"A club for diplomats and gentlemen," Prince Karschoff remarked, looking
lazily through a little cloud of tobacco smoke around the spacious but
almost deserted card room. "The classification seems comprehensive
enough, yet it seems impossible to get even a decent rubber of bridge."
Sir Daniel Harker, a many years retired plenipotentiary to one of the
smaller Powers, shrugged his shoulders.
"Personally, I have come to the conclusion," he declared, "that the
_raison d'être_ for the club seems to be passing. There is no diplomacy,
nowadays, and every man who pays his taxes is a gentleman. Kingley, you
are the youngest. Ransack the club and find a fourth."
The Honourable Nigel Kingley smiled lazily from the depths of his
easy-chair. He was a young Englishman of normal type, long-limbed,
clean-shaven, with good features, a humorous mouth and keen grey eyes.
"In actual years," he admitted, "I may have the advantage of you two,
but so far as regards the qualities of youth, Karschoff is the youngest
man here. Besides, no one could refuse him anything."
"It is a subterfuge," the Prince objected, "but if I must go, I will go
presently. We will wait five minutes, in case Providence should be kind
to us."
The three men relapsed into silence. They were seated in a comfortable
recess of the card room of the St. Philip's Club. The atmosphere of the
apartment seemed redolent with suggestions of faded splendour. There was
a faint perfume of Russian calf from the many rows of musty volumes
which still filled the stately bookcases. The oil paintings which hung
upon the walls belonged to a remote period. In a distant corner, four
other men were playing bridge, speechless and almost motionless, the
white faces of two of them like cameos under the electric light and
against the dark walls. There was no sound except the soft patter of the
cards and the subdued movements of a servant preparing another bridge
table by the side of the three men. Then the door of the room was
quietly opened and closed. A man of youthful middle-age, carefully
dressed, with a large, clean-shaven face, blue eyes, and fair hair
sprinkled with grey, came towards them. He was well set up, almost
anxiously ingratiating in manner.
"You see now what Providence has sent," Sir Daniel Harker observed under
his breath.
"It is enough to make an atheist of one, this!" the Prince muttered.
"Any bridge?" the newcomer enquired, seating himself at the table and
shuffling one of the packs of cards.
The three men rose to their feet with varying degrees of unwillingness.
"Immelan is too good for us," Sir Daniel grumbled. "He always wins."
"I am lucky," the newcomer admitted, "but I may be your partner; in
which case, you too will win."
"If you are my partner," the Prince declared, "I shall play for five
pounds a hundred. I desire to gamble. London is beginning to weary me."
"Mr. Kingley is a better player, though not so lucky," Immelan
acknowledged, with a little bow.
"Never believe it, with all due respect to our young friend here," Sir
Daniel replied, as he cut a card. "Kingley plays like a man with brain
but without subtlety. In a duel between you two, I would back Immelan
every time."
Kingley took his place at the table with a little gesture of
resignation. He looked across the table to where Immelan sat displaying
the card which he had just cut. The eyes of the two men met. A few
seconds of somewhat significant silence followed. Then Immelan gathered
up the cards.
"I have the utmost respect for Mr. Kingley as an adversary," he said.
The latter bowed a little ironically.
"May you always preserve that sentiment! To-day, chance seems to have
made us partners. Your deal, Mr. Immelan."
"What stakes?" the Prince enquired, settling himself down in his chair.
"They are for you to name," Immelan declared.
The Prince laughed shortly.
"I believe you are as great a gambler at heart as I am," he observed.
"With Mr. Kingley for my partner, and the game one of skill," was the
courteous reply, "I do not need to limit my stakes."
A servant crossed the room, bringing a note upon a tray. He presented it
to Kingley, who opened and read it through without change of
countenance. When he had finished it, however, he laid his cards face
downwards upon the table.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I owe you my most profound apologies. I am called
away at once on a matter of urgent business."
"But this is most annoying," the Prince declared irritably.
"Here comes my saviour," Kingley remarked, as another man entered the
card room. "Henderson will take my place. Glad I haven't to break you
up, after all. Henderson, will you play a rubber?"
The newcomer assented. Nigel Kingley made his adieux and crossed the
room. Immelan watched him curiously.
"What is our friend Kingley's profession?" he enquired.
"He has no profession," Sir Daniel replied. "He has never come into
touch with the sordid needs of these money-grubbing days. He is the
nephew and heir of the Earl of Dorminster."
Immelan looked away from the retreating figure.
"Lord Dorminster," he murmured. "The same Lord Dorminster who was in the
Government many years ago?"
"He was Foreign Secretary when I was Governor of Jamaica," Sir Daniel
answered. "A very brilliant man he was in those days."
Immelan nodded thoughtfully.
"I remember," he said.
Nigel Kingley, on leaving the St. Philip's Club, was driven at once, in
the automobile which he found awaiting him, to a large corner house in
Belgrave Square, which he entered with the air of an habitué. The
waiting major-domo took him at once in charge and piloted him across the
hall.
"His lordship is very much occupied, Mr. Nigel," he announced. "He is
not seeing any other callers. He left word, however, that you were to be
shown in the moment you arrived."
"His lordship is quite well, I hope?"
"Well in health, sir, but worried, and I don't wonder at it," the man
replied, speaking with the respectful freedom of an old servant. "I
never thought I'd live to see such times as these."
A man in the early sixties, still good-looking, notwithstanding a
somewhat worn expression, looked up from his seat at the library table
on Kingley's entrance. He nodded, but waited until the door was closed
behind the retreating servant before he spoke.
"Good of you to come, Nigel," he said. "Bring your chair up here."
"Bad news?" the newcomer enquired.
"Damnable!"
There was a brief silence, during which Nigel, knowing his uncle's
humours, leaned back in his chair and waited. Upon the table was a
little pile of closely written manuscript, and by their side several
black-bound code books, upon which the "F.O.Private" still remained,
though almost obliterated with time. Lord Dorminster's occupation was
apparent. He was decoding a message of unusual length. Presently he
turned away from the table, however, and faced his nephew. His hands
travelled to his waistcoat pocket. He drew out a cigarette from a thin
gold case, lit it and began to smoke. Then he crossed his legs and
leaned a little farther back in his chair.
"Nigel," he said, "we are living in strange times."
"No one denies that, sir," was the grave assent.
Lord Dorminster glanced at the calendar which stood upon the desk.
"To-day," he continued, "is the twenty-third day of March, nineteen
hundred and thirty-four. Fifteen years ago that terrible Peace Treaty
was signed. Since then you know what the history of our country has
been. I am not blowing my own trumpet when I say that nearly every man
with true political insight has been cast adrift. At the present moment
the country is in the hands of a body of highly respectable and
well-meaning men who, as a parish council, might conduct the affairs of
Dorminster Town with unqualified success. As statesmen they do not
exist. It seems to me, Nigel, that you and I are going to see in reality
that spectre which terrified the world twenty years ago. We are going to
see the breaking up of a mighty empire."
"Tell me what has happened or is going to happen," Nigel begged.
"Well, for one thing," his uncle replied, "the Emperor of the East is
preparing for a visit to Europe. He will be here probably next month.
You know whom I mean, of course?"
"Prince Shan!" Nigel exclaimed.
"Prince Shan of China," Lord Dorminster assented. "His coming links up
many things which had been puzzling me. I tell you, Nigel, what happens
during Prince Shan's visit will probably decide the destinies of this
country, and yet I wouldn't mind betting you a thousand to one that
there isn't a single official of the Government who has the slightest
idea as to why he is coming, or that he is coming at all."
"Do you know?" Nigel asked.
"I can only surmise. Let us leave Prince Shan for the moment, Nigel. Now
listen. You go about a great deal. What do people say about
me--honestly, I mean? Speak with your face to the light."
"They call you a faddist and a scaremonger," Nigel confessed, "yet there
are one or two, especially at the St. Philip's Club, diplomatists and
ambassadors whose place in the world has passed away, who think and
believe differently. You know, sir, that I am amongst them."
Lord Dorminster nodded kindly.
"Well," he said, "I fancy I am about to prove myself. Seven years ago,
it was," he went on reminiscently, "when the new National Party came
into supreme power. You know one of their first battle cries--'Down with
all secret treaties! Down with all secret diplomacy! Let nothing exist
but an honest commercial understanding between the different countries
of the world!' How Germany and Russia howled with joy! In place of an
English statesman with his country's broad interests at heart, we have
in Berlin and Petrograd half a dozen representatives of the great
industries, whose object, in their own words, is, I believe, to develop
friendly commercialism and a feeling of brotherhood between the nations.
Not only our ambassadors but our secret service were swept clean out of
existence. I remember going to Broadley, the day he was appointed
Foreign Minister, and I asked him a simple question. I asked him whether
he did not consider it his duty to keep his finger upon the pulses of
the other great nations, however friendly they might seem, to keep
himself assured that all these expressions of good will were honourable,
and that in the heart of the German nation that great craving for
revenge which is the natural heritage of the present generation had
really become dissipated. Broadley smiled at me. 'Lord Dorminster,' he
said, 'the chief cause of wars in the past has been suspicion. We look
upon espionage as a disgraceful practice. It is the people of Germany
with whom we are in touch now, not a military oligarchy, and the people
of Germany no more desire war than we do. Besides, there is the League
of Nations.' Those were Broadley's views then, and they are his views
to-day. You know what I did?"
Nigel assented cautiously.
"I suppose it is an open secret amongst a few of us," he observed. "You
have been running an unofficial secret service of your own."
"Precisely! I have had a few agents at work for over a year, and when I
have finished decoding this last dispatch, I shall have evidence which
will prove beyond a doubt that we are on the threshold of terrible
events. The worst of it is--well, we have been found out."
"What do you mean?" Nigel asked quickly.
His uncle's sensitive lips quivered.
"You knew Sidwell?"
"Quite well."
"Sidwell was found stabbed to the heart in a café in Petrograd, three
weeks ago," Lord Dorminster announced. "An official report of the
enquiry into his death informs his relatives that his death was due to a
quarrel with some Russian sailors over one of the women of the quarter
where he was found."
"Horrible!" Nigel muttered.
"Sidwell was one of those unnatural people, as you know," Lord
Dorminster went on, "who never touched wine or spirits and who hated
women. To continue. Atcheson was a friend of yours, wasn't he?"
"Of course! He was at Eton with me. It was I who first brought him here
to dine. Don't tell me that anything has happened to Jim Atcheson!"
"This dispatch is from him," Lord Dorminster replied, indicating the
pile of manuscript upon the table,--"a dispatch which came into my hands
in a most marvellous fashion. He died last week in a nursing home
in--well, let us say a foreign capital. The professor in charge of the
hospital sends a long report as to the unhappy disease from which he
suffered. As a matter of fact, he was poisoned."
Nigel Kingley had been a soldier in his youth and he was a brave man.
Nevertheless, the horror of these things struck a cold chill to his
heart. He seemed suddenly to be looking into the faces of spectres, to
hear the birth of the winds of destruction.
"That is all I have to say to you for the moment," his uncle concluded
gravely. "In an hour I shall have finished decoding this dispatch, and I
propose then to take you into my entire confidence. In the meantime, I
want you to go and talk for a few minutes to the cleverest woman in
England, the woman who, in the face of a whole army of policemen and
detectives, crossed the North Sea yesterday afternoon with this in her
pocket."
"You don't mean Maggie?" Nigel exclaimed eagerly.
His uncle nodded.
"You will find her in the boudoir," he said. "I told her that you were
coming. In an hour's time, return here."
Lord Dorminster rose to his feet as his nephew turned to depart. He laid
his hand upon the latter's shoulder, and Nigel always remembered the
grave kindliness of his tone and expression.
"Nigel," he sighed, "I am afraid I shall be putting upon your shoulders
a terrible burden, but there is no one else to whom I can turn."
"There is no one else to whom you ought to turn, sir," the young man
replied simply. "I shall be back in an hour."