Nigel and Maggie had tea together in the little room which the latter
had used as a boudoir. They were discussing the question of her future
residence there.
"I am afraid," he declared, "that you will have to marry me."
"It would have its advantages," she admitted thoughtfully. "I am really
so fond of you, Nigel. I should be married at St. Mary Abbot's,
Kensington, and have the Annersley children for bridesmaids. Don't you
think I should look sweet in old gold and orange blossoms?"
"Don't tantalise me," he begged.
"We really must decide upon something," she insisted. "I hate giving up
my rooms here, I should hate having my worthy aunt as resident duenna,
and I suppose it would be gloriously improper for us two to go on living
here if I didn't. Are you quite sure that you love me, Nigel?"
"I am not quite so sure as I was this morning," he confessed, holding
out his cup for some more tea. "I met a perfectly adorable girl to-day
at luncheon at the Ritz. Such eyes, Maggie, and the slimmest, most
wonderful figure you ever saw!"
"Who was the cat?" Maggie enquired with asperity.
"She is Russian. Her name is Naida Karetsky. Karschoff introduced me."
Maggie was suddenly serious. There was just a trace of the one
expression he had never before seen in her face--fear--lurking in her
eyes, even asserting itself in her tone.
"Naida Karetsky?" she repeated. "Tell me exactly how you met her?"
"She was lunching with her father and Oscar Immelan. She stopped to
speak to Karschoff and asked him to present me. Afterwards, she invited
us to take coffee in the lounge."
"She went out of her way to make your acquaintance, then?"
"Yes, I suppose she did."
"You know who she is?"
"The daughter of one of the Russian Consuls over here, I understood."
"She is more than that," Maggie declared nervously. "She is the
inspiration of the President himself. She is the most vital force in
Russian politics. She is the woman whom I wanted you to know, to whom I
told you that I wished you to pay attentions. And now that you know her,
I am afraid."
"Where did you meet her?" he asked curiously.
"We were at school together in Paris. She was two years older than I,
but she stayed there until she was twenty. Afterwards we met in
Florence."
Nigel was greatly interested.
"Somehow or other, nothing that you can tell me about her surprises me,"
he admitted. "She has the air of counting for great things in the world.
She is very beautiful, too."
"She is beautiful enough," Maggie replied, "to have turned the head of
the great Paul Matinsky himself. They say that he would give his soul to
be free to marry her. As it is, she is the uncrowned Tsarina of Russia."
Nigel frowned slightly.
"Isn't that going rather a long way?" he objected.
"Not when one remembers what manner of a man Matinsky is," Maggie
replied. "He may have his faults, but he is an absolute idealist so far
as regards his private life. There has never been a word of scandal
concerning him and Naida, nor will there ever be. But in his eyes, Naida
has that most wonderful gift of all,--she has vision. He once told a man
with whom I spoke in Berlin that Naida was the one person in the world
to whom a mistake was impossible. Nigel, did she give you any idea at
all what she was over here for?"
"Not as yet," he replied, "but she has asked me to go and see her."
"Did she seem interested in you personally, or was it because your name
is Dorminster?"
Nigel sighed.
"I hoped it was a personal interest, but I cannot tell. She asked me
whether I had inherited my uncle's hobby."
"What did you tell her?" she asked eagerly.
"Very little. She seemed sympathetic, but after all she is in the enemy
camp. She and Immelan seemed on particularly good terms."
"Yet I don't believe that she is committed as yet," Maggie declared.
"She always used to speak so affectionately of England. Nigel, do you
think that I have vision?"
"I am sure that you have," he answered.
"Very well, then, I will tell you what I see," she continued. "I see
Naida Karetsky for Russia, Oscar Immelan for Germany, Austria and
Sweden, and Prince Shan for Asia--here--meeting in London--within the
next week or ten days, to take counsel together to decide whether the
things which are being plotted against us to-day shall be or shall not
be. Of Immelan we have no hope. He conceals it cleverly enough, but he
hates England with all the fervour of a zealot. Naida is unconvinced.
She is to be won. And Prince Shan--"
"Well, what about him?" Nigel demanded, a little carried away by
Maggie's earnestness.
She shook her head.
"I don't know," she confessed. "If the stories one hears about him are
true, no man nor any woman could ever influence him. At least, though,
one could watch and hope."
"Prince Shan is supposed to be coming to Paris, not to London," Nigel
remarked.
"If he goes to Paris," Maggie said, "Naida and Immelan will go. So shall
we. If he comes here, it will be easier. Tell me, Nigel, did you see the
Prime Minister?"
"I saw him," Nigel replied, "but without the slightest result. He is
clearly of the opinion that the open verdict was a merciful one. In
other words, he believes that it was a case of suicide."
"How wicked!" Maggie exclaimed.
"I suppose it is trying the ordinary Britisher a little high," Nigel
remarked, "to ask him to believe that he was murdered in cold blood,
here in the heart of London, by the secret service agent of a foreign
Power. The strangest part of it all is that it is true. To think that
those few pages of manuscript would have told us exactly what we have to
fear! Why, I actually had them in my hand."
"And I in my corsets!" Maggie groaned.
They were both silent for a moment. Then Nigel moved towards the door
and opened it.
"Come downstairs into the library, will you, Maggie?" he begged. "Let us
go in for a little reconstruction."
They found Brookes in the hall and took him with them. The blinds in
the room had never been raised, and there was still that nameless
atmosphere which lingers for long in an apartment which has become
associated with tragedy. Instinctively they all moved quietly and spoke
in hushed voices. Nigel sat in the chair where his uncle had been found
dead and made a mental effort to reconstruct the events which must have
immediately preceded the tragedy.
"I know that this was all thrashed out at the inquest, Brookes," he
said, "but I want you to tell me once more. You see how far it is from
this table to the door. My uncle must have had abundant warning of any
one approaching. Was there no other way by which any one could have
entered the room?"
"There was, your lordship," the man replied, "and I have regretted
several times since that I did not mention it at the inquest. The
cleaners were here on the morning of that day, and the window at the
farther end of the room was unfastened--I even believe that it was
open."
Nigel rose and examined the window in question. It was almost flush with
the ground, and although there were iron railings separating it from the
street, a little gate opening from the area entrance made ingress not
only possible but easy. Nigel returned to his chair.
"I can't understand this not having been mentioned at the inquest,
Brookes," he said.
"I was waiting for the question to be asked, your lordship. It was
perfectly clear to every one there, if your lordship will excuse my
saying so, that both the coroner and the police seemed to have made up
their minds that it was a case of suicide."
Nigel nodded.
"I had the same idea with reference to the coroner, at any rate,
Brookes," he said. "So long as the verdict was returned in the form it
was, I am not sure that it was not better so."
He dismissed the man with a little nod and sat turning over the code
books which still stood upon the table.
"You and I, at any rate, Maggie, know the truth," he said, "and so long
as we can get no help from the proper quarters, I think that we should
do better to let the matter remain as it is. We don't want to direct
people's attention to us. We want to lull suspicion so far as we can, to
be free to watch the three."
The telephone bell rang, and as Nigel moved his arm to take off the
receiver, he knocked over one of the black, morocco-bound code books, A
sheet of paper with a few words upon it came fluttering to the ground.
Maggie picked it up, glanced at it carelessly at first and then with
interest.
"Nigel," she exclaimed, "you see whose handwriting this is? Could it be
part of the decoded dispatch?"
The telephone enquiry had been unimportant. Nigel pushed the instrument
away. They both looked eagerly at the page of manuscript paper. It was
numbered "8" at the top, and the few words written upon it in Lord
Dorminster's writing were obviously the continuation of a paragraph:
The name of the middle one, then, of the three secret cities, into
which at all costs some one must find his way, is Kroten, and the
telephone number which is all the clue I have been able to get, up
to the present, to the London end of the affair, is Mayfair 146.
"This is just where he got to in the decoding!" Nigel declared. "I
wonder whether it's any use looking for the rest."
They searched through every page of the heavy code books in vain. Then
they returned to their study of the single page. Nigel dragged down an
atlas and studied it.
"Kroten," he muttered. "Here it is,--a small place about six hundred
miles from Petrograd, apparently the centre of a barren, swampy
district, population thirty thousand, birth rate declining, industries
nil. Cheerful sort of spot it seems!"
"I have more luck than you!" Maggie cried, her finger tracing out a
line in the open telephone book. "Look!"
Nigel glanced over her shoulder and read the entry to which she was
pointing:
"_Immelan Oscar, 13 Clarges Street, W. Mayfair 146._"