The Duchess looked up from her writing table and nodded to her husband,
who had just entered.
“Good morning, Ambrose!” she said. “Do you want to talk to me?”
“If you can spare me five minutes,” the Duke suggested. “I don’t think
that I need keep you longer.”
The Duchess handed her notebook to her secretary, who hastened from the
room. The Duke seated himself in her vacant chair.
“About our little party down in Hampshire next week,” he began.
“I am waiting to hear from you before I send out any invitations,” the
Duchess answered.
“Quite so,” the Duke assented. “To tell you the truth, I don’t want
anything in the nature of a house party. What I should really like would
be to get Maiyo there almost to ourselves.”
His wife looked at him in some surprise.
“You seem particularly anxious to make things pleasant for this young
man,” she remarked. “If he were the son of the Emperor himself, no one
could do more for him than you people have been doing these last few
weeks.”
The Duke of Devenham, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, whose wife
entertained for his party, and whose immense income, derived mostly from
her American relations, was always at its disposal, was a person almost
as important in the councils of his country as the Prime Minister
himself. It sometimes occurred to him that the person who most signally
failed to realize this fact was the lady who did him the honor to
preside over his household.
“My dear Margaret,” he said, “you can take my word for it that we know
what we are about. It is very important indeed that we should keep on
friendly terms with this young man,--I don’t mean as a personal matter.
It’s a matter of politics--perhaps of something greater, even, than
that.”
The Duchess liked to understand everything, and her husband’s reticence
annoyed her.
“But we have the Japanese Ambassador always with us,” she remarked. “A
most delightful person I call the Baron Hesho, and I am sure he loves us
all.”
“That is not exactly the point, my dear,” the Duke explained. “Prince
Maiyo is over here on a special mission. We ourselves have only been
able to surmise its object with the aid of our secret service in Tokio.
You can rest assured of one thing, however. It is of vast importance to
the interests of this country that we secure his goodwill.”
The Duchess smiled good humoredly.
“Well, my dear Ambrose,” she said, “I don’t know what more we can do
than feed him properly and give him pleasant people to talk to. He
doesn’t go in for sports, does he? All I can promise is that we will do
our best to be agreeable to him.”
“I am sure of it, my dear,” the Duke said. “You haven’t committed
yourself to asking any one, by the bye?”
“Not a soul,” his wife answered, “except Sir Charles. I had to ask him,
of course, for Penelope.”
“Naturally,” the Duke assented. “I am glad Penelope will be there. I
only wish that she were English instead of American, and that Maiyo
would take a serious fancy to her.”
“Perhaps,” the Duchess said dryly, “you would like him to take a fancy
to Grace?”
“I shouldn’t mind in the least,” her husband declared. “I never met a
young man whom I respected and admired more.”
“Nor I, for that matter,” the Duchess agreed. “And yet, somehow or
other--”
“Somehow or other?” the Duke repeated courteously.
“Well, I never altogether trust these paragons,” his wife said. “In all
the ordinary affairs of life the Prince seems to reach an almost perfect
standard. I sometimes wonder whether he would be as trustworthy in the
big things. Nothing else you want to talk about, Ambrose?”
“Nothing at all,” the Duke said, rising to his feet. “I only wanted to
make it plain that we don’t require a house party next week.”
“I shan’t ask a soul,” the Duchess answered. “Do you mind ringing the
bell as you pass? I’ll have Miss Smith back again and send these letters
off.”
“Good!” the Duke declared. “I’m going down to the House, but I don’t
suppose there’ll be anything doing. By the bye, we shall have to be a
little feudal next week. Japan is a country of many ceremonies, and,
after all, Maiyo is one of the Royal Family. I have written Perkins, to
stir him up a little.”
The Duke drove down to the House, but called first in Downing Street. He
found the Prime Minister anxious to see him.
“You’ve arranged about Maiyo coming down to you next week?” he asked.
“That’s all right,” the Duke answered. “He is coming, for certain. One
good thing about that young man--he never breaks an engagement.”
The Prime Minister consulted a calendar which lay open before him.
“Do you mind,” he asked, “if I come, too, and Bransome?”
“Why, of course not,” the Duke replied. “We shall be delighted. We have
seventy bedrooms, and only half a dozen or so of us. But tell me--is
this young man as important as all that?”
“We shall have to have a serious talk,” the Prime Minister said, “in a
few days’ time. I don’t think that even you grasp the exact position of
affairs as they stand today. Just now I am bothered to death about other
things. Heseltine has just been in from the Home Office. He is simply
inundated with correspondence from America about those two murders.”
The Duke nodded.
“It’s an odd thing,” he remarked, “that they should both have been
Americans.”
“Heseltine thinks there’s something behind this correspondence,” the
Prime Minister said slowly. “Washington was very secretive about the man
Fynes’ identity. I found that out from Scotland Yard. Do you know, I’m
half inclined to think, although I can’t get a word out of Harvey, that
this man Fynes--”
The Prime Minister hesitated.
“Well?” the Duke asked a little impatiently.
“I don’t want to go too far,” his chief said. “I am making some fresh
inquiries, and I am hoping to get at the bottom of the matter very
shortly. One thing is very certain, though, and that is that no two
murders have ever been committed in this city with more cold-blooded
deliberation, and with more of what I should call diabolical cleverness.
Take the affair of poor young Vanderpole, for instance. The person who
entered his taxi and killed him must have done so while the vehicle was
standing in the middle of the road at one of the three blocks. Not
only that, but he must have been a friend, or some one posing as a
friend--some one, at any rate, of his own order. Vanderpole was over six
feet high, and as muscular as a young bull. He could have thrown any one
out into the street who had attempted to assault him openly.”
“It is the most remarkable case I ever heard of in my life,” the Duke
admitted, helping himself to a cigarette from a box which he had just
discovered.
“There is another point,” the Prime Minister continued. “There are
features in common about both these murders. Not only were they both the
work of a most accomplished criminal, but he must have been possessed of
an iron nerve and amazing strength. The dagger by which Hamilton Fynes
was stabbed was driven through the middle of his heart. The cord with
which Vanderpole was strangled must have been turned by a wrist
of steel. No time for a word afterwards, mind, or before. It was a
wonderful feat. I am not surprised that the Americans can’t understand
it.”
“They don’t suggest, I suppose,” the Duke asked, “that we are not trying
to clear the matter up?”
“They don’t suggest it,” his chief answered, “but I can’t quite make
out what’s at the back of their heads. However, I won’t bother you about
that now. If I were to propound Heseltine’s theory to you, you would
think that he had been reading the works of some of our enterprising
young novelists. Things will have cleared up, I dare say, by next week.
I am coming round to the House for a moment if you’re not in a hurry.”
The Duke assented, and waited while the secretary locked up the papers
which the Prime Minister had been examining, and prepared others to be
carried into the House. The two men left the place together, and the
Duke pointed toward his brougham.
“Do you mind walking?” the Prime Minister said. “There is another matter
I’d like to talk to you about, and there’s nowhere better than the
streets for a little conversation. Besides, I need the air.”
“With pleasure,” the Duke answered, who loathed walking.
He directed his coachman to precede them, and they started off, arm in
arm.
“Devenham,” the Prime Minister said, “we were speaking, a few minutes
ago, of Prince Maiyo. I want you to understand this, that upon that
young man depends entirely the success or failure of my administration.”
“You are serious?” the Duke exclaimed.
“Absolutely,” the Prime Minister answered. “I know quite well what he
is here for. He is here to make up his mind whether it will pay Japan to
renew her treaty with us, or whether it would be more to her advantage
to enter into an alliance with any other European power. He has been to
most of the capitals in Europe. He has been here with us. By this time
he has made up his mind. He knows quite well what his report will be.
Yet you can’t get a word out of him. He is a delightful young fellow,
I know, but he is as clever as any trained diplomatist I have ever come
across. I’ve had him to dine with me alone, and I’ve done all that I
could to make him talk. When he went away, I knew just exactly as much
as I did before he came.”
“He seems pleased enough with us,” the Duke remarked.
“I am not so sure,” the Prime Minister answered. “He has travelled about
a good deal in England. I heard of him in Manchester and Sheffield,
Newcastle and Leicester, absolutely unattended. I wonder what he was
doing there.”
“From my experience of him,” the Duke said, “I don’t think we shall know
until he chooses to tell us.”
“I am afraid you are right,” the Prime Minister declared. “At the same
time you might just drop a hint to your wife, and to that remarkably
clever young niece of hers, Miss Penelope Morse. Of course, I don’t
expect that he would unbosom himself to any one, but, to tell you
the truth, as we are situated now, the faintest hint as regards his
inclinations, or lack of inclinations, towards certain things would
be of immense service. If he criticised any of our institutions, for
instance, his remarks would be most interesting. Then he has been
spending several months in various capitals. He would not be likely to
tell any one his whole impressions of those few months, but a phrase,
a word, even a gesture, to a clever woman might mean a great deal. It
might also mean a great deal to us.”
“I’ll mention it,” the Duke promised, “but I am afraid my womenfolk are
scarcely up to this sort of thing. The best plan would be to tackle him
ourselves down at Devenham.”
“I thought of that,” the Prime Minister assented. “That is why I am
coming down myself and bringing Bransome. If he will have nothing to say
to us within a week or so of his departure, we shall know what to think.
Remember my words, Devenham,--when our chronicler dips his pen into the
ink and writes of our government, our foreign policy, at least, will
be judged by our position in the far East. Exactly what that will be
depends upon Prince Maiyo. With a renewal of our treaty we could go to
the country tomorrow. Without it, especially if the refusal should come
from them, there will be some very ugly writing across the page.”
The Duke threw away his cigarette.
“Well,” he said, “we can only do our best. The young man seems friendly
enough.”
The Prime Minister nodded.
“It is precisely his friendliness which I fear,” he said.