So these were the rewards of knight-errantry! In his anger he was
glad to be rid of her. He was free at last. She'd been nothing but an
embarrassment. If she were to attempt a reconciliation, he would turn
his back on her. It wasn't likely that he'd put his neck into the same
noose twice.
Little by little from resenting her, he began to suspect her. Had she
been using him as a cat's-paw in a deeper game? Every man with whom she
had ever associated, she had destroyed; could she be expected, to show
more mercy to a man by whom she had been rejected? Her husband's words
came back: “When she has added you to her list of victims, if she gives
you time before she kills you, remember that I warned you.”
Everything to do with her became distorted when interpreted in the light
of treachery. The pathos of her unrequited affection had been a mask;
her humanitarianism had been a cloak for her designs. When he retraced
his relations with her, it seemed glaringly probable that from the start
she had been the agent of his financial rivals, placed by them on board
the _Ryndam_ with the definite intention of accomplishing his ruin.
Except for her final error in tactics, she would have attained her
object. He had escaped by the narrowest of margins.
But the other people who had come upon the scene, where did they stand?
Were they her puppets, jumping whichever way she pulled the wires,
or were they her active co-conspirators? Varensky and the Little
Grandmother were undoubtedly her puppets; she employed their enthusiasms
to serve her purposes. Anna was her victim--a woman wronged and cheated,
infinitely dear to him and tragic. It was Captain Lajos who troubled
him. The more he thought about him, the more certain he became that the
Captain and Santa were hand in glove. The farce which they had enacted
on the train had been prearranged with a view to intimidating him. His
most unnerving information, concerning the menace of starving millions,
had come from the Captain. And there was a further fact, which had been
disquieting him all morning: it was Captain Lajos who had tried Santa's
door last night.
What did they think to gain by their plotting? Having pondered the
conundrum, he decided that their object was to thwart his schemes for
grasping world-power, and that the means they had chosen were to compel
him to give for nothing the hoards of food which he had intended that
Europe should buy.
Well aware that this theory was far from covering all the facts, he was
still feeling his way through a quagmire of surmise, when a visitor was
announced. In the foyer he found an officer, resplendently uniformed,
waiting to escort him to his audience at the Royal Palace. He
was whizzed away in a handsome car. As he traveled, his companion
entertained him with anecdotes, grimly humorous, of Bela Kun's reign of
terror.
“Experiments of that sort soon disprove themselves,” he said cheerfully.
“We live through them and go on again.”
“And your country is going on again?” Hindwood inquired.
“Emphatically. Signs of revival are already apparent.”
“But what about Russia? How's revival possible without security?”
The officer laughed carelessly. “I catch your meaning; you've heard this
latest about Bolshevism's downfall. In our part of the world we pay
no heed to rumors; they're inventions of political opportunists or of
gamblers in the international exchange. Even if this latest is true,
it's the best thing that could have happened.”
Hindwood twisted in his seat that he might lose nothing of his
companion's expression. “The best thing in the long run--that's granted.
But meanwhile, because of the breakdown in organization, over a hundred
million Russians are likely to die.”
Again the officer laughed, stretching his long legs. “The fittest will
survive. One has to die somehow. The last war was fought because the
world was too crowded. Famine's nature's cure for overpopulation.”
The remark sounded singularly ill-timed, coming from a man whose country
was also starving. Hindwood frowned. “A heartless cure and, thank
goodness, not the only one.”
“Not more heartless than civilized society's, which encourages armed
nations to strangle each other with every filthy invention of science.
When you forbid Nature to correct matters in her own way, sooner or
later you find yourself with a war on your hands. The matter's very
simple: so many mouths to fill and so many rations. When the mouths are
in excess of the rations, some one has to go short. The people who are
selected to go short can either drop in their tracks or fight. If they
fight and win, the result's the same--some one else has to go without.
The adjustment's automatic.”
“The thought of death,” Hindwood suggested quietly, “especially of other
people's death, doesn't seem to trouble you.”
“That's natural. Killing and dying are my trade.”
Brutal as was the point of view, after Santa's sentimental fallacies,
there was something honest and direct about these bald assertions.
Hindwood spoke again. “What applies to Russia, applies equally to
Hungary. My errand at the Palace is to offer sufficient food to keep
your country alive. According to your theory, I'm interfering with
Nature's laws. I'm doing something economically immoral. I ought to
leave you to your fate.”
To his amazement he was met with a polite concurrence. “That's how I
regard it.”
It was impossible to credit the man's sincerity. Hindwood glanced aside,
irritated and shocked. He was seeking a motive for such disinterested
frankness. There was nothing more to say.
He had been so much absorbed in the conversation that he had not noticed
their direction. They were skimming high above the Danube, crossing a
bridge that spanned the sunlit gulf in giant strides. Behind lay Pest,
modern as a second Paris; in front lay Buda, ancient and scarcely
Christian, still bearing the marks of its Turkish occupation. On
reaching the further bank, the ascent to the Palace begun to climb.
It was just as they were reaching the top that Hindwood was for a second
time startled by the ghost of memory. Peering down on him from the
ramparts, with its head between its paws, was a snow-white Russian
wolf-hound. The next moment they had passed beneath an arch, between
saluting sentries, and had halted in the Palace-yard.