THE DEVIL'S AUCTION
I said as little as possible during the drive homeward.
My companion was equally silent. No doubt he, like myself, was
bracing himself for a duel of wits.
As soon as we were safe in my private room at the hotel, with a
bottle of vodka and a box of cigars in front of us, I opened the
discussion with my habitual directness.
"I need not tell you, M. Auguste, that I have not invited you here to
discuss questions of psychology. I am a politician, and it matters
nothing to me whether I am dealing with a ghost or a man, provided I
can make myself understood."
M. Auguste bowed.
"For instance, it is quite clear that the interesting revelations we
have had to-night would not have been made without your good will. It
is to be presumed, therefore, that if I can convince you that it is
better to turn the Emperor's mind in another direction, you will
refuse to make yourself the medium of further communications of that
precise character."
M. Auguste gave me an intelligent glance.
"I am as you have just said, a _medium_," he replied with significant
emphasis. "As such, I need not tell you, I have no personal interest
in the communications which are made through me."
I nodded, and took out my pocket-book, from which I extracted a
hundred ruble-note (about $75).
"I promised to show you something interesting," I remarked, as I laid
it on the table.
M. Auguste turned his head, and his lip curled slightly.
"I am afraid my sight is not very good," he said negligently. "Is not
that object rather small?"
"It is merely a specimen," I responded, counting out nine others, and
laying them beside the first.
"Ah, now I fancy I can see what you are showing me," he admitted.
"There is a history attached to these notes," I explained. "They
represent the amount of a bet which I have just won."
"Really! That is most interesting."
"I now have another bet of similar nature pending, which I hope also
to be able to win."
"I am tempted to wish you success," put in the medium encouragingly.
"The chances of success are so great that if you were a betting man I
should be inclined to ask you to make a joint affair of it," I said.
"My dear M. V----, I am not a bigot. I have no objection to a wager
provided the stakes are made worth my while."
"I think they should be. Well, I will tell you plainly, I stand to
win this amount if the Baltic Fleet does not sail for another month."
M. Auguste smiled pleasantly.
"I congratulate you," he said. "From what I have heard the repairs
will take at least that time."
"But that is not all. This bet of mine is continuous. I win a similar
stake for every month which passes without the fleet having left
harbor."
M. Auguste gazed at me steadily before speaking.
"If your bet were renewable weekly instead of monthly, you might
become quite a rich man."
I saw that I was dealing with a cormorant. I made a hasty mental
calculation. Half of one thousand rubles was about $375 a week, and
the information I had led me to believe that Port Arthur was capable
of holding out for another six months at least. To delay the sailing
of the Baltic Fleet till then would cost roughly $10,000--say 15,000
rubles.
I decided that neither England nor Japan would grudge the price.
"I think your suggestion is a good one," I answered M. Auguste. "In
that case, should you be willing to share the bet?"
"I should be willing to undertake it entirely," was the response.
The scoundrel wanted $20,000!
Had I been dealing with an honest man I should have let him have the
money. But he had raised his terms so artfully that I felt sure that
if I yielded this he would at once make some fresh demand.
I therefore shook my head, and began picking up the notes on the
table.
"That would not suit me at all," I said decidedly. "I do not wish to
be left out altogether."
M. Auguste watched me with growing uneasiness as I restored the notes
one by one to my pocket-book.
"Look here!" he said abruptly, as the last note disappeared. "Tell me
plainly what you expect me to do."
"I expect you to have a communication from your friend Madame
Blavatsky, or any other spirit you may prefer--Peter the Great would
be most effective, I should think--every time the Baltic Fleet is
ready to start, warning 'Mr. Nicholas' not to let it sail."
M. Auguste appeared to turn this proposal over in his mind.
"And is that all?" he asked.
"I shall expect you to keep perfect secrecy about the arrangement. I
have a friend at Potsdam, and I shall be pretty sure to hear if you
try to give me away."
"Potsdam!" M. Auguste seemed genuinely surprised, and even
disconcerted.
"Do you mean to say that you didn't know you were carrying out the
instructions of Wilhelm II.?" I demanded, scarcely less surprised.
It was difficult to believe that the vexation showed by the medium
was feigned.
"Of course! I see it now!" burst from him. "I wondered what she meant
by all that stuff about Germany. And I--a Frenchman!"
It is extraordinary what unexpected scruples will display themselves
in the most unprincipled knaves. Low as they may descend, there seems
always to be some one point on which they are as sensitive as a
Bayard.
M. Auguste, of all men in the world, was a French patriot! It turned
out that he was a fanatical Nationalist and anti-Semite. He had
howled in anti-Dreyfusite mobs, and flung stones at the windows of
Masonic temples in Paris.
I was delighted with this discovery, which gave me a stronger hold on
him than any bribe could.
But I had noted the feminine pronoun in his exclamation recorded
above. I did not think it referred to the revealing spirit.
"You have been deceived by the woman who has given you your
instructions," I remarked to him, when his excitement had subsided a
little. "I fancy I can guess her name."
"Yes. It is the Princess Y----," he confessed.
Bewildering personality! Again, as I heard her name connected with an
intrigue of the basest kind, a criminal conspiracy to influence the
ruler of Russia by feigned revelations from the spirits of the dead,
I recalled the sight I had last had of her, kneeling in her oratory,
scourging herself before--my portrait!
There was no longer any fear that M. Auguste would prove obdurate on
the question of terms. He pocketed his first five hundred rubles, and
departed, vowing that the Baltic fleet should never get farther than
Libau, if it was in the power of spirits to prevent it.
Desirous to relieve Lord Bedale's mind as far as possible I
despatched the following wire to him the next morning:
Sailing of Baltic Fleet postponed indefinitely. No danger
for the present. Watch Germany.
I sent a fuller account of the situation to a son of Mr. Katahashi,
who was in England, nominally attached to the staff of the Imperial
Bank, but really on business of a confidential character which it
would be indiscreet on my part to indicate.
I may say that I particularly cautioned the young Japanese to avoid
any action calculated to give the least color to the German legends
about warships being secretly manufactured in British yards to the
order of the Mikado's Government.
Every reader who has followed the course of the war with any
attention will recollect the history of the fleet thus detained by my
contrivance.
Week after week, and month after month, the Baltic Fleet was declared
to be on the point of departure. Time after time the Czar went on
board to review it in person, and speak words of encouragement to the
officers and crew. And every time, after everything had been
pronounced ready, some mysterious obstacle arose at the last moment
to detain the fleet in Russian waters.
Journalists, naval experts, politicians and other ill-informed
persons invented or repeated all sorts of explanations to account for
the series of delays.
Only in the very innermost circles of the Russian Court it was
whispered that the guardian spirit of the great Peter, the founder of
Russia's naval power, had repeatedly come to warn his descendant of
disasters in store for the fleet, should it be permitted to sail.
M. Auguste was earning his reward.