The Great Prince Shan Part 7

"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 a.s.sociated 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 ma.n.u.script 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._"

CHAPTER VI

Nigel played golf at Ranelagh, on the following Sunday morning, with Jere Chalmers, a young American in the Diplomatic Service, who had just arrived in London and brought a letter of introduction to him. They had a pleasant game and strolled off from the eighteenth green to the dressing rooms on the best of terms with each other.

"Say, Dorminster," his young companion enjoined, "let's get through this fixing-up business quickly. I've had a kind of feeling for a c.o.c.ktail, these last four holes, which I can't exactly put into words. Besides, I want to have a word or two with you before the others come down."

"I shan't be a minute," Nigel promised. "I'm going to change into flannels after lunch--that is, if you don't mind playing a set or two at tennis. My cousin-in-law Maggie Trent, whom you'll meet at luncheon, is rather keen, and she doesn't care about golf."

"I'm game for anything," the other agreed, lifting his head spluttering from the basin. "Gee, that's good! Get a move on, there's a good fellow.

I have a fancy for just five minutes with you out on the lawn, with the ice c.h.i.n.king in our gla.s.ses."

Nigel finished smoothing his hair, and the two men strolled through the hall, gave an order to a red-coated attendant, and found a secluded table under a marvellous tree in the gardens on the other side. Chalmers had become a little thoughtful.

"Dorminster," he declared, "yours is a wonderful country."

"Just how is it appealing to you at the moment?" Nigel enquired.

"I'll try and tell you," was the meditative reply. "It's your extraordinary insouciance. It seems to me, as a budding diplomat, that you are running the most ghastly risks on earth."

"In what direction?"

The young American shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, you've got a thoroughly democratic Government--not such a bad Government, I should say, as things go. They've bled your _bourgeoisie_ a bit, and serve 'em right, but with an empire to keep up you're losing all touch upon international politics. Your amba.s.sadors have been exchanged for trade consuls, the whole of your secret service staff has been disbanded, you place your entire faith on this sacred League of Nations. Say, Dorminster, you're taking risks!"

"You mustn't forget," Dorminster replied, "that it was your country who started the League of Nations."

"President Wilson did," Chalmers grunted. "You can't say that the country ever backed him up. That's the worst of us on the other side--we so seldom really get a common voice."

"The League of Nations was a thundering good idea," Nigel declared, "but it belongs to Utopia and not to this vulgar planet."

"Just so," Chalmers rejoined, "and yet you are about the only nation who ever took it into her bosom and suckled it. To be perfectly frank with you, now, what other nation in the world is there, except yours, which is obeying the conventions strictly? I tell you frankly, we keep our eye on j.a.pan, and we build a good many commercial ships which would astonish you if you examined them thoroughly. Our National Guard, too, know a bit more about soldiering than their grandfathers. You people, on the other hand, seem to have become infatuated pacifists. I can't tell tales out of school, but I don't like the way things are going on eastwards. Asia means something different now that that amazing fellow, Prince Shan, has made a great nation of China."

"I am entirely in accord with you," Nigel agreed, "but what is one to do about it? Our present Government has a big majority, trade at home and abroad is prosperous, the income tax is down to a shilling in the pound and looks like being wiped out altogether. Everybody is fat and happy."

"Just as they were in 1914," Chalmers remarked significantly.

"More so," Dorminster a.s.serted. "In those days we had our alarmists.

Nowadays, they too seem to have gone to sleep. My uncle--"

"Your uncle was an uncommonly shrewd man," Chalmers interrupted. "I was going to talk about him."

"After lunch," Nigel suggested, rising to his feet. "Here come my cousin and some of her tennis friends. Karschoff is lunching with us, too. You know him, don't you? Come along and I'll introduce you to the others."

It was a very cheerful party who, after a few minutes under the trees, strolled into luncheon and took their places at the round table reserved for them at the end of the room. Maggie at once took possession of Chalmers.

"I have been so anxious to meet you, Mr. Chalmers," she said. "They tell me that you represent the modern methods in American diplomacy, and that therefore you have been made first secretary over the heads of half a dozen of your seniors. How they must dislike you, and how clever you must be!"