The Pawns Count Part 11

"Sharing rooms in the Plaza Hotel?" she repeated.... "You and Jimmy?"

"I guess that's so," Mr. Fischer a.s.sented. "We were doing business together one day, and the subject cropped up somehow or other. Your brother was thinking of making a move, and I'd just been shown these rooms, which were a trifle on the large side for me. I made him an offer and he jumped at it."

"I hope you're not leading James into extravagant ways," she remarked anxiously. "I loved his little apartment in Forty-Second Street and it was so inexpensive."

"Your brother's share of these rooms isn't anything more than he can afford," Mr. Fischer a.s.sured her. "That I can promise you. I guess his firm is doing well just now. If they've many more clients like me they are."

"It is very nice of you to put business in his way," Pamela said thoughtfully. "I wonder why you do it, Mr. Fischer?"

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Well," Pamela went on, her eyes travelling out seaward for a moment, "you seem to be one of those sort of men, Mr. Fischer, who never do anything without an object."

"_Some_ powers of observation," he admitted blithely.

"You have an object in being kind to Jimmy, then?"

Mr. Fischer produced a cigar case and selected a cheroot.

"Mind my smoking?"

"Not in the least. The only time I mind things is when people don't answer my questions."

"I was only kind of hesitating," Mr. Fischer went on, leaning back once more in his chair. "You want the truth, don't you?"

"I never think anything else is worth while."

"In the first place, then," her companion began, "your brother belongs to what I suppose is known as the exclusive set in New York. I am a Westerner with few friends there. Through him I have obtained introductions to several people whom it was interesting to me, from a business point of view, to know."

"I see," Pamela murmured. "You are at least frank, Mr. Fischer."

"I am going to be more frank still," he promised her. "Then another reason, of course, was because I liked him, and a third, which I am not sure wasn't the chief of all, because he was your brother."

Pamela laughed gaily.

"Is that necessary?"

"Necessary or not, it's the truth," he a.s.sured her. "I am a man of quick impressions and lasting ones."

"But we've never met except on a steamer," Pamela reminded him.

"I know it's the fashion," Mr. Fischer said, "to turn up one's nose at steamer acquaintances. It isn't like that with me. You see, I don't have as much opportunity of meeting folk as some others, perhaps. The most interesting people I've known socially I've met on steamers. I sat at your table, side by side with you, Miss Van Teyl, for seven days a few months ago. I guess I'll remember those seven days as long as I live."

Pamela turned her head and looked at him. The faintly derisive smile died away from her lips. The man was in earnest. A certain curiosity stole into her eyes as the seconds pa.s.sed. She studied his hard, strong face, with its great jaw and prominent forehead; the mouth, a little too full, and belying the rest of his physiognomy, yet with its own peculiar strength. He had taken off his spectacles, and it seemed to her that the cold, flinty light of his eyes had caught for a moment some touch of the softer blue of the sea or the sky. Seated, he lost some of the awkwardness of his too great and ill-carried height. It seemed to her that he was at least a person to be reckoned with, either in friendship or enmity.

"Are you an American born, Mr. Fischer," she asked him.

He shook his head.

"I was born at Offenbach," he told her, "near Frankfurt. My father brought me out to America when I was eleven years old."

"You must find the present condition of things a little trying for you," she observed.

Oscar Fischer put on his gla.s.ses again. He did not answer for several moments.

"That opens up a subject, Miss Van Teyl," he said, "which some day I should like to discuss with you."

"Why not now?" she invited. "I feel much more inclined for conversation than reading."

"Tell me, then, to begin with," he asked thoughtfully, "on which side are your sympathies?"

"I try to do my duty as an American citizen," she replied promptly, "and that is to have no sympathies. Our dear country has set the world an example of what neutrality should be. I think it is the duty of us Americans to try and bring ourselves into exactly the same line of feeling."

He changed his position a little uneasily. His att.i.tude became less of a sprawl. His eyes were fixed upon her face.

"I fear," he said, "that we are going to begin by a disagreement. I do not consider that America has realised in the least the duties of a neutral nation."

"You must explain that at once, if you please, before we go any further," Pamela insisted.

"Is this neutrality?" Fischer demanded, his rather harsh voice almost raucous now with a touch of real feeling. "America ships daily millions of dollars' worth of those things that make war possible, to France, to Italy, above all to England. She keeps them supplied with ammunition, clothing, scientific instruments, food--a dozen things which make war easier. To Germany she sends nothing. Is that neutrality?"

"But America is perfectly willing to deal in the same way with Germany," Pamela pointed out. "German agents can come and place their orders and take away whatever they want. The market is as much open to her as to the Allies."

Fischer was sitting bolt upright in his chair now. There was a little spot of colour in his cheeks and his eyes flashed behind his spectacles. He struck the side of the chair. He was very angry.

"That is Jesuitical," he declared. "It is perfectly well-known that Germany is not in a position to fetch munitions from America.

Therefore, I say that there is no neutrality in supplying one side in the war with goods which the other is unable to procure."

"Then you place upon America the onus of Germany's naval inferiority,"

Pamela remarked drily.

"Germany's maritime inferiority does not exist," Mr. Fischer protested.

"When the moment arrives that the High Seas fleet comes out for action the world will know the truth."

"Then hadn't it better come," Pamela suggested, "and clear the ocean for your commerce?"

"That isn't the point," Fischer insisted. "We have wandered from the main issue. I say that America abandons its neutrality when it helps the Allies to continue the war."

"I don't think you will find," Pamela replied, "that international law prevents any neutral country from supplying either combatant with munitions. If one country can fetch the things and the other can't, that is the misfortune of the country that can't. For one moment look at the matter from England's point of view. She has built up a mighty navy to keep the seas clear for exactly this purpose--to continue her commerce from abroad. Germany instead has built up a mighty army, with which she has overrun Europe. Germany has had the advantage from her army. Why shouldn't England have the advantage from her navy?"

"Let me ask you the question you asked me a few minutes ago," her companion begged. "Were you born in America--or England?"

"I was born in America," Pamela told him; "so were my parents and my grandparents. I claim to be American to the backbone. I claim even to treat any sympathies I might have in this affair as prejudices, and not even to allow them a single corner in my brain."

Mr. Fischer sat quite still for several moments. He was struggling very hard to keep his temper. In the end he succeeded.

"We will not, then, pursue the subject of America's neutrality," he said, "because it is obvious that we disagree fundamentally. But tell me this, now, as an American and a patriot. Which do you think would be better for America--That Germany and Austria won this war, or the Allies?"