The World Masters Part 9

So thinking, he travelled to Paris, leaving his uniform behind him, and dressed just as an ordinary man about town, quietly, but with exquisite care and neatness.

As soon as he had settled himself in a modest hotel in one of the streets of the Avenue de l'Ope, he wrote a discreetly-worded note to one of the secretaries of the Ministry of War, a former schoolfellow of his, with whom he had had previous communications of a confidential sort, asking him to arrange a private interview for him with the Minister at the earliest possible date, and, if possible, to dine with him the next evening. The next morning he called to pay his respects to Madame de Bourbon and the marquise at the hotel they had taken in the Avenue Neuilly.

He met the marquise alone in the salon. She received him quietly and almost coldly--but this he had expected.

"So you have finally decided," she said. "I thought from your letter that you would do so. How very different you look _en civile_! Really, although we naturally hate the sight of them, still, it must be admitted that those German uniforms do make a good-looking man look his best."

"Yes," replied Victor, choking down his chagrin as best he might; "to a certain extent it is true, after all, that the feathers make the bird, and so, of course, the clothes make the man. Still, I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to tolerate me for the future without my German plumage. As you say, I have made my decision. I have broken with Germany for ever. Henceforth, I am a son of France--and, Adelaide, I have come to ask a daughter of France to help me to serve her."

"Of France!" she echoed, drawing herself up, and looking at him with a half-angry glint in her eyes, "of what France? Of this nation of sn.o.bs and shopkeepers, ruled by a combination of stockbrokers, heavy-witted bourgeoisie and political adventurers? or the old France--my France--the France of my ancestors, as it was in the days when the great Louis said: 'L'etat c'est moi'? The one is not worth saving; the other might be worth restoring."

"But this France of the bourgeoisie must first be saved, so that we may make out of it the foundation for the throne of the great Louis.

If we succeed, Adelaide, as it is still possible that we may do, we shall be strong enough to abolish the salic law and to enthrone you as Empress of the French."

"Of France, if you please! My ancestors were Kings of France. Even the Corsican dared only style himself Emperor of the French. You seem to forget that I am a daughter of the Bourbons, a scion of the older line, and that therefore France is my personal heritage. But come,"

she went on, with a swift change of tone and manner, "it will be time enough to talk about that when I am nearer to my inheritance than I am now. You said that you wanted my help--how? What can I do now, left alone as I am?"

"Not quite alone, Adelaide," he said, half reproachfully. "Have I not given up everything, even, as some would say, sacrificed honour itself, to help you to win back that which is your own by every right?

And you can help me as no one else can. I have a friend in the Ministry of War--Gaston Leraulx, one of the secretaries. We were school-fellows and college friends. He is to dine with me to-night, and he will arrange an interview with the Minister of War. I shall ask you to come with me to that interview."

"What do you say, Victor? You wish me, a princess of the House of Bourbons to enter the bureau of one of these ministers--these politicians who are ruling in the place of the old n.o.blesse--men whom we might perhaps have employed as lacqueys?"

"That is true," he replied; "but remember, Adelaide, that time brings its differences. My ancestors were n.o.bles when yours were kings. If the old order of things is to be restored we must use these people as means to an end. I ask you to come with me to the Minister of War, so that you may help me to convince him, from your own knowledge, of the terrible mistake that he made when he refused to entertain the project that my father placed before him.

"You can tell him that strange story of how my father in his despair committed his body and his secret to the sea; how the sea gave it up into the hands of our worst enemies--the enemies of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow--England and America; and how, even now, they are spending their millions upon that upon which France would not even risk a few paltry thousands.

"When I place my papers before him he will see that they are identical with my father's, and I shall give him others which will make it impossible for him to doubt my faith; and you, you will be there to help me with your knowledge, with the prestige of your name, and with your beauty. The General may be all that you think him, but do not forget that he is a Frenchman, and that all Frenchmen who are not quite mad respect and admire at least two things----"

"And those are--what?" she said, taking a couple of steps towards him, and speaking in a low, earnest tone. "Am I to understand you to mean that this man--I know that he is one of the most able men that France can boast of--might perhaps be made an instrument of?"

"I mean," said Victor, taking her hand unresistingly, "that General Ducros is himself an aristocrat, a man whose forefathers served yours well; that he is a Frenchman whose spirit will recognise yours as being of similar lineage, whose eyes will not be blind, and whose ears will not be deaf. Surely, Adelaide, you see by this time what I mean: you see how, with you, I may succeed in everything, and, without you, I may fail. And, remember, if I fail there is an end of everything.

This is our last hope. If it is not realised, these accursed English and Americans will be masters of the situation, masters of the world, indeed. Surely, Adelaide, for the sake of all that is past and all that may be to come you will not say no?"

"No, Victor; I will not," she replied, still allowing her hand to rest in his, and yet thinking the while of that other man, whose face was ever present to her eyes, and whose voice was ever echoing in her ears. "I will visit this Minister of yours with you. His name is good, and perhaps he may not be unworthy of it. At any rate, he is not disgraced by one of those new t.i.tles of the First or Second Empire. If I can help you I will; trust me for that. When it is arranged send me a telegram and our carriage is at your disposal. Ah, who is this?"

At this moment the door opened, and the lacquey announced:

"Monsieur le Comte de Valdemar; Ma'm'selle la Comtesse de Valdemar."

Victor Fargeau saw at a glance that the count and Sophie were dressed in half-mourning, and instantly divined that their visit was one of condolence. This, of course, gave him a most excellent excuse to make his adieux.

There was just a glimmer of taunting mockery in Sophie's brilliant eyes as she recognised the dashing young cavalry officer in the sober garb of civil life, but it pa.s.sed like a flash, and as they shook hands she said:

"A most unexpected meeting, captain!" And then, with a look of frank challenge, "No doubt it is most important business that has brought you to Paris _en civile_."

"It is not without importance, countess, at least to my own poor and presently insignificant self. Whether," he went on, with a swift involuntary glance at Adelaide, who was receiving the condolences of the count, "it will ever be of importance to others is one of the secrets of fate; and, if so, you, who are no doubt justly credited with knowing half the secrets of Europe, will probably be one of the first to discover the fact."

"I wonder whether that is intended for a compliment or the reverse,"

said Sophie, with a look of challenge coming back into her eyes. "You see, captain, there are two sorts of people who are supposed to know everything--diplomatists and spies."

Her voice dropped almost to a whisper as she spoke the last word.

Victor did his best to preserve his composure, but Sophie's watchful eyes saw that the shot had gone home; still, the next moment he replied, with the stiff wooden-doll bow of the German officer, and without a tremor in his voice:

"It would be quite impossible that mam'selle could be anything but one of the two."

As he raised his head she looked into his eyes again, and laughed outright.

"Well hit, captain! that was very nicely put. I think you and I would make better friends than enemies, and in proof of my belief, let me tell you a secret which is not of Europe. An Anglo-American syndicate has for some reason or other leased several square miles round the Magnetic Pole in Boothia Land, British North America."

"Really! And might I ask why? It doesn't seem to be a very profitable investment in landed property."

"Who knows?" said Sophie, with a little shrug of her shapely shoulders. "These English and Americans, you know, are always doing the maddest things. I shouldn't wonder if they intended to turn the _Aurora borealis_ into electric light for Chicago."

"Nor I," said Victor. "And now, if you will permit me, I must say Au revoir."

"I wonder how much our ex-captain really knows, and if my dear friend Adelaide here knows anything or not," said Sophie, in her soul, when Victor had made his adieux and the door closed behind him.

CHAPTER XII

It was not until four days later that Victor's friend in the Ministry of War was able to procure an appointment for him with General Ducros.

Pressure of business was Captain Gaston Leraulx' explanation, and it was an honest one. What he did not know was that on the evening of the day when Count Valdemar and his daughter paid their visit of condolence to Adelaide de Conde, General Ducros dined with them.

They had no other guest, for the best of reasons. Countess Sophie, the omniscient, by means of a happy accident, had got a fairly clear idea of the outlines of the Great Storage Scheme. The servants of the White Tzar are everywhere, known or unknown, generally the latter. A Russian trapper happened to meet a French-Canadian voyageur in Montreal when Shafto Hardress was making his negotiations with the Canadian Government. They had a few drinks and a talk over the extraordinary deal that he had made with the Canadian Government, a deal which had been reported and commented on by the Canadian and American journals with the usual luxuriance of speculative imagination. The same night the voyageur and the trapper, both men who were living on the products of their season's hunting and trapping, cabled practically the same details to Paris and Petersburg.

The voyageur's telegram had gone to General Ducros; and he, with the instinct of a soldier and a statesman, had instantly connected it with the greatest mistake that he had made in his life, his refusal to entertain the proposal which Doctor Emil Fargeau had laid before him.

He saw that he had refused even to examine a scheme which this Anglo-American syndicate had somehow got hold of and thought it worth their while to spend thousands of pounds even in preliminary development. As he said to himself when the unwelcome news came to him, "I have committed a crime--for I have made a mistake, and for statesmen mistakes are something worse than crimes."

As soon as the Russian trapper's message had reached Count Valdemar, he immediately discussed it with his daughter, who over and over again had given proof of an almost clairvoyant insight into the most difficult and intricate concerns of international diplomacy. The moment she saw it her instinct led her back to the reception at the German Emba.s.sy in Petersburg.

"It was all very easy, after all, general," she said, when the dinner was over, and the coffee and liqueurs were on the table. "If you will pardon me saying so, it is in cases like this that the intuition of the woman outstrips the logical faculty of the man. You have asked me how I discovered the connection between the interview between yourself and Doctor Fargeau, which, as you say, ended somewhat unhappily for France, and this extraordinary purchase of a seemingly worthless landed property by Viscount Hardress."

"Ah yes," said the general, knocking the ash off his cigarette.

"Statesmen are not supposed to make mistakes, but to you, Ma'm'selle, and Monsieur le Comte, I must confess, to my most intense chagrin, the man was an Alsatian, and had accepted the new order of things in the provinces, he was a German subject, and his son was a German officer on the general staff. What could I think?"

"My dear general," replied Sophie, after a long whiff at her yellow Russian cigarette, "your conclusions were perfectly just under the circ.u.mstances. But when you have had your interview with Captain Fargeau and my dear friend the marquise, I think you will find that, after all, they were erroneous. Do you not think so, papa?"

"I fancy," replied the count, slowly, "that when you have made your explanations to the general, he will agree with you."

"Very well, then, general, I will spin my little thread before you, and you shall see whether it holds together or not. First, there was that s.n.a.t.c.h of a conversation that I heard at the German Emba.s.sy reception in Petersburg. Captain Fargeau was talking with the late Prince de Conde, and he was called away by one of the servants. From another source I knew afterwards that he had received a telegram from Stra.s.sburg. He came back, and made a pretence of dancing with my very dear friend, Adelaide de Conde. They went out into the winter garden, just in front of myself and my partner. I heard him tell her that 'he'

had succeeded, and gone to Paris.

"You have told me of his father's visit to you. The chief part of his scheme was the building of these works round the Magnetic Pole in Boothia Land. The prince and Adelaide go to a little out-of-the-way place in Germany, called Elsenau. The fashionable papers told us that.

They also told us that Lord Orrel and his daughter were there; and almost the same day arrives this Viscount Branston, Lord Orrel's son.

The prince suddenly and mysteriously dies--as they say, from the bursting of a blood-vessel on the brain. Of course, all the papers tell us of that, and also that Viscount Branston goes to Vienna and brings back Madame de Bourbon, who is here now, in Paris, with Adelaide.