“What’s the name?” Lutchester inquired.
The man hesitated for a moment, then passed it over.
“Oscar H. Fischer,” he said. “Happen to know the name?”
Lutchester’s face was immovable. He passed the license back again. They both turned round. Mr. Fischer had issued from the restaurant.
“What’s wrong?” he asked hastily. “The commissionaire says you want me, Mr. Officer?”
The inspector produced his pocketbook.
“Just want to ask you a few questions about your chauffeur, sir.”
Fischer glanced at the driver’s seat of the car, as though aware of the man’s disappearance for the first time.
“What’s become of the fellow?” he inquired.
“Shot himself,” the inspector replied, “after a deliberate attempt to murder this gentleman.”
Mr. Fischer’s composure was admirable. There was a touch of gravity mingled with his bewilderment. Nevertheless, he avoided meeting Lutchester’s eyes.
“You horrify me!” he exclaimed. “Why, the fellow’s only been driving for me for a few hours.”
“That so?” the officer remarked, with a grunt. “Get any references with him?”
“As a matter of fact, I did not,” Fischer admitted frankly. “I discharged my chauffeur yesterday, at a moment’s notice, and this man happened to call just as I was wanting the car out this afternoon. He promised to bring me references to-morrow from Mr. Gould and others. I engaged him on that understanding. He told me that his name was Kay— Robert Kay. That is all that I know about him, except that he was an excellent driver. I am exceedingly sorry Mr. Lutchester,” he went on, turning towards him, “that this should have happened.”
“So you two know one another, eh?” the officer observed.
“Oh, yes, we know one another!” Lutchester admitted drily.
“I shall have to ask you both for your names and addresses,” the official continued. “I think I won’t ask you any more questions at present. Seems to me headquarters had better take this on.”
“I shall be quite at your service,” Lutchester promised.
The man made a few more notes, saluted, and took his leave. Fischer and Lutchester remained for a moment upon the pavement.
“It is a dangerous custom,” Lutchester remarked, “to take a servant without a reference.”
“It will be a warning to me for the remainder of my life,” Fischer declared.
“I, too, have learnt something,” Lutchester concluded, as he turned away.
CHAPTER XXVII
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Fischer, as he waited for Pamela the following afternoon in the sitting-room of her flat on Fifty-eighth Street, felt that although the practical future of his life might be decided in other places, it was here that its real climax would be reached. Pamela herself was to pronounce sentence upon him. He was feeling scarcely at his best. An examination in the courthouse, which he had imagined would last only a few minutes, had been protracted throughout the afternoon. The district attorney had asked him a great many questions, some rather awkward ones, and the inquiry itself had been almost grudgingly adjourned for a few hours. And here, in Pamela’s sitting-room, the first things which caught his eye were the headlines of one of the afternoon papers:
WESTERN MILLIONAIRE ENGAGES THE GIRL HESTE’S MURDERER AS CHAUFFEUR!
ATTEMPTED MURDER AND SUICIDE IN FIFTH AVENUE LAST NIGHT.
Fischer pushed the newspaper impatiently away, and, in the act of doing so, the door was opened and Pamela entered. She came towards him with outstretched hand.
“I see you are looking at the account of your misdeeds,” she said, as she seated herself behind a tea tray. “Will you tell me why a cautious man like you engages, without reference, a chauffeur who turns out to be a murderer?”
Fischer frowned irritably.
“For four hours,” he complained, “several lawyers and a most inquisitive police captain have been asking me the same question in a hundred different ways. I engaged the man because I needed a chauffeur badly. He was to have brought his references this morning. I was only trusting him for a matter of a few hours.”
“And during those few hours,” she observed, “he seems to have developed a violent antipathy to Mr. Lutchester.”
“I do not understand the affair at all,” Mr. Fischer declared, “and, if I may say so, I am a little weary of it. I came here to discuss another matter altogether.”
She leaned back in her place.
“What have you come to discuss, Mr. Fischer?”
“That depends so much upon you,” he replied. “If you give me any encouragement, I can put before you a great proposition. If your prejudices, however, remain as I think they always have been, on the side of England, why then I can do nothing.”
“If I counted for anything,” Pamela said, “I mean to say if it mattered to any one what my attitude was, I would start by admitting that my sympathies are somewhat on the side of the Allies. On the other hand, my sympathies amount to nothing at all compared with my interest in the welfare of the United States. I am perfectly selfish in that respect.”
“Then you have an open mind to hear what I have to say,” Fischer remarked. “I am glad of it. You encourage me to proceed.”
“That is all very well,” Pamela said, stirring her tea, “but I cannot help asking once more why you come to me at all? What have I to do with any proposition you may have to make?”
“Just this,” he explained. “I have a serious and authentic proposition to make to the American Government. I cannot make it officially— although it comes from the highest of all sources—for the most obvious reasons. It may seem better worth listening to to-day, perhaps, than a week ago, so far as you are concerned. That is because you believed in British invincibility upon the sea. I never did.”
“Go on, please,” Pamela begged. “I am still waiting to realise my position in all this.”
“I should like,” Fischer declared, “my proposition to reach the President through Senator Hastings, and Senator Hastings is your uncle.”
“I see,” Pamela murmured.
“My offer itself is a very simple one,” Fischer continued. “Your secret service is so bad that you probably know nothing of what is happening. Ours, on the other hand, is still marvellously good, and what I am going to tell you is surely the truth. Japan is accumulating great wealth. She is saving her ships and men for one purpose, and one purpose only. Europe could not bribe her highly enough to take a more active part in this war. Her price was one which could not be paid. She demanded a free hand with the United States.”
“This,” Pamela admitted, “is quite interesting, but it is entirely in the realms of conjecture, is it not?”
“Not wholly,” Fischer insisted. “At the proper time I should be prepared to bring you evidence that tentative proposals were made by Japan to both England and France, asking what would be their attitude, should she provide them with half a million men and undertake transport, if at the conclusion of the war she desired a settlement with the United States. The answer from France and England was the same—that they could not countenance an inimical attitude towards the States.”
“You are bound to admit, then,” Pamela remarked, “that England played the game here.”
“The bribe was not big enough,” Fischer replied drily. “England would sell her soul, but not for a mess of pottage. To proceed, however, Japan has practically kept out of the war. She is enjoying a prosperity never known before, and for every million pounds’ worth of munitions she exports to Russia, she puts calmly on one side twenty-five per cent, to accumulate for her own use. At the conclusion of the war she will be in a position she has never occupied before, and while the rest of the world is still gasping, she will proceed to carry out what has been the dream of her life—the invasion of your Western States.”
“I admit that this is plausible,” Pamela confessed, “but you are only pointing out a very obvious
danger, for which I imagine that we are already fairly well prepared.”
“Believe me,” Fischer said earnestly, “you are not. It is this fact which makes the whole situation so vital to you. Later on in our negotiations, I will show you proof of your danger. Meanwhile, let me proceed to the offer which I am empowered to make, which comes direct from the one person in Germany whose word is unshakable.”
Pamela changed her position a little, as though to escape from the sunlight which was finding its way underneath the broad blinds. Her eyes were fixed upon her visitor. She listened intently to every word he had to say. Despite some vague feeling of mistrust, which she acknowledged to herself might well have been prejudiced, she found the situation interesting, even stimulating. Her few excursions into the world of high politics had never brought her into such a position as this. She felt both flattered and interested—attracted, too, in some nameless way, by the man’s personality, his persistence, his daring, his whole-heartedness. The situation was instinct with interest to her.
“But why make it to me?” she murmured.
“You are to be my delegate,” he answered. “Take the substance of what I say to you, to your uncle. Try, for your country’s sake, to interest him in it. The offer which I make shall save you a vast amount of sacrifice. It shall save your dislocating the industries of the country and sowing the seeds of a disturbing and yet inadequate militarism. I offer you, in short, a German alliance against Japan.”
“The value of that offer,” Pamela remarked thoughtfully, “would depend rather upon the issue of the present war, wouldn’t it?”
Fischer’s face darkened. His tone was almost irritable.
“That is already preordained,” he said firmly. “You see, I will be quite frank with you. Germany has lost her chance of sweeping and complete victory. The result of the war will be a return to the status-quo-ante. Yet, believe me, Germany will be strong enough to settle some of the debts she owes, and the debt to Japan is one of these.”
“Still, there is the practical question of getting men and ships over from Germany to America,” Pamela persisted.
“It is already solved,” was the swift reply. “At the proper time I will show you and prove how it can be done. At present, not one word can pass my lips. It is one of the secrets on which the future of Germany depends.”
“And the price?” Pamela asked.
“That America adopts our view as to the high seas traffic,” Fischer replied. “This would mean the stopping of all supplies, munitions and ammunition from America to England. We offer you an alliance. We ask only for your real and actual neutrality for the remainder of the war. We offer a great and substantial advantage, a safeguard for your country’s future, in return for what? Simply that America will pursue the course of honour and integrity to all nations.”
“America,” Pamela declared, “has never failed in this.”
Fischer shrugged his shoulders.
“There is more than one point of view,” he reminded her. “Will you take my message with you to Washington to-morrow?”
“Yes,” Pamela promised, “I will do that. The rest, of course, remains with others. I do not myself go so far, even,” she added, “as to declare myself in sympathy with you.”
“And yet,” he insisted, with swift violence, “it is your sympathy which I desire more than anything in the world—your sympathy, your help, your companionship; a little—a very little at first—of your love.”
“I am afraid that I am not a very satisfactory person from that point of view,” Pamela confessed. “I have a great sympathy with every man who is really out for the great things, but so far as you are concerned, Mr. Fischer, or any one else,” she went on, after a moment’s hesitation, “I have no personal feeling.”
“That shall come,” he declared.
“Then please wait a little time before you talk to me again like this,” she said, rising and holding out her hand. “At present there is no sign of it.”
“There is so much that I could offer you,” he pleaded, gripping the hand which she had given him in farewell, “so much that I could do for your country. Believe me, I am not talking idly.”
“I do believe that,” she admitted. “You are a very clever man, Mr. Fischer, and I think that you represent all that you claim. Perhaps, if we really do negotiate—”
“But you must!” he interrupted impatiently. “You must listen to me for every reason—politically for your country’s sake, personally because I shall offer you and give you happiness and a position you could never find elsewhere.”
For a moment her eyes seemed to be looking through him, as though some vision of things outside the room were troubling her. Her finger had already touched the bell and a servant was standing upon the threshold.
“We shall meet in Washington,” Mr. Fischer concluded, with an air of a prophet, as he took his leave.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Table of Contents
It was within half an hour of closing time that same afternoon when Lutchester walked into James Van Teyl’s office. The young man greeted him with some surprise.
“Will you do some business for me?” Lutchester asked, without any preliminaries.
“Sure!”
“How many Anglo-French will you buy for me? I can obtain credit by cable to-morrow through any bank for twenty or thirty thousand pounds.”
“You want to buy Anglo-French?” Van Teyl repeated softly.
His visitor nodded.
“Any news?”
Lutchester hesitated, and Van Teyl continued with an apologetic gesture.
“I beg your pardon. That’s not my job, anyway, to ask questions. I’ll buy you twenty-five thousand, if you like. Guess they can’t drop much lower.”
Lutchester sat down.
“Thank you,” he said, “I will wait.”
A little ripple of excitement went through the office as Van Teyl started his negotiations. It seemed to Lutchester that several telephones and half a dozen perspiring young men were called into his service. In the end Van Teyl made out a note and handed it to him.
“I could have done better for you yesterday,” he observed. “The market is strengthening all the time. There are probably some rumours.”
A boy went by along the pavement outside waving a handful of papers. His cry floated in through the open window:
REPORTED LOSS OF MANY MORE GERMAN BATTLESHIPS. BRITISH CLAIM VICTORY.
Van Teyl grinned.
“You got here just in time,” he murmured, “but I suppose you knew all about this.”
“I have known since three o’clock,” Lutchester replied, “that all the reports of a German victory were false. You will find, when the truth is known, that the German losses were greater than the British.”
“Then if that’s so,” Van Teyl remarked, “I’ve got one client who’ll lose a hatful which you ought to make. Coming up town?”
“I should like, if I may?” Lutchester said, “to be permitted to pay my respects to your sister.”
“Why, that’s fine!” Van Teyl exclaimed unconvincingly. “We’ll take the subway up.”
They left the office and plunged into the indescribable horrors of their journey. When they stepped out into the sunlit street in another atmosphere, Van Teyl laid his hand upon his companion’s arm in friendly fashion.
“Say, Lutchester,” he began, “I don’t know that you are going to find Pamela exactly all that she might be in the way of amiability and so on. I know these things are done on the other side, but here it’s considered trying your friends pretty high to take a lady of Sonia’s reputation where you are likely to meet your friends. No offence, eh?”
“Certainly not,” Lutchester replied. “I was sorry, of course, to see you last night. On the other hand, Sonia is an old friend, and my dinner with her had an object. I think I could explain it to your sister.”
“I don’t know that I should try,” Van Teyl advised. “For all her cosmopolitanism, Pamela has som
e quaint ideas. However, I thought I’d warn you, in case she’s a bit awkward.”
Pamela, however, had no idea of being awkward. She welcomed Lutchester with a very sweet smile, and gave him the tips of her fingers.
“I was wondering whether we should see you again before we went,” she said. “We are leaving for Washington to-morrow.”
“By the three o’clock train, I hope?” he ventured.
She raised her eyebrows.
“Why, are you going, too?”
“I hope so.”
“I should have thought most of the munition works,” she observed, “were further north.”
“They are,” he acknowledged, “but I have business in Washington. By the bye, will you both come out and dine with me to-night?”
Van Teyl glanced at his sister. She shook her head.
“I am so sorry,” she said, “but we are engaged. Perhaps we shall see something of you in Washington.”
“I have no doubt you will,” Lutchester replied “All the same,” he added, “it would give me very great pleasure to entertain you at dinner this evening.”
“Why particularly this evening?” she asked.
He looked at her with a queer directness, and Pamela felt certain very excellent resolutions crumbling. She suffered her brother to leave the room without a word.
“Because,” he explained, “I think you will find a different atmosphere everywhere. There will be news in the evening papers.”
“News?” she repeated eagerly. “You know I am always interested in that.”
“The reports of a German naval victory were not only exaggerated,” Lutchester said calmly; “they were untrue. Our own official announcement was clumsy and tactless, but you will find it amplified and explained to-night.”
Pamela listened with an interest which bordered upon excitement.
“You are sure?” she exclaimed.
“Absolutely,” he replied. “My notification is official.”
“So you think if we dined with you, the atmosphere to-night would be different?” she observed, with a sudden attempt at the recondite.
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