Domiloff shook his head.
“I fought with Nicolas, but I was only a boy,” he said.
“I will tell you what all the world knows,” Ardrossen continued. “France to-day, for all her so-called wealth, owes more money than any other country. The greater part of that money has been sunk in the most marvellous scheme of defence which any engineers in the world have ever conceived or carried into effect. That scheme is under rigid and close observation at the present moment. I am only a spy. I can tell you only what I know and suspect for what it is worth. A small majority of the French Cabinet and the French military authorities believe that this is the hour for war. Until they decide one way or the other you must temporize.”
Domiloff was silent for several moments.
“You talk like a man of knowledge, Ardrossen,” he confessed.
“I am,” was the calm reply. “I will tell you one thing more which may convince you that I am also a person of system. I was within fifty yards of the spot eleven days ago when the warrant for the arrest of Sagastrada was signed. I knew of it days before any movement was made. I knew, too, in which direction Rothmann would urge him to try and escape. I flew to Paris, boarded the Blue Train and arrived here, as you know. I offer my advice to you, Baron Domiloff. You are a diplomat and you should know the meaning of the word procrastination. It will be a matter of four days—no more.”
Ardrossen rose to his feet and picked up his hat. Domiloff rang the bell. It was perhaps typical of the two men, typical of the whole interview, that no further word was spoken between them. Ardrossen, with a little bow, followed Tashoff out of the room.
CHAPTER XVI
Table of Contents
AT a quarter to eight that evening the bar at the Hôtel de Paris was packed up to and beyond the limits of its capacity. Additional chairs had been sent for, people were seated even on the arms of the fauteuils and every stool at the bar was occupied. The hubbub was deafening. Lucille, whose voice like her person was charming but petite, leaned back in her chair, with Lord Henry on one of its arms and Townleyes on the other.
“Like this,” she explained, “one of you can repeat to me what people on either side are saying, then I shall hear all the gossip. The last thing I heard was that the quails are coming over by aeroplane from Egypt and Céline is going to sing.”
“Both rumours, although founded on fact,” Lord Henry assured her. “I met Céline just now on the stairs. She is cutting the last act to-night and giving her understudy a chance by permission of the management. She is to sing, I think, at half-past eleven.”
“I have selected my dinner already,” the Prince remarked. “Plovers’ eggs, nightingales’ tongues and larks’ breasts.”
Lucille sighed.
“You have the most exotic tastes for the unattainable, Léon,” she protested. “I suppose that is why you really never appreciate me.”
“My dear,” he complained, “of all the women I know, you are the most unattainable to your poor husband.”
“Men have been dragged through the divorce court for less than that,” she warned him. “Should you consider me unattainable, Henry?”
“I have been trying to find out for the last five years,” he lamented. “This little domestic party at the present moment is a proof of my failure.”
“We shall shock Miss Haskell,” Lucille said, glancing across at her.
“A fortnight ago you might have,” Joan admitted. “Not now. I am beginning to understand that everything in this little corner of the world begins like a firecracker and ends in talk.”
“Poor child,” Lord Henry sympathized. “You shall change your mind this evening. I will propose to you during the first dance.”
“I would rather have it in writing,” she suggested. “Please send me a note to my room and get someone to witness your signature.”
“Pooh, this is all too serious,” the Prince observed, his fingers toying for a moment with his closely cut moustache. “Miss Haskell has no taste for unfledged youths like you two. She prefers to exchange whispers with a roué of my type.”
“You apple-cheeked little cherub,” his wife murmured, “flattering yourself that you could ever be called a roué! I could almost more easily imagine Henry here as the unfledged youth.”
“We are all talking a lot of nonsense,” Townleyes remarked.
“Doesn’t everyone in this part of the world?” Lucille asked, stretching out her hand towards the tray of cocktails which Louis had just brought from the bar. “Louis, you are the only sensible person in this room. You have the art, too, of hiding in your cocktails the things we scarcely dare whisper.”
“She means the absinthe,” her husband muttered.
“All the same,” Townleyes went on, “we are bound to indulge in a lot of nonsense here because if we began to talk seriously we should probably end by going crazy.”
“I don’t care a bit what’s going on in the world,” the Princess declared. “We are in Monte Carlo.”
“But I am not so sure,” Townleyes said, “that the shadows may not be looming over us. What, for instance, will become of our wonderful host?”
“And where is he now?” Joan asked. “That seems to me to be more to the point.”
“I should imagine,” Townleyes suggested, “that Domiloff has put him somewhere in cold storage—locked him up out of the way. He is bursting with money now that his banks have found out where he is.”
“It must be rather intriguing for a young man who has had the world at his feet to know that he is badly wanted by the police at pretty well every frontier,” Lord Henry observed.
Domiloff suddenly appeared through the swing door leading into the hotel. A dozen people shouted to him to join them, one or two even rose from their places to struggle towards him, but he waved them back with a courteous gesture.
“Presently,” he begged. “Excuse me.”
Somehow or other he made his way to the far end of the room to where the Princess’s party was established in the bow window. He went straight to Joan.
“Miss Haskell,” he said, “I wonder whether you could spare me a moment. We could stand on the steps outside there.”
She rose to her feet doubtfully. She was still in her tennis clothes, a scarlet wrap hanging from her shoulders and a muffler of the same colour around her neck.
“Do you really want to speak to me, Baron?” she asked.
“If you please,” he apologized. “I will not keep you more than a few minutes. Lucille, I beg your pardon for disturbing your party. Miss Haskell can return immediately.”
“No fresh news, Baron?” the Princess enquired.
“Nothing, dear lady,” he assured her. “Everything goes well for the great dinner to-night.”
“Where is the young man?”
The Baron shrugged his shoulders but made no reply. He led Joan out on to the steps and, with a glance at the stream of passers-by, on to the front door of the hotel and into the foyer. He chose a retired corner and drew his chair close to hers.
“Miss Haskell,” he confided, “that young man in whom we are all more or less interested presents just now a somewhat formidable problem.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, “but how am I concerned in it?”
“He seems to talk to you more than to any of the others. Do you believe that you have any influence over him at all?”
“Not the slightest,” she assured her questioner. “I think the only reason he talks to me a little more is because all the rest of them are so wildly frivolous and every now and then he has these serious fits.”
“I do not wonder at his being serious,” Domiloff remarked grimly. “I could not make those others believe it if I tried, but I am convinced that there are people down here bent on getting him back to his own country by fair means or foul. Müller, who has just arrived, for instance. He is practically chief of the new international police and he is here for no other purpose.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” she
wondered. “Is there any way in which I could help?”
“I believe there is,” he told her frankly. “Outside in the bay there is an American steamer just arrived on a trip round the world. She is sailing under the American flag, which ought to secure him against arrest if he once gets on board, and so far as regards—er—the sort of thing that happened to his friend Paul Rothmann, I should imagine he would be safer there than anywhere else I can think of.”
“What does he say about it himself?” Joan asked.
“He is not very polite,” Domiloff admitted. “He says he would rather go to prison than be cooped up with a lot of strangers for six months. You see,” he went on, “Rudolph Sagastrada, although he is in business as a financier, is a young man of very fine tastes. He likes the best in life of food and drink, pictures and music, scenery and women. There would be a hundred things on the ordinary tourist steamer which would grate against his sensibilities and I suppose very few compensations. It would be just the same,” he continued hurriedly, “if it were a steamer of British or any other nationality, only he feels—and I think he is quite right—that there would be very few whom he met with whom he would be able to exchange anything in the shape of ideas.”
“But where do I come in?” Joan asked.
Domiloff avoided the point.
“He has shown a marked partiality for your society,” he reminded her. “I thought you might talk to him about it.”
“I don’t see what good talking would do,” she replied. “You have probably pointed out the whole situation to him. He would be safe on that boat if you can manage to get him there and he is not safe anywhere else. I can’t see why, if he has any common sense at all, he hesitates.”
“I can,” Domiloff asserted. “He is afraid of being bored. I recognize the type. Every susceptibility he has would be offended. He would hate the whole time, unless . . .”
“Don’t mind me,” Joan begged. “Say what you want to.”
“Unless there was someone on board who was agreeable to him and shared his tastes.”
“Meaning me?”
“Meaning you.”
She laughed softly. Then she was silent for a few minutes. She found it quite impossible, however, to concentrate her thoughts upon the ideas called up by her companion’s tentative suggestion. She was looking at her feet—extraordinarily pretty feet she had—rather admiring her stockings. Everyone declared that her legs, which she was not bashful about showing on the tennis courts, were the most beautiful in the place. She was congratulating herself upon having changed at the dressing rooms before she came up. Then suddenly she remembered that she was supposed to be considering something very much more serious. Of course, the whole thing was ridiculous. She was not at all sure that she ought not to be offended, except that no one ever was offended with Domiloff.
“You are not seriously suggesting,” she asked, “that I should go off alone with Rudolph Sagastrada, give him six months of my company and sacrifice my reputation to save him from boredom, even though it were to save his life?”
Domiloff wrinkled his fine forehead. More than ever, he had the appearance of an ambassador.
“A union with that young man,” he insisted, “should not present itself in the light of an impossibility. He has one sister who is a Princess, married, at any rate, to demi-semi-Royalty. She might be a queen one day, if there was any readjustment of Balkan affairs. One of his brothers is chairman of the Polo Club in New York and could marry absolutely anyone he wanted to out there. Then his Uncle Leopold still entertains what remains of the great world in Paris and his collection of pictures is the finest in France. Rudolph Sagastrada, even if he is hounded out of his country, is not a person to be dismissed lightly.”
“But my dear Baron,” Joan expostulated, “your young protégé has said many charming things to me but he has not asked me to marry him.”
Domiloff was not inclined to consider that fact of much importance.
“Perhaps you have not given him the opportunity,” he remarked.
“Why should I when such an idea has never entered into my own head? As a matter of fact, I should think that since the time we brought him home from Beaulieu, he has paid more attention to the Princess de Hochepierre than to me.”
“Lucille is perhaps more accessible,” Domiloff pointed out. “The young man is just the type with whom she loves to indulge in a little gentle flirtation. But we know Lucille. We know just how far that would take her. I am not asking you to do anything stupid or crude. That, I know, would be out of the question. My suggestion is that you have a few words with Sagastrada to-night and try to get him interested in this scheme.”
Joan laughed again, her peculiar self-communing laugh. It was the mirth of one sharing a humorous idea with oneself.
“I came to Monte Carlo,” she confided, “with a thousand dollars for a month’s holiday—a well-brought-up young woman with very definite ideas of how I was going to spend my time and my money. My ideas certainly did not include anything like offering myself as companion to a hunted young multi-millionaire.”
“Never mind about that just now,” he begged. “I have lent Rudolph Sagastrada part of my new suite in the Sporting Club. It enables me to place sentries at his door. I should like to take you up there. Perhaps he might offer us a cocktail before we change for this great function. We can tell him that we were driven out of the bar by the crowd. It would only take us a few minutes to get there along the passages.”
She hesitated for a few moments. Then she rose to her feet with a little laugh which was not altogether devoid of nervousness.
“Very well,” she agreed. “They say that no one ever denies you anything in Monte Carlo. I’ll try and see if I can be eloquent about the tourist steamer.”
The salon in which Domiloff had installed his young visitor, although it was essentially a man’s room, seemed to hold everything possible in the way of luxury. Rudolph, dressed in his own well-fitting clothes, looked very much at his ease and in keeping, seated there in a comfortable easy chair, a shaded lamp by his side and a volume of his beloved Heine’s Florentine Nights in his hand. He sprang to his feet at the entrance of his visitors.
“What a relief to welcome someone human,” he declared. “That sentry at the door in uniform, and such uniform, makes me feel like Royalty under restraint. Shall I play the host or will you, Baron?”
“I am going to ring, if I may, for a cocktail,” Domiloff suggested. “People are queuing up for drinks in the bar—a level hundred of them, I should think, and all talking at the same time.”
“I am not quite sure,” Rudolph confided, turning to Joan with a pleasant smile, “whether I am a prisoner or a guest, but order the cocktails by all means, Baron. Here comes your own butler.”
“Get out one of my shakers,” Domiloff instructed, “some large and small glasses, a bottle of Clicquot, the gin and French vermouth, and send up some ice. We will make them ourselves, if you do not mind, Sagastrada. The whole place is in confusion with this big dinner of yours.”
“No bad news then?” the young man asked. “I am allowed to be host at my own party?”
“You are indeed,” Domiloff assured him. “I have given you the run of the place until to-morrow morning and I do not break my word. This for the moment is my little kingdom. Legalized arrest I should protect you from anywhere in the Principality, but it is only within these walls that I can protect you from these strange gentlemen who seem to be travelling all round Europe nowadays with the weapons of the gangster concealed about their persons.”
Joan drew off her wash-leather gloves.
“Would you like me to make the cocktails, Baron?” she suggested.
“The voice of a divinity,” Domiloff declared with a sigh of relief. “I have a hundred things to do but first of all listen to me, Rudolph. I understand that you wish me to ask whomever I think worth while to the party.”
“You have carte blanche, Baron,” Sagastrada assured him. “Ask as many as t
he room will hold. All that I demand from you in return is that you arrange my table for me and that I have my friends within speaking distance. There is your divine wife, for instance, who gave me permission half-an-hour ago to call her by her prénom Lydia, the Princess, of course, and Miss Haskell as near as possible.”
“One of my secretaries will see to all that,” Domiloff promised him. “You will receive in the foyer, the whole of which is being curtained off. The dinner is going to cost you not a small fortune but a large one. I have never before spent so much money belonging to another man!”
“There are certain conditions in life,” Rudolph observed, “where money does not matter in the least. It has been an encumbrance to me up till now, for I am sure that I should have been a poet if I had not been born a banker. The more you strip me of the easier I shall find it to get some of my thoughts on to paper. Ruin me, Baron, with pleasure. I am a willing victim.”
“Hear him talk,” Domiloff laughed. “Not one of the Rothschilds I ever met was quite so contemptuous of his possessions.”
“So far as I can remember,” Rudolph rejoined, “not one of the Rothschilds was ever placed in such a position as I am. If you are running the risk of a bullet in your chest at any moment, you do not sit counting your pennies. You spend them while you have the chance!”
Domiloff drank his Martini quickly and turned away.
“I am going to leave Miss Haskell to entertain you until she has to go and change,” he said. “I shall be back in plenty of time to escort you up to the reception place. Ring for anything you want,” he added, looking back from the door. . . .
Rudolph established his guest in a comfortable chair and took over the business of mixing the cocktails. With a beautifully frosted glass in his hand he seated himself opposite to her.
“It is kind of you to come and comfort me in my solitude,” he said. “That dear fellow, Domiloff, was absolutely brutal this afternoon. He would not even let me go into the rooms until to-night. Must be the old General who has disturbed him.”
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