Part 33 (2/2)

Report dispatched London. Fear escape impossible. Good-by.

JESSON.

”Horrible!” Maggie exclaimed, with a s.h.i.+ver. ”I thought he was in Russia.”

”So did we all,” Nigel replied. ”He must have come to the conclusion that the key to the riddle he was trying to solve was in China, and gone on there. Look here, Maggie,” he continued, after a moment's hesitation, ”do you think anything could be done for Jesson with Prince Shan?”

Maggie was silent. They were standing in a shaded corner of the hall, but a fleck of suns.h.i.+ne shone in her hair. She was still a little out of breath with the exercise, her cheeks full of healthy colour, her eyes bright. She tapped her skirt with her riding whip. Nigel watched her a little uneasily.

”Prince Shan is calling here this afternoon,” Maggie announced. ”I hope you don't mind.”

”What are you going to say to him?” Nigel asked bluntly.

There was a short, tense silence. Even at the thought of the crisis which she knew to be so close at hand, Maggie felt herself unnerved and in dubious straits.

”I do not know,” she said at last. ”For one thing, I do not know what he wants.”

”What he wants seems perfectly plain to me,” Nigel replied gravely. ”He wants you.”

Maggie made a desperate effort to regain the lightheartedness of a few weeks ago.

”If you believe that,” she said, ”your composure is most unflattering.”

There was a ring at the front doorbell, and a familiar voice was heard outside. Maggie turned away to the staircase with a little sigh of relief.

”Naida!” she exclaimed. ”I remember now I asked her for a quarter past one instead of half-past. You must entertain her, Nigel. I'll change into something quickly. And of course I'll speak to Prince Shan. We mustn't lose a minute about that. I'll telephone from my room in a few minutes, Naida. Nigel will look after you.”

Naida came down the hall, cool and exquisitely gowned in a creation of s.h.i.+mmering white. Nigel led her into the rarely used drawing-room and found a chair for her between the open window and the conservatory. At first they exchanged but few words. The sense of her near presence affected Nigel as nothing of the sort had ever done before. She for her part seemed quite content with a silence which had in it many of the essentials of eloquence.

”If the history of these days is ever written by an irascible German historian,” Naida remarked at length, ”he will probably declare that the destinies of the world have been affected during this last month by an outburst of primitivism. Do you know that I have written quite nice things to Paul about you English people? Honest things, of course, but still things which you helped me to discover. And Prince Shan, too. I think that when he rode here through the clouds, he believed in his heart that he was coming as a harbinger of woe.”

”You really think, then, that the crisis is past?” Nigel asked.

She nodded.

”I am almost sure of it. Prince Shan returns to China within the course of the next few days.”

”We have lived so long,” Nigel observed, ”in dread of the unknown. I wonder whether we shall ever understand the exact nature of the danger with which we were faced.”

”It depends upon Prince Shan,” she replied. ”The terms were Immelan's, but the method was his.”

”Do you believe,” he asked a little abruptly, ”that the attempt on Prince Shan's life last night was made by Immelan?”

There was a touch, perhaps, of her Muscovite ancestry in the cool indifference with which she considered the matter.

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