Part 9 (2/2)
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 fas.h.i.+onable 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.
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