Part 14 (1/2)

”You must take account also,” Felix said, ”of the difference in the countries. In England the police system, if not the most infallible in the world, is certainly the most incorruptible. There was never a country in which security of person and life was so keenly watched over as here. In America, up to a certain point, a man is expected to look after himself. The same feeling does not prevail here.”

Mr. Sabin a.s.sented.

”And therefore,” he remarked, ”for the purposes of your friends I should consider this a difficult and unpromising country in which to work.”

”Other countries, other methods!” Felix remarked laconically.

”Exactly! It is the new methods which I am anxious to discover,” Mr.

Sabin said. ”No glimmering of them as yet has been vouchsafed to me. Yet I believe that I am right in a.s.suming that for the moment London is the headquarters of your friends, and that Lucille is here?”

”If that is meant for a question,” Felix said, ”I may not answer it.”

Mr. Sabin nodded.

”Yet,” he suggested, ”your visit has an object. To discover my plans perhaps! You are welcome to them.”

Felix thoughtfully knocked the ashes off his cigarette.

”My visit had an object,” he admitted, ”but it was a personal one. I am not actually concerned in the doings of those whom you have called my friends.”

”We are alone,” Mr. Sabin reminded him. ”My time is yours.”

”You and I,” Felix said, ”have had our periods of bitter enmity. With your marriage to Lucille these, so far as I am concerned, ended for ever. I will even admit that in my younger days I was prejudiced against you. That has pa.s.sed away. You have been all your days a bold and unscrupulous schemer, but ends have at any rate been worthy ones. To-day I am able to regard you with feelings of friendliness. You are the husband of my dear sister, and for years I know that you made her very happy. I ask you, will you believe in this statement of my att.i.tude towards you?”

”I do not for a single moment doubt it,” Mr. Sabin answered.

”You will regard the advice which I am going to offer as disinterested?”

”Certainly!”

”Then I offer it to you earnestly, and with my whole heart. Take the next steamer and go back to America.”

”And leave Lucille? Go without making any effort to see her?”

”Yes.”

Mr. Sabin was for a moment very serious indeed. The advice given in such a manner was full of forebodings to him. The lines from the corners of his mouth seemed graven into his face.

”Felix,” he said slowly, ”I am sometimes conscious of the fact that I am pa.s.sing into that period of life which we call old age. My ambitions are dead, my energies are weakened. For many years I have toiled--the time has come for rest. Of all the great pa.s.sions which I have felt there remains but one--Lucille. Life without her is worth nothing to me. I am weary of solitude, I am weary of everything except Lucille. How then can I listen to such advice? For me it must be Lucille, or that little journey into the mists, from which one does not return.”

Felix was silent. The pathos of this thing touched him.

”I will not dispute the right of those who have taken her from me,” Mr.

Sabin continued, ”but I want her back. She is necessary to me. My purse, my life, my brains are there to be thrown into the scales. I will buy her, or fight for her, or rejoin their ranks myself. But I want her back.”

Still Felix was silent. He was looking steadfastly into the fire.

”You have heard me,” Mr. Sabin said.