"There I join issue with you, sir," the Frenchman replied. "These are the obvious and expressed views of other European countries, yet month by month come rumours of the training of great masses of troops, far in excess of the numbers permitted by the League of Nations. There is all the time a haze of secrecy over what is going on in certain parts of Germany. And as for Russia, ostensibly the freest country in the world, Tsarism in its worst days never imposed such despotic restrictions concerning the coming and going of foreigners, in one particular district, at any rate."

"The Russian Government have certainly given us cause for complaint in that direction," Mr. Mervin Brown admitted. "Strong representations are being made to them at the present moment. On the other hand, the reason for their attitude is easily enough understood. In the days when Russia lay exhausted, foreigners took too much advantage of her, attained far too close a grip upon her great natural resources. Russia has determined that what she has left she will keep to herself. The attitude is reasonable, although I am free to admit that she is carrying her legislation against foreigners too far."

"What about the number of men she has under arms every year?" Monsieur Senn enquired.

"Russia has always a possible danger to fear from China, the new Colossus of Asia," the Prime Minister pointed out. "Even Russia herself has not made such strides within the last fifteen years as China. The secession of the Asiatic countries from the League of Nations demanded certain precautions which Russia is justified in taking."

The Frenchman had risen to his feet, but he still lingered. A tall man, of commanding presence, with olive complexion, deep brown eyes, and black hair lightly streaked with grey, Monsieur Felix Senn had been a great figure in the war of 1914-1918 and had retained since a commanding position in French politics. It had often been said that nothing but his great friendship for England had prevented his gaining the highest honours. His present mission, therefore, which was practically to end the alliance between the two countries, was a peculiarly painful one to him.

"I must tell you before we part, Mr. Mervin Brown," he said gravely, "that neither I nor many of my fellow countrymen share your optimism. You seem to have inherited the timeworn theory that the War of 1914 was entirely provoked by the junker class of Germans. That is not true. It was a people's war, and the people have never forgotten what they were pleased to consider the harsh terms of the Treaty of Peace. Then as regards Russia, have you ever considered that Russia financially and politically is more than half German? When Germany lost the war, she had one great consolation—she acquired Russia. You have compared the economic condition of France to-day with that of your country, sir. I admit your commercial supremacy, but let me tell you this. I would not, for the greatest boon the gods could offer me, see France in the same helpless state as England is in to-day."

The Prime Minister rose also to his feet. He wore an air of offended dignity.

"Monsieur Senn," he declared, "the spirit of militarism is in the blood of your country. You cannot rid yourself of it in one generation or two. But, believe me, no people's government at any time in the future, whether it be English, Russian, German, or American, will ever dare to suggest or even to dream of a war of aggression or revenge. If we are comparatively unprotected, it is because we need no protection. We hear the footfall of your marching millions, and we thank God that that sound is represented in our country by the roar of machinery and the blaze of furnaces."

The Frenchman bowed and accepted the hand which the Prime Minister offered him.

"I present to you once more, sir," he said, "the compliments and infinite regrets of Monsieur le President."

A chapter of English history ended with the quiet passing of Monsieur Senn into the sunlit street. The latter entered his waiting automobile and drove at once to the French Embassy. The Ambassador listened in silence to his report.

"What about the Press?" was his only question.

"Monsieur le President insists upon the truth being known," the emissary announced. "France has pledged her word against secret treaties. Besides, the honour of France must never afterwards be called in question."

The Ambassador sighed. He was new to his present post, but he had grown grey in the service of his country.

"It is the end of a one-sided arrangement," he declared. "It is incredible that these people do not realise that it is against their own country—against themselves—that this slowly fermenting hatred is being brewed. The racial enmity between Germany and France is nothing compared with the hate of antagonistic kinship between Germany and England. However, France is the gainer by to-day's event. We have only our own frontiers to watch."

Monsieur Felix Senn wandered on to the St. Philip's Club, where he found his old friend Prince Karschoff talking in a corner of the smoking room with Nigel. They were both of them prepared for the news which he presently communicated to them. Karschoff was bitter, Nigel silent.

"Well said Carlyle that 'History is philosophy teaching by examples'," the former expounded. "How the historian of the future will revel in this epoch! What treatises he will write, what parallels he will draw! See him point to the days when the aristocracy ruled England, and England fought and flourished; then to the epoch when the bourgeoisie took their place, and with a mighty effort, met a great emergency and flourished. And finally, in sympathy with the great European upheaval, in sympathy with the great natural law of change, Labour ousts both, single-eyed Labour, and down goes England, crumbling into the dust!—Let us lunch, my friends. The cuisine is still good here."

Nigel excused himself.

"I am engaged," he said. "We may meet afterwards."

"Something tells me, my dear Nigel," Karschoff declared, "that you are bent on frivolity."

"If to lunch with a woman is frivolous, I plead guilty," Nigel replied.

Karschoff's face was suddenly grave. He seemed on the point of saying something but checked himself and turned away with a little shrug of the shoulders.

"Each one to his taste," he murmured. "For my aperitif, a dash of absinthe in my cocktail; for Dorminster here, the lure of a woman's smile. Perhaps he gains. Who knows?"



CHAPTER XVIII

Nigel waited for his luncheon companion in the crowded vestibule of London's most famous club restaurant. He was to a certain extent out of the picture among the crowd of this new generation of pleasure seekers, on the faces of whom opulence and acquisitiveness had already laid its branding hand. The Mecca alike of musical comedy and the Stock Exchange, the place, however, still preserved a curious attraction for the foreign element in London, so that when at last Naida appeared, she was exchanging courtesies with an Italian Duchess on one side and a celebrated Russian dancer on the other. Nigel led her at once to the table which he had selected in the balcony.

"I have obeyed your wishes to the letter," he said, "and I think that you are right. Up here we are entirely alone, and, as you see, they have had the sense to place the tables a long way apart. Am I to blame, I wonder, for asking you to do so unconventional a thing as to lunch here again alone with me?"

She drew off her gloves and smiled across the table at him. Her plain, tailor-made gown, with its high collar, was the last word in elegance. The simplicity of her French hat was to prove the despair of a well-known modiste seated downstairs, who made a sketch of it on the menu and tried in vain to copy it. Even to Nigel's exacting taste she was flawless.

"Is it unconventional?" she asked carelessly. "I do not study those things. I lunch or dine with a party, generally, because it happens so. I lunch alone with you because it pleases me."

"And for this material side of our entertainment?" he enquired, smiling, as he handed her the menu card.

"A grapefruit, a quail with white grapes, and some asparagus," she replied promptly. "You see, in one respect I am an easy companion. I know exactly what I want. A mixed vermouth, if you like, yes. And now, tell me your news?"

"There is news," he announced, "which the whole world will know of before many hours are past. France has broken her pact with England."

"It is my opinion," she said deliberately, "that France has been very patient with you."

"And mine," he acknowledged. "We have now to see what will become of a fat and prosperous country with a semi-obsolete fleet and a comic opera army."

"Must we talk of serious things?" she asked softly. "I am weary of the clanking wheels of life."

He sighed.

"And yet for you," he said, "they are not grinding out the fate of your country."

"Nevertheless, I too hear them all the time," she rejoined. "And I hate them. They make one lose one's sense of proportion. After all, it is our own individual and internal life which counts. I can understand Nero fiddling while Rome burned, if he really had no power to call up fire engines."

"Are you an individualist?" he asked.

"Not fundamentally," she replied, "but I am caught up in the throes of a great reaction. I have been studying events, which it is quite true may change the destinies of the world, so intently that I have almost forgotten that, after all, the greatest thing in the world, my world, is the happiness or ill-content of Naida Karetsky. It is really of more importance to me to-day that my quail should be cooked as I like it than that England has let go her last rope."

"You are not an Englishwoman," he reminded her.

"That is of minor importance. We are all so much immersed in great affairs just now that we forget it is the small ones that count. I want my luncheon to be perfect, I want you to seem as nice to me as I have fancied you, and I want you to chase completely away the idea that you are cultivating my acquaintance for interested motives."

"That I can assure you from the bottom of my heart is not the case," he replied. "Whatever other interests I may feel in you," he added, after a moment's hesitation, "my first and foremost is a personal one."

She looked at him with gratitude in her eyes for his understanding.

"A woman in my position," she complained, "is out of place. A man ought to come over and study your deservings or your undeservings and pore over the problem of the future of Europe. I am a woman, and I am not big enough. I am too physical. I have forgotten how to enjoy myself, and I love pleasure. Now am I a revelation to you?"

"You have always been that," he told her. "You are so truthful yourself," he went on boldly, "that I shall run the risk of saying the most banal thing in the world, just because it happens to be the truth. I have felt for you since our first meeting what I have felt for no other woman in the world."

"I like that, and I am glad you said it," she declared lightly enough, although her lips quivered for a moment. "And they have put exactly the right quantity of Maraschino in my grapefruit. I feel that I am on the way to happiness. I am going to enjoy my luncheon.—Tell me about Maggie."

"I saw her yesterday," he answered. "We have arranged for her to come and live at Belgrave Square, after all."

"My terrible altruism once more," she sighed. "I had meant not to speak another serious word, and yet I must. Maggie is very clever, amazingly clever, I sometimes think, but if she had the brains of all of her sex rolled into one, she would still be facing now an impossible situation."

"Just what do you mean?" he asked cautiously.

"Maggie seems determined to measure her wits with those of Prince Shan," she said. "Believe me, that is hopeless."

She looked up at him and laughed softly.

"Oh, my dear friend," she went on, "that wooden expression is wonderful. You do not quite know where I stand, except—may I flatter myself?—as regards your personal feelings for me. Am I for Immelan and his schemes, or for your own foolish country? You do not know, so you make for yourself a face of wood."

"Where do you stand?" he asked bluntly.

"Sufficiently devoted to your interests to beg you this," she replied. "Do not let your little cousin think that she can deal with a man like Prince Shan. There can be only one end to that."

Nigel moved a little uneasily in his place.

"Prince Shan is only an ordinary human being, after all," he protested.

"That is just where you are mistaken," she declared. "Prince Shan is one of the most extraordinary human beings who ever lived. He is one of the most farseeing men in the world, and he is absolutely the most powerful."

"But China," Nigel began—

"His power extends far beyond China," she interrupted, "and there is no brain in the world to match his to-day."

"If he were a god wielding thunderbolts," Nigel observed, "he could scarcely do much harm to Maggie here in London."

"There was an artist once," she said reflectively, "who drew a caricature of Prince Shan and sent it to the principal comic paper in America. It was such a success that a little time later on he followed it up with another, which included a line of Prince Shan's ancestors. Within a month's time the artist was found murdered. Prince Shan was in China at the time."

"Are you suggesting that the artist was murdered through Prince Shan's contrivance?"

"Am I a fool?" she answered. "Do you not know that to speak disrespectfully of the ancestors of a Chinaman is unforgivable? To all appearances Prince Shan never moved from his wonderful palace in Pekin, many thousands of miles away. Yet he lifted his little finger and the man died."

"Isn't this a little melodramatic?" Nigel murmured.

"Melodrama is often nearer the truth than people think," she said. "Shall I give you another instance? I know of several."

"One more, then."

"Prince Shan was in Paris two years ago, incognito," she continued. "There was at the time a small but very fashionable restaurant in the Bois, close to the Pre Catelan. He presented himself one night there for dinner, accompanied, I believe, by La Belle Nita, the Chinese dancer who is in London to-day. As you know, there is little in Prince Shan's appearance to denote the Oriental, but for some reason or other the proprietor refused him a table. Prince Shan made no scene. He left and went elsewhere. Three nights later, the cafe was burnt to the ground, and the proprietor was ruined."

"Anything else?" Nigel asked.

"Only one thing more," she replied. "I have known him slightly for years. In Asia he ranks to all men as little less than a god. His palaces are filled with priceless treasures. He has the finest collection of jewels in the world. His wealth is simply inexhaustible. His appearance you appreciate. Yet I have never seen him look at a woman as he looked at your cousin the first time he met her. I was at the Ritz with my father, and I watched. I know you think that I am being foolish. I am not. I am a person with a very great deal of common sense, and I tell you that Prince Shan has never desired a thing in life to which he has not helped himself. Maggie is a clever child, but she cannot toss knives with a conjuror."

Nigel was impressed and a little worried.

"It seems absurd to think that anything could happen to Maggie here in London," he said, "after—"

He paused abruptly. Naida smiled at him.

"After her escape from Germany, I suppose you were going to say? You see, I know all about it. There was no Prince Shan in Berlin."

He shrugged his shoulders slightly.

"Well," he admitted, "I don't quite bring myself to believe in your terrible ogre, so I shall not worry. Tell me what news you have from Russia?"

"Political?"

"Any news."

She smiled.

"I notice," she said, "that English people are changing their attitude towards my country. A few years ago she seemed negligible to them. Now they are beginning to have—shall I call them fears? Even my kind host, I think, would like to know what is in Paul Matinsky's heart as he hears the friends of Oscar Immelan plead their cause."

"I admit it," he told her frankly. "I will go farther. I would give a great deal to know what is in your own mind to-day concerning us and our destiny. But these things are not for the moment. It was not to discuss or even to think of them that I asked you here to-day."

"Why did you invite me, then?" she asked, smiling.

"Because I wanted the pleasure of having you opposite me," he replied,—"because I wanted to know you better."

"And are you progressing?"

"Indifferently well," he acknowledged. "I seem to gain a little and slide back again. You are not an easy person to know well."

"Nothing that is worth having is easy," she answered, "and I can assure you, when my friendship is once gained, it is a rare and steadfast thing."

"And your affection?" he ventured.

Her eyes rested upon his for a moment and then suddenly drooped. A little tinge of colour stole into her cheeks. For a moment she seemed to have lost her admirable poise.

"That is not easily disturbed," she told him quietly. "I think that I must have an unfortunate temperament, there are so few people for whom I really care."

He took his courage into both hands.

"I have heard it rumoured," he said, "that Matinsky is the only man who has ever touched your heart."

She shook her head.

"That is not the truth. Paul Matinsky cares for me in his strange way, and he has a curiously exaggerated appreciation of my brain. There have been times," she went on, after a moment's hesitation, "when I myself have been disturbed by fancies concerning him, but those times have passed."

"I am glad," he said quietly.

His fingers, straying across the tablecloth, met hers. She did not withdraw them. He clasped her hand, and it remained for a moment passive in his. Then she withdrew it and leaned back in her chair.

"Is that meant to introduce a more intimate note into our conversation?" she asked, with a slight wrinkling of the forehead and the beginnings of a smile upon her lips.

"If I dared, I would answer 'yes'," he assured her.

"They tell me," she continued pensively, "that Englishmen more than any other men in the world have the flair for saying convincingly the things which they do not mean."

"In my case, that would not be true," he answered. "My trouble is that I dare not say one half of what I feel."

She looked across the table at him, and Nigel suddenly felt a great weight of depression lifted from his heart. He forgot all about his country's peril. Life and its possibilities seemed somehow all different. He was carried away by a rare wave of emotion.

"Naida!" he whispered.

"Yes?"

Her eyes were soft and expectant. Something of the gravity had gone from her face. She was like a girl, suddenly young with new thoughts.

"You know what I am going to say to you?"

"Do not say it yet, please," she begged. "Somehow it seems to me that the time has not come, though the thought of what may be in your heart is wonderful. I want to dream about it first," she went on. "I want to think."

He laughed, a strange sound almost to his own ears, for Nigel, since his uncle's death, had tasted the very depths of depression.

"I obey," he agreed. "It is well to dally with the great things. Meanwhile, they grow."

She smiled across at him.

"I hope that they may," she answered. "And you will ask me to lunch again?"

"Lunch or dine or walk or motor—whatever you will," he promised.

She reflected for a moment and then laughed. She was drawing on her gloves now, and Nigel was paying the bill.

"There are some people who will not like this," she said.

"And one," he declared, "for whom it is going to make life a Paradise."

They passed out into the street and strolled leisurely westwards. As they crossed Trafalgar Square, a stream of newsboys from the Strand were spreading in all directions. Nigel and his companion seemed suddenly surrounded by placards, all with the same headlines. They paused to read:

TRIUMPH OF THE CHANCELLOR HUGE REDUCTION OF THE NATIONAL DEBT TOTAL ABOLITION OF THE INCOME TAX

They walked on. Naida said nothing, although she shook her head a little sorrowfully. Nigel glanced across the Square and down towards Westminster.

"They will shout themselves hoarse there this afternoon," he groaned.

For the first time she betrayed her knowledge of coming events.

"It is amazing," she whispered, "for the writing on the wall is already there."



CHAPTER XIX

Seated in one of the first tier boxes at the Albert Hall, in the gorgeous but obsolete uniform of a staff officer in the Russian Imperial Forces, Prince Karschoff, with Nigel on one side and Maggie on the other, gazed with keen interest at the brilliant scene below and around. The greatest city the world has ever known seemed in those days to have entered upon an orgy of extravagance unprecedented in history. Every box and every yard of dancing space on the floor beneath was crowded with men and women in wonderful fancy costumes, the women bedecked with jewels which eager merchants had brought together from every market of the world; even the men, in their silks and velvets and ruffles, carrying out the dominant note of wealth. It was a ball given for charity and under royal patronage.

"All our friends seem to be here to-night," the Prince remarked, glancing around. "I saw Naida with her father and the eternal Oscar Immelan. Chalmers is here with an exceedingly gay party, and yonder sits his Imperial Highness, looking very much the barbaric prince.—By the by," he added, glancing towards Maggie, "I thought that he was not coming?"

Maggie, who seemed a little tired, nodded quietly. It was a week or ten days later, and an early season was now in full swing.

"He told me that he was not coming," she said. "I suppose the temptation to wear that gorgeous raiment was too much for him."

"Apropos of that, there is one curious thing to be noted here with regard to clothes," the Prince continued. "Amongst the men, you find Venetian Doges, Chancellors, gallants of every age, but scarcely a single uniform. In a way, this seems typical of the passing of the militarism of your country. You are beginning to remind me of Venice in the Middle Ages. There is a new type of brain dominant here, fat instead of muscle, a citizen aristocracy instead of the lean, clear-eyed, athletic type."

Maggie moved in her place a little irritably.

"I am tired of warnings," she declared. "I wish some one could do something."

"It is impossible," the Prince pronounced solemnly. "Napoleon earned for himself a greater claim to immortality when he christened the English a nation of shopkeepers than when he won the Battle of Austerlitz. If the Englishman of to-day saw his material prosperity slipping away from him, then indeed he would be nervous and restless, ready to lean towards every wind that blew, to listen to every disquieting rumour. To-day his bank balance is prodigious, and all's well with the world.—How wonderfully Prince Shan lives up to his part to-night!"

They looked across towards the opposite box, whose single occupant, in the bright green robes of a mandarin, sat looking down upon the gay throng with an absolutely immovable expression. There was something almost regal about his air of detachment, his solitude amidst such a gay scene.

"There is one of the strangest and most consistent figures in history," Karschoff, who was in a talkative frame of mind, went on reflectively. "I honestly believe that Prince Shan considers himself to be of celestial descent, to carry in his person the honour of countless generations of Manchus. He has no intimates. Even Immelan usually has to seek an audience. What his pleasures may be, who knows?—because everything that happens with him happens behind closed walls. To-night, the door of his box is guarded as though he were more than royalty. No one is allowed to enter unless he has special permission."

"There is some one entering now," Maggie pointed out, "for the first time. Watch!"

La Belle Nita stood for a moment in the front of the box. She was dressed in the gala costume of a Chinese lady, in a cherry-coloured robe with wide sleeves, her hair, with its many jewelled ornaments, like a black pool of night, her face ghastly white with a superabundance of powder. Prince Shan turned his head slightly towards her, and though no muscle of his face moved, it was obvious that her coming was unwelcome. She began to talk. He listened with the face of a sphinx. Presently she drew back into the shadows of the box. She had thrown herself into a chair, and her face was hidden.

"La Belle Nita has made a mistake," Maggie observed. "His Serene Highness evidently had no wish to be disturbed."

Karschoff's eyes rested upon the figure in green silk, and they were filled with an unwilling admiration.

"That man is magnificent," he declared. "Watch his face now that he is speaking. Not a muscle moves, not a flash in his eyes, yet one has the fancy that he is saying terrible things."

It was obvious, a moment later, that La Belle Nita had left the box. Maggie sprang up. Her colour was a little heightened. There was a rare nervousness in her tone.

"Let us walk around and find some of the others," she suggested, turning to Nigel. "I want to dance."

They all three passed out and mingled with the dancers. Maggie put on her mask and deliberately glided into the crowd as though with the intention of losing herself. It was not until she was underneath Prince Shan's box and out of sight of its occupant that she paused. Her thoughts were in a turmoil. His presence there, after his deliberate assurance to her that he had no intention of coming, his calm and unnoticing regard of her and every one else, seemed to confirm in every way the wave of pessimism which she as well as Nigel was experiencing. She had passed Immelan in the entrance, and there was something ominously disturbing in his cool, triumphant smile. She pictured to herself the agreement signed, some nameless terror already launched. She remembered that Nigel had complained of Naida's inaccessibility during the last few days. She herself had been surprised at Prince Shan's apparent withdrawal, temporary though it might be, from the peculiar but impressive position which he had taken up with regard to her.

She stood back against the wall, in a dark corner, striving to collect her thoughts, thankful for the brief respite from conversation. A man in the costume of a monk, who had followed her across the room, touched her on the shoulder. He spoke in a quiet, unfamiliar voice with a foreign accent,

"You are Lady Maggie Trent?"

"Yes!"

"Will you please go to box number fourteen, on the second tier? There is some one there who waits for you."

"Who is it?" she asked.

The monk had glided away. Maggie, after a few minutes' reflection, slipped out into the corridor, mounted one flight of stairs, and passed along the semicircular balcony. The door of box number fourteen was ajar. She pushed it gently open and glanced in. Seated so as to be out of sight of the whole house was La Belle Nita. For a moment the two looked at each other. Then the Chinese girl sprang to her feet, made a quaint little bow, and, gliding around, closed the door behind her visitor.

"Sit down, please," she invited. "I will tell you things you may like to hear."

A sudden thought flashed into Maggie's mind. She began to see light. She obeyed at once. The two women sat well back and out of sight of the house. La Belle Nita held the handle of the door in her hand while she spoke, as though to prevent any one entering.

"I have an enemy who was once a friend," she said, "and I wish to do him evil. He is not only my enemy, but he is yours. He is the enemy of all you English people, because it is a great disaster which he plans to bring upon you."

"You speak of Prince Shan?" Maggie exclaimed.

Even at the mention of his name, the girl shook. She looked around as though fearing the shadows. She rattled the door to make sure that it was closed.

"For him whom you call Prince Shan I have worked many years, first of all in Paris, now here. I was content with small reward. That reward he now takes from me. It is my wish to betray him."

"Why do you send for me?" Maggie asked.

"Because you have been an English spy," was the quiet reply. "It may surprise you that I know that, but I do know. I have been a spy for Prince Shan in Paris. You were a spy for England in Berlin. You were a spy for your country's sake; I was a spy for love. Now I betray for hate."

"Please go on."

"Prince Shan came this time to Europe with two schemes in his mind," the girl continued. "One concerned France. That one he has discarded. Through me he learned of the military strength of France, her secret resources, of her tireless watch upon the Rhine. So he listens to Immelan, and Immelan and he together, oh, English lady, they have made a wonderful plan!"

"Are you going to tell me what it is?" Maggie asked, her eyes bright with excitement.

"I cannot tell you because I do not know," was the unwilling admission, "but I will make it so that you can discover for yourself. A few hours ago, the plan was submitted to Prince Shan. It lies in the third drawer of an ebony cabinet, in the room on the left-hand side of the hall after you have entered his house in Curzon Street."

"But no one can enter it!" Maggie exclaimed. "The place is like a fort. No stranger may pass the threshold even. The Prince has told me himself that he receives no visitors."

La Belle Nita smiled. From a pocket somewhere within the folds of her flowing gown, she produced two small keys.

"Listen," she said. "The house in Curzon Street has been called the House of Silence. There are many servants there, but they come only from beneath and when they are summoned. There is what no other person has ever possessed—the key of the front door. There is also the key of the cabinet. Prince Shan has ordered his automobile for two o'clock. It is now barely midnight."

The keys lay in the palm of Maggie's hand. Her heart had begun to beat quickly. Somehow or other, she was conscious of a thrill of excitement which she had never before experienced, even when she had sat back in her corner of the railway carriage, watching for the frontier, knowing that the wires were busy with her name, and that men who knew no mercy were on her track.

"If the servants should hear me?" she faltered.

"You say only 'I await the Prince'," La Belle Nita murmured. "That key never leaves his own person save for one in great favour. They will believe that he gave it to you. You will be unmolested."

A queer sensation suddenly assailed Maggie. She felt extraordinarily primitive, ridiculously feminine. She looked at the girl opposite to her, the girl whose body was draped in perfumed silks, whose face was thick with rice powder, whose eyes were sad. She felt no pity. What feeling she had, she did not care to analyse.

"Is this your key?" she asked.

"It was mine once, but its use has been forbidden to me," the girl replied. "Prince Shan is a changed man. Something has come into his life of which I know nothing, but as it has come, so must I go. I give you your chance, lady, but already I weaken. Go quickly, if you go at all. Please leave me, for I am very unhappy."

Maggie stole quietly out and made her way through the jostling throng back to her own box, which for the moment was empty. She slipped on her cloak, and from the hidden spaces where she stood she looked across the auditorium. The silent figure in green silk robes was still seated in his place, his eyes following the movements of the dancers, his head a little thrown back, a slight weariness in his face. He was still alone. He still had the air of being alone because it was his desire. Once he looked up towards the box in which she was, and Maggie, although she knew she was invisible, shrank back against the wall. She set her teeth hard and looked back through the slightly misty space. An unfamiliar feeling for a moment almost choked her. She waited until she had vanquished it, then adjusted her mask and left the box.



CHAPTER XX

From the moment when the taxicab drove away and left her in the deserted street, Maggie was conscious of a strange sense of suppressed excitement, something more poignant and mysterious, even, than the circumstances of her adventure might account for. It was exciting enough, in its way, to play the part of a marauding thief, to find herself unexpectedly face to face with a possible solution of the great problem of Prince Shan's intentions. But beneath all this there was another feeling, more entirely metaphysical, which in a sense steadied her nerves because it filled her with a strange impression that she had lost her own identity, that she was playing somebody else's part in a novel and thrilling drama.

The street was empty when she inserted the little key in the front door. There was not a soul there to see her step in as it swung open and then softly, noiselessly, but without any conscious effort of hers, closed again behind her. She held her breath and looked around.

The hall was round, painted white and dimly lit by an overhead electric globe. In the centre was a huge green vase filled with great branches of some sort of blossoms. Not a picture hung upon the walls, nor was there any hall stand, chest, closet for coats or hats, or any of the usual furbishings of such a place. There were three rugs upon the polished floor and nothing else except a yawning stairway and closed doors. Whatever servants might be in attendance were evidently in a distant part of the building. Not a sound was to be heard. Still without any lack of courage, but oppressed with that curious sense of unreality, she turned almost automatically towards the door on the left and opened it. Again it closed behind her noiselessly. She realised that she was in one of the principal reception rooms of the house, dimly lit as the hall from a dome-shaped globe set into the ceiling. She moved a yard or two across the threshold and stood looking about her. Here again there was an almost singular absence of furniture. The walls were hung with apple-green silk, richly embroidered. There were some rugs upon the polished floor, a few quaintly carved chairs set with their backs against the wall, and opposite to her the ebony cabinet of which La Belle Nita had spoken. She moved towards it. Somehow or other, she found herself with the other key in her hand, stooping down. She counted the drawers—one, two three—fitted in the key, turned it, and realised with a little start the presence in the drawer of a roll of parchment, tied around with tape and sealed with a black seal. She laid her hand upon it, but even at that moment she felt a shiver pass through her body. There had been no sound in the room, which she could have sworn had been empty when she entered it, yet she had now a conviction that she was not alone. She turned slowly around, her lips parted, breathing quickly. Standing in the middle of the room, a grim, commanding figure in his flowing green robes, the dim light flashing upon the great diamonds in his belt, stood Prince Shan.

To Maggie at that moment came a great throbbing in her ears, a sense of remoteness from this terrible happening, followed by an intense and vital consciousness of danger. The man who had brought new things into her life, the polished gentleman of the world, with his fascinating brain and gentle courtesy, had gone. It was Prince Shan of China who stood there. She felt the chill of his contempt and disapproval in her heart. She had forfeited her high estate. She was a convicted thief,—an adventuress!

She gripped at the side of the cabinet. Her poise had gone. She had the air of a trapped animal.

"You!" she exclaimed. "How did you get here?"

He answered her without change of expression. A sense of crisis seemed to have made his tone more level, his face stony.

"It is my house," he said. "I do not often leave it. I sat in my sleeping chamber behind"—he pointed to the silken curtains through which he had passed—"I heard your entrance and guessed with pain and regret at your mission."

"But a quarter of an hour ago you were at the ball!"

"You are mistaken," he replied. "I do not attend such gatherings. I had given you my word that I should not be there."

"But I saw you," she persisted, "in that same costume!"

"Surely not," he dissented. "The person whom you saw was a gentleman from my suite, who wore the dress of an inferior mandarin. He is sometimes supposed to resemble me. I should have believed that your apprehension of such things would have informed you that no Prince of my line would wear the garments of his order for a public show."

Her fingers had left the drawer now. She stood upright, pale and desperate.

"That woman of your country, then—La Belle Nita—did she lie to me?"

"How can I tell?" he answered coldly, "because I do not know what she said."

Maggie made an effort to test her position.

"I came here as a thief," she confessed. "I am detected. What are your intentions?"

He moved very slowly a little closer to her. Maggie felt her sense of excitement grow.

"You came here as a thief," he repeated, "as a spy. Why did you not ask me for the information you desired?"

"Because you would not have told me," she replied, "at least you would not have told me the truth."

"For a price," he said, "the truth would have been yours for the asking. For a different price it is yours now."

Again without noticeable movement he seemed to have drawn nearer. The edge of that cool ebony cabinet seemed to be burning her fingers. Try however hard, she could not frame the question which had risen to her lips.

"The price," he continued, "is you—yourself. A few hours ago it was your love I craved for. Now it is yourself."

He was so near to her now that she faced the steady radiance of his wonderful eyes, so near that she could trace the faint lines about his mouth, the strong, stern immobility of his perfectly shaped, olive-tinted features.

"You are too wonderful," he went on, "to remain a daughter of the crude West. I want to take you back with me to the land where life still moves to poetry, to the land where one can live in a world unknown by these struggling hordes. You shall live in a palace where the perfume of flowers lingers always, with the sound of running water in your ears, a palace from which all sordid things and all manner of ugliness are banished because we alone have found the key to the garden of happiness."

He raised his hand, and it seemed as though unseen eyes watched them from every quarter. The silken curtains through which he had issued were drawn back by invisible hands, and the inner apartment was disclosed. Its faint illumination was obscured with purple shades. There was a high lacquer bedstead, with little ivory ladders on either side, a bedstead hung with silks of black and purple and mauve. There was a huge couch, a shrine opposite the bed, in which was a kneeling figure of black marble. A faint odour, as though from thousand-year-old sachets, very faint indeed and yet with its mead of intoxication, seemed to steal out from the room, which had borrowed from its curious hangings, its marvellous adornments, its strangely attuned atmosphere, all the mysticism of a fabled world.

"You have come," he said. "Will you stay?" The inertia seemed suddenly to leave her limbs. She threw up her head as though gasping for air, escaped, somehow or other, from the thrall of his eyes, and passed across the smooth floor with flying footsteps. Her fingers seized the handle of the door and turned it, only to find it held by some invisible fastening. She shook it passionately. There was not even sound. She turned back once more. Prince Shan had only slightly changed his position. He stood upon the threshold of the inner room, and his arms were outstretched in invitation.

"Am I a prisoner?" she sobbed.

"You came of your own free will," he replied. "You will stay for my pleasure and for the joy of my being. As for these things," he went on, moving slowly to the cabinet, picking up the pile of papers and throwing them on one side contemptuously, "these are only one's amusements. I pass my lighter hours with them. They interest me in the same manner as a chess problem. We do not care, we in the mighty East, which of you holds your head highest this side of Suez. All you western nations are to us a peck of dust outside our palace gates. Listen, dear one. We can leave, if you will, to-night, and top the clouds before sunrise. And I promise you this," he went on, "when you pass from the greyness of these sordid lands into the everlasting sunshine of the East, you will not care any longer about these people who go about the world on all fours. Day by day you will know what life and love mean. You will find the cloying weight of material things pass from your brain and body, and the joy of holy and wonderful living take their place."

Her whole being was in a turmoil. She drew nearer to the papers upon the table. She was now within a yard of Prince Shan himself. He made no effort to intercept her, no movement of any sort to stop her. Only his eyes never left her face, and she felt a madness which seemed to be choking the life out of her, a pounding of her heart against her ribs, a strange and wonderful joy, a joy in which there was no fear, a joy of new things and new hopes. With the papers for which she had come only a few yards away, she forgot them. She turned her head slowly. His arms seemed to steal out from those long, silken sleeves. She suddenly felt herself held in a wonderful embrace.

"Dear lady of all my desires," he whispered in her ear, "you shall make me happy and find the secret of happiness yourself in giving, in suffering, in love."

For a long and wonderful moment she lay in his arms. She felt the soft burning of his kisses, the call of the room with its intoxicating, yet strangely ascetic perfume, the room to which all the time he seemed to be gently leading her. And then a flood of strange, alien recollections and realisations seemed to bring her from a better place back to a worse,—the sound of a passing taxicab, the distant booming of Big Ben, sounds of the world outside, the actual day-by-day world, with its day-by-day code of morals, the world in which she lived, and her friends, and all that had made life for her. She drew away, and he watched the change in her.

"I want to go!" she cried. "Let me go!"

"You are no prisoner," he assured her sadly.

He clapped his hands. She had reached the door by now and found the handle yield to her fingers. Outside in the hall, the front door stood open, and a heavy rain was beating in on the white flags. She looked around. She was in her own atmosphere here. Their eyes met, and his were very sorrowful.

"My servants are assembling," he said. "You will find a car at your service."

Even then she hesitated. There was a strange return of the wonderful emotion of a few minutes ago. She hoped almost painfully that he would call. Instead, he lifted the silk hangings and passed out of sight. Somehow or other, she made her way down the hall. A butler stood upon the steps, another servant was holding open the door of a limousine just drawn up. She had no distinct recollection of giving any address. She simply threw herself back amongst the cushions. It was not until they were in Piccadilly that she suddenly remembered that she had left upon the table the papers he had scornfully offered her. Then she began to laugh.



CHAPTER XXI

It chanced that the box was empty when Maggie, with flying footsteps, hastened down the corridor and pushed open the door. She sank into a chair, her knees trembling, her senses still dazed. Deliberately, although with hot and trembling fingers, she folded over and tore into small pieces a programme of the dances, which she had picked up from an adjoining chair. The action, insignificant though it was, seemed to bring her back into touch with the real and actual world, the world of music and wild gayety, of swiftly moving feet, of laughter and languorous voices. For a brief space of time she had escaped, she had wandered a little way into an unknown country, a country from whose thrilling dangers she had emerged with a curious feeling that life would never be altogether the same again. She glanced at the clock at the back of the box. She had been absent from the Hall altogether only about an hour and twenty minutes. There was still at least an hour before it would be possible for her to plead weariness and escape. And opposite, in the shadows of the distant box, the mock Prince Shan seemed always to be gazing at her with that cryptic smile upon his lips.

Presently the door was stealthily opened. A face as pale as death, with black eyes like pieces of coal, was framed for a moment in the shadowed slit. A little waft of familiar perfume stole in. La Belle Nita, her flaming lips widely parted, as soon as she recognised the sole occupant of the box, crept through the opening and closed the door again.

"You are here?" she exclaimed incredulously. "Your courage failed you? You did not go?"

"I have been and returned," Maggie answered. "Now tell me what I have done that you should have plotted this thing against me?"

The girl sat on the edge of a chair and for a moment hummed the refrain of a sad chant, as she rocked slowly backwards and forwards.

"'What have you done?' the rose asked the butterfly. 'What have you done?' the mimosa blossom asked the little blue bird, whose wings fluttered amongst her leaves. 'You have taken love from me, love which is the blossom of life.'"

"It sounds very picturesque," Maggie said coldly, "but I do not follow your allegory. What I want to know is why you lied to me, why you sent me to that house to meet Prince Shan?"

"How did I lie to you?" Nita demanded. "The papers you sought were there. Were they not yours for the asking, or was the price too great?"

"The papers were there, certainly," Maggie acquiesced, "but you knew very well—"

She stopped short. Slowly the Oriental idea of it all was beginning to frame itself in her mind. She dimly understood the bewilderment in the other's face.

"The papers were there, and he, the most wonderful of all men, was there," Nita murmured, "yet you leave him while the night is yet young, you return here without them!"

Maggie rose from her chair, moved to the side table and poured herself out a glass of wine, which she drank hastily. Anything to escape from the scornful wonder of those questioning eyes!

"I did not go there," she said, "to make bargains with Prince Shan. I believed as you wished me to believe, that he was here in that box. I believed that I should have found the house empty, should have found what I wanted and have escaped with it. Why did you do this thing? Why did you send me on that errand when you knew that Prince Shan was there?"

"It was my desire that he should know that you are no different from other women," was the calm reply. "I was a spy for him. You are a spy—against him."

"It was a deliberate plot, then!" Maggie exclaimed, trying to feel the anger which she imparted to her tone.

La Belle Nita suddenly laughed, softly and like a bird.

"You very, very foolish Englishwoman," she said. "A hand leaned down from Heaven, and you liked better to stay where you were, but I am glad."

"And why?"

"Because I have been his slave," the girl continued. "At odd, strange moments he has shown me a little love, he has let me creep into a small corner of his heart. Now I am cast out, and there is no more life for me because there is no more love, and there is no more love because, having felt his, no other can come after. Here have I sat with all the tortures of Hell burning in my blood because I knew that you and he were there alone, because I was never sure that, after all, I was not doing my lord's will. And now I know that I suffered in vain. You did not understand."

Maggie looked across at her visitor reflectively. She was beginning to regain her poise.

"Listen," she said, "did you seriously expect me to accept Prince Shan as a lover?"

The girl's eyes were round with wonder.

"It would be your great good fortune," she murmured, "if he should offer you so wonderful a thing."

Maggie laughed,—persisted in her laugh, although it sounded a little hard and the mirth a little forced.

"I cannot reason with you," she declared, "because you would not understand. If you love him so much, why not go back to him? You will find him quite alone. I dare say you know the secrets of his lockless doors and hordes of unseen servants."

La Belle Nita rose to her feet. About her lips there flickered the faintest smile.

"Young English lady," she said, "I shall not go, because I am shut for ever out of his heart. But listen; would you have me go?"

For a moment Maggie's poise was gone again. A strange uncertainty was once more upon her. She was terrified at her own feelings. The smile on the other's lips deepened and then passed away.

"Ah," she murmured, as with a little bow she turned towards the door, "you are not all snow and ice, then! There is something of the woman in you. He must have known that. I am better content."

Alone in the box, Maggie was confronted once more with spectres. She felt all the fear and the sweetness of this new awakening. The old dangers and problems, the danger of life and death, the problem of her well-ordered days, fell away from her as trifles. There was wilder music in the world than any to which she had yet listened,—music which seemed to be awakening vibrant melodies in her terrified heart. The curtain which hung about the forbidden world had been suddenly lifted. Little shivers of fear convulsed her. Her standards were confused, her whole sense of values disturbed. Her primal virginity, left to itself because it had never needed a guard, had suddenly become a questioning thing. She sat there face to face with this new phase in her life. She was not even conscious of the abrupt pause in the music, the agitated murmur of voices, the sudden cessation of that rhythmical sweep of footsteps on the floor below.

The door of the box was once more opened. Naida, attired as a lady of the Russian Court, entered, followed by Nigel. Both were obviously disturbed. Nigel, who was in ordinary evening dress, carrying his discarded mask in his hand, was paler than usual and exceedingly grave. Naida's dark eyes, too, seemed filled with a sense of awesome things. Almost at the same moment, Maggie realised for the first time that the music had ceased, that there was a hush outside, curiously perceptible, almost audible.

"What has happened?" she asked breathlessly.

Nigel had poured out a glass of wine and was holding it to Naida's lips.

"Something very terrible," he said quietly. "Prince Shan was murdered in his box there a few minutes ago."

Maggie half rose to her feet. The walls seemed spinning round. Then she looked across the great empty space. The still figure in the apple-green coat had disappeared.

"Prince Shan was murdered in that box," she repeated, "a few minutes ago?"

"Yes!" Nigel assented gravely. "He seems to have feared something of the sort, for he had two servants on guard outside and announced that he was not receiving visitors to-night. No one knows any particulars, but a number of people in the auditorium saw him fall sideways from his chair. When he was picked up, there was a small dagger through his heart."

"Through Prince Shan's heart?" Maggie persisted wildly.

"Yes!"

Suddenly she began to laugh. It was a strange, hysterical ebullition of feeling, frankly horrifying. Naida gazed at her with distended eyes.

"Prince Shan has never been here!" Maggie explained brokenly. "He has never left his house in Curzon Street! He is there now!"

Nigel shook his head.

"What is the matter with you, Maggie?" he demanded. "Every one has seen Prince Shan here. You spoke of him yourself. He was in the box exactly opposite."

She shook her head.

"That was one of his suite," she cried. "I know! I tell you I know!" she went on, her voice rising a little. "Prince Shan is safe in his house in Curzon Street."

"How can you possibly know this, Maggie?" Naida intervened eagerly.

"Because I left him there half an hour ago," was the tremulous reply.



CHAPTER XXII

There is in the Anglo-Saxon temperament an almost feverish desire to break away from any condition of strain, a sort of shamefaced impulse to discard emotionalism. The strange hush which had lent a queer sensation of unreality to all that was passing in the great building was without any warning brought to an end. Whispers swelled into speech, and speech into almost a roar of voices. Then the music struck up, although at first there were few who cared to dance. There were many who, like Maggie and her companions, silently left their places and hurried homewards.

In the limousine scarcely a word was spoken. Maggie leaned back in her seat, her face dazed and expressionless. Opposite to her, Nigel sat with set, grim face, looking with fixed stare out of the window at the deserted streets. Of the three, Naida seemed more on the point of giving way to emotion. They had passed Hyde Park Corner, however, before a word was spoken. Then it was she who broke the silence.

"Where do we go to first?" she demanded.

"To the Milan Court," Nigel replied.

"You are taking me home first, then?"

"Yes!"

She was silent for a moment. Then she leaned forward and touched the window.

"Pull that down, please," she directed. "I am stifling."

He obeyed, and the rush of cold, wet air had a curiously quietening effect upon the nerves of all of them. Raindrops hung from the leaves of the lime trees and still glittered upon the windowpane. On the way towards the river, the masses of cloud were tinged with purple, and faintly burning stars shone out of unexpectedly clear patches of sky. The night of storm was over, but the wind, dying away before the dawn, seemed to bring with it all the sweetness of the cleansed places, to be redolent even of the budding trees and shrubs,—the lilac bushes, drooping with their weight of moisture, and the pink and white chestnut blossoms, dashed to pieces by the rain but yielding up their lives with sweetness. The streets, in that single hour between the hurrying homewards of the belated reveller and the stolid tramp of the early worker, were curiously empty and seemed to gain in their loneliness a new dignity. Trafalgar Square, with the National Gallery in the background, became almost classical; Whitehall the passageway for heroes.

"What does it all mean?" Naida asked, almost pathetically.

It was Maggie who answered. Her tone was lifeless, but her manner almost composed.

"It means that the attempt to assassinate Prince Shan has failed," she said. "Prince Shan told me himself that he had no intention of going to the ball. He kept his word. The man who was murdered was one of his suite."

"But how do you know this?" Naida persisted.

"You heard what I told you in the box," was the quiet reply. "I shall explain—as much as I can explain—to Nigel when we get home. He can tell you everything later on to-day at lunch-time, if you like."

"It has been one of the strangest nights I ever remember," Naida declared, after a brief pause. "Oscar Immelan, who was dining with us, arrived half an hour late. I have never seen him in such a condition before. He had the air of a broken man."

"Have you any idea of what had happened?" Nigel asked.

"Only this," Naida replied. "We saw Prince Shan last night. He spent several hours with us. I may be wrong, but I came to the conclusion then that he had at any rate modified his views about the whole situation since his arrival in England."

Again there was a brief silence. The minds of all three of them were busy with the same thought. Prince Shan's word had been spoken and Immelan's hopes dashed to the ground,—and within a few hours, this murder! They nursed the thought, but no one put it into words.

A sleepy-eyed porter opened the door of the car outside the Milan Court. Naida gathered herself together with a little shiver.

"I think that after to-night," she said quietly, "there need be no secrets between any of us."

Nigel held her hand in his. Their eyes met, and both of them were conscious, in that moment, of closer personal relations, of the passing of a certain sense of strain. She even smiled as she turned away.

"To-morrow," she concluded, "there must be a great exchange of confidences. I am lunching at Belgrave Square, if Maggie has not forgotten, and I shall tell you then what I have written to Paul Matinsky. I showed it to Prince Shan yesterday. Good night!"

She patted Maggie's hand affectionately and flitted away. The revolving doors closed behind her, and the car swung out once more into the Strand, glided down the Mall, past Buckingham Palace, and stopped at last before the great, lifeless house in Belgrave Square. Nigel opened the front door with a latchkey and turned on the light.

"You won't mind sparing me a few minutes?" he begged.

"I suppose not," she answered, shivering.

He led the way to the study. She threw off her cloak and sank into the depths of one of the big easy-chairs. She looked very frail and rather pathetic as she leaned her head against the chair back. Now that the excitement was over, the strain of the emotion she had experienced showed in the violet shadows under her eyes and in the droop of her shoulders.

"I am tired," she said plaintively.

Nigel came over and sat on the arm of her chair.

"Tell me what happened to-night, Maggie."

"The little Chinese girl sent for me to go to her box," she explained. "She told me where in Prince Shan's house were hidden the papers which revealed the understanding between Immelan and himself. She gave me a key of the house and a key of the cabinet. We could both see the man whom I believed to be Prince Shan seated in his box. She assured me that he would be there for the next two hours. I went to the house in Curzon Street."

"Well?"

His monosyllable was sharp and incisive. His face was grey and anxious. She herself remained lifeless. All that there was of emotion between them seemed to have become vested in his searching eyes.

"I found what I believe to have been the papers. They were in the cabinet, just where she had told me. Then I turned around and found Prince Shan watching me. He had been there all the time."

"Go on, please."

"At first he said little, but I knew that he was very angry. I have never felt so ashamed in my life."

"You must tell me the rest, please."

She stirred uneasily in her chair.

"It is very difficult," she confessed frankly.

"Remember," he persisted, "that in a way, Maggie, I am your guardian. I am responsible, too, for anything which may happen to you whilst you are engaged in work for the good of our cause. You seem to have walked into a trap. Did he threaten you, or what?"

"There was nothing definite," she answered, "and yet—he made me understand."

"Made you understand what?"

"His wishes," she replied, looking up coolly. "He offered me the papers."

"That damned Chinaman!"

There was a cold light in her eyes which Nigel had met with before and dreaded.

"You forget yourself, Nigel," she said. "Prince Shan is a great nobleman."

"The rest? Tell me the rest," he demanded.

"I am here," she reminded him.

"And the papers?"

"I came away without them."

He turned, and, walking to the window, threw it open. The dawn had become almost silvery, and the leaves of the overhanging trees were rustling in the faintest of breezes. Presently he came back.

"What exactly are your feelings for this man, Maggie?" he asked.

For the first time he was struck with a certain pathos in her immobile face. She looked up at him, and there was a gleam almost of fear in her eyes.

"I don't know, Nigel," she confessed.

He moved restlessly about the room, seemed to notice for the first time the whisky and soda set out upon the sideboard and the open box of cigarettes. He helped himself and came back.

"Did you read the papers?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"I had no chance."

"You don't know for certain what they were about?"

"I think I do," she replied. "I believe they contained the text of the agreement between Immelan and Prince Shan. I believe they would have shown us exactly what we have to fear."

He stood there for a moment thoughtfully.

"To-night," he said, "I find it difficult to concentrate upon these things. Naida was extraordinarily hopeful. She has seen Prince Shan, and between them I believe that they have decided to let Oscar Immelan's scheme alone. Karschoff, too, has heard rumours. He is of the same opinion. Somehow or other, though, I seem to have lost my sense of perspective. A greater fear has come into my heart, Maggie."

She rose to her feet and laid her hands upon his shoulders.

"Nigel," she whispered, "I cannot answer you. I cannot say what you would like me to say, although, on the other hand, there is no surety of what you seem to fear. I am going to bed. I am very tired."

A feeble shaft of sunlight stole into the room, flickered and passed away, then suddenly reappeared. Nigel turned and opened the door, and she passed out, curiously silent and absorbed. He looked after her, perplexed and worried. Suddenly a strangely commonplace, yet—in the silence of the house and the great hall—an almost dramatic sound startled him. The front doorbell rang sharply. After a moment's hesitation, he hurried to it himself. Karschoff stood upon the steps, still in his evening clothes, his face a little drawn and haggard in the bright light.

"I could not resist coming in, Nigel," he said. "I saw the light in the study from outside. Is there any definite news?"

Nigel drew him inside.

"There are indications," he replied cautiously, "that the present danger is passing."

Karschoff nodded.

"I gathered so from Naida," he admitted. "Prince Shan, though, is the pivot upon which the whole thing turns. You have heard nothing final from him?"

"Nothing! Tell me, was any one arrested at the Albert Hall?"

"No one. The murdered man, as I suppose you have heard, was Sen Lu, one of the Prince's secretaries."

"The whole thing seems strange," Nigel remarked. "Do you suppose Prince Shan knew that an attempt upon his life was likely to-night?"

Karschoff shook his head doubtfully.

"It is difficult to say. These Orientals contrive to surround themselves with such an atmosphere of mystery. But from what I know of Prince Shan," he went on, "I do not think that he is one to shirk danger—even from the assassin's dagger."

A milk cart drew up with a clatter outside. There was the sound of the area gate being opened. Karschoff put on his hat. He looked Nigel in the face.

"Maggie," he began—

Nigel nodded understandingly as he threw open the front door.

"I'll tell you about it to-morrow," he promised, "or rather later on to-day. She's a little overwrought. Otherwise—there's nothing."

Karschoff turned away with a sigh of relief.

"I am glad," he said. "Prince Shan is the soul of honour according to his own standard, but these Orientals—one never knows. I am glad, Nigel."



CHAPTER XXIII

In his spacious reception room, with its blue walls, the high vases of flowers, the faint odour of incense, its indefinable ascetic charm, Prince Shan sat in his high-backed chair whilst Li Wen, his trusted secretary talked. Li Wen was very eloquent. His tone was never raised, he never forgot that he was speaking to a being of a superior world. He had a great deal to say, however, and he was eager to say it. Prince Shan, as he listened, smoked a long cigarette in a yellow tube. He wore a ring in which was set an uncut green stone on the fourth finger of his left hand. Although the hour was barely nine o'clock, he was shaved and dressed as though for a visit of ceremony. He listened to Li Wen gravely and critically.

"I am sorry about the little one," he said, looking through the cloud of tobacco smoke up towards the ceiling. "Nita has been very useful. She has been as faithful, too, as is possible for a woman."

Li Wen bowed and waited. He knew better than to interrupt.

"It was through the information which Nita brought me," his master went on, "that I have been able to check the truth of Immelan's statement as to the French dispositions and the rapprochement with Italy. Nita has served me very well indeed. What she has done in this matter, she has done in a moment of caprice."

"My lord," Li Wen ventured, "a woman is of no account in the plans of the greatest. She is like a leaf blown hither or thither on the winds of love or jealousy. She may be used, but she must be discarded."

"It is a strange world, this western world," Prince Shan mused. "In our own country, Li Wen, we plot or we fight, we build the great places, climb to the lofty heights, and when we rest we pluck flowers, and women are our flowers. But here, while one builds, the women are there; while one climbs, the women are in the way. They jostle the thoughts, they disturb the emotions, not only of the poet and the pleasure seeker, but of the man who hews his way upwards to the goal he seeks. And it is very deliberate, Li Wen. An Englishman eats and drinks in public and places opposite him a flower he has plucked or hopes to pluck. He drugs himself deliberately. Half the time when he should be soaring in his thoughts, he descends of deliberate intent. Instead of his flower, he makes his woman the partner of his grossness."

"The master speaks," Li Wen murmured. "But what of the woman? She awaits your pleasure."

"I shall hear what she has to say," Prince Shan decided.

Walking backwards as nimbly as a cat, his head drooped, his hands in front of him, Li Wen left his master's presence. A moment later he reappeared, ushering in La Belle Nita. Prince Shan waved him away. The girl came slowly forward, pale and trembling, smouldering fires in her narrow eyes. Not a muscle of Prince Shan's face moved. He watched her approach in silence. She sank on to the floor by the side of his chair.

"What is my master's will?" she asked.

Prince Shan looked downwards at her, and she began to tremble again. There was nothing threatening in his eyes, nothing menacing in his expression. Nevertheless, she felt the chill of death.

"You have done me many good and faithful services, Nita," he said. "What evil spirit has put it into your brain that it would be a good thing to deceive me?"

Her scarlet lips opened and closed again.

"How have I deceived?" she faltered. "I gave the keys to the woman with the blue eyes, and I sent her to my lord. It was a hard thing to do that, but I did it. Was there any risk of evil? My lord was here to deal with her."

"Why did you do this thing, Nita?" he asked.

"My lord knows," she answered simply. "I did it to bring evil upon this English woman whom he has preferred. I did it that he might understand. It was my lord himself who told me that she was a spy. Now it is proved."

Prince Shan's fingers stole into the pocket of his coat. He held out a crumpled sheet of paper, on which was written a single sentence. The girl began to shiver.

"You have been very anxious indeed, Nita," he said, "to bring evil upon this woman. This is the message you sent to Immelan. Do you recognise your words? Listen, these are your words:

"'The greatest of all will desert you, if the Englishwoman whom he loves is not speedily removed. Even to-night he may give papers into her hand, and your secret will be known.'"

The girl sat transfixed. She seemed to have lost all power of speech.

"That is a copy of the message which you sent to Immelan," he told her sternly.

"It is the terrible Li Wen," she faltered. "He has the second sight. The devil walks with him."

"The devil is sometimes a useful confederate," her companion continued equably. "You warned Immelan that it was in my mind to refuse his terms and to open my heart to the Englishwoman, and you seduced Sen Lu to carry your message. Yet your judgment was at fault. The hand of Immelan was stretched out against me, and me alone. But for my knowledge of these things, I might have sat in the place of Sen Lu, who rightly died in my stead. What have you to say?"

She rose to her feet. He made no movement, but his eyes watched her, and the muscles of his body stiffened. He watched the white hand which stole irresolutely towards the loose folds of her coat.

"You ask me why I have done this," she cried, "but you already know. It is because you have taken this woman with the blue eyes into your heart."

"If that were true," he answered, "of what concern is it to others? I am Prince Shan."

"You sent me here to breathe this cursed western atmosphere," she moaned, "to drink in their thoughts and see with their eyes. I see and know the folly of it all, but who can escape? Jealousy with us is a disease. Over there one creeps away like a hurt animal because there is nothing else. Here it is different. The Frenchwoman, the Englishwoman, who loses her lover—she does not fold her hands. She strikes, she is a wronged creature. I too have felt that."

Her master sat for long in silence.

"You are right," he pronounced. "I shall try to be just. You are a person of small understanding. You have never made any effort to live with your head in the clouds. Let that be so. The fault was mine."

"I do not wish to live," she cried.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Live or die—what does it matter?" he answered indifferently. "With life there is pain, and with death there is none, but if you choose life, remember this. The woman with the blue eyes, as you call her, has become the star of my life. If harm should come to her, not only you, but every one of your family and race, in whatsoever part of the world they may be, will leave this life in agony."

The girl stood and wondered.

"My lord thinks so much of a plaything?" she murmured.

Prince Shan frowned. His finely shaped, silky eyebrows almost met. She covered her eyes and drooped her head.

"We of the East," he said, "although we are the mightier race, progress slowly, because the love of new things is not with us. Something of western ways I have learned, and the love of woman. It is not for a plaything I desire her whom we will not name. She shall sit by my side and rule. I shall wed her with my brain as with my body. Our minds will move together. We shall feel the same shivering pleasure when we rule the world with great thoughts as when our bodies touch. I shall teach her to know her soul, even as my own has been revealed to me."

"No woman is worthy of this, my lord," the girl faltered.

He waved his hand and she stole away. At the door he stopped her.

"Do you go to life or death, Nita?" he asked.

She looked at him with a great sorrow.

"I am a worthless thing," she replied. "I go where my lord's words have sent me."

Li Wen reappeared presently for an appointed audience. He brought messages.

"Highness," he announced, "there is a code dispatch here from Ki-Chou. An American gained entrance to the City last week. Yesterday he left by aeroplane for India. He was overtaken and captured. It is feared, however, that he has agents over the frontier, for no papers were found upon him."

"It was a great achievement," Prince Shan said thoughtfully. "No other foreigner has ever passed into our secret city. Is there word as to how he got there?"

"He came as a Russian artificer from that city in Russia of which we do not speak," Li Wen replied. "He brought letters, and his knowledge was great."

"His name?" the Prince asked.

"Gilbert Jesson, Highness. His passport and papers refer to Washington, but his message, if he sent one, is believed to have come to London."

"The man must die," the Prince said calmly. "That, without doubt, he expects. Yet the news is not serious. My heart has spoken for peace, Li Wen."

Li Wen bowed low. His master watched him curiously.

"If I had asked it, Li Wen, where would your counsel have led?"

"Towards peace, Highness. I do not trust Immelan. It is not in such a manner that China's Empire shall spread. There are ancestors of mine who would turn in their graves to find China in league with a western Power."

"You are a wise man, Li Wen," his master declared. "We hold the mastery of the world. What shall we do with it?"

"The mightiest sword is that which enforces peace," was the calm reply. "Highness, the lady whom you were expecting waits in the anteroom."

Prince Shan nodded. He welcomed Naida, who was ushered in a moment or two later, with rather more than his usual grave and pleasant courtesy, leading her himself to a chair.

"I wondered," she confessed, "if I were ever to be allowed to see inside your wonderful house."

"It is my misfortune to be compelled to pay so brief a visit to this country," he replied. "As a rule, it gives me great pleasure to open my rooms three evenings and entertain those who care to come and see me."

"I have heard of your entertainments," she said, smiling. "Prima donnas sing. You rob the capitals of Europe to find your music. Then the great Monsieur Auguste is lured from Paris to prepare your supper, and not a lady leaves without some priceless jewel."

"I entertain so seldom," he reminded her. "I fear that the fame of my feasts has been exaggerated."

"When do you leave, Prince?" she asked him.

"Within a few days," he replied.

"I come for your last word," she announced. "All that I have written to Paul Matinsky you know."

"The last word is not yet to be spoken," he said. "This, however, you may tell Matinsky. The scheme of Oscar Immelan has been laid before me. I have rejected it."

"In what other way, then, would you use your power?" she asked.

He made no answer. She watched him with a great and growing curiosity.

"Prince," she said, "they tell me that you are a great student of history."

"I have read what is known of the history of most of the countries of the world," he admitted.

"There have been men," she persisted, "who have dealt in empires for the price of a woman's smile."

"Such men have loved," he said, "as I love."

"Yet for you life has always been a great and lofty thing," she reminded him. "You could not stand where you do if you had not realised the beauty and wonder of sacrifice. Fate has given the peace of the world into your keeping. You will not juggle with the trust?"

He rose to his feet. A servant stood almost immediately at the open door.

"Fate and an American engineer," he remarked with a smile. "I thank you, dear lady, for your visit. You will hear my news before I leave."

She looked into his eyes for a moment.

"It is a great decision," she said, "which rests with you!"



CHAPTER XXIV

An hour or so later, Prince Shan left his house in Curzon Street and, followed at a discreet distance by two members of his household, strolled into the Park. It had pleased him that morning to conform rigorously to the mode of dress adopted by the fashionable citizens of the country which he was visiting. Few people, without the closest observation, would have taken him for anything but a well-turned-out, exceedingly handsome and distinguished-looking Englishman. He carried himself with a faint air of aloofness, as though he moved amongst scenes in which he had no actual concern, as though he were living, in thought at any rate, in some other world. The morning was brilliantly sunny, and both the promenade and the Row were crowded. Slightly hidden behind a tree, he stood and watched. A gay crowd of promenaders passed along the broad path, and the air was filled with the echo of laughter, the jargon of the day, intimate references to a common world, invitations lightly given and lightly accepted. It was Sunday morning, in a season when colour was the craze of the moment, and the women who swept by seemed to his rather mystical fancy like the flowers in some of the great open spaces he knew so well, stirred into movement by a soft wind. They were very beautiful, these western women; handsome, too, the men with whom they talked and flirted. Always they had that air, however, of absolute complacency, as though they felt nothing of the quest which lay like a thread of torture amongst the nerves of Prince Shan's being. There was no more distinguished figure among the men there than he himself, and yet the sense of alienation grew in his heart as he watched. There were many familiar faces, many to whom he could have spoken, no one who would not have greeted him with interest, even with gratification. And yet he had never been so deeply conscious of the gulf which lay between the oriental fatalism of his life and ways and the placid self-assurance of these westerners, so well-content with the earth upon which their feet fell. He had judged with perfect accuracy the place which he held in their thoughts and estimation. He was something of a curiosity, his title half a joke, the splendour of his long race a thing unrealisable by these scions of a more recent aristocracy. Yet supposing that this new wonder had not come into his life, that Immelan had been a shade more eloquent, had pleaded his cause upon a higher level, that Naida Karetsky also had formed a different impression of the world which he was studying so earnestly,—what a transformation he could have brought upon this light-hearted and joyous scene! The scales had so nearly balanced; at the bottom of his heart he was conscious of a certain faint contempt for the almost bovine self-satisfaction of a nation without eyes. Literature and painting, art in all its far-flung branches, even science, were suffering in these days from a general and paralysing inertia. Life which demanded no sacrifice of anybody was destructive of everything in the nature of aspiration. Sport seemed to be the only incentive to sobriety, the desire to live long in this fat land the only brake upon an era of self-indulgence. He looked eastwards to where his own millions were toiling, with his day-by-day maxims in their ears, and it seemed to his elastic fancy that he was inhaling a long breath of cooler and more vigorous life.

The current of his reflections was broken. He had moved a little towards the rails, and he was instantly aware of the girl cantering towards him,—a slight, frail figure, she seemed, upon a great bay horse. She wore a simple brown habit and bowler hat, and she sat her horse with that complete lack of self-consciousness which is the heritage of a born horsewoman. She was looking up at the sky as she cantered towards him, with no thought of the crowds passing along the promenade. Yet, as she drew nearer, she suddenly glanced down, and their eyes met. As though obeying his unspoken wish, she reined in her horse and came close to the rails behind which he stood for a moment bareheaded. There was the faintest smile upon her lips. She was amazingly composed. She had asked herself repeatedly, almost in terror, how they should meet when the time came. Now that it had happened, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. She was scarcely conscious even of embarrassment.

"You are demonstrating to the world," she remarked, "that the reports of your death this morning were exaggerated?"

"I had forgotten the incident," he assured her calmly.

His callousness was so unaffected that she shivered a little.

"Yet this Sen Lu, this man for whom you were mistaken, was an intimate member of your household, was he not?"

"Sen Lu was a very good friend," Prince Shan answered. "He did his duty for many years. If he knows now that his life was taken for mine, he is happy to have made such atonement."

She manoeuvred her horse a little to be nearer to him.

"Why was Sen Lu murdered?" she asked.

"There are those," he replied, "of whom I myself shall ask that question before the day is over."

"You have an idea, then?" she persisted.

"If," he said, "you desire my whole confidence, it is yours."

She sat looking between her horse's ears.

"To tell you the truth," she confessed, "I do not know what I desire. Your philosophy, I suppose, does not tolerate moods. I shall escape from them some time, I expect, but just now I seem to have found my way into a maze. The faces of these people don't even seem real to me, and as for you, I am perfectly certain that you have never been in China in your life."

"Tell me the stimulant that is needed to raise you from your apathy," he asked. "Will you find it in the rapid motion of your horse—a very noble animal—in the joy of this morning's sunshine and breeze, or in the toyland where these puppets move and walk?" he added, glancing down the promenade. "Dear Lady Maggie, I beg permission to pay you a visit of ceremony. Will you receive me this afternoon?"

She knew then what it was that she had been hoping for. She looked down at him and smiled.

"At four o'clock," she invited.

She nodded, touched her horse lightly with the whip, and cantered off. Prince Shan found himself suddenly accosted by a dozen acquaintances, all plying him with questions. He listened to them with an amused smile.

"The whole affair is a very simple one," he said. "A member of my household was assassinated last night. It was probably a plot against my own life. Those things are more common with us, perhaps, than over here."

"Jolly country, China, I should think," one of the younger members of the group remarked. "You can buy a man's conscience there for ninepence."

Prince Shan looked across at the speaker gravely.

"The market value here," he observed, "seems a little higher, but the supply greater."

"Touche!" Karschoff laughed. "There is another point of view, too. The further east you go, the less value life has. Westwards, it becomes an absolute craze to preserve and coddle it, to drag it out to its furthermost span. The American millionaire, for example, has a resident physician attached to his household and is likely to spend the aftermath of his life in a semi-drugged and comatose condition. And in the East, who cares? If not to-day—to-morrow! Inevitability, which is the nightmare of the West, is the philosophy of the East. By the by, Prince," he added, "have you any theory as to last night's attempt?"

"That is just the question," Prince Shan replied, "which two very intelligent gentlemen from Scotland Yard asked me this morning. Theory? Why should I have a theory?"

"The attempt was without a doubt directed against you," Karschoff observed. "Do you imagine that it was personal or political?"

"How can I tell?" the Prince rejoined carelessly. "Why should any one desire my death? These things are riddles. Ah! Here comes my friend Immelan!" he went on. "Immelan, help us in this discussion. You are not one of those who place the gift of life above all other things in the world!"

"My own or another's?" Immelan asked, with blunt cynicism.

"I trust," was the bland reply, "that you are, as I have always esteemed you, an altruist."

"And why?"

Prince Shan shrugged his shoulders. He was a very agreeable figure in the centre of the little group of men, the hands which held his malacca cane behind his back, the smile which parted his lips benign yet cryptic.

"Because," he explained, "it is a great thing to have more regard for the lives of others than for one's own, and there are times," he added, "when it is certainly one's own life which is in the more precarious state."

There was a little dispersal of the crowd, a chorus of congratulations and farewells. Immelan and Prince Shan were left alone. The former seemed to have turned paler. The sun was warm, and yet he shivered.

"Just what do you mean by that, Prince?" he asked.

"You shall walk with me to my house, and I will tell you," was the quiet reply.



CHAPTER XXV

"I suppose," Immelan suggested, as the two men reached the house in Curzon Street, "it would be useless to ask you to break your custom and lunch with me at the Ritz or at the club?"

His companion smiled deprecatingly.

"I have adopted so many of your western customs," he said apologetically. "To this lunching or dining in public, however, I shall never accustom myself."

Immelan laughed good-naturedly. The conversation of the two men on their way from the Park had been without significance, and some part of his earlier nervousness seemed to be leaving him.

"We all have our foibles," he admitted. "One of mine is to have a pretty woman opposite me when I lunch or dine, music somewhere in the distance, a little sentiment, a little promise, perhaps."

"It is not artistic," Prince Shan pronounced calmly. "It is not when the wine mounts to the head, and the sense of feeding fills the body, that men speak best of the things that lie near their hearts. Still, we will let that pass. Each of us is made differently. There is another thing, Immelan, which I have to say to you."

They passed into the reception room, with its shining floor, its marvellous rugs, its silken hangings, and its great vases of flowers. Prince Shan led his companion into a recess, where the light failed to penetrate so completely as into the rest of the apartment. A wide settee, piled with cushions, protruded from the wall in semicircular shape. In front of it was a round ebony table, upon which stood a great yellow bowl filled with lilies. Prince Shan gave an order to one of the servants who had followed them into the room and threw himself at full length among the cushions, his head resting upon his hand, his face turned towards his guest.

"They will bring you the aperitif of which you are so fond," he said, "also cigarettes. Mine, I know, are too strong for you."

"They taste too much of opium," Immelan remarked.

Prince Shan's eyes grew dreamy as he gazed through a little cloud of odorous smoke.

"There is opium in them," he admitted. "Believe me, they are very wonderful, but I agree with you that they are not for the ordinary person."

The soft-footed butler presented a silver tray, upon which reposed a glassful of amber liquid. Immelan took it, sipped it appreciatively, and lit a cigarette.

"Your man, Prince," he acknowledged, "mixes his vermouths wonderfully."

"I am glad that what he does meets with your approval," was the courteous reply. "He came to me from one of your royal palaces. I simply told him that I wished my guests to have of the best."

"Yet you never touch this sort of drink yourself," Immelan observed curiously.

The Prince shook his head.

"Sometimes I take wine," he said. "That is generally at night. A few evenings ago, for instance," he went on, with a reminiscent smile, "I drank Chateau Yquem, smoked Egyptian cigarettes, ate some muscatel grapes, and read 'Pippa Passes.' That was one of my banquets."

"As a matter of fact," Immelan remarked thoughtfully, "you are far more western in thought than in habit. The temperance of the East is in your blood."

"I find that my manner of life keeps the brain clear," Prince Shan said slowly. "I can see the truth sometimes when it is not very apparent. I saw the truth last night, Immelan, when I sent Sen Lu to die."

Immelan's expression was indescribable. He sat with his mouth wide open. The hand which held his glass shook. He stared across the bowl of lilies to where his host was looking up through the smoke towards the ceiling.

"Sen Lu was a traitor," the latter went on, "a very foolish man who with one act of treachery wiped out the memory of a lifetime of devotion. In the end he told the truth, and now he has paid his debt."

"What do you mean?" Immelan demanded, in a voice which he attempted in vain to control. "How was Sen Lu a traitor?"

"Sen Lu," the Prince explained, "was in the pay of those who sought to know more of my business than I chose to tell—who sought, indeed, to anticipate my own judgment. When they gathered from him, and, alas! from my sweet but frail little friend Nita, that the chances were against my signing a certain covenant, they came to what, even now, seems to me a strange decision. They decided that I must die. There I fail wholly to follow the workings of your mind, Immelan. How was my death likely to serve your purpose?"

Immelan was absolutely speechless. Three times he opened his lips, only to close them again. Some instinct seemed to tell him that his companion had more to say. He sat there as though mesmerised. Meanwhile, the Prince lit another cigarette.

"A blunder, believe me, Immelan," he continued thoughtfully. "Death will not lower over my path till my task is accomplished. I am young—many years younger than you, Immelan—and the greatest physicians marvel at my strength. Against the assassin's knife or bullet I am secure. You have been brought up and lived, my terrified friend, in a country where religion remains a shell and a husk, without comfort to any man. It is not so with me, I live in the spirit as in the body, and my days will last until the sun leans down and lights me to the world where those dwell who have fulfilled their destiny."

Immelan drained the contents of the glass which his unsteady hand was holding. Then he rose to his feet. The veins on his forehead were standing out, his blue eyes were filled with rage.

"Blast Sen Lu!" he muttered. "The man was a double traitor!"

"He has atoned," his companion said calmly. "He made his peace and he went to his death. It seems very fitting that he should have received the dagger which was meant for my heart. Now what about you, Oscar Immelan?"

Immelan laughed harshly.

"If Sen Lu told you that I was in this plot against your life, he lied!"

The Prince inclined his head urbanely.

"Such a man as Sen Lu goes seldom to his death with a lie upon his lips," he said. "Yet I confess that I am puzzled. Why should you plan this thing, Immelan? You cannot know what is in my mind concerning your covenant. I have not yet refused to sign it."

"You have not refused to sign it," Immelan replied, "but you will refuse."

"Indeed?" the Prince murmured.

"You are even now trifling with the secrets confided to you," Immelan went on. "You know very well that the woman who came to you last night is a spy whose whole time is spent in seeking to worm our secret from you."

"Your agents keep themselves well informed," was the calm comment.

"Yours still have the advantage of us," Immelan answered bitterly. "Now listen to me. I have heard it said of you—I have heard that you claim yourself—that you have never told a falsehood. We have been allies. Answer me this question. Have you parted with any of our secrets?"

"Not one," the Prince assured him. "A certain lady visited this house last night, not, as you seem to think, at my invitation, but on her own initiative. She was not successful in her quest."

"She would not pay the price, eh?" Immelan sneered. "By the gods of your ancestors, Prince Shan, are there not women enough in the world for you without bartering your honour, and the great future of your country, for a blue-eyed jade of an Englishwoman?"