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The Great Prince Shan, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Chapter 3 |
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_ CHAPTER III On a certain day some weeks after the adjourned inquest and funeral of Lord Dorminster, Nigel obtained a long-sought-for interview with the Right Honourable Mervin Brown, who had started life as a factory inspector and was now Prime Minister of England. The great man received his visitor with an air of good-natured tolerance. "Heard of you from Scotland Yard, haven't I, Lord Dorminster?" he said, as he waved him to a seat. "I gather that you disagreed very strongly with the open verdict which was returned at the inquest upon your uncle?" "The verdict was absolutely at variance with the facts," Nigel declared. "My uncle was murdered, and a secret report of certain doings on the continent, which he was decoding at the time, was stolen." "The medical evidence scarcely bears out your statement," Mr. Mervin Brown pointed out dryly, "nor have the police been able to discover how any one could have obtained access to the room, or left it, without leaving some trace of their visit behind. Further, there are no indications of a robbery having been attempted." "I happen to know more than any one else about this matter," Nigel urged,--"more, even, than I thought it advisable to mention at the inquest--and I beg you to listen to me, Mr. Mervin Brown. I know that you considered my uncle to be in some respects a crank, because he was far-seeing enough to understand that under the seeming tranquillity abroad there is a universal and deep-seated hatred of this country." "I look upon that statement as misleading and untrue," the Minister declared. "Your late uncle belonged to that mischievous section of foreign politicians who believed in secret treaties and secret service, and who fostered a state of nervous unrest between countries otherwise disposed to be friendly. We have turned over a new leaf, Lord Dorminster. Our efforts are all directed towards developing an international spirit of friendliness and trust." "Utopian but very short-sighted," Nigel commented. "If my uncle had lived to finish decoding the report upon which he was engaged, I could have offered you proof not only of the existence of the spirit I speak of, but of certain practical schemes inimical to this country." "The papers you speak of have disappeared," Mr. Mervin Brown observed, with a smile. "They were taken away by the person who murdered my uncle," Nigel insisted. The Right Honourable gentleman nodded. "Well, you know my views about the affair," he said. "I may add that they are confirmed by the police. I am in no way prejudiced, however, and am willing to listen to anything you may have to say which will not take you more than a quarter of an hour," he added, glancing at the clock upon his table. "Here goes, then," Nigel began. "My uncle was a statesman of the old school who had no faith in the Utopian programme of the present Government of this country. When you abandoned any pretence of a continental secret service, he at his own expense instituted a small one of his own. He sent two men out to Germany and one to Russia. The one sent to Russia was the man Sidwell, whose murder in a Petrograd cafe you may have read of. Of the two sent to Germany, one has disappeared, and the other died in hospital, without a doubt poisoned, a few days after he had sent the report to England which was stolen from my uncle's desk. That report was brought over by Lady Maggie Trent, Lord Dorminster's stepdaughter, who was really the brains of the enterprise and under another name was acting as governess to the children of Herr Essendorf, President of the German Republic. Half an hour before his death, my uncle was decoding this dispatch in his library. I saw him doing it, and I saw the dispatch itself. He told me that so far as he had gone already, it was full of information of the gravest import; that a definite scheme was already being formulated against this country by an absolutely unique and dangerous combination of enemies." "Those enemies being?" Nigel shook his head. "That I can only surmise," he replied. "My uncle had only commenced to decode the dispatch when I last saw him." "Then I gather, Lord Dorminster," the Minister said, "that you connect your uncle's death directly with the supposed theft of this document?" "Absolutely!" "And the conclusion you arrive at, then?" "Is an absolutely logical one," Nigel declared firmly. "I assert that other countries are not falling into line with our lamentable abnegation of all secret service defence, and that, in plain words, my uncle was murdered by an agent of one of these countries, in order that the dispatch which had come into his hands should not be decoded and passed on to your Government." The Right Honourable gentleman smiled slightly. He was a man of some natural politeness, but he found it hard to altogether conceal his incredulity. "Well, Lord Dorminster," he promised, "I will consider all that you have said. Is there anything more I can do for you?" "Yes!" Nigel replied boldly. "Induce the Cabinet to reestablish our Intelligence Department and secret service, even on a lesser scale, and don't rest until you have discovered exactly what it is they are plotting against us somewhere on the continent." "To carry out your suggestions, Lord Dorminster," the Minister pointed out, "would be to be guilty of an infringement of the spirit of the League of Nations, the existence of which body is, we believe, a practical assurance of our safety." Nigel rose to his feet. "As man to man, sir," he said, "I see you don't believe a word of what I have been telling you." "As man to man," the other admitted pleasantly, as he touched the bell, "I think you have been deceived." * * * * * Nigel, even as a prophet of woe, was a very human person and withal a philosopher. He strolled along Piccadilly and turned into Bond Street, thoroughly enjoying one of the first spring days of the season. Flower sellers were busy at every corner; the sky was blue, with tiny flecks of white clouds, there was even some dust stirred by the little puffs of west wind. He exchanged greetings with a few acquaintances, lingered here and there before the shop windows, and presently developed a fit of contemplation engendered by the thoughts which were all the time at the back of his mind. Bond Street was crowded with vehicles of all sorts, from wonderfully upholstered automobiles to the resuscitated victoria. The shop windows were laden with the treasures of the world, buyers were plentiful, promenaders multitudinous. Every one seemed to be cheerful but a little engrossed in the concrete act of living. Nigel almost ran into Prince Karschoff, at the corner of Grafton Street. "Dreaming, my friend?" the latter asked quietly, as he laid his hand upon Nigel's shoulder. "Guilty," Nigel confessed. "You are an observant man, Prince. Tell me whether anything strikes you about the Bond Street of to-day, compared with the Bond Street of, say, ten years ago?" The Russian glanced around him curiously. He himself was a somewhat unusual figure in his distinctively cut morning coat, his carefully tied cravat, his silk hat, black and white check trousers and faultless white spats. "A certain decline of elegance," he murmured. "And is it my fancy or has this country become a trifle Americanised as regards the headgear of its men?" Nigel smiled. "I believe our thoughts are moving in the same groove," he said. "To me there seems to be a different class of people here, as though the denizens of West Kensington, suddenly enriched, had come to spend their money in new quarters. Not only that, but there is a difference in the wares set out in the shops, an absence of taste, if you can understand what I mean, as though the shopkeepers themselves understood that they were catering for a new class of people." "It is the triumph of your _bourgeoisie_," the Russian declared. "Your aristocrat is no longer able to survive. _Noblesse oblige_ has no significance to the shopman. He wants the fat cheques, and he caters for the people who can write them. Let us pursue our reflections a little farther and in a different direction, my friend," he added, glancing at his watch. "Lunch with me at the Ritz, and we will see whether the cookery, too, has been adapted to the new tastes." Nigel hesitated for a moment, a somewhat curious hesitation which he many times afterwards remembered. "I am not very keen on restaurants for a week or two," he said doubtfully. "Besides, I had half promised to be at the club." "Not to-day," Karschoff insisted. "To-day let us listen to the call of the world. Woman is at her loveliest in the spring. The Ritz Restaurant will look like a bouquet of flowers. Perhaps 'One for you and one for me.' At any rate, one is sure of an omelette one can eat." The two men turned together towards Piccadilly. _ |
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