CHAPTER XXII

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_ Mrs. Theodore Hastings was forty-eight years old, which her friends said was the reason why her mansion on Fifth Avenue was furnished and lit with the delicate sombreness of an old Italian palace. There was about it none of the garishness, the almost resplendent brilliancy associated with the abodes of many of our neighbours. Although her masseuse confidently assured her that she looked twenty-eight, Mrs. Hastings preferred not to put the matter to the test. She received her carefully selected dinner guests in a great library with cedarwood walls, furnished with almost Victorian sobriety, and illuminated by myriads of hidden lights. Pamela, being a relative, received the special consideration of an affectionately bestowed embrace.

"Pamela, my child, wasn't it splendid I heard that you were in New York!" she exclaimed. "Quite by accident, too. I think you treat your relatives shamefully."

Her niece laughed.

"Well, anyhow, you're the first of them I've seen at all, and directly Jim told me he was coming to you, I made him ring up in case you had room for me."

"Jimmy was a dear," Mrs. Hastings declared, "and, of course, there couldn't be a time when there wouldn't be room for you. Even now, at the last moment, though, I haven't quite made up my mind where to put you. Choose, dear. Will you have a Western bishop or a rather dull Englishman?"

"What is the name of the Englishman?" Pamela asked, with sudden intuition.

"Lutchester, dear. Quite a nice name, but I know nothing about him. He brought letters to your uncle. Rather a queer time for Englishmen to be travelling about, we thought, but still, there he is. Seems to have found some people he knows--and I declare he is coming towards you!"

"I met him in London," Pamela whispered, "and I never could get on with bishops."

The dinner table was large, and arranged with that wonderful simplicity which Mrs. Hastings had adopted as the keynote of her New York parties. She had taken, in fact, simplicity under her wing and made a new thing of it. There were more flowers than silver, and cut glass than heavy plate. There seemed to be an almost ostentatious desire to conceal the fact that Mr. Hastings had robbed the American public of a good many million dollars.

"Of course," Pamela declared, as they took their places, and she nodded a greeting to some friends around the table, "fate is throwing us together in the most unaccountable manner."

"I accept its vagaries with resignation," Lutchester replied. "Besides, it is quite time we met again. You promised to show me New York, and I haven't seen you for days."

"I don't even remember the promise," Pamela laughed, "but in any case I have changed my mind. I am not sure that you are the nice, simple-minded person you profess to be. I begin to have doubts about you."

"Interest grows with mystery," Lutchester remarked complacently. "Let us hope that I am promoted in your mind."

"Well, I am not at all sure. Of course, I am not an Englishman, so it is of no particular interest to me, but if you really came over here on important affairs, I am not sure that I approve of your playing golf the day after your arrival."

"That, perhaps, was thoughtless," he admitted, "but one gets so short of exercise on board ship."

"Of course," Pamela observed tentatively, "I'd forgive you even now if you'd only be a little more frank with me."

"I am prepared to be candour itself," he assured her.

"Tell me," she begged, "the whole extent of your mission in America?"

He glanced around.

"If we were alone," he replied, "I might court indiscretion so far as to tell you."

"Then we will leave the answer to that question until after dinner," she said.

She talked to her left-hand neighbour for a few moments, and Lutchester followed suit. They turned to one another again, however, at the first opportunity.

"I have conceived," she told him, "a great admiration for Mr. Oscar Fischer."

"A very able man," Lutchester agreed.

"He is not only that," Pamela continued, "but he is a man with large principles and great ideas."

"Principles!" Lutchester murmured.

"Of course, you don't like him," Pamela went on, "and I don't wonder at it. He is thoroughly German, isn't he?"

"Almost prejudiced, I'm afraid," Lutchester assented.

"Don't be silly," Pamela protested. "Why, he's German by birth, and although you English people are much too pig-headed to see any good in an enemy, I think you must admit that the way they all hang together-- Germans, I mean, all over the world--is perfectly wonderful."

"There have been a few remarks of the same sort," Lutchester reminded her, "about the inhabitants of the British Empire--Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, for instance."

"As a matter of fact," Pamela admitted generously, "I consider that your Colonials understand the word patriotism better than the ordinary Englishman. With them, as with the Germans, it is almost a passionate impulse. Your hearts may be in the right places, but you always give one the impression of finding the whole thing rather a bore."

"Well, so it is," Lutchester insisted. "Who wants to give up a very agreeable profession and enter upon a career of bloodshed, abandon all one's habits, and lose most of one's friends? No, we are honest about that, at any rate! Germany may be enjoying this war. We aren't."

"What was your profession?" Pamela inquired.

"Diplomacy," Lutchester confided. "I intended to become an ambassador."

"Do you think you have the requisite gifts?"

"What are they?"

"Secrecy, subtlety, caution, and highly-developed intelligence," she replied. "How's that?"

"All those gifts," he assured her, "I possess."

She fanned herself for a moment and looked at him.

"We are not a modest race ourselves," she said, "but I think you can give us a lead. By the bye, were you playing golf with Senator Hamblin by accident the other afternoon?"

"You mean the old Johnny down at Baltusrol?" he asked coolly. "I picked him up wandering about by the professionals' shed."

"Did you talk politics with him?"

"We gassed a bit about the war," Lutchester admitted cheerfully.

Pamela laughed. She leaned a little forward. The buzz of conversation now was insistent all around them.

"Of you two," she whispered, "I prefer Fischer."

Lutchester considered the matter for some time.

"Well, there's no accounting for tastes," he said presently. "I shouldn't have thought him exactly your type."

"He may not be," Pamela confessed, "but at least he has the courage to speak what is in his mind."

Lutchester smiled.

"So Fischer has taken you into his confidence, has he?" he murmured. "Well, now, that seems queer to me. I should have thought your interests would have lain the other way."

"As an individual?"

"As an American."

"I am not wholly convinced of that."

"Come," he protested, "what is the use of a friend from whom you are separated by an unnegotiable space?"

"What unnegotiable space?"

"The Atlantic."

"And why is the Atlantic unnegotiable?"

"Because of a little affair called the British fleet," Lutchester pointed out.

"There is also," she reminded him drily, "a German fleet, and they haven't met yet."

"Ah! I had almost forgotten there was such a thing," he murmured. "Where do they keep it?"

"You know. You aren't nearly so stupid as you pretend to be," she said, a little impatiently. "I should like you so much better if you would be frank with me."

"What about those qualifications for my ambassadorial career?" he reminded her--"Secrecy, subtlety, caution."

"The master of these," she whispered, rising to her feet in response to her hostess's signal, "knows when to abandon them--"

Lutchester changed his place to a vacant chair by James Van Teyl's side.

"I was going to ask you, Mr. Van Teyl," he inquired, "whether your Japanese servant was altogether a success? I think I shall have to get a temporary servant while I am over here."

"Nikasti was entirely Fischer's affair," Van Teyl replied, "and I can't say much about him as I have given up my share of the apartments at the Plaza. The fellow's all right, I dare say, but we hadn't the slightest use for a valet. The man on the floor's good enough for any one."

"By the bye," Lutchester inquired, "is Fischer still in New York?"

"No, he's in Washington," Van Teyl replied. "I believe he's expected back to-morrow.... Say, can I ask you a question?"

Lutchester almost imperceptibly drew his chair a little closer.

"Of course you can," he assented.

"What I want to know," Van Teyl continued confidentially, "is how you get that long run on your cleek shots? I saw you play the sixteenth hole, and it looked to me as though the ball were never going to stop."

Lutchester smiled.

"I have made a special study of that shot," he confided. "Yes, I can tell you how it's done, but it needs a lot of practice. It's done in turning over the wrists sharply just at the moment of impact. You get everything there is to be got into the stroke that way, and you keep the ball low, too."

"Gee, I must try that!" Van Teyl observed, making spasmodic movements with his wrists. "When could we have a day down at Baltusrol?"

"It will have to be next week, I'm afraid, if you don't mind," Lutchester replied. "I've a good many appointments in New York, and I may have to go to Washington myself. By the bye, I thought our host lived there."

"So he does," Van Teyl assented. "Nowadays, though, it seems to have become the fashion for politicians to own a house up in New York and do some entertaining here. They're after the financial interest, I suppose."

"Is your uncle a keen politician?"

"Keen as mustard," Van Teyl answered. "So's my aunt. She'd give her soul to have the old man nominated for the Presidency."

"Any chance of it?"

"Not an earthly! He'll come a mucker, though, some day, trying. He'd take any outside chance. For a clever man he's the vainest thing I know."

Lutchester smiled enigmatically as he followed the example of the others and rose to his feet.

"Even in America, then," he observed, "your great men have their weaknesses." _

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