CHAPTER XXIV

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_ "Now indeed I feel that I am in New York," Pamela declared, as she broke off one of the blossoms of the great cluster of deep red roses by her side, and gazed downward over her shoulder at the far-flung carpet of lights. "One sees little bits of America in every country of the world, but never this."

Fischer, unusually grave and funereal-looking in his dinner clothes and black tie, followed her gesture with thoughtful eyes. Everything that was ugly in the stretching arms of the city seemed softened, shrouded and bejewelled. Even the sounds, the rattle and roar of the overhead railways, the clanging of the electric car bells, the shrieking of the sirens upon the river, seemed somehow to have lost their harsh note, to have become the human cry of the great live city, awaking and stretching itself for the night.

"I agree with you," he said. "You dine at the Ritz-Carlton and you might be in Paris. You dine here, and one knows that you are in America."

"Yet even here we have become increasingly luxurious," Pamela remarked, looking around. "The glass and linen upon the tables are quite French; those shaded lights are exquisite. That little band, too, was playing at the Ritz three years ago. I am sure that the maitre d'hotel who brought us to our table was once at the Cafe de Paris."

"Money would draw all those things from Europe even to the Sahara," Fischer observed, "so long as there were plenty of it. But millions could not buy our dining table in the clouds."

"A little effort of the imagination, fortunately," Pamela laughed, looking upwards. "There are stars, but no clouds."

"I guess one of them is going to slip down to the next table before long," Van Teyl observed, with a little movement of his head.

They all three turned around and looked at the wonderful bank of pink roses within a few feet of them.

"One of the opera women, I daresay," the young man continued. "They are rather fond of this place."

Pamela leaned forward. Fischer was watching the streets below; Only a short distance away was a huge newspaper building, flaring with lights. The pavements fringing it were thronged with a little stationary crowd. A row of motor-bicycles was in waiting. A night edition of the paper was almost due.

"Mr. Fischer," she asked, "what about that news?"

He withdrew his eyes from the street. Almost unconsciously he straightened himself a little in his place. There was pride in his tone. Behind his spectacles his eyes flashed.

"I would have told it you before," he said, "but you would not have believed it. Soon--in a very few moments--the news will be known. You will see it break away in waves from that building down there, so I will bear with your incredulity. The German and British fleets have met, and the victory has remained with us."

"With us?" Pamela repeated.

"With Germany," Fischer corrected himself hastily.

"Is this true?" James Van Teyl almost shouted. "Fischer, are you sure of what you're saying? Why, it's incredible!"

"It is true," was the proud reply. "The German Navy has been a long time proving itself. It has done so now. To-day every German citizen is the proudest creature breathing. He knew before that his armies were invincible. He knows now that his fleet is destined to make his country the mistress of the seas. England's day is over. Her ships were badly handled and foolishly flung into battle. She has lost many of her finest units. Her Navy is to-day a crippled and maimed force. The German fleet is out in the North Sea, waiting for an enemy who has disappeared."

"It is inconceivable," Pamela gasped.

"I do not ask you to believe my word," Fischer exclaimed. "Look!"

As though the flood gates had been suddenly opened, the stream of patient waiters broke away from the newspaper building below. Like little fireflies, the motor-bicycles were tearing down the different thoroughfares. Boys like ants, with their burden of news sheets, were running in every direction. Motor-trucks had started on their furious race. Even the distant echoes of their cries came faintly up. Fischer called a messenger and sent him for a paper.

"I do not know what report you will see," he said, "but from whatever source it comes it will confirm my story. The news is too great and sweeping to be contradicted or ignored."

"If it's true," Van Teyl muttered, "you've made a fortune in my office to-day. It looks like it, too. There was something wrong with Anglo-French beside your selling for the last hour this afternoon. I couldn't get buyers to listen for a moment."

"Yes, I shall have made a great deal of money," Fischer admitted, "money which I shall value because it comes magnificently, but I hope that this victory may help me to win other things."

He looked fixedly at Pamela, and she moved uneasily in her chair. Almost unconsciously the man himself seemed somehow associated with his cause, to be assuming a larger and more tolerant place in her thoughts. Perhaps there was some measure of greatness about him after all. The strain of waiting for the papers became almost intolerable. At last the boy reappeared. The great black headlines were stretched out before her. She felt the envelopment of Fischer's triumph. The words were there in solid type, and the paper itself was one of the most reliable.

GREAT NAVAL BATTLE IN THE NORTH SEA.

BRITISH ADMIRALTY ADMITS SERIOUS LOSSES.

"QUEEN MARY," "INDEFATIGABLE," AND MANY FINE SHIPS LOST.

Pamela looked up from the sheet.

"It is too wonderful," she whispered, with a note of awe in her tone. "I don't think that any one ever expected this. We all believed in the British Navy."

"There is nothing," Fischer declared, "that England can do which Germany cannot do better."

"And America best of all," Pamela said.

Fischer bowed.

"That is one comparison which will never now be made," he declared, "for from to-night Germany and America will draw nearer together. The bubble of British naval omnipotence is pricked."

"Meanwhile," Van Teyl observed, putting his paper away, "we are neglecting our dinner. Nothing like a good dose of sensationalism for giving us an appetite."

Fischer was watching his glass being filled with champagne. He seized it by the stem. His eyes for a moment travelled upwards.

"I am an American citizen," he said, with a strange fervour in his tone, "but for the moment I am called back. And so I lift my glass and I drink--I alone, without invitation to you others--to those brave souls who have made of the North Sea a holy battle-ground."

He drained his glass and set it down empty. Pamela watched him as though fascinated. For a single moment she was conscious of a queer sensation of personal pity for some shadowy and absent friend, of something almost like a lump in her throat, a strange instinct of antagonism towards the man by her side so enveloped in beatific satisfaction--then she frowned when she realised that she had been thinking of Lutchester, that her first impulse had been one of sympathy for him. The moment passed. The service of dinner was pressed more insistently upon them. James Van Teyl, who had been leaning back in his chair, talking to one of the maitres d'hotel, dismissed him with a little nod and entrusted them with a confidence.

"Say, do you know who's coming to the next table?" he exclaimed. "Sonia!"

They were all interested.

"You won't mind?" Fischer asked diffidently.

"In a restaurant, how absurd!" Pamela laughed. "Why, I'm dying to see her. I wonder how it is that some of these greatest singers in the world lead such extraordinary lives that people can never know anything of them."

"Society is tolerant enough nowadays," her brother observed, "but Sonia won't give them even a decent chance to wink at her eccentricities. She crossed, you know, on the Prince Doronda's yacht, for fear they wouldn't let her land."

"Here she comes," Pamela whispered.

There was a moment's spellbound silence. Two maitres d'hotel were hurrying in front. A pathway from the lift had been cleared as though for a royal personage. Sonia, in white from head to foot, a dream of white lace and chinchilla, with a Russian crown of pearls in her glossy black hair, and a rope of pearls around her neck, came like a waxen figure, with scarlet lips and flashing eyes, towards her table. And behind her--Lutchester! Pamela felt her fingers gripping the tablecloth. Her first impulse, curiously enough, was one of wild fury with herself for that single instant's pity. Her face grew cold and hard. She felt herself sitting a little more upright. Her eyes remained fixed upon the newcomers.

Lutchester's behaviour was admirable. His glance swept their little table without even a shadow of interest. He ignored with passive unconcern the mistake of Van Teyl's attempted greeting. He looked through Fischer as though he had been a ghost. He stood by Sonia's side while she seated herself, and listened with courteous pleasure to her excited admiration of the flowers and the wonderful vista. Then he took his own place. In his right hand he was carrying an evening paper with its flaming headlines.

"That," Fischer pronounced, struggling to keep the joy from his tone, "is very British and very magnificent!"

* * * * *

Pamela had imperfect recollections of the rest of the evening. She remembered that she was more than usually gay throughout dinner-time, but that she was the first to jump at the idea of a hurried departure and a visit to a cabaret. Every now and then she caught a glimpse of Sonia's face, saw the challenging light in her brilliant eyes, heard little scraps of her conversation. The Frenchwoman spoke always in her own language, with a rather shrill voice, which made Lutchester's replies sound graver and quieter than usual. More than once Pamela's eyes rested upon the broad lines of his back. He sat all the time like a rock, courteous, at times obviously amusing, but underneath it all she fancied that she saw some signs of the disturbance from which she herself was suffering. She rose to her feet at last with a little sigh of relief. It was an ordeal through which she had passed.

Once in the lift, her brother and Fischer discussed Lutchester's indiscretion volubly.

"I suppose," Van Teyl declared, "that there isn't a man in New York who wouldn't have jumped at the chance of dining alone with Sonia, but for an Englishman, on a night like this," he went on, glancing at the paper, "say, he must have some nerve!"

"Or else," Fischer remarked, "a wonderful indifference. So far as I have studied the Anglo-Saxon temperament, I should be inclined to vote for the indifference. That is why I think Germany will win the war. Every man in that country prays for his country's success, not only in words, but with his soul. I have not found the same spirit in England."

"The English people," Pamela interposed, "have a genius for concealment which amounts to stupidity."

"I have a theory," Fischer said, "that to be phlegmatic after a certain pitch is a sign of low vitality. However, we shall see. Certainly, if England is to be saved from her present trouble, it will not be the Lutchesters of the world who will do it, nor, it seems, her Navy."

They found their way to a large cabaret, where Pamela listened to an indifferent performance a little wearily. The news of what was termed a naval disaster to Great Britain was flashed upon the screen, and, generally speaking, the audience was stunned. Fischer behaved throughout the evening with tact and discretion. He made few references to the matter, and was careful not to indulge in any undue exhilaration. Once, when Van Teyl had left the box, however, to speak to some friends, he turned earnestly to Pamela.

"Will it please you soon," he begged, "to resume our conversation of the other day? However you may look at it, things have changed, have they not? An invincible British Navy has been one of the fundamental principles of beliefs in American politics. Now that it is destroyed, the outlook is different. I could go myself to the proper quarter in Washington, or Von Schwerin is here to be my spokesman. I have a fancy, though, to work with you. You know why."

She moved uneasily in her place.

"I have no idea," she objected, "what it is that you have to propose. Besides, I am only just a woman who has been entrusted with a few diplomatic errands."

"You are the niece of Senator Hastings," Fischer reminded her, "and Hastings is the man through whom I should like my proposal to go to the President. It is an honest offer which I have to make, and although it cannot pass through official channels, it is official in the highest sense of the word, because it comes to me from the one man who is in a position to make himself responsible for it."

Her brother came back to the box before Pamela could reply, but, as they parted that night, she gave Fischer her hand.

"Come and see our new quarters," she invited. "I shall be at home any time to-morrow afternoon."

It was one of the moments of Fischer's life. He bowed low over her fingers.

"I accept, with great pleasure," he murmured. _

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