LITMIR.BIZ

      “I have the pleasure to address Major Fawley, is it not so?” he began in a clear pleasant voice with a slight foreign accent. “I was hoping to present a letter of introduction but it arrives late. My name is Krust.”

      “Adolf Krust?” Fawley asked, rising to his feet.

      “The same,” was the cheerful rejoinder. “You have heard of me, yes?”

      “Naturally,” Fawley replied. “Any one who takes an interest in European politics must have heard of Adolf Krust. Come in and sit down, sir.”

      The visitor shook hands but hesitated.

      “This is not a formal visit,” he said. “I ventured to look in to ask if you would care to play golf with me to-day. I have heard of you from a mutual friend, besides this letter of introduction of which I spoke.”

      “That is quite all right,” Fawley assured him. “You have had your coffee, I suppose?”

      “At seven o’clock,” the other answered. “What I wished to explain was that I am not alone. My two nieces are with me. It is permitted to ask them to enter?”

      “By all means,” Fawley assented. “I hope they will excuse my rather unconventional attire.”

      “They are unconventional themselves,” Krust declared. “Nina!”

      Two young women entered at once. They wore the correct tweed clothes of the feminine golfer but they gave one rather the impression of being dressed for a scene in a musical comedy. Their bérets were almost too perfect and the delicacy of their complexions could scarcely have survived a strenuous outdoor life. They were, as a matter of fact, exceedingly pretty girls.

      “Let me present Major Fawley,” Krust said, waving his hand. “Miss Nina Heldersturm—Miss Greta Müller.”

      Fawley bowed, shook hands with the young women, apologised for his costume and disposed of them upon a divan.

      “We owe you apologies,” Krust went on, “for descending upon you like this, but the fact of it is our rooms are all upon this floor. I ventured—”

      “Not another word, please,” Fawley begged. “I am very glad indeed to meet you, Mr. Krust, and your charming nieces.”

      “We go to golf,” Krust declared. “These young ladies are too frivolous for the pursuit. I myself am a serious golfer. It has been said of me that I take my nieces with me to distract my opponents!”

      “We never say a word,” one of the young ladies protested.

      “We really have very good golf manners,” the other put in. “If we are allowed to walk round, we never speak upon the stroke, we never stand in any one’s line and we always say ‘hard luck’ when any one misses a putt.”

      “You have been well trained,” Fawley approved.

      “To serious conversation they are deaf,” Krust confided. “They have not a serious thought in their brains. How could it be otherwise? They are Bohemians. Nina there calls herself an artist. She paints passably but she is lazy. Greta has small parts at the Winter Garden. Just now we are all in the same position. We are out of harness. Our worthy President has put me temporarily upon the shelf. Nina is waiting for a contract and Greta has no engagements until the summer. We were on our way to Italy—as perhaps you know.”

      Krust’s suddenly wide-opened eyes, his quick lightning-like glance at Fawley almost took the latter aback.

      “I had no idea of the fact,” he answered.

      “I wish to go to Rome. It was my great desire to arrive there yesterday.

      A mutual friend of ours, however, said ‘No.’ A politician cannot travel incognito. My business, it seems, must be done at second hand.”

      “It is,” Fawley ventured, “the penalty of being well known.”

      Krust stroked his smooth chin. His eyes were still upon Fawley.

      “What our friend lacks,” he observed, “is audacity. If it is dangerous for me to be in a certain place, I call for the photographers and the journalists. I announce my intention of going there. I permit a picture of myself upon the railway platform. What a man is willing to tell to the whole world, the public say, can lead nowhere. One succeeds better in this world by bluff than by subtlety.”

      “Are you going to play golf with this talkative old gentleman?” Greta asked, smiling at Fawley in heavenly fashion. “We love him but we are a little tired of him. We should like a change. We should like to walk round with you both and we promise that our behaviour shall be perfect.”

      Fawley reflected for a moment. He had the air of a man briefly weighing up the question of an unimportant engagement but actually his mind had darted backwards to the seventh gallery in the mountains. Step by step he traced his descent. He considered the matter of the changed cars—the ancient Ford lying at the bottom of the precipice; his Lancia, released from its place of hiding in a desolate spot, into which he had clambered in the murky twilight after dawn. His change of clothes in a wayside barn. The bundle which lay at the bottom of a river bed in the valley. Civilian detectives perhaps might have had a chance of tracing that intruder from the hidden galleries, but not military police. If he crossed the frontier now into, say, Switzerland or Germany, he would be weeks ahead of the time and only a trivial part of his task accomplished. The decision which he had intended to take after more leisurely reflection he arrived at now in a matter of seconds.

      “If you will wait while I get into some clothes and see my coiffeur, I shall be delighted,” he accepted.

      Greta flashed at him a little smile of content which left him pondering. Krust picked up his hat and glanced at his watch.

      “At eleven o’clock,” he pronounced, “we will meet you in the bar below. Rudolf shall mix us an Americano before we start. There is no need for you to bring a car. The thing I have hired here is a perfect omnibus and will take us all.”

      “Where do we play?” Fawley asked.

      “It is a fine morning,” the other pointed out. “The glass is going up. The sun is shining. I will telephone to Mont Agel. If play is possible there, they will tell me. If not, we will go to Cagnes.”

      “In the bar at eleven o’clock,” Fawley repeated as he showed them out…

      Fawley was an absent-minded man that morning. When he submitted himself to the ministrations of the coiffeur and valet, his thoughts travelled back to his interview with Berati and travelled forward, exploring the many byways of the curious enterprise to which he had committed himself. Krust occupied the principal figure in his reflections. With the papers daily full of dramatic stories of the political struggle which seemed to be tearing out the heart of a great country, here was one of her principal and most ambitious citizens, with an entourage of frivolity, playing golf on the Riviera. Supposing it were true, as he had hinted, that his presence was due to a desire to visit Berati, why had Berati gone so far as to refuse to see him—a man who might, if chance favoured him, become the ruler of his country? Berati had known of his presence here, had even advised Fawley to cultivate his acquaintance.

      “Do you know the gentleman who was in here when you arrived—Monsieur Krust?” he asked his coiffeur abruptly.

      The man leaned forward confidentially.

Скачать книгу