Cornelius Blunn was a guest such as hotel proprietors dream of and very seldom have the chance to entertain. His demands were always on a magnificent scale and no spendthrift prince in the days when there were such beings could have shown less disposition to haggle. At the Great Central Hotel in New York he had a suite of five or six rooms, the most simple of which was his own bedchamber. Notwithstanding his affability and democratic habits, he was a person difficult of approach. In an outer room there were always two or three typists. In the next apartment were the travelling advisers connected with his various enterprises, who, with his direction and lavish cabling, influenced the destinies of his industrial ventures when he was from home. Then came a smaller chamber occupied by his secretary,—a somewhat colourless young woman of twenty-nine or thirty years of age, with thin sandy hair, and intelligent forehead, close-lipped, silent, a woman of deliberate ways and quiet speech. Beyond was a pleasant little reception room, with a lavishly furnished sideboard, plenty of magazines and easy-chairs, and, leading from it, Blunn’s sitting room, an apartment with a great writing table, a special telephone and very little else in the way of furniture. The chair occupied by his visitors was a comfortable one enough, but it faced the north light. Even Itash blinked behind his spectacles as he subsided into its depths.
“You have news, my young friend?” Blunn enquired of his caller.
“There is very little,” the latter answered, speaking with his usual deliberation. “Four more names have been sent in from our headquarters at San Francisco. They are all vouched for. They all desire places of responsibility. One of them, a fruit grower in California, is well known to me. His father was in the service of our family.”
Cornelius Blunn nodded.
“Good,” he said. “You have places for them?”
“For the first three,” Itash replied. “The man I spoke of last, I have sent for. I propose to take him into the Intelligence.”
“You have no other news?”
“There is no other news. May I smoke?”
Blunn nodded his permission. He sat back in his chair apparently studying his visitor. Itash was by no means a pleasant personality. The strength of his face lay rather in its cunning than in any other quality. His mouth was cruel. His eyes, as bright as beads, too shifty. His complexion was yellow even for an Oriental. His black hair reeked of the productions of the barber’s shop. The handkerchief which he had been holding in his hand seemed steeped with some powerful scent. The cigarette which he presently began to smoke had a pungent and almost sickly odour.
“Count Itash,” Blunn said at last, “you are a very clever young man of the Oriental school, but you have one fault. You are too fond of women.”
Itash removed his cigarette from his mouth. He seemed a little uncertain how to take the other’s speech. In the end he grinned.
“In your country,” he retorted, “it is wine and beer, and food. In mine it is flowers and women.”
“You may dabble in horticulture as much as you choose,” Blunn observed drily, “but women are dangerous.”
“I have learnt to manage them,” the young man declared.
“So far as your personal comfort is concerned, no doubt that is so,” Blunn acknowledged, “but you must remember that, to me, and many others, you do not exist as a young scion of the Japanese nobility who desires to achieve success as a diplomatist and walk meanwhile in the flowery ways. You are something more vital. You are a part depository of the greatest secret the world has ever known. Itash, if a single bead of the truth has sweated out of your carcass, you shall be looking for your own particular corner in hell before the moon changes.”
Blunn struck the table in front of him, not heavily, but with a sharp menacing tap. There were lines in his face now which few people ever saw. His cheeks seemed to have sagged a little, his eyes sunken. His lips had parted, and one of his teeth, always a slight disfigurement, had, for the moment, the appearance of a fang. Itash dropped his cigarette. The sudden attack had paralysed him. He looked like a person stricken through fear into idiocy.
“Pick that up,” Blunn directed, “and speak the truth, or nothing that I have ever threatened you with will count by the side of the things which shall surely happen. What have you told Cleo, the dancing girl of Monte Carlo?”
“Nothing, upon the tomb of my fathers!” the young man swore.
He picked up the cigarette. Blunn’s questioning eyes still held him.
“Upon the great matters,” he went on, “I have never spoken in my life with any human being, and as to women—they are my toys. I have never treated one seriously. It is not our way in Japan. There is not one of them who knows a thought that is in my brain, a feeling that comes from the heart. Not one, not one!”
“You know that this dancing girl has followed you to New York?” Blunn demanded.
“What has that to do with the matters that count?” Itash enquired wonderingly. “She has been the companion of my idle moments, she has never asked a question; she is like the others, a being for the dance, the wine, an hour or so of love. I tire of her and I take another companion. Sometimes you change wine for beer, is it not so? She is a foolish being and my notice has been pleasant to her. She is jealous—women are made like that. What does it matter?”
“I hear your words,” Cornelius Blunn said. “Now listen to this, Itash, and tell me what you make of it with your Oriental wisdom. This dancing girl has followed you from Monte Carlo to New York. Two nights ago she visited Grant Slattery, was in his room for two hours. What do you make of that?”
“It is her profession,” Itash sneered.
“You think so? That is the Oriental kink in you,” Blunn declared. “A man like Grant Slattery doesn’t amuse himself with the cast-off mistresses of such as you. Now listen! Of your wisdom answer me this. Why, on the morning after her visit, did Grant Slattery himself interview the managers of the three great steel companies with whom Japan has dealt in this country?”
Itash’s face expressed only bewilderment. He seemed utterly unable to read the riddle of Blunn’s words.
“I am foolish,” he confessed. “I cannot see what distresses you. I cannot understand what Cleo—”
Blunn pulled him up. He was convinced that the young man was at least a harmless agent of his own undoing.
“Listen,” he interrupted. “You are one of the few persons in a position to call the attention of people whom it might concern to the fact that Japan, during the last three years, has purchased more steel in the United States than would build her six battleships allowed her by the Limitation of Armaments twice over and re-lay every line of railway she has in Japan. Cleo, your sweetheart, comes to see Grant Slattery, and Grant Slattery interviews representatives of these three steel companies the very next morning.”
“Never have I opened my lips to Cleo upon any such subject in my life,” the young man asserted fervently. “She knows nothing. She can know nothing.”
“Humph!” Blunn grunted. “The puzzle remains then. But I do not understand it. I am uneasy—it is one of the most unfortunate things which could have happened that this annual meeting of the Limitation of Armaments should be fixed for a date just before the question of joining the Pact comes up in the Senate. We keep our secrets well—we, who understand these things—but there are other matters besides the secrets of your country’s warships which are there to be discovered, if the fortune went against us. A scare at the Conference might undo all our great work.”
“There will be no scare,” Itash declared. “Our extra battleships are hidden. No one knows that each one has a sister-ship.”
“There remains that visit,” Blunn muttered. “I shall brood over it until I have some explanation. I am not happy about you and your hobbies, Itash. Women are best left out of the game. I had rather you collected butterflies.”
“I should be as likely to tell the butterflies my secrets,” the young man scoffed. “You should know that we do not treat our womankind as you do. They are the marionettes who dance for our pleasure. To treat them seriously would spoil our joy of them.”
Cornelius Blunn seemed to be slowly coming back to himself again. His tone was almost good-humoured.
“Listen,” he said. “You sup every night with your little lady from the Café de Paris at the Folies Bergeres, is it not so?”
Itash was a little startled.
“I am usually there,” he admitted.
“To-night,” Blunn announced, “I am your host. I remember the young lady. I have danced with her myself. I will dance with her to-night, whilst you look on and are sulky. You need not be afraid,” he went on. “I have no designs on your belongings. It pleases me to spend an hour or so with you both. At midnight, at the Folies Bergeres! You have always the corner table on the right, have you not?”
“I have never seen you there,” Itash remarked suspiciously, as, in obedience to the other’s gesture of dismissal, he rose to his feet.
“I have never been there,” Blunn acknowledged. “But I know most things that go on in New York.”