Itash proceeded to pay his morning call upon the person whom the newspapers had christened “The Mid-European Napoleon of Modern Finance and Diplomacy.” He was passed through into the presence of the great man within a very few minutes. He entered courteous, self-assured, dignified. He was reduced within a few seconds to a state of abject collapse. For years afterwards he remembered the horror of those moments. Cornelius Blunn’s opening words filled him with blank amazement, his final ones stripped him of every shred of confidence and self-respect.
“I have been associated at different times,” the latter concluded, “with rogues and hucksters, thieves, liars and fools. I have never yet entrusted the destinies of a great nation to a man who cannot keep his mouth shut, even in his sleep.”
“But how could I tell?” the young man gasped. “How do I know even now that what you tell me is true?”
“Let me remind you of this,” Blunn went on. “We talked for hours one night in Monte Carlo on the matter of steel. With two companies over here we are all right. Over the third we have no control or any influence. We discussed the possibility of this third company adding up the amount of your contracts with their two rivals—even leaving out the steel plates we sent you from Germany—and of presenting a report to the Limitation of Armaments Conference. You remember that conversation?”
“I remember it perfectly,” Itash groaned.
“You left me with your mind full of the subject. It was at the time when Mademoiselle Cleo was your fancy. Very well, the other day Mademoiselle calls upon our friend Grant Slattery, and the next morning he visits the representatives of each one of those steel firms. Can’t you see that trouble or suspicion at the Conference might upset everything we have done?”
“I know,” Itash muttered. “Still, they will not discover anything that counts in time. We have been very clever. We have four secret harbours and two secret dockyards, besides the one in China. Each battleship we built was duplicated. The two were given the same name. We kept even the work people in ignorance. The flying ships are safe. They are up in Ulensk. Now I shall send a cable. The four battleships which have been launched must steam away northward. The four that are ready to be launched under the same name must take their place. Everybody will believe that it is the same ships returned. I am not afraid. There are American spies in Tokyo, but our secret harbours have never been visited.”
“Go and send your cable and come back again,” Blunn directed, “Warn your people that without a doubt investigations will be made. Let your fleet be manoeuvred in every way so as to confuse undesired onlookers. But remember, nothing must interfere with its final assembly. You know the date.”
Itash smiled for the first time.
“On November the first,” he said, “we have the most complete and wonderful plan of movement. Units of the fleet will appear from all sorts of unexpected places. They have their final meeting place only five days’ steaming from San Francisco.”
Blunn nodded.
“Go and send your cables,” he ordered. “Then return here. I suppose you can rely upon your code?”
“My code is undecipherable to any human being except the person to whom it is addressed,” Itash declared. “It is based upon the ancient priests’ language of my country, two thousand years old, and untranslatable save by a Japanese scholar. That again is coded and has never left my person.”
He opened his coat and waistcoat and showed a band around his underclothes. Blunn waved him away.
“Good!” he approved. “Be back within two hours. You will not sleep before then!”
For a few moments after the departure of Itash, Cornelius Blunn sat motionless in his chair, his eyes fixed upon the calendar which stood on his table. Finally he rose to his feet, opened the door and called to his secretary.
“Miss Herman,” he enjoined, “for half an hour I am engaged. You understand? Not even a telephone message.”
“I understand perfectly, sir,” she replied. “It is as usual.” She returned to her place. Blunn re-entered his sitting room, carefully locking the door behind him. The apartment, before the changes necessitated by his demands, had been an ordinary hotel sitting room, with heavy plush furniture and curtains. There were two windows, across which he carefully drew the curtains until every scrap of daylight was excluded. He then turned on the electric light and made his way to the ponderous safe, which looked as though it were built into the further wall. He undid his coat and waistcoat and released the chain which was wound around his body. At the end of it were two keys. With one, after a few minutes’ adjustment, he opened the safe. From underneath a pile of papers he drew out a curiously shaped and heavy box fashioned of beaten gold. On the left-hand side of the lid were the arms of the city of Berlin. On the right the arms of the Hohenzollerns. In the middle was an inscription in German:
To Cornelius Blunn, the faithful servant of this city and friend of his Kaiser.
WILHELM.
Nineteen-thirteen.
Blunn closed the door of the café and returned to his place at the desk, carrying the box with him. He lit the electric lamp which stood upon the table and, with the other key, unlocked the casket. Its contents were simple enough in appearance—two small morocco-bound volumes resembling diaries at the top and a few sheets of parchment on which were several great seals; underneath a letter, yellow with age, crumpled a little at the corners, and showing signs of slight tear in one of the folds. With careful fingers Cornelius Blunn spread the latter out on the table before him. At either end he placed a small paperweight. Then he folded his hands and read its contents to himself in a very low undertone. The roar of the city seemed muffled by the closely drawn curtains. One thought of a dark and silent mosque in the middle of a sunlit Oriental city. Here was a man at his devotions,—and this was what he read:
My Beloved Son,
I write you this message from my deathbed with the last fragment of strength with which an inscrutable Providence has endowed me. I go before my work is accomplished, and, for that reason, a heavier burden must rest upon your shoulders. You will bear it worthily because of the purpose. My son, the chosen people of God were often called upon to face suffering—aye, and humiliation. But in the end they triumphed. Greatness will always survive, and the greatest thing upon this earth is the soul of the German people.
Have nothing to do, Cornelius, with those who would write her apologia. The empires of the world were built up with blood and sacrifice, and the knowledge of these things was in our hearts,—we, who planned the war and believed that we should see Germany the ruling power of the world from Palestine to London. We struck too soon or too late. History may, perhaps, tell you. Next time the hour must be chosen so that failure is an impossible element.
All that shall happen in the future and the way to our glorious goal has been discussed between us many a time. My charge upon you is this. Remember the maxims of those who made Germany. The man whom you forgive will never forgive you. The man to whom you show a kindness will owe you a grudge for it. Hate your enemies in life, in death, and after death. When the time comes, every man and woman of the United States of America, of France, of England is your enemy. Never did the Philistines oppress and humiliate the children of Israel as these people have done the nation of His later choice. Show no mercy. Strip them,—those whom you leave alive—of wealth, women and honour. Let them feel the iron in their souls which that accursed Treaty of Versailles has brought into the souls of our own people. When Germany strikes again see that she climbs for ever to the highest place amongst the peoples of the earth. By the sword Germany came into being, and by the sword she shall fight her way to the chosen places. Farewell, Cornelius, and remember my last words. NEVER SPARE AN ENEMY OR MISUSE A FRIEND.
Cornelius Blunn.
The sound of the man’s low voice ceased. Yet for several moments he sat quite still. A breath of wind, coming through the opened upper part of the window, moved the curtains an inch or two, and a thin sharp shaft of sunlight fell like a glancing rod of gold across the table, resting for a minute upon his face. All that there was of coarseness, even the humanity of good-fellowship and humour, seemed to have vanished. Cornelius Blunn had become the prototype of his country, fashioned according to his father’s mandate of blood and iron. He might indeed have posed, in those few moments, for a statue of the great avenger. There was implacable hatred in every feature and line of his face, unforgiving, unmerciful. He was the incarnation of a real and living spirit.
The ceremony was over. With reverent fingers the letter was restored to its place at the bottom of the box. For a few minutes he pored over the contents of the two morocco-bound volumes. Finally he returned everything to the box, carried it to the safe, reset the latter’s combination, and carefully locked it. Then he turned out the lights, drew back the curtains, lit a cigar and unlocked the door.
“Business as usual. Miss Herman,” he said.
“Mr. Gurlenheim from the new London Steel Company is waiting to see you, sir,” she announced.
A shadow of anxiety rested for a moment on Blunn’s face.
“I will see him at once,” he decided. “Count Itash too, immediately he returns.”
Mr. Gurlenheim was a short, rather pudgy man, with flaxen hair streaked with grey, a guttural voice, and a fussy manner. He accepted a chair, but got up again directly.
“My friend,” he exclaimed, as soon as he had shaken hands, “it is a serious matter on which I have come to see you. We have received a communication signed by the Secretary of the Limitation of Armaments Conference requiring a statement of all steel sold to Japan for the period of the last two years. We are asked to prepare it at once, as it may be referred to at the next meeting of the Conference.”
“Nothing to worry about,” Blunn declared, pushing a box of cigars across the table. “The Conference have accepted the position so far as the steel supplied from Germany is concerned—faulty plates. Our people conceded—on paper—an enormous reduction in price. As regards the steel from America—well, Japan over-bought. That’s all she can say. There seemed a possibility of shortage in steel and she decided to cover herself. We’re only limited to building, not to making provision for building.”
“But what about the building, my friend?” Mr. Gurlenheim enquired anxiously. “Japan has gone a little beyond her specified limit, eh?”
“We are not fools, we and those others,” Cornelius Blunn told him calmly, “What has been done in Japan it is better for you not to know. But whatever has been done has been accomplished in such a manner that it would take a year to discover anything, and before then the time will have arrived.”
Mr. Gurlenheim drew a very large silk handkerchief of florid design from his pocket and mopped his forehead.
“This year will seem like ten to me,” he confessed. “It is all very well for you, my friend. You will be in Germany when the storm bursts. Supposing the people should take it into their heads to wreak vengeance upon us here? They might—if they knew.”
Cornelius Blunn smiled scornfully.
“If you feel like that,” he said, “you’d better go to the Riviera for a few months, and leave some one else your share of the plunder here. Only you must let me know quickly. You are down for very unimportant work, nothing that exposes you to the slightest risk, but I want to be sure of even the weakest link in the chain.”
“I shall stay,” Gurlenheim declared. “I know what I have to do. But, supposing—supposing for one moment, Blunn, that anything went wrong. Say, for instance, that things came out at the Limitation of Armaments Conference and that America decided to join the Pact?”
“In that case there would be a postponement,” was the grim acknowledgment. “The end might not come in your days or mine.”
“No fear of the whole scheme leaking out with names and that sort of thing?” Gurlenheim persisted.
“There is no fear of that,” Blunn assured him. “The only complete list of names and stations in this country never leaves my possession. I have been looking at it to-night. No one else ever sees it.”
Mr. Gurlenheim began to feel a man again,—or as much of a man as nature intended him to be. He accepted the cigar which he had previously ignored, pinched it carefully and admired its quality.
“It is a great thing to be a very rich man like you,” he sighed. “Money comes fast enough over here, but not fast enough for the years. I am fifty years old and I have barely a million.”
Blunn smiled.
“Before this time next year you can call it ten,” he promised. “The wealth of the world is coming to us, Gurlenheim. It is coming because we’re going to take it. To-night, at dinner, drink a glass of wine to the memory of the men who drew up the Treaty of Versailles, and who thought that war could only be made with ships and men.”
“That war could only be made with ships and men!” Gurlenheim repeated, as he rose to his feet. “Good! I will drink that glass of wine. I will drink that toast.”