It was three whole clays before Grant saw anything more of Hodson. Then the latter appeared in his room about seven o’clock in the evening and demanded a cocktail.
“Glad you’ve remembered my existence,” Grant grumbled good-humouredly, as he gave the necessary orders. “Stoneham and I have been pegging away. There are heaps of things I want to know about.”
Hodson nodded.
“There are big events close at hand,” he announced. “A great deal of what you suspect is true, with a few other trifles thrown in. Can you go to England to-morrow?”
“England!” Grant exclaimed. “Why, the Limitation of Armaments Conference starts here in a little over a fortnight.”
“You’ll be back for it,” the other assured him. “I want you to catch the Katalonia to-morrow morning. She sails at eight o’clock. Let me see, to-morrow’s Saturday. You’ll be in Plymouth Wednesday, and in London Wednesday night. Lord Yeovil will be expecting you. You can sail back on Saturday in the Sefaloni. You’ll probably return with Yeovil and his staff.”
“What am I to do in England?” Grant asked, trying to keep back an alien and most disturbing thought.
“Deliver despatches from Washington,” was the prompt reply. “I have them in my pocket. I came through from Washington to-day. Great Britain polices the eastern waters for the Limitation of Armaments Conference, and we want a sea-plane patrol over certain specified districts. There are a few other little matters to be enquired into, too.”
“Look here,” Grant expostulated. “You’re not sending me over to play messenger boy, are you?”
“Not likely!”
“What’s the game then? Do you want to get me out of the way?”
“Not precisely that. Where are you dining?”
“With you, anywhere, I was going up to the Lotos Club. Stoneham generally drops in there.”
“I’m tired,” Hodson confessed. “I’d like to hear some music and look at some pretty women. I’ll go round and have a bath and change and call for you in half an hour. We’ll get a corner table at Sherry’s. I think, as we’re saving empires, we can afford some terrapin and a bottle of champagne.”
“You’re serious about that trip to England—because I must have my fellow pack?”
“Serious! My God, I am!” was the emphatic answer. “You’ll be the chief spoke in the wheel for the next ten days. You won’t miss anything here, either. I’m gathering up some wonderful threads but I’m doing it silently. I’ll come round in half an hour. I’m on your floor.”
A fit of restlessness seized Grant. He gave his servant the necessary orders, interviewed the travel manager in the hotel and secured the best accommodation possible on the steamer. Then he permitted himself to think deliberately, opened up the closed chambers in his mind, welcomed reflection and memory. He would see Susan. He would find out what her silence really meant, what she thought or believed about him. In a sense, it was all very hopeless. He had been forced into an accursed position. He scarcely knew even now how to appraise it. And yet the big thing remained unaltered and still seemed to tower over everything else,—he loved Susan. There was not a grain of affection in his heart for anybody else. She was his only possible companion. Was he so much less fit for her than any other of the young men by whom she was surrounded? He tried to judge himself and his position fairly. The trouble was that it could never be represented to any one else in the same manner. He remembered and brooded with gloomy insistence over that slight vein of prudery in Susan, something altogether unconnected with the narrow ways, or any unduly censorious attitude towards life, which seldom in fact expressed itself in speech, but was more a Dart of herself, a sort of instinctive and supercilious shrinking from the small licences of a world which she never judged in words. Perhaps he had fallen for ever in her esteem; perhaps the one sin recorded against him would have cost him already what he had sometimes fancied that he had won. Now that he was going to see her so soon, he wondered how he had been content to wait to know the truth. Next Thursday he would be in London. It was the height of the season and she would certainly be there. Next Thursday or Friday they might meet. He told himself that he would know in the first ten seconds whether his disaster had been irredeemable.
The two men dined at Sherry’s in a retired corner. They dined, as Grant complained, like profiteers and gourmands. Hodson ordered caviare and lobster Newburg, terrapin, saddle of lamb, asparagus and champagne.
“A disgraceful meal,” Grant declared, as he sipped his cocktail. “Do you really think we shall get through it?”
“Of course we shall,” Hodson laughed. “To tell you the truth I’ve scarcely eaten anything for two days. They were a tough lot on the trains to Washington and back. I can manage better in the cities.”
“What do you mean?” his companion asked curiously.
“Well, the same powers that murdered that poor girl and translated it into suicide were out for me,” Hodson explained. “If they had known that it was you who started me off, I expect you’d be in the same position. My own little crowd are pretty useful though. And Poynter’s men are wonderful. There are two of them at the next table. They look all right, don’t they?”
“They look just like two successful business men talking over a deal,” Grant observed.
“Well, they aren’t,” Hodson assured him. “They’re two of Poynter’s shrewdest detectives. They’ve got guns in their pockets and their job is to see that no one tries to steal a march on me from the lounge. One of my men is down in the kitchen. I dared not eat anything on the train, for they were in with the chef there. I’ve been shot at twice in the last twenty-four hours. They nearly got me, too. It’s a great storm that’s gathering. Grant.”
“Exactly why are you sending me to England?”
“Listen,” was the earnest reply. “This is official. It comes from the White House. You know who owns the New Year now. You know the power at the back of the greater part of our Press. They want to make bad blood between Great Britain and this country. You can guess why. They’re at it already, and the British Press, quite naturally, is beginning to take it up. Use all your influence with Lord Yeovil. Tell him the truth. Get him to take you to see his own big newspaper people and try to keep the feeling down. Beg him to disregard any attacks upon him personally, either before he comes or directly he lands. It’s all part of the game. It will all be over, tell him, in two months, and for heaven’s sake do what you can to stop trouble.”
“I certainly will,” Grant promised. “I used to have a certain amount of influence with Lord Yeovil.”
“That’s why we’re sending you. One reason, at any rate. Then—Hullo! another farewell party, I see.”
“Why farewell?” Grant asked, looking curiously at the newcomers.
“I hadn’t come to that. Cornelius Blunn is sailing for England to-morrow. He’ll be your fellow passenger.”
“Where the devil is he off to?”
“A dozen of the most astute brains in the States, besides my own, have tried to solve that question,” Hodson replied. “At present, I must frankly admit that we don’t know. I have a theory. He’s getting a trifle shaken up in New York. Not exactly scared, but nervy. He wants to re-establish confidence. There’s a dinner of German bankers in London at which he is advertised to take the Chair. He imagines that his attendance at that function just now will put us off the scent. He’ll probably come back by your steamer.”
“Is he taking the casket with him, I wonder,” Grant reflected.
“I may consider some day,” Hodson said deliberately, “that within the last few hours I have made the mistake of my life. That girl’s whisper to you was probably the vital part of all that she had to tell. I honestly believe that the key to the whole conspiracy—and there is a great conspiracy. Grant, I’ll tell you that—is in that casket, side by side, no doubt in affectionate communion, with that letter from old man Blunn, the present man’s father, which we know he always carries with him. They’ll risk a lot for sentiment, these people. I honestly believe I ought to have raided his private room with a dozen picked men, broken open his safe and casket and shot myself if I found nothing. I believe it was a fair risk. Honestly, Grant, it wasn’t that I funked it. It was just because I knew all the time how Cornelius Blunn would have laughed at me if the thing had been a fake, how the Department would have laughed at me, how the Press would have poked fun, and the novelists pointed to me in triumph as one who carried the skein of fancy farther even than their imaginative brains had ventured. The fact of it is, Slattery, that ridicule is a much more powerful factor in our daily lives than we are willing to acknowledge. A great many men are susceptible to ridicule who are immune to fear.”
“All the same,” Grant proposed a little doggedly, “give me a dozen men and a plan of campaign and I’ll run the risk.”
“As a last resource,” Hodson declared, “it is always open to us. Personally, I have some hopes in other directions. Now, let us see whom our friend, Cornelius Blunn, is entertaining. H’m! A respectable lot but suggestive. The two great steel men, Pottinger, the new editor of the New York, Admiral Purvin—he’s all right but inclined to be talkative—and Doctor Sinclair Forbes, the great Jewish educationalist. A respectable party but a dash of the Teuton about most of them. A farewell party that amounted to anything would have been given in his rooms. By the way. Grant, if you speak to Blunn on the way out, don’t tell him you’re sailing to-morrow. I’ve arranged for you to be quarter of an hour late. They’ll put the gangway down again for you. I’m beginning to have great faith in Blunn’s organisation. If he considered your presence in England likely to prove inconvenient, I think it’s very doubtful whether you would reach the steamer in time. Now he’s seen us. Wave your hand, Slattery. Play his game. Love your enemies on the surface. Be glad to see the people you wish were at the bottom of the sea. It’s a great game as Blunn plays it. How he must hate to see us together. And yet, behold! A great honour is coming to us.”
Blunn had risen to his feet, with a word of excuse to his guests, and came across the room to them. He beamed upon Grant and shook hands with Hodson cordially, reminding him of a previous meeting at Washington.
“I am giving a little farewell party,” he announced. “I have decided, rather at the last moment, to accept an invitation to visit London.”
“Didn’t I once hear you say that you seldom visited England?” Grant queried.
“Your memory is excellent, Mr. Slattery,” Blunn admitted. “To tell you the truth, I do so now more from a sense of duty than with the expectation of any pleasure. The whole world knows that my father hated England, and, in a milder form, I have inherited his dislike. But, in these days of settled peace, what can one do? What good does it do to ourselves or to the world to keep open the old sore? I have been asked to preside at the Anniversary Dinner given to celebrate the reopening of the German banks in London. I must confess that at first I refused but strong pressure has been brought to bear upon me. I have decided to go. Naturally my presence on such an occasion must mean the burying forever of all feelings of ill will.”
“I think you are quite right,” Hodson remarked.
“So do I,” Grant echoed. “Your presence there will be of great significance. By the way, are you returning to the States?”
“I am not sure. My friend Lutrecht, who is coming over to represent us on the Limitation of Armaments Conference, is very anxious that I should be here, but, personally, I think it exceedingly doubtful. My affairs in Germany require my presence, and I have promised to visit Hamburg within the next few weeks. I will only say ’au revoir‘, gentlemen. Mr. Slattery and I, at any rate, are citizens of the world, and we are likely to meet in most unexpected places.”
He returned to his table and the two men exchanged a smile.
“Even Cornelius Blunn,” Hodson murmured, “has a knack of telling the truth sometimes.”