General Naniescu was enjoying himself thoroughly. He had his friend Number Ten sitting there opposite him, and Number Ten was looking as savage as a bear. Naniescu had offered him a cigar, a glass of fine, even whiskey and soda, but Number Ten had declined everything and remained very truculent.
"You had no right," he said, with a savage oath, "to go behind my back."
But Naniescu was at his blandest. "What could I do, my dear friend?" he asked, and waved his white, downy hands to emphasise by appropriate gesture, both his perplexity and his contrition. "What would you have had me do? Decline to deal with that young Blakeney? Then those precious articles would have been lost to me for ever. Lady Tarkington would not have written them all over again."
"I told you the other day that I would get those articles for you. Ask M. de Kervoisin here if I have ever failed in anything I have undertaken. I had the manuscript in my hand when that young blackguard snatched it out of my hand. Curse him!"
Naniescu leaned back in his chair and gave a guttural, complacent laugh: "I do agree with you, my dear friend," he said. "That young Blakeney is an unmitigated blackguard. I have had to deal with some in my day, but never with such a corrupt, dirty scoundrel. Yes, dirty, that's what he is. But you know, you English, you are astonishing! Everything big with you—big fellows, big Empire, big money, big blackguards! Yes, big blackguards! Oh, là, là!"
"Yes," Number Ten assented dryly. "And the big blackguard who is also a big fellow, got big money out of you, for you have been a fool, as well as a knave, my friend. I only asked you ten thousand sterling for the manuscript."
"Are you pretending that you know what I paid Blakeney?" Naniescu asked, with his most fatuous smile. "Because, my friend, in picturesque poker parlance—I am very fond of a game of poker myself—and in poker language we call what you are doing now 'bluff.' You don't know what I paid Blakeney for the manuscript. But I don't mind telling you that I paid nothing at all. Yes, my dear friend, nothing at all."
And with the tip of his well-manicured little finger, Naniescu emphasised every syllable with a tap on the table.
"I am glad to hear it," Number Ten retorted curtly, "because that will make it easier for you to pay me the ten thousand now."
But this idea amused the General so much that he nearly rolled off his chair laughing.
"Ils sont impayables ces Anglais!" he said, when with streaming eyes and scanty breath he found words to express his sense of the ludicrous. "Why in the name of Tophet should I pay you ten thousand pounds sterling?"
"Because if you don't, those newspaper articles will never be published."
"Ah, bah!" Naniescu exclaimed, with a mocking grin, "who will prevent it?"
"I, of course."
"You, of course? How, I should like to know?"
"That's my business."
"You can't do it, my friend," Naniescu rejoined complacently. "You can't do it. I defy you to do it."
"Is that a challenge?"
Number Ten had said this very quietly. He was in the act of lighting a cigarette when he spoke, and he finished lighting it, blew out the match, and threw it into the nearest ash-tray before he glanced at Naniescu. Then he smiled, because Naniescu's face expressed arrogance first, then bewilderment, and finally indecision.
"Is it a challenge?" he reiterated sardonically. "I don't mind, you know, one way or the other. There are at least three governments—neighbours of yours, by the way—who will pay me ten thousand pounds apiece for certain services which they require, and which I can render them. But you have behaved like a knave and a fool, my friend, and it will amuse me to punish you. So listen to me! Unless you give me a cheque for the ten thousand pounds which you promised me, and which I can cash at your fusty old bank over the way this very afternoon, I guarantee you that Lady Tarkington's articles will not be published in any English newspaper."
He smoked on in silence for a little while longer, blowing rings of smoke through his pursed lips, and in the intervals laughing softly, mockingly to himself, or throwing an occasional glance of intelligence in the direction of Kervoisin, who apparently immersed in a book had taken no part in the conversation. Naniescu's bewilderment had become ludicrous, and at one moment when he took his perfumed handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his streaming forehead, the face of his spy-in-chief became distorted with that look of ferocious cruelty which was so characteristic of him.
"I haven't a great deal of time to spare," Number Ten remarked dryly, after a few minutes' silence; "if you accept my challenge I start for London to-night."
"You'll never get there in time," Naniescu rejoined, with an attempt at swagger.
Number Ten smiled. "Don't you think so?" he asked simply.
"The frontier is closed——"
"Would you rather risk it than pay me the ten thousand pounds?"
Naniescu appealed to his friend.
"De Kervoisin——" he said, almost pitiably.
But M. de Kervoisin, with a shrug, indicated that this was no concern of his.
"M. de Kervoisin," Number Ten said, still smiling, "knows my methods. During the war I had other and more dangerous frontiers to cross than this one, my friend—and I never failed."
In Naniescu's puny mind, obviously a war was waging between greed and avarice. He was seeing his beautiful day-dream vanishing into the intangible ether—whence come all dreams—and he was not prepared to take any risks. Those articles which a reliable courier was even now taking to London with all speed were the most precious things he, Naniescu, had ever possessed. They meant honour, security, money—far more money than Number Ten was demanding with such outrageous impudence. And Naniescu was afraid of Number Ten, afraid of his daring, his courage, his unscrupulous determination to carry through what he had set out to do.
Ten thousand pounds! It was a great deal, but it would come out of secret service funds, not out of Naniescu's own pocket. There was only that slight tickling of one's amour propre to subdue. The desire to get the better of Number Ten, to win this battle of wits against so crafty an opponent. But what was amour propre when weighed in the balance with the realisation of Naniescu's wonderful day-dreams?
Nevertheless he made one more effort at a bargain.
"If I pay you that ten thousand," he said, with a savage oath, "what guarantee have I that the articles will be published?"
"None," was Number Ten's cool reply; "but if you don't pay me the ten thousand, I guarantee that they will not be published."
At which M. de Kervoisin put down his book and indulged in a good laugh.
"Take care, my friend," he said to Number Ten, "our friend here is beginning to lose his temper, and you may find yourself under lock and key before he has done with you."
"I wonder!" Number Ten retorted dryly. "It would mean raising hell in the English press, wouldn't it? if a British subject—what?"
He did not pursue the subject. Even Naniescu himself had put such a possibility out of his reckoning.
"All that our friend could do," Number Ten went on, speaking over his shoulder to M. de Kervoisin, "would be to have me murdered, but he would find even that rather difficult. Ten thousand pounds of secret service money is considerably safer—and cheaper in the end."
Then at last Naniescu gave in. "Oh, have it your own way, curse you!" he exclaimed.
"The money now," Number Ten said coolly, raising a warning finger. "You may as well send one of your clerks over to the bank for it. I prefer that to taking your cheque."
Then he turned to Kervoisin, and picked up the book which the latter had thrown down on the table. "Ah!" he remarked, with a total change of tone, "Marcel Proust's latest. You are an epicure in literature, my friend."
He fingered the book, seemingly as indifferent to what Naniescu was doing and saying, as if the whole matter of a ten thousand pound cheque did not concern him in the least.
The general had gone across to a desk which stood in the farther corner of the room. He had written out a cheque, rung the bell, and was now giving orders to a clerk to fetch the money from the Anglo-Roumanian bank over the way.
On the whole he was not displeased with the transaction. The articles signed by Uno and published in the Times would redound to his credit, would bring him all that he had striven for all his life; and, after all, they would cost him nothing—nothing at all.
Number Ten and de Kervoisin were discussing Marcel Proust; he, Naniescu, was savouring his day-dreams once again; and presently when the clerk returned with a bundle of crisp English bank-notes in his hand, Naniescu handed the money over to his spy-in-chief, without a qualm, and certainly without regret.
"This being Monday," Number Ten said, after he had stowed the money away in his pocket-book, "and your courier having started last night, you will probably see the first of the articles in Thursday's Times. By the way," he went on casually, "what are you doing about young Imrey and the girl?"
"What do you mean by that? What should I be doing with them?"
"Well, when these articles appear——"
"I send them packing, c'est entendu. I never go back on my word," Naniescu said, with a grandiose gesture.
"It would not pay you to do that in this case, my friend. Lady Tarkington has your written promise, and she would raise hell if you played her false. But I wasn't thinking of that. I only wished to warn you to keep an eye on those two young firebrands."
"Oh," Naniescu retorted, with a shrug, "once I have them out of the country they can do what they like. They no longer hurt me. Especially after the publication of those beautiful articles."
"That is so, but you are sending Count and Countess Imrey out of the country, aren't you?"
"What makes you say that?"
"Well, you paid Blakeney for the articles with the title deeds of Kis-Imre, didn't you?"
"How did you know that?"
"I didn't," Number Ten replied dryly. "I guessed, and you gave yourself away."
"Well, and if I did—what is it to you?"
"Nothing, my friend. Nothing. I come back to my original warning. Keep a close eye on young Imrey and Anna Heves, and above all keep a close eye on Blakeney."
"That young blackguard?"
"Yes, that young blackguard! He may be playing a double game, you know. I suppose he is still in Cluj?"
"I thought of that," Naniescu broke in curtly, "so I have had Imrey and the Heves girl transferred to Sót."
"Sót? Isn't that rather near the frontier?"
"Thirty kilomètres."
"But why Sót?"
"We have commandeered a château there, which we use as a prison for political offenders. We chose it because it stands alone in an out-of-the-way part of the country, and it saves the nuisance of public manifestations and disturbances when a prisoner who happens to have been popular is condemned. We try them by a military tribunal which holds its sittings at Sót, and if an execution is imperative—well, it is done without any fuss."
"I see. Well," Number Ten went on, as he rose to take his leave, "I need not detain you any longer. Let me assure you," he concluded, with his habitual sardonic smile, "that I shall not now think of interfering with any of the measures which you have adopted to stop Lady Tarkington from running after her manuscript."
"I don't believe that you could have interfered in any case," Naniescu retorted gruffly.
"It is not too late, my friend. I would rather like to pit my wits against yours. So if you have repented of the bargain——" And Number Ten half drew his bulging pocket-book out of his pocket.
"Oh, go to the devil!" Naniescu exclaimed, half in rage and half in laughter.
"And I hope soon to meet you in his company," Number Ten replied, as he finally took his leave from the two men.
As soon as the door had closed on him, Naniescu turned and looked at his friend. But de Kervoisin had picked up his book, and gave him no encouragement to discuss the intriguing personality of Number Ten. His face, too, was quite inscrutable. Marcel Proust was engaging his full attention. For a moment it seemed as if Naniescu would fall back on his stock phrase, or else on a string of cosmopolitan oaths; he even drew his breath ready for either; then it seemed as if words failed him.
The intriguing personality was above comment.