"Well," he said, "I concluded that you would be looking for a change of air somewhere, and I really could not see what part of the world you had left open to yourself. America is the only country strong enough to keep you! Besides, I reckoned a little upon that curiosity with regard to undeveloped countries which I have observed to be one of your traits. So far as I am aware, you have never resided long in America."
"Neither have I even visited Kamtchatka or Greenland," Mr. Sabin remarked.
"I understand you," Felix remarked, nodding his head. "America is certainly one of the last places one would have dreamed of looking for you. You will find it, I am afraid, politically unborn; your own little methods, at any rate, would scarcely achieve popularity there. Further, its sympathies, of course, are with democratic France. I can imagine that you and the President of the United States would represent opposite poles of thought. Yet there were two considerations which weighed with me."
"This is very interesting," Mr. Sabin remarked. "May I know what they were? To be permitted a glimpse into the inward workings of a brain like yours is indeed a privilege!"
Felix bowed with a gratified smile upon his lips. The satire of Mr. Sabin"s dry tone was apparently lost upon him.
"You are most perfectly welcome," he declared. "In the first place I said to myself that Kamtchatka and Greenland, although equally interesting to you, would be quite unable to afford themselves the luxury of offering you an asylum. You must seek the shelter of a great and powerful country, and one which you had never offended, and save America, there is none such in the world. Secondly, you are a Sybarite, and you do not without very serious reasons place yourself outside the pale of civilisation. Thirdly, America is the only country save those which are barred to you where you could play golf!"
"You are really a remarkable young man," Sabin declared, softly stroking his little grey imperial. "You have read me like a book! I am humiliated that the course of my reasoning should have been so transparent. To prove the correctness of your conclusions, see the little volume which I had brought to read on my way to Liverpool."
He handed it out to Felix. It was ent.i.tled, "The Golf Courses of the World," and a leaf was turned down at the chapter headed, "United States."
"I wish," he remarked, "that you were a golfer! I should like to have asked your opinion about that plan of the Myopia golf links. To me it seems cramped, and the bunkers are artificial."
Felix looked at him admiringly.
"You are a wonderful man," he said. "You do not bear me any ill-will then?"
"None in the least," Mr. Sabin said quietly. "I never bear personal grudges. So far as I am concerned, I never have a personal enemy. It is fate itself which vanquished me. You were simply an instrument. You do not figure in my thoughts as a person against whom I bear any ill-will. I am glad, though, that you did not cash my cheque for 20,000!"
Felix smiled. "You went to see, then?" he asked.
"I took the liberty," Mr. Sabin answered, "of stopping payment of it."
"It will never be presented," Felix said "I tore it into pieces directly I left you."
Mr. Sabin nodded.
"Quixotic," he murmured.
The express was rushing on through the night. Mr. Sabin thrust his hand into his bag and took out a handful of cigars. He offered one to Felix, who accepted, and lit it with the air of a man enjoying the reasonable civility of a chance fellow pa.s.senger.
"You had, I presume," Mr. Sabin remarked, "some object in coming to see the last of me? I do not wish to seem unduly inquisitive, but I feel a little natural interest, or shall we say curiosity as to the reason for this courtesy on your part?"
"You are quite correct," Felix answered. "I am here with a purpose. I am the bearer of a message to you."
"May I ask, a friendly message, or otherwise?"
His fingers were tightening upon the little hard substance in his pocket, but he was already beginning to doubt whether after all Felix had come as an enemy.
"Friendly," was the prompt answer. "I bring you an offer."
"From Lobenski?"
"From his august master! The Czar himself has plans for you!"
"His serene Majesty," Mr. Sabin murmured, "has always been most kind."
"Since you left the country of the Shah," Felix continued, "Russian influence in Central Asia has been gradually upon the wane. All manner of means have been employed to conceal this, but the unfortunate fact remains. You were the only man who ever thoroughly grasped the situation and attained any real influence over the master of western Asia! Your removal from Teheran was the result of an intrigue on the part of the English. It was the greatest misfortune which ever befel Russia!"
"And your offer?" Mr. Sabin asked.
"Is that you return to Teheran not as the secret agent, but as the accredited amba.s.sador of Russia, with an absolutely free hand and unlimited powers."
"Such an offer," Mr. Sabin remarked, "ten years ago would have made Russia mistress of all Asia."
"The Czar," Felix said, "is beginning to appreciate that. But what was possible then is possible now!"
Mr. Sabin shook his head. "I am ten years older," he said, "and the Shah who was my friend is dead."
"The new Shah," Felix said, "has a pa.s.sion for intrigue, and the sands around Teheran are magnificent for golf."
Mr. Sabin shook his head.
"Too hard," he said, "and too monotonous. I am peculiar perhaps in that respect, but I detest artificial bunkers. Now there is a little valley," he continued thoughtfully, "about seven miles north of Teheran, where something might be done! I wonder----"
"You accept," Felix asked quietly.
Mr. Sabin shook his head.
"No, I decline."
It was a shock to Felix, but he hid his disappointment.
"Absolutely?"
"And finally."
"Why?"
"I am ten years too old!"
"That is resentment!"
Mr. Sabin denied it.
"No! Why should I not be frank with you, my friend? What I would have done for Russia ten years ago, I would not do to-day! She has made friends with the French Republic. She has done more than recognise the existence of that iniquitous inst.i.tution--she has pressed her friendship upon the president--she has spoken the word of alliance. Henceforth my feeling for Russia has changed. I have no object to gain in her development. I am richer than the richest of her n.o.bles, and there is no t.i.tle in Europe for which I would exchange my own. You see Russia has absolutely nothing to offer me. On the other hand, what would benefit Russia in Asia would ruin England, and England has given me and many of my kind a shelter, and has even held aloof from France. Of the two countries I would much prefer to aid England. If I had been the means of destroying her Asiatic empire ten years ago it would have been to me to-day a source of lasting regret. There, my friend, I have paid you the compliment of perfect frankness."
"If," Felix said slowly, "the price of your success at Teheran should be the breach of our covenants with France--what then? Remember that it is the country whose friendship is pleasing to us, not the government. You cannot seriously doubt but that an autocrat, such as the Czar, would prefer to extend his hand to an Emperor of France than to soil his fingers with the clasp of a tradesman!"
Mr. Sabin shook his head softly. "I have told you why I decline," he said, "but in my heart there are many other reasons. For one, I am no longer a young man. This last failure of mine has aged me. I have no heart for fresh adventures."
Felix sighed.
"My mission to you comes," he said, "at an unfortunate time. For the present, then, I accept defeat."
"The fault," Mr. Sabin murmured, "is in no way with you. My refusal was a thing predestined. The Czar himself could not move me."
The train was slowing a little. Felix looked out of the window.
"We are nearing Crewe," he said. "I shall alight then and return to London. You are for America, then?"
"Beyond doubt," Mr. Sabin declared.
Felix drew from his pocket a letter.
"If you will deliver this for me," he said, "you will do me a kindness, and you will make a pleasant acquaintance."
Mr. Sabin glanced at the imprescription. It was addressed to-- "Mrs. J. B. Peterson, "Lenox, "Ma.s.s., U.S.A."
"I will do so with pleasure," he remarked, slipping it into his dressing-case.
"And remember this," Felix remarked, glancing out at the platform along which they were gliding. "You are a marked man. Disguise is useless for you. Be ever on your guard. You and I have been enemies, but after all you are too great a man to fall by the hand of a German a.s.sa.s.sin. Farewell!"
"I will thank you for your caution and remember it," Mr. Sabin answered. "Farewell!"
Felix raised his hat, and Mr. Sabin returned the salute. The whistle sounded. Felix stepped out on to the platform.
"You will not forget the letter?" he asked "I will deliver it in person without fail," Mr. Sabin answered.
CHAPTER XLI.
MR. AND MRS. WATSON OF NEW YORK.
It was their third day out, and Mr. Sabin was enjoying the voyage very much indeed. The Calipha was a small boat sailing to Boston instead of New York, and contemptuously termed by the ocean-going public an old tub. She carried, consequently, only seven pa.s.sengers besides Mr. Sabin, and it had taken him but a very short time to decide that of those seven pa.s.sengers not one was interested in him or his affairs. He had got clear away, for the present at any rate, from all the complications and dangers which had followed upon the failure of his great scheme. Of course by this time the news of his departure and destination was known to every one whom his movements concerned. That was almost a matter of course, and realising even the impossibility of successful concealment, Mr. Sabin had made no attempt at any. He had given the name of Sabin to the steward, and had secured the deck"s cabin for his own use. He chatted every day with the captain, who treated him with respect, and in reply to a question from one of the stewards who was a Frenchman, he admitted that he was the Duc de Souspennier, and that he was travelling incognito only as a whim. He was distinctly popular with every one of the seven pa.s.sengers, who were a little doubtful how to address him, but whom he succeeded always in putting entirely at their ease. He entered, too, freely into the little routine of steamer life. He played shuffleboard for an hour or more every morning, and was absolutely invincible at the game; he brought his golf clubs on deck one evening after dinner, and explained the manner of their use to an admiring little circle of the seven pa.s.sengers, the captain, and doctor. He rigorously supported the pool each day, and he even took a hand at a mild game of poker one wet afternoon, when timidly invited to do so by Mr. Hiram Shedge, an oil merchant of Boston. He had in no way the deportment or manner of a man who had just pa.s.sed through a great crisis, nor would any one have gathered from his conversation or demeanour that he was the head of one of the greatest houses in Europe and a millionaire. The first time a shadow crossed his face was late one afternoon, when, coming on deck a little behind the others after lunch, he found them all leaning over the starboard bow, gazing intently at some object a little distance off, and at the same time became aware that the engines had been put to half-speed.
He was strolling towards the little group, when the captain, seeing him, beckoned him on to the bridge.
"Here"s something that will interest you, Mr. Sabin," he called out. "Won"t you step this way?"
Mr. Sabin mounted the iron steps carefully but with his eyes turned seawards; a large yacht of elegant shape and painted white from stern to bows was lying-to about half a mile off flying signals.
Mr. Sabin reached the bridge and stood by the captain"s side.
"A pleasure yacht," he remarked. "What does she want?"
"I shall know in a moment," the captain answered with his gla.s.s to his eye. "She flew a distress signal at first for us to stand by, so I suppose she"s in trouble. Ah! there it goes. "Mainshaft broken," she says."
"She doesn"t lie like it," Mr. Sabin remarked quietly.
The captain looked at him with a smile.
"You know a bit about yachting too," he said, "and, to tell you the truth, that"s just what I was thinking."
"Holmes."
"Yes, sir."
"Ask her what she wants us to do."
The signalman touched his hat, and the little row of flags ran fluttering up in the breeze.
"She signals herself the Mayflower, private yacht, owner Mr. James Watson of New York," he remarked. "She"s a beautiful boat."
Mr. Sabin, who had brought his own gla.s.ses, looked at her long and steadily.
"She"s not an American built boat, at any rate," he remarked.
An answering signal came fluttering back. The captain opened his book and read it.
"She"s going on under canvas," he said, "but she wants us to take her owner and his wife on board."
"Are you compelled to do so?" Mr. Sabin asked.
The captain laughed.
"Not exactly! I"m not expected to pick up pa.s.sengers in mid ocean."
"Then I shouldn"t do it," Mr. Sabin said. "If they are in a hurry the Alaska is due up to-day, isn"t she? and she"ll be in New York in three days, and the Baltimore must be close behind her. I should let them know that."
"Well," the captain answered, "I don"t want fresh pa.s.sengers bothering just now."
The flags were run up, and the replies came back as promptly. The captain shut up his gla.s.s with a bang.
"No getting out of them," he remarked to Mr. Sabin. "They reply that the lady is nervous and will not wait; they are coming on board at once--for fear I should go on, I suppose. They add that Mr. Watson is the largest American holder of Cunard stock and a director of the American Board, so have them we must--that"s pretty certain. I must see the purser."
He descended, and Mr. Sabin, following him, joined the little group of pa.s.sengers. They all stood together watching the long rowing boat which was coming swiftly towards them through the smooth sea. Mr. Sabin explained to them the messages which had pa.s.sed, and together they admired the disabled yacht.
Mr. Sabin touched the first mate on the arm as he pa.s.sed.
"Did you ever see a vessel like that, Johnson?" he remarked.
The man shook his head.
"Their engineer is a fool, sir!" he declared scornfully. "Nothing but my own eyes would make me believe there"s anything serious the matter with her shaft."
"I agree with you," Mr. Sabin said quietly.