Читать книгу Gabriel Samara, Peacemaker - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 11

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Miss Sadie Loyes set down the telephone receiver upon the instrument with a little bang. She was obviously annoyed.

"Miss Borans," she announced sharply, "eleven hundred and eighty wants you again. Keep a record of your time."

Catherine rose to her feet and placed the cover on her machine. Miss Loyes watched her with critical eyes.

"Crazy about you, seemingly," she continued. "They're making such a fuss about him in the papers this morning, I thought I'd go up myself for an hour or so. Knows his own mind, anyhow—you or nobody. What kind of work is it?"

"Not work you'd enjoy very much, I think, Miss Loyes," Catherine replied, smiling faintly as she thought of the previous morning, "correspondence and documents and that sort of thing. Yesterday afternoon Mr. Bromley Pride interviewed him for the New York Comet. He didn't get much of a story, though."

"These foreigners leave me cold," the manageress declared. "What we Americans make such a fuss about them for I don't know. They just come over here for what they can get. One of the papers this morning said that this Mr. Samara has fixed up a loan with the President of something like two hundred millions. Keep your time card carefully, Miss Borans. There's one thing about these Russians, they aren't mean!"

Catherine descended the stairs into the hall and made leisurely progress towards the lift. On the way the fancy seized her to call in at the florist's shop and buy a single dark red rose which she pulled through the waistband of her dress. The elevator man, who had scarcely noticed her before, watched her disappearing figure with undisguised admiration.

"She sure is some girl, that!" he remarked to one of the messenger boys, as he stepped back into the elevator.

The young lady seated behind the desk at the entrance to the corridor wished her good morning with a faint air of surprise. She called to her associate at the other end of the place and motioned after Catherine.

"Did you see that pale-faced ninny from the typing room, all dolled out, this morning?" she demanded. "She's got a beau all right. I never noticed that she was so stylish."

It was a very different sitting room which Catherine presently entered. There were half a dozen men present and conversation was a little vehement. At her entrance it subsided. Samara motioned her to a chair at the smaller table and proceeded to dismiss his callers.

"I agree," he said. "It seems cowardly but perhaps you are right. At one o'clock Carloss, and at three o'clock the bank president. Louden can make all the arrangements. He had better bring an automobile here and cable Cherbourg."

They drifted away, one by one. Samara himself escorting them through the little hall to the door. Presently he returned and threw himself into an easy-chair.

"Trouble at home, here, and everywhere," he remarked grimly. "I've got to hurry home."

"About your demilitarisation scheme?" she enquired.

"Half the unrest is owing to German influence," he answered, with a nod. "We've had so many commitments to her in the past that she's grown to look upon these armies as her own. Our people over here are quite right, though. I must get back at once and make a tour through the military district. In the meantime, I am going to cable over a proclamation. Ready?"

"Quite," she answered.

He dictated rapidly for half an hour or more. As soon as he had finished he went to a cupboard in which was an array of bottles, mixed himself a drink and tossed it off. Then he sat in his easy-chair with his hands in his pockets and a frown upon his forehead, while she gathered up the loose pages of her work.

"Tell me," he asked abruptly, "what did your friends think of me last night?"

"They were surprised," she admitted.

"Favourably or unfavourably?"

"On the whole favourably. Your offer to them all has made a great stir in their quiet lives."

"It was a serious one," he declared, rising to his feet and pacing the room. "There is no reason why they shouldn't come back. I have nothing against the Monarchists so long as they accept the situation and desist from plots. The people against whom I wage war to the death are the anarchists. They are a waning force but I have not done with them yet. I am a humane man but I would kill an anarchist as I would a fly, because of the poison they carry with them."

She looked at him thoughtfully, but she made no remark. Presently he stopped in front of her chair.

"Don't you agree with me—I mean about your people?" he demanded. "Don't you think I was right to ask them to come back? They are, after all, Russian citizens."

"I think you were right," she replied, "with one exception."

"One exception?" he repeated.

"Nicholas Imanoff. If you allow him to return, I don't think I should have him in the army. You know what the Russian peasant soldier is. Communism is a meaningless cry to him, although he may shout for it if he is bidden. God and the Tzar are still in his blood."

"You are giving me advice against your own people!" he exclaimed suddenly.

The faintest tinge of colour stole for a moment under the creamy pallor of her cheeks. The same idea had flashed in upon her.

"I am tired of plots and rebellions," she explained. "Changes of government should be worked out by the will of the people. If the people call for a Tzar—well, there is Nicholas. But if he is once in the army, there will be plots. It isn't for our own good. I should like to see the monarchy reëstablished, but I should like to see it reëstablished by orthodox means."

"You tell me that Alexandrina of Kossas is your patroness," he said. "Does that mean that you too are an aristocrat?"

"By inclination," she confessed. "You must remember that it is not only the aristocracy who would support monarchy. I am one of those who consider it the sanest form of government. Would you like me to do anything with this proclamation?"

He took the sheets from her and glanced them through, made a few alterations in pencil, and laid them down again. Afterwards he resumed his restless perambulation of the room. She leaned back in her chair and waited. Samara was evidently disturbed. Occasionally he muttered to himself. Once he stood for quite five minutes gazing out of the window, down into the windy, sunlit streets.

"I am sailing this afternoon, Miss Borans," he announced, suddenly turning round. "My people are all emphatic and they are right. There is danger here and trouble to face at home."

She did not attempt to conceal her interest.

"I read your interview in the New York Comet, this morning," she said, "but after all it told us very little. As the General was saying last night, you are still outside the Pact of Nations. You can demobilise the whole of these first million men and still remain, on paper at any rate, the greatest military power in Europe."

"I could," he assented. "But that is not my intention. I want my Russian people back on the land instead of behind the guns, and I'm going to have them there. That's all I can say. Later on I have a scheme of my own for a citizen army—the only sort of army any country ought to have. Miss Borans, will you go back to Russia with me?"

"Will I do what?" she asked, looking at him intently.

"Precisely what I have asked," he persisted. "What relatives have you here?"

"A sort of aunt," she replied, "and a second cousin."

"Good! You work now for the management of this hotel. Work for me instead. I need a secretary like you. If your friends accept my offer, you'll have company over there. You won't clash with Andrew. He has his own line of work."

She shook her head.

"I could not work for you, Mr. Samara," she said.

"Why not?" he demanded roughly. "You are a Russian patriot. So am I."

"Our ideas of patriotism might not be the same," she pointed out. "If there were a movement in favour of the reëstablishment of the monarchy in Russia, for instance, I should join it."

"Join it and welcome," he answered. "I'm not at all sure that you would, though, if you were on the spot. Russia to-day is leaping onward towards prosperity. I can prove that to you. What do you want a monarchy back for? Not for the sake of the Russian people. They'd be no better off. Who are you for, Miss Borans—the people or one particular class?"

"That one particular class is a section of the people," she reminded him.

"An infinitesimal one," he scoffed. "Majorities count. You must work for the good of the greatest number."

"All the same," she said, "I am not disposed to be your secretary."

His face darkened almost into a scowl.

"Don't be absurd!" he protested angrily. "It's a good offer. You can name your own salary in reason. You would be able to live in your native country instead of being an exile."

She shook her head.

"It is an impossibility," she assured him.

He glared at her for a moment furiously. Then, without further reference to it, he abandoned the subject.

"Take down these letters," he directed. "Take copies but be sure you give them to me."

"I am quite ready," she murmured.

He dictated for an hour. When he had finished, he read the letters she handed him with almost meticulous care, signed them and watched her as she placed them in their envelopes. Then he took the copies, looked them through and locked them up in a despatch box.

"How is Mr. Andrew Kroupki this morning?" she enquired.

"Better," he answered shortly. "He will not be able to travel with me, though. It is most annoying."

She glanced at the clock.

"What time does your boat sail?" she asked.

"Eight o'clock," he told her, "but I am going on board at six. It seems that although the police released our friend of yesterday morning, a hint or two of what he was after got about. I'm practically being smuggled out of the country."

"You have appointments at one o'clock and three," she reminded him. "Is there anything more that I can do for you before I leave?"

"There is only one thing you could do for me, and you won't do it," he growled. "I'm not a woman's man and I never learned how to talk to them, but you're the sort of human being it does one good to work with. I believe in you. You could help me."

"There are many others who could do that," she assured him.

"I don't meet them," he answered. "My biographers have written a lot of nonsense about me. Because I have swept clean the roads of life and driven the masses along the appointed way, they talk about my magnetism, my intense sympathy with human beings. It's all rubbish! I have no sympathy. Men and women are mostly puppets to me and life is a chess-board. If I could find some one who would teach me tolerance, some one whom I could trust, for whom I could feel human things, I could accomplish greater deeds than I have ever accomplished yet. There are times when I am frightened of my own materialism. I have thought all my life universally, in composite blocks. The world is becoming like a doll's house to me. I have a fancy that you might be able to change this. Will you come and try?"

Again she shook her head. "It is an impossibility," she repeated.

"That ends it, then!" he pronounced abruptly. "Tell your people to send an account for the typing in to the hotel. The Embassy are arranging to pay my bill after my departure. All the evening papers are announcing that I leave on Saturday. You will perhaps consider what I have told you concerning my movements as confidential."

"I will remember," she promised.

She rose to her feet. He glowered across the room at her.

"Some day," he concluded, "you may see that you've wasted a great opportunity. No woman ever had a greater. You've read of me and my work but you don't know. When I crushed Bolshevism, the heart and soul of Russia began to beat again. The work's only begun. You and your little monarchist plots! Why don't you lift your head and see the greater things? You could help."

"I am very sorry," she sighed, as she turned away.

He heard the door close. Then he crossed the room towards the cupboard. Help in his task from any human being seemed to be the one thing in life always denied him.