Читать книгу Exit A Dictator - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 4

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From the moment of her boarding the Queen Anne at New York, Anna Prestnoff, who was best known to fame as a scene painter and dress designer to the Russian ballet, performances of which had been occupying the boards of a prominent New York theatre for the last two months, found herself exposed to the whole gamut of more or less courteous devices adopted by the travelling male of amorous proclivities towards making her acquaintance. Cosmopolitan though she was, she had ideas of her own on this subject and set herself sedulously to the task of proving to as many of the other sex as ventured in her direction how obnoxious a really agreeable girl can make herself when harried into a defensive frame of mind. The task, however, apart from being somewhat exhausting, had its disadvantages. A table alone in the saloon meant an uncomfortable and ill-served locality. Absence from the bar smoke room entailed lukewarm cocktails on deck, and Anna Prestnoff had never developed a taste for lukewarm cocktails. On the second morning of the voyage, she retired to the greater seclusion of the boat deck prepared to renew the contest, but this time the attack upon her solitude assumed a different 15 shape. It was an intrusion, of course, but of a more direct type. She heard the footsteps approaching and had proceeded with her reading unperturbed. No use, however. The footsteps had paused. She found herself addressed by name.

“You have chosen a pleasant corner, Anna Prestnoff. I had some difficulty in finding you.”

The voice seemed somehow familiar, but softer and more pleasant than her memory of it. She was taken by surprise and lowering her book she looked up. She drew a quick, startled little breath. It was surely the impossible that had happened. She threw aside her rug and made an attempt to rise to her feet. The newcomer, a tall, slim but powerfully built man of early middle-age, pushed her gently back in her place.

“But surely—” she began, the astonishment lingering in her eyes.

“You are quite right,” he interrupted, “but will you please do as I ask? Will you remember that I am a fellow-traveller upon the boat by chance and that my name is Mr. Alexander? You will allow me, perhaps, as a compatriot,” he went on, dragging a chair to her side and sitting down, “to have the great pleasure of cultivating your further acquaintance.”

“It will give me much happiness,” she acknowledged. “There are several things I should like to know which only you can tell me.”

“Well?”

“I read in the papers that you were in New York 16 for the purpose of launching an American edition of the European Review. Were you successful?”

“Quite. I have arranged for a simultaneous publication in New York and in London.”

“It was from you, then,” she went on, “that I received those mystifying instructions only a week ago.”

“It is the truth, but please forget it,” he begged. “I trust that your recall to London has not seriously interfered with your plans.”

The slight agitation of her manner had passed but something of the surprise still lingered in her beautiful eyes.

“I am glad to go back to London,” she confided. “My work in New York was unsatisfactory.”

“The ballet is an acquired taste for Anglo-Saxons,” he remarked.

“New York is scarcely an Anglo-Saxon city,” she reminded him, “but it certainly showed little appreciation of my work. Even Nikoli was a comparative failure there.”

“The success or failure of the season of ballet,” he observed calmly, “is a matter of slight importance. Its establishment there was not wholly for artistic reasons, as you know. Will you permit me?”

He drew a thin gold cigarette case from his pocket and offered it to her. She took out a cigarette, which she lit with his lighter.

“You will be happier in London,” he went on, 17 after a brief pause. “You will find yourself amidst more sympathetic surroundings.”

She smoked for a moment, obviously enjoying the fine quality of the tobacco. Then she turned towards him.

“It is not, of course, to place me in more sympathetic surroundings or for my happiness alone that I am being sent back to London,” she said.

“There are other considerations, beyond a doubt,” he admitted gravely. “They will develop in time.”

The girl was silent for several minutes, then she turned slightly in her chair, facing him more directly.

“So you are really Alexander?”

He drew a small morocco-leather case from his inside pocket, shook out a visiting-card and slipped it into the oblong space at the back of the chair. She leaned over and looked at it.

“Mr. Alexander,” she repeated. “Rather a curt sort of card, is it not? Not even an address.”

“Does that surprise you?” he asked. “For the last few years I have been a vagrant. That will not last forever.”

She sighed.

“It is bad for all of us,” she said. “I, too, would like a settled home. People are getting so tired of us. Outside the ballet we seem—our menkind especially—to have embraced all the dishonourable professions in the world. I do not mean you, of course,” 18 she went on hastily. “Your establishment of the European Review has been a great triumph. Some of your articles, too, have been a joy to us.”

“I am not a writer by profession,” he observed. “It is hard sometimes to express oneself.”

“You succeed in doing it,” she assured him. “A famous American statesman came to one of our evening parties at the studio only a week or so ago. We were talking about the Russian censorship—”

“We will not discuss these things in public, Anna Prestnoff,” he interrupted. “I have written only the truth.”

“Yes, but you have written it as no one else has done,” she persisted eagerly. “You have written it with moderation. If any of those who have had the opportunity—Kerensky, Leon Trotsky and many others—had exercised the same gift, our country would not be in the condition it is now.”

“Nevertheless,” he said, “the pen is not my weapon. I could serve my country more easily with my sword.”

“For a man with brains,” she declared, “that seems to me so senseless. All fighting is brutal and uncivilised. It is worse—it is illogical.”

“Illogical, I grant you,” he admitted. “But man will have become a bloodless creature when the time comes that he no longer wants to fight.”

“Will you explain this to me, then?” she begged. “The world has gradually come to recognise the fact that women are equal to men so far as regards 19 intelligence. Supposing this were to happen—that the political governments of the world fell into the hands of women—do you think then that there would be any more war? Do you think that women would find no other way to express themselves except by machine guns and bombing aeroplanes?”

“I am afraid that my imagination is not sufficiently elastic,” he admitted gravely enough, but with a twinkle in his eyes. “I cannot conceive such a situation as you suggest. In any case, we are working,” he went on, after a moment’s hesitation, “for the future of our own times. We are working to right the balance of the world without bloodshed.”

“Are you satisfied with your progress?” she asked calmly.

“We have so few means of knowing,” he pointed out, “how far our progress has gone. Would you like to make an expedition to Moscow and try to find out?”

She shuddered.

“I should like to but I should be afraid,” she confessed frankly.

The deck steward made a sudden appearance. He was breathless and his manner was urgent.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but would you be so kind as to go down to your cabin? You are wanted there at once.”

Alexander rose to his feet.

“Who is it that wants me?” he asked.

The man hesitated.

“It is your servant, sir, who insisted that you should be sent for,” he confided.

“You will excuse me?” Alexander begged, turning to the girl.

“Of course.”

She leaned forward in her chair to watch him as he hurried away. She was finding it hard to realise that this person with the deep, pleasant voice and easy manners, with whom she had been conversing during the last ten minutes, was indeed the shadowy, dramatic figure behind the curtain of her life since she had been enrolled one of the workers on the European Review. His movements had been shrouded all the while in so much mystery—it was, indeed, the first time that she had ever seen him face to face. Certain vague prejudices which she had once conceived were already almost entirely dissipated. He carried himself, she was forced to admit, as a man should. His head and shoulders were finely set and there was an air of restrained vigour about his movements which suggested strength of limb and body. She noticed that people whom he passed looked at him with respect, that the cabin steward who accosted him raised his cap and remained uncovered while they spoke for a few moments. Then he disappeared and she found herself reassembling her impressions of him with almost feverish energy.

Alexander’s first sensation as he entered his cabin was one of mild amusement. Likinski was seated bolt 21 upright upon the edge of the only easy chair. Towering over him stood Paul, who had very much the air of a bulldog guarding his captive.

“What has happened?” Alexander asked simply.

“I returned from the pressing room a few minutes ago,” his servant explained. “I found this person in possession here.”

“What were you doing in my cabin?” Alexander demanded, turning towards the intruder.

“Absolutely nothing,” was the prompt reply. “Your servant is mad, as most Cossacks are. I explained that a friend had asked me to visit him. I understood that the number of his cabin was twenty-seven and I came here. I was perhaps misinformed. While I was hesitating, your servant enters and he refuses to allow me to leave.”

“You permit me to speak, Monsieur?” Paul enquired.

“Certainly.”

“This gentleman says that he mistook the number of the cabin. For a man who had made such a mistake his behaviour was peculiar. When I came in he was examining the fastenings of the portholes.”

“What were you doing that for?” Alexander asked curiously.

“Tell me the reason yourself, if you can,” the man in the chair replied. “What interest could I have in the portholes of your stateroom? I simply raised myself up a little to look out, because I fancied I heard the fog signal.”

“The sun was shining,” Paul observed stolidly. “Furthermore, Monsieur, the drawer of your desk was open. It was closed when I left the room a few minutes before.”

“That is a foolish thing to say,” Likinski declared. “Am I likely to be a thief?”

“Very likely indeed, I should think,” Alexander remarked.

“You say that to me—a stranger!” Likinski cried angrily.

“You may be something of a stranger—although I know about you—but your companion is most certainly not,” was the calm rejoinder.

“Who, Nicolas Grodin?”

“A thoroughly bad lot,” Alexander observed.

“You are in a state of ignorance,” Likinski scoffed. “You talk of one about whom you know nothing. I will let you into a secret—if it does not appear upon to-day’s news. Nicolas Grodin is at the present moment the accredited Minister to the English Court.”

“You astonish me!” Alexander exclaimed. “To think that our government should have fallen as low as that!”

Likinski rose to his feet. He was still a little afraid, but he was also very angry. There were points of fire in his small eyes.

“I shall not stay here to be insulted myself or to hear my friend insulted,” he declared. “My presence in your cabin—Mr. Alexander—if that is what 23 you call yourself—was accidental. I shall now leave it.”

Paul glanced towards his master. Alexander, standing with his back to the door, was looking down at the intruder thoughtfully.

“I am wondering,” he confided, “whether I ought not to insist upon searching you first.”

Likinski buttoned up his coat.

“If you lay a finger upon me,” he threatened, “I shall go to the Commander and shall charge you with assault.”

Alexander’s smile was one of kindly indifference.

“That would be a very foolish thing to do,” he said. “See that he remains where he is, Paul, for a moment.”

He strolled across to the desk, looked at the contents of the open drawer and made a cursory examination of several of the others. He picked up a pocket-book and glanced through it. Then he swung round.

“Nothing missing here,” he admitted. “You were quite right, Paul, to send for me. You can go now, Likinski, only listen. Do not make this mistake again. I do not like strangers in my cabin.”

Likinski seemed on the point of an outburst, but the open door was too much for him. He made a rapid and undignified exit. Paul watched him with an air of dissatisfaction. His master remained a little puzzled.

“You did quite right to send for me, Paul,” he repeated, “but I cannot think what on earth the fellow was after. He must know that I should never be likely to leave any papers of importance lying about.”

“He is a bad man,” the servant said simply. “I do not believe that he found his way here by accident, any more than I believe that England would accept his master as a Minister.”

“His Excellency Nicolas Grodin,” Alexander murmured with a faint smile. “It does not sound right, Paul. I almost wish I had searched the fellow.”

Along the corridor-way, Likinski, hurrying to the refuge of his cabin, was busy mopping the moisture from his forehead.