A Maker of History Part 46

"_Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes!_" Spencer murmured.

Monsieur Louis smiled.

"My gift," he answered, "will not terrify you. You are a journalist. I offer to make the fortune of your paper. You shall be the first to announce an affair of the greatest international importance since the war between Russia and j.a.pan was declared. No, I will go further than that. It is the greatest event since Waterloo."

"_L'affaire Poynton_ strikes so deep?" Spencer remarked.

"So deep," the Baron answered. "It is the fools who grope their way into great places. So did the boy Poynton. You, my friend, shall be the one brilliant exception. You shall make yourself the king of journalists, and you shall be quoted down the century as having achieved the greatest journalistic feat of modern days."

Spencer turned his drawn, haggard face towards his visitor. A slight flush of color stained his cheek.

"You fascinate me," he said slowly. "I admit it. You have found the weak spot in my armor. Proceed! For whom do you speak?"

Monsieur Louis abandoned his somewhat lounging att.i.tude. He stood by Spencer's side, and, leaning down, whispered in his ear. Spencer's eyes grew bright.

"Monsieur Louis," he said, "you play at a great game."

The Baron shrugged his shoulders.

"Me!" he answered. "I am but a p.a.w.n. I do what I am told."

"To return for a moment to _l'affaire Poynton_," Spencer said. "I am in the humor to trust you. Have I then your a.s.surance that the boy and girl do not suffer?"

"Upon my own honor and the honor of the company to whom I belong," he answered with some show of dignity. "It is a pledge which I have never yet broken."

"I am a bribed man," Spencer answered.

Monsieur Louis threw away his second cigarette. He cast a look almost of admiration upon the man who still lay stretched upon the couch.

"You are the only Englishman I ever met, Monsieur Spencer," he said, "who was not pig-headed. You have the tenacity of your countrymen, but you have the genius to pick out the right thread from the tangle, to know truth when you meet it, even in unlikely places. I doff my hat to you, Monsieur Spencer. If you permit I will send my own physician to you. You will be yourself in a week."

"You know the antidote?" Spencer remarked grimly.

"Naturally! Accidents will happen. You wish that I should send him?"

"Without doubt," Spencer answered. "I am weary of this couch."

"You shall leave it in a week," Monsieur promised, as he left the room.

Spencer closed his eyes. Already he felt coming on the daily headache, which, with the terrible weakness, was a part of his symptoms. But there was no rest for him yet. Monsieur Louis had scarcely been gone five minutes when Duncombe arrived.

Duncombe had had no word of his friend's illness. He stood over his couch in shocked surprise.

"My dear fellow," he exclaimed. "I had no idea that you were ill. This is why I have not heard from you, then."

Spencer smiled as he held out his hand, and Duncombe, who seemed to catch some meaning in the upraised eyebrows of his friend, was shocked.

"You mean?" he exclaimed.

Spencer nodded.

"_L'affaire Poynton_" he said gently. "A very subtle dose of poison indeed, my friend. I shall not die, but I have had my little lesson.

Here the individual has little chance. We fight against forces that are too many for us. I told you so at the start."

"Yet I," Duncombe answered, "have not suffered."

"My friend," Spencer answered, "it is because I am the more dangerous."

"You have discovered something?" Duncombe exclaimed.

"I came near discovering a great deal," Spencer answered. "Perhaps it would have been better for my system if I had discovered a little less.

As it is I have finished with _l'affaire Poynton_ for the present. You see how very nearly _l'affaire Poynton_ finished me."

"It is not like you," Duncombe said thoughtfully, "to give anything up."

"We come face to face sometimes with unique experiences, which destroy precedent," Spencer answered. "This is one of them."

"And what," Duncombe asked, "do you advise me to do?"

"Always the same advice," Spencer answered. "Leave Paris to-day. Go straight back to Norfolk, read the newspapers, and await events."

"Well, I think that I shall do so," Duncombe answered slowly. "I have found out where Miss Poynton is, but she will not see me. I have made an enemy of my dearest friend, and I have, at any rate, interrupted your career and endangered your life. Yes, I will go back home."

"You may yet save your friend some--inconvenience," Spencer suggested.

"Try to persuade him to go back with you."

"He will not listen to me," Duncombe answered. "He has brought an English detective with him, and he is as obstinate as a mule. For myself I leave at nine o'clock."

"You are well advised, exceedingly well advised," Spencer said. "Mind I do not take the responsibility of sending you away without serious reasons. I honestly believe that Miss Poynton is safe, whatever may have happened to her brother, and I believe that you will serve her best by your temporary absence."

Duncombe stood for a moment wrapped in thought. The last few months had aged him strangely. The strenuous days and nights of anxious thought had left their mark in deep lines upon his face. He looked out of the window of Spencer's room, and his eyes saw little of the busy street below. He was alone once more with this strange, terrified girl upon the hillside, with the wind in their faces, and making wild havoc in her hair. He was with her in different moods in the little room behind his library, when the natural joy of her young life had for the moment rea.s.serted itself. He was with her at their parting. He saw half the fearful regret with which she had left his care and accepted the intervention of the Marquise. Stirring times these had been for a man of his quiet temperament, whom matters of sentiment and romance had pa.s.sed lightly by, and whose pa.s.sions had never before been touched by the finger of fire. And now he was going back to an empty life--a life at least empty of joy, save the hope of seeing her again. For good or for evil, the great thing had found its way into his life. His days of calm animal enjoyment were over. Sorrow or joy was to be his. He had pa.s.sed into the shadows of the complex life.

He remembered where he was at last, and turned to Spencer.

"About yourself, Spencer," he said. "Have you seen a doctor?"

"Yes. I am not seriously ill," his friend answered. "The worst is over now. And, Duncombe, it's hard for you to go, I know--but look here, I believe that you will be back in a month, and taking Miss Poynton to lunch _chez_ Ritz. I never felt so sure of it as I do to-day."

Duncombe remembered the answer to his note, and found it hard to share his friend's cheerfulness.

CHAPTER VIII

A POLITICAL INTERLUDE