The Sins of Severac Bablon Part 59

The gentleman who had admitted Sheffield had left the apartment almost immediately afterwards. Now he returned, and fastened a pin in the detective's tie.

"By way of apology for spoiling your case, Sheffield!" he said.

What Sheffield said or did at that moment he could never afterwards remember. A faint recollection he had of muttering something about "Severac Bablon----!"

"Ss.h.!.+" Mr. Belford had replied. "There is no such person!"

It was at the moment of his leave-taking that his eyes were drawn to an ash-tray upon the big table. A long tongue of bluish-grey smoke licked the air, coiling sinuously upward from amid cigar ends and ashes. It seemingly possessed a peculiar and pungent perfume.

And it proceeded from the smouldering fragment of a yellow cigarette.

When Inspector Sheffield fully recovered his habitual composure and presence of mind, he found himself proceeding along Piccadilly. War was in the breeze; War was on all the placards. Would-be warriors looked out from every club window. "Rule, Britannia" rang out from every street organ.

Then came running a hoa.r.s.e newsboy, ap.r.o.ned with a purple contents-bill, a bundle of _Gleaners_ under his arm. His stock was becoming depleted at record speed. He could scarce pa.s.s the sheets and grab the halfpence rapidly enough.

For where all else spoke of war, his bill read and his blatant voice proclaimed:

"PEACE! _Official!_"

Again the power of the Seal had been exercised in the interests of the many, although popularly it was believed, and maintained, that Britain's huge, efficient, and ever-growing air-fleet contributed not a little to this peaceful conclusion.

The _Gleaner_ a.s.sured its many readers that such was indeed the case. To what extent the _Gleaner_ spoke truly, and to what extent its statements were inspired, you are as well equipped to judge as I.

And unless some future day shall free my pen, I have little more to tell you of Severac Bablon. Officially, as the Holder of the Seal, his work, at any rate for the time, in England was done. Some day, Sheard may carry his history farther, and he would probably begin where I leave off.

This, then, will be at a certain pier-head, on a summer's day, and at a time when, far out near the sky-line, grey shapes crept southward--battles.h.i.+ps--the flying squadron which thirty-six hours earlier had proceeded to a neighbour's water-gate to demonstrate that the command of the seas had not changed hands since the days of Nelson.

The squadron was returning to home waters. It was a concrete message of peace, expressed in terms of war.

Nearer to the sh.o.r.e, indeed at no great distance from the pier-head, lay a white yacht, under steam. A launch left her side, swung around her stern, and headed for the pier.

In a lower gallery, shut off from the public promenades, where thousands of curious holiday-makers jostled one another for a sight of the great yacht, or for a glimpse of those about to join her, a tall man leaned upon the wooden rail and looked out to sea. A girl in while drill, whose pretty face was so pale that fas.h.i.+onable New York might have failed to recognise Zoe Oppner, the millionaire's daughter, stood beside him.

"Though I have been wrong," he said slowly, "in much that I have done, even you will agree that I have been right in this."

He waved his hand towards the fast disappearing squadron.

"Even I?" said Zoe sharply.

"Even you. For only you have shown me my errors."

"You admit, then, that your----!"

"Robberies?"

"Not that, of course! But your----"

"Outrages?"

"I did not mean that either. The means you have adopted have often been violent, though the end always was good. But no really useful reform can be brought about in such a way, I am sure."

The man turned his face and fixed his luminous eyes upon hers.

"It may be so," he said; "but even now I see no other way."

Zoe pointed to the almost invisible battles.h.i.+ps.

"Ah!" continued Severac Bablon, "that was a problem of a different kind.

In every civilised land there is a power above the throne. Do you think that, unaided, Prussia ever could have conquered gallant France? The people who owe allegiance to the German Emperor are a great people, but, in such an undertaking as war, without the aid of that people who owe allegiance to _me_, they are helpless as a group of children! Had I been in 1870 what I am to-day, the Prussian arms had never been carried into Paris!"

"You mean that a nation, to carry on a war, requires an enormous sum of money?"

"Which can only be obtained from certain sources."

"From the Jews?"

"In part, at least. The finance of Europe is controlled by a group of Jewish houses."

"But they are not all----"

"Amenable to my orders? True. But the outrages with which you reproach me have served to show that when my orders are disobeyed I have power to enforce them! Where I am not respected I am feared. I refused my consent to the loan by aid of which Great Britain's enemies had designed to prosecute a war against her. None of those theatrical displays with which sometimes I have impressed the errant vulgar were necessary. The greatest name in European finance was refused to the transaction--and the Great War died in the hour of its birth!"

His eyes gleamed with almost fanatic ardour.

"For this will be forgotten all my errors, and forgiven all my sins!"

"I am sure of that," said Zoe earnestly. "But--whatever you came to do----"

"I have not done--you would say? Only in part. Where I made my home in London, you have seen a curtained recess. It held the Emblem of my temporal power."

He moved his hand, and the sunlight struck green beams from the bezel of the strange ring upon his finger. Zoe glanced at it with something that was almost like fear.

"This," he said, replying, as was his uncanny custom to an unspoken question, "is but the sign whereby I may be known for the holder of that other Emblem. My house is empty now; the Emblem returns to the land where it was fas.h.i.+oned."

"You are abandoning your projects--your mission? Why?"

"Perhaps because the sword is too heavy for the wielder. Perhaps because I am only a man--and lonely."

The launch touched the pier, below them.

"You are the most loyal friend I have made in England--in Europe--in the world," said Severac Bablon. "Good-bye."

Zoe was very pale.

"Do you mean--for--always?"

"When you have said 'Good-bye' to me I have nothing else to stay for."