The Vultures Part 20

Cartoner rode into our midst to-night."

"Cartoner?" repeated the prince.

"Yes. He rang the bell, and when the door was opened--we were expecting some one else--he led his horse into our midst, with a loose shoe."

"Who saw him?" asked the prince.

"Every one."

"Kosmaroff?"

"Yes. And if I had not been there it would have been all up with Cartoner. You know what Kosmaroff is. It was a very near thing."

"That would have been a mistake," said the prince, reflectively. "It was the mistake they made last time. It has never paid yet to take life in driblets."

"That is what I told Kosmaroff afterwards, when Cartoner had gone. It was evident that it could only have been an accident. Cartoner could not have known. To do a thing like that, he must have known all--or nothing."

"He could not have known all," said the prince. "That is an impossibility."

"Then he must have known nothing," put in Wanda, with a laugh, which at one stroke robbed the matter of much of its importance.

"I do not know how much he perceived when he was in--as to his own danger, I mean--for he has an excellent nerve, and was steady; steadier than I was. But he knows that there was something wrong," said Martin, wiping the dust from his face with his pocket-handkerchief. His hand shook a little, as if he had ridden hard, or had been badly frightened.

"We had a bad half-hour after he left, especially with Kosmaroff. The man is only half-tamed, that is the truth of it."

"That is more to his own danger than to any one else's," put in Wanda, again. She spoke lightly, and seemed quite determined to make as little of the incident as possible.

"Then how do matters stand?" inquired the prince.

"It comes to this," answered Martin, "that Poland is not big enough to hold both Kosmaroff and Cartoner. Cartoner must go. He must be told to go, or else----"

Wanda had taken up her work again. As she looked at it attentively, the color slowly faded from her face.

"Or else--what?" she inquired.

Martin shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, Kosmaroff is not a man to stick at trifles."

"You mean," said Wanda, who would have things plainly, "that he would a.s.sa.s.sinate him?"

Wanda glanced at her father. She knew that men hard pressed are no sticklers. She knew the story of the last insurrection, and of the wholesale a.s.sa.s.sination, abetted and encouraged by the anonymous national government of which the members remain to this day unknown. The prince made an indifferent gesture of the hand.

"We cannot go into those small matters. We are playing a bigger game that that. It has always been agreed that no individual life must be allowed to stand in the way of success."

"It is upon that principle that Kosmaroff argues," said Martin, uneasily.

"Precisely; and as I was not present when this happened--as it is, moreover, not my department--I cannot, personally, act in the matter."

"Kosmaroff will obey n.o.body else."

"Then warn Cartoner," the prince said, in a final voice. His had always been the final word. He would say to one, go; and to another, come.

"I cannot do it," said Martin, looking at Wanda. "You know my position--how I am watched."

"There is only one person in Warsaw who can do it," said Wanda--"Paul Deulin."

"Deulin could do it," said the prince, thoughtfully. "But I never talk to Deulin of these matters. Politics are a forbidden subject between us."

"Then I will go and see Monsieur Deulin the first thing to-morrow morning," said Wanda, quietly.

"You?" asked her father. And Martin looked at her in silent surprise.

The old prince's eyes flashed suddenly.

"Remember," he said, "that you run the risk of making people talk of you. They may talk of us--of Martin and me--the world has talked of the Bukatys for some centuries--but never of their women."

"They will not talk of me," returned Wanda, composedly. "I will see to that. A word to Mr. Cartoner will be enough. I understood him to say that he was not going to stay long in Warsaw."

The prince had acquired the habit of leaving many things to Wanda. He knew that she was wiser than Martin, and in some ways more capable.

"Well," he said, rising. "I take no hand in it. It is very late. Let us go to bed."

He paused half-way towards the door.

"There is one thing," he said, "which we should be wise to recollect--that whatever Cartoner may know or may not know will go no farther. He is a diplomatist. It is his business to know everything and to say nothing."

"Then, by Heaven, he knows his business!" cried Martin, with his reckless laugh.

There are three entrances to the Hotel de l'Europe, two beneath the great archway on the Faubourg, where the carriages pa.s.s through into the court-yard--where Hermani was a.s.sa.s.sinated--where the people carried in the bodies of those historic five, whose mutilated corpses were photographed and hawked all through eastern Europe. The third is a side door, used more generally by habitues of the restaurant. It was to this third door that Wanda drove the next morning. She knew the porter there.

He was in those days a man with a history and Wanda was not ignorant of it.

"Miss Cahere--the American lady?" she said. And the porter gave her the number of Netty's room. He was too busy a man to offer to escort her thither.

Wanda mounted the stairs along the huge corridor. She pa.s.sed Netty's room, and ascended to the second story. All fell out as she had wished.

At the head of the second staircase there is a little gla.s.s-part.i.tioned room, where the servants sit when they are unemployed. In this room, reading a French newspaper, she found Paul Deulin's servant, a well-trained person. And a well-trained French servant is the best servant in the world. He took it for granted that Wanda had come to see his master, and led the way to the s.p.a.cious drawing-room occupied by Deulin, who always travelled _en prince_.

"I am given for my expenses more money than I can spend," he said, in defence of his extravagant habits, "and the only people to whom I want to give it are those who will not accept it."

Deulin was not in the room, but he came in almost as soon as Wanda had found a chair. She was looking at a book, and did not catch the flash of surprise in his eyes.

"Did Jean show you in?" he said.

"Yes."

"That is all right. He will keep everybody else out. And he will lie. It would not do, you know, for you to be talked about. We all have enemies, Wanda. Even plain people have enemies."

Wanda waited for him to ask her why she had come.

"Yes," he said, glancing at her and drawing a chair up to the table near which she was sitting. "Yes! What is the matter?"