Pimpernel and Rosemary Baroness Orczy (mobi reader TXT) 📖

“Is that a challenge?”

Number Ten had said this very quietly. He was in the act of lighting a cigarette when he spoke, and he finished lighting it, blew out the match, and threw it into the nearest ashtray before he glanced at Naniescu. Then he smiled, because Naniescu’s face expressed arrogance first, then bewilderment, and finally indecision.

“Is it a challenge?” he reiterated sardonically. “I don’t mind, you know, one way or the other. There are at least three governments⁠—neighbours of yours, by the way⁠—who will pay me ten thousand pounds apiece for certain services which they require, and which I can render them. But you have behaved like a knave and a fool, my friend, and it will amuse me to punish you. So listen to me! Unless you give me a cheque for the ten thousand pounds which you promised me, and which I can cash at your fusty old bank over the way this very afternoon, I guarantee you that Lady Tarkington’s articles will not be published in any English newspaper.”

He smoked on in silence for a little while longer, blowing rings of smoke through his pursed lips, and in the intervals laughing softly, mockingly to himself, or throwing an occasional glance of intelligence in the direction of Kervoisin, who apparently immersed in a book had taken no part in the conversation. Naniescu’s bewilderment had become ludicrous, and at one moment when he took his perfumed handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his streaming forehead, the face of his spy-in-chief became distorted with that look of ferocious cruelty which was so characteristic of him.

“I haven’t a great deal of time to spare,” Number Ten remarked drily, after a few minutes’ silence; “if you accept my challenge I start for London tonight.”

“You’ll never get there in time,” Naniescu rejoined, with an attempt at swagger.

Number Ten smiled. “Don’t you think so?” he asked simply.

“The frontier is closed⁠—”

“Would you rather risk it than pay me the ten thousand pounds?”

Naniescu appealed to his friend.

“De Kervoisin⁠—” he said, almost pitiably.

But M. de Kervoisin, with a shrug, indicated that this was no concern of his.

“M. de Kervoisin,” Number Ten said, still smiling, “knows my methods. During the war I had other and more dangerous frontiers to cross than this one, my friend⁠—and I never failed.”

In Naniescu’s puny mind, obviously a war was waging between greed and avarice. He was seeing his beautiful daydream vanishing into the intangible ether⁠—whence come all dreams⁠—and he was not prepared to take any risks. Those articles which a reliable courier was even now taking to London with all speed were the most precious things he, Naniescu, had ever possessed. They meant honour, security, money⁠—far more money than Number Ten was demanding with such outrageous impudence. And Naniescu was afraid of Number Ten⁠—afraid of his daring, his courage, his unscrupulous determination to carry through what he had set out to do.

Ten thousand pounds! It was a great deal, but it would come out of secret service funds, not out of Naniescu’s own pocket. There was only that slight tickling of one’s amour propre to subdue. The desire to get the better of Number Ten, to win this battle of wits against so crafty an opponent. But what was amour propre when weighed in the balance with the realisation of Naniescu’s wonderful daydreams?

Nevertheless he made one more effort at a bargain.

“If I pay you that ten thousand,” he said, with a savage oath, “what guarantee have I that the articles will be published?”

“None,” was Number Ten’s cool reply; “but if you don’t pay me the ten thousand, I guarantee that they will not be published.”

At which M. de Kervoisin put down his book and indulged in a good laugh.

“Take care, my friend,” he said to Number Ten, “our friend here is beginning to lose his temper, and you may find yourself under lock and key before he has done with you.”

“I wonder!” Number Ten retorted drily “It would mean raising hell in the English press, wouldn’t it? if a British subject⁠—what?”

He did not pursue the subject. Even Naniescu himself had put such a possibility out of his reckoning.

“All that our friend could do,” Number Ten went on, speaking over his shoulder to M. de Kervoisin, “would be to have me murdered, but he would find even that rather difficult. Ten thousand pounds of secret service money is considerably safer⁠—and cheaper in the end.”

Then at last Naniescu gave in. “Oh, have it your own way, curse you!” he exclaimed.

“The money now,” Number Ten said coolly, raising a warning finger. “You may as well send one of your clerks over to the bank for it. I prefer that to taking your cheque.”

Then he turned to Kervoisin, and picked up the book which the latter had thrown down on the table “Ah!” he remarked, with a total change of tone, “Marcel Proust’s latest. You are an epicure in literature, my friend.”

He fingered the book, seemingly as indifferent to what Naniescu was doing and saying, as if the whole matter of a ten thousand pound cheque did not concern him in the least.

The general had gone across to a desk which stood in the farther corner of the room. He had written out a cheque, rung the bell, and was now giving orders to a clerk to fetch the money from the Anglo-Romanian bank over the way.

On the whole he was not displeased with the transaction. The articles signed by Uno and published in the Times would redound to his credit, would bring him all that he had striven for all his life; and, after all, they would cost him nothing⁠—nothing at all.

Number Ten and de Kervoisin were discussing Marcel Proust; he, Naniescu, was savouring his daydreams once again; and presently when the clerk returned with a bundle of crisp English banknotes in his hand, Naniescu handed the money over to his spy-in-chief without a qualm, and certainly without regret.

“This being Monday,” Number Ten said, after he had stowed