The Great Prince Shan written by E. Phillips Oppenheim
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E. Phillips Oppenheim >> The Great Prince Shan
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15 THE GREAT PRINCE SHAN
by
E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM
1922
CHAPTER I
"A club for diplomats and gentlemen," Prince Karschoff remarked, looking
lazily through a little cloud of tobacco smoke around the spacious but
almost deserted card room. "The classification seems comprehensive
enough, yet it seems impossible to get even a decent rubber of bridge."
Sir Daniel Harker, a many years retired plenipotentiary to one of the
smaller Powers, shrugged his shoulders.
"Personally, I have come to the conclusion," he declared, "that the
_raison d'etre_ for the club seems to be passing. There is no diplomacy,
nowadays, and every man who pays his taxes is a gentleman. Kingley, you
are the youngest. Ransack the club and find a fourth."
The Honourable Nigel Kingley smiled lazily from the depths of his
easy-chair. He was a young Englishman of normal type, long-limbed,
clean-shaven, with good features, a humorous mouth and keen grey eyes.
"In actual years," he admitted, "I may have the advantage of you two,
but so far as regards the qualities of youth, Karschoff is the youngest
man here. Besides, no one could refuse him anything."
"It is a subterfuge," the Prince objected, "but if I must go, I will go
presently. We will wait five minutes, in case Providence should be kind
to us."
The three men relapsed into silence. They were seated in a comfortable
recess of the card room of the St. Philip's Club. The atmosphere of the
apartment seemed redolent with suggestions of faded splendour. There was
a faint perfume of Russian calf from the many rows of musty volumes
which still filled the stately bookcases. The oil paintings which hung
upon the walls belonged to a remote period. In a distant corner, four
other men were playing bridge, speechless and almost motionless, the
white faces of two of them like cameos under the electric light and
against the dark walls. There was no sound except the soft patter of the
cards and the subdued movements of a servant preparing another bridge
table by the side of the three men. Then the door of the room was
quietly opened and closed. A man of youthful middle-age, carefully
dressed, with a large, clean-shaven face, blue eyes, and fair hair
sprinkled with grey, came towards them. He was well set up, almost
anxiously ingratiating in manner.
"You see now what Providence has sent," Sir Daniel Harker observed under
his breath.
"It is enough to make an atheist of one, this!" the Prince muttered.
"Any bridge?" the newcomer enquired, seating himself at the table and
shuffling one of the packs of cards.
The three men rose to their feet with varying degrees of unwillingness.
"Immelan is too good for us," Sir Daniel grumbled. "He always wins."
"I am lucky," the newcomer admitted, "but I may be your partner; in
which case, you too will win."
"If you are my partner," the Prince declared, "I shall play for five
pounds a hundred. I desire to gamble. London is beginning to weary me."
"Mr. Kingley is a better player, though not so lucky," Immelan
acknowledged, with a little bow.
"Never believe it, with all due respect to our young friend here," Sir
Daniel replied, as he cut a card. "Kingley plays like a man with brain
but without subtlety. In a duel between you two, I would back Immelan
every time."
Kingley took his place at the table with a little gesture of
resignation. He looked across the table to where Immelan sat displaying
the card which he had just cut. The eyes of the two men met. A few
seconds of somewhat significant silence followed. Then Immelan gathered
up the cards.
"I have the utmost respect for Mr. Kingley as an adversary," he said.
The latter bowed a little ironically.
"May you always preserve that sentiment! To-day, chance seems to have
made us partners. Your deal, Mr. Immelan."
"What stakes?" the Prince enquired, settling himself down in his chair.
"They are for you to name," Immelan declared.
The Prince laughed shortly.
"I believe you are as great a gambler at heart as I am," he observed.
"With Mr. Kingley for my partner, and the game one of skill," was the
courteous reply, "I do not need to limit my stakes."
A servant crossed the room, bringing a note upon a tray. He presented it
to Kingley, who opened and read it through without change of
countenance. When he had finished it, however, he laid his cards face
downwards upon the table.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I owe you my most profound apologies. I am called
away at once on a matter of urgent business."
"But this is most annoying," the Prince declared irritably.
"Here comes my saviour," Kingley remarked, as another man entered the
card room. "Henderson will take my place. Glad I haven't to break you
up, after all. Henderson, will you play a rubber?"
The newcomer assented. Nigel Kingley made his adieux and crossed the
room. Immelan watched him curiously.
"What is our friend Kingley's profession?" he enquired.
"He has no profession," Sir Daniel replied. "He has never come into
touch with the sordid needs of these money-grubbing days. He is the
nephew and heir of the Earl of Dorminster."
Immelan looked away from the retreating figure.
"Lord Dorminster," he murmured. "The same Lord Dorminster who was in the
Government many years ago?"
"He was Foreign Secretary when I was Governor of Jamaica," Sir Daniel
answered. "A very brilliant man he was in those days."
Immelan nodded thoughtfully.
"I remember," he said.
Nigel Kingley, on leaving the St. Philip's Club, was driven at once, in
the automobile which he found awaiting him, to a large corner house in
Belgrave Square, which he entered with the air of an habitue. The
waiting major-domo took him at once in charge and piloted him across the
hall.
"His lordship is very much occupied, Mr. Nigel," he announced. "He is
not seeing any other callers. He left word, however, that you were to be
shown in the moment you arrived."
"His lordship is quite well, I hope?"
"Well in health, sir, but worried, and I don't wonder at it," the man
replied, speaking with the respectful freedom of an old servant. "I
never thought I'd live to see such times as these."
A man in the early sixties, still good-looking, notwithstanding a
somewhat worn expression, looked up from his seat at the library table
on Kingley's entrance. He nodded, but waited until the door was closed
behind the retreating servant before he spoke.
"Good of you to come, Nigel," he said. "Bring your chair up here."
"Bad news?" the newcomer enquired.
"Damnable!"
There was a brief silence, during which Nigel, knowing his uncle's
humours, leaned back in his chair and waited. Upon the table was a
little pile of closely written manuscript, and by their side several
black-bound code books, upon which the "F.O.Private" still remained,
though almost obliterated with time. Lord Dorminster's occupation was
apparent. He was decoding a message of unusual length. Presently he
turned away from the table, however, and faced his nephew. His hands
travelled to his waistcoat pocket. He drew out a cigarette from a thin
gold case, lit it and began to smoke. Then he crossed his legs and
leaned a little farther back in his chair.
"Nigel," he said, "we are living in strange times."
"No one denies that, sir," was the grave assent.
Lord Dorminster glanced at the calendar which stood upon the desk.
"To-day," he continued, "is the twenty-third day of March, nineteen
hundred and thirty-four. Fifteen years ago that terrible Peace Treaty
was signed. Since then you know what the history of our country has
been. I am not blowing my own trumpet when I say that nearly every man
with true political insight has been cast adrift. At the present moment
the country is in the hands of a body of highly respectable and
well-meaning men who, as a parish council, might conduct the affairs of
Dorminster Town with unqualified success. As statesmen they do not
exist. It seems to me, Nigel, that you and I are going to see in reality
that spectre which terrified the world twenty years ago. We are going to
see the breaking up of a mighty empire."
"Tell me what has happened or is going to happen," Nigel begged.
"Well, for one thing," his uncle replied, "the Emperor of the East is
preparing for a visit to Europe. He will be here probably next month.
You know whom I mean, of course?"
"Prince Shan!" Nigel exclaimed.
"Prince Shan of China," Lord Dorminster assented. "His coming links up
many things which had been puzzling me. I tell you, Nigel, what happens
during Prince Shan's visit will probably decide the destinies of this
country, and yet I wouldn't mind betting you a thousand to one that
there isn't a single official of the Government who has the slightest
idea as to why he is coming, or that he is coming at all."
"Do you know?" Nigel asked.
"I can only surmise. Let us leave Prince Shan for the moment, Nigel. Now
listen. You go about a great deal. What do people say about
me--honestly, I mean? Speak with your face to the light."
"They call you a faddist and a scaremonger," Nigel confessed, "yet there
are one or two, especially at the St. Philip's Club, diplomatists and
ambassadors whose place in the world has passed away, who think and
believe differently. You know, sir, that I am amongst them."
Lord Dorminster nodded kindly.
"Well," he said, "I fancy I am about to prove myself. Seven years ago,
it was," he went on reminiscently, "when the new National Party came
into supreme power. You know one of their first battle cries--'Down with
all secret treaties! Down with all secret diplomacy! Let nothing exist
but an honest commercial understanding between the different countries
of the world!' How Germany and Russia howled with joy! In place of an
English statesman with his country's broad interests at heart, we have
in Berlin and Petrograd half a dozen representatives of the great
industries, whose object, in their own words, is, I believe, to develop
friendly commercialism and a feeling of brotherhood between the nations.
Not only our ambassadors but our secret service were swept clean out of
existence. I remember going to Broadley, the day he was appointed
Foreign Minister, and I asked him a simple question. I asked him whether
he did not consider it his duty to keep his finger upon the pulses of
the other great nations, however friendly they might seem, to keep
himself assured that all these expressions of good will were honourable,
and that in the heart of the German nation that great craving for
revenge which is the natural heritage of the present generation had
really become dissipated. Broadley smiled at me. 'Lord Dorminster,' he
said, 'the chief cause of wars in the past has been suspicion. We look
upon espionage as a disgraceful practice. It is the people of Germany
with whom we are in touch now, not a military oligarchy, and the people
of Germany no more desire war than we do. Besides, there is the League
of Nations.' Those were Broadley's views then, and they are his views
to-day. You know what I did?"
Nigel assented cautiously.
"I suppose it is an open secret amongst a few of us," he observed. "You
have been running an unofficial secret service of your own."
"Precisely! I have had a few agents at work for over a year, and when I
have finished decoding this last dispatch, I shall have evidence which
will prove beyond a doubt that we are on the threshold of terrible
events. The worst of it is--well, we have been found out."
"What do you mean?" Nigel asked quickly.
His uncle's sensitive lips quivered.
"You knew Sidwell?"
"Quite well."
"Sidwell was found stabbed to the heart in a cafe in Petrograd, three
weeks ago," Lord Dorminster announced. "An official report of the
enquiry into his death informs his relatives that his death was due to a
quarrel with some Russian sailors over one of the women of the quarter
where he was found."
"Horrible!" Nigel muttered.
"Sidwell was one of those unnatural people, as you know," Lord
Dorminster went on, "who never touched wine or spirits and who hated
women. To continue. Atcheson was a friend of yours, wasn't he?"
"Of course! He was at Eton with me. It was I who first brought him here
to dine. Don't tell me that anything has happened to Jim Atcheson!"
"This dispatch is from him," Lord Dorminster replied, indicating the
pile of manuscript upon the table,--"a dispatch which came into my hands
in a most marvellous fashion. He died last week in a nursing home
in--well, let us say a foreign capital. The professor in charge of the
hospital sends a long report as to the unhappy disease from which he
suffered. As a matter of fact, he was poisoned."
Nigel Kingley had been a soldier in his youth and he was a brave man.
Nevertheless, the horror of these things struck a cold chill to his
heart. He seemed suddenly to be looking into the faces of spectres, to
hear the birth of the winds of destruction.
"That is all I have to say to you for the moment," his uncle concluded
gravely. "In an hour I shall have finished decoding this dispatch, and I
propose then to take you into my entire confidence. In the meantime, I
want you to go and talk for a few minutes to the cleverest woman in
England, the woman who, in the face of a whole army of policemen and
detectives, crossed the North Sea yesterday afternoon with this in her
pocket."
"You don't mean Maggie?" Nigel exclaimed eagerly.
His uncle nodded.
"You will find her in the boudoir," he said. "I told her that you were
coming. In an hour's time, return here."
Lord Dorminster rose to his feet as his nephew turned to depart. He laid
his hand upon the latter's shoulder, and Nigel always remembered the
grave kindliness of his tone and expression.
"Nigel," he sighed, "I am afraid I shall be putting upon your shoulders
a terrible burden, but there is no one else to whom I can turn."
"There is no one else to whom you ought to turn, sir," the young man
replied simply. "I shall be back in an hour."
CHAPTER II
Lady Maggie Trent, a stepdaughter of the Earl of Dorminster, was one of
those young women who had baffled description for some years before she
had commenced to take life seriously. She was neither fair nor dark,
petite nor tall. No one could ever have called her nondescript, or have
extolled any particular grace of form or feature. Her complexion had
defied the ravages of sun and wind and that moderate indulgence in
cigarettes and cocktails which the youth of her day affected. Her nose
was inclined to be retrousse, her mouth tender but impudent, her grey
eyes mostly veiled in expression but capable of wonderful changes. She
was curled up in a chair when Nigel entered, immersed in a fashion
paper. She held out her left hand, which he raised to his lips.
"Well, Nigel, dear," she exclaimed, "what do you think of my new
profession?"
"I hate it," he answered frankly.
She sighed and laid down the fashion paper resignedly.
"You always did object to a woman doing anything in the least useful. Do
you realise that if anything in the world can save this stupid old
country, I have done it?"
"I realise that you've been running hideous risks," he replied.
She looked at him petulantly.
"What of it?" she demanded. "We all run risks when we do anything worth
while."
"Not quite the sort that you have been facing."
She smiled thoughtfully.
"Do you know exactly where I have been?" she asked.
"No idea," he confessed. "What my uncle has just told me was a complete
revelation, so far as I was concerned. I believed, with the rest of the
world, what the newspapers announced--that you were visiting Japan and
China, and afterwards the South Sea Islands, with the Wendercombes."
She smiled.
"Dad wanted to tell you," she said, "but it was I who made him promise
not to. I was afraid you would be disagreeable about it. We arranged it
all with the Wendercombes, but as a matter of fact I did not even start
with them. For the last eight months, I have been living part of the
time in Berlin and part of the time in a country house near the Black
Forest."
"Alone?"
"Not a bit of it! I have been governess to the two daughters of Herr
Essendorf."
"Essendorf, the President of the German Republic?"
Lady Maggie nodded.
"He isn't a bit like his pictures. He is a huge fat man and he eats a
great deal too much. Oh, the horror of those meals!" she added, with a
little shudder. "Think of me, dear Nigel, who never eat more than an
omelette and some fruit for luncheon, compelled to sit down every day to
a _mittagessen_! I wonder I have any digestion left at all."
"Do you mean that you were there under your own name?" he asked
incredulously.
She shook her head.
"I secured some perfectly good testimonials before I left," she said.
"They referred to a Miss Brown, the daughter of Prebendary Brown. I was
Miss Brown."
"Great Heavens!" Nigel muttered under his breath. "You heard about
Atcheson?"
She nodded.
"Poor fellow, they got him all right. You talk about thrills, Nigel,"
she went on. "Do you know that the last night before I left for my
vacation, I actually heard that fat old Essendorf chuckling with his
wife about how his clever police had laid an English spy by the heels,
and telling her, also, of the papers which they had discovered and
handed over. All the time the real dispatch, written by Atcheson when
he was dying, was sewn into my corsets. How's that for an exciting
situation?"
"It's a man's job, anyhow," Nigel declared.
She shrugged her shoulders and abandoned the personal side of the
subject.
"Have you been in Germany lately, Nigel?" she enquired.
"Not for many years," he answered.
She stretched herself out upon the couch and lit a cigarette.
"The Germany of before the war of course I can't remember," she said
pensively. "I imagine, however, that there was a sort of instinctive
jealous dislike towards England and everything English, simply because
England had had a long start in colonisation, commerce and all the rest
of it. But the feeling in Germany now, although it is marvellously
hidden, is something perfectly amazing. It absolutely vibrates wherever
you go. The silence makes it all the more menacing. Soon after I got to
Berlin, I bought a copy of the Treaty of Peace and read it. Nigel, was
it necessary to have been so bitterly cruel to a beaten enemy?"
"Logically it would seem not," Nigel admitted. "Actually, we cannot put
ourselves back into the spirit of those days. You must remember that it
was an unprovoked war, a war engineered by Germany for the sheer
purposes of aggression. That is why a punitive spirit entered into our
subsequent negotiations."
She nodded.
"I expect history will tell us some day," she continued, "that we needed
a great statesman of the Beaconsfield type at the Peace table. However,
that is all ended. They sowed the seed at Versailles, and I think we are
going to reap the harvest."
"After all," Nigel observed thoughtfully, "it is very difficult to see
what practical interference there could be with the peace of the world.
I can very well believe that the spirit is there, but when it comes to
hard facts--well, what can they do? England can never be invaded. The
war of 1914 proved that. Besides, Germany now has a representative on
the League of Nations. She is bound to toe the line with the rest."
"It is not in Germany alone that we are disliked," Maggie reminded him.
"We seem somehow or other to have found our way into the bad books of
every country in Europe. Clumsy statesmanship is it, or what?"
"I should attribute it," Nigel replied, "to the passing of our old
school of ambassadors. After all, ambassadors are born, not made, and
they should be--they very often were--men of rare tact and perceptions.
We have no one now to inform us of the prejudices and humours of the
nations. We often offend quite unwittingly, and we miss many
opportunities of a _rapprochement_. It is trade, trade, trade and
nothing else, the whole of the time, and the men whom we sent to the
different Courts to further our commercial interests are not the type to
keep us informed of the more subtle and intricate matters which
sometimes need adjustment between two countries."
"That may be the explanation of all the bad feeling," Maggie admitted,
"and you may be right when you say that any practical move against us is
almost impossible. Dad doesn't think so, you know. He is terribly
exercised about the coming of Prince Shan."
"I must get him to talk to me," Nigel said. "As a matter of fact, I
don't think that we need fear Asiatic intervention over here. Prince
Shan is too great a diplomatist to risk his country's new prosperity."
"Prince Shan," Maggie declared, "is the one man in the world I am
longing to meet. He was at Oxford with you, wasn't he, Nigel?"
"For one year only. He went from there to Harvard."
"Tell me what he was like," she begged.
"I have only a hazy recollection of him," Nigel confessed. "He was a
most brilliant scholar and a fine horseman. I can't remember whether he
did anything at games."
"Good-looking?"
"Extraordinarily so. He was very reserved, though, and even in those
days he was far more exclusive than our own royal princes. We all
thought him clever, but no one dreamed that he would become Asia's great
man. I'll tell you all that I can remember about him another time,
Maggie. I'm rather curious about that report of Atcheson's. Have you any
idea what it is about?"
She shook her head.
"None at all. It is in the old Foreign Office cipher and it looks like
gibberish. I only know that the first few lines he transcribed gave dad
the jumps."
"I wonder if he has finished it by now."
"He'll send for you when he has. How do you think I am looking, Nigel?"
"Wonderful," he answered, rising to his feet and standing with his elbow
upon the mantelpiece, gazing down at her. "But then you _are_ wonderful,
aren't you, Maggie? You know I always thought so."
She picked up a mirror from the little bag by her side and scrutinized
her features.
"It can't be my face," she decided, turning towards him with a smile. "I
must have charm."
"Your face is adorable," he declared.
"Are you going to flirt with me?" she asked, with a faint smile at the
corners of her lips. "You always do it so well and so convincingly. And
I hate foreigners. They are terribly in earnest but there is no finesse
about them. You may kiss me just once, please, Nigel, the way I like."
He held her for a moment in his arms, tenderly, but with a reserve to
which she was accustomed from him. Presently she thrust him away. Her
own colour had risen a little.
"Delightful," she murmured. "Think of the wasted months! No one has
kissed me, Nigel, since we said good-bye."
"Have you made up your mind to marry me yet?" he asked.
"My dear," she answered, patting his hand, "do restrain your ardour. Do
you really want to marry me?"
"Of course I do!"
"You don't love me."
"I am awfully fond of you," he assured her, "and I don't love any one
else."
She shook her head.
"It isn't enough, Nigel," she declared, "and, strange to say, it's
exactly how I feel about you."
"I don't see why it shouldn't be enough," he argued. "Perhaps we have
too much common sense for these violent feelings."
"It may be that," she admitted doubtfully. "On the other hand, don't
let's run any risk. I should hate to find an affinity, and all that sort
of thing, after marriage--divorce in these days is such shocking bad
form. Besides, honestly, Nigel, I don't feel frivolous enough to think
about marriage just now. I have the feeling that even while the clock is
ticking we are moving on to terrible things. I can't tell you quite what
it is. I carried my life in my hands during those last few days abroad.
I dare say this is the reaction."
He smiled reassuringly.
"After all, you are safe at home now, dear," he reminded her, "and I
really am very fond of you, Maggie."
"And I'm quite absurdly fond of you, Nigel," she acknowledged. "It makes
me feel quite uncomfortable when I reflect that I shall probably have to
order you to make love to some one else before the week is out."
"I shall do nothing of the sort," he declared firmly. "I am not good at
that sort of thing. And who is she, anyhow?"
They were interrupted by a sudden knock at the door--not the discreet
tap of a well-bred domestic, but a flurried, almost an imperative
summons. Before either of them could reply, the door was opened and
Brookes, the elderly butler, presented himself upon the threshold. Even
before he spoke, it was clear that he brought alarming news.
"Will you step down to the library at once, sir?" he begged, addressing
Nigel.
"What is the matter, Brookes?" Maggie demanded anxiously.
"I fear that his lordship is not well," the man replied.
They all hurried out together. Brookes was evidently terribly perturbed
and went on talking half to himself without heeding their questions.
"I thought at first that his lordship must have fainted," he said. "I
heard a queer noise, and when I went in, he had fallen forward across
the table. Parkins has rung for Doctor Wilcox."
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