Max | Page 4

always made a point of seeing the story behind the circumstance; and, had he realized it, a common instinct bound him in a triangular link to the peering, winking lamps, and to the Russian boy lying unsociably wrapped in his heavy coat. All three had an eye for an adventure.
But the lights were up, and the curtain down--it was a theatre between the acts; and presently the calculating voice of McCutcheon broke forth again, as he relapsed into his original attitude, coiling up his long limbs and nursing his cigar to a glow.
"I can't get over that 'four jacks,'" he said. "To think I could have been funked into seeing Billy at fifty!"
Blake laughed. "'Twas the eye-glass did it, Mac! A man shouldn't be allowed to play poker with an eye-glass; it's taking an undue advantage."
McCutcheon smiled his dry smile and shot a quizzical glance at the neat young Englishman, who had become absorbed in one of his papers.
"Solid face, Blake!" he agreed. "Nothing so fine as an eye-glass for sheer bluff. What would Billy be without one? Well, perhaps we won't say. But with it you have no use for doubt--he's a diplomat all the time."
The young man named Billy showed no irritation. With the composure which he wore as a garment, he went on with his occupation.
For a time McCutcheon bore this aloofness, then he opened a new attack. "What are you reading, my son? Makes a man sort of want his breakfast to see that hungry look in your eyes. Share the provender, won't you?"
Billy looked up sedately.
"You fellows think my life's a game," he said. "But I tell you it takes some doing to keep in touch with things."
Blake laughed chaffingly. "And the illustrated weekly papers are an excellent substitute for Blue-books?"
Billy remained undisturbed. "It's all very well to scoff, but one may get a side-light anywhere. In diplomacy nothing's too insignificant to notice."
Again Blake laughed. "The principle on which it offers you a living?"
"Oh, come," said Billy, "that's rather rough! You know very well what I mean. 'Tisn't always in the serious reports you get the color of a fact, just as the gossip of a dinner-table is often more enlightening than a cabinet council."
"Apropos?"
"I was thinking of this Petersburg affair."
"What? The everlasting Duma business?" McCutcheon drew in a long breath of smoke.
Billy looked superior, as befitted a man who dealt in subtler matters than mere politics. "Not at all," he said. "The disappearance of the Princess Davorska."
Here Blake made a murmur of impatience. "Oh, Billy, don't!" he said. "It's so frightfully banal."
McCutcheon took his cigar from his mouth. "The woman who disappeared on the eve of her marriage?"
"Yes," broke in Blake, "disappeared on the eve of her marriage to elope with some poet or painter, and set society by the ears. Thoroughly modern and banal!"
The young diplomat glanced up once more.
"I don't think there's any suggestion of a lover."
"Fact is more potent than suggestion, Billy. Of course there is a lover. Princesses don't disappear alone."
"You're a Socialist, Ned." Billy's eyes returned to his paper. "Like all good Socialists, crammed to the neck with class bigotry. Nobody is such an individualist as the man who advocates equality!"
Blake smiled. "That seems to sound all right," he said; "but it doesn't remove the lover."
The good-humored scepticism at last forced a way to Billy's susceptibilities.
"Look here," he said, crossly, "if hearing's not believing, perhaps seeing is! Look at these pictures; they're not particularly modern or banal."
He held out his paper, but Blake shook his head.
"No! No, Billy, not for me. If it was some little Rumanian gypsy who had run away from her tribe I'd take her to my heart and welcome. But a Princess Davorska--no!"
At this point McCutcheon stretched out his long arm and took the paper from Billy's hand. "Let's have a squint!" he said. "Lover or no lover, she must be a bit wide awake." And, curling himself up again, he began to read from the paper, in a monotonous murmuring voice: "'_The Princess, as well as being a woman of artistic accomplishments, is an ardent sportswoman, having in her early girlhood hunted and shot with keen zest on her father's estates. The above picture shows her at the age of seventeen, carrying a gun_.' By the Lord, she is wide awake!" he added, by way of comment. "She is wide awake carrying that gun, but I'd lay my money on the second picture. Say, Billy, she looks a queen in her court finery!"
But here real disgust crossed Blake's face. "Oh, that'll do, Mac! Give us peace about the woman. I'm sick to death of all such nonsense. We're due in a couple of hours. I think I'll try for forty winks." He threw away his cigar and tucked his rug about him.
McCutcheon glanced at