Red Fleece | Page 2

was a hard moment. He explained with difficulty that her language was as yet an inconvenient vehicle for him.
"You are not Russian?" she said in French.
He shook his head. She seemed to be relieved and he wondered why.
"What do you want?" she asked, though not quite with the original asperity.
"It did not occur to me you would notice," he said in the language she had ventured. "I saw you yesterday. You made me think of New York. As I was near to-day, I hoped to see you again---" "You are American?" She spoke now in English, and with a still softer intonation.
"Yes,--you speak English, too?"
"I like it. It is---" she checked herself and asked with just a shade of coldness, "Is there anything I can do for you?"
It might be construed as a courtesy to a stranger from one who lived in Warsaw. Peter liked it, a certain vista opening. However, there was no answer within reach except the truth, and he plunged:
"I should like to know you better."
The red lower lip disappeared beneath the other. Her gray eyes grew very wide; something intrepid and exquisite in her manner as she searched his face. Whatever she knew of the world, she dared still to trust her intuition--this was something of the revelation he drew.
"Why?"
Many people were passing. He looked toward the quieter center of the Square.
"Will you walk with me there?" he asked. "It is not easy to explain this sort of thing---"
"No. I must go on. You may walk a little way."
"You are very good.... You see, I cannot tell just why--as you asked. If I knew you well, I could tell you. Yesterday I was quite unromantic---"
She made it hard for him and did not let him see her smile. "You mean you are romantic to-day?"
Peter laughed. "What a trap--and I was trying so hard to tell you."
"You were trying---"
"I don't need to tell you. All there is to say is that I want you to be my friend."
"I should have to think," she answered.
"Of course. ... Do you pass here every day?"
"I should have to think," she said.
It was the third day afterward that she passed again.
Chapter 2
The first time that Boylan of the Rhodes News Agency of New York saw Peter Mowbray was in the office of Lonegan of The States, Mowbray's chief in Warsaw. Lonegan had known Peter in New York and had wanted him for his second many months before the fact was brought about. This was the Boylan of the Schmedding Polar Failure, of various wars and expeditions, a huge spectacle of a man, an old-timer, and very fond of Lonegan, though as representative of Rhodes' he was structurally the competitor of The States in this territory.
"Young Mowbray may be all right," Boylan observed, "but the curse of the student is on him. I should say that he isn't gusty enough for hard work--vest buttons too safe--"
"You can't measure health by the pound," Lonegan observed, regarding the other's bulk with one eye shut. "I never heard of Mowbray spending much time in bed outside of the small hours." "How old is he?" "Twenty-six or seven."
"I suppose he put on his gear all in a year or two?"
"There is that look about him, but he's safely over it. Some people never stop, but I've had to look up at him from the same angle now and then during the last five years.... It was just a little before that he happened into--his route like mine--his cub-year in London, then assistant in Antwerp, then in Dresden. He had Dresden alone for a year. I've been angling for him some time----"
"Yes," Boylan remarked, "you need the right kind of help to stand up with Rhodes from this end----"
"You do make it wildly exciting," Lonegan answered gently. "We'll rock Peter yet."
This chat took place in June. Ten weeks afterward Boylan came in with the big news, and found Lonegan bending over the following cablegram, almost the last that came through in the private cipher of The States:
Get Mowbray post with Russians. We are mailing influential matters. Warsaw key-desk for northern campaigns. We are to be congratulated on having Lonegan there.
It was from the Old Man, who in certain cases ventured thus to be expensively felicitous....
"I'm sorry, Lonegan," Boylan said. "I thought you would be taking the field---"
"No, the Old Man's got the right eye for these affairs. I'm a desk man."
What Lonegan had swallowed to make his voice clear and steady, only he knew, but his nerve was effective. "You've got to help me, Boylan," he said. "You know the military end. You've got to help me get him attached. I know you'd do it for me, but I want you to do it for him--"
A grunt from the big man, who disappeared.
...Lonegan's lip curled. Again it