Chapter II: We Improve the Acquaintance

O’Hagan’s friendship is a passport from the commonplace to the amazing. In acknowledgment of this off-handed introduction I bowed, and was mute. The Grand Duke nodded. His eyes constantly sought my nonchalant friend.

“How fortunate,” said the latter smoothly, “that the traffic chanced to be delayed.”

Bewildered, utterly, I acquitted myself of an ambiguous nod.

“Where are they?” asked the Grand Duke suddenly. His delivery was thick, unmusical.

“If you will be good enough to glance rearward,” replied O’Hagan, “you will perceive a car which is following closely!”

We were, at that moment, turning around by Trafalgar Square; so that this prediction impressed me as being a peculiarly safe one. The Grand Duke, however, peering through a little window at the back, turned again to O’Hagan with palpable uneasiness. His heavy, dull features marked him a man of bulldog tenacity and autocratic stupidity.

“A green car?” he inquired.

O’Hagan, twisting about one finger the black ribbon attached to his monocle, inclined his head gravely. The tone of the Grand Duke’s query had been peremptory—that of one accustomed to command and to be slavishly obeyed. My friend’s mode of reply—the graceful and dignified inclination of the head, the lowering of the eyelids—had subtly defined, and with exquisite artistry, his attitude toward the Grand Duke.

In that simple inclination he had conveyed: “Duke”—(it were impossible to imagine O’Hagan addressing any man breathing as “Your Highness”)—“Duke, you are in the company of a gentleman at present amicably disposed toward you, but of a gentleman who would as promptly tweak your nose, should you forget what is due to him, as he would tweak any other.”

It was a silent declaration of aristocracy, typically and peculiarly O’Haganish.

A faint shade of difference crept into the Grand Duke’s voice. I doubt if the man has lived, since Napoleon Buonaparte, who, meeting Captain the Honble. Bernard O’Hagan, could have escaped enmeshment within his catholic patronage. O’Hagan would patronize the shade of Julius Cæsar.

“What,” inquired the Grand Duke awkwardly, “do you propose?”

“First,” said my friend, holding his monocle between second and third fingers, and waving it roofward, “extinguish these interior lights. It was most indiscreet to travel so publicly.”

Association with Bernard O’Hagan renders one more or less accustomed to the _outre_. The amazing ceases to amaze, the appalling to appal; wonders lose their potency, and one’s pulse remains normal amid singular adventures.

It afforded me small surprise to see my friend’s injunction instantly obeyed. (It would afford me small surprise to see the Premier blacking O’Hagan’s boots.)

“Next,” continued the Captain, “direct your man to drive to your embassy.”

The obedient Grand Duke bent forward and called gutturally into the tube.

(“There is one thing,” O’Hagan tells me, “which a nobleman of the Grand Duke’s race can never appreciate—the doctrine of aristocratic equality. He must always dominate or be dominated. My ancestor, Patrick, had this from the lips of Cardinal Richelieu—a singularly shrewd observer, Raymond, and a gentleman.”)

“I have no intention,” resumed the Grand Duke, “of handing them over to the ambassador.”

O’Hagan shrugged his shoulders impatiently, turning his eye-glass upon the speaker with the air of a wise man weary of folly.

“_Will_ you allow me to advise?” he said, with a certain disdain. “Do _they_ know that?”

“They cannot possibly,” replied the other. “It is what they most fear—eh?”

“Very well, then,” drawled O’Hagan, yawning discreetly under cover of a gloved hand, “they will abandon the pursuit and no attempt will be made upon your private apartments.”

“I do not fear their attempts!” growled the Grand Duke, with truculent contempt.

“My good Duke!” said O’Hagan languidly—“my dear Duke—do you wish every paper in Europe to discuss your affairs? Do you wish all the world to hear of an attempt to burgle your rooms?”

“What! do you think they would dare?”

Captain O’Hagan surveyed him, pebble uplifted, as one surveys a surpassing fool.

“Dare!” he said icily. “Dare! My good, dear Duke—where is your common sense?”

(“That expression marked the psychological moment, Raymond,” he later was good enough to inform me. “I was deliberately tightening the screw. If he submitted. I knew that the man was mine.”)

The Grand Duke glared for a moment. Then:

“No; you are right!” he agreed, grudgingly.

Bernard O’Hagan would be a dazzling ornament to the diplomatic service. One can imagine his prevailing upon the united monarchies of Europe to present a fleet of dreadnoughts to Great Britain as a little token of esteem.

Is it necessary, by the way, that I mention here how all this extraordinary conversation was so much Sanscrit to me? I think not. I perceived no gleam of light through the darkness. I was a man in a tunnel leading he knows not whither, surrounded by he knows not what.

My bewildered surmisings had come to a hazy meridian, I think, when the car drew up before the embassadorial residence.

“If he is at home, what excuse shall I make for my call?” asked the Grand Duke.

“Any excuse!” said O’Hagan drily. “You may profess to have heard rumours that he is troubled with a return of his gout——”

“He has no gout!”

“His wife’s gout, then! Anything—anything!”

Grunting uncouthly, the Grand Duke alighted and disappeared in the darkness. Coincident with the footman’s reclosure of the door, burst forth my dammed up torrent of queries.

“_Ssh!_” O’Hagan raised his hand. “I will explain later, Raymond. Exhibit no surprise. Merely agree with me—tacitly agree!”

“But where did——”

“_Ssh!_”—impatiently. “These servants are spies!”

I felt curiously like a screw-stoppered bottle of some highly aerated mineral, which has been partially unscrewed. Questions literally _sizzled_ from me. But I must perforce contain myself; and we were presently rejoined by the Grand Duke. He glanced up and down the street ere entering. Giving a brief order to the man:

“Where are they?” he growled, as he took his seat.

“They have left their car,” replied my friend; “but two of them are in hiding near the corner.”

“Do you know either of these?”

“_He_ is one!” said O’Hagan impressively.

“Whom?” snapped the Grand Duke.

Now, Captain O’Hagan is rarely at a loss for the right word at the right time. He holds it churlish to stammer and stutter, and wholly inconsistent with that grand manner of which, if I be not mistaken, he is the only surviving master. Yet, now, he seemed somewhat taken aback. Later, I understood why. But——

“Need you ask?” he returned, with very brief hesitancy.

“Not Leo?” the Grand Duke demanded, hoarsely.

O’Hagan smiled and inclined his head.

The Siresian nobleman struck his huge fist into the palm of his hand, furiously. He was a truly formidable man.

“Curse him ten thousand times!” he shouted, wildly. “How has _he_ found out that I have them?”

“I fear you have been indiscreet, Duke,” murmured O’Hagan.

“Indiscreet!” roared the Grand Duke. “Not a living soul can have seen me meet Casimir! Ah, but——”

He broke off, evidently struck by a new idea.

“Was he followed?” he demanded.

“I fear so!” gravely answered my friend.

“They—have him?”—jerkily.

“I fear so!”

The Siresian swore, stormily.

“Ah, well,” he concluded. “He was well paid for the risk—poor devil!”

And now we were in the heart of hotel-land. The car drew up before the dazzling portals of the New Louvre. The footman threw open the door and stood rigidly to attention. On the car-step the Grand Duke hesitated, turned, and was delivered of a new idea.

“Now that I have the letters and the photographs, what have I to fear?” he snapped, in an angry voice. “They cannot reach them here! And do they not think that I have delivered them to the embassy?”

O’Hagan placed a gloved finger to his lips, and directed a rapid glance through his monocle toward a hotel servant who stood immediately behind the footman.

“It is good of you to bring us along to supper, Duke!” he cried loudly and breezily. “Fancy running into you at the Folly of all places!”

The Grand Duke accepted the guidance of this accomplished diplomat. In single file we entered the hotel—the nobleman frowning thunderously at the liveried servant silently impeached of espionage by O’Hagan. To a suite of apartments furnished with opulent magnificence we made a stately progress. When, for a few moments, my surprising friend and I found ourselves alone, the mental volcano which raged within me burst into active eruption, casting forth questions in a burning torrent.

O’Hagan, hand raised: “My dear Raymond!”

I talked on, but diminuendo.

O’Hagan, raising monocle: “My dear fellow!”

The querulous torrent died away, _poco a poco_. Then:

“I had anticipated all your questions, my boy,” said O’Hagan; “and I will deal with them in order. In the first place—No, I am _not_ acquainted with the Grand Duke! I had never seen him in my life until you drew my attention to him outside the Folly! I have no idea what it is that he has secured, and which he evidently apprehends someone is likely to pursue him in order to recover!—letters and photographs, according to his own account. Do not glare in that way, Raymond; it makes you appear cross-eyed!”

To the door I looked hurriedly, and back to my nonchalant friend, who swung his monocle and eyed me with an amused smile. My tongue defied me.

“If you will glance over our conversation, in retrospect,” he continued, “you will perceive that my contributions partook of the nature of leading questions disguised as items of information. In fact, I adopted the tactics of an examining magistrate!

“It all rests upon this, Raymond. At the moment when you said, ‘That is the Grand Duke John,’ you may recall that I was about to recount to you an exploit of my ancestor, Patrick? This exploit, Raymond, was performed before La Rochelle, and involved three of the enemy, a dozen bottles of wine, and a game pie! The Grand Duke is the enemy in this case, my boy. You must be aware that he is one of a group whose activities are inimical to our interests in the Baltic. I saw my way clearly. I stepped up and whispered to him, ‘They are following you, Duke! We will slip into the car, unperceived amid the traffic, and explain more fully. There must be no delay here!’”

(I inhaled noisily.)

“This was a bow at venture, Raymond. The odds against my scoring were about ten thousand to one. But—as occurred to a certain Desmond O’Hagan on a somewhat similar occasion—I scored! Given such premises, who after that could err? Although I will confess that I overstepped the mark once; but, thanks to the darkness of the car, and the corresponding darkness prevailing in the Grand Ducal mind, I recovered! I may add, Raymond, that our present position, though one of absorbing interest, is delicate to a degree!”

“O’Hagan!” I broke in hotly, “this is beyond belief! Had I known, had I dreamed, of the false position in which we were placed——”

I ceased. Language failed me again. Then:

“O’Hagan!” I cried, “what have you done it for?”

“Primarily,” he answered, “for supper! After supper I shall offer the Grand Duke any satisfaction which he may desire. Secondarily, here _is_ the Grand Duke!”

Even as he spoke my mind was busy; and, as I now perceived with consternation, O’Hagan had indeed been “pumping” the Grand Duke—“pumping” him with the cleverness of a very accomplished K.C. I was amazed; amazed that the Siresian should have fallen so easy a victim—that even Bernard O’Hagan should have had the stark effrontery to practise such a deception.

“If you will excuse me for a few moments more,” said the Grand Duke, “I will rejoin you for supper.”

With a cold bow, he left us again.

“O’Hagan!” I burst out——

O’Hagan coughed, and raised his monocle to his eye.

“—I will not, cannot stay!——”

O’Hagan coughed again, more urgently, and, across my left shoulder, seemed to focus something through the pebble.

“—The supper would choke me!”

O’Hagan coughed a third time, with bronchial violence, bowed low—as a Leicester before an Elizabeth—and surreptitiously kicked me shrewdly upon the shin.

I spun around sharply. I followed the direction of my friend’s enraptured gaze. And my eyes rested upon one of the loveliest women I have ever seen!

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