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"Do you mind telling me why he doesn't use that name, if it's his?" "See here, Princess Sofia" Karslake slewed round to face her squarely with his most earnest and persuasive manner "I am merely Prince Victor's secretary, I'm not supposed to know all his secrets, and those I do know I'm supposed not to talk about. I'd much rather you put that question to Prince Victor yourself."
Victor dropped into a chair beside the table and lifted the lid of a small golden casket. Helping himself to one of its store of cigarettes, he made Karslake free of the remainder with a gracious hand. The secretary demurred, producing his pocket case. "If you don't mind, sir ..." Victor moved a supercilious eyebrow. "Woodbines again?"
But Karslake, being a young man not very much given to introspection, his work is more a picture of things seen than a transcription of things thought. However, one may read between the lines; the very breaks are eloquent, while the break at the end speaks with a significance that no words could attain. The manuscript in itself is interesting.
"Never fear for me, remember that I am of the Secret Service: two minutes after I see the inside of the nearest police station, I shall be free and happy in the assurance that your name is without stain. Then Karslake will come for you, bring you to me ... Now!" Lanyard caught the girl's two wrists together and, throwing himself bodily backward across the desk, carried her hands to his throat.
But whenever her reflections took that back-turning she would recall the man who had talked to Karslake in the café, that day so long ago, of his own humble past as a 'bus-boy in Troyon's in Paris, and who on leaving had given Sofia herself that odd look of half-recognition tempered by bewilderment.
These and yourself will be provided with means of self-protection by Sturm." "And Karslake?" "I have not yet made up my mind." "Hearing is obedience." Victor relapsed into another reverie which lasted so long that even the patience of Shaik Tsin bade fair to fail. In the end the silence was broken by two words: "The crystal."
Had not Karslake warned her in his note: "Your only safety now lies in his continuing to believe that you are unsuspicious."
To this he added that he 'oped there had been no 'itch, he was most heager to be installed in his new situation, and would do his best to give satisfaction. Karslake replied airily that he was sure Nogam would do famously, and Nogam said "Thank you, sir."
In its stead Victor favoured Karslake with a slow smile of understanding that broadened into an insuppressible grin of successful malice, a grimace of crude exultation through which peered out the impish savage mutinously imprisoned within a flimsy husk of modern manner. Suspecting this self-betrayal, he erased the grin swiftly, but not so swiftly that Karslake failed to note it.
My interest in the affair is impersonal, but none the less keen. Though I did not know young Karslake, I knew his stuff as everybody still does, when you come to that.
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