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Updated: June 4, 2025
"Really, one gains much through being an onlooker," the Prince reflected. "There go the spirit of Russia and the spirit of Germany. You dabble in these things, my friend Dorminster. Can you guess what they are met for for whom they wait?" "I might guess," Nigel replied, "but I would rather be told." "They wait for the master spirit," Karschoff declared, taking his arm.
"Matinsky isn't that sort," Nigel said cheerfully. "Even an old gossip like Karschoff calls him a purist, and you yourself have spoken of his principles." Maggie shrugged her shoulders. "All right," she remarked. "If you are determined to rush into danger, I suppose you must. There is just one more point to be considered, though.
"Except Jesson," Nigel muttered. "And Jesson's gleam of knowledge, or suspicion," Prince Karschoff remarked, "seems to have brought him to the end of his days. Can anything be done with Prince Shan about him, do you think?" "Only indirectly, I am afraid," Nigel replied. "Maggie is seeing him this afternoon.
"Surely that girl is well-born?" he observed. "I have never seen a more delightful carriage." "You are right," Karschoff told him. "Karetsky is a well-to-do man of commerce, but her mother was a Baroness Kolchekoff, a distant relative of my own. The Kolchekoffs lived on their estates, and as a matter of fact we never met. Naida has gone over to the people, though, body and soul."
She is the confidante and the inspiration of Matinsky, and though one realises, of course, that so long as there is a Russian Republic there must be a Russian President, I suppose I should scarcely be human if I did not hate him." "Surely," Nigel queried, "she must be very much his junior?" "Matinsky is forty-four," Karschoff said. "Naida is twenty-six or twenty-seven.
Chalmers came grumblingly up to Mrs. Bollington Smith, with whom he was an established favourite. "Lady Maggie is treating me disgracefully," he complained. "She will scarcely dance at all. She goes around talking to every one as though it were a sort of farewell party." "Perhaps it may be," Karschoff remarked quietly. "She isn't going away, is she?" Chalmers demanded.
Prince Karschoff was there, benign and distinguished; Chalmers and one or two other young men from the American Embassy. There was a sprinkling of Maggie's girl friends, a leaven of the older world in Nigel's few intimates, and Naida, very pale but more beautiful than ever in a white velvet gown, her hair brushed straight back, and with no jewellery save one long rope of pearls.
"I saw the light in the study from outside. Is there any definite news?" Nigel drew him inside. "There are indications," he replied cautiously, "that the present danger is passing." Karschoff nodded. "I gathered so from Naida," he admitted. "Prince Shan, though, is the pivot upon which the whole thing turns. You have heard nothing final from him?" "Nothing!
Tell me, was any one arrested at the Albert Hall?" "No one. The murdered man, as I suppose you have heard, was Sen Lu, one of the Prince's secretaries." "The whole thing seems strange," Nigel remarked. "Do you suppose Prince Shan knew that an attempt upon his life was likely to-night?" Karschoff shook his head doubtfully. "It is difficult to say.
Karschoff, who was in an unusually loquacious frame of mind, pointed out many of the habitués of the place to his companion. "I am become a club and restaurant lounger in my old age," he declared, a little bitterly. "Almost a boulevardier. Still, what else is there for a man without a country to do?" "You know everybody," Nigel replied, without reference to his companion's lament.
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