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Updated: September 11, 2025
Victor, on the contrary, sat for a long moment staring thoughtfully at nothing and absently turning the envelope over and over in his hands; while Nogam with specious nonchalance found something unimportant to do in another quarter of the room. The envelope was damp and warm to the touch.
Nogam peered myopically at the paper. "It might be 'Ebrew, sir," he hazarded, helpfully "by the looks of it, I mean. I suppose some private message, 'e thought you'd understand." "Hebrew, you fool! Damn your impudence! Do you take me for a Jew?" "Beg pardon, sir no 'arm meant." "No," Sturm declared, "it's Chinese."
It might have implied, for example, that Victor's half-hearted and paltering distrust of Nogam had all along been only too well warranted. In which case, the fat was already in the fire with a vengeance, and Victor's probable duration of life was dependent wholly upon the speed with which he could quit Frampton Court and hurl his motor-car through the night to the lower reaches of the Thames.
As soon as I have left, you will dismiss all the English servants, with a quarter's wage in advance in lieu of notice. Karslake will provide the money." "He does not accompany you?" "No." "And the man Nogam?" Victor appeared to hesitate. "What do you think?" he enquired at length. "What I have always thought." "That he is a spy?" "Yes." "But with no tangible support for your suspicions?" "None."
I don't think he has to." "You mean," Sturm stammered, perturbed, "you think he knows suspects?" "I think he is one thing or the other: merely Nogam, or one of the greatest of living actors. In either case he is flawless thus far. But if not merely Nogam, he will have a subtler means of eavesdropping than by listening at doors." "The dictograph?" "Make your mind easy about that.
Victor watched him from every angle, overt and covert, but had his trouble for his pains; Nogam, observed in a mirror, when Victor's back was turned, went about his business with no more betrayal of personal feeling or independent mentality than when waiting upon his master face to face. Victor could have kicked him for sheer resentment of his pattern virtues.
Now at last she knew him, now the romance of her dreams of yesterday came true: through the mean masquerade of Nogam the man emerged, identifying himself in her sight unmistakably with that splendid stranger whom she had never quite forgotten since that old-time afternoon when he had met Karslake in the Café des Exiles and talked so intimately of his antecedents, hinting at a history of youthful years strangely analogous with her own.
"All is well, Excellency, as well as you could wish, knowing what you know." Profound relief found voice in a sigh from Victor's heart. "You got my messages, then? Nogam delivered them?" "So I understand. I myself did not see him, Excellency. The man Sturm " On that name the voice died away in what Victor fancied was a gasp that might have been of either fright or pain. "Hello!" he prompted.
Alone, Prince Victor sat at the desk where he had, four hours earlier, inscribed those characters which should have hurried Nogam into a premature grave. That they had failed of their mission was something that fretted Victor Vassilyevski, his mind and nerves, to a pitch of exacerbation all but unendurable. What had become of that sentence to death?
And this last could be counted upon not to put in appearance until Nogam took him word that Victor was waiting.
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