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Updated: September 24, 2025
"This Julien Portel," he said, "it is another woman he prefers." He saw her bosom heave. The storm against which she had been struggling all the time seemed on the point of bursting. The hot blood was singing in her ears, her eyes were aflame. She crossed the room and rang the bell. Falkenberg was content to wait. He felt that he had won! The butler appeared almost immediately.
"I understand well enough why you need Julien Portel," she admitted. "I am still in the dark, however, as to why you imagine that I shall give him up?" "Because I am going to buy him from you," Falkenberg asserted. She glanced across the room at him, half curiously, half scornfully. "Buy him! You!" "Exactly," he replied. "You smile because you do not understand.
"Portel has brought me," Falkenberg answered grimly. "They tell me that he has taken shelter under the shadow of your petticoats." "Shelter from your assassins!" "Precisely!" Falkenberg admitted. "I do not admire your methods," Madame Christophor remarked. "They seem to me not only brutal but clumsy. You killed seven men and injured several others, to no purpose."
Julien asked. The man leaned back and laughed. "Ask yourself that question, not me," he replied. "You Sir Julien Portel, caricatured as the best-dressed man in the House of Commons, member of the most fashionable clubs, brilliant debater, successful politician, future Prime Minister, and all that sort of twaddle. You were living too far up in the clouds, my friend, to come down here.
"Monsieur is desired upon the telephone," he announced. Julien frowned. "Who is it?" The man shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the booth. Julien hesitated. Then he stepped inside and held the receiver to his ear. "Who is this?" he asked. A very slow, musical voice answered him. He never for a moment had a doubt as to whose it might be. "Is this Sir Julien Portel?"
"No," she replied, "I do not think that I shall back out. There is nothing in the whole world I want so much as to have you a Cabinet Minister. If there had been any other way " "But there is no other way," her husband interrupted. "So long as Julien Portel lives, I should never get my chance. He holds the post I want. Every one knows that he is clever.
He knows whence came the money which bought Le Jour. He knows every detail of my campaign here." "There are surely others," she objected, "who must have guessed " "But there was no one else," he interrupted, "who had the special knowledge which Portel has. He came from the Foreign Office, with the records of the last two years in his mind. At Berlin he and I crossed swords.
There was a short silence between the two men. In a sense they had been friends all their lives. Sir Julien Portel had been a successful politician, the youngest Cabinet Minister for some years. Kendricks had never aspired to be more than a clever journalist of the vigorous type. Nevertheless, they had been more than ordinarily intimate. "Have you made any plans?" Kendricks inquired presently.
"You will conduct the Prince von Falkenberg into the winter-garden," she directed. "He desires to speak to Sir Julien Portel." "And you?" Falkenberg asked, turning towards her. A swift gesture showed him her disordered countenance. It was reasonable. "I follow," she announced.
Falkenberg frowned. "There is something between us greater than personal enmity," he retorted fiercely. "My personal enemy I would deal with in such a manner as I make no doubt would commend itself to your scruples. Julien Portel is more than that. He is the enemy of my country. Upon him, therefore, I shall have no mercy." "I will not argue with you," she replied.
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