style="font-size:15px;"> “Why, man, if you knew how sick of it all I am,” sighed Crabb, “you’d thank your stars for the lucky dispensation that took you out of it. Rasselas was right. I’ve been pursuing the phantoms of hope for thirty years, and I’m still hopeless. There have been a few bright spots” – Crabb smiled at his cigar ash – “a very few, and far between.”
“Bored as ever, Crabb?”
“Immitigably. To live in the thick of things and see nothing but the pale drabs and grays. No red anywhere. Oh, for a passion that would burn and sear – love, hate, fear! I’m forever courting them all. And here I am still cool, colorless and unscarred. Only once” – his gray eyes lit up marvelously – “only once did I learn the true relation of life to death, Burnett; only once. That was when the Blue Wing struggled six days in a hurricane with Hatteras under her lee. It was glorious. They may talk of love and hate as they will; fear, I tell you, is the Titan of passions.”
Burnett was surprised at this unmasking.
“You should try big game,” he said, carelessly.
“I have,” said the other; “both beasts and men – and here I am in flannels and a red tie! I’ve skinned the one and been skinned by the other – to what end?”
“You’ve bought experience.”
“Cheap at any cost. You can’t buy fear. Love comes in varieties at the market values. Hate can be bought for a song; but fear, genuine and amazing, is priceless – a gem which only opportunity can provide; and how seldom opportunity knocks at any man’s door!”
“Crabb the original – the esoteric!”
“Yes. The same. The very same. And you, how different! How sober and rounded!”
There was a silence, contemplative, retrospective on both their parts. Crabb broke it.
“Tell me, old man,” he said, “about your position. Isn’t there any chance?”
Burnett smiled a little bitterly.
“I’m a consular clerk at twelve hundred a year during good behavior. When I’ve said that, I’ve said it all.”
“But your future?”
“I’m not in line of promotion.”
“Impossible! Politics?”
“Exactly. I’ve no pull to speak of.”
“But your service?”
“I’ve been paid for that.”
“Isn’t there any other way?”
“Oh, yes,” Burnett laughed, “that treaty. I happened to know something about it when I was out there. It has to do with neutrality, trade ports and coaling stations; but just what, the devil only knows, and his deputy, Baron Arnim, won’t tell. Arnim is now in Washington, ostensibly sight-seeing, but really to confer with Von Schlichter, the ambassador there, about it. You see, we’ve got rather more closely into the Eastern question than we really like, and a knowledge of Germany’s attitude is immensely important to us.”
“Pray go on,” drawled Crabb.
“That’s all there is. The rest was a joke. Crowthers wants me to get the text of that treaty from Baron Arnim’s dispatch-box.”
“Entertaining!” said Crabb, with clouding brow. And then, after a pause, with all the seriousness in the world: “And aren’t you going to?”
Burnett turned to look at him in surprise.
“What?”
“Get it. The treaty.”
“The treaty! From Baron Arnim! You don’t know much of diplomacy, Crabb.”
“You misunderstood me,” he said, coolly; and then, with lowered voice:
“Not from Baron Arnim – from Baron Arnim’s dispatch-box.”
Burnett looked at his acquaintance in a maze. Crabb had been thought a mystery in the old days. He was an enigma now.
“Surely you’re jesting.”
“Why? It oughtn’t to be difficult.”
Burnett looked fearfully around the room at their distant neighbors. “But it’s burglary. Worse than that. If I, in my connection with the State Department, were discovered tampering with the papers of a foreign government, it would lead to endless complications and, perhaps, the disruption of diplomatic relations. Such a thing is impossible. Its very impossibility was the one thing which prompted Crowthers’ suggestion. Can’t you understand that?”
Crabb was stroking his chin and contemplating his well-shaped boot.
“Admit that it’s impossible,” he said calmly. “Do you think, if by some chance you were enabled to give the Secretary of State this information, you’d better your condition?”
“What is the use, Crabb?” began Burnett.
“It can’t do any harm to answer me.”
“Well – yes, I suppose so. If we weren’t plunged immediately into war with Emperor William.”
“Oh!” Crabb was deep in thought. It was several moments before he went on, and then, as though dismissing the subject.
“What are your plans, Ross? Have you a week to spare? How about a cruise on the Blue Wing? There’s a lot I know that you don’t, and a lot you know that I’d like to. I’ll take you up to Washington whenever you’re bored. What do you say?”
Ross Burnett accepted with alacrity. He remembered the Blue Wing, Jepson and Valentin’s dinners. He had longed for them many times when he was eating spaghetti at Gabri’s little restaurant in Genoa.
When they parted it was with a consciousness on the part of Burnett that the affair of Baron Arnim had not been dismissed. The very thought had been madness. Was it only a little pleasantry of Crabb’s? If not, what wild plan had entered his head? It was unlike the Mortimer Crabb he remembered.
And yet there had been a deeper current flowing below his placid surface that gave a suggestion of desperate intent which nothing could explain away. And how illimitable were the possibilities if some plan could be devised by which the information could be obtained without resort to violent measures! It meant for him at least a post at the helm somewhere, or, perhaps, a secretaryship on one of the big commissions.
The idea of burglary, flagrant and nefarious, he dismissed at a thought. Would there not be some way – an unguarded moment – a faithless servant – to give the thing the aspect of possible achievement? As he dressed he found himself thinking of the matter with more seriousness than it deserved.
CHAPTER IV
A week had passed since the two friends had met, and the Blue Wing now lay in the Potomac near the Seventh Street wharf. It was night and the men had dined.
Valentin’s dinners were a distinct achievement. They were of the kind which made conclusive the assumption of an especial heaven
