"What's that?" he asked.
"Just what I want to know," continued Fisher; "I call it rot—why, it only seems yesterday that he came here!"
"Must you really go, Capel?" enquired the Prince with sudden interest.
"I'm afraid so; you see, twice every year our house sends some hundreds of thousands to St. Petersburg in the matter of the loan we got for Russia. My uncle likes me to be one of the two that look after the business, and so I'm going back."
"That's a queer job," remarked Kennel, with a delightfully assumed indifference. "How many of you round up the dollars, did you say?"
"Only two of us," said Capel, lighting a cigarette and lolling back to look away down the coast-line to Bordighera; "you see, there's no danger."
"Of course not," interrupted Messenger suddenly; "I suppose nobody ever knows when the money is going."
"Exactly—we have a special train from Fenchurch Street to Tilbury, a special cabin or tug from Tilbury to Flushing, and then we go right through to the Russian frontier."
"Do they give you a great time out yonder?" asked Kenner.
"By Jove! I should think they do! I was trotted all over St. Petersburg like a grand duke when I went there last winter; I never ate so much in a week that I can remember."
"So I should fancy," said Kenner, sinking suddenly back into his chair and taking up his book.
"By-the-way," said he, as if in after-thought, "I may skirmish a while in your old city after this flower-show here—what's the number of your street, if I'm passing?"
"I've got Capel's address," interposed Fisher suddenly; "we're going to dine together when I get back."
"That's right," said the Prince, looking hard at Kenner as he spoke.
They did not question the lads further, nor even look at them, but had great occupation in the causeries of current French newspapers which lay about on chairs and tables in pictorial profusion. The contaminating example of silence seized upon the others—a musical silence, during which the leaves of the date-bearing palms swayed musically in the sea-breeze, and the melodies which Glück made floated up from terrace to terrace, to be lost in a crescendo of chatter and movement, or to merge with the whispers of the wind to which the multicolored buds were opening. So full of seductive rest was all the environment of lake-like water and olive-capped hills that to survey it in idleness, to draw deep breaths of intoxicating freshness, was sufficient pastime for the restless or the wanderer. Even the boys, given to mad desires to make this bill or that cape, to ensnare the unnameably poor fish of the Mediterranean, to do any thing but vegetate, suffered it for a whole hour before the mood took them to round the Cap d'Ail and inspect the point of Villefranche. The idea was no sooner suggested by Fisher than Sydney Capel gave it an immediate imprimatur; and in the wealth of his self-satisfaction cried with one of the five Italian words he knew: "Andiamo! there's just time for an hour's spin, out and back. I say, Kenner, can we have your boat?"
"Why, certainly," said the American. "I guess the Prince and me don't hanker after sprat-fishing this watch—eh, Prince?"
"Don't consider me," replied the Prince quietly; "I'm going into the hotel to write letters."
"Then you'll want me?" cried Fisher dolefully.
"Not a bit of it. I've only got to tot down one or two things, and you're better out than in. We shall see you at dinner."
"Yes; Capel will have time to bolt something before he sets out on that money-grubbing business of his. We should be back by five."
They went off arm in arm toward the harbor, where the American's steam yacht Semiramis lay, and Fisher took the opportunity on the way to make a somewhat significant remark upon his friend and patron's scholarship.
"Poor old Messenger!" said he; "I fancy him blundering through a dictionary without me. I never knew a man write such a fist or spell so badly in all my life!"
"And yet they sent him down from the 'varsity without a degree," interposed Capel with malice.
"That's true; but he's the best chap alive for all that. He's been more than a brother to me; and there's something else in the world besides spelling."
He always consoled himself with this reflection, which was the growth of an honest friendship; but upon this afternoon the Prince had scant need of his sympathy. He progressed without his amanuensis to his satisfaction; for the truth was that he had no business of letter-writing at all. The moment the boys were out of hearing he had put his paper down, as Kenner had done; and the men, each desiring the other to begin, waited with a slight, but unusual, restraint upon them. This was but the restraint of an instant, neither boasting of any substantial mock modesty; and when once he spoke, the Prince had meaning in his voice.
"Kenner," said he, "I've a fancy to smoke a cigar out past the lower town. Are you that way?"
"I was going to suggest it," replied Kenner, with the frankest air possible; "let's get."
They moved from the terrace, and skirted round the harbour to the Mentone road, walking sedately, and without uttering a single observation, until they had left the effervescence and the voices of those who served tables behind them, and were upon that perfect highway which is one of the continuing glories of the Riviera. There, but for a handful of loiterers coming from the olive-clad promontory of Cap Martin, they had no company; and the sun being almost in the zenith, they made yet a slower measure of progress. Again, as at the hotel, Messenger was the first to speak.
"Kenner," said he of a sudden, as he stopped and began to use his stick upon the hard road as a man uses a burin upon a block—"Kenner, that money could be acquired."
The American blew a great circle of smoke from his lips, and looked at the other full in the face.
"You've made an observation," said he, "for which I've been looking for the last ten minutes."
Messenger ceased to engrave unnecessary hieroglyphics upon the wayside when he had got the answer, and walked on briskly for a while, as a man whose active mind compels activity in his limbs. When he stopped again, it was at a fall of the road where the hedge was all ablaze with a burden of flower and fruit, and a little cascade of crystal water shot out a thousand lights, as of unnumbered jewels. There was a jutting out of the grass bank here which made a natural seat under a canopy of wisteria and laburnum, and the men went to it by a common impulse, and began to talk more freely.
"What I want to ask myself," said the Prince, resuming the broken conversation at the point he had left it—"what I want to ask myself is this: How comes it if these clerks—you can't call them any thing else—are sent twice or three times a year to St. Petersburg with some tons of money, that no one of our friends has ever had the mind to try his luck with them?"
"That's nat'ral," interrupted the American; "but who's going to say that they have heard of it? I've got a head pretty full of items, but this is a cablegram to me. You don't suppose the dude's people are going round to all the newspaper men with the tale: 'Here's five hundred thousand off to St. Petersburg again; come and have a straight talk about it.' They keep it under lock and key; that's their chart of safety, as any mule could see."
"I quite follow you," said Messenger, whose hair was streaming back from his forehead in the fresh breeze, and whose eyes shone queerly, as if reflecting the ardent thought of the keen mind behind them; "yet, when I really think of the matter, I can remember that I have heard the tale before. All these financial houses send bullion in big sums to the Continent at one time or other, and it's rare that they've any other guard than a couple of trusted clerks."
"And why should they?" asked Kenner, to whom reflection brought some disappointment; "why should they? Who could interfere with them? You've got to leave sticking up trains to our boys; it's played out in your country, I reckon. Even Red Rube himself wouldn't have taken it on, passage paid!"
"All that's very true,"