it’s destroyed. We have a thousand-to-one chance. We are indebted to a phone call, which fortunately came through direct to you, for knowledge of Dr. Prescott’s whereabouts.”
“Why do you say ‘which fortunately came through’? You surely have no doubts about Richet?”
“How long with you?” snapped Smith.
“Nearly a year.”
“Nationality?”
“American.”
“I mean pedigree.”
“That I cannot tell you.”
“There’s colour somewhere. I can’t place its exact shade. But one thing is clear: Dr. Prescott is in great danger. So are you.”
The abbot arrested Smith’s restless promenade, laying a hand upon his shoulder.
“There is only one other candidate in the running for dictatorship, Mr. Smith—Harvey Bragg. Yet I find hard to believe that he . . . You are not accusing
“Harvey Bragg!” Smith laughed shortly. “Popularly known as ‘Bluebeard,’ I believe? My dear Dom Patrick, Harvey Bragg is a small pawn in a big game.”
“Yet—he may be President, or Dictator.”
Smith turned, staring in his piercing way into the priest’s eyes.
“He almost certainly
Only the mad howling of the blizzard disturbed a silence which fell upon those words—”He almost certainly
Then the priest whose burning rhetoric, like that of Peter the Hermit, had roused a nation, found voice; he .spoke in very low tones:
“Why do you say he certainly will be Dictator?”
“I said
“He has carried them out! He controls enormous funds.”
“He does! Have you any suspicion, Father, of the source of those funds?”
For one fleeting moment a haunted look came into the abbot’s eyes. A furtive memory had presented itself, only to elude him.
“None,” he replied wearily; “but his following to-day is greater than mine. Just as a priest and with no personal pretensions, I have tried—God knows I have tried—to keep the people sane and clean. Machinery has made men mad. As machines reach nearer and nearer to the province of miracles, as Science mounts higher and higher—so Man sinks lower and lower. On the day that Machinery reaches up to the stars, Man, spiritually, will have sunk back to the primeval jungle.”
He dropped into his chair.
Smith, resting a lean, nervous hand upon the desk, leaned across it, staring into the speaker’s face.
“Harvey Bragg is a true product of his age,” he said tensely—”and he is backed by one man! I have followed this man from Europe to Asia, from Asia to South America, from South to North. The resources of three European Powers and of the United States have been employed to head that man off. But he is here! In the political disruption of the country he sees his supreme opportunity.”
“His name, Mr. Smith?”
“In your own interests, Father, I suggest it might be better that you don’t know—yet.”
Abbot Donegal challenged the steely eyes, read sincerity there, and nodded.”
“I accept your suggestion, Mr. Smith. In the Church we are trained to recognize tacit understandings. You are not a private investigator instructed by the President, nor is ‘Mr. Smith’ your proper title. But I think we understand one another. . . . And you tell me that this man, whoever he may be, is backing Harvey Bragg?”
“I have only one thing to tell you: Stay up here at the top of your tower until you hear from me!”
“Remain a prisoner?”
Patrick Donegal stood up, suddenly aggressive, truculent.
“A prisoner, yes. I speak, Father, with respect and authority”
“You may speak, Mr. Smith, with the authority of Congress, of the President in person, but my first duty is to God; my second to the State. I take the eight o’clock Mass in the morning.”
For a moment their glances met and challenged; then:
“There may be times, Father, when you have a duty even higher than this,” said Smith crisply.
“You cannot induce me, my friend, to close my eyes to a plain obligation. I do not doubt your sincerity. I have never met a man more honest or more capable. I cannot doubt my own danger. But in this matter I have made my choice.”
For a moment longer Federal Agent 56 stared at the priest, his lean face very grim. Then, suddenly stooping, he picked up his leather topcoat and his hat from the floor and shot out his hand.
