A door opposite the one through which I had come opened, and a girl came in, closing the door behind her, shutting out a throbbing purr, as of some heavy machine, that had sounded through.
“I’m Romaine Frankl,” she said in English, “His Excellency’s secretary. Will you tell me what you wish?”
She might have been any age from twenty to thirty, something less than five feet in height, slim without boniness, with curly hair as near black as brown can get, black-lashed eyes whose gray irises had black rims, a small, delicate-featured face, and a voice that seemed too soft and faint to carry as well as it did. She wore a red woolen dress that had no shape except that which her body gave it, and when she moved—to walk or raise a hand—it was as if it cost her no energy—as if someone else were moving her.
“I’d like to see him,” I said while I was accumulating this data.
“Later, certainly,” she promised, “but it’s impossible now.” She turned, with her peculiar effortless grace, back to the door, opening it so that the throbbing purr sounded in the room again. “Hear?” she said. “He’s taking his nap.”
She shut the door against His Excellency’s snoring and floated across the room to climb up in the immense leather chair at the desk.
“Do sit down,” she said, wriggling a tiny forefinger at a chair beside the desk. “It will save time if you will tell me your business, because, unless you speak our tongue, I’ll have to interpret your message to His Excellency.”
I told her about Lionel Grantham and my interest in him, in practically the same words I had used on Scanlan, winding up:
“You see, there’s nothing I can do except try to learn what the boy’s up to and give him a hand if he needs it. I can’t go to him—he’s too much Grantham, I’m afraid, to take kindly to what he’d think was nursemaid stuff. Mr. Scanlan advised me to come to the Minister of Police.”
“You were fortunate.” She looked as if she wanted to make a joke about my country’s representative but weren’t sure how I’d take it. “Your chargé d’affaires is not always easy to understand.”
“Once you get the hang of it, it’s not hard,” I said. “You just throw out all his statements that have ‘no’s’ or ‘not’s’ or ‘nothing’s’ or ‘don’t’s’ in them.”
“That’s it! That’s it, exactly!” She leaned toward me, laughing. “I’ve always known there was some key to it, but nobody’s been able to find it before. You’ve solved our national problem.”
“For reward, then, I should be given all the information you have about Grantham.”
“You should, but I’ll have to speak to His Excellency first. He’ll wake presently.”
“You can tell me unofficially what you think of Grantham. You know him?”
“Yes. He’s charming. A nice boy, delightfully naive, inexperienced, but really charming.”
“Who are his friends here?”
She shook her head and said:
“No more of that until His Excellency wakes. You’re from San Francisco? I remember the funny little street cars, and the fog, and the salad right after the soup, and Coffee Dan’s.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Twice. I was in the United States for a year and half, in vaudeville, bringing rabbits out of hats.”
We were still talking about that half an hour later when the door opened and the Minister of Police came in.
The oversize furniture immediately shrank to normal, the girl became a midget, and I felt like somebody’s little boy.
This Vasilije Djudakovich stood nearly seven feet tall, and that was nothing to his girth. Maybe he wouldn’t weigh more than five hundred pounds, but, looking at him, it was hard to think except in terms of tons. He was a blond-haired, blond-bearded mountain of meat in a black frock coat. He wore a necktie, so I suppose he had a collar, but it was hidden all the way around by the red rolls of his neck. His white vest was the size and shape of a hoop-skirt, and in spite of that it strained at the buttons. His eyes were almost invisible between the cushions of flesh around them, and were shaded into a colorless darkness, like water in a deep well. His mouth was a fat red oval among the yellow hairs of his whiskers and mustache. He came into the room slowly, ponderously, and I was surprised that the floor didn’t creak nor the room tremble.
Romaine Frankl was watching me attentively as she slid out of the big leather chair and introduced me to the Minister. He gave me a fat, sleepy smile and a hand that had the general appearance of a naked baby, and let himself down slowly into the chair the girl had quit. Planted there, he lowered his head until it rested on the pillows of his several chins, and then he seemed to go to sleep.
I drew up another chair for the girl. She took another sharp look at me—she seemed to be hunting for something in my face—and began to talk to him in what I suppose was the native lingo. She talked rapidly for about twenty minutes, while he gave no sign that he was listening or that he was even awake.
When she was through, he said: “Da.” He spoke dreamily, but there was a volume to the syllable that could have come from no place smaller than his gigantic belly.
The girl turned to me, smiling.
“His Excellency will be glad to give you every possible assistance. Officially, of course, he does not care to interfere in the affairs of a visitor from another country, but he realizes the importance of keeping Mr. Grantham from being victimized while here.
