It was nearly half-past eleven when Martin came in. He was in riding-costume and was covered with dirt. His eyes, rimmed with dust, looked out of a face that was pale beneath the sunburn. He threw himself into a chair with an exclamation of fatigue.
“Had any dinner?” asked his father.
Wanda looked at her brother’s face, and changed color herself. There was a suggestion of the wild rose in Wanda’s face, with its delicate, fleeting shades of pink and white, while the slim strength of her limbs and carriage rather added to a characteristic which is essentially English or Polish. For American girls suggest a fuller flower on a firmer stem.
“Something has happened,” said Wanda, quietly.
“Yes,” replied Martin, stretching out his slight legs.
The prince laid aside his newspaper, and looked up quickly. When his attention was thus roused suddenly his eyes and his whole face were momentarily fierce. Someone had once said that the history of Poland was written on those deep-lined features.
“Anything wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing that affects affairs,” replied Martin. “Everything is safe.”
Which seemed to be catchwords, for Kosmaroff had made use of almost the identical phrases.
“I am quite confident that there is no danger to affairs,” continued Martin, speaking with the haste and vehemence of a man who is anxious to convince himself. “It was a mere mischance, but it gave us all a horrid fright, I can tell you—especially me, for I was doubly interested. Cartoner rode into our midst tonight.”
“Cartoner?” repeated the prince.
“Yes. He rang the bell, and when the door was opened—we were expecting someone else—he led his horse into our midst, with a loose shoe.”
“Who saw him?” asked the prince.
“Everyone.”
“Kosmaroff?”
“Yes. And if I had not been there it would have been all up with Cartoner. You know what Kosmaroff is. It was a very near thing.”
“That would have been a mistake,” said the prince, reflectively. “It was the mistake they made last time. It has never paid yet to take life in driblets.”
“That is what I told Kosmaroff afterwards, when Cartoner had gone. It was evident that it could only have been an accident. Cartoner could not have known. To do a thing like that, he must have known all—or nothing.”
“He could not have known all,” said the prince. “That is an impossibility.”
“Then he must have known nothing,” put in Wanda, with a laugh, which at one stroke robbed the matter of much of its importance.
“I do not know how much he perceived when he was in—as to his own danger, I mean—for he has an excellent nerve, and was steady; steadier than I was. But he knows that there was something wrong,” said Martin, wiping the dust from his face with his pocket-handkerchief. His hand shook a little, as if he had ridden hard, or had been badly frightened. “We had a bad half-hour after he left, especially with Kosmaroff. The man is only half-tamed, that is the truth of it.”
“That is more to his own danger than to anyone else’s,” put in Wanda, again. She spoke lightly, and seemed quite determined to make as little of the incident as possible.
“Then how do matters stand?” inquired the prince.
“It comes to this,” answered Martin, “that Poland is not big enough to hold both Kosmaroff and Cartoner. Cartoner must go. He must be told to go, or else—”
Wanda had taken up her work again. As she looked at it attentively, the color slowly faded from her face.
“Or else—what?” she inquired.
Martin shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, Kosmaroff is not a man to stick at trifles.”
“You mean,” said Wanda, who would have things plainly, “that he would assassinate him?”
Wanda glanced at her father. She knew that men hard pressed are no sticklers. She knew the story of the last insurrection, and of the wholesale assassination, abetted and encouraged by the anonymous national government of which the members remain to this day unknown. The prince made an indifferent gesture of the hand.
“We cannot go into those small matters. We are playing a bigger game that that. It has always been agreed that no individual life must be allowed to stand in the way of success.”
“It is upon that principle that Kosmaroff argues,” said Martin, uneasily.
“Precisely; and as I was not present when this happened—as it is, moreover, not my department—I cannot, personally, act in the matter.”
“Kosmaroff will obey nobody else.”
“Then warn Cartoner,” the prince said, in a final voice. His had always been the final word. He would say to one, go; and to another, come.
“I cannot do it,” said Martin, looking at Wanda. “You know my position—how I am watched.”
“There is only one person in Warsaw who can do it,” said Wanda—“Paul Deulin.”
“Deulin could do it,” said the prince, thoughtfully. “But I never talk to Deulin of these matters. Politics are a forbidden subject between us.”
“Then I will go and see Monsieur Deulin the first thing tomorrow morning,” said Wanda, quietly.
“You?” asked her father. And Martin looked at her in silent surprise. The old prince’s eyes flashed suddenly.
“Remember,” he said, “that you run the risk of making people talk of you. They may talk of us—of Martin and me—the world has talked of the Bukatys for some centuries—but never of their women.”
“They will not talk of me,” returned Wanda, composedly. “I will see to that. A word to Mr. Cartoner will be enough. I understood him to say that he was not going to stay long in Warsaw.”
The prince had acquired the habit of leaving many things to Wanda. He knew that she was wiser than Martin, and in some ways more capable.
“Well,” he said, rising. “I take no hand in
