“No, sir,” said he, turning his keen gray eyes upon me. “My name is Petrokine; you mistake me perhaps for one of the others. But now, not a word of business until the council meets. Try your chef’s soup; you will find it excellent, I think.”
Who Mr. Petrokine or the others might be I could not conceive. Land stewards of Dimidoff’s, perhaps; though the name did not seem familiar to my companion. However, as he appeared to shun any business questions at present, I gave in to his humor, and we conversed on social life in England—a subject in which he displayed considerable knowledge and acuteness. His remarks, too, on Malthus and the laws of population were wonderfully good, though savoring somewhat of Radicalism.
“By the way,” he remarked, as we smoked a cigar over our wine, “we should never have known you but for the English labels on your luggage; it was the luckiest thing in the world that Alexander noticed them. We had had no personal description of you; indeed we were prepared to expect a somewhat older man. You are young indeed, sir, to be intrusted with such a mission.”
“My employer trusts me,” I replied; “and we have learned in our trade that youth and shrewdness are not incompatible.”
“Your remark is true, sir,” returned my newly made friend; “but I am surprised to hear you call our glorious association a trade! Such a term is gross indeed to apply to a body of men banded together to supply the world with that which it is yearning for, but which, without our exertions, it can never hope to attain. A spiritual brotherhood would be a more fitting term.”
“By Jove!” thought I, “how pleased the boss would be to hear him! He must have been in the business himself, whoever he is.”
“Now, sir,” said Mr. Petrokine, “the clock points to eight, and the council must be already sitting. Let us go up together, and I will introduce you. I need hardly say that the greatest secrecy is observed, and that your appearance is anxiously awaited.”
I turned over in my mind as I followed him how I might best fulfil my mission and secure the most advantageous terms. They seemed as anxious as I was in the matter, and there appeared to be no opposition, so perhaps the best thing would be to wait and see what they would propose.
I had hardly come to this conclusion when my guide swung open a large door at the end of a passage, and I found myself in a room larger and even more gorgeously fitted up than the one in which I had dined. A long table, covered with green baize and strewn with papers, ran down the middle, and round it were sitting fourteen or fifteen men conversing earnestly. The whole scene reminded me forcibly of a gambling hell I had visited some time before.
Upon our entrance the company rose and bowed. I could not but remark that my companion attracted no attention, while every eye was turned upon me with a strange mixture of surprise and almost servile respect. A man at the head of the table, who was remarkable for the extreme pallor of his face as contrasted with his blue-black hair and mustache, waved his hand to a seat beside him, and I sat down.