He did not pursue the subject. Even Naniescu himself had put such a possibility out of his reckoning.
"All that our friend could do," Number Ten went on, speaking over his shoulder to M. de Kervoisin, "would be to have me murdered, but he would find even that rather difficult. Ten thousand pounds of secret service money is considerably safer—and cheaper in the end."
Then at last Naniescu gave in. "Oh, have it your own way, curse you!" he exclaimed.
"The money now," Number Ten said coolly, raising a warning finger. "You may as well send one of your clerks over to the bank for it. I prefer that to taking your cheque."
Then he turned to Kervoisin, and picked up the book which the latter had thrown down on the table. "Ah!" he remarked, with a total change of tone, "Marcel Proust's latest. You are an epicure in literature, my friend."
He fingered the book, seemingly as indifferent to what Naniescu was doing and saying, as if the whole matter of a ten thousand pound cheque did not concern him in the least.
The general had gone across to a desk which stood in the farther corner of the room. He had written out a cheque, rung the bell, and was now giving orders to a clerk to fetch the money from the Anglo-Roumanian bank over the way.
On the whole he was not displeased with the transaction. The articles signed by Uno and published in the Times would redound to his credit, would bring him all that he had striven for all his life; and, after all, they would cost him nothing—nothing at all.
Number Ten and de Kervoisin were discussing Marcel Proust; he, Naniescu, was savouring his day-dreams once again; and presently when the clerk returned with a bundle of crisp English bank-notes in his hand, Naniescu handed the money over to his spy-in-chief, without a qualm, and certainly without regret.
"This being Monday," Number Ten said, after he had stowed the money away in his pocket-book, "and your courier having started last night, you will probably see the first of the articles in Thursday's Times. By the way," he went on casually, "what are you doing about young Imrey and the girl?"