Bristow smiled inscrutably. “I don’t doubt you have,” he answered drily, “and, as it happens, I can probably give you some information. The question is whether I shall do it.”
Caruth colored. “I don’t understand you, Mr. Bristow,” he syllabled anxiously.
“Probably not. I will try to explain.” The reporter tossed his cigar into the fire and leaned back in his chair. “Isn’t it curious how things fit in together?” he began reflectively. “Life is a mosaic made up of hundreds of separate facts. Each belongs in one place and only in one. Until rightly fitted, the whole is an unintelligible jumble. But when fitted, we see that they are all parts of one design. I am interested in Russia and Russians. My work has compelled me to be; some of the best ‘stories’ I have gotten for the Consolidated Press have had to do with Russia. I am well acquainted in the Russian colony here. Professor Shishkin, the distinguished Russian scientist, is a great friend of mine. I’m telling you this so that you may understand why I was interested in this woman—this Russian woman, for she was Russian—about whom you are inquiring. My interest did not decrease when she took a cab at the Battery and told the cabman to drive her to this building.”
Caruth gasped, but said nothing.
“When I returned home after midnight,” went on the reporter, “the elevator had stopped running, and I had to walk up the stairs. Your door was ajar. As I passed it I distinctly heard a woman’s voice—and yours. It was none of my business, and I went on upstairs and to bed. The next morning I heard about your valet’s murder, and noticed that you said nothing about a visitor in your flat. Yet a woman must have been there when your man fled; in fact, I suspect that he had left your door open in his flight only a moment before I passed up the stairs. Your inquiry seems to bring all these facts into a somewhat curious consonance.”
Caruth was breathing hard. “Well?” he asked. “What are you going to do about it?”
The reporter hesitated. “I don’t know,” he answered at last, frankly. “It all depends! But I want you to understand one thing, Mr. Caruth: I am not a police reporter nor a yellow sensation reporter. My duty to the Consolidated Press does not call on me to solve murder mysteries, nor to pry into scandals. I don’t know you very well, nor what you are capable of doing at a pinch. For the matter of that, nobody does know what a man is capable of—not even himself. I’ve seen too many unexpected manifestations of virtue and of crime to judge lightly. That is why I have kept silent, though I knew you were holding back something about this murder. I don’t think to-night’s developments will lead me to change my course, though I cannot be certain. If you have any explanation to make, I shall be glad to hear it. I shall not make a newspaper story out of it, and I shall not repeat it without grave cause. More than this I cannot promise.”
Caruth did not answer for a moment. His thoughts whirled, unsettled as dry leaves in an October blast. His secret, it seemed, was not his secret at all—had never been his secret. From the first, this newspaper man had been able to shatter his glib story by a word, and had refrained from doing so. How many others possessed the same potentiality for mischief? Abruptly he threw away his cigar.
“I’ll tell you the whole story,” he declared. “I don’t know whether you’ll believe it or not. Probably I shouldn’t believe it myself if any one else told it to me. It seems too preposterous to talk about plots and terrorists and all that here in New York.”
“Not at all,” Bristow smiled. “New York is a hot-bed of plots. Probably nine-tenths of all the political plots in the world are hatched here and hereabouts. Just consider a moment! Anybody can plot in this country in perfect safety; and there are plenty of plotters handy. Is it a Russian plot? New York is the second largest Russian city in the world. It has thousands upon thousands of dwellers who have been driven out of Russia at the blow of the knout. Is it a German one? Berlin is the only city in the world holding more Germans than New York. Is it an Italian one? There are more Italians in and around New York than there are in Rome. Plots? Why, New York reeks with plots and plotters! Men lay their schemes, raise their funds, choose their emissaries, and a month or so later something happens in Europe—it may be the murder of a king. But it started here, beneath our noses.”