"You are right," he murmured. "Nothing is known yet. Very likely they will not know until the valet goes to lay out his clothes for dinner.... Dead!"
Selingman, with one hand gripping the iron arm of the seat, watched his companion's face with a sort of fascinated curiosity. There were beads of perspiration upon Draconmeyer's forehead, but his expression, in its way, was curious. There was no horror in his face, no fear, no shadow of remorse. Some wholly different sentiment seemed to have transformed the man. He was younger, more virile. He seemed as though he could scarcely sit still.
"My friend," Selingman said, "I know that you are one of our children, that you are one of those who have seen the truth and worked steadfastly for the great cause with the heart of a patriot and the unswerving fidelity of a strong man. But tell me the honest truth. There is something else in your life—you have some other feeling about this man Hunterleys' death?"
Draconmeyer removed his eyes from the front of the hotel and turned slowly towards his companion. There was a transfiguring smile upon his lips. Again he gave Selingman the impression of complete rejuvenation, of an elderly man suddenly transformed into something young and vigorous.
"There is something else, Selingman," he confessed. "This is the moment when I dare speak of it. I will tell you first of any living person. There is a woman over there whom I have set up as an idol, and before whose shrine I have worshipped. There is a woman over there who has turned the dull paths of my life into a flowery way. I am a patriot, and I have worked for my country, Selingman, as you have worked. But I have worked, also, that I might taste for once before I die the great passion. Don't stare at me, man! Remember I am not like you. You can laugh your way through the world, with a kiss here and a bow there, a ribbon to your lips at night, thrown to the winds in the morning. I haven't that sort of philosophy. Love doesn't come to me like that. It's set in my heart amongst the great things. It's set there side by side with the greatest of all."
"His wife!" Selingman muttered.
"Are you so colossal a fool as only to have guessed it at this moment?" Draconmeyer continued contemptuously. "If he hadn't blundered across our path here, if he hadn't been my political enemy, I should still some day have taken him by the throat and killed him. You don't know what risks I have been running," he went on, with a sudden hoarseness. "In her heart she half loves him still. If he hadn't been a fool, a prejudiced, over-conscientious, stiff-necked fool, I should have lost her within the last twenty-four hours. I have had to fight and scheme as I have never fought and schemed before, to keep them apart. I have had to pick my way through shoals innumerable, hold myself down when I have been burning to grip her by the wrists and tell her that all that a man could offer a woman was hers. Selingman, this sounds like nonsense, I suppose."
"No," Selingman murmured, "not nonsense, but it doesn't sound like Draconmeyer."
"Well, it's finished," Draconmeyer declared, with a great sigh of content. "You know now. I enter upon the final stage. I had only one fear. Jean Coulois has settled that for me. I wonder whether they know. It seems peaceful enough. No! Look over there," he added, gripping his companion's arm. "Peter, the concierge, is whispering with the others. That is one of the managers there, out on the pavement, talking to them."
Selingman pointed down the road towards Monaco.