"Money never counts here," the doctor replied gravely. "We shall save him if it is possible. You've nothing to tell me, I suppose, as to how he met with his wound?"
"Nothing."
They walked out together into the night. The bank of clouds had drifted away now and the moon was shining. Below them, barely a quarter of a mile away, they could see the flare of lights from the Casino. A woman was laughing hysterically through the open windows of a house on the other side of the way. Some one was playing a violin in a café at the corner of the street.
"Richard," Hunterleys said, "will you see me through? I have to get to Cannes as fast as I can to send a cable. I daren't send it from here, even in code."
"I'll drive you to Cannes like a shot," Richard assented heartily. "Just a brandy and soda on our way out, and I'll show you some pretty driving."
They stopped at the Café de Paris and left the car under the trees. Both men took a long drink and Richard filled his pocket with cigarettes. Then they re-entered the car, lit up, and glided off on the road for Cannes. Richard had become more serious. His boyish manner and appearance had temporarily gone. He drove, even, with less than his usual recklessness.
"That was a fine fellow," he remarked enthusiastically, after a long pause, "that fellow Roche!"
"And we've many more like him," Hunterleys declared. "We've men in every part of the world doing what seems like dirty work, ill-paid work, too, doing it partly, perhaps, because the excitement grows on them and they love it, but always, they have to start in cold blood. The papers don't always tell the truth, you know. There's many a death in foreign cities you read of as a suicide, or the result of an accident, when it's really the sacrifice of a hero for his country. It's great work, Richard."
"Makes me feel kind of ashamed," Richard muttered. "I've never done anything but play around all my life. Anyway, those sort of things don't come to us in our country. America's too powerful and too isolated to need help of that description. We shouldn't have any use for politicians of your class, or for Secret Service men."
"If you're in earnest," Hunterleys advised, "you go to Washington and ask them about it some day. The time's coming, if it hasn't already arrived, when your country will have to develop a different class of politicians. You see, whether she wants it or not, she is coming into touch, through Asia and South America, with European interests, and if she does, she'll have to adopt their methods more or less. Poor old Roche! There was something more he wanted to say, and if it's what I've been expecting, your country was in it."