“Did he tell you?”
“I do not think that he did. He told me frankly enough that he had no past—that it was not to be referred to. There were others like that in the campaign, men who had secrets to bury, men who sought forgetfulness, even that forgetfulness which a bullet brings. We were a strange company enough. But the fighting was good.”
“And since then you have met him again in England?”
“I met him at a little fencing-academy six months ago, and since then we have fenced together continually. But for your recognition of him I should have written him down as harmless.”
A spot of colour burned in Reist’s cheek. He ground his heel into the mat.
“Harmless! He! A Turk! A Russian spy! A double-dealing rogue. Sword in hand I have chased him through the Kurdistan valley all one night, and if I had caught him then Russia would have lost a tool and the Sultan a traitorous soldier. He holds still, although an absentee, a high command in the Turkish army, and all the while he is in the pay of Russia. Prince Alexis knows of my mission to you by now, and if we reach Theos we are lucky, for I do not think that a Tyrnaus upon the throne of Theos would suit Russia at all.”
“I may seem stupid,” Ughtred said, seriously, “but it is necessary that I should understand these things. Why should Russia object so much to my reinstatement upon the throne of my fathers? Surely of all the nations of Europe one would expect from her the least sympathy with a democratic form of government.”
“Russia is above all sympathies or antipathies,” Reist answered, bitterly. “She is the most self-centred, the most absolutely selfish nation on earth. The present state of turmoil in Theos is owing largely to the efforts of Muscovite secret agents. Russia desires a weak Theos. She wants to stand behind the government and pull the strings. It is she whom we have most to fear now.”
Ughtred lit a cigar and leaned back in his corner. He was still in his evening clothes, and he looked doubtfully at the window-panes streaming with rain.
“Neither Russia nor her agents can interfere with us on neutral soil,” he remarked. “I wish, Reist, that you had let me send for my bag. I shall be a very dilapidated object by the time we reach the frontier.”