“Do not forget,” he said, “that there is always a limit fixed, whether it be one day, two days, or three days.”
“A limit to your complacence, I presume?”
Mr. Fentolin assented.
“Obviously, then,” Mr. Dunster concluded, “you wish those who sent me to believe that my message has been delivered. Yet there I must confess that you puzzle me. What I cannot see is, to put it bluntly, where you come in. Any one of the countries represented at this little conference would only be the gainers by the miscarriage of my message, which is, without doubt, so far as they are concerned, of a distasteful nature. Your own country alone could be the sufferer. Now what interest in the world, then, is there left—what interest in the world can you possibly represent—which can be the gainer by your present action?”
Mr. Fentolin’s eyes grew suddenly a little brighter. There was a light upon his face strange to witness.
“The power which is to be the gainer,” he said quietly, “is the power encompassed by these walls.”
He touched his chest; his long, slim fingers were folded upon it.
“When I meet a man whom I like,” he continued softly, “I take him into my confidence. Picture me, if you will, as a kind of Puck. Haven’t you heard that with the decay of the body comes sometimes a malignant growth in the brain; a Caliban-like desire for evil to fall upon the world; a desire to escape from the loneliness of suffering, the isolation of black misery?”
Mr. John P. Dunster let his cigar burn out. He looked steadfastly at this strange little figure whose chair had imperceptibly moved a little nearer to his.
“You know what the withholding of this message you carry may mean,” Mr. Fentolin proceeded. “You come here, bearing to Europe the word of a great people, a people whose voice is powerful enough even to still the gathering furies. I have read your ciphered message. It is what I feared. It is my will, mine—Miles Fentolin’s—that that message be not delivered.”