And here is where the story really begins.
CHAPTER III
OFF FOR BHARBAZONIA!
See, what a ready tongue suspicion hath!
He that but fears the thing he would not know,
Hath, by instinct, knowledge from another's eyes,
That what he feared is chanced.
—Shakespeare: Henry IV.
When the big ocean liner swung clear of her dock the following Tuesday under the propelling influence of a pair of optimistic tugs which, undaunted by her huge bulk and their diminutive size, dragged her slowly into the current of the Hudson River, and set her face toward Europe, Nick and I were leaning over the guard rail watching the sea of upturned faces on the dock and the mass of waving handkerchiefs.
My preparations for the voyage had been quickly made. After expressing my steamer trunk to the boat, writing a few letters and turning my practice over to my hospital colleague, I was at liberty to accompany Nick in his swift trips about the city while he transacted the business which brought him to Philadelphia.
He first visited the Russian consul; then he held a long talk with a white-bearded black-robed priest of the Greek Church and an Armenian shoemaker in the Lombard Street district. Everywhere he was received with considerable show of respect, and I began to suspect that his early education in the languages had not been entirely a matter of taste or of chance.
During all this time I had no glimpse of General Palmora in Philadelphia, and he was not on board when we drove on the dock in Nicholas' automobile, having made the trip from home in it. Nick intended to take his car with him.
"It will be the first one they ever saw in Bharbazonia," he laughed, and, when I suggested that it might be cheaper to buy a car in Europe and so avoid the duties, he said that automobiles were unknown at the place where we would disembark from the General's yacht and that there would be no duties.
"Looks as if I had fallen in with a band of smugglers," I said banteringly.