The "news" in the letter she sent from Julian, was all of the gathering strength of the peace movement and the glorious part in it which America was destined to play. President Wilson, "the man with more power and a greater range of action than any ruler on the earth to-day"—President Wilson was the hope of the world. The rest of the page had been torn off. Nan was learning discretion, poor child!
In the intervals of business conclaves in the city, trips to Pittsburgh and elsewhere, Napier continued to cultivate Mr. Roderick Taylor despite that gentleman's refusal to lunch out, or to dine out. Not with Mr. Napier! Taylor was never seen in the company he most liked, as he said in his pleasant way. But there were private smokes and talks during which many things that had been mysteries to Napier became clear. Those were the days when Taylor and his agents were almost daily unearthing evidences of the underground activity of the pro-German propagandist. Among these moles of international mischief Taylor's weasels came upon Schwarzenberg's traces only to lose them. "Suspects of more public weight and interest, particularly men, were far more easily dealt with. These border-line women were the devil."
Never in all that time was Napier wholly free from a dread of hearing the name of Ellis in connection with Schwarzenberg; for always in his mind the figure of the winged messenger followed the devious ways of the German, followed like her shadow. The girl he loved was lavishing faith and service, as well as financing this enemy of England. The thought was an anguish to him.
Nothing of all this to Taylor. The sole reference to the chief ground of Napier's own interest in the situation was a carelessly expressed opinion, "Schwarzenberg must be making a considerable hole in the Ellis pockets."
But, no. According to the omniscient Taylor, Schwarzenberg's spendings were on a scale quite outside the Ellis range. Taylor half closed his whitish eyelashes and regarded the end of his cigar. "I am, I believe, on the track of Schwarzenberg's new resources."
That telephone again! It was always ringing in here when Macray was out. Taylor listened, laughed, and made an appointment.
An Italian, he explained, a Mr. Luigi Montani, over here with his family. He had taken from some friends of Taylor's a furnished house in Washington. All arranged in twenty-four hours. Not a syllable in the press.
"He's just been telling me that when his servants, Italians, went downstairs the first morning, they couldn't open the front door for the mass of pro-German literature shoved through the letter-box overnight."
The incident set Taylor talking about "the slender thread" on which may hang "the everlasting things" in international relationships. He talked of America with, as Napier thought, an understanding given to few foreigners. You couldn't shake Taylor's faith in America. "But her ignorance of one entire hemisphere!"
Was it greater, Napier asked, than Old-World ignorance of the new?