Crabb was stroking his chin and contemplating his well-shaped boot.
“Admit that it’s impossible,” he said calmly. “Do you think, if by some chance you were enabled to give the Secretary of State this information, you’d better your condition?”
“What is the use, Crabb?” began Burnett.
“It can’t do any harm to answer me.”
“Well—yes, I suppose so. If we weren’t plunged immediately into war with Emperor William.”
“Oh!” Crabb was deep in thought. It was several moments before he went on, and then, as though dismissing the subject.
“What are your plans, Ross? Have you a week to spare? How about a cruise on the Blue Wing? There’s a lot I know that you don’t, and a lot you know that I’d like to. I’ll take you up to Washington whenever you’re bored. What do you say?”
Ross Burnett accepted with alacrity. He remembered the Blue Wing, Jepson and Valentin’s dinners. He had longed for them many times when he was eating spaghetti at Gabri’s little restaurant in Genoa.
When they parted it was with a consciousness on the part of Burnett that the affair of Baron Arnim had not been dismissed. The very thought had been madness. Was it only a little pleasantry of Crabb’s? If not, what wild plan had entered his head? It was unlike the Mortimer Crabb he remembered.
And yet there had been a deeper current flowing below his placid surface that gave a suggestion of desperate intent which nothing could explain away. And how illimitable were the possibilities if some plan could be devised by which the information could be obtained without resort to violent measures! It meant for him at least a post at the helm somewhere, or, perhaps, a secretaryship on one of the big commissions.