“Tell me!” cried the German Emperor in his astonishment.
“I owe the idea to you, and, crazy as it may appear, I shall confide it to you. I should be rather base if I did not; and I rely, if not on your generosity, then on your foresight, to let me alone. You can have Europe, and welcome, and when the time comes that you need my help you will get it; but you can’t have South America—not an inch of it; and now I’ll tell you why—”
“Suppose I decline to listen?”—and none but himself could know what it cost him to admit that possibility. But the excitable color had flashed into his face, and his eyes were glittering. “If I do listen,” he added in a moment, “I decline to commit myself beforehand.”
“It won’t matter. Even if you betrayed me you could not obstruct my purpose. Of course I wish my secret kept. Only the fool takes the world into his confidence. I only tell you—well, not so much for the reason I just gave, as because you have given me your friendship, and I like you better than any one on earth except my father. You would have suggested the idea in any case; and if we had been cut out for enemies I’d have left the next day, and it would have been a year before you would have known what I was up to.”
The Emperor’s face did not soften. He felt anything but sentimental. “Why are you so sure that Europe—that I—could not balk you?” he asked.
“Because I have a hundred million dollars at my disposal at the present moment, and the work will be done before you can cook up a war with the United States.”
The Emperor turned gray, and let his temper fly. “Damn your American billions!” he cried. “If I could lay my hands on that amount—”
“Well,” said Fessenden. “When the time comes you can have it.”