Wanda had taken up her work again. As she looked at it attentively, the color slowly faded from her face.
“Or else—what?” she inquired.
Martin shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, Kosmaroff is not a man to stick at trifles.”
“You mean,” said Wanda, who would have things plainly, “that he would assassinate him?”
Wanda glanced at her father. She knew that men hard pressed are no sticklers. She knew the story of the last insurrection, and of the wholesale assassination, abetted and encouraged by the anonymous national government of which the members remain to this day unknown. The prince made an indifferent gesture of the hand.
“We cannot go into those small matters. We are playing a bigger game that that. It has always been agreed that no individual life must be allowed to stand in the way of success.”
“It is upon that principle that Kosmaroff argues,” said Martin, uneasily.
“Precisely; and as I was not present when this happened—as it is, moreover, not my department—I cannot, personally, act in the matter.”
“Kosmaroff will obey nobody else.”