'Four-wheeler?' Sarrasin suggested tentatively.
'No; I don't seem to be in humour for anything slow and creeping,' the Dictator said gaily. 'I feel full of animal spirits, somehow. Perhaps it is the getting out of danger, although really I don't think there was much'—and then he stopped, for he suddenly reflected that it must seem rather ungracious to suggest that there was not much danger to a pair of people who had come all the way from Clapham Common to look after his life. 'There was not much craft,' he went on to say, 'displayed in that first attempt. You will have to look after me pretty closely in the future. No; I must spin in a hansom—it is the one thing I specially love in London, its hansom. Here, we'll have two hansoms, and I'll take charge of Mrs. Sarrasin, and you'll follow us, or, at least, you'll find your way the best you can, Captain Sarrasin—and let us see who gets there first.'
CHAPTER XV
'IF I WERE TO ASK YOU?'
It is needless to say that Hamilton had never sent any telegram asking the Dictator to meet him on the bridge in St. James's Park or anywhere else at eleven o'clock at night. Hamilton at first was disposed to find fault with the letting loose of the supposed assassin, and was at all events much in favour of giving information at Scotland Yard and putting the police authorities on the look-out for some plot. But the opinion of the Dictator was clear and fixed, and Hamilton naturally yielded to it. Ericson was quite prepared to believe that some plot was expanding, but he was convinced that it would be better to allow it to expand. The one great thing was to find out who were the movers in the plot. If the London Sicilian really were a hired assassin, it was clear that he was thrown out merely as a skirmisher in the hope that he might succeed in doing the work at once, and the secure conviction that if he failed he could be abandoned to his fate. It was the crude form of an attempt at political assassination. A wild outcry on the part of the Dictator's friends would, he felt convinced, have no better effect than to put his enemies prematurely on their guard, and inspire them to plan something very subtle and dangerous. Or if, then, their hate did not take so serious a form, the Dictator reasoned that they were not particularly dangerous. So he insisted on lying low, and quietly seeing what would come of it. He was not now disposed to underrate the danger, but he felt convinced that the worst possible course for him would be to proclaim the danger too soon.
Therefore, Ericson insisted that the story of the bridge and the Sicilian knife must be kept an absolute secret for the present at least, and the help of Scotland Yard must not be invoked. Of course, it was clear even to Hamilton that there was no evidence against the supposed Sicilian which would warrant any magistrate in committing him for trial on a charge of attempted assassination. There was conjectural probability enough; but men are not sent for trial in this country on charges of conjectural probability. The fact of the false telegram having been sent was the only thing which made it clear that behind the Sicilian there were conspirators of a more educated and formidable character. The Sicilian never could have sent that telegram; would not be likely to know anything about Hamilton. Hamilton in the end became satisfied that the Dictator was right, and that it would be better to keep a keen look-out and let the plot develop itself. The most absolute reliance could be put on the silence of the Sarrasins; and better look-out could hardly be kept than the look-out of that brave and quick-witted pair of watchers. Therefore Ericson told Hamilton he meant to sleep in spite of thunder.
The very day after the scene on the bridge the Dictator got an imperious little note from Helena asking him to come to see her at once, as she had something to say to him. He had been thinking of her—he had been occupying himself in an odd sort of way with the conviction, the memory, that if the supposed assassin had only been equal to his work, the last thought on earth of the Dictator would have been given to Helena Langley. It did not occur to the Dictator, in his quiet, unegotistic nature, to think of what Helena Langley would have given to know that her name in such a crisis would have been on his dying lips.
Ericson himself did not think of the matter in that sentimental and impassioned way. He was only studying in his mind the curious fact that he certainly was thinking about Helena Langley as he stood on the bridge and looked on the water; and that, if the knife of the ladies' slipper-maker had done its business promptly, the last thought in his mind, the last feeling in his heart, would have been given not to Gloria but to Helena Langley.
He was welcomed and ushered by To-to. When the footman had announced him, Helena sprang up from her sofa and ran to meet him.