"She has not spoken and she will not speak, Count."
"Ah, you are among the credulous. Your confidence flatters her, I fear."
"It is just—she has never lied to me."
The Count shrugged his shoulders.
"I will send your message," he said.
He wrote the cable in a fine pointed hand and duly delivered it to the waiter. His own would follow it ten minutes later—when he had made up his mind how to act. A dangerous thought had come to him and begun to obsess his mind. This English boy, he was saying, might yet be a more dangerous enemy than the girl they had set out to trap. It might yet be necessary to clap them both in the same prison until the whole truth were known. He resolved to debate it at his leisure. There was plenty of time, for the police were watching all the exits from the city, and if Lois Boriskoff attempted to pass out, God help her.
"We must not expect an answer to this before dinner," he said, holding out the message for the waiter to take it. "If you think it all right, we can proceed to amuse ourselves until the reply comes. Warsaw is somewhat a remarkable city as you will already have seen. Some of its finest monuments have been erected to celebrate the execution of its best patriots. Every public square stands for an insurrection. The castle is fortified not against the stranger but the citizen—those guns you tell me about were put there by Nicolas to remind us that he would stand no nonsense. We are the sons of a nation which, officially, does not exist—but we honor our dead kings everywhere and can show you some of Thorwaldsen's finest monuments to them. Let us go out and see these wonders if you are willing."
The apparent digression served him admirably, for it permitted him to think. As many another in the service of the autocracy, he had a sterling love for Poland in its historical aspect, and was as proud as any man when he uttered the name of a Sobieski, a Sigismund or a Ladislaus. Revolution as a modern phase he despised. To him there were but people and nobles, and the former had become vulgar disturbers of the Czar's peace who must be chastened with rods. His own career depended altogether upon his callous indifference to mere human sympathies.
Alban could offer no objection to visit Warsaw under such a pleasant guide and he also welcomed the hours of truce. It came to him that the Count might honestly doubt Lois' word and that, knowing nothing of her, he would have had little reason to trust her. The morning passed in a pleasant stroll down the Senatorska where are the chief shops of Moscow. Here the Count insisted upon buying his English friend a very beautiful amber and gold cigarette-case, to remind him, as he said, of their quarrel.