“Well, I don’t want to set a fashion,” said the other equably. “I’m only advising you not to be.”
“Keep your advice until it’s wanted.”
“If it were a question of you alone, I would. But there are others to be considered. Now, listen, Mr. Brewster: Wisner and Stark wouldn’t let you through that quarantine, after it’s declared, if you were the Secretary himself. A point is being stretched in giving you this chance. If you’ll agree to ship a doctor,—Stark will find you one,—stay out for six full days before touching anywhere, and, if plague develops, make at once for any detention station specified by the doctor, you can go. Those are Stark’s conditions.”
“Damnable nonsense!” declared Mr. Brewster, jumping to his feet, quite red in the face.
“Let me warn you, Mr. Brewster,” put in Sherwen, with quiet force, “that you are taking a most unwise course. I am advised that Mr. Perkins is acting under instructions from our consulate.”
“You say that Dr. Pruyn is here. I want to see him before—”
“How can you see him? Nobody knows where he is keeping himself. I haven’t seen him yet myself. Now, Mr. Brewster, just sit down and talk this over reasonably with Mr. Perkins.”
“Oh, no,” said the third conferee positively; “I’ve no time for argument. At six o’clock I’ll be back here. Unless you decide by then, I’ll telephone the consulate that the whole thing is off.”
“Of all the impudent, conceited, self-important young whippersnappers!” fumed Mr. Brewster. But he found that he had no audience, as Sherwen had followed the scientist out of the room.
Before the afternoon was over, the American concessionnaire had come to realize that the situation was less assured than he had thought. Twice the British Minister had come, and there had been calls from the representatives of several other nationalities. Von Plaanden, in full uniform and girt with the short saber that is the special and privileged arm of the crack cavalry regiment to which he belonged at home, had dismounted to deliver personally a huge bouquet for Miss Brewster, from the garden of the Hochwald Legation, not even asking to see the girl, but merely leaving the flowers as a further expression of his almost daily apology, and riding on to an official review at the military park.