Robbie told a sensational story about what had happened on board the ship. A few hours before reaching Marseille, the door of his cabin had been jimmied, and a portfolio of his papers, relating to this Turkish deal, had been stolen. Fortunately the most secret letters, which might have cost the life of that minister in Constantinople, had been sewed up in the lining of Robbie's coat — he patted the spot. But it was highly inconvenient to lose the drawings of the gun. “Of course it was Zaharoff,” the father added.
“You mean that he was on that ship?” asked Lanny.
The other laughed. “No; the old wolf did that sort of thing when he was young, and belonged to the tidiimbadschi, those firemen of Constantinople who were really gangsters. But now he's an officer in the Legion of Honor, and when he wants a burglary done he hires somebody else.”
Lanny was excited, of course. “You need a bodyguard!” he exclaimed; and then, a marvelous idea: “Oh, Robbie, why don't you take me with you to Monte?”
The father laughed. “As a bodyguard?”
“If you have something you want taken care of, they wouldn't suspect me; and I'd hang onto it, believe me!”
Lanny's fervor mounted, and he began a campaign. “Listen, Robbie, I stayed home and didn't go to school for fear I'd miss seeing you; and then you come and only stay one day, and maybe you'll be called to Bucharest as soon as you get through at Monte. But if you'll let me go with you I can see you a lot — you're not going to be with that Turk all day and night. When you are, I'll keep out of the way — I'll get things to read, or go to a movie, and I'll stay in the hotel room at night, honest I will. Please, Robbie, please, you really ought to have somebody with you, and if I'm ever to learn about the industry — you just can't imagine what it'll mean to me. . . .”
And so on, until the father said: “All right.” Lanny was so happy he stood on his head in the stern of the boat and kicked his bare legs in the air.
VI
Beauty insisted upon lending them her car, so that Pierre would go along to help take care of Lanny. They would have a Budd automatic in the car, and Pierre knew how to use it — he couldn't fail to learn in a household where boxes of cartridges lay around like chocolates in other homes. Robbie laughed and said he didn't think Za-haroff had had any murder done for some years; but anyhow, it gave a fourteen-year-old boy more thrills than all the movies produced up to February 1914.