“My dear fellow,” he said rather anxiously, “I hope you are not going to do anything rash, run into any danger.”
I laughed. “I am not going to leave Buyda, if I can help it, before I come back for that letter.”
“No?”
“No. What danger should there be here?”
“None to a British subject,” he answered guardedly. “All the same, queer things do happen sometimes.”
“Under the enlightened rule of Chancellor Rallenstein?”
He looked grave, and as though he would like to say more to me than he dared. “Rallenstein is a strong man; one of the strongest brains in Europe, and”—he sank his voice—“he is not credited with an excess of scruples.”
I refrained from looking as though I could illustrate that opinion in highly coloured fashion, and rose to go. Turnour was a weak man—a good official, but a machine. Certainly not the man to take into an appalling confidence.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll take care of myself. Only, a stranger in an out-of-the-way place like this is easily lost sight of and never missed. I shall, no doubt, come back for that letter to-night.”
He locked it in a drawer, and after a few commonplaces I left him and went back through the city towards the palace. The place was busy and gay as usual; people get used to living under the very frown of a despotic government as at the foot of a volcano.