“I was attracted by the price, the same as you were, George,” he replied regretfully. “Neither of us understood what would be expected of us, and if we weren’t so hard up we wouldn’t have accepted. But we are in it now, and there’s no turning back.”
“Some one of these mornings,” Randall said gravely, “we’re going to wake up to find we’ve been caught, and I’d hate to think what the Japs will do to us. Boil us in oil, probably. That used to be the favorite punishment for high treason in the days of the late Shoguns.
“I am frightened at Impey’s methods,” he added. “He’s playing a dangerous game, and now with this American cruiser in port he’ll have to be doubly careful.”
“Well, as long as he keeps that turbine yacht in Yokohama harbor my mind will be easy,” James Wells exclaimed, smiling at his companion’s earnestness. “The Japs don’t know that she has the speed of a torpedo boat.”
Randall’s hand was on the door-knob, but suddenly he seemed to change his mind, and walked back to where his companion was standing.
“I feel like a cur, writing the things I do when I know they are all untrue.” His voice was vehement and his young face wore a troubled look. “There’s only a filmy web of truth for all the woof of falsehood. If I were not so completely up against it, I’d chuck the whole business and go back home.”
James Wells’ face hardened slightly, and he bit his lips to suppress an emotion which the younger man’s words caused him to feel.
“Look what we’ve been doing here for the last year, nearly,” Randall continued savagely. “Arousing these slow minded Japanese to believe that the United States is sitting up nights figuring out how to rob her of her spoils from Russia. Everything that has come up we’ve turned to our ends. Those San Francisco immigrant cases we twisted about so that the Japanese believed that their people were being hung from the lamp-posts. Now we are trying to dispose of the Chinese battle-ships to the country that’s silly enough to buy them. We’ve made the Japanese believe that the American fleet is only waiting to seize them before coming north from Manila and putting Japan entirely out of business.
“The surprise to me is,” he added gravely, “that men like Captain Inaba and the Emperor’s ministers believe it.”
“When you hear a thing every day, served up to you with all kinds of fancy dressing, by and by you begin to believe there must be something to it,” Wells answered with a smile. “Your eloquence, George, is so wonderful that sometimes, ’pon my soul, I believe it myself.”