Niko's face was a little whiter, his eyes were filled with wonder. Slowly he nodded his head.
'You surprise me with your knowledge of things which I had imagined secret,' he said. 'Secret they have remained so far as I am concerned. Such information as you have gained can have come but from one source, so I will speak thus far. The sword of Japan shall be drawn in defence of her honour, and for no other cause. The alliance which you suggest would be hateful and dishonouring to my country. Nor,' he concluded, 'would Japan at any time commence a war with a treasonable ally.'
'What answer have you made to Kessner?' Lavendale asked bluntly.
His companion gently raised his eyebrows.
'Who is that gentleman--Mr. Kessner?' he inquired.
'Ah! I forgot,' he said. 'Those would not be your methods. Yet we know quite well that the person whose name I have mentioned has made overtures to you which could not, under present circumstances, emanate from Berlin. Japan from the west, and Germany on the east, might well embarrass a country so criminally unprepared for war as mine. I take it, however, that that combination is not to be feared.'
Niko rose from his place. He had a habit of ending a discussion exactly at the period he chose.
'Not in your time or mine,' he answered simply....
Lavendale, notwithstanding a nervous system almost unexampled, was possessed of curiously sensitive instincts. Before he reached Pall Mall, he was obsessed with an idea that he was being followed. He turned rather abruptly around. A tall, broad-shouldered man in dark clothes, wearing a Homburg hat and with a cigar in the corner of his mouth, waved his stick in friendly greeting.
'This is Mr. Lavendale, isn't it?' he remarked. 'Kind of forgotten me, perhaps? My name's Courlander. Met you with Mr. Kessner the other night.'
'I remember you perfectly,' Lavendale acknowledged. 'Very pleasant dinner we had.'
Mr. Courlander fell into step with his companion, who had turned eastwards.
'There are few things in the world that Ludwig Kessner doesn't understand,' he continued, 'from the placing of a loan to the ordering of a dinner. He isn't much use at eating it, poor fellow, but that's the fault of his digestion. Too much ice-water, I tell him.'