“I understand,” he said at length. “Before, I was puzzled. There seemed no reason why you should take any interest in the scheme.”
“My interest in the Malgamite scheme narrows down to an interest in one person,” answered Mrs. Vansittart, “which is what really happens to all human interests, my friend.”
“La plus grande punition infligée à l'homme, c'est faire souffrir ce qu'il aime, en voulant frapper ce qu'il hait.”
Cornish had, as he told Mrs. Vansittart, been living a week at Scheveningen in one of the quiet little inns in the fishing-town, where a couple of apples are displayed before lace curtains in the window of the restaurant as a modest promise of entertainment within. Knowing no Dutch, he was saved the necessity of satisfying the curiosity of a garrulous landlady, who, after many futile questions which he understood perfectly, came to the conclusion that Cornish was in hiding, and might at any moment fall into the hands of the police.
There are, it appears, few human actions that attract more curiosity for a short time than the act of colonization. But no change is in the long run so apathetically accepted as the presence of a colony of aliens. Cornish soon learnt that the malgamite works were already accepted at Scheveningen as a fact of small local importance. One or two fish-sellers took their wares there instead of going direct to The Hague. A few of the malgamite workers were seen at times, when they could get leave, on the Digue, or outside the smaller _cafés_. Inoffensive, stricken men these appeared to be, and the big-limbed, hardy fishermen looked on them with mingled contempt and pity. No one knew what the works were, and no one cared. Some thought that fireworks were manufactured within the high fence; others imagined it to be a gunpowder factory. All were content with the knowledge that the establishment belonged to an English company employing no outside labour.
Cornish spent his days unobtrusively walking on the dunes or writing letters in his modest rooms. His evenings he usually passed at the Café de l'Europe, where an occasional truant malgamite worker would indulge in a mild carouse. From these grim revelers Cornish elicited a good deal of information. He was not actually, as his landlady suspected, in hiding, but desired to withhold as long as possible from Von Holzen and Roden the fact that he was in Holland. None of the malgamite workers recognized him; indeed, he saw none of those whom he had brought across to The Hague, and he did not care to ask too many questions. At length, as we have seen, he arrived at the conclusion that Von Holzen's schemes had been too deeply laid to allow of attack by subtler means, and as a preliminary to further action called on Mrs. Vansittart.