Nikasti stood suddenly to attention. "It is Mr. Van Teyl who returns," he warned them. He glided from the room, shaking out a little the dress coat which he had been carrying. The two men looked after him. Fischer threw his cigar savagely away and lit another. "Curse these orientals!" he muttered. "They listen and listen, and one never knows. Van Teyl won't be here for hours. That was just an excuse to get away." But there was a smile of triumph on Von Schwerin's lips. "I know them better than you do, Fischer," he declared. "Nikasti is our man!" CHAPTER XIX High up in one of the topmost chambers of the Hotel Plaza, Nikasti, after his conference with Von Schwerin and Fischer, sought solitude. He opened the high windows, out of which he could scarcely see, dragged up a chest of drawers and perched himself, Oriental fashion, on the top, his long yellow fingers intertwined around his knees, his soft brown eyes gazing over the wooded slopes of the Park. He was away from the clamour of tongues, from the poisoned clouds of sophistry, even from the disturbance of his own thoughts, incited by specious arguments to some form of reciprocity. Here he sat in the clouds and searched for the true things. His eyes seemed to be travelling over the battlefields of Europe. He saw the swaying fortunes of mighty armies, he looked into council chambers, he seemed to feel the pulses of the great world force which kept going this most amazing Juggernaut. He saw the furnaces of Japan, blazing by night and day; saw the forms of hundreds of thousands of his fellow creatures bent to their task; saw the streams of ships leaving his ports, laden down with stores; saw the great guns speeding across Siberia, the endless trains of ammunition, the rifles, food for the famine-stricken giants who beat upon the air with empty fists. He saw the gold come streaming back. He saw it poured into the banks, the pockets of the merchants, the homes of his people. He saw brightening days throughout the land. He saw the slow but splendid strength of the nation rejoicing in its new possibilities. And beyond that, what? Wealth was the great means towards the great end, but if the great end were once lost sight of, there was no more hideous poison than that stream of enervating prosperity. He remembered his own diatribes concerning the decadence of England; how he had pointed to the gold poison, to the easy living of the poor, the blatant luxury of the rich. He had pointed to the soft limbs, the cities which had become pools of sensuality, to the daily life which, calling for no effort, had seen the passing of the spirit and the triumph of the gross. And what about his own people? Mankind was the same the world over. The gold which was bringing strength and life to the nation might very soon exude the same poisonous fumes, might very soon be laying its thrall upon a people to whom living had become an easier thing. However it might be for other,