Page:The Inheritors, An Extravagant Story.djvu/199

 brilliant, limpid—oh, to a woman of sorts. But I had to take something of my old line. "How would flirting with that man help you?"

"It's quite simple," she answered, "he's to show Callan all Greenland, and Callan is to write . . . Callan has immense influence over a great class, and he will have some of the prestige of—of a Commissioner."

"Oh, I know about Callan," I said.

"And," she went on, "this man had orders to hide things from Callan; you know what it is they have to hide. But he won't now; that is what I was arranging. It's partly by bribery and partly because he has a belief in his beaux yeux—so Callan will be upset and will write an . . . exposure; the sort of thing Callan would write if he were well upset. And he will be, by what this man will let him see. You know what a little man like Callan will feel . . . he will be made ill. He would faint at the sight of a drop of blood, you know, and he will see—oh, the very worst, worse than what Radet saw. And he will write a frightful article, and it will be a thunderclap for de Mersch . . . And de Mersch will be getting very shaky by then. And your friend