He realised that he detested the Saxham girl, one of Margot's chosen Club intimates, more fervently than even Tota Stannus or Joan Delabrand; more thoroughly than Rhona Helvellyn; only little less heartily than he hated Cynthia Charterhouse. Big, bold, galumphing, provocative--in fact, so much IT that you couldn't overlook her--he found her more unpleasantly attractive than usual, in a bodice that was no more than a fold of shimmering orange stuff above the waist--tossing the _panache_ of ospreys that startlingly crowned her, offering up her _persistant_ illusion perfumes for the delectation of the appreciative male.
Only look at her, ready to climb into her neighbour's pocket. Leaning her round white elbows on the guipure table-cloth, half-shutting those long greeny-brown Egyptian eyes of her, wreathing her long thick white neck to send a daring challenge into the face of the laughing man. A big man, bright red-haired, blue-eyed, and broad-chested, showing every shining tooth in his handsome grinning head....
"She's _screaming_, isn't she, dear Lady Beau?" Thus the Saxham to her employer, friend, and ally, across the silver bowls of Rayon d'Or roses, her naked shoulder brushing the coat-sleeve of her neighbour, the big rufous man. And Lady Beau gushed back:
"In marvellous form to-night.... Don't you think so, Count? Do agree with us!" and the big man agreed, with the accent of the German Fatherland:
"She is _kolossal_.... _Wunderlich_! ..."
"Who's the German next me--big beggar Lady Beau and Miss Saxham are gushing over?" Franky presently telegraphed to Courtley behind the charming American's accommodating back. And Courtley signalled in reply:
"Von Herrnung. German Count of sorts--Engineer and Flieger officer. Son of an Imperial Councillor, and cousin to Princess Willy of Kiekower Oestern--really rather an interestin' beast in his way. Made a one-stop flight to Paris from Hanover in April, with an Albatros biplane. Previously won an event in the Prinz Heinrich Circuit Competition." He added: "We can't decently blink their progress in military aviation. It's one o' them there fax which the brass-hats at the War Office pretend to regard as all my eye. Yet they know the Fatherland--or if they don't they oughter! Good-lookin' chap this. Not over thirty, I should guess him. Always dodging in and out of the German Embassy. The Goblin frightful nuts on him.... Goin' to steer him through the next London Season--suppose he's lookin' out for a moneyed wife!"
"Hope he gets her!" Franky mentally commented. But he looked with new interest at his big blond German neighbour, mentally calculating that with all that bone, brawn, and muscle, von Herrnung couldn't tip the scale at less than sixteen stone.
Small-boned himself and of stature not above the medium, Franky appreciated height and size in other men. And von Herrnung was undeniably a son of Anak. The noiseless, demure waiters who paused beside his chair to refill his glass or offer him dishes were dwarfed by his seated presence to the proportions of little boys.
Once, when there was a momentary bustle at the principal entrance to the now crowded restaurant, and a party of men, ceremoniously ushered by M. Spitz in person, passed up the central gangway between the rows of glittering tables, shielded by glass-panelled screens framed in oxidised silver, and crowded now with gossiping, laughing, gobbling patrons--men and women of varied nationalities, representing the elite of the fashionable world, von Herrnung rose and remained imperturbably standing at the salute, his eyes set and fixed, his head turned rigidly towards the personage, semi-bald, stout, with a prominent under jaw and a hard official stare rendered glassier by a frameless square monocle, and showing beneath the open front of a loose military mantle a star upon the left side of his evening dress-coat, and the glitter of an Order suspended from a yellow riband about his thick bull-neck.
"The German Ambassador, Baron von Giesnau," Lady Wathe returned to a question from Lady Beauvayse, as the portly official figure creaked by, leaving a whiff of choice cigars and a taint of _parfum tres persistant_, lifting three fingers of a white-gloved hand in acknowledgment of his countryman's salute, and von Herrnung unstiffened and dropped back into his chair. "No! ... I'm not sure where the Emperor is...." She added, with one of her laughs and a shrug of her thin vivacious shoulders: "Ask Count von Herrnung--he's sure to know!"
"_Gnaedige Graefin_," von Herrnung returned when interrogated, "I am not able to answer your question." He shrugged his broad shoulders and showed his white teeth. "_Unser Kaiser_ is--who shall say where? At the Hof ... possibly at Homburg.... Stop! ... Now I remember! _Seine Majestaet_ is at Kiel...." He continued, arranging with a big white hand displaying a preposterously long thumb-nail a corner of his glittering, tightly rolled moustache: "At Kiel ... _ach_, yes! he has been there since the 25th of June. Entertaining the British and American Ambassadors, visiting the Commander-in-Chief of your British Squadron, superintending the armament of one of our own new battle-cruisers,--seeing put into her those great big Krupp guns that are to sink your super-Dreadnoughts by-and-by!"
The deliberately-uttered words of the last sentence dropped into a little pool of chilly silence. He had spoken with perfect gravity, and the Englishmen who heard him stared before they grinned. Then the women shrieked in ecstasies of amusement--the Goblin's laugh overtopping all.
"For he hates us! ... You can't think how he hates us! ..." she crowed, writhing her lean little throat, clasped by seven rows of shimmering stones, wagging her Kobold's head, crowned by its diadem of multi-coloured fire. "Tell us how you hate us, Tido! ... Do--pray do!"
"I hate you, _ach_ yes! ... All German officers are like that--particularly the officers of our Field Flying Service," gravely corroborated von Herrnung. "We have many pleasant acquaintanceships with men and women of British nationality, but your race--the Anglo-Saxon branch of the great Teutonic oak-tree, it is natural that we should hate! For that Germany must expand upon the west and north-west as well as south and east, or suffocate, is certain. She must wield the trident of Sea Power; she must transform the map of Europe. She must exploit and disseminate German trade and German Kultur; therefore, as the British, more than any other nation, stands in the way of German development, we look forward to the Day when we shall exterminate you and take our right position as masters of the world!"
The women screamed anew at this. The men were now laughing in good earnest. Franky found it impossible to restrain the convulsions that shook him in his chair. Purple-faced Brayham tried to speak, but broke down wheezing and spluttering. The Goblin shrilled:
"Tell them, Tido.... Please tell them! ... Do--ha! ha! tell them how you're spoiling for a scrimmage with us! Show them your thumb-nail, pray do!"
Thus adjured, the big German solemnly extended his left hand for general inspection. The pointed, carefully-manicured thumb-nail was at least two inches long. Its owner said with perfect gravity:
"This is the badge of a Society of England-haters, chiefly Prussian military officers, young men of noble birth, bound by an oath of blood. This mark we carry to distinguish us. It is a sign of our dedication, to remind us of the purpose for which we are set apart." He added: "Count Zeppelin himself set the fashion of the uncut thumb-nail. It will be cut when the Day comes, and it has been dipped in blood!"
"In blood--how beastly!" said the Saxham girl, curling the corners of her wide red mouth contemptuously. "What a horrid crowd your noble young Prussian officers must be! And when is the dipping to come off?" Her voice was deep and resonant as a masculine baritone, and of so carrying a quality that Franky started as though the words had been spoken at his ear.
"_Gnaedige Fraeulein_," von Herrnung answered, "I have already told you. When the Day comes for which we are preparing. When the great German nation shall abandon Christianity--cast off the rusty fetters of Morality and Virtue--call on the Ancient God of Battles--and beat out the iron sceptre of World Power with sword-blows upon the anvil of War."
"When we're all to be exterminated, he means!" Lady Wathe gasped behind her filmy handkerchief. "Tido, you're too absolutely screaming! Do say why your noble young Prussians keep us waiting? ..." And von Herrnung answered composedly:
"Because we are not yet ready. We shall not be perfectly ready before the spring of 1916."
His hard, bright glance encountered Franky's, and he lifted his full glass of champagne and drank to him, smiling pleasantly.
Of course the German was rotting, reflected Franky. If he wasn't, the combined insolence and brutality of such a menace, uttered at the table of one of the Britons in whose gore von Herrnung and his comrades yearned to dip their preposterous two-inch thumb-nails, took the bun, by the Great Brass Hat! He was perfectly cool, as his muscular white hands--for the dinner had arrived at the dessert stage--manipulated the silver knife that peeled a blood-red nectarine. What a splendid ring, a black-and-white pearl, large as a starling's egg, and set in platinum, the fellow sported on the little finger of that clawed left hand. What was he asking, in the suave voice with the guttural Teutonic accent?