WORLD'S END

Of course these revolutionaries couldn't come to the Crillon. Where had Alston met this painter? The professor described the room, and the Texas colonel smiled and asked if it would be possible to get some extra chairs into it. He said they would go that very evening, as soon as he could get away from a reception he had promised to attend. He told the professor where and when to call for him. They would say nothing to anybody about it; they would take along Alston's translator, who already knew about it. The colonel didn't speak French, unfortunately, and it might be that the Bolsheviks wouldn't know English.

A first-class thrill for a youth just embarked upon a diplomatic career. He was going to the top right at one bound! He was going to help with the most exciting problem of the conference; to have a hand in settling the destinies of a hundred and forty million people - and incidentally to shake the gory paws of those murderers, assassins, fiends in human form, creatures whom the resources of the English language were inadequate to describe. So Lanny had been hearing, and he pictured them as pirates with bushy black whiskers, and pistols and daggers in their belts. He hurried off to tell his uncle of the appointment and make sure the little white mouse wouldn't have to sit on the cot!

Uncle Jesse said he could borrow chairs from neighbors in the tenement. "We poor help each other out," he explained, with one of his wry smiles. He added: "Keep your eyes open, Lanny, and see if you can't learn something."

"Thank you, Uncle Jesse," replied the youth. "I'm learning a lot, really."

"It won't please your father," continued the other. "I've known him since before you were born, and I've never known him to learn anything. He's going to be an unhappy man, with the world changing as it is."

Lanny wouldn't discuss his father with this uncle whom he didn't like. But he went off thinking hard, and wondering: Was Robbie really narrow-minded and set in his opinions? Or was this Bolshevik propaganda?

III

That evening Alston and his secretary strolled to the Hotel Majestic, residence of the British delegation, where a grand reception was being held. Promptly at eleven the colonel emerged, and a sturdily built man in civilian clothes fell in behind him and accompanied him to his car, and, after the others had got in, took his seat alongside the chauffeur. So far as Lanny knew, this man never spoke once, but he watched, and no doubt had a gun handy.

Huddled into one corner of the car, Lanny listened to the conversation of one of the most powerful men in the world. The youth was intensely curious about this soft-voiced and kind-faced little person. What was it that had lifted him from obscurity in a region of vast lonely plains inhabited by long-horned cattle which one saw in the movies? Lanny gathered that the Texas colonel's leading characteristic was a desire for information; he went right to work to pump Alston's mind, asking him about all the problems on which he had been specializing. Sooner or later the little white mouse might have to settle them. He had a way of shutting his eyes for a few moments when he wanted to impress something upon his memory. Presently he was asking questions about Georgia - not the state in America, whose problems had been settled long ago, but the portion of Russia in the Caucasus mountains, famed for its lovely women.

"Those people have one great misfortune, Colonel House," remarked the professor. "They are sitting on one of the world's great oil deposits."

"I know," said the other. "It may explode and blow us all to kingdom come." He asked many more questions, and then said: "Do you suppose it would be possible for you to look into this matter and let me have a report?"

"Why, I suppose so," said the professor, both surprised and pleased, "They've got me loaded up with work already, though."

"I know; but we all have to do more and more. This Georgian business complicates the Russian problem, and we'll have to find a way to settle it. What do you say?"

"I am honored, of course."

"Perhaps we'll have a committee and put you on it. I'll have to put it up to the President."

So fate gave another turn to Lanny Budd's destiny. He was going to meet the mountaineers of the Caucasus and learn about their manners and customs - but not their lovely women, alas, for they hadn't brought any of these to Paris.

IV