"Of course," Julien remarked, stifling a yawn, "if you've come to Paris to be moral--"
"Not I!" Kendricks broke in roughly. "Bless you, I'm one of the worst. A wild night in Paris calls me even now from any part of the world. But Lord, what fools we are! And, Julien, we get worse. It's the old people who keep these places going."
"The older we get," Julien replied, "the harder we have to struggle for our joys."
"Tell me how long you have known Herr Freudenberg?" he insisted. "How many times have you been seen with him? Is it the truth that you met him to-night for the first time?"
"To tell you the truth, Julien," Kendricks interrupted, "there's some hidden trouble, some mysterious influence at work which seems to be upsetting the relations just now between France and England. To be frank with you, I know that Carraby, at a Cabinet meeting yesterday, suggested that you were at the bottom of it."
"D--n that fellow!" he muttered. "Does anybody believe it?"
"Scarcely. And yet, Julien, it pays to be careful. You can't afford to be seen in public places with the enemies of your country."
"Is Carl Freudenberg an enemy of my country?"
Kendricks leaned back in his seat and laughed scornfully.
"Julien," he exclaimed, "there are times when you are very simple! Do you indeed mean that you would try to deceive even me? You would pretend that I, David Kendricks, of the _Post_, don't know that Herr Freudenberg and the Prince von Falkenberg, ruler of Germany, are one and the same person? Maker of toys, he calls himself! Maker of fools' palaces, if you like, builder of prison houses, if you will. No man was ever born with less of a conscience, more solely and wholly ambitious both for his country and for himself, than the man with whom you talked to-night. You knew him?"
"Naturally," Julien answered. "We met at Berlin."
"The man is a great genius," Kendricks continued. "No one will deny him that. They speak of his weaknesses. They talk of his drinking bouts, of his plunges into French dissipation. The man hasn't a single dissipated thought in his mind. He moves through this world--this little Paris world--with one idea only. He gets behind the scenes. He comes here secretly, drops hints here and there as a private person, lets himself be considered a Parisian of Parisians. All the time he listens and he drops his cunning words of poison and he works. What are his ambitions? Do you know, Julien?"