Читать книгу Tales of Mystery & Espionage: 21 Spy Thrillers in One Edition - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 27

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The Right Honourable Willoughby Johns, the very harassed Prime Minister of England, fitted on a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and studied the atlas which lay before him.

“Take a sharp pencil, Malcolm,” he invited his secretary, “and trace the frontier for me from the sea upwards.”

The latter promptly obeyed. The map was one which had been compiled in sections and the particular one now spread out stretched from Nice to Bordighera.

“You will find it a little irregular, sir,” he warned his chief. “The road from the sea here mounts to the official building on the main thoroughfare in a fairly straight line, but after that in the mountains it becomes very complicated. This will doubtless be the excuse the French authorities will offer in the matter of the subterranean passages.”

“And the roads?”

“There is a first-class road on the French side from a place called Sospel running in this direction, sir. The whole range of hills on the right-hand side is strongly fortified, but our military report, which I was studying this afternoon at the War Office with General Burns, still gives the situation here entirely in favour of an attacking force. Fawley’s latest information, however,” the secretary went on, dropping his voice, “changes the situation entirely. The new French defences, starting from this bulge here, and which comprise some of the finest subterranean work known, strike boldly across the frontier and now command all the slopes likely to be dangerous. If a copy of Fawley’s plan should reach Italy, I imagine that there would be war within twenty-four hours.”

“Has Fawley reported any fresh movements of troops in the neighbourhood?”

“Major Fawley himself, as you know, sir, has been in Berlin for some short time,” Malcolm replied. “So far as our ordinary sources of information are concerned, we gather that everything on the Italian side is extraordinarily quiet. The French, on the other hand, have been replacing a lot of their five-year-old guns with new Creuzots at the places marked, and trains with locked wagons have been passing through Cagnes, where we have had a man stationed, every hour through the night for very nearly a fortnight. So far as we know, however, there has been no large concentration of troops.”

The Prime Minister studied the atlas for some minutes and then pushed it on one side.

“Seems to me there is some mystery about all this,” he observed. “Bring me Grey’s textbook upon Monaco.”

“I have it in my pocket, sir,” the young man confided, producing the small volume. “You will see that the French have practically blotted out Monaco as an independent State. There is no doubt that they will treat the territory in any way they wish. The old barracks at the top of Mont Agel, which used to contain quite a formidable number of men and a certain strength in field artillery, has been evacuated and everything has been pushed forward towards the frontier. It would seem that the whole military scheme of defence has been changed.”

The Prime Minister leaned back in his chair a little wearily.

“Telephone over to the War Office and see if General Burns is still there,” he directed. “Say I should like to see him.”

“Very good, sir. Is there anything more I can do?”

“Not at present. The call to Washington is through, I suppose?”

“You should be connected in half an hour, sir.”

“Very well. Send in General Burns the moment he arrives.”

Henry Malcolm, the doyen of private secretaries, took his leave. For another twenty minutes the Prime Minister studied the atlas with its pencilled annotations and the pile of memoranda which had been left upon his desk. A queer, startling situation! No one could make out quite what it meant. Willoughby Johns, as he pored over the mass of miscellaneous detail which had been streaming in for the last forty-eight hours, was inclined to wonder whether after all there was anything in it. Another war at a moment’s notice! The idea seemed idiotic. He took a turn or two up and down the room, with its worn but comfortable furniture, its spacious, well-filled bookshelves. His familiar environment seemed in some way a tonic against these sinister portents…There was a tap at the door. Malcolm presented himself once more.

“General Burns was at the Foreign Office, sir,” he announced. “He will be around in five minutes.”

The Prime Minister nodded. He glanced at his watch. Still only seven o’clock. A telephone message from Washington to wait for and he had been up at six. He listened to the subdued roar of traffic in the Buckingham Palace Road and the honking of taxis in the park. Men going home after their day’s work, without a doubt, home to their wives and children. Or perhaps calling at the club for a cheerful rubber of bridge and a whisky and soda. What a life! What peace and rest for harassed nerves! Dash it all, he would have a whisky and soda himself! He rang the bell twice. A solemn but sympathetic-looking butler presented himself.

“Philpott,” his master ordered, “a whisky and soda—some of the best whisky you have—and Schweppe’s soda water—no siphons.”

“Very good, sir,” the man replied, rather startled. “Would you care for a biscuit as well, sir?”

“Certainly. Two or three biscuits.”

“Mr. Malcolm was saying that you had cancelled the dinner with the Cordonas Company to-night, sir.”

“Quite right,” Willoughby Johns assented. “No time for public dinners just now. I will have something here later on after the call from Washington has been through.”

The man took his departure only to make very prompt reappearance. The whisky and soda was excellent. The Prime Minister drank it slowly and appreciatively. He made up his mind that he would have one every night at this hour. He hated tea. It was many hours since lunch, at which he had drunk one glass of light hock. Of course he needed sustenance. All the doctors, too, just now were preaching alcohol, including his own. Nevertheless, he felt a little guilty when General Burns was ushered in.

“Come in, General,” he welcomed him. “Glad I caught you. Take a chair.”

Burns, the almost typical soldier, a man of quick movements and brusque speech, took the chair to which he was motioned.

“My time is always at your disposal, sir,” he said. “I very seldom leave before nine, anyway.”

The Prime Minister crumpled up his last piece of biscuit and swallowed it, finished his whisky and soda, and stretched himself out with the air of a man refreshed.

“What is all this trouble down south, Burns?” he asked.

The General smiled sardonically.

“We leave it to you others to discover that, sir,” he replied. “We only pass on the externals to you. I don’t like the look of things myself but there may be nothing in it.”

“You started the scare,” the Prime Minister reminded him reproachfully.

“I beg your pardon, sir, I would not call it that,” the other protested. “What I did was to send in a report to the Foreign Office, as it was my duty to do, that there were at the present moment in Monte Carlo and Nice a larger number of Secret Service men of various nationalities than I have ever known drawn towards one spot since 1914.”

“Who are they? Is there any report of their activities, further than these formal chits and despatches?” Willoughby Johns asked.

“They scarcely exist by name, sir. There have been seven men from the eastern section of the newly established Italian Secret Service staying in Monte Carlo at once. They mingled freely with every one and gambled at the tables, but recently five of them are said to have disappeared completely. There have been various reports about them but nothing authentic.”

“What do you imagine yourself has happened to them?” the Prime Minister enquired.

The General shrugged his shoulders.

“My opinion, sir, is,” he said, “that they got lost in the mountains and fell into the hands of people who have an ugly way with strangers. They take their risks, of course, but no one has complained. Then there is a Frenchman there, Marquet. One of the cleverest agents who ever breathed. He sits in an easy-chair in the Hôtel de France lounge practically the whole of the day, but somehow or other he gets to know things. Then there were two Germans—Krust, the great industrialist, who is supposed to be a supporter of the Crown Prince, and another one whom I do not know. We have our own two men; one of them has a villa and never leaves Monte Carlo and the other resides in Nice. Finally, if I may mention his name, there is the American, Major Fawley, who is reported to have been drowned at the entrance to the harbour but whom we have heard of since in Germany. He would be a useful man to talk to if we could get hold of him.”

“Ah, yes, Major Fawley,” the Prime Minister reflected.

“Fawley’s report about affairs in Berlin, if he ever got there, would be extraordinarily interesting,” the General remarked.

The Prime Minister looked vague.

“I thought it was one of the peculiarities of the man,” he observed, “that he never made reports.”

“He is a remarkable traveller. One meets him in the most unexpected places. He believes in viva voce reports.”

The Prime Minister stroked his chin.

“I suppose you know that he is in London, Burns?” he asked.

“Only half an hour ago. We were not, as a matter of fact, looking out for him. We were interested in the wanderings of the Princess di Vasena and we tracked her down to Major Fawley’s rooms at the Albany.”

“Your men are good workers,” the Prime Minister approved.

“Espionage in London is easy enough. You must appreciate the fact, though, sir, that to have a man like Fawley working outside the department, who insists upon maintaining this isolation, makes it rather difficult for us.”

“That is all very well, General,” the Prime Minister declared impatiently. “Personally, I hate Secret Service work, but we have to make use of it. We are up against the gravest of problems. No one can make out what is going on in Rome or in Berlin. We are compelled to employ every source of information. Fawley is invaluable to us but you know the situation. We are under great obligations to him and he has done as much, without the slightest reward or encouragement, to bring about a mutual understanding between Washington and Downing Street as was possible for any human being. He works for the love of the work. He will accept no form of reward. All that he asks is freedom from surveillance so that he can work in his own fashion. I admit that the position must seem strange to you others but I am afraid that we cannot alter it.”

The General rose thoughtfully to his feet. The Prime Minister, whose nerves were a little on edge, waved him back again.

“It is no good taking this matter the wrong way, Burns,” he said. “We are having far more trouble with M.2.XX. at Scotland Yard than with you. There was a fight of some sort in Major Fawley’s rooms at the Albany last night. His young brother got rather badly wounded. Fawley simply insists upon it that the whole affair be hushed up, yet we know that in that room were the Princess Elida di Vasena, Prince Patoni, her cousin—the private secretary of Berati, mark you—and Fawley. To add to the complication, the young man, who was third secretary at Rome, has resigned from the Service and is going back to New York to-morrow, if he is well enough to travel. The Sub-commissioner is furious with the Home Secretary and the Home Secretary complains to us. Nothing matters. We have given our word to Fawley and we have to keep it.”

“Why?” the General asked calmly.

The Prime Minister smiled.

“I don’t blame you for asking that question, General,” he went on, “and I will give you an honest reply. Because I myself, and the two others who have to bear the brunt of affairs during these days of fierce anxiety, have come to one definite conclusion. Fawley is the only man in Europe to-day who can save us from war.”

Malcolm made a hurried entrance.

“The call to Washington is through, sir, in your private cabinet,” he announced.

General Burns saluted and took his leave. The Prime Minister hurried to the telephone.

* * * * *

It was ten minutes later when a furious ringing of the bell in the small room sent Malcolm hurrying in to his chief. The Prime Minister was restlessly pacing up and down the room. There seemed to be new lines in his face. He was haggard as though with a sense of fresh responsibilities. Yet with it all there was a glow of exaltation. He was like a man in the grip of mighty thoughts. He looked at Malcolm for a moment, as the latter entered the room and closed the door behind him, almost vaguely.

“You have spoken to Washington, sir?”

The Prime Minister nodded.

“Malcolm,” he instructed his secretary, “I want Fawley here within half an hour.”

“Fawley, sir?” the young man repeated anxiously. “But you know our agreement? As a matter of fact, the house is being watched at this minute. London seems to have become as full of spies as any place on the Continent could be. Would it not be best, sir—”

“I must see Fawley myself and at once,” the Prime Minister said firmly. “If an armed escort is necessary, provide it. Do you think that you can find him?”

“There will be no difficulty about that, sir,” the young man replied doubtfully. “He keeps us informed of his movements from hour to hour. If this Prince Patoni, the envoy from Italy, discovers that Fawley is in direct communication with you, though, sir, it might lead to any sort of trouble,” Malcolm said gravely.

“It is worth the risk,” was the dogged reply. “Have a squad of police, if you want them, and clear the street. Anderson will see to that for you. Fawley can arrive as an ordinary dinner guest in a taxicab, but whatever happens, Fawley must come.”

“It shall be arranged, sir,” Malcolm promised.