Читать книгу Matorni's Vineyard - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 8

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The Right Honourable Charles, Lord Bremner, whose visit to Monte Carlo had been undertaken at the urgent request of the Prime Minister, devoted a portion of the remainder of the day of his arrival to judicious camouflage. He lunched at the Hôtel de Paris, with some friends whom he had met on the tennis courts, played two sets of tennis in the afternoon, arranged for him by the secretary, took out his card, and gambled with the utmost seriousness until seven o’clock at the Sporting Club. It was not until a quarter to eight that he sent a waiter round with his compliments to enquire whether Mr. Amory would take a cocktail with him in his sitting room before dinner. Mervyn, accepting the invitation without apparent enthusiasm, presently descended to the second floor of the hotel and made his diffident appearance in the Cabinet Minister’s suite.

“All right to come here, was it, sir?” he asked, as the waiter ushered him in. “I understood we were to meet in the lounge.”

“To tell you the truth,” Bremner replied, “I forgot what time we said, and I didn’t want to keep you waiting. Help yourself to a cigarette—Sullivan’s, fresh from London yesterday. I must tell you about my tennis.”

The waiter who had brought the cocktails disappeared, closing the door. Mervyn made a little grimace.

“Seems rather rot, this sort of thing, sir,” he said, “but as a matter of fact one can’t be too careful here. This hotel is a perfect hotbed of spies. Besides, there is not the slightest doubt that I am being watched. That’s why I thought it better to keep out of your way until this evening.”

“Quite right, Mervyn,” Bremner agreed. “As you say, one can’t be too careful in these feverish times. All the same, we’re on French soil, aren’t we? This is a French hotel, for instance, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but the trouble is,” Mervyn pointed out, “that half the employees are Italian. They say the Italians are rotten colonists, but they are very hard to dig out of a place where they have once got a hold; Nice, for example, even to-day, is more Italian than French, so far as regards the working population, and at some of the old towns along the coast, like Cagnes, there is scarcely a person whose French you can understand. They are traditionally Italian, and the Italians are the sort of nation with whom tradition never dies.”

“You’ve made a study of these things apparently,” Bremner remarked, sipping his cocktail.

“I can’t say that exactly, sir,” Mervyn rejoined, “but the present situation gives one to think, doesn’t it?”

“It does indeed. I quite appreciate your caution, Mervyn, but so long as we are together for a few minutes, without advertising the fact, let’s talk. Tell me how you became possessed of this information 52 which has thrown us all into such a panic. I thought you came out here really to form a sort of receiving house between Rome and London, just to make weekly reports upon the situation as it presented itself to you here, from both points of view—I mean the French and Italian, of course.”

“Quite true, sir,” Mervyn assented. “That was the idea, and I thought, to tell you the truth, that I was in for rather a dull time. What happened though was that I tumbled into a queer sort of adventure on the way out.”

Bremner nodded.

“You were in the train at the time that Uguello was murdered?”

“I sat at the same table in the restaurant car,” Mervyn confided. “I hadn’t the least idea who he was, but from the moment I saw him, I could tell that he was either grievously ill or in desperate straits. Then I recognised Torrita, and I knew that there must be something up.”

“Who is Torrita?” Bremner asked. “The name sounds familiar to me, but you must remember that I’m not in your line altogether.”

“Torrita,” Mervyn replied, “is the Chief of the Secret Police of Italy. What that really means is that he is Matorni’s watchman, his chief spy, executioner, or whatever you like to call it. Italy, as you know, has left off even claiming to be considered a constitutionally governed country. Matorni is supreme—an absolute autocrat. Torrita, with a 53 thousand spies working under him, has only to put a cross against a man’s name, and he is dead the next day. What chance had poor Uguello when he saw Torrita within a few feet of him in the train, and knew that he never travelled without half a dozen of his henchmen close at hand? He knew perfectly well, when he left the restaurant car, that they never meant him to leave the train alive.”

“But where exactly did you come into it?”

Mervyn, in response to a gesture from his host, helped himself to another cocktail.

“You see, it was like this, sir,” he explained. “Uguello had been sent by the Red Shirts to Germany and to London, to collect proofs of Matorni’s great scheme, and of his dealings with Germany. He was to bring these proofs back to Milan, and there was to be a simultaneous exploitation of them amongst the whole of the Red Shirt centres in Italy. The scheme was excellent, so far as it went, but Torrita’s spies were too many and too well informed. Uguello never had a chance of getting back to Italy. He realised that in the train. Sewn into his vest he had documents which, if they could have been emblazoned upon the sky for all Italy to have seen, would have meant the end of Matorni and all his wild schemes. Unfortunately, Uguello realised that by no human power would he succeed in reaching the frontier. What was he to do? The idea must have come into his mind when I tried to talk to him. He looked upon me as an absolutely harmless, 54 simple-minded young Englishman whom no one would suspect, and he handed over his reports to me. An hour or so later he was murdered.”

“You certainly tumbled into things,” Bremner remarked thoughtfully. “The papers, so I understand, were entrusted to you to pass on to some one in Italy.”

Mervyn’s face suddenly seemed to have grown older and harder. The blue of his eyes was steely. His clean-shaven mouth was set in rigid lines.

“I am the servant of my country,” he said quietly. “You know as well as I do, sir, the code which prevails amongst our Secret Service—the code which must prevail, I imagine, in any Secret Service in the world. One has to abandon conscience and one’s personal sense of honour. One’s country, and her good, become the Alpha and the Omega of one’s life.”

“Quite right, young man,” Bremner approved. “Go on. You must not regard anything I say in the light of criticism. My job here is to understand.”

“Quite so, sir. Very well, then. I got the packet through all right, melted the seal, transcribed the notes, and forwarded them to London.”

Bremner smiled reminiscently.

“And a pretty stir they made, I can tell you,” he confided. “You gave the Foreign Office the busiest hour it’s had since the war.”

“There has been nothing of the sort mooted since the war,” Mervyn agreed. “Matorni is the only man 55 who could have conceived such a scheme, and few people would have imagined him capable of it. Anyhow, that’s my story. I needn’t tell you, sir, that I didn’t communicate with Paris in any shape or form. I still have the original documents, and if an accredited ambassador from amongst Uguello’s party comes for them, I intend to let him have them. That much, at least, I think I owe to the keeping of my trust.”

Bremner was noncommittal. He contented himself with a short nod.

“I can tell you this, Mervyn,” he said. “You must be interested, and naturally you have a right to know. We sent a messenger over to Paris by aeroplane the next day. We decided upon that course unanimously. France is still, to a certain extent, our ally, and she had a right to the facts.”

“Are you able to tell me what our line is likely to be, sir?” Mervyn enquired.

Bremner sighed.

“Our attitude is not necessarily one of volition,” he answered; “it is one of necessity. We are in no position to go to war with any one about anything. It is a humiliating situation, but there it is. Fortunately our technical obligations do not commit us—”

The telephone bell at his elbow rang sharply. Bremner picked up the receiver and listened.

“You can show Monsieur le Général up,” he directed. “Some fresh development, I suppose,” he added, turning to Mervyn, after having carefully 56 replaced the receiver. “The French General, De Parnouste, is here. I knew he was somewhere in the neighbourhood. They sent him down the day they received our despatches.”

Mervyn smiled.

“He came down well camouflaged,” he remarked. “He brought a little French actress, two motor cars, his tennis racquets and golf clubs, and has been gambling at the Sporting Club every night as though nothing else in the world interested him. Our fellows don’t trouble to do the thing so completely as that.”

“He is a perfect wonder,” Bremner declared enthusiastically. “I knew all that. I also know that yesterday morning, from four o’clock until half-past six, he was on the upper Corniche, examining the gun situations.”

There was a knock at the outer door of the suite, a quick step across the little hall, and a page boy threw open the door. Général de Parnouste, after a lightning glance at Mervyn, advanced with outstretched hands to Bremner.

“My dear friend,” he said, “I trust that I do not disturb you. It approaches your dinner hour, I know, but I found myself in the hotel, and I thought it would be a pleasure to take an apéritif with you.”

“Nothing could be more agreeable to me,” Bremner replied hospitably. “As it chances, too, there need be no delay. Our cocktail shaker is half full, and we even have glasses. Permit me. Mervyn, let 57 me fill your glass too. I shall ask your leave, General, to present my nephew, Mr. Mervyn Amory.”

The General shook hands cordially.

“We have met upon the tennis courts,” he remarked, “although I am not, alas, in such a distinguished class of the game.”

Bremner lowered his voice a little.

“Our young friend here,” he confided, “has another interest in life besides sport. He has been connected with one of the departments of our Foreign Office since the war, and it is entirely owing to his efforts that those despatches reached you at the Quai d’Orsay last week.”

The General threw out his hands—a typically French gesture of astonishment.

“You English are really wonderful people,” he confessed. “I have known Mr. Amory by sight and by reputation for years, and he is the last person I should ever have suspected of such interests. Under the circumstances I may speak. I have news—serious news.”

“You may speak freely,” Bremner assured him. “No one has a better right to know what is happening than my nephew.”

“This morning at five o’clock,” the General recounted, “two Italian spies were discovered sketching our Fort Number Three, above La Turbie—the one which commands the Corniche Road beyond the village, and which is fitted with our new guns. They got out of the place and raced for their cars. The 58 sentries, however, had given the alarm; we had no automobile at hand equal in speed to theirs, and, as the frontier was so close, we adopted extreme measures. One of the machine guns we have established there, masked for that purpose, was turned upon them at once.”

“It was necessary?” Bremner asked, a little doubtfully.

“It was entirely justifiable,” was the blunt reply. “They might otherwise have escaped with the plans. As it is, they are both dead, their bodies lying in the Mairie at La Turbie, and with them the evidence of their guilt. I have despatched an aviator to Paris, and we are awaiting instructions.”

“What about their passports?” Mervyn enquired.

“Quite in order. They were both Italian officers of senior rank, belonging to the Thirteenth Artillery Corps.”

“Machiello was one of them, perhaps?” Mervyn suggested, with a sudden start.

“Pietro Machiello was one,” the General acknowledged. “He has been staying for a month at an hotel in the Condamine, playing tennis in the daytime, and spying at night.”

“I was drawn to play against him to-morrow,” Mervyn confided.

The Frenchman drew himself up and smiled grimly.

“He will never wield a racquet again,” he said. “A brave man, perhaps, although of a detestable 59 profession. There are seventeen bullets in his body at the present moment.”

“Has the Italian Consul here been notified?” Bremner enquired.

The General, who had been listening intently, held up his finger. He moved towards the door, and on the threshold met a waiter entering with a tray of glasses.

“I see another gentleman arrive,” he explained beamingly. “Would Milord like more cocktails made?”

“I think there are enough in the shaker. Fill up the gentlemen’s glasses.—Why don’t you stay and dine with us, General.”

“You are very kind,” the latter replied. “I have an engagement, or I should have been delighted. As you are aware,” he added, looking across at the waiter as he rolled a cigarette, “I am on the retired list now, with nothing to do but amuse myself for the last few years of my life. I am devoting myself to that pursuit. Hence it is Madame who waits.”

The garçon took his leave. The General remained silent until the outside door was closed.

“Even that fellow is an Italian,” he pointed out. “They can’t all be spies, of course, but you always find some one at your elbow in this place. No, Lord Bremner,” he went on, “we have made no report to any one except headquarters at Paris. We are a little tired of incidents. The law as regards a spy who is caught red-handed is pretty well universal. 60 We should never consent to an enquiry, military or otherwise. I am reporting the circumstances to you, unofficially, for a reason at which I expect you can guess.—My apologies. I have a short distance to go, and Madame, who thinks nothing of being an hour late for déjeuner, is an extraordinarily punctual person at dinner time.”

The General withdrew, and the other two, after a suitable interval, followed him downstairs into the restaurant. The place as usual was crowded, the music, if anything, a little too insistent, the hum of conversation unceasing. There were representatives at the various tables of every nationality in the world—every nationality and every class of society. The most famous variety artist in Europe, escorted by a Roumanian prince, divided Bremner and Mervyn from an English duchess and her Italian husband. A little farther away were seated an American multi-millionaire and his family; behind, a party of Chileans, one of whom was reported to have won a million francs the day before.

“An English Cabinet Minister,” Bremner remarked good-naturedly, “makes no sort of a show here. All the same,” he added, dropping his voice, “a word from one of us, and I wonder how many people would be left in this hotel in a week’s time?”

“Things could scarcely move as quickly as that, sir?” Mervyn queried.

“There could be no actual fighting so soon, of course,” Bremner admitted, “but look at that terrible 61 single railway line. The whole of the rolling stock on both sides of the frontier would naturally be commandeered, and the Upper and Middle Corniche roads would certainly be closed to civilians. War in these parts would be a terrible thing. Neither side would wish to damage Monte Carlo, but on the other hand there would certainly be fierce fighting for La Turbie, and the railways would naturally be shelled from the sea by the fleet which held the ascendancy for the moment.”

The manager of the hotel—a person of great consequence—who would probably have fainted upon the spot if he had overhead the conversation between the two men, paused to pay his respects. Bremner presented his compliments upon the cosmopolitan appearance of the room. Monsieur Deuillet beamed his satisfaction.

“Now indeed,” he assented, “the time has arrived when one realises that war is a thing of the past. See, we have here in my restaurant, you, Lord Bremner, a Cabinet Minister of your country; Baron von Grezzner, who is in the German Reichstag, and has, I believe, a portfolio; Général de Parnouste, once Chief of the Staff of the French Army; an Italian Admiral, whose name I have not heard, and many other notable people—all together here with no other thought save that of pleasure. It is now indeed that one appreciates the wonderful joys of peace.”

He passed on with a little bow. The sommelier 62 had just filled their glasses, and Bremner raised his thoughtfully.

“We will drink a toast, Mervyn,” he suggested, “to the continuance of peace.”

They were in the act of drinking when, without the slightest warning, there was an explosion which seemed almost to shake the room. Every one started. Those who were nearest the windows left their places to look out. The glasses and cutlery upon the tables rattled. The walls themselves seemed to tremble. The manager looked back from the threshold of the room with a reassuring smile.

“The Fête Day of the Prince of Monaco,” he reminded them. “It is the gun which signals the fireworks.”

The explanation was generally received with laughter and instant forgetfulness, but to Bremner and Mervyn Amory it seemed a strange punctuation of their talk. They drank their toast, but in silence. Bremner leaned back in his chair and stared out of the high window to where the lights of La Turbie mingled with the stars.

“If one were superstitious,” he murmured, “that would be a displeasing reminiscence.”