Читать книгу The Colossus of Arcadia - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 6

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Ardrossen, a silent, detached spectator, stood behind the rail which separated the lounge from the restaurant and watched the gay scene below in which the Princess’ dinner party was the focus of interest. The hostess herself was dancing with Townleyes, a graceful and polished performer lending himself now entirely to the charm of the music. That vague air of detachment which at the beginning of the festivities had made him rather a difficult neighbour had completely disappeared. Lord Henry, vigorous, happy and genial, had chosen Miss Dolly Parker for his partner. The popular young woman was always a prominent participant in Monte Carlo rejoicings. Amongst those who remained at the table, Oscar Dring sat without immediate neighbours, his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, a terrific frown drawing closer together his massive eyebrows. He represented adequately and in sinister fashion the revolt against this gay scene which he undoubtedly felt. A grim, portentous figure his, grotesquely out of place in its present environment.

The Princess, with a little grimace, whispered into Townleyes’ ear as they passed.

“Why on earth did I ask that terrible man! Why did someone not tell me that he was crazy?”

“What puzzles me is why he came,” Townleyes confessed.

“I imagine,” she suggested, “that it gives him a spectacular opportunity of posing as the modern prophet of woe.”

“He has the ear of the whole world, at the moment,” her companion observed. “They told me in Marseilles that he was the most prominent figure in the Cercle Rouge at Nice. I even heard that the French would deport him to-morrow if they dared.”

The Princess gave herself entirely to the music. Really, this apparently stiff Englishman danced very well. Then they passed Dring once more and she turned her head deliberately away.

“Talk about the writing on the wall . . .” she remarked irritably. “This man, I should think, has been emblazoning the skies.”

“We must drive him back to his wilderness of woe,” Townleyes said smiling. “A prophet with a spleen! He really isn’t worth taking seriously. He’ll probably find out for himself before many days are passed that this is the one corner of the world where political unrest really doesn’t matter. We come here to find happiness and we mean to be successful.”

She smiled, effectively reassured, and leaned a little closer to her partner. Townleyes, after all, was a man of strength. He was one of those who counted. It was difficult to believe what Lord Henry had hinted—that he was not always entirely sincere. . . .

Stephen Ardrossen, turning his back upon the panorama of colour and movement, made his way by lift and passage to his own room. Arrived there, he stepped out of the French windows and, looking down on the harbour, counted the yachts, starting at the lighthouse end. At the fourth in the line he paused. Apart from the nautical lights, there was a single lamp hanging from far aft, evidently there for the benefit of the crew or visitors. He drew his watch from his pocket. Even as he looked at it the bells from the Roman Catholic Cathedral halfway up the hill began to chime the hour. He counted the strokes. Eleven o’clock. Precisely at the final reverberation the light on the yacht was extinguished. He waited—waited for two minutes without movement. At the end of that time the light shone again.

As though it had conveyed to him some sort of signal, the watcher turned swiftly back into the room, secured the door, selected a key from the bunch which he drew from his pocket, and unlocked one of the larger steamer trunks which as yet had been undisturbed. He plunged in both hands and drew out an armful of clothing.

There was a wind stealing in to the harbour—an east wind which ruffled the still surface of the placid water and brought with it the nip of the snows. The warmth of the Café du Port seemed more than ever agreeable to the dark, silent figure of the man in engineer’s overalls who pushed his way through the swing door, glanced round for a moment and seated himself on one of the bare benches set against the wall. He placed a couple of spanners, a handful of waste which he had been carrying and a mechanic’s bag of tools on the table in front of him and summoned a waiter. He growled out an order for a café and fine, and a packet of Marylands, and on their arrival he commenced to smoke. A man in the costume of a yacht’s captain a few feet away leaned towards him. They were out of hearing of the rest of the company.

“You going on board?” the latter asked.

The mechanic nodded.

“If you can’t do your work, I must,” he replied.

The seaman spat out his extinct cigarette, produced a packet of almost black tobacco with some papers and began to roll another with filthy, yellow-stained fingers.

“Vous êtes fou!” he exclaimed contemptuously. “I myself have been alone there for two hours. With the keys you gave me I opened every door and every cupboard. Nothing—absolument rien.”

“There’s one cupboard which you have not opened,” the other reminded him, gazing hard at the opposite wall.

“No more will you,” was the sneering retort. “Not a book—not a packet—not a letter.”

“Twenty men were at work in the hull of that boat at Gosport for ten days. What were they doing there then?”

“J’en sais rien,” the seaman scowled, feeling with his foot for a spittoon.

“If you have searched the whole ship,” the mechanic asked, “what has become of the papers your master took from the man he shot in Marseilles harbour? We all know that amongst them was an account of the meeting of the secret session of the Cercle Rouge and a copy of the resolutions passed by the secret committee of the sixth division of the frontier army.”

“You find them,” was the disgruntled reply. “I cannot. I ask myself whether they are not on the way to Whitehall.”

The man in overalls puffed at his cigarette, swallowed his coffee and toyed with his fine. He glanced incuriously about the place. There were half-a-dozen sailors from the oil boat on the other side of the harbour talking to a couple of women who had wandered down from Beausoleil. Their conversation was vociferous but of a staccato nature, owing to the fact that the men hailed from Sunderland and the women were Monégasques speaking no language but their own. There were also some seafaring men from the two or three coasting steamers which had put in late in the afternoon from St. Tropez. No one showed the slightest interest in these two seated a little apart from the others. Even the proprietor of the Café glanced at them only now and then to see whether their glasses were empty.

“Tell me precisely,” the mechanic whispered, “what you know about your master’s movements to-night.”

“That is simple,” was the prompt reply. “John made the toilette for him about nine and mixed him a cocktail. I was standing by when he spoke. ‘You can go ashore, if you like, to-night, John,’ he said. ‘I am dining at the Sporting Club and playing Baccarat afterwards until two o’clock.’ And with that he hopped it. You have got a clear two hours and there is not a soul on the boat. I shall be at the end of the gully and I will blow my whistle if he should turn up before his time. You can slip into the dinghy the other side and get round under cover of the Lady Rose, or it is quite dark enough for you to leave by the gangway. If you meet him why disturb yourself? You can say that I sent for you to look at the piston in number two engine and that you have been and put it right. I have left the engine room door open.”

The mechanic nodded, paid his reckoning, said good night to the captain and swung through the door into the darkness of the quay.

A few minutes’ stealthy walk, threading his way amongst the shadowy figures of the one or two loungers left on the quay, brought him to the fourth boat in line from the lighthouse. The gangway was carefully placed and without a moment’s hesitation he swung himself on board, made his way to the aft hatch, which was raised, and slid down the steps to the small saloon. Arrived there he remained a tense, motionless figure for several seconds. His eyes were searching the whole place as though for any signs of recent occupation. All the time he was listening. There was no noise except the sucking and the lapping of the water against the sides of the boat, the dull, distant hammering of some men on the other side preparing an anchor chain, and nearer along the front the faint sound of a guitar in one of the cafés. On the boat itself there was just that silence which a man might pray for who had secret work to do.

The moment arrived when he was apparently satisfied. He moved noiselessly forward, pushed open the hooked-back door at the farther end of the saloon and entered what was obviously the owner’s sleeping apartment. For a boat of that tonnage this cabin appeared to be of unusual size; it stretched from beam to beam and was quite as spacious as an ordinary-sized bedroom. The intruder wasted scarcely more than a few seconds in looking around him. He produced a large bunch of keys from the pocket of his slacks and with the fingers of a conjuror he opened one after the other every drawer in the built-in bureau which occupied almost the whole of one side of the wall. Drawer after drawer he pulled out and with almost incredible speed he drew out letters, papers, documents of every description, examined them and thrust them back into their places. Sometimes he paused for a few seconds to study the figures or written words, but in most cases he seemed to know by instinct the nature of the papers amongst which he was making his breathless search. When he had finished there was scarcely a visible sign of his search. He crossed the room. There was a writing table against the opposite wall with drawers on either side of the kneehole. Again he searched with the same incredible speed, selecting his keys as before with almost miraculous accuracy. Once he paused and read over a letter with the air of one committing its words to memory. He replaced it, however, in its envelope, exactly as he had found it. In almost the last drawer he found two or three pages, pinned together with a paper fastener, which seemed as though they had been torn from a child’s exercise book. One swift glance down what seemed to be a list of names and the document was transferred to his pocket. Again he locked up the drawers, replaced the chair and glanced searchingly around him. There was not a sign anywhere to denote that the room had even been entered. . . . He passed into the saloon, opened one or two cupboards, tapped their backs, glanced at their contents and left the doors closed or open as he had found them. Somewhere upon this boat, if the news from Spain were true, lay documents containing some of the secrets of the world, brought from Madrid by the man who, in terror of his life, had sought refuge on the Silver Shadow and whom Townleyes had shot. If these papers were still in existence, if this wild-looking captain were telling the truth, Townleyes had brought them to Monte Carlo. Why? His brain was working like a quietly purring, perfectly regular instrument. He counted the chances. He could destroy them. That was the limit of his power. In the short spaces of time he might hope to steal on board, the task of discovering them was a superhuman one. There remained the alternative—destruction. He weighed the chances in his mind. Destruction would be easy enough. Just a bomb—one with an ultra-modern time fuse such as he could have put his hand on any moment—anywhere down in the hold and the Silver Shadow would exist no more. Yet destruction would be a clumsy subterfuge. They must wait a little longer, these impatient people who kept flashing him messages across the skies. No one—not even he, the doyen of all spies—could achieve impossibilities. He moved quietly away towards the door, mounted the few steps and stood upon the deck. The breeze had freshened, the boat was swaying slightly and there was a fresh salty taste about the wind. He groped his way forward. His fingers played in the darkness with the line of wire. He traced it to the lantern head, found the catch and turned on the light. A vivid streak of illumination showed him the gangway a few feet away. He leaned towards it, placed one hand firmly upon the rail, then, leaning back and fumbling for the switch, he turned out the light. A second or two later he was walking along the quay in the shadow of the wall.

From a room in the Sporting Club overlooking the harbour a man with a girl by his side had been gazing downwards. He gave a sudden exclamation.

“What’s the matter?” his companion asked.

“Nothing,” he answered. “But here is an extraordinary thing. I know for a fact that there is no one on my boat to-night, yet at that moment the light we have rigged up aft near the gangway shone out and was then extinguished.”

“Burglars!” the girl laughed.

Townleyes shrugged his shoulders lightly.

“Then the member or members of that ancient and honourable profession,” he remarked, “who are playing about on my boat at the present moment, are doomed to disappointment. Come and have a drink with me to give me courage.”

“I don’t think you need courage,” she observed as they moved away towards the crowded bar. “The bold way you came and asked me to dance with you without any introduction almost took my breath away. The restaurant is not the night club, you know, and you were the Princess’s guest.”

“We were two men over, anyway,” he told her. “Besides, you smiled at me.”

“I didn’t,” she declared indignantly.

“Then you ought to have done,” he replied. “Your subconscious mind should have insisted upon our previous acquaintance. A glass of champagne or a champagne cocktail?”

“Champagne cocktail and Virginian cigarettes, please. Anyway, I am very glad you asked me and I don’t believe the Princess minded a bit. Everyone says she is such a good sort. You mustn’t look so glum, Sir Julian. You’ll never win if you sit down at the tables like that. What are you thinking about?”

“Just at that moment,” he confessed as he ordered the drinks, “I was wondering who on earth could have been playing about on my boat. It really isn’t of the slightest importance, for I haven’t a thing on board worth stealing except the Ship’s Papers and an Admiralty Warrant. Here’s to a happy month at Monte Carlo, Miss Haskell,” he added, lifting his glass.

“I’m certainly having it with all you nice people!” she laughed gaily.