Читать книгу Up the Ladder of Gold - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 9

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Warren Rand passed on his way along the Embankment, after a brief interlude climbed Norfolk Street into the Strand, and finally reached the great block of buildings on the upper floors of which were established his palatial flat—and safety. The man who had waited for him outside the House of Commons recovered consciousness the next morning, in the accident ward of a well-known London hospital. Tellesom—Colonel Charles Tellesom, D.S.O. until 1918, and chief of one of the branches of his Majesty’s Secret Service after then, now Chief of the Private Bodyguard who watched over the safety of Warren Rand—discussed the affair with the latter half an hour after its occurrence.

“I think we ought to charge this fellow, sir,” he advised. “Of course, we didn’t let him come near enough for you to run any real risk, but he was carrying a nasty little weapon—one of those new, almost silent automatics, with a needle bullet. We left it in his pocket, and I am certain he’d get it in the neck from Scotland Yard.”

Warren Rand shook his head.

“The police courts over here are awkward places,” he declared. “They want to know too much about everybody’s business. You let him off too lightly. Why not give him another chance and then beat him up for good?”

Tellesom looked a little doubtful. He was a typical, well-bred young Englishman, fair of complexion, almost florid, with keen grey eyes and sunburnt skin. The remains of a scar on the left-hand side of his face was a slight disfigurement, and there were times when the lines around his mouth made him seem older than he really was. Otherwise, he was one of the fortunate survivors of three and a half years of desperate fighting. He owed his present position as head of Warren Rand’s bodyguard to his friendship with an American general and his own love of adventure.

“This is a queer country for that sort of thing, sir,” he remarked. “You can get away with anything in the States, and pretty well anything in most of the countries of Southern Europe, but the law here is a most inhuman machine.”

“A German, of course?”

“Not a doubt about it.”

“They’re the only people who’ve really got it in for me just now,” Warren Rand reflected. “They’ll do their best to get me, I suppose.”

“I’ll see that they don’t, sir,” was the confident assertion.

Warren Rand reflected for a moment. Then he rang one of the bells upon his desk. John Glynde, wearing a black alpaca coat and smoking a large cigar, made prompt entrance.

“Working late to-night, John,” his Chief remarked.

“I’ve just finished. There are only four letters which you need sign yourself. Here they are.”

“Money market interesting?”

John Glynde smiled faintly.

“We gave them a scare in New York,” he confided, “but rushed things up to top after hours—cleaned up half a million or so. Very little doing in Brussels or Berlin, but heavy business with Montreal. Here are the figures, if you care to look at them. Just under a million to the good on the day.”

Warren Rand read the four letters through like lightning and signed his name. The sheaf of figures he scarcely glanced at.

“What about Behrling?” he asked.

“He’s busy. Got half a dozen of his best men over, too. I was talking to the Colonel about him this evening. They tried to get a man in here and did all they could to get one of their lady typists in the place—a very dangerous young woman, from all I could hear of her.”

Warren Rand smiled.

“German psychology,” he observed. “The same methods for every one. They won’t give any one credit for brains except themselves. Where’s Behrling to be found?”

“I can tell you,” Tellesom intervened. “At any one of the night clubs in town.”

“So he’s at the old game,” Warren Rand reflected, with a hard smile. “I wonder how much of it is bluff.”

“Only a part of it, I think, sir,” Tellesom remarked. “I was up against him during the latter part of the War once or twice. He was just the same then. I remember the last words he spoke to me. It was in Bucharest before the fun began there. ‘I am a Secret Service agent,’ he said, ‘and I might as well carry my name and address and profession on my hat, for every one knows it, and they’re welcome to know it. All the same,’ he went on, wagging his pudgy forefinger at me, ‘I never fail.’ ”

“Conceited ass!” Warren Rand observed calmly. “We must teach him a lesson. One of his men is in the hospital, anyway. Come along, Tellesom.”

John Glynde looked at his Chief in surprise.

“You’re not going out again to-night?” he protested, blinking.

“Of course I’m going out again,” was the prompt reply. “A weakling like you, John, may go to bed at ten minutes past eleven. I can’t. Two o’clock’s my hour.”

“Where are we going?” Tellesom enquired.

“We’re going to find Behrling,” Warren Rand confided. “You know the ropes, I suppose. I’m ready.”

At ten minutes past two, Warren Rand had had enough of it. He lingered for a moment on the pavement outside a famous night haunt near Oxford Street. Tellesom, as usual, stood close to his side, wary and watchful. There were two other men in the background, inconspicuous but alert pillars of security. The automobile was drawn up to the curb.

“Very interesting, Tellesom,” his charge admitted. “The English temperament is, I should imagine, unchangeable. A street café in Bucharest would be more amusing if less ponderously respectable. It’s pretty well my time for turning in. I’m for home.”

“Just this one more place,” Tellesom begged. “Mostly foreigners here, I promise you, and a pretty good chance of finding our man.”

Warren Rand suffered himself to be led away, and the next place they visited—it was a little more than a glorified cellar—brought them to the end of their quest. While his foot was still on the last of the stairs and retreat remained possible, he saw Felix Behrling. Their mutual recognition was instantaneous and the flash from their eyes was like the crossing of rapiers. Warren Rand drew a sharp breath. Every unsuspected nerve in his body was tingling. He knew now that the evening had been well spent and that those dim suspicions at the back of his mind had something in them of the nature of inspiration. He drew off his gloves and handed them, with his coat and hat, to the vestiaire. Tellesom had secured one of the best tables in a neighbouring corner, but Warren Rand whispered to the maître d’hôtel who was waiting to escort them, and chose one near the dancing floor, with several people in the background.

“You like this better?” Tellesom protested.

“It suits me quite well,” was the indifferent reply. “Besides, a bullet through my head would probably be more dangerous to other people here.”

Tellesom flashed a swift glance around the room and felt like kicking himself for not having recognised Felix Behrling before. His hand stole underneath the tails of his coat, but Warren Rand took his seat with a careless gesture.

“Too high a price here for even my life,” he remarked confidently. “My friend amuses himself.”

The person whom they were discussing seemed indeed to be finding amusement in a fashion which was scarcely English. He was a big man, ruddy of complexion, with a bristling fair moustache and much hair of the same colour. His eyes were blue, his smile was cherubic, and not a soul in the room seemed less likely to be carrying a messenger of death in his hip pocket. He had apparently dined well, but in case there should be any doubt about the matter, he had supped well also. On each side of him was seated a young woman, both of prepossessing appearance; his arms were extended amorously around the backs of their chairs. So he faced Warren Rand, across those few yards of empty space, and showed all his white teeth as he laughed.

“Welcome, my enemy,” he cried softly. “Have you come to rob me of my treasures here, as you have emptied my pockets and the pockets of my country-people?”

Warren Rand smiled imperturbably.

“I will leave you the most precious part of your possessions,” he reassured him. “As for your pockets, it is for you to decide whether you like them full or empty.”

Felix Behrling, a Baron of Saxony and Count of the Holy Roman Empire, at times a very great personage in his own peculiar way, indulged in a grimace.

“Not the price of a bottle of wine has he left me to assuage the thirst of these dear ladies,” he declared. “Chloe and Lucie, mark him well, your vis-à-vis, my children. It is through him that I am poverty-stricken. That man beckons with his finger and calls to him all the money in the world! Bank notes take to themselves feet and run to him. Million-dollar bonds rise up from the gratings of Wall Street and nest in his pockets. As for gold, he is more greedy of gold than anything else. The last wheelbarrowful in Europe was emptied into his cellars yesterday. My friend and enemy, we thirst, and you alone can afford to pay the prices of this den of robbers.”

Warren Rand summoned a waiter.

“Serve that gentleman opposite with a magnum of your best champagne,” he ordered.

Felix Behrling chuckled and drew his companions a little nearer to him—a gesture which they seemed in no way to resent, although their smiles were equally directed towards their prospective host.

“The man has a thread of gold concealed in him somewhere,” Felix Behrling acknowledged. “He has neither heart nor conscience, but some hidden sense tells him when the gracious gesture must be made. We will drink with you, disturber of our peace. You must know my lady friends. On my right is Chloe. You might have met her years ago at the Folies Bergères if your footsteps had ever wandered into so plebeian a place. On my left is Lucie. Lucie is English, and I believe of gentle birth. She has met with misfortunes. So have we all. That is her story, but we who have loved her and lived with her suspect that she is Austrian. More chic than these English, but not so popular here where money is to be gained.”

Chloe laughed across at Warren Rand.

“Monsieur est drôle,” she said apologetically. “He makes the fun all the time. He is never serious.”

“He likes to enjoy himself,” Lucie interposed. “And why not? So, also, do we. Of Austria, though, I am not. I am of Warsaw, as the world here knows.”

“I would ask you to join us,” Felix Behrling went on—“you and your personal bodyguard—but the whale does not swim in the same water as the stickleback. One question I shall ask you, however, now that we have met face to face, surrounded by, shall we call them, the amenities of life. This much I shall ask you, however much I shall have to discount your answer. I know why you have come to England. I can guess what you said at Westminster this evening. I know why you will be leaving England during the next few days, but when you have brought this episode to an end, turned to another, and completed that, imposed your will upon a few weak-kneed diplomatists and debt-burdened bankers, what then? What do you live for? What do you work for? What is the end of it?”

He raised a full glass of wine to his lips and drained its contents. No one plunged into the silence which ensued. The girls clung to him on each side. Warren Rand listened with impassive face.

“You all know me,” his opposite neighbour continued. “Drunk or sober, in the arms of Chloe, or with the clips falling into my automatic, I am Felix Behrling, a German and proud of it, a schemer when scheming is necessary, in the byways and underground passages of life, a diplomatist when the higher places need me. You know what I want. You know very well the ambition of my life, but your desire—what the devil you’re aiming at, what particular corner of the skies towards which you climb, you wish to pull down and explore, who can tell? Not one of us. You’ve hit us all, my friend and enemy. But why? You don’t dally by the way as I do, like this, and seek pleasure. When will you don the smile of accomplishment?”

“When you and the rest of the world learn common sense,” was the faintly contemptuous reply. “You regard me as an enemy, yet, if you were asked, you could never expound the reason of your hatred for me. What you work for you will never gain, even though one of your hired cutthroats should be more fortunate than the one who loitered upon the Embankment a little too long for his health this evening.”

“Hear him!” Felix Behrling exclaimed, turning round as though to appeal to the waiters and a few other belated guests, who, by this time, were firmly convinced that they were listening to two madmen. “As though I would bring harm upon him! A man who has stood us a magnum of champagne in the hour of our distress! Tell us about that corner of the sky and we might even form an alliance. No, keep silence, rather,” he added, as the waiter served a fresh bottle of wine. “Let us fill our glasses and drink before the oracle has time to change his mind.”

“You talk a great deal,” Warren Rand remarked.

“Not for the next few moments,” Felix Behrling promised. “For the next few moments I shall drink. Still, you were right when you said that I talked much. Ask yourself this, though. Which gives away the secrets of the world most completely—the brainless jackass to whom no one listens, or the stern, silent man, in whose whisperings are all the germs of what the world wants to know? I wonder!”

He drained another glass of wine and stood up—an enormous figure of a man. Chloe wreathed herself around him, and they danced, Behrling with amazing lightness of step and in faultless time.

“Astonishing!” Tellesom murmured, with a gleam of admiration in his steely grey eyes. “Where does he learn all that he knows, I wonder?”

“The man is a genius,” Warren Rand admitted. “That is why I wish he would remain in Saxony.”

Lucie, from opposite, came over and stood by their table. She looked wistfully at the two men.

“You would care to dance, perhaps?” she suggested.

Warren Rand shook his head, but Tellesom leaned across the table.

“How long have you known our friend there?” he asked.

“We met to-night for the first time,” the girl lied glibly. “He is very amusing, but he gets very drunk, and nobody ever knows what he is talking about.”

“You see,” Warren Rand pointed out, turning to his companion. “He has his own way of doing it. I don’t suppose he even told her to lie to us. They know. Accept this, Mademoiselle Lucie, for the pleasure of the dance which I hope some day to watch, and perhaps, all things considered, it would be better if you returned to your place.”

The girl looked at the bank note in her hand, flashed a little glance of amazed gratitude at its donor, and faded away. She reached the table just as Behrling and his companion returned from dancing. The former was out of breath, drops of perspiration upon his forehead, his great stomach heaving. Tellesom watched him like a lynx. The quieter days had come, but he had seen Felix Behrling kill a man with as scant notice as he was giving now of hostile intent.

“My enemy,” Behrling said, across those few feet of space, “you will notice that I have not once mentioned your name. I know your weakness, you see. Have you come over here to fight?”

Warren Rand seemed to be listening to the music—the jazz music which he hated.

“I may have come over here to see that you don’t,” was his somewhat delayed answer.

Felix Behrling rocked in his place and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

“It would be easier,” he declared bombastically, “to stop the sequence of the days than to destroy in man’s heart the love of fighting. They tell me that you can reap the news of the world in half an hour. Why not? You were born and bred on newspapers—printers’ ink in your veins, I think sometimes, instead of good red blood. I’ll tell you something. You’re responsible for Geneva. You’ve kept it going. I tell you there’s been more treachery and falsehoods, more poison and lying, in those stuccoed halls than was ever let loose in the trenches. You are trying to do the impossible, my squat Napoleon of the Press. You are trying to alter the balance of the world. You may get the weights into your hand, but you’ll never be allowed to juggle with them. The world’s against you, enemy of mine, and you, after all, are only one man.”

The music started again. Chloe sprang up and dragged him away.

“I want to dance,” she cried. “You waste too much time talking.”

Behrling paused only long enough to drink a glass of wine. Then he took her into his arms.

“Even these children,” he called down, as he passed the opposite table, “have learned some wisdom.”