Читать книгу The Spymaster - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 6

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One of the most distinguished and beautiful women in Europe, who, only two nights before, had entertained the whole diplomatic world of the Court of St. James’s, entered at twenty minutes to eight that evening the plainly furnished little dining room through the folding doors which separated it from the back apartment—a shabbier sort of place altogether with a dreary view down into some seldom-used mews. She was carrying a man’s hat in her hand and she began to talk before she had crossed the threshold.

“A perfectly horrible hat, Godfrey! Really, you are very careless about your appearance. I wonder—”

The man who had been standing looking down into the busy street with his hands behind his back turned slowly round. The hat slipped through her nerveless fingers. She stared at him in horror.

“Guy!” she faltered. “Why, what are you doing here?”

She looked wildly round. He watched the colour fading from her cheeks, the horror deepen in her eyes. He moved quite quietly towards her.

“Godfrey is not available,” he announced. “I thought I would come myself.”

She would have collapsed but for his firm clutch on her arm. He guided her to a chair.

“Don’t faint, Sabine,” he begged. “Come, we are old friends. There is nothing so terrible to be faced, after all.”

His voice was icy but his effort at reassurance was obvious. He went on talking. Her eyes were fastened upon him.

“These young fellows,” he continued, “are getting all the fun nowadays. I’m not sure that they deserve it. They’re rather bunglers. Try a spot of this wine.”

He filled a glass from the sherry decanter on the sideboard and held it to her lips. Her fingers brushed his as she raised her hand. They were deathly cold.

“This is hideous,” she gasped. “How did you know?”

He sighed patiently.

“No one gives my poor branch of the Service credit for anything,” he observed. “Of course I knew. It is my business to know. Sailors aren’t all fools. . . . Drink that down. Nothing very terrible is going to happen.”

She obeyed him, shivering. He took the glass back to the sideboard.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Because as soon as you are able,” he went on, “I should like to ring for dinner, if you don’t mind. I took the liberty of making one small alteration in the menu whilst I was waiting. Hot lobster never agrees with me. I changed it to grilled sole, but I am allowing you a sauce.”

“You mean that you are dining with me here instead of Godfrey?” she asked in a bewildered tone.

“Of course. I thought you would have guessed that. I have even brought you the little document you were expecting,” he concluded, producing an envelope.

The horror seized her once more.

“You are mocking me, Guy!”

“Not altogether,” he assured her. “We may have to exchange a few more serious words presently. Just now let us carry on.”

“What are you going to do about me?” she demanded.

“Depends upon yourself,” he replied. “If you take my advice everything will be all right. We are used to spies—thick as locusts in this radius. We are learning how to deal with them.”

She shrank back.

“Not—”

“No, no,” he interrupted soothingly. “Nothing of that sort at all. I will explain presently. What I should really like now is to see you sit up at table.”

“Give me some more sherry, or better still a cocktail,” she begged.

He refilled her glass.

“Cocktails are coming,” he told her, “but sherry is better for your digestion. There—armchair for you, back to the light—not that you need it—and sherry. Shouldn’t drink all of it. There’s vodka coming along with the caviar.”

“Is this the feast before the execution?” she enquired with a faint smile.

“There won’t be any execution,” he assured her. “You are a woman of the world, Sabine. You must take this little matter philosophically. You could not have expected to have carried through all the time. Besides Godfrey Ryson was the wrong person for you to choose, and Ronnie Hincks, after all, is young and too deeply imbued with a sense of discipline to question seriously the doings of his superior officer. Of course they are both my A.D.C.’s—that’s something—but Hincks is not really a schemer. Ryson made one or two mistakes, or we should not be having this pleasant party.”

“You may ring,” she told him. “I am quite ready.”

A maître d’hôtel, olive-complexioned, black-haired, typical, presented himself, followed by a waiter. He bowed and hurried on the preparations.

“Monsieur Machinka,” he announced, “has been called away on urgent business.”

“Bad luck,” Cheshire commented coolly. “I am not altogether surprised, though. He will probably be back again in a day or two. We will trust you to serve the dinner, Luigi. Pretty well all foreigners here, aren’t you?”

“Italians and English, sir,” the man answered smilingly. “English and Italians always get on well together. No Germans here, very few French, no Russians. Always I say the same thing—even with the kitchen help—English and Italians. Her Highness is well?” he went on, turning to Sabine a little anxiously. “She is not feeling the room close?”

“I am quite well, Luigi,” she assured him. “A few too many late nights, perhaps.”

The man smiled sympathetically.

“The English life is very gay,” he observed.

The satellites arrived with the caviar and the service of dinner continued smoothly towards its appointed end. Cheshire developed an unusual aptitude for small talk. Luigi, who had been more than a little nervous, was speedily reassured. He served the coffee and Italian liqueurs himself. The time came when his two guests were alone. Sabine was more like herself but the dark shade of anxiety was still there in the background. She leaned over the table and lit her first cigarette.

“Guy,” she asked hysterically, “what do you think of me?”

He sighed. He laid his hand upon hers and she clutched at his fingers.

“It has been a shock, Sabine,” he told her. “Yet one has to look at these things from the larger point of view. You are married to an American, one of the finest fellows in the world, but at heart you have remained a foreigner. Your own country means everything to you. Is that not so?”

“Yes,” she confessed. “Still, I know I have been very foolish.”

“You have,” he told her brusquely.

“What are you going to do with me?” she pleaded. “Is there to be scandal—or worse? Am I to be deported? Is my husband to be told, or is it worse even than that? Are you going to treat me as spies were dealt with in the old days?”

“Never that,” he assured her. “Whether you will choose to avoid the scandal and the deportation depends upon you.”

“Tell me, then, how?” she begged. “How?”

“You will continue in exactly the same fashion, the only difference being that you will meet me either here or elsewhere and not—Ryson.”

His slight hesitation before he uttered the latter’s name startled her.

“What about Ronnie?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Sabine,” he said, “you ask too much. Commander Hincks was and is an Englishman. He has, either wilfully or through carelessness, betrayed his own country. You are betraying an alien country for the sake of your own. There is a difference.”

“You mean that he will die?” she asked in an awed whisper.

“That depends largely upon you.”

“Upon me?”

“Yes. If you answer the questions I may ask you from time to time, if you continue the work upon which you are at present engaged, his life and possibly his career will be saved. If not, he must pay the penalty for his folly.”

She shivered.

“And it was my fault!”

“Scarcely your fault,” he murmured indulgently. “He was a very foolish young man.”

“And his friend—Godfrey Ryson?”

“Even more foolish, because he was older and the instigator of this damnable business.”

“What will become of him?”

“You read your evening papers?”

“Never.”

“That’s a pity,” he regretted. “It might have saved you a shock. Ryson committed suicide this morning at an hotel not far from here.”

“God!” she muttered. “And what becomes of me?”

“You remain as you are. You continue your excellent work. But I personally will supply you with the material.”

She was on the verge of hysteria. She pressed her hand to her side. Her bosom was rising and falling quickly.

“There is something terrible underneath what you say.”

“There is nothing,” he assured her. “You have your means of communication with your friends still open. We have not interfered with it, we do not propose to interfere, but we shall supply you with the material.”

An indignant light flashed in her eyes.

“You mean that I am to betray my country?”

“You are to continue to forward the information you derive from me. I have taken the place of Hincks and Ryson. I shall supply you with interesting facts. One of the next, I think, was to have been the marks and loading and size of five thousand torpedoes we bought last week, also to what port they are shipped.”

“How did you know that?” she asked.

He waved the question away.

“I shall give you the information,” he repeated doggedly. “You will forward it.”

She brooded over the matter for some moments. Suddenly she leaned forward and gripped him by the wrists.

“The information will be false,” she cried.

“That is not your affair,” he told her sternly. “As a matter of fact, all the information you have received and have passed on to your friends has been false the whole of the time. Do you understand anything about the papers Ryson brought you, do you understand these tracings of a cruiser, the second half of which I am placing in your hands in a few minutes? Of course not. You pass them on. It is your business. For anything you know, I, too, am a traitor to my country. Shall I put the matter more clearly still, Sabine?”

“Yes.”

“You will pass on the information, the tracings that I bring you, exactly as before, without a word of explanation or doubt. You give no hint to your friends which reflects in any way on their genuineness. You do this and Hincks continues to live and remain in the Service. You do this and you remain Sabine Alexandra Margarita, Princess Pelucchi, first lady amongst the nobility of your country, married to one of the richest men and finest fellows in the world.”

“But I cannot go on!” she moaned. “If I do I am a spy, I am a double spy. I am worse than anything breathing.”

“That you do not know,” he insisted. “That is not for you to know. You deal only in sealed papers. The only true thing you may take into your heart is this—that unless you do as I say, it is the end.”

“You can say this to me,” she cried passionately. “You, who once told me—more than once—that you loved me!”

“I told you the truth, Sabine. I shall continue to love you—and hate you. You will remain the only woman in my life.”

She threw her arms round his neck, leaning towards him with all the magical light flowing from her glorious eyes. Never had she felt more powerless. He returned her gaze coldly, with just that slight touch of polite interest which a woman recognises as an insult.

“I understand,” she said, drawing away with a little shiver. “Give me what I came to receive from Godfrey.”

He drew the long envelope from his pocket.

“One more question. It has come to my knowledge that a copy of these tracings from the Admiralty was being sent to a man called Henry Copeland at the Lambeth post office. I imagine that these were duplicates of the ones handed to you. Henry Copeland’s real name is Florestan. Do you know anything of him?”

“By name only,” she replied.

“Who is he?”

“Like myself, a spy,” she answered bitterly. “A spy in the service of my country. It was someone in the Embassy who suggested that duplicates should be sent to him to compare with those I received and passed on. They compare the two and are satisfied.”

He reflected for a few moments in silence. Then he placed the sealed envelope in her hand.

“Take great care of it,” he begged with gentle irony. “It is very valuable, very precious. There are some crafty fellows in your Embassy.”

She drew her cloak around her shoulders.

“Guy,” she said, “I never thought that you could be so cruel.”

“I have to be cruel to keep my senses,” he rejoined sadly.

The only word of consolation, of real kindness that he had uttered. She hugged the memory of it to herself as she passed down those dreary back stairs, along the bricked-up passage, and into the waiting taxicab.