Читать книгу The Dumb Gods Speak - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 5

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Suzanne of the International Bureau, concerning whose real vocation in life there were various rumours afloat, held in these days a premier position amongst the courtesans of Nice. She was tall, willowy, and exotic in her characteristics. The sheen of her yellow hair, untouched by any form of artificial colouring, was her chief beauty. She had, however, the eyes of an eastern slave—languishing and passionate—the sneering but at times very attractive mouth of a Parisian cocotte of the haut monde. In Nice she had achieved great success, and in the only night restaurant which she frequented she reigned as a queen. She curtsied to Mark Humberstone as she entered his audience chamber a few days later, and assumed an air of devout attention.

"You have sent for your slave," she said, stifling a yawn. "I was expecting your summons but it is early for me—and a little inconvenient."

"Yes, I sent for you," Mark, who had seated himself at Catherine Oronoff's desk, observed.

"Eh bien?"

"You are living happily these days they tell me, Suzanne."

"Comme ci, comme ça," she answered with a little shrug of the shoulders.

"You will perhaps learn presently," he said, "how to die happily."

She mocked at him, yet somehow or other there was a chill feeling in her blood. Not many people had seen that look in Mark Humberstone's eyes without fear.

"Oh la la!" she exclaimed. "Have I not worked well?"

"Your work is an utter failure," was the calm reply. "Costoli has broken his leave to lie in your arms. Henceforth the man is useless to our clients and I know of no other who could have served their purpose."

"Useless?" she cried passionately. "What do you mean? You have had the secret sailing orders of September the seventeenth, you have had the new charts of which only a dozen have been issued. Costoli is a ruined man and he knows it. He lies in my flat—he is there now—like a whipped dog. What more can I do?"

"Costoli dismissed from the Service, Costoli no longer Inspector of Naval Gunnery and a member of the Admiralty Board of his country, is useless to those for whom we are working," Mark said coldly. "I told you what was required. The man was to have been your slave until the moment came when the great things were near. Now, in less than a week, you have made him compromise himself with his government, you have made him desert his post, his honour is gone, his life forfeit. What use is such a pricked bubble to us?"

"Well, he is no more use to me," the girl declared with a heartless little shrug of the shoulders. "You had better get rid of him. I should not advise you to hand him over to the authorities. He might in a fit of remorse tell them about me and anything that he suspects about the Bureau."

"So your little tongue has been wagging, eh?" Mark asked quietly.

"It is false!" she shrieked. "You should not accuse me like this—I who have worked for you as a slave. Antonio is not a fool. What does he suppose I want the papers for? He knows that I am a spy. He has given me what you asked for and I have given him the payment he craved. How am I to blame if he loses his head?"

The man whom she was addressing yawned—very lightly and very delicately. It was just an indication of weariness but it brought a shiver to the heart of the girl who watched him.

"You have captured the pawn, Suzanne," he admitted, "but you have not only failed in the great things, you have made it impossible that you can ever succeed. Costoli in a month's time could have given us information that would have been worth ten millions. So long as he was going to sell his honour, he might have done it for something worth while. He behaved like a fool. So also have you. A woman of the world knows how to keep a man at her feet better than that."

She threw herself into a chair and swung her leg. It was obvious, from her scanty attire, that her abode was somewhere under the same roof.

"So I am dragged down here to be found fault with," she complained, "to be told, I suppose, that the hundred thousand francs I wanted for next week will not be forthcoming."

"In that you are correct," Mark agreed. "The hundred thousand francs will not be forthcoming. On the other hand," he went on, unlocking a drawer and producing a square sheet of paper, "something else may be coming that you will prize less highly. You have heard of the death warrants of the Bureau, Suzanne?"

She went suddenly rigid. There had never at any time been any natural colour in her cheeks but her eyes were terrible in their fixed stare.

"You do not really mean," she faltered, "that I am to die?"

"Precisely what I am contemplating," he answered coolly, "and quickly too. You know very well that you could not escape the cordon I have drawn round this little corner of Nice, but one prefers to do things decently. You shall die with your lover—a drama of jealousy or despair, eh? The press will welcome the story."

She threw herself on her knees by his side. He drew his chair away.

"Don't dare to touch me," he ordered. "You know that that sort of thing is forbidden. You have thrown away the chance of a generation. What was at the back of your head? Why did you let Costoli desert his ship?"

Real tears were streaming from her eyes.

"I prayed him not to," she pleaded. "I pushed him out of my room. I bade him listen to the clock as it struck. I sent for a car. I did all I could. My master, he was drunk—drunk in his soul—drunk with love for me—drunk as you will never be with any wine or for any woman. I lost my senses too, perhaps. I gave myself and then it was—too late. Antonio may know more. What if he joined you?"

"He lies there like a whipped cur," Mark said calmly. "I have no use, Suzanne, for those who betray their country for such paltry things as you. I thought that Costoli was at least a man—that he would put up a battle—or I would have planned differently. And as for you—any little gamine from the street would have answered my purpose as well as you have done. I would not have such a man as Costoli working for me. There is nothing for him but his revolver, and he must know it. Why not conclude this matter in a friendly fashion—carry out the little drama pleasantly and with all the stage surroundings. Rush to him now, tell him that all is lost, shoot him and then yourself, or vice versa. I promise you that there shall be no scandal. We have our own ways of dealing with that, you know."

She clutched at the table by his side, breaking her beautiful nails recklessly. She feared to touch him, his disgust was too obvious, yet it was her life for which she pleaded.

"Listen," she cried, "Costoli has a brother—you know that. He knows as much as Antonio ever knew. He could perhaps satisfy you. Antonio shall die—I promise you that. He will shoot himself this morning if I tell him that I am a spy and never loved him. But the brother—he was wild with love for me but he had brains enough to go to his Admiral. He got a month's leave. He is in Toulon, I believe. If I send for him he will come."

The young man smiled sardonically, certainly not pleasantly. He looked down at the-girl who was pleading for her life—beautiful even in those agonies of hers—and his expression was that of one who looks upon some nauseous thing.

"Get up," he ordered. "Go back to your chair. Do not think that you have triumphed. I have as much pity for you as I have for the rats they kill in the sewers day by day. Still, you have given me an idea. You want to live. It might be arranged."

"Tell me how," she implored. "I will do anything. You would be mad to kill me. There is no one else who can turn a man inside out and play upon his heartstrings as I can. Sometimes I feel like a tigress and that men are my food. You can have what you waft from Costoli's brother—I promise you that. He was madder about me even than Antonio. I thought that Antonio was your man or I should have taken him."

Mark said nothing and more and more every second Suzanne seemed to feel the terror of his silence. The light had gone out of her face. She was like a whipped animal sprawling in the chair waiting for the final lash.

"Ever been to Warsaw?" he asked.

"I was born there," she confided.

"A fact which does not appear upon your dossier."

"What does it matter?" she answered. "I was not born at all if it comes to that—I was kicked into life. My mother was a chorus girl at the opera. She never knew who my father was."

"How old were you when you left?"

"Four or five—I do not remember."

"But you went back again there."

"That is in my dossier all right," she told him. "I danced there when I was thirteen. When I was fifteen I had a lover with money. He took me back to Paris."

"Ever hear of a family of the name of Agrestein?"

She became an animate person again through the sheer shock of surprise.

"Warsaw millionaires!" she cried. "It was Paul Agrestein's grandson who took me to Paris."

He glanced up from a small book at which he had been gazing.

"These dossiers have their value," he remarked. "This one, my dear Suzanne, may save your worthless life. You want to live, I gather."

"As a bird wants to sing," she answered wildly. "I have life in me. It hurts. I will live."

"Well, you were the mistress of young Paul Agrestein," he observed. "That may make a difference. Sit up and listen to me."

She obeyed at once. Mechanically her fingers stole into the little bag which had fallen to the floor. He laughed as he saw her use her vanity case.

"Not worth while for me," he told her contemptuously. "Listen—the Costoli business is finished. You yourself have brought it to an end and it will be better for you to disappear for a time. For the moment you are reinstated. You go back to your lover. He is sober now?"

"He is what I choose to have him," she said carelessly. "Je m'en fiche de lui! He has lost his spirit."

"Take him away from here in an hour's time," Mark directed. "You can order a car. Take him to one of the hotels. Engage a suite of apartments. By the by, be sure that he takes his revolver with him."

"What is to be the end?"

"He is to shoot himself to-night. See that he does it. There will be very few formalities afterwards. You can return here, then I shall speak to you again about Warsaw."

"But the French police..." she faltered.

"When have you found the French police interfering with us or anyone belonging to us?" he asked. "You may be served with a notice of deportation, but whatever happens you will come here and nobody will stop you. Is that understood?"

She rose to her feet and drew a little breath.

"Yes," she answered. "Antonio Costoli is to die tonight. That pleases me. I am to live. That pleases me more still. I submit to the French police. I know nothing of why Costoli committed suicide. He may have talked a little—not my affair."

He pointed to the door and she slunk away closing it behind her.

"Ciel!" she exclaimed under her breath. She felt her knees trembling. "Pourquoi est-ce qu'on ne tue pas ce sale Americain?"

"It is the man with the bags," Catherine Oronoff announced as she stood, a short time later, by the side of Mark Humberstone's desk.

"What about him? He has all his instructions."

"He wants to know if he can give his ridiculous show at the Jetée Casino. He prefers," she continued, "to establish his identity at any place where he is likely to stay for any length of time."

"I see no objection. As it happens I wish to speak to him. Telephone, if you please, for him to come at once."

In a few minutes Mr. Jonson appeared. He had changed his clothes to a well-fitting suit of dark blue and he wore a bunch of violets in his buttonhole. He had evidently paid a visit to the coiffeur, for his pink-and-white cheeks were smooth and his coarse brown hair straight as the fibres of a mat. His new employer looked him over with a scrutiny from which most men would have shrunk. Mr. Jonson welcomed it with a pleased smile.

"What sort of a man are you, I wonder," Mark speculated.

"My deeds will show."

"Spoken curiously like an Oriental."

Mr. Jonson bowed.

"If I undertake service I serve honestly and well, but I choose whom I serve. I choose for what cause."

"In a strange service, such as this will be, amid strange surroundings," Mark warned him gravely, "you may come across much which you should ignore."

"I am not the sort of man who, when he has a mission, looks either to the right or to the left," Mr. Jonson confided. "I do not run about on four feet and I do not count the grains of dust in the road before me as I walk. The sunshine which you have lent me for a covering is where my eyes turn, and I have kept the soul with which I was born."

"You are a man of constant purpose, then?"

Then Mr. Jonson did an astonishing thing. He made the sign of the cross. Ever so slightly his questioner frowned upon him.

"What is the meaning of that?" he demanded.

"A cabalistic sign," was the apologetic reply. "I am not a Catholic. The cross is my visiting card in some places. It is the only fashion in which I talk to myself."

"I begin to wonder," Mark exclaimed, "whether it is a lunatic whom I have appointed to take charge of my safety!"

"You need have no fear," the other assured him. "It was no lunatic who kept your father safe from assassination. I am so far from madness that if you wish it I will answer now one of the unspoken questions you have had in your mind to ask me."

"Are these the tricks of the Jetée Casino, of the man who stops the spinning of the world when he chooses?"

"I possess the art of divination," Mr. Jonson asserted, "but not in that fashion. Mine comes from the brain and from a curious apprehension I have always had of the motives of others. I suggest that you have sent for me to ask some question with regard to Warsaw."

There was a moment's silence. Catherine Oronoff swung round in her chair to look at this strange man with the egg-shaped head and the curiously precise appearance. Mark, if he felt any surprise, disclosed none. He flicked away the ash from the cigarette which he was smoking.

"Another Casino trick?" he remarked smiling. "Well, I fall. Have you ever, I wonder, heard of the house of Agrestein there? In the old days when millions flowed into the Riviera banks the Agresteins fashioned tiaras worth a king's ransom. Is there one of the family still living in Warsaw?"

"I seem to remember," Mr. Jonson said, gazing straight into the sunlight with unblinking eyes, "that Paul Agrestein, the head of the family, still lives in the old palace."

"He would be a man of what age?"

"About sixty."

"He travels sometimes this way?"

"I have heard of him in these parts once," Mr. Jonson admitted. "He and his father before him had the reputation of being great gamblers."

"The Poles have that proclivity," Mark observed, rising to his feet.

"Have I your permission, sir, to depart?" the visitor asked.

"Why?"

"My men are at work fixing my apparatus at the Casino. It has to be very accurate and the performance commences at five o'clock. I need a particular sort of lunch first, and I have not yet cashed any money."

"You may go," Mark acquiesced.

The magician rose smiling to his feet. He bowed to Catherine Oronoff and he bowed to Mark Humberstone. The latter looked curiously at the door through which, in a moment or two, he had disappeared.

"I am beginning to wonder," he speculated, "whether I am wise in accepting the services of a clairvoyant."

She shook her head.

"He is no clairvoyant," she declared. "When he entered the room you had his passport in your hand. Three times you turned back to the page where his Warsaw visa was inscribed."

"That is all very well," Mark agreed. "A reasonable explanation indeed; but, I ask myself, where did he find that only slightly mutilated quotation he made use of apparently for my benefit? I am becoming suspicious about the fellow," he went on thoughtfully. "He stops the earth with his forefinger in places of public amusement, he apprehends already, I believe, my interest in Warsaw, and he knows a quotation which it is not humanly possible that he has ever seen."

Catherine Oronoff sometimes told herself that it was her mission in life to keep the feet of the man she served upon the earth. She yawned slightly as she turned to a file of papers she was sorting.

"I do not think that he is quite so wonderful as all that," she remarked. "There are explanations for everything. Some day or other, I should think, you may find Mr. Jonson quite useful."

Mark rose suddenly to his feet. A ripple of the April breeze had stolen into the large, severe-looking room and brought with it a breath of the perfume from the waving lime trees, perhaps also a wave of the odour from the heaped flower stalls in the market. From where he had been seated, too, he had caught a glimpse of the blue sky.

"We are going to St. Paul for lunch," he announced. "How long will it take you to get ready?"

She smiled.

"I am ready, but—"

Mark was suddenly the autocrat. He swept away her protests. In less than five minutes they were in his automobile passing along the Promenade des Anglais.