Читать книгу The Day, or The Passing of a Throne - Fred M. White - Страница 6

Table of Contents

The giddy little butterfly known as Lady Loxton occupied a large and luxurious flat which took up practically the top floor of a block of buildings known as Medhurst Gardens. She was young and vivacious, always lively and agreeable, and enviously known as one of the best dressed women in London. She was deliciously pretty in a Dresden china way, and apparently lived entirely for pleasure. If she was the possessor of anything in the way of intelligence she disguised it most effectively, and her ingenuousness was a constant source of pleasure and amusement to her quicker-witted friends.

And yet in spite of her innocence of the world, she had done very well for herself. The gossips who knew were prepared to prove that she had been the only child of a shady Irish officer, whose service had been dispensed with, and that in her earlier days she had been on the Parisian stage, and that she had played in Vaudiville all over the Continent. Some considerable time before she had married Lord Loxton, regarded by competent critics as the greatest blackguard in the peerage, and at his death had found herself amply provided for. People were surprised to find that Lord Loxton had left so much money, for he had been looked on as permanently in the ranks of the impecunious, but then his pretty wife had done much for him, and had found him one or two powerful friends on the Continent. It was generally understood that Loxton had done well over his speculations in foreign shares, not that it mattered much any way, for Society was prepared to take Lady Loxton as she stood, and her invitations were eagerly sought for.

She made her way upstairs presently to her own flat, and let herself in with a latchkey. The servants had all retired for the night to their own quarters, which were at the end of a long corridor, and cut off from the rest of the flat by a pair of heavy baize doors. The wire of a burglar alarm ran along the wainscot, and this Lady Loxton carefully connected before entering the dining-room.

The luxurious apartment, with its old oak panelling and priceless pictures, was brilliantly flooded with light. Before the clear log fire a man sat on an arm chair smoking a cigarette. He was very tall and very thin, with a lean, long face, and head covered with coarse black hair. This was no less a person than Professor Garzia, one of the greatest authorities in Europe on music, and a Spaniard of old descent. He shrugged his shoulders as Lady Loxton entered.

"My child, you have been a long time," he said.

"But not time wasted, Pedro," Lady Loxton laughed. "I did not find Leroux at home, but behold there was little Vera in the midst of a passionate love scene with our friend Paul Rosslyn. Of course, I pretended to see nothing, but there is something in the wind all the same. But never mind those children. Have you heard from Von Kemp and our friend Aldeborough?"

"Ah, von Kemp and the others, they are in gaol," Garzia said, with a shrug of his shoulders. "The little game with the shaded lamps was spotted and the house raided just after dusk this evening. It is by great good luck that I got away without being seen. I had managed to hide the car, or at this moment I should not be enjoying the pleasure of your charming society."

Lady Loxton hissed something between her little white teeth. Her expression had entirely changed now, her big innocent eyes twinkled with malice and cunning. The alert vigour of her face and the outward thrust of her chin would have astonished her Society friends had they seen her at that moment. For here was no frivolous butterfly, but a hard, scheming woman of the world.

"What infernal luck!" she cried. "And I thought that we had planned the whole thing so carefully. There must have been some bad blundering somewhere, Pedro. And fancy this coming at a time when we need money from Berlin so badly. I was promised 200,000 marks if I brought off that little coup and got those gunboats mixed up with the mines that von Kemp made, and which have been lying perdu at Aldeborough for the last four years. And I am reduced to my last £5 note. We shan't get another penny through Rotterdam until we have pulled something off. Look here."

The speaker took up a copy of a leading newspaper, and indicated an advertisement appealing for subscriptions towards a children's convalescent home, of which Lady Loxton appeared to be the president. The appeal was for children in Germany and Belgium as well as England—an appeal for the little ones suffering from the war, and printed in three languages. Lady Loxton smiled as she looked at it.

"What fools these English authorities are," she said. "And yet I flatter myself that this is an excellent scheme for throwing dust in their eyes. This advertisement is published in London and Berlin every day. And each day it is slightly altered. By picking out certain letters I can read what our friends in Berlin say, and vice versa. To-day's message says that the Secret Service Department at Potsdam is getting very dissatisfied with us, and that unless we do something striking, the money will be cut off. Now can't you think of something? Something dazzling!"

Garzia frowned moodily. With his intimate knowledge of the coding of the advertisement he was reading it eagerly between the lines. He looked up presently, his eyes gleaming like coals.

"This is a great scheme of your's Marie," he exclaimed. "Ah, who would guess that the frivolous Lady Loxton was the cleverest spy ever trained in Prussia. You are great my child, the greatest of them all. And yet they are so full of ingratitude. But that was not what I was going to say. See, there is another message here. Will you take down the letters as I pick them out."

Lady Loxton took a sheet of paper, and for the next quarter of an hour jotted down a series of letters in what appeared to be a meaningless jumble on a sheet of paper. Her eyes sparkled, and her breath came a little faster as she divided up the words.

"Listen to this," she cried. "Berlin has got wind of a new aeroplane invented by our young friend Paul Rosslyn. It is a folding plane, with something entirely new in the way of a motor, and the whole thing can be packed in a big portmanteau. Moreover, it is absolutely noiseless. My word, what an instrument for bomb dropping! Talk about the terror by night! Now this is in your line, Pedro. You must get hold of the drawings of that plane and the designs of the engine. What do you think?"

Garzia smiled as he took a fresh cigarette.

"I dare say," he muttered. "But don't you think it would be quite as easy to get hold of the aeroplane itself?"