Читать книгу Under Cover - Martyn Wyndham - Страница 2

ALTHOUGH the carriages and automobiles of the wealthy were no longer three deep in the Rue de la Paix, as they had been earlier in the season, this ravishing thoroughfare was crowded with foot-passengers as Monty and his friend made their way under the red and white awnings of the shops into Cartier’s.

The transaction took very little time. The manager of the place seemed to be expecting his client, to whom he accorded the respect that even a Rue de la Paix jeweler may pay to a million-franc customer. Bank of France notes of high denominations were passed to him and Steven Denby received a small, flat package and walked out into the sunshine with it.

“Now,” said the owner of the pearls, “guard me as you would your honor, Monty; the sport begins, and I am now probably pursued by a half dozen of the super-crooks of high class fiction.”

“I wish you’d be serious,” Monty said plaintively.

“I am,” Denby assured him. “But I rely on your protection, so feel more light-hearted than I should otherwise.”

“You are laughing at me,” Monty protested.

“I want you to look a little less like a detected criminal,” Denby returned.

“If I happened to be a detective after a criminal I should arrest you on sight. You keep looking furtively about as though you’d done murder and bloodhounds were on your track.”

“Well, they are on our track,” Monty said excitedly, and then whispered thrillingly: “Have a cigarette, Dick.” There was trembling triumph in his voice. He felt he had justified himself in his friend’s eyes.

“What is it?” Denby asked with no show of excitement.

“There was a man in Cartier’s who watched us all the time,” Monty confided. “He is on our trail now. We’re being shadowed, Steve. It’s all up!”

“Nonsense!” his companion cried. “There’s nothing compromising in buying a pearl necklace. I didn’t steal it.”

Suddenly he turned around and looked at the man Monty indicated. His face cleared. “That’s Harlow. He’s one of Cartier’s clerks, who looks after American women’s wants. Don’t worry about him.”

By this time the two had come to the Tuileries, that paradise for the better class Parisian children. Denby pointed to a seat. “Sit down there,” he commanded, “while I see what Harlow wants.”

Obediently Monty took a seat and watched the man he had mistaken for a detective from the corner of his eye. Denby chatted confidentially with him for fully five minutes and then, it seemed to the watcher, passed a small packet into his hand. The man nodded a friendly adieu and walked rapidly out of sight. For a few seconds Denby stood watching and then rejoined his friend.

“Anything the matter?” the timorous one demanded eagerly.

“Why should there be?” Denby returned. “Don’t worry, Monty, there’s nothing to get nervous about yet.”

Monty remembered the confidential conversation between the two.

“He seemed to have a lot to tell you,” he insisted.

Denby smiled. “He did; but he came as a friend. Harlow wanted to warn me that while I was buying the necklace a stranger was mightily interested and asked Harlow what he knew about me.”

“There you are,” Monty gasped excitedly, “I told you it was all up. Did Harlow know who the man was?”

“He suspected him of being a customs spy. Our customs service takes the civilized world as its hunting ground and Paris is specially beloved of it.”

“What are you going to do?” Monty asked when he had looked suspiciously at an amiable old priest who went ambling by. “They’ll get you.”

“They may,” Denby said, “but the interested gentleman at Cartier’s won’t.”

“But he knows all about you,” Monty persisted. “It will be dead easy.”

“He doesn’t,” the other returned. “Harlow took the liberty of transforming me into an Argentine ranch owner of unbounded wealth about to purchase a mansion in the Parc Monceau.”

“That was mighty good of him,” Monty cried in relief. “That fellow Harlow is certainly all right.”

Denby smiled a trifle oddly, Monty thought. “His kind ways have won him a thousand dollars,” he returned. “Did you see me pass him something?”

Monty nodded.

“Well, that was five thousand francs. I passed it to him, not in the least because I believe in the mythical stranger – ”

“What do you mean?” the amazed Monty exclaimed. It seemed to him he was getting lost in a world of whose existence he had been unaware.

“Simply this,” Denby told him, “that I disbelieve Harlow’s story and am not as easily impressed by kind faces as you are. I think Harlow’s inquisitive stranger was a fake.”

Monty looked at him with a superior air. “And you mean to say,” he said with the air of one who has studied financial systems, “that you handed over a thousand dollars without verifying it? I call that being easy.”

“It’s this way,” Denby explained patiently. “Harlow knows I have the necklace and he’s in a position to know on what boat I sail. If I had not remembered that I owed him five thousand francs just now he might have informed the customs that I had bought a million-franc necklace and I should have been marked down as one to whom a special search must be made if I didn’t declare it.”

“But if he’s a clerk in Cartier’s what has he to do with the customs?” Monty asked.

“Perhaps he is underpaid,” the other returned. “Perhaps he is extravagant – I’ve seen him at the races and noticed that he patronized the pari mutuel– perhaps he has a wife and twelve children. I’ll leave it to you to decide, but I dare not take a risk.”

Monty shivered. “It looks to me as if we were going to have a hell of a time.”

“A little excitement possibly,” Denby said airily, “but nothing to justify language like that, though. You ought to have been with me last year at Buenos Ayres, Monty, and I could have shown you some sport.”

“I don’t think I’m built for a life like that,” Monty admitted, and then reflected that this friend of his was an exceedingly mysterious being of whose adult life and adventures he knew nothing. For an uneasy moment he hoped his father would never discover this association, but there soon prevailed the old boyish spirit of hero-worship. Steven Denby might not conform to some people’s standards, but he felt certain he would do nothing criminal. One had to live, Monty reflected, and his father complained constantly of hard times.

“What sort of sport was it?” he hazarded.

“It had to do with the secret of a torpedo controlled by wireless,” Denby said. “A number of governments were after it and there collected in Buenos Ayres the choicest collection of high-grade adventurers that I have ever seen. Some day when I’m through with this pearl trouble I’ll tell you about it.”

But what Denby had carelessly termed “pearl trouble” was quite sufficient for the less experienced man. He had a vivid imagination, more vivid now than at any period of his career. Paris was full of Apaches, he knew, and not all spent their days lying in the sun outside the barriers. Supposing one sprang from behind a tree and fell upon Denby and seized the precious package whose outline was discernible through the breast pocket of his coat. Monty suddenly took upon himself the rôle of an adviser.

“It’s no use taking unnecessary risks,” he said. “I saw you put those pearls in your breast pocket, and there were at least six people who had the same opportunity as I. It’s just putting temptation in the way of a thief.”

“I welcome this outbreak of caution on your part,” said Denby, laughing at his expression of anxiety, “but you’ll need it on board ship most. The greatest danger is that a couple of crooks may rob me and then pitch me overboard. Monty, for the sake of our boyhood recollections, don’t let them throw me overboard.”

“Now you are laughing at me,” Monty said a trifle sulkily.

“What do you want me to do?” Denby demanded.

“Put those pearls in some other place,” he returned stubbornly.

Denby made a pass or two in the air as conjurers do when they perform their marvels.

“It’s done,” he cried. “From what part of my anatomy or yours shall I produce them?”

“There you go,” Monty exclaimed helplessly, “you won’t be serious. I’m getting all on the jump.”

“A cigarette will soothe you,” Denby told him, taking a flat leathern pouch from his pocket and offering it to the other.

“I can’t roll ’em,” Monty protested.

“Then a look at my tobacco has a soothing effect,” the elder man insisted. “I grow it in my private vineyard in Ruritania.”

Monty turned back the leather flap to look at his friend’s private brand and saw nestling in a place where once tobacco might have reposed a necklace of pearls for which a million of francs had been paid.

“Good Lord!” Monty gasped. “How did you do it?”

“A correspondence school course in legerdemain,” Steven explained. “It comes in handy at times.”

“But I didn’t see you do it and I was watching.”

“An unconscious tribute to my art,” Denby replied. “Monty, I thank you.”

Monty grew less anxious. If Steven had all sorts of tricks up his sleeve there was no reason to suppose he must fail.

“I don’t think you need my advice,” he admitted. “It doesn’t seem I can help you.”

“You may be able to help a great deal,” Denby said more seriously, “but I don’t want you to act as if you were a criminal. Pass it off easily. Of course,” – he hesitated, – “I’ve had more experience in this sort of thing than you, and am more used to being up against it, but it will never do if you look as anxiously at everybody on the Mauretania as you do at the passers-by here. You can help me particularly by observing if I am the subject of special scrutiny.”

“That will be a cinch,” Monty asserted.

“Then start right away,” his mentor commanded. “We have been under observation for the last five minutes by someone I’ve never laid eyes on before.”

“Good Lord!” Monty cried. “It was that old priest who stared at us. I knew he was a fake. That was a wig he had on!”

“Try again,” Denby suggested. “It happens to be a woman and a very handsome one. As we went into Cartier’s she passed in a taxi. I only thought then that she was a particularly charming American or English woman out on a shopping expedition. When we came out she was in one of those expensive couturier’s opposite, standing at an upper window which commands a view of Cartier’s door. They may have been coincidences, but at the present moment, although we are sauntering along the Champs Elysées, she is pursuing us in another taxi. She has passed us once. When she went by she told the chauffeur to turn, but he was going at such a pace that he couldn’t pull up in time. He has just turned and is now bearing down on us. Take a look at the lady, Monty, so you will know her again.”

A sense of dreadful responsibility settled on Montague Vaughan. He was now entering upon his rôle of Denby’s aid and must in a few seconds be brought face to face with what was unquestionably an adventuress of the highest class. He knew all about them from fiction. She would have the faintest foreign accent, be wholly charming and free from vulgarity, and yet like Keats’ creation be a belle dame sans merci. But, he wondered uneasily, what would be his rôle if his friend fell victim to her charms?

He was startled out of his vain imaginings when Denby exclaimed: “By all that’s wonderful, she seems to know one of us, and it’s not I! You’re the fortunate man, Monty.”

A pretty woman with good features and laughing eyes was certainly looking out of a taxi and smiling right at him. And when he realized this, Monty’s depression was lifted and he sprang forward to meet her. “It’s Alice,” he cried.

Denby, following more leisurely, was introduced to her.

“I came last night,” she explained. “Michael’s horse won and there was no more interest in Deauville or Trouville and as I must buy some things I came on here as soon as I could. I thought I saw you in Cartier’s,” she explained, “and tried to make you see me when you came out, but only Mr. Denby looked my way so I dared not make any signs of welcome.”

She seemed exceedingly happy to be in Paris again, and Denby, looking at her with interest, knew he was in the company of one of the most notable and best liked of the smart hostesses among the sporting set on Long Island. The Harringtons were enormously rich and lived at a great estate near Westbury, not far from the Meadow Brook Club. The Directory of Directors showed the name of Michael Harrington in a number of influential companies, but of recent years his interest in business had slackened and he was more interested in the development of his estate and the training of his thoroughbreds than in Wall Street activities.

For her part she took him, although the name was totally unfamiliar, as a friend of Monty’s, and was prepared to like him. Whereas an Englishwoman of her class might have been insistent to discover whether any of his immediate ancestors had been engaged in retail trade before she accepted him as an equal, Alice Harrington was willing to take people on their face value and retain them on their merits.

She saw a tall, well-bred man with strong features and that air of savoir faire which is not easy of assumption. She felt instantly that he was the sort of man Michael would like. He talked about racing as though he knew, and that alone would please her husband.

“I’ve spent so much money,” she said presently, “that I shall dismiss this taxi-man and walk. One can walk in Paris with two men, whereas one may be a little pestered alone.”

“Fine,” Monty cried. “We’ll go and lunch somewhere. What place strikes your fancy?”

“Alas,” she said, “I’m booked already. I have an elderly relation in the Boulevard Haussmann who stays here all summer this year on account of alterations in the house which she superintends personally, and I’ve promised.”

“I hope she hasn’t sacrificed you at a dinner table, too,” Denby said, “because if you are free to-night you’d confer a blessing on a fellow countryman if you’d come with Monty and me to the Ambassadeurs. Polin is funnier than ever.”

“I’d love to,” she cried. “You have probably delivered me from my aunt’s dismal dinner. I hadn’t an engagement but now I can swear to one truthfully. Men are usually so vain that if you say you’re dreadfully sorry but you’ve another engagement they really believe it. The dear things think no other cause would make a woman refuse. But my aunt would interrogate me till I faltered and contradicted myself.”

They left her later at one of those great mansions in the Boulevard Haussmann. The house was enlaced with scaffolding and workmen swarmed over its roof.

“It’s old Miss Woodwarde’s house,” Monty explained. “She’s worth millions and will probably leave it to Alice, who doesn’t need any, because she’s the only one of all her relatives who speaks the truth and doesn’t fawn and flatter.”

“It takes greater strength of mind than poor relations usually have, to tell rich relatives the truth,” Steven reminded him.

Monty had evidently recovered his good spirits. “I knew you’d like her,” he said later, “and I knew she’d take to you. We’ll have a corking dinner and a jolly good time.”

“There’s one thing I want to ask of you,” Denby said gravely. “Don’t give any particulars about me. If she’s the sort I think her she won’t ask, but you’ve got a bad habit of wanting people to hear how I fished you out of the river. I want to slip into New York without any advertisement of the fact. I’m not the son of a plutocrat as you are. I’m the hard-up son of a man who was once rich but is now dead and forgotten.”

“Do hard-up men hand a million francs across for a string of pearls to put in their tobacco-pouches?” Monty demanded shrewdly.

“You may regard that as an investment if you like,” Denby answered. “It may be all my capital is tied up in it.”

“You’re gambling for a big stake then,” Monty said seriously. “Is it worth it, old man?”

For a moment he had an idea of offering him a position in some of the great corporations in which his father was interested, but refrained. Steven Denby was not the kind of man to brook anything that smacked of patronage and he feared his offer might do that although otherwise meant.

“It means a whole lot more to me than you can think,” Denby returned. “I have made up my mind to do it and I think I can get away with it in just the way I have mapped out.” Then, with a smile: “Monty, I’ve a proper respect for your imaginative genius, but I’d bet you the necklace to the tobacco-pouch that you don’t understand how much I want to get that string of pearls through the customs.”

“The pouch is yours,” Monty conceded generously. “How should I guess? How do I know who’s a smuggler or who isn’t? Alice says she always gets something through and for all I know may have a ruby taken from the eye of a Hindoo god in her back hair!”

He looked at his friend eagerly, a new thought striking him. He often surprised himself in romantic ideas, ideas for which Nora was responsible.

“Perhaps you are taking it for someone, someone you’re fond of,” he suggested.

“Why not?” Denby returned. “If I were really fond of any woman I’d risk more than that to please her.”

Monty noticed that he banished the subject by speaking of Alice Harrington’s penchant for smuggling.

“I hope Mrs. Harrington won’t run any risks,” he said. “In her case it is absolutely senseless and unnecessary.”

“Oh, they’d never get after her,” Monty declared. “She’s too big. They get after the little fellows but they’d leave Mrs. Michael Harrington alone.”

“Don’t you believe it,” his friend answered. “They’re doing things differently now. They’re getting a different class of men in the Collector’s office.”

“I suppose you’d like the old style better,” Monty observed.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the other. “It’s more risky now and so one has to be cleverer. I’ve often heard it said the hounds have all the fun and the fox none.

“I’m not so sure of that, Monty; I think a fox that can fool thirty couple of hounds and get back to his earth ought to be a gladsome animal.”

“I’ll find out when we’re in West Street, New York,” Monty said grimly. “I’ll take particular notice of how this fox acts and where the hounds are. If you harp on this any more I shall lose my appetite. What about Voisin’s?”

“Eat lightly,” Denby counseled him. “I’m going to treat you to a remarkable meal to-night; I know the chef at the Ambassadeurs, and the wine-steward feeds out of my hand.”

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t buy necklaces like that if you have those Ambassadeurs waiters corralled. They soaked me six francs for a single peach once,” Monty said reminiscently. But he wondered, all the same, how it was Steven should be able to fling money away as he chose.

His friend looked at him shrewdly. “You’re thinking I ought to patronize the excellent Duval,” he observed. “Well, sometimes I do. I think I’ve patronized most places in Paris once.”

“Steve, you’re a mystery,” Monty asserted.

“I hope I am,” said the other; “I make my living out of being just that.”

They walked in silence to the Rue St. Honoré, Monty still a bit uneasy at being in a crowded place with a friend in whose pocket was a million francs’ worth of precious stones. Once or twice as the pocket gaped open he caught a glimpse of the worn pigskin pouch. Steven was taking wholly unnecessary risks, he thought.

As they were leaving Voisin’s together after their luncheon it happened that Monty walked behind his friend through the door. Deftly he inserted his hand into the gaping pocket and removed the pouch to his own. He chuckled to think of the object lesson he would presently dilate upon.

When they were near one of those convenient seats which Paris provides for her street-living populace Monty suggested a minute’s rest.

With an elaborate gesture he took out the pouch and showed it to Denby.

“Did you ever see this before?” he demanded.

“I’ve got one just like it,” his friend returned without undue interest. “Useful things, aren’t they, and last so much longer than the rubber ones?”

“My pouch,” said Monty, beginning to enjoy his own joke, “looks better inside than outside. I keep in it tobacco I grow in my private orchid house. Look!”

He pulled back the flap and held it out to Denby.

Denby gazed in it obediently with no change of countenance.

“You’re not a heavy smoker, are you?” he returned.

Instantly Monty gazed into it. It was empty except for a shred of tobacco.

“Good God!” he cried. “They’ve been stolen from me and they put the pouch back!”

“What has?” the other exclaimed.

“The pearls,” Monty groaned. “I took them for a joke, and now they’re gone!”

He looked apprehensively at Steven, meditating meanwhile how quickly he could turn certain scrip he held into ready money.

Steven evinced no surprise. Instead he rose from his seat and placed a foot upon it as though engaged in tying a lace. But he pointed to the cuff on the bottom of the trouser leg that was on the seat by Monty’s side. And Monty, gazing as he was bid, saw his friend’s slender fingers pick therefrom a string of pearls.

“I know no safer place,” Denby commented judicially. “Of course the customs fellows are on to it, but no pickpocket who ever lived can get anything away from you if you cache it there. On board ship I shall carry it in my pocket, but this is the best place in Paris when one is in strange company.”

Monty said no word. His relief was too great and he felt weak and helpless.

“What’s the matter?” Denby demanded.

“I want a drink,” Monty returned, “but it isn’t on you.”