Читать книгу Her Royal Highness - William Le Queux - Страница 17

It wanted thirty minutes to midnight.

The New Year’s Eve fun at Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo was fast and furious.

Ministerial officers and their women-folk, British officers of the garrison, officials and their wives from all parts of Egypt, Society from the other hotels, and a sprinkling of grave, brown-faced Egyptian gentlemen in frock coats and fezes, all congregate here to dine, to dance, to throw “serpentines,” and to make merry by touching the golden pig—a real pig covered with gold paint—at the coming of the New Year.

That night was no exception, for the salons were crowded to overflowing, champagne flowed freely, and everyone laughed heartily at the various antics of the great assembly. Cosmopolitan it was, in every sense of the word, for most European languages could be heard there. In the ballroom a great dance was in progress, while the supper-room was crowded to suffocation, and in the big salons one could hardly move about so dense was the well-dressed crowd.

Upon this scene Hubert Waldron gazed when he arrived in a cab from the Savoy. Though Lola, her uncle, and Miss Lambert had, on landing, obtained rooms at Shepheard’s, the Englishman had failed to do so, and had therefore gone to the Savoy, whither Henri Pujalet had also gone, as well as Chester Dawson, the Easthams, and several other members of the party.

Already they had been in Cairo three days, and though Waldron had watched Pujalet continuously, the lovers had not held any clandestine meeting.

As he elbowed his way through that New Year’s Eve crush in the big Oriental lounge, however, he suddenly—came upon the pair. Lola, her face beaming with supreme pleasure, was dressed in simple, yet becoming taste in turquoise blue, with a touch of the same colour in her dark hair, while the Frenchman, erect and well-groomed, presented a particularly smart appearance. Neither noticed the diplomat, so engrossed were they in their conversation. The opportunity of meeting was, of course, a unique one, for even if her uncle discovered her how could he reprove her for dancing with a man who had been their fellow-traveller for nearly three weeks?

The girl’s face was flushed with excitement and pleasure now that she hung upon her lover’s arm as he led her back to the ballroom.

Hubert Waldron watched them, then sighed and turned away.

He had not gone far up the long salon before he was accosted by a rather thick-set, clean-shaven Englishman of about thirty-five, with blue eyes, rather fair hair, and whose clothes fitted perfectly.

“Hulloa, Waldron! By Jove! Who’d have dreamt of meeting you here! Why, I thought you were still in Madrid!”

“Jerningham!” gasped the diplomat. “My dear old Jack, how are you?” he cried, grasping his hand warmly.

“Oh, so-so,” replied the other, nonchalantly. “I’ve been travelling about a lot of late. And you?”

“Been on leave up to Wady Haifa, and now on my way back to Madrid.”

“And to the Teatro Real—eh?” added his friend with a sly grin.

“No. She’s in London. An engagement there.”

“And you’re not in London! Why?”

“Can’t get my leave extended, or, you bet, I’d be back in town like a shot. What would I give for a bit dinner at the St. James’s Club and a stroll along Piccadilly.”

“Of course. But how’s the lady?”

“Very well—I believe. I had a wire yesterday telling me of her great success at the Palace. The newspapers are full of her photographs and all that.”

“And all the nuts in town running madly after her—eh? Beatriz likes that.”

Waldron did not reply for a few moments, then, changing the subject, he said:

“Let’s go along to the bar. This crowd is distinctly unpleasant.”

Five minutes later, when the pair were seated in a quiet corner, Waldron asked in a low, confidential tone:

“What’s the latest? I’ve been away from the Embassy for nine weeks.”

“Oh, the political situation remains about the same. I’ve been mostly in Germany and Russia, since I was last in Madrid. I had a rather good scoop about a fortnight ago—bought the designs of the new Krupp aerial gun.”

“By Jove, did you?”

“Yes. It has taken me three months to negotiate, and the fellow who made the deal tried to back out of it at the last moment.”

“Traitors always do,” remarked the diplomat.

“Yes,” admitted the British secret-service agent, as Jack Jerningham actually was. “They usually lose heart at the crucial moment. But in this case the new invention of our friends is simply a marvellous one. It’s a feather in my cap in the department, I’m glad to say.”

“You’ve had a good many feathers in your cap during the past five years, my dear Jack,” Waldron replied. “Your successes since you left the navy have been phenomenal—especially when a year ago you obtained a copy of the secret treaty signed by Austria regarding the partition of the Balkans. That was an amazing feat—never before equalled by any secret agent, I should think.”

“Bah! Nothing really very wonderful,” was Jerningham’s modest reply. “More by good luck than anything else. I’m here in Cairo to report on the growing unrest. At home the Chief suspects German influence to be at work.”

“And what’s the result of your inquiries?”

“Our friends are, no doubt, at the bottom of it all. Across the North Sea they mean business; and the ‘day’ must come very soon.”

“You’ve made that prophecy for several years now.”

“Because I happen to know, my dear boy. If one man should know the truth, surely it’s my unimportant self. My Chief has always agreed with me, although it is the fashion in the House to laugh at what is called ‘the German bogey.’ But that’s exactly what they desire in Berlin. They don’t want the British public to take our warnings too seriously. But if you doubt the seriousness of the present situation, ask anybody at the Berlin Embassy. They’ll tell you the truth—and they ought surely to know.”

Jack Jerningham and Hubert Waldron had been friends ever since their youth. The estate near Crowhurst, in Sussex, which Waldron’s father owned, though his diplomatic duties had kept him nearly always abroad, adjoined that of the Jerninghams of Heatherset, of whom Jack was the second son.

After Dartmouth he had passed into the navy, had become a full lieutenant, and afterwards had joined the Intelligence Department, in which capacity he was constantly travelling about the world as the eyes and ears of the Embassies, and ever ready to purchase out of the secret-service fund any information or confidential plan which might be advantageous to the authorities at Whitehall.

A typical, round-faced, easy-going naval officer of a somewhat careless and generous disposition, nobody outside the diplomatic circle ever suspected his real calling. But by those who did know, the ambassadors, ministers, and staffs of the embassies and legations, he was held in highest esteem as a thoroughgoing patriot, a man of great discretion and marvellous shrewdness, in whom his Chief at home placed the most complete confidence.

“There’ll be trouble here in Cairo before long, I fear,” he was whispering to his friend. “Kitchener will have a very rough time of it if the intrigues of our friends at Berlin are successful. They are stirring up strife every day, and the crisis would have arrived long ago were it not for Kitchener’s bold firmness. They know he won’t stand any nonsense from the native opposition. Britain is here to rule, and rule she will. Hence our friends the enemy are just a little afraid. I’m going back home next week to report upon the whole situation.”

“I’m getting pretty, sick of the humdrum of diplomacy,” Hubert declared wearily, between the puffs of his excellent cigarette. Though the big American bar was crowded by men, in the corner where they sat upon a red plush settee they could not be overheard, the chatter and noise being so great. “We at the Embassies are only puppets, after all. It is such men as you who shape the nation’s policy. We’re simply the survival of the old days when kings exchanged courtesies and views by means of their ambassadors, and we, the frills of the Embassy, merely dress up, dance attendance at every function, and pretend to an importance in the world which we certainly do not possess.”

“My dear Hubert, you never spoke truer words than those. Everything nowadays is worked from Downing Street, and the ambassador is simply the office boy who delivers the message. Your father was one of the brilliant men of the old regime. The Empire owes much to him, especially for what he did at Rome.”

“Yes, those days have passed. In this new century the world has other ways and other ideas. It is the age of advertisement, and surely the best advertisement manager which the world has ever known is the Kaiser William.”

“Oh, that’s admitted,” laughed the secret agent. “Why, he can’t go to his castle at Corfu for a week—as he does each spring—without some wonderful relic of Greek antiquity being unearthed in his presence. It is whispered that they sow them there in winter, just as the brave Belgians sow the bullets on the battlefield of Waterloo. To-day we are assuredly living on the edge of a volcano,” Jerningham went on. “When the eruption takes place—and who knows when it will—then, at that hour, the red-tape must be burst asunder, the veil torn aside, and the bitter truth faced—the bubble of British bombast will, I fear, be pricked.”

“You are always such a confounded pessimist, my dear Jack,” laughed Waldron.

“Ah, Hubert, I’m a pessimist because I am always on the move from capital to capital and I learn things as I go,” was Jerningham’s quick reply. “You fellows at the Embassies sit down and have a jolly good time at balls, dinners, tea-fights, and gala performances. Why? Because you’re paid for your job—paid to remain ignorant. I’m paid to learn. There’s the little difference.”

“I admit, my dear fellow, that without your service we should be altogether a back number. To your department is due the credit of knowing what is going on in the enemy’s camps.”

“I should think so. I don’t pay out ten thousand a year, more or less, without getting to know something, I can tell you.”