“No, wait a minute,” Gardenia intervened. “Tell me exactly what you have in mind.”
With a little smile on his lips the Baron closed the door, which he had already opened.
*
An hour later Gardenia drove in the carriage up to the door of the British Embassy.
It was just half past five and the Baron had assured her that Lord Hartcourt was playing polo at that very moment on the other side of Paris.
Nevertheless her lips felt dry and her voice quavered a little as, when the door opened, she asked,
“Can I see Lord Hartcourt, please?”
“His Lordship is out,” the footman informed her.
“I am sure there must be some mistake,” Gardenia protested. “I made an appointment to meet Lord Hartcourt here this evening. I have brought an aquarium with me that he asked me to bring.”
She held a small glass tank in her hands and the man could see the little fish darting backwards and forwards in the water.
“Please wait a moment, miss.”
The footman then pulled the door open and another man appeared dressed as an English butler. It was not the redoubtable Jarvis whom everybody in Paris knew, because the Baron had told her that today was Jarvis’s day out. It was another Englishman, his assistant, who had only recently arrived at the Embassy.
Gardenia raised her large eyes to him.
“Lord Hartcourt asked me particularly to come here this evening,” she said, “at half-past five and bring him this aquarium. I am afraid he must have forgotten our appointment.”
“His Lordship is playing polo, I think, miss,” the butler said and Gardenia’s heart gave a little throb of relief.
“In that case perhaps I could put the aquarium in his sitting room. I am afraid that I must carry it there myself because it is very easy to upset the water and that disturbs the fish.”
“Very well, miss. If you will come this way.”
The butler did not hesitate as an older man would have done at the unconventionality of a young lady going up to his Lordship’s private rooms.
He led the way and Gardenia followed him slowly. The water in the tank was inclined to slop over. At the same time she was terribly afraid that they might meet someone.
“Don’t worry,” the Baron had assured her. “The Ambassador and Ambassadress are attending a Reception at the Persian Embassy. I know because I was invited there myself.”
They reached the second floor and the butler opened the door.
Gardenia then entered Lord Hartcourt’s sitting room and walked across to put the small aquarium, which by this time seemed very heavy, down on a table in the centre of the room.
She arranged it first this way and then the other and then said,
“I will just leave the instructions for Lord Hartcourt as to how he must feed the fish. Do you think I could write him a note?”
“But, of course, miss,” the butler replied.
He drew a piece of crested writing paper from the leather covered case that stood on the writing desk. He placed it on the blotter and pulled the inkpot tray a little nearer.
“You can write here, miss,” he suggested.
“Thank you so much,” Gardenia smiled at him. “I am afraid it will take me a minute or two. Don’t wait if you are busy.”
“You can find your way down, miss?”
“Yes, quite easily,” Gardenia smiled. “I will prop the letter against the aquarium so that his Lordship will see it as soon as he arrives back.”
“Very good, miss.”
The butler, who was not particularly interested in the aquarium or in Lord Hartcourt’s reaction to it, obviously wanted to get back to the hall and went out leaving the door ajar.
Gardenia, waiting until she heard his footsteps dying away, sprang from the writing table and closed the door quietly.
Her heart was beating suffocatingly.
She opened the drawers of the desk.
“Look at the back,” the Baron had told her. “Englishmen are untidy and careless, they always shove anything of value to the back of a drawer.”
It was actually true. Her father always used to put the letters of importance or the bills he found unpalatable at the back of the drawer in his desk. She remembered that her mother had to ferret them out and get him to pay them when he was in a good mood.
There were various small books and letters and a profusion of other papers at the back of Lord Hartcourt’s drawers, but not the book that she was looking for.
“It is likely to be small with either a grey or blue stiff cover,” the Baron had instructed her. “It may have nothing written on the outside, more than likely not. You open it, glance inside and find only one letter, or two or three if you can, and what is written against them. That is all I need. I can then set your aunt’s mind at rest”
It sounded a simple thing to do. But Gardenia, concerned at the impropriety of entering Lord Hartcourt’s room, could only search with trembling hands, anxious to find what she was seeking and to be gone.
There was only one drawer left, the lowest one on the left hand side. She had to kneel down to open it and put her hand at the back.
She was in this position with her skirts billowing out around her when she heard the door behind her open. She turned her head for the moment, but was too paralysed even to jump to her feet.
Then, as she saw who stood there, she felt the blood drain from her cheeks and her heart almost stopped beating.
Lord Hartcourt came into the room.
He was wearing his white polo breeches and his peaked cap was in his hand. He looked at her and the expression on his face was the most frightening she had ever thought to see on any man.
“Good evening,” he said. “You appear to be searching for something. Can I help you?”
The Baron had told her that if by any chance she was disturbed by a servant she was to say that she was looking for an envelope.
But now everything he had told her went out of Gardenia’s head. She could only stay where she was, kneeling on the floor and staring at Lord Hartcourt as if he was an apparition from some other world.
“I had no idea that my possessions, meagre though they are, would be of such interest to you,” Lord Hartcourt said. “May I enquire what particular object you had in mind?”
“I thought you were ‒ playing polo,” Gardenia answered almost idiotically.
“That is quite obvious,” Lord Hartcourt said. “And now are you prepared to give me an explanation or do I ask one of the footmen to fetch the Police?”
“The Police?”
Gardenia rose slowly to her feet. Her face was very white and she was trembling.
“I cannot explain. It – it would get someone into ‒ trouble.”
“I am sure it would,” Lord Hartcourt said easily, “but I am afraid you have to give me an explanation, otherwise, as I have just suggested, I must send for the Police and accuse you of stealing.”
“But I have not stolen anything,”
“How can I know that?” Lord Hartcourt replied. “I personally am not prepared to search you and you are here in my rooms under false pretences. You told the butler that you had an appointment with me.”
“Yes, I know that was not – true.” Gardenia faltered miserably, “but I had to ‒ come.”
“What for?” Lord Hartcourt's question was like a pistol shot.
“I just cannot tell you. You see, as I have already said, it would be getting someone into trouble.”
“It is going to get you into a great deal of trouble, I am afraid,” Lord Hartcourt said. “Very well, if you will not tell me, I will send a footman for the nearest Policeman. I think there is usually one on duty outside the Embassy.”
“No, no, please!” she cried. “It would cause a terrible scandal and what would Aunt Lily say?”
“I should think she would say a great deal,” Lord Hartcourt answered, “but not half as much as I am going to say. What are you doing here in my rooms? Who sent
you? What are you looking for? Who is paying you?”
As the questions came out fast and furiously, Gardenia took a step backwards, recoiling from him, her hands going out trembling to seek the support of the desk.
“Nobody is paying me,” she protested. “Of course they are not.”
“Do you expect me to believe that?” Lord Hartcourt asked. “Spies are always paid and paid heavily I believe.”
He spoke with such scorn in his voice that Gardenia felt almost as though he had flayed her with a whip.
“But I am not a spy,” she repeated. “I swear I am not spying.”
“Then what have you come here for?” he enquired.
She opened her lips to speak and realised suddenly, as though someone had hit her with a blow between the eyes, what was the truth. Her eyes widened and suddenly her fingers crept up towards her beating heart.
“I did not know. I did not realise,” she whimpered. “Oh, God, what am I to do? I must have been crazy to have listened to him!”
“To listen to whom? The Baron?” Lord Hartcourt asked.
“Yes, but I did not realise what he was asking of me. I thought it was strange, but he told me my aunt was unhappy and worrying. He said that if I cared for her at all – and the way he put it ‒ it seemed such a little thing, such a very little thing – ” Gardenia’s voice broke.
She was on the verge of tears.
“Suppose you sit down and tell me all about it,” Lord Hartcourt said in a very different voice.
Almost as though she obeyed him in a dream. Gardenia crossed the room to the sofa by the fireplace. She then sat down, pulling her hat from her head as she did so and the evening sunlight coming in through the window touched the gold of her curls and turned them into fire.
She clasped her hands together and raised a white and frightened face to Lord Hartcourt.
“I believed him when he told me about this boy, a Midshipman in the British Navy, and now I wonder if he really exists at all. Perhaps he just invented him. How could I be so stupid and ‒ so foolish?”
This time the tears broke her voice.
She clenched her hands together, fighting for self-control.
“Start from the beginning,” Lord Hartcourt proposed quietly.
In faltering and trembling tones, Gardenia told him exactly what had happened, what the Baron had said about the problems of the Midshipman, how she had said it was impossible for her to visit a man’s rooms and how he had told her to forget about it as obviously she did not care for her aunt.
“I am grateful, terribly grateful to Aunt Lily,” Gardenia went on. “The way the Baron put it, it seemed so ungracious and so unkind of me not to try to help her.”
“You are a little fool,” Lord Hartcourt said and now there was no anger in his voice. “But I believe you.”
“I see now how stupid I was,” Gardenia went on brokenly. “Of course the boy would not write in such a way ‒ even if he was imprisoned. I don’t suppose a Midshipman can even get at the Naval Code.”
“Of course he cannot,” Lord Hartcourt agreed.
“I did not stop to think,” Gardenia went on. “The Baron made me hurry upstairs and get my hat – when I came down he had the little aquarium waiting for me and the carriage was outside.”
“The Baron knows his job,” Lord Hartcourt said. “Shock tactics should always be carried out at the double. Act first and think afterwards, at least as far as the truth is concerned. The German High Command always do their thinking well in advance.”
“Everything he said was right,” Gardenia murmured. “You were playing polo, there was a new butler, the Ambassador was out at a Reception – ”
“They are very thorough,” Lord Hartcourt agreed. “But he did not anticipate that the game of polo would be over early owing to an accident.”
“How can I ask you to forgive me?” Gardenia said with a little throb in her voice. “I am ashamed, deeply ashamed, at being so stupid. If you had sent for the Police how could I have explained that I was looking for the Naval Code? They would have thought that I was a spy.”
“They would have indeed,” Lord Hartcourt said rather grimly. “France is very sensitive as regards foreign spies at the moment, perhaps because they are everywhere.”
“You mean Germans are spying on the French?”
“But, of course, and on the British. They can think of nothing else. No pawn is too small and you would have played your part in their game of intrigue if it had come off. I am sure Herr Baron really imagines that in my usual careless British manner I leave the Code Book lying about on my desk. It would have been a tremendous feather in his cap if you had found it. If you failed, well, I should merely have been surprised that you had come to call at the Embassy and there was the charming little present, for which I would have to thank you and a note that would have accounted for your presence in my sitting room.”
“It is clever, terribly clever,” Gardenia said, “but if I had any wits about me I would not have fallen into his trap ‒ so easily.”
“The Baron is a very experienced and clever man. It is not the first time he has brought off a coup of this sort.”
Gardenia looked startled.
“You mean he is a spy?” she asked. “Then why, why don’t you arrest him?”
“My dear, we are friends with Germany. They are our cousins, we are devoted to them,” Lord Hartcourt said with heavy sarcasm. We should never do anything so gauche as to make accusations we could not prove against anyone as important as the Baron von Knesebech.”
“But you can prove them!” Gardenia exclaimed. “He sent me here.”
“And suppose he denies it?” Lord Hartcourt asked. “It is only your word against his and who do you think is going to be believed?”
“But I would say that he insisted I came and that he gave me the aquarium.”
Lord Hartcourt smiled.
“And you, young and attractive, went to the rooms of a man whom you knew only very slightly in whose company you had been seen on several occasions alone. What explanation do you think the world, the sensuous world of High Society, would put on that?”
“Oh!”
The exclamation came involuntarily from Gardenia’s lips. Her two hands pressed against her cheeks as if to hide the flooding colour that rose from her chin to the top of her forehead.
“Exactly,” Lord Hartcourt said. “That is just what they would think, Gardenia, and what a pity it is not true.”
He was no longer angry and his voice had almost a caressing note in it.
Gardenia rose swiftly to her feet.
“I must go home.”
Lord Hartcourt, who had seated himself by her on the sofa, reached out his hand, caught hers and drew her back.
“Not yet,” he said. “Why waste this delightful interview that the Baron has arranged so skilfully?”
Gardenia, because the pressure of his hand compelled her, sat down on the edge of the sofa.
“Please, please don’t tease me. I am so unhappy, so worried and so ashamed. Just forgive me and tell me what I must say to the Baron.”
“Tell him the truth,” Lord Hartcourt suggested. “No, I have a better idea.”
He rose to his feet and wrote down three letters on a piece of paper with a corresponding letter opposite each of them.
“Give him this,” he said. Tell him this is what you discovered in a little book.”
Gardenia looked at it suspiciously.
“What is it?” she asked.
The code you were looking for,” Lord Hartcourt replied.
“But it is the wrong one,” Gardenia said positively.
“Of course,” Lord Hartcourt told her. “It is the old one which is no longer in use. The Baron will be delighted with you until he discovers that your information is out of date.”
“I would rather not do it. I don’t want to give him anything. I don’t want to speak to him again. I have always hated him since I first saw him and now I know he is a spy and
that he wants to harm my country – ”
“Then help your country by doing what I will tell you,” Lord Hartcourt said. “Perhaps you can give us some information. It would be a change to have someone in the enemy’s camp.”
Gardenia threw the piece of paper on the floor.
“I won’t, I won’t!” she cried passionately. “You know as well as I do that I would not have come here if I had had the sense to understand what he was suggesting. I will not spy for anyone or anything. It is low and degrading. It makes me think of reptiles and serpents and I will not be a spy. I will not have anything to do with ‒ treachery.”
Lord Hartcourt laughed, but gently so that somehow she was not offended.
“You look lovely and your eyes flash when you are annoyed about something,” he said. “I have never met a face which can show so many different emotions so quickly. You are a strange girl, Gardenia.”
“I only feel unhappy at the moment,” she said. “I have to go back and face the Baron. I would like to tell him the truth that you found me and that you know he was trying to make me spy against my own country.”
“No, don’t tell him that,” Lord Hartcourt urged. “It will do no good and only put him on his guard. Tell him nothing and give him the piece of paper as I have suggested.”
“No!” Gardenia insisted positively. “He might try to thank me before he realises that the information is wrong and that I could not bear.”
She shuddered as she spoke and Lord Hartcourt looked at her with suddenly perceptive eyes.
“You hate him!” he said. “Has he tried to make advances to you in any way?”
“He kissed me,” Gardenia said, the words slipping out almost before she was aware she had uttered them, “and I wanted to kill him! I tried to hide from him, I stayed in my room all last evening and would not go down to dinner. Today he caught me unawares in the library and he played on my feelings, I see that now, until I consented to come here. I cannot, oh, I cannot keep seeing a man like that!”
“You will have to leave your aunt’s house,” Lord Hartcourt suggested.
“How can I?” Gardenia asked piteously.
“Quite easily,” he replied.
He then bent forward and before she realised what he was doing he had slipped his arms round her and drawn her close to him.
An Innocent in Paris Page 16
