She played with her vanity case nervously. If there was a fault in her appearance, however, she decided not to remedy it at the moment.
“Guy,” she began, “this is really a terrible business. I have come about Sabine.”
“A terrible business?”
“You must not mind,” she went on. “Sabine tells me everything. We trust one another. I should also like you to trust me. I am as safe from speech, from any form of breaking confidence, as any human being could be.”
“You have character, I know,” he admitted, “but what is all this leading to?”
“You gave Sabine the other evening a most awful shock.”
“So she told you about it.”
There was nothing in his tone to denote anger, but she understood.
“You must remember this, Guy,” she pleaded. “Sabine and I are one. There has never been a secret between us of any sort. I know that she had turned the head of that stupid man, Godfrey Ryson, and that he was giving her documents and tracings of plans which she passed on through the Embassy here to officials of her own country. A terrible thing to do, perhaps. I am not here to defend it, Guy. I shall only ask you to remember that Sabine is not an Anglo-Saxon and she loves her country passionately. She believes that that country is being rashly led and may soon be engaged in what might be a mortal struggle. Sabine felt her old patriotism in her blood, in her heart, everywhere. She was forced to do something. She did what she could.”
“I am not arguing,” Cheshire said. “I am not complaining. What next?”
She looked at him with wonder in her eyes.
“You are changed.”
“Danger changes everyone. I, too, have a country.”
“We spoke of that, Sabine and I,” she went on eagerly. “Believe me, we are not unsympathetic. We realise your position entirely. I am here only to ask one thing, and that can make little difference to you. The price of your silence with regard to Sabine, your attitude towards Henry, who is the dearest person on earth, and to your British Government, to whom your honour is pledged, is, she tells me, that she continue to be the intermediary for these communications which, I presume, will be deceptive and which you will supply.”
“Well?”
“I am here, Guy, to beg you to let me take her place.”
“So that’s it,” he murmured half to himself.
“It is reasonable,” she pleaded. “Sabine, apart from her illustrious name, which is also mine, holds a great position in life. She is the wife of Henry Prestley and even I know what that means to-day. If anything happened to her it would break his heart, it would shock all Europe.”
“What do you mean by anything happening to her?”
“My dear Guy, you will not pretend that these secret meetings, this interchange of letters, does not involve her in danger.”
“No,” he admitted. “I do not deny that.”
“Then please think, and think fast. I wish to take her place. I have little to lose. I am not married. I am not even betrothed. There are reasons why I should take her place, Guy. Do not ask me what they are, but they are sufficient. If one of us must do it, and I can see no other way, let it be me.”
“I don’t believe,” he said, “that your sister would allow you to make the sacrifice.”
“She will. She has already consented. The final decision remains with you.”
“Does she realise,” he asked quietly, “that if this business came to the knowledge of the outside authorities you might possibly be shot?”
“As though that mattered!” she scoffed. “Read the history of my country and you will discover that a Pelucchi has never feared death. Please agree to what I ask. I will come where you wish, when you wish. I will tell you how to communicate with me like Godfrey used to with Sabine. I will be absolutely faithful to my word. I, too, love my country but even if what I do were to hurt her mortally, I would rather it were I who did it than Sabine.”
“Think carefully,” he advised. “You are a very young woman, Elida, and you have a brilliant life before you, perhaps—”
“What do you mean—a brilliant life?” she interrupted scornfully. “Every one of the Pelucchis are as poor as rats. I do not mind telling you that Sabine dresses me. Of the men who have asked me to marry them there is not one at whom I would look, and twenty-six years old, let me tell you, for a girl of my country, is the beginning of the end.”
“I shall not attempt to flatter you,” he said with a faint smile. “I will not even tell you that you are as beautiful from the world’s point of view as Sabine, but I shall still say that there is no other woman to compare with you in appearance and vivacity and charm in this country or any other. You will marry, of course. Remember that you risk possibly making a very great match if a whisper of this gets about. There might even be a scandal about our meetings. You risk a great deal, Elida, for your sister’s sake.”
“Not only for her sake,” she reminded him. “It is also to save Ronnie.”
“Let me test you,” he insisted. “More than anything else your country wants to know the range and speed of our new bombers and the guns we are mounting upon our fast cruisers. Probably within the next few days I shall be handing you this information to pass on, only it will not be strictly true. You understand what that means—the possession of it so long as they believe in its truth is likely to do your country more harm than good, a great deal more harm than good. Furthermore, if they ever discovered what you have done you would never be able to revisit your country and your life would be safe nowhere.”
She laughed bitterly.
“You cannot frighten me,” she said. “As to my patriotism, however strong a force it might be, I have this to think of. If I do not do it Sabine will. I would rather it were I. Guy, you consent?”
“Yes,” he promised. “I consent.”
He touched a bell.
“Now I must send you away,” he continued. “My secretary will take you down. You will hear from us when we need you.”
She took his hands.
“I am so grateful, Guy,” she confided, looking at him earnestly. “I cannot tell you how much Sabine means to me and how I love Henry. I feel now that they at any rate will be safe. Ronnie, too—well, Ronnie counts for something.”
He studied her curiously.
“Well, we may be at war in less than a week. That will settle everything.”
“You really think that war is coming?” she asked with a distressed frown. “Oh, Guy, I hope not. I hate war or rather the thought of it. When Patani told me—”
“What did he tell you?” Cheshire interrupted abruptly.
She hesitated.
“He told me that he thought there would be war. He told me that if only they could get certain figures they were waiting for as regards your preparations, war would be a certainty. It might come any day.”
Cheshire smiled.
“Perhaps we may be able to oblige your friend,” he remarked as his secretary knocked at the door and Elida took her leave.
Sabine, very beautiful in her gold-coloured negligee, was resting when Elida came softly into her room. She made room for her sister on the couch by her side.
“Sit down for a moment, child,” she begged.
Elida looked round the boudoir.
“Where is Marie?” she asked.
“Having her dinner. I’m dressing early for the opera. No one will disturb us. Henry is at the club. Tell me—what did he say?”
“I thought at first that he was going to be difficult,” Elida confided. “He was so stern—such a different person altogether. In the end, though, he consented.”
Sabine raised herself on the couch. Elida, who knew her sister so well, was a little surprised. It might have been evil news that she had brought.
“You are glad, Sabine?” she asked anxiously.
Sabine gazed dreamily up at the frescoed ceiling.
“Of course I’m glad,” she said, holding her sister’s hand. “It is a great reli
ef—a great joy. But you, Elida, have you counted the cost of this?”
“I have,” the girl answered. “I am happy, Sabine, because I know now that nothing can disturb your happiness and Henry’s. No one will ever guess that you had anything to do with this, even if trouble should come. For me it does not matter… . But really,” she went on, “I do not think that anything will ever happen. Guy seems so confident, so sure, so successful in everything he does. He talks and looks like a man of power. I think he will make quite a good spy of me before we have finished.”
“I wonder whether he was sorry,” Sabine meditated.
“He should have been glad,” Elida declared severely. “He has worshipped you so long and with such fidelity. He was your friend when I was a child. He must be glad to know that you are safe.”
Sabine made no reply. Elida was watching her anxiously.
“Tell me,” she begged, “if Guy had ever asked you to marry him should you have said yes?”
“I suppose so,” Sabine sighed. “He is the sort of man very few women would refuse.”
“You do not, by any chance,” Elida asked, bending a little closer to her sister, “care for him still?”
“I might have done if I had realised how much he cared. He never said so and yet, since I am at the confessional, shall I tell you something? He was a poor man in Washington—just Naval Attaché to a very extravagant Ambassador. You know how much liberty one has over there and I think if I were to have gone on seeing him secretly, with all the excitement and glamour of those little dinners together or stolen meetings in strange places—well, I do not know, Elida. I do not know what might have happened. There have been times when I have been alone with him when I should have been afraid to let him know just what I was feeling. He never expected anything from me, he never asked for anything. Perhaps that is why I cannot help loving him a little. There are not many men like that.”
Elida smiled as she stood upright.
“Perhaps,” she said, looking down at Sabine with her mass of tumbled hair framing her flushed face and a very soft look in her damp eyes, “perhaps I am more glad now than I have been at all that I am to take your place.”
CHAPTER VI
Table of Contents
For the third afternoon following, the private card room of the St. George’s Club had been deserted by its most ornamental members. It was the third day of a series of informal conferences which had been hurriedly summoned by the Prime Minister to discuss certain alarming developments in European politics. Although the Press had shown a most laudable restraint, there were many sinister and disquieting rumours afloat. On the Stock Exchange prices had sagged badly. No one knew exactly what was happening except that handful of men seated in the official library of No. 10, Downing Street, and they themselves had very few facts to go on. On this third afternoon, Malcolm Dunkerley, joint Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who had recently been appointed Envoy Extraordinary from Great Britain to one of the disturbed capitals of Europe, was supplying the thrills. He had flown back from the Continent the previous evening and his report had produced something akin to consternation amongst the few who had been asked to listen to it. Dunkerley had just come up from the House and his harassed and dejected appearance was sufficiently clear indication of the badgering which he had received and the questions which had been showered upon him. From this informal gathering who were present by special invitation, he had nothing to conceal and he was very frank indeed.
“Orson-Meade thought that his reception was chilly enough,” he confided, “but his people were at least polite. That is more than I can say of my friend. He didn’t mince words either. After dealing with diplomats for so many years it seems a queer thing to hear a Dictator talk.”
“Are you serious,” Fakenham asked, “when you say that he actually threatened war?”
“I am indeed,” was the somewhat agitated reply. “‘We are weary of conversations,’ were his last words to me. ‘We want peace but we are tired of talking about peace. It leads nowhere. It gets nothing that we want.’ I asked him plainly then what it was he wanted. He showed me a map that would have created a sensation in the House if it could have been passed round! ‘We want people of my country established there and there and there,’ he said, touching three places. ‘We want a coinage, banks, and an exchange of our own. We want an open market for petrol, iron, steel, rubber, cordite, nickel—practically everything you can think of in raw materials. We do not want to buy any manufactured articles. We want to import the raw materials ourselves from our own people and pay for them with our own money. Until we can do this we are dissatisfied and our only alternative is to do as we are doing—to prepare to take what we want for ourselves.’ It is no good concealing the fact, gentlemen, that this is a distinct and definite threat. I am practically ordered back again to an interview on Tuesday week and I am expected then to reply to what amounts to an ultimatum.”
“Our friend,” the Premier observed, “has opened his mouth wider than ever before, because up till now he has always spoken of the issues between us as being matters for discussion and arbitration.”
“Well, there is no question of discussion or arbitration at the present moment,” Malcolm Dunkerley pronounced. “I am to be back at the Palace on Tuesday week and unless I take a definite proposal, their next move will be with battleships.”
“You really believe that they want war?” the Premier persisted.
Dunkerley shrugged his shoulders.
“I am afraid I do,” he answered.
“Jellicoe’s reply to such demands as these would have been a Naval demonstration at Malta,” one of the younger of the Ministers put in.
“In Jellicoe’s days,” Fakenham remarked drily, “the country against whom he would have been demonstrating did not possess a matter of a thousand war planes.”
There was silence for a few moments. Then Dunkerley summed up the whole affair.
“This is the first positively belligerent move which either Orson-Meade or myself has encountered. The curious feature, otherwise, in these attempted conversations, has been the reluctance of each of the countries we have approached to put forward any definite proposals. It seems to me that up till now they have been playing for time.”
“No doubt about that,” Fakenham agreed. “I can tell you why, if you like. Before they committed themselves finally they wanted to find out exactly how far we had got on with our rearmament scheme.”
“I can prove the truth of your words,” General Mallinson remarked from his corner. “It is not a thing we ever talk about outside the department, but if it interests you gentlemen I can tell you that there are more foreign spies at work at the present moment in this country than ever before. They are all here after the same thing and they are positively reckless about it. They are at Aldershot, at Devonport, at Newcastle, at Chatham, at Woolwich, and several other places I needn’t mention. They are running almost incredible risks, for which, naturally, a few of them have already paid the penalty. They are out to discover exactly how far our schemes have been carried out, especially in planes and battleships. Now that they have found out the truth, or what they believe to be the truth, we are for it.”
There was a further brief silence.
“I should imagine,” the Prime Minister decided at last, speaking firmly and resolutely, “that General Mallinson is right. Our potential enemies have not wished to commit themselves until they were sure that we were really in a hole. I have not a word to say about the espionage business. That lies entirely in the hands of the General here and Admiral Cheshire, but I do think, having studied carefully the reports of Malcolm Dunkerley and Orson-Meade, that both countries with whom they have been attempting to hold these conversations have come to the conclusion that our rearmament preparations are in a parlous state. I propose that Malcolm Dunkerley and Orson-Meade return at once to their respective posts and insist upon a continuance of the conversations. If any further delay is attempted we shall know that t
hey mean war. We are working on that presumption already.”
“Personally, I do not think there is much doubt about it,” Fakenham agreed. “I know the general public always believes that a newspaper wants war. We don’t. I can assure you of that. All the same, I think it is coming.”
“If so, it must be faced calmly,” the Premier continued. “Malcolm Dunkerley and Orson-Meade must return to their posts to-morrow. If they are confronted with the same difficulties, they must break off negotiations and return. In that case we will have another brief meeting amongst ourselves and a Cabinet Council the day after.”
“There is just one thing more I should like to mention,” General Mallinson said as the meeting showed signs of breaking up. “It is on Admiral Cheshire’s behalf as well as my own. We should like to be allowed to make a formal statement as to this matter of espionage before anything in the shape of mobilisation is determined upon. We might have some interesting facts to lay before you.”
“You shall have the opportunity that you ask for,” the Premier agreed. “Your departments are run, as is only right, in complete secrecy. That secrecy, however, in the face of imminent war, must come to an end. If there is anything you have to say that might influence the situation, we shall expect you both to say it in this room immediately you are called upon.”
“Cheshire, I know, will be prepared,” the General said. “So shall I.”
The Prime Minister rang the bell.
“The meeting is dissolved,” he announced, rising a little abruptly to his feet.
Prestley rose from his easy chair and strolled over to the card table as Fakenham, Mallinson, and Herbert Melville entered the room almost together half an hour later that afternoon.
“Heavens!” he exclaimed. “What a welcome sight! Come along and cut, you loiterers. Anyone been down in the City?”
“Not a soul,” Mallinson replied. “Be reasonable, my dear fellow. Why should we imperil our diminutive pensions and feeble savings by furtive visits to our Stock Brokers in these days of panic?”
“It’s a bad day down there, I can tell you that,” Fakenham observed, spreading out a pack of cards.
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