21 Greatest Spy Thrillers in One Premium Edition (Mystery & Espionage Series)

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  “The Contessa Pelucchi?”

  “Yes,” she gasped.

  “I am Colonel Partridge in charge of a squad from Scotland Yard,” he explained. “We want this fellow Florestan. He was here a moment ago.”

  “Was it a moment ago?” she asked. “I was frightened. I scarcely remember.”

  “I think you must have fainted,” he said kindly. “You don’t remember how he got away?”

  She shook her head:—

  “He was here, standing where you are. Then the darkness came.”

  They continued the search but there was no Florestan.

  CHAPTER XIX

  Table of Contents

  “Having no diamond, partner?” the Deputy Commissioner asked Cheshire suspiciously towards the close of their first rubber on the following evening.

  “If I have, it’s up my sleeve where you won’t get at it,” was the terse reply. “Strange though it may seem, I have no diamond. I have therefore trumped the trick,” he added, gathering it up. “We get our contract and the rubber is ours.”

  “Our only chance,” Fakenham grunted.

  “I thought the blighter had another,” Prestley observed.

  Cheshire leaned back in his chair and grinned.

  “There’s a fable in this club,” he remarked, watching his partner add up the score, “that once in the dim forgotten ages I revoked.”

  “Only last week,” Sir Herbert muttered, “and I was your partner.”

  “It seems longer ago than that,” the Admiral went on. “However, it is a thing that happens to an accomplished player like myself once in a lifetime. There is no news in the paper to-day—Fakenham takes care of that—nothing that I know of to disturb one’s tranquility of mind. Have I shown any signs of carelessness?”

  “Never played better in your life,” his partner assured him. “We are two thousand and ten points up. Fakenham, I know, can afford to pay, if he will, but even if he won’t, the famous banker on my right will pay for both.”

  “Not sure that I don’t deserve to,” Prestley observed, crossing his legs and lighting a cigar. “I ought to have got my trick in spades.”

  “You missed a trick by shirking the finesse,” his partner agreed.

  “Ah well, I guess you fellows need the money,” Prestley conceded in a tone of resignation. “The Police and the Navy, they say, are the two worst paid Services in England. That is why a policeman has to pass his life having clandestine assignations with a cook and a sailor has to have a girl in every port to pay for his beer.”

  “What a thoroughly offensive fellow Prestley is becoming,” Melville remarked casually. “Anyone going to play another rubber?”

  “I can’t,” Cheshire groaned. “I have to dine early and give a lecture to the younger generation.”

  “I don’t want to play again,” the Deputy Commissioner decided. “I’ll play you Bezique, Cheshire, in the back room until you have to go.”

  “How much money have you in your pocket-book?” the latter asked.

  “About fifty quid.”

  “Good news,” the Admiral chuckled. “I always believe that debts of honour should be discharged on the spot.”

  They passed into the back room. Melville closed the door behind him. Cheshire drew up a chair to one of the small tables and held his head for a moment between his hands.

  “Get on with it, Melville, quickly,” he begged. “I thought that last rubber would be the end of me.”

  “Sorry, but it was your own doing,” the other reminded him. “You begged me, after those few words last night, not to communicate with you in any way, you told me what to say to the young lady, you planned it all yourself.”

  “I know,” Cheshire agreed. “It’s a queer business. Nothing been heard of the fellow, I suppose?”

  “Not a thing. I am inclined to agree with Partridge—he believes he has gone to earth somewhere in Soho. I can draw you a rough plan of his getaway, if you would like to have it.”

  Cheshire shook his head.

  “Waste of time,” he groaned. “It is our own fault, in a way. A club with three empty houses on one side and a cul de sac beyond can do just about what it likes.”

  “Can’t blame Partridge,” Melville said. “We occupied two houses and we had a dozen men posted round the club itself. The fellow must have gone through the cellars underneath, where some of my men were, and when he got into Firth Street the thing was easy.”

  “There’s a taxicab stand in Firth Street,” Cheshire remarked.

  His companion nodded.

  “There was only one cab fetched away within an hour of the time we raided the club,” he reported. “Partridge is hot on the tracks of the driver but I don’t think it will do him much good. He was hailed by a man coming in the opposite direction and they seem to have picked up a lady afterwards.”

  “What about Holborn?”

  “Well, Partridge went there himself,” Melville replied. “They simply looked upon him as a lunatic. Florestan is apparently the most important man in the business. They showed me a telegram from him signed ‘Florestan’ sent yesterday from Belgium confirming his purchase of thousands of tons of steel plates, or something of the sort. They won’t listen to any suggestion that it is an unusual thing for a man to be travelling on the Continent and in England without leaving any indication as to his whereabouts.”

  “What possible explanation can they offer?” Cheshire asked curiously.

  “Simply that their Mr. Florestan is known to be the keenest buyer of metals in the trade, and if his competitors knew where he went they would all follow him and up would go the price. That is why he keeps his movements so secret. As for the club itself, of course we knew there was nothing to be found there. The secretary seems to be a very respectable Italian importer who gave the police every assistance last night. There was no drinking and the class of people there were, so far as one could see, just wives and families of the tradespeople who belong. With regard to Florestan, they made no secret whatever about the fact that he was one of the firm of Brown, Shipman & Co., and president of the club. But no one there seemed to have the least knowledge of the existence of the secret passage and there is not a book in the place to even suggest that anything illegal was going on.”

  “I don’t suppose there was,” Cheshire observed. “How did they account for the secret passage, though?”

  “They all declared that they knew not a thing about it. I would have sent for you to hear the cross-examination but you know how keen you were to be kept out of it.”

  Cheshire nodded.

  “I did expect to hear something about the young lady, though,” he said.

  “Do you mean to say that you have not seen or heard from her?” Melville asked incredulously.

  “Not I. I wouldn’t telephone or go near her for the world.”

  “You don’t know then that she was in a dead faint when Partridge forced open the door? She must have had a horrible time.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  Melville looked at his companion curiously.

  “For a man of gallantry,” he observed, “you seem to have allowed this young lady to take on pretty considerable risks.”

  “Risks be damned!” was the bitter reply. “Think of what was the other side. You may think me as brutal as you like, but I felt pretty well sure that when she left me she would be followed, that somehow or other Florestan would have made a big effort to get hold of her papers. The risk was worth running a hundred times over. Even you, my friend, don’t realise that this conspiracy which we are fighting is vital. It is going to settle the future, for the next fifty years at any rate, of the British Empire. Get that into your head, Melville, and you will understand why I have had to act like a dummy all day and get on with my job and not even answer a telephone message, and why last night I lost all sense of chivalry and all that sort of rubbish. I let the girl go to face what she had to face because I believed she would lead your people to Florestan.”

&nbs
p; “You are rather a brute, but you are certainly consistent,” the Deputy Commissioner agreed grudgingly.

  “Consistent,” Cheshire scoffed. “God bless my soul, Melville, there’s one thing about me—I’ve developed an eighth instinct since I took on this job. I can feel spies when they are anywhere within a hundred yards of me. I tell you frankly, I felt perfectly sure that Florestan would do his best to get hold of that girl last night and I kept away on purpose. I have sat in my room all day long surrounded by sickly shadows—invisible—speechless. If I had telephoned to the Contessa, if I had been round there this morning, if I had had her escorted direct to her Embassy, if I had shown the faintest interest in her, the whole thing was up. You can abuse me as much as you like. I played the game that was worth playing and it nearly came off.”

  Melville threw his cigar into the grate.

  “I’m sorry, Cheshire,” he said. “You make me feel like a schoolboy. Anyhow, things might have been a great deal worse. Nothing more terrible happened to the Contessa than a nasty shock. Partridge himself took her home. They waited for an hour and then he sent her to the Embassy with a plain clothes escort in my own private car. At midnight she reported that she had delivered the package to the right person in the right way. The Embassy plane left at four o’clock and your stuff went out with the rest of the diplomatic despatches.”

  Cheshire remained in a very grim mood. His whisky and soda stood by his side untouched. His pipe filled with tobacco lay there unlit.

  “What sort of men had you in the squad?” he asked.

  “The best in the Yard.”

  Cheshire choked back his rejoinder but his expression was sufficiently eloquent.

  “You must not be too down on us, old fellow,” Melville continued. “We were outwitted. Partridge admits it. I admit it. We will get our own back—don’t be afraid of that. Florestan is a devil of a fellow. Remember—I don’t want to seem brutal but you had your own lesson with him that night in Colville Terrace. We have discovered one of his bolt holes, anyway.”

  “Close it,” Cheshire enjoined firmly. “Block the passage. Have a score of men in the club. I have a fancy he might try to get back that way. Let your men in Soho take off the gloves to-night. Florestan cannot be far away. I feel he isn’t far away. Don’t be content with the ordinary sort of search. Rake out the place, Melville. It’s time someone gave Soho a shock. See that they get it to-night. I would go and join Partridge but I’ve got a hunch.”

  “What is it?” Melville asked.

  Cheshire rose to his feet. The silent fury which had been devouring him seemed for the moment to have subsided. He took a gulp from his tumbler. He walked over to the fireplace, struck a match and lit his pipe.

  “Florestan is somewhere close around,” he declared. “His business is here with us—not abroad. My hunch is that we shall see or hear again from him within twenty-four hours. If they drive him out of Soho I’ll tell you now, Melville, where he will make for. The Milan. Do you get that? He has corner rooms at the Milan in the name of Copeland. I shouldn’t be surprised to see him dancing with the crowd to-night or taking a drink at the bar!”

  “If you really think that,” Melville advised, “you had better keep away from your own rooms to-night.”

  “Not I,” Cheshire answered. “I am the man he wants, just now. I don’t think he will leave this neighbourhood until he has had a try to get at me.”

  “Have you anything to go on?” Melville persisted. “Why do you think he would take such a tremendous risk as to go to the Milan?”

  “Because he’s clever enough to do the entirely obvious thing when he’s in a fix,” Cheshire replied. “Wipe everything else out of your mind for the moment, Melville. It’s Florestan, always Florestan. Don’t telephone to me. If there is any news, send me round a perfectly reliable man at midnight to my rooms at the Milan. No papers or cards. No message. I will leave word for a Mr. Brown to be shown up, if he comes. Midnight exactly.”

  Melville nodded.

  “You are none too safe, yourself, my friend, in these places just now,” he warned him. “You have had one narrow escape.”

  “Safety be damned!” Cheshire answered savagely. “Who cares about that? If it costs your life and mine and the lives of every one of your men who are searching in Soho at this minute, it would be worth while if we could get Florestan under lock and key.”

  “Why is he suddenly so formidable?” Melville asked.

  “Because he works as I work—by instinct,” was the vigorous reply. “Do you think he would have run the risk he has run with a sister of the Princess Pelucchi if he hadn’t an inkling of my scheme? The merest suspicion, if he tests it, is destruction, that is, if the inkling arrives and the suspicion is born before its time. It will mean war, then, and we are not ready for war. That is the long and the short of it. At midnight, Melville, I shall be in my room alone.”

  “And supposing there is no news?”

  “Conceited sort of chap, aren’t I?” Cheshire rejoined, with a grin in which there was no mirth. “I shall find my way round to Soho myself!”

  CHAPTER XX

  Table of Contents

  The closest of espionage to which he could have been subjected would have discovered nothing in Admiral Cheshire’s movements during the remainder of that evening to have given rise to a moment’s suspicion. He arrived at his rooms at the Milan Court at the usual time, received a couple of telephone messages, one asking him to dine with a cousin at the Beefsteak Club, another enclosing a ticket for a theatre and an invitation to supper afterwards from some country friends. Both these affairs had been dealt with by his social secretary, who reported that no other telephone messages had been received and there had been no callers. Cheshire dismissed him for the night, took his bath and changed, ordered a light dinner which he had served in solitude with an evening paper propped up in front of him. Afterwards, he wrote three letters by hand, taking them down to the post himself, and strolled across the entrance hall towards the balcony lounge where a small crowd of men and women were drinking before-supper cocktails and watching the crowd dancing below. He lingered for a few minutes at the top of the steps, exchanged greetings with one or two of the maîtres d’hôtel who hurried up, and shook his head in reply to various invitations.

  “No supper for me to-night, Joseph,” he remarked to the small dark man who was urging him to occupy a table in a retired corner. “I may come in later with friends. Just came down to have a look at you. Business good, as usual, I see.”

  “Marvellous,” the man replied. “Every night it is the same. This war scare seems to bring people instead of keeping them away.”

  Cheshire nodded and took his leave. He had accomplished his purpose if it should be necessary. He had established an alibi. He turned his back upon the room and glanced carelessly enough round at the other lookers-on. Suddenly he stiffened. A Junoesque-looking lady in a very beautiful black evening gown, undoubtedly handsome, gloriously flamboyant, had deliberately smiled at him from her solitary table in the corner. Cheshire did not hesitate for a moment. He threaded his way through the crowded space towards her.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Florestan—or ought I to say Mrs. Copeland?” he said, bowing over her hand.

  He took care to show no signs of surprise. She looked up at him out of those curious and wonderful eyes. There was the same faintly ironical smile upon her full, voluptuous lips.

  “Mrs. Florestan is my correct name,” she told him. “My husband took his apartment here under another name as he has so many Continental clients who stay here, and whom he is not always anxious to see. You did not disclose the whole of your own, by the by, when you came to pay us that little visit.”

  “Admiral Cheshire, if you prefer it,” he replied briskly. “Sometimes it is convenient to forget one’s title. How is your aggressive husband?”

  “Oh, all right, I suppose,” she answered. “He is away somewhere. An inconvenient sort of husband to have,” she went on with a suggesti
ve upward glance. “Never gives his poor wife a chance. She never knows when he is coming home, or, perhaps you would add, going away. Will you not sit down?”

  Cheshire sank into a chair by her side. It was a quarter past eleven but he really felt that it was doubtful whether he could occupy his time until midnight more usefully than in a brief chat with Mrs. Florestan.

  “Won’t you have a cocktail?” he asked.

  “I should love a champagne cocktail,” she told him. “Not too much bitters.”

  “Have it without any at all,” he suggested. “What’s the good of spoiling good wine?”

  “Very well,” she agreed.

  He ordered a bottle and made some reference to the music, which she ignored.

  “I did not think I should see you again,” she remarked. “You had a quarrel with Horace, did you not, after I left that night?”

  “He was a trifle over-hospitable,” Cheshire assented. “Didn’t seem to like parting with me. What’s become of that servant of yours—the one with the fringe?”

  “She has disappeared,” Mrs. Florestan confided a little bitterly. “They are all the same. You cannot find servants for small houses. What Horace keeps that wretched place on for I cannot imagine, when the firm give him a suite up here just to entertain his foreign customers in. I am a foreign customer, myself, at the moment,” she added with a laugh. “I hate Kensington.”

  “Are you waiting for friends?” he asked.

  “I have none,” she answered. “I dress up and come and sit here most evenings just to watch the people arrive for dinner or supper.”

  “It seems scarcely an exciting life,” he remarked.

  “I have not the good fortune,” she rejoined. “There is no one to make it exciting for me.”

  “Where is your husband?”

  “Who knows? I wrote to the firm yesterday to enquire and incidentally to complain. Of his bills here I take no account. I come when I choose. I am established here now. They never ask for money. I pay none. I just sign. But I needed money for other purposes when I wrote to the firm.”