The butler, who was waiting at his post, threw open the door. There was an unusually large crowd of loiterers outside. A few drops of misty rain were falling but the sky above was clear. The man leaned forward.
“The police have done their best to clear the street, sir,” he announced. “Some of them are rather hard to get rid of but there is a special squad of Scotland Yard men here waiting for the Admiral.”
A car drove up. Cheshire shook hands with his Chief and ran lightly down the steps. An uneasy-looking Inspector stood at the open door of the automobile with his hand at the salute.
“Admiralty—side entrance,” Cheshire directed. “Thanks very much, Inspector. You really need not have troubled.”
“The Deputy Commissioner sent us down, sir,” was the respectful reply. “We are to wait and take you over to the Milan.”
“Not likely!” Cheshire exclaimed scornfully. “You take me to the Admiralty and leave me there. My compliments to the Deputy Commissioner and thanks, but I am working all night and will find my own way back to my rooms.”
“If you do leave the Admiralty before daylight, sir, I hope you will ring us up,” the other persisted. “The reason we are a little extra careful is because there have been one or two queer characters hanging around Downing Street for the last twenty-four hours. We have raked the street through several times but I can’t say I’m comfortable about it.”
“They wouldn’t go for small fry like me,” Cheshire grinned as he stepped past the Inspector to enter the car.
There was a crash of glass. Both windows in the automobile seemed to fall away and the air for a moment was thick with flying fragments. The Inspector reeled and nearly lost his balance. Cheshire staggered, but only for a moment. Then there was a Babel of police whistles, a rush to one particular portion of the street opposite. Cheshire settled himself down in a corner. His voice was hard and pregnant with authority.
“Drive at once to the Admiralty side entrance,” he ordered.
The chauffeur obeyed. In ten minutes the man who had undertaken the mighty task of saving his country was seated at his desk.
CHAPTER XXVI
Table of Contents
The following day was one of repression. Contrary to early reports, the Stock Exchange remained open. “Business as Usual” was the slogan faithfully observed. There was a complete absence of news, which puzzled everyone except the man who sat working at his desk or in his chart room hour after hour. There was a vague report in some of the papers that a revolver had been discharged at a passing motor car in Downing Street, but apparently no one had been hurt except the would-be assassin, an unknown man now under arrest, who had fought fiercely for his liberty and was lying unidentified and unconscious in a ward of the nearest hospital. Of definite news from abroad there seemed to be none. The journals of the day had all adopted the same note, they all preached the same advice. The pourparlers had reached their most difficult crisis and reflection was being indulged in upon both sides. The Envoys—Orson-Meade and Dunkerley—had both flown to England and upon receipt of their reports a Cabinet Council was summoned to be held on the following day, after which it was understood that they would both return to their posts. There was something exceedingly deliberate about the attitude of the Press and the politicians. All the time, Cheshire was working upon a scheme which was to remain for years afterwards in the archives of the Admiralty as a triumphal and magnificent piece of tactical exposition.
The solitary worker, paler, with an extraordinarily bright light in his eyes, fell back exhausted in his chair soon after midday. He refused lunch but drank an unusual quantity of brandy and ate two biscuits. Then after a strong cup of coffee he lit his pipe and continued. He spent most of the afternoon in the chart room but completed his task at his desk. At eight o’clock Hincks found him lying comatose, sprawled over his table. He looked up at his assistant’s entrance and addressed him with something of his old briskness.
“Another glass of brandy, Hincks,” he directed. “Bring it yourself. I have some instructions for you.”
The young man returned in less than a minute with a plate of biscuits and the brandy. He carried also a siphon but Cheshire shook his head.
“Presently, perhaps,” he said, gripping the tumbler. “I am not thirsty, only a little tired. Listen, Hincks,” he went on, after a gulp from the glass. “My task is finished. If this scheme of our projected offensive can get into the hands of those who think that every move we could make is known to them over in Rome, if it could reach them before the first shot has been fired, we shall have done our job. There will be no war.”
Hincks was speechless as he picked up sheet after sheet of plans and explanation.
“This is a miracle, sir,” he faltered at last.
“It might have been true,” Cheshire said in a low tone, “if we had had the ships and the sailors to man them—another thousand sea-planes and the new guns. We could have wiped them off the face of the sea, Hincks, as surely in fact as we have done here on paper. Now listen—how long will it take you to copy this?”
“I can do it in twelve hours, sir.”
“I shall leave it to you to carry on, then,” Cheshire decided.
“And when I have copied it?” Hincks asked anxiously. “Am I to bring it to you?”
“I have other work on hand,” was the somewhat enigmatic reply. “I might not be here. You are to make your own appointment with Elida Pelucchi. You are to represent me and hand her over the plans. She knows what to do with them. She will be waiting for you, as soon as you have finished them, in my rooms at the Milan Court. They are for her and her only.”
For a moment or two Hincks stood like a man turned to stone, then a slow flush of colour stained his cheeks. His fingers began to tremble. He stretched out his hand and leaned on the desk.
“Sir,” he stammered, “I am to see the Contessa? You trust me with this?”
“Don’t be a fool,” Cheshire answered. “Haven’t I trusted you ever since that trouble? You know my weakness. I believe in my gift. I know men. I know you, Hincks. You will never falter again as long as you live. You will take my place with the young woman. You will urge upon her that not one second is to be lost in handing that over to the person who is waiting for it.”
“But you, sir?” Hincks asked in bewilderment.
“I have yet another task to perform,” he explained. “Shake hands, Commander Hincks,” he added, holding out his hand. “I had a word with Maddox about you to-day. If the new job I am looking for takes me abroad you will get your step all right. You will be one of the youngest Captains to command a battleship.”
“I don’t quite understand, sir—” Hincks began.
“It is not your business to understand,” was the prompt reply. “You are to obey. Leave me alone now for a time. Commence your copying.”
“What shall I do with our own copy, sir?”
“Deliver it personally to Admiral Maddox. He had better take it to the First Lord.”
Hincks gathered up the papers, dazed though he was. There was something in his Chief’s appearance which filled him with dismay.
“I wish you would let me send you something, sir,” he begged. “You have had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours and more.”
“I am quite all right,” Cheshire assured him. “I shall be starting my other job directly and I shall have enough people fussing round then. And Ronnie—”
The young man drew himself to attention.
“Yes, sir.”
“Elida Pelucchi—she has a weak spot in her heart for you, I think.”
“It isn’t possible, sir,” Hincks declared brokenly. “I will get over that.”
“Don’t be a damn’ fool,” Cheshire told him. “The girl’s fond of you. It doesn’t matter who she is. You’ve got plenty of money of your own—well-born, all that sort of stuff.”
“But I thought, sir, that you—”
“You thought wrong, then. Remember that. Out you get.”
It was a couple of hours later when Cheshire prepared to leave his rooms. He sent for his typist-secretary and cleared up some letters. She looked at him strangely.
“Anything I can do for you, sir?” she asked. “If you will pardon my saying so—you look tired.”
He hesitated.
“Well, if that is the case,” he decided, “I’ll take a little more brandy before I go.”
He raised the glass, which still stood upon the desk, to his lips, but set it down in a moment. Then he left the room, passed through the general offices and descended in the lift. The commissionaire hurried forward.
“Your car is here, sir,” he announced. “The police car that brought you had its windows smashed but another one arrived to take its place early this morning. It has been waiting about all day.”
“Fetch it along,” Cheshire directed.
“Where to, sir?”
“I must call and see a friend before I go to my rooms,” he said. “St. George’s Hospital, tell the driver.”
Life was a little hazy afterwards. Cheshire found his way across the pavement and into the private consulting room on the ground floor of the hospital. Word got about as to his identity and in a moment a surgeon he knew quite well hurried in.
“Admiral,” he exclaimed anxiously, as they shook hands, “what’s wrong?”
“I have been doing a long stunt of work,” Cheshire told him, “and I’ve got a bullet in my shoulder you had better see to. It’s been there twenty-four hours.”
He reeled even as the words left his lips. He arrived at his private room on a stretcher.
CHAPTER XXVII
Table of Contents
“Commander Hincks calling, Madam,” Greyes announced the next morning, throwing open the door of Cheshire’s salon in the Milan Court.
Elida sprang from her chair and held out her hands. Her eyes shone with excitement.
“Ronnie!” she exclaimed in amazement. “I had no idea. Where is Guy?”
Hincks was holding her hands tightly. For a moment or two he seemed too overcome to speak.
“Elida,” he confided, “I am his deputy. One thing and one thing only for us. I have your packet here.”
“Well?”
“This must be taken to wherever you take the papers without a single second’s delay. You read the journals. You know there is a great crisis. The Chief worked on these twenty-four hours without stopping. I have had to do my bit, too. Now you must do yours.”
“My dear boy, I am ready,” she exclaimed. “Give them to me! I understand.”
He took her into his arms for an instant and kissed her. Then he pressed the sealed package into her hands.
“Listen,” he said, “there’s a Service car waiting at the Embankment entrance. I can guess where you are taking this, but I don’t need to know. If you happen to see the person who is responsible for receiving them from you you are to say that this is the last effort.”
“Aren’t you even coming down with me?” she asked.
“The Chief thought it best not. Greyes is waiting—his servant—in the corridor. He will take you. You see what a state I am in. I have been working all night without stopping. You deliver those plans, and if you like—”
“Well? I am sure I shall like!”
“You can come back here and we will have lunch together. It was the Admiral’s suggestion that our meeting should take place in these rooms.”
“I shall fly,” she declared. “See, I have brought my despatch box.”
He placed the packet inside. She tucked the case under her arm.
“Greyes is waiting outside,” he told her again, throwing the door open.
She hurried off. Hincks found his way to the bathroom, took off his coat and plunged his head into a basin of cold water. Then he locked the door, stripped and indulged in a hot bath. He was a different-looking young man when he re-entered the sitting room in about twenty minutes’ time. Elida returned to find him walking restlessly up and down the room.
“It is delivered?” he cried eagerly.
She showed him the empty despatch case.
“Straight from here into the hands of my friend at the Embassy,” she assured him. “No harm in telling you that now, I suppose. Not a sign of a Ludini or a Florestan. This horrible business is finished.”
His thankfulness was expressed only by a hoarse, unintelligible exclamation. It shone, however, from his face. He pressed the bell. He handed her the menu.
“Two Dry Martinis,” he told the waiter. “The Contessa will order luncheon when you bring them.”
The man disappeared with a bow. Elida saw the fever still in her companion’s face.
“Do not worry any more, Ronnie,” she begged. “It is done—successfully accomplished. The plans leave Heston in an hour. They will reach their destination this evening.”
He drew a long sigh of relief. They sat side by side on the divan. The eagerly desired cocktails arrived. Elida studied the menu and ordered luncheon. They were alone again together.
“This is the end, Elida,” he told her once more. “The Chief has pronounced it. The stunt is finished.”
“And oh, how glad I am!” she cried joyfully. “It has all been so hateful. Tell me, Ronnie, are you really re-established?”
“Absolutely,” he assured her. “The Admiral has been too wonderful. He has stood by me all the time. I am really in charge of the department until he comes back.”
“Where is he?” Elida asked.
He shook his head.
“I don’t know. Somewhere where he can rest, I hope. He was absolutely worn out when he left. I should think that probably he went to Downing Street.”
“I must be reassured, Ronnie. It is really finished—all this Secret Service business?”
“Yes,” he told her. “And you don’t need to be too unhappy about it, either, Elida. If you seem to have been working a little against your country, remember that what you have really been working against is war. The better side of your country does not want war. The better side of ours doesn’t. We are the altruists of the world, even if we have worked behind the curtain.”
“I wish I could make Sabine see that,” she sighed.
“She will see it before long,” he assured her.
“The whole world appears to be suffering from a sort of paralysis, Ronnie,” she went on. “I came through the streets here and it seemed to me that the people were all walking as though they were in a dream, as though some pestilence were threatening them, as though they were hurrying under the umbrellas of fear to escape a storm. And the posters—they are all terrible, too. They seem to be announcing every possible horror except the actual declaration of war. In the Strand a bus tyre burst and people ran for their lives. Everyone seemed to think it was a bomb falling.”
He smiled a little wanly.
“This is the worst time,” he muttered.
The waiter wheeled in the luncheon table.
“I hope I have ordered what you like,” she said. “Oysters for both of us, a clear consommé, a plainly roasted chicken and a soufflé.”
“Delicious,” he agreed.
She listened for a moment to the rumble of traffic in the street below. The newsboys’ voices were plainly audible. She made a little grimace.
“I think,” she decided, “we need something to keep our spirits up. Do perfectly well-brought-up English girls ever drink champagne in the middle of the day, Ronnie?”
“Veuve Clicquot ’21,” he ordered promptly. “The oysters look marvellous.”
The waiter took his leave. The door was scarcely clo
sed before Hincks turned once more to his companion.
“Let’s not talk any more about impending calamities,” he suggested. “Let’s forget that there is such a thing as ugly work for an honourable purpose. I am telling myself all the time that I shall be back at sea in less than a month. In the meantime—”
“Well, what shall we talk about?” she asked.
“Ourselves.”
“I am going to be horrid,” she told him, patting his hand across the table. “I do not wish to talk about ourselves just now. My mind is full of one person.”
“The Chief!”
“Quite true,” she acknowledged. “I cannot help thinking about him. I would like to know where he is now. Every time I have seen him—especially since the reception at Regent’s Park—he has seemed to me entirely unlike himself. He has seemed like another man living in another world.”
“He has been rather like that,” Hincks admitted, “ever since he took up this job at the Admiralty. He has worked magnificently but it doesn’t suit him. He hates duplicity. Why do you want to talk about him? You are not going to tell me that you are in love with him?”
She shook her head very convincingly.
“Quite sure I am not,” she told him. “I do not think that Guy is very much of a woman’s man. I think his profession and his country come first in his life, but if ever he has been in love with anyone it was with Sabine.”
“With your sister?”
She nodded.
“I saw him very soon after the engagement was announced,” she continued, “and I thought he looked awful. He went on leave almost immediately afterwards. There was talk of his retiring but everyone said that the Admiralty would not let him go. He had an extended leave and I think there is not a port in Europe or Asia that he has not visited.”
“That’s right,” Hincks agreed. “It was his work at Singapore and the report he presented to the Admiralty which really gave him the position he holds to-day. I have heard a lot of them say that the modern Singapore would never have been built but for him. Afterwards, he went to sea again and just as everyone thought he was going to be appointed to the command of the North Sea Fleet he took up this new branch of work—XYZ, they call it. They started that after he had spent nearly a year in Malta and Cyprus.”
21 Greatest Spy Thrillers in One Premium Edition (Mystery & Espionage Series) Page 137
