“We don’t want that!” he exclaimed. “Telephone at once to all the places en route to London, car number LC 3221. Can you make any sort of speed, Mr. Lavendale?”
“Jump in,” was the grim reply. “You’ll soon see.”
They dashed up the hill, travelling almost at the same speed as the other car. As they passed the church they saw it a speck in the distance, climbing the next hill. Lavendale slipped in his fourth speed.
“Thank God for the dust!” he muttered. “We shall see which way they go. Hold on, Suzanne. We’ll have to take risks.”
The air rushed past them. The finger of the speedometer crept up from thirty to fifty and sixty miles an hour. They swung round the corner and through a tiny village, a cloud of dust rising behind, heedless of the blessings shouted after them by the irate foot-passengers.
“He’s gone to the right,” Lavendale announced. “That’s Letheringsett. He’ll leave the London road, though, if he can.”
“He’ll try to give you the slip,” Major Elwell remarked, “and take the train from somewhere.”
Lavendale smiled. The finger in front of them was still creeping upward. They missed a hay wagon by a few inches. The pillar of dust in front of them grew nearer.
“We’ll shepherd him into Fakenham,” Lavendale muttered. “I could catch him now, if I wanted. They’ll have had the message there, though.”
They skirted Letheringsett, up the hill, round corner after corner, through Thursford, with barely a hundred yards dividing them. Once, at some crossroads, the car in front seemed to hesitate and they shot up to within fifty yards. The light now was becoming bad. There were little patches of shadow where the trees overhung the road.
“They’re giving it up!” Lavendale exclaimed. “By Jove, we’ve got them!”
He pointed forward. The road running into Fakenham narrowed. A line of three soldiers stood across the thoroughfare. With a grinding of brakes and ponderous swaying of the foremost car, the chase was over. Mr. Leonard Johnson descended, shaking the dust from his coat.
“Following me?” he asked Lavendale sarcastically.
Major Elwell’s hand fell upon his shoulder.
“We’re not meaning to lose sight of you again just yet, sir,” he said.
“You know what risk you run in interfering with an American citizen?” the other demanded.
“Perfectly,” Major Elwell replied.
“You don’t, that’s certain, or you wouldn’t attempt it,” Johnson snapped. “However, we can’t talk in the street. I’ll get into your car and go on to the inn with you.”
They drove on to the Crown Inn, mounted the outside staircase, Lavendale in front and Major Elwell bringing up the rear. The coffee-room was empty. They rang for refreshments and dismissed the waiter. Johnson threw back his overcoat.
“Now let’s have this out,” he began truculently, addressing Major Elwell. “Who the mischief are you, and what do you mean by following me like this?”
“I am censor for the neighbourhood in which you landed from Holland, Mr. Johnson,” was the quiet reply. “Your present position is entirely the result of your own injudicious behaviour.”
“What exactly do you want?” Johnson demanded.
“After your attempt to escape,” Major Elwell announced, “I shall be compelled to search you.”
Johnson drew a revolver from his pocket. His manner remained bellicose.
“Look here,” he said, “if you’re looking for trouble you can have it. I don’t recognise the right of anybody to interfere with my movements.”
Major Elwell strolled slowly across the room to where Johnson was standing, looking all the time down the muzzle of the out-stretched revolver.
“One moment, Mr. Johnson,” he said. “Do you mind glancing out of this window? No, you can keep your weapon—I’ve no designs on that. Just look down into the street.”
Johnson did as he was bidden. Half-a-dozen soldiers were lined up outside the entrance.
“Then out of the door, if you please,” the Major further suggested. He held it open. At the bottom of the stairs a sentry was standing with fixed bayonet. Johnson stared at him for a moment. Then he turned abruptly away.
“Look here,” he said hoarsely, “this censor business don’t go with me. You’re lying!”
“Perhaps so,” Major Elwell admitted smoothly, “and so are you. You mentioned, I think, that you had been in the American Embassy at Berlin.. You omitted to mention, however, that you have since joined the German Secret Service. As that fact is well known to us, you can understand, I dare say, why we regard this landing of yours upon a lonely part of the coast with some—shall I say suspicion?”
Johnson stood very still for a moment. He seemed to be thinking deeply.
“This censorship of yours is a bluff, I suppose,” he muttered.
“Among many other positions,” Major Elwell admitted, “I also hold a somewhat important place in the English Secret Service. You have, I trust, one of the first qualifications for useful service in your profession—you are able to recognise the inevitable? You are face to face with it now.”
There was a brief silence. Johnson was standing at the window with his hands behind him. Presently he turned around.
“Very well,” he pronounced curtly, “you’ve got me fairly enough. Go ahead.”
“You see,” Major Elwell explained, “you might, under the present laws, be treated as an ordinary indiscreet traveller—or as a spy. Better hand over everything you are carrying.”
Johnson opened his coat pocket and threw a few letters and a pocket-book upon the table. Major Elwell glanced them through and sighed. Then he turned toward Suzanne.
“If you would give us a couple of minutes, please,” he begged.
Lavendale led her out into the yard. In a few minutes the door behind them was thrown open. The Major was standing at the top of the steps.
“Where’s the car?” he shouted—“the car they came in?”
Lavendale looked down the yard and dashed into the street.
“Where’s the other car?” he asked one of the soldiers on guard. 9
“No instruction to detain it, sir,” the man replied. “The chauffeur drove it to the garage to fill up with petrol.”
They ran across the street in a little procession. The man in charge of the place stared at them, a little dazed.
“Car came in about ten minutes ago—a great Delauney-Belleville,” he informed them. “She filled up and started off for London.”
Major Elwell turned toward Lavendale and laughed hardly.
“That fellow’s first job,” he muttered, “and he’s done us in! The documents he was carrying are in that car!”
The Secret Envelope
MAJOR ELWELL spent the next hour in the telegraph office while Lavendale and Suzanne raced southward. More than once they had news of the car of which they were in pursuit. At Brandon it was only twenty minutes ahead and at Newmarket they learned that the driver had called at the station, found there was no train for an hour and continued his journey. From Newmarket, through Six-Mile-Bottom and onward, they touched seventy miles an hour, and even Suzanne shivered a little in her seat. At the Royston turn the sparks flew upward through the grey light as Lavendale’s brakes bit their way home.
“Two ways to London here,” he muttered. “Wait.”
He took a little electric torch from his pocket and stooped down in the road. In less than a dozen seconds he was back in the driving seat.
“By Royston,” he whispered. “I fancy, somehow, we are gaining on him.”
They tore onward along the narrow but lonelier road. Once, on a distant hillside far in front, they caught the flash of a light. Lavendale gave a little whoop of triumph.
“We shall get him,” he cried fiercely. “We’ve twenty miles of road like this to Royston.”
The excitement of the chase began to tell on both of them. Suzanne, sitting close to the side of the car, leaned a little forward, her eyes b
right, her hair wind-tossed, her cheeks flushed, breathless all the time with the lashing of their speed-made wind. Lavendale sat like a figure of wood, leaning a little over his wheel, his hands rigid, his whole frame tense with the strain. Once more they saw the light, this time a little nearer. Then they skidded crossing an unexpected railway track, took a few seconds to right themselves, and the light shot ahead. They passed through Royston and shot up the hill, scarcely slackening speed. It was a little before moonlight now and the heath stretching away on their left seemed like some silent and frozen sea on which the mists rested lightly. Suddenly a little cry broke from Lavendale’s lips, his foot crushed down upon the brakes. In front of them, by the side of the road, was the other car, disabled, its left wheel missing, the driving seat empty. They came to a standstill within a few feet of it and Lavendale leaped lightly out. . Lying with his head upon the grass was the driver. Lavendale bent rapidly over him.
“The front wheel must have shot off and pitched him forward,” he explained to Suzanne. “I’m afraid he is hurt. You’d better go and sit in the car.”
Then the woman he had seen nothing of blazed out from the girl by his side.
“Do not be foolish,” she cried fiercely. “He is alive, is he not? Quick! Search him!”
Lavendale for a moment was staggered. He was feeling for the man’s heart.
“What is the life or death of such as he!” she continued, almost savagely. “Search him, I say!”
Lavendale obeyed her, a little dazed. There was a license, a newspaper of that morning’s date, a few garage receipts for petrol, a handkerchief, a penknife and a large cigarette case—not another thing. She pushed him on one side while she felt his body carefully. The man opened his eyes, groaning.
“My leg!” he muttered.
Lavendale stood up.
“I think that’s all that’s the matter with him,” he pronounced,”—fracture of the leg. We’d better take him back to the hospital.”
“Leave him alone,” she ordered. “Come here with me at once.”
Lavendale obeyed mutely. She sprang up into the dismantled car and began feeling the cushions.
“Look in the pockets,” she directed.
Lavendale turned them inside out. There were maps, a contour book, a motor handbook, more garage receipts, an odd glove—nothing of interest. Suddenly Suzanne gave a little cry. She bent closer over the driving cushion, pulled at a little hidden tab, opened it. There reposed a letter in a thick white envelope, the letter of their quest. Lavendale flashed his electric torch upon it. It was addressed in plain characters—
To His Excellency.
He thrust it into his pocket.
“Look here,” he insisted, “we’ve found what we want. We must see about that man now.”
They lifted him into their car and drove him back to the hospital. Lavendale left money, called at the police-station and gave information about the accident. Then they ran up to the hotel and stood side by side for a moment in the dimly-lit, stuffy coffee-room. He drew the letter from his pocket.
“Well?” he asked.
She glanced at the seal—huge and resplendent.
“It is only the first part of our task that is done,” she sighed, “yet everything is ready for the second. That letter will be delivered. It is the answer we want.”
She took the letter and placed it in the small bag she was carrying. “Some sandwiches, please,” she begged, “and then London.”
* * * * *
Twenty-four hours later they sat in her little sitting-room. Suzanne was restless and kept glancing at the clock, lighting cigarettes and throwing them away. Often she glanced at Lavendale, imperturbable, a little troubled.
“Why do you frown?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” he answered simply. “This business has its dark side, you know. I was thinking of it from your point of view. You are going to open a friend’s letter—that’s what it comes to. You’re on fire to see whether your friend, whom you should trust, is as honourable as you think him. It leaves an unpleasant flavour, you know.”
She came to a standstill before him.
“My friend,” she said, “you have something yet to learn in our profession. It is this—honour and joy, conduct itself, idealism, all those things that make up the mesh of life, lose their significance to the man and woman who work for their country as I have done, as you have commenced to do. I am for France alone and for France’s sake I have no character. For France’s sake I have sent a dummy messenger to the Prince. For France’s sake I shall open the reply. It may tell me everything, it may tell me nothing, but one must be warned.”
There was a ring at the bell. A young man entered, closing the door behind him. Suzanne almost sprang toward him.
“You have the answer?” she cried.
The messenger bowed. Suzanne was suddenly calm. She tore open the long, thick envelope with trembling fingers. She peered inside for a moment, doubtfully. Then her whole face relaxed, her eyes flashed with joy. She held the envelope up over the table. A little stream of torn pieces of paper fell from it. Her eyes were moist as she watched them.
“It is the offer of our enemy,” she cried, “and the answer of our ally! Some scraps of paper!”
8. THE UNDENIABLE FORCE
Table of Contents
LAVENDALE drew a deep sigh of content as he withdrew his eyes reluctantly from the glittering phantasmagoria of the city, stretching away below like a fire-spangled carpet. He leaned back in his chair and raised his frosted glass to his lips.
“No doubt about my being an American born, Moreton?” he observed. “The first night in New York is always a real homecoming to me. And this is New York, isn’t it?” he went on, musingly, “city of steel and iron, typical, and indescribable.”
Jim Moreton, an erstwhile college friend and now a prosperous lawyer, nodded sympathetically.
“We are right in the heart of things here,” he assented. “Nothing like a roof-garden round about Broadway to see us at home. I wonder whether you noticed any change?” he went on. “They tell us that we get more European every year in our love of pleasure and luxury.”
Lavendale glanced around at the many little groups dining on the twenty-eighth story of a famous hotel, under the light of the big, yellow moon. The table illuminations, and the row of electric lights which ran along the parapet, seemed strangely insignificant. Everywhere was a loud murmur of conversation, punctuated by much feminine laughter, the incessant popping of corks, the music of the not-too-insistent string band.
“I tell you, Jimmy,” he confided, leaning forward toward his friend, “to look into the faces of these people is the greatest relief I have known for twelve months. Just at first, when war broke out, one didn’t notice much change, in England especially, but latterly there has been no mistaking it. Wherever you went, in the streets or the restaurants, you could see the writing in the faces of the people, a sort of dumb repression of feeling, just as though they were trying to get through the task of everyday life because they had to, eating and drinking because they had to, talking, amusing themselves, even, with an absent feverishness all the time—unnatural. I tell you it’s like being in some sort of a dream to be in London or Paris to-day. It’s only tonight I’ve felt myself back among real men and women again, and it’s good.”
Moreton nodded understandingly.
“A fellow was writing something of the sort in one of the Sunday papers last week,” he remarked. “Over here, of course, the whole thing to us is simply pictorial. We don’t realise or appreciate what is happening. We can’t.”
“And yet some day,” Lavendale sighed, “we shall have to go through it ourselves.”
“One of your Harvard theories cropping up again!”
“It’s more than a theory now—it’s a certainty,” Lavendale insisted. “One doesn’t need to brood, though. There’s plenty of real life buzzing around us all the time. Do you know why I sent you that wireless, Jim?”
&
nbsp; “Not an idea on earth,” the other admitted. “I guess I was conceited enough to hope that you wanted to see me again.”
“That’s so, anyway,” Lavendale assured him, “and you know it, but apart from that I want you to do something for me. I want to meet your uncle.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Moreton promised, a little dubiously. “He isn’t the easiest person to get at, as you know.”
“Where is he now?” Lavendale inquired.
“I haven’t had a line from him or my aunt for months,” Moreton replied, “but the papers say he is coming to New York to-night.”
“Is there anything in these sensational reports about his new discovery?” Lavendale asked eagerly.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” the other confessed. “There is no doubt that he is giving up his laboratories and closing down in the country. He told me himself, last time I saw him, that the thing he’d been working at, off and on, for the last thirty years, was in his hands at last, perfect. He’s through with inventing—that’s how he put it to me. He is going to spend the rest of his days reading cheap novels in the mornings and visiting the movies in the afternoons—says his brain’s tired.”
“I shouldn’t wonder at that,” Lavendale observed. “He was seventy-two last year, wasn’t he? I wonder how long he’ll keep his word, though.”
“He seems in earnest. He has been very cranky lately, and they were all terrified down at Lakeside that he’d blow up the whole place.”
“You don’t know any particulars about this last invention, I suppose?”
“If I did,” Moreton declared with a little laugh, “I could have had my weight in dollars from the newspaper men alone. No, I know nothing whatever about it. All I can promise is that I’ll take you up to Riverside Drive and do my best to boost you in. Now tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself this year, Ambrose? You’ve left the diplomatic service, haven’t you?”
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