“The police can do me no harm,” she declared, “and as for pay—you know yourself that they pay nothing for information. If I deceive those men, whom secretly I think we both fear, I might lose my life. So you see, Henri, it is not worth while to waste time on poor little Suzanne. If it is secret information about the Bureau for which you search, you must search elsewhere.”
Déchanel rose to his feet.
“It has been a bad day for me,” he grumbled. “All the same, you are foolish, Suzanne. Bureaux d’Espionage come and go. As a rule those who control them end their days in prison. Police protection is better.”
She threw her arms round his neck and led him towards the door.
“You, my beloved Henri,” she said, “you will always protect me, of that I feel sure, and I shall always be your loving Suzanne.”
Déchanel grunted but his departure was slightly postponed.
CHAPTER XXII
Table of Contents
Catherine came hurriedly into the Bureau where Mark was still seated. She noticed that on her unannounced entrance his hand had crept swiftly towards his hip pocket.
“As bad as that?” she exclaimed with uplifted eyebrows.
He rose to his feet and laughed light-heartedly. The lines had suddenly gone from his face. He sat on the edge of the desk, lit a cigarette and motioned her to take his chair.
“But I cannot sit still,” she confided. “That is why I left my own room. I have lost my nerve, Mark. What is it that is going on upstairs? I have never heard such a thunder of dynamos. Even my floor shakes.”
“I have not been up for an hour,” he told her. “I have had that little pipsqueak Déchanel here.”
“In search of Agrestein?”
“That was rather the idea,” Mark assented.
“Is he dangerous, do you think?” she asked.
“Not in the least. The only thing is that the authorities are bound to find out that there has been a little trouble some time or other and it doesn’t leave us much time to close down. Cheng has all the courage in the world but he is running it rather fine.”
She leaned back in the chair.
“Even now,” she said quietly, “it is terribly hard to realise what is going on, that from under this roof you and Cheng and a handful of others are planning an upheaval of the world.”
“I can’t believe it myself sometimes,” Mark confessed. “We thought it all out at Beaumont Park even before we perfected our last lot of instruments. In theory then we knew that we could do what we are doing to-day. But, my God, it is à different thing when we go into one of the dark rooms upstairs and watch thousands of men crossing the mountains in China, talk to the General and get his answer back!”
“Do not let us talk about it,” she begged. “It is too stupendous. When will Cheng be back?”
“To-night some time. How long we shall be able to stay here, though, I don’t know. I have just had a despatch from our own ambassador in London imploring me to go over at once. One of the London newspapers has it splashed all over the front page this morning that there are ten thousand American officers in China and half the American fleet off Vladivostok! Of course that’s all ridiculous—about the fleet, I mean, but it is going to lead to trouble. Then everyone knows that General Mayne is there. No one could keep that out of the news.”
Catherine rose to her feet. Mark looked at her curiously. “Know what you look like to-night, Catherine?”
“Thoroughly washed out, I suppose.”
He shook his head.
“You look like a nun,” he said. “There is not a line in your face, but neither is there any expression. Your eyes are just as beautiful as ever but the light seems gone.”
“Rubbish!” she smiled. “It is because I am wearing all black and have this little white muslin tie. Sorry you do not like me, because I was half hoping that you might have invited me to that Russian restaurant for dinner. I am not really greedy but I could not go out to lunch. I had to put all those cables into code that Cheng left me before he started off.”
“A wonderful idea,” he declared with enthusiasm. “Catherine, this is fine. Come up to my sitting-room and I’ll shake you a cocktail, then I’ll tidy up and we’ll get off. My car is round at the Laperle entrance. I was dying to get out of this place for a time. It’s just about the hour, you know, when Washington gets busy.”
They made their way to Mark’s quarters.
“Do you mind, Catherine,” he asked her as he mixed the cocktails, “if I don’t change? I have a sort of urge to get away.”
“So have I,” she told him. “Please do not think of doing such a thing.”
“Three minutes is all I shall take,” he went on. “Plenty of magazines there. Mix another cocktail for when I come out if you like. I’m aching to get into the fresh air. Touch of the mistral in the wind, I think. Things have been happening all day but I feel there’s still something coming.”
He hurried into the bathroom, plunged his head into cold water, washed, changed his shoes, brushed his hair and reappeared within the three minutes. Catherine was standing almost where he had left her—still and quiet—her hands folded in front of her, her eyes turned to the window.
“Quick!” he cried. “Let’s pretend we have only thirty seconds to be out of this place. Never mind the second cocktail. We will have one there.”
They hurried out, sped along dimly lit corridors, opened many doors with Mark’s master key and came at last to the courtyard on the east side. Mark helped her into the car, sprang into the driver’s seat and in a moment or two they were in the heart of the city.
“Gorgeous!” he exclaimed. “Now I have you to myself for a time at any rate. The world can fall to pieces if it likes but we will dine while it’s doing it.”
He was light-hearted—suddenly gay. Very soon they arrived at their destination. A corner table in a little restaurant they had visited once or twice was vacant.
“This,” he declared, “is wonderful. We will drink old Burgundy. Somehow or other you must have more colour in your cheeks. I must hear you laugh. Forget everything, Catherine, but this. Listen!”
She looked at him intently. His eyes caught hers and held them.
“All day long I have had the same pent-up feeling. A moment like this was what I craved. God—it’s wonderful! I brought you here, Catherine, to tell you before another second of the evening has passed that I love you.”
The buzz of conversation from many diners surged around them. The maître d’hôtel, with the menu in his hand, made diffident approach and, finding his advances disregarded, faded away into the distance. The small string band who had recognised a generous patron was playing softly his favourite tune, the Tango des Roses. The popping of corks, the clatter of plates, all the business connected with the services of many dinners ebbed and flowed around them. It was probably a matter of a minute or so only—Catherine never asked herself, Mark never knew—yet for the rest of their lives it remained for both of them a little fragment of life detached from the legend of the clock, a breathless passage of time when new things seemed born into the world. Mark was content. For him that silence was something he had no will to break, for all that he wished to know was there for him to read. The pallor had gone from Catherine’s face, a slow delicate streak of colour had taken its place. She was breathing a little quickly. Her lips seemed to have attained a new fullness and her eyes had lost all their weariness, even the very dimness of them, so exquisitely human, was the dimness of unshed tears. Her whisper, when at last her lips were parted, broke the spell.
“Mark, dear Mark—you really mean it?”
He drew a long breath.
“From the bottom of my heart and to the end of my life, Catherine, I mean it,” he said.
She—least impulsive of persons—suddenly stretched out her hand. He held it for a moment…This time the maître d’hôtel’s second appearance was overpowering. Their fingers reluctantly unclasped. Mark pushed the menu away.
&n
bsp; “The smallest but the best dinner you can serve us—four dishes only—the champagne the patron recommends. And listen, Serge—you can ice it up properly afterwards but open a bottle at once and fill our glasses.”
The man had perception and he hurried away.
“Catherine,” Mark continued, “I know I am a clumsy idiot. I have been dying to say this to you for I don’t know how long and yet all this business of controlling those mighty forces and Cheng’s weaving of plots and the whole drama of our day by day life seems almost to have kept one dumb, to have sapped one’s will. Oh, I don’t know how to say it! You understand. To-night I suddenly felt freed of it all when we drove away from that place. I never thought I should do anything so quaint as to say those words sitting in a little restaurant with all these people round, but there you are—I’ve said them. I mean them. And you?”
“I care for you, dear,” she said with a quiver of passion in her tone. “I always have done. It is your English word perhaps—I think I prefer the other. I love you, Mark.”
The champagne, which the patron himself had hastened to bring, foamed in their glasses. They drank their silent toast. Catherine’s fingers were shaking and veritable tears were in her eyes for a moment. She wiped them away with a half apologetic, half happy whisper.
“I have been miserable for so long, Mark,” she told him. “I felt the life being squeezed out of me. I never dreamt that I should be happy again—that this might come. Now we are going to be ordinary human beings. Just fancy though—my first glimpse of Paradise, after all these years, in the Restaurant Russe! Will you do something for me?”
“Will I?”
“Afterwards if we have time drive up to the bend in the road where we stopped on our way to Monte Carlo. Can we do this?”
“Of course we can. We will eat our festival dinner, we will drink our sacramental wine, we will have one dance and then—up to the hills.”
She half closed her eyes.
“If time would only stand still,” she murmured. “Life does not seem to have left me anything else to wish for.”
The world flowed back to them. They passed their compliments to the patron. They drank his excellent wine. Mark insisted upon his drinking their health. Monsieur, whose apprehensions were of the quickest and who like everyone of his race was overflowing with sentiment, made a gallant little speech—a few happy words full of charm and tact. Madame from her desk must join in. She, too, raised her full glass and waved her congratulations. Wine seemed to find its way as though by a miracle to the orchestra. The little restaurant was en fête. It seemed to Mark that he was back again in his college days, before the serious business of life had made almost a sober young man of him, carefree and with the joy of youth in his veins giving himself up fully and entirely to a new sense of happiness. Catherine, too, was transformed. The burden of those grey, miserable years—such a procession of them—marked with tragedies instead of festivals, all the girlhood soured in her blood, seemed to have fallen away. She was suddenly free and joyous. She flung the truth at him impulsively.
“Mark,” she said, “I have never been happy before in my life! I have only imagined what it might be like. It has come. I am happy.”
“And I—absolutely and entirely.”
They danced. They shook hands with the leader of the orchestra. They danced again. When they reached their table, with a glance of apology, Mark demanded his bill.
“Do you mind?”
She laughed.
“If you had not asked for it I should have done. I, too, am impatient…”
There was a brief epic of haste, such pourboires as had never been dreamed of in the Restaurant Russe from Mark’s eager fingers. Through the streets of the town, where the mechanical routine of driving for a moment or two brought him back to earth, up into the hills where the pale light of a mist-screened moon was more than sufficient to guide them on their way. Catherine lay back in her place, once more pale, but with her eyes, soft and brilliant now with this new light of happiness, fixed sometimes upon the slowly drifting clouds, sometimes upon Mark. The road was deserted and his great headlights blazed out the way for them. They reached the slight curve of the wall. They came to a standstill. It was the same place. He took her cold little hands into his.
“Listen, Mark,” she said. “When we were here the other night, when we stopped, I prayed to myself that you might say something like what you said to-night. Please—”
She took his arm and folded it around her waist. “Please—” she begged, looking up at him.
“Catherine, I love you,” he cried passionately. “It was all here the other night, but have I grown temperamental, I wonder? This marvellous business—it choked me somehow. But to-night it was all gone. When we hurried out of that place together I knew that I was going to say what I have kept here. Catherine, I love you.”
Her arms were suddenly around his neck clutching at him, drawing his face almost fiercely towards hers. A smile of supreme happiness was on her lips. They stepped off the edge of the mundane world.
They drove home in a state of deep but tranquil happiness. Mark permitted himself a little grimace as the flaming lights from the observatory tower of the Bureau came into sight.
“I would like to dump all that stuff into the sea,” he declared.
He was driving at a snail’s pace now. She rested her fingers upon his hand which guided the wheel.
“We shall finish the work there together, Mark,” she reminded him.
“You bet,” he answered firmly. “I am not going to part with you again, Catherine.”
“I do not wish to be parted,” she assured him, holding his hand tightly. “I have been alone since I was thirteen, Mark. That is long enough for me.”
“At half-past two to-morrow,” he confided, “you and I will be standing before the American Consul and at a quarter to three, if you ever try to run away from me, the law will step in!”
“What do you mean?” she gasped.
“I mean that you will be Mrs. Mark Humberstone, of course. I shall be your husband. Does that terrify you?”
“Mark! But it is not possible!”
“Isn’t it?” he replied. “They have got to make it possible. We will get the legal side of it done anyway—probably the whole lot.”
“To-morrow!” she repeated incredulously.
He leaned over and kissed her on the lips.
“To-morrow by twenty minutes to three,” he assured her, “sit tight, Catherine!—you will be my wife.”
CHAPTER XXIII
Table of Contents
For some reason or another there was a great crowd that night at the Jetée Casino. When Professor Ventura, the Man Who Stopped the Earth and made human beings dance like mad people, came to the front to acknowledge the applause which always followed his turn, it was necessary for him to make his bow three times before comparative silence reigned. Then, as he was in the act of turning away, an amazing thing happened. From the front row, only a few feet from the stage, a woman rose and leaned forward gripping the rail which separated the stalls from the orchestra—a heavily built woman with over-rouged cheeks and over-becarmined lips, wearing, notwithstanding the heat of the spring evening, a mantle of fur. She stood gazing in blank astonishment at the little man in the neat evening clothes who had just received with imperturbable expression the plaudits of the audience. She leaned forward as though about to spring upon the stage. Her arm shot out in his direction, a pudgy forefinger was pointed straight at him.
“Murderer!” she shrieked. “It was you who killed my man. Police—vite!”
Her thick knee was upon the partition, she seemed to be trying to struggle on to the stage.
“Au secours! He is a murderer, I tell you.”
The next turn was on the point of being announced. The leader of the orchestra swung round in his high chair and tried to push her back into her seat. A man in an adjacent stall sprang up.
“A madwoman!” he shouted. “Take care eve
ryone. She may be armed.”
All the time, the man on the stage stood watching her with unchanging expression. She recovered her breath and once more her shriek rang through the house.
“Assassin! I tell you that’ he is an assassin. Do I not know? Seize him!”
Her fingers suddenly parted from the rail, she fell back into the aisle and lay there doubled up, a queer ungainly mass of fur-covered quivering limbs. She raised her hands and pawed the air. Then her arms fell as though life had suddenly gone from her. She lay perfectly still.
“It is a fit,” someone called out. “Bring water.”
“Madame faints,” someone else exclaimed.
“Dieu me protège si ce n’est pas la mort!” a hysterical woman cried.
There was a great stir amongst the attendants and very little done. A man from the back called out that he was a doctor and tried to make his way down, but the passage was too narrow and the wedge of people too solid. No one cared in the least that the little man with the pince nez and the shrill voice might indeed be taking aid to a dying woman. They meant first to have their look at this delectable and tragic spectacle. Through the door leading from the orchestra Jonson suddenly appeared. He pushed his way to the woman and called to the bystanders to stand back.
“Here is the doctor,” someone announced.
“A glass of water,” Jonson said calmly, taking the tumbler from the hands of a programme girl who, with her clothes nearly torn off her back, had just arrived. “Let her have air, too. Stand back, people.”
He dropped on his knee, felt her pulse, examined her eyelids, undid her coat and felt her heart all in the best professional manner. Then he slipped a pastille from a bottle in his waistcoat pocket into the palm of his hand and passed it into her mouth. He poured water between her teeth. Two of the attendants had now elbowed their way through.
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