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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  “Nothing to raid,” Mark replied. “We cleared out several days ago.”

  “That looks bad,” the other observed. “The old man has been worrying about you. The whole of France is worked up about this alliance with Russia, you know.”

  “If there is a treaty,” Mark declared, “it is not worth the paper it is written on. Never mind about that, though. All we want is a few days’ time and our freedom, until we can step out into the open.”

  Harding shook his head doubtfully.

  “The Chief will help you all he can, I am sure,” he said, “but I tell you frankly, Mark, that the Soviet, for the first time in history, is amazingly popular here just now. The newspapers have leading articles about their thousands of aeroplanes and their perfect military equipment. They talk about nothing else in the cafés. Everyone believes that a firm alliance with the Soviet is going to save France. If anything has happened to Retsky over here, and it got about that you and Prince Cheng were mixed up in it, there is no one could protect you for five minutes. It’s rather a pity that whilst you were in the air you didn’t go on as far as England.”

  The ambassador reappeared—an unhappy man.

  “Things are very black indeed, Mr. Humberstone,” he announced gravely. “Just as well to have you know that you are face to face with serious trouble. There is a woman on her way to Paris, the mistress, apparently, of this man who was supposed to be Retsky, who was present when he was shot. Your partner Cheng was there, too. He was the one who gave the order. She is in charge of a very clever commissioner from the police bureau in Nice—a fellow named Déchanel—but they will never be able to keep her quiet when she gets to Paris. Déchanel is to take her straight to Levissier. They will be here, at the latest, tomorrow morning.”

  Mark smiled confidently.

  “By to-morrow morning,” he declared, “all of France that counts won’t care whether Retsky is dead or alive. They will be looking out upon a new world.”

  Mr. Mountain resumed his seat. His expression, however, remained entirely gloomy.

  “Of course I must listen, Mr. Humberstone,” he continued, “to whatever you may choose to tell me, but I must tell you that I think you are treating the situation a great deal too lightly. For the first time in my recollection—in history, I should think—the Embassy is surrounded by French gendarmes. If your friend Prince Cheng is following you here, they will arrest him and I cannot do a thing about it. It is slightly different with you, of course, but your position is not exactly an enviable one.”

  “If I had thought, sir,” Mark went on, “that I was bringing trouble upon you by coming here, I would have stayed away. A few minutes of your time is all I am asking for now. Let me explain things my own way.”

  “Go right ahead, then,” Mr. Mountain invited.

  “You know very well,” Mark continued, “that although my father was something of an idealist, he was still the most amazing scientist, not only his generation, but the whole world has ever known.”

  “That is true enough,” Mr. Mountain admitted patiently.

  “Of course, if it had not been for him I should never have been worth a snap of the fingers,” Mark went on. “But I want you to believe this, sir. He left me the threads, he left me the great original idea and I have succeeded in bringing them together. You must believe me, Mr. Mountain. It was my father’s brain that destroyed the whole Japanese Fleet with all their guns and planes and twenty-five thousand men. I can do more than that. I can do things to the world that no one has ever dreamed of. Now, the question is this. You see how much time we have. Very little but quite enough. Bring here into this room now or at any time you will, the two men—soldiers or statesmen—whom France can trust unreservedly. Bring them here and I will convince them that everything we have done—Cheng and I—we have done with one sole idea—the idea of realising my father’s ambition and bringing peace to the world. We have run our risks and we may have to pay. We have broken the law. France can do what she likes about it. We are ready to take all that is coming to us. Neither Cheng nor I know what fear is. But listen, sir, nothing that we have done has been done in vain. We have succeeded. There will be no more war.”

  The ambassador was genuinely impressed. His eyes were full of admiration as he looked across at the speaker. Mark had seemed, perhaps, in his few but passionate words, veritably inspired. The flame of truth burned in them.

  “Very well, Mark,” he decided. “For your own sake, as well as for your father’s memory, you shall have your chance. Monsieur Châtelain, the Premier of France, and General Levissier, who is Chief of the Police now, but commanded an army corps during the war and proved himself a brilliant soldier, shall be here to-night. I will let you know as soon as the appointments are made. In the meantime don’t leave this house, or you will be arrested the moment your feet cross the threshold. Levissier himself told me that, just now, frankly. He declined, too, to give you a laissez passer or any form of permit.”

  “He will change his mind before to-morrow,” Mark declared confidently. “In the meantime, sir, may I ask Harding to send to the flying ground for my bags, and may I have a bath?”

  Mr. Mountain rang the bell.

  “Harding will do as you ask and hand you over to my own servant,” he said. “Make yourself free of the whole place, Mark. You are a very welcome and an honoured visitor, for your own sake as well as for your father’s. I cannot say more than that. From now on you must fight your own battle.”

  CHAPTER XXX

  Table of Contents

  At the Café Russe, which was somewhere on the other side of the Seine and a little to the right of the long line of cafés frequented by the most independent artistic fraternity in the world, Catherine Oronoff sat at a table alone. She, too, like her late travelling companion, was wearing the clothes in which she had flown up from Nice and her appearance lacked something of its usual trim perfection. There was a cup of coffee before her and she was smoking a cigarette with obvious appreciation. She had chosen a solitary table in a retired corner and the gaunt faced proprietor, making his afternoon promenade through the rooms, only recognised her at the last moment. He hesitated and then turned back.

  “Princess,” he ventured, bowing low. “I am not mistaken?”

  “You are not mistaken, Kreloff,” she acknowledged, with a pleasant smile of recognition. “You are Ivan Kreloff, the brother of the Count Andrew Kreloff who died on the same day as my father. I am Catherine Oronoff.”

  Kreloff sighed.

  “These are sad days, Princess, dreary days, indeed. One sees no light anywhere. One gathers no hope. Russia seems to have become a country accursed.”

  “There may yet be hope for her,” Catherine said hopefully. “Retsky, they say, has disappeared.”

  “One hears strange things about that,” the restaurant keeper remarked, glancing around. “The French people are greatly perturbed. There are reports that Retsky, who was supposed to be ill at his country house near Moscow, was actually visiting the south of France under a false name and was assassinated there.”

  Catherine Oronoff flicked the ash from her cigarette. “Reports,” she observed, “which I believe are perfectly true.”

  There was a gleam for a moment in the man’s lack-lustre, sad brown eyes. He looked over his shoulder and searchingly round the place.

  “Here in my own café I fear to discuss such matters,” he confided. “Night by night we are visited by spies.”

  “Spies from where?”

  “Some of them are from the French police. That is natural, for we have many Russian habitués who are of the old régime. Just lately, since the rumour of Retsky’s disappearance was started, I have fancied that there were one or two strangers here who might well have come from the Russia of to-day. They are not welcome, but they come.”

  Catherine shrugged her shoulders.

  “What does it matter?” she asked. “If there is ever to be any sort of revival in our country it must come after great purificatio
n by fire and suffering. War may hasten that revival. If it be true that the Chinese have seized Vladivostok and are sweeping into Russia, I am not sure that it is an evil thing.”

  Kreloff was silent. He had grave reasons for not caring to continue the discussion.

  “You are here for a purpose, Princess?” he enquired.

  “I am here to meet a friend.”

  The man leaned respectfully forward.

  “Princess,” he ventured, “you will forgive. You are not in distress?”

  She shook her head.

  “Not in the least, my good Kreloff.”

  “One makes a living here,” he went on apologetically. “A luncheon, a dinner—they are always to be had. In the day’s takings they will not appear—and there could be a room, too.”

  “You have not changed, my friend,” she exclaimed, looking up at him gratefully. “If I needed help I would accept your offer, but I have served a generous employer. We have done a great work—he and about a thousand others who have been toiling at his command. For a moment there is a pause. I have enough money, though, to live on and to help others. I am not in want, I can assure you.”

  “I am forgiven?”

  “There was nothing to forgive. You have given me a very pleasant sensation. I had begun to think that such feelings were dead. Look at me,” she went on, pulling off her small hat and smoothing her hair. “Do I look very unhappy?”

  The admiration shone for a moment out of his eyes. “Princess,” he said, “I have never seen you look so young nor, if I may say it, so beautiful.”

  She laughed.

  “That is because I am very nearly happy.”

  A moment later, Kreloff was called away by his chief maître d’hôtel. Catherine Oronoff sat on in her retired corner. The place was filling up as the hour for the apéritif arrived. She fitted another cigarette into her holder and ordered vermouth. The waiter who served it, stood respectfully on one side to allow precedence to the man who had followed him down the room—a tall man with a weary light in his eyes and wasted features, yet a comparatively young man and a man of presence. Catherine Oronoff rose to her feet and curtsied slightly. He bent over her fingers and raised them to his lips.

  “You, too, join in the farce,” he laughed gloomily. “I lent myself to it. It was before this last hideous débâcle. We had some faint gleams of hope. I think the Royalist spirit here encouraged us. Now all that is gone. Nothing is left except to go back and offer to fight for one’s country and to do that would simply mean assassination by the people one tried to succour. A queer world, Princess. The fates have not been kind to us. A century ago how good life must have tasted.”

  She pointed to the place by her side.

  “You will honour me?”

  “Why, of course,” he agreed. “Is not that why I am here?”

  He called a waiter and ordered vodka. She watched him with some satisfaction as he sipped it slowly, instead of with the eagerness of the old days—eagerness which spoke of something more than thirst.

  “Tell me about yourself,” he invited. “I heard from His Grace the Archbishop not long ago that you were his chief and most valuable supporter down in Nice.”

  “I am not in want,” she answered, “which is something for a Russian to be able to say. I have had an important position in the Bureau where I worked and I have been generously paid.”

  “You are fortunate,” he said bitterly. “Most of our women seem to be living on their virtue or rather the loss of it, and our men have become lordly gigolos ministering to these uncouth Western beauties. Tell me why you sent for me, Catherine Oronoff?”

  “One moment,” she begged. “Tell me what you think of this new unsettlement in Russia and the disappearance of Retsky? Might there not be a chance afterwards?”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “For another generation, perhaps,” he sighed. “Most of us are too old and tired. I am not sure that even I myself am man enough to make a great fight. Besides, I have lost faith. You may laugh at me, but years ago I did believe that one ruled by the favour of some unknown, unrealised being and that so long as one ruled well and justly there was reward. That has all gone. You are disappointed?” She laid her fingers upon his coat sleeve.

  “I have a message for you, Alexander,” she told him.

  “A message?” he repeated quickly. “From whom is it?”

  She hesitated.

  “It is from someone whom I hope to meet here very soon. I was to bring you with me. He has important things to say.”

  He looked at her curiously.

  “It is not like you, Catherine Oronoff, to be so mysterious.”

  “I am acting under the orders of one whom I trust.”

  “It is enough,” he acquiesced.

  “If he can get here,” she confided, dropping her voice a little, “although that may be difficult, we are to meet Mr. Cheng in a private room here.”

  “Your Bureau!”

  “The Bureau has closed its doors. Mr. Cheng is here in Paris, so is Mark Humberstone. They have very serious things to say to you, Alexander.”

  “To me? That sounds strange,” he remarked, knitting his brows.

  “It is doubtful,” she went on, “whether Mark Humberstone will be here. There is trouble with the French police concerning a certain matter, and he is sheltering at the American Embassy. Mr. Cheng is in the same trouble but he is cleverer at this sort of thing. I believe that somehow or other he will manage it.”

  A short man of cheerful appearance, dressed as a maître d’hôtel, carrying a tray and walking with brisk, light movements, came down the room and paused before their table. With a little bow, he took their empty glasses. As he did so he leaned towards Catherine.

  “It is arranged,” he said in a low tone. “It will be number seven, the first door to the right after you have ascended, and Monsieur Kreloff himself awaits you outside.”

  Her lips were opened but a cold gleam in his eyes checked the exclamation which very nearly escaped them. She recovered herself at once and rose to her feet.

  “Will you come with me, sir?” she begged.

  Alexander acquiesced promptly. Mr. Jonson collected the glasses, turned the cigarette packet upside down to make sure that it was empty and placed that, too, on the tray. He straightened the tablecloth, pushed back a cushion into its place, then he went smiling on his way through the crowded room…

  “Garçon—maître d’hôtel!”

  Jonson paused. He looked over his shoulder at another somewhat secluded table in a distant wing of the café. It was Suzanne who was seated there, faultlessly Parisian, her beautiful yellow hair fresh from the hands of the coiffeur, her little hat fresh from the stand at the modiste’s where it had reposed for a few hours only, her gown fashioned to do as little as possible to obscure the lines of her slim but voluptuous figure. Her elbows were on the table and she beckoned Mr. Jonson with a long, highly manicured finger. His footsteps seemed to have lost some of their spring as he turned and obeyed the summons.

  “It is indeed you?” she asked incredulously. “You are a waiter here?”

  “Mademoiselle se trompe,” he muttered. “She wishes something to drink—yes?”

  Suzanne laughed at him.

  “Imbécile!” she mocked. “Do I not know, too, that the Bureau has closed its doors and that Professor Ventura has no longer an engagement at the Casino de la Jetée? You have soon found another place, my friend.”

  “And you?”

  She blew out a little cloud of smoke and glanced furtively towards the entrance.

  “For me it is not so easy,” she confided. “I need money, a great deal of money, and here in Paris it seems to me that the times have changed. The flâneur of other days has disappeared.”

  “There is the other profession,” Mr. Jonson reminded her, “in which Mademoiselle also excelled.”

  She looked away from him with a little shiver.

  “I have had enough of that,” she declared.
“I prefer the easy life. I wish to run no more those risks of life and death. Besides, the Bureau has ceased to exist. There will never be anything else to take its place.”

  “For the easy life Mademoiselle is on the wrong side of the Seine.”

  “Many people come this way,” she yawned. “They fancy that they see life. Ciel, these tourists! I ask myself now, what has become of our two great men?”

  “Ah, who knows?” Jonson queried.

  “I came here,” Suzanne continued, “according to the directions of Monsieur Humberstone. Très gentil, Monsieur Humberstone. Chic aussi. Un brave jeune homme.”

  “I had not the good fortune to see Monsieur Humberstone when I left,” Jonson confided gloomily. “It was always Mr. Cheng. Some small thing went wrong and for me there was the open door.”

  “I make no complaint,” Suzanne said. “I received my démission here and a fee most generous. Perhaps it was because this was a place that Monsieur Humberstone intended to visit that I remain a client. It seems to be, however, hopeless, as you say, my friend. I must try the other side of the Seine.”

  She bent forward to watch the entrance. Several times she had cast a furtive glance in that direction.

  “If he should come here,” she continued, “I ask that you send me un petit mot. I have an apartment at seventeen Rue d’Hautpol, leading from the Champs Elysées, troisième étage.”

  “And Monsieur Cheng?” Jonson asked, watching her intently. “Will he do if Monsieur Humberstone does not come?”

  She half closed her eyes, indulging in a feline little shiver.

  “Talk to me no more of that man,” she enjoined. “I never wish to hear of him again. Monsieur Humberstone, now that one is free from the Bureau, if one could drink a glass of wine with him and talk, or drive in the Bois perhaps, or a little visit to my flat, that might be agreeable.”