The telephone rang a few minutes later. Crawshay this time took up the receiver, and Brightman the spare one which hung by the side. It was Henshaw speaking.
“Miss Beverley has just gone in to dinner,” he announced. “She is accompanied by Mr. Jocelyn Thew and a young officer in the uniform of a Flight Commander.”
“What is his name?” Crawshay asked.
“I have had no opportunity of finding out yet,” was the reply. “I believe that he is staying in the hotel, and he seems to be on very intimate terms with Miss Beverley.”
“On no account lose sight of the party,” Crawshay directed, “and try and find out the young soldier’s name. Wasn’t he introduced to Jocelyn Thew?”
“Not a bit of it,” was the prompt reply. “They shook hands very much like old friends.”
“Go back and watch,” Crawshay directed. “I must know his name. The sooner you can find out, the better. I want to get away within a few minutes, if I can.”
They left the instrument. Crawshay, who seemed a little nervous, took a cigarette from an open box which he passed across to his companion, and strolled up and down the room for a few moments with his hands in his pockets.
“A young officer,” he remarked, “presumably English, known to both Miss Beverley and Jocelyn Thew, seems rather a puzzle. He may be the connecting link. I hope to goodness your man won’t be long, Brightman.”
“Are you in a hurry?” the detective asked.
Crawshay nodded.
“I want to get round to the Savoy,” he announced.
Brightman smiled slightly.
“Were you thinking about the young lady, sir?” he asked.
“I thought it might be useful to renew my acquaintance with her,” Crawshay explained, a little laboriously. “I shouldn’t think she’d go out alone.”
“She has probably made some friends by this time,” Brightman observed.
Crawshay dropped his eyeglass and polished it.
“From my experience of the young lady,” he said, a little stiffly, “I should think it improbable. I happened to meet her twice in New York, and she struck me as being an extraordinarily well-behaved and, in her natural way, very attractive person.”
“Do you suppose that she came to Europe after Jocelyn Thew?” Brightman asked.
“Oh, damn Jocelyn Thew!” Crawshay replied. “I should think it most unlikely. You and I have both seen the man’s dossier. Most cold-blooded person alive.”
The telephone broke in once more upon their conversation. Crawshay took up the receiver. It was Henshaw speaking.
“I made a mistake about the uniform, sir,” he announced. “The young man is in the Canadian Flying Corps and he is the young lady’s brother. He is called Captain Beverley.”
“Her brother!” Crawshay exclaimed.
“The connecting link!” Brightman murmured.
Meanwhile, the little dinner at Claridge’s, of which sketchy tidings were being conveyed to the two occupants of Crawshay’s flat by Henshaw, was settling down, so far as the two men were concerned, into a cheery enough meal. There had been a little strangeness at first, but Jocelyn Thew’s hearty welcome of his young friend, and his genuine pleasure at seeing him, had quickly broken the ice. Katharine, however, although she had a shade more colour than earlier in the day, had sometimes the air of a Banquo at the feast. She listened almost feverishly to Jocelyn Thew, whenever he seemed inclined to turn the conversation into a certain channel, and she watched her brother a little anxiously as the waiter filled up his glass, unchecked, every few minutes. The likeness between the two was apparent enough, although marked by certain differences. Beverley was tall, of exceedingly powerful build, and with a fresh, strong face which would have been remarkably attractive but for the weak mouth and the slightly puffy cheeks.
“I can’t conceive anything more fortunate than this meeting,” Jocelyn Thew declared, as he inspected the cigars which had been brought round to him, with the air of a connoisseur. “Quite an extraordinary coincidence, too, that you should turn up in London on five days’ leave, the very day that your sister arrives from the States. Tell me, are you right up at the front?”
“Right beyond it, most days,” was the cheerful reply. “We spend most of our time over the German lines.”
“Lucky fellow!” Jocelyn Thew sighed. “You are getting now what a few years ago one had to defy the law for—real, thrilling sensations. It’s a life for men, yours.”
The young man’s hand shook a little as he raised his glass. He looked towards Jocelyn Thew almost appealingly.
“It’s a splendid life,” he assented, talking rapidly and with the air of one who wishes to stifle conversation. “I had hard work to get my wings, but I guess I’m all right now. The engine part of it never gave me any trouble, but I suffered from a kind of sickness the first few times I went up. It’s a gorgeous sensation, flying. The worst of it is we never know when those cunning Germans aren’t coming out with something fresh. They stung us up last week with a dozen planes of an entirely new pattern, two hundred and fifty horse-power engines on a small frame. Gee, they gave some of our elderly machines a touching up, I can tell you!”
“So you fly over the German lines most days, eh?” Jocelyn Thew ruminated.
“We dropped a few thousand copies of the President’s speech last Monday,” the young man told them. “That ought to give them something to think about. They only know just what they are told. The last batch of prisoners that were brought in firmly believed that one of their armies had landed in England and that London was on the point of falling.”
“All war,” Jocelyn Thew said didactically, “is carried on under a cloud of misconception.”
The young man stretched himself out. He had dined well and his courage was returning. He asked a question which up till then he had felt inclined to shirk.
“What licks me,” he declared suddenly, “is finding you two over here. What ever brought you across, Katharine?”
There was a brief silence. Katharine seemed uncertain how to answer. It was Jocelyn Thew who took up the challenge.
“A little over a fortnight ago,” he explained, “I called upon your sister in New York. I begged her to perform a certain service for me. She consented. The execution of that service brought her across from New York on board the City of Boston.”
“But have you two been seeing anything of one another, then? You never mentioned Thew in any of your letters, Katharine?”
“Your sister and I have not met since a certain memorable occasion,” Jocelyn Thew replied.
The young man shivered and drained his glass.
“What was this service?” he enquired.
“Your sister played sick nurse upon the steamer to a person in whom I was interested, and who was operated upon in her hospital,” Jocelyn Thew explained. “He was an Englishman, and very anxious to reach his own country before he died.”
“I can’t quite catch on to it,” Beverley admitted.
Jocelyn Thew glanced carelessly around. His manner was the reverse of suspicious, but he only resumed his speech when he was sure that not even a waiter was within hearing.
“It happened to form part of an important plan of mine,” he said, “that a man who was dangerously ill should be brought over to England without raising any suspicion as to his bona fides. I made use of your sister’s name and social position to ensure this. There has been, as I think you have often acknowledged, Beverley, a debt owing from you to me. Half of that debt your sister has paid.”
“You haven’t been getting Katharine mixed up in any crooked business?” her brother demanded excitedly.
“Your sister ran no risk whatever,” Jocelyn Thew assured him. “She performed her share of the bargain excellently. It is just possible,” he continued, with a glint of fire in his eyes and a peculiar, cold emphasis creeping into his words, “that it may fall to your lot to wipe out the remainder of the debt.”
Beverley moved in his chair uneasily.
“You will remember,” he said, “that things have changed. I am not a free agent now. I entered upon this fighting business as an adventure, but, my God, Thew, it’s got into my blood! I’ve seen things, felt things. I don’t want anything to come between me and the glorious life I live day by day.”
Jocelyn Thew nodded approvingly.
“That’s the proper spirit, Beverley,” he declared. “I always knew you had pluck. Quite the proper spirit! Your sister showed the same courage when the necessity came.”
“Oh, don’t bring me into this, please!” she interrupted.
“You seem to have been brought into it,” her brother observed grimly, “and I’m not sure that I am satisfied. I can pay my own debts.”
There was a note of rising anger in his tone. Katharine laid her fingers upon his hand.
“Don’t imagine things, please, Dick,” she begged. “It is my own foolishness if I am disturbed. I really had nothing to do. Mr. Thew has been most considerate.”
“In any case,” Jocelyn Thew went on, “I think that the matter had better be discussed another time, when we are alone. We might have to make reference to things which are best not mentioned in a public place.”
For a moment the young man’s eyes challenged his. Then they fell. He shivered a little.
“Why ever speak of them?” he demanded.
“Ah, well, we’ll see,” Jocelyn Thew observed. “Now what about an hour or two at a music-hall? I have a box at the Alhambra.”
Katharine rose at once to her feet. They all made their way into the lounge. Whilst they waited for her to fetch her cloak, Beverley swung round to his companion.
“Look here,” he said, “for myself it doesn’t matter—you know that—but what game are you playing? I don’t know much about your life, of course, before those few days, but on your own showing you were out for big things. Are you known here? Is it anything—anything against the law, this business you’re on? I don’t care for myself—you know that. It’s Katharine I’m thinking of.”
Jocelyn Thew knocked the ash from his cigar. He smiled deprecatingly at his companion. Certainly there was no man in that very fashionable restaurant who looked less like a criminal.
“My dear Beverley,” he expostulated, “you must remember that I am an exceedingly clever person. I am suspected of any number of misdemeanours. I will not say that there are not one or two of which I have not been guilty, but I have never left behind me any proof. I dare say the English police over here look on me sometimes just as hungrily as the New York ones. They feel in their hearts that I am an adventurer. They feel that I have been connected with some curious enterprises, both in the States and various other countries of the globe. They know very well that where there has been fighting and loot and danger, I have generally followed under my own flag. They know all this, but they can prove nothing against me. They can only watch me, and that they do wherever I am. They are watching me now, every hour of the day.”
“It isn’t,” the young man commenced, with a sudden break in his tone—
Jocelyn shook his head.
“No, my young friend,” he said, “the curtain fell upon that little episode. I doubt whether there is even a police record of it. It isn’t the lives of individuals I am juggling with to-day. It’s the life of a nation.”
“Are you a spy?” Beverley asked him hoarsely.
“Your sister,” Jocelyn Thew pointed out, “is waiting for us.”
CHAPTER XX
Table of Contents
Crawshay, having the good fortune to find, as he issued from his rooms, a taxicab whose driver’s ideas of speed were in accordance with his own impatience, managed to reach the Savoy at a few minutes before eight. He entered the hotel by the Court entrance. An insignificant-looking young man with a fair moustache and watery eyes touched him on the shoulder as he passed through the Court lobby. Crawshay glanced lazily around and assured himself that they were unobserved.
“Anything fresh?” he asked laconically.
“Nothing. We have searched Miss Sharey’s rooms thoroughly, and two of our men have been over Thew’s apartments again.”
“Miss Sharey up-stairs?”
The young man shook his head.
“Hasn’t been up for some hours,” he reported.
Crawshay nodded and strolled on. He left his coat and hat in charge of the attendant, and entered the grill room. Here, however, he met with disappointment. The place was crowded but his search was methodical. There was no sign there of Nora Sharey. He climbed the few stairs and entered the smoking room. Seated in an armchair, reading a novel, he discovered the young lady of whom he was in search.
He crossed the room at a slow saunter, as though on his way to the bar, and paused before the girl’s chair. She laid down her book and looked up at him. Her smile at once assured him of a welcome.
“I am glad that I am not altogether forgotten, Miss Sharey,” he said, holding out his hand which she promptly accepted. “I suppose it still is Miss Sharey, is it? I hope so.”
“I guess the name’s all right,” she replied. “Glad to see you don’t bear any ill-will against me, Mr. Crawshay. You Englishmen sometimes get so peevish when things don’t go quite your way, and you weren’t saying nice things to me last time we met.”
Crawshay smiled and glanced at the seat by her side. She made room for him, and he subsided into the vacant space with a little sigh of content.
“A man’s profession,” he confided, “sometimes makes large and repugnant demands upon him.”
“If that means you are sorry you were rude to me last time we met down in Fourteenth Street,” she said, “I guess I may as well accept your apology. You were a trifle disappointed then, weren’t you?”
“We acted,” Crawshay explained, with studied laboriousness,—“my friends and I acted, that is to say—upon inconclusive information. America at that time, you see, was a neutral Power, and the facilities granted us by the New York police were limited in their character. My department was thoroughly convinced that the—er—restaurant of which your father was the proprietor was something more than the ordinary meeting place of that section of your country-people who carried their enmity towards my country to an unreasonable extent.”
She looked at him admiringly.
“Say, you know how to talk!” she observed. “What about getting an innocent girl turned out of a job at Washington, though?”
Crawshay stroked his long chin reflectively.
“You don’t suppose,” he began—
“Oh, don’t yarn!” she interrupted. “I’m not squealing. You knew very well that I’d no need to take a post as telephone operator, and you did your duty when you got me turned off. It was very clever of you,” she went on, “to tumble to me.”
Crawshay accepted the compliment with a smile.
“If you will permit me to say so, Miss Sharey,” he declared, “you are what we call in this country a good sportsman.”
“Oh, I can keep on the tracks all right,” she assented. “I guess I am a little easier to deal with, for instance, than your friend Mr. Jocelyn Thew.”
Crawshay frowned. His expression became gloomier.
“I am bound to confess, Miss Sharey,” he sighed, “that your friend Mr. Jocelyn Thew has been the disappointment of my life.”
“Some brains, eh?”
“He has brains, courage and luck,” Crawshay pronounced. “Against these three things it is very hard work to bring off—shall I say a coup?”
“The man who gets the better of Jocelyn Thew,” she declared, with a little laugh, “deserves all the nuts. He is a sure winner every time. You’re up against him now, aren’t you?”
“More or less,” Crawshay confessed. “I crossed on the steamer with him.”
“I bet that didn’t do you much good!”
“I lost the first game,” Crawshay confessed candidly. “I see that you know all about it.”
“No need to put me wiser than I am,
” the girl observed carelessly. “Jocelyn Thew’s no talker.”
“Not unless it serves his purpose. It is astonishing,” Crawshay went on reflectively, “how the science of detection has changed during the last ten years. When I was an apprentice at it—and though you may not think it. Miss Sharey, I am a professional, not an amateur, although I am generally employed on Government business—secrecy was our watchword. We hid in corners, we were stealthy, we always posed as being something we weren’t. We should have denied emphatically having the slightest interest in the person under surveillance. In these days, however, everything is changed. We play the game with the cards upon the table—all except the last two or three, perhaps—and curiously enough, I am not at all sure that it doesn’t add finesse to the game.”
Her eyes flashed appreciatively.
“You’re dead right,” she acknowledged. “Take us two, for instance. You know very well that Jocelyn Thew is a pal of mine. You know very well that I shall see him within the next twenty-four hours. You know very well that you’re out to hunt him to the death, and you know that I know it. Every question you ask me has a purpose, yet we talk here just as chance acquaintances might—I, a girl whom you rather like the look of—you do like the look of me, don’t you, Mr. Crawshay?”
Crawshay had no need to be subtle. His eyes and tone betrayed his admiration.
“I have thoroughly disliked you ever since you were too clever for me in New York,” he confessed, “and I have been in love with you all the time.”
“And you,” she continued, with a little gleam of appreciation in her eyes, “are a very pleasant-looking, smart, agreeable Englishman, who looks as though he knew almost enough to ask a poor girl out to dinner.”
Crawshay glanced at his wrist watch.
“It is you who have the science of detection,” he declared. “You have read my thoughts. Do you wish to change your clothes first, or shall we turn in at a grill room?”
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