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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  Julian, in course of time, laid down the Review which he had been studying and looked out of the window.

  “We shall be in London in three quarters of an hour,” he announced politely.

  She sat up and yawned, produced her vanity case, peered into the mirror, and used her powder puff with the somewhat piquant assurance of the foreigner. Then she closed her dressing case with a snap, pulled down her veil, and looked across at him.

  “And how,” she asked demurely, “does my fiance propose to entertain me this evening?”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “With the exception of one half-hour,” he replied unexpectedly, “I am wholly at your service.”

  “I am exacting,” she declared. “I demand that half-hour also.”

  “I am afraid that I could not allow anything to interfere with one brief call which I must pay.”

  “In Downing Street?”

  “Precisely!”

  “You go to visit your friend at the Foreign Office?”

  “Immediately I have called at my rooms.”

  She looked away from him out of the window. Beneath her veil her eyes were a little misty. She saw nothing of the trimly partitioned fields, the rolling pastoral country. Before her vision tragedies seemed to pass,—the blood-stained paraphernalia of the battlefield, the empty, stricken homes, the sobbing women in black, striving to comfort their children whilst their own hearts were breaking. When she turned away from the window, her face was hardened. Once more she found herself almost hating the man who was her companion. Whatever might come afterwards, at that moment she had the sensations of a murderess.

  “You may know when you sleep to-night,” she exclaimed, “that you will be the blood-guiltiest man in the world!”

  “I would not dispute the title,” he observed politely, “with your friend the Hohenzollern.”

  “He is not my friend,” she retorted, her tone vibrating with passion. “I am a traitress in your eyes because I have received a communication from Germany. From whom does it come, do you think? From the Court? From the Chancellor or one of his myrmidons? Fool! It comes from those who hate the whole military party. It comes from the Germany whose people have been befooled and strangled throughout the war. It comes from the people whom your politicians have sought to reach and failed.”

  “The suggestion is interesting,” he remarked coldly, “but improbable.”

  “Do you know,” she said, leaning a little forward and looking at him fixedly, “if I were really your fiancee—worse! if I were really your wife—I think that before long I should be a murderess!”

  “Do you dislike me as much as all that?”

  “I hate you! I think you are the most pigheaded, obstinate, self-satisfied, ignorant creature who ever ruined a great cause.”

  He accepted the lash of her words without any sign of offence,—seemed, indeed, inclined to treat them reflectively.

  “Come,” he protested, “you have wasted a lot of breath in abusing me. Why not justify it? Tell me the story of yourself and those who are associated with you in this secret correspondence with Germany? If you are working for a good end, let me know of it. You blame me for judging you, for maintaining a certain definite poise. You are not reasonable, you know.”

  “I blame you for being what you are,” she answered breathlessly. “If you were a person who understood, who felt the great stir of humanity outside your own little circle, who could look across your seas and realise that nationality is accidental and that the brotherhood of man throughout the world is the only real fact worthy of consideration—ah! if you could realise these things, I could talk, I could explain.”

  “You judge me in somewhat arbitrary fashion.”

  “I judge you from your life, your prejudices, even the views which you have expressed.”

  “There are some of us,” he reminded her, “to whom reticence is a national gift. I like what you said just now. Why should you take it for granted that I am a narrow squireen? Why shouldn’t you believe that I, too, may feel the horror of these days?”

  “You feel it personally but not impersonally,” she cried. “You feel it intellectually but not with your heart. You cannot see that a kindred soul lives in the Russian peasant and the German labourer, the British toiler and the French artificer. They are all pouring out their blood for the sake of their dream, a politician’s dream. Freedom isn’t won by wars. It must be won, if ever, by moral sacrifice and not with blood.”

  “Then explain to me,” he begged, “exactly what you are doing? What your reason is for being in communication with the German Government? Remember that the dispatch I intercepted came from no private person in Germany. It came from those in authority.”

  “That again is not true,” she replied. “I would ask for permission to explain all these things to you, if it were not so hopeless.”

  “The case of your friends will probably be more hopeless still,” he reminded her, “after to-night.”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “We shall see,” she said solemnly. “The Russian revolution surprised no one. Perhaps an English revolution would shake even your self-confidence.”

  He made no reply. Her blood tingled, and she could have struck him for the faint smile, almost of amusement, which for a moment parted his lips. He was already on his feet, collecting their belongings.

  “Can you help me,” he asked, “with reference to the explanations which it will be necessary to make to your aunt and to my own people? We left this morning, if you remember, in order that you might visit the Russian Embassy and announce our betrothal. You are, I believe, under an engagement to return and stay with my mother.”

  “I cannot think about those things to-day,” she replied. “You may take it that I am tired and that you had business. You know my address. May I be favoured with yours?”

  He handed her a card and scribbled a telephone number upon it. They were in the station now, and their baggage in the hands of separate porters. She walked slowly down the platform by his side.

  “Will you allow me to say,” he ventured, “how sorry I am—for all this?”

  The slight uncertainty of his speech pleased her. She looked up at him with infinite regret. As they neared the barrier, she held out her hand.

  “I, too, am more sorry than I can tell you;” she said a little tremulously. “Whatever may come, that is how I feel myself. I am sorry.”

  They separated almost upon the words. Catherine was accosted by a man at whom Julian glanced for a moment in surprise, a man whose dress and bearing, confident though it was, clearly indicated some other status in life. He glanced at Julian with displeasure, a displeasure which seemed to have something of jealousy in its composition. Then he grasped Catherine warmly by the hand.

  “Welcome back to London, Miss Abbeway! Your news?”

  Her reply was inaudible. Julian quickened his pace and passed out of the station ahead of them.

  CHAPTER X

  Table of Contents

  The Bishop and the Prime Minister met, one afternoon a few days later, at the corner of Horse Guards Avenue. The latter was looking brown and well, distinctly the better for his brief holiday. The Bishop, on the contrary, was pale and appeared harassed. They shook hands and exchanged for a moment the usual inanities.

  “Tell me, Mr. Stenson,” the Bishop asked earnestly, “what is the meaning of all this Press talk, about peace next month? I have heard a hint that it was inspired.”

  “You are wrong,” was the firm reply. “I have sent my private secretary around to a few of the newspapers this morning. It just happens to be the sensation, of the moment, and it’s fed all the time from the other side.”

  “There is nothing in it, then, really?”

  “Nothing whatever. Believe me, Bishop—and there is no one feeling the strain more than I am—the time has not yet come for peace.”

  “You politicians!” the Bishop sighed. “Do you sometimes forget, I wonder, that even the pawn
s you move are human?”

  “I can honestly say that I, at any rate, have never forgotten it,” Mr. Stenson answered gravely. “There isn’t a man in my Government who has a single personal feeling in favour of, or a single benefit to gain, by the continuance of this ghastly war. On the other hand, there is scarcely one who does not realise that the end is not yet. We have pledged our word, the word of the English nation, to a peace based only upon certain contingencies. Those contingencies the enemy is not at present prepared to accept. There is no immediate reason why he should.”

  “But are you sure of that?” the Bishop ventured doubtfully. “When you speak of Germany, you speak of William of Hohenzollern and his clan. Is that Germany? Is theirs the voice of the people?”

  “I would be happy to believe that it was not,” Mr. Stenson replied, “but if that is the case, let them give us a sign of it.”

  “That sign,” declared the Bishop, with a gleam of hopefulness in his tone, “may come, and before long.”

  The two men were on the point of parting. Mr. Stenson turned and walked a yard or two with his companion.

  “By the bye, Bishop,” he enquired, “have you heard any rumours concerning the sudden disappearance of our young friend Julian Orden?”

  The Bishop for a moment was silent. A passer-by glanced at the two men sympathetically. Of the two, he thought, it was the man in spiritual charge of a suffering people who showed more sign of the strain.

  “I have heard rumours,” the Bishop acknowledged. “Tell me what you know?”

  “Singularly little,” Mr. Stenson replied. “He left Maltenby with Miss Abbeway the day after their engagement, and, according to the stories which I have heard, arranged to dine with her that night. She came to call for him and found that he had disappeared. According to his servant, he simply walked out in morning clothes, soon after six o’clock, without leaving any message, and never returned. On the top of that, though, there followed, as I expect you have heard, some very insistent police enquiries as to Orden’s doings on the night he spent with his friend Miles Furley. There is no doubt that a German submarine was close to Blakeney harbour that night and that a communication of some sort was landed.”

  “It seems absurd to connect Julian with any idea of treasonable communication with Germany,” the Bishop said slowly. “A more typical young Englishman of his class I never met.”

  “Up to a certain point I agree with you,” Mr. Stenson confessed, “but there are some further rumours to which I cannot allude, concerning Julian. Orden, which are, to say the least of it, surprising.”

  The two men came to a standstill once more.

  Stenson laid his hand upon his companion’s shoulder. “Come,” he went on, “I know what is the matter with you, my friend. Your heart is too big. The cry of the widow and the children lingers too long in your ears. Remember some of your earlier sermons at the beginning of the war. Remember how wonderfully you spoke one morning at St. Paul’s upon the spirituality to be developed by suffering, by sacrifice. `The hand which chastises also purifies.’ Wasn’t that what you said? You probably didn’t know that I was one of your listeners, even—I myself, in those days, scarcely looked upon the war as I do now. I remember crawling in at the side door of the Cathedral and sitting unrecognised on a hard chair. It was a great congregation, and I was far away in the background, but I heard. I remember the rustle, too, the little moaning, indrawn breath of emotion when the people rose to their feet. Take heart, Bishop. I will remind you once more of your own words `These are the days of purification.’”

  The two men separated. The Bishop walked thoughtfully towards the Strand, his hands clasped behind his back, the echo of those quoted words of his still in his ear. As he came to the busy crossing, he raised his head and looked around him.

  “Perhaps,” he murmured, “my eyes have been closed. Perhaps there are things to be seen.”

  He called a taxicab and, giving the man some muttered directions, was driven slowly down the Strand, looking eagerly first on one side of the way and then on the other. It was approaching the luncheon hour and the streets were thronged. Here seemed to be the meeting place of the Colonial troops,—long, sinewy men, many of them, with bronzed faces and awkward gait. They elbowed their way along, side by side with the queerest collection of people in the world. They stopped and talked in little knots, they entered and left the public houses, stood about outside the restaurants. Here and there they walked arm in arm with women. Taxicabs were turning in at the Savoy, taxicabs and private cars. Young ladies of the stage, sometimes alone, very often escorted, were everywhere in evidence. The life of London was flowing on in very much the same channels. There were few, if any signs of that thing for which he sought. The taxicab turned westwards, crossed Piccadilly Circus and proceeded along Piccadilly, its solitary occupant still gazing into the faces of the people with that same consuming interest. It was all the same over again—the smiling throngs entering and leaving the restaurants, the smug promenaders, the stream of gaily dressed women and girls. Bond Street was even more crowded with shoppers and loiterers. The shop windows were as full as ever, the toilettes of the women as wonderful. Mankind, though khaki-clad, was plentiful. The narrow thoroughfare was so crowded that his taxicab went only at a snail’s crawl, and occasionally he heard scraps of conversation. Two pretty girls were talking to two young men in uniform.

  “What a rag last night! I didn’t get home till three!”

  “Dick never got home at all. Still missing!”

  “Evie and I are worn out with shopping. Everything’s twice as expensive, but one simply can’t do without.”

  “I shouldn’t do without anything, these days. One never knows how long it may last.”

  The taxicab moved on, and the Bishop’s eyes for a moment were half-closed. The voices followed him, however. Two women, leading curled and pampered toy dogs, were talking at the corner of the street.

  “Sugar, my dear?” one was saying. “Why, I laid in nearly a hundredweight, and I can always get what I want now. The shopkeepers know that they have to have your custom after the war. It’s only the people who can’t afford to buy much at a time who are really inconvenienced.”

  “Of course, it’s awfully sad about the war, and all that, but one has to think of oneself. Harry told me last night that after paying all the income tax he couldn’t get out of, and excess profits; he is still—”

  The voices dropped to a whisper. The Bishop thrust his head out of the window.

  “Drive me to Tothill Street, Westminster,” he directed. “As quickly as possible, please.”

  The man turned up a side street and drove off. Still the Bishop watched, only by now the hopefulness had gone from his face. He had sought for something of which there had been no sign.

  He dismissed his taxicab in front of a large and newly finished block of buildings in the vicinity of Westminster. A lift man conducted him to the seventh floor, and a commissionaire ushered him into an already crowded waiting room. A youth, however, who had noticed the Bishop’s entrance, took him in charge, and, conducting him through two other crowded rooms, knocked reverently at the door of an apartment at the far end of the suite. The door was opened, after a brief delay, by a young man of unpleasant appearance, who gazed suspiciously at the distinguished visitor through heavy spectacles.

  “The Bishop wishes to see Mr. Fenn,” his guide announced.

  “Show him in at once,” a voice from the middle of the room directed. “You can go and have your lunch, Johnson.”

  The Bishop found himself alone with the man whom he had come to visit,—a moderately tall, thin figure, badly-dressed, with a drooping moustache, bright eyes and good forehead, but peevish expression. He stood up while he shook hands with the Bishop and motioned him to a chair.

  “First time you’ve honoured us, Bishop,” he remarked, with the air of one straining after an equality which he was far from feeling.

  “I felt an unconquerable impulse to talk with you
,” the Bishop admitted. “Tell me your news?”

  “Everything progresses,” Nicholas Fenn declared confidently. “The last eleven days have seen a social movement in this country, conducted with absolute secrecy, equivalent in its portentous issues to the greatest revolution of modern times. For the first time in history, Bishop, the united voice of the people has a chance of making itself heard.”

  “Mr. Fenn,” the Bishop said, “you have accomplished a wonderful work. Now comes the moment when we must pause and think. We must be absolutely and entirely certain that the first time that voice is heard it is heard in a righteous cause.”

  “Is there a more righteous cause in the world than the cause of peace?” Fenn asked sharply.

  “Not if that peace be just and reasonable,” the Bishop replied, “not if that peace can bring to an end this horrible and bloody struggle.”

  “We shall see to that,” Fenn declared, with a self-satisfied air.

  “You have by now, I suppose, the terms proposed by your—your kindred body in Germany?”

  Nicholas Fenn stroked his moustache. There was a frown upon his forehead.

  “I expect to have them at any moment,” he said, “but to tell you the truth, at the present moment they are not available.”

  “But I thought—”

  “Just so,” the other interrupted. “The document, however, was not where we expected to find it.”

  “Surely that is a very serious complication?”

  “It will mean a certain delay if we don’t succeed in getting hold of it,” Fenn admitted. “We intend to be firm about the matter, though.”

  The Bishop’s expression was troubled.

  “Julian Orden,” he said, “is my godson.”

  “Necessity knows neither friendship nor relationship,” Fenn pronounced didactically. “Better ask no questions, sir. These details do not concern you.”

  “They concern my conscience,” was the grave reply. “Ours is an earnest spiritual effort for peace, a taking away from the hands of the politicians of a great human question which they have proved themselves unable to handle. We should look, therefore, with peculiar care to the means we adopt.”