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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  Hamer made no reply. His father watched him with searching eyes. Dimly he began to wonder whether it was possible that he had made a mistake in confiding the secret of the Bird of Paradise to his son. Hamer could never feel the same hatred as had scarred his own life. France had been a second home to him. He had probably grown to love the country. Even at his father’s bidding he might hesitate to aid in striking her this mortal blow. Too late now. He had chosen his weapons and he must abide by them.

  “What you have told me, Hamer,” he continued, “concerning these other people who have been trying to buy the boat from you seems to me to be strong confirmation of the story as it was handed over to me. At any rate, as soon as the boat comes into my possession I shall pull her to pieces, and I shall know exactly where to find these records.”

  “And when you have found them?”

  “It may depend to some extent upon the names of the men implicated,” Scott Wildburn admitted. “At any rate, I promise you that I shall know how to use the document. I do not pretend that I shall not use it ruthlessly, because I shall. France will receive thee greatest shock she has ever known in her life—worse than the Revolution itself.”

  There was a light in his father’s eyes which Hamer had only seen there once before—something intensely and bitterly cruel. He felt a shiver of something like fear.

  “Father,” he said, “we shall never be so close together again as we are now. It is a time for naked words. Is this hatred of yours for France political only or is it inspired as well by the memory of a woman—my mother—who is dead?”

  “I am glad you have asked that question,” Scott Wildburn replied, “but although you are my son and hers, Hamer, I shall not answer it. You know for yourself that since the day she left me I have never set my toot on French soil and you know for yourself that I never forgive. Most men in their lives,” he went on with marked deliberation, “have one great love or one great hate, men I mean who have walked in the lofty places of life. It may be so with me. I leave it to you to divine for yourself. I only ask you, for your own sake, to remember this. Remember that you are now a partner in the world’s most dangerous secret. A word, the breath of a word, and there is a whole army of assassins ready for us, a crowd that would make the gangsters of Chicago seem like children playing on a nursery floor. How you lived on that boat, Hamer, and escaped being killed is more than I can imagine, especially after that little danseuse had visited you. You had the luck of innocence, I suppose.”

  “Is the Marquis de Montelimar one of the people implicated?” Hamer asked.

  “How do I know?” his father answered. “I’ll tell you when the records come into my hands. I imagine that the first name we draw will give the whole world a shock. Concerning the others I am not sure.”

  Hamer Wildburn was feeling dazed and utterly miserable, perhaps more miserable than he had ever been before in his life. The blackest terror of all was that overwhelming suspicion that Lucienne’s father must somehow be concerned in the records.

  “Why do you deal with this horrible business yourself, father?” he asked. “Of course, I know that newspapers nowadays practically govern the world. They make war or peace. They unearth horrible conspiracies. They deal in the honour of great men, they traffic with the national conscience of countries. But it is not their office. They were never meant to mete out justice. It is a foul way to balance the scales of justice. This thing, if it must be brought to light, dad, should never be done through the newspapers. There is at any rate one man in France who can be trusted—General Perissol. He has control over all the police and the internal secret service of France. Why not let him deal with this matter?”

  “General Perissol is an honourable man so far as I know,” Wildburn Scott admitted. “On the other hand, I am not sure that he would deal with this affair as I intend it to be dealt with.”

  “You are taking a great responsibility, sir,” Hamer insisted.

  “I don t think that anyone ever took a greater,” his father agreed. “However, it has come, and I am ready for it…Shall I send for Ned? We had better have some sort of deed of sale. Ned can take it down to Antibes to-night. I have a ‘plane waiting, and the crew are all ready to go on board. You can have your cheque now.”

  “I don’t want the cheque, dad,” Hamer said. “I’m not thinking about that. I’m thinking of the ruin which will surely come upon France if you publish those names.”

  Scott Wildburn made no reply. He stretched out his hand towards the bell. Hamer caught his wrist just in time.

  “Don’t bother, please.” he begged. “I must think for a moment.”

  Scott Wildburn turned calmly around. “Think? What about?”

  “About handing you over the boat,” Hamer cried desperately “You know what it will mean. You know the difficulty there has been in getting a Government together whom the French people are willing to trust. Six months ago the country was in peril. If these records contain any of the great names of those who are in the present Government the Ministry will fall, there will be no one else whom the people will trust and the Communists will come into power. You could not avoid a revolution then and all that is left of France that is worth having would go into the melting-pot.”

  “Glad to see you have been studying these things,” his father acquiesced. “Yes, that is probably what would happen. Leaving out the personal side, however, looking at the matter from the Frenchman’s own point of view, could anything be worse than for the country to be governed by men who are sucking the blood out of her?”

  “I do not know.” Hamer groaned. “Tanya herself put ideas into my head, but I have not had time to think them out. The only thing I am sure of is that a newspaper exposure would mean utter and complete ruin. There must be safer, less ghastly, and more diplomatic ways of dealing with the situation. The men whose names appear in the records that you spoke of, they could be approached secretly and forced to resign. They must be punished, of course, but there is no need for them to drag down the country’s honour with their own. They will lose their careers, they will be under a shadow for the rest of their lives, but you don’t want to turn the whole country into a seething inferno.”

  Scott Wildburn had drawn himself up to his full height, and a very fine figure of a man he was except for the inhumanity of his features and poise.

  “There may be some small measure of doubt in my mind as to minor details,” he said, “but what I have decided to do is already settled, and—forgive me, my son—advice from you would seem a little out of place, would it not? I am going to send for Ned.”

  “I shouldn’t.” Hamer exclaimed with desperate courage.

  His father, with his hand upon the bell, looked round at him.

  “What do you mean?” he demanded.

  “I mean that I have made up my mind not to part with the boat.” Hamer shouted. “I would sooner place a bomb in her and blow her to pieces!”

  The atmosphere seemed to grow tenser every second because of the dead silence which followed Hamer’s words. His father stood for a moment without moving, his hand poised over the bell. Then he resumed his place in his chair, and sat without gesture or speech, his eyes fixed steadily on his son. Hamer was desperately uncomfortable. He felt himself at a hopeless disadvantage beside that immense self-control.

  “I’m sorry,” he blundered out. “You see, I can’t feel about France like you do. I love it. It is my home. And then there’s Lucienne. That was a promise—the first promise I ever made her.”

  “I have always looked upon you, Hamer, as being a person of average intelligence,” his father said quietly, without the slightest trace of anger in his tone. “With average intelligence you should duly appreciate the proportions of life. I am asking one of the smallest things in the world of you considering our relative positions, which happens, owing to circumstances, to be also one of the greatest. You talk to me of a girl to whom you have become engaged during these lazy summer months—of bathing and swimming together—a
nd who suddenly seems to take the place to you of your duty to your father, your race, and your honour. I must ask you once more to be sure that there is no misunderstanding. Are you willing to place the Bird of Paradise immediately and without reservations in my hands?”

  “I must see Lucienne first.” Hamer answered doggedly. “I must find out whether her father is interested in these records before I tell her that I cannot keep my promise.”

  “And in doing that,” his father reminded him, “you disclose the whole situation. The Bird of Paradise will depart at once from the face of the waters and the most disgraceful conspiracy the modern world has ever known will remain undetected, and its authors go unpunished. All this that you may keep your word to your sweetheart.”

  “You make it sound pretty rotten, dad,” Hamer replied, “but I shall keep my word to Lucienne. I would waive all the other considerations even though I should feel that you were wrecking a great country to gratify your personal vengeance. I should think it a horrible thing to do, but I should not interfere. Your genius, the gargantuan success of your life has given you the power. If you wanted to ruin the careers of these men, one of whom at least I know to be a fine statesman, although I believe he would be involved, you must do it if you think fit. I would not interfere if you insisted, although I should loathe myself for giving way, and if you will forgive my saying so—I should lose some of my respect for you in the contemplation of such human sabotage. But I am going to keep my word to Lucienne.”

  “In that case,” his father replied, glancing at his watch, “you will perhaps excuse me. Mine is only a flying visit to Paris—the first, as you know, for many years, and I have various things to attend to. I am sorry to have given you the trouble of this fruitless journey. You have only to ask for it and a draft for your expenses will be attached to your next quarter’s allowance.”

  Something like tears stood in Hamer’s eyes. “Look here, Dad,” he remonstrated, “aren’t you hitting rather below the belt?”

  His father had touched the bell. He stood with his back to the room looking out of the window. Ned Foster, the young bespectacled secretary, made swift appearance.

  “Ned,” his chief directed, looking for a moment over his shoulder, “my son and I have failed to come to an understanding. Please take him from the suite and see that he catches the next train back to the South of France. I shall not be requiring to see him again.”

  CHAPTER XXVI

  Table of Contents

  Monsieur and Madame Crestner of the Plage Restaurant at Garoupe were excited, jubilant, but a trifle disturbed. Madame was genuinely uneasy. She drew her husband on one side away from the little babel before the bar.

  “What is it then that arrives?” she demanded. “Mademoiselle Tanya, the great artiste from Juan-les-Pins, she visits us. She says that she has invited a great supper party here of friends. She bids me provide more tables, more food, more wine. The money drops from her fingers like water.”

  “All these things,” Monsieur said, rubbing his hands gently together, “are excellent. Mademoiselle is drawing a large salary. She will not look at the bills.”

  “That is all very well,” Madame declared, “but how can we feed a hundred people? Our regular clients we have had to send away. Our cooking ranges inside and out are heaped with food. We cook, and we cook, and we cook. But a hundred people, and, ma foi, such people!”

  “It is not our concern who they are,” her husband pointed out. “As for the wine, it is stored up behind the shed. We have enough, and more than enough, for a hundred people. The food-well, they must have consideration.”

  “But listen, Jean,” she went on, clutching at his arm. “Who are these people? I ask you. Look around. I know where they come from. They come from Marseilles-nearly every one of them. Look at their faces. See how they talk together in corners. All the time I fancy that there is something on their minds. They look to me more like conspirators than men out for a night picnic with a great actress.”

  Monsieur shrugged his shoulders.

  “It is not our affair,” he decided.

  “Of course, it is our affair,” she insisted, drawing him a little further on one side. “They point, and they point, and they point—always at the Bird of Paradise. Monsieur Wildburn—si gentil—he is away in Paris. Do you note this? Auguste has not arrived for his aperitif nor for the ice to-night. Never does he miss. There is the dinghy and the small speedboat. Auguste has not left the Bird of Paradise.”

  “Is that of consequence?” Monsieur asked, after a brief visit to his kitchen.

  “I am uneasy. That is all.” she said. “Always we know there has been something; mysterious about Monsieur Wildburn’s boat. So many people visit it. They talk and they go away, and now the gunboat lying there. It seems strange that Mademoiselle should have chosen to give her party the one night that Monsieur Wildburn is away.”

  Monsieur rolled and lit a cigarette.

  “Disturb yourself no longer, little one,” he begged. “I am a restaurant keeper and you are my wife. We have a great feast to prepare for one who is well able to pay and has given us two mille already to secure the tables. To-night we are going to make money. Others can do as they wish.”

  Another carload of guests was discharged—good-looking men in their way but hard men, saturnine in appearance, few of them with the joie de vivre of the French café lounger in his face. Men with a purpose they seemed, and there was something too which Monsieur observed but of which he said nothing to his wife. Here and there war a little bulge in those queer-shaped side pockets that were very much the fashion in Marseilles…

  There was a murmur amongst the gathering crowd. Some with their aperitifs still in their hands strolled down to the edge of the water. A large speedboat had rounded the point and was making for the plage. A whisper went about.

  “It is Tanya—Tanya warned us that she would come by sea.”

  Monsieur of the restaurant shaded his eyes with his hand and looked seawards.

  “Perhaps,” he murmured, “Mademoiselle was not wise.”

  A loiterer standing by him heard the words and noticed the little streak of white which capped the waves in the distance.

  “Something which arrives, eh Monsieur?” he demanded.

  “Nothing of any account,” Monsieur replied.

  The speedboat anchored about twenty yards from the landing-stage. The loiterers took little dinghies out, and the speedboat unloaded a couple. She was crowded herself with the remainder of the guests of the evening, and there was a shout of welcome when Mademoiselle stepped on shore. Tanya was her old self. Her eyes seemed on fire. She needed no rouge upon her cheeks. Her hair, already disarranged by the wind, blew wildly about her face. She was dressed in black, but she wore a red shawl draped loosely over her shoulders. As she stepped onto the plage there was a sudden forest of uplifted hands, the murmur of a song, and then the song itself—the Red March, rolling, thunderous music—a march prohibited in France and all over Europe where the forces of government were strong enough to insist without indiscretion. They came to the scattered group of tables under the shed, singing the words and swaying their bodies to the music, and presently they forgot to sing while they clapped.

  “Monsieur Crestner,” Tanya called out, shaking hands with his wife and himself, “our feast is prepared—yes?”

  “Everything is prepared, Mademoiselle,” Madame assured her. “This is a great honour that you have done us. If only we could have accommodated more. They keep ringing up for tables, but I say that it is impossible. I have six extra waiters. I hope that everything will be well served—that Mademoiselle will excuse.”

  “We will excuse everything,” Tanya declared gaily. “Let there be plenty of food and wine and we will help ourselves. We are hungry, and, above all, we are thirsty.”

  The man by her side, a man of gigantic frame, but of savage, unpleasant expression, clapped his hands together.

  “Mademoiselle Tanya speaks the truth,” he said, “
but there are other things, too, in our blood.”

  She pulled him by the sleeve.

  “Sit down,” she enjoined. “The time is not yet.”

  An officer from the Fidélité drove up in a taxicab and on his way to the landing stage stared around him in amazement. A sudden silence fell upon the crowd at the sight of his uniform. He had an uneasy feeling that he was the cynosure of a hundred hostile gazes. He paused, however, and addressed one of the waiters whom he knew.

  “What on earth is this which goes on to-night?” he demanded.

  “It is Mademoiselle Tanya, the great danseuse, who gives a party,” the man explained.

  The officer smiled. He knew nothing of Mademoiselle, save as a danseuse. He looked towards the table where she sat and saluted. She waved her hand.

  “Queer looking lot to-night,” he muttered to the boatman who was lounging at the end of the pier, looking earnestly out to sea.

  “Shan’t be sorry to see the back of ‘em, sir,” was the fervent reply.

  A gendarme, who was on duty all day to regulate the traffic, crept round to the back of the shed and mounted his bicycle. An inspiration had arrived to him. He had overheard scraps of the conversation at the head table where Tanya was seated with a little crowd of men whose appearance was not altogether festive.

  At their extemporised dining table on the fringe of the pine woods, which reached almost to the villa itself, General Perissol and Louise sat lingering over an unusually late dinner. From where they sat the bay was almost hidden although faint sounds of revelry below mounted at times to their hearing. Perissol, after many hours of hard and continuous fighting, was realising, perhaps for the first time, the glow of an undisturbed happiness. Louise, notwithstanding the new softness in her eyes and her general air of regained youth, showed some faint signs of anxiety as every now and then the strains of music and the faint echoes of laughter floated up from the plage. Coffee had been served and the servants had disappeared. She leaned forward and smoothed his hand.