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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  “I must plead ignorance,” Lessingham regretted, “of everything connected with mackerel spinning.”

  “It’s fine sport for a change,” Sir Henry declared. “The only thing is that if you strike a shoal one gets tired of hauling the beggars in. By-the-by, has Jimmy been up for me, Philippa? Have you heard whether there are any mackerel in?”

  Philippa raised her eyebrows.

  “Mackerel!” she repeated sarcastically.

  “Have you any objection to the fish, dear?” Sir Henry enquired blandly.

  Philippa made no reply. Her husband frowned and turned towards Lessingham.

  “You see,” he complained a little irritably, “my wife doesn’t approve of my taking an interest even in fishing while the war’s on, but, hang it all, what are you to do when you reach my age? Thinks I ought to be a special constable, don’t you, Philippa?”

  “Need we discuss this before Mr. Lessingham?” she asked, without looking up from her paper.

  Lessingham promptly prepared to take his departure.

  “See something more of you, I hope,” Sir Henry remarked hospitably, as he conducted his guest to the door. “Where are you staying here?”

  “At the hotel.”

  “Which?”

  “I did not understand that there was more than one,” Lessingham replied. “I simply wrote to The Hotel, Dreymarsh.”

  “There is only one hotel open, of course, Mr. Lessingham,” Philippa observed, turning towards him. “Why do you ask such an absurd question, Henry? The ‘Grand’ is full of soldiers. Come and see us whenever you feel inclined, Mr. Lessingham.”

  “I shall certainly take advantage of your permission, Lady Cranston,” were the farewell words of this unusual visitor as he bowed himself out.

  Sir Henry moved to the sideboard and helped himself to a whisky and soda. Philippa laid down her newspaper and watched him as though waiting patiently for his return. Helen and Nora had already obeyed the summons of the dressing bell.

  “Henry, I want to hear your news,” she insisted. He threw himself into an easy-chair and turned over the contents of Philippa’s workbasket.

  “Where’s that tie of mine you were mending?” he asked. “Is it finished yet?”

  “It is upstairs somewhere,” she replied. “No, I have not finished it. Why do you ask? You have plenty, haven’t you?”

  “Drawers full,” he admitted cheerfully. “Half of them I can never wear, though. I like that black and white fellow. Your friend Lessingham was wearing one exactly like it.”

  “It isn’t exactly an uncommon pattern,” Philippa reminded him.

  “Seems to have the family taste in clothes,” Sir Henry continued, stroking his chin. “That grey tweed suit of his was exactly the same pattern as the suit Richard was wearing, the last time I saw him in mufti.”

  “They probably go to the same tailor,” Philippa remarked equably.

  Sir Henry abandoned the subject. He was once more engrossed in an examination of the mackerel spinners.

  “You didn’t answer my question about Jimmy Dumble,” he ventured presently.

  Philippa turned and looked at him. Her eyes were usually very sweet and soft and her mouth delightful. Just at that moment, however, there were new and very firm lines in her face.

  “Henry,” she said sternly, “you are purposely fencing with me. Mr. Lessingham’s taste in clothes, or Jimmy Dumble’s comings and goings, are not what I want to hear or talk about. You went to London, unwillingly enough, to keep your promise to me. I want to know whether you have succeeded in getting anything from the Admiralty?”

  “Nothing but the cold shoulder, my dear,” he answered with a little chuckle.

  “Do you mean to say that they offered you nothing at all?” she persisted. “You may have been out of the service too long for them to start you with a modern ship, but surely they could have given you an auxiliary cruiser, or a secondary command of some sort?”

  “They didn’t even offer me a washtub, dear,” he confessed. “My name’s on a list, they said—”

  “Oh, that list!” Philippa interrupted angrily. “Henry, I really can’t bear it. Couldn’t they find you anything on land?”

  “My dear girl,” he replied a little testily, “what sort of a figure should I cut in an office! No one can read my writing, and I couldn’t add up a column of figures to save my life. What is it?” he added, as the door opened, and Mills made his appearance.

  “Dumble is here to see you, sir.”

  “Show him in at once,” his master directed with alacrity. “Come in, Jimmy,” he went on, raising his voice. “I’ve got something to show you here.”

  Philippa’s lips were drawn a little closer together. She swept past her husband on her way to the door.

  “I hope you will be so good,” she said, looking back, “as to spare me half an hour of your valuable time this evening. This is a subject which I must discuss with you further at once.”

  “As urgent as all that, eh?” Sir Henry replied, stopping to light a cigarette. “Righto! You can have the whole of my evening, dear, with the greatest of pleasure.—Now then, Jimmy!”

  CHAPTER VI

  Table of Contents

  Jimmy Dumble possessed a very red face and an extraordinary capacity for silence. He stood a yard or two inside the room, twirling his hat in his hand. Sir Henry, after the closing of the door, did not for a moment address his visitor. There was a subtle but unmistakable change in his appearance as he stood with his hands in his pockets, and a frown on his forehead, whistling softly to himself, his eyes fixed upon the door through which his wife had vanished. He swung round at last towards the telephone.

  “Stand by for a moment, Jimmy, will you?” he directed.

  “Aye, aye, sir!”

  Sir Henry took up the receiver. He dropped his voice a little, although it was none the less distinct.

  “Number one—police-station, please.—Hullo there! The inspector about?—That you, Inspector?—Sir Henry Cranston speaking. Could you just step round?—Good! Tell them to show you straight into the library. You might just drop a hint to Mills about the lights, eh? Thank you.”

  He laid down the receiver and turned towards the fisherman.

  “Well, Jimmy,” he enquired, “all serene down in the village, eh?”

  “So far as I’ve seen or heard, sir, there ain’t been a word spoke as shouldn’t be.”

  “A lazy lot they are,” Sir Henry observed.

  “They don’t look far beyond the end of their noses.”

  “Maybe it’s as well for us, sir, as they don’t,” was the cautious reply.

  Sir Henry strolled to the further end of the room.

  “Perhaps you are right, Jimmy,” he admitted.

  “That fellow Ben Oates seems to be the only one with ideas.”

  “He don’t keep sober long enough to give us any trouble,” Dumble declared. “He began asking me questions a few days ago, and I know he put Grice’s lad on to find out which way we went last Saturday week, but that don’t amount to anything. He was dead drunk for three days afterwards.”

  Sir Henry nodded.

  “I’m not very frightened of Ben Oates, Jimmy,” he confided, as he threw open the door of a large cabinet which stood against the further wall. “No strangers about, eh?”

  “Not a sign of one, sir.”

  Sir Henry glanced towards the door and listened.

  “Shall I just give the key a turn, sir?” his visitor asked.

  “I don’t think it is necessary,” Sir Henry replied. “They’ve all gone up to change. Now listen to me, Jimmy.”

  He leaned forward and touched a spring. The false back of the cabinet, with its little array of flies, spinners, fishing hooks and tackle, slowly rolled back. Before them stood a huge chart, wonderfully executed in red, white and yellow.

  “That’s a marvellous piece of work, sir,” the fisherman observed admiringly.

  “Best thing I ever did in my life,” Sir Henry
agreed. “Now see here, Jimmy. We’ll sail out tomorrow, or take the motor boat, according to the wind. We’ll enter Langley Shallows there and pass Dead Man’s Rock on the left side of the waterway, and keep straight on until we get Budden Wood on the church tower. You follow me?”

  “Aye, aye, sir!”

  “We make for the headland from there. You see, we shall be outside the Gidney Shallows, and number twelve will pick us up. Put all the fishing tackle in the boat, and don’t forget the bait. We must never lose sight of the fact, Jimmy, that the main object of our lives is to catch fish.”

  “That’s right, sir,” was the hearty assent.

  “We’ll be off at seven o’clock sharp, then,” Sir Henry decided.

  “The tide’ll be on the flow by that time,” Jimmy observed, “and we’ll get off from the staith breakwater. That do be a fine piece of work and no mistake,” he added, as the false back of the cabinet glided slowly to its place.

  Sir Henry chuckled.

  “It’s nothing to the one I’ve got on number twelve, Jimmy,” he said. “I’ve got the seaweed on that, pretty well. You’ll take a drop of whisky on your way out?” he added. “Mills will look after you.”

  “I thank you kindly, sir.”

  Mills answered the bell with some concern in his face.

  “The inspector is here to see you, sir,” he announced. “He did mention something about the lights. I’m sure we’ve all been most careful. Even her ladyship has only used a candle in her bedroom.”

  “Show the inspector in,” Sir Henry directed, “and I’ll hear what he has to say. And give Dumble some whisky as he goes out, and a cigar.”

  “Wishing you good night, sir,” the latter said, as he followed Mills. “I’ll be punctual in the morning. Looks to me as though we might have good sport.”

  “We’ll hope for it, anyway, Jimmy,” his employer replied cheerfully. “Come in, Inspector.”

  The inspector, a tall, broad-shouldered man, saluted and stood at attention. Sir Henry nodded affably and glanced towards the door. He remained silent until Mills and Dumble had disappeared.

  “Glad I happened to catch you, Inspector,” he observed, sitting on the edge of the table and helping himself to another cigarette. “Any fresh arrivals?”

  “None, sir,” the man reported, “of any consequence that I can see. There are two more young officers for the Depot, and the young lady for the Grange, and Mr. and Mrs. Silvester returned home last night. There was a commercial traveller came in the first train this morning, but he went on during the afternoon.”

  “Hm! What about a Mr. Lessingham—a Mr. Hamar Lessingham?”

  “I haven’t heard of him, sir.”

  “Have you had the registration papers down from the hotel yet?”

  “Not this evening, sir. I met the Midland and Great Northern train in myself. Her ladyship was the only passenger to alight here.”

  “And I came the other way myself,” Sir Henry reflected.

  “Now you come to mention the matter, sir,” the inspector continued, “I was up at the hotel this afternoon, and I saw some luggage about addressed to a name somewhat similar to that.”

  “Probably sent on in advance, eh?”

  “There could be no other way, sir,” the inspector replied, “unless the registration paper has been mislaid. I’ll step up to the hotel this evening and make sure.”

  “You’ll oblige me very much, if you will. By Jove,” Sir Henry added, looking towards the door, “I’d no idea it was so late!”

  Philippa, who had changed her travelling dress for a plain black net gown, was standing in the doorway. She looked at the inspector, and for a moment the little colour which she had seemed to disappear.

  “Is anything the matter?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Nothing in the world, my dear,” her husband assured her. “I am frightfully sorry I’m so late. Jimmy stayed some time, and then the inspector here looked in about our lights. Just a little more care in this room at night, he thinks. We’ll see to it, Inspector.”

  “I am very much obliged, sir,” the man replied. “Sorry to be under the necessity of mentioning it.”

  Sir Henry opened the door.

  “You’ll find your own way out, won’t you?” he begged. “I’m a little late.”

  The inspector saluted and withdrew. Sir Henry glanced round.

  “I won’t be ten minutes, Philippa,” he promised. “I had no idea it was so late.”

  “Come here one moment, please,” she insisted.

  He came back into the room and stood on the other side of the small table near which she had paused.

  “What is it, dear?” he enquired. “We are going to leave our talk till after dinner, aren’t we?”

  She looked him in the face. There was an anxious light in her eyes, and she was certainly not herself. “Of course! I only wanted to know—it seemed to me that you broke off in what you were saying to the inspector, as I came into the room. Are you sure that it was the lights he came around about? There isn’t anything else wrong, is there?”

  “What else could there be?” he asked wonderingly.

  “I have no idea,” she replied, with well-simulated indifference. “I was only asking you whether there was anything else?”

  He shook his head.

  “Nothing!”

  She threw herself into an easy-chair and picked up a magazine.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Do hurry, please. I have a new cook and she asked particularly whether we were punctual people.”

  “Six minutes will see me through it,” Sir Henry promised, making for the door. “Come to think of it, I missed my lunch. I think I’ll manage it in five.”

  CHAPTER VII

  Table of Contents

  Sir Henry was in a pleasant and expansive humour that evening. The new cook was an unqualified success, and he was conscious of having dined exceedingly well. He sat in a comfortable easy-chair before a blazing wood fire, he had just lit one of his favourite brand of cigarettes, and his wife, whom he adored, was seated only a few feet away.

  “Quite a remarkable change in Helen,” he observed. “She was in the depths of depression when I went away, and to-night she seems positively cheerful.”

  “Helen varies a great deal,” Philippa reminded him.

  “Still, to-night, I must say, I should have expected to have found her more depressed than ever,” Sir Henry went on. “She hoped so much from your trip to London, and you apparently accomplished nothing.”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “And you have had no letters?”

  “None.”

  “Then Helen’s high spirits, I suppose, are only part of woman’s natural inconsistency.—Philippa, dear!”

  “Yes?”

  “I am glad to be at home. I am glad to see you sitting there. I know you are nursing up something, some little thunderbolt to launch at me. Won’t you launch it and let’s get it over?”

  Philippa laid down the book which she had been reading, and turned to face her husband. He made a little grimace.

  “Don’t look so severe,” he begged. “You frighten me before you begin.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but my face probably reflects my feelings. I am hurt and grieved and disappointed in you, Henry.”

  “That’s a good start, anyway,” he groaned.

  “We have been married six years,” Philippa went on, “and I admit at once that I have been very happy. Then the war came. You know quite well, Henry, that especially at that time I was very, very fond of you, yet it never occurred to me for a moment but that, like every other woman, I should have to lose my husband for a time.—Stop, please,” she insisted, as he showed signs of interrupting. “I know quite well that it was through my persuasions you retired so early, but in those days there was no thought of war, and I always had it in my mind that if trouble came you would find your way back to where you belonged.”

  “But, my dear child, that is all very well,” Sir H
enry protested, “but it’s not so easy to get back again. You know very well that I went up to the Admiralty and offered my services, directly the war started.”

  “Yes, and what happened?” Philippa demanded. “You were, in a measure, shelved. You were put on a list and told that you would hear from them—a sort of Micawber-like situation with which you were perfectly satisfied. Then you took that moor up in Scotland and disappeared for nearly six months.”

  “I was supplying the starving population with food,” he reminded her genially. “We sent about four hundred brace of grouse to market, not to speak of the salmon. We had some very fair golf, too, some of the time.”

  “Oh, I have not troubled to keep any exact account of your diversions!” Philippa said scornfully. “Sometimes,” she continued, “I wonder whether you are quite responsible, Henry. How you can even talk of these things when every man of your age and strength is fighting one way or another for his country, seems marvellous to me. Do you realise that we are fighting for our very existence? Do you realise that my own father, who is fifteen years older than you, is in the firing line? This is a small place, of course, but there isn’t a man left in it of your age, with your physique, who has had the slightest experience in either service, who isn’t doing something.”

  “I can’t do more than send in applications,” he grumbled. “Be reasonable, my dear Philippa. It isn’t the easiest thing in the world to find a job for a sailor who has been out of it as long as I have.”

  “So you say, but when they ask me what you are doing, as they all did in London this time, and I reply that you can’t get a job, there is generally a polite little silence. No one believes it. I don’t believe it.”

  “Philippa!”

  Sir Henry turned in his chair. His cigar was burning now idly between his fingers. His heavy eyebrows were drawn together.

  “Well, I don’t,” she reiterated. “You can be angry, if you will—in fact I think I should prefer you to be angry. You take no pains at the Admiralty. You just go there and come away again, once a year or something like that. Why, if I were you, I wouldn’t leave the place until they’d found me something—indoors or outdoors, what does it matter so long as your hand is on the wheel and you are doing your little for your country? But you—what do you care? You went to town to get a job—and you come back with new mackerel spinners! You are off fishing to-morrow morning with Jimmy Dumble. Somewhere up in the North Sea, to-day and to-morrow and the next day, men are giving their lives for their country. What do you care? You will sit there smoking your pipe and catching dabs!”