“Did they get the submarine?” his listener asked eagerly.
“Get it!” the other repeated, with a smile. “They blew it into scrap metal.”
“Plenty of movement in your life!”
“I’ve run the gauntlet over there once too often,” Horridge said grimly. “Just look at me now, Sir Henry. I’m twenty-nine years old, and it’s only two years and a half since I was invalided out of the navy and took this job on. The last person I asked to guess my age put me down at fifty. What should you have said?”
“Somewhere near it,” was the candid admission. “Never mind, Horridge, you’ve done your bit. You shall pass on your experience to a new hand, take your pension and try the south coast of England for a few months. Now let’s get on with it. You know what I want to hear about.”
Horridge produced from his pocket a long strip of paper.
“They’re there, sir,” he announced, “coaled to the scuppers, every man standing to stations and steam up. There’s the list.”
He handed the paper across to Sir Henry, who glanced it down.
“The fast cruiser squadron,” he observed. “Hm! Three new ships we haven’t any note of. No transports, then, Horridge?’”
“Not a sign of one, sir,” was the reply. “They’re after a bombardment.”
He rose to his feet, walked to a giant map of England, and touched a certain port on the east coast. Sir Henry’s eyes glistened.
“You’re sure?”
“It is a certainty,” Horridge replied. “I’ve been on three of those ships. I’ve dined with four of the officers. They’re under sealed orders, and the crew believes that they’re going to escort out half a dozen commerce destroyers. But I have the truth. That’s their objective,” Horridge repeated, touching once more the spot upon the map, “and they are waiting just for one thing.”
Sir Henry smiled thoughtfully.
“I know what they’re waiting for,” he said. “Perhaps if they’d a Herr Horridge to send over here for it, they’d have got it before now. As it is—well, I’m not sure,” he went on. “It seems a pity to disappoint them, doesn’t it? I’d love to give them a run for their money.”
Horridge smiled faintly. He knew a good deal about his companion.
“They’re spoiling for it, sir,” he admitted. Sir Henry spoke down a telephone and a few minutes later Ensol reappeared.
“Find Mr. Horridge a comfortable room,” his chief directed, “and one of our confidential typists. You can make out your report at your leisure,” he went on. “Come in and see me when it’s all finished.”
“Certainly, sir,” Horridge replied, rising.
Sir Henry held out his hand. He looked with something like wonder at the nerve-shattered man who had risen to his feet with a certain air of briskness.
“Horridge,” he said, “I wish I had your pluck.”
“I don’t know any one in the service from whom you need borrow any, sir,” was the quiet reply.
CHAPTER XIX
Table of Contents
Lessingham sat upon a fallen tree on Dutchman’s Common near the scene of his romantic descent, and looked rather ruefully over the moorland, seawards. Above him, the sky was covered with little masses of quickly scudding clouds. A fugitive and watery sunshine shone feebly upon a wind-tossed sea and a rain-sodden landscape. He found a certain grim satisfaction in comparing the disorderliness of the day with the tumult in his own life. He felt that he had embarked upon an enterprise greater than his capacity, for which he was in many ways entirely unsuitable. And behind him was the scourge of the telegram which he had received a few hours ago, a telegram harmless enough to all appearance, but which, decoded, was like a scourge to his back.
Your work is unsatisfactory and your slackness deserves reprobation. Great events wait upon you. The object of your search is necessary for our imminent operations.
The sound of a horse’s hoofs disturbed him. Captain Griffiths, on a great bay mare, glanced curiously at the lonely figure by the roadside, and then pulled up.
“Back again, Mr. Lessingham?” he remarked.
“As you see.”
The Commandant fidgeted with his horse for a moment. Then he approached a little nearer to Lessingham’s side.
“You are a good walker, I perceive, Mr. Lessingham,” he remarked.
“When the fancy takes me,” was the equable reply.
“Have you come out to see our new guns?”
“I had no idea,” Lessingham answered indifferently, “that you had any.”
Griffiths smiled.
“We have a small battery of anti-aircraft guns, newly arrived from the south of England,” he said. “The secret of their coming and their locality has kept the neighbourhood in a state of ferment for the last week.”
Lessingham remained profoundly uninterested.
“They most of them spotted the guns,” his companion continued, “but not many of them have found the searchlights yet.”
“It seems a little late in the year,” Lessingham observed, “to be making preparations against Zeppelins.”
“Well, they cross here pretty often, you know,” Griffiths reminded him. “It’s only a matter of a few weeks ago that one almost came to grief on this common. We picked up their observation car not fifty yards from where you are sitting.”
“I remember hearing about it,” Lessingham acknowledged.
“By-the-by,” the Commandant continued, smoothing his horse’s neck, “didn’t you arrive that evening or the evening after?”
“I believe I did.”
“Liverpool Street or King’s Cross? The King’s Cross train was very nearly held up.”
“I didn’t come by train at all,” Lessingham replied, glancing for a moment into the clouds, “And now I come to think of it, it must have been the evening after.”
“Fine county for motoring,” Griffiths continued, stroking his horse’s head.
“The roads I have been on seem very good,” was the somewhat bored admission.
“You haven’t a car of your own here, have you?”
“Not at present.”
Captain Griffiths glanced between his horse’s ears for a few moments. Then he turned once more towards his companion.
“Mr. Lessingham,” he said, “you are aware that I am Commandant here?”
“I believe,” Lessingham replied, “that Lady Cranston told me so.”
“It is my duty, therefore,” Griffiths went on, “to take a little more than ordinary interest in casual visitors, especially at this time of the year. The fact that you are well-known to Lady Cranston is, of course, an entirely satisfactory explanation of your presence here. At the same time, there is certain information concerning strangers of which we keep a record, and in your case there is a line or two which we have not been able to fill up.”
“If I can be of any service,” Lessingham murmured.
“Precisely,” the other interrupted. “I knew you would feel like that. Now your arrival here—we have the date, I think—October 6th. As you have just remarked, you didn’t come by train. How did you come?”
Lessingham’s surprise was apparently quite genuine.
“Is that a question which you ask me to answer—officially?” he enquired.
His interlocutor shrugged his shoulders.
“I am not putting official questions to you at all,” he replied, “nor am I cross-examining you, as might be my duty, under the circumstances, simply because your friendship with the Cranstons is, of course, a guarantee as to your position. But on the other hand, I think it would be reasonable if you were to answer my question.”
Lessingham nodded.
“Perhaps you are right,” he admitted. “As you can tell by finding me here this afternoon, I am a great walker. I arrived—on foot.”
“I see,” Griffiths reflected. “The other question which we usually ask is, where was your last stopping place?”
“Stopping place?” Lessingham murmured.
“Yes, where did you sleep the night before you came here?” Griffiths persisted.
Lessingham shook his head as though oppressed by some distasteful memory.
“But I did not sleep at all,” he complained. “It was one of the worst nights which I have ever spent in my life.”
Captain Griffiths gathered up his reins.
“Well,” he said with clumsy sarcasm, “I am much obliged to you, Mr. Lessingham, for the straight-forward way in which you have answered my questions. I won’t bother you any more just at present. Shall I see you to-morrow night at Mainsail Haul?”
“Lady Cranston has asked me to dine,” was the somewhat reserved reply.
His inquisitor nodded and cantered away. Lessingham looked after him until he had disappeared, then he turned his face towards Dreymarsh and walked steadily into the lowering afternoon. Twilight was falling as he reached Mainsail Haul, where he found Philippa entertaining some callers, to whom she promptly introduced him. Lessingham gathered, almost in the first few minutes, that his presence in Dreymarsh was becoming a subject of comment.
“My husband has played bridge with you at the club, I think,” a lady by whose side he found himself observed. “You perhaps didn’t hear my name—Mrs. Johnson?”
“I congratulate you upon your husband,” Lessingham replied. “I remember him perfectly well because he kept his temper when I revoked.”
“Dear me!” she exclaimed. “He must have taken a fancy to you, then. As a rule, they rather complain about him at bridge.”
“I formed the impression,” Lessingham continued, “that he was rather a better player than the majority of the performers there.”
Mrs. Johnson, who was a dark and somewhat forbidding-looking lady, smiled.
“He thinks so, at any rate,” she conceded. “Didn’t he tell me that you were invalided home from the front?”
Lessingham shook his head.
“I am quite sure that it was not mentioned,” he said. “We walked home together as far as the hotel one evening, but we spoke only of the golf and some shooting in the neighbourhood.”
Philippa, who had been maneuvering to attract Lessingham’s attention, suddenly dropped the cake basket which she was passing. There was a little commotion. Lessingham went down on his hands and knees to help collect the fragments, and she found an opportunity to whisper in his ear.
“Be careful. That woman is a cat. Stay and talk to me. Please don’t bother, Mr. Lessingham. Won’t you ring the bell instead?” she continued, raising her voice.
Lessingham did as he was asked, and affected not to notice Mrs. Johnson’s inviting smile as he returned. Philippa made room for him by her side.
“Helen and I were talking this afternoon, Mr. Lessingham,” she said, “of the days when you and Dick were both in the Magdalen Eleven and both had just a chance of being chosen for the Varsity. You never played, did you?”
He shook his head.
“No such luck. In any case, Richard would have been in well before me. I always maintained that he was the first of our googlie bowlers.”
“So you were at Magdalen with Major Felstead?” another caller remarked in mild wonder.
“Mr. Lessingham and my brother were great friends,” Philippa explained. “Mr. Lessingham used to come down to shoot in Cheshire.”
Lady Cranston’s guests were all conscious of a little indefinable disappointment. The gossip concerning this stranger’s appearance in Dreymarsh was practically strangled. Mrs. Johnson, however, fired a parting shot as she rose to go.
“You were not in the same regiment as Major Felstead, were you, Mr. Lessingham?” she asked. “No,” he answered calmly.
Philippa was busy with her adieux. Mrs. Johnson remained indomitable.
“What was your regiment, Mr. Lessingham?” she persisted. “You must forgive my seeming inquisitive, but I am so interested in military affairs.”
Lessingham bowed courteously.
“I do not remember alluding to my soldiering at all,” he said coolly, “but as a matter of fact I am in the Guards.”
Mrs. Johnson accepted Philippa’s hand and the inevitable. Her good-by to Lessingham was most affable. She walked up the road with the vicar.
“I think, Vicar,” she said severely, “that for a small place, Dreymarsh is becoming one of the worst centres of gossip I ever knew. Every one has been saying all sorts of unkind things about that charming Mr. Lessingham, and there you are—Major Felstead’s friend and a Guardsman! Somehow or other, I felt that he belonged to one of the crack regiments. I shall certainly ask him to dinner one night next week.”
The vicar nodded benignly. He had the utmost respect for Mrs. Johnson’s cook, and his own standard of social desirability, to which the object of their discussion had attained.
“I should be happy to meet Mr. Lessingham at any time,” he pronounced, with ample condescension. “I noticed him in church last Sunday morning.”
CHAPTER XX
Table of Contents
“My dear man, whatever shall I do with you!” Philippa exclaimed pathetically, as the door closed upon the last of her callers. “The Guards, indeed!”
Lessingham smiled as he resumed his place by her side.
“Well,” he said, “I told the dear lady the truth. You will find my name well up in the list of the thirty-first battalion of the Prussian Guards.”
She threw herself back in her chair and laughed. “How amusing it would be if it weren’t all so terrible! You really are a perfect political Raffles. Do you know that this afternoon you have absolutely reestablished yourself? Mr. Johnson will probably call on you to-morrow—they may even ask you to dine—the vicar will write and ask for a subscription, and Dolly Fenwick will invite you to play golf with her.”
“Do not turn my head,” he begged.
“All the same,” Philippa continued, more gravely, “I shall never have a moment’s peace whilst you are in the place. I was thinking about you last night. I don’t believe I have ever realised before how terrible it would be if you really were discovered. What would they do to you?”
“Whatever they might do,” he replied, a little wearily, “I must obey orders. My orders are to remain here, but even if I were told that I might go, I should find it hard.”
“Do you mean that?” she asked.
“I think you know,” he answered.
“You men are so strange,” she went on, after a moment’s pause. “You give us so little time to know you, you show us so little of yourselves and you expect so much.”
“We offer everything,” he reminded her.
“I want to avoid platitudes,” she said thoughtfully, “but is love quite the same thing for a man as for a woman?”
“Sometimes it is more,” was the prompt reply. “Sometimes love, for a woman, means only shelter; often, for a man, love means the blending of all knowledge, of all beauty, all ambition, of all that he has learned from books and from life. Sometimes a man can see no further and needs to look no further.”
Philippa suddenly felt that she was in danger. There was something in her heart of which she had never before been conscious, some music, some strange turn of sentiment in Lessingham’s voice or the words themselves. It was madness, she told herself breathlessly. She was in love with her husband, if any one. She could not have lost all feeling for him so soon. She clasped her hands tightly. Lessingham seemed conscious of his advantage, and leaned towards her.
“If I were not offering you my whole life,” he pleaded, “believe me, I would not open my lips. If I were thinking of episodes, I would throw myself into the sea before I asked you to give me even your fingers. But you, and you alone, could fill the place in my life which I have always prayed might be filled, not for a year or even a decade of years, but for eternity.”
“Oh, but you forget!” she faltered.
“I remember so much,” he replied, “that I know it is hard for you to speak. There are bonds which you have made sacred, and your fingers sh
rink from tearing them asunder. If it were not for this, Philippa—hear the speech of a renegade—my mandate should be torn in pieces. My instructions should flutter into the waste-paper basket, To-morrow should see us on our way to a new country and a new life. But you must be very sure indeed.”
“Is it because of me that you are staying here?” she asked.
“Upon my honour, no,” he assured her. “I must stay here a little longer, whatever it may mean for me. And so I am content to remain what I am to you at this minute. I ask from you only that you remain just what you are. But when the moment of my freedom comes, when my task here is finished and I turn to go, then I must come to you.”
She rose suddenly to her feet, crossed the floor, and threw open the window. The breeze swept through the room, flapping the curtains, blowing about loose articles into a strange confusion. She stood there for several moments, as though in search of some respite from the emotional atmosphere upon which she had turned her back. When she finally closed the window, her hair was in little strands about her face. Her eyes were soft and her lips quivering.
“You make me feel,” she said, taking his hand for a moment and looking at him almost piteously, “you make me feel everything except one thing.”
“Except one thing?” he repeated.
“Can’t you understand?” she continued, stretching out her hand with a quick, impulsive little movement. “I am here in Henry’s house, his wife, the mistress of his household. All the years we’ve been married I have never thought of another man. I have never indulged in even the idlest flirtation. And now suddenly my life seems upside down. I feel as though, if Henry stood before me now, I would strike him on the cheek. I feel sore all over, and ashamed, but I don’t know whether I have ceased to love him. I can’t tell. Nothing seems to help me. I close my eyes and I try to think of that new world and that new life, and I know that there is nothing repulsive in it. I feel all the joy and the strength of being with you. And then there is Henry in the background. He seems to have had so much of my love.”
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