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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  “It is always done,” the man assured me. “In hotels such as this, where all is life and gayety, our clients do not care to be reminded of such an ugly thing as death. Half the people on that floor would have left if they had known that the dead body of a man has been lying there. We keep these things very secret. The coffin has been taken to the undertaker’s. The funeral will be from there.”

  “Who is the man?” I asked. “Had he been ill long?”

  The clerk shook his head.

  “He was a Frenchman,” he said; “Bartot was his name. He had an apoplectic stroke in the café one day last week, and since then complications set in.”

  I turned away with a little shiver. It was not pleasant to reflect upon—this man’s death!

  XXIX. AN UNSATISFACTORY INTERVIEW

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  Before I was up the next morning I was informed that Fritz was waiting outside the door of my room. I had him shown in, and he stood respectfully by my bedside.

  “Sir,” he said, “I have once more discovered Mr. Delora.”

  “Fritz,” I answered, “you are a genius! Tell me where he is?”

  “He is at a small private hotel in Bloomsbury,” Fritz declared. “It is really a boarding-house, frequented by Australians and Colonials. The number is 17, and the street is Montague Street.”

  I sat up in bed.

  “This is very interesting,” I said.

  Fritz coughed.

  “I trusted that you would find it so, sir,” he admitted.

  I thought for several moments. Then I sprang out of bed.

  “Fritz,” I said, “our engagement comes to an end this morning. I am going to pay you for two months’ service.”

  I went to my drawer and counted out some notes, which Fritz pocketed with a smile of contentment.

  “I am obliged to give up my interest in this affair,” I said, “so I cannot find any more work for you. But that money will enable you to take a little holiday, and I have no doubt that you will soon succeed in obtaining another situation.”

  Fritz made me a magnificent bow.

  “I am greatly obliged to you, sir,” he announced. “I shall take another situation at once. Holidays—they will come later in life. At my age, and with a family, one must work. But your generosity, sir,” he wound up, with another bow, “I shall never forget.”

  I dressed, and walked to the address which Fritz had given me. As I stood on the doorstep, with the bell handle still in my hand, the door was suddenly opened. It was Delora himself who appeared! He shrank away from me as though I were something poisonous. I laid my hand on his shoulder, firmly determined that this time there should be no escape.

  “Mr. Delora,” I said, “I want a few words with you. Can I have them now?”

  “I am busy!” he answered. “At any other time!”

  “No other time will do,” I answered. “It is only a few words I need say, but those few words must be spoken.”

  He led the way reluctantly into a sitting-room. There were red plush chairs set at regular intervals against the wall, and a table in the middle covered by papers—mostly out of date. Delora closed the door and turned toward me sternly.

  “Captain Rotherby,” he said, “I am quite aware that there are certain people in London who are very much interested in me and my doings. Their interests and mine clash, and it is only natural that they should plot against me. But where the devil you come in I cannot tell! Tell me what you mean by playing the spy upon me? What business is it of yours?”

  “You misunderstand the situation, sir,” I answered. “More than ten days ago you left me in charge of your niece at Charing Cross, while you drove on, according to your own statement, to the Milan Hotel. You never went to that hotel. You never, apparently, meant to. You have never been near it since. You have left your niece in the centre of what seems to be a very nest of intrigue. I have the right to ask you for an explanation of these things. This morning I have a special right, because to-day I have promised to go away into the country, and to take no further interest in your doings.”

  “Let us suppose,” Delora said dryly, “that it is already to-morrow morning.”

  “No!” I answered. “There is something which I mean to say to you. You need not be alarmed. The few words I have to say to you are not questions. I do not want to understand your secrets,—to penetrate the mystery which surrounds you and your doings. I will not ask you a single question. I will not even ask you why you left your niece in such a fit of terror, and have never yet dared to show your face at the Milan.”

  “A child would understand these things!” Delora exclaimed. “The Milan Hotel is one of the most public spots in London. It is open to any one who cares to cross the threshold. It is the last place in the world likely to be a suitable home for a man like myself, who is in touch with great affairs.”

  “Then why did you choose to go there?” I asked.

  “It was not my choice at all,” Delora answered. “Besides, it was not until I arrived in London that I understood exactly the nature of the intrigues against me.”

  “At least,” I protested, “you should never have brought your niece with you. Frankly, your concerns don’t interest me a snap of the fingers. It is of your niece only that I think. You have no right to leave her alone in such anxiety!”

  “Nor can I see, sir,” Delora answered, “that you have any better right to reproach me with it. Still, if it will shorten this discussion, I admit that if I had known how much trouble there was ahead of me I should not have brought her. I simply disliked having to disappoint her. It was a long-standing promise.”

  “Let that go,” I answered. “I have told you that I have handed in my commission. I have nothing more to do with you or your schemes, whatever they may be. But I came here to find you and to tell you this one thing. Felicia says that you are her uncle, she scouts the idea of your being an impostor, she speaks of you as tenderly and affectionately as a girl well could. That is all very well. Yet, in the face of it, I am here to impress this upon you. I love your niece, Mr. Delora,—some day or other I mean to make her my wife,—and I will not have her dragged into anything which is either disreputable or against the law.”

  “Has my niece encouraged you?” Delora asked calmly.

  “Not in the least,” I answered. “She has been kind enough to give me to understand that she cares a little, and there the matter ends. Nothing more could be said between us in this state of uncertainty. But I came here for this one purpose. I came to tell you that if by any chance Felicia should be mistaken, if you play her false in any way, if you seek to embroil her in your schemes, or to do anything by means of which she could suffer, I shall first of all shake the life out of your body, and then I shall go to Scotland Yard and tell them how much I know.”

  “About Mr. Tapilow, also?” Delora asked, with a sneer.

  “Do you think I am afraid to take the punishment for my own follies?” I asked indignantly. “If I believed that, I would go and give myself up to-morrow. Louis can give me away if he will, or you. I don’t care a snap of the fingers. But what I want you to understand is this. Felicia is, I presume, your niece. I should have been inclined to have doubted it, but I cannot disbelieve her own word. I think myself that it is brutal to have brought such a child here and to have left her alone—”

  “She is not alone,” Delora interrupted stiffly. “She has a companion.”

  “Who arrived yesterday,” I continued. “She has spent some very bad days alone, I can promise you that.”

  “I have telephoned,” Delora said, “twice a day—sometimes oftener.”

  I laughed ironically.

  “For your own sake or hers, I wonder,” I said. “Anyhow, we can leave that alone. What I want you to understand is this, that if there is indeed anything illegal or criminal in your secret doings over here, you must take care that Felicia is safely provided for if things should go against you. She is not to be left there to be the butt of a great crim
inal action. If I find that you or any of your friends are making use of her in any way whatever, I swear that you shall suffer for it!”

  Delora smiled at me grimly. He seemed in his few dry words to have revealed something of his stronger and less nervous self.

  “You terrify me!” he said. “Yet I think that we must go on pretty well as we are, even if my niece has been fortunate enough to enlist your sympathies on her behalf. Never mind who I am, or what my business is in this country, young man. It is not your affair. You should have enough to think about yourself in this country of easy extradition. My niece can look after herself. So can I. We do not need your aid, or welcome your interference.”

  “You insinuate,” I declared indignantly, “that your niece is one of your helpers! I do not believe it!”

  “Helpers in what?” he asked, with upraised eyebrows.

  “God knows!” I exclaimed, a little impatiently. “What you do, or what you try to do, is not my business. Felicia is. That is why I have warned you.”

  “Am I to have the honor, then?” Delora asked, with a curl of his thin lips,—

  “You are,” I interrupted, “if you call it an honor, although to tell you frankly, as things are at present, I am not inclined to go about begging too many different people’s permission. If it were not that my brother Dicky has just written over from Brazil to ask me to be civil to you and your niece, you wouldn’t have left this place so easily.”

  “Your brother!” Delora said, looking at me uneasily. “Say that again.”

  “Certainly!” I answered. “My brother Dicky, who is now out in Brazil, and who has written to me about you. You met him there, of course?” I added. “He stayed with you at—let me see, what is the name of your place?” I asked suddenly.

  “Menita,” Delora answered, without hesitation. “Now you mention it, of course I remember him! If he has written you to be civil to us, you can do it best by minding your own business. In a fortnight’s time I shall be free to entertain or to be entertained. At present I am on a secret mission, and I do not wish my work to be interfered with.”

  I moved toward the door.

  “I have said all that I wish to say,” I remarked. “If I hear nothing from you I shall come back to London in fourteen days.”

  “You will find me with my niece,” Delora said, “and we shall be happy to see you.”

  I left him there, feeling somehow or other that I had not had the best of our interview. Yet my position from the first was hopeless. There was nothing for me to do but to keep my word to Felicia and let things drift.

  I drove to the club on my way to the station, where I had arranged for my baggage to be sent. As I crossed Pall Mall I met Lamartine. He was standing on the pavement, on the point of entering a motor-car on which was piled some luggage.

  “So you, too, are leaving London,” I remarked, stopping for a moment.

  He looked at me curiously.

  “I am going to Paris,” he said.

  “A pleasure trip?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Not entirely,” he said. “Only this morning I made a somewhat surprising discovery.”

  “Concerning our friend?” I asked.

  “Concerning our friend,” Lamartine echoed.

  He seemed dubious, for a moment, whether to take me into his confidence.

  “You have not found Delora yet?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” he answered. “And you?”

  “I have seen him,” I admitted.

  “Are you disposed to tell me where?” Lamartine asked softly.

  I shook my head.

  “I have finished with the affair,” I told him. “I finish as I began,—absolutely bewildered! I know nothing and understand nothing. I am going down into the country to shoot pheasants.”

  Lamartine smiled.

  “I,” he remarked, entering the car, “am going after bigger game!”

  XXX. TO NEWCASTLE BY ROAD

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  I found several of my brother’s friends staying at Feltham, who were also well known to me, and my aunt, who was playing hostess, had several women staying with her. We spent the time very much after the fashion of an ordinary house-party during the first week of October. We shot until four o’clock, came home and played bridge until dinner-time, bridge or billiards after dinner, varied by a dance one night and some amateur theatricals. On the fifth day a singular thing happened to me.

  The whole of the house-party were invited to shoot with my uncle, Lord Horington, who lived about forty miles from us. We left in two motor-cars soon after breakfast-time, and for the last few miles of the way we struck the great north road. It was just after we had entered it that we came upon a huge travelling car, covered with dust, and with portmanteaus strapped upon the roof, hung up by the side of the road. Our chauffeur slowed down to find out if we could be of any use, and as the reply was scarcely intelligible, we came to a full stop. He dismounted to speak to the other chauffeur, and I looked curiously at the two men who were leaning back in the luxurious seats inside the car. For a moment I could not believe my eyes! Then I opened the door of my own car and stepped quickly into the road. The two men who were sitting there, and by whom I was as yet unobserved, were Delora and the Chinese ambassador!

  I walked at once up to the window of their car and knocked at it. Delora leaned forward and recognized me at once. His face, for a moment, seemed dark with anger. He let down the sash.

  “What does this mean?” he asked. “Have you forgotten our bargain?”

  I laughed a little shortly.

  “My dear sir,” I said, “it is not I who have come to see you, but you to see me. I am within a few miles of my own estate, on my way to shoot at a friend’s.”

  He stared at me for a moment incredulously.

  “Do you mean to tell me,” he said, in a low tone, “that you have not followed us from London?”

  “Why I have not been in London, or near it, for five days,” I told him. “I slept last night within thirty miles from here, and, as I told you before, am on my way to shoot with my uncle at the present moment.”

  “I know nothing of the geography of your country,” Delora said shortly. “What you say may be correct. His Excellency and I are having a few days’ holiday.”

  “May I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you at Feltham?” I inquired.

  “I am afraid not,” Delora answered. “If we had known that we should have been so near, we might have arranged to pay you a visit. As it is, we are in a hurry to get on.”

  “How far north did you think of going?” I asked.

  “We have not decided,” Delora answered. “Remember our bargain, and ask no questions.”

  “But this is a holiday trip,” I reminded him. “Surely I may be permitted to advise you about the picturesque spots in my own country!”

  “You can tell me, at any rate, what it is that has happened to our car,” Delora answered. “Neither His Excellency nor I know anything about such matters.”

  I walked round and talked to the two chauffeurs. The accident, it seemed, was a trivial one, and with the help of a special spanner, with which we were supplied, was already rectified. I returned and explained matters to Delora.

  “Have you come far this morning?” I asked.

  “Not far,” Delora answered. “We are taking it easy.”

  I looked at his tired face, at the car thick with dust, at the Chinese ambassador already nodding in his corner, and I smiled to myself. It was very certain to me that they had run from London without stopping, and I felt an intense curiosity as to their destination. However, I said no more to them. I made my adieux to Delora, and bowed profoundly to the Chinese ambassador, who opened his eyes in time solemnly to return my farewell. The chauffeur was already in his place, and I stopped to speak to him. I saw Delora spring forward and whistle down the speaking-tube, but my question was already asked.

  “How far north are you going?” I asked.


  “To Newcastle, sir,” the man answered.

  He turned then to answer the whistle, and I re-entered my own car. We started first, but they passed us in a few minutes travelling at a great rate, and with a cloud of dust behind them. Delora threw an evil glance at me from his place. For once I had stolen a march upon him. They had both been too ignorant of their route to keep their final destination concealed from the chauffeur, and they certainly had not expected to meet any one on the way with whom he would be likely to talk! But why to Newcastle? I asked myself that question so often during the morning that my shooting became purely a mechanical thing. Newcastle,—the Tyne, coals, and shipbuilding! I could think of nothing else in connection with the place.

  Late that evening I sat with a whiskey and soda and final cigar in the smoking-room. The evening papers had just arrived, brought by motor-bicycle from Norwich. I found nothing to interest me in them, but, glancing down the columns, my attention was attracted by some mention of Brazil. I looked to see what the paragraph might be. It concerned some new battleships, and was headed,—

  LARGEST BATTLESHIPS IN THE WORLD!

  It is not generally known, that there will be launched from the works of Messrs. Halliday & Co. on the Tyne, within the next three or four weeks, two of the most powerful battleships of the “Dreadnought” type, which have yet been built.

  There followed some specifications, in which I was not particularly interested, an account of their armament, and a final remark,—

  One is tempted to ask how a country, in the financial position of Brazil, can possibly reconcile it with her ideas of national economy, to spend something like three millions in battleships, which there does not seem to be the slightest chance of her ever being called upon to use!

  Somehow or other this paragraph fascinated me. I read it over and over again. I could see no connection between it and the visit of Delora to Newcastle, especially accompanied as he was by the Chinese ambassador. Yet the more I thought of it, the more I felt convinced that in some way the two were connected. I put down the paper at last, and called out of the room to a motoring friend.