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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  “You have no sympathy—neither of you,” she declared in a voice which, sweet though it was, had nothing in it this morning of the sorceress’s guile. “I pass through a terrible crisis. I make the great sacrifice of my life, and what do you care—either of you? You are as bad as the Baron himself, and he is a devil—implacable, stony. He is not a man at all.”

  The musical director’s lips curled very faintly in a reminiscent smile. Céline guessed at its nature and her great eyes flashed with anger.

  “Imbécile!” she exclaimed. “In those days it was different. The Paul Domiloff of to-day is heartless. He is eaten up with ambition.”

  “Pardon, Madame,” the second man, Riotto, the manager of the opera, observed. “You wrong the Baron. He is making the bravest fight any man ever made to preserve Monaco in the place which belongs to it and to keep it the most beautiful playground of the world.”

  “Your heart, Céline,” Adolf Zabruski declared, “should at the present moment be filled with gratitude to him. It was he who saved you from a colossal act of folly.”

  Céline glanced across the empty seas to where last night the Hesperides had been lying.

  “It would have been a folie magnifique,” she sighed. “The world would have applauded it.”

  Riotto shrugged his shoulders.

  “You know how they treat a broken contract here,” he reminded them. “What about ‘Louise’? Notwithstanding all my persuasions, for ten years they refused to give it.”

  “Pooh!” she scoffed. “You think they would treat Céline like that? Imbécile! It was the Baron. He had another scheme. There was someone else—the American girl.”

  “Did she go?” Riotto enquired.

  Céline looked across the sea. She was really, she assured herself, suffering a great deal.

  “Who knows?” she exclaimed tearfully.

  “I would remind you once more,” Zabruski, who never forgot that he was her business manager, said, tapping the table with his fingers and leaning forward, “that in the whole history of the opera here, broken contracts have spelled ruin to the artistes.”

  The tears had marvellously disappeared from Céline’s eyes. She leaned back in her chair. She laughed at him.

  “You know to whom you speak?” she asked. “My dear Signor—I—Céline! Do you know what I should do if they spoke of law to me? I should say: ‘Very well.’ I should fold my arms like this. I should order my automobile. I should drive to my villa above Grasse. I should say to the world: ‘Céline sings no more’—and I should keep my word—until they came and pleaded.”

  “You are sure they would come?” Riotto queried.

  She looked at him scornfully.

  “The people would drive them there,” she answered. “Do you think the world who follow me wherever I sing would allow me to remain dumb because of a contract? Was ever a great Diva plagued with such a soulless entourage? One would remind me that he is my director. Bah! The other talks to me of contracts. Go away, both of you. Je m’en fiche de vous deux!”

  “I think,” Riotto proposed, rising, “that we smoke a cigar on the Terrace, Adolf. Madame dislikes the odour and she will perhaps calm herself.”

  “To me it is equal,” she said, waving her hand. “Go away, both of you.”

  They passed down the Terrace arm in arm.

  “Why is it that Monaco is gay with bunting this morning?” Zabruski demanded of his companion.

  “Something to do with the State. There has been a change of government or perhaps it is just a fête day. The question I ask myself is this,” Riotto went on, pausing in the middle of the broad walk: “The banker Sagastrada—did he leave last night on that steamer or not?”

  Céline, just at that moment, was asking herself the same question.

  Lord Henry, immaculate in faultlessly cut tweeds, a grey Homburg hat, a Guards’ tie and a bunch of violets in his buttonhole, came down the steps of the hotel and strolled along the Terrace dispensing greetings in every direction. Céline called him to her. She gave him her fingers, which he raised devoutly to his lips.

  “Madame is abroad early,” he remarked.

  She waved her hand.

  “It is the sunshine,” she explained. “I wake this morning and through the windows I feel the sunshine and the breeze. I could rest no more. Monsieur—Milord, I would ask you a question.”

  “I am at your disposition, Madame.”

  “The young banker—that glorious young man who dominated the place last night, with whom I danced—and oh! how he dances—did he leave by that steamer?”

  “Madame,” Lord Henry lied, “I left the party early—early for me. It was five o’clock. Whether he went or not I do not know.”

  She frowned.

  “If they have done him evil, those horrible men, that policeman who calls himself a General, never again so long as I live will I sing a note in his country,” she declared.

  “Diva,” Lord Henry said, bending a little lower still over the table, “have I your permission to repeat that threat?”

  She raised her fine eyes and looked at him steadily. There were times, when she spoke with men not of her own country, when she wondered. Lord Henry’s expression, however, was entirely grave.

  “He is not an artist, that man,” she said. “It would probably mean nothing to him if you did. Let that be as you will. Only, Lord Henry—that wonderful young man, if he did not go away, if he stayed here because I failed him, can you not let him know that I desire him to visit me at once?”

  She was smiling at her companion now, a very beautiful vision, notwithstanding the overprofuseness of her delicately perfumed cosmetics and the voluptuous unreality of her immediate surroundings—the three dogs in their elaborate collars held by the grim-looking French maid, who stood motionless in the background. Lord Henry sighed as he took off his hat with a flourish and made his adieux.

  “It will give me pain,” he confessed, “but I will transmit your message.”

  She smiled at his gallantry and threw him a kiss. Then she turned to the maid behind.

  “Marie,” she announced, “I will make a little promenade. Fifi I will carry. The others watch every moment. See that they are well behaved and follow me closely.”

  “Mais oui, Madame,” the maid answered.

  It was an understood convention in the Principality that on her morning promenade it was Madame herself who signified her desire to speak to her acquaintances, otherwise she was left, save for bows and smiles, unmolested. Foxley Brent, who never kept a rule and had the skin of a rhinoceros, nevertheless placed himself in her way, holding his mastiff by the collar.

  “Madame takes the sun early,” he observed.

  “A little before my usual time,” she admitted.

  The world-famed cosmopolitan, the most finished exponent of sartorial extravagances, with a big red carnation in his buttonhole, moved a step nearer. His small dark eyes were full of twinkling banter.

  “The Hesperides has sailed,” he pointed out.

  “So I see, Monsieur,” she answered, waving him away. “You will excuse me, if you please. The sight of your great dog upsets my little ones.”

  Céline passed on, leaving Foxley Brent disgruntled, but annoyed only that others had witnessed his rebuff. A few minutes later she came face to face with Joan. This time it was she who paused. Joan followed suit. The two women smiled at one another in different fashions. Joan herself in her chic tennis outfit was correctly attired according to Riviera traditions. Foxley Brent, who had turned to watch the meeting, wore for an instant upon his face the grin of the satyr. He saw what no casual observer could have seen—he saw the encounter of two women each clad in her own armour: Céline in the dark maroon confection of a famous Parisian couturière, a turban hat of the same material, a hatpin with an old garnet, a garnet necklace and bracelets. From the tiny strip of lace about her neck—priceless lace it was indeed—to the tips of her shining patent shoes, she was the woman of one world; and Joan, in her careless
ly flung-on tennis frock, a little open at her neck, her muffler drifting behind in the breeze—she, in the frank abandon of her perfectly natural gait, seemed to have brought something of the old Grecian ideals with which to confront the lascivious arts of the French workshops. An Aphrodite of the Terrace—“Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian wells.” Céline’s glorious eyes travelled over her, and the heavily beringed fingers which were stroking the head of her Pomeranian trembled a little.

  “Mademoiselle is early abroad,” she said.

  “And you, too, Madame,” Joan answered. “A morning like this is enough to make one regret the misspent night.”

  “You play the game of tennis?” Céline enquired.

  “I have had an hour’s practice with the professional,” Joan replied carelessly. “It was a little too early to expect any of the others to play. Afterwards I had a swim.”

  Céline shivered. The barbarity of exposing one’s limbs to the sting of a February morning, even though the sun was shining, seemed to her inconceivable. It was not possible that men could really worship such crudity.

  “You can perhaps tell me,” she went on, “what everyone, including myself, is asking. What has become of our young host of last night?”

  Involuntarily Joan’s eyes also travelled across the placid blue sea.

  “I have heard nothing,” she replied. “When I left, the siren was hooting but Rudolph Sagastrada was still in the Sporting Club.”

  Céline’s smile was almost one of triumph.

  “Then he is still in Monte Carlo!” she exclaimed.

  “Perhaps. . . . You sang very wonderfully last night, Madame. It was a great privilege to hear you.”

  Something of the tenseness passed from Céline’s attitude. Even if it was an unwilling meed of admiration, it was welcome. This girl—who was she, to be feared? She could hit a round white ball over a tennis net with amazing skill. What was that? She, Céline, could sing her way into the heart of a man. She could sing into his blood, bring the passion into his eyes. . . . The dream of last night floated for a moment before her.

  “I am glad that you like my voice,” she said. “It is only a few times in my life that I have sung in a restaurant. I could almost say never. It was not easy but the young man himself—he has the gift of calling out the music. He himself has inspiration.”

  “He is having quite an adventure,” Joan observed.

  Céline laughed softly.

  “They will not dare to touch him here,” she declared. “His family is one of the greatest in Europe. To be a Sagastrada is to have achieved fame.”

  Joan smiled and prepared to move on.

  “The fame of being a millionaire and coming of a family of millionaires does not seem to count for much in his country,” she remarked. “I wish you a pleasant promenade, Madame.”

  Joan, as she passed on, found herself joined at once by Foxley Brent and Hayden Smith. They strolled on together, Joan listening a little listlessly to the former’s ceaseless flow of conversation. Suddenly she stopped. She was gazing intently at a table in a retired corner. Her two companions looked at her enquiringly.

  “Someone you know?” Foxley Brent asked.

  She shook her head. The person she had been watching had raised a newspaper hurriedly and disappeared behind it. Joan, however, had already recognized him. He was one of the two men who had been following Sagastrada, and even as she hesitated there she saw the other one strolling up the broad steps towards the Hôtel de Paris.

  “No, no one I know,” she answered. “I am allowed, after an hour’s strenuous tennis and a swim, to plead guilty to a slight hangover from last night, am I not?” she added, pointing towards the bar.

  Foxley Brent hailed her suggestion with approbation.

  “Come right along,” he enjoined. “Come on, Hayden. We won’t stand any monkeying about from that young barman. A bottle—we will open it ourselves—and let me have my own way with the orange and the Angostura.”

  “And the ice,” Joan pleaded.

  “My, what a drink we are going to have in a matter of five minutes!” Foxley Brent exclaimed, the light of anticipation already dancing in his eyes.

  They lingered a moment or two, even then, before they crossed the road. Joan exchanged a few words with some possible opponents of the afternoon. Foxley Brent was accosted by one of his numerous acquaintances and Hayden Smith greeted briefly one of the so-called sportsmen on his way to attend a Pigeon Battue. When they strolled on again, Joan noticed that the watcher, who had been sitting in the retired corner, had left his place and was entering the bar.

  “Steady on for a moment,” Foxley Brent advised, looking up the broad straight thoroughfare bordering the gardens and twisting his head to see round the sharp bend in the road which led past the Turkish baths and down into the Condamine. “Nasty corner, this, and there are one or two fellows about practising for the race. Good God! What’s that?”

  The conversation ended for the moment. Opposite, through the open windows of the bar, they all three heard distinctly the unmistakable report of a revolver fired twice in rapid succession. There was a hubbub of shouting and a crash of breaking glass. Suddenly a man dressed in khaki-coloured clothes, red-faced and bare-headed, appeared for a moment at the open window of the bar, laid his hand firmly upon the sill and vaulted through. On the pavement he lost his balance, struggled wildly and crashed into the road. Almost simultaneously, the swing door of the bar on the left was flung open. A second man, very similar in appearance to the first, sprang down the few steps, running bent double like a wild animal. For an infinitesimal part of a second he paused to glance up and down the road, then he seemed to make directly for the spot where his companion was making frantic efforts to rise to his feet. Before he had done more than clear the kerbstone, however, there was the sound of another shot behind him. He suddenly straightened himself, gave a little cry and leaped into the air. The tragedy which followed was almost instantaneous. The man who had jumped from the window of the bar and who was on the point of recovering his balance, was knocked flat on his back by the impact of his companion’s body just as a furiously driven automobile came dashing round the corner from the Condamine. There was a great honking of horns. The car skidded, the effect of a mighty but unsuccessful effort to avoid the two writhing figures. A moment later it had passed completely over both and crashed into the pavement. Then the crowd running from the Terrace, from the Place, the officials from the front of the Casino—all seemed to meet in one heterogeneous mass of shouting people bending over the two prostrate bodies lying in the road. Afterwards it appeared to everybody that a miracle happened. Louis, the barman, who had been on his knees in the dust, rose and hurried back into the bar. Apparently he already divined the finish of the affair. Half-a-dozen men, who seemed to have come from nowhere—soberly dressed, responsible-looking—and the liveried porter from outside the Casino had snatched up their burdens and shouldered their way to the Terrace entrance. They swung to the left. In a moment they had disappeared. All that was left of the tragedy was the shattered automobile, the occupants of which were unhurt, and one or two wayfarers who had joined in the scrimmage.

  “Say, what’s become of those fellows?” Foxley Brent cried, looking around him in blank amazement.

  Joan opened her lips and closed them again. Two of the gendarmes in their musical comedy uniforms had appeared from the Place and were clearing the street. The Babel of voices had ceased. Habitués were moving away as fast as they could. Joan felt a sudden impulse towards silence. She said nothing. None of the three, in fact, did more than glance towards that big window just in front of them. Nevertheless, they crossed the street, pushed open the door of the bar, which was now practically empty, and, closely followed by Louis brushing the dust from his trousers, took their places in armchairs around the corner table. Then Foxley Brent spoke, and his voice seemed hoarser and his transatlantic accent more definite than ever.

  “Say—quick as hell, Louis! A bottle of Po
mmery, ice, three tumblers, an orange, Angostura and the sugar castor.”

  Louis’s smile was a little vague but nevertheless it contained gleams of understanding. He disappeared behind the counter. His assistant made his appearance through the far door and brought salted almonds and biscuits to the table. He was very pale and his hands were shaking.

  “What’s been going on here, Fred?” Foxley Brent asked him.

  “I saw nothing, sir,” the man replied. “I just happened to be away for a moment.”

  “Humph!” his questioner grunted. “And mark my words,” he went on, turning to his two companions, “what that lad says is just about what everyone else will say—they saw nothing. But I saw—”

  “Perhaps if everyone else,” Joan interrupted, “is going to decide that they saw nothing, it might be just as well for us to fall in line.”

  “Guess you’re right,” Foxley Brent agreed.

  “I’m sure she is,” Hayden Smith meditated. “For instance,” he continued, leaning over the table so that their three heads nearly touched, “I saw who bobbed up at this window a few seconds after that last shot had been fired.”

  “And so?” Joan asked.

  “I’m going to forget it right now.”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  Table of Contents

  IT was Foxley Brent who, notwithstanding the universal conspiracy of silence, began to question the barman.