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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  “Say, what little hell’s game have you been up to in here this morning, Louis?” he enquired, removing the cigar for a moment from the corner of his mouth. “Didn’t I hear a gun from the other side of the sidewalk?”

  Louis shook his head.

  “I do not think so, sir,” he replied. “There was a man found his way in—nobody knows who he was. He asked me where Mr. Sagastrada was and before I could reply, another stranger came along and whispered something in his ear. I went to the other end of the bar to shake some cocktails and when I came back one man was making for the door and the other was jumping out of the window. Then I heard the noise outside and saw that both of them had been run over.”

  “What about that last shot?” Foxley Brent asked.

  “I did not hear it, sir,” Louis replied.

  His questioner thrust his cigar back into his mouth.

  “If I could tell them like you, Louis,” he observed admiringly, “I’d be earning more than you can make by shaking those cocktails all day long.”

  “It’s no good asking any of these fellows questions,” Lord Henry, who had just joined them, observed as Louis turned away without remark. “They’re all too well trained. I was standing next a man in the ‘kitchen’ once, saw him take poison and fall on the floor writhing in agony. In twenty seconds there was not a sign of him. I asked a valet what was the matter. He simply replied that the gentleman was taken a little faint. That’s all you ever hear.”

  “People do really disappear sometimes, then?” Joan asked.

  Foxley Brent laughed shortly.

  “I should say so,” he agreed. “They go right off the map and there’s never a line about them in the papers and I defy anyone to find out what becomes of them. By-the-by, I wonder what has become of Sagastrada?”

  “No good asking Louis,” Lord Henry said. “We shall have to wait until the Baron comes along.”

  Joan, who had been gazing idly out of the window, waved her hand.

  “Why, there he is!” she exclaimed. “That’s strange, though. He came out of the private entrance to the theatre in the gardens there.”

  Lord Henry looked thoughtful. Hayden Smith was listening to Foxley Brent, who was laying down the law about a change in the race course at Deauville. Lord Henry whispered in Joan’s ear.

  “I would forget that, Miss Haskell.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  He motioned his head slightly towards Foxley Brent.

  “Such a gossip, that fellow,” he said. “And there have been funny rumours about that State entrance to the theatre.”

  She nodded. Domiloff lounged up the steps and into the bar. He came across to them with his usual rather tired smile.

  “Brandy, Louis,” he ordered, sinking into a chair. “Half pale brandy and half ginger ale, a lot of lemon and a lot of ice. In a tankard, Louis—you understand? Move the champagne bottle farther away from me. I cannot stand the sight of it this morning.”

  “Where is your ward?” Foxley Brent asked him.

  “Still asleep, I should think.”

  “Still in your rooms?”

  Domiloff was blandly deaf.

  “I should think we must have drunk the cellars dry last night,” he observed. “In all my recollection I never saw more champagne flowing round the place. Good thing the young man has got the money to pay for it!”

  “Sagastrada!” Foxley Brent exclaimed. “My God, money is a joke to that family! I remember when his uncle in New York gave one supper party that cost fifty thousand dollars. I was there. Not unlike this young man.”

  “Everything as usual this morning?” Joan asked, her eyes travelling for a moment towards that private entrance.

  “Everything ticking away like a piece of clockwork,” the Baron replied. “I must just have my drink and go and see what this troublesome young man is up to.”

  A chasseur in the quiet livery of Domiloff’s private staff put his head in at the door, recognized his master and came swiftly over to him. He handed the latter a note, stood by while it was read and, accepting his curt little nod of dismissal, hurried off. Domiloff, with the air of a man unconscious of what he is doing, very slowly tore the half-sheet of notepaper into small pieces. He rose to his feet and held out his hand for the tankard which Louis was bringing. He looked round at the little company with a slight nod and raised it to his lips.

  “Sorry I have to hurry off,” he remarked as he set it down. “I am wanted over in the Casino.”

  He rose to his feet. Joan took him by the arm and walked by his side out on to the steps leading to the Place.

  “Baron,” she said quietly, “is this very kind of you?”

  “It is very unkind,” he admitted. “I am sorry, Miss Joan, but there were just two men there to whom I did not wish to tell the whole truth. The House of Assembly came to no decision until six o’clock this morning. They decided then to leave the matter entirely in my hands. The Hesperides had left.”

  “So Rudolph Sagastrada remains,” she murmured.

  “So far as I know he is at the present moment sleeping peacefully. Just as well for him, in the circumstances.”

  “You mean—”

  “Those two assassins from Beaulieu chose this morning to try and fight their way up to his room. That is one spot of trouble out of the way, anyhow.”

  “You think that I failed you?” she asked a little timidly.

  He shook his head.

  “You behaved as I should have expected, knowing and admiring you as I do,” he answered. “In any case, I have now received definite authorization from the French Cabinet. Sagastrada is to remain in Monte Carlo.”

  He left her with a smile upon her lips and crossed the road towards the main entrance to the Casino, where the uniformed porters were already standing at the salute. Joan returned to her table in the bar where Léon de Hochepierre and Lucille had just arrived. They were in the midst of an eager recital of the morning’s events when Domiloff also rejoined them.

  “Come right along, Baron,” Foxley Brent invited cordially. “Young Sagastrada has not turned up yet. Is it true that you have him locked up in your new apartments?”

  “Just as well that I have, considering what has been going on this morning,” Domiloff replied. “Excuse me for a few moments, please. I will join you later.”

  He strolled across to the bar and seated himself on a high stool. Louis was preparing some cocktails exactly opposite. Domiloff watched him for a moment curiously.

  “Business good this morning, Louis?”

  “Plenty to do, sir,” was the respectful reply. “Can I get you anything?”

  “Serve those cocktails you are shaking and come back again.”

  The barman obeyed. Domiloff leaned over and helped himself to some salted almonds. He ate one or two meditatively. When Louis returned he leaned a little further across the bar and dropped his voice.

  “Louis,” he enquired, “who else was in the bar when those two men dashed out of it like lunatics and were run over and killed?”

  Louis’s grey eyes were troubled. He glanced down the long line of empty stools towards the door.

  “It is not easy for me to say, sir,” he confided. “People pass in and out so quickly. A great many just push the door open to see if anyone is here they want to talk to and then go out again. So far as I remember the place was nearly empty.”

  “There will be no enquiry into this matter,” Domiloff continued thoughtfully, “but something must have happened to have sent those men rushing across the street like madmen so that they never saw the automobile coming, and that something must have happened in this bar.”

  “It did,” Louis admitted, dropping his voice until it was almost a whisper.

  “Proceed, Louis.”

  “I saw the door pushed open at the hotel end,” the barman went on, “and two men entered together and made as though they were going to the round table where you and Mr. Sagastrada usually sit. One of them, in fact, stopped and
asked me where Mr. Sagastrada was. Then the telephone rang and I looked away to see if Fred was answering it. Just as I looked back again, two shots were fired. One of the men rushed out of the bar by the swing door into the street, the other vaulted through the window just before him and fell down. There was a third shot and then the crash of the automobile.”

  “From where did it seem that those shots were fired, Louis?” Domiloff asked quietly.

  “They might have been fired from anywhere round about where you are standing now, sir,” Louis answered.

  “I see,” Domiloff murmured, crushing another of the salted almonds between his teeth. “And the men who were leaving the place were the two men who have been hanging around after Rudolph Sagastrada for several days?”

  “Yes, sir. There was no mistaking them. They entered the room together as though in a great hurry and I had the idea that Mr. Sagastrada and some of the others might be behind and that they were going to conceal themselves behind the curtains near his table and wait for him.”

  “I see. Then the two shots were fired and they—er—changed their minds.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And they were fired from this end of the room?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Domiloff, who was seated on the last stool nearest the hotel door, slipped down, lifted the flap of the counter and glanced at the little zinc sink and drawers.

  “What do you keep in there, Louis?” he asked.

  “Some of the things I need for making the cocktails, sir.”

  “And in the drawers?”

  Louis made no reply. He continued his task of polishing glasses. Domiloff leaned over to his side, opened one of the mahogany drawers and closed it again carefully.

  “Nothing else you would like to tell me, Louis?”

  “Nothing that you do not know, Baron.”

  Domiloff lit a cigarette.

  “Perhaps you are right, Louis,” he said. “Bring me a bottle of ginger ale and lemon peel without any brandy, over to the table.”

  “Yes, Baron.”

  Domiloff strolled back to his place at the round table and seated himself on the arm of Joan’s fauteuil whilst a chair was brought for him.

  “Queer little village, this,” he observed.

  “Odd that you should only have just found that out,” she smiled.

  “How long have you been here now?” he asked.

  “A fortnight,” she told him. “It seems to me that something has happened every day.”

  “Keep a diary?”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t think I should show it to you if I did!”

  He accepted the tumbler that Louis had brought him and sipped its contents thoughtfully.

  “Is Lydia down?” Joan asked.

  “I rather fancy that she is in my rooms with Rudolph Sagastrada. Do you want to see him?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered frankly.

  “For a young woman of some decision of character,” Domiloff observed, “you seem to find it very difficult to make up your mind about that young man.”

  “I do,” she confessed. “I am never quite sure what my feelings are for him.”

  “Bad sign, that.”

  “I’m not so sure,” she replied. “There were a few minutes last night when I was certain I cared for him more than anyone in the world.”

  “And this morning?”

  She shook her head.

  “The crisis has passed. One of the most terrifying and exciting visions of my life has faded.”

  “Do you want to see him?”

  She made no reply. Lucille intervened.

  “Is our young friend coming down to lunch?” she asked the Baron, “and if so is there any safe place where we could take him?”

  Domiloff finished his drink and rose to his feet.

  “I should doubt it,” he answered. “We are doing the best we can but I should not say there was any place where he was perfectly safe.”

  “You are not leaving us?” Joan asked.

  “Not without you,” he replied, taking her arm and leading her towards the door.

  “Is this an abduction?”

  “Well,” he confided, “you have been here two weeks and no one has run away with you yet. I am going to start the fashion.”

  “Let us know about lunch as soon as you have finished that ribald conversation,” Lucille called after them.

  Joan knew instinctively where she was being taken. Nevertheless, they passed along the broad corridors and up in the lift without, a word. When they reached the entrance to the suite which had been made over to Sagastrada, Joan broke the silence.

  “Is he still in danger?”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “More or less. All the same, we got rid of those two gentlemen from Beaulieu this morning.”

  “Who shot them?”

  Domiloff’s surprise seemed perfectly natural.

  “They were run over coming out of the bar. Well out of the way, I should think.”

  “Is that what you are looking so pleased about this morning?”

  “My dear, no. I am pleased partly because they are safely out of the way and partly because I am with you.”

  The gendarme saluted and stood on one side as they reached their destination. Domiloff led the way into the salon. Sagastrada was sitting on a couch which he shared with Lydia. He was a little pale, otherwise he was apparently in excellent spirits.

  “All is well,” Domiloff, who was standing with his finger pressed upon the bell, confided. “Your would-be assassins from Beaulieu are lying in state. At four o’clock to-morrow morning, when the curious have ceased to cumber the streets, they will be buried.”

  “The men who were run over?” Rudolph demanded.

  Domiloff assented.

  “Who fired the shot from the bar?”

  “No one seems to have the slightest idea. There is not much of this gangster business going on in Monte Carlo and everyone seems to have taken cover directly they heard the pistol shot.”

  Sagastrada shivered slightly. He was of more sensitive fibre than the beautiful woman by his side or the Baron himself.

  “We heard the shooting,” Joan confided. “We were just going to cross the street. The sight of those men has always terrified me ever since I saw one of them jump into the car at Beaulieu.”

  “Well, they will not terrify you any longer,” Domiloff remarked. “The man who murdered Rothmann may have been all right but I cannot think how a man like the other ever got a job as a first-class assassin.”

  “All the same,” Rudolph said earnestly, “I should like to know who fired the shot from the bar.”

  “I do not think that you will ever find out,” Domiloff declared. “Reminds me of the time I was a young man out on a ranch in a pretty bad quarter of Texas,” he went on reflectively. “We rode in one day to a sort of settlement where there was a bar and some women and gambling. I remember I was just commencing my first drink after a five hours’ ride when there was the sound of a revolver shot. That bar was packed with cowboys and loungers of every description a second before. I turned round to see what was going on and it was empty!”

  “And so?”

  “The same thing, apparently, happened below,” Domiloff explained. “People who are here for pleasure are extraordinarily careful of their lives. Where they all hid, out of which windows they jumped or what means of exit they used, I do not know. I could find no one who saw or heard a shot fired. Apparently the bar was empty.”

  “Tell me this morning’s news,” Rudolph begged after a moment’s pause. “What about the fierce ogre who wants me for a travelling companion?”

  “We are acting on the principle that attack is better than defence,” Domiloff recounted, lighting a cigarette. “We have commandeered the telephone wires and are censoring the telegraph. As for the mighty man himself, I may have to deal with him this afternoon. I have an appointment with him later on.”

  Saga
strada laughed softly.

  “Your husband is indeed an uncrowned king, Baroness,” he murmured.

  She touched his cheek lightly.

  “Are you the captured prince?” she asking smiling.

  “A too willing prisoner,” he sighed.

  Domiloff’s butler made his appearance with a silver tray laden with cocktails.

  “Double ones,” the host pointed out. “These are strenuous days. In some respects this week is likely to be the most eventful which Monte Carlo has ever known.”

  “All the same,” Joan declared, shaking her head, “I can drink no more cocktails. I had two downstairs with Mr. Brent.”

  “I have not had one at all,” Lydia said, as she stretched out her hand. “I have been wholly occupied in trying to keep my guest’s spirits up.”

  “To whom you have not yet offered a single drink,” Sagastrada observed, also helping himself. “It is queer—in my own country I forget all about wines until dinnertime, and apéritifs only exist when one goes to a café or dines out. Here they seem to go with the atmosphere.”

  “What is there peculiar about the atmosphere of Monte Carlo, I wonder?” Lydia Domiloff speculated.

  “The sun and the languor of the place,” Sagastrada pronounced, “are always working in the blood. It is like a clearinghouse for all the passions.”

  “Quite good,” Domiloff observed with an appreciative smile. “The true banker’s simile.”

  “Paul,” his wife asked him a little abruptly, “what are we going to do with this young man? It is impossible that he stay here much longer or I myself shall drift into danger. I am far too sympathetic.”

  “Shall we send for the Diva?” Joan suggested.

  “We are only like this,” Lydia sighed, “when romance is in the air, when a picturesque young man is in danger of his life—”

  “Am I really picturesque?” Sagastrada interrupted. “Horrible! It is because I have tied my tie with loose ends.”

  “There is a general disposition to talk nonsense this morning,” Domiloff declared, replenishing the glasses and helping himself. “I beg to suggest a more serious subject for your consideration. What about luncheon?”

  “Where,” Lydia asked, “can we lunch without fear of flying bullets? Before you people came I was rather looking forward to a tête-à-tête affair. My guest is still suffering from the strain of last night. A little caviar and chicken and perhaps a pint of dry champagne is really all he ought to have.”