by David Garth
“That two million is to be held in trust for a little Czech boy now in England. Nice thing to do, of course, but I did it against my better judgment and I was right. That two million kicked over my apple-cart, Major. It got the Nazis on my trail. I could feel the danger all around me. I knew that they were aware now that I had learned something of their plans. I would have to sneak out of the country to save my skin. And so I prepared a trap-door escape—through Klaeber I secured a forged emergency passport made out to one Robert Luce.”
He stopped and lighted a cigarette. The strain of those days seemed to have crept into his voice.
“You can see how I stood to lose any chance to uncover the facts about their plans in this country. Why, if they suspected I knew enough, they would change the set-up and the little information we had so laboriously and delicately worked to uncover would be nullified. It was a bad time.”
Major Barnes could imagine. “Go on,” he said, “please, Mr. Rhodes.”
“Just about then, in the course of my work as correspondent, I went to the fortified railroad center of Dorrheim to observe the concentration and military review of Koch’s Panzer Division. I was crossing the market square near the railroad yards to see them come in when the air raid came. It was a honey—daring British bombers taking a wallop at that rail center and concentration.
“I was making tracks from that exposed spot when the first bomb hit. The concussion knocked me flat on the cobblestones and I just lay there and hugged them and felt as though the whole market place would blow up under me any moment. But one place was as safe as another, right then. It was unmitigated hell while it lasted and when it passed over I was so weak I could scarcely stand up. There was confusion indescribable. Great clouds of dust rising from heaps of rubble—and in working my way blindly out of the mess I stumbled over a man who had been blasted unrecognizable.
“I was just about to leave the poor devil when suddenly I had my idea. How I had lived through that raid was a miracle and it was too good to waste. Right then and there I saw that my chance to be of any further use to my country lay in getting out of Nazi surveillance. So I promptly retired from the press corps.” He smiled slightly. “I froze the information I had of their plans. I froze that two million dollars. I loaded that shattered casualty with my every credential except the forged one, my wallet, everything, even my cigarettes. I relieved him of everything he had himself and got out of there as fast as I could. Lucian Rhodes was dead. Long live Robert Luce with his forged emergency passport.”
Major Barnes drew a breath. “And it worked?” he said tersely. “You stayed in Germany.”
“Prague,” corrected Lucian. “I lay hidden with some good Czech friends in a small apartment on the Moravská Ulice and kept my contact with Klaeber through a young Czech named Duchnod. For four months I lived like a nocturnal animal. And then Klaeber got some news to me. The gold shipment, now of ten millions in gold concentrates, was ready to go, and so was their dangerous agent. In that apartment on the Moravská Ulice, Duchnod and I worked out a plan to heat that gold shipment. Klaeber cooperated by arranging papers for him to join the Almaric’s crew as Velder, electrician’s assistant. Duchnod went off and I hung around for further word on the agent. It came shortly after—no idea of his identity, just the word that he was heading for the Clipper at Lisbon and was going to be contacted at the town of Valleron in Spain on a certain day. I left Prague immediately, got through into France, transmitted my information to the British Intelligence, hoping they would spot him at Valleron, and then hurried on to Valleron myself as fast as I could.”
He flung himself down in a chair.
“Well, as you know, the British missed that contact. Why not? They were looking for a man. And yet in the light of what I know now that contact did take place and it resulted in the death of John Tresh, an American expatriate.
“I’d like to say something about that man, Tresh. I never knew him. But that sick old political warhorse did a vital thing. Sometime or other, the Nazis must have pumped him or the Carney political machine that looked promising as a subversive tool. Tresh knew that machine backwards and forwards, naturally. And during these contacts, he probably became suspicious and in his shrewd mind tried to do a little pumping of his own. He bought something, some shred of information, not at all conclusive, but enough to alarm him. The Nazis covered fast when they suspected he had learned something. That nurse of his must have been in their pay and watched him closely. Linda Baker, leaving for a great assignment in the United States, stopped casually in Valleron to ascertain just what Tresh knew about her, if anything. Apparently she decided that he could be dangerous and gave the word to shut him up. That was the contact we all had so hoped to spot.”
He shook his head in regret. Major Barnes, resting his chin on his hand and following every word, stirred slightly.
“But Tresh had already communicated what he knew to Miss Britton,” he said with interest.
“Yes,” said Lucian slowly, “to Berkeley. To, of all people, a clicking dynamic girl with a tremendous devotion to her country. And as soon as Linda Baker knew that Berkeley had interviewed Tresh there still existed a potential threat to her. Linda Baker was ruthless with anything that might endanger her identity or the success of her work. From then on Berkeley was in terrible danger. It’s covered in her statement.”
He twisted his wide shoulders restlessly.
“I was in one hell of a spot, Major Barnes. Here I was, arriving in the United States, officially dead, with forged credentials. If the F.B.I. had gotten an inkling of that I would have been popped into custody before I could blink.”
“I know,” said Major Barnes. “And when you refused to explain because of Klaeber’s vital and dangerous position you would have been regarded as a traitor.”
They lighted cigarettes and smoked together in silence, sitting across the table in the little conference room. Lucian tapped his cigarette absently over an ash tray.
“The point is,” he said calmly, “that I did not have any concrete information to pass on. Linda Baker had her ears cocked for the F.B.I. Any little warning, arising from partial information, would have caused a complete change in set-up. But Linda Baker did not have her ears cocked for a foreign correspondent believed to have been killed in an air raid. It seemed best that I stay free, active, and officially dead.”
There was nothing in his even, low voice to convey the pressure and responsibility that had weighed upon him in the quick, sure, single-handed fight he had been forced to wage.
“I went after that gold shipment first. It came into Mecupan on schedule. Duchnod and I,” he said in an offhand way, “took care of it, according to plan. I came out of that Mecupan business all right—but Duchnod died of exposure and wounds. I buried him down there, on a lonely stretch of beach—a lone, stunted palm for a headstone.
“In a way, that ten-million-dollar sinking tripped me up again. The Nazis in trying to place responsibility evidently gave full consideration to the fact that a foreign correspondent named Lucian Rhodes had known about it. Therefore, perhaps, Lucian Rhodes was not dead, as believed. They set about finding out and the result was nearly disastrous for all of us.”
“That picture they stole!” exclaimed Major Barnes. “By heaven, yes! That gave Linda Baker her line on you.”
Lucian nodded and pressed out his cigarette. “That’s about all. Major. You have my story.”
The Intelligence officer rubbed his long cleft chin.
“I think you can be assured that any charge against you will be waived after your statement is considered.” He stretched his hand across the table and gripped Lucian’s. “That’s my personal thanks, old chap. But how does a country express its thanks to a man who kept his feet and his head?”
“That’s the beauty of it,” said Lucian. “No American needs any thanks for being an American.”
“Perhaps not,” smiled Major Barnes. “But you beat a tough trail alone.”
“Alone?” sa
id Lucian Rhodes. “I started out alone, but when the pressure was the greatest and I couldn’t see one step ahead of me I wasn’t alone, Major. I had a girl with me who,” he said softly, reverently, “was a fighting fool.”
CHAPTER 25
It was late in the afternoon when Lucian returned from Washington, drove through the little Maryland village near his home, passed the gabled Five Mile Inn with its aura of Revolutionary patriots having a tankard before a roaring fire, and stopped at John Hardesty’s house to see Miss Melissa Rhodes and bring her home with him.
He had phoned earlier from Washington to tell her he was on his way and she had been her usual chipper self then. Consequently, he was shocked when he arrived and learned that she was resting in bed under doctor’s orders.
“Nothing serious,” Hardesty assured him quickly. “She had just been terribly anxious this past day or so and when she heard from you she relaxed a little too far. She’ll be as trig as ever in a couple of days.”
Lucian found her propped up on her pillow, looking frilly and regal. He bent to kiss her, then sat on the edge of the bed holding her fragile hand in his.
“Things have come pretty fast and furious for you,” he said gently.
“You’re not going off to Europe again—or somewhere?” she asked in a husky, anxious little voice. “Please, Lucian—your destinies lie here. Your great usefulness—”
“All right, Aunt,” he said, and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.
“That letter you left for me,” she said, “I wanted to open it—so many times.”
“It was a farewell note of sorts, Aunt. Just to tell you that I was on my country’s business, that I loved you and thanked you for all you’ve done for me, and what to do about a matter of two million dollars.” He smiled down at her. “You don’t mind not being an heiress, do you?”
“I never felt as though it was mine, Lucian.” She tugged at his hand slightly. “Lucian—where is Berkeley?”
“Up at her home by now, I expect. Or perhaps she is on her way west to join her family.”
Miss Melissa Rhodes regarded him with half-shut eyes.
“Either is quite a distance from here, Lucian.”
“She has plans of her own, Aunt,” he said.
That soft, somewhat husky voice again floated up from the pillow. “You don’t seem to have much to do with those plans, Lucian—”
“I’m afraid,” he said abruptly, “I have altogether too much to do with them.” He pressed her hand and stood up. “You get some rest, Aunt,” he commanded. “I’ll be down to see you in the morning.”
She held on to his hand for a moment. “I’ve asked—that Peter be told to have a good dinner ready for you.”
“Still keeping the home fires burning,” said Lucian. He put her hand down on the coverlet. “Thank you, little one. Good night.”
He left the house and walked to the car Major Barnes had put at his disposal. And for a moment he stood there looking at it as though he was considering buying it. Which was noteworthy because just then he did not even see it.
But he could seem to see, and with remarkable clarity, too, a slender girl looking mystic in New Orleans moonlight with a musical serenade created for her alone by the night breeze sighing through a willow that bent over the wall of an old French garden, and the exotic, fluting note of a bird in one of those great old oaks lacy with Spanish moss.
“This is going to be a great evening,” Lucian Rhodes muttered. “I’ll probably sit and stare into the fire like some old codger reviewing his youth.”
But whatever the viewpoint of the imminent evening, the time of day itself was lovely as he drove out toward his home. The Maryland countryside looked as though it had been painted in soft grays and browns, with occasional glints of gold dotting the autumn canvas as some of the country estates deep back from the white ribbon of road heralded with the first few lighted windows the passing of the day.
Lucian drove slowly, lounging back relaxed, one hand on the wheel—driving as though reluctant to get home. But there was such a sense of emptiness about it, as though it was some big barnlike establishment void of heat or light or sound. That was ridiculous. It was a beautiful place and it was his home. It was where he had been born.
Perhaps it was because he suddenly noticed how fragile and little Aunt Melissa Rhodes had looked propped up against her big pillow just now. For the day she rode on out of this world a lot of confidence and love and devotion was going with her. You subtracted that and had remaining a world where an attractive dark-haired woman with a beautiful cultivated voice and the harmonies of mighty music in her fingertips could be a dangerous, ruthless, murderous spy. Stand on a lonesome stretch of sandy shore beside the grave of a young Czech patriot and wish you could have understood the words he had murmured in his native tongue just before he died.
No, it wasn’t the house that had a sense of emptiness. Perhaps, the emptiness was his.
He traversed the long drive and drew up before the house.
The light over the great front door had been turned on and cast a luminous shaft out over the flagged veranda.
Lucian lighted a cigarette and stood there a moment looking at the old colonnaded mansion. He found himself thinking of another homecoming—his great-grandfather, Cary, returning from his duel with Bradman. The pale poetical Bradman who had been forced into a fight with the deadliest duelist in Maryland and fallen beneath the oaks at sunrise. Maybe Cary Rhodes had stepped out of his carriage and stood on this spot for a moment and known the emptiness of home-coming. That duel nobody could understand, least of all the girl who had married him. And he had returned knowing that she thought him ruthless and brutal and would have gone with her father.
Lucian threw his cigarette away and walked across the flagstones. He let himself in, closed the door behind him, and then stopped, one hand in the very act of removing his hat, the other still on the door.
The broad entrance hall of the old Rhodes mansion was softly lighted by a small lamp on the rosewood table near the wall. It all looked familiar—the portraits, the beautiful old mirror, the fine spiral staircase down there at the end—but he had the craziest idea he was seeing things. This could not be a hundred years ago and yet, even as Cary Rhodes had come home to find waiting the girl who had married him, so at this moment a girl was sitting in that same great carved chair.
“Berkeley!” said Lucian Rhodes incredulously.
She was sitting there, long slim legs crossed comfortably, her hands clasped about one knee. She looked as though she might have been waiting for a taxi, wearing a fur jacket and a turban that matched the soft glowing rose of her dress.
“Hello, Lucian,” she said immediately.
“But it’s a miracle!” he said slowly. “It really is—finding you here.”
“There’s no miracle about it,” returned the girl. “What kind of a person do you think I’d be to flit oft and leave you facing some nebulous trouble with the F.B.I.? There must be something that can be done and let me remind you that my father is one of this country’s great lawyers.”
Lucian tossed his hat aside and strode toward her. Why she was here did not matter. She was here! It was something he found hard to believe even while he stretched out his hand to her and asked her to come on into the study.
Peter had lighted a lamp in the study and a fire was burning on the hearth. Lucian settled the girl on a divan.
“Will you have a drink?” he asked.
She declined. He started to press the bell, then changed his mind and returned to stand before her, his back to the fire.
“Please,” he urged gently, “take off your coat. You lock as though you were about to leave in the next two minutes.”
Berkeley hesitated briefly, then allowed him to help her off with her fur jacket. She looked stirring in that dress of deep soft rose with a golden chain about her throat and a golden bracelet on her wrist.
“I stopped by to see what the situation was with you and to thank
Miss Rhodes for her sweetness to me,” she said. “I understood Miss Rhodes is not here, but that you were expected, so I waited. How is she, Lucian?”
He told her that the brisk little lady was just being quiet and catching her breath.
“I wish I could have seen her before I take off Westward-ho,” said the girl. She laughed. “I really am going to make it this time, although I wouldn’t blame you for doubting it. But I want to know first how things stand with you. What is this F.B.I. trouble, Lucian?”
He did not bother about the last part of that. She was bending west, definitely, conclusively, this time.
“Forget about me for the moment,” he advised pleasantly. “I’d far rather talk about you. That day in Valleron seems a long time ago, doesn’t it, Berkeley? Remember that judge and his mustaches?”
“I remember Herr Colonel Starme a lot better,” commented the girl evenly.
Lucian locked his hands behind his back and looked out over her head. “Remember when we paid for the license?” he asked reminiscently. “Fourteen pesetas and they gave us change in French, Spanish, and Italian money.”
“I remember how you dashed out and bought a ring,” he heard her say and looking down at her he was amazed to see it right there in her open palm, that narrow band of dull chased gold.
“Why, you’ve kept it!” he exclaimed involuntarily.
“Of course,” said Berkeley. “I’ll always keep it. Why wouldn’t I?”
