“I am for plain actions and plain words,” Von Thal persisted. “You tell me that you have information that Berati has placed his faith in this man. He is sending him to Germany to report upon the situation, to choose between Krust, Behrling and us, in plain words. Very well. You go on to say that you fear he will decide for Krust.”
“I did not go so far as that,” Elida protested earnestly. “Only yesterday Berati refused to receive Krust. He had to come back from San Remo, where he went to telephone. He refused to see him or to take him anywhere else for an audience. The matter is not decided. Our object with Major Fawley should be to get him to promise that we have fair play, that he shall see something of our organisations and hear something of our plans as well as Krust’s. After that will come the time for arguments, and after that, Maurice, but not before, might come the time for the sort of action you are contemplating.”
She was suddenly more grave. There was a smouldering light in her eyes. She turned to face Fawley.
“If we arrive at that stage,” she said, “and we are faced with an unfavourable decision, I think I would send the dearest friend or the dearest relative I have into hell if he elected to hand Germany over to the bourgeoisie.”
“Better to the Soviet,” Von Thal grunted.
The Captain came and spoke to Von Thal in a low voice.
“It is a mistral which arrives, Your Highness,” he announced.
The Prince rose to his feet and gazed westward. There was a curious bank of clouds which seemed suddenly to have appeared from nowhere. White streaks of foam danced upon the sea below. Von Thal waved the man aside with a muttered word and turned his back upon him.
“The trouble of this affair,” Fawley declared, “is that the Princess has formed an exaggerated idea of my influence. I am only a pawn, after all. Berati has already a sheaf of reports from Germany. Mine will only be one of the many.”
“At the risk of flattering your self-esteem,” Elida said, “I will tell you that Berati has an extraordinary opinion of your resource and capacity. He does not believe that any other man breathing would have obtained for him the plan of the new French defences on the frontier, with particulars of their guns, and preserved his life and liberty.”
Fawley laid down his cigarette. For once Elida had scored. He was genuinely disturbed.
“That sounds rather like a fairy-tale, Princess.”
“Never mind,” she persisted. “It was bad diplomacy on my part, I admit, to tell you that, but I could not resist the temptation. You are a clever man, Major Fawley, but neither I nor my friends walk altogether in the dark. You need not be afraid. Only I and two others know what I have just told you, and how you communicated with Berati is still a secret to us.”
“Such an enterprise as you have alluded to,” Fawley observed, “would have been more in my line. I am no politician. That is what neither my chief nor you seem to understand. I will promise what you ask,” he went on, after a moment’s pause. “I shall not travel to Germany with Krust. I will not be subject to his influence, and I will visit any organisations or meet anyone you may suggest.”
Von Thal sprang to his feet. There was a sullen look in his face, angry words trembling upon his lips. Elida rose swiftly and laid her fingers upon his mouth.
“I forbid you to speak, Maurice,” she enjoined. “You hear that? You see, I have guessed your thoughts. You would wish to provoke a quarrel with Major Fawley by means of an insult. I will not tolerate it. I accept Major Fawley’s proposition. Remember, I am your superior in this matter. You must do as I say.”
She withdrew her hand slowly. The blood seemed to have rushed to Von Thal’s head. He was by no means a pleasant sight.
“And if I refuse?” he demanded.
“You will be ordered to return to Germany to-night,” she told him. “You will never again be associated with any enterprise in which I am concerned, and I shall do my best to discredit you entirely with Von Salzenburg.”
Von Thal hesitated for a moment, then he swung on his heel and strode away forward. From their sheltered seats they could see him leaning over the side of the boat regardless of the spray through which they were driving.
“A nice joy-trip you are giving me,” Fawley grumbled. “How do you know that I am not liable to sea-sickness?”
“You do not seem to me to be that sort of person,” she answered absently.
They were rolling and pitching now in the trough of a heavy sea. Occasionally a wave sent a cloud of spray over their heads. They had turned for the harbour, but it was hard to see more than its blurred outline. A sailor had brought them oilskins and removed the plates and glasses.
“We are running in with the wind now,” Fawley remarked. “Good thing we turned when we did.”
She drew him farther into the shelter. It seemed to him that her fingers lingered almost caressingly upon his wrist.
“If only you and I,” she sighed, “could be on the same side.”
“Well, I think I should be an improvement upon your present fellow-conspirators,” he rejoined.
“Maurice, as I dare say you know,” she told him, “is a nephew of Von Salzenburg. He has the reputation of being a fine soldier.”
“These fine soldiers,” Fawley grunted, “are always a terrible nuisance in civil life. What the mischief is he up to now?”
Conditions had changed during the last few moments. They were only about a hundred yards from the entrance to the harbour, but they seemed to be taking an unusual course which laid them broadside to the heavy seas. Two sailors were busy lowering one of the dinghies. Elida pointed towards the wheel. The Prince had taken the captain’s place, he had thrown off his oilskins and coat and was standing up with the wheel in his hand, his broad ugly mouth a little open, his eyes fixed steadily upon the narrow opening to the harbour.
“He is mad!” Elida exclaimed.
A great wave broke over them, smashing some of the woodwork of the deck lounge and sending splinters of glass in every direction. People were running, dimly visible shrouded figures, through the mist and cloud of rain to the end of the pier. There were warning shouts. The captain gripped Von Thal by the arm and shouted indistinguishable words. Maurice’s right hand shot out. The man staggered back and collapsed half upon the deck, half clinging to the rails. Once again they mounted a wave which for a few seconds completely engulfed them.
“Maurice is running straight for the sea wall,” Elida gasped.
“In that case,” Fawley exclaimed, tearing off his coat, “I think we will make for the dinghy.”
There was suddenly a terrific crash, a splintering of wood all around them, a crashing and screeching of torn timbers. They seemed to be up in the air for a moment. Von Thal, who had left the wheel, came dashing towards them. The deck seemed to be parting underneath their feet. Fawley drew the girl closer into his arms, her wet cheeks were pressed to his. For a period of seconds their lips met fiercely, hungrily, the flavour of salt in their madness and the roar and blinding fury of the breaking waves stupefying them…. Once again the yacht, which had been sucked backwards, crashed into the stone wall. This time she fell apart like a cardboard box. Fawley saw as though in a dream Elida hauled into the dinghy. She was surrounded by ugly pieces of wreckage threatening them every second with death. He drew a long breath and dived down to the calmer waters.
Chapter XIII
Fawley, after several weeks of devious and strenuous wanderings, crossed the very fine hall of Berlin’s most famous hotel well aware that he was now approaching the crucial point of his enterprise. Frankfurt, thanks to his English and French connections, had been easy. At Cologne and some of the smaller towns around, even if he had aroused a little suspicion, he had learnt all that he needed to know. But in Berlin, for the first time, outside aid was denied to him, and he became conscious that he was up against a powerful and well-conducted system of espionage. The very
politeness of the hotel officials, their casual glance at his credentials, their meticulous care as to his comfort—all these things had seemed to him to possess a sinister undernote. He chose for his headquarters a small suite upon the sixth floor with the sitting-room between his bedroom and bathroom, but his first discovery was that the one set of keys attached to the double doors was missing, and he only obtained the keys giving access to the corridor after some considerable delay….
Yet to all appearance he had been received as an ordinary and welcome visitor. According to his custom, he was travelling under his own passport and without any sort of compromising papers, yet all the time he fancied that these polite officials, some of whom seemed to be always in the background, were looking at him from behind that masked expression of courtesy and affability with definite suspicion.
For two days he lounged about the city as an ordinary tourist without any particular attempt at secrecy, asking no questions, seeking no new acquaintances, and visiting only the largest and best-known restaurants. On the third morning after his arrival there was a thunderous knocking at the door and, in reply to his invitation to enter, there rolled in, with his fat, creaseless face and pudgy hand already extended, Adolf Krust. Fawley laid down his pipe and suffered his fingers to be gripped.
“So you gave us all the slip, you crafty fellow,” the visitor exclaimed. “And you left my little friend in such distress, with a copy of an A.B.C. in her hand and tears in her eyes, and all that we know, or rather that we do not know, is that the Daily Mail tells us that Major Fawley, late of the American Army, has left the Hôtel de France for London. London indeed! The one place in the world that for you and me and for those like us is dead. What should you be doing in London, eh?”
“I may go there before I finish up,” Fawley replied, smiling. “After all, I am half English, you know.”
“You are of no country,” Adolf Krust declared, sinking into the indicated easy-chair and blowing out his cheeks. “You are the monarch of cosmopolitans. You are a person who carries with him always a cult. You have upset us all in Monte Carlo. Some believe that you were drowned when that clumsy fool, that idiot nephew of Von Salzenburg’s, drove you on to the sea wall of the harbour in that fearful mistral.”
“It was an excellent stage disappearance for me,” Fawley observed. “I was just a shade too much in the limelight for my safety or my comfort.”
“You speak the truth,” his visitor agreed. “Only two days after you left, the French military police were swarming in the hotel. Everyone was talking about you. There were some who insisted upon it that you were a dangerous fellow. They are right, too, every time, but all the same you breathe life. Yes,” Krust concluded with a little sigh of satisfaction, “it is well put, that—you breathe life.”
“Perhaps that is because I have so often loitered in the shadow of death,” Fawley remarked.
Krust shrugged his tightly encased shoulders. In the city he had abandoned the informal costume of the Riviera and was attired with the grave precision of a senator.
“In the walk of life we traverse,” he said, “that is a matter of course…. Ach, but this is strange!”
“What is strange?”
“To find you after all my persuadings in my beloved Berlin.”
“I have also visited your beloved Frankfurt and Cologne,” Fawley confided dryly, perfectly certain that his visitor was well acquainted with the fact.
The blue eyes grew rounder and rounder.
“You take away the breath,” Krust declared. “As the great young man used to say—you sap the understanding. You have seen Von Salzenburg?”
Fawley shook his head.
“Not I!” he answered. “Some day, if there is anything that might come of it, we will see him together.”
Krust’s eyes became more protuberant than ever. This was a strange one, this man! He wondered whether, after all, Greta had told the truth, whether she had not all the time kept back something from him. Fawley pushed a box of cigarettes across the table. His caller waved them away and produced a leather receptacle the size of a traveller’s sample case.
“You are not one of those who object to the odour of any good tobacco even if it be strong?” he asked. “You have seen my cigars. You will not smoke them, but they are good. They are made in Cologne and they cost two pfennig each, which in these days helps the pocket-book.”
“Smoke one by all means,” Fawley invited. “Thank goodness it is warm weather and the windows are open!”
“You joke at my taste in tobacco,” Krust grumbled, “but you do not joke at my taste in nieces, nicht? What about the little Greta?”
“Charming,” Fawley admitted with a smile. “Everyone in Monte Carlo wondered at your luck.”
“It is all done by kindness and a little generosity,” the other remarked with an air of self-satisfaction. “I have not the looks. I certainly have not the figure, but there are other gifts! One has to study the sex to know how to please.”
“How did you find me out here?” Fawley asked abruptly.
“I have intelligent friends in Berlin who watch,” was the cautious reply. “You were seen down south at the march of the Iron Army. You were seen at the new Russian Night Club in Düsseldorf the other night, where there are not many Russians but a good deal of conversation. People are curious just now about travellers. I have been asked what you do here.”
Fawley yawned.
“Bore myself chiefly,” he admitted. “I find Germany a far better governed country than I had anticipated. I have few criticisms. A great brain must be at work somewhere.”
Krust rolled a cigar between his fingers. It was a light-coloured production, long, with faint yellow spots. Every few seconds he knocked away the ash.
“A great brain,” he repeated, as if following out a train of thought of his own. “I will tell you something, friend Fawley. What you think is produced by a great brain is nothing but the God-given sense of discipline which every true German possesses. There is no one to thank for the smoothness with which the great wheel revolves. It is the German people themselves who are responsible.”
“Prosperity seems to be returning to the country,” Fawley reflected. “I find it hard to believe that these people will suffer themselves to be led into such an adventure as a new war.”
Krust pinched his cigar thoughtfully.
“The German has pride,” he said. “He would wish to re-establish himself. In the meantime he does not hang about at street corners. He works. You want to see underneath the crust. Why not accept my help? Unless some doors are unlocked even you, the most brilliant secret service agent of these days, will fail. You will make a false report. You will leave this country and you will not understand.”
“Berati has his methods and I have mine,” Fawley observed. “I admit that I am puzzled, but I do not believe that either you or Von Salzenburg could enlighten me…. Still, there would be no harm in our dining and spending the evening together. My ears are always open, even if I do not promise to be convinced.”
Krust sighed.
“To go about openly with you,” he regretted, “would do neither of us any good. It would give me all the joy in the world to offer you the hospitality of the city. I dare not.”
Fawley smiled as he pressed the bell for the waiter.
“Then I must show you some.”
Adolf Krust chuckled.
“I am a man,” he confessed, “who when he talks likes to drink. Most good Germans are like that.”
“Cocktails?”
Krust waved aside the idea.
“I drink cocktails only at the bar. Wine or beer here. It is equal to me.”
Fawley rang the bell and gave the waiter an order. The finest Rhine wine was served to them in deliciously frosted glasses. They drank solemnly an unspoken toast. Fawley refilled the glasses. Again they were raised.
He muttered a few words in his own language. The toast, however, whatever it may have been, was never drunk. There was a loud knocking at the outside door. What followed on Fawley’s invitation to enter seemed to his astonished eyes more like the advance guard of a circus than anything. The door was thrown open with a flourish. The manager of the hotel, in a tightly fitting frock coat and grey trousers of formal design, entered hurriedly. He took not the slightest notice of Fawley, but swung round and ranged himself by the side of the threshold. He was joined a few seconds later by the assistant manager, dressed in precisely the same fashion, who also made precipitate entrance and stood on the other side facing his chief. There followed an officer dressed in some sort of uniform, and after him a younger man, who appeared to hold the post of A.D.C., in more sombre but still semimilitary accoutrements. Last of all came a man in civilian clothes—stern, with a shock of brown hair streaked with grey, hard features, granite-like mouth, keen steely eyes. He held up his hand as he entered in a gesture which might have been intended for the Fascist salute or might have been an invocation to silence. He spoke German correctly, but with a strong Prussian accent.
“My name is Behrling—Heinrich Behrling,” he announced. “It is my wish to speak a few words with the agent of my friend General Berati of Rome. I have the pleasure—yes?”
Fawley bowed, but shook his head.
“I cannot claim the distinction of being the recognised agent of that great man,” he declared. “I am an American visiting Germany as a tourist.”
The new-comer advanced further into the room and shook hands with some solemnity. Fawley turned towards where his previous visitor had been seated, then gave a little start. The hideous and unsavoury cigar propped up against an ash-tray was still alight. The arm-chair, however, had been pushed back and the black Homburg hat which had rested upon the floor had gone. There was in the place where Adolf Krust had sat the most atrocious odour of foul tobacco, but nowhere in the room was there any sign of him nor any indication of his sudden departure except the wide-opened door leading into the bathroom.
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