Bobby, smiling, shook his head. He had to lie; there was no other way out.
“I’m quite willing to believe that you work for my father, Dr. Sandor—but the lady you call Minna Braun did not hand me any package.”
“What?”
“I say she did not hand me any package. She certainly came to my room last night in a highly terrified condition, explaining that two men had endeavoured to break down her door—but after a while I induced her to go back to her room. That is all.”
The statement, although not appearing to satisfy the man, was allowed to pass without comment. Sandor, it was very evident, was endeavouring to overcome an attack of intense irritability. At last he appeared to have succeeded.
Taking out his handkerchief and blowing his nose violently, he said: “Then, if she did not hand you the package, my information is wrong. But let us forget our worries. When did you say you intended to return to England?”
Bobby thought for a moment and then decided on the truth this time. Why not?
“I thought of going back to-morrow via Paris.”
“By train?”
“No—air.”
Sandor broke into a smile.
“Then I must make your last day’s stay enjoyable. Would you care to visit a small club of which I am a member? I promise you will meet some very interesting people. But not, of course, if you have any remaining doubt about my bona fides.”
It was the second challenge, and Bobby felt compelled to accept it.
“I’ll come with pleasure,” he said.
***
The men to whom Sandor introduced him in the small but extremely comfortable club off the Unter den Linden were certainly agreeable, and, being of the true cosmopolitan type, they strove to make the visitor feel as much at home as though he were sitting down in the Junior Army and Navy in London. They were all civilians, and talk touched on many subjects dear to the hearts of men of the world: the latest fashionable members of the demi-monde, the different attractions of night life in Pé, Paris, and the various ports of the Far East. Such conversation, while it carried a distinct masculine tang, never became unnecessarily coarse, and Bobby, while he did far more listening than talking, could find no objection to it.
His host, he remarked, seemed fairly popular in this particular set of well-to-do men, and certainly no one could have looked after him with greater assiduity.
After lunch—and this was a meal which would have satisfied the tastes of any but the most exacting gourmet—some one in the smoking-room suggested cards.
Sandor touched his guest on the shoulder.
“Do you play poker, Wingate?” he inquired.
“Yes—but for small stakes. Remember, I’m anything but a millionaire. What’s your limit here?”
“Oh, we play for various amounts.”
Bobby, who liked the game, but who was very conscious of having only a few pounds on him, said:
“Perhaps I’d better watch—I haven’t very much with me.”
They would not listen to this. While Sandor offered to back him to any reasonable amount—a suggestion to which Wingate shook his head—the others said:
“Well, what about a five marks’ limit?”
As he knew he could not lose a great deal—unless he lost his head—Bobby agreed, and they sat down to what Sandor described as “a quiet, friendly game” of five players.
***
After a couple of hours, Bobby’s counters had grown to quite a respectable pile. He must be in, he thought, to the tune of about thirty pounds. The party was now showing signs of wishing to break up, but, just as one suggested another round of drinks, a man sitting on Sandor’s right—that was two away from the Englishman— proposed a final round of jackpots with no limit.
Wingate looked at Sandor, who nodded reassuringly at him.
“Don’t worry,” the glance said.
It was not up to him to demur. He had no wish to appear a spoil-sport—as would undoubtedly have been the case if he had raised any objection. For one thing, he had been winning handsomely; for another, there was his natural pride.
“Is that all right, Wingate?” inquired his sponsor.
“Yes.” He had only to keep his head, he told himself.
The luck of the cards was still with him; he could never remember having such a run—it was uncanny. Never once, for instance, did he find himself without the necessary “openers,” and when he had filled in after discarding, he found himself with the very cards required to make his hands unbeatable. Bobby was not in a position to realise, of course, that the dealer on these occasions was Albrecht Ballin.
He would have been foolish in these circumstances not to have given his unexpected good fortune its head, and, although the amount of the “rise” caused him uneasiness at times, he went through with it, with the result that when the last jackpot had finished he found himself a winner of between 1,300 and 1,400 marks.
“You appear to have all the money in the world there,” Sandor said with a laugh. “Now the question is: how are you going to get it out of Pé? You have heard of the recent restrictions prohibiting the removal of capital from Ronstadt, I dare say?”
Bobby, excited and not quite his usual self, imagined at first that the other was pulling his leg, but the confirmatory nods of the other players convinced him that Sandor was serious.
“The only way to get round it is to change your counters into English banknotes,” one suggested.
“Good idea, Stürm,” promptly replied Sandor. “As it happens, I’ve just got back from England and I have two £50 notes on me.”
Still flushed, and somewhat out of control, Bobby thanked the speaker and placed the two notes in his pocket-book.
“I don’t like taking this money, all the same, gentlemen,” he said.
A roar of laughter greeted the remark. The listeners appeared to think it was the funniest thing they had heard for years.
“Well, I must be going,” now announced Sandor, after the other necessary financial adjustments had been made; “I must see about earning some bread and butter.”
Wingate parted from him on the steps of the Hotel Poste.
“I hope to see you again before long,” the doctor said. “In the meantime, a safe return to dear old London. Don’t forget to mention me to your father.”
“I won’t.” It was only after the man had gone on his way that Bobby recalled Sandor’s enigmatical smile.
But he decided to waste no further time in trying to solve that riddle: the quicker he was out of Pé the better. It was a pity that he had not been able to get any clue as to the plot against the governor, but against that he offset the fact that the governor would be ready with a full explanation when he talked to him. Trust a Colonel in M.I.5 to be able to look after himself!
Walking into the hotel, he told the office that he would be leaving in the morning, and returned to the guest-house.
Here he found drama awaiting him.
Chapter XI
The Inquisition
Meanwhile, the man known to Emil Crosber as Adolf Ritter was undergoing a stern cross-examination in the Headquarters of the Secret Police in the Wilhelmstrasse. With him, looking ashen-faced and trembling, was Aschelmann, the manager of the Hotel Poste.
Crosber’s tone was venomous.
“Because I want you both to get the right angle on this, I propose to narrate the facts,” he said, showing his teeth in a snarl. “Britain, with whom we shall shortly be at war, is known by us to possess the plans, and to be secretly manufacturing a new shoulder weapon, capable of being carried by any infantry soldier, which fires a small high-explosive, armour-piercing steel. Tests at Aldershot have proved this can put out of action any modern tank. These plans are being very jealously guarded, but, working through his old paramour, Marie Roget, this Department had hoped that s
ufficient pressure could be brought to bear on Colonel Clinton, to ensure that he, in his prominent position in M.I.5, would be able to place his hands on them.
“Before the woman I had commissioned to do this work left Pé, however, two rather surprising things happened. The first was that, by a queer stroke of luck, a certain friend of this country, long resident in England, was able to secure excellent prints of the plans of the anti-tank gun, and the second was that, out of the blue, as it were, Clinton’s adopted son came to Pé—I have not the slightest doubt in the hope that he could do a little honest spying himself. At least, that is your belief,” looking up at Ritter.
The latter person, whom Bobby Wingate would have had no difficulty in recognising as that very obliging medico, Dr. Emeric Sandor, nodded.
“That is the information which was given to me by—”
He was sharply interrupted.
“Don’t mention that name, you fool—even here!” cried Crosber. “Don’t you realise that when war breaks out that same person will be worth several army corps to us? Let it be sufficient that you were given this information.”
“Yes,” humbly agreed the other.
“With the son available, what more natural than that we should endeavour to improve on the position by compromising him so that we could exert a further hold on his father—even to two such crass idiots as you both have proved, that much is clear, I suppose?”
The listeners, looking like badly whipped dogs, gave murmurs of acquiescence.
“That was why I stopped Marie Roget, or, as we know her, Minna Braun, from going to London to interview the father, and instructed her to concentrate on the son.
“The plan—she is a clever woman—appears to have worked very well—up to a point.” It was now that Crosber’s face grew as black as a thundercloud. “In order that the hold Minna Braun had already obtained on the young man should be strengthened, she appealed to his sense of chivalry—always a good card to play with the British. She posed as a French agent who was being trailed by Ronstadt agents. Would the young Englishman with whom she had fallen in love help her by taking charge of the packet which contained the information she had been sent to Pé to get? He was quite willing to help her.
“Everything would have been all right,” Crosber concluded, “but for your unpardonable mistake, Aschelmann.” He glared at the hotel manager. “You had been handed the package by Ritter here, to be planted on young Wingate, and you had also received, for transmission to Ritter, a package from England. What do you do but get the two packages mixed up!
“But the package handed by Minna Braun to Wingate must be found if we have to search the whole of Ronstadt, and don’t come back here, either of you, without it. That is all.”
***
Bobby had nearly finished dressing for dinner when the knock came on the door. He had been devoting considerable time to thinking of the events of the day. Then his mind turned to London—and Rosemary. What would she think when she got that newspaper? She would recognise his writing, no doubt, but would surely look inside for a message of some sort from him.
He was putting the finishing touches to his tie when knuckles rattled on the outside of the door.
“Yes?” he called, thinking it was the valet offering his services.
But when the door opened, a stranger showed himself. He was a thickset man of dominating appearance, and Bobby did not like the look on his face one little bit.
“Herr Wingate?” this fellow asked.
“Yes, that’s my name. What do you want?”
The man scowled at him unpleasantly and ordered his two companions, who had been waiting outside in the corridor, into the room.
“I am from the Secret Police,” he announced, “and I have authority to search your luggage.”
Without waiting for any comment, he walked over to the two suitcases that stood on the luggage rest at the bottom of the bed.
He had his hands already on the first when Bobby recovered from his surprise.
“What’s the idea?” he asked.
The leader of the raiding party gave him another unpleasant scowl.
“The idea is that you do not move from this room until we have gone right through it.” He made a sign and his two underlings took up a position by the young Englishman.
Bobby realised it would be foolish to attempt to put up any kind of fight. What lay at the back of this he could not decide, unless—yes, that must be it: these men were after the package which Minna Braun had handed to him for custody. Well, that package was now safely on its way to London, so he had nothing to fear. Rosemary would readily understand his quickly pencilled note on the outside page of the newspaper: “Keep this safe for me.” The confidence he felt conquered his sense of rage.
“Do I understand that I am under suspicion of having committed some crime?”
“I am not here to answer questions.”
“Then may I smoke?”
“You may not smoke.”
A bully, this fellow, with his fleshy jowls and little, piglike eyes. A petty tyrant, rejoicing in his power that could instil fear into the hearts of all those he visited or even passed in the streets. The type was so new to the young Englishman that Bobby stared at him with the greatest interest.
It took fifteen minutes for the two suitcases to be examined. After that, the clothes hanging in the wardrobe, the drawers of the dressing-table, even the bedding—all these were gone through with the utmost care.
“If you’d only tell me what you are expecting to find, I might be able to help you.”
“Shut your mouth.”
Now was the time when Bobby felt he had to call upon all his reserves, but he managed to control himself. They were three against one, and all armed. Probably they were asking nothing better than to be given a chance to beat him into insensibility. He had heard sufficient of the methods of the Pé Secret Police, long before he had come to the city. For months the European newspapers had been devoting columns to the unsavoury subject.
Still, it was terribly galling to be insulted by this brute—and even more nauseating to feel the fellow’s hands going over his clothes, as they did the next minute.
“Put on your hat and coat,” Wingate was now ordered.
“Why?”
“Why?” roared the man. “Because I tell you to, that’s why! You’re coming for a drive with me, if you must know.”
Bobby made a stand at this.
“I have been very patient with you so far,” he said quietly, “but the time has come, I think, when I should remind you of certain important facts. I am a British subject—”
The emissary of the Secret Police spat.
“As though I didn’t know that!” he returned, with infinite contempt.
“And, being a British subject, I demand to be treated with proper respect. I’m not a criminal.”
Although he did not see that there was anything inherently humorous in the words, they were greeted with low, menacing laughter.
“Not a criminal! That’s good, hein?” asked the leader of his two satellites.
The couple laughed again, as though savouring some private jest of their own.
Bobby boiled with anger. But mixed with his rage was a sense of—well, not exactly fear, but certainly uneasiness. Where were these men going to take him? What was the meaning of that “drive”? If he demanded to be taken to a lawyer or some responsible official at the British Embassy, they would rock with fresh scorning laughter, without a doubt. They recognised no law but their own wishes—and the commands of their superiors.
“Come along; we’ve wasted enough time. Besides, some one will be waiting.”
***
There were three men in this room to which he had been brought, and all of them were in uniform. The man seated at the desk, who was evidently going to take charge of the proceedi
ngs, was middle-aged, immaculately dressed in the uniform that fitted his slim figure like a glove, and had a face as hard as flint. He wore a monocle in his right eye.
He wasted no time.
“Good-evening, Lieutenant Wingate,” he said in a chilling tone. “I regret the necessity for having you brought here—by the way, to relieve your mind of any further doubt, this is the Headquarters of the Ronstadt Secret Service—but I am afraid the necessity has arisen through your own actions.”
Bobby took a cigarette from the box which was pushed towards him and slowly lit it.
“I shall be pleased to hear some further details.”
“That request can quite easily be granted. Now, according to the information we have about you, you left London on ten days’ leave on September sixteenth. You had a military pass entitling you to travel to Paris—but no farther. May I ask why you came to Pé?”
“Certainly.” It was no use losing his head. He was on the brink of serious danger, but he must put the best face on it possible. “I came because I wished to attend the Musical Festival as well as the big Agricultural Exhibition.”
“I see. You would go to the Festival as a civilian, I take it, and to the Agricultural Exhibition in—shall I say, another capacity?”
“I don’t understand you.”
“No? Then I will be more explicit. The evidence we have, Lieutenant Wingate, all goes to prove that you came to Pé with the determination to undertake a little spying work for your country.”
“It’s a lie!”
His interrogator shrugged his elegant shoulders.
“I should like to accept your word, Lieutenant, but I am afraid it is not possible for me to do so. Do you deny, for instance, that you spent practically the whole of yesterday in the company of a woman calling herself Minna Braun?”
“Yes, but—”
“Is it not equally true that this woman confessed to you in your bedroom last night that she was a French Secret Service agent?”
He kept silent. What reply could he give? His inquisitor continued.
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