“That I cannot tell you just yet,” Fawley said gravely. “But, Elida, believe me when I tell you that I am not working for the harm of Italy or Germany or France. I may not have kept my word to the letter with any one of these countries, or rather with their representatives to whom I
have talked, but I have been aiming at great things. If the great things come, it does not matter what happens to me. And they may come. In the meantime, I can do so little. A single false movement and calamity might follow.”
“You speak in riddles,” Elida faltered, “but I trust you, Martin. None of the others do. I trust you, dear Martin. If I could help—if I could save you—I would give my life!”
For a moment he took her lightly and reverently, yet with a faint touch of the lover, into his arms. The worn look passed from her face. Her eyes suddenly lost their terrified gleam, a tremor of joy seemed to pass through her body. He drew quietly away but he kept her hand in his.
“Tell me,” he asked, “are you here officially?”
She shook her head.
“They do not trust me any more,” she confided.
“Then why are you here?” he persisted.
She lifted her eyes. Since those last few minutes they were so soft and sweet, so full of expression, that at that moment she was entirely and utterly convincing.
“Because I am such a big fool. Because I like to see you. Because I knew that you were in danger on every side. I had to tell you. You must have thought me such an ordinary little adventuress,” she said wistfully. “You will forgive me for that? All that I wanted to know I wanted to know for your sake—that I might help you—”
The door was suddenly half flung, half kicked open. Micky, in his pyjamas, swayed upon the threshold. All his fresh colour had gone. He was gripping the wainscoting as though for support. There was an ugly splash of colour on his chest.
“Fellow in your room, Martin,” he faltered. “Room—Jenkins told me I was to sleep. Must have been—hiding somewhere.”
Fawley half carried, half dragged his brother to a couch. Elida sprang to the bell and kept her finger upon it.
“Did you see the fellow, Micky?” Fawley asked.
“Looked like a foreigner. He came out from behind the wardrobe—only a few feet away—and shot at me just as I was getting into bed.”
Fawley gave swift orders to Jenkins, who was already in the room. Elida had possessed herself of a cloth and was making a bandage.
“There will be a doctor here in a minute, Micky,” his brother said. “Close your eyes. I must have a look. Elida is making a bandage for you. Missed your heart by a thirtieth of an inch, thank God,” he went on. “Don’t faint, old chap. I can’t give you a drink, but I am going to rub some brandy on your lips. God, what a fool I was to let you sleep in my room!”
“An undersized little rat,” Micky gasped, with feeble indignation. “I could have squeezed the life out of him if he’d given me the chance. He turned out the lights and stole up behind. What are you in trouble with the Dagos for, Martin?”
“You think he was a Dago, then?”
“Sure. What about the police?”
Fawley shook his head.
“We ought to send for them, I suppose, but it is not altogether etiquette in the profession.”
“Am I in on one of your jobs, then, Martin?” the boy asked, with a weak grin.
“Looks like it,” his brother assented. “I’m damned sorry. It was Jenkins’ fault, putting you in there. You were not prepared, of course.”
“Well, I didn’t think it was necessary to hold a gun in your right hand and untie your tie with the left in London,” Micky grumbled.
Then the door swung open. The man with the bald head, the beady eyes and the long jaw stood upon the threshold. He seemed to grasp the situation in a moment. With an impatient turn of the shoulder, he threw back the long evening cape he was wearing. His hand flashed out just too late. He was looking into the muzzle of Fawley’s steadily held and vicious-looking revolver.
“That won’t do here, Patoni,” the latter said, in a voice such as no one in the room had ever heard him use before. “Drop your gun. Before I count three, mind. There’s going to be none of that sort of thing. One—two—”
Patoni’s weapon fell smoothly on to the carpet. Fawley kicked it towards Elida, who stooped and picked it up. From outside they heard the rattle of the lift.
“That’s the doctor,” Fawley announced. “Micky, can you get back to your room? You will find Jenkins there to help you.”
“I guess so,” the young man replied, moving unsteadily towards the door.
“An accident, remember,” Fawley continued. “You were unpacking your gun and it went off—shaking a cartridge out or anything you like. The doctor won’t be too particular. He leaves that sort of thing to the police and we don’t want the police in on this.”
There were hurried footsteps outside and the door was thrown open. Jenkins was there, the doctor, the liftman. Micky staggered towards them.
“Take Mr. Michael into my room, Jenkins,” Fawley ordered. “Let the doctor examine him there and report. I have looked at the wound. I do not think it is dangerous. Close the door and leave us.”
Fawley’s voice was not unduly raised but some quality in it seemed to compel obedience. They all disappeared. Elida, obeying a gesture from him, closed the door. He pointed to a chair.
“Sit down, Prince,” he directed.
CHAPTER XXII
Table of Contents
Fawley, gentle though he was in his methods, was running no risks. He seated himself at his desk, his revolver lying within a few inches of his fingers. Patoni was a yard or so away towards the middle of the room. Elida was on Fawley’s left.
“What do you want with me, Prince Patoni?” Fawley asked.
The Italian’s eyes were full of smouldering anger.
“A great deal,” he answered. “General Berati has sent me here with an order which I have in my pocket—you can see it when you choose—that you accompany me at once to Rome. Furthermore, I am here to know what my cousin the Princess Elida is doing in London, and particularly what she is doing in your room at this hour of the night.”
“That is my own affair entirely,” Elida declared. “He is an impertinent fellow, this cousin of mine,” she went on, turning to Fawley. “He follows me about. He persecutes me. In Rome it is not permitted. There are too many of my own people there. I have a brother, if I need a protector.”
“Is it not true,” he demanded, “that you were once engaged to me?”
“For four days,” she answered. “Then I discovered that I hated your type. Proceed with your business with Major Fawley. Leave me out of it, if you please.”
Patoni’s eyes flamed for a moment with malignant fire. He turned his shoulder upon her and faced Fawley. For the moment he had lost his guise of the cardinal’s nephew, the politician’s secretary. His rasping tone, his drawn-up frame once more recalled the cavalry officer.
“I have told you, Major Fawley,” he said, “that I have in my pocket an order from General Berati requiring your immediate presence in Rome. I have an aeroplane waiting at Heston now. I should be glad to know whether it would be convenient for you to leave at dawn.”
“Most inconvenient,” Fawley answered. “Besides, I hate the early morning air. Why does the General want me before my work is finished?”
“He demands to know what part of the work he entrusted you with concerns England?”
“He will find that easy to understand later on,” was the smooth rejoinder.
“I am not talking about later on,” Patoni declared harshly. “I am talking about now. I represent General Berati. You can see my mandate if you will. I am your Chief. What are you doing in England when you should have taken the information you gained in Berlin direct to Rome?”
“Working still for the good of your country,” Fawley assured him.
“No one has asked you to work independently for the good of o
ur country,” was the swift retort. “You have been asked to obey orders, to study certain things and report on them. Not one of these concerns England. You are not supposed to employ any initiative. You are supposed to work to orders.”
“I must have misunderstood the position,” Fawley observed. “I never work in that way. I preserve my own independence always. Was Berati not satisfied with me for my work on the frontier?”
“It was fine work,” Patoni admitted grudgingly. “To show you that I am not prejudiced, I will tell you something. Five men we have sent one after the other to check the details of your work, to confirm the startling information you submitted as to the calibre of the anti-aircraft guns and to report further upon the object of the subterranean work which has been carried to our side of the frontier. One by one they disappeared. Not one of the five has returned alive!”
“It was murder to send them,” Fawley remarked. “I do not say that they might not have done as well as I did if they had been the first, but unfortunately I did not get clean away, and after that the French garrison redoubled their guards.”
“The matter of the frontier is finished and done with,” Patoni declared. “I have no wish to sit here talking. Here are the General’s instructions.”
He drew a paper from his pocket and smoothed it out in front of Fawley. The latter glanced at it and pushed it away.
“Quite all right, beyond a doubt,” he admitted. “The only thing is that I am not coming with you.”
“You refuse?” Patoni demanded, his voice shaking with anger.
“I refuse,” Fawley reiterated. “I am a nervous man and I have learnt to take care of myself. When you introduce yourself into my apartment, following close upon an attempt at assassination by one of your countrymen, I find myself disinclined to remain alone in your company during that lonely flight over the Alps, or anywhere else, in fact.”
“This will mean trouble,” Patoni warned him.
“What more serious trouble can it mean,” Fawley asked, “than that you should commence your mission to me—if ever you had one—by having one of your myrmidons steal into my bedroom and nearly murder my brother, who was unfortunately occupying it in my place? That is a matter which has to be dealt with between you and me, Patoni.”
The Italian’s right hand groped for a minute to the spot where the hilt of his sword might have been.
“That is a private affair,” he said. “I am ready to deal with it at any time. I am a Patoni and we are in the direct line with the Di Rezcos. The presence of my cousin in your rooms is a matter to be dealt with at once.”
“It will be dealt with by ordering you out of them,” Fawley retorted, as he pressed the bell.
Patoni sprang to his feet. He looked more than ever like some long, lean bird of prey.
“This is an insult!” he exclaimed.
Elida rose from her chair and moved over between the two men. It was her cousin whom she addressed.
“No brawling in my presence, if you please,” she insisted. “You have put yourself hopelessly in the wrong, Pietro. A would-be assassin cannot claim to be treated as a man of honour.”
“A would-be assassin!” he exclaimed furiously.
“I will repeat the words, if you choose,” she went on coldly. “I too am well served by my entourage. I know quite well that you arrived in this country with two members of Berati’s guard and that it was you yourself who gave the orders for the attack upon Major Fawley.”
“You are a traitress!” he declared.
“You may think what you will of me,” she rejoined, “so long as you leave me alone.”
“Am I to suffer the indignity, then, of finding you here alone with this American at this hour of the night?” Patoni demanded harshly.
“So far as you are concerned, there is no indignity,” Elida replied. “You are not concerned. I am past the age of duennas. I do as I choose.”
Jenkins presented himself in answer to the bell.
“Show this gentleman out,” his master instructed.
The man bowed and stood by the opened door. Patoni turned to his cousin.
“You will leave with me, Elida.”
She shook her head.
“I shall leave when I am ready and I shall choose my own escort,” she replied. “It will not be you!”
Patoni was very still and very quiet. He moved a few steps towards the door. Then he turned round.
“I shall report to my Chief what I have seen and heard,” he announced. “I think that it will cure him of employing any more mercenaries in the affairs of our country.”
“I hope that at the same time he will be cured of sending offensive envoys,” Fawley concluded, with a valedictory wave of the hand.
CHAPTER XXIII
Table of Contents
The Right Honourable Willoughby Johns, the very harassed Prime Minister of England, fitted on a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and studied the atlas which lay before him.
“Take a sharp pencil, Malcolm,” he invited his secretary, “and trace the frontier for me from the sea upwards.”
The latter promptly obeyed. The map was one which had been compiled in sections and the particular one now spread out stretched from Nice to Bordighera.
“You will find it a little irregular, sir,” he warned his chief. “The road from the sea here mounts to the official building on the main thoroughfare in a fairly straight line, but after that in the mountains it becomes very complicated. This will doubtless be the excuse the French authorities will offer in the matter of the subterranean passages.”
“And the roads?”
“There is a first-class road on the French side from a place called Sospel running in this direction, sir. The whole range of hills on the right-hand side is strongly fortified, but our military report, which I was studying this afternoon at the War Office with General Burns, still gives the situation here entirely in favour of an attacking force. Fawley’s latest information, however,” the secretary went on, dropping his voice, “changes the situation entirely. The new French defences, starting from this bulge here, and which comprise some of the finest subterranean work known, strike boldly across the frontier and now command all the slopes likely to be dangerous. If a copy of Fawley’s plan should reach Italy, I imagine that there would be war within twenty-four hours.”
“Has Fawley reported any fresh movements of troops in the neighbourhood?”
“Major Fawley himself, as you know, sir, has been in Berlin for some short time,” Malcolm replied. “So far as our ordinary sources of information are concerned, we gather that everything on the Italian side is extraordinarily quiet. The French, on the other hand, have been replacing a lot of their five-year-old guns with new Creuzots at the places marked, and trains with locked wagons have been passing through Cagnes, where we have had a man stationed, every hour through the night for very nearly a fortnight. So far as we know, however, there has been no large concentration of troops.”
The Prime Minister studied the atlas for some minutes and then pushed it on one side.
“Seems to me there is some mystery about all this,” he observed. “Bring me Grey’s textbook upon Monaco.”
“I have it in my pocket, sir,” the young man confided, producing the small volume. “You will see that the French have practically blotted out Monaco as an independent State. There is no doubt that they will treat the territory in any way they wish. The old barracks at the top of Mont Agel, which used to contain quite a formidable number of men and a certain strength in field artillery, has been evacuated and everything has been pushed forward towards the frontier. It would seem that the whole military scheme of defence has been changed.”
The Prime Minister leaned back in his chair a little wearily.
“Telephone over to the War Office and see if General Burns is still there,” he directed. “Say I should like to see him.”
“Very good, sir. Is there anything more I can do?”
“Not at present. The call to Wash
ington is through, I suppose?”
“You should be connected in half an hour, sir.”
“Very well. Send in General Burns the moment he arrives.”
Henry Malcolm, the doyen of private secretaries, took his leave. For another twenty minutes the Prime Minister studied the atlas with its pencilled annotations and the pile of memoranda which had been left upon his desk. A queer, startling situation! No one could make out quite what it meant. Willoughby Johns, as he pored over the mass of miscellaneous detail which had been streaming in for the last forty-eight hours, was inclined to wonder whether after all there was anything in it. Another war at a moment’s notice! The idea seemed idiotic. He took a turn or two up and down the room, with its worn but comfortable furniture, its spacious, well-filled bookshelves. His familiar environment seemed in some way a tonic against these sinister portents…There was a tap at the door. Malcolm presented himself once more.
“General Burns was at the Foreign Office, sir,” he announced. “He will be around in five minutes.”
The Prime Minister nodded. He glanced at his watch. Still only seven o’clock. A telephone message from Washington to wait for and he had been up at six. He listened to the subdued roar of traffic in the Buckingham Palace Road and the honking of taxis in the park. Men going home after their day’s work, without a doubt, home to their wives and children. Or perhaps calling at the club for a cheerful rubber of bridge and a whisky and soda. What a life! What peace and rest for harassed nerves! Dash it all, he would have a whisky and soda himself! He rang the bell twice. A solemn but sympathetic-looking butler presented himself.
“Philpott,” his master ordered, “a whisky and soda—some of the best whisky you have—and Schweppe’s soda water—no siphons.”
“Very good, sir,” the man replied, rather startled. “Would you care for a biscuit as well, sir?”
“Certainly. Two or three biscuits.”
“Mr. Malcolm was saying that you had cancelled the dinner with the Cordonas Company to-night, sir.”
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