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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  “It seems incredible,” Dominey declared bluntly.

  “It is nevertheless true,” Seaman insisted. “No member of our service is allowed to remain more than one month without communicating his existence and whereabouts to headquarters. No word has been received from Wolff since that night in January. On the other hand, indirect information has reached us that he is in durance over here.”

  “But such a thing is against the law, unheard of,” Dominey protested. “No country can keep the citizen of another country in prison without formulating a definite charge or bringing him up for trial.”

  Seaman smiled grimly.

  “That’s all very well in any ordinary case,” he said. “Wolff has been a marked man for years, though. Wilhelmstrasse would soon make fuss enough, if it were of any use, but it would not be. There are one or two Englishmen in German prisons at the present moment, concerning whose welfare the English Foreign Office has not even thought it worth while to enquire. What troubles me more than the actual fact of Wolff’s disappearance is the mystery of his visit to you and his apprehension practically on the spot.”

  “They must have tracked him down there,” Dominey remarked.

  “Yes, but they couldn’t thrust a pair of tongs into your butler’s sitting- room, extract Johann Wolff, and set him down inside Norwich Castle or whatever prison he may be in,” Seaman objected. “However, the most disquieting feature about Wolff is that it introduces something we don’t understand. For the rest, we have many men as good, and better, and the time for their utility is past. You are our great hope now, Dominey.”

  “It is to be, then?”

  Seaman took a long and ecstatic draught of his hock and seltzer.

  “It is to be,” he declared solemnly. “There was never any doubt about it. If Russia ceases to mobilise to-morrow, if every statesman in Servia crawls to Vienna with a rope around his neck, the result would still be the same. The word has gone out. The whole of Germany is like a vast military camp. It comes exactly twelve months before the final day fixed by our great authorities, but the opportunity is too great, too wonderful for hesitation. By the end of August we shall be in Paris.”

  “You bring news indeed!” Dominey murmured, standing for a moment by the opened window.

  “I have been received with favour in the very loftiest circles,” Seaman continued. “You and I both stand high in the list of those to whom great rewards shall come. His Majesty approves altogether of your reluctance to avail yourself of his permission to wed the Princess Eiderstrom. ‘Von Ragastein has decided well,’ he declared. ‘These are not the days for marriage or giving in marriage. These, the most momentous days the world has ever known, the days when an empire shall spring into being, the mightiest since the Continents fell into shape and the stars looked down upon this present world.’ Those are the words of the All Highest. In his eyes the greatest of all attributes is singleness of purpose. You followed your own purpose, contrary to my advice, contrary to Terniloff’s. You will gain by it.”

  Seaman finished his meal in due course, and the tray was removed. Soon the two men were alone again, Seaman puffing out dense volumes of smoke, gripping his cigar between his teeth, brandishing it sometimes in his hand to give effect to his words. A little of his marvellous caution seemed to have deserted him. For the first time he spoke directly to his companion.

  “Von Ragastein,” he said, “it is a great country, ours. It is a wonderful empire we shall build. To-night I am on fire with the mighty things. I have a list of instructions for you, many details. They can wait. We will talk of our future, our great and glorious destiny as the mightiest nation who has ever earned for herself the right to govern the world. You would think that in Germany there was excitement. There is none. The task of every one is allotted, their work made clear to them. Like a mighty piece of gigantic machinery, we move towards war. Every regiment knows its station, every battery commander knows his positions, every general knows his exact line of attack. Rations, clothing, hospitals, every unit of which you can think, has its movements calculated out for it to the last nicety.”

  “And the final result?” Dominey asked. “Is that also calculated?”

  Seaman, with trembling fingers, unlocked the little despatch box which stood by his side and took from it jealously a sheet of linen-backed parchment.

  “You, my friend,” he said, “are one of the first to gaze upon this. This will show you the dream of our Kaiser. This will show you the framework of the empire that is to be.”

  He laid out a map upon the table. The two men bent over it. It was a map of Europe, in which England, a diminished France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, were painted in dark blue. For the rest, the whole of the space included between two lines, one from Hamburg to Athens, the other from Finland to the Black Sea, was painted a deep scarlet, with here and there portions of it in slightly lighter colouring. Seaman laid his palm upon the map.

  “There lies our future Empire,” he said solemnly and impressively.

  “Explain it to me,” Dominey begged.

  “Broadly speaking, everything between those two lines belongs to the new German Empire. Poland, Courland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine will possess a certain degree of autonomous government, which will practically amount to nothing. Asia is there at our feet. No longer will Great Britain control the supplies of the world. Raw materials of every description will be ours. Leather, tallow, wheat, oil, fats, timber—they are all there for us to draw upon. And for wealth—India and China! What more could you have, my friend?”

  “You take my breath away. But what about Austria?”

  Seaman’s grin was almost sardonic.

  “Austria,” he said, “must already feel her doom creeping upon her. There is no room in middle Europe for two empires, and the House of Hapsburg must fall before the House of Hohenzollern. Austria, body and soul, must become part of the German Empire. Then further down, mark you. Roumania must become a vassal state or be conquered. Bulgaria is already ours. Turkey, with Constantinople, is pledged. Greece will either join us or be wiped out. Servia will be blotted from the map; probably also Montenegro. These countries which are painted in fainter red, like Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece, become vassal states, to be absorbed one by one as opportunity presents itself.”

  Dominey’s finger strayed northward.

  “Belgium,” he observed, “has disappeared.”

  “Belgium we shall occupy and enslave,” Seaman replied. “Our line of advance into France lies that way, and we need her ports to dominate the Thames. Holland and the Scandinavian countries, as you observe are left in the lighter shade of red. If an opportunity occurs, Holland and Denmark may be incited to take the field against us. If they do so, it means absorption. If they remain, as they probably will, scared neutrals, they will none the less be our vassal states when the last gun has been fired.”

  “And Norway and Sweden?”

  Seaman looked down at the map and smiled.

  “Look at them,” he said. “They lie at our mercy. Norway has her western seaboard, and there might always be the question of British aid so far as she is concerned. But Sweden is ours, body and soul. More than any other of these vassal states, it is our master’s plan to bring her into complete subjection. We need her lusty manhood, the finest cannon food in the world, for later wars, if indeed such a thing should be. She has timber and minerals which we also need. But there—it is enough. First of all men in this country, my friend, you Von Ragastein, have gazed upon this picture of the future.”

  “This is marvellously conceived,” Dominey muttered, “but what of Russia with her millions? How is it that we propose, notwithstanding her countless millions of men, to help ourselves to her richest provinces, to drive a way through the heart of her empire?”

  “This,” Seaman replied, “is where genius steps in. Russia has been ripe for a revolution any time for the last fifteen years. We have secret agents now in every city and country place and throughout the army. We shall teach R
ussia how to make herself a free country.”

  Dominey shivered a little with an almost involuntary repulsion. For the second time that almost satyr-like grin on Seaman’s face revolted him.

  “And what of my own work?”

  Seaman helped himself to a liqueur. He was, as a rule, a moderate man, but this was the third time he had replenished his glass since his hasty meal.

  “My brain is weary, friend,” he admitted, passing his hand over his forehead. “I have a great fatigue. The thoughts jump about. This last week has been one of fierce excitements. Everything, almost your daily life, has been planned. We shall go over it within a day or so. Meanwhile, remember this. It is our great aim to keep England out of the war.”

  “Terniloff is right, then, after all!” Dominey exclaimed.

  Seaman laughed scornfully.

  “If we want England out of the war,” he pointed out, “it is not that we desire her friendship. It is that we may crush her the more easily when Calais, Boulogne and Havre are in our hands. That will be in three months’ time. Then perhaps our attitude towards England may change a little! Now I go.”

  Dominey folded up the map with reluctance. His companion shook his head. It was curious that he, too, for the first time in his life upon the same day, addressed his host differently.

  “Baron Von Ragastein,” he said, “there are six of those maps in existence. That one is for you. Lock it away and guard it as though it were your greatest treasure on earth, but when you are alone, bring it out and study it. It shall be your inspiration, it shall lighten your moments of depression, give you courage when you are in danger; it shall fill your mind with pride and wonder. It is yours.”

  Dominey folded it carefully up, crossed the room, unlocked a little safe and deposited it therein.

  “I shall guard it, according to your behest, as my greatest treasure,” he assured his departing guest, with a fervour which surprised even himself.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  Table of Contents

  There was something dramatic, in the most lurid sense of the word, about the brief telephone message which Dominey received, not so many hours later, from Carlton House Terrace. In a few minutes he was moving through the streets, still familiar yet already curiously changed. Men and women were going about their business as usual, but an air of stupefaction was everywhere apparent. Practically every loiterer was studying a newspaper, every chance acquaintance had stopped to confer with his fellows. War, alternately the joke and bogey of the conversationalist, stretched her grey hands over the sunlit city. Even the lightest-hearted felt a thrill of apprehension at the thought of the horrors that were to come. In a day or two all this was to be changed. People went about then counting the Russian millions; the steamroller fetish was to be evolved. The most peaceful stockbroker or shopkeeper, who had never even been to a review in his life, could make calculations of man power with a stump of pencil on the back of an old envelope, which would convince the greatest pessimist that Germany and Austria were outnumbered by at least three to one. But on this particular morning, people were too stunned for calculations. The incredible had happened. The long-discussed war—the nightmare of the nervous, the derision of the optimist—had actually materialised. The happy-go-lucky years of peace and plenty had suddenly come to an end. Black tragedy leaned over the land.

  Dominey, avoiding acquaintances as far as possible, his own mind in a curious turmoil, passed down St. James’s Street and along Pall Mall and presented himself at Carlton House Terrace. Externally, the great white building, with its rows of flower boxes, showed no signs of undue perturbation. Inside, however, the anteroom was crowded with callers, and it was only by the intervention of Terniloff’s private secretary, who was awaiting him, that Dominey was able to reach the inner sanctum where the Ambassador was busy dictating letters. He broke off immediately his visitor was announced and dismissed every one, including his secretaries. Then he locked the door.

  “Von Ragastein,” he groaned, “I am a broken man!”

  Dominey grasped his hand sympathetically. Terniloff seemed to have aged years even in the last few hours.

  “I sent for you,” he continued, “to say farewell, to say farewell and make a confession. You were right, and I was wrong. It would have been better if I had remained and played the country farmer on my estates. I was never shrewd enough to see until now that I have been made the cat’s-paw of the very men whose policy I always condemned.”

  His visitor still remained silent. There was so little that he could say.

  “I have worked for peace,” Terniloff went on, “believing that my country wanted peace. I have worked for peace with honourable men who were just as anxious as I was to secure it. But all the time those for whom I laboured were making faces behind my back. I was nothing more nor less than their tool. I know now that nothing in this world could have hindered what is coming.”

  “Every one will at least realise,” Dominey reminded him, “that you did your best for peace.”

  “That is one reason why I sent for you,” was the agitated reply. “Not long ago I spoke of a little volume, a diary which I have been keeping of my work in this country. I promised to show it to you. You have asked me for it several times lately. I am going to show it to you now. It is written up to yesterday. It will tell you of all my efforts and how they were foiled. It is an absolutely faithful narrative of my work here, and the English response to it.”

  The Prince crossed the room, unlocked one of the smaller safes, which stood against the side of the wall, withdrew a morocco-bound volume the size of a small portfolio, and returned to Dominey.

  “I beg you,” he said earnestly, “to read this with the utmost care and to await my instructions with regard to it. You can judge, no doubt,” he went on a little bitterly, “why I give it into your keeping. Even the Embassy here is not free from our own spies, and the existence of these memoirs is known. The moment I reach Germany, their fate is assured. I am a German and a patriot, although my heart is bitter against those who are bringing this blot upon our country. For that reason, these memoirs must be kept in a safe place until I see a good use for them.”

  “You mean if the governing party in German should change?”

  “Precisely! They would then form at once my justification, and place English diplomacy in such a light before the saner portion of my fellow countrymen that an honourable peace might be rendered possible. Study them carefully, Von Ragastein. Perhaps even your own allegiance to the Party you serve may waver for a moment as you read.”

  “I serve no Party,” Dominey said quietly, “only my Country.”

  Terniloff sighed.

  “Alas! there is no time for us to enter into one of our old arguments on the ethics of government. I must send you away, Von Ragastein. You have a terrible task before you. I am bound to wish you Godspeed. For myself I shall not raise my head again until I have left England.”

  “There is no other commission?” Dominey asked. “No other way in which I can serve you?”

  “None,” Terniloff answered sadly. “I am permitted to suffer no inconveniences. My departure is arranged for as though I were royalty. Yet believe me, my friend, every act of courtesy and generosity which I receive in these moments, bites into my heart. Farewell!”

  Dominey found a taxicab in Pall Mall and drove back to Berkeley Square. He found Rosamund with a little troop of dogs, just entering the gardens, and crossed to her side.

  “Dear,” he asked, taking her arm, “would you mind very much coming down to Norfolk for a few days?”

  “With you?” she asked quickly.

  “Yes! I want to be in retreat for a short time. There are one or two things I must settle before I take up some fresh work.”

  “I should love it,” she declared enthusiastically. “London is getting so hot, and every one is so excited.”

  “I shall order the touring car at three o’clock,” Dominey told her. “We shall get home about nine. Parkins and your maid
can go down by train. Does that suit you?”

  “Delightfully!”

  He took her arm and they paced slowly along the hot walk.

  “Rosamund dear,” he said, “the time has come which many people have been dreading. We are at war.”

  “I know,” she murmured.

  “You and I have had quite a happy time together, these last few months,” he went on, “even though there is still that black cloud between us. I have tried to treat you as kindly and tenderly as though I were really your husband and you were indeed my wife.”

  “You’re not going away?” she cried, startled. “I couldn’t bear that! No one could ever be so sweet as you have been to me.”

  “Dear,” he said, “I want you to think—of your husband—of Everard. He was a soldier once for a short time, was he not? What do you think he would have done now that this terrible war has come?”

  “He would have done what you will do,” she answered, with the slightest possible tremor in her tone. “He would have become a soldier again, he would have fought for his country.”

  “And so must I—fight for my country,” he declared. “That is why I must leave you for an hour now while I make some calls. I shall be back to luncheon. Directly afterwards we must start. I have many things to arrange first, though. Life is not going to be very easy for the next few days.”

  She held on to his arm. She seemed curiously reluctant to let him go.

  “Everard,” she said, “when we are at Dominey shall I be able to see Doctor Harrison?”

  “Of course,” he assured her.

  “There is something I want to say to him,” she confided, “something I want to ask you, too. Are you the same person, Everard, when you are in town as when you are in the country?”

  He was a little taken aback at her question—asked, too, with such almost plaintive seriousness. The very aberration it suggested seemed altogether denied by her appearance. She was wearing a dress of black and white muslin, a large black hat, Paris shoes. Her stockings, her gloves, all the trifling details of her toilette, were carefully chosen, and her clothes themselves gracefully and naturally worn. Socially, too, she had been amazingly successful. Only the week before, Caroline had come to him with a little shrug of the shoulders.