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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  For a moment there was a dead silence. In the background several of the maîtres d’hôtel had gathered obsequiously around. For some reason or other, every one seemed to be looking at Norgate as though he were a criminal.

  “Isn’t your request a little unusual, Prince?” he remarked drily.

  The colour in the young man’s face became almost purple.

  “Did you hear what I said, sir?” he demanded. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Perfectly,” Norgate replied. “A prince who apparently has not learnt how to behave himself in a public place.”

  The young man took a quick step forward. Norgate’s fists were clenched and his eyes glittering. The Baroness stepped between them.

  “Mr. Norgate,” she said, “you will please give me your escort home.”

  The Prince’s companions had seized him, one by either arm. An older man who had been dining in a distant corner of the room, and who wore the uniform of an officer of high rank, suddenly approached. He addressed the Prince, and they all talked together in excited whispers. Norgate with calm fingers arranged the cloak around his companion and placed a hundred mark note upon his plate.

  “I will return for my change another evening,” he said to the dumbfounded waiter. “If you are ready, Baroness.”

  They left the restaurant amid an intense hush. Norgate waited deliberately whilst the door was somewhat unwillingly held open for him by a maître d’hôtel, but outside the Baroness’s automobile was summoned at once. She placed her fingers upon Norgate’s arm, and he felt that she was shivering.

  “Please do not take me home,” she faltered. “I am so sorry—so very sorry.”

  He laughed. “But why?” he protested. “The young fellow behaved like a cub, but no one offered him any provocation. I should think by this time he is probably heartily ashamed of himself. May I come and see you to-morrow?”

  “Telephone me,” she begged, as she gave him her hand through the window. “You don’t quite understand. Please telephone to me.”

  She suddenly clutched his hand with both of hers and then fell back out of sight among the cushions. Norgate remained upon the pavement until the car had disappeared. Then he looked back once more into the restaurant and strolled across the brilliantly-lit street towards the Embassy.

  CHAPTER II

  Table of Contents

  Norgate, during his month’s stay in Berlin, had already adopted regular habits. On the following morning he was called at eight o’clock and rode for two hours in the fashionable precincts of the city. The latter portion of the time he spent looking in vain for a familiar figure in a green riding-habit. The Baroness, however, did not appear. At ten o’clock Norgate returned to the Embassy, bathed and breakfasted, and a little after eleven made his way round to the business quarters. One of his fellow-workers there glanced up and nodded at his arrival.

  “Where’s the Chief?” Norgate enquired.

  “Gone down to the Palace,” the other young man, whose name was Ansell, replied; “telephoned for the first thing this morning. Ghastly habit William has of getting up at seven o’clock and suddenly remembering that he wants to talk diplomacy. The Chief will be furious all day now.”

  Norgate lit a cigarette and began to open his letters. Ansell, however, was in a discoursive mood. He swung around from his desk and leaned back in his chair.

  “How can a man,” he demanded, “see a question from the same point of view at seven o’clock in the morning and seven o’clock in the evening? Absolutely impossible, you know. That’s what’s the matter with our versatile friend up yonder. He gets all aroused over some scheme or other which comes to him in the dead of night, hops out of bed before any one civilised is awake, and rings up for ambassadors. Then at night-time he becomes normal again and takes everything back. The consequence is that this place is a regular diplomatic see-saw. Settling down in Berlin pretty well, aren’t you, Norgate?”

  “Very nicely, thanks,” the latter replied.

  “Dining alone with the Baroness von Haase!” his junior continued. “A Court favourite, too! Never been seen alone before except with her young princeling. What honeyed words did you use, Lothario—”

  “Oh, chuck it!” Norgate interrupted. “Tell me about the Baroness von Haase! She is Austrian, isn’t she?”

  Ansell nodded.

  “Related to the Hapsburgs themselves, I believe,” he said. “Very old family, anyhow. They say she came to spend a season here because she was a little too go-ahead for the ladies of Vienna. I must say that I’ve never seen her out without a chaperon before, except with Prince Karl. They say he’d marry her—morganatically, of course—if they’d let him, and if the lady were willing. If you want to know anything more about her, go into Gray’s room.”

  Norgate looked up from his letters.

  “Why Gray’s room? How does she come into his department?”

  Ansell shook his head.

  “No idea. I fancy she is there, though.”

  Norgate left the room a few minutes later, and, strolling across the hall of the Embassy, made his way to an apartment at the back of the house. It was plainly furnished, there were bars across the window, and three immense safes let into the wall. An elderly gentleman, with gold-rimmed spectacles and a very benevolent expression, was busy with several books of reference before him, seated at a desk. He raised his head at Norgate’s entrance.

  “Good morning, Norgate,” he said.

  “Good morning, sir,” Norgate replied.

  “Anything in my way?”

  Norgate shook his head.

  “Chief’s gone to the Palace—no one knows why. I just looked in because I met a woman the other day whom Ansell says you know something about—Baroness von Haase.”

  “Well?”

  “Is there anything to be told about her?” Norgate asked bluntly. “I dined with her last night.”

  “Then I don’t think I would again, if I were you,” the other advised. “There is nothing against her, but she is a great friend of certain members of the Royal Family who are not very well disposed towards us, and she is rather a brainy little person. They use her a good deal, I believe, as a means of confidential communication between here and Vienna. She has been back and forth three or four times lately, without any apparent reason.”

  Norgate stood with his hands in his pockets, frowning slightly.

  “Why, she’s half an Englishwoman,” he remarked.

  “She may be,” Mr. Gray admitted drily. “The other half’s Austrian all right, though. I can’t tell you anything more about her, my dear fellow. All I can say is that she is in my book, and so long as she is there, you know it’s better for you youngsters to keep away. Be off now. I am decoding a dispatch.”

  Norgate retraced his steps to his own room. Ansell glanced up from a mass of passports as he entered.

  “How’s the Secret Service Department this morning?” he enquired.

  “Old Gray seems much as usual,” Norgate grumbled. “One doesn’t get much out of him.”

  “Chief wants you in his room,” Ansell announced. “He’s just come in from the Palace, looking like nothing on earth.”

  “Wants me?” Norgate muttered. “Righto!”

  He went to the looking-glass, straightened his tie, and made his way towards the Ambassador’s private apartments. The latter was alone when he entered, seated before his table. He was leaning back in his chair, however, and apparently deep in thought. He watched Norgate sternly as he crossed the room.

  “Good morning, sir,” the latter said.

  The Ambassador nodded.

  “What have you been up to, Norgate?” he asked abruptly.

  “Nothing at all that I know of, sir,” was the prompt reply.

  “This afternoon,” the Ambassador continued slowly, “I was to have taken you, as you know, to the Palace to be received by the Kaiser. At seven o’clock this morning I had a message. I have just come from the Palace. The Kaiser has given me to understand that
your presence in Berlin is unwelcome.”

  “Good God!” Norgate exclaimed.

  “Can you offer me any explanation?”

  For a moment Norgate was speechless. Then he recovered himself. He forgot altogether his habits of restraint. There was an angry note in his tone.

  “It’s that miserable young cub of a Prince Karl!” he exclaimed. “Last night I was dining, sir, with the Baroness von Haase at the Cafe de Berlin.”

  “Alone?”

  “Alone,” Norgate admitted. “It was not for me to invite a chaperon if the lady did not choose to bring one, was it, sir? As we were finishing dinner, the Prince came in. He made a scene at our table and ordered me to leave.”

  “And you?” the Ambassador asked.

  “I simply treated him as I would any other young ass who forgot himself,” Norgate replied indignantly. “I naturally refused to go, and the Baroness left the place with me.”

  “And you did not expect to hear of this again?”

  “I honestly didn’t. I should have thought, for his own sake, that the young man would have kept his mouth shut. He was hopelessly in the wrong, and he behaved like a common young bounder.”

  The Ambassador shook his head slowly.

  “Mr. Norgate,” he said, “I am very sorry for you, but you are under a misapprehension shared by many young men. You believe that there is a universal standard of manners and deportment, and a universal series of customs for all nations. You have our English standard of manners in your mind, manners which range from a ploughboy to a king, and you seem to take it for granted that these are also subscribed to in other countries. In my position I do not wish to say too much, but let me tell you that in Germany they are not. If a prince here chooses to behave like a ploughboy, he is right where the ploughboy would be wrong.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Norgate was looking a little dazed.

  “Then you mean to defend—” he began.

  “Certainly not,” the Ambassador interrupted. “I am not speaking to you as one of ourselves. I am speaking as the representative of England in Berlin. You are supposed to be studying diplomacy. You have been guilty of a colossal blunder. You have shown yourself absolutely ignorant of the ideals and customs of the country in which you are. It is perfectly correct for young Prince Karl to behave, as you put it, like a bounder. The people expect it of him. He conforms entirely to the standard accepted by the military aristocracy of Berlin. It is you who have been in the wrong—diplomatically.”

  “Then you mean, sir,” Norgate protested, “that I should have taken it sitting down?”

  “Most assuredly you should,” the Ambassador replied, “unless you were willing to pay the price. Your only fault—your personal fault, I mean—that I can see is that it was a little indiscreet of you to dine alone with a young woman for whom the Prince is known to have a foolish passion. Diplomatically, however, you have committed every fault possible, I am very sorry, but I think that you had better report in Downing Street as soon as possible. The train leaves, I think, at three o’clock.”

  Norgate for a moment was unable to speak or move. He was struggling with a sort of blind fury.

  “This is the end of me, then,” he muttered at last. “I am to be disgraced because I have come to a city of boors.”

  “You are reprimanded and in a sense, no doubt, punished,” the Ambassador explained calmly, “because you have come to—shall I accept your term?—a city of boors and fail to adapt yourself. The true diplomatist adapts himself wherever he may be. My personal sympathies remain with you. I will do what I can in my report.”

  Norgate had recovered himself.

  “I thank you very much, sir,” he said. “I shall catch the three o’clock train.”

  The Ambassador held out his hand. The interview had finished. He permitted himself to speak differently.

  “I am very sorry indeed, Norgate, that this has happened,” he declared. “We all have our trials to bear in this city, and you have run up against one of them rather before your time. I wish you good luck, whatever may happen.”

  Norgate clasped his Chief’s hand and left the apartment. Then he made his way to his rooms, gave his orders and sent a messenger to secure his seat in the train. Last of all he went to the telephone. He rang up the number which had become already familiar to him, almost with reluctance. He waited for the reply without any pleasurable anticipations. He was filled with a burning sense of resentment, a feeling which extended even to the innocent cause of it. Soon he heard her voice.

  “That is Mr. Norgate, is it not?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “I rang up to wish you good-by.”

  “Good-by! But you are going away, then?”

  “I am sent away—dismissed!”

  He heard her little exclamation of grief. Its complete genuineness broke down a little the wall of his anger.

  “And it is my fault!” she exclaimed. “If only I could do anything! Will you wait—please wait? I will go to the Palace myself.”

  His expostulation was almost a shock to her.

  “Baroness,” he replied, “if I permitted your intervention, I could never hold my head up in Berlin again! In any case, I could not stay here. The first thing I should do would be to quarrel with that insufferable young cad who insulted us last night. I am afraid, at the first opportunity, I should tell—”

  “Hush!” she interrupted. “Oh, please hush! You must not talk like this, even over the telephone. Cannot you understand that you are not in England?”

  “I am beginning to realise,” he answered gruffly, “what it means not to be in a free country. I am leaving by the three o’clock train, Baroness. Farewell!”

  “But you must not go like this,” she pleaded. “Come first and see me.”

  “No! It will only mean more disgrace for you. Besides—in any case, I have decided to go away without seeing you again.”

  Her voice was very soft. He found himself gripping the pages of the telephone book which hung by his side.

  “But is that kind? Have I sinned, Mr. Francis Norgate?”

  “Of course not,” he answered, keeping his tone level, almost indifferent. “I hope that we shall meet again some day, but not in Berlin.”

  There was a moment’s silence. He thought, even, that she had gone away. Then her reply came back.

  “So be it,” she murmured. “Not in Berlin. Au revoir!”

  CHAPTER III

  Table of Contents

  Faithful to his insular prejudices, Norgate, on finding that the other seat in his coupe was engaged, started out to find the train attendant with a view to changing his place. His errand, however, was in vain. The train, it seemed, was crowded. He returned to his compartment to find already installed there one of the most complete and absolute types of Germanism he had ever seen. A man in a light grey suit, the waistcoat of which had apparently abandoned its efforts to compass his girth, with a broad, pink, good-humoured face, beardless and bland, flaxen hair streaked here and there with grey, was seated in the vacant place. He had with him a portmanteau covered with a linen case, his boots were a bright shade of yellow, his tie was of white satin with a design of lavender flowers. A pair of black kid gloves lay by his side. He welcomed Norgate with the bland, broad smile of a fellow-passenger whose one desire it is to make a lifelong friend of his temporary companion.

  “We have the compartment to ourselves, is it not so? You are English?”

  Some queer chance founded upon his ill-humour, his disgust of Germany and all things in it, induced Norgate to tell a deliberate falsehood.

  “Sorry,” he replied in English. “I don’t speak German.”

  The man’s satisfaction was complete.

  “But I—I speak the most wonderful English. It pleases me always to speak English. I like to do so. It is practice for me. We will talk English together, you and I. These comic papers, they do not amuse. And books in the train, they make one giddy. What I like best is a companion and a bottle of Rhine win
e.”

  “Personally,” Norgate confessed gruffly, “I like to sleep.”

  The other seemed a little taken aback but remained, apparently, full of the conviction that his overtures could be nothing but acceptable.

  “It is well to sleep,” he agreed, “if one has worked hard. Now I myself am a hard worker. My name is Selingman. I manufacture crockery which I sell in England. That is why I speak the English language so wonderful. For the last three nights I have been up reading reports of my English customers, going through their purchases. Now it is finished. I am well posted. I am off to sell crockery in London, in Manchester, in Leeds, in Birmingham. I have what the people want. They will receive me with open arms, some of them even welcome me at their houses. Thus it is that I look forward to my business trip as a holiday.”

  “Very pleasant, I’m sure,” Norgate remarked, curling himself up in his corner. “Personally, I can’t see why we can’t make our own crockery. I get tired of seeing German goods in England.”

  Herr Selingman was apparently a trifle hurt, but his efforts to make himself agreeable were indomitable.

  “If you will,” he said, “I can explain why my crockery sells in England where your own fails. For one thing, then, I am cheaper. There is a system at my works, the like of which is not known in England. From the raw material to the finished article I can produce forty per cent. cheaper than your makers, and, mind you, that is not because I save in wages. It is because of the system in the various departments. I do not like to save in wages,” he went on. “I like to see my people healthy and strong and happy. I like to see them drink beer after work is over, and on feast days and Sundays I like to see them sit in the gardens and listen to the band, and maybe change their beer for a bottle of wine. Industrially, Mr. Englishman, ours is a happy country.”

  “Well, I hope you won’t think I am rude,” Norgate observed, “but from the little I have seen of it I call it a beastly country, and if you don’t mind I am going to sleep.”