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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  “Wasting your time, aren’t you?” the latter remarked, pointing to the growing heap of cigarettes.

  “Well, I guess not,” Dorward answered. “I can smoke this lot before we reach London.”

  Bellamy smiled enigmatically.

  “I don’t think that you will,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “You are such a sanguine person,” Bellamy sighed. “Personally, I do not think that there is the slightest chance of your reaching London at all.”

  Dorward laughed scornfully.

  “And why not?” he asked.

  Bellamy merely shrugged his shoulders. Dorward seemed to find the gesture irritating.

  “You’ve got espionage on the brain, my dear friend,” he declared dryly. “I suppose it’s the result of your profession. I may not know so much about Europe as you do, but I am inclined to think that an American citizen traveling with his passport on a train like this is moderately safe, especially when he’s not above a scrap by way of taking care of himself.”

  “You’re a plucky fellow,” remarked Bellamy.

  “I don’t see any pluck about it. In Vienna, I must admit, I shouldn’t have been surprised if they’d tried to fake up some sort of charge against me, but anyhow they didn’t. Guess they’d find it a pretty tall order trying to interfere with an American citizen.”

  Bellamy looked at his friend curiously.

  “I suppose you’re not bluffing, by any chance, Dorward?” he said. “You really believe what you say?”

  “Why in thunder shouldn’t I?” Dorward asked.

  Bellamy sighed.

  “My dear Dorward,” he said, “it is amazing to me that a man of your experience should talk and behave like a baby. You’ve taken some notice of your fellow-passengers, I suppose?”

  “I’ve seen a few of them,” Dorward answered carelessly. “What about them?”

  “Nothing much,” Bellamy declared, “except that there are, to my certain knowledge, three high officials of the Secret Police of Austria in the next coupe but one, and at least four or five of their subordinates somewhere on board the train.”

  Dorward withdrew his cigarette from his mouth and looked at his friend keenly.

  “I guess you’re trying to scare me, Bellamy,” he remarked.

  But Bellamy was suddenly grave. There had come into his face an utterly altered expression. His tone, when he spoke, was almost solemn.

  “Dorward,” he said, “upon my honor, I assure you that what I have told you is the truth. I cannot seem to make you realize the seriousness of your position. When you left the Palace with that paper in your pocket, you were, to all intents and purposes, a doomed man. Your passport and your American citizenship count for absolutely nothing. I have come in to warn you that if you have any last messages to leave, you had better give them to me now.”

  “This is a pretty good bluff you’re putting up!” Dorward exclaimed contemptuously. “The long and short of it is, I suppose, that you want me to break the seal of this document and let you read it.”

  Bellamy shook his head.

  “It is too late for that, Dorward,” he said. “If the seal were broken, they’d very soon guess where I came in, and it wouldn’t help the work I have in hand for me to be picked up with a bullet in my forehead on the railway track.”

  Dorward frowned uneasily.

  “What are you here for, anyway, then?” he asked.

  “Well, frankly, not to argue with you,” Bellamy answered. “As a matter of fact, you are of no use to me any longer. I am sorry, old man. You can’t say that I didn’t give you good advice. I am bound to play for my own hand, though, in this matter, and if I get any benefit at all out of my journey, it will be after some regrettable accident has happened to you.”

  “Say, ring the bell for drinks and chuck this!” Dorward exclaimed. “I’ve had about enough of it. I am not denying anything you say, but if these fellows really are on board, they’ll think twice before they meddle with me.”

  “On the contrary,” Bellamy assured him, “they will not take the trouble to think at all. Their minds are perfectly made up as to what they are going to do. However, that’s finished. I have nothing more to say.”

  Dorward gazed for a minute or two fixedly out of the window.

  “Look here, Bellamy,” he said, turning abruptly round, “supposing I change my mind, supposing I open this precious document and let you read it over with me?”

  Bellamy rose hastily to his feet.

  “You must not think of it!” he exclaimed. “You would simply write my death-warrant. Don’t allude to that matter again. I have risked enough in coming in here to sit with you.”

  “Then, for Heaven’s sake, don’t stop any longer!” Dorward said irritably. “You get on my nerves with all this foolish talk. In an hour’s time I am going to bolt my door and go to sleep. We’ll breakfast together in the morning, if you like.”

  Bellamy said nothing. The steward had brought them the whiskies and sodas which Dorward had ordered. Bellamy raised his tumbler to his lips and set it down again.

  “Forgive me,” he said, “I do not think that I am thirsty.”

  Dorward drank his off at a gulp. Almost immediately he closed his eyes. Bellamy, with a little shrug of the shoulders, left him alone. As he passed along to his own coupe, he met Louise in the corridor.

  “You have seen Von Behrling?” he whispered. She nodded.

  “He is in that coupe, number 7, alone,” she said. “I invited him to come in with me but he seemed embarrassed. It is his companions who watch him all the time. He has promised to talk with me later.”

  In the middle of the night, Louise opened her eyes to find Bellamy bending over her.

  “Louise,” he whispered, “it is Von Behrling who will take possession of the packet. They have been discussing whether it will not be safer to go on to London instead of doubling back. See Von Behrling again. Do all you can to persuade him to come to London,—all you can, Louise, remember.”

  “So!” she whispered. “I shall put on my dressing-gown and sit in the corridor. It is hot here.”

  Bellamy glided out, closing the door softly behind him. The train was rushing on now through the blackness of an unusually dark night. For some time he sat in his own compartment, listening. The voices whose muttered conversation he had overheard were silent now, but once he fancied that he heard shuffling footsteps and a little cry. In his heart he knew well that before morning Dorward would have disappeared. The man within him was hard to subdue. He longed to make his way to Dorward’s side, to interfere in this terribly unequal struggle, yet he made no movement. Dorward was a man and a friend, but what was a life more or less? It was to a greater cause that he was pledged. Towards three o’clock he lay down on his bed and slept….

  The train attendant brought him his coffee soon after daylight. The man’s hands were trembling.

  “Where are we?” Bellamy asked sleepily.

  “Near Munich, Monsieur,” the man answered. “Monsieur noticed, perhaps, that we stopped for some time in the night?”

  Bellamy shook his head.

  “I sleep soundly,” he said. “I heard nothing.”

  “There has been an accident,” the man declared. “An American gentleman who got in at Vienna was drinking whiskey all night and became very drunk. In a tunnel he threw himself out upon the line.”

  Bellamy shuddered a little. He had been prepared, but none the less it was an awful thing, this.

  “You are sure that he is dead?” he asked.

  The man was very sure indeed.

  “There is a doctor from Vienna upon the train, sir,” he said. “He examined him at once, but death must have been instantaneous.”

  Bellamy drew a long breath and commenced to put on his clothes. The next move was for him.

  V. “VON BEHRLING HAS THE PACKET”

  Table of Contents

  Bellamy stole along the half-lit corridors of the train until he came to the coup
é which had been reserved for Mademoiselle Idiale. Assured that he was not watched, he softly turned the handle of the door and entered. Louise was sitting up in her dressing-gown, drinking her coffee. He held up his finger and she greeted him only with a nod.

  “Forgive me, Louise,” he whispered, “I dared not knock, and I was obliged to see you at once.”

  She smiled.

  “It is of no consequence,” she said. “One is always prepared here. The porter, the ticket-man, and at the customs—they all enter. Is anything wrong?”

  “It has happened,” he answered.

  She shivered a little and her face became grave.

  “Poor fellow!” she murmured.

  “He simply sat still and asked for it,” Bellamy declared, still speaking in a cautious undertone. “He would not be warned. I could have saved him, if any one could, but he would not hear reason.”

  “He was what you call pig-headed,” she remarked.

  “He has paid the penalty,” Bellamy continued. “Now listen to me, Louise. I got into that small coupe next to Von Behrling’s, and I feel sure, from what I overheard, that they will go on to London, all three of them.”

  “Who is there on the train?” she demanded.

  “Baron Streuss, who is head of the Secret Police, Von Behrling and Adolf Kahn,” Bellamy answered. “Then there are four or five Secret Service men of the rank and file, but they are all traveling separately. Von Behrling has the packet. The others form a sort of cordon around him.”

  “But why,” she asked, “does he go on to London? Why not return to Vienna?”

  “For one thing,” Bellamy replied, with a grim smile, “they are afraid of me. Then you must remember that this affair of Dorward will be talked about. They do not want to seem in any way implicated. To return from any one of these stations down the line would create suspicion.”

  She nodded.

  “Well?”

  “I am going to leave the train at the next stop,” he continued. “I find that I shall just catch the Northern Express to Berlin. From there I shall come on to London as quickly as I can. You know the address of my rooms?”

  She nodded.

  “15, Fitzroy Street.”

  “When I get there, let me have a line waiting to tell me where I can see you. While I am on the train you will find Von Behrling almost inaccessible. Directly I have gone it will be different. Play with him carefully. He should not be difficult. To tell you the truth, I am rather surprised that he has been trusted upon a mission like this. He was in disgrace with the Chancellor a short while ago, and I know that he was hurt at not being allowed to attend the conference. The others will watch him closely, but they cannot overhear everything that passes between you two. Von Behrling is a poor man. You will know how to make him wish he were rich.”

  Very slowly her eyebrows rose up. She looked at him doubtfully.

  “It is a slender chance, David,” she remarked. “Von Behrling is a little wild, I know, and he pretends to be very much in love with me, but I do not think that he would sell his country. Then, too, see how he will be watched. I do not suppose that they will leave us alone for a moment.”

  Bellamy took her hands in his, gripping them with almost unnatural force.

  “Louise,” he declared earnestly, “you don’t quite realize Von Behrling’s special weakness and your extraordinary strength. You know that you are beautiful, I suppose, but you do not quite know what that means. I have heard men talk about you till one would think that they were children. You have something of that art or guile—call it what you will—which passes from you through a man’s blood to his brain, and carries him indeed to Heaven—but carries him there mad. Louise, don’t be angry with me for what I say. Remember that I know my sex. I know you, too, and I trust you, but you can turn Von Behrling from a sane, honorable man into what you will, without suffering even his lips to touch your fingers. Von Behrling has that packet in his possession. When I come to see you in London, I will bring you twenty thousand pounds in Bank of England notes. With that Von Behrling might fancy himself on his way to America—with you.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment. Perhaps she wished to keep hidden from him the thoughts which chased one another through her brain. He wished to make use of her—of her, the woman whom he loved. Then she remembered that it was for her country and his, and the anger passed.

  “But I am afraid,” she said softly, “that the moment they reach London this document will be taken to the Austrian Embassy.”

  “Before then,” Bellamy declared, “Von Behrling must not know whether he is in heaven or upon earth. It will not be opened in London. He can make up another packet to resemble precisely the one of which he robbed Dorward. Oh! it is a difficult game, I know, but it is worth playing. Remember, Louise, that we are not petty conspirators. It is your country’s very existence that is threatened. It is for her sake as well as for England.”

  “I shall do my best,” she murmured, looking into his face. “Oh, you may be sure that I shall do my best!”

  Bellamy raised her fingers to his lips and stole away. The electric lamps had been turned out, but the morning was cloudy and the light dim. Back in his own berth, he put his things together, ready to leave at Munich. Then he rang for the porter.

  “I am getting out at the next stop,” he announced.

  “Very good, Monsieur,” the man answered.

  Bellamy looked at him closely.

  “You are a Frenchman?”

  “It is so, Monsieur!”

  “I may be wrong,” Bellamy continued slowly, “but I believe that if I asked you a question and it concerned some Germans and Austrians you would tell me the truth.”

  The man’s gesture was inimitable. Englishmen to him were obviously the salt of the earth. Germans and Austrians—why, they existed as the cattle in the fields—nothing more. Bellamy gave him a sovereign.

  “There were three Austrians who got in at Vienna,” he said. “They are in numbers ten and eleven.”

  “But yes, Monsieur!” the man assented. “As yet I think they are fast asleep. Not one of them has rung for his coffee.”

  “Where are they booked for?”

  “For London, Monsieur.”

  “You do not happen,” Bellamy continued, “to have heard them say anything about leaving the train before then?”

  “On the contrary, sir,” the porter answered, “two of the gentlemen have been inquiring about the boat across to Dover. They were very anxious to travel by a turbine.”

  Bellamy nodded.

  “Thank you very much. You will be so discreet as to forget that I have asked you any questions concerning them. As for me, if one would know, I am on my way to Berlin.”

  The bell rang. The man looked outside and put his head once more in Bellamy’s coupe.

  “It is one of the gentleman who has rung,” he declared. “If anything is said about leaving the train, I shall report it at once to Monsieur.”

  “You will do well,” Bellamy answered.

  The porter returned in a few moments.

  “Two of the gentlemen, sir,” he announced, “are undressed and in their pyjamas. They have ordered their breakfast to be served after we leave Munich.”

  Bellamy nodded.

  “Further, sir,” the man continued, coming a little closer, “one of them asked me whether the English gentleman—meaning you—was going through to London or not. I told them that you were getting out at the next station and that I thought you were going to Berlin.”

  “Quite right,” Bellamy said. “If they ask any more questions, let me know.”

  Mademoiselle Idiale, with the aid of one of the two maids who were traveling with her, was able to make a sufficiently effective toilette. At a few minutes before the time for luncheon, she walked down the corridor and recognized Von Behrling, who was sitting with his companions in one of the compartments.

  “Ah, it is indeed you, then!” she exclaimed, smiling at him.

  He rose
to his feet and came out. Tall, with a fair moustache and blue eyes, he was often taken for an Englishman and was inclined to be proud of the fact.

  “You have rested well, I trust, Mademoiselle?” he asked, bowing low over her fingers.

  “Excellently,” replied Louise. “Will you not take me in to luncheon? The car is full of men and I am not comfortable alone. It is not pleasant, either, to eat with one’s maids.”

  “I am honored,” he declared. “Will you permit me for one moment?”

  He turned and spoke to his companions. Louise saw at once that they were protesting vigorously. She saw, too, that Von Behrling only became more obstinate and that he was very nearly angry. She moved a few steps on down the corridor, and stood looking out of the window. He joined her almost immediately.

  “Come,” he said, “they will be serving luncheon in five minutes. We will go and take a good place.”

  “Your friends, I am afraid,” she remarked, “did not like your leaving them. They are not very gallant.”

  “To me it is indifferent,” he answered, fiercely twirling his moustache. “Streuss there is an old fool. He has always some fancy in his brain.”

  Louise raised her eyebrows slightly.

  “You are your own master, I suppose,” she said. “The Baron is used to command his policemen, and sometimes he forgets. There are many people who find him too autocratic.”

  “He means well,” Von Behrling asserted. “It is his manner only which is against him.”

  They found a comfortable table, and she sat smiling at him across the white cloth.

  “If this is not Sachers,” she said, “it is at least more pleasant than lunching alone.”

  “I can assure you, Mademoiselle,” he declared, with a vigorous twirl of his moustache, “that I find it so.”

  “Always gallant,” she murmured. “Tell me, is it true of you—the news which I heard just before I left Vienna? Have you really resigned your post with the Chancellor?”

  “You heard that?” he asked slowly.

  She hesitated for a moment.