“You really mean that we are to go there, then?” she asked.
“It isn’t exactly one of my privileges,” he declared, “to fix upon the spot where we shall take our belated honeymoon, but I haven’t been in Belgrade for years, and I know you’d like to see your people.”
“It will be more happiness than I ever dreamed of,” she murmured. “Do you think we shall be safe in passing through Vienna?”
Bellamy laughed.
“Remember,” he said, “that I am no longer David Bellamy, with a silver greyhound attached to my watch-chain and an obnoxious reputation in foreign countries. I am Lord Denchester of Denchester, a harmless English peer traveling on his honeymoon. By the way, I hope you like the title.”
“I shall love it when I get used to it,” she declared. “To be an English Countess is dazzling, but I do think that I ought not to go on singing at Covent Garden.”
“To-morrow will be your last night,” he reminded her. “I have asked Laverick and the dear little girl he is going to marry to come with me. Afterwards we must all have supper together.”
“How nice of you!” she exclaimed.
“I don’t know about that,” Bellamy said, smiling. “I really like Laverick. He is a decent fellow and a good sort. Incidentally, he was thundering useful to us, and pretty plucky about it. He interests me, too, in another way. He is a man who, face to face with a moral problem, acted exactly as I should have done myself!”
“You mean about the twenty thousand pounds?” she asked.
Bellamy assented.
“He was practically dishonest,” he pointed out. “He had no right to use that money and he ought to have taken the pocket-book to the police-station. If he had done so—that is to say, if he had waited there for the police, if he had been seen to hold out that pocket-book, to have discussed it with any one, it is ten to one that there would have been another tragedy that night. At any rate, the document would never have come to us.”
She smiled.
“My moral judgment is warped,” she asserted, “from the fact that Laverick’s decision brought us the document.”
He nodded.
“Perhaps so,” he agreed, “and yet, there was the man face to face with ruin. The use of that money for a few hours did no one any harm, and saved him. I say that such a deed is always a matter of calculation, and in this case that he was justified.”
“I wonder what he really thinks about it himself,” she remarked.
“Perhaps I’ll ask him.”
But when the time came, and he sat in the box with Laverick and Zoe, he forgot everything else in the joy of watching the woman whom he had loved so long. She moved about the stage that night as though her feet indeed fell upon the air. She appeared to be singing always with restraint, yet with some new power in her voice, a quality which even in her simpler notes left the great audience thrilled. Already there was a rumor that it was her last appearance. Her marriage to Bellamy had been that day announced in the Morning Post. When, in the last act, she sang alone on the stage the famous love song, it seemed to them all that although her voice trembled more than once, it was a new thing to which they listened. Zoe found herself clasping Laverick’s hand in tremulous excitement. Bellamy sat like a statue, a little back in the box, his clean-cut face thrown into powerful relief by the shadows beyond. Yet, as he listened, his eyes, too, were marvelously soft. The song grew and grew till, with the last notes, the whole story of an exquisite and expectant passion seemed trembling in her voice. The last note came from her lips almost as though unwillingly, and was prolonged for an extraordinary period. When it died away, its passing seemed something almost unrealizable. It quivered away into a silence which lasted for many seconds before the gathering roar of applause swept the house. And in those last few seconds she had turned and faced Bellamy. Their eyes met, and the light which flashed from his seemed answered by the quivering of her throat. It was her good-bye. She was singing a new love-song, singing her way into the life of the man whom she loved, singing her way into love itself. Once more the great house, packed to the ceiling, was worked up to a state of frenzied excitement. Bellamy was recognized, and the significance of her song sent a wave of sentiment through the house whose only possible form of expression took to itself shape in the frantic greetings which called her to the front again and again. But the three in the box were silent. Bellamy stood back in the shadows. Laverick and Zoe seemed suddenly to become immersed in themselves. Bellamy threw open the door of the box and pointed outside.
“At Luigi’s in half-an-hour,” said he softly. “You will excuse me for a few minutes? I am going to Louise.”
THE END
THE SPYMASTER
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
CHAPTER I
Table of Contents
Admiral Guy Cheshire, whose orders and decorations denoted an unusually distinguished career for a man of forty-five years, a very unwilling participant in the brilliant scene, was honoured by his old friend, Henry D. Prestley, host of the gathering, with a few minutes’ tête-à-tête in one of the smaller reception rooms of the great house in Regent’s Park. Prestley was a silent man; so also, except when he was talking nonsense, was the Admiral. A queer sort of friendship had sprung up between them during the last ten years. They played golf together at irregular intervals and bridge in the same little circle most evenings at the famous St. George’s Club.
“I was thinking, as I came up the stairs,” Cheshire confided, “that yours is really the first of the great diplomatic shows of the season. Sabine has evidently made up her mind to make the others seem like Cinderella dances.”
Prestley shrugged his shoulders slightly. From where they stood they had a fine view of the larger rooms through which a continual stream of men and women was flowing. The old days of tiaras had returned. The brilliant uniforms of the men assisted in providing a wonderful blaze of colour. The ballroom was banked with a forest of flowers. The strains of an Austrian waltz, played by an orchestra unsurpassed in the world, reached their ears faintly. It was all a gay and marvellous whirlpool of gorgeous and scintillating life.
“We are doing it for the Ambassador of Sabine’s country, of course,” Prestley observed. “I felt a little uncomfortable about it but Sabine was dead keen. Broccia has been summoned back to a conference and Count Patani is, after all, a distant connection of hers. My wife loves entertaining for her people and if this sort of thing gives her pleasure, so much the better.”
“I ask myself sometimes,” Cheshire meditated, “why you didn’t go in for the diplomatic life yourself.”
Prestley smiled. He had the fine delicate features, the long straight nose of all the men of his family, but he lacked the physique of his race. Notwithstanding his youthful successes at outdoor sports—he had played football for Harvard, and international polo—his complexion was pale and he had preserved the thoughtful air of a statesman or a man of great affairs. He was, as a matter of fact, head of the most famous banking firm in the world.
“Sometimes,” he confessed, “I ask myself the same question. Then I answer it and I am s
atisfied. There were reasons, my friend. Sabine, I think, so long as she married an American instead of a fellow-countryman, is quite as happy in her present position without the restraint of diplomatic life. The show to-night, of course, is given entirely for Patani. We can still unofficially step in, though, now and then, when we are asked to on behalf of our own people. Neither Broccia nor his wife have had any experience of this sort of thing. It gives Sabine pleasure and she has not the responsibilities.”
“An amazing woman,” Cheshire observed. “She knows as much about European politics as anyone with whom I ever talked—much more than I do. Then, of course, it isn’t my job. I am only a sailor.”
An urgent messenger came for the host. He departed with a little farewell nod to his friend. The latter, who was in a depressed frame of mind, had just decided to seek the solace of a glass of champagne when a very beautiful girl, with an only half-uttered word of apology, left her partner and came over to him.
“What have you done with my young man, Guy?” she complained. “Have you put him on night duty or something of that sort?”
“Which of your retinue are you talking about?” he demanded.
“Why, Ronnie Hincks, of course. Is he not one of your A.D.C.’s or something, tucked up with you indoors at the Admiralty for a month or two?”
“Ronnie Hincks? Oh, yes. Isn’t he here?”
The girl shook her head.
“I have been looking for him everywhere. Sabine was asking for him, too. We are both very sad. Godfrey Ryson is absent, also.”
“They’re pretty busy at the shop,” the Admiral confided. “I’ve come straight from there myself.”
“Heavens! No dinner?”
He shook his head:—
“I’m going to make up for it in a minute or two.”
She glanced regretfully at her partner.
“I wish I could take you into supper,” she sighed. “You know Tony Gresham, do you not, Admiral? Tony and I are going to forget all about our scrappy dinner. Come in with us.”
The two men exchanged nods.
“Do come, sir,” Gresham begged. “We would be delighted to have you.”
“Just what I should have said at your age,” Cheshire replied drily, “but I should have kicked myself for having to say it. No, I won’t come, thanks, Elida. To tell you the truth, I have not really paid my respects to your sister yet. I got mixed up with a little tangle of Royalties and, being a shy man, I fled.”
“You know where to find her,” the girl said as she rejoined her partner. “She is in what she calls the Tapestry Salon, taking a brief rest. She is easily got at, though.”
“I will present my apologies at once,” Cheshire declared as he took his leave.
Progress through the crowded rooms was difficult. Admiral Guy Cheshire was a popular man and found friends on every side. He came face to face with his hostess only when she was leaving her retreat. There was a touch of eagerness in her manner as she dismissed her cavalier and came towards him.
“I almost wondered,” she said quietly, “whether you were not keeping out of my way.”
He looked at her in very genuine admiration. He knew little about women’s clothes, but her ivory satin gown, so exquisitely classic a garment, those marvellous Pelucchi pearls, her beautifully coiled and smoothly coiffured chestnut-brown hair, and the flash of her brown eyes, seemed to reproduce one of those Florentine pictures of the Renaissance.
“You flatter me,” he remarked. “I have been laying my homage at the feet of the younger generation. Elida, too, looks beautiful to-night.”
Her imitation curtsy was a trick of the old days.
“I have just a quarter of an hour before the formal business of supper,” she confided. “I have not given you any special place, Guy. I know you are entitled to it but I also know that there is just truth enough in your affected shyness to make you like to look after yourself. Stay with me for a minute. Here—let us sit down inside this small room. Bring us some champagne,” she ordered one of the footmen.
“We will sit on that divan away from this blaze of lights.”
“I am very much honoured,” he murmured, as he followed her. . . .
“My friend,” she said, as soon as they had settled down. “I am still your friend, am I not?”
“I hope so,” he answered gravely. “Has my behaviour in any way led you to think differently?”
“No,” she admitted, “but you come no longer to my At Homes. You have the entrée to my private sessions. You do not come.”
“These are anxious times, as you know,” he reminded her. “So long as the wireless from the Continent works, my official duties keep me at my desk.”
“Is that quite honest with me—an old friend?” she asked. “You see, I, too, have information. I know that you occupy a wonderful post. I know that you are greatly engaged just now, but that is no reason why you should desert your friends altogether. It makes them just a little anxious.”
He smiled reassurance. He had thrown off some part of his dejection now. The sailor light was back in his eyes and some of the lines had gone from his sunburnt face. A cynical critic who knew him well might have declared that the mask was down.
“I flatter myself, really,” he told her, “when I pretend that my work is sufficiently important to keep me wholly from my pleasures. Thursday is your next day for receiving us who have the honour of being your intimates, isn’t it? I shall present myself.”
“And you will be very welcome,” she assured him. “The list grows no longer. I want to talk to you seriously.”
“A slight disappointment, that,” he smiled, “but it shall be seriously, if you will, so long as there are a few minutes for ourselves. I should like to talk of Washington with you—of Rome and the old days.”
She shook her head.
“Not Rome now,” she objected. “Washington always. You remember when we used to ride in the mornings?”
“I remember losing my heart to you.”
Her little pout was a delicate gesture.
“You are a sailor,” she reminded him. “You always told me that no one else would have got you on the back of a horse and when I saw you there I almost believed you—and now you stay away just when I need you most.”
“Why do you need me?”
“I want to understand,” she said. “It seems to me that all Europe is drifting into something very serious. One wishes to help. One wishes direction. They say,” she went on, raising her eyes and looking at him directly, “that a good deal of knowledge lies behind that still face of yours, Guy.”
“Everything that I know, I will share with you,” he promised. “With a few trifling exceptions, of course.”
“Such as the size of your latest battleship, I suppose, and the name of the little ballerina with whom you took supper last week?”
“Naturally, serious knowledge like that is kept in a secret chamber,” he admitted. “Still, it is rather fun to part with the key, sometimes!”
“I wonder how much you have changed, really, Guy,” she meditated.
“You shall ask me on Thursday.”
She rose to her feet. She was either a wonderful actress or she was reluctant to go.
“Our few minutes have drifted away,” she complained, “and there are heaps of things I really wanted to ask you, I really wanted to understand. On Thursday you must give me a whole hour. Listen, I will get rid of one or two people first. You shall come at seven o’clock. Everyone leaves about then to go on to cocktail parties. You shall have yours with me.”
He bent over her fingers.
“Nothing,” he promised, “shall keep me away.”
She summoned one of the young secretaries who had been waiting for her with a list in his hand, and passed out into the crowded room with him at her side. Cheshire watched her steadily, almost stonily. He watched her until she had disappeared, then he turned to the champagne which the footman had brought and which they had forgotten. He drank his wine thoug
htfully. The wife of his friend Henry Prestley, the playmate of his own younger days, had given him something to think about. He found himself wondering… .
“Cheshire, the one man I was looking for!”
There was a note of eagerness in the tone of the very magnificent personage who had almost pushed his way through a little throng on the other side of the great staircase. General Lord Robert Mallinson, for many years considered the handsomest man in the British Army, presented still a fine figure, in his full-dress uniform with his long row of marvellous decorations. His black hair was streaked with grey but his movements and a certain innate alertness kept him well within the bounds of early middle age.
“Are you going to feed with the lions?” he asked.
Cheshire shook his head.
“Not I. I was prowling about looking for the buffet.”
“I’m with you,” the General exclaimed. “What a stroke of luck! Come along. I can show you the way. No one seems to have found it out yet.”
They descended to the ground floor and secured an absolutely retired corner in a huge room occupied for the moment only by a small crowd of attentive waiters.
“Caviar, with cold chicken, ham and salad to follow, for me,” the General ordered. “Not too much of that mayonnaise stuff. There’s no champagne here that isn’t good. We’ll have a bottle, eh, Cheshire?”
“Rather!”
“A cocktail first,” Mallinson insisted. “Look here, old chap, this is a stroke of luck. If I present myself at your bureau and ask for an interview, though I know your fellows are well trained, it is jolly hard work to keep it away from the gossip paragraphist. The same trouble if you came to see me. And to have a little tête-à-tête lunch in the coffee-room of the club would be madness. We are just the two men in London who ought not to meet, I suppose, and here we are doing it without a soul to wonder what we are talking about.”
“What are we going to talk about?” Cheshire enquired.
Mallinson moved his chair slightly. They now commanded a view of the room but were themselves almost unseen. Anyone approaching would be visible whilst they were still out of hearing.
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