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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  I am in despair because I fear that you may believe I led you deliberately into a trap. I had no thought of my husband’s returning. His arrival was as great a shock to me as to you. You drove him, I hear, to leave the hotel by the fire escape, but he got the better of you, as he always will. He is not human, that man. Let your police headquarters take care of him. You have not a chance.

  I wish to see you. I can scarcely hope that you will return here. It must be when and where you will.

  Deborah.

  P.S. I am sending you a newspaper cutting from to-night’s paper. This is another instance of that man’s malevolence.

  He opened the cutting and read:

  The body of the young woman who was found in the Regent’s Canal last week has been identified as that of Rosa Bland. She was recently engaged as a domestic servant in the employ of Mrs. Horace Florestan of Colville Terrace, Kensington. There is still no clue as to whether she committed suicide or was the victim of foul play.

  Cheshire’s face grew hard as he read the few lines. He placed the cutting in his pocket-book. The second envelope he opened was heavily sealed. He cut open the flap of the envelope, drew out a stiff sheet of faintly tinted lavender notepaper, and read:

  Guy, my dear,

  Come and tell me at once, please, whether it is something we are doing which has brought about this uproar. Sabine was talking to Broccia for over an hour last night and I have not seen her look so cheerful for ages. Even my dear brother-in-law has lost his lugubrious expression. I am opening a small Art Show at four o’clock at Number 73a, Rite Street, Chelsea. Come and fetch me away and buy a picture.

  Elida.

  P.S. May I send my love to Ronnie?

  Cheshire drew a sheet of paper towards him and wrote a few lines in his neat, precise handwriting:

  My dear Elida,

  To-day I am a prisoner—to-morrow also. On Thursday I shall fetch you from your Picture Show, which I suppose will continue open for a few days, at the more human hour of six o’clock.

  Ever yours, Guy.

  P.S. I will deliver your message.

  He rung for a messenger and despatched the note, then he made his way to the little chart room he kept for himself, took off his coat, put on an overall and mounted a stool. For five hours he worked without stopping, safe from any manner of intrusion by reason of the framed notice which hung outside the door. When at last weariness came, he locked up all that he had done in a small safe let into the wall, washed his hands and bathed his head in the small lavatory attached to the room. Half an hour later he was drinking tea and eating buttered toast in the private card room of the St. George’s Club. On the other side of the table Sir Herbert Melville was seated, similarly engaged. The two men were alone in the room. The Deputy Commissioner, who had been exceedingly blunt, was very much in earnest.

  “I don’t want you to misunderstand me, Cheshire,” he said. “Our affiliation has been tremendously useful and we can pride ourselves upon having done some wonderful work. Where you have needed our help you have always had it. All the same, I am not entirely satisfied about this Florestan business.”

  “Then you are hard to satisfy,” was the terse rejoinder. “Some days ago I passed over into safe-keeping at Scotland Yard the revolver with which Florestan shot poor Meldicott, and a case of the rotten cartridges—very easily identified. With the evidence of the car, you already have a clear case.”

  “Yes, but we have not got Florestan,” Melville said drily.

  “Admittedly, but you must agree that I did some good work that night, nevertheless. I came across Mrs. Florestan, who I thought might know something of his whereabouts, gave her supper, danced with her. Could your most zealous detectives have done more than that? I took her up to the apartments and I did what I cannot help thinking that your men ought to have done long ago—I searched them. I found the revolver and I found the cartridges.”

  “And nearly got yourself into a hell of a mess,” Melville grunted.

  “Would you have missed the chance?” Cheshire asked. “Not on your life! If I didn’t catch Florestan, I got the next best thing—the evidence. As regards the former, I suppose I handled the matter stupidly, but it’s not easy to see how I could have done otherwise. The fellow was unarmed. I could not shoot him. I didn’t see any sense in a scrap fight. I never thought he could get away from the hotel. Fire escapes! Who thinks of that sort of thing outside the cinema? I had your men in the rooms two minutes after I left. Both lifts, the main stairway, the service stairs and every exit from the hotel was guarded. What more could I have done?”

  “I am not complaining,” Melville said, a little subdued, “but you must remember even that car with its false numbers, and the possession of the revolver and the cartridges, is not final evidence. We might prove that it was the revolver with which the trick was done and it was one of those cartridges that hit Meldicott, but we have still to prove that it was Florestan who pulled the trigger.”

  Cheshire shrugged his shoulders.

  “Your chaps can frame him up when they get hold of him,” he remarked. “You’ve got your records round at the Yard. I can double them for you. He has sold the Admiralty material that he knew was bad. We put him on our suspected list, and if he was not going to hang for Meldicott’s murder, he would have been shot as a spy before very long.”

  “What about his wife?”

  “Sorry I can’t introduce you,” Cheshire replied. “She is an amazing woman—amazing in appearance, manners and her way of talking, but I can tell you one thing, she is ready to give Florestan away for what she knows. The only trouble is that I do not think she knows much. He seems to have kept his life a closed book against everyone.”

  “Seeing her again?” Melville enquired.

  Cheshire considered the point.

  “Yes, I think so,” he admitted. “There was a poor girl drowned in the Regent’s Canal a short time ago who has just been identified as a domestic servant at Florestan’s Kensington house. That’s the girl who cut my ropes in the cellar and disappeared from the car outside the police station, you know.”

  “I remember,” Melville observed. “And you had not seen her since?”

  “Not a sign—but you see from this cutting what has happened to her. I want to find out whether she has any people and arrange for her having a decent funeral, and that sort of thing.”

  Melville made a note in his pocket-book.

  “We’ll see to that end of the affair for you,” he promised, “but we are badly stuck up about Florestan, Cheshire. None of our men seem to have a line on him at all and there’s not a soul who saw him come down that fire escape.”

  “I have turned Florestan over to you for the immediate present,” Cheshire announced. “It is not that I am not desperately anxious to bring him in, it is not that I don’t realise he is a hideous danger to us, but for twenty-four hours I am busy on an even bigger job.”

  “Secretive devil, aren’t you?” Melville observed.

  Cheshire finished his tea and lit a pipe.

  “I hear Fakenham’s voice,” he said, “and here comes Prestley. Good egg, we shall get a rubber, after all. I have had to lay off my work waiting for a cable from Singapore. Come along,” he added, rising to his feet and making for the card table. “Here’s the newspaper man looking as pleased as Punch. He will want us to believe that he himself wrote that leading article which has made the nation joyful.”

  “Soldiers may fight,” Fakenham remarked, lighting his cigar, “and sailors, too, may make a show of it, but it is the Press that always steps in and saves the country.”

  CHAPTER XXIV

  Table of Contents

  There was a look of concern upon the valet’s face as he entered his master’s salon in the Milan Court that evening. He came over to the table where Cheshire was writing.

  “Well, what is it?” the latter asked without looking up. “You know my orders.”

  “There’s a lady here who wishes to see you urgently,
sir,” he announced.

  “Worse and worse,” was the gruff comment.

  “If I have done wrong, sir, I am very sorry. The lady’s name is Florestan—Mrs. Horace Florestan.”

  Cheshire laid down his pen and swung round in his chair.

  “Do you mean to say that she is here now?” he demanded, with sudden interest in his tone. “You are a wonderful chap, Greyes,” he added with a kindly smile. “Always know when to disobey orders, don’t you? You have done a jolly sensible thing this time, let me tell you. Show the lady in.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  He hurried out to the inner hall of the suite and in a moment the door of the apartment was thrown open.

  “Mrs. Florestan to see you, sir.”

  She crossed the floor very casually, smothered in furs—there was an east wind blowing outside—and wearing a turban hat with a half veil. Cheshire rose to his feet and, although kindly, there was something faintly ironical in his bow.

  “You honour me, my dear lady,” he said.

  She was entirely composed, glanced round the room, selected a comfortable easy chair not too far from his desk and sank into it pensively.

  “Why did you not answer my note?” she demanded.

  “For at least a dozen reasons,” he replied. “One may do, perhaps. I had an idea that you might have left, and all letters in that case addressed to you would go with your husband’s to Scotland Yard. I could not bear the idea of the minions of that establishment smiling at my outpourings.”

  “So that was the sort of letter you were going to write to me, was it?”

  He sighed.

  “Why not? The last time we met you probably saved my life. Now I shall not have to write you a letter of thanks. You are here. That is better.”

  “You are glad to see me?”

  “More than glad—delighted.”

  “Then give me a cigarette and tell me, if you please, why.”

  He handed her the box of cigarettes, held his lighter steadily in front of the one she selected, and resumed his seat.

  “Because I want your husband’s address.”

  She laughed—a deep but not unpleasant expression of mirth. She had raised her veil since she had commenced to smoke and again Cheshire wondered what a great sculptor would have made of her mouth.

  “Well, I think I can surprise you, even if I do not give you his postal address or telephone number,” she replied. “An hour ago I talked with him.”

  “Viva voce?”

  “On the telephone.”

  “Where was he?”

  “Rome.”

  “I shall have to talk to the Deputy Commissioner about this,” Cheshire muttered with a gesture of despair. “He never should have been allowed to reach Rome.”

  “I will say this for my husband, although I dislike him immensely,” she confided. “If he wants to go to a place he goes there.”

  “He didn’t catch cold struggling down that outside fire escape, I hope?” Cheshire asked with gentle sarcasm.

  “I have never known him have a cold in his life,” she answered. “I have never heard him plead guilty to a headache. I have never seen him ill. I have never known him consult a doctor. He seems somehow removed from all human weaknesses.”

  “What did he ring up about?” he enquired. “To wish you good night?”

  “Just an effort of gallantry, I suppose,” she remarked. “Anyway, it cost him nothing. He spoke on a private wire.”

  Cheshire shook his head.

  “I am having nothing whatever to do with that effort of gallantry,” he scoffed. “Please be reasonable and tell me what he wanted.”

  “He rang up to ask me to go to Regent’s Park House, enquire there for the Contessa Elida Pelucchi and to give her a message.”

  “So you came to me?”

  “So I came to you,” she agreed. “The new order of things. I hope you approve.”

  She drew off her gloves, and smoothing them out laid them upon the table.

  “So I came to you,” she repeated reflectively. “Tell me, is it not the custom when a lady calls upon you at this hour of the evening to offer her an apéritif?”

  Cheshire leaned over and touched the bell.

  “I should like an Italian Vermouth with Campari Bitters,” she went on.

  “Sounds good,” he admitted. “I will try one myself. We have the Campari, I think, Greyes?” he asked as the servant entered the room.

  “Yes, sir. I will mix the drinks at once.”

  “There are times,” Cheshire explained as Greyes closed the door, “when we make our own cocktails. This is one of them. So you have a message to take to the Contessa Elida Pelucchi, and you came here with it. That is a very gracious action on your part.”

  “I do not think,” she told him, “that my husband intended you to share the knowledge of that message. In fact his only reference to you was rather blasphemous.”

  “I really cannot see why,” Cheshire objected. “I consider he is one up on me. When I think of the hours I spent in your miserable cellar, in that rotten house of yours, I am inclined to believe that my dislike of him will last throughout my life. Of course,” he went on, “it is quite true that I did force him to descend an outdoor fire escape in most inclement weather, and if you like to give me that message and save me the worry of going over to Regent’s Park I might consider balancing the account, so far as I personally am concerned. What do you think about that?”

  “Well, what I think is,” she confided, “that you must like me to be here or you would not be so long-winded. Who cares whether your accounts with Horace are balanced or not? I consider that he is a most unpleasant type of man. I cannot imagine why he married me and I am dizzy with bewilderment when I ask myself why I married him. I have my sane moments, of course, but I can assure you that I spend most of my days, and nights, too, in a state of terror when I even think about him.”

  Greyes came quietly into the room bearing on a silver salver two glasses filled with a most fascinating-looking decoction. The visitor sipped hers and approved. Cheshire followed suit.

  “Just a shade on the sweet side,” he remarked, “but excellent, all the same. That will do, Greyes. I will ring if I want you again.”

  The man took his leave. Deborah Florestan lit another cigarette.

  “My friend,” she began, looking steadfastly at her companion, “has it not occurred to you, I wonder, that our intercourse is rather a one-sided affair?”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, I consider that I have given you a great deal of valuable information,” she said. “I have also, in all probability, saved your life. Now you are asking me, in the language of the novelists, to betray my husband’s confidence.”

  “But, my dear lady,” he expostulated, “think what I have done for you!”

  She looked at him steadily. Again that puzzling mouth of hers intrigued him.

  “Well, what have you done for me?” she asked.

  “I stood you a very excellent supper the other night, I accepted your invitation to visit your rooms, after distinct assurances from you that your husband was nowhere about, and I then went through several very uncomfortable moments wondering whether he was going to kill me or I was going to kill him. Notwithstanding all this I have not uttered a single word of remonstrance.”

  She laughed derisively.

  “I should not talk too much about that,” she said. “I do not think you were at all clever that evening. You were armed and he was not. I do not think that you should have allowed him to get away.”

  “I suppose I mucked it, somehow,” Cheshire acknowledged. “So far as being armed is concerned, though, I don’t see what advantage that gave me. I couldn’t have shot him with one of those filthy cartridges. We might have had a good stand-up fight, of course, but the commotion would have awakened you from your first sleep, and, although I rather fancy myself at a scrap, the consequences might have been unpleasant.”

  “You did not get the
better of that other scrap,” she reminded him.

  “Only a trifling affair, that,” he exclaimed with a wave of the hand. “He was just a thought too quick for me, that was all. Look here, we are wrangling like a couple of children, wasting time, too. What about that message for the Contessa?”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “No.”

  “Why should I be like all these other foolish women—give, give, give with no return? Why should I not make a bargain with you?”

  “In what coinage must I pay?”

  She stretched herself a little in her chair, took off her turban with its beautiful sapphire and diamond ornament and laid it upon the table. Her long fingers played for a moment or two with her hair.

  “I can think of only two things you might have to offer,” she decided. “Money and—love.”

  “And which do you choose?”

  “I think that I shall choose love.”

  “A doubtful commodity,” he warned her. “Now let us get on with the message, please.”

  “My husband said that it is the urgent wish of a certain great personage that she present herself in Rome before the end of the week.”

  “For any particular reason?”

  She shrugged her shoulders slightly.

  “He seems to be in everyone’s confidence,” she said. “He may know it. He did not share his knowledge with me.”

  “And that was all the message?”

  “Every word. Am I to deliver it or not?”

  Greyes made discreet entrance, his replenished salver in his hand, in answer to the summons of the bell. Deborah Florestan, who had sunk very low in her chair, stretched out her hand greedily to the tray of hors d’oeuvres he was carrying. He laid them on the table before her, half filled her glass with Vermouth and added the Campari. Cheshire strolled over to the table and helped himself.

  “I shall change in half an hour, Greyes,” he announced.

  “Very good, sir,” the latter replied as he left the room.

  Cheshire moved his chair closer to his visitor’s.

  “You have not answered my question,” she reminded him.

  “Since you have confided the message to me it really makes very little difference,” he replied. “I shall take good care that the Contessa remains at Regent’s Park. I don’t think that Rome would be at all a healthy place for her just now.”