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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

“Do you realise,” he asked her, towards the end of their meal, “that you are still a complete mystery to me?”

  She nodded affably. “Yes?”

  “You know what I mean, of course,” he went on. “Three weeks ago we joined hands for a moment. We were—may I not use the word?—associates. We were not, perhaps, completely successful in our enterprise, but at least we prevented that marvellous secret from ever reaching an enemy’s hands. Then you disappeared. I hear nothing from you until your voice startles me down the telephone to-night—you want to dine with me. Well, I am your slave, and here I am; but tell me, where have you been all this time?”

  “In France,” she answered.

  “And what have you been doing?”

  “Attending to my own business.”

  “And what is that?” he asked coolly.

  She raised her eyebrows, but her air of offence was obviously assumed. She lit a cigarette and watched the smoke for a minute. He was absorbed in the study of her hands—her unusually firm yet delicate fingers, ringless save for one large, quaintly cut emerald.

  “In my life,” she said, “I have no confidants.”

  “That seems a pity,” he replied. “We might be useful to one another.”

  “I am not so sure,” she answered thoughtfully. “For instance, although we speak together in English, my soul is French. I am for France and France only. England is our very dear ally. England is a splendid and an honourable nation, but it is France’s future welfare in which I am concerned, and not England’s. You, on the other hand, are Saxon. England and America, after all, are very close together.”

  “Greatest mistake of your life,” he assured her. “I have a great respect for England and a great liking for English people, and I believe that she was dragged into this war without wanting it; but, on the other hand, as I told you once before, I am for America and America only. England has asked for what she is getting for a good many years. If even she gets a-good hiding it won’t do her any harm.”

  “But America is so far outside,” she observed.

  “Don’t you make any mistake,” he answered promptly. “The world grows smaller, year by year. The America of fifty years ago has become impossible today. We have our political interests in every country, and, however slow and unwilling we may be to take up our responsibilities, we’ve got to come into line with the other great powers and use the same methods.”

  “You may be right,” she confessed. “Very well, then, you are for America and I am for France. Now tell me, as between Germany and England how are your sympathies?”

  “With England, without a doubt,” he pronounced. “Mind, I am not a rabid anti-German. I am not in the least sure that a nation with the great genius for progress that Germany has shown is not to some extent justified in taking up the sword to hew a larger place in the world for her own people. But that does not affect my answer to your question. My sympathies are with England.”

  She flicked the ash from her cigarette. She was looking a little languidly across the room towards a table set against the wall.

  “If your sympathy were a little stronger,” she remarked quietly, “I could show you how to render England an incalculable service.”

  “Tell me how?”

  “First of all,” she continued, “look at those three men and tell me what you think of them?”

  He turned a little in his place and glanced towards the table which she had indicated. One of the three men who were seated at it was obviously a foreigner. His hair was grey towards the temples, although his moustache was almost jet-black; his cheek-bones were high, his teeth a little prominent. He wore evening clothes of the most correct cut, his shirt and links were unexceptionable. His two companions were men of a different stamp. The one who seemed to dominate the party was a huge man, clean-shaven, with puffy face and small eyes. He wore a dark flannel suit of transatlantic cut. He was drinking a large whisky-and-soda and smoking a cigar, and had apparently eaten nothing. His companion was of smaller build, with flaxen moustache and hair, and dressed in light grey clothes and yellow boots. On the face of it, the trio were ill-assorted.

  “Well, I should say,” Lavendale remarked, “that the dark man in the corner chair was a foreigner—a Russian, for choice. The other two are, of course, American businessmen. The face of the big man seems familiar to me.”

  “You’ve probably seen his picture in the illustrated papers,” she told him. “That is Jacob J. Weald. He was once called, I believe, the powder king.”

  Lavendale nodded. His manner had become more interested.

  “Of course,” he murmured. “And that’s Jenkins, the secretary of the Weald Company. I wonder who the third man is?”

  “His name is Ossendorf—the Baron Cyril Ossendorf. He is a persona grata at the Russian Embassy and he owns great estates in Poland.”

  “Stop!” Lavendale exclaimed. “This is getting interesting. He is buying munitions, of course.”

  “Marvellous!” she murmured.

  “Don’t chaff me—it’s really interesting.”

  “Yes,” she admitted, “it is interesting, even from its external point of view. You are right. The Baron is probably giving, or has given, an enormous order for ammunition. Yet there is something behind that little conference, if only we could probe it, more interesting than you would believe, my friend.”

  She paused. He waited eagerly but she was silent for an unusually long time.

  “You were suggesting,” he ventured to remind her, “a few minutes ago, that there was some way in which intervention—”

  She leaned a little towards him. Her hand rested for a second upon his.

  “I have come to the conclusion,” she said, speaking very softly, “that one of us, either you or I, must kill Ossendorf.”

  He began to laugh and then stopped suddenly. A little shiver ran through him. For a single second her face was almost the face of a tigress. He felt that his laugh was a mistake.

  “You are in earnest!” he muttered.

  She rose from the table, gathered up her belongings and allowed him to arrange her cloak about her shoulders. “Except that I retract that possible alternative,” she said calmly. “I shall deal with Ossendorf myself.”

  “But I don’t understand,” he persisted.

  “How should you?” she answered, smiling. “By-the-by, where are we going? We spoke of a music-hall, didn’t we?”

  “I have a box at the Empire,” he told her.

  She was stepping by him into the taxi when she suddenly paused. Her frame seemed to become rigid.

  “The Empire,” he told the driver.

  She turned suddenly around.

  “Your rooms,” she directed. “Tell him to drive at once to your rooms.”

  He was startled but he obeyed her without hesitation. A moment later he took his place by her side.

  “That valet of yours!” she exclaimed.

  “What about him?”

  “I told you that I knew his face. I have just remembered.”

  “Well?”

  “A year ago he was an attaché at the Japanese Embassy. His name is Baron Komashi.”

  Lavendale was mystified. “Are you sure?” he asked incredulously.

  “Perfectly certain,” she insisted.

  “But why on earth should he be a friend of Perkins and willing to act as my valet?”

  “It’s the eternal game,” she declared, “and they are clever at it, too, the Japs. Tell me, have you any papers of special value about just now?”

  “Yes, in my safe,” he admitted, “but no one else has an idea of the combination.”

  “Combination!” she scoffed. “Niko Komashi, too! Tell me, are these papers political which you have inside the safe?”

  “In a measure, yes!” he asserted. They had reached the street in which his rooms were situated.

  “There is no light in my room,” he said, as they ascended the stairs. “Niko must have done his work and gone home.”

  “Y
es,” she murmured, “he has done his work, without a doubt. He has a knack of doing that.”

  Lavendale produced his latch-key. The rooms appeared to be empty and in darkness. In the sitting-room he unlocked his safe and peered in. One by one he examined his papers. Everything was in perfect order. He turned back to his companion.

  “Nothing has been disturbed,” he announced confidently.

  She came over towards him, put her head for a moment inside the safe and immediately withdrew it.

  “Niko has been through these papers during your absence,” she declared. “If everything is there, it is because he had no need to steal. He has examined or made copies of what he chose.”

  “How do you know this?” he asked incredulously.

  “It is quite simple,” she explained. “Even the cleverest man in the world seems always to forget one thing. Niko forgot that his clothes and fingers, even his breath, have always that peculiar Oriental perfume. What is it like—half almond-blossom, half sandalwood?”

  “I remember I noticed it when he came in,” Lavendale agreed quickly.

  “Put your head inside that safe again,” he directed.

  He obeyed at once. When he emerged, his face was troubled. He locked the door mechanically. “You are right,” he said.

  They were silent for a moment. Lavendale was contemplating the lock in a dazed manner. He turned to Suzanne. She had seated herself in his easy-chair and had thrown back her cloak.

  “You were going to tell me,” he reminded her, “about this fellow Niko. You had an idea about him.”

  “Mine is no idea,” she replied. “It is a certainty. The man who posed this evening as your temporary valet, the man who in your absence has opened your safe, why, it is Baron Niko Komashi. He belongs to one of the most aristocratic families in Japan.”

  “But he is a member of the Servants Club!” Lavendale expostulated. “He was a friend of Perkins—my servant!”

  “Ostensibly,” she said drily. “He came over here as first secretary to the Embassy. Then he disappeared. No one quite knew what had become of him. I once had a suspicion. Now I know. You and I, my friend, are bunglers at the game he plays.”

  Once more Lavendale was looking at the lock—unscratchcd, bearing no signs of having been tampered with. “The thing is a miracle,” he muttered.

  “Tell me-unless you would rather not,” she asked, leaning a little forward, “was there any document in that safe likely to be of particular interest to the Japanese Secret Service?”

  Lavendale’s face was dark with mingled shame and humiliation.

  “There was just the one document that should have been kept from them at all costs,” he declared bitterly. “Two years ago I wrote a series of articles for an American Sunday paper upon our military unpreparedness. I don’t know that they did any particular good, but, anyway, it’s a subject I have studied closely. That paper I had my fingers on just now contains every possible scrap of information as to our standing army, our volunteer forces, our artillery, our possible scheme of defence on the west and the east, our stock of munitions, and our expenditure of same per thousand men. There was also an air and naval report and a scheme for mining San Francisco Harbour.”

  She leaned back in her chair and laughed. “Most interesting! I can quite understand how Niko’s eyes would gleam! What’s that?”

  She turned her head suddenly. Lavendale, too, had started, and with a swift movement forward had touched the switch and plunged the room into darkness. They heard the soft click of the latch and the opening and closing of the front door. They heard the soft footsteps of the intruder across the hall. The door of the room in which they were was quietly opened and closed. Still with that same amazing stealthiness, a small, dark figure crossed the room and stood before the safe. Then there was a pause, several breathless moments of silence. Niko’s instinct was telling him that he was not alone. Once more Lavendale’s finger touched the switch and the lights blazed out. Niko was standing, the knob of the safe in his hand, his head turned towards them.

  The sudden light had a common effect upon all of them. Suzanne for a moment held her hand in front of her eyes. Niko blinked slightly. Then he drew himself up to his full height of five feet four. He stood in front of the safe with his eyes fixed upon Lavendale, something about his face and attitude bearing a curious resemblance to a statue carved in wax. Lavendale coughed.

  “You remind me, Baron Komashi,” he said, “of an old English proverb—the pitcher that goes once too often to the well, you know. Was it something you had forgotten that brought you back? No, stay where you arc, please.”

  Niko remained motionless. Lavendale moved to a long, open cupboard which stood against the wall, opened it and groped about amongst its contents for a moment. Then he swung the door to and slipped some cartridges into the little revolver which he had taken from the top shelf. Niko’s muscles suddenly seemed to relax. Ever so slightly he shrugged his shoulders. It was the gesture of a supreme philosophy.

  “There’s no need for a row,” Lavendale went on. “The game you and I are playing at, Baron Komashi, requires finesse rather than muscle. By a stroke of genius you nave read a certain document in that safe. That document is naturally of interest to the representative of the one country with whom America might possibly quarrel.”

  Niko bowed his sleek head. “I have read the document,” he confessed. “It was my business to read it. And now?”

  “There you have me,” Lavendale admitted. “It is a document, without a doubt, of great interest to you, and your Government will highly appreciate a résumé of its contents. At the same time, the only way to stop your making use of your information is to kill you.”

  The man’s face was like the face of a sphinx. Suzanne leaned a little farther back in her chair and crossed her legs.

  “It is a fortunate century in which you pursue your career, Baron,” she observed, “and perhaps a fortunate country. These little qualms about human life which I can clearly see are influencing Mr. Lavendale, scarcely exist, even now, amongst your people, do they?”

  “We are as yet,” Niko replied suavely, “free, I am thankful to say, from the cowardice of the West.”

  “If I asked you for your word of honour,” Lavendale continued, “that you would not use that information?”

  “I might give it you,” Niko acknowledged, “but my country’s service is a higher thing than my personal honour, therefore it would do you no good. I shall be frank with you. There is no way you can prevent my report being duly made except by killing me. I am here, a self-confessed robber. If I were in your place, I should shoot.”

  “The cowardice of the West, you see,” Lavendale remarked, throwing his revolver upon the table. “You had better get out of the room. I might change my mind.”

  For a moment Niko made no movement. Suzanne rose to her feet and lit a cigarette.

  “As a matter of curiosity,” she asked, “tell us why you returned, Baron?” He bowed.

  “The Empire performance is not over until half-past eleven,” he explained, “and it is barely ten o’clock. I had some faint misgivings as to the resetting of the lock. I came back to examine it. That is my answer. You speak now of curiosity. I, too, have curiosity. Will you tell me how you knew that I had opened the safe?”

  She smiled and lifted her handkerchief for a moment to her lips. Niko’s head was bent as though in humiliation. “It is so hard to outgrow one’s errors,” he sighed.

  He looked towards Lavendale and Lavendale pointed impatiently towards the door. He took a step or two in that direction, then he paused.

  “Sir,” he said, looking back, “because your methods are not mine, believe me that I still can appreciate their mistaken chivalry. The information I have gained I shall use. No promise of mine to the contrary would avail you. But there is, perhaps, some return which I might offer, more valuable, perhaps, to mademoiselle, yet of some import to you also.”

  Suzanne leaned a little forward. Her cigaret
te burnt idly between her fingers.

  “In this great conflict,” Niko continued, “whose reverberations shake the earth, Japan watches from afar off. There are few who know the reason, but there is a reason. Let that pass. My country lays no seal upon my lips. What I know I pass on to you. A hundred million cartridges and five thousand tons of heavier ammunition, which might otherwise have reached Russia, are lying now at the bottom of the ocean. This is the doing of one man, a man in the pay of Germany, a man who is the greatest traitor the world has ever known.”

  “Ossendorf!” Suzanne cried.

  Niko bowed and moved towards the door. “Mademoiselle has suspected, perhaps,” he concluded. “It is I who can assure her that her suspicions are just. The greatest plant in America is kept producing munitions by day and night, bought with Russian gold but never meant to reach their destination. It is well?”

  He looked at Lavendale, his hand upon the door. Lavendale nodded curtly.

  “It is well,” he said.

  Lavendale Springs a Surprise

  MR. JACOB P. WEALD smoothed out the document which he had been examining and drew a deep, sigh of satisfaction.

  “Say, Ed,” he remarked, turning to his secretary, who was smoking a cigar at the other end of the room, “that’s worth a cool million apiece for us, that contract.”

  “Hope there’s no hitch,” the other replied anxiously. “What’s this young fellow from the Embassy want?”

  “Nothing to hurt us,” Weald assured him. “We’re all right with the authorities all round. I’m glad, Ed, we did the square thing. We’ve had it straight from the British War Office to go right along ahead and give Russia everything we can turn out. Well, Russia’s going to have it, and, by gum, there’s enough ammunition provided for in that contract to make mincemeat of the whole German Army!”

  There was a knock at the door of the sitting-room and a servant announced Mr. Ambrose Lavendale. Lavendale, following closely behind, shook hands at once with the two men.

  “I’ve heard of your plant, Mr. Weald,” he said, pleasantly. “Wonderful things you’ve been doing in the way of producing ammunition, they tell me. Been unlucky with some of your shipments, though, haven’t you?”