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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  “You heard the message, then?”

  “I did.”

  “You listened—at the keyhole?”

  “I listened outside,” Gerald assented doggedly. “I am glad I listened. Do you mind answering my question?”

  “Do I mind!” Mr. Fentolin repeated softly. “Really, Gerald, your politeness, your consideration, your good manners, astound me. I am positively deprived of the power of speech.”

  “I’ll wait here till it comes to you again, then,” the boy declared bluntly. “I’ve waited on you hand and foot, done dirty work for you, put up with your ill-humours and your tyranny, and never grumbled. But there is a limit! You’ve made a poor sort of creature of me, but even the worm turns, you know. When it comes to giving away secrets about the movements of our navy at a time when we are almost at war, I strike.”

  “Melodramatic, almost dramatic, but, alas! so inaccurate,” Mr. Fentolin sighed. “Is this a fit of the heroics, boy, or what has come over you? Have you by any chance—forgotten?”

  Mr. Fentolin’s voice seemed suddenly to have grown in volume. His eyes dilated, he himself seemed to have grown in size. Gerald stepped a little back. He was trembling, but his expression had not changed.

  “No, I haven’t forgotten. There’s a great debt we are doing our best to pay, but there’s such a thing as asking top much, there’s such a thing as drawing the cords to snapping point. I’m speaking for Esther and mother as well as myself. We have been your slaves; in a way I suppose we are willing to go on being your slaves. It’s the burden that Fate has placed around our necks, and we’ll go through with it. All I want to point out is that there are limits, and it seems to me that we are up against them now.”

  Mr. Fentolin nodded. He had the air of a man who wishes to be reasonable.

  “You are very young, my boy,” he said, “very young indeed. Perhaps that is my fault for not having let you see more of the world. You have got some very queer ideas into your head. A little too much novel reading lately, eh? I might treat you differently. I might laugh at you and send you out of the room. I won’t. I’ll tell you what you ask. I’ll explain what you find so mysterious. The person to whom I have been speaking is my stockbroker.”

  “Your stockbroker!” Gerald exclaimed.

  Mr. Fentolin nodded.

  “Mr. Bayliss,” he continued, “of the firm of Bayliss, Hundercombe & Dunn, Throgmorton Court. Mr. Bayliss is a man of keen perceptions. He understands exactly the effect of certain classes of news upon the market. The message which I have just sent to him is practically common property. It will be in the Daily Mail to-morrow morning. The only thing is that I have sent it to him just a few minutes sooner than any one else can get it. There is a good deal of value in that, Gerald. I do not mind telling you that I have made a large fortune through studying the political situation and securing advance information upon matters of this sort. That fortune some day will probably be yours. It will be you who will benefit. Meanwhile, I am enriching myself and doing no one any harm.”

  “But how do you know,” Gerald persisted, “that this message would ever have found its way to the Press? It was simply a message from one battleship to another. It was not intended to be picked up on land. There is no other installation but ours that could have picked it up. Besides, it was in code. I know that you have the code, but the others haven’t.”

  Mr. Fentolin yawned slightly.

  “Ingenious, my dear Gerald, but inaccurate. You do not know that the message was in code, and in any case it was liable to be picked up by any steamer within the circle. You really do treat me, my boy, rather as though I were a weird, mischief-making person with a talent for intrigue and crime of every sort. Look at your suspicions last night. I believe that you and Mr. Hamel had quite made up your minds that I meant evil things for Mr. John P. Dunster. Well, I had my chance. You saw him depart.”

  “What about his papers?”

  “I will admit,” Mr. Fentolin replied, “that I read his papers. They were of no great consequence, however, and he has taken them away with him. Mr. Dunster, as a matter of fact, turned out to be rather a mare’s-nest. Now, come, since you are here, finish everything you have to say to me. I am not angry. I am willing to listen quite reasonably.”

  Gerald shook his head.

  “Oh, I can’t!” he declared bitterly. “You always get the best of it. I’ll only ask you one more question. Are you having the wireless hauled down?”

  Mr. Fentolin pointed out of the window. Gerald followed his finger. Three men were at work upon the towering spars.

  “You see,” Mr. Fentolin continued tolerantly, “that I am keeping my word to Lieutenant Godfrey. You are suffering from a little too much imagination, I am afraid. It is really quite a good fault. By-the-by, how do you get on with our friend Mr. Hamel?”

  “Very well,” the boy replied. “I haven’t seen much of him.”

  “He and Esther are together a great deal, eh?” Mr. Fentolin asked quickly.

  “They seem to be quite friendly.”

  “It isn’t Mr. Hamel, by any chance, who has been putting these ideas into your head?”

  “No one has been putting any ideas into my head,” Gerald answered hotly. “It’s simply what I’ve seen and overheard. It’s simply what I feel around, the whole atmosphere of the place, the whole atmosphere you seem to create around you with these brutes Sarson and Meekins; and those white-faced, smooth-tongued Marconi men of yours, who can’t talk decent English; and the post-office man, who can’t look you in the face; and Miss Price, who looks as though she were one of the creatures, too, of your torture chamber. That’s all.”

  Mr. Fentolin waited until he had finished. Then he waved him away.

  “Go and take a long walk, Gerald,” he advised. “Fresh air is what you need, fresh air and a little vigorous exercise. Run along now and send Miss Price to me.”

  Gerald overtook Hamel upon the stairs.

  “By this time,” the latter remarked, “I suppose that our friend Mr. Dunster is upon the sea.”

  Gerald nodded silently. They passed along the corridor. The door of the room which Mr. Dunster had occupied was ajar. As though by common consent, they both stopped and looked in. The windows were all wide open, the bed freshly made. The nurse was busy collecting some medicine bottles and fragments of lint. She looked at them in surprise.

  “Mr. Dunster has left, sir,” she told them.

  “We saw him go,” Gerald replied.

  “Rather a quick recovery, wasn’t it, nurse?” Hamel asked.

  “It wasn’t a recovery at all, sir,” the woman declared sharply. “He’d no right to have been taken away. It’s my opinion Doctor Sarson ought to be ashamed of himself to have permitted it.”

  “They couldn’t exactly make a prison of the place, could they?” Hamel pointed out. “The man, after all, was only a guest.”

  “That’s as it may be, sir,” the nurse replied. “All the same, those that won’t obey their doctors aren’t fit to be allowed about alone. That’s the way I look at it.”

  Mrs. Fentolin was passing along the corridor as they issued from the room. She started a little as she saw them.

  “What have you two been doing in there?” she asked quickly.

  “We were just passing,” Hamel explained. “We stopped for a moment to speak to the nurse.”

  “Mr. Dunster has gone,” she said. “You saw him go, Gerald. You saw him, too, didn’t you, Mr. Hamel?”

  “I certainly did,” Hamel admitted.

  Mrs. Fentolin pointed to the great north window near which they were standing, through which the clear sunlight streamed a little pitilessly upon her worn face and mass of dyed hair.

  “You ought neither of you to be indoors for a minute on a morning like this,” she declared. “Esther is waiting for you in the car, I think, Mr. Hamel.”

  Gerald passed on up the stairs to his room, but Hamel lingered. A curious impulse of pity towards his hostess stirred him. The morning sunlight
seemed to have suddenly revealed the tragedy of her life. She stood there, a tired, worn woman, with the burden heavy upon her shoulders.

  “Why not come out with Miss Fentolin and me?” he suggested. “We could lunch at the Golf Club, out on the balcony. I wish you would. Can’t you manage it?”

  She shook her head.

  “Thank you very much,” she said. “Mr. Fentolin does not like to be left.”

  Something in the finality of her words seemed to him curiously eloquent of her state of mind. She did not move on. She seemed, indeed, to have the air of one anxious to say more. In that ruthless light, the advantages of her elegant clothes and graceful carriage were suddenly stripped away from her. She was the abject wreck of a beautiful woman, wizened, prematurely aged. Nothing remained but the eyes, which seemed somehow to have their message for him.

  “Mr. Fentolin is a little peculiar, you know,” she went on, her voice shaking slightly with the effort she was making to keep it low. “He allows Esther so little liberty, she sees so few young people of her own age. I do not know why he allows you to be with her so much. Be careful, Mr. Hamel.”

  Her voice seemed suddenly to vibrate with a curious note of suppressed fear. Almost as she finished her speech, she passed on. Her little gesture bade him remain silent. As she went up the stairs, she began to hum scraps of a little French air.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  Table of Contents

  Hamel sliced his ball at the ninth, and after waiting for a few minutes patiently, Esther came to help him look for it. He was standing down on the sands, a little apart from the two caddies who were beating out various tufts of long grass.

  “Where did it go?” she asked.

  “I have no idea,” he admitted.

  “Why don’t you help look for it?”

  “Searching for balls,” he insisted, “is a caddy’s occupation. Both the caddies are now busy. Let us sit down here. These sand hummocks are delightful. It is perfectly sheltered, and the sun is in our faces. Golf is an overrated pastime. Let us sit and watch that little streak of blue find its way up between the white posts.”

  She hesitated for a moment.

  “We shall lose our place.”

  “There is no one behind.”

  She sank on to the little knoll of sand to which he had pointed, with a resigned sigh.

  “You really are a queer person,” she declared. “You have been playing golf this morning as though your very life depended upon it. You have scarcely missed a shot or spoken a word. And now, all of a sudden, you want to sit on a sand hummock and watch the tide.”

  “I have been silent,” he told her, “because I have been thinking.”

  “That may be truthful,” she remarked, “but you wouldn’t call it polite, would you?”

  “The subject of my thoughts is my excuse. I have been thinking of you.”

  For a single moment her eyes seemed to have caught something of that sympathetic light with which he was regarding her. Then she looked away.

  “Was it my mashie shots you were worrying about?” she asked.

  “It was not,” he replied simply. “It was you—you yourself.”

  She laughed, not altogether naturally.

  “How flattering!” she murmured. “By-the-by, you are rather a downright person, aren’t you, Mr. Hamel?”

  “So much so,” he admitted, “that I am going to tell you one or two things now. I am going to be very frank indeed.”

  She sat suddenly quite still. Her face was turned from him, but for the first time since he had known her there was a slight undertone of colour in her cheeks.

  “A week ago,” he said, “I hadn’t the faintest idea of coming into Norfolk. I knew about this little shanty of my father’s, but I had forgotten all about it. I came as the result of a conversation I had with a friend who is in the Foreign Office.”

  She looked at him with startled eyes.

  “What do you mean?” she asked quickly. “You are Mr. Hamel, aren’t you?”

  “Certainly,” he replied. “Not only am I Richard Hamel, mining engineer, but I really have all that reading to do I have spoken about, and I really was looking for a quiet spot to do it in. It is true that I had this part of the world in my mind, but I do not think that I should ever have really decided to come here if it had not been for my friend in London. He was very interested indeed directly I mentioned St. David’s Tower. Would you like to know what he told me?”

  “Yes! Go on, please.”

  “He told me a little of the history of your uncle, Mr. Fentolin, and what he did not tell me at the time, he has since supplemented. I suppose,” he added, hesitatingly, “that you yourself—”

  “Please go on. Please speak as though I knew nothing.”

  “Well, then,” Hamel continued, “he told me that your uncle was at one time in the Foreign Office himself. He seemed to have a most brilliant career before him when suddenly there was a terrible scandal. A political secret—I don’t know what it was—had leaked out. There were rumours that it had been acquired for a large sum of money by a foreign Power. Mr. Fentolin retired to Norfolk, pending an investigation. It was just as that time that he met with his terrible accident, and the matter was dropped.”

  “Go on, please,” she murmured.

  “My friend went on to say that during the last few years Mr. Fentolin has once again become an object of some suspicion to the head of our Secret Service Department. For a long time they have known that he was employing agents abroad, and that he was showing the liveliest interest in underground politics. They believed that it was a mere hobby, born of his useless condition, a taste ministered to, without doubt, by the occupation of his earlier life. Once or twice lately they have had reason to change their minds. You know, I dare say, in what a terribly disturbed state European affairs are just now. Well, my friend had an idea that Mr. Fentolin was showing an extraordinary amount of interest in a certain conference which we understand is to take place at The Hague. He begged me to come down, and to watch your uncle while I was down here, and report to him anything that seemed to me noteworthy. Since then I have had a message from him concerning the American whom you entertained—Mr. John P. Dunster. It appears that he was the bearer of very important dispatches for the Continent.”

  “But he has gone,” she said quickly. “Nothing happened to him, after all. He went away without a word of complaint. We all saw him.”

  “That is quite true,” Hamel admitted. “Mr. Dunster has certainly gone. It is rather a coincidence, however, that he should have taken his departure just as the enquiries concerning his whereabouts had reached such a stage that it had become quite impossible to keep him concealed any longer.”

  She turned a little in her place and looked at him steadfastly.

  “Mr. Hamel,” she said, “tell me—what of your mission? You have had an opportunity of studying my uncle. You have even lived under his roof. Tell me what you think.”

  His face was troubled.

  “Miss Fentolin,” he said, “I will tell you frankly that up to now I have not succeeded in solving the problem of your uncle’s character. To me personally he has been most courteous. He lives apparently a studious and an unselfish life. I have heard him even spoken of as a philanthropist. And yet you three—you, your mother, and your brother, who are nearest to him, who live in his house and under his protection, have the air of passing your days in mortal fear of him.”

  “Mr. Hamel,” she exclaimed nervously, “you don’t believe that! He is always very kind.”

  “Apparently,” Hamel observed drily. “And yet you must remember that you, too, are afraid of him. I need not remind you of our conversations, but there the truth is. You praise his virtues and his charities, you pity him, and yet you go about with a load of fear, and—forgive me—of secret terror in your heart, you and Gerald, too. As for your mother—”

  “Don’t!” she interrupted suddenly. “Why do you bring me here to talk like this? You cannot alter things. N
othing can be altered.”

  “Can’t it!” he replied. “Well, I will tell you the real reason of my having brought you here and of my having made this confession. I brought you here because I could not bear to go on living, if not under your roof, at any rate in the neighbourhood, without telling you the truth. Now you know it. I am here to watch Mr. Fentolin. I am going on watching him. You can put him on his guard, if you like; I shan’t complain. Or you can—”

  He paused so long that she looked at him. He moved a little closer to her, his fingers suddenly gripped her hand.

  “Or you can marry me and come away from it all,” he concluded quietly. “Forgive me, please—I mean it.”

  For a moment the startled light in her eyes was followed by a delicious softness. Her lips were parted, she leaned a little towards him. Then suddenly she seemed to remember. She rose with swift alertness to her feet.

  “I think,” she said, “that we had better play golf.”

  “But I have asked you to marry me,” he protested, as he scrambled up.

  “Your caddy has found your ball a long time ago,” she pointed out, walking swiftly on ahead.

  He played his shot and caught her up.

  “Miss Fentolin—Esther,” he pleaded eagerly, “do you think that I am not in earnest? Because I am. I mean it. Even if I have only known you for a few days, it has been enough. I think that I knew it was coming from the moment that you stepped into my railway carriage.”

  “You knew that what was coming?” she asked, raising her eyes suddenly.

  “That I should care for you.”

  “It’s the first time you’ve told me,” she reminded him, with a queer little smile. “Oh, forgive me, please! I didn’t mean to say that. I don’t want to have you tell me so. It’s all too ridiculous and impossible.”