“So this is Mr. Jonson, is it?” he remarked.
The latter beamed acquiescence. He was standing in front of his chair with a bag on either side of him. Mark Humberstone looked him up and down curiously. There was something in his puzzled scrutiny which almost suggested recognition.
“So you want a job here, Mr. Jonson?”
“That is why I came.”
“And you were so sure of getting it,” Mark Humberstone went on with a glance towards the bags, “that you brought your luggage with you.”
“I came straight here from the railway station, sir,” the other explained. “As to my luggage, when I am travelling I never let it out of my sight.”
“Let us see what you have inside.”
Mr. Jonson obediently opened the suitcases. The young man examined their contents in blank surprise, and, stooping down, drew out a pair of scarlet silk tights which he held up wonderingly.
“What in God’s name is this?” he demanded.
“Both these bags,” Mr. Jonson explained, “contain my professional outfit. I have an engagement this week at the Jetée Casino. I imagine there are others in your Bureau, sir, who follow some sort of profession as a cloak to their more serious activities. It has always been my custom.”
He laid out the contents upon the floor. Whilst he was still stooping, Mark Humberstone, with a swift movement, withdrew a very finished article in the way of modern guns from the man’s hip pocket. Mr. Jonson stood suddenly upright.
“I do not suppose,” he remarked with a smile, “that that is any surprise to you. It is a very good gun.”
“I know the make,” Mark acknowledged, opening the breech and satisfying himself that it was unloaded. “It shall be returned to you before you go.”
“So long as I am not expected to work without it,” Mr. Jonson murmured.
Catherine Oronoff looked across at the visitor curiously. “Are you Professor Ventura?” she asked.
“That is my stage name,” he replied. “I am better known as The Man Who Stops the World.”
“One of your tricks?”
He bowed.
“As soon as I have presented myself at the Casino,” he invited, “and reported myself to the management, I shall ask for a handful of tickets and you must do me the honour of witnessing my performance. You may call it a trick if you will. It has puzzled many people.”
Humberstone sank into an easy chair a few yards away. His long nervous fingers were still playing with the revolver which he held in his hand. He looked up suddenly with a frown.
“I am surprised, sir,” he said, addressing Mr. Jonson, “that any man with intelligence enough to discover that there was such an organisation as the International Bureau of Espionage, and with the sense to want to work for it, should be foolish enough to start by attempting to deceive us.”
“I regret already that I made the attempt,” the culprit admitted humbly.
“What post did you hope to fill here?”
“My business for the last two years,” the applicant confided, “has been, in company with two others, to guard the life of a person of some consequence.”
“Your patron still lives?”
“He is, I believe, in the best of health,” was the cheerful reply.
“And why have you abandoned your position?”
“I became out of sympathy with the person whom I was guarding. I realised that I was drifting into a very dangerous position.”
“So you found your way here,” Mark Humberstone meditated. “And now?”
His fingers had ceased to toy with the revolver. His eyes were fixed steadfastly upon the little man whose face had become almost sphinx-like.
“I should like a post upon the personal staff of your executive, sir,” he confided. “I should like to act as a free lance remaining always in the background but always present—the number one bodyguard of you and Mr. Cheng.”
“What do you know about Mr. Cheng?” the young man flashed out.
“Not much, sir,” was the quiet reply. “Not much about you—not much about him. Still, this is a bureau of spies. Where there are spies there is danger. Where there is danger there I love to be.”
Mark Humberstone contemplated his unusual visitor with thoughtful eyes.
“You are a curious sort of fellow,” he remarked.
“So your father said more than once when I guarded for three years his private laboratory at Beaumont Park,” Mr. Jonson observed imperturbably.
Mark Humberstone sat up with a start. His face cleared.
“Now I remember you!” he exclaimed.
Mr. Jonson appeared gratified.
“For three years,” he went on, “my orders were to watch over the person of your father, and if there was trouble to waste no time asking questions—to shoot. That you may remember, sir, I did three times. The professor was always protected. No one was ever able to lay even a finger upon him.”
“You called yourself a Russian in those days, and you came from the staff of some notorious bootlegger.”
“What of it?” Mr. Jonson said placidly. “I have a dozen passports, and if on each one of them I claim a different nationality what does it matter? The bootlegger died a natural death, your father did the same, so now I come to look after you—and Mr. Cheng. It is a post for which I am admirably suited,” he continued after a brief pause. “I am a master of jiu-jitsu, I can fence with my arm against another man’s stick and break it in his hand. I know all the tricks of garrotting and gagging, and I have various other very useful accomplishments which I picked up during my study of Oriental conjuring. With a revolver or any sort of gun I am untouchable.”
“Your drawback in life I should think,” Mark observed drily, “is your overpowering modesty.”
“I am neither modest nor a braggart,” was the carefully spoken rejoinder. “I speak the truth.”
“Why, then,” Mark demanded with a suddenly keener thrust in his tone, “did you lie to us about your nationality when you applied for your position here? Why didn’t you tell me at once who you were? You served my father well.”
Mr. Jonson was the picture of misery. He cast a furtive glance towards the girl. His vis-à-vis understood. “You can say what is in your mind,” the latter enjoined. “This young lady is one of ourselves. She has our entire confidence.”
“It was in my mind,” the visitor admitted, “to enter your service under another identity just for this one reason: my experience has taught me that it is generally against the staff of a threatened man’s own household one has to guard.”
There was another short silence, then Mark rose to his feet and tossed the revolver lightly back into Mr. Jonson’s outstretched hands.
“You are attached to my Bureau,” he announced. “I am not sure,” he went on, “that either Mr. Cheng or myself are in any particular danger but there are certainly people in the world with whom we are not popular. This young lady,” he added, turning to Catherine, “will take you to the staff secretary. He will allot you a room and provide you with what money you require. Until you have definite instructions keep out of sight as much as possible. Afterwards, Mademoiselle, you will be so kind as to send for Suzanne.”
Mr. Jonson picked up his bags, bowed low to his new patron, and followed Catherine Oronoff across the room. From the doorway he looked back. Once more he bowed. There was a suggestion of the Orient about the man which, considering his complexion, his figure, and his neat precise English, seemed ridiculous. He departed without any further spoken word of farewell. Mark watched him with fathomless eyes. Both men seemed to possess the gift of silence.
CHAPTER II
Table of Contents
Suzanne of the International Bureau, concerning whose real vocation in life there were various rumours afloat, held in these days a premier position amongst the courtesans of Nice. She was tall, willowy, and exotic in her characteristics. The sheen of her yellow hair, untouched by any form of artificial colouring, was her chief beauty. She had
, however, the eyes of an eastern slave—languishing and passionate—the sneering but at times very attractive mouth of a Parisian cocotte of the haut monde. In Nice she had achieved great success, and in the only night restaurant which she frequented she reigned as a queen. She curtsied to Mark Humberstone as she entered his audience chamber a few days later, and assumed an air of devout attention.
“You have sent for your slave,” she said, stifling a yawn. “I was expecting your summons but it is early for me—and a little inconvenient.”
“Yes, I sent for you,” Mark, who had seated himself at Catherine Oronoff’s desk, observed.
“Eh bien?”
“You are living happily these days they tell me, Suzanne.”
“Comme ci, comme ça,” she answered with a little shrug of the shoulders.
“You will perhaps learn presently,” he said, “how to die happily.”
She mocked at him, yet somehow or other there was a chill feeling in her blood. Not many people had seen that look in Mark Humberstone’s eyes without fear.
“Oh la la!” she exclaimed. “Have I not worked well?”
“Your work is an utter failure,” was the calm reply. “Costoli has broken his leave to lie in your arms. Henceforth the man is useless to our clients and I know of no other who could have served their purpose.”
“Useless?” she cried passionately. “What do you mean? You have had the secret sailing orders of September the seventeenth, you have had the new charts of which only a dozen have been issued. Costoli is a ruined man and he knows it. He lies in my flat—he is there now—like a whipped dog. What more can I do?”
“Costoli dismissed from the Service, Costoli no longer Inspector of Naval Gunnery and a member of the Admiralty Board of his country, is useless to those for whom we are working,” Mark said coldly. “I told you what was required. The man was to have been your slave until the moment came when the great things were near. Now, in less than a week, you have made him compromise himself with his government, you have made him desert his post, his honour is gone, his life forfeit. What use is such a pricked bubble to us?”
“Well, he is no more use to me,” the girl declared with a heartless little shrug of the shoulders. “You had better get rid of him. I should not advise you to hand him over to the authorities. He might in a fit of remorse tell them about me and anything that he suspects about the Bureau.”
“So your little tongue has been wagging, eh?” Mark asked quietly.
“It is false!” she shrieked. “You should not accuse me like this—I who have worked for you as a slave. Antonio is not a fool. What does he suppose I want the papers for? He knows that I am a spy. He has given me what you asked for and I have given him the payment he craved. How am I to blame if he loses his head?”
The man whom she was addressing yawned—very lightly and very delicately. It was just an indication of weariness but it brought a shiver to the heart of the girl who watched him.
“You have captured the pawn, Suzanne,” he admitted, “but you have not only failed in the great things, you have made it impossible that you can ever succeed. Costoli in a month’s time could have given us information that would have been worth ten millions. So long as he was going to sell his honour, he might have done it for something worth while. He behaved like a fool. So also have you. A woman of the world knows how to keep a man at her feet better than that.”
She threw herself into a chair and swung her leg. It was obvious, from her scanty attire, that her abode was somewhere under the same roof.
“So I am dragged down here to be found fault with,” she complained, “to be told, I suppose, that the hundred thousand francs I wanted for next week will not be forthcoming.”
“In that you are correct,” Mark agreed. “The hundred thousand francs will not be forthcoming. On the other hand,” he went on, unlocking a drawer and producing a square sheet of paper, “something else may be coming that you will prize less highly. You have heard of the death warrants of the Bureau, Suzanne?”
She went suddenly rigid. There had never at any time been any natural colour in her cheeks but her eyes were terrible in their fixed stare.
“You do not really mean,” she faltered, “that I am to die?”
“Precisely what I am contemplating,” he answered coolly, “and quickly too. You know very well that you could not escape the cordon I have drawn round this little corner of Nice, but one prefers to do things decently. You shall die with your lover—a drama of jealousy or despair, eh? The press will welcome the story.”
She threw herself on her knees by his side. He drew his chair away.
“Don’t dare to touch me,” he ordered. “You know that that sort of thing is forbidden. You have thrown away the chance of a generation. What was at the back of your head? Why did you let Costoli desert his ship?”
Real tears were streaming from her eyes.
“I prayed him not to,” she pleaded. “I pushed him out of my room. I bade him listen to the clock as it struck. I sent for a car. I did all I could. My master, he was drunk—drunk in his soul—drunk with love for me—drunk as you will never be with any wine or for any woman. I lost my senses too, perhaps. I gave myself and then it was—too late. Antonio may know more. What if he joined you?”
“He lies there like a whipped cur,” Mark said calmly. “I have no use, Suzanne, for those who betray their country for such paltry things as you. I thought that Costoli was at least a man—that he would put up a battle—or I would have planned differently. And as for you—any little gamine from the street would have answered my purpose as well as you have done. I would not have such a man as Costoli working for me. There is nothing for him but his revolver, and he must know it. Why not conclude this matter in a friendly fashion—carry out the little drama pleasantly and with all the stage surroundings. Rush to him now, tell him that all is lost, shoot him and then yourself, or vice versa. I promise you that there shall be no scandal. We have our own ways of dealing with that, you know.”
She clutched at the table by his side, breaking her beautiful nails recklessly. She feared to touch him, his disgust was too obvious, yet it was her life for which she pleaded.
“Listen,” she cried, “Costoli has a brother—you know that. He knows as much as Antonio ever knew. He could perhaps satisfy you. Antonio shall die—I promise you that. He will shoot himself this morning if I tell him that I am a spy and never loved him. But the brother—he was wild with love for me but he had brains enough to go to his Admiral. He got a month’s leave. He is in Toulon, I believe. If I send for him he will come.”
The young man smiled sardonically, certainly not pleasantly. He looked down at the-girl who was pleading for her life—beautiful even in those agonies of hers—and his expression was that of one who looks upon some nauseous thing.
“Get up,” he ordered. “Go back to your chair. Do not think that you have triumphed. I have as much pity for you as I have for the rats they kill in the sewers day by day. Still, you have given me an idea. You want to live. It might be arranged.”
“Tell me how,” she implored. “I will do anything. You would be mad to kill me. There is no one else who can turn a man inside out and play upon his heartstrings as I can. Sometimes I feel like a tigress and that men are my food. You can have what you waft from Costoli’s brother—I promise you that. He was madder about me even than Antonio. I thought that Antonio was your man or I should have taken him.”
Mark said nothing and more and more every second Suzanne seemed to feel the terror of his silence. The light had gone out of her face. She was like a whipped animal sprawling in the chair waiting for the final lash.
“Ever been to Warsaw?” he asked.
“I was born there,” she confided.
“A fact which does not appear upon your dossier.”
“What does it matter?” she answered. “I was not born at all if it comes to that—I was kicked into life. My mother was a chorus girl at the opera. She never knew who my father
was.”
“How old were you when you left?”
“Four or five—I do not remember.”
“But you went back again there.”
“That is in my dossier all right,” she told him. “I danced there when I was thirteen. When I was fifteen I had a lover with money. He took me back to Paris.”
“Ever hear of a family of the name of Agrestein?”
She became an animate person again through the sheer shock of surprise.
“Warsaw millionaires!” she cried. “It was Paul Agrestein’s grandson who took me to Paris.”
He glanced up from a small book at which he had been gazing.
“These dossiers have their value,” he remarked. “This one, my dear Suzanne, may save your worthless life. You want to live, I gather.”
“As a bird wants to sing,” she answered wildly. “I have life in me. It hurts. I will live.”
“Well, you were the mistress of young Paul Agrestein,” he observed. “That may make a difference. Sit up and listen to me.”
She obeyed at once. Mechanically her fingers stole into the little bag which had fallen to the floor. He laughed as he saw her use her vanity case.
“Not worth while for me,” he told her contemptuously. “Listen—the Costoli business is finished. You yourself have brought it to an end and it will be better for you to disappear for a time. For the moment you are reinstated. You go back to your lover. He is sober now?”
“He is what I choose to have him,” she said carelessly. “Je m’en fiche de lui! He has lost his spirit.”
“Take him away from here in an hour’s time,” Mark directed. “You can order a car. Take him to one of the hotels. Engage a suite of apartments. By the by, be sure that he takes his revolver with him.”
“What is to be the end?”
“He is to shoot himself to-night. See that he does it. There will be very few formalities afterwards. You can return here, then I shall speak to you again about Warsaw.”
21 Greatest Spy Thrillers in One Premium Edition (Mystery & Espionage Series) Page 186