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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  “My friend,” Mark protested soothingly, “you take this little matter too seriously.”

  The police official very nearly relapsed into hysterics.

  “Too seriously!” he cried. “Name of God, what then is serious? The second in command of the Turkish cruiser a Corpse upon the floor of a public restaurant with a bullet in his head, thrown down by you as he was in the act of shooting Suzanne! And you—as the authorities of Paris assure us, one of the great figures of the world, here on a mission of vast importance—dead to a surety if the Turk had turned his head and seen you standing there!”

  “But nothing serious has happened,” Mark argued gently. “The Turk is dead. Well, probably he had played with the little lady. It may be that he was suffering from a fit of jealousy, but he shot himself. No one murdered him. If he chose to die it was bad taste to create a commotion in a public place, but he had the right. A suicide. Well, the man is dead. No more to be said. Why disturb me and yourself like this?”

  “But everyone knows that it was Suzanne again at whom he shot—this man,” Déchanel pointed out. “How can I keep people’s tongues from wagging? They are of the gay world—true; but a little courtesan who has been responsible for the deaths of two men within ten days loses her popularity, mark you. One cannot continually cover up these affairs.”

  “There may be some reason in what you say,” Mark acknowledged. “Suzanne had better disappear for a few weeks. In any case I thought of sending her to Warsaw, if Mr. Cheng is willing. She is not needed here. At the end of that time we will see. Conditions here are changing. The International Bureau may be shifting its quarters.”

  “At least one would have peace,” the Frenchman groaned.

  “Come, come, my friend, confess now that it would break your heart if we went,” Mark continued, leaning back in his chair with an air of genial expansion. “Here is the centre of all movement and mystery for you. How you wonder, up there at headquarters, why I have spent millions of francs upon the most unique and powerful radio installation in the world! How you wonder what goes on under this roof, and to what parts of the world our spies steal to carry out their commissions! What does it all mean, you ask yourselves, you and the others—even some of your ministers in Paris who worry you so by telephone. Fancy if we were gone…You would have nothing to ask ask another. And, Déchanel,—a word in your ear,—your account! Awful. Nothing going in. Nothing for the stocking—nothing towards that little château!”

  The police official mopped his forehead and looked steadfastly at the speaker.

  “What a man!” he murmured. “You make the blague all the time.”

  “Confess, though,” Mark enjoined, “you would hate to see me go.”

  Déchanel extended his hand across the table.

  “Monsieur,” he confessed, “we should go into mourning. All Nice would regret you. You keep us alive. You provide us—well, with more excitement than is good for us. You are the son of the great Professor Humberstone, we know, and you seem to have found your way into the places where the wealth of the world is stored. You know what my own particular confrère said to me last week? ‘Read me the secrets of the International Bureau, and I will tell you what will happen in Europe during the next five years.”

  “A very farseeing fellow, your confrère,” Mark observed. “We pull many strings, my friend. We have sometimes to employ strange people and to give our friends in authority anxious times. Never mind. When the grand finale comes no one shall suffer because of us…Suzanne shall go to Warsaw for a fortnight and to Paris afterwards. Come, that is a promise. You are satisfied?”

  “You will permit us to put it in the records that she has been sent away by order of the police?” Déchanel asked anxiously.

  “But certainly,” Mark assented.

  Déchanel twirled his black moustache.

  “I should like some evidence to put before my chief that the departure is bona fide.”

  Mark glanced across at Catherine and motioned towards the telephone.

  “A compartment on the Train Bleu, mademoiselle, for Suzanne as far as Paris to-day. From Le Bourgét, the morning plane to Berlin and through to Warsaw. All papers to be here in an hour…Good.”

  The police official rose to his feet.

  “As usual, monsieur,” he exclaimed, saluting, “you treat me like a prince. Is there any message I can convey if I am rung up from Paris?”

  “There is one matter which needs arranging,” Mark observed. “The Turkish boat, which seems to be the cause of much of this trouble, has been hanging around waiting for a cargo. Will you give my compliments to your chief and say that if he has a chance to walk round to see Monsieur Renard, who I believe is the head of the Maritime Customs, I should be glad if he would use his influence to prevent the embarkation of the cargo.”

  The police official stroked his chin.

  “No explanation?” he asked.

  “I have, from the Quay,” Mark confided, “studied the build of that small cruiser, and I am convinced that it would be a dangerous enterprise for the Port of Nice and for the cruiser herself to attempt to load her with explosives.”

  “Explosives?”

  “Precisely. That cruiser is waiting for a delivery of mines, purchased from a certain government, for delivery at Toulon. Toulon proved to be an impossible place, so the cruiser came here to Nice. Mines would be a very dangerous cargo for the cruiser. You see, she is not fitted properly for their reception, and they would have to be transferred somewhere or other between here and their destination to a mine-laying craft. Dangerous. Very dangerous. If your superintendent of the Maritime Customs would like to discuss the matter with me, I shall be here for a few days longer at any rate.”

  Déchanel, with a final salute, made his way to the door.

  “Your message shall be delivered,” he promised. “In parting you will forgive my remarking, in case we should not meet again, that you are the most amazing man I have ever come across in my life.”

  A very crushed and deflated Suzanne answered Mark’s summons. She entered the room reluctantly. She walked with heavy footsteps, the volatile grace which had been one of her most appealing charms had gone. Her eyes were beringed, and she sank into the chair which Mark indicated with a listless gesture. Nevertheless, something of the old light returned to her eyes at the sound of his level voice. She realised that her disgrace was not irretrievable.

  “You leave this afternoon for Warsaw, Suzanne,” he announced. “In your room within an hour you will find a packet containing your hundred thousand francs, your month’s money, your expense account replenished, and your tickets.”

  “Very well,” she assented wearily. “I would rather it were Paris, but Warsaw will do. You are not sending me away for always?”

  “No,” he replied coolly. “You are too useful. You will return when you have finished your task.”

  “And what is that to be?”

  “You will go each day to the aviation office, you will find the names of those who are travelling westwards. The day that Paul Agrestein books a place you will telephone to me.”

  “The old man?” she murmured.

  “Yes, the grandfather of your lover. Listen, you know him by sight?”

  “Of course.”

  “The day he has booked his passage you must see the plane start. If it is indeed Paul Agrestein who travels you must report it. If on the other hand—this is important—there is someone else travelling with his passport, you must telephone through here as soon as the plane leaves the ground.”

  “That is easy,” she admitted.

  “Leave for Paris when you have carried out my instructions. Apply at the Bureau des Affairs Etrangères at the American Embassy each morning for a message. Remain in Paris until you get it. Repeat, now, what you are to do.”

  She repeated almost every word with parrot-like exactitude, then she leaned a little farther over her chair. Her face was drawn, her eyes were tense, and her voice had lost its music.
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  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “You are overwrought, Suzanne,” he replied indulgently, “or you would know that it is not permitted to ask such questions. However, this may be a lesson to you. You will understand now that whenever anyone leaves this place their destination is known to me or to Mr. Cheng automatically. I was told that you had disobeyed orders and that you were at Maxim’s, within ten minutes of your entering the door.”

  “But why did you come there?” she asked feverishly.

  “I had received a report from the police,” he told her. “Commander Darnu returned from San Rafael in the middle of the night to find the Admiral unconscious upon the floor of his cabin and the chart which was to have been the keystone of the work gone. The Commander dashed to the police. It was not a matter in which, for various reasons, they felt greatly concerned, and he found them unsympathetic. In a fury he went himself to Maxim’s, obviously in search of you. The information was conveyed to me and I acted upon it…Now, you see, I have broken my own rule. I have condoned your asking a question by answering it. Be careful not to offend again.”

  “You knew that he would kill me?”

  “I imagined so.”

  “But you ran a terrible risk,” she went on, breathing a little more rapidly. “You ran a risk when you threw him down just as he was pulling the trigger of his gun. Even when he lay upon the floor he could have shot you first and then himself. The people were scared to death. Brave men were running for cover like rats. I saw one waiter under a table. The Turk could have killed you easily.”

  “I can assure you he could not,” Mark answered with a thin smile. “I had no fear of that. It is not my fate to be killed in a minor squabble like that.”

  “You saved my life,” she said half to herself, but with her wonderful eyes all the time challenging his, “I cannot imagine why. You have never spoken a kindly word to me. You have never looked at me as though I were a human being.”

  “I protect my employees.”

  “Was that all?”

  He looked at her steadily, his eyebrows slightly raised, some inkling of surprise in his face.

  “It was all and quite enough,” he told her. “Take my advice, lie down now until an hour before the departure of the train. You must not be seen in this hysterical condition. You need rest.”

  “I am very grateful—”

  “I dislike gratitude. Remember that, and forget your fancies.”

  She rose to her feet.

  “I should have liked to have thanked you,” she sighed. “I will keep what I feel in my heart. A miserable sort of place, you think? Perhaps so.”

  His eyes followed her until she left the room. He turned to Catherine, who had just entered, with a smile of gentle irony.

  “A battered old portmanteau, I should think, Suzanne’s heart,” he remarked.

  “Quand même, mon cher, why do you run such risks for the sake of such a creature?” Catherine asked. “Do you think it is fair to the great work—to all your responsibilities here?”

  He installed her in his chair and watched her light a cigarette.

  “You see, I am beginning to imbibe Cheng’s wonderful fatalism,” he explained. “I feel that I shall always have warning when anything is going to happen to me.”

  She looked up at him—a little differently. Her eyes seemed almost of a deeper blue, yet he fancied that they were softer—faintly misty.

  “Would it make any difference, Mark, if I told you that as I do not quite share this wonderful fatalism you and Cheng talk about, I would rather you took a little more care of yourself?”

  Mark felt his heart suddenly bounding. He leaned a little towards her.

  “Catherine,” he began…

  They both of them heard the soft opening of the door. He turned his head unwillingly. Cheng was standing motionless upon the threshold. For a moment he did not speak, and a queer thought flashed through Mark’s brain. He fancied that there was something ominous, almost sinister, in that brief silence.

  CHAPTER XV

  Table of Contents

  It was Cheng himself who dissolved the situation. He closed the door behind him and came a little farther into the room.

  “I want Jonson,” he announced. “Have his movements been reported?”

  Catherine reached out for the book by her side. She glanced at one of the typewritten pages.

  “He was on the sheet this morning,” she told him. “He performed twice at the Jetée last night. There was rather a scene the second time. A man fainted. They say the police will stop his turn. What an advertisement! But of course they will not do anything of the sort.”

  “Where is Jonson now Cheng asked softly.

  “On the Promenade des Anglais,” she replied. “He starts from exactly opposite the Jetée Casino at ten o’clock and he walks to the first racecourse gate every day—wet or fine. He is somewhere about halfway there now, I should think.”

  “Have one of the men from the small car squad who knows him by sight go out after him at once,” Cheng directed. “I shall expect him here in half an hour.”

  Catherine crossed the floor and spoke for a few minutes into one of the house telephones.

  “You still trust him?” she asked, when she returned to her place.

  “Why not? He has done odd things, but he has always had a reason for them. I rather like the man who has the courage to disobey orders. He must know before he does it that he is risking his life.”

  “I think that your little fat man is like you in that respect,” she confided. “I do not think that he minds risking his life at all. He gives me the impression, though, of a man working always towards some set purpose. I ask myself whether that purpose is concerned with the activities of the International Bureau.”

  “Why should it not be?”

  “Jonson is a man of parts himself,” she answered. “He is not a man to work for others without a reason. Why has he taken the trouble to learn that trick of his on the stage? Not for your sake.”

  “He didn’t learn it,” Mark interposed. “He picked it up at one of the laboratories in Beaumont Park when he was working for my father. I was looking at the instrument he uses the other day.”

  “The only regrettable part of your Russian disposition, my dear young lady,” Cheng went on, “is that it has filled you with suspicions. Poor Jonson. That marvellous time-and-conduct sheet of yours tells us where he has spent every minute since he came to Nice.”

  “If he is a man with a purpose, as I suspect,” Catherine replied, “it may be that the moment for that purpose to be fulfilled has not yet arrived.”

  Mr. Cheng had nothing more to say. He never pursued an argument when he had already arrived at a definite conclusion.

  “I have been on the roof all night,” he confided. “I want the morning papers—French, English, German, and Italian.”

  “They are worth looking at,” Mark observed. “The Italians are trying to persuade the Persians to send an expedition out into the desert to discover our secret wireless bases. Russia claims to have discovered some of them already. The English Times complains that some mysterious force is interfering with her communications to India.”

  “Well, you have no need to worry,” Cheng commented. “Unless we succeed, India will not belong to them in ten years’ time. They would be very foolish if they built this new line of airships they are talking about with India in its present condition.”

  The papers arrived. Cheng’s face darkened a little as he read the same story in all of them. He threw them on one side impatiently.

  “The sky will be strewn with aeroplanes before long,” he remarked, “all containing courageous and enterprising war correspondents on the way to a front—no one knows where. In the idiomatic language of the Western Hemisphere—they have their wind up.”

  “I think before long,” Catherine said with a somewhat dreary smile, “we may be in the same position.”

  “Because of these newspapers? Pooh! That, f
rom our point of view, is the joy of this sensational press. They glut you with horrors every day and when the time for horrors really comes people still read but they do not believe. That English newspaper, for example, which for months and even years has embarked on a fierce crusade. War that is coming to-morrow, or the next day, or the next month…War inevitable! Pictures of airships raining bombs on London! Why, people have become so used to it that they have begun not to care if airships do rain bombs on London. If they only knew it—these newspapermen—there is something brewing for them which would make then stark with fear! They fancy they hear the thunders but they are not sure. They have heard the imitation for so long.”

  Catherine lit a cigarette. She was a privileged person, but it was very seldom that she took part in these discussions.

  “Mr. Cheng and Mr. Humberstone,” she said, “this is the plain speaking of a woman with her feet in France and her head not in Asia or in the clouds or even peering over the borderline into heaven. You have bribed every newspaper that could be bribed. You have engineered accidents to every cable line and wireless station not under your control. You have succeeded for months in cutting down to a shadow all news from certain parts of the Eastern world. It has been a wonderful achievement, but the limit has been reached. Travellers are returning who have seen things with their-own eyes. You picked up the Viceroy of India’s last message to Downing Street, but you could not stop it.”

  “And what is the meaning of all this tirade, Catherine Oronoff?” Cheng asked.

  “The meaning is that you are putting off your grand coup, whatever it may be, until too late,” she declared. “I think you love to loiter here with the strings in your hand. You gloat over the moment when you will gather them together and find the world in tumult. If ever you are going to play the great god behind the clouds, Prince, you should play it now. It is time you loosed the lightnings.”