“I shall be with you,” she repeated.
“My task is not finished,” he warned her. “To-day is the beginning. The world is to know what has happened here at the castle of the precipice. There may be war, Hou Hsi. The time may come when we shall have to part for a time.”
“I shall have belonged to you,” she murmured, “and I shall be happy.”
“You will be happy because you are my bride and because you are destined to become the saviour of your country. You must not forget, dear, that the people of our race once ruled their world as no other nation has ever done. Evil times have come since then, but they are over. Now we move on towards our common fate—indivisible. We carry the same standards. We shall fight for the same cause. Ours will be the great modern crusade, the first war that has been fought for a great cause since the days when the Knights Templar of Europe fought the Saracens. We are going to fight against Western greed, against that foul country which has done its best to strip idealism from life, to tear down beauty from its shrine, to teach men to live like animals. Life will never be easy, dear Hou Hsi.”
“I shall be with you,” she whispered again.
“We shall run risks.”
“I shall be by your side.”
He smiled and to her there was something almost godlike in the spirituality of his face as he drew her closer to him. He clapped his hands. The others all trooped out from the windows. He handed Hou Hsi over to them.
For half-an-hour, Cheng walked with the Priest upon the terrace. They spoke in their own language, they lived for a time in their own world. Then Hou Hsi came shyly out. It was long since she had walked in the streets of Paris or down Bond Street but she was dressed in the clothes of a famous French dressmaker, her small hat was of the latest mode, only the graceful little swing of her walk seemed to give her a foreign appearance. He laughed as he led her down to the waiting car. She whispered to him as they drove away:
“I do as one must in this country. I wear their clothes. In the trunks there I have brought with me my wedding robe and the head-dress which belongs to past centuries. That pleases you?”
Her eyes drooped before his. He pressed his lips to her temple. She crept as close as possible into his arms.
“I am happy,” she sighed.
CHAPTER XXI
Table of Contents
Down in Nice there were threats of a mistral from the Estérels, and already its depressing influence was beginning to make itself felt. Monsieur Déchanel from the Bureau of the Chef de la Sûreté, for example, appeared to be in no pleasant mood as he was shown into Mark’s sanctum. He was out of breath and the bowler hat which he placed upon the floor by the side of his chair had left a red ring around his forehead. He had obviously been perspiring freely. There was a cowed look in his usually bright eyes. He seemed to have shrunken in his clothes during the last few days.
“Déchanel,” Mark observed, looking across at him critically, “it is as I told you before. You must change your chapelier. Your hats are a size too small for you, or perhaps it is your brain that swells. Compose yourself, I beg of you. Whatever it is that you fear, believe me it is of no account. The world goes very well.”
“For you perhaps,” the police official replied with something less than his usual deference. “For me the world goes badly. At the head office there is trouble, almost consternation. I am not sure that I did wisely in blotting out the record of all that happened at the Russian hotel. I have been with the chief for hours. The conversation has all the time hinged upon you and Mr. Cheng and your extraordinary enterprises.”
“That does not distress me,” Mark assured him cheerfully. “I like to be an object of interest—even to the police. Tell me of your anxiety, Monsieur Déchanel. When you have finished, you can wipe your forehead once more and you will see that you have ceased to perspire. The world will seem a more pleasant place. It is so with you, I am sure, as with so many of us—your troubles are imaginary. Tell me with whom they are concerned at the present moment.”
“At the present moment,” Déchanel answered, leaning forward in his chair, “they are concerned chiefly with a manufacturing jeweller from Warsaw, a very well-known man indeed. Paul Agrestein.”
If he had hoped to gain inspiration from any change of expression in his companion’s face he was disappointed. Mark did not by the flicker of an eyelid betray any interest in his visitor’s announcement.
“Agrestein,” he repeated. “Paul Agrestein. It sounds familiar. But why do you come to me? What have I to do with a Warsaw jeweller?”
“Who knows with whom you have to do?” Déchanel rejoined with some heat. “You are a man who keeps his mouth too tightly closed. Even in Paris they are beginning to ask questions about the activities of the International Bureau and its mysterious principals.”
“You amuse me, cher ami,” Mark observed. “What is there mysterious about me? I am a notable scientist, I am one of the trustees of my father’s world-famous inventions and I have insight. I am usually successful in any undertaking I embark upon. Why, however, this flurried visit, this agitation, this bringing to my notice the disappearance of Paul Agrestein?”
“Because Suzanne was in Warsaw making enquiries about him, and Suzanne is one of your spies.”
“But, my good friend, Suzanne was sent to Warsaw to save you from the embarrassment of her presence here.”
“There was a further motive for her presence in Warsaw,” the police official insisted. “She haunted the Hotel d’Angleterre. She was seen day by day upon the flying ground. She is known to have made enquiries from the authorities at the passport office and from the steward on the plane as to Paul Agrestein.”
“You may not be aware,” Mark confided, “that she has an interest in the family. Her first lover, I believe, was an Agrestein.”
“All that is unimportant,” Déchanel declared impatiently. “Listen to me, I beg you. We had orders from the highest of all sources to trace the man who carried the passport of Paul Agrestein and was supposed to have arrived in Nice. We could discover nothing of him here and we worked backwards to the Warsaw end. Paul Agrestein has never left his factory. He was at work there yesterday. He is at work there today.”
“You appear,” Mark complained, “to be taking up a great deal of my time talking about an insignificant matter in which I have no concern.”
“On the contrary,” Déchanel objected, “it is a matter of world-wide importance.”
“So far, then, I presume you have only told me half the story. Get on with it.”
Déchanel leaned forward in his chair and obeyed.
“We have urgent enquiries from headquarters as to the man who travelled on the plane, descended at Cannes and is believed to have visited Nice under the name of Paul Agrestein. The enquiries are of such a nature that all Nice is being combed to discover his whereabouts. It was your spy Suzanne who went to Warsaw to enquire for him. Why? What was your business with Agrestein?”
Mark raised his eyebrows very slightly.
“I am without a doubt mistaken, Déchanel,” he said, “but your mode of interrogation appears to me to be a trifle blunt.”
“This is not a time for niceties,” was the brusque rejoinder. “My post at the Bureau, my reputation, depends upon the solution of this mystery.”
Mark reflected for a moment, then he took up one of his telephones.
“Send Suzanne,” he ordered.
“Ah, now we shall see that I was right,” Déchanel exclaimed. “Suzanne has returned. You sent her to Warsaw to watch for this man Agrestein or the man who travelled under his name.”
“Or the man who travelled under his name,” Mark repeated. “Yes, that is well put. I advise you to wait, my friend. I daresay Suzanne can throw some light upon this matter. She has been at times one of my most accomplished helpers. Women are better than men, you know, Déchanel. They do not get flurried or nervous in a crisis. They do not run about like frightened hens.”
“A woman like Suz
anne has nothing to lose except her life,” Déchanel replied sulkily, “and that, I presume, you take care of.”
“I take care of my helpers so long as they merit it,” Mark assented. “Afterwards, of course, they must look out for themselves.”
Suzanne had glided into the room. She smiled at Déchanel and stood by the side of Mark’s desk.
“Eh bien?”
“Our friend Monsieur Déchanel here,” Mark explained, leaning back in his chair, “is anxious to know why you were in Warsaw and what your interest is in a certain Monsieur Paul Agrestein, a manufacturing jeweller of Warsaw.”
“Monsieur Déchanel then still occupies himself with my affairs?” Suzanne observed.
“Monsieur Déchanel has a perfect right to do so if he chooses,” was that gentleman’s curt retort. “You forget, Mademoiselle, my position. I have visited you always in friendly fashion but I am an official of the Sûreté here.”
“Eh bien? You wish to know my interest in Monsieur Paul Agrestein. I thought so well informed a Bureau as yours knew everything. The grandson of Paul Agrestein was my first lover. When we were unfortunately separated the Agrestein family made me an allowance. That allowance has suddenly ceased. I seek out Monsieur Paul to learn the reason. I had no other motive.”
“Falsehoods,” Déchanel exclaimed.
“Rude little man,” Suzanne remarked reprovingly. “I can, if you will, show you the letters from Paul telling me of the allowance. I can show you the letter from the family attorney telling me he had been instructed to send it to me.”
“And it is for that business alone that you were in Warsaw, Mademoiselle?”
“Is it not of sufficient importance?” she replied. “My allowance was something, I can tell you. It was worth having. Monsieur here,” she went on, indicating Mark with a little jerk of her head, “he pays well but it is not often that I can be of use to him. Since the disturbance concerning those young foreign navy men and the affair with the Turkish Commander, he has not chosen to give me work, and I spend a great deal of money, Monsieur Déchanel. I am not a cheap woman, though some of my friends need to be reminded often of the fact.”
The police official groaned. He remembered very well one night when Mademoiselle had emptied his pocketbook.
“These things are beside the point,” he said sharply. “Answer me. Did you succeed in your errand?”
“I saw Monsieur Agrestein,” she acknowledged, “but he was very unkind to me. He assured me that the firm had lost all their money and that there was no more coming to me.”
“Where did you see him?”
“On the flying ground outside Warsaw,” she replied. “I walked with him to the plane. He talked with me till the last moment. A very nice old gentleman but stingy.”
“Our friend Déchanel suggests,” Mark confided, “that the man who travelled by plane from Warsaw, whom you were waiting about for, was not Monsieur Agrestein at all.”
Suzanne shrugged her shoulders.
“It was the name on the ticket sheet of the Air Company. It was the name on the passport which I saw him hand to the conductor. He was not in the least like my Paul but a grandfather—what would you have?”
“That finishes the matter so far as I am concerned,” Mark declared. “Take mademoiselle away with you. You can question her then at your convenience.”
Déchanel picked up his hat and avoided the other’s quick glance. It was precisely what he had had in his mind to do.
“If mademoiselle will permit me to offer her a glass of wine,” he suggested.
She beamed upon him.
“With much pleasure, monsieur,” she consented, “so long as you do not continue to ask me stupid questions.”
Suzanne thrust her hand through her companion’s arm as soon as the two had passed through the heavy door which shut off the private suites of offices from the main building.
“Oh, la la,” she sighed, “every time I leave that room I feel like a bird which has escaped from its cage! Monsieur Déchanel, you are a man and you know no fear. I am a woman and I am afraid of these two young men who are responsible for the International Bureau. I am afraid of Mr. Cheng. I am just as much, if not more afraid of Professor Mark Humberstone.”
It occurred to Henri Déchanel that for the sake of his reputation for courage it was as well that mademoiselle—joyous, desirable Mademoiselle Suzanne—had not seen him half-an-hour before. He coughed and straightened his necktie.
“I will tell you something,” he confided. “There are others beside myself who are beginning to ask themselves questions concerning this International Bureau.”
“Take my advice, mon cher,” she enjoined, “ask your questions about something else. Both these men are devils. They have a thousand ears, and a thousand unseen arms with which to strike. They remind me of two great king spiders in an amazing web.”
“I am beginning to believe with the authorities in Paris,” Déchanel declared, curling his moustache, “that the activities of this Bureau must be looked into more closely. They have been treated leniently up till now because, between ourselves, little one, there have been times when they have been useful to us, but just now—well, serious things are afoot.”
“Tell me about them,” Suzanne begged.
“But where is this that you are taking me?” he demanded as she threw open a door. “This is not the way out.”
“Did you not say that we should drink a glass of wine together?” she reminded him. “Do you pretend not to remember that this is my apartment?”
“A glass of wine—yes—but I meant at a café.”
“A café! Who do you think I am to sit in cafés?” Suzanne laughed scornfully. “Besides, are you not better here? You can sit in my salon and wait whilst I change my frock if you must take me out. Then you can drive me to Beaulieu—yes? There is a violinist there at the Réserve who thrills me. I would like to hear him with you.”
He coughed uneasily.
“I think,” he agreed, “if you would have it so our conversation would go better away from this building.”
“The bold Monsieur Déchanel is suddenly shy,” she laughed. “He is afraid that I might ask him to help me with my toilette. Well, I shall do as you wish—”
“Not as I wish,” he interrupted, with a world of meaning in his rolling eyes, “but as the fates demand. However—sit down for one moment, Mademoiselle Suzanne. Tell me whether it is true that you went to Warsaw only in order to see Paul Agrestein.”
“Of course it is true,” she answered, “and much good it did me! I am beginning to ask myself whether the man on the flying ship who seemed to be Paul Agrestein may not have been an impostor.”
“Now listen, Suzanne, I ask you a question. Much hangs on it. Who was he?”
She looked at him with wide-opened eyes.
“How should I know?” she replied. “His name on the sheet of passengers was Agrestein. The name on his passport was Agrestein. He admitted when I spoke to him that his name was Paul Agrestein. He answered me like a barbarian. I told him that I had visited him at his workshops and at his bureau without success. I spoke to him of my poverty, of my life with little Paul. I gave him up for an allowance and that allowance I only received for a year.”
“And his answer?”
“What do you suppose was his answer—he a man of some strength though he may be old? He pushed me away, he refused to talk. He mounted the airship and he told the conductor to be sure I did not follow. That is what I got in Warsaw, Henri, my beloved one, for seeking Paul Agrestein.”
“Since the man whom you encountered may not have been Paul Agrestein, what else did you expect?”
“I am probably foolish to doubt that it was he,” she observed, fumbling in a huge box of chocolates by her side. “He must be well known in Warsaw. How could he travel with a false passport?”
She selected a bonbon and bit it between her beautiful white teeth.
“It is often done,” her companion assured her drily.
“Come now, listen. We want to know who that man was if he was not Agrestein. Our friend behind that door knows—I am certain of that. A most amazing suggestion has been made to our head office. It is our duty to discover the truth. Will you help us, Mademoiselle Suzanne, or do you mean to remain where you are now—in a very dangerous position, mind you—one of the spies of the International Bureau?”
She patted his hand.
“Écoute, mon cher,” she said, “I have told you how much I fear that man on the other side of the door. I value my life. I love safety and pleasant living and money. All those things come to me for doing what I am told to do and for answering no questions outside. What sort of a fool should I be if I risked everything to pour out my heart like a little ingénue to Monsieur Déchanel, dangerous man as he is with us poor girls?”
“In other words,” he rejoined, twirling his moustache, “you have nothing to tell me.”
“Absolutely nothing. I am your good companion when you wish to frivol, your friend at all times. I have lips which you may kiss when I feel in the humour—which is generally, but which will never open to whisper the secrets of the Bureau, if they have any, in your ears.”
“It may be,” he warned her gloomily, “that the good times are coming to an end. Mr. Cheng is not exactly popular with the authorities. In Paris they have been talking about him. The man whom we have just left, Mark Humberstone, is one of the greatest scientists in the world, but who knows how he may use these new inventions? If what our people in Paris say is true they have at work night and day a marvellous wireless directed upon a new principle, with the help of which they get news from the East and at the same time block out many other stations. Not only the wireless but the cables have been affected by a perfect holocaust of electricity. All this points to strange things. It points beyond the mere traffic in stolen plans and letters. The brains of Paris are at work upon the affair. Beware, Suzanne, lest you cling too long to a sinking ship.”
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