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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  Fischer grunted scornfully.

  “You don’t know much about your sister, young fellow,” he said. “Internal politics over here may not interest her a cent, but she’s crazy about America as a country, and she’s shrewd enough to see things coming that a great many of you over here aren’t looking for. Anyway, she came bang up against me in a little scheme I had on the night before I left Europe, and somewhere about her she’s got concealed a document which I’d gladly buy for a quarter of a million dollars.”

  Van Teyl drank off his second cocktail.

  “Some money!” he observed. “How did she come by the prize?”

  “Played up for it, just as I did,” Fischer replied. “She was clever enough to make use of my scaffolding, and got up the ladder first. I’m not squealing, but I’ve got to have that document, whatever it costs me.”

  Van Teyl was silent for a moment. There was an undercurrent of something threatening in his companion’s manner, of which he had taken note.

  “And the second thing you mentioned?” he asked. “What is that?”

  Fischer, as though to give due emphasis to his statement, indulged in a brief pause. Then he leaned a little forward and spoke very slowly and very forcibly.

  “I want to marry her,” he declared.

  Van Teyl learned back in his chair and gazed at his vis-a-vis in blank astonishment.

  “You must be a damned fool, Fischer!” he exclaimed.

  “You think so?” was the unruffled reply. “I wonder why?”

  “I’ll tell you why, if you want to know,” Van Teyl continued bluntly. “I know of four of the richest and best-looking young men in America, two ambassadors, an English peer, and an Italian prince, who have proposed to Pamela during the last twelve months alone. She refused every one of them.”

  “Well,” Fischer remarked, “she must marry some time.”

  Van Teyl looked at him insolently.

  “I shouldn’t think you’d have a dog’s chance,” he pronounced.

  There was a little glitter behind Fischer’s spectacles.

  “Up till now,” he admitted smoothly, “I have not been fortunate. I must confess, however, that I was hoping for your good offices.”

  “Pamela wouldn’t take the slightest notice of anything I might say,” Van Teyl declared. “Besides, I should hate you to marry her.”

  “A little blunt, are you not, my young friend?” Fischer remarked amiably. “Still, to continue, there is also the matter of that document. I must confess that I exercised all my ingenuity to obtain possession of it on the steamer.”

  “You would!” Van Teyl muttered.

  “Your sister, however,” Fischer continued, “was wise enough to have it locked up in the purser’s safe the moment she set foot upon the steamer. She gave me the slip when she got it back, and eluded me, somehow, on the quay. She will scarcely have had time to part with it yet, though. When she arrives here to-night, it will in all probability be in her possession.”

  “Well?” Van Teyl demanded. “You don’t suggest that I should rob her of it, I suppose?”

  “Not at all,” Fischer replied. “On the other hand, you might very well induce her to give it up voluntarily, or at least to treat with me.”

  “You don’t know Pamela,” was Van Teyl’s curt reply.

  “I know her sufficiently,” Fischer went on, leaning over the table, “to believe that she would sacrifice a great deal to save her brother from Sing Sing.”

  Van Teyl took the thrust badly. He started as though he had been stabbed, and his face became almost ghastly in its pallor. He tossed off a glass of wine hastily.

  “Just what do you mean by that?” he asked thickly.

  “Are you prepared,” Fischer continued, “to have me visit your office to- morrow morning and examine my accounts and securities in the presence of your partners?”

  “Why not?” Van Teyl faltered. “What the hell do you mean?”

  “I mean, James Van Teyl,” his companion declared, “that I should find you a matter of a hundred thousand dollars short. I mean that you’ve realised on some of my securities, gambled on your own account with the proceeds, and lost. You did this as regards one stock at least, with a forged transfer, which I hold.”

  Van Teyl looked almost piteously around. Life seemed suddenly to have become an unreal thing—the crowds of well-dressed diners, the gentle splashing of the water from the fountains in the winter garden, the distant murmuring of music from behind the canopy of palms. So this was the end of it! All that week he had hoped against hope. He had been told of a sure thing. Next week he had meant to have a great gamble. Everything was to have gone his way, after all. And now it was too late. Fischer knew, and Fischer was a cruel man!…

  The unnatural silence came to an end. Only Fischer’s voice seemed to come from a long way off.

  “Drink your wine, James Van Teyl,” he advised, “and listen to me. You’ve been under obligations to me from the start. I meant you to be. I brought a great business to your firm, and I insisted upon having you interested. I had a motive, as I have for most things I do. You are well placed socially in New York, and I am not. You are also above suspicion, which I am not. It suited me to take this suite in the Plaza, nominally in our joint names, but to pay the whole account myself. It suited me because I required the shelter of your social position. You understand?”

  “I always understand,” Van Teyl muttered.

  “Just so. Only, whereas you simply thought me a snob, I had in reality a different and very definite purpose. We come now, however, to your present obligation to me. I can, if I choose, tear up your forged transfer, submit to the loss of my money, and leave you secure. I shall do so if you are able to induce your sister to hand over to me those few lines of writing—to which, believe me, she has no earthly right—and to accept me as a prospective suitor.”

  Van Teyl was drinking steadily now, but every mouthful of food seemed almost to choke him. Red-eyed and defiant, he faced his torturer.

  “You’re talking rot!” he declared. “Pamela wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth, and if she’s got anything she wants to keep, she’ll keep it.”

  “And see her brother disgraced,” Fischer reminded him, “tried at the Criminal Court for theft and sent to Sing Sing? It’s a good name in New York, yours, you know. The Van Teyls have held up their heads high for more than one generation. Your sister will not fancy seeing it dragged down into the mire.”

  For a single moment the young man seemed about to throw himself upon his companion, Fischer, perfectly unmoved, watched him, nevertheless, like a cat.

  “Better sit tight,” he enjoined. “Drop it now or people will be watching us. I have ordered some of the old brandy. A liqueur or two will steady you, perhaps. Afterwards we will go upstairs and take your sister into our confidence.”

  Van Teyl nodded.

  “Very well,” he agreed hoarsely. “We’ll hear what Pamela has to say.”

  CHAPTER XI

  Table of Contents

  Nikasti, with a low bow, watched the disappearance of the lift into which his two new masters, James Van Teyl and Oscar Fischer, had stepped. He waited until the indicator registered its safe arrival on the ground floor. Then he slowly retraced his steps along the corridor, entered the sitting-room, and took up the telephone receiver, which was still lying upon the table.

  “Will you give me number 77,” he asked—“Miss Van Teyl’s suite?”

  There was a moment’s silence—then a voice at the other end to which he made obeisance.

  “It is Miss Van Teyl who speaks? I am Mr. Van Teyl’s valet. Mr. Van Teyl is here now and will be glad if you will come in.”

  He replaced the receiver, listened and waited. In a few moments there was the sound of a light footstep outside. The door was opened and Pamela entered. She was still wearing the grey tailor-made costume in which she had left the steamer.

  “Why, where is Mr. Van Teyl?” she asked, looking around the r
oom. “I have been ringing up for the last ten minutes and couldn’t get any answer. I did not realise that it was the next suite.”

  “Mr. Van Teyl is close at hand, madam,” Nikasti replied. “If you will kindly be seated, I will fetch him.”

  “How long have you been valet here?” Pamela asked curiously.

  “For a few hours only, madam,” was the grave reply. “If you will be so good as to wait.”

  He bowed low and left the room. Pamela took up an evening paper and for a few minutes buried herself in its contents. Then suddenly she held it away from her and listened. A queer and unaccountable impulse inspired her with a certain mistrust. There was no sound of movement in the adjoining bedchamber, nor any sign of her brother’s presence. She opened the door and peered in. It was empty and in darkness. Then, moved by that same unaccountable impulse, she crossed the room and listened at the door which led into her own suite, and which she perceived was bolted on this side as well as her own. She listened at first idly, afterwards breathlessly. In a few moments she was convinced that her senses were not playing her false. Some one was moving stealthily about in her room, the key to which was even at that moment in her hand. She hastened to the door, to be confronted by another surprise. The handle turned but the door refused to open. She was locked in.

  Pamela was both generous and insistent in the matter of bells. She found four, and she rang them all together. The consequences were speedy, and in their way satisfactory. Nikasti himself, a breathless chambermaid, a hurt but dignified waiter, and the floor valet, who had not even stopped to put on his coat, entered together. They seemed a little stupefied at finding Pamela alone and no sign of any disturbance.

  “Why was I locked in here?” Pamela demanded indignantly, taking them en bloc.

  There was a little chorus of non-comprehension. Nikasti stepped forward, waved to the others to be silent, and bowed almost to the ground.

  “It was a mistake easily to be understood, madam,” he explained. “The handle is a little stiff, perhaps, but the door was not locked. We all reached here together, I myself barely a yard in advance. No key was used—and behold!”

  Pamela was disposed to argue, but a moment’s reflection induced her to change her mind. This falsehood of Nikasti’s was at least interesting. She waved the hotel servants away.

  “I am sorry to have troubled you,” she said. “I will remember it when I pay my bill.”

  They took their leave, Nikasti showing them out. When the last had departed, he turned back to the centre table, from the other side of which Pamela was watching him curiously.

  “I cannot imagine,” she remarked, “how I could have made such a mistake about the door. I tried it twice or three times and it certainly seemed to me to be locked.”

  Nikasti moved a step nearer towards her. Something of the servility of his manner had gone. For the first time she looked at him closely, appreciated the tense immobility of his features, the still, penetrating light of his cold eyes. A queer premonition of trouble for a moment unsteadied her.

  “There was no mistake,” he said softly. “The door was locked.”

  Even then she did not fully understand the position. She leaned a little towards him.

  “It was locked?” she repeated.

  “I locked it,” he told her. “It is locked now, securely. I have been searching in your room for something which I did not find. I think that you had better give it to me. It will save trouble.”

  “Are you mad?” she demanded breathlessly.

  “Do I seem so?” he replied. “There is no person more sane than I. I require from you the formula of the new explosive, which you stole in Henry’s restaurant eleven days ago.”

  The sense of mystery passed. It was simply trouble of the ordinary sort from an unexpected source.

  “Dear me!” she murmured. “Every one seems interested in my little adventure. How did you hear about it?”

  “I destroyed the cable telling me of all that happened only a few minutes ago,” he explained. “It was the foolish talk of the young inventor which gave his secret to the world to scramble for.”

  “It was very clever of your informant,” she remarked, “to suggest that I was the fortunate thief. Why not Oscar Fischer? It was his plot, not mine.”

  The eyes of the little Japanese seemed suddenly to narrow. He realised quite well that she was talking simply to gain time.

  “Madam,” he insisted, “the formula. It is for my country, and for my country I would risk much.”

  “I do not doubt it,” she replied; “but if I hold it, I hold it for my country, too, and there is nothing you would risk for Japan from which I should shrink for America.”

  He laid his hands upon the table. She turned her ring and clenched her hand. She could see his spring coming, realised in those few seconds that here was an opponent of more desperate and subtle calibre than Joseph. Whether her wits might have failed her, fate remained her friend. There was a knock at the door.

  “You hear?” she cried breathlessly. “There is some one there. Shall I call out?”

  His hands and knee were gone from the table. He was once more his old self, so completely the servant that for a moment even Pamela was puzzled. It seemed as though the events of the last few seconds might have been part of a disordered dream. Nikasti played to the cue of her fevered question and entirely ignored them. He opened the door with a respectful flourish—and John Lutchester walked in.

  CHAPTER XII

  Table of Contents

  Pamela’s first shock of surprise did not readily pass. In the first place, John Lutchester’s appearance in America at all was entirely unexpected. In the second, by what possible means could he have arrived at this precise and psychological moment?

  “You!” she exclaimed, a little helplessly. “Mr. Lutchester!”

  He smiled as he shook hands. Nikasti had slipped noiselessly from the room. Pamela made no effort to detain him. She had a curious feeling that the things which had passed between them concerned their two selves only. So had no desire whatever to hand him over to retributive justice.

  “You are surprised,” he observed. “So far as my presence here is concerned, I knew quite well that I was coming some time ago, but it was one of those matters, you understand, Miss Van Teyl, that one is scarcely at liberty to talk about. I am here in connection with my work.”

  “Your work,” she repeated weakly. “I thought that you were in the Ministry of Munitions?”

  “Precisely,” he admitted. “I have a travelling inspectorship. You see, I don’t mind telling you this, but it is just as well, if you will forgive my mentioning it, Miss Van Teyl, that these things are not spoken of to any one. My business over here is supposed to be secret. I am going round some of the factories from which we are drawing supplies.”

  She drew a long breath and began to feel a little more like herself.

  “Well, after this,” she declared, “I shall be surprised at nothing. I have had one shock already this evening, and you are the second.”

  “The first, I trust, was not disagreeable?”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “Without flattering you,” she answered, “I think I could say that I prefer the second.”

  “I had an idea,” Lutchester remarked diffidently, “that my arrival seemed either opportune or inopportune—I could not quite tell which. Were you in any way troubled or embarrassed by the presence of the little Japanese gentleman?”

  “Of course not,” she replied. “Why, he is Jimmy’s valet.”

  “How absurd of me!” Lutchester murmured. “By the bye, if Jimmy is your brother—Mr. Van Teyl—I have a letter to him from a pal in town—Dicky Green. It was to present it that I found my way up here this evening. I was told that he might put me in the way of a little golf during my spare time over here.”

  He produced the note and laid it upon the table. Pamela glanced at it and then at Lutchester. He was carefully dressed in dinner clothes, black tie and
white waistcoat. He was, as usual, perfectly groomed and immaculate. He had what she could only describe to herself as an everyday air about him. He seemed entirely free from any mental pressure or the wear and tear of great events.

  “Golf?” she repeated wonderingly. “You expect to have a little spare time, then?”

  “Well, I hope so,” Lutchester replied. “One must have exercise. By the bye,” he went on, “is your brother in, do you happen to know? Perhaps it would be more convenient if I came round in the morning? I am staying in the hotel.”

  “Oh, for goodness sake, don’t go away,” she begged. “Jimmy will be here presently, for certain. To tell you the truth, we have been rather playing hide-and-seek this evening, but it hasn’t been altogether his fault. Please sit down over there—you will find cigarettes on the sideboard—and talk to me.”

  “Delighted,” he agreed, taking the chair opposite to her. “I suppose you want to know what became of poor Graham?”

  A sudden bewilderment appeared in her face. She leaned towards him. Her forehead was knitted, her eyes puzzled. There was a new problem to be solved.

  “Why, Mr. Lutchester,” she demanded, “how on earth did you get here?”

  “Across the Atlantic,” he replied amiably. “Bit too far the other way round.”

  “Yes, but what on?” she persisted. “I went straight on to the Lapland after we parted last week, and only arrived here an hour or so ago. There was no other passenger steamer sailing for three days.”

  “I was a stowaway,” he told her confidentially—“helped to shovel coals all the way over.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense!” she protested a little sharply. “I dislike mysteries. Look at you! A stowaway, indeed! Tell me the truth at once?”

  He leaned forward in his chair towards her. An ingenuous smile parted his lips. He had the air of a schoolboy repeating a mischievous secret.

  “The fact is, Miss Van Teyl,” he confided, “I don’t want it talked about, you know, but I had a joy ride over.”