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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  Lutchester looked into her eyes without flinching. Pamela, to her annoyance, was worsted in the momentary duel.

  “We cannot always choose our atmosphere,” he reminded her.

  “Mademoiselle Sonia is perhaps connected with the regulation of the munition supplies from America?”

  “Mademoiselle Sonia,” Lutchester asserted, “is an old friend of mine. Apart from that, it was my business to talk to her.”

  “Your business?”

  Lutchester assented with perfect gravity.

  “Within a day or two,” he said, “now, if you made a point of it, I could explain a great deal.”

  Pamela threw herself into a chair almost irritably.

  “You have the cult of being mysterious, Mr. Lutchester,” she declared. “To be quite frank with you, you seem to be the queerest mixture of any man I ever knew.”

  “It is the fault of circumstances,” he regretted, “if I am sometimes compelled to present myself to you in an unfavourable light. Those circumstances are passing. You will soon begin to value me at my true worth.”

  “We had half promised,” Pamela murmured, “to go out with Mr. Fischer this evening.”

  “The more reason for my intervention,” Lutchester observed. “Fischer is not a fit person for you to associate with.”

  She laughed curiously.

  “People who saw you at the roof-garden last night might say that you were scarcely a judge,” Pamela retorted.

  “People who did not know the circumstances might have considered me guilty of an indiscretion,” Lutchester admitted, “but they would have been entirely wrong. On the other hand, your friend Fischer is a would-be murderer, a liar, and is at the present moment engaged in intrigues which are a most immoral compound of duplicity and cunning.”

  “I shall begin to think,” Pamela murmured, “that you don’t like Mr. Fischer!”

  “I detest him heartily,” Lutchester confessed.

  “I find him singularly interesting,” Pamela announced, sitting up in her chair.

  “I dare say you do,” Lutchester replied. “Women are always bad judges of our sex. All the same, you are not going to marry him.”

  “How do you know he wants to marry me?” Pamela demanded.

  “Instinct!”

  “And what do you mean by saying that I am not going to marry him?”

  “Because,” Lutchester announced, “you are going to marry some one else.”

  Pamela rose to her feet. There was a little spot of colour in her cheeks.

  “Am I indeed!” she exclaimed. “And whom, pray?”

  “That I will tell you at Washington,” Lutchester promised.

  “You know his name, then?”

  “I know him intimately,” was the cool reply. “What about our dinner to- night?”

  “We are going to dine with Mr. Fischer,” Pamela decided.

  “I really don’t think so,” Lutchester objected. “For one thing, Mr. Fischer will probably have to attend the police court again later on.”

  “What about?”

  “For having hired a famous murderer to try and get rid of me.” Lutchester explained suavely.

  “Do you really believe that?” Pamela scoffed. “Why should he want to get rid of you? What harm can you do him?”

  “I am trying to find out,” Lutchester replied grimly. “Still, since you ask the question, the pocketbook which is on its way to Germany, and which I picked up when Nikasti was taken ill—”

  “Oh, yes, I know about that!” Pamela interrupted. “That is the one thing that always sets me thinking about you. What did you do it for? How did you know what it meant to me?”

  “Divination, I imagine,” Lutchester answered, “or perhaps I was thinking what it might mean to Mr. Fischer.”

  She looked at him and her face was a study in mixed expressions. Her forehead was a little knitted, her eyes almost strained in their desire to read him; her lips were petulant.

  “Dear me, what a puzzle you are!” she exclaimed. “All the same, I am going to wait for Mr. Fischer. It doesn’t matter whether one dines or sups. I suppose he will get away from the police court sometime or other.”

  “But anyway,” he protested, “you’ve heard all that Mr. Fischer has to say. Now I, on the other hand, haven’t shown you my hand yet.”

  “Heard all that Mr. Fischer has to say?” she repeated.

  “Certainly! Wasn’t he here for several hours with you this afternoon? Didn’t he promise you an alliance with Germany against Japan, if you could persuade certain people at Washington to change their tone and attitude towards the export of munitions?”

  “This,” she declared, trying to keep a certain agitation from her tone, “is mere bluff.”

  Lutchester was suddenly very serious indeed.

  “Listen,” he said, “I can prove to you, if you will, that it is not bluff. I can prove to you that I really know something of what I am talking about.”

  “There is nothing I should like better,” she declared.

  “To begin with then,” Lutchester said, “the pocketbook which Nikasti is supposed to have stolen from your room, the pocketbook of young Sandy Graham, which Mr. Fischer has sent to Germany, does not contain the formula of the new explosive, or any other formula that amounts to anything.”

  “Just how do you know that?” she demanded.

  “To continue,” Lutchester said, playing with a little ornament upon the mantelpiece, “you have an appointment—within half an hour, I believe—with Mr. Paul Haskall, who is a specialist in explosives, having an official position with the American Government.”

  She had ceased to struggle any longer with her surprise. She looked at him fixedly but remained silent.

  “It is your belief,” he proceeded, “that you are going to hand over to him the formula of which we were speaking.”

  “It is no belief,” she replied. “It is certainty. I took it myself from Graham’s pocket.”

  Lutchester nodded.

  “Good! Have you opened it?”

  “I have,” she declared. “It is without doubt, the formula.”

  “On the other hand, I am here to assure you that it is not,” Lutchester replied.

  Her hand was tearing at the cushion by her side. She moistened her lips. There was something about Lutchester hatefully convincing.

  “What do you mean?” she demanded. “Is this a trick. You won’t get it! No one but Mr. Haskall will get that formula from me!”

  Lutchester smiled.

  “It will only puzzle him when he gets it! To tell you the truth, the formula is rubbish.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said firmly. “If you think you are going to interfere with my handing it over to him, you are mistaken.”

  “I have no wish to do anything of the sort,” Lutchester assured her. “Make a bargain with me. Mr. Haskall will be here soon. Unfasten the little package you are carrying somewhere about your person, hand him the envelope and watch his face. If he tells you that what you have offered him is a coherent and possible formula for an explosive, then you can look upon me for ever afterwards as the poor, foolish person you sometimes seem to consider me. If, on the other hand, he tells you that it is rubbish, I shall expect you at the Ritz-Carlton at half-past eight.”

  There was a ring at the bell. She rose to her feet.

  “I accept,” she declared. “That is Mr. Haskall. And, by the bye, Mr. Lutchester, don’t order too elaborate a dinner, for I am very much afraid you will have to eat it all yourself. Now, au revoir,” she added, as the door was opened in obedience to her summons and a servant stood prepared to show him out. “If we don’t turn up to-night, you will know the reason.”

  “I am very hopeful,” Lutchester replied, as he turned away.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  Table of Contents

  At five-and-twenty minutes past eight that evening Lutchester, who was waiting in the entrance hall of the Ritz-Carlton, became just a little restless. At half-past
, his absorption in an evening paper, over the top of which he looked at every newcomer, was almost farcical. At five-and-twenty to nine Pamela arrived. He advanced down the lounge to meet her. Her face was inscrutable, her smile conventional. Yet she had come! He looked over his shoulder towards the men’s coat room.

  “Your brother?”

  “I sent Jim to his club,” she said. “I want to have a confidential talk with you, Mr. Lutchester.”

  “I am very flattered,” he told her, with real earnestness.

  She vanished for a few moments in the cloakroom, and reappeared, a radiant vision in deep blue silk. Her hair was gathered in a coil at the top of her head, and surmounted with an ornament of pearls.

  “You are looking at my headdress,” she remarked, as they walked into the room. “It is the style you admire, is it not?”

  He murmured something vague, but he knew that he was forgiven. They were ushered to their places by a portly maitre d’hotel, and she approved of his table. It was set almost in an alcove, and was partially hidden from the other diners.

  “Is this seclusion vanity or flattery?”

  “As a matter of fact, it is rather a popular table,” he told her. “We have an excellent view of the room, and yet one can talk here without being disturbed.”

  “To talk to you is exactly what I wish to do,” she said, as they took their places. “We commence, if you please, with a question. Mr. Fischer thought that he had that formula and he hasn’t. I could have sworn that it was in my possession==and it isn’t. Where is it?”

  “I took it to the War Office before I left England,” he told her simply. “They will have the first few tons of the stuff ready next month.”

  “You!” she cried, “But where did you get it?”

  “I happened to be first, that’s all,” he explained. “You see, I had the advantage of a little inside information. I could have exposed the whole affair if I had thought it wise. I preferred, however, to let matters take their course. Young Graham deserved all he got there, and I made sure of being the first to go through his papers. I’m afraid I must confess that I left a bogus formula for you.”

  “I had begun to suspect this,” Pamela confessed. “You don’t mind being put into the witness box, do you?” she added, as she pushed aside the menu with a little sigh of satisfaction. “How wonderfully you order an American dinner!”

  “I am so glad I have chosen what you like,” he said, “and as to being in the witness box==well, I am going to place myself in the confessional, and that is very much the same thing, isn’t it?”

  “To begin at the beginning, then==about that destroyer?”

  “My mission over here was really important,” he admitted. “I couldn’t catch the Lapland, so the Admiralty sent me over.”

  “And your golf with Senator Hamblin? It wasn’t altogether by accident you met him down at Baltusrol, was it?”

  “It was not,” he confessed, “I had reason to suspect that certain proposals from Berlin were to be put forward to the President either through his or Senator Hastings’ mediation. There were certain facts in connection with them, which I desired to be the first to lay before the authorities.”

  She looked around the room and recognised some of her friends. For some reason or other she felt remarkably light-hearted.

  “For a poor vanquished woman,” she observed, turning back to Lutchester, “I feel extraordinarily gay to-night. Tell me some more.”

  He bowed.

  “Mademoiselle Sonia,” he proceeded, “has been a friend of mine since she sang in the cafes of Buda Pesth. I dined with her, however, because it had come to my knowledge that she was behaving in a very foolish manner.”

  Pamela nodded understandingly.

  “She was the friend of Count Maurice Ziduski, wasn’t she?”

  “She is no longer,” Lutchester replied. “She sailed for France this morning without seeing him. She has remembered that she is a Frenchwoman.”

  “It was you who reminded her!”

  “Love so easily makes people forgetful,” he said, “and I think that Sonia was very fond of Maurice Ziduski. She is a thoughtless, passionate woman, easily swayed through her affections, and she had no idea of the evil she was doing.”

  “So that disposes of Sonia,” Pamela reflected.

  “Sonia was only an interlude,” Lutchester declared. “She really doesn’t come into this affair at all. The one person who does come into it, whom you and I must speak of, is Fischer.”

  “A most interesting man,” Pamela sighed. “I really think his wife would have a most exciting life.”

  “She would!” Lutchester agreed. “She’d probably be allowed to visit him once every fourteen days in care of a warder.”

  “Spite!” Pamela exclaimed, with a suspicious little quiver at the corner of her lips.

  Lutchester shook his head.

  “Fischer is too near the end of his rope for me to feel spiteful,” he said, “though I am quite prepared to grant that he may be capable of considerable mischief yet. A man who has the sublime effrontery to attempt to come to an agreement with two countries, each behind the other’s back, is a little more than Machiavellian, isn’t he?”

  “Is that true of Mr. Fischer?”

  “Absolutely,” Lutchester assured her. “He is over here for the purpose of somehow or other making it known informally in Washington that Germany would be willing to pledge herself to an alliance with America against Japan, after the war, if America will alter her views as to the export of munitions to the Allies.”

  “Well, that’s a reasonable proposition, isn’t it, from his point of view?” Pamela remarked. “It may not be a very agreeable one from yours, but it is certainly one which he has a right to make.”

  “Entirely,” Lutchester agreed, “but where he goes wrong is that his primary object in coming here was to meet Hie chief of the Japanese Secret Service, to whom he has made a proposition of precisely similar character.”

  Pamela set down her glass.

  “You are not in earnest!”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Nikasti?”

  “Precisely! He came all the way from Japan to confer with Fischer. Probably, if we knew the whole truth, those rooms at the Plaza Hotel, and the social partnership of your brother and Fischer, were arranged for no other reason than to provide a safe personality for Nikasti in this country, and a safe place for him to talk things over with Fischer.”

  “Mr. Fischer was paying nearly the whole of the expenses of the Plaza suite,” Pamela observed thoughtfully.

  “Naturally,” Lutchester replied. “Your brother’s name was a good, safe name to get behind. But to conclude with our friend Nikasti. He is supposed to leave New York next Saturday, and to carry to the Emperor of Japan an autograph letter from a nameless person, promising him, if Japan will cease the export of munitions to Russia, the aid of Germany in her impending campaign against America.”

  “An autograph letter, did you say?” Pamela almost gasped.

  “An autograph letter,” Lutchester repeated firmly. “Now don’t you agree with me that Fischer’s game is just a little too daring?”

  “It is preposterous!” she cried.

  “I have a theory,” Lutchester continued, “that Fischer was never intended to use more than one of these letters. It was intended that he should study the situation here, approach one side, and, if unsuccessful, try the other. Fischer, however, conceived a more magnificent idea. He seems to be trying both at the same time. It is the sublime egotism of the Teutonic mind.”

  “It is monstrous!” Pamela exclaimed indignantly.

  “It is almost as monstrous,” Lutchester agreed, “as his daring to raise his eyes to you, although, so far as you are concerned, I believe that he is as honest as the man knows how to be.”

  “And why,” she asked, “do you credit him with so much good faith?”

  “Because,” Lutchester replied, “if he had not been actuated by personal motives, h
e would never have sought you out as an intermediary. There are other sources open to him, by means of which he could make equally sure of reaching the President’s ear. His idea was to impress you. It was foolish but natural.”

  Pamela was deep in thought. There was an angry spot of colour burning in her cheek.

  “Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Lutchester,” she persisted, “that this afternoon, say, when with every appearance of earnestness he was begging me to put these propositions before my uncle, he had really made precisely similar overtures to Japan?”

  “I give you my word that this is the truth,” Lutchester assured her solemnly.

  She looked at him with something almost like wonder in her eyes.

  “But you?” she exclaimed. “How do you know this? How can you be sure of it?”

  “I have seen the autograph letter which Nikasti has in his possession,” he announced.

  “You mean that Mr. Fischer showed it to you?” she exclaimed incredulously.

  Lutchester hesitated.

  “There are methods,” he said, “which those who fight in the dark places for their country are forced sometimes to make use of. I have seen the letter. I have half convinced those who represent Japan in this matter of Fischer’s duplicity. With your help I am hoping wholly to do so.”

  Pamela leaned for a moment back in her chair.

  “Really,” she declared, “I am beginning to have the feeling that I am living almost too rapidly. Let us have a breathing spell. I wonder what all these other people are talking about.”

  “Probably,” he suggested, with a little glance around, “about themselves. We will follow their example. Will you marry me, please, Miss Van Teyl?”

  “We haven’t even come to the ice yet,” she sighed, “and you pass from high politics to flagrant personalities. Are you a sensationalist, Mr. Lutchester?”

  “Not in the least,” he protested. “I simply asked you an extremely important question quite calmly.”

  “It isn’t a question that should be asked calmly,” she objected.

  “I have immense self-control,” he told her, “but if you’d like me to abandon it==”