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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  Mermillon rose to his feet.

  “I am obliged to you, sir,” he said, “for answering my question so frankly. Your boat, I see, is the Fidélité. And your name?”

  “Commander Berard. At your service, Monsieur.”

  Mermillon extended his hand.

  “We shall not detain you a moment longer. Is your business likely to take you long?”

  “About a week, I should think. I shall telephone each day to the Admiral. He will tell me if the result of my work here is in any way interesting and if it is worth continuing.”

  “If you stay long enough and have an hour to spare at any time,” Mermillon invited graciously, “the hospitality of my yacht is at your service. I should be delighted to see you for lunch or dinner any day if you will signal first to be sure that we are on board. We are lying across the bay there.”

  “I shall venture to pay my respects, sir,” the commander assured his distinguished visitor.

  Mermillon let his fingers dabble in the water on their swift homeward voyage. He seemed a little thoughtful.

  “I am afraid,” he reflected, “I must have seemed to be making rather a fool of myself to that young man.”

  Perissol, who still preserved his attitude of indifference, shook his head.

  “Your questions were perfectly in order,” he remarked. “The only point is—I don’t know exactly what replies you expected to receive. Charting the coast waters is one of the duties of the navy.”

  CHAPTER VII

  Table of Contents

  “‘Fresh as the foam, new bathed in Paphian wells,’” Hamer Wildburn quoted as, stooping down, he pulled Lucienne from the water, up the steps and on to his boat, the sea shine glittering upon her bathing suit. “Say, if you had not come this morning, I should have put on my shore clothes and presented myself at the château.”

  “A young man who can quote poetry lying on his stomach,” she laughed “deserves a visit from Aphrodite herself. I am terribly sorry, Hamer my dear but we have a houseful, and you know what that means. Thank goodness we have our own bay the other side so I can escape sometimes. I must lie in the sun while I dry.”

  “Your peignoir is here,” he pointed out. “I fetched it up directly I saw you on the quay.”

  “Plenty of cushions are all I want for the moment,” she answered, “then a cigarette and perhaps another swim.”

  “And luncheon?” he asked eagerly.

  “Not a chance,” she sighed “We have a houseful of young people at the château. You can come up and join us if you like.”

  “Not to-day, I’m afraid,” he regretted. “You forget that I am a struggling journalist. I have to get some of my stuff off to Paris this afternoon. It’s good to see you, Lucienne.”

  “And it’s such a relief to be here,” she assured him. “You have made me feel very unsocial, my dear Hamer. I no longer like to sit in a chattering group and talk scandal and nonsense. I am becoming a serious person.”

  She took his hand and twined her fingers between his.

  “I don’t want you ever to change,” he said. “I love your gaiety. I am sometimes rather a sober sort of chap myself. It does one good to hear your laughter and have to rack one’s brains to keep pace with you.”

  “Dear Hamer,” she murmured, “kiss me.”

  He obeyed, after a tentative glance around. She scoffed at him as she drew away.

  “Que tu es sot!” she exclaimed. “Did you think I hadn’t made sure that no one was looking? That was a psychological minute. It may not recur during the whole of my visit. There was not a soul on the quay, and we are just out of sight from the plage. However, you probably don’t like kissing. It’s a pity.”

  “Don’t be an idiot or I shall take you below,” he threatened. “Tell me something, will you, Lucienne?”

  “I’ll see. What is it?”

  “For the last three or four days there has been a very powerful motor boat lying in your pool there, a white one with a rather large cabin aft, and I should think very powerful engines She doesn’t belong to you people, does she?”

  “No, she belongs to Louise de Fantany. She is a great friend of the house, and we let her keep it there when she wants to. She has a lovely château, but it is up in the mountains.”

  “Louise de Fantany,” he repeated. “Tell me about her.”

  “So soon?” Lucienne sighed.

  “Nothing of that sort,” he declared scornfully, “and no secrets from you, my sweetheart. She is the lady who swam aboard my yacht at 3 o’clock in the morning! You know—I’ve told you all about her visit.”

  Lucienne sat up with a gasp.

  “The half-naked woman who tried to do that old-fashioned stunt—to drug you?”

  “Don’t make me blush,” he begged. “She’s the woman all right. I caught a glimpse of her this morning.”

  “What was she doing here?” Lucienne asked curiously. “She hasn’t been to the château.”

  “She drove up in a fast car at about a hundred kilometres an hour,” he replied, “came like a streak down to the motor boat, started up in 30 seconds, and shot over to the gunboat. She didn’t go on board, but she talked to the commander for a few minutes and then went off seawards, going at a terrific pace.”

  “She’s crazy,” Lucienne declared.

  “That’s how I figure it out,” he agreed. “Anyway, if she’s a friend of yours, I thought you might return the emerald she dropped here that night.”

  Lucienne’s eyes were wide open. She lifted herself once more from her recumbent position.

  “Not one of her famous emeralds?”

  “I don’t know anything about famous jewels,” the young man answered. “I only know that it’s an emerald.”

  “And she hasn’t been to claim it?”

  “The first glimpse I have had of her since was this morning in the motor boat.”

  An expression of blank bewilderment was reflected in Lucienne’s charming face.

  “Ah! par exemple!” she murmured. “My dear, do you know what that necklace is worth?”

  “No idea.”

  “She gave a hundred and eighty thousand pounds for it—pounds sterling, mind!”

  “Then she was crazy,” he declared, “to go in swimming with that much round her neck.”

  She turned over on her side to face her companion. Those soft brown eyes were filled with something more than curiosity.

  “Hamer,” she demanded, “why did she take risks like that? What is there on this harmless little boat to send people demented in that fashion? A French Cabinet Minister has arrived here to try and buy it, Louise de Fantany tried to do the same thing and when she found you didn’t want to sell, she searched the place. What for? You are not anybody in disguise, are you Hamer? You are not a secret agent of one of the world’s great politicians incognito with boxes full of treaties in your wardrobe?”

  He shook his head.

  “The whole thing has got me set,” he confessed. I’m just a journalist, I’ve told you that before.”

  “Journalists come across secrets sometimes,” she reflected.

  “The greatest secret of my life,” he replied, is that I adore you.”

  “I wish you didn’t have to keep it a secret,” she said naively. The château is full of eligible young Frenchmen and my beloved mamma is beginning to get curious about you. Such clever people mothers, when they have ingenuous daughters like me to deal with. She knows that there is someone and she is beginning to realise that it’s you.”

  “I’ll speak to your father whenever you give me permission. I’ve told you that before,” he reminded her.

  “To-morrow then or the next day,” she sighed. “I warn you that you may find him just a little difficult.”

  Hamer nodded.

  “I can quite understand that,” he admitted. I must seem a pretty useless sort of person to him, living on a boat and writing articles for the Paris edition of an American newspaper. Got a Duke staying there, too, haven’t you?�
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  “How did you know that?” she demanded.

  “I see the French paper every morning. Gets the news quicker than any other. ‘Amongst the guests staying at the château de la Garoupe…Duc de Montessset.’”

  She made a little grimace.

  “I suppose you think it odd, Hamer,” she confided, “that in a republican country like this one thinks of titles any more. I don’t think I do. The old world that one hears about has fallen away. Perhaps it is as well. We are all more genuine men and women nowadays, but if you have been born in it there is a sort of glamour that holds. Mother has nearly shaken herself free. Father—never.”

  “He would like to see you the Duchesse de Montesset?”

  “Even if there were no château, no money, no estates, I believe that he would,” she admitted. “I have tried my best to laugh him out of such ideas. We have no court to go to. It is not dignified to be always accepting our position only at the hands of foreigners. I am a Frenchwoman, and I tell father that the only thing I can do is to be a Frenchwoman like the others. Being a duchess would make me no different. There is no reality about it. Guy is not particularly intelligent, he is not madly good looking, his manners are no better than other young men’s. The château is wonderful. There is already a scheme headed by the mayor of the nearest town to take it over—with some sort of a recompense, I suppose—and turn it into a museum. There is no dignity in the position of being a French aristocrat in a republican country.”

  He put his arm round her.

  “You are going to be an American citizen,” he told her, “and you shall live in any country of the world you choose.”

  “Well, that’s something,” she sighed. “You will give up America for me then?”

  “Pay visits there now and then, of course. I think you would like New York.”

  “I feel to-day that I should love any place with you, Hamer,” she whispered. “When the sun shines like this I feel that it must be France, but then I feel so affectionate, too, that it really doesn’t matter. Give me one of your cigarettes, and the lightest cocktail you can make and I shall swim home, be punctual for lunch, and see what I can do with daddy. If I come and wave to you in the afternoon you are to come over in the dinghy.”

  “You are an adorable child,” he said a little huskily, “and this time I don’t care whether anyone is looking or not..Afterwards I’ll fetch the emerald.”

  The cigarette was smoked, the cocktail duly approved. Then Hamer Wildburn produced a small wooden box, and in the centre of it the pendant emerald. She gave a little gasp.

  “Hamer,” she exclaimed, “it is the pendant. It is the best emerald of the whole necklace.”

  He nodded.

  “So Monsieur Mermillon seemed to think when he pointed it out.”

  She looked at it for several moments intently.

  “Why on earth doesn’t Louise come and claim it?” she marvelled.

  “I have asked myself that question more than once,” Hamer Wildburn admitted gravely. “The only conclusion I can come to is that if she makes a fuss about, it she must disclose the fact of her visit here. She is in some sort of a plot and she wants to keep behind the curtain. Well, when you give her this back you can tell her that her secret doesn’t exist, that I am no chatterbox. Unless it becomes necessary I shall never mention the fact of her visit here—especially if she is a friend of yours.”

  She handed the box back.

  “You don’t think that I am going to swim with this in my hand,” she protested. “Keep it, Hamer, or send it up by your matelot some time. Louise lives at the château de Mougins, only about ten kilometres from here.”

  He thrust the box into the pocket of his trousers. “I’ll tell you what I shall do while you are frivolling with this crowd,” he said. “I’m going over the boat with the plan and a hammer to tap the panels. I’m going to turn the old lady inside out to see what I’ve got that brings Cabinet Ministers here to beg, and a Princess to commit a crime and leave behind a twenty thousand pound emerald. Think of me as spending the afternoon in a sort of Aladdin’s cave, Lucienne.”

  “I don’t think you have any treasure aboard at all,” she told him, pausing for a minute on the last step. “I think you have another man—or perhaps a woman—in the Iron Mask whom you are keeping locked up in a small hole somewhere in the galley and whom you let out at nights. When I get back I shall consult the Almanac and see if any crowned head or dictator is missing. If you are playing gaoler to one of these, Hamer, you can begin to shiver in your shoes. Father and I between us will spot him.”

  With a little backward wave of the hand she dived gracefully into the sea. Almost immediately she turned over upon her back, and, facing the boat, threw him a kiss.

  “A demain, mon amour,” she called to him softly.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Table of Contents

  A small but perfectly appointed seaplane circled gracefully round the Bay of Garoupe, and finally alighted within a yard or two of the Aigle Noir. A few moments later the Baron de Brett, looking very smart in his white flannels and rakish-looking panama, climbed the gangway of the boat and descended into the lounge. Mermillon, who had just finished working with a messenger from his bureau in Paris, sent the latter away. He swung round to greet his friend.

  “Well, what luck?” he asked. “Comme toujours, je gagne,” was the indifferent reply. “But enough of that. Explain to me quickly—what is the meaning of a gunboat in the bay?”

  The French statesman shrugged his shoulders slightly. His manner was evidently intended to convey the impression that the matter was of no particular moment.

  “I interviewed the commander a few minutes after his arrival,” he confided. “He is here to take soundings. It is a part of the coast which the French Navy have never considered seriously, either for purposes of attack or defence, and he is here to draw up a report.”

  “But for us,” the Baron exclaimed, “the affair is an impossibility! Can you not telephone to the admiral and request its withdrawal? You surely have enough influence for that—the noises disturb your repose—you are here on a much-needed vacation, and must have complete rest.”

  “I have considered the matter,” Mermillon replied. “I tell you frankly I do not see what possible excuse I can invent. It is not seemly for a politician on vacation to interfere with the activities of either of the services. To what real nuisance can we claim that we are subjected on account of the presence of the gunboat? It might disturb our fishing. It might, in this small space, render the waters of the bay less attractive, but can a good Frenchman complain of such a thing?”

  “A mild remonstrance,” the Baron suggested.

  Mermillon shook his head. “You are not a diplomat, my dear friend,” he commented. “An angry one would be more disarming.”

  “Why the devil doesn’t that pig-headed American go for a cruise?” the Baron demanded furiously. “We could deal with him on the open seas all right.”

  “We might be able to,” Mermillon agreed, “but can you tell me how to get him on to the open seas? He is on terms of close friendship with the Montelimars, the people at the château. A very beautiful young lady from there visits him daily. They lunch together often upon the boat. If you were this pig-headed person you would be the first to find it difficult to move away under such conditions. That, I think, was at the back of his mind when he offered to sell the boat in two months’ time. He has no intention of leaving his situation here until matters are arranged. Incidentally, the young lady will have a fortune of millions.”

  The Baron grunted.

  “The Montelimars are wealthy enough,” he admitted. “We once did some business together.”

  “If you have done business with him, my dear Baron,” Mermillon remarked with a smile, “perhaps we had better keep away from the château altogether.”

  “Not at all,” was the half indignant reply. “We have met only on questions of high finance and Montelimar, or rather the firm he was conne
cted with, made money by our transaction.”

  Mermillon touched the bell by his side. “We will have a word with Chicotin,” he decided.

  There was no difficulty about that for the latter was, they were informed, waiting outside for an audience. Monsieur Chicotin, whose nationality was Russian, had survived an infamous past by reason of his skill in the manufacture of explosives. He was even now in possession of several diplomas from various nations and, in moments of expansion and in the right company, he was accustomed to boast that he had slain more men with his own fingers than any regiment of soldiers in the world. He was a smooth, dapper-looking person, with eyes set far too close together, in appearance a cross between a gigolo and an apache. Mermillon motioned him to a seat and waited until the door was closed. It transpired that Monsieur Chicotin was angry.

  “I am here to demand,” he began, “if all my work is to be for nothing. Why do you ask me to solve an interesting and important scientific problem and then allow it to be rendered useless?”

  “You are apparently suffering from some hallucination,” Mermillon observed gently. “I sent for you to ask how near you were to the completion of your task.”

  “One—two hours,” was the eager reply. “I hesitate to put the finishing touches because they should only be there a brief period before use. I have done what you asked me for. I have produced an instrument, adjustable by clockwork, which would destroy the boat you pointed out to me—not to clumsy fragments, not like the affairs of my younger days which blew a man’s head in one direction and his legs in the other, but left his body without demolition. I have achieved a wonderful task. My success is so great that I assure you gentlemen that placed on any part of the Bird of Paradise my engine would not blow her up in the old-fashioned parlance. It would disintegrate her. There would not be a recognisable molecule of timber or of metal or of any known material substance to be found afterwards. She and all that she is made of would disappear into air. The theoretical scientist would tell you that absolute destruction is impossible. As a matter of practice—no. Any class of man with any class of intelligence might search these seas, might employ divers underneath and searchers upon all the near land, and not one fragment or atom would they ever discover of the ship itself or any anyone who had been on her at the time of the explosion.”