21 Greatest Spy Thrillers in One Premium Edition (Mystery & Espionage Series)
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“It must be because there is something terribly valuable concealed on board—jewels or something of that sort. Or something terribly incriminating—stolen papers or bonds. If it was that, Hamer, and they couldn’t get hold of the boat, they might try to destroy it!”
“What good would that do?” he demanded. “Stupid! They would get rid of something they were afraid of.”
He smiled incredulously.
“Lucienne, my dear,” he expostulated, “where on earth could anything be hidden upon the boat that I don’t know about? I have no valuables or papers myself. My first visitor, too, pretty well ransacked the place. If there had been anything to be discovered I should think that the Princess would have had it.”
Lucienne shook her head. Nothing that he had said seemed to reassure her.
“Do your two men sleep on board,” she asked.
“Why, yes,” he told her. “In the galley there. Why?”
“You don’t keep a watch, I suppose?”
“Never thought of it,” he admitted. “I never heard of a burglary at sea.”
“Well, keep one to-night and the next few nights,” she begged. “Just to please me.”
“All right,” he promised. “I believe the men sleep on deck, anyway, this hot weather.”
“Have you a revolver?”
“Did you ever know an American without one? I will keep it loaded at my bedside if you say the word.”
“Please do. And if there is any further attempt, or if any strangers visit you, will you promise to let me know?”
“Faithfully.”
She drew a sigh of relief.
“Now I must really depart,” she announced, with a glance at her wrist watch. “It has been a lovely morning, Hamer. Thank you so much.”
“Swimming back, or shall I take you in the dinghy?”
She handed him her watch and adjusted her cap.
“I’ll swim,” she decided. “If I want you to come to-night and send a note will it be all right?”
“I’ll come over in less than no time,” he promised her.
They crossed the deck. She drew off her peignoir and stood poised for a moment at the top of the steps—a slim, fairy-like figure, seductively feminine, notwithstanding the almost boyishly straight line.
“Wait for my message,” she called to him, as she turned round and trod water after her almost perfect dive.
He waved his hand and stood watching her until she landed.
CHAPTER XI
Table of Contents
The girl slipped during the last few steps of her furious dance in the roughly built café chantant at Garoupe, and would have fallen from the slightly raised platform into the scanty row of chairs below, but for the promptness of a man seated there alone, who rose swiftly to his feet and caught her in his arms. She lay there for a moment or two, panting, an epitome of abandon in her tumbled skirts, her mass of disarranged black hair, and the trembling of her passion-riven body. The man gazed down at her in amazement.
“It is without a doubt the little Tanya!” he exclaimed.
She raised her head, which had rested upon his shoulder, stared at him a moment, then sank into the cane chair by his side.
“Paul Chicotin!” she cried. “It is thou, Paul, my little one.”
“Large enough to have saved you from a bad fall,” he reminded her. “And you, what are you doing here, dancing like a crazy thing in a village barn?”
“Oh, la la,” she scoffed. “You will find fault with my performance next. I dance here because I choose. Remain where you are, little one. More must come of this.”
She stood up and bowed to the small audience, who were still applauding. Another performer—a man—came forward to do his gymnastic turn. She caught Chicotin by the arm.
“This is a meeting,” she exclaimed. “It means much to me. I need not perform unless I choose. We are going to drink a glass of wine together—yes?”
They left the scantily filled barn, crossed the road, and entered a café, rather a famous café in its way, with its table set against the stone wall, a precipice a few feet away. There was a screen of plane trees around the place. The lighting was almost negligible. She led the way to a table in the corner. He summoned a waiter from out of the shadows and ordered a bottle of champagne. She looked at him curiously from those marvellous black eyes of hers, which seemed to be flecked with gold.
“Things march well with thee, then,” she observed.
“With those who know where to look for it, there is always money,” he replied, boastfully.
“You are still a worker for The Cause,” she asked, dropping her voice.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“No.”
Her face was almost ugly as she leaned towards him.
“You are a renegade,” she demanded.
“Bah, such folly!” he answered. ‘“Years ago I was a nihilist. I was also an anarchist. Later I joined the Communist party. Now I belong to no party. I am an egoist. I work for myself, and myself only. My genius is for those who choose to pay for it.”
“Ah!”
There was a world of meaning in the long drawn-out interjection. He rolled a cigarette and lit it. She watched his fingers and hands as though fascinated.
“In one thing I am unchanged,” he declared. “I hate the people who possess wealth while I have nothing, but it is not for vague causes or for the community or any society that I labour now. It is for Paul Chicotin.”
“Is it not that you serve the world best when you labour for the oppressed masses,” she demanded, “when you work to destroy the capitalist and the aristocrat?”
“Perhaps so,” he answered indifferently, “Only I do not care any longer for the masses. I work only for Paul Chicotin.”
She bit her upper lip thoughtfully. It was not until the wine was served that she relaxed.
“To the sacred cause of the people,” she said, raising her glass.
“To Paul Chicotin and Tanya,” he countered. “In the world I have lost touch with, little one, I have not lost my fondness for thee. There is a lover—yes?”
“Plenty,” she assured him. “I give myself where the cause demands it. I am not like you. I have no self outside it.”
“If you give yourself to me,” he suggested cunningly, “you might rekindle my enthusiasm.”
“I wonder,” she answered.
He held her hand. They kissed in the darkness, yet she was guarded even in her love making.
“What do you do here, Paul?” she asked.
“I have completed a marvellous piece of work within the last few days,” he confided, “work no other person in the world could have ventured upon. For it I have already received fifty thousand francs. In a day or two I am to receive a further hundred thousand.”
There was a covetous gleam in her eyes.
“Who is it that has such sums of money to spend and what is this work?” she demanded with apparent carelessness. “I remember you only as an indolent student who tampered with fine machinery and made clocks.”
“This,” he admitted, “is a clock. It is a clock de luxe. It is a clock such as never before has been fashioned. It is the most amazing piece of machinery in the world.”
“Tell me some more,” she begged.
“There is no more to tell,” he rejoined. “It is not as it was in the old days when we worked in a band. I work now for a single employer and I have no place in his counsels.”
“You have become a tool once more,” she scoffed.
“I have earned money,” he replied, “but I have earned money for Paul Chicotin. I have a bank balance such as a man might be proud of. Before this week is over I shall add to it one hundred thousand francs. Think of that, Tanya! Only a man of genius could succeed in such a fashion.”
“I know more of the men of genius,” she sighed, “who fail. Perhaps they fail because their aims are lofty, because they work only for those who suffer.”
“I am one of those who su
ffer and have suffered,” he answered doggedly. “Now I work for myself…Tell me what you are doing here?”
She leaned across the table, a familiar attitude, her elbows firmly planted, her oval face between her long, tapering fingers. She was sallow in complexion and her make-up was negligible. Her eyes, however, were brilliant and her full lips invitingly red. She was without doubt a Jewess.
“Tell me first,” she insisted, “for whom you perform these works. Who has bought that cunning brain of yours, Paul, and those marvellous fingers? In whose cause do you labour?”
“The cause of Paul Chicotin,” he repeated.
“And who reaps the benefit of your brain?”
“Paul Chicotin.”
“It is all you are disposed to tell me?”
“It is as much as is good for you to know.” She brooded over his response, smoking his cigarettes with fierce little gulps, drinking the wine greedily.
“Often they have asked for you in The Circle, Paul,” she confided.
“The Circle for me does not exist any longer,” he declared. “I am no longer a philanthropist. I shall soon be old. Life is only a matter of a few short years and then—gone—gone,” he added with a snap of the fingers. “The ash heap gets us in the end. I wheeze no more of suffering humanity. It is folly that the strong should work for the weak, the clever man for the fool. I work for Paul Chicotin. Mine is the one unassailable philosophy of the world. I rely on no one. I depend on no one. I use my genius for myself.”
She looked at him searchingly. She had the air of one seeking to penetrate into the man’s mind, to learn what was there beneath the mere words. The fragmentary moonlight seemed to have changed her whole expression. She was no longer the Paris gamine dancing before a crude audience for unworthy applause. The hidden enthusiasm of a woman with a purpose in life had almost spiritualised her. She neglected her champagne. In that moment he was dimly aware of, although he viciously resented, the change in their relations.
“So your genius now,” she murmured, “goes not for The Cause, but to make life soft for Paul Chicotin.”
“It is ill put,” he grunted, “but the meaning is the same.”
“I liked it better,” she told him, “when, without a scruple you blew off the heads and legs of innocent people to reach the one guilty one.”
“And spent my days hungry, my nights in squalor, and every second in fear.”
“And now,” she continued, “you work for a master. What is the task, Paul, mon petit? You work on a machine perhaps to drive a hundred toilers on to the streets because it will do their work, or are you the paid servant of an assassin?”
“I work for Paul Chicotin,” he repeated, doggedly. “That is why I can offer you champagne, a little flat at Juan or Nice, if you care to stay in these parts, and man, hours of the day and night in my company.”
She sighed.
“I was starving when I wandered over here from Marseilles,” she confided. “In a sense you are right, I suppose. The Circle is in trouble. We have good leaders, but they have no power. All our efforts fade away in speeches forgotten as soon as they are made, for our audiences seem to have melted away. Never has there been such an opportunity as we possess at present, and we cannot use it. If we had the money now that we had in the old times, the money to bribe, to buy the secrets of our enemies, we would brush away this fog which hangs over our beloved country. We would set the guillotine flashing once more in the Place de la Republique. We would see the heads tumble of the men who are sucking; her life blood away.”
He looked uneasily around.
“That sort of talk,” he warned her, “would get you into trouble nowadays.”
“The leaves of the plane trees would need to betray us then, dear Paul,” she pointed, out, “for there is no one else here, no one to listen to a poor little dancing girl whose heart aches for the suffering millions. We know who those men are who have betrayed her but they are far above our reach. We need a few men of courage like Paul Chicotin used to be.”
He caressed her fingers and she permitted his touch passively.
“Paul Chicotin, the Killer for The Cause,” he whispered, “is dead, but Paul Chicotin, the lover of Tanya, remains.”
“Passion is dead in my heart,” she sighed. “The man who wakes it must be one of us. Tell me then, my friend, since you think so dearly of me—for whom is it that you work?”
He shook his head.
“I answer all your questions, Tanya,” he complained. “I tell you everything. To me you are dumb. Why are you singing for sous when your place is at the Folies Bergères? Are you down here for The Circle?”
“The Circle has been driven out of Paris,” she confided. “It is re-established secretly, oh, and with so much caution, in Marseilles. I have a mission here, but it is so hard to make progress—penniless and without friends.”
He drew from his pocket a porte-monnaie stuffed with notes and threw it on the table before her.
“Never again call yourself penniless,” he chided. “Chicotin is at least faithful to his loves. You have been my bonne amie, Tanya. You need money? It is yours.”
“I will take money,” she told him, “only from my lover.”
“Can I not be he once more?” Chicotin pleaded.
She shook her head sadly, although there was promise in her eyes.
“You have been, dear Paul,” she admitted, “and a wonderful lover, too. You might be again, but you would have to remember that the price of my love would be—not your mille notes, but your help.”
“But how can I help?” he demanded. “I have told you that Paul the Killer is dead. I work only for myself. I have no heart for any Cause. France, Italy, Russia—they are all one to me. Patriotism was once a religion in my heart. I have outlived that. I am Chicotin the individual. I love life, I love wine, I love comfort, and I love luxury, and—I love you.”
“Prove it,” she begged, clutching at his hand. “I am not asking you to become again The Killer, the scourge upon the earth, as the bourgeois Press once called you. Help me with a word or two of information.”
“Well?”
She rose casually enough to her feet and looked searchingly around the place. Satisfied as to their complete detachment she resumed her chair, folded her arms and leaned across the table towards him.
“It has long been known, Paul,” she said, “that France has been the carcase upon which a number of her so-called statesmen have fastened themselves—pilfering money, stealing it in huge sums, sucking her dry with the help of such poor dupes as the man whom they shot at Geneva for fear he should breathe a word as to his accomplices. Those men are still alive. For all we know they are still engaged in the greatest orgy of robbery that the world has ever known. The aristocrats, whose heads filled the baskets at the time of the revolution, and whose blood ran down the gutters, were innocent babes compared to these men. They believed that they had the right to oppress the poor. They were blatant in their lives as they were in their deaths. These men whom we Communists hate so now call themselves of the people. They profess to rule France for the people. They call themselves honest citizens of the Republic. They sit in the high places. Their mistresses hung with Jewels roll in their Limousines and befoul the very atmosphere of our adored Paris. Listen Paul,” she went on, clutching him fiercely by the shoulder. “If we were in a position to publish the truth all France would be on our side, revolution would sweep over the country like a devouring wind. There would come the Soviet of France, starting upon the heights, not having to tear its way upwards with bleeding fingers. France, the real France, would rule the world. Bear with me, Paul, a minute, I implore you.”
She drank wine, holding the glass to her lips with trembling fingers.
“Calm yourself, my little Tanya,” her companion begged. “This is good for the meetings. It is good when you are in company with the others, but remember—we seem to be alone, but one never knows. Calm yourself, my child. I am here waiting to listen.”
“Well?” Chicotin asked a little breathlessly.
“Berthold told me with those dying words that the truth was to be found in these parts,” she pointed out. “That is why I am here. Can you help me, my lover that used to be, my lover who might still hold me in his arms?”
Paul Chicotin shivered although the night was warm, and the perfume of the flowering shrubs that, hung over the terrace was heavy and soothing.
“Was the money in his room?” he asked.
“The money was there—a few hundred francs, barely more. There had been a letter. It was gone. The place was swept bare. The police had seen to that. They knew very well what he was striving to tell me. They stood around in the room of execution to see that he carried the secret of what he had learnt with, him to the grave.”
Chicotin lit a fresh cigarette with shaking yellow-stained fingers. Already the stumps of a dozen were on the table.
“The thing is probably a myth,” he declared. “There is nothing to grasp—no starting point. What good can you do groping about this coast looking—for what? You don’t know. Berthold should have had the courage to shout one name, one hint. The bullet would have been a pleasanter death.”
“Berthold was wiser than you,” she told him scornfully. “He knew that if he had spoken that definite word, if he had given me any hint which it was possible to follow, I should never have seen the sunlight again.”