“I must be in an inquisitive frame of mind,” Lucienne confessed, “because I find myself asking questions all the time. Why did she stay here with you an hour and a half after the others? To see the sun rise?”
“Well, we did see the sun rise for that matter,” he acknowledged, “but she stayed to add herself to the number of those who have bewildered me with their offers for my boat, and she stayed a little longer to elucidate once and for all the mystery of the Bird of Paradise.”
“Hamer! You are talking nonsense,”
Lucienne declared.
“If you say that again I shall kiss you,” he threatened.
“Things are not so bad as I feared,” she conceded, “but I should regard any attempt on your part towards familiarities of that sort as an impertinence which I should promptly resent.”
He leaned over and kissed her. She made not the slightest resistance, and he had a very strong idea that she returned the caress.
“What happened was this,” he said. “Tanya suddenly changed from a mad gamine to a young woman of sound common sense—a most inspired person. She told me some things which I would rather not pass on for the moment, but they were purely political. She told me others which I will confide to you. The reason, from different points of view, that different people want to acquire the Bird of Paradise, is because cunningly hidden in various parts of her are the detailed reports made by that fellow Tositi as to his dealings with some of your greatest politicians.”
Lucienne had gone a little paler. She was leaning forward in her chair.
“Is Mademoiselle Tanya being bribed by one of these men?” she asked.
“By no means,” he answered. “She is working for herself and for her party. She is a Communist, and she wants to start a new era in this country. It is true that she egged those half-drunken young men on to bring her on board. It is true, I believe, that in the first instance she encouraged a row so that if I got knocked out she would be free of the place, but she had only one motive for coming or for staying here. She wanted those records.”
Lucienne removed her hat. She placed one of her small delicate hands on either side of Hamer’s cheeks, drew his face down, and kissed him.
“Now I feel better,” she declared. “She did try to vamp you, though.”
“All in the way of business,” he denied. “I told her that I was engaged, and that Americans did not understand the vamping dodge. It was then she became earnest and talked to me like a serious woman.”
“You didn’t let her have the records?”
“Not a chance,” he answered. “Where they are I don’t know myself. What to do with the boat I don’t know. What I am sure of, though, is that, there is going to be some trouble here before very long.”
“The boat is mine,” she reminded him calmly.
“Then, for heaven’s sake, come and marry me to-morrow at Nice, and take possession,” he suggested. “I’m as ready for a fight as most men, but I honestly don’t see any fun in being shot or murdered in my sleep just because I happen to own a boat which possesses secrets. It is not as though I cared a fig either way. I am neither a philanthropist nor a sentimentalist. Anyone can govern France for all I care. For a moment or two that young woman last night nearly converted me, then I thought of that gunboat and Perissol on the hill. They would never let her get away with anything. Why on earth, Lucienne, can’t we go to General Perissol and tell him what we believe. He must have a suspicion of it already. He is the man to deal with the affair.”
She shook her head sadly.
“Hamer, dearest,” she said,‘“There is more to be considered. General Perissol is not France any more than Edouard Mermillon is France. Father is coming back from Paris next week. We must wait till then.”
“And in the meantime,” he observed, “what is to happen if my Joan of Arc, with a thousand Marseillais behind her, sweep through the gendarmes here, as they easily could, and seize the boat? What about that, Lucienne?”
“Did you part on friendly terms with your Joan of Arc, as you call her?”
“Yes. But make no mistake about this,” he insisted. “She made me no promise. I don’t amount in her eyes to a husk of chaff. She wants the secret of the boat in her hands, and then, according to her, the whole of the French Government is doomed.”
Lucienne simply pointed backwards over her shoulder. He followed the direction of her gesture, and suddenly realised that the guns of the Fidélité were practically trained upon them.
“So that’s what the gunboat’s there for, is it?” he demanded, with indications of anger in his tone.
She laid her hand upon his.
“Hamer, dear,” she said, “remember this. You are the unfortunate possessor of a bone of contention. The final issue does not concern you. The only insupportable catastrophe would be if your Joan of Arc, as you call her, were to succeed. Otherwise the whole thing would be, as I think you say in English, stalemate. It would be settled in the way my father wishes it settled.”
Hamer gazed gloomily across the stretch of sea landwards. Since the first inkling of the fact that the Bird of Paradise carried treasure of some sort it seemed to him that the situation had never been so unsatisfactory. He fancied that he could almost hear Tanya’s gentle beseeching voice, the music which her simple eloquence had sometimes imparted to it, the pleading which, regardless of all the small things of life come so convincingly from her heart. And for those few minutes, minutes which he was destined never to forget, the little guttersnipe, as he had heard her called, and as she had more than once seemed to him, had attained to something like a stainless spirituality. He recalled that exquisite simplicity of verbiage and motive which had so nearly undermined even his promise. Every other argument those people had brought to bear upon him seemed suddenly sordid. Even Lucienne was begging only for her father’s material safety and well being. Beside all this Tanya’s message seemed to come to him from a different and a cleaner world.
“You are not Hesitating, Hamer?” Lucienne asked him softly.
He made no effort to explain. There was no human being, he felt, who could have understood. For the moment, however, he was spared the necessity of a response. The small dinghy from the shore was rocking below. A boy, exhausted with his efforts, was resting upon his oars and in the band of his cap was an oblong strip of pale green.
“For me?” Hamer called out. The boy nodded.
“Une depeche pour Monsieur. Urgent.”
Auguste’s hand steadied the boat. The boy passed him the message. Hamer, with an apologetic glance towards his companion, tore the perforated edges. He read, and read again. The message took his breath away. It was dated from Paris that morning.
“I wish to see you at the earliest possible moment on an urgent matter. Cancel every engagement and come to me at once. Ned will meet you at Le Bourget. Buy ‘plane if necessary.—Luke.”
Hamer’s surprise choked him. He uttered no word or exclamation. He simply read the message over for the third time.
“No bad news, I hope?” Lucienne asked, gravely curious.
The young man came to himself. He passed the message to her, handed down ten francs to the boy and waved him away.
“Who is this from?” she inquired. “My father.”
“I thought he never came to Europe nowadays.”
“He has not been for two years. It must be ten since he was in France.”
“His message sounds very urgent,” she remarked.
“Something very extraordinary must have happened,” he agreed. “I have heard my father say he never intended to visit France again and I have never known him to change his mind.”
Lucienne sighed.
“Well, I am afraid there is no doubt about it,” she said. “You will have to go.”
“Come up to the Cap with me,” he begged, “while I telephone. We can decide there whether I take a ‘plane or the six o’clock Blue Train.”
“The weather’s bad for flying inland,” she reminded h
im anxiously. “We had a message this morning. My cousin thought of flying; one of the young men you knocked to pieces. He heard that it was snowing at Grenoble.”
“I hate flying anyway,” he replied, “but if they guarantee me a reasonable passage I suppose I will have to go. What I am thinking about is, though—what about the boat?”
“I will take care of her for you,” Lucienne promised.
“You will do nothing of the sort,” he objected firmly. “It would not surprise me in the least to come back—when I do come back—and find her blown to smithereens, like that flat in Juan was the other night. I don’t want you anywhere near her, my dear.”
“If you want to keep things just as they are,” she suggested, after a moment’s pause, “why not have a word or two with Commander Berard?”
He nodded.
“It seems the most sensible thing,” he decided.
“I will help Auguste pack your bag,” she said, “while you take the dinghy across.”
“What a luxury!” he smiled. “I never felt so nearly married in my life.”
“Like the feeling?”
“It’s swell,” he assured her.
Commander Berard was reticent, but reasonable.
“You see, Commander,” Hamer explained, “I know very well that you are supposed to be down here taking soundings, and the rest of it, and that you could not be expected to enter upon any activities outside, but there is the most important French Cabinet Minister within a few yards of you. There is the chief of all the police of France up on the hill, and you may possibly have gathered from them that my boat is an object of interest to certain undesirable people.”
Berard’s expression was unchanging. He said nothing. He merely listened.
“We will leave it at that,” Hamer went on. “I am compelled to go to Paris to-day. It is my father who has sent for me. I shall leave Auguste in charge, of course, and he has Jean with him. I want to ask you unofficially whether you could not—bearing all things in mind—place a small guard upon her until I get back? That and your guns ought to be enough.”
“I think I should be justified in going as far as that, Mr. Wildburn,” the commander admitted. “The only thing is that if my action is not approved of by General Perissol I shall have to withdraw my men.”
“I’ll take the risk,” Hamer agreed.
CHAPTER XXIV
Table of Contents
Hamer Wildburn alighted from the Paris Blue Train at the Gare de Lyons on the following morning, and held out his hand to the bespectacled young man who hurried up to him.
“Well, Ned, old fellow,” he greeted him. “This is a nice surprise to spring upon one. What’s all the fuss about?”
“Can’t tell you a single thing, Hamer. We only heard that the old man was on his way over when he was half a day out of Cherbourg. I expect he had hard work dodging the newspaper men at the other end and those radio fellows. We had instructions to take the suite he used to have in the old days at the Meurice and to get you here at once. The suite was easy enough, but you took a bit of moving.”
“I hate Paris anyway—especially at this time of the year,” Hamer confessed, handing the ticket for his registered luggage to a porter. “I thought it would have done the old man good to have come down to my part of the world, and, anyway, I didn’t waste any time in telephoning. There was a storm blowing south, around Uriage way, and there were no ‘planes leaving of any sort.”
“It blew hard here last night,” the young man observed. “The chief heard from Le Bourget that no ‘plane would be leaving Cannes so he didn’t expect you before.”
“What’s, it all about?” Hamer inquired. “It isn’t a thing we talk much about, but I know for a fact that he never meant to set foot in France again as long as he lived.”
“We were just as much surprised as you were,” Ned Foster answered, as they made their way towards the exit. “So far we have not heard a word of explanation.”
“Something to do with the newspaper, perhaps?”
His companion shrugged his shoulders.
“Shouldn’t be surprised. We have to run the paper as we are told, of course, but we run it at a good many millions of francs loss because of our politics. I am never quite sure when I get down in the mornings that I shan’t find the office blown up.”
They stepped into the waiting automobile, and drove off after a very brief delay. Hamer looked about him with distaste. It was a grey morning, but the air was heavy and oppressive.
“Well, I hope he won’t keep me long,” he remarked fervently. “I am really having the time of my life down there, Ned. I am doing my stunt of work for you fellows, and meeting some very interesting people—French politicians most of them, by-the-bye. I have also just become engaged to the prettiest and sweetest girl you ever saw out of the States, or in them either, for that matter.”
Ned Foster started.
“Does the chief know that?” he asked.
“It won’t be popular news, I don’t suppose, but he will know as soon as I see him,” the other replied. “I have not had time to write yet. What sort of a humour is he in?”
“Dangerous, I should say. Dangerous, with a touch of the mysterious. He is too amiable to be natural. So far, although he came over on a fast boat, and insisted upon a special train from Cherbourg, he has done nothing but loll about in the sitting-room, smoking those terrible cigars. He has not been near the office, and he doesn’t want to see Jimmy Pollen until to-morrow. I had hard work to keep Jimmy away. He’s afraid the governor may have an idea of shutting up here.”
“Is he out of bed yet—the governor, I mean?”
“Got up at six, and had his coffee and rolls. He went out last night in his ordinary clothes, after having dinner in his room, but he was back before midnight. I think he was only having a look round the place.”
“Well, I wish he had chosen another time for this surprise visit,” Hamer grumbled. “I’m a dutiful son when it comes to the point, and all that, but I was just planning a cruise to Bandol and Toulon when I got your despatch.”
“Living on that little boat of yours?”
“I should say I am. Sleep on deck most nights. It’s a good life.”
“You can get the same sort or thing at Palm Beach or Newquay,” his patriotic friend reminded him.
Hamer shook, his head.
“No, you can’t,” he denied. “Too many people. Too much to do. Too many late parties it’s so artificial at those places. We lead the simple life down my way. Besides, you see—”
“I understand,” the other interrupted. “The sweetest and prettiest girl in the world out side the States—or in them for that matter—lives there!”
“You can chaff, but you wait till you see her,” Hamer laughed.
Luke Scott Wildburn, who was accounted one of the most successful men in the world, welcomed his son with a good natured smile and a hearty handshake. He was a tall, fine looking man with a good deal of his son’s physique, but with the worn lines of coming age in his face, and a touch of langour in his manner which some people thought was affectation, but which he had possessed all his life. He was dressed, notwithstanding the heat, with great formality, and he had apparently been dictating letters to one of his typists, who left the room and hurried away at the entrance of the two visitors.
“Well, young fellow, you hated coming away, I suppose?” he remarked, pushing his chair further away from the table and crossing his legs.
“So would you, sir, if you had been in my place,” his son replied. “It’s no weather for Paris. I wonder you can stand that kit.”
“I have an early appointment with the President,” Scott Wildburn explained, “and you know we Americans have the reputation of overdoing the right thing for fear of doing the wrong. What do you say about it, Ned?”
“Before midday, sir, even in diplomatic circles, a certain negligence of costume is permitted in August.”
“Hear him,” his chief chuckled. “He’s a wal
king encyclopaedia. He will suggest your first proper remarks when you are introduced to a fashionable cocotte, a princess, or a crowned head. I don’t know what I should do without Ned.”
“Thank you, sir,” the young man replied. “I hope you will never have occasion to.”
“Apt, you see, as usual…To return to the subject of my black coat, I think that I am one of those people who are proof against these changes of climate, perhaps because I am of a sedentary turn of life. You must have some coffee after your journey, Hamer. Order petit déjeuner in the smaller salon, Ned, for Hamer. I will ring up your room when I want anybody or anything. See that a car and servant are ready at half past eleven for my visit. After that time you and Hamer can fade away for lunch somewhere if you want to. I am invited by the President.”
Father and son strolled into a smaller room, and Ned hastened away. Scott Wildburn threw himself into an easy chair, and lit an atrocious looking cigar. Hamer followed suit with a cigarette.
“So you are having a good time, are you, young fellow?”
“I like it,” Hamer confessed. “It would not suit you, sir, but then I was never so fond of action as you are.”
“I don’t know that I am particularly fond of action,” his father meditated. “On the other hand, I cannot see how anybody finds any time for dawdling with only thirty or forty years of actual life.”
“I suppose one develops even when one dawdles,” Hamer reflected. “I have not been utterly lazy either. I have written two articles a week for the paper, read a good bit, and I have the outline of a novel ready to start upon. I like working all right, but I like working in my own way and at my own time. I should hate an official post, for instance, with all its responsibilities and complications, and I should never be able to manage an immense organisation like yours, with all your staff to keep in their places. Incidentally, sir, I was going to write to you in a few days to tell you that I am engaged to be married.”
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