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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  “Miss Worth!” he exclaimed.

  She came towards him confidently, her hands outstretched, slim, dressed in sober black, her cheeks as pale as ever, her eyes a little more brilliant. She threw her muff into a chair and a moment afterwards sank into it herself.

  “You have been expecting me?” she asked eagerly.

  Granet was a little taken aback.

  “I have been hoping to hear from you,” he said. “You told me, if you remember, not to write.”

  “It was better not,” she assented. “Even after you left I had a great deal of trouble. That odious man, Major Thomson, put me through a regular cross-examination again, and I had to tell him at last—”

  “What?” Granet exclaimed anxiously.

  “That we were engaged to be married,” she confessed. “There was really no other way out of it.”

  “That we were engaged,” Granet repeated blankly.

  She nodded.

  “He pressed me very hard,” she went on, “and I am afraid I made some admissions—well, there were necessary—which, to say the least of it, were compromising. There was only one way out of it decently for me, and I took it. You don’t mind?”

  “Of course not,” he replied.

  “There was father to be considered,” she went on. “He was furious at first—”

  “You told your father?” he interrupted.

  “I had to,” she explained, smoothing her muff. “He was there all the time that Thomson man was cross-examining me.”

  “Then your father believes in our engagement, too?”

  “He does,” she answered drily, “or I am afraid you would have heard a little more from Major Thomson before now. Ever since that night, father has been quite impossible to live with. He says he has to being a part of his work all over again.”

  “The bombs really did do some damage, then?” he asked.

  She nodded, looking at him for a moment curiously.

  “Yes,” she acknowledged, “they did more harm than any one knows. The place is like a fortress now. They say that if they can find the other man who helped to light that flare, he will be shot in five minutes.”

  Granet, who had been standing with his elbow upon the mantelpiece, leaned over and took a cigarette from a box.

  “Then, for his sake, let us hope that they do not find him,” he remarked.

  “And ours,” she said softly.

  Granet stood and looked at her steadfastly, the match burning in his fingers. Then he threw it away and lit another. The interval had been full of unadmitted tension, which suddenly passed.

  “Shall you think I am horribly greedy,” she asked, “if I say that I should like something to eat? I am dying of hunger.”

  Granet for a moment was startled. Then he moved towards the bell.

  “How absurd of me!” he exclaimed. “Of course, you have just come up, haven’t you?”

  “I have come straight from the station here,” she replied.

  He paused.

  “Where are you staying, then?”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t know yet,” she admitted.

  “You don’t know?” he repeated.

  She met his gaze without flinching. There was a little spot of colour in her cheeks, however, and her lips quivered.

  “You see,” she explained, “things became absolutely impossible for me at Market Burnham. I won’t say that they disbelieved me—not my father, at any rate—but he seems to think that it was somehow my fault—that if you hadn’t been there that night the thing wouldn’t have happened. I am watched the whole of the time, in fact not a soul has said a civil word to me—since you left. I just couldn’t stand it any longer. I packed up this morning and I came away without saying a word to any one.”

  Granet glanced at the clock. It was a quarter past ten.

  “Well, the first thing to do is to get you something to eat,” he said; ringing the bell. “Do you mind having something here or would you like to go to a restaurant?”

  “I should much prefer having it here,” she declared. “I am not fit to go anywhere, and I am tired.”

  He rang the bell and gave Jarvis a few orders. The girl stood up before the glass, took off her hat and smoothed her hair with her hands. She had the air of being absolutely at home.

  “Did you come up without any luggage at all?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “I have a dressing-bag and a few things downstairs on a taxicab,” she said. “I told the man to stop his engine and wait for a time—until I had seen you,” she added, turning around.

  There was a very slight smile upon her lips, the glimmer of something that was almost appealing, in her eyes. Granet took her hand and patted it kindly. Her response was almost hysterical.

  “It’s very sweet of you to trust me like this,” he said. “Jarvis will bring you something to eat, then I’ll take you round to your aunt’s. Where is it she lives—somewhere in Kensington, isn’t it? Tomorrow we must talk things over.”

  She threw herself back once more in the easy-chair and glanced around her.

  “I should like,” she decided, “to talk them over now.”

  He glanced towards the door.

  “Just as you please,” he said, “only Jarvis will be in with your sandwiches directly.”

  She brushed aside his protest.

  “I was obliged,” she continued, “to say that I was engaged to you, to save you from something—I don’t know what. The more I have thought about it, the more terrible it has all seemed. I am not going to even ask you for any explanation. I—I daren’t.”

  Granet looked at his cigarette for a moment thoughtfully. Then he threw it into the fire.

  “Perhaps you are wise,” he said coolly. “All the same, when the time comes there is an explanation.”

  “It is the present which has become such a problem,” she went on. “I was driven to leave home and I don’t think I can go back again. Father is simply furious with me, and every one about the place seems to have an idea that I am somehow to blame for what happened the other night.”

  “That seems to me a little unjust,” he protested.

  “It isn’t unjust at all,” she replied brusquely. “I’ve told them all lies and I’ve got to pay for them. I came to you—well, there really wasn’t anything else left for me to do, was there? I hope you don’t think that I am horribly forward. I am quite willing to admit that I like you, that I liked you from the first moment we met at Lady Anselman’s luncheon. At the same time, if that awful night hadn’t changed everything, I should have behaved just like any other stupidly and properly brought-up young woman—waited and hoped and made an idiot of myself whenever you were around, and in the end, I suppose, been disappointed. You see, fate has rather changed that. I had to invent our engagement to save you—and here I am,” she added, with a little nervous laugh, turning her head as the door opened.

  Jarvis entered with the sandwiches and arranged them on a small table by her side. Granet poured out the wine for her, mixed himself a whiskey-and-soda and took a sandwich also from the plate.

  “Now tell me,” he began, as soon as Jarvis had disappeared, “what is there at the back of your mind about my presence there at Market Burnham that night?”

  She laid down her sandwich. For the first time her voice trembled. Granet realised that beneath all this quietness of demeanour a volcano was threatening.

  “I have told you that I do not want to think of that night,” she said firmly. “I simply do not understand.”

  “You have something in your mind?” he persisted. “You don’t believe, really, that that man Collins, who was found shot—”

  She glanced at the door.

  “I couldn’t sleep that night,” she interrupted. “I heard your car arrive, I saw you both together, you and the man who was shot. I saw—more than that. I hadn’t meant to tell you this but perhaps it is best. I ask you for no explanation. You see, I am something of an individu
alist. I just want one thing, and about the rest I simply don’t care. To me, to myself, to my own future, to my own happiness the rest is very slight, and I never pretend to be anything else but a very selfish person. Only you know now that I have lied, badly.”

  “I understand,” he said. “Finish your sandwiches and I will take you to your aunt’s. To-morrow I will write to your father.”

  She drew a little sigh.

  “I will do whatever you say,” she agreed, “only—please look at me.”

  He stooped down a little. She seized his wrists, her voice was suddenly hoarse.

  “You weren’t pretending altogether?” she pleaded. “Don’t make me feel a perfect beast. You did care a little? You weren’t just talking nonsense?”

  She would have drawn him further down but he kept away.

  “Listen,” he said, “when I tell you that I am going to write to your father to-morrow, you know what that means. For the rest, I must think. Perhaps this is the only way out. Of course, I like you but the truth is best, isn’t it? I hadn’t any idea of this. As a matter of fact, I am rather in love with someone else.”

  She caught at her breath for a moment, half closed her eyes as thought to shut out something disagreeable.

  “I don’t care,” she muttered. “You see how low I have fallen—I’ll bear even that. Come,” she added, springing up, “my aunt goes to bed before eleven. You can drive me down there, if you like. Are you going to kiss me?”

  He bent over her a little gravely and his lips touched her forehead. She caught his face suddenly between her hands and kissed him on the lips. Then she turned towards the door.

  “Of course, I am horribly ashamed,” she exclaimed, “but then—well, I’m myself. Come along, please.”

  He followed her down into the taxi and they drove off towards Kensington.

  “How long have you known the other girl?” she asked abruptly.

  “Very little longer than I have known you,” he answered.

  She took off her glove. He felt her hand steal into his.

  “You’ll try and like me a little, please?” she begged. “There hasn’t been any one who cared for so many years—not all my life. When I came out—ever since I came out—I have behaved just like other properly, well-brought-up girls. I’ve just sat and waited. I’ve rather avoided men than otherwise. I’ve sat and waited. Girls haven’t liked me much. They say I’m odd. I’m twenty-eight now, you know. I haven’t enjoyed the last six years. Father’s wrapped up in his work. He thinks he has done his duty if he sends me to London sometimes to stay with my aunt. She is very much like him, only she is wrapped up in missions instead of science. Neither of them seems to have time to be human.”

  “It must have been rotten for you,” Granet said kindly.

  Her hand clutched his, she came a little nearer.

  “Year after year of it,” she murmured. “If I had been good-looking, I should have run away and gone on the stage. If I had been clever, I should have left home and done something. But I am like millions of others—I am neither. I had to sit and wait. When I met you, I suddenly began to realise what it would be like to care for some one. I knew it wasn’t any use. And then this miracle happened. I couldn’t help it,” she went on doggedly. “I never thought of it at first. It came to me like a great flash that the only way to save you—”

  “To save me from what?” he asked.

  “From being shot as a spy,” she answered quickly. “There! I’m not a fool, you know. You may think I’m a fool about you but I am not about things in general. Good-bye! This is my aunt’s. Don’t come in. Ring me up to-morrow morning. I’ll meet you anywhere. Good-bye, please! I want to run away.”

  He watched her go, a little dazed. A trim parlourmaid came out and, after a few words of explanation, superintended the disposal of her luggage in the hall. Then the taxicab man returned.

  “Back to Sackville Street,” Granet muttered.

  CHAPTER XXX

  Table of Contents

  Granet, on his return to Sackville Street, paid the taxicab driver, ascended the stairs and let himself into his rooms with very much the air of a man who has passed through a dream. A single glance around, however, brought him vivid realisations of his unwelcome visitor. The little plate of sandwiches, half finished, the partly emptied bottle of wine, were still there. One of her gloves lay in the corner of the easy-chair. He picked it up, drew it for a moment through his fingers, then crushed it into a ball and flung it into the fire. Jarvis, who had heard him enter, came from one of the back rooms.

  “Clear these things away, Jarvis,” his master ordered. “Leave the whiskey and soda and tobacco on the table. I may be late.”

  Jarvis silently obeyed. As soon as he was alone, Granet threw himself into the easy-chair. He was filled with a bitter sense of being entrapped. He had been a little rash at Market Burnham, perhaps, but if any other man except Thomson had been sent there, his explanations would have been accepted without a word, and all this miserable complication would have been avoided. He thought over Isabel’s coming, all that she had said. She had left him no loophole. She had the air of a young woman who knew her own mind excellently well. A single word from her to Thomson and the whole superstructure of his ingeniously built-up life might tumble to pieces. He sat with folded arms in a grim attitude of unrest, thinking bitter thoughts. They rolled into his brain like black shadows. He had been honest in the first instance. With ancestors from both countries, he had deliberately chosen the country to which he felt the greatest attachment. He remembered his long travels in Germany, he remembered on his return his growing disapproval of English slackness, her physical and moral decadence. Her faults had inspired him not with the sorrow of one of her real sons, but with the contempt of one only half bound to her by natural ties. The ground had been laid ready for the poison. He had started honestly enough. His philosophy had satisfied himself. He had felt no moral degradation in wearing the uniform of one country for the benefit of another. All this self-disgust he dated from the coming of Geraldine Conyers. Now he was weary of it all, face to face, too, with a disagreeable and insistent problem.

  He started suddenly in his chair. An interruption ordinary enough, but never without a certain startling effect, had broken in upon his thoughts. The telephone on his table was ringing insistently. He rose to his feet and glanced at the clock as he crossed the room. It was five minutes past twelve. As he took up the receiver a familiar voice greeted him.

  “Is that Ronnie? Yes, this is Lady Anselman. Your uncle told me to ring you up to see if you were in. He wants you to come round.”

  “What, to-night?”

  “Do come, Ronnie,” his aunt continued. “I don’t suppose it’s anything important but your uncle seems to want it. No, I sha’n’t see you. I’m just going to bed. I have been playing bridge. I’m sure the duchess cheats—I have never won at her house in my life. I’ll tell your uncle you’ll come, then, Ronnie…. Good night!”

  Granet laid down the receiver. Somehow or other, the idea of action, even at that hour of the night was a relief to him. He called to Jarvis and gave him a few orders. Afterwards he turned out and walked through the streets—curiously lit and busy it seemed to him—to the corner of Park Lane, and up to the great mansion fronting the Park, which had belonged to the Anselmans for two generations. There were few lights in the windows. He was admitted at once and passed on to his uncle’s own servant.

  “Sir Alfred is in the study, sir,” the latter announced, “if you will kindly come this way.”

  Granet crossed the circular hall hung with wonderful tapestry, and passed through the sumptuously-furnished library into the smaller, business man’s study, in which Sir Alfred spent much of his time. There were telephones upon his desk, a tape machine, and a private instrument connected with the telegraph department. There was a desk for his secretary, now vacant, and beyond, in the shadows of the apartment, winged bookcases which held a collection of editions de luxe, first editions,
and a great collection of German and Russian literature, admittedly unique. Sir Alfred was sitting at his desk, writing a letter. He greeted his nephew with his usual cheerful nod.

  “Wait before you go, Harrison,” he said to his valet. “Will you take anything, Ronald? There are cigars and cigarettes here but nothing to drink. Harrison, you can put the whiskey and soda on the side, anyhow, then you can wait for me in my room. I shall not require any other service to-night. Some one must stay to let Captain Granet out. You understand?”

  “Perfectly, sir,” the man replied.

  “If you don’t mind, Ronnie, I will finish this letter while he brings the whiskey and soda,” Sir Alfred said.

  Captain Granet strolled around the room. There was no sound for a moment but the scratching of Sir Alfred’s quill pen across the paper. Presently Harrison returned with the whiskey and soda. Sir Alfred handed him a note.

  “To be sent to-night, Harrison,” he directed; “no answer.”

  The man withdrew, closing the door behind him. Sir Alfred, with his hands in his pockets, walked slowly around. When he came back he turned out all the lights except the heavily shaded one over his desk, and motioned his nephew to draw his easy-chair up to the side.

  “Well, Ronnie,” he said, “I suppose you are wondering why I have sent for you at this hour of the night?”

  “I am,” Granet admitted frankly. “Is there any news?—anything behind the news, perhaps I should say?”

  “What there is, is of no account,” Sir Alfred replied. “We are going to talk pure human nature, you and I for the next hour. The fate of empires is a matter for the historians. It is your fate and mine which just now counts for most.”

  “There is some trouble?” Granet asked quickly,—“some suspicion?”

  “None whatever,” Sir Alfred repeated firmly. “My position was never more secure than it is at this second. I am the trusted confidant of the Cabinet. I have done, not only apparently but actually, very important work for them. Financially, too, my influence as well as my resources have been of vast assistance to this country.”