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

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  “I think,” he said stiffly, “that we had better drop the subject. I had no idea that Miss Morse felt so strongly about it or I should not have presumed, even here and amongst ourselves, to criticise a person who holds such a high place in her esteem. Everard, I’ll play you a game of billiards before we go upstairs. There’s just time.”

  Captain Wilmot hesitated. He was a peace-loving man, and, after all, Penelope and his friend were engaged.

  “Perhaps Miss Morse—” he began.

  Penelope turned upon him.

  “I should like you all to understand,” she declared, “that every word I said came from my heart, and that I would say it again, and more, with the same provocation.”

  There was a finality about Penelope’s words which left no room for further discussion. The little group was broken up. She and Lady Grace went to their rooms together.

  “Penelope, you’re a dear!” the latter said, as they mounted the stairs. “I am afraid you’ve made Charlie very angry, though.”

  “I hope I have,” Penelope answered. “I meant to make him angry. I think that such self-sufficiency is absolutely stifling. It makes me sometimes almost loathe young Englishmen of his class.”

  “And you don’t dislike the Prince so much nowadays?” Lady Grace remarked with transparent indifference.

  “No!” Penelope answered. “That is finished. I misunderstood him at first. It was entirely my own fault. I was prejudiced, and I hated to feel that I was in the wrong. I do not see how any one could dislike him unless they were enemies of his country. Then I fancy that they might have cause.”

  Lady Grace sighed.

  “To tell you the truth, Penelope,” she said, “I almost wish that he were not quite so devotedly attached to his country.”

  Penelope was silent. They had reached Lady Grace’s room now, and were standing together on the hearthrug in front of the fire.

  “I am afraid he is like that,” Penelope said gently. “He seems to have none of the ordinary weaknesses of men. I, too, wish sometimes that he were a little different. One would like to think of him, for his own sake, as being happy some day. He reminds me somehow of the men who build and build, toiling always through youth unto old age. There seems no limit to their strength, nor any respite. They build a palace which those who come after them must inhabit.”

  Once more Lady Grace sighed. She was looking into the heart of the fire. Penelope took her hands.

  “It is hard sometimes, dear,” she said, “to realize that a thing is impossible, that it is absolutely out of our reach. Yet it is better to bring one’s mind to it than to suffer all the days.”

  Lady Grace looked up. At that moment she was more than pretty. Her eyes were soft and bright, the color had flooded her cheeks.

  “But I don’t see why it should be impossible, Penelope,” she protested. “We are equals in every way. Alliances between our two countries are greatly to be desired. I have heard my father say so, and Mr. Haviland. The trouble is, Pen,” she added with trembling lips, “that he does not care for me.”

  “You cannot tell,” Penelope answered. “He has never shown any signs of caring for any woman. Remember, though, that he would want you to live in Japan.”

  “I’d live in Thibet if he asked me to,” Lady Grace declared, raising her handkerchief to her eyes, “but he never will. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t understand. I am very foolish, Penelope.”

  Penelope kissed her gently.

  “Dear,” she said, “you are not the only foolish woman in the world.”…

  Conversation amongst the younger members of the house-party at Devenham Castle was a little disjointed that evening. Perhaps Penelope, who came down in a wonderful black velveteen gown, with a bunch of scarlet roses in her corsage, was the only one who seemed successfully to ignore the passage of arms which had taken place so short a while ago. She talked pleasantly to Somerfield, who tried to be dignified and succeeded only in remaining sulky. Chance had placed her at some distance from the Prince, to whom Lady Grace was talking with a subdued softness in her manner which puzzled Captain Wilmot, her neighbor on the other side.

  “I saw you with all the evening papers as usual, Bransome,” the Prime Minister remarked during the service of dinner. “Was there any news?”

  “Nothing much,” the Foreign Secretary replied. “Consuls are down another point and the Daily Comet says that you are like a drowning man clinging to the raft of your majority. Excellent cartoon of you, by the bye. You shall see it after dinner.”

  “Thank you,” the Prime Minister said. “Was there anything about you in the same paper by any chance?”

  “Nothing particularly abusive,” Sir Edward answered blandly. “By the bye, the police declare that they have a definite clue this time, and are going to arrest the murderer of Hamilton Fynes and poor dicky Vanderpole tonight or tomorrow.”

  “Excellent!” the Duke declared. “It would have been a perfect disgrace to our police system to have left two such crimes undetected. Our respected friend at the Home Office will have a little peace now.”

  “How about me?” Bransome grumbled. “Haven’t I been worried to death, too?”

  The Prince, who had just finished describing to Lady Grace a typical landscape of his country, turned toward Bransome.

  “I think that I heard you say something about a discovery in connection with those wonderful murder cases,” he said. “Has any one actually been arrested?”

  “My paper was an early edition,” Bransome answered, “but it spoke of a sensational denouement within the next few hours. I should imagine that it is all over by now. At the same time it’s absurd how the Press give these things away. It seems that some fellow who was bicycling saw a man get in and out of poor Dicky’s taxi and is quite prepared to swear to him.”

  “Has he not been rather a long time in coming forward with his evidence?” the Prince remarked. “I do not remember to have seen any mention of such a person in the papers before.”

  “He watched so well,” Bransome answered, “and was so startled that he was knocked down and run over. The detective in charge of the case found him in a hospital.”

  “These things always come out sooner or later,” the Prime Minister remarked. “As a matter of fact, I am inclined to think that our police wait too long before they make an arrest. They play with their victim so deliberately that sometimes he slips through their fingers. Very often, too, they let a man go who would give himself away from sheer fright if he felt the touch of a policeman upon his shoulder.”

  “As a nation,” Bransome remarked, helping himself to the entree, “we handle life amongst ourselves with perpetual kid gloves. We are always afraid of molesting the liberty of the subject. A trifle more brutality sometimes would make for strength. We are like a dentist whose work suffers because he is afraid of hurting his patient.”

  Somerfield was watching his fiancee curiously.

  “Are you really very pale tonight, Penelope,” he asked, “or is it those red flowers which have drawn all the color from your cheeks?”

  “I believe that I am pale,” Penelope answered. “I am always pale when I wear black and when people have disagreed with me. As a matter of fact, I am trying to make the Prince feel homesick. Tell me,” she asked him across the round table, “don’t you think that I remind you a little tonight of the women of your country?”

  The Prince returned her gaze as though, indeed, something were passing between them of greater significance than that half-bantering question.

  “Indeed,” he said, “I think that you do. You remind me of my country itself—of the things that wait for me across the ocean.”

  The Prince’s servant had entered the dining room and whispered in the ear of the butler who was superintending the service of dinner. The latter came over at once to the Prince.

  “Your Highness,” he said, “some one is on the telephone, speaking from London. They ask if you could spare half a minute.”

  The Prince
rose with an interrogative glance at his hostess, and the Duchess smilingly motioned him to go. Even after he had left the room, when he was altogether unobserved, his composed demeanor showed no signs of any change. He took up the receiver almost blithely. It was Soto, his secretary, who spoke to him.

  “Highness,” he said, “the man Jacks with a policeman is here in the hall at the present moment. He asks permission to search this house.”

  “For what purpose?” the Prince asked.

  “To discover some person whom he believes to be in hiding here,” the secretary answered. “He explains that in any ordinary case he would have applied for what they call a search warrant. Owing to your Highness’ position, however, he has attended here, hoping for your gracious consent without having made any formal application.”

  “I must think!” the Prince answered. “Tell me, Soto. You are sure that the English doctor has had no opportunity of communicating with any one?”

  “He has had no opportunity,” was the firm reply. “If your Highness says the word, he shall pass.”

  “Let him alone,” the Prince answered. “Refuse this man Jacks permission to search my house during my absence. Tell him that I shall be there at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon and that at that hour he is welcome to return.”

  “It shall be done, Highness,” was the answer.

  The Prince set down the receiver upon the instrument and stood for a moment deep in thought. It was a strange country, this,—a strange end which it seemed that he must prepare to face. He felt like the man who had gone out to shoot lions and returning with great spoil had died of the bite of a poisonous ant!

  XXXI. GOODBYE!

  Table of Contents

  The Prince on his return from the library intercepted Penelope on her way across the hall.

  “Forgive me,” he said, “but I could not help overhearing some sentences of your conversation with Sir Charles Somerfield as we sat at dinner. You are going to talk with him now, is it not so?”

  “As soon as he comes out from the dining room.”

  He saw the hardening of her lips, the flash in her eyes at the mention of Somerfield’s name.

  “Yes!” she continued, “Sir Charles and I are going to have a little understanding.”

  “Are you sure,” he asked softly, “that it will not be a misunderstanding?”

  She looked into his face.

  “What does it matter to you?” she asked. “What do you care?”

  “Come into the conservatory for a few minutes,” he begged. “You know that I take no wine and I prefer not to return into the dining room. I would like so much instead to talk to you before you see Sir Charles.”

  She hesitated. He stood by her side patiently waiting.

  “Remember,” he said, “that I am a somewhat privileged person just now. My days here are numbered, you see.”

  She turned toward the conservatories.

  “Very well,” she said, “I must be like every one else, I suppose, and spoil you. How dare you come and make us all so fond of you that we look upon your departure almost as a tragedy!”

  He smiled.

  “Indeed,” he declared, “there is a note of tragedy even in these simplest accidents of life. I have been very happy amongst you all, Miss Penelope. You have been so much kinder to me than I have deserved. You have thrown a bridge across the gulf which separates us people of alien tongues and alien manners. Life has been a pleasant thing for me here.”

  “Why do you go so soon?” she whispered.

  “Miss Penelope,” he answered, “to those others who ask me that question, I shall say that my mission is over, that my report has been sent to my Emperor, and that there is nothing left for me to do but to follow it home. I could add, and it would be true, that there is very much work for me still to accomplish in my own country. To you alone I am going to say something else.”

  She was no longer pale. Her eyes were filled with an exceedingly soft light. She leaned towards him, and her face shone as the face of a woman who prays that she may hear the one thing in life a woman craves to hear from the lips she loves best.

  “Go on,” she murmured.

  “I want to ask you, Miss Penelope,” he continued, “whether you remember the day when you paid a visit to my house?”

  “Very well,” she answered.

  “I was showing you a casket,” he went on.

  She gripped his arm.

  “Don’t!” she begged. “Don’t, I can’t bear any more of that. You don’t know how horrible it seems to me! You don’t know—what fears I have had!”

  He looked away from her.

  “I have sometimes wondered,” he said, “what your thoughts were at that moment, what you have thought of me since.”

  She shivered a little, but did not answer him.

  “Very soon,” he reminded her, “I shall have passed out of your life.”

  He heard the sudden, half-stifled exclamation. He felt rather than saw the eyes which pleaded with him, and he hastened on.

  “You understand what is meant by the inevitable,” he continued. “Whatever has happened in the matters with which I have been concerned has been inevitable. I have had no choice—sometimes no choice in such events is possible. Do not think,” he went on, “that I tell you this to beg for your sympathy. I would not have a thing other than as it is. But when we have said goodbye, I want you to believe the best of me, to think as kindly as you can of the things which you may not be able to comprehend. Remember that we are not so emotional a nation as that to which you belong. Our affections are but seldom touched. We live without feeling for many days, sometimes for longer, even, than many days. It has not been so altogether with me. I have felt more than I dare, at this moment, to speak of.”

  “Yet you go,” she murmured.

  “Yet I go,” he assented. “Nothing in the world is more certain than that I must say farewell to you and all of my good friends here. In a sense I want this to be our farewell. Leaving out of the question just now the more serious dangers which threaten me, the result of my mission here alone will make me unpopular in this country. As the years pass, I fear that nothing can draw your own land and mine into any sort of accord. That is why I asked you to come here with me and listen while I said these few words to you, why I ask you now that, whatever the future may bring, you will sometimes spare me a kindly thought.”

  “I think you know,” she answered, “that you need not ask that.”

  “You will marry Sir Charles Somerfield,” he continued, “and you will be happy. In this country men develop late. Somerfield, too, will develop, I am sure. He will become worthy even, I trust, to be your husband, Miss Penelope. Something was said of his going into Parliament. When he is Foreign Minister and I am the Counsellor of the Emperor, we may perhaps send messages to one another, if not across the seas, through the clouds.”

  A man’s footstep approached them. Somerfield himself drew near and hesitated. The Prince rose at once.

  “Sir Charles,” he said, “I have been bidding farewell to Miss Penelope. I have had news tonight over the telephone and I find that I must curtail my visit.”

  “The Duke will be disappointed,” Somerfield said. “Are you off at once?”

  “Probably tomorrow,” the Prince answered. “May I leave Miss Penelope in your charge?” he added with a little bow. “The Duke, I believe, is awaiting me.”

  He passed out of the conservatory. Penelope sat quite still.

  “Well,” Somerfield said, “if he is really going—”

  “Charlie,” she interrupted, “if ever you expect me to marry you, I make one condition, and that is that you never say a single word against Prince Maiyo.”

  “The man whom a month ago,” he remarked curiously, “you hated!”

  She shook her head.

  “I was an idiot,” she said. “I did not understand him and I was prejudiced against his country.”

  “Well, as he actually is going away,” Sir Charles remark
ed with a sigh of content, “I suppose it’s no use being jealous.”

  “You haven’t any reason to be,” Penelope answered just a little wistfully. “Prince Maiyo has no room in his life for such frivolous creatures as women.”

  The Prince found the rest of the party dispersed in various directions. Lady Grace was playing billiards with Captain Wilmot. She showed every disposition to lay down her cue when he entered the room.

  “Do come and talk to us, Prince,” she begged. “I am so tired of this stupid game, and I am sure Captain Wilmot is bored to tears.”

  The Prince shook his head.

  “Thank you,” he said, “but I must find the Duke. I have just received a telephone message and I fear that I may have to leave tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow!” she cried in dismay.

  The Prince sighed.

  “If not tomorrow, the next day,” he answered. “I have had a summons—a summons which I cannot disobey. Shall I find your father in the library, Lady Grace?”

  “Yes!” she answered. “He is there with Mr. Haviland and Sir Edward. Are you really going to waste your last evening in talking about treaties and such trifles?”

  “I am afraid I must,” he answered regretfully.

  “You are a hopelessly disappointing person,” she declared a little pitifully.

  “It is because you are all much too kind to me that you think so,” he answered. “You make me welcome amongst you even as one of yourselves. You forget—you would almost teach me to forget that I am only a wayfarer here.”

  “That is your own choice,” she said, coming a little nearer to him.

  “Ah, no,” he answered. “There is no choice! I serve a great mistress, and when she calls I come. There are no other voices in the world for one of my race and faith. The library you said, Lady Grace? I must go and find your father.”

  He passed out, closing the door behind him. Captain Wilmot chalked his cue carefully.

  “That’s the queerest fellow I ever knew in my life,” he said. “He seems all the time as though his head were in the clouds.”