21 Greatest Spy Thrillers in One Premium Edition (Mystery & Espionage Series) - E. Phillips Oppenheim

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the purchase of stocks for Mademoiselle Idiale. He had scarcely reached his own room when he was told that Mr. James Shepherd wished to speak to him for a moment upon the telephone. He took up the receiver.

      “Who is it?” he asked.

      “It is Shepherd,” was the answer. “Is that Mr. Laverick?”

      “Yes!”

      “You were outside the restaurant here a few minutes ago,” Shepherd continued. “You had with you a lady—a young, tall lady with a veil.”

      “That’s right,” Laverick admitted. “What about her?”

      “One of the two men who watch always here was reading the paper in the window,” Shepherd went on hoarsely. “He saw her with you and I heard him mutter something as though he had received a shock. He dropped his glass and his paper. He watched you every second of the time you were there until you had disappeared. Then he, too, put on his hat and went out.”

      “Anything else?”

      “Nothing else,” was the reply. “I thought you might like to know this, sir. The man recognized the lady right enough.”

      “It seems queer,” Laverick admitted. “Thank you for ringing me up, Shepherd. Good morning!”

      Laverick leaned back in his chair. There was no doubt whatever now in his mind but that Mademoiselle Idiale, for some reason or other, was interested in this crime. Her wish to see the place, her introduction to him last night and her purchase of stocks, were all part of a scheme. He was suddenly and absolutely convinced of it. As friend or foe, she was very certainly about to take her place amongst the few people over whom this tragedy loomed.

      XXII. ACTIVITY OF AUSTRIAN SPIES

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      Louise left her brougham in Piccadilly and walked across the Green Park. Bellamy, who was waiting, rose up from a seat, hat in hand. She took his arm in foreign fashion. They walked together towards Buckingham Palace—a strangely distinguished-looking couple.

      “My dear David,” she said, “the man perplexes me. To look at him, to hear him speak, one would swear that he was honest. He has just those clear blue eyes and the stolid face, half stupid and half splendid, of your athletic Englishman. One would imagine him doing a foolishly honorable thing, but he is not my conception of a criminal at all.”

      Bellamy kicked a pebble from the path. His forehead wore a perplexed frown.

      “He didn’t give himself away, then?”

      “Not in the least.”

      “He took you out and showed you the spot where it happened?”

      “Without an instant’s hesitation.”

      “As a matter of curiosity,” asked Bellamy, “did he try to make love to you?”

      She shook her head.

      “I even gave him an opening,” she said. “Of flirtation he has no more idea than the average stupid Englishman one meets.”

      Bellamy was silent for several moments.

      “I can’t believe,” he said, “that there is the least doubt but that he has the money and the portfolio. I have made one or two other inquiries, and I find that his firm was in very low water indeed only a week ago. They were spoken of, in fact, as being hopelessly insolvent. No one can imagine how they tided over the crisis.”

      “The man who was watching for you?” she inquired.

      “He makes no mistakes,” Bellamy assured her. “He saw Laverick enter that passage and come out. Afterwards he went back to his office, although he had closed up there and had been on his homeward way. The thing could not have been accidental.”

      “Why do you not go to him openly?” she suggested. “He is, after all, an Englishman, and when you tell him what you know he will be very much in your power. Tell him of the value of that document. Tell him that you must have it.”

      “It could be done,” Bellamy admitted. “I think that one of us must talk plainly to him. Listen, Louise,—are you seeing him again?”

      “I have invited him to come to the Opera House to-night.”

      “See what you can do,” he begged. “I would rather keep away from him myself, if I can. Have you heard anything of Streuss?”

      She shrugged her shoulders.

      “Nothing directly,” she replied, “but my rooms have been searched—even my dressing-room at the Opera House. That man’s spies are simply wonderful. He seems able to plant them everywhere. And, David!—”

      “Yes, dear?”

      “He has got hold of Lassen,” she continued. “I am perfectly certain of it.”

      “Then the sooner you get rid of Lassen, the better,” Bellamy declared.

      “It is so difficult,” she murmured, in a perplexed tone. “The man has all my affairs in his hands. Up till now, although he is uncomely, and a brute in many ways, he has served me well.”

      “If he is Streuss’s creature he must go,” Bellamy insisted.

      She nodded.

      “Let us sit down for a few minutes,” she said. “I am tired.”

      She sank on to a seat and Bellamy sat by her side. In full view of them was Buckingham Palace with its flag flying. She looked thoughtfully at it and across to Westminster.

      “Do they know, I wonder, your country-people?” she asked.

      “Half-a-dozen of them, perhaps,” he answered gloomily, no more.

      “To-day,” she declared, “I seem to have lost confidence. I seem to feel the sense of impending calamity, to hear the guns as I walk, to see the terror fall upon the faces of all these great crowds who throng your streets. They are a stolid, unbelieving people—these. The blow, when it comes, will be the harder.”

      Bellamy sighed.

      “You are right,” he said. “When one comes to think of it, it is amazing. How long the prophets of woe have preached, and how completely their teachings have been ignored! The invasion bogey has been so long among us that it has become nothing but a jest. Even I, in a way, am one of the unbelievers.”

      “You are not serious, David!” she exclaimed.

      “I am,” he affirmed. “I think that if we could read that document we should see that there is no plan there for the immediate invasion of England. I think you would find that the blow would be struck simultaneously at our Colonies. We should either have to submit or send a considerable fleet away from home waters. Then, I presume, the question of invasion would come again. All the time, of course, the gage would be flung down, treaties would be defied, we should be scorned as though we were a nation of weaklings. Austria would gather in what she wanted, and there would be no one to interfere.”

      Louise was very pale but her eyes were flashing fire.

      “It is the most terrible thing which has happened in history,” she said, “this decadence of your country. Once England held the scales of justice for the world. Now she is no longer strong enough, and there is none to take her place. David, even if you know what that document contains, even then will it help very much?”

      “Very much indeed. Don’t you see that there is one hope left to us—one hope—and that is Russia? The Czar must be made to withdraw from that compact. We want to know his share in it. When we know that, there will be a secret mission sent to Russia. Germany and Austria are strong, but they are not all the world. With Russia behind and France and England westward, the struggle is at least an equal one. They have to face

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