LITMIR.BIZ

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staying with my aunt, who has a suite here,” she explained.

      Behrling leaned forward from his corner.

      “Before we meet again, Major Fawley,” he prophesied, “there will be a great change in this city—in this country. You are here now in these terrifying moments before the storm, when the air is sulphurous and overcharged with the thunders to come. You will find us a saner country when you return.”

      * * * * *

      There was the sound of music and many voices as they arrived on the fourth floor. At the end of the corridor was a vision of bowing servants and beyond, rooms banked with flowers and waving palms. Elida gave one look and stepped swiftly back into the lift.

      “I cannot bear it,” she told Fawley. “My aunt receives her political friends on Thursday evenings and to-night they are all there in force. I can hear their voices even here. They will tear themselves to pieces before they have finished. There must be, it seems, a hundred different ways of saving Germany and every one of my aunt’s friends has hold of a different plan. Let me come and sit with you for a few minutes. I heard the waiter say that he had placed a note in your salon, so I feel that I may come without compromising you.”

      “By all means,” Fawley assented. “My sitting room is not much, but from the window one has at least a fine view of the city. Come with the greatest pleasure, but,” he went on, as they stepped out of the lift and he fitted the key in the door of his suite, “do let us leave politics alone for a time. My sympathies are of no use to any one. I cannot turn them into action.”

      She sighed as she followed him into the rooms and allowed her cloak to slip from her shoulders.

      “It is too bad,” she lamented, “because there was never a time in her history when Germany more needed the understanding of intelligent Anglo-Saxons. So this is where you live?”

      He smiled.

      “For a few hours longer,” he reminded her. “I am off to-morrow.”

      “To Rome?”

      He remained silent for a moment.

      “In these days of long-distance telephones and wireless, a poor government messenger never knows where he will be sent.”

      He picked up the despatch which lay upon the table and, after a questioning glance towards her, opened it. He read it carefully then tore it into small pieces.

      “Your plans are changed?” she asked.

      “Only confirmed,” he answered. “Come and sit before the window and look down at this beautiful city. We have an idea in America, you know, or rather we used to have, when I was interested in politics, that in order to bring about a state of bankruptcy in Berlin, the people beautified their city, built new boulevards, new public buildings, and then failed to pay the interest on their loans!”

      “It is probably true,” Elida assented. “That was all before I took any interest in this part of the world. To-day Germany is on her feet again, her hands are uplifted, she is feeling for the air. She is trying to drag down from the heavens the things that belong to her. Germany has a great future, you know, Major Fawley.”

      “No one doubts that,” he replied.

      She looked around the room curiously and last of all at him, at his drawn but wholesome-looking face, his deep-set visionary eyes, his air of immense self-control. She took note of all the other things which appeal to a woman, the little wave in his hair brushed back by the ears, the humorous lines about his firm mouth. He possessed to the fullest extent the distinction of the class to which they both belonged.

      “Do you mind if I become very personal for a few moments?” she asked abruptly.

      “So long as you do not find too much fault with me.”

      “The men in the Secret Service, whom I have come across,” she began, “our Italian Secret Service, I mean, of course, and the French, travel under false names, generally assuming a different status to their real one. They travel with little luggage, they stay in weird hotels in streets that no one ever heard of, and life for them seems to be filled with a desire to escape from their own personality. Here are you staying in the best-known hotel in Berlin under your own name, wearing the clothes and using the speech of your order. There on your writing table is your dressing case fitted with an ordinary lock and with your name in full stamped upon it. I begin to think that you must be a fraud. I should not be surprised to find that your proper name even was inscribed in the hotel register.”

      “Guilty to everything,” he confessed, pushing his chair a little nearer to hers and closer to the window. “But then you must remember that the Secret Service of the old order has gone out. The memoirs writer and the novelist have given away our fireworks. We are only subtle now by being terribly and painfully obvious.”

      “You may be speaking the truth,” she murmured, “but it seems to me that it must be a dangerous experiment. I could recall to myself the names of at least a dozen people who know that a Major Fawley is here on behalf of a certain branch of the Italian Government to see for himself and report upon the situation. It would be worth the while of more than one of them to make sure that you never returned to Rome.”

      “There are certain risks to be run, of course,” he admitted. “The only point is that I came to the conclusion some years ago that one runs them in a more dignified fashion and with just as much chance of success by abandoning the old methods.”

      She sat perfectly silent for some time. They were both looking downwards at the thronged and brilliantly lit streets, the surging masses of human beings, listening to the hoarse mutterings of voices punctuated sometimes with the shouting of excited pedestrians. There was a certain tenseness underneath it all. The trampling of feet upon the pavement was like the breaking of an incoming tide. One had the idea of mighty forces straining at a yielding leash. Elida swung suddenly around.

      “You play the game of frankness wonderfully,” she said bitterly, “but there are times when you fall down.”

      “As for instance?”

      “When you make enquiries of the concierge about the air services to Rome. When you send for a time-table to compare the trains and when you slip into the side entrance at Cook’s in the twilight an hour or so later and take your ticket for England!”

      “You have had me followed?” he asked.

      “It has been necessary,” she told him. “What has England to do with your report to Berati?”

      His eyes seemed to be watching the black mass of people below, but he smiled reflectively.

      “What an advertisement this last coup of yours is for the open methods of diplomacy,” he observed. “Would it surprise you very much to know that I can take the night plane to Croydon, catch the International Airways to Rome, and be there a little quicker than any way I have discovered yet of sailing over the Alps?”

      “Will you turn your head and look at me, please?”

      He obeyed at once.

      “You are not going to London, then?” she persisted. “Berati has abandoned that old idea of his of seeking English sympathies?”

      Fawley rose to his feet and Elida’s heart sank. She knew very well that during the last few minutes, ever since, in fact, she had confessed to her surveillance over him, she had lost everything she had striven so hard to gain. Her bid for his supreme confidence had failed. Before she actually realised what had happened, she was moving towards the door. He was speaking meaningless words; his tone, his expression had changed. All the humanity seemed to have left his face. Even the admiration which had gleamed more than once in his eyes and the memory of which she had treasured all the evening had become the admiration of a man for an attractive doll.

      “You are under your own roof,” he remarked, as he opened the door. “You will forgive me if

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