LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER XXII

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      Fawley, gentle though he was in his methods, was running no risks. He seated himself at his desk, his revolver lying within a few inches of his fingers. Patoni was a yard or so away towards the middle of the room. Elida was on Fawley’s left.

      “What do you want with me, Prince Patoni?” Fawley asked.

      The Italian’s eyes were full of smouldering anger.

      “A great deal,” he answered. “General Berati has sent me here with an order which I have in my pocket—you can see it when you choose—that you accompany me at once to Rome. Furthermore, I am here to know what my cousin the Princess Elida is doing in London, and particularly what she is doing in your room at this hour of the night.”

      “That is my own affair entirely,” Elida declared. “He is an impertinent fellow, this cousin of mine,” she went on, turning to Fawley. “He follows me about. He persecutes me. In Rome it is not permitted. There are too many of my own people there. I have a brother, if I need a protector.”

      “Is it not true,” he demanded, “that you were once engaged to me?”

      “For four days,” she answered. “Then I discovered that I hated your type. Proceed with your business with Major Fawley. Leave me out of it, if you please.”

      Patoni’s eyes flamed for a moment with malignant fire. He turned his shoulder upon her and faced Fawley. For the moment he had lost his guise of the cardinal’s nephew, the politician’s secretary. His rasping tone, his drawn-up frame once more recalled the cavalry officer.

      “I have told you, Major Fawley,” he said, “that I have in my pocket an order from General Berati requiring your immediate presence in Rome. I have an aeroplane waiting at Heston now. I should be glad to know whether it would be convenient for you to leave at dawn.”

      “Most inconvenient,” Fawley answered. “Besides, I hate the early morning air. Why does the General want me before my work is finished?”

      “He demands to know what part of the work he entrusted you with concerns England?”

      “He will find that easy to understand later on,” was the smooth rejoinder.

      “I am not talking about later on,” Patoni declared harshly. “I am talking about now. I represent General Berati. You can see my mandate if you will. I am your Chief. What are you doing in England when you should have taken the information you gained in Berlin direct to Rome?”

      “Working still for the good of your country,” Fawley assured him.

      “No one has asked you to work independently for the good of our country,” was the swift retort. “You have been asked to obey orders, to study certain things and report on them. Not one of these concerns England. You are not supposed to employ any initiative. You are supposed to work to orders.”

      “I must have misunderstood the position,” Fawley observed. “I never work in that way. I preserve my own independence always. Was Berati not satisfied with me for my work on the frontier?”

      “It was fine work,” Patoni admitted grudgingly. “To show you that I am not prejudiced, I will tell you something. Five men we have sent one after the other to check the details of your work, to confirm the startling information you submitted as to the calibre of the anti-aircraft guns and to report further upon the object of the subterranean work which has been carried to our side of the frontier. One by one they disappeared. Not one of the five has returned alive!”

      “It was murder to send them,” Fawley remarked. “I do not say that they might not have done as well as I did if they had been the first, but unfortunately I did not get clean away, and after that the French garrison redoubled their guards.”

      “The matter of the frontier is finished and done with,” Patoni declared. “I have no wish to sit here talking. Here are the General’s instructions.”

      He drew a paper from his pocket and smoothed it out in front of Fawley. The latter glanced at it and pushed it away.

      “Quite all right, beyond a doubt,” he admitted. “The only thing is that I am not coming with you.”

      “You refuse?” Patoni demanded, his voice shaking with anger.

      “I refuse,” Fawley reiterated. “I am a nervous man and I have learnt to take care of myself. When you introduce yourself into my apartment, following close upon an attempt at assassination by one of your countrymen, I find myself disinclined to remain alone in your company during that lonely flight over the Alps, or anywhere else, in fact.”

      “This will mean trouble,” Patoni warned him.

      “What more serious trouble can it mean,” Fawley asked, “than that you should commence your mission to me—if ever you had one—by having one of your myrmidons steal into my bedroom and nearly murder my brother, who was unfortunately occupying it in my place? That is a matter which has to be dealt with between you and me, Patoni.”

      The Italian’s right hand groped for a minute to the spot where the hilt of his sword might have been.

      “That is a private affair,” he said. “I am ready to deal with it at any time. I am a Patoni and we are in the direct line with the Di Rezcos. The presence of my cousin in your rooms is a matter to be dealt with at once.”

      “It will be dealt with by ordering you out of them,” Fawley retorted, as he pressed the bell.

      Patoni sprang to his feet. He looked more than ever like some long, lean bird of prey.

      “This is an insult!” he exclaimed.

      Elida rose from her chair and moved over between the two men. It was her cousin whom she addressed.

      “No brawling in my presence, if you please,” she insisted. “You have put yourself hopelessly in the wrong, Pietro. A would-be assassin cannot claim to be treated as a man of honour.”