LITMIR.BIZ

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If engineering works were still being carried on in the vicinity, the labours of the day were evidently at an end. From somewhere in the heart of the woods came the faintly musical humming of a saw at work amongst the pine logs, and from an incredible distance came every now and then the faint wailing of a siren in the midst of a stretch of misty sea. Fawley smoked on composedly. Only once he indulged in a grimace. He remembered the story of a fellow worker who, after bringing off many successful coups, was eventually shot for being discovered with absolutely genuine papers. Those things are in the day’s march. It might come to him as it had come to others. Fawley, in moments of crisis, had contemplated often before the problem of sudden extermination. This time it was mixed with a new emotion. He found himself remembering Elida!

      An orderly hurried in. He whispered a word in the Colonel’s ear. The latter left his place and entered the little cabinet at the far end of the room. He remained inside fully ten minutes. One heard occasionally the threads of a broken conversation mingled with the somewhat heated amenities between the Colonel and the local authorities. In the end, the Colonel emerged from the telephone booth and resumed his seat behind his desk without speech. He had the air of a man who has received a sudden and unexpected blow. He had lost his dignity, his poise, his military flair. He was just a middle-aged, tired old gentleman who had set himself to face an unsatisfactory problem.

      “Do I take off my collar,” Fawley asked, “and submit myself to the amiable ministrations of your picturesque bandits outside, or are you by chance convinced that my mission to you is a genuine one?”

      The Colonel closed his eyes for a moment as though in pain.

      “I am prepared to admit the genuineness of your mission, Major Fawley,” he said. “Why my superiors at the War Office are playing this extraordinary game, I do not know. I imagine that military logic has become subservient to political intrigue…What date do you propose for this extraordinary entertainment?”

      “Sunday next. Four days from to-day,” Fawley answered briskly. “Of course, before that time I have an almost impossible task to perform, but if I should succeed—four days from to-day. You will do me the favour perhaps to look at this small sketch. You will see I have marked in pencil three crosses just where I should think I might install our friends the enemy.”

      The Colonel studied the plan. He referred to a hand-drawn map and turned back again to the plan. He nodded his head slowly in unconvinced but portentous fashion.

      “With every moment of our intercourse,” he said coldly, “you impress me the more, Major Fawley, with your exceptional ability as a—do we call it spy or Secret Service star? I leave it to you to choose. Be there at that spot at the time and hour appointed, and France, with your assistance, shall betray herself.”

      Fawley rose to his feet.

      “I gather that I am a free man?” he asked.

      “You are a free man,” the Colonel answered calmly. “I do not like you. I do not trust you. I hate these intermeshed political and military eruptions which in a single second destroy the work of years. In letting you go free, I submit to authority, but if you care for a warning, take it. You are a self-acknowledged spy. You will be watched from the moment you leave my doors and if the time should come when you make that little slip which they say all men of your profession make sooner or later, I pray that I may be the one to benefit.”

      Fawley sighed as he drew himself up and stood with his hand upon the door handle.

      “I really do not know, Colonel,” he expostulated, “why you dislike me so much. I need not have worked at all. I have chosen to work in the greatest cause the world has ever known—the great cause of peace. I have already risked my life half a dozen times. Once more makes no difference. Perhaps when you have settled down on your estates, with your children and grandchildren, you will not regard the man who works behind the scenes quite so venomously…By the by, if I must submit to perpetual escort, may I beg that you will give me two of your lightest guards? The two who mounted my footboard coming up would break the back axle of my car before we reached Sospel.”

      The Colonel looked coldly at his departing guest.

      “You need have no fear, Major Fawley,” he said. “You are no longer a prisoner. My motor-bicycle scouts will trace you from the moment you leave to wherever you go and telephone to me their report. I shall get in touch at once with the Chef de la Sûreté of the district. Things may happen or they may not.”

      Fawley drew a deep breath of the pine-scented air as he stood outside, lingered for a moment and stepped unhindered into his car. This was the first stage of his desperate mission safely accomplished. Elida had warned him almost passionately that it was the second which would prove most difficult.

      CHAPTER XXVIII

       Table of Contents

      Once more Fawley crossed that huge spacious apartment, at the far end of which Berati sat enthroned behind his low desk, a grim and motionless figure. The chair on his left-hand side was vacant. There was no sign anywhere of Patoni.

      “I ought to apologise for my sudden return to Rome, perhaps,” Fawley ventured. “Events marched quicker than I had anticipated. Except for a brief stay at Monte Carlo, I have come here directly from Paris.”

      Berati leaned slightly forward. His eyes were like slits of coal-black fire, his lower lip was dragged down, his face resembled a sculptor’s effort to reproduce the human sneer.

      “You have been paying quite a round of visits, I understand,” he remarked icily. “London—I scarcely thought that London and Downing Street were places with which we had any present concern.”

      “You were misinformed, sir,” Fawley replied calmly. “London and Washington are both concerned in the present situation.”

      Berati rang a bell from under his desk, an unseen gesture. In complete silence, so stealthily that Fawley was unaware of their presence until he felt a heavy hand upon each of his shoulders, two of the new Civic Guards had entered the room and moved up to where he stood. They were standing on either side of him now—portents of the grim future.

      “You and the Princess,” Berati said harshly; “both of you pretend to have been working for Italy. You have been working for England. The Princess, for all I know, has been working for France—”

      “Not exactly correct, sir,” Fawley interrupted. “Of the Princess’ activities I know little, except that I believe she was trying to coerce you into signing a treaty with the wrong party in Germany. So far as I am concerned, I will admit that I have deceived you. I professed to enter your service. I never had the intention of working for one nation only. I had what I venture to consider a greater cause at heart.”

      Berati glared at him from behind his desk. He seemed to have suddenly become, in these moments of unrestrained anger, the living presentment of the caricatures of himself which Europe had studied with shivering repugnance for the last two years.

      “There is one thing about you, Major Fawley,” he said. “There will not be many words between us, so I will pay you a compliment. I think that you are the bravest man I ever met.”

      “You flatter me,” Fawley murmured.

      “Somehow or other,” Berati went on, “you learnt the most important secrets of the French fortifications. You must have taken enormous risks. I sent five men after you to check your statements and every one of them lies buried amongst the mountains. Yours was a wonderful and courageous effort but your visit here to-day is perhaps a braver action still. Do you realise that, Fawley? You must have known that if ever you came within my reach—within my grasp—you would pay for your treachery with your life.”

      “I knew there was a risk,” Fawley admitted coolly. “On the other hand, I know that you have brains. I am less afraid of you than I should be of most men, because I think that when you have listened to what I have to say you will probably widen

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