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Title: Moon of madness
Author: Sax Rohmer
Release date: October 7, 2025 [eBook #77001]
Language: English
Original publication: Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1927
Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOON OF MADNESS ***
Moon of Madness
By SAX ROHMER
GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1927
[COPYRIGHT]
COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &
COMPANY. COPYRIGHT, 1926, 1927, BY LIBERTY
WEEKLY, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
FIRST EDITION
CONTENTS
I. The German Liner
II. Rescue
III. The Man from the River Plate
IV. At the Casino
V. “In Five Minutes”
VI. The Bungalow in the Hills
VII. A Short Note
VIII. The Call
IX. Moon of Madness
X. The “Arundel Castle” Sails
XI. The Photographs
XII. The Motor Cruiser
XIII. The Grass Orphan
XIV. The Portfolio
XV. Terms with the Enemy
XVI. The House on the Cliff
XVII. Nanette Is Confidential
XVIII. Suspects
XIX. Dr. Zimmermann Calls
XX. Fog in the Channel
XXI. A Missing Picture
XXII. Portrait of a Girl Diving
XXIII. Fiasco
XXIV. Peter Pan
XXV. The Second Message
XXVI. The Cryptogram
XXVII. The Comrades Gather
XXVIII. The Raid
XXIX. Adolf Zara
XXX. Memories Can Save
XXXI. Hiatus
XXXII. The Heart of Nanette
MOON OF MADNESS
CHAPTER I.
THE GERMAN LINER
“I should _love_ a long glass of iced German lager,” said Nanette.
“Besides, I refuse to be deserted for a whole morning.”
Her Japanese parasol lay along the rail of the veranda, her round bare
elbows rested upon it and she cuddled her obstinate little chin in
upturned palms. I turned to her with a glance in which I had meant to
convey rebuke. But the blue eyes danced with mischief and pouting lips
smiled impudently, a smile half childish and half elfin.
“Young ladies of eighteen do not drink beer,” I answered paternally.
“It isn’t done.”
Jack Kelton came out as I spoke, saw Nanette, and flushed like a girl.
When I say “like a girl” I mean like a girl of Victorian literature.
To-day one should say “like a boy.” I never saw Nanette blush during
all the time I knew her. I saw her grow deathly pale; but this was
later.
Jack was good to see in the Madeira sunlight; one of those lean-limbed
young Oxonians who strip so well and who always look amazingly clean.
Nanette turned a slim shoulder in his direction, and stared out
pensively across the bay. I thought that she had the most perfect arms
imaginable. So did Nanette.
“I want to go out with you two and Mr. Ensleigh to that ship,” she
said, peering aside at the enraptured Jack. “Please ask Mumsy. She
likes you--and I love beer.”
Jack and I exchanged glances. We both looked at Nanette; and then
beyond to where the subject of controversy lay anchored--a big German
out of Bremen, in from the River Plate.
“I _have_ asked her,” Jack declared. “She’s adamant.”
“So have I,” came a cheery voice--and Ensleigh joined the party. “She
says that Mr. Kirby is coming to lunch.”
“But I _loathe_ Mr. Kirby!” cried Nanette, turning upon the speaker
scornfully. “He’s one of the reasons why I want to go!”
“Is that so, Nan?”
From a long, awning-covered chair near the corner of the veranda
Nanette’s mother arose--a gracefully pretty woman who solved the
mystery of Nanette’s beauty for those who had met only her father.
“Mumsy! Have you been sitting there all the time?”
“All the time, dear--and I have heard every word! So don’t attempt to
take one back!”
Ensleigh, the well-groomed, became all attention. He became attentive
from the crown of his perfectly brushed hair to the soles of his
spruce white shoes. He placed a chair for Nanette’s pretty mother. He
focussed his Zeiss glasses to enable her to view the German liner. She
thanked him with a smile that was very like Nanette’s.
“So you loathe poor Mr. Kirby?” she murmured, raising the glasses.
“Hate him poisonously!”
“And you love beer?”
“Simply worship it, Mum! Lager is my vice!”
Her mother lowered the glasses and fought with rising laughter, for
Nanette was looking straight at her. Then:
“You little devil!” she said. “I don’t believe a word of it! But your
father simply won’t hear of you going on board a German ship. Don’t
ask me why. You know him as well as anybody.”
“I’ll ask him myself!” Nanette said, flashing blue eyes rebelliously.
“Where is the funny old thing?”
“Nan, dear!”
“Oh, he’s a darling! But he _is_ funny! He’s never forgotten that I
was once a baby.”
“You are still a baby, Nan--a mere infant.”
Nanette threw back her shapely bobbed head and laughed scornfully.
Wild canaries were love-making in the palm grove below the balcony,
and, being poetically inclined, I suppose, I thought that Nanette’s
soft rippling laughter was music sweet as theirs.
She turned swiftly. She had all her mother’s grace as well as the
divine abandon of youth. With never another glance at any of us, she
walked in through the open French window. Jack Kelton’s glance
followed the slim, straight figure. Her mother looked up at Ensleigh.
“Have you a daughter?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “I regret----”
“Don’t regret,” she interrupted; but her smile belied the Chinese
solecism to come: “Pray that you may never have a daughter!”
“Really,” Jack began, in his youthful, diffident way, “I don’t think
there’s any harm in----”
He was interrupted. Nanette returned, dragging by the hand a very
bored, gray-haired gentleman who carried a copy of the _Times_ that
was ten days old. The gentleman, blinking through his glasses, was
being forced out into the sunshine.
“Now, Pop,” said Nanette firmly, “is there really any reason why I
shouldn’t go with Mr. Ensleigh, Mr. Decies, and Mr. Kelton to see that
German liner?”
“Well, dear,” her father replied, in his laboured manner, “I am afraid
you would be late for lunch, and----”
His glance sought his wife’s. I distinctly detected a negative shake
of the head from Nanette’s mother.
“And,” he went on, “your mother thinks that this would be rude, as Mr.
Kirby is expected.”
He smiled almost apologetically, patted Nanette on the head, and,
_Times_ in hand, returned to his shady lair in the smoke-room. Nanette
stared reproachfully at her mother.
“Don’t be huffy about it, darling,” said the latter. “Really, you will
only have time for a swim and a sun bath, if you are to make yourself
presentable by one o’clock.”
Nanette looked swiftly from face to face. A number of people had now
begun to come out from late breakfast. She checked speech, withered
poor Jack with a final, comprehensive look of scorn, and walked
quickly into the hotel. The last few steps that were visible, as she
crossed the threshold, almost consisted of stamping her little feet.
Following a moment of silence:
“Look here, you chaps,” said Jack, “it looks rather mean for us all to
desert Nanette. I know we’ve engaged the launch and all that, but it’s
beastly tame swimming alone----”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Kelton,” Nanette’s mother broke in. She was smiling.
“Nanette will not be swimming alone!”
Poor Jack smiled in return, flushed, and then frowned darkly. His
glance constantly sought the entrance to the hotel. But Ensleigh
tactfully made the conversation general, and we were discussing the
feminine modes of Paris as opposed to those of Buenos Aires when a
slight figure arrayed in a pink bathrobe and shaded by a Japanese
parasol passed slowly down the path below the terrace; whereupon:
“There goes Nanette!” said Jack, jumping up. “Excuse me. I’ll just run
and ask her if she would rather I stayed.”
He hurled himself in the direction of the steps and disappeared. A
moment later he reappeared, running after the girl. We watched.
“Nanette!” he called.
Nanette paused, turned, waved her hand, and went on. She walked under
a veritable awning of hibiscus, sweeping some of the blossoms off with
her parasol. Rounding the corner, she came into view again on a lower
path. Her mother leaned over the balcony rail.
“Go after her, Jack!” she called. “Don’t be afraid of her!”
The words reached Nanette. She looked up through flower-laden
branches. Her voice came faintly.
“I don’t want him to come after me. I want to be alone.”
Jack Kelton turned and began to walk back up the sloping path. He kept
his curly head lowered, taking out a briar from his pocket and
fumbling for his pouch. Nanette’s mother glanced at Ensleigh.
“Poor Jack,” she said. “He is very young!”
CHAPTER II.
RESCUE
We did not take the lift down to the landing-stage. It was busy with
bathers; therefore we descended by the rambling stairway cut out of
the rock. At the bend, I paused.
Half across the bay, far beyond the waddling group who hugged the
bathing pool, where the transparent water showed turquoise blue, I saw
a flashing of white limbs and glimpsed a pink-covered head lowered to
the swell. Came a rapturous murmur behind me.
“Nanette! Gad! That girl swims like a fish!”
“They should follow with the boat,” Ensleigh’s voice broke in on
Jack’s. “There’s a beastly current cuts round the headland.”
“She is safe enough,” said I. “Her fairy godmother was a mermaid--or a
siren.”
Nevertheless, when we reached the waiting launch, Nanette’s daring had
attracted attention. I could not see her mother; but there was a buzz
of excited conversation all around, and the brown-skinned professional
was making urgent signals to the boatmen.
“She’s right on our course!” cried Jack. “Come on! Hurry up!”
“Don’t worry,” I implored him, tumbling into the launch.
“But she’ll never be able to swim it!” said Ensleigh, jumping in
behind me. “Hullo! What’s this!”
He had stumbled over a bulky parcel wrapped up in newspaper. I thought
I recognized the _Times_.
“Please leave alone, sir!” cried the Portuguese in charge. “I aska
tella you no touch!”
“Oh!”
Ensleigh stared at him suspiciously, and then we were off.
“Pick her up, Decies!” came a shout from someone on shore. “She’s
overdone it this morning. She can never get back!”
The purr of the motor made it difficult to hear the other shouts that
followed us. But excitement was growing intense, and I looked out
ahead uneasily. I could not see Nanette.
“Can you see her, Decies?” said Jack hoarsely.
“No.”
“There she is!”
The cry came from Ensleigh, and:
“Where?” Jack and I yelled together.
Ignoring us:
“Port, easy!” he directed the man at the wheel. “Now--as she is! Hold
it!”
We raced, all out, in the direction of the rash swimmer. A sort of
anger claimed me. This crazy performance was a display of girlish
pique. I felt particularly sorry for Jack Kelton. He was hanging over
the bow in a perfect anguish of terrified expectation. Presently:
“She’s still swimming strongly!” he gasped; then, almost immediately:
“My God!”
“What?”
Ensleigh and I were peering ahead over Jack’s shoulder.
“She’s gone down!”
Over the noise of the motor, over the sound of the sea, it reached us
dimly--a prolonged, horrified cry from the watchers on shore.
What happened during the next few minutes I am unable to record. I
think Jack was fighting with the boatman because he couldn’t get
another amp. out of his engine. Ensleigh, I remember, looked
dishevelled for the first time in my experience of him. I was drenched
with perspiration--and it was not wholly due to the heat of the sun.
Then, dead ahead, not six lengths away, a white arm was thrown up out
of the sea.
“Stop her!” I yelled.
Hot on the words came a splash--and Jack was in. He was fully dressed,
except that he had shed his college jacket. He reached Nanette as she
came up for the second time.
“Reverse! Starboard!”
We described an untidy crescent; and then--Nanette was being hauled
aboard. She sank down on the cushions as Jack came clambering over
looking like a half-drowned Airedale.
“Nanette!” he panted, and dropped on his knees before her.
She opened starry eyes, and looked at him.
“Yes?” she said.
“Back to the landing-stage,” I heard Ensleigh direct the boatman.
“What’s that!” cried Nanette, surprisingly sitting upright. “Not on
your life, Pedro!”
We were riding the swell, the motor silent, and from the now-distant
bathing pool I heard a sound of great, prolonged cheering.
Nanette sprang up on the thwart, standing there, poised on tip-toe, a
slender young goddess. Jack’s coat was in her hand; and she waved it
furiously, looking back to where moving figures showed upon
flower-draped terraces.
The cheering was renewed.
“That will relieve Mumsy’s anxiety,” said Nanette, sitting down again.
“Please go ahead, Pedro--and would somebody pass me my robe?”
“What!” cried Jack.
Ensleigh tore away the pages of the _Times_ from the mysterious
bundle--and there was Nanette’s pink robe!
“Be careful, please!” she said. “My shoes are wrapped up in it.” She
turned to Jack, at the same time pulling off her pink bathing cap.
“I’m so sorry you jumped in,” she added. “You were a darling to do it,
though.”
He had been positively glowering at her; but, at this, he blushed with
delight and became a proud and happy man. Nanette shook her tousled
head distractingly. Stooping, she pulled out from the folded robe a
pair of high-heeled shoes and proceeded to squeeze five tiny wet toes
into each of them.
“Nanette!” I said slowly. “Weren’t you drowning?”
She looked up at me.
“Of course I wasn’t drowning!” she returned. “I was swimming under
water. I was good for another mile!”
“Nanette!” said Ensleigh. “You will come to a bad end, my child.”
“Please pass me my parasol,” Nanette retorted. “It’s in the locker.
And be careful. My bag is inside it.”
The Japanese parasol was discovered. From it, Nanette took a small
bag. Surveying herself disdainfully in a square mirror, she combed her
hair. She delicately applied lip salve and powdered her impudent nose.
“You are all wet!” said Jack, feasting his eyes.
His case was worse than hers, and I marvelled at the altruism of love.
“The sun will dry me. But, oh! how good that lager will taste! Won’t
someone please give me a cigarette?”
I held out a yellow packet, and:
“Nanette,” I said, “one day a Someone will come who will teach you how
to behave yourself!”
“Tosh!” said Nanette, taking a Gold Flake. “I’ve outlived that sheikh
stuff.”
CHAPTER III.
THE MAN FROM THE RIVER PLATE
As we drew alongside the German, it became evident that we were
objects of much interest to her people. I had a good view of the
third-class quarters; she had a deck-load of dagoes under her awnings
that would have frightened a Chicago bootlegger.
We started up the ladder; and I thought it probable that some of the
spectators would either fall overboard or break their necks, so
urgently did they crane across the rails.
“They are anxious to see the gallant rescuer,” said Ensleigh.
I knew my dago better. They were anxious to see Nanette’s pretty legs.
On the deck, I turned and looked across to where Funchal climbed the
hill. The sunlight was dazzling. I could trace the steep cobbled
street, from point to point, down which one may slide in a wicker
toboggan; see the square, too, with its powder-blue trees, and imagine
the morning gathering at the tables outside the Golden Gate. Away over
the bows I looked, and saw the flower-draped cliffs below Reid’s,
where, on the lower terrace, over cocktails, Nanette would, I
surmised, be the sole topic of conversation.
The lady in question, supremely indifferent to the somewhat marked
curiosity of the passengers, was walking aft with Jack, doubtless in
quest of the much-desired lager. Jack, his legs encased in sodden
flannels, was ridiculously happy because Nanette hung on his arm.
“Leave them alone,” said Ensleigh. “God knows he’s earned it.”
We found our way to the smoke-room and ordered drinks. They were good
and cheap. They served to wipe out one more of the old scores I had
against our Teutonic friends (_nées_ enemies). It was a distinctly
mongrel company. Germans predominated, with a big sprinkling of those
nondescripts and none-such usually invoiced as Argentines but
sometimes mistaken for Greeks.
One man, who sat alone, puzzled me. He was handsome, in a way. He wore
his wavy hair rather long and was dressed in a perfectly cut and
immaculately white drill suit. With the aid of a black-rimmed monocle
attached to a thick ribbon, he read what looked like an official
document.
“By Jove!” Ensleigh exclaimed.
Glancing aside, I saw that he, too, was staring at this romantic
individual.
“Looks like John Barrymore,” said I.
“I know,” Ensleigh replied. “But he didn’t wear his hair like that the
last time I saw him--coming out of the Salient with what was left of
the Irish Guards. By Jove!”
He jumped up and crossed the room. I followed.
“O’Shea!” he cried.
The man addressed dropped his monocle and stood up; then:
“Ensleigh!” he exclaimed, and held out his hand. “Can it be Ensleigh!”
“Ensleigh it is!” was the reply; “and I want you to meet”--drawing me
forward--“Mr. Decies. Decies, this is Major Edmond O’Shea.”
The Major readjusted his monocle and looked me over briefly, as if to
determine whether he wanted to know me or not. I found myself looking
into a pair of the coldest gray eyes that had ever examined my hidden
motives.
But, to tell the truth, I was more than a little flurried. For, as
Ensleigh spoke, the fact had dawned upon me that I stood in the
presence not only of an Irishman of ancient family, nor merely in that
of a distinguished British officer, but in the presence of a mess-room
tradition; a thing infinitely more wonderful and holy. This was “The
O’Shea”--a synonym for all that’s fine under the Colours from
Whitehall to Khatmandu.
He dropped his monocle and grasped my hand warmly.
“I am glad to meet you, Mr. Decies,” he said. We formed a trio, and
there were some inevitable reminiscences--and more drinks; then:
“What, in the name of wonder, are you doing on this ship?” Ensleigh
asked.
O’Shea shrugged his shoulders. He had some queerly Gallic mannerisms.
In fact, if one had not known better, one must have written him off as
an incurable poseur.
“Peace-time soldiering is a dull business,” he replied. “I take on odd
jobs to keep me out of mischief.”
He rang for the steward and ordered drinks in what I believe was
unexceptionable German. Following some aimless chatter:
“Are you for Bremen?” asked Ensleigh.
“I don’t know,” said O’Shea surprisingly. He twirled his glass and
stared around the smoke-room. “I may come ashore here.”
“You _may_!” I exclaimed and glanced at the clock. “You have twenty
minutes to decide!”
“Two would be sufficient,” he assured me. “I travel light!”
He smiled--and, in the smile, I met for the first time the real
O’Shea. The cold gray eyes were cold no longer; they smiled,
too--whimsically, lovably. The cloak of inscrutability was dropped,
just for a moment, and the clean, brave soul of the man peeped out. A
vague dislike vanished as morning mist, and I knew that men would
follow Edmond O’Shea into the thickest and the hottest, if he needed
them; women, too, perhaps. A man like that is a man born to suffer.
But suddenly I understood why the Guards had worshipped him.
“There goes the first shore signal,” said Ensleigh. “We had better
rescue Nanette from the lager.”
We found her on deck with Jack and another man who had tacked himself
on to the party. He was a poisonously handsome none-such, and his
heavy-lidded dark eyes were literally devouring the girl’s dainty
beauty. He had come across Jack in London; and now Jack was the most
unhappy man in Madeira. Every time roguish blue eyes met lustful brown
eyes, he visibly shuddered.
The dark gentleman was presented.
“Ensleigh, Decies--meet Senhor Gabriel da Cunha.”
We met him--reluctantly.
“This,” said Ensleigh, “is Mr. Jack Kelton--Major Edmond O’Shea.
Doubtless, Senhor da Cunha, you have met already?”
“No,” murmured O’Shea, bowing coldly. “One does not meet everybody on
board.”
“Nanette!” I called.
She had stepped to the rail with Da Cunha. She turned.
“Yes?”
“I want you to know Major Edmond O’Shea.”
She came forward and I introduced them formally. Nanette gave one
quick, startled look at O’Shea--and O’Shea, noting her unusual attire,
smiled. Nanette dropped her lashes, said something meaningless, and
ran back to Da Cunha.
I heard Jack grind his teeth. When he joined the pair at the rail I
stood at his elbow.
“We must be saying good-bye, Mr. da Cunha,” he began, but:
“Not good-bye at all!” Da Cunha exclaimed, turning and resting one
hand on Nanette’s shoulder. “I am undecided until this morning, but
now--it is settled! Here, in Madeira”--he indicated distant hills--“I
have a bungalow, so charming. Do you know--” he included us all in the
conversation--“that in Funchal is what they call a ‘blind spot’ in
radio? Yes. But in my bungalow, high up, I have the most perfect set
in the island; and one night--to-night, maybe--” he glanced aside at
Nanette--“we shall dance to your Savoy band!”
“You are going ashore, then?”
“But certainly! It is settled. Is it not?”
The question was addressed to Nanette, and:
“I should just _hate_ to lose you so soon,” she replied. “Let’s go and
see if your things are in the boat.”
Side by side with the radiantly smiling Da Cunha, she hurried forward.
She glanced at Jack, at me, at Ensleigh. O’Shea was watching her, but
she avoided his gaze. He turned and went in at the saloon entrance.
The last gong sounded. Jack had suddenly disappeared. I stared at
Ensleigh. He whistled softly.
“Nanette has been bitten at last,” he remarked.
“Yes,” I said, “I think she has.”
Da Cunha’s baggage was loaded into Reid’s launch and we all got
aboard. We were surrounded by a babbling gang in boats who held up
Madeira lace and cane chairs and shawls and bedspreads, desperately
inviting bids from the passengers. It was distracting, so that I
scarcely noticed a steward coming down the ladder, carrying a suitcase
and a valise. Jack sat right astern, his hands plunged in the pockets
of his sodden flannels. Then, suddenly, I realized that someone was
beside me.
I turned--and met the cold gray eyes of O’Shea!
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “Your decision was a sudden one!”
“Yes,” he replied, “it was--very.”
“Hullo, O’Shea!” cried Ensleigh. “This is fine!”
Nanette bent toward Da Cunha, talking animatedly.
CHAPTER IV.
AT THE CASINO
A party of us went down to the Casino that night, consisting of
Nanette, Nanette’s mother, Ensleigh, and myself. Jack excused himself
on the plea that he had promised to play somebody five-hundred up.
Nanette had been put through the hoop well and truly for her escapade,
but she looked none the worse for this parental correction.
Newly from the seclusion of a French convent, she was learning the
dangerous truism that beauty governs mankind.
Da Cunha was waiting at the Casino--and Nanette pretended to be
surprised. Her mother really _was_ surprised, and maternally alarmed.
She was a woman of the world and she knew her Da Cunhas.
The said Da Cunha wanted to dance. Nanette loved dancing and danced
divinely. Therefore she decided to play roulette.
“Please, Mumsy,” she pleaded--“until I have lost a pound!”
Her mother consented, silently signalling me to sit beside Nanette at
the table. Whilst Nanette’s mother danced with Ensleigh, I chaperoned
Nanette.
The game was dull. Da Cunha constantly urged the superior charms of
the ballroom. But Nanette played on. Presently:
“Do you think Jack will come along?” she asked.
“I hope so.”
An interval in which Nanette lost five shillings, then:
“Had you met Major O’--what’s his name--before?”
“No. I had heard of him.”
“Really? Is he famous?”
“I suppose he is--in a way.”
“But listen!” Da Cunha exclaimed, “this is _so_ boring! Let us dance.”
“Not until I’ve lost my pound,” said Nanette firmly.
More aimless play, then:
“I saw your Major man when we first went on board, you know,” said
Nanette, casually staking her all on a number. “Jack and I peeped into
the smoke-room, and--he was in there.”
“Really. Is that so?”
“Yes. Wasn’t it odd I should meet him, after--seeing him like that?”
“Very odd.”
Nanette’s fortune was swept away by the croupier. She remained
unperturbed. She kept throwing quick little glances all about the
room, and now:
“Please take me out on the terrace and get me a long, cool drink,” she
asked.
We stood up and crossed to the open doors. Da Cunha grabbed Nanette’s
arm and led her out. As I followed, I glanced aside, and saw Jack
coming in. He looked very flushed. He was literally glaring after the
pair in front of me. I waved to him, but he swung around and went out
again.
It was dark on the terrace and at first I couldn’t see Nanette. Then I
glimpsed a raised white arm over in a distant corner. She was standing
with her back to the railing and Da Cunha stood in front of her,
bending forward, one hand resting beside her and his face very close
to hers.
“What about that long, cool drink?” said I.
Nanette immediately ran to me.
“Oh, please!” she cried. “I’m simply gasping! Where shall we sit?
Somewhere by the windows--where we can watch.”
She was excited, and it was clear enough that Da Cunha had been making
love to her. He turned, and I heard him snap his fingers.
“Why not here?” he suggested. “How beautiful is the view in the
moonlight, with the dark groves and twinkling lamps.”
“No,” said Nanette, selecting a table near an open window. “I feel
chilly and I want to watch the dancing.”
“If you are cold, let us dance.”
Nanette shook her head and opened a tiny jewelled cigarette case. She
bent toward me.
“A match, please,” she begged.
She was quite determined, and so we sat there sipping iced drinks
until Nanette’s mother and Ensleigh joined us. There were inquiries
for Jack, but I said nothing--for the boy had been palpably drunk.
Nanette was unable to mask her preoccupation, constantly looking into
the lighted rooms, then, suddenly, halfway through a Charleston, she
jumped up.
“Come on,” she said to Da Cunha, and threw her wrap to me--“let’s
dance!”
He was on his feet in an instant and the two went in. Nanette’s mother
was playing, and as I stood up I glanced toward the table.
O’Shea was standing watching the play.
Nanette and Da Cunha began to dance. Da Cunha danced perfectly, with
all the sensuous grace of a none-such; but the look in his dark eyes
raised my gorge to a hundred and twenty in the shade. Nanette floated
in his arms like a bit of thistledown; her tiny feet seemed scarcely
to brush the floor. He talked to her constantly, and sometimes she
smiled up at him; but, always, she glanced into the roulette room as
they passed. Ensleigh joined us.
“Yes,” said he, “little Nanette is in the throes of her first
infatuation.”
As he spoke, she went past in Da Cunha’s arms, and frowned at
Ensleigh--because he blocked her view of the roulette table.
“She is,” I agreed.
She danced every dance after that with Da Cunha, becoming more and
more animated as the night wore on. Then her mother moved an
adjournment. Of course, Nanette objected.
“Mumsy,” she said. “Mr. Da Cunha has invited us all to drive up to his
bungalow. We can dance to the Savoy band. Think of it!”
But her mother refused to think of it. Da Cunha was not defeated yet,
however. His car was waiting. He would drive the party to Reid’s. In
the end this invitation was accepted. Nanette, her mother, Ensleigh,
and I elected to go.
“How many can you take?” Nanette asked.
“Oh, six easily.”
“I wonder if anyone else is going back?” said Nanette.
Following her glance:
“I might ask Major O’Shea if he is ready,” said I. “Do you mind,
Senhor da Cunha?”
“But of course not!” he replied, looking like Cæsar Borgia thinking
out a new prescription.
O’Shea thanked me. He preferred to walk.
“And I dislike Senhor Da Cunha,” he added.
Therefore the five of us packed into a flamingo-red Farman that stood
before the Casino. I thought that if brass helmets had been served
out, we should have done credit to any fire brigade. Da Cunha, of
course, had Nanette beside him in front. I could hear his constant
murmur over the roar of the engine. He took us up to Reid’s at an
average of about fifty-five.
Nanette’s mother steered Nanette to bed, and Da Cunha did not stay
long. I sent a page to look for Jack, but he was not in his room.
At about midnight, O’Shea joined us. We went out on to the terrace,
pipes going, and sat watching the fairyland of the gardens below, with
the winking lights of Funchal climbing the slopes beyond. Presently I
heard a faint movement, and:
“Oh!” said a voice in the darkness.
We all turned--and there was Nanette, distracting in déshabille.
“I can’t sleep, and I left my book out here!” she explained.
“Let me look,” said Ensleigh.
But he looked in vain.
“May I stay awhile and smoke a cigarette with you?” Nanette pleaded;
“or were you telling funny stories?”
She stayed--seated on the arm of my chair. There was not much
conversation, but after awhile O’Shea got up and disappeared. Nanette
began to talk, then, with feverish animation, until presently O’Shea
came back, carrying a loose coat.
Very gracefully, he placed it around Nanette’s shoulders.
“You must be cold,” he said.
Nanette glanced up at him, then down again--and shivered. But it was
not because she was cold.
Later, long after Nanette reluctantly had retired to her room, Jack
was driven up from Funchal. We put him to bed without arousing anyone.
“I’ll kill that slimy Da Cunha,” he declared thickly--and went to
sleep.
O’Shea surveyed him through the black-rimmed monocle.
“I wonder if cats and pretty girls know how cruel they are?” he
murmured.
CHAPTER V.
“IN FIVE MINUTES”
The days wore on in that lotus-eaters’ paradise and I became an
audience of one at a comedy designed to end in drama. There was a
mystery that intrigued me vastly, and Ensleigh shared my curiosity.
I could not imagine what the O’Shea was doing in Madeira.
Da Cunha, palpably, had broken his journey to pursue Nanette. He
positively haunted the hotel. I found it hard to believe that any such
motive had inspired the Major. Ensleigh, with singular density,
believed that Nanette was desperately infatuated with Da Cunha. I let
him think so, and studied O’Shea.
This strange man spent a large part of every day seated on his
balcony, reading and writing. What he read or what he wrote, nobody
knew. On occasions, he disappeared for hours: and no one knew where he
went.
It was queer, too, how many times Nanette strolled through the
unfrequented part of the gardens below this balcony. Sometimes, but
rarely, she would be alone, sometimes with Jack, more often with Da
Cunha. But, always, she paused to glance in her mirror and powder her
nose before she turned the corner. O’Shea, apparently, never noticed
her.
She would loiter around the bathing pool for hours in the morning and
then suddenly throw off her robe and plunge into the sea with an easy,
gliding dive like a young dryad. By this token I would know that
O’Shea was sauntering down the steps.
As she went in, Da Cunha and Jack would take the water like twin
ducks. It was a miracle that they never tried to drown each other.
O’Shea was a hard man to know; a lonely man. I was honestly proud of
the fact that, little by little, he began to unbend to me, to grant me
something like friendship. Occasionally he would join me on the
cocktail terrace before lunch; and Nanette would ask him for matches
and then run back to her mother, Ensleigh, Jack, Da Cunha, and the
rest of the party who, amongst them, had enough matches to fire the
building.
Da Cunha was ceaselessly persevering in his endeavours to take her for
drives, to take her fishing, and to dance with her to the strains of
the Savoy band. Her mother negatived these plans.
One day a very (apparently) indignant Nanette came across to where I
was sitting with O’Shea. Jack followed.
“Mr. Decies!” she burst out, “Gabriel wants to drive me out to a
perfectly wonderful cliff. You lie on the edge and look down I don’t
know how many hundred feet. Now, do _you_ see any earthly reason why I
shouldn’t go?”
“I don’t suppose Decies sees any earthly reason why _I_ shouldn’t,”
said Jack. “But I haven’t been invited.”
“You are always quarrelling with Gabriel,” Nanette retorted, fixing a
cigarette in her holder. “Please, Major, would you give me a light?”
As she stooped over the match that he struck for her, I could see her
eyes--looking at every wave in his hair, seeking out the hint of
powder at his temples, studying his long, sensitive fingers. He threw
the match away, and:
“You are such a restless little girl,” he said. “Why not spend a few
peaceful hours in the garden, reading? Let me lend you a book.”
Coming from any other source, this suggestion would have provoked a
scathing rejoinder, but:
“Thank you,” said Nanette simply, “I will.”
She sat for that entire afternoon in a secluded corner of the garden,
a comfortable, empty chair drawn up beside her own, reading a Russian
novel--and waiting for O’Shea to join her.
But he didn’t.
That evening the comedy became drama. I was to learn in a few short
hours how Nanette’s alluring beauty had averted tragedy from a royal
house. And this was how it developed:
A rather special dance had been arranged--I forget why; and O’Shea,
quite the best-dressed man in the hotel, was last to go to his room
and first down. He could get into black quicker than anyone I have
ever met. You may know Reid’s green and yellow jazz cocktail bar?
Well, as I looked in, having changed, there was O’Shea on a tall stool
studying a dry Martini through his monocle. The way his bow was tied
excited my envy; it was a poem in white piqué.
We had the bar to ourselves, and presently: “How long do you expect to
stay in Madeira?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled--that rare and revealing smile.
“In the strictest confidence, Decies,” he replied--and suddenly his
gray eyes grew steely; he was smiling no longer--“until I have in my
possession a certain small black dispatch-box.”
“What!” I exclaimed.
“It contains,” he went on, “some unfortunate correspondence
compromising a royal personage; and if it ever reaches the Communist
base in London, I hesitate to imagine the consequences.”
“Good heavens!” said I, and formed my lips to convey an unspoken name.
O’Shea nodded.
“Exactly,” he replied. “That was what took me to the Argentine; but
the Reds’ man--a dangerous and clever agent--doubled on me in Buenos
Aires, and so you met me on my way back to Europe.”
“Then you have it!” I cried.
“No, damn it! I haven’t!” said he; “or would I be sitting on this
stool? It’s getting desperate, Decies! There’s a British destroyer
standing off Funchal waiting my radio that I’m coming on board!”
I said nothing for a few moments. Then I thanked him for his
confidence.
“I confide in you with a definite purpose,” he replied. “I claim to be
a judge of men, and I judge you to be one who would stand by in a
rough house. I may need help, after all. If I do, the facts being as
we know them, can I call on you?”
We solemnly shook hands--as Nanette came racing in.
She was flushed with excitement, and wearing a new frock. Her blue
eyes shone like stars when she saw O’Shea. She looked adorable, and
was well aware of the fact. Her happiness was that of the girl who
knows herself to be perfectly gowned. It was completed now that Fate
had ordained O’Shea to be the first man to see her so.
Jumping on to a tall stool:
“Do you like me?” she demanded naïvely.
“You look as though you had come straight from fairyland,” I said.
“Let me order you something, to prove you are mortal.”
“Oh, no, please!” cried Nanette. “Mumsy would play Hamlet if she
caught me drinking cocktails! Give me just a sip of yours!”
She drank from my glass, watching me with roguish eyes; then, turning
to O’Shea:
“Am I smart enough to be honoured with a dance this evening, Major?”
she asked--but the note of raillery faded as she met his glance, and
she dropped her bobbed head, looking down at tiny blue and silver
shoes.
“The honour would be mine, Nanette,” he said, in the gentle way he had
of addressing all women.
Nanette bit her lip and jumped to the floor, as her mother came to
look for her.
“Good gracious, Nanette!” she exclaimed. “In the _bar_! And your
frock, dear! I see, now, why you wouldn’t have me with you to try on!”
“Please _don’t_, Mumsy!” cried Nanette. “Will you _never_ allow me to
grow up!”
The blue-and-silver frock was certainly daring for a débutante. It
was pure Paris; but Nanette’s sweet shoulders were worth displaying.
“You are altogether too naked, dear!” her mother declared.
“I wear less when I’m swimming!” argued the reasonable Nanette.
“Never mind. Please wear your wrap, dear, or a scarf--at least during
dinner.”
And so the famous evening began.
Da Cunha had managed to get himself invited to the dinner party that
included Nanette, and Jack sat facing him. Ensleigh, O’Shea, and I
shared a bachelor table.
When the dancing began, I missed O’Shea. Nanette danced with me, but
very abstractedly, alternately watching the door and the open French
windows. There are few things more provoking than to dance with a
pretty girl who wants to dance with someone else.
Da Cunha claimed her quite often and she suffered his public
love-making in a way that nearly led to an outburst from Jack. The
storm broke when O’Shea appeared. Nanette had begun dancing with Jack,
but she did not finish. She dragged him across the floor to O’Shea,
and:
“Please say you will dance,” she pleaded. She turned to her flushed
partner. “Then we will finish our fox-trot, Jack,” she added.
“I hate to refuse,” O’Shea replied, and his voice was very gentle;
“but I came down to beg you to excuse me. I find that I must go
out--on most urgent business. Don’t be angry. I mean it, Nanette.”
Nanette was not angry--but she was deeply humiliated. Every woman in
the room had marked her descent upon the aloof O’Shea, confident in
her radiant young beauty.
“I don’t want to dance any more,” she said petulantly, when the Major
had gone, “at least, not to this silly band.”
“It’s an excellent band, dear,” her mother replied, watching Nanette
with a sudden maternal anxiety.
“They play such old stuff,” Nanette declared. “‘Brown Eyes, Why Are
You Blue?’ is wildly out of date. They are liable to break into ‘Rock
of Ages’ almost any minute!”
“Then what do you want to do?”
“I want to drive up to Gabriel’s and dance to the Savoy band.”
“Nanette!”--her mother spoke sharply--“I have already told you that I
absolutely refuse. You heard what your father said?”
“No, Mumsy, I didn’t,” Nanette replied. “_You_ told me. I would like
to ask Pop.”
But “Pop” had retired with a _Financial News_ and three old copies of
the _Morning Post_.
“Then I’m going to bed,” Nanette announced. “I have a headache.”
She turned and walked from the ballroom. Da Cunha detained her in the
doorway, but only for a moment. Then he crossed the floor and went out
on to the terrace. A few minutes later I strolled up to my room to get
a pipe. The window was open, and I lingered in the dark for a moment,
held by the moon-magic of the night. As I stood there, I heard a soft
call:
“Nanette!”
Nanette’s room was below and to the left of mine. I looked out. I
could see a slender silvery figure leaning over the balcony.
“Is that you, Gabriel?”
“Yes, dear.”
“In five minutes!”
CHAPTER VI.
THE BUNGALOW IN THE HILLS
Personality is a queer thing. Nobody has quite defined it yet. In my
wild quest of a plan to save Nanette from herself, without letting her
mother know and without compromising her, I came straight to what
looked to me like an inevitable decision--I decided to tell O’Shea.
What I thought he could do that I couldn’t do alone, God knows; but
the Guards used to feel like that about him.
One fear I had: that he should have started out on whatever mysterious
business called him. I raced across to his room. It was in darkness. I
went hareing down to the lounge. Dancing was in full swing; no sign of
O’Shea. I grabbed the hall porter.
“Has Major O’Shea gone out?”
“No, sir. Not this way.”
I turned, hope reborn--and there stood O’Shea reading a note that a
chambermaid had just handed to him!
“O’Shea!” I cried.
He glanced up. His face was very stern. His eyes glinted icily.
“Go and get Kelton,” he said. “Bring him here--alone.”
“But Nanette----”
“I know all about Nanette. Bring Kelton to me.”
I ran. I was under orders. But it was a service of love.
Jack was in the bar--quite alone. He looked at me in a lowering way.
“Nanette’s in danger,” I said briefly. He jumped up. “Come quickly.”
When we got to the hall porter’s sanctum, and he saw who was waiting,
he pulled up with a jerk.
“What the hell has _he_ got to do with it?” he demanded.
“Mr. Kelton!”
O’Shea was watching him.
“Well, what is it?”
“This!” O’Shea handed him the note. “You read it, too, Decies.”
Jack and I read together:
Have gone to Gabriel’s bungalow to dance. If you get this in time,
will you join us?
Nanette.
Jack crushed the paper into a ball.
“My God! The little fool!” he said. “Why did she send this to _you_?”
O’Shea stared the angry lover down, then:
“Because she is very young,” he answered, without one note of anger.
“Don’t blame her, Kelton--and don’t blame me. Blame the customs of
to-day. Leave me out. _You_ are going to save her from Da Cunha.”
“Has she started?”
“I fear so.”
“Then where’s the chance? That swine has a Farman racer!”
“True, but he can’t race at night on those roads. It will take him
half an hour.”
“We have no car!”
“We don’t need one. I happen to know a route--a mere goat track--by
which we can climb to the bungalow almost as quickly as he can drive
there.”
“You mean it?” asked Jack hoarsely.
“As it happens, I was about to take a stroll in that direction when
this note reached me.”
“Come on!” said Jack.
* * * * *
I have the haziest recollection of that appalling climb. O’Shea knew
the way like the palm of his hand. Under a sickle moon that looked so
near in its white purity one almost felt one could reach up and grasp
it, we climbed, panting and sweating. From the gardens of the valley
we broke up through banana plantations where the great bursting pods
banged our heads as we stooped to follow that tireless guide. We
scaled a sheer hillside steep as a roof. We crawled along a path less
than a yard wide, with a gorge yawning hundreds of feet below in which
the vineyards shrank to a close green carpet.
We came to the red earth of the uplands. Our feet sank in it as in
moss. Pines barred our way, rank on rank. Away to the left, below,
beyond, the still sea shone like lapis lazuli.
“Ssh! Quiet!” O’Shea ordered.
We pulled up. I looked at Jack. He might recently have come out of the
hot-room in a Turkish bath. His collar was a mere farce; a loop of
exhausted linen. I believe I was no more spruce. I looked at O’Shea.
That remarkable man appeared to be as well-dressed as usual.
“Single file,” he commanded. “Not a sound.”
We crept on, breathing heavily; and presently, through those sentinel
pines on the crest, it reached us--the music of the Savoy orchestra,
playing in a distant Strand!
“Thank God! We are in time!” said O’Shea.
We sighted Da Cunha’s bungalow through the thinning trees. Lights
shone out from three tall windows fronting on an L-shaped stoop. The
windows were open, and O’Shea made his dispositions.
“Kelton,” he directed, “take the window on your right front. Keep out
of sight. Wait your moment. Time it. We shall not interfere.” He held
out his hand. “This is your chance. Make the most of it.”
Jack grasped the extended hand, and:
“Thank you, sir!” he said.
He went off through the pines, stooping warily.
We gave him time to reach his post; then O’Shea and I made a detour
and crept up on to the veranda so that we looked into Da Cunha’s
bungalow from a window opposite to that which concealed Jack.
The room was sparsely furnished. It had a polished floor from which
the few rugs had been removed. There was champagne in an ice bucket on
a buffet. There was the most elaborate and costly wireless set I had
ever beheld. A Moorish lamp hanging from the beamed ceiling gave
light. I could see two good pictures--both nudes--and a long, deep,
cushioned divan. At the Savoy, they were playing Jerome Kern’s “Who,”
and Nanette and Da Cunha were dancing to it.
I have said that the none-such danced perfectly. His dancing on this
night was inspired--inspired by passion. He did not merely hold
Nanette, he enveloped her; with his arms, with his ardent, lascivious
eyes.
She swam into view and out of view like a dream-nymph hypnotized by a
satyr. Her expression was indefinable as I saw it. A sort of
exaltation was there, born of adventure and sensuous music. I could
not know whether she had tasted the wine; but there was a dawning
doubt, too, a doubt of herself that was not yet fear.
Then the music ceased, and we heard remote applause.
Da Cunha disconnected the set and led Nanette to the divan. He seated
himself beside her, smiled, and put his arm around her bare shoulders.
She made a little whimsical grimace, but did not protest. Then she
glanced at him quickly--and he stooped and kissed her. It was a
lingering kiss, which she ended by pushing him away.
Their conversation reached us as a mere murmur; but Nanette
imperatively negatived further advances and pointed in the direction
of the buffet. Da Cunha shrugged, smiled, and crossed to the ice
bucket.
I had both fists so tightly clenched that they hurt; but O’Shea’s hand
held my wrist like a human manacle. Jack’s inaction astounded me.
Then, under the urge of O’Shea’s iron restraint, I began to think.
After all, poor Jack held no rights over Nanette, and he was too
unworldly to grasp the inwardness of this scene. She had suffered Da
Cunha’s kiss. Jack was still waiting for his cue.
It came shortly after Da Cunha returned with two beaded glasses. I had
watched Nanette whilst the man had poured out the wine; and I knew
that, at last, pique, rebellion, having died their natural deaths, she
realized her position.
He set the glasses on a little coffee table and drew it beside the
divan. Nanette asked him to connect up with the Savoy again. He shook
his head and smilingly handed her one of the glasses. She put it down,
untouched. Da Cunha drained the other, replaced it on the table, and,
suddenly throwing himself on his knees, clasped the girl in eager arms
and burst into a torrent of passionate speech.
Nanette shrank back on the divan. Da Cunha followed her. He kissed her
hands, her arms, her shoulders. He devoured her with his lips.
She writhed in his clasp, uttered a half-stifled cry, and wrenching
one arm free, tried to thrust him away.
Then Jack came in.
He covered the course in four running strides, stooped, seized Da
Cunha around the neck, and jerked him on to his feet. Whereon
followed--catastrophe.
Jack slipped on the polished floor, stumbled, tried to recover--and
fell.
Da Cunha twisted about and kicked him above the left temple.
He lay prone.
“Jack!” cried Nanette. “Jack!”
O’Shea’s grip on my wrist was like a vise.
“Wait,” he said. “The boy’s down but he’s not out!”
O’Shea was right. Nanette’s voice recalled him. Da Cunha wore only
light dancing shoes.
Jack rolled over, avoided a second swinging kick, and came to his
feet, shaking his tawny head like a terrier with a flea in his ear.
“Jack!” cried Nanette again.
She crouched on the divan, wide-eyed. Her shoulder strap had slipped;
and Nanette will never know how beautiful I know she is. Even as I
saw, guiltily, she readjusted it--and the fight started.
Blood was trickling into Jack’s eyes. He kept dodging and trying to
clear his sight. It upset his judgment, beyond a doubt; added to which
his skull must have been humming like a beehive. Remember, too, the
climb he had put in.
To my intense annoyance, the none-such proved able to box as well as
he danced and kicked. He took all a trained fighter’s advantage of
Jack’s double handicap. Some punishment came his way, but it was not
heavy--and he kept registering killing body blows on his opponent.
Jack might have planted a lucky one before it was too late. But
Nanette defeated him.
“Jack!” she cried, a sob in her voice. “Don’t let him _beat_ you!”
Half-dazed, the boy paused, dropped his hands--and Da Cunha recorded a
tremendous right well below the belt. Jack went down--to stay.
“The dirty swine!” I exclaimed.
O’Shea slipped a revolver into my hand.
“I don’t think there are any servants about to-night,” he said. “But
see that I’m not interrupted.”
He stepped in through the open window, twirling his monocle on its
black ribbon. It was not pose; it was nerves. The man was human. He
was fighting for composure.
Da Cunha faced him, and:
“_You!_” came, as a sort of rapturous sigh, from the divan.
The two men confronted each other for an electric moment; then:
“You are a very dirty fighter, Da Cunha,” said O’Shea smoothly. “But,
as you are probably tired, I suggest that you give me the black
dispatch-box that you have locked in your bedroom--and we will say no
more about it.”
Da Cunha’s expression became complicated. My own brain was revolving
like a merry-go-round. This sudden revelation was too much for
me--that Da Cunha was a Red agent!
“Go to hell!” was the reply. “Who are you?”
“You are very forgetful,” said O’Shea.
As he spoke, he reached out a long, lazy left. It looked effortless,
but it was perfectly timed, perfectly measured. It started in the ball
of his suddenly rigid right foot and from there carried every amp. of
energy in his body to the point of Da Cunha’s jaw.
There was a pleasant snapping sound. Da Cunha went down like a
poleaxed ox.
Nanette sat silent, a second Niobe.
“Decies!” cried O’Shea. “The revolver! We have no time to waste!”
I ran in, passing the weapon to him.
“Attend to Kelton,” he directed. “We must get him away.”
He crossed to a door right of the divan and went into a room beyond,
which was dimly lighted.
“Mr. Decies----” Nanette began.
Came the sound of a pistol shot… a second! There followed a
splintering crash. Nanette leapt to her feet, and turned--as O’Shea
came out again, carrying a small black dispatch-box. He put it on the
coffee table.
Jack stirred and groaned. Nanette’s gaze never left O’Shea. And now,
timidly approaching him:
“I was mad,” she whispered. “Oh, thank you!” She swayed and sank into
his arms, her perfect lips raised to his in offering. “Can you forgive
me?”
He held her for a moment, very tenderly, looking into her eyes, then:
“I have nothing to forgive, little girl,” he said. “You have been
foolish, but I don’t think you will ever be so foolish again.”
Gently, he set her aside, and:
“Decies,” said he, “lend a hand with Kelton. We will borrow the
Farman.”
CHAPTER VII.
A SHORT NOTE
Wonderful to relate, we managed to keep secret the story of
Nanette’s indiscretion. Her mother never knew that she had left her
room. And it was toward dusk of the following day that the first act
of the tragi-comedy came to a close.
To Ensleigh’s inquiries touching my disappearance from the dance, I
had returned evasive replies. Jack kept his room, for good and
sufficient reasons, and O’Shea had gone into the town early and had
not come back. Nanette remained invisible.
For all the glory of the Madeiran sunshine and the wonder of the
flowers, black depression sat heavily upon us.
I was lounging on the terrace at about six o’clock wondering what
Nanette was doing and whether her mother suspected anything, when
O’Shea suddenly walked out to me.
“Hello!” I cried. “I thought you had gone for good!”
“No,” he answered musingly, “not yet.”
He sank into a chair, as though dog weary.
“Had a hard day?” I asked.
“Fairly,” he replied; “but I’ve done my job. I suspect there are
harder to come.” He paused, then: “Have you seen Nanette?” he asked.
“No,” I stared at him. “O’Shea, tell me if you resent my
frankness--but that girl’s madly in love with you.”
“I don’t resent it, Decies,” he answered. “I know she thinks she is.
But Nanette is very young. There is something you don’t know--that
nobody else will ever know.”
I looked into the gray eyes. But they were not cold: they were on
fire! I drew a sharp breath.
“O’Shea----” I began.
He nodded, and gripped my hand hard.
“Yes!” he said simply. “From the first moment I saw her. I daren’t
trust myself to see her again. You understand? It’s quite impossible.”
“But why?”
“For many reasons. Thank God, _she’s_ young enough to forget.”
There was a short silence, which is more memorable to me than many
long conversations.
“What shall you do?” I asked.
He pointed across the bay.
Trailing a pennant of smoke in her wake, the greyhound shape of a
destroyer raced for the harbour.
“I sail in an hour,” he answered. “I can take care of myself, Decies,
but Nanette is of an age when a--silly attachment might spoil years of
her life. So”--he took a letter from his pocket--“I have done a cruel
thing. I have said what isn’t true--God knows it isn’t true! Her pride
will do the rest. Will you give it to her--after I have gone?”
The promise was made. I thought of Nanette’s fresh young loveliness,
which this man, who wanted her madly, might have taken as an
unconditional gift. I thought of certain others I had met. I recalled
that we moved in the year of freedom, 1927. And I wondered.
I have known some good Irishmen and some bad. But Edmond O’Shea would
be a mighty fine advertisement for any race on earth.
Nanette came down to dinner, and I can never forget her expression
when she saw O’Shea’s deserted table.
My task was going to be a hard one.
I took her out to the terrace afterward. Away on the distant horizon I
could trace a faint wisp of smoke.
“Do you mean,” she said, and her voice had changed strangely, “that
Major O’Shea--has gone?”
I looked at her, a sweet picture in the moonlight. And little Nanette
had grown up. She watched me with a woman’s eyes.
I handed the note to her. She ran to the library window, tearing open
the envelope as she went. I turned away and tried to trace the slender
smoke trail fading, fading on a distant horizon.
A cry brought me sharply about.
Nanette stood before me, her eyes blazing, her face deathly white.
“Do you know what is in this?” she demanded.
“I do not, Nanette.”
And indeed I shall never know; but I know what it cost him to write
it.
A moment she stood so, glaring at me. Then, frenziedly she began to
tear the letter into tiny fragments, and:
“How dare he!” she cried. “Oh, God! how _dare_ he!”
Whereupon she burst into such passionate sobs that it was agony to
hear them. Dropping into a chair on the deserted terrace, she cried
until my heart ached.
It was her first love, and a very big one. An O’Shea inspires nothing
petty. But she had courage, and pride.
She conquered her weakness, and stood up.
“You are very kind, Mr. Decies,” she said. “I am sorry I made a fool
of myself.”
Then she went in, walking very upright.
I spent a wretched evening, and when I retired to my room, sleep
simply would not come. I got up, with an idea of smoking a pipe, but,
first, I crossed to the open window. On a moon-dappled path below the
terrace I espied a moving figure; and Burns’s words flashed through my
mind: “The best-laid schemes o’ mice and men…”
Nanette was stealing among the flowers, collecting tiny fragments of
the torn letter that a light evening breeze had blown from the terrace
above. It was a hurt, an affront; but it was the only thing of his she
had.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE CALL
“Telegram, sir!”
I sat up with a start. Morning sunlight flooded the large bare room.
Wild canaries were singing outside my window. Slowly, facts began to
assert themselves. I had been dreaming that I was taking tea at
Stewarts with the Duchess of York and Mr. Tom Mann, when Trebitch
Lincoln had appeared through a window, holding a bomb in his hand.
Now, I realized that I had read news of all in a week-old _Daily Mail_
recently; but that actually I was in bed at Reid’s Hotel, Funchal.
The radio message that the boy had brought up was crisp enough, but it
effectually banished my drowsiness.
Please call on British consul at once. Vitally urgent. Am holding you
to our bargain.
O’Shea.
A bargain based upon the survival of so old an institution as the
British Empire is not lightly denied: I thought that perhaps my dreams
had been prophetic. Nor was Edmond O’Shea the man to send such a
message except under stress extraordinary.
As I hurriedly bathed, shaved, and dressed, I reviewed the position.
There was O’Shea, homeward bound with a packet of letters whose
publication would further Red anarchy a number of points. There was
myself, George Decies, who in a neutral way had helped to secure
these. There was Gabriel da Cunha, agent of the nightmare called
Communism, nursing a broken jaw as a result of foregoing transactions.
And there was Nanette.
Even as her name brought the dainty image to my mind, from under the
open window came a soft call:
“Coo--oo!”
I crossed, struggling with an intractable tie; and there on the
balcony below was Nanette.
To know that the most provocatively pretty girl one has ever met is
madly in love with a better man and to behave sanely in her company is
an acid test of what I have heard termed “British poise.”
She shaded her eyes with her hands, looking up at me. Her arms were a
delicate brown colour on their outer curves where the sun had tanned
them, and by comparison ivory white beneath. With a background of
flowers against distant sea blue, Nanette made a picture exquisite to
remember in old age but disturbing to a comparatively young bachelor.
Temptation is sweet only when there is a chance of falling.
“What a horrid tie,” she said. “Please wear the gray one with silver
stripes, as it’s our last day in Madeira.”
There was a wistful note in her appeal, and, looking down at little
Nanette, slowly a memory came: I had worn that gray tie on the day we
had met O’Shea.
I suppressed a sigh, “admirin’ how the world was made.” At eighteen,
there are many things that even Miss 1927 doesn’t know. There was one
that Nanette did not even suspect. There was another that I knew of;
but this not my own secret. I was unselfish enough to wish I could
tell her.
“Very well, Nanette,” I replied, and lingered, looking down.
“Are you going to swim this morning--for the last time?”
“No. I have to go into the town.”
“I don’t think I shall swim, then,” said Nanette. “May I come with
you? Or is it a stag party?”
Before I could reply:
“Please remember your packing!” came a voice from below.
Nanette’s mother stepped out onto the balcony and looked up at me in
mock severity. Seeing her, beside her daughter, I reflected that the
lucky man who won Nanette would acquire a bride who would always be
beautiful. “Consider well the mother of thy beloved,” says an Arab
poet. “In her behold thy beloved-to-be.”
“Pop is doing his to-night,” Nanette protested.
I visualized “Pop,” sole occupant of the family table in the dining
room, dealing with a solid English breakfast, regardless of flies,
temperature, and the indifferent quality of the bacon.
“He has none to do, dear,” was the reply. “I do it for him.”
“But, darling,” Nanette wheedled, bobbed head pressed against her
mother’s shoulder, “there are hours and hours. Please let me off.”
In the end she had her way, and we set out together along the dusty
road. There would be disappointment this morning down at the bathing
pool, I mused, peering aside at the piquant face shaded by a Japanese
parasol. Nanette wore no hat, and I said to myself that if all the
women who were bobbed had such shapely heads as Nanette’s, the world
would be very beautiful.
“Did you tell Jack you were going?” I asked.
“No.” Nanette aroused herself from a reverie. “I forgot.”
Poor Jack! And he would have sold his Blue for a smile from Nanette.
The road to the town is very picturesque; and I might have counted
George Decies a happy man had I not known that my charming companion
loved to be with me only because I formed a link with her memories of
someone else. Down the steep slope we walked, talking but little. An
old roadmaker doffed his hat, smiled, and bade us good-morning. I
sensed his kindly, appreciative glance following us. Funchal is famous
for honeymoons.
Past the gardens of the Casino and the flower-cloaked balconies of
villas we went. I forced myself to think of my real mission. Common
sense whispered that I should have driven down in a fast car. Sense of
duty demanded that I should conceal the nature of my business from
Nanette.
“Shall you be long with the consul?” she asked.
“I don’t expect to be,” I replied.
“Then I will go along and have a simply perfect shawl I saw sent up to
Mum,” said Nanette. “She won’t like it. But _I_ love it.”
We were just about to turn into that steep and narrow street that
leads to the square, when:
“Hi! hi! Hullo there!” we were hailed.
We turned. Bumping along in a sledge behind two sweating patient oxen,
was Jack.
“Hullo, Jack,” said Nanette. “Mr. Decies has to see the consul and I’m
going shopping. Want to come along?”
“Rather!” cried Jack. “Jump in.”
We proceeded to the consulate in the bullock cart, escorted by a
battalion of flies with fixed bayonets.
“Meet you at the Golden Gate,” called Jack.
He was absurdly happy when I left him with Nanette and climbed the
narrow stairs to the consul’s office.
The British consul was a quiet little official automaton who had
buried his heart in somebody’s grave and had nothing left to hope for.
“Good-morning, Mr. Decies,” he said, and smiled rather sadly as I
plumped an ornamental object down on the table.
“Good Lord!” said I.
It was Nanette’s handbag, a frivolous trifle from Paris, which she had
asked me to take care of as we got into the bullock cart. I had been
carrying it unconsciously.
“You are early,” the consul went on, “and I have not quite finished
decoding a dispatch which I am instructed to deliver to you. The main
point, however, is this: Major O’Shea arrives in Madeira to-morrow
night, and----”
“Oh!” A faint cry interrupted him. “I’m so sorry----”
We both turned and looked up.
Nanette stood in the doorway, her blue eyes so widely opened as to
convey an impression of fear.
“I came for my bag,” she said. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
CHAPTER IX.
MOON OF MADNESS
Fifteen minutes later I was in possession of the facts--and faced
with a problem.
“This chap Da Cunha,” said the consul, “isn’t Portuguese, in spite of
his name. He’s some kind of what-not. He has the biggest radio outfit
in the island up at his summer bungalow.”
“He’s a Communist agent.”
“I know,” the other returned quietly, “but it wasn’t my business to
mention it first. He crashed in his car the other day and he’s
dry-docked for repairs in a house he owns down here in the town. I
know the surgeon who’s attending.”
I did not contradict him, for I was reading once again the body of the
decoded message:
Arrive Funchal Harbour 2 A.M. Friday morning. Please meet me. Arrange
for accommodation privately. No one must know. Letters have all been
photographed. See Da Cunha does not slip away. Watch Arundel Castle.
Try to learn if any associate of Da C. sails. Prevent if possible. I
count on you.
O’Shea.
“Not a ship has cleared for European ports since Major O’Shea left,”
said the consul. “So there’s a good chance.”
“He’s returning in the destroyer?”
“I don’t think so.” He glanced at a list of shipping. “Although this
dispatch came from her. My idea is that they intercepted the Yeoward
boat and put him on board. She’s due here at the time stated.”
“Devilish awkward,” I murmured. “It’s late to cancel my sailing. I’m
booked in the _Arundel Castle_.”
“I’ll step across to Blandy’s with you,” said the consul, standing up
and reaching for his hat. “We can get you transferred to a later boat.
Leave the finding of private accommodation to me, too.”
“Do you know of any one associated with Da Cunha?”
“No. Da Cunha has property in Madeira, but he’s rarely here. Nearly
all I know about him I have learned officially.”
We settled our business at the Union Castle agent’s, thanks to
consular aid, and, the morning growing insufferably hot, my friend
agreed that something icy through a straw was indicated. When we
arrived at the Golden Gate this theory proved to be popular. A party
from Reid’s that included Nanette’s mother had arrived, and Jack was
sharing Nanette with a stranger whose ancestors had known more about
how the Pyramid was built than you or I can ever hope to learn.
He reminded me of my London stockbroker until he was introduced as
Macalister. He had a real-estate smile that was not unattractive, and
my first, natural impression was that he had recently purchased the
island from the Portuguese and was running his eye over the property.
Presently, however:
“And how is our friend, Gabriel?” Nanette asked. Then, turning to me:
“I met Mr. Macalister with Gabriel da Cunha,” she explained.
I forget how Macalister replied, for I was exchanging significant
glances with the consul. A few moments later that competent official
took the floor.
“So you are leaving Madeira, Mr. Macalister?” he asked.
“No,” the other replied, sharing an appreciative look between the
cigar that he had just lighted and Nanette. “I had hoped to sail in
the _Arundel Castle_, but I have been delayed.”
The consul put several more leading questions to Macalister, in a
chatty way, but I rather lost track of the conversation. Nanette was
in a mood of feverish animation, which I knew, from experience, meant
mischief. The party had been over to Blandy’s apparently, and had
learned that accommodation in the _Arundel Castle_ was limited.
Nanette and Jack talked happy nonsense about camping out in boats and
what not. Then I made an announcement.
“Somebody is lucky,” I said. “My berth will be vacant.”
This statement was received with gratifying consternation.
“You surely can’t mean that you are not coming with us?” Nanette’s
mother exclaimed.
Two pairs of eyes I particularly noted at this moment--the
heavy-lidded brown eyes of Mr. Macalister and the wide-open blue eyes
of Nanette.
“Unhappily, yes,” I replied. “Unfortunate, very; but I must wait for
the Royal Mail boat.”
There was a sort of farewell dance at Reid’s that night. Quite a
number of people were leaving in the _Arundel_. Nanette persistently
avoided me; and I doubled-up with Jack in a scowling competition
having for target Mr. Julian Macalister, who had dropped in after
dinner and monopolized Nanette.
Once, pausing near me:
“Do you know what they call the crescent moon here?” she asked.
“No.”
“Moon of Madness.”
She laughed and danced on. Jack scowled. I wondered.
At the cocktail bar, during an interval, things bordered on the
hectic. I have been honoured in the friendship of some of Mr.
Macalister’s race who were very courtly gentlemen. Mr. Macalister was
not as one of these.
“Don’t look so gloomy, my lad,” he said to Jack. “It takes a man of
experience to please a young girl.”
Jack had boxed for his college and was no mean craftsman. I rapidly
took in the powerful but fleshy form of Macalister and prepared to
mourn his passing. He smiled confidently; but one could have got
roughly about the same odds on a peanut in a monkey-house, when:
“Mr. Decies!” said someone at my elbow.
Jack was just descending in a leisurely way from his tall stool. He
paused as I turned. The British consul stood behind us.
“A word in private,” said he.
I grabbed Jack’s arm.
“Come along, too,” I urged.
He hesitated, then:
“Perhaps you’re right,” came with manifest reluctance.
We walked out into the lounge; and the consul handed me a scribbled
note.
“Received in code to-night,” he explained.
Detain Julian Macalister at any cost.
Jack had left us, going to look for Nanette, and:
“From O’Shea?” I asked.
“No. From Scotland Yard!”
“But he’s not sailing!”
The consul met my gaze of inquiry.
“That radio set of Da Cunha’s is very well informed,” he said.
“Macalister knew of this move before _I_ did. He only cancelled
to-day.”
CHAPTER X.
THE _ARUNDEL CASTLE_ SAILS
I cannot pretend that I was a happy man as I climbed the ladder of
the _Arundel Castle_ on the following morning. All my friends were
leaving, and the affection and admiration that I had for Edmond O’Shea
could not recompense me for their loss. My only consolation lay in the
knowledge that, unhonoured and unsung though I should be, yet, in a
modest way, I was doing my job of work toward saving Great Britain
from the Reds.
An inward-bound liner, by the time she makes Madeira, offers a ripe
crop of studies to the psychologist. The gay Conrads, who have learned
the truth of Leonard Merrick’s unmoral dictum, “a man is young as
often as he falls in love.” The anxious-eyed women who have lost what
their men have found. A score of flirtations and two or three
intrigues, followed with interest by the midnight watch and reported
in routine to the purser. The odd men out, too, are always rather
pathetic. It was wonderful how many lonely eyes lighted up when
Nanette stepped on to the deck. Even some of the Conrads prepared to
change their minds.
Baggage was missing, of course. Nanette’s mother had lost a wardrobe
trunk, nothing less.
“Don’t worry,” said Nanette’s father, in his imperturbable way. “It
will turn up.”
“It will be Nan’s turn to worry,” was the reply. “All her things are
in it!”
Nanette, the irresponsible, had disappeared with Jack in quest of her
new quarters. She professed to be the victim of a dreadful theory that
her stable companion was an elderly Boer lady with gout.
Coffee-coloured boys were diving off the boat-deck; vendors of lace
shouted themselves hoarse from a flotilla of small craft that clung to
the steamer like wasps to a honey-pot; Portuguese lightermen shrieked
amiable execrations at one another; nobody could find the missing
trunk, nobody could find Nanette; Nanette’s father said both would
turn up--and the Bay of Funchal embraced it all with peaceful beauty.
When the last shore-signal was sounded, I found Jack beside me. He was
plainly in a panic.
“Here, I say,” he exclaimed. “I thought Nanette was with you!”
“And I thought she was with you!”
“When did you see her last?”
“When she went to look for her cabin.”
“But she came back to fetch _you_!”
“She didn’t arrive.”
“Hurry up, please,” urged the officer on the gangway. “You’re last for
the shore, sir.”
Jack turned and ran in at the saloon entrance. I could see no one else
I knew; so there was nothing for it but to tumble down the ladder.
Reid’s launch had gone, and I took the boat in which some customs
people, office men, and others were going ashore.
They had turned steam on to the anchor and the ladder was swinging up
as we drew away. I stood in the boat, searching the decks far above
me, their rails lined with unfamiliar faces. From the white-capped,
gold-laced officers on the bridge, I worked down, deck by deck. I
caught a momentary glimpse of some folks I knew and waved
automatically; but of Nanette’s party I could see nothing.
Then sounded faintly a bell. Straggling boats seemed to be drawn
astern of the liner by some powerful current. There was movement in
the placid water; a swell rocked us. One could see the churning of the
screw in clear blue sea. Renewed waving--and the _Arundel Castle_ was
homeward bound for Southampton, with mails, mixed cargo, several
potential weddings, and a broken heart or so.
As I stepped from the boat on to the stone stairs and went up to the
jetty, I paused, looking back. I was shortly to meet Edmond O’Shea,
and the thought was pleasurable, but I would have given much to have
been aboard the liner now headed for the open sea.
I walked up the tree-lined street, sighing when I passed the shop
where Nanette had found that wonderful shawl. The square, you may
recall, is planted with those trees that flourish principally in South
Africa and bear a light blue blossom. In the sunshine of early morning
it seemed to me that all the streets were dim with an azure born of
the flowers.
Only two tables had been placed outside the Golden Gate. At one of
them a girl was seated, her elbows on the table, her chin propped upon
clenched hands. She stirred slightly, and I saw the sunlight gleaming
in her hair.…
I stood stock still. Then I began to run.
Nanette looked up.
She was pale. Her widely opened eyes were the colour of those
flowers--misty blue. And they said, “I am afraid. I am ashamed. Don’t
be angry with me.”
“Nanette!” I whispered.
She bit her lip and turned her head aside quickly; then:
“I was mad to do it,” she confessed. “I am sorry--now. Please send a
message to the ship. They will be frantic.”
“But--your things? You will have to wait for a whole week.”
“They are in the small wardrobe trunk. I bribed Pedro to leave it
behind. Oh, please, Mr. Decies!” She clutched my arm and I felt how
she trembled. “Look after me. I am so frightened.”
CHAPTER XI.
THE PHOTOGRAPHS
The S.S. _Aguila_ of Messrs. Yeoward Brothers dropped her anchor on
to the rocky bottom of Funchal Harbour at fifteen minutes after two
A.M. under a perfect moon like the crescent of Islam; a true Moon of
Madness.
They had the ladder down in a trice, and my boat drew alongside. I ran
up to the deck--and there was Edmond O’Shea in a white drill suit,
more like John Barrymore than ever with the moonlight gleaming on his
wavy hair.
We shook hands in silence, whilst his searching gray eyes looked into
mine and mine told him all that I was helpless to conceal. Then:
“It was good of you, Decies,” he said. “My message has put you out?”
“I had booked in the _Arundel_; but it didn’t matter. My time is my
own.”
Indeed, already the spell of The O’Shea was on me. There are many
names honoured in connection with the Grand Parade, but ask one of the
men who knows what happened on the Retreat when Smith Dorrien sent for
O’Shea; a company commander then, and only a major now. We all won the
war, according to our own accounts; the old Irish Guards--what’s left
of them--would convince you that Edmond O’Shea helped us.
“What has happened?” I asked him.
He gave me the facts, whilst we enjoyed the hospitality of the captain
who was delighted to have been instrumental in helping so
distinguished a passenger.
“The original letters are safe in Whitehall, Decies. But I found
pinholes showing where they had been stuck on a board--obviously to be
photographed! We sent a radio to Captain McPhee here, and I doubled
back. The mails will be watched at Southampton; but I don’t fear the
mails. Some trusted agent will carry the photographs. I wired
headquarters for likely birds.”
“Scotland Yard replied,” said I. “One, Julian Macalister, is under
surveillance.”
O’Shea’s cold eyes fixed me.
“Who’s watching him?” he asked.
This brought me to it, and I gulped a quick drink before replying:
“Nanette.”
His expression changed; then:
“So they are still here?” he said.
“_She_ is still here.”
The captain excused himself gracefully, on a plea of duty; and I told
O’Shea.
“You think she overheard you in the consul’s office?”
“I know she did. She admitted it.”
“And so you told her--the rest?”
“Was I wrong?”
O’Shea stood up and paced the room a couple of times; then:
“I don’t know,” said he. “Let’s go ashore.”
Fate has playfully set me in some queer situations, but I can recall
none stranger than that in which I found myself now. O’Shea, occupying
a room in the consul’s house, and engaged in private consultations
with the military governor and others; Nanette, studiously declining
to meet him--although his return to Funchal was the reason of her
being there; Da Cunha, incapacitated, and only able to act through
Macalister; the latter gentleman dancing attendance on Nanette.
“He doesn’t know that I know anything,” she said to me. “And he
doesn’t know that Major O’Shea is here.”
We were taking tea on the terrace of Reid’s; the adorably pretty girl
who had “missed the boat” and my innocent self subjects of much
inaccurate speculation. Two frantic radios had been brought out to
Nanette: one from her mother and one from Jack.
“Please answer them for me,” was all she had said.
“Nanette!” I looked into the childish blue eyes, in which, when O’Shea
was mentioned, I had seen the woman-light shine. “I feel responsible
for you. In playing with a dangerous man like Macalister you take
risks which you don’t understand.”
“I’m going to find out where the photographs are!”
“Because of--O’Shea?”
She looked at me bravely.
“No,” she lied--yet did not know she lied. “Because Major O’Shea
insulted my intelligence. I am going to find out for my own sake.”
I dined with O’Shea in the town that night. He was frantically
worried. That Macalister was the man to whom the task had been
assigned of getting the photographs to Red headquarters he could not
doubt. But where were they? And how did Macalister propose to smuggle
them through?
“Where is Nanette?” he asked suddenly.
“Dining with Macalister at Reid’s.”
“Damn!” said O’Shea; then: “Go back and look after her,” he begged. “I
can’t stand it, Decies. You shouldn’t leave her.”
“She dismissed me!”
“Report yourself for duty. ’Phone me here.”
I arrived at the hotel fifteen minutes later. The hall porter handed
me a note as I ran in. I tore the envelope open in a sort of frenzy.
This was the message:
Photographs are on board a motor cruiser belonging to Gabriel da
Cunha. I can’t find out where it is. But Macalister goes in it
to-morrow morning to Las Palmas and from there by steamer to England.
Have gone with him to the Casino. Will keep him as long as possible.
Can’t do any more.
Nanette.
When I ’phoned to O’Shea, I heard him groan.
“Send someone from the hotel to stand by her,” he said; or, rather, it
was an order. “I can find out where Da Cunha’s boat lies by using the
military wires. It’s hell, Decies, but I daren’t take chances. Join me
here. But make sure she is safe.”
CHAPTER XII.
THE MOTOR CRUISER
The governor’s car, a Cadillac--tribute to the far-flung efficiency
of American salesmanship--was driven by the chauffeur over what I took
to be the edge of a sheer precipice. I inhaled noisily. Then we were
gliding down a cobbled road that, serpentine, embraced a fairy port.
Nestling in a cleft, a volcanic chasm, its terraced roofs silvered by
the crescent moon, lay a town asleep. Patches of colour, as though a
Titan artist had thrown uncleaned palettes into the hollow, crowded
upon and overlay the white walls. Green fronds peeped above pools of
shadow. A beautiful auditorium, this town looked down upon the eternal
drama of the sea.
O’Shea spoke to the chauffeur in Portuguese. His command of
unpronounceable languages was not the least of his acquirements. The
powerful brakes were applied and our switchback descent ceased.
We proceeded on foot.
Where a low stone wall prevented the traveller from falling through
the roof of a villa some twenty feet below, O’Shea pulled up, grasped
my arm, and pointed.
Displaying her graceful, creamy shape like a courtesan stretched upon
blue velvet, a fine-lined motor boat rode in the tiny harbour. Lights
shone out from her cabin ports. O’Shea unbuttoned the coat that he
wore over dinner kit and began to twirl his monocle to and fro upon
its black ribbon about an extended finger.
“There is Da Cunha’s boat,” said he; “and there, no doubt, is what we
are after. But it looks----”
“As though Nanette had failed to keep Macalister?”
O’Shea turned to me, and his eyes gleamed very coldly in the
moonlight.
“Decies,” he said, “you remind me of an unpleasant truth: that if I
succeed in this matter I shall be indebted to a girl.”
“She will have done a big thing for England.”
“I don’t begrudge her that. It would hurt me to think she had done it
for me.”
For a moment I hesitated; then:
“I think she knows it,” I ventured, “and wants to hurt you.”
“Why?”
“Because you hurt _her_.”
He stared very fixedly out over the harbour for some moments, but he
did not seem to have taken offence. At last:
“If I had married very young, Decies,” he said, “and God had been good
to me, I might have had a daughter like Nanette. Even if there were no
other reason, shouldn’t I be a blackguard to think of her except as a
wilful child?”
But I could find no answer. This man’s codes were beyond me. Young
though he was in the days of the Big Push, he had won a name that had
outlasted those of a score of general officers and more than one field
marshal. The fact came home to me and brought with it a great
humility, that I was not of the stuff that histories are made of.
“Suppose we go and look for a boat,” I said.
O’Shea aroused himself--for he had his dreams even as you and I.
“A boat it is,” said he. “As I have no official status whatever,
there’s nothing for it but frank piracy. Are you game?”
“Every time.”
We went on down the sloping cobbled street. Presently it led us
through the heart of the little town, where shuttered windows told of
citizens asleep and only a zealous dog broke the silence. This until,
as we were about to come out on the water front, from a high balcony
stole the strains of a guitar.
O’Shea paused, looking up. A dim light might be discerned. He glanced
at me, smiled, and we passed on. Love is an art with the Southerners.
I have wondered since, reviewing that journey, during which both our
minds, I think, were busied with plans for boarding the motor boat and
securing the incriminating photographs, that no premonition touched
me. “Nanette had failed to keep Macalister,” I had said, noting the
lighted cabin. Yet Nanette had dared to slip away from the _Arundel
Castle_ and to remain alone in Funchal. I should have known my
Nanette.
Drawn up beside a quay, a red blotch in the moonlight, was a
long-nosed French car.
“Da Cunha’s Farman,” I exclaimed. “Macalister _is_ on board.”
But O’Shea did not reply. He was starting out in the direction of the
lighted craft, a thirty-eight-foot motor cruiser, very handy in smooth
water but a dirty brute, I thought, in a choppy sea. Then:
“I am wondering,” he murmured.
“What?”
“Why he is lying out there and not alongside? There is no boat at the
stair.”
At first, the full significance of his remark missed me. My concern
was with the problem of how we were to find transport. Then, something
in the quality of that fixed stare with which my companion watched the
lighted ports, his poise, as if listening, prepared me for what was to
come.
The tones of a coarse voice, raised hilariously, reached my ears,
coming from the cruiser’s cabin. A trill of laughter followed,
youthful, musical. My heart missed a beat. I clutched O’Shea’s arm.
“My God!” I said, “he has Nanette with him!”
Involuntarily, my gaze went upward, to where in cold serenity the Moon
of Madness raised her crescent lamp.
O’Shea from the pocket of his light coat took a revolver. He placed it
in his soft hat and crammed the hat tightly on his head. He began to
peel his dinner jacket.
“I’m going for a swim,” said he. “Coming?”
But he was not alone in the idea. Before I could frame any reply came
sounds of loud laughter, a scuffling of feet--and I saw Nanette run
out on to the after-deck. She wore a blue-and-silver dance frock. I
heard Macalister call to her and I heard her laughing answer; but I
could not distinguish a word.
I saw her raise her arms as though to unfasten the string of beads
about her neck. She stooped swiftly, stood upright again--and
Macalister was beside her.
There was a shrill cry--half laughter, half hysteria. Nanette
disappeared in the shadow of the awning. I heard the man’s voice, his
heavy tread.…
Nanette reappeared at the bow of the boat.
Heroism is always beautiful, whether it spring from love of country or
love of man. The dance frock had vanished, shed like the sheath of a
chrysalis when the moth is born. A silver moon-goddess stood at the
prow. She stooped, once, twice--I thought to discard her shoes. Then,
as Macalister came stumbling forward, Nanette dived almost soundlessly
into the still blue sea.
And Nanette could swim like a seal.
Macalister craned over the side. For one moment I think he
contemplated following. Then the bobbed head came up two lengths away.
Behind the swimmer, on a tow-line of beads, floated a flat, square
portfolio.
I glanced once at O’Shea--and that man of action was stricken to
stone. Fists clenched, he stood, watching a girl of eighteen doing the
work he had come to do--and doing it for _him_.
Macalister was hauling in his anchor. The motor started with a roar.
Then Nanette saw us. She was halfway to the shore.
“Please throw one of the rugs on the steps,” came gaspingly. “And go
away! Start the car up!”
When, a few minutes later, a very wet Nanette, wrapped in a light top
coat, confronted O’Shea, I don’t know quite what happened.
“There are your photographs,” I heard her say. “If I never see you
again, at least think I was not such a fool as you supposed.”
With all her dear bravado, she could not still the trembling of her
voice. I saw O’Shea’s pale face, and turned aside. That meeting was
one I can never forget. Yet the details will always be hazy.
Macalister was in the picture somewhere. I think I knocked him down. I
don’t remember why. But I fancy it was not because of any attempt to
recover the portfolio but because he grossly misunderstood the
situation.
Then, I recall, O’Shea stooped, lifted Nanette, and walked up the
sloping cobbled street under a smiling moon. He had suffered as only
the few can suffer, to make her forget him. His sacrifice had been
rejected by the Great Goddess.
Once, Nanette peeped up at him swiftly. I saw her eyes. Then she hid
her face against his shoulder. I think Nanette was crying. But I know
Nanette was happy.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE GRASS ORPHAN
“Public men should never indulge in private correspondence,” said
O’Shea. “Such indiscretions sometimes lead to war. I understand that
all Napoleon’s social engagements were made by proxy.”
He turned toward me, his arm resting on the rail of the balcony. There
were times when O’Shea looked extraordinarily handsome. To-day, I
thought he appeared almost haggard. In his spruce white suit with
Madeiran sunlight making play in the waves of his hair, he had all
that curious atmosphere of romance that made him attractive to women
and unpopular with men who knew no better. But his eyes were
tragically tired.
I saw him glance at a square portfolio that lay upon the table in the
shadows of my room.
“Six photographic negatives,” he went on musingly, “and twelve
prints--as all the letters photographed ran to more than one page.
It’s odd to reflect, Decies, that these scraps of film and paper might
light a bonfire big enough to burn up a whole Empire.”
Odd indeed; yet I knew it to be true. For that relentless loom which
the Arabs call Kismet had drawn me into the pattern of this human
carpet woven of anarchy, love, sacrifice, and God knows what other
threads. I knew; therefore:
“Why not destroy them?” said I.
O’Shea shook his head.
“My instructions are to deliver them intact to headquarters,” he
replied.
“Are you returning in the Royal Mail boat?”
“No. They are sending for me.”
“Lodge them in the bank, then.”
“Contrary to instructions, Decies. They must remain in my charge.”
I met the fixed stare of his cold gray eyes.
“In which respect,” said I, “your instructions resemble mine.”
“And do honour to both of us,” he added.
I lighted a cigarette, smiling perhaps a trifle wryly. When a wayward
beauty of eighteen deliberately misses the boat home and her parents
radio an eligible bachelor that they hold him responsible for her
safety, one sits up and takes notice. Traditional English phlegm is
called upon to do its best.
On the terrace above the bathing pool, a band was playing jazz. Below
my windows a multi-coloured cascade of flowers poured down, wave upon
wave, to meet the deep blue ocean. Sounds of laughter came floating
up. Little yellow birds darting gaily from palm to palm appeared to
find life a thing of song. I wondered. Was it Abraham Lincoln who
confessed that he could mould men but not circumstance?
“It seems absurd,” said O’Shea, breaking a long silence. “But do you
know what I was thinking?”
“No.”
“That, after all, Madeira is a very lonely island.”
He stared at me fixedly, until:
“What do you mean exactly?” I asked.
“Decies,” he said, “the Reds have had a nasty set-back in England. But
there’s propaganda there”--he pointed to the portfolio--“for which
Moscow would pay a substantial fortune. They have forty-eight hours to
act.”
“But only two agents in the island--one out of the ring.”
“Gabriel da Cunha has a mysterious radio set in his bungalow. He will
be in touch with his chief--and his chief is a dangerously clever
man.”
The official records of the Irish Guards afford sufficient credentials
for the courage of Major Edmond O’Shea. He was watching me with that
close regard which seemed to concern itself with one’s subconscious
self, so pointedly did it penetrate; and, rather fatuously:
“You are surely not nervous about your charge?” I queried.
He continued to watch me for a moment, then:
“No,” he replied, and his expression grew abstracted. “Oddly enough, I
was thinking of yours.”
He turned aside, toying with the black-rimmed monocle that he rarely
wore unless he were annoyed. At the Guards’ depot in Essex it used to
be said that the appearance on parade of O’Shea wearing his monocle
made bayonets rattle.
Precisely what he had in mind I found myself at a loss to imagine, and
before I had time to ask:
“Please, are you at home?” cried a voice from below.
I crossed to my balcony and looked down.
Nanette stood on the terrace. The sunshine made a glory of her tousled
head as she laughed up at me. A stout German seated near by in a cane
lounge-chair found his attention engrossed by the unashamed beauty of
a pair of slim legs that had suddenly interfered with his view of the
bay. They were delicately sunburned to the knees, which--the brevity
of modern frocks and a habit of going stockingless had forced me to
learn--were dimpled. One suspects that Cleopatra had dimpled knees.
“Yes, Nanette,” said I. “Where have you been?”
“Bathing. You should know that, Mr. Decies. You are sadly neglecting
your grass orphan!”
She looked very lovely. The German tourist raised envious eyes to my
balcony, their envy magnified by heavily rimmed goggles.
“Please come down and join the party.”
“Very well, Nanette,” I answered.
But when I turned back and reëntered my room, O’Shea and the
portfolio were gone. And I knew that little Nanette would be
disappointed.
Presently, side by side, we walked down a shady path strewn with
fallen hibiscus blossom. Nanette was very silent. An American training
ship manned by naval cadets lay in the bay, and, at a bend in the
path, Nanette paused. She stared out at the little vessel--“a painted
ship upon a painted sea.”
“One of the boys from the cadet ship is with our party,” she said.
“He’s nice. I have promised to dance with him to-night. He’s from
Boston,” she added.
“Has he got late shore leave then?” I asked.
“No,” Nanette answered in a dreamy voice, moving on. “I don’t think
so. He just wants to stop. They are going to the Azores from here.
Where is--or are--the Azores?”
“Quite a long way,” I answered vaguely; for Nanette really didn’t want
to know.
There was small envy in my heart regarding the cadet from Boston. He
was being used as a diversion by a distractingly pretty girl whose
heart was not in the game. However, it is the mission of youth to
learn, and the poor fellow would “learn about women from her.”
I met him in due course. He was being lionized by a group seated
around a table beneath a gay umbrella that cast pleasing shadows.
Nanette unblushingly monopolized him, and his joy was ghastly to
behold. He would cheerfully have deserted his ship for her.
The sister of the British consul, who was acting as a sort of official
chaperone to our grass orphan, kept throwing appealing looks in my
direction. But I was helpless, and I knew it. A hundred times
Nanette’s glance sought the steps. And if only O’Shea had joined us,
the eyes of the infatuated young man from Boston might have been
opened before he doomed himself to cells for a siren’s smile.
But O’Shea did not join us.
When I drifted down to dinner that evening, I missed him. I waited in
the cocktail bar in vain. Nanette peeped in, too. At last, there was
nothing for it but to dine alone. And constantly the blue eyes of
Nanette, who had been “adopted” by a charming couple from the North
Country, were turned in my direction. Always she smiled--but only to
hide her disappointment.
The cadet blew along in due course, flushed with excitement, and was
greeted by a very composed Nanette. Accompanied by her temporary
“parents,” she bore the young man away to the Casino.
I made up my mind to walk down later. But I was largely concerned with
the absence of O’Shea. I hung about until after nine o’clock and was
prepared to go out, when I saw him crossing the lounge. He beckoned to
me, and:
“They are not idle, Decies,” he said. “Da Cunha’s radio has been
busy.”
“Have you picked anything up?”
“No. Conditions in the town are bad. But there’s something afoot.”
“Short of burglary, what can they do?”
He stared at me vacantly; then:
“I don’t know,” he confessed.
But we were to learn--and very soon.
A disturbance in the lobby proclaimed itself.
“What’s the trouble?” said I.
Even as I spoke, the worthy man from Lancashire, whose wife had taken
Nanette under her wing, came hurrying in. He was pale.
“My God! Decies,” he exclaimed. “Did you send a car to the Casino for
Nanette?”
“No!” I replied blankly.
“Damn it! I suspected there was something wrong!”
“Quick!” said O’Shea. “What has happened?”
The other spoke very breathlessly.
“Someone brought her a message--from _you_, Mr. Decies. She ran out
without a word. Young Clayton, the cadet, ran after her.”
“Well?” O’Shea urged.
“When I got to the door, they told me that both had driven off in a
car that was waiting by the gate.”
“Did anyone actually see this car?” O’Shea demanded.
“No. It stood out in the roadway.”
“Then who brought the message?”
“A boy idling at the gate.”
“You questioned him?”
“Closely,” replied the man from Lancashire. “He did not know the
chauffeur and only had a glimpse of the car.”
“But I don’t understand,” said I dazedly.
“I followed,” the hoarse voice went on, “but just this side of the
bridge, where it’s so lonely and dark at night, I nearly ran over
Clayton! He was insensible. He’s out in the hallway now! Nanette--has
disappeared!”
Very deliberately, O’Shea adjusted his monocle.
“Decies,” he said coldly, “why, in God’s name, didn’t you stick to
your post?”
CHAPTER XIV.
THE PORTFOLIO
Born leaders of men do not achieve leadership; men force it upon
them. Here was a panic-stricken group, soon augmented by the manager
and a doctor who chanced to be in the hotel. One was for communicating
with the police; another urged the military; all were anxious to
enlarge the news.
We were in a room on the right of the entrance, the medical man
bending over an insensible cadet. O’Shea quietly closed the door. And
I have since remembered how instinctively we all turned and faced him.
“Doctor,” he said, “how soon will he recover?”
The Portuguese physician shook his head.
“Do not count upon him,” he answered gravely. “A tremendous blow on
the back of his skull. I cannot examine him properly here. He must be
taken at once to the hospital.”
“An accident?”
“But certainly, no! Foul play. Some blunt weapon. I suspect a
sandbag.”
“Shall I telephone the police?” the manager asked.
“No,” said O’Shea. “Get young Clayton away as quickly as possible.
Gentlemen”--he included us all in a comprehensive glance--“let us keep
this affair to ourselves.”
“What!” I cried.
But indeed, beyond that one word I could not go. Inertia at such a
time astounded me.
“There is a well-known policy of war,” O’Shea went on: “Masterly
inactivity. We have no Service de Sûreté and no Scotland Yard in
Madeira. A clumsy hue and cry could serve no better purpose than to
drive the enemy into some more remote hiding place.”
“But, Nanette!” I burst out.
Then I met O’Shea’s glance. I noted the grim set of his jaw. I saw how
pale he was.
“Your remark was rather unnecessary, Decies,” he said. “I recently
pointed out to you that Madeira is a very lonely island. If you can
suggest any plan for locating the whereabouts of Nanette, do so.”
Then I understood. And I think I groaned.
“There are so many roads they might have taken,” the manager
explained. “And what means have we of tracing the car? There are no
traffic police in Madeira. Such a thing has never happened here
before. Certainly not in my time.”
“What villain has done it?” came in agonized North Country dialect.
“Oh, the poor little lass!”
“Madeiran blood runs very hot,” said the physician.
“No doubt,” O’Shea agreed. “And Nanette is a lovely child. But do you
believe there is any one amongst her acquaintances mad enough to
commit such an outrage?”
“Why do you say ‘amongst her acquaintances’?” I asked stupidly.
“Because _your_ name was used to induce her to go,” O’Shea answered.
“Ultimately, she must be found. Her abductor knows this. Therefore he
is prepared to make terms.”
Came a rap on the door.
“Yes?” said the manager.
A hall porter appeared. Major O’Shea was wanted on the telephone. As
he went out:
“Come to my room in five minutes, Decies,” he directed.
The five minutes that followed form a blur in my memory. There were
hushed voices. There was movement; a still figure being carried
through the hall to where a car waited out in the scented darkness.
Someone kept saying, “We must _do_ something. We must _do_ something,”
over and over again. There was a woman who sobbed with a Lancashire
accent.
Then I stood in O’Shea’s room. He was seated on the side of the bed.
“I was right,” he said. “It’s a move in the Red game!”
“What!”
My wild, distorted ideas were tumbled over one another by that
statement. They fought in my brain, seeking fresh formation.
“I knew that if my theory were sound they would waste no time. That
was Julian Macalister on the ’phone. It’s the photographs they’re
after, Decies!”
Whereupon: “Thank God!” I exclaimed.
O’Shea raised his eyes to me.
“I forgive you,” he said softly, “for preferring my ruin to
Nanette’s.”
Certainly the swift tragedy of the last half hour must have numbed my
brain. O’Shea had watched me, not angrily, for several moments before
the full meaning of his words gripped my mind.
I dropped into an armchair.
Gabriel da Cunha and Julian Macalister, Communist agents, had
triumphed at the eleventh hour!
“My special duties as a secret service officer end to-night.” It was
O’Shea who spoke, but his voice seemed to come hollowly from a great
distance. “My resignation from the regiment must follow.”
I spoke never a word.
“There is just one thing, Decies, you can do.”
Then I roused myself. I looked eagerly at O’Shea. I think, in that
dark hour, I would have crawled through the hottest alleyways of hell
to save him. “Why, in God’s name, didn’t you stick to your post?”
Those words of his would sound in my ears for many a long day to come.
“You can enable me to resign,” he went on. “It would be preferable to
being gazetted: ‘The King having no further use for this officer’s
services.’”
“Anything,” I said. “I will do anything.”
A party of serenaders, playing gently on guitars and singing a
languorous love-song, passed along the road below. Their voices
mingled in perfect harmony. A sea breeze bore perfume into the room.
And I thought that this soft island, set like a jewel above the brow
of Africa, might once have been the home of Calypso, stealing men’s
senses.
“It may seem mere splitting of hairs,” O’Shea went on. “But it serves
my purpose, and so I ask you to do it.”
He took up the precious portfolio, which lay upon the bed beside him.
“I forced the lock last night,” he said, “but had it repaired and
fitted with a key in the town this morning. I removed the seals intact
and replaced them. Here is the key.” He held it out upon his open
palm. “Take it.”
I took it, wondering and waiting.
“Now take the portfolio,” said he. “You will find it is locked. Hide
it where you please. But its security means everything to me, to
Nanette, and to England.”
“You mean,” I began, “that I----”
“I mean,” O’Shea took me up, “that _you_ may pay this price to ransom
her. _I_ cannot. You have sworn no oath of allegiance to the Crown. I
have.”
“Good God!” I cried. “The decision is to rest with _me_!”
“As a private citizen you can choose between the claims of your
country, in this very difficult matter, and the claims of a helpless
girl who has been given into your charge. As an officer, I have no
choice.”
He spoke in a low, monotonous voice. But I shall remember every word
of his instructions whilst memory lasts.
“You must not tell me where it is concealed. It should be in some
place, though, that is quickly accessible.”
“But, O’Shea! Are they sending someone to make terms?”
“They are. At eleven o’clock to-night.”
“Why not have him arrested?”
O’Shea stared at me, and smiled. But it was a cold smile.
“Julian Macalister is coming in person,” he replied. “News of this
unfortunate occurrence having reached him and our mutual friend,
Gabriel da Cunha, both are anxious to place their extensive knowledge
of the island at our disposal. On what charge should you propose to
arrest Macalister?”
“Directly he declares his real object, upon a triple charge of
blackmail, abduction, and attempted murder!”
“And then?”
“Well, surely----”
“My dear fellow!” O’Shea stood up and sighed wearily. “Racks and
boiling oil would never be sanctioned by the civil governor.
Personally, I should prescribe them.”
I was silenced. O’Shea was right.
“Under Portuguese law the case would take weeks,” he added. “It would
be adjourned to Lisbon. No. We cannot leave her in unknown hands----”
He turned, the sentence unfinished, and walked across to the balcony.
I knew that if she had never met Edmond O’Shea little Nanette would
have been safe in England that night. And I knew that he knew.
Taking up the portfolio, I went out, closing the door very quietly.
CHAPTER XV.
TERMS WITH THE ENEMY
I had noted a loose floor board in my room. With the aid of a knife
blade, I succeeded in lifting it, revealing a dusty cavity. Here I hid
the portfolio. I replaced the board and slipped the key on to my ring
with others that I habitually carried.
That I was destined to be present at the interview with Macalister, I
foresaw clearly enough. How best to prepare myself it was not easy to
determine. Primarily I had to focus upon keeping my temper. O’Shea
plainly wanted to be alone.
I looked into the cocktail bar. Two men whom I knew were drinking
highballs, and:
“Hullo, Decies,” said one, “what’s this crazy rumour about your little
friend?”
The words offended me. I suppose I was in a mood for it. Since the
fateful morning that Nanette had missed the boat, many questionable
glances had been cast upon me.
“It’s what you say,” I answered shortly: “a crazy rumour.”
Then I went out.
I crossed the lobby and stood in the porch for a while, breathing the
warm perfume of the gardens. A man and a girl were walking down the
slope toward the terraces. He had his arm about her waist.
The open road called to me. Lighting my pipe, I set out. Drivers of
bullock carts solicited my patronage, but I ignored them and walked
on. I had no idea where I was going. I think I was merely running away
from myself. I could not banish the illusion that Nanette was hiding
behind some tree; that she would suddenly leap out at me with mock
reproaches for my neglect of the grass orphan.
Twice I thought I saw her slender figure in the distance.
O’Shea was ruined. This was the idea that ultimately came to the top
and stayed there. O’Shea was ruined. The blind love of a child-woman
had wrecked the best man it had ever been my lot to know. She had
stayed for O’Shea. No one suspected it. But I knew.
This was the sequel.
Lonely in my knowledge of all it might mean--when, willy-nilly, I
should have surrendered the portfolio--I tramped on. A great, cold
jewel, the moon lighted my way. By a stagnant cistern, green with
slime, I pulled up. I had walked half the distance to the Casino.
This cistern was infested by poisonous insects with nasty habits in
their tails and a social custom of leaving red-hot visiting cards. I
turned back, scratching viciously.
A party homeward bound to Reid’s in a car offered me a lift.
I thanked them but preferred to walk.
“… Having no further use for this officer’s services.” Yes, I could
save him from that.
The hall porter said that Major O’Shea was in his room. Therefore,
having a curiosity respecting Macalister, I took up a strategic
position on a shadowed bench in that miniature palm grove which
commands the porch. I told the porter where he could find me.
I had waited but a short time when Macalister arrived, in the pomp and
circumstance of a glorious Farman. A chauffeur, whose pedigree
connected with apes more recently than usual, drove the red torpedo in
at the gate with much skill and even more noise. I stood up to see
Macalister alight.
He entered Reid’s proprietorially. He was in evening kit, wore a straw
hat boasting a band of well-known colours, to which he was not
entitled, and smoked a successful cigar decorated with what looked
like the Order of the Garter. If he was nervous he showed no sign of
the fact.
One has heard many jokes aimed at the courage of the Jew. Sometimes
from members of his own race. In justice to one whom I shall always
dislike, I wish to say that Julian Macalister, bearing a Scottish
name, was fearless as any man who ever wore the tartan.
Caliban drove the Farman out into the road again, and I settled down
with my pipe to await O’Shea’s summons.
It came sooner than I had expected. Mr. Macalister was all of a man of
business.
“Major O’Shea asks you to step up to his room, sir,” said the hall
porter.
Knocking out my pipe, I made my way upstairs. On the side of the
angels though I might be, I found myself not wholly at ease. I rapped
at O’Shea’s door and walked in.
Macalister was seated in an armchair, a stump of fat cigar between his
teeth. The band was absent. I presumed that he had smoked it.
O’Shea stood, facing me, by the open window. “I hope I have not
dragged you from pleasant company. But Mr. Macalister here has
presumed to question a statement of mine.”
“Cut it out,” said Macalister. “This is business.”
“Mr. Macalister,” O’Shea resumed blandly--and now I noted that he wore
his monocle--“is not personally responsible for his defects of
education. Forgive him, Decies. The facts, briefly, are these: You may
recall that I recently placed in your care a certain portfolio, the
contents of which you know?”
“You did,” said I.
“My reason,” O’Shea continued, “was that I feared an attempt by Mr.
Macalister or his friends to recover this portfolio. I mentioned my
fears to you at the time.”
“You did,” I repeated.
“Mr. Macalister,” O’Shea turned to him, “Mr. Decies, here, has the
portfolio and a new key which I have had made. The portfolio is
locked. I don’t know what he has done with it. Therefore your
proposals are useless.”
Macalister rolled the cigar stump. With a thumb and forefinger he
removed fragments from his mouth--of what, I cannot say; possibly the
band. Then:
“I believe you,” he granted. “I never doubted your word. You’re damned
up-stage but you don’t lie.”
“Thank you,” said O’Shea.
The tone in which he spoke puzzled me at the time. It was so oddly
sincere.
“But, you see,” Macalister went on, “I know why you’ve done it!”
O’Shea did not exactly start. But his glance, as Macalister spoke, was
dagger-like in its intensity.
“You’re an officer and a gentleman. The two aren’t always twins, but
you happen to be both. I’ve got to deal with Mr. Decies? If he lets
you down, the disgrace is his. You’re just branded a fool, but you
save your ‘British honour.’ Am I right?”
By heavens! I knew he was right! And, studying the low brow, the
small, Semitic skull, the gross person of the man, I wondered. If a
Julian Macalister could read human nature so clearly, small wonder
that the cream of his race ruled the Rialtos of the world. So I
reflected.
“Very well, Mr. Decies.” He diverted the cigar stump in my direction.
“As it’s turned out, I’m not sorry. You’re sweet on the little lady
who’s disappeared. I don’t blame you. I fancy her, myself. But
business is business.”
Only O’Shea’s frigid stare held me in my place. I plunged my hands in
my trouser pockets and clenched them tightly.
“Do not permit Mr. Macalister’s vulgarity to upset your judgment,”
said O’Shea. “Also, make due allowances for him.”
“I don’t say I know where she is,” Macalister resumed unmoved, “but
I’m prepared to promise that she’ll be home by midnight if you, Mr.
Decies, will double on the major and hand over to me that portfolio!”
“One moment!”
O’Shea broke in so violently that he startled me.
“Well?” said Macalister.
“You fully appreciate the value of what the portfolio contains?”
O’Shea challenged.
“Fully,” I answered.
“You know what is at stake--on both sides?”
“I do.”
“So do I. Therefore I am going to leave you alone with Mr. Macalister.
Make your terms, Decies. I shall never reproach you. Communism is a
powerful movement. To-night it conquers.”
He walked quickly to the door and went out.
“Very pretty,” said Macalister. “When he’s fired from the Guards he
should do well in the movies.”
CHAPTER XVI.
THE HOUSE ON THE CLIFF
I have come to the conclusion that British honour is pretty good
stock-in-trade. Macalister accepted my word that no rescue by force
would be attempted. And, if Macalister accepted it, I think my promise
must be a gilt-edged security.
At twenty minutes before midnight--the time I had arranged to set
out--Reid’s was moderately excited. The absence of Nanette could no
longer be concealed in view of the fact that her worthy foster-parents
had created something of a hubbub following her departure from the
Casino. Hotel servants had been talking, too.
The arrangement had the charm of simplicity.
In a car containing only a chauffeur and myself, I was to follow the
Farman. Any support must be not less than five hundred yards in the
rear.
“But,” I had objected, “although you trust _me_, I don’t trust _you_.
I might be held up.”
“You can arm yourself if you like,” Macalister had conceded. “And you
will have the driver. Your friends, too, will be close behind you.”
I had hesitated, until:
“Damn it!” he cried. “I want the goods! This deal is square!”
I agreed when he spoke thus. Slowly, I was learning my man.
O’Shea elected to follow alone.
“They will stick to their bargain, Decies,” he said sadly. “We dare
not take the risk, I admit; but Nanette is safe enough. They know how
far they can go.”
Past a curious group clustering around the hotel entrance, we walked
out--Macalister, O’Shea, and myself. I watched a magnificent cigar
being lighted in the Farman, wondering how and where Macalister found
room to carry more than one at a time.
Then we set forth upon our queer journey.
The Farman led through the outskirts of Funchal, around the flank of
the little town and out to that sea road which scales the frowning
cliffs.
I am never at my best on roads of this kind. A squat red lozenge in
the glare of our headlights, the leading car, from time to time, would
disappear over a precipice. Nothing would obstruct my view of starry
sky and the still mirror of the ocean far below.
Then, a hairpin turn in the dizzy path being negotiated, there ahead
again the Farman would appear.
So it went, up and up, around bend after bend, until the bumping and
jolting told me that we had left the road, such as it was, and were
digging a road of our own.
We crept over a desolate dome of territory that must have been left
behind when Atlantis sank. Upon our topping the crown of this blasted
heath, I looked out ahead. I prayed that the brakes had been recently
overhauled.
A long, curving, rock-strewn slope swept gracefully down to a sheer
edge. And perched close to the precipice like a lonely seafowl was a
little, dirty white dwelling--hundreds of eerie feet above the sea,
approached by no perceptible path. I exhausted my imagination in
endeavouring to invent a reason why any human being should live there.
By means of zigzag manœuvring, the Farman was brought to within fifty
yards or so of the place. My chauffeur gingerly imitated the design.
Then came the prearranged signal.
Macalister’s arm was protruded. He waved his cigar like a field
marshal’s baton.
“Stop!” I said--and the word sounded like a gasp of relief.
I got out, turned, and looked back.
O’Shea’s car had been pulled up on the crest. I could see him standing
beside it, a distant silhouette against the sky.
I walked down to where Macalister waited by the house.
There was a low stone wall round the seaward end of the property,
enclosing a tiny garden in which bricks were apparently cultivated.
And now I could see over the edge. I gasped. A wooden ladder,
connecting with a platform that jutted out just below the house,
described a jazz pattern down the cliff-side. In a miniature cove,
below, a smart motor cruiser lay, her lighted ports like watching
eyes.
“Send your car up to the top,” Macalister directed.
I shouted to the man. And, as I watched him painfully tacking back
against the gradient, I reflected that if O’Shea’s psychology should
prove to be at fault, mine was a sorry case. I fingered a revolver
that nestled in my pocket.
The climb accomplished:
“Now,” said Macalister, “you remember the conditions?”
“Perfectly.”
“Halfway between the house and my car.”
I turned and mounted the slope. Macalister whistled shrilly.
Spinning about, I watched. I saw two things happen.
Macalister’s simian chauffeur leapt from his seat, stripping off his
jacket and discarding his cap. From somewhere on the hither side of
the building, which appeared to possess no door, three figures came
into view. Two were men, thick-set nondescripts; the third was a girl.
And the girl was Nanette!
They held her wrists, but the moment she caught sight of me standing
there in the moonlight:
“Mr. Decies!” she cried. “Don’t do it! don’t do it! I’ll never forgive
you! They _dare_ not harm me, and you are not to do it!”
I made no answer. I had none to make. And so the men led her on until
she stood before me.
She was pale, and so slender, between her burly captors, as to look
ethereal. Her widely open eyes were fixed in a stare of reproach. My
heart thumped.
“You don’t understand, Nanette,” I said. “There is Major O’Shea--and
he wishes it.”
One long, lingering glance she cast up to where O’Shea stood watching.
I saw a flood of colour sweep over her face. Then her obstinate little
mouth quivered. She lowered her head, and:
“I hate myself,” she whispered.
“Now,” said Macalister, coming forward, “give me the key.”
I did so. He placed it carefully in his waistcoat pocket. Nanette
never looked up.
“Hand the portfolio to Miguel.”
The chauffeur was indicated. I obeyed, and the man handed the
portfolio on to Macalister, who narrowly examined the seals.
“Senhor da Cunha,” he said sharply.
Whereupon Miguel ran off, carrying the portfolio, and disappeared over
the edge where the ladder was. So Gabriel da Cunha was on board the
cruiser!
Again Macalister spoke rapid Portuguese.
Nanette was released, and the two men turned and went back to the
house. She stood before me, with lowered head.
Macalister raised his straw hat. The colours of the band looked highly
effective in the moonlight.
“Miss Nanette and Mr. Decies,” he said, “I bid you good-night.”
He was not without a certain vulgar dignity. He followed his brace of
ruffians to the dwelling.
“Come, Nanette!” I urged. “It isn’t safe to delay.”
But, as we climbed to the waiting cars, she spoke only twice.
“They told me you had sent for me,” she said, “because Major
O’Shea--was ill.”
“What happened?”
“Poor Tommy Clayton sat in front, and the man with me, who said he was
a doctor, reached over and hit him with something. I screamed.”
“Did he put his hand over your mouth to stop you?”
She nodded.
“Have they been unkind to you?”
She shook her head.
O’Shea waited until we gained the crest, then he got into his car and
drove off. I followed, with an unusually dumb Nanette.
She sneaked into Reid’s by the side entrance and went straight to her
room. O’Shea was waiting for me in the cocktail bar. I entered very
gloomily and he ordered me a double whisky and soda.
“They will have some little difficulty in opening the portfolio,
Decies,” he said, watching the bartender preparing our drinks.
I stared at him. He was smiling!
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
“I mean that I took the precaution of filing one of the wards before I
gave the key to you.”
But, even then, I didn’t understand, and:
“What for?” I asked.
“Unnecessarily, as it fell out,” he replied. “But my idea was to gain
time.”
“To gain time!”
“Yes. To enable us to get a good start before they forced the lock.”
He slid a full glass along the counter in my direction, and:
“Do you play poker?” he asked.
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“I was merely wondering if you did. That portfolio which you have been
treasuring, Decies, contains several pages torn from an old copy of
the _Sporting Times_. Yet neither you nor I have told a lie about it
from start to finish! Chin-chin!”
CHAPTER XVII.
NANETTE IS CONFIDENTIAL
“Did you ever hear of Adolf Zara?” said O’Shea.
I shook my head blankly.
“That’s the devil of it,” he murmured. “He works in the dark.”
“Who is he?”
He hesitated for a moment, then:
“He is the immediate chief of those Communist gentlemen,” he replied,
“whose activities have detained me so long in Madeira. One good thing
I owe to him. I shall be returning to England with you in the
morning.”
“What!” I exclaimed gladly. “By the _Union Castle_?”
“Yes.” He turned, staring at me in that coldly penetrating way which
was so disconcerting and so misleading. “By a sheer coincidence, Mr.
Zara is on board and I am instructed to look out for him.”
“But the ship is full, O’Shea.”
“There is always room for three more passengers in any British liner,”
he replied: “a diplomatic agent, a King’s Messenger, and a pretty
woman.”
“What are you expected to do?” I asked.
“I am expected to prevent him landing!”
“But”--doubtless my expression became more blank than ever--“surely
the authorities at Southampton----”
“The authorities at Southampton don’t know in what name he is
travelling. Neither does Capetown, apparently. They merely know that
he’s on board--with a false passport. He made South Africa too hot to
hold him. Moscow’s idea seems to be that another Boer war would add to
the gaiety of nations. The Boers don’t seem to think so.”
He stirred languidly in the cane lounge chair and, raising his
monocle, surveyed a number of ants performing mysterious evolutions on
his white drill suit. It was very still and peaceful in the little
palm grove. A faint breeze carried perfume from the gardens, a sound
of distant voices and soft laughter. Outside the cool oasis in which
we sat, shaded, Madeira sunlight blazed on a million gay flowers, and
the low mossy walls were alive with lizards.
“Have you ever seen this man?” I asked.
“No,” O’Shea turned his head lazily. “I haven’t the slightest idea
what he looks like. Unless I get some further news by radio, my chance
of identifying this Red sportsman is a bad hundred to one.”
“But you say he has a false passport?”
“So I understand. Probably issued in Paris or Milan or even New York,
and in perfect order. Thousands of undesirables travel about the world
annually with other people’s passports, Decies. The appended
photograph is the only snag, and you might be surprised to learn how
easy it is to replace it and duplicate the official stamp.”
Presently I went hunting for Nanette. My guardianship of this dainty,
wayward ward was soon to cease; and whilst I lacked the courage to
think about saying good-bye at Southampton, I had learned that for a
man of my age and temperament the rôle of official uncle to a
beautiful girl was no sort of job.
Tea was in full swing on the terrace, but Nanette was not there. I
thought she might be on the tennis courts, and I strolled down the
steps and along the sloping, flower-gay path sacred to basking
lizards.
Halfway down there is a sort of abutment, overhanging the lower
gardens and possessing a stone seat. Here, in a lounge chair, her
parasol propped against the low wall, I saw Nanette.
Her little feet tucked up on the chair, to protect her bare legs from
the ants, she sat manicuring her finger nails.
She neither saw nor heard my approach. And I stood still watching her.
Quite mechanically she was polishing away with a chamois burnisher,
but her blue eyes were staring, unseeingly, out over the bay.
As I studied the charming, pensive profile, I wondered, as I had
wondered too often, what fate had in store for little Nanette. My more
immediate wonder was concerned with the problem of how she had
contrived to be alone.
Suddenly she turned and saw me.
“Coo-ooh!” she called. “Have you come to take me to tea?”
“Yes,” I replied, walking down to her. “What has become of everybody?”
“I don’t know,” said Nanette. “I wanted to be alone.”
“To think?”
“I suppose so.”
I dropped on to the stone seat beside her.
“Whom did you want to think about, Nanette?”
She lowered her lashes, and polished busily.
“Oh--Pop and Mum--and folks.”
I lighted a cigarette, and presently she looked up. Her clear eyes
regarded me wistfully for a moment, and:
“You know,” she said. “Don’t you?”
“I am afraid I do, Nanette,” I confessed.
“Isn’t it strange,” she went on, staring away over the sea, “that I
should be so crazy about someone who avoids me?”
“Very strange,” I answered dully.
When a girl thus makes a confidant of a man she has never kissed, if
he knows the rules of the game he retires hurt. Then:
“I suppose I shall get over it,” she said, and smilingly packed up the
manicure implements. “We have to be on board at a fiendishly early
hour to-morrow. I don’t know whether to go to bed at nine o’clock or
sit up all night. Let’s have tea.”
As I helped her out of the cushioned chair:
“I have some news for you, Nanette,” I said. “Major O’Shea is coming
with us.”
Her eyes opened very widely; and she stared at me in a frightened way
that I always associated with any sudden reference to O’Shea. Then she
turned swiftly, taking up her parasol.
“Really,” she said. “How often he changes his mind.”
But as we walked up the long path to the terrace she talked
animatedly. And glancing aside at her flushed face, I realized with
almost a shock of surprise how very young she was--and how sweetly
incapable of hiding the excitement that my news had created.
CHAPTER XVIII.
SUSPECTS
That run home to Southampton did not begin auspiciously for Nanette.
Her happiness at being on the same ship with O’Shea was distinctly
blunted by the presence of an official chaperone.
Her father had some sort of pull with the line, and by dint of
industrious cabling, he had contrived to get in touch with a lady he
knew who was returning from South Africa: One Mrs. Porter, a really
formidable matron, deep-chested, heavy-jowled, and contemplating a
sinful world through spectacles of an unnecessarily unpleasant
pattern.
“Pop is mad!” said Nanette. “This woman must die.”
Excluding O’Shea and myself, Nanette had come on board with a male
escort of three devoted dancing partners. Lacking the society of
Nanette, these were three very lonely young men, divided by a mutual
distrust but united in their dislike of O’Shea.
Unreciprocated passion renders its victims clairvoyant; and each one
of these three knew what the rest of the crowd at Reid’s Hotel had
never suspected: that Nanette only emerged from a land of dreams when
O’Shea was with her. Now, to crown a troublous situation, Mrs. Porter
presented a protégé--Captain Slattery. She made it pointedly clear
that no other follower would be tolerated.
I resigned my staff of office with a sigh, and settled down to be
sorry for Nanette--and Slattery.
O’Shea and I stood at the door of the smoke-room watching the coast of
Madeira melt into a blue distance. Nanette, in a short, sleeveless
frock, came along the deck, linked between two men, one of whom was
Slattery. She pretended not to see us. But right in front of the door
she pulled up insistently, leaning on the rail and pointing out
something to her companions. Nanette knew she had very beautiful arms.
But she wanted O’Shea to know.
He smiled at me, sadly, and turning, went into the smoke-room. The
girl’s dainty naïveté was hopelessly disarming. We sat down facing
one another across a table, and:
“There is something I want you to do for me,” said O’Shea.
“About--Nanette?”
“No.” He shook his head, and that tragically hungry look came into his
eyes that I had seen there before. “Don’t let us talk about her,
Decies. I have a valuable portfolio in my stateroom.”
“Surely you will hand it over to the purser?”
“Impossible. Contrary to the rules of the game. The ship might sink.
But a certain Adolf Zara is on board. Therefore----”
He paused, staring at me significantly.
“You want _me_ to take charge of it?”
“Yes. Lock it in your trunk. I don’t expect any move on this
gentleman’s part. He is stalking bigger game and therefore anxious to
avoid publicity. But he _might_ take it into his head to pay me an
unofficial visit. I have a room to myself. You are sharing a cabin
with a representative of the _Cape Times_ whom, luckily, you chance to
have met before.”
“Very well,” said I. “Of course, this man, Zara, will know you are on
board?”
“Naturally,” O’Shea returned. “His associates in Madeira will have
advised him--although absolutely nothing to afford a clue to his
assumed identity happened at Funchal. He is a dangerously clever man.”
“Have you taken a look around?”
“Yes. Have you?”
“I have. But no likely candidate for the honour of being Adolf Zara
has presented himself.”
“I agree,” said O’Shea quietly. “But I have an appointment with the
purser in an hour’s time. I am going carefully through the declaration
sheets.”
When O’Shea left me, I was joined by the journalist, my
stable-companion; a substantial Scot whom I had met in London two
years before. He proposed a promenade. And just as we started the
faithful three came into the smoke-room, together, and ordered drinks.
Their aspects were mournful.
Then, in a shady corner outside, we discovered the explanation.
Nanette was coiled up in a deck chair, her charming head turned in the
direction of her neighbour on the right--Slattery. In a chair on her
left, enveloped in an unnecessary rug, Mrs. Porter slumbered
soundly--and almost noiselessly.
Nanette beckoned to me. As I paused, she threw a venom-laden glance at
the unconscious chaperone, and:
“I do not like you, Mrs. P.,” she murmured. “The reason why is plain
to see--and hear.”
Slattery, his gaze fixed upon her, smiled admiringly. He had very even
white teeth. Then he looked up at me.
“I hear that your friend is the famous O’Shea,” he said. “I thought he
was a movie actor.”
The words told me plainly that this was another victim of the
distracting Nanette. Therefore I forgave him.
“His appearance is certainly deceptive,” I admitted.
“We were on their right at the time he was recommended for the V.C.,”
Slattery went on. “I was only a pup, but _we_ saw some dirty work,
too. The crack regiments always get the limelight, though.”
Nanette glanced at him under suddenly lowered lashes, and:
“Please, Mr. Decies, lead me to a cool drink with lemon in it,” she
said.
She was on her feet in one graceful movement. Her ability to
disentangle herself from complicated poses resembled that of an
antelope. Grasping my right arm and the left of my startled Scottish
companion, she moved away.
“Captain Slattery is so good-looking that he bores me,” she whispered
in my ear.
O’Shea found me some little time later.
“I have ventured to have you put at a table among strangers,” he said.
“Your immediate neighbour is a certain Dr. Zimmermann.”
He stared at me.
“I’ll do my best, O’Shea,” said I. “Where are _you_?”
“At the purser’s table,” he replied, “facing one John Edward
Wainwright, of Halifax, Nova Scotia. These two birds may prove to be
black swans, but there isn’t another query in the passenger list.”
I experienced Dr. Zimmermann at lunch and later at dinner. Apart from
his audible enjoyment of the soup, I found his table manners genial.
He had been studying the neolithic fauna of South Africa on behalf of
some learned Munich institution blessed with a name that only Dr.
Zimmermann could pronounce and that I shall never attempt to spell.
My report to O’Shea was unsatisfactory.
“He seems fairly true to type,” I said. “If he is not what he
professes to be, he carries it well. How about your man?”
O’Shea shrugged in his curious way.
“He obviously knows Halifax,” was the reply. “His line appears to be
steam trawlers. Having unaccountably neglected the subject of steam
trawlers, I am rather at a disadvantage here.”
“I am equally rusty,” I confessed, “upon the neolithic fauna of South
Africa.”
There was dancing on deck that night. Nanette danced with the faithful
three in turn and with Slattery. Slattery secured more than his fair
share because of the powerful backing of “Mrs. P.”
Nanette was dancing with me, in a curiously abstracted way, when
suddenly she grew animated. Her eyes sparkled. She floated in my arms
lightly as a feather.
Following her glance, I saw O’Shea watching us.
When I had deposited Nanette with the guardian Mrs. Porter, I returned
to find O’Shea; for he had signalled to me. He was standing just
inside the smoke-room door.
“Adolf Zara is active,” he said in a cautious voice.
“What do you mean?”
He glanced around the smoke-room warningly. I took the cue and looked
about me. Dr. Zimmermann sat in a corner, fast asleep. Wainwright, the
other suspect, formed one of a bridge party.
“Two dispatch-cases have been forced open,” O’Shea went on, “by
someone who entered my cabin to-night!”
CHAPTER XIX.
DR. ZIMMERMANN CALLS
“You have my authority to take any steps you may think fit, Major
O’Shea,” said the Captain. “I have received the usual instructions and
of course I shall do nothing without consulting you.”
We came down to the nearly deserted promenade deck. Three young men
were doing a midnight route march there--and Nanette, coiled up,
squirrel-like, in a furry cloak, occupied one of two chairs. The other
accommodated Slattery. “Mrs. P.,” leaving her charge in selected
company, had presumably retired.
Slattery was obviously elated. The chairs were set very near to the
foot of the ladder communicating with the bridge and the commander’s
quarters. Slattery didn’t know that Nanette had seen O’Shea go up and
that she was patiently waiting to see him come down.
We crossed to the rail, and leaned there, watching the clear water and
the strange phosphorescent shapes glittering in its depths. And
presently a slim bare arm was slipped under mine. I turned,
startled--to find Nanette beside me.
“Please may I stay for five minutes?” she said. “Or do you want to go
to the smoke-room?”
She stayed, and for longer than five minutes. Slattery had
disappeared; and the threesome had terminated around a table decorated
with tall glasses. We began to pace up and down, Nanette clinging to
my arm.
Presently, as we turned, very timidly she slipped her other arm under
O’Shea’s.
“Is it true,” she asked, “that there was nearly a mutiny at a
reinforcement camp where you were toward the end of the war? And that
a company sergeant-major called Meakin was courtmartialled?”
O’Shea looked down at her in his gravely gentle way.
“It is not true, Nanette,” he answered. “Where did you hear the
story?”
“I didn’t believe it,” she answered indignantly, “but someone told
me.”
O’Shea caught my side glance and smiled--the happy, revealing smile
that had grown so rare. But after Nanette had retired, over a final
pipe in O’Shea’s room:
“Queer thing,” he murmured. “That that story should have leaked out.”
“What story?” said I.
“The trouble with a group of N.C.O’s at that camp, which rumour would
seem to have expanded to a mutiny.” He stared at me coldly. “It was
the long arm of hidden Moscow,” he added. “We had agents of theirs in
our ranks. Did you ever hear of it?”
“Vaguely, now that you remind me.”
“The ringleaders managed to slip away. But it’s odd Nanette should
have got hold of the thing. Well!” He lay back on the sofa berth and
regarded me with raised brows. “There is nothing more to be done
to-night.”
“Are you satisfied about Zimmermann and Wainwright?”
“About Wainwright, yes. He had been playing since dinner time.
Zimmermann nobody seems to have noticed. How long he had been in the
smoke-room I can’t discover. We may safely count steam trawlers out,
Decies. Focus on the neolithic fauna of South Africa.”
“Shall you turn in now?”
“No,” said O’Shea, reaching up to the rack above his head for a pipe
and tobacco pouch that lay there. “I am going to spend an hour with
the young gentleman from the Marconi Company. Radio operators are
sometimes inspiring.”
To reach my cabin I had to pass the smoke-room door, and, just as I
came to it:
“Either of them is old enough to be her father!” I heard.
I stepped in. The faithful three alone kept a resentful steward from
his bed.
“Whose father?” said I.
“Hullo, Decies!” the speaker hailed me. “Sit down and let’s have a
doch-an’-dorris. We were talking about Nanette.”
“Oh!” I remarked, dropping into a chair. “What seems to be the
difficulty?”
“Well,” another explained, “she has fallen flat for that chap
Slattery; and we were saying that he’s old enough to be her father.”
“He is about thirty-five,” I hazarded--“a dangerous age for a girl of
eighteen.”
“Piffle!” was the retort. “Why, when she was only thirty he would be
nearly fifty!”
“Have you pointed this out to her?”
“Rather not! Suppose _you_ have a shot. You are well in with her
ladyship.”
“I should prefer to be excused,” said I.
The profound slumbers of my Scottish friend proclaimed themselves to
the ear as I walked along the alleyway leading to our stateroom. A
sleeping partner who snores is difficult. When he snores in Gaelic he
is nearly insupportable.
I undressed to a ceaseless accompaniment that I found the reverse of
soothing. Slipping on a dressing gown, I lighted my pipe, determined
to go out on the deserted deck; for the night was hot as Sahara; the
sea a burnished mirror.
Off I went, and met not a soul. For half an hour or so I wandered
aimlessly. When, at last, my pipe burned out, feeling sleepy enough to
face the snore barrage, I retraced my steps.
Rounding the corner of the alleyway, I pulled up short.
Dr. Zimmermann had just come out of my room and was quietly closing
the door behind him!
I stepped back swiftly. But I was too late. He turned and saw me.
He wore an appalling red gown and a really incredible nightcap.
Through the thick pebbles of his spectacles he beamed apologetically,
and:
“Mr. Decies--my _dear_ sir!” he said, coming forward. “I can never
forgive myselves--never!” He held up a huge pipe. “I did not know that
you had a companion. I knock. I think I hear you sleeping. And I
venture to come in. I am restless. The smoke-room steward is retired.
I know you are a pipe lover, and”--he indicated the yawning bowl--“I
have not tobacco, so, I venture.”
I stared him fully in the eyes for a moment, then:
“Don’t apologize,” I said. “You are welcome to a pipe.”
Opening the door, I stood aside for him to enter. My pouch lay,
conspicuous, on the bed cover, but:
“I see it there,” Zimmermann whispered, stuffing about an ounce of
expensive mixture into his incinerator. “But you are not here.”
Thanking me profusely in a thick undertone, he presently took his
departure. I listened to his receding footsteps, then I stooped,
pulled out my trunk, and examined the lock.
It was fast. Nor could I find a scrap of evidence to show that
anything else in the cabin had been tampered with.
What was I to believe? Could Dr. Zimmermann really be the formidable
agent, Adolf Zara? If it were so, he had cool courage enough to
justify the faith of his employers. In any event, I determined that
O’Shea must be informed without delay of this suspicious occurrence.
Sleep was not for me.
CHAPTER XX.
FOG IN THE CHANNEL
Toward dusk on the following day--our last evening afloat--things
began to move to that strange revelation which solved the Zara
mystery.
O’Shea had been missing quite often. Several times I saw him coming
out of the radio cabin, and he had had two long interviews with the
commander, at the second of which the purser had attended. Then,
having got into dinner kit, I was making for the smoke-room when I met
him.
“Hello!” I called. “Any news?”
He took me aside, and:
“No reply yet,” he answered.
“Perhaps the authorities in Munich don’t realize the urgency of your
message.”
“Perhaps not,” he said absently. “Let’s explore a cocktail.”
In the smoke-room we found Slattery and my Scottish piper; so we
formed a quartette.
Slattery’s attitude toward O’Shea was not friendly. I excused much of
it, feeling the real cause to be, not professional jealousy, but
Nanette. However, O’Shea was senior and Slattery never allowed himself
to be openly rude.
I was seated with my back to the door, when suddenly I saw a change of
expression on three faces. I turned.
Nanette was peeping in at us. She looked adorable in a dainty lace
frock and I saw Slattery glance aside at O’Shea in a way that was twin
brother to murderous.
For it was to O’Shea that Nanette was appealing.
“Would it be perfectly horrible of me to come in?” she asked.
“It would be perfectly delightful, Nanette,” said I.
She came in, to the marked perturbation of the smoke-room. She sat
between O’Shea and myself. The three musketeers, who had been talking
loudly in a neighbouring corner, grew suddenly silent.
“If you see Mrs. P.,” said Nanette, taking a sip from my glass,
“please hide me until I get under the table.”
Dinner that night was something of an ordeal for me. Dr. Zimmermann
talked continuously about fossils, took two servings of every course,
and generally seemed to be in high good humour. I think my own share
in the conversation was not marked by any unusual brilliancy.
O’Shea’s mood rather defeated me. He was by habit a lonely man, with a
way of sinking into himself. To-night, this phase of his temperament,
which had expressed itself in his evasive talk, for some reason I
found irritating.
On the morrow we should dock. The identity of Zara remained a mystery.
The result of O’Shea’s radio message was unknown to me. And O’Shea had
become a sphinx.
A group having for its nucleus the faithful trio had got up an
extempore dance on deck. A victrola belonging to Slattery provided the
music. Mrs. Porter presided over the instrument, and Slattery and
Nanette did most of the dancing. A few others joined for a time and
then retired, presumably to cope with the important job of packing.
I discovered myself to be the victim of a rising excitement. Something
was afoot. I determined to find O’Shea.
It was a longish quest, but I found him at last, He was pacing up and
down the deserted boat-deck. As I came up the ladder he stopped and
stared at me, then:
“Hullo, Decies,” he said. “Forgive my odd behaviour. But it’s a race
against time, and time looks like winning.”
“What do you mean?” I asked blankly. “Have you had no reply?”
“That’s it,” said he, “and I can’t afford to make a mistake. They
expect fog, though. It may save the situation.”
I was not at all clear on this point, but O’Shea immediately resumed
his promenade and I perforce fell into step beside him.
“Zimmermann is in his cabin,” I said.
“Good,” O’Shea murmured. “Where is Nanette?”
The question surprised me. Very rarely indeed did O’Shea speak of
Nanette.
“I left her with Mrs. Porter and Slattery,” I replied.
He nodded, but made no comment. Presently:
“If this dangerously clever devil slips through my fingers,” he
declared, “Whitehall will disown me!”
And suddenly, as he spoke, an explanation of his recent behaviour
presented itself. To the world he remained the aloof O’Shea; something
of a poseur; a man unmoved by the trivial accidents of life. With me
he felt that he could be real. He had treated the matter lightly
enough, hitherto. But now, England all but in sight, and the enigma of
Zara unsolved, he showed himself a desperately worried man.
“If I get him,” he began abruptly, after long and taciturn
promenading, “do you know to whom the credit will belong?”
“No,” I returned, puzzled.
“To Nanette,” said O’Shea.
This silenced me effectually. For what Nanette had to do with the
matter was about as clear as pea soup.
I left him, toward one o’clock, promising to return. I had abandoned
the idea of sleeping; and I wanted to change. No message for O’Shea
had come up to the time of my departure from the boat-deck. The
wireless operator on duty was unable to conceal his intense
excitement. Just before I came down, leaning over the half-door of his
room:
“Fog in the Channel, sir!” he announced gleefully.
“Good!” said O’Shea. “Go and change, Decies.”
I managed to effect a change of costume without arousing my Scottish
friend. He snored harmoniously and uninterruptedly. When I returned to
the deck, no trace of mist was visible. The sea looked like oil and
the heat was oppressive. I lingered at the rail for a moment, staring
forward to where the Cornish coast lay veiled in distance.
Right ahead, I discerned a faintly moving white speck. Then I became
aware of someone beside me.
I turned. The Captain stood at my elbow.
“No rest for me to-night, Mr. Decies,” he said. “The Channel is a mass
of soup.”
“So I have heard,” I replied. “What’s that ahead?”
“I have been wondering,” he murmured. “It looks like a motor boat--and
right on our course. Excuse me. I might as well go up.”
A few minutes later, as I rejoined O’Shea, the ship bellowed her
warning to the small craft ahead.
O’Shea was in the operator’s room.
“What’s that?” he asked. “Not fog already?”
“No,” said I. “There’s some kind of boat in our way.”
“Oh,” said he. “Fisherman?”
“No. It looks like a pleasure cruiser.”
He stared for a moment. I had never seen him look so ill groomed. His
wavy hair, since he had gone hatless all night, was wildly disordered.
Then the instrument began its mysterious coughing.
O’Shea placed his monocle carefully in position and lighted a
cigarette. The operator adjusted the headpiece.
“Here it is, sir!” he said. “At last!”
“Excellent,” said O’Shea calmly.
And, whilst this long-awaited message came through, the horn began its
disturbing solo--and mist crept, damply, into the cabin. We had struck
the outer fringe of the Channel fog.
At this moment I saw Nanette. She stood at the door, wide-eyed,
wrapped in a furry coat. I ran out to her.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, and clutched me--“where is--Major O’Shea?”
She was trembling.
“Nanette!” I said. “What is it? He is there--in the operator’s room.”
“Thank God!” I heard her whisper. Then: “I have been so frightened!”
she went on, clinging to me. “Mrs. Porter sleeps like a log--and
Captain Slattery came to our room a few minutes ago and knocked. I
opened the door, not realizing who it was.”
“Yes?” I said, clenching my hands tightly.
“He was--insane. He said--he was going to kill Major O’Shea----”
“What’s that?” came in a cool voice.
O’Shea stepped out on the deck. He held a slip of paper in his hand.
The mist had closed down, now, like a blanket. Even the deep note of
the fog-horn was muted.
“I’ve got him, Decies!” said O’Shea.
“What!”
“He sent off two code messages before my eyes were opened; and he
received one reply. I don’t know the code.”
Dimly, through the fog, a queer, high siren note reached us.
“Major O’Shea!” Nanette released her grip and grasped O’Shea’s arm.
“Are you talking about Captain Slattery?”
The Marconi operator joined our party as:
“Yes,” O’Shea replied, “thanks to you, Nanette! Only the Bolsheviks
knew so much about our trouble in that camp as Slattery confided to
you!” He turned to me. “I acted on that slender clue, Decies. The name
of a company sergeant-major--and I was right! The _real_ Captain
Slattery is in hospital at Ladysmith!”
“Good God!” said I. “Then this man----”
“Is Adolf Zara! I told you he was dangerously clever!”
Then, muffled, ghostly, it reached our ears on the boat-deck--that
most thrilling of all sea cries:
“Man overboard!”
Already the ship’s engines were running dead slow. Now they were rung
off.
Helter-skelter we went hounding after O’Shea--to Slattery’s stateroom.
It was empty. One of the lifebelts was missing. Out in the fog, that
queer high siren note persisted. I thought of the white motor
boat--and of Slattery’s radio message.
O’Shea fixed his monocle in place. The sleeping ship was awakening to
a growing pandemonium.
“Have you a cigarette, Decies?” he said. “I have smoked all mine. It
needs a brave man to do what Adolf Zara has done to-night. If ever I
have the pleasure of meeting Captain Slattery again, I shall tell him
so.”
CHAPTER XXI.
A MISSING PICTURE
“Oh, I say!” cried Jack. “This is topping!”
His admiring gaze was set upon a photograph in my portfolio of Madeira
snapshots. It represented a slender girl, arms raised, poised in the
act of diving from a rock into the clear water below. In justice to
the beauty of the model and not out of any desire to fan my artistic
vanity, I agreed with Jack.
The original of the study, seated on the edge of a table, slim legs
swinging restlessly, surveyed the work with less enthusiasm.
“I look painfully bare,” said Nanette severely.
“Can I have a copy, Decies?” Jack asked.
“Please say no,” came promptly from Nanette. “If you want a
photograph, Jack, I had several good ones taken in Switzerland.”
We examined other items of my collection.
“Hallo!” said Jack. “Who is the sportsman with the toothy smile?”
He was frowning at a snapshot of Nanette coiled up in a deck chair.
Seated very near to her, in smiling tête-à-tête, was a man whose
white sun helmet cast a dark shadow upon his features.
“Captain Slattery,” Nanette replied. “You don’t know him, Jack.”
She turned over the print, giving me a swift glance. Its full
significance rather missed me at the time. I merely supposed that this
picture of the man we had known as “Captain Slattery” conjured up
memories of O’Shea. And memories of O’Shea almost invariably brought
about sudden changes of mood in little Nanette.
Later, however, having induced Jack to telephone to somebody about
something or another, she drew me aside.
“Captain Slattery is in London!” she said, speaking with suppressed
excitement. “This was what I really came to tell you.”
“What!” I exclaimed.
In the days that had lapsed since the disappearance of the notorious
Adolf Zara, alias Captain Slattery, I had begun to share O’Shea’s view
that this greatly daring man had perished at sea.
“I received this note from him last night,” Nanette went on. “And I
don’t know what to do.”
Opening the envelope which she handed to me, I drew out a single sheet
of unheaded, undated paper having a cutting pinned to it. The note
read as follows:
I learn from the appended picture that you are in London. If you can
forgive me for my behaviour and will consent to see me for a moment
before I leave England, put a message in the Personal Column of the
_Daily Planet_ and I will arrange the rest. I can never forget you--so
try to be kind.
J. Slattery.
The picture referred to was cut from the _Daily Planet_, and showed
Nanette as one of a group at a dance party--I forget where.
“How did he learn your address?” I asked.
“He didn’t,” said Nanette. “Look at the envelope. It was forwarded
from the office of the _Planet_.”
She watched me almost pathetically, and I divined the nature of the
problem that was disturbing Nanette’s mind.
“I simply couldn’t do it!” she burst out. “It isn’t as though he were
really a criminal. He _is_ a criminal, I suppose, in a way. But
political crimes leave me rather cold. And, you see--he trusts me.”
“Do you mean, Nanette,” I asked, “that you don’t want me to tell Major
O’Shea?”
Nanette shook her head.
“Of course I don’t,” she replied. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it if I
had meant that. What I mean is--that I am not going to do what he
asks.”
“Yet he begs you to be kind,” said I, feasting my eyes on Nanette’s
charming face which, now, wore an adorably wistful expression.
“I _am_ being kind,” she retorted; then: “Oh!” she exclaimed, and,
suddenly silent, watched the open door.
Jack’s voice might be heard. He was returning from the telephone
downstairs and had evidently admitted visitors. A moment later they
came in--O’Shea and an inspector of the Special Branch whom I had met
before. He was a burly man with a rat-trap jaw, and I thought it
probable that he could trace an unbroken descent from the first Bow
Street runner in criminal history.
Nanette greeted O’Shea with disarming nonchalance. But the only person
in the room who believed that she had not expected to meet him there
was Jack. The detective, a peculiarly efficient man-hunter, as events
were to show, smiled grimly and stared out of the window.
O’Shea held Nanette’s hand for a moment, and then turned aside,
twirling his monocle string around an extended forefinger.
“Come along, Jack!” cried Nanette gaily. “Mumsy will be tearing the
Berkeley down!”
Jack was only too ready to depart. His admiration of O’Shea was
something he could not hide, and, whilst he was no psychologist, this
very hero worship inspired distrust--where Nanette was concerned. In
other words, he was not clever enough to know that Nanette loved
O’Shea, but he was modest enough to wonder how any girl could spare
him an odd glance whilst O’Shea was present.
Nanette’s vivacity became feverish. She literally danced down the
stairs, calling farewells to everybody. But, finally, from a long way
down:
“Good-bye, Major O’Shea!” she cried.
“Good-bye, Nanette,” he said, and shook Jack’s cordially extended
hand. “Look after her, Kelton. She is well worth it.”
“You’re right, sir!” Jack replied with enthusiasm--and was gone.
“Now,” said O’Shea, and fixed one of his coldest stares upon me--“are
the snapshots developed?”
“Yes,” I replied, almost startled by his abrupt change of manner. “The
prints came in this morning.”
“And are there any of Adolf Zara, sir?” asked the inspector.
“There is one. Unfortunately, his features are in shadow.”
“Let me see,” said O’Shea.
Once more my portfolio of snapshots was produced.
“This could be enlarged,” said the inspector eagerly. “It is quite
sharp.”
“Does the face seem familiar?” O’Shea asked.
“Vaguely. I think I have seen him somewhere. But it’s very much a case
of a needle in a haystack. Of course, he’s far too clever to go to any
of the known centres--always supposing he’s alive, and, being alive,
that he’s in London.”
“He is alive, and he is in London,” said I.
“What!” O’Shea rapped out the word in a parade-ground voice. “How the
devil do you know that, Decies?”
In a very few sentences I told him.
“That settles it,” said the inspector. “The rest is routine. Find the
woman and your case is won.”
O’Shea adjusted his monocle. It was a danger signal, but the Scotland
Yard man was ignorant of this fact.
“Explain yourself, inspector,” he directed, with ominous calm.
“Well--it’s clear enough,” was the reply. “I shall insert a paragraph
in the _Planet_, and when Mr. Zara turns up, he will be met by someone
he’s not expecting.”
“You will do nothing of the kind,” said O’Shea coldly. “The assistance
of the Special Branch has been asked for because of the facilities
that you possess in cases of this kind. But on no account must the
name of any friend of mine be dragged into the matter.”
The atmosphere grew oppressively electrical for a moment; then:
“As you wish, sir,” returned the inspector. “But you are going to lose
him.”
“I trust not. But even so, I decline to use this lady’s name as a bait
to trap Zara.”
No doubt the man from Scotland Yard thought the speaker mad. No doubt
he wondered why cases of this sort were placed in charge of
distinguished soldiers handicapped by such preposterous scruples. But
he did not know how Fate had intertwined Nanette in this affair so
that at every turn success or failure seemed to lie cupped in her
little hands. He took it like a good sportsman, however.
“Might I look over the other photographs?” he asked.
“Certainly,” said I, and spread them before him. “The negatives are in
the wallet. You will want the one of Zara.”
But when, later, I found myself alone, and began to arrange my
photographic gallery, I missed not one negative, but _two_. Search
availed me nothing. The negative of Zara was gone, but so also was
that of Nanette in the act of diving from a rock.
“Jack!” I exclaimed. “Jack must have taken it!”
But I was wrong.
CHAPTER XXII.
PORTRAIT OF A GIRL DIVING
On the following morning Nanette’s mother called. One great
disadvantage of this era of freedom is that it has taken all the kick
out of life. Without prohibitions there can be no thrills. If a pretty
married woman had called upon my father in his bachelor days he would
have immediately consulted his solicitor.
She looked more like Nanette than ever. Her shapely arms were
sunburned, and (I thought) were very beautiful so. But, as Nanette had
done, she declared that she was ashamed of her gipsy appearance. But
she had come with some more definite purpose than merely to chat, and
presently the truth popped out.
“Really, you know, Mr. Decies,” she said, “I don’t think it was quite
playing the game.”
I suppose I stared like an idiot.
“You know quite well what I mean,” she added, and smiled in that way
which was so like Nanette’s.
“On the contrary,” I assured her earnestly. “I really haven’t the
faintest idea to what you refer.”
She stared at me very unblinkingly, then nodded.
“I can see you haven’t,” she confessed. “Perhaps you didn’t think
there was any harm in it--and, of course, I admit the excellence of
the charity. But I’m afraid it will get her talked about. At least,
you might have consulted me.”
“Please--please!” I entreated. “Take pity upon me. You are clearly
referring to something of which I have no knowledge whatever----”
“Mr. Decies,” she interrupted--and held out a newspaper which she
carried--“I am referring to the picture in the _Daily Planet_.”
“But what have I to do with the pictures in the _Daily Planet_?” I
asked blankly.
“Since you took the picture in question, the connection in this case
is obvious.”
Dazedly, I opened the copy of the _Planet_ which she handed to me--and
there, prominently featured, was a large reproduction of my snapshot
of Nanette diving! The caption read:
A charming study of a charming diver. No wonder Madeira grows more
popular every season. The original photograph is on view in the Modern
Gallery, Bond Street, amongst a collection offered for sale in aid of
St. Dunstan’s Institute for Blinded Soldiers.
To say that I was staggered is to convey but a feeble idea of my frame
of mind. I stared at the picture until I seemed to see it dimly
through a haze. When, at last, I looked up and met the reproachful
gaze of Nanette’s mother, I was temporarily past comment.
My innocence must have proclaimed itself, for:
“Mr. Decies,” she said, and I saw her expression change, “I must
apologize. You evidently are as surprised as I was. But this only
deepens the mystery. Did you develop this film yourself?”
“No,” I answered. “It was on one of several spools which I brought
back. The Kodak people developed it. But----”
I stopped short. The truth had presented itself to me. One of four
people had taken this unaccountable liberty with the photograph. Jack,
the inspector, O’Shea, or Nanette herself. For I had no evidence to
show which of these four had removed the negative from the wallet.
“Yes?” Nanette’s mother prompted.
“The firm in question certainly knows nothing of the matter,” I went
on. “You see, I missed this negative yesterday.”
“You mean that someone stole it?”
“Stole it or borrowed it.”
“But with what object?”
“Presumably a philanthropic one,” said I, very blankly. “Nobody
profits--except the charity.”
“It resembles the work of an enemy--if one can imagine Nan having an
enemy. Unfortunately, it is a perfect likeness. In fact, it was
brought to my notice by someone. Personally, I don’t read the
_Planet_.”
“What does Nanette think about it?”
“She doesn’t know. That is, she had already gone out when the paper
was shown to me. She may know by now. I am afraid it will earn her a
rather unenviable notoriety.”
I promised that I would thresh the matter out, but as I had a luncheon
appointment all I could hope to do immediately was to ring up the
_Planet_ and speak to the department responsible.
This led to nowhere.
The art editor was out, and apparently no other member of the staff
knew anything whatever about the photograph--or about anything else.
I lunched that day at the Savoy Grill. So did nearly everybody who had
been in Funchal whilst Nanette was there. The room appeared to be
decorated with copies of the _Planet_, and my reception would have
gratified Gene Tunney and overwhelmed Douglas Fairbanks. I grew
stickily embarrassed.
Finally, I made my escape--and in the lobby ran into Jack.
“I say, Decies,” he exclaimed, “it’s hardly good enough. Nanette
kicked at the picture from the first. Now you go and publish it!”
“Stop!” I said sharply. “This is the last time I shall explain the
fact to anyone. But I did not send Nanette’s photograph to the
_Planet_. Except that someone stole the negative from the portfolio at
my rooms yesterday, I know nothing whatever about the matter.”
“_Stole_ it!”
“Exactly.”
“But when?”
“I missed it just after you had gone. In fact, Jack, I thought at the
time you had borrowed it to have a copy made.”
“Good heavens, no! She didn’t want me to have it.”
“Then the mystery remains a mystery.”
“It’s so objectless!” cried Jack. “A photograph like that is just good
fun amongst friends, but one doesn’t want the million readers of the
_Planet_ to see it. This defeats me! Have you rung up the office?”
“Yes. I could get no satisfaction. I am going along to the Modern
Gallery now.”
“I’ll come with you!” said Jack.
CHAPTER XXIII.
FIASCO
A curious episode marked our arrival at the gallery. On the opposite
side of Bond Street, you may recall that there is a block of offices
and showrooms, occupied by beauty specialists, modistes, and others.
Well, at the entrance to the gallery, where an announcement stated
that an exhibition of modern drawings and art photographs was being
held in aid of, etc., we bumped into one of Nanette’s Madeira
conquests.
“Hallo, Milton!” said I.
The young man, who had been leaning against the doorway and staring
abstractedly across the street, became galvanized into sudden action.
He gave a swift look at me, a second look at Jack, and then:
“Hallo, Decies,” he returned in an oddly guilty way.
Immediately he stared across the street again. At which moment came a
cry from Jack.
“Gad! There’s Nanette!”
“Where?” I asked.
“In that window, on the first floor there. She has seen us, I think.”
I followed the direction of his gaze. The window indicated belonged to
an expert organizer of female hair. An attractive wax bust was visible
but no Nanette. I turned to Milton.
“_Is_ Nanette there?” I asked.
“I couldn’t say,” he replied evasively.
Jack gave him a venomous glance and started across the street.
“We can see for ourselves,” he snapped.
I looked inquiringly at the young man in the doorway, but he returned
my regard with so high a challenge that I wondered, checked the words
on my tongue, and followed Jack.
We mounted the stairway to the first landing, and Jack threw open a
door bearing the simple legend “Pierre” with quite unnecessary
violence. We found ourselves in a discreet waiting room delicately
perfumed. A stout French gentleman, whose wavy gleaming locks were a
credit to his professional acquirements, greeted us. He bowed.
“I have called for a lady who is here,” said Jack. “Please tell her
Mr. Decies and Mr. Kelton.”
“But there is some mistake,” Pierre replied--assuming that this was
none other than the maestro in person. “No one is here at the
moment--unless you mean Mlle. Justine, my assistant.” He raised his
voice. “Justine!”
A trim figure in white appeared at the door of an inner sanctuary
sacred to hair.
“M’sieur?” said Justine, and bestowed upon us a swift glance of
roguish dark eyes.
“You are alone?”
“Yes, m’sieur. I am waiting for Lady Rickaby whose appointment is at
three.”
She bit her lip, suppressing a smile, and disappeared.
“You see?” M. Pierre extended apologetic palms. “There is no one.”
“What’s afoot?” Jack asked as we regained Bond Street. “That fat bird
was lying. The girl gave it away. Nanette is hiding from us.”
We stared at each other, badly puzzled. Then we looked across to where
Milton lounged in the entrance to the Modern Gallery, seemingly
oblivious of our existence.
“Come on!” said Jack savagely.
We joined the waiting Milton.
“Have you seen the famous picture?” I asked.
“No,” he replied, “I haven’t.”
Jack made a snorting noise, then, paying a shilling each, we went into
the exhibition. We found it to be far from crowded, and, indeed, the
artistic donations were not of outstanding merit. Quite the most
interesting exhibit was the lady in charge of the sales department.
And, at the end of a ten minutes’ quest, we sought her aid.
“Perhaps you could tell me,” said I, “where the picture is that was
reproduced in to-day’s _Planet_--a portrait of a girl diving.”
Whereupon the lady addressed began to laugh!
Jack’s expression was worthy of study. In the eyes of poor Jack,
anything touching Nanette was sacred, and this was the second time in
one afternoon that inquiries concerning her had provoked merriment.
“I wish I could!” was the reply. “Really, it’s most absurd. But all
the same the publicity has done the exhibition a lot of good. Forgive
my laughter, but, you see, we know nothing whatever about this
picture!”
“What!”
Jack’s exclamation was not merely rude; it was explosive.
“It has never been here,” she went on. “Dozens of people have asked
about it. But _we_ have never seen it. The secretary ’phoned the
_Planet_ this morning and was told that they had used the photograph
in good faith.”
“But who sent it to them?” I asked.
“I am afraid I can’t tell you,” was the answer. “All we could learn
was that it had been sent in by a responsible agency. Personally, of
course, we are rather grateful.”
In silence Jack and I departed. Milton was standing in Bond Street
just outside the doorway.
“Good-bye, Milton,” I said. “Let’s hope it keeps fine.”
“Good-bye, Decies,” said he, jauntily imperturbable.
Jack glanced sharply up at M. Pierre’s windows; but only the wax bust
rewarded his scrutiny.
“I am beginning to hate your friend Milton,” he confided.
“He is not so popular with _me_,” I confessed.
“Come round to the club,” Jack suggested. “This thing calls for cool
reflection.”
I left him at four o’clock. We had telephoned Nanette’s mother, only
to learn that Nanette had not returned. The whole thing was
provokingly mysterious. It had entirely diverted my thoughts from the
more serious problem of the capture of Adolf Zara. In fact, I could
not shake my mind free of it.
That Nanette had been hiding in the establishment of M. Pierre, I no
longer doubted. And that Milton had some part in the comedy was clear
enough. Poor fellow, I regarded him in a more charitable spirit than
Jack had at command. Nanette had been using him--for what purpose I
could not imagine--and his reward would be small.
Some association between Nanette, at M. Pierre’s, and Milton, in the
entrance of the Modern Gallery, seemed to be established. But since
Nanette’s photograph was not in the gallery, why this association--and
conveying what?
Nothing--in so far as my bewildered brain served me.
So I mused, as I drifted along Pall Mall. I determined to hunt up
O’Shea, when, suddenly, I saw something which called me to prompt
action.
A taxi turned a corner at the very moment I was about to cross. In it
sat Nanette--and Adolf Zara!
It is in such moments of stress as this that vacant cabs magically
disappear from the streets. No fewer than five taximen had solicited
my patronage during the few minutes that had elapsed since I had left
Jack.
Now, with a dangerous agitator wanted by the British Government
disappearing in the distance, from end to end of Pall Mall not a taxi
was in sight!
When at last one crept into view, pursuit was out of the question.
If I had been perplexed before, perplexity now gave place to
consternation. The comedy of Bond Street had been no more than a gay
curtain draped before a stage set for drama. I tried in vain to allot
the actors their proper rôles. What part did the missing photograph
play? How came Zara in the cast? What of Milton? And what of Nanette?
It was not far to my chambers, and I hurried back, with the intention
of ’phoning O’Shea.
I met him at the door.
Those who enjoyed the privilege of seeing Edmond O’Shea in action
relate that when things were going hopelessly wrong he would fix his
monocle immovably in his eye and retain it there, contrary to
regulations, throughout the hottest fighting. He was wearing it now.
“Hallo, O’Shea!” I called. “This is lucky! I want to see you badly.”
“I came to see _you_, Decies,” said he. “There is something I wish you
to know.”
Having opened the door and hurried him upstairs:
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” I began. “But Nanette met Zara this
afternoon.”
O’Shea stared at me incredulously.
“Where?” he demanded.
“I don’t know where. But I saw them together not ten minutes ago.”
He hesitated for a moment; then:
“Tell me all about it,” he said calmly.
In as few words as possible I outlined the events of the day,
terminating with my glimpse of Nanette and Adolf Zara together in Pall
Mall.
“It is a blank mystery to me, O’Shea,” I said. “I simply cannot
understand what it’s all about.”
“To me,” he replied, “it is equally, but painfully, clear.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the first place,” said he, “our friend the inspector borrowed your
negative of Nanette.”
“The inspector! In heaven’s name, what for?”
“Because he happens to be a clever man at his trade. I declined to
allow him to insert a paragraph in Nanette’s name. But he was by no
means defeated. He employed certain official channels and secured the
publication of her photograph.”
“With what object?”
“You recall the words that appeared under the picture?”
“Clearly. But the original was _not_ in Bond Street.”
“Quite unnecessary that it should be, Decies. Our friend the inspector
was in Bond Street, however.”
I think I was gaping like an imbecile.
“You are simply confusing me, O’Shea,” I managed to say.
“Yes,” he admitted. “No doubt the scheme is difficult to grasp. You
see--the inspector banked on Zara’s infatuation for Nanette. He judged
it, no doubt, by the risk that Zara ran in communicating with her.”
“Good heavens!” I cried. “I see it all! He hoped in this way to lure
Zara to the gallery?”
“Certainly. He thought that Zara would probably come, first, to secure
the picture, and, second, possibly to obtain a glimpse of Nanette in
person.”
“And you say the inspector was there? I didn’t see him.”
“I did!” said O’Shea grimly. “He was in an office at the end of the
gallery--with the door ajar. The girl in charge knew he was there on
some police business, but she did not know that it had any connection
with the missing print. I gave him a crisp five minutes. But,
officially, he was within his rights--and he knew it, dash him!”
“O’Shea,” I said, “I can’t fit Nanette and young Milton into the
picture.”
O’Shea’s expression changed, softened.
“I wonder?” he murmured. “She has a high spirit, and, I am beginning
to think, a keen brain. Decies!”--he suddenly grasped my
shoulder--“how happy some man is going to be, some day!”
He turned aside abruptly, and walked into the inner room where my
modest library formed a haven of refuge. Vaguely, as we had talked, I
had grown aware of voices below. My man was one of the speakers; the
other voice had been inaudible throughout.
Then I heard the door open behind me. I looked. And there was Nanette!
But, even as I was about to greet her, I checked the words. I had seen
Nanette merry; I had seen her sad. I knew her moods of coquetry and of
contrition. But, always, save once, I had thought of her as a child. I
did not know her as I saw her now.
“I thought you were my friend,” she said. “I thought I could trust
you. If I had had one little doubt I would never have told you----”
“Nanette,” I began----
But she checked me with a sad, angry gesture.
“You are no better than _he_ is,” she went on bitterly; “for you
helped him. Heavens, what a fool I have been! And he only thinks of me
as a _bait_ for his traps!”
“Stop!” I cried. “For heaven’s sake, stop, Nanette!”
“He was right,” she pursued, stonily ignoring me, and looking
unseeingly, miserably, before her as she spoke. “Captain Slattery
came. But I had arranged to warn him.”
I remembered Milton and his watch upon the window of M. Pierre. Then,
abruptly, her mood changed. The blue eyes, which were so sweetly
childish, blazed at me.
“No man, however bad he is, shall ever be lured to ruin by _me_. Tell
Major O’Shea that Captain Slattery is laughing at him!”
“He is entitled to laugh, Nanette,” said a grave voice.
O’Shea came out from the recess and stood watching her.
A moment she confronted him, then:
“Good-bye!” she said.
Turning, Nanette ran from the room. I heard the street door slam.
“O’Shea!” I cried. “Why didn’t you tell her?”
“It is better she should think as she does,” he replied. “Fate has
done what I failed to do. Now she will forget.”
I have often wondered, since, if he believed it would be so. I have
tried, knowing the man’s honesty of soul, to conceive that he hoped it
would be so. What _I_ believed or what I hoped I cannot pretend to
record. But, at some hour past midnight, I learned that Nanette was
unwilling to ignore the promptings of her heart.
Dejectedly, I sat smoking a lonely pipe, when the ’phone bell rang. I
took up the receiver. I think I knew who had called me, even before I
heard her voice.
“Is that you, Mr. Decies?”
“Yes, Nanette.”
“I am so miserable, because----”
She hesitated.
“Because of what?” I prompted gently.
“Because I never gave you a chance to explain. Oh, Mr. Decies! Tell
me--_is_ there something I don’t know?”
“Why, yes--there is,” I replied. “You don’t know that Major O’Shea and
I were totally ignorant of the plot to trap the man you call Captain
Slattery.”
“Oh!” came, as a sort of sigh, broken by a sob. “And I told him----
Mr. Decies, do you think you can ever forgive me?”
“I _do_ forgive you, Nanette.”
“And do you think---- Good-night!”
“Nanette!” I called. “Nanette!” But there was no answer.
CHAPTER XXIV.
PETER PAN
A delicious haze hung over the Serpentine, by which token I knew
that a warm day might be expected. Votaries of Peter Pan were few, for
the morning was young as yet, but I sat watching him in his green
temple and I thought how puzzled some archæologist of the future was
going to be.
Strange to reflect that a Scotsman should add to the ranks of the
gods; stranger still that his immortal child should find himself so
completely at home upon Olympus. More and more strange the reflection
that none of the older gods were jealous.
Children of course came to pay tribute, and I think it was this
morning I learned for the first time that there are many juvenile
citizens whose day is incomplete unless they have made offering--a
laugh, a pointed finger, a fleeting glance--to the god of that dear
world which is hidden from most of us behind the gates of innocence.
To many an exile under palm and pine, the coming of spring means
dreams of crocuses and Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.
I was suffering from a fit of physical and mental restlessness. I
could not clear my mind of the idea that some imminent peril
threatened O’Shea. That Nanette was involved, I feared, but tried hard
not to believe. Experience of that Red organization known as the S
Group had shown its members to be frankly unscrupulous; and Nanette
had blindly involved herself with one of them. I knew why she had done
it, but the man, Adolf Zara, could not know. For Nanette, Zara had
ceased to exist. I doubted that the reverse was true.
The peace of the morning and the beauty of the lake mocked me. In the
long encounter between O’Shea and the S Group, honours had gone to the
enemy. But the battle was not yet over. Instinct and common sense
alike told me that the worst was yet to come.
My ceaseless meditations along these lines had earned me a sleepless
night, and I think I had sought out this spot beside the Serpentine
with some vague idea of finding peace.
Now, coming out of a brown study and looking up, I observed a figure
approaching along the path. It was that of a girl very simply dressed
in a gray walking suit, and wearing a tight-fitting hat, which I
should have described as claret-coloured but for which the fashion
journals no doubt have a better name. Her fingers listlessly
interlocked, she came slowly along, looking down at the path and
sometimes kicking a pebble aside. Never once did she look up, not even
when she arrived before Peter Pan, until:
“Good-morning, Nanette!” said I.
Then she stopped as suddenly as though a physical obstacle had checked
her.
“Good heavens!” she replied, tore herself from a land of dreams and
stared at me, smiling. But her smile was not exactly a happy one.
“It’s like a musical comedy, isn’t it?”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, everybody turning up at the same place for no reason!”
“Not everybody,” said I.
“Well--no.” Nanette hesitated, and then sat down beside me on the
bench. “Not everybody.”
“Curiously enough,” I went on, “I was thinking about you.”
Nanette stared at the point of her shoe.
“Must be telepathy,” she murmured.
“Why? Were you thinking about me?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “I shall never forgive myself for what I have
done.”
“You mean--about Adolf Zara?”
“About Captain Slattery, yes.” She turned to me. “You see, I always
think of him as ‘Slattery.’”
“Does that make you like him any better, Nanette?”
“No,” she admitted; “I have never liked him. But, well--you know how I
felt about him? Does Major O’Shea know that I know?”
“You mean,” I suggested, “does he know that you no longer suspect him
of using you as a lure?”
Nanette nodded without looking up.
“I have had no opportunity of telling him,” said I. “But I expect to
see him to-day.” I rested my hand upon hers, which lay listlessly on
the seat beside her. “May I talk to you quite honestly?”
“Of course,” said Nanette, but still did not look up.
“I want to tell you,” I went on, “that the man you call Captain
Slattery, but whose real name is Adolf Zara, is not as civilized as he
appears to be. He is a member of a very dangerous organization. I hope
you will make a point of avoiding him.”
“I am never going to see him again,” Nanette declared.
She spoke abstractedly, and it dawned upon me that her interest was
centred less upon this matter of her perilous acquaintance with a
member of the S Group than upon the passers-by. I attached little
significance to the fact at the time, and:
“I am only anxious about your personal safety,” I said. “Anything you
care to tell me, I shall keep to myself. Are you sure that Captain
Slattery does not mean to see _you_ again?”
Nanette looked aside at me.
I thought that, since Adolf Zara was human, my question had been
rather superfluous. O’Shea, who was no alarmist, had admitted that the
secret organization of these people was extensive and efficient. Wild
ideas assailed my mind, but:
“Of course, we are no longer in the lonely island of Madeira,” I went
on, “but in the capital of a civilized country. All the same, Nanette,
I should be glad to know that Zara was no longer in England.”
“So should I,” she admitted, and looked away again.
The words were simple enough, but, from what I knew of Nanette, I
detected an unfamiliar note in her voice. I was not sorry to hear it,
although it was a note of fear. It told me that my warning had been
unnecessary. Nanette knew that Zara was a dangerous man.
“I have been wondering what I should do,” she began suddenly. “But now
I have made up my mind.”
She opened her handbag and took out a twisted scrap of paper.
Smoothing it carefully, she passed it to me, and:
“Captain Slattery dropped this yesterday,” she said, “while he was
with me in a taxi. I think, perhaps----”
She hesitated.
“Yes?” said I, glancing at what was written on the paper.
“It’s so odd that I think, perhaps, you should show it to--your
friend.”
Watching her as she spoke, I wondered at the scheme of things;
wondered whether she would outlive a romance born in a jewelled
island, or whether, despite her youth, it was real, for good or ill,
this love of hers for O’Shea.
I suppressed a sigh, and bent over the writing. This was what I read:
Book from Charing Cross to the British Museum. From the Mansion House
also it is no distance to the British Museum. Hyde Park there is a
station. Change at Charing Cross for Piccadilly. Bond Street is merely
Bond Street, and two London Bridges are better than one Bond Street.
But the Mansion House and the British Museum are national
institutions, and Berkeley Square pulled down or Berkeley Square blown
up would only lead to the Old Bailey. Residents at the Crystal Palace
rarely moved to Berkeley Square, and the Tower Bridge is new whilst
London Bridge is old. Meet you in Bond Street.
I raised my eyes. Nanette was stifling laughter. Now she stifled it no
longer. And Nanette’s laughter was very sweet music.
“Of course,” she confessed, “I know it _seems_ perfectly idiotic! But
one never knows. It may mean a general strike or something. But
whatever it means, I shall have to be pushing along. I am meeting
Mumsy at Marshall’s.”
She stood up, looking sharply to right and left, and I wondered what
this might portend. However, we took the path to the Gate, walking
very slowly, and from there proceeded in a taxi.
I dropped Nanette at her destination and was standing outside the shop
wondering whether to walk over to the Club or to hunt up O’Shea, when
an explanation of this chance meeting presented itself.
O’Shea, I recalled, had once said, in Nanette’s presence, that when he
had a difficult problem upon his mind, he varied the ordinary routine
of a London morning. Other duties permitting, he walked as far as
Peter Pan, and in the presence of the little god not infrequently
discovered a solution of his difficulties.
Nanette had been unfortunate. This morning O’Shea had not come.
I reëntered the taxi which I had kept waiting, and:
“Lancaster Gate,” I directed.
Why I did so I have no idea; but experience has taught me that the
motives which prompt many far-reaching actions are so obscure as to
defy subsequent research.
Discharging the man, I set out along that path beside the Serpentine.
The hour was now approaching noon, and platoons of white-capped
nursemaids promenaded with the younger generation. I found myself
surrounded by future society beauties; statesmen who would be making
laws when I was an old man; great soldiers destined to save the
British Empire from enemies yet unborn; actresses whose reputations
might overshadow the memory of Sarah Bernhardt; princesses, dukes,
vagabonds, thieves; some in perambulators, others in miniature
automobiles, some toddling; a fascinating crowd.
Then I awakened from my day dream. Standing squarely in front of Peter
Pan, and watching that youthful deity with a fixed stare, was O’Shea!
He remained unaware of my presence until I touched him on the
shoulder.
He turned swiftly. And I saw a far-away look in his gray eyes
instantly change to one of close scrutiny; then:
“Decies,” he said, “I am glad to see you. I learned something last
night.”
“What?” I said.
“I learned why Adolf Zara has come to England! The president of the S
Group--a person with the mentality of a Tomsky and the morals of a
baboon--is one Schmidt.”
“Well?” said I.
“Schmidt is in London!”
CHAPTER XXV.
THE SECOND MESSAGE
“Of course,” I said, “it may mean nothing.”
O’Shea raised his eyes from the extraordinary communication that I had
handed to him, and:
“Or it may mean everything!” he added.
We sat on that bench by the water’s edge where I had met Nanette.
O’Shea continued his scrutiny of the message, and, looking over his
shoulder, I read it again for perhaps the twentieth time. Its
absurdity fogged me. Passers-by ceased to exist, and I forgot Peter
Pan.
“Perhaps,” said I, “it is some kind of code.”
“Since it is otherwise meaningless,” O’Shea murmured, without raising
his eyes, “your suggestion is excellent. You will have noticed that
there are three references to the British Museum and that the
expression ‘Two London Bridges’ occurs?”
“I had not particularly noticed this,” I admitted.
“Two London Bridges,” O’Shea went on musingly. “Very interesting--very
interesting. You see where I mean?”
He indicated the passage with the rim of his monocle.
“Quite,” said I eagerly. “But Charing Cross, Berkeley Square, and Bond
Street also occur several times.”
“But only Bond Street and Berkeley Square crop up in pairs,” he
replied, “if we exclude the brace of London Bridges.”
And now, as we sat there pondering over this nonsensical piece of
writing, came a strange interruption.
“Have you seen Comrade Zara?” said a guttural voice.
I looked up sharply. A stout German obstructed my view of Kensington
Gardens. His ample face was draped in a pleasant smile, and he
surveyed O’Shea and myself through a pair of spectacles that resembled
portholes. No doubt I was gaping like an imbecile but O’Shea rose to
the situation lightly.
“He is here,” he replied calmly. “Are you from Comrade Schmidt?”
“I am,” said the German. His smile disappeared. Relieved of it, his
face was frankly sinister. “Have you seen Comrade Wilson?”
Perhaps it is unnecessary to state that emerging from a perusal of the
letter about Hyde Park, Bond Street, and Berkeley Square, and finding
myself plunged into this apparently inane conversation, I began to
doubt my own sanity; but:
“_This_ is Comrade Wilson,” said O’Shea gravely, and waved his hand in
my direction!
The German nodded in a very brusque way.
“Show me the order,” he demanded.
O’Shea held up the demented document we had been reading; whereupon:
“Good,” said our eccentric acquaintance. “Quick! The order for
to-night!” He passed an envelope to O’Shea. “I am followed.
Good-morning.”
He moved off hurriedly, and I was still staring in speechless
astonishment when a thick-set man wearing a blue suit and a soft hat,
and who, without resembling a straggler from the Row, might have been
a Colonial visitor, came along the path. One keen side-glance he gave
us, and then disappeared in the wake of our Teutonic acquaintance.
“O’Shea----” I began; but:
“After all,” he interrupted me, “one must admit that the Scotland Yard
people are efficient. That was a detective-inspector of the Special
Branch.”
“Do you mean he is following the German?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“But why should he follow him? Who was the German?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea!” O’Shea replied.
“But he mentioned Zara! And you seemed to know him.”
O’Shea adjusted his monocle and looked me over in a way that I didn’t
like.
“Really, Decies,” he replied, “considering the admirable assistance
which you have given me in this matter--for which I shall always be
grateful--there are times when you defeat me. Why our German friend
reposed his confidence in us I have no more idea than the Man in the
Moon, nor why he confided this letter to my keeping. But his reference
to Zara brands him a member of the S Group, without the significant
fact that he is being followed by an officer of the Special Branch,
whom I chance to know but who does not know me. The weary arm of
coincidence is not long enough to embrace all these happenings,
Decies. There is some other explanation. Let us see if it is here.”
He tore open the envelope and withdrew a single sheet of paper. I bent
forward eagerly, and over his shoulder read the following:
Charing Cross, London Bridge, Hyde Park, and the Strand are all worthy
of a visit. Kingsway is modern, but the British Museum, Tower Bridge,
the Mansion House, especially the British Museum, must not be
neglected. Hyde Park merits several visits. The Mansion House, or the
British Museum, can be done in one day, but Hyde Park is the only Hyde
Park, whilst Piccadilly and the Strand are merely thoroughfares. The
British Museum exhibit 365A is not in the National Gallery. The
Crystal Palace does not resemble Buckingham Palace and Bond Street is
not the Station for the Crystal Palace. Shepherd’s Market is a
survival. But book at Kingsway. Meet you at the Mansion House.
“And now,” said O’Shea, “you know as much as I do!”
I stared at him blankly, and, as I stared, heard clocks, near and
remote, strike the hour of noon. O’Shea suddenly thrust the second
letter into his pocket and began to study that which Nanette had given
to me.
He looked up, staring intently at the figure of Peter Pan, then:
“Twelve o’clock,” he muttered. “Does the fact that it is twelve
o’clock convey anything to you, Decies?”
“Nothing,” I confessed, “except that I feel thirsty.”
But it had conveyed something more to O’Shea. A distinguished officer
is not relieved of his ordinary duties and dispatched to the Argentine
upon the toss of a coin. He is selected for his special
qualifications. That O’Shea’s qualifications were extensive I had
already learned; that they were also peculiar was beginning to dawn
upon me.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE CRYPTOGRAM
Nanette was with a party at the Hippodrome that night, and I had
promised to look in during the interval. The curtain had just fallen
and the orchestra was playing as I entered with O’Shea. The manager
met us at the top of the steps.
No doubt you remember him. He is unforgettable, being the best-dressed
manager in Europe. He was delighted to meet O’Shea and much happier in
greeting an officer of the Household troops who had come in for a
drink than in endorsing a plebeian check for the use of the Royal box.
Nanette came running out ahead of her party and stopped dead on seeing
O’Shea. He bowed in his grave, courtly fashion. She glanced at me
swiftly, and then:
“Oh, Major O’Shea,” she said, “I want to ask you to forgive me!”
“And I want to thank you,” said he.
“To thank me?”
Nanette looked up at him and then down again very swiftly. She began
tapping her foot upon the rubber-coated floor.
“To thank you,” he repeated, “once more. It seems to be my happy fate,
Nanette, to be always thanking you.”
“But what have you to thank me for?” she asked, industriously studying
the point of her shoe.
“For giving me an opportunity of redeeming my many failures.”
Nanette looked up--she was quite calm again--and met his eyes bravely.
“Some of them,” she said, “have been my fault.”
“You are wrong,” O’Shea assured her. “The fault has been mine from the
very beginning.”
“What do you mean?” she asked; and I turned aside, joining some
friends who had just come out from the stalls.
In spite of my determination about Nanette, it still hurt a little bit
to see that light in her eyes.
“I mean,” I heard O’Shea reply, “that I have tried to do something
that is impossible.”
I heard no more, nor did I want to.
That bell which indicates the rise of the curtain releases from the
bars of a London theatre certain characteristic types. The wet man
returning guiltily with guarded breath to his dry wife in the stalls,
having stepped out to “smoke a cigarette.” The bored man, who is
present under protest, and who goes to his seat like a martyr to the
stake. The victim of jazzitis who dances with his girl friend in the
lobby, and post-mortem examination of whose skull reveals the presence
of several perfectly formed saxophones but nothing else.
The curtain was about to rise and practically everybody was seated
when I learned that Nanette had straggled. She stood with O’Shea in
the opening at the back of the stalls. And I thought that I had never
before seen her so animated in his company.
Envied model of her girl friends, Nanette was a paragon of
self-possession in the company of all men, or had been until she had
met O’Shea. Never, hitherto, had I seen her at her ease with him. But
to-night she was--realized that she was--and her happy excitement will
be good to remember when I am ten years older.
One hand resting upon his arm, she looked up, talking gaily. He, too,
had relaxed, as any man must have done finding himself in the company
of an adorably pretty and spirited girl who loved him so much that she
didn’t care who knew. He was laughing like a schoolboy.
The curtain was up before Nanette tore herself away. She was very
flushed, and I know her heart was beating wildly. I pitied her escort,
foreseeing that she would be abstracted throughout the remainder of
the evening.
O’Shea turned to me, and his eyes were still glistening happily.
“Well, Decies,” said he, “what are you thinking?”
“I am thinking,” I replied honestly, “that we are about of an age.
That if Nanette had looked at me as I saw her looking at you, I should
have asked her to marry me before I let her go back to her seat.”
He stared very hard, his expression changing from second to second;
then:
“Being Celtic,” he said, “I suppose I am superstitious. At every turn
since I have met her Nanette has intruded in my life. I am beginning
to wonder.”
“About what are you thinking in particular?” I asked.
“About the letter that Zara dropped in the cab and that Nanette gave
to you.”
“Have you fathomed it?” I asked excitedly--“and the other?”
“Both are in the same code. But without the first I doubt that I
should have been able to read the second.”
“Then you _have_ read them?”
“I have,” O’Shea replied; “and this time Nanette has dealt me a full
hand.”
His suppressed excitement communicated itself to me.
“What have you learned?” I said eagerly. “Can I be of any assistance?”
“Your assistance is indispensable!” he returned. “Are you game?”
“Every time!”
“Good enough. Let us go along to your rooms, and I will explain what
to-night has in store for us.”
As the taxi that we presently hailed threaded its way through the
traffic of Cranbourne Street, and on through that of Piccadilly, I
glanced aside several times at my silent companion. I wondered if his
abstraction might be ascribed to the problem of the S Group, or to
that of Nanette. Not being an O’Shea, I hesitated to judge. But my
vote was for Nanette.
Arrived at my rooms and having sampled the whisky and soda:
“Now,” O’Shea began, “the mantle of Edgar Allan Poe not having fallen
upon my shoulders, I doubt that I should have solved this cipher but
for the happy coincidence of meeting our German friend in the very
shadow of Peter Pan. You will recall, too, that at the moment of his
departure, the clocks were chiming the hour of noon.”
“I remember,” said I.
“I turned it over in my mind, considering the thing from every
conceivable angle. Before I tackled the cipher--for of course the
messages were palpably written in some kind of cipher--one fact was
plain enough to me.”
“What was that?”
“The fact that Zara, an important member of the S Group, was not known
by sight to the member who spoke to us! He mistook _me_ for Zara, and
he mistook _you_ for one Comrade Wilson, of whom I had never heard,
and respecting whom I have no instructions.”
“So far I agree,” said I, “but what I simply cannot make out is why
this deranged German should walk up to two perfect strangers seated in
Kensington Gardens and take it for granted that they were the people
he was looking for.”
“His opening remark was non-committal,” O’Shea reminded me,
reflectively sipping his whisky and soda.
“Certainly it was; but am I to assume that the man was walking about
London addressing the inquiry, ‘Have you seen Comrade Zara?’ to every
male citizen he met on his travels?”
“The very point that led me to a solution of the problem,” O’Shea
returned. “I realized, of course, that the routine which you indicate
would have been insane, and I do not look for insanity of this kind
from members of the S Group. I recalled that we had been sitting by
the statue of Peter Pan, and that I had drawn your attention to the
presence of ‘Two London Bridges’ in the message. I noted that the
double bridges were preceded by a reference to Bond Street--or,
rather, by two references to Bond Street--and followed by another. I
remembered that the hour was noon.
“Treating the message as a cipher, I assumed, as a basis of
investigation, that the various well-known spots mentioned represented
letters and that all intervening words might be neglected. Now, I had
two almost certain clues to work upon.
“First, that our German friend clearly expected to meet Zara and
someone called Wilson by the statue of Peter Pan. Second, that he
expected to meet them there at noon. Think for a moment, and you will
realize that this must have been the case.”
“It is clear enough,” said I, “now that you point it out to me.”
“His handing me a second message in the same cipher,” O’Shea went on,
“suggested that the first related to the appointment which we, by
bounty of the gods, had accidentally kept. I therefore assumed that
the first message conveyed something of this sort: ‘Be at the statue
of Peter Pan at midday.’
“I began to examine it with this idea in mind. Particularly, I was
looking for a sequence to fit the name, Peter Pan. As you can see--”
he spread the original messages on my table before me--“it appears
unmistakably at the very beginning. Charing Cross is the first point
mentioned; four other London landmarks occur, and then Charing Cross
again. I assumed as a working theory that Charing Cross stood for the
letter P.
“This suggested that British Museum was E as it occurs next, is
followed by Mansion House, and then occurs again.
“Assuming Mansion House to be T, we get P-e-t-e. Calling Hyde Park R,
we get Peter. Charing Cross then crops up in its correct place.
Reading Piccadilly as A and Bond Street as N gives Peter Pan.”
He laid his cigarette in an ash-tray and bent over the writing
enthusiastically.
“This enabled me to cross-check, for Bond Street occurs again
immediately, with the two London Bridges which first attracted my
attention, followed by another Bond Street.
“Bond Street being N, it was reasonable to assume that London Bridge
was O, making--Peter Pan, Noon.”
“By gad!” I exclaimed. “It’s wonderful!”
“On the contrary,” O’Shea assured me, “it is elementary. To continue:
we now have Mansion House again, or T, followed by British Museum--E,
and two Berkeley Squares, hitherto unmentioned. Old Bailey and Crystal
Palace crop up next--very defeating--followed by a third Berkeley
Square. Then Tower Bridge. This is followed by London Bridge, O, and
Bond Street, N. Remembering the name of the Comrade for whom you were
mistaken, Decies, I very quickly determined that Berkeley Square stood
for L and the word following ‘Noon’ was ‘Tell.’ This gave me a pair of
blanks, then L, another blank, and o-n. Wilson was clearly indicated,
and I had my complete message. ‘Peter Pan noon, tell Wilson.’”
O’Shea replaced his cigarette between his lips and turned to me,
smiling.
“You mean,” said I, “that you have read the second message?”
“Naturally,” he replied. “It is childishly easy, once having got the
idea of the nature of the cipher. Without bothering you with details,
such as the letters implied by Buckingham Palace, Shepherd’s Market,
and Kingsway--places that don’t occur in the first message--I may say
that it reads as follows: ‘Porchester Terrace 365A--which I assume to
be the number of a house--midnight.’”
“Good heavens!” I glanced at the clock. “And he said the order was for
to-night!”
“To-night,” O’Shea returned, glancing up. “We have two hours.”
“We have two hours?”
“Precisely,” said he, and his gray eyes surveyed me unblinkingly.
“There are certain chances, but there is no game without chances, and
we shall be covered by a raid squad from Scotland Yard. Whether
Comrade Schmidt is more familiar with the appearance of Comrades Zara
and Wilson than his emissary seems to be, I cannot say. But to-night
at twelve o’clock I suggest that you and I present ourselves at number
365A Porchester Terrace, as Comrades Zara and Wilson! It is asking a
lot, Decies, but are you game?”
“Good God!” I said, hesitated for one electric moment, and then held
out my hand.
O’Shea grasped it.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE COMRADES GATHER
“Nanette has gone on somewhere to dance,” said O’Shea.
“I know.” I stared out of the window of the taxi. “I take it that she
doesn’t know where _we_ have gone on to?”
“No.”
O’Shea’s reply was little more than a whisper, but it told me that
which made me at once glad and sorry. For good or for ill, Nanette was
winning.
“Two things are rather worrying me,” O’Shea confessed. “It is obvious
enough that Zara is afraid to visit any of the known centres of the S
Group, hence the appointment at Peter Pan. He probably received the
letter--or ‘Order’--at some post office, under an assumed name. But if
he had read it and decoded it before he dropped it in the taxi, where
was he at noon to-day?”
“Unable to approach Peter Pan,” I replied promptly, “because we were
there, not to mention the man from Scotland Yard who was following the
German.”
“Yes,” O’Shea mused. “Zara’s reaction to this check is one of the
points I am wondering about. It may prove to be a snag. The second
snag----”
But as our taxi had turned into Porchester Terrace and was now pulling
up, I did not learn what the second snag might be.
We alighted, and I looked up and down the street. Save for O’Shea’s
assurance, there was nothing to show that our movements were covered
by the squad from Scotland Yard. Porchester Terrace proclaimed itself
empty from end to end, or for as far as I could see.
Number 365A was a prosperous-looking mansion set back beyond a patch
of shrubbery and approached through a sort of arcade guarded by
handsome double doors. What appeared to be a large room on the first
floor was brilliantly lighted, but otherwise the house was in
darkness.
“Pull over to the other side of the street,” O’Shea directed the taxi
driver, “and wait. We shall not be long.”
“Very good, sir.”
As the man turned his cab:
“Now,” said O’Shea, “we are going over the top! Are you fit?”
“All ready,” said I.
O’Shea pressed the bell button.
In the interval that elapsed between the ringing of the bell and the
opening of the door, I conjured up a picture of Nanette dancing with
somebody or another somewhere, perpetually glancing abstractedly about
the room, as I had seen her do so often, in hope of catching a glimpse
of O’Shea.
It was hard to believe that this doorway before which we waited
represented a frontier which, once crossed, shut us off from the life
of empty gaiety which the name of London conveys to so many; difficult
to regard it as the porch of a grim and real underworld, controlled by
enemies of established society, remorseless, almost inhuman in their
bloodthirsty fanaticism.
A saturnine foreign butler admitted us. We had shed our dinner kit and
were wearing tweeds.
“Comrade Zara and Comrade Wilson,” said O’Shea with composure.
The man nodded and stood aside. We entered the arcade, which was
bordered by plants in pots, and saw ahead of us some carpeted steps,
lighted by a hanging lantern.
As the double doors closed behind us, I experienced one of those
indescribable moments compounded of panic and exhilaration. Then
somewhere, very dimly, I heard a clock striking midnight. We were
going upstairs.
“Comrade Zara and Comrade Wilson.”
I found myself in a large room, very simply furnished in library
fashion, and in the presence of six or seven rather unsavoury human
specimens, some of whom bowed curtly, and some of whom did not bow at
all.
Our Peter Pan acquaintance was present; and a short thick-set man, who
had incredibly long arms, and who generally resembled a red baboon,
came forward to greet us. He had incomplete teeth, and those that
survived badly needed scaling. His accent opened up wide
possibilities.
“Greeting, Comrades,” said he. “You are welcome. My name is Schmidt.”
And as he spoke, fixing his piercing glance first upon O’Shea and then
upon myself, I recognized beneath that uncouth exterior the primitive,
formidable force of the man.
He presented the other comrades, by names which are not to be found in
Debrett, and I reflected that impudence is indispensable to success in
this sort of game.
It became evident that, from Comrade Schmidt downward, nobody in the
room was familiar with the appearance of either Zara or Wilson!
An appalling-looking bearded creature attached itself to O’Shea.
“We are anxious, Comrade,” it said, “to hear your personal account of
the state of the work in South Africa.”
“I am not too hopeful,” O’Shea replied gloomily, and glanced aside at
me.
“But,” said Schmidt, turning his dreadful little eyes in my direction,
“Comrade Wilson brings us news from the United States which will be
like new blood in our veins.”
Somehow or another, O’Shea managed to shake off the Missing Link, and
to secure a word aside with me.
“Very full bag,” he murmured. “If we make no mistakes, we shall purge
England and America of some unsavoury elements. But the second snag
which I had foreseen rests on the fact that another steamer from
Madeira has reached Southampton since we returned. There is one member
of the S Group whom we left behind. He knows us both. He might quite
conceivably have been in that steamer! His appearance here would raise
the temperature considerably. And----”
He was interrupted. The door of the room was thrown open and the
foreign butler entered.
“Comrade Macalister,” he announced.
“The snag to which I referred!” said O’Shea.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE RAID
I suppose that at some time during his life every man who has
anything of the boy left in him has thought that he would like to take
a fling at the great adventure of Secret Service. I feel called upon
to assure these aspirants that a comfortable armchair is the better
choice.
Accident, or that Higher Power which the Arabs call Kismet, had cast
me into the path of Edmond O’Shea. He had honoured me with his
friendship, but had quite failed to recognize that I was a man of
lesser stature than his own. Whilst granting every honour to marshal
and statesman, personally I am disposed to believe that it was men
such as O’Shea who steered the Allies to victory; and perhaps,
hitherto, I had been inclined to look upon the Secret Service as a job
for highbrows rather than for soldiers.
This error was to be corrected.
Conceive a large room filled with enemies of established order;
fanatics, whose collected scruples would have left a thimble empty.
Conceive that I and O’Shea, posing as members of their bloodthirsty
organization, were amongst them as spies, pledged to bring about their
ruin.
Now, conceive that a “Comrade,” who knows us and has fared ill at our
hands, is suddenly announced.
Perhaps I shall be forgiven when I say that I remembered with
gratitude how Edmond O’Shea had rallied a company of the Guards during
the great retreat, how his presence of mind and consummate
self-possession had helped historians to chronicle Cambrai with pride
rather than with humility.
He edged up beside me. I saw him fumbling for his monocle and saw his
change of expression when he realized that he had left it behind;
then:
“Get near the door,” he murmured. “My fault, Decies, to have let you
in for this. But I had hoped to learn things that police examination
can never bring out.”
Macalister came in.
He was in dinner kit and he smoked a cigar which, to my disordered
vision, appeared to be decorated with two bands. His superb
self-possession was worthy of Tom Mix. He did not merely own the room;
he possessed the property.
“Take the left,” said O’Shea.
Unerringly, instinctively, Macalister’s glance settled upon us at the
moment of his entrance. He had advanced no more than one pace beyond
the butler, and his mouth was agape for excited utterance, when
O’Shea’s revolver had him covered.
Overwhelmed with a sense of utter unreality, I covered the group of
four on my left which included the formidable Schmidt.
Glibly, as though born of long familiarity, the words leapt to my
tongue:
“Hands up!”
The command was obeyed. And I have since thought, paradoxical though
it may appear, that violent men, in these matters, are more tractable
than men of peace. Assessing human life lightly, they credit the brain
behind the gun with compunction no greater than their own.
“By God!” I heard Macalister say--and I hope I shall always find time
to take off my hat to a good loser--“I had you wrong all along,
Major!”
Schmidt looked dangerously ugly for a moment; then:
“Line up,” said O’Shea sharply. “Jump to it. Fall in on the left of
Schmidt.”
Came inarticulate mutterings, but without other audible protest the
group obeyed, forming a line having Schmidt at one end and the
saturnine butler at the other.
“Now,” O’Shea continued, “if any man lowers his hands, I shall not
argue with him. Decies, will you go down to the street door and
whistle? Pass behind me. Keep a sharp look-out. I don’t know who is in
the house.”
I obeyed, the sense of unreality prevailing. But I know I shall always
remember that row of sullen-faced men with raised hands, who watched
as I crossed behind O’Shea.
There was no one on the stairs, and no one in the long, glazed passage
that led to the street. This gained, I ran the length of it, and
throwing open the double doors beheld a seemingly deserted Porchester
Terrace.
I whistled shrilly. The result was magical.
Springing from what hiding places I know not, men appeared running
from right and left! This was the raid squad from Scotland Yard, and I
realized that I was helping to mould history.
Our taximan, who was waiting on the other side of the street, and who
had been peacefully smoking a cigarette, jumped down from his seat and
watched the proceedings with an expression of stupefaction that was
comic in its intensity.
Everything was carried out in a most orderly manner. The members of
the Group were arrested without unnecessary fuss. The whole thing
might have been “produced” by David Belasco. A six-seater car appeared
from somewhere or another, in which the gang was canned as neatly as
tinned sardines.
The police handled the job with such discretion that chance passers-by
never dreamed that anything unusual was going forward. They do these
raids much better on the screen.
Macalister was the last to come down from above, his cigar still held
firmly between his teeth. He was unperturbed. Deportation was the
worst he had to fear, and he knew it quite well. He was smiling slyly.
He paused, looking hard at O’Shea and at myself.
“Listen,” he said, “you two boys have doubled on me pretty badly, but
I don’t bear no malice.” His grammar at times revealed the influence
of the Cubist school. “Zara is different, and he’s still loose. Take
my tip and watch out for Zara. If he’s seeing red, don’t try to pet
him. Good-night!”
He entered the car, urged by two detectives.
“Good-night,” murmured O’Shea thoughtfully, and turned to me.
“You know, Decies,” he went on, “if that man had had our advantages,
he would have made a damned good sportsman.”
There were certain formalities to be attended to, and I suppose it was
close upon two o’clock when O’Shea and I found ourselves outside my
rooms. I suggested a doch-an’-dorris.
“If I were superstitious,” O’Shea declared, “I should refuse.”
He smiled, glancing up at the tall ladder beneath which we must walk
to reach my door.
“Oh!” said I, “they are mending the roof, or something.”
“I suppose we might risk it,” he replied; and we went in.
The incident stuck in my mind, not so much because of any
superstitious significance that I attached to it as because of what
actually happened later.
O’Shea dropped on to the settee in my big room and sighed rather
wearily as he watched me preparing drinks.
“You know, Decies,” said he, “I am both glad and sorry that this job
is over. I have blundered through by sheer good luck. Without your
aid, and the aid of someone else, I should have crashed badly.”
“Perhaps not,” I returned. “If you had not succeeded in one way, you
might quite easily have found another.”
“Or I might not,” said he. “No. I am a poor policeman, and peace-time
soldiering is no sort of game.”
“What do you mean, O’Shea?”
“I mean,” he replied, holding up to the light a glass that I had
handed to him, “that I am infernally restless.”
I sighed as loudly as he had done and stooped over the syphon. Then:
“Decies,” said O’Shea, “we live in a generation that grows up very
early.”
“We do,” I agreed.
“I should like to talk to you seriously. There are many men I have
known longer, but none I could sooner trust. Yet in this matter
somehow I don’t feel…”
“Yes?” I prompted.
“Well, I don’t feel quite at liberty to discuss it with you.”
There was a silence that might have been awkward. O’Shea was watching
me almost pathetically; and:
“I know what you want to talk about,” I said. “Nanette is a witch. But
there is only one man in the world for her now. It might be fair,
though, to give her a year to think it over.”
“You don’t doubt _my_ attitude in the matter,” O’Shea murmured.
“No,” I replied, “I know it.”
He looked at me very fixedly, when:
“Coo-ooh!” I heard.
O’Shea’s expression changed; and, turning, I crossed to an open
window, looking down into the street.
Standing just in front of the ladder which disfigured the front of the
premises, was Nanette, staring upward. A two-seater with several
people in it stood at the curb.
“Hello, Nanette,” I called.
“Saw your light,” she shouted, “as we were passing. May we come up, or
are you going to bed?”
“No,” I replied, and hesitated to tell her what I knew she hoped.
“Come right up and bring your friends. I have only just got in.”
“Right-oh!” she cried.
CHAPTER XXIX.
ADOLPH ZARA
The party that presently invaded us proved to consist of Nanette and
a brunette girl friend whom I had not seen before. They were escorted
by a young medical officer on leave from Mesopotamia--a very charming
type of Scotsman--and Milton, one of Nanette’s Madeira conquests,
whom, you may recall, I had met again recently under rather odd
circumstances. I thought that this evening was probably his reward for
the weary job of scouting that he had performed on that occasion.
He was not a happy man. The fact was beginning to dawn upon him that
at the Savoy, the Hippodrome, and wherever else they had gone, he had
been wasting his fragrance on the desert air. I pictured him driving
to my apartment as one consciously heading for his doom.
The poor fellow was rather pathetically young, and, regarding every
acquaintance of Nanette’s as a serious rival, he had awakened to the
fact that he had three score or so of deadly enemies in London.
Presently:
“Whisky and soda?” said I; “or have you reached the Bass stage?”
“Neither, thanks,” he returned, and glared around my modest bachelor
apartment as one who finds himself in the chamber of Bluebeard.
Nanette had sped to O’Shea like an arrow to its target. As I turned
aside from the peevish Milton, “I hadn’t dared to hope I should see
you again to-night,” I heard her say.
The other man and the pretty brunette were jointly occupying my most
comfortable armchair, therefore, conquering a perfectly stupid pique
which Milton had inspired:
“Well,” said I, holding out my cigarette case, “we seem to have no
alternative but to--look on, Milton.”
He rejected the olive-branch, and, rudely ignoring my proffered case,
crossed to the settee where Nanette and O’Shea sat side by side.
“I say, Nanette,” he exclaimed, “what about going on to Chelsea?”
Nanette barely glanced up as she replied:
“No, I don’t want to dance any more to-night, Jim.”
“Why not dance here?” cried her friend, pointing in the direction of
the piano. “Do you play, Mr. Decies?”
“Not dance music,” I confessed gladly.
“But Jim does,” she went on. “Go on, Jim! Just one.”
“Jim” crossed to the piano, offering an excellent imitation of an ox
approaching Chicago. He crashed into a piece of syncopation that put
years on the instrument. I had never heard the item before and trust
that I shall never hear it again. I saw O’Shea smilingly shake his
head; then Nanette ran across to me, and off we went around the
furniture, I wondering which would burst first, a wire in my reeling
piano or a blood-vessel in the empurpled skull of the player.
Nanette danced because she was too happy to keep still, even with
O’Shea beside her. I danced because I had no choice in the matter. It
was an odd business, pointedly illustrating the part that Terpsichore
plays in this modern civilization of ours.
Nanette was dancing with me, but she wanted to dance with O’Shea. The
other pair didn’t want to dance at all. They just wanted to be alone
together. And Milton didn’t want to be the band. In fact, the whole
thing was a sort of neutral territory, or sanctuary, in which the
various protagonists found temporary refuge.
I don’t know what momentous decision Nanette’s girl friend was
shirking, but when Milton threatened to weaken:
“Go on, Jim! Please go on!” she cried, avoiding the ardent gaze of her
partner.
Milton, the most ferociously reluctant musician I have ever seen at
work, made a renewed assault upon the keyboard. He was watching
Nanette, who rarely took her eyes off O’Shea; and a vein rose
unpleasantly upon his forehead. He perpetrated some discords that set
my teeth on edge.
How long this might have continued I hesitate to guess. Milton’s gorge
was rising tropically. I doubt that his destruction of my piano would
have ceased while life remained in the instrument, but an interruption
came.
Nanette and I had navigated an awkward channel behind the armchair and
were beating up toward the settee and O’Shea. The man from Mesopotamia
had ingeniously steered his partner into a little book-lined recess at
the farther end of the room. I had my back to the open window and
Nanette was facing it. Suddenly she grew rigid.
Her face became transfigured with an expression of horror that I can
never forget. She pulled up dead--staring, staring past me, into the
darkness of the street beyond.
“What is it, Nanette?” I began, when the music ceased with a crash and
I saw Milton bound to his feet.
Unconsciously, I had gripped Nanette hard. But, in the next instant,
she wrenched herself free from my grasp, turned, and with a queer sort
of smothered cry threw herself upon O’Shea!
I twisted about.
Not two feet behind me an arm protruded into the room! The hand
grasped a strange-looking pistol--for at that time I had never seen a
Maxim Silencer. I heard a muffled thud. Something came whizzing
through the air in my direction. (I learned later, when clarity came,
that it was a valuable Ming vase that had stood upon the piano.)
“Hold him, Decies!” yelled Milton.
It was Milton who had hurled this costly projectile at the dimly seen
arm in the window. The vase went crashing out into the street. I heard
a second thud. Milton fell forward across the instrument--and then
slid down on to the carpet. The hand clutching the pistol had
vanished.
A sort of vague red mist was dancing before my eyes. Came a rush of
footsteps. Nanette was slipping from O’Shea’s arms. His face as he
looked down into hers was a mask of tragedy. I heard her utter a
little moan and I saw a streak of blood upon one white shoulder.
Then followed chaos.
A very weak voice, which vaguely I recognized as that of Milton, said:
“Don’t worry about me, Doc. Look after Nanette.”
I saw O’Shea stoop and lift Nanette. I saw her pale face. When,
cutting through the tumult like a ray from a beacon:
“The window, Decies! Watch which way he goes!”
Automatically, I obeyed O’Shea. I strained out, looking to right and
to left of the ladder. It was boarded over, but I realized that a
desperate man, given sufficient agility, could have climbed the rungs
from underneath, as evidently the assassin had done.
At first, the street seemed to be empty from end to end; then I saw
the figure of a man emerge from shadow into a patch of light cast by a
street lamp--one who walked swiftly in the direction of Berkeley
Square. I withdrew my head and stared, only half believing, about the
room.
Milton, looking deathly, lay propped up against the piano. He met my
glance, and:
“Seen him?” he demanded.
I turned, as the military surgeon who had been bending over Nanette
looked up at her friend, who stood beside him.
“Know anything about nursing?” he jerked.
The girl was very pale, but:
“Yes,” she answered bravely, meeting his eyes, “a little. Tell me what
to do, and I will do it.”
He nodded, smiling, whereat I was reassured, and then:
“Have you a manservant in the house, Mr. Decies?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Dig him out. I can manage. You fellows are in the way. Get after the
swine who did this.”
But O’Shea had already started for the door. His expression was one I
had rather not have seen. There is a savage hidden in every Celt, if
one digs deep through.
The other members of the group by this time were safely housed in
cells. I thought that if we were destined to overtake Adolf Zara, he
was likely to enjoy the distinction of spending the night in a morgue.
CHAPTER XXX.
MEMORIES CAN SAVE
As Milton’s car, driven by O’Shea, raced around the corner into the
square, all question of the fugitive’s identity was settled.
Just vaulting into a two-seater that had been parked over by the
railings was the man whose retreating figure I had seen as I leaned
from the window! I prayed that he might be unable to start. But my
prayer was not answered. Off he went, heading for Piccadilly.
One swift glance back he gave over his shoulder. And in the light of
the street lamp by which the car had stood, I saw the face of Zara!
I glanced at O’Shea beside me. His pale features were set like a mask.
I looked to right and to left; but not a soul was in sight. Berkeley
Square was apparently deserted. Often enough I had wondered how
certain notorious burglaries had been accomplished with all the
resources of civilization at beck and call of justice. This was the
answer.
We had no means of arranging for Zara’s interception--although a
constable was on duty at the corner of Bruton Street! We could only
hope to keep him in sight or else overtake him. The merest hitch, or
slightest traffic delay, would deliver him into our hands. But the
betting was equal. Such an accident might as well befall us as him;
and, the quarry once out of sight, our chances fell below zero.
O’Shea spoke never a word. His mind held but one single purpose. That
purpose, I firmly believe, was to wreak justice upon Zara with his own
hands.
Momentarily, I wondered about Milton. Of Nanette I dared not think.
But a cold fury was growing within me, and I fingered the pistol that
had been in my pocket since the raid upon the house in Porchester
Terrace.
Zara whirled round into St. James’s Street. The traffic in Piccadilly
was not great but there were a number of pedestrians about. I even saw
policemen in the distance. It all seemed utterly grotesque. Then, hot
upon the fugitive, we, too, were dropping down the slope. Far ahead I
could see the clock above St. James’s Palace. The hour was a quarter
past two.
Our speed was outrageous. We crossed Pall Mall at about thirty-five,
and came out into the Mall, heading for Buckingham Palace in
Brooklands fashion. We were gaining slightly. We crept from forty-five
to fifty. Broad thoroughfares, brightly lighted, offered no
obstruction; and we flew around the sharp bend by the Victoria
Memorial and headed east.
“Westminster Bridge!” I muttered.
O’Shea did not speak. Past the barracks we sped, and, undeterred by a
certain amount of traffic in Parliament Square, shot on to the
approach to the Bridge. We were now three lengths behind Zara, and on
the gradient began to improve upon it. Zara drove on the inside of the
car lines, hugging the pavement. And at about the centre of the Bridge
we passed outside him. I heard someone shouting.
“Cover him, Decies!” said O’Shea grimly. “Shoot if he doesn’t pull
up!”
I turned and gave a loud cry. Zara had slowed down and was already
twenty yards behind us!
“Stop, O’Shea!” I cried--“stop!”
He obeyed so suddenly that I nearly dived through the windshield. Then
we jumped, one on either side, and started to run back.
Zara had already dismounted, and I saw him peeling his coat. A picture
arose out of the recent past: a foggy night off Ushant: and I seemed
to hear again that eerie cry, “Man overboard!”
So it was that Zara had eluded us once before. Undoubtedly he was
going to do so again; and for all the cold hatred in my heart, I could
not entirely withhold admiration as I saw him bound upon the parapet,
raise his arms, and take that appalling dive into the Thames far
below.
I knew now, however, what I had not known formerly: that Adolf Zara’s
courage was the courage of madness. His was that disease of fanaticism
which, when it does not cough up a Tomsky, floods the criminal lunatic
asylums.
As we both craned over the parapet, peering down at the uneasy water,
I heard the sound of a runner and then the flat note of a police
whistle.
“There he is!” said O’Shea.
I stared but could see nothing, when:
“Hello, there! What’s the game! Who was it that went over?” cried a
loud voice.
We turned, as a breathless constable came doubling up.
“A very dangerous criminal,” O’Shea replied, “and we were chasing him.
Quick, officer! on which side of the Bridge shall we find a boat?”
The manner of one accustomed to give orders is unmistakable, and:
“West, sir,” the constable answered promptly. “There’s a boat at the
pier.”
“Good,” said O’Shea, and started to run to the car. I followed.
As we jumped in, turned, and headed back to where Big Ben recorded the
fact that only seven minutes had elapsed since we had passed St.
James’s Palace, I saw the constable coming after us. But, leaving the
car by the foot of the clock tower, O’Shea raced across to the gate at
the head of those steps that lead down to the pier. It was locked; and
here I thought that the chase ended. But I had counted without O’Shea.
London, unlike New York, normally is a very empty city at two o’clock
in the morning; but now, as if conjured up by a magic talisman, a
group began to assemble. I looked to my right--from which the
constable was bearing down upon us. Even as he ran, his bearing was
ominous. It occurred to me that he regarded O’Shea and myself with
justifiable suspicion, and I foresaw complications.
It was odd, I reflected, that we stood almost in the shadow of
Scotland Yard--representing Law and Order, the forces of Empire
against those of disruption--but that the very powers that should have
backed us were likely now to aid and abet a dangerous conspirator and
assassin in escaping the meshes of justice.
The constable rather windily began to blow his whistle again.
A resolute-looking man, clean-shaven, and of a very hard-bitten
countenance, suddenly appeared at my elbow.
“What’s the trouble?” he inquired--and challenged me with keen eyes.
An official note in his voice was recognizable. O’Shea turned quickly.
The ever-increasing group drew more closely around us. A second
constable was making his way across from Parliament Square.
“The trouble is,” said O’Shea, “that this gate is locked, and I want
to get on to the pier.”
The man, whose face seemed to have been chiselled out of seasoned
teak, stared in a curious way. Then the breathless constable burst
upon us.
“Just a minute!” he began. “I want to know some more about this
business!”
He became uneasily aware of the presence of our weatherbeaten
acquaintance. He stopped in the act of laying his hand upon O’Shea’s
arm. O’Shea, watching the man who had accosted us, spoke, and:
“Sergeant Donoghue!” he said.
The expression on the grim face changed. The man so addressed drew
himself smartly to attention. It was automatic--second nature; but his
smile was good to see.
“Thank you, sir,” said he, “for remembering me.”
O’Shea held out his hand.
“Stand easy, Sergeant,” he replied. “I gather that you have left the
Army and rejoined the Police.”
Donoghue’s eyes were glistening as he grasped the proffered hand.
“I have that, sir,” he said, “and without loss of rank. I am a
detective-sergeant now.”
He glanced at the two constables--for the Parliament Square
reinforcement had come up.
“Carry on,” he directed, “there’s a man drowning. Leave this to me.”
“Donoghue,” said O’Shea, “do you hate the Reds?”
“I do, sir!”
“Well, one of them has just jumped off the Bridge. He is a powerful
swimmer. I want to get on to the pier and into a boat.”
“You are in luck, sir,” Donoghue returned enthusiastically, “for
to-night I happen to have the key.”
When, a minute later, we pushed out into the stream, watched by an
ever-increasing group of idlers, I thought how proud a man must feel
to see a light like that which had crossed Donoghue’s face as he had
recognized the officer he had served under. One such silent tribute is
worth more than a thousand cheers.
“Do you remember the night behind the farm, sir?” Donoghue asked.
And O’Shea in reply merely laid his hand upon his shoulder and gripped
hard for a moment. But this apparently simple question had a
far-reaching result, as I was presently to learn.
A fairly strong current was running, which, together with O’Shea’s
recollection of the swimmer’s position as seen from the Bridge,
sufficiently indicated where we should lay our course.
Certain official steps had automatically been taken, and we were not
alone in our quest. Apparently, even at two o’clock in the morning, it
is contrary to County Council regulations for anyone to bathe from
Westminster Bridge.
Looking up from that unfamiliar viewpoint at certain London landmarks
outlined against the clear sky, I wondered why Fate always seems to
put a brake upon our joy-rides.
Untrammelled by an intense anxiety on account of Nanette that obsessed
me to-night, this queer adventure must have been definitely enjoyable.
But, like so many human experiences, it was less exciting in the doing
than it is in the telling. For exploration of unfamiliar by-paths, as
I have already mentioned, there is no vehicle like a cosy armchair.
That Zara would head for the nearest landing place, it was fairly
reasonable to suppose. Therefore we pulled hard across in the
direction of the County Hall, eagerly watching the surface of the
water. Suddenly:
“There he goes!” cried Donoghue.
But, even as he spoke, I had seen the swimmer--close in, under the
right bank, heading powerfully for the stairs. We raced for him and
made land almost simultaneously.
In the act of landing Zara stumbled and slipped back into the river.
He came up by the stern of the boat. O’Shea’s hand shot out, grasped
him by a soddened collar-band, and hauled him in against the side.
Dimly, I could see O’Shea’s face as he looked down at the upcast eyes
of Zara. I think I knew what was in his mind, and in those upturned
eyes was recognition of it--and acceptance.
Still grasping the helpless man, O’Shea glanced quickly at Donoghue.
“Yes, Donoghue,” he said coldly, “I remember the night behind the
farm. You have reminded me that I once had decent instincts. Sergeant,
here’s your prisoner.”
CHAPTER XXXI.
HIATUS
I find that my memory holds no proper record of the hour that
elapsed between this time and our return to Nanette. There were
certain unavoidable formalities to be gone through; but within ten
minutes of the arrest of Zara, I was on the telephone to my rooms. My
man answered; and his replies, whilst reticent, were reassuring.
“Mr. Milton has been removed to hospital, sir. A very narrow escape, I
understand. It will be a long job, but he is in no danger. Yes, sir,
the lady is”--pause--“still here.”
“Why?” I asked uneasily, and glanced at O’Shea, who was standing at my
elbow throughout this conversation.
“They--didn’t like to move her, sir. I ’phoned to Sir Frank Leslie, in
Harley Street, sir, by request. He is here.”
“But where is--the lady?”
“Sorry, sir, but she is--in your room. Her mother is with her, sir.”
“Is she dangerously ill?”
“I don’t really know, sir. Both the medical men are with her now.”
As I replaced the receiver, I stared at O’Shea. He had moved away from
me and was pacing restlessly up and down the bleakly furnished room in
New Scotland Yard from which we had been speaking.
“You understand?” I said. “She is--rather badly hurt.”
“I understand.” He nodded grimly. “She saved my life, Decies, perhaps
at the price of her own. I can’t bear to think of it.”
He turned abruptly and stared out of the window at a vista of empty
Embankment below, lighted by many twinkling lamps.
“I have been a self-reliant man all my life, Decies; it may be
aggressively so. Perhaps this is poetic justice. Since the moment that
I set foot in Madeira, up to this very hour, she has done my work for
me, step by step. You admit it, Decies? You admit it?”
“I do,” said I. “It’s true, but no discredit to you.”
He shook his head and resumed the restless pacing. I saw him groping
for his monocle, which he had left at his rooms prior to setting out
for the raid on the S Group, and I saw him snap his fingers irritably
as he realized how enslaved he was to this habit.
“I have placed independence above every other virtue in man,” he went
on. “I have fought for it and suffered for it. I suppose she has been
sent to teach me that independence and loneliness are inseparable. Do
you know,” he turned and looked fully into my eyes, with an expression
almost of humility, “I don’t think I could bear that lonely path any
longer, Decies. And if--” he paused and squared his jaw for a
moment--“and if I have to follow it, there won’t be very much left.”
“Shut up!” I said. “You are talking nonsense. If you elect to be
lonely in future, the choice is yours.”
“Unless…” he smiled wryly.
“Don’t think of that!” I replied. “She is young and full of stamina.
Besides, she wants to live.”
“And I want her to live,” he added softly. “Yet, even now, I can’t
believe it--and I can’t quite condone it.”
“Condone what?” I demanded.
“The acceptance, by a man of my age, world-worn, a little
disappointed, more than a little cynical, of such a sacrifice, from a
girl with all the world to choose from. I can find no justification.”
“I see,” I murmured. “And can you find any for leaving her, now that
you know? Because you can’t shut your eyes to the fact that this is
not a schoolgirl’s infatuation, but the real thing. Can you condone
that?”
My voice was not quite steady.
“She was ready to die for you, O’Shea,” I said. “It would break her
heart to lose you. Damn it!” I pulled out my cigarette case, “I am
talking like your sentimental aunt.”
O’Shea smiled, this time more happily, and grasped my shoulder in
characteristic fashion.
“I believe we are both behaving rather idiotically,” he admitted.
“Let’s hope for the best.”
“I don’t believe you would recognize it if it came to you,” I
returned.
He shrugged his shoulders and we went up to a room on the floor above,
where some sort of superior official was waiting. Throughout the
interview that followed O’Shea became again the steely-eyed,
square-jawed soldier whom I knew so well; the traditional O’Shea,
whose name had been a tonic to many a man during those black days when
the shadow of Prussia lay over Europe.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE HEART OF NANETTE
I seemed to detect an ominous air of hush as I opened the door for
O’Shea and myself to go up to my apartments. Nanette’s mother met us.
I could scarcely bear to look at her. Almost immediately, she fixed
her eyes upon O’Shea.
“Major O’Shea,” she began bravely, “I have known for a long time how
Nanette felt about you.…”
“And I suppose you have reproached me,” said he.
“I have not,” she returned. “I have had many opportunities of
watching, and I know that your behaviour has been admirable, if…” she
hesitated.
“Yes?” O’Shea urged gently.
“If she has really meant anything to you. Be frank with me, Major
O’Shea. Has she?”
“She has,” he replied gravely. “I didn’t know, but I know now.”
“It is frightfully hard to say,” she went on, “but…” she turned to me
impulsively. “Can you help me, Mr. Decies?”
“I think I can,” said I. “There is no reason why my friend, Major
O’Shea, should not marry Nanette, unless there is any on your side.
Personally, he thinks he is too old for her!” This last remark I added
in what was meant to be a facetious manner, for the situation was
difficult to cope with. “But please tell us--how is she?”
“She will recover,” was the reply, “thanks to the speedy attention
that she received. Failing this, it might have been--otherwise. I am
afraid she cannot be moved for some time, Mr. Decies. It will be a
dreadful inconvenience for you.…”
“And a great honour,” I added. “Is it possible to see her?”
“I don’t know if it is advisable. But she is asking to see”--glancing
at O’Shea--“someone.”
O’Shea bit his lip--the nearest approach to a display of emotion that
I had ever observed in him--and turned quickly aside.
Then followed a period of waiting. Nanette’s girl friend came down,
having been relieved by a professional nurse. She smiled at O’Shea,
and blushed furiously; an unusual accomplishment in a girl of her type
and age. But the smile and the blush told me more of the state of
Nanette’s heart than a long dissertation could have revealed.
The young medical officer appeared at last, and his expression was
reassuring.
“Can we go up?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied; “I have Sir Frank’s permission to admit you for
three minutes, but no more than three minutes.”
He stared significantly at O’Shea.
In a queerly furtive fashion I began to mount the stairs of my own
house, treading softly as upon holy ground and going with bated
breath. O’Shea moved equally silently. I cannot say what his feelings
were at this moment, for I did not even look at him. But when we came
to the door of the sick room that had been my bedroom, it was opened
by a white-capped nurse, and we entered, catlike as burglars.
Nanette lay propped up in my bed, with closed eyes. She was pale, but,
in that hour, more adorable than ever. Her mother sat over by an open
window, watching, and Sir Frank Leslie stood beside the bed. We crept
forward, abashed as detected criminals. But Nanette did not stir,
until:
“Someone has come to say good-night to you, dear,” said her mother.
Then the drooping lids quivered, and she raised her blue eyes. I
cannot say if she saw O’Shea, or merely pretended that she did not see
him; but admittedly he was standing behind me. She laid her hand in
mine, and:
“Thank you, Mr. Decies,” she murmured, in a pathetically weak voice.
“I am going to be a frightful nuisance to you. In future, I shall try
to arrange to be shot in my own bedroom.”
She closed her eyes again, wearily, and dropped her hand upon the
coverlet. Sir Frank beckoned to me to step aside. I did so.
O’Shea drew nearer.
“I have come to thank you, Nanette,” he said.
He sat on the chair beside her, bending forward. Slowly, she turned
her head, raised weary lids again, and looked at him. She stayed so
for what seemed a very long time; just looking--looking--and
questioning. He stooped nearer and nearer, until suddenly, but very
weakly, a white arm crept around his neck and little trembling fingers
were plunged into his hair.
Nanette drew his head down upon the pillow beside her, sighed, and
closed her eyes again happily.
I turned away, staring at her mother. Then I caught Sir Frank’s
glance. He began to tiptoe toward the door, nodded significantly to
the nurse--and shepherded us out of the sick room!
The last to leave, I looked back, guiltily, for one moment. Nanette
was fast asleep, for they had given her an opiate. And she lay with
her head nestling upon O’Shea’s shoulder.
I shall always remember her smile.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. lounge-chair/lounge chair,
shore-signal/shore signal, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Abandon the use of drop-caps.
Punctuation: fix a few quotation mark pairings/nestings.
[Chapter IV]
Change (“Please, _mumsy_,” she pleaded--“until I have) to _Mumsy_.
[Chapter XXIV]
“He is a member of a very _dangerout_ organization” to _dangerous_.
[Chapter XXVIII]
“There was no one on the stairs, and no one. in the long, glazed”
delete the period.
[End of text]
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