21 Greatest Spy Thrillers in One Premium Edition (Mystery & Espionage Series). E. Phillips Oppenheim
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the contrary,” Bellamy assured him, “they will not take the trouble to think at all. Their minds are perfectly made up as to what they are going to do. However, that’s finished. I have nothing more to say.”
Dorward gazed for a minute or two fixedly out of the window.
“Look here, Bellamy,” he said, turning abruptly round, “supposing I change my mind, supposing I open this precious document and let you read it over with me?”
Bellamy rose hastily to his feet.
“You must not think of it!” he exclaimed. “You would simply write my death-warrant. Don’t allude to that matter again. I have risked enough in coming in here to sit with you.”
“Then, for Heaven’s sake, don’t stop any longer!” Dorward said irritably. “You get on my nerves with all this foolish talk. In an hour’s time I am going to bolt my door and go to sleep. We’ll breakfast together in the morning, if you like.”
Bellamy said nothing. The steward had brought them the whiskies and sodas which Dorward had ordered. Bellamy raised his tumbler to his lips and set it down again.
“Forgive me,” he said, “I do not think that I am thirsty.”
Dorward drank his off at a gulp. Almost immediately he closed his eyes. Bellamy, with a little shrug of the shoulders, left him alone. As he passed along to his own coupe, he met Louise in the corridor.
“You have seen Von Behrling?” he whispered. She nodded.
“He is in that coupe, number 7, alone,” she said. “I invited him to come in with me but he seemed embarrassed. It is his companions who watch him all the time. He has promised to talk with me later.”
In the middle of the night, Louise opened her eyes to find Bellamy bending over her.
“Louise,” he whispered, “it is Von Behrling who will take possession of the packet. They have been discussing whether it will not be safer to go on to London instead of doubling back. See Von Behrling again. Do all you can to persuade him to come to London,—all you can, Louise, remember.”
“So!” she whispered. “I shall put on my dressing-gown and sit in the corridor. It is hot here.”
Bellamy glided out, closing the door softly behind him. The train was rushing on now through the blackness of an unusually dark night. For some time he sat in his own compartment, listening. The voices whose muttered conversation he had overheard were silent now, but once he fancied that he heard shuffling footsteps and a little cry. In his heart he knew well that before morning Dorward would have disappeared. The man within him was hard to subdue. He longed to make his way to Dorward’s side, to interfere in this terribly unequal struggle, yet he made no movement. Dorward was a man and a friend, but what was a life more or less? It was to a greater cause that he was pledged. Towards three o’clock he lay down on his bed and slept….
The train attendant brought him his coffee soon after daylight. The man’s hands were trembling.
“Where are we?” Bellamy asked sleepily.
“Near Munich, Monsieur,” the man answered. “Monsieur noticed, perhaps, that we stopped for some time in the night?”
Bellamy shook his head.
“I sleep soundly,” he said. “I heard nothing.”
“There has been an accident,” the man declared. “An American gentleman who got in at Vienna was drinking whiskey all night and became very drunk. In a tunnel he threw himself out upon the line.”
Bellamy shuddered a little. He had been prepared, but none the less it was an awful thing, this.
“You are sure that he is dead?” he asked.
The man was very sure indeed.
“There is a doctor from Vienna upon the train, sir,” he said. “He examined him at once, but death must have been instantaneous.”
Bellamy drew a long breath and commenced to put on his clothes. The next move was for him.
V. “VON BEHRLING HAS THE PACKET”
Bellamy stole along the half-lit corridors of the train until he came to the coupé which had been reserved for Mademoiselle Idiale. Assured that he was not watched, he softly turned the handle of the door and entered. Louise was sitting up in her dressing-gown, drinking her coffee. He held up his finger and she greeted him only with a nod.
“Forgive me, Louise,” he whispered, “I dared not knock, and I was obliged to see you at once.”
She smiled.
“It is of no consequence,” she said. “One is always prepared here. The porter, the ticket-man, and at the customs—they all enter. Is anything wrong?”
“It has happened,” he answered.
She shivered a little and her face became grave.
“Poor fellow!” she murmured.
“He simply sat still and asked for it,” Bellamy declared, still speaking in a cautious undertone. “He would not be warned. I could have saved him, if any one could, but he would not hear reason.”
“He was what you call pig-headed,” she remarked.
“He has paid the penalty,” Bellamy continued. “Now listen to me, Louise. I got into that small coupe next to Von Behrling’s, and I feel sure, from what I overheard, that they will go on to London, all three of them.”
“Who is there on the train?” she demanded.
“Baron Streuss, who is head of the Secret Police, Von Behrling and Adolf Kahn,” Bellamy answered. “Then there are four or five Secret Service men of the rank and file, but they are all traveling separately. Von Behrling has the packet. The others form a sort of cordon around him.”
“But why,” she asked, “does he go on to London? Why not return to Vienna?”
“For one thing,” Bellamy replied, with a grim smile, “they are afraid of me. Then you must remember that this affair of Dorward will be talked about. They do not want to seem in any way implicated. To return from any one of these stations down the line would create suspicion.”
She nodded.
“Well?”
“I am going to leave the train at the next stop,” he continued. “I find that I shall just catch the Northern Express to Berlin. From there I shall come on to London as quickly as I can. You know the address of my rooms?”
She nodded.
“15, Fitzroy Street.”
“When I get there, let me have a line waiting to tell me where I can see you. While I am on the train you will find Von Behrling almost inaccessible. Directly I have gone it will be different. Play with him carefully. He should not be difficult. To tell you the truth, I am rather surprised that he has been trusted upon a mission like this. He was in disgrace with the Chancellor a short while ago, and I know that he was hurt at not being allowed to attend the conference. The others will watch him closely, but they cannot overhear everything that passes between you two. Von Behrling is a poor man. You will know how to make him wish he were rich.”
Very slowly her eyebrows rose up. She looked at him doubtfully.
“It is a slender chance, David,” she remarked. “Von Behrling is a little wild, I know, and he pretends to be very much in love with me, but I do not think that he would sell his country. Then, too, see how he will be watched. I do not suppose that they will leave us alone for a moment.”
Bellamy took her hands in his, gripping them with almost unnatural force.
“Louise,”