21 Greatest Spy Thrillers in One Premium Edition (Mystery & Espionage Series). E. Phillips Oppenheim
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no longer wish to serve a company of assassins.”
The cocktails were served. Elida ordered supper and wine.
“You see,” she explained, “our host eats or drinks practically nothing. I am to entertain you till he comes. You are to be impressed. How shall I begin, I wonder?”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Princess—” he began.
“You may call me Elida,” she interrupted. “From you I prefer it. I shall call you Martin. In a place like this, we do not wish to advertise ourselves.”
“I am very happy to find you so gracious,” he assured her. “I am happy too to know that you did not share your cousin’s desire to send me to destruction.”
“No one in the world,” she said quietly, “has a stronger wish than I have, Martin, to keep you alive, to keep you well, to keep you near me if I can.”
“Do you speak for your new chief?” he enquired.
“You must please not be bitter,” she pleaded. “I speak for myself. That, I assure you, you should believe. If you wish to be serious, I will now speak to you for Heinrich Behrling. It was his wish that I should do so.”
“Why should he trouble about me?” Fawley asked, toying with the stem of his wineglass. “I am only an agent and a mercenary at that.”
“Do not fence,” she begged. “Remember that I know all about you. We can both guess why you are here. Berati is at last not absolutely certain that he is dealing with the right party. Very late in the day and against his will, he is finding wisdom—as I have. Our tinsel prince and his goose-stepping soldiers will never help Germany towards freedom. It is the passionate youth of Germany, the liberty-loving and country-loving youth in whose keeping the future rests.”
“This is very interesting,” Fawley remarked, with a faint smile. “Considering your antecedents, I find it almost incredible.”
“Must one ignore the welfare of one’s country because one happens to be born an aristocrat?” she demanded.
“Not if a Rienzi presents himself,” he retorted. “Are you sure, however, that Behrling really is your Rienzi?”
“If I were not,” she insisted, with a note of passion in her tone, “I should never have given my life and reputation and everything worth having to his cause, as I have done since the day of that catastrophe upon the yacht. Do you know, Martin, that I am one of a band—the latest recruit perhaps but one of the most earnest—a band of six thousand young women, all born in different walks of life. We have all the same idea. We work to make Heinrich Behrling the ruler of Germany. We are not all Germans. We do not wear uniform, we do not look for any reward. Our idea is to give everything we possess, whatever it may be—money, our gifts of persuasion, our lives if necessary, to win adherents to Behrling’s cause, to stop and rout the communists and the Monarchist Party. Another Hohenzollern mixed up with politics and the whole world would lose faith in Germany. The only way that she can escape from the yoke of France is by showing the world that she has espoused the broader and greater principles of life and government.”
Fawley accepted a cigarette.
“You are very interesting, Elida,” he said. “I wish that I knew more of this matter. I am afraid that I am a very dumb and ignorant person.”
“It has occurred to me once or twice this evening,” she rejoined drily, “that you wish to appear so.”
“Alas,” he sighed, “I can assure you that I am no actor.”
“Nor are you, I am afraid,” she whispered, leaning across the table, “quite so impressionable as I fancied you were that afternoon in the corridor of Berati’s palazzo.”
The grim lines at the corners of his mouth relaxed.
“Elida,” he replied, as he looked into her eyes, “all I can say is—give me the opportunity to prove myself.”
She was puzzled for a moment. Then she smiled.
“You are thinking of Krust and his little crowd of fairies,” she laughed. “Yet I am told that he finds them very useful. One of them you seemed to find—rather attractive—at Monte Carlo.”
He shrugged his shoulders. Perhaps she realised that her mention of the place was not altogether tactful. She changed the conversation.
“Why are you not working for your own country?” she asked curiously.
“Because my own country has a passion for imagining that even in these days of fast steamships and seaplanes, she can remain apart from Europe and European influence,” he answered, with a faintly regretful tremor in his tone. “We have abandoned all Secret Service methods. We have no Secret Service. I can tell you of six departments in which one might have served before the war. Not one of these exists to-day. In their place we have but one department and to belong to this it is only necessary that a man has never been out of his own country, can speak no language but his own and is devoid of any pretensions to intelligence! The work for its own sake is so fascinating that one finds it hard to abandon it altogether. That is why I offered my services to Italy.”
“And are you satisfied? The work interests you?”
He seemed a little doubtful.
“Lately,” he admitted, “there is too much talk and too little action. I cannot see that I make any definite progress.”
“That means that you weary yourself talking to me?” she asked, her hand resting for a moment on his and her soft eyes pleading with him.
“Not in the least,” he assured her. “In a few minutes, though, we shall have our friend Behrling here, and it will all begin again. I would so much sooner take you somewhere else, where Behrling is not likely to appear, and ask you a few questions which you would find quite easy to answer.”
A brilliant smile parted her lips.
“Now you talk more as I had hoped,” she confided. “Indeed, if you would let me, I would wish to be your companion all the time that you are here. All the devotion I can offer is at your command but I will be honest with you—there are still a few things I want to know.”
“Elida,” he said, “I do not believe that there is a single thing in the world I could tell you that you do not know already. For instance, heaps of people must have told you that you have the most beautiful hazel-brown eyes in the world.”
She patted his hand.
“If I were Nina or Greta,” she observed, “I should throw my arms around your neck. You would wish it—yes?”
They were very beautiful arms but he shook his head.
“It is absurd of me,” he confessed, “but I should be afraid that you were not sincere.”
“How very Anglo-Saxon,” she meditated. “What on earth has sincerity to do with it?”
“To the sentimentalist—” he began.
“My dear new friend Martin,” she interrupted, “do not let us spoil everything before we begin. We are neither of us sentimentalists. We are both just playing a game: fortunately it is a pleasant game. I am afraid that you mean to win. Never mind, there are pleasures—But do not speak about sentiment. That belongs to the world we leave behind us when we take our country into our hearts.”
“The wrong word, I suppose,” he admitted. “On the other hand, I do confess to being a trifle maudlin. If I had any secrets to give away, you would succeed where Behrling would fail.”
“But you have none?”
“Not a ghost of one,” he assured her.
Her face suddenly lost its softened charm. She was looking past him towards the door. He leaned forward and followed her gaze, then, though nothing audible escaped his lips, he whistled softly to