21 Greatest Spy Thrillers in One Premium Edition (Mystery & Espionage Series). E. Phillips Oppenheim
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a flash the relaxation passed from Fawley’s expression. His tone was unchanged but he had relapsed into the stony-faced, polite, but casual guest, performing his social duties.
“Our dear old friend,” he observed, “is probably having an unfortunate love affair. He is the only one of our diplomats who has achieved the blue ribbon of the profession and remained a lover of women. They really ought not to have given him Rome. It was trying him too high.”
“Yet not long ago,” she reminded him, “you were pursuing your vocation there.”
“Ah, but then I am not a lover of women,” he declared.
“I wonder whether it matters,” she went on. “I mean, I wonder whether, outside the pages of the novelist, ambassadors ever do give away startling secrets to the Delilahs of my sex, and whether,” she added, with a flash of her beautiful eyes, “they ever win successes with a whisper which should cost them a lifetime’s devotion.”
With a murmured request for permission, he followed her example and lit a cigarette.
“One would like to believe in that sort of thing,” he reflected, “but I do not think there is much of it nowadays. Whispers are too easily traced back and if you once drop out of a profession, it is terribly difficult to reëstablish yourself. We Americans, as you must have found out for yourself, are an intensely practical people. We would not consider any woman in the world worth the loss of our career.”
She leaned back in her corner of the divan and laughed melodiously.
“What gallantry!”
There was a certain return of good humour in his kindly smile.
“Let us be thankful at any rate,” he said, “that our relations are such that we do not need to borrow the one from the other.”
Her fingers played nervously with her vanity case.
“That may not last,” she murmured, almost under her breath. “I did not follow you here for nothing.”
He listened to the music.
“Rather a good tune?” he suggested.
She shook her head.
“Neither did I follow you here to dance with you.”
He sighed regretfully.
“The worst of even the byways of my profession,” he lamented, “is that duty so often interferes with pleasure. The Chief’s wife who, as I dare say you know, is my cousin, has given me a special list here and I have to take the wife of the French Naval Attaché in to supper.”
“I shall not keep you,” she promised. “I should probably have sent you away before now if I had not felt reluctant to say what I came to say. Sit down for one moment and leave me when you please. It is necessary.”
“Necessary?” he repeated.
She nodded. She was less at her ease than he had ever seen her. Her exquisite fingers were playing nervously with a jewel which hung from her neck.
“I think I told you once that I saw quite a good deal of your young brother in Rome during the hunting season.”
“Micky?”
“Yes. The one in the Embassy. Third secretary, is he not?”
Fawley nodded.
“Well, what about him?”
“He is not quite so discreet as you are.”
A queer silence. The sound of the music seemed to have faded away. When he spoke, his voice was lower than ever but there was an almost active belligerency in his tone.
“Just what do you mean?” he demanded.
“You are going to hate me, so get ready for it.”
“For the first time in my life,” he muttered, “I am inclined to wish that you were a man.”
She was hardening a little. The first step was taken, at any rate.
“Well, I am not, you see, and you can do nothing about it. Here is a scrappy note from your brother which I received a short time ago. It is written, as you see, on the Embassy note paper.”
She handed him an envelope. He drew out its contents deliberately and read the half sheet of paper.
Dear Princess,
I rather fancy that I am crazy but here you are. I send you copies of the last three code cables from Washington to the Chief. I have no access to the code and I cannot see what use they can be to you without it, but I have kept my word.
Don’t forget our dance to-morrow night.
Micky.
Fawley folded up the note and returned it.
“The copies of the various cables,” she remarked, “were enclosed. Rather ingenuous of the boy, was it not, to imagine that any one who interested themselves at all in the undercurrents of diplomacy had not the means of decoding despatches? They were all three very unimportant, though. They did not tell me what I wished to know.”
There was a tired look in his eyes but otherwise he remained impassive.
“Yes,” he agreed, “it was ingenuous. It just shows that it is not quite fair to bring these lads fresh from college into a world where they meet women like you. Go on, please.”
“The cables,” she continued, “and your brother’s note, if you wish for it, are at your disposal, in return for accurate knowledge of just one thing.”
“What is it you wish to know?” he asked.
“I wish to know why you came here to London instead of taking the information you collected in Germany straight to Rome.”
“Anything else?”
“Whether Washington and London are likely to come to any agreement.”
“Upon what?”
“Some great event which even the giants fear to whisper about.”
“I have seldom,” he declared, rising to his feet and beckoning to a young man who was standing upon the threshold of the anteroom, looking in, “spent an hour in which the elements of humour and pleasure were so admirably blended. Dickson, young fellow, you are in luck,” he went on, addressing the friend to whom he had signalled. “I am permitted to present you to the Princess di Vasena. Put your best foot foremost, and if you can dance as well as you used to, heaven is about to open before you. Princess—to our next meeting.”
He bowed unusually low and strolled away. She looked after him thoughtfully as she made room for the newcomer by her side.
“You were wondering?” the latter asked.
“When that meeting will be, for one thing. Major Fawley is always so mysterious. Shall we dance?”
CHAPTER XX
Fawley, during the course of his wanderings about the world, had years ago decided upon London as his headquarters and occupied in his hours of leisure a very delightful apartment in the Albany. At ten o’clock on the evening following the ball at Dorrington House a freckled young man, still in flying clothes, was ushered into his room by the family servant whom he had brought with him from New York and established as caretaker.
“Mister Michael, sir,” the latter announced. “Shall I serve dinner now?”
“Cocktails first,” Fawley ordered, “then dinner as soon as you like. You won’t need to change, Micky. Just get out of those ghoulish-looking clothes, have your bath and put on a dressing gown or