The two men who were supping together in the grillroom at the Cafe Milan were talking with a seriousness which seemed a little out of keeping with the rose-shaded lamps and the swaying music of the band from the distant restaurant. Their conversation had started some hours before in the club smoking-room and had continued intermittently throughout the evening. It had received a further stimulus when Richard Hamel, who had bought an Evening Standard on their way from the theatre a few minutes ago, came across a certain paragraph in it which he read aloud.
“Hanged if I understand things over here, nowadays, Reggie!” he declared, laying the paper down. “Here’s another Englishman imprisoned in Germany—this time at a place no one ever heard of before. I won’t try to pronounce it. What does it all mean? It’s all very well to shrug your shoulders, but when there are eighteen arrests within one week on a charge of espionage, there must be something up.”
For the first time Reginald Kinsley seemed inclined to discuss the subject seriously. He drew the paper towards him and read the little paragraph, word by word. Then he gave some further order to an attentive maitre d’hotel and glanced around to be sure that they were not overheard.
“Look here, Dick, old chap,” he said, “you are just back from abroad and you are not quite in the hang of things yet. Let me ask you a plain question. What do you think of us all?”
“Think of you?” Hamel repeated, a little doubtfully. “Do you mean personally?”
“Take it any way you like,” Kinsley replied. “Look at me. Nine years ago we played cricket in the same eleven. I don’t look much like cricket now, do I?”
Hamel looked at his companion thoughtfully. For a man who was doubtless still young, Kinsley had certainly an aged appearance. The hair about his temples was grey; there were lines about his mouth and forehead. He had the air of one who lived in an atmosphere of anxiety.
“To me,” Hamel declared frankly, “you look worried. If I hadn’t heard so much of the success of your political career and all the rest of it, I should have thought that things were going badly with you.”
“They’ve gone well enough with me personally,” Kinsley admitted, “but I’m only one of many. Politics isn’t the game it was. The Foreign Office especially is ageing its men fast these few years. We’ve been going through hell, Hamel, and we are up against it now, hard up against it.”
The slight smile passed from the lips of Hamel’s sunburnt, good-natured face. He himself seemed to become infected with something of his companion’s anxiety.
“There’s nothing seriously wrong, is there, Reggie?” he asked.
“Dick,” said Kinsley, with a sigh, “I am afraid there is. It’s very seldom I talk as plainly as this to any one but you are just the person one can unburden oneself to a little; and to tell you the truth, it’s rather a relief. As you say, these eighteen arrests in one week do mean something. Half of the Englishmen who have been arrested are, to my certain knowledge, connected with our Secret Service, and they have been arrested, in many cases, where there are no fortifications worth speaking of within fifty miles, on one pretext or another. The fact of the matter is that things are going on in Germany, just at the present moment, the knowledge of which is of vital interest to us.”
“Then these arrests,” Hamel remarked, “are really bona fide?”
“Without a doubt,” his companion agreed. “I only wonder there have not been more. I am telling you what is a pretty open secret when I tell you that there is a conference due to be held this week at some place or another on the continent—I don’t know where, myself—which will have a very important bearing upon our future. We know just as much as that and not much more.”
“A conference between whom?” Hamel asked.
Kinsley dropped his voice almost to a whisper.
“We know,” he replied, “that a very great man from Russia, a greater still from France, a minister from Austria, a statesman from Italy, and an envoy from Japan, have been invited to meet a German minister whose name I will not mention, even to you. The subject of their proposed discussion has never been breathed. One can only suspect. When I tell you that no one from this country was invited to the conference, I think you will be able, broadly speaking, to divine its purpose. The clouds have been gathering for a good many years, and we have only buried our heads a little deeper in the sands. We have had our chances and wilfully chucked them away. National Service or three more army corps four years ago would have brought us an alliance which would have meant absolute safety for twenty-one years. You know what happened. We have lived through many rumours and escaped, more narrowly than most people realise, a great many dangers, but there is every indication this time that the end is really coming.”
“And what will the end be?” Hamel enquired eagerly.
Kinsley shrugged his shoulders and paused while their glasses were filled with wine.
“It will be in the nature of a diplomatic coup,” he said presently. “Of that much I feel sure. England will be forced into such a position that she will have no alternative left but to declare war. That, of course, will be the end of us. With our ridiculously small army and absolutely no sane scheme for home defence, we shall lose all that we have worth fighting for—our colonies—without being able to strike a blow. The thing is so ridiculously obvious. It has been admitted time after time by every sea lord and every commander-in-chief. We have listened to it, and that’s all. Our fleet is needed under present conditions to protect our own shores. There isn’t a single battleship which could be safely spared. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Egypt, India, must take care of themselves. I wonder when a nation of the world ever played fast and loose with great possessions as we have done!”
“This is a nice sort of thing to hear almost one’s first night in England,” Hamel remarked a little gloomily. “Tell me some more about this conference. Are you sure that your information is reliable?”
“Our information is miserably scanty,” Kinsley admitted. “Curiously enough, the man who must know most about the whole thing is an Englishman, one of the most curious mortals in the British Empire. A spy of his succeeded in learning more than any of our people, and without being arrested, too.”
“And who is this singular person?” Hamel asked.
“A man of whom you, I suppose, never heard,” Kinsley replied. “His name is Fentolin—Miles Fentolin—and he lives somewhere down in Norfolk. He is one of the strangest characters that ever lived, stranger than any effort of fiction I ever met with. He was in the Foreign Office once, and every one was predicting for him a brilliant career. Then there was an accident—let me see, it must have been some six or seven years ago—and he had to have both his legs amputated. No one knows exactly how the accident happened, and there was always a certain amount of mystery connected with it. Since then he has buried himself in the country. I don’t think, in fact, that he ever moves outside his place; but somehow or other he has managed to keep in touch with all the political movements of the day.”
“Fentolin,” Hamel repeated softly to himself. “Tell me, whereabouts does he live?”
“Quite a wonderful place in Norfolk, I believe, somewhere near the sea. I’ve forgotten the name, for the moment. He has had wireless telegraphy installed; he has a telegraph office in the house, half-a-dozen private wires, and they say that he spends an immense amount of money keeping in touch with foreign politics. His excuse is that he speculates largely, as I dare say he does; but just lately,” Kinsley went on more slowly, “he has been an object of anxiety to all of us. It was he who sent the first agent out to Germany, to try and discover at least where this conference was to be held. His man returned in safety, and he has one over there now who has not been arrested. We seem to have lost nearly all of ours.”
“Do you mean to say that this man Fentolin actually possesses information which the Government hasn’t as to the intentions of foreign Powers?” Hamel asked.
Kinsley nodded. There was a slight flush upon his pallid cheeks.
“He not only has it, but he doesn’t mean to part with it. A few hundred years ago, when the rulers of this country were men with blood in their veins, he’d have been given just one chance to tell all he knew, and hung as a traitor if he hesitated. We don’t do that sort of thing nowadays. We rather go in for preserving traitors. We permit them even in our own House of Commons. However, I don’t want to depress you and play the alarmist so soon after your return to London. I dare say the old country’ll muddle along through our time.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Hamel begged. “There’s no other subject of conversation could interest me half as much. Have you formed any idea yourself as to the nature of this conference?”
“We all have an idea,” Kinsley replied grimly; “India for Russia; a large slice of China for Japan, with probably Australia thrown in; Alsace-Lorraine for France’s neutrality. There’s bribery for you. What’s to become of poor England then? Our friends are only human, after all, and it’s merely a question of handing over to them sufficient spoil. They must consider themselves first: that’s the first duty of their politicians towards their country.”
“You mean to say,” Hamel asked, “that you seriously believe that a conference is on the point of being held at which France and Russia are to be invited to consider suggestions like this?”
“I am afraid there’s no doubt about it,” Kinsley declared. “Their ambassadors in London profess to know nothing. That, of course, is their reasonable attitude, but there’s no doubt whatever that the conference has been planned. I should say that to-night we are nearer war, if we can summon enough spirit to fight, than we have been since Fashoda.”
“Queer if I have returned just in time for the scrap,” Hamel remarked thoughtfully. “I was in the Militia once, so I expect I can get a job, if there’s any fighting.”
“I can get you a better job than fighting—one you can start on to-morrow, too,” Kinsley announced abruptly, “that is if you really want to help?”
“Of course I do,” Hamel insisted. “I’m on for anything.”
“You say that you are entirely your own master for the next six months?”
“Or as much longer as I like,” Hamel assented. “No plans at all, except that I might drift round to the Norfolk coast and look up some of the places where the governor used to paint. There’s a queer little house—St. David’s Tower, I believe they call it—which really belongs to me. It was given to my father, or rather he bought it, from a man who I think must have been some relative of your friend. I feel sure the name was Fentolin.”
Reginald Kinsley set down his wine-glass.
“Is your St. David’s Tower anywhere near a place called Salthouse?” he asked reflectively.
“That’s the name of the village,” Hamel admitted. “My father used to spend quite a lot of time in those parts, and painted at least a dozen pictures down there.”
“This is a coincidence,” Reginald Kinsley declared, lighting a cigarette. “I think, if I were you, Dick, I’d go down and claim my property.”
“Tired of me already?” Hamel asked, smiling.
Reginald Kinsley knocked the ash from his cigarette.
“It isn’t that. The fact is, that job I was speaking to you about was simply this. We want some one to go down to Salthouse—not exactly as a spy, you know, but some one who has his wits about him. We are all of us very curious about this man Fentolin. There are no end of rumours which I won’t mention to you, for they might only put you off the scent. But the man seems to be always intriguing. It wouldn’t matter so much if he were our friend, or if he were simply a financier, but to tell you the truth, we have cause to suspect him.”
“But he’s an Englishman, surely?” Hamel asked. “The Fentolin who was my father’s friend was just a very wealthy Norfolk squire—one of the best, from all I have heard.”
“Miles Fentolin is an Englishman,” Kinsley admitted. “It is true, too, that he comes of a very ancient Norfolk family. It doesn’t do, however, to build too much upon that. From all I can learn of him, he is a sort of Puck, a professional mischief-maker. I don’t suppose there’s anything an outsider could find out which would be really useful to us, but all the same, if I had the time, I should certainly go down to Norfolk myself.”
The conversation drifted away for a while. Mutual acquaintances entered, there were several introductions, and it was not until the two found themselves together in Kinsley’s rooms for a few minutes before parting that they were alone again. Hamel returned then once more to the subject.
“Reggie,” he said, “if you think it would be of the slightest use, I’ll go down to Salthouse to-morrow. I am rather keen on going there, anyway. I am absolutely fed up with life here already.”
“It’s just what I want you to do,” Kinsley said. “I am afraid Fentolin is a little too clever for you to get on the right side of him, but if you could only get an idea as to what his game is down there, it would be a great help. You see, the fellow can’t have gone into all this sort of thing blindfold. We’ve lost several very useful agents abroad and two from New York who’ve gone into his pay. There must be a method in it somewhere. If it really ends with his financial operations—why, all right. That’s very likely what it’ll come to, but we should like to know. The merest hint would be useful.”
“I’ll do my best,” Hamel promised. “In any case, it will be just the few days’ holiday I was looking forward to.”
Kinsley helped himself to whisky and soda and turned towards his friend.
“Here’s luck to you, Dick! Take care of yourself. All sorts of things may happen, you know. Old man Fentolin may take a fancy to you and tell you secrets that any statesman in Europe would be glad to hear. He may tell you why this conference is being held and what the result will be. You may be the first to hear of our coming fall. Well, here’s to you, anyway! Drop me a line, if you’ve anything to report.”
“Cheero!” Hamel answered, as he set down his empty tumbler. “Astonishing how keen I feel about this little adventure. I’m perfectly sick of the humdrum life I have been leading the last week, and you do sort of take one back to the Arabian Nights, you know, Reggie. I am never quite sure whether to take you seriously or not.”
Kinsley smiled as he held his friend’s hand for a moment.
“Dick,” he said earnestly, “if only you’d believe it, the adventures in the Arabian Nights were as nothing compared with the present-day drama of foreign politics. You see, we’ve learned to conceal things nowadays—to smooth them over, to play the part of ordinary citizens to the world while we tug at the underhand levers in our secret moments. Good night! Good luck!”
Richard Hamel, although he certainly had not the appearance of a person afflicted with nerves, gave a slight start. For the last half-hour, during which time the train had made no stop, he had been alone in his compartment. Yet, to his surprise, he was suddenly aware that the seat opposite to him had been noiselessly taken by a girl whose eyes, also, were fixed with curious intentness upon the broad expanse of marshland and sands across which the train was slowly making its way. Hamel had spent a great many years abroad, and his first impulse was to speak with the unexpected stranger. He forgot for a moment that he was in England, travelling in a first-class carriage, and pointed with his left hand towards the sea.
“Queer country this, isn’t it?” he remarked pleasantly. “Do you know, I never heard you come in. It gave me quite a start when I found that I had a fellow-passenger.”
She looked at him with a certain amount of still surprise, a look which he returned just as steadfastly, because even in those few seconds he was conscious of that strange selective interest, certainly unaccounted for by his own impressions of her appearance. She seemed to him, at that first glance, very far indeed from being good-looking, according to any of the standards by which he had measured good looks. She was thin, too thin for his taste, and she carried herself with an aloofness to which he was unaccustomed. Her cheeks were quite pale, her hair of a soft shade of brown, her eyes grey and sad. She gave him altogether an impression of colourlessness, and he had been living in a land where colour and vitality meant much. Her speech, too, in its very restraint, fell strangely upon his ears.
“I have been travelling in an uncomfortable compartment,” she observed. “I happened to notice, when passing along the corridor, that yours was empty. In any case, I am getting out at the next station.”
“So am I,” he replied, still cheerfully. “I suppose the next station is St. David’s?”
She made no answer, but so far as her expression counted for anything at all, she was a little surprised. Her eyes considered him for a moment. Hamel was tall, well over six feet, powerfully made, with good features, clear eyes, and complexion unusually sunburnt. He wore a flannel collar of unfamiliar shape, and his clothes, although they were neat enough, were of a pattern and cut obviously designed to afford the maximum of ease and comfort with the minimum regard to appearance. He wore, too, very thick boots, and his hands gave one the impression that they were seldom gloved. His voice was pleasant, and he had the easy self-confidence of a person sure of himself in the world. She put him down as a colonial—perhaps an American—but his rank in life mystified her.
“This seems the queerest stretch of country,” he went on; “long spits of sand jutting right out into the sea, dikes and creeks—miles and miles of them. Now, I wonder, is it low tide or high? Low, I should think, because of the sea-shine on the sand there.”
She glanced out of the window.
“The tide,” she told him, “is almost at its lowest.”
“You live in this neighbourhood, perhaps?” he enquired.
“I do,” she assented.
“Sort of country one might get very fond of,” he ventured.
She glanced at him from the depths of her grey eyes.
“Do you think so?” she rejoined coldly. “For my part, I hate it.”
He was surprised at the unexpected emphasis of her tone—the first time, indeed, that she had shown any signs of interest in the conversation.
“Kind of dull I suppose you find it,” he remarked pensively, looking out across the waste of lavender-grown marshes, sand hummocks piled with seaweed, and a far distant line of pebbled shore. “And yet, I don’t know. I have lived by the sea a good deal, and however monotonous it may seem at first, there’s always plenty of change, really. Tide and wind do such wonderful work.”
She, too, was looking out now towards the sea.
“Oh, it isn’t exactly that,” she said quietly. “I am quite willing to admit what all the tourists and chance visitors call the fascination of these places. I happen to dislike them, that is all. Perhaps it is because I live here, because I see them day by day; perhaps because the sight of them and the thought of them have become woven into my life.”
She was talking half to herself. For a moment, even the knowledge of his presence had escaped her. Hamel, however, did not realise that fact. He welcomed her confidence as a sign of relaxation from the frigidity of her earlier demeanour.
“That seems hard,” he observed sympathetically. “It seems odd to hear you talk like that, too. Your life, surely, ought to be pleasant enough.”
She looked away from the sea into his face. Although the genuine interest which she saw there and the kindly expression of his eyes disarmed annoyance, she still stiffened slightly.
“Why ought it?”
The question was a little bewildering.
“Why, because you are young and a girl,” he replied. “It’s natural to be cheerful, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” she answered listlessly. “I cannot tell. I have not had much experience.”
“How old are you?” he asked bluntly.
This time it certainly seemed as though her reply would contain some rebuke for his curiosity. She glanced once more into his face, however, and the instinctive desire to administer that well-deserved snub passed away. He was so obviously interested, his question was asked so naturally, that its spice of impertinence was as though it had not existed.
“I am twenty-one,” she told him.
“And how long have you lived here?”
“Since I left boarding-school, four years ago.”
“Anywhere near where I am going to bury myself for a time, I wonder?” he went on.
“That depends,” she replied. “Our only neighbours are the Lorneybrookes of Market Burnham. Are you going there?”
He shook his head.
“I’ve got a little shanty of my own,” he explained, “quite close to St. David’s Station. I’ve never even seen it yet.”
She vouchsafed some slight show of curiosity.
“Where is this shanty, as you call it?” she asked him.
“I really haven’t the faintest idea,” he replied. “I am looking for it now. All I can tell you is that it stands just out of reach of the full tides, on a piece of rock, dead on the beach and about a mile from the station. It was built originally for a coastguard station and meant to hold a lifeboat, but they found they could never launch the lifeboat when they had it, so the man to whom all the foreshore and most of the land around here belongs—a Mr. Fentolin, I believe—sold it to my father. I expect the place has tumbled to pieces by this time, but I thought I’d have a look at it.”
She was gazing at him steadfastly now, with parted lips.
“What is your name?” she demanded.
“Richard Hamel.”
“Hamel.”
She repeated it lingeringly. It seemed quite unfamiliar.
“Was your father a great friend of Mr. Fentolin’s, then?” she asked.
“I believe so, in a sort of way,” he answered. “My father was Hamel the artist, you know. They made him an R.A. some time before he died. He used to come out here and live in a tent. Then Mr. Fentolin let him use this place and finally sold it to him. My father used often to speak to me about it before he died.”
“Tell me,” she enquired, “I do not know much about these matters, but have you any papers to prove that it was sold to your father and that you have the right to occupy it now when you choose?”
He smiled.
“Of course I have,” he assured her. “As a matter of fact, as none of us have been here for so long, I thought I’d better bring the title-deed, or whatever they call it, along with me. It’s with the rest of my traps at Norwich. Oh, the place belongs to me, right enough!” he went on, smiling. “Don’t tell me that any one’s pulled it down, or that it’s disappeared from the face of the earth?”
“No,” she said, “it still remains there. When we are round the next curve, I think I can show it to you. But every one has forgotten, I think, that it doesn’t belong to Mr. Fentolin still. He uses it himself very often.”
“What for?”
She looked at her questioner quite steadfastly, quite quietly, speechlessly. A curious uneasiness crept into his thoughts. There were mysterious things in her face. He knew from that moment that she, too, directly or indirectly, was concerned with those strange happenings at which Kinsley had hinted. He knew that there were things which she was keeping from him now.
“Mr. Fentolin uses one of the rooms as a studio. He likes to paint there and be near the sea,” she explained. “But for the rest, I do not know. I never go near the place.”
“I am afraid,” he remarked, after a few moments of silence, “that I shall be a little unpopular with Mr. Fentolin. Perhaps I ought to have written first, but then, of course, I had no idea that any one was making use of the place.”
“I do not understand,” she said, “how you can possibly expect to come down like this and live there, without any preparation.”
“Why not?”
“You haven’t any servants nor any furniture nor things to cook with.”
He laughed.
“Oh! I am an old campaigner,” he assured her. “I meant to pick up a few oddments in the village. I don’t suppose I shall stay very long, anyhow, but I thought I’d like to have a look at the place. By-the-by, what sort of a man is Mr. Fentolin?”
Again there was that curious expression in her eyes, an expression almost of secret terror, this time not wholly concealed. He could have sworn that her hands were cold.
“He met with an accident many years ago,” she said slowly. “Both his legs were amputated. He spends his life in a little carriage which he wheels about himself.”
“Poor fellow!” Hamel exclaimed, with a strong man’s ready sympathy for suffering. “That is just as much as I have heard about him. Is he a decent sort of fellow in other ways? I suppose, anyhow, if he has really taken a fancy to my little shanty, I shall have to give it up.”
Then, as it seemed to him, for the first time real life leaped into her face. She leaned towards him. Her tone was half commanding, half imploring, her manner entirely confidential.
“Don’t!” she begged. “It is yours. Claim it. Live in it. Do anything you like with it, but take it away from Mr. Fentolin!”
Hamel was speechless. He sat a little forward, a hand on either knee, his mouth ungracefully open, an expression of blank and utter bewilderment in his face. For the first time he began to have vague doubts concerning this young lady. Everything about her had been so strange: her quiet entrance into the carriage, her unusual manner of talking, and finally this last passionate, inexplicable appeal.
“I am afraid,” he said at last, “I don’t quite understand. You say the poor fellow has taken a fancy to the place and likes being there. Well, it isn’t much of a catch for me, anyway. I’m rather a wanderer, and I dare say I shan’t be back in these parts again for years. Why shouldn’t I let him have it if he wants it? It’s no loss to me. I’m not a painter, you know, like my father.”
She seemed on the point of making a further appeal. Her lips, even, were parted, her head a little thrown back. And then she stopped. She said nothing. The silence lasted so long that he became almost embarrassed.
“You will forgive me if I am a little dense, won’t you?” he begged. “To tell you the truth,” he went on, smiling, “I’ve got a sort of feeling that I’d like to do anything you ask me. Now won’t you just explain a little more clearly what you mean, and I’ll blow up the old place sky high, if it’s any pleasure to you.”
She seemed suddenly to have reverted to her former self—the cold and colourless young woman who had first taken the seat opposite to his.
“Mine was a very foolish request,” she admitted quietly. “I am sorry that I ever made it. It was just an impulse, because the little building we were speaking of has been connected with one or two very disagreeable episodes. Nevertheless, it was foolish of me. How long did you think of staying there—that is,” she added, with a faint smile, “providing that you find it possible to prove your claim and take up possession?”
“Oh, just for a week or so,” he answered lightly, “and as to regaining possession of it,” he went on, a slightly pugnacious instinct stirring him, “I don’t imagine that there’ll be any difficulty about that.”
“Really!” she murmured.
“Not that I want to make myself disagreeable,” he continued, “but the Tower is mine, right enough, even if I have let it remain unoccupied for some time.”
She let down the window—a task in which he hastened to assist her. A rush of salt, cold air swept into the compartment. He sniffed it eagerly.
“Wonderful!” he exclaimed.
She stretched out a long arm and pointed. Away in the distance, on the summit of a line of pebbled shore, standing, as it seemed, sheer over the sea, was a little black speck.
“That,” she said, “is the Tower.”
He changed his position and leaned out of the window.
“Well, it’s a queer little place,” he remarked. “It doesn’t look worth quarrelling over, does it?”
“And that,” she went on, directing his attention to the hill, “is Mr. Fentolin’s home, St. David’s Hall.”
For several moments he made no remark at all. There was something curiously impressive in that sudden sweep up from the sea-line; the strange, miniature mountain standing in the middle of the marshes, with its tree-crowned background; and the long, weather-beaten front of the house turned bravely to the sea.
“I never saw anything like it,” he declared. “Why, it’s barely a quarter of a mile from the sea, isn’t it?”
“A little more than that. It is a strangely situated abode, isn’t it?”
“Wonderful!” he agreed, with emphasis. “I must study the geological formation of that hill,” he continued, with interest. “Why, it looks almost like an island now.”
“That is because of the floods,” she told him. “Even at high tide the creeks never reach so far as the back there. All the water you see stretching away inland is flood water—the result of the storm, I suppose. This is where you get out,” she concluded, rising to her feet.
She turned away with the slightest nod. A maid was already awaiting her at the door of the compartment. Hamel was suddenly conscious of the fact that he disliked her going immensely.
“We shall, perhaps, meet again during the next few days,” he remarked.
She half turned her head. Her expression was scarcely encouraging.
“I hope,” she said, “that you will not be disappointed in your quarters.”
Hamel followed her slowly on to the platform, saw her escorted to a very handsome motor-car by an obsequious station-master, and watched the former disappear down the stretch of straight road which led to the hill. Then, with a stick in one hand, and the handbag which was his sole luggage in the other, he left the station and turned seaward.
Mr. Fentolin, surrounded by his satellites, was seated in his chair before the writing-table. There were present in the room most of the people important to him in his somewhat singular life. A few feet away, in characteristic attitude, stood Meekins. Doctor Sarson, with his hands behind him, was looking out of the window. At the further end of the table stood a confidential telegraph clerk, who was just departing with a little sheaf of messages. By his side, with a notebook in her hand, stood Mr. Fentolin’s private secretary—a white-haired woman, with a strangely transparent skin and light brown eyes, dressed in somber black, a woman who might have been of any age from thirty to fifty. Behind her was a middle-aged man whose position in the household no one was quite sure about—a clean-shaven man whose name was Ryan, and who might very well have been once an actor or a clergyman. In the background stood Henderson, the perfect butler.
“It is perhaps opportune,” Mr. Fentolin said quietly, “that you all whom I trust should be present here together. I wish you to understand one thing. You have, I believe, in my employ learned the gift of silence. It is to be exercised with regard to a certain visitor brought here by my nephew, a visitor whom I regret to say is now lying seriously ill.”
There was absolute silence. Doctor Sarson alone turned from the window as though about to speak, but met Mr. Fentolin’s eye and at once resumed his position.
“I rely upon you all,” Mr. Fentolin continued softly. “Henderson, you, perhaps, have the most difficult task, for you have the servants to control. Nevertheless, I rely upon you, also. If one word of this visitor’s presence here leaks out even so far as the village, out they go, every one of them. I will not have a servant in the place who does not respect my wishes. You can give any reason you like for my orders. It is a whim. I have whims, and I choose to pay for them. You are all better paid than any man breathing could pay you. In return I ask only for your implicit obedience.”
He stretched out his hand and took a cigarette from a curiously carved ivory box which stood by his side. He tapped it gently upon the table and looked up.
“I think, sir,” Henderson said respectfully, “that I can answer for the servants. Being mostly foreigners, they see little or nothing of the village people.”
No one else made any remark. It was strange to see how dominated they all were by that queer little fragment of humanity, whose head scarcely reached a foot above the table before which he sat. They departed silently, almost abjectly, dismissed with a single wave of the hand. Mr. Fentolin beckoned his secretary to remain. She came a little nearer.
“Sit down, Lucy,” he ordered.
She seated herself a few feet away from him. Mr. Fentolin watched her for several moments. He himself had his back to the light. The woman, on the other hand, was facing it. The windows were high, and the curtains were drawn back to their fullest extent. A cold stream of northern light fell upon her face. Mr. Fentolin gazed at her and nodded his head slightly.
“My dear Lucy,” he declared, “you are wonderful—a perfect cameo, a gem. To look at you now, with your delightful white hair and your flawless skin, one would never believe that you had ever spoken a single angry word, that you had ever felt the blood flow through your veins, or that your eyes had ever looked upon the gentle things of life.”
She looked at him, still without speech. The immobility of her face was indeed a marvellous thing. Mr. Fentolin’s expression darkened.
“Sometimes,” he murmured softly, “I think that if I had strong fingers—really strong fingers, you know, Lucy—I should want to take you by the throat and hold you tighter and tighter, until your breath came fast, and your eyes came out from their shadows.”
She turned over a few pages of her notebook. To all appearance she had not heard a word.
“To-day,” she announced, “is the fourth of April. Shall I send out the various checks to those men in Paris, New York, Frankfort, St. Petersburg, and Tokio?”
“You can send the checks,” he told her. “Be sure that you draw them, as usual, upon the Credit Lyonaise and in the name you know of. Say to Lebonaitre of Paris that you consider his last reports faulty. No mention was made of Monsieur C’s visit to the Russian Embassy, or of the supper party given to the Baron von Erlstein by a certain Russian gentleman. Warn him, if you please, that reports with such omissions are useless to me.”
She wrote a few words in her book.
“You made a note of that?”
She raised her head.
“I do not make mistakes,” she said.
His eyebrows were drawn together. This was his work, he told himself, this magnificent physical subjection. Yet his inability to stir her sometimes maddened him.
“You know who is in this house?” he asked. “You know the name of my unknown guest?”
“I know nothing,” she replied. “His presence does not interest me.”
“Supposing I desire you to know?” he persisted, leaning a little forward. “Supposing I tell you that it is your duty to know?”
“Then,” she said, “I should tell you that I believe him to be the special envoy from New York to The Hague, or whatever place on the Continent this coming conference is to be held at.”
“Right, woman!” Mr. Fentolin answered sharply. “Right! It is the special envoy. He has his mandate with him. I have them both—the man and his mandate. Can you guess what I am going to do with them?”
“It is not difficult,” she replied. “Your methods are scarcely original. His mandate to the flames, and his body to the sea!”
She raised her eyes as she spoke and looked over Mr. Fentolin’s shoulder, across the marshland to the grey stretch of ocean. Her eyes became fixed. It was not possible to say that they held any expression, and yet one felt that she saw beneath the grey waves, even to the rocks and caverns below.
“It does not terrify you, then,” he asked curiously, “to think that a man under this roof is about to die?”
“Why should it?” she retorted. “Death does not frighten me—my own or anybody else’s. Does it frighten you?”
His face was suddenly livid, his eyes full of fierce anger. His lips twitched. He struck the table before him.
“Beast of a woman!” he shouted. “You ghoul! How dare you! How dare you—”
He stopped short. He passed his hand across his forehead. All the time the woman remained unmoved.
“Do you know,” he muttered, his voice still shaking a little, “that I believe sometimes I am afraid of you? How would you like to see me there, eh, down at the bottom of that hungry sea? You watch sometimes so fixedly. You’d miss me, wouldn’t you? I am a good master, you know. I pay well. You’ve been with me a good many years. You were a different sort of woman when you first came.”
“Yes,” she admitted, “I was a different sort of woman.”
“You don’t remember those days, I suppose,” he went on, “the days when you had brown hair, when you used to carry roses about and sing to yourself while you beat your work out of that wretched typewriter?”
“No,” she answered, “I do not remember those days. They do not belong to me. It is some other woman you are thinking of.”
Their eyes met. Mr. Fentolin turned away first. He struck the bell at his elbow. She rose at once.
“Be off!” he ordered. “When you look at me like that, you send shivers through me! You’ll have to go; I can see you’ll have to go. I can’t keep you any longer. You are the only person on the face of the earth who dares to say things to me which make me think, the only person who doesn’t shrink at the sound of my voice. You’ll have to go. Send Sarson to me at once. You’ve upset me!”
She listened to his words in expressionless silence. When he had finished, carrying her book in her hand, she very quietly moved towards the door. He watched her, leaning a little forward in his chair, his lips parted, his eyes threatening. She walked with steady, even footsteps. She carried herself with almost machine-like erectness; her skirts were noiseless. She had the trick of turning the handle of the door in perfect silence. He heard her calm voice in the hall.
“Doctor Sarson is to go to Mr. Fentolin.”
Mr. Fentolin sat quite still, feeling his own pulse.
“That woman,” he muttered to himself, “that—woman—some day I shouldn’t be surprised if she really—”
He paused. The doctor had entered the room.
“I am upset, Sarson,” he declared. “Come and feel my pulse quickly. That woman has upset me.”
“Miss Price?”
“Miss Price, d—n it! Lucy—yes!”
“It seems unlike her,” the doctor remarked. “I have never heard her utter a useless syllable in my life.”
Mr. Fentolin held out his wrist.
“It’s what she doesn’t say,” he muttered.
The doctor produced his watch. In less than a minute he put it away.
“This is quite unnecessary,” he pronounced. “Your pulse is wonderful.”
“Not hurried? No signs of palpitation?”
“You have seven or eight footmen, all young men,” Doctor Sarson replied drily. “I will wager that there isn’t one of them has a pulse so vigorous as yours.”
Mr. Fentolin leaned a little back in his chair. An expression of satisfaction crept over his face.
“You reassure me, my dear Sarson. That is excellent. What of our patient?”
“There is no change.”
“I am afraid,” Mr. Fentolin sighed, “that we shall have trouble with him. These strong people always give trouble.”
“It will be just the same in the long run,” the doctor remarked, shrugging his shoulders.
Mr. Fentolin held up his finger.
“Listen! A motor-car, I believe?”
“It is Miss Fentolin who is just arriving,” the doctor announced. “I saw the car coming as I crossed the hall.”
Mr. Fentolin nodded gently.
“Indeed?” he replied. “Indeed? So my dear niece has returned. Open the door, friend Sarson. Open the door, if you please. She will be anxious to see me. We must summon her.”