“Of course, we're behaving shockingly, all three of us!” Philippa declared, as she sipped her champagne and leaned back in her seat.
“You mean by coming to a place like this?” Lessingham queried, looking around the crowded restaurant. “We are not, in that case, the only sinners.”
“I didn't mean the mere fact of being here,” Philippa explained, “but being here with you.”
“I forgot,” he said gloomily, “that I was such a black sheep.”
“Don't be silly,” she admonished. “You're nothing of the sort. But, of course, we are skating on rather thin ice. If I had Henry to consider in any way, if he had any sort of a career, perhaps I should be more careful. As it is, I think I feel a little reckless lately. Dreymarsh has got upon my nerves. The things that I thought most of in life seem to have crumbled away.”
“Ought I to be sorry?” he asked. “I am not.”
“But why are you so unsympathetic?”
“Because I am waiting by your side to rebuild,” he whispered.
A tall, bronzed young soldier with his arm in a sling, stopped before their table, and Helen, after a moment's protest and a glance at Philippa, moved away with him to the little space reserved for the dancers.
“What a chaperon I am!” Philippa sighed. “I scarcely know anything about the young man except his name and that he was in Dick's regiment.”
“I did not hear it,” Lessingham observed, “but I feel deeply grateful to him. It is so seldom that I have a chance to talk to you alone like this.”
“It seems incredible that we have talked so long,” Philippa said, glancing at the watch upon her wrist. “I really feel now that I know all about you—your school days, your college days, and your soldiering. You have been very frank, haven't you?”
“I have nothing to conceal—from you,” he replied. “If there is anything more you want to know—”
“There is nothing,” she interrupted uneasily.
“Perhaps you are wise,” he reflected, “and yet some day, you know, you will have to hear it all, over and over again.”
“I will not be made love to in a restaurant,” she declared firmly.
“You are so particular as to localities,” he complained. “You could not see your way clear, I suppose, to suggest what you would consider a suitable environment?”
Philippa looked at him for a moment very earnestly.
“Ah, don't let us play at things we neither of us feel!” she begged. “And there is some one there who wants to speak to you.”
Lessingham looked up into the face of the man who had paused before their table, as one might look into the face of unexpected death. He remained perfectly still, but the slight colour seemed slowly to be drawn from his cheeks. Yet the newcomer himself seemed in no way terrifying. He was tall and largely built, clean-shaven, and with the humourous mouth of an Irishman or an American. Neither was there anything threatening in his speech.
“Glad to run up against you, Lessingham,” he said, holding out his hand. “Gay crowd here tonight, isn't it?”
“Very,” Lessingham answered, speaking very much like a man in a dream. “Lady Cranston, will you permit me to introduce my friend—Mr. Hayter.”
Philippa was immediately gracious, and a few moments passed in trivial conversation. Then Mr. Hayter prepared to depart.
“I must be joining my friends,” he observed. “Look in and see me sometime, Lessingham—Number 72, Milan Court. You know what a nightbird I am. Perhaps you will call and have a final drink with me when you have finished here.”
“I shall be very glad,” Lessingham promised.
Mr. Hayter passed on, a man, apparently, of many acquaintances, to judge by his interrupted progress. Lady Cranston looked at her companion. She was puzzled.
“Is that a recent acquaintance,” she asked, “as he addressed you by the name of Lessingham?”
“Yes,” was the quiet reply.
“You don't wish to talk about him?”
“No!”
Helen and her partner returned, a few moments later, and the little party presently broke up. Lessingham drove the two women to their hotel in Dover Street.
“We've had a most delightful evening,” Philippa assured him, as they said good night. “You are coming round to see us in the morning, aren't you?”
“If I may,” Lessingham assented.
Helen found her way into Philippa's room, later on that night. She had nerved herself for a very thankless task.
“May I sit down for a few moments?” she asked, a little nervously. “Your fire is so much better than mine.”
Philippa glanced at her friend through the looking-glass before which she was brushing her hair, and made a little grimace. She felt a forewarning of what was coming.
“Of course, dear,” she replied. “Have you enjoyed your evening?”
“Very much, in a way,” was the somewhat hesitating reply. “Of course, nothing really counts until Dick comes back, but it is nice to talk with some one who knows him.”
“Agreeable conversation,” Philippa remarked didactically, “is one of the greatest pleasures in life.”
“You find Mr. Lessingham very interesting, don't you?” Helen asked.
Philippa finished arranging her hair to her satisfaction and drew up an easy-chair opposite her visitor's.
“So you want to talk with me about Mr. Lessingham, do you?”
“I suppose you know that he's in love with you?” Helen began.
“I hope he is a little, my dear,” was the smiling reply. “I'm sure I've tried my best.”
“Won't you talk seriously?” Helen pleaded.
“I don't altogether see the necessity,” Philippa protested.
“I do, and I'll tell you why,” Helen answered. “I don't think Mr. Lessingham is at all the type of man to which you are accustomed. I think that he is in deadly earnest about you. I think that he was in deadly earnest from the first. You don't really care for him, do you, dear?”
“Very much, and yet not, perhaps, quite in the way you are thinking of,” was the quiet reply.
“Then please send him away,” Helen begged.
“My dear, how can I?” Philippa objected. “He has done us an immense service, and he can't disobey his orders.”
“You don't want him to go away, then?”
Philippa was silent for several moments. “No,” she admitted, “I don't think that I do.”
“You don't care for Henry any more?”
“Just as much as ever,” was the somewhat bitter reply. “That's what I resent so much. I should like Henry to believe that he had killed every spark of love in me.”
Helen moved across and sat on the arm of her friend's chair. She felt that she was going to be very daring.
“Have you any idea at the back of your mind, dear,” she asked “of making use of Mr. Lessingham to punish Henry?”
Philippa moved a little uneasily.
“How hatefully downright you are!” she murmured. “I don't know.”
“Because,” Helen continued, “if you have any such idea in your mind, I think it is most unfair to Mr. Lessingham. You know perfectly well that anything else between you and him would be impossible.”
“And why?”
“Don't be ridiculous!” Helen exclaimed vigorously. “Mr. Lessingham may have all the most delightful qualities in the world, but he has attached himself to a country which no English man or woman will be able to think of without shuddering, for many years to come. You can't dream of cutting yourself adrift from your friends and your home and your country! It's too unnatural! I'm not even arguing with you, Philippa. You couldn't do it! I'm wholly concerned with Mr. Lessingham. I cannot forget what we owe him. I think it would be hatefully cruel of you to spoil his life.”
Philippa's flashes of seriousness were only momentary. She made a little grimace. She was once more her natural, irresponsible self.
“You underrate my charm, Helen,” she declared. “I really believe that I could make his life instead of spoiling it.”
“And you would pay the price?”
Philippa, slim and elflike in the firelight, rose from her chair. There was a momentary cruelty in her face.
“I sometimes think,” she said calmly, “that I would pay any price in the world to make Henry understand how I feel. There, now run along, dear. You're full of good intentions, and don't think it horrid of me, but nothing that you could say would make any difference.”
“You wouldn't do anything rash?” Helen pleaded.
“Well, if I run away with Mr. Lessingham, I certainly can't promise that I'll send cards out first. Whatever I do, impulse will probably decide.”
“Impulse!”
“Why not? I trust mine. Can't you?” Philippa added, with a little shrug of the shoulders.
“Sometimes,” Helen sighed, “they are such wild horses, you know. They lead one to such terrible places.”
“And sometimes,” Philippa replied, “they find their way into the heaven where our soberer thoughts could never take us. Good night, dear!”
Mr. William Hayter, in the solitude of his chambers at the Milan Court, was a very altered personage. He extended no welcoming salutation to his midnight visitor but simply motioned him to a chair.
“Well,” he began, “is your task finished that you are in London?”
“My task,” Lessingham replied, “might just as well never have been entered upon. The man you sent me to watch is nothing but an ordinary sport-loving Englishman.”
“Really! You have lived as his neighbour for nearly a month, and that is your impression of him?”
“It is,” Lessingham assented. “He has been away sea-fishing, half the time, but I have searched his house thoroughly.”
“Searched his papers, eh?”
“Every one I could find, and hated the job. There are a good many charts of the coast, but they are all for the use of the fishermen.”
“Wonderful!” Hayter scoffed. “My young friend, you may yet find distinction in some other walk of life. Our secret service, I fancy, will very soon be able to dispense with your energies.”
“And I with your secret service,” Lessingham agreed heartily. “I dare say there may be some branches of it in which existence is tolerable. That, however, does not apply to the task upon which I have been engaged.”
“You have been completely duped,” Hayter told him calmly, “and the information you have sent us is valueless. Sir Henry Cranston, instead of being the type of man whom you have described, is one of the greatest experts upon coast defense and mine-laying, in the English Admiralty.”
Lessingham laughed shortly.
“That,” he declared, “is perfectly absurd.”
“It is,” Hayter repeated, with emphasis, “the precise truth. Sir Henry Cranton's fishing excursions are myths. He is simply transferred from his fishing boat on to one of a little fleet of so-called mine sweepers, from which he conducts his operations. Nearly every one of the most important towns on the east coast are protected by minefields of his design.”
Lessingham was dumbfounded. His companion's manner was singularly convincing.
“But how could Sir Henry or any one else keep this a secret?” he protested. “Even his wife is scarcely on speaking terms with him because she believes him to be an idler, and the whole neighbourhood gossips over his slackness.”
“The whole neighbourhood is easily fooled,” Hayter retorted. “There are one or two who know, however.”
“There are one or two,” Lessingham observed grimly, “who are beginning to suspect me.”
“That is a pity,” Hayter admitted, “because it will be necessary for you to return to Dreymarsh at once.”
“Return to Dreymarsh at once? But Cranston is away. There is nothing for me to do there in his absence.”
“He will be back on Wednesday or Thursday night,” was the confident reply. “He will bring with him the plan of his latest defenses of a town on the east coast, which our cruiser squadron purpose to bombard. We must have that chart.”
Lessingham listened in mute distress.
“Could you possibly get me relieved?” he begged. “The fact is—”
“We could not, and we will not,” Hayter interrupted fiercely. “Unless you wish me to denounce you at home as a renegade and a coward, you will go through with the work which has been allotted to you. Your earlier mistakes will be forgiven if that chart is in my hands by Friday.”
“But how do you know that he will have it?” Lessingham protested. “Supposing you are right and he is really responsible for the minefields you speak of, I should think the last thing he would do would be to bring the chart back to Dreymarsh.”
“As a matter of fact, that is precisely what he will do,” Hayter assured his listener. “He is bringing it back for the inspection of one of the commissioners for the east coast defense, who is to meet him at his house. And I wish to warn you, too, Maderstrom, that you will have very little time. For some reason or other, Cranston is dissatisfied with the secrecy under which he has been compelled to work, and has applied to the Admiralty for recognition of his position. Immediately this is given, I gather that his house will be inaccessible to you.”
Lessingham sat, his arms folded, his eyes fixed upon the fire. His thoughts were in a turmoil, yet one thing was hatefully clear. Cranston was not the unworthy slacker he had believed him to be. Philippa's whole point of view might well be changed by this discovery—especially now that Cranston had made up his mind to assert himself for his wife's sake. There was an icy fear in his heart.
“You understand,” Hayter persisted coldly, “what it is you have to do?”
“Perfectly. I shall return by the afternoon train,” was the despairing reply.
“If you succeed,” Hayter continued, “I shall see that you get the usual acknowledgment, but I will, if you wish it, ask for your transfer to another branch of the service. I am not questioning your patriotism or your honour, Maderstrom, but you are not the man for this work.”
“You are right,” Lessingham said. “I am not.”
“It is not my affair,” Hayter proceeded, “to enquire too closely into the means used by our agents in carrying out our designs. That I find you in London in company with the wife of the man whom you are appointed to watch, may be a fact capable of the most complete and satisfactory explanation. I ask no questions. I only remind you that your country, even though it be only your adopted country, demands from you, as from all others in her service, unswerving loyalty, a loyalty uninfluenced by the claims of personal sentiment, duty, or honour. Have I said enough?”
“You have said as much as it is wise for you to say,” Lessingham replied, his voice trembling with suppressed passion.
“That is all, then,” the other concluded. “You know where to send or bring the chart when you have it? If you bring it yourself, it is possible that something which you may regard as a reward, will be offered to you.”
Lessingham rose a little wearily to his feet. His farewell to Hayter was cold and lifeless.
He left the hotel and started on his homeward way, struggling with a sense of intolerable depression. The streets through which he passed were sombre and unlit.
A Zeppelin warning, a few hours before, had driven the people to their homes. There was not a chink of light to be seen anywhere. An intense and gloomy stillness seemed to brood over the deserted thoroughfares. Nightbirds on their way home flitted by like shadows. Policemen lurked in the shadows of the houses. The few vehicles left crawled about with insufficient lights. Even the warning horns of the taxicab men sounded furtive and repressed. Lessingham, as he marched stolidly along, felt curiously in sympathy with his environment. Hayter's news brought him face to face with that inner problem which had so suddenly become the dominant factor in his life. For the first time he knew what love was. He felt the wonder of it, the far-reaching possibilities, the strange idealism called so unexpectedly into being. He recognized the vagaries of Philippa's disposition, and yet, during the last few days, he had convinced himself that she was beginning to care. Her strained relations with her husband had been, without a doubt, her first incentive towards the acceptance of his proffered devotion. Now he told himself with eager hopefulness that some portion of it, however minute, must be for his own sake. The relations between husband and wife, he reminded himself, must, at any rate, have been strained during the last few months, or Cranston would never have been able to keep his secret. In his gloomy passage through this land of ill omens, however, he shivered a little as he thought of the other possibility—tortured himself with imagining what might happen during her revulsion of feeling, if Philippa discovered the truth. A sense of something greater than he had yet known in life seemed to lift him into some lofty state of aloofness, from which he could look down and despise himself, the poor, tired plodder wearing the heavy chains of duty. There was a life so much more wonderful, just the other side of the clouds, a very short distance away, a life of alluring and passionate happiness. Should he ever find the courage, he wondered, to escape from the treadmill and go in search of it? Duty, for the last two years, had taken him by the hand and led him along a pathway of shame. He had never been a hypocrite about the war. He was one of those who had acknowledged from the first that Germany had set forth, with the sword in her hand, on a war of conquest. His own inherited martial spirit had vaguely approved; he, too, in those earlier days, had felt the sunlight upon his rapier. Later had come the enlightenment, the turbulent waves of doubt, the nightmare of a nation's awakening conscience, mirrored in his own soul. It was in a depression shared, perhaps, in a lesser degree by millions of those whose ranks he had joined, that he felt this passionate craving for escape into a world which took count of other things.
Punctually at 12 o'clock the next morning, Lessingham presented himself at the hotel in Dover Street and was invited by the hall porter to take a seat in the lounge. Philippa entered, a few minutes later, her eyes and cheeks brilliant with the brisk exercise she had been taking, her slim figure most becomingly arrayed in grey cloth and chinchilla.
“I lost Helen in Harrod's,” she announced, “but I know she's lunching with friends, so it really doesn't matter. You'll have to take care of me, Mr. Lessingham, until the train goes, if you will.”
“For even longer than that, if you will,” he murmured.
She laughed. “More pretty speeches? I don't think I'm equal to them before luncheon.”
“This time I am literal,” he explained. “I am coming back to Dreymarsh myself.”
He felt his heart beat quicker, a sudden joy possessed him. Philippa's expression was obviously one of satisfaction.
“I'm so glad,” she assured him. “Do you know, I was thinking only as I came back in the taxicab, how I should miss you.”
She was standing with her foot upon the broad fender, and her first little impulse of pleasure seemed to pass as she looked into the fire. She turned towards him gravely.
“After all, do you think you are wise?” she asked. “Of course, I don't think that any one at Dreymarsh has the least suspicion, but you know Captain Griffiths did ask questions, and—well, you're safely away now. You have been so wonderful about Dick, so wonderful altogether,” she went on, “that I couldn't bear it if trouble were to come.”
He smiled at her.
“I think I know what is at the back of your mind,” he said. “You think that I am coming back entirely on your account. As it happens, this is not so.”
She looked at him with wide-open eyes.
“Surely,” she exclaimed, “you have satisfied yourself that there is no field for your ingenuity in Dreymarsh?”
“I thought that I had,” he admitted. “It seems that I am wrong. I have had orders to return.”
“Orders to return?” she repeated. “From whom?”
He shook his head.
“Of course, I ought not to have asked that,” she proceeded hastily, “but it does seem odd to realise that you can receive instructions and messages from Germany, here in London.”
“Very much the same sort of thing goes on in Germany,” he reminded her.
“So they say,” she admitted, “but one doesn't come into contact with it. So you are really coming back to Dreymarsh!”
“With you, if I may?”
“Naturally,” she agreed.
He glanced at the clock. “We might almost be starting for lunch,” he suggested.
She nodded. “As soon as I've told Grover about the luggage.”
She was absent only a few moments, and then, as it was a dry, sunny morning, they walked down St. James Street and along Pall Mall to the Carlton. Philippa met several acquaintances, but Lessingham walked with his head erect, looking neither to the right nor to the left.
“Aren't you sometimes afraid of being recognised?” she asked him. “There must be a great many men about of your time at Magdalen, for instance?”
“Nine years makes a lot of difference,” he reminded her, “and besides, I have a theory that it is only when the eyes meet that recognition really takes place. So long as I do not look into any one's face, I feel quite safe.”
“You are sure that you would not like to go to a smaller place than the Carlton?”
“It makes no difference,” he assured her. “My credentials have been wonderfully established for me.”
“I'm so glad,” she confessed. “I know it's most unfashionable, but I do like these big places. If ever I had my way, I should like to live in London and have a cottage in the country, instead of living in the country and being just an hotel dweller in London.”
“I wonder if New York would not do?” he ventured.
“I expect I should like New York,” she murmured.
“I think,” he said, “in fact, I am almost sure that when I leave here I shall go to the United States.”
She looked at him and turned suddenly away. They arrived just then at their destination, and the moment passed. Lessingham left his companion in the lounge while he went back into the restaurant to secure his table and order lunch. When he came back, he found Philippa sitting very upright and with a significant glitter in her eyes.
“Look over there,” she whispered, “by the palm.”
He followed the direction which she indicated. A man was standing against one of the pillars, talking to a tall, dark woman, obviously a foreigner, wrapped in wonderful furs. There was something familiar about his figure and the slight droop of his head.
“Why, it's Sir Henry!” Lessingham exclaimed, as the man turned around.
“My husband,” Philippa faltered.
Sir Henry, if indeed it were he, seemed afflicted with a sudden shortsightedness. He met the incredulous gaze both of Lessingham and his wife without recognition or any sign of flinching. At that distance it was impossible to see the tightening of his lips and the steely flash in his blue eyes.
“The whiting seem to have brought him a long way,” Philippa said, with an unnatural little laugh.
“Shall I go and speak to him?” Lessingham asked.
“For heaven's sake, no!” she insisted. “Don't leave me. I wouldn't have him come near me for anything in the world. It is only a few weeks ago that I begged him to come to London with me, and he said that he hated the place. You don't know—the woman?”
Lessingham shook his head.
“She looks like a foreigner,” was all he could say.
“Take me in to lunch at once,” Philippa begged, rising abruptly to her feet. “This is really the last straw.”
They passed up the stairway and within a few feet of where Sir Henry was standing. He appeared absorbed, however, in conversation with his companion, and did not even turn around. Philippa's little face seemed to have hardened as she took her seat. Only her eyes were still unnaturally bright.
“I am so sorry if this has annoyed you,” Lessingham regretted. “You would not care to go elsewhere?”
“I? Go anywhere else?” she exclaimed scornfully. “Thank you, I am perfectly satisfied here. And with my companion,” she added, with a brilliant little smile. “Now tell me about New York. Have you ever been there?”
“Twice,” he told her. “At present the dream of my life is to go there with you.”
She looked at him a little wonderingly.
“I wonder if you really care,” she said. “Men get so much into the habit of saying that sort of thing to women. Sometimes it seems to me they must do a great deal of mischief. But you—Is that really your wish?”
“I would sacrifice everything that I have ever held dear in life,” he declared, with his face aglow, “for its realization.”
“But you would be a deserter from your country,” she pointed out. “You would never be able to return. Your estates would be confiscated. You would be homeless.”
“Home,” he said softly, “is where one's heart takes one. Home is just where love is.”
Her eyes, as they met his, were for a moment suspiciously soft. Then she began to talk very quickly of other things, to compare notes of countries which they had both visited, even of people whom they had met. They were obliged to leave early to catch their train. As they passed down the crowded restaurant they once more found themselves within a few feet of Sir Henry. His back was turned to them, and he was apparently ignorant of their near presence. The party had become a partie Carríe, another man, and a still younger and more beautiful woman having joined it.
“Of course,” Philippa said, as they descended the stairs, “I am behaving like an idiot. I ought to go and tell Henry exactly what I think of him, or pull him away in the approved Whitechapel fashion. We lose so much, don't we, by stifling our instincts.”
“For the next few minutes,” he replied, glancing at his watch, “I think we had better concentrate our attention upon catching our train.”
They reached King's Cross with only a few minutes to spare. Grover, however, had already secured a carriage, and Helen was waiting for them, ensconced in a corner. She accepted the news of Lessingham's return with resignation. Philippa became thoughtful as they drew towards the close of their journey and the slow, frosty twilight began to creep down upon the land.
“I suppose we don't really know what war is,” she observed, looking out of the window at a comfortable little village tucked away with a background of trees and guarded by a weather-beaten old church. “The people are safe in their homes. You must appreciate what that means, Mr. Lessingham.”
“Indeed I do,” he answered gravely. “I have seen the earth torn and dismembered as though by the plough of some destroying angel. A few blackened ruins where, an hour or so before, a peaceful village stood; men and women running about like lunatics stricken with a mortal fear. And all the time a red glow on the horizon, a blood-red glow, and little specks of grey or brown lying all over the fields; even the cattle racing round in terror. And every now and then the cry of Death! You are fortunate in England.”
Philippa leaned forward.
“Do you believe that our turn will come?” she asked. “Do you believe that the wave will break over our country?”
“Who can tell?”
“Ah, no, but answer me,” she begged. “Is it possible for you to land an army here?”
“I think,” he replied, “that all things are possible to the military genius of Germany. The only question is whether it is worth while. Germans are supposed to be sentimentalists, you know. I rather doubt it. There is nothing would set the joybells of Berlin clanging so much as the news of a German invasion of Great Britain. On the other hand, there is a great party in Germany, and a very far-seeing one, which is continually reminding the Government that, without Great Britain as a market, Germany would never recover from the financial strain of the war.”
“This is all too impersonal,” Philippa objected. “Do you, in your heart, believe that the time might come when in the night we should hear the guns booming in Dreymarsh Bay, and see your grey-clad soldiers forming up on the beach and scaling our cliffs?”
“That will not be yet,” he pronounced. “It has been thought of. Once it was almost attempted. Just at present, no.”
Philippa drew a sigh of relief.
“Then your mission in Dreymarsh has nothing to do with an attempted landing?”
“Nothing,” he assured her. “I can even go a little further. I can tell you that if ever we do try to land, it will be in an unsuspected place, in an unexpected fashion.”
“Well, it's really very comforting to hear these things at first-hand,” Philippa declared, with some return to her usual manner. “I suppose we are really two disgraceful women, Helen and I—traitors and all the rest of it. Here we sit talking to an enemy as though he were one of our best friends.”
“I refuse to be called an enemy,” Lessingham protested. “There are times when individuality is a far greater thing than nationality. I am just a human being, born into the same world and warmed by the same sun as you. Nothing can alter the fact that we are fellow creatures.”
“Dreymarsh once more,” Philippa announced, looking out of the window. “And you're a terribly plausible person, Mr. Lessingham. Come round and see us after dinner—if it doesn't interfere with your work.”
“On the contrary,” he murmured under his breath. “Thank you very much.”
Sir Henry was standing with his hands in his pockets and a very blank expression upon his face, looking out upon the Admiralty Square. He was alone in a large, barely furnished apartment, the walls of which were so hung with charts that it had almost the appearance of a schoolroom prepared for an advanced geography class. The table from which he had risen was covered with an amazing number of scientific appliances, some samples of rock and sand, two microscopes and several telephones.
Sir Henry, having apparently exhausted the possibilities of the outlook, turned somewhat reluctantly away to find himself confronted by an elderly gentleman of cheerful appearance, who at that moment had entered the room. From the fact that he had done so without knocking, it was obvious that he was an intimate.
“Well, my gloomy friend,” the newcomer demanded, “what's wrong with you?”
Sir Henry was apparently relieved to see his visitor. He pushed a chair towards him and indicated with a gesture of invitation a box of cigars upon his desk.
“Your little Laranagas,” he observed. “Try one.”
The visitor opened the box, sniffed at its contents, and helped himself.
“Now, then, get at it, Henry,” he enjoined. “I've a Board in half-an-hour, and three dispatches to read before I go in. What's your trouble?”
“Look here, Rayton,” was the firm reply, “I want to chuck this infernal hole-and-corner business. I tell you I've worked it threadbare at Dreymarsh and it's getting jolly uncomfortable.”
The newcomer grinned.
“Poor chap!” he observed, watching his cigar smoke curl upwards. “You're in a nasty mess, you know, Henry. Did I tell you that I had a letter from your wife the other day, asking me if I couldn't find you a job?”
Sir Henry waited a little grimly, whilst his friend enjoyed the joke.
“That's all very well,” he said, “but we are on the point of a separation, or something of the sort. I'll admit it was all right at first to run the thing on the Q.T., but that's pretty well busted up by now. Why, according to your own reports, they know all about me on the other side.”
“Not a doubt about it,” the other agreed. “I'm not sure that you haven't got a spy fellow down at Dreymarsh now.”
“I'm quite sure of it,” Sir Henry replied grimly. “The brute was lunching with my wife at the Carlton to-day, and, as luck would have it, I was landed with that Russian Admiral's wife and sister-in-law. You're breaking up the happy home, that's what you're doing, Rayton!”
His lordship at any rate seemed to find the process amusing. He laughed until the tears stood in his eyes.
“I should love to have seen Philippa's face,” he chuckled, “when she walked into the restaurant and saw you there! You're supposed to be off on a fishing expedition, aren't you?”
“I went out after whiting,” Sir Henry groaned, “and I'd just promised to chuck it for a time when I got the Admiral's message.”
“Well, we'll see to your German spy, anyway,” his visitor promised.
“Don't be an ass!” Sir Henry exclaimed irritably. “I don't want the fellow touched at present. Why, he's been a sort of persona grata at my house. Hangs around there all the time when I'm away.”
“All the more reason for putting an end to his little game, I should say,” was the cheerful reply.
“And have the whole neighbourhood either laughing at my wife and Miss Fairclough, or talking scandal about them!” Sir Henry retorted.
“I forgot that,” his friend confessed ruminatively. “He's a gentlemanly sort of fellow, from what I hear, but a rotten spy. What do you want done with him?”
“Leave him for me to deal with,” Sir Henry insisted. “I have a little scheme on hand in which he is concerned.”
Rayton scratched his chin doubtfully.
“The fellow may not be such a fool as he seems,” he reminded his friend.
“I won't run any risks,” Sir Henry promised. “I just want him left there, that's all. And look here, Rayton, you know what I want from you. I quite agreed to your proposals as to my anonymity at the time when I was up in Scotland, but the thing's a secret no longer with the people who count. Every one in Germany knows that I'm a mine-field specialist, so I don't see why the dickens I should pose any longer as a sort of half-baked idiot.”
Rayton's eyes twinkled.
“You want to play the Wilson Barrett hero and make a theatrical disclosure of your greatness,” he laughed. “Poor Philippa will fall upon her knees. You will be the hero of the village, which will probably present you with some little article of plate. You've a good time coming, Henry.”
“Talk sense, there's a good fellow,” the other begged. “You go and see the Chief and put it to him. There isn't a single reason why I shouldn't own up now.”
“I'll see what I can do,” Rayton promised, “but what about this fellow Lessingham, or whatever else he calls himself, down there? There's a chap named Griffiths—Commandant, isn't he?—been writing us about him.”
“I won't have Lessingham touched,” Sir Henry insisted. “He can't do any particular harm down there, and there isn't a line or a drawing of mine down at Dreymarsh which he isn't welcome to.”
Lord Rayton rose to his feet.
“Look here, Henry, old fellow,” he said, “I do sympathise with you up to a certain point. I tell you what I'll do. I shall have to answer Philippa's letter, and I'll answer it in such a way that if she is as clever a little woman as I think she is, she'll get a hint. Of course,” he went on ruminatively, “it is rather a misfortune that the Princess Ollaneff and her sister are such jolly good-looking women. Makes it look a little fishy, doesn't it? What I mean to say is, it's a far cry from fishing for whiting in the North Sea to lunching with a beautiful princess at the Carlton—when you think your wife's down in Norfolk.”
Sir Henry threw open the door.
“Look here, I've had enough of you, Rayton,” he declared. “You get back and do an hour's work, if you can bring your mind to it.”
The latter assumed a sudden dignity, necessitated by the sound of voices in the corridor, and departed. The door had scarcely been closed when two younger men presented themselves—Miles Ensol, Sir Henry's secretary, a typical-looking young sailor minus his left arm; and a pale-faced, clean-shaven man of uncertain age, in civilian clothes. Sir Henry shook hands with the latter and pointed to the easy-chair which his previous visitor had just vacated.
“Welcome back again, Horridge,” he said cordially. “Miles, I'll ring when I want you.”
“Very good, sir,” the secretary replied. “There's a fisherman from Norfolk downstairs, when you're at liberty.”
Sir Henry nodded.
“I'll see him presently. Shut him up somewhere where he can smoke.”
The young man withdrew, carefully closing the door, around which Sir Henry, with a word of apology, arranged a screen.
“I don't think,” he explained, “that eavesdropping extends to these premises, or that our voices could reach outside. Still, a ha'porth of prevention, eh? Have a cigar, Horridge.”
“I'm not smoking for a day or two, thank you, sir.”
“You look as though they'd put you through it,” Sir Henry remarked.
His visitor smiled.
“I've travelled fourteen miles in a barrel,” he said, “and we were out for twenty-four hours in a Danish sailing skiff. You know what the weather's been like in the North Sea. Before that, the last word of writing I saw on German soil was a placard, offering a reward of five thousand marks for my detention, with a disgustingly lifelike photograph at the top. I had about fifty yards of quay to walk in broad daylight, and every other man I passed turned to stare after me. It gives you the cold shivers down your back when you daren't look round to see if you're being followed.”
Sir Henry groped in the cupboard of his desk, and produced a bottle of whisky and a syphon of soda water. His visitor nodded approvingly.
“I've touched nothing until I've reached what I consider sanctuary,” he observed. “My nerves have gone rotten for the first time in my life. Do you mind, sir, if I lock the door?”
“Go ahead,” Sir Henry assented.
He brought the whisky and soda himself across the room. Horridge resumed his seat and held out his hand almost eagerly. For a moment or two he shook as though he had an ague. Then, just as suddenly as it had come upon him, the fit passed. He drained the contents of the tumbler at a gulp, set it down empty by his side, and stretched out his hand for a cigar.
“The end of my journey didn't help matters any,” he went on. “I daren't even make for a Dutch port, and we were picked up eventually by a tramp steamer from Newcastle to London with coals. I hadn't been on board more than an hour before a submarine which had been following overhauled us. I thought it was all up then, but the fog lifted, and we found ourselves almost in the midst of a squadron of destroyers from Harwich. I made another transfer, and they landed me in time to catch the early morning train from Felixstowe.”
“Did they get the submarine?” his listener asked eagerly.
“Get it!” the other repeated, with a smile. “They blew it into scrap metal.”
“Plenty of movement in your life!”
“I've run the gauntlet over there once too often,” Horridge said grimly. “Just look at me now, Sir Henry. I'm twenty-nine years old, and it's only two years and a half since I was invalided out of the navy and took this job on. The last person I asked to guess my age put me down at fifty. What should you have said?”
“Somewhere near it,” was the candid admission. “Never mind, Horridge, you've done your bit. You shall pass on your experience to a new hand, take your pension and try the south coast of England for a few months. Now let's get on with it. You know what I want to hear about.”
Horridge produced from his pocket a long strip of paper.
“They're there, sir,” he announced, “coaled to the scuppers, every man standing to stations and steam up. There's the list.”
He handed the paper across to Sir Henry, who glanced it down.
“The fast cruiser squadron,” he observed. “Hm! Three new ships we haven't any note of. No transports, then, Horridge?'”
“Not a sign of one, sir,” was the reply. “They're after a bombardment.”
He rose to his feet, walked to a giant map of England, and touched a certain port on the east coast. Sir Henry's eyes glistened.
“You're sure?”
“It is a certainty,” Horridge replied. “I've been on three of those ships. I've dined with four of the officers. They're under sealed orders, and the crew believes that they're going to escort out half a dozen commerce destroyers. But I have the truth. That's their objective,” Horridge repeated, touching once more the spot upon the map, “and they are waiting just for one thing.”
Sir Henry smiled thoughtfully.
“I know what they're waiting for,” he said. “Perhaps if they'd a Herr Horridge to send over here for it, they'd have got it before now. As it is—well, I'm not sure,” he went on. “It seems a pity to disappoint them, doesn't it? I'd love to give them a run for their money.”
Horridge smiled faintly. He knew a good deal about his companion.
“They're spoiling for it, sir,” he admitted. Sir Henry spoke down a telephone and a few minutes later Ensol reappeared.
“Find Mr. Horridge a comfortable room,” his chief directed, “and one of our confidential typists. You can make out your report at your leisure,” he went on. “Come in and see me when it's all finished.”
“Certainly, sir,” Horridge replied, rising.
Sir Henry held out his hand. He looked with something like wonder at the nerve-shattered man who had risen to his feet with a certain air of briskness.
“Horridge,” he said, “I wish I had your pluck.”
“I don't know any one in the service from whom you need borrow any, sir,” was the quiet reply.