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Okewood of the Secret Service

by Valentine Williams · English · Gutenberg #2417 · 515,624 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Okewood of the Secret Service

Author: Valentine Williams


        
Release date: December 1, 2000 [eBook #2417]
                Most recently updated: August 18, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2417

Credits: Polly Stratton. HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OKEWOOD OF THE SECRET SERVICE ***




Okewood of the Secret Service

by Valentine Williams


Contents

 CHAPTER I. THE DEPUTY TURN
 CHAPTER II. CAPTAIN STRANGWISE ENTERTAINS A GUEST
 CHAPTER III. MR. MACKWAYTE MEETS AN OLD FRIEND
 CHAPTER IV. MAJOR OKEWOOD ENCOUNTERS A NEW TYPE
 CHAPTER V. THE MURDER AT SEVEN KINGS
 CHAPTER VI. “NAME O’BARNEY”
 CHAPTER VII. NUR-EL-DIN
 CHAPTER VIII. THE WHITE PAPER PACKAGE
 CHAPTER IX. METAMORPHOSIS
 CHAPTER X. D. O. R. A. IS BAFFLED
 CHAPTER XI. CREDENTIALS
 CHAPTER XII. AT THE MILL HOUSE
 CHAPTER XIII. WHAT SHAKESPEARE’S COMEDIES REVEALED
 CHAPTER XIV. BARBARA TAKES A HAND
 CHAPTER XV. MR. BELLWARD IS CALLED TO THE TELEPHONE
 CHAPTER XVI. THE STAR OF POLAND
 CHAPTER XVII. MR. BELLWARD ARRANGES A BRIDGE EVENING
 CHAPTER XVIII. THE GATHERING OF THE SPIES
 CHAPTER XIX. THE UNINVITED GUEST
 CHAPTER XX. THE ODD MAN
 CHAPTER XXI. THE BLACK VELVET TOQUE
 CHAPTER XXII. WHAT THE CELLAR REVEALED
 CHAPTER XXIII. MRS. MALPLAQUET GOES DOWN TO THE CELLAR
 CHAPTER XXIV. THE TWO DESERTERS
 CHAPTER XXV. TO MRS. MALPLAQUET’S
 CHAPTER XXVI. THE MAN IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE
 CHAPTER XXVII. THE RED LACQUER ROOM
 CHAPTER XXVIII. AN OFFER FROM STRANGWISE
 CHAPTER XXIX. DOT AND DASH
 CHAPTER XXX. HOHENLINDEN TRENCH
 CHAPTER XXXI. THE £100,000 KIT




CHAPTER I.
THE DEPUTY TURN


Mr. Arthur Mackwayte slipped noiselessly into the dining-room and took
his place at the table. He always moved quietly, a look of gentle
deprecation on his face as much as to say: “Really, you know, I can’t
help being here: if you will just overlook me this time, by and by you
won’t notice I’m there at all!” That was how he went through life, a
shy, retiring little man, quiet as a mouse, gentle as a dove, modesty
personified.

That is, at least, how Mr. Arthur Mackwayte struck his friends in
private life. Once a week, however, he fairly screamed at the public
from the advertisement columns of “The Referee”: “Mackwayte, in his
Celebrated Kerbstone Sketches. Wit! Pathos! Tragedy!!! The Epitome of
London Life. Universally Acclaimed as the Greatest Portrayer of London
Characters since the late Chas. Dickens. In Tremendous Demand for
Public Dinners. The Popular Favorite. A Few Dates still Vacant. 23,
Laleham Villas, Seven Kings. ’Phone” and so on.

But only professionally did Mr. Mackwayte thus blow his own trumpet,
and then in print alone. For the rest, he had nothing great about him
but his heart. A long and bitter struggle for existence had left no
hardness in his smooth-shaven flexible face, only wrinkles. His eyes
were gray and keen and honest, his mouth as tender as a woman’s.

His daughter, Barbara, was already at table pouring out the tea—high
tea is still an institution in music-hall circles. Mr. Mackwayte always
gazed on this tall, handsome daughter of his with amazement as the
great miracle of his life. He looked at her now fondly and thought
how.... how distinguished, yes, that was the word, she looked in the
trim blue serge suit in which she went daily to her work at the War
Office.

“Rations a bit slender to-night, daddy,” she said, handing him his cup
of tea, “only sardines and bread and butter and cheese. Our meatless
day, eh?”

“It’ll do very well for me, Barbara, my dear,” he answered in his
gentle voice, “there have been times when your old dad was glad enough
to get a cup of tea and a bite of bread and butter for his supper. And
there’s many a one worse off than we are today!”

“Any luck at the agent’s, daddy?”

Mr. Mackwayte shook his head.

“These revues are fair killing the trade, my dear, and that’s a fact.
They don’t want art to-day, only rag-time and legs and all that. Our
people are being cruelly hit by it and that’s a fact. Why, who do you
think I ran into at Harris’ this morning? Why, Barney who used to work
with the great Charles, you know, my dear. For years he drew his ten
pound a week regular. Yet there he was, looking for a job the same as
the rest of us. Poor fellow, he _was_ down on his luck!”

Barbara looked up quickly.

“Daddy, you lent him money....”

Mr. Mackwayte looked extremely uncomfortable.

“Only a trifle, my dear, just a few shillings.... to take him over the
week-end.... he’s getting something.... he’ll repay me, I feel
sure....”

“It’s too bad of you, daddy,” his daughter said severely. “I gave you
that ten shillings to buy yourself a bottle of whiskey. You know he
won’t pay you back. That Barney’s a bad egg!”

“Things are going bad with the profession,” replied Mr. Mackwayte.
“They don’t seem to want any of us old stagers today, Barbara!”

“Now, daddy, you know I don’t allow you to talk like that. Why, you are
only just finished working.... the Samuel Circuit, too!”

Barbara looked up at the old man quickly.

“Only, four weeks’ trial, my dear.... they didn’t want me, else they
would have given me the full forty weeks. No, I expect I am getting
past my work. But it’s hard on you child....”

Barbara sprang up and placed her hand across her father’s mouth.

“I won’t have you talk like that, Mac”—that was her pet name for
him—“you’ve worked hard all your life and now it’s my turn. Men have
had it all their own way before this war came along: now women are
going to have a look in. Presently, when I get to be supervisor of my
section and they raise my pay again, you will be able to refuse all
offers of work. You can go down to Harris with a big cigar in your
mouth and patronize him, daddy...”

The telephone standing on the desk in the corner of the cheap little
room tingled out sharply. Barbara rose and went across to the desk. Mr.
Mackwayte thought how singularly graceful she looked as she stood, very
slim, looking at him whimsically across the dinner-table, the receiver
in her hand.

Then a strange thing happened. Barbara quickly put the receiver down on
the desk and clasped her hands together, her eyes opened wide in
amazement.

“Daddy,” she cried, “it’s the Palaceum... the manager’s office... they
want you urgently! Oh, daddy, I believe it is an engagement!”

Mr. Mackwayte rose to his feet in agitation, a touch of color creeping
into his gray cheeks.

“Nonsense, my dear!” he answered, “at this time of night! Why, it’s
past eight... their first house is just finishing... they don’t go
engaging people at this time of day... they’ve got other things to
think of!”

He went over to the desk and picked up the receiver.

“Mackwayte speaking!” he said, with a touch of stage majesty in his
voice.

Instantly a voice broke in on the other end of the wire, a perfect
torrent of words.

“Mackwayte? Ah! I’m glad I caught you at home. Got your props there?
Good. Hickie of Hickie and Flanagan broke his ankle during their turn
at the first house just now, and I want you to take their place at the
second house. Your turn’s at 9.40: it’s a quarter past eight now: I’ll
have a car for you at your place at ten to nine sharp. Bring your band
parts and lighting directions with you... don’t forget! You get twenty
minutes, on! Right! Goodbye!”

“The Palaceum want me to deputize for Hickie and Flanagan, my dear,” he
said a little tremulously, “9.40... the second house... it’s... it’s
very unexpected!”

Barbara ran up and throwing her arms about his neck, kissed him.

“How splendid!” she exclaimed, “the Palaceum, daddy! You’ve never had
an engagement like this before... the biggest hall in London...!!

“Only for a night, my dear,” said Mr. Mackwayte modestly.

“But if they like you, daddy, if it goes down... what will you give
them, daddy?”

Mr. Mackwayte scratched his chin.

“It’s the biggest theatre in London,” he mused, “It’ll have to be broad
effects... and they’ll want something slap up modern, my dear, I’m
thinking...”

“No, no, daddy” his daughter broke in vehemently “they want the best.
This is a London audience, remember, not a half-baked provincial house.
This is London, Mac, not Wigan! And Londoners love their London! You’ll
give ’em the old London horse bus driver, the sporting cabby, and I
believe you’ll have time to squeeze in the hot potato man...”

“Well, like your poor dear mother, I expect you know what’s the best
I’ve got” replied Mr. Mackwayte, “but it’ll be a bit awkward with a
strange dresser... I can’t get hold of Potter at this time, of night...
and a stranger is sure to mix up my wigs and things...”

“Why, daddy, I’m going with you to put out your things...”

“But a lady clerk in the War Office, Barbara... a Government official,
as you might say... go behind at a music-hall... it don’t seem proper
right, my dear!”

“Nonsense, Mac. Where’s your theatre trunk? Come along. We’ll have to
try and get a taxi!”

“They’re sending a car at ten to nine, my dear!”

“Good gracious! what swells we are! And it’s half-past eight already!
Who is on the bill with you?”

“My dear, I haven’t an idea... I’m not very well up in the London
programmes, I’m afraid... but it is sure to be a good programme. The
Palaceum is the only house that’s had the courage to break away from
this rotten revue craze!”

Barbara was in the hall now, her arms plunged to the shoulder in a
great basket trunk that smelt faintly of cocoa-butter. Right and left
she flung coats and hats and trousers and band parts, selecting with a
sure eye the properties which Mr. Mackwayte would require for the
sketches he would play that evening. In the middle of it all the
throbbing of a car echoed down the quiet road outside. Then there came
a ring at the front door.


At half-past nine that night, Barbara found herself standing beside her
father in the wings of the vast Palaceum stage. Just at her back was
the little screened-off recess where Mr. Mackwayte was to make the
quick changes that came in the course of his turn. Here, since her
arrival in the theatre, Barbara had been busy laying out coats and hats
and rigs and grease-paints on the little table below the mirror with
its two brilliant electric bulbs, whilst Mr. Mackwayte was in his
dressing-room upstairs changing into his first costume.

Now, old Mackwayte stood at her elbow in his rig-out as an old London
bus-driver in the identical, characteristic clothes which he had worn
for this turn for the past 25 years. He was far too old a hand to show
any nervousness he might feel at the ordeal before him. He was chatting
in undertones in his gentle, confidential way to the stage manager.

All around them was that curious preoccupied stillness—the hush of the
power-house—which makes the false world of the stage so singularly
unreal by contrast when watched from the back. The house was packed
from floor to ceiling, for the Palaceum’s policy of breaking away from
revue and going back to Mr. Mackwayte called “straight vaudeville” was
triumphantly justifying itself.

Standing in the wings, Barbara could almost feel the electric current
running between the audience and the comedian who, with the quiet
deliberation of the finished artist, was going through his business on
the stage. As he made each of his carefully studied points, he paused,
confident of the vast rustle of laughter swelling into a hurricane of
applause which never failed to come from the towering tiers of humanity
before him, stretching away into the roof where the limelights blazed
and spluttered. Save for the low murmur of voices at her side, the
silence behind the scenes was absolute. No one was idle. Everyone was
at his post, his attention concentrated on that diminutive little
figure in the ridiculous clothes which the spot-lights tracked about
the stage.

It was the high-water mark of modern music-hall development. The
perfect smoothness of the organization gave Barbara a great feeling of
contentment for she knew how happy her father must be. Everyone had
been so kind to him. “I shall feel a stranger amongst the top-liners of
today, my dear,” he had said to her in the car on their way to the
hall. She had had no answer ready for she had feared he spoke the
truth.

Yet everyone they had met had tried to show them that Arthur Mackwayte
was not forgotten. The stage-door keeper had known him in the days of
the old Aquarium and welcomed him by name. The comedian who preceded
Mr. Mackwayte and who was on the stage at that moment had said, “Hullo,
Mac! Come to give us young ’uns some tips?” And even now the stage
manager was talking over old days with her father.

“You had a rough but good schooling, Mac,” he was saying, “but, by
Jove, it gave us finished artists. If you saw the penny reading line
that comes trying to get a job here... and gets it, by Gad!... it’d
make you sick. I tell you I have my work cut out staving them off! It’s
a pretty good show this week, though, and I’ve given you a good place,
Mac... you’re in front of Nur-el-Din!”

“Nur-el-Din?” repeated Mr. Mackwayte, “what is it, Fletcher? A
conjurer?”

“Good Lord, man, where have you been living?” replied Fletcher.
“Nur-el-Din is the greatest vaudeville proposition since Lottie
Collins. Conjurer! That’s what she is, too, by Jove! She’s the newest
thing in Oriental dancers... Spaniard or something... wonderful
clothes, what there is of ’em... and jewelry... wait till you see her!”

“Dear me,” said Mr. Mackwayte, “I’m afraid I’m a bit behind the times.
Has she been appearing here long?”

“First appearance in London, old man, and she’s made good from the word
‘Go!’ She’s been in Paris and all over the Continent, and America, too,
I believe, but she had to come to me to soar to the top of the bill. I
saw at once where _she_ belonged! She’s a real artiste, temperament,
style and all that sort of thing and a damn good producer into the
bargain! But the worst devil that ever escaped out of hell never had a
wickeder temper! She and I fight all the time! Not a show, but she
doesn’t keep the stage waiting! But I won! I won’t have her prima donna
tricks in this theatre and so I’ve told her! Hullo, Georgie’s
finishing...”

The great curtain switched down suddenly, drowning a cascade of
applause, and a bundle of old clothes, twitching nerves, liquid
perspiration and grease paint hopped off the stage into the centre of
the group. An electric bell trilled, the limelights shut off, with a
jerk that made the eyes ache, a back-cloth soared aloft and another
glided down into its place, the comedian took two, three, four calls,
then vanished into a horde of dim figures scuttling about in the gloom.

An electric bell trilled again and deep silence fell once more, broken
only by the hissing of the lights.

“You ought to stop behind after your turn and see her, Mac,” the stage
manager’s voice went on evenly. “All right, Jackson! On you go, Mac!”

Barbara felt her heart jump. Now for it, daddy!

The great curtain mounted majestically and Arthur Mackwayte, deputy
turn, stumped serenely on to the stage.




CHAPTER II.
CAPTAIN STRANGWISE ENTERTAINS A GUEST


It was the slack hour at the Nineveh Hotel. The last groups about the
tea-tables in the Palm Court had broken up, the Tzigane orchestra had
stacked its instruments together on its little platform and gone home,
and a gentle calm rested over the great hotel as the forerunner of the
coming dinner storm.

The pre-dinner hour is the uncomfortable hour of the modern hotel de
luxe. The rooms seem uncomfortably hot, the evening paper palls, it is
too early to dress for dinner, so one sits yawning over the fire,
longing for a fireside of one’s own. At least that is how it strikes
one from the bachelor standpoint, and that is how it appeared to affect
a man who was sitting hunched up in a big arm-chair in the vestibule of
the Nineveh Hotel on this winter afternoon.

His posture spoke of utter boredom. He sprawled full length in his
chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his eyes
half-closed, various editions of evening papers strewn about the ground
at his feet. He was a tall, well-groomed man, and his lithe, athletic
figure looked very well in its neat uniform.

A pretty little woman who sat at one of the writing desks in the
vestibule glanced at him more than once. He was the sort of man that
women look at with interest. He had a long, shrewd, narrow head, the
hair dark and close-cropped, a big, bold, aquiline nose, and a firm
masterful chin, dominated by a determined line of mouth emphasised by a
thin line of moustache. He would have been very handsome but for his
eyes, which, the woman decided as she glanced at him, were set rather
too close together. She thought she would prefer him as he was now,
with his eyes glittering in the fire-light through their long lashes.

But what was most apparent was the magnificent physical fitness of the
man. His was the frame of the pioneer, the man of the earth’s open
spaces and uncharted wilds. He looked as hard as nails, and the woman
murmured to herself, as she went on with her note, “On leave from the
front.”

Presently, the man stirred, stretched himself and finally sat up. Then
he started, sprang to his feet, and strode easily across the vestibule
to the reception desk. An officer was standing there in a worn uniform,
a very shabby kit-bag by his side, a dirty old Burberry over his arm.

“Okewood!” said the young man and touched the other on the shoulder,
“isn’t it Desmond Okewood? By Jove, I _am_ glad to see you!”

The new-comer turned quickly.

“Why, hullo,” he said, “if it isn’t Maurice Strangwise! But, good
heavens, man, surely I saw your name in the casualty list... missing,
wasn’t it?”

“Yep!” replied the other smiling, “that’s so! It’s a long story and
it’ll keep! But tell me about yourself... this,” he kicked the kit-bag
with the toe of his boot, “looks like a little leave! Just in from
France?”

He smiled again, baring his firm, white teeth, and looking at him
Desmond suddenly remembered, as one recalls a trifle, his trick of
smiling. It was a frank enough smile but... well, some people smile too
much.

“Got in just now by the leave train,” answered Desmond.

“How much leave have you got?” asked Strangwise.

“Well,” said the other, “it’s a funny thing, but I don’t know!”

“Say, are they giving unlimited leave over there now?”

Desmond laughed.

“Hardly,” he replied. “But the War Office just applied for me to come
over and here I am! What they want me for, whether it’s to advise the
War Council or to act as Quartermaster to the Jewish Battalion I can’t
tell you! I shan’t know until tomorrow morning! In the meantime I’m
going to forget the war for this evening!”

“What are you going to do to-night?” asked Strangwise.

Desmond began to check off on his fingers.

“Firstly, I’m going to fill the biggest bath in this hotel with hot
water, get the biggest piece of Pears’ soap in London, and jump in:
Then, if my tailor hasn’t betrayed me, I’m going to put on dress
clothes, and whilst I am dressing summon Julien (if he’s maitre d’hôtel
here) to a conference, then I’m going to eat the best dinner that this
pub can provide. Then...”

Strangwise interrupted him.

“The bath is on you, if you like,” he said, “but the dinner’s on me and
a show afterwards. I’m at a loose end, old man, and so are you, so
we’ll hit up together! We’ll dine in the restaurant here at 7.30, and
Julien shall come up to your room so that you can order the dinner. Is
it a go?”

“Rather,” laughed Desmond, “I’ll eat your dinner, Maurice, and you
shall tell me how you managed to break out of the casualty list into
the Nineveh Hotel. But what do all these anxious-looking gentry want?”

The two officers turned to confront a group of four men who were
surveying them closely. One of them, a fat, comfortable looking party
with grizzled hair, on seeing Desmond, walked up to him.

“Hullo!” said Desmond, “it’s Tommy Spencer! How are you, Spencer?
What’s the betting in Fleet Street on the war lasting another five
years? Have you come to interview me?”

The tubby little man beamed and shook hands effusively.

“Glad to see you looking so well, Major,” he said, “It’s your friend we
want...”

“What? Strangwise? Here, Maurice, come meet my friend Tommy Spencer of
the “Daily Record,” whom I haven’t seen since we went on manoeuvres
together down at Aldershot! Captain Strangwise, Tommy Spencer! Now,
then, fire away; Spencer!”

Strangwise smiled and shook his head.

“I’m very pleased to know your friend, Desmond,” he said, “but, you
know, I can’t talk! I had the strictest orders from the War Office...
It’s on account of the other fellows, you know...”

Desmond looked blankly at him. Then he—turned to Spencer.

“You must let me into this, Spencer,” he said, “what’s old Maurice been
up to? Has he been cashiered for wearing shoes or what?”

Spencer’s manner became a trifle formal.

“Captain Strangwise has escaped from a prisoners’ of war camp in
Germany, Major,” he said, “we’ve been trying to get hold of him for
days! He’s the talk of London!”

Desmond turned like a shot.

“Maurice!” he cried, “’pon my soul, I’m going to have an interesting
evening... why, of course, you are just the sort of fellow to do a
thing like that. But, Spencer, you know, it won’t do... fellows are
never allowed to talk to the newspaper men about matters of this kind.
And if you’re a good fellow, Spencer, you won’t even say that you have
seen Strangwise here... you’ll only get him into trouble!”

The little man looked rather rueful.

“Oh, of course, Major, if you put it that way,” he said.

“... And you’ll use your influence to make those other fellows with you
drop it, will you, Spencer? And then come along to the bar and we’ll
have a drink for old times’ sake!”

Spencer seemed doubtful about the success of his representations to his
colleagues but he obediently trotted away. Apparently, he succeeded in
his mission for presently he joined the two officers alone in the
American Bar.

“I haven’t seen Strangwise for six months, Spencer,” said Desmond over
his second cocktail. “Seeing him reminds me how astonishing it is the
way fellows drop apart in war. Old Maurice was attached to the Brigade
of which I am the Brigade Major as gunner officer, and we lived
together for the best part of three months, wasn’t it, Maurice? Then he
goes back to his battery and the next thing I hear of him is that he is
missing. And then I’m damned if he doesn’t turn up here!”

Spencer cocked an eye at Strangwise over his Martini.

“I’d like to hear your story, despite the restrictions,” he said.

Strangwise looked a trifle embarrassed.

“Maybe I’ll tell you one day,” he replied in his quiet way, “though,
honestly, there’s precious little to tell...”

Desmond marked his confusion and respected him for it. He rushed in to
the rescue.

“Spencer,” he said abruptly, “what’s worth seeing in London? We are
going to a show to-night. I want to be amused, mark you, not elevated!”

“Nur-el-Din at the Palaceum,” replied the reporter.

“By Jove, we’ll go there,” said Desmond, turning to Maurice. “Have you
ever seen her? I’m told she’s perfectly marvelous...”

“It’s an extraordinarily artistic turn,” said Spencer, “and they’re
doing wonderful business at the Palaceum. You’d better go and see the
show soon, though, for they tell me the lady is leaving the programme.”

“_No!_” exclaimed Strangwise so suddenly that Desmond turned round and
stared at him. “I thought she was there for months yet...”

“They don’t want her to go,” answered Spencer, “she’s a perfect
gold-mine to them but I gather the lady is difficult... in fact, to put
it bluntly she’s making such a damn nuisance of herself with her
artistic temperament that they can’t get on with her at all.”

“Do you know this lady of the artistic temperament, Maurice?” asked
Desmond.

Strangwise hesitated a moment.

“I met her in Canada a few years ago,” he said slowly, “she was a very
small star then. She’s a very handsome and attractive girl, in spite of
our friend’s unfavorable verdict. There’s something curiously real
about her dancing, too, that you don’t find in this sort of show as a
rule!”

He stopped a moment, then added abruptly:

“We’ll go along to the Palaceum to-night, if you like, Desmond,” and
Desmond joyfully acquiesced. To one who has been living for weeks in an
ill-ventilated pill-box on the Passchendaele Ridge, the lights and
music and color of a music-hall seem as a foretaste of Paradise.

And that was what Desmond Okewood thought as a few hours later he found
himself with Maurice Strangwise in the stalls of the vast Palaceum
auditorium. In the unwonted luxury of evening clothes he felt clean and
comfortable, and the cigar he way smoking was the climax of one of
Julien’s most esoteric efforts.

The cards on either side of the proscenium opening bore the words:
“Deputy Turn.” On the stage was a gnarled old man with ruddy cheeks and
a muffler. a seedy top hat on his head, a coaching whip in his hand,
the old horse bus-driver of London in his habit as he had lived. The
old fellow stood there and just talked to the audience of a fine
sporting class of men that petrol has driven from the streets, without
exaggerated humor or pathos. Desmond, himself a born Cockney, at once
fell under the actor’s spell and found all memories of the front
slipping away from him as the old London street characters succeeded
one another on the stage. Then the orchestra blared out, the curtain
descended, and the house broke into a great flutter of applause.

Desmond, luxuriating in his comfortable stall puffed at his cigar and
fell into a pleasant reverie.

He was contrasting the ghastly nightmare of mud and horrors from which
he had only just emerged with the scene of elegance, of civilization;
around him.

Suddenly, his attention became riveted on the stage. The atmosphere of
the theatre had changed. Always quick at picking up “influences,”
Desmond instantly sensed a new mood in the throngs around him. A
presence was in the theatre, an instinct-awakening, a material
influence. The great audience was strangely hushed. The air was heavy
with the scent of incense. The stringed instruments and oboes in the
orchestra were wandering into rhythmic [Updater’s note: a line appears
to be missing from the source here] dropped.

Maurice touched his elbow.

“There she is!” he said.

Desmond felt inclined to shake him off roughly. The interruption jarred
on him. For he was looking at this strangely beautiful girl with her
skin showing very brown beneath a wonderful silver tiara-like
headdress, and in the broad interstices of a cloth-of-silver robe with
short, stiffly wired-out skirt. She was seated, an idol, on a
glittering black throne, at her feet with their tapering dyed nails a
fantastically attired throng of worshipers.

The idol stirred into life, the music of the orchestra died away. Then
a tom-tom began to beat its nervous pulse-stirring throb, the strident
notes of a reed-pipe joined in and the dancer, raised on her toes on
the dais, began to sway languorously to and fro. And so she swayed and
swayed with sinuously curving limbs while the drums throbbed out faster
with ever-shortening beats, with now and then a clash of brazen cymbals
that was torture to overwrought nerves.

The dancer was the perfection of grace. Her figure was lithe and supple
as a boy’s. There was a suggestion of fire and strength and agility
about her that made one think of a panther as she postured there
against a background of barbaric color. The grace of her movements, the
exquisite blending of the colors on the stage, the skillful grouping of
the throng of worshipers, made up a picture which held the audience
spellbound and in silence until the curtain dropped.

Desmond turned to find Strangwise standing up.

“I thought of just running round behind the scenes for a few minutes,”
he said carelessly.

“What, to see Nur-el-Din? By Jove, I’m coming, too!” promptly exclaimed
Desmond.

Strangwise demurred. He didn’t quite know if he could take him: there
might be difficulties: another time... But Desmond got up resolutely.

“I’ll be damned if you leave me behind, Maurice,” he laughed, “of
course I’m coming, too! She’s the most delightful creature I’ve ever
set eyes on!”

And so it ended by them going through the pass-door together.




CHAPTER III.
MR. MACKWAYTE MEETS AN OLD FRIEND


That night Nur-el-Din kept the stage waiting for five minutes. It was a
climax of a long series of similar unpardonable crimes in the
music-hall code. The result was that Mr. Mackwayte, after taking four
enthusiastic “curtains,” stepped off the stage into a perfect
pandemonium.

He found Fletcher, the stage manager, livid with rage, surrounded by
the greater part of the large suite with which the dancer traveled.
There was Madame’s maid, a trim Frenchwoman, Madame’s business manager,
a fat, voluble Italian, Madame’s secretary, an olive-skinned South
American youth in an evening coat with velvet collar, and Madame’s
principal male dancer in a scanty Egyptian dress with grotesquely
painted face. They were all talking at the same time, and at intervals
Fletcher muttered hotly: “This time she leaves the bill or I walk out
of the theatre!”

Then a clear voice cried:

“_Me voila!_” and a dainty apparition in an ermine wrap tripped into
the centre of the group, tapped the manager lightly on the shoulder and
said:

“_Allons!_ I am ready!”

Mr. Mackwayte’s face creased its mask of paint into a thousand
wrinkles. For, on seeing him, the dancer’s face lighted up, and,
running to him with hands outstretched, she cried:

“_Tiens!_ Monsieur Arthur!” while he ejaculated:

“Why, it’s little Marcelle!”

But now the stage manager interposed. He whisked Madame’s wrap off her
with one hand and with the other, firmly propelled her on to the stage.
She let him have his way with a merry smile, dark eyes and white teeth
flashing, but as she went she said to Mr. Mackwayte:

“My friend, wait for me! _Et puis nous causerons!_ We will ’ave a talk,
_n’est-ce pas?_”

“A very old friend of mine, my dear,” Mr. Mackwayte said to Barbara
when, dressed in his street clothes, he rejoined her in the wings where
she stood watching Nur-el-Din dancing. “She was an acrobat in the Seven
Duponts, a turn that earned big money in the old days. It must be...
let’s see... getting on for twenty years since I last set eyes on her.
She was a pretty kid in those days! God bless my soul! Little Marcelle
a big star! It’s really most amazing!”

Directly she was off the stage, Nur-el-Din came straight to Mr.
Mackwayte, pushing aside her maid who was waiting with her wrap.

“My friend,” she cooed in her pretty broken English, “I am so glad, so
glad to see you. And this is your girl... ah! she ’as your eyes,
Monsieur Arthur, your nice English gray eyes! Such a big girl... ah!
but she make me feel old!”

She laughed, a pretty gurgling laugh, throwing back her head so that
the diamond collar she was wearing heaved and flashed.

“But you will come to my room, _hein?_” she went on. “Marie, my wrap!”
and she led the way to the lift.

Nur-el-Din’s spacious dressing-room seemed to be full of people and
flowers. All her little court was assembled amid a perfect bower of
hot-house blooms and plants. Head and shoulders above everybody else in
the room towered the figure of an officer in uniform, with him another
palpable Englishman in evening dress.

Desmond Okewood thought he had never seen anything in his life more
charming than the picture the dancer made as she came into the room.
Her wrap had fallen open and beneath the broad bars of her
cloth-of-silver dress her bosom yet rose and fell after the exertions
of her dance. A jet black curl had strayed out from beneath her lofty
silver head-dress, and she thrust it back in its place with one little
brown bejeweled hand whilst she extended the other to Strangwise.

“_Tiens, mon capitaine!_” she said. Desmond was watching her closely,
fascinated by her beauty, but noticed an unwilling, almost a hostile
tone, in her voice.

Strangwise was speaking in his deep voice.

“Marcelle,” he said, “I’ve brought a friend who is anxious to meet you.
Major Desmond Okewood! He and I soldiered together in France!” The
dancer turned her big black eyes full on Desmond as she held out her
hand to him.

“Old friends, new friends,” she cried, clapping, her hands like a
child, “I love friends. Captaine, here is a very old friend,” she said
to Strangwise as Mr. Mackwayte and Barbara came into the rooms,
“Monsieur Arthur Mackwayte and ’is daughter. I ’ave know Monsieur
Arthur almos’ all my life. And, Mademoiselle, permit me? I introduce le
Captaine Strangwise and ’is friend... what is the name? Ah, Major
Okewood!”

Nur-el-Din sank into a _bergère_ chair beside her great mirror.

“There are too many in this room,” she cried, “there is no air!
Lazarro, Ramiro, all of you, go outside, my friends!”

As Madame’s entourage surged out, Strangwise said:

“I hear you are leaving the Palaceum, Marcelle!”

He spoke so low that Mr. Mackwayte and Barbara, who were talking to
Desmond, did not hear. Marcelle, taking off her heavy head-dress,
answered quickly:

“Who told you that?”

“Never mind,” replied Strangwise. “But you never told me you were
going. Why didn’t you?”

His voice was stern and hard now, very different from his usual quiet
and mellow tones. But he was smiling.

Marcelle cast a glance over her shoulder. Barbara was looking round the
room and caught the reflection of the dancer’s face in a mirror hanging
on the wall. To her intense astonishment, she saw a look of despair,
almost of terror, in Nur-el-Din’s dark eyes. It was like the frightened
stare of some hunted beast. Barbara was so much taken aback that she
instinctively glanced over her shoulder at the door, thinking that the
dancer had seen something there to frighten her. But the door was shut.
When Barbara looked into the mirror again, she saw only the reflection
of Nur-el-Din’s pretty neck and shoulders. The dancer was talking again
in low tones to Strangwise.

But Barbara swiftly forgot that glimpse of the dancer’s face in the
glass. For she was very happy. Happiness, like high spirits, is
eminently contagious, and the two men at her side were supremely
content.

Her father’s eyes were shining with his little success of the evening:
on the way upstairs Fletcher had held out hopes to him of a long
engagement at the Palaceum while as for the other, he was radiant with
the excitement of his first night in town after long months of
campaigning.

He was thinking that his leave had started most propitiously. After a
man has been isolated for months amongst muddy masculinity, the
homeliest woman will find favor in his eyes. And to neither of these
women, in whose presence he so unexpectedly found himself within a few
hours of landing in England, could the epithet “homely” be applied.
Each represented a distinct type of beauty in herself, and Desmond, as
he chatted with Barbara, was mentally contrasting the two women.
Barbara, tall and slim and very healthy, with her braided brown hair,
creamy complexion and gray eyes, was essentially English. She was the
typical woman of England, of England of the broad green valleys and
rolling downs and snuggling hamlets, of England of the white cliffs
gnawed by the restless ocean. The other was equally essentially a woman
of the South. Her dark eyes, her upper lip just baring her firm white
teeth, spoke of hot Latin or gypsy blood surging in her veins. Hers was
the beauty of the East, sensuous, arresting, conjuring up pictures of
warm, perfumed nights, the thrumming of guitars, a great yellow moon
hanging low behind the palms.

“Barbara!” called Nur-el-Din from the dressing table. Mr. Mackwayte had
joined her there and was chatting to Strangwise.

“You will stay and talk to me while I change _n’est-ce pas?_ Your papa
and these gentlemen are going to drink a whiskey-soda with that animal
Fletcher... _quel homme terrible_... and you shall join them
presently.”

The men went out, leaving Barbara alone with the dancer. Barbara
noticed how tired Nur-el-Din was looking. Her pretty, childish ways
seemed to have evaporated with her high spirits. Her face was heavy and
listless. There were lines round her eyes, and her mouth had a hard,
drawn look.

“Child,” she said, “give me, please, my _peignoir_... it is behind the
door,... and, I will get this paint off my face!”

Barbara fetched the wrapper and sat down beside the dancer. But
Nur-el-Din did not move. She seemed to be thinking. Barbara saw the
hunted look she had already observed in her that evening creeping over
her face again.

“It is a hard life; this life of ours, a life of change, _ma petite!_ A
great artiste has no country, no home, no fireside! For the past five
years I have been roaming about the world! Often I think I will settle
down, but the life holds me!”

She took up from her dressing-table a little oblong plain silver box.

“I want to ask you a favor, _ma petite_ Barbara!” she said. “This
little box is a family possession of mine: I have had it for many
years. The world is so disturbed to-day that life is not safe for
anybody who travels as much as I do! You have a home, a safe home with
your dear father! He was telling me about it! Will you take this little
box and keep it safely for me until... until... the war is over...
until I ask you for it?”

“Yes, of course,” said Barbara, “if you wish it, though, what with
these air raids, I don’t know that London is particularly safe,
either.”

“Ah! that is good of you,” cried Nur-el-Din, “anyhow, the little box is
safer with you than with me. See, I will wrap it up and seal it, and
then you will take it home with you, _n’est-ce pas?_”

She opened a drawer and swiftly hunting among its contents produced a
sheet of white paper, and some sealing-wax. She wrapped the box in the
paper and sealed it up, stamping the seals with a camel signet ring she
drew off her finger. Then she handed the package to Barbara.

There was a knock at the door. The maid, noiselessly arranging Madame’s
dresses in the corner opened it.

“You will take care of it well for me,” the dancer said to Barbara, and
her voice vibrated with a surprising eagerness, “you will guard it
preciously until I come for it...” She laughed and added carelessly:
“Because it is a family treasure, a life _mascotte_ of mine, _hein?_”

Then they heard Strangwise’s deep voice outside.

Nur-el-Din started.

“Le Captaine is there, Madame,” said the French maid, “’e say Monsieur
Mackwayte ask for Mademoiselle!”

The dancer thrust a little hand from the folds of her silken kimono.

“_Au revoir, ma petite_,” she said, “we shall meet again. You will come
and see me, _n’est-ce pas?_ And say nothing to anybody about...” she
pointed to Barbara’s bag where the little package was reposing, “it
shall be a secret between us, _hein?_ Promise me this, _mon enfant!_”

“Of course, I promise, if you like!” said Barbara, wonderingly.


At half-past eight the next morning Desmond Okewood found himself in
the ante-room of the Chief of the Secret Service in a cross and puzzled
mood. The telephone at his bedside had roused him at 8 a.m. from the
first sleep he had had in a real bed for two months. In a drowsy voice
he had protested that he had an appointment at the War Office at 10
o’clock, but a curt voice had bidden him dress himself and come to the
Chief forthwith. Here he was, accordingly, breakfastless, his chin
smarting from a hasty shave. What the devil did the Chief want with him
anyhow? _He_ wasn’t in the Secret Service, though his brother, Francis,
was.

A voice broke in upon his angry musing.

“Come in, Okewood!” it said.

The Chief stood at the door of his room, a broad-shouldered figure in a
plain jacket suit. Desmond had met him before. He knew him for a man of
many questions but of few confidences, yet his recollection of him was
of a suave, imperturbable personality. To-day, however, the Chief
seemed strangely preoccupied. There was a deep line between his bushy
eyebrows as he bent them at Desmond, motioning him to a chair. When he
spoke, his manner was very curt.

“What time did you part from the Mackwaytes at the theatre last night?”

Desmond was dumbfounded. How on earth did the Chief know about his
visit to the Palaceum? Still, he was used to the omniscience of the
British Intelligence, so he answered promptly:

“It was latish, sir; about midnight, I think!”

“They went home to Seven Kings alone!”

“Yes, sir, in a taxi!” Desmond replied.

The Chief contemplated his blotting-pad gloomily. Desmond knew it for a
trick of his when worried.

“Did you have a good night?” he said to Desmond, suddenly.

“Yes,” he said, not in the least understanding the drift of the
question. “... though I didn’t mean to get up quite so early!”

The Chief ignored this sally.

“Nothing out of the ordinary happened during the night, I suppose?” he
asked again.

Desmond shook his head.

“Nothing that I know of, sir,” he said.

“Seen Strangwise this morning?”

Desmond gasped for breath. So the Chief knew about him meeting
Strangwise, too!

“No, sir!”

A clerk put his head in at the door.

“Well, Matthews!”

“Captain Strangwise will be along very shortly, sir,” he said.

The Chief looked up quickly.

“Ah, he’s all right then! Good.”

“And, sir,” Matthews added, “Scotland Yard telephoned to say that the
doctor is with Miss Mackwayte now.”

Desmond started up.

“Is Miss Mackwayte ill?” he exclaimed.

The Chief answered slowly, as Matthews withdrew: “Mr. Mackwayte was
found murdered at his house early this morning!”




CHAPTER IV.
MAJOR OKEWOOD ENCOUNTERS A NEW TYPE


There is a sinister ring about the word “murder,” which reacts upon
even the most hardened sensibility. Edgar Allan Poe, who was a master
of the suggestive use of words, realized this when he called the
greatest detective story ever written “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”
From the very beginning of the war, Desmond had seen death in all its
forms but that word “murdered,” spoken with slow emphasis in the quiet
room, gave him an ugly chill feeling round the heart that he had never
experienced on the battlefield.

“Murdered!” Desmond repeated dully and sat down. He felt stunned. He
was not thinking of the gentle old man cruelly done to death or of the
pretty Barbara prostrate with grief. He was overawed by the curious
fatality that had plucked him from the horrors of Flanders only to
plunge him into a tragedy at home.

“Yes,” said the Chief bluntly, “by a burglar apparently—the house was
ransacked!”

“Chief,” he broke out, “you must explain. I’m all at sea! Why did you
send for me? What have you got to do with criminal cases, anyway?
Surely, this is a Scotland Yard matter!”

The Chief shook his head.

“I sent for you in default of your brother, Okewood!” he said. “You
once refused an offer of mine to take you into my service, but this
time I had to have you, so I got the War Office to wire...”

“Then my appointment for ten o’clock to-day was with you?” Desmond
exclaimed in astonishment.

The Chief nodded.

“It was,” he said curtly.

“But,” protested Desmond feebly, “did you know about this murder
beforehand!”

The Chief threw back his head and laughed.

“My dear fellow,” he said; “I’m not quite so deep as all that. I
haven’t second sight, you know!”

“You’ve got something devilish like it, sir!” said Desmond. “How on
earth did you know that I was at the Palaceum last night?”

The Chief smiled grimly.

“Oh, that’s very simple,” he said. “Shall I tell you some more about
yourself? You sat...” he glanced down at the desk in front of him,”...
in Stall E 52 and, after Nur-el-Din’s turn, Strangwise took you round
and introduced you to the lady. In her dressing-room you met Mr.
Mackwayte and his daughter. After that...”

“But,” Desmond interrupted quickly, “I must have been followed by one
of your men. Still, I can’t see why my movements should interest the
Secret Service, sir!”

The Chief remained silent for a moment. Then he said:

“Fate often unexpectedly takes a hand in this game of ours, Okewood. I
sent for you to come back from France but old man Destiny wouldn’t
leave it at that. Almost as soon as you landed he switched you straight
on to a trail that I have been patiently following up for months past.
That trail is...”

The telephone on the desk rang sharply.

“Whose trail?” Desmond could not forbear to ask as the Chief took off
the receiver.

“Just a minute,” the Chief said. Then he spoke into the telephone:

“Marigold? Yes. Really? Very well, I’ll come straight along now... I’ll
be with you in twenty minutes. Good-bye!”

He put down the receiver and rose to his feet.

“Okewood,” he cried gaily, “what do you say to a little detective work?
That was Marigold of the Criminal Investigation Department... he’s down
at Seven Kings handling this murder case. I asked him to let me know
when it would be convenient for me to come along and have a look round,
and he wants me to go now. Two heads are better than one. You’d better
come along!”

He pressed a button on the desk.

The swift and silent Matthews appeared.

“Matthews,” he said, “when Captain Strangwise comes, please tell him
I’ve been called away and ask him to call back here at two o’clock to
see me.”

He paused and laid a lean finger reflectively along his nose.

“Are you lunching anywhere, Okewood?” he said. Desmond shook his head.

“Then you will lunch with me, eh? Right. Come along and we’ll try to
find the way to Seven Kings.”

The two men threaded the busy corridors to the lift which deposited
them at the main entrance. A few minutes later the Chief was
dexterously guiding his Vauxhall car through the crowded traffic of the
Strand, Desmond beside him on the front seat.

Desmond was completely fogged in his mind. He couldn’t see light
anywhere. He asked himself in vain what possible connection could exist
between this murder in an obscure quarter of London and the man at his
side who, he knew, held in his firm hands lines that stretched to the
uttermost ends of the earth? What kind of an affair was this, seemingly
so commonplace that could take the Chief’s attention from the hundred
urgent matters of national security that occupied him?

The Chief seemed absorbed in his driving and Desmond felt it would be
useless to attempt to draw him out. They wended their way through the
city and out into the squalid length of the Mile End Road. Then the
Chief began to talk.

“I hate driving through the City,” he exclaimed, “but I always think
it’s good for the nerves. Still, I have a feeling that I shall smash
this old car up some day. That friend of yours, Strangwise, now he’s a
remarkable man! Do you know his story?”

“About his escape from Germany?” asked Desmond.

The Chief nodded.

“He told me something about it at dinner last night,” said Desmond,
“but he’s such a modest chap he doesn’t seem to like talking about it!”

“He must have a cool nerve,” replied the Chief, “he doesn’t know a word
of German, except a few scraps he picked up in camp. Yet, after he got
free, he made his way alone from somewhere in Hanover clear to the
Dutch frontier. And I tell you he kept his eyes and ears open!”

“Was he able to tell you anything good” asked Desmond.

“The man’s just full of information. He couldn’t take a note of any
kind, of course, but he seems to have a wonderful memory. He was able
to give us the names of almost every unit of troops he came across.”

He stopped to skirt a tram, then added suddenly:

“Do you know him well, Okewood?”

“Yes, I think I do,” said Desmond. “I lived with him for about three
months in France, and we got on top-hole together. He’s a man
absolutely without fear.”

“Yes,” agreed the Chief. “But what about his judgment? Would you call
him a well-balanced fellow? Or is he one of these harum-scarum soldier
of fortune sort of chaps?”

“I should say he was devilish shrewd,” replied the other. “Strangwise
is a very able fellow and a fine soldier. The Brigadier thought a lot
of him. There’s very little about artillery work that Strangwise
doesn’t know. Our Brigadier’s a good judge, too... he was a gunner
himself once, you know.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” answered the Chief, “because there are
some things he has told us, about the movements of troops,
particularly, that don’t agree in the least with our own Intelligence
reports. I am an old enough hand at my job to know that very often one
man may be right where fifty independent witnesses are dead wrong. Yet
our reports from Germany have been wonderfully accurate on the whole.”

He stopped.

“Tell me,” he asked suddenly, “is Strangwise a liar, do you think?”

Desmond laughed. The question was so very unexpected.

“Let me explain what I mean,” said the Chief. “There is a type of man
who is quite incapable of telling the plain, unvarnished truth. That
type of fellow might have the most extraordinary adventure happen to
him and yet be unable to let it stand on its merits. When he narrates
it, he trims it up with all kinds of embroidery. Is Strangwise that
type?”

Desmond thought a moment.

“Your silence is very eloquent,” said the Chief drily.

Desmond laughed.

“It’s not the silence of consent,” he said, “but if you want me to be
quite frank about Strangwise, Chief, I don’t mind telling you I don’t
like him overmuch. We were very intimate in France. We were in some
very tight corners together and he never let me down. He showed himself
to be a very fine fellow, indeed. There are points about him I admire
immensely. I love his fine physique, his manliness. I’m sure he’s got
great strength of character, too. It’s because I admire all this about
him that I think perhaps it’s just jealousy on my part when I feel...”

“What?” said the Chief.

“Well,” said Desmond slowly, “I feel myself trying to like something
below the surface in the man. And then I am balked. There seems to be
something abysmally deep behind the facade, if you know what I mean. If
I think about it much, it seems to me that there is too much surface
about Strangwise and not enough foundation! And he smiles... Well,
rather often, doesn’t he?”

“I know what you mean,” said the Chief. “I always tell my young men to
be wary when a man smiles too much. Smiles are sometimes camouflage, to
cover up something that mustn’t be seen underneath! Strangwise is a
Canadian, isn’t he?”

“I think so,” answered Desmond, “anyhow, he has lived there. But he got
his commission over here. He came over some time in 1915, I believe,
and joined up.”

“Ah, here we are!” cried the Chief, steering the car down a turning
marked “Laleham Villas.”

Laleham Villas proved to be an immensely long terrace of small
two-story houses, each one exactly like the other, the only difference
between them lying in the color of the front doors and the arrangement
of the small strip of garden in front of each. The houses stretched
away on either side in a vista of smoke-discolored yellow brick. The
road was perfectly straight and, in the dull yellow atmosphere of the
winter morning, unspeakably depressing.

The abode of small clerks and employees, Laleham Villas had rendered
up, an hour before, its daily tribute of humanity to the City-bound
trains of the Great Eastern Railway. The Mackwayte’s house was plainly
indicated, about 200 yards down on the right-hand side, by a knot of
errand boys and bareheaded women grouped on the side-walk. A large,
phlegmatic policeman stood at the gate.

“You’ll like Marigold,” said the Chief to Desmond as they got out of
the car, “quite a remarkable man and very sound at his work!”

British officers don’t number detective inspectors among their habitual
acquaintances, and the man that came out of the house to meet them was
actually the first detective that Desmond had ever met. Ever since the
Chief had mentioned his name, Desmond had been wondering whether Mr.
Marigold would be lean and pale and bewildering like Mr. Sherlock
Holmes or breezy and wiry like the detectives in American crook plays.

The man before him did not bear the faintest resemblance to either
type. He was a well-set up, broad-shouldered person of about
forty-five, very carefully dressed in a blue serge suit and black
overcoat, with a large, even-tempered countenance, which sloped into a
high forehead. The neatly brushed but thinning locks carefully arranged
across the top of the head testified to the fact that Mr. Marigold had
sacrificed most of his hair to the vicissitudes of his profession. When
it is added that the detective had a small, yellow moustache and a
pleasant, cultivated voice, there remains nothing further to say about
Mr. Marigold’s external appearance. But there was something so patent
about the man, his air of reserve, his careful courtesy, his shrewd
eyes, that Desmond at once recognized him for a type, a cast from a
certain specific mould. All services shape men to their own fashion.
There is the type of Guardsman, the type of airman, the type of naval
officer. And Desmond decided that Mr. Marigold must be the type of
detective, though, as I have said, he was totally unacquainted with the
_genus_.

“Major Okewood, Marigold,” said the Chief, “a friend of mine!”

Mr. Marigold mustered Desmond in one swift, comprehensive look.

“I won’t give you my hand, Major,” the detective said, looking down at
Desmond’s proffered one, “for I’m in a filthy mess and no error. But
won’t you come in, sir?” he said to the Chief and led the way across
the mosaic tile pathway to the front door which stood open.

“I don’t think this is anything in your line, sir,” said Mr. Marigold
to the Chief as the three men entered the house, “it’s nothing but just
a common burglary. The old man evidently heard a noise and coming down,
surprised the burglar who lost his head and killed him. The only novel
thing about the whole case is that the old party was shot with a pistol
and not bludgeoned, as is usually the case in affairs of this kind. And
I shouldn’t have thought that the man who did it was the sort that
carries a gun...”

“Then you know who did it?” asked the Chief quietly.

“I think I can safely say I do, sir,” said Mr. Marigold with the
reluctant air of one who seldom admits anything to be a fact, “I think
I can go as far as that! And we’ve got our man under lock and key!”

“That’s a smart piece of work, Marigold,” said the Chief.

“No, sir,” replied the other, “you could hardly call it that. He just
walked into the arms of a constable over there near Goodmayes Station
with the swag on him. He’s an old hand... we’ve known him for a
receiver for years!

“Who is it?” asked the Chief, “not one of my little friends, I suppose,
eh, Marigold!”

“Dear me, no, sir,” answered Mr. Marigold, chuckling, “it’s one of old
Mackwayte’s music-hall pals, name o’ Barney!”




CHAPTER V.
THE MURDER AT SEVEN KINGS


“This is Mrs. Chugg, sir,” said Mr. Marigold, “the charwoman who found
the body!”

The Chief and Desmond stood at the detective’s side in the Mackwaytes’
little dining-room. The room was in considerable disorder. There was a
litter of paper, empty bottles, overturned cruets and other _débris_ on
the floor, evidence of the thoroughness with which the burglar had
overhauled the cheap fumed oak sideboard which stood against the wall
with doors and drawers open. In the corner, the little roll-top desk
showed a great gash in the wood round the lock where it had been
forced. The remains of a meal still stood on the table.

Mrs. Chugg, a diminutive, white-haired, bespectacled woman in a rusty
black cape and skirt, was enthroned in the midst of this scene of
desolation. She sat in an armchair by the fire, her hands in her lap,
obviously supremely content with the position of importance she
enjoyed. At the sound of Mr. Marigold’s voice, she bobbed up and
regarded the newcomers with the air of a tragedy queen.

“Yus mister,” she said with the slow deliberation of one who thoroughly
enjoys repeating an oft-told tale, “I found the pore man and a horrid
turn it give me, too, I declare! I come in early this morning a-purpose
to turn out these two rooms, the dining-room and the droring-room, same
as I always do of a Saturday, along of the lidy’s horders and wishes. I
come in ’ere fust, to pull up the blinds and that, and d’reckly I
switches on the light ‘Burglars!’ I sez to meself, ‘Burglars! That’s
wot it is!’ seeing the nasty mess the place was in. Up I nips to Miss
Mackwayte’s room on the first floor and in I bursts. ‘Miss,’ sez I,
‘Miss, there’s been burglars in the house!’ and then I sees the pore
lamb all tied up there on ’er blessed bed! Lor, mister, the turn it
give me and I ain’t telling you no lies! She was strapped up that tight
with a towel crammed in ’er mouth she couldn’t ’ardly dror ’er breath!
I undid ’er pretty quick and the fust thing she sez w’en I gets the
towl out of her mouth, the pore dear, is ‘Mrs. Chugg,’ she sez all of a
tremble as you might say, ‘Mrs. Chugg’ sez she, ‘my father! my father!’
sez she. With that up she jumps but she ’adn’t put foot to the floor
w’en down she drops! It was along of ’er being tied up orl that time,
dyer see, mister! I gets ’er back on the bed. ‘You lie still, Miss,’
says I, ‘and I’ll pop in and tell your pa to come in to you!’ Well; I
went to the old genelmun’s room. Empty!”

Mrs. Chugg paused to give her narrative dramatic effect.

“And where did you find Mr. Mackwayte?” asked the Chief in such a
placid voice that Mrs. Chugg cast an indignant glance at him.

“I was jes’ going downstairs to see if ’e was in the kitching or out at
the back,” she continued, unheeding the interruption, “when there on
the landing I sees a foot asticking out from under the curting. I pulls
back the curting and oh, Lor! oh, dear, oh, dear, the pore genelmun,
’im as never did a bad turn to no one!”

“Come, come, Mrs. Chugg!” said the detective.

The charwoman wiped her eyes and resumed.

“’E was a-lying on his back in ’is dressing-gown, ’is face all burnt
black, like, and a fair smother o’ blood. Under ’is hed there was a
pool o’ blood, mister, yer may believe me or not...”

Mr. Marigold cut in decisively.

“Do you wish to see the body, sir?” the detective asked the Chief,
“they’re upstairs photographing it!”

The Chief nodded. He and Desmond followed the detective upstairs,
whilst Mrs. Chugg resentfully resumed her seat by the fire. On her face
was the look of one who has cast pearls before swine.

“Any finger-prints?” asked the Chief in the hall.

“Oh, no,” he said, “Barney’s far too old a hand for that sort o’
thing!”

The landing proved to be a small space, covered with oilcloth and
raised by a step from the bend made by the staircase leading to the
first story. On the left-hand side was a window looking on a narrow
passage separating the Mackwayte house from its neighbors and leading
to the back-door. By the window stood a small wicker-work table with a
plant on it. At the back of the landing was a partition, glazed
half-way up and a door—obviously the bath-room.

The curtain had been looped right over its brass rod. The body lay on
its back at the foot of the table, arms flung outward, one leg doubled
up, the other with the foot just jutting out over the step leading down
to the staircase. The head pointed towards the bath-room door. Over the
right eye the skin of the face was blackened in a great patch and there
was a large blue swelling, like a bruise, in the centre. There was a
good deal of blood on the face which obscured the hole made by the
entrance of the bullet. The eyes were half-closed. A big camera,
pointed downwards, was mounted on a high double ladder straddling the
body and was operated by a young man in a bowler hat who went on with
his work without taking the slightest notice of the detective and his
companions.

“Close range,” murmured Desmond, after glancing at the dead man’s face,
“a large calibre automatic pistol, I should think!”

“Why do you think it was a large calibre pistol, Major?” asked Mr.
Marigold attentively.

“I’ve seen plenty of men killed at close range by revolver and rifle
bullets out at the front,” replied Desmond, “but I never saw a man’s
face messed up like this. In a raid once I shot a German at point blank
range with my revolver, the ordinary Army issue pattern, and I looked
him over after. But it wasn’t anything like this. The only thing I’ve
seen approaching it was one of our sergeants who was killed out on
patrol by a Hun officer who put his gun right in our man’s face. That
sergeant was pretty badly marked, but...”

He shook his head. Then he added, addressing the detective: “Let’s see
the gun! Have you got it?”

Mr. Marigold shook his head.

“He hadn’t got it on him,” he answered, “he swears he never had a gun.
I expect he chucked it away somewhere. It’ll be our business to find it
for him!”

He smiled rather grimly, then added:

“Perhaps you’d care to have a look at Miss Mackwayte’s room, sir!”

“Is Miss Mackwayte there” asked the Chief.

“I got her out of this quick,” replied Mr. Marigold, “she’s had a bad
shock, poor girl, though she gave her evidence clearly enough for all
that... as far as it goes and that’s not much. Some friends near by
have taken her in! The doctor has given her some bromide and says she’s
got to be kept quiet...”

“What’s her story!” queried the Chief.

“She can’t throw much light on the business. She and her father reached
home from the theatre about a quarter past twelve, had a bit of supper
in the dining-room and went up to bed before one o’clock. Miss
Mackwayte saw her father go into his room, which is next to hers, and
shut the door. The next thing she knows is that she woke up suddenly
with some kind of a loud noise in her ears... that was the report of
the pistol, I’ve no doubt... she thought for a minute it was an air
raid. Then suddenly a hand was pressed over her mouth, something was
crammed into her mouth and she was firmly strapped down to the bed.”

“Did she see the man?” asked Desmond.

“She didn’t see anything from first to last,” answered the detective,
“as far as she is concerned it might have been a woman or a black man
who trussed her up. It was quite dark in her bedroom and this burglar
fellow, after binding and gagging her, fastened a bandage across her
eyes into the bargain. She says she heard him moving about her room and
then creep out very softly. The next thing she knew was Mrs. Chugg
arriving at her bedside this morning.”

“What time did this attack take place?” asked the Chief.

“She has no idea,” answered the detective. “She couldn’t see her watch
and they haven’t got a striking clock in the house.”

“But can she make no guess!”

“Well, she says she thinks it was several hours before Mrs. Chugg
arrived in the morning... as much as three hours, she thinks!”

“And what time did Mrs. Chugg arrive!”

“At half-past six!”

“About Mackwayte... how long was he dead when they found him? What does
the doctor say?”

“About three hours approximately, but you know, they can’t always tell
to an hour or so!”

“Well,” said the Chief slowly, “it looks as if one might figure the
murder as having been committed some time between 3 and 3.30 a.m.”

“My idea exactly,” said Mr. Marigold. “Shall we go upstairs?”

He conducted the Chief and Desmond up the short flight of stairs to the
first story. He pushed open the first door he came to.

“Mackwayte’s room, on the back,” he said, “bed slept in, as you see,
old gentleman’s clothes on a chair—obviously he was disturbed by some
noise made by the burglar and came out to see what was doing! And
here,” he indicated a door adjoining, “is Miss Mackwayte’s room, on the
front; as you observe. They don’t use the two rooms on the second
floor, except for box-rooms... one’s full of old Mackwayte’s theatre
trunks and stuff. They keep no servant; Mrs. Chugg comes in each
morning and stays all day. She goes away after supper every evening.”

Desmond found himself looking into a plainly furnished but dainty
bedroom with white furniture and a good deal of chintz about. There
were some photographs and pictures hanging on the walls. The room was
spotlessly clean and very tidy.

Desmond remarked on this, asking if the police had put the room
straight.

Mr. Marigold looked quite shocked.

“Oh, no, everything is just as it was when Mrs. Chugg found Miss
Mackwayte this morning. There’s Miss Mackwayte’s gloves and handbag on
the toilet-table just as she left ’em last night. I wouldn’t let her
touch her clothes even. She went over to Mrs. Appleby’s in her
dressing-gown, in a taxi.”

“Then Master Burglar didn’t burgle this room?” asked the Chief.

“Nothing touched, not even the girl’s money,” replied Marigold.

“Then why did he come up here at all?” asked Desmond.

“Obviously, the old gentleman disturbed him,” was the detective’s
reply. “Barney got scared and shot the old gentleman, then came up here
to make sure that the daughter would not give him away before he could
make his escape. He must have known the report of the gun would wake
her up.”

“But are there no clues or finger-prints or anything of that kind here,
Marigold?” asked the Chief.

“Not a finger-print anywhere,” responded the other, “men like Barney
are born wise to the fingerprint business, sir.”

He dipped a finger and thumb into his waistcoat pocket.

“Clues? Well, I’ve got one little souvenir here which I daresay a
writer of detective stories would make a good bit of.”

He held in his hand a piece of paper folded flat. He unfolded it and
disclosed a loop of dark hair.

“There!” he said mockingly, straightening out the hair and holding it
up in the light. “That’s calculated to set one’s thoughts running all
over the place, isn’t it? That piece of hair was caught in the buckle
of one of the straps with which Miss Mackwayte was bound to the bed.
Miss Mackwayte, I would point out, has brown hair. _Whose hair do you
think that is?_”

Desmond looked closely at the strand of hair in the detective’s
fingers. It was long and fine and glossy and jetblack.

The Chief laughed and shook his head.

“Haven’t an idea, Marigold,” he answered, “Barney’s, I should imagine,
that is, if he goes about with black ringlets falling round his
shoulders.”

“Barney?” echoed the detective. “Barney’s as bald as I am. Besides, if
you saw his sheet, you’d realize that he has got into the habit of
wearing his hair short!”

He carefully rolled the strand of hair up, replaced it in its paper and
stowed it in his waistcoat pocket.

“It just shows how easily one is misled in a matter of this kind,” he
went on. “Supposing Barney hadn’t got himself nabbed, supposing I
hadn’t been able to find out from Miss Mackwayte her movements on the
night previous to the murder, that strand of hair might have led me on
a fine wild goose chase!”

“But, damn it, Marigold,” exclaimed the Chief, laughing, “you haven’t
told us whose hair it is?”

“Why, Nur-el-Din’s, of course!”

The smile froze on the Chief’s lips, the laughter died out of his eyes.
Desmond was amazed at the change in the man. The languid interest he
had taken in the different details of the crime vanished. Something
seemed to tighten up suddenly in his face and manner.

“Why Nur-el-Din?” he asked curtly.

Mr. Marigold glanced quickly at him. Desmond remarked that the
detective was sensible of the change too.

“Simply because Miss Mackwayte spent some time in the dancer’s
dressing-room last night, sir,” he replied quietly, “she probably sat
at her dressing-table and picked up this hair in hers or in her veil or
something and it dropped on the bed where one of Master Barney’s
buckles caught it up.”

He spoke carelessly but Desmond noticed that he kept a watchful eye on
the other.

The Chief did not answer. He seemed to have relapsed into the
preoccupied mood in which Desmond had found him that morning.

“I was going to suggest, sir,” said Mr. Marigold diffidently, “if you
had the time, you might care to look in at the Yard, and see the
prisoner. I don’t mind telling you that he is swearing by all the
tribes of Judah that he’s innocent of the murder of old Mackwayte. He’s
got an amazing yarn... perhaps you’d like to hear it!”

Mr. Marigold suddenly began to interest Desmond. His proposal was put
forward so modestly that one would have thought the last thing he
believed possible was that the Chief should acquiesce in his
suggestion. Yet Desmond had the feeling that the detective was far from
being so disinterested as he wished to seem. It struck Desmond that the
case was more complicated than Mr. Marigold admitted and that the
detective knew it. Had Mr. Marigold discovered that the Chief knew a
great deal more about this mysterious affair than the detective knew
himself? And was not his attitude of having already solved the problem
of the murder, his treatment of the Chief as a dilettante criminologist
simply an elaborate pose, to extract from the Chief information which
had not been proffered?

The Chief glanced at his watch.

“Right,” he said, “I think I’d like to go along.”

“I have a good deal to do here still,” observed Mr. Marigold, “so, if
you don’t mind, I won’t accompany you. But perhaps, sir, you would like
to see me this afternoon?”

The Chief swung round on his heel and fairly searched Mr. Marigold with
a glance from beneath his bushy eyebrows. The detective returned his
gaze with an expression of supreme innocence.

“Why, Marigold,” answered the Chief, “I believe I should. Six o’clock
suit you?”

“Certainly, sir,” said Mr. Marigold.

Desmond stood by the door, vastly amused by this duel of wits. The
Chief and Mr. Marigold made a move towards the door, Desmond turned to
open it and came face to face with a large framed photograph of the
Chief hanging on the wall of Miss Mackwayte’s bedroom.

“Why, Chief,” he cried, “you never told me you knew Miss Mackwayte!”

The Chief professed to be very taken aback by this question. “Dear me,
didn’t I, Okewood?” he answered with eyes laughing, “she’s my
secretary!”




CHAPTER VI.
“NAME O’BARNEY”


“Miss Mackwayte telephoned to ask if I could go and see her,” said the
Chief to Desmond as they motored back to White hall, “Marigold gave me
the message just as we were coming out. She asked if I could come this
afternoon. I’m going to send you in my place, Okewood. I’ve got a
conference with the head of the French Intelligence at three, and the
Lord knows when I shall get away. I’ve a notion that you and Miss
Mackwayte will work very well together.”

“Certainly,” said Desmond, “she struck me as being a very charming and
clever girl. Now I know the source of your information about my
movements last night!”

“That you certainly don’t!” answered the Chief promptly, “if I thought
you did Duff and No.39 should be sacked on the spot!”

“Then it wasn’t Miss Mackwayte who told you?”

“I haven’t seen or heard from Miss Mackwayte since she left my office
yesterday evening. You were followed!”

“But why?”

“I’ll tell you all about it at, lunch!”

Bated once more, Desmond retired into his shell. By this he was
convinced of the utter impossibility of making the Chief vouchsafe any
information except voluntarily.

Mr. Marigold had evidently announced their coming to Scotland Yard, for
a very urbane and delightful official met them at the entrance and
conducted them to a room where the prisoner was already awaiting them
in charge of a plain clothes man. There the official excused himself
and retired, leaving them alone with the prisoner and his escort.

Barney proved to be a squat, podgy, middle-aged Jew of the familiar
East End Polish or Russian type. He had little black beady eyes, a
round fat white face, and a broad squabby Mongol nose. His clothes were
exceedingly seedy, and the police had confiscated his collar and tie.
This absence of neckwear, coupled with the fact that the lower part of
his face was sprouting with a heavy growth of beard, gave him a
peculiarly villainous appearance:

He was seated on a chair, his head sunk on his breast. His eyes were
hollow, and his face overspread with a horrible sickly greenish pallor,
the hue of the last stage of fear. His hands, resting on his knees,
twisted and fiddled continually. Every now and then convulsive shudders
shook him. The man was quite obviously on the verge of a collapse.

As the Chief and Desmond advanced into the room, the Jew looked up in
panic. Then he sprang to his feet with a scream and flung himself on
his knees, crying:

“Ah, no! Don’t take me away! I ain’t done no ’arm, gentlemen! S’welp
me, gentlemen, I ain’t a murderer! I swear...”

“Get him up!” said the Chief in disgust, “and, look here, can’t you
give him a drink? I want to speak to him. He’s not fit to talk
rationally in this state!”

The detective pushed a bell in the wall, a policeman answered it, and
presently the prisoner was handed a stiff glass of whiskey and water.

After Barney had swallowed it, the Chief said:

“Now, look here, my man, I want you to tell me exactly what happened
last night. No fairy tales, remember! I know what you told the police,
and if I catch you spinning me any yarns on to it, well, it’ll only be
the worse for you. I don’t mind telling you, you’re in a pretty bad
mess!”

The prisoner put down the glass wearily and wiped his forehead with the
back of his hand. Though the room was bitterly cold, the perspiration
stood out in beads on his brow.

“I have told the trewth, sir,” he said hoarsely, “and it goes against
me, don’t it? Hafen’t I not gif myself op to the policeman? Couldn’t I
not haf drop the svag and ron away? For sure! And vy didn’t I not do
it? For vy, because of vot I seen in that house. I’ve ’ad my bit of
trobble mit the police and vy should I tell them how I vos op to a game
last night if I vas not a-telling the trewth, eh! I’ve been on the
crook, gentlemen, I say it, ja, but I ain’t no murderer, God choke me I
ain’t!

“I’ve earned gut monney in my time on the ’alls but life is very ’ardt,
and I’ve been alvays hongry these days. Yesterday I meet old Mac wot I
used to meet about the ’alls I vos workin’ along o’ my boss... at the
agent’s it vos were I vos lookin’ for a shop! The perfesh always makes
a splash about its salaries, gentlemen, and Mac ’e vos telling me vot a
lot o’ monney he make on the Samuel Circuit and ’ow ’e ’ad it at home
all ready to put into var savings certif’kits. I never done a job like
this von before, gentlemen, but I vos hardt pushed for money, s’welp me
I vos!

“I left it till late last night because of these air raids... I vanted
to be sure that ole Mac and ’is daughter should be asleep. I god in
from the back of the louse, oi, oi, bot it vos dead easy! through the
scollery vindow. I cleared op a bagful of stuff in the dining-room...
there vosn’t, anything vorth snatching outer the parlor... and
sixty-five quid out of an old cigar-box in the desk. The police ’as got
it... I give it all back! I say I haf stolen, but murder? No!” He
paused.

“Go on,” said the Chief.

The prisoner looked about him in a frightened way.

“I vos jus’ thinking I had better be getting avay, he continued in his
hoarse, gutteral voice, ’ven snick.!... I hears a key in the front
door. I vos, standing by the staircase... I had no time to get out by
the vay I had kom so I vent opstairs to the landing vere there vos a
curtain. I shlip behind the curtain and vait! I dare not look out but I
listen, I listen.. I hear some one go into the dining-room and move
about. I open the curtain a little way... so!... because I think I vill
shlip downstairs vile the other party is in the dining-room... and
there I sees ole Mac in his dressing-gown just coming down from the
first floor. The same moment I hear a step in the front hall.

“I see ole Mac start but he does not stop. He kom right downstairs, and
I step back behind the curtain ontil I find a door vich I push. I dare
not svitch on my light but presently I feel the cold edge of a bath
with my hands. I stay there and vait. Oi, oi, oi, how shall you belief
vot I tell?”

He broke off trembling.

“Go on, Barney,” said the detective, “can’t you see the gentlemen are
waiting?”

The Jew resumed, his voice sinking almost to a whisper.

“It vos quite dark behind the curtain but from the bathroom, through
the open door, I could just see ole Mac standing with his back to me,
a-holding the curtain. He must haf shlip in there to watch the other
who vos komming opstairs. Then... then... I hear a step on the stair...
a little, soft step... then ole Mac he open the curtain and cry ‘Who
are you?’ Bang! the... the... other on the stairs he fire a shot. I see
the red flash and I smell the... the powder not? The other, he does not
vait... he just go on opstairs and ole Mac is lying there on his back
with the blood a-trickling out on the oil-cloth. And I, vith my bag on
my back, I creep downstair and out by the back again, and I ron and ron
and then I valks. Gott! how I haf walked! I vos so frightened! And
then, at last, I go to a policeman and gif ‘myself op!”

Barney stopped. The tears burst from his eyes and laying his grimy face
on his arm, he sobbed.

The detective patted him on the back.

“Pull yourself together, man!” he said encouragingly.

“This man on the stairs,” queried the Chief, “did you see him?”

“Ach was!” replied the prisoner, turning a tearstained face towards
him, “I haf seen nothing, except old Mac’s back vich vos right in vront
of me, it vos so dark!”

“But couldn’t you see the other person at all, not even the outline”
persisted the Chief.

The prisoner made a gesture of despair.

“It vos so dark, I say! Nothing haf I seen! I haf heard only his step!”

“What sort of step? Was it heavy or light or what? Did this person seem
in a hurry?”

“A little light tread... so! won, two! won, two!, and qvick like ’e
think ’e sneak opstairs vithout nobody seeing!”

“Did he make much noise”

“Ach was! hardly at all... the tread, ’e vos so light like a
woman’s...”

“Like a woman’s, eh!”, repeated the Chief, as if talking to himself,
“Why do you think that?”

“Because for vy it vos so gentle! The’ staircase, she haf not sqveak as
she haf sqveak when I haf creep away!”

The Chief turned to the plain clothes man.

“You can take him away now, officer,” he said.

Barney sprang up trembling.

“Not back to the cell,” he cried imploringly, “I cannot be alone. Oh,
gentlemen, you vill speak for me! I haf not had trobble vith the police
this long time! My vife’s cousin, he is an elder of the Shool he vill
tell you ’ow poor ve haf been...”

But the Chief crossed the room to the door and the detective hustled
the prisoner away.

Then the official whom they had seen before came in.

“Glad I caught you,” he said. “I thought you would care to see the post
mortem report. The doctor has just handed it in.”

The chief waved him off.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt about the cause of death,” he replied,
“we saw the body ourselves...”

“Quite so,” replied the other, “but there is something interesting
about this report all the same. They were able to extract the bullet!”

“Oh,” said the Chief, “that ought to tell us something!”

“It does,” answered the official. “We’ve submitted it to our small arms
expert, and he pronounces it to be a bullet fired by an automatic
pistol of unusually large calibre.”

The Chief looked at Desmond.

“You were right there,” he said.

“And,” the official went on, “our man says, further, that, as far as he
knows, there is only one type of automatic pistol that fires a bullet
as big as this one!”

“And that is?” asked the Chief.

“An improved pattern of the German Mauser pistol,” was the other’s
startling reply.


The Chief tapped a cigarette meditatively on the back of his hand.

“Okewood,” he said, “you are the very model of discretion. I have put
your reticence to a pretty severe test this morning, and you have stood
it very well. But I can see that you are bristling with questions like
a porcupine with quills. Zero hour has arrived. You may fire away!”

They were sitting in the smoking-room of the United Service Club. “The
Senior,” as men call it, is the very parliament of Britain’s
professional navy and army. Even in these days when war has flung wide
the portals of the two services to all-comers, it retains a touch of
rigidity. Famous generals and admirals look down from the lofty walls
in silent testimony of wars that have been. Of the war that is, you
will hear in every cluster of men round the little tables. Every day in
the hour after luncheon battles are fought over again, personalities
criticized, and decisions weighed with all the vigorous freedom of
ward-room or the mess ante-room.

And so to-day, as he sat in his padded leather chair, surveying the
Chief’s quizzing face across the little table where their coffee was
steaming, Desmond felt the oddness of the contrast between the direct,
matter-of-fact personalities all around them, and the extraordinary web
of intrigue which seemed to have spun itself round the little house at
Seven Kings.

Before he answered the Chief’s question, he studied him for a moment
under cover of lighting a cigarette. How very little, to be sure,
escaped that swift and silent mind! At luncheon the Chief had
scrupulously avoided making, the slightest allusion to the thoughts
with which Desmond’s mind was seething. Instead he had told, with the
gusto of the born raconteur, a string of extremely droll yarns about
“double crosses,” that is, obliging gentlemen who will spy for both
sides simultaneously, he had come into contact with during his long and
varied career. Desmond had played up to him and repressed the questions
which kept rising to his lips. Hence the Chief’s unexpected tribute to
him in the smoking room.

“Well,” said Desmond slowly, “there _are_ one or two things I should
like to know. What am I here for? Why did you have me followed last
night? How did you know, before we ever went to Seven Kings, that
Barney did not murder old Mackwayte? And lastly...”

He paused, fearing to be rash; then he risked it:

“And lastly, Nur-el-Din?”

The Chief leant back in his chair and laughed.

“I’m sure you feel much better now,” he said. Then his face grew grave
and he added:

“Your last question answers all the others!”

“Meaning Nur-el-Din?” asked Desmond.

The Chief nodded.

“Nur-el-Din,” he repeated. “That’s why you’re here, that’s why I had
you followed last night, that’s why I...” he hesitated for the word,
“let’s say, _presumed_ (one knows for certain so little in our work)
that our friend Barney had nothing to do with the violent death of poor
old Mackwayte. Nur-el-Din in the center, the kernel, the hub of
everything!”

The Chief leant across the table and Desmond pulled his chair closer.

“There’s only one other man in the world can handle this job, except
you,” he began, “and that’s your brother Francis. Do you know where he
is, Okewood?”

“He wrote to me last from Athens,” answered Desmond, “but that must be
nearly two months ago.”

The Chief laughed.

“His present address is not Athens,” he said, “if you want to know,
he’s serving on a German Staff somewhere at the back of Jerusalem the
Golden. Frankly, I know you don’t care about our work, and I did my
best to get your brother. He has had his instructions and as soon as he
can get away he will. That was not soon enough for me. It had to be him
or you. So I sent for you.”

He stopped and cleared his throat. Desmond stared at him. He could
hardly believe his eyes. This quiet, deliberate man was actually
embarrassed.

“Okewood,” the Chief went on, “you know I like plain speaking, and
therefore you won’t make the mistake of thinking I’m trying to flatter
you.”

Desmond made a gesture.

“Wait a moment and hear me out,” the Chief went on. “What is required
for this job is a man of great courage and steady nerve. Yes, we have
plenty of fellows like that. But the man I am looking for must, in
addition to possessing those qualities, know German and the Germans
thoroughly, and when I say thoroughly I mean to the very core so that,
if needs be, he may be a German, think German, act German. I have men
in my service who know German perfectly and can get themselves up to
look the part to the life. But they have never been put to the real,
the searching test. Not one of them has done what you and your brother
successfully accomplished. The first time I came across you, you had
just come out of Germany after fetching your brother away. To have
lived for weeks in Germany in wartime and to have got clear away is a
feat which shows that both you and he can be trusted to make a success
of one of the most difficult and critical missions I have ever had to
propose. Francis is not here. That’s why I want you.”

The Chief paused as if weighing something in his mind.

“It’s not the custom of either service, Okewood,” he said, “to send a
man to certain death. You’re not in this creepy, crawly business of
ours. You’re a pukka soldier and keen on your job. So I want you to
know that you are free to turn down this offer of mine here and now,
and go back to France without my thinking a bit the worse of you.”

“Would you tell me something about it?” asked Desmond.

“I’m sorry I can’t,” replied the other. “There must be only two men in
this secret, myself and the fellow who undertakes the mission. Of
course, it’s not certain death. If you take this thing on, you’ll have
a sporting chance for your life, but that’s all. It’s going to be a
desperate game played against a desperate opponent. Now do you
understand why I didn’t want you to think I was flattering you? You’ve
got your head screwed on right, I know, but I should hate to feel
afterwards, if anything went wrong, that you thought I had buttered you
up in order to entice you into taking the job on!”

Desmond took two or three deep puffs of his cigarette and dropped it
into the ash-tray.

“I’ll see you!” he said.

The Chief grinned with delight.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed, “I knew you were my man!”




CHAPTER VII.
NUR-EL-DIN


The love of romance is merely the nobler form of curiosity. And there
was something in Desmond Okewood’s Anglo-Irish parentage that made him
fiercely inquisitive after adventure. In him two men were constantly
warring, the Irishman, eager for romance yet too indolent to go out in
search of it, and the Englishman, cautious yet intensely vital withal,
courting danger for danger’s sake.

All his ill-humor of the morning at being snatched away from his work
in France had evaporated. In the Chief he now saw only the magician who
was about to unlock to him the realms of Adventure. Desmond’s eyes
shone with excitement as the other, obviously simmering with
satisfaction, lit another cigarette and began to speak.

“The British public, Okewood,” he said, hitching his chair closer,
“would like to see espionage in this country rendered impossible. Such
an ideal state of things is, unfortunately out of the question. Quite
on the contrary, this country of ours is honeycombed with spies. So it
will ever be, as long as we have to work with natural means: at present
we have no caps of invisibility or magician’s carpets available.

“As we cannot hope to kill the danger, we do our best to scotch it.
Personally, my modest ambition is to make espionage as difficult as
possible for the enemy by knowing as many as possible of his agents and
their channels of communication, and by keeping him happy with small
results, to prevent him from finding out the really important things,
the disclosure of which would inevitably compromise our national
safety.”

He paused and Desmond nodded.

“The extent of our business,” the Chief resumed, “is so large, the
issues at stake so vital, that we at the top have to ignore the
non-essentials and stick to the essentials. By the nonessentials I mean
the little potty spies, actuated by sheer hunger or mere officiousness,
the neutral busybody who makes a tip-and-run dash into England, the
starving waiter, miserably underpaid by some thieving rogue in a
neutral country—or the frank swindler who sends back to the Fatherland
and is duly paid for long reports about British naval movements which
he has concocted without setting foot outside his Bloomsbury lodgings.

“These folk are dealt with somehow and every now and then one of ’em
gets shot, just to show that we aren’t asleep, don’t you know? But
spasmodic reports we can afford to ignore. What we are death on is
anything like a regular news service from this country to Germany; and
to keep up this steady flow of reliable information is the perpetual
striving of the men who run the German Secret Service.

“These fellows, my dear Okewood, move in darkness. Very often we have
to grope after ’em in darkness, too. _They_ don’t get shot, or hardly
ever; they are far too clever for that. Between us and them it is a
never-ending series of move and countermove, check and counter-check.
Very often we only know of their activities by enemy action based on
their reports. Then there is another leak to be caulked, another
rat-hole to be nailed up, and so the game goes on. Hitherto I think I
may say we have managed to hold our own!”

The Chief stopped to light another cigarette. Then he resumed but in a
lower voice.

“During the past month, Okewood,” he said, “a new organization has
cropped up. The objective of every spy operating in this country is, as
you may have surmised, naval matters, the movements of the Fleet, the
military transports, and the food convoys. This new organization has
proved itself more efficient than any of its predecessors. It
specializes in the movement of troops to France, and in the journeys of
the hospital ships across the Channel. Its information is very prompt
and extremely accurate, as we know too well. There have been some very
disquieting incidents in which, for once in a way, luck has been on our
side, but as long as this gang can work in the dark there is the danger
of a grave catastrophe. With its thousands of miles of sea to patrol,
the Navy has to take a chance sometimes, you know! Well, on two
occasions lately, when chances were taken, _the Hun knew we were taking
a chance_, and what is more, _when and where we were taking it!_”

The Chief broke off, then looking Desmond squarely in the eyes, said:

“This is the organization that you’re going to beak up!”

Desmond raised his eyebrows.

“Who is at the head of it?” he asked quietly.

The Chief, smiled a little bitterly.

“By George!” he cried, slapping his thigh, “you’ve rung the bell in
one. Okewood, I’m not a rich man, but I would gladly give a year’s pay
to be able to answer that question. To be perfectly frank with you, I
don’t know who is at the back of this crowd, but...” his mouth set in a
grim line, “I’m going to know!”

He added whimsically:

“What’s more, you’re going to find out for me!”

Desmond smiled at the note of assurance in his voice.

“I suppose you’ve got something to go on?” he asked. “There’s
Nur-el-Din, for instance. What about her?”

“That young person,” replied the Chief, “is to be your particular
study. If she is not the center of the whole conspiracy, she is, at any
rate, in the thick of it. It will be part of your job to ascertain the
exact rôle she is playing.”

“But what is there against her?” queried Desmond.

“What is there against her? The bad company she keeps is against her.
‘Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are’ is a maxim
that we have to go on in our profession, Okewood. You have met the
lady. Did you see any of her entourage? Her business manager, a fat
Italian who calls himself Lazarro, did you notice him? Would you be
surprised to hear that Lazarro alias Sacchetti alias Le Tardenois is a
very notorious international spy who after working in the Italian
Secret Service in the pay of the Germans was unmasked and kicked out of
Italy... that was before the war? This pleasant gentleman subsequently
did five years in the French penal settlements in New Caledonia for
robbery with violence at Aix-les-Bains... oh, we know a whole lot about
him! And this woman’s other friends! Do you know, for instance, where
she often spends the week-end? At the country-place of one Bryan
Mowbury, whose name used to be Bernhard Marburg, a very old hand indeed
in the German Secret Service. She has identified herself right and left
with the German espionage service in this country. One day she lunches
with a woman spy, whose lover was caught and shot by the French. Then
she goes out motoring with...”

“But why in Heaven’s name are all these people allowed to run loose?”
broke in Desmond. “Do you mean to say you can’t arrest them?”

“Arrest ’em? Arrest ’em? Of course, we can arrest ’em. But what’s the
use? They’re all small fry, and we have to keep out a few lines baited
with minnows to catch the Tritons. None of ’em can do any harm: we
watch ’em much too closely for that. Once you’ve located your spy, the
battle’s won. It’s when he—or it may be a she—is running loose, that I
get peeved!”

The Chief sprang impatiently to his feet and strode across the
smoking-room, which was all but empty by this time, to get a match from
a table. He resumed his seat with a grunt of exasperation.

“I can’t see light, Okewood!” he sighed, shaking his head.

“But is this all you’ve got against Nur-el-Din?” asked Desmond.

“No,” answered the other slowly, “it isn’t. If it were, I need not have
called you in. We would have interned or deported her. No, we’ve traced
back to her a line leading straight from the only member of the new
organization we have been able to lay by the heels.”

“Then you’ve made an arrest?”

The Chief nodded.

“A fortnight ago... a respectable, retired English business man, by
name of Basil Bellward... taken with the goods on him, as the saying
is...”

“An Englishman, by Jove!”

“It’s hardly correct to call him an Englishman, though he’s posed as an
English business man for so long that one is almost justified in doing
so. As a matter of fact, the fellow is a German named Wolfgang Bruhl
and it is my belief that he was planted in this country at least a
dozen years ago solely for the purpose of furnishing him with good,
respectable credentials for an emergency like this.”

“But surely if you found evidence of his connection with this gang of
spies, it should be easy to get a clue to the rest of the crowd?”

“Not so easy as you think,” the Chief replied. “The man who organized
this system of espionage is a master at his craft. He has been careful
to seal both ends of every connection, that is to say, though we found
evidence of Master Bellward-Bruhl being in possession of highly
confidential information relating to the movements of troops, we
discovered nothing to show whence he received it or how or where he was
going to forward it. But we did find a direct thread leading straight
back to Nur-el-Din.”

“Really,” said Desmond, “that rather complicates things for her,
doesn’t it?”

“It was in the shape of a letter of introduction, in French, without
date or address, warmly recommending the dancer to our friend,
Bellward.”

“Who is this letter from?”

“It is simply signed ‘P.’, but you shall see it for yourself when you
get the other documents in the case.”

“But surely, sir, such a letter might be presented in perfectly good
faith...”

“It might, but not this one. This letter, as an expert has ascertained
beyond all doubt, is written on German manufactured note-paper of a
very superior quality;, the writing is stiff and angular and not
French: and lastly, the French in which it is phrased, while correct,
is unusually pompous and elaborate.”

“Then...”

“The letter was, in all probability, written by a German!”

There was a moment’s silence. Desmond was thinking despairingly of the
seeming hopelessness of untangling this intricate webwork of tangled
threads.

“And this murder, sir,” he began.

The Chief shrugged his shoulders.

“The motive, Okewood, I am searching for the motive. I can see none
except the highly improbable one of Miss Mackwayte being my
confidential secretary. In that case why murder the father, a harmless
old man who didn’t even know that his daughter is in my service, why
kill him, I ask you, and spare the girl? On the other hand, I believe
the man Barney’s story, and can see that Marigold does, too. When I
first heard the news of the murder over the telephone this morning, I
had a kind of intuition that we should discover in it a thread leading
back to this mesh of espionage. Is it merely a coincidence that a hair,
resembling Nur-el-Din’s, is found adhering to the straps with which
Barbara Mackwayte was bound? I can’t think so... and yet...”

“But do you believe then, that Nur-el-Din murdered-old Mackwayte? My
dear Chief, the idea is preposterous...”

The Chief rose from his chair with a sigh.

“Nothing is preposterous in our work, Okewood,” he replied. “But it’s
3.25, and my French colleague hates to be kept waiting.”

“I thought you were seeing Strangwise, at two?” asked Desmond.

“I put him off until six o’clock,” replied the Chief, “he knows
Nur-el-Din, and he may be able to give Marigold some pointers about
this affair. You’re off to see Miss Mackwayte now, I suppose. You know
where she’s staying? Good. Well, I’ll say good-bye, Okewood. I shan’t
see you again...”

“You won’t see me again? How do you mean, sir?”

“Because you’re going back to France!”

“Going back to France? When?”

“By the leave-boat to-night!”

Desmond smiled resignedly.

“My dear Chief,” he said, “you must be more explicit. What am I going
back to France for?”

“Why, now I come to think of it,” replied the Chief, “I never told you.
You’re going back to France to be killed, of course!”

“To be killed!”

Desmond looked blankly at the other’s blandly smiling face.

“Two or three days from now,” said the Chief, “you will be killed in
action in France. I thought of making it a shell. But we’ll have it a
machine gun bullet if you like. Whichever you prefer; it’s all the same
to me!”

He laughed at the dawn of enlightenment in Desmond’s eyes.

“I see,” said Desmond.

“I hope you don’t mind,” the Chief went on more seriously, “but I know
you have no people to consider except your brother and his wife. She’s
in America, and Francis can’t possibly hear about it. So you needn’t
worry on that score. Or do you?”

Desmond laughed.

“No-o-o!” he said slowly, “but I’m rather young to die. Is it
absolutely necessary for me to disappear?”

“Absolutely!” responded the Chief firmly.

“But how will we manage it?” asked Desmond.

“Catch the leave-boat to-night and don’t worry. You will receive your
instructions in due course.”

“But when shall I see you again?”

The Chief chuckled.

“Depends entirely on yourself, Okewood,” he retorted. “When you’re
through with your job, I expect. In the meantime, Miss Mackwayte will
act between us. On that point also you will be fully instructed. And
now I must fly!”

“But I say, sir,” Desmond interposed hastily. “You haven’t told me what
I am to do. What part am I to play in this business anyway?”

“To-morrow,” said the Chief, buttoning up his coat, “you become Mr.
Basil Bellward!”




CHAPTER VIII.
THE WHITE PAPER PACKAGE


A taxi was waiting in Pall Mall outside the club and Desmond hailed it,
though secretly wondering what the driver would think of taking him out
to Seven Kings. Rather to his surprise, the man was quite affable, took
the address of the house where Barbara was staying with her friends and
bade Desmond “hop in.” Presently, for the second time that day, he was
heading for the Mile End Road.

As they zigzagged in and out of the traffic, Desmond’s thoughts were
busy with the extraordinary mission entrusted to him. So he was to sink
his own identity and don that of an Anglo-German business man, his
appearance, accent, habits, everything. The difficulties of the task
positively made him cold with fear. The man must have relations,
friends, business acquaintances who would be sufficiently familiar with
his appearance and manner to penetrate, at any rate in the long run,
the most effective disguise. What did Bellward look like? Where did he
live? How was he, Desmond, to disguise himself to resemble him? And,
above all, when this knotty problem of make-up had been settled, how
was he to proceed? What should be his first step to pick out from among
all the millions of London’s teeming populace the one obscure
individual who headed and directed this gang of spies?

Why hadn’t he asked the Chief all these questions? What an annoying man
the Chief was to deal with to be sure! All said and done, what had he
actually told Desmond? That there was a German Secret service
organization spying on the movements of troops to France, that this
man, Basil Bellward, who had been arrested, was one of the gang and
that the dancer, Nur-el-Din, was in some way implicated in the affair!
And that was the extent of his confidence! On the top of all this fog
of obscurity rested the dense cloud surrounding the murder of old
Mackwayte with the unexplained, the fantastic, clue of that single hair
pointing back to Nur-el-Din.

Desmond consoled himself finally by saying that he would be able too
get some light on his mission from Barbara Mackwayte, whom he judged to
be in the Chief’s confidence. But here he was doomed to disappointment.
Barbara could tell him practically nothing save what he already knew,
that they were to work together in this affair. Like him, she was
waiting for her instructions.

Barbara received him in a neat little suburban drawing-room in the
house of her friends, who lived a few streets away from the Mackwaytes.
She was wearing a plainly-made black crêpe de chine dress which served
to accentuate the extreme pallor of her face, the only outward
indication of the great shock she had sustained. She was perfectly calm
and collected, otherwise, and she stopped Desmond who would have
murmured some phrases of condolence.

“Ah, no, please,” she said, “I don’t think I can speak about it yet.”

She pulled a chair over for him and began to talk about the Chief.

“There’s not the least need for you to worry,” she said with a little
woeful smile, like a sun-ray piercing a rain-cloud, “if the Chief says
‘Go back to France and wait for instructions,’ you may be sure that
everything is arranged, and you will receive your orders in due course.
So shall I. That’s the Chief all over. Until you know him, you think he
loves mystery for mystery’s sake. It isn’t that at all. He just doesn’t
trust us. He trusts nobody!”

“But that hardly seems fair to us...” began Desmond.

“It’s merely a precaution,” replied Barbara, “the Chief takes no risks.
I’ve not the least doubt that he has decided to tell you nothing
whatsoever about your part until you are firmly settled in your new
role. I’m perfectly certain that every detail of your part has already
been worked out.”

“Oh, that’s not possible,” said Desmond. “Why, he didn’t know until an
hour ago that I was going to take on this job.”

Barbara laughed.

“The Chief has taught me a lot about judging men by their looks,” she
said: “Personally, if I’d been in the Chief’s places I should have gone
ahead without consulting you, too.”

The girl spoke with such directness that there was not the least
suggestion of a compliment in her remark, but Desmond blushed to the
roots of his hair. Barbara noticed it and added hastily:

“I’m not trying to pay you a compliment: I’m just judging by your type.
I believe I can always tell the man that will take on any job, however
dangerous, and carry it through to the end.”

Desmond blushed more furiously than ever.

He made haste to divert the conversation into a safer channel.

“Well,” he said slowly, “seeing that you and I were intended to work
together, it seems to me to be a most extraordinary coincidence our
meeting like that last night...”

“It was more than a coincidence,” said Barbara, shaking her dark brown
head. “Forty-eight hours ago I’d never heard of you, then the Chief
gave me a telegram to send to your Divisional General summoning you
home, after that he told me that we were to work together, and a few
hours later I run into you in Nur-el-Din’s dressing-room...”

She broke off suddenly, her gray eyes big with fear. She darted across
the room to an ormolu table on which her handbag was lying. With
astonishment, Desmond watched her unceremoniously spill out the
contents on to the table and rake hastily amongst the collection of
articles which a pretty girl carries round in her bag.

Presently she raised herself erect and turning, faced the officer. She
was trembling as though with cold and when she spoke, her voice was low
and husky.

“Gone!” she whispered.

“Have you lost anything” Desmond asked anxiously.

“How could I have forgotten it?” she went on as though he had not
spoken, “how could I have forgotten it? Nearly twelve hours wasted, and
it explains everything. What will the Chief think of me!”

Slowly she sank down on the sofa where she had been sitting, then,
without any warning, dropped her head into her hands and burst into
tears.

Desmond went over to her.

“Please don’t cry,” he said gently, “you have borne up so bravely
against this terrible blow; you must try and not let it overwhelm you.”

All her business-like calm had disappeared now she was that most
distracting of all pictures of woman, a pretty girl overwhelmed with
grief. She crouched curled upon the sofa, with shoulders heaving,
sobbing as though her heart would break.

“Perhaps you would like me to leave you?” Desmond asked. “Let me ring
for your friends... I am sure you would rather be alone!”

She raised a tear-stained face to his, her long lashes glittering.

“No, no,” she said, “don’t go, don’t go! I want your help. This is such
a dark and dreadful business, more than I ever realized. Oh, my poor
daddy, my poor daddy!”

Again she hid her face in her hands and cried whilst Desmond stood
erect by her aide, compassionate but very helpless.

After a little, she dabbed her eyes with a tiny square of cambric, and
sitting up, surveyed the other.

“I must go to the Chief at once,” she said, “it is most urgent. Would
you ring and ask the maid to telephone for a taxi?”

“I have one outside,” answered Desmond. “But won’t you tell me what has
happened?”

“Why,” said Barbara, “it has only just dawned on me why our house was
broken into last night and poor daddy so cruelly murdered! Whoever
robbed the house did not come after our poor little bits of silver or
daddy’s savings in the desk in the dining room. They came after
something that I had!”

“And what was that” asked Desmond.

Then Barbara told him of her talk with Nur-el-Din in the dancer’s
dressing-room on the previous evening and of the package which
Nur-el-Din had entrusted to her care.

“This terrible business put it completely out of my head,” said
Barbara. “In the presence of the police this morning, I looked over my
bedroom and even searched my hand-bag which the police sent back to me
this afternoon without finding that the burglars had stolen anything.
It was only just now, when we were talking about our meeting in
Nur-el-Din’s room last night, that her little package suddenly flashed
across my mind. And then I looked through my handbag again and
convinced myself that it was not there.”

“But are you sure the police haven’t taken it?”

“Absolutely certain,” was the reply. “I remember perfectly what was in
my hand-bag this morning when I went through it, and the same things
are on that table over there now.”

“Do you know what was in this package!” said Desmond.

“Just a small silver box, oblong and quite plain, about so big,” she
indicated the size with her hands, “about as large as a cigarette-box.
Nur-el-Din said it was a treasured family possession of hers, and she
was afraid of losing it as she traveled about so much. She asked me to
say nothing about it and to keep it until the war was over or until she
asked me for it.”

“Then,” said Desmond, “this clears Nur-el-Din!”

“What do you mean,” said Barbara, looking up.

“Simply that she wouldn’t have broken into your place and killed your
father in order to recover her own package...”

“But why on earth should Nur-el-Din be suspected of such a thing?”

“Have you heard nothing about this young lady from the Chief?”

“Nothing. I had not thought anything about her until daddy discovered
an old friend in her last night and introduced me.”

The Chief’s infernal caution again! thought Desmond, secretly admiring
the care with which that remarkable man, in his own phrase, “sealed
both ends of every connection.”

“If I’m to work with this girl,” said Desmond to himself, “I’m going to
have all the cards on the table here and now,” so forthwith he told her
of the Chief’s suspicions of the dancer, the letter recommending her to
Bellward found when the cheese merchant had been arrested, and lastly
of the black hair which had been discovered on the thongs with which
Barbara had been fastened.

“And now,” Desmond concluded, “the very next thing we must do is to go
to the Chief and tell him about this package of Nur-el-Din’s that is
missing.” Barbara interposed quickly.

“It’s no use your coming,” she said. “The Chief won’t see you. When he
has sent a man on his mission, he refuses to see him again until the
work has been done. If he wishes to send for you or communicate with
you, he will. But it’s useless for you to try and see him yourself. You
can drop me at the office!”

Desmond was inclined to agree with her on this point and said so.

“There is one thing especially that puzzles me, Miss Mackwayte,”
Desmond observed as they drove westward again, “and that is, how anyone
could have known about your having this box of Nur-el-Din’s. Was there
anybody else in the room when she gave you the package?”

“No,” said Barbara, “I don’t think so. Wait a minute, though,
Nur-el-Din’s maid must have come in very shortly after for I remember
the opened the door when Captain Strangwise came to tell me daddy was
waiting to take me home.”

“Do you remember if Nur-el-Din actually mentioned the package in the
presence of the maid!”

“As far as I can recollect just as the maid opened the door to Captain
Strangwise, Nur-el-Din was impressing on me again to take great care of
the package. I don’t think she actually mentioned the box but I
remember her pointing at my bag where I had put the package.”

“The maid didn’t see Nur-el-Din give you the box?”

“No, I’m sure of that. The room was empty save for us two. It was only
just before Captain Strangwise knocked that I noticed Marie arranging
Nur-el-Din’s dresses. She must have come in afterwards without my
seeing her.”

“Well then, this girl, Marie, didn’t see the dancer give you the box
but she heard her refer to it. Is that right?”

“Yes, and, of course, Captain Strangwise...”

“What about him?”

“He must have heard what Nur-el-Din was saying, too!”

Desmond rubbed his chin.

“I say, you aren’t going to implicate old Strangwise, too, are you?” he
asked.

Barbara did not reflect his smile.

“He seems to know Nur-el-Din pretty well,” she said, “and I’ll tell you
something else, that woman’s afraid of your friend, the Captain!”

“What do you mean?” asked Desmond.

“I was watching her in the glass last night as he was talking to her
while you and I and daddy were chatting in the corner. I don’t know
what he said to her, but she glanced over her shoulder with a look of
terror in her eyes. I was watching her face in the glass. She looked
positively _hunted!_”

The taxi stopped. Desmond jumped out and helped his companion to
alight.

“_Au revoir_,” she said to him, “never fear, you and I will meet very
soon again!”

With that she was gone. Desmond looked at his watch. It pointed to a
quarter to six.

“Now I wonder what time the leave-train starts tonight,” he said aloud,
one foot on the sideboard of the taxi.

“At 7.45, sir,” said a voice.

“Desmond glanced round him. Then he saw it was the taxi-driver who had
spoken.

“7.45, eh?” said Desmond. “From Victoria, I suppose?”

“Yes, sir,” said the taxi-man.

“By Jove, I haven’t much time,” ejaculated the officer “and there are
some things I want to get before I go back across the Channel. And I
shall have to see the Railway Transport Officer about my pass.”

“That’s all right, sir,” said the taxi-man, “I have your papers here”;
he handed Desmond a couple of slips of paper which he took from his
coat-pocket; “those will take you back to France all right, I think
you’ll find!”

Desmond looked at the papers: they were quite in order and correctly
filled up with his name, rank and regiment, and date.

The taxi-man cut short any further question by saying:

“If you’ll get into the cab again, sir, I’ll drive you where you want
to go, and then wait while you have your dinner and take you to the
station. By the way, your dinner’s ordered too!”

“But who the devil are you?” asked Desmond in amazement.

“On special service, the same as you, sir!” said the man with a grin
and Desmond understood.

Really, the Chief was extremely thorough.

They went to the stores in the Haymarket, to Fortnum and Mason’s, and
lastly, to a small, grubby shop at the back of Mayfair where Desmond
and his brother had bought their cigarettes for years past. Desmond
purchased a hundred of their favored brand, the Dionysus, as a reserve
for his journey back to France, and stood chatting over old times with
the fat, oily-faced Greek manager as the latter tied up his cigarettes
into a clean white paper parcel, neatly sealed up with red sealing wax.

Then Desmond drove back to the Nineveh Hotel where he left his
taxi-driving colleague in the courtyard on the understanding that at
7.25 the taxi would be waiting to drive him to the station.

Desmond went straight upstairs to his room to put his kit together. In
the strong, firmly woven web spread by the Chief, he felt as helpless
as a fly caught in a spider’s mesh. He had no idea of what his plans
were. He only knew that he was going back to France, and that it was
his business to get on the leave-boat that night.

As he passed along the thickly carpeted, silent corridor to his room,
he saw the door of Strangwise’s room standing ajar. He pushed open the
door and walked in unceremoniously. A suitcase stood open on the floor
with Strangwise bending over it. At his elbow was a table crowded with
various parcels, a case of razors, different articles of kit, and some
books. Desmond halted at the door, his box of cigarettes dangling from
his finger.

“Hullo, Maurice,” he said, “are you off, too?”

Strangwise spun round sharply. The blood had rushed to his face,
staining it with a dark, angry flush.

“My God, how you startled me!” he exclaimed rather testily. “I never
heard you come in!”

He turned rather abruptly and went on with his packing. He struck
Desmond as being rather annoyed at the intrusion; the latter had never
seen him out of temper before.

“Sorry if I butted in,” said Desmond, sliding his box of cigarettes off
his finger on to the littered table and sitting down on a chair. “I
came in to say good-bye. I’m going back to France to-night!”

Maurice looked round quickly. He appeared to be quite his old self
again and was all smiles now.

“So soon?” he said. “Why, I thought you were getting a job at the War
Office!”

Desmond shook his head.

“Not good enough,” he replied, “it’s back to the sandbags for mine. But
where are you off to?”

“Got a bit of leave; the Intelligence folk seem to be through with me
at last, so they’ve given me six weeks!”

“Going to the country” asked Desmond.

Strangwise nodded.

“Yep,” he said, “down to Essex to see if I can get a few duck or snipe
on the fens. I wish you were coming with me!”

“So do I, old man,” echoed Desmond heartily. Then he added in a serious
voice:

“By the way, I haven’t seen you since last night. What a shocking
affair this is about old Mackwayte, isn’t it? Are there any
developments, do you know?”

Strangwise very deliberately fished a cigarette out of his case which
was lying open on the table and lit it before replying.

“A very dark affair,” he said, blowing out a cloud of smoke and
flicking the match into the grate. “You are discreet, I know, Okewood.
The Intelligence people had me up this morning... to take my
evidence...”

Strangwise’s surmise about Desmond’s discretion was perfectly correct.
With Desmond Okewood discretion was second nature, and therefore he
answered with feigned surprise: “Your evidence about what? About our
meeting the Mackwaytes last night?”

After he had spoken he realized he had blundered. Surely, after all,
the Chief would have told Strangwise about their investigations at
Seven Kings. Still...

“No,” replied Strangwise, “but about Nur-el-Din!”

The Chief had kept his own counsel about their morning’s work. Desmond
was glad now that he had dissimulated.

“You see, I know her pretty well,” Strangwise continued, “between
ourselves, I got rather struck on the lady when she was touring in
Canada some years ago, and in fact I spent so much more money than I
could afford on her that I had to discontinue the acquaintance. Then I
met her here when I got away from Germany a month ago; she was lonely,
so I took her about a bit. Okewood, I’m afraid I was rather
indiscreet.”

“How do you mean?” Desmond asked innocently.

“Well,” said Strangwise slowly, contemplating the end of his cigarette,
“it appears that the lady is involved in certain activities which
considerably interest our Intelligence. But there, I mustn’t say any
more!”

“But how on earth is Nur-el-what’s her name concerned in this murder,
Maurice?”

Strangwise shrugged his shoulders.

“Ah, you’d better ask the police. But I tell you she’ll be getting into
trouble if she’s not careful!”

Throughout this conversation Desmond seemed to hear in his ears
Barbara’s words: “That woman’s afraid of your friend!” He divined that
for some reason or other, Strangwise wanted to create a bad impression
in his mind about the dancer. He scanned Maurice’s face narrowly. Its
impenetrability was absolute. There was nothing to be gleaned from
those careless, smiling features.

“Well,” said Desmond, getting up, “_nous verrons_. I shall have to make
a bolt for it now if I don’t want to miss my train. Good-bye, Maurice,
and I hope you’ll get some birds!”

“Thanks, old man. Au revoir, and take care of yourself. My salaams to
the General!”.

They shook hands warmly, then Desmond grabbed his box of cigarettes in
its neat white wrapper with the bold red seals and hurried off to his
room.

Strangwise stood for a moment gazing after him. He was no longer the
frank, smiling companion of a minute before. His mouth was set hard and
his chin stuck out at a defiant angle.

He bent over the table and picked up a white paper package sealed with
bold red seals. He poised it for a moment in his hands while a flicker
of a smile stole into the narrow eyes and played for an instant round
the thin lips. Then, with a quick movement, he thrust the little
package into the side pocket of his tunic and buttoned the flap.

Whistling a little tune, he went on with his packing.




CHAPTER IX.
METAMORPHOSIS


It was a clear, cold night. A knife-edge icy wind blew from the
north-east and kept the lanyards dismally flapping on the flag-mast
over the customs house. The leave train lay in the station within a
biscuit’s throw of the quayside and the black, blank Channel beyond, a
long line of cheerfully illuminated windows that to those returning
from leave seemed as the last link with home.

The Corporal of Military Police, who stood at the gangway examining the
passes, stopped Desmond Okewood as the latter held out his pass into
the rays of the man’s lantern.

“There was a message for you, sir,” said the Corporal. “The captain of
the Staff boat would h-esteem it a favor, sir, if you would kindly go
to his cabin immediately on h-arriving on board, sir!”

“Very good, Corporal!” answered the officer and passed up the gang
plank, enviously regarded by the press of brass-hats and red-tabs who,
for the most part, had a cramped berth below or cold quarters on deck
to look forward to.

A seaman directed Desmond to the Captain’s cabin. It was built out just
behind the bridge, a snug, cheery room with bright chintz curtains over
the carefully screened portholes, a couple of comfortable benches with
leather seats along the walls, a small bunk, and in the middle of the
floor a table set out with a bottle of whiskey, a siphon and some
glasses together with a box of cigars.

The Captain was sitting there chatting to the pilot, a short,
enormously broad man with a magenta face and prodigious hands which
were folded round a smoking glass of toddy.

“Pick ’em up? Rescue ’em?” the pilot ejaculated, as Desmond walked in,
“I’d let ’em sink, every man Jack o’ them, the outrageous murderin’
scoundrels. I don’t like to hear you a-talking of such nonsense,
Cap’en!”

On Desmond’s entrance the Captain broke off the conversation. He proved
to be a trimly-built man of about fifty with a grizzled beard, and an
air of quiet efficiency which is not uncommonly found in seamen. The
pilot drained his glass and, scrambling to his feet, nodded to Desmond
and stumped out into the cold night air.

“Jawin’ about the U boats!” said the Captain, with a jerk of his head
towards the cabin door, “I don’t know what the feelings of your men in
the trenches are towards Fritz, Major, but I tell you that no German
will dare set foot in any coast port of the United Kingdom in my
life-time or yours, either! Accommodation’s a bit narrow on board. I
thought maybe you’d care to spend the night up here!”

“Any orders about me?” asked Desmond.

The Captain went a shade deeper mahogany in the face.

“Oh no,” he replied, with an elaborate assumption of innocence. “But
won’t you mix yourself a drink? And try one of my cigars, a present
from a skipper friend of mine who sailed into Tilbury from Manila last
week.”

Desmond sat in the snug cabin, puffing a most excellent cigar and
sipping his whiskey and soda while, amid much shouting of seamen and
screaming of windlasses, the staff boat got clear. Presently they were
gliding past long low moles and black, inhospitable lighthouses,
threading their way through the dark shapes of war craft of all kinds
into the open Channel. There was a good deal of swell, but the sea was
calm, and the vessel soon steadied down to regular rise and fall.

They had been steaming for nearly an hour when, through the open door
of the cabin, Desmond saw a seaman approach the captain on the bridge.
He handed the skipper a folded paper.

“From the wireless operator, sir!” Desmond heard him say.

The skipper scanned it. Then the engine telegraph rang sharply, there
was the sound of churning water, and the vessel slowed down. The next
moment the Captain appeared at the door of the cabin.

“I’m afraid we’re going to lose you, Major,” he said pleasantly, “a
destroyer is coming up to take you off. There was a wireless from the
Admiral about you.”

“Where are they going to take me, do you know?” asked Desmond.

The Captain shook his head.

“I haven’t an idea. I’ve only got to hand you over!”

He grinned and added:

“Where’s your kit?”

“In the hold, I expect!” answered Desmond. “The porter at Victoria told
me not to worry about it, and that I should find it on the other side.
And, oh damn it!—I’ve got a hundred cigarettes in my kit, too! I bought
them specially for the journey!”

“Well, take some of my cigars,” said the skipper hospitably, “for your
traps’ll have to go to France this trip, Major. There’s no time to get
’em up now. I’ll pass the word to the Military Landing Officer over
there about ’em, if you like. He’ll take care of ’em for you. Now will
you come with me?”

Desmond scrambled into his coat and followed the Captain down the steps
to the deck. A little distance away from the vessel, the long shape of
a destroyer was dimly visible tossing to and fro in the heavy swell. A
ladder had been let down over the side of the steamer, and at its foot
a boat, manned by a number of heavily swathed and muffled forms, was
pitching.

A few officers stood by the rail watching the scene with interest. The
skipper adroitly piloted Desmond past them and fairly thrust him out on
to the ladder.

Desmond took the hint and with a hasty “Good night” to the friendly
captain, staggered down the swaying ladder and was helped into the
boat. The boat shoved off, the bell of the engine telegraph on the
steamer resounded sharply, and the vessel resumed her interrupted
voyage whilst the rowing boat was headed towards the destroyer. On
board the latter vessel an officer met Desmond at the rail and piloted
him to the ward-room. Almost before they got there, the destroyer was
under way.

The officer who had welcomed him proved to be the second in command, a
joyous person who did the honors of the tiny ward-room with the aplomb
of a Commander in a super-Dreadnought. He mixed Desmond a drink and
immediately started to converse about life at the front without giving
the other a chance of asking whither they were bound.

The suspense was not of long duration, however, for in about half an
hour’s time, the destroyer slowed down and Desmond’s host vanished.
When he reappeared, it was to summon Desmond on deck.

They lay aside a mole by some steps cut in the solid concrete. Here
Desmond’s host took leave of him.

“There should be a car waiting for you up there,” he said.

There on top of the mole, exposed to the keen blast of the wind, a
large limousine was standing. A chauffeur, who looked blue with cold,
got down from his seat as Desmond emerged from the stairs and touched
his cap.

“Major Okewood?” he asked.

“That’s my name!” said Desmond.

“If you’ll get in, sir, we’ll start at once!” the man replied.

Befogged and bewildered, Desmond entered the car, which cautiously
proceeded along the breakwater, with glimpses of black water and an
occasional dim light on either hand. They bumped over the railway-lines
and rough cobblestones of a dockyard, glided through a slumbering town,
and so gradually drew out into the open country where the car gathered
speed and fairly raced along the white, winding road. Desmond had not
the faintest idea of their whereabouts or ultimate destination. He was
fairly embarked on the great adventure now, and he was philosophically
content to let Fate have its way with him. He found himself wondering
rather indolently what the future had in store.

The car slowed down and the chauffeur switched the headlights on. Their
blinding glare revealed some white gate-posts at the entrance of a
quiet country station. Desmond looked at his watch. It was half-past
one. The car stopped at the entrance to the booking-office where a man
in an overcoat and bowler was waiting.

“This way, Major, please,” said the man in the bowler, and led the way
into the dark and silent station. At the platform a short train
consisting of an engine, a Pullman car and a brakesman’s van stood, the
engine under steam. By the glare from the furnace Desmond recognized
his companion. It was Matthews, the Chief’s confidential clerk.

Matthews held open the door of the Pullman for Desmond and followed him
into the carriage. A gruff voice in the night shouted:

“All right, Charley!” a light was waved to and fro, and the special
pulled out of the echoing station into the darkness beyond.

In the corner of the Pullman a table was laid for supper. There was a
cold chicken, a salad, and a bottle of claret. On another table was a
large tin box and a mirror with a couple of electric lights before it.
At this table was seated a small man with gray hair studying a large
number of photographs.

“If you will have your supper, Major Okewood, sir,” said Matthews, “Mr.
Crook here will get to work. We’ve not got too much time.”

The sea air had made Desmond ravenously hungry. He sat down promptly
and proceeded to demolish the chicken and make havoc of the salad. Also
he did full justice to the very excellent St. Estephe.

As he ate he studied Matthews, who was one of those undefinable
Englishmen one meets in tubes and ’buses, who might be anything from a
rate collector to a rat catcher. He had sandy hair plastered limply
across his forehead, a small moustache, and a pair of watery blue eyes.
Mr. Crook, who continued his study of his assortment of photographs
without taking the slightest notice of Desmond, was a much more alert
looking individual, with a shock of iron gray hair brushed back and a
small pointed beard.

“Matthew’s,” said Desmond as he supped, “would it be indiscreet to ask
where we are?”

“In Kent, Major,” replied Matthews.

“What station was that we started from?”

“Faversham.”

“And where are we going, might I inquire?”

“To Cannon Street, sir!”

“And from there?”

Mr. Matthews coughed discreetly.

“I can’t really say, sir, I’m sure! A car will meet you there and I can
go home to bed.”

The ends sealed again! thought Desmond. What a man of caution, the
Chief!

“And this gentleman here, Matthews?” asked Desmond, lighting one of the
skipper’s cigars.

“That, sir, is Mr. Crook, who does any little jobs we require in the
way of make-up. Our expert on resemblances, if I may put it that way,
sir, for we really do very little in the way of disguises. Mr. Crook is
an observer of what I may call people’s points, sir, their facial
appearance, their little peculiarities of manner, of speech, of gait.
Whenever there is any question of a disguise, Mr. Crook is called in to
advise as to the possibilities of success. I believe I am correct in
saying, Crook, that you have been engaged on the Major here for some
time. Isn’t it so?”

Crook looked up a minute from his table.

“That’s right,” he said shortly, and resumed his occupation of
examining the photographs.

“And what’s your opinion about this disguise of mine?” Desmond asked
him.

“I can make a good job of you, Major,” said the expert, “and so I
reported to the Chief. You’ll want to do your hair a bit different and
let your beard grow, and then, if you pay attention to the lessons I
shall give you, in a week or two, you’ll be this chap here,” and he
tapped the photograph in his hand, “to the life.”

So saying he handed Desmond the photograph. It was the portrait of a
man about forty years of age, of rather a pronounced Continental type,
with a short brown beard, a straight, rather well-shaped nose and
gold-rimmed spectacles. His hair was cut _en brosse_, and he was rather
full about the throat and neck. Without a word, Desmond stretched out
his hand and gathered up a sheaf of other photos, police photos of Mr.
Basil Bellward, front face and profile seen from right and left, all
these poses shown on the same picture, some snapshots and various
camera studies. Desmond shook his head in despair. He was utterly
unable to detect the slightest resemblance between himself and this
rather commonplace looking type of business man.

“Now if you’d just step into the compartment at the end of the Pullman,
Major,” said Crook, “you’ll find some civilian clothes laid out. Would
you mind putting them on? You needn’t trouble about the collar and tie,
or coat and waistcoat for the moment. Then we’ll get along with the
work.”

The train rushed swaying on through the darkness. Desmond was back in
the Pullman car in a few minutes arrayed in a pair of dark gray tweed
trousers, a white shirt and black boots and socks. A cut-away coat and
waistcoat of the same tweed stuff, a black bowler hat of rather an
old-fashioned and staid pattern, and a black overcoat with a velvet
collar, he left in the compartment where he changed.

He found that Crook had opened his tin box and set out a great array of
grease paints, wigs, twists of tow of various colors, and a number of
pots and phials of washes and unguents together with a whole battery of
fine paint brushes. In his hand he held a pair of barber’s clippers and
the tips of a comb and a pair of scissors protruded from his vest
pocket.

Crook whisked a barber’s wrap round Desmond and proceeded, with
clippers and scissors, to crop and trim his crisp black hair.

“Tst-tst” he clicked with his tongue. “I didn’t realize your hair was
so dark, Major. It’ll want a dash of henna to lighten it.”

The man worked with incredible swiftness. His touch was light and sure,
and Desmond, looking at his reflection in the glass, wondered to see
what fine; delicate hands this odd little expert possessed. Matthews
sat and smoked in silence and watched the operation, whilst the special
ran on steadily Londonwards.

When the clipping was done, Crook smeared some stuff on a towel and
wrapped it round Desmond’s head.

“That’ll brighten your hair up a lot, sir. Now for a crepe beard just
to try the effect. We’ve got to deliver you at Cannon Street ready for
the job, Mr. Matthews and me, but you won’t want to worry with this
nasty messy beard once you get indoors. You can grow your own beard,
and I’ll pop in and henna it a bit for you every now and then.”

There was the smart of spirit gum on Desmond’s cheeks and Crook gently
applied a strip of tow to his face. He had taken the mirror away so
that Desmond could no longer see the effect of the gradual
metamorphosis.

“A mirror only confuses me,” said the expert, breathing hard as he
delicately adjusted the false beard, “I’ve got this picture firm in my
head, and I want to get it transferred to your face. Somehow a mirror
puts me right off. It’s the reality I want.”

As he grew more absorbed in his work, he ceased to speak altogether. He
finished the beard, trimmed the eyebrows, applied a dash of henna with
a brush, leaning backwards continually to survey the effect. He
sketched in a wrinkle or two round the eyes with a pencil, wiped them
out, then put them in again. Then he fumbled in his tin box, and
produced two thin slices of grey rubber.

“Sorry,” he said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to wear these inside your
cheeks to give the effect of roundness. You’ve got an oval face and the
other man has a round one. I can get the fullness of the throat by
giving you a very low collar, rather open and a size too large for
you.”

Desmond obediently slipped the two slices of rubber into his mouth and
tucked them away on either side of his upper row of teeth. They were
not particularly uncomfortable to wear.

“There’s your specs,” said Crook, handing him a spectacle case, “and
there’s the collar. Now if you’ll put on the rest of the duds, we’ll
have a look at you, sir.”

Desmond went out and donned the vest and coat and overcoat, and, thus
arrayed, returned to the Pullman, hat in hand.

Crook called out to him as he entered

“Not so springy in the step, sir, if you please. Remember you’re
forty-three years of age with a Continental upbringing. You’ll have to
walk like a German, toes well turned out and down on the heel every
time. So, that’s better. Now, have a look at yourself!”

He turned and touched a blind. A curtain rolled up with a click,
disclosing a full length mirror immediately opposite Desmond.

Desmond recoiled in astonishment. He could scarcely credit his own
eyes. The glass must be bewitched, he thought for a moment, quite
overwhelmed by the suddenness of the shock. For instead of the young
face set on a slight athletic body that the glass was wont to show him,
he saw a square, rather solid man in ugly, heavy clothes, with a brown
silky beard and gold spectacles. The disguise was baffling in its
completeness. The little wizard, who had effected this change and who
now stood by, bashfully twisting his fingers about, had transformed
youth into middle age. And the bewildering thing was that the success
of the disguise did not lie so much in the external adjuncts, the false
beard, the pencilled wrinkles, as in the hideous collar, the thick
padded clothes, in short, in the general appearance.

For the first time since his talk with the Chief at the United Service
Club, Desmond felt his heart grow light within him. If such miracles
were possible, then he could surmount the other difficulties as well.

“Crook,” he said, “I think you’ve done wonders. What do you say,
Matthews?”

“I’ve seen a lot of Mr. Crook’s work in my day, sir,” answered the
clerk, “but nothing better than this. It’s a masterpiece, Crook, that’s
what it is.”

“I’m fairly well satisfied,” the expert murmured modestly, “and I must
say the Major carries it off very well. But how goes the enemy,
Matthews?”

“It’s half past two,” replied, the latter, “we should reach Cannon
Street by three. She’s running well up to time, I think.”

“We’ve got time for a bit of a rehearsal,” said Crook. “Just watch me,
will you please, Major, and I’ll try and give you an impression of our
friend. I’ve been studying him at Brixton for the past twelve days, day
and night almost, you might say, and I think I can convey an idea of
his manner and walk. The walk is a very important point. Now, here is
Mr. Bellward meeting one of his friends. Mr. Matthews, you will be the
friend!”

Then followed one of the most extraordinary performances that Desmond
had ever witnessed. By some trick of the actor’s art, the shriveled
figure of the expert seemed to swell out and thicken, while his low,
gentle voice deepened into a full, metallic baritone. Of accent in his
speech there was none, but Desmond’s ear, trained to foreigners’
English, could detect a slight Continental intonation, a little roll of
the “r’s,” an unfamiliar sound about those open “o’s” of the English
tongue, which are so fatal a trap for foreigners speaking our language.
As he watched Crook, Desmond glanced from time to time at the
photograph of Bellward which he had picked up from the table. He had an
intuition that Bellward behaved and spoke just as the man before him.

Then, at Crook’s suggestion, Desmond assumed the role of Bellward. The
expert interrupted him continually.

“The hands, Major, the hands, you must _not_ keep them down at your
sides. That is military! You must move them when you speak! So and so!”

Or again:

“You speak too fast. Too... too youthfully, if you understand me, sir.
You are a man of middle age. Life has no further secrets for you. You
are poised and getting a trifle ponderous. Now try again!”

But the train was slackening speed. They were running between black
masses of squalid houses. As the special thumped over the bridge across
the river, Mr. Crook gathered up his paints and brushes and photographs
and arranged them neatly in his black tin box.

To Desmond he said:

“I shall be coming along to give you some more lessons very soon,
Major. I wish you could see Bellward for yourself: you are very apt at
this game, and it would save us much time. But I fear that’s
impossible.”

Even before the special had drawn up alongside the platform at Cannon
Street, Crook and Matthews swung themselves out and disappeared. When
the train stopped, a young man in a bowler hat presented himself at the
door of the Pullman.

“The car is there, Mr. Bellward, sir!” he said, helping Desmond to
alight. Desmond, preparing to assume his new role, was about to leave
the carriage when a sudden thought struck him. What about his uniform
strewn about the compartment where he had changed? He ran back. The
compartment was empty. Not a trace remained of the remarkable scenes of
their night journey.

“This is for you,” said the young man, handing Desmond a note as they
walked down the platform.

Outside the station a motor-car with its noisy throbbing awoke the
echoes of the darkened and empty courtyard. Desmond waited until he was
being whirled over the smooth asphalt of the City streets before he
opened the letter.

He found a note and a small key inside the envelope.

“On reaching the house to which you will be conveyed,” the note said,
“you will remain indoors until further orders. You can devote your time
to studying the papers you will find in the desk beside the bed. For
the present you need not fear detection _as long as you do not leave
the house_.” Then followed a few rough jottings obviously for his
guidance.

“Housekeeper, Martha, half blind, stupid; odd man, John Hill, mostly
invisible, no risk from either. You are confined to house with heavy
chill. _Do not go out until you get the word._”

The last sentence was twice underlined.

The night was now pitch-dark. Heavy clouds had come up and obscured the
stars and a drizzle of rain was falling. The car went forward at a good
pace and Desmond, after one or two ineffectual attempts to make out
where they were going, was lulled by the steady motion into a deep
sleep. He was dreaming fitfully of the tossing Channel as he had seen
it but a few hours before when he came to his senses with a start. He
felt a cold draught of air on his face and his feet were dead with
cold.

A figure stood at the open door of the car. It was the chauffeur.

“Here we are, sir,” he said.

Desmond stiffly descended to the ground. It was so dark that he could
distinguish nothing, but he felt the grit of gravel under his feet and
he heard the melancholy gurgle of running water. He took a step forward
and groped his way into a little porch smelling horribly of mustiness
and damp. As he did so, he heard a whirr behind him and the car began
to glide off. Desmond shouted after the chauffeur. Now that he stood on
the very threshold of his adventure, he wanted to cling desperately to
this last link with his old self. But the chauffeur did not or would
not hear, and presently the sound of the engine died away, leaving
Desmond to the darkness, the sad splashing of distant water and his own
thoughts.

And then, for one brief moment, all his courage seemed to ooze out of
him. If he had followed his instinct, he would have turned and fled
into the night, away from that damp and silent house, away from the
ceaseless splashing of waters, back to the warmth and lights of
civilization. But his sense of humor, which is very often better than
courage, came to his rescue.

“I suppose I ought to be in the devil of a rage,” he said to himself,
“being kept waiting like this outside my own house! Where the deuce is
my housekeeper? By Gad, I’ll ring the place down!”

The conceit amused him, and he advanced further into the musty porch
hoping to find a bell. But as he did so his ear caught the distant
sound of shuffling feet. The shuffle of feet drew nearer and presently
a beam of light shone out from under the door. A quavering voice called
out:

“Here I am, Mr. Bellward, here I am, sir!”

Then a bolt was drawn back, a key turned, and the door swung slowly
back, revealing an old woman, swathed in a long shawl and holding high
in her hand a lamp as she peered out into the darkness.

“Good evening, Martha,” said Desmond, and stepped into the house.

Save for Martha’s lamp, the lobby was in darkness, but light was
streaming into the hall from the half open door of a room leading off
it at the far end. While Martha, wheezing asthmatically, bolted the
front door, Desmond went towards the room where the light was and
walked in.

It was a small sitting-room, lined with bookshelves, illuminated by an
oil lamp which stood on a little table beside a chintz-covered settee
which had been drawn up in front of the dying fire.

On the settee Nur-el-Din was lying asleep.




CHAPTER X.
D. O. R. A. IS BAFFLED


When Barbara reached the Chief’s ante-room she found it full of people.
Mr. Marigold was there, chatting with Captain Strangwise who seemed to
be just taking his leave; there was a short, fat, Jewish-looking man,
very resplendently dressed with a large diamond pin in his cravat and a
small, insignificant looking gentleman with a gray moustache and the
red rosette of the Legion of Honor in his button-hole. Matthews came
out of the Chief’s room as Barbara entered the outer office.

“Miss Mackwayte,” he said, “we are all so shocked and so very,
sorry...”

“Mr. Matthews,” she said hastily in a low voice, “never mind about that
now. I must see the Chief at once. It is most urgent.”

Matthews gesticulated with his arm round the room.

“All these people, excepting the officer there, are waiting to see him,
Miss, and he’s got a dinner engagement at eight...”

“It is urgent, Mr. Matthews, I tell you. If you won’t take my name in,
I shall go in myself!”

“Miss Mackwayte, I daren’t interrupt him now. Do you know who’s with
him...?”

Strangwise crossed the room to where Barbara was standing.

“I can guess what brings you here, Miss Mackwayte,” he said gently. “I
hope you will allow me to express my condolences...?”

The girl shrank back, almost imperceptibly, yet Strangwise, whose eyes
were fixed on her pale face, noticed the spontaneous recoil. The
sunshine seemed to fade out of his debonair countenance, and for a
moment Barbara Mackwayte saw Maurice Strangwise as very few people had
ever seen him, stern and cold and hard, without a vestige of his
constant smile. But the shadow lifted as quickly as it had fallen. His
face had resumed its habitually engaging expression as he murmured:

“Believe me, I am truly sorry for you!”

“Thank you, thank you!” Barbara said hastily and brushed past him. She
walked straight across the room to the door of the Chief’s room, turned
the handle and walked in.

The room was in darkness save for an electric reading lamp on the desk
which threw a beam of light on the faces of two men thrust close
together in eager conversation. One was the Chief, the other a face
that Barbara knew well from the illustrated papers.

At the sound of the door opening, the Chief sprang to his feet.

“Oh, it’s Miss Mackwayte,” he said, and added something in a low voice
to the other man who had risen to his feet. “My dear,” he continued
aloud to Barbara, “I will see you immediately; we must not be disturbed
now. Matthews should have told you.”

“Chief,” cried Barbara, her hands clasped convulsively together, “you
must hear me now. What I have to say cannot wait. Oh, you must hear
me!”

The Chief looked as embarrassed as a man usually looks when he is
appealed to in a busy moment by an extremely attractive girl.

“Miss Mackwayte,” he said firmly but with great courtesy, “you must
wait outside. I know how unnerved you are by all that you have gone
through, but I am engaged just now. I shall be free presently.”

“It is about my father, Chief,” Barbara said in a trembling voice, “I
have found out what they came to get!”

“Ah!” said the Chief and the other man simultaneously.

“We had better hear what she has to say!” said the other man, “but
won’t you introduce me first?”

“This is Sir Bristowe Marr, the First Sea Lord,” said the Chief,
bringing up a chair for Barbara, “Miss Mackwayte, my secretary,
Admiral!”

Then in a low impassioned voice Barbara told her tale of the package
entrusted to her by Nur-el-Din and its disappearance from her bedroom
on the night of the murder. As she proceeded a deep furrow appeared
between the Chief’s bushy eyebrows and he stared absently at the
blotting-pad in front of him. When the girl had finished her story, the
Chief said:

“Lambelet ought to hear this, sir: he’s the head of the French
Intelligence, you know. He’s outside now. Shall we have him in? Miss
Mackwayte shall tell her story, and you can then hear what Lambelet has
to say about this versatile young dancer.”

Without waiting for further permission, he pressed a bell on the desk
and presently Matthews ushered in the small man with the Legion of
Honor whom Barbara had seen in the ante-room.

The Chief introduced the Frenchman and in a few words explained the
situation to him. Then he turned to Barbara:

“Colonel Lambelet speaks English perfectly,” he said, “so fire away and
don’t be nervous!”

When she had finished, the Chief said, addressing Lambelet:

“What do you make of it, Colonel?”

The little Frenchman made an expressive gesture.

“Madame has become aware of the interest you have been taking in her
movements, _mon cher_. She seized the opportunity of this meeting with
the daughter of her old friend to get rid of something compromising, a
code or something of the kind, _qui sait?_ Perhaps this robbery and its
attendant murder was only an elaborate device to pass on some
particularly important report of the movements of your ships... _qui
sait?_”

“Then you are convinced in your own mind, Colonel, that this woman is a
spy?” The clear-cut voice of the First Sea Lord rang out of the
darkness of the room outside the circle of light on the desk.

“_Mais certainement!_” replied the Frenchman quietly. “Listen and you
shall hear! By birth she is a Pole, from Warsaw, of good, perhaps,
even, of noble family. I cannot tell you, for her real name we have not
been able to ascertain... _parbleu_, it is impossible, with the Boches
at Warsaw, _hein?_ We know, however, that at a very early age, under
the name of _la petite Marcelle_, she was a member of a troupe of
acrobats who called themselves The Seven Duponts. With this troupe she
toured all over Europe. _Bien!_ About ten years ago, she went out to
New York as a singer, under the name of Marcelle Blondinet, and
appeared at various second-class theatres in the United States and
Canada. Then we lose track of her for some years until 1913, the year
before the war, when the famous Oriental dancer, Nur-el-Din, who has
made a _grand succès_ by the splendor of her dresses in America and
Canada, appears at Brussels, scores a triumph and buys a fine mansion
in the outskirts of the capital. She produces herself at Paris,
Bordeaux, Lyons, Marseilles, Madrid, Milan and Rome, but her home in
Brussels, always she returns there, your understand me, hein? _La
petite Marcelle_ of The Seven Duponts, Marcelle Blondinet of the _café
chantant_, has blossomed out into a star of the first importance.”

The Colonel paused and cleared his throat.

“To buy a mansion in Brussels, to run a large and splendid troupe,
requires money. It is the men who pay for these things, you would say.
Quite right, but listen who were the friends of Madame Nur-el-Din.
Bischoffsberg, the German millionaire of Antwerp, von Wurzburg, of
Berne... ah ha! you know that gentleman, _mon cher?_” he turned,
chuckling, to the Chief who nodded his acquiescence; “Prince Meddelin
of the German Embassy in Paris and administrator of the German Secret
Service funds in France, and so on and so on. I will not fatigue you
with the list. The direct evidence is coming now.

“When the war broke out in August, 1914, Madame, after finishing her
summer season in Brussels, was resting in her Brussels mansion. What
becomes of her? She vanishes.”

“She told Samuel, the fellow who runs the Palaceum, that she escaped
from Brussels!” interposed the Chief.

The Frenchman threw his hands above his head.

“Escaped, escaped? _Ah, oui, par exemple_, in a German Staff car. As I
have told my colleague here,” he went on, addressing the Admiral, “she
escaped to Metz, the headquarters of the Army Group commanded by the...
the... how do you say? the Prince Imperial?”

“The Crown Prince,” rectified the Chief.

“Ah, _oui_,—the Crown Prince. Messieurs, we have absolute testimony
that this woman lived for nearly two years either in Metz or Berlin,
and further, that at Metz, the Crown Prince was a constant visitor at
her house. She was one of the ladies who nearly precipitated a definite
rupture between the Crown Prince and his wife. _Mon Admiral_,” he went
on, addressing the First Sea Lord again, “that this woman should be at
large is a direct menace to the security of this country and of mine.
It is only this morning that I at length received from Paris the facts
which I have just laid before you. It is for you to order your action
accordingly!”

The little Frenchman folded his arms pompously and gazed at the
ceiling.

“How does she explain her movements prior to her coming to this
country” the First Sea Lord asked the Chief.

For an answer the Chief pressed the bell.

“Samuel, who engaged her, is outside. You shall hear her story from
him,” he said.

Samuel entered, exuding business acumen, prosperity, geniality. He
nodded brightly to the Chief and stood expectant.

“Ah, Mr. Samuel,” said the Chief, “I wanted to see you about
Nur-el-Din. You remember our former conversation on the subject. Where
did she say she went to when she escaped to Brussels?”

“First to Ostend,” replied the music-hall proprietor, “and then, when
the general exodus took place from there, to her mother’s country place
near Lyons, a village called Sermoise-aux-Roses.”

“And what did she say her mother’s name was?”

“Madame Blondinet, sir!”

The Frenchman rapped smartly on a little pocketbook which he had
produced and now held open in his hand.

“There, is a Madame Blondinet who has a large farm near
Sermoise-aux-Roses,” he said, “and she has a daughter called Marcelle,
who went to America.”

“Why then...?” began the First Sea Lord.

“_Attendez un instant!_”

The Colonel held up a plump hand.

“Unfortunately for Madame Nur-el-Din, this Marcelle Blondinet spent the
whole of her childhood, in fact, the whole of her life until she was
nineteen years of age, on her mother’s farm at a time when _this_
Marcelle Blondinet was touring Europe with The Seven Duponts. The
evidence is absolute. Mademoiselle here heard the dancer herself
confirm it last night!”

“Thank you, Mr. Samuel,” said the Chief, “we shan’t require you any
more. But I’m afraid your Nur-el-Din will have to break her contract
with you.”

“She’s done that already, sir!” said Samuel ruefully.

The Chief sprang to his feet excitedly.

“Broken it already?” he cried. “What do you mean? Explain yourself!
Don’t stand there staring at me!”

Mr. Samuel looked startled out of his life.

“There was a bit of a row between her and the stage manager last night
about her keeping the stage waiting again,” he said; “and after lunch
today she rang up to say she would not appear at the Palaceum to-night
or any more at all! It’s very upsetting for us; and I don’t mind
telling you, gentlemen, that I’ve been to my solicitors about it...”

“And why the blazes didn’t you come and tell me?” demanded the Chief
furiously.

“Well, sir, I thought it was only a bit of pique on her part, and I
hoped to be able to talk the lady round. I know what these stars are!”

“You’ve seen her then?” the Chief snapped out.

“No, I haven’t!” Mr. Samuel lamented. “I’ve been twice to the
Nineveh—that’s where she’s stopping—and each time she was out!”

The Chief dismissed him curtly.

When the door had closed behind him, the Chief said to the First Sea
Lord:

“This is where D.O.R.A. steps in, I think, sir!”

“Decidedly!” replied the Admiral. “Will you take the necessary steps?”

The Chief nodded and pressed the bell. Matthews appeared.

“Anything from the Nineveh?” he asked.

“The lady has not returned, sir!”

“Anything from Gordon and Duff?”

“No, sir, nothing all day!”

The telephone on the desk whirred. The Chief lifted the receiver.

“Yes. Oh, it’s you, Gordon? No, you can say it now: this is a private
line.”

He listened at the receiver for a couple of minutes. The room was very
still.

“All right, come to the office at once!”

The Chief hung up the receiver and turned to the Admiral.

“She’s given us the slip for the moment!” he said. “That was Gordon
speaking. He and Duff have been shadowing our lady friend out of doors
for days. She left the hotel on foot after lunch this afternoon with my
two fellows in her wake. There was a bit of a crush on the pavement
near Charing Cross and Duff was pushed into the roadway and run over by
a motor-’bus. In the confusion Gordon lost the trail. He’s wasted all
this time trying to pick it up again instead of reporting to me at
once.”

“_Zut!_” cried the Frenchman.




CHAPTER XI.
CREDENTIALS


The sight of Nur-el-Din filled Desmond with alarm. For a moment his
mind was overshadowed by the dread of detection. He had forgotten all
about Mr. Crook’s handiwork in the train, and his immediate fear was
that the dancer would awake and recognize him. But then he caught sight
of his face in the mirror over the mantelpiece. The grave bearded man
staring oddly at him out of the glass gave him a shock until he
realized the metamorphosis that had taken place in his personality. The
realization served instantly to still his apprehension.

Nur-el-Din lay on her side, one hand under her face which was turned
away from the fire. She was wearing a big black musquash coat, and over
her feet she had flung a tweed overcoat, apparently one of Mr.
Bellward’s from the hatstand in the hall. Her hat, a very dainty little
affair of plain black velvet, was skewered with a couple of jewelled
hatpins to the upholstery of the settee.

Desmond watched her for a moment. Her face looked drawn and tired now
that her eyelids, with their long sweeping black lashes, were closed,
shutting off the extraordinary luminosity of her eyes. As he stood
silently contemplating her, she stirred and moaned in her sleep and
muttered some word three or four times to herself. Desmond was
conscious of a great feeling of compassion for this strangely beautiful
creature. Knowing as he did of the hundred-eyed monster of the British
Secret Service that was watching her, he found himself thinking how
frail, how helpless, how unprotected she looked, lying there in the
flickering light of the fire.

A step resounded behind him and old Martha shuffled into the room,
carefully shading the lamp she still carried so that its rays should
not fall on the face of the sleeper.

“I don’t know as I’ve done right, sir,” she mumbled, “letting the pore
lady wait here for you like this, but I couldn’t hardly help it, sir!
She says as how she must see you, and seeing as how your first
tellygram said you was coming at half-past nine, I lets her stop on!”

“When did she arrive” asked Desmond softly.

“About six o’clock,” answered the old, woman. “Walked all the way up
from Wentfield Station, too, sir, and that cold she was when she
arrived here, fair blue with the cold she was, pore dear. D’reckly she
open her lips, I sees she’s a furrin’ lady, sir. She asks after you and
I tells her as how you are away and won’t be back till this evening.
‘Oh!’ she says, I then I wait!’ And in she comes without so much as
with your leave or by your leave. She told me as how you knew her, sir,
and were expecting to see her, most important, she said it was, so I
hots her up a bit o’ dinner. I hopes as how I didn’t do wrong, Mr.
Bellward, sir!”

“Oh, no, Martha, not at all!” Desmond replied—at random. He was sorely
perplexed as to his next move. Obviously the girl could not stay in the
house. What on earth did she want with him? And could he, at any rate,
get at the desk and read the papers of which the note spoke and which,
he did not doubt, were the _dossier_ of the Bellward case, before she
awoke? They might, at least, throw some light on his relations with the
dancer.

“She had her dinner here by the fire,” old Martha resumed her
narrative, “and about a quarter past nine comes your second tellygram,
sir, saying as how you could not arrive till five o’clock in the
morning.”

Desmond glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. The hands pointed to a
quarter past five! He had lost all count of the time in his
peregrinations of the night.

“I comes in here and tells the young lady as how you wouldn’t be back
last night, sir,” the old woman continued, “and she says, ‘Oh,’ she
says, ‘then, where shall I go?’ she says. ‘Why don’t you go home, my
dear?’ says I, ‘and pop round and see the master in the morning,’ I
says, thinking the pore young lady lives about here. And then she tells
me as how she come all the way from Lunnon and walked up from the
station. As well you know, sir, the last train up leaves Wentfield
Station at five minutes to nine, and so the pore young lady couldn’t
get back that night. So here she had to stop. I got the spare room
ready for her and lit a nice fire and all, but she wouldn’t go to bed
not until she had seen you. I do hope as how I’ve not done wrong, sir.
I says to Mr. Hill, I says...”

Desmond held up his hand to restrain her toothless babble. Nur-el-Din
had stirred and was sitting up, rubbing her eyes. Then she caught sight
of Desmond and scrambled rather unsteadily to her feet.

“Monsieur Bellward?” she said in French, “oh, how glad I am to see
you!”

“All right, Martha,” said Desmond, “see that the spare room is ready
for this lady, and don’t go to bed just yet. I shall want you to take
this lady to her room.”

The old woman hobbled away, leaving the two alone. As soon as the door
had closed behind her, Nur-el-Din exclaimed:

“You know me; _hein?_”

Desmond bowed in the most correct Continental manner.

“Who does not know the charming Nur-el-Din?” he replied.

“No!” Nur-el-Din commanded with flashing eyes, “no, not that name! I am
Madame Le Bon, you, understand, a Belgian refugee, from Termonde!”

Rather taken aback by her imperious manner, Desmond bowed again but
said nothing.

“I received your letter,” the dancer resumed, “but I did not answer it
as I did not require your assistance. But now I wish your help. It is
unfortunate that you were absent from home at the very time I counted
upon your aid.”

She flashed a glance at him as though awaiting an apology.

“I am extremely sorry,” said Desmond, “if I had but known...”

Nur-el-Din nodded carelessly.

“I wish to pass the night here,” she went on, “in fact, I may be here
for several days. They are becoming inconvenient in London, you
understand.”

“But the theatre, your professional engagements?”

“Bah, I have left the theatre. I have had enough of these stupid
English people... they know nothing of art!”

Desmond reflected a moment. Nur-el-Din’s manner was most perplexing.
What on earth could induce her to adopt this tone of condescension
towards him? It nettled him. He resolved to try and find out on what it
was based.

“I am only too happy to be of assistance to you,” he said, “especially
in view of the letter of introduction you sent me, but I must tell you
plainly that what you ask is impossible.”

“Impossible?” repeated Nur-el-Din, stamping her feet. “Impossible? Do
you know what you are saying?”

“Perfectly,” replied Desmond negligently. “Obviously, you must stay
here for the rest of the night since you cannot return to London until
the trains start running, but to stay here indefinitely as you propose
to do is out of the question. People would talk!”

“Then it is your business to see that they don’t!”

“Your letter of introduction came from one whom I am always anxious to
oblige,” Desmond went on. “But the service he is authorized to claim
from me does not entitle him to jeopardize my other activities.”

He drew a breath. It was a long shot. Would it draw her?

It did. Nur-el-Din fumbled in her bag, produced a leather pocket-book
and from it produced a slip of paper folded in two.

“Read that!” she cried, “and then you shall apologize!”

Desmond took the paper. It was a sheet torn from a book of German
military field messages. “_Meldedienst_” (Message Service) was printed
in German at the top and there were blanks to be filled in for the
date, hour and place, and at the bottom a printed form of
acknowledgment for the recipient to sign.

In a large ostentatious, upright German handwriting was written what
follows:

“To All Whom it May Concern.


“The lady who is the bearer of this, whose description is set out
overleaf, is entitled to the full respect and assistance of the German
forces on land and sea and in the air, wherever it may be. Her person
and property are inviolate.
    “Given At Our Headquarters at Metz


“Friedrich Wilhelm
“Kronprinz des
“Deutschen Reiches.”


Across the signature was the impress of a green stamp, lozenge-shaped,
inscribed “Headquarters of the Fifth Army, General Staff, 21st
September, 1914.”

On the back of the slip was a detailed description of Nur-el-Din.

Desmond bowed and handed the paper back to its owner.

“Madame must accept my humble excuses,” he murmured, hardly knowing
what he was saying, so great was his surprise, “my house and services
are at Madame’s disposal!”

“The other letter was from Count Plettenbach, the Prince’s A.D.C., whom
I think you know!” added the dancer in a mollified voice as she
replaced the slip of paper in its pocketbook and stowed it away in her
hand-bag. Then, looking up archly at Desmond, she said:

“Am I so distasteful, then, to have in your house?”

She made a charming picture. Her heavy fur coat had fallen open,
disclosing her full round throat, very brown against the V-shaped
opening of her white silk blouse. Her mouth was a perfect cupid’s bow,
the upper lip slightly drawn up over her dazzlingly white teeth. Before
Desmond could answer her question, if answer were needed, her mood had
swiftly changed again. She put her hand out, a little brown hand, and
laying it on his shoulder, looked up appealingly into his eyes.

“You will protect me,” she said in a low voice, “I cannot bear this
hunted life. From this side, from that, they, are closing in on me, and
I am frightened, so very frightened. Promise you will keep me from
harm!”

Desmond gazed down into her warm, expressive eyes helplessly. What she
asked was impossible, he knew, but he was a soldier, not a policeman,
he told himself, and under his breath he cursed the Chief for landing
him in such a predicament. To Nur-el-Din he said gently:

“Tell me what has happened to frighten you. Who is hunting you? Is it
the police?”

She withdrew her hand with a gesture of contempt.

“Bah!” she said bitterly. “I am not afraid of the police.”

Then she sank into a reverie, her gaze fixed on the dying embers of the
fire.

“All my life has been a struggle,” she went on, after a moment, “first
with hunger, then with men, then the police. I am used to a hard life.
No, it is not the police!”

“Who is it, then” asked Desmond, completely nonplused.

Nur-el-Din let her eyes rest on his face for a moment.

“You have honest eyes,” she said, “your eyes are not German... pardon
me, I would not insult your race... I mean they are different from the
rest of you. One day, perhaps, those eyes of yours may persuade me to
answer your question. But I don’t know you well enough yet!”

She broke off abruptly, shaking her head.

“I am tired,” she sighed and all her haughty manner returned, “let the
old woman show me to my room. I will take _déjeuner_ with you at one
o’clock.”

Desmond bowed and stepping out into the hall, called the housekeeper.
Old Martha shuffled off with the girl, leaving Desmond staring with
vacant eyes into the fire. He was conscious of a feeling of exultation,
despite his utter weariness and craving for sleep. This girl, with her
queenly ways, her swiftly changing moods, her broad gusts of passion,
interested him enormously. If she were the quarry, why, then, the chase
were worth while! But the end? For a brief moment, he had a vision of
that frail, clinging figure swaying up against some blank wall before a
file of levelled rifles.

Then again he seemed to see old Mackwayte lying dead on the landing of
the house at Seven Kings. Had this frail girl done this unspeakable
deed? To send her to the gallows or before a firing-squad—was this to
be the end of his mission? And the still, small voice of conscience
answered: “Yes! that is what you have come here to do!”

Old Martha came shuffling down the staircase. Desmond called to her,
remembering that he did not yet know where his bedroom was.

“Will you light me up to my room, Martha?” he said, “I want to be sure
that the sheets are not damp!”

So saying he extinguished the lamp on the table and followed the old
woman upstairs.




CHAPTER XII.
AT THE MILL HOUSE


Clad in a suit of Mr. Basil Bellward’s pyjamas of elaborate
blue-flowered silk, Desmond lay propped up in bed in Mr. Bellward’s
luxuriously fitted bedroom, sipping his morning coffee, and studying
with absorbed interest a sheet of blue foolscap. A number of papers lay
strewn about the eiderdown quilt. At the head of the bed a handsome
Sheraton bureau stood open.

As the French say, Mr. Bellward had refused himself nothing. His
bedroom was most tastefully furnished. The furniture was mahogany,
every piece carefully chosen, and the chintz of curtains and upholstery
was bright and attractive. A most elaborate mahogany wardrobe was
fitted into the wall, and Desmond, investigating it, had found it to
contain a very large assortment of clothes of every description, all
new or nearly so, and bearing the name of a famous tailor of Cork
Street. Folding doors, resembling a cupboard, disclosed, when open, a
marble basin with hot water laid on, while a curtained door in the
corner of the room gave access to a white tiled bathroom. Mr. Bellward,
Desmond had reflected after his tour of the room on his arrival,
evidently laid weight on his personal comfort; for the contrast between
the cheerful comfort of his bedroom and the musty gloom of the rooms
downstairs was very marked.

A bright log fire hissed on the open hearth and the room was pleasantly
warm. Old Martha’s coffee was excellent, and Desmond, very snug in Mr.
Bellward’s comfortable bed, noted with regret that the clock on the
mantel-shelf marked a quarter to twelve. But then he thought of the
tête-à-tête luncheon that awaited him at one o’clock and his face
cleared. He didn’t mind getting up so much after all.

He fell again to the perusal of the documents which he had found, as
indicated in the note from headquarters, in the desk by the bed. They
were enclosed in two envelopes, one large, the other small, both
without any superscription. The large envelope enclosed Mr. Bellward’s
dossier which consisted of a fairly detailed account of his private
life, movements, habits and friends, and an account of his arrest. The
small envelope contained Desmond’s eagerly expected orders.

Desmond examined the papers in the large envelope first. From them he
ascertained that the house in which he found himself was called The
Mill House, and was situated two and a half miles from the station of
Wentfield on the Great Eastern Railway in Essex. Mr. Bellward had taken
the place some eight years before, having moved there from the Surrey
hills, but had been wont to spend not more than two months in the year
there. For the rest of the time he traveled abroad, usually passing the
winter months on the Riviera, and the spring in Switzerland or Italy.
The war had brought about a change in his habits, and Harrogate, Buxton
and Bath had taken the place of the Continental resorts which he had
frequented in peace time.

When in residence at The Mill House, Mr. Bellward had gone up to London
nearly every morning, either walking or going by motor-cycle to the
station, and not returning until dinner-time in the evening. Sometimes
he passed the night in London, and on such occasions slept at a small
hotel in Jermyn Street. His dossier included, a long and carefully
compiled list of the people he knew in London, mostly men of the rich
business set, stockbrokers, manufacturers, solicitors, and the like.
Against every name was set a note of the exact degree of intimacy
existing between Bellward and the man in question, and any other
information that might serve Bellward’s impersonator in good stead.
Desmond laid this list aside for the moment, intending to study it more
closely at his leisure.

Of intercourse with his neighbors in, the country, Mr. Bellward
apparently had none. The Mill House stood in a lonely part of the
country, remote from the more thickly populated centres of Brentwood
and Romford, on the edge of a wide tract of inhospitable marshland,
known as Morstead Fen, intersected by those wide deep ditches which in
this part of the world are known as dykes. At this stage in the report
there was a note to the effect that the rector of Wentfield had called
twice at The Mill House but had not found Mr. Bellward at home, and
that his visits had not been returned. There were also some opinions
apparently culled locally regarding the tenant of the Mill House, set
out something in this wise:—

“Landlord of the Red Lion, Wentfield: The gentleman has never been to
the Red Lion, but sometimes orders my Ford car and always pays
regularly.
    “The Stationmaster at Wentfield: A gentleman who keeps himself to
    himself but very liberal with his money.
    “Sir Marsham Dykes, of The Chase, Stanning: A damned unsociable
    churlish fellow.
    “Mr. Tracy Wentfield, of the Channings, Home Green: A very rude
    man. He slammed the front door of the house in my face when I went
    to ask him for a contribution to our Cottage Hospital. It is not my
    habit to repeat idle gossip, but they do say he is a heavy
    drinker.”


There was a lot more of this sort of thing, and Desmond turned from it
with a smile to take up the account of Bellward’s arrest. It appeared
that, about a fortnight before, on the eve of the departure for France
of a very large draft of troops, a telegram was handed in at the East
Strand telegraph office addressed to Bellward. This telegram ran thus:

“Bellward, Bellward Hotel, Jermyn Street.
    “Shipping to you Friday 22,000 please advise correspondents.
“MORTIMER.”


The authorities were unable to deliver this telegram as no such an
hotel as the Hotel Bellward was found to exist in Jermyn Street. An
examination of the address showed clearly that the sender had absent
mindedly repeated the addressee’s name in writing the name of the
hotel. An advice was therefore addressed to the sender, Mortimer, at
the address he had given on the back of the form, according to the
regulations, to inform him that his telegram had not been delivered. It
was then discovered that the address given by Mortimer was fictitious.

Suspicion being thus aroused, the telegram was forwarded to the Postal
Censor’s department whence it reached the Intelligence Authorities who
promptly spotted the connection between the wording of the telegram and
the imminent departure of the drafts, more especially as the dates
tallied. Thereupon, Mr. Bellward was hunted up and ultimately traced by
his correspondence to The Mill House. He was not found there, but was
eventually encountered at his London hotel, and requested to appear
before the authorities with a view to throwing some light on Mortimer.
Under cross-examination Bellward flatly denied any knowledge of
Mortimer, and declared that a mistake had been made. He cited various
well known city men to speak for his bona-fides and protested violently
against the action of the authorities in doubting his word. It was
ultimately elicited that Bellward was of German birth and had never
been naturalized, and he was detained in custody while a search was
made at The Mill House.

The search was conducted with great discretion, old Martha being got
out of the way before the detectives arrived and a careful watch being
kept to avoid any chance of interruption. The search had the most
fruitful results. Hidden in a secret drawer of the Sheraton desk in
Bellward’s bedroom, was found a most elaborate analysis of the
movements of the transports to France, extremely accurate and right up
to date. There was absolutely no indication, however, as to whence
Bellward received his reports, and how or to whom he forwarded them. It
was surmised that Mortimer was his informant, but an exhaustive search
of the post office files of telegrams despatched showed no trace of any
other telegram from Mortimer to Bellward save the one in the possession
of the authorities. As for Mortimer, he remained a complete enigma.

That, summarised, was the gist of the story of Bellward’s arrest. The
report laid great stress on the fact that no one outside half a dozen
Intelligence men had any knowledge (a) of Bellward being an
unnaturalized German, (b) of his arrest.

Desmond’s orders, which he reserved to the last were short and to the
point. They consisted of five numbered clauses.

“1. You will have a free hand. The surveillance of the house was
withdrawn on your arrival and will not be renewed.

“2. You will not leave the house until further orders.

“3. You will keep careful note of any communication that may be made to
you, whether verbal or in writing, of whatever nature it is. When you
have anything to be forwarded, ring up 700 Slanning on the telephone
and give Bellward’s name. You will hand your report to the first person
calling at the house thereafter asking for the letter for Mr. Elias.

“4. If help is urgently required, ring up 700 Stanning and ask for Mr.
Elias. Assistance will be with you within 15 minutes after. This
expedient must only be used in the last extremity.

“5. Memorize these documents and burn the lot before you leave the
house.”

“Handy fellow, Mr. Elias,” was Desmond’s commentary, as he sprang out
of bed and made for the bathroom. At a quarter to one he was ready
dressed, feeling very scratchy and uncomfortable about the beard which
he had not dared to remove owing to Nur-el-Din’s presence in the house.
Before he left the bedroom, he paused a moment at the desk, the
documents of the Bellward case in his hands. He had a singularly
retentive memory, and he was loth to have these compromising papers in
the house whilst Nur-el-Din was there. He took a quick decision and
pitched the whole lot into the fire, retaining only the annotated list
of Mr. Bellward’s friends. This he placed in his pocket-book and, after
watching the rest of the papers crumble away into ashes, went
downstairs to lunch.

Nur-el-Din was in the drawing-room, a long room with two high windows
which gave on a neglected looking garden. A foaming, churning brook
wound its way through the garden, among stunted bushes and dripping
willows, obviously the mill-race from which the house took its name.
The drawing-room was a bare, inhospitable room, studded here and there
with uncomfortable looking early Victorian armchairs swathed in
dust-proof cloths. A fire was making an unsuccessful attempt to burn in
the open grate.

Nur-el-Din turned as he entered the room. She was wearing a gray cloth
tailor-made with a white silk, blouse and a short skirt showing a pair
of very natty brown boots. By contrast with her ugly surroundings she
looked fresh and dainty. Her eyes were bright and her face as smooth
and unwrinkled as a child’s.

“_Bon jour_,” she cried gaily, “ah! but I am ’ungry! It is the air of
the country! I love so the country!”

“I hope you slept well, Madame!” said Desmond solicitously, looking
admiringly at her trim figure.

“Like a dead man,” she replied with a little laugh, translating the
French idiom. “Shall we make a leetle promenade after the _déjeuner?_
And you shall show me your pretty English country, _voulez-vous?_ You
see, I am dressed for _le footing!_”

She lifted a little brown foot.

They had a delightful luncheon together. Old Martha, who proved to be
quite a passable cook, waited on them. There was some excellent
Burgundy and a carafe of old brandy with the coffee. Nur-el-Din was in
her most gracious and captivating mood. She had dropped all her
arrogance of their last interview and seemed to lay herself out to
please. She had a keen sense of humor and entertained Desmond vastly by
her anecdotes of her stage career, some not a little _risqué_, but
narrated with the greatest _bonhomie_.

But, strongly attracted as he was to the girl, Desmond did not let
himself lose sight of his ultimate object. He let her run on as gaily
as she might but steadily, relentlessly he swung the conversation round
to her last engagement at the Palaceum. He wanted to see if she would
make any reference to the murder at Seven Kings. If he could only bring
in old Mackwayte’s name, he knew that the dancer _must_ allude to the
tragedy.

Then the unexpected happened. The girl introduced the old comedian’s
name herself.

“The only pleasant memory I shall preserve of the Palaceum,” she said
in French, “is my meeting with an old comrade of my youth. Imagine, I
had not seen him for nearly twenty years. Monsieur Mackwayte, his name
is, we used to call him Monsieur Arthur in the old days when I was the
child acrobat of the Dupont Troupe. Such a charming fellow; and not a
bit changed! He was doing a deputy turn at the Palaceum on the last
night I appeared there! And he introduced me to his daughter! _Une
belle Anglaise!_ I shall hope to see my old friend again when I go back
to London!”

Desmond stared at her. If this were acting, the most hardened criminal
could not have carried it off better. He searched the girl’s face. It
was frank and innocent. She ran on about Mackwayte in the old days, his
kindliness to everyone, his pretty wife, without a shadow of an attempt
to avoid an unpleasant topic. Desmond began to believe that not only
did the girl have nothing to do with the tragedy but that actually she
knew nothing about it.

“Did you see the newspapers yesterday?” he asked suddenly.

“My friend,” said Nur-el-Din, shaking her curls at him. “I never read
your English papers. There is nothing but the war in them. And this
war!”

She gave a little shudder and was silent.

At this moment old Martha, who had left them over their coffee and
cigarettes, came into the room.

“There’s a gentleman called to see you, sir!” she said to Desmond.

Desmond started violently. He was scarcely used to his new rôle as yet.

“Who is it, Martha?” he said, mastering his agitation.

“Mr. Mortimer!” mumbled the old woman in her tired voice, “at least
that’s what he said his name was. The gentleman hadn’t got a card!”

Nur-el-Din sprang up from her chair so vehemently that she upset her
coffee.

“Don’t let him come in!” she cried in French.

“Did you say I was in?” Desmond asked the old housekeeper, who was
staring at the dancer.

“Why, yes, sir,” the woman answered.

Desmond made a gesture of vexation.

“Where is this Mr. Mortimer?” he asked

“In the library, sir!”

“Tell him I will be with him at once.”

Martha hobbled away and Desmond turned to the girl.

“You heard what my housekeeper said? The man is here. I shall have to
see him.”

Nur-el-Din, white to the lips, stood by the table, nervously twisting a
little handkerchief.

“_Non, non_,” she said rapidly, “you must not see him. He has come to
find me. Ah! if he should find out what I have done... you will not
give me up to this man?”

“You need not see him,” Desmond expostulated gently, “I will say you
are not here! Who is this Mortimer that he should seek to do you harm?”

“My friend,” said the dancer sadly, “he is my evil genius. If I had
dreamt that you knew him I would never have sought refuge in your
house.”

“But I’ve never set eyes on the man in my life!” exclaimed Desmond.

The dancer shook her head mournfully at him.

“Very few of you have, my friend,” she replied, “but you are all under
his orders, _n’est-ce pas?_”

Desmond’s heart leaped. Was Mortimer’s the guiding hand of this network
of conspiracy?

“I’ve trusted you, Monsieur,” Nur-el-Din continued in a pleading voice,
“you will respect the laws of hospitality, and hide me from this man.
You will not give me up! Promise it, my friend?”

Desmond felt strangely moved. Was this a callous murderess, a hired
spy, who, with her great eyes brimming over with tears, entreated his
protection so simply, so appealingly?

“I promise I will not give you up to him, _Mademoiselle!_” he said and
hated himself in the same breath for the part he had to play. Then he
left her still standing by the table, lost in thought.

Desmond walked through the hall to the room in which he had found
Nur-el-Din asleep on his arrival. His nerves were strung up tight for
the impending encounter with this Mortimer, whoever, whatever he was.
Desmond did not hesitate on the threshold of the room. He quietly
opened the door and walked in.

A man in a black and white check suit with white gaiters stood on the
hearthrug, his hands tucked behind his back. He had a curiously
young-old appearance, such as is found in professors and scientists of
a certain type. This suggestion was probably heightened by the very
strong spectacles he wore, which magnified his eyes until they looked
like large colored marbles. He had a heavy curling moustache resembling
that affected by the late Lord Randolph Churchill. There was a good
deal of mud on his boots, showing that he had come on foot.

The two men measured one another in a brief but courteous glance.
Desmond wondered what on earth this man’s profession was. He was quite
unable to place him.

“Mr. Bellward?” said Mortimer, in a pleasant cultivated voice, “I am
pleased to have this opportunity of meeting you personally.”

Desmond bowed and muttered something conventional. Mortimer had put out
his hand but Desmond could not nerve himself to take it. Instead he
pushed forward a chair.

“Thanks,” said Mortimer sitting down heavily, “I’ve had quite a walk
across the fen. It’s pleasant out but damp! I suppose you didn’t get my
letter?”

“Which letter was that” asked Desmond.

“Why the one asking you to let me know when you would be back so that
we might meet at last!”

Desmond shook his head.

“No,” he said, “I didn’t get that one. It must have gone astray. As a
matter of fact,” he added, “I only got back this morning.”

“Oh, well then, I am fortunate in my visit,” said Mortimer. “Did
everything go off all right?”

“Oh, yes,” Desmond hastened to say, not knowing what he was talking
about, “everything went off all right.”

“I don’t in the least grudge you the holiday,” the other observed, “one
should always be careful to pay the last respects to the dead. It makes
a good impression. That is so important in some countries!”

He beamed at Desmond through his spectacles.

“Was there anything left in your absence?” he asked, “no, there would
be nothing; I suppose!”

Desmond took a firm resolution. He must know what the man was driving
at.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said bluntly.

“God bless my soul!” ejaculated Mortimer turning round to stare at him
through his grotesque glasses. And then he said very deliberately in
German:

“_War niemand da?_”

Desmond stood up promptly.

“What do you want with me?” he asked quietly, “and why do you speak
German in my house?” Mortimer gazed at him blankly.

“Excellence, most excellent,” he gasped. “I love prudence. My friend,
where are your eyes?”

He put a large, firm hand up and touched the upper edge of the left
lapel of his jacket. Desmond followed his gesture with his eyes and saw
the other’s first finger resting on the shiny glass head of a black
pin. Almost instinctively Desmond imitated the gesture. His fingers
came into contact with a glassheaded pin similarly embedded in the
upper edge of the lapel of his own coat.

Then he understood. This must be the distinguishing badge of this
confraternity of spies. It was a clever idea, for the black pin was
practically invisible, unless one looked for it, and even if seen,
would give rise to no suspicions. It had obviously escaped the notice
of the Chief and his merry men, and Desmond made a mental resolve to
rub this omission well into his superior on the first opportunity. He
felt he owed the Chief one.

Mr. Mortimer cleared his throat, as though to indicate the conclusion
of the episode. Desmond sat down on the settee.

“Nothing came while I was away!” he said.

“Now that you are back,” Mortimer remarked, polishing his glasses with
a bandanna handkerchief, “the service will be resumed. I have come to
see you, Mr. Bellward,” he went on, turning to Desmond, “contrary to my
usual practice, mainly because I wished to confirm by personal
observation the very favorable opinion I had formed of your ability
from our correspondence. You have already demonstrated your discretion
to me. If you continue to show that your prudence is on a level with
your zeal, believe I shall not prove myself ungrateful.”

So saying he settled his glasses on his nose again.

The action woke Desmond from a brown study. During the operation of
wiping his spectacles, Mr. Mortimer had given Desmond a glimpse of his
eyes in their natural state without the protection of those distorting
glasses. To his intense surprise Desmond had seen, instead of the weak,
blinking eyes of extreme myopia, a pair of keen piercing eyes with the
clear whites of perfect health. Those blue eyes, set rather close
together, seemed dimly familiar. Someone, somewhere, had once looked at
him like that.

“You are too kind,” murmured Desmond, grappling for the thread of the
conversation.

Mortimer did not apparently notice his absentmindedness.

“Everything has run smoothly,” he resumed, “on the lines on which we
have been working hitherto, but more important work lies before us. I
have found it necessary to select a quiet rendezvous where I might have
an opportunity of conferring in person with my associates. The first of
these conferences will take place very shortly. I count upon your
attendance, Bellward!”

“I shall not fail you,” replied Desmond. “But where is this rendezvous
of yours, might I ask?”

Mortimer shot a quick glance at him.

“You shall know in good time,” he answered drily. Then he added:

“Do you mind if I have a few words with Nur-el-Din before I go!”

The unexpected question caught Desmond off his guard.

“Nur-el-Din?” he stammered feebly.

“She is staying with you, I believe,” said Mortimer pleasantly.

Desmond shook his head.

“There must be some mistake,” he averred stoutly, “of course I know who
you mean, but I have never met the lady. She is not here. What led you
to suppose she was?”

But even as he spoke, his eyes fell on a black object which lay near
his arm stretched out along the back of the settee. It was a little
velvet hat, skewered to the upholstery of the settee by a couple of
jewelled hat-pins. A couple of gaudy cushions lay between it and
Mortimer’s range of vision from the chair in which the latter was
sitting. If only Mortimer had not spotted it already!

Desmond’s presence of mind did not desert him. On the pretext of
settling himself more comfortably he edged up another cushion until it
rested upon the other two, thus effectively screening the hat from
Mortimer’s view even when he should get up.

“I wish she were here,” Desmond added, smiling, “one could not have a
more delightful companion to share one’s solitude, I imagine.”

“The lady has disappeared from London under rather suspicious
circumstances;” Mortimer said, letting his grotesque eyes rest for a
moment on Desmond’s face, “to be quite frank with you, my dear fellow,
she has been indiscreet, and the police are after her.”

“You don’t say!” cried Desmond.

“Indeed, it is a fact,” replied the other, “I wish she would take you
as her model, my dear Bellward. You are the pattern of prudence, are
you not?”

He paused perceptibly and Desmond held his breath.

“She has very few reputable friends,” Mortimer continued presently,
“under a cloud as she is, she could hardly frequent the company of her
old associates, Mowbury and Lazarro and Mrs. Malplaquet, you doubtless
know whom I mean. I know she has a very strong recommendation to you,
so I naturally thought—well, no matter!”

He rose and extended his hand.

“_Au revoir_, Bellward,” he said, “you shall hear from me very soon.
You’ve got a snug little place here, I must say, and everything in
charming taste. I like your pretty cushions.”

The blood flew to Desmond’s face and he bent down, on pretense of
examining the cushions, to hide his confusion.

“They aren’t bad,” he said, “I got them at Harrod’s!”

He accompanied Mortimer to the front door and watched him disappear
down the short drive and turn out of the gate into the road. Then
feeling strangely ill at ease, he went back to join Nur-el-Din in the
dining-room. But only the housekeeper was there, clearing the table.

“If you’re looking for the young lady, sir,” said old Martha, “she’s
gone out!”

“Oh!” said Desmond, with a shade of disappointment in his voice, “will
she be back for tea?”

“She’s not coming back at all,” answered the old woman, “she told me to
tell you she could not stop, sir. And she wouldn’t let me disturb you,
neither, sir.”

“But did she leave no note or anything for me?” asked Desmond.

“No, sir,” answered old Martha as she folded up the cloth.

Gone! Desmond stared gloomily out at the sopping garden with an uneasy
feeling that he had failed in his duty.




CHAPTER XIII.
WHAT SHAKESPEARE’S COMEDIES REVEALED


In a very depressed frame of mind, Desmond turned into the library. As
he crossed the hall, he noticed how cheerless the house was. Again
there came to him that odor of mustiness—of all smells the most eerie
and drear—which he had noticed on his arrival. Somehow, as long as
Nur-el-Din had been there, he had not remarked the appalling loneliness
of the place.

A big log fire was blazing cheerfully in the grate, throwing out a
bright glow into the room which, despite the early hour, was already
wreathed in shadows. Wearily Desmond pulled a big armchair up to the
blaze and sat down. He told himself that he must devote every minute of
his spare time to going over in his mind the particulars he had
memorized of Mr. Bellward’s habits and acquaintanceships. He took the
list of Bellward’s friends from his pocket-book.

But this afternoon he found it difficult to concentrate his attention.
His gaze kept wandering back to the fire, in whose glowing depths he
fancied he could see a perfect oval face with pleading eyes and
dazzling teeth looking appealingly at him.

Nur-el-Din! What an entrancing creature she was! What passion lurked in
those black eyes of hers, in her moods, swiftly changing from gusts of
fierce imperiousness to gentle airs of feminine charm! What a frail
little thing she was to have fought her way alone up the ladder from
the lowest rung to the very top! She must have character and grit,
Desmond decided, for he was a young man who adored efficiency: to him
efficiency spelled success.

But a spy needs grit, he reflected, and Nur-el-Din had many qualities
which would enable her to win the confidence of men. Hadn’t she
half-captivated him, the would-be spy-catcher, already?

Desmond laughed ruefully to himself. Indeed, he mused, things looked
that way. What would the Chief say if he could see his prize young man,
his white-headed boy, sitting sentimentalizing by the fire over a woman
who was, by her own confession, practically an accredited German agent?
Desmond thrust his chin out and shook himself together. He would put
the feminine side of Nur-el-Din out of his head. He must think of her
henceforth only as a member of the band that was spotting targets for
those sneaking, callous brutes of U-boat commanders.

He went back to the study of the list of Mr. Bellward’s friends. But he
found it impossible to focus his mind upon it. Do what he would, he
could not rid himself of the sensation that he had failed at the very
outset of his mission. He was, indeed, he told himself, the veriest
tyro at the game. Here he had had under his hand in turn Nur-el-Din and
Mortimer (who, he made no doubt, was the leader of the gang which was
so sorely troubling the Chief), and he had let both get away without
eliciting from either even as much as their address. By the use of a
little tact, he had counted on penetrating something of the mystery
enveloping the dancer and her relationship with the gang; for he
thought he divined that Nur-el-Din was inclined to make him her
confidant. With the information thus procured, he had hoped to get on
to the track of the leader of the band.

But that ugly brute; Mortimer, with his goggle eyes, had spoiled
everything. His appearance had taken Desmond completely by surprise: to
tell the truth, it had thrown our young man rather off his guard. “If
only I might have had a little longer acquaintance with my part,” he
reflected bitterly as he sat by the fire, “I should have been better
able to deal with that pompous ass!”

Afterwards, when thinking over the opening events of this extraordinary
episode of his career, Desmond rather wondered why he had not followed
Mortimer out of the house that afternoon and tracked him down to his
hiding place. But, as a matter of fact, the idea did not occur to him
at the time. His orders were positive not to leave the house, and he
never even thought of breaking them—at any rate, not then.

His orders, also, it is true, were to report to headquarters any
communication that might be made to him; but these instructions, at
least as far as Nur-el-Din’s and Mortimer’s visits were concerned, he
resolved to ignore.

For one thing, he felt angry with the Chief who, he argued rather
irrationally, ought to have foreseen and prevented Mortimer thus taking
him by surprise. The Chief liked secrets—well, for a change, he should
be kept in the dark and the laugh would be on Desmond’s side. For a few
minutes after Mortimer’s departure, Desmond had felt strongly inclined
to go to the telephone which stood on the desk in the library and ring
up Mr. Elias, as he should have done, but he resisted this impulse.
Now, thinking things over in the firelight, he was glad he had
refrained. He would ferret out for himself the exact part that
Nur-el-Din and Mortimer were playing in this band of spies. Nothing
definite had come of his interviews with them as yet. It would be time
enough to communicate with Headquarters when he had something positive
to report.

Then Desmond thrust the paper he had been studying back in his
pocket-book and jumped up. He felt that the inaction was stifling him.
He determined to go for a walk round the garden. That, at least, was in
the spirit of his orders.

Remembering that he was supposed to be suffering from a chill he donned
a heavy Ulster of Bellward’s which was hanging in the hall and wound a
muffler round his neck. Then cramming a soft cap on his head (he noted
with satisfaction that Bellward’s hats fitted him remarkably well) he
opened the front door and stepped outside.

The rain had stopped, but the whole atmosphere reeked of moisture.
Angry-looking, dirty-brown clouds chased each other across the lowering
sky, and there was a constant sound of water, trickling and gurgling
and splashing, in his ears.

An untidy-looking lawn with a few unkempt and overgrown rhododendron
bushes dotted here and there ran its length in front of the house and
terminated in an iron railing which separated the grounds from a little
wood. A badly water-logged drive, green with grass in places, ran past
the lawn in a couple of short bends to the front gate. On the other
side the drive was bordered by what had once been a kitchen garden but
was now a howling wilderness of dead leaves, mud and gravel with
withered bushes and half a dozen black, bare and dripping apple trees
set about at intervals. At the side of the house the kitchen garden
stopped and was joined by a flower garden—at least so Desmond judged it
to have been by a half ruined pergola which he had noticed from the
drawing-room windows. Through the garden ran the mill-race which poured
out of the grounds through a field and under a little bridge spanning
the road outside.

Desmond followed the drive as far as the front gate. The surrounding
country was as flat as a pancake, and in almost every field lay great
glistening patches of water where the land had been flooded by the
incessant rain. The road on which the house was built ran away on the
left to the mist-shrouded horizon without another building of any kind
in sight. Desmond surmised that Morstead Fen lay in the direction in
which he was looking. To the right, Desmond caught a glimpse of a
ghostly spire sticking out of some trees and guessed that this was
Wentfield Ch

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