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FOREWORD
FOREWORD
"I am for England and England only," John Lutchester, the Englishman, asserted. "I am for Japan and Japan only," Nikasti, the Jap, insisted. "I am for Germany first and America afterwards," Oscar Fischer, the German-American pronounced. "I am for America first, America only, America always," Pamela Van Teyl, the American girl, declared. They were all right except the German-American....
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
Mefiez-Vous! Taisez-Vous! Les Oreilles Ennemies Vous Ecoutent! The usual little crowd was waiting in the lobby of a fashionable London restaurant a few minutes before the popular luncheon hour. Pamela Van Teyl, a very beautiful American girl, dressed in the extreme of fashion, which she seemed somehow to justify, directed the attention of her companions to the notice affixed to the wall facing them. "Except," she declared, "for you poor dears who have been hurt, that is the first thing I have se
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
Molly Holderness, for whom Graham's absence possessed, perhaps, more significance than the others, relapsed very soon into a strained and anxious silence. Pamela and Lutchester, on the other hand, divided their attention between a very excellent luncheon and an even flow of personal, almost inquisitorial conversation. "You will find," Pamela warned her companion almost as they took their places, "that I am a very curious person. I am more interested in people than in events. Tell me something ab
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
Pamela, after a brief conversation with her friends, once more left the restaurant. In the lobby she called Ferrani to her. "Has Mr. Fischer gone, Ferrani?" she asked. "Not two minutes ago," the man replied. "You wish to speak to him? I can stop him even now." She shook her head. "On the contrary," she said drily, "Mr. Fischer represents a type of my countrymen of whom I am not very fond. He is a great patron of yours, is he not?" "He is a large shareholder in the company," Ferrani confessed. "T
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
The last of the supper-guests had left Henry's Restaurant, the commissionaire's whistle was silent. The light laughter and frivolous adieux of the departing guests seemed to have melted away into a world somewhere beyond the pale of the unseasonable fog. The little strip of waste ground adjoining was wrapped in gloom and silence. The exterior of the bare and deserted chapel, long since unconsecrate, was dull and lifeless. Inside, however, began the march of strange things. First of all, the pinp
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
So far as Sandy Graham was concerned, his unconsciousness might have lasted an hour or a day. As a matter of fact, it was scarcely a minute after the disappearance of Fischer and his confederates when he was conscious of a rush of cold air in the place, and beheld the vision of a tiny flash of light at the lower end of the gloomy building. Immediately afterwards he heard the soft closing of a door and beheld a tall, shadowy figure slowly approaching. He lay quite still and looked at it, and his
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
It was about half-an-hour later when Sandy Graham opened his eyes and began to feel the life once more warm in his veins. He was seated in the most comfortable easy-chair of John Lutchester's bachelor sitting-room. By his side was a coffee equipage and a decanter of brandy. His head still throbbed, and his bones ached, but his mind was beginning to grow clearer. Lutchester, who had been seated at the writing table, swung round in his chair at the sound of his guest's movement. "Feeling better, e
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
The Lapland was two days out from Tilbury before Pamela appeared on deck, followed by her maid with an armful of cushions, and the deck steward with her rugs. She had scarcely made herself comfortable in a sunny corner when she was aware of the approach of a large, familiar figure. Her astonishment was entirely genuine. "Mr. Fischer!" she exclaimed. "Why, how on earth did you catch this steamer? I thought you were coming on the Thursday boat?" "Some inducement to change my mind," Mr. Fischer rep
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
It was one evening towards the end of the voyage, and about an hour after dinner. A huge form loomed out of the darkness, continuing its steady promenade along the unlit portion of the deck. Pamela, moved by some caprice, abandoned her caution of the last few days and called out. "Mr. Fischer!" He stopped short. The sparks flew from the red end of his cigar, which he tossed into the sea. He hastened towards her. "Miss Van Teyl?" he replied, a little hesitatingly. "How clever of you to know my vo
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
James Van Teyl glanced curiously at the small, dark figure standing patiently before him, and then back again at the wireless cable which he held in his fingers. He was just back from a tiring day in Wall Street, and was reclining in the most comfortable easy-chair of his Hotel Plaza sitting-room. "Gee!" he murmured. "This beats me. The last thing I should have thought we wanted here was a valet. The fellow who looks after this suite has scarcely anything else to do. What did you say your name w
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
Van Teyl, as he hastened forward to meet his friend, presented at first sight a very good type of the well-groomed, athletic young American. He was over six feet tall, with smooth, dark hair brushed back from his forehead, a strong, clean-shaven face and good features. Only, as he drew nearer, there was evident a slight, unnatural quivering at the corner of his lips. The cordiality of his greeting, too, was a little overdone. "Welcome home, Fischer! Why, man, you're looking fine. Had a pleasant
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
Nikasti, with a low bow, watched the disappearance of the lift into which his two new masters, James Van Teyl and Oscar Fischer, had stepped. He waited until the indicator registered its safe arrival on the ground floor. Then he slowly retraced his steps along the corridor, entered the sitting-room, and took up the telephone receiver, which was still lying upon the table. "Will you give me number 77," he asked—"Miss Van Teyl's suite?" There was a moment's silence—then a voice at the other end to
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
Pamela's first shock of surprise did not readily pass. In the first place, John Lutchester's appearance in America at all was entirely unexpected. In the second, by what possible means could he have arrived at this precise and psychological moment? "You!" she exclaimed, a little helplessly. "Mr. Lutchester!" He smiled as he shook hands. Nikasti had slipped noiselessly from the room. Pamela made no effort to detain him. She had a curious feeling that the things which had passed between them conce
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
The first few seconds after the entrance of the two men were monopolised by the greetings of Pamela with her brother. Fischer stood a little in the background, his eyes fixed upon Lutchester. His brain was used to emergencies, but he found himself here confronted by an unanswerable problem. "Say, this is Mr. Lutchester, isn't it?" he inquired, holding out his hand. "The same," Lutchester assented politely. "We met at Henry's some ten days ago, didn't we?" "Mr. Lutchester has brought us a letter
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
Lutchester, to all appearance, remained sublimely unconscious of the tension which his words and appearance seemed to have created. He had strolled a little further into the room, and was looking down at the packet which he still held. "You are wondering how I got hold of this, of course?" he observed. "Just one of those simple little coincidences which either mean a great deal or nothing at all." "How did you know it was mine?" Pamela asked, almost under her breath. "I'll explain," Lutchester c
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
Pamela opened her eyes the next morning upon a distinctly pleasing sight. At the foot of her bed was an enormous basket of pink carnations. On the counterpane by her side lay a smaller cluster of twelve very beautiful dark red Gloire de Dijon roses. Attached to these latter was a note. "When did these flowers come, Leah?" Pamela asked the maid who was moving about the room. "An hour ago, madam," the girl told her. "Read the name on the card," Pamela directed, pointing to the mass of pink blossom
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
An elderly New Yorker, a man of fashion, renowned for his social perceptions, pressed his companion's arm at the entrance to Central Park and pointed to Pamela. "There goes a typical New York girl," he said, "and the best-looking I've seen for many a long day. You can go all round Europe, Freddie, and not see a girl with a face and figure like that. She had that frank way, too, of looking you in the eyes." "I know," the other assented. "Gibson's girls all had it. Kind of look which seems to say—
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
Pamela sat that afternoon on the balcony of the country club at Baltusrol and approved of her surroundings. Below her stretched a pleasant vista of rolling greensward, dotted here and there with the figures of the golfers. Beyond, the misty blue background of rising hills. "I can't tell you how peaceful this all seems, Jimmy," she said to her brother, who had brought her out in his automobile. "One doesn't notice the air of strain over on the Continent, because it's the same everywhere, but it g
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CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
There was a ripple of interest and a good deal of curiosity that afternoon, in the lounge and entrance hall of the Hotel Plaza, when a tall, grey-moustached gentleman of military bearing descended from the automobile which had brought him from the station, and handed in his name at the desk, inquiring for Mr. Fischer. "Will you send my name up—the Baron von Schwerin," he directed. The clerk, who had recognised the newcomer, took him under his personal care. "Mr. Fischer is up in his rooms, expec
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CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
High up in one of the topmost chambers of the Hotel Plaza, Nikasti, after his conference with Von Schwerin and Fischer, sought solitude. He opened the high windows, out of which he could scarcely see, dragged up a chest of drawers and perched himself, Oriental fashion, on the top, his long yellow fingers intertwined around his knees, his soft brown eyes gazing over the wooded slopes of the Park. He was away from the clamour of tongues, from the poisoned clouds of sophistry, even from the disturb
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CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
Fischer raised his eyebrows in mild surprise to find Nikasti waiting for him in the sitting room that evening, with his overcoat and evening hat. He closed the door of the bedroom from which he had issued carefully behind him. "You don't need to go on with this business now that we have had our little talk," he remonstrated. "I cannot leave until the twentieth," Nikasti replied. "I think it best that I remain here. Your cocktail, sir." Fischer accepted the glass with a good-humoured little laugh
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CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXI
Mr. Fischer's business later on that night led him into unsavoury parts. He left his car at the corner of Fourteenth Street, and, after a moment's reflection, as though to refresh his memory, he made his way slowly eastwards. He wore an unusually shabby overcoat, and a felt hat drawn over his eyes, both of which garments he had concealed in the automobile. Even then, however, his appearance made him an object of some comment. A little gang of toughs first jostled him and then turned and followed
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CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXII
Mrs. Theodore Hastings was forty-eight years old, which her friends said was the reason why her mansion on Fifth Avenue was furnished and lit with the delicate sombreness of an old Italian palace. There was about it none of the garishness, the almost resplendent brilliancy associated with the abodes of many of our neighbours. Although her masseuse confidently assured her that she looked twenty-eight, Mrs. Hastings preferred not to put the matter to the test. She received her carefully selected d
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CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIII
Fischer, exactly one week after his nocturnal visit to Fourteenth Street, hurried out of the train at the Pennsylvania Station, almost tore the newspapers from the news stand, glanced through them one by one and threw them back. The attendant, open-mouthed, ventured upon a mild protest. Fischer threw him a dollar bill, caught up his handbag, and made for the entrance. He was the first passenger from the Washington Limited to reach the street and spring into a taxi. "The Plaza Hotel," he ordered.
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CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXIV
"Now indeed I feel that I am in New York," Pamela declared, as she broke off one of the blossoms of the great cluster of deep red roses by her side, and gazed downward over her shoulder at the far-flung carpet of lights. "One sees little bits of America in every country of the world, but never this." Fischer, unusually grave and funereal-looking in his dinner clothes and black tie, followed her gesture with thoughtful eyes. Everything that was ugly in the stretching arms of the city seemed softe
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CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXV
Sonia had the air of one steeped in an almost ecstatic content. On her return from the roof garden she had exchanged her wonderful gown for a white silk negligee, and her headdress of pearls for a quaint little cap. She was stretched upon a sofa drawn before the wide-flung French windows of her little sitting-room at the Ritz-Carlton, a salon decorated in pink and white, and filled almost to overflowing with the roses which she loved. By her side, in an easy chair which she had pressed him to dr
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CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVI
Lutchester left Sonia and the Ritz-Carlton a few minutes before midnight, to find a great yellow moon overhead, which seemed to have risen somewhere at the back of Central Park. The broad thoroughfare up which he turned seemed to have developed a new and unfamiliar beauty. The electric lamps shone with a pale and almost unnatural glow. The flashing lights of the automobiles passing up and down were almost whimsically unnecessary. Lutchester walked slowly up Fifth Avenue in the direction of his h
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CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVII
Fischer, as he waited for Pamela the following afternoon in the sitting-room of her flat on Fifty-eighth Street, felt that although the practical future of his life might be decided in other places, it was here that its real climax would be reached. Pamela herself was to pronounce sentence upon him. He was feeling scarcely at his best. An examination in the courthouse, which he had imagined would last only a few minutes, had been protracted throughout the afternoon. The district attorney had ask
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CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXVIII
It was within half an hour of closing time that same afternoon when Lutchester walked into James Van Teyl's office. The young man greeted him with some surprise. "Will you do some business for me?" Lutchester asked, without any preliminaries. "Sure!" "How many Anglo-French will you buy for me? I can obtain credit by cable to-morrow through any bank for twenty or thirty thousand pounds." "You want to buy Anglo-French?" Van Teyl repeated softly. His visitor nodded. "Any news?" Lutchester hesitated
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CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXIX
At five-and-twenty minutes past eight that evening Lutchester, who was waiting in the entrance hall of the Ritz-Carlton, became just a little restless. At half-past, his absorption in an evening paper, over the top of which he looked at every newcomer, was almost farcical. At five-and-twenty to nine Pamela arrived. He advanced down the lounge to meet her. Her face was inscrutable, her smile conventional. Yet she had come! He looked over his shoulder towards the men's coat room. "Your brother?" "
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CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXX
Fischer had by no means the appearance of a discomfited man that evening, when some time later Pamela and Lutchester approached the little group of which he seemed, somehow, to have become the central figure. It was a small party, but, in its way, a distinguished one. Pamela's aunt was a member of an historic American family, and a woman of great social position, not only in New York but in Washington itself. Of the remaining guests, one was a financial magnate of world-wide fame, and the other,
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CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXI
The offices of Messrs. Neville, Brooks, and Van Teyl were the scene of something like pandemonium. Van Teyl himself, bathed in perspiration, rushed into his room for the twentieth time. He almost flung the newspaper man who was waiting for him through the door. "No, we don't know a darned thing," he declared. "We've no special information. The only reason we're up to our neck in Anglo-French is because we've two big clients dealing." "It's just a few personal notes about those clients we'd like
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CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXII
Lutchester breathed the air of Washington and felt almost homesick. The stateliness of the city, its sedate and quiescent air after the turmoil of New York, impressed him profoundly. Everywhere its diplomatic associations made themselves felt. Congress was in session, and the faces of the men whom he met continually in the hotels and restaurants seemed to him some index of the world power which flung its far-reaching arms from beneath the Capitol dome. One afternoon a few days after his arrival
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CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIII
Philip Downing very soon justified the profession to which he belonged by strolling off with some excuse about paying his respects to some acquaintances. Pamela and Lutchester immediately dropped the somewhat frivolous tone of their conversation. "You know that things are moving with our friend Fischer?" she began. "I gathered so," Lutchester assented. "His scheme is growing into shape," she went on. "You know what wonderful people his friends are for organising. Well, they are going to start a
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CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXIV
"Small affair, this," Downing observed, as he piloted Lutchester through the stately reception rooms of the Embassy. "You see, we are all living a sort of touchy life here, nowadays. We try to be civil to any of the German or Austrian lot when we meet, but of course they don't come to our functions. And every now and then some of those plaguey neutrals get the needle and they don't come, so we never know quite where we are, Guadopolis has been avoiding us lately, and I hear he was seen out at th
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CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXV
Mr. Oscar Fischer and his friend, Senator Theodore Hastings, stood side by side, a week later, in the bar of one of the most fashionable of New York hotels. They were passing away the few minutes before Pamela and her aunt would be ready to join them in the dining room above. "Very little news, I fancy," Hastings remarked, glancing at the tape which was passing through his companion's fingers. "Nothing—of any importance," Fischer replied. "Nothing." The older man glanced searchingly at his compa
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CHAPTER XXXVI
CHAPTER XXXVI
Fischer, on leaving his unsuccessful dinner party, drove direct to the residence of Mr. Max H. Bookam, in Fifth Avenue. The butler who admitted him looked a little blank at his inquiry. "Mr. Bookam was expected home yesterday, sir," he announced. "He has not arrived, however." "Has there been any telegram from him?—any news as to the cause of his non-return?" Fischer persisted. "I believe that Mr. Kaye, his secretary, has some information, sir," the man admitted. "Perhaps you would like to see h
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