E. Phillips Oppenheim - 21 Greatest Spy Thrillers in One Premium Edition (Mystery & Espionage Series)

She drew him farther into the shelter. It seemed to him that her fingers lingered almost caressingly upon his wrist.

“If only you and I,” she sighed, “could be on the same side.”

“Well, I think I should be an improvement upon your present fellow conspirators,” he rejoined.

“Maurice, as I dare say you know,” she told him, “is a nephew of Von Salzenburg. He has the reputation of being a fine soldier.”

“These fine soldiers,” Fawley grunted, “are always a terrible nuisance in civil life. What the mischief is he up to now?”

Conditions had changed during the last few moments. They were only about a hundred yards from the entrance to the harbour but they seemed to be taking an unusual course which laid them broadside to the heavy seas. Two sailors were busy lowering one of the dinghies. Elida pointed towards the wheel. The Prince had taken the captain’s place, he had thrown off his oilskins and coat, and was standing up with the wheel in his hand, his broad ugly mouth a little open, his eyes fixed steadily upon the narrow entrance to the harbour.

“He is mad!” Elida exclaimed.

A great wave broke over them, smashing some of the woodwork of the deck lounge and sending splinters of glass in every direction. People were running, dimly visible shrouded figures, through the mist and cloud of rain to the end of the pier. There were warning shouts. The captain gripped Von Thal by the arm and shouted indistinguishable words. Maurice’s right hand shot out. The man staggered back and collapsed half upon the deck, half clinging to the rails. Once again they mounted a wave which for a few seconds completely engulfed them.

“Maurice is running straight for the sea wall,” Elida gasped.

“In that case,” Fawley exclaimed, tearing off his coat, “I think we will make for the dinghy.”

There was suddenly a terrific crash, a splintering of wood all around them, a crashing and screeching of torn timbers. They seemed to be up in the air for a moment. Von Thal, who had left the wheel, came dashing towards them. The deck seemed to be parting underneath their feet. Fawley drew the girl closer into his arms, her wet cheeks were pressed to his. For a period of seconds their lips met fiercely, hungrily, the flavour of salt in their madness, and the roar and blinding fury of the breaking waves stupefying them…Once again the yacht, which had been sucked backwards, crashed into the stone wall. This time she fell apart like a cardboard box. Fawley saw, as though in a dream, Elida hauled into the dinghy. She was surrounded by ugly pieces of wreckage, threatening them every second with death. He drew a long breath and dived down to the calmer waters.

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Fawley, after several weeks of devious and strenuous wanderings, crossed the very fine hall of Berlin’s most famous hotel, well aware that he was now approaching the crucial point of his enterprise. Frankfurt, thanks to his English and French connections, had been easy. At Cologne and some of the smaller towns around, even if he had aroused a little suspicion, he had learnt all that he needed to know. But in Berlin, for the first time, outside aid was denied to him and he became conscious that he was up against a powerful and well-conducted system of espionage. The very politeness of the hotel officials, their casual glance at his credentials, their meticulous care as to his comfort—all these things had seemed to him to possess a sinister undernote. He chose for his headquarters a small suite upon the sixth floor, with the sitting room between his bedroom and bathroom; but his first discovery was that the one set of keys attached to the double doors was missing and he only obtained the keys giving access to the corridor after some considerable delay…

Yet to all appearance he had been received as an ordinary and welcome visitor. According to his custom, he was travelling under his own passport and without any sort of compromising papers, yet all the time he fancied that these polite officials, some of whom seemed to be always in the background, were looking at him from behind that masked expression of courtesy and affability with definite suspicion.

For two days he lounged about the city as an ordinary tourist, without any particular attempt at secrecy, asking no questions, seeking no new acquaintances, and visiting only the largest and best-known restaurants. On the third morning after his arrival there was a thunderous knocking at the door, and in reply to his invitation to enter there rolled in, with his fat creaseless face, and pudgy hand already extended, Adolf Krust. Fawley laid down his pipe and suffered his fingers to be gripped.

“So you gave us all the slip, you crafty fellow,” the visitor exclaimed. “And you left my little friend in such distress with a copy of an A.B.C. in her hand and tears in her eyes; and all that we know, or rather that we do not know, is that the Daily Mail tells us that Major Fawley, late of the American Army, has left the Hôtel de France for London. London, indeed! The one place in the world that for you and me and for those like us is dead. What should you be doing in London, eh?”

“I may go there before I finish up,” Fawley replied, smiling. “After all, I am half English, you know.”

“You are of no country,” Adolf Krust declared, sinking into the indicated easy-chair and blowing out his cheeks. “You are the monarch of cosmopolitans. You are a person who carries with him always a cult. You have upset us all in Monte Carlo. Some believe that you were drowned when that clumsy fool, that idiot nephew of Von Salzenburg, drove you on to the sea wall of the harbour in that fearful mistral.”

“It was an excellent stage disappearance for me,” Fawley observed. “I was just a shade too much in the limelight for my safety or my comfort.”

“You speak the truth,” his visitor agreed. “Only two days after you left, the French military police were swarming in the hotel. Every one was talking about you. There were some who insisted upon it that you were a dangerous fellow. They are right, too, every time; but all the same, you breathe life. Yes,” Krust concluded, with a little sigh of satisfaction, “it is well put, that—you breathe life.”

“Perhaps that is because I have so often loitered in the shadow of death,” Fawley remarked.

Krust shrugged his tightly encased shoulders. In the city he had abandoned the informal costume of the Riviera and was attired with the grave precision of a senator.

“In the walk of life we traverse,” he said, “that is a matter of course… Ach , but this is strange!”

“What is strange?”

“To find you, after all my persuadings, in my beloved Berlin.”

“I have also visited your beloved Frankfurt and Cologne,” Fawley confided drily, perfectly certain that his visitor was well acquainted with the fact.

The blue eyes grew rounder and rounder.

“You take away the breath,” Krust declared. “As the great young man used to say—you sap the understanding. You have seen Von Salzenburg?”

Fawley shook his head.

“Not I!” he answered. “Some day, if there is anything that might come of it, we will see him together.”

Krust’s eyes became more protuberant than ever. This was a strange one, this man! He wondered whether, after all, Greta had told the truth, whether she had not all the time kept back something from him. Fawley pushed a box of cigarettes across the table. His caller waved them away and produced a leather receptacle the size of a traveller’s sample case.

“You are not one of those who object to the odour of any good tobacco, even if it be strong?” he asked. “You have seen my cigars. You will not smoke them, but they are good. They are made in Cologne and they cost two pfennig each, which in these days helps the pocketbook.”