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

“Your great Drake,” she reminded him, “played bowls when the Armada sailed. Your Cabinet Ministers will be playing golf or tennis. Oh, what a careless country you are!—a careless, haphazard, blind, pig-headed nation to watch over the destinies of such an Empire! I’m so tired of politics, dear. I am so tired of all the big things that concern other people. They press upon one. Now it is finished. You and I are alone. You are my lover, aren’t you? Remind me of it. If you will, I will discuss the subject you mentioned the other day. Of course I shall say ‘No!’ I am not nearly ready to be married yet. But I should like to hear your arguments.”

Their heads grew closer and closer together. They were almost touching when Selingman and Rosa Morgen came in. Selingman paused before their table.

“Well, well, young people!” he exclaimed. “Forgive me, Baroness, if I am somewhat failing in respect, but the doings of this young man have become some concern of mine.”

Her greeting was tinged with a certain condescension. She had suddenly stiffened. There was something of the grande dame in the way she held up the tips of her fingers.

“You do not disapprove, I trust?”

“Baroness,” Selingman declared earnestly, “it is an alliance for which no words can express my approval. It comes at the one moment. It has riveted to us and our interests one whose services will never be forgotten. May I venture to hope that your journey to Italy has been productive?”

“Not entirely as we had hoped,” Anna replied, “yet the position there is not unfavourable.”

Selingman glanced towards the table at which Miss Morgen had already seated herself.

“I must not neglect my duties,” he remarked, turning away.

“Especially,” Anna murmured, glancing across the room, “when they might so easily be construed into pleasures.”

Selingman beamed amiably.

“The young lady,” he said, “is more than ornamental—she is extremely useful. From the fact that I may not be privileged to present her to you, I must be careful that she cannot consider herself neglected. And so good night, Baroness! Good night, Norgate!”

He passed on. The Baroness watched him as he took his place opposite his companion.

“Is it my fancy,” Norgate asked, “or does Selingman not meet entirely with your approval?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“It is not that,” she replied. “He is a great man, in his way, the Napoleon of the bourgeoisie, but then he is one of them himself. He collects the whole scheme of information as to the social life and opinions—the domestic particulars, I call them—of your country. Details of your industries are at his finger-tips. He and I do not come into contact. I am the trusted agent of both sovereigns, but it is only in high diplomatic affairs that I ever intervene. Selingman, it is true, may be considered the greatest spy who ever breathed, but a spy he is. If we could only persuade your too amiable officials to believe one-tenth of what we could tell them, I think our friend there would breakfast in an English fortress, if you have such a thing.”

“We should only place him under police supervision,” declared Norgate, “and let him go. It’s just our way, that’s all.”

She waved the subject of Selingman on one side, but almost at that moment he stood once more before them. He held an evening paper in his hand.

“I bring you the news,” he announced. “A terrible tragedy has happened. The Archduke of Austria and his Consort have been assassinated on their tour through Bosnia.”

For a moment neither Anna nor Norgate moved. Norgate felt a strange sense of sickening excitement. It was as though the curtain had been rung up!

“Is the assassin’s name there?” he asked.

“The crime,” Selingman replied, “appears to have been committed by a young Servian student. His name is Sigismund Henriote.”

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They paused at last, breathless, and walked out of the most wonderful ballroom in London into the gardens, aglow with fairy lanterns whose brilliance was already fading before the rising moon. They found a seat under a tall elm tree, and Anna leaned back. It was a queer mixture of sounds which came to their ears; in the near distance, the music of a wonderful orchestra rising and falling; further away, the roar of the great city still awake and alive outside the boundary of those grey stone walls.

“Of course,” she murmured, “this is the one thing which completes my subjugation. Fancy an Englishman being able to waltz! Almost in that beautiful room I fancied myself back in Vienna, except that it was more wonderful because it was you.”

“You are turning my head,” he whispered. “This is like a night out of Paradise. And to think that we are really in the middle of London!”

“Ah! do not mention London,” she begged, “or else I shall begin to think of Sodom and Gomorrah. After all, why need one live for anything else except the present?”

“There is the Comtesse,” he reminded her disconsolately.

She sighed.

“How horrid of you!”

“Let us forget her, then,” he begged. “We will go into the marquee there and have supper, and afterwards dance again. We’ll steal to-night out of the calendar. We’ll call it ours and play with it as we please.”

She shook her head.

“No,” she decided, “you have reminded me of our duty, and you are quite right. You were brought here to talk to the Comtesse. I do not know why, but she is in a curiously impenetrable frame of mind. I tried hard to get her to talk to me, but it was useless; you must see what you can do. Fortunately, she seems to be absolutely delighted to have met you again. You have a dance with her, have you not?”

He drew out his programme reluctantly.

“The next one, too,” he sighed.

Anna rose quickly to her feet.

“How absurd of me to forget! Take me inside, please, and go and look for her at once.”

“It’s all very well,” Norgate grumbled, “but the last time I saw her she was about three deep among the notabilities. I really don’t feel that I ought to jostle dukes and ambassadors to claim a dance.”

“You must not be so foolish,” Anna insisted. “The Comtesse cares nothing for dukes and ambassadors, but she is most ridiculously fond of good-looking young men. Mind, you will do better with her if you speak entirely outside all of us. She is a very peculiar woman. If one could only read the secrets she has stored up in her brain! Sometimes she is so lavish with them, and at other times, and with other people, it seems as though it would take an earthquake to force a sentence from her lips. There she is, see, in that corner. Never mind the people around her. Go and do your duty.”

Norgate found it easier than he had expected. She no sooner saw him coming than she rose to her feet and welcomed him. She laid her fingers upon his arm, and they moved away towards the ballroom.

“I am afraid,” he apologised, “that I am rather an intruder. You all seemed so interested in listening to the Duke.”

“On the contrary, I welcome you as a deliverer,” she declared. “I have heard those stories so often, and worse than having heard them is the necessity always to smile. The Duke is a dear good person, and he has been exceedingly kind to me during the whole of my stay, but oh, how one sometimes does weary oneself of this London of yours! Yet I love it. Do you know that you were almost the first person I asked for when I arrived here? They told me that you were in Berlin.”

“I was,” he admitted. “I am in the act of being transferred.”

“Fortunate person!” she murmured. “You speak the language of all capitals, but I cannot fancy you in Berlin.”