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

“Your table is reserved, Herr Oberst ,” he said. “Please to follow me.”

He led the way into a small but evidently very high-class restaurant. The walls were panelled in black oak which, so far from giving the place a sombre appearance, increased the brilliancy of the effect produced by the masses of scarlet flowers with which every table was decorated, the spotless linen, the profusion of gleaming glass and silver. He led the way to a small table in a recess—a table laid for three, one place of which was already occupied. Fawley stopped short. Elida was seated there—looking like a Greuze picture in her filmy veil and white satin gown, with her chestnut-brown hair and soft hazel eyes. She was obviously very nervous.

“I am afraid that there must be some mistake,” Fawley said to the maître d’hôtel . “It is a man whom I am expecting to meet.”

The maître d’hôtel had resumed his consequential air.

“I do not make mistakes, Herr Oberst ,” he declared. “This is the table commanded by my most honoured patron to be reserved for Herr Oberst Fawley and the Prinzessin Elida di Rezco di Vasena. His Excellency will join you later.”

Elida smiled appealingly up at Fawley.

“You will support my presence for a short time until your host arrives?” she begged. “He is, as you know, a very busy man. He thought that we might converse for a while until he comes.”

“But what do you know about him?” Fawley asked wonderingly. “Surely this is not your galère ?”

“I will explain,” she promised. “You are angry with me but indeed nothing that happened was my fault. Please sit down.”

She laid her hand upon his wrist and drew him gently towards the table. Fawley steeled himself, as well as he might, against the lure of her beseeching eyes, but took the place by her side.

“Forgive me if I seemed ungracious,” he murmured. “I never dreamed of seeing you here.”

She drew a sigh of relief and approved his idea of a cocktail. The pedagogue of the place strutted away. They were alone.

“Dear friend,” she said, and for a person who had seemed to him, at most times, so indifferent, her voice trembled with emotion. “Indeed I was not to blame. No idea of my mad cousin’s scheme had ever entered my head. One result of it you see in my presence here.”

“I am glad to believe it,” he answered. “Do you mean then that your sympathies are changed?”

“It would seem so, would it not?” she answered, with a sigh of relief. “It has been a great upheaval but I believe that they are. My cousin assured me that Von Salzenburg himself said that you were to be got rid of. The idea sickened me. I no longer wish to serve a company of assassins.”

The cocktails were served. Elida ordered supper and wine.

“You see,” she explained, “our host eats or drinks practically nothing. I am to entertain you till he comes. You are to be impressed. How shall I begin, I wonder?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Princess—” he began.

“You may call me Elida,” she interrupted. “From you I prefer it. I shall call you Martin. In a place like this, we do not wish to advertise ourselves.”

“I am very happy to find you so gracious,” he assured her. “I am happy too to know that you did not share your cousin’s desire to send me to destruction.”

“No one in the world,” she said quietly, “has a stronger wish than I have, Martin, to keep you alive, to keep you well, to keep you near me if I can.”

“Do you speak for your new chief?” he enquired.

“You must please not be bitter,” she pleaded. “I speak for myself. That, I assure you, you should believe. If you wish to be serious, I will now speak to you for Heinrich Behrling. It was his wish that I should do so.”

“Why should he trouble about me?” Fawley asked, toying with the stem of his wineglass. “I am only an agent and a mercenary at that.”

“Do not fence,” she begged. “Remember that I know all about you. We can both guess why you are here. Berati is at last not absolutely certain that he is dealing with the right party. Very late in the day and against his will, he is finding wisdom—as I have. Our tinsel prince and his goose-stepping soldiers will never help Germany towards freedom. It is the passionate youth of Germany, the liberty-loving and country-loving youth in whose keeping the future rests.”

“This is very interesting,” Fawley remarked, with a faint smile. “Considering your antecedents, I find it almost incredible.”

“Must one ignore the welfare of one’s country because one happens to be born an aristocrat?” she demanded.

“Not if a Rienzi presents himself,” he retorted. “Are you sure, however, that Behrling really is your Rienzi?”

“If I were not,” she insisted, with a note of passion in her tone, “I should never have given my life and reputation and everything worth having to his cause, as I have done since the day of that catastrophe upon the yacht. Do you know, Martin, that I am one of a band—the latest recruit perhaps but one of the most earnest—a band of six thousand young women, all born in different walks of life. We have all the same idea. We work to make Heinrich Behrling the ruler of Germany. We are not all Germans. We do not wear uniform, we do not look for any reward. Our idea is to give everything we possess, whatever it may be—money, our gifts of persuasion, our lives if necessary, to win adherents to Behrling’s cause, to stop and rout the communists and the Monarchist Party. Another Hohenzollern mixed up with politics and the whole world would lose faith in Germany. The only way that she can escape from the yoke of France is by showing the world that she has espoused the broader and greater principles of life and government.”

Fawley accepted a cigarette.

“You are very interesting, Elida,” he said. “I wish that I knew more of this matter. I am afraid that I am a very dumb and ignorant person.”

“It has occurred to me once or twice this evening,” she rejoined drily, “that you wish to appear so.”

“Alas,” he sighed, “I can assure you that I am no actor.”

“Nor are you, I am afraid,” she whispered, leaning across the table, “quite so impressionable as I fancied you were that afternoon in the corridor of Berati’s palazzo .”

The grim lines at the corners of his mouth relaxed.

“Elida,” he replied, as he looked into her eyes, “all I can say is—give me the opportunity to prove myself.”

She was puzzled for a moment. Then she smiled.

“You are thinking of Krust and his little crowd of fairies,” she laughed. “Yet I am told that he finds them very useful. One of them you seemed to find—rather attractive—at Monte Carlo.”

He shrugged his shoulders. Perhaps she realised that her mention of the place was not altogether tactful. She changed the conversation.

“Why are you not working for your own country?” she asked curiously.

“Because my own country has a passion for imagining that even in these days of fast steamships and seaplanes, she can remain apart from Europe and European influence,” he answered, with a faintly regretful tremor in his tone. “We have abandoned all Secret Service methods. We have no Secret Service. I can tell you of six departments in which one might have served before the war. Not one of these exists to-day. In their place we have but one department and to belong to this it is only necessary that a man has never been out of his own country, can speak no language but his own and is devoid of any pretensions to intelligence! The work for its own sake is so fascinating that one finds it hard to abandon it altogether. That is why I offered my services to Italy.”