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

“You mean if the governing party in German should change?”

“Precisely! They would then form at once my justification, and place English diplomacy in such a light before the saner portion of my fellow countrymen that an honourable peace might be rendered possible. Study them carefully, Von Ragastein. Perhaps even your own allegiance to the Party you serve may waver for a moment as you read.”

“I serve no Party,” Dominey said quietly, “only my Country.”

Terniloff sighed.

“Alas! there is no time for us to enter into one of our old arguments on the ethics of government. I must send you away, Von Ragastein. You have a terrible task before you. I am bound to wish you Godspeed. For myself I shall not raise my head again until I have left England.”

“There is no other commission?” Dominey asked. “No other way in which I can serve you?”

“None,” Terniloff answered sadly. “I am permitted to suffer no inconveniences. My departure is arranged for as though I were royalty. Yet believe me, my friend, every act of courtesy and generosity which I receive in these moments, bites into my heart. Farewell!”

Dominey found a taxicab in Pall Mall and drove back to Berkeley Square. He found Rosamund with a little troop of dogs, just entering the gardens, and crossed to her side.

“Dear,” he asked, taking her arm, “would you mind very much coming down to Norfolk for a few days?”

“With you?” she asked quickly.

“Yes! I want to be in retreat for a short time. There are one or two things I must settle before I take up some fresh work.”

“I should love it,” she declared enthusiastically. “London is getting so hot, and every one is so excited.”

“I shall order the touring car at three o’clock,” Dominey told her. “We shall get home about nine. Parkins and your maid can go down by train. Does that suit you?”

“Delightfully!”

He took her arm and they paced slowly along the hot walk.

“Rosamund dear,” he said, “the time has come which many people have been dreading. We are at war.”

“I know,” she murmured.

“You and I have had quite a happy time together, these last few months,” he went on, “even though there is still that black cloud between us. I have tried to treat you as kindly and tenderly as though I were really your husband and you were indeed my wife.”

“You’re not going away?” she cried, startled. “I couldn’t bear that! No one could ever be so sweet as you have been to me.”

“Dear,” he said, “I want you to think—of your husband—of Everard. He was a soldier once for a short time, was he not? What do you think he would have done now that this terrible war has come?”

“He would have done what you will do,” she answered, with the slightest possible tremor in her tone. “He would have become a soldier again, he would have fought for his country.”

“And so must I—fight for my country,” he declared. “That is why I must leave you for an hour now while I make some calls. I shall be back to luncheon. Directly afterwards we must start. I have many things to arrange first, though. Life is not going to be very easy for the next few days.”

She held on to his arm. She seemed curiously reluctant to let him go.

“Everard,” she said, “when we are at Dominey shall I be able to see Doctor Harrison?”

“Of course,” he assured her.

“There is something I want to say to him,” she confided, “something I want to ask you, too. Are you the same person, Everard, when you are in town as when you are in the country?”

He was a little taken aback at her question—asked, too, with such almost plaintive seriousness. The very aberration it suggested seemed altogether denied by her appearance. She was wearing a dress of black and white muslin, a large black hat, Paris shoes. Her stockings, her gloves, all the trifling details of her toilette, were carefully chosen, and her clothes themselves gracefully and naturally worn. Socially, too, she had been amazingly successful. Only the week before, Caroline had come to him with a little shrug of the shoulders.

“I have been trying to be kind to Rosamund,” she said, “and finding out instead how unnecessary it is. She is quite the most popular of the younger married women in our set. You don’t deserve such luck, Everard.”

“You know the proverb about the old roue,” he had replied.

His mind had wandered for a moment. He realised Rosamund’s question with a little start.

“The same person, dear?” he repeated. “I think so. Don’t I seem so to you?”

She shook her head.

“I am not sure,” she answered, a little mysteriously. “You see, in the country I still remember sometimes that awful night when I so nearly lost my reason. I have never seen you as you looked that night.”

“You would rather not go back, perhaps?”

“That is the strange part of it,” she replied. “There is nothing in the world I want so much to do. There’s an empty taxi, dear,” she added, as they reached the gate. “I shall go in and tell Justine about the packing.”

Table of Contents

Within the course of the next few days, a strange rumour spread through Dominey and the district,—from the farm labourer to the farmer, from the school children to their homes, from the village post-office to the neighbouring hamlets. A gang of woodmen from a neighbouring county, with an engine and all the machinery of their craft, had started to work razing to the ground everything in the shape of tree or shrub at the north end of the Black Wood. The matter of the war was promptly forgotten. Before the second day, every man, woman and child in the place had paid an awed visit to the outskirts of the wood, had listened to the whirr of machinery, had gazed upon the great bridge of planks leading into the wood, had peered, in the hope of some strange discovery into the tents of the men who were camping out. The men themselves were not communicative, and the first time the foreman had been known to open his mouth was when Dominey walked down to discuss progress, on the morning after his arrival.

“It’s a dirty bit of work, sir,” he confided. “I don’t know as I ever came across a bit of woodland as was so utterly, hopelessly rotten. Why, the wood crumbles when you touch it, and the men have to be within reach of one another the whole of the time, though we’ve a matter of five hundred planks down there.”

“Come across anything unusual yet?”

“We ain’t come across anything that isn’t unusual so far, sir. My men are all wearing extra leggings to keep them from being bitten by them adders—as long as my arm, some of ‘em. And there’s fungus there which, when you touch it, sends out a smell enough to make a man faint. We killed a cat the first day, as big and as fierce as a young tigress. It’s a queer job, sir.”

“How long will it take?”

“Matter of three weeks, sir, and when we’ve got the timber out you’ll be well advised to burn it. It’s not worth a snap of the fingers.—Begging your pardon, sir,” the man went on, “the old lady in the distance there hangs about the whole of the time. Some of my men are half scared of her.”

Dominey swung around. On a mound a little distance away in the park, Rachael Unthank was standing. In her rusty black clothes, unrelieved by any trace of colour, her white cheeks and strange eyes, even in the morning light she was a repellent figure. Dominey strolled across to her.

“You see, Mrs. Unthank,” he began—

She interrupted him. Her skinny hand was stretched out towards the wood.

“What are those men doing, Sir Everard Dominey?” she demanded. “What is your will with the wood?”