THE SPY PARAMOUNT. E. Phillips Oppenheim
the stroke, we never stand in any one’s line and we always say ‘hard luck’ when any one misses a putt.”
“You have been well trained,” Fawley approved.
“To serious conversation they are deaf,” Krust confided. “They have not a serious thought in their brains. How could it be otherwise? They are Bohemians. Nina there calls herself an artist. She paints passably but she is lazy. Greta has small parts at the Winter Garden. Just now we are all in the same position. We are out of harness. Our worthy President has put me temporarily upon the shelf. Nina is waiting for a contract and Greta has no engagements until the summer. We were on our way to Italy—as perhaps you know.”
Krust’s suddenly wide-opened eyes, his quick lightning-like glance at Fawley almost took the latter aback.
“I had no idea of the fact,” he answered.
“I wish to go to Rome. It was my great desire to arrive there yesterday.
A mutual friend of ours, however, said ‘No.’ A politician cannot travel incognito. My business, it seems, must be done at second hand.”
“It is,” Fawley ventured, “the penalty of being well known.”
Krust stroked his smooth chin. His eyes were still upon Fawley.
“What our friend lacks,” he observed, “is audacity. If it is dangerous for me to be in a certain place, I call for the photographers and the journalists. I announce my intention of going there. I permit a picture of myself upon the railway platform. What a man is willing to tell to the whole world, the public say, can lead nowhere. One succeeds better in this world by bluff than by subtlety.”
“Are you going to play golf with this talkative old gentleman?” Greta asked, smiling at Fawley in heavenly fashion. “We love him but we are a little tired of him. We should like a change. We should like to walk round with you both and we promise that our behaviour shall be perfect.”
Fawley reflected for a moment. He had the air of a man briefly weighing up the question of an unimportant engagement but actually his mind had darted backwards to the seventh gallery in the mountains. Step by step he traced his descent. He considered the matter of the changed cars—the ancient Ford lying at the bottom of the precipice; his Lancia, released from its place of hiding in a desolate spot, into which he had clambered in the murky twilight after dawn. His change of clothes in a wayside barn. The bundle which lay at the bottom of a river bed in the valley. Civilian detectives perhaps might have had a chance of tracing that intruder from the hidden galleries, but not military police. If he crossed the frontier now into, say, Switzerland or Germany, he would be weeks ahead of the time and only a trivial part of his task accomplished. The decision which he had intended to take after more leisurely reflection he arrived at now in a matter of seconds.
“If you will wait while I get into some clothes and see my coiffeur, I shall be delighted,” he accepted.
Greta flashed at him a little smile of content which left him pondering. Krust picked up his hat and glanced at his watch.
“At eleven o’clock,” he pronounced, “we will meet you in the bar below. Rudolf shall mix us an Americano before we start. There is no need for you to bring a car. The thing I have hired here is a perfect omnibus and will take us all.”
“Where do we play?” Fawley asked.
“It is a fine morning,” the other pointed out. “The glass is going up. The sun is shining. I will telephone to Mont Agel. If play is possible there, they will tell me. If not, we will go to Cagnes.”
“In the bar at eleven o’clock,” Fawley repeated as he showed them out…
Fawley was an absent-minded man that morning. When he submitted himself to the ministrations of the coiffeur and valet, his thoughts travelled back to his interview with Berati and travelled forward, exploring the many byways of the curious enterprise to which he had committed himself. Krust occupied the principal figure in his reflections. With the papers daily full of dramatic stories of the political struggle which seemed to be tearing out the heart of a great country, here was one of her principal and most ambitious citizens, with an entourage of frivolity, playing golf on the Riviera. Supposing it were true, as he had hinted, that his presence was due to a desire to visit Berati, why had Berati gone so far as to refuse to see him—a man who might, if chance favoured him, become the ruler of his country? Berati had known of his presence here, had even advised Fawley to cultivate his acquaintance.
“Do you know the gentleman who was in here when you arrived—Monsieur Krust?” he asked his coiffeur abruptly.
The man leaned forward confidentially.
“I shave him every morning, sir,” he announced. “A very great German statesman and a millionaire. They say he could have been President if Hindenburg had retired. Every one is wondering what he is doing here with things in such a turmoil at home.”
“He seems to have good taste in his travelling companions,” Fawley observed.
The coiffeur coughed discreetly.
“His nieces, sir. Charming young ladies. Very popular too, although the old gentleman seldom lets them out of his sight. My wife,” the man went on, dropping his voice a little, “was brought up in Germany. She is German, in fact. She knows the family quite well. She does not seem to remember these young ladies, however.”
“I wonder how long he is staying,” Fawley meditated.
“Only yesterday morning,” the man confided, “he told me that he was waiting for news from home which might come at any moment. He is rung up every morning from Germany. He brought his own private telephone instrument and had it fitted here. He has spoken to Rome once or twice too. It is my belief, sir, that he is up to some game here. From what I can make out by the papers, he is just as well out of Germany while things are in this mess. He has plenty working for him there.”
“Perhaps you are right,” Fawley observed indifferently. “… Just a snip on the left-hand side, Ernest,” he went on, glancing into the mirror.
“The usual time to-night, sir?” the man asked, stepping back to observe his handiwork.
His customer nodded. For several moments after the coiffeur had left him, he remained in his chair, glancing into the mirror. He was utterly free from vanity and his inspection of himself was purely impersonal. Something to thank his ancestry for, he reflected. No one, to look at him, would believe for a moment the story of his last night’s adventures; would believe that he had been for hours in peril of his life, in danger of a chance bullet, in danger of his back to a wall and a dozen bullets concerning which there would be no chance whatever; in danger of broken limbs or a broken neck, committing his body to the perils of the gorges and precipices with only a few feet between him and eternity. There were lines upon his healthy, slightly sunburnt face with its firmly chiselled features and bright hard eyes, but they were the lines of experiences which had failed to age. They were the lines turning slightly upwards from his mouth, the fainter ones at the corners of his eyes, the single furrow across his forehead. Life and his forebears had been kind to him. If he failed in this—the greatest enterprise of his life—it would not be his health or his nerve that would play him false. The turn of the wheel against him might do it… Below him the people were streaming into the Casino. He smiled thoughtfully as he reflected that amongst these worshippers of the world-powerful false goddess he was the one man of whom a famous American diplomat praising his work had declared, “Fawley never leaves anything to chance.”
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