Tales of Mystery & Suspense: 25+ Thrillers in One Edition. E. Phillips Oppenheim
here, it is not England or the English which are to engage your attention. We require you to concentrate wholly and entirely upon Terniloff.”
Dominey was startled.
“Terniloff?” he repeated. “I expected to work with him, but—”
“Empty your mind of all preconceived ideas,” Seaman enjoined. “What your duties are with regard to Terniloff will grow upon you gradually as the situation develops.”
“As yet,” Dominey remarked, “I have not even made his acquaintance.”
“I was on the point of telling you, earlier in our conversation, that I have made an appointment for you to see him at eleven o’clock to-night at the Embassy. You will go to him at that hour. Remember, you know nothing, you are waiting for instructions. Let speech remain with him alone. Be particularly careful not to drop him a hint of your knowledge of what is coming. You will find him absolutely satisfied with the situation, absolutely content. Take care not to disturb him. He is a missioner of peace. So are you.”
“I begin to understand,” Dominey said thoughtfully.
“You shall understand everything when the time comes for you to take a hand,” Seaman promised, “and do not in your zeal forget, my friend, that your utility to our great cause will depend largely upon your being able to establish and maintain your position as an English gentleman. So far all has gone well?”
“Perfectly, so far as I am concerned,” Dominey replied. “You must remember, though, that there is your end to keep up. Berlin will be receiving frantic messages from East Africa as to my disappearance. Not even my immediate associates were in the secret.”
“That is all understood,” Seaman assured his companion. “A little doctor named Schmidt has spent many marks of the Government money in frantic cables. You must have endeared yourself to him.”
“He was a very faithful associate.”
“He has been a very troublesome friend. It seems that the natives got their stories rather mixed up concerning your namesake, who apparently died in the bush, and Schmidt continually emphasised your promise to let him hear from Cape Town. However, all this has been dealt with satisfactorily. The only real dangers are over here, and so far you seem to have encountered the principal ones.”
“I have at any rate been accepted,” Dominey declared, “by my nearest living relative, and incidentally I have discovered the one far-seeing person in England who knows what is in store for us.”
Seaman was momentarily anxious.
“Whom do you mean?”
“The Duke of Worcester, my cousin’s husband, of whom you were speaking just now.”
The little man’s face relaxed.
“He reminds me of the geese who saved the Capitol,” he said, “a brainless man obsessed with one idea. It is queer how often these fanatics discover the truth. That reminds me,” he added, taking a small memorandum book from his waistcoat pocket and glancing it through. “His Grace has a meeting to-night at the Holborn Town Hall. I shall make one of my usual interruptions.”
“If he has so small a following, why don’t you leave him alone?” Dominey enquired.
“There are others associated with him,” was the placid reply, “who are not so insignificant. Besides, when I interrupt I advertise my own little hobby.”
“These—we English are strange people,” Dominey remarked, glancing around the room after a brief but thoughtful pause. “We advertise and boast about our colossal wealth, and yet we are incapable of the slightest self- sacrifice in order to preserve it. One would have imagined that our philosophers, our historians, would warn us in irresistible terms, by unanswerable scientific deduction, of what was coming.”
“My compliments to your pronouns,” Seaman murmured, with a little bow. “Apropos of what you were saying, you will never make an Englishman—I beg your pardon, one of your countrymen—realise anything unpleasant. He prefers to keep his head comfortably down in the sand. But to leave generalities, when do you think of going to Norfolk?”
“Within the next few days,” Dominey replied.
“I shall breathe more freely when you are securely established there,” his companion declared. “Great things wait upon your complete acceptance, in the country as well as in town, as Sir Everard Dominey. You are sure that you perfectly understand your position there as regards your—er—domestic affairs?”
“I understand all that is necessary,” was the somewhat stiff reply.
“All that is necessary is not enough,” Seaman rejoined irritably. “I thought that you had wormed the whole story out of that drunken Englishman?”
“He told me most of it. There were just one or two points which lay beyond the limits where questioning was possible.”
Seaman frowned angrily.
“In other words,” he complained, “you remembered that you were a gentleman and not that you were a German.”
“The Englishman of a certain order,” Dominey pronounced, “even though he be degenerate, has a certain obstinacy, generally connected with one particular thing, which nothing can break. We talked together on that last night until morning; we drank wine and brandy. I tore the story of my own exile from my breast and laid it bare before him. Yet I knew all the time, as I know now, that he kept something back.”
There was a brief pause. During the last few minutes a certain tension had crept in between the two men. With it, their personal characteristics seemed to have become intensified. Dominey was more than ever the aristocrat; Seaman the plebian schemer, unabashed and desperately in earnest. He leaned presently a little way across the table. His eyes had narrowed but they were as bright as steel. His teeth were more prominent than usual.
“You should have dragged it from his throat,” he insisted. “It is not your duty to nurse fine personal feelings. Heart and soul you stand pledged to great things. I cannot at this moment give you any idea what you may not mean to us after the trouble has come, if you are able to play your part still in this country as Everard Dominey of Dominey Hall. I know well enough that the sense of personal honour amongst the Prussian aristocracy is the finest in the world, and yet there is not a single man of your order who should not be prepared to lie or cheat for his country’s sake. You must fall into line with your fellows. Once more, it is not only your task with regard to Terniloff which makes your recognition as Everard Dominey so important to us. It is the things which are to come later.—Come, enough of this subject. I know that you understand. We grow too serious. How shall you spend your evening until eleven o’clock? Remember you did not leave England an anchorite, Sir Everard. You must have your amusements. Why not try a music hall?”
“My mind is too full of other things,” Dominey objected.
“Then come with me to Holborn,” the little man suggested. “It will amuse you. We will part at the door, and you shall sit at the back of the hall, out of sight. You shall hear the haunting eloquence of your cousin-in-law. You shall hear him trying to warn the men and women of England of the danger awaiting them from the great and rapacious German nation. What do you say?”
“I will come,” Dominey replied in spiritless fashion. “It will be better than a music hall, at any rate. I am not at all sure, Seaman, that the hardest part of my task over here will not be this necessity for self-imposed amusements.”
His companion struck the table gently but impatiently with his clenched fist.
“Man, you are young!” he exclaimed. “You are like the rest of us. You carry your life in your hands. Don’t nourish past griefs. Cast the memory of them away. There’s nothing which narrows a man more than morbidness. You have a past which may sometimes bring the ghosts around you, but remember the sin was not wholly yours, and there is an atonement which in measured fashion you may commence whenever you please. I have said enough about that. Greatness