Tales of Mystery & Suspense: 25+ Thrillers in One Edition. E. Phillips Oppenheim
time there is the problem of you, the problem which I am just as far off solving as ever I was? Often I find myself comparing you with the Everard whom I married.”
“Do I fail so often to come up to his standard?” he asked.
“You never fail,” she answered, looking at him with brimming eyes. “Of course, he was very much more affectionate,” she went on, after a moment’s pause. “His kisses were not like yours. And he was far fonder of having me with him. Then, on the other hand, often when I wanted him he was not there, he did wild things, mad things; he seemed to forget me altogether. It was that,” she went on, “that was so terrible. It was that which made me so nervous. I think that I should even have been able to stand those awful moments when he came back to me, covered with blood and reeling, if it had not been that I was already almost a wreck. You know, he killed Roger Unthank that night. That is why he was never able to come back.”
“Why do you talk of these things to-night, Rosamund,” Dominey begged.
“I must, dear,” she insisted, laying her fingers upon his hand and looking at him curiously. “I must, even though I see how they distress you. It is wonderful that you should mind so much, Everard, but you do, and I love you for it.”
“Mind?” he groaned. “Mind!”
“You are so like him and yet so different,” she went on meditatively. “You drink so little wine, you are always so self-controlled, so serious. You live as though you had a life around you of which others knew nothing. The Everard I remember would never have cared about being a magistrate or going into Parliament. He would have spent his time racing or yachting, hunting or shooting, as the fancy took him. And yet—”
“And yet what?” Dominey asked, a little hoarsely.
“I think he loved me better than you,” she said very sadly.
“Why?” he demanded.
“I cannot tell you,” she answered, with her eyes upon her plate, “but I think that he did.”
Dominey walked suddenly to the window and leaned out. There were drops of moisture upon his forehead, he felt the fierce need of air. When he came back she was still sitting there, still looking down.
“I have spoken to Doctor Harrison about it,” she went on, her voice scarcely audible. “He told me that you probably loved more than you dared to show, because someday the real Everard might come back.”
“That is quite true,” he reminded her softly. “He may come back at any moment.”
She gripped his hand, her voice shook with passion. She leaned towards him, her other arm stole around his neck.
“But I don’t want him to come back!” she cried. “I want you!”
Dominey sat for a moment motionless, like a figure of stone. Through the wide-flung, blind-shielded windows came the raucous cry of a newsboy, breaking the stillness of the summer evening. And then another and sharper interruption,—the stopping of a taxicab outside, the firm, insistent ringing of the front doorbell. Recollection came to Dominey, and a great strength. The fire which had leaped up within him was thrust back. His response to her wave of passion was infinitely tender.
“Dear Rosamund,” he said, “that front doorbell summons me to rather an important interview. Will you please trust in me a little while longer? Believe me, I am not in any way cold. I am not indifferent. There is something which you will have to be told,—something with which I never reckoned, something which is beginning to weigh upon me night and day. Trust me, Rosamund, and wait!”
She sank back into her chair with a piquant and yet pathetic little grimace.
“You tell me always to wait,” she complained. “I will be patient, but you shall tell me this. You are so kind to me. You make or mar my life. You must care a little? Please?”
He was standing up now. He kissed her hands fondly. His voice had all the old ring in it.
“More than for any woman on earth, dear Rosamund!”
Seaman, in a light grey suit, a panama, and a white beflowered tie, had lost something of the placid urbanity of a few months ago. He was hot and tired with travel. There were new lines in his face and a queer expression of anxiety about his eyes, at the corners of which little wrinkles had begun to appear. He responded to Dominey’s welcome with a fervour which was almost feverish, scrutinised him closely, as though expecting to find some change, and finally sank into an easy-chair with a little gesture of relief. He had been carrying a small, brown despatch case, which he laid on the carpet by his side.
“You have news?” Dominey asked.
“Yes,” was the momentous reply, “I have news.”
Dominey rang the bell. He had already surmised, from the dressing-case and coats in the hall, that his visitor had come direct from the station.
“What will you have?” he enquired.
“A bottle of hock with seltzer water, and ice if you have it,” Seaman replied. “Also a plate of cold meat, but it must be served here. And afterwards the biggest cigar you have. I have indeed news, news disturbing, news magnificent, news astounding.”
Dominey gave some orders to the servant who answered his summons. For a few moments they spoke trivialities of the journey. When everything was served, however, and the door closed, Seaman could wait no longer. His appetite, his thirst, his speech, seemed all stimulated to swift action.
“We are of the same temperament,” he said. “That I know. We will speak first of what is more than disturbing—a little terrifying. The mystery of Johann Wolff has been solved.”
“The man who came to us with messages from Schmidt in South Africa?” Dominey asked. “I had almost forgotten about him.”
“The same. What was at the back of his visit to us that night I cannot even now imagine. Neither is it clear why he held aloof from me, who am his superior in practically the same service. There we are, from the commencement, confronted with a very singular happening, but scarcely so singular as the denouement. Wolff vanished from your house that night into an English fortress.”
“It seems incredible,” Dominey declared bluntly.
“It is nevertheless true,” Seaman insisted. “No member of our service is allowed to remain more than one month without communicating his existence and whereabouts to headquarters. No word has been received from Wolff since that night in January. On the other hand, indirect information has reached us that he is in durance over here.”
“But such a thing is against the law, unheard of,” Dominey protested. “No country can keep the citizen of another country in prison without formulating a definite charge or bringing him up for trial.”
Seaman smiled grimly.
“That’s all very well in any ordinary case,” he said. “Wolff has been a marked man for years, though. Wilhelmstrasse would soon make fuss enough, if it were of any use, but it would not be. There are one or two Englishmen in German prisons at the present moment, concerning whose welfare the English Foreign Office has not even thought it worth while to enquire. What troubles me more than the actual fact of Wolff’s disappearance is the mystery of his visit to you and his apprehension practically on the spot.”
“They must have tracked him down there,” Dominey remarked.
“Yes, but they couldn’t thrust a pair of tongs into your butler’s sitting- room, extract Johann Wolff, and set him down inside Norwich Castle or whatever prison he may be in,” Seaman objected. “However, the most disquieting feature about Wolff is that it introduces something we don’t understand. For the rest, we have many men as good, and better, and the time for their utility is past. You are our great hope now, Dominey.”
“It is to be, then?”
Seaman took a long and ecstatic draught of his hock and seltzer.
“It