The Double Four. E. Phillips Oppenheim
and faced him.
"My friend," he said, "this is not the same packet."
The ambassador stared at him incredulously.
"This packet can scarcely have gained two ounces in the night," Peter went on. "Besides, the seal is fuller. I have an eye for these details."
De Lamborne leaned against the back of the table. His eyes were a little wild, but he laughed hoarsely.
"We fight, then, against the creatures of another world," he declared. "No human being could have opened that safe last night."
Peter hesitated.
"Monsieur de Lamborne," he said, "the room adjoining is your wife's?"
"It is the salon of madame," the Ambassador admitted.
"What are the electrical appliances doing there?" Peter demanded. "Don't look at me like that, de Lamborne. Remember that I was here before you arrived."
"My wife takes an electric massage every day," Monsieur de Lamborne answered in a hard, unnatural voice. "In what way is Monsieur le Baron concerned in my wife's doings?"
"I think that there need be no answer to that question," Peter said quietly. "It is a greater tragedy which we have to face. I maintain that your safe was entered from that room. A search will prove it."
"There will be no search there," de Lamborne declared fiercely. "I am the ambassador of France, and my power under this roof is absolute. I say that you shall not cross that threshold."
Peter's expression did not change. Only his hands were suddenly outstretched with a curious gesture—the four fingers were raised, the thumbs depressed. Monsieur de Lamborne collapsed.
"I submit," he muttered. "It is you who are the master. Search where you will."
"Monsieur has arrived?" the woman demanded breathlessly.
The proprietor of the restaurant himself bowed a reply. His client was evidently well known to him.
"Monsieur has ascended some few minutes ago."
The woman drew a little sigh of relief. A vague misgiving had troubled her during the last few hours. She raised her veil as she mounted the narrow staircase which led to the one private room at the Hôtel de Lorraine. Here she was safe; one more exploit accomplished, one more roll of notes for the hungry fingers of her dress-maker.
She entered, without tapping, the room at the head of the stairs, pushing open the ill-varnished door with its white-curtained top. At first she thought that the little apartment was empty.
"Are you there?" she exclaimed, advancing a few steps.
The figure of a man glided from behind the worn screen close by her side and stood between her and the door.
"Madame!" Peter said, bowing low.
Even then she scarcely realised that she was trapped.
"You!" she cried. "You, Baron! But I do not understand. You have followed me here?"
"On the contrary, madame," he answered; "I have preceded you."
Her colossal vanity triumphed over her natural astuteness. The man had employed spies to watch her! He had lost his head. It was an awkward matter, this, but it was to be arranged. She held out her hands.
"Monsieur," she said, "let me beg you now to go away. If you care to, come and see me this evening. I will explain everything. It is a little family affair which brings me here."
"A family affair, madame, with Bernadine, the enemy of France," Peter declared gravely.
She collapsed miserably, her fingers grasping at the air; the cry which broke from her lips harsh and unnatural. Before he could tell what was happening, she was on her knees before him.
"Spare me!" she begged, trying to seize his hands.
"Madame," Peter answered, "I am not your judge. You will kindly hand over to me the document which you are carrying."
She took it from the bosom of her dress. Peter glanced at it and placed it in his breast-pocket.
"And now?" she faltered.
Peter sighed—she was a very beautiful woman.
"Madame," he said, "the career of a spy is, as you have doubtless sometimes realised, a dangerous one."
"It is finished!" she assured him breathlessly. "Monsieur le Baron, you will keep my secret? Never again, I swear it, will I sin like this. You will not tell my husband?"
"Your husband already knows, madame," was the quiet reply. "Only a few hours ago I proved to him whence had come the leakage of so many of our secrets lately."
She swayed upon her feet.
"He will never forgive me!" she cried.
"There are others," Peter declared, "who forgive more rarely even than husbands."
A sudden illuminating flash of horror told her the truth. She closed her eyes and tried to run from the room.
"I will not be told!" she screamed. "I will not hear. I do not know who you are. I will live a little longer!"
"Madame," Peter said, "the Double Four wages no war with women, save with spies only. The spy has no sex. For the sake of your family, permit me to send you back to your husband's house."
That night two receptions and a dinner party were postponed. All London was sympathising with Monsieur de Lamborne, and a great many women swore never again to take a sleeping draught. Madame de Lamborne lay dead behind the shelter of those drawn blinds, and by her side an empty phial.
CHAPTER III
THE MAN FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT
Bernadine, sometimes called the Count von Hern, was lunching at the Savoy with the pretty wife of a Cabinet Minister, who was just sufficiently conscious of the impropriety of her action to render the situation interesting.
"I wish you would tell me, Count von Hern," she said, soon after they had settled down in their places, "why my husband seems to object to you so much. I simply dared not tell him that we were going to lunch together; and, as a rule, he doesn't mind what I do in that way."
Bernadine smiled slowly.
"Ah, well," he remarked, "your husband is a politician and a very cautious man. I dare say he is like some of those others, who believe that because I am a foreigner and live in London, that therefore I am a spy."
"You a spy!" she laughed. "What nonsense!"
"Why nonsense?"
She shrugged her shoulders. She was certainly a very pretty woman, and her black gown set off to its fullest advantage her deep red hair and fair complexion.
"I suppose because I can't imagine you anything of the sort," she declared. "You see, you hunt and play polo, and do everything which the ordinary Englishmen do. Then one meets you everywhere. I think, Count von Hern, that you are much too spoilt, for one thing, to take life seriously."
"You do me an injustice," he murmured.
"Of course," she chattered on, "I don't really know what spies do. One reads about them in these silly stories, but I have never felt sure that as live people they exist at all. Tell me, Count von Hern, what could a foreign spy do in England?"
Bernadine twirled his fair moustache and shrugged his shoulders.
"Indeed, my dear