Under Cover. Martyn Wyndham
tourist who passes a week here and spends nothing to speak of might be excused, but not a serious student like Monty.”
“I will vouch for him,” Mrs. Harrington said. “I’ve known him for years and I don’t think it’s a life suited to him at all, is it, Monty?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said he airily. “I may be leading a double life.” He looked at her not without an expression of triumph. Little did she know in what a conspiracy he was already enlisted. After an excellent repast and a judicious indulgence in some rare wine Monty felt he was extraordinarily well fitted for delicate intrigue, preferably of an international character. He stroked his budding moustache with the air of a gentleman adventurer.
Alice Harrington smiled. She was a good judge of character and Monty was too well known to her to lend color to any such notion.
“It won’t do,” she averred, “but Mr. Denby has every earmark of it. There’s that piercing look of his and the obsequious way waiters attend on him.”
Monty laughed heartily. He was in possession of a secret that made such an idea wholly preposterous. Here was a man with a million-franc pearl necklace in his pocket, a treasure he calmly proposed to smuggle in against the laws of his country, being taken for a spy.
“Alice,” he said still laughing, “I’ll go bail on Steve for any amount you care to name. I am also willing to back him against all comers for brazen nerve and sheer gall.”
Denby interrupted him a little hastily.
“As we two men are free from suspicion, only Mrs. Harrington remains uncleared.”
“This is all crazy talk,” Monty asserted.
“I know one woman, well known in New York, who goes over each year and more than once has made her expenses by tipping off the authorities to things other women were trying to get through without declaration.”
“You speak with feeling,” Mrs. Harrington said, and wondered if this friend of Monty’s had not been betrayed by some such confidence.
“Are you going to take warning?” Denby asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. You’ve been reading the American papers and are deceived by the annual warnings to intending European tourists. I’m a hardened and successful criminal.” She leaned forward to look at a dancer on the stage below them and Denby knew that his monitions had left her unmoved.
“When were you last at home?” she demanded presently of Denby.
“About six months ago,” he answered. “I shall be there a week from to-morrow if I live.”
The last three words vaguely disturbed Monty. Why, he wondered crossly, was Denby always reminding him of danger? There was no doubt that what his friend really should have said was: “If I am not murdered by criminals for the two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of valuables they probably know I carry with me.”
“Have you booked your passage yet?” she asked.
It occurred to her that it would be pleasant to have a second man on the voyage. Like all women of her world, she was used to the attentions of men and found life deplorably dull without them, although she was not a flirt and was still in love with her husband.
“Not yet,” he answered, “but La Provence goes from Havre to-morrow.”
“Come with us,” she insisted. “The Mauretania sails a couple of days later but gets you in on the same morning as the other.” She turned to Monty. “Isn’t that a brilliant idea?”
“It’s so brilliant I’m blinded by it,” he retorted, gazing at his friend with a look of respect. Not many hours ago Steven had asserted that he and Monty must sail together on the fastest of ships, and now he had apparently decided to forsake the Compagnie Transatlantique only on account of Alice Harrington’s invitation.
“I shall be charmed,” was all he had said.
Monty felt that he was a co-conspirator of one who was not likely to be upset by trifles. He sighed. A day or so ago he had imagined himself ill-used by Fate because no unusual excitement had come his way, and now his prayers had been answered too abundantly. The phrase “If I live” remained in his memory with unpleasant insistency.
“We ought to cross the Channel by the afternoon boat to-morrow,” Alice said. “There are one or two things I want to get for Michael in London.”
“It will be a much nicer voyage for me than if I had gone alone on La Provence,” Denby said gratefully, while Monty continued to meditate on the duplicity of his sex.
When they had taken Mrs. Harrington to her hotel Monty burst out with what he had been compelled to keep secret all the evening.
“What in thunder makes you so careful about people smuggling?” he demanded.
“About other people smuggling, you mean,” Denby corrected.
“It’s the same thing,” Monty asserted.
“Far from it,” his friend made answer. “If Mrs. Harrington is suspected and undeclared stuff found on her, you and I as her companions will be more or less under suspicion too. It is not unusual for women to ask their men friends to put some little package in their pockets till the customs have been passed. The inspectors may have an idea that she has done this with us. Personally I don’t relish a very exhaustive search.”
“You bet you don’t,” his friend returned. “I shall probably be the only honest man aboard.”
“Mrs. Harrington may ask you to hold some small parcel till she’s been through the ordeal,” Denby reminded him. “If she does, Monty, you’ll be caught for a certainty.”
“Damn it all!” Monty cried petulantly, “why can’t you people do the right thing and declare what you bring in, just as I do?”
“What is your income?” Denby inquired. “Your father was always liberal with you.”
“You mean I have no temptation?” Monty answered. “I forgot that part of it. I don’t know what I’d do if there wasn’t always a convenient paying teller who passed me out all the currency I wanted.”
He looked at his friend curiously, wondering just what this act of smuggling meant to him. Perhaps Denby sensed this.
“You probably wondered why I wrung that invitation out of Mrs. Harrington instead of being honest and saying I, too, was going by the Cunard line. I can’t tell you now, Monty, old man, but I hope some day if I’m successful that I can. I tell you this much, though, that it seems so much to me that no little conventionalities are going to stand in my way.”
Monty, pondering on this later when he was in his hotel room, called to mind the rumor he had heard years ago that Steven’s father had died deeply in debt. It was for this reason that the boy was suddenly withdrawn from Groton. It might be that his struggles to make a living had driven him into regarding the laws against smuggling as arbitrary and inequitable just as Alice Harrington and dozens of other people he knew did. Denby, he argued, had paid good money for the pearls and they belonged to him absolutely; and if by his skill he could evade the payment of duty upon them and sell them at a profit, why shouldn’t he? Before slumber sealed his eyes, Montague Vaughan had decided that smuggling was as legitimate a sport as fly-fishing. That these views would shock his father he knew. But his father always prided himself upon a traditional conservatism.
CHAPTER FOUR
LESS than an hour before the Mauretania reached Quarantine, James Duncan, whose rank was that of Customs Inspector and present assignment the more important one of assistant to Daniel Taylor, a Deputy-Surveyor, threw away the stub of cigar and reached for the telephone.
When central had given him his number he called out: “Is that you, Ford?” Apparently the central had not erred and his face took on a look of intentness as he gave the man at the other end of the line his instructions. “Say, Ford,” he called, “I’ve got something mighty important for you. Directly the Mauretania gets into Quarantine, go through the declarations