Tales of Mystery & Suspense: 25+ Thrillers in One Edition. E. Phillips Oppenheim

I’d never come inside the doors. It’s a rotten way of spending one’s time. You play, I suppose?”

      “Oh, yes, I play,” Norgate admitted, “but I rather agree with you. How wonderfully well Mrs. Benedek is looking, isn’t she!”

      Baring withdrew his admiring eyes from her vicinity.

      “Prettiest and smartest woman in London,” he declared.

      “By-the-by, is she English?” Norgate asked.

      “A mixture of French, Italian, and German, I believe,” Baring replied. “Her husband is Benedek the painter, you know.”

      “I’ve heard of him,” Norgate assented. “What are you doing now?”

      “I’ve had a job up in town for a week or so, at the Admiralty,” Baring explained. “We are examining the plans of a new—but you wouldn’t be interested in that.”

      “I’m interested in anything naval,” Norgate assured him.

      “In any case, it isn’t my job to talk about it,” Baring continued apologetically. “We’ve just got a lot of fresh regulations out. Any one would think we were going to war to-morrow.”

      “I suppose war isn’t such an impossible event,” Norgate remarked. “They all say that the Germans are dying to have a go at you fellows.”

      Baring grinned.

      “They wouldn’t have a dog’s chance,” he declared. “That’s the only drawback of having so strong a navy. We don’t stand any chance of getting a fight.”

      “You’ll have all you can do to keep up, judging by the way they talk in Germany,” Norgate observed.

      “Are you just home from there?”

      Norgate nodded. “I am at the Embassy in Berlin, or rather I have been,” he replied. “I am just home on six months’ leave.”

      “And that’s your real impression?” Baring enquired eagerly. “You really think that they mean to have a go at us?”

      “I think there’ll be a war soon,” Norgate confessed. “It probably won’t commence at sea, but you’ll have to do your little lot, without a doubt.”

      Baring gazed across the room. There was a hard light in his eyes.

      “Sounds beastly, I suppose,” he muttered, “but I wish to God it would come! A war would give us all a shaking up—put us in our right places. We all seem to go on drifting any way now. The Services are all right when there’s a bit of a scrap going sometimes, but there’s a nasty sort of feeling of dry rot about them, when year after year all your preparations end in the smoke of a sham fight. Now I am on this beastly land job—but there, I mustn’t bother you with my grumblings.”

      “I am interested,” Norgate assured him. “Did you say you were considering something new?”

      Baring nodded.

      “Plans of a new submarine,” he confided. “There’s no harm in telling you as much as that.”

      Mrs. Benedek, who was dummy for the moment, strolled over to them.

      “I am not sure,” she murmured, “whether I like the expression you have brought back from Germany with you, Mr. Norgate.”

      Norgate smiled. “Have I really acquired the correct diplomatic air?” he asked. “I can assure you that it is an accident—or perhaps I am imitative.”

      “You have acquired,” she complained, “an air of unnatural reserve. You seem as though you had found some problem in life so weighty that you could not lose sight of it even for a moment. Ah!”

      The glass-topped door had been flung wide open with an unusual flourish. A barely perceptible start escaped Norgate. It was indeed an unexpected appearance, this! Dressed with a perfect regard to the latest London fashion, with his hair smoothly brushed and a pearl pin in his black satin tie, Herr Selingman stood upon the threshold, beaming upon them.

      CHAPTER VIII

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      Selingman had the air of a man who returns after a long absence to some familiar spot where he expects to find friends and where his welcome is assured. Mrs. Paston Benedek slipped from her place upon the cushioned fender and held out both her hands.

      “Ah, it is really you!” she exclaimed. “Welcome, dear friend! For days I have wondered what it was in this place which one missed all the time. Now I know.”

      Selingman took the little outstretched hands and raised them to his lips.

      “Dear lady,” he assured her, “you repay me in one moment for all the weariness of my exile.”

      She turned towards her companion.

      “Captain Baring,” she begged, “please ring the bell. Mr. Selingman and I always drink a toast together the moment he first arrives to pay us one of his too rare visits. Thank you! You know Captain Baring, don’t you, Mr. Selingman? This is another friend of mine whom I think that you have not met—Mr. Francis Norgate, Mr. Selingman. Mr. Norgate has just arrived from Berlin, too.”

      For a single moment the newcomer seemed to lose his Cheeryble-like expression. The glance which he flashed upon Norgate contained other elements besides those of polite pleasure. He was himself again, however, almost instantly. He grasped his new acquaintance by the hand.

      “Mr. Norgate and I are already old friends,” he insisted. “We occupied the same coupe coming from Berlin and drank a bottle of wine together in the buffet.”

      Mrs. Benedek threw back her head and laughed, a familiar gesture which her enemies declared was in some way associated with the dazzling whiteness of her teeth.

      “And now,” she exclaimed, “you find that you belong to the same bridge club. What a coincidence!”

      “It is rather surprising, I must admit,” Norgate assented. “Mr. Selingman and I discussed many things last night, but we did not speak of bridge. In fact, from the tone of our conversation, I should have imagined that cards were an amusement which scarcely entered into Mr. Selingman’s scheme of life.”

      “One must have one’s distractions,” Selingman protested. “I confess that auction bridge, as it is played over here, is the one game in the world which attracts me.”

      “But how about the crockery?” Norgate asked. “Doesn’t that come first?”

      “First, beyond a doubt,” Selingman agreed heartily. “Always, though, my plan of campaign is the same. On the day of my arrival here, I take things easily. I spend an hour or so at the office in the morning, and the afternoon I take holiday. After that I settle down for one week’s hard work. London—your great London—takes always first place with me. In the mornings I see my agents and my customers. Perhaps I lunch with one of them. At four o’clock I close my desk, and crockery does not exist for me any longer. I get into a taxi, and I come here. My first game of bridge is a treat to which I look forward eagerly. See, there are three of us and several sitting out. Let us make another table. So!”

      They found a fourth without difficulty and took possession of a table at the far end of the room. Selingman, with a huge cigar in his mouth, played well and had every appearance of thoroughly enjoying the game. Towards the end of their third rubber, Mrs. Benedek, who was dummy, leaned across towards Norgate.

      “After all, perhaps you are better off here,” she murmured in German. “There is nothing like this in Berlin.”

      “One is at least nearer the things one cherishes,” Norgate quoted in the same language.

      Selingman was playing the hand and held between his fingers a card already drawn to play.