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

my proposals. He conforms to no type. He sets up before me a problem which I myself have failed wholly to solve. I come to you, dear lady, for your aid.”

      “I am to spy upon the spy,” she remarked.

      “It is an easy task,” Selingman declared. “This young man is your slave. Whatever your daily business may be here, some part of your time, I imagine, will be spent in his company. Let me know what manner of man he is. Is this innate corruptness which brings him so easily to the bait, or is it the stinging smart of injustice from which he may well be suffering? Or, failing these, has he dared to set his wits against mine, to play the double traitor? If even a suspicion of this should come to you, there must be an end of Mr. Francis Norgate.”

      Anna toyed for a moment with the rose at her bosom. Her eyes were looking out of the room. Once again she was conscious of a curious slackening of purpose, a confusion of issues which had once seemed to her so clear.

      “Very well,” she promised. “I will send you a report in the course of a few days.”

      “I should not,” Selingman continued, rising, “venture to trouble you, Baroness, as I know the sphere of your activities is far removed from mine, but chance has put you in the position of being able to ascertain definitely the things which I desire to know. For our common sake you will, I am sure, seek to discover the truth.”

      “So far as I can, certainly,” Anna replied, “but I must admit that I, like you, find Mr. Norgate a little incomprehensible.”

      “There are men,” Selingman declared, “there have been many of the strongest men in history, impenetrable to the world, who have yielded their secrets readily to a woman’s influence. The diplomatists in life who have failed have been those who have underrated the powers possessed by your wonderful sex.”

      “Among whom,” Anna remarked, “no one will ever number Herr Selingman.”

      “Dear Baroness,” Selingman concluded, as the maid whom Anna had summoned stood ready to show him out, “it is because in my life I have been brought into contact with so many charming examples of your power.”

      * * * * *

      Once more silence and solitude. Anna moved restlessly about on her couch. Her eyes were a little hot. That future into which she looked seemed to become more than ever a tangled web. At half-past seven her maid reappeared.

      “Madame will dress for dinner?”

      Anna swung herself to her feet. She glanced at the clock.

      “I suppose so,” she assented.

      “I have three gowns laid out,” the maid continued respectfully. “Madame would look wonderful in the light green.”

      “Anything,” Anna yawned.

      The telephone bell tinkled. Anna took down the receiver herself.

      “Yes?” she asked.

      Her manner suddenly changed. It was a familiar voice speaking. Her maid, who stood in the background, watched and wondered.

      “It is you, Baroness! I rang up to see whether there was any chance of your being able to dine with me? I have just got back to town.”

      “How dared you go away without telling me!” she exclaimed. “And how can I dine with you? Do you not realise that it is Ascot Thursday, and I have had many invitations to dine to-night? I am going to a very big dinner-party at Thurm House.”

      “Bad luck!” Norgate replied disconsolately. “And to-morrow?”

      “I have not finished about to-night yet,” Anna continued. “I suppose you do not, by any chance, want me to dine with you very much?”

      “Of course I do,” was the prompt answer. “You see plenty of the Princess of Thurm and nothing of me, and there is always the chance that you may have to go abroad. I think that it is your duty—”

      “As a matter of duty,” Anna interrupted, “I ought to dine at Thurm House. As a matter of pleasure, I shall dine with you. You will very likely not enjoy yourself. I am going to be very cross indeed. You have neglected me shamefully. It is only these wonderful roses which have saved you.”

      “So long as I am saved,” he murmured, “tell me, please, where you would like to dine?”

      “Any place on earth,” she replied. “You may call for me here at half-past eight. I shall wear a hat and I would like to go somewhere where our people do not go.”

      Anna set down the telephone. The listlessness had gone from her manner. She glanced at the clock and ran lightly into the other room.

      “Put all that splendour away,” she ordered her maid cheerfully. “To-night we shall dazzle no one. Something perfectly quiet and a hat, please. I dine in a restaurant. And ring the bell, Marie, for two aperitifs—not that I need one. I am hungry, Marie. I am looking forward to my dinner already. I think something dead black. I am looking well tonight. I can afford to wear black.”

      Marie beamed.

      “Madame has recovered her spirits,” she remarked demurely.

      Anna was suddenly silent. Her light-heartedness was a revelation. She turned to her maid.

      “Marie,” she directed, “you will telephone to Thurm House. You will ask for Lucille, the Princess’s maid. You will give my love to the Princess. You will say that a sudden headache has prostrated me. It will be enough. You need say no more. To-morrow I lunch with the Princess, and she will understand.”

      CHAPTER XXV

       Table of Contents

      “Confess,” Anna exclaimed, as she leaned back in her chair, “that my idea was excellent! Your little restaurant was in its way perfection, but the heat—does one feel it anywhere, I wonder, as one does in London?”

      “Here, at any rate, we have air,” Norgate remarked appreciatively.

      “We are far removed,” she went on, “from the clamour of diners, that babel of voices, the smell of cooking, the meretricious music. We look over the house-tops. Soon, just behind that tall building there, you will see the yellow moon.”

      They were taking their coffee in Anna’s sitting-room, seated in easy-chairs drawn up to the wide-flung windows. The topmost boughs of some tall elm trees rustled almost in their faces. Away before them spread the phantasmagoria of a wilderness of London roofs, softened and melting into the dim blue obscurity of the falling twilight. Lights were flashing out everywhere, and above them shone the stars. Norgate drew a long breath of content.

      “It is wonderful, this,” he murmured.

      “We are at least alone,” Anna said, “and I can talk to you. I want to talk to you. Should you be very much flattered, I wonder, if I were to say that I have been thinking of little else for the last three or four days than how to approach you, how to say something to you without any fear of being misunderstood, how to convince you of my own sincerity?”

      “If I am not flattered,” he answered, looking at her keenly, “I am at least content. Please go on.”

      “You are one of those, I believe,” she continued earnestly, “who realise that somewhere not far removed from the splendour of these summer days, a storm is gathering. I am one of those who know. England has but a few more weeks of this self-confident, self-esteeming security. Very soon the shock will come. Oh! you sit there, my friend, and you are very monosyllabic, but that is because you do not wholly trust me.”

      He swung suddenly round upon her and there was an unaccustomed fire in his eyes.

      “May it not be for some other reason?” he asked quickly.

      There was a moment’s silence. Her own face seemed paler than ever