The Spymaster E-Book

E. Phillips Oppenheim

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

A mystery novel with international intrigue set in London before World War Two. Sir Maurice Oldfield was one of the most important British spies of the Cold War era. A farmer’s son from a provincial grammar school who found himself accidentally plunged into the world of espionage, Sir Maurice was the first Chief of MI6 who didn’t come to the role via the traditional public school and Oxbridge route. Working his way to the top of the secret service, he took on the job of rebuilding confidence in the British Secret Service in the wake of the Philby, Burgess and Maclean spy scandals. This is the fascinating life story, told in detail for the first time, of a complex, likable character as well as a formidable intelligence chief.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER I

Admiral Guy Cheshire, whose orders and decorations denoted an unusually distinguished career for a man of forty-five years, a very unwilling participant in the brilliant scene, was honoured by his old friend, Henry D. Prestley, host of the gathering, with a few minutes’ tête-à-tête in one of the smaller reception rooms of the great house in Regent’s Park. Prestley was a silent man; so also, except when he was talking nonsense, was the Admiral. A queer sort of friendship had sprung up between them during the last ten years. They played golf together at irregular intervals and bridge in the same little circle most evenings at the famous St. George’s Club.

“I was thinking, as I came up the stairs,” Cheshire confided, “that yours is really the first of the great diplomatic shows of the season. Sabine has evidently made up her mind to make the others seem like Cinderella dances.”

Prestley shrugged his shoulders slightly. From where they stood they had a fine view of the larger rooms through which a continual stream of men and women was flowing. The old days of tiaras had returned. The brilliant uniforms of the men assisted in providing a wonderful blaze of colour. The ballroom was banked with a forest of flowers. The strains of an Austrian waltz, played by an orchestra unsurpassed in the world, reached their ears faintly. It was all a gay and marvellous whirlpool of gorgeous and scintillating life.

“We are doing it for the Ambassador of Sabine’s country, of course,” Prestley observed. “I felt a little uncomfortable about it but Sabine was dead keen. Broccia has been summoned back to a conference and Count Patani is, after all, a distant connection of hers. My wife loves entertaining for her people and if this sort of thing gives her pleasure, so much the better.”

“I ask myself sometimes,” Cheshire meditated, “why you didn’t go in for the diplomatic life yourself.”

Prestley smiled. He had the fine delicate features, the long straight nose of all the men of his family, but he lacked the physique of his race. Notwithstanding his youthful successes at outdoor sports–he had played football for Harvard, and international polo–his complexion was pale and he had preserved the thoughtful air of a statesman or a man of great affairs. He was, as a matter of fact, head of the most famous banking firm in the world.

“Sometimes,” he confessed, “I ask myself the same question. Then I answer it and I am satisfied. There were reasons, my friend. Sabine, I think, so long as she married an American instead of a fellow-countryman, is quite as happy in her present position without the restraint of diplomatic life. The show to-night, of course, is given entirely for Patani. We can still unofficially step in, though, now and then, when we are asked to on behalf of our own people. Neither Broccia nor his wife have had any experience of this sort of thing. It gives Sabine pleasure and she has not the responsibilities.”

“An amazing woman,” Cheshire observed. “She knows as much about European politics as anyone with whom I ever talked–much more than I do. Then, of course, it isn’t my job. I am only a sailor.”

An urgent messenger came for the host. He departed with a little farewell nod to his friend. The latter, who was in a depressed frame of mind, had just decided to seek the solace of a glass of champagne when a very beautiful girl, with an only half-uttered word of apology, left her partner and came over to him.

“What have you done with my young man, Guy?” she complained. “Have you put him on night duty or something of that sort?”

“Which of your retinue are you talking about?” he demanded.

“Why, Ronnie Hincks, of course. Is he not one of your A.D.C.’s or something, tucked up with you indoors at the Admiralty for a month or two?”

“Ronnie Hincks? Oh, yes. Isn’t he here?”

The girl shook her head.

“I have been looking for him everywhere. Sabine was asking for him, too. We are both very sad. Godfrey Ryson is absent, also.”

“They’re pretty busy at the shop,” the Admiral confided. “I’ve come straight from there myself.”

“Heavens! No dinner?”

He shook his head:–

“I’m going to make up for it in a minute or two.”

She glanced regretfully at her partner.

“I wish I could take you into supper,” she sighed. “You know Tony Gresham, do you not, Admiral? Tony and I are going to forget all about our scrappy dinner. Come in with us.”

The two men exchanged nods.

“Do come, sir,” Gresham begged. “We would be delighted to have you.”

“Just what I should have said at your age,” Cheshire replied drily, “but I should have kicked myself for having to say it. No, I won’t come, thanks, Elida. To tell you the truth, I have not really paid my respects to your sister yet. I got mixed up with a little tangle of Royalties and, being a shy man, I fled.”

“You know where to find her,” the girl said as she rejoined her partner. “She is in what she calls the Tapestry Salon, taking a brief rest. She is easily got at, though.”

“I will present my apologies at once,” Cheshire declared as he took his leave.

Progress through the crowded rooms was difficult. Admiral Guy Cheshire was a popular man and found friends on every side. He came face to face with his hostess only when she was leaving her retreat. There was a touch of eagerness in her manner as she dismissed her cavalier and came towards him.

“I almost wondered,” she said quietly, “whether you were not keeping out of my way.”

He looked at her in very genuine admiration. He knew little about women’s clothes, but her ivory satin gown, so exquisitely classic a garment, those marvellous Pelucchi pearls, her beautifully coiled and smoothly coiffured chestnut-brown hair, and the flash of her brown eyes, seemed to reproduce one of those Florentine pictures of the Renaissance.

“You flatter me,” he remarked. “I have been laying my homage at the feet of the younger generation. Elida, too, looks beautiful to-night.”

Her imitation curtsy was a trick of the old days.

“I have just a quarter of an hour before the formal business of supper,” she confided. “I have not given you any special place, Guy. I know you are entitled to it but I also know that there is just truth enough in your affected shyness to make you like to look after yourself. Stay with me for a minute. Here–let us sit down inside this small room. Bring us some champagne,” she ordered one of the footmen.

“We will sit on that divan away from this blaze of lights.”

“I am very much honoured,” he murmured, as he followed her. . . .

“My friend,” she said, as soon as they had settled down. “I am still your friend, am I not?”

“I hope so,” he answered gravely. “Has my behaviour in any way led you to think differently?”

“No,” she admitted, “but you come no longer to my At Homes. You have the entrée to my private sessions. You do not come.”

“These are anxious times, as you know,” he reminded her. “So long as the wireless from the Continent works, my official duties keep me at my desk.”

“Is that quite honest with me–an old friend?” she asked. “You see, I, too, have information. I know that you occupy a wonderful post. I know that you are greatly engaged just now, but that is no reason why you should desert your friends altogether. It makes them just a little anxious.”

He smiled reassurance. He had thrown off some part of his dejection now. The sailor light was back in his eyes and some of the lines had gone from his sunburnt face. A cynical critic who knew him well might have declared that the mask was down.

“I flatter myself, really,” he told her, “when I pretend that my work is sufficiently important to keep me wholly from my pleasures. Thursday is your next day for receiving us who have the honour of being your intimates, isn’t it? I shall present myself.”

“And you will be very welcome,” she assured him. “The list grows no longer. I want to talk to you seriously.”

“A slight disappointment, that,” he smiled, “but it shall be seriously, if you will, so long as there are a few minutes for ourselves. I should like to talk of Washington with you–of Rome and the old days.”

She shook her head.

“Not Rome now,” she objected. “Washington always. You remember when we used to ride in the mornings?”

“I remember losing my heart to you.”

Her little pout was a delicate gesture.

“You are a sailor,” she reminded him. “You always told me that no one else would have got you on the back of a horse and when I saw you there I almost believed you–and now you stay away just when I need you most.”

“Why do you need me?”

“I want to understand,” she said. “It seems to me that all Europe is drifting into something very serious. One wishes to help. One wishes direction. They say,” she went on, raising her eyes and looking at him directly, “that a good deal of knowledge lies behind that still face of yours, Guy.”

“Everything that I know, I will share with you,” he promised. “With a few trifling exceptions, of course.”

“Such as the size of your latest battleship, I suppose, and the name of the little ballerina with whom you took supper last week?”

“Naturally, serious knowledge like that is kept in a secret chamber,” he admitted. “Still, it is rather fun to part with the key, sometimes!”

“I wonder how much you have changed, really, Guy,” she meditated.

“You shall ask me on Thursday.”

She rose to her feet. She was either a wonderful actress or she was reluctant to go.

“Our few minutes have drifted away,” she complained, “and there are heaps of things I really wanted to ask you, I really wanted to understand. On Thursday you must give me a whole hour. Listen, I will get rid of one or two people first. You shall come at seven o’clock. Everyone leaves about then to go on to cocktail parties. You shall have yours with me.”

He bent over her fingers.

“Nothing,” he promised, “shall keep me away.”

She summoned one of the young secretaries who had been waiting for her with a list in his hand, and passed out into the crowded room with him at her side. Cheshire watched her steadily, almost stonily. He watched her until she had disappeared, then he turned to the champagne which the footman had brought and which they had forgotten. He drank his wine thoughtfully. The wife of his friend Henry Prestley, the playmate of his own younger days, had given him something to think about. He found himself wondering… .

“Cheshire, the one man I was looking for!”

There was a note of eagerness in the tone of the very magnificent personage who had almost pushed his way through a little throng on the other side of the great staircase. General Lord Robert Mallinson, for many years considered the handsomest man in the British Army, presented still a fine figure, in his full-dress uniform with his long row of marvellous decorations. His black hair was streaked with grey but his movements and a certain innate alertness kept him well within the bounds of early middle age.

“Are you going to feed with the lions?” he asked.

Cheshire shook his head.

“Not I. I was prowling about looking for the buffet.”

“I’m with you,” the General exclaimed. “What a stroke of luck! Come along. I can show you the way. No one seems to have found it out yet.”

They descended to the ground floor and secured an absolutely retired corner in a huge room occupied for the moment only by a small crowd of attentive waiters.

“Caviar, with cold chicken, ham and salad to follow, for me,” the General ordered. “Not too much of that mayonnaise stuff. There’s no champagne here that isn’t good. We’ll have a bottle, eh, Cheshire?”

“Rather!”

“A cocktail first,” Mallinson insisted. “Look here, old chap, this is a stroke of luck. If I present myself at your bureau and ask for an interview, though I know your fellows are well trained, it is jolly hard work to keep it away from the gossip paragraphist. The same trouble if you came to see me. And to have a little tête-à-tête lunch in the coffee-room of the club would be madness. We are just the two men in London who ought not to meet, I suppose, and here we are doing it without a soul to wonder what we are talking about.”

“What are we going to talk about?” Cheshire enquired.

Mallinson moved his chair slightly. They now commanded a view of the room but were themselves almost unseen. Anyone approaching would be visible whilst they were still out of hearing.

“I want you,” the General proposed, “to come and see the Chief with me as soon as an appointment can be arranged.”

“Anything fresh?”

“No, it’s an idea,” was the rather sombre reply. “I’ll tell you what I based it upon.”

The cocktails were brought and there was an interlude of several moments. Then Mallinson continued.

“We all know the position. A month or so ago it looked as though trouble were inevitable, and we are not ready for it, you know, Cheshire. We are not ready for it yet,” he added emphatically.

“Go on!” Cheshire begged. “Don’t shout.”

“The Chief, all on his own, took a bold step,” the General said in a slightly lower voice. “He gave diplomacy and a certain prominent official the go-by. He personally approached the three countries who make Europe. He asked that they should each receive a Special Envoy from here to discuss some of these difficult matters and if necessary he offered a meeting with himself, supposing an impasse was reached. It meant trouble with some of the small fry, of course, and one or two of them have had to go. Has anything struck you, Cheshire, about our progress since those offers were courteously received by the various great men concerned?”

The Admiral’s eyes glittered for a moment.

“It has,” he admitted. “I have come to the conclusion, within the last three days, that although every one of them is keeping the thing open, they are placing every possible obstacle in the way of these discussions. They are playing for time.”

“God knows you’re right,” the General declared. “That’s exactly the conclusion I have come to. You are with me so far, then?”

“Absolutely.”

“Now I’m going to move a step further,” his companion continued. “We neither of us talk about our jobs. There are millions of English people who do not know that I am the head of the real Secret Service so far as the Army is concerned, and that you occupy exactly the same position with regard to the Navy. We have exchanged confidences at various times during the last few years. Just lately we have not come together. It’s time we did. I have something to say to you, Cheshire.”

“Go ahead.”

“They are playing for time, each one of these countries to whom the Chief addressed his appeal for discussions. They want to find out how much is true of all this mighty rearmament business that the papers have been full of. They want to know how we are getting on with it and how much of it is a bluff. You know what that means? They have doubled their spies in this country. I don’t mind telling you we have had a horrible week of it–details we don’t discuss, of course–but we have twenty-three men in prison at the present moment–some from Woolwich, one or two from Aldershot, half a dozen from the War Office itself–who will never see much of the daylight again. What about you?”

“Almost the same story,” was the grim reply. “My department is working day and night and I have eleven branches and four new travelling ones a secret to everyone except myself. Your idea is perfectly right, General. They are holding off until they know the truth and they are making a big drive to get to know it, too.”

The supper was brought. They leaned back in their chairs. Mallinson lit a cigarette. They were served by a maître d’hôtel in plain clothes. Cheshire looked at him curiously as he bowed his greetings.

“I am managing this room, sir,” the man explained. “I should like to give you gentlemen my personal attention. You seem to have chosen a rather draughty corner. Would you like a screen? I can easily arrange one.”

“Not on any account,” the General replied. “What they call draughts I call fresh air. I welcome them myself at these crowded places.”

The maître d’hôtel bowed and dropped the suggestion. He opened the wine himself and lingered round after having examined the dishes served.

“If there is anything you want specially, gentlemen, I hope you will send for me,” he begged.

“Your face seems familiar,” Cheshire remarked. “Tell me your name.”

The man produced a card and handed it over.

“Antonio Machinka,” Mallinson exclaimed. “Machinka’s Restaurant in Jermyn Street anything to you?”

“My property, General. I should be proud to welcome you or your friends any time. My restaurant is very popular, a little too popular at times, but I have several attractive suites if you should be requiring privacy.”

There was not a ghost of a smile upon Machinka’s face. His were the pale cheeks, the earnest manner, the pleasant voice of the Anglicized Italian. Mallinson thrust the card into his pocket.

“We will remember,” he promised. “Just now, keep the waiters away as much as you can, there’s a good fellow. The Admiral and I have not met lately and we have plenty to talk about.”

“It shall be as you wish, sir,” the man replied, departing with a little bow.

Cheshire sipped his wine.

“Mysterious chaps, these foreigners, sometimes,” he remarked thoughtfully. “Know anything about him, General?”

“Nothing, and what I did know a year ago might not have been of any account to-day.”

“He’s on my list,” the Admiral reflected. “You should have him on yours, too.”

“You are well up to date, my friend.”

Cheshire leaned over the table.

“I try to be. One of the mystery women in London for whom we watch most closely,” he confided, “dined in a suite of Machinka’s last week. We think we know with whom. We are not quite sure. We are waiting till next time. I don’t mind telling you that the head waiter who looks after those suites is our man. We had hard work to get him there, as, although he is a foreigner, he is married to an Englishwoman. Queer his turning up. You heard how that submarine there was nearly such a row about was identified after she had been sunk in Spanish waters?”

“I only knew that she was identified and the fuss that they were trying to make had to be stopped pretty quick,” the General replied.

“The information came to us from Suite A at Machinka’s. A small world, General. We have compared notes. We agree. Now what are we going to do about it all?”

“We must see the Chief as soon as possible,” Mallinson insisted. “Remember that, shrewd fellow though he may be, he has no personal outlook upon the details of what is going on. He can only see through the eyes of his satellites. It is up to us to ram the truth home to him as to what is happening, to try and make him see exactly the way one at least of our friends on the Continent is trying to diddle us.”

“I will come,” Cheshire promised, “and I will do my best, but I don’t mind telling you, General, that the most difficult part of our task is not the work itself, is not the getting on the track of these people and hunting them down, it is getting the danger that they represent under the hide of the average British bourgeois statesman. In their hearts they don’t believe in spies. That’s where the modern fiction writer has done us such an ill turn. He has written these spy stories so long that they have become only humorous. They have ceased to be convincing. The British public does not believe in spies. If we were only to bring out a dozen of them, like our friend in Moscow, try them publicly and shoot them in the Tower, it would do us a thundering lot of good.”

“Our bosses won’t do it,” Mallinson observed gloomily. “You are quite right, Cheshire. It is fantastic the way they smile, even when we can prove that we are up against real and serious trouble. There is another thing, too. Like every other profession, the profession of espionage is chockful of the worst lot of amateurs. We have shipped back to the Continent dozens and dozens of friendless young governesses and theatrical people of every description. It is the women that are the biggest nuisance. Not one out of twenty of them could ever do us any real harm, but the very fact that there are so many fools at the game makes it difficult for us to get one or two of these sentimentalists to realise the situation. I used to take a dozen or so of them into one of the departments as typists, just to see how far they would go. It was simply pitiful to penetrate their stupid schemes and to see the ghastly fright they got in when they were caught.”

“They are in the way, of course,” Cheshire agreed, “but our great anxiety concerns those few who are in it, who know the game and who are playing it just about up to the limit.”

The General looked at his friend steadily. They were silent while their glasses were refilled. Machinka’s figure was always there in the background–suave and eager.

“That fellow will end with his back to the wall some day,” Cheshire continued. “He was raided twice in Soho–faked-up charge organised by us. He was harbouring spies and it was a difficult locality. He bought his present restaurant with foreign money. Thinks he’s safe.”

Mallinson rose to his feet.

“Well,” he said, “it’s been a pleasant chat. See you to-morrow, Cheshire.”

He made his way back into the crowd. Cheshire remained for a few minutes longer smoking a final cigarette in thoughtful solitude. For the second time in rather an interesting evening, he was hesitating. When at last he made his departure, he paused as he passed Machinka, who was preparing with a low bow to usher him out.

“I was trying to think,” he said slowly, “who it was mentioned your restaurant the other day, Machinka. Good chef you have, haven’t you?”

“Excellent, sir. Excellent.”

“Good service, too, I was told, and some real old Chianti. Ah, I remember! It was Captain Ryson of the Devastation–off his ship just now and acting as one of my assistants at the Admiralty. You remember Captain Ryson, Machinka?”

The latter’s face wore the slightly worried expression of a maître d’hôtel who fails to recognise the name of a client.

“There are so many sometimes,” he apologised. “One hears the names and forgets. A gentleman of your own age, sir?”

Cheshire smiled.

“He would not be flattered. It must have been someone else. Good night. Thanks for looking after us. Good night.”

Machinka bowed with even more than his usual courtesy. Afterwards, he stood for a few moments without moving, gazing with an air of disquietude after his departing patron.

CHAPTER II

Four men on the evening of the following day, seated in heavy mahogany chairs around a bridge table within the sacred purlieus of the St. George’s Club, leaned back with the relaxed air which follows upon the completion of a closely contested rubber. They were all men of some distinction. One was Henry D. Prestley, American banker, husband of the Princess Sabine Pelucchi and host of the previous night’s great diplomatic reception. His partner was Sir Herbert Melville, Deputy Commissioner of Police. His two opponents were General Lord Robert Mallinson and Lord Fakenham, the latter a Press magnate, owner of half a dozen newspapers and many other periodicals.

“A cheap rubber for you fellows, considering your shocking overcalling,” Fakenham observed as he rang the bell for a waiter. “I can have a drink now with a clear conscience. Join me, gentlemen. I can afford to treat you. I make it that I win forty-two pounds.”

“You are too infernally lucky,” Mallinson grumbled. “However, I’ll drink a whisky and soda with you.”

The orders were given. The door of the private room was quietly opened. Cheshire, alert and debonair notwithstanding a slight stoop, made his appearance. Fakenham drew a sigh of relief.

“Now if you fellows want to go on,” he said, “you have a fourth. As for me–I am tired. The strain of Prestley’s glorious party last night was too much for me.”

Cheshire leaned over the table, reached out for one of the packs of cards, performed an amazing trick, threw another pack into the air and had apparently shuffled it before the cards came fluttering down. Finally, he calmly nominated the partner with whom he had decided to cut and succeeded in drawing him.

“Why anyone plays cards with me I cannot imagine,” he remarked. “Cards have kept me from penury throughout my life. You all know what I can do and yet you go on trusting me.”

“The fact of it is, my dear friend,” the Deputy Commissioner of Police remarked, “you will probably end your days in prison, but it won’t be for your cheating at cards. Up till now I should say you were one of the most consistent losers in the club.”

“I purposely handicap myself by making every obvious mistake known to man,” Cheshire confided. “I also deliberately choose to play with a small circle whose appreciation of the intricacies of the game is negligible. Even on an Admiral’s half-pay, my losses mean no more than a snap of the fingers to me.”

“You look very spruce and pleased with yourself this evening,” the General yawned. “What have you been up to?”

“Work,” was the prompt and emphatic reply. “Zealous and untiring work on behalf of an ungrateful country. Seven hours at a stretch at my desk at the Admiralty.”

“I might play one more rubber,” Fakenham decided. “We four cut. This intrusive newcomer, with the deplorable manners and the absurdly inflated ideas of his own capacity, is in, anyway.”

The Admiral chuckled.

“I’m in all right,” he agreed. “You couldn’t have cut me out if you had tried. Try the seventh card from the middle if you want to play, Melville.”

Melville did as was suggested and turned up a king. The others scowled at him.

“Look here, you sea-faring charlatan,” Fakenham observed drily. “You leave off these tricks in a respectable club. I’ll choose my own card, thanks.”

He hesitated for a moment, then drew a two.

“Play instead of me, if you like,” the General suggested.

Fakenham shook his head.

“I’d sooner watch for a time.”

A long-drawn-out rubber finished some time after Fakenham had taken his leave. Cheshire glanced at a handsome clock which stood on the chimney piece. It was one of those modern creations fashioned to tell the time without any audible indication of progress. Everything in the room was made for silence, to enable the greatest brains in Europe to struggle more successfully with the problems of their latest diversion.

“Rotten time to finish a rubber,” he remarked. “Half-past seven.”

Sir Herbert grunted.

“An unpleasant reminiscence,” he said. “If I were really a faithful servant of my country I should call in at the Yard on my way home and go through the evening reports.”

“Digging up mares’ nests,” the General suggested chaffingly.

“Queer chaps, you Britishers,” Prestley sighed. “I don’t know why it is that directly a soldier retires he becomes a devastating critic of all military operations. A sailor takes you on one side and tells you that his country is at the mercy of anyone with half a dozen submarines up his sleeve.”

“And a policeman?” the Admiral interposed. “Don’t forget the policeman, Prestley.”

“He is worse than anyone else. He is always ready to assert that as soon as he gave up office and since he lost his job in one of the mysterious branches of the hidden service, the country is drifting into the hands of foreigners, every maître d’hôtel is a spy, and every Russian ballerina in the pay of some foreign country or other. You Englishmen are wonderful at your work,” he concluded, “but when you do lay off for half an hour you are the most howling mob of pessimists I ever came across.”

“What about another rubber?” Cheshire asked patiently. “It’s better than being slated by this glib-tongued millionaire.”

“Since the Navy took to revoking,” Sir Herbert declared, “this game is getting too expensive for me. I’ll play another rubber if I can be insured against cutting with Cheshire.”

The latter’s profanity for the next few seconds was both instructive and awesome. The Deputy Commissioner rang the bell.

“You are fined drinks round for using language like that,” he said sternly. “Give your orders, gentlemen. The Admiral will sign the chit.”

“Once in my life,” Cheshire grunted, “have I revoked in this club and never shall I hear the last of it. It cost us precisely nothing at all. We won the rubber afterwards. However, I’ve told you what I think of you and I’ll pay for the drinks with pleasure. Pink Gin for me, Brooks,” he added, looking up as the waiter approached.

“Dry Martini,” Sir Herbert murmured.

“Mixed Vermouth for me,” Prestley chose after reflection.

“A glass of the Dry Amontillado for me,” the General decided.

“And what about me?” demanded a man who had opened the door a few seconds before. “Am I left out of this orgy? I warn you I am going to cut in.”

“Who cares?” the Admiral exclaimed. “I’m paying for the drinks and you can have this crowd so far as contract bridge is concerned. They’re over-cautious, George. That’s what’s the matter with them. They won’t call their hands, they get left, and they grumble. A man revokes for the first time in his life and they haven’t the least idea how to treat the matter in a gentlemanly fashion. That’s why I am paying for drinks.”

The newcomer, George Marsden, a well-known permanent official in the Foreign Office, glanced at the clock. A smile parted his lips and his expression, always amiable but sometimes a little too serious, relaxed.

“The hour has struck,” he said. “I’ll take a Dry Martini.”

The waiter departed. The five men were alone in the room. Marsden drew up a chair close to Sir Herbert’s.

“No Continental news, I suppose?” the latter asked him.

Marsden shook his head.

“I am calling at the Foreign Office on my way home,” he confided. “There will be the usual evening messages from the two capitals we are chiefly interested in. Nothing else has transpired.”

The drinks arrived. Cheshire signed the chit and rose to his feet.

“I have a leaning towards domesticity,” he declared.

There was a subdued jeer from everybody. The Admiral, more than once, had been said to be the least married man in the Service and his bachelor parties were famous.

“You’ve got your four,” he pointed out. “You don’t need me, anyway. I must think of my country. All very well for you landlubbers, but I may be on the bridge of a battleship in a week’s time.”

“Swashbuckler!” Melville muttered.

Cheshire turned towards the door.

“It’s a nice club, this,” he remarked. “A warm, cosy little place for a dreary evening. All the same, it has its drawbacks. Less than a fiver that revoke cost you, Policeman, yet the memory still rankles. Good night, you others.”

Cheshire stood for a moment or two upon the steps of the club considering the weather. The commissionaire, with an open umbrella, glanced up at him from the pavement.

“Nasty night, sir,” he said. “Shall I call you a taxi or is your car here?”

“I think I’ll have a taxi.”

The man whistled. The taxi arrived. Cheshire was piloted across the rain-splashed pavement.

“Where to, sir?”

“The Admiralty. The Arch entrance.”

Before they had gone a hundred yards Cheshire stopped the taxi.

“Drive down Lambeth way,” he ordered.

“Which end of Lambeth do you want, sir?”

“The post office.”

The man drove on. Arrived at his destination, Cheshire alighted and, with his collar turned up and his Homburg hat pulled over his eyes, entered the place and made his way to one of the counters.

“Letters for Henry Copeland?” he enquired.

The clerk in attendance disappeared. When he returned he was holding a long typewritten envelope.

“Henry Copeland?”

Cheshire stretched out his hand.

“That’s right,” he said.

The young man went about his business. Cheshire, with the letter in his pocket, left the place and stepped back into the taxicab. For a moment he hesitated.

“The Admiralty,” he ordered.

They drove off. Twice Cheshire drew the letter from his pocket and each time he replaced it. Arrived at the Admiralty, he paid off the man, made his way along divers passages to a row of lifts, mounted to the top floor, traversed another long corridor, and paused before a door guarded by two commissionaires in uniform. They both saluted gravely as Cheshire entered the room. He passed a long line of clerks through a small chart room and finally opened with a key which he took from his chain a private office at the end. He closed the door behind him. A young man, who had sprung to his feet outside, followed him in.

“Do you require Captain Ryson, sir?” he asked. “He has just gone into the lower chart room.”

“Not at present.”

“Commander Hincks, sir?”

“No one for a few minutes.”

The young man disappeared. Cheshire opened a massive roll-top desk and pulled down the electric light. Slowly, and with a visible reluctance, he drew the letter from his pocket. He laid it on the blotting pad before him and fingered a paper cutter. For several moments he hesitated. A queer look of indecision seemed to have come into his face. He tapped the letter with the end of the cutter and then very slowly slit open the envelope and drew out half a sheet of foolscap and a folded slip of tracing paper. Word by word he read the contents of the note. He turned it over hastily and looked at some figures on the other side. Then he spread out before him what appeared to be a portion of a plan. He stared at it for several minutes. Afterwards he returned the letter and the tracing to the envelope and slipped the latter underneath the blotting pad. He leaned a little back in his chair. His fingers were interlaced. Something of the light-hearted humanity seemed to have gone from his expression, the lines to have sunk a little deeper, his eyes to be filled with something which seemed like a desire for escape from some hideous dilemma. So he sat for several moments without moving. Finally, he touched one of the buttons of a bell push on the top of the desk. A young officer in Naval uniform almost immediately hurried into the room.

“Commander Hincks, sir,” he announced. “We were not expecting you back to-night.”

“These are the times when unexpected things happen,” was the grim reply. “Is the door closed?”

“Yes, sir.”

Cheshire opened one of the drawers by his side, drew out a metal box which he unlocked with a key from his chain, and took from it a small oblong key which seemed to be its sole contents. He handed it to the newcomer.

“The code word is ‘Pernambuco’,” he confided. “Open my private safe.”

The young man took the key and approached the safe in a corner of the room. In a few minutes he turned round.

“Safe open, sir,” he reported.

“Give me the folder with the 7XTY designs.”

A folio in a green cardboard cover was produced and brought over to the desk.

“Now close the safe,” Cheshire directed, “and fetch Captain Ryson.”

“There’s nothing wrong, I hope, sir?”

“I hope not. Return yourself with Captain Ryson.”

“Very good, sir.”

The young man left the room. Cheshire lifted the blotting pad and withdrew the typewritten letter and slipped it into his pocket. Then he unfastened the folder and drew out the plans. There were twenty-one in all, fastened together in threes, each three apparently being plans of the same vessel–fore, aft and amidships. He spread them out before him and drew the light a little further down. Presently there came a knock at the door. Commander Hincks reappeared, ushering in an older man.

“Good evening, Admiral,” the latter said cheerfully.

Cheshire ignored the greeting and beckoned the two men to approach.

“You know what these are, I suppose?” he asked, touching with his forefinger the parchment.

“Rather,” was Ryson’s prompt reply. “They are the sectional plans of what is to be our 35-36 cruiser.”

“And you, Hincks?”

“Why yes, sir. You gave us a locked-door lecture on them only last week.”

The Admiral thrust his hand into his pocket and brought out the tissue slip.

“What do you make of this?” he asked.

The two men bent over it. There was a little exclamation from Hincks, something that sounded like a groan from the older man.

“It is a tracing of the hidden lower deck of the cruiser, sir. The secret deck that you were so keen about.”

Cheshire returned it to the envelope and his pocket. The two men were staring at him, white-faced and mute. It was Ryson who spoke first.

“Where did you get that from, sir?” he cried hoarsely.

The Admiral’s voice was hard and stern now as he answered.

“It is I,” he said, “who propose to ask questions, but in case you are really curious, I will tell you that someone calling himself Henry Copeland collected it from Lambeth post office less than an hour ago and brought it here. Fortunately, we have an Intelligence Department with eyes in the back of its head as well as the front. Now listen to me. You know where the keys are kept, you two. You know sometimes the code word. Hincks knows where to find the key of this desk when I am away. You, Ryson, know where to find the key of the inner drawer. You two between you form the only link between the contents of that safe and the outside world. You two together, I said. Now what about it?”

“Are we accused?” Ryson demanded, his deep voice vibrant with something which might have been passion or might have been fear.

“Where were you both last night? You were both invited to Regent’s Park. You neither of you came.”

“We were here, sir, according to arrangement,” Hincks replied. “I stayed till midnight and handed over to Captain Ryson at that hour.”

“I was here till six o’clock this morning,” Ryson corroborated.

“You were here,” Cheshire repeated. “Yes–the one night when you knew that I was away! What were you doing?”

“I was drafting, sir,” Hincks replied.

“I was in the model room working on my submarine,” Ryson affirmed.

“Perhaps. Go away now. Sleep on it. See me here, both of you, at nine o’clock to-morrow morning, then I will tell you whether you are accused or not. Lock up the safe, Hincks. That will be all for to-night, Captain Ryson.”

Both of them seemed about to burst into speech. Suddenly Cheshire raised his eyes. Something in his expression seemed to freeze the words upon their lips. Ryson swung round and left the room. Hincks busied himself with the safe and came back with the key.

“I shall be here for twenty minutes resetting the combination,” Cheshire told him. “Remember what I said. I do not wish to see either of you again to-night. You will preserve absolute silence as to what has happened.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Convey my wishes also to Ryson.”

“Yes, sir.”

Admiral Cheshire was alone. He moved over to the safe and for a quarter of an hour he was busy. Then he closed it again and came back to his seat. He seemed suddenly to have aged. The lines about his mouth had grown deeper and deeper. He took the letter and the sheet of tracing paper and placed them in a leather case in his inner pocket. When at last he rose to leave, he looked around him and threw up his arms to the ceiling as though in mute protest. That was the end of it. Once more wearing that expression of complete detachment which he carried with him always in the hours of crisis, he left the room.

CHAPTER III

At nine o’clock precisely on the following morning, Cheshire stepped out of a taxicab and, entering the Admiralty by a private door, made his way to the suite of offices occupied by his department. He passed through the outer room taking no account of many curious and furtive glances. In the bureau immediately before his own, however, he paused for a moment to exchange a word with Commander Hincks. The latter, who was obviously waiting for him, retained his self-control with an effort.

“You have heard the news, sir?”

Cheshire nodded curtly.

“I will discuss the matter with you later,” he said.

“In the meantime, sir,” Hincks ventured, “there is a representative from the Universal Press waiting here–he says with your permission. They sent him along from the Censor’s Department.”

“In ten minutes I will see him,” Cheshire announced.

He passed on to his private office. His typist-secretary was sorting some letters at the table usually occupied by Commander Hincks. The Admiral nodded good morning and seated himself at his desk. One single letter already lay there. It bore no postmark and had evidently been sent in by hand. He slit open the envelope, read the few lines it contained, and laid it face downwards on the blotting pad. He turned to the young woman at the other end of the room.

“There is a messenger from the Universal Press in the waiting room,” he told her. “Fetch him, please.”

“Very good, sir.”

The young woman disappeared for a few moments and returned ushering in Stephen Adams, a well-known figure in the journalistic world. Cheshire welcomed him with a brief nod.

“Sad affair, sir,” the newcomer remarked. “The editor sent me round to see you. The early editions are waiting.”

“Quite so,” Cheshire replied, leaning back in his chair. “As it happens, Mr. Adams,” he went on, “this tragedy explains itself. I am about to hand you over this note which I have just received. It was written by Captain Ryson evidently a few minutes before he shot himself.”

The journalist’s fingers were twitching already. Cheshire, however, preferred to read the letter aloud, which he promptly did. It was dated from a neighbouring hotel.

“Sir,