The Firefly of France
CHAPTER VIII
WHAT A THIEF CAN DO
In sheer desperation I achieved a ghastly levity of demeanor.
"Please don't shoot me yet," I managed to request. "And if I sit downand think for a moment, don't take it for a confession. Any innocent manwould be shocked dumb temporarily if his traps gave up such loot."
I sat down in dizzy fashion, my judges watching me. Through my mind, ina mad phantasmagoria, danced the series of events that had begun in theSt. Ives restaurant and was ending so dramatically in the salon of thisship. Or perhaps the end had not yet arrived, I thought ironically. Bya slight effort of imagination I could conjure up a scene of the sortrendered familiar by countless movie dramas--a lowering fortress wall,myself standing against it, scornfully waving away a bandage, and drawnup before me a highly efficient firing-squad.
To all intents and purposes I was a spy, caught red-handed; but with duerespect for circumstantial evidence, I did not mean to remain one long.That part of it was too absurd. There must be a dozen ways out of it.Come! The fact that so strange an experience had befallen me in a NewYork hotel on the eve of my sailing could not be pure coincidence. Therelay the clue to the mystery. Let me work it out.
And then, as my wits began groping, comprehension came to me--a suddencomprehension that left me stunned and dazed: The open trunk, the thief,the descent by the fire-escape, the girl's calm denial, turning us fromthe suspected floor. Yes, the girl! Heavens, what a blind dolt I hadbeen! No wonder that Van Blarcom had felt moved to say a helping wordfor me, as for a congenital idiot not responsible for his acts!
"When you are ready--" the lieutenant was remarking. I pulled myselftogether as hastily as I could.
"First," I began, with all the resolution I could muster, "I want tosay that I am as much at a loss as you are about this thing. I never seteyes upon those papers until this evening. Why, man alive, I insistedon the search! I asked you to examine the wallet! Do you think I did allthat to establish my own guilt?"
"We'll keep to the point, please." His very politeness was ill omened."The papers were in your baggage. Can you explain how they came there?"
"I am going to try," I answered coolly. "To begin with, I can vouch forit that they were not there two weeks ago when my man packed the trunk.That I can swear to, for I glanced through the letters before handinghim the wallet; and when he had finished packing I locked the trunk andwent yachting for five days."
"And your luggage? Did it go with you?" queried the Englishman.
"No; it didn't. It remained in the baggage-room of my apartment house;but when I landed and found hotel quarters, I had it sent to me at theSt. Ives."
"So you stayed there!" He was eyeing me with ever-growing disfavor."You didn't know, of course, that it was a nest of agents, a sort ofrendezvous for hyphenates, and that the last spy we caught on this linehad made it his headquarters in New York?"
"I did not," I replied stiffly. "But I can believe the worst of it.Now, here's what befell me there." I recounted my adventure briefly,beginning with the summons from restaurant to telephone.
It was strange how, as I talked, each detail fell into its place, howeach little circumstance, formerly so mystifying, grew clear. The alarmof the _maitre d'hotel_ over my sudden departure, his relief when Ientered the booths, his corresponding horror when, emerging, I tookthe elevator for my room, puzzled me no longer. The deserted halls, theflight of the little German intruder, the determined lack of interest ofthe hotel management, were merely links in the chain.
I told a straight, unvarnished story with one exception. When I cameto the point I couldn't bring in Miss Esme Falconer's name. I saidnon-committally that a lady had occupied the room where the thief tookrefuge; and I left it to be inferred that I had never seen her before orsince.
The lieutenant heard my tale out with impassivity. "Is that all, Mr.Bayne?" he asked shortly, as I paused.
"Yes," I lied doggedly. "And if you want more, I call you insatiable.I've told you enough to satisfy any man's appetite for the abnormal,haven't I?"
"Your defense, then," he summed it up, "is that under the protection ofa German management a German agent entered your room, opened your trunk,concealed these papers in it, and repacked it. You believe that, eh?"
It sounded wild enough, I acknowledged gloomily as I sat staring at thecarpet with my elbows on my knees.
"You've been a pretty fool, a pretty fool, a pretty fool!" the refrainsang itself unceasingly in my ears. I was disgusted with the episode,more disgusted yet with my own role. Why was I lying, why making myselfby my present silence as well as by my former density the flagrantconfederate of a clever spy?
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Oh, what's the use?" I muttered. "No, of course I don't believe it, andyou won't either if you are sane. It is too ridiculous. I might aswell suggest that if the thief hadn't been gone when they arrived, themanager and the detective would have shanghaied me, or the house doctordrugged me with a hypodermic till the fellow could get away. Let's endall this! I'm ready to go ashore if you want to take me. In your placeI know I should laugh at such a story; and I think that on generalprinciples I should order the man who told it shot."
"Not necessarily, Mr. Bayne," was the cool response of the Englishman."The trouble with you neutrals is that you laugh too much at Germanspies. We warn you sometimes, and then you grin and say that it'shysteria. But by and by you'll change your minds, as we did, and knowthe German secret service for what it is--the most competent thing, themost widely spread, and pretty much the most dangerous, that the worldhas to fight to-day."
"You don't mean," I inquired blankly, "that you believe me?"
It looks odd enough as I set it down. Ordinarily I expect my word to beaccepted; but then, as a general thing I don't suddenly discover that Ihave been chaperoning a set of German code-dispatches across the seas.
"I mean," he corrected with truly British phlegm, "that I can't saypositively your story is untrue. Here's the case: Some one--probablyFranz von Blenheim--wants to send these papers home by way of Italyand Switzerland. Your hotel manager tells him you are going to sail forNaples; you are an American on your way to help the Allies; it's ten toone that nobody will suspect you and that your baggage will go throughuntouched. What does he do? He has the papers slipped into your wallet.Then he sends a cable to some friend in Naples about a sick aunt, orcandles, or soap. And the friend translates the cable by a private codeand reads that you are coming and that he is to shadow you and learnwhere you are stopping and loot your trunk the first night you spendashore!"
"I don't grasp," I commented dazedly; "why they should weave suchcircles. Why not let one of their own agents bring over the papers?"
The lieutenant smiled a faint, cold, wintry smile.
"Spies," he informed me, "always think they are watched, and generallythey're not wrong in thinking so. If they can send their documents by aninnocent person, they had better. For my part, I call it a very cleverscheme."
"I believe I am dreaming," I muttered. "Somebody ought to pinch me.You found those infernal things nestling among my coats and hose andtrousers--and you don't think I put them there?"
"I didn't say that," he denied as unresponsively as a brazen Vishnu. "Isimply say that I wouldn't care to order you shot as things stand now.But you'll remember that I have only your word that all this happened orthat you are really an American or even that this passport is yours andthat your name is--ah--Devereux Bayne. We'll have to know quite a bitmore before we call this thing settled. How are you going to satisfy hisMajesty the King?"
I plucked up spirit.
"Well," I suggested, "how will this suit you? I'll go down to mystateroom and stop there until we land in Italy; and, if you like, justto be on the safe side with such a desperado as I am, you can put aguard outside my door. But first, you'll send a sheaf of marconigramsfor me in both directions. You're welcome to read them, of course,before they go. Then when we get to Naples, my friend, Mr. Herriott,will meet the stea
mer. He is second secretary at the United Statesembassy, and his identification will be sufficient, I suppose. Anyhow,if it isn't, I dare say the ambassador will say a word for me. I haveknown him for years, though not so well."
"That would be quite sufficient as to identification." He stressed thelast word significantly, and I thanked heaven for Dunny and the forceswhich I knew that rather important old personage could set to work.
"Also," I continued coolly, "there will be various cablegrams fromUnited States officials awaiting us, which will convince you, I hope,that I am not likely to be a spy. There will be a statement from thefriend who dined with me at the St. Ives. There will be the declarationof the policeman who saw the German climb down the fire-escape andbolt into the room beneath." "And hang the expense!" I added inwardly,computing cable rates, but assuming a lordly indifference to them whichonly a multimillionaire could really feel.
The Englishman and the captain consulted a moment. Then the formerspoke:
"That will be satisfactory, sir, to Captain Cecchi and to me. Write outyour cables, if you please. They shall be sent. And I say, Mr. Bayne,--Ihope you drive that ambulance. I'm not stationed here to be a partizan,but you've stood up to us like a man."
An hour later as I finished my solitary dinner, the electric lightsflickered and died, and the engines began their throb. Under cover ofthe darkness we were slipping out of Gibraltar. I leaned my arms on thetable and scanned the remains of my feast by the light of my one sadcandle, not thinking of what I saw, or of the various calls for help Ihad been dispatching, or of the sailor grimly mounting guard outside mydoor. I was remembering a girl, a girl with ruddy hair and a wild-roseflush and great, gray, starry eyes, a girl that by all the rules of thegame I should have handed over to those who represented the countriesshe was duping, a girl that I had found I had to shield when I came faceto face with the issue.