The Cab of the Sleeping Horse

Madeline Spencer, leaning languidly against the mahogany table in the corner of the drawing-room, drummed softly with her finger tips as she listened.

“What is the use of it all?” Marston was asking. “We can’t get the letter. Harleston evidently told the truth; he has turned it over to the State Department, so why not be content that it’s there, and let well enough alone?”

“I’ve been letting well enough alone by occupying them with the notion that the letter is the thing most desired,” Mrs. Spencer returned. “Muddying the water, as it were, so as to obscure the main issue and get away with the trick. Direct your attention here, if you please, gentlemen! Meanwhile we escape from the other end.”

“Mrs. Clephane was at the French Embassy this afternoon,” he observed.

“At last she had a glimmering of sense!” Mrs. Spencer laughed. “Why she didn’t beat it there direct from the train I can’t imagine. Such ignorance is a large asset for those of us who know. I had thought of impersonating her and amusing myself with d’Hausonville, but I concluded it wasn’t worth while. It riles me, however, that the affair was so atrociously bungled by Crenshaw and the others. What possessed them to release Mrs. Clephane once they had her?—and what in Heaven’s name made them overlook the letter in the cab?”

“Search me!” Marston replied.

“There is no occasion to search you, Marston,” she smiled, “I shouldn’t find very much except—placidity.”

“Placidity has its advantages,” he smiled back.

“It has; that’s why I asked the Chief for you. You were not as happy in your choice of assistants, Marston. They are a stupid lot. You may send them back to New York. We’ll handle this matter ourselves, with Mrs. Chartrand’s involuntary assistance.”

“Very good, madame!” said Marston. “The trouble, you see, came with that chap Harleston’s butting into the affair. Who would have foreseen that he would happen along just at that particular moment and scoop the letter without turning a hair. It was rotten luck sure.”

“It was all easy enough if the blundering fools had only exercised an atom of sense,” Mrs. Spencer retorted. “Mrs. Clephane couldn’t deceive a normal two-year-old child; she is as transparent as plate glass.”

“She was clever enough to get rid of the letter in the cab, and to give them the plausible story that it was locked in the hotel safe. And the hotel safe was the reasonable place for her to leave the letter until she had seen the Ambassador, and someone from the Embassy could return with her and get the letter.”

“Granted—if Mrs. Clephane were a wise woman and in the service. She isn’t wise and she isn’t in the service; and both these facts are so apparent that he who runs may read. She played the Buissards for fools and won. If they had exercised the intelligence of an infant, they’d have known that she had the letter with her when she left the hotel. You got a glimmer of light when you thought of the cab—and Mrs. Clephane told you that Mr. Harleston had stopped and looked at the sleeping horse and then started him toward Dupont Circle. You came to me to report—and I, knowing Harleston, solved the remainder of the mystery. But with Harleston’s entry the affair assumed quite a different aspect; and it is no reflection on you, Marston, that your expedition to his apartment didn’t succeed; though somewhat later Crenshaw did act as a semi-reasonable man, and secured the letter—only to foozle again like an imbecile. The play in the hotel last night, as schemed by us, should have gone through and eliminated Clephane and Harleston for a time; but Harleston upset things by his quick action and sense of danger—moreover, he guessed as to Clephane, for the management got wise and made a search, and the dear lady found Harleston and me in Peacock Alley—and she pre-empted him.”

Marston blinked and said nothing.

“Why don’t you say something?” she asked sharply.

“What is there to say that you don’t already know,” he replied placidly.

“Very little, Marston, about the subject in hand,” she replied curtly. “And now let us see how matters stand to date. First—the French Ambassador knows that a cipher letter to him from his Foreign Minister has been intercepted and is in the hands of the American State Department. Second—as it is in letter cipher, there isn’t much likelihood of it being translated. Third—the matter covered by the letter must be something that they are reluctant to send by cable; for you know, Marston, that the United States, in common with European nations, requires all telegraph and cable companies to forward immediately to the State Department a copy of every cipher message addressed to a foreign official. Maybe they are not able to translate it, but of that the sending nation cannot be sure and it makes it very careful, particularly when the local government is affected. Fourth—France will have to choose between consuming a week in getting another letter from Paris to Washington, or she will have to chance the cable with the risk of America learning her message.”

“What do you think France will do?” Marston asked.

“If the letter concerned my mission, she will risk the cable,” Mrs. Spencer replied. “She would far rather disclose the affair to the United States, than to let Germany succeed.”

“May she not be content now to warn the United States?” suggested Marston.

“It’s quite possible. All depends whether the letter concerns my mission. We have been informed by the Wilhelm-strasse that it probably does, and directed to prevent its delivery to the French Ambassador. We’ve succeeded in preventing, but bungled it over to the United States—the one country that we shouldn’t have aroused. What in the devil’s name ails your assistants, Marston—particularly Crenshaw?”

“To be quite candid,” Marston replied, “he had a grouch; he thought that Sparrow and I flub-dubbed the matter of the cab, and deliberately tried to lose him when we went to the Collingwood. And when he did come, he drew his gun on us until he understood.”

“What?” she exclaimed.

“He thought that it was a scheme of Sparrow to injure him in your eyes. It seems that he and Sparrow are jealous of your beautiful eyes.”

“What are you talking about?” she demanded. “What have I, or my beautiful eyes, to do with Crenshaw and Sparrow?”

“What usually happens to the men who are associated with you in any enterprise: they get daffy over you.”

“Because they get daffy over me is no excuse for stupid execution of the business in hand,” she shrugged. “You never have been guilty of stupidity, Marston.”

“Because I’ve managed never to be a fool about you—however much I have been tempted to become one.”

“Have been, Marston?” she inflected.

“Have been—and am,” he bowed. “I’m not different from the rest—only—”

She curled herself on a divan, and languidly stretched her slender rounded arms behind the raven hair.

“Only what, Marston?” she murmured.

“Only I know when the game is beyond me.”

“So, to you, I’m a game?”

“Of an impossible sort,” he replied. “I admire at a distance—and keep my head.”

“And your heart, too, mon ami?”

“My heart is the servant of my head. When it ceases so to be, I shall ask to be detached from the Paris station.”

“Are you satisfied with your present assignment?”

“Much more than satisfied; very much more than satisfied.”

She held out her hand to him, and smiled ravishingly.

“We understand each other now, Marston,” she said simply; which tied Marston only the tighter to her—as she well knew. And Marston knew it, too. Also he knew that he had not the shade of a chance with her—and that she knew that he knew it. It was Madeline Spencer’s experience with men that such as she tried for she usually got. There were exceptions, but them she could count on the fingers of one hand. Harleston—though for a time he was on the verge of submission—was an exception. And for that she was ready to rend him at the fitting opportunity; the more so because her own feelings had been aroused. As they were once before with Armand Dalberg—who had calmly put her in her place, and tumbled her schemes about her ears.

All her life there would be a weak spot in her heart for Dalberg; and, such is the peculiarly inconsistent nature of the female, a hatred that fed itself on his scorn of her.

She had dared much with Dalberg—and often; and always she had lost. The Duke of Lotzen was only a means to an end: money and exquisite ease. Left with ample wealth on his decease, she, for her excitement and to be in affairs, had mixed in diplomacy, and had quickly become an expert in tortuous moves of the tortuous game.

Then one day she encountered Harleston, and bested him. With a rare good nature for a diplomat, he had taken his defeat with a smile, at the same time observing her manifold attractions with a careful eye and an indulgent mind for the past. Which caused her to look at him again, and to think of him frequently; and at last to want him for her own—after a little while. And he had appeared not averse to the wanting—after a little while. Now, just as he was about to succumb, he was suddenly whisked away by another woman—that woman simply a later edition of herself: the same figure, the same poise, the same methods, the same allurements; but younger in years, fresher, and, she admitted it to herself, less acquainted with the ways of men. And now she had lost him; and never would she be able to get him back. Another woman had filched him from her—filched him forever from her, she knew.

Therefore she hated Mrs. Clephane with a glowing hate.

“Have you seen the—man?” Marston asked, when her attention came back to him.

She nodded. “I’ve had a communication from him.”

“Anything doing?”

“Not yet. He will duly apprise me. Meanwhile we, or rather I, am to remain quiet and wait expectantly.”

“He thinks you are alone?”

“Of course. He would be off like a colt if he thought that I had a corps of assistants.”

“The longer the delay the more chance France has to repeat the letter by cable,” Marston remarked.

“Certainly—but I shan’t be fool enough to tell him so, or anything as to the letter. He would end negotiations instantly.”

“When are you to see him?”

“This afternoon at three.”

“At Chartrands?”

“No, in Union Station.”

“It’s a long way to go,” Marston observed.

“So I intimated, but without avail.”

“Is he afraid?”

“No, only inexperienced in deception and over cautious. Moreover, it is a serious business.”

“Particularly since Harleston is on the trail?” Marston added.

Mrs. Spencer nodded again. “We’ll pray that he does not uncover the matter until we are up and away.”

“If we pray, it should be effective!” Marston laughed.

“It likely will be—one way or the other,” she returned drily. “However, if we are careful, a prayer more or less won’t effect much damage. It’s really up to the—man in the case. If he can get away with it, we can manage the rest.”

“And if he can’t?”

“Then there will be nothing on us, unless the Clephane letter is translated and implicates me by name—or Paris resorts to cable. If it were not for France’s meddling, it would be ridiculously simple so far as we are concerned; everything would be up to the man.”

“And you do not know who the man is, nor what he is about to betray?” Marston asked.

“I do not—nor am I in the least inquisitive, despite the fact that I’m a woman. I haven’t even so much as tried to guess. I was ordered here under express instructions; which are to meet someone who will communicate with me by letter in which a certain phrase will occur. Thereafter I am to be guided by him and the circumstances until I receive from him a certain package, when I am instantly to depart the country and hurry straight to Berlin. Whether I am to receive a copy of a secret treaty between our friends or our enemies, a diplomatic secret of high importance, a report on the fortifications or forces of another nation, or what it is, I haven’t the slightest idea. It’s all in the game—and the game fascinates me; its dangers and its uncertainty. Some other nation wants what Germany is about to get; some other nation seeks to prevent its betrayal; some other nation seeks to block us; someone else would even murder us to gain a point—and our own employer would not raise a hand to seek retribution, or even to acknowledge that we had died in her cause. They laud the soldier who dies for his flag, but he who dies in the secret service of a government is never heard of. He disappears; for the peace or the reputation of nations his name is not upon the public rolls of the good and faithful servants. It’s risky, Marston; it’s thankless; it’s without glory and without fame; nevertheless it’s a fascinating game; the stakes are incalculable, the remuneration is the best.”

“You’re quite right as to those high up in the service,” Marston remarked, “the remuneration, I mean, but not as to us poor devils who are only the pawns. We not only have no glory nor honour, but considering the danger and what we do we are mightily ill paid, my lady, mightily ill paid. The fascination and danger of the game, as you say, is what holds us. At any rate, it’s what holds me—and the pleasure of working sometimes with you, and what that means.”

“And we always win when together because we are in accord,” she smiled, holding out her hand to him. “Team work, my good friend, team work!”

He took the hand, and bending over raised it to his lips with an air of fine courtesy and absolute devotion.

“And we shall win this time, Marston,” she went on, “we shall sail for Europe before the week is ended—I’m sure of it.”

“I shall be satisfied if we never sail—or sail always,” he returned, and slowly released her fingers and stepped back.

She paid him with a ravishing smile; and Madeline Spencer, when she wished, could smile a man into fire—and out again. It was too soon for the “out again” with Marston. He was very useful—he was not restless, nor demanding, nor sensitive, nor impatient of others, nor jealous. He was like a faithful dog, who adores and adores, and pleads only to be allowed to adore. Moreover, he was a capable man and trustworthy; dependable and far above his class. Therefore she took care that his chains should be silken, yet at the same time that he be not permitted to graze too far afield.

“I wonder,” Marston was saying, after a little thought, “if Carpenter, the Chief of the Secret Bureau of their State Department, might be purchasable—if we made him a good stiff bid?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “It isn’t likely, however; he is too old and tried an official to be venal. Furthermore we haven’t any money at hand, and my instructions are to act independently of the German Embassy, and under no circumstances whatever to communicate with it. In such business as we are engaged, the Embassy never knows us nor of our plans. They don’t dare to know; and they will calmly deny us if we appeal to them.”

“The money might be arranged,” Marston suggested. “You could cable to Berlin for it—and have it cabled back.”

“It might be done,” said she thoughtfully. “You mean to try Carpenter for a copy of the cipher letter?”

“It won’t do any particular harm, as I see it; it can’t make us any worse off and it may give us the letter. It’s worth the trial, it seems to me.”

“But if Carpenter has not succeeded in finding the key-word, how will the letter help? Do you expect to bribe the French Embassy also?”

“It may not be necessary,” he replied. “I know a number of keys of French ciphers; one of them may fit.”

“Very well,” said she quietly; “you are empowered to have a try at Carpenter.”

“Good—I’ll start after it at once. Any further orders, madame?”

“None till evening,” again holding out her hand—and again smiling him into kissing it adoringly.

“A useful man, Marston!” she reflected when the door closed behind him. “And one who never presumes. A smile pays him for anything, and keeps him devoted to me. Yes, a very useful and satisfactory man. His idea of corrupting Carpenter may be rather futile; and he may get into a snarl by trying it, but,” with a shrug of her shapely shoulders, “that is his affair and won’t involve me. And if he should prove successful, the new French key-word which the Count, the dear Count, gave me just before I left Paris, may turn the trick.”

The Count de M—— was confidential secretary to the Foreign Minister, and he had slipped her the bit of paper containing the key-word at a ball, two evenings before she sailed on her present mission. He was not aware that she was sailing, nor was she; the order came so suddenly that she and her maid had barely time to fling a few things in a couple of steamer trunks and catch the last train. She had fascinated the Count; for a year he had been one of her most devoted, but most discreet, admirers. He also was exceedingly serviceable. Hence she took pains to hold him.

Languidly she reached for her little gold mesh bag—the one thing that never left her—and from a secret pocket took several slips of paper.

“Why, where is it!” she exclaimed, looking again with greater care.... “The devil! I’ve lost it!”

However, after a moment of thought, she recalled the key-word, and the rule that he whispered to her—also the squeeze he gave her hand, and the kiss with the eyes. The Count had fine eyes—he could look much, very much.... She smiled in retrospection.... Yet how did she drop that bit of paper—and where?... Or did she drop it?... All the rest were there. It was very peculiar.... She had referred to the De Neviers slip on last Saturday—and she distinctly remembered that the Count’s was there at that time. Consequently she must have dropped it on Sunday when she was studying the Rosny matter, and then she was in this room—and Marston and Crenshaw and Sparrow were in the next room.—H-u-m.... Well, the Count wrote in a woman’s hand; and the finder cannot make anything out of the words:

À l’aube du jour.