XVI—Another Letter
Harleston sauntered through Peacock Alley; not finding Mrs. Clephane, he had himself announced and went up to her apartment.
Outwardly he was impassive; inwardly there was the liveliest sensation of eagerness and anticipation. He could not recall a time when he had so much joy in living, and in the expectation of the woman. And when he felt Mrs. Clephane’s small hand in his, and heard her bid him welcome, and looked into her eyes, he was well content to be alive—and with her.
“I’ve quite a lot to tell you,” she smiled. “I’m so glad you could dine with me—it will give us much more time.”
“Time is not of the essence of this contract,” he replied.
“What contract?” she asked, with a fetching little frown of perplexity.
“The contract of the present—and the future.”
“Oh, you mean our friendship—and that you won’t doubt me ever again?”
“Precisely—and then some,” he confided.
“What is the ‘some’, Mr. Harleston?” frowning again in perplexity.
“Whatever may happen,” he said slowly.
“You mean it?” she asked.
“I mean it—and more—when I may.”
“The ‘more’ and the ‘may’ are in the future,” she remarked. “Meanwhile, what have you to report?”
“Very considerable,” said he. “Mrs. Spencer was in the Collingwood, this afternoon—in the Chartrands’ apartment. And the telephone girl recognized her as the woman who left the building on the night of the—cab.”
“That explains a lot to you!” Mrs. Clephane exclaimed.
“The explanation isn’t necessary, except to complete the chain of events,” he replied. “We know the later and essential facts as to the letter. There is just one earlier circumstance that isn’t clear to me; and while, as I say, it’s immaterial yet I’m curious. How did the Spencer gang know that I had taken the letter from the cab?”
“Oh!” Mrs. Clephane cried. “I fancy I can explain. You know I saw you at the cab. Well, when they released me, I concluded I’d give them something to think about, and I remarked that Mr. Harleston, of the United States Diplomatic Service, had stopped at the cab, looked inside, and then started the horse out Massachusetts Avenue. I thought I had told you.”
“You didn’t tell me, but it’s very plain now. Madeline Spencer inferred the rest and instructed them how to act. And they came very close to turning the trick.”
“You mean to getting the letter?” she cried.
He nodded. “I had gone to bed, when something told me to take precautions; I carried the letter across the corridor and gave it to a friend to keep for me until morning. A short time after, the three men called.”
“Good Heavens!” she breathed. “What if they had gotten the letter.”
“Unless they knew the key-word, they wouldn’t have been any better off than are we—I mean than is the United States.”
“I’m France, am I?” she smiled.
“For only this once—and not for long, I trust,” he replied.
“Amen!” she exclaimed, “Also for ever more. I’ll be so relieved to be out of it and back to my normal ways that I gladly promise never to try it again. I’m committed to seeing this affair through and to aiding the French Embassy in whatever way I can, both because I must keep faith with Madame Durrand, and because my inexperience and credulity lost it the letter. That done, and I’m for—you, Mr. Harleston!” she laughed.
“And I’m for you always—no matter whom you’re for, nor what you may do or have done,” he replied.
For just an instant she gave him her eyes; then the colour flamed up and she turned hastily away.
“Sit down, sir,” she commanded—most adorably he thought; “I had almost forgotten that I have something to tell you.”
“You’ve been telling me a great deal,” he confided.
She shrugged her answer over her shoulder, and peremptorily motioned him to a chair.
“Madame Durrand has been located,” she began. “The Embassy telephoned me that she is in Passavant Hospital, getting along splendidly; and that she duly wired them of her accident and of my having the letter, with an identifying description of me. The wire was never received.”
“It was blocked by a present,” he remarked. “The wire never left the hospital.”
“So the Marquis d’Hausonville said. He also assured me that the letter was of no immediate importance, and that steps were being taken to have it repeated.”
“Which may be true,” Harleston smiled, “but it is entirely safe to assume that he is acting precisely as though the letter was of the most immediate importance. You may be sure that the moment you left him he dispatched a cable to Paris reciting the facts, so that the Foreign Office could judge whether to cable the letter or to dispatch it by messenger. And he has the reply hours ago.”—(“Also,” he might have added, “our State Department—only it may not be able to translate it.”) “I should say, Mrs. Clephane, that your duty is done now, unless the Marquis calls on you for assistance. You have performed your part—”
“Very poorly,” she interjected.
“On the contrary, you have performed it exceptionally well. You, a novice at this business, prevented the letter from falling into Spencer’s hands, and so you blocked that part of their game. No, no, Mrs. Clephane, I regard you as more than acquitted of blame.”
“You’re always nice, Mr. Harleston!” she responded.
“Nice expresses very inadequately what I wish to be to you,” he said slowly.
Again the flush came—and her glance wavered, and fled away.
“Meanwhile,” he went on, “I am quite content to know that you think me nice to you.”
She sprang up and moved out of distance, saying as she did so, with a ravishing smile:
“Nice is comprehended in other pleasant—adjectives.”
“It is?” said he, advancing slowly toward her.
“But you, Mr. Harleston, are forbidden to guess how pleasant, or the particular adjective, until you’re permitted.”
“And you’ll permit me to guess some day—and soon.”
“Maybe so—and maybe not!” she laughed. “It will depend on the both of us—and the business in hand. Diplomats, you are well aware, are given to very disingenuous ways and methods.”
“In diplomacy,” he appended. “A diplomat, as a rule, is merely a man of a little wider experience and more mature judgment—the American diplomat alone excepted, save in the secret service. Therefore he knows his mind, and what he wants; and he usually can be depended upon to keep after it until he gets it.”
“And to want it after he gets it?” she inquired.
“Don’t be cynical,” he cautioned.
“I’m not. The world looks good to me, and I try to look good to the world.”
“You have succeeded!” he exclaimed.
“I’ve about-faced,” she went on. “Now I presume everybody trustworthy until it’s proven otherwise. Time was, and not so long ago, when I was more than cynical; and I found it didn’t pay in a woman. A man may be cynical and get away with it; a woman only injures her complexion, and makes trouble for herself. Me for the happy spirit, and side-stepping the bumps.”
“Good girl!” Harleston applauded—thinking of her unhappy spirit, and the hard bumps she must have endured during the time that the late deceased Clephane was whirling to an aeroplane finish. “You’re a wonder, Mrs. Clephane,” he ended.
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll make me vain?” she asked.
“It can’t be done,” he averred. “You simply can’t be spoiled; you’re much too sensible.”
“La! la!” she trilled. “What a paragon of—”
—“everything,” he adjected.
“Everything that I must be, if you so wish it.”
“Just so!” he replied.
“Aren’t you afraid of a paragon, Mr. Harleston?”
“Generally, yes; specifically, no.”
“La! la!” she trilled again. “You’re becoming mystic; which means mysterious, which means diplomatic, which means deception—which warns us to get back to the simple life and have dinner. Want dinner, Mr. Harleston?”
“With you, yes; also breakfast and luncheon daily.”
“You couldn’t do that unless you were my husband,” she replied tantalizingly and adorably.
“I’m perfectly aware of it,” he responded, leaning forward over the back of the chair that separated them.
“But I’m not ready to take a husband, monsieur,” she protested lightly.
“I’m perfectly aware of that also. When you are ready, madame, I am ready too. Until then I’m your good friend—and dinner companion.”
He had spoken jestingly—yet the jest was mainly pretence; the real passion was there and ready the instant he let it control. As for Mrs. Clephane, Harleston did not know. Nor did she herself know—more than that she was quite content to be with him, and let him do for her, assured that he would not misunderstand, nor misinterpret, nor presume. So, across the chair’s back, she held out her hand to him; and he took it, pressed it lightly, but answered never a word.
“Now you shall hear the special matter I’ve got bottled up,” said she. “Whom do you think was here late this afternoon?”
“The Emperor of Spain!” he guessed.
“A diplomatic answer!” she mocked. “There is no Emperor of Spain; yet it’s not absolutely wide of the diplomatic truth, for it was Mrs. Buissard—she of the cab, you’ll remember.”
“So!” Harleston exclaimed. “What’s the move now; I fancy she was not paying a social visit.”
“You fancy correctly,” Mrs. Clephane replied. “She came to the apartment unannounced; and when I, chancing to be passing the door when she knocked, opened it, and saw who was without, I almost cried out with surprise. I didn’t cry out, however. On the contrary, remembering diplomatic ways, I most cordially invited her in. To do her justice, Mrs. Buissard, beyond expressing hope that I had experienced no ill effect from the occurrence of the other night, wasted no time in coming to business.”
“‘Mrs. Clephane,’ she said, sitting on the corner of the table just where you are sitting now, ‘I have a proposition to make to you—may I make it?’
“I could see no reason to forbid, so I acquiesced.
“‘And if you cannot accept straightway, will you promise to forget that it was made?’ she asked.
“Again I acquiesced. I admit, I was curious.
“‘We assume,’ said she, ‘that between France and Germany you are indifferent.’
“‘Paris and Berlin have each their good points,’ I replied.
“‘Quite so,’ she acquiesced; ‘just now, however, we ask you to favour Berlin and for a consideration.’
“‘I don’t want a consideration,’ I smiled; ‘tell me what’s the favour you seek?’
“‘We ask you,’ she replied instantly, ‘to take a letter to the French Ambassador and tell him that it is the letter Madame Durrand gave you in New York, and that it has just been returned to you by the American State Department.’
“‘Have you the letter with you?’ I asked.
“‘I have,’ she replied, producing it from her bag. ‘It may not exactly resemble the original.’
“‘It doesn’t,’ said I.
“‘But the French Ambassador won’t know it,’ she smiled. ‘Further, so as to make the matter entirely regular with you, you will receive an appointment in the German Secret Service and five thousand dollars in advance.’
“‘Is it usual to—change sides so suddenly?’ I asked.
“‘You’re not changing sides,’ she explained. ‘You’ve never had a side, in the diplomatic sense. It is entirely regular in diplomacy for you to take such a course as is proposed; there is nothing unusual about it. And, my dear Mrs. Clephane, a position in the German Foreign Secret Service is a rare plum, I can assure you, even though you may not care to be—active in it.’
“Naturally, I understood. Mrs. Spencer thinking me the same type as herself, without conscience, character, or morals, had evolved this plan either to test me or to ensnare me. To test me, because she is jealous of you; or to ensnare me because she wants to win out diplomatically—or both, it may be. I am a poor hand at pretence; but I played the game, as you would say, to the best of my ability. So I seemed to fall in with her scheme; France was nothing to me; I had been given no option in the matter of accepting the letter and attempting its delivery; I had done all and more than could be expected of a disinterested person; I had lost the letter but through no fault of mine. I was acquitted of further responsibility; was at liberty to choose. And Mrs. Buissard agreed with me in everything. In the end, I accepted the spurious letter for delivery to the French Ambassador.”
“Good!” Harleston applauded. “You’re learning the method of diplomacy very rapidly; fire with fire, ruse with ruse, deceit with deceit—anything for the object in hand.”
“It went against me to do it,” she admitted, “but I’ll pay them in their own coin—or something to that effect. Of course, I’ve no intention of delivering the letter to the French Embassy. I’ll deliver it to you instead.”
“Delightful!” Harleston exclaimed. “You’re a bully diplomat. However, I’m not so sure that Spencer ever imagined her letter would reach the Marquis. She’s playing for something else, though what is by no means clear. Let us have a look at the letter; maybe it will help.”
She stood beside him as he cut the envelope and he took out the single sheet of paper—on which was an assortment of letters, set down separately and without relation to words.
“What is it,” said she, “a scrambled alphabet?”
“Looks like it!” he smiled. “As a matter of fact, however, it’s in the Blocked-Out Square cipher—like the original lett—”
“Then they could read the original?” she cut in.
“Not unless they have its particular key-word—”
“Oh, yes; I remember now,” said she. “Go on!”
“There’s no ‘go on,’” he explained. “Nor would it help matters if there were. This letter is spurious; there is nothing to find from it, even if we could translate it. It’s intended as a plant; either for us or for the Marquis; but I fancy, for us—so with your permission we will waste no time on it further than to keep alert for its purpose. When were you to receive the five thousand dollars?”
“I don’t know!” she laughed.
“And the appointment to the German Secret Service?”
“I don’t know; she didn’t say and I didn’t ask. I was too much occupied with meeting her on her own ground and playing the game. I was crazy to get the letter so I could show it to you.”
“Which doubtless was what she too wanted; I can’t see through her scheme—unless it is to muddy the water while the main play is being pulled off. And our men haven’t discovered a single material thing, though they have had Spencer and all the rest of the gang under shadow since the morning after the cab affair.”
The telephone buzzed. Mrs. Clephane answered it.
“Yes, Mr. Harleston is here,” she said, passing the receiver to him.
“Hello!” said Harleston.
“Can you make it convenient to drop around here sometime this evening?” Major Ranleigh inquired.
“Will ten o’clock do?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be there,” said Harleston.