CHAPTER XXVIII

________________________________________________
_ It was within half an hour of closing time that same afternoon when Lutchester walked into James Van Teyl's office. The young man greeted him with some surprise.

"Will you do some business for me?" Lutchester asked, without any preliminaries.

"Sure!"

"How many Anglo-French will you buy for me? I can obtain credit by cable to-morrow through any bank for twenty or thirty thousand pounds."

"You want to buy Anglo-French?" Van Teyl repeated softly.

His visitor nodded.

"Any news?"

Lutchester hesitated, and Van Teyl continued with an apologetic gesture.

"I beg your pardon. That's not my job, anyway, to ask questions. I'll buy you twenty-five thousand, if you like. Guess they can't drop much lower."

Lutchester sat down.

"Thank you," he said, "I will wait."

A little ripple of excitement went through the office as Van Teyl started his negotiations. It seemed to Lutchester that several telephones and half a dozen perspiring young men were called into his service. In the end Van Teyl made out a note and handed it to him.

"I could have done better for you yesterday," he observed. "The market is strengthening all the time. There are probably some rumours."

A boy went by along the pavement outside waving a handful of papers. His cry floated in through the open window:

REPORTED LOSS OF MANY MORE GERMAN BATTLESHIPS. BRITISH CLAIM VICTORY.

Van Teyl grinned.

"You got here just in time," he murmured, "but I suppose you knew all about this."

"I have known since three o'clock," Lutchester replied, "that all the reports of a German victory were false. You will find, when the truth is known, that the German losses were greater than the British."

"Then if that's so," Van Teyl remarked, "I've got one client who'll lose a hatful which you ought to make. Coming up town?"

"I should like, if I may?" Lutchester said, "to be permitted to pay my respects to your sister."

"Why, that's fine!" Van Teyl exclaimed unconvincingly. "We'll take the subway up."

They left the office and plunged into the indescribable horrors of their journey. When they stepped out into the sunlit street in another atmosphere, Van Teyl laid his hand upon his companion's arm in friendly fashion.

"Say, Lutchester," he began, "I don't know that you are going to find Pamela exactly all that she might be in the way of amiability and so on. I know these things are done on the other side, but here it's considered trying your friends pretty high to take a lady of Sonia's reputation where you are likely to meet your friends. No offence, eh?"

"Certainly not," Lutchester replied. "I was sorry, of course, to see you last night. On the other hand, Sonia is an old friend, and my dinner with her had an object. I think I could explain it to your sister."

"I don't know that I should try," Van Teyl advised. "For all her cosmopolitanism, Pamela has some quaint ideas. However, I thought I'd warn you, in case she's a bit awkward."

Pamela, however, had no idea of being awkward. She welcomed Lutchester with a very sweet smile, and gave him the tips of her fingers.

"I was wondering whether we should see you again before we went," she said. "We are leaving for Washington to-morrow."

"By the three o'clock train, I hope?" he ventured.

She raised her eyebrows.

"Why, are you going, too?"

"I hope so."

"I should have thought most of the munition works," she observed, "were further north."

"They are," he acknowledged, "but I have business in Washington. By the bye, will you both come out and dine with me to-night?"

Van Teyl glanced at his sister. She shook her head.

"I am so sorry," she said, "but we are engaged. Perhaps we shall see something of you in Washington."

"I have no doubt you will," Lutchester replied "All the same," he added, "it would give me very great pleasure to entertain you at dinner this evening."

"Why particularly this evening?" she asked.

He looked at her with a queer directness, and Pamela felt certain very excellent resolutions crumbling. She suffered her brother to leave the room without a word.

"Because," he explained, "I think you will find a different atmosphere everywhere. There will be news in the evening papers."

"News?" she repeated eagerly. "You know I am always interested in that."

"The reports of a German naval victory were not only exaggerated," Lutchester said calmly; "they were untrue. Our own official announcement was clumsy and tactless, but you will find it amplified and explained to-night."

Pamela listened with an interest which bordered upon excitement.

"You are sure?" she exclaimed.

"Absolutely," he replied. "My notification is official."

"So you think if we dined with you, the atmosphere to-night would be different?" she observed, with a sudden attempt at the recondite.

Lutchester looked into her eyes without flinching. Pamela, to her annoyance, was worsted in the momentary duel.

"We cannot always choose our atmosphere," he reminded her.

"Mademoiselle Sonia is perhaps connected with the regulation of the munition supplies from America?"

"Mademoiselle Sonia," Lutchester asserted, "is an old friend of mine. Apart from that, it was my business to talk to her."

"Your business?"

Lutchester assented with perfect gravity.

"Within a day or two," he said, "now, if you made a point of it, I could explain a great deal."

Pamela threw herself into a chair almost irritably.

"You have the cult of being mysterious, Mr. Lutchester," she declared. "To be quite frank with you, you seem to be the queerest mixture of any man I ever knew."

"It is the fault of circumstances," he regretted, "if I am sometimes compelled to present myself to you in an unfavourable light. Those circumstances are passing. You will soon begin to value me at my true worth."

"We had half promised," Pamela murmured, "to go out with Mr. Fischer this evening."

"The more reason for my intervention," Lutchester observed. "Fischer is not a fit person for you to associate with."

She laughed curiously.

"People who saw you at the roof-garden last night might say that you were scarcely a judge," Pamela retorted.

"People who did not know the circumstances might have considered me guilty of an indiscretion," Lutchester admitted, "but they would have been entirely wrong. On the other hand, your friend Fischer is a would-be murderer, a liar, and is at the present moment engaged in intrigues which are a most immoral compound of duplicity and cunning."

"I shall begin to think," Pamela murmured, "that you don't like Mr. Fischer!"

"I detest him heartily," Lutchester confessed.

"I find him singularly interesting," Pamela announced, sitting up in her chair.

"I dare say you do," Lutchester replied. "Women are always bad judges of our sex. All the same, you are not going to marry him."

"How do you know he wants to marry me?" Pamela demanded.

"Instinct!"

"And what do you mean by saying that I am not going to marry him?"

"Because," Lutchester announced, "you are going to marry some one else."

Pamela rose to her feet. There was a little spot of colour in her cheeks.

"Am I indeed!" she exclaimed. "And whom, pray?"

"That I will tell you at Washington," Lutchester promised.

"You know his name, then?"

"I know him intimately," was the cool reply. "What about our dinner to-night?"

"We are going to dine with Mr. Fischer," Pamela decided.

"I really don't think so," Lutchester objected. "For one thing, Mr. Fischer will probably have to attend the police court again later on."

"What about?"

"For having hired a famous murderer to try and get rid of me." Lutchester explained suavely.

"Do you really believe that?" Pamela scoffed. "Why should he want to get rid of you? What harm can you do him?"

"I am trying to find out," Lutchester replied grimly. "Still, since you ask the question, the pocketbook which is on its way to Germany, and which I picked up when Nikasti was taken ill--"

"Oh, yes, I know about that!" Pamela interrupted. "That is the one thing that always sets me thinking about you. What did you do it for? How did you know what it meant to me?"

"Divination, I imagine," Lutchester answered, "or perhaps I was thinking what it might mean to Mr. Fischer."

She looked at him and her face was a study in mixed expressions. Her forehead was a little knitted, her eyes almost strained in their desire to read him; her lips were petulant.

"Dear me, what a puzzle you are!" she exclaimed. "All the same, I am going to wait for Mr. Fischer. It doesn't matter whether one dines or sups. I suppose he will get away from the police court sometime or other."

"But anyway," he protested, "you've heard all that Mr. Fischer has to say. Now I, on the other hand, haven't shown you my hand yet."

"Heard all that Mr. Fischer has to say?" she repeated.

"Certainly! Wasn't he here for several hours with you this afternoon? Didn't he promise you an alliance with Germany against Japan, if you could persuade certain people at Washington to change their tone and attitude towards the export of munitions?"

"This," she declared, trying to keep a certain agitation from her tone, "is mere bluff."

Lutchester was suddenly very serious indeed.

"Listen," he said, "I can prove to you, if you will, that it is not bluff. I can prove to you that I really know something of what I am talking about."

"There is nothing I should like better," she declared.

"To begin with then," Lutchester said, "the pocketbook which Nikasti is supposed to have stolen from your room, the pocketbook of young Sandy Graham, which Mr. Fischer has sent to Germany, does not contain the formula of the new explosive, or any other formula that amounts to anything."

"Just how do you know that?" she demanded.

"To continue," Lutchester said, playing with a little ornament upon the mantelpiece, "you have an appointment--within half an hour, I believe--with Mr. Paul Haskall, who is a specialist in explosives, having an official position with the American Government."

She had ceased to struggle any longer with her surprise. She looked at him fixedly but remained silent.

"It is your belief," he proceeded, "that you are going to hand over to him the formula of which we were speaking."

"It is no belief," she replied. "It is certainty. I took it myself from Graham's pocket."

Lutchester nodded.

"Good! Have you opened it?"

"I have," she declared. "It is without doubt, the formula."

"On the other hand, I am here to assure you that it is not," Lutchester replied.

Her hand was tearing at the cushion by her side. She moistened her lips. There was something about Lutchester hatefully convincing.

"What do you mean?" she demanded. "Is this a trick. You won't get it! No one but Mr. Haskall will get that formula from me!"

Lutchester smiled.

"It will only puzzle him when he gets it! To tell you the truth, the formula is rubbish."

"I don't believe you," she said firmly. "If you think you are going to interfere with my handing it over to him, you are mistaken."

"I have no wish to do anything of the sort," Lutchester assured her. "Make a bargain with me. Mr. Haskall will be here soon. Unfasten the little package you are carrying somewhere about your person, hand him the envelope and watch his face. If he tells you that what you have offered him is a coherent and possible formula for an explosive, then you can look upon me for ever afterwards as the poor, foolish person you sometimes seem to consider me. If, on the other hand, he tells you that it is rubbish, I shall expect you at the Ritz-Carlton at half-past eight."

There was a ring at the bell. She rose to her feet.

"I accept," she declared. "That is Mr. Haskall. And, by the bye, Mr. Lutchester, don't order too elaborate a dinner, for I am very much afraid you will have to eat it all yourself. Now, au revoir," she added, as the door was opened in obedience to her summons and a servant stood prepared to show him out. "If we don't turn up to-night, you will know the reason."

"I am very hopeful," Lutchester replied, as he turned away. _

Read next: CHAPTER XXIX

Read previous: CHAPTER XXVII

Table of content of Pawns Count


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book