The Pawns Count Part 42

"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 a.s.sured 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.

CHAPTER XXIX

At five-and-twenty minutes past eight that evening Lutchester, who was waiting in the entrance hall of the Ritz-Carlton, became just a little restless. At half-past, his absorption in an evening paper, over the top of which he looked at every newcomer, was almost farcical. At five-and-twenty to nine Pamela arrived. He advanced down the lounge to meet her. Her face was inscrutable, her smile conventional. Yet she had come! He looked over his shoulder towards the men's coat room.

"Your brother?"

"I sent Jim to his club," she said. "I want to have a confidential talk with you, Mr. Lutchester."

"I am very flattered," he told her, with real earnestness.

She vanished for a few moments in the cloakroom, and reappeared, a radiant vision in deep blue silk. Her hair was gathered in a coil at the top of her head, and surmounted with an ornament of pearls.

"You are looking at my headdress," she remarked, as they walked into the room. "It is the style you admire, is it not?"

He murmured something vague, but he knew that he was forgiven. They were ushered to their places by a portly maitre d'hotel, and she approved of his table. It was set almost in an alcove, and was partially hidden from the other diners.

"Is this seclusion vanity or flattery?"

"As a matter of fact, it is rather a popular table," he told her. "We have an excellent view of the room, and yet one can talk here without being disturbed."

"To talk to you is exactly what I wish to do," she said, as they took their places. "We commence, if you please, with a question. Mr. Fischer thought that he had that formula and he hasn't. I could have sworn that it was in my possession--and it isn't. Where is it?"

"I took it to the War Office before I left England," he told her simply. "They will have the first few tons of the stuff ready next month."

"You!" she cried, "But where did you get it?"

"I happened to be first, that's all," he explained. "You see, I had the advantage of a little inside information. I could have exposed the whole affair if I had thought it wise. I preferred, however, to let matters take their course. Young Graham deserved all he got there, and I made sure of being the first to go through his papers. I'm afraid I must confess that I left a bogus formula for you."

"I had begun to suspect this," Pamela confessed. "You don't mind being put into the witness box, do you?" she added, as she pushed aside the menu with a little sigh of satisfaction. "How wonderfully you order an American dinner!"

"I am so glad I have chosen what you like," he said, "and as to being in the witness box--well, I am going to place myself in the confessional, and that is very much the same thing, isn't it?"

"To begin at the beginning, then--about that destroyer?"

"My mission over here was really important," he admitted. "I couldn't catch the _Lapland_, so the Admiralty sent me over."

"And your golf with Senator Hamblin? It wasn't altogether by accident you met him down at Baltusrol, was it?"

"It was not," he confessed, "I had reason to suspect that certain proposals from Berlin were to be put forward to the President either through his or Senator Hastings' mediation. There were certain facts in connection with them, which I desired to be the first to lay before the authorities."

She looked around the room and recognised some of her friends. For some reason or other she felt remarkably light-hearted.

"For a poor vanquished woman," she observed, turning back to Lutchester, "I feel extraordinarily gay to-night. Tell me some more."

He bowed.

"Mademoiselle Sonia," he proceeded, "has been a friend of mine since she sang in the cafes of Buda Pesth. I dined with her, however, because it had come to my knowledge that she was behaving in a very foolish manner."

Pamela nodded understandingly.

"She was the friend of Count Maurice Ziduski, wasn't she?"

"She is no longer," Lutchester replied. "She sailed for France this morning without seeing him. She has remembered that she is a Frenchwoman."

"It was you who reminded her!"

"Love so easily makes people forgetful," he said, "and I think that Sonia was very fond of Maurice Ziduski. She is a thoughtless, pa.s.sionate woman, easily swayed through her affections, and she had no idea of the evil she was doing."

"So that disposes of Sonia," Pamela reflected.

"Sonia was only an interlude," Lutchester declared. "She really doesn't come into this affair at all. The one person who does come into it, whom you and I must speak of, is Fischer."

"A most interesting man," Pamela sighed. "I really think his wife would have a most exciting life."

"She would!" Lutchester agreed. "She'd probably be allowed to visit him once every fourteen days in care of a warder."

"Spite!" Pamela exclaimed, with a suspicious little quiver at the corner of her lips.

Lutchester shook his head.

"Fischer is too near the end of his rope for me to feel spiteful," he said, "though I am quite prepared to grant that he may be capable of considerable mischief yet. A man who has the sublime effrontery to attempt to come to an agreement with two countries, each behind the other's back, is a little more than Machiavellian, isn't he?"

"Is that true of Mr. Fischer?"

"Absolutely," Lutchester a.s.sured her. "He is over here for the purpose of somehow or other making it known informally in Was.h.i.+ngton that Germany would be willing to pledge herself to an alliance with America against j.a.pan, after the war, if America will alter her views as to the export of munitions to the Allies."

"Well, that's a reasonable proposition, isn't it, from his point of view?" Pamela remarked. "It may not be a very agreeable one from yours, but it is certainly one which he has a right to make."

"Entirely," Lutchester agreed, "but where he goes wrong is that his primary object in coming here was to meet Hie chief of the j.a.panese Secret Service, to whom he has made a proposition of precisely similar character."

Pamela set down her gla.s.s.

"You are not in earnest!"