Miss Penelope Morse was perfectly well aware that the taxicab in which
she left the Carlton Hotel was closely followed by two others. Through
the tube which she found by her side, she altered her first instructions
to the driver, and told him to proceed as fast as possible to Harrod’s
Stores. Then, raising the flap at the rear of the cab, she watched the
progress of the chase. Along Pall Mall the taxi in which she was seated
gained considerably, but in the Park and along the Bird Cage Walk both
the other taxies, risking the police regulations, drew almost alongside.
Once past Hyde Park Corner, however, her cab again drew ahead, and when
she was deposited in front of Harrod’s Stores, her pursuers were out of
sight. She paid the driver quickly, a little over double his fare.
“If any one asks you questions,” she said, “say that you had
instructions to wait here for me. Go on to the rank for a quarter of an
hour. Then you can drive away.”
“You won’t be coming back, then, miss?” the man asked.
“I shall not,” she answered, “but I want those men who are following
me to think that I am. They may as well lose a little time for their
rudeness.”
The chauffeur touched his hat and obeyed his instructions. Miss Penelope
Morse plunged into the mazes of the Stores with the air of one to
whom the place is familiar. She did not pause, however, at any of the
counters. In something less than two minutes she had left it again by a
back entrance, stepped into another taxicab which was just setting down
a passenger, and was well on her way back towards Pall Mall. Her ruse
appeared to have been perfectly successful. At any rate, she saw nothing
more of the occupants of the two taxicabs.
She stopped in front of one of the big clubs and, scribbling a line on
her card, gave it to the door keeper.
“Will you find out if this gentleman is in?” she said. “If he is, will
you kindly ask him to step out and speak to me?”
She returned to the cab and waited. In less than five minutes a tall,
broad-shouldered young man, clean-shaven, and moving like an athlete,
came briskly down the steps. He carried a soft hat in his hand, and
directly he spoke his transatlantic origin was apparent.
“Penelope!” he exclaimed. “Why, what on earth--”
“My dear Dicky,” she interrupted, laughing at his expression, “you need
not look so displeased with me. Of course, I know that I ought not to
have come and sent a message into your club. I will admit at once that
it was very forward of me. Perhaps when I have told you why I did so,
you won’t look so shocked.”
“I’m glad to see you, anyway,” he declared. “There’s no bad news, I
hope?”
“Nothing that concerns us particularly,” she answered. “I simply want to
have a little talk with you. Come in here with me, please, at once. We
can ride for a short distance anywhere.”
“But I am just in the middle of a rubber of bridge,” he objected.
“It can’t be helped,” she declared. “To tell you the truth, the matter I
want to talk to you about is of more importance than any game of cards.
Don’t be foolish, Dicky. You have your hat in your hand. Step in here by
my side at once.”
He looked a little bewildered, but he obeyed her, as most people did
when she was in earnest. She gave the driver an address somewhere in the
city. As soon as they were off, she turned towards him.
“Dicky,” she said, “do you read the newspapers?”
“Well, I can’t say that I do regularly,” he answered. “I read the New
York Herald, but these London journals are a bit difficult, aren’t they?
One has to dig the news out,--sort of treasure-hunt all the time.”
“You have read this murder case, at any rate,” she asked, “about the man
who was killed in a special train between Liverpool and London?”
“Of course,” he answered, with a sudden awakening of interest. “What
about it?”
“A good deal,” she answered slowly. “In the first place, the man who was
murdered--Mr. Hamilton Fynes--comes from the village where I was brought
up in Massachusetts, and I know more about him, I dare say, than any
one else in this country. What I know isn’t very much, perhaps, but it’s
interesting. I was to have lunched with him at the Carlton today; in
fact, I went there expecting to do so, for I am like you--I scarcely
ever look inside these English newspapers. Well, I went to the Carlton
and waited and he did not come. At last I went into the office and asked
whether he had arrived. Directly I mentioned his name, it was as though
I had thrown a bomb shell into the place. The clerk called me on one
side, took me into a private office, and showed me a newspaper. As
soon as I had read the account, I was interviewed by an inspector from
Scotland Yard. Ever since then I have been followed about by reporters.”
The young man whistled softly.
“Say, Penelope!” he exclaimed. “Who was this fellow, anyhow, and what
were you doing lunching with him?”
“That doesn’t matter,” she answered. “You don’t tell me all your
secrets, Mr. Dicky Vanderpole, and it isn’t necessary for me to tell you
all mine, even if we are both foreigners in a strange country. The poor
fellow isn’t going to lunch with any one else in this world. I suppose
you are thinking what an indiscreet person I am, as usual?”
The young man considered the matter for a moment.
“No,” he said; “I didn’t understand that he was the sort of person
you would have been likely to have taken lunch with. But that isn’t my
affair. Have you seen the second edition?”
The girl shook her head.
“Haven’t I told you that I never read the papers? I only saw what they
showed me in at the Carlton.”
“The Press Association have cabled to America, but no one seems to be
able to make out exactly who the fellow is. His letter to the captain of
the steamer was from the chairman of the company, and his introduction
to the manager of the London and North Western Railway Company was from
the greatest railway man in the world. Mr. Hamilton Fynes must have
been a person who had a pretty considerable pull over there. Curiously
enough, though, only the name of the man was mentioned in them; nothing
about his business, or what he was doing over on this side. He was
simply alluded to as ‘Mr. Hamilton Fynes--the gentleman bearing this
communication.’ I expect, after all, that you know more about him than
any one.”
She shook her head.
“What I know,” she said, “or at least most of it, I am going to
tell you. A few years ago he was a clerk in a Government office in
Washington. He was steady in those days, and was supposed to have a
head. He used to write me occasionally. One day he turned up in London
quite unexpectedly. He said that he had come on business, and whatever
his business was, it took him to St. Petersburg and Berlin, and then
back to Berlin again. I saw quite a good deal of him that trip.”
“The dickens you did!” he muttered.
Miss Penelope Morse laughed softly.
“Come, Dicky,” she said, “don’t pretend to be jealous. You’re an
outrageous flirt, I know, but you and I are never likely to get
sentimental about one another.”
“Why not?” he grumbled. “We’ve always been pretty good pals, haven’t
we?”
“Naturally,” she answered, “or I shouldn’t be here. Do you want to hear
anything more about Mr. Hamilton Fynes?”
“Of course I do,” he declared.
“Well, be quiet, then, and don’t interrupt,” she said. “I knew London
well and he didn’t. That is why, as I told you before, we saw quite
a great deal of one another. He was always very reticent about his
affairs, and especially about the business which had taken him on the
Continent. Just before he left, however, he gave me--well, a hint.”
“What was it?” the young man asked eagerly.
She hesitated.
“He didn’t put it into so many words,” she said, “and I am not sure,
even now, that I ought to tell you, Dicky. Still, you are a fellow
countryman and a budding diplomatist. I suppose if I can give you a lift
I ought to.”
The taxi was on the Embankment now, and they sped along for some time in
silence. Mr. Richard Vanderpole was more than a little puzzled.
“Of course, Penelope,” he said, “I don’t expect you to tell me anything
which you feel that you oughtn’t to. There is one thing, however, which
I must ask you.”
She nodded.
“Well?”
“I should like to know what the mischief my being in the diplomatic
service has to do with it?”
“If I explained that,” she answered, “I should be telling you everything
I haven’t quite made up my mind to do that yet.”
“Tell me this?” he asked. “Would that hint which he dropped when he was
here last help you to solve the mystery of his murder?”
“It might,” she admitted.
“Then I think,” he said, “apart from any other reason, you ought to tell
somebody. The police at present don’t seem to have the ghost of a clue.”
“They are not likely to find one,” she answered, “unless I help them.”
“Say, Penelope,” he exclaimed, “you are not in earnest?”
“I am,” she assured him. “It is exactly as I say. I believe I am one of
the few people who could put the police upon the right track.”
“Is there any reason why you shouldn’t?” he asked.
“That’s just what I can’t make up my mind about,” she told him.
“However, I have brought you out with me expecting to hear something,
and I am going to tell you this. That last time he came to England--the
time he went to St. Petersburg and twice to Berlin--he came on
government business.”
The young man looked, for a moment, incredulous.
“Are you sure of that, Pen?” he asked. “It doesn’t sound like our
people, you know, does it?”
“I am quite sure,” she declared confidently. “You are a very youthful
diplomat, Dicky, but even you have probably heard of governments who
employ private messengers to carry despatches which for various reasons
they don’t care to put through their embassies.”
“Why, that’s so, of course, over on this side,” he agreed. “These
European nations are up to all manner of tricks. But I tell you frankly,
Pen, I never heard of anything of the sort being done from Washington.”
“Perhaps not,” she answered composedly. “You see, things have developed
with us during the last twenty-five years. The old America had only
one foreign policy, and that was to hold inviolate the Monroe doctrine.
European or Asiatic complications scarcely even interested her. Those
times have passed, Dicky. Cuba and the Philippines were the start of
other things. We are being drawn into the maelstrom. In another ten
years we shall be there, whether we want to be or not.”
The young man was deeply interested.
“Well,” he admitted, “there’s a good deal in what you say, Penelope. You
talk about it all as though you were a diplomat yourself.”
“Perhaps I am,” she answered calmly. “A stray young woman like myself
must have something to occupy her thoughts, you know.”
He laughed.
“That’s not bad,” he asserted, “for a girl whom the New York Herald
declared, a few weeks ago, to be one of the most brilliant young women
in English society.”
She shrugged her shoulders scornfully.
“That’s just the sort of thing the New York Herald would say,” she
remarked. “You see, I have to get a reputation for being smart and
saying bright things, or nobody would ask me anywhere. Penniless
American young women are not too popular over here.”
“Marry me, then,” he suggested amiably. “I shall have plenty of money
some day.”
“I’ll see about it when you’re grown up,” she answered. “Just at
present, I think we’d better return to the subject of Hamilton Fynes.”
Mr. Richard Vanderpole sighed, but seemed not disinclined to follow her
suggestion.
“Harvey is a silent man, as you know,” he said thoughtfully, “and he
keeps everything of importance to himself. At the same time these little
matters get about in the shop, of course, and I have never heard of any
despatches being brought across from Washington except in the usual way.
Presuming that you are right,” he added after a moment’s pause, “and
that this fellow Hamilton Fynes really had something for us, that would
account for his being able to get off the boat and securing his special
train so easily. No one can imagine where he got the pull.”
“It accounts, also,” Penelope remarked, “for his murder!”
Her companion started.
“You haven’t any idea--” he began.
“Nothing so definite as an idea,” she interrupted. “I am not going so
far as to say that. I simply know that when a man is practically the
secret agent of his government, and is probably carrying despatches
of an important nature, that an accident such as he has met with, in a
country which is greatly interested in the contents of those despatches,
is a somewhat serious thing.”
The young man nodded.
“Say,” he admitted “you’re dead right. The Pacific cruise, and our
relations with Japan, seem to have rubbed our friends over here
altogether the wrong way. We have irritations enough already to smooth
over, without anything of this sort on the carpet.”
“I am going to tell you now,” she continued, leaning a little towards
him, “the real reason why I fetched you out of the club this afternoon
and have brought you for this little expedition. The last time I lunched
with Mr. Hamilton Fynes was just after his return from Berlin. He
intrusted me then with a very important mission. He gave me a letter to
deliver to Mr. Blaine Harvey.”
“But I don’t understand!” he protested. “Why should he give you the
letter when he was in London himself?”
“I asked him that question myself, naturally,” she answered. “He told me
that it was an understood thing that when he was over here on business
he was not even to cross the threshold of the Embassy, or hold any
direct communication with any person connected with it. Everything had
to be done through a third party, and generally in duplicate. There
was another man, for instance, who had a copy of the same letter, but I
never came across him or even knew his name.”
“Gee whiz!” the young man exclaimed. “You’re telling me things, and no
mistake! Why this fellow Fynes made a secret service messenger of you!”
Penelope nodded.
“It was all very simple,” she said. “The first Mrs. Harvey, who was
alive then, was my greatest friend, and I was in and out of the place
all the time. Now, perhaps, you can understand the significance of
that marconigram from Hamilton Fynes asking me to lunch with him at the
Carlton today.”
Mr. Richard Vanderpole was sitting bolt upright, gazing steadily ahead.
“I wonder,” he said slowly, “what has become of the letter which he was
going to give you!”
“One thing is certain,” she declared. “It is in the hands of those whose
interests would have been affected by its delivery.”
“How much of this am I to tell the chief?” the young man asked.
“Every word,” Penelope answered. “You see, I am trying to give you
a start in your career. What bothers me is an entirely different
question.”
“What is it?” he asked.
She laid her hand upon his arm.
“How much of it I shall tell to a certain gentleman who calls himself
Inspector Jacks!”