JEAN HAS A SURPRISE.
Jean, thus dismissed, descended to the library, where, across the dark
crimson carpet, the last rays of the gorgeous sunset slanted in through
the high windows in which were set the armorial bearings of the
dead-and-gone Bracondales in stained-glass escutcheons.
She crossed the great sombre apartment and stood gazing through the
diamond panes away over the level green of the broad park to where the
sea lay bathed in the golden light of the dying day.
Her eyes were fixed vacantly into space. She was thinking--thinking
again of that fateful paragraph in the paper--the unexpected news which
had rendered her a widow. And poor Adolphe? Alas! though he had been her
only friend and full of sympathy for her, yet he was now wearing out his
days in penal servitude at the dreaded Devil's Island.
She thought of him often with feelings of pity. Though a criminal of a
criminal stock, ill-bred, and with scarcely any education, yet he had
behaved to her as few men had behaved. He had always held her in high
esteem and respect. Even as she stood there she could hear his
high-pitched voice addressing her as "Madame."
Upstairs, by the bedside of the sick Cabinet Minister, the thin,
grey-faced man, "the eyes and ears of the Cabinet," was making a secret
report to his lordship.
Though the Earl of Bracondale, K.G., was His Majesty's Principal
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, yet Darnborough, the
ever-astute, sleepless man of secrets, was the keeper of Great Britain's
prestige abroad. Though his name never appeared on the roll of
Government servants, and did not draw any salary as an official, yet he
was the only man in England who could demand audience of the Sovereign
at any hour by day or by night, or who had the free _entree_ to the
Royal residences and could attend any function uninvited.
As a statesman, as a secret agent, as an ingenious plotter in the
interests of his country, he was a genius. He was a discovery of the
late Lord Salisbury in the last days of the Victorian Era. At that time
he had been a Foreign Office clerk, a keen-eyed young man with a lock of
black hair hanging loosely across his brow. Lord Salisbury recognised in
him a man of genius as a diplomat, and with his usual bluntness called
him one day to Hatfield and gave him a very delicate mission abroad.
Darnborough went. He had audience with the Shah of Persia, juggled with
that bediamonded potentate, and came back with his draft of a secret
treaty directed against Russia's influence safely in his pocket. He had
achieved what British Ministers to Teheran for the previous fifteen
years had failed to effect. And from that moment Darnborough had been
allowed a free hand in international politics.
Lord Rosebery, Lord Lansdowne, and Sir Edward Grey had adopted the same
attitude towards him as the great Lord Salisbury. He was the one man who
knew the secret policy of Britain's enemies, the man who had so often
attended meetings of the Cabinet and warned it of the pitfalls open for
the destruction of British prestige.
At that moment the renowned chief of the Secret Service was explaining
the latest conspiracy afoot against England, a serious conspiracy
hatched in both Berlin and Vienna to embroil our nation in complications
in the Far East. Darnborough's agents in both capitals had that morning
arrived at Downing Street post-haste and reported upon what was in
progress, with the result that their chief had come to place before the
Foreign Minister the latest iniquity of diplomatic juggling.
His lordship lay in bed and listened to the man of secrets without
uttering a word.
At length he turned his head restlessly on the pillow and, with a weary
sigh, remarked:
"Ah! Darnborough, I fear that each day brings us nearer the peril,
nearer the day of Germany's attack. The exposure of those confidential
reports upon our naval manoeuvres was serious enough to our
diplomacy. The policy of the Government is, alas! one of false assurance
in our defences. The country has been lulled to sleep far too long.
False assurances of our national security have been given over and over
again, and upon them the Cabinet have pursued a policy of bluff. But,
alas! the days of Palmerston and Salisbury are past. Europe can gauge
the extent and strength of our national defence, and, with the
navigation of the air, we live no longer upon 'the tight little island'
of our revered ancestors."
"Yes," replied the man seated in the chair by the bedside, as he
stretched his legs forward and folded his arms. "In all the capitals it
is to-day the fashion to laugh at England's greatness, and to speak of
us as a declining Power. I hear it everywhere. The Great Powers are in
daily expectation of seeing the tail of the British lion badly twisted,
and I quite agree that the most unfortunate leakage of a national secret
was that report upon the last naval manoeuvres. The bubble of our
defensive and offensive power has burst."
"And poor Richard Harborne lost his life," remarked the Earl.
"Yes," replied the other, thoughtfully.
"He was a fine fellow, Darnborough--a very fine young fellow. He came to
see me once or twice upon confidential matters. You sent him to Mexico,
you'll remember, and he came to report to me personally. I was much
struck by his keen foresight and cleverness. Have you gained any further
information concerning his mysterious end?"
"I have made a good many inquiries, both at home and abroad, but
Harborne seems to have been something of a mystery himself. He was
strangely reserved, and something of a recluse in private life--lived in
chambers in the Temple when not travelling abroad, and kept himself very
much to himself."
"For any reason?"
"None, as far as I can tell. He was a merry, easy-going young fellow, a
member of the St. James's, and highly popular among the younger set at
the club, but he held aloof from them all he could. As I told you some
time ago, there was a lady in the case."
His lordship sighed.
"Ah! Darnborough, the best of men go under for the sake of a woman!"
"In this case I am not sure that Harborne was really a victim," replied
his visitor. "Only the other day, when in Borkum, I ascertained that
Harborne had been in Germany and met by appointment a young foreign
woman named Fraeulein Montague. She was French, I was told, and very
pretty. It was she who carried on the negotiations for the purchase of
the secret of the new Krupp aerial gun."
"You ought to find her. She might tell you something."
"That's just what I am striving my utmost to do. I have learnt that she
was the daughter of a French restaurant-keeper, living somewhere in
London, and that after Harborne's death she married a Frenchman, whose
name I am unable, as yet, to ascertain."
"You will soon know it, Darnborough," remarked the Earl with a faint
smile. "You always know everything."
"Is it not my profession?" the other asked. "Yes, I shall try to
discover this lady, for I have a theory that she knows something which
we ought to know. In addition, she knows who killed Richard Harborne."
"I sincerely hope that you will be successful," declared the Foreign
Minister. "By Harborne's death Britain has lost a fearless patriot, a
man who served his country as truly and as well as any bedecorated
general, and who had faced death a dozen times unflinchingly in the
performance of his duties to his country and his sovereign."
"Yes," declared Darnborough, "if any man deserved a C.M.G. or a
knighthood, Dick Harborne most certainly did. I am the only person who
is in the position of knowing how devotedly he served his country."
"I know, I know!" exclaimed the Earl. "And if he had lived it was my
intention of including his name in the next Birthday Honours list."
"Poor fellow," remarked his chief. "I wonder who that woman Montague
was, and whether she really had any hand in the crime? That he was fond
of her I have learned on good authority, yet Dick was, after all, not
much of a ladies' man. Therefore I am somewhat surprised at the nature
of the information I have gathered. Nevertheless, I mean to find the
woman--and to know the truth."
"Have you any clue whatever to her identity?" inquired the Earl, looking
at him strangely.
"None, save what I have told you," was the slow, deliberate reply. "But
I think I shall eventually find her."
"You will, Darnborough. I know well what you mean when you reply in
those terms. I have experienced your vague responses before," laughed
his lordship.
But the great secret agent only grinned, and his grey face broadened
into a smile, while the Earl lay wondering whether, after all, his
visitor knew more concerning the mysterious female friend of Harborne
than he had admitted.
Darnborough went on with his secret report, placing before the Secretary
of State the exact nature of the war-cloud which once again threatened
to arise over Europe, and of which our Embassies in Berlin and Vienna,
with all the pomp of their officialdom, were as yet in ignorance.
And while the chief of the Secret Service was closeted with the Foreign
Minister, and the latter was scribbling some pencil notes of his
visitor's report, Jean waited downstairs in the library for the Earl's
permission to return to his room.
As the soft after-glow of early autumn spread over the western sea
before her, she turned at last from the long window and crossed the big
room, wherein deep shadows were now falling.
The Earl's mysterious visitor had been shown in there by Jenner before
being conducted to his lordship's room, and upon the Earl's pedestal
writing-table, set in an alcove overlooking the terrace, stood a small,
well-worn despatch-box of green enamelled steel, covered with dark green
canvas.
It had been brought by Darnborough, and stood unlocked and open, just as
he had taken from it the written reports of the agents of the Secret
Service who had arrived at Charing Cross early that morning from the
Continent.
Curiosity prompted Jean to pause and peer into it. She wondered what
business that rather sour-faced man had with the Earl, and what that
portable little steel box could contain.
A photograph--the photograph of a young and handsome woman--which was
lying face upwards, first attracted her attention. Curious, she thought,
that the man towards whom old Jenner had been so deferential should
carry about the picture of a pretty woman.
She took it in her fingers and held it in the light in order to examine
it more closely. Then, in replacing it, she glanced at the file of
papers uppermost, a thick bundle of various documents, stamped with the
arms of England and the words, "Foreign Office," and upon the outside of
which was written in a bold, clerkish hand, "_Re_ Richard Harborne,
deceased."
Richard Harborne! Sight of that name caused her to hold her breath.
She took out the file of papers with trembling hand and bent to examine
them in the light.
She saw there were newspaper cuttings, and long reports both in writing
and typed--reports signed by persons of whom she had no knowledge.
In one paper at which she glanced Dick was referred to as "The
Honourable Richard Davies Harborne, late of His Britannic Majesty's
Secret Service."
She read eagerly, hoping to discover something to throw light upon the
poor fellow's sad end, but the writing was small, cramped, and difficult
for her to decipher.
Yet, so deeply interested did she become that she did not hear the door
open.
Suddenly she heard a footstep behind her, and, starting quickly, turned
to find his lordship's mysterious visitor standing facing her with a
look of severe inquiry upon his grey, furrowed countenance.
"Oh! I--I--I'm so very sorry!" was all she could say, as she quickly
replaced the file of papers in the despatch-box. "I--I----"
But further words failed her, and she stood abashed, confused, and
ashamed.