CHAPTER III A DEAL WITH NIKO

Lavendale paused in the act of struggling with his tie, and looked steadfastly into the mirror in front of him. He had heard no definite sound, yet some queer intuition seemed to have suddenly awakened within his subconscious mind a sense of the mysterious, something close at hand, unaccountable, minatory. His flat was empty and the catch of the front door secure, yet he knew very well that he was being watched. He turned slowly around.

'What the mischief——'

He broke off in his sentence. A small man, dressed in black clothes, imperturbable, yellow-skinned, and with Oriental type of features, was standing to attention, a clothes-brush in his hand. His dark, oval eyes rested for a moment upon the crumpled failure of Lavendale's tie. Without a word he took another from an open drawer, came softly across the room and reached upwards. Before Lavendale knew what was happening, the bow which had been worrying him for the last five minutes was faultlessly tied. He glanced into the mirror and was compelled to give vent to a little exclamation of satisfaction.

'That's all very well, you know,' he said, turning once more around. 'The tie's all right, but who the devil are you, and what are you doing in my rooms?'

The man bowed. Again the Oriental seemed to assert itself in the subtle ease with which he almost prostrated himself.

'Sir,' he explained, 'I am the friend of your servant Perkins.'

'Then perhaps you can tell me where on earth Perkins is?' Lavendale demanded.

'He is in the hospital, sir,' the man answered. 'He met with a slight accident while he and I were together. I am his messenger. I undertook to bring you news of him and to do what I could, in my poor way, to fill his place for this evening. He lent me his key. It was in that manner I was able to gain entrance here.'

'An accident?' Lavendale repeated. 'What sort of an accident?'

'I chose an idle word, perhaps,' the other confessed. 'It was indeed more a matter of sudden illness. Perkins and I lunched together at the Chinese Restaurant in Piccadilly Circus. As we left the place, he faltered; he fainted in the passage. I called a taxicab and took him to the hospital. It was not a great affair, they said, but it was better that he should rest there. So I came to you.'

'And who the dickens may you be?'

'My name is Niko. I came from Japan with General Kinish, military attaché to the Japanese Embassy. He has gone to the Italian Front and left me without a situation.'

'You're all right at ties, any way,' Lavendale admitted, glancing once more into the mirror. 'All the same, I think I can get along without a man until Perkins comes back.'

His hands sought his trousers pockets but Niko shook his head gravely.

'It is impossible,' he protested. 'Perkins may be away for a week. I shall wait upon you until he returns. It is best.'

'Well, have it your own way,' Lavendale remarked. 'Better answer that bell, then. If it is a lady, show her into the sitting-room.'

Niko glided away and returned in a moment.

'The lady,' he announced, 'is in the sitting-room.'

He held up Lavendale's coat and the latter hastened from the room. Suzanne de Freyne was standing facing the door as he entered, her theatre cloak thrown back. He took her hands.

'You are adorably punctual!' he exclaimed.

'Tell me,' she asked, a little abruptly, 'how long have you had your valet?'

'About five minutes, I believe,' he answered. 'He is a substitute. My own man was taken ill at luncheon-time. Why do you ask?'

'Because he is the first person,' she explained, 'who has succeeded in puzzling me in one particular way since I can remember.'

He looked at her as though for an explanation, and in a moment she continued.

'I flatter myself that I never forget a face. Your valet is perfectly well-known to me and yet I cannot tell you who he is.'

Lavendale glanced uneasily towards the door.

'I shan't keep him,' he said. 'I hate prejudices, but I am full of them. The fellow's a Jap, of course.'

Suzanne did not reply for a moment. Her attention seemed to have suddenly wandered. Then she turned around with a little laugh.

'I am hungry, my friend!' she exclaimed. 'Let us go. And yet, remember this. Temporary servants are bad things for people who follow our profession.'

They left the room. Niko was standing with the front door wide open, his master's hat and gloves in his hand.

'I will be here at seven o'clock in the morning, sir,' he promised, 'and bring news of Perkins.'

Lavendale nodded. The door was closed softly behind them. At the bottom of the stairs he glanced up.

'Wish I could get rid of the ridiculous idea I have about that fellow,' he remarked.

'Is there anything in your rooms of particular—I will not say value, I will say interest?' she inquired.

'I suppose I have the usual amount of valuables,' he admitted, 'but Perkins is a very careful servant, and I am sure he would never have sent any one who wasn't reliable. As regards my papers and that sort of thing, they are all locked up in a safe with a combination lock.'

She did not pursue the subject and it faded quickly from Lavendale's mind. They dined in a quiet corner at the Milan and they talked of many things, chiefly the war.

'Do you realize,' he asked her, towards the end of their meal, 'that you are still a complete mystery to me?'

She nodded affably.

'Yes?'

'You know what I mean, of course,' he went on. 'Three weeks ago we joined hands for a moment. We were—may I not use the word?—associates. We were not, perhaps, completely successful in our enterprise, but at least we prevented that marvellous secret from ever reaching an enemy's hands. Then you disappeared. I heard nothing from you until your voice startled me down the telephone to-night—you want to dine with me. Well, I am your slave and here I am, but tell me, where have you been all this time?'

'In France,' she answered.

'And what have you been doing?'

'Attending to my own business.'

'And what is that?' he asked coolly.

She raised her eyebrows but her air of offence was obviously assumed. She lit a cigarette and watched the smoke for a minute. He was absorbed in the study of her hands—her unusually firm yet delicate fingers, ringless save for one large, quaintly-cut emerald.

'In my life,' she said, 'I have no confidants.'

'That seems a pity,' he replied. 'We might be useful to one another.'

'I am not so sure,' she answered thoughtfully. 'For instance, although we speak together in English, my soul is French. I am for France and France only. England is our very dear ally. England is a splendid and an honourable nation, but it is France's future welfare in which I am concerned, and not England's. You, on the other hand, are Saxon. England and America, after all, are very close together.'

'Greatest mistake of your life,' he assured her. 'I have a great respect for England and a great liking for English people, and I believe that she was dragged into this war without wanting it, but, on the other hand, as I told you once before, I am for America and America only. England has asked for what she is getting for a good many years. If even she gets a good hiding it won't do her any harm.'

'But America is so far outside,' she observed.

'Don't you make any mistake,' he answered promptly. 'The world grows smaller, year by year. The America of fifty years ago has become impossible to-day. We have our political interests in every country, and, however slow and unwilling we may be to take up our responsibilities, we've got to come into line with the other great Powers and use the same methods.'

'You may be right,' she confessed. 'Very well, then, you are for America and I am for France. Now tell me, as between Germany and England how are your sympathies?'

'With England, without a doubt,' he pronounced. 'Mind, I am not a rabid anti-German. I am not in the least sure that a nation with the great genius for progress that Germany has shown is not to some extent justified by taking up the sword to hew a larger place in the world for her own people. But that does not affect my answer to your question. My sympathies are with England.'

She flicked the ash from her cigarette. She was looking a little languidly across the room towards a table set against the wall.

'If your sympathy were a little stronger,' she remarked quietly, 'I could show you how to render England an incalculable service.'

'Tell me how?'

'First of all,' she continued, 'look at those three men and tell me what you think of them?'

He turned a little in his place and glanced towards the table which she had indicated. One of the three men who were seated at it was obviously a foreigner. His hair was grey towards the temples, although his moustache was almost jet-black; his cheek-bones were high, his teeth a little prominent. He wore evening clothes of the most correct cut, his shirt and links were unexceptionable. His two companions were men of a different stamp. The one who seemed to dominate the party was a huge man, clean-shaven, with puffy face and small eyes. He wore a dark flannel suit of transatlantic cut. He was drinking a large whisky and soda and smoking a cigar, and had apparently eaten nothing. His companion was of smaller build, with flaxen moustache and hair, and dressed in light grey clothes and yellow boots. On the face of it, the trio were ill-assorted.

'Well, I should say,' Lavendale remarked, 'that the dark man in the corner chair was a foreigner—a Russian, for choice. The other two are, of course, American business men. The face of the big man seems familiar to me.'

'You've probably seen his picture in the illustrated papers,' she told him. 'That is Jacob P. Weald. He was once called, I believe, the powder king.'

Lavendale nodded. His manner had become more interested.

'Of course,' he murmured. 'And that's Jenkins, the secretary to the Weald Company. I wonder who the third man is?'

'His name is Ossendorf—the Baron Cyril Ossendorf. He is a persona grata at the Russian Embassy and he owns great estates in Poland.'

'Stop!' Lavendale exclaimed. 'This is getting interesting. He is buying munitions, of course.'

'Marvellous!' she murmured.

'Don't chaff me—it's really interesting.'

'Yes,' she admitted, 'it is interesting even from its external point of view. You are right. The Baron is probably giving, or has given, an enormous order for ammunition. Yet there is something behind that little conference, if only we could probe it, more interesting than you would believe, my friend.'

She paused. He waited eagerly, but she was silent for an unusually long time.

'You were suggesting,' he ventured to remind her, 'a few minutes ago, that there was some way in which intervention——'

She leaned a little towards him. Her hand rested for a second upon his.

'I have come to the conclusion,' she said, speaking very softly, 'that one of us, either you or I, must kill Ossendorf.'

He began to laugh and then stopped suddenly. A little shiver ran through him. For a single second her face was almost the face of a tigress. He felt that his laugh was a mistake.

'You are in earnest!' he muttered.

She rose from the table, gathered up her belongings and allowed him to arrange her cloak about her shoulders.

'Except that I retract that possible alternative,' she said calmly. 'I shall deal with Ossendorf myself.'

'But I don't understand,' he persisted.

'How should you?' she answered, smiling.

'By the by, where are we going? We spoke of a music hall, didn't we?'

'I have a box at the Empire,' he told her.

She was stepping by him into the taxi when she suddenly paused. Her frame seemed to become rigid.

'The Empire,' he told the driver.

She turned suddenly around.

'Your rooms,' she directed. 'Tell him to drive at once to your rooms.'

He was startled, but he obeyed her without hesitation. A moment later he took his place by her side.

'That valet of yours!' she exclaimed.

'What about him?'

'I told you that I knew his face. I have just remembered.'

'Well?'

'A year ago he was an attaché at the Japanese Embassy. His name is Baron Komashi.'

Lavendale was mystified.

'Are you sure?' he asked incredulously.

'Perfectly certain,' she insisted.

'But why on earth should he be a friend of Perkins and willing to act as my valet?'

'It's the eternal game,' she declared, 'and they are clever at it, too, the Japs. Tell me, have you any papers of special value about just now?'

'Yes, in my safe,' he admitted, 'but no one else has an idea of the combination.'

'Combination!' she scoffed. 'Niko Komashi, too! Tell me, are these papers political which you have inside that safe?'

'In a measure, yes!' he assented.

They had reached the street in which his rooms were situated.

'There is no light in my room,' he said, as they ascended the stairs. 'Niko must have done his work and gone home.'

'Yes,' she murmured, 'he has done his work, without a doubt. He has a knack of doing that.'

Lavendale produced his latch-key. The rooms appeared to be empty and in darkness. In the sitting-room he unlocked his safe and peered in. One by one he examined his papers. Everything was in perfect order. He turned back to his companion.

'Nothing has been disturbed,' he announced confidently.

She came over towards him, put her head for a moment inside the safe and immediately withdrew it.

'Niko has been through these papers during your absence,' she declared. 'If everything is there, it is because he had no need to steal. He has examined or made copies of what he chose.'

'How do you know this?' he asked incredulously.

'It is quite simple,' she explained. Even the cleverest man in the world seems always to forget one thing. Niko forgot that his clothes and fingers, even his breath, have always that peculiar Oriental perfume. What is it like—half almond-blossom, half sandalwood?'

'I remember I noticed it when he came in,' Lavendale agreed quickly.

'Put your head inside that safe again,' she directed.

He obeyed at once. When he emerged, his face was troubled. He locked the door mechanically.

'You are right,' he said.

They were silent for a moment. Lavendale was contemplating the lock in a dazed manner. He turned to Suzanne. She had seated herself in his easy-chair and had thrown back her cloak.

'You were going to tell me,' he reminded her, 'about this fellow Niko. You had an idea about him.'

'Mine is no idea,' she replied. 'It is a certainty. The man who posed this evening as your temporary valet, the man who in your absence has opened your safe, why, it is Baron Niko Komashi. He belongs to one of the most aristocratic families of Japan.'

'But he is a member of the Servants' Club!' Lavendale expostulated. 'He was a friend of Perkins—my servant!'

'Ostensibly,' she said dryly. 'He came over here as first secretary to the Embassy. Then he disappeared. No one quite knew what had become of him. I once had a suspicion. Now I know. You and I, my friend, are bunglers at the game he plays.'

Once more Lavendale was looking at the lock—unscratched, bearing so signs of having been tampered with.

'The thing is a miracle,' he muttered.

'Tell me—unless you would rather not,' she asked, leaning a little forward, 'was there any document in that safe likely to be of particular interest to the Japanese Secret Service?'

Lavendale's face was dark with mingled shame and humiliation.

'There was just the one document that should have been kept from them at all costs,' he declared bitterly. 'Two years ago I wrote a series of articles for an American Sunday paper upon our military unpreparedness. I don't know that they did any particular good, but, anyway, it's a subject I have studied closely. That paper I had my fingers on just now contains every possible scrap of information as to our standing army, our volunteer forces, our artillery, our possible scheme of defence on the west and the east, our stock of munitions, and our expenditure of same per thousand men. There was also an air and naval report and a scheme for mining San Francisco Harbour.'

She leaned back in her chair and laughed.

'Most interesting! I can quite understand how Niko's eyes would gleam! ... What's that?'

She turned her head suddenly. Lavendale, too, had started, and with a swift movement forward had touched the switch and plunged the room into darkness. They heard the soft click of the latch and the opening and closing of the front door. They heard the soft footsteps of the intruder across the hall. The door of the room in which they were was quietly opened and closed. Still with that same amazing stealthiness, a small, dark figure crossed the room and stood before the safe. Then there was a pause, several breathless moments of silence. Niko's instinct was telling him that he was not alone. Once more Lavendale's finger touched the switch and the lights blazed out. Niko was standing, the knob of the safe in his hand, his head turned towards them.

The sudden light had a common effect upon all of them. Suzanne for a moment held her hand in front of her eyes. Niko blinked slightly. Then he drew himself up to his full height of five feet four. He stood in front of the safe with his eyes fixed upon Lavendale, something about his face and attitude bearing a curious resemblance to a statue carved in wax. Lavendale coughed.

'You remind me, Baron Komashi,' he said, 'of an old English proverb—the pitcher that goes once too often to the well, you know. Was it something you had forgotten that brought you back? No, stay where you are, please.'

Niko remained motionless. Lavendale moved to a long, open cupboard which stood against the wall, opened it and groped about amongst its contents for a moment. Then he swung the door to and slipped some cartridges into the little revolver which he had taken from the top shelf. Niko's muscles suddenly seemed to relax. Ever so slightly he shrugged his shoulders. It was the gesture of a supreme philosophy.

'There's no need for a row,' Lavendale went on. 'The game you and I are playing at, Baron Komashi, requires finesse rather than muscle. By a stroke of genius you have read a certain document in that safe. That document is naturally of interest to the representative of the one country with whom America might possibly quarrel.'

Niko bowed his sleek head.

'I have read the document,' he confessed. 'It was my business here to read it. And now?'

'There you have me,' Lavendale admitted. 'It is a document, without a doubt, of great interest to you, and your Government will highly appreciate a résumé of its contents. At the same time, the only way to stop your making use of your information is to kill you.'

The man's face was like the face of a sphinx. Suzanne leaned a little further back in her chair and crossed her legs.

'It is a fortunate century in which you pursue your career, Baron,' she observed, 'and perhaps a fortunate country. These little qualms about human life which I can clearly see are influencing Mr. Lavendale, scarcely exist, even now, amongst your people, do they?'

'We are as yet,' Niko replied suavely, 'free, I am thankful to say, from the cowardice of the west.'

'If I asked you for your word of honour,' Lavendale continued, 'that you would not use that information?

'I might give it you,' Niko acknowledged, 'but my country's service is a higher thing than my personal honour, therefore it would do you no good. I shall be frank with you. There is no way you can prevent my report being duly made except by killing me. I am here, a self-confessed robber. If I were in your place, I should shoot.'

'The cowardice of the west, you see,' Lavendale remarked, throwing his revolver upon the table. 'You had better get out of the room. I might change my mind.'

For a moment Niko made no movement. Suzanne rose to her feet and lit a cigarette.

'As a matter of curiosity,' she asked, 'tell us why you returned, Baron?'

He bowed.

'The Empire performance is not over until half-past eleven,' he explained, 'and it is barely ten o'clock. I had some faint misgivings as to the resetting of the lock. I came back to examine it. That is my answer. You speak now of curiosity. I, too, have curiosity. Will you tell me how you knew that I had opened the safe?'

She smiled and lifted her handkerchief for a moment to her lips. Niko's head was bent as though in humiliation.

'It is so hard to outgrow one's errors,' he sighed.

He looked towards Lavendale and Lavendale pointed impatiently towards the door. He took a step or two in that direction, then he paused.

'Sir,' he said, looking back, 'because your methods are not mine, believe me that I still can appreciate their mistaken chivalry. The information I have gained I shall use. No promise of mine to the contrary would avail you. But there is, perhaps, some return which I might offer, more valuable, perhaps, to mademoiselle, yet of some import to you also.'

Suzanne leaned a little forward. Her cigarette burnt idly between her fingers.

'In this great conflict,' Niko continued, 'whose reverberations shake the earth, Japan watches from afar off. There are few who know the reason, but there is a reason. Let that pass. My country lays no seal upon my lips. What I know I pass on to you. A hundred million cartridges and five thousand tons of heavier ammunition, which might otherwise have reached Russia, are lying now at the bottom of the ocean. This is the doing of one man, a man in the pay of Germany, a man who is the greatest traitor the world has ever known.'

'Ossendorf!' Suzanne cried.

Niko bowed and moved towards the door.

'Mademoiselle has suspected, perhaps,' he concluded. 'It is I who can assure her that her suspicions are just. The greatest plant in America is kept producing munitions by day and night, bought with Russian gold but never meant to reach their destination. It is well?'

He looked at Lavendale, his hand upon the door. Lavendale nodded curtly.

'It is well,' he said.

*****

Mr. Jacob P. Weald smoothed out the document which he had been examining and drew a deep sigh of satisfaction.

'Say, Ed,' he remarked, turning to his secretary, who was smoking a cigar at the other end of the room, 'that's worth a cool million apiece for us, that contract.'

'Hope there's no hitch,' the other replied anxiously. 'What's this young fellow from the Embassy want?'

'Nothing to hurt us,' Weald assured him. 'We're all right with the authorities all round. I'm glad, Ed, we did the square thing. We've had it straight from the British War Office to go right along ahead and give Russia everything we can turn out. Well, Russia's going to have it, and, by gum, there's enough ammunition provided for in that contract to make mincemeat of the whole German Army!'

There was a knock at the door of the sitting-room and a servant announced Mr. Ambrose Lavendale. Lavendale, following closely behind, shook hands at once with the two men.

'I've heard of your plant, Mr. Weald,' he said pleasantly. 'Wonderful things you've been doing in the way of producing ammunition, they tell me. Been unlucky some with your shipments, though, haven't you?'

'That's so,' the other admitted, 'but that's not our fault. We don't come in there. Our friends have their own steamships, eleven of them, bought for the job.'

'Lost two out of three already, haven't they?' Lavendale remarked.

'Say, you seem some wise, young man,' Mr. Weald said pleasantly. 'However, I got the note from the boss. What can we do for you?'

'A very small thing,' Lavendale replied. 'I understand that Baron Ossendorf is coming here to sign that contract at twelve o'clock.'

'You're dead right, sir,' Mr. Weald admitted, 'and there's a magnum of the best standing there in the ice, waiting for the psychological moment.'

'Mind my being present and asking him one question—just one?' Lavendale inquired.

'We ain't likely to object to anything you want to do, young fellow,' Mr. Weald assured him. 'Ed Jenkins there—he's secretary of the company—and I, have got no crooked ideas about this business. We are going to bring a few million dollars into our own pockets, but we are going to do it on the straight. What our Ambassador over here says, goes, and his note asks us to take you into this.'

There was a knock at the door. Ossendorf was announced and promptly entered. He held out a hand each to Weald and Jenkins. Then he glanced inquiringly at Lavendale.

'This is a young friend of ours from the American Embassy,' Mr. Weald explained. 'Mr. Ambrose Lavendale—Baron Ossendorf. He's a kind of witness that all's right and above-board.'

Baron Ossendorf bowed and held out his long, elegantly-shaped hand.

'I am delighted, Mr. Lavendale,' he said, 'delighted that you should be a participator in our little business this morning. Between Russia and America there have always been the most cordial sentiments of friendship. It is a pleasure to us to think that we are able, at these terrible times, to be of service to one another.... You have the contract, Mr. Weald? Ah!' he added, glancing at it through his eyeglass, 'I see that this is the draft which I have already perused. Nothing remains, then, but for me to sign it.'

He dipped his pen in the ink, stooped down and there was a moment's silence whilst his pen spluttered across the paper. Mr. Weald began to cut the strings of the magnum of champagne.

'Just one moment,' Lavendale interposed. 'There is a little condition, Baron, which it is not proposed to put officially into the agreement, a very small matter, but may I suggest it to you?'

Ossendorf turned his head. His eyes had narrowed a little.

'By all means, sir.'

'The contract,' Lavendale continued slowly, 'is for the whole production of the Weald Plant for six months, with option of continuance until the end of the war. Shipments are to be made weekly by steamers whose names are given there, steamers practically acquired by the Russian Government.'

'You are well informed, my young friend,' Ossendorf admitted quietly.

'It has been suggested,' Lavendale said, speaking slowly and looking Ossendorf in the face, 'that you should change the wireless operator on all those vessels for a person approved by the British Government.'

There was a moment's deep silence. Mr. Weald had paused with his knife already pressed against the last string of the bottle. Jenkins was standing with his mouth open, a little dazed. Ossendorf shrank back as though he had received a blow. It was obvious that he retained his composure with an effort.

'What do you mean?' he demanded.

'Simply this,' Lavendale replied firmly. 'Already the Iris and the Southern Star, with enough ammunition on board to have supplied an army, have gone to the bottom. I mean, sir, that every one of those remaining nine boats on which is to be packed the whole production of the greatest ammunition plant in America, is doomed to go to the bottom.'

Two great drops of sweat had broken out on Ossendorf's forehead. His face seemed suddenly to have grown thinner. His mouth was open. He glared at Lavendale, but he was utterly incapable of speech. The latter turned to Weald.

'Mr. Weald,' he said, 'this contract for your entire output can be signed within twenty-four hours, either by a representative of Russia other than Baron Ossendorf, or by the secretary of the British Munition Board. This man Ossendorf is a paid traitor—the Judas of the war.'

Mr. Weald was incapable of coherent speech.

'You mean,' Jenkins faltered, 'that he is in the pay of Germany?'

'Ask him!' Lavendale suggested scornfully.

Ossendorf seemed to wither up. He staggered to his feet and groped to the door. Suddenly something flashed in his hands, clasped tightly between them. There was a loud report, the room seemed filled with smoke. They all three looked in a dazed manner at the figure stretched upon the carpet, face downwards, the shoulders still twitching slightly. Lavendale stood with his finger upon the bell.

'Sorry to have interfered, Mr. Weald,' he said, 'but your stuff's wanted somewhere else—not at the bottom of the sea.' ...


Ossendorf's body was carried away. It was very well understood that the matter was to be hushed up. Lavendale lingered with Mr. Weald, who was walking restlessly about the room, still scarcely able to realize what had happened.

'Poor devil!' he kept on muttering. 'Poor devil!'

Lavendale laid his hand firmly upon his compatriot's shoulder.

'Look here, Mr. Weald,' he said, 'there are good and bad of every nation—Germans, Americans, English, or French. This man was outside the pale. He was a black and dastardly traitor, the pariah of humanity, he trafficked with the lives of human beings, he was a murderer for gold. If anything, his end was too merciful.'

Mr. Weald nodded reflectively. Lavendale's words were convincing. His eyes wandered towards the champagne bottle upon the sideboard. He was feeling the strain.

'In that case,' he murmured, 'perhaps——'