The Lost Naval Papers Part 14

"And now," cried the patron, "this scene, so deplorable and scandalous, is happily ended. Our beautiful Madame and the brave captain, their mistakes and misunderstandings removed, are again lovers of the fondest. Let us go, my friends, and leave them to forgive one another as they will desire to do in decent privacy.

_Allons, allons, vite_!"

He drove away the boot-collector and the night porter, who had not understood one word of the quick French which had been spoken. They explained the scene satisfactorily to themselves by the one word, "French." The women would also have gone if Madame, who was still laughing, had not hastily recalled Marie.

"Marie," she whispered, spluttering with cheerful impropriety, "lead that captain away and lock him into his room or my reputation is gone for ever. Take Rouille away, and then leave me, for I want to laugh and then to sleep."

But Rust, blushing deeply at the preposterous closing of the scene, had sneaked quietly out of the room.

They met at breakfast without embarra.s.sment. At least Madame was perfectly tranquil; I cannot answer so surely for Rust. In the eyes of the little world of the hotel nothing had been changed. They retained their a.s.sumed characters as a Widow and Soldier of France, who consorted with the freedom of old friends.

"So," said Madame, when all had been explained, "you were put on by our dear, fiery Froissart, and I by the dear, secretive Dawson. We blundered up against one another, and the rest followed naturally. You were such an one as I looked for, and I was of the kind pictured by the imaginative Froissart. It has all been most amusing, especially when one reflects that the English Government has paid for all our delightful lunches, teas, dinners, and motor runs. I doubt, though, whether we can with easy consciences send in the bill for this week-end."

"No. We will divide the cost between ourselves, for I am sure that you will refuse to be my guest. All I ask is that you do not cut our holiday the shorter on account of what has pa.s.sed."

"Not by an hour," replied Madame heartily. "I like you, Captain Rust; we will enjoy ourselves to-day as colleagues _en vacance_, and to-morrow we will report at headquarters. We will leave Dawson and Froissart to sort out the responsibility for the whole comedy. It has been a most pleasing experience. Never shall I forget that scene of last night and the bewilderment of the poor patron. His comments were a delight, and the conclusion was so purely French in its artless conception that I felt for your innocent blushes."

"The patron was the limit," muttered Rust, flushing deeply.

"He was. And yet no one could convince him that the reconciliation so desired by him was not the most natural and decorous for us. I am still sore with excessive laughter. Again and again in the night I woke up and simply bellowed."

The Sunday was again a very fine day, and Rust speaks of it still with enthusiasm. Madame revealed herself to him, no longer as the seductive siren, but as a true-hearted colleague and helper. He saw her not only as a beautiful and most compelling fascinator, before whom he had grovelled, but as a big-brained and big-souled friend. "She is the only woman whom I have ever met with whom I would go tiger-shooting,"

said Rust to me. I will accept that one sentence as his considered verdict; no greater tribute could be paid by a man to a woman.

At first he did not fully grasp that the Madame of that Sunday, the real Madame, was wholly different from the one he had known before. As they sat together upon the cliffs towards Rottingdean, he slipped his arm about her waist. Gently, but very decidedly, she removed it. "No, _mon ami_," said she. "All that has pa.s.sed with the necessity for its exercise. I do not play with my friends."

"Thank you," replied he--it was the brightest speech which Madame has recorded of him. There is hope that Rust will, with years and experience, develop in intelligence.

When Madame returned to London on the Monday, she sought an audience of Chief Inspector Dawson, and told the whole story. He was not pleased, but handsomely conceded that she had carried out her duties with skill and enterprise. "The farce was not your fault," said he; "it was entirely due to that French a.s.s Froissart, who has no right to play games of his own without consulting me. I will make a protest to the Chief."

"Don't do that," urged Madame. "Froissart is rather a dear, and you know that the fault was partly yours, for not taking him into your confidence. I have determined to cultivate Froissart, and shall endeavour to persuade him that your feminine a.s.sistants are not all of microscopic intelligence and of repulsive appearance."

"You will succeed," said Dawson handsomely.

Froissart, to whom Rust reported, gleaned some consolation from the failure of his agent. "This wonder of a woman, of whom I must instantly make the honourable acquaintance, has saved the detested Dawson from the deeps of humiliation. But we have scored off him most surely. He has shown himself to be a blundering, conceited English pig, and I will protest to the Chief that never again must he keep me in ignorance of his projects. I shall laugh at him; all our people here will laugh. I shall be revenged. _Conspuez_ Dawson!"

"Don't be too hard on Dawson," urged Rust. "Madame Gilbert thinks a lot of him, and would be pained if he suffered discredit through any fault of hers."

"Fault!" shouted the gallant Froissart. "_La belle Madame_ is _sans faute_, peerless, a prodigy of skill and discretion! She is superb. If she implores me to spare the man Dawson, then I will consent, though my heart is rent in fragments. As for you, _mon ami_, I fear that in her hands you were not a figure of admiration. She twisted you about her pretty fingers like a skein of wool. I do not think that you are, what you call, cut out for the Secret Service."

"That is quite my own opinion," a.s.sented he gloomily.

PART III

_TO SEE IS TO BELIEVE_

CHAPTER XII

DAWSON PRESCRIBES

The mind of Dawson has the queerest limitations. He is entirely free from any sense of proportion. If I wrote of those incidents which he pressed upon me, this book would be intolerably dull. He sees no interest in any episode which is not Dawson, Dawson, all the time. The emotion which was aroused in the hearts of Cary and myself by Trehayne's letter caused Dawson no small anxiety. He feared lest in rendering this episode I should turn the limelight upon Trehayne and leave the private of Marines in the shadows. Which is precisely what I have done. From his "sick bed" he sent me a letter explaining that his own honourable weakness of sympathy with an enemy spy was physical, not moral--reprehensible failing induced by lack of sleep. He laboured to convince me that the spirit of Dawson in the full flush of health was of a frightfulness wholly Prussian in its logical completeness.

But I smiled, went my own way, and Dawson, when he comes to read this book, can swear as loudly as he pleases.

If I had depended only upon Dawson, I should never have secured the details of the story which I am about to write. It was Froissart who first put me upon the track of it during one of those visits which I paid to him when I was investigating _l'affaire_ Rust. Froissart, in imaginative insight, is as much superior to Dawson as the average Frenchman is to the average Englishman. But in execution he admits sorrowfully that he cannot hold a candle to his brutal secretive English chief. "I have genius," exclaimed Froissart, "of which the sacred dog Dawson has not a particle. I know not whence come his ideas, the most penetrative. It cannot be from _son Esprit_ of which he has none; his brain reposes, without doubt, in his stomach. Yet, _ma foi_, that man whom I detest and to whom I am a colleague most loyal, is of a practical ingenuity most wonderful. Did you ever learn how he hid the great cruisers _Intrepid_ and _Terrific_ from the watching eyes of the Boche, and won, here in England, a glorious victory for the English Navy, eight thousand miles away? I was with him, and at the end, falling upon his bosom in generous admiration, I kissed him on both cheeks. And what was my reward? It was to receive a short-arm blow upon the diaphragm. That man of mud took my wind, as he called it, and I was laid gasping upon the floor. It was in this fashion that he repulsed me--me a Count of _l'ancien regime_. I could have his blood."

I soothed Froissart, and extracted enough from him in rapid French spasms--his idiomatic staccato French is often beyond my understanding--to give me a general idea of what Dawson had done.

Thereafter I pursued my inquiries, pumping Dawson himself--who, for some reason, did not greatly value the affair--tackling others who knew more than they were always willing to tell, even to me their friend. Yet in many ways, of which it were well not to be particular, I arrived at the full story which I now tell. To my mind it shows Dawson at his best, and Dawson's best is very good indeed.

It was early in November, three months after war had begun. Dawson, to whom had been committed the general supervision of all known enemy spies in London, and who had already put in force that combination of tight net and loose string which I have described, received a summons from his Chief the moment he arrived at his office at the Yard. "You are wanted at the Admiralty," said the Commissioner--"and wanted badly. You are to report at once in the First Lord's private room."

"What is the game?" inquired Dawson. "I have lots to do here which I cannot well leave."

"I don't know. But I have orders to send you, and to relieve you from all other duties. If you want help, you can take Froissart, that French detective who has just been sent to us from Paris as a sort of liaison officer. He is strongly recommended as a first-cla.s.s man."

"Hum," said Dawson, between whom and his Chief was a very close friendship. "I suppose I must toddle round and see what the little man wants this time. Last month he had secret wireless installations on the brain."

Dawson found the First Lord striding up and down his big room. All round the walls were set great maps bristling with pins to which were attached numbered labels. Each pin represented a ship, and each ship was obedient to an order flashed from the big aerials overhead. Here was the Holy of Holies, the nerve ganglion of the English Navy, and here, striding up and down, the man who could jab the nerve-centre with his finger whenever he pleased. He often pleased. Then he would gloat over the pins as they skipped about the maps.

Chief Inspector Dawson was announced, and stood to attention.

"Ha!" cried the First Lord, "so you are Dawson, the Master of Spies.

We need you, Dawson; the country needs you; I need you. You have a great chance this day to show your quality, Dawson. Those of whom I approve, I advance. They become great men. Am I to approve of you?"

Dawson observed that he could not well say until he learned what was wanted of him.

"Ha!" cried the First Lord again, "you are a man of few words. I like those with me who do not talk. When there is talking to be done--well, I can do a little in that line myself. Among my instruments I demand silence."

Dawson said nothing. The First Lord struck a bell; a servant in blue uniform appeared. "Will you please tell his lordship that Chief Inspector Dawson is here, and that I await his presence."

The man retired and presently returned. "His lordship is in his room making out the orders for the Fleet. He bids me say that he is quite at your service."

The First Lord flushed, and glanced hurriedly at Dawson, who stood at attention, stolid, silent, immovable. It would seem that he read nothing in the message.

"The Mountain is old and stiff in his joints," remarked the First Lord playfully. "When he settles into his chair, it would take a bomb to lift him out. We are young and active; we must consider the infirmities of age. Mahomet will go to the Mountain, and you will please to follow."

Mahomet, swinging his long coat-tails, strode out of the room and down a pa.s.sage, whence they emerged into another room also set about with pin-studded maps.