The Pawns Count Part 1

The p.a.w.ns Count.

by E. Phillips Oppenheim.

CHAPTER I

Mefiez-Vous!

Taisez-Vous!

Les Oreilles Ennemies Vous Ecoutent!

The usual little crowd was waiting in the lobby of a fashionable London restaurant a few minutes before the popular luncheon hour. Pamela Van Teyl, a very beautiful American girl, dressed in the extreme of fashion, which she seemed somehow to justify, directed the attention of her companions to the notice affixed to the wall facing them.

"Except," she declared, "for you poor dears who have been hurt, that is the first thing I have seen in England which makes me realise that you are at war."

The younger of her two escorts, Captain Richard Holderness, who wore the uniform of a well-known cavalry regiment, glanced at the notice a little impatiently.

"What rot it seems!" he exclaimed. "We get fed up with that sort of thing in France. It's always the same at every little railway station and every little inn. 'Mefiez-vous! Taisez-vous!' They might spare us over here."

John Lutchester, a tall, clean-shaven man, dressed in civilian clothes, raised his eyegla.s.s and read out the notice languidly.

"Well, I don't know," he observed. "Some of you Service fellows--not the Regulars, of course--do gas a good deal when you come back. I don't suppose you any of you know anything, so it doesn't really matter," he added, glancing at his watch.

"Army's full of Johnnies, who come from G.o.d knows where nowadays,"

Holderness a.s.sented gloomily. "No wonder they can't keep their mouths shut."

"Seems to me you need them all," Miss Pamela Van Teyl remarked with a smile.

"Of course we do," Holderness a.s.sented, "and Heaven forbid that any of us Regulars should say a word against them. Jolly good stuff in them, too, as the Germans found out last month."

"All the same," Lutchester continued, still studying the notice, "news does run over London like quicksilver. If you step down to the American bar here, for instance, you'll find that Charles is one of the best-informed men about the war in London. He has patrons in the Army, in the Navy, and in the Flying Corps, and it's astonishing how communicative they seem to become after the second or third c.o.c.ktail."

"c.o.c.ktail, mark you, Miss Van Teyl," Holderness pointed out. "We poor Englishmen could keep our tongues from wagging before we acquired some of your American habits."

"The habits are all right," Pamela retorted. "It's your heads that are wrong."

"The most valued product of your country," Lutchester murmured, "is more dangerous to our hearts than to our heads."

She made a little grimace and turned away, holding out her hand to a new arrival--a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a strong, cold face and keen, grey eyes, aggressive even behind his gold-rimmed spectacles.

There was a queer change in his face as his eyes met Pamela's. He seemed suddenly to become more human. His pleasure at seeing her was certainly more than the usual transatlantic politeness.

"Mr. Fischer," she exclaimed, "they are saying hard things about our country! Please protect me."

He bowed over her fingers. Then he looked up. His tone was impressive.

"If I thought that you needed protection, Miss Van Teyl--"

"Well, I can a.s.sure you that I do," she interrupted, laughing. "You know my friends, don't you?"

"I think I have that pleasure," the American replied, shaking hands with Lutchester and Holderness.

"Now we'll get an independent opinion," the former observed, pointing to the wall. "We were discussing that notice, Mr. Fischer. You're almost as much a Londoner as a New Yorker. What do you think?--is it superfluous or not?"

Fischer read it out and smiled.

"Well," he admitted, "in America we don't lay much store by that sort of thing, but I don't know as we're very good judges about what goes on over here. I shouldn't call this place, anyway, a hotbed of intrigue.

Excuse me!"

He moved off to greet some incoming guests--a well-known stockbroker and his partner. Lutchester looked after him curiously.

"Is Mr. Fischer one of your typical millionaires, Miss Van Teyl?" he asked.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"We have no typical millionaires," she a.s.sured him. "They come from all cla.s.ses and all States."

"Fischer is a Westerner, isn't he?"

Pamela nodded, but did not pursue the conversation. Her eyes were fixed upon a girl who had just entered, and who was looking a little doubtfully around, a girl plainly but smartly dressed, with fluffy light hair, dark eyes, and a very pleasant expression. Pamela, who was critical of her own s.e.x, found the newcomer attractive.

"Is that, by any chance, one of our missing guests, Captain Holderness?" she inquired, turning towards him. "I don't know why, but I have an idea that it is your sister."

"By Jove, yes!" the young man a.s.sented, stepping forward. "Here we are, Molly, and at last you are going to meet Miss Van Teyl. I've bored Molly stiff, talking about you," he explained, as Pamela held out her hand.

The girls, who stood talking together for a moment, presented rather a striking contrast. Molly Holderness was pretty but usual. Pamela was beautiful and unusual. She had the long, slim body of a New York girl, the complexion and eyes of a Southerner, the savoir faire of a Frenchwoman. She was extraordinarily cosmopolitan, and yet extraordinarily American. She impressed every one, as she did Molly Holderness at that moment, with a sense of charm. One could almost accept as truth her own statement--that she valued her looks chiefly because they helped people to forget that she had brains.

"I won't admit that I have ever been bored, Miss Van Teyl," Molly Holderness a.s.sured her, "but d.i.c.k has certainly told me all sorts of wonderful things about you--how kind you were in New York, and what a delightful surprise it was to see you down at the hospital at Nice. I am afraid he must have been a terrible crock then."

"Got well in no time as soon as Miss Van Teyl came along," Holderness declared. "It was a bit dreary down there at first. None of my lot were sent south, and a familiar face means a good deal when you've got your lungs full of that rotten gas and are feeling like nothing on earth. I wonder where that idiot Sandy is. I told him to be here a quarter of an hour before you others--thought we might have had a quiet chat first.

Will you stand by the girls for a moment, Lutchester, while I have a look round?" he added.

He hobbled away, one of the thousands who were thronging the streets and public places of London--brave, simple-minded young men, all of them, with tangled recollections in their brains of blood and fire and h.e.l.l, and a game leg or a lost arm to remind them that the whole thing was not a nightmare. He looked a little disconsolately around, and was on the point of rejoining the others when the friend for whom he was searching came hurriedly through the turnstile doors.

"Sandy, old chap," Holderness exclaimed, with an air of relief, "here you are at last!"

"Cheero, d.i.c.k!" was the light-hearted reply. "Fearfully sorry I'm late, but listen--just listen for one moment."

The newcomer threw his hat and coat to the attendant. He was a rather short, freckled young man, with a broad, high forehead and light-coloured hair. His eyes just now were filled with the enthusiasm which trembled in his tone.

"d.i.c.k," he continued, gripping his friend's arm tightly, "I'm late, I know, but I've great news. I've motored straight up from Salisbury Plain. I've done it! I swear to you, d.i.c.k, I've done it!"

"Done what?" Holderness demanded, a little bewildered.

"I've perfected my explosive--the thing I was telling you about last week," was the triumphant reply. "The whole world's struggling for it, d.i.c.k. The German chemists have been working night and day for three years, just for one little formula, and I've got it! One of my sh.e.l.ls, which fell in a wood at daylight this morning, killed every living thing within a mile of it. The bark fell off the trees, and the labourers in a field beyond threw down their implements and ran for their lives. It's the principle of intensification. The poison feeds on its own vapours. The formula--I've got it in my pocket-book--"

"Look here, old fellow," Holderness interrupted, "it's all splendid, of course, and I'm dying to hear you talk about it, but come along now and be introduced to Miss Van Teyl. Molly's over there, waiting, and we're all half starved."