The Pawns Count Part 17

There was a little chorus of non-comprehension. Nikasti stepped forward, waved to the others to be silent, and bowed almost to the ground.

"It was a mistake easily to be understood, madam," he explained. "The handle is a little stiff, perhaps, but the door was not locked. We all reached here together, I myself barely a yard in advance. No key was used--and behold!"

Pamela was disposed to argue, but a moment's reflection induced her to change her mind. This falsehood of Nikasti's was at least interesting.

She waved the hotel servants away.

"I am sorry to have troubled you," she said. "I will remember it when I pay my bill."

They took their leave, Nikasti showing them out. When the last had departed, he turned back to the centre table, from the other side of which Pamela was watching him curiously.

"I cannot imagine," she remarked, "how I could have made such a mistake about the door. I tried it twice or three times and it certainly seemed to me to be locked."

Nikasti moved a step nearer towards her. Something of the servility of his manner had gone. For the first time she looked at him closely, appreciated the tense immobility of his features, the still, penetrating light of his cold eyes. A queer premonition of trouble for a moment unsteadied her.

"There was no mistake," he said softly. "The door was locked."

Even then she did not fully understand the position. She leaned a little towards him.

"It was locked?" she repeated.

"I locked it," he told her. "It is locked now, securely. I have been searching in your room for something which I did not find. I think that you had better give it to me. It will save trouble."

"Are you mad?" she demanded breathlessly.

"Do I seem so?" he replied. "There is no person more sane than I. I require from you the formula of the new explosive, which you stole in Henry's restaurant eleven days ago."

The sense of mystery pa.s.sed. It was simply trouble of the ordinary sort from an unexpected source.

"Dear me!" she murmured. "Every one seems interested in my little adventure. How did you hear about it?"

"I destroyed the cable telling me of all that happened only a few minutes ago," he explained. "It was the foolish talk of the young inventor which gave his secret to the world to scramble for."

"It was very clever of your informant," she remarked, "to suggest that I was the fortunate thief. Why not Oscar Fischer? It was his plot, not mine."

The eyes of the little j.a.panese seemed suddenly to narrow. He realised quite well that she was talking simply to gain time.

"Madam," he insisted, "the formula. It is for my country, and for my country I would risk much."

"I do not doubt it," she replied; "but if I hold it, I hold it for my country, too, and there is nothing you would risk for j.a.pan from which I should shrink for America."

He laid his hands upon the table. She turned her ring and clenched her hand. She could see his spring coming, realised in those few seconds that here was an opponent of more desperate and subtle calibre than Joseph. Whether her wits might have failed her, fate remained her friend. There was a knock at the door.

"You hear?" she cried breathlessly. "There is some one there. Shall I call out?"

His hands and knee were gone from the table. He was once more his old self, so completely the servant that for a moment even Pamela was puzzled. It seemed as though the events of the last few seconds might have been part of a disordered dream. Nikasti played to the cue of her fevered question and entirely ignored them. He opened the door with a respectful flourish--and John Lutchester walked in.

CHAPTER XII

Pamela's first shock of surprise did not readily pa.s.s. In the first place, John Lutchester's appearance in America at all was entirely unexpected. In the second, by what possible means could he have arrived at this precise and psychological moment?

"You!" she exclaimed, a little helplessly. "Mr. Lutchester!"

He smiled as he shook hands. Nikasti had slipped noiselessly from the room. Pamela made no effort to detain him. She had a curious feeling that the things which had pa.s.sed between them concerned their two selves only. So had no desire whatever to hand him over to retributive justice.

"You are surprised," he observed. "So far as my presence here is concerned, I knew quite well that I was coming some time ago, but it was one of those matters, you understand, Miss Van Teyl, that one is scarcely at liberty to talk about. I am here in connection with my work."

"Your work," she repeated weakly. "I thought that you were in the Ministry of Munitions?"

"Precisely," he admitted. "I have a travelling inspectorship. You see, I don't mind telling you this, but it is just as well, if you will forgive my mentioning it, Miss Van Teyl, that these things are not spoken of to any one. My business over here is supposed to be secret. I am going round some of the factories from which we are drawing supplies."

She drew a long breath and began to feel a little more like herself.

"Well, after this," she declared, "I shall be surprised at nothing. I have had one shock already this evening, and you are the second."

"The first, I trust, was not disagreeable?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Without flattering you," she answered, "I think I could say that I prefer the second."

"I had an idea," Lutchester remarked diffidently, "that my arrival seemed either opportune or inopportune--I could not quite tell which.

Were you in any way troubled or embarra.s.sed by the presence of the little j.a.panese gentleman?"

"Of course not," she replied. "Why, he is Jimmy's valet."

"How absurd of me!" Lutchester murmured. "By the bye, if Jimmy is your brother--Mr. Van Teyl--I have a letter to him from a pal in town--d.i.c.ky Green. It was to present it that I found my way up here this evening. I was told that he might put me in the way of a little golf during my spare time over here."

He produced the note and laid it upon the table. Pamela glanced at it and then at Lutchester. He was carefully dressed in dinner clothes, black tie and white waistcoat. He was, as usual, perfectly groomed and immaculate. He had what she could only describe to herself as an everyday air about him. He seemed entirely free from any mental pressure or the wear and tear of great events.

"Golf?" she repeated wonderingly. "You expect to have a little spare time, then?"

"Well, I hope so," Lutchester replied. "One must have exercise. By the bye," he went on, "is your brother in, do you happen to know? Perhaps it would be more convenient if I came round in the morning? I am staying in the hotel."

"Oh, for goodness sake, don't go away," she begged. "Jimmy will be here presently, for certain. To tell you the truth, we have been rather playing hide-and-seek this evening, but it hasn't been altogether his fault. Please sit down over there--you will find cigarettes on the sideboard--and talk to me."

"Delighted," he agreed, taking the chair opposite to her. "I suppose you want to know what became of poor Graham?"

A sudden bewilderment appeared in her face. She leaned towards him. Her forehead was knitted, her eyes puzzled. There was a new problem to be solved.

"Why, Mr. Lutchester," she demanded, "how on earth did you get here?"

"Across the Atlantic," he replied amiably. "Bit too far the other way round."

"Yes, but what on?" she persisted. "I went straight on to the _Lapland_ after we parted last week, and only arrived here an hour or so ago.

There was no other pa.s.senger steamer sailing for three days."