The Zeppelin's Passenger, E. Phillips Oppenheim [english readers TXT] 📗
- Author: E. Phillips Oppenheim
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“Dick is back - just arrived!” she exclaimed. “I can’t tell you how happy we are, and how grateful!”
Lessingham raised her fingers to his lips.
“I am glad,” he said simply. “Do you mean that he is in the house here, now?”
“He is in the dining room with Helen.”
Lessingham for a moment was thoughtful.
“Don’t you think,” he suggested, “that it would be better to keep us apart?”
“I was wondering,” she confessed.
“Have you told him about my bringing the letters?”
She shook her head.
“We nearly did. Then I stopped - I wasn’t sure.”
“You were wise,” he said.
“Are you wise?” she asked him quickly.=20
=20
“In coming back here?”
She nodded.
“Captain Griffiths knows everything,” she reminded him. “He is simply furious because your arrest was interfered with. I really believe that he is dangerous.”
Lessingham was unmoved.
“I had to come back,” he said simply.
“Why did you go away so suddenly?”
“Well, I had to do that, too,” he replied, “only the governing causes were very different. We will speak, if you do not mind, only of the cause which has brought me back. That I believe you know already.”
Philippa was curiously afraid. She looked towards the door as though with some vague hope of escape. She realised that the necessity for decision had arrived.
“Philippa,” he went on, “do you see what this is?”
He handed her two folded slips of paper. She started. At the top of one she recognised a small photograph of herself.
“What are they?” she asked. “What does it mean?”
“They are passports for America,” he told her.
“For - for me?” she faltered.
“For you and me.”
They slipped from her fingers. He picked them up from the carpet. Her face was hidden for a moment in her hands.
“I know so well how you are feeling,” he said humbly. “I know how terrible a shock this must seem to you when it comes so near. You are so different from the other women who might do this thing. It is so much harder for you than for them.”
She lifted her head. There was still something of the look of a scared child in her face.
“Don’t imagine me better than I am,” she begged. “I am not really different from any other woman, only it is the first time this sort of thing has ever come into my life.”
“I know. You see,” he went on, a little wistfully, “you have not taken me, as yet, very far into your confidence, Philippa. You know that I love you as a man loves only once. It sounds like an empty phrase to say it, but if you will give me your life to take care of, I shall only have one thought - to make you happy. Could I succeed? That is what you have to ask yourself. You are not happy now. Do you think that, if you stay on here, the future is likely to be any better for you?”
She shook her head drearily.
“I believe,” she confessed, “that I have reached the very limit of my endurance.”
He came a little nearer. His hands rested upon her shoulders very lightly, yet they seemed like some enveloping chain. More than ever in those few moments she realised the spiritual qualities of his face. His eyes were aglow. His voice, a little broken with emotion, was wonderfully tender. He looked at her as though she were some precious and sacred thing.
“I am rich,” he said, “and there are few parts of the world where we could not live. We could find our way to the islands, like your great writer Stevenson in whom you delight so much; islands full of colour, and wonderful birds, and strange blue skies; islands where the peace of the tropics dulls memory, and time heats only in the heart. The world is a great place, Philippa, and there are corners where the sordid crime of this ghastly butchery has scarcely been heard of, where the horror and the taint of it are as though they never existed, where the sun and moon are still unashamed, and the grey monsters ride nowhere upon the sapphire seas.”
“It sounds like a fairy tale,” she murmured, with a half pathetic smile.
“Love always fashions life like a fairy tale,” he replied.
She stood perfectly still.
“You must have my answer now, at this moment?” she asked at last.
“There are yet some hours,” he told her. “I have a very powerful automobile here, and tonight there is a full moon. If we leave here at ten o’clock, we can catch the steamer tomorrow afternoon. Everything has been made very easy for me. And fortune, too, is with us - your vindictive commandant, Captain Griffiths, is in London. You see, you have the whole afternoon for thought. I want you only for your happiness. At ten o’clock I shall come here. If you are coming with me, you must be ready then. You understand?”
“I understand,” she assented, under her breath. “And now,” she went on, raising her eyes, “somehow I think that you are right. It would be better for you and Dick not to meet.”
“I am sure of it,” he agreed. “I shall come for my answer at ten o’clock. I wonder - “
He stood looking at her, his eyes hungry to find some sign in her face. There was so much kindness there, so much that might pass, even, for affection, and yet something which, behind it all, chilled his confidence. He left his sentence uncompleted and turned towards the door. Suddenly she called him back. She held up her finger. Her whole expression had changed. She was alarmed.
“Wait!” she begged. “I can hear Dick’s voice. Wait till he has crossed the hail.”
They both stood, for a moment, quite silent. Then they heard a little protesting cry from Helen, and a good-humoured laugh from Richard. The door was thrown open.
“You don’t mind our coming through to the gun room, Phil?” her brother asked. “We’re not - My God!”
There was a queer silence, broken by Helen, who stood on the threshold, the picture of distress.
“I tried to get him to go the other way, Philippa.
Richard took a quick step forward. His hands were outstretched.
“Bertram!” he exclaimed. “Is this a miracle? You here with my sister?”
Lessingham held out his hand. Suddenly Richard dropped his. His expression had become sterner.
“I don’t understand,” he said simply. “Somebody please explain.”
For a few brief seconds no one seemed inclined to take upon themselves the onus of speech. Richard’s amazement seemed to increase upon reflection.
“Maderstrom!” he exclaimed. “Bertram! What in the name of all that’s diabolical are you doing here?”
“I am just a derelict,” Lessingham explained, with a faint smile. “Glad to see you, Richard. You are a day earlier than I expected.”
“You knew that I was coming, then?” Richard demanded.
“Naturally,” Lessingham replied. “I had the great pleasure of arranging for your release.”
“Look here,” Richard went on, “I’m groping about a bit. I don’t understand. Forgive me if I run off the track. I’m not forgetting our friendship, Maderstrom, or what I owe to you since you came and found me at Wittenburg. But for all that, you have served in the German Army and are an enemy, and I want to know what you are doing here, in England, in my brother-in-law’s house.”
“No particular harm, Richard, I promise you,” Lessingham replied mildly.
“You are here under a false name!”
“Hamar Lessingham, if you do not mind,” the other assented. “I prefer my own name, but I do not fancy that the use of it would ensure me a very warm welcome over here just now. Besides,” he added, with a glance at Philippa, “I have to consider the friends whose hospitality I have enjoyed.”
In a shadowy sort of way the truth began to dawn upon Richard. His tone became grimmer and his manner more menacing.
“Maderstrom,” he said, “we met last under different circumstances. I will admit that I cut a poor figure, but mine was at least an honourable imprisonment. I am not so sure that yours is an honourable freedom.”
Philippa laid her hand upon her brother’s arm.
“Dick, dear, do remember that they were starving you to death!” she begged.
“You would never have lived through it,” Helen echoed.
“You are talking to Mr. Lessingham,” Philippa protested, “as though he were an enemy, instead of the best friend you ever had in your life.”
Richard waved them away.
“You must leave this to us,” he insisted. “Maderstrom and I will be able to understand one another, at any rate. What are you doing in this house - in England? What is your mission here?”
“Whatever it may have been, it is accomplished,” Lessingham said gravely. “At the present moment, my plans are to leave your country tonight.”
“Accomplished?” Richard repeated. “What the devil do you mean? Accomplished? Are you playing the spy in this country?”
“You would probably consider my mission espionage,” Lessingham admitted.
“And you have brought it to a successful conclusion?”
“I have.”
Philippa threw her arms around her brother’s neck. “Dick,” she pleaded, “please listen. Mr. Lessingham has been here, in this district, ever since he landed in England. What possible harm could be do? We haven’t a single secret to be learned. Everybody knows where our few guns are. Everybody knows where our soldiers are quartered. We haven’t a harbour or any secret fortifications. We haven’t any shipping information which it would be of the least use signalling anywhere. Mr. Lessingham has spent his time amongst trifles here. Take Helen away somewhere and forget that you have seen him in the house. Remember that he has saved Henry’s life as well as yours.”
“I invite no consideration upon that account,” Lessingham declared. “All that I did for you in Germany, I did, or should have attempted to do, for my old friend. Your release was different. I am forced to admit that it was the price paid for my sojourn here. I will only ask you to remember that the bargain was made without your knowledge, and that you are in no way responsible for it.”
“A price,” Richard pronounced fiercely, “which I refuse to pay!”
Lessingham shrugged his shoulders.
“The alternative,” he confessed, “is in your hands.”
Richard moved towards the telephone.
“I am sorry, Maderstrom,” he said, “but my duty is clear. Who is Commandant here, Philippa?”
Philippa stood between her brother and the telephone. There was a queer, angry patch of colour in her cheeks. Her eyes were on fire.
“Richard,” she exclaimed, “you shall not do this from my house! I forbid you!”
“Do what?”
“Give information. Do you know what it would mean if they believed you?”
“Death,” he answered. “Maderstrom knew the risk he ran when he came to this country under a false name.”
“Perfectly,” Lessingham admitted.
“But I won’t have it!” Philippa protested. “He has become our friend. Day by day we have grown to like him better and better. He has saved your life, Dick. He has brought you back to us. Think what it is that you purpose!”
“It is what every soldier has to face,” Richard declared.
“You men drive me crazy with your foolish ideas!” Philippa cried desperately. “The war is in your brains, I think. You would carry it from the battlefields into your daily life. Because two great countries are at war, is everything to go by - chivalry? - all the finer, sweeter feelings of life? If you two met on the battlefield, it would be different. Here in my drawing-room, I will not have this black
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