The Great Impersonation, E. Phillips Oppenheim [finding audrey TXT] 📗

position. I am only a German tradesman, admitted to the circles like these for reasons connected solely with the welfare of my country. Yet I know much, as it happens, of the truth of this matter, the matter which is causing you distress. I beg you to reconsider your decision. Our friend here is, I think, needlessly hard upon himself. So much the greater will be his reward when the end comes. So much the greater will be the rapture with which he will throw himself on his knees before you.”

“Has he sent you to reason with me?”

“Not directly. I am to a certain extent, however, his majordomo in this enterprise. I brought him from Africa. I have watched over him from the start. Two brains are better than one. I try to show him where to avoid mistakes, I try to point out the paths of danger and of safety.”

“I should imagine Sir Everard finds you useful,” she remarked calmly.

“I hope he does.”

“It has doubtless occurred to you,” she continued, “that our friend has accommodated himself wonderfully to English life and customs?”

“You must remember that he was educated here. Nevertheless, his aptitude has been marvellous.”

“One might almost call it supernatural,” she agreed. “Tell me, Mr. Seaman, you seem to have been completely successful in the installation of our friend here as Sir Everard. What is going to be his real value to you? What work will he do?”

“We are keeping him for the big things. You have seen our gracious master lately?” he added hesitatingly.

“I know what is at the back of your mind,” she replied. “Yes! Before the summer is over I am to pack up my trunks and fly. I understand.”

“It is when that time comes,” Seaman said impressively, “that we expect Sir Everard Dominey, the typical English country gentleman, of whose loyalty there has never been a word of doubt, to be of use to us. Most of our present helpers will be under suspicion. The authorised staff of our secret service can only work underneath. You can see for yourself the advantage we gain in having a confidential correspondent who can day by day reflect the changing psychology of the British mind in all its phases. We have quite enough of the other sort of help arranged for. Plans of ships, aerodromes and harbours, sailings of convoys, calling up of soldiers⁠—all these are the A.B.C. of our secret service profession. We shall never ask our friend here for a single fact, but, from his town house in Berkeley Square, the host of Cabinet Ministers, of soldiers, of the best brains of the country, our fingers will never leave the pulse of Britain’s day by day life.”

Stephanie threw herself back in her easy-chair and clasped her hands behind her head.

“These things you are expecting from our present host?”

“We are, and we expect to get them. I have watched him day by day. My confidence in him has grown.”

Stephanie was silent. She sat looking into the fire. Seaman, keenly observant as always, realised the change in her, yet found something of mystery in her new detachment of manner.

“Your Highness,” he urged, “I am not here to speak on behalf of the man who at heart is, I know, your lover. He will plead his own cause when the time comes. But I am here to plead for patience, I am here to implore you to take no rash step, to do nothing which might imperil in any way his position here. I stand outside the gates of the world which your sex can make a paradise. I am no judge of the things that happen there. But in your heart I feel there is bitterness, because the man for whom you care has chosen to place his country first. I implore your patience, Princess. I implore you to believe what I know so well⁠—that it is the sternest sense of duty only which is the foundation of Leopold Von Ragastein’s obdurate attitude.”

“What are you afraid that I shall do?” she asked curiously.

“I am afraid of nothing⁠—directly.”

“Indirectly, then? Answer me, please.”

“I am afraid,” he admitted frankly, “that in some corner of the world, if not in this country, you might whisper a word, a scoffing or an angry sentence, which would make people wonder what grudge you had against a simple Norfolk baronet. I would not like that word to be spoken in the presence of anyone who knew your history and realised the rather amazing likeness between Sir Everard Dominey and Baron Leopold Von Ragastein.”

“I see,” Stephanie murmured, a faint smile parting her lips. “Well, Mr. Seaman, I do not think that you need have many fears. What I shall carry away with me in my heart is not for you or any man to know. In a few days I shall leave this country.”

“You are going back to Berlin⁠—to Hungary?”

She shook her head, beckoned her maid to open the door, and held out her hand in token of dismissal.

“I am going to take a sea voyage,” she announced. “I shall go to Africa.”

The morrow was a day of mild surprises. Eddy Pelham’s empty place was the first to attract notice, towards the end of breakfast time.

“Where’s the pink and white immaculate?” the Right Honourable gentleman asked. “I miss my morning wonder as to how he tied his tie.”

“Gone,” Dominey replied, looking round from the sideboard.

“Gone?” everyone repeated.

“I should think such a thing has never happened to him before,” Dominey observed. “He was wanted in town.”

“Fancy anyone wanting Eddy for any serious purpose!” Caroline murmured.

“Fancy anyone wanting him badly enough to drag him out of bed in the middle of the night with a telephone call and send him up to town by the breakfast train from Norwich!” their host continued. “I thought we had started a new ghost when he came into my room in a purple dressing-gown and broke the news.”

“Who wanted him?” the Duke enquired. “His tailor?”

“Business of importance was his pretext,” Dominey replied.

There was a