Elusive Isabel, by Jacques Futrelle (2 page)

He sat at his desk intently studying a cable despatch which lay before him. It was in the Secret Service code. Leaning over his shoulder was Mr. Grimm—_the_ Mr. Grimm of the bureau. Mr. Grimm was an utterly different type from his chief. He was younger, perhaps thirty-one or two, physically well proportioned, a little above the average height, with regular features and listless, purposeless eyes—a replica of a hundred other young men who dawdle idly in the windows of their clubs and watch the world hurry by. His manner was languid; his dress showed fastidious care.

Sentence by sentence the bewildering intricacies of the code gave way before the placid understanding of Chief Campbell, and word by word, from the chaos of it, a translation took intelligible form upon a sheet of paper under his right hand. Mr. Grimm, looking on, exhibited only a most perfunctory interest in the extraordinary message he was reading; the listless eyes narrowed a little, that was all. It was a special despatch from Lisbon dated that morning, and signed simply “Gault.” Completely translated it ran thus:

“Secret offensive and defensive alliance of the Latin against the English-speaking nations of the world is planned. Italy, France, Spain and two South American republics will soon sign compact in Washington. Proposition just made to Portugal, and may be accepted. Special envoys now working in Mexico and Central and South America. Germany invited to join, but refuses as yet, giving, however, tacit support; attitude of Russia and Japan unknown to me. Prince Benedetto d’Abruzzi, believed to be in Washington at present, has absolute power to sign for Italy, France and Spain. Profound secrecy enjoined and preserved. I learned of it by underground. Shall I inform our minister? Cable instructions.”

“So much!” commented Mr. Campbell.

He clasped his hands behind his head, lay back in his chair and sat for a long time, staring with steadfast, thoughtful eyes into the impassive face of his subordinate. Mr. Grimm perched himself on the edge of the desk and with his legs dangling read the despatch a second time, and a third.

“If,” he observed slowly, “if any other man than Gault had sent that I should have said he was crazy.”

“The peace of the world is in peril, Mr. Grimm,” said Campbell impressively, at last. “It had to come, of course, the United States and England against a large part of Europe and all of Central and South America. It had to come, and yet—!”

He broke off abruptly, and picked up the receiver of his desk telephone.

“The White House, please,” he requested curtly, and then, after a moment: “Hello! Please ask the president if he will receive Mr. Campbell immediately. Yes, Mr. Campbell of the Secret Service.” There was a pause. Mr. Grimm removed his immaculate person from the desk, and took a chair. “Hello! In half an hour? So much!”

The pages of the Almanac de Gotha fluttered through his fingers, and finally he leaned forward and studied a paragraph of it closely. When he raised his eyes again there was that in them which Mr. Grimm had never seen before—a settled, darkening shadow.

“The world-war has long been a chimera, Mr. Grimm,” he remarked at last, “but now—now! Think of it! Of course, the Central and South American countries, taken separately, are inconsequential, and that is true, too, of the Latin countries of Europe, except France, but taken in combination, under one directing mind, the allied navies would be—would be formidable, at least. Backed by the moral support of Germany, and perhaps Japan—! Don’t you see? Don’t you see?”

He lapsed into silence. Mr. Grimm opened his lips to ask a question: Mr. Campbell anticipated it unerringly:

“The purpose of such an alliance? It is not too much to construe it into the first step toward a world-war—a war of reprisal and conquest beside which the other great wars of the world would seem trivial. For the fact has at last come home to the nations of the world that ultimately the English-speaking peoples will dominate it—dominate it, because they are the practical peoples. They have given to the world all its great practical inventions—the railroad, the steamship, electricity, the telegraph and cable—all of them; they are the great civilizing forces, rounding the world up to new moral understanding, for what England has done in Africa and India we have done in a smaller way in the Philippines and Cuba and Porto Rico; they are the great commercial peoples, slowly but surely winning the market-places of the earth; wherever the English or the American flag is planted there the English tongue is being spoken, and there the peoples are being taught the sanity of right living and square dealing.

“It requires no great effort of the imagination, Mr. Grimm, to foresee that day when the traditional power of Paris, and Berlin, and St. Petersburg, and Madrid will be honey-combed by the steady encroachment of our methods. This alliance would indicate that already that day has been foreseen; that there is now a resentment which is about to find expression in one great, desperate struggle for world supremacy. A few hundred years ago Italy—or Rome—was stripped of her power; only recently the United States dispelled the illusion that Spain was anything but a shell; and France—! One can’t help but wonder if the power she boasts is not principally on paper. But if their forces are combined? Do you see? It would be an enormous power to reckon with, with a hundred bases of supplies right at our doors.”

He rose suddenly and walked over to the window, where he stood for a moment, staring out with unseeing eyes.

“Given a yard of canvas, Mr. Grimm,” he went on finally, “a Spanish boy will waste it, a French boy will paint a picture on it, an English boy will built a sail-boat, and an American boy will erect a tent. That fully illustrates the difference in the races.”

He abandoned the didactic tone, and returned to the material matter in hand. Mr. Grimm passed him the despatch and he sat down again.

“‘Will soon sign compact in Washington,’” he read musingly. “Now I don’t know that the signing of that compact can be prevented, but the signing of it on United States soil can be prevented. You will see to that, Mr. Grimm.”

“Very well,” the young man agreed carelessly. The magnitude of such a task made, apparently, not the slightest impression on him. He languidly drew on his gloves.

“And meanwhile I shall take steps to ascertain the attitude of Russian and Japanese representatives in this city.”

Mr. Grimm nodded.

“And now, for Prince Benedetto d’Abruzzi,” Mr. Campbell went on slowly. “Officially he is not in Washington, nor the United States, for that matter. Naturally, on such a mission, he would not come as a publicly accredited agent, therefore, I imagine, he is to be sought under another name.”

“Of course,” Mr. Grimm acquiesced.

“And he would avoid the big hotels.”

“Certainly.”

Mr. Campbell permitted his guileless blue eyes to linger inquiringly upon those of the young man for half a minute. He caught himself wondering, sometimes, at the perfection of the deliberate indifference with which Mr. Grimm masked his emotions. In his admiration of this quality he quite overlooked the remarkable mask of benevolence behind which he himself hid.

“And the name, D’Abruzzi,” he remarked, after a time. “What does it mean to you, Mr. Grimm?”

“It means that I am to deal with a prince of the royal blood of Italy,” was the unhesitating response. Mr. Grimm picked up the Almanac de Gotha and glanced at the open page. “Of course, the first thing to do is to find him; the rest will be simple enough.” He perused the page carelessly. “I will begin work at once.”

Mr. Grimm was chatting idly with Senorita Rodriguez, daughter of the minister from Venezuela, the while he permitted his listless eyes to wander aimlessly about the spacious ball-room of the German embassy, ablaze with festooned lights, and brilliant with a multi-colored chaos of uniforms. Gleaming pearl-white, translucent in the mass, were the bare shoulders of women; and from far off came the plaintive whine of an orchestra, a pulsing sense rather than a living sound, of music, pointed here and there by the staccato cry of a flute. A zephyr, perfumed with the clean, fresh odor of lilacs, stirred the draperies of the archway which led into the conservatory and rustled the bending branches of palms and ferns.

For a scant instant Mr. Grimm’s eyes rested on a young woman who sat a dozen feet away, talking, in playful animation, with an undersecretary of the British embassy—a young woman severely gowned in some glistening stuff which fell away sheerly from her splendid bare shoulders. She glanced up, as if in acknowledgment of his look, and her eyes met his. Frank, blue-gray eyes they were, stirred to their depths now by amusement. She smiled at Senorita Rodriguez, in token of recognition.

“Aren’t they wonderful?” asked Senorita Rodriguez with the quick, bubbling enthusiasm of her race.

“What?” asked Mr. Grimm.

“Her eyes,” was the reply. “Every person has one dominant feature—with Miss Thorne it is her eyes.”

“Miss Thorne?” Mr. Grimm repeated.

“Haven’t you met her?” the senorita went on. “Miss Isabel Thorne? She only arrived a few days ago—the night of the state ball. She’s my guest at the legation. When an opportunity comes I shall present you to her.”

She ran on, about other things, with only an occasional remark from Mr. Grimm, who was thoughtfully nursing his knee. Somewhere through the chatter and effervescent gaiety, mingling with the sound of the pulsing music, he had a singular impression of a rhythmical beat, an indistinct tattoo, noticeable, perhaps, only because of its monotony. After a moment he shot a quick glance at Miss Thorne and understood; it was the tapping of an exquisitely wrought ivory fan against one of her tapering, gloved fingers. She was talking and smiling.

“Dot-dash-dot! Dot-dash-dot! Dot-dash-dot!” said the fan.

Mr. Grimm twisted around in his seat and regaled his listless eyes with a long stare into the senorita’s pretty face. Behind the careless ease of repose he was mechanically isolating the faint clatter of the fan.

“Dot-dash-dot! Dot-dash-dot! Dot-dash-dot!”

“Did any one ever accuse you of staring, Mr. Grimm?” demanded the senorita banteringly.

For an instant Mr. Grimm continued to stare, and then his listless eyes swept the ball-room, pausing involuntarily at the scarlet splendor of the minister from Turkey.

“I beg your pardon,” he apologized contritely. There was a pause. “The minister from Turkey looks like a barn on fire, doesn’t he?”

Senorita Rodriguez laughed, and Mr. Grimm glanced idly toward Miss Thorne. She was still talking, her face alive with interest; and the fan was still tapping rhythmically, steadily, now on the arm of her chair.

“Dot-dash-dot! Dot-dash-dot! Dot-dash-dot! Dot-dash-dot!”

“Pretty women who don’t want to be stared at should go with their faces swathed,” Mr. Grimm suggested indolently. “Haroun el Raschid there would agree with me on that point, I have no doubt. What a shock he would get if he should happen up at Atlantic City for a week-end in August!”

“Dot-dash-dot! Dot-dash-dot! Dot-dash-dot!”

Mr. Grimm read it with perfect understanding; it was “F—F—F” in the Morse code, the call of one operator to another. Was it accident? Mr. Grimm wondered, and wondering he went on talking lazily:

“Curious, isn’t it, the smaller the nation the more color it crowds into the uniforms of its diplomatists? The British ambassador, you will observe, is clothed sanely and modestly, as befits the representative of a great nation; but coming on down by way of Spain and Italy, they get more gorgeous. However, I dare say as stout a heart beats beneath a sky-blue sash as behind the unembellished black of evening dress.”

“F—F—F,” the fan was calling insistently.

And then the answer came. It took the unexpectedly prosaic form of a violent sneeze, a vociferous outburst on a bench directly behind Mr. Grimm. Senorita Rodriguez jumped, then laughed nervously.

“It startled me,” she explained.

“I think there must be a draft from the conservatory,” said a man’s voice apologetically. “Do you ladies feel it? No? Well, if you’ll excuse me—?”

Mr. Grimm glanced back languidly. The speaker was Charles Winthrop Rankin, a brilliant young American lawyer who was attached to the German embassy in an advisory capacity. Among other things he was a Heidelberg man, having spent some dozen years of his life in Germany, where he established influential connections. Mr. Grimm knew him only by sight.

And now the rhythmical tapping of Miss Thorne’s fan underwent a change. There was a flutter of gaiety in her voice the while the ivory fan tapped steadily.

“Dot-dot-dot! Dash! Dash-dash-dash! Dot-dot-dash! Dash!”

“S—t—5—u—t,” Mr. Grimm read in Morse. He laughed pleasantly at some remark of his companion.

“Dash-dash! Dot-dash! Dash-dot!” said the fan.

“M—a—n,” Mr. Grimm spelled it out, the while his listless eyes roved aimlessly over the throng. “S—t—5—u—t m—a—n!” Was it meant for “stout man?” Mr. Grimm wondered.

“Dot-dash-dot! Dot! Dash-dot-dot!”

“F—e—d,” that was.

“Dot-dot-dash-dot! Dot-dash! Dash-dot-dash-dot! Dot!”

“Q—a—j—e!” Mr. Grimm was puzzled a little now, but there was not a wrinkle, nor the tiniest indication of perplexity in his face. Instead he began talking of Raphael’s cherubs, the remark being called into life by the high complexion of a young man who was passing. Miss Thorne glanced at him once keenly, her splendid eyes fairly aglow, and the fan rattled on in the code.

“Dash-dot! Dot! Dot-dash! Dot-dash-dot!”

“N—e—a—f.” Mr. Grimm was still spelling it out.

Then came a perfect jumble. Mr. Grimm followed it with difficulty, a difficulty utterly belied by the quizzical lines about his mouth. As he caught it, it was like this: “J—5—n—s—e—f—v—a—t—5—f,” followed by an arbitrary signal which is not in the Morse code: “Dash-dot-dash-dash!”

Mr. Grimm carefully stored that jumble away in some recess of his brain, along with the unknown signal.

“D—5—5—f,” he read, and then, on to the end: “B—f—i—n—g 5—v—e—f w—h—e—n g g—5—e—s.”

That was all, apparently. The soft clatter of the fan against the arm of the chair ran on meaninglessly after that.