From her pretty lips rang out a merry ripple of laughter, and over her sweet face spread a mischievous look.
"I admit the allegation, M'sieur Jacox," was her rather saucy response in French. "But I had no idea you would again recognise me."
"Ah, mademoiselle, beauty such as yours is not universal, and is always to be remembered," I said, with an expression of mock reproval.
"Now, why do you flatter me--you?" she asked, "especially after what passed at Caux."
"Surely I may be permitted to admire you, Suzette? Especially as I am now aware of the truth."
She started, and stared at me for a moment, a neat little figure in black. Then she gave her shoulders a slight shrug, pouting like a spoiled child.
There were none to overhear us. It was out of the season in Paris, and on that afternoon, the 15th of August, 1908, to be exact, we had driven by "auto" into the Bois, and were taking our "five o'clock" under the trees at Pre Catalan, that well-known restaurant in the centre of the beautiful pleasure wood of the Parisians.
I had serious business with Suzette Darbour.
After our success in preventing the plans of the improved _Dreadnoughts_ falling into German hands, I had, at Ray's suggestion, left Charing Cross in search of the dainty little divinity before me, the neat-waisted girl with the big dark eyes, the tiny mouth, and the cheeks that still bore the bloom of youth upon them--the girl who, at the Hotel d'Angleterre, in Copenhagen, had been known as Vera Yermoloff, of Riga, and who had afterwards lived in the gay little watering-place of Caux under the same name, and had so entirely deceived me--the girl whom I now knew to be the catspaw of others--in a word, a decoy!
Yet how sweet, how modest her manner, how demure she looked as she sat there before me at the little table beneath the trees, sipping her tea and lifting her smiling eyes to mine. Even though I had told her plainly that I was aware of the truth, she remained quite unconcerned. She had no fear of me apparently. For her, exposure and the police had no terrors. She seemed rather amused than otherwise.
I lit a cigarette, and by so doing obtained time for reflection.
My search had led me first to the Midi, thence into Italy, across to Sebenico in Dalmatia, to Venice, and back to Paris, where only that morning, with the assistance of my old friend of my student days in the French capital, Gaston Bernard, of the Prefecture of Police, I had succeeded in running her to earth. I had only that morning found her residing with a girl friend--a seamstress at Duclerc's--in a tiny flat _au cinquieme_ in a frowsy old house at the top of the Rue Pigalle, and living in her own name, that of Suzette Darbour.
And as I sat smoking I wondered if I dared request her assistance.
In the course of my efforts to combat the work of German spies in England I had been forced to make many queer friendships, but none perhaps so strange as the one I was now cultivating. Suzette Darbour was, I had learned from Ray Raymond a few months ago, a decoy in association with a very prince of swindlers, an American who made his head-quarters in Paris, and who had in the past year or two effected amazing _coups_, financial and otherwise, in the various capitals of Europe.
Her age was perhaps twenty-two, though certainly she did not look more than eighteen. She spoke both English and Russian quite well, for, as she had told me long ago, she had spent her early days in Petersburg.
And probably in those twenty years of her life she had learnt more than many women had learned in forty.
Hers was an angelic face, with big, wide-open, truthful eyes, but her heart was, I knew, cold and callous.
Could I--dare I--take her into my service--to assist me in a matter of the most vital importance to British interests? The mission upon which I was engaged at that moment was both delicate and difficult. A single false move would mean exposure.
I was playing a deep game, and it surely behoved me to exercise every precaution. During the years I had been endeavouring to prove the peril to which England was exposed from foreign invasion, I had never been nearer failure than now. Indeed, I held my breath each time I recollected all that depended upon my success.
Ray Raymond, Vera Vallance, and myself had constituted ourselves into a little band with the object of combating the activity of the ingenious spies of the Kaiser. Little does the average Englishman dream of the work of the secret agent, or how his success or failure is reflected in our diplomatic negotiations with the Powers. Ambassadors and ministers may wear smart uniforms with glittering decorations, and move in their splendid embassies surrounded by their brilliant staffs; attaches may flirt, and first secretaries may take tea with duchesses, yet to the spy is left the real work of diplomacy, for, after all, it is upon the knowledge he obtains that His Excellency the Ambassador frames his despatch to his Government, or the Minister for Foreign Affairs presents a "Note" to the Powers.
We had for months been working on without publicity, unheeded, unrecognised, unprotected, unknown. A thankless though dangerous task, our only reward had been a kind word from the silent, sad-faced Prime Minister himself. For months our whereabouts had been unknown, even to each other. Ray generally scented the presence of spies, and it was for me to carry through the inquiry in the manner which I considered best and safest for myself.
"Suzette," I said at length, looking at her across the rising smoke from my cigarette, "when we last met you had the advantage of me. To-day we stand upon even ground."
"Pardon! I don't quite understand?" asked the little lady in the sheath costume with just a slight tremor of the eyelids.
"Well--I have discovered that you and Henry Banfield are friends--that to you he owes much of his success, and that to you is the credit of a little affair in Marienbad, which ended rather unpleasantly for a certain hosiery manufacturer from Chemnitz named Muller."
Her faced blanched, her eyes grew terrified, and her nails clenched themselves into her white palms.
"Ah! Then you--you have found me, m'sieur, for purposes of revenge--you--you intend to give me over to the police because of the fraud I practised upon you! But I ask you to have pity for me," she begged in French. "I am a woman--and--and I swear to you that I was forced to act towards you as I did."
"You forced open my despatch-box, believing that I carried valuables there, and found, to your dismay, only a few papers."
"I was compelled to do so by Banfield," she said simply. "He mistook you for another man, a diplomat, and believed that you had certain important documents with you."
"Then he made a very great mistake," I laughed. "And after your clever love-making with me you only got some extracts from a Government report, together with a few old letters."
"From those letters we discovered who you really were," mademoiselle said. "And then we were afraid."
I smiled.
"Afraid that I would pay Banfield back in his own coin, eh?"
"I was afraid. He was not, for he told me that if you attempted any reprisal, he would at once denounce you to the Germans."
"Thanks. I'm glad you've told me that," I said, with feigned unconcern.
Truth to tell, however, I was much upset by the knowledge that the cunning American who so cleverly evaded the police had discovered my present vocation.
Yet, after all, had not the explanation of the pretty girl before me rather strengthened my hand?
"Well, Suzette," I said, with a moment's reflection, "I have not sought you in order to threaten you. On the contrary, I am extremely anxious that we should be friends. Indeed, I want you, if you will, to do me a service."
She looked me straight in the face, apparently much puzzled.
"I thought you were my enemy," she remarked.
"That I am not. If you will only allow me, I will be your friend."
Her fine eyes were downcast, and I fancied I detected in them the light of unshed tears. How strange it was that upon her attitude towards me should depend a nation's welfare!
"First, you must forgive me for my action at Caux," she said in a low, earnest voice, scarce above a whisper. "You know my position, alas! I dare not disobey that man who holds my future so irrevocably in his hands."
"He threatens you, then?"
"Yes. If I disobeyed any single one of his commands, he would deliver me over at once to the police for a serious affair--a crime, however, of which I swear to you that I am innocent--the crime of murder!"
"He holds threats over you," I said, tossing away my cigarette.
"Describe the affair to me."
"It is the crime of the Rue de Royat, two years ago. You no doubt recollect it," she faltered, after some hesitation. "A Russian lady, named Levitsky, was found strangled in her flat and all her jewellery taken."
"And Banfield charges you with the crime?"
"I admit that I was in the apartment when the crime was committed--decoyed there for that purpose--but I am not the culprit."
"But surely you could prove the identity of the assassin?"
"I saw him for an instant. But I had no knowledge of who he was."