The Pawns Count Part 18

"I was a stowaway," he told her confidentially--"helped to shovel coals all the way over."

"Don't talk nonsense!" she protested a little sharply. "I dislike mysteries. Look at you! A stowaway, indeed! Tell me the truth at once?"

He leaned forward in his chair towards her. An ingenuous smile parted his lips. He had the air of a schoolboy repeating a mischievous secret.

"The fact is, Miss Van Teyl," he confided, "I don't want it talked about, you know, but I had a joy ride over."

"A what?"

"A joy ride," he repeated. "A cousin of mine is in command of a destroyer, and she was under orders to sail for New York. He hadn't the slightest right, really, to bring a pa.s.senger, as she was coming over on a special mission, but I had word about the trip over here, so I slipped on board late one night--not a word to any one, you understand--and--well, here I am. A more awful voyage," he went on impressively, "you couldn't imagine. I was sore all over within twenty-four hours of starting. There's practically no deck on those things, you know, for sitting out or anything of that sort. The British Navy's nowhere for comfort, I can tell you. The biggest liner for me, going back!"

Pamela was still a little dazed. Lutchester's story did not sound in the least convincing. For the moment, however, she accepted his account of himself.

"Tell me now," she begged, "about Captain Graham?"

"You haven't heard, then?"

"I have heard nothing. How should I hear?"

"I took him straight back to my rooms after we left you," Lutchester began. "He was in an awful state of nerves and drugs and drink. Then I put him to bed as soon as I could, and rang up a pal of mine at the War Office to take him in hand."

"Do you believe," she asked curiously, "that he had really been robbed of his formula?"

"Those amiable people who were interviewing him in the chapel seemed to think so," Lutchester observed.

"But you! What do you think?" she persisted. He smiled in superior fas.h.i.+on.

"I find it rather hard to bring myself to believe that any one would take the trouble," he confided. "I have heard it said in my department that there have been thirty-one new explosives invented since the beginning of the war. Two of them only are in use, and they're not much better than the old stuff."

Pamela nodded understandingly.

"All the same," she remarked, "I am not at all sure that was the case with Captain Graham's invention. There were rumours for days before that something wonderful was happening on Salisbury Plain. They had to cover up whole acres of ground after his last experiments, and a man who was down there told me that it seemed just as though the life had been sucked out of it."

"Where did you collect all this information?" her visitor inquired.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"One hears everything in London."

Lutchester was sitting with his finger-tips pressed together. For a moment his attention seemed fixed upon them.

"There are things," he said, "which one hears, too, in the far corners of the world--on the Atlantic, for instance."

"You have had some news?" she interrupted.

"It is really a private piece of information," he told her, "and it won't be in the papers--not the way the thing happened, anyway--but I don't suppose there's any harm in telling you, as we were both more or less mixed up in the affair. Graham was shot the next day, on his way up to Northumberland."

"Shot?" she exclaimed incredulously.

"Murdered, if you'd like the whole thrill," Lutchester continued. "Of course, we didn't get many particulars in the wireless, but we gathered that he was shot by some one pa.s.sing him in a more powerful car on a lonely stretch of the Great North Road."

Pamela shuddered. She was for the moment profoundly impressed. A certain air of unreality which had hung over the events of that night was suddenly banished. The whole tragedy rose up before her eyes. The effect of it was almost stupefying.

"Gave me quite a shock," Lutchester confided. "Somehow or other I had never been able to take that night quite seriously. There was more than a dash of melodrama in it, wasn't there? Seems now as though those fellows must have been in earnest, though."

"And as though Captain Graham's formula," she reminded him gravely, "was the real thing."

"Whereupon," Lutchester observed, "our first interest in the affair receives a certain stimulus. Some one stole the formula. To judge from the behaviour of those amiable gentlemen connected with Henry's Restaurant, it wasn't they. Some one had been before them. Have you any theories, Miss Van Teyl?"

"I can tell you who has," she replied. "Do you remember when we were all grouped around that notice--Mefiez-vous! Taisez-vous! Les oreilles ennemies vous ecoutent!?"

"Of course I do," he a.s.sented.

"Do you remember Baron Sunyea making a remark afterwards? He had been standing by and heard everything Graham said."

"Can't say that I do," Lutchester regretted, "but I remember seeing him about the place."

"You promise to say or do nothing without my permission, if I tell you something?" she went on.

"Naturally!"

"See, then, how diplomacy or secret service work, or whatever you like to call it, can gather the ends of the world together! Only a quarter of an hour ago that j.a.panese valet of my brother's, having searched my rooms in vain, demanded from me that formula!"

"From you?" Lutchester gasped. "But you haven't got it!"

"Of course not. On the other hand Sunyea pitched upon me as being one of the possible thieves, and cabled his instructions over."

"Have you got it?" he asked abruptly.

"If I had," she smiled, "I should not tell you."

"But come," he expostulated, "the thing's no use to you."

"So Baron Sunyea evidently thought," she laughed. "We'll leave that, if you don't mind."

Lutchester was still looking a little bewildered.

"I had an idea when I came in," he muttered, "that things were a little sc.r.a.ppy between you and the j.a.panese gentleman."

She was suddenly serious.

"Now that I have told you the truth," she said, "I really ought to thank you. You certainly seem to have a knack of appearing when you are wanted."

"Fluke this time, I'm afraid," he acknowledged, "but I rather like the suggestion. You ought to see a great deal of me, Miss Van Teyl. Do you realise that I am a stranger in New York, and any hospitality you can show me may be doubly rewarded? Are you going to take me round and show me the sights?"

"Are you going to have any time for sight-seeing?"

"Well, I hope so. Why not? A fellow can't do more than a certain number of hours' work in a day."