The Zeppelin's Passenger Part 42

"That is just what I am seriously thinking of doing," she confided.

Helen affected to laugh, but her mirth was obviously forced. Their conversation ceased perforce with the return of Mills into the room.

Then the wonderful thing happened. The windows of the dining room faced the drive to the house and both women could clearly see a motor car turn in at the gate and stop at the front door. It was obviously a hired car, as the driver was not in livery, but the tall, mulled-up figure in unfamiliar clothes who occupied the front seat was for the moment a mystery to them. Only Helen seemed to have some wonderful premonition of the truth, a premonition which she was afraid to admit even to herself.

Her hand began to shake. Philippa looked at her in amazement.

"You look as though you had seen a ghost, Helen!" she exclaimed. "Who on earth can it be, coming at this time of the day?"

Helen was speechless, and Philippa divined at once the cause of her agitation. She sprang to her feet.

"Helen, you don't imagine--" she gasped. "Listen!"

There was a voice in the hail--a familiar voice, though strained a little and hoa.r.s.e; Mills' decorous greetings, agitated but fervent. And then--Major Richard Felstead!

"d.i.c.k!" Helen screamed, as she threw herself into his arms. "Oh, d.i.c.k!

d.i.c.k!"

It was an incoherent, breathless moment. Somehow or other, Philippa found herself sharing her brother's embrace. Then the fire of questions and answers was presently interrupted by Mills, triumphantly bearing in a fresh dish of curry.

"What will the Major take to drink, your ladys.h.i.+p?" he asked.

Felstead laughed a little chokingly.

"Upon my word, there's something wonderfully sound about Mills!" he said. "It's a ghoulish thing to ask for in the middle of the day, isn't it, Philippa, but can I have some champagne?"

"You can have the whole cellarful," Philippa a.s.sured him joyously. "Be sure you bring the best, Mills."

"The Perrier Jonet 1904, your ladys.h.i.+p," was the murmured reply.

Mills' disappearance was very brief, and in a very few moments they found themselves seated once more at the table. They sat one on either side of him, watching his gla.s.s and his plate. By degrees their questions and his answers became more intelligible.

"When did you get here?" they wanted to know.

"I arrived in Harwich about daylight this morning," he told them; "came across from Holland. I hired a car and drove straight here."

"When did you know you were coming home?" Helen asked.

"Only two days ago," he replied. "I never was so surprised in my life.

Even now I can't realise my good luck. I can't see what I've done. The last two months, in fact, seem to me to have been a dream. Jove!" he went on, as he drank his wine, "I never thought I should be such a pig as to care so much for eating and drinking!"

"And think what weeks of it you have before you?" Helen explained, clapping her hands. "Philippa and I will have a new interest in life--to make you fat."

He laughed.

"It won't be very difficult," he promised them. "I had several months of semi-starvation before the miracle happened. It was all just the chance of having had a pal up at Magdalen who's been serving in the German Army--Bertram Maderstrom was his name. You remember him, Philippa? He was a Swede in those days."

"What a dear he must have been to have remembered and to have been so faithful!" Philippa observed, looking away for a moment.

"He's a real good sort," Felstead declared enthusiastically, "although Heaven knows why he's turned German! He worked like a slave for me. I dare say he didn't find it so difficult to get me better quarters and a servant, and decent food, but when they told me that I was free--well, it nearly knocked me silly."

"The dear fellow!" Philippa murmured pensively.

"Do you remember him, either of you?" Felstead continued. "Rather good-looking he was, and a little shy, but quite a sportsman."

"I--seem to remember," Philippa admitted.

"The name sounds familiar," Helen echoed. "Do have some more chutney, d.i.c.k."

"Thanks! What a pig I am making of myself!" he observed cheerfully.

"You girls will think I can't talk about any one but Maderstrom, but the whole business beats me so completely. Of course, we were great pals, in a way, but I never thought that I was the apple of his eye, or anything of that sort. How he got the influence, too, I can't imagine. And oh!

I knew there was something else I was going to ask you girls,"

Felstead went on. "Have you ever had a letter, or rather a letter each, uncensored? Just a line or two? I think I mentioned Maderstrom which I should not have been allowed to do in the ordinary prison letters."

Felstead was helping himself to cheese, and he saw nothing of the quick glance which pa.s.sed between the two women.

"Yes, we had them, d.i.c.k," Philippa told him. "It was one afternoon--it doesn't seem so very long ago. And oh, how thankful we were!"

Felstead nodded.

"He got them across all right, then. Tell me, did they come through Holland? What was the postmark?"

"The postmark," Philippa repeated, a little doubtfully. "You heard what d.i.c.k asked, Helen? The postmark?"

"I don't think there was one," Helen replied, glancing anxiously at Philippa.

Felstead set down his gla.s.s.

"No postmark? You mean no foreign postmark, I suppose? They were posted in England, eh?"

Philippa shook her head.

"They came to us, d.i.c.k," she said, "by hand."

Felstead was, without a doubt, astonished. He turned round in his chair towards Philippa.

"By hand?" he repeated. "Do you mean to say that they were actually brought here by hand?"

Perhaps something in his manner warned them. Philippa laughed as she bent over his chair.

"We will tell you how they came, presently," she declared, "but not until you have finished your lunch, drunk the last drop of that champagne, and had at least two gla.s.ses of the port that Mills has been decanting so carefully. After that we will see. Just now I have only one feeling, and I know that Helen has it, too. Nothing else matters except that we have you home again."

Felstead patted his sister on the cheek, drew her face down to his and kissed her.

"It's so wonderful to be at home!" he exclaimed apologetically. "But I must warn you that I am the rabidest person alive. I went out to the war with a certain amount of respect for the Germans. I have come back loathing them like vermin. I spent--but I won't go on."

Mills made his appearance with the decanter of port.

"I beg your ladys.h.i.+p's pardon," he said, as he filled Felstead's gla.s.s, "but Mr. Lessingham has arrived and is in the library, waiting to see you."