Book: The False Faces

V >> Vance, Louis Joseph >> The False Faces




If his attire was radiant, so was the temper of the secretary sunny. He
tripped forward in sprightliest fashion, offering cordial hands to the
caller till he recognized him, and even then was discountenanced only for
the briefest moment.

"My dear Mr. Ember!" he purred soothingly--"why didn't you tell me last
night it was you who had sent that telegram? If I had for a moment
suspected the truth you should have had your appointment with Colonel
Stanistreet at any hour you might have cared to name, no matter how
ungodly!"

Lanyard bowed gravely. "Thank you," he said. "And Colonel Stanistreet--?"

"Is just finishing breakfast. He will be down directly. Please be seated,
make yourself entirely at ease. And will you excuse me--?"

"With pleasure," Lanyard assured him, his gravity unbroken.

A doubt clouded Mr. Blensop's bright eyes, but its transit was
instantaneous. He turned forthwith to join the iron-gray man before the
portrait which concealed the safe.

"And now, Mr. Stone," said Mr. Blensop, with indulgence.

"Well, sir," said Mr. Stone quietly, "if you'll be good enough to show me
how this contraption works, maybe I'll find out something interesting,
maybe not."

Mr. Blensop proceeded to oblige by operating the lever and sliding aside
the portrait.

"Thanks," said Mr. Stone, producing a magnifying glass from a waistcoat
pocket and beginning to peer myopically at the face of the safe. "I take
it nobody's been pawing over this since the late, as you might say,
unpleasantness?"

"Not a soul has touched it. By Colonel Stanistreet's order it was covered
as soon as we found it had been tampered with."

"_Um-m_," Mr. Stone acknowledged, bending close to his work.

Partially, perhaps, by way of administering an urbane rebuke to Lanyard for
his readiness to dispense with his society, Mr. Blensop remained in
the neighbourhood of Mr. Stone, hovering round him like a domesticated
humming-bird.

"Do you find anything?" he enquired, when Stone straightened up.

"Fingerprints a-plenty," Mr. Stone admitted with a hint of temper--"a slew
of the damn things. Looks like you must've called in the neighbours to help
make a good show. However, we'll see what we can make of 'em."

He conjured from some recess in his clothing a squat bottle, from another a
stopper in which was fitted a blowpipe, joined the two together, approached
the safe with one end of the pipe between his lips and sprayed it with a
thin film of white powder, the contents of the bottle.

"I say, do tell me what that's for?"

"That," said Mr. Stone patiently, "is to make the fingerprints stand out,
so we can get a good likeness of 'em."

He put the bottle aside, blinked at the safe approvingly, and by further
exercise of powers of legerdemain materialized a pocket kodak and a
flashlight pistol.

"Can't I help you?" Blensop offered eagerly. "I used to be rather a dab at
amateur photography, you know."

"Well, I'm kind of stuck on pressing the button myself," Stone confessed,
adjusting the focus. "But if you want to work that flashlight, I don't
mind."

"Delighted," Mr. Blensop asserted. "How does it go, now?"

"Like this." Stone set his camera down to demonstrate. "Now just stand
behind me," he concluded, "and pull the trigger when I say 'now'."

"I'll do my best, but--I say--will it bang?"

Stone had taken up the camera once more. His sole answer was a grunt upon
which his hearers placed two distinct interpretations--Lanyard's affording
him considerable gratification.

"If you're ready," said Stone--"_now_"

Mr. Blensop squinted unbecomingly and pressed the trigger. A vivid flare
lifted from the pan of the pistol, and winked out in a cloud of vapour,
slowly dissipating.

"Is that all?"

"Yes, sir--that's all of that." Stone stowed the camera away about his
person and from another cranny produced a small cardboard box of glass
slides, one of which he offered. "Now if you'll just run your fingers
through your hair and rest them on this slide, light but steady...."

"What for?" Blensop demanded with a giggle of nervous reluctance. "You
don't think I'm the thief, do you?"

"No, sir, I don't. But if I haven't got your fingerprints, how am I going
to tell them from the thief's?"

"Oh, I see," Blensop said with a note of allayed apprehension, and put
himself on record.

The door opening to admit Colonel Stanistreet, Lanyard rose. At sight of
him the Englishman checked and stared enquiringly, his eyes shadowed by
careworn brows; for it was apparent that, if the events of the night had
not depressed the spirits of the secretary, his employer had known little
sleep or none since the burglary.

"Colonel Stanistreet," Blensop said melodiously, abandoning Stone to his
unsupervised devices, "this is Mr. Ember, the gentleman who called last
night before you got home. It appears he is the person who sent us that
telegram from Edgartown day before yesterday."

"Indeed? Ember is not the name with which the message was signed."

"The message was purposely left unsigned," Lanyard explained.

Stanistreet nodded approval. "I am glad to meet you, Mr. Ember," he said,
offering a hand. "Be seated. I am most anxious first to express our
gratitude, next to learn how you came by your information."

"You will find it an interesting story."

"No doubt of that." Stanistreet took the desk chair, opened a cigar
humidor, and offered it. "I shall be even more interested, however," he
said with an evanescent trace of humour, "to know who the devil you are,
sir."

"That is something I am prepared to prove to your satisfaction."

"If you will be so good.... But excuse me for one moment." Stanistreet
turned in his chair. "Mr. Stone?"

"Yes, sir."

"Have you finished with the safe? If so, I want my secretary to check over
its contents carefully and make sure nothing else is missing."

"I'm all through with it, Colonel Stanistreet. Now, if you don't mind,
I'm going to mouse around and see if I can nose out anything else that's
useful."

"That shall be entirely as you will. Now, Blensop"--Stanistreet nodded to
the secretary--"let us make certain...."

"Yes, sir."

Blithely Mr. Blensop addressed himself to the safe.

"There has been an accident of some sort, Colonel Stanistreet?" Lanyard
enquired civilly, nodding toward the shattered French window.

"A burglary, sir."

"The criminal escaped--?"

Stanistreet nodded. "Our watchman surprised him, and was shot for his
pains--not seriously, I'm happy to say. The burglar got himself tangled
up in that window, but extricated in time, and went over the garden wall
before we could determine which way he had taken."

"I trust you lost nothing of value?"

Stanistreet shrugged. "Unhappily, we did--a diamond necklace, the property
of my sister-in-law, and--ah--a document we could ill afford to part
with.... But you offered to show me credentials, I believe."

"Such as they are," Lanyard replied. "My passports and letters were stolen
from me. But these, I think, should serve as well to prove my bona fides."

He laid out in order upon the desk his plunder from the safe aboard the
U-boat--all but the money--the three cipher codes, the log, the diary
of the commander, the directory of German secret agents, and such other
documents as he had selected.

The first Colonel Stanistreet took up with a dubious frown which swiftly
lightened, yielding, as he pursued his examination into the papers and
began to recognize their surpassing value to the Allied cause, to a subdued
glimmer of gratulatory excitement.

But he was at pains to satisfy himself as to the authenticity of each paper
in turn, providing a lull for which Lanyard was not ungrateful since it
gave him a chance to adjust his understanding to an unexpected development
in the affair.

He lounged at ease, smoking, his eyes, half-veiled by lowered lids, keenly
reviewing the room and its tenants.

Stone, the detective (an operative, Lanyard rightly inferred, of the
American Secret Service, loaned to the British in order to keep the
burglary out of police records and newspapers), had wandered out into the
garden that glowed with young April sunlight beyond the windows. From
time to time he was to be seen stooping and inspecting the earth with the
gravity of an earnest, efficient, sober-sided sleuth of the old school.

Blensop was busy before the safe, extracting the contents of each
pigeonhole in turn, thumbing its dockets of papers, checking each off upon
a typewritten list several pages in length.

To that lithe and debonair figure Lanyard's gaze oftenest reverted.

So not only had the necklace been stolen but "a document" which the British
Secret Service "could ill afford to part with"!

Lanyard entertained no least doubt as to the identity of the document in
question. There could be but one, he felt, which Stanistreet would so
characterize.

That document had not been in the safe when Lanyard had opened it at
midnight.

After a moment Mr. Blensop uttered a musical note of vexation. The lead of
his pencil had broken. He threw it pettishly aside, came over to the desk,
took up a penholder, dipped it in the ink-well, and returned to his task.




XXII

CHICANE


Colonel Stanistreet put down the last of the papers and slapped his hand
upon it resoundingly.

"This is one of the most remarkable collections of data, I venture to
assert, that has ever come into the hands of the British Government. Have
you any idea of its value?"

Lanyard lifted a whimsical eyebrow. "Some," he admitted drily.

"And what do you ask for it, sir?"

"Nothing."

The gaze of the Englishman bored into his eyes; but he met their challenge
with an unshaken countenance, smiling.

"My dear sir," Stanistreet demanded--"who are you?"

"The name under which I sailed for New York on board the _Assyrian_,"
Lanyard announced quietly, "was André Duchemin."

Disturbed by a startled exclamation, together with a sound of shuffling and
a slight thump, he looked round in mild curiosity to see Blensop staggered
and astare, standing over a litter of documents which had slipped from his
grasp to the floor. Mastering his emotion quickly enough, the secretary
knelt with a mumbled apology and began to pick up the papers.

With no more notice of the incident Lanyard returned undivided attention to
Colonel Stanistreet.

"I had another name," he confessed, "and a reputation none too savoury,
as, I daresay, you know. Through the courtesy of the British Intelligence
Office I was permitted to disguise these; but on the _Assyrian_ I was
recognized--in short, ran afoul of German Secret Service agents who knew
me, but whom I did not know. On the sixth night out circumstances conspired
to make me seem a serious obstacle to their schemes. Consequently I was
waylaid, robbed, and thrown overboard. Within the next few minutes a
torpedo struck the ship and the submarine which fired it came up under me
as I struggled to keep afloat. By passing myself off as a Boche spy, I
succeeded in inducing the commander to take me below, and so reached the
Martha's Vineyard base. There chance played into my hands: I contrived to
sink the U-boat and escape, as reported in my telegram."

During a brief silence he found opportunity to observe that Mr. Blensop was
working with hands that trembled singularly.

"Incredible!" Stanistreet commented.

"Yet here is proof," Lanyard asserted, indicating the papers beneath
Stanistreet's hand.

"My dear sir, I didn't mean--"

"Pardon!" Lanyard smiled, with a lifted hand. "I never thought you did,
Colonel Stanistreet. But it is your duty to make sure you are not imposed
upon by plausible adventurers. Therefore--since my papers have been
stolen--I am glad to be able to prove my identity with André Duchemin by
referring to survivors of the _Assyrian_ disaster, among others Mr. Sherry,
the second officer, Mr. Crane of the United States Secret Service, and a
countrywoman of yours, a Miss Cecelia Brooke, whose acquaintance I was
fortunate enough to make."

Stanistreet nodded heavily, and consulted his watch. "Miss Brooke," he
said, "should be here shortly. Blensop made an appointment with her last
night, which I confirmed by telephone this morning."

"Then, with permission, I shall remain and ask her to vouch for me,"
Lanyard suggested in resignation, since it appeared he was not to be
permitted to escape this girl, that destiny was not yet finished with their
entanglement.

"I shall be glad if you will, sir.... Monsieur Duchemin," Stanistreet
began, but hesitated--"or do you prefer another style?"

"I am content with Duchemin."

"That is a matter for your own discretion, but I should warn you it may
already have acquired an evil odour on this side. To my knowledge it has
been used within the last twenty-four hours, and the pretensions of its
wearer supported by your stolen credentials."

"I am not surprised," Lanyard stated reflectively. "A chap with a beard,
perhaps?"

"Why, yes...."

"Anderson," the adventurer nodded: "that, at least, was his alias when he
jockeyed himself into the second steward's berth aboard the _Assyrian_."

He glanced idly across the room, discovered Blensop once more at pause in a
stare, and grinned amiably.

"He came here last night," Stanistreet volunteered deliberately--
"representing himself as André Duchemin--to sell me a certain paper, the
same which subsequently, I am convinced, he returned to steal."

"And did," Lanyard added.

"And did," the Briton conceded. "Now you have told me who he is, I promise
you every effort shall be made to apprehend him and prevent further misuse
of the name you have assumed."

"It has," Lanyard said tersely.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I say every effort has been made--and successfully--to accomplish the ends
you mention."

"What's that you say?" Blensop demanded shrilly, crossing to the desk.

"My secretary," Stanistreet explained, "was present at the interview, and
is naturally interested."

"And very good of him, I'm sure," Lanyard agreed. "I was about to explain,
Mr. Blensop, that Ekstrom, alias Anderson, was killed in the course of
a raid on the Prussian spy headquarters in Seventy-ninth Street this
morning."

"Amazing!" Blensop gasped. "I am glad to hear it," he added, and went
slowly back to his task.

"I may as well tell you, sir," Lanyard pursued, "I have every reason to
believe the document sold you last night was one of those stolen from me."

Stanistreet wagged a contentious head.

"I cannot conceive how it could have come into your possession, sir."

"Simply enough. Miss Brooke requested me to take care of it for her."

The eyes of the Englishman grew stony. "Miss Brooke!" he repeated testily.
"I don't understand."

"It was a document--I do not seek to know its nature from you, sir--of
vital importance in this present crisis, with the United States newly
entered into the war."

Stanistreet affirmed with an inclination of his head.

"I may tell you this much, Monsieur Duchemin: if it had not reached this
country safely.... What am I saying? If it be not recovered without delay,
the chances of America's early and efficient participation in the war will
suffer a tremendous setback ... Blensop, be good enough to call up the
American Secret Service at once and ask whether the document in question
was found on the body of this--ah--Ekstrom."

"Pardon," Lanyard interposed as Blensop hesitantly approached the
telephone. "It would be a waste of time. I happen to know, because I was
there, that no such document was found on Ekstrom's body."

"The devil!" Stanistreet grumbled. "What can have become of it? This
business grows only the blacker the deeper one seeks to fathom it. I
must own myself completely at a loss. How it came into the hands of Miss
Brooke--"

"I can explain that, I think. The document was in the care of two
gentlemen, Mr. Bartholomew and Lieutenant Thackeray. The former was
murdered by the Huns in search of it, Lieutenant Thackeray murderously
assaulted. But for Miss Brooke's intervention the assassins must have
succeeded. As it was, the young woman herself found it and, one presumes,
took charge of it because her fiancé was incapacitated, and possibly with
the notion that she might thereby prevent further mischief of the same
nature."

"Her fiancé?" Stanistreet echoed blankly.

"Lieutenant Thackeray--"

"Her brother, sir!" the Briton laughed. "Thackeray was his nom de service."

It was Lanyard's turn to stare. "Ah!" he murmured. "A light begins to
dawn...."

"Upon me as well," Stanistreet confessed. "Miss Brooke and her brother are
orphans and, before the war, were inseparable companions. I do not doubt
that, learning he had been commissioned with an uncommonly perilous errand,
she booked passage by the _Assyrian_ without his consent, in order to be
near him in event of danger."

"This explains much," Lanyard conceded--"much that perplexed more than one
can say."

"But in no way advances us on the trail of the purloined document."

"I am afraid, sir," Lanyard lied deliberately, "you may as well abandon all
hope of ever seeing it again. Ekstrom made away with it: no question about
that. There was time enough and to spare between his exploit here and his
death for him to deliver it to safe hands. It is doubtless decoded by this
time, a copy of it already well on the way to the Wilhelmstrasse."

"I am afraid," Stanistreet echoed--"I am very much afraid you are right."

His thick, spatulate fingers of an executive drummed heavily upon the desk.

Stone's figure darkened the windows.

"Colonel Stanistreet?" he called diffidently.

"Yes, Mr. Stone?"

"There's something here I'd like to consult you about, sir, if you can
spare a minute."

"Certainly." The Englishman rose. "If you will excuse me, Monsieur
Duchemin...." Half way to the windows he hesitated. "By the bye, Blensop, I
wish you'd call up Apthorp and ask after Howson's condition."

"Very good, sir," Blensop intoned cheerfully.

"And do it without delay, please. I don't like to think of the poor fellow
suffering."

"Immediately, sir."

As his employer passed out into the garden with Stone, the secretary
discontinued his checking and came over to the desk, drawing up a chair and
sitting down to telephone. At the same time Lanyard got up and began to
pace thoughtfully to and fro.

"Howson is the wounded night watchman, I take it, Mr. Blensop?"

"Yes--an excellent fellow.... Schuyler nine, three hundred," Blensop cooed
into the transmitter.

Conceivably that ostensible discomfiture whose symptoms Lanyard had
remarked had been a transitory humour. Mr. Blensop was now in what seemed
the most equable and blithe of tempers. His very posture at the telephone
eloquently betokened as much: he had thrown himself into the chair with
picturesque nonchalance, sitting with body half turned from the desk, his
right hand holding the receiver to his ear, his left thrust carelessly
into his trouser pocket, thus dragging back the lapel of that impeccable
morning-coat and exposing the bright cap of his gold-mounted fountain pen.

Something in that implement seemed to possess for Lanyard overpowering
fascination. His gaze yearned for it, returned again and again to it.

He changed his course to stroll up and down behind Blensop, between him and
the safe.

"I understood Colonel Stanistreet to say the watchman was not seriously
injured, I believe," he observed, with interest.

"Shot through the shoulder, that is all.... Schuyler nine, three hundred?
Dr. Apthorp, please. This is Mr. Blensop speaking, secretary to Colonel
Stanistreet.... Are you there, Dr. Apthorp?"

With professional dexterity Lanyard en passant dropped a hand over the
young man's shoulder and lightly lifted the pen from its place in the
pocket of Blensop's waistcoat; the even tempo of his step unbroken, he
tossed it toward the safe, where it fell without sound upon a heavy Persian
rug.

"Yes--about Howson," the musical accents continued, "Colonel Stanistreet is
most solicitous...."

Swiftly Lanyard moved toward the safe, glanced through the French windows
to assure himself that Stanistreet and Stone were safely preoccupied,
whipped out the envelope he had prepared, and thrust it into a file of
papers which did not crowd its pigeonhole; accomplishing the complete
manoeuvre with such adroitness that, like the business of the pen, it
passed utterly without the knowledge of the secretary.

"Thank you so much. _Good_ morning, Dr. Apthorp."

Lanyard was passing the desk when Blensop rose, and the footman was
entering with his salver.

"A lady to see Colonel Stanistreet, sir--by appointment, she says."

Blensop glanced at the card. At the same time Stanistreet came in from the
garden, leaving Stone to potter about visibly in the distance.

"Miss Brooke is here, sir," the secretary announced.

"Ask her to come in, please."

The footman retired.

"Howson is resting easily, Dr. Apthorp reports," Blensop added, going back
to the safe. "Has Stone turned up anything of interest, sir?"

"Footprints," Stanistreet replied with a snort of moderate impatience.
"He's quite upset since I've informed him the man who made them is--"

"_Good God_!"

The interruption was Blensop's in a voice strangely out of tune.
Stanistreet wheeled sharply upon him.

"What the deuce--!" he snapped.

By every indication the secretary had suffered the most severe shock of his
experience. His face was ghastly, his eyes vacant; his knees shook beneath
him; one hand pressed convulsively the bosom of his waistcoat. His
endeavours to reply evoked only a husky, rattling sound.

"What the devil has come over you?" Stanistreet insisted.

The rattle became articulate: "I've lost it! It's gone!"

"What have you lost?"

"N-nothing, sir. That is--I mean to say--my fountain pen."

"The way you take it, I should say you'd lost your head," Stanistreet
commented. "You must have dropped the thing somewhere. Look about, see if
you can't find it."

Thus admonished, the secretary began to search the floor with frantic
glances, and as the footman ushered in Cecelia Brooke, Lanyard saw the
young man dart forward and retrieve the pen with a start of relief wellnigh
as unmanning as the shock of loss had seemed.

With that Lanyard's interest in the fellow waned; he was too poor a thing
to consider seriously; while here was one who compelled anew, as ever when
they met, the homage of sincere and marvelling admiration.

Yet another of those miracles of feminine adaptability and makeshift had
brought the girl to this meeting in the guise of one who had never known a
broken night or an hour's care, with a look of such fresh tranquility that
it seemed hardly possible she could be one and the same with that wilted
little woman whom Lanyard had left in the gray dawn at the entrance to the
Hotel Knickerbocker. A tailored suit, necessarily borrowed plumage, became
her so completely that it was difficult to believe it not her own. Her eyes
were calm and sweet with candour; her colour was a clear and artless glow;
the hand she offered the Briton was tremorless.

"Colonel Stanistreet?"

"I am he, Miss Brooke. It is kind of you to call so early to relieve my
mind about your brother. I have known Lionel so long...."

"He is resting easily," said the girl. "His complete recovery is merely a
matter of time and nursing."

"That is good news," said Stanistreet. "Monsieur Duchemin I believe you
know."

"I have been fortunate in that at least."

Gravely Lanyard saluted the hand extended to him in turn. "Mademoiselle is
most gracious," he said humbly.

"Then--I understand--Monsieur Duchemin must have told you--?" The girl
addressed Stanistreet.

"Permit me to leave you--" Lanyard interposed.

"No," she begged--"please not! I've nothing to say that you may not hear.
You have been too much involved--"

"If mademoiselle insists," Lanyard demurred. "I feel it is not right I
should stay. And yet--if you will indulge me--I should like very much to
demonstrate the truth of an old saw...."

Two confused looks were his response.

"I fear I, for one, do not follow," Stanistreet admitted.

"I will explain quite briefly," Lanyard promised. "The adage I have in mind
is as old as human wit: Set a thief to catch a thief. And the last time it
was quoted in my hearing, it was not to my advantage. I recall, indeed,
resenting it enormously."

He paused with purpose, looking down at the desk. A pad of blank paper
caught his eye. He took it up and examined it with an abstracted manner.

"Well, monsieur: the application of your adage?"

"Colonel Stanistreet, what would you think if I were to tell you the
combination of your safe?"

"I should be inclined to suspect that you were the devil," Stanistreet
chuckled.

"By all accounts a gentleman of intelligence: one is flattered.... Very
well: I proceed to demonstrate black art with the aid of this white
paper pad. The combination, monsieur, is as follows: nine, twenty-seven,
eighteen, thirty-six."

A low cry of bewilderment greeted this announcement. Blensop had drawn near
and was eyeing Lanyard as if under the influence of hypnotism.

"How--how do you know that?" he asked in a broken voice.

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