The Hand of Peril/Part 6/Chapter 4
IV
Abrupt as the crash of a stone through a conservatory-pane came the break in the silence which had enisled them. It came in the form of a knock on the door, peremptory, impatient, authoritative. It brought the world back about them, at a stroke. It reminded Kestner of why he was there, of a mission that had stood for the moment forgotten, of the danger that might still be ahead of them.
"Wait!" he said in a whisper as he started for the door. But before he could cross the room that door swung open and a man stepped inside.
The first thing about this man that impressed Kestner was his size. Yet an over-fastidiousness of apparel seemed to lend to the great figure a touch of the effeminate. He reminded the American of an Angle viking in a silk-lined Inverness. He made a figure that at first glance might pass unchallenged through the grand monde of Rome, yet beneath the immaculate raiment and the official-like posture of the shoulders lay some inalienable trace of the charlatan.
Kestner saw at a glance that the man was Watchel, at one time answering to the name of Wimpffen, and at still another known as Keudell. He knew it by the small sword-scars on the blonde cheek, by the deep-set eyes under the yellow lashes, by the grim and saturnine mouth with the touch of mockery about the heavy lips. He recalled certain things from Wilnach's wire, the murder of Eichendorff at Odessa, the court-martial at Boden, the Provincial Court case at Vienna over the Galician fortification betrayals, the earlier rumour of a year once spent in the penal mines of Siberia, the Livorno plot to smuggle the fruits of a winter's espionage out of Italy by concealing certain papers in the coffin of a British Admiral who had died at Pisa, There were other unsavoury details from equally unsavoury quarters. And remembering them, Kestner also remembered that knowledge was power. Yet his enemy seemed in no way discomfited by the American's calm stare of opposition.
"Herr Keudell, I believe?"
Kestner had the satisfaction of beholding the deep-set eyes betray one brief second of disquiet. But it was a second and no more.
"Herr Watchel," corrected the other. Kestner bowed.
"It's some time, Herr Watchel, since we've had the pleasure of meeting."
"It is," admitted Watchel. But the grim line of his mouth did not relax.
"At that last meeting, you may remember, I had occasion to inquire as to your particular business of the moment. I must now repeat that inquiry."
Watchel's movement was one of brusque impatience.
"My business is my own," was his coldly enunciated retort.
"In this room and the presence of this lady"—Watchel sniffed audibly at Kestner's ceremonial bow—"I fear that all business must first be referred to me."
"Why?" demanded Watchel.
"That I can explain when I recognise the necessity for doing so."
Watchel made a sign to the white-faced woman who stood so intently watching them.
"Get this man out of here," he commanded.
"That," was Kestner's easy retort, "may not be as simple as it appears."
Watchel threw back the silk-lined cape of his Inverness. Then he went to the door and opened it. Having done that, he took out a time-piece of heavily embossed gold.
"I will give you three minutes," he calmly announced. "Three minutes and no more!"
"And then?" suggested Kestner. The dull glow that burned through his body forewarned him that all his old fighting blood was again being stirred into life. It was the voice of Maura Lambert that broke the silence.
"Please go!" she timorously implored. The unlooked for note of anxiety in her voice made Kestner swing sharply about on her.
"You want me to?" he demanded, staring at her colourless face.
"Yes," she answered.
She did not look at him. She was staring intently at Watchel, as a child stares into an unlighted room through which it must pass.
"Then you'll tell me why," insisted Kestner. He was still further perplexed by her unconscious gesture of despair, by the tragic light in her troubled eyes.
"Tell him!" was Watchel's curt command.
She still stood at the far side of the room, but all the while that she spoke she kept watching the huge blonde figure facing Kestner.
"For two months I have been in this man's pay," she slowly and distinctly said.
"In this man's pay?" echoed Kestner.
"I was alone, and without money," she went determinedly on in her flat and unhurried monotone. "A dealer for whom I had copied eight gallery canvasses went away without paying me. I was in trouble about a studio I had taken from an English artist in the Via Cavour. I had to move to a cheap pension. And even there the same trouble presented itself."
"Go on," prompted Kestner.
"Then this man came to me, when I was making a copy of Raphael's Sybils in Santa Maria Delle Pace, for a Pittsburgh banker who countermanded the order when he found it wouldn't fit his dining-room. I seemed to be at the end of my rope. Then this man asked me to copy a signature for him. He said that a copy would be worth five hundred lire to him. I did it, in the end, and he paid me. Then he came again, saying that a friend of his held to have credentials and passports to take him through the Turkish lines to Adrianople."
"Go on," again commanded Kestner as she came to a stop.
"I put him off, day by day, until my money was gone and I was helpless again. There seemed no other way. Then I borrowed what money I could from the piccolo who used to run errands for me. I borrowed that money to cable to you at Washington. An answer came back saying you were no longer with the Department."
"And I never even knew," cried Kestner, taking a deep breath.
"I made copies of a passport," she went on, "and was paid for it. Then I copied a signature on the official paper of the Austrian Embassy, and was paid for that. Then this man came to me and said I would have to go with him to Corfu, where I could work with him on duplicates of the Toulon fortifications. I refused to go. He tried to force me to go, but that same day I met Sadie Wimpel in the Piazza di Spagna. Through her I got a commission to make gallery copies for an English dealer."
"Is that all?" demanded Kestner. His face was now almost as colourless as the woman's.
"Yes," she said in the same flat monotone as before.
Kestner turned slowly about, confronting the man who still stood with the time-piece in his hand.
"You can put away that watch," he announced with a steely incisiveness. He did not speak loudly, but from his eyes shone a white-heat of indignation which could not be concealed.
"Why can I?" asked Watchel, still making a pretence of viewing him with bland and rounded eyes.
"Because I'm going to thrash you within an inch of your life!" declared the American as he threw off his coat and tossed it into a corner of the room.