The Zeppelin's Passenger by E. Phillips Oppenheim (romantic novels to read txt) 📕

“So you say, but when they ask me what you are doing, as they all did in London this time, and I reply that you can’t get a job, there is generally a polite little silence. No one believes it. I don’t believe it.”

“Philippa!”

Sir Henry turned in his chair. His cigar was burning now idly between his fingers. His heavy eyebrows were drawn together.

“Well, I don’t,” she reiterated. “You can be angry, if you will - in fact I think I should prefer you to be angry. You take no pains at the Admiralty. You just go there and come away again, once a year or something like that. Why, if I were you, I wouldn’t leave the place until they’d found me something - indoors or outdoors, what does it matter so long as your hand is on the wheel and you are doing your little for your country? But you - what do you care? You went to town to get a job - and you come back with new mackerel spinners! You are off fishing tomorrow morning with Jimmy Dumble. Somewhere up in the North Sea, to-day and tomorrow and the next day, men are giving their lives for their country. What do you care? You will sit there smoking your pipe and catching dabs!”

“Do you know you are almost offensive, Philippa?” her husband said quietly.

“I want to be,” she retorted. “I should like you to feel that I am. In any case, this will probably be the last conversation I shall hold with you on the subject.”

“Well, thank God for that, anyway! “he observed, strolling to the chimneypiece and selecting a pipe from a rack. “I think you’ve said about enough.”

“I haven’t finished,” she told him ominously.

“Then for heaven’s sake get on with it and let’s have it over,” he begged.

“Oh, you’re impossible!” Philippa exclaimed bitterly. “Listen. I give you one chance more. Tell me the truth? Is there anything in your health of which I do not know? Is there any possible explanation of your extraordinary behaviour which, for some reason or other, you have kept to yourself? Give me your whole confidence.”

Sir Henry, for a moment, was serious enough. He stood looking down at her a little wistfully.

“My dear,” he told her, “I have nothing to say except this. You are my very precious wife. I have loved you and trusted you since the day of our marriage. I am content to go on loving and trusting you, even though things should come under my notice which I do not understand. Can’t you accept me the same way?”

Philippa, rnomentarily uneasy, was nevertheless rebellious.

“Accept you the same way? How can I! There is nothing in my life to compare in any way with the tragedy of your - “

She paused, as though unwilling to finish the sentence. He waited patiently, however, for her to proceed.

“Of my what?”

Philippa compromised.

“Lethargy,” she pronounced triumphantly.

“An excellent word,” he murmured.

“It is too mild a one, but you are my husband,” she remarked.

“That reminds me,” he said quietly. “You are my wife.”

“I know it,” she admitted, “but I am also a woman, and there are limits to my endurance. If you can give me no explanation of your behaviour, Henry, if you really have no intention of changing it, then there is only one course left open for me.”

“That sounds rather alarming - what is it?” he demanded.

Philippa lifted her head a little. This was the pronouncement towards which she had been leading.

“From to-day,” she declared, “I cease to be your wife.”

His fingers paused in the manipulation of the tobacco with which he was filling his pipe. He turned and looked at her.

“You what?”

“I cease to be your wife.”

“How do you manage that? he asked.

“Don’t jest,” she begged. “It hurts me so. What I mean is surely plain enough. I will continue to live under your roof if you wish it, or I am perfectly willing to go back to Wood Norton. I will continue to bear your name because I must, but the other ties between us are finished.”

“You don’t mean this, Philippa,” he said gravely. “But I do mean it,” she insisted. “I mean every word I have spoken. So far as I am concerned, Henry, this is your last chance.”

There was a knock at the door. Mills entered with a note upon a salver. Sir Henry took it up, glanced questioningly at his wife, and tore open the envelope.

“There will be no answer, Mills,” he said.

The man withdrew. Sir Henry read the few lines thoughtfully:-

Police-station, Dreymarsh SIR,

According to enquiries made I find that Mr. Hamar Lessingham arrived at the Hotel this evening in time for dinner. His luggage arrived by rail yesterday. It is presumed that he came by motor-car, but there is no car in the garage, nor any mention of one. His room was taken for him by Miss Fairclough, ringing up for Lady Cranston about seven o’clock.

Respectfully yours, JOHN HAYLOCK.

“Is your note of interest?” Philippa enquired.

“In a sense, yes,” he replied, thrusting it into his waistcoat pocket. “I presume we can consider our late subject of conversation finished with?”

“I have nothing more to say,” she pronounced.

“Very well, then,” her husband agreed, “let us select another topic. This time, supposing I choose?”

“You are welcome.”

“Let us converse, then, about Mr. Hamar Lessingham.”

Philippa had taken up her work. Her fingers ceased their labours, but she did not look up.

“About Mr. Hamar Lessingham,” she repeated. “Rather a limited subject, I am afraid.”

“I am not so sure,” he said thoughtfully. “For instance, who is he?”

“I have no idea,” she replied. “Does it matter? He was at college with Richard, and he has been a visitor at Wood Norton. That is all that we know. Surely it is sufficient for us to offer him any reasonable hospitality?”

=20

“I am not disputing it,” Sir Henry assured her. “On the face of it, it seems perfectly reasonable that you should be civil to him. On the other hand, there are one or two rather curious points about his coming here just now.”

“Really?” Philippa murmured indifferently, bending a little lower over her work.

“In the first place,” her husband continued, “how did he arrive here?”

“For all I know,” she replied, “he may have walked.”

“A little unlikely. Still, he didn’t come from London by either of the evening trains, and it seems that you didn’t take his rooms for him until about seven o’clock, before which time he hadn’t been to the hotel. So, you see, one is driven to wonder how the mischief he did get here.”

“I took his rooms?” Philippa repeated, with a sudden little catch at her heart.

“Some one from here rang up, didn’t they?” Sir Henry went on carelessly. “I gathered that we were introducing him at the hotel.”

“Where did you hear that?” she demanded.

He shrugged his shoulders, but avoided answering the question.

“I have no doubt,” he continued, “that the whole subject of Mr. Hamar Lessingham is scarcely worth discussing. Yet he does seem to have arrived here under a little halo of coincidence.”

“I am afraid I have scarcely appreciated that,” Philippa remarked; “in fact, his coming here has seemed to me the most ordinary thing in the world. After all, although one scarcely remembers that since the war, this is a health resort, and the man has been ill.”

“Quite right,” Sir Henry agreed. “You are not going to bed, dear?”

Philippa had folded up her work. She stood for a moment upon the hearth-rug. The little hardness which had tightened her mouth had disappeared, her eyes had softened.

“May I say just one word more,” she begged, “about our previous - our only serious subject of conversation? I have tried my best since we were married, Henry, to make you happy.”

“You know quite well,” ‘he assured her, “that you have succeeded.”

“Grant me one favour, then,” she pleaded. “Give up your fishing expedition tomorrow, go back to London by the first train and let me write to Lord Rayton. I am sure he would do something for you.”

“Of course he’d do something!” Her husband groaned. “I should get a censorship in Ireland, or a post as instructor at Portsmouth.”

“Wouldn’t you rather take either of those than nothing?” she asked, “than go on living the life you are living now?”

“To be perfectly frank with you, Philippa, I wouldn’t,” he declared bluntly. “What on earth use should I be in a land appointment? Why, no one could read my writing, and my nautical science is entirely out of date. Why a cadet at Osborne could floor me in no time.”

“You refuse to let me write, then?” she persisted.

“Absolutely.”

“You intend to go on that fishing expedition with Jimmy Dumble tomorrow?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for anything,” he confessed.

Philippa was suddenly white with anger.

“Henry, I’ve finished,” she declared, holding out her hand to keep him away from her. “I’ve finished with you entirely. I would rather be married to an enemy who was fighting honourably for his country than to you. What I have said, I mean. Don’t come near me. Don’t try to touch me.”

She swept past him on her way to the door.

“Not even a good-night kiss?” he asked, stooping down.

She looked him in the eyes.

“I am not a child,” she said scornfully.

He closed the door after her. For a moment he remained as though undecided whether to follow or not. His face had softened with her absence. Finally, however, he turned away with a little shrug of the shoulders, threw himself into his easy-chair and began to smoke furiously.

The telephone bell disturbed his reflection. He rose at once and took up the receiver.

“Yes, this is 19, Dreymarsh. Trunk call? All right, I am here.”

He waited until another voice came to him faintly.

“Cranston?”

“Speaking.”

“That’s right. The message is Odino Berry, you understand? O-d-i-n-o b-e-r-r-y.”

“I’ve got it,” Sir Henry replied. “Good night!” He hung up the receiver, crossed the room to his desk, unlocked one of the drawers, and produced a black memorandum book, secured with a brass lock. He drew a key from his watch chain, opened the book, and ran his fingers down the 0’s.

“Odino,” he muttered to himself. “Here it is: ‘We have trustworthy information from Berlin.’ Now Berry.” He turned back. “‘You are being watched by an enemy secret service agent.’”

He relocked the cipher book and replaced it in the desk. Then he strolled over to his easy-chair and helped himself to a whisky and soda from the tray which Mills had just arranged upon the sideboard.

“We have trustworthy information from Berlin,” he repeated to himself, “that you are being watched by an enemy secret service agent.”