Elusive Isabel, by Jacques Futrelle (14 page)

His entire manner underwent a change; he drew a chair up to the table, and stood for an instant with his hand resting on the back.

“The compact is written in three languages—English, French and Italian. I shall ask you to sign, after reading either or all, precisely as the directions you have received from your home government instruct. On behalf of the three greatest Latin countries, as special envoy of each, I will sign first.”

He dropped into the chair, signed each of the three parchment pages three times, then rose and offered the pen to the cowled figure at one end of the semicircle. The man came forward, read the English transcript, studied the three signatures already there with a certain air of surprise, then signed. The second man signed, the third man, and the fourth.

The fifth had just risen to go forward when the door opened silently and Mr. Grimm entered. Without a glance either to right or left, he went straight toward the table, and extended a hand to take the compact.

For an instant there had come amazement, a dumb astonishment, at the intrusion. It passed, and the hand of the man who had done the talking darted out, seized the compact, and held it behind him.

“If you will be good enough to give that to me, your Highness,” suggested Mr. Grimm quietly.

For half a minute the masked man stared straight into the listless eyes of the intruder, and then:

“Mr. Grimm, you are in very grave danger.”

“That is beside the question,” was the reply. “Be good enough to give me that document.”

He backed away as he spoke, kicked the door closed with one heel, then leaned against it, facing them.

“Or better yet,” he went on after a moment, “burn it. There is a lamp in front of you.” He paused for an answer. “It would be absurd of me to attempt to take it by force,” he added.

There was a long, tense silence. The cowled figures had risen ominously; Miss Thorne paled behind her mask, and her fingers gripped her palms fiercely, still she sat motionless. Prince d’Abruzzi broke the silence. He seemed perfectly calm and self-possessed.

“How did you get in?” he demanded.

“Throttled your guard at the front door, took him down cellar and locked him in the coal-bin,” replied Mr. Grimm tersely. “I am waiting for you to burn it.”

“And how did you escape from—from the other place?”

Mr. Grimm shrugged his shoulders.

“The lamp is in front of you,” he said.

“And find your way here?” the prince pursued.

Again Mr. Grimm shrugged his shoulders. For an instant longer the prince gazed straight into his inscrutable face, then turned accusing eyes on the masked figures about him.

“Is there a traitor?” he demanded suddenly. His gaze settled on Miss Thorne and lingered there.

“I can relieve your mind on that point—there is not,” Mr. Grimm assured him. “Just a final word, your Highness, if you will permit me. I have heard everything that has been said here for the last fifteen minutes. The details of your percussion cap are interesting. I shall lay them before my government and my government may take it upon itself to lay them before the British government. You yourself said a few minutes ago that this compact was not possible before this cap was invented and perfected. It isn’t possible the minute my government is warned against its use. That will be my first duty.”

“You are giving some very excellent reasons, Mr. Grimm,” was the deliberate reply, “why you should not be permitted to leave this room alive.”

“Further,” Mr. Grimm resumed in the same tone, “I have been ordered to prevent the signing of that compact, at least in this country. It seems that I am barely in time. If it is signed—and it will be useless now on your own statement unless you murder me—every man who signs it will have to reckon with the highest power of this country. Will you destroy it? I don’t want to know what countries already stand committed by the signatures there.”

“I will not,” was the steady response. And then, after a little: “Mr. Grimm, the inventor of this little cap, insignificant as it seems, will receive millions for it. Your silence would be worth—just how much?”

Mr. Grimm’s face turned red, then white again.

“Which would you prefer? An independence by virtue of a great fortune, or—or the other thing?”

Suddenly Miss Thorne tore the mask from her face and came forward. Her cheeks were scarlet, and anger flamed in the blue-gray eyes.

“Mr. Grimm has no price—I happen to know that,” she declared hotly. “Neither money nor a consideration for his own personal safety will make him turn traitor.” She stared coldly into the prince’s eyes. “And we are not assassins here,” she added.

“Miss Thorne has stated the matter fairly, I believe, your Highness,” and Mr. Grimm permitted his eyes to linger a moment on the flushed face of this woman who, in a way, was defending him. “But there is only one thing to do, Miss Thorne.” He was talking to her now. “There is no middle course. It is a problem that has only one possible answer—the destruction of that document, and the departure of you, and you, your Highness, for Italy under my personal care all the way. I imagined this matter had ended that day on the steamer; it
will
end here, now, to-night.”

The prince glanced again at his watch, then thoughtfully weighed the percussion cap in his hand, after which, with a curious laugh, he walked over to the squat iron globe in an opposite corner of the room. He bent over it half a minute, then straightened up.

“That cap, Mr. Grimm, has one disadvantage,” he remarked casually. “When it is attached to a mine or torpedo it can not be disconnected without firing it. It is attached.” He turned to the others. “It is needless to discuss the matter further just now. If you will follow me? We will leave Mr. Grimm here.”

With a strange little cry, neither anger nor anguish, yet oddly partaking of the quality of each, Isabel went quickly to the prince.

“How dare you do such a thing?” she demanded fiercely. “It is murder.”

“This is not a time, Miss Thorne, for your interference,” replied the prince coldly. “It has all passed beyond the point where the feelings of any one person, even the feelings of the woman who has engineered the compact, can be considered. A single life can not be permitted to stand in the way of the consummation of this world project. Mr. Grimm alive means the compact would be useless, if not impossible; Mr. Grimm dead means the fruition of all our plans and hopes. You have done your duty and you have done it well; but now your authority ends, and I, the special envoy of—”

“Just a moment, please,” Mr. Grimm interrupted courteously. “As I understand it, your Highness, the mine there in the corner is charged?”

“Yes. It just happened to be here for purposes of experiment.”

“The cap is attached?”

“Quite right.” The prince laughed.

“And at three o’clock, by your watch, the mine will be fired by a wireless operator fifteen miles from here?”

“Something like that; yes, very much like that,” assented the prince.

“Thank you. I merely wanted to understand it.” Mr. Grimm pulled a chair up against the door and sat down, crossing his legs. On his knees rested the barrel of a revolver, glittering, fascinating, in the semi-darkness. “Now, gentlemen,” and he glanced at his watch, “it’s twenty-one minutes of three o’clock. At three that mine will explode. We will all be in the room when it happens, unless his Highness sees fit to destroy the compact.”

Eyes sought eyes, and the prince removed his mask with a sudden gesture. His face was bloodless.

“If any man,” and Mr. Grimm gave Miss Thorne a quick glance, “I should say,
any person
, attempts to leave this room I
know
he will die; and there’s a bare chance that the percussion cap will fail to work. I can account for six of you, if there is a rush.”

“But, man, if that mine explodes we shall all be killed—blown to pieces!” burst from one of the cowled figures.

“If the percussion cap works,” supplemented Mr. Grimm.

Mingled emotions struggled in the flushed face of Isabel as she studied Mr. Grimm’s impassive countenance.

“I have never disappointed you yet, Miss Thorne,” he remarked as if it were an explanation. “I shall not now.”

She turned to the prince.

“Your Highness, I think it needless to argue further,” she said. “We have no choice in the matter; there is only one course—destroy the compact.”

“No!” was the curt answer.

“I believe I know Mr. Grimm better than you do,” she argued. “You think he will weaken; I know he will not. I am not arguing for him, nor for myself; I am arguing against the frightful loss that will come here in this room if the compact is not destroyed.”

[Illustration: “You think he will weaken; I know he will not.”]

“It’s absurd to let one man stand in the way,” declared the prince angrily.

“It might not be an impertinent question, your Highness,” commented Mr. Grimm, “for me to ask how you are going to
prevent
one man standing in the way?”

A quick change came over Miss Thorne’s face. The eyes hardened, the lips were set, and lines Mr. Grimm had never seen appeared about the mouth. Here, in a flash, the cloak of dissimulation was cast aside, and the woman stood forth, this keen, brilliant, determined woman who did things.

“The compact will be destroyed,” she said.

“No,” declared the prince.

“It
must
be destroyed.”

“
Must? Must?
Do you say
must to me?
”

“Yes,
must
,” she repeated steadily.

“And by what authority, please, do—”

“By that authority!” She drew a tiny, filigreed gold box from her bosom and cast it upon the table; the prince stared at it. “In the name of your sovereign—
must
!” she said again.

The prince turned away and began pacing, back and forth across the room with the parchment crumpled in his hand. For a minute or more Isabel stood watching him.

“Thirteen minutes!” Mr. Grimm announced coldly.

And now broke out an excited chatter, a babel of French, English, Italian, Spanish; those masked and cowled ones who had held silence for so long all began talking at once. One of them snatched at the crumpled compact in the prince’s hand, while all crowded around him arguing. Mr. Grimm sat perfectly still with the revolver barrel resting on his knees.

“Eleven minutes!” he announced again.

Suddenly the prince turned violently on Miss Thorne with rage-distorted face.

“Do you know what it means to you if I do as you say?” he demanded savagely. “It means you will be branded as traitor, that your name, your property—”

“If you will pardon me, your Highness,” she interrupted, “the power that I have used was given to me to use; I have used it. It is a matter to be settled between me and my government, and as far as it affects my person is of no consequence now. You will destroy the compact.”

“Nine minutes!” said Mr. Grimm monotonously.

Again the babel broke out.

“Do we understand that you want to see the compact?” one of the cowled men asked suddenly of Mr. Grimm as he turned.

“No, I don’t want to see it. I’d prefer not to see it.”

With hatred blazing in his eyes the prince made his way toward the lamp, holding a parchment toward the blaze.

“There’s nothing else to be done,” he exclaimed savagely.

“Just a moment, please,” Mr. Grimm interposed quickly. “Miss Thorne, is that the compact?”

She glanced at it, nodded her head, and then the flame caught the fringed edge of paper. It crackled, flashed, flamed, and at last, a thing of ashes, was scattered on the floor. Mr. Grimm rose.

“That is all, gentlemen,” he announced courteously. “You are free to go. You, your Highness, and Miss Thorne, will accompany me.”

He held open the door and there was almost a scramble to get out. The prince and Miss Thorne waited until the last.

“And, Miss Thorne, if you will give us a lift in your car?” Mr. Grimm suggested. “It is now four minutes of three.”

The automobile came in answer to a signal and the three in silence entered it. The car trembled and had just begun to move when Mr. Grimm remembered something, and leaped out.

“Wait for me!” he called. “There’s a man locked in the coal-bin!”

He disappeared into the house, and Miss Thorne, with a gasp of horror sank back in her seat with face like chalk. The prince glanced uneasily at his watch, then spoke curtly to the chauffeur.

“Run the car up out of danger; there’ll be an explosion there in a moment.”

They had gone perhaps a hundred feet when the building they had just left seemed to be lifted bodily from the ground by a great spurt of flame which tore through its center, then collapsed like a thing of cards. The prince, unmoved, glanced around at Miss Thorne; she lay in a dead faint beside him.

“Go ahead,” he commanded. “Baltimore.”

Mr. Campbell ceased talking and the deep earnestness that had settled on his face passed, leaving instead the blank, inscrutable mask of benevolence behind which his clock-like genius was habitually hidden. The choleric blue eyes of the president of the United States shifted inquiringly to the thoughtful countenance of the secretary of state at his right, thence along the table around which the official family was gathered. It was a special meeting of the cabinet called at the suggestion of Chief Campbell, and for more than an hour he had done the talking. There had been no interruption.

“So much!” he concluded, at last. “If there is any point I have not made clear Mr. Grimm is here to explain it in person.”

Mr. Grimm rose at the mention of his name and stood with his hands clasped behind his back. His eyes met those of the chief executive listlessly.

“We understand, Mr. Grimm,” the president began, and he paused for an instant to regard the tall, clean-cut young man with a certain admiration, “we understand that there does not actually exist such a thing as a Latin compact against the English-speaking peoples?”

“On paper, no,” was the reply.

“You personally prevented the signing of the compact?”