The Councillors of Falconhoe ebook

Contents

Introduction

I. A Pink Carnation

II. “Tell England”

III. Fairbourne Castle

IV. For The Night Only

V. The Uncut Emerald Again

VI. A Chance To Live

VII. Falconhoe Manor

VIII. Whilst The Fates Sleep

IX. The Imps O’ The Moon

X. The Lengthening Thread

XI. The Next Move

XII. The Thread Lengthens

XIII. Thieves In Counsel

XIV. In Old Madrid

XV. The Lure Of The South

XVI. The Drama In The Stalls

XVII. The Story She Had To Tell

XVIII. Mainly Biographical

XIX. On The Way

XX. The Jelicorse Way

XXI. Jelicorse Sees His Way

XXII. The Start Of The Quest

XXIII. The Cradle Of His Race

XXIV. A Voice From The Grave

XXV. Vickers’s Story

XXVI. The Treasure-Seeker

XXVII. A Triumphant Progress

XXVIII. Circe!

XXIX. Exit Hommany

XXX. Vendetta

XXXI. In Wax

XXXII. A Sudden Check

XXXIII. Rogues In Council

XXXIV. Impulse

XXXV. A Question Of Proof

XXXVI. The Silent Witness

XXXVII. It Might Have Been Worse

INTRODUCTION

Secret service did not end with the close of the Great War, and some alluring adventures in the highway and byways of diplomacy are narrated in “The Councillors of Falconhoe,” the new serial story by Mr. Fred. M. White, publication of which will begin in the columns of the “Herald” on Friday. The story opens in the cardroom of the Mars and Jupiter Club, London, where a few diplomatists are enjoying a quiet rubber of bridge, and the reader’s interest is held from the start in an atmosphere of excitement. Hilary Jelicorse, the central figure in the story, after exciting adventures in the war, is unable to settle down to the comparatively peaceful routine of the Foreign Office. He prefers to work through other channels for the Foreign Secretary, and in the book is engaged thrillingly in countering the machinations of those who would throw Europe further towards the abyss. With him are a miscellaneous assortment of people, also unable to adjust themselves to humdrum life after the hectic years of war adventure. The Ladies Peggy and Joan Pevensey, twin daughters of the Duke of Fairbourne, after thrilling exploits in Serbia, are anxious to assist him. Then there is the impecunious nobleman, Nelson, compelled by circumstances arising out of the war to act as a waiter in the Hotel Agincourt. Mingling with them, and all involved in the exciting plot, are prima donnas, Spanish grandees, German plotters chafing under defeat, and others.

Falconhoe is an old manor house on the high cliffs, not far from the lovely village of Lynton, in North Devon. It is a secluded and romantic spot of England, and here Jelicorse has started, with his associates, as a sort of international detective agency, with branches all over Europe, private service of aeroplanes, and wireless to Berlin, Vienna, and Rome. A beautiful ancient emerald, won by the opera singer, Inez Salviati, has an important bearing upon the story. A fascinating woman is this Salviati, with her slim, graceful figure, dark, intelligent eyes, and smile that is both mocking and elusive. She has worked on secret missions with Jelicorse in Mexico City and elsewhere, and she plays a large part in the present adventure. Readers of the story will probably agree that its subject matter has a perennial fascination, that the plot is excitingly developed, and that Europe, as always still offers superb attractions to the man of adventurous imagination.

–The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 August 1922

I. A PINK CARNATION

It was drawing near to the dinner hour and the bridge players in the smaller cardroom of the Mars and Jupiter Club had fined down to one table, and there the rubber was in its final stage.

“Your call, I think, Marquis,” the man on the left or dealer suggested. “What, an original call of three spades?”

“Even so, Colonel,” the Marquis of Navarro smiled blandly. “The time passes, and dinner draws near. So I take the risk.”

“‘Fraid I shall have to double you,” Colonel Philip Enderby, late of the British army, drawled.

“Not a free double,” his partner, Major George Farncombe, once of the Army Intelligence, hinted. “However–”

The fourth man at the table regarded his companions serenely through his monocle. This was Hilary Jelicorse, lately attached to the Foreign Office and gently squeezed out some time after the peace celebrations. He described himself whimsically as one of the unemployed who was unhappily precluded from accepting the dole. And there is many a true word spoken in jest.

“Don’t redouble, Marquis,” he implored. “If you do and it comes off, I am a ruined community.”

“But that is precisely what I am going to do,” the Marquis of el Navarro laughed. “Look at my hand, partner.”

They were old friends these, who had seen much service and shared many perils in the hectic years 1914-18, though the Marquis was a Spanish grandee and presumedly neutral. And even now, in the year of grace 1922, there was much to be done, and el Navarro had come over to London to discuss a matter that had a sinister bearing on the future peace and prosperity of Europe. What that project was he had yet to learn, nor was he disposed to make much of it.

He made his contract with one overtrick, and took up his winnings as the others rose from the table. The big clock on the Adams mantelpiece drowsily proclaimed the half-hour after 7 on a drift of silver bells. The Marquis still had a few minutes to spare.

“I am very curious to know why you Falconhoe Councillors summoned me from the seclusion of my palazzo in Madrid,” he said “I am dining to-night with the Spanish Ambassador, so must be moving shortly. Give me a hint, Jelicorse. Is it trouble in Russia or Germany? But that would seem to be impossible.”

“Why?” Jelicorse asked. “Suppose I told you that there was danger from both–in league together. I am just back from Germany, and I know what I know. I have in my mind’s eye a fine old castle near Findsburg, in Prussia, where there are concealed many heavy howitzers and where the employees on the estate are camouflaged units of the once famous Iron Division of Brandenburg. Multiply that little lot by ten thousand and then ask yourself questions. And then imagine those infuriated Junkers in accord with Russia, with a perfect understanding with Lenin and his fellow-fanatic Trotsky. They were at Brest-Lovitsk and afterwards. What then, Marquis?”

The dark eyes of the Marquis gleamed. Despite his age, the old spirit of adventure was deep in his breast. Moreover, he knew the men he was talking to intimately. Neutral as he was supposed to be, he had done his share and more in the cause of freedom on behalf of democracy. Meanwhile time was drifting on.

“It sounds promising,” he murmured; “I mean it sounds sinister. But in a few days I go with you to your stronghold at Falconhoe, and there you shall tell me everything. For the moment au revoir.”

“I must be off, too,” Jelicorse remarked when the Marquis had departed. “What a linguist that chap is! His English is as good as ours at least. Are you two going to dine here? You are? Good! Then I can get you on the ‘phone if I need you. So long.”

An hour later Hilary Jelicorse lounged into the palm room of the Agincourt, and took his place at a small table which had evidently been reserved for him. He dropped into his seat and surveyed the big throng of diners seated round the small tables under the shaded lamps and half hidden by banks of flowers. With the ripples of laughter and the half lights on colour and glittering gems it was as if there were no such things as trouble and care and hardship in the world.

But Jelicorse had not come there to indulge in any cheap philosophy of that kind, though his own poverty since the Great Upheaval had been bitter enough. And both Enderby and Farncombe were in similar sorry case. The country that was to be such a paradise for heroes to live in had proved, for the present at any rate, a sorry land for Jelicorse and his peers.

But Jelicorse was here to-night with a stern definite object, and he put such thoughts resolutely from his mind. And then as the dinner moved on he realised that his quarry was not coming that night. Once he had come to this conclusion he turned his mind to what was going on around him. And as he did so his attention suddenly froze and concentrated on a table a little way off–a table where three people were seated, a women and two men.

The woman was young, not more than twenty-five at the most. A slim, graceful woman, with a figure as perfect as that of the Venus of Milo, but tall and willowy, and with features as regular as those of the earlier Greeks. Very dark she was, dark eyes full of fine intelligence and intellect, and a smile both mocking and elusive She was laughing with almost childlike vivacity and enjoyment when her face first riveted Jelicorse’s attention.

One of the men with her was young, with the subtle suggestiveness of birth, and high breeding. There was a certain haughtiness about his clean-shaven face which spoke of one born to the purple and in the habit of being obeyed. Spaniard or Italian beyond doubt. Then he turned slightly and Jelicorse recognised the young Duke of Lombaso, a Spanish grandee with royal blood in his veins.

It had been part of his business during the strenuous years to know all sorts and conditions of men, especially those who counted in the councils of Europe, and so the features of the young Duke of Lombaso were more or less familiar. His mother had been a princess, and her son had inherited her beauty. He was an attractive figure enough in his pride of manhood and race, though now he was laughing and smiling as if his fair companion was the one thing in the world that counted. Educated at Eton and Christ Church, his English was perfect, and his knowledge of English ways and sports complete.

The third person of the party was big and bluff, with a certain coarse arrogance that suggested the Prussian type as the world knew it at its best, or worse, before Armageddon. There was something cruel and sinister in his thick features and the insolent upward brushing of his thick reddish moustache, after the manner of Wilhelm before he fell, like Lucifer, never to rise again.

“Oh, oh,” Jelicorse murmured to himself, “Count Andra Barrados, what are you doing in that galley? If it comes to that, what are you doing in London at all? If necessary, I will have you deported, my half-bred Prussian. But not yet, not yet.”

For quite a long time Jelicorse watched the triangular dining party as if he were a spectator in the stalls studying a problem play. Then with a quiet gesture he summoned a waiter hovering near, and more or less disengaged, and ostensibly laid a ten-shilling note by the side of his plate.

“Alphonse or Carl, as the case may be, though I hope not Carl, do you feel any wild desire to earn that interesting scrap of paper?”

He spoke softly without looking up, and the waiter smiled. It might even be said that he grinned. He was a quite nice-looking waiter, with clear blue eyes and the trim, erect figure of one who has known the stern discipline of the barrack square. He looked far more like a gentleman than half the men guests dining there.

“What is it that you want, sir?” he asked.

“You see the lady over there dining with those two gentlemen. Will you find out for me if she is staying in the hotel? That’s all.”

The note and the waiter vanished simultaneously. In a few minutes the waiter was back again. He glided up to Jelicorse’s chair, absorbed apparently in his duties and quite in the best manner of his tribe. He spoke in a bare whisper.

“Signorina Inez Salviati is staying in the hotel, sir,” he said. “And alone, save for her maid. She is here to fulfil an engagement at Covent Garden Opera. If there is anything else, sir–”

“Good man,” Jelicorse murmured. “There is one little thing more. At the next table whence the festive diners have departed I notice a little arrangement of pink carnations. Could you hypothecate one and bring it here without unnecessary ostentation?”

The waiter thought that he could and did. Jelicorse removed the flimsy laced rag and his finger bowl from his unused dessert plate, and stripping four petals from the beautiful hot-house bloom laid them in a sort of square in the centre of the plate.

“Rather neat, Alphonse, what?” he smiled. “A new idea in table decorative art. Now I want you to take this plate and exchange it for the one in front of the lady yonder. Just as it is without disturbing my pattern. Not difficult, Alphonse, I think, because–. I am afraid that you are not listening, Alphonse.”

“Why, good Lord, sir–” the waiter began. Jelicorse looked up swiftly and as quickly down again. But in that fraction of time he had seen all he wanted.

“This is a strange world, Niel, otherwise Alphonse,” he murmured with the same absent air. “And I’m not sure that Wilhelm did not remodel it after all. But what is Sir Niel Nelson, Bart., doing in the guise of a waiter at the Agincourt?”

“Broke,” the man addressed as Niel Nelson snapped. “Poor enough before the big trouble. Joined up, as you know, in the early days, and kept hanging about Mespot till lately. Now money all gone, stocks eating their heads off, and no dividends in the garden. Old place mortgaged to the crest tiles, and with this infernal taxation, glad to part for enough to put me square. Brought up to do nothing, and not sponging on friends. Managed to get a billet here, but no worse off than thousands of sound chaps. Recognised you when you came in and didn’t look at me. Should have said nothing if you hadn’t asked me to work the old secret sign dodge you put me up to when we had that little adventure together in Constantinople in 1916. Couldn’t help crying out for the life of me.”

Jelicorse listened with head bent over his plate.

“Rotton hard luck,” he murmured. “But if you are good for one of the old stunts I think I can make an opening for you. Meanwhile we are wasting time. Get on with it.”

From under his brows Jelicorse watched the progress of events at the table where the three people were dining. He could see the girl laughing and chatting gaily, and catch some or the sallies that came from the Duke. The man with the hard, cynical face and the aggressive, upturned moustache smiled in his sinister fashion, but seemed more intent on weighing up his companions than entering into their sparkling discourse. He had the furtive watchful air of one who half expects to be detected in some crime.

The waiter stopped by the table and dexterously shifted the dessert plate for the one he carried behind him and displayed the four petals to the view of the one to whom obviously they were intended to convey either a message or a warning. Jelicorse intently watching, saw her stop in the midst of some gay remark and change colour. Then before her younger companion could gather anything as to the cause of her confusion she had swept away the pink petals and was her smiling self again. At the same time those wonderful alluring eyes of hers swept the dining room slowly until at length they rested on Jelicorse for a fleeting instant and a message was flashed back to him, a message that he perfectly understood.

The girl turned with perfect composure to her companions.

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