The Secret War

3

Valerie Lorne takes a hand

Sir Anthony Lovelace stared at the girl. He had been right, her hair was chestnut, and her eyes were grey.

After her first exclamation she recovered almost instantly, and stepped firmly into the room. `What did you mean, Christopher, when you said you had got to commit murder?'

`Darling, I'm sorry sorry if I scared you; but you took us rather by surprise.' He waved a hand towards his guest. `This is Sir Anthony Lovelace. Lovelace, my fiancé, Valerie Lorne.'

As she acknowledged the introduction Lovelace thought her eyes showed a sudden flicker of interest, but she turned abruptly to her fiancé. `I let myself in and I quite thought you were alone.'

`That's all right, sweet,' said Christopher swiftly. `Until I heard your plane come over I didn't think you'd be back before tomorrow, but I meant to call you later. Let's go into the other room.'

They followed her out across the hall to the book lined sitting room. Christopher shut the door behind him. `It's come,' he said facing her. 'Somehow I never thought they'd select me; but they have. It came yesterday morning.'

`You mean the thing you told me of when we became engaged?' She lit a cigarette and Lovelace gave her full marks for the hold she was keeping on herself. Christopher nodded.

`Well,' she appeared to consider for a moment. `That's pretty hard on both of us: but if you've got to, it will not be murder.'

'Lovelace here seems to think it is.'

`Please forget I said that.' Lovelace was feeling the awkwardness of his position, 'Look here, Penn, you'll naturally want to talk this thing over with miss Lorne. Don't let's stand on ceremony. Ring for your car to be sent round and it can take me back to New York at once.

'Thanks, but I'd rather you didn't go yet. I've still got something l want to say to you.'

The girl picked up a log and threw it on the fire. As she dusted her hands,' she said thoughtfully 'It is obvious Christopher has told you about the Millers’ of God. Don't you think that the end really justifies the means in the work they're doing?'

'To a certain extent,' Lovelace agreed uneasily, 'but l find it hard to stomach the actual fact of killing some fellow who, however blood guilty he may be in theory, considers himself a perfectly innocent business man going about his normal job.'

Valerie Lorne spoke with sudden fervour. 'I expected the infidels considered themselves innocent when they turned Our Lord's sepulchre into a Mohammedan: mosque, yet thousands of Christians gave their lives to recapture the Holy Land. This, too, is a Crusade!`

Perhaps, but surely that was different, It was a war like any other, There was no question of stealthy assassination. Still, this really isn't my business. Your fiancé seems determined to carry theory into practice and you, apparently, agree that he's right to do so,'

'I've very little option,' she said slowly. `I don't know how long you have known him, but Christopher Penn is Christopher Penn. He told me this might occur when we became engaged, although neither of us thought it likely then. Now it's happened I mustn’t allow my personal feelings to interfere with well what he considers to be his duty.

Lovelace was several years older than either of the others. He sensed the young man's feeling that he had pledged himself to a horrid business and the girl's loyal acceptance of the fact; yet her abhorrence of it. He felt that he must make some effort to straighten out this tangle, so he said: `Is there some very unpleasant penalty to be faced if you decided to back out, Penn?'

'No, none. The society is very elastic and there's very little mystery about it. No passwords or secret signs, or that sort of bunkum. Most of us are even rather ashamed of the name under which it's run, but it had to be called something. There are no oaths of secrecy, so we can speak of it quite freely to anyone we like, although of course we never do, except to people we feel we can absolutely trust. Even if our judgment were at fault, and somebody broke a confidence one of us made to him, it couldn't do much damage. You see, we have no offices or fixed meeting places: nearly all our communications are carried by word of mouth and as most of us are wealthy people we travel frequently so there's no difficulty in passing on suggestions or decisions from one part of the world to another. There are no penalties for anyone who ceases to be an active member, either. If I refused to do this job it'd just be put up to someone else. But conviction and well, honour if you like are tighter bonds than any oath., and I could never respect myself again if I ratted on the others now.'

`You see, Sir Anthony, that's Christopher,' Valerie smiled for the first time, giving a queer little twist to her mouth. 'Difficult chap for a girl to love, isn't he? The most pig headed, quixotic fool between Panama and Alaska I should say but I happen to like him.: Anyhow, I'm afraid there's nothing to be done except for his friends to help him as far as they can.'

Lovelace cast an eye on the decanter. 'D'you mind if I mix myself a drink?' He wanted time to think up another argument.

Please do. I'm so sorry I forgot to ask you, I so rarely drink anything myself, you see,' Christopher said apologetically.

While he measured out the whisky with careful deliberation Lovelace's brain was working overtime. The boy was a fanatic and the girl was in love with him. Pretty hard on her but, by Jove, she was behaving magnificently. Where the devil had he met her? Somewhere in the past but that didn't matter now. She had hypnotized herself into an active sympathy with this society of madmen; but were they mad or terribly, logically sane? Anyhow, she didn't want him to become a murderer for all her talk about Crusades. He wasn't liking the idea either now it had taken concrete form. Probably doubted his ability to carry the job through. Case of the spirit being willing but the flesh being weak. Perhaps he could be scared into chucking it. That seemed the only line to try. Tumbler in hand, Lovelace turned back towards his host.

`Ever seen an execution?'

`No. Why?'

`I have, several. Saw a Chinese coolie's head chopped off once. He took it pretty stolidly, but an Armenian spy in the pay of the Greeks who had to face a Turkish firing party didn't take it half so well. Neither did a young Spaniard who was hanged during the South American trouble. I can hear his screaming now as they fixed the noose round his neck. To look at he was rather like you.'

`Why are you telling me this?'

'Only because it may happen to you one cold grey morning. On an empty tummy perhaps, when dreams are unsatisfactory fare. The police must know something of your organization by this time, and if they get you after you've done this job you'll see the inside of the death cell for certain.'

Christopher shrugged a little contemptuously. `The police! Their job is to keep ordinary crime in check but they're up against an utterly different proposition in the Millers of God, No one of us ever commits a second crime. Each of us is a completely reputable person, who has other activities to cover his operations and other equally unsuspected people to assist in his getaway. None of the deaths we are responsible for has any apparent motive, so there is never any case for the police to formulate against us. We're completely outside their natural orbit so we haven't a thing to fear from their attentions,'

`I see. Well, would you care to give us some particulars as to how you propose to set about this er killing

With an ether pistol discharging a deadly gas from some special shells. It's silent, painless, and practically instantaneous. All our executions are carried out that, way, although whenever possible we arrange things afterwards to look as though death had been caused by an accident. I received the pistol and shells yesterday With my instructions.'

Lovelace's tanned face looked very grave, He was still seeking a way to divert the younger man from his terrible purpose as he inquired : 'Where will you try and get Benyon on in his home?'

'Benyon Christopher exclaimed. 'But it's not him

I should never be called on to execute a man I know that would be too awful. It was only just because I did know him I was asked to give him his warning before I left the States.'

'This this job means your going abroad then? said Valerie,

'Yes. To Paris first where I shall receive my final instructions from one of our people. After that I don't know. I was told to get my passport visaed for all countries bordering on the Mediterranean, or the Red Sea. and Abyssinia, though; so it looks as if they may be sending me to the seat of the war.'

`But, darling!' Valerie protested, `you would be absolutely lost in a place like Abyssinia. You know how impractical you are and you don't speak a single foreign language except French.'

He nodded gloomily. `I know, sweet. I've never been farther east than Rome, even as a tourist and I'll be horribly handicapped if I have to go on to Asia Minor or Eritrea or Abyssinia itself. That's just what's worrying me at the moment.'

A hint of amusement showed in Lovelace's brown eyes. `So that's it, eh? That's why you got me out here. When you heard that I was a pretty useful linguist, and had been in Abyssinia before, you hoped to rope me in as your assistant in the chase.'

`Yes,' Christopher confessed quite frankly, `that was my idea. When I heard you talking in the Club this evening it almost seemed as though God had sent you there specially to help me.'

Lovelace shook his head. `Nothing doing I'm afraid. Because I hate war and all the senseless misery that it causes, it doesn't mean for one moment that I'm prepared to lend a hand in an assassination.'

`I don't ask you to. I only want you as a friend who knows the ropes if I have to go to Africa. Please come with me. You're going out there anyway. It won't delay you much if we have to put in a day in Paris on the way. Forget what I'm going out there to do if you like. We'll never speak of it again, but I do wish you'd travel with me.'

`I'm sorry.' Lovelace shook his head again. `What you propose to do is murder: the killing of some unsuspecting man. I can't be a party to that.'

Valerie Lorne had been silent for a time. Now she spoke again. `Won't you? I wish you would. Christopher will be like a child in those tropical countries. He needs a friend like you so badly. Even if you can't forget his mission you need take no part in it. Surely you won't refuse to let him travel with you to the Near East if he has to go there.'

Somehow Lovelace found the girl's appeal harder to resist. In some queer way, which he could not explain to himself, he felt as though she had some sort of claim on him. Yet he still stubbornly shook his head.

`I can't. Perhaps that's because I'm not big enough to scrap all the rather foolish prejudices with which most of us have been brought up. If it were a question of giving my own life to stop another war well, I'd try to screw my courage up to that because I've seen so much of war in its worst aspects. But to aid and abet a murder in cold blood; that's too much. I just can't do it.'

Valerie sighed and turned to Christopher. `When must you sail, darling?'

`I've booked on the Europa which sails tomorrow night. It's urgent and they wanted me to leave as soon as possible. I pulled a few strings with the diplomatic people yesterday and they got my passport back for me with all the necessary visas this afternoon. I've made arrangements with my bank to have funds at my disposal in all the larger towns I may have to go to. I only hope the enemy organization doesn't find out what I'm up to and try to prevent my leaving the country though.

As the door opened they all started and looked towards it. The elderly butler stood there with his eyes on Christopher. `The telephone, sir,' he said. `The person who called you refused to give his name.'

`Excuse me, won't you.' Christopher went into the next room.

The interruption had broken the tension. Lovelace walked over to Valerie who was leaning with one elbow on the corner of the mantelpiece. He was a good head taller than she was and stood looking down at her.

`We've met somewhere before, you know: where was it?' he asked abruptly.

`Don't you remember?' She turned her face up to his and a smile deepened the dimple in her cheek..

`No,' he confessed. `I've been racking my brains for the last hour to place it; but I can't. Tell me.'

Slowly she shook her head and her grey eyes grew dreamy. 'Why should I? It may have been long ago. It may even have been in some previous existence. What's it matter where it was if you have forgotten?'

As she turned away Christopher rejoined them. His beautiful, ascetic face seemed colder and harder than ever, yet there was a faint nervous tremor in his long pointed fingers as he lit a cigarette.

'That call was anonymous,' he said. 'The man the other end of the wire didn't mince matters. He just told me certain people know what I've been put up do, and that if I stayed in the United States no harm would befall me, but that if I set foot outside the country I'd be dead within a week.'

Valerie laid a hand on his shoulder. 'You mean go on, Christopher?' 'Certainly. This'll make things more difficult that's all. I'll have to regard every person in the ship an enemy who is out to get me.'

'You won't,' she said with swift determination, I mean to fly you over the border into Canada before morning. You'll be on the water then before they even know you've sailed.'

Christopher's face brightened. `Valerie, you're a girl, in a million. If you'll do that it will give me a clear start and a safe passage over. Once I'm in Europe I’ll go to earth, and they'll have the devil's own job to find me, Bless you, darling.'

`How long will it take you to pack a bag?'

`I'll be ready in an hour. I've got a few papers, see to, that's all, and we can look up tomorrow's Canadian sailings in the news sheets. I'll order the car for you, Lovelace, to take you back to New York,.'

Thanks,' said Lovelace quietly. 'I'd be glad if yon would. But why are you in such a desperate hurry Surely if you're over the Canadian border by dawn that will. do? Plenty of time for me to collect my bags in New York and return here before you set out.'

`Return here?' echoed Christopher.

'Yes. This is a very different business from what I thought it a few minutes ago. If the enemy are organized and have sent you an ultimatum your job's no longer assassination, but an act of war. I'm game to help you now, so I'm coming too.'