Chapter Thirty Three. Spreading the Net.

At half-past three next day Hubert Waldron entered the private room of the Questore, or Chief of Police at Turin, where they found a rather elegant, brown-bearded man seated at his writing-table. He instantly recognised Pucci, and quick explanations ensued.

“The man you want duly arrived here,” said the official, “and was picked up by Cimino—whom I believe you know.”

“Certainly. He was with me in Genoa some years ago,” said Pucci.

“Well, all I know is, that the man Flobecq left by the Paris express just before noon, and Cimino is with him. I had a telephone message from you to the effect that His Majesty was making an inquiry. What is it about?” he asked, gazing from the detective to the Englishman.

“At present it is confidential,” replied Pucci, rather lamely. And then he introduced Waldron as a foreign diplomat, and explained that the matter concerned diplomacy, and that the King desired the affair to be kept entirely secret.

The curiosity of the bearded official was at once curbed. Cigarettes were lit by all three, and the Questore suggested that Pucci and his companion should go to the Hôtel Europe and await word from Cimino.

“I will give orders that at any hour when a wire may arrive a copy shall be sent over to you,” he promised.

“Excellent,” exclaimed Hubert, thanking the Chief of Police, and ten minutes later the pair left the Prefecture and drove to the hotel to await developments.

Hubert telegraphed to Lola, giving her brief word of what he had done, and signing himself “Your Friend.” He feared lest somebody might open the dispatch, because for aught he knew she might have left Rome to attend the Queen upon some public function or other, as she was so often forced to do. She scarcely knew from one day to another where she might be, for King Umberto’s Queen was a capricious lady, and somewhat erratic in attending the public ceremonies which were so frequent, and entailed such long and tedious journeys from end to end of the kingdom, one day in Bari, the next in Pisa, and the next in Como. Often Their Majesties, in the fulfilment of their public duties, travelled the whole twenty-four hours in order to arrive at a memorial, to lay a foundation-stone, launch a battleship, or inspect a corps of veterans—and those twenty-four hours of train journey in summer were often the reverse of pleasant. Truly the King worked as hard as any daily toiler within his kingdom.

The Europe, overlooking the big, wide piazza in Turin, proved a quiet place, and Hubert was glad of a stretch on the bed—in his clothes—after the wild motor journey of the previous night.

About twenty-four hours later came the eagerly awaited message from the Italian detective, reporting that Flobecq had installed himself in a small obscure establishment called the Hôtel Weber in the Rue d’Amsterdam, close to the Lazare Station in Paris, and that he was apparently in treaty with a person named Bernard Stein, a journalist of evil reputation.

“He is negotiating the sale of the Princess’s letters!” Hubert gasped when he read the copy of the detective’s telegram.

Therefore, within an hour, accompanied by Pucci, he was in the express, climbing that steep railroad which leads up to Bardonnechia, and the long tunnel of the Mont Cenis.

The train was not an international one, therefore they were compelled to change at Modane, the frontier, where they took the P.L.M. rapide for Paris.

After another night journey across France, the two men alighted from a taxi at the Hôtel Weber, a small, uninviting-looking place with a dingy café beneath. It was then eight o’clock in the morning, and the valet de chambre, a clean-shaven man in shirt-sleeves and green baize apron, showed them two barely furnished rooms with the beeswaxed floors uncarpeted. They held consultation, being joined at once by the detective, Cimino, a short, stout man with small black eyes, and rather shabby clothes.

A few words sufficed to explain the situation.

He had followed Flobecq, unobserved, and had ascertained that on the previous day he had met in the Café de la Paix, a man named Stein, whom he afterwards found was an unattached journalist who wrote for certain of the most unprincipled of the Paris journals.

The two men spent several hours together, and were apparently bargaining. No agreement, he believed, had been arrived at, and they had arranged to meet again that day.

Hubert listened in silence to the man’s story, then, taking a taxi, he drove first to the British Embassy, and thence to an apartment near the Arc de Triomphe, where he was closeted for half an hour with Colonel Guy Maitland, the British military attaché.

Thence, just after half-past ten, he drove to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the Quai d’Orsay, and there interviewed one of the permanent staff.

When he emerged he was accompanied back to the Hôtel Weber by a thin, insignificant-looking little man, wearing a bowler hat and grey gloves. The net was gradually being drawn around the famous spy, who had not yet left his room, and was still unconscious of how completely he was now surrounded. Truth to tell, the thin man in black was Berton, a detective inspector of the political department of the Sûreté, attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Thus the four men waited impatiently in the hotel, Berton of the Sûreté having telephoned from the little bureau of the proprietor for two plain-clothes agents from the nearest poste of police.

At last Flobecq, on descending the stairs, was met by a waiter who told him that a gentleman was awaiting him in the little private salon on the first floor.

In surprise, he turned into the room indicated, and there came face to face with Hubert Waldron. His cheeks went pale, and he started at the unexpected encounter.

“Ah, m’sieur!” he exclaimed, with a strenuous attempt to conceal his surprise. “It is you—eh?”

“Yes, M’sieur Flobecq,” replied Hubert, at once closing the door. “I have great pleasure in meeting you again. You see your identity is well-known to me, and I require a few minutes’ private conversation with you.”

And as he uttered these words he placed himself between the spy and the door.

“Well, and what, pray, do you want with me?” asked Flobecq in French, his dark brows quickly knit with a hard, evil expression.

“I want you to hand over to me those letters you have of the Princess Luisa of Savoy,” Waldron said boldly.

The man laughed. He was well-dressed—a good-looking, easy-going figure of that type which always made an impression upon women, but which men instinctively hated.

“I have followed you here from Italy. And at Her Highness’s request I ask you for those letters. I know that you are in treaty with the journalist, Stein, regarding them. He is a dealer in scandals, and if he purchases them will, no doubt, have a ready market for them,” Hubert added.

“Your audacity is really amazing, M’sieur Waldron.”

“It may be. But I have, fortunately, gained knowledge of your heartless deception. I know the whole of the bitter circumstances; of your pretended affection for the Princess, and how you have compelled her to act as your cat’s-paw and become a thief. Further,” and he hesitated for a few seconds, “further, I am also well aware of your position as secret agent of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Vienna—a fact of which they are also aware, here in Paris—at the Quai d’Orsay!”

“My dear m’sieur,” laughed the other, folding his arms deliberately and facing the Englishman. “If you think you can bluff me, you are quite welcome to the illusion. The Princess is my friend—as you well know—you admitted it when we met at Brussels.”

“She was your friend. But to-day, you having been revealed as a spy of Italy’s enemy, she is no longer your friend. I am still her friend. And that is the reason of my presence here to-day. You were very clever in your escape from Orvieto, when you left her there in expectation. But there are others equally as evasive, I may assure you.” Waldron stood with his hands stuck deep in the pockets of his blue serge suit in an attitude of triumph. He could play the game of bluff equally with anyone, when occasion demanded.

“I shall act exactly as I think proper,” was the spy’s indignant reply.

“You will think proper to hand me over those letters—letters of an innocent girl who has been misled by as clever and cunning a plot as has ever been conceived in the whole history of espionage. I admit that you, Mijoux Flobecq, are an artist. But in this case, you have been betrayed by the patriotism of your unfortunate victim.”

“Ah! She has told you then!” he remarked with a smile of contempt.

“No, I watched and found out for myself,” was Hubert’s reply. “The key plan of which you had so ingeniously contrived to obtain possession, is safe in my hands, and—”

“Because she handed it over to you!” he cried. “Because she grew afraid at the last second. All women do! It seems that her love for me waned,” he added in a strange voice.

“That may be. But can a woman ever really love a man who is suddenly revealed to her as an enemy?” queried the diplomat. “No. You were amazingly clever, M’sieur Flobecq, but your estimate of human nature was entirely wrong. As soon as she knew that you were a spy of Italy’s hereditary enemy, Austria, her love turned to hatred. That was but natural.”

“And she betrayed me?”

“No, she did not. There, you are quite mistaken,” was Hubert’s quick response. “It will surprise you to know that I was in the Hôtel Belle Arti and overheard every word that passed between you. It was there, for the first time, that I realised the truth. And—” He looked straight into the eyes of the spy. ”... and I tell you openly and frankly that I am her friend!”

“Then it was your threat I overheard while speaking to her! Well, and what can you do, pray? She has misled me.”

“Do!” echoed Waldron, still standing with his back to the door of the little, shabbily furnished reading-room. “Do! I merely ask you for those letters.”

“Which you will never get. I have them here safe in my pocket,” and he drew out a bulky envelope which he exhibited in triumph. “At noon to-day I shall sell them to my friend, Stein, who can easily place them in the proper quarter. It will be my revenge, my dear m’sieur,” he laughed.

“And a pretty revenge—eh?—upon a defenceless girl whom you have deceived—whom you have met in all sorts of odd, out-of-the-way places. I saw you together as far away as Wady Haifa, in the Sudan. And I watched you all the time you were together in Egypt.”

“I think that to discuss this affair further is quite useless,” Flobecq said with an annoyed look. “You can rest assured that neither your bluff, nor any other influence that you could bring to bear upon me, would ever induce me to give up the letters to you.”

“That is your decision—eh? Reflect—because your defiance may cost you more than you imagine.”

“Bah! What do I care for you, a mere British diplomat! What do you know of Secret Service ways, or methods?” he laughed.

“I know this,” was Hubert’s reply, “that if you refuse to give back to me the correspondence of your unfortunate victim you will find yourself in a very awkward predicament here in Paris.”

“Bah! You are only bluffing, I repeat! What, do you think I have any fear of you? You diplomats are merely air bubbles of self-importance. You are so easily pricked.” And he turned from Waldron with an expression of supreme contempt.

“Seven months ago there was an incident at Toulon Arsenal—regarding the Admiralty wireless station there—and you escaped,” Hubert remarked in a low, meaning voice.

“Well?”

“Well, that incident is not yet forgotten,” the Englishman said with a curious smile.

“I don’t follow you.”

“Well, in this hotel there are three agents of police now waiting to place you under arrest as a spy of Austria,” he said very quietly; “therefore I think, M’sieur Flobecq, you really must admit that, in this particular game, I just now hold most of the honours—eh?”

The spy’s face darkened. He saw himself checkmated for the first time by a better and more ingenious man.

“You will hand me over those letters at once,” Waldron went on, “or I shall call into this room the inspector of the Sûreté who is anxious to arrest you on charges of espionage. And they have been wanting you now for fully seven months, remember. But they are not yet tired. Oh, dear no! The Sûreté is never tired of waiting. If it is ten years, the penalty for espionage in France is the same!” Hubert added, with a grin of triumph.

In an instant Mijoux Flobecq flew into a passion, declaring that the Englishman should never regain possession of the incriminating correspondence for which he had so heartlessly practised blackmail upon Her Royal Highness.

“I defy you!” he cried with a sneer. “I have arranged the price with my friend, Stein. And he shall have the letters for publication—to reveal to Europe how, even in Royal circles, traitors exist?”

“Traitors!” cried Hubert, advancing towards him threateningly. “Repeat that word, and, by gad! I’ll strangle you—you blackguard! The Princess Luisa is no traitor. You have held her in an evil bondage—you, the agent of your taskmasters in Vienna—you, who with your devilish cunning, hoped to betray Italy into Austria’s hands.”

Hubert Waldron was intensely angry, now that he had cast that outrageous reflection upon Lola’s honour.

“Now, once and for all, I demand those letters?” he added, facing Flobecq very determinedly.

“And I, on my part, refuse to give them to you.”

“Then you are prepared to accept the consequences—eh?”

“Quite.”

“You refuse to release an unfortunate girl from the consequences of a foolish infatuation?”

“She has betrayed me. Therefore I feel myself entirely at liberty to act just as I deem fit.”

“Act as you wish, M’sieur Flobecq, but I warn you that it is at your own peril. I am prepared to endeavour to give you your liberty in exchange for those letters.”

“I have my liberty. I do not wish to bargain for it with you!” laughed the other in open defiance.

“For the last time, I ask you to hand me over that packet.”

“And I refuse.”

“Give the letters to me, I say?” cried Hubert, and, exasperated by the fellow’s demeanour, he sprang suddenly upon him.

He was strong and athletic, and the insults which the spy had cast upon Lola had caused him to lose his temper. His hands were at Flobecq’s throat.

A second later, however, the spy drew a revolver, and only just in the nick of time did the Englishman manage to turn the barrel aside ere it went off.

Then ensued a fierce and desperate struggle for the weapon—indeed a fight for life.

Hubert held Flobecq’s right wrist in a grip of iron, at the same time endeavouring to obtain possession of the envelope containing the letters. In this latter, however, he was unsuccessful.

Again the weapon went off in the mêlée, the bullet embedding itself in the ceiling, while the two men, locked in each other’s deadly embrace, fell against a table, smashing a large porcelain vase to fragments.

The reports aroused the alarm of the agents of police who, a few seconds later, rushed into the room where they found the two men struggling desperately. But just as they entered, accompanied by the proprietor of the hotel in a state of the utmost alarm, Flobecq discharged his weapon a third time. The bullet struck a huge mirror, shattering it into a thousand pieces.

With the aid of the police agents, Flobecq was, with difficulty, secured, whereupon Hubert—with the one thought uppermost in his mind, that of Lola’s honour—placed his hand swiftly into the inner pocket of his adversary’s coat and abstracted the envelope containing the fateful letters.

“That man is a thief!” yelled the spy, white to the lips with fury. “Arrest him! Arrest him, I say. He has stolen my property.”

Next second, as Hubert drew back and before anyone was aware of it, the man under arrest snatched a heavy police revolver from the hand of one of the men holding him, and fired point-blank at the Englishman.

Again, in the spy’s passion of hatred, his shot went wide of the mark, and Hubert stood unharmed, the letters already safe in his pocket.

In a moment all three men, finding their prisoner armed, drew back. Then in an instant he had freed himself.

His back was set against the wall, and flourishing the heavy weapon he held them all at bay.

“You shan’t take me!” he shrieked in defiance. “Touch me again, any of you, and I’ll shoot you dead!” he shouted in desperation.

And by the distorted expression of his livid face they all knew he meant it.

Berton, the inspector of the Sûreté, made a sudden dash forward, in order to again secure the man so long wanted for espionage, but in less time than it takes to describe the dramatic scene he received a bullet in the shoulder.

Again Flobecq, still holding them all at bay and defying them to arrest him, fired at Waldron, once more missing him, and then firing two further shots at random, one taking effect upon the hand of the elder of the two French agents.

Then the third man, finding his two companions wounded, and himself at the mercy of the frenzied spy, raised his own revolver, took careful aim and fired in self-defence.

The shot took instant effect.

Mijoux Flobecq, the handsome adventurer, shot through the heart, fell forward, face downwards, dead.