Elusive Isabel, by Jacques Futrelle Unknown (best fiction novels to read TXT) 📖

“Your name?” he asked finally.

“Pietro Petrozinni,” was the ready reply. “As I say, I accept all responsibility.”

A few minutes later Mr. Grimm and his prisoner passed out of the legation side by side, and strolled down the street together, in amicable conversation. Half an hour later Senor Alvarez identified Pietro Petrozinni as the man who shot him; and the maid servant expressed a belief that he was the man who slammed the door in her face.

VII

THE SIGNAL

“And the original question remains unanswered,” remarked Mr. Campbell.

“The original question?” repeated Mr. Grimm.

“Where is Prince Benedetto d’Abruzzi, the secret envoy?” his chief reminded him.

“I wonder!” mused the young man.

“If the Latin compact is signed in the United States—?”

“The Latin compact will not be signed in the United States,” Mr. Grimm interrupted. And then, after a moment: “Have we received any further reports on Miss Thorne? I mean reports from our foreign agents?”

The chief shook his head.

“Inevitably, by some act or word, she will lead us to the prince,” declared Mr. Grimm, “and the moment he is known to us everything becomes plain sailing. We know she is a secret agent—I expected a denial, but she was quite frank about it. And I had no intention whatever of placing her under arrest. I knew some one was in the adjoining room because of a slight noise in there, and I knew she knew it. She raised her voice a little, obviously for the benefit of whoever was there. From that point everything I said and did was to compel that person, whoever it was, to show himself.”

His chief nodded, understandingly. Mr. Grimm was silent for a little, then went on:

“The last possibility in my mind at that moment,” he confessed, “was that the person in there was the man who shot Senor Alvarez. Frankly I had half an idea that—that it might be the prince in person.” Suddenly his mood changed: “And now our lady of mystery may come and go as she likes because I know, even if a dozen of our men have ransacked Washington in vain for the prince, she will inevitably lead us to him. And that reminds me: I should like to borrow Blair, and Hastings, and Johnson. Please plant them so they may keep constant watch on Miss Thorne. Let them report to you, and, wherever I am, I will reach you over the ‘phone.”

“By the way, what was in that sealed packet that was taken from Senor Alvarez?” Campbell inquired curiously.

“It had something to do with some railroad franchises,” responded Mr. Grimm as he rose. “I sealed it again and returned it to the senor. Evidently it was not what Signor Petrozinni expected to find—in fact, he admitted it wasn’t what he was looking for.”

For a little while the two men gazed thoughtfully, each into the eyes of the other, then Mr. Grimm entered his private office where he sat for an hour with his immaculate boots on his desk, thinking. A world-war—he had been thrust forward by his government to prevent it—subtle blue-gray eyes—his Highness, Prince Benedetto d’Abruzzi—a haunting smile and scarlet lips.

At about the moment he rose to go out, Miss Thorne, closely veiled, left the Venezuelan legation and walked rapidly down the street to a corner, where, without a word, she entered a waiting automobile. The wheels spun and the car leaped forward. For a mile or more it wound aimlessly in and out, occasionally bisecting its own path; finally Miss Thorne leaned forward and touched the chauffeur on the arm.

“Now!” she said.

The car straightened out into a street of stately residences and scuttled along until the placid bosom of the Potomac came into view; beside that for a few minutes, then over the bridge to the Virginia side, in the dilapidated little city of Alexandria. The car did not slacken its speed, but wound in and out through dingy streets, past tumble-down negro huts, for half an hour before it came to a standstill in front of an old brick mansion.

“This is number ninety-seven,” the chauffeur announced.

Miss Thorne entered the house with a key and was gone for ten minutes, perhaps. She was readjusting her veil when she came out and stepped into the car silently. Again it moved forward, on to the end of the dingy street, and finally into the open country. Three, four, five miles, perhaps, out the old Baltimore Road, and again the car stopped, this time in front of an ancient colonial farmhouse.

Outwardly the place seemed to be deserted. The blinds, battered and stripped of paint by wind and rain, were all closed, and one corner of the small veranda had crumbled away from age and neglect. A narrow path, strewn with pine needles, led tortuously up to the door. In the rear of the house, rising from an old barn, a thin pole with a cup-like attachment at the apex, thrust its point into the open above the dense, odorous pines. It appeared to be a wireless mast. Miss Thorne passed around the house, and entered the barn.

A man came forward and kissed her—a thin, little man of indeterminate age—drying his hands on a piece of cotton waste. His face was pale with the pallor of one who knows little outdoor life, his eyes deep-set and a-glitter with some feverish inward fire, and the thin lips were pressed together in a sharp line. Behind him was a long bench on which were scattered tools of various sorts, fantastically shaped chemical apparatus, two or three electric batteries of odd sizes, and ranged along one end of it, in a row, were a score or more metal spheroids, a shade larger than a one-pound shell. From somewhere in the rear came the clatter of a small gasoline engine, and still farther away was an electric dynamo.

“Is the test arranged, Rosa?” the little man queried eagerly in Italian.

“The date is not fixed yet,” she replied in the same language. “It will be, I hope, within the next