“O.K. this time, Chief!” said one, exhibiting a row of glittering teeth.
The other nodded and stepped forward.
“Good evening, Dom Patrick Donegal,” he said, and pulled inside a dripping leather overcoat to exhibit a gold badge. “A nice run you’ve given us!”
“Here! I say!” exclaimed Fosdyke-Fosdyke. “This damn joke is getting stale!”
And in a dilapidated but roadworthy Ford the amiable priest was driving furiously through the storm in the direction of New York: the Abbot of Holy Thorn was one stage further on his self-imposed journey.
Chapter 18
MRS. ADAIR REAPPEARS
Moya Adair stepped out of the elevator, crossed the marble lobby of the luxurious apartment house and came out on to Park Avenue. She was muffled up in her mink coat, the little Basque beret which she wore in rough weather crushed tightly upon mahogany-red curls. A high, fiercely cold wind had temporarily driven the clouds away, and a frosty moon looked down from a glittering sky. Moya inhaled delightedly the ice-cold air from the Avenue. It was clean and wholesome in contrast to the smoke-laden atmosphere of the Dumas’ apartment.
Her new assignment terrified her. For some reason known only to the President, that awful Chinaman who dominated her life, she had been chosen to supplant Lola Dumas. And she feared the enmity of Lola Dumas second only to that of the President. It was the yellow streak, more marked in her than in her father, which made her terrible; Moya, who had met her several times, had often thought of Lola as a beautiful, evil priestess of Voodoo—a dabbler in strange rites.
She began to walk briskly in the direction of a nearby hotel where, as Miss Eileen Breon, accommodation had been provided for her by the organization to which unwillingly she belonged. She felt as though she had escaped from an ever-present danger.
Harvey Bragg, potential Dictator of America, had accepted her appearance in the spirit in which sultans had formerly welcomed the present of a Circassian slave girl. And she had nowhere to turn for help—unless to the President. Oddly enough, she trusted that majestic but evil man.
The newspapers, in which politics occupied so much space, were nevertheless giving prominence to the mysterious death of James Richet. In her heart of hearts Moya Adair believed that James Richet had been executed by the President’s orders. The power of the sinister Chinaman ws terrifying; yet although he held a life dearer than her own in his hands, Moya’s service was not wholly one of fear. He had never called upon her to do anything which her philosophy told her to be despicable. Sometimes in her dreams she thought that he was Satan, fallen son of the morning, but in her very soul she knew that his word was inviolable; that execrable though his deeds appeared to Western eyes, paradoxically he might be trusted to give measure for measure.
Her first instructions in regard to Bragg had related to the forthcoming debate at Carnegie Hall. She had given him certain typed notes, with many of which he had quarrelled furiously. The odd fact had dawned upon her during this first interview that Bragg had never met the President!
“I’ll play this bunch of underground stiffs just as long as their funds last out,” he had declared. “But you can tell your ‘President’ that what I need is money, not his orders!”
Moya pointed out that directions received in the past had invariably led to success. Bragg, becoming more and more deeply intrigued, had tried to cross-examine. Failing, he had changed his tactics and made coarsely violent love to her. . . .
She raised her face, as she hurried along, to the healing purity of the moonlight. Salvaletti tactfully had terminated that first hateful interview; but she shrank from Salvaletti as she instinctively shrank from snakes. Since then, the scene had been re-enacted—many times.
She had reached her hotel and was just turning into the doorway when a hand touched her shoulder. . . .
It had come—and, almost, it was welcome!
Since that snowy night outside the Tower of the Holy Thorn, hourly she had expected arrest. She glanced swiftly aside.
A tall, bearded man who wore glasses, a black hat and a caped topcoat stood at her elbow.
“Live here, Mrs. Adair?” he asked drily.
A stream of traffic released at that moment by a changing light almost drowned her reply, in so low a voice did she speak.
“Yes. Who are you, and what do you want?”
Yet even as she spoke she knew that she had heard that monotonous voice before. Under the shadow of his hat brim the man’s eyes glistened through the spectacles.
“I want to step inside and have a word with you.”
“But I don’t know you.”
The man pulled the caped coat aside and she saw the glitter of a gold badge. Yes, she had been right—a federal officer! It was finished: she was in the hands of the law, free of that awful President, but. . .
The lobby of the expensively discreet apartment hotel was deserted, for the hour was late. But as they sat down facing each other across a small table, Moya Adair had entirely recovered her composure. She had learned in these last years that she could not afford to be a woman; she blessed the heritage of courage and common sense which was hers. It had saved her from madness, from suicide; from even worse than suicide.
And now the federal agent removed his black hat. She knew him and, in the moment of recognition, wondered why she was glad.
She smiled into the bearded face—and Moya was not ignorant of the fact that her smile was enchanting.
“Am I to consider myself under arrest?” she asked. “Because, if so, I don’t expect to have the same luck as last time.”
