A.E.W. Mason - The Summons

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"Friday morning then," said Miss Cheyne, and made a note of it.

Hillyard had thus a week in which to resume his friendships, arrange to
write, at some distant time, a play, revisit his club and his tailor,
and revel, as at a pageant, in the fresh beauty, the summer clothes, the
white skin and clean-limbed boyishness of English girls. He went
through, in a word, the first experiences of most men returned from a
long sojourn in other climes; and they were ordinary enough. But the
week was made notable for him by one small incident.

It was on the Monday and about five o'clock in the afternoon. He was
walking from the Charing Cross Road towards Leicester Square, when, from
a doorway ahead of him, a couple emerged. They did not turn his way but
preceded him, so that he only saw their backs. But he had no doubt who
one of the couple was. The fair hair, the tall, slim, long-limbed
figure, the perverse sloppiness of dress which could not quite obscure
her grace of youth, betrayed the disdainful prodigy of Rackham Park. The
creator of Linda Spavinsky swam ahead of him. Had he doubted her
identity, a glance at the door from which she had emerged would have
dispelled the doubt. It was the entrance to a picture gallery, where,
cubes and curves having served their turn and gone, the rotundists were
having an innings. Everybody and everything was in rounds, palaces and
gardens and ships and Westminster Bridge, and men and women were all in
circles. The circle was the principle of life and art. Joan Whitworth
would be drawn to the exhibition as a filing to a magnet. Undoubtedly
Joan Whitworth was ahead of Hillyard and he began to hurry after her.
But he checked himself after a few paces. Or rather the aspect of her
companion checked him. His appearance was vaguely familiar, but that was
all. It was not certainly Sir Chichester Splay, for the all-sufficient
reason that the Private View had long gone by; since the very last week
of the exhibition was announced in the window. Moreover, the man in
front of him was younger than Sir Chichester.

The couple, however, crossed the road to the Square Garden, and Hillyard
saw the man in profile. He stopped so suddenly that a man walking behind
him banged heavily against his back. The man walked on and turned round
after he had passed to stare at Hillyard. For Hillyard stood stock
still, he was unaware that any one had run into him, in all his body his
lips alone moved.

"Mario," he whispered. "Mario Escobar!"

The man who had been so far the foremost in his thoughts during the last
weeks that he never thought that he could have failed to recognise him.
Mario Escobar! And with Joan Whitworth. Millicent Splay's letter flashed
back into his memory. The distress which he had seemed to hear loud
behind the written words--was this its meaning and explanation? Joan
Whitworth and Mario Escobar! Certainly Joan knew him! He was sitting
next to her on the night when "The Dark Tower" was produced, sitting
next to her, and talking to her. Sir Charles Hardiman had used some
phrase to describe that conversation. Hillyard was strangely anxious to
recapture the phrase. Escobar was talking to her with an air of intimacy
a little excessive in a public place. Yes, that was the sentence.

Hillyard walked on quickly to his club.

"Is Sir Charles Hardiman here?" he asked of the hall porter.

"He is in the card-room, sir."

Martin Hillyard went up the stairs with a sense of relief. His position
was becoming a little complicated. Mario Escobar was B45, and a friend
of Joan Whitworth, and a friend of the Splays. There was one point upon
which Martin Hillyard greatly needed information.

Hardiman, a little heavier and broader and more obese than when Hillyard
had last seen him, was sitting by a bridge table overlooking the
players. He never played himself, nor did he ever bet upon the game, but
he took a curious pleasure in looking on, and would sit in the card-room
by the hour engrossed in the fall of the cards. The sight of Hillyard,
however, plucked him out of his occupation.

"So you're back!" he cried, heaving himself heavily out of his chair and
shaking hands with Martin.

"For a month."

"I hear you have done very well," Sir Charles continued. "Have a
whisky-and-soda."

"Thanks."

Hardiman touched the bell and led the way over to a sofa.

"Lucky man! The doctor's read the Riot Act to me! I met Luttrell in the
Mall this morning, on his way back from Buckingham Palace. He had just
been given his D.S.O."

Hardiman began to sit down, but the couch was low, and though he began
the movement lazily, it went suddenly with a run, so that the springs
of the couch jumped and twanged and his feet flew from beneath him.

"Yes, he has done splendidly," said Martin. "His battalion too. That's
what he cares about."

Sir Charles needed a moment or two after he had set down to recover his
equipoise. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.

"Luttrell told me you were both off to Rackham Park this week for
Gatwick."

"That's right! But I shan't get down until Friday afternoon," said
Hillyard.

The waiter put the glass of whisky-and-soda at his side, and he took a
drink from it.

"Perhaps you are going too," he suggested.

Hardiman shook his head.

Hillyard was silent for a minute. Then he asked another question.

"Do you know who is going to be there beside Luttrell and myself?"

Sir Charles smiled.

"I don't know, but I fancy that you won't find him amongst the guests."

Hillyard was a little startled by the answer, but he did not betray the
least sign of surprise. He pursued his questions.

"You know whom I have in my mind?"

"I drew a bow at a venture," answered Sir Charles.

"Shall I name him?" asked Hillyard.

"I will," returned Sir Charles. "Mario Escobar."

Hillyard nodded. He took another pull at his whisky-and-soda. Then he
lit a cigarette and leaned forward, with his elbows upon his knees; and
all the while Sir Charles Hardiman, his body in a majestic repose,
contemplated him placidly. Hardiman had this great advantage in any
little matter of debate; he never wished to move. Place him in a chair,
and he remained, singularly immobile.

"Since you were so quick to guess at once the reason of my question,"
continued Hillyard, "I can draw an inference. Mario Escobar has been at
Rackham Park a good deal?"

Sir Charles Hardiman's smile broadened.

"Even now you don't express your inference," he retorted. "You mean that
Mario Escobar has been at Rackham Park too much." He paused whilst he
drew out his cigarette-case and selected a cigarette from it. "And I
agree," he added. "Mario Escobar is too picturesque a person for these
primitive days."

Hillyard was not sure what Sir Charles Hardiman precisely meant. But on
the other hand he was anxious to ask no direct questions concerning
Escobar. He sought to enter in by another gate.

"Primitive?" he said.

"Yes. We have become rather primitive, especially the women. They have
lost a deal of self-consciousness. They exact less. They give more--oh,
superbly more! It's the effect of war, of course. They have jumped down
off their little pinnacles. Let me put it coarsely. They are saved from
rape by the fighting man, and they know it. Consequently all men benefit
and not least," Sir Charles lit his cigarette, "that beast of
abomination, the professional manipulator of women, the man who lives by
them and on them, who cajoles them first and blackmails them afterwards,
who has the little attentions, the appealing voice, in fact all the
tricks of his trade ready at his fingers' ends. However, Millie Splay's
awake to the danger now."

"Danger!" Hillyard sharply exclaimed.

"Quite right. It's too strong a word. I take it back," Hardiman agreed
at once. But he was not in the habit of using words wildly. He had said
exactly what he meant to say, and having aroused the attention which he
meant to arouse, he calmly withdrew the word. "I rubbed it into
Chichester's thick head that Escobar was overmuch at Rackham Park, and
in the end--it percolated."

Much the same account of Escobar, with this instance of Rackham Park
omitted, was given to Hillyard by Commodore Graham on the Friday
morning.

"He is the kind of man whom men loathe and women like. He runs about
London, gets a foot in here and there. You know what London is, even now
in the midst of this war, with its inability to be surprised, and its
indifference to strange things. You might walk down Regent Street
dressed up as a Cherokee Indian, feathers and tomahawk and all, and how
many Cockneys would take the trouble to turn round and look at you
twice? It was pretty easy for Escobar to slip about unnoticed."

Commodore Graham bent his head over the case of tubes which Hillyard had
brought with him.

"We'll have a look-out kept for these things. There have been none of
them in England up till now."

Martin Hillyard returned to the personality of Mario Escobar.

"Did you suspect him before?" he asked.

Commodore Graham pushed the cigarettes towards Hillyard.

"Scotland Yard has kept an eye on him. That sort of adventurer is always
dangerous."

He rang the bell, and on Miss Cheyne's appearance called for what
information the office had concerning Mario Escobar. Miss Cheyne
returned with a book in which Escobar's dossier was included.

"Here he is," said Graham, and Hillyard, moving across to the bureau,
followed Graham's forefinger across the written page. He was agent for
the Compania de Navigacion del Sur d'Espana--a German firm on the black
list, headquarters at Alicante. Escobar severed his connection with the
company on the outbreak of war.

Graham raised his head to comment on the action.

"That, of course, was camouflage. But it checked suspicion for a time.
Suspicion was first aroused," and he resumed reading again, "by his
change of lodging. He lived in a small back bedroom in a boarding-house
in Clarence Street, off Westbourne Grove, and concealed his address,
having his letters addressed to his club, until February, 1915, upon
which date he moved into a furnished flat in Maddox Street. Nothing
further, however, happened to strengthen that suspicion until, in the
autumn of that year, a letter signed Mario was intercepted by the
censor. It was sent to a Diego Perez, the Director of a fruit company at
Murcia, for Emma Grutsner."

"You sent me a telegram about her," exclaimed Hillyard, "in November."

Commodore Graham's forefinger travelled along the written lines and
stopped at the number and distinguishing sign of the telegram, sent and
received.

"Yes," continued Graham. "Here's your answer. 'Emma Grutzner is the
governess in a Spanish family at Torrevieja, and she goes occasionally,
once a month or so, to the house of Diego Perez in Murcia.'"

"Yes, yes! I routed that out," said Hillyard. "But I hadn't an idea that
Mario Escobar was concerned in it."

"That wasn't mentioned?" asked the Commodore.

"No. I already knew, you see, of B45. If just a word had been added that
it was Mario who was writing to Emma Grutzner we might have identified
him months ago."

"Yes," answered Graham soothingly and with a proper compunction. He was
not unused to other fiery suggestions from his subordinates that if only
the reasons for his telegrams and the information on which his questions
were based, were sent out with the questions themselves, better results
in quicker time could be obtained. Telegrams, however, were going out
and coming in all day; a whole array of cipherers and decipherers lived
in different rookeries in London. Commodore Graham's activities embraced
the high and the narrow seas, great Capitals and little tucked-away
towns and desolate stretches of coast where the trade-winds blew. No
doubt full explanations would have led in many cases to more
satisfactory conclusions. But fuller explanations were out of all
possibility. Even with questions fined down to the last succinct
syllable the cables groaned. None of the objections were raised,
however, by Commodore Graham. It was his business to keep men like
Hillyard who were serving him well to their own considerable cost, in a
good humour. Remorse was the line, not argument.

"What a pity! I _am_ sorry," protested the Commodore. "It's my fault!
There's nothing else to be said. I am to blame about it."

Martin Hillyard began to feel some compunction that he had ever
suggested a fault in the composition of the telegram. But then, it was
his business not to betray any such tenderness.

"If we could have in the future a little more information from London,
it would save us a good deal of time," he said stonily. "Sometimes a
surname is hurled at us, and will we find him, please, and cable home
all details?"

"Yes, that is very wrong," the Commodore agreed. "We will have that
changed." Then a bright idea appeared to occur to him. His face lighted
up. "After all, in this instance the mistake hasn't done any real harm.
For we have got our friend Mario Escobar now, and without these tubes
and this letter from Berlin about the use of them and Jose Medina's
account of the conversation in the next room we shouldn't have got him.
The German governess wasn't enough. He's, after all, a neutral. Besides,
there was nothing definite in his letter. But now----"

"Now you can deal with him?" asked Hillyard eagerly.

"To be sure," replied the Commodore. "We have no proof here to put him
on his trial. But we have reasonable ground for believing him to be in
communication with our enemies for the purpose of damaging us, and
that's quite enough to lock him up until the end of the war."

He reached out his hand for the telephone and asked for a number.

"I am ringing up Scotland Yard," he said to Hillyard over the top of the
instrument; and immediately Hillyard heard a tiny voice speaking as if
summoned from another planet.

"Hallo!" cried Graham. "Is that you, A.C.? You remember Mario Escobar?
Good. I have Hillyard here from the Mediterranean with a clear case.
I'll come over and see you."

Mr. "A.C.", whose real name was Adrian Carruthers, thereupon took up the
conversation at the other end of the line. The lines deepened upon the
Commodore's forehead as he listened. Then he turned to Hillyard, and
swore softly and whole-heartedly.

"Mario Escobar has vanished."

"But I saw him myself," Hillyard exclaimed. "I saw him in London."

"When?"

"On Monday afternoon."

Graham lifted the mouthpiece to his lips again.

"Wait a bit, A.C. Hillyard saw the man in London on Monday afternoon."

Again A.C. spoke at the other end from an office in Scotland Yard.
Graham put down the instrument with a bang and hung up the receiver.

"He vanished yesterday. Could he have seen you?"

Hillyard shook his head.

"I think not."

"Oh, we'll get him, of course. He can't escape from the country. And we
will get him pretty soon," Graham declared. He looked out of the window
on to the river. "I wonder what in the world alarmed him, since it
wasn't you?" he speculated slowly.

But both Scotland Yard and Commodore Graham were out of their reckoning
for once. Mario Escobar was not alarmed at all. He had packed his bag,
taken the tube to his terminus, bought his ticket and gone off in a
train. Only no one had noticed him go; and that was all there was to
it.

CHAPTER XX

LADY SPLAY'S PREOCCUPATIONS

"It's a good race to leave alone, Miranda," said Dennis Brown. "But if
you want to back something, I should put a trifle on Kinky Jane."

"Thank you, Dennis," Miranda answered absently. She was standing upon
the lawn at Gatwick with her face towards the line of bookmakers upon
the far side of the railings. These men were shouting at the full frenzy
of their voices, in spite of the heat and the dust. The ring was
crowded, and even the enclosure more than usually full.

"But you won't get any price," Harold Jupp continued, and he waved an
indignant arm towards the bookmakers. "I never saw such a crowd of
pinchers in my life."

"Thank you, Harold," Miranda replied politely. She was aware that he was
advising her, but the nature of the advice did not reach her mind. She
was staring steadily in front of her.

Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp looked at one another in alarm. They knew
well that sibylline look on the face of Miranda Brown. She was awaiting
the moment of inspiration. She was all wrapped up in expectation of it.
At times she glanced at her race-card, whilst a thoughtful frown
puckered her pretty forehead, as though the name of the winning filly
might leap out in letters of gold.

Dennis shook his head dolefully. For the one thing sure and certain was
that the fatal moment of inspiration would come to Miranda in time to
allow her to reach the railings before the start. Suddenly a name
uttered by an apoplectic gentleman in a voice breaking with fine passion
reached her ears, with the odds attached to it of nine to one.

Miranda's face cleared of all its troubles.

"Oh, why didn't I think of that before?" she said in an extremity of
self-reproach. She walked straight to the apoplectic gentleman, followed
by the unhappy pair of scientific punters.

"Callow Girl is nine to one, isn't it?"

The apoplectic gentleman smiled winningly.

"To you, missie."

Miranda laughed.

"I'll have ten pounds on it," she said, and did not hear the gasp of her
husband behind her. She made a note of the bet in her little
pocket-book.

"That's ninety pounds, anyway," she said, turning to her companions.
"They will just buy that simple little Callot frock with the
embroidery."

Yes, racing was as easy as that to Miranda Brown. She wanted a simple
little Callot frock which would cost ninety pounds, and Callow Girl was
obviously marked out to win it for her.

"Then I shall be a Callot girl," she said gaily, and as neither of her
companions enjoyed her witticism she stamped her small foot in vexation.

"Oh, how dull you both are!" she cried.

"Well, you see," Dennis rejoined, "we've had rather a bad day."

"So have I," returned Miranda indignantly. "Yet I keep up my spirits."

A look of blank amazement overspread the face of Dennis Brown. He gazed
around as one who should say, "Did you ever see anything so amazing
outside the Ark?"

Miranda corrected her remark with a laugh.

"Well, I mean I haven't won as much as I should have if I had backed
winners." For she had really mastered the science of the race-course.
She knew how to go racing. Her husband paid her losses and she kept her
winnings.

Harold Jupp took her seriously by the arm.

"You ought to go into a home, Miranda," he advised. "You really ought.
That little head was never meant for all this weighty thought."

Miranda walked across to the little stone terrace which looks down the
course.

"Don't be foolish, Harold, but go and collect Colonel Luttrell if you
can find him, whilst I see my filly win," she said. "Dennis has already
gone to find the car and we propose to start immediately this race is
over."

Miranda ascended the grass slope and saw the fillies canter down towards
the starting post. From the chatter about her she gathered that the odds
on Callow Girl had shortened. It was understood that a sum of money had
been laid on her at the last moment. She was favourite before the flag
was dropped and won by half a length. Miranda ran joyously down the
slope.

"What did I tell you, Harold? Aren't I wonderful? And have you found
Colonel Luttrell? You know Millie told us to look out for him?" she
cried all in a breath.

Luttrell had written to Lady Splay to say that he would try to motor to
Gatwick in time for the last races; and that he would look out for Jupp
and Dennis Brown, whom he had already met earlier in the week at a
dinner party given by Martin Hillyard.

"There's no sign of him," Harold Jupp answered.

There were two more races, but the party from Rackham Park did not wait
for them. They drove over the flat country through Crawley and Horsham
and came to the wooded roads between high banks where the foliage met
overhead, and to the old stone bridges over quiet streams. Harold Jupp
was home from Egypt, Dennis Brown from Salonika, and as the great downs,
with their velvet forests, seen now over a thick hedge, now in an
opening of branches like the frame of a locket, the marvel of the
English countryside in summer paid them in full for their peril and
endurance.

"I have a fortnight, Miranda," said Dennis, dropping a hand upon his
wife's. "Think of it!"

"My dear, I have been thinking of nothing else for months," she said
softly. Terrors there had been, nights and days of them, terrors there
would be, but she had a fortnight now, perfect in its season, and in the
meeting of old friends upon familiar ground--a miniature complete in
beauty, like the glimpses of the downs seen through the openings amongst
the boughs.

"Yes, a whole fortnight," she cried and laughed, and just for a second
turned her head away, since just for a second the tears glistened in her
eyes.

The car turned and twisted through the puzzle of the Petworth streets
and mounted on to the Midhurst road. The three indefatigable race-goers
found Lady Splay sitting with Martin Hillyard in the hall of Rackham
Park.

"You had a good day, I hope," she said.

"It was wonderful," exclaimed Dennis Brown. "We didn't make any money
except Miranda. But that didn't matter."

"All our horses were down the course," Harold Jupp explained. "They
weren't running in their form at all"; and he added cheerfully: "But the
war may be over before the winter, and then we'll go chasing and get it
all back."

Millicent Splay rang for tea, just as Joan Whitworth came into the hall.

"You didn't see Colonel Luttrell then?" asked Lady Splay.

"No."

"He'll come down later then." She had an eye for Joan Whitworth as she
spoke, but Joan was so utterly indifferent as to whether Colonel
Luttrell would arrive or not that she could not stifle a sigh. She had
gathered Luttrell into the party with some effort and now it seemed her
effort was to be fruitless. Joan persisted in her mood of austere
contempt for the foibles of the world. She was dressed in a gown of an
indeterminate shade between drab and sage-green, which did its best to
annul her. She had even come to sandals. There they were now sticking
out beneath the abominable gown.

"She can't ruin her complexion," thought Millicent Splay. "That's one
thing. But if she could, she would. Oh, I would love to smack her!"

Joan, quite unaware of Millie Splay's tingling fingers and indignant
eyes, sat reading "Ferishtah's Fancies." Other girls might set their
caps at the soldiers. Joan had got to be different. She had even dallied
with the pacifists. Martin Hillyard had carried away so close a
recollection of her on that afternoon when she had driven him through
the golden sunset over Duncton Hill and of the brave words she had then
spoken that he had to force himself to realise that this was indeed
she.

Millicent Splay had three preoccupations that afternoon but none pressed
upon her with so heavy a load of anxiety as her preoccupation concerning
Joan Whitworth.

Martin crossed the room to Joan and sat upon the couch beside her.

"Didn't I see you in London, Miss Whitworth, on Monday afternoon?" he
asked.

Joan met his gaze steadily.

"Did you? It was possible. I was in London on Monday. Where did you
think you saw me?"

"Coming out of a picture gallery in Green Street."

Joan did not flinch, nor drop her eyes from his.

"Yes, you saw me," she replied. Then with a challenge in her voice she
added distinctly, so that the words reached, as they were meant to
reach, every one in that room. "I was with Mario Escobar."

The room suddenly grew still. Two years ago, Martin Hillyard reflected,
Harold Jupp or Dennis would have chaffed her roundly about her conquest,
and she would have retorted with good humour. Now, no one spoke, but a
little sigh, a little movement of uneasiness came from Millie Splay.
Joan did not take her eyes from Hillyard's face. But the blood mounted
slowly over her throat and cheeks.

"Well?" she asked, and the note of challenge was a trifle more audible
in her quiet voice. And since he was challenged, Hillyard answered:

"He is a German spy."

The words smote upon all in the room like a blow. Joan herself grew
pale. Then she replied:

"People say that nowadays of every foreigner."

The moment of embarrassment was prolonged to a full minute--during which
no one spoke. Then to the relief of every one, Sir Chichester Splay
entered the hall. He had been sitting all day upon the Bench. He had to
attend the Flower Show in Chichester during the next week. Really the
life of a country notable was a dog's life.

"You are going to make a speech at Chichester, Sir Christopher?" Jupp
inquired.

"Oh no, my boy," replied Sir Chichester. "Make a speech indeed! And in
this weather! Nothing would induce me. Me for the back benches, as our
cousins across the Atlantic would say."

He spoke pompously, yet with a certain gratification as though Harold
Jupp had asked him to dignify the occasion with a speech.

"Have the evening papers not arrived yet?" he asked, looking with
suspicious eyes on Dennis Brown.

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