THE TRENCH DAYS: The Collected War Tales of William Le Queux (WW1 Adventure Sagas, Espionage Thrillers & Action Classics). William Le Queux

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СКАЧАТЬ as yet unlined by care, a small, dark moustache, and a manner as courteous towards a woman as any diplomat accredited to the Court of St. James.

      Jack Sainsbury, though merely an employee of the Ochrida Copper Corporation, a man who went by “Tube” to the City each morning and returned each night to the modest little flat in Heath Street, at which his sister Jane acted as housekeeper for him, was an honest, upright Englishman who had, in the first month of the war, done his duty and gone to the recruiting office of the Honourable Artillery Company to enlist.

      A defective elbow-joint had prevented him passing the doctor. And though no one in the office knew he had tried to join the new army, he had returned to the City and continued his soul-killing avocation of adding figures and getting out totals.

      His meeting with Elise Shearman was not without its romantic side.

      One Sunday morning, two years before, he had been riding his motor-cycle up to Hatfield, as was his habit, to meet at the Red Lion — that old inn that is the rendezvous of all motor-cyclists — the men and women who come out there each Sunday morning, wet or fine, from London. Fine cars, driven by their owners, turn into the inn-yard all the morning, but the motor-cyclist ignores them. It is the meeting-place of the man on the cycle.

      One well-remembered Sunday morning Elise, who was advanced enough to put on a Burberry with a leather strap around her waist and sit astride on a motor-cycle, was careering up the North Road beyond Barnet when, of a sudden, she swerved to avoid a cart, and ran headlong into a ditch.

      At the moment Jack Sainsbury, who chanced to be behind her, stopped, sprang off, and went to her assistance.

      She lay in the ditch with her arm broken. Quickly he obtained medical aid, and eventually brought her home to Fitzjohn’s Avenue, where he had, with her father’s knowledge and consent, been a constant visitor ever since.

      Jack Sainsbury, whose father, and his family before him, had been gentlemen-farmers for two centuries in Leicestershire, was, above all, a thorough-going Englishman. He was no smug, get-on-at-all-hazards person of the consumptive type one meets at every turn in the City. On the contrary, he was a well-set-up, bold, straightforward, fearless fellow who, though but a clerk in a City office, was one of that clean-limbed, splendid type which any girl would have welcomed as her hero.

      What Jack Sainsbury said, he meant. His colleagues in the office knew that. They all regarded him as a man of high ideals, and as one whose heart had, ever since the war, been fired with a keen and intense spirit of patriotism.

      That Elise Shearman loved him could be seen at the first moment when he had opened the door and crossed the threshold. Her eyes brightened, and her full, red lips puckered sweetly as she returned his fond, passionate kisses.

      Yes, they loved each other. Elise’s parents knew that. Sometimes they were anxious, for Dan Shearman felt that it would not be altogether a brilliant match, as far as an alliance went. Yet Mrs Shearman, on her part, had so often pleaded, that no separation of the pair had, as yet, been demanded. Hence they found idyllic happiness in each other’s love.

      “You seem unusually thoughtful to-night, Jack!” exclaimed the girl, tenderly smoothing his hair as they stood together clasped in each other’s arms.

      “Do I?” he answered with a start. “I really didn’t know,” he laughed, aroused from his deep thoughts.

      “You are, Jack. Why?”

      “I — well, I’m really not — except perhaps — ”

      “Perhaps what?” asked Elise determinedly.

      “Well, I had rather a heavy day at the office,” was her lover’s hesitating reply. “And I’ve just remembered something.”

      “Oh! business. And that’s all?”

      “Yes, business, dearest,” was his reply. “I must apologise if my thoughts were, for the moment, far away,” he laughed.

      “You’re like father,” said the girl. “He sits by the fire sometimes for a quarter of an hour at a stretch staring into it, and thinking of his horrid business affairs. But of course business is an obsession with him.”

      “Perhaps when I’m your father’s age it will be an obsession with me,” replied Jack Sainsbury.

      “I sincerely hope it won’t,” she said, with a smile upon her pretty lips.

      “It won’t, if I’m able to make sufficient money to keep you properly, darling,” was the young man’s fervent answer, as he bent until his moustache lightly brushed her cheek.

      Truth to tell, he was reflecting seriously. For hours he had thought over those strange words he had overheard on entering the boardroom that afternoon.

      Those astounding words of Lewin Rodwell’s were, in themselves, an admission — a grave and terrible admission.

      Lewin Rodwell and Sir Boyle Huntley were engaged in a great conspiracy, and he — Jack Sainsbury — was the only person who knew the ghastly truth.

      Those two highly patriotic men, whose praises were being sung by every newspaper up and down the country; whose charitable efforts had brought in hundreds of thousands of pounds and hundreds of tons of comforts for our troops abroad; the two men whose photographs were in every journal, and whom the world regarded as fine typical specimens of the honest Briton, men who had raised their voices loudly against German barbarism and intrigue, were, Jack Sainsbury knew, wearing impenetrable masks. They were traitors!

      He alone knew the truth — a truth so remarkable and startling that, were it told and published to the world, Great Britain would stand aghast and bewildered at the revelation. It was inconceivable, incredible. At times he felt himself doubting what he had really heard with his own ears. Yet it had been Rodwell’s voice, and the words had been clear and distinct, a confession of guilt that was as plain as it was damning.

      Sir Boyle had, from his seat in the House of Commons, risen time after time and denounced the policy of the Government in not interning every enemy alien in the country; he had heckled the Home Secretary, and had exposed cases of German intrigue; he had demanded that rigorous action should be taken against the horde of German spies in our midst, and had spoken up and down the country warning the Government and the people of the gravity of the spy-peril, and that British citizens would take the law in their own hands if drastic measures were not taken to crush out the enemy in our midst.

      Yet that afternoon — by no seeking of his own — Jack Sainsbury had learnt a truth which, even hours after the words had fallen upon his ears, left him staggered and astounded.

      He knew the secret of those two great and influential men.

      What should he do? How should he act?

      Such was the cause of his marked thoughtfulness that night — an attitude which Elise had not failed to notice and which considerably puzzled her.

      Mrs Shearman, a pleasant-faced, grey-haired and prosperous-looking lady, who spoke with a strong Lancashire accent, entered the room a few moments later, and the pair, springing aside at the sound of her footsteps, pretended to be otherwise occupied, much to the elder lady’s amusement.

      After greeting Jack the old lady sat down with him, while Elise, at her mother’s request, returned to the piano and began to sing Léon Garnier’s “Sublime Caresse,” with that СКАЧАТЬ