Ambrose Lavendale, Diplomat

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

'This man,' she explained, 'is being entertained at dinner at Ranelagh at the present moment. We can go down there and you can see from the open doorway of the dining-room whether there is any truth in my suspicions. If we are wrong——'

'You need have no fear, young lady,' the General assured her calmly. 'I am a member of Ranelagh and well-known there. It will be quite in order that I stroll round the place and glance in at the dining-room. If your suspicions are, as you suggest, ill-founded, no harm will be done. If they are true,' he added, his voice shaking for a moment, 'if really it is vouchsafed to me in this life to find myself face to face once more with that man——'

He broke off abruptly and muttered something under his breath. Not another word was spoken until they had turned in at the avenue and pulled up in front of the clubhouse. The General had become preternaturally calm. He waited, however, for Suzanne to precede him.

'If you will lead the way, young lady,' he suggested.

They crossed through the two rooms, out on to the terrace the other side, and turned towards the dining-room. The gardens were bright with flowers, and the glow of the sunset seemed still to linger about the place. One or two visitors who had dined early were already having their coffee under the trees. From a hidden spot the musicians were tuning their instruments. Suzanne felt her heart beat rapidly as they drew near the dining-room; the General, apparently unmoved, walked with measured tread, a commanding and dignified figure. A couple of young soldiers stood up as he passed, and he accepted their salute genially. Then he passed into the dining-room. Almost immediately in front of him, at the table usually reserved for the golfers' luncheon, the dinner-party was proceeding, and on the right-hand side of the host sat the distinguished Frenchman. He was facing the door and he glanced up at the entrance of the little party. Suzanne asked no questions. She felt her breath almost stop, a little sob choked her. The faces of almost every one in the room, the laughter, the murmur of conversation, seemed suddenly in her mind to have become arrested. More than anything else in the world she was conscious of this one thing—the man who sat there knew that his hour had come, knew that Fate was marching towards him in the shape of that grim, military figure.

The General walked towards the party very much with the air of one who had come to make some casual inquiry. It was only when he was recognized that a little interested murmur stole around the room. He walked to within a few feet of the Frenchman and his right hand seemed to have disappeared for a moment.

'Gentlemen,' he said, without unduly raising his voice but with curious distinctness, 'the man whom you are entertaining here as an emissary from our French allies, is an impostor, a German and a spy. He cost me, a few weeks ago, the lives of two thousand of my men. A far smaller thing, he is responsible for the ruin of my reputation. This is less than he deserves.'

With hand as steady as a rock, the General held his revolver out before him and deliberately fired three times at the man whom he had accused, and who had fallen forward now, his outstretched hands sweeping the wineglasses from in front of him—stone dead. The General watched his victim without emotion. He even leaned forward to make sure that the wounds were mortal. Then he walked deliberately out into the garden, heedless of the shrieking of the women, the crowd of diners who had sprung to their feet, the passing of the paralysis which had seemed to keep every one in the room seated and silent.

*****

They found the proofs upon his body that night—horrifying, stupefying proofs—and the censor's hand came down. No word of that tragedy ever appeared under any sensational headline in any newspaper. In the face of that grim silence, even many of those who had been present found themselves wondering whether that lightning tragedy had not been a nightmare of the brain. To Suzanne de Freyne, however, it remained always one of the tense moments of her life. The General, with the revolver still in his hand, turned towards her with a polite gesture and a happy smile as he led the way into the garden. He tossed the weapon into a bed of geraniums and seemed utterly indifferent to the turmoil around.