The Zeppelin's Passenger - E. Phillips Oppenheim (best way to read ebooks TXT) 📗

bewilderment, “what is wrong with my front door?”

“For all I know, dear lady,” the newcomer confessed, “yours may be an excellent front door. I would ask you, however, to consider my appearance I have been obliged to conclude the last few miles of my journey in somewhat ignominious fashion. My clothes - they were quite nice clothes, too, when I started,” he added, looking down at himself ruefully - ” have suffered. And, as you perceive, I have lost my hat.”

“Your hat?” Helen exclaimed, with a sudden glance at Nora’s trophy.

“Precisely! I might have posed before your butler, perhaps, as belonging to what you call the hatless brigade, but the mud upon my clothes, and these unfortunate rents in my garments, would have necessitated an explanation which I thought better avoided. I make myself quite clear, I trust?”

“Clear?” Philippa murmured helplessly.

“Clear?” Helen echoed, with a puzzled frown.

“I mean, of course,” their visitor explained, “so far as regards my choosing this somewhat surreptitious form of entrance into your house.”

Philippa shrugged her shoulders and made a determined move towards the bell. The intruder, however, barred her way. She looked up into his face and found it difficult to maintain her indignation. His expression, besides being distinctly pleasant, was full of a respectful admiration.

“Will you please let me pass?” she insisted.

“Madam,” he replied, “I am afraid that it is your intention to ring the bell.”

“Of course it is,” she admitted. “Don’t dare to prevent me.”

“Madam, I do not wish to prevent you,” he assured her. “A few moments’ delay - that is all I plead for.”

“Will you explain at once, sir,” Philippa demanded, “what you mean by forcing your way into my house in this extraordinary fashion, and by locking that door?”

“I am most anxious to do so,” was the prompt reply. “I am correct, of course, in my first surmise that you are Lady Cranston - and you Miss Fairclough?” he added, bowing ceremoniously to both of them. “A very great pleasure! I recognised you both quite easily, you see, from your descriptions.”

“From our descriptions?” Philippa repeated.

The newcomer bowed.

“The descriptions, glowing, indeed, but by no means exaggerated, of your brother Richard, Lady Cranston, and your fianc=82, Miss Fairclough.”

“Richard?” Philippa almost shrieked.

“You have seen Dick?” Helen gasped.

The intruder dived in his pockets and produced two sealed envelopes. He handed one each simultaneously to Helen and to Philippa.

“My letters of introduction,” he explained, with a little sigh of relief. “I trust that during their perusal you will invite me to have some tea. I am almost starving.”

The two women hastened towards the lamp.

“One moment, I beg,” their visitor interposed. “I have established, I trust, my credentials. May I remind you that I was compelled to ensure the safety of these few minutes’ conversation with you, by locking that door. Are you likely to be disturbed?”

“No, no! No chance at all,” Philippa assured him.

“If we are, we’ll explain,” Helen promised.

“In that case,” the intruder begged, “perhaps you will excuse me.”

He moved towards the door and softly turned the key, then he drew the curtains carefully across the French windows. Afterwards he made his way towards the tea-table. A little throbbing cry had broken from Helen’s lips.

“Philippa,” she exclaimed, “it’s from Dick! It’s Dick’s handwriting!”

Philippa’s reply was incoherent. She was tearing open her own envelope. With a well-satisfied smile, the bearer of these communications seized a sandwich in one hand and poured himself out some tea with the other. He ate and drank with the restraint of good-breeding, but with a voracity which gave point to his plea of starvation. A few yards away, the breathless silence between the two women had given place to an almost hysterical series of disjointed exclamations.

“It’s from Dick!” Helen repeated. “It’s his own dear handwriting. How shaky it is! He’s alive and well, Philippa, and he’s found a friend.”

“I know - I know,” Philippa murmured tremulously. “Our parcels have been discovered, and he got them all at once. Just fancy, Helen, he’s really not so ill, after all!”

They drew a little closer together.

“You read yours out first,” Helen proposed,” and then I’ll read mine.”

Philippa nodded. Her voice here and there was a little uncertain.

MY DEAREST SISTER,

I have heard nothing from you or Helen for so long that I was really getting desperate. I have had a very rough time here, but by the grace of Providence I stumbled up against an old friend the other day, Bertram Maderstrom, whom you must have heard me speak of in my college days. It isn’t too much to say that he has saved my life. He has unearthed your parcels, found me decent quarters, and I am getting double rations. He has promised, too, to get this letter through to you. =20

You needn’t worry about me now, dear. I am feeling twice the man I was a month ago, and I shall stick it out now quite easily.

Write me as often as ever you can. Your letters and Helen’s make all the difference.

My love to you and to Henry. Your affectionate brother, RICHARD.

P.S. Is Henry an Admiral yet? I suppose he was in the Jutland scrap, which they all tell us here was a great German victory. I hope he came out all right.

Philippa read the postscript with a little shiver. Then she set her teeth as though determined to ignore it.

“Isn’t it wonderful!” she exclaimed, turning towards Helen with glowing eyes.=20 “Now yours, dear?”

Helen’s voice trembled as she read. Her eyes, too, at times were misty:

DEAREST,

I am writing to you so differently because I feel that you will really get this letter. I have bad an astonishing stroke of luck, as you will gather from Philippa’s note. You can’t imagine the difference. A month ago I really thought I should have to chuck it in. Now I am putting on flesh every day and beginning to feel myself again. I owe my life to a pal with whom I was at college, and whom you and I, dearest, will have to remember all our lives.

I think of you always, and my thoughts are like the flowers of which we see nothing in these hideous huts. My greatest joy is in dreaming of the day when we shall meet again.

Write to me often, sweetheart. Your letters and my thoughts of you are the one joy of my life.

Always your lover, DICK.

There were a few moments of significant silence. The girls were leaning together, their arms around one another’s necks, their heads almost touching. Behind them, their visitor continued to eat and drink. He rose at last, however, reluctantly to his feet, and coughed. They started, suddenly remembering his presence. Philippa turned impulsively towards him with outstretched hands.

“I can’t tell you how thankful we are to you,” she declared.

“Both of us,” Helen echoed.

He touched with his fingers a box of cigarettes which stood upon the tea-table.

“You permit? “he asked.

“Of course,” Philippa assented eagerly. “You will find some matches on the tray there. Do please help yourself. I am afraid that I must have seemed very discourteous, but this has all been so amazing. Won’t you have some fresh tea and some toast, or wouldn’t you like some more sandwiches?”

“Nothing more at present, thank you,” he replied. “If you do not mind, I would rather continue our conversation.”

“These letters are wonderful,” Philippa told him gratefully. “You know from whom they come, of course. Dick is my twin brother, and until the war we had scarcely ever been parted. Miss Fairclough here is engaged to be married to him. It is quite two months since we had a line, and I myself have been in London for the last three days, three very weary days, making enquiries everywhere.”

“I am very happy,” he said, “to have brought you such good news.”

Once more the normal aspect of the situation began to reimpose itself upon the two women. They remembered the locked door, the secrecy of their visitor’s entrance, and his disordered condition.

“May I ask to whom we are indebted for this great service?” Philippa enquired.

“My name for the present is Hamar Lessingham,” was the suave reply.

“For the present?” Philippa repeated. “You have perhaps, some explanations to make,” she went on, with some hesitation; “the condition of your clothes, your somewhat curious form of entrance?”

“With your permission.”

“One moment,” Helen intervened eagerly. “Is it possible, Mr. -=20 Lessingham, that you have seen Major Felstead lately?”

“A matter of fifty-six hours ago, Miss Fairclough. I am happy to tell you that be was looking, under the circumstances, quite reasonably well.”

Helen caught up a photograph from the table by her side, and came over to their visitor’s side.

“This was taken just before be went out the first time,” she continued. “Is he anything like that now?”

Mr. Hamar Lessingham sighed and shook his head.

“You must expect,” he warned her, “that prison and hospital have had their effect upon him. He was gaining strength every day, however, when I left.”

Philippa held out her hand. She had been looking curiously at their visitor.

“Helen, dear, afterwards we will get Mr. Lessingham to talk to us about Dick,” she insisted. “First there are some questions which I must ask.”

He bowed slightly and drew himself up. For a moment it seemed as though they were entering upon a duel - the slight, beautiful woman and the man in rags.

“Just now,” she began, “you told us that you saw Major Felstead, my brother, fifty-six hours ago.”

“That is so,” he assented.

“But it is impossible!” she pointed out. “My brother is a prisoner of war in Germany.”

“Precisely,” he replied, “and not, I am afraid, under the happiest conditions, he has been unfortunate in his camp. Let us talk about him, shall we?”

“Are you mad,” Helen demanded, “or are you trying to confuse us?”

“My dear young lady!” he protested. “Why suppose such a thing? I was flattering myself that my conversation and deportment were, under the circumstances, perfectly rational.”

“But you are talking nonsense,” Philippa insisted. “You say that you saw Major Felstead fifty-six hours ago. You cannot mean us to believe that fifty-six hours ago you were at Wittenberg.”

“That is precisely what I have been trying to tell you,” he agreed.

“But it isn’t possible!” Helen gasped.

“Quite, I assure you,” he continued; “in fact, we should have been here before but for a little uncertainty as to your armaments along the coast. There was a gun, we were told, somewhere near here, which we were credibly informed had once been fired without the slightest accident.”

Philippa’s eyes seemed to grow larger and rounder.

“He’s raving!” she decided.

“He isn’t!” Helen cried, with sudden divination. “Is that your hat?” she asked, pointing to the table where Nora had left her trophy.

“It is,” he admitted with a smile, “but I do not think that I will claim it.”

“You were in the observation car of that Zeppelin!”

Lessingham extended his hand.

“Softly, please,” he begged. “You have, I gather, arrived at the truth, but for the moment shall it be our secret? I made an exceedingly uncomfortable, not to say undignified descent from the Zeppelin which passed over Dutchman’s Common last night.”

“Then,” Philippa cried, “you are a German!”

“My dear lady, I have escaped that misfortune,” Lessingham confessed. “Do you think that none other than Germans ride in Zeppelins?”