Chapter SEVENTEEN: Across Europe

Then the message from Illona, delivered to me in Kensington Gardens, had been a false one, sent by the Little Countess in order to mislead me! Why? With what motive?

Angela, or whatever her true name was, evidently had been aware of Illona’s appointment with me, and had sent the girl with that cock-and-bull story so that we should be prevented from meeting. Possibly the delay in Illona’s arrival was purposely brought about by the woman who had been my enemy on that night in Camberwell.

Whither had she gone with her man friend who called himself Detmold?

She had driven to the Landing Stage at Liverpool, it was true; but, she might easily have taken the train to London, instead of embarking upon a boat.

I was to ring up Illona at her club. Again she had failed to give her address. However, there seemed to be some object in withholding it. And she evidently believed me to be well aware of it.

This constant strain had brought me well nigh to craziness. Everywhere I turned some obstacle arose which prevented my learning the truth. My memory had returned, but at what cost! Would that I had remained in the state of mental unbalance in which I had existed until that evening in Rome; for, now that I had lost Joan, my anxiety and grief bordered on frenzy.

I spent that morning ringing up the many ladies’ clubs. I had never believed they were so numerous. What name could I ask for save my own--Hipwell?

From every one of the various feminine social centres came the same regretful reply that they had no member of that name. When all that failed, I rang up a number of bridge-clubs in the West End. But, from several there came no reply as they were closed at that hour of the day, and from the rest came the usual negative response.

Five minutes later, Bruce brought in a note that had just been delivered by hand, the envelope of which bore the familiar words, “On His Britannic Majesty’s Service.” With eager fingers I tore it open, to find my orders to leave Victoria at two o’clock with dispatches for Brussels, Berne, and Vienna.

How could I go, when at any moment Illona might ring me up, or call on me?

I spoke over the telephone to my friend Gordon at the Foreign Office, begging him to send somebody else.

“I’m really awfully sorry, old boy,” he replied. “But the whole staff are traveling. Morton will be the first back, but he can’t be in till Saturday night. He’s on his way home from Constantinople, by Bucharest. So there’s nobody else to take your place. I’m so awfully sorry, old chap. I’d do anything to arrange it for you, as you well know. I’m afraid you really must do this trip. You’ll be back in five days,” he added.

Five days! What might not happen in that period? Besides, the man Dufour would be brought up again at Bow Street.

There was no alternative. Already it was past twelve o’clock; so, I told Bruce to get out my small suit-case, which he always kept packed with everything I required for a fortnight. Then, I sat down and wrote a letter of explanation to Illona regarding the appointment in Kensington Gardens, and what had occurred there. I asked for her address, and, enclosing the piece of impossible music, I sealed the envelope with my lapis-lazuli ring and addressed it: “To Illona.”

“Bruce,” I said very seriously. “While I am away, a lady may call--or she may ring up. Tell her that I shall be back next Wednesday, and ask her to kindly give you her Christian name. If the name is Illona, give this letter to her. It is most urgent and important. Perhaps you may have difficulty in inducing her to give her name, but use tact, and tell her exactly what I’ve said to you.”

“Yes, sir. I quite understand,” my man replied in his well-trained manner. “But what kind of lady will she be--old or young, sir?”

That question completely floored me.

“Well, as a matter of fact, Bruce”--I hesitated lamely--“I’ve never seen the lady. I only know of her.”

“Very well, sir. I will exercise discretion,” he said. And I dashed out to the Piccadilly, where I swallowed a hasty lunch in the grill-room. And, just before two o’clock, I entered a _coupé_ of one of the Pullmans of the first portion of the Continental train, which had been reserved for me, and into which a porter placed six little white canvas bags of dispatches. The Foreign Office bags carried by King’s Messengers always intrigue the traveling public. They imagine them to be full of State secrets, whereas their contents are mostly dull, uninteresting Consular reports, Treasury accounts, memoranda, and perhaps some private letters for Ambassadors to Downing Street, marked “Per favour of Foreign Office bag.” If all were stolen they would not amount to much.

Indeed, there is a tradition in the Foreign Office that before the war a certain Captain Gordon Smith--that was not his real name--one of the most cheery and most cosmopolitan of the corps of King’s Messengers, one day discovered, in a locked cupboard in his rooms, a bag of dispatches that had been there for four years! His man, who had long since left his service, had found them among his kit on his return one night from Madrid and had locked them up for safety! Now every bag is minutely numbered and signed for, both by the messenger on receiving it and by the secretary at the Embassy abroad, or the official in charge of incoming dispatches at Downing Street. Hence it is impossible for a bag to go astray. Yet in this instance somebody carelessly signed a receipt for so many incoming bags, with the result that Gordon Smith had one over. The story goes that rather than get anybody hauled over the coals for negligence, he cut it open, and made a bonfire in his sitting-room of the whole of the contents, including the bag itself.

The “crossed dispatch,” as it is known--the secret instructions intended only for the eye of the representative of His Majesty the King abroad--is carried on the person of the messenger, who, like myself, usually has a very serviceable Browning to defend it from any possible pilferer.

As I settled myself with a magazine, Crawford, the conductor of the car, looked in, and, wishing me good afternoon, asked if I were comfortable, while several travelers glanced in with interest at seeing my little white bags piled in front of me. I have been taken by tourists to be of many professions. Some have whispered to each other that I am a bank clerk taking bags of banknotes to Paris. Others think I am employed by some bookmaker. Still others have thought me to be a dress-designer, or the runner of an illegal lottery. Then there have been those who have seen me piled with thirty or forty bags on the big round which includes Vienna, the Balkan capitals, Athens, Constantinople, Bucharest, and back. Those people have thought I was traveling for some great advertising agency to boom American corn-flakes, or perhaps a traveling circus!

At Dover Maritime, that ever-genial official of the Southern Railway, Mr. Harvey Beresford--whom every King’s Messenger and most distinguished travelers know--that energetic, untiring inspector who is alert to see every outgoing or incoming boat from Calais, Boulogne, or Ostend--catching sight of me, rushed up and gripped my hand.

“Hulloa, Beresford,” I exclaimed, greeting the smart, nautical-looking man, who always wore his peaked cap at an angle.

“A long journey this time?” he asked, as we went through the little side door and strode down to the boat, where a strong wind was blowing.

My dispatch bags were locked in a deck cabin. And, I stood outside, chatting with the cheery friend of King’s Messengers and distinguished travelers. For, the popular Harvey Beresford is the friend of kings, princes, diplomats, ministers, and the great ones who visit England. It is his unique job to receive them or wish them God-speed.

The average traveler to and fro the Continent knows him not. He will see a pleasant, round-faced naval-looking man, who is chatting with a railway official, an obtrusive man. But he is perhaps the best-known person to the great ones of our century.

The siren sounded that the mails were on board and had been duly counted and checked. Electric cranes were still dumping luggage into the nets. An invitation for a cocktail had been firmly refused by my old friend, because he was on duty. The captain came along over the gangway and passed the time of day with us both.

“Well, so long, Mr. Hipwell,” laughed Beresford. “I’m forever on this quay, but I’m going over at the end of August on a little run round Belgium; taking the wife. Just a little quiet trip to take me out of the five-times-a-day cross-Channel traffic. Oh, the tourist rush which we’re going to have this season! They tell me that Cook’s have over a hundred guides with parties going to Switzerland alone this season! But, my dear Mr. Hipwell, when you travel with that firm, you travel under a master. People may jeer at tourist agencies; but neither of us does. A ‘Cookite’ of the stage of the ’nineties with the saying, ‘Follow the man from Cook’s’ was humorous. But ‘Cookites’ who go over by each boat for their holidays are properly fathered from the moment they leave London till they’re back at Victoria. We can’t say that for all the travel agencies, can we--eh?”

“I agree, Beresford--I entirely agree,” I said, laughing. He was always bluff and outspoken, even though so tactful and courteous.

The warning siren blew again. All the baggage had been stowed, and the steamer was ready to cast off. Only the one gangway remained down, and crowded around it stood the usual mixed assortment of travelers, from _chic_ French actresses in rich furs to the usual thin, be-spectacled Indian civil servants on their return East, accompanied by their wives.

“Well, good-bye, my dear Beresford,” I said, gripping his hand. Next moment he nipped nimbly across the gangway just as it was drawn up, and the vessel moved away.

It was near midnight when, on alighting at Brussels, I gave over two of the bags and a special dispatch to Carew, the second secretary of the Embassy, who had come down to the station in the car to meet me.

Until the Ostend-Bâle night express roared in, I stood on the platform with him. Then, I entered the single berth that had been reserved for me in the _wagon-lit_, which was to bear me south to Bâle. There, again, I would be compelled to change for Berne, the capital of the peaceful little Swiss confederation.

In that narrow little bed, as the train rocked and rolled throughout the night, along the valleys of the Ardennes and down to Strasburg, sleep refused to come to my eyes. My thoughts were ever of Joan, and of my mysterious wife, who begged me to meet her, yet whose whereabouts I had no means whatever of ascertaining.

My life had become so perplexing, so full of apprehension, with hourly dread and a terror of dire disaster pending, that, sleeping or waking, the mystery of Illona was my one concern.

I took my morning coffee in the big frescoed restaurant at Bâle station, and presently took train with my bags to Berne. There I delivered one of them at the Legation. Then, driving back to the station, I went on to Zürich; and thence, that night, caught the express to Vienna.

My only object was to fulfil my duties and get back to London with all haste. On arrival at the big, echoing West Bahnhof at Vienna, I took a taxi to our fine Embassy in the Metternichgasse, and there delivered my bags and dispatches over to Charlie Denby, the first secretary.

He invited me to remain to dinner, but I declined, and, as a bag was ready to go back, I flung it into the taxi. I found that I had time to spare to catch the Orient Express for Paris, so I drove around the Ring, that wonderful succession of the finest boulevards in all the world.

I knew Vienna well. At other times I would have been glad of a couple of days’ enjoyment and rest there after the dusty journey from London. But that night I merely took a _capuziner_ outside the Prückel Café in the Stuben-Ring, and then went along to the Stephans-Keller to have my evening meal, an exquisitely-cooked _goulasch_ with _paprika_, followed by deliciously thin _palatschinken_. Usually a King’s Messenger is well versed in foreign dishes, and I fear I was no exception.

Just after ten o’clock the great Orient Express thundered into the station on its way from Constantinople to Calais, a dining-car and four dusty sleeping-cars. The brown-uniformed conductor, who stepped out, knew me. He saluted, and soon had me comfortably installed.

But hardly had he done so than Charlie Denby breathlessly entered the car, saying:

“Glad I’ve caught you, Lionel. We’ve just had a wire from the Foreign Office altering your route. You are to go by the Paris portion from Wels instead of by Brussels and Ostend. There are dispatches waiting for you in Paris.”

“Gosh!” I laughed. “What a life one leads on these gridirons of railways!”

The express waited twenty minutes, therefore my kit and I were quickly transferred into the _wagon-lit_ for Paris, and Charlie and I had cocktails in the _wagon-restaurant_.

I looked around at my fellow-travelers. They were mostly commercial and financial people from the near East, together with one or two really nice American families, the sort that we Englishmen love to meet--smart, well-behaved people, with the neatest luggage in the world.

American travelers can be picked out of millions by reason of their pleasant looks and the tidiness of their belongings.

As a constant traveler, wherever I go, I meet Americans fathered by Cook’s, Raymond & Whitcomb, the American Express, and other tourist firms, who always look after their clients well.

Only King’s Messengers can be true judges of tourist agencies, the amazing wonders of their organization, and their few failures.

Modern travel is a most complicated affair. No one knows or sees more of it than the unobtrusive man in a serviceable traveling-coat. It is the man who invariably eats a modest sandwich in the smoking-room of a cross-Channel steamer; the most trusted servant of the State; the messenger who is directly in the service of his Sovereign.