CHAPTER XVII.
NANETTE IS CONFIDENTIAL
“Did you ever hear of Adolf Zara?” said O’Shea.
I shook my head blankly.
“That’s the devil of it,” he murmured. “He works in the dark.”
“Who is he?”
He hesitated for a moment, then:
“He is the immediate chief of those Communist gentlemen,” he replied, “whose activities have detained me so long in Madeira. One good thing I owe to him. I shall be returning to England with you in the morning.”
“What!” I exclaimed gladly. “By the _Union Castle_?”
“Yes.” He turned, staring at me in that coldly penetrating way which was so disconcerting and so misleading. “By a sheer coincidence, Mr. Zara is on board and I am instructed to look out for him.”
“But the ship is full, O’Shea.”
“There is always room for three more passengers in any British liner,” he replied: “a diplomatic agent, a King’s Messenger, and a pretty woman.”
“What are you expected to do?” I asked.
“I am expected to prevent him landing!”
“But”--doubtless my expression became more blank than ever--“surely the authorities at Southampton----”
“The authorities at Southampton don’t know in what name he is travelling. Neither does Capetown, apparently. They merely know that he’s on board--with a false passport. He made South Africa too hot to hold him. Moscow’s idea seems to be that another Boer war would add to the gaiety of nations. The Boers don’t seem to think so.”
He stirred languidly in the cane lounge chair and, raising his monocle, surveyed a number of ants performing mysterious evolutions on his white drill suit. It was very still and peaceful in the little palm grove. A faint breeze carried perfume from the gardens, a sound of distant voices and soft laughter. Outside the cool oasis in which we sat, shaded, Madeira sunlight blazed on a million gay flowers, and the low mossy walls were alive with lizards.
“Have you ever seen this man?” I asked.
“No,” O’Shea turned his head lazily. “I haven’t the slightest idea what he looks like. Unless I get some further news by radio, my chance of identifying this Red sportsman is a bad hundred to one.”
“But you say he has a false passport?”
“So I understand. Probably issued in Paris or Milan or even New York, and in perfect order. Thousands of undesirables travel about the world annually with other people’s passports, Decies. The appended photograph is the only snag, and you might be surprised to learn how easy it is to replace it and duplicate the official stamp.”
Presently I went hunting for Nanette. My guardianship of this dainty, wayward ward was soon to cease; and whilst I lacked the courage to think about saying good-bye at Southampton, I had learned that for a man of my age and temperament the rôle of official uncle to a beautiful girl was no sort of job.
Tea was in full swing on the terrace, but Nanette was not there. I thought she might be on the tennis courts, and I strolled down the steps and along the sloping, flower-gay path sacred to basking lizards.
Halfway down there is a sort of abutment, overhanging the lower gardens and possessing a stone seat. Here, in a lounge chair, her parasol propped against the low wall, I saw Nanette.
Her little feet tucked up on the chair, to protect her bare legs from the ants, she sat manicuring her finger nails.
She neither saw nor heard my approach. And I stood still watching her. Quite mechanically she was polishing away with a chamois burnisher, but her blue eyes were staring, unseeingly, out over the bay.
As I studied the charming, pensive profile, I wondered, as I had wondered too often, what fate had in store for little Nanette. My more immediate wonder was concerned with the problem of how she had contrived to be alone.
Suddenly she turned and saw me.
“Coo-ooh!” she called. “Have you come to take me to tea?”
“Yes,” I replied, walking down to her. “What has become of everybody?”
“I don’t know,” said Nanette. “I wanted to be alone.”
“To think?”
“I suppose so.”
I dropped on to the stone seat beside her.
“Whom did you want to think about, Nanette?”
She lowered her lashes, and polished busily.
“Oh--Pop and Mum--and folks.”
I lighted a cigarette, and presently she looked up. Her clear eyes regarded me wistfully for a moment, and:
“You know,” she said. “Don’t you?”
“I am afraid I do, Nanette,” I confessed.
“Isn’t it strange,” she went on, staring away over the sea, “that I should be so crazy about someone who avoids me?”
“Very strange,” I answered dully.
When a girl thus makes a confidant of a man she has never kissed, if he knows the rules of the game he retires hurt. Then:
“I suppose I shall get over it,” she said, and smilingly packed up the manicure implements. “We have to be on board at a fiendishly early hour to-morrow. I don’t know whether to go to bed at nine o’clock or sit up all night. Let’s have tea.”
As I helped her out of the cushioned chair:
“I have some news for you, Nanette,” I said. “Major O’Shea is coming with us.”
Her eyes opened very widely; and she stared at me in a frightened way that I always associated with any sudden reference to O’Shea. Then she turned swiftly, taking up her parasol.
“Really,” she said. “How often he changes his mind.”
But as we walked up the long path to the terrace she talked animatedly. And glancing aside at her flushed face, I realized with almost a shock of surprise how very young she was--and how sweetly incapable of hiding the excitement that my news had created.