CHAPTER VIII.

THE CALL

“Telegram, sir!”

I sat up with a start. Morning sunlight flooded the large bare room. Wild canaries were singing outside my window. Slowly, facts began to assert themselves. I had been dreaming that I was taking tea at Stewarts with the Duchess of York and Mr. Tom Mann, when Trebitch Lincoln had appeared through a window, holding a bomb in his hand. Now, I realized that I had read news of all in a week-old _Daily Mail_ recently; but that actually I was in bed at Reid’s Hotel, Funchal.

The radio message that the boy had brought up was crisp enough, but it effectually banished my drowsiness.

Please call on British consul at once. Vitally urgent. Am holding you to our bargain.

O’Shea.

A bargain based upon the survival of so old an institution as the British Empire is not lightly denied: I thought that perhaps my dreams had been prophetic. Nor was Edmond O’Shea the man to send such a message except under stress extraordinary.

As I hurriedly bathed, shaved, and dressed, I reviewed the position. There was O’Shea, homeward bound with a packet of letters whose publication would further Red anarchy a number of points. There was myself, George Decies, who in a neutral way had helped to secure these. There was Gabriel da Cunha, agent of the nightmare called Communism, nursing a broken jaw as a result of foregoing transactions. And there was Nanette.

Even as her name brought the dainty image to my mind, from under the open window came a soft call:

“Coo--oo!”

I crossed, struggling with an intractable tie; and there on the balcony below was Nanette.

To know that the most provocatively pretty girl one has ever met is madly in love with a better man and to behave sanely in her company is an acid test of what I have heard termed “British poise.”

She shaded her eyes with her hands, looking up at me. Her arms were a delicate brown colour on their outer curves where the sun had tanned them, and by comparison ivory white beneath. With a background of flowers against distant sea blue, Nanette made a picture exquisite to remember in old age but disturbing to a comparatively young bachelor. Temptation is sweet only when there is a chance of falling.

“What a horrid tie,” she said. “Please wear the gray one with silver stripes, as it’s our last day in Madeira.”

There was a wistful note in her appeal, and, looking down at little Nanette, slowly a memory came: I had worn that gray tie on the day we had met O’Shea.

I suppressed a sigh, “admirin’ how the world was made.” At eighteen, there are many things that even Miss 1927 doesn’t know. There was one that Nanette did not even suspect. There was another that I knew of; but this not my own secret. I was unselfish enough to wish I could tell her.

“Very well, Nanette,” I replied, and lingered, looking down.

“Are you going to swim this morning--for the last time?”

“No. I have to go into the town.”

“I don’t think I shall swim, then,” said Nanette. “May I come with you? Or is it a stag party?”

Before I could reply:

“Please remember your packing!” came a voice from below.

Nanette’s mother stepped out onto the balcony and looked up at me in mock severity. Seeing her, beside her daughter, I reflected that the lucky man who won Nanette would acquire a bride who would always be beautiful. “Consider well the mother of thy beloved,” says an Arab poet. “In her behold thy beloved-to-be.”

“Pop is doing his to-night,” Nanette protested.

I visualized “Pop,” sole occupant of the family table in the dining room, dealing with a solid English breakfast, regardless of flies, temperature, and the indifferent quality of the bacon.

“He has none to do, dear,” was the reply. “I do it for him.”

“But, darling,” Nanette wheedled, bobbed head pressed against her mother’s shoulder, “there are hours and hours. Please let me off.”

In the end she had her way, and we set out together along the dusty road. There would be disappointment this morning down at the bathing pool, I mused, peering aside at the piquant face shaded by a Japanese parasol. Nanette wore no hat, and I said to myself that if all the women who were bobbed had such shapely heads as Nanette’s, the world would be very beautiful.

“Did you tell Jack you were going?” I asked.

“No.” Nanette aroused herself from a reverie. “I forgot.”

Poor Jack! And he would have sold his Blue for a smile from Nanette.

The road to the town is very picturesque; and I might have counted George Decies a happy man had I not known that my charming companion loved to be with me only because I formed a link with her memories of someone else. Down the steep slope we walked, talking but little. An old roadmaker doffed his hat, smiled, and bade us good-morning. I sensed his kindly, appreciative glance following us. Funchal is famous for honeymoons.

Past the gardens of the Casino and the flower-cloaked balconies of villas we went. I forced myself to think of my real mission. Common sense whispered that I should have driven down in a fast car. Sense of duty demanded that I should conceal the nature of my business from Nanette.

“Shall you be long with the consul?” she asked.

“I don’t expect to be,” I replied.

“Then I will go along and have a simply perfect shawl I saw sent up to Mum,” said Nanette. “She won’t like it. But _I_ love it.”

We were just about to turn into that steep and narrow street that leads to the square, when:

“Hi! hi! Hullo there!” we were hailed.

We turned. Bumping along in a sledge behind two sweating patient oxen, was Jack.

“Hullo, Jack,” said Nanette. “Mr. Decies has to see the consul and I’m going shopping. Want to come along?”

“Rather!” cried Jack. “Jump in.”

We proceeded to the consulate in the bullock cart, escorted by a battalion of flies with fixed bayonets.

“Meet you at the Golden Gate,” called Jack.

He was absurdly happy when I left him with Nanette and climbed the narrow stairs to the consul’s office.

The British consul was a quiet little official automaton who had buried his heart in somebody’s grave and had nothing left to hope for.

“Good-morning, Mr. Decies,” he said, and smiled rather sadly as I plumped an ornamental object down on the table.

“Good Lord!” said I.

It was Nanette’s handbag, a frivolous trifle from Paris, which she had asked me to take care of as we got into the bullock cart. I had been carrying it unconsciously.

“You are early,” the consul went on, “and I have not quite finished decoding a dispatch which I am instructed to deliver to you. The main point, however, is this: Major O’Shea arrives in Madeira to-morrow night, and----”

“Oh!” A faint cry interrupted him. “I’m so sorry----”

We both turned and looked up.

Nanette stood in the doorway, her blue eyes so widely opened as to convey an impression of fear.

“I came for my bag,” she said. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”