89 
Unexpected Visitors to English Shores

Inside the house, Ramsay Halifax had arisen about half an hour earlier.

He had arrived at Hawsker Head late the previous night. A nicely lit fire was already ablaze as he came downstairs, thanks to Doyle McCrogher, though Ramsay found himself alone. McCrogher was at sea in his trusty vessel bringing ashore what Ramsay expected to be a single additional guest—an arrival, it might be noted, that he was not especially looking forward to seeing on the basis of the fact that he had himself made the drive north from London alone. There would be purgatory to pay from Barclay’s mouth, and he was already trying to plan how to respond to the anticipated caustic barbs from the latter’s tongue.

Chalmondley Beauchamp, meanwhile, was atop the lighthouse at the controls, a function in the operation of the network which he now handled almost entirely. The two or three others present were all still asleep.

Ramsay made himself a small pot of tea and had just completed his first cup in front of the fire when the door opened. The astonishment which registered on his face was instantaneous. He sat for a moment gaping at the figure who followed Hartwell Barclay inside.

“Scarlino . . . what are you doing here?” he finally exclaimed, more confused than anything. “You didn’t find—”

“No, I didn’t find her,” interjected Scarlino testily, showing no inclination toward conversation with Ramsay.

Behind him another stranger walked in.

“But if—”

“Forget the girl,” said Scarlino, removing his coat as the door closed. “That was just a ploy. We are here on another assignment—one that requires, shall we say, talents of which you have proved yourself capable. The girl means nothing anymore.—Is there any coffee around here?” He glanced about, then walked in the direction of what he took for the kitchen, where a kettle of water still stood steaming on the stove.

“We—what we?” said Ramsay, rising from his chair. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that. What kind of talents?—Barclay,” he said, now turning to his mentor in the ways of the Fountain, “what’s this all about?”

“That’s what I should be asking you,” Barclay rejoined, finding a cup and pouring himself what remained in Ramsay’s small pot from the table in front of the chair where he had been sitting. “You were supposed to have taken care of the girl by now, if you recall.”

“Unfortunately, she has continued to elude me.”

“She’s not dead?”

“No, she’s not dead.”

“Why not?”

“It didn’t work out. What are these other two doing here?” he said, returning to the subject at hand. He gestured toward the newcomers in the kitchen, who were investigating coffee makings and scarcely paying attention to the conversation about them in the adjacent room.

Barclay took a long sip from the tea in his cup, then eyed Ramsay intently.

“It seems they have orders from Austrian and German Intelligence to assassinate the good Mr. Asquith and his colleague Churchill,” he said.

“What!” exclaimed Ramsay. “That’s further than we’ve ever gone.”

“Perhaps,” replied Barclay. “Unfortunately, they left me little choice but to bring them to England for precisely that purpose.”

“That may be. But what the deuce does it have to do with me?”

“The most fascinating part of their scheme,” replied Barclay, the hint of a smile now revealing itself in his expression, “is that they seem to think you are the man to pull the trigger.”

“What! That’s the most insane—”

“It seems they have been setting this whole thing up for months.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Once Matteos put you and Scarlino in touch, you were a marked man, Ramsay. They knew all about us. They infiltrated our network.”

Barclay’s only consolation in the affair—for the past miserable hours in the submarine had caused him to hate Scarlino and the Prussian even more than Ramsay did—was in seeing his irritating and cocky young colleague squirm. “Seems as if we’ve been beaten at our own game,” he added with an ironic smile.

“How is that possible?” exclaimed Ramsay.

“The other fellow there is a high-ranking member of the Prussian Intelligence Service. They have contacts throughout Europe that make us look like amateurs. It would seem, my dear young Halifax, that we are working for them now.”

“Well, I for one have no intention of working for them!” said Ramsay irascibly.

“You have no choice, Halifax,” said Scarlino with a sinister smile as he walked in from the kitchen holding a cup of very bad and hastily assembled coffee. “We are in charge of this operation now. And its code name is Halifax Kills Churchill.”

An evil laugh now filled the room. The sound of it grated on Ramsay’s ears so stridently that for a moment his hand twitched in the direction of his gun.

If he was going to kill anyone, he thought, this maniac ought to be at the top of the list!