Mediterranean Nights Read Free

got under cover in a taxi before he appeared in the station yard.
    He had a good look round before he jumped into a cab. I tapped on my man’s window, and we set off after him down the Rue Lafayette. We nearly lost him at the Opéra, but spotted him again in the Rue de la Paix. As we entered the Place Vendôme I saw that he had pulled up at the Ritz.
    I made my chap drive on through the square and then round to the back of the hotel—the entrance to the bar. I paid him off and walked slowly down that endless corridor lined with show cases. I wanted to give Essenbach time to register before I appeared. As I poked my nose round the corner a page was leading him to the lift. I went over to the desk and asked for a room, but I’d hardly spoken to the clerk when I heard a soft voice behind me, and there was the lady of the tawny eyes and intriguing eyebrows.
    She gave her name to the other clerk as Fräulein Lisabetta von Loewring, but I hadn’t time to stop and talk to her.
    Five minutes later another taxi set me down at the gates of the British Embassy. I walked through into the courtyard and entered the block of office buildings on the right. I was inluck. The office staff had gone of course, but little—well, let’s call him Harvey—was still there.
    â€˜Well, Thornton,’ he grinned at me, ‘glad to see you—take a seat.’
    â€˜Know who’s come in on the boat train?’ I asked.
    He shook his head.
    â€˜Kurt Essenbach,’ I told him.
    â€˜Essenbach?’ he repeated. ‘You mean the chap who went Bolshie after the war and then returned to the German service in 1925? That’s interesting—we haven’t heard a thing about him for the last two years. What’s he up to now?’
    â€˜That’s your job—not mine,’ I told him, but I mentioned the Felixstowe label and suggested Martlesham as a possibility.
    â€˜I’d better get through to London,’ he said, and in a few moments he was talking to someone round the corner from Whitehall. When he put down the receiver his face was grave.
    It seemed that I was right. Two days before one of the draughtsmen on the civil side had disappeared from Martlesham. Steady fellow—been working there for eighteen months. Essenbach of course—taking his time. The police had failed to trace him, so they set a watch on the ports and got our people to put a man on every boat. He’d slipped through at Dover, but the service man had picked him up half-way across—spotted the Felixstowe label—careless that, for an old hand. Anyhow they had wired from Calais and were following him to Paris.
    I learned too that Essenbach had been working in the special room because one of the seniors had gone sick—just the chance he’d been waiting for—and although the blue prints were intact it was a hundred to one he’d got a set of tracings from the diagram of our new fighter. It looked serious to me.
    Harvey said that a special man had been sent over by ‘plane, and in the meantime the chap who had spotted Essenbach on the boat would be sitting on his tail.
    I felt a bit sick that I hadn’t known they were on to him earlier—having hurried to the Embassy had spoilt my chances of what might have developed into something interesting, and as I stood up I told Harvey casually of my meeting with Fräulein Lisabetta.
    He was on me like a flash and cursed me for not having mentioned her before. You see, no first-class espionage man ever holds anything a second longer than he need. There is nearly always a messenger to meet him somewhere and relieve him of his stuff. I had left the compartment for a few moments just before we reached Chantilly, so anything might have happened then, and if I hadn’t been so rusty I should have thought of it before. Harvey was insistent that she had been sent to meet him, and when I thought it over I felt it was ten to one that he was