Wallace at Bay Read Free

security in which I have reason to believe they fondly imagined themselves. They will be very much on the alert, and our job will consequently be rendered a thousand times more difficult.’
    ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ apologised Preston.
    ‘So am I,’ returned Major Brien, dryly.
    ‘It was a remarkable coincidence that I should choose that very man – the millionth chance in fact.’
    ‘If you were a member of this service,’ put in Captain Shannon, ‘you would quickly learn that there are no such odds as a million to one against anything, or a thousand to one, for that matter. Ishould be beastly trite, but perfectly truthful, if I added that it is the unexpected that generally turns up.’
    ‘That is true,’ nodded Brien; ‘to us nothing is unexpected. Perhaps it will help you in your future career, Mr Preston, if you remember that. Goodbye.’
    Shannon escorted the actor to the lift. From there until he walked out of the front door he was passed on from one man to another, being hardly ever out of sight of at least two. He learnt more than one lesson that afternoon he never forgot. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why his acting improved so tremendously.

CHAPTER TWO
Carter and a Bootblack
    Directly his visitor had departed Major Brien walked along the corridor to the room of Sir Leonard Wallace, and reported what had occurred. The Chief of the British Secret Service listened without interruption until the end. Except that he had frowned slightly at the information concerning the anarchist’s escape, he showed no emotion of any sort. In fact, he appeared absolutely unconcerned.
    ‘It is all very well to blame the actor,’ he observed, ‘but his action should not have been responsible for Pestalozzi’s escape. Since yesterday afternoon, when Carter found him in Soho, he has been continually followed by two, sometimes three, today four men. “He has visited three houses, four restaurants, at which he has stayed for varying periods,”’ he was quoting from a report on his desk, ‘“and slept the night in the Canute Hotel, in Waterloo Road.” That is correct, isn’t it?’ Brien nodded.‘Well, in that time, the men who trailed him learnt that he was exceedingly jumpy, startled by the least happening out of the ordinary. He was, in short, on the qui vive and ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. That being the case, why were they not more careful?’
    Brien moodily took a cigarette from the box on the desk and lit it.
    ‘It is going to be a devil of a job to pick him up again,’ he remarked, ‘and the king is due next week.’
    ‘Not so difficult as it may appear, Bill.’ Brien caught the glint in his friend’s eyes, and all doubt or exasperation vanished at once. ‘Send Carter to me if he’s available, will you? If not Maddison will do.’
    Warning had been sent to headquarters from the British agent in Vienna that a gang of international anarchists had grown very active in their meetings in that city of late. Certain information which had reached him suggested that they had determined to assassinate the king of a European country about to pay an official visit to Great Britain. Sir Leonard Wallace had hardly received the first report when a second arrived stating that three members of the band of anarchists had left for England – one of them, Pestalozzi, being known to have arrived already. How he had entered the country was a mystery, but there was no doubt of his being there.
    Immediately an intensive search had commenced for him, while watch was kept on all ports and aerodromes for the other two. After nearly a month’s heartbreaking disappointment, with scarcely a clue to suggest Pestalozzi’s whereabouts, Carter, of the Secret Service, had traced him to a restaurant in Soho. From that moment he had been under almost constant surveillance until theunfortunate intervention by Gale Preston. Even when he had slept at the Canute Hotel, on the preceding night, a man had actually been in