The Game Played in the Dark | Page 2

could probably have selected for the commission. To a
certain point--to the abstraction of the papers, in fact--he succeeded, but
it was with pursuit close upon his heels. There was that disadvantage in
employing a rogue to do work that implicated roguery, for whatever
moral right the Countess had to the property, her accomplice had no
legal right whatever to his liberty. On half-a-dozen charges at least he
could be arrested on sight in as many capitals of Europe. He slipped out
of Vienna by the Nordbahn with his destination known, resourcefully
stopped the express outside Czaslau and got away across to Chrudim.
By this time the game and the moves were pretty well understood in
more than one keenly interested quarter. Diplomacy supplemented
justice and the immediate history of Guido became that of a fox hunted
from covert to covert with all the familiar earths stopped against him.
From Pardubitz he passed on to Glatz, reached Breslau and went down
the Oder to Stettin. Out of the liberality of his employer's advances he
had ample funds to keep going, and he dropped and rejoined his
accomplices as the occasion ruled. A week's harrying found him in
Copenhagen, still with no time to spare, and he missed his purpose

there. He crossed to Malmo by ferry, took the connecting night train to
Stockholm and the same morning sailed down the Saltsjon, ostensibly
bound for Obo, intending to cross to Revel and so get back to central
Europe by the less frequented routes. But in this move again luck was
against him and receiving warning just in time, and by the mysterious
agency that had so far protected him, he contrived to be dropped from
the steamer by boat among the islands of the crowded Archipelago,
made his way to Helsingfors and within forty-eight hours was back
again on the Frihavnen with pursuit for the moment blinked and a
breathing-time to the good.
To appreciate the exact significance of these wanderings it is necessary
to recall the conditions. Guido was not zigzagging a course about
Europe in an aimless search for the picturesque, still less inspired by
any love of the melodramatic. To him every step was vital, each
tangent or rebound the necessary outcome of his much-badgered plans.
In his pocket reposed the papers for which he had run grave risks. The
price agreed upon for the service was sufficiently lavish to make the
risks worth taking time after time; but in order to consummate the
transaction it was necessary that the booty should be put into his
employer's hand. Half-way across Europe that employer was waiting
with such patience as she could maintain, herself watched and
shadowed at every step. The Countess X. was sufficiently exalted to be
personally immune from the high-handed methods of her country's
secret service, but every approach to her was tapped. The problem was
for Guido to earn a long enough respite to enable him to communicate
his position to the Countess and for her to go or to reach him by a trusty
hand. Then the whole fabric of intrigue could fall to pieces, but so far
Guido had been kept successfully on the run and in the meanwhile time
was pressing.
"They lost him after the Hutola," Beedel reported, in explaining the
circumstances to Max Carrados. "Three days later they found that he'd
been back again in Copenhagen but by that time he'd flown. Now
they're without a trace except the inference of these 'Orange peach
blossom' agonies in The Times. But the Countess has gone hurriedly to
Paris; and Lafayard thinks it all points to London."

"I suppose the Foreign Office is anxious to oblige just now?"
"I expect so, sir," agreed Beedel, "but, of course, my instructions don't
come from that quarter. What appeals to us is that it would be a feather
in our caps--they're still a little sore up at the Yard about Hans the
Piper."
"Naturally," assented Carrados. "Well, I'll see what I can do if there is
real occasion. Let me know anything, and, if you see your chance
yourself, come round for a talk if you like on--to-day's Wednesday?--I
shall be in at any rate on Friday evening."
Without being a precisian, the blind man was usually exact in such
matters. There are those who hold that an engagement must be kept at
all hazard: men who would miss a death-bed message in order to keep
literal faith with a beggar. Carrados took lower, if more substantial,
ground. "My word," he sometimes had occasion to remark, "is subject
to contingencies, like everything else about me. If I make a promise it
is conditional on nothing which seems more important arising to
counteract it. That, among men of sense, is understood." And, as it
happened, something did occur