The Pawns Count | Page 2

country! Please protect me."

He bowed over her fingers. Then he looked up. His tone was
impressive.
"If I thought that you needed protection, Miss Van Teyl--"
"Well, I can assure you that I do," she interrupted, laughing. "You
know my friends, don't you?"
"I think I have that pleasure," the American replied, shaking hands with
Lutchester and Holderness.
"Now we'll get an independent opinion," the former observed, pointing
to the wall. "We were discussing that notice, Mr. Fischer. You're
almost as much a Londoner as a New Yorker. What do you think?--is it
superfluous or not?"
Fischer read it out and smiled.
"Well," he admitted, "in America we don't lay much store by that sort
of thing, but I don't know as we're very good judges about what goes on
over here. I shouldn't call this place, anyway, a hotbed of intrigue.
Excuse me!"
He moved off to greet some incoming guests--a well-known
stockbroker and his partner. Lutchester looked after him curiously.
"Is Mr. Fischer one of your typical millionaires, Miss Van Teyl?" he
asked.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"We have no typical millionaires," she assured him. "They come from
all classes and all States."
"Fischer is a Westerner, isn't he?"
Pamela nodded, but did not pursue the conversation. Her eyes were
fixed upon a girl who had just entered, and who was looking a little
doubtfully around, a girl plainly but smartly dressed, with fluffy light

hair, dark eyes, and a very pleasant expression. Pamela, who was
critical of her own sex, found the newcomer attractive.
"Is that, by any chance, one of our missing guests, Captain
Holderness?" she inquired, turning towards him. "I don't know why, but
I have an idea that it is your sister."
"By Jove, yes!" the young man assented, stepping forward. "Here we
are, Molly, and at last you are going to meet Miss Van Teyl. I've bored
Molly stiff, talking about you," he explained, as Pamela held out her
hand.
The girls, who stood talking together for a moment, presented rather a
striking contrast. Molly Holderness was pretty but usual. Pamela was
beautiful and unusual. She had the long, slim body of a New York girl,
the complexion and eyes of a Southerner, the savoir faire of a
Frenchwoman. She was extraordinarily cosmopolitan, and yet
extraordinarily American. She impressed every one, as she did Molly
Holderness at that moment, with a sense of charm. One could almost
accept as truth her own statement--that she valued her looks chiefly
because they helped people to forget that she had brains.
"I won't admit that I have ever been bored, Miss Van Teyl," Molly
Holderness assured her, "but Dick has certainly told me all sorts of
wonderful things about you--how kind you were in New York, and
what a delightful surprise it was to see you down at the hospital at Nice.
I am afraid he must have been a terrible crock then."
"Got well in no time as soon as Miss Van Teyl came along,"
Holderness declared. "It was a bit dreary down there at first. None of
my lot were sent south, and a familiar face means a good deal when
you've got your lungs full of that rotten gas and are feeling like nothing
on earth. I wonder where that idiot Sandy is. I told him to be here a
quarter of an hour before you others--thought we might have had a
quiet chat first. Will you stand by the girls for a moment, Lutchester,
while I have a look round?" he added.
He hobbled away, one of the thousands who were thronging the streets

and public places of London--brave, simple-minded young men, all of
them, with tangled recollections in their brains of blood and fire and
hell, and a game leg or a lost arm to remind them that the whole thing
was not a nightmare. He looked a little disconsolately around, and was
on the point of rejoining the others when the friend for whom he was
searching came hurriedly through the turnstile doors.
"Sandy, old chap," Holderness exclaimed, with an air of relief, "here
you are at last!"
"Cheero, Dick!" was the light-hearted reply. "Fearfully sorry I'm late,
but listen--just listen for one moment."
The newcomer threw his hat and coat to the attendant. He was a rather
short, freckled young man, with a broad, high forehead and
light-coloured hair. His eyes just now were filled with the enthusiasm
which trembled in his tone.
"Dick," he continued, gripping his friend's arm tightly, "I'm late, I know,
but I've great news. I've motored straight up from Salisbury Plain. I've
done it! I swear to you, Dick, I've done it!"
"Done what?" Holderness demanded, a little bewildered.
"I've perfected my explosive--the thing I was telling you about last
week," was the triumphant reply. "The