The Pawns Count

"Small affair, this," Downing observed, as he piloted Lutchester through the stately reception rooms of the Embassy. "You see, we are all living a sort of touchy life here, nowa...

The first few seconds after the entrance of the two men were monopolised by the greetings of Pamela with her brother. Fischer stood a little in the background, his eyes fixed up...

"On the contrary," she said drily, "Mr. Fischer represents a type of my countrymen of whom I am not very fond. He is a great patron of yours, is he not?"

At five-and-twenty minutes past eight that evening Lutchester, who was waiting in the entrance hall of the Ritz-Carlton, became just a little restless. At half-past, his absorpt...

It was about half-an-hour later when Sandy Graham opened his eyes and began to feel the life once more warm in his veins. He was seated in the most comfortable easy-chair of Joh...

The usual little crowd was waiting in the lobby of a fashionable London restaurant a few minutes before the popular luncheon hour. Pamela Van Teyl, a very beautiful American gir...

High up in one of the topmost chambers of the Hotel Plaza, Nikasti, after his conference with Von Schwerin and Fischer, sought solitude. He opened the high windows, out of which...

Mr. Fischer's business later on that night led him into unsavoury parts. He left his car at the corner of Fourteenth Street, and, after a moment's reflection, as though to refre...

"Now indeed I feel that I am in New York," Pamela declared, as she broke off one of the blossoms of the great cluster of deep red roses by her side, and gazed downward over her...

Pamela opened her eyes the next morning upon a distinctly pleasing sight. At the foot of her bed was an enormous basket of pink carnations. On the counterpane by her side lay a...

Pamela's first shock of surprise did not readily pass. In the first place, John Lutchester's appearance in America at all was entirely unexpected. In the second, by what possibl...

The _Lapland_ was two days out from Tilbury before Pamela appeared on deck, followed by her maid with an armful of cushions, and the deck steward with her rugs. She had scarcely...

A little ripple of excitement went through the office as Van Teyl started his negotiations. It seemed to Lutchester that several telephones and half a dozen perspiring young men...

Mr. Oscar Fischer and his friend, Senator Theodore Hastings, stood side by side, a week later, in the bar of one of the most fashionable of New York hotels. They were passing aw...

"There goes a typical New York girl," he said, "and the best-looking I've seen for many a long day. You can go all round Europe, Freddie, and not see a girl with a face and figu...

Fischer, exactly one week after his nocturnal visit to Fourteenth Street, hurried out of the train at the Pennsylvania Station, almost tore the newspapers from the news stand, g...

Molly Holderness, for whom Graham's absence possessed, perhaps, more significance than the others, relapsed very soon into a strained and anxious silence. Pamela and Lutchester,...

Fischer, as he waited for Pamela the following afternoon in the sitting-room of her flat on Fifty-eighth Street, felt that although the practical future of his life might be dec...

There was a ripple of interest and a good deal of curiosity that afternoon, in the lounge and entrance hall of the Hotel Plaza, when a tall, grey-moustached gentleman of militar...

The offices of Messrs. Neville, Brooks, and Van Teyl were the scene of something like pandemonium. Van Teyl himself, bathed in perspiration, rushed into his room for the twentie...

Sonia had the air of one steeped in an almost ecstatic content. On her return from the roof garden she had exchanged her wonderful gown for a white silk negligee, and her headdr...

Mrs. Theodore Hastings was forty-eight years old, which her friends said was the reason why her mansion on Fifth Avenue was furnished and lit with the delicate sombreness of an...

Van Teyl, as he hastened forward to meet his friend, presented at first sight a very good type of the well-groomed, athletic young American. He was over six feet tall, with smoo...

Fischer had by no means the appearance of a discomfited man that evening, when some time later Pamela and Lutchester approached the little group of which he seemed, somehow, to...

Fischer raised his eyebrows in mild surprise to find Nikasti waiting for him in the sitting room that evening, with his overcoat and evening hat. He closed the door of the bedro...

"I cannot remember saying so, my dear," Mrs. Hastings replied. "I had nothing against the man himself. It was simply his attitude with regard to some of your uncle's plans, of w...

The last of the supper-guests had left Henry's Restaurant, the commissionaire's whistle was silent. The light laughter and frivolous adieux of the departing guests seemed to hav...

Lutchester left Sonia and the Ritz-Carlton a few minutes before midnight, to find a great yellow moon overhead, which seemed to have risen somewhere at the back of Central Park....

Lutchester breathed the air of Washington and felt almost homesick. The stateliness of the city, its sedate and quiescent air after the turmoil of New York, impressed him profou...

Pamela sat that afternoon on the balcony of the country club at Baltusrol and approved of her surroundings. Below her stretched a pleasant vista of rolling greensward, dotted he...

Lutchester, to all appearance, remained sublimely unconscious of the tension which his words and appearance seemed to have created. He had strolled a little further into the roo...

So far as Sandy Graham was concerned, his unconsciousness might have lasted an hour or a day. As a matter of fact, it was scarcely a minute after the disappearance of Fischer an...

James Van Teyl glanced curiously at the small, dark figure standing patiently before him, and then back again at the wireless cable which he held in his fingers. He was just bac...

Philip Downing very soon justified the profession to which he belonged by strolling off with some excuse about paying his respects to some acquaintances. Pamela and Lutchester i...

It was one evening towards the end of the voyage, and about an hour after dinner. A huge form loomed out of the darkness, continuing its steady promenade along the unlit portion...

Nikasti, with a low bow, watched the disappearance of the lift into which his two new masters, James Van Teyl and Oscar Fischer, had stepped. He waited until the indicator regis...

Fischer, on leaving his unsuccessful dinner party, drove direct to the residence of Mr. Max H. Bookam, in Fifth Avenue. The butler who admitted him looked a little blank at his...