THE DOUBLE FOUR

By E. Phillips Oppenheim

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto & Melbourne
First published September 1911.
Reprinted October 1911.
Shilling Edition April 1913.
Reprinted February 1917.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1. The Desire of Madame
CHAPTER 2. The Ambassador's Wife
CHAPTER 3. The Man from the Old Testament
CHAPTER 4. The First Shot
CHAPTER 5. The Seven Suppers of Andrea Korust
CHAPTER 6. The Mission of Major Kosuth
CHAPTER 7. The Ghosts of Havana Harbour
CHAPTER 8. An Alien Society
CHAPTER 9. The Man behind the Curtain
CHAPTER 10. The Thirteenth Encounter

THE DOUBLE FOUR

CHAPTER I

THE DESIRE OF MADAME

The man looked up from the sheet of notepaper which he held in his hand, and gazed through the open French windows before which he was standing. It was a very pleasant and very peaceful prospect. There was his croquet lawn, smooth-shaven, the hoops neatly arranged, the chalk mark firm and distinct upon the boundary. Beyond, the tennis court, the flower gardens, and to the left the walled fruit garden. A little farther away was the paddock and orchard, and a little farther still the farm, which for the last four years had been the joy of his life. His meadows were yellow with buttercups; a thin line of willows showed where the brook wound its lazy way through the bottom fields. It was a home, this, in which a man could well lead a peaceful life, could dream away his days to the music of the west wind, the gurgling stream, the song of birds, and the low murmuring of insects. Peter Ruff stood like a man turned to stone, for even as he looked these things passed away from before his eyes, the roar of the world beat in his ears—the world of intrigue, of crime, the world where the strong man hewed his way to power, and the weaklings fell like corn before the sickle.

"It is the desire of Madame!"

Peter Ruff clenched his fists as he read the words once more. It was a message from a world every memory of which had been deliberately crushed—a world, indeed, in which he had seemed no longer to hold any place. He was Peter Ruff, Esquire, of Aynesford Manor, in the County of Somerset. It could not be for him, this strange summons.

The rustle of a woman's soft draperies broke in upon his reverie. He turned round with his usual morning greeting upon his lips. She was, without doubt, a most beautiful woman: petite, and well moulded, with the glow of health in her eyes and on her cheeks. She came smiling to him—a dream of muslin and pink ribbons.

"Another forage bill, my dear Peter?" she demanded, passing her arm through his. "Put it away and admire my new morning gown. It came straight from Paris, and you will have to pay a great deal of money for it."

He pulled himself together—he had no secrets from his wife.

"Listen," he said, and read aloud:

Violet was a little perplexed. She failed, somehow, to recognise the sinister note underlying those few sentences.

"It sounds friendly enough," she remarked. "You are not obliged to go, of course."

Peter Ruff smiled grimly.

"Yes, it sounds all right," he admitted.

"They won't expect you to take any notice of it, surely?" she continued. "When you bought this place, Peter, you gave them definitely to understand that you had retired into private life, that all these things were finished with you."

"There are some things," Peter Ruff said slowly, "which are never finished."

"But you resigned," she reminded him. "I remember your letter distinctly."

"From the Double Four," he answered, "no resignation is recognised save death. I did what I could, and they accepted my explanations gracefully and without comment. Now that the time has come, however, when they need, or think they need, my help, you see they do not hesitate to claim it."

"You will not go, Peter? You will not think of going?" she begged.

He twisted the letter between his fingers and sat down to his breakfast.

"No," he said, "I shall not go."

That morning Peter Ruff spent upon his farm, looking over his stock, examining some new machinery, and talking crops with his bailiff. In the afternoon he played his customary round of golf. It was the sort of day which, as a rule, he found completely satisfactory, yet, somehow or other, a certain sense of weariness crept in upon him towards its close. The agricultural details in which he was accustomed to take so much interest had fallen a little flat. He even found himself wondering, after one of his best drives, whether it was well for the mind of a man to be so utterly engrossed by the flight of that small white ball towards its destination. More than once lately, despite his half-angry rejection of them, certain memories, half-wistful, half-tantalising, from the world of which he now saw so little, had forced their way in upon his attention. This morning the lines of that brief note seemed to stand out before him all the time with a curious vividness. In a way he played the hypocrite to himself. He professed to have found that summons disturbing and unwelcome, yet his thoughts were continually occupied with it. He knew well that what would follow was inevitable, but he made no sign.

Two days later he received another letter. This time it was couched in different terms. On a square card, at the top of which was stamped a