The Zeppelin's PassengerOppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
General
The Zeppelin's Passenger
Oppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
Historical fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
Punctually at 12 o'clock the next morning, Lessingham presented himself
at the hotel in Dover Street and was invited by the hall porter to take
a seat in the lounge. Philippa entered, a few minutes later, her eyes
and cheeks brilliant with the brisk exercise she had been taking, her
slim figure most becomingly arrayed in grey cloth and chinchilla.
“I lost Helen in Harrod's,” she announced, “but I know she's lunching
with friends, so it really doesn't matter. You'll have to take care of
me, Mr. Lessingham, until the train goes, if you will.”
“For even longer than that, if you will,” he murmured.
She laughed. “More pretty speeches? I don't think I'm equal to them
before luncheon.”
“This time I am literal,” he explained. “I am coming back to Dreymarsh
myself.”
He felt his heart beat quicker, a sudden joy possessed him. Philippa's
expression was obviously one of satisfaction.
“I'm so glad,” she assured him. “Do you know, I was thinking only as I
came back in the taxicab, how I should miss you.”
She was standing with her foot upon the broad fender, and her first
little impulse of pleasure seemed to pass as she looked into the fire.
She turned towards him gravely.
“After all, do you think you are wise?” she asked. “Of course, I don't
think that any one at Dreymarsh has the least suspicion, but you know
Captain Griffiths did ask questions, and--well, you're safely away now.
You have been so wonderful about Dick, so wonderful altogether,” she
went on, “that I couldn't bear it if trouble were to come.”
He smiled at her.
“I think I know what is at the back of your mind,” he said. “You think
that I am coming back entirely on your account. As it happens, this is
not so.”
She looked at him with wide-open eyes.
“Surely,” she exclaimed, “you have satisfied yourself that there is no
field for your ingenuity in Dreymarsh?”
“I thought that I had,” he admitted. “It seems that I am wrong. I have
had orders to return.”
“Orders to return?” she repeated. “From whom?”
He shook his head.
“Of course, I ought not to have asked that,” she proceeded hastily,
“but it does seem odd to realise that you can receive instructions and
messages from Germany, here in London.”
“Very much the same sort of thing goes on in Germany,” he reminded her.
“So they say,” she admitted, “but one doesn't come into contact with it.
So you are really coming back to Dreymarsh!”
“With you, if I may?”
“Naturally,” she agreed.
He glanced at the clock. “We might almost be starting for lunch,” he
suggested.
She nodded. “As soon as I've told Grover about the luggage.”
She was absent only a few moments, and then, as it was a dry, sunny
morning, they walked down St. James Street and along Pall Mall to the
Carlton. Philippa met several acquaintances, but Lessingham walked with
his head erect, looking neither to the right nor to the left.
“Aren't you sometimes afraid of being recognised?” she asked him. “There
must be a great many men about of your time at Magdalen, for instance?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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