The Secret Adversary quotes

Tommy sat down opposite her. His bared head revealed a shock of exquisitely slicked-back red hair. His face was pleasantly ugly—nondescript, yet unmistakably the face of a gentleman and a sportsman.

His brown suit was well cut, but perilously near the end of its tether.

They were an essentially modern-looking couple as they sat there.

She wore a small bright green toque over her black bobbed hair, and her extremely short and rather shabby skirt revealed a pair of uncommonly dainty ankles.

Her appearance presented a valiant attempt at smartness.

The tea came at last, and Tuppence, rousing herself from a fit of meditation, poured it out.

They were an essentially modern-looking couple as they sat there.

Tuppence had no claim to beauty, but there was character and charm in the elfin lines of her little face, with its determined chin and large, wide-apart grey eyes that looked mistily out from under straight, black brows.

She wore a small bright green toque over her black bobbed hair, and her extremely short and rather shabby skirt revealed a pair of uncommonly dainty ankles. Her appearance presented a valiant attempt at smartness.

Tommy shook his head sadly. There was a silence, and then Tuppence burst out:

“Money, money, money! I think about money morning, noon and night! I dare say it’s mercenary of me, but there it is!”

“Same here,” agreed Tommy with feeling.

“I’ve thought over every imaginable way of getting it too,” continued Tuppence. “

There are only three! To be left it, to marry it, or to make it.

First is ruled out. I haven’t got any rich elderly relatives. Any relatives I have are in homes for decayed gentlewomen! I always help old ladies over crossings, and pick up parcels for old gentlemen, in case they should turn out to be eccentric millionaires.

“We’ve tried all the orthodox ways, yes. But suppose we try the unorthodox.

Tommy, let’s be adventurers!

”

“You’re about the limit, that’s what you are,” growled Whittington, with a sort of unwilling admiration. “You took me in all right. Thought you were quite a meek little kid with just enough brains for my purpose.”

“Life,” moralized Tuppence, “is full of surprises.”

“All the same,” continued Whittington, “someone’s been talking. You say it isn’t Rita. Was it—? Oh, come in.”

“No,” said Tuppence thoughtfully, “he didn’t believe it.

That’s the curious part about speaking the truth. No one does believe it.

I found that out this morning. Now let’s go to lunch. How about the Savoy?”

“

And people say that coincidences don’t happen!

” Tuppence tackled her pêche Melba happily.

It was dispatched to England by a special messenger selected for that purpose, a young fellow called Danvers. It was hoped that the whole affair had been kept so secret that nothing would have leaked out.

That kind of hope is usually disappointed. Somebody always talks!

“Danvers sailed for England on the Lusitania. He carried the precious papers in an oilskin packet which he wore next his skin. It was on that particular voyage that the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk. Danvers was among the list of those missing.

A veil might with profit be drawn over the events of the next half-hour.

Suffice it to say that no such person as “Inspector Brown” was known to Scotland Yard. The photograph of Jane Finn, which would have been of the utmost value to the police in tracing her, was lost beyond recovery. Once again “Mr. Brown” had triumphed.

“

My union, Tuppence, my union! It does not permit me to work before 11 a.m.

”

Tommy laid his paper finally aside. “

There’s something of the simplicity of the truly great mind about you, Tuppence.

Fire ahead. I’m listening.”

“

Full marks for industry, zero for modesty.

But the great point is, is there a ‘Rita’ on the list?”

They are honest men—and that is their value to us. It is curious—but you cannot make a revolution without honest men. The instinct of the populace is infallible.” He paused, and then repeated, as though the phrase pleased him: “

Every revolution has had its honest men. They are soon disposed of afterwards.

”

“I went round to his house,” said Julius. “

I said that I reckoned a car like that was worth every penny of twenty thousand dollars. Then I told him that it was worth just about fifty thousand dollars to me if he’d get out.

”

“Well, Miss Tuppence, then, as I’m certainly going to be a friend. Don’t be offended because I think you’re young.

Youth is a failing only too easily outgrown.

Now, about this young Tommy of yours—”

“I’ll tell you. You said just now that you had a long memory.

A long memory isn’t half as useful as a long purse!

I dare say it relieves your feelings a good deal to plan out all sorts of dreadful things to do to me, but is that practical? Revenge is very unsatisfactory. Everyone always says so.

“Nonsense!” snapped Tuppence. “Do I look the sort of girl that’s always falling in love with every man she meets?”

“You do not. You look the sort of girl that’s mighty often getting fallen in love with!”

“Oh!” said Tuppence, rather taken aback. “That’s a compliment, I suppose?”

He’d never have dared to say so. I’ve always jumped on sentiment—and here I am being more sentimental than anybody. What idiots girls are! I’ve always thought so. I suppose I shall sleep with his photograph under my pillow, and dream about him all night.

It’s dreadful to feel you’ve been false to your principles.

”

“Dead men tell no tales,” he said evenly.

“Ah,” said Tommy, “but I’m not dead yet!”

“You soon will be, my young friend,” said the German.

“No,” admitted Boris at last sullenly, “you do not.”

“Thank God, he’s not a mind reader,” thought Tommy.

Aloud he pursued his advantage:

At last the door opened, and the German called imperiously to Conrad to return.

“Let’s hope the judge hasn’t put his black cap on,” remarked Tommy frivolously.

“That’s right, Conrad, march me in. The prisoner is at the bar, gentlemen.”

“Garn,” said Number 14 unexpectedly. “Think we’re as green as to do you in here, and have the police nosing round? Not ’alf! We’ve ordered the carriage for your lordship tomorrow mornin’, but in the meantime we’re not taking any chances, see!”

“Nothing,” said Tommy, “could be plainer than your words⁠—unless it was your face.”

“Stow it,” said Number 14.

“I guess you’re lucky to be here at all. That bluff of yours was the goods all right. How you ever came to think of it all so pat beats me to a frazzle!”

“I was in such a funk I had to think of something,” said Tommy simply.

There was a moment’s pause, and then Tommy reverted to Mrs. Vandemeyer’s death.

But Sir James was far too wary to be drawn.

“Coincidences are curious things,” he said dryly.

Nevertheless Tommy was now certain of what he had before only suspected. Sir James’s presence in Manchester was not accidental. Far from abandoning the case, as Julius supposed, he had by some means of his own successfully run the missing girl to earth.

What I meant was that the French set about marriage in a businesslike way—find two people who are suited to one another, look after the money affairs, and see the whole thing practically, and in a businesslike spirit.”

“If you ask me,” said Tommy, “we’re all too damned businesslike nowadays. We’re always saying, ‘Will it pay?’ The men are bad enough, and the girls are worse!”

“Cool down, son. Don’t get so heated.”

Julius looked at him sadly and shook his head.

“British phlegm! Sure we expected it⁠—but it kind of rattles me, all the same, to see it sitting there just where we expected to find it!”

Tommy, whose calm was, perhaps, more assumed than natural, moved his feet impatiently.

“So you’re not dead, Miss Tuppence, any more than that Tommy boy of yours was!”

“The Young Adventurers take a lot of killing,” boasted Tuppence.

“So it seems,” said Sir James dryly. “Am I right in thinking that the joint venture has ended in success, and that this”—he turned to the girl on the couch—“is Miss Jane Finn?”

“Ha!” said Sir William, eyeing her. “Girls aren’t what they used to be in my young days.”

“Yes, they are,” said Tuppence. “Their clothes are different, perhaps, but they themselves are just the same.”

“Well, perhaps you’re right. Minxes then—minxes now!”

“I believe you,” said the old gentleman, chuckling, and pinched her ear in high good-humour. Most young women were terrified of the “old bear,” as they termed him.

Tuppence’s pertness delighted the old misogynist.

Then came the timid archdeacon, a little bewildered by the company in which he found himself, glad that his daughter was considered to have distinguished herself, but unable to help glancing at her from time to time with nervous apprehension. But Tuppence behaved admirably.