Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/540
THE PATRIOT'S SACRIFICE.
Barber. "Anything else, Sir?"
Customer (who has been shaved). "I'll get you to trim my hair a little less Kaiserish."
THE STAMPS OF FORTUNE.
Our Great New War Serial.
A Romance of Love, War and Philately.
(Concluded.)
[Synopsis of preceding chapters and characters in the story, which takes place in the autumn of 1914.
Emilia Watermark, a sweet young English girl, possessor of a magnificent Stamp Collection inherited from her father, which includes a unique set of San Salvador 1896 issue (unused).
She is in love with
Harold Poolwink, a splendid young English athlete and enthusiastic philatelist, employed in Steinart's Grand Emporium.
Steinart, a wealthy naturalised merchant, only interested in stamps as a side-line on which money might be made. He presses his unwelcome attentions on Emilia, but has no real love for her, his only wish being to obtain possession of the priceless Salvadors.
He really loves
Magda Ivanovitch, a beautiful adventuress, whom he employs to abstract valuable stamps from famous collections. She cherishes a secret passion for Harold, and hopes to tempt him from his Emilia by pandering to his craving for hitherto unobtainable specimens.
Steinart, having discovered that his employé dares to be his rival with Emilia, has sent him on a special mission to Germany, and in his absence calls on Emilia. During the interview, which takes place in the room containing the famous collection, Steinart suddenly informs Emilia that war has been declared between England and Germany, and that Harold has been interned in Germany as a spy.
Emilia faints with the shock of the announcement, and when she recovers finds that the German has taken his departure, along with the priceless case of San Salvadors!
Meanwhile Harold Pootwink, immured in the prison fortress Schweinoberundunterwolfenberg, has had a midnight visit from Magda Ivanovitch, who by the offer of some specimens of marvellous rarity tries to induce him to leave his prison with her in her airship.
Harold nobly resists the temptress, who in rage and despair revenges herself by throwing his precious stamp album into the river flowing past the castle walls. The loving work of a lifetime is lost for ever, and Harold resigns himself to hopeless grief.]
Chapter XLVIII.
Magda Ivanovitch had returned to London, after her unsuccessful attempt to seduce Harold Pootwink from his early love, with a heart full of bitterness and disappointment. Even the unhealthy excitement of abstracting rare specimens from public or private Stamp Collections had palled on her. In this mood the capricious beauty welcomed the devotion of Steinart, whom she had formerly despised, and allowed him to regard himself as her accepted lover.
Some weeks after the events narrated in the last chapter she was sitting in her luxuriously furnished flat in Brixton, listlessly looking over some of the philatelic treasures she had risked so much to obtain. Her pet snake looked on over her shoulder, and there was a noticeable similarity in the steely glitter of their eyes when any particularly superb specimen was handled.
Her maid announced a visitor, and Magda, laying aside her cigarette and throwing the snake to the other end of the couch, made room beside herself for Steinart.
"You are late, my friend," she said coldly. Then, noticing his wild hunted appearance, "What has happened?" she cried. "Do not say you have lost the Salvadors!"
"The Salvadors! Bah!" he replied. "Gott strafe England! Donnerwetter! Not the Salvadors alone, but all I possess, mine life itself, are in danger. For some times past haf I by a figure draped in black closely followed been. Last night, as I out of the secret entrance to the cellar creep, I think I glimpse it. To-day, when I send a message by the wireless in the wastepaper basket of mine private office concealed, I haf a haunting feeling I am by those unseen eyes observed. We must leaf the country at once, before all is discovered." With a groan he sank down on the end of the couch occupied by the snake, and rose again hurriedly.
"Calm yourself, my friend," returned Magda a trifle contemptuously. "I also have seen your veiled figures, not once or twice, but I snap the fingers only. I am too clever to be caught; and as for your cellar and your wireless no living soul can know of them but ourselves, and your secret is safe with me."
"But it is not safe with me," cricd Emilia Watermark, as she flung open the door to admit a file of special constables. "Officers, do your duty!"
As this is the last we shall hear of the villain and villainess we may add that, three Zeppelins, complete with their crews and bombs, having been discovered in his cellar, Steinart was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment under the Act for Prevention of Cruelty to Women and Children.
Magda Ivanovitch was interned on a lonely island in the Pacific, where she was out of temptation, the island having no collection—on Sundays or any other day—while the pet snake received naturalization papers and was given an honest English home in the Zoo.
Chapter XLIX.
When Steinart and his accomplices had been safely disposed of, Emilia awoke to the fact that she was almost penniless. For months she had lived for nothing but to complete the evidence against her enemies. Money had been spent like water, and to gain her object she had even sold part of the famous collection at a sacrifice. The Salvadors had of course been returned to her by the police, but, alas! in the meantime a secret hoard of the same issue had been discovered in an obscure pawnshop, and the once unique stamps were hardly worth the paper they were printed on, the market price quoted being 1s. 9d. for the entire set. She was now keeping body and soul together on a miserable pittance of £300 a year.
Her only link with the past was a large tin trunk filled with the letters which Harold had written her daily, nay, almost hourly, since his departure for Germany. The very envelopes were dear to her and were numbered from 1 up to 325, this being the last one Harold had posted before his arrest.
One evening, as had become her custom, she was seated on the floor beside the trunk, re-reading the precious words of the lover she might never see again, when a manly step outside her door made her heart beat high with a new hope. In an instant she was on her feet, in another she was in Harold's arms.