“And now what do you advise?”
“For the present at least to give no sign that you suspect anything. You are well enough posted now, my boy, to go straight ahead. Give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves as sure as your name’s Grey and mine’s O’Hara. Assume the tone I told you of, and they’ll never suspect. They may be surprised, but they’ll be happy and they’ll be unwary. Never take the initiative yourself. Leave it all to Lindenwald.”
“But what will they make out of it?” Grey urged, curiously. “Surely you have formed some theory?”
“Yes, I have a theory,” O’Hara responded, “but it is probably just as well for me to keep it to myself for a while.”
“What do you think this talk about ‘thrones’ and ‘mad princes’ means?”
“That is for us to find out. And unless I am more of a fool than I think, it will very shortly develop. In the meantime you are anxious about the answers to your cables, aren’t you? Since theyare addressed to Grey, you can’t accept them, that’s clear. But you shall know what is in them just the same. I’ll undertake that for you.”
“But——”
“Never mind, lad; leave it to me.”
“And the box with proofs that Schlippenbach spoke of? That is important.”
“To be sure. It is at the Gare du Nord in his name or yours, eh? I’ll get it for you. But the key?”
Suddenly Grey remembered.
“There is a key in a wallet I found. Possibly that is it.”
“Possibly.”
And the thought of the wallet reminded him that a fifty-franc note and some change was all the money he had in his possession.
“I’m a little short of funds,” he said. “Do you happen to know how or where I have been in the habit of getting money when I needed it?”
O’Hara laughed.
“The whole thing is so absurd,” he explained, “as well as serious. Fancy your not knowing what you have done every few days since youlanded! Johann has your letter of credit and gets you whatever you desire. All that is necessary is for you to sign your name.”
When O’Hara had gone Grey sat for a long time brooding over his extraordinary experience. His head was still aching, throbbingly, and his nerves were still a-tingle. Whatever treatment he had been subjected to its effects had not yet been entirely eliminated. He undressed, got into his pyjamas and went to bed; but sleep was coy and not to be won by wooing. He heard the clock strike two and three and four, and he saw the first gray sign of dawn between his curtains before he fell into a restless, troubled, unrefreshing slumber.
Mr. Herbert Frothinghamhad that evening been one of a dinner party of six at Armenonville. He had sat between Miss Hope Van Tuyl and Lady Constance Vincent, and across a plateau of primrose-coloured orchids the charming Mrs. Dickie Venable had at intervals favoured him with fleeting smiles. Nicholas Van Tuyl, sleek and ruddy, was at the left of Lady Constance, who had for her vis-à-vis Sinclair Edson, a tall, young, sallow-faced secretary from the United States Embassy.
“I hope you haven’t failed to observe the notabilities,” this latter-named gentleman was saying as he daintily dissected hiscarpe au buerre noir; “there are quite a number here this evening.” His pose as mentor was apt to grow annoying at times, but the Van Tuyls had been in Paris onlytwo days, and father and daughter were alike interested.
“Oh, do show me that East Indian prince or whatever he is,” cried Hope enthusiastically, her great dark eyes brilliant; “I’ve heard so much of him. Is he here?”
“The Maharajah of Kahlapore? Yes, he must be here, surely. I never come nowadays but he is.”
He turned his head and craned his neck in an effort to locate the Hindu potentate. The piazza of the pavilion was, as usual, crowded. Every table was occupied—and the throng was the acme of cosmopolitanism. Five continents were represented. It was indeed a veritable congress of nations. Monarchs, kings dethroned, and pretenders rubbed elbows. Women of the world and of the half-world brushed skirts. Dazzling toilets of delicate tints were silhouetted against coats of lustreless black. Diamonds blazed; pearls reflected the myriad lights; gems of all colours, shapes, and sizes glistened in the foreground and sparkled in remote corners.
“Ah, there he is,” Edson discovered, speaking without turning his face; “there, off to the right.You can just see his white turban over the head of that Titian-haired woman in the blue gown.”
The whole party stared, stretching, twisting to get a glimpse.
“Rather insignificant, isn’t he?” observed Mrs. Dickie disparagingly.
“His turban accentuates hiscafé au laitcomplexion,” laughed Hope.
“But you should see him at finger-bowl time,” suggested Lady Constance, who had lunched next to him and his suite that day at Paillard’s. “He is most original.”
“Oh, tell us,” cried Hope pleadingly; “what does he do?”
“It must be seen to be appreciated,” the Englishwoman replied. She was auburn-haired, generously proportioned, and rather stolid. Her tone was even more of a refusal than her words.
“I’ll tell you,” volunteered Edson glibly. “He has a special bowl twice the ordinary size and he plunges his whole face in it.”
“Horrors!” shrieked Mrs. Dickie; “he should be arrested for attempted suicide.”
“But he isn’t the most interesting personagehere by any means,” Edson pursued, now thoroughly launched in the exercise of hismétier; “have you noticed the sallow-faced, heavy-browed and long-moustached gentleman just three tables away, dining with the dark-bearded president of the Chamber of Deputies?”
“The man with that enormous, gorgeously jewelled star on his breast?” asked Miss Van Tuyl, leaning back and gazing over Frothingham’s shoulder. “Oh, what a brutal face he has!”
“It is the Shah of Persia,” announced Edson; and then he glanced about to revel in the effect of his revelation.
“He’s a beast,” commented Lady Constance, disgustedly, “though I believe his manners have improved somewhat since he was here last. Do you know when he was in Berlin some years ago he sat next to the Empress Augusta at a State banquet, and whenever he got anything in his mouth that was not to his taste, he just calmly removed it!”
“They say he thought nothing of putting his hands on the bare shoulders of the women he met,” Edson added.
“I saw the King of the Belgians as we came in,” said Mr. Van Tuyl, presently, as a waiter passed thefilet aux truffes; “one sees him everywhere, eh?”
“Oh, yes,” Edson hastened to observe; “he’s as omnipresent as the poor. But did you see the woman with him? She’s the very latest, you know. Was aQuartier Latinmodel six months ago and is now regarded as the most beautiful woman in Paris.La Minette Blanche, they call her. She has a palace on the Boulevard Malesherbes and as many retainers as a princess.”
“The old scoundrel!” exclaimed Mrs. Dickie, vindictively; “I don’t know which is worse, the Shah or he. He gained a reputation as a wife-beater or something, didn’t he? At all events I’ll bet the devil is keeping a griddle hot for him down below, and it’s pretty near time he occupied it.”
“How terribly spiteful!” laughed Frothingham; “His Majesty isn’t a bad sort at all; a little fickle, perhaps, but with his love of beauty and his opportunities you can hardly expect domesticity. And he’s done a lot of good in his way.”
“Speaking of royalty, that is rather an oddcondition of affairs in Budavia, by the way,” suggested Nicholas Van Tuyl. “Did you see the paper this morning? The King is very ill. Can’t live a fortnight; and there is a question as to the succession. It seems that the Crown Prince was kidnapped when he was five years old and nothing has ever been heard of him. They don’t know whether he is alive or dead.”
“Oh, how interesting!” exclaimed Mrs. Dickie, putting down her fork to listen. “And to whom does the crown go?”
“To King Frederic’s nephew, Prince Hugo; as thorough a reprobate, they say, as there is in all Europe.”
“Wouldn’t it be funny if the Crown Prince should turn up at this juncture?” suggested Edson; and there was something significant in his tone.
“Has such a possibility been hinted at?” asked Van Tuyl.
“Well—” and Edson hesitated the briefest moment, “one can never tell.” Whether intentionally or not, he gave the impression that he knew more than he cared to divulge. “I had acall today from an officer of the Budavian army. He is a member of the royal household.” He said this with an air, and Frothingham muttered, “Snob!” under his breath.
“I suppose he spoke of the situation, eh?” asked Van Tuyl.
“Yes, of course, he referred to it. I met him last year in Vienna. His call was purely social.”
“Is he to be in Paris long?” asked Mrs. Dickie, quickly. “Bring him to tea next Tuesday.”
But Edson evaded a promise. He was listening to Frothingham, who was saying:
“You can never tell when or where or under what circumstances a lost man will reappear. After today I shall make it a rule not to believe a man is dead unless I have seen him buried.”
“Why, whom on earth have you seen?” questioned Miss Van Tuyl. There was just the slightest suspicion of a tremour in her voice, and her eyes were apprehensive. The speaker, however, detected neither. He had, in fact, quite forgotten, if he had ever heard, that there had been an attachment between the man he had that day met on theterrasseof the Café de la Paix and the woman who sat at his side.
“Carey Grey, the absconder!”
The words struck her as a blow from a clenched fist. Her cheeks, which had been a trifle flushed, went suddenly white as the damask napery. Her jewelled fingers clutched the edge of the table. She felt that she was falling backward, that everything was receding, and she caught the table edge to save herself.
“Carey Grey!” repeated Nicholas Van Tuyl, in amazement. “Surely you must have been mistaken!”
“Not a bit of it. I talked to him.”
“The devil!” exclaimed Edson and then apologised.
“You’d never know him,” Frothingham went on, after emptying his champagne glass; “he has bleached his hair, and he is wearing a bleached beard, too.”
“Oh, horrible!” This from Mrs. Dickie.
“Told a most remarkable story about not knowing anything for five months; brain fever or something. I must admit he was very convincing.”
“I wonder if that is the man I knew?” Lady Constance broke in. “He came over with an American polo team; he was a great friend of Lord Stanniscourt’s.”
“Same man,” said Van Tuyl, with a glint of admiration in his tone. “He was a capital polo player, and—yes, by Jove, a rattling good fellow in every way. It was a surprise to everyone when he went wrong.” He had been watching his daughter with no little anxiety. Now her colour was returning and her hands were in her lap.
“Yes, to everyone,” Mrs. Dickie volunteered, “the whole thing was simply astounding. He had a good business, hadn’t he? What do you suppose he wanted with that money?”
“Nobody was ever able to conjecture,” answered Frothingham, as he helped himself to somecaneton.
“And he is really here in Paris?” queried Edson, twirling the long stem of a fragile wineglass between thumb and finger. “Where is he stopping?”
Hope Van Tuyl unconsciously leaned forward to catch the address.
“I don’t know. I never thought to inquire.”
From the violins of the tziganes glided the languorous strains of the “Valse Bleue,” and instantly all other sounds dwindled. Even the clatter of knives and forks seemed gradually to cease and the babble of tongues was vague and far away. Into the girl’s dark eyes came an expression of melancholy, and the corners of her red-lipped mouth drooped. The leaves of her calendar had been fluttered back a twelvemonth by the melody, and she was out under the stars with the cool breeze from the Hudson fanning her flushed cheeks. Through the open French windows of the clubhouse at her back the music was floating. Beside her, his arm girdling her waist, was the man to whom she had just promised her love and loyalty—the man whose name she would be proud to wear through all her days—Carey Grey. The ineffable joy, the blissful content of the moment were, in some mystic manner, reborn by the chords that sang and swelled and vibrated and whispered, and yet over all, mingling with the delicious, intoxicating happiness of this reincarnated experience,was an overpowering sense of loss—dire, monstrous, crushing.
“Hope, dear,”—it was her father’s voice that brought her back to the present. His anxious eyes had still been upon her. “Drink your wine, girl; you aren’t ill, are you? Mr. Edson has been speaking to you and I don’t believe you’ve heard a word.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Edson,” she ejaculated, recovering herself. “I fear for the moment I was very far off. Would you mind repeating what you said?”
“I was proposing a coaching party to Versailles for Saturday, and as everybody seemed to approve I took the opportunity to ask you if you would do me the honour of occupying the box seat.”
“With pleasure,” she accepted, smiling bravely, though a dull, leaden pain was gripping her heart; “I think it will be simply lovely.”
The sextet had come to the restaurant crowded into Mr. Edson’s big touring car, and when at length the dinner was finished and the men had smoked their cigars and the moon had come up from behind the trees and floated like a silver boatin the deep blue sea of the heavens, they took their places again and went spinning at frantic speed out into the Allée de Longchamp. A quick turn to the left and in another instant the Porte Dauphine had been passed and the machine was flying smoothly down the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne with the Arc de Triomphe rising massively white in the moonlight ahead.
Frothingham found himself brought very close to Hope Van Tuyl by the exigencies of the arrangement of six goodly sized persons in a space designed for five; and he was glad that it was so. He had seen much of her during the winter season in New York, and he had come abroad chiefly because he knew that she and her father had planned to spend the early summer in Europe. She was the type of woman he admired. She was tall and athletic, fond of sports and clever at them, but not so much of an enthusiast as to be open to the charge of having unsexed herself. She was, indeed, intensely feminine. Though she could handle a coach and four as dexterously as the average masculine whip and could drive a golf ball well on to two hundred yards, her hands were asdelicately white and her fingers as long and taper as those of a girl whose most strenuous exertion was the execution of a Chopin nocturne. Her hair was dark, almost black, with glinting bronze reflections in the sunlight. Her eyes were the brown of chestnuts and her eyebrows black and perfectly arched. Frothingham had dreamed night after night of her mouth—it was so red and so tenderly curved, and her lips seemed always moist.
He had noticed her preoccupation towards the close of the dinner, and he had marvelled as to the cause. It was such an unusual mood for her. Now, as they were sweeping with exhilarating speed down the long avenue, with its double row of glittering lights that flashed by in streaks—while all the rest were laughing, shouting, shrieking in the exuberance of the moment—she was still abstracted, silent.
Frothingham ventured to place a hand over one of hers, but she drew her own away instantly, as though the contact were painful. He fancied then that he had perhaps unwittingly offended her in some way, and he whispered, close to her ear:
“I hope you are not annoyed at me. Have Ibeen guilty of any discourtesy? I am sure I——”
But it was very evident she was not listening, and he broke off in the middle of the sentence.
The Van Tuyls were stopping at the Ritz, and there Edson put them down. Frothingham, who had taken lodgings not far away, alighted too, and Nicholas Van Tuyl asked him in.
“I feel like a brandy and soda,” he said, “and I want company.”
Hope excused herself and went directly to her room. She was very nervous and verydistraite. The story that Carey Grey was not only alive and in Paris, but had been ill, delirious and therefore unaccountable, disquieted and distressed her. She had loved him more than she knew until his crime and his flight, and, above all, his desertion without a word of explanation, revealed to her the fulness of her passion. Then she had battled with herself for a time; had grown philosophic and had reasoned, and eventually had gathered together the pages of her life that bore his name, had torn them out and, as she believed, destroyed them utterly. And now they were here before her, suddenlyrestored as a magician makes whole again the articles that he tears into bits before his auditors’ eyes.
As she entered her room her maid, who had been reading near a window, arose, took up something from her dressing-table and came toward her with it in her outstretched hand.
“A telegram for m’amselle,” she said. She was a very pretty French maid, and she had a very delicious French accent. She preferred to speak in English, though Miss Van Tuyl invariably answered her in French. “It came not ten minutes ago, m’amselle.”
Hope walked listlessly to where an electric lamp glowed under a Dresden shade, tearing open the envelope as she went. Unfolding the inclosure, she held it in the light’s glare; and then the little blue sheet dropped from her nerveless fingers, and she reeled. Had it not been for Marcelle she might have fallen; but the girl, burning with curiosity to learn the contents of the telegram—or cablegram, as it proved—had followed her mistress’s every movement, and now her arm was about her waist.
“Oh, m’amselle, m’amselle,” she cried in alarm; “my poor m’amselle! Is it that you hear the bad news?”
But Miss Van Tuyl made no reply. Recovering herself, she crossed the room and sat down in the chair by the window that Marcelle had just vacated. The girl stood for a moment irresolute. Then she stooped and picked up the sheet of blue paper, placing it on the table under the lamp. As she did so her quick eye took in enough to satisfy her as to its import. It was from Miss Van Tuyl’s brother in New York, and it repeated a cable just received. The words made a very deep impression on Marcelle because of one of them, of which, though it was quite as much French as it was English, she did not know the meaning.
“That he is here in Paris I can understand; and that he is alive and well, oh, yes!” she iterated and reiterated to herself; “but what is it he means by ‘in-ex-pleek-able’? ‘Conditionsin-ex-pleek-able’? Oh, I fear, I fear, that is something very terrible.”
Therecame a gentle tap on Grey’s door; then a rap, louder and more insistent; and then repeated knocking, aggressive, commanding; and Grey, aroused suddenly from what was more stupor than sleep, sat up in bed, startled, crying:
“Come in!Entrez! Herein!”
The door opened and Johann entered.
“It is long after noon, Herr Arndt,” he said, bowing, “and the funeral is arranged for three o’clock.”
Grey rubbed his eyes and made an effort to collect his scattered senses.
“Ah, yes,” he murmured, after a moment; “Herr Schlippenbach’s funeral.”
“It is very wet,” Johann continued; “since six this morning it has been raining. I have ordered Herr Arndt’s coffee. It will be here presently.”
“And my tub?”
“It waits, Herr Arndt.”
While Grey, in bathrobe and slippers, was sipping hiscafé au laitand nibbling abrioche, Captain Lindenwald presented himself.
“I have arranged everything,” he announced, with an air of thorough self-satisfaction; “for the present we will leave the remains here in Paris. Later we can decide whether they shall be brought on to Kürschdorf or sent back to America. I have placed all the details of the obsequies in the hands of theCompagnie des Pompes Funèbres. The temporary interment will be this afternoon at Père-la-Chaise. Will it be the pleasure of Herr Arndt to attend?”
Grey raised his cup to his lips and replaced it on the saucer before replying. He wished to make sure that he could rid his tone of all modulation.
“Yes,” he answered, speaking with great care, “I will go.” If he was to play the game it were better that he played every hand dealt to him.
After a little he asked:
“And the Fraülein von Altdorf? How is she today?”
“Oh, much better,” returned the Herr Captain,his face beaming; “she is more composed, more resigned. She is a wonderful young woman, Herr Arndt; and oh, she is so beautiful!”
“Yes, she is very lovely,” Grey acquiesced.
But his thoughts at the moment were not of her. Lindenwald’s eulogy had set vibrant a chord of emotion, had conjured a picture, had reproduced a dream that seemed a reality. It was indeed difficult for him to reconcile the remembrance of that sleep fantasy, so vivid was it in every detail, with the knowledge that it was not a waking experience. He had sat for hours, it seemed, beside Hope Van Tuyl, gazing into the limpid depths of her sympathetic eyes, listening to the melody of her clear, full-toned voice. They were in a great garden with parterres of gay, sweet-scented flowers—roses and heliotrope and geraniums—and smooth terraces of greensward with marble nymphs and satyrs on mossy pedestals, and above them the kindly, protecting, leafy branches of an old oak. He had, he thought, just found again the girl he loved—found her after a long, long separation, and now she was close within his hungry arms and her lips were always very near his own. He was telling hersome fantastic tale, like a bit culled from the Arthurian legends, of how he was a great king, and had only been away to claim his own, and now she was to be his queen and sit beside him on the throne in robes of purple and ermine and help him rule his people with justice and mercy.
Yet here he was sitting in a Paris hotel bedchamber, with a man who was almost a stranger, while the rain was pelting on the window-panes and the room was so gloomy that he could scarcely see the face of his visitor. The recollection of the dream thus contrasted filled him with a spirit of rebellion. He was beset with an impulse to reveal without further delay his true condition and let the culprits, whoever they might be, escape with their object undefined and their plunder unrestored. The craving to see and hold and talk to the woman he adored obsessed him for the moment, and he felt that all else was trivial and futile.
It was in this mood still that Jack O’Hara found him an hour later.
“I am off to America by the first steamer,” he said, joyously. “It is all tommyrot following thisthing up. I’m going back, tell everything as far as I know, and let the police do the rest.”
The Irishman looked at him in amazement.
“What’s come over you, lad?” he asked, solemnly. “Have you gone off your head or are you dreaming? Sure you’re not going to back out now when we’ve got such a pretty little fight ahead of us, with the enemy in ambush and afraid to show their colours?”
“No, I’m not off my head,” Grey replied a little less gaily. He did not like the suggested imputation of cowardice.
“Then you are dreaming, sure.”
“I have been.” The reply was ambiguous, but O’Hara took it that his friend had changed his mind.
“And you’re not now; you’re awake, wide awake, eh? And you’re going to stop and rout ’em, horse, foot, and dragoon? That’s right, man. What the devil put the going-home notion in your noddle? I’ll wager twenty pounds it’s a woman you’ve been thinking of.”
Grey stood by the window looking out on the drenched Boulevard. O’Hara’s words were aninspiration, but the face and form of Hope were still before him and her voice still echoed in his ears. The longing would not easily down.
“I’ve been looking after your blessed cablegrams,” the Irishman went on. “There’s only one there for you. I told ’em my name was Grey and opened it and read it. Then I gave it back to ’em, and explained it must be for same other Grey. I told ’em my name was Charley, and that that was addressed to Carey.”
“Only one?” Grey exclaimed, in a tone of disappointment, turning. “I don’t suppose Mallory will answer. What a damned blackguard he must think me! He’s handed my cable over to the police, of course. I suppose extradition papers are under way by this time. But the one? What was it?”
“Here, I wrote it down so as not to forget,” and O’Hara, after fumbling in his breast pocket, produced an envelope on which was written:
Overcome with joy. I never gave up hope. God bless you.—Mother.
Overcome with joy. I never gave up hope. God bless you.—Mother.
Grey turned to the window again, his eyes as wet as the panes. After a little he asked:
“And that was the only one?”
“The only one.”
Then Hope had not answered. She believed him guilty, of course. It would have been better to have let her, like the rest of the world, think him dead. What a trickster is the weaver of dreams! How real had seemed his vision, and yet how untrue! And he had thought of going to her as fast as the speediest ocean liner could take him. Oh, yes, he was awake now; wide, wide awake.
“I couldn’t get the box at the Gare du Nord,” O’Hara continued. “They’d given a brass or something for it and had no record of your name or Schlippenbach’s either. You had better ask Johann about it, or Lutz.”
“I will,” said Grey.
A hearse had stopped before the door, and he began now putting on his gloves.
“No,” he added as he buttoned the grey suèdes, “I’m not going back to America, O’Hara. Maybe I’ll never go back. I’m going to Schlippenbach’s funeral now, and I’m going to follow this thing to the end of the route if it takes me through hell.” His face was very set and solemn, and he spokewith a determination that made O’Hara’s eyes dance.
“Bravo, lad!” he cried, enthusiastically. “I still have two months’ leave, and I’ll go with you, hand in hand, every step of the way.”
The drive to Père-la-Chaise was very long and very boresome. Captain Lindenwald was not inclined to conversation and Grey dared not attempt to lead in the direction he wished, for fear of revealing how little he knew of what had been prearranged. He gathered, however, that it had been planned to start for Budavia early in the following week and that the death of Herr Schlippenbach was not to interfere with this arrangement; but of what they were going for—of what was to follow their arrival, he could glean no hint.
On the return from the cemetery, however, an incident occurred which he regarded as significant, though it only added to his perplexity. The carriage had just crossed the Place de la République, past the great bronze statue which adorns the square, and was rolling leisurely along the Boulevard St. Martin, when Lindenwald suddenly drew back in the corner in evident trepidation,catching Grey’s arm and dragging him back with him.
“For God’s sake!” he whispered, excitedly. “Did you see that man?”
“What man?” Grey asked, a little annoyed. He had seen a score of men. The day was waning; the rain had ceased and there was the usual crowd that throngs the boulevards at the green hour.
Lindenwald clutched him tightly for a moment, huddled away from the window of the voiture. At this point the sidewalks are somewhat higher than the roadway and they had both been looking up at the pedestrians, more interested in the procession than in each other.
“He was standing in front of the Folies Dramatiques,” Lindenwald explained, presently; “his presence here means no good.”
“But who?” Grey persisted.
“It was the Baron von Einhard. You know who the Baron von Einhard is. Ah! It is very plain. In some way, in spite of all our precautions, Hugo has got word. We must now be more than careful. The Baron, my dear Herr Arndt,would not hesitate one little—one very little moment to cut your throat if he got the chance.” Lindenwald shut his teeth tight, puckered his lips, and peered convincingly at Grey between half-lowered lids.
The American crushed back an exclamation of surprise. In its place he substituted an inquiry.
“What is the Baron like?” he asked, wondering whether he had seen him. The question was a risk, but he ventured.
“He is small, dark, sharp-featured. He looks more like an Italian than a Budavian, and he is vengeful. He is, too, oh, so shrewd! Six assassinations are at his door, and yet—positively, Herr Arndt, what I say is true—not one of them can be brought home to him.”
“You are quite sure it was he whom you saw?”
“Oh, quite sure, of a certainty. I only trust he did not see us. But his eyes are lynx-like. If he saw us you can be assured we are even now being followed. Will it be too warm, do you think, if I lower the shade? He is not here alone, and they are on the lookout.”
“As you think best,” Grey replied. And CaptainLindenwald pulled down the silk covering of the window.
When at length they alighted at the Hôtel Grammont and entered the courtyard theportierinformed the Captain that a gentleman was waiting for him in the reading-room. He went in, with Grey, who wished to look at a newspaper, closely following; and a tall, sallow-faced young man, faultlessly attired, rose and came towards them.
Grey turned aside to a table, but Lindenwald greeted the caller with no little suavity of manner.
“Ah, Monsieur Edson,” he said, affably, “this is indeed an honour. You have not, I hope, been waiting long?”
“I have a favour to ask,” the young diplomat replied, “and I shall take only a moment of your time, Captain. I today received advices from the State Department at Washington that there is an American stopping at this hotel whose name is Grey, though they tell me here there is no one of that name in the house. It seems he cabled to New York yesterday and gave this as his address. He is wanted for embezzlement.”
Grey overheard the words and stood motionless, tense, listening eagerly. His eyes were bent over the table, but it was so dark in the room that the print of the paper before him was but a grey blur.
“And you would like me to—?” asked Lindenwald. There was no savour of agitation in his voice, and Grey wondered how much or how little he knew.
“I thought perhaps you might aid me. Fortunately I have his description. I dined in company with a man last night who has seen him. He is tall, well set-up, and has fair hair, beard and moustache.”
“There are many such,” replied the Captain, shrugging his shoulders.
A servant entered with a burning wax taper, and Grey stepped aside for him to light the gas over the table. As he did so he faced Edson, and the illumination lit his features.
“Ah, there,” the caller whispered, a little nervously, “standing by the table behind you—there is a man of the very type. Perhaps that is he.”
Captain Lindenwald turned his head.
“Ha, ha!” he laughed, clapping his hand on Edson’s shoulder, “that is very droll, very. Do you remember what I told you yesterday at the Embassy?”
Edson nodded.
“Yes, yes, of course. But——”
“Well, it is he.”
“He?”
“Yes, to be sure. In the strictest confidence, mind you. I would not tell you were it not that I want to assure you beyond all question that he, of all persons, cannot be suspected.”
Grey smiled in spite of himself.
“That man is——”
“Sh!” warned Lindenwald his voice very low. “Yes, that man is His Royal Highness, Prince Maximilian, heir apparent to the throne of Budavia.”
In spite of the low tone of the speaker Grey caught the words, and the blood went rushing to his head and set him dizzy. What monstrous lie was this? He heir apparent to the throne of Budavia! He, a descendant of plain Puritan ancestry, a republican of republicans, being posed asa royal personage! It was staggering. And this was the solution to the riddle. This was why they were going to Kürschdorf. Herr Arndt was a name assumed. The Crown Prince was travelling incognito. It was all too ridiculous. He had suspected some mad scheme from Schlippenbach’s death-bed admonition and from Lutz’s overheard conversation with Johann, but this comic opera dénouement was quite beyond anything he had permitted himself to fancy.
The young gentleman from the United States Embassy was evidently duly impressed. He coloured and he apologised and he looked hard at Grey to make sure that he would recognise Prince Maximilian should he again chance to see him—dining at Armenonville, for instance.
“I hope,” he added, with a faint smile, “that you will not mention my stupid blunder to His Royal Highness. I should be mortified to have him know.”
“Ha, ha!” laughed Lindenwald again, “he would take it as a good joke. Oh, yes, I must tell him. He will be so much amused.”
Edson sidled toward the door and the Budavianofficer turned to accompany him, but stopped short, his face suddenly pallid. Standing on the threshold, not five paces away, was the small, wiry, dark, sharp-featured man he had noticed on the Boulevard St. Martin.
“Good evening, Herr Captain,” said the Baron von Einhard, his eyes twinkling.
Captain Lindenwald saluted in military fashion, and the Baron returned the salute as Edson brushed by him into the passage.
“You did not, I suppose, expect to see me in Paris, eh?” the newcomer observed.
“You were the last man for whom I looked, Baron,” the officer rejoined. “What is the latest news from Kürschdorf?”
“You have not seen the evening papers, then?”
“No.”
“His Majesty is much worse. His condition became alarming this morning, at nine o’clock. He cannot, the doctors say, live over forty-eight hours.” He made the announcement with an air of pleasurable anticipation. “I should fancy, Herr Captain, that your presence might be requiredat the Palace. Or,” and there was a world of cunning suggestion in his tone, “you have more important business here in Paris?”
“As you say, Herr Baron,” Lindenwald replied, visibly uncomfortable. He was questioning whether the Baron had overheard his conversation with Edson, and if so, how much. The man’s small eyes were like the eyes of a snake, beady and sinister. They compelled against one’s will.
“You remain here long?” von Einhard continued, smiling insinuatingly.
“The length of my stay is undetermined.”
“I trust we shall meet again,” and the Baron, still smiling, bowed, turned on his heel and vanished.
Grey, who had been listening, now rejoined the Captain.
“He followed us, evidently,” he ventured.
“He is a serpent,” Lindenwald commented, gravely, “and one to be feared. He crawls in the grass, gives no sign and strikes with poisoned fang where and when least expected. We must be very wary—very wary, indeed, until we are quite sure he has left the city. Ah, and that isnot the worst—how can we ever be sure? This is a case, Herr Arndt, where caution is more advisable than valour.”
“And your advice is?” Grey queried.
“My advice is never to go out unaccompanied. Already he is setting his traps, arranging his pitfalls. You cannot conceive of his ingenuity. I am vexed because I feel myself unequal to combat his trickery. In fair fight I have no fear, but to fence with von Einhard is to be always in danger of the impalpable.”
When they had separated and Grey was alone in his room, he flung himself into a comfortable chair, lighted a cigarette and gave himself up to reflection. The gravity of the affair was not to be minimized, yet he could not repress a smile as he thought of the triangular form the matter had assumed and of the complications, ramifications and cross-purposes that had developed. Personally his object was to detect and bring to justice those persons who had, for some reason not yet divulged, been using him as a cat’s-paw to attain an end of which he was also ignorant. He had, of course, every reason to believe that in this plotCaptain Lindenwald was a prominent factor, and as such his hand was against him. Meanwhile the machinery of international justice had been set in motion to bring about his own apprehension, extradition and punishment for a crime he had never contemplated and never willingly committed. Whether to this infraction Captain Lindenwald had been a party he had no means of knowing, but now it had turned out that another enemy was in the field—an aggressive foe seeking his life—and in this new battle Captain Lindenwald, strangely enough, was, it would seem, his staunch ally. He wondered whether any man had ever before been so harassed, so persecuted, so maligned, so humiliated through no fault of his own; and his sense of injury waxed more galling and his resentment more turbulently avid. He grew impatient of every hour’s delay in the chase, restless under his enforced inaction and fretful over the tardy revelation of past events and the development of future plans.
Then the thought of the box at the Gare du Nord recurred to him, and he got up and rang for Johann. But the youth knew nothing of it.
“Lutz, perhaps,” he said; “it is possible that Lutz knows. I will send him to you, Herr Arndt.”
And a little later Lutz came in. His air was timid and his manner uneasy. His eyes were furtive and refused to meet his master’s, and his fingers were in constant motion.
“Ah, Lutz,” Grey greeted him composedly, taking great care to erase all modulation from his tone, “there is somewhere, probably among poor Herr Schlippenbach’s effects, a receipt or check for a box at a railway station here in Paris—at the Gare du Nord, in fact. I wish you would see if you can find it for me.”
“Yes, Herr Arndt.” His gaze was on the carpet.
“Immediately, Lutz.”
“Yes, Herr Arndt.”
“That is all.”
When he had gone Grey began pacing the floor like a madman, his fists clenched, his eyes blazing.
“Was ever guilt more apparent?” he asked himself. “It is written all over him.”
And he wondered how he had controlled himself, how he had refrained from catching him by the throat and strangling a confession from him without more ado.
Greydined that evening across the Boulevard at the Maison Dorée, in company with Fräulein von Altdorf and Herr Captain Lindenwald; and, as the officer insisted that it was advisable for them to avoid as much as possible the public eye, the trio dined in acabinet particulieron the second floor with windows open on the street. It was not a very gay dinner, in spite of the Herr Captain’s efforts to infuse some mirth into it. Miss von Altdorf was apparently still grief-stricken over her great-uncle’s sudden death, and though she strove valiantly to smile at Lindenwald’s essays at wit and to respond with some animation to Grey’s less jocose but cheerful observations, it was with such palpable exertion as to rather discourage her would-be entertainers.
Her youth was a surprise to the American. At first sight he had fancied her three or four-and-twenty, but he was satisfied now that she could not be more than eighteen. Her figure was distinctly girlish.
She was all in white, from her great ostrich-plumed hat of Leghorn straw to her tiny canvas bottines, because, young as she was, she entertained prejudices against conventional mourning, and exercised them. It was a question, however, whether in black or white she was more beautiful. In the death-chamber Grey had seen her sombre-robed and had pronounced her rarely lovely, and now in raiment immaculately snowy she was equally alluring. Her expression was naturally pensive and her recent sorrow had given to her big, deep-set, long-lashed blue eyes a pathos that awoke the tenderest emotions. As the American gazed at her across the table he experienced a thrill of sentiment that was undeniable, and he had but to glance at Lindenwald to see in his contemplation the same fervency of soul.
“I should like it,” Grey said to her when the dinner was about over and he was burning his cognac over his coffee, “if you would take a trip with me tomorrow into the country. We willstart early and havedéjeunerat some inn, under the trees. It will do you a world of good.”
Something very like a frown gathered on Lindenwald’s brow, but it passed before he spoke.
“Do not forget my warning, Herr Arndt,” he interjected. “It would perhaps be safer for me to accompany Fraülein von Altdorf.”
“I will chance it,” Grey replied, decisively. “I feel that I, too, need a little outing.”
“It will be lovely, Uncle Max,” the girl responded, with more animation than she had previously shown. “Let us go to Versailles. I have never been, and I have read so much about it.”
“Versailles it shall be, my dear,” he answered, lighting a cigarette, while Lindenwald brushed his hand across his brow to hide a scowl.
Grey’s broken, unrefreshing, dreamful slumber of the night before, followed by a tiresome, distressing day, resulted early in the evening in a drowsiness that he could not shake off. For a while he dozed in a chair by an open window, but when the clock had struck eleven he arose and prepared for bed, and in a little while he was sleeping soundly behind his blue velvet curtains.
The night, however, was warm and close after the rain of the day, and, as the hours wore on, the sleeper grew restless and turned uneasily from side to side, by-and-by waking at each turning and seeking a cool spot between the sheets. At length sleep forsook him altogether, and he lay quite wide awake peering into the darkness in an effort to distinguish objects. But the night was very black and the room was enveloped in a pall of ink, save where the reflection from the street lamps spread patches of dim yellow light on wall and ceiling. The stillness, too, was oppressive. The boulevard was dead, and within doors no sound except the monotonous ticking of the clock on the mantel-shelf was audible.
He waited longingly for the clock to strike that he might know how many hours must elapse before the dawn; and as he waited, his senses alert, there broke softly on the silence the stealthy tread of feet in the passage on the other side of the wall near which he lay. No sooner had he heard the footsteps than they ceased, and the sound was succeeded by a muffled, metallic clicking from the direction of his door. With Lindenwald’s warningin mind he had turned the key in the lock before retiring, and he recalled this now with a sense of satisfied security; but even as he did so he was conscious of the door being pushed slowly but creakingly ajar, and then the tread that he had heard without he heard within. He held his breath, not in affright, for he was, he realised, wonderfully composed, but lest he scare away the intruder before the object of his visit was made plain.
Another second and a figure had crossed in the dim light that came from one of the windows. It was a rather undersized figure, Grey thought, but its attitude was crouching, almost creeping, and he might be deceived. Quickly a hand went to the cord loops at either side of the casements and dropped the curtains, and now the room was devoid of even the dim illumination from the street lamps. Then again, for a heart-beat, there was a blade of light visible as the visitor’s arm shot quickly between the lowered window hangings and drew cautiously together the open sashes, first one and then the other.
The steps now approached the bed—very slowly, haltingly, as though the intruder stoppedat each footfall to listen. Grey waited, with every muscle tense, his nerves a-strain, wondering, speculating as to this night prowler’s next move. For a little while his approach ceased and the suspense grew maddening. The man had evidently halted in the centre of the room. Then there came the faintest tinkle of glass touched to glass, so faint that the ticking of the clock made question whether it was not imagination; and then the stealthy stepping was resumed, but more nearly silent than before, until the man in the bed, with heart pounding, teeth shut tight and breath indrawn and held, knew that the other was there beside him—leaning in over him, between the curtains, with a hand outstretched....
Blindly, into the pitch dark, with all its power of nerve and muscle, Grey’s clenched fist shot upward just as a cloth, wet with a liquid so suffocatingly volatile as to stagger him for the instant, dropped on his face. He heard a startled cry, half moan, half groan, and then a crash as a body reeled backward and, losing its balance, toppled over a chair. On his feet in a flash, Grey made haste to follow up his advantage. His foot touched hisfallen assailant and he flung his full weight down upon him, groping wildly in the dark to find his arms and pinion them. But the fellow wriggled like a worm—twisting agilely, squirming from under his clutch—and his arms evaded capture. Locked in a desperate embrace they rolled over and over, now half rising to their knees, now thrown back again, upsetting tables and chairs, pounding their heads stunningly on floor and wall, clutching at each other’s hair, gripping each other’s throats—a wrestling match in which science had neither time nor place; a struggle for capture on the part of one, and for escape on the part of the other.
Grey was the stronger of the two, the heavier, the more muscular, but his foe was all elasticity, wiry, resilient, untiring, indomitable. The minutes passed without any apparent advantage to either. The smaller man was swearing in four languages and Grey was breathing hard. The noise they were making, as they rose and fell and overturned furniture, was thunderous. Each moment Grey expected the house would be awakened and assistance would arrive. Perspiration waspouring from his every pore; his pyjamas were in ribbons, his body and limbs half naked. Vainly he strove to strike and stun his adversary. His blows were dodged as if by instinct and his knuckles were bleeding where they had come in contact with the floor.
At length he succeeded in laying hold of the fellow’s face, his nose and mouth in his iron grasp, but instantly the jaws wrenched open and then closed savagely with Grey’s finger between viciously incisive teeth. A cry of pain escaped him as for the smallest moment a wave of faintness swept over him, and then he felt his antagonist slipping sinuously from under him and he grabbed wildly for a fresh hold. He caught a wrist and tried to cling to it, but the teeth were cutting to the bone, grinding on the joint, and the wrist slid through his grasp and the head followed in a twinkling. He rolled over and lunged out again, but the steely jaws had at that instant released his mangled finger, and even as he was striving to reach, struggling pantingly to his knees, he heard the door open quickly and he knew that he was alone.
He sank back to a sitting posture, breathing hard and deeply, but the air seemed suddenly to have grown thick and foul and choking, and he clambered to his feet and sought in the darkness for a window. Presently the touch of the curtains rewarded him. He thrust them frantically aside, pushed open the sashes and then dropped down again with his head and shoulders far out over the balcony, drinking in the cool, fresh air of the very early morning.
And it was here, in this position, a minute later that Johann, who had after considerable deliberation decided to investigate the cause of the disturbance, found him pale and exhausted, with the remnants of his pyjamas spattered with blood from his bleeding finger.
“Oh, Herr Arndt,” he cried, in perturbation, “what has happened? Have you tried to kill yourself? Oh, it is suffocating here! The gas—the room is full of gas.”
Johann helped Grey to his feet, sat him in a chair by the window, and having discovered the four gas jets of the chandelier which depended from the ceiling in the centre of the room turnedfull on, he turned them off, opened the other window and threw wide the door to effect a draft. Then he lighted the candles and returned to make an inventory of his master’s injuries.
“I’m not very much hurt, Johann,” Grey assured him; “but it was a pretty tough scrimmage while it lasted, and the brute did give my finger a biting. He had teeth like a saw and jaws like a vise. His original idea was asphyxiation, I suppose. He fancied I was asleep and that he would make it my last. By the way, look in the bed over there. You’ll find a chloroformed handkerchief, I think.”
“And was it for robbery, do you imagine, Herr Arndt, that he came?” Johann asked, as he went toward the bed.
“God knows,” Grey answered. “It looks rather professional when a fellow unlocks your door with a pair of nippers. The key was in the lock, you see.”
“You did not see his face, Herr Arndt? You would not know him?”
“I’m not a cat, Johann, and I cannot see in the dark.”
Then the valet hastened away to investigate, but returned without any information worth the calling. He had aroused theportieronly to learn that the street door had not been opened in two hours either for ingress or egress. Whoever the depredator was he must either have come in early and remained hidden or have entered through some unbarred window in the rear of the hotel, probably escaping by the same means. Having made his report Johann bathed and bound Grey’s finger, drew a bath for him, got out clean nightwear, remade the bed, and, just as the clock struck the half-hour after four, left him once more alone, still with the chloroformed handkerchief in his hand, which he was examining carefully for the third time. But it was merely a square piece of fine hemstitched linen without any distinguishing mark whatever. In that, certainly, there was no clue to his visitor.
But just as he was about to blow out his candles his foot trod on something hard, and he stooped and picked up a seal ring. It was very heavy and richly chased, and it bore an elaborately engraved coat of arms. In that last despairing clutch at thefellow’s hand he had evidently stripped this from his finger—this which could not but prove damaging evidence of his identity. The heraldic device was to Grey unfamiliar, but it would be a comparatively easy matter to learn to what family it belonged. Indeed, he had a vague recollection of having noticed a ring of this pattern on the little finger of Baron von Einhard’s ungloved hand the afternoon before in the hotel reading-room; but the pattern was not uncommon, and— but it was preposterous to fancy that a man of his position, no matter what Lindenwald had said, no matter what his reputation for chicanery, craft, and cunning, would personally undertake a deliberate attempt at homicide. Such impossible characters might figure in melodramas, but in real life they were out of the question. And then he looked at the ring again, turning it over and inspecting it very minutely in the light of the candle flame.
Captain Lindenwald, when he was told of the affair, was quite sure it was von Einhard even before he was shown the ring, and when that was forthcoming he was willing to swear to it. The arms, he declared, were the von Einhard arms,and the ring could have been worn by no one save the Baron himself. He was for putting the matter in the hands of the police and thus avoiding future dangers, but after a little deliberation he realised that such a course would be impracticable. For the present it was absolutely necessary, he knew, to reveal nothing as to his and his charge’s whereabouts. Too much was known already; and general publicity, even though it put von Einhard where he could do no personal harm, would more greatly imperil the carrying out of the plans that were indispensable.
This, at least, was the impression he conveyed to Grey, though he was, as usual, most guarded in his choice of words. Never yet, the American observed, had he directly spoken of his mission, nor had he once so much as intimated to him that he knew him as other than Herr Max Arndt. That he was a crown princeen routeto the bedside of his dying sire Captain Lindenwald had zealously refrained from uttering save to a third party under stress of unusual circumstance, and then in a tone so low that he could not reasonably be expected to hear.
“If I may be permitted,” the Captain requested, “I will keep this ring for a little. I may run across von Einhard, and I should like to give him this one hint that his attempt on your life is known to us.”
But for some reason which he could not define Grey demurred.
“I have a whim to wear it,” he said, replacing it upon his finger; and Lindenwald made no further plea.
Itwas deemed best not to mention the incident of the night to Miss von Altdorf, and on their way to the Gare St. Lazare that morning Grey accounted for his bandaged finger by the subterfuge of having caught it in a door. He was not altogether satisfied with the spot chosen for the day’s outing. Had he been allowed unaided to make the choice he would undoubtedly have selected a resort of quite different character, but the girl had expressed a wish to visit Louis XIV’s “Abîme des dépenses,” and he had without demur acceded to her desire. After all, to be alone with her and thus gather from her knowledge as much information as possible concerning the mystery that surrounded him was his prime object, and for this purpose Versailles offered as propitious a background as Bougival or Croissy or a dozen other places that he personally would have preferred.
The day, washed clear and brilliant by the rain of yesterday, was not uncomfortably warm, and, though the maimed finger ached distractingly at times, Grey, in spite of his misgivings, found the little jaunt delightfully diverting. The Fraülein had shaken off much of her melancholy of the previous evening, and her mood was cheerful, if not merry. Her appreciation, which was mingled with a joyousness almost childish, was especially gratifying to her companion. Everything she saw interested her, and her comment, while invariably intelligent, was so unaffected and ingenuous as to be ofttimes amusing.
When, afterdéjeunerat the Café de la Comédie, they had come out upon the terrace of the palace and stood overlooking the quaint, solemn, old-fashioned gardens, cut up into squares and triangles and parallelograms and ornamented with statues and vases and fountains arranged with monotonously geometric precision, her face shone with pleasure for a moment and then a shadow crossed it.
“Are all landscape gardeners atheists?” she asked, naïvely.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Grey replied, smiling; “I’ve never investigated their religious beliefs.”
“Well, the one who designed all this,” she added, with a sweep of her hand, “had very little respect for God’s taste.”
And later, as they sauntered through room after room and gallery after gallery of the palace, with their interminable succession of paintings and sculptures, she was much impressed by the pictured ceilings.
“I wonder why they put their best work where one must break one’s neck to see it?” she queried; and then she laughed. “Do you suppose it was to encourage the kings and queens and other grandees to bear in mind their exalted position and to hold their heads high?”
Grey had thus far refrained from broaching the subject which had inspired the excursion. He had chosen first of all to study the girl and gauge her character. Over her presence in the little party of questionables in which he had so unexpectedly found himself he was much perplexed. It seemed scarcely reasonable to suppose that she was not in some way involved in the plot, but whether activelyor passively, with knowledge or without, was, or at least might be, open to question. He certainly could gather no indication from her attitude, her manner, or her utterance that she was other than artless and sincere. She appeared, in fact, uncommonly simple-hearted, straightforward, and guileless, and, after weighing the evidence, he reached the conclusion that if she had a place in the scheme of his enemies it was most assuredly without her ken or connivance. It was nevertheless clear that she must be innocently aware of much that he wished eagerly to know, and, as they wandered over the palace together, from the sumptuously decoratedSalles des Croisades, reflecting in picture, trophy and souvenir the conquest of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre, to the magnificentGalerie des Glaces, with its many high-arched windows and glittering, gilt-niched mirrors, he ponderingly strove to outline some course of procedure that would yield him what he desired and yet not reveal his own delicately fragile position.
It was not, however, until they had finished their inspection of the palace and had passed outinto the gardens by theCour des Princesthat an opportunity offered to make trial of the plan he had conceived. They had strolled under the orange trees beside that long stretch of velvet lawn towards what is known as the basin of Apollo and had found seats on the marble coping of the fountain. As they sat there facing each other amid the perfume of the flowers and the spice of the shrubbery, the balmy breath of summer fanning their cheeks and the genial glow of a tempered June sun bathing them, the girl’s eye fell for the first time upon the ring on Grey’s little finger, and she gave an involuntary start of surprise.
“Oh, is it you, then?” she cried, and there was something of awe in her voice, though her eyes were smiling. “But no,” she added, quickly, “that cannot be. I do not understand, Uncle Max.”
“Nor I, child,” Grey replied, smiling back at her. He had not observed her glance, and her exclamation had startled him. She took his hand in her long, white, rose-tipped fingers and held it up before his eyes, the ring glinting in the sunshine.
“That!” she said. “What does it mean, your wearing it?”
“Mean?” he hesitated, wondering. “Why should it mean anything? Has not a gentleman a right to wear a ring if his fancy runs that way?”
“Oh, yes, of course; some rings; but no ordinary gentleman has a right to wear that one.”
“But suppose I am not an ordinary gentleman?” he pursued. “Suppose I have a title and bear arms, have I not a right to engrave those arms upon gold and wear them on my finger?”
She looked at him very seriously from out her deep-set, long-lashed eyes of purplish blue, and then she said:
“But it is the ring of the Crown Prince. And you are not the Crown Prince. If you were you could not be my uncle.”
Grey’s heart leaped. His decision had been confirmed. She was not trying to put him on a throne to which he had no more right than those workmen who were repairing the stone margin of the great canal a hundred yards away. Yet, at the same time, she had filled him with a new perplexity.It was evident that the ring was quite familiar to her. Therefore it could hardly be von Einhard’s, and Lindenwald’s assertion must not only have been false but knowingly false, and with an object. If the Fraülein von Altdorf knew the ring as the Crown Prince’s ring, Lindenwald must also have known it as such. It was for that reason he did not wish Grey to keep it. He feared, probably, just such a revelation as had come about. These points were plain enough, but the whole intricate problem was growing more and more involved. Its likeness to a maze again recurred. With every effort to extricate himself he seemed to get further and more bewilderingly entangled. And once more he was tempted to leave the path, which seemed to turn and turn again on itself, and to cut his way through thicket and underbrush regardless of consequences.
“What a wise Fraülein it is!” he replied, after a pause. “What you say is very true. If I am the Crown Prince I am not your uncle, and if I am your uncle I am not the Crown Prince. Now which would you prefer to have me?”
“Oh, for your sake,” she answered, quickly,“I’d rather you were heir to the throne; but for my sake I’d rather you were my uncle.”
“But not being able to be both, suppose you should learn that I am neither?” he queried, laughing.
“But you are,” she protested, with conviction. “You are my uncle, that is a fact.”
“How do you know?” Grey asked. The situation was growing interesting; disclosures were imminent, and they were coming quite naturally without his having had to resort to the plan he had mapped out.
“How does one ever know such things?” she replied, a little annoyance in her tone. “You were my Great-uncle Schlippenbach’s nephew and I am your niece. I call you Uncle Max and you call me Minna.”
“Ah, yes, that is very true,” Grey went on, banteringly, and he remembered what O’Hara had told him of how they had met in London a week after his setting foot on English soil; “but you never saw me in your life until two months ago. Do you remember how we first met?”
“I have a very vivid recollection of it. It wasat dinner at the Folsonham, in London. I wore a pale green frock. And poor Great-uncle Schlippenbach said: ‘Minna, my dear, this is your Uncle Max, who hasn’t seen you since you were a baby.’”
“And what else did he say?”
“Oh, I don’t remember all the conversation.”
“Did he say anything about where we were going, and what we were going for?”
“I don’t think he said anything then. But you must remember. You were as much there as I was.”
“Ah, but I was not listening,” Grey pleaded, his eyes a-twinkle. “I had something better to do.”
“What was that, pray?”
“I had my pretty niece to look at.”
The rose in Minna’s cheeks deepened and her eyes fell shyly.
“Now you are teasing me again,” she said.
Grey turned an uninterested gaze for a brief space on the sun-god and his chariot which, surrounded by tritons, nymphs, and dolphins, rose in heroic proportions from the centre of the basin.