CHAPTER FOURTEEN
NEITHER Wilkins nor Florence had waited long for Caruth to return. In fact, that gentleman had scarcely vanished into the mayor’s office when Florence had turned to her companion.
“Gee!” she remarked. “Me for the breakaway. These high-brows gets on me nerves. Let’s see the town—even if it ain’t all to the giddy, it’s better than the old boat. Gee! but it’s slow!” Miss Lee, it will be observed, was glad to pretermit, when opportunity offered, the forms of polite speech that she was rapidly acquiring.
Wilkins looked at her suspiciously. “You ain’t seemed in no ways bored,” he suggested.
“Oh, I got to put up a front, of course,” rejoined the girl indifferently; “but if it wasn’t for you, I guess I’d fade away. This style of life’s all right for those that likes it, I guess, but it’s me for Coney Island every time.”
They had reached the church now and were peering in at the open door. Miss Lee was not impressed; she had seen Russian churches in her beloved New York, and mentally compared them with this one, much to its disadvantage. Wilkins, however, foundit all new and interesting. The candles ranged before the icons, the gilt and glass of the altar, the tawdry trappings, all impressed him, and he advanced into the building, studying its details.
PARDON, MADEMOISELLE! I MUST SPEAK TO YOU SECRETLY“PARDON, MADEMOISELLE! I MUST SPEAK TO YOU SECRETLY”
“PARDON, MADEMOISELLE! I MUST SPEAK TO YOU SECRETLY”
“PARDON, MADEMOISELLE! I MUST SPEAK TO YOU SECRETLY”
Scarcely had he left the girl when a man dressed in the habiliments of a priest stepped to her side, holding out his hat, as if for alms. As Florence stared at him, he muttered swiftly, in excellent English:
“Pardon, mademoiselle! I must speak to you secretly. You have been deceived. You are not Professor Shishkin’s daughter. You are a princess of Russia with a huge fortune. I have come from St. Petersburg to talk with you. Give me a chance, I beg.”
Miss Lee turned away. “Say, Mr. Wilkins,” she called. “I left my jacket in the boat. Would you mind chasin’ down and gettin’ it for me? I’ll wait here for you.”
When the plainsman had gone, Florence turned to the priest. “Make good,” she ordered briefly. “You look like the Caliph of Bagdad, and I guess you can do the magic. If I’m a face-card instead of a two-spot, of course I want to know it.”
The priest did not answer Florence’s speech in words. Turning, he stepped to the door and threw out his hand. “Begone!” he shouted to the curious crowd, and at the word it melted away.
Then he came back. “Will you not be seated, Princess?” he inquired courteously, pointing towarda bench that stood against the wall. “I regret that I have no better accommodation to offer you, but——”
Florence took the seat. “Cut it out,” she advised. “Get on with the fairy tale.”
The priest removed his cap and threw back his vestments, revealing himself as a well-preserved, courtly gentleman of perhaps fifty years of age. Beautiful white hair curled about his brow, while his beard and mustaches were the pink of military perfection. Florence, studying him furtively, found him very good to look upon. To her he represented romance, aristocracy, refinement—all that she had never had in her sordid life. He was too old to play Prince Charming, she concluded, but he was of the type to which she believed Prince Charming belonged.
Meanwhile the priest was seating himself. “No fairy tale. Princess,” he contradicted deferentially—“unless we liken it to Cinderella and transform the beautiful, wronged young lady into the princess. Rather let us call it a masquerade. I am not what I seem. You are not what you seem. Your whole expedition is not what it seems. We are all masked. But the time for unmasking is at hand.”
Florence stared at him languidly. “I suppose you know what you mean,” she remarked insolently. “But I don’t.”
“How should you until I explain? First, Princess, I am not a priest.”
“I knew it. What are you? A wizard?”
“I am Baron Ivan Demidroff, chief of the third section of the Russian police. Perhaps you know what that means. Your yacht has been watched ever since it entered the Baltic, and I am here for the express purpose of meeting you. If I may advise, Princess, it is not well to scoff always. This affair is not one for laughter.”
“Oh, splash! Excuse these tears of regret!” mocked the girl. “Go ahead! I’ll be good.”
For a moment the Baron studied the girl’s face. Then he shrugged his shoulders. Privately he was revising his former opinions about American training and manners. He had not met Florence’s type before.
“You have always supposed yourself the daughter of Professor Shishkin, have you not, Princess?” he questioned.
Florence dodged. “Well, I got a right to,” she answered. “He told me so himself.”
“I know. He did you a grave injustice. Listen, Princess! Twenty years ago, the man you suppose to be your father engaged in a plot to murder my imperial master the Czar. The plot was detected, and its authors were thrown into prison. Three years after, Shishkin escaped. In some way he had gotten the idea that his highness, the Grand Duke Ivan, had been responsible for his arrest. It was not true, but he believed it. So he slipped into the palace of the Grand Duke and stole away his daughter, thePrincess Yves Napraxine. He escaped with her to America and passed her off as his daughter. You were that child! You were and are that princess, Yves Napraxine, daughter of the late Grand Duke Ivan, cousin to his imperial majesty the Czar, and heiress to a great fortune. All this would have been yours from birth up had not that wicked old man stolen you away and robbed you of it.”
Florence closed her eyes. She felt faint. Ever since Professor Shishkin had approached her in New York, she had been wondering to what the adventure would lead. Naturally romantic, in spite of her flippancy, she had thought out half a dozen possible terminations, the least of which left her rich and honored. But never in her wildest imaginings had she dreamed of being identified as a princess and a cousin of the Czar.
A delightful excitement raced through her veins. In imagination she was already receiving homage and declining the hands of great nobles. Then, all at once, the “pipe went out.” None of this could be hers. It all belonged to the real Olga, married and settled three thousand miles away. The truth must of course soon appear; all she could do was to get all the pleasure possible out of the situation while it lasted. Perhaps she might manage to feather her nest by that time.
Her thoughts flew to the Professor. So this was the reason why he had wanted to keep the real Olga out of Russia? He had dreaded just sucha disclosure as this. Well, she would help him as long as she could—that is, as long as his interests did not clash with hers. When they did, of course——
The Baron had been watching her closely, trying to read her changing face.
“Ah ha!” he exclaimed. “You understand now perhaps some things you could not guess before. Perhaps you remember details of your childhood, almost forgotten. You were three years old when you were stolen, and some recollection sticks in your mind. Is it not so?”
“Yes, some recollection sticks in my mind.” Florence wondered grimly what the Baron would say if he knew what her recollections really were.
“The villain has robbed you of your birthright,” he repeated, with what seemed to be rising wrath. “But now it shall all be restored. Yes!”
Florence nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The situation was too new and strange, and she must move circumspectly. Besides, she was certain the Baron had more to say. She had been taught in a hard school, and was very sure that his actions were not disinterested. So she merely waited.
Baron Demidroff did not delay. “Yes,” he reiterated. “It shall all be restored, and the robber shall be punished. But there is more to tell, Princess. To whom, think you, belongs the gold for which theSea Spumeis seeking?”
“What gold?” Florence looked innocently intothe Baron’s eyes. She would admit nothing until compelled to do so.
“What gold?Mon Dieu, Princess, do you think we police are fools? Every step of the so-called Miss Fitzhugh and of Monsieur Caruth has been known to us. Almost we captured the letter on the fire-escape in New York. ButMonsieur le valetwas too cunning for us.”
Florence raised her eyes. “So,” she murmured thoughtfully, “it was your agents who murdered Wilkins?”
“Executed him, Princess. He was a robber and a murderer, with a long criminal record. We knew him well. His robbery of Monsieur Caruth was his last crime. My men observed him from the fire-escape and acted summarily. That is all.”
Florence did not understand half of this. She had been told nothing of Wilkins’s murder, her only knowledge being inferred from what his brother had said to her about it three days before. She laid away in her mind the information the Baron so freely imparted, and waited.
“So you let the letter get by you,” she suggested.
The Baron flung up his hands. “Alas, yes, Princess. But we watched and waited, and when Miss Fitzhugh organized her little expedition, we guessed that she had somehow gotten the letter. But,mademoiselle, revenons à nos moulons! Do you know whose gold it is they seek?”
Florence shook her head.
“It is yours! Yes, Princess, I swear it. Your illustrious father had never given up the hope of finding you, and when he died, ten years ago, his will directed that his estate should be set aside for you or be spent in seeking for you. When Russia’s needs became great owing to the war with Japan, my imperial master directed that money be borrowed for the government on your English estates. If you were found, he would pay it back; if you were not found, the estate would in time revert to the Crown. That gold was carried by theOrkney, wrecked by the nihilists, and is now being stolen from you by your pretended father and his rascally associates. It makes one’s blood boil, Princess!”
For obvious reasons, Florence’s blood did not boil quite so ardently as the Baron’s seemed to do. Plainly he was trying to excite her animosity against the members of her party, for reasons not yet disclosed, but not difficult to guess in a general way. She was sure that he was preparing to ask her to play traitor, and she was debating inwardly whether or not she would find it profitable to do so.
“It’s a real fervent tale,” she remarked encouragingly. “Gee! wouldn’t it make a hit on the ten-twent’-thirt’ circuit. Think of the Czarski doing the hands-across-the-sea act to an American girl! By the way, I forgot how you said you found me!”
Baron Demidroff hesitated. “It is a long story,” he boggled. “We got a hint from a friend of ours in the nihilist councils, and we followed it up. Theproofs were completed only after your party sailed from America. The last Unit came by cable a few days ago.”
Florence rose. “Well,” she said, “if it satisfies you, I certainly ain’t got any kick coming. But I guess you’d better get down to brass tacks and be done with it. Do I get this estate and princely rank, or don’t I? Talk business! I’m no ingénue.”
The Baron’s eyes lighted up. At last he thought he understood. He rose. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “You will treat with us! That is well. You will get everything if you help us! We want that gold. The Emperor is responsible to you for it, and he has charged us to recover it. Is it in the Inlet here?”
“You can search me!”
“What?”
“Oh, gee, I don’t know! Nobody knows! They’re hunting for it here, but I don’t think they’re certain it ain’t somewhere else.”
“Didn’t the letter tell?”
“I haven’t seen any letter.”
“Ah!” The Baron was disappointed. “Well, no matter!” he went on. “You can help me nevertheless. Let me know when they find it, and I will do the rest. The moment it is in my hands, I will hand you the proofs that will make you a princess and give you a fortune of forty million rubles—twenty million American dollars. Will you help us?”
Florence shivered with delight. If she were clever,she might coax some of those twenty millions to come her way. But matters were still decidedly vague.
“Why can’t you seize the yacht now?” she asked. “Why do you need my help?”
“My dear young lady!” the Baron exclaimed. “We do not know where the wreck is! We do not know that she is in this inlet at all. It may be for a blind that the yacht comes here. If we seize her before she finds the gold, we know nothing and we get nothing. Mr. Caruth he draw himself up. ‘Ah ha!’ he cries. ‘You insult the American flag!’ The American newspapers raise the—the war-whoop—and we—we can answer nothing. We have no proof. But when the gold is once aboard, we get it and we can catch Mr. Caruth red-handed. He is caught stealing our gold. He can say nothing. If he makes trouble, the American papers are dumb or they take our side. Russia’s friendship with America is not disturbed. It is only a pirate that is caught. Ah, no, no, Princess. We must proceed slowly. We must know our ground before we move. We must wait until the gold is found. Now what say you?”
Florence considered. Clearly, nothing was to be gained by refusing the Baron outright. She must have time to decide on her course of action. If it appeared best to betray the yacht, she would not hesitate to do so; but she had no intention of playing the traitor unless she saw her profit. She must study over the situation. Meanwhile, she would appear to accept.
“All right,” she said briefly. “I’ll go with you. I’ll let you know when the gold is found. How’ll I do it?”
If Baron Demidroff was gratified, he did not show it. He was no longer treating Florence as a girl, but as a woman and a fellow conspirator.
“Your stateroom is the second on the port side, I believe,” he said tersely. “Very well. When the gold is found, hang a small red flag from your port-hole or show a red light there by night. It is understood? Yes? But your friend approaches.Adieu, Madame la Princesse!”
As he walked up the aisle toward the altar, Miss Lee rose to greet Wilkins. “Gee!” she exclaimed. “Let’s get back on board. This place is as dead as a puddle duckski!”