“Monsieur,—I kill myself because it is easiest and best. Thepoison was given me for you, but I have not the courage to becomea murderer, or afterwards to conceal my guilt. Monsieur has beena good master to me, and also Madame la Comtesse was alwaysindulgent and kind. The mistake of my life has been the joiningthe lower order of the Society. The money which I have receivedhas been but a poor return for the anxiety and trouble which havecome upon me since Madame la Comtesse left America. Now that Iseek shelter in the grave I am free to warn Monsieur that thePrince of S. L. is his determined and merciless enemy, and thathe has already made an unlawful use of his position in the Societyfor the sake of private vengeance. If monsieur would make apowerful friend he should seek the Lady Muriel Carey.“Monsieur will be so good as to destroy this when read. My willis in my trunk.“Your Grace’s faithful servant,“Jules Duson.”
Mr. Sabin read this letter carefully through to the end. Then he put it into his pocket-book and quickly rang the bell.
“You had better send for a doctor at once,” he said to the waiter who appeared. “My servant appears to have suffered from some sudden illness. I am afraid that he is quite dead.”
“You spoke, my dear Lucille,” the Duchess of Dorset said, “of your departure. Is not that a little premature?”
Lucille shrugged her beautiful shoulders, and leaned back in her corner of the couch with half-closed eyes. The Duchess, who was very Anglo-Saxon, was an easy person to read, and Lucille was anxious to know her fate.
“Why premature?” she asked. “I was sent for to use my influence with Reginald Brott. Well, I did my best, and I believe that for days it was just a chance whether I did not succeed. However, as it happened, I failed. One of his friends came and pulled him away just as he was wavering. He has declared himself now once and for all. After his speech at Glasgow he cannot draw back. I was brought all the way from America, and I want to go back to my husband.”
The Duchess pursed her lips.
“When one has the honour, my dear,” she said, “of belonging to so wonderful an organisation as this we must not consider too closely the selfish claims of family. I am sure that years ago I should have laughed at any one who had told me that I, Georgina Croxton, should ever belong to such a thing as a secret society, even though it had some connection with so harmless and excellent an organisation as the Primrose League.”
“It does seem remarkable,” Lucille murmured.
“But look what terrible times have come upon us,” the Duchess continued, without heeding the interruption. “When I was a girl a Radical was a person absolutely without consideration. Now all our great cities are hot-beds of Socialism and—and anarchism. The whole country seems banded together against the aristocracy and the landowners. Combination amongst us became absolutely necessary in some shape or form. When the Prince came and began to drop hints about the way the spread of Socialism had been checked in Hungary and Austria, and even Germany, I was interested from the first. And when he went further, and spoke of the Society, it was I who persuaded Dorset to join. Dear man, he is very earnest, but very slow, and very averse to anything at all secretive. I am sure the reflection that he is a member of a secret society, even although it is simply a linking together of the aristocracy of Europe in their own defence, has kept him awake for many a night.”
Lucille was a little bored.
“The Society,” she said, “is an admirable one enough, but just now I am beginning to feel it a little exacting. I think that the Prince expects a good deal of one. I shall certainly ask for my release to-night.”
The Duchess looked doubtful.
“Release!” she repeated. “Come, is that not rather an exaggerated expression? I trust that your stay at Dorset House has not in any way suggested an imprisonment.”
“On the contrary,” Lucille answered; “you and the Duke have been most kind. But you must remember that I have home of my own—and a husband of my own.”
“I have no doubt,” the Duchess said, “that you will be able to return to them some day. But you must not be impatient. I do not think that the Prince has given up all hopes of Reginald Brott yet.”
Lucille was silent. So her emancipation was to be postponed. After all, it was what she had feared. She sat watching idly the Duchess’s knitting needles. Lady Carey came sweeping in, wonderful in a black velvet gown and a display of jewels almost barbaric.
“On my way to the opera,” she announced. “The Maddersons sent me their box. Will any of you good people come? What do you say, Lucille?”
Lucille shook her head.
“My toilette is deficient,” she said; “and besides, I am staying at home to see the Prince. We expect him this evening.”
“You’ll probably be disappointed then,” Lady Carey remarked, “for he’s going to join us at the opera. Run and change your gown. I’ll wait.”
“Are you sure that the Prince will be there?” Lucille asked.
“Certain.”
“Then I will come,” she said, “if the Duchess will excuse me.”
The Duchess and Lady Carey were left alone for a few minutes. The former put down her knitting.
“Why do we keep that woman here,” she asked, “now that Brott has broken away from her altogether?”
Lady Carey laughed meaningly.
“Better ask the Prince,” she remarked.
The Duchess frowned.
“My dear Muriel,” she said, “I think that you are wrong to make such insinuations. I am sure that the Prince is too much devoted to our cause to allow any personal considerations to intervene.”
Lady Carey yawned.
“Rats!” she exclaimed.
The Duchess took up her knitting, and went on with it without remark. Lady Carey burst out laughing.
“Don’t look so shocked,” she exclaimed. “It’s funny. I can’t help being a bit slangy. You do take everything so seriously. Of course you can see that the Prince is waiting to make a fool of himself over Lucille. He has been trying more or less all his life.”
“He may admire her,” the Duchess said. “I am sure that he would not allow that to influence him in his present position. By the bye, she is anxious to leave us now that the Brott affair is over. Do you think that the Prince will agree?”
Lady Carey’s face hardened.
“I am sure that he will not,” she said coolly. “There are reasons why she may not at present be allowed to rejoin her husband.”
The Duchess used her needles briskly.
“For my part,” she said, “I can see no object in keeping her here any longer. Mr. Brott has shown himself quite capable of keeping her at arm’s length. I cannot see what further use she is.”
Lady Carey heard the flutter of skirts outside and rose.
“There are wheels within wheels,” she remarked. “My dear Lucille, what a charming toilette. We shall have the lady journalists besieging us in our box. Paquin, of course. Good-night, Duchess. Glad to see you’re getting on with the socks, or stockings, do you call them?”
Insolent aristocratic, now and then attractive in some strange suggestive way, Lady Carey sat in front of the box and exchanged greetings with her friends. Presently the Prince came in and took the chair between the two women. Lady Carey greeted him with a nod.
“Here’s Lucille dying to return to her lawful husband,” she remarked. “Odd thing, isn’t it? Most of the married women I ever knew are dying to get away from theirs. You can make her happy or miserable in a few moments.”
The Prince leaned over between them, but he looked only at Lucille.
“I wish that I could,” he murmured. “I wish that that were within my power.”
“It is,” she answered coolly. “Muriel is quite right. I am most anxious to return to my husband.”
The Prince said nothing. Lady Carey, glancing towards him at that moment, was surprised at certain signs of disquietude in his face which startled her.
“What is the matter with you?” she asked almost roughly.
“Matter with me? Nothing,” he answered. “Why this unaccustomed solicitude?”
Lady Carey looked into his face fiercely. He was pale, and there was a strained look about his eyes. He seemed, too, to be listening. From outside in the street came faintly to their ears the cry of a newsboy.
“Get me an evening paper,” she whispered in his ear.
He got up and left the box. Lucille was watching the people below and had not appreciated the significance of what had been passing between the two. Lady Carey leaned back in the box with half-closed eyes. Her fingers were clenched nervously together, her bosom was rising and falling quickly. If he had dared to defy her! What was it the newsboys were calling? What a jargon! Why did not Saxe Leinitzer return? Perhaps he was afraid! Her heart stood still for a moment, and a little half-stifled cry broke from her lips. Lucille looked around quickly.
“What is the matter, Muriel?” she asked. “Are you faint?”
“Faint, no,” Lady Carey answered roughly. “I’m quite well. Don’t take any notice of me. Do you hear? Don’t look at me.”
Lucille obeyed. Lady Carey sat quite still with her hand pressed to her side. It was a stifling pain. She was sure that she had heard at last. “Sudden death of a visitor at the Carlton Hotel.” The place was beginning to go round.
Saxe Leinitzer returned. His face to her seemed positively ghastly. He carried an evening paper in his hand. She snatched it away from him. It was there before her in bold, black letters:
“Sudden death in the Carlton Hotel.”
Her eyes, dim a moment ago, suddenly blazed fire upon him.
“It shall be a life for a life,” she whispered. “If you have killed him you shall die.”
Lucille looked at them bewildered. And just then came a sharp tap at the box door. No one answered it, but the door was softly opened. Mr. Sabin stood upon the threshold.
“Pray, don’t let me disturb you,” he said. “I was unable to refrain from paying you a brief visit. Why, Prince, Lady Carey! I can assure you that I am no ghost.”
He glanced from one to the other with a delicate smile of mockery parting his thin lips. For upon the Prince’s forehead the perspiration stood out like beads, and he shrank away from Mr. Sabin as from some unholy thing. Lady Carey had fallen back across her chair. Her hand was still pressed to her side, and her face was very pale. A nervous little laugh broke from her lips.
Mr. Sabin found a fourth chair, and calmly seated himself by Lucille’s side. But his eyes were fixed upon Lady Carey. She was slowly recovering herself, but Mr. Sabin, who had never properly understood her attitude towards him, was puzzled at the air of intense relief which almost shone in her face.
“You seem—all of you,” he remarked suavely, “to have found the music a little exciting. Wagner certainly knew how to find his way to the emotions. Or perhaps I interrupted an interesting discussion?”
Lucille smiled gently upon him.
“These two,” she said, looking from the Prince to Lady Carey, “seem to have been afflicted with a sudden nervous excitement, and yet I do not think that they are, either of them, very susceptible to music.”
Lady Carey leaned forward, and looked at him from behind the large fan of white feathers which she was lazily fluttering before her face.
“Your entrance,” she murmured, “was most opportune, besides being very welcome. The Prince and I were literally—on the point of flying at one another’s throats.”
Mr. Sabin glanced at his neighbour and smiled.
“You are certainly a little out of sorts, Saxe Leinitzer,” he remarked. “You look pale, and your hands are not quite steady. Nerves, I suppose. You should see Dr. Carson in Brook Street.”
The Prince shrugged his shoulders.
“My health,” he said, “was never better. It is true that your coming was somewhat of a surprise,” he added, looking steadily at Mr. Sabin. “I understood that you had gone for a short journey, and I was not expecting to see you back again so soon.”
“Duson,” Mr. Sabin said, “has taken that short journey instead. It was rather a liberty, but he left a letter for me fully explaining his motives. I cannot blame him.”
The Prince stroked his moustache.
“Ah!” he remarked. “That is a pity. You may, however, find it politic, even necessary, to join him very shortly.”
Mr. Sabin smiled grimly.
“I shall go when I am ready,” he said, “not before!”
Lucille looked from one to the other with protesting eyebrows.
“Come,” she said, “it is very impolite of you to talk in riddles before my face. I have been flattering myself, Victor, that you were here to see me. Do not wound my vanity.”
He whispered something in her ear, and she laughed softly back at him. The Prince, with the evening paper in his hand, escaped from the box, and found a retired spot where he could read the little paragraph at his leisure. Lady Carey pretended to be absorbed by the music.
“Has anything happened, Victor?” Lucille whispered.
He hesitated.
“Well, in a sense, yes,” he admitted. “I appear to have become unpopular with our friend, the Prince. Duson, who has always been a spy upon my movements, was entrusted with a little sleeping draught for me, which he preferred to take himself. That is all.”
“Duson is—”
He nodded.
“He is dead!”
Lucille went very pale.
“This is horrible!” she murmured
“The Prince is a little annoyed, naturally,” Mr. Sabin said. “It is vexing to have your plans upset in such a manner.”
She shuddered.
“He is hateful! Victor, I fear that he does not mean to let me leave Dorset House just yet. I am almost inclined to become, like you, an outcast. Who knows—we might go free. Bloodshed is always avoided as much as possible, and I do not see how else they could strike at me. Social ostracism is their chief weapon. But in America that could not hurt us.”
He shook his head.
“Not yet,” he said. “I am sure that Saxe Leinitzer is not playing the game. But he is too well served here to make defiance wise.”
“You run the risk yourself,” she protested.
He smiled.
“It is a different matter. By the bye, we are overheard.”
Lady Carey had forgotten to listen any more to the music. She was watching them both, a steely light in her eyes, her fingers nervously entwined. The Prince was still absent.
“Pray do not consider me,” she begged. “So far as I am concerned, your conversation is of no possible interest. But I think you had better remember that the Prince is in the corridor just outside.”
“We are much obliged to you,” Mr. Sabin said. “The Prince may hear every word I have to say about him. But all the same, I thank you for your warning.”
“I fear that we are very unsociable, Muriel,” Lucille said, “and, after all, I should never have been here but for you.”
Lady Carey turned her left shoulder upon them.
“I beg,” she said, “that you will leave me alone with the music. I prefer it.”
The Prince suddenly stood upon the threshold. His hand rested lightly upon the arm of another man.
“Come in, Brott,” he said. “The women will be charmed to see you. And I don’t suppose they’ve read your speeches. Countess, here is the man who counts all equal under the sun, who decries class, and recognises no social distinctions. Brott was born to lead a revolution. He is our natural enemy. Let us all try to convert him.”
Brott was pale, and deep new lines were furrowed on his face. Nevertheless he smiled faintly as he bowed over Lucille’s fingers.
“My introduction,” he remarked, “is scarcely reassuring. Yet here at least, if anywhere in the world, we should all meet upon equal ground. Music is a universal leveler.”
“And we haven’t a chance,” Lady Carey remarked with uplifted eyebrows, “of listening to a bar of it.”
Lucille welcomed the newcomer coldly. Nevertheless, he manoeuvred himself into the place by her side. She took up her fan and commenced swinging it thoughtfully.
“You are surprised to see me here?” he murmured.
“Yes!” she admitted.
He looked wearily away from the stage up into her face.
“And I too,” he said. “I am surprised to find myself here!”
“I pictured you,” she remarked, “as immersed in affairs. Did I not hear something of a Radical ministry with you for Premier?”
“It has been spoken of,” he admitted.
“Then I really cannot see,” she said, “what you are doing here.”
“Why not?” he asked doggedly.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“In the first place,” she said, “you ought to be rushing about amongst your supporters, keeping them up to the mark, and all that sort of thing. And in the second—”
“Well?”
“Are we not the very people against whom you have declared war?”
“I have declared war against no people,” he answered. “It is systems and classes, abuses, injustice against which I have been forced to speak. I would not deprive your Order of a single privilege to which they are justly entitled. But you must remember that I am a people’s man. Their cause is mine. They look to me as their mouthpiece.”
Lucille shrugged her shoulders.
“You cannot evade the point,” she said. “If you are the, what do you call it, the mouthpiece of the people, I do not see how you can be anything else than the enemy of the aristocracy.”
“The aristocracy? Who are they?” he asked. “I am the enemy of all those who, because they possess an ancient name and inherited wealth, consider themselves the God-appointed bullies of the poor, dealing them out meagre charities, lordly patronage, an unspoken but bitter contempt. But the aristocracy of the earth are not of such as these. Your class are furnishing the world with advanced thinkers every year, every month! Inherited prejudices can never survive the next few generations. The fusion of classes must come.”
She shook her head.
“You are sanguine, my friend,” she said. “Many generations have come and gone since the wonderful pages of history were opened to us. And during all these years how much nearer have the serf and the aristocrat come together? Nay, have they not rather drifted apart?... But listen! This is the great chorus. We must not miss it.”
“So the Prince has brought back the wanderer,” Lady Carey whispered to Mr. Sabin behind her fan. “Hasn’t he rather the air of a sheep who has strayed from the fold?”
Mr. Sabin raised the horn eyeglass, which he so seldom used, and contemplated Brott steadily.
“He reminds me more than ever,” he remarked, “of Rienzi. He is like a man torn asunder by great causes. They say that his speech at Glasgow was the triumph of a born orator.”
Lady Carey shrugged her shoulders.
“It was practically the preaching a revolution to the people,” she said. “A few more such, and we might have the red flag waving. He left Glasgow in a ferment. If he really comes into power, what are we to expect?”
“To the onlookers,” Mr. Sabin remarked, “a revolution in this country would possess many interesting features. The common people lack the ferocity of our own rabble, but they are even more determined. I may yet live to see an English Duke earning an honest living in the States.”
“It depends very much upon Brott,” Lady Carey said. “For his own sake it is a pity that he is in love with Lucille.”
Mr. Sabin agreed with her blandly.
“It is,” he affirmed, “a most regrettable incident.”
She leaned a little towards him. The box was not a large one, and their chairs already touched.
“Are you a jealous husband?” she asked.
“Horribly,” he answered.
“Your devotion to Lucille, or rather the singleness of your devotion to Lucille,” she remarked, “is positively the most gauche thing about you. It is—absolutely callow!”
He laughed gently.
“Did I not always tell you,” he said, “that when I did marry I should make an excellent husband?”
“You are at least,” she answered sharply, “a very complaisant one.”
The Prince leaned forward from the shadows of the box.
“I invite you all,” he said, “to supper with me. It is something of an occasion, this! For I do not think that we shall all meet again just as we are now for a very long time.”
“Your invitation,” Mr. Sabin remarked, “is most agreeable. But your suggestion is, to say the least of it, nebulous. I do not see what is to prevent your all having supper with me to-morrow evening.”
Lady Carey laughed as she rose, and stretched out her hand for her cloak.
“To-morrow evening,” she said, “is a long way off. Let us make sure of to-night—before the Prince changes his mind.”
Mr. Sabin bowed low.
“To-night by all means,” he declared. “But my invitation remains—a challenge!”
The Prince, being host, arranged the places at his supper-table. Mr. Sabin found himself, therefore, between Lady Carey and a young German attache, whom they had met in the ante-room of the restaurant. Lucille had the Prince and Mr. Brott on either side of her.
Lady Carey monopolised at first the greater part of the conversation. Mr. Sabin was unusually silent. The German attache, whose name was Baron von Opperman, did not speak until the champagne was served, when he threw a bombshell into the midst of the little party.
“I hear,” he said, with a broad and seraphic smile, “that in this hotel there has to-day a murder been committed.”
Baron von Opperman was suddenly the cynosure of several pairs of eyes. He was delighted with the success of his attempt towards the general entertainment.
“The evening papers,” he continued, “they have in them news of a sudden death. But in the hotel here now they are speaking of something—what you call more—mysterious. There has been ordered an examination post-mortem!”
“It is a case of poisoning then, I presume?” the Prince asked, leaning forward.
“It is so supposed,” the attache answered. “It seems that the doctors could find no trace of disease, nothing to have caused death. They were not able to decide anything. The man, they said, was in perfect health—but dead.”
“It must have been, then,” the Prince remarked, “a very wonderful poison.”
“Without doubt,” Baron Opperman answered.
The Prince sighed gently.
“There are many such,” he murmured. “Indeed the science of toxicology was never so ill-understood as now. I am assured that there are many poisons known only to a few chemists in the world, a single grain of which is sufficient to destroy the strongest man and leave not the slightest trace behind. If the poisoner be sufficiently accomplished he can pursue his—calling without the faintest risk of detection.”
Mr. Sabin sipped his wine thoughtfully.
“The Prince is, I believe, right,” he remarked. “It is for that reason, doubtless, that I have heard of men whose lives have been threatened, who have deposited in safe places a sealed statement of the danger in which they find themselves, with an account of its source, so that if they should come to an end in any way mysterious there may be evidence against their murderers.”
“A very reasonable and judicious precaution,” the Prince remarked with glittering eyes. “Only if the poison was indeed of such a nature that it was not possible to trace it nothing worse than suspicion could ever be the lot of any one.”
Mr. Sabin helped himself carefully to salad, and resumed the discussion with his next course.
“Perhaps not,” he admitted. “But you must remember that suspicion is of itself a grievous embarrassment. No man likes to feel that he is being suspected of murder. By the bye, is it known whom the unfortunate person was?”
“The servant of a French nobleman who is staying in the hotel,” Mr. Brott remarked. “I heard as much as that.”
Mr. Sabin smiled. Lady Carey glanced at him meaningly.
“You have worried the Prince quite sufficiently,” she whispered. “Change the subject.”
Mr. Sabin bowed.
“You are very considerate—to the Prince,” he said.
“It is perhaps for your sake,” she answered. “And as for the Prince—well, you know, or you should know, for how much he counts with me.”
Mr. Sabin glanced at her curiously. She was a little flushed as though with some inward excitement. Her eyes were bright and soft. Despite a certain angularity of figure and her hollow cheeks she was certainly one of the most distinguished-looking women in the room.
“You are so dense,” she whispered in his ear, “wilfully dense, perhaps. You will not understand that I wish to be your friend.”
He smiled with gentle deprecation.
“Do you blame me,” he murmured, “if I seem incredulous? For I am an old man, and you are spoken of always as the friend of my enemy, the friend of the Prince.”
“I wonder,” she said thoughtfully, “if this is really the secret of your mistrust? Do you indeed fear that I have no other interest in life save to serve Saxe Leinitzer?”
“As to that,” he answered, “I cannot say. Yet I know that only a few months ago you were acting under orders from him. It is you who brought Lucille from America. It was through you that the first blow was struck at my happiness.”
“Cannot I atone?” she murmured under her breath. “If I can I will. And as for the present, well, I am outside his schemes now. Let us be friends. You would find me a very valuable ally.”
“Let it be so,” he answered without emotion. “You shall help me, if you will, to regain Lucille. I promise you then that my gratitude shall not disappoint you.”
She bit her lip.
“And are you sure,” she whispered, “that Lucille is anxious to be won back? She loves intrigue, excitement, the sense of being concerned in important doings. Besides—you must have heard what they say about her—and Brott. Look at her now. She wears her grass widowhood lightly enough.”
Mr. Sabin looked across the table. Lucille had indeed all the appearance of a woman thoroughly at peace with the world and herself. Brott was talking to her in smothered and eager undertones. The Prince was waiting for an opportunity to intervene. Mr. Sabin looked into Brott’s white strong face, and was thoughtful.
“It is a great power—the power of my sex,” Lady Carey continued, with a faint, subtle smile. “A word from Lucille, and the history book of the future must be differently written.”
“She will not speak that word,” Mr. Sabin said. Lady Carey shrugged her shoulders. The subtlety of her smile faded away. Her whole face expressed a contemptuous and self-assured cynicism.
“You know her very well,” she murmured. “Yet she and I are no strangers. She is one who loves to taste—no, to drink—deeply of all the experiences of life. Why should we blame her, you and I? Have we not the same desire?”
Mr. Sabin lit a cigarette.
“Once, perhaps,” he remarked. “You must not forget that I am no longer a young man.”
She leaned towards him.
“You will die young,” she murmured. “You are not of the breed of men who grow old.”
“Do you mean to turn my head?” he asked her, with a humorous smile.
“It would be easier,” she answered, “than to touch your heart.”
Then Lucille looked across at them—and Mr. Sabin suddenly remembered that Reginald Brott knew them both only as strangers.
“Muriel,” she said, “you are behaving disgracefully.”
“I am doing my best,” Lady Carey answered, “to keep you in countenance.”
The eyes of the two women met for a moment, and though the smiles lingered still upon their faces Lady Carey at any rate was not able to wholly conceal her hatred. Lucille shrugged her shoulders.
“I am doing my best,” she said, “to convert Mr. Brott.”
“To what?” Lady Carey asked.
“To a sane point of view concerning the holiness of the aristocracy,” Lucille answered. “I am afraid though that I have made very little impression. In his heart I believe Mr. Brott would like to see us all working for our living, school-teachers and dressmakers, and that sort of thing, you know.”
Mr. Brott protested.
“I am not even,” he declared, “moderately advanced in my views as regards matters of your sex. To tell you the truth, I do not like women to work at all outside their homes.”
Lady Carey laughed.
“My dear,” she said to Lucille, “you and I may as well retire in despair. Can’t you see the sort of woman Mr. Brott admires? She isn’t like us a bit. She is probably a healthy, ruddy-cheeked young person who lives in the country, gets up to breakfast to pour out the coffee for some sort of a male relative, goes round the garden snipping off roses in big gloves and a huge basket, interviews the cook, orders the dinner, makes fancy waistcoats for her husband, and failing a sewing maid, does the mending for the family. You and I, Lucille, are not like that.”
“Well, you have mentioned nothing which I couldn’t do, if it seemed worth while,” Lucille objected. “It sounds very primitive and delightful. I am sure we are all too luxurious and too lazy. I think we ought to turn over a new leaf.”
“For you, dear Lucille,” Lady Carey said with suave and deadly satire, “what improvement is possible? You have all that you could desire. It is much less fortunate persons, such as myself, to whom Utopia must seem such a delightful place.”
A frock-coated and altogether immaculate young man approached their table and accosted Mr. Sabin.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, “but the manager would be much obliged if you would spare him a moment or two in his private room as soon as possible.”
Mr. Sabin nodded.
“In a few minutes,” he answered.
The little party broke up almost immediately. Coffee was ordered in the palm court, where the band was playing. Mr. Sabin and the Prince fell a little behind the others on the way out of the room.
“You heard my summons?” Mr. Sabin asked.
“Yes!”
“I am going to be cross-examined as regards Duson. I am no longer a member of the Order. What is to prevent my setting them upon the right track?”
“The fact,” the Prince said coolly, “that you are hoping one day to recover Lucille.”
“I doubt,” Mr. Sabin said, “whether you are strong enough to keep her from me.”
The Prince smiled. All his white teeth were showing.
“Come,” he said, “you know better than—much better than that. Lucille must wait her release. You know that.”
“I will buy it,” Mr. Sabin said, “with a lie to the manager here, or I will tell the truth and still take her from you.”
The Prince stood upon the topmost step of the balcony. Below was the palm court, with many little groups of people dotted about.
“My dear friend,” he said, “Duson died absolutely of his own free will. You know that quite well. We should have preferred that the matter had been otherwise arranged. But as it is we are safe, absolutely safe.”
“Duson’s letter!” Mr. Sabin remarked.
“You will not show it,” the Prince answered. “You cannot. You have kept it too long. And, after all, you cannot escape from the main fact. Duson committed suicide.”
“He was incited to murder. His letter proves it.”
The Prince shrugged his shoulders.
“By whom? Ah, how your story would excite ridicule. I seem to hear the laughter now. No, my dear Souspennier, you would bargain for me with Lucille. Look below. Are we likely to part with her just yet?”
In a corner, behind a gigantic palm, Lucille and Brott were talking together. Lady Carey had drawn Opperman a little distance away. Brott was talking eagerly, his cheeks flushed, his manner earnest. Mr. Sabin turned upon his heel and walked away.
Mr. Sabin, although he had registered at the hotel under his accustomed pseudonym, had taken no pains to conceal his identity, and was well known to the people in authority about the place. He was received with all the respect due to his rank.
“Your Grace will, I trust, accept my most sincere apologies for disturbing you,” Mr. Hertz, the manager, said, rising and bowing at his entrance. “We have here, however, an emissary connected with the police come to inquire into the sad incident of this afternoon. He expressed a wish to ask your Grace a question or two with a view to rendering your Grace’s attendance at the inquest unnecessary.”
Mr. Sabin nodded.
“I am perfectly willing,” he said, “to answer any questions you may choose to put to me.”
A plain, hard-featured little man, in a long black overcoat, and holding a bowler hat in his hand, bowed respectfully to Mr. Sabin.
“I am much obliged to you, sir,” he said. “My name is John Passmore. We do not of course appear in this matter unless the post-mortem should indicate anything unusual in the circumstances of Duson’s death, but it is always well to be prepared, and I ventured to ask Mr. Hertz here to procure for me your opinion as regards the death of your servant.”
“You have asked me,” Mr. Sabin said gravely, “a very difficult question.”
The eyes of the little detective flashed keenly.
“You do not believe then, sir, that he died a natural death?”
“I do not,” Mr. Sabin answered.
Mr. Hertz was startled. The detective controlled his features admirably.
“May I ask your reasons, sir?”
Mr. Sabin lightly shrugged his shoulders.
“I have never known the man to have a day’s illness in his life,” he said. “Further, since his arrival in England he has been acting in a strange and furtive manner, and I gathered that he had some cause for fear which he was indisposed to talk about.”
“This,” the detective said, “is very interesting.”
“Doubtless,” Mr. Sabin answered. “But before I say anything more I must clearly understand my position. I am giving you personally a few friendly hints, in the interests of justice perhaps, but still quite informally. I am not in possession of any definite facts concerning Duson, and what I say to you here I am not prepared to say at the inquest, before which I presume I may have to appear as a witness. There, I shall do nothing more save identify Duson and state the circumstances under which I found him.”
“I understand that perfectly, sir,” the man answered. “The less said at the inquest the better in the interests of justice.”
Mr. Sabin nodded.
“I am glad,” he said, “that you appreciate that. I do not mind going so far then as to tell you that I believe Duson died of poison.”
“Can you give me any idea,” the detective asked, “as to the source?”
“None,” Mr. Sabin answered. “That you must discover for yourselves. Duson was a man of silent and secretive habits, and it has occurred to me more than once that he might possibly be a member of one of those foreign societies who have their headquarters in Soho, and concerning which you probably know more than I do.”
The detective smiled. It was a very slight flicker of the lips, but it attracted Mr. Sabin’s keen attention.
“Your suggestions,” the detective said, “are making this case a very interesting one. I have always understood, however, that reprisals of this extreme nature are seldom resorted to in this country. Besides, the man’s position seems scarcely to indicate sufficient importance—perhaps—”
“Well?” Mr. Sabin interjected.
“I notice that Duson was found in your sitting-room. It occurs to me as a possibility that he may have met with a fate intended for some one else—for yourself, for instance, sir!”
“But I,” Mr. Sabin said smoothly, “am a member of no secret society, nor am I conscious of having enemies sufficiently venomous to desire my life.”
The detective sat for a moment with immovable face.
“We, all of us, know our friends, sir,” he said. “There are few of us properly acquainted with our enemies.”
Mr. Sabin lit a cigarette. His fingers were quite steady, but this man was making him think.
“You do not seriously believe,” he asked, “that Duson met with a death which was intended for me?”
“I am afraid,” the detective said thoughtfully, “that I know no more about it than you do.”
“I see,” Mr. Sabin said, “that I am no stranger to you.”
“You are very far from being that, sir,” the man answered. “A few years ago I was working for the Government—and you were not often out of my sight.”
Mr. Sabin smiled.
“It was perhaps judicious,” he remarked, “though I am afraid it proved of very little profit to you. And what about the present time?”
“I see no harm in telling you, sir, that a general watch is kept upon your movements. Duson was useful to us... but now Duson is dead.”
“It is a fact,” Mr. Sabin said impressively, “that Duson was a genius. My admiration for him continually increases.”
“Duson made harmless reports to us as we desired them,” the detective said. “I have an idea, however, that if this course had at any time been inimical to your interests that Duson would have deceived us.”
“I am convinced of it,” Mr. Sabin declared.
“And Duson is dead!”
Mr. Sabin nodded gravely.
The little hard-visaged man looked steadily for a moment upon the carpet.
“Duson died virtually whilst accepting pay from if not actually in the employ of our Secret Service Department. You will understand, therefore, that we, knowing of this complication in his life, naturally incline towards the theory of murder. Shall I be taking a liberty, sir, if I give you an unprofessional word of warning?”
Mr. Sabin raised his eyebrows.
“By no means,” he answered. “But surely you cannot—”
The man smiled.
“No, sir,” he said drily. “I do not for one moment suspect you. The man was our spy upon your movements, but I am perfectly aware that there has been nothing worth reporting, and I also know that you would never run such a risk for the removal of so insignificant a person. No, my warning comes to you from a different point of view. It is, if you will pardon my saying so, none the less personal, but wholly friendly. The case of Duson will be sifted to the dregs, but unless I am greatly mistaken, and I do not see room for the possibility of a mistake, I know the truth already.”
“You will share your knowledge?” Mr. Sabin asked quietly.
The detective shook his head.
“You shall know,” he said, “before the last moment. But I want to warn you that when you do know it—it will be a shock to you.”
Mr. Sabin stood perfectly still for several moments. This little man believed what he was saying. He was certainly deceived. Yet none the less Mr. Sabin was thoughtful.
“You do not feel inclined,” he said slowly, “to give me your entire confidence.”
“Not at present, sir,” the man answered. “You would certainly intervene, and my case would be spoilt.”
Mr. Sabin glanced at the clock.
“If you care to call on me to-morrow,” he said, “I could perhaps show you something which might change your opinion.”
The detective bowed.
“I am always open, sir,” he said, “to conviction. I will come about twelve o’clock.”
Mr. Sabin went back to the palm lounge. Lucille and Reginald Brott were sitting together at a small table, talking earnestly to one another. The Prince and Lady Carey had joined another party who were all talking together near the entrance. The latter, directly she saw them coming, detached herself from them and came to him.
“Your coffee is almost cold,” she said, “but the Prince has found some brandy of wonderful age, somewhere in the last century, I believe.”
Mr. Sabin glanced towards Lucille. She appeared engrossed in her conversation, and had not noticed his approach. Lady Carey shrugged.
“You have only a few minutes,” she said, “before that dreadful person comes and frowns us all out. I have kept you a chair.”
Mr. Sabin sat down. Lady Carey interposed herself between him and the small table at which Lucille was sitting.
“Have they discovered anything?” she asked.
“Nothing!” Mr. Sabin answered.
She played with her fan for a moment. Then she looked him steadily in the face.
“My friend?”
He glanced towards her.
“Lady Carey!”
“Why are you so obstinate?” she exclaimed in a low, passionate whisper. “I want to be your friend, and I could be very useful to you. Yet you keep me always at arm’s length. You are making a mistake. Indeed you are. I suppose you do not trust me. Yet reflect. Have I ever told you anything that was not true? Have I ever tried to deceive you? I don’t pretend to be a paragon of the virtues. I live my life to please myself. I admit it. Why not? It is simply applying the same sort of philosophy to my life as you have applied to yours. My enemies can find plenty to say about me—but never that I have been false to a friend. Why do you keep me always at arm’s length, as though I were one of those who wished you evil?”
“Lady Carey,” Mr. Sabin said, “I will not affect to misunderstand you, and I am flattered that you should consider my good will of any importance. But you are the friend of the Prince of Saxe Leinitzer. You are one of those even now who are working actively against me. I am not blaming you, but we are on opposite sides.”
Lady Carey looked for a moment across at the Prince, and her eyes were full of venom.
“If you knew,” she murmured, “how I loathe that man. Friends! That is all long since past. Nothing would give me so much pleasure as never to see his face again.”
“Nevertheless,” Mr. Sabin reminded her, “whatever your private feelings may be, he has claims upon you which you cannot resist.”
“There is one thing in the world,” she said in a low tone, “for which I would risk even the abnegation of those claims.”
“You would perjure your honour?”
“Yes—if it came to that.”
Mr. Sabin moved uneasily in his chair. The woman was in earnest. She offered him an invaluable alliance; she could show him the way to hold his own against even the inimical combination by which he was surrounded. If only he could compromise. But her eyes were seeking his eagerly, even fiercely.
“You doubt me still,” she whispered. “And I thought that you had genius. Listen, I will prove myself. The Prince has one of his foolish passions for Lucille. You know that. So far she has shown herself able to resist his fascinations. He is trying other means. Lucille is in danger! Duson!—but after all, I was never really in danger, except the time when I carried the despatches for the colonel and rode straight into a Boer ambush.”
Mr. Sabin saw nothing, but he did not move a muscle of his face. A moment later they heard the Prince’s voice from behind them.
“I am very sorry,” he said, “to interrupt these interesting reminiscences, but you see that every one is going. Lucille is already in the cloak-room.”
Lady Carey rose at once, but the glance she threw at the Prince was a singularly malicious one. They walked down the carpeted way together, and Lady Carey left them without a word. In the vestibule Mr. Sabin and Reginald Brott came face to face.