Grey’s awakening was as gradual as a clouded dawn. For a time dreams and realities intermingled. Then slowly a partial consciousness of his physical being obtruded: his fingers were clutching a silken coverlet; he turned on his side and the linen pillow-case was cool to his cheek; through half-open eyelids a sweep of pale blue became visible. Later he realised that he was in a curtained bed and that the blue was the colour of the draperies. He lay still for a long while—drowsy, inert, his sensibilities numb. Presently the ticking of a clock became audible, and then a rumble of street sounds. At the same moment a throbbing pain in his head asserted itself. With an effort he sat up, his hands pressed against his2 temples, his mind groping. Then in a flash the unfamiliarity of his surroundings aroused him suddenly, sharply, like a cold plunge, and his brain cleared a trifle. His memory went staggering back after the night before; but the mists descended again and the way grew dark, and he could remember no night without its morning.
He put his feet to the floor and stood up, but a dizziness overcame him, and he sank back upon the bed, weak and limp. His heart was beating tumultuously and his breath came in short, quick gasps. After a little these abnormalities passed and he raised himself on one elbow, resting his cheek on his hand. At the contact he started, amazed, bewildered. In some unaccountable manner he had grown a beard. His hand ran from his cheek to his chin. Close-cropped at the sides it was here an inch long and trimmed to a point, and his moustache was one of several months’ culture and training. He fancied he was dreaming and would awaken presently to find himself clean-shaven, as he had been for years.
And now, he remembered; after all, it was quite clear. He had been to the opera last night,3 had gone from there to the club, had returned home late, and, having a pressing business appointment at ten this morning, had dragged himself out of bed at eight, still fagged and aggravatingly sleepy. Now he had just had his coffee, and while Lutz was shaving him he was dozing and dreaming.
But how wonderfully real the transformation all seemed! He grew curious as to how he looked with beard and moustache, and, crawling out between the pale-blue velvet curtains, he sought a mirror. The revelation was dumfounding. He, Carey Grey, who from infancy had been as dark as a Spaniard, was as blond as a Norseman. He ran his fingers through his hair, tousled it, going closer to the glass to make sure that there was not some optical illusion. He puffed out his lip and pulled at his moustache until his lowered eyes could see it, and he thrust his chin forward and turned up the point of his beard with the back of his hand until it, too, came within the range of his vision. If this were a dream, he told himself, never before had dream been so real. If it were a reality, never before had reality been so mystifying.
4 His puzzled survey of himself was followed by a minute inspection of the room into which he had been so mysteriously transported. Its general aspect was foreign; its detail distinctly French. The walls were panelled and medallioned. The bed from which he had risen was one of a pair, each with its gilded papier maché frieze and its looped-back blue velvet curtains. At the head of each bed were six pillows and another of down at the foot. The full-length mirror into which he had gazed was duplicated between two windows. Upon the mantel was a bronze and gilt clock, flanked by partially burned candles in brass sticks. Two tables, a couch, a washstand, a cheffonier, three chairs and a wardrobe completed the furnishing. A couple of companion pictures, unmistakably French both in conception and execution, decorated two of the wall panels. The hands of the clock stood at twenty minutes of four. He crossed to a window with three sets of curtains and three sets of cord loops all of a tangle, and looked out.
For the spectacle that confronted him he was not prepared. The change in his appearance had5 indeed been incomprehensible; the strangeness of the room in which he awakened was inexplicable; but to discover at a glance that he was no longer on his native soil, that without his knowledge he had been carried across sea and land and dropped into a Paris hotel on the Boulevard des Italiens, was not only inconceivable but terrifying. He was very pale, and his brain was reeling. Twice he drew trembling fingers across his eyes, as if to wipe out the kaleidoscope of the street below; but when he looked again the view was even more convincing. It was a bit of the French Capital with which he was almost as familiar as with that part of Fifth avenue lying within range of his club windows or with that portion of Broad street near Wall into which he had been wont to glance from his office in the Mills Building.
He turned away from it as from a nightmare, and, sitting down, tried to think. The idea that he was dreaming was not tenable. He knew that he was very wide awake and thoroughly possessed of his faculties. His head still ached with a dull, swollen, congested sensation such as follows a too6 riotous night, but he could recall nothing of the cause. It occurred to him now that he had read in the newspapers of cases where men had lost their memory for months and had wandered into remote states or countries. This must be the explanation. And in his aberration he had given way to some freak of fancy, had grown a beard and then had had it and his hair bleached corn colour. Men under similar mental derangement, he recollected, forgot their names and homes. Perhaps he had been in the same plight. Now, however, his mind was clear on those points, at least, and he thanked God for his restoration.
Then he wondered how long he had been away. That night at the opera and the club; that morning he had risen early to keep an engagement, and had dozed off while his valet was shaving him—why, that was midwinter; and now, if he could judge by the trees on the boulevard, and the tables in front of the Café Riche across the road, and the straw hats, it must be early summer—late May or June; possibly, indeed, July. And all this time his friends at home—his mother, his fiancée, his partner—were probably thinking him dead. What7 a relief it would be to them to get the cablegrams he would send, telling that he was alive and well and was returning by the first steamer!
He smiled as he got up and went to the cheffonier and the wardrobe in search of clothes. He was thinking of the sensation the papers in New York must have made over his disappearance; the theories they must have advanced and the pictures they must have published. And then the tragic side of the affair took hold of him, and he put himself in his mother’s place, in Hope’s place, and fancied he could appreciate, in a way at least, their anxiety as the days passed without tidings, and their grief and despair as weeks quadrupled into months.
Having discovered an assortment of garments, including a bathrobe of pongee silk, he looked about for a tub. Across the passage he found a bathroom, and a dip into cold water relieved his headache and balanced his nerves. When at length he was in attire which, while quite as unfamiliar as his yellow hair and beard, was nevertheless tasteful and well fitting, he emerged from his room, locked the door and started forth on a tour8 of investigation. His curiosity had grown with his dressing, enhanced, perhaps, by his failure to find in any drawer, closet, or pocket a scrap of writing or printing from which he could gain a clue concerning his recent past. His sole discovery indeed had been a wallet containing two fifty-franc notes and a trunk key.
A tall, round-faced portier in green livery smiled and bowed, rather obsequiously he thought, as he passed out through the wide portal into the boulevard. Then the commingled scent of asphalt and macadam and burning charcoal—that characteristically Parisian odour—smote his olfactories, and before his eyes was the afternoon panorama of the gayest of Paris thoroughfares. It was the newspaper hour, and a kiosk in front of the hotel was being besieged by a horde, each hungry for his favourite journal. Every man that passed had a paper in his hand or in his pocket. Some were reading as they walked. On the roadway carriages, fiacres, omnibuses were crowding, and Grey noted, with a sense of old friends returned, the varnished hats of the cochers. The chairs under the awnings of the cafés were filling,9 and the white-aproned waiters were coming and going with their inevitable bustle of trays and glasses.
At the corner of the rue St. Anne he crossed to the north side of the boulevard and turned into the rue Taitbout, in which, he remembered, there was a telegraph office, for he meant to lose no time in despatching his cables. As he picked his way through the narrow street the messages took form, and on reaching the office it was but the labour of a moment to put them on paper, poke them in through the little window and pay the stipulated toll. To his mother he wired:
Safe and well. Sailing first steamer. H?tel Grammont.
And the others—one addressed to Hope Van Tuyl, East Sixty-fourth street, New York, and one to “Malgrey,” the code name of the stock brokerage firm in which he was a junior partner—were similar.
Rejoining the throng of pedestrians on the boulevard, he sauntered leisurely towards the Avenue de l’Opéra, his mind still busy with conjectures.
The billboards in front of the Théatre du Vaudeville10 caught his eye, but the attractions they announced made no impression. At the groups of idlers seated at little round tables before the Café Américain he scarcely glanced and his own unfamiliar reflection in the plate glass of the shop windows he failed utterly to recognise. He crossed the Place de l’Opéra without so much as turning his head, and halting at the far corner stepped in under the ample awning of the Café de la Paix and found a seat. Of the waiter who approached him he ordered a mazagran and some Egyptian cigarettes, and when they were brought he sat for some time, heedless of his surroundings, his brain racked with futile speculations.
“Pardon, monsieur!”
Someone in passing had inadvertently touched his foot and was apologising. Startled out of his reverie he looked up, and his face lighted. Instantly he was on his feet.
“Frothingham, by all that’s good!” he exclaimed.
The other, tall, straight and swarthy, turned upon him a look in which mystification and suspicion fought for supremacy.
11 “Really,” he said, coldly, “I—I don’t remember ever having——”
“Of course, of course,” Grey interrupted, not without some embarrassment, “I can quite understand that you shouldn’t recognise me. You see, I—well, I’m Carey Grey.”
Mr. Frothingham’s demeanour showed no change.
“Carey Grey,” he repeated, icily; “I used to know a Carey Grey in New York, a member of the Knickerbocker and the union; but he was nearly as dark as I am, and besides—why, he’s dead.”
“If you don’t mind sitting down a bit,” Grey went on, as he staggered under the news of his own demise, “I’ll try to explain. I’m Carey Grey, just the same—the Carey Grey, of the Knickerbocker and the union, and I’m not dead.”
Frothingham recognised his voice now, and mystification routed suspicion from the field. He took a chair and Grey sat down, too, with the marble-topped table between them.
“First and foremost,” Grey began, “tell me what day of the month it is.”
12 “The fourteenth.”
“Of what?”
“Of June, of course.”
“And of the week?”
“Thursday.”
“Thanks. I hadn’t the slightest idea.”
Frothingham fancied the man had gone mad.
“The whole thing is most extraordinary,” Grey went on, and then he proceeded to relate his afternoon’s experience, while his listener preserved an interested but incredulous silence.
“Can’t remember a blessed thing,” the narrator concluded, “since that morning last winter—I suppose it was last winter. What year is this?”
He was told.
“Yes, it was last winter, then—January, if I’m not mistaken.”
Frothingham looked thoughtful and counted back. He wondered whether it was insanity or drugs, or—cunning.
“You must have heard something of it,” Grey went on, eagerly. “Did the newspapers say I was dead?”
“I think that was the ultimate conclusion.”
13 “I suppose they searched for me?”
“Oh, yes, they searched. They followed up every clue. There were columns in the papers for days—yes, for weeks.”
Grey sighed audibly.
“I can’t understand it,” he said, with something of distress in his voice; “I never thought my head was weak. To be sure, I’d been under rather a strain, with the market in the unsettled condition it was, but my memory was always clear enough. Why, I could give you the closing price and highest and lowest of about every active stock on the list, day after day, without an error of an eighth. By the way, do you know how things have been going in the Street? What’s New York Central now—and St. Paul?”
“Really, I have lost track, Grey,” replied Frothingham indifferently.
“I must get a Paris Herald,” the man who had been out of the world for five months continued; “I’m the modern Rip Van Winkle. Thousands of things have happened—must have happened, and I’m in blank ignorance. I just cabled to New York—to Mallory, my partner, and——”
14 “You what!” exclaimed Frothingham, in amazement.
“Cabled to Mallory. You know him—Dick Mallory, my partner. He’ll be surprised to hear I’m alive, I suppose.”
“Good God, man!”
“What’s the matter?”
The two sat staring at each other across the table, each a picture of sudden startled bewilderment.
“Then you really don’t know?” Frothingham asked. “Oh, that’s impossible! You can’t make me believe—see here, Carey, you’re very clever and all that, but you don’t think for one minute, do you, that you are taking me in? I did fancy for a little while that you’d gone off your head; but I was wrong. You’re sharp and shrewd, and you feared I had recognised you and that that was why I stumbled over your foot; so you made up your mind that you’d block my game by recognising me and telling me this pipe dream. Oh, come, come, be fair! You know; and you know that I know.”
Grey caught his breath sharply as this torrent15 of insult surged upon him. The blood rushed to his face only to desert it. His fists doubled instinctively, and he rose to his feet, white with indignant anger.
“Take that back!” he commanded, in a hoarse whisper. “Take it back, I say, or I’ll——”
There was no mistaking his earnestness, his determination; no, nor at this juncture, his honesty. Frothingham was convinced even against his judgment.
“Oh, I say,” he retorted, mildly, “don’t make a scene, old chap. If I said anything, I—I—well, of course you don’t understand. I see it now. I’m sure I was wrong, and I ask your pardon. There now, sit down.”
“I don’t know that I care to,” Grey replied, the words of the other still rankling. “I’m not used to being called a blackguard. I’ve never in my life done anything to be seriously ashamed of, and nobody has ever dared, until this day, to utter such an insinuation.”
Frothingham was silent for a moment, the mere suggestion of a smile on his lips. He calmly unbuttoned one of his gloves and then buttoned it again.
16 “God forbid,” he said, without looking up, “that I should be the first to imply anything; but—I wish you would sit down, Grey!—you say you’ve lost count for five months, and—well, there are some things that you ought to know.”
Grey resumed his seat. Now the man was talking reasonably. Of course there were things that he ought to know—hundreds of things probably in which he was personally interested. The thought instantly became appalling. What, indeed, might not have happened in five months? Where had he been during that time? And what had he been doing?
“Yes,” he admitted, “you are quite right, I suppose. One of the things, for instance, is——”
“One of the things, for instance, is,” repeated the other, interrupting him, “that you left New York suddenly—disappeared totally and—you ought to know this for your own salvation—under a cloud.”
Grey started, and the colour that had returned to his face fled again. He leaned across the table, resting his arms on its marble top.
“Under a cloud!” he exclaimed, breathlessly.17 “My God, Frothingham! What do you mean?”
“I’d rather not go into details,” was the answer, given very quietly. “It’s not a pleasant position that I have chosen for myself, and I prefer that you don’t question me. What you have told me—and I’m satisfied now it is the truth—has put another light on the whole business. And you really cabled to New York?”
“Not half an hour ago. I sent three.”
“It’s too late, I suppose, to stop them.”
“I fancy so.”
“I’d see, if I were you. It is important.”
“But why? For God’s sake, man, tell me why.”
“No,” said Frothingham, rising; “you’d better read about it for yourself. It will be more satisfactory. You can find a file of the New York Herald at the office of the Paris paper. It’s only a block or so away, you know. Look up last January. But I’d try to stop those cables first. I must be off now; I’ve got an appointment.” And he joined the now much augmented throng on the promenade.
18 Grey dropped a five-franc piece on the table, and hurried into a fiacre that stood in waiting.
“Rue Taitbout, 46,” he directed.
But when he reached there it was to learn that his messages had been dispatched and that no power on earth could recall them.
Consumed with eager concern, Grey had himself driven to the office of the Herald. He was perturbed, distraught, and nervously apprehensive.
“Under a cloud,” he repeated, thoughtfully; “under a cloud. That may mean anything—murder, arson, theft, elopement. I’m a fugitive from justice, I suppose. That much Frothingham made very clear when he urged my stopping those cables.” And then his mood changed, and he argued that he was unnecessarily agitated. It could not be so bad. In his senses or out of them he would never, he felt sure, have committed a crime—some indiscretion, possibly, but not a crime.
When at length the file of the newspaper was before him and he was turning the pages, he noted that his fingers were unsteady and that perspiration was oozing from every pore. Carefully he scanned20 each headline, running down column after column with keen scrutiny. Ten minutes passed and he had reached nearly the middle of the month without finding so much as a line of what he sought. Much of the matter, however, was familiar, from which he argued that the date of revelation must be farther on. Each leaf of the book of days he turned now with dread expectation. He had been standing, the file on a table at arm’s length, but suddenly he sat down, stunned by the message of the types that faced him:
“Carey Grey an Embezzler—Well-known Wall Street Broker Hypothecates Firm’s Securities and Disappears—Upwards of a Hundred Thousand Dollars Gone.”
His heart was pounding very hard and his head was bursting.
“It’s a lie,” he muttered, inaudibly, “an outrageous, despicable lie. It’s impossible. It’s preposterous. Embezzle from my own firm? It’s ridiculous.”
He leaned forward and pulled the file of papers down until one end rested in his lap, and then he read hastily, but with the scrupulous heed of absolute21 concentration, every word of the two columns that told with minute detail the story of his defalcation and flight.
“Carey Grey, of the firm of Mallory & Grey, stockbrokers, with offices in the Mills Building,” began the account, “has been missing for a week and securities to the value of $110,000, it was discovered yesterday, have disappeared from the firm’s safe deposit vault. Most of the securities, including first mortgage bonds of the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad Company, to the amount of $40,000, and Brooklyn Rapid Transit 5s, worth $40,000 more, Grey hypothecated, personally, with the Shoe and Leather Bank on the day prior to his flight.
“The news of the defalcation caused a sensation in the Street and in society as well. Carey Grey was one of the most popular members of the Stock Exchange and his character had always been regarded as beyond reproach. A member of an old New York family—his mother was a Livingstone—his social position was of the best. He occupied bachelor apartments in the Dunscombe, on Sixty-sixth street, near Madison avenue, and22 his name appears on the membership lists of the union, Knickerbocker, and other clubs.
“Mr. Mallory, his partner, said yesterday: ‘Mr. Grey was at his desk last Wednesday when I reached the office, and he was there when I went away at half-past three. There was nothing unusual in his manner. He discussed with me several matters of business and spoke of a certain directors’ meeting that he should attend the next day. I have not seen or heard from him since. When he did not appear on Thursday I feared he was ill and telephoned to his rooms, but the answer came that he was not in. The whole business is to me inexplicable. I have known Carey Grey from childhood, and I would have been willing to swear that there was not a dishonest bone in his body. But the evidence against him is simply indisputable. The loss struck us at an especially bad time, but we shall pull through all right.’
“Inspector McClusky admitted that he was all at sea concerning Grey’s whereabouts. The case was not reported to him for a week—not until the securities were missed—and so it was quite possible the absconder had left the country; nevertheless23 he was doing all in his power to locate him.
“At Grey’s apartments yesterday Franz Lutz, his valet, was preparing to seek employment elsewhere.
“‘Mr. Grey,’ he said, ‘slept here last Wednesday night. He rose about eight o’clock Thursday morning, saying he had an urgent business appointment at the Waldorf-Astoria at ten sharp. He went away in a cab, and I have not seen him since.’
“Grey’s mother, who lives with her sister, Mrs. Hermann Valkenburgh, in Washington Square, North, has been prostrated by the revelations of the past twenty-four hours, and is under the care of her physician, Dr. Elbridge Bond.
“A rumour that Grey was engaged to be married to Miss Hope Van Tuyl, daughter of Nicholas Van Tuyl, president of the Consolidated Mortgage Company, was current yesterday. Miss Van Tuyl when seen last night denied the report.”
There was more of it, much more, all of which Grey read with deep and astonished interest; but it was merely repetition and speculation. When24 he finished the two columns he turned to the paper of the day following, and found a column there. As Frothingham had told him, the newspapers had kept up the sensation for weeks, and the Herald was as energetic as any. At length came a report that a man answering his description had jumped overboard from a steamer in the Gulf of Mexico and had been drowned before assistance could reach him. There was nothing in his effects to give a hint as to his identity, but the world, with one accord, apparently, had accepted the suggestion that it was the missing Grey, and then the subject was dropped.
He ran through the files for another month, but other matters of more immediate interest had crowded the Grey affair out of the public thought.
He returned the papers to the clerk who had provided them, and went out onto the Avenue de l’Opéra, horrified and perplexed. He was a felon, hiding from the law. And yet never, so far as he could remember, had he harboured a dishonest impulse. He was disguised to escape detection, and the disguise when he had discovered it had been, and still was, more mystifying to himself25 than it could possibly be to others. Then he began to wonder what his cables would bring forth. He would be arrested, of course, and tried, and in all probability found guilty. The evidence against him as set forth in the newspaper account was not merely strong—it was irrefutable. Against the testimony of Mallory and of the bank officials what could he offer in refutation? To fancy any court or jury would put faith in his asseveration that he was unconscious when the act was committed was to count on the impossible. Nevertheless it was clearly his duty now to return at once to America and do all in his power to make reparation. And then it occurred to him that in spite of his alleged embezzlement he was, apparently, practically without funds. If he had taken the money, as charged, it must, of course, be somewhere, but of its location he had not the faintest idea. That he had disposed of a hundred or even eighty thousand dollars in five months was in the highest degree improbable.
At the corner of the Rue de la Paix is the office of Thomas Cook & Sons, and Grey entered and inquired as to the sailing of transatlantic liners.26 The Celtic, he learned, was to sail the next day from Liverpool, but he could make better time probably, the clerk told him, by taking the Deutschland from Boulogne, or the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse from Cherbourg, on Saturday. The tide of travel was all the other way at this season and he would have no difficulty in securing a stateroom, even at the last minute.
Resuming his stroll he had very nearly reached his hotel when a young man, pale and evidently much agitated, halted before him, and raising his hat, deferentially, said:
“A thousand pardons, Herr Arndt, but I beg you to make haste. Herr Schlippenbach—he is dying.”
He spoke in German, and Grey noted that in feature and manner he was Teutonic. For an instant the American imagined the youth had addressed him by mistake, but he had sufficient presence of mind to give no sign. A second later he was reassured.
“I went to your room, Herr Arndt, as usual at four-thirty, but you were gone out, and the portier told me you left no message.”
27 Grey hesitated over a reply. He realized that he was on the verge of a discovery. It was very evident now that he was not alone in Paris—that he had acquaintances, at least; probably companions; and that one of them was dying. In order to learn more he must give no indication of the change that had been wrought in him in the last few hours.
“Dying!” he exclaimed, in a tone of surprise; “I had no idea it was so serious.”
His German was excellent. In his early youth he had spent two years at G?ttingen, and had lived for one winter with a German family in Vienna.
“Yes,” went on the young man, excitedly, “the Herr Doctor says it is a matter now of hours only, perhaps minutes. They have sent for a priest. Herr Schlippenbach—poor old Herr Schlippenbach—he is quite unconscious.”
“He can recognise no one?”
“No, Herr Arndt, he just lies staring at the ceiling, and breathing very hard and loud. Oh, it is so pitiful! And the Fr?ulein, she is sobbing, sobbing, sobbing all the time.”
28 Herr Arndt. So that is the name he is known by here in Paris, at the H?tel Grammont, by those he has met—those he has travelled with, perhaps! And there is a Fr?ulein in the party! Herr Schlippenbach’s daughter, probably. A hundred questions crowded for utterance, but he held them back.
“It was the Fr?ulein who sent for the priest, I suppose?” he ventured.
“Yes, Herr Arndt; she and Herr Captain Lindenwald. When Herr Schlippenbach dies Fr?ulein von Altdorf will have a great fortune; yes?”
“Surely,” Grey hazarded. Then the girl was not the old German’s daughter, after all, though she was to inherit his property. The affair was growing a trifle complicated.
“And Herr Captain Lindenwald—will he, do you think, Herr Arndt, marry the Fr?ulein?”
Grey was silent. If this fellow was a servant he was evidently forgetting his place, and it was well to remind him of it.
“How odd it is I never can remember your name!” he said, at length, ignoring the question and scowling a little.
29 “Johann, Herr Arndt.”
“Yes, yes, to be sure. How stupid!”
And then they turned in at the broad marble entrance of the hotel.
The room into which Johann conducted Grey was on the second floor, its windows overlooking the court. With the glare of the boulevards still in their eyes, the gloom of the darkened chamber was for a moment almost impenetrable. Grey was conscious of the presence of several persons, but they appeared more like shadows than realities, their outlines alone distinguishable. The room was very quiet, save for the sound of the laboured breathing which Johann had mentioned, and which came from a bed in an alcove to the left of the entrance. Grey stood hesitant just inside the doorway, while his vision grew accustomed to the semi-darkness; and Johann, hat in hand, stood behind him.
Presently from out of the dusk a figure approached, tiptoeing across the floor.
“He is dying!”
31 The words were whispered in German. The speaker, Grey observed, was of medium height, but broad of shoulder and of erect military bearing. The ends of his moustache were trained upward after the fashion affected by the German Emperor.
Grey nodded his head in token that he understood.
“Dr. Zagaie is here. He has just administered nitro-glycerine and tincture of aconite. We are hoping that he may regain consciousness.”
Objects were now becoming more clearly defined. Grey could see the bed now, though its occupant was hidden by the bulky form of the physician, who had his fingers on the dying man’s pulse, and by the black-clad, slender figure of a woman who was pressing a handkerchief to her eyes. At the foot of the bed stood a white-capped and white-cuffed nurse.
“Let us hope,” Grey responded.
The situation was most trying. He was with those who, it was apparent, knew him extremely well, and yet were to him utter strangers. He was almost afraid to speak lest he betray himself, and32 if the necessity for learning something concerning his associates and associations had not been so urgently important he would have retreated without waiting further developments. He was nervously a-tremble, his fingers were twitching involuntarily and alternately waves of hot and cold bathed him from head to heel. The atmosphere of the room stifled him; the stertorous breathing of the invalid oppressed him, the gloom and the whispers and the soft tread of the persons present drove him frantic. He was seized with an almost uncontrollable impulse to shout, to rush about, to pull back the curtains and let in some daylight. He gripped his hat until the brim cracked in his hand, the sound cutting the silence discordantly.
“Sit down, Herr Arndt. We are expecting the Reverend Father. I sent Lutz for him half an hour ago.”
Lutz! Had the dusk been less deep the surprise that came over Grey’s features must have been observed. Lutz! Could it be possible that his valet was here in Paris with him, he asked himself. And instantly he negatived the answer. Such a supposition was beyond reason. He had misunderstood,33 or it was another Lutz. The name was not uncommon.
He placed his hat on a table and took a chair near a window, from which he could look into the court below. The man who had addressed him joined the group at the bedside. Johann quietly opened the door and went out, closing it as quietly behind him. The silence became painful. The inhalations and exhalations of the patient grew less strident. The sobs of the Fraülein, which had at intervals punctured the stillness, were suppressed.
Then, of a sudden, there was a commotion about the bed. The dying man, who for hours had been gazing fixedly at the ceiling, turned his eyes upon his watchers and moved his head feebly. The doctor beckoned the nurse.
“Raise his head and shoulders a trifle. Quick, another pillow!”
Promptly and deftly the nurse obeyed.
“The stimulants are acting,” murmured the Herr Captain to the Fraülein: “he has responded, but it will be but temporary.”
She wiped her eyes with her wet handkerchief,34 but said nothing. The invalid’s gaze passed each of the four in turn. Then his lips moved, and the doctor, bending down, placed his ear close to his mouth.
“Monsieur Arndt,” the physician said, in a low tone, as he straightened himself, “it is Monsieur Arndt that he wants.”
The other three turned towards Grey. Captain Lindenwald raised his hand with a beckoning gesture.
“He wants you,” he whispered; and as the American approached the bed they made way for him. It was a face very thin and drawn that met Grey’s view. Very sallow, too, and parchment-like; the nose long and peaked, and the under lip, where it showed above the snow-white beard, darkly purple. A great shock of hair vied with the pillows in whiteness. In the tired eyes was a look of recognition.
“Lean over,” said Dr. Zagaie; “he wishes to speak to you. His voice is very weak.”
A sensation of repulsion had swept over Grey at sight of the old man, and now, to bring his face close to that of the invalid upon whom death had35 already set its mark was sickeningly repugnant. But with an effort of will he bent his head. A withered, wrinkled hand gripped his wrist and for the hundredth part of a second he recoiled. The voice that breathed into his ear was little more than a sigh, and he strained to gather the words.
“Take it,” he heard; “it is yours. The key——”
And then the utterances sank so low as to be unintelligible. That the old man had spoken in English was a circumstance over which Grey marvelled quite as much as he did over the ambiguous command. He stood erect again and would have stepped back, but the grip of the sufferer was still upon his arm. Then, from the glazing eyes came an appeal that was unmistakable, and again Grey bent his ear.
“The throne,” breathed the voice feebly; “it is yours. Take it!” This much the listener heard quite clearly, mentally commenting that the speaker was delirious. But from the sentences that followed he could only glean a word here and there. “Key” was mentioned again, and “box,”36 and he thought he heard “proofs,” and something that sounded like “Gare du Nord.”
At length the fingers on his wrist relaxed and the eyes of Herr Schlippenbach closed. Instantly and with professional celerity Dr. Zagaie plunged the needle of a hypodermic syringe into the fainting man’s arm. Simultaneously there was a gentle tap on the door, and without waiting to be bidden a florid-faced priest entered, carrying a small black leather case.
Grey resumed his place by the window, his brain teeming with problems so enigmatical as to defy even theoretical solution. The dying man was delirious, of course, he argued; therefore his words were unworthy of consideration. And yet, he answered himself, he had made a supreme effort to convey a message and he had chosen to phrase it in not his own tongue but his listener’s, to make sure that it would be understood. He felt like a man in a maze. At every turn there was some new surprise; and he was going on and on, getting farther and farther into the tangle, without as yet seeing any chance of extricating himself.
Meanwhile, unnoticed by him, preparations for37 the Sacrament of Extreme Unction were being hurriedly made. The priest had donned his alb and stole and poured from a cruet the holy oil. The next minute the voice of the cleric, clear and distinct, cleaving the hush of the room, startled Grey from his meditation. The droning of the Latin ritual, solemn and awesome, struck a new chord in his emotional being. He got to his feet and stood with clasped hands and bowed head. Now the priest was anointing the dying man’s eyes. With oily thumb he made the sign of the cross and recited the words: “Through this holy unction, and His most blessed mercy, may the Lord pardon thee whatever sins thou hast committed by thy sight, Amen.” And then his ears, his nose, his mouth, his hands, his feet were each in turn anointed with the same form of supplication.
The ceremony concluded, Dr. Zagaie again stepped forward, taking the place vacated by the priest. As he did so Herr Schlippenbach, who had been breathing softly, peacefully, with closed lids, opened his eyes wide with a look of sudden horror. There was a quick, convulsive movement38 that stirred the coverlet, a long deep-drawn sigh, and the aged man lay motionless.
Fraülein von Altdorf turned away, grief-stricken and horrified, from the spectacle of death, and Grey for the first time saw her face. It was more than pretty, he thought, with its big, sad blue eyes and its full, red-lipped mouth all a-quiver with emotion. And her hair, which shone even in the dusk of that darkened apartment with a lustre of its own imparting, was very abundant and very beautiful. He realised that she was coming towards him and he took a step forward to meet her. She raised her arms and stretched out her hands gropingly until they rested on his shoulders, and instinctively he knew that she had grown suddenly faint. He clasped her swaying figure about the waist and supported her to a couch.
“Dr. Zagaie,” he called, impatiently, “Mlle. von Altdorf requires a restorative.”
Captain Lindenwald, who had been speaking to the nurse, turned solicitously at the words.
“My dear,” he cried, kneeling beside the prostrate girl, “my dear, let me get you some wine; the strain has been too much for you.”
39 But the Fr?ulein motioned him away.
“I shall be quite myself presently,” she said.
Nevertheless Dr. Zagaie insisted on her taking a sedative.
After a little Grey withdrew, and not without some difficulty found his apartment, which was on the same floor, but in another part of the hotel. In his absence his room had been put in order, and there now lay upon the table a blue envelope, addressed in a distinctly English hand to “M. Max Arndt.” Though it was undoubtedly meant for him it was with rather a sense of impropriety that he took it up and tore off the end. Revelation after revelation had followed one another so rapidly that afternoon that he was growing callous to discovery, and when he read—
My Dear Max:
I shall be unable to dine with you tonight as I promised, but will meet you later in the Café Américain if you can arrange it—say between eleven and midnight. Jack.
—it was with scarcely a tremour of surprise. Indeed there was something in the tone of the scrawl—something, perhaps, in the penmanship, that gave him a sense of reassurance. The dying Herr Schlippenbach had affected him oddly. Nearness40 to him had produced a sort of emotional nausea, and for some reason which he could not explain he had experienced a violent antipathy to Captain Lindenwald. He realized that, surrounding the little company of which he had so strangely found himself one, there was a mystery which baffled his understanding. Then the last words of the old German recurred to him, and again he pondered as to whether they bore any significance or were merely the murmurings of dementia. As the clock on the mantel-shelf chimed seven, a knock sounded on the door, and in answer to his “Entrez!” Johann entered.
“Will Herr Arndt dress for dinner?” he asked. “Herr Captain Lindenwald is not dressing, and thought perhaps Herr Arndt would dine with him in the salle à manger. Fr?ulein von Altdorf is indisposed, and is having some tea and toast in her room.
“No, Johann,” Grey replied, after a moment’s consideration, “I won’t dress. Give my compliments to the Herr Captain, and say that I’m feeling a bit seedy and will dine here alone, if he will be so good as to excuse me.”
41 Johann bowed and was about to go, but stopped with his hand on the doorknob.
“Will Herr Arndt order his dinner now?” he queried; and Grey named the dishes.
His appetite, he all at once discovered, was excellent, and when the table had been spread and the courses followed one another in leisurely succession and with admirable service, he found himself eating with the relish that betokens good digestion. It seemed, too, when he had finished and lighted a cigarette that he could think more calmly and coherently. The windows of his room opened upon a narrow balcony, and placing a chair he stepped out and sat there meditative above the changeful tide of the boulevard which flowed unceasingly below.
He was no longer exercised over the possible effect of his cables, for he reflected that Carey Grey, so far as all Paris save one man knew, was still dead. A message or a messenger to the H?tel Grammont would find no such person. His changed appearance, his changed name, and his changed associates were a disguise that must prove quite impenetrable. He would therefore42 have ample time, unhampered by either enemies or friends, to delve into the perplexing riddle that confronted him. It would be policy, he argued, to delay his return to America until he could trace his movements abroad. The difficulties that he must encounter he did not pretend to belittle. When he strove to lay out a plan of action he was balked at the very outset. To ask questions was to betray himself, and yet it must be a very long and tedious, not to say perilous, procedure to attempt to drift blindly with the current without either chart or compass to warn him of rocks and shoals.
The twilight deepened into night, and as the stars sparkled into the darkening canopy above the electric lights flashed into a brighter brilliancy along the boulevard below. Grey’s cigarette had been tossed away, and he sat listlessly watching the vari-coloured lamps of the cabs as they passed to and fro—now a green, now a red, now a yellow. He had moved his chair to the space of balcony between the windows to escape an annoying draft, and from where he sat he could neither see into his room nor be seen from it. The scratching of a match inside, however, was plainly audible.43 Someone evidently was lighting his candles. And then the sound of voices came to him, and he pricked his ears.
“It is indeed a catastrophe,” he heard. The speaker was Johann. The accent was unmistakable.
“You have no idea. It is worse, a thousand times worse than you know——”
Grey, with difficulty, choked back an exclamation.
“Lutz!” he muttered to himself, in astonishment. “By all that’s good! Lutz! Here in Paris, and with me.”
“Yes,” the valet continued, “Herr Schlippenbach was necessary to Herr Arndt. Without Herr Schlippenbach, Herr Arndt is another man. He is mad, Johann, and filled with wild notions. He does not know his own people. He fancies he is someone else. Herr Schlippenbach was his balance wheel.”
“So!” murmured Johann. “So!”
“I have a great fear we shall never get him to Kürschdorf at all.”
“But the Herr Captain?”
44 “Oh, yes, the Herr Captain will do his best, I am sure,” Lutz assented; “but it will be a mad Prince, and not a sane one, he will have on his hands.”
The comment that Johann made was not distinguishable. They were going towards the door, which Grey next heard open and then close sharply, forced by the draft from the window.
It lacked but a few minutes of midnight when Grey entered the smoke-clouded air of the Café Américain. The great room was crowded and the babel of voices and the clatter of glass and china were wellnigh deafening. He stood for a moment near the door, looking about through half-closed lids like one near-sighted. A dark, languorous-eyed woman, gorgeous in scarlet silk and lace, smiled and beckoned him, but he paid no heed. He forced his way between the closely aligned tables to the centre of the room, glancing from right to left as he proceeded. His imagination had pictured his correspondent as a youngish, fair man, but he realised that his imagination was not to be relied on. He must depend on being seen and recognised, since recognition on his part was impossible. A waiter brushed against him, spattering him with beer46 from jostled glasses. A pretty brunette in a white gown and a great rose-trimmed hat of coarse straw seized his hand and pressed it suggestively as she passed him on her way to the door. And then, over near the mirrored wall to the right, he saw a man standing, his arm raised to attract attention, a smile on his honest, sun-browned face; and he knew it was “Jack.” He was tall and spare, all muscle and sinew, and his hair was brightly red, as also was his rather close-cropped moustache.
“Gad, man,” he exclaimed, as Grey came to him, “I fancied you weren’t to be here.”
He spoke with the pleasant brogue of the North of Ireland, and his voice and manner were as confidence-inspiring as had been his note.
Grey smiled, with something of embarrassment in his eyes. The very frankness of the other man was disconcerting. It had been comparatively easy to hide his simulation from the others, but now it was different. This big, hearty fellow was not only all honesty himself, but he inspired honesty—he demanded it.
“To tell the truth,” the American replied, feeling47 that a confession was about to be wrung from him, “I’ve had a rather wretched day.”
Jack looked at him keenly, his lips pressed tight in cogitation, as Grey ordered a grenadine.
“What’s the trouble, old chap?” he asked presently, throwing back his head and sending an inverted cone of cigarette smoke ceilingward. “Tell me about it; you don’t look well; you are pale and—by Jove! What’s the matter with your voice? You don’t speak like yourself. If I didn’t see you sitting there I’d fancy it was another man who spoke.”
“Would you, really?” Grey asked. The information, seeing that it was necessary for him to keep up his masquerade for awhile, was disconcerting.
“Really, you have quite lost something—or perhaps I should say you have gained something. Your tone now has some colour, some modulation. Yesterday you spoke like—you’ll pardon me, won’t you?—you spoke like an automaton.”
“Would you mind giving me an imitation?” Grey laughed. “Oh, yes, I am serious. I want to hear you. After awhile I’ll tell you why.”
48 “Since it is your pleasure, my dear Max,” Jack replied in an even drone at low pitch, “I am only too delighted to do as I am bidden. There you are! That’s not exaggerated the least bit, either.”
“Thank you,” Grey said; and then he sat for a full minute in silence. He was impelled to make a clean breast of the whole astounding affair to this man and ask his aid. Though he was unacquainted even with his name he felt he could trust him. In this sudden and inexplicable faith his aversion for Herr Schlippenbach and Captain Lindenwald found its antithesis. He nevertheless appreciated the importance of extreme caution, and his judgment warred for the moment with his impulse. Finally a truce was signed.
“Was yesterday’s tone an affectation or is today’s?” asked the Irishman jocularly.
Grey took a sip at the pink contents of his glass.
“Neither,” he answered, seriously; “yesterday I was asleep; today I am awake.”
“Tut, tut, man! Don’t talk in riddles,” the other protested. “You were no more asleep last night at Maxim’s than you are this minute. By the way, did you see your friend Sarema as you49 came in? She was sitting quite near the door a little while ago.”
“Sarema?”
“To be sure. Come, come, my lad, has your mood changed as well as your tone and voice? You certainly remember the odalisque from the Folies Bergères.”
Grey’s eyes showed that his astonishment was unfeigned.
“Oh, but this is marvellous,” cried Jack, leaning forward, his arms on the table. “You weren’t drunk, man. You—you certainly weren’t asleep.”
“What is your name?” Grey asked, suddenly.
“Fancy!” exclaimed the Irishman. “Have you forgotten that, too? John James O’Hara, lieutenant in His Majesty’s Second Dragoon Guards, of Kirwan Lodge, Drumsna, County Leitrim, at your service, sir. And you’ll be telling me next, I suppose, that you don’t remember meeting me in the smoke-room of the Lucania the first day out of New York, and that over two months ago.
“As God is my judge,” Grey answered, solemnly,50 “I have no recollection of ever seeing you before tonight.”
O’Hara’s muscles stiffened and then relaxed. There was no incredulity in his face, only wonder.
“And have you forgotten your own name, too?” he queried, after a moment.
“I never knew the name I am called by until today.”
“Gad, man, you’re crazy,” the Irishman commented, lighting a fresh cigarette. “You’ve got me all of a tangle. I’m damned if you’re not uncanny. And your name is not Max Arndt at all, then?”
“No.”
“And Herr Schlippenbach. He is not your uncle?”
“God forbid!”
“And the Fr?ulein von Altdorf is not your sister’s daughter, I suppose?”
“I never had a sister.”
The dragoon guard threw up his hands.
“Then, if it’s all the same to you,” he continued, “and not revealing any State secrets,51 would you be so good as to tell me who you are? Introduce yourself to me. For it seems that though we’ve been together the better part of two months we’re still strangers.”
Grey made a rapid but careful survey of his neighbours. Under the circumstances it might not be well to speak his own name where it could be overheard. He took another drink of his grenadine before replying.
“After all,” he said, “this is hardly the place for confidences. What do you say to walking over to my hotel? We can have privacy there.”
And Lieutenant O’Hara readily consented.
At the door of the H?tel Grammont a courier was in excited dispute with the portier.
“But he will be here tomorrow, perhaps. Is it not so?”
“I cannot say. There is no Monsieur Grey here now, of a certainty.”
“You are sure? You are most sure?”
“Is it not that I have said it twenty—thirty—a hundred times?” insisted the portier. “And you are not the only one who has asked. There have been three others here, including an agent of52 police. Ah, Monsieur Grey! He had better stay away, perhaps.”
When at length the room of the American was reached and the door locked on the inside, Grey turned to his friend.
“Did you overhear the conversation below?” he asked.
“I caught snatches of it. A wire for someone, wasn’t it?”
“Yes; for me.”
“For you?” O’Hara stared. “Then why in God’s name didn’t you take it?”
“I couldn’t afford to, and yet I’d give a good deal to know its message.”
“But it was for a person named Grey, I thought. You are Grey, then?”
“Yes.”
“And the police officer! He was looking for—you?”
“For me,” Grey confessed. “Now you can understand why I didn’t care to talk in the café.”
O’Hara dropped into a chair.
“This is very interesting,” he said, and his blue eyes twinkled.
53 Grey, his hands in his trousers’ pockets, was standing before the chimney-piece. His expression was very grave.
“I suppose,” he began, “that you think me rather a blackguard. Appearances so far are against me, aren’t they? By my own admission I’m here under an assumed name trying to evade the minions of the law, who are hot-foot on my trail. Everything you thought you knew about me I have informed you is false. Therefore you are not likely to be predisposed in my favour. Consequently the story I’m going to tell you now you’ll probably not believe. I’m free to admit that if the situation were reversed I wouldn’t believe you; and yet—I—well, I wouldn’t have taken you into my confidence if it were not that I’m sure you’re a gentleman—an honest, high-principled, Irish gentleman who loves right and is willing to fight for it.”
O’Hara smiled encouragingly.
“Drive ahead, my boy,” he urged; “the jury is absolutely unprejudiced.”
Then Grey plunged into a detailed narrative of that surprising day. He told of his strange awakening54 and parenthetically gave his hearer an idea of his position at home and a glimpse of his previous life. He rehearsed his conversation with Frothingham; he repeated word for word the cables he had sent to New York; he summarized the articles he had read in the Herald; he described the passing of Herr Schlippenbach and recited his death-bed communication, and finally he gave, as nearly as he could remember it, the conversation between Lutz and Johann.
O’Hara listened with rapt interest, interrupting him now and then with a question, at times smiling understandingly and at others scowling at what he regarded as evidence of importance against the little group by which Grey was surrounded. At the conclusion of the recital he sprang up and impulsively grasped the American’s hand.
“You’ll come out on top yet, boy,” he cried, “and it’s John James O’Hara that’ll help to put you there. I’ve heard of such cases as this before. They’ve been drugging you, lad, that’s as plain as the nose on my face, and your dear uncle, Herr Schlippenbach, do you mind, has been the chief55 drugger. It was because he was too ill to do his work that the effects wore off. Now that he’s gone they’re worried to death over you. Sure, you’re not so blind that you can’t see that yourself.”
“But I don’t understand——”
“Of course you don’t. Neither do I. There’s a lot we have got to find out. But two heads are better than one; and you just put a big bundle of trust in mine.”
He was excited and his brogue, Grey thought, was delightful.
“What do you suggest?”
“In the first place it is probably best that I tell you what little I know. Your memory, up until this afternoon, is a blank. Well, then, I’ll give you the benefit of mine.”
O’Hara lighted another cigarette and, taking a deep inhalation, started pacing the floor, his head bent thoughtfully forward.
“As I said,” he began, “we met in the smoke-room of the Lucania on the afternoon of Saturday, the seventh of April. You told me your name was Max Arndt, that you were born in56 Kürschdorf, the capital of Budavia, where your uncle, Herr Schlippenbach, whom you accompanied, had at one time been tutor in the royal family. You had spent your life, however, in the United States, had been engaged in the importation of German wines, I think you said, in New York, and were now on your way back to your native town, where, by the death of a relation, you had recently come into large estates. The man Lutz was with you, but he appeared to be old Schlippenbach’s valet rather than yours. On reaching Liverpool you were met by Captain Lindenwald, who is of the royal household of the Kingdom of Budavia, and by the fellow Johann. After about a week in London your party was joined by Miss von Altdorf, who had been at school somewhere in Kent. You told me she was your sister’s child, an orphan, and that your uncle and yourself supported her.”
“Great God!” exclaimed Grey, amazedly, “and did I seem sane—rational?”
“Perfectly,” O’Hara answered; “you were the character to the smallest detail. Your voice was the only peculiar thing about you. You57 spoke like a deaf man, with practically no inflection.”
“Did you talk to Schlippenbach?”
“Oh, yes; frequently. He was really very clever. He had a wonderful fund of general knowledge. There was scarcely a subject with which he was not familiar. But his specialty was phrenology. He told me that in his youth he had known Dr. Spurzheim, the pupil of Dr. Franz Gall, the founder of the science, that he had studied under him and gone very deeply into the matter. He was a chemist, too, and from something he let drop one day I got the impression that he had experimented considerably with an?sthetics, narcotics, and that sort of thing.”
“And to some purpose, apparently,” put in Grey. “But his object, O’Hara? What in heaven’s name could have been his object? I never knew him—never saw him to my recollection until he was dying.”
“Ah, lad, we haven’t got that far yet, but we’ll know before we’re through.”
And then he went on with his story. He was with the quartet a great deal in London, he said.58 He showed them about, and they were all very appreciative. They stopped there until the middle of May and then they moved on to Paris. Without any intention of prying into their affairs he had observed that Herr Schlippenbach and Captain Lindenwald had a good deal of correspondence with parties in Kürschdorf.
“And what was my attitude towards them all?” Grey inquired. “Was I very sociable or was I reserved?”
“You were rather dignified,” O’Hara answered; “and now I come to think of it, they treated you with considerable deference, though they endeavoured to dissemble it whenever I was about. Miss von Altdorf seemed quite fond of you, old chap, and it was amusing to note how Captain Lindenwald insisted on making love to her at every opportunity, only to be gently, but firmly, repulsed. As for that young woman I found her most charming,—and you did too, apparently. Of course, as she was your niece, you could take her to dine tête-à-tête and to places of amusement unchaperoned, and you did very frequently, much to Lindenwald’s annoyance. Whatever59 the plot is, Grey, I feel satisfied that she is not in it.”
“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 they60 are 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 you61 landed! 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 Frothingham had 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 his carpe 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 only63 two 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.64 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 his café au lait complexion,” 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 personage65 here by any means,” Edson pursued, now thoroughly launched in the exercise of his métier; “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.
66 “I saw the King of the Belgians as we came in,” said Mr. Van Tuyl, presently, as a waiter passed the filet 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 a Quartier Latin model 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 odd67 condition 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 a68 call 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 the69 terrasse of 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.”
70 “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 some caneton.
“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.
71 “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,72 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 boat73 in 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 as74 delicately 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 I75 been 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 very distraite. 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, suddenly76 restored 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.
77 “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’? ‘Conditions in-ex-pleek-able’? Oh, I fear, I fear, that is something very terrible.”
There came 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?”
79 “It waits, Herr Arndt.”
While Grey, in bathrobe and slippers, was sipping his café au lait and nibbling a brioche, 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 the Compagnie 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,80 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 her81 some 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 this82 thing 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 an83 inspiration, 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.
Grey turned to the window again, his eyes as wet as the panes. After a little he asked:
“And that was the only one?”
84 “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 spoke85 with 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,86 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,87 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 Captain88 Lindenwald pulled down the silk covering of the window.
When at length they alighted at the H?tel Grammont and entered the courtyard the portier informed 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.”
89 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.
90 “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 as91 a 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 Budavian92 officer 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 required93 at 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 is94 not 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 plot95 Captain 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.
96 “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.”
97 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.