Part 5

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.

VII

Grey dined that evening across the Boulevard at the Maison Dorée, in company with Fräulein von Altdorf and Herr Captain Lindenwald; and, as the officer insisted that it was advisable for them to avoid as much as possible the public eye, the trio dined in a _cabinet particulier_ on the second floor with windows open on the street. It was not a very gay dinner, in spite of the Herr Captain’s efforts to infuse some mirth into it. Miss von Altdorf was apparently still grief-stricken over her great-uncle’s sudden death, and though she strove valiantly to smile at Lindenwald’s essays at wit and to respond with some animation to Grey’s less jocose but cheerful observations, it was with such palpable exertion as to rather discourage her would-be entertainers.

Her youth was a surprise to the American. At first sight he had fancied her three or four-and-twenty, but he was satisfied now that she could not be more than eighteen. Her figure was distinctly girlish.

She was all in white, from her great ostrich-plumed hat of Leghorn straw to her tiny canvas bottines, because, young as she was, she entertained prejudices against conventional mourning, and exercised them. It was a question, however, whether in black or white she was more beautiful. In the death-chamber Grey had seen her sombre-robed and had pronounced her rarely lovely, and now in raiment immaculately snowy she was equally alluring. Her expression was naturally pensive and her recent sorrow had given to her big, deep-set, long-lashed blue eyes a pathos that awoke the tenderest emotions. As the American gazed at her across the table he experienced a thrill of sentiment that was undeniable, and he had but to glance at Lindenwald to see in his contemplation the same fervency of soul.

“I should like it,” Grey said to her when the dinner was about over and he was burning his cognac over his coffee, “if you would take a trip with me tomorrow into the country. We will start early and have _déjeuner_ at some inn, under the trees. It will do you a world of good.”

Something very like a frown gathered on Lindenwald’s brow, but it passed before he spoke.

“Do not forget my warning, Herr Arndt,” he interjected. “It would perhaps be safer for me to accompany Fraülein von Altdorf.”

“I will chance it,” Grey replied, decisively. “I feel that I, too, need a little outing.”

“It will be lovely, Uncle Max,” the girl responded, with more animation than she had previously shown. “Let us go to Versailles. I have never been, and I have read so much about it.”

“Versailles it shall be, my dear,” he answered, lighting a cigarette, while Lindenwald brushed his hand across his brow to hide a scowl.

Grey’s broken, unrefreshing, dreamful slumber of the night before, followed by a tiresome, distressing day, resulted early in the evening in a drowsiness that he could not shake off. For a while he dozed in a chair by an open window, but when the clock had struck eleven he arose and prepared for bed, and in a little while he was sleeping soundly behind his blue velvet curtains.

The night, however, was warm and close after the rain of the day, and, as the hours wore on, the sleeper grew restless and turned uneasily from side to side, by-and-by waking at each turning and seeking a cool spot between the sheets. At length sleep forsook him altogether, and he lay quite wide awake peering into the darkness in an effort to distinguish objects. But the night was very black and the room was enveloped in a pall of ink, save where the reflection from the street lamps spread patches of dim yellow light on wall and ceiling. The stillness, too, was oppressive. The boulevard was dead, and within doors no sound except the monotonous ticking of the clock on the mantel-shelf was audible.

He waited longingly for the clock to strike that he might know how many hours must elapse before the dawn; and as he waited, his senses alert, there broke softly on the silence the stealthy tread of feet in the passage on the other side of the wall near which he lay. No sooner had he heard the footsteps than they ceased, and the sound was succeeded by a muffled, metallic clicking from the direction of his door. With Lindenwald’s warning in mind he had turned the key in the lock before retiring, and he recalled this now with a sense of satisfied security; but even as he did so he was conscious of the door being pushed slowly but creakingly ajar, and then the tread that he had heard without he heard within. He held his breath, not in affright, for he was, he realised, wonderfully composed, but lest he scare away the intruder before the object of his visit was made plain.

Another second and a figure had crossed in the dim light that came from one of the windows. It was a rather undersized figure, Grey thought, but its attitude was crouching, almost creeping, and he might be deceived. Quickly a hand went to the cord loops at either side of the casements and dropped the curtains, and now the room was devoid of even the dim illumination from the street lamps. Then again, for a heart-beat, there was a blade of light visible as the visitor’s arm shot quickly between the lowered window hangings and drew cautiously together the open sashes, first one and then the other.

The steps now approached the bed--very slowly, haltingly, as though the intruder stopped at each footfall to listen. Grey waited, with every muscle tense, his nerves a-strain, wondering, speculating as to this night prowler’s next move. For a little while his approach ceased and the suspense grew maddening. The man had evidently halted in the centre of the room. Then there came the faintest tinkle of glass touched to glass, so faint that the ticking of the clock made question whether it was not imagination; and then the stealthy stepping was resumed, but more nearly silent than before, until the man in the bed, with heart pounding, teeth shut tight and breath indrawn and held, knew that the other was there beside him--leaning in over him, between the curtains, with a hand outstretched....

Blindly, into the pitch dark, with all its power of nerve and muscle, Grey’s clenched fist shot upward just as a cloth, wet with a liquid so suffocatingly volatile as to stagger him for the instant, dropped on his face. He heard a startled cry, half moan, half groan, and then a crash as a body reeled backward and, losing its balance, toppled over a chair. On his feet in a flash, Grey made haste to follow up his advantage. His foot touched his fallen assailant and he flung his full weight down upon him, groping wildly in the dark to find his arms and pinion them. But the fellow wriggled like a worm--twisting agilely, squirming from under his clutch--and his arms evaded capture. Locked in a desperate embrace they rolled over and over, now half rising to their knees, now thrown back again, upsetting tables and chairs, pounding their heads stunningly on floor and wall, clutching at each other’s hair, gripping each other’s throats--a wrestling match in which science had neither time nor place; a struggle for capture on the part of one, and for escape on the part of the other.

Grey was the stronger of the two, the heavier, the more muscular, but his foe was all elasticity, wiry, resilient, untiring, indomitable. The minutes passed without any apparent advantage to either. The smaller man was swearing in four languages and Grey was breathing hard. The noise they were making, as they rose and fell and overturned furniture, was thunderous. Each moment Grey expected the house would be awakened and assistance would arrive. Perspiration was pouring from his every pore; his pyjamas were in ribbons, his body and limbs half naked. Vainly he strove to strike and stun his adversary. His blows were dodged as if by instinct and his knuckles were bleeding where they had come in contact with the floor.

At length he succeeded in laying hold of the fellow’s face, his nose and mouth in his iron grasp, but instantly the jaws wrenched open and then closed savagely with Grey’s finger between viciously incisive teeth. A cry of pain escaped him as for the smallest moment a wave of faintness swept over him, and then he felt his antagonist slipping sinuously from under him and he grabbed wildly for a fresh hold. He caught a wrist and tried to cling to it, but the teeth were cutting to the bone, grinding on the joint, and the wrist slid through his grasp and the head followed in a twinkling. He rolled over and lunged out again, but the steely jaws had at that instant released his mangled finger, and even as he was striving to reach, struggling pantingly to his knees, he heard the door open quickly and he knew that he was alone.

He sank back to a sitting posture, breathing hard and deeply, but the air seemed suddenly to have grown thick and foul and choking, and he clambered to his feet and sought in the darkness for a window. Presently the touch of the curtains rewarded him. He thrust them frantically aside, pushed open the sashes and then dropped down again with his head and shoulders far out over the balcony, drinking in the cool, fresh air of the very early morning.

And it was here, in this position, a minute later that Johann, who had after considerable deliberation decided to investigate the cause of the disturbance, found him pale and exhausted, with the remnants of his pyjamas spattered with blood from his bleeding finger.

“Oh, Herr Arndt,” he cried, in perturbation, “what has happened? Have you tried to kill yourself? Oh, it is suffocating here! The gas--the room is full of gas.”

Johann helped Grey to his feet, sat him in a chair by the window, and having discovered the four gas jets of the chandelier which depended from the ceiling in the centre of the room turned full on, he turned them off, opened the other window and threw wide the door to effect a draft. Then he lighted the candles and returned to make an inventory of his master’s injuries.

“I’m not very much hurt, Johann,” Grey assured him; “but it was a pretty tough scrimmage while it lasted, and the brute did give my finger a biting. He had teeth like a saw and jaws like a vise. His original idea was asphyxiation, I suppose. He fancied I was asleep and that he would make it my last. By the way, look in the bed over there. You’ll find a chloroformed handkerchief, I think.”

“And was it for robbery, do you imagine, Herr Arndt, that he came?” Johann asked, as he went toward the bed.

“God knows,” Grey answered. “It looks rather professional when a fellow unlocks your door with a pair of nippers. The key was in the lock, you see.”

“You did not see his face, Herr Arndt? You would not know him?”

“I’m not a cat, Johann, and I cannot see in the dark.”

Then the valet hastened away to investigate, but returned without any information worth the calling. He had aroused the _portier_ only to learn that the street door had not been opened in two hours either for ingress or egress. Whoever the depredator was he must either have come in early and remained hidden or have entered through some unbarred window in the rear of the hotel, probably escaping by the same means. Having made his report Johann bathed and bound Grey’s finger, drew a bath for him, got out clean nightwear, remade the bed, and, just as the clock struck the half-hour after four, left him once more alone, still with the chloroformed handkerchief in his hand, which he was examining carefully for the third time. But it was merely a square piece of fine hemstitched linen without any distinguishing mark whatever. In that, certainly, there was no clue to his visitor.

But just as he was about to blow out his candles his foot trod on something hard, and he stooped and picked up a seal ring. It was very heavy and richly chased, and it bore an elaborately engraved coat of arms. In that last despairing clutch at the fellow’s hand he had evidently stripped this from his finger--this which could not but prove damaging evidence of his identity. The heraldic device was to Grey unfamiliar, but it would be a comparatively easy matter to learn to what family it belonged. Indeed, he had a vague recollection of having noticed a ring of this pattern on the little finger of Baron von Einhard’s ungloved hand the afternoon before in the hotel reading-room; but the pattern was not uncommon, and-- but it was preposterous to fancy that a man of his position, no matter what Lindenwald had said, no matter what his reputation for chicanery, craft, and cunning, would personally undertake a deliberate attempt at homicide. Such impossible characters might figure in melodramas, but in real life they were out of the question. And then he looked at the ring again, turning it over and inspecting it very minutely in the light of the candle flame.

Captain Lindenwald, when he was told of the affair, was quite sure it was von Einhard even before he was shown the ring, and when that was forthcoming he was willing to swear to it. The arms, he declared, were the von Einhard arms, and the ring could have been worn by no one save the Baron himself. He was for putting the matter in the hands of the police and thus avoiding future dangers, but after a little deliberation he realised that such a course would be impracticable. For the present it was absolutely necessary, he knew, to reveal nothing as to his and his charge’s whereabouts. Too much was known already; and general publicity, even though it put von Einhard where he could do no personal harm, would more greatly imperil the carrying out of the plans that were indispensable.

This, at least, was the impression he conveyed to Grey, though he was, as usual, most guarded in his choice of words. Never yet, the American observed, had he directly spoken of his mission, nor had he once so much as intimated to him that he knew him as other than Herr Max Arndt. That he was a crown prince _en route_ to the bedside of his dying sire Captain Lindenwald had zealously refrained from uttering save to a third party under stress of unusual circumstance, and then in a tone so low that he could not reasonably be expected to hear.

“If I may be permitted,” the Captain requested, “I will keep this ring for a little. I may run across von Einhard, and I should like to give him this one hint that his attempt on your life is known to us.”

But for some reason which he could not define Grey demurred.

“I have a whim to wear it,” he said, replacing it upon his finger; and Lindenwald made no further plea.

VIII

It was deemed best not to mention the incident of the night to Miss von Altdorf, and on their way to the Gare St. Lazare that morning Grey accounted for his bandaged finger by the subterfuge of having caught it in a door. He was not altogether satisfied with the spot chosen for the day’s outing. Had he been allowed unaided to make the choice he would undoubtedly have selected a resort of quite different character, but the girl had expressed a wish to visit Louis XIV’s “_Abîme des dépenses_,” and he had without demur acceded to her desire. After all, to be alone with her and thus gather from her knowledge as much information as possible concerning the mystery that surrounded him was his prime object, and for this purpose Versailles offered as propitious a background as Bougival or Croissy or a dozen other places that he personally would have preferred.

The day, washed clear and brilliant by the rain of yesterday, was not uncomfortably warm, and, though the maimed finger ached distractingly at times, Grey, in spite of his misgivings, found the little jaunt delightfully diverting. The Fraülein had shaken off much of her melancholy of the previous evening, and her mood was cheerful, if not merry. Her appreciation, which was mingled with a joyousness almost childish, was especially gratifying to her companion. Everything she saw interested her, and her comment, while invariably intelligent, was so unaffected and ingenuous as to be ofttimes amusing.

When, after _déjeuner_ at the Café de la Comédie, they had come out upon the terrace of the palace and stood overlooking the quaint, solemn, old-fashioned gardens, cut up into squares and triangles and parallelograms and ornamented with statues and vases and fountains arranged with monotonously geometric precision, her face shone with pleasure for a moment and then a shadow crossed it.

“Are all landscape gardeners atheists?” she asked, naïvely.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Grey replied, smiling; “I’ve never investigated their religious beliefs.”

“Well, the one who designed all this,” she added, with a sweep of her hand, “had very little respect for God’s taste.”

And later, as they sauntered through room after room and gallery after gallery of the palace, with their interminable succession of paintings and sculptures, she was much impressed by the pictured ceilings.

“I wonder why they put their best work where one must break one’s neck to see it?” she queried; and then she laughed. “Do you suppose it was to encourage the kings and queens and other grandees to bear in mind their exalted position and to hold their heads high?”

Grey had thus far refrained from broaching the subject which had inspired the excursion. He had chosen first of all to study the girl and gauge her character. Over her presence in the little party of questionables in which he had so unexpectedly found himself he was much perplexed. It seemed scarcely reasonable to suppose that she was not in some way involved in the plot, but whether actively or passively, with knowledge or without, was, or at least might be, open to question. He certainly could gather no indication from her attitude, her manner, or her utterance that she was other than artless and sincere. She appeared, in fact, uncommonly simple-hearted, straightforward, and guileless, and, after weighing the evidence, he reached the conclusion that if she had a place in the scheme of his enemies it was most assuredly without her ken or connivance. It was nevertheless clear that she must be innocently aware of much that he wished eagerly to know, and, as they wandered over the palace together, from the sumptuously decorated _Salles des Croisades_, reflecting in picture, trophy and souvenir the conquest of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre, to the magnificent _Galerie des Glaces_, with its many high-arched windows and glittering, gilt-niched mirrors, he ponderingly strove to outline some course of procedure that would yield him what he desired and yet not reveal his own delicately fragile position.

It was not, however, until they had finished their inspection of the palace and had passed out into the gardens by the _Cour des Princes_ that an opportunity offered to make trial of the plan he had conceived. They had strolled under the orange trees beside that long stretch of velvet lawn towards what is known as the basin of Apollo and had found seats on the marble coping of the fountain. As they sat there facing each other amid the perfume of the flowers and the spice of the shrubbery, the balmy breath of summer fanning their cheeks and the genial glow of a tempered June sun bathing them, the girl’s eye fell for the first time upon the ring on Grey’s little finger, and she gave an involuntary start of surprise.

“Oh, is it you, then?” she cried, and there was something of awe in her voice, though her eyes were smiling. “But no,” she added, quickly, “that cannot be. I do not understand, Uncle Max.”

“Nor I, child,” Grey replied, smiling back at her. He had not observed her glance, and her exclamation had startled him. She took his hand in her long, white, rose-tipped fingers and held it up before his eyes, the ring glinting in the sunshine.

“That!” she said. “What does it mean, your wearing it?”

“Mean?” he hesitated, wondering. “Why should it mean anything? Has not a gentleman a right to wear a ring if his fancy runs that way?”

“Oh, yes, of course; some rings; but no ordinary gentleman has a right to wear that one.”

“But suppose I am not an ordinary gentleman?” he pursued. “Suppose I have a title and bear arms, have I not a right to engrave those arms upon gold and wear them on my finger?”

She looked at him very seriously from out her deep-set, long-lashed eyes of purplish blue, and then she said:

“But it is the ring of the Crown Prince. And you are not the Crown Prince. If you were you could not be my uncle.”

Grey’s heart leaped. His decision had been confirmed. She was not trying to put him on a throne to which he had no more right than those workmen who were repairing the stone margin of the great canal a hundred yards away. Yet, at the same time, she had filled him with a new perplexity. It was evident that the ring was quite familiar to her. Therefore it could hardly be von Einhard’s, and Lindenwald’s assertion must not only have been false but knowingly false, and with an object. If the Fraülein von Altdorf knew the ring as the Crown Prince’s ring, Lindenwald must also have known it as such. It was for that reason he did not wish Grey to keep it. He feared, probably, just such a revelation as had come about. These points were plain enough, but the whole intricate problem was growing more and more involved. Its likeness to a maze again recurred. With every effort to extricate himself he seemed to get further and more bewilderingly entangled. And once more he was tempted to leave the path, which seemed to turn and turn again on itself, and to cut his way through thicket and underbrush regardless of consequences.

“What a wise Fraülein it is!” he replied, after a pause. “What you say is very true. If I am the Crown Prince I am not your uncle, and if I am your uncle I am not the Crown Prince. Now which would you prefer to have me?”

“Oh, for your sake,” she answered, quickly, “I’d rather you were heir to the throne; but for my sake I’d rather you were my uncle.”

“But not being able to be both, suppose you should learn that I am neither?” he queried, laughing.

“But you are,” she protested, with conviction. “You are my uncle, that is a fact.”

“How do you know?” Grey asked. The situation was growing interesting; disclosures were imminent, and they were coming quite naturally without his having had to resort to the plan he had mapped out.

“How does one ever know such things?” she replied, a little annoyance in her tone. “You were my Great-uncle Schlippenbach’s nephew and I am your niece. I call you Uncle Max and you call me Minna.”

“Ah, yes, that is very true,” Grey went on, banteringly, and he remembered what O’Hara had told him of how they had met in London a week after his setting foot on English soil; “but you never saw me in your life until two months ago. Do you remember how we first met?”

“I have a very vivid recollection of it. It was at dinner at the Folsonham, in London. I wore a pale green frock. And poor Great-uncle Schlippenbach said: ‘Minna, my dear, this is your Uncle Max, who hasn’t seen you since you were a baby.’”

“And what else did he say?”

“Oh, I don’t remember all the conversation.”

“Did he say anything about where we were going, and what we were going for?”

“I don’t think he said anything then. But you must remember. You were as much there as I was.”

“Ah, but I was not listening,” Grey pleaded, his eyes a-twinkle. “I had something better to do.”

“What was that, pray?”

“I had my pretty niece to look at.”

The rose in Minna’s cheeks deepened and her eyes fell shyly.

“Now you are teasing me again,” she said.

Grey turned an uninterested gaze for a brief space on the sun-god and his chariot which, surrounded by tritons, nymphs, and dolphins, rose in heroic proportions from the centre of the basin.

“I never knew much of my Uncle Schlippenbach,” he ventured, after a little; “tell me about him.”