Part 6

“You should know more than I,” the Fraülein returned. “You were in New York with him while I was in England.”

“Yes, I know,” her companion went on, as he took a cigarette from his case and struck a match, “but I don’t mean intimately, personally. Tell me a little of his history.”

“Everybody knew he was eccentric.”

“Of course.”

“Otherwise he would never have left Budavia. Just think of what he gave up!”

“That’s just it,” Grey interposed, eagerly. “What did he give up? I’ve heard stories, to be sure, but I don’t know that I ever had the truth of it.”

“Oh, I’ve heard it a hundred times,” Minna responded, digging the point of her parasol into the gravel. “You see, he was tutor to the Court. He had taught King Frederic about all there was to teach, and when His Majesty outgrew school books--of course he wasn’t His Majesty then, but His Royal Highness the Crown Prince--Great-uncle Schlippenbach accompanied him on the grand tour. They visited every court in Europe and then went over to Africa and Turkey in Asia, and I don’t know where else. Then when Frederic succeeded to the throne, Great-uncle Schlippenbach was still retained, and after a while, when a little prince was born to Queen Anna, he was constituted a sort of kindergarten-professor to the royal infant.”

“In other words, a mental wet-nurse,” suggested Grey.

“Yes, exactly. I think he taught him to say ‘bah’ and ‘boo’ and ‘gee-gee’ and ‘moo-cow’--or rather their German equivalents--and led him gloriously on to the alphabet. Then, just as he was beginning to spell nicely in words of three letters, something happened. Nobody ever knew just exactly what it was, but Great-uncle Schlippenbach took offence. Her Majesty, Queen Anna, it seems, was to blame. He brooded over the matter for weeks and months, growing more and more incensed, more and more bitter. In vain King Frederic tried to mollify him. He was very fond of Great-uncle Schlippenbach, and he wanted to smooth matters over, but the royal tutor was not to be pacified. He broke out in a torrent of rage, recounting his fancied wrongs and declaring that he had wasted the best years of his life in a hopeless effort to grow flowers of intellect from barren soil. The German Emperor would have had him behind the bars for _lèse-majesté_, but King Frederic only laughed and offered him a baronetcy. But Great-uncle Schlippenbach scorned the offer. Having spoken his mind, he packed his boxes and left the Court, left Kürschdorf, left Budavia, left Europe and went to America to begin life anew. That was twenty-five years ago, and he was forty years old.”

“And the poor little Crown Prince had to learn his words of four letters from someone less gifted, eh?”

“Dear only knows from whom he ever did learn them,” Miss von Altdorf continued. “He disappeared the very next week after Great-uncle Schlippenbach.”

“Disappeared?” repeated Grey.

“Oh, yes, you remember that, surely. He was abducted, you know. Why, that’s a part of the history of your own country. That’s why there’s so much excitement now over rumours of his turning up at this late day. Oh, dear, Uncle Max, why will you tease me so? You made me tell you that whole story, and I’m sure you knew it quite as well as I.”

Grey laughed joyously.

“I love to hear you talk,” he told her, his gaze lingering fondly on her blushing face. “And so,” he added, “they are looking for the kidnapped baby to reappear a man and claim his own? Is that it?”

But she was silent, her eyes downcast.

“Won’t you answer me?” he pleaded.

“I won’t again tell you what you already know,” she answered, a little petulantly.

“But I don’t know about this ring, really,” Grey urged. “Tell me about it. What has it got to do with the stolen Crown Prince?”

Minna looked up, regarding him searchingly.

“Where did you get it?” she asked.

“I found it,” he answered, quite truthfully.

“In a jewel casket, within a great iron chest, inside an ordinary travelling box?” she cross-questioned.

The significance of the description was not lost on her hearer.

“No,” he returned, frankly, “not in anything at all. On the floor of my room.”

Her eyes were round with surprise.

“And how did it come there?”

“I cannot imagine. That is why I’d like you to tell me what you know of it.”

“And before you found it on the floor of your room you had never seen it?”

“Never. I swear it by the sun-god yonder.”

“My great-uncle never showed it to you--never told you of it?”

“Never,” Grey repeated.

“He showed it to me in London,” she confessed, reaching out for the finger it adorned, “and told me all about it. It seems that when he left Budavia it had in some way got in with his effects. He did not find it until a year or more afterward. It had belonged to the King before his coronation, and to his father before him, and to his grandfather before that. The arms are those of the Prince of Kronfeld. The Crown Prince is always, you know, the Prince of Kronfeld.”

“And as the little Prince of Kronfeld had been kidnapped and Uncle Schlippenbach did not know where to find him, he simply put the ring away for safe-keeping, eh?” asked Grey, quizzically.

“He was taking it back to Kürschdorf when he died,” Minna answered, with rebuke in her tone. “As soon as he heard that the Crown Prince had been found he started. He wished, he said, to put it on his finger with his own hand. ‘His Royal Highness will probably travel _incognito_,’ he said to me, ‘but I shall know him; and when we meet I shall give him the ring. When you see it worn you will know that the wearer is the Crown Prince.’”

“And when you saw it on my finger you thought--just for a moment--that I was he, didn’t you, Minna? But then, as I am your uncle I cannot be the Prince of Kronfeld, so we will take it off and wear it no more,” Grey concluded, slipping the golden circlet from his finger and stowing it away in a pocket of his waistcoat.

“But what I should like to know,” continued the Fraülein, “is how it came on the floor of your room?”

“And so should I,” her companion echoed; “how it got out of the casket, and the iron chest, and the travelling box.”

Presently the sound of many shuffling feet was borne to their ears, accompanied by the discordant piping of high-pitched voices, and turning their heads they saw approaching an army of tourists with a gesticulating, haranguing guide in the lead.

“It’s a case of ‘follow the man from Cook’s,’” Grey observed, annoyed at having their privacy invaded. “We had better stroll on.”

They walked rapidly for a while, keeping always to the right, until they were out of sight and sound of the disturbing company, and then they dawdled from terrace to terrace; leaned over lichen-stained marble balustrades to see their reflections in the dark, silent pools; loitered on banks of mossy turf beneath the shade of towering trees; stopped to admire, to criticise, and not infrequently to laugh over the sculptures that dotted the way, and came out at length upon an avenue, long and straight and level and gleaming white in the afternoon sunshine.

“You want to see the Trianons, of course,” Grey suggested to the girl. “I know you are familiar with many of the events that took place there.”

And so, turning to the left, they sauntered on until they came to the one-story horse-shoe shaped villa that Louis XIV built for Madame de Maintenon. But Minna was tired of sight-seeing, and the porcelains and the pictures proved alike uninteresting. The Petit Trianon pleased her much better because of its associations with Marie Antoinette, who had been one of her school-girl heroines, and over its delightful English-looking garden she grew enthusiastic.

They strolled along the winding paths, dallied on the shore of the funny little artificial lake, and rested for a while in the “_Temple de l’Amour_.” The number of visitors, however, was to both of them a disturbing influence. They would have liked the place to themselves, but they were at every turn running into couples and parties whose presence, as Grey put it, “spoiled the picture.”

They had just emerged from that group of homely, quaint cottages in a far corner of the garden where the fair ladies of Louis’s Court were wont to play at peasant life, when the rippling laughter of women and the more hearty if less musical merriment of men broke jarringly upon their hearing.

“Can’t we have some milk at the _vacherie Suisse_?” Grey heard a woman’s voice ask in the English of the well-bred.

And then a man rejoined:

“Milk! What for? There’s still an unopened case of champagne in the coach.”

Again the laughter echoed, but nearer. The little company were coming towards them, hidden by the shrubbery. A second later and they came into view--a tall, large woman with brilliant auburn hair, in gown and hat of pale lavender; a middle-aged man, red-faced and well-groomed; a dainty little dark woman, all in red, with a tall, dark man in grey, and then--Grey went white as the whitest cloud overhead, for Hope Van Tuyl was approaching, and with her was the young man from the Embassy whom he had seen yesterday at the hotel. And there was Frothingham, too, whom he had not recognised at first glance; and it was Nicholas Van Tuyl, he saw now, who was with the red-haired woman in the lead.

For a second he halted, undecided, a powerful impulse urging him to speak to the woman he loved, at all hazards. His lips were framing words, his eyes were beaming, his hand was half way to his hat, before his judgment came to the rescue--and held him; told him that it would be folly, that now as never before it was his duty to maintain his disguise and thereby eventually establish his innocence. His eyes cooled, his teeth closed on his embryo utterance, his hand dropped to his side.

“Carey Grey!”

Hope’s voice rang out suddenly above the babble of the party. She had seen him and recognised him. The others had passed on. Only she and Edson were there beside him. With an effort that cost him the most poignant torture he ever suffered he turned to Minna, murmuring words that had no meaning and walked heedlessly by.

Edson caught Miss Van Tuyl’s trembling arm.

“Sh!” he warned, a little excitedly; “you’ve made a mistake. That isn’t Grey.”

“But”--and the colour came and went in her face and she breathed quickly--“but I know it is. I know him, I’m sure; oh, quite, quite sure. I cannot be mistaken. His hair is changed; yes, and he has a beard, but his eyes--I should always know his eyes; and”--as she stood gazing after him--“his shoulders. There isn’t another man in the world who has shoulders just like Carey Grey’s.”

“No other man, possibly,” added Edson, “except the Crown Prince of Budavia.”

IX

On the way back to Paris Grey’s thoughtful silence contrasted so markedly with his cheery loquacity of the morning that Fraülein von Altdorf was led to observe:

“I do believe you’re tired, Uncle Max.”

“Tired?” he repeated, forcing a smile. “No, my child, not a bit. The day has been a joy. I’ve revelled in it. Tired! The idea! Am I a septuagenarian or am I an invalid?”

“But you haven’t spoken for fifteen whole minutes.”

“Haven’t I, really? I suppose I was thinking.”

“Of what?” she asked, mischievously.

Grey hesitated a little moment.

“Of fortune and misfortune,” he answered, gravely; “of Fate and the pranks she plays; of life and its inconsistencies; of right and wrong and rewards and punishments; of love and hatred and jealousy; of fair women and brutal, selfish men; of a hundred and one things more or less interesting and absorbing.”

“Oh, you _were_ busy!” the girl exclaimed. “I don’t wonder you didn’t hear my question. Altogether I have asked it three times.”

“I beg your pardon,” he pleaded contritely; “that was very rude of me. Won’t you ask it once more?”

They had a compartment to themselves and were seated opposite each other. The train had just left Asnières and was crossing the Seine.

“I was wondering whether you noticed the lady we passed in the garden of the Petit Trianon. I don’t believe you did.”

“We passed many ladies,” Grey temporised; “I can’t say that I noticed them all.”

“Oh, but this one was very beautiful,” she insisted. “She had such colouring and such lovely brown eyes, and I think she thought she recognised you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me at the time?” he asked, striving to appear unconscious.

“Why didn’t I? That’s a nice question. I nudged you and I tried to catch your eye; and, after we had gone on a few steps I begged you to look back, but you wouldn’t heed me. Oh, you were thinking very hard just then. Was it about fair ladies and brutal, selfish men, do you imagine?”

“Probably,” Grey answered. “I’m sorry I was so rude.” And once more he relapsed into meditative silence.

Very bitter indeed was his self-condemnation. If he could have had a second more in which to make his decision he would have decided differently. Of that he was sure. It may have been that he took the course of wisdom, but wisdom and love have been enemies since time began, and where his allegiance was due there he had proved traitor. He contrasted his selfishness with her loyalty, and his ready willingness to conclude that she believed ill of him with her now proved steadfastness, even to the disregard of place and circumstance. He had metaphorically given her a curse for a caress, and he mentally and emotionally scourged himself for his brutality. The suggestion that desperate ills require desperate remedies--that it was necessary to be cruel that he might be kind--presented itself, but he refused to admit that it had any application. He was consumed by a desire to make reparation, to wipe out this blot of cowardice with some recklessly bold bit of bravery. He would go to her hotel--the Van Tuyls always stopped at the Ritz--and regardless of consequences he would present himself, explain all, and, in abject abasement, beseech her pardon. This, he argued, was the very least he could do. But when he reached this conclusion doubts assailed him and robbed him of what little peace he had garnered. Would she receive him? What right had he to expect that she could permit him to speak to her, now that he had repulsed her--cut her in the presence of her friends and further insulted and humiliated her by appearing more than interested in another woman--and a very young and very pretty woman, too? He most assuredly could have no just cause for complaint should she adopt such an attitude. She had indicated clearly enough that as long as only newspaper reports were his accusers she was willing to await his side of the story, but when she had given him an opportunity to defend himself, and he had chosen to ignore it and herself as well, was it in reason to hope for any further forbearance?

It was in this mood that Grey’s return from Versailles was accomplished; in this ill-temper with himself and this doubt of being able to undo what he looked on as a more dire menace to his happiness than all the charges of defalcation and embezzlement and all the dangers of extradition.

When at length he and Miss von Altdorf reached the Hôtel Grammont they found O’Hara awaiting them. He came running out to the _fiacre_ and gave a hand to the young woman, assisting her to alight.

“Where on earth have you been?” he asked, smiling; but Grey caught a note of concern in his voice.

“To Versailles, for the day,” the Fraülein answered, gaily. “And oh, such a lovely day, too! I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.”

“Didn’t they tell you?” Grey asked. “Lindenwald knew.”

“I haven’t seen him.”

“Johann knew.”

“I haven’t seen Johann either.”

It was not until the two men were together in Grey’s room that O’Hara broke his news.

“They’ve cleared out,” he said, bluntly. “What do you think of that for a rum go?”

Grey, who had been drawing off his gloves, stopped midway in the process.

“Cleared out!” he repeated, in astonishment. “Who have cleared out? What do you mean?”

“The whole crew,” declared O’Hara, “Lindenwald and Lutz and Johann. I understood at first that you and the Fraülein had gone with them, but the _portier_ told me that you and she had started earlier and that your traps were still here.”

“But they?” Grey pursued, eagerly. “Where have they gone? Did they leave no word?”

“Devil a word,” returned the Irishman. “They paid their bill--that is, the Captain did--and departed, kit and all.”

“What does it mean?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

Grey drew off his other glove.

“They’re frightened,” he decided; “they have grown suspicious. They never knew at what minute they would be pounced on. Their plot was clear enough. What they wanted to do was to palm me off as the Crown Prince of Budavia and put me on the throne when the King dies, as he is going to, if he has not already.”

“What rot!” exclaimed O’Hara. “Have you gone clean daft? What would be their object? How could they hope to do it?”

“I don’t know anything about their object,” Grey continued, calmly; “that’s still a puzzle to me; but they might hope for a lot with me in the condition I was in a few days ago. I apparently did their bidding to their utmost satisfaction.”

“It’s very improbable,” the Irishman insisted; “you’ll never be able to make any one believe it.”

“Won’t I?” the American demanded. “Well, then, wait and see. I’ve learned a lot since I saw you last. As much as I’ve told you is very plain. I have witnesses to prove it. And the other proofs--my God! What do you suppose has become of that box at the Gare du Nord? I sent Lutz for the check or receipt last night, and he never brought it. And this ring!” he went on, talking more to himself than to his companion, “it was in that box. Of course it was. And--” He ceased speaking--his thoughts were coming now too rapidly for words--and stood with lips pressed and eyelids drawn, gazing through his lashes into space.

He was satisfied that someone--he suspected it was Lutz--had got the box from the railway station, had rifled it, had abstracted the ring, had made so bold as to wear it. Yes, when Lutz had come in answer to his summons of the previous evening, he was wearing it even then. It must have been too large for him. He had been nervous, his hands had been twitching, and it had dropped from his finger, and--but no; could it be possible? Was it--_was_ it Lutz who had returned in the early morning with intent to smother him? Was it he with whom he had wrestled? Was it from his hand that he had stripped this heirloom of the Budavian Court? And Lindenwald’s assurance that it bore the von Einhard arms? What could that mean, other than that Lindenwald was in league with Lutz and striving to shield him? And now their flight....

“Will you kindly tell me whether you are subject to these attacks?” asked O’Hara, interrupting his train of thought. “If I’m to be your lieutenant and serve in your campaign, it strikes me that I should have your full and entire confidence, and yet you are keeping something from me.”

“I’ll tell you everything after dinner,” Grey consented. “We’ll have a council of war and we’ll map out a plan of action.”

When O’Hara had run away to dress, promising to meet Grey and the Fraülein in a private room of the Café Riche at seven-thirty and dine with them, the American’s thoughts reverted to his resolution to see Hope Van Tuyl at all hazards. The disappearance of Lindenwald and the others, however, had again somewhat altered the situation. It was now more than ever necessary that he retain his freedom in order to track and run down the fugitives, and he recognised the risk he took in going to a hotel patronised largely by Americans and sending up a card bearing his real name. Once more his judgment was in the ascendency--wisdom had gained a slight advantage over the little blind god.

Sitting down at his table Grey took up a pen and wrote:

MY DARLING: For the last two hours I have been in purgatory. What must you think of me? I would come to you at once if I could, but it is impossible. Tomorrow morning, though, I must see you. At the end of the Tuileries gardens, near the Place de la Concorde, there is, you may remember, a grove of trees. Arrange to be there with your maid at eleven o’clock. There will be few there at that hour.

This he despatched to the Ritz by messenger.

“Fancy Captain Lindenwald going off!” cried Minna, as, promptly at twenty minutes past seven, she joined Grey in the drawing-room. “Where has he gone, do you suppose? And Lutz, too, and even Johann.”

“They’ve gone to the seaside over Sunday,” was Grey’s jesting reply. “Paris was getting too warm for them.”

“But,” she protested, at fault, “I understood we were all to start for Kürschdorf tomorrow night.”

“Were we? Who said so?”

“Captain Lindenwald, last evening.”

“Well, Captain Lindenwald has changed his plans.”

“It is certainly very mysterious,” she concluded, perplexedly. “I couldn’t believe it when the chambermaid told me.” And the great solemn eyes were graver than usual.

When, after dinner, they returned to the hotel, Grey’s glance detected a telegram in the rack addressed to the decamping Captain and he made haste to appropriate it. A little later, in his room, he handed it to O’Hara.

“It may be of service,” he said, significantly. “I don’t much like prying into another man’s affairs, but in this case his and mine are, in a way, identical.”

The Irishman nodded.

“We’ll keep it until you’ve told me all you know without it,” he suggested, taking out a briarwood pipe and filling it, “so drive ahead, lad, and don’t omit any details.”

And then Grey told his story, beginning with the glimpse of von Einhard, on the Boulevard St. Martin; following with the visit of Edson and the overheard announcement that he, Grey, was the Crown Prince Maximilian; the reappearance of the Baron; Lutz’s suspicious demeanour; the attempt on his life; the finding of the ring; the ring’s history; and, finally, his own deductions.

O’Hara listened attentively, blowing great clouds of smoke from under his red moustache. Occasionally he interrupted with a question. When the recital was concluded he got up and extended his hand.

“Well done, man,” he exclaimed; “you have been making hay in sun and rain alike. I wonder if we could lay our hands on this Baron von Einhard. It seems to me that he is just the chap we want to make friends with.”

“I dare say he is still hanging about,” the American replied; “he probably has not lost sight of me. I’d know him if I saw him again. We’ll have a look in at the cafés a little later. And now about Lindenwald and the others. Didn’t the _portier_ know which way they went?”

“No, they hailed a couple of passing _fiacres_, and he didn’t hear what directions were given.”

Grey tore open the telegram which O’Hara had tossed onto the table. It was dated Kürschdorf. “The King is dead,” it read; “wire when you will be here,” and it was signed, “Ritter.”

He pushed it across to the Irishman, remarking:

“He probably had that news from some other source before he left.”

“You think it hastened him?”

“In a way, yes. At least it directed him,” Grey said, with conviction.

O’Hara looked at him inquiringly.

“You surely don’t imagine the three of them have gone to Kürschdorf?” he blurted, in a tone of surprise.

“I do mean that exactly.”

“But why there, of all places? If Lindenwald is expected to bring the Crown Prince with him he surely wouldn’t go there empty-handed. What excuses could he make?”

“I don’t pretend to conjecture his excuses,” Grey replied, smiling, “but it seems very clear to me that Kürschdorf is his only sanctuary. There he will be with friends. Whatever he says is likely to be believed. If he fled elsewhere he would be in constant danger of arrest. His very flight would be evidence of his guilt.”

O’Hara nodded.

“You’re probably right,” he acquiesced; “anyway he turned he had to take chances, and Kürschdorf must have looked to him the least dangerous. What do you propose to do?”