Part 67 (2/2)
The Princess nodded.
”Did you know it, Naa?”
”I began to suspect it recently.”
”May I ask how?”
The Princess glanced at Rue and smiled:
”Ruhannah's friend, Colonel Izzet Bey, was very devoted to Minna Minti----”
”To _whom_!” exclaimed Neeland, astounded.
”To Ilse Dumont. Minna Minti is her stage name,” said the Princess.
Neeland turned and looked at Rue, who, conscious of his excitement, flushed brightly, yet never suspecting what he was about to say.
The Princess said quietly:
”Yes, tell her, Jim. It is better she should know. Until now it has not been necessary to mention the matter, or I should have done so.”
Rue, surprised, still prettily flushed with expectancy, looked with new curiosity from one to the other.
Neeland said:
”Ilse Dumont, known on the stage as Minna Minti, is the divorced wife of Eddie Brandes.”
At the mention of a name so long hidden away, buried in her memory, and almost forgotten, the girl quivered and straightened up, as though an electric shock had pa.s.sed through her body.
Then a burning colour flooded her face as at the swift stroke of a lash, and her grey eyes glimmered with the starting tears.
”You'll have to know it, darling,” said the Princess in a low voice.
”There is no reason why you should not; it no longer can touch you.
Don't you know that?”
”Y-yes----” Ruhannah's slowly drooping head was lifted again; held high; and the wet brilliancy slowly dried in her steady eyes.
”Before I tell you,” continued Neeland, ”what happened to me through Ilse Dumont, I must tell you what occurred in the train on my way to Paris.... May I have a cigarette, Princess Naa?”
”At your elbow in that silver box.”
Rue Carew lighted it for him with a smile, but her hand still trembled.
”First,” he said, ”tell me what particular significance those papers in the olive-wood box have. Then I can tell you more intelligently what happened to me since I went to Brookhollow to find them.”
”They are the German plans for the fortification of the mainland commanding the Dardanelles, and for the forts dominating the Gallipoli peninsula.”
”Yes, I know that. But of what interest to England or France or Russia----”
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