Part 27 (1/2)

'We had better get him upstairs, somehow,' said Racksole.

'Yes,' Aribert a.s.sented. 'Eugen, the lady with the red hat, the lady you are waiting for, is upstairs. She has sent us down to ask you to come up. Won't you come?'

'Himmel!' the poor fellow exclaimed, with a kind of weak anger. 'Why did you not say this before?'

He rose, staggered towards Aribert, and fell headlong on the floor. He had swooned. The two men raised him, carried him up the stone steps, and laid him with infinite care on a sofa. He lay, breathing queerly through the nostrils, his eyes closed, his fingers contracted; every now and then a convulsion ran through his frame.

'One of us must fetch a doctor,' said Prince Aribert.

'I will,' said Racksole. At that moment there was a quick, curt rap on the french window, and both Racksole and the Prince glanced round startled. A girl's face was pressed against the large window-pane. It was Nella's.

Racksole unfastened the catch, and she entered.

'I have found you,' she said lightly; 'you might have told me. I couldn't sleep. I inquired from the hotel-folks if you had retired, and they said no; so I slipped out. I guessed where you were.' Racksole interrupted her with a question as to what she meant by this escapade, but she stopped him with a careless gesture. 'What's this?' She pointed to the form on the sofa.

'That is my nephew, Prince Eugen,' said Aribert.

'Hurt?' she inquired coldly. 'I hope not.'

'He is ill,' said Racksole, 'his brain is turned.'

Nella began to examine the unconscious Prince with the expert movements of a girl who had pa.s.sed through the best hospital course to be obtained in New York.

'He has got brain fever,' she said. 'That is all, but it will be enough.

Do you know if there is a bed anywhere in this remarkable house?'

Chapter Eighteen IN THE NIGHT-TIME

'HE must on no account be moved,' said the dark little Belgian doctor, whose eyes seemed to peer so quizzically through his spectacles; and he said it with much positiveness.

That p.r.o.nouncement rather settled their plans for them. It was certainly a professional triumph for Nella, who, previous to the doctor's arrival, had told them the very same thing. Considerable argument had pa.s.sed before the doctor was sent for. Prince Aribert was for keeping the whole affair a deep secret among their three selves. Theodore Racksole agreed so far, but he suggested further that at no matter what risk they should transport the patient over to England at once. Racksole had an idea that he should feel safer in that hotel of his, and better able to deal with any situation that might arise. Nella scorned the idea. In her quality of an amateur nurse, she a.s.sured them that Prince Eugen was much more seriously ill than either of them suspected, and she urged that they should take absolute possession of the house, and keep possession till Prince Eugen was convalescent.

'But what about the Spencer female?' Racksole had said.

'Keep her where she is. Keep her a prisoner. And hold the house against all comers. If Jules should come back, simply defy him to enter--that is all.

There are two of you, so you must keep an eye on the former occupiers, if they return, and on Miss Spencer, while I nurse the patient. But first, you must send for a doctor.'

'Doctor!' Prince Aribert had said, alarmed. 'Will it not be necessary to make some awkward explanation to the doctor?'

'Not at all!' she replied. 'Why should it be? In a place like Ostend doctors are far too discreet to ask questions; they see too much to retain their curiosity. Besides, do you want your nephew to die?'

Both the men were somewhat taken aback by the girl's sagacious grasp of the situation, and it came about that they began to obey her like subordinates.

She told her father to sally forth in search of a doctor, and he went.

She gave Prince Aribert certain other orders, and he promptly executed them.

By the evening of the following day, everything was going smoothly. The doctor came and departed several times, and sent medicine, and seemed fairly optimistic as to the issue of the illness. An old woman had been induced to come in and cook and clean. Miss Spencer was kept out of sight on the attic floor, pending some decision as to what to do with her. And no one outside the house had asked any questions. The inhabitants of that particular street must have been accustomed to strange behaviour on the part of their neighbours, unaccountable appearances and disappearances, strange flittings and arrivals. This strong-minded and active trio--Racksole, Nella, and Prince Aribert-- might have been the lawful and accustomed tenants of the house, for any outward evidence to the contrary.