Part 13 (1/2)
”Miss West will be here in a few minutes,” she said. ”Tell me, Uncle Colin, what have you been doing while you've been away--eh?”
”I had some business in London, and afterwards went on a flying visit to see my mother down in Cornwall,” I said.
”Ah! How is she? I hope you told her to come and see me. I would be so very delighted if she will come and stay a week or so.”
”I gave her Your Highness's kind message, and she is writing to thank you. She'll be most delighted to visit you,” I said.
”Nothing has been discovered regarding Madame de Rosen's letters, I suppose?” she asked with a sigh, her face suddenly grown grave.
”Hartwig arrives to-night, or to-morrow,” I replied. ”We shall then know what has transpired. From his Majesty he received explicit instructions to spare no effort to solve the mystery of the theft.”
”I know. He told me so when he was here three weeks ago. He has made every effort. Of all the police administration I consider Hartwig the most honest and straightforward.”
”Yes,” I agreed. ”He is alert always, marvellously astute, and, above all, though he has had such an extraordinary career, he is an Englishman.”
”So I have lately heard,” replied my pretty companion. ”I know he will do his best on my behalf, because I feel that I have lost the one piece of evidence which might have restored poor Marya de Rosen and her daughter to liberty.”
”You have lost the letters, it is true,” I said, looking into her splendid eyes. ”You have lost them because it was plainly in the interests of General Markoff, the Tzar's favourite, that they should be lost. Madame de Rosen herself feared lest they should be stolen, and yet a few days later she and Luba were spirited away to the Unknown.
Search was, no doubt, made at her house for that incriminating correspondence. It could not be found; but, alas! you let out the secret when sitting out with me at the Court ball. Somebody must have overheard. Your father's palace was searched very thoroughly, and the packet at last found.”
”The Emperor appeared to be most concerned about it before I left Russia. When I last saw him at Tzarskoie-Selo he seemed very pale, agitated and upset.”
”Yes,” I said. Then, very slowly, for I confess I was much perturbed, knowing how we were at that moment hemmed in by our enemies, I added: ”This theft conveyed more to His Majesty than at present appears to your Highness. It is a startling coup of those opposed to the monarchy--the confirmation of a suspicion which the Emperor believed to be his--and his alone.”
”A suspicion!” she exclaimed. ”What suspicion? Tell me.”
Next moment Miss West, thin-faced and rather angular, entered the room, and we dropped our confidences. Then, at my invitation, my dainty little hostess went to the piano, and running her white fingers over the keys, commenced to sing in her clear, well-trained contralto ”L'Heure Exquise” of Paul Verlaine:
La lune blanche Luit dans les bois; De chaque branche Part une voix Sous la ramee...
O bien-aimee.
CHAPTER TEN.
REVEALS TWO FACTS.
When I entered my bedroom at the Hotel Metropole it wanted half an hour to midnight. But scarce had I closed the door when a waiter tapped at it and handed me a card.
”Show the gentleman up,” I said in eager antic.i.p.ation, and a few minutes later there entered a tall, thin, clean-shaven, rather aristocratic-looking man in a dark brown suit--the same person whom old Igor had evidently recognised walking along King's Road.
”Well, Tack? So you are here with your report--eh?” I asked.
”Yes, sir,” was his reply, as I seated myself on the edge of the bed, and he took a chair near the dressing-table and settled himself to talk.
Edward Tack was a man of many adventures. After a good many years at Scotland Yard, where he rose to be the chief of the Extradition Department on account of his knowledge of languages, he had been engaged by the Foreign Office as a member of our Secret Service abroad, mostly in Germany and Russia. During the past two years he had, as a blind to the police, carried on a small insurance agency business in Petersburg; but the information he gathered from time to time and sent to the Emba.s.sy was of the greatest a.s.sistance to us in our diplomatic dealings with Russia and the Powers.
He never came to the Emba.s.sy himself, nor did he ever hold any direct communication with any of the staff. He acted as our eyes and ears, exercising the utmost caution in transmitting to us the knowledge of men and matters which he so cleverly gained. He worked with the greatest secrecy, for though he had lived in Petersburg two whole years, he had never once been suspected by that unscrupulous spy-department controlled by General Markoff.
”I've been in Brighton several days,” my visitor said. ”The hotel porter told me here that you were away, so I went to the `Old s.h.i.+p!' and waited for you.”
”Well--what have you discovered?” I inquired, handing him my cigarette-case. ”Anything of interest?”