The Lady in the Car

Next day, at Semlin, where our passports were examined, the passport-officer took off his hat to him, bowed low and viséd his passport without question, saying, as he handed back the document to its owner:

“Bon voyage, Altesse.”

I stared at the pair. My fussy friend with the big head must therefore be either a prince or a grand duke! Just then I was not a prince – only plain M’sieur Martin. In Roumania princes are as plentiful as blackberries, so I put him down as a Roumanian.

As I sat opposite him at dinner that night he was discussing with me the harmful writings of some newly discovered German who was posing as a cheap philosopher, and denouncing them as dangerous to the community. He leaned his elbow upon the narrow table and supported his clean-shaven chin upon his finger, displaying to me most, certainly by accident, the palm of his thin right hand.

What I discovered there caused me a good deal of surprise. In its centre was a dark livid mark, as though it had been branded there by a hot iron, the plain and distinct imprint of a cat’s-paw!

It fascinated me. There was some hidden meaning in that mark, I felt convinced. It was just as though a cat had stepped upon blood with one of its fore-paws and trodden upon his hand.

Whether he noticed that I had detected it or not, I cannot say, but he moved his hand quickly, and ever after kept it closed.

His name, he told me at last, was Konstantinos Vassos, and he lived in Athens. But I took that information cum grano, for I knew him to be a prince travelling incognito. The passport-officer at Semlin makes no mistakes.

But if actually a prince, why did he carry a passport?

There is, unfortunately, no good hotel at Sofia. The best is the Bulgarie, kept by a pleasant old lady to whom I was well-known as M’sieur Martin, and in this we found ourselves next night installed. He gave his name as Vassos, and to all intents and purposes was more of a stranger in Prince Ferdinand’s capital than I myself was, for I had been there at least half a dozen times before. Most of the Ministers knew me, and I was always elected a member of the smart diplomats’ club, the Union, during my stay.

The days passed. From the first morning of my arrival I found myself as before in a vortex of gaiety; invitations to the Legations poured in upon me, cards for dances here and there, receptions by members of the Cabinet, and official dinners by the British and French Ministers, while daily I spent each afternoon with my friend, Colonel Mayhew, the British military attaché, in his comfortable quarters not far from our Agency.

All the while, I must here confess, I was working my cards very carefully. I had sounded my friend, Petkoff, the grave, grey-haired Prime Minister – the splendid Bulgarian patriot – and he was inclined to admit the British proposals. The Minister of War, too, was on my side. German agents had approached him, but he would have none of them. In Bulgaria just then they had no love of Germany. They were far too Russophile.

Indeed, in this strenuous life of a fortnight or so I had practically lost sight of the ugly old gentleman who had been addressed by the passport-officer as his Highness. Once or twice I had seen him wandering alone and dejected along the streets, for he apparently knew nobody, and was having a very quiet time, Greeks were disliked in Sofia almost as much as Turks, on account of the Greek bands who massacre the Bulgars in Macedonia.

One night at the weekly dance at the Military Club – a function at which the smart set at Sofia always attend, and at which the Ministers of State themselves put in an appearance – I had been waltzing with the daughter of the Minister of the Interior, a pretty dark-haired girl in blue, whom I had met during my last visit to Bulgaria, and the Spanish attaché, a pale-faced young man wearing a cross at his throat, had introduced to me a tall, very handsome, sweet-faced girl in a black evening-gown trimmed with silver.

A thin wreath of the same roses was in her hair, and around her neck was a fine gold chain from which was suspended a big and lustrous diamond.

Mademoiselle Balesco was her name, and I found her inexpressibly charming. She spoke French perfectly, and English quite well. She had been at school in England, she said – at Scarborough. Her home was at Galatz, in Roumania, where her father was Prefect.

We had several dances, and afterwards I took her down to supper. Then we had a couple of waltzes, and I conducted her out to the carriage awaiting her, and, bowing, watched her drive off alone.

But while doing so, there came along the pavement, out of the shadow, the short ugly figure of the old Greek Vassos, with his coat collar turned up, evidently passing without noticing me.

A few days later, when in the evening I called on Mayhew at his rooms, he said:

“What have you been up to, Martin? Look here! This letter was left upon me, with a note asking me to give it to you in secret. Looks like a woman’s hand! Mind what you’re about in this place, old chap! There are some nasty pitfalls, you know!”

I took the letter, opened it, read it through, and placed it in my pocket without a word.

With a bachelor’s curiosity, he was eager to know who was my fair correspondent. But I refused to satisfy him.

Suffice it to say that on that same night I went alone to a house on the outskirts of Sofia, and there met at her urgent request the pretty girl Marie Balesco, who had so enchanted me. Ours seemed to be a case of mutual attraction, for as we sat together, she seemed, after apologising for thus approaching me and throwing all the convenances to the winds, to be highly interested in my welfare, and very inquisitive concerning the reasons which had brought me to Bulgaria.

Like most women of the Balkans, she smoked, and offered me her cigarette-case. I took one – a delicious one it was, but rather strong – so strong, indeed, that a strange drowsiness suddenly overcame me. Before I could fight against it the small, well-furnished room seemed to whirl about me, and I must have fallen unconscious. Indeed I knew no more until on awakening I found myself back in my bed at the hotel.

I gazed at the morning sunshine upon the wall, and tried to recollect what held occurred.

My hand seemed strangely painful. Raising it from the sheets, I looked at it.

Upon my right palm, branded as by a hot iron, was the Sign of the Cat’s-paw!

Horrified I stared at it. It was the same mark that I had seen upon the hand of Vassos! What could be its significance?

In a few days the burn healed, leaving a dark red scar, the distinct imprint of the feline foot. From Mayhew I tried, by cautious questions, to obtain some information concerning the fair-faced girl who had played such a prank on me. But he only knew her slightly. She had been staying with a certain Madame Sovoff, who was something of a mystery, but had left Sofia.

A month passed. Mademoiselle and Madame returned from Belgrade and were both delighted when I suggested they should go for a run in the “sixty.” I took them over the same road as I had taken Olga Steinkoff. In a week Mademoiselle became an enthusiastic motorist, and was full of inquiry into the various parts of the engine, the ignition, lubrication, and other details. One day I carefully approached the matter of this remarkable mark upon my palm. But she affected entire ignorance. I confess that I had grown rather fond of her, and I hesitated to attribute to her, or to Madame, any sinister design; the strange mark on my hand was both weird and puzzling. We drove out in the car often, and many a time I recollected pretty Olga, and her horrible fate.

Vassos, who was still at the hotel, annoyed me on account of his extreme politeness, and the manner in which he appeared to spy upon all my movements. I came across him everywhere. Inquiries concerning the reason of the ugly Greek’s presence in Bulgaria met with negative result. One thing seemed certain; he was not a prince incognito.

How I longed to go to him, show him the mark upon my hand, and demand an explanation. But my curiosity was aroused; therefore I patiently awaited developments, my revolver always ready in my hip pocket, in case of foul play.

The mysterious action of the pretty girl from Galatz also puzzled me.

At last the Cabinet of Prince Ferdinand were in complete accord with the Prime Minister Petkoff, regarding the British proposals. All had been done in secret from the party in opposition, and one day I had lunched with his Excellency the Prime Minister, at his house in the suburbs of the city.

“You may send a cipher despatch to London, if you like, Mr Martin,” he said, as we sat over our cigars. “The documents will all be signed at the Cabinet meeting at noon to-morrow. In exchange for this loan of three millions raised in London, all the contracts for quick-firing guns and ammunition go to your group of financiers.” Such was the welcome news his Excellency imparted to me, and you may imagine that I lost no time in writing out a cipher message, and sending it by the man-servant to the nearest telegraph office.

For a long time I sat with him, and then he rose, inviting me to walk with him in the Boris Gardens, as was his habit every afternoon, before going down to the sitting of the Sobranje, or Parliament.

On our way we passed Vassos, who raised his hat politely to me.

“Who’s that man?” inquired the Minister quickly, and I told him all I knew concerning the ugly hunchback.

In the pretty public garden we were strolling together in the sundown, chatting upon the situation in Macedonia and other matters, when of a sudden, a black-moustached man in a dark grey overcoat and round astrachan cap, sprang from the bushes at a lonely spot, and raising a big service revolver, fired point-blank at his Excellency.

I felt for my own weapon. Alas! It was not there! I had forgotten it!

The assassin, seeing the Minister reel and fall, turned his weapon upon me. Thereupon, in an instant I threw up my hands, crying that I was unarmed, and was an Englishman.

As I did so, he started back as though terrified. His weapon fell from his grasp, and with a spring, he disappeared again into the bushes.

All had happened in a few brief instants; for ere I could realise that a tragedy had actually occurred, I found the unfortunate Prime Minister lying lifeless at my feet. My friend had been shot through the heart!

Readers of the newspapers will recollect the tragic affair, which is no doubt still fresh in their minds.

I told the Chief of Police of Sofia of my strange experience, and showed him the mark upon my palm. Though detectives searched high and low for the hunchback Greek, for Madame Sovoff, and for the fascinating Mademoiselle, none of them were ever found.

The assassin was, nevertheless, arrested a week later, while trying to cross the frontier into Servia. I, of course, lost by an ace the great financial coup, but before execution the prisoner made a confession which revealed the existence of a terrible and widespread conspiracy, fostered by Bulgaria’s arch-enemy Turkey, to remove certain members of the Cabinet who were in favour of British influence becoming paramount.

Yes. It was a rather narrow squeak.

Quite unconsciously, I had, it seemed, become an especial favourite of the silent, watchful old Konstantinos Vassos. He had no idea that I was a “crook” or that I was a secret agent. Fearing lest I, in my innocence, should fall a victim with his Excellency – being so often his companion – he had, with the assistance of the pretty Marie Balesco, contrived to impress upon my palm the secret sign of the conspirators.

To this fact I certainly owe my life, for the assassin – a stranger to Sofia, who had been drawn by lot – would, no doubt, have shot me dead, had he not seen upon my raised hand “The Sign of the Cat’s-paw.”

Chapter Eight

Concerning a Woman’s Honour

Few people are aware of the Prince’s serious love affair.

Beyond his most intimate friend, the Parson, I believe nobody knows of it except myself.

The truth I have managed to glean only bit by bit, for he has never told me himself. It is a matter which he does not care to mention, for recollections of the woman are, no doubt, ever in his heart, and as with many of us, ever painful.

No man or woman is thoroughly bad. Adventurer that he is, the Prince has ever been true and honourable, even generous, towards a good woman. The best and staunchest of friends, yet the bitterest of enemies if occasion required, he has never, to my knowledge, played an honest woman a scurvy trick.

The little romance of real life occurred in Florence about three years ago. A good many people got hold of a garbled version of it, but none know the actual truth. He loved, and because he loved he dare not pose in his usual character as a prince, for fear that she should discover the fraud. On the contrary, he was living at a small cheap hotel on the Lung Arno as Jack Cross, and posing as a man who was very hard-up and, besides, friendless.

He had entered upon the campaign with an entirely different object – an object which had for its consummation the obtaining of some very fine jewels belonging to the wife of an American who had made a corner in cotton, and who was engaged in seeing Europe. Max Mason and the Parson were both living as strangers to each other at the Savoy, in the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, and idling daily in the Via Tornabuoni. A big coup had been planned, but instead of bringing it off, as luck would have it, his Highness had fallen hopelessly in love, and with a real royal princess, a woman whose beauty was universally proverbial.

Their love-story was full of pathos.

They were standing together in a garden one sunny afternoon, and were alone, without eavesdroppers. A moment before, he had been wondering what she would do; what she would say if she knew the ghastly truth – that he was a thief!

He had been born a gentleman – though he had no more right to the title of “prince” than I had. True, at college at Cheltenham he had been nicknamed “the prince,” because of his charming manner and elegant airs. Few of us even imagined, however, that he would, in later years, pass himself off as a German princeling and gull the public into providing him with the wherewithal to live in ease and luxury.

As he stood at the handsome woman’s side, thoughts of the past – bitter and regretful – flashed upon him. His conscience pricked him.

“Princess! – I – I – ” he stammered.

“Well?” and her sweet red lips parted in a smile.

“I – ah! yes, it’s madness. I – I know I’m a fool! I see danger in all this. I have jeopardised your good name sufficiently already. People are looking at us now – and they will surely misjudge us!”

“You are not a fool, my dear Jack,” she answered in her charming broken English. “You are what you call a goose.” And she laughed outright.

“But think! What will they say?”

“They may say just whatever pleases them,” she answered airily, glancing at the half a dozen or so smartly dressed people taking tea in the beautiful Italian garden overlooking the red roofs and cupolas of the Lily City, Florence. “They – the world – have already said hard things about me. But what do I really care?”

“You care for the Prince’s honour, as well as your own,” he ventured in a low serious voice, looking straight into her blue eyes.

Her Imperial and Royal Highness Angelica Pia Marie Therese Crown-Princess of Bosnia, and daughter of a reigning Emperor, was acknowledged to be one of the most beautiful and accomplished women in Europe. Her photographs were everywhere, and a year before, at her brilliant marriage in Vienna, all the States of Europe were represented, and her photograph had appeared in every illustrated newspaper on the two Continents. The world, ignorant of the tragedy of life behind a throne, believed the royal marriage to be a love-match, but the bitter truth remained that it was merely the union of two imperial houses, without the desire of either the man, or the woman. Princess Angelica had, at the bidding of the Emperor, sacrificed her love and her young life to a man for whom she had only contempt and loathing.

As she stood there, a tall, frail figure, in plain white embroidered muslin, her fair hair soft beneath her big black hat, her sweet delicately moulded face and her eyes of that deep childlike blue that one so seldom sees in girls after fourteen, there was upon her countenance an undisguised love-look. She was indeed the perfect incarnation of all that was graceful and feminine; little more indeed, than a girl, and yet the wife of a prince that would ere long become a king.

For a few moments the man and the woman regarded each other in silence.

He was spell-bound by her wondrous beauty like many another man had been. But she knew, within herself, that he was the only man she had ever met that she could love.

And surely they were a curiously ill-assorted pair, as far as social equality went, she the daughter of an Emperor, while he a hard-up young Englishman, tall, dark-haired, with a handsome, serious face, lived, he had explained to her, in Florence, first, because it was cheap, and secondly, because his old aunt, who had a small house out on the Fiesole Road, practically kept him. His story to her was that he had once been on the Stock Exchange, but a run of ill-luck had broken him, so he had left England, and now managed to scrape along upon a couple of hundred or so a year paid him by a firm of Italian shipping and forwarding agents, for whom he now acted as English manager. The position was an excellent “blind.” Nobody recognised him as Tremlett, alias “his Highness.”

Half aristocratic Florence – those stiff-backed Italian duchesses and countesses with their popinjay, over-dressed male appendages – envied Jack Cross his intimate acquaintance with the Crown-Princess of Bosnia, who, in winter, lived at the magnificent villa on the Viale dei Colli, overlooking the town. Towards Italian society her royal Highness turned the cold shoulder. The Emperor had no love for Italy, or the Italians, and it was at his orders that she kept herself absolutely to herself.

On rare occasions, she would give a small garden-party or dinner to a dozen or so of the most prominent men and women in the city. But it was not often that they were asked, and beyond three or four people in Florence her Highness had no friends there. But part of her school-days had been spent in the big convent up at Fiesole, therefore it had been her whim after her marriage, to purchase that beautiful villa with its gorgeous rooms, marble terraces, and lovely gardens as a winter home.

And to that splendid house the Prince, alias Jack Cross, was always a welcome guest. He went there daily, and when not there, her Highness would amuse herself by chattering to him over the telephone to his office.

Envied by the society who would not know him because he was not an aristocrat, and with the sharp eye of the Florentine middle-classes upon him, little wonder was it that whispers were soon going about regarding the Princess’s too frequent confidences with the unknown Englishman.

He was watched whenever he rang at the great iron gate before which stood an Italian sentry day and night, and he was watched when he emerged. In the clubs, in the salons, in the shops, in the cafés, the gossip soon became common, and often with a good deal of imaginary embroidery.

It was true that he often dined at the Villa Renata with her Highness, the young Countess von Wilberg, the lady-in-waiting, and the old Countess Lahovary, a Roumanian, who had been lady-in-waiting to her mother the Empress, and in whose charge she always was when outside Bosnia. The evenings they often spent in the drawing-room, Her Highness being a good pianist. And on many a night she would rise, take her shawl, and pass out into the bright Italian moonlight with the young Englishman as her escort.

It was the way they passed nearly every evening – in each other’s company. Yet neither of her companions dare suggest a cessation of the young man’s visits, fearing to arouse the Princess’s anger, and receive their dismissal.

At risk of gossip her Imperial Highness often invited him to go for runs with her in her fine forty “Fiat” to Siena, to Bologna, or to Pisa, accompanied always, of course, by the Countess Lahovary. In those days he pretended not to possess a car, though he could drive one, and on many occasions he drove the Princess along those white dusty Italian highways. She loved motoring, and so did he. Indeed, he knew quite as much regarding the engine as any mechanic.

The Crown Prince hardly, if ever, came to Florence. His father, the King, was not on the best of terms with the Italian Court, therefore he made that an excuse for his absence in Paris, where, according to report his life was not nearly as creditable as it might have been.

Such were the circumstances in which, by slow degrees, her Highness found herself admiring and loving the quiet unassuming but good-looking young Englishman at whom everybody sneered because, to save himself from penury, he had accepted the managership of a trading concern.

Prince Albert himself saw it all, and recognised the extreme peril of the situation.

Born in the purple as the woman who had entranced him had been, she held public opinion in supreme contempt, and time after time had assured Jack that even if people talked and misconstrued their platonic friendship she was entirely heedless of their wicked untruths and exaggerations.

That afternoon was another example of her recklessness in face of her enemies.

She had invited up a few people to take tea and eat strawberries in the grounds, while a military band performed under the trees near by. But quickly tiring of the obsequiousness of her guests, she had motioned Cross aside, and in a low voice said in English: “For heaven’s sake, Jack, take me away from these awful people. The women are hags, and the men tailors’ dummies. Let us walk down to the rosary.”

And he, bowing as she spoke, turned and walked at her side, well knowing that by taking her from her guests he was increasing the hatred already felt against him.

In her heart she loved this unknown hardworking young Englishman, while he was held captive beneath her beauty, spell-bound by the music of her voice, thrilled by the touch of the soft hand which he kissed each day at greeting her, and each evening when they parted.

Yes, people talked. Cross knew they did. Men had told him so. Max and the Parson had heard all sorts of wild gossip, and had sent him a letter telling him that he was an idiot. They wanted to handle the American woman’s diamonds. They were not in Florence for sentimental reasons. The report had even reached his old aunt’s ears, and she had administered to him a very severe reprimand, to which he had listened without a single word of protest, except that he denied, and denied most emphatically, that he was the Princess’s lover. He was her friend, that was all.

True, she was lonely and alone there in gay Florence, the City of Flowers. Sarajevo, her own capital she hated, she had often said. “It is pleasant, my dear Jack, to be in dear old Firenze,” she had declared only the previous evening as they had walked and talked together in the white moonlight. “But doubly pleasant to be near such a good, true friend as you are to me.”

“I do but what is my duty, Princess,” he replied in a low voice. “You have few friends here. But I am, I hope, one who is loyal and true.”

Those words of his crossed her mind as they strolled away from the music and the guests that warm May afternoon, strolled on beneath the blossoms, and amid the great profusion of flowers. She glanced again at his serious thoughtful face, and sighed within herself. What were titles, imperial birth, power, and the servility of the people, to love? Why was she not born a commoner, and allowed to taste the sweets of life, that even the most obscure little waiting-maid or seamstress were allowed. Every woman of the people could seek Love and obtain it. But to her, she reflected bitterly, it was denied – because she was not of common clay, but an Emperor’s daughter, and destined to become a reigning queen!

Together they walked along the cool cypress avenue; he tall, clean-limbed in his suit of white linen and panama. But they strolled on in silence, beyond the gaze of their enemies.