The Great Court Scandal

“Cannot you speak here?” she inquired.

“Not in this room, among these people. Are there not any smaller salons upstairs? they would be empty at this hour. If I recollect aright, there is a small writing-room at the top of the stairs yonder. I would beg of your Highness to allow me to speak to you there.”

“But what is this secret you have to tell me?” she inquired curiously. “It surely cannot be of such a nature that you may not explain it in an undertone here?”

“I must not be seen with you, Princess,” he exclaimed quickly. “I run great risk in speaking with you here in public. I will explain all if you will only allow me to accompany you to that room.”

She hesitated. So ingenious had been the plots formed against her that she had now grown suspicious of every one. Yet this man was after all a mystery, and mystery always attracted her, as it always attracts both women and men equally.

So with some reluctance she turned upon her heel and ascended the stairs, he following her at a respectful distance.

Their previous meeting had indeed been a strange one.

Fond of horses from her girlhood, she had in Treysa made a point of driving daily in her high English dogcart, sometimes a single cob, and sometimes tandem. She was an excellent whip, one of the best in all Germany, and had even driven her husband’s coach on many occasions. On the summer’s afternoon in question, however, she was driving a cob in one of the main thoroughfares of Treysa, when of a sudden a motor car had darted past, and the animal, taking fright, had rushed away into the line of smart carriages approaching on the opposite side of the road.

She saw her peril, but was helpless. The groom sprang out, but so hurriedly that he fell upon his head, severely injuring himself; while at that moment, when within an ace of disaster, a man in a grey flannel suit sprang out from nowhere and seized the bridle, without, however, at once stopping the horse, which reared, and turning, pinned the stranger against a tree with the end of one of the shafts.

In an instant a dozen men, recognising who was driving, were upon the animal, and held it; but the next moment she saw that the man who had saved her had fallen terribly injured, the shaft having penetrated his chest, and he was lying unconscious.

Descending, she gazed upon the white face, from the mouth of which blood was oozing; and having given directions for his immediate conveyance to the hospital and for report to be made to her as soon as possible, she returned to the palace in a cab, and telephoned herself to the Court surgeon, commanding him to do all in his power to aid the sufferer.

Next day she asked permission of the surgeon that she might see the patient, to thank him and express her sympathy. But over the telephone came back the reply that the patient was not yet fit to see any one, and, moreover, had expressed a desire that nobody should come near him until he had quite recovered.

In the fortnight that went by she inquired after him time after time, but all that she was able to gather was that his name was Guy Bourne, and that he was an English banker’s clerk from London, spending his summer holiday in Treysa. She sent him beautiful flowers from the royal hot-houses, and in reply received his thanks for her anxious inquiries. He told the doctor that he hoped the Princess would not visit him until he had quite recovered. And this wish of his she had of course respected. His gallant action had, without a doubt, saved her from a very serious accident, or she might even have lost her life.

Gradually he recovered from his injuries, which were so severe that for several days his life was despaired of, and then when convalescent a curious thing happened.

He one day got up, and without a word of thanks or farewell to doctors, staff, or to the Crown Princess herself, he went out, and from that moment all trace had been lost of him.

Her Highness, when she heard of this, was amazed. It seemed to her as though for some unexplained reason he had no wish to receive her thanks; or else he was intent on concealing his real identity with some mysterious motive or other.

She had given orders for inquiry to be made as to who the gallant Englishman was; but although the secret agents of the Government had made inquiry in London, their efforts had been futile.

It happened over two years ago. The accident had slipped from her memory, though more than once she had wondered who might be the man who had risked his life to save hers, and had then escaped from Treysa rather than be presented to her.

And now at the moment when she was in sore need of a friend he had suddenly recognised her, and come forward to reveal himself!

Naturally she had not recognised in the dark, rather handsome face of the well-dressed Englishman the white, bloodless countenance of the insensible man with a brass-tipped cart-shaft through his chest. And he wanted to speak to her in secret? What had he, a perfect stranger, to tell her?

The small writing-room at the top of the stairs was fortunately empty, and a moment later he followed her into it, and closed the door.

Little Ignatia looked with big, wondering eyes at the stranger. The Princess seated herself in a chair, and invited the Englishman to take one.

“Princess,” he said in a refined voice, “I desire most humbly to apologise for making myself known to you, but it is unfortunately necessary.”

“Unfortunately?” she echoed. “Why unfortunately, Mr Bourne, when you risked your life for mine? At that moment you only saw a woman in grave peril; you were not aware of my station.”

“That is perfectly true,” he said quietly. “When they told me at the hospital who you were, and when you sent me those lovely flowers and fruit, I was filled with – well, with shame.”

“Why with shame?” she asked. “You surely had no need to be ashamed of your action? On the contrary, the King’s intention was to decorate you on account of your brave action, and had already given orders for a letter to be sent to your own King in London, asking his Majesty to allow you as a British subject to receive and wear the insignia of the Order of the Crown and Sword.”

“And I escaped from Treysa just in time,” he laughed. Then he added, “To tell you the truth, Princess, it is very fortunate that I left before – well, before you could see me, and before his Majesty could confer the decoration.”

“But why?” she asked. “I must confess that your action in escaping as you did entirely mystified me.”

“You were annoyed that I was ungentlemanly enough to run away without thanking your Highness for all your solicitude on my behalf, and for sending the surgeon of the royal household to attend to my injuries. But, believe me, I am most deeply and sincerely grateful. It was not ingratitude which caused me to leave Treysa in secret as I did, but my flight was necessary.”

“Necessary? I don’t understand you.”

“Well, I had a motive in leaving without telling any one.”

“Ah, a private motive!” she said – “something concerning your own private affairs, I suppose?”

He nodded in the affirmative. How could he tell her the truth?

His disinclination to explain the reason puzzled her sorely. That he was a gallant man who had saved a woman without thought of praise or of reward was proved beyond doubt, yet there was something curiously mysterious about him which attracted her. Other men would have at least been proud to receive the thanks and decoration of a reigning sovereign, while he had utterly ignored them. Was he an anarchist?

“Princess,” he said at last, rising from his chair and flushing slightly, “the reason I have sought you to-day is not because of the past, but is on account of the present.”

“The present! why?”

“I – I hardly know what to say, Princess,” he said confusedly. “Two years ago I fled from you because you should not know the truth – because I was in fear. And now Fate brings me again in your path in a manner which condemns me.”

“Mr Bourne, why don’t you speak more plainly? These enigmas I really cannot understand. You saved my life, or at least saved me from a very serious accident, and yet you escaped before I could thank you personally. To-day you have met me, and you tell me that you escaped because you feared to meet me.”

“It is the truth, your Highness. I feared to meet you,” he said, “and, believe me, I should not have sought you to-day were it not of most urgent necessity.”

“But why did you fear to meet me?”

“I did not wish you to discover what I really am,” he said, his face flushing with shame.

“Are you so very timid?” she asked with a light laugh.

But in an instant she grew serious. She saw that she had approached some sore subject, and regretted. The Englishman was a strange person, to say the least, she thought.

“I have nothing to say in self-defence, Princess,” he said very simply. “The trammels of our narrow world are so hypocritical, our laws so farcical and full of incongruities, and our civilisation so fraught with the snortings of Mother Grundy, that I can only tell you the truth and offer no defence. I know from the newspapers of your present perilous position, and of what is said against you. If you will permit me to say so, you have all my sympathy.” And he paused and looked straight into her face, while little Ignatia gazed at him in wonder.

“I wonder if your Highness will forgive me if I tell you the truth?” he went on, as though speaking to himself.

“Forgive you? Why, of course,” she laughed. “What is there to forgive?”

“Very much, Princess,” he said gravely. “I – I’m ashamed to stand here before you and confess; yet I beg of you to forgive me, and to accept my declaration that the fault is not entirely my own.”

“The fault of what?” she inquired, not understanding him.

“I will speak plainly, because I know that your good nature and your self-avowed indebtedness to me – little as that indebtedness is – will not allow you to betray me,” he said in a low, earnest tone. “You will recollect that on your Highness’s arrival at the Gare de l’Est your dressing-bag was stolen, and within it were your jewels – your most precious possession at this critical moment of your life?”

“Yes,” she said in a hard voice of surprise, her brows contracting, for she was not yet satisfied as to the stranger’s bona fides. “My bag was stolen.”

“Princess,” he continued, “let me, in all humility, speak the truth. The reason of my escape from Treysa was because your police held a photograph of me, and I feared that I might be identified. I am a thief – one of an international gang. And – and I pray you to forgive me, and to preserve my secret,” he faltered, his cheeks again colouring. “Your jewels are intact, and in my possession. You can now realise quite plainly why – why I escaped from Treysa!”

She held her breath, staring at him utterly stupefied. This man who had saved her, and so nearly lost his own life in the attempt, was a thief!

Chapter Sixteen

Light Fingers

Her Highness was face to face with one of those clever international criminals whose coups were so constantly being reported in the Continental press.

She looked straight into his countenance, a long, intense look, half of reproach, half of surprise, and then, in a firm voice, said, —

“Mr Bourne, I owe you a very great debt. To-day I will endeavour to repay it. Your secret, and the secret of the theft, shall remain mine.”

“And you will give no information to the police?” he exclaimed quickly – “you promise that?”

“I promise,” she said. “I admire you for your frankness. But, tell me – it was not you who took my bag at the station?”

“No. But it was one of us,” he explained. “When the bag containing the jewels was opened I found, very fortunately, several letters addressed to you – letters which you evidently brought with you from Treysa. Then I knew that the jewels were yours, and determined, if I could find you, to restore them to you with our apologies.”

“Why?” she asked. “You surely do not get possession of jewels of that value every day?”

“No, Princess. But the reason is, that although my companions are thieves, they are not entirely devoid of the respect due to a woman. They have read in the newspapers of your domestic unhappiness, and of your flight with the little Princess, and have decided that to rob a defenceless woman, as you are at this moment, is a cowardly act. Though we are thieves, we still have left some vestige of chivalry.”

“And your intention is really to restore them to me?” she remarked, much puzzled at this unexpected turn of fortune.

“Yes, had I not found those letters among them, I quite admit that, by this time, the stones would have been in Amsterdam and re-cut out of all recognition,” he said, rather shamefacedly. Then, taking from his pocket the three letters addressed to her – letters which she had carried away from Treysa with her as souvenirs – he handed them to her, saying, —

“I beg of you to accept these back again. They are better in your Imperial Highness’s hands than my own.”

Her countenance went a trifle pale as she took them, and a sudden serious thought flashed through her mind.

“Your companions have, I presume, read what is contained in these?”

“No, Princess; they have not. I read them, and seeing to whom they were addressed, at once took possession of them. I only showed my companions the addresses.”

She breathed more freely.

“Then, Mr Bourne, I am still more deeply in your debt,” she declared; “you realised that those letters contained a woman’s secret, and you withheld it from the others. How can I sufficiently thank you?”

“By forgiving me,” he said. “Remember, I am a thief, and if you wished you could call the hotel manager and have me arrested.”

“I could hardly treat in that way a man who has acted so nobly and gallantly as you have,” she remarked, with perfect frankness. “If those letters had fallen into other hands they might, have found their way back to the Court, and to the King.”

“I understand perfectly,” he said, in a low voice. “I saw by the dates, and gathered from the tenor in which they were written that they concealed some hidden romance. To expose what was written there would have surely been a most cowardly act – meaner even than stealing a helpless, ill-judged woman’s jewels. No, Princess,” he went on; “I beg that although I stand before you a thief, to whom the inside of a gaol is no new experience, a man who lives by his wits and his agility and ingenuity in committing theft, you will not entirely condemn me. I still, I hope, retain a sense of honour.”

“You speak like a gentleman,” she said. “Who were your parents?”

“My father, Princess, was a landed proprietor in Norfolk. After college I went to Sandhurst, and then entered the British Army; but gambling proved my ruin, and I was dismissed in disgrace for the forgery of a bill in the name of a brother officer. As a consequence, my father left me nothing, as I was a second son; and for years I drifted about England, an actor in a small travelling company; but gradually I fell lower and lower, until one day in London I met a well-known card-sharper, who took me as his partner, and together we lived well in the elegant rooms to which we inveigled men and there cheated them. The inevitable came at last – arrest and imprisonment. I got three years, and after serving it, came abroad and joined Roddy Redmayne’s gang, with whom I am at present connected.”

The career of the man before her was certainly a strangely adventurous one. He had not told her one tithe of the remarkable romance of his life. He had been a gentleman, and though now a jewel thief, he still adhered to the traditions of his family whenever a woman was concerned. He was acute, ingenious beyond degree, and a man of endless resource, yet he scorned to rob a woman who was poor.

The Princess Claire, a quick reader of character, saw in him a man who was a criminal, not by choice, but by force of circumstance. He was now still suffering from that false step he had taken in imitating his brother officer’s signature and raising money upon the bill. However she might view his actions, the truth remained that he had saved her from a terrible accident.

“Yours has been an unfortunate career, Mr Bourne,” she remarked. “Can you not abandon this very perilous profession of yours? Is there no way by which you can leave your companions and lead an honest life?”

When she spoke she made others feel how completely the purely natural and the purely ideal can blend into each other, yet she was a woman breathing thoughtful breath, walking in all her natural loveliness with a heart as frail-strung, as passion-touched, as ever fluttered in a female bosom.

“Ah, Princess!” he cried earnestly, “I beg of you not to reproach me; willingly I would leave it all. I would welcome work and an honest life; but, alas! nowadays it is too late. Besides, who would take me in any position of trust, with my black record behind me? Nobody.” And he shook his head. “In books one reads of reformed thieves, but there are none in real life. A thief, when once a thief, must remain so till the end of his days – of liberty.”

“But is it not a great sacrifice to your companions to give up my jewellery?” she asked in a soft, very kindly voice. “They, of course, recognise its great value?”

“Yes,” he smiled. “Roddy, our chief, is a good judge of stones – as good, probably, as the experts at Spink’s or Streeter’s. One has to be able to tell good stuff from rubbish when one deals in diamonds, as we do. Such a quantity of fake is worn now, and, as you may imagine, we don’t care to risk stealing paste.”

“But how cleverly my bag was taken!” she said. “Who took it? He was an elderly man.”

“Roddy Redmayne,” was Bourne’s reply. “The man who, if your Highness will consent to meet him, will hand it back to you intact.”

“You knew, I suppose, that it contained jewels?”

“We knew that it contained something of value. Roddy was advised of it by telegraph from Lucerne.”

“From Lucerne? Then one of your companions was there?”

“Yes, at your hotel. An attempt was made to get it while you were on the platform awaiting the train for Paris, but you kept too close a watch. Therefore, Roddy received a telegram to meet you upon your arrival in Paris, and he met you.”

What he told her surprised her. She had been quite ignorant of any thief making an attempt to steal the bag at Lucerne, and she now saw how cleverly she had been watched and met.

“And when am I to meet Mr Redmayne?” she asked.

“At any place and hour your Imperial Highness will appoint,” was his reply. “But, of course, I need not add that you will first give your pledge of absolute secrecy – that you will say nothing to the police of the way your jewels have been returned to you.”

“I have already given my promise. Mr Redmayne may rely upon my silence. Where shall we fix the meeting? Here?”

“No, no,” he laughed – “not in the hotel. There is an agent of police always about the hall. Indeed, I run great risk of being recognised, for I fear that the fact of your having reported your loss to the police at the station has set Monsieur Hamard and his friends to watch for us. You see, they unfortunately possess our photographs. No. It must be outside – say at some small, quiet café at ten o’clock to-night, if it will not disturb your Highness too much.”

“Disturb me?” she laughed. “I ought to be only too thankful to you both for restoring my jewels to me.”

“And we, on our part, are heartily ashamed of having stolen them from you. Well, let us say at the Café Vachette, a little place on the left-hand side of the Rue de Seine. You cross the Pont des Arts, and find it immediately; or better, take a cab. Remember, the Vachette, in the Rue de Seine, at ten o’clock. You will find us both sitting at one of the little tables outside, and perhaps your Highness will wear a thick veil, for a pretty woman in that quarter is so quickly noticed.”

She smiled at his final words, but promised to carry out his directions. Surely it was a situation unheard-of – an escaped princess making a rendezvous with two expert thieves in order to receive back her own property.

“Then we shall be there awaiting you,” he said. “And now I fear that I’ve kept you far too long, Princess. Allow me to take my leave.”

She gave him her hand, and thanked him warmly, saying —

“Though your profession is a dishonourable one, Mr Bourne, you have, nevertheless, proved to me that you are at heart still a gentleman.”

“I am gratified that your Imperial Highness should think so,” he replied, and bowing, withdrew, and stepped out of the hotel by the restaurant entrance at the rear. He knew that the agent of police was idling in the hall that led out into the Rue St. Lazare, and he had no desire to run any further risk of detection, especially while that bag with its precious contents remained in the shabby upstairs room in the Rue Lafayette.

Her Highness took little Ignatia and drove in a cab along the Avenue des Champs Elysées, almost unable to realise the amazing truth of what her mysterious rescuer of two years ago had revealed to her. She now saw plainly the reason he had left Treysa in secret. He was wanted by the police, and feared that they would recognise him by the photograph sent from the Prefecture in Paris. And now, on a second occasion, he was serving her against his own interests, and without any thought of reward!

With little Ignatia prattling at her side, she drove along, her mind filled with that strange interview and the curious appointment that she had made for that evening.

Later that day, after dining in the restaurant, she put Ignatia to bed and sat with her till nine o’clock, when, leaving her asleep, she put on a jacket, hat, and thick veil – the one she had worn when she escaped from the palace – and locking the door, went out.

In the Rue St. Lazare she entered a cab and drove across the Pont des Arts, alighting at the corner of the Rue de Seine, that long, straight thoroughfare that leads up to the Arcade of the Luxembourg, and walked along on the left-hand side in search of the Café Vachette.

At that hour the street was almost deserted, for the night was chilly, with a boisterous wind, and the small tables outside the several uninviting cafés and brasseries were mostly deserted. Suddenly, however, as she approached a dingy little place where four tables stood out upon the pavement, two on either side of the doorway, a man’s figure rose, and with hat in hand, came forward to meet her.

She saw that it was Bourne, and with scarcely a word, allowed herself to be conducted to the table where an elderly, grey-haired man had risen to meet her.

“This is Mr Redmayne,” explained Bourne, “if I may be permitted to present him to you.”

The Princess smiled behind her veil, and extended her hand. She recognised him in an instant as the gallant old gentleman in the bright red cravat, who, on pretence of assisting her to alight, had made off with her bag.

She, an Imperial Archduchess, seated herself there between the pair of thieves.

Chapter Seventeen

In which “The Mute” is Revealed

When, in order to save appearances, Bourne had ordered her a bock, Roddy Redmayne bent to her, and in a low whisper said, —

“I beg, Princess, that you will first accept my most humble apologies for what I did the other day. As to your Highness’s secrecy, I place myself entirely in your hands.”

“I have already forgiven both Mr Bourne and yourself,” was her quiet answer, lifting her veil and sipping the bock, in order that her hidden face should not puzzle the waiter too much. “Your friend has told me that, finding certain letters in the bag, you discovered that it belonged to me.”

“Exactly, and we were all filled with regret,” said the old thief. “We have heard from the newspapers of your flight from Treysa, owing to your domestic unhappiness, and we decided that it would be a coward’s action to take a woman’s jewels in such circumstances. Therefore we resolved to try and discover you and to hand them back intact.”

“I am very grateful,” was her reply. “But is it not a considerable sacrifice on your part? Had you disposed of them you would surely have obtained a good round sum?”

The man smiled.

“We will not speak of sacrifice, your Highness,” the old fellow said. “If you forgive us and accept back your property, it is all that we ask. I am ashamed, and yet at the same time gratified, that you, an Imperial Princess, should offer me your hand, knowing who and what I am.”