Her Majesty's Minister

How long I stood there I cannot tell. My thoughts were inexpressibly sad ones, and the discovery had utterly upset me, so that I scarcely knew what I said or did. The blow of thus finding her lifeless crushed me. The affair was mysterious, to say the least of it. Of a sudden, however, the sobs of the grief-stricken Countess aroused me to a sense of my responsibility, and taking her hand I led her from the bedside into an adjoining room.

“How has this terrible catastrophe occurred?” I demanded of her breathlessly. “Only two hours ago she was well and happy.”

“You mean when you saw her?” she said. “What was the object of your call?”

“To see her,” I responded.

“And yet you parted ill friends in Brussels?” she observed in a tone of distinct suspicion. “You had some motive in calling. What was it?”

I hesitated. I could not tell her that I suspected her daughter to be a spy.

“In order to assure her of my continued good friendship.”

She smiled, rather superciliously I thought.

“But how did the terrible affair occur?”

“We have no idea,” answered the Countess brokenly. “She was found lying upon the floor of the salon within a quarter of an hour of the departure of her visitor, who proved to be yourself. Jean, the valet-de-chambre, on entering, discovered her lying there, quite dead.”

“Astounding!” I gasped. “She was in perfect health when I left her.”

She shook her head sorrowfully, and her voice, choking with grief, declared:

“My child has been killed – murdered!”

“Murdered! Impossible!” I cried.

“But she has,” she declared. “I am absolutely positive of it!”

Chapter Six

A Piece of Plain Paper

“What medical examination has been made?” I demanded.

“None,” responded the Countess. “My poor child is dead, and no doctor can render her assistance. Medical aid is unavailing.”

“But do you mean to say that on making this discovery you did not think it necessary to send for a doctor?” I cried incredulously.

“I did not send for one – I sent for you,” was her response.

“But we must call a doctor at once,” I urged. “If you have suspicion of foul play we should surely know if there is any wound, or any injury to account for death.”

“I did not consider it necessary. No doctor can return her to me,” she wailed. “I sent for you because I believed that you would render me assistance in this terrible affair.”

“Most certainly I will,” I replied. “But in our own interests we must send for a medical man, and if it is found to be actually a case of foul play, for the police. I’ll send a line to Doctor Deane, an Englishman whom I know, who is generally called in to see anybody at the Embassy who chances to be ill. He is a good fellow, and his discretion may be relied upon.”

So saying, I scribbled a line on the back of a card, and told the man to take a cab down to the Rue du Havre, where the doctor occupied rooms over a hosier’s shop a stone’s throw from the bustling Gare St. Lazare.

A very curious mystery was evidently connected with this startling discovery, and I was anxious that my friend, Dick Deane, one of my old chums of Rugby days, should assist me in clearing it up.

The Countess de Foville, whose calmness had been so remarkable while speaking with me before we entered the death-chamber, had now given way to a flood of emotion. She sank back into her chair, and, burying her face in her hands, cried bitterly.

I tried to obtain some further information from her, but all that escaped her was:

“My poor Yolande! My poor daughter!” Finding that my endeavours to console her were futile, I went forth and made inquiries of the three frightened maidservants regarding what had occurred.

One of them, a dark-eyed Frenchwoman in frilled cap, whom I had seen on my previous visit, said, in answer to my questions:

“Jean discovered the poor mademoiselle in the petit salon about a quarter of an hour after m’sieur had left. She was lying upon her face near the window, quite rigid. He shouted; we all rushed in, and on examining her found that she was already dead.”

“But was there no sign of a struggle?” I inquired, leading the way to the room indicated.

“The room was just as m’sieur sees it now,” she answered, with a wave of her hand.

I glanced around, but as far as I could distinguish it was exactly as I had left it.

“There was no mark of violence – nothing to show that mademoiselle had been the victim of foul play?”

“Nothing, m’sieur.”

Could it have been a case of suicide? I wondered. Yolande’s words before I had taken leave of her were desponding, and almost led me to believe that she had taken her life rather than face the man Wolf who had so suddenly arrived in Paris – the man who exercised upon her some mysterious influence, the nature of which I could not guess.

“It was not more than fifteen minutes after I had left, you say?” I inquired.

“No, m’sieur, not more.”

“Mademoiselle had no other visitor?”

“No, m’sieur. Of that we are all certain.”

“And the Countess, where was she during the time I was here?”

“She was out driving. She did not return till about five minutes after we had made the terrible discovery.”

“And how did madame act?”

“She ordered us to carry poor mademoiselle to her room. Poor madame! She bore the blow with wonderful fortitude.”

That remark caused me to prick up my ears.

“I don’t quite understand,” I said. “Did she not give way to tears?”

“No, m’sieur; she shed no tears, but sat erect, motionless as a statue. She appeared unable to realise that poor mademoiselle was actually dead. At last she rang, and sent Jean to you.”

“You are absolutely certain that mademoiselle had no visit or after I left?”

“Absolutely.”

“It would, moreover, not be possible for anyone to enter or leave without your knowledge?” I suggested.

“M’sieur understands me perfectly. Mademoiselle must have fallen to the floor lifeless immediately after I had let you out. She made no sound, and had Jean not entered with her letters, which the concierge had brought, my poor young mistress might be lying there now.”

The average Frenchwoman of the lower class is always dramatic wherever a domestic calamity is concerned, and this worthy bonne was no exception. She punctuated all her remarks with references to the sacred personages of the Roman Catholic religion.

“You haven’t searched the room, I suppose?”

“No, m’sieur. Madame gave orders that nothing was to be touched.”

This reply was eminently satisfactory. I glanced again around the place, now dim in the falling twilight, and ordered her to throw back the sun-shutters.

The woman went to the window and opened them, admitting a flood of mellow light, the last crimson of the glorious afterglow. Up from the boulevard came the dull roar of the traffic, mingling with the sound of distant bells ringing the Ave Maria. The bonne – an Alsatian, from her accent – crossed herself from force of habit, and retreated towards the door.

“You may go,” I said. “I will remain here until the doctor arrives.”

“Bien, m’sieur,” answered the woman, disappearing and closing the door after her.

My object in dismissing her was to make a thorough search of the apartment, in order to discover whether any of Yolande’s private possessions were there. She had been denounced by Kaye and Anderson as a spy, and it occurred to me that I might possibly discover the truth. But she was dead. The painful fact seemed absolutely incredible.

The room was not a large one, but well furnished, with considerable taste and elegance. There was the broad, silk-covered couch, upon which Yolande had sat in the full possession of health and spirits only a couple of hours before; the skin rug, upon which her tiny foot had been stretched so coquettishly; the small table, by which she had stood supporting herself after I had made the fatal announcement that Wolf was in Paris.

As I stood there the whole of that strangely dramatic scene occurred to me. Yet she was dead – dead! She had died with her secret in her heart.

At any moment Dick Deane might arrive, but I desired to be the first to make an examination of the room, and with that object crossed to the little escritoire of inlaid olive-wood, one of those rather gimcrack pieces of furniture manufactured along the Ligurian coast for unsuspecting winter visitors. It was the only piece of incongruous furniture in the room, all the rest being genuine Louis Quatorze.

One or two letters bearing conspicuous coats-of-arms were lying there, but all were notes of a private nature from one or other of her friends. One was an invitation to Vichy from the Baronne Deland, wife of the great Paris financier; another, signed “Rose,” spoke of the gaiety of Cairo and the dances at Shepheard’s during the past winter; while a third, also in French, and bearing no signature, made an appointment to meet her in the English tea-shop in the Rue Royale on the following day at five o’clock.

That note, written upon plain paper of business appearance, had apparently been left by hand. Who, I wondered, was the person who had made that appointment? To me the writing seemed disguised, and probably, owing to the thickness of the up-strokes, had been penned by a male hand. There was a mistake in the orthography, too, the word “plaisir” being written “plasir.” This showed plainly that no Frenchman had written it.

I placed the letter in my pocket, and, encouraged by it, continued my investigations.

In the tiny letter-rack was a note which the unfortunate girl had written immediately before being struck down. It was addressed to “Baronne Maillac, Château des Grands Sablons, Seine et Marne.” The little escritoire contained four small drawers; the contents of each I carefully scrutinised. They were, however, mostly private letters of a social character – some from persons whom I knew well in Society. Suddenly, from the bottom of one of the smaller drawers, I drew forth several sheets of plain octavo paper of a pale yellow shade. There were, perhaps, half-a-dozen sheets, carefully wrapped in a sheet of plain blue foolscap. I opened them, and, holding one up to the light, examined the water-mark.

Next instant the truth was plain. That paper was the official paper used in French Government offices for written reports. How came it in her possession, if the accusation against her were untrue?

I held it in my hand, glaring at it in bewilderment. Sheet by sheet I examined it, but there was no writing upon it. Apparently it was her reserve store of paper, to be used as wanted. In the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs everything is methodical, especially the preparation of the dossiers. A certain dossier had once fallen into Kaye’s hands, and it contained sheets of exactly similar paper to that which I held in my hand.

Eagerly I continued my search, striving to discover some writing which might lead me to a knowledge of the truth, but I found nothing. I had completed an examination of the whole of the contents of the drawers, when it occurred to me that there might be some other drawer concealed there. Years ago I had been offered an escritoire of this pattern in Genoa, and the sun-tanned fellow who endeavoured to induce me to purchase it had shown behind the centre drawer in the table a cunningly contrived cavity where private correspondence might be concealed.

Therefore I drew out the drawer, sounded the interior at the back, and, finding it hollow, searched about for the spring by which it might be opened. At last I found it, and next moment drew forth a bundle of letters. They were bound with a blue ribbon that time had faded. I glanced at the superscription of the uppermost, and a thrill of sympathy went through me.

Those carefully preserved letters were my own – letters full of love and tenderness, which I had written in the days that were dead. I stood holding them in my hand, my heart full of the past.

In this narrative, my reader, it is my intention to conceal nothing, but to relate to you the whole, undisguised truth, even though this chapter of England’s secret history presents a seemingly improbable combination of strange facts and circumstances. Therefore I will not hide from you the truth that in those moments, as I drew forth one of the letters I had written long ago and read it through, sweet and tender memories crowded upon me, and in my eyes stood blinding tears. I may be forgiven for this, I think, when it is remembered how fondly I had once loved Yolande, before that fatal day when jealousy had consumed me, and I had turned my back upon her as a woman false and worthless.

Letter after letter I read, each bringing back to me sad memories of those days, when in the calm sunset hour we had wandered by the riverside hand in hand like children, each supremely content in each other’s love, fondly believing that our mad passion would last always. In all the world she had been, to me, incomparable. The centre of admiration at those brilliant balls at the Royal Palace at Brussels, the most admired of all the trim and comely girls who rode at morning in the Bois, the merriest of those who picnicked in the forest round about the ancient château, the sweetest, the most tender, and the most pure of all the women I knew – Yolande in those days had been mine. There, in my hand, I held the letter which I had written from Scotland when on leave for the shooting, asking if she loved me sufficiently to become my wife. To that letter I well remembered her reply – indeed, I knew it verbatim; a tender letter, full of honest love and straightforward admission – a letter such as only a pure and good woman could have penned. Yes, she wrote that she loved me dearly, and would be my wife.

And yet it was all of the past. All had ended.

I sighed bitterly – how bitterly, mere words cannot describe. You, reader, be you man or woman, can you fully realise how deeply I felt at that moment, how utterly desolate the world then seemed to me?

Those letters I slowly replaced in the cavity and closed it. Then, as I turned away, my eyes fell upon the photographs standing upon a small whatnot close by the escritoire. They were of persons whom I did not know – all strangers, save one. This was a cabinet portrait in a heavy silver frame, and as I took it up to scrutinise it more closely a cry involuntarily escaped my lips.

The picture was a three-quarter length representation of a black-bearded, keen-eyed man, standing with his hands thrust idly in his pockets, and smoking a cigarette. There was no mistaking those features. It was the photograph of the man the discovery of whose presence in Paris had produced such an extraordinary effect upon her – Rodolphe Wolf.

Chapter Seven

By a Thread

I was still standing by the window, holding the photograph in my hand, and gazing upon it in wonder, when Dick Deane was shown in.

“What’s the matter, old chap? Are you the man in possession here?” he asked breezily, gripping me by the hand.

He was a fair, merry-faced fellow of thirty-five, rather good-looking, smartly dressed in black frock-coat of professional cut, and wearing a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez. He had been born in Paris, and had spent the greater part of his life there, except during the years when he was at school with me before going to Edinburgh, where he took his degree. Then he had returned to Paris, taken his French degree, and had soon risen to be one of the fashionable doctors in the French capital. He was an especial favourite in the salons, and, like every good-looking doctor, a favourite with the ladies.

“I’m not in possession,” I answered. “A very serious affair has happened here, and we want your assistance.”

In an instant he became grave, for I suppose my tone showed him that I was in no humour for joking.

“What’s the nature of the affair?” he asked.

“Death,” I replied seriously. “A lady here – a friend of mine – has died mysteriously.”

“A mystery – eh?” he exclaimed, instantly interested. “Tell me about it.”

“This place,” I replied, “belongs to the Countess de Foville, a lady whom I knew well when I was at the Brussels Embassy, and it is her daughter Yolande who has been found dead in this room this evening.”

“Yolande de Foville!” he repeated, with knit brows. “She was a friend of yours once, if I mistake not?” he added, looking me straight in the face.

“Yes, Dick, she was,” I responded. “I told you of her long ago.”

“You loved her once?”

“Yes,” I answered with difficulty, “I loved her once.”

“And how did the unfortunate affair occur?” he asked, folding his arms and leaning back against a chair. “Tell me the whole story.”

“I called here this afternoon, and spent half an hour or so with her,” I said. “Then I left and returned straight to the Embassy – ”

“You left her here?” he inquired, interrupting. “Yes, in this very room. But it seems that a quarter of an hour later one of the servants entered and discovered her lying upon the door, dead.”

“Curious!” he ejaculated. “Has a medical man seen her?”

“No. The Countess sent for me as being one of her daughter’s most intimate friends, and I, in turn, sent for you.”

“Where is the poor young lady?”

“In her room at the end of the corridor,” I answered hoarsely.

“Is there any suspicion of murder?”

“Apparently none whatever. She had no visitor after I left.”

“And no suspicion of suicide?” he asked, with a sharp look. “Did you part friends?”

“Perfectly so,” I responded. “As to suicide, she had no reason, as far as anyone knows, to make an attempt upon her life.”

He gave vent to an expression which sounded to me much like a grunt of dissatisfaction.

“Now, be perfectly frank with me, Gerald,” he said, suddenly turning to me and placing his hand upon my shoulder. “You loved her very dearly once – was that not so?”

I nodded.

“I well remember it,” he went on. “I quite recollect how, on one occasion, you came over to London, and while dining together at Jimmy’s you told me of your infatuation, and showed me her photograph. Do you remember the night when you told me of your engagement to her?”

“Perfectly.”

“And as time went on you suddenly dropped her – for what reason I know not. We are pals, but I have never attempted to pry into your affairs. If she really loved you, it must have been a hard blow for her when she heard that you had forsaken her for Edith Austin.”

“You reproach me,” I said. “But you do not know the whole truth, my dear fellow. I discovered that Yolande possessed a second lover.”

He nodded slowly, with pursed lips.

“And that was the reason of your parting?”

“Yes.”

“The sole reason?”

“The sole reason.”

“And you have no suspicion that she may have committed suicide because of her love for you? Such things are not uncommon, remember, with girls of a certain temperament.”

“If she has committed suicide, it is not on my account,” I responded in a hard voice.

“I did not express that opinion,” he hastened to protest. “Before we discuss the matter further it will be best for me to see her. Death may have been due to natural causes, for aught we know.”

I stood motionless. His suggestion that my sweetheart of the old days had committed suicide because I had forsaken her was a startling one. Surely that could not be so?

“Come,” my friend said, “let us lose no time. Which is the room?”

I led him along the corridor, and opened the door of the chamber in which she was lying so cold and still. The light of the afterglow fell full upon her, tipping her auburn hair with crimson and illuminating her face with a warm radiance that gave her back the appearance of life. But it was only for a few moments. The slanting ray was lost, and the pallor of that beautiful countenance became marked against the gold of her wondrous hair.

In silence I stood at the foot of the bed watching my friend, who was now busy with his examination. He opened her eyes and closed them again, felt her heart, raised her arms, and examined her mouth, uttering no word. His serious face wore a look as though he were infinitely puzzled.

One after the other he examined the palms of her hands long and carefully, then, bending until his eyes were close to her face, he examined her lips, brow, and the whole surface of her cheeks. Upon her neck, below the left ear, was a mark to which he returned time after time, as though not satisfied as to its cause. Upon her lower lip, too, was a slight yellow discoloration, which he examined several times, comparing it with the mark upon the neck. He was unable to account for either.

“Curious!” he ejaculated. “Very curious indeed!”

“What is curious?” I inquired eagerly.

“Those marks,” he answered, indicating them with his finger. “They are very puzzling. I’ve never seen such marks before.”

“Do they point to foul play?” I inquired, feeling suspicious that she had by some mysterious means fallen the victim of an assassin.

“Well, no,” he responded, after some hesitation; “that is not my opinion.”

“Then what is your opinion?”

“At present I have none. I can have none until I make a thorough examination. There are certainly no outward marks of violence.”

“We need not inform the police, I suppose?”

“Not at present,” he replied, his eyes still fixed upon the blanched face of the woman who had once been all the world to me.

I raised her dead hand, and upon it imprinted a last fervent kiss. It was cold and clammy to my lips. In that hour all my old love for her had returned, and my heart had become filled with an intense bitterness and desolation. I had thought that all my love for her was dead, and that Edith Austin, the calm, sweet woman far away in an English county, who wrote to me daily from her quiet home deep in the woodlands, had taken her place. But our meeting and its tragic sequel had, I admit, aroused within me a deep sympathy, which had, within an hour, developed into that great and tender love of old. With men this return to the old love is of no infrequent occurrence, but with women it seldom happens. Perhaps this is because man is more fickle and more easily influenced by woman’s voice, woman’s glances, and woman’s tears.

The reader will probably accuse me of injustice and of fickleness of heart. Well, I cannot deny it; indeed, I seek to deny nothing in this narrative of strange facts and diplomatic wiles, but would only ask of those who read to withhold their verdict until they have ascertained the truth yet to be revealed, and have read to the conclusion, this strange chapter of the secret history of a nation.

My friend the doctor was holding one hand, while I imprinted a last kiss upon the other. A lump was in my throat, my eyes were filled with tears, my thoughts were all of the past, my anguish of heart unspeakable. That small chill hand with the cold, glittering ring – one that I had given her in Brussels long ago – seemed to be the only reality in all that hideous phantasmagoria of events.

“Do not despair,” murmured the kind voice of my old friend, standing opposite me on the other side of the bed. “You loved her once, but it is all over – surely it is!”

“No, Dick!” I answered brokenly. “I thought I did not love her. I have held her from me these three years – until now.”

“Ah!” he sighed, “I understand. Man always longs for the unattainable.”

“Yes, always,” I responded.

In that moment the memory of the day when we had parted arose gaunt and ghost-like. I had wronged her; I felt confident that I had. All came back to me now – that cruel, scandalous denunciation I had uttered in the heat of my mad jealousy – the false tale which had struck her dumb by its circumstantial accuracy. Ah! how bitter it all was, now that punishment was upon me! I remembered how, in the hour of my worldly triumph and of her highest hope – at the very moment when she had spoken words of greater affection to me than she had ever used before – I had made the charge against her, and she had fallen back with her young heart crushed within her. My ring was there, still glittering mockingly upon her dead hand. By the unfounded charge I had made against her I had sinned. My sin at that moment arose from its grave, and barred the way for ever to all hope – to all happiness.

The summer twilight was stealing on apace, and in the silence of the room there sounded the roar of life from the boulevard below. Men were crying Le Soir with strident voices, and all Paris was on its way to dine, and afterwards to enjoy itself in idleness upon the terraces of the cafés or at those al-fresco variety performances in the Avenue des Champs Elysées, where the entrance fee includes a consommation.