The Wiles of the Wicked

“We must arrest them,” said Hickman briefly. “Such a pair of villains must, not be allowed to go scot free.”

“And to you,” exclaimed Mabel, turning to me with the bright light of unshed tears in her fine eyes, “to your patience and careful watchfulness is due the unravelling of this extraordinary mystery, which might otherwise have remained an enigma always.”

She took my hand. I saw in her beautiful countenance that love-look as of old. But I bent over her bejewelled fingers as a courtier would over those of a princess of an Imperial House, my heart too full for words.

The madwoman railed at us, shrieking and hurling imprecations interspersed with all sorts of rambling sentences, while Edna held her tightly by the wrist and strove to calm her.

The scene was a hideous one. Neither of us could bear it longer, therefore we withdrew, leaving Hickman with Edna and her charge.

The chronicle of this strange chapter of my life’s history is finished.

There is no more to tell, save perhaps to explain – as Sir Henry Blundell, the specialist on mental diseases, explained to me in his consulting-room in Harley Street – the cause of my six lost years. Such an experience, it seemed, was not unknown in medical science, and he made it clear to me that the blow I had accidentally dealt myself in Hickman’s rooms had so altered the balance of my brain – already affected by the cab accident during my blindness – that my intellect stopped like a watch. I lost all knowledge of the past, and from the moment of recovering consciousness commenced an entirely new life. This extended through the long period, nearly six years, until I had struck my head against the marble statue in the drawing-room at Denbury, when my brain, restored again to its normal capacity, lost all impression of events which had occurred during its abnormal state. This, of course, accounted for my extraordinary unconscious life, my inverted tastes, and my parting with the woman I loved so fondly.

And what of her, you ask?

She had, during that period of my unconsciousness, become satiated by the gaiety of the brilliant Court at Vienna, and the tragic death of her devoted mother, the Empress, at the hand of Luccheni, the anarchist, caused her to prefer a life quiet, free, and untrammelled. Knowing her royal birth, however, I dared not ask her hand in marriage, and it was not until many weeks later, after the woman Natalie Joliot had been confined as a homicidal patient in Woking Asylum, Edna Grainger had, owing to Mabel’s clemency, escaped to the continent, the ex-Minister Roesch and his companion Gechkuloff had been extradited from Bow Street to Sofia to take their trial for their gigantic defalcations upon the State Treasury, and I had sold Denbury and made an end of the financial business which stood in my name, that she complained to me of her loneliness.

With eager, trembling heart I took her white hand in mine and put to her the question. I knew it was presumptuous, almost unheard of. But, reader, you may readily imagine what overwhelming joy arose within me when she threw her arms passionately about my neck, and as answer raised her face and gave me a warm fond kiss.

Our life to-day is very even, very uneventful, idyllically happy. Under her second title of Countess of Klagenfurt we were soon afterwards married. We spent part of our time at Heaton, with which she is charmed now that it is swept and garnished, and the remainder at her own mediaeval Castle of Mohaes, one of the great ancestral estates of the Hapsbourg-Lorraines in the Tyrol, not far from Innsbruck, which was presented to her as a marriage gift by the Emperor.

Her Imperial Highness the Archduchess Marie-Elizabeth-Mabel no longer exists. At the outset I made it quite plain that I had not written here my true name. I did so at my wife’s suggestion, for although my real name is probably known to most of those who read this record of my strange adventures, yet the world is still in ignorance of Mabel’s actual social position. She said that she had no desire to be pointed at as a Princess who married a commoner, and I have, of course, respected her wish.

She sacrificed all for my sake, and peace and joy are ours at last. With a fond and devoted love she gave up everything in order to become my wife, and as such has renounced for ever that world in which she was born – the world of Purple and Fine Linen.

The End.