"As her cousin, the Prince von Gramberg."
"The Prince. You still hold to that farce?"
"Be good enough to explain what you mean."
"Simply that you are no more the Prince von Gramberg than I am, but Heinrich Fischer, an ex-play-actor. Do you dare to deny that?"
"Certainly I do."
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Then who are you?"
"For the present, and for the purposes of this interview, I am the Prince von Gramberg, and you will be good enough so to regard me."
"Swashbuckling talk is of no use to frighten me, and I have no time for any further antics of yours. You deceived me for a time, I admit, but I know you now, and, unless you leave my house, I will call my servants, and have you expelled from it and handed over to the police for an impostor."
"No, Baron Heckscher, you will not," I answered firmly, shaking my head.
"I know the whole of this inner plot of yours, and can expose it, and will, too, as I told you last night."
"Possibly an effective weapon in a stage-play," he sneered. "But I have no time for folly of this sort."
He crossed the room to the bell, and stretched out his hand as if to ring it.
"I know the scheme to marry my cousin to a man already married, and so to betray and ruin her. And, mark me, if you attempt to send me away, I will go straight to Berlin and denounce the whole of your foul treachery against that girl."
"You speak a fool"s tale!" he cried angrily, though he withdrew his hand from the bell.
"Maybe, but even a fool"s tale, as you call it, can be sifted. Your scheme now seems on the point of succeeding. The gist of it is that when my cousin Minna is not forthcoming--through your own machinations, mark you--the cry should be raised for the Duke Marx. I have known that throughout, and I too have had my plans. You will find it difficult to play your game of chess without the King."
I enjoyed the start of surprise my words caused. It was now my turn to smile with an air of confidence.
"What do you mean by that?" he asked, frowning.
"All that is in your thoughts, and more," said I significantly.
"What do you mean?" he repeated, coming toward me and looking searchingly at me.
"I mean," I began very earnestly, as if about to tell him; but changed my tone, and asked, "Where is the Countess Minna?"
He took his eyes off my face, and glanced quickly from side to side, as some men will in moments of swift, searching thought.
"You have not dared----" he began, and paused.
"You have dared to seize the Queen," said I quickly. "Why should I not dare to seize your King? This is no child"s game we are playing."
He started again, pursed his lips, and frowned. I had beaten him. I knew it.
"It is checkmate," said I quietly. "And you may as well admit it. But my game is a cleaner one than yours. You have thought to ruin the Countess Minna either by a bigamous marriage or by a fate so foul that none but a soulless, intriguing traitor would have conceived it. I mean your King no harm; but I swear by every G.o.d that man has ever set up for a fetich that if so much as a hair of the pure girl"s head is harmed I will visit it a thousandfold on my hostage. Now, will you tell me where is the Countess Minna?"
I had him now fast in my clutches, and turn which way he would there was no escape. To do him justice, so soon as his first dismay had pa.s.sed his face wore an impa.s.sive, expressionless look that told me little. But I could read his other actions.
He had been going to his colleagues to propose that the agitation to bring the Duke Marx forward should be set on foot at once; and this move of mine had beaten him absolutely. Once or twice he let out of his eyes a glance of malice that told me what he would have done had he dared; but I had drawn his fangs, and for the time he was powerless to harm.
While I sat thus watching him and enjoying my triumph, a knock came to the door and a servant entered to say that a messenger had come for me, and wished to see me urgently.
"I will return in a moment," I said as I went out.
The man had brought me a telegram. I tore it open and found it was from von Krugen.
"Safe so far."
I dismissed the man and returned to the baron with a feeling of even greater exultation and confidence than before. I was like a man drowning who, at the last moment, had pulled himself into safety.
"Well, baron?" I asked as I re-entered the room. "Have you decided to answer my question?"
He was writing hurriedly, and glanced up a moment without speaking, then resumed, finished the letter, rang for a servant, and ordered it to be delivered at once.
"That is your answer. It is a letter to excuse my presence for half an hour. It will give time for our conference. Now, what is your motive, and what are your terms?"
As he put the question he wheeled his chair round so that he could face me as he waited for the answer.
CHAPTER XXI
NEWS OF MINNA
I did not reply to Baron Heckscher for a few seconds. It was obvious, of course, that matters had taken a new turn, and I sat thinking how to use the situation to Minna"s best advantage.
"Now that you are reasonable, we will go back a little way," I said deliberately. "What do you mean by asking me my motive?"
"Presumably you have some strong motive and some object to gain. Though for the purposes of this interview, as you say, I am willing to call you the Prince von Gramberg, or anything else you like, I have proofs that you are nothing of the kind. Apparently you are an adventurer. Certainly you have been Heinrich Fischer, an actor at Frankfort, and that within a year or two. You were there for several years, and have been identified beyond question. What you were before then I neither know nor care. You have played the part of the Prince von Gramberg, and played it with plenty of dash, spirit, skill, and shrewdness. But men don"t do these things for no object. You have run an hourly risk of detection as an impostor, and have certainly rendered yourself liable to heavy imprisonment; indeed, proceedings are already in course for your prosecution. Why, then, have you acted in this way?"
"Those are my private affairs," I answered after a pause; "and until you can disprove my a.s.sertion I remain the Prince von Gramberg, if you please."
"As you will, your Highness." He gave the t.i.tle with excellent irony. "I may tell you that when the information reached us it was at the request of the countess"s only surviving relative that she was removed from your custody."
"You mean the Baroness Gratz. I had already suspected her treachery; but you will save much trouble by keeping to the plain truth. Your object was not to get the countess out of my custody, but into your own, so that while this plot to place her on the throne had apparently been engineered in her interest it was the Ostenburg heir who should benefit.
It was your work to put forward that scoundrel von Nauheim as her husband, so that when she had been ruined by him she would be impossible as a claimant for the throne. We may as well be frank."
He made a movement of anger at this, and then asked sharply:
"If what you say of him be true, how did you know it?"
"We may pa.s.s that by," I replied, with a wave of the hand; "sufficient that I did know him. To save her from such a fate has been my motive."