"There was an understanding."
"Impossible!"
"Your Highness, the man who wishes to probe a mystery to its root never uses the word "impossible". But I will say this for young Mr Dimmock. I think he repented, and I think that it was because he repented that he-- er--died so suddenly, and that his body was spirited away."
"Why has no one told me these things before?" Aribert exclaimed.
"Princes seldom hear the truth," she said.
He was astonished at her coolness, her firmness of a.s.sertion, her air of complete acquaintance with the world.
"Miss Racksole," he said, "if you will permit me to say it, I have never in my life met a woman like you. May I rely on your sympathy--your support?"
"My support, Prince? But how?"
"I do not know," he replied. "But you could help me if you would. A woman, when she has brain, always has more brain than a man."
"Ah!" she said ruefully, "I have no brains, but I do believe I could help you."
What prompted her to make that a.s.sertion she could not have explained, even to herself. But she made it, and she had a suspicion--a prescience- -that it would be justified, though by what means, through what good fortune, was still a mystery to her.
"Go to Berlin," she said. "I see that you must do that; you have no alternative. As for the rest, we shall see. Something will occur. I shall be here. My father will be here. You must count us as your friends."
He kissed her hand when he left, and afterwards, when she was alone, she kissed the spot his lips had touched again and again. Now, thinking the matter out in the calmness of solitude, all seemed strange, unreal, uncertain to her. Were conspiracies actually possible nowadays? Did queer things actually happen in Europe? And did they actually happen in London hotels? She dined with her father that night.
"I hear Prince Aribert has left," said Theodore Racksole.
"Yes," she a.s.sented. She said not a word about their interview.
Chapter Eight ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE OF THE BARONESS
ON the following morning, just before lunch, a lady, accompanied by a maid and a considerable quant.i.ty of luggage, came to the Grand Babylon Hotel. She was a plump, little old lady, with white hair and an old- fashioned bonnet, and she had a quaint, simple smile of surprise at everything in general.
Nevertheless, she gave the impression of belonging to some aristocracy, though not the English aristocracy. Her tone to her maid, whom she addressed in broken English--the girl being apparently English--was distinctly insolent, with the calm, unconscious insolence peculiar to a certain type of Continental n.o.bility. The name on the lady"s card ran thus: "Baroness Zerlinski". She desired rooms on the third floor. It happened that Nella was in the bureau.
"On the third floor, madam?" questioned Nella, in her best clerkly manner.
"I did say on de tird floor," said the plump little old lady.
"We have accommodation on the second floor."
"I wish to be high up, out of de dust and in de light," explained the Baroness.
"We have no suites on the third floor, madam."
"Never mind, no mattaire! Have you not two rooms that communicate?"
Nella consulted her books, rather awkwardly.
"Numbers 122 and 123 communicate."
"Or is it 121 and 122?" the little old lady remarked quickly, and then bit her lip.
"I beg your pardon. I should have said 121 and 122."
At the moment Nella regarded the Baroness"s correction of her figures as a curious chance, but afterwards, when the Baroness had ascended in the lift, the thing struck her as somewhat strange. Perhaps the Baroness Zerlinski had stayed at the hotel before. For the sake of convenience an index of visitors to the hotel was kept and the index extended back for thirty years. Nella examined it, but it did not contain the name of Zerlinski. Then it was that Nella began to imagine, what had swiftly crossed her mind when first the Baroness presented herself at the bureau, that the features of the Baroness were remotely familiar to her.
She thought, not that she had seen the old lady"s face before, but that she had seen somewhere, some time, a face of a similar cast. It occurred to Nella to look at the "Almanach de Gotha"--that record of all the mazes of Continental blue blood; but the "Almanach de Gotha" made no reference to any barony of Zerlinski. Nella inquired where the Baroness meant to take lunch, and was informed that a table had been reserved for her in the dining-room, and she at once decided to lunch in the dining- room herself. Seated in a corner, half-hidden by a pillar, she could survey all the guests, and watch each group as it entered or left.
Presently the Baroness appeared, dressed in black, with a tiny lace shawl, despite the June warmth; very stately, very quaint, and gently smiling. Nella observed her intently. The lady ate heartily, working without haste and without delay through the elaborate menu of the luncheon. Nella noticed that she had beautiful white teeth. Then a remarkable thing happened. A cream puff was served to the Baroness by way of sweets, and Nella was astonished to see the little lady remove the top, and with a spoon quietly take something from the interior which looked like a piece of folded paper. No one who had not been watching with the eye of a lynx would have noticed anything extraordinary in the action; indeed, the chances were nine hundred and ninety-nine to one that it would pa.s.s unheeded. But, unfortunately for the Baroness, it was the thousandth chance that happened. Nella jumped up, and walking over to the Baroness, said to her:
"I"m afraid that the tart is not quite nice, your ladyship."
"Thanks, it is delightful," said the Baroness coldly; her smile had vanished. "Who are you? I thought you were de bureau clerk."
"My father is the owner of this hotel. I thought there was something in the tart which ought not to have been there."
Nella looked the Baroness full in the face. The piece of folded paper, to which a little cream had attached itself, lay under the edge of a plate.
"No, thanks." The Baroness smiled her simple smile.
Nella departed. She had noticed one trifling thing besides the paper-- namely, that the Baroness could p.r.o.nounce the English "th" sound if she chose.
That afternoon, in her own room, Nella sat meditating at the window for long time, and then she suddenly sprang up, her eyes brightening.
"I know," she exclaimed, clapping her hands. "It"s Miss Spencer, disguised!
Why didn"t I think of that before?" Her thoughts ran instantly to Prince Aribert. "Perhaps I can help him," she said to herself, and gave a little sigh. She went down to the office and inquired whether the Baroness had given any instructions about dinner. She felt that some plan must be formulated. She wanted to get hold of Rocco, and put him in the rack. She knew now that Rocco, the unequalled, was also concerned in this mysterious affair.
"The Baroness Zerlinski has left, about a quarter of an hour ago," said the attendant.
"But she only arrived this morning."
"The Baroness"s maid said that her mistress had received a telegram and must leave at once. The Baroness paid the bill, and went away in a four- wheeler."
"Where to?"
"The trunks were labelled for Ostend."
Perhaps it was instinct, perhaps it was the mere spirit of adventure; but that evening Nella was to be seen of all men on the steamer for Ostend which leaves Dover at 11 p.m. She told no one of her intentions-- not even her father, who was not in the hotel when she left. She had scribbled a brief note to him to expect her back in a day or two, and had posted this at Dover. The steamer was the Marie Henriette, a large and luxurious boat, whose state-rooms on deck vie with the glories of the Cunard and White Star liners. One of these state-rooms, the best, was evidently occupied, for every curtain of its windows was carefully drawn. Nella did not hope that the Baroness was on board; it was quite possible for the Baroness to have caught the eight o"clock steamer, and it was also possible for the Baroness not to have gone to Ostend at all, but to some other place in an entirely different direction.
Nevertheless, Nella had a faint hope that the lady who called herself Zerlinski might be in that curtained stateroom, and throughout the smooth moonlit voyage she never once relaxed her observation of its doors and its windows.
The Maria Henriette arrived in Ostend Harbour punctually at 2 a.m. in the morning. There was the usual heterogeneous, gesticulating crowd on the quay.
Nella kept her post near the door of the state-room, and at length she was rewarded by seeing it open. Four middle-aged Englishmen issued from it. From a glimpse of the interior Nella saw that they had spent the voyage in card-playing.