His wife"s arched brows narrowed. Her pale, delicate face, in which the lines of care had appeared too prematurely, already betrayed fiercest anger.
"I happen to have inquired, and I now know that those allegations are correct!" she cried. "This dark-haired singer-woman, Irene Speroni, has attained great success on the variety stage in Italy. She is the star of the Sala Margherita in Rome."
"Well?" he asked in defiance. "And what of it, pray?"
"That letter you have destroyed tells me the truth. I received it a few days ago, and sent an agent to Italy in order to learn the truth. He has returned to-night. See!" And suddenly she produced a crannied snapshot photograph, of postcard size, of the Crown-Prince in his polo-playing garb, and with him a smartly-dressed young woman, whose features were in the shadow. I caught sight of that picture, because when he tossed it from him angrily without glancing at it, I picked it up and handed it back to the Crown-Princess.
"Yes," she cried bitterly, "You refuse, of course, to look upon this piece of evidence! I now know why you went to Wiesbaden. The woman was singing there, and you gave her a pair of emerald and diamond earrings which you purchased from Vollgold in Unter den Linden. See! Here is the bill for them!"
And again she produced a slip of paper.
At this the Crown-Prince grew instantly furious, and, pale to the lips, he roundly abused his long-suffering wife, telling her quite frankly that, notwithstanding the fact that she might spy upon his movements, he should act exactly as his impulses dictated.
That scene was, indeed, a disgraceful one, ending in the poor woman, in a frantic paroxysm of despair, tearing off the splendid necklet of diamonds at her throat--his present to her on their marriage--and casting it full into his face.
Then, realizing that the scene had become too tragic, I took her small hand, and, with a word of sympathy, led her out of the room and along the corridor.
As I left her she burst into a sudden torrent of tears; yet when I returned again to the Crown-Prince I found his manner had entirely changed. He treated his wife"s natural resentment and indignation as a huge joke, and it was then that His Imperial Highness declared to me:
"Cilli is a fool!"
That sunny afternoon the Crown-Prince had sprawled himself on the plush lounge of the smoking car as the train travelled upon that picturesque line between Genoa and the French frontier at Ventimiglia, the line which follows the coast for six hours. With the tideless sapphire Mediterranean lapping the yellow beach on the one side and high brown rocks upon the other, we went through Savona, Albenga, the old-world Porto Maurizio to the glaring modern town of San Remo and palm-embowered Bordighera, that beautiful Italian Riviera that you and I know so well.
"Listen, Heltzendorff," his Highness exclaimed suddenly between the whiffs of his cigarette. "In Nice I may disappear for a day or two. I may be missing. But if I am, please don"t raise a fuss about it. I"m incognito, and n.o.body will know. I may be absent for seven days. If I am not back by that time then you may make inquiry."
"But the Commissary of Police Eckardt! He will surely know?" I remarked in surprise.
"No. He won"t know. I shall evade him as I"ve so often done before,"
replied His Imperial Highness. "I tell you of my intentions so that you may curb the activities of our most estimable friend. Tell him not to worry, and he will be paid a thousand marks on the day Count von Grunau reappears."
I smiled, for I saw the influence of the eternal feminine.
"No, Heltzendorff. You are quite mistaken," he said, reading my thoughts, and putting down his cigarette end. "There is no lady in this case. I am out here for secret purposes of my own. For that reason I take you into my confidence rather than that unnecessary inquiry should be made and some of those infernal journalists get hold of the fact that the Count von Grunau and the Crown-Prince are one and the same person. I was a fool to take this saloon. I ought to have travelled as an ordinary pa.s.senger, I know, but," he laughed, "this is really comfortable and, after all, what do we care what the world thinks--eh? Surely we can afford to laugh at it when all the honours of the game are already in our hands."
And at that moment we ran into the pretty, flower-decked station of San Remo, the place freshly painted for the attraction of the winter visitors who annually went south for sunshine.
His words mystified me, but I became even more mystified by his actions a few days later.
I was in ignorance that a fortnight before Hermann Hardt, one of His Highness"s couriers, had left Potsdam and on arrival at Nice had rented for three months the fine Villa Lilas--the winter residence of the American millionaire leather merchant, James G. Jamieson, of Boston, who had gone yachting to j.a.pan.
You know Nice, my dear Le Queux--you know it as well as I do, therefore you know the Villa Lilas, that big white mansion which faces the sea on Montboron, the hill road between the port of Nice and Villefranche. Half hidden among the mimosa, the palms, and grey-green olives, it is after the style of Mr. Gordon Bennett"s villa at Beaulieu, with a big gla.s.s front and pretty verandas, with climbing geraniums flowering upon the terraces.
We soon settled there, for the household staff had arrived three days before, and on the evening of our arrival I accompanied the Crown-Prince down into the town to the Jetee promenade, the pier-pavilion where the gay cosmopolitan world disports itself to chatter, drink and gamble.
It was a glorious moonlit night, and "Willie," after strolling through the great gilded saloons, in one of which was a second-rate variety entertainment--the season not having yet commenced--went outside. We sat at the end of the pier smoking.
"Nice is dull as yet, is it not?" he remarked, for each year he always spent a month there incognito, the German newspapers announcing that he was away shooting. But "Willie," leading the gay life of the Imperial b.u.t.terfly, much preferred the lively existence of the Cote d"Azur to the remote schloss in Thuringia or elsewhere.
I agreed with him that Nice had not yet put on the tinsel and pasteboard of her Carnival attractions. As you know, Carnival in Nice is gay enough, but, after all, it is a forced gaiety got up for the profit of the shops and hotels, combined with the "Cercle des Bains" of Monaco--the polite t.i.tle of the Prince"s gilded gambling h.e.l.l.
We smoked together and chatted, as we often did when His Imperial Highness became bored. I was still mystified why we had come to the Riviera so early in the season, because the white and pale green paint of the hotels was not yet dry, and half of them not yet open.
Yet our coming had, no doubt, been privately signalled, because within half an hour of our arrival at the Villa Lilas a short, stout old Frenchman, with white, bristly hair--whom I afterwards found out was Monsieur Paul Bavouzet, the newly-appointed Prefect of the Department of Alpes-Maritimes--called to leave his card upon the Count von Grunau.
The Imperial incognito only means that the public are to be deluded.
Officialdom never is. They know the ruse, and support it all the world over. His Highness the Crown-Prince was paying his annual visit to Nice, and the President had sent his compliments through his representative, the bristly-haired little Prefect.
Soon after eleven that night the Crown-Prince, after chatting affably with me, strolled back to the Promenade des Anglais, where Knof, the chauffeur, awaited us with a big open car, in which we were whizzed around the port and up to Montboron in a few minutes.
As I parted from the Crown-Prince, who yawned and declared that he was tired, he said:
"Ah! Heltzendorff. How good it is to get a breath of soft air from the Mediterranean! We shall have a port on this pleasant sea one day--if we live as long--eh?"
That remark showed the trend of events. It showed how, hand in hand with the Emperor, he was urging preparations for war--a war that had for its primary object the destruction of the Powers which, when the volcano erupted, united as allies.
The bright autumn days pa.s.sed quite uneventfully, and frequently I went pleasant motor runs into the mountains with His Highness, up to the frontier at the Col di Tenda, to La Vesubie, Puget-Theniers, and other places. Yet I was still mystified at the reason of our sojourn there.
After we had been at the Villa Lilas about ten days I was one afternoon seated outside the popular Cafe de l"Opera, in the Place Ma.s.sena, when a lady, dressed in deep mourning and wearing the heavy veil in French style, pa.s.sed along the pavement, glanced at me, and then, hesitating, she turned, and, coming back, advanced to the little table in the corner whereat I was sitting.
"May I be permitted to have a word with you, Monsieur?" she asked in French, in a low, refined voice.
"Certainly," was my reply, and, not without some surprise, I rose and drew a chair for her.
She glanced round quickly, as though to satisfy herself that she would not be overheard, but, as a matter of fact, at that hour the chairs on the terraces of the cafe were practically deserted. At the same moment, viewing her closely, I saw that she was about twenty-four, handsome, dark-haired, with well-cut features.
"I know, Monsieur, that I am a complete stranger to you," she exclaimed with a smile, "but to me you are quite familiar by sight. I have pa.s.sed you many times in Berlin and in Potsdam, and I know that you are Count von Heltzendorff, personal-adjutant to His Highness the Crown-Prince--or Count von Grunau, as he is known here in France."
"You know that!" I exclaimed.
She smiled mysteriously, replying:
"Yes. I--well, I happen to be a friend of His Highness."
I held my breath. So this pretty young Frenchwoman was one of my young Imperial master"s friends!
"The fact is, Count," she went on, "I have travelled a considerable distance to see you. I said that I was one of the Crown-Prince"s friends. Please do not misunderstand me. I know that he has a good many lady friends, but, as far as I am concerned, I have never been introduced to him, and he does not know me. I am his friend because of a certain friendliness towards him."
"Really, Madame, I don"t quite understand," I said.
"Of course not," she answered, and then, glancing round, she added: "This place is a little too public. Cannot we go across to the garden yonder?"
At her suggestion I rose and walked with her to a quiet spot in the gardens, where we sat down, and I listened with interest to her.
She told me that her name was Julie de Rouville, but she would give no account of where she lived, though I took it that she was a young widow.
"I have ventured to approach you, Count, because I cannot approach the Crown-Prince," she said presently. "You probably do not know the true reason of his visit here to Nice?"
"No," I said. "I admit that I do not. Why is he here?"