Chapter Twenty Eight. The Eyewitness.

“Princess!”

“You!” she gasped, staring at him, her face white as death, and clutching at the back of a chair for support.

“Yes. I see now why you were so anxious that I should not remain in your company this evening,” he said in bitter reproach.

“Then—then you know!” she cried. “You—you saw me!”

“Yes. I have been watching you, and I can only say that I am surprised to find you tampering with His Excellency’s safe!” he said in a low, hard tone, while, as ill-luck would have it, old Ghelardi, in uniform, with a glittering star upon his coat, entered the room just at that moment and overheard part of the diplomat’s words.

“Ah!” said the crafty Chief of Secret Police, affecting not to have overheard anything. “Ah! these assignations—eh?”

She raised her hand towards him in a quick gesture, but from her glove, there fell the small key.

Ghelardi stooped and picked it up.

“Hallo!” he exclaimed, “what does this mean, Your Highness? A safe key!”

The unhappy girl, white as death, nodded in the affirmative.

The white-haired official stepped across, drew the brass cover aside from the keyhole, and tried the key. It yielded.

“And may I ask Your Royal Highness why I find you here, in His Excellency’s room, with a key to his private safe wherein, I believe, many secrets of our defences are kept?” he asked of her.

“I refuse to answer you, Signor Commendatore,” was her bold reply, as she drew herself up and faced him. “You have no right to question me. I shall answer only to His Majesty for what I have done.”

This bold declaration took Hubert aback.

“Very well,” replied the old man, pocketing the key and smiling that strange, cunning smile of his. “Your Highness shall be compelled to answer to him—and without very much delay.”

And he turned on his heel and without a word left the room.

“Ah! Mr Waldron,” she cried, wringing her hands, “what must you think of me? I know I have acted very foolishly—that I am mad—that I—”

“Hush, Princess!” he said, his heart full of sympathy for her in her wild distress. “You have acted wrongly, it is true—very, very wrongly. Yet I am still your friend. I will see you safely out of this impasse—if you will only allow me. What is that document you have abstracted from the safe?”

She made no response, but placing her hand within her breast she very slowly drew it out and handed it to him.

Without opening the envelope he placed it in his pocket. Then taking her hand, he looked long and earnestly into her face and said:

“You had better return to the Palace at once, Lola. You are not well. Leave me to settle matters with Ghelardi.”

“But he will tell the King!” she gasped, wringing her hands in despair. “What can I say—how shall I explain?”

“Leave all to me,” he urged. “But before you go, tell me one thing. Why is Henri Pujalet in Rome?”

“No, no!” she shrieked, “do not mention his name. I—ah! no—do not torture me, I beg of you!” she went on wildly. “Hate me—denounce me as a spy, if you will—revile my memory if you wish—but do not taunt me with the name of that man.”

“I will see you to your carriage. Come,” he urged simply.

She struggled to calm herself, placing her gloved hand upon her beating heart, while the Englishman laid his hand tenderly upon her shoulder in deepest sympathy.

At first he had been horrified at discovering the bitter, amazing truth. But horror had now been succeeded by poignant regret and a determination to suppress, if possible, what must be, if divulged by Ghelardi, as no doubt it would—a most terrible national scandal.

While they were standing together, a Colonel of Artillery and two ladies entered, the former showing them the private cabinet of the head of the War Department. The women recognised the Princess by the decoration she wore at the edge of her bodice, and bowed low and awkwardly before her as she passed out, followed by Hubert.

With hurried steps he conducted her to the main entrance, and at once sent a servant for one of the royal automobiles, saying that Her Royal Highness was not well.

Together they waited in an ante-room almost without speaking. She seemed too nervous and overwrought.

“I trust you, Mr Waldron,” she said suddenly, looking up into his face. “Yet—ah! what can you think of me! How you must scorn and despise me! But—but I hope you will not misjudge me—that—you will make allowances for me—a girl—a very foolish girl?”

“Do not let us discuss that now,” he hastened to reply in a low, hard voice, for he never knew until that moment how mad was his affection for her.

And just then one of the royal flunkeys entered, bowing, to announce that the car was awaiting Her Royal Highness.

Their hands clasped in silence, and she walked out through a line of obsequious servants and down the flight of steps to the royal car.

As she went out a waiter stood behind the line of soldiers drawn up in the great vestibule, watching intently. Unobserved he had followed the pair when they had emerged from His Excellency’s private cabinet, and his shrewd eyes had noticed something amiss.

He was the same man who had passed Hubert earlier in the evening and whose face had so puzzled him.

The Englishman, after the royal car had driven away, turned and made his way back in search of Ghelardi.

The discovery held him utterly confounded. What secret was contained in that envelope she had stolen? Why had she a key to the Minister’s safe?

As he walked back, his mind tortured by a thousand strange thoughts and curious theories, the mysterious waiter followed him at a respectable distance, watching.

Hubert was wondering what had become of Pucci whom he ordered to be near him, and whom he had not seen the whole evening.

He gained the door of His Excellency’s room just as the Chief of Secret Police returned along the corridor.

“I have been endeavouring to discover His Excellency, but, unfortunately, I cannot find him anywhere,” the old man said. “We will open the safe and see what has been taken. It is utterly astounding to me that the Princess Luisa should be revealed as a spy.”

“I do not think we should condemn her yet,” urged Waldron. “There may be some explanation.”

“Explanation! What explanation can there be of a woman who takes advantage of a reception, when the sentries are relaxed, to creep up here, open the safe with a false key, and abstract documents.”

“I cannot see the motive,” declared Waldron.

“Ah! but I do. I and my agents have been watching for weeks,” he replied, and crossing to the safe he placed the key in the lock and again opened it.

Many formidable bundles of documents were disclosed, lying within, together with the thin envelope with which Lola had replaced the one she had taken.

Waldon took it up and turned it over with curiosity. Then, deliberately tearing it open, he pulled out its contents.

It was, he found to his dismay, only a blank piece of tracing paper!

“Ah! that is what she has placed here, after taking out a similar envelope, I suppose,” snapped the keen-eyed old man, grasping the situation in a moment. “I have suspected this all along—ever since those fortress plans so mysteriously disappeared. And now she has taken another document. I was foolish to allow her to leave with you.”

“The document—or whatever it is—is in my safe keeping.”

“You have it!” he cried quickly. “Please hand it to me.”

“I shall do no such thing, Commendatore,” was Hubert’s defiant reply.

“It is a secret of State, and you, as a foreigner, have no right to its possession!”

“It has been given to me for safety, and I shall hand it over to His Majesty, and to him alone.”

“Signor Waldron, I demand it,” the old man said angrily, raising his voice as he flung the safe door to with a clang and re-locked it. “I demand it—in the name of His Majesty!”

“And I refuse.”

“You defy me then?”

“Yes, I defy you, signore,” he replied firmly, his dark eyes fixed upon those of the crafty official.

“You are Her Highness’s lover. When the King is made aware of that fact he will show you little graciousness, I assure you,” said Ghelardi with a dry laugh.

“But you will remain silent upon that point, just as you will remain silent regarding what we have discovered to-night,” the Englishman said slowly. “No scandal must attach to the Princess’s name, remember.”

“Of course you wish to shield her—for your own ends. She is the spy for whom we have been searching all these weeks. It is she who placed in the hands of the our enemies the truth concerning the new fortifications along the northern frontier.”

“I refuse to discuss that point,” replied Hubert very coldly, but firmly. “One thing alone I demand of you, and that is silence—silence most absolute and profound.”

“It is my duty to inform the King of the whole circumstances.”

“True, it may be your duty, but it is one that you will not perform, Signor Ghelardi. Think of the terrible scandal throughout Europe if the Press got wind of it! And they must do—if you report officially, and it comes to the ears of His Excellency the Minister. The latter hates the Princess, because she accidentally snubbed the Countess Cioni at the ball at the Palazzo Ginori last week.”

“That is no affair of mine. Women’s jealousies do not concern me in the least. I am charged with the safety of the State against foreign espionage.”

“Well—in this case you’ve discovered the truth accidentally,” responded the diplomat, “and having done so, if you respect your Sovereign and his family, you will say nothing. Further, we may, if we remain silent, be able to obtain more information from Her Highness as to the identity of the person into whose hands the plans fell.”

“She abstracted them, without a doubt, for she had this duplicate key of the safe,” the old man declared.

“You will say nothing, I command you.”

“You! How can you impose silence upon me, pray?” he demanded fiercely. “You are a foreigner, and you are holding a State secret.”

“I shall hold it at present for safe keeping.”

“Then I shall go straight to the King and lay the whole matter before him.”

“You threatened to do a similar action before,” said the other very quietly. “I repeat my warning—that silence is best.”

“Then I tell you frankly that I refuse to heed your warning. It is my duty to my Sovereign to tell him the truth.”

“Very well—go to him and tell him—at your own peril.”

“Peril!” he echoed. “What peril?”

“The peril at which I have already hinted, Signor Ghelardi,” he answered in a low, hard voice. “Do you wish me to be more explicit? Well—there is in a village called Wroxham, in Norfolk, a mystery—the murder of a man named Arthur Benyon, a British naval officer—which has never yet been cleared up. One man can clear it up—an eyewitness who is, fortunately, still alive and who knows you. And if it is cleared up, then you, Luigi Ghelardi—who at the time occupied the office of Chief of the German Secret Service, and was directing the operation of the horde of spies who are still infesting East Anglia, will be confronted with certain very awkward questions.”

The old man’s face went livid. He started at Waldron’s words, and his bony fingers clenched themselves into the palms.

“Shall I say more?” asked the Englishman, after a brief pause, his eyes fixed upon the crafty chief of spies. “Shall I explain how Arthur Benyon, an agent of the British Intelligence Department, was attacked one summer night after sailing on the Norfolk Broads, being shot in cold blood, and his body flung into the river—how the revolver was thrown in after him, and how, half an hour later, a man, dusty and breathless, gained a car that had been waiting for him and drove through the night up to London. And the fugitive was yourself—Luigi Ghelardi!”

He paused.

“And shall I describe the hue and cry raised by the police: how at the inquest a man named James, employed on a wherry, made a queer statement that was not believed, and how you left London next day and returned to Germany? Shall I also describe to you what the eyewitness saw—and—”

“No!” cried the man hoarsely. “Enough! enough!”

“Then give me that safe key and remain silent. If not, I shall also do my duty and explain to the King those circumstances to which I have just referred.”

Ghelardi reluctantly drew the key from his pocket, and having handed it to the Englishman, passed to the door in silence, staring in horror at the man who had so unexpectedly levelled such a terrible accusation against him.

He knew that Hubert Waldron held all the honours in that game. In his eyes showed a wild, murderous look.

Yes, he would treat the man before him as he had treated the Englishman, Benyon—seal his lips as he had sealed his own—if only he dared!

But Hubert Waldron, his hand upon the hilt of his uniform-sword, only bowed as the other slowly passed out. He knew now the reason why those two men, Merlo and Fiola, had been bribed to encompass his end.