Chapter Thirty Five. In which there is another Mystery.
The girl puzzled him.
Her attitude was as though she delighted in tantalising him, as if she held knowledge superior to his own. And so she did. She was evidently aware of the whereabouts of Maud—his own lost love.
He repeated his question, his eyes fixed upon her pale, serious countenance. But she made no response.
“Why have you brought me here, Miss Lorena?” he asked. “You told me you had something to tell me.”
“So I have,” she answered, looking up at him again. “I don’t know, Mr Rolfe, what opinion you must have of me, but I hope you will consider my self-introduction permissible under the circumstances.”
“Why, of course,” he declared, for truth to tell he was much interested in her. She seemed so charmingly unconventional, not much more than a schoolgirl, and yet with all the delightful sweetness of budding womanhood. “But you have mentioned the name of a woman—a woman who is lost to me.”
“Ah! Maud Petrovitch,” she sighed. “Yes. I know. I know all the tragic story.”
“The tragic story?” he echoed, staring at her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean the tragic story of your love,” was her slow, distinct reply. “Pray forgive me, Mr Rolfe, for mentioning a subject which must be most painful, but I have only done so to show you that I am aware of the secret of your affection.”
“Then you are a friend of Maud?”
She nodded, without uttering a word.
“Where is she? I must see her,” he said quickly, with a fierce, anxious look upon his countenance. “This suspense is killing me.”
She was silent. Slowly she turned her fine eyes upon his, looking straight into his face.
“You ought surely to know,” she said, unflinchingly.
“I—I know! Why? Why do you say that?”
“Because you know the truth—you know why they so suddenly disappeared.”
“I know the truth!” he repeated. “Indeed I do not. You are speaking in enigmas, just as you yourself are an enigma, Miss Lorena.”
Her lips relaxed into a smile of incredulity.
“Why, Mr Rolfe, do you make a pretence of ignorance, when you are fully aware of the whole of the combination of circumstances which led Doctor Petrovitch and his daughter to escape from London?”
“But, my dear girl!” he cried; “you entirely misjudge me. I am in complete ignorance.”
“And yet you were present at Cromwell Road on the night in question!” she said slowly, fixing her eyes calmly upon him.
“Who are you, Miss Lorena, that you should make these direct allegations against me?” he cried, staring at her.
“I am your friend, Mr Rolfe, if you will allow me to act as such.”
“My friend!” he cried. “But you are alleging that I have secret knowledge of the Doctor’s disappearance—that I make a pretence of ignorance. If I were in possession of the facts, is it feasible that I should be so anxious of the welfare of Maud?”
“No anxiety is necessary.”
“Then she is alive?”
“I believe so.”
“And well?”
“Yes, she is quite well. But—”
“But what?” he demanded. “Speak, Lorena. Speak, I beg of you.”
She had hesitated, and he saw by her contracted brow that anxiety had arisen within her mind.
“Well—she is safe, I believe, up to the present. Yet if what I fear be true, she is daily nay, hourly, in peril—in deadliest peril.”
“Peril!” he gasped. “Of what?”
“Of her life. You know that the political organisations of the East are fraught with murder plots. Dr Petrovitch has opponents—fierce, dastardly opponents, who would hesitate at nothing to encompass his end. They have intrigued to induce the King to place him in disgrace, but at Belgrade the Petrovitch party are still predominant. It is only in the country—at Nisch and Pirot—where the Opposition is really strong.”
“You seem to know Servia and the complication of Servian politics, mademoiselle?” he remarked.
“Yes, I happen to know something of them. I have made them a study, and I assure you it would be very fascinating if there were not quite so many imprisonments in the awful fortress of Belgrade, and secret assassination. But Servia is a young country,” the girl added, with a philosophic air, “and all young countries must go through the same periods of unrest and internal trouble. At any rate, all parties in Servia acknowledge that King Peter is a constitutional monarch, and is doing his utmost for the benefit of his people.”
“You are a partisan of the Karageorgevitch?”
“I am. I make no secret of it. Alexander and Draga were mere puppets in the hands of Servia’s enemies. Under King Peter the country is once more prosperous, and, after all, political life there is no more fraught with danger than it is in go-ahead Bulgaria. Did they not kill poor Petkoff the other day in the Boris Garden in Sofia? That was a more cruel and dastardly murder than any in Servia, for Petkoff had only one arm, and was unable to defend himself. The other was shot away at the Shipka where he fought for his country against the Turk.”
“How is it you know so much of Servia?” Charlie inquired, for he found himself listening to the girl’s sound arguments with much interest. Her views upon the complicated situation in the Near East were almost identical with his. “Did you ever see Petkoff, for instance?”
“I knew him well. Twice I’ve dined at his house is Sofia. Strangely enough, he was with his bosom friend Stambuloff when the latter was assassinated, and for years was a marked man. As Prince Ferdinand’s Prime Minister, which he was at the time he was shot, he introduced many reforms into Bulgaria, and was a patriot to the core.”
He was surprised. Who could this girl be who dined with Prime Ministers, and who was, apparently, behind the scenes of Balkan politics?
“And you fear lest the same fate should befall Maud. Why?” he asked.
“Because the Opposition has a motive—a strong motive.”
“For the secret assassination of the daughter of the man who has made Servia what she is!” he exclaimed.
“Yes. Maud is in peril.”
“And for that reason, I suppose, is living incognito?”
“Possibly,” she answered, not without hesitation. “There is, I believe, a second reason.”
“What is that?”
“I scarcely like to tell you, Mr Rolfe. We are strangers, you and I.”
“But do tell me. I am very anxious to know. If she is your friend, she has, no doubt, told you of our love.”
“Well, she wishes to avoid you.”
“Avoid me—why?”
“Because acquaintance with you increases her peril.”
“How absurd!” he cried. “How can her love for me affect her father’s political opponents in Servia?”
“I am ignorant of the reasons. I only know the broad facts.”
“But the Doctor had retired from active political life long ago! He told me one day how tired he was of the eternal bickerings of the Skuptchina.”
“Of course he had ostensibly retired, but he secretly directed the policy of the present Government. In all serious matters King Peter still consults him.”
“And that is why you have brought me into the privacy of these gardens, Miss Lorena—to tell me this!” he laughed, bending to her and drawing a semi-circle in the gravel with the point of his stick.
“No,” she replied sharply, with just a little frown of displeasure. “You do not understand me, Mr Rolfe. Have I not said, a few moments ago, that I wanted to be your friend?”
“You are a most delightful little friend,” was his courteous reply.
“Ah! I see. You treat me as a child,” was her rather impatient reply. “You are not serious.”
“I am most serious,” he declared, with a solemn face. “Indeed, I was never more serious in my life than I am at this moment.”
She burst out laughing—a peal of light, merry, irresponsible, girlish laughter.
“And before I met you,” she said, “I thought you a most terribly austere person.”
“So I am—at times. I have to be, Miss Lorena. I’m secretary to a very serious old gentleman, remember.”
“Yes. And that was the very reason why I threw the convenances to the winds—if there are any in the Anglo-French circle in Paris—and spoke to you—a perfect stranger.”
“You spoke because I was Mr Statham’s secretary?” he asked, somewhat puzzled.
“Yes. I wanted to speak to you privately.”
“Well, nobody can overhear us here,” he said glancing around, and noticing only a fat bonne wheeling a puny child in a gaudily-trapped perambulator.
“I wanted to speak to you regarding Mr Statham,” she said, after a long pause. “I ascertained you were coming to Paris, and waited in order to see you.”
“Why?” he asked, much surprised. The refusal of her name, her determination to conceal her identity, her friendship for Maud, and her intimate acquaintance with thing Servian, all combined to puzzle him to the verge of distraction. Who was she? What was she?
The mystery of the Doctor and his daughter was an increasing one. His pretended ignorance of certain facts had been unmasked by her in a manner which showed that she was aware of the actual truth. Was she really a secret messenger from the girl he loved so devotedly—the girl with whom he had last walked and talked with in the quietness of the London sundown in Nevern Square?
He glanced again at her pretty but mysterious face. She was a lady—refined, well-educated, with tiny white hands and well-shod feet. There was nothing of the artificial chic of the Parisienne about her, but a quiet dignity which seemed almost incongruous in one so young. Indeed, he wondered that she was allowed about in the streets of Paris alone, without a chaperone.
Her piquante manner, and her utter disregard of all conventionality, amused him. True, she was older than Maud but most possibly her bosom friend. If so, Maud was probably in hiding in Paris, and this pretty girl had been sent to him as Cupid’s messenger.
“I wanted to see you on a matter which closely concerns Mr Statham.”
“Anything that concerns Mr Statham concerns myself, Miss Lorena,” he said. “I am his confidential secretary.”
“I have ascertained that, otherwise I would not have dared to speak to you. I want to warn you.”
“Of what?”
“Of a deeply-laid conspiracy to wreck Mr Statham’s life,” she said. “There have arisen recently two men who are now determined to lay bare the secret of the millionaire’s past, in revenge for some old grievance, real or fancied.”
“For the purposes of blackmail—eh?” he asked. “Every rich man is constantly being subjected to attempted blackmail in some form or other.”
“No. They have no desire to obtain money. Their sole intention is to expose Mr Statham.”
“Most men who are unsuccessful are eager to denounce the methods of their more fortunate friends,” he said, smiling. “Mr Statham has no fear of exposure, I assure you.” The girl looked him straight in the face with a long, steady gaze.
“Ah! I see?” she exclaimed, after a pause. “You treat me as an enemy, Mr Rolfe; not as a friend.”
