Kitabı oku: «The Great Court Scandal», sayfa 9
Chapter Sixteen
Light Fingers
Her Highness was face to face with one of those clever international criminals whose coups were so constantly being reported in the Continental press.
She looked straight into his countenance, a long, intense look, half of reproach, half of surprise, and then, in a firm voice, said, —
“Mr Bourne, I owe you a very great debt. To-day I will endeavour to repay it. Your secret, and the secret of the theft, shall remain mine.”
“And you will give no information to the police?” he exclaimed quickly – “you promise that?”
“I promise,” she said. “I admire you for your frankness. But, tell me – it was not you who took my bag at the station?”
“No. But it was one of us,” he explained. “When the bag containing the jewels was opened I found, very fortunately, several letters addressed to you – letters which you evidently brought with you from Treysa. Then I knew that the jewels were yours, and determined, if I could find you, to restore them to you with our apologies.”
“Why?” she asked. “You surely do not get possession of jewels of that value every day?”
“No, Princess. But the reason is, that although my companions are thieves, they are not entirely devoid of the respect due to a woman. They have read in the newspapers of your domestic unhappiness, and of your flight with the little Princess, and have decided that to rob a defenceless woman, as you are at this moment, is a cowardly act. Though we are thieves, we still have left some vestige of chivalry.”
“And your intention is really to restore them to me?” she remarked, much puzzled at this unexpected turn of fortune.
“Yes, had I not found those letters among them, I quite admit that, by this time, the stones would have been in Amsterdam and re-cut out of all recognition,” he said, rather shamefacedly. Then, taking from his pocket the three letters addressed to her – letters which she had carried away from Treysa with her as souvenirs – he handed them to her, saying, —
“I beg of you to accept these back again. They are better in your Imperial Highness’s hands than my own.”
Her countenance went a trifle pale as she took them, and a sudden serious thought flashed through her mind.
“Your companions have, I presume, read what is contained in these?”
“No, Princess; they have not. I read them, and seeing to whom they were addressed, at once took possession of them. I only showed my companions the addresses.”
She breathed more freely.
“Then, Mr Bourne, I am still more deeply in your debt,” she declared; “you realised that those letters contained a woman’s secret, and you withheld it from the others. How can I sufficiently thank you?”
“By forgiving me,” he said. “Remember, I am a thief, and if you wished you could call the hotel manager and have me arrested.”
“I could hardly treat in that way a man who has acted so nobly and gallantly as you have,” she remarked, with perfect frankness. “If those letters had fallen into other hands they might, have found their way back to the Court, and to the King.”
“I understand perfectly,” he said, in a low voice. “I saw by the dates, and gathered from the tenor in which they were written that they concealed some hidden romance. To expose what was written there would have surely been a most cowardly act – meaner even than stealing a helpless, ill-judged woman’s jewels. No, Princess,” he went on; “I beg that although I stand before you a thief, to whom the inside of a gaol is no new experience, a man who lives by his wits and his agility and ingenuity in committing theft, you will not entirely condemn me. I still, I hope, retain a sense of honour.”
“You speak like a gentleman,” she said. “Who were your parents?”
“My father, Princess, was a landed proprietor in Norfolk. After college I went to Sandhurst, and then entered the British Army; but gambling proved my ruin, and I was dismissed in disgrace for the forgery of a bill in the name of a brother officer. As a consequence, my father left me nothing, as I was a second son; and for years I drifted about England, an actor in a small travelling company; but gradually I fell lower and lower, until one day in London I met a well-known card-sharper, who took me as his partner, and together we lived well in the elegant rooms to which we inveigled men and there cheated them. The inevitable came at last – arrest and imprisonment. I got three years, and after serving it, came abroad and joined Roddy Redmayne’s gang, with whom I am at present connected.”
The career of the man before her was certainly a strangely adventurous one. He had not told her one tithe of the remarkable romance of his life. He had been a gentleman, and though now a jewel thief, he still adhered to the traditions of his family whenever a woman was concerned. He was acute, ingenious beyond degree, and a man of endless resource, yet he scorned to rob a woman who was poor.
The Princess Claire, a quick reader of character, saw in him a man who was a criminal, not by choice, but by force of circumstance. He was now still suffering from that false step he had taken in imitating his brother officer’s signature and raising money upon the bill. However she might view his actions, the truth remained that he had saved her from a terrible accident.
“Yours has been an unfortunate career, Mr Bourne,” she remarked. “Can you not abandon this very perilous profession of yours? Is there no way by which you can leave your companions and lead an honest life?”
When she spoke she made others feel how completely the purely natural and the purely ideal can blend into each other, yet she was a woman breathing thoughtful breath, walking in all her natural loveliness with a heart as frail-strung, as passion-touched, as ever fluttered in a female bosom.
“Ah, Princess!” he cried earnestly, “I beg of you not to reproach me; willingly I would leave it all. I would welcome work and an honest life; but, alas! nowadays it is too late. Besides, who would take me in any position of trust, with my black record behind me? Nobody.” And he shook his head. “In books one reads of reformed thieves, but there are none in real life. A thief, when once a thief, must remain so till the end of his days – of liberty.”
“But is it not a great sacrifice to your companions to give up my jewellery?” she asked in a soft, very kindly voice. “They, of course, recognise its great value?”
“Yes,” he smiled. “Roddy, our chief, is a good judge of stones – as good, probably, as the experts at Spink’s or Streeter’s. One has to be able to tell good stuff from rubbish when one deals in diamonds, as we do. Such a quantity of fake is worn now, and, as you may imagine, we don’t care to risk stealing paste.”
“But how cleverly my bag was taken!” she said. “Who took it? He was an elderly man.”
“Roddy Redmayne,” was Bourne’s reply. “The man who, if your Highness will consent to meet him, will hand it back to you intact.”
“You knew, I suppose, that it contained jewels?”
“We knew that it contained something of value. Roddy was advised of it by telegraph from Lucerne.”
“From Lucerne? Then one of your companions was there?”
“Yes, at your hotel. An attempt was made to get it while you were on the platform awaiting the train for Paris, but you kept too close a watch. Therefore, Roddy received a telegram to meet you upon your arrival in Paris, and he met you.”
What he told her surprised her. She had been quite ignorant of any thief making an attempt to steal the bag at Lucerne, and she now saw how cleverly she had been watched and met.
“And when am I to meet Mr Redmayne?” she asked.
“At any place and hour your Imperial Highness will appoint,” was his reply. “But, of course, I need not add that you will first give your pledge of absolute secrecy – that you will say nothing to the police of the way your jewels have been returned to you.”
“I have already given my promise. Mr Redmayne may rely upon my silence. Where shall we fix the meeting? Here?”
“No, no,” he laughed – “not in the hotel. There is an agent of police always about the hall. Indeed, I run great risk of being recognised, for I fear that the fact of your having reported your loss to the police at the station has set Monsieur Hamard and his friends to watch for us. You see, they unfortunately possess our photographs. No. It must be outside – say at some small, quiet café at ten o’clock to-night, if it will not disturb your Highness too much.”
“Disturb me?” she laughed. “I ought to be only too thankful to you both for restoring my jewels to me.”
“And we, on our part, are heartily ashamed of having stolen them from you. Well, let us say at the Café Vachette, a little place on the left-hand side of the Rue de Seine. You cross the Pont des Arts, and find it immediately; or better, take a cab. Remember, the Vachette, in the Rue de Seine, at ten o’clock. You will find us both sitting at one of the little tables outside, and perhaps your Highness will wear a thick veil, for a pretty woman in that quarter is so quickly noticed.”
She smiled at his final words, but promised to carry out his directions. Surely it was a situation unheard-of – an escaped princess making a rendezvous with two expert thieves in order to receive back her own property.
“Then we shall be there awaiting you,” he said. “And now I fear that I’ve kept you far too long, Princess. Allow me to take my leave.”
She gave him her hand, and thanked him warmly, saying —
“Though your profession is a dishonourable one, Mr Bourne, you have, nevertheless, proved to me that you are at heart still a gentleman.”
“I am gratified that your Imperial Highness should think so,” he replied, and bowing, withdrew, and stepped out of the hotel by the restaurant entrance at the rear. He knew that the agent of police was idling in the hall that led out into the Rue St. Lazare, and he had no desire to run any further risk of detection, especially while that bag with its precious contents remained in the shabby upstairs room in the Rue Lafayette.
Her Highness took little Ignatia and drove in a cab along the Avenue des Champs Elysées, almost unable to realise the amazing truth of what her mysterious rescuer of two years ago had revealed to her. She now saw plainly the reason he had left Treysa in secret. He was wanted by the police, and feared that they would recognise him by the photograph sent from the Prefecture in Paris. And now, on a second occasion, he was serving her against his own interests, and without any thought of reward!
With little Ignatia prattling at her side, she drove along, her mind filled with that strange interview and the curious appointment that she had made for that evening.
Later that day, after dining in the restaurant, she put Ignatia to bed and sat with her till nine o’clock, when, leaving her asleep, she put on a jacket, hat, and thick veil – the one she had worn when she escaped from the palace – and locking the door, went out.
In the Rue St. Lazare she entered a cab and drove across the Pont des Arts, alighting at the corner of the Rue de Seine, that long, straight thoroughfare that leads up to the Arcade of the Luxembourg, and walked along on the left-hand side in search of the Café Vachette.
At that hour the street was almost deserted, for the night was chilly, with a boisterous wind, and the small tables outside the several uninviting cafés and brasseries were mostly deserted. Suddenly, however, as she approached a dingy little place where four tables stood out upon the pavement, two on either side of the doorway, a man’s figure rose, and with hat in hand, came forward to meet her.
She saw that it was Bourne, and with scarcely a word, allowed herself to be conducted to the table where an elderly, grey-haired man had risen to meet her.
“This is Mr Redmayne,” explained Bourne, “if I may be permitted to present him to you.”
The Princess smiled behind her veil, and extended her hand. She recognised him in an instant as the gallant old gentleman in the bright red cravat, who, on pretence of assisting her to alight, had made off with her bag.
She, an Imperial Archduchess, seated herself there between the pair of thieves.
Chapter Seventeen
In which “The Mute” is Revealed
When, in order to save appearances, Bourne had ordered her a bock, Roddy Redmayne bent to her, and in a low whisper said, —
“I beg, Princess, that you will first accept my most humble apologies for what I did the other day. As to your Highness’s secrecy, I place myself entirely in your hands.”
“I have already forgiven both Mr Bourne and yourself,” was her quiet answer, lifting her veil and sipping the bock, in order that her hidden face should not puzzle the waiter too much. “Your friend has told me that, finding certain letters in the bag, you discovered that it belonged to me.”
“Exactly, and we were all filled with regret,” said the old thief. “We have heard from the newspapers of your flight from Treysa, owing to your domestic unhappiness, and we decided that it would be a coward’s action to take a woman’s jewels in such circumstances. Therefore we resolved to try and discover you and to hand them back intact.”
“I am very grateful,” was her reply. “But is it not a considerable sacrifice on your part? Had you disposed of them you would surely have obtained a good round sum?”
The man smiled.
“We will not speak of sacrifice, your Highness,” the old fellow said. “If you forgive us and accept back your property, it is all that we ask. I am ashamed, and yet at the same time gratified, that you, an Imperial Princess, should offer me your hand, knowing who and what I am.”
“Whatever you may be, Mr Redmayne,” she said, “you have shown yourself my friend.”
“And I am your friend; I’ll stand your friend, Princess, in whatever service you may command me,” declared the keen-eyed old man, who was acknowledged by the Continental police to be one of the cleverest criminals in the length and breadth of Europe. “We have discovered that you are alone here; but remember that you are not friendless. We are your friends, even though the world would call us by a very ugly name – a gang of thieves.”
“I can only thank you,” she sighed. “You are extremely good to speak like this. It is true that misfortune has fallen upon me, and being friendless, it is reassuring to know that I have at least two persons in Paris ready to perform any service I require. Mr Bourne once rendered me a very great service, but refused to accept any reward.” And she added, laughing, “He has already explained the reason of his hurried departure from Treysa.”
“Our departures are often hurried ones, your Highness,” he said. “Had we not discovered that the jewels were yours, we should in an hour have dispersed, one to England, one to Germany, and one to Amsterdam. But in order to discover you we remained here, and risked being recognised by the police, who know me, and are aware of my profession. To-morrow we leave Paris, for already Hamard’s agents, suspecting me of the theft, are searching everywhere to discover me.”
“But you must not leave before I make you some reward,” she said. “Where are the jewels?”
“In that closed cab. Can you see it away yonder?” and he pointed to the lights of a vehicle standing some distance up the street. “Kinder, one of our friends, has it with him. Shall we get into the cab and drive away? Then I will restore the bag to you, and if I may advise your Highness, I would deposit it in the Crédit Lyonnais to-morrow. It is not safe for a woman alone to carry about such articles of great value. There are certain people in Paris who would not hesitate to take your life for half the sum they represent.”
“Thank you for your advice, Mr Redmayne,” she said. “I will most certainly take it.”
“Will your Highness walk to the cab with me?” Bourne asked, after he had paid the waiter. “You are not afraid to trust yourself with us?” he added.
“Not at all,” she laughed. “Are you not my friends?” And she rose and walked along the street to where the cab was in waiting. Within the vehicle was a man whom he introduced to her as Mr Kinder, and when all four were seated within, Bourne beside her and Redmayne opposite her, the elder man took the precious bag from Kinder’s hand and gave it to her, saying, —
“We beg of your Highness to accept this, with our most humble apologies. You may open it and look within. You will not, I think, find anything missing,” he added.
She took the dressing-bag, and opening it, found within it the cheap leather bag she had brought from Treysa. A glance inside showed her that the jewels were still there, although there were so many that she, of course, did not count them.
For a few moments she remained in silence; then thanking the two for their generosity, she said, —
“I cannot accept their return without giving you some reward, Mr Redmayne. I am, unfortunately, without very much money, but I desire you to accept these – if they are really worth your acceptance,” and taking from the bag a magnificent pair of diamond earrings she gave them into his hand. “You, no doubt, can turn them into money,” she added.
The old fellow, usually so cool and imperturbable, became at once confused.
“Really, Princess,” he declared, “we could not think of accepting these. You, perhaps, do not realise that they are worth at least seven hundred pounds.”
“No; I have no idea of their value. I only command you to accept them as a slight acknowledgment of my heartfelt gratitude.”
“But – ”
“There are no buts. Place them in your pocket, and say nothing further.”
A silence again fell between them, while the cab rolled along the asphalte of the boulevard.
Suddenly Bourne said, —
“Princess, you cannot know what a weight of anxiety your generous gift has lifted off our minds. Roddy will not tell you, but it is right that you should know. The fact is that at this moment we are all three almost penniless – without the means of escape from Paris. The money we shall get for those diamonds will enable us to get away from here in safety.”
She turned and peered into his face, lit by the uncertain light of the street lamps. In his countenance she saw a deep, earnest look.
“Then the truth is that without money to provide means of escape you have even sacrificed your chances of liberty, in order to return my jewels to me!” she exclaimed, for the first time realising the true position.
He made no response; his silence was an affirmative. Kinder, who had spoken no word, sat looking at her, entirely absorbed by her grace and beauty.
“Well,” she exclaimed at last, “I wonder if you would all three do me another small favour?”
“We shall be only too delighted,” was Bourne’s quick reply. “Only please understand, your Highness, that we accept these earrings out of pure necessity. If we were not so sorely in need of money, we should most certainly refuse.”
“Do not let us mention them again,” she said quickly. “Listen. The fact is this. I have very little ready money, and do not wish at this moment to reveal my whereabouts by applying to my lawyers in Vienna or in Treysa. Therefore it will be best to sell some of my jewellery – say one thousand pounds’ worth. Could you arrange this for me?”
“Certainly,” Roddy replied, “with the greatest pleasure. For that single row diamond necklet we could get from a thousand to twelve hundred pounds – if that amount is sufficient.”
She reopened the bag, and after searching in the fickle light shed by the street lamps she at length pulled out the necklet in question – one of the least valuable of the heap of jewels that had been restored to her in so curious and romantic a manner.
The old jewel thief took it, weighed it in his hand, and examined it critically under the feeble light. He had already valued it on the day when he had secured it. It was worth in the market about four thousand pounds, but in the secret channel where he would sell it he would not obtain more than twelve hundred for it, as, whatever he said, the purchaser would still believe it to be stolen property, and would therefore have the stones re-cut and reset.
“You might try Père Perrin,” Guy remarked. “It would be quicker to take it to him than to send it to Amsterdam or Leyden.”
“Or why not old Lestocard, in Brussels? He always gives decent prices, and is as safe as anybody,” suggested Kinder.
“Is time of great importance to your Highness?” asked the head of the association, speaking with his decidedly Cockney twang.
“A week or ten days – not longer,” she replied.
“Then we will try Père Perrin to-morrow, and let you know the result. Of course, I shall not tell him whose property it is. He will believe that we have obtained it in the ordinary way of our profession. Perrin is an old Jew who lives over at Batignolles, and who asks no questions. The stuff he buys goes to Russia or to Italy.”
“Very well. I leave it to you to do your best for me, Mr Redmayne,” was her reply. “I put my trust in you implicitly.”
“Your Imperial Highness is one of the few persons – beyond our own friends here – who do. To most people Roddy Redmayne is a man not to be trusted, even as far as you can see him!” and he grinned, adding, “But here we are at the Pont d’Austerlitz. Harry and I will descend, and you, Bourne, will accompany the Princess to her hotel.”
Then he shouted an order to the man to stop, and after again receiving her Highness’s warmest thanks, the expert thief and his companion alighted, and, bowing to her, disappeared.
When the cab moved on again towards the Place de la Bastille, she turned to the Englishman beside her, saying —
“I owe all this to you, Mr Bourne, and I assure you I feel most deeply grateful. One day I hope I may be of some service to you, if,” and she paused and looked at him – “well, if only to secure your withdrawal from a criminal life.”
“Ah, Princess,” he sighed wistfully, “if I only could see my way clear to live honestly! But to do so requires money, money – and I have none. The gentlemanly dress which you see me wearing is only an imposture and a fraud – like all my life, alas! nowadays.”
She realised that this man, a gentleman by birth, was eager to extricate himself from the low position into which he had, by force of adverse circumstances, fallen. He was a cosmopolitan of cosmopolitans, a quiet, slow-speaking, slightly built, high-browed, genial-souled man, with his slight, dark moustache, shrewd dark eyes, and a mouth that had humour smiling at the corners; a man of middle height, his dark hair showing the first sign of changing early to grey, and a countenance bitten and scarred by all the winds and suns of the round globe; a wise and quiet man, able to keep his own counsel, able to get his own end with few words, and yet unable to shape his own destiny; a marvellous impostor, the friend of men and women of the haut monde, who all thought him a gentleman, and never for one instant suspected his true occupation.
Such was the man who had once risked his life for hers, the man who had now returned her stolen jewels to her, and who was at that moment seated at her side escorting her to her hotel on terms of intimate friendship.
She thought deeply over his bitter words of regret that he was what he was. Could she assist him, she wondered. But how?
“Remain patient,” she urged, in a calm, kindly tone. “I shall never forget my great indebtedness to you, and I will do my utmost in order that you may yet realise your wish to lead an honest life. At this moment I am, like yourself, an outcast, wondering what the future may have in store for me. But be patient and hope, for it shall be my most strenuous endeavour to assist you to realise your commendable desire.”
“Ah! really your Highness is far too kind,” he answered, in a voice that seemed to her to falter in emotion. “I only hope that some way will open out to me. I would welcome any appointment, however menial, that took me out of my present shameful profession – that of a thief.”
“I really believe you,” she said. “I can quite understand that it is against the nature of a man of honour to find himself in your position.”
“I assure you, Princess, that I hate myself,” he declared in earnest confidence. “What greater humility can befall a man than to be compelled to admit that he is a thief – as I admitted to you this afternoon? I might have concealed the fact, it is true, and have returned the jewels anonymously; yet an explanation of the reason of my sudden flight from Treysa after all your kindness was surely due to you. And – well, I was forced to tell you the whole truth, and allow you to judge me as you will.”
“As I have already said, Mr Bourne, your profession does not concern me. Many a man of note and of high position and power in the Ministries of Europe commits far greater peculations than you do, yet is regarded as a great man, and holds the favour of his sovereign until he commits the unpardonable sin of being found out. No, a man is not always what his profession is.”
“I thank you for regarding me in such a lenient light, your Highness, and I only look forward with hope to the day when, by some turn of Fortune’s wheel, I gain the liberty to be honest,” he answered.
“Remember, Mr Bourne, that I am your friend; and I hope you are still mine in return,” she said, for the cab had now stopped at the corner of the Rue d’Amsterdam, as he had ordered it, for it was running unnecessary risk for him to drive with her up to the hotel.
“Thank you, Princess,” he said earnestly, raising his hat, his dark, serious eyes meeting hers. “Let us be mutual friends, and perhaps we can help each other. Who knows? When I lay in the hospital with my chest broken in I often used to wonder what you would say if you knew my real identity. You, an Imperial Princess, were sending flowers and fruit from the royal table to a criminal for whom half the police in Europe were in active search!”
“Even an Imperial Princess is not devoid of gratitude,” she said, when he was out upon the pavement and had closed the door of the cab.
The vehicle moved forward to the hotel, and he was left there, bowing in silence before her, his hat in his hand.
To the hall porter she gave the precious bag, with orders to send it at once to her room, and then turned to pay the cabman.
But the man merely raised his white hat respectfully, saying, —
“Pardon, Madame, but I have already been paid.”
Therefore she gave him a couple of francs as tip.
Then she ascended in the lift to her room, where a porter with the bag was awaiting her, and unlocking the door, found that little Ignatia, tired out by her afternoon drive, had not stirred.
Locking the door and throwing off her things, she opened the bag and took out the magnificent ornaments one by one. She had not counted them before leaving the palace, therefore could not possibly tell if all were intact. In handfuls she took them out and laid them in a glittering heap upon the dressing-table, when of a sudden she found among them a small envelope containing something hard to the touch.
This she opened eagerly, and took out a cheap, tiny little brooch, about half an inch long, representing a beetle, scarlet, with black spots – the innocent little insect which has so interested all of us back in our youthful days – a ladybird.
The ornament was a very cheap one, costing one franc at the outside, but in the envelope with it was a letter. This she opened, scanned the few brief lines quickly, then re-read it very carefully, and stood staring at the little brooch in her hand, puzzled and mystified.
The words written there revealed to her the existence of a secret.
