"Then at last the truth is plain!" she exclaimed. "You have supplied
the key to the enigma for which I have been so long in search!"
"Tell me," I said, in breathless earnestness. "All these years I have
been striving in vain to solve the problem."
She paused, her dark, fathomless eyes fixed upon me, as though lacking
courage to tell me the truth.
"I deceived you, Wilford, from the first," she faltered, "I hid from you
the secret of my birth, and it was at my request Colonel Channing--who,
of course, knew me well when he was British Attache at Vienna--refused
to tell you the truth. You wonder, of course, that I should live in
England _incognita_. Probably, however, you know that my poor mother,
the late Empress, loved England and the English. She gave me an English
name at my baptism, and when only five years of age I was sent here to
be educated. At seventeen I returned to Vienna, but soon became tired
of the eternal glitter of palace life, and a year or two later, as soon
as I was of age and my own mistress, I returned to London, took into my
service Mrs Anson, the widow of an English officer well known to my
mother, and in order to preserve my _incognita_ caused her to pass as my
mother. I took the house at The Boltons, and only Colonel and Mrs
Channing knew my real station. I was passionately fond of music, and
desired to complete my studies, besides which I am intensely fond of
London and of life unfettered by the trammels which must hamper the
daughter of an Emperor."
"You preferred a quiet, free life in London to that at your father's
Court?"
"Exactly," she answered. "At twenty-one I had had my fill of life at
Court, and found existence in London, where I was unknown, far more
pleasant. Besides Mrs Anson, I had as companion a young Englishwoman
who had been governess in a well-known family in Vienna. Her name was
Grainger."
"Grainger?" I cried. "Edna Grainger?"
"The same. She was my companion. Well, after I had been established at
The Boltons nearly a year I met, while on a visit to a country house, a
young man with whom I became on very friendly terms--Prince Alexander,
heir to the throne of Bulgaria. We met often, and although I still
passed as Mabel Anson, our acquaintanceship ripened into a mutual
affection. With a disregard for the _convenances_, I induced Mrs Anson
to invite him on several occasions to The Boltons. One
morning, however, I received a private message from Count de
Walkenstein-Trosburg, our ambassador here, saying that he had received a
cipher telegraphic dispatch that my father, the Emperor, was very
unwell, and his Excellency suggested that I should return to Vienna.
This I did, accompanied by Mrs Anson, and, leaving the woman Grainger
in charge of the household as usual, I wrote to the young Prince from
Vienna, but received no reply, and when I returned a fortnight later
searched for him in vain. He had mysteriously disappeared. A few days
before, in my dreams, I had seen the fatal raven, the evil omen of my
House, and feared the worst."
"Then the man who was murdered at The Boltons on that night was none
other than Prince Alexander, the heir to the throne of Bulgaria!" I
cried.
"Without a doubt," she answered. "What you have just told me makes it
all plain. You took from the dead man's pocket a small gold
pencil-case, and you will remember that I recognised it as one that I
had given him. It was that fact which caused me to suspect you."
"Suspect me? Did you believe me guilty of murder?"
"I did not then know that murder had been committed. All that was known
was that the heir to the throne had mysteriously disappeared. The
terrible truth I have just learnt from your lips. The discovery that
the little gift I had made to him was in your possession filled me with
suspicion, and in order to solve the mystery I invoked the aid of the
police-agent attached to our Embassy, and invited both of you to dine,
in order that he might meet you. You will remember the man you met on
that night?"
"Hickman!" I cried. "Was he really a police-agent?"
"Yes. He induced you, it appears, to go to a lodging he had taken for
the purpose, and without my knowledge gave you a drugged cigar. You
fell unconscious, and this enabled him to thoroughly overhaul your
pockets, and also to go to your chambers during the night, either with
your latch-key, and make a complete search, the result of which
convinced us both that you had no hand in the missing man's
disappearance, in spite of the fact that his dress-stud and pencil-case
were in your possession. On the following morning, however, when you
were but half conscious--Hickman having then returned from making his
search at Essex Street--you accidentally struck your head a violent blow
on the corner of the stone mantelshelf. This blow, so severe that they
were compelled to remove you to the hospital, apparently affected your
brain, for when I met you again a month later you seamed curiously
vacant in mind, and had no recollection whatever of the events that had
passed."
"I had none, I assure you," I said.
"It seems marvellous that you should be utterly in ignorance of what
followed," she went on, her sweet eyes still gazing deeply into mine.
"You told me how you loved me, and I, loving you in return, we entered
upon a clandestine engagement that was to be secret from all. A few
summer months went by, happy, joyous months, the most blissful in all my
life, and then your love suddenly cooled. You had embarked in financial
schemes in the City--you were becoming enriched by some concessions in
Bulgaria, it was whispered--but your love for me slowly died, and you
married a woman twice your age. Can you imagine my feelings? I was
heart-broken, Wilford--utterly heart-broken."
"But I knew not what I was doing," I hastened to declare. "I loved you
always--always. My brain had been injured by that blow, and all my
tastes and feelings thereby became inverted."
"I remained in England a few weeks longer, wandering aimlessly hither
and thither, and then at last returned to Vienna and plunged into the
vortex of gaiety at Court, in order to forget my sorrow."
"And that woman Grainger? What of her?"
"She left my service about a month after that night when you met with
your accident at The Boltons. I have not seen her since."
I then related how for the past month I had been closely watching her,
and repeated the conversation I had overheard at Hull between her and
her visitors on the previous night.
"The woman, after leaving my service, has, it seems, somehow become an
agent of the Bulgarian Government. She knows the truth," she said
decisively. "We must obtain it from her."
"It was a woman who struck the young Prince down!" I exclaimed quickly.
"Of that I am certain."
My wife reflected for a brief instant.
"Perhaps," she said. "That woman was jealous of the attention he paid
me."