Another story related by Garrett, the chauffeur, is worth telling, for
it is not without its humorous side.
It occurred about six weeks after the return of the party from San Remo.
It was dismal and wet in London, one of those damp yellow days with
which we, alas I are too well acquainted.
About two o'clock in the afternoon, attired in yellow fishermen's
oil-skins instead of his showy grey livery, Garrett sat at the wheel of
the new "sixty" six-cylinder car of Finch Grey's outside the Royal
Automobile Club, in Piccadilly, bade adieu to the exemplary Bayswater
parson, who stood upon the steps, and drew along to the corner of Park
Lane, afterwards turning towards the Marble Arch, upon the first stage
of a long and mysterious journey.
When it is said that the journey was a mysterious one Garrett was
compelled to admit that, ever since he had been in the service of Prince
Albert of Hesse-Holstein his journeys had been made for the most part
with a motive that, until the moment of their accomplishment, remained
to him a mystery. His employer gave him orders, but he never allowed
him to know his plans. He was paid to hold his tongue and obey. What
mattered if his Highness, who was such a well-known figure in the world
of automobilism was not a Highness at all; or whether the Rev Thomas
Clayton held no clerical charge in Bayswater. He, Garrett, was the
Prince's chauffeur, paid to close his ears and his eyes to everything
around him, and to drive whatever lady who might be in the car hither
and thither, just as his employer or his audacious friends required.
For two years his life had been one of constant change, as these secret
records show. In scarcely a country in Europe he had not driven, while
fully half a dozen times he had driven between Boulogne and the "Place"
at Monte Carlo, four times from Calais due east to Berlin, as well as
some highly exciting runs over certain frontiers when compelled to evade
the officers of the law.
The good-looking Prince Albert, whose real name was hidden in obscurity,
but who was best known as Tremlett, Burchell-Laing, Drummond, Lord
Nassington, and half a dozen other aliases, constantly amazed and
puzzled the police. Leader of that small circle of bold and ingenious
men, he provided the newspapers with sensational gossip from time to
time, exploits in which he usually made use of one or other of his
high-power cars, and in which there was invariably a lady in the car.
Prince Albert was nothing if not a ladies' man, and in two years had
owned quite a dozen cars of different makes with identification plates
innumerable, most of them false.
His Highness, who always found snobs to bow and dust his boots, and who
took good care to prey upon their snobbishness, was a perfect marvel of
cunning. His cool audacity was unequalled. The times which he passed
unsuspected and unidentified beneath the very noses of the police were
innumerable, while the times in which Garrett had been in imminent peril
of arrest were not a few.
The present journey was, however, to say the least, a very mysterious
one.
That morning at ten o'clock he had sat, as usual, in the cosy chambers
in Dover Street. His Highness had given him a cigar, and treated him as
an equal, as he did always when they were alone.
"You must start directly after lunch for the Highlands, Garrett," he had
said suddenly, his dark, clearly defined brows slightly knit. He was
still in his velvet smoking-jacket, and smoked incessantly his brown
"Petroffs."
"I know," he went on, "that the weather is wretched--but it is
imperative. We must have the car up there."
Garrett was disappointed, for they were only just back from Hamburg, and
he had expected at least to spend a few days with his own people down at
Surbiton.
"What?" he asked, "another _coup_?" His Highness smiled meaningly.
"We've got a rather ticklish piece of work before us, Garrett," he said,
contemplating the end of his cigar. "There's a girl in it--a very
pretty little girl. And you'll have to make a lot of love to her--you
understand?" And the gay nonchalant fellow laughed as his eyes raised
themselves to the chauffeur's.
"Well," remarked the man, somewhat surprised. "You make a much better
lover than I do. Remember the affair of the pretty Miss Northover?"
"Yes, yes!" he exclaimed impatiently. "But in this affair it's
different. I have other things to do besides love-making. She'll have
to be left to you. I warn you, however, that the dainty Elfrida is a
dangerous person--so don't make a fool of yourself, Garrett."
"Dangerous?" he echoed.
"I mean dangerously attractive, that's all. Neither she, nor her
people, have the least suspicion. The Blair-Stewarts, of Glenblair
Castle, up in Perthshire, claim to be one of the oldest families in the
Highlands. The old fellow made his money at shipbuilding, over at
Dumbarton, and bought back what may be, or may not be, the family
estate. At any rate, he's got pots of the needful, and I, having met
him with his wife and daughter this autumn at the `Excelsior,' at Aix,
am invited up there to-morrow to spend a week or so. I've consented if
I may go _incognito_ as Mr Drummond."
"And I go to take the car up?"
"No. You go as Herbert Hebberdine, son of old Sir Samuel Hebberdine,
the banker of Old Broad Street, a young man sowing his wild oats and a
motor enthusiast, as every young man is more or less nowadays," he
laughed. "You go as owner of the car. To Mrs Blair-Stewart I
explained long ago that you were one of my greatest friends, so she has
asked me to invite you, and I've already accepted in your name."
"But I'm a stranger!" protested Garrett.
"Never mind, my dear fellow," laughed the audacious Prince. "Clayton
will be up there too. It's he who knows the people, and is working the
game pretty cleverly."
"Is it jewels?" asked the chauffeur in a low voice.
"No, it just isn't, this time! You're mistaken, as you always are when
you're too inquisitive. Garrett, it's something better," he answered.
"All you've got to do is to pretend to be smitten by the girl. She's a
terrible little flirt, so you won't have very much difficulty. You make
the running, and leave all the rest to me." His master, having shown
him on the map where Glenblair was situated, half way between Stirling
and Perth, added:
"I'll go up to-night, and you'll be there in three days' time.
Meanwhile I'll sing your praises, and you'll receive a warm welcome from
everybody when you arrive. Take your decent kit with you, and act the
gentleman. There's a level thousand each for us if we bring it off
properly. But," he added, with further injunctions not to fall
genuinely in love with the pretty Elfrida, "the whole thing rests upon
you. The girl must be devoted to you--otherwise we can't work the
trick."
"What _is_ the trick?" asked Garrett, his curiosity aroused.
"Never mind what it is, Garrett," he said, rising to dismiss him.
"Have your lunch and get away. You've five hundred miles of bad roads
and new metal before you, so the sooner you're off the better. Call and
see Clayton at his rooms. He's got a bag, or something, to put in the
car, I think. When we meet in Scotland, recollect that I'm Prince
Albert _incognito_. We were at Bonn together, and have been friends for
many years. Good luck to you!"
And with that he left the Prince's cosy rooms, and soon found himself
out in Dover Street again, much puzzled.
The real object of his visit and his flirtation at a Scotch castle
filled his mind as, in the dull light of that fading afternoon, he swept
along the muddy Great North Road his exhaust opened and roaring as he
went ascending through Whetstone and Barnet in the direction of
Hatfield. The "sixty" repainted cream with narrow gilt lines upon it
certainly presented a very smart appearance, but in the back he had a
couple of false number-plates, together with three big pots of
dark-green enamel and a brush, so that if occasion arose, as it had
arisen more than once, he could run up a by-road, and in an hour
transform its appearance, so that its own maker would scarcely recognise
it.
In the grey twilight as he approached Hitchin, swinging round those
sharp corners at a speed as high as he dared, it poured with rain again,
and he was compelled to lower the wind-screen and receive the full brunt
of the storm, so blurred became everything through the sheet of
plate-glass. The old "Sun" at Hitchin reached, he got a drink, lit his
head-lamps, and crossing the marketplace, pushed forward, a long and
monotonous run up Alconbury Hill and through Wansford to Stamford where,
at the Stamford Hotel--which recalled memories of the Northovers--he ate
a cold dinner and rested for an hour over a cigar.
Many were the exciting adventures he had had while acting as chauffeur
to his Highness, but his instructions that morning had somehow filled
him with unusual misgiving. He was on his way to pretend to make love
to a girl whom he had never seen, the daughter of a millionaire
shipbuilder, a man who, as the Prince had informed him, had risen from a
journeyman, and like so many others who make money, had at once looked
round for a ready-made pedigree, and its accompanying estate. Heraldry
and family trees seem to exercise a strange and unaccountable
fascination for the parvenu.
As he pushed north, on through that long dark night in the teeth of a
bitter northeaster and constant rain, his mind was full of the
mysterious _coup_ which his Highness and his friend were about to
attempt. Jewels and money were usually what they were in search of, but
on this occasion it was something else. What it was, his Highness had
flatly refused to tell.
Aided by the Rev Thomas Clayton, one of the cleverest impostors who
ever evaded the police, his Highness's successes had been little short
of marvellous. His audacity was unparalleled. The Parson, who lived
constantly in that smug circle wherein moved the newly-rich, usually
marked down the victim, introduced his Highness, or the fascinating Mr
Tremlett, and left the rest to the young cosmopolitan's tact and
ingenuity. Their aliases were many, while the memory of both Tremlett
and Clayton for faces was extraordinary. A favourite pose of the Prince
was that of military _attache_ in the service of the German Government,
and this self-assumed profession often gained him admission to the most
exclusive circles here, and on the Continent.
Garrett's alias of Herbert Hebberdine he had assumed on one or two
previous occasions--once at Biarritz, when his Highness successfully
secured the splendid pearl necklace of the Duchess of Taormino, and
again a few months later at Abbazia, on the beautiful shore of the
Adriatic. On both occasions their _coup_ had been brought off without a
hitch, he recollected. Therefore, why should he, on this occasion,
become so foolishly apprehensive?
He could not tell. He tried to analyse his feelings as, hour after
hour, he sat at the wheel, tearing along that dark, wet, endless highway
due north towards York. But all in vain. Over him seemed to have
spread a shadow of impending evil, and try how he would, he could not
shake off the uncomfortable feeling that he was rushing into some grave
peril from which he was destined not to escape.
To describe in detail that wet, uncomfortable run from Hyde Park Corner
to Edinburgh would serve no purpose in this little chronicle of an
exciting chapter of an adventurous life. Suffice it to say that, late
in the night of the second day after leaving London, he drew up before
the North British Hotel, in Prince's Street, glad of shelter from the
icy blast. A telegram from his Highness ordered him to arrive at the
castle on the following evening; therefore, just as dusk was falling, he
found himself before the lodge-gates of the splendid domain of the laird
of Glenblair, and a moment later turned into the drive which ascended
for more than a mile through an avenue of great bare beeches and oaks,
on the one side a dense wood, and on the other a deep, beautiful glen,
where, far below, rippled a burn with many picturesque cascades.
Once or twice he touched the button of the electric horn to give warning
of his approach, when suddenly the drive took a wide curve and opened
out before a splendid old mansion in the Scotch baronial style, situated
amid the most romantic and picturesque scenery it had ever been his lot
to witness.
At the door, brought out by the horn, stood his Highness, in a smart
suit of blue serge, and the Parson, in severe clerical garb and
pince-nez, while with them stood two women, one plump, elderly, and
grey-haired, in a dark gown, the other a slim figure in cream with wavy
chestnut hair, and a face that instantly fascinated the new-comer.
As he alighted from the car and drew off his fur glove the Prince--who
was staying _incognito_ as Mr Drummond--introduced him to his hostess,
before whom he bowed, while she, in turn, said:
"This is my daughter, Elfrida--Mr Hebberdine."
Garrett bowed again. Their eyes met, and next instant the young man
wished heartily that he had never come there. The Prince had not
exaggerated her beauty. She was absolutely perfect. In all the years
he had been a wanderer he had never seen such dainty _chic_, such tiny
hands and feet, or such a sweet face with its soft pink cheeks and its
red lips made for kisses. She could not have been more than eighteen or
so, yet about her was none of the _gaucherie_ of the school-girl. He
noticed that she dropped her eyes quickly, and upon her cheeks arose
just the _soupcon_ of a blush.
"Had a good run, Herbert?" asked the Prince as he entered the big hall
of the castle.
"Not very. The roads were infernally bad in places," replied the other,
"and the new metal between York and Newcastle is most annoying."
"Good car, that of yours!" remarked the Parson, as though he had never
seen it before, while his Highness declared that a six-cylinder was
certainly the best of all.
After a whisky and soda, brought by the grave, antiquated butler,
Garrett drove the car round to the garage some little distance from the
house, where he found three fine cars belonging to his host.
Then, as he went to his room to change for dinner, he passed his
Highness on the stairs.
"The game's quite easy," whispered the latter as he halted for a second.
"It remains for you to make the running with Elfrida. Only be careful.
Old Blair-Stewart is pretty sly--as you'll see."
At dinner in the long old-fashioned panelled room, hung with the
portraits of what were supposed to be the ancestors of the
Blair-Stewarts of Glenblair, Garrett first met the rather stout,
coarse-featured shipbuilder who had assumed the head of that historic
house, and had bought the estate at three times its market value. From
the first moment of their meeting Garrett saw that he was a blatant
parvenu of the worst type, for he began to talk of "my hothouses," "my
motors," and "my yacht" almost in the first five minutes of their
conversation.
The party numbered about fifteen at dinner, and he had the good fortune
to be placed next the dainty little girl in turquoise towards whom the
part allotted to him was to act as lover.
She was, he saw, of very different type to her father. She had been at
school in Versailles, and afterwards had studied music in Dresden she
told him, and she could, he found, speak three languages quite well.
She had apparently put off her school-girl shyness when she put up her
hair, and indeed she struck him as being an amusing little friend to any
man. Motoring was her chief hobby. She could drive one of her father's
cars, a "sixteen-twenty" herself, and often did so. Therefore they were
soon upon a topic in which they were mutually enthusiastic.
A yellow-haired, thin-faced young man of elegant appearance, for he had
a velvet collar to his dress-coat and amethyst buttons to his vest, was
looking daggers at them. From that Garrett concluded that Archie Gould
was the lover of the winning Elfrida, and that he did not approve of
their mutual merriment. The Parson, who said grace, was a perfect
example of decorum, and was making himself delightful to his hostess,
while his Highness was joking with a pretty little married woman who,
without doubt, was full of admiration of his handsome face.
What would the good people of Glenblair have thought had they been aware
of the identity of the trio they were entertaining at their table? As
Garrett reflected, he smiled within himself. His fellow guests were
mostly wealthy people, and as he looked around the table he saw several
pieces of jewellery, necklets, pendants and the like for which the old
Jew in the Kerk Straat at Amsterdam would have given them very fair
prices.
If jewellery was not the object of their visit, then what was?
Two days passed, and Garrett took Elfrida and the Prince for several
runs on the "sixty," much to the girl's delight. He watched closely the
actions of his two companions, but could detect nothing suspicious.
Blair-Stewart's wife was a quaint old crow with a faint suspicion of a
moustache, who fancied herself hugely as wife of the wealthy laird of
Glenblair. She was busy visiting the poor of the grey straggling
Highland village, and his Highness, flattering her vanity, was assisting
her. Next to the Prince, the Parson was the most prominent person in
the house-party, and managed to impress on every occasion his own
importance upon the company.
With the dainty Elfrida, Garrett got on famously, much to the chagrin
and disgust of her yellow-headed young admirer, Gould, who had recently
inherited his father's estate up in Inverness-shire, and who it was
currently reported, was at that moment engaged in the interesting
occupation of "going through" it.
Elfrida, though extremely pretty, with a soft natural beauty all her
own, was an essentially out-door girl. It being a hard frost, they had
been out together on the "sixty" in the morning, and later she had been
teaching him curling on the curling-pond in the park, and initiated him
into the mysteries of "elbow in" and "elbow out." Indeed, every
afternoon the whole party curled, a big bonfire being lit on the side of
the pond, and tea being taken in the open. He had never practised the
sport of casting those big round stones along the ice before, but he
found it most invigorating and amusing, especially when he had as
instructress such a charming and delightful little companion.
Just as the crimson light of sundown was tinting the snow with its
blood-red glow one afternoon, she suddenly declared her intentions to
return to the house, whereupon he offered to escort her. As soon,
however, as they were away from the rest of the party she left the path
by which they were approaching the avenue, saying that there was a
shorter cut to the castle. It was then that they found themselves
wandering over the snow in the centre of a leafless forest, where the
deep crimson afterglow gleamed westward among the black trunks of the
trees, while the dead silence of winter was upon everything.
Garrett was laughing with her, as was his habit, for their flirtation
from the first had been a desperate one. At eighteen, a girl views
nothing seriously, except her hobbies. As they walked together she
presented a very neat-ankled and dainty appearance in her short blue
serge skirt, little fur bolero, blue French _beret_, and thick white
gloves. In the brief time he had been her father's guest, he had not
failed to notice how his presence always served to heighten the colour
of her cheeks, or how frequently she met him as if by accident in all
sorts of odd and out-of-the-way corners. He was not sufficiently
conceited to imagine that she cared for him any more than she did for
young Gould, though he never once saw him with her. He would scowl at
them across the table; that was all.
Of a sudden, as they went on through the leafless wood she halted, and
looking into his face with her beautiful eyes, exclaimed with a girl's
frankness:
"I wonder, Mr Hebberdine, if I might trust you?--I mean if you would
help me?"
"Trust me!" he echoed very surprised, as their acquaintanceship had been
of such short duration. "If you repose any confidence in me, Miss
Blair-Stewart, I assure you I shall respect its _secrecy_."
Her eyes met his, and he was startled to see in them a look of
desperation such as he had not seen in any woman's gaze before. In that
moment the mask seemed to have fallen from her, and she stood there
before him craving his pity and sympathy--his sympathy above that of all
other men!
Was not his position a curious one? The very girl whom he had come to
trick and to deceive was asking him to accept her confidences.
"You are very kind indeed to say that," she exclaimed, her face
brightening. "I hardly know whether I dare ask you to stand my friend,
for we've only known each other two or three days."
"Sufficiently long, Miss Elfrida, to win me as your faithful champion,"
the young man declared, whereupon her cheeks were again suffused by a
slight flush.
"Well, the fact is," she said with charming bluntness, "though I have
lots of girl friends, I have no man friend."
"There is Archie Gould," he remarked, "I thought he was your friend!"
"He's merely a silly boy," she laughed. "I said a man friend--like
yourself."
"Why are you so anxious to have one?"
She hesitated. Her eyes were fixed upon the spotless snow at their
feet, and he saw that she held her breath in hesitation.
"Men friends are sometimes dangerous, you know," he laughed.
"Not if the man is a true gentleman," was her rather disconcerting
answer. Then, raising her eyes again, and gazing straight into his face
she asked, "Will you really be my friend?"
"As I've already said, I'd only be too delighted. What do you want me
to do?"
"I--I want you to help me, and--and to preserve my secret."
"What secret?" he inquired, surprised that a girl of her age should
possess a secret.
He saw the sudden change in her countenance. Her lips were trembling,
the corners of her mouth hardened, and, without warning, she buried her
face in her hands and burst into tears.
"Oh! come, come, Elfrida!" he exclaimed quickly, placing his hand
tenderly upon her shoulder. "No, don't give way like this! I am your
friend, and will help you in what ever way you desire, if you will tell
me all about it. You are in distress. Why? Confide in me now that I
have promised to stand your friend."
"And--and you promise," she sobbed. "You promise to be my friend--
whatever happens."
"I promise," he said, perhaps foolishly. "Whatever happens you may rely
upon my friendship."
Then, next instant, his instructions from his Highness flashed across
his mind. He was there for some secret reason to play a treacherous
part--that of the faithless lover.
She stood immovable, dabbing her eyes with a little wisp of lace. He
was waiting for her to reveal the reason of her unhappiness. But she
suddenly walked on mechanically, in her eyes a strange look of terror,
nay of despair.
He strode beside her, much puzzled at her demeanour. She wished to tell
him something of which she was ashamed. Only the desperation of her
position prompted her to make the admission, and seek his advice.
They had gone, perhaps, three hundred yards still in the wood. The
crimson light had faded, and the December dusk was quickly darkening, as
it does in Scotland, when again she halted and faced him, saying in a
faltering tone:
"Mr Hebberdine, I--I do hope you will not think any the worse of me--I
mean, I hope you won't think me fast, when I tell you that I--well,
somehow, I don't know how it is--but I feel that Fate has brought you
here purposely to be my friend--_and to save me_!"
"To save you!" he echoed. "What do you mean? Be more explicit."
"I know my words must sound very strange to you. But it is the truth!
Ah!" she cried, "you cannot know all that I am suffering--or of the
deadly peril in which I find myself. It is because of that, I ask the
assistance of you--an honest man."
Honest! Save the mark! He foresaw himself falling into some horrible
complication, but the romance of the situation, together with the
extreme beauty of his newly found little friend held the young man
fascinated.
"I cannot be of assistance, Miss Elfrida, until I know the truth."
"If we are to be friends you must call me Elfrida," she said in her
girlish way, "but in private only."
"You are right. Other people might suspect, and misconstrue what is a
platonic friendship," he said, and he took her hand in order to seal
their compact.
For a long time he held it, his gaze fixed upon her pale, agitated
countenance. Why was she in peril? Of what?
He asked her to tell him. A slight shudder ran through her, and she
shook her head mournfully, no word escaping her lips. She sighed, the
sigh of a young girl who had a burden of apprehension upon her sorely
troubled mind. He could scarcely believe that this was the bright,
happy, laughing girl who, half an hour ago, had been putting her stones
along the ice, wielding her besom with all her might, and clapping her
dainty little hands with delight when any of her own side knocked an
opponent off "the pot lid."
At last, after long persuasion, during which time dusk had almost
deepened into darkness in that silent snow-covered wood, she, in a
faltering voice, and with many sentences broken by her emotion, which
she vainly strived to suppress, told him a most curious and startling
story to which he listened with breathless interest.
The first of the series of remarkable incidents had occurred about two
years ago, while she was at school in Versailles. She, with a number of
other elder girls, had gone to spend the summer at a branch of the
college close to Fontainebleau, and they often succeeded, when cycling,
in getting away unobserved and enjoying long runs in the forest alone.
One summer's evening she was riding alone along a leafy by-way of the
great forest when, by some means, her skirt got entangled in the machine
and she was thrown and hurt her ankle. A rather well-dressed Frenchman
who was coming along assisted her. He appeared to be very kind, gave
her a card, with the name "Paul Berton" upon it, was told her name in
response, and very quickly a friendship sprang up between them. He was
an engineer, and staying at the Lion d'Or, in Fontainebleau, he said,
and having wheeled her machine several miles to a spot quite near the
college, suggested another meeting. She, with the school-girl's
adventurous spirit, consented, and that proved to be the first of many
clandestine rendezvous. She was not quite seventeen while he was, she
thought, about twenty-six.
She kept her secret from all, even from her most intimate schoolmate,
fearing to be betrayed to the head governess, so all the summer these
secret meetings went on, she becoming more and more infatuated on every
occasion, while he, with apparent carelessness, learned from her the
history of her family, who they were, and where they resided.
"One thing about Paul puzzled me from the very first evening we met,"
she said reflectively as she was describing those halcyon days of
forbidden love. "It was that I noticed, high upon his left wrist, about
four inches from the base of the hand, a scarlet mark, encircling the
whole arm. It looked as though he had worn a bracelet that had chafed
him, or perhaps it had been tattooed there. Several times I referred to
it, but he always evaded my question, and seemed to grow uneasy because
I noticed it. Indeed, after a few meetings I noticed that he wore
shirts with the cuffs buttoned over with solitaires, instead of open
links. Well--" she went on slowly with a strange, far-away look in her
face. "I--I hardly like to tell you further."
"Go on, little friend," he urged, "your secret is in safe keeping with
me--whatever it may be. You loved the man, eh?"
"Ah! yes!" she cried. "You are right. I--I loved him--and I did not
know. We met again in Paris--many times. All sorts of ruses I resorted
to, in order to get out, if only for half an hour. He followed me to
London--when I left school--and he came up here."
"Up here!" he gasped. "He loved you, then?"
"Yes. And when I went to Dresden he went there also."
"Why?"
She held her breath. Her eyes looked straight into his, and then were
downcast.
"Because--because," she faltered hoarsely, "because he is my husband!"
"Your husband. Great heavens!"
"Yes. I married him six months ago at the registry office in the
Blackfriars Road, in London," she said in a strangely blank voice. "I
am Madame Berton."
He stood utterly dumbfounded. The sweet, refined face of the child-wife
was ashen pale, her white lips were trembling, and tears were welling in
her eyes. He could see she wished to confide further in him.
"Well?" he asked. It was the only word he could utter.
"We parted half an hour after our marriage, and I have only seen him six
times since. He comes here surreptitiously," she said in a low voice of
despair.
"Why?"
"Because evil fortune has pursued him. He--he confessed to me a few
weeks ago that he was not so rich as he had been. He will be rich some
day, but now he is horribly poor. He being my husband, it is my duty to
help him--is it not?"
Garrett's heart rose against this cowardly foreigner, who had inveigled
her into a secret marriage, whoever he might be, for, according to
French law, he might at once repudiate her. Poor child! She was
evidently devoted to him.
"Well," he said, "that depends upon circumstances. In what manner is he
seeking your assistance?"
She hesitated. At last she said:
"Well--I give him a little money sometimes. But I never have enough.
All the trinkets I dare spare are gone."
"You love him--eh?" asked the young man seriously.
"Yes," was her frank reply. "I am looking forward to the day when he
can acknowledge me as his wife. Being an engineer he has a brilliant
idea, namely, to perform a great service to my father in furthering his
business aims, so that it will be impossible for him to denounce our
marriage. Towards this end I am helping him. Ah! Mr Hebberdine, you
don't know what a dear, good fellow Paul is."
The young man sniffed suspiciously.
"He has invented a new submarine boat which will revolutionise the naval
warfare of the future. Father, in secret, builds submarine boats, you
know. But Paul is anxious to ascertain what difference there is between
those now secretly building and his own invention, prior to placing it
before dear old dad."
"Well?"
She hesitated.
"I wanted to ask you, Mr Hebberdine, if you will do me a favour
to-night," she said presently. "Paul is staying at the `Star,' down in
the village, in the name of Mr James. I dare not go there, and he dare
not approach me. There have been thieves about in this neighbourhood
lately, and dad is having the castle watched at night by detectives."
At this Garrett pricked up his ears. Glenblair was, in those
circumstances, no place for his Highness and his clerical companion.
"I wonder," she suggested, "whether you would do me a great favour and
go down to the village to-night about ten and--and give him this."
From within her fur bolero she produced an envelope containing what
seemed to be a little jewellery box about two inches long by an inch and
a half broad. This she handed to him saying, "Give it into the hand of
nobody except Paul personally. Tell him that you are my friend--and
his."
So devoted was the girl-wife to her husband, and so unhappy did she seem
that Garrett, filled with the romance of the affair, at once agreed to
carry out his promise. Her remarkable story had amazed him. He alone
knew her secret.
As they sat at dinner that night, her eyes met his once or twice, and
the look they exchanged was full of meaning. He was the bearer of some
secret message to her husband.
At half-past nine when the men had gone to the billiard-room, Garrett
slipped upstairs to his room to put on a pair of thick boots, for he had
a walk through the snow a good couple of miles to the village.
Scarcely had he closed the door when it opened again, and the Prince,
his finger raised in silence, entered, and in a low excited whisper
exclaimed:
"It's all up! We must get away on the car as soon as possible. Every
moment's delay means increased peril. How have you got on with
Elfrida?"
The chauffeur stared at him without uttering a word.
"Elfrida!" he echoed at last. "Well, she's told me a most remarkable
story, and made me her confidante." Then, as briefly as possible, he
told him everything. How her husband was staying in Glenblair village
as Mr James; and how he had promised to convey the little packet to
him.
When he had finished the Prince fell back in his chair utterly
dumbfounded. Then, taking the little packet, he turned it over in his
hand.
"Great Heavens!" he cried. "You don't know what you've done, Garrett.
There's something very funny about all this!" he added quickly. "Wait
here, and I'll run along to Clayton," and he left the young man
instantly, carrying the packet in his hand.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
An hour later Garrett was driving the Prince and the Rev Thomas
Clayton in the car due south, and they were travelling for all they were
worth over the hard frozen snow. Of the reason of that sudden flight,
Garrett was in complete ignorance. All he knew was that he had orders
to creep out to the garage, get the car, and await his companions who,
in a few moments, came up out of the shadows. Their big overcoats were
in the car, therefore their evening clothes did not trouble them. Then,
with as little noise as possible, they ran down a back drive which his
Highness, having reconnoitred, knew joined the main Perth road. An
idling constable saw them, and wished them good evening. They were
guests from the Castle, therefore he allowed them to pass unmolested.
The constable would scarcely have done this, however, had he known what
they were carrying away with them.
They took the road by Dunblane and Stirling, and then straight south
into Glasgow, where at two o'clock in the morning, Garrett's two
companions alighted in a deserted snow-covered street in the suburbs of
the city, and bidding him farewell, gave him orders to get back to
London with all haste.
The run was a most dismal one. All through the snowstorm next day he
kept on, making but poor progress.
Next night, Garrett spent alone in Carlisle, and on the following
morning started direct for London, being compelled, owing to the
abominable state of the roads, to take two days over the run.
A week of suspense went by, when one evening he received a note from his
Highness, in consequence of which he went to Dover Street, where he
found him smoking one of his "Petroffs," as was his wont.
"Well, Garrett?" he laughed. "Sit down, and have a drink. I've got
eight hundred pounds for you here--your share of the boodle?"
"But I don't understand," he exclaimed. "What boodle?"
"Of course you don't understand!" he laughed. "Just carry your mind
back. You told me the story of little Elfrida's unfortunate secret
marriage, and that her husband had a red ring tattooed around his left
wrist. That conveyed nothing to you; but it told me much. That
afternoon I was walking with the ladies up Glenblair village when, to my
surprise, I saw standing at a door no less a person than Jacques
Fourrier, or `Le Bravache,' as he's known in Paris, an `international,'
like ourselves."
"Le Bravache!" gasped Garrett, for his reputation was that of the most
daring and successful adventurer on the Continent, besides which he knew
him as his Highness's arch-enemy owing to a little love affair of a
couple of years before.
"Yes. `Le Bravache'!" the Prince went on. "He recognised me, and I saw
that our game was up. Then you told me Elfrida's story, and from the
red circle on the man's arm I realised that Paul Berton, the engineer,
and `Le Bravache' were one and the same person! Besides, she had
actually given you to take to her husband the very thing we had gone to
Glenblair to obtain!"
"What was it?" he asked excitedly.
"Well, the facts are these," answered the audacious, good-looking
Prince, blowing a cloud of smoke from his lips. "Old Blair-Stewart has
taken, in secret, a contract from the German Government to build a
number of submarine boats for naval use. The plans of these wonderful
vessels are kept in a strong safe in the old chap's private office in
Dumbarton, and both Fourrier and ourselves were after them--the French
Intelligence Department having, in confidence, offered a big sum to any
one bringing them to the Quay d'Orsay. Now you see the drift of the
story of the exemplary Paul to his pretty little wife, and why he
induced her to take impressions in wax of her father's safe-key, she
believing that he merely wanted sight of the plans in order to ascertain
whether they were any better than his own alleged invention.
Fortunately for us, she induced you to be her messenger. When we sent
you up there with orders to be nice to Elfrida we never anticipated such
a _contretemps_ as Fourrier's presence, or that the dainty little girl
would actually take the impressions for us to use."
"Then you have used it?"
"Of course. On the night after leaving you, having made the false key
in Glasgow, we went over to Dumbarton and got the plans quite easily.
We crossed by Harwich and Antwerp to Brussels on to Paris, and here we
are again. The Intelligence Department of the Admiralty are very
satisfied--and so are we. The pretty Elfrida will no doubt remain in
ignorance, until her father discovers his loss, but I'm half inclined to
write anonymously to her and tell the poor girl the truth regarding her
mysterious husband. I think I really shall, for my letter would cast a
good deal of suspicion upon the Man with the Red Circle."