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 cafe 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 Cafe 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."