Weary and fagged Waldron descended from the sleeping-car at the Gare de
Lyon in Paris twenty hours later and dispatched a telegram to the
address Lola had given him. Then he drove in a taxi across the French
capital, and next morning found himself in the Grand Hotel in gay little
Brussels--awaiting a reply.
About eleven o'clock it came--a message by express making an appointment
to meet at noon at the Cafe Metropole a little farther up the boulevard.
Hubert was wasting no time. He had not lost a single moment since
leaving the Eternal City, and on that rush northward his mind was ever
centred upon the crisis between the two Powers which had evidently
occurred.
He had left word with Peters that if any person called, or anyone rang
up on the telephone, the reply was that he had left Rome on urgent
business for three or four days. On no account was his man to say
whither he had gone.
He flung off his coat and cast himself upon the bed to rest for an hour.
But the noise in the busy boulevard outside was irritating, worse even
than the roar of the great international express which had borne him
half across Europe.
Presently he washed, changed his clothes, and then went forth to the
cafe, a popular rendezvous which he had known when, six years before, he
had served temporarily at the Brussels Legation.
It was a huge, square, open place, with walls tiled to represent various
Bacchanalian pictures, and many tables, upon half of which were laid
cloths for the _dejeuner_. Being winter there were only a dozen tables
set on the pavement outside, but in summer there are a hundred spread
over the broad footway, and in an evening the place, being a highly
papular resort, is crowded to overflowing by the chattering, bearded
Bruxellois and their female friends.
At that hour, however, the place was nearly empty as Hubert entered, his
sharp eyes gazing around. Then suddenly he saw a youngish man in grey
overcoat and wearing a Tyrolese hat of dark green plush, seated in a far
corner.
He rose and smiled as Waldron entered, and the latter instantly
recognised him as the secret lover--the man who had travelled with them
down the Nile, and whose attitude towards Lola had so completely
disarmed all suspicion.
The two men lifted hats to each other in the foreign manner, and then
Hubert exclaimed with a pleasant smile:
"This is a strange renewal of our acquaintance, M'sieur Pujalet, is it
not?"
"Hush?" exclaimed the other warningly. "Not Pujalet here--Petrovitch,
if you please!" and a mysterious expression crossed his dark, rather
handsome, features.
"As you wish, of course," replied Waldron with a bright laugh. "You, of
course, know the object of my mission? The--"
He hesitated, for he was naturally cautious, and it had suddenly
occurred to him at that second that this Frenchman was, no doubt, in
ignorance of the true station of the woman he loved, just as he himself
had been. So the word "Princess" died from his lips.
"Mademoiselle asked you to give me a letter, did she not?" said the man
politely in French. "I am sure, M'sieur Waldron, I do not know how to
thank you sufficiently for making this long journey in order to meet
me."
"No thanks are necessary," the other replied. "I am simply Mam'zelle's
messenger," he laughed, producing the letter from his pocket-book and
handing it to him.
"Ah! but this is really a great service you have done both of us," he
declared earnestly. "One that I fear I shall never be able to repay,"
he declared, taking the letter in his eager hands.
Waldron, watching keenly, saw that the man's fingers trembled visibly.
That letter contained some message of greatest import to him, without a
doubt. Yet he held it unopened--not daring, it seemed, to break the
seal and learn the truth.
"Candidly," Waldron said, now sitting back easily in a chair opposite
Pujalet, "I wondered why it could not be entrusted to the post. It
would in that case have reached you two days earlier."
"Ah! there are some things one does not exactly care to trust to the
post even though registered."
"If a packet is insured it is rarely lost--even in Italy where the post
is so uncertain and insecure. The Administration of Posts and
Telegraphs does not care to be called upon to pay an indemnity."
Pujalet did not reply. And by his silence Waldron was convinced that he
feared the letter might have been tampered with and opened--that the
secret it contained might be revealed.
If this were so, then, after all, it was more than probable that he did
really know Lola's actual identity!
And again, what had Her Highness meant when she had hinted at blackmail!
Why, too, had not Pujalet travelled to Rome himself instead of burying
himself in Brussels.
From that moment Waldron viewed Henri Pujalet with suspicion. Why
should he, a Frenchman, be passing there as a Servian, and living in
obscurity? His manner, from the very first moment when he had seen him
with Lola in his arms under those dark palms in far-off Wady Haifa, had
been suspicious. For some reason--why, he could not himself tell--
Hubert felt a bitter antagonism towards the Frenchman. Surely it was a
foolish fancy of Her Royal Highness to allow herself to love that man--a
person whose movements were, on the face of them, not those of an
honourable man.
Yet, on the other hand, Waldron remembered how devoted the pair had
seemed towards each other. And it was only because of this, because of
his intense interest and admiration for Lola, that he had declared
himself her friend, and had undertaken that mad rush across Europe on
her behalf.
"Please disregard me entirely," he said to the Frenchman, "if you wish
to open your letter," and taking out his cigarette-case he selected one
and slowly lit it, the while covertly watching the man before him as he
broke the seal and drew forth a sheet of paper.
Pujalet eagerly devoured what was written there, while Waldron, from the
opposite side of the little marble table, watched his countenance
keenly.
He saw a sudden expression of blank amazement. Then his sharp, dark
eyes narrowed, and surprise gave way to a distinct expression of evil.
Whatever the Princess's missive contained, it certainly caused him both
annoyance and alarm. The man's astute cleverness, however, was shown by
the manner in which he made pretence of disregarding it and treating it
with nonchalance.
He smiled as he looked again into the face of his companion, though it
was but a strange, sickly smile, like that seen upon a criminal's face
on listening to his sentence. And without a word he signalled to a
waiter and called for a cognac.
Waldron refused his invitation to drink, but watched him as he tossed
off the _petit verre_ at a single gulp.
"I regret if the news I have brought is unwelcome," Waldron remarked, as
he drew slowly at his cigarette and watched the smoke curling upwards.
"But m'sieur must forgive me."
"Oh, no," he laughed, "the news is not unwelcome in the least. At first
I regarded it as such, but on mature reflection I see it is not," he
declared, quite unperturbed.
But Waldron knew from the man's manner that he was lying. He felt that
Henri Pujalet was not the charming, educated man which he had believed
him to be on the Nile.
"I hope Mademoiselle has not been--well, indiscreet," the Englishman
remarked with a smile. "Ladies so often are."
"Ah, yes. Well--she has, truth to tell, been just a little indiscreet.
But it is nothing," he declared, "really nothing whatever."
"Is there any reply I can convey to her?" asked Waldron. "I am leaving
for Paris at four o'clock."
"So soon--eh? Will you not remain and be my guest at dinner this
evening?" urged the other. "Do. You must be tired and want rest."
"Ah, no. I much regret, M'sieur Pujalet. But I have to be back at my
post at the Embassy at once. I travel to Italy direct--just as I came."
"Of course. You are a diplomat! I clean forgot!" exclaimed the man
before him. "Ah! yours must be a most interesting profession! I have
several good friends at the foreign Embassies in Paris. But I heard
yesterday that trouble seems to be brewing in Europe--another war-cloud,
they say."
"Oh!" exclaimed Waldron, in an instant interested. "I know nothing of
it. Who told you?"
Pujalet seemed upon his guard in an instant.
"Oh--er--I--well, somebody here in this cafe last night was telling us
that secret mobilisation orders had been given."
"Secret mobilisation! Where?"
The Frenchman hesitated and reflected.
"In Austria--I believe," was his reply. "But, really, I did not take
much notice."
Hubert Waldron held his breath for a few seconds. Was the great secret
already out? The political gossip of the cafes was very often correct.
"Was the man unknown to you?"
"Quite. While I was seated over yonder with a friend of mine, a banker
of Liege, the man came in, greeted his friend, and joined us. And then
they began to chat. Personally, I'm tired of all these war alarms.
They come too frequently, being set about by unscrupulous operators on
the Bourses."
"Then you don't believe the rumour--eh?"
"I never believe rumours which I hear in such circumstances as those.
Not until I have some confirmation," the man declared.
"I have not seen the papers to-day. Is there any mention of the
crisis?" Hubert asked.
"None that I have seen," Pujalet replied. "It is merely an alarmist
rumour, no doubt."
Waldron lit another cigarette and reflected deeply.
It was distinctly curious and certainly most alarming that the fact
which was regarded as such a dead secret in Vienna should have been
openly discussed in that cafe in Brussels on the previous night. On his
journey he had carefully watched the principal French and Italian
papers, but there was no mention whatever of the affair. Besides,
before leaving Rome he had arranged that if anything fresh leaked out
regarding the crisis a telegram should meet him on his arrival at the
Gare de Lyon.
With that innate cautiousness and shrewd discretion which was inborn in
him, and which had placed him above others in the profession of
diplomacy, he carefully questioned Henri Pujalet further, asking him the
opinion held by the stranger regarding the pending crisis, and other
such-like questions.
But the mind of the man seated before him seemed an utter blank
regarding what had transpired.
"All I know is that the man told us that Austria is secretly preparing
for war, and that in a few days Europe would be aflame. I naturally put
him down to be one of those alarmist cranks with whom one so often comes
into contact--a man who exaggerates the gossip of the Bourse and repeats
it as actual fact with embroidery of his own."
"Your friend was a banker?" Waldron remarked. "Perhaps the man had
received some inside knowledge from Vienna for the purpose of operating
on the Bourse?"
"He may have done," replied the other thoughtfully. "But really I don't
know. I didn't take much notice of his words."
Waldron said nothing for a few moments.
"And your reply to Mam'zelle?" he asked at last.
"If I bring it to you at the Grand by three o'clock will that be
convenient to you?"
"Quite," was the reply, and then the two men parted, Hubert taking a
taxi up to the British Legation in the Rue de Spa, where he had a
pleasant luncheon with Hugh Bennett, the Minister, and his wife,
returning to the Grand at three o'clock, where in his room he received a
sealed letter from the Frenchman's hand.
It was addressed "To Mademoiselle Lola Duprez" and not to the Princess
Luisa of Savoy, as Hubert had half expected.
"I can, alas! do no more than thank you most warmly and deeply both on
my own behalf and upon Mam'zelle's," said Pujalet in his polite Parisian
manner. "By coming here you have rendered a great service to us both--
one that I can never in all my life forget."
But Hubert Waldron, though he placed the letter in his pocket, held the
man in distinct antipathy. He could read men's minds better than most
of his fellows. It was his profession as a diplomat.
And in the heart of Henri Pujalet, that man who had come up out of the
desert from nowhere, he felt that there was a hidden yet distinct evil.
Upon him on that grey, wintry afternoon as he drove to the station to
catch the express back to Paris there fell a feeling that a crisis--a
dangerous and dramatic crisis--was imminent.
Ah! had he but known the truth--had he had but sight of what the
Princess had written in that fatal letter he had conveyed to her lover--
how differently would he have acted!
But, alas! he travelled back to the Eternal City bearing the bitter
reply of the Princess's secret lover--a reply by which her own young
life was held in the balance, which crushed her soul, which held her in
breathless terror, and, alas! caused her to long for the dark oblivion
of death.