By the time the prince had ceased speaking there was not the slightest
doubt in Lord Orrel's mind that, in some most mysterious manner, he
was connected with the discovery which Hardress had made when he took
the mutilated body out of the waters of the Channel. Perhaps even the
unknown dead might have been someone near and dear to him. It seemed
to him utterly impossible either to doubt the prince's word or to
believe that two such discoveries could have been made by two men at
the same time, or even that there could exist at the same time on
earth two men whose genius, once put into practice, could make them
rival masters of the world.
And supposing that he knew part of the story which the prince was
going to tell him--the sequel, and, from a practical point of view,
the all-important portion--ought he to tell him what he knew too? He
was under no actual pledge of secrecy to his associates in the great
Trust, but still he felt that he was under an honourable obligation to
keep the story of the discovery to himself. On the other hand, granted
that the prince knew the first half, would it be right--would it be
honourable, according to his own exact code of honour, to keep the
sequel from him? Perhaps the prince even had a definite personal
interest in the scheme; and, in that case, to keep silence would be to
rob him of his prior rights. What was he to do?
He had been a Minister of the Crown for a short term of office, and by
the time they reached his sitting-room, and he had locked the door,
after the wine had been placed on the table, diplomacy had come to his
aid, and he had made up his mind. When he had filled the glasses he
took out his cigar-case, selected the best it contained, and said:
"Prince, I'm going to ask you to allow me to take a very great
liberty."
"My dear Lord Orrel, there is nothing that you could do that I should
consider a liberty. Thank you, I will; I know that your cigars are
always most excellent, and now we will make ourselves comfortable, and
you shall take your liberty."
He took the proffered cigar as he spoke, snipped the end, and lit it.
Lord Orrel did the same, and when they had saluted each other over
their wine, in the old-fashioned, courtly style, he began:
"My dear prince, the liberty that I am going to ask your permission to
take is a very great one, because it is a liberty of anticipation; and
few men, even the most chivalrous, care to be anticipated, especially
when they have an interesting story to tell. In other words, I, too,
have a very strange story to tell you. In fact, the strangest that
ever came within my experience. And there are reasons, which I will
explain to you afterwards, why I am asking the favour of your
permission to tell it before yours."
The prince looked puzzled, and his dark brows approached each other
for just the fraction of a second. He took a sip at his wine, leant
back in his chair, and blew a long whiff of smoke up towards the
gaudily-painted ceiling. Then he said, with a barely perceptible shrug
of his shoulders:
"My dear Lord Orrel, you are not asking me any favour. On the
contrary, you are merely requesting that you shall entertain me before
I try to do the same by you. Moreover, as it is quite impossible that
there can be any connection between our stories, there can be no
question of anticipation; so, pray, proceed. I am all attention."
"As I said," began Lord Orrel, settling himself in his chair, and
taking a long pull at his cigar, "the story is a very strange one, and
it is also one which could not well be told from the housetops,
because it involves--well, what may be something almost as wonderful
as what you hinted at in the garden just now."
"Ah," interrupted the prince, with a visible start and a sudden
lifting of the eyebrows, "then, in truth, it must be strange indeed;
and so I am more than ever anxious to hear it; and if, as I divine,
you wish me to treat it in confidence, you, of course, have my word,
as a gentleman of France, that no detail of it shall ever pass my
lips."
His host felt not a little relieved at being released from the
necessity of binding him to secrecy, as, for the sake of his
colleagues, he would have felt obliged to do; so he said:
"That, my dear prince, it would be quite impossible to imagine; and
now, as it is getting a little late, I will get to my story."
He began with the finding of the mutilated body by the _Nadine_, and
the discovery of the tin box containing the momentous papers, and had
just given a sketch of their contents and the use that was about to be
made of the dead man's discovery when the prince, whose face had been
growing greyer and greyer during the recital, at length lost his hold
upon the stern control under which he had just placed himself. He
sprang to his feet, flung his arms apart, and cried, in a high-pitched,
half-choked voice:
"Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! It is the same!--what miracle has happened? My
lord, you have been telling me the end of the story of which I was
going to tell you the beginning. And so France, poor France, through
the stupidity of the ministerial puppets that the mob has placed in
the seats of their ancient rulers, has refused the sceptre of the
world; and I--I, the heir of her ancient royal house, have lost not
only the throne of my ancestors, but the power to make her the
mistress of the nations. Truly, the mills of God grind slowly, but
they grind exceeding small. Her kings misruled her, and she took other
rulers, who have cheated and swindled her, and humbled her before
those who once did her bidding; and now, when the hand of Fate holds
out the means of regaining all that she has lost, and more, infinitely
more, she puts it aside with the sneering laugh of contemptuous
ignorance. Truly it is a judgment that judges even unto the third and
fourth generation. Ah, yes; and on me, too!--I, who am innocent! Mon
Dieu, mon Dieu, it is cruel!"
As the last words came from his trembling lips his hands came together
on his forehead, and he dropped back into his chair.
For a moment of speechless astonishment Lord Orrel stared across the
room at him. Then, dropping his cigar on the tray, he got up and went
and laid his hand on the prince's shoulder.
"My dear prince, my dear friend," he said, in a voice moved by
emotion, "I am most deeply distressed that my story should have
affected you so painfully. Believe me, I had no intention, no thought
even----"
The prince dropped his hands from his head, and stood and faced him,
his face white and set and his eyes burning; but with a perfectly
steady voice, he said:
"My lord, I thank you. So much emotion, though perhaps it was natural,
ought not to have been shown. I should not have permitted it to
myself, save in solitude. It was impossible that I should know that
your lordship's story was the same as mine, and so, naturally, the
shock was greater. And now, may I ask your lordship one question?"
"I will answer it, prince, before you ask it," interrupted Lord Orrel.
"But first, let me beg of you to drink your wine; really, you do not
look well."
The prince took the glass from him and drained it in silence, his hand
shaking ever so little as he held it to his lips, and the other went
on:
"Knowing what I did, I felt certain that two such miracles could not
have happened at the same time; moreover, some inspiration told me
that the discovery you spoke of in the garden was the same that my son
made under such terrible circumstances in the Channel. Now, sit down,
pray, do, and let us talk this matter over as men of the world."
"Men of the world!" echoed the prince, sadly, as he sat down again;
"nay, of two worlds. I of the old, you and your son and your great
business syndicate of the new; I of the past, you of the present and
the future; I who would have revived the glories of an ancient race,
the despotism, if you will, of a bygone dynasty, you who would found a
new one--despotism a thousand times harder, a dynasty of money, not of
blood, the most soulless and brutal of all dynasties. Ah, well, it is
fate, and who shall question that? No; if you will pardon me, my dear
Orrel, we will not talk further upon this subject, to-night, at any
rate. I confess that what you have told me has affected me deeply. If
you will permit me, I will go to bed. The Russians, you know, have a
saying, 'Take thy thoughts to bed with thee, for the morning is wiser
than the evening.' To-morrow, perhaps, I shall be able to converse
with you on this momentous matter more calmly than I could do
to-night."
"By all means, my dear prince," was the reply; "and, no doubt, such a
course would be better for me too, for I admit that this extraordinary
coincidence has upset me not a little as well. And so, good-night, and
sound sleep."
"Ah, yes," replied the prince, as they shook hands at the door; "sound
sleep. I hope so. Good-night, my lord, and pleasant dreams of the
world-empire."
He turned away to his bedroom, which was the next but two to his
daughter's. The intervening rooms were occupied by his valet and her
maid. The valet's door was ajar, and there was a light in the room. He
stopped, and said:
"I shall not want anything to-night, Felix, so you may go to bed. If I
require you in the night I will knock on the wall, as usual."
"Bien, monseigneur," replied the valet, opening the door and bowing.
"J'ai l'honneur de vous sous haiter le bon soir, monseigneur."
"Bon soir," replied the prince, as he passed on to his room. "Le
chocolat a huit heures."
But Xavier de Conde, Prince of Bourbon, would never drink another
cup of chocolate. As soon as his door closed behind him, a
sternly-repressed flood of passion broke out, and he spent half the
remainder of the night walking, in his stockinged feet, up and down
his big bedchamber, with clenched teeth and tight-gripped hands, his
brain seething with a thousand thoughts of passion, and his white,
twitching lips shaping unspoken words of rage, bitterness, and
despair. It was a cruel irony that Fate had wrought on him and his
ancient house. The possible sceptre of the world had been offered to
his hereditary enemies, the Republicans of France, and, if Fargeau had
held to his compact, the compact for which he had given his daughter
to his son, he would have been master of France; and Fargeau would
have kept it, for he was a loyal Frenchman; and his son would have
married a future Queen of France! And now not only had France refused
the sceptre and snatched the crown from him, but the sceptre had
passed by some bitter caprice of Fate into the hands of France's
hereditary enemies. What could he say or do? Nothing. It was
maddening--worse than maddening. He had pledged his honour, and could
tell no one--but even if he could, what then? The secret was
out--worse--it was in the hands of men who could make the ideal a
reality. They could not even give him back the power if they would,
for the knowledge was theirs already, and they could act on it while
he could not.
The more he thought the faster the fever that was burning in his blood
increased. His lips and tongue grew parched. His steps grew irregular
and faltering. The veins in his head were beating on his brain like
sledge-hammers. The lights began to waver before his eyes. He felt
instinctively that madness--that long-inherited curse of his race--was
coming. What if he should really go mad and babble not only of this
great secret, but also of all the plots and intrigues of which he had
been the centre! How many devoted friends and adherents would be
consigned to prison and exile--perhaps even to the scaffold! The very
thought chilled him back into sanity for the time being. He rapped
sharply at the wall, and presently Felix appeared, half-dressed, and
doing his best to stifle a yawn.
"Felix," said the prince, who was now sitting in his arm-chair with
his head between his hands, "bid Marie arouse mam'selle immediately,
and request her to dress and come to me. I am unwell--another of my
attacks, I fear--and she only knows what to do for me. Quick--I need
her at once."
Felix vanished, and within ten minutes the marquise was in her
father's room; but by this time the blood was beating on his brain
again, and the fierce light of insanity was beginning to dawn in his
eyes.
With the valet's help she partly undressed him and got him to bed.
Then she locked the door and braced herself for what she instinctively
knew must be a terrible ordeal.
She saw at a glance that some terrible shock had thrown his brain off
its balance. She had plotted with him and for him, and she knew why it
was her duty to lock the door. But what was this? Whence had come this
blow which had struck him down so swiftly? She soon learnt, as the
disjointed words and fragmentary sentences were shaped in the struggle
between sanity and delirium for the command of his brain. Hour after
hour it went on, a piteous jumble of the memories of a long, busy
life; but in the end, out of the mental tangle she was able to unravel
one clear thread of thought. Emil Fargeau had given his secret to the
sea, and the sea had given it into the hands of the English, the
ancient enemies of her country and her race; and it was the son of
this Lord Orrel, the brother of the haughty English beauty sleeping
here, under the same roof, who had re-discovered it, and they were
even worse than English, they were half-American; and England and
America would between them share that empire of the world, that
mastery of the human race, which should have been her father's and
hers. She had even permitted her troth to be sold to a simple officer
in the German army, a spy in the enemy's camp, in order to purchase
this new sovereignty for her house.
The prince was rapidly sinking; she could see that, and yet she was
helpless to save him, for she had promised that no one, not even a
doctor, should be admitted into the room. She gave him a dose of an
opiate which he always carried with him, and about dawn he was
sleeping, but every now and then talking in his sleep more coherently.
At sunrise the effect of the drug wore off, and delirium resumed its
sway for a few moments. His eyes opened, and with a sudden jerk he sat
up in bed, his eyes glaring at the opposite wall, and his fingers
clutching and tearing at the bedclothes. His lips worked convulsively
for a while, then, with a hoarse, croaking scream he died.
"France! O ma belle France, maitresse du monde--et moi ton roi,
ton--ah----!"
His voice dropped suddenly in a low, soft sigh, his eyelids fell, and
his arms shrank to his sides, and he rolled back into his daughter's
arms. The fresh rush of blood to his head had broken a vessel on the
brain.
Adelaide knew instinctively that the dead weight in her arms was not
that of a living man. She laid him back on the pillows, called up
Felix and sent him for the resident physician. When he had made his
examination, he said, in his guttural French:
"Mam'selle la Marquise, there is no hope. The prince is dead. If I had
been called earlier I might have done something. I will make an
examination afterwards and certify the cause of death, according to
law. Accept my most respectful condolences."
That evening Shafto Hardress arrived from Paris at the Hotel
Wilhelmshof.