Late that afternoon the hall-porter at the Milan Hotel, the
commissionaire, and the chief maitre d’hotel from the Café, who
happened to be in the hall, together with several others around the
place who knew Stephen Laverick by sight, were treated to an unexpected
surprise. A large closed motor-car drove up to the front entrance and
several men descended, among whom was Laverick himself. He nodded to
the hall-porter, whose salute was purely mechanical, and making his way
without hesitation to the interior of the hotel, presented his receipt
at the cashier’s desk and asked for his packet. The clerk looked up at
him in amazement. He did not, for the moment, notice that the two men
standing immediately behind bore the stamp of plain-clothes policemen.
He had only a few minutes ago finished reading the report of Laverick’s
examination before the magistrates and his remand until the morrow,
upon the charge of murder. His knowledge of English law was by no means
perfect, but he was at least aware that Laverick’s appearance outside
the purlieus of the prison was an unusual happening.
“Your packet, sir!” he repeated, in amazement. “Why, this is Mr.
Laverick himself, is it not?”
“Certainly,” was the quiet reply. “I am Stephen Laverick.”
The clerk called the head cashier, who also stared at Laverick as
though he were a ghost. They whispered together in the background for a
moment, and their faces were a study in perplexity. Of Laverick’s
identity, however, there was no manner of doubt. Besides, the presence
of what was obviously a very ample escort somewhat reassured them. The
cashier himself came forward.
“We shall be exceedingly glad, Mr. Laverick,” he said dryly, “to get
rid of your packet. Your instructions were that we should disregard all
orders to hand it over to any person whatsoever, and I may say that
they have been strictly adhered to. We have, however, had two
applications in your name this morning.”
“They were both forgeries,” Laverick declared.
The cashier hesitated. Then he leaned across the broad mahogany counter
towards Laverick. One of the men who appeared to form part of the
escort detached himself from them and approached a few steps nearer.
“This gentleman is your friend, sir?” the cashier asked, glancing
towards him.
“He is my solicitor,” Laverick answered, “and is entirely in my
confidence. If you have anything to tell me, I should like Mr. Bellamy
also to hear.”
Bellamy, who was standing a little in the background, took his place by
Laverick’s side. The cashier, who knew him by sight, bowed.
“Beside these two forged orders, sir,” he said, turning again to
Laverick, “we have had a man who took a room in the hotel leave a small
black bag here, which he insisted upon having deposited in our document
safe. My assistant had accepted it and was actually locking it up when
he noticed a faint sound inside which he could not understand. The bag
was opened and found to contain an infernal machine which would have
exploded in a quarter of an hour.”
Bellamy drew his breath sharply between his teeth.
“We should have thought of that!” he exclaimed softly. “That’s Kahn’s
work!”
“I seem to have given you a great deal of trouble,” Laverick remarked
quietly. “I gather, however, from what you say, that my packet is still
in your possession?”
“It is, sir,” the man assented. “We have two detectives from Scotland
Yard here at the present moment, though, and we had almost decided to
place it in their charge for greater security.”
“It will be well taken care of from now, I promise you,” Laverick
declared.
The cashier and his clerk led the way into the inner office. At their
invitation Laverick and his solicitor followed, and a few yards behind
came the two plain-clothes policemen, Bellamy, and the superintendent.
The safe was opened and the packet placed in Laverick’s hands. He
passed it on at once to Bellamy, and immediately afterwards the doorway
behind was thronged with men, apparently ordinary loiterers around the
hotel. They made a slow and exceedingly cautious exit. Once outside,
Bellamy turned to Laverick with outstretched hand.
“Au revoir and good luck, old chap!” he said heartily. “I think you’ll
find things go your way all right to-morrow morning.”
He departed, forming one of a somewhat singular cavalcade—two of his
friends on either side, two in front, and two behind. It had almost the
appearance of a procession. The whole party stepped into a closed
motor-car. Three or four men were lounging on the pavement and there
was some excited whispering, but no one actually interfered. As soon as
they had left the courtyard, Laverick and his solicitor, with his own
guard, re-entered the motor-car in which they had arrived, and drove
back to Bow Street. Very few words were exchanged during the short
journey. His solicitor, however, bade him good-night cheerfully, and
Laverick’s bearing was by no means the bearing of a man in despair.
In Downing Street, within the next half-an-hour, a somewhat remarkable
little gathering took place. The two men chiefly responsible for the
destinies of the nation—the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State
for Foreign Affairs—sat side by side before a small table. Facing them
was Bellamy, and spread out in front were those few pages of foolscap,
released from their envelope a few minutes ago for the first time since
the hand of the great Chancellor himself had pressed down the seal. The
Foreign Minister had just finished a translation for the benefit of his
colleague, and the two men were silent, as men are in the presence of
big events.
“Bellamy,” the Prime Minister said slowly, “you are willing to stake, I
presume, your reputation upon the authenticity of this document?”
“My honor and my life, if you will,” Bellamy answered earnestly. “That
is no copy which you have there. On the contrary, the handwriting is
the handwriting of the Chancellor himself.”
The Prime Minister turned silently towards his colleague. The latter,
whose eyes still seemed glued to those fateful words, looked up.
“All I can say is this,” he remarked impressively, “that never in my
time have I seen written words possessed of so much significance. One
moment, if you please.”
He touched the bell, and his private secretary entered at once from an
adjoining room.
“Anthony,” he said, “telephone to the Great Western Railway Company at
Paddington. Ask for the station master in my name, and see that a
special train is held ready to depart for Windsor in half-an-hour. Tell
the station-master that all ordinary traffic must be held up, but that
the destination of the special is not to be divulged.”
The young man bowed and withdrew.
“The more I consider this matter,” the Foreign Minister went on, “the
more miraculous does the appearance of this document seem. We know now
why the Czar is struggling so frantically to curtail his visit—why he
came, as it were, under protest, and seeks everywhere for an
opportunity to leave before the appointed time. His health is all
right. He has had a hint from Vienna that there has been a leakage. His
special mission only reached Paris this morning. The President is in
the country and their audience is not fixed until to-morrow. Rawson
will go over with a copy of these papers and a dispatch from His
Majesty by the nine o’clock train. It is not often that we have had the
chance of such a ‘coup’ as this.”
He drew his chief a few steps away. They whispered together for several
moments. When they returned, the Foreign Minister rang the bell again
for his secretary.
“Anthony,” he said, “Sir James and I will be leaving in a few minutes
for Windsor. Go round yourself to General Hamilton, telephone to
Aldershot for Lord Neville, and call round at the Admiralty Board for
Sir John Harrison. Tell them all to be here at ten o’clock tonight. If
I am not back, they must wait. If either of them have royal commands,
you need only repeat the word ‘Finisterre.’ They will understand.”
The young man once more withdrew. The Prime Minister turned back to the
papers.
“It will be worth a great deal,” he remarked, with a grim smile, “to
see His Majesty’s face when he reads this.”
“It would be worth a great deal more,” his fellow statesman answered
dryly, “to be with his August cousin at the interview which will
follow. A month ago, the thought that war might come under our
administration was a continual terror to me. To-day things are entirely
different. To-day it really seems that if war does come, it may be the
most glorious happening for England of this century. You saw the last
report from Kiel?”
Sir James nodded.
“There isn’t a battleship or a cruiser worth a snap of the fingers
south of the German Ocean,” his colleague continued earnestly. “They
are cooped up—safe enough, they think—under the shelter of their
fortifications. Hamilton has another idea. Between you and me, Sir
James, so have I. I tell you,” he went on, in a deeper and more
passionate tone, “it’s like the passing of a terrible nightmare—this.
We have had ten years of panic, of nervous fears of a German invasion,
and no one knows more than you and I, Sir James, how much cause we have
had for those fears. It will seem strange if, after all, history has to
write that chapter differently.”
The secretary re-entered and announced the result of his telephone
interview with the superintendent at Paddington. The two great men
rose. The Prime Minister held out his hand to Bellamy.
“Bellamy,” he declared, “you’ve done us one more important service.
There may be work for you within the next few weeks, but you’ve earned
a rest for a day or two, at any rate. There is nothing more we can do?”
“Nothing except a letter to the Home Secretary, Sir James,” Bellamy
answered. “Remember, sir, that although I have worked hard, the man to
whom we really owe those papers is Stephen Laverick.”
The Prime Minister frowned thoughtfully.
“It’s a difficult situation, Bellamy,” he said. “You are asking a great
deal when you suggest that we should interfere in the slightest manner
with the course of justice. You are absolutely convinced, I suppose,
that this man Laverick had nothing to do with the murder?”
“Absolutely and entirely, sir,” Bellamy replied.
“The murdered man has never been identified by the police,” Sir James
remarked. “Who was he?”
“His name was Rudolph Von Behrling,” Bellamy announced, “and he was
actually the Chancellor’s nephew, also his private secretary. I have
told you the history, sir, of those papers. It was Von Behrling who,
without a doubt, murdered the American journalist and secured them. It
was he who insisted upon coming to London instead of returning with
them to Vienna, which would have been the most obvious course for him
to have adopted. He was a pauper, and desperately in love with a
certain lady who has helped me throughout this matter. He agreed to
part with the papers for twenty thousand pounds, and the lady
incidentally promised to elope with him the same night. I met him by
appointment at that little restaurant in the city, paid him the twenty
thousand pounds, and received the false packet which you remember I
brought to you, sir. As a matter of fact, Von Behrling, either by
accident or design, and no man now will ever know which, left me with
those papers which I was supposed to have bought in his possession, and
also the money. Within five minutes he was murdered. Doubtless we shall
know sometime by whom, but it was not by Stephen Laverick. Laverick’s
share in the whole thing was nothing but this—that he found the
pocket-book, and that he made use of the notes in his business for
twenty-four hours to save himself from ruin. That was unjustifiable, of
course. He has made atonement. The notes at this minute are in a safe
deposit vault and will be returned intact to the fund from which they
came. I want, also, to impress upon you, Sir James, the fact that Baron
de Streuss offered one hundred thousand pounds for that letter.”
Sir James nodded thoughtfully. He stooped down and scrawled a few lines
on half a sheet of note-paper.
“You must take this to Lord Estcourt at once,” he said, “and tell him
the whole affair, omitting all specific information as to the nature of
the papers. The thing must be arranged, of course.”
Half-a-dozen reporters, who had somehow got hold of the fact that the
Prime Minister and his colleague from the Foreign Office were going
down to Windsor on a special mission, followed them, but even they
remained altogether in the dark as to the events which were really
transpiring. They knew nothing of the interview between the Czar and
his August host—an interview which in itself was a chapter in the
history of these times. They knew nothing of the reason of their royal
visitor’s decision to prolong his visit instead of shortening it, or of
his autograph letter to the President of the French Republic, which
reached Paris even before the special mission from St. Petersburg had
presented themselves. The one thing which they did know, and that alone
was significant enough, was that the Czar’s Foreign Minister was cabled
for that night to come to his master by special train from St.
Petersburg. At the Austrian and German Embassies, forewarned by a
report from Baron de Streuss, something like consternation reigned. The
Russian Ambassador, heckled to death, took refuge at Windsor under
pretence of a command from his royal master. The happiest man in London
was Prince Rosmaran.