The Wiles of the Wicked

by William Le Queux

confessed to me how they hadcontemplated the assassination of the young Prince after he had signedthe document, in order to remove the heir to the throne, and thusstrengthen the hands of the People's Party. They explained how they haddiscovered a cellar beside the Thames, close to the Turpentine Factoryat Battersea Bridge, and had intended that on the Prince emerging fromthe house at The Boltons he should be accosted by a man in policeuniform, and asked to walk to the police-station, only to find himselfentrapped. Now they pointed out that the witness to the crime was theblind gentleman who had met with the accident, and as his signature wasupon the document executed, it was necessary that he should besilenced."

  "They intended to kill me!" I cried.

  "Most assuredly," she responded, turning towards me. "When you emergedfrom the house you were met by the man who acted the part ofpolice-constable, a London ruffian, and being blind, at once fell intothe trap. I saved you, for I saw that by securing your silence inexchange for your life I should also secure you as an agent who might beuseful to the two men into whose clutches I had so suddenly andhopelessly fallen. This proved correct, for ere long your assistancebecame of greatest use. On the morning when we parted, accompanied byGechkuloff, I visited your chambers, and made a search there toascertain who and what you were. Having once embarked on the conspiracywith these two men, whom I found were powerful factors in Bulgarianpolitics, I was compelled to assist them in disposing of the body--whichwas placed in the cellar beside the Thames, and allowed to float outwith the tide. Then, having sent the servants on holiday, I removed theblood-stains, and worked the crochet cover for the couch."

  "You told me that those stains were of coffee that you had spilledthere," Mabel said.

  "True," she answered. "But I was compelled to deceive you. I left yousoon afterwards, for by Roesch's influence I became appointed Englishgoverness to the two youngest children of Prince Ferdinand, and it waswhile at Sofia that I suggested to the Minister of Finance the schemefor placing the concessions in the hands of Mr Heaton, whom I had heardwas now suffering from an unaccountable loss of memory, and recollectednothing of the past. The subject was mooted to Prince Ferdinand, who inall good faith empowered me to treat with Mr Heaton, and before longseveral formidable concessions were floated in the City. The mostremarkable thing was Mr Heaton's absolute ignorance of all the past.He was as wax in the hands of the two men who had become my masters.Only at the last coup, when they desired to raise a loan of half amillion sterling, intending to appropriate it to their own uses, did herefuse to render us further assistance. It was as though his memory hadsuddenly returned to him, and he suspected."

  "My memory had then returned," I said briefly, marvelling at herremarkable narrative. "But what reason had the men in making thoseelaborate preparations for the assassination of the Prince?"

  "There were two reasons. One was that by the execution of the deed theywere empowered to raise upon post-obits large sums, repayable when theyoung Prince came to the accession, and, secondly, they had found outthat he had, by some means, discovered the huge defalcations which hadbeen made in the Ministry of Finance at Sofia, and feared that he mightexpose them."

  "But you say that, although they had intention of assassinating him,they did not actually do so?" Hickman observed.

  "No. They were not the actual assassins."

  "Then who was?" demanded Mabel.

  The woman stood in silence, her lips hard-set, her face drawn.

  "The truth must be told," she said at last. "It is, I suppose, uselessto try and conceal it now."

  And with a sudden movement she flung open the door leading to a smallante-chamber, crying in a hoarse, desperate voice--

  "Enter! The guilty one is there?"

  We pressed forward, and there saw a thin grey-haired woman who had guiltwritten plainly upon her drawn white face. She had overheard all ourconversation, and had been compelled to remain in that chamber, therebeing no outlet.

  "Joliot!" gasped Mabel, amazed. "My maid!" Then, addressing thecowering, trembling woman, she demanded the truth.

  We stood there astonished. There was a silence, long and painful. Thecontortions of the guilty woman's features were horrible; in her blackeyes burned a fierce light, and she trembled in every limb.

  "Yes," she cried hoarsely, after the question had been repeated, "Ikilled him! I killed him because I was jealous! I thought that insteadof coming to visit your Highness he, in reality, came to visit MissGrainger. Therefore without knowing why I did it, I dashed into theroom where Miss Grainger was at the piano and attacked her. The Princerose quickly and stretched out his arm to save her. Then rushing uponhim I stabbed him to the heart! Since that day," she added, in her lowvoice, scarcely audible, "since that day I have lived upon the meagrecharity of Roesch, and yesterday came here to take up a position as MissGrainger's maid."

  "Your interests were mutual in the preservation of your secret,therefore you resolved to adjust your differences and live together,eh?" remarked Hickman.

  She gave vent to a shrill peal of hideous laughter, as though there weresomething humorous in that grim and terrible tragedy. It jarred uponour nerves, but it also explained to us the ghastly truth.

  The woman Natalie Joliot was hopelessly insane.

  "Your Highness recognises the state of the wretched woman's mind,"observed Edna Grainger, with a pitying look. "She has been so eversince the homicidal frenzy which seized her on that fatal night, and Ihave now taken her beneath my charge, for with me she is as docile as achild."

  The truth was a startling one. We all three stood by in wonderingsilence. The crime had been committed in a sudden access of madness bythat miserable creature who could not be held responsible for heractions.

  "Roesch and Gechkuloff, with their elaborate preparations for theassassination of the heir to the Bulgarian throne, were murderers atheart, but, by that strange combination of circumstances which so oftenrender truth stranger than fiction, their work was accomplished byanother hand," I remarked.

  "There seems no doubt," said Edna, "that large sums were raised inLondon and in Paris upon the deed executed by the young Prince, whoevidently had no knowledge of its true nature, and during the first sixmonths before the hue-and-cry as to his disappearance all was plainsailing. When, however, suspicion arose that the heir had met with foulplay they feared to continue using the deed, and hit upon the expedientof the concessions which I induced you to negotiate."

  "And these two men, Roesch and Gechkuloff, where are they?" inquiredHickman.

  "They were in England yesterday. The mystery surrounding thewhereabouts of Prince Alexander has been used for political purposes inBulgaria, with the result that the Ministry has been forced to resign.The defalcations of the head of the Treasury and his assistant beingdiscovered, they were both forced to fly. They are, I believe, on theirway to Australia."

  "We must arrest them," said Hickman briefly. "Such a pair of villainsmust, not be allowed to go scot free."

  "And to you," exclaimed Mabel, turning to me with the bright light ofunshed tears in her fine eyes, "to your patience and carefulwatchfulness is due the unravelling of this extraordinary mystery, whichmight otherwise have remained an enigma always."

  She took my hand. I saw in her beautiful countenance that love-look asof old. But I bent over her bejewelled fingers as a courtier would overthose of a princess of an Imperial House, my heart too full for words.

  The madwoman railed at us, shrieking and hurling imprecationsinterspersed with all sorts of rambling sentences, while Edna held hertightly by the wrist and strove to calm her.

  The scene was a hideous one. Neither of us could bear it longer,therefore we withdrew, leaving Hickman with Edna and her charge.

  The chronicle of this strange chapter of my life's history is finished.

  There is no more to tell, save perhaps to explain--as Sir HenryBlundell, the specialist on mental diseases, explained to me in hisconsulting-room in Harley Street--the cause of my six lost
years. Suchan experience, it seemed, was not unknown in medical science, and hemade it clear to me that the blow I had accidentally dealt myself inHickman's rooms had so altered the balance of my brain--already affectedby the cab accident during my blindness--that my intellect stopped likea watch. I lost all knowledge of the past, and from the moment ofrecovering consciousness commenced an entirely new life. This extendedthrough the long period, nearly six years, until I had struck my headagainst the marble statue in the drawing-room at Denbury, when my brain,restored again to its normal capacity, lost all impression of eventswhich had occurred during its abnormal state. This, of course,accounted for my extraordinary unconscious life, my inverted tastes, andmy parting with the woman I loved so fondly.

  And what of her, you ask?

  She had, during that period of my unconsciousness, become satiated bythe gaiety of the brilliant Court at Vienna, and the tragic death of herdevoted mother, the Empress, at the hand of Luccheni, the anarchist,caused her to prefer a life quiet, free, and untrammelled. Knowing herroyal birth, however, I dared not ask her hand in marriage, and it wasnot until many weeks later, after the woman Natalie Joliot had beenconfined as a homicidal patient in Woking Asylum, Edna Grainger had,owing to Mabel's clemency, escaped to the continent, the ex-MinisterRoesch and his companion Gechkuloff had been extradited from Bow Streetto Sofia to take their trial for their gigantic defalcations upon theState Treasury, and I had sold Denbury and made an end of the financialbusiness which stood in my name, that she complained to me of herloneliness.

  With eager, trembling heart I took her white hand in mine and put to herthe question. I knew it was presumptuous, almost unheard of. But,reader, you may readily imagine what overwhelming joy arose within mewhen she threw her arms passionately about my neck, and as answer raisedher face and gave me a warm fond kiss.

  Our life to-day is very even, very uneventful, idyllically happy. Underher second title of Countess of Klagenfurt we were soon afterwardsmarried. We spent part of our time at Heaton, with which she is charmednow that it is swept and garnished, and the remainder at her ownmediaeval Castle of Mohaes, one of the great ancestral estates of theHapsbourg-Lorraines in the Tyrol, not far from Innsbruck, which waspresented to her as a marriage gift by the Emperor.

  Her Imperial Highness the Archduchess Marie-Elizabeth-Mabel no longerexists. At the outset I made it quite plain that I had not written heremy true name. I did so at my wife's suggestion, for although my realname is probably known to most of those who read this record of mystrange adventures, yet the world is still in ignorance of Mabel'sactual social position. She said that she had no desire to be pointedat as a Princess who married a commoner, and I have, of course,respected her wish.

  She sacrificed all for my sake, and peace and joy are ours at last.With a fond and devoted love she gave up everything in order to becomemy wife, and as such has renounced for ever that world in which she wasborn--the world of Purple and Fine Linen.

  The End.