“Careful man. What’s your motto? Plenty of rope, eh? I’ve taken a leaf out of your book. I’ve given M. Lemoine plenty of rope. I’ve not denied his accusations. But, all the same, I’m afraid he’s going to be disappointed. You see I always believe in having something up one’s sleeve. Anticipating that some little unpleasantness might arise here, I took the precaution to bring a trump card along with me. It—or rather he—is upstairs.”
“Upstairs?” said Lord Caterham, very interested.
“Yes, he’s been having rather a trying time of it lately, poor fellow. Got a nasty bump on the head from someone. I’ve been looking after him.”
Suddenly the deep voice of Mr. Isaacstein broke in: “Can we guess who he is?”
“If you like,” said Anthony, “but—”
Lemoine interrupted with sudden ferocity:
“All this is foolery. You think to outwit me yet again. It may be true what you say—that you were not in America. You are too clever to say it if it were not true. But there is something else. Murder! Yes, murder. The murder of Prince Michael. He interfered with you that night as you were looking for the jewel.”
“Lemoine, have you ever known King Victor do murder?” Anthony’s voice rang out sharply. “You know as well—better than I do, that he has never shed blood.”
“Who else but you could have murdered him?” cried Lemoine. “Tell me that!”
The last word died on his lips, as a shrill whistle sounded from the terrace outside. Anthony sprang up, all his assumed nonchalance laid aside.
“You ask me who murdered Prince Michael?” he cried. “I won’t tell you—I’ll show you. That whistle was the signal I’ve been waiting for. The murderer of Prince Michael is in the library now.”
He sprang out through the window, and the others followed him as he led the way round the terrace, until they came to the library window. He pushed the window, and it yielded to his touch.
Very softly he held aside the thick curtain, so that they could look into the room.
Standing by the bookcase was a dark figure, hurriedly pulling out and replacing volumes, so absorbed in the task that no outside sound was heeded.
And then, as they stood watching, trying to recognize the figure that was vaguely silhouetted against the light of the electric torch it carried, someone sprang past them with a sound like the roar of a wild beast.
The torch fell to the ground, was extinguished, and the sounds of a terrific struggle filled the room. Lord Caterham groped his way to the lights and switched them on.
Two figures were swaying together. And as they looked the end came. The short sharp crack of a pistol shot, and the small figure crumbled up and fell. The other figure turned and faced them—it was Boris, his eyes alight with rage.
“She killed my master,” he growled. “Now she tries to shoot me. I would have taken the pistol from her and shot her, but it went off in the struggle. St. Michael directed it. The evil woman is dead.”
“A woman?” cried George Lomax.
They drew nearer. On the floor, the pistol still clasped in her hand, and an expression of deadly malignity on her face, lay—Mademoiselle Brun.
Twenty-eight
KING VICTOR
“I suspected her from the first,” explained Anthony. “There was a light in her room on the night of the murder. Afterwards, I wavered. I made inquiries about her in Brittany, and came back satisfied that she was what she represented herself to be. I was a fool. Because the Comtesse de Breteuil had employed a Mademoiselle Brun and spoke highly of her, it never occurred to me that the real Mademoiselle Brun might have been kidnapped on her way to her new post, and that it might be a substitute taking her place. Instead I shifted my suspicions to Mr. Fish. It was not until he had followed me to Dover, and we had had a mutual explanation, that I began to see clearly. Once I knew that he was a Pinkerton’s man, trailing King Victor, my suspicions swung back again to their original object.
“The thing that worried me most was that Mrs. Revel had definitely recognized the woman. Then I remembered that it was only after I had mentioned her being Madame de Breteuil’s governess. And all she had said was that that accounted for the fact that the woman’s face was familiar to her. Superintendent Battle will tell you that a deliberate plot was formed to keep Mrs. Revel from coming to Chimneys. Nothing more nor less than a dead body, in fact. And though the murder was the work of the Comrades of the Red Hand, punishing supposed treachery on the part of the victim, the staging of it, and the absence of the Comrade’s sign manual, pointed to some abler intelligence directing operations. From the first, I suspected some connexion with Herzoslovakia. Mrs. Revel was the only member of the house party who had been to the country. I suspected at first that someone was impersonating Prince Michael, but that proved to be a totally erroneous idea. When I realized the possibility of Mademoiselle Brun’s being an imposter, and added to that the fact that her face was familiar to Mrs. Revel, I began to see daylight. It was evidently very important that she should not be recognized, and Mrs. Revel was the only person likely to do so.”
“But who was she?” said Lord Caterham. “Someone Mrs. Revel had known in Herzoslovakia?”
“I think the Baron might be able to tell us,” said Anthony.
“I?” The Baron stared at him, then down at the motionless figure.
“Look well,” said Anthony. “Don’t be put off by the makeup. She was an actress once, remember.”
The Baron stared again. Suddenly he started.
“God in heaven,” he breathed, “it is not possible.”
“What is not possible?” asked George. “Who is the lady? You recognize her, Baron?”
“No, no, it is not possible.” The Baron continued to mutter. “She was killed. They were both killed. On the steps of the palace. Her body was recovered.”
“Mutilated and unrecognizable,” Anthony reminded him. “She managed to put up a bluff. I think she escaped to America, and has spent a good many years lying low in deadly terror of the Comrades of the Red Hand. They promoted the revolution, remember, and, to use an expressive phrase, they always had it in for her. Then King Victor was released, and they planned to recover the diamond together. She was searching for it that night when she came suddenly upon Prince Michael, and he recognized her. There was never much fear of her meeting him in the ordinary way of things. Royal guests don’t come in contact with governesses, and she could always retire with a convenient migraine, as she did the day the Baron was here.
“However, she met Prince Michael face to face when she least expected it. Exposure and disgrace stared her in the face. She shot him. It was she who placed the revolver in Isaacstein’s suitcase, so as to confuse the trail, and she who returned the letters.”
Lemoine moved forward.
“She was coming down to search for the jewel that night, you say,” he said. “Might she not have been going to meet her accomplice, King Victor, who was coming from outside? Eh? What do you say to that?”
Anthony sighed.
“Still at it, my dear Lemoine? How persistent you are! You won’t take my hint that I’ve got a trump card up my sleeve?”
But George, whose mind worked slowly, now broke in.
“I am still completely at sea. Who was this lady, Baron? You recognize her, it seems?”
But the Baron drew himself up and stood very straight and stiff.
“You are in error, Mr. Lomax. To my knowledge I have not this lady seen before. A complete stranger she is to me.”
“But—”
George stared at him—bewildered.
The Baron took him into a corner of the room, and murmured something into his ear. Anthony watched with a good deal of enjoyment, George’s face turning slowly purple, his eyes bulging, and all the incipient symptoms of apoplexy. A murmur of George’s throaty voice came to him.
“Certainly . . . certainly . . . by all means . . . no need at all . . . complicate situation . . . utmost discretion.”
&nbs
p; “Ah!” Lemoine hit the table sharply with his hand. “I do not care about all this! The murder of Prince Michael—that was not my affair. I want King Victor.”
Anthony shook his head gently.
“I’m sorry for you, Lemoine. You’re really a very able fellow. But, all the same, you’re going to lose the trick. I’m about to play my trump card.”
He stepped across the room and rang the bell. Tredwell answered it.
“A gentlemen arrived with me this evening, Tredwell.”
“Yes, sir, a foreign gentleman.”
“Quite so. Will you kindly ask him to join us here as soon as possible?”
“Yes, sir.”
Tredwell withdrew.
“Entry of the trump card, the mysterious Monsieur X,” remarked Anthony. “Who is he? Can anyone guess?”
“Putting two and two together,” said Herman Isaacstein, “what with your mysterious hints this morning, and your attitude this afternoon, I should say there was no doubt about it. Somehow or other you’ve managed to get hold of Prince Nicholas of Herzoslovakia.”
“You think the same, Baron?”
“I do. Unless yet another impostor you have put forward. But that I will not believe. With me, your dealings most honourable have been.”
“Thank you, Baron. I shan’t forget those words. So you are all agreed?”
His eyes swept round the circle of waiting faces. Only Lemoine did not respond, but kept his eyes fixed sullenly on the table.
Anthony’s quick ears had caught the sound of footsteps outside in the hall.
“And yet, you know,” he said with a queer smile, “you’re all wrong!”
He crossed swiftly to the door and flung it open.
A man stood on the threshold—a man with a neat black beard, eyeglasses, and a foppish appearance slightly marred by a bandage round the head.
“Allow me to present to you the real Monsieur Lemoine of the Sûreté.”
There was a rush and a scuffle, and then the nasal tones of Mr. Hiram Fish rose bland and reassuring from the window:
“No, you don’t, sonny—not this way. I have been stationed here this whole evening for the particular purpose of preventing your escape. You will observe that I have you covered well and good with this gun of mine. I came over to get you, and I’ve got you—but you sure are some lad!”
Twenty-nine
FURTHER EXPLANATIONS
“You owe us an explanation, I think, Mr. Cade,” said Herman Isaacstein, somewhat later in the evening.
“There’s nothing much to explain,” said Anthony modestly. “I went to Dover and Fish followed me under the impression that I was King Victor. We found a mysterious stranger imprisoned there, and as soon as we heard his story we knew where we were. The same idea again, you see. The real man kidnapped, and the false one—in this case King Victor himself—takes his place. But it seems that Battle here always thought there was something fishy about his French colleague, and wired to Paris for his fingerprints and other means of identification.”
“Ah!” cried the Baron. “The fingerprints. The Bertillon measurements that that scoundrel talked about?”
“It was a clever idea,” said Anthony. “I admired it so much that I felt forced to play it up. Besides, my doing so puzzled the false Lemoine enormously. You see, as soon as I had given the tip about the ‘rows’ and where the jewel really was, he was keen to pass on the news to his accomplice, and at the same time to keep us all in that room. The note was really to Mademoiselle Brun. He told Tredwell to deliver it at once, and Tredwell did so by taking it upstairs to the schoolroom. Lemoine accused me of being King Victor, by that means creating a diversion and preventing anyone from leaving the room. By the time all that had been cleared up and we adjourned to the library to look for the stone, he flattered himself that the stone would be no longer there to find!”
George cleared his throat.
“I must say, Mr. Cade,” he said pompously, “that I consider your action in that matter highly reprehensible. If the slightest hitch had occurred in your plans, one of our national possessions might have disappeared beyond the hope of recovery. It was foolhardy, Mr. Cade, reprehensibly foolhardy.”
“I guess you haven’t tumbled to the little idea, Mr. Lomax,” said the drawling voice of Mr. Fish. “That historic diamond was never behind the books in the library.”
“Never?”
“Not on your life.”
“You see,” explained Anthony, “that little device of Count Stylptitch’s stood for what it had originally stood for—a rose. When that dawned upon me on Monday afternoon, I went straight to the rose garden. Mr. Fish had already tumbled to the same idea. If, standing with your back to the sundial, you take seven paces straight forward, then eight to the left and three to the right, you come to some bushes of a bright red rose called Richmond. The house has been ransacked to find the hiding place, but nobody has thought of digging in the garden. I suggest a little digging party tomorrow morning.”
“Then the story about the books in the library—”
“An invention of mine to trap the lady. Mr. Fish kept watch on the terrace, and whistled when the psychological moment had arrived. I may say that Mr. Fish and I established martial law at the Dover house, and prevented the Comrades from communicating with the false Lemoine. He sent them an order to clear out, and word was conveyed to him that this had been done. So he went happily ahead with his plans for denouncing me.”
“Well, well,” said Lord Caterham cheerfully, “everything seems to have been cleared up most satisfactorily.”
“Everything but one thing,” said Mr. Isaacstein.
“What is that?”
The great financier looked steadily at Anthony.
“What did you get me down here for? Just to assist at a dramatic scene as an interested onlooker?”
Anthony shook his head.
“No, Mr. Isaacstein. You are a busy man whose time is money. Why did you come down here originally?”
“To negotiate a loan.”
“With whom?”
“Prince Michael of Herzoslovakia.”
“Exactly. Prince Michael is dead. Are your prepared to offer the same loan on the same terms to his cousin Nicholas?”
“Can you produce him? I thought he was killed in the Congo?”
“He was killed all right. I killed him. Oh, no, I’m not a murderer. When I say I killed him, I mean that I spread the report of his death. I promise you a prince, Mr. Isaacstein. Will I do?”
“You?”
“Yes, I’m the man. Nicholas Sergius Alexander Ferdinand Obolovitch. Rather long for the kind of life I proposed to live, so I emerged from the Congo as plain Anthony Cade.”
Little Captain Andrassy sprang up.
“But this is incredible—incredible,” he spluttered. “Have a care, sir, what you say.”
“I can give you plenty of proofs,” said Anthony quietly. “I think I shall be able to convince the Baron here.”
The Baron lifted his hand.
“Your proofs I will examine, yes. But of them for me there is no need. Your word alone sufficient for me is. Besides, your English mother you much resemble. All along have I said: ‘This young man on one side or the other most highly born is.’ ”
“You have always trusted my word, Baron,” said Anthony. “I can assure you that in the days to come I shall not forget.”
Then he looked over at Superintendent Battle, whose face had remained perfectly expressionless.
“You can understand,” said Anthony with a smile, “that my position has been extremely precarious. Of all of those in the house I might be supposed to have the best reason for wishing Michael Obolovitch out of the way, since I was the next heir to the throne. I’ve been extraordinarily afraid of Battle all along. I always felt that he suspected me, but that he was held up by lack of motive.”
“I never believed for a minute that you’d shot him, sir,” said Superintendent Battle. “We’ve got a feeling in s
uch matters. But I knew that you were afraid of something, and you puzzled me. If I’d known sooner who you really were I daresay I’d have yielded to the evidence, and arrested you.”
“I’m glad I managed to keep one guilty secret from you. You wormed everything else out of me all right. You’re a damned good man at your job Battle. I shall always think of Scotland Yard with respect.”
“Most amazing,” muttered George. “Most amazing story I ever heard. I—I can really hardly believe it. You are quite sure, Baron, that—”
“My dear Mr. Lomax,” said Anthony, with a slight hardness in his tone, “I have no intention of asking the British Foreign Office to support my claim without bringing forward the most convincing documentary evidence. I suggest that we adjourn now, and that you, the Baron, Mr. Isaacstein and myself discuss the terms of the proposed loan.”
The Baron rose to his feet, and clicked his heels together.
“It will be the proudest moment of my life, sir,” he said solemnly, “when I see you King of Herzoslovakia.”
“Oh, by the way, Baron,” said Anthony carelessly, slipping his hand through the other’s arm, “I forgot to tell you. There’s a string tied to this. I’m married, you know.”
The Baron retreated a step or two. Dismay overspread his countenance.
“Something wrong I knew there would be,” he boomed. “Merciful God in heaven! He has married a black woman in Africa!”
“Come, come, it’s not so bad as all that,” said Anthony laughing. “She’s white enough—white all through, bless her.”
“Good. A respectable morganatic affair it can be, then.”
“Not a bit of it. She’s to play Queen to my King. It’s no use shaking your head. She’s fully qualified for the post. She’s the daughter of an English peer who dates back to the time of the Conqueror. It’s very fashionable just now for royalties to marry into the aristocracy—and she knows something of Herzoslovakia.”
“My God!” cried George Lomax, startled out of his usual careful speech. “Not—not—Virginia Revel?”
The Secret of Chimneys Page 24