‘Grand Aerial Tour of Europe …’ read out Alex, craning his neck.
‘That’s the big air race, isn’t it?’ said Anna, remembering. ‘There were posters for it at the station. Oh, couldn’t we go and see it?’
Lil hated to disappoint them, but she knew they’d have to stay in the hotel room. ‘I’m afraid not,’ she said regretfully. ‘We’re under strict instructions to stay here.’
They nodded, disappointed, but not really surprised. ‘I suppose we couldn’t go to the park, at least?’ tried Anna tentatively. ‘Or even just to that pâtisserie down there?’ She gestured to a shop with a striped awning, where a group of girls were peering into the window, pointing at cakes fluffy with cream and drizzled with chocolate.
‘I’d like to go there,’ said Alex wistfully, indicating an illuminated sign which read CINÉMA in large letters. Alex was as fascinated by moving pictures as he was by the theatre, but there was no picture palace in Elffburg, so he’d never had the chance to see any for himself. Now there was a real cinema just a short distance from their hotel: he leaned out a little further, trying to make out the names of the pictures that were showing and Anna grabbed the back of his jersey as though she were afraid he’d fall out.
‘I’m awfully sorry, but we can’t,’ said Lil, gazing out at the trees, and the fountains, at the girls now emerging from the pâtisserie with candy-striped boxes of cakes. The morning sun gleamed gold on the distant carousel, and there was the faint tinkle of music. They only had one day in Paris – it seemed so dreadful that they had to spend it shut up in a hotel room. She’d have loved nothing more than to take Anna and Alex on a jolly day’s sight-seeing. But she had her instructions, and she meant to follow them.
‘At least we can watch from up here,’ she said, trying to console them. ‘And look – M. Martin has sent up some books, and a game and a jigsaw. That ought to be plenty to keep us entertained until luncheon. Then we’ll order something really splendid to eat.’ Even if she couldn’t give them a day out, she could at least make sure they were well fed. Perhaps she would see if someone could go out to that little pâtisserie Anna had seen, and fetch them some cakes?
Just then, there was a tap on the door. Lil went to answer it, careful to open the door only the merest crack. If the children’s faces were all over the newspapers, she didn’t want any passing hotel guests to catch a glimpse of them. ‘Yes?’
One of the hotel bell-boys in a red-and-gold uniform was waiting outside. ‘Excuse me, mademoiselle, there’s a telephone call for you downstairs.’
‘A telephone call?’
‘Yes – from London. Very urgent, mademoiselle.’
Lil’s first thought was Sophie. What if something was wrong? But of course, neither Sophie, nor her brother Jack, nor anyone else had the first idea she was here, at the Grand Hotel Continental in Paris. A call from London could surely only mean one person: the Chief.
She turned to Alex and Anna. ‘I’ll be back in a moment. I’ll lock the door behind me – don’t open it to anyone but me or Captain Forsyth,’ she instructed them.
A moment later, the bell-boy had ushered her down to the grand reception desk, where the telephone was waiting for her. But when she picked up the receiver, there was nothing but a strange buzzing at the other end of the line. ‘Hello? Hello ?’ she asked. ‘Operator?’ But there was no answer and after a moment or two, she hung up the receiver, frowning.
‘Did the caller give a name?’ she asked the smart gentleman on duty at the desk.
‘I’m afraid not, mademoiselle. But I would advise you to wait a minute or two, Perhaps it was a bad line – if so, they may telephone again.’
But the telephone did not ring, and Lil began to feel a prickle of apprehension. The Chief was always so careful about keeping their missions a strict secret, so why would he risk telephoning her at the hotel? With a sinking heart she wondered if something had happened in Arnovia. For a minute or two she hesitated by the telephone, wondering if she should place a call to HQ. But what if it had not been a genuine telephone call at all, but some sort of trick to make her give herself away? Her chest squeezed tight, and then coming to a sudden decision, she hurried as fast as she could back to the suite, fumbling with the tasselled room key.
The sitting room was empty. The books and games lay untouched on the table. Her heart was pounding, but she was being silly – surely Alex and Anna must be in their bedrooms. She opened the nearest bedroom door – Anna’s – and found it deserted.
‘Hello? Where are you? Are you playing a game?’ she called out, hoping to hear muffled laughter coming from behind the curtains or under the bed.
But there was no answer. She opened one bedroom door, then another; she pushed back the curtains; she looked behind the chairs. But there was no one there.
To her growing horror, she realised that the hotel suite was completely empty.
The royal children were gone.
PART V
‘Today Papa says he will take me to see an exhibition by the famous “Flying Man”. They say he can fly through the air in a machine of his own construction – a glider with propellers! That such a phenomenon should be possible is quite incredible to me – I shall not believe it until I have seen it with my own eyes.’
– From the diary of Alice Grayson
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Grand Hotel Continental, Paris
From the window of the hotel suite, Anna gazed down at the street below. Behind her, on the table, lay two brand-new school stories she’d never read before, but neither The Bravest Girl in the Fifth nor Two Schoolgirl Chums held any appeal for her now. Instead, she stared at the girl in the white frock as she strolled on, into the park and past the fountains. She wondered what it must feel like to walk in a park alone, with the breeze blowing in your hair. The thought of it seemed as light and carefree as the red air-balloon drifting lazily across the blue sky.
‘I do wish we could go down,’ she said again.
‘Well, we can’t, so there’s no sense going on about it,’ said Alex, rather grumpily, not taking his eyes off the sign for the cinéma. But it was all right for him, Anna thought. Even after everything that had happened, she supposed that Alex would still be going away to boarding school. He’d soon be playing cricket, and making new friends, and he’d probably become the hero of the Fourth Form … well, of course he would. Everyone was bound to like Alex – people always did. He’d be able to travel and meet new people, and stay in grand hotels like this one. He’d go to all those places she’d gazed at in the schoolroom atlas: London and St Petersburg and Vienna and New York. Meanwhile, she’d be back in Arnovia, perhaps even back at Wilderstein Castle, no doubt under the care of another elderly relative or a boring governess, practising her deportment. All this – the train journey, Paris, the park, the red air-balloon, would seem like a story she’d read in a book once, rather than something real that had actually happened to her.
The thought of being at Wilderstein Castle, without either Alex or Lil, was almost too much to bear. She opened her mouth to ask Alex whether he thought she’d be sent back there, but before she could speak, there came another quick tap at the door.
Anna frowned, remembering what Lil had said. Alex looked at her uncertainly and neither of them moved, but then the voice of a bell-boy called out, ‘Pardon, mademoiselle ? Some refreshments for you?’ and they scrambled to their feet at once.
‘Ooh, I’ll bet Lil sent out for some of those cakes from the shop we saw,’ said Alex gladly.
Anna was first to the door, and opened it a little way as she’d seen Lil do. But before she even had the chance to cry out, the door was forced open and she was pushed back into the room.
In a jagged shock of terror, she heard Alex yell. Her hands were forced behind her back; a gloved hand was pressed over her mouth. But this time it was not Lil muffling her screams for help. ‘Hello, Princess,’ said a voice, very close to her ear, and fear crashed over her as she realised that the man
holding her was the footman from Wilderstein Castle.
Another yell and a scuffle. She realised that two other men were seizing Alex, and once again she tried to scream, but the footman’s hand pressed harder, half-choking her. It can’t be real, she thought, as they were carried out of the room, the suite door swinging shut. They had left Arnovia behind them. They were hundreds of miles away from Wilderstein Castle. This was Paris; they were safe.
She caught a horrible flashing glimpse of Alex, slung like a shapeless old bundle in the arms of another big, square-shouldered man. His eyes wide and wild, and one struggled desperately to free herself from the footman’s grasp, but she could not. Her vision seemed to twist and blur, but all the same she made out the figure of a woman standing in the corridor, watching them through a lorgnette. She was one of the hotel guests – Anna had seen her in the lobby the night before! Surely she would help them?
‘Help! Help! We’re being kidnapped!’ she tried to cry out, but muffled by the footman’s glove, the only sound she could make was a dreadful groan. The woman simply stood and watched her, a cold expression on her face.
‘Better for you if you do not try to fight, Your Highness,’ she said. Then to the footman: ‘Get the princess out of here quickly, before she causes a fuss.’
Anna heard a door bang open. There were steep dark stairs looming below her – this must be a service staircase that the hotel staff used. The footman bundled her down them as though she were no more than a sack of laundry. Then another door was opening and they were outside in the sunlight, where an enormous black motor car stood waiting for them, the engine already running, and Alex was already being shoved inside.
Sitting watching from the front seat, Anna saw the Count was sitting with Würstchen on his lap, and worse still, in the back, sitting very stiff and upright as Alex was pushed in beside her, was the Countess.
In spite of the hot sun, Anna felt a shock of cold rush over her like icy water. They had found them. She didn’t know how they had done it, but somehow the Countess had traced them to Paris and the hotel. She had tricked Lil into leaving them alone in their room; and they had come to take them away. In the doorway, the lady with the lorgnette was watching coolly: she gave the Countess a swift nod, then turned away and went back into the hotel, closing the door securely behind her.
The footman pushed Anna roughly towards the car. But in one flashing moment, she remembered how she’d fought back against Lil in her bedroom at Wilderstein Castle, and how Lil had looked at her almost admiringly. I didn’t think you had it in you … You aren’t going to make this easy for me, are you? No, she was not going to make it easy. Something seemed to awaken inside her that made her want to fight.
Summoning all her strength, she made a desperate effort to claw her way free of the footman’s grip. All thoughts of what princesses ought to do were quite forgotten. She was no princess now, but a wild creature, kicking and biting and scratching. She clawed for the footman’s face and he gave a yell of pain: excited by the commotion, she heard Würstchen let out a few frenzied barks.
‘For heaven’s sake! Get her in the car! And shut that dog up!’ she heard the Countess say. But almost as if he was deliberately disobeying her, Würstchen wriggled free of the Count’s arms, and dived into the fray, jumping up and barking, snapping his jaws at the footman.
The footman kicked out at him, and in that moment, Anna had the chance to wriggle free. She darted away, feeling a surge of triumph, but her victory was short-lived.
‘Leave her,’ came the Countess’s harsh voice. ‘We have the prince, we don’t need her. Get in the car and drive!’
Aiming one final kick at Würstchen, the footman did as she said, leaping into the driver’s seat. The door slammed shut behind him, and then the motor car disappeared out in a cloud of smoke, leaving Anna staring horrified after it. She ran behind it into the street, but it had already sped off, flashing by the park until it had disappeared, and Alex had vanished away with it.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
The Grand Hotel Continental, Paris
Somewhere high above, Sophie sat in her dressing gown by the window of Miss Blaxland’s suite. She was dimly aware that down below, a car was roaring along the street and a dog was barking, but she didn’t really hear them. Her whole attention was fixed on Professor Blaxland’s letter, which lay in her lap. She’d already read it at least a dozen times, but now, even though she was beginning to feel that she knew it by heart, she looked down at it once more. The first two pages had been written in the flowing handwriting she had recognised immediately from the other papers she had seen on the Professor’s desk:
The third page of the letter was very different. Sophie couldn’t be sure whether there were pages missing, or whether the Professor had simply broken off part-way through writing his report. Either way, on the final page his handwriting had become wilder and more ragged. There were only a few disjointed sentences, but they seemed to burn off the page with importance.
The letter was unsigned, but Sophie knew it had been written by Professor Blaxland. She guessed it must have been intended for the Chief himself.
Now, she sat with her chin in her hands, pondering over all that she had discovered. It was beginning to make sense to her now: a picture emerging from all the scattered fragments. The Professor had taken on undercover work for the Secret Service Bureau, and the Chief had given him the task of researching the Fraternitas Draconum. He’d written his notes in code, and his reports in invisible ink to prevent anyone intercepting them and stealing the information they contained. It had been a wise precaution: after all, she herself had spent enough time intercepting secret letters on behalf of the Bureau to guess that Ziegler’s spies would do the same.
The discovery that the Professor had been researching the Fraternitas was surprising enough, but what was even more startling to her was the fact that he had been investigating the dragon paintings by Benedetto Casselli. They were paintings that Sophie knew very well indeed: after all, she and Lil had been the ones who had saved them after they were stolen by the crooked art collector Raymond Lyle, on behalf of the Baron and the Fraternitas Draconum. It had later been discovered that one of the paintings concealed a mysterious secret message reading green lion, black sun. That was where Sophie had come across the image of the green lion before.
Thinking back on that case, she remembered that the government had planned to continue examining the paintings to see what else they could learn from them. She supposed the Bureau had taken on the enquiries, and the Professor had been given the task of working out what the cryptic message might mean. It sounded as though he had discovered that the message was one of a series of clues to the location of some kind of weapon. She lingered again over his description of it: a powerful weapon which held mysterious, perhaps even legendary, powers.
The words made her think immediately of her old adversary, the Baron. He’d been desperate to get his hands on the dragon paintings: he’d even murdered her father’s old friend, Colonel Fairley, to obtain one of them. Surely he must have known about the secret clues they held? And the phrase Age of the Dragon – she knew she’d heard the Baron himself say it, once before.
He had always been fixated on new and powerful weapons, she remembered – naval warships, explosives, rifles, infernal machines – and no doubt aeroplanes had interested him too. He’d been obsessed with trying to kick start a war in Europe, planning to profit from selling weapons to warring nations at high prices. She knew that there was nothing he would have loved more than a mysterious secret weapon that was supposed to have legendary powers.
The Baron was long gone now, of course. But what if the other members of the Fraternitas Draconum had shared his ideas, and were still working to find the secret weapon? Without the clue in the painting – now safely in the possession of the British government – they would be unable to locate it. But if they had somehow learned that the Professor was investigating the paintings, they would have known exact
ly where to find the information they needed to get their hands on the weapon.
That was why they had broken into the Professor’s apartment, Sophie concluded. They had stolen the notebook containing his research; and then they had killed him. Sophie knew enough about the Fraternitas Draconum to be certain that they would let nothing stand in the way of what they wanted; certainly they would not think twice about murdering a British agent if it would help them reach their goals.
Now, at last, she began to understand what the grey man and Herr Grün had been doing in the Professor’s apartment. She knew the Fraternitas Draconum had had dealings with the German Empire in the past – what if they were now working hand in glove with Ziegler? Could they have secured the services of the spymaster and his agents to go after Blaxland and get the information they needed? Might they even have promised the German government the use of this secret weapon, the very idea of which had so horrified the Professor? The thought of it made her heart beat a little faster, especially when she thought of how close she’d come to being caught by Ziegler’s spies at La Lune Bleue the previous night. Now, she glanced quickly out of the window, down at the park below. It would be such easy work for a professional like the grey man to track ‘Miss Blaxland’ back to her hotel. For all she knew he could be down there now, lying in wait for her, planning to pounce the very moment they appeared.
Peril in Paris (Taylor and Rose Secret Agents) Page 15