Her Royal Highness: A Romance of the Chancelleries of Europe

“But why face exposure?”

“There is no other way. Last night, just as I was within an ace of releasing myself from the terrible bondage, you entered and discovered the disgraceful truth. Ghelardi, too, knows it. He will tell His Majesty – for he hates both you and I, as you well know.”

“Your Highness may rest absolutely assured that he will say no word to the King – he dare not.”

“Dare not? Why? Ghelardi will dare anything.”

“He will not dare to utter a syllable regarding the events of last night,” said Waldron. “Therefore this affair remains between you and me.”

And he looked her straight in the face, much pained at that tragic interview.

“Be frank with me, Lola – do!” he urged after a moment’s pause. “Tell me the real truth, and I may yet be able to save the situation.”

“No,” she cried, wringing her hands frantically. “You cannot. I have come to bid you good-bye – you, my good friend. Ah! I have been too foolish; I have disregarded all good counsels, and have gone down – down to my death! Yet only; because I have loved. Had I not had the misfortune to have been born a princess I should have loved and been happy. But, alas! happiness is impossible for me, unfortunate as I am – only death – death!”

And she stood, her white nervous lips moving in silence, her fine eyes fixed straight before her as though looking into the Unknown, horrified, transfixed.

Chapter Thirty.

Mijoux Flobecq

“Lola,” he cried at last, unable to stand the sight of her tears and despair, and equally unable to restrain – himself longer. “Lola! Let me help you – let me know the real facts, however ugly they may be – and I will get you out of this difficulty! I implore you to do this, because – ah! you force me to confess to you, though I have believed myself strong enough to preserve my secret —because I love you!”

She started quickly and drew back, staring at him in surprise through her tear-dimmed eyes.

“You!” she gasped.

“Yes,” he answered in a quick, low whisper, grasping her small hand in his. “I know that I have no right to speak to you thus, but I cannot hold my secret longer. My love for you is forbidden, and besides I know, alas! too well, that your affection is centred upon another – Henri Pujalet – the man who loves you.”

Mention of her lover’s name seemed to electrify her. She snatched away her hand, turned her head and ejaculated:

“No, no. Do not mention that man’s name, I beg of you?”

This caused Hubert considerable surprise. Was it actually possible that they had quarrelled? He recollected that Pujalet had told him that he had come to Rome to meet her.

“I regret, Lola, if I have annoyed you,” he said quickly in deep apology, “but the fact remains that I love only you – you, my love!”

“You have forgotten your Spanish dancer – eh?” she asked in a strange tone of reproach.

“I took your advice,” was his simple reply; “and in doing so I gradually grew to love you, Princess, yet knowing that my affection could only bring me, a lonely man, grief, pain and despair.”

She was silent. Her little, white-gloved hand was again in his, and he had raised it reverently to his lips.

Ah! that was to him a moment of extreme ecstasy, for her hand lay inert and he saw that though her head was turned to conceal her emotion, her chest heaved and fell convulsively. She was sobbing.

He placed his arm tenderly about her small waist, and slowly she turned her tear-stained face to his. Their gaze met, but no second glance was needed to show that the passionate affection was reciprocated, though it remained unspoken, unacknowledged.

For some moments he held her in his strong, manly embrace, and though no word passed between them their two hearts beat in unison.

Alas! it was but a false paradise. Yet are not our lives made up of such? And we, all of us, are prepared to sacrifice years of weariness and of grief for five brief minutes of sweet illusion.

He did not speak. He knew not what to say. The serious nature of that theft on the previous night he realised, alas! too well. Had that intricate key plan passed from her hand, then the whole truth would have been out, and Europe must have been suddenly aflame.

As it was, his duty remained towards her, to strive to stifle the scandal and prevent the story either reaching the King’s ears or becoming public property.

Cataldi knew that the key had been stolen, and would probably inform His Majesty, in which case Hubert would be hastily summoned to audience and closely questioned.

In such circumstances what could he explain? Ay, what?

For fully five minutes the pair stood there motionless, save that with his hand he had softly stroked her cheek. Then, unable to repress the passion that arose within his bursting heart, he bent until his lips touched hers in a fierce, passionate caress.

She turned her great, expressive eyes upon his, those eyes that were so deep and fathomless, and sighed heavily as he kissed her. Her beautiful head was thrown back, displaying her slim white throat, around which was a thin platinum chain from which was suspended a tiny platinum locket encrusted with diamonds, a gift of the Tzarina. She was inexpressibly sweet and refined, her soft beauty seeming the more perfect as she stood there inert in the man’s strong arms.

Again his lips met hers. Then to his boundless joy he felt that, at the same instant she kissed him in return.

Yet next second, as though annoyed that she should have flung discretion to the winds, she gently disengaged herself from his embrace, saying in a low, pained voice:

“No, Hubert – I – I mean Mr Waldron – this is madness. I – we can never be anything but friends, alas! though I – ”

She broke off short, and hot tears again filled her splendid eyes.

Then, covering her face suddenly with her hands, she burst into a fit of sobbing.

Hubert crossed and turned the key in the door in case Peters might enter.

Then, returning to her, he strove to comfort her. He implored her, with all the pleading he could summon, to reveal to him the whole story of the plans and the reason she had abstracted them.

But she gravely shook her head, and still preserved a resolute silence.

The man stood bewildered. He saw himself in a terrible quandary. Within a few hours the King might get to know, or Cataldi might inadvertently mention the mysterious theft of the key plan.

The Press – and more especially the scurrilous section of it on the Continent – has an ingenious way of ferreting out details regarding scandals which is gravely disconcerting to those who are trying to suppress them.

Of his love Hubert Waldron made no further mention. Her mild reproof held him tongue-tied. He knew, alas! too well, the bitter truth of her simple remark. They could never be more than friends, for she must marry a Prince of the blood-royal. The pride of the Royal House of Savoy would never admit or sanction a morganatic marriage.

For fully another quarter of an hour she remained there. He saw, however, upon her face traces of tears, and when she grew calmer he opened the door of his room, into which she passed, and there bathed her eyes with eau-de-Cologne.

When she again emerged she was her old self, though still very pale and nervous, and just before one o’clock she drew on her long gloves and, taking up her blue, morocco hand-bag which bore the royal cipher in gold, bade him a low, half-whispered “Addio.”

“Not farewell,” he said, bending and kissing her hand. “Keep a stout heart, Lola. Do nothing rash. Act with great caution and discretion, and I, on my part, will do all I can to preserve silence.” She shook her head despairingly.

“That does not remove the terrible stigma upon me,” she said. “It does not remove my guilt!” And with those words upon her white lips she passed through the door which Hubert unlocked for her and down the stairs to the busy street; he following in silence.

In order not to attract notice she would not allow him to call a vettura, but preferred to walk. Therefore, slipping out of the door with another whispered adieu, she was instantly lost to his sight.

When he returned upstairs the telephone bell was ringing, and he responded.

He heard the detective, Pucci, speaking.

“You missed me, signore – eh?” he said cheerily, though the voice sounded far away. “I am at Orvieto – at the Hôtel Belle Arti – eighty miles from Rome. I could not communicate with you before leaving. Can you come here? It is most important. I cannot leave.”

“Neither can I,” Waldron replied. “Why have you gone to the country?”

“I am keeping observation upon a friend of yours, signore.”

“A friend of mine! Who?”

“The gentleman whom you spoke with at the station in Rome last night – a foreigner.”

Waldron started. Could he mean Henn Pujalet?

“A Frenchman?”

“Si, signore. His behaviour was curious, therefore I came here with him. I have made a discovery. Will you come here? If you leave by the two-eighteen from Rome – the Milan express – you can be here soon after five. I would return to Rome but I have no one here whom I can trust to follow if he leaves,” Pucci explained.

Waldron felt that in the circumstances to leave Rome was impossible – and yet on further reflection he saw that if the King summoned him to audience would it not be best to be absent from the capital and thus gain time for action? The brigadier, Pucci, was not a man ever to follow false scents. He must have discovered something gravely mysterious. Was it possible that he had found out that the elegant Frenchman was the lover of Princess Luisa!

He had only a few seconds to make up his mind. “Very well, Pucci. If you think it necessary I will leave by the train you mention. Meet me at the station.”

“Benissimo, signore,” answered the voice faintly dying away, as it does upon some trunk-telephone lines.

Waldron tried to question him further, when the querulous voice of the female clerk at the Exchange declared that the time was up, and promptly cut him off without further ceremony. Telephone operators are no respecters of persons, whether one Is in Paris, Pekin, Petersburg, or Paddington.

Swallowing a sandwich at the station buffet, and travelling without luggage, Hubert Waldron entered a first-class compartment of the express, which that afternoon was well-filled by foreigners leaving Rome for the north – the reason being that the Roman season, now over, Society was making for Paris and London, as fast as it could. There is always a headlong rush at the end of the season, be it in Egypt, on the Riviera, from Algeria or from any French or German watering-place. It is always helter-skelter to the capitals, regardless of comfort or of expense, and the Compagnie des Wagons-lits reaps a rich harvest always.

The journey from Rome up the wooded valley of the winding Tiber, through a country rich in ruins of the ancient Etruscans, lay through the real heart of Italy, delightfully picturesque, yet for Hubert in his state of mind it held no attraction. He sat in the compartment together with two elderly Englishwomen of the quiet, pension type, and a young and rather foppish German student, impatient to meet the detective, and hear from him the result of his observations.

Orte, high up amid its most delightful surroundings, was passed at last, and then, after several stoppages – though the train was termed an express – Orvieto, situate upon the top of its steep rock was reached, a Gibraltar on land, an invulnerable fortress in the days of the Etruscan League, and in mediaeval times a great stronghold of the Guelphs, and often affording refuge to the Popes.

The station lay below the town, which latter was reached by a funicular railway through a long, dark tunnel beneath the fortress. And upon the platform, as the train ran in, Hubert discerned a rather insignificant-looking man in shabby black and somewhat down at heel – a man at whom no one would cast a second glance. It was the brigadier, Pucci.

Hubert descended and crossed towards him, but to his surprise the detective turned away and did not appear to recognise him.

Indeed Pucci hurried off quickly as though business had called him elsewhere, and ere the diplomat could approach he was already out of the station.

In a secluded corner, away from the view of other arriving passengers, the detective halted, saying with relief:

“Madonna mia, signore! That was a narrow escape of being detected.”

“Why?” inquired Hubert in surprise.

“Why, did you not see who arrived by the train with you?”

“No,” replied the Englishman. “I was not watching.”

“Her Royal Highness the Princess Luisa alighted from your train.”

“Her Highness?” he gasped utterly dumbfounded.

“Yes; but I hope she has not seen you,” Pucci remarked dubiously.

“Then Pujalet is here – still at the hotel,” said Hubert, for he at once realised the object of Lola’s visit there.

“Si, signore. Presently I will tell you what I have by the merest chance discovered,” Pucci replied. “But we must be extremely wary – or the Princess may see us. She is evidently on her way to the hotel to meet your friend the Frenchman. We will let her go, and follow quickly afterwards. Last night a complot was afoot – some desperate plot – But my suspicions were aroused, and by some action of yours – I know not what – it was frustrated.”

“But what do you know, Pucci?” Hubert Waldron demanded breathlessly. “Tell me quickly.”

“I will tell you presently – after we have ascertained the motive of this journey of Her Highness,” replied the detective quietly. “Ah! I am glad you have come here, Signor Waldron. There is something in progress which is an entire mystery to me – something which I believe that you alone will be able to explain.”

“But you have said there was a plot which was frustrated last night. Of what was its nature?” The detective did not reply. His head was turned towards the roadway, which his quick eyes were watching intently.

“Her Highness has gone up to the hotel,” he said. “Let us hasten and watch. I will explain all later. Come – we have not time to lose. This fellow, Flobecq, is a very slippery customer.”

“Flobecq!” echoed Hubert Waldron, starting in amazement.

“Yes. His name is Flobecq, yet I suppose that is not the name by which you know him – eh?”

“Flobecq!” gasped Hubert Waldron. “You are dreaming. Surely that is not his name.”

“Yes, signore, I tell you it is. His name is Mijoux Flobecq!”

Chapter Thirty One.

The Bond Revealed

“The whole affair last night was a complete fiasco, thanks to you!”

“I know it, alas!”

“And all through your infernal friendship with Waldron?”

“I cannot help it. I did my very best, Henri.”

“Your best!” sneered the Frenchman. “You actually allowed him to take the tracings from you when you already had them in your possession! Faugh! It is all too childish.”

“Childish!” Lola echoed in anger. “Ah, yes, I know. What affection have you now for me – you who declared that you were mine – that – ”

“Love is out of the question,” the man replied brutally. “With me it is a matter of business. We must all live. You – a Royal Princess – are in no want. I, agent of the Foreign Office at Vienna, am in constant want of money. You gave me plans that were useless. I merely asked you to contrive to obtain for me the missing tracings.”

“In return for my letters to you!” she cried, in bitter reproach.

But the man merely laughed as he replied:

“Have I not told you, my dear Lola, it is with me purely a matter of finance, not of sentiment.” They were together in a small, plainly furnished sitting-room on the first floor of the mediaeval Palazzo Bisenzi, now occupied by the Hôtel Belle Arti, in ignorance that every word spoken could be overheard by the Englishman and his companion.

The two latter were listening intently at the door of an adjoining room – for in Italian hotels the communicating doors are always an invitation to the eavesdropper. The old place had frescoed walls and ceilings, and in some rooms the floors were of marble.

“And because I have failed, you will carry out your disgraceful threat – eh? You told me so on the telephone this morning,” she asked in a low, nervous voice.

“You have failed purposely – because you did not intend that I should gain knowledge of that military secret. I know how strenuously active that English friend of yours has been in endeavouring to elucidate the mystery of the theft – and now, thanks to you, he has succeeded,” replied Mijoux Flobecq, alias Henri Pujalet, the well-known spy of Austria – the man to whom, though young, the authorities in Vienna had practically entrusted the direction of her wide network of spies across the face of Europe. So cleverly had he concealed his identity that even Ghelardi – the great Ghelardi, whose boast it was that he knew every secret agent of importance in Europe – had been utterly unaware that Henri Pujalet and Mijoux Flobecq were one and the same!

Hubert had long ago heard him spoken of as a man whose phenomenal successes in espionage had been most remarkable for their cleverness, ingenuity, and daring. The foreign policy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had practically been based upon his reports – as that of Italy was based upon those of Luigi Ghelardi – and in every chancellerie in Europe the name of Flobecq was synonymous of all that was crafty, cunning, and unscrupulous.

The official head of Austria’s Secret Service was a stout and rather slow-speaking, plethoric man of middle-age, who had graduated under Azeff in Russia, and who was well-known to Ghelardi. But Mijoux Flobecq was a man of meteoric fame, a man who had recently come to be regarded in almost legendary light as one of the most remarkable of the unseen and unknown characters in European espionage.

There are several others, Bylandt of Berlin, Captain Hetherington of London, Gomez of Petersburg, and the mysterious and elusive Monsieur X. of the Quai D’Orsay. Diplomats know them by name, and are too well aware of their successes. But not one of them has ever been identified in the flesh.

Lola uttered a loud protest against the allegation that she had purposely played into the Englishman’s hands, and then turned and reproached him bitterly for his heartless and brutal treatment.

“I have failed through no want of tact,” she cried. “Was it not clearly to my own advantage to preserve my honour – now, alas! that you stand revealed in your true light – that I should act as you directed and become a thief?”

“You used the safe key I gave you with great success on the first occasion – ”

“Because I was in ignorance of the terrible gravity of my action,” she interrupted. “You told me that the plans were of no real consequence, but if you could obtain them it would put you in the good graces of your firm in Paris. You told me that your firm were Government contractors who were seeking to learn certain details in order that they might tender to our Ministry for the construction of the forts. I never dreamed the truth. I had no idea that you were Mijoux Flobecq, the spy of Austria! Not until three days after I had handed you the plans were my suspicions aroused by some remark which His Majesty dropped while speaking with General Cataldi after one of the State banquets. Then, making a few inquiries in secret, aided by my friend, Pietro Olivieri, I was horrified to discover the ghastly truth,” she said. “I found that you – the man who had declared your profound love for me – had practised a most wicked deception. You had induced me to hand over one of the most important of our State secrets to our enemies in Vienna!”

“It was useless without the key,” he remarked, quite unaffected by the bitterness of her reproach.

“I committed a theft for which others were suspected, because of my love for you,” she went on in a low, hard tone. “You, as Henri Pujalet, had very cleverly led me to believe you had no idea that I was any other than Lola Duprez, niece of old Jules Gigleux of Paris. Yet you knew my real identity all the time! You had laid your plans cleverly, and made me believe that you spoke the truth when you swore undying devotion to me. For nearly nine months you made pretence to love me, and wrote me many letters, to which I naturally responded. Our stolen interviews took place in many cities, but you had always one fixed idea – the coup which you would one day make with my assistance. At last, on that occasion when at midnight I met you on the road to Tivoli, you put before me a proposition. To save you from bankruptcy, and in order that your position might be assured with your firm in Paris, you begged me to obtain the plans of those frontier fortresses – to steal them! You had, it seemed, intimate inside knowledge of all the arrangements at our Ministry of War. You actually described the very portfolio in which they were kept, and knew the very hour at which they would be placed in the Minister’s safe, to which you even gave me a duplicate key.”

The man only laughed aloud at her chagrin.

“I now know how you had met General Cataldi at Biarritz, and had, by a clever ruse, taken a wax impression of his safe key, and how, indeed, for months you had been contemplating the theft, feeling certain that my love for you would be strong enough to induce me to fall your helpless victim. Well, I fell. Yes, I believed in you, Henri – believed that you really loved me. I sacrificed all for your sake. But it never crossed my mind that your love was only a hollow pretence, that you were fooling me with your soft-spoken speeches, and that you were the enemy of my country or a professional spy.”

“You could have had me arrested,” he laughed. “Why didn’t you?”

“Ah, when I realised what I had done I begged you to return the plans I had stolen. Mr Waldron conveyed my imploring message to you in Brussels and what was your reply? That I must remain silent – that the key plan was wanted – and that if I did not consent to help you to obtain it you would hand over my letters to you for publication in the Matin!”

“That is exactly what I intend now to do,” was his cold reply. “Our bargain was that I would return your letters on condition that you obtained the tracings of the key.”

“I failed to do that,” she cried frantically. “I was detected.”

“By Waldron. Because you intended that you should be caught in the act, and thus prevented from carrying out your part of the contract.”

“But surely you will give me back my letters!” she implored eagerly. “You will not hound me – a helpless girl – to death by my own hand! I could not bear the exposure, for the honour of my House.”

“You should have thought of all that before,” he laughed mockingly. “The bargain was fair enough, and you accepted readily.”

“Because I could not bear exposure. Think what the publication of those letters will mean to me. In them I have admitted committing a theft. I – a Royal Princess – have betrayed my own country?”

“You are not the first woman who has sacrificed her life for her love,” he answered, quite regardless of her emotion.

“But have you no pity for me, no remorse?” she cried in frantic despair.

“I repeat that, to me, this is not a matter of sentiment. All I required was the cipher key plan – which you actually had in your possession and gave up to Waldron. I was in the Ministry that night in the garb of a waiter. I watched him follow you into the Minister’s private cabinet, and I saw Ghelardi go in later. He came out, and presently you came out with Waldron. I followed you both down to the vestibule, but from your faces I knew that you had been discovered.”

“Yes, Mijoux Flobecq,” she cried in sudden defiance, “the game is up, and the honour of Italy is saved. The timely entry of Mr Waldron into that room has averted a European war!”

“And brought exposure and disaster upon yourself,” answered the man in harsh tones. “Within a week from to-day Europe will read in the Paris Press a most interesting correspondence which will reflect anything but honour upon the Royal House of Savoy.”

“Then you really intend to crush me, and send me to my death – eh?”

“I intend to act exactly as I have said,” was the fellow’s firm response. “When my mind is made up I never alter it.”

“So this is how you repay me for all my sacrifice for you – eh?” she asked with poignant bitterness, and a catch in her voice which was distinctly audible by the two men listening.