Her Royal Highness: A Romance of the Chancelleries of Europe

Ten times within our present twentieth century has Europe been upon the verge of a great and bloody war. Orders have been given to mobilise, and armies have stood ready to come to grips. Yet only the Embassies have known, and there, most happily, secrets can be kept, even in these get-rich-quick days of bribery and dishonesty.

Europe has slept in her bed in calm, blissful ignorance that at any hour the terrible weapons of modern warfare might provide a cruel awakening, or perhaps a long and fatal sleep!

Such were the thoughts which floated through Hubert’s mind as Peters came in one morning after five days of uncertainty and vain inquiry, and placed the letters at his master’s elbow.

Among them was one bearing a Spanish stamp – a long and regretful letter from Beatriz.

He read it through twice, and then tore it into little fragments and cast it upon the fire with a brief sigh.

The telephone bell rang, and he rose and answered it.

A girl’s voice spoke. It was the Princess Luisa.

“I say, Signor Waldron,” she exclaimed in English, when he had told her that it was he who spoke, “the appointment is all right. To-night at eight-thirty – eh? I want to see you most urgently.”

“I shall be there,” he replied. He did not address her as “Highness,” as he feared lest the telephone girl should be curious.

“Benissimo. Addio!” was her reply, and then she rang off.

Again he threw himself into his chair, his brow dark and thoughtful. The appointment they had made when she had visited him she had been unable to keep, as she had had to accompany the Queen to Naples; and she had only just returned, she explained.

How strange was it all. If by good chance he were successful in his inquiries he might, after all, save Italy and her Sovereign.

But could he? Was the dastardly conspiracy too clever and well sustained? Ay, that was the question.

Those very men – those Ministers who depended upon the King’s good graces, and would lick His Majesty’s boots, were the same men who were now betraying him and the country into the hands of their hereditary enemy. And for gold – always for gold – that most necessary commodity upon which the devil has for ever set his curse.

That afternoon he spent at the Embassy attending to dispatches brought from Downing Street by the King’s messenger who had arrived in Rome that morning, and who was due to return to London at midnight.

For two arduous hours he was closeted with the Ambassador going through the various matters requiring attention, including several questions regarding the Consulates of Florence and Venice. A question had arisen in London of the advisability of reducing the Florence Consulate-General to a Vice-Consulate and making Livorno a Consulate-General in its place. Florence was without trade, while Livorno – or Leghorn as it is known to the English – was full of shipping and other interests. Florence had too long been practically a sinecure, and its Consul-General a picturesque figure, hence the question afoot – the Ambassador being asked to write his opinion upon the proposed reduction.

Durrant, the Councillor of Embassy, being absent in England on leave, it devolved upon Waldron to attend to the clerical duties, and it was nearly six o’clock ere he had sealed the last dispatch and placed it in the small Foreign Office bag of white canvas.

Then the Ambassador questioned him upon the latest phase of his inquiry, but to all questions he was discreetly evasive – even to his own Chief.

Hubert Waldron was never optimistic, though he felt that already he was on the track of the thief.

Chapter Sixteen.

Her Royal Highness

Soon after eight o’clock Hubert descended from a rickety vettura outside the great dark Pantheon, and passing across the piazza, plunged into a maze of narrow, obscure, ill-lit streets until he came to a small quiet restaurant – a place hidden away in the back thoroughfares of the Eternal City, and known only to the populace.

The place which he entered was long and bare, with whitewashed walls and red plush settees – an unpretentious little place devoid of decoration or of comfort.

Upon the empty tables stood vases of paper flowers, big serviettes, and a single knife and fork lay in each place, for the Italian, though he is fond of good food and is usually a gourmet, takes no notice of his surroundings so long as the fare is well-cooked and palatable.

Upon each table stood the big rush-covered fiasco of Tuscan red wine in its silver-plated stand, and as Hubert entered, the padrone, a short, stout man, came forward to greet him. Dinner was long since over, and the proprietor believed his visitor to be one of those stray foreigners who sometimes drifted in at odd hours because his establishment was a noted one in Rome.

He was surprised when Hubert, speaking in excellent Italian, explained that he was expecting a lady, and that he wished to dine tête-à-tête.

“Egisto,” he called to the elderly, under-sized waiter, “a private room for the signore. A lady will call at half-past eight.”

“Si, signore,” was the man’s prompt reply, and at once he conducted the Englishman upstairs to a small stuffy room on the first floor overlooking the little piazza, where he began setting out the table for two.

Egisto in his black cotton coat and long white apron was surprised when his visitor, in reply to a question as to what he wished to eat, said:

“Please yourself. Something which is a speciality of the house. What is it?”

“Well, signore, our zuppa alla Marinara is supposed to be the best in Rome,” he replied. “And of fish, we have red mullet cooked in the Livornese fashion – and carciofi alla guidea.”

“Good,” the visitor answered, for Hubert knew Italian cooking and knew what to order. “A dozen tartufi della mare, the ztàppa, triglie and a risotto with fegatini of chicken.”

Egisto bowed. From that moment he held the stranger, though a foreigner, in great esteem, for he realised that he knew a good dinner. And every waiter from Liverpool to Luxor or from Tunis to Trondhjem bows to the man who can discriminate on a menu. In what contempt, alas! are our own dear Cookites our Lunnites and our other various couponists held by the man in the black tie and white apron. I have heard a tourist order a boiled haddock in Florence, another whom I overheard demanded “fish and chips” in the Grand Rue in Constantinople, and I recollect quite well a man from Oldham – evidently a cotton operative – loudly call in broad Lancashire for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding in the Grand Hotel at Christiania.

Waldron descended the stairs and waited outside for some ten minutes or so until a taxi drove up and Her Highness, in the same shabby navy blue costume, and worn furs, descended and greeted him eagerly.

When alone together in the small bare room – for only a table and two rush-covered chairs were set upon the uncarpeted floor, with a cheap sideboard against the wall – he assisted her off with her jacket, and when she was seated, Hubert said:

“Now we shall be able to resume our little confidential chat that was so unfortunately interrupted the other night. This place is quite quiet, and the waiter cannot understand a single word of English.”

“Yes,” she sighed apprehensively. “I – I really hardly know what to tell you, Mr Waldron,” she faltered, her big, expressive eyes fixed upon his. “I only know that you are my very good friend, and that I have been foolish – ah! terribly foolish.”

The waiter at that moment entered with the zuppa, and after it was served, discreetly withdrew.

“You hinted something about blackmail. I hope Your Highness will tell me everything. No doubt I can assist you,” he said in a low, intense voice when the door had closed.

“Not Highness, please – Lola,” she protested, with a faint smile.

“I’m sorry,” he exclaimed with an apologetic laugh. Then he added: “I suppose we must eat some of this in order to keep up appearances – eh?”

“I suppose so,” she agreed, and they both commenced to eat.

“Of course,” Waldron went on earnestly, “I don’t ask you in any spirit of mere inquisitiveness to tell me anything. I simply make the request because you have admitted that you are worried, and I believe that it may be in my power to assist you.”

“Ah, Mr Waldron,” she sighed, “I know I have been horribly indiscreet, and have greatly annoyed Their Majesties. Old Ghelardi has orders to watch me daily, but fortunately he is, after all, my friend. It is true that an agent of secret police is told off to follow me wherever I go, for my own personal protection, and because the anarchists have lately again threatened the Royal House. But our crafty old friend, whom you know as Jules Gigleux, is good enough to allow me much latitude, so that I know when the secret agent will be off duty, and can then escape his unwelcome attentions.”

“With Ghelardi’s connivance?” Hubert suggested with a laugh. “Then he is not exactly your enemy?”

She nodded in the affirmative, a sweet and mischievous smile playing about her full red lips.

“True,” she went on bitterly, a hard, haunted look in her eyes, “I am a Princess of Savoia, yet after all, am I not a girl like all the others about me? At home, at my mother’s castle at Mantova, I was always allowed my freedom to ride, to motor, to do whatever I liked. But since, alas! I’ve been compelled to live at the Palace my life has been so horribly circumscribed. I’m tired to death of the narrowness, the pomp, the tiresome etiquette, and the eternal best behaviour one has to put on. It’s all horrible. Only in the evenings when, with Ghelardi’s connivance, can I go out for an hour or so, do I breathe and enjoy the freedom to which ever since a child I have been accustomed. In Society, people declare that I outrage all the conventionalities, and they hold up their hands at exaggerated stories of my motor trips, or because I go incognita to a theatre or make visits to my friends. But they do not know, Mr Waldron, all that I have suffered. They cannot realise that the heart of a princess of the blood-royal is just the same as that of a girl of the people; that every woman loves to live, to enjoy herself, and to have her own freedom even though she may live in the eternal limelight and glitter of a brilliant Court like ours.”

“But permit me to say that if half what I hear be true you are – well, shall we say just slightly injudicious in the way you go about incognita,” he remarked.

“Ah! Yes, I know,” she replied impatiently. “But I really can’t help it. Oh, how heartily I wish that I had never been a princess! The very title grates upon my nerves.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because of the utter emptiness of it all – because,” and her voice changed – “because of the tragedy of it all.”

“Tragedy! What do you mean?” he echoed quickly, staring at her.

The waiter again entered interrupting, yet Waldron saw from the change in her countenance that there was something hidden in her heart which she desired to confide to him, but for some reason she dare not speak the truth.

As the man busied himself with the plates, recollections of that young Frenchman, Henri Pujalet, arose before the Englishman. He remembered the passionate meeting beneath the palms, and her strict injunctions to exert every precaution so that Gigleux should suspect nothing.

Where was Pujalet? he wondered. Had their affection now cooled, and the secret lover, in ignorance of her real identity and believing her to be poor and dependent upon her uncle, had with a Frenchman’s proverbial inconstancy returned to his own beloved boulevards?

From the Princess’s attitude he felt convinced that it was so, and he had, in consequence, become much relieved.

When Egisto had bowed low and again disappeared, having changed the dishes, Waldron looked across at his pretty companion, and in a voice of deeper earnestness, said:

“May I not be permitted to know the nature of this tragedy? Remember, you alone know the tragedy of my own love. Is yours, I wonder, of a similar nature?”

She bit her lip, her wide-open eyes fixed upon his. He saw that her breath came and went in short quick gasps and that in her strained eyes was the light of unshed tears.

“Yes,” she managed to respond.

There was silence for a few moments. She looked a sweet, pathetic little figure, for her countenance was very pale and apprehensive.

Then he bent across the table where she sat with her elbows upon it, her chin resting upon her hands, her plate untouched.

“And will you not confide in me? You know my secret and gave me certain advice which I heeded,” he said.

“Ah! Then you have broken with your Spanish dancer – eh?” she asked quickly in a voice which surprised him. She laid a bitter accent upon the word “dancer.”

“I have.”

“Because she has, of course proved false to you – as I knew she would,” declared Her Highness. “Yes, Mr Waldron, you have acted wisely, as one day you will most certainly be convinced. I heard all about it when I was visiting the Queen of Spain. The woman would have led you to ruin, as so many women have led the men who are the most honest and best in the world. It seems by the contrariness of Fate that the life of a good man should so often be linked with that of a bad woman – and vice versa?”

He nodded in acquiescence.

“Will you tell me nothing concerning yourself – your own difficulties and sorrows?” he asked, earnestly looking into her face. “I have been perfectly frank with you, and surely you know how proud I am to believe myself your friend.”

“You are proud of my friendship merely because I happen to be a princess,” she remarked sharply, glancing straight at him, her dark, well-marked brows slightly contracted.

“No, not for that, Your Highness,” he protested. “When we first met you led me to believe that you were poor and dependent upon your uncle. Was my attitude in any way different towards you then than it is now?”

“No. Ah, forgive me!” she replied quickly, stretching her little hand across to him in appeal. “I am, I know, too impetuous. It was foolish of me to utter such words, knowing them to be untrue! No, Mr Waldron, you have always shown yourself my friend, ever since that sunny morning when we first met on the deck of the Arabia. I deceived you, but under sheer compulsion, I assure you.”

“I have forgiven that long, long ago,” was his reply. “We are still friends and I, unfortunately, find you in distress. Yet you will not confide in me. That is what annoys me.”

“I regret if my silence irritates you in the least,” was her low reply, her face growing very grave. “But have you not, in your own heart, certain secrets which you do not desire divulged to anyone – certain private matters which concern your own life – perhaps your own honour?”

“Well, if you put it to me in that fashion, I cannot deny it,” he said. “I suppose we all have, more or less.”

“Then pray do not let my hesitation annoy you, Mr Waldron,” was her quiet, serious answer. “I know you are my friend, and I highly appreciate your friendship, – but I – I – ”

And she broke off short, again biting her lip.

Then, without another word she took up her knife and fork and commenced to eat, as though to divert her thoughts from some subject intensely distasteful to her.

Waldron sat sorely puzzled.

Time after time he tried to induce her to explain further her strange hint as to blackmail, but without avail.

The meal, which proved so dismal and unenjoyable, at last ended and Egisto disappeared for the last time. Both felt relieved.

Then Waldron bent to the Princess Luisa, asking frankly:

“Now tell me what may I do to prove to you my friendship?”

“There is no necessity to prove a fact of which I am already aware,” was her reply after a few seconds’ reflection.

“Truth to tell, Princess,” he remarked, “I cannot quite make you out. Why are you so silent, and yet so distressed? As a man of the world – a freelance – I could, I am sure, extricate you from what I fear may be a pitfall in which you to-night find yourself. You have been indiscreet, perhaps. Yet all of us, in every station of life, have committed regrettable indiscretions.”

“Indiscretions!” she echoed hoarsely. “Yes, you are right, Mr Waldron. Quite right! Ah!” she cried, after a slight pause. “I only wish I were permitted to reveal to you the whole of the strange, tragic circumstances. They would amaze you, I know – but, alas! I can’t.”

“Why not?” he protested.

“For the sake of my own honour,” she faltered, and her eyes, he saw, were filled with tears.

He sprang up and took her small white hand warmly within his own, saying:

“Let me be your friend, Princess. Do, I implore you.”

“Princess!” she cried bitterly. “Will you never learn to drop that title when you speak to me.”

He apologised, still holding her hand in his strong grip as pledge of his great friendship, and of his deep admiration for her. Love was entirely out of the question, he knew. He had realised that hard fact ever since the startling discovery of that photograph in the drawing-room of the Embassy.

At last, after a long silence, she spoke in a hard, intense voice, quite unusual to her, for she was full of suppressed emotion.

“If you really are my friend I – I wonder,” she hesitated, “if you would do something for me – something to assist me?”

“Most willingly,” he cried. “What is it?”

“I – I hardly like to ask it, but I have no other true and confidential friend in Rome except Renata. And as a maid she cannot help me in this matter without arousing suspicion in a certain quarter.”

“What can I do? I’m ready to assist you in any way in my power,” he answered her quickly.

“Even though it necessitates a journey to Brussels?”

“To Brussels!” echoed Hubert in surprise. Then he added: “Of course – anywhere that may be necessary.”

“Then I want this letter delivered by hand. It is most secret and important, and I would only trust it to you, Mr Waldron, because I know that you would never betray my confidence whatever may happen.” And she drew forth with nervous fingers from within her blouse a letter sealed with a large black seal bearing the single letter “L.” Waldron took it and saw that the address read:

“Private – To Monsieur S. Petrovitch, Bruxelles.”

“See here,” she went on, showing him a small scrap of paper upon which she had written: “Slavo Petrovitch, Box 463 Bureau de Poste, Bruxelles.”

“On arrival in Brussels send word to this address that you are there, and you will be met if you make an appointment in the Café Métropole.”

“But if this letter is in such strict secrecy how am I to establish the identity of the Monsieur Petrovitch?” Waldron queried after a second’s thought.

For answer she opened the small circular golden locket she wore suspended by a thin platinum chain and exhibited to him a photograph within.

He held his breath as his eyes fell upon it. The picture was that of Henri Pujalet!

She smiled mysteriously in his face, saying:

“You recognise him, I see, as one of our fellow-travellers on the Nile?”

“Yes I do,” was Waldron’s brief response.

“And you will do this for me as my friend – and ask no questions?”

“I have already promised,” he replied, bowing before her very gravely.

“Ah, Mr Waldron!” she cried, bursting into a sudden torrent of tears, quite unable further to repress her emotion. “Yes, I know you are my real true friend! And if you will do this for me you can never know how great a service you are rendering me – a service the magnitude of which you will perhaps one day know when – when I dare to tell you the tragic and astounding truth!” And before he could be aware of it, she had raised his hand in a sudden outburst of frantic gratitude and kissed it.

Chapter Seventeen.

The Cipher Dispatch

Next day Hubert Waldron continued his inquiry with unceasing activity.

Armed with His Majesty’s authority, he had an interview with the Commendatore Bertini, the Questore, or Chief of Police of Rome. The secret or political police under Ghelardi was an entirely different department. Therefore, without telling the bald-headed Questore the reason or nature of the inquiry in which he was engaged he requested assistance in His Majesty’s name, and was given the Brigadier Giovanni Pucci, a well-known and astute officer of the brigade mobile.

To the tall, thin, athletic-looking, clean-shaven man with small black eyes, and hair turning a trifle grey, Hubert took a fancy at once, and in a taxi they went round to his rooms to hold secret council.

Beside the fire, while the detective, a crafty, keen-eyed Neapolitan, smoked cigarettes, the diplomat explained that he required strict inquiry made into the antecedents of the corporal, Tonini. He also desired information concerning the private lives of General Cataldi, his secretary, Pironti, and the official, Lambarini.

The detective made some careful memoranda in his pocket-book and promised most minute attention to the matter.

“Remember, Signor Pucci,” Waldron said, “this affair is strictly confidential and concerns His Majesty alone. I shall tell him that I have entrusted the inquiry to you.”

“I will do my very utmost, signore, and place in your hands all the information I can gather. You wish for a written report?”

“Certainly. And only actual facts.”

The detective showed greatest curiosity regarding the reason of such inquiries regarding public officials, but the Englishman told him nothing.

“Just make your inquiries, Signor Pucci,” he said, “this is all I require of you at present. I may be absent from Rome for a week, so while I am away please continue to work. As you know, the Questore has placed your services entirely at His Majesty’s disposal.”

“I appreciate the honour which has been done me,” was the astute officer’s reply, for he was a brigadier, and a terror to the criminal fraternity in the Eternal City. Having graduated in the underworld of Naples among the Camorra and the Mafia, he had become one of the Questore’s right-hand men. “His Majesty knows me,” he added, “for I have done duty with him many times on his journeys. I am often told off as his personal guardian.”

“In that case then I can rely upon you to treat this matter with the utmost confidence,” Hubert remarked, and soon afterwards Peters showed the tall man out.

Time after time Hubert examined the mysterious letter with which Her Highness had entrusted him. Why was Pujalet passing in Brussels as a Servian? What secret could that sealed envelope contain which could not be trusted to the post? Ah! if he could only discover it!

“Peters,” he said presently, as his man came in to stir the fire, “I may be leaving Rome for a day or two. I may even go to-night. So just pack my small suit-case.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Stay,” he said, and going to a drawer in a small occasional table which was laden with English books and magazines he took out a serviceable-looking Browning pistol, adding: “Just put that in also.”

“Very well, sir.”

It did not surprise Peters, for his master often took the weapon with him on night journeys upon Continental railways. Indeed in Italy one acquires the habit of carrying a gun.

In the afternoon Hubert strolled, as usual, up the Pincio where he met and greeted many of the great ones in Roman Society, not because he cared for it, but because it was the correct thing to do so, and as diplomat he had to bow always to Society’s decree.

He afterwards paid a call upon the Princess Altieri at the great old Grazini Palace, that fine mediaeval palazzo, the chief façades of which, as those who know Rome are aware, are in the Piazza della Valle and the Via del Sudario, that palace designed by the immortal Raphael and erected by Lorenzetto.

Entering the great portals where stood the pompous concierge in cocked hat and bearing his silver-headed staff of office, he ascended the great stone staircase at the head of which a flunkey met him and conducted him to the huge gilded salon wherein the Princess Altieri, a diminutive old lady in black, was entertaining a crowd of chattering friends.

After he had bowed over the old lady’s hand he glanced around and recognised a number of familiar faces. His own Chief, besides the Russian and French Ambassadors were there, while there were a dozen or so marquises and Counts with their women-folk, a few foreign notables, and a sprinkling of the ornamental men from the Embassies.