Her Royal Highness: A Romance of the Chancelleries of Europe

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.

Hubert found himself chatting with Count Niccoli, Colonial Secretary of State, when presently his Chief came up and whispered in his ear: “Waldron, can you be round at the Embassy in an hour? I want to tell you something.”

“Certainly,” was the diplomat’s reply, and the two men were lost to each other in the crush.

The chatter went on, for the old Princess being highly popular in Rome, many people always came to her weekly receptions. In half a dozen tongues conversation was carried on, and the room with its ancient painted ceiling, its closed windows and high stoves, was unbearably hot. Indeed, half aristocratic Rome seemed to have dropped in after its sunset airing on the Pincio.

An hour later, however, when Hubert entered the Ambassador’s room, his Chief rose from his table with a grave expression upon his pale, refined face.

“Waldron,” he said, “I fear the secret of those stolen plans of the frontier fortresses is out.”

“The secret out!” gasped the other. “Why – what is known?”

“Look at this!” he said, taking from a drawer a telegram in cipher which was deciphered upon a sheet of paper to which it was pinned. “It came in at three o’clock. Read it.”

Waldron scanned it with eager eyes, and saw that the message which had been handed in at Vienna at half-past one was from Lord Ecclesbourne, British Ambassador to Austria, and read:

“From information received through confidential channels it seems that Austria-Hungary is now rapidly and secretly mobilising on the Italian frontier. The Seventh and Eleventh Army Corps are assembled at Bozen and Klagenfurt respectively. Orders have been sent to the Austrian fleet by wireless from Sebenico, but of these I have no knowledge. The Emperor returned to Vienna last night and a meeting of the War Council was held an hour afterwards at which he was present. Though the newspapers this morning merely announce a series of manoeuvres in the Tyrol, it seems clear that a crisis has occurred and that immediate hostilities against Italy are contemplated. Please regard foregoing as confidential and report back any information which may come to your knowledge. I have to-day sent dispatches by telegram and also by special messenger to London. – Ecclesbourne.”

“By Jove! This is extremely serious!” declared Hubert, standing aghast with the dispatch in his hand. “No doubt the truth is out. Have you told them here of this dispatch?”

“Certainly not. The information is ours, and, as you see, it is strictly confidential.”

“But surely I may warn His Majesty!”

“No,” was the Ambassador’s decided reply.

“But are we not a friendly Power?” argued the secretary. “Is it not our duty to tell them what we know?”

“It may be, but I cannot betray what is sent to me as strictly confidential,” was His Excellency’s response.

“But Lord Ecclesbourne is unaware of the actual truth. If he knew it he certainly would not withhold the information,” Hubert argued.

“True. But do you not remember that any information obtained through our Secret Service is strictly confidential, and must not on any pretext be given to a foreign Power?”

“I know that, of course. But such a rule surely cannot apply in such a case as this,” urged Waldron impatiently. “We know that the plans have been stolen, and that this hostile movement is the result. We surely ought to warn Italy, so that she is not taken by surprise, which is, no doubt, the intention of her arch-enemy.”

“No doubt it is,” replied the Ambassador. “And I regret that we cannot break the rule. Indeed, I dare not – without orders from home.”

“Those we shall never get, I fear. We cannot explain the facts by wire, and a messenger to Downing Street would take fully three days. Why, in that time the Austrians will be in Venice and Milan!” declared Waldron. “Can we do nothing to avert this war?” he asked frantically.

“What can we do, my dear fellow? Even if you went to His Majesty I do not see what benefit would accrue.”

“It would put the Ministry of War upon its guard.”

“They will know. Possibly they know already. Ghelardi is a good watch-dog, and he has his spies in Vienna, just as we have. Probably he knows as much as we do,” was the Ambassador’s reply as he stood upon the red Turkey hearthrug with folded arms, a fine diamond pin sparkling in his black cravat.

“But can we do nothing – nothing?” cried Waldron in impatience and alarm. “I promised His Majesty that I would work in the interests of Italy, and if I withhold this fact from him, surely I shall be held culpable!”

“Your first duty is to your own King, Waldron,” replied His Excellency very gravely. “To betray information obtained by our Secret Service is, by the regulations, absolutely forbidden, I repeat.”

“I know that full well. But in these circumstances is it not our duty as a friendly Power to place Italy on her guard, and save her from invasion?”

“Our first duty is to observe our own regulations,” replied the Ambassador, one of the old red-tape school, who like the ostrich hid his head in the sand and still believed in England as the chief and unconquerable Power among nations.

“And not to observe at the same time our cordial relations with a Power which has, on its own initiative, already given us plans of half a dozen improvements in modern ordnance – plans which we have used to our own advantage.”

“Well – if you desire, you are at liberty to send a cipher dispatch to Lord Westmere and try and obtain leave,” was the Ambassador’s reply. “I can, I regret, give no permission myself.”

For some seconds Waldron remained silent. He stood near the window gazing blankly out upon the broad handsome thoroughfare now lit by long rows of electric lights, the fine modern road which led to the Porta Pia.

“Very well,” he replied savagely, “I will myself obtain leave from Downing Street,” and turning upon his heel, he went away to the chancellerie and there wrote out a telegram which he reduced to cipher by aid of the small blue-covered book which he took from the strong-room, afterwards taking the message himself to the chief telegraph office and dispatching it.

The dispatch was a long one, but it was necessary to give full explanation.

It was then six o’clock by Italian time, or five o’clock in England. The night express left Rome for Paris at twenty minutes after midnight, and it was his intention to catch it, providing he received a reply in time to have audience with His Majesty prior to leaving.

He dressed and afterwards dined at the Embassy, as was his habit. Lady Cathcart, with the hauteur of the Ambassador’s wife, sat at the head of the table, and several of the staff were present, also two Members of Parliament, men to whom ambassadors always have to be civil. But the meal proved a very dreary one. Both Members – who were quite unimportant persons, and who would never have appeared in “Who’s Who” had not their Constituents placed them there – aired their ideas upon the European situation – ideas which were ridiculous and unsound, though none present were so impolite as to say so.

“Have you sent your dispatch?” asked His Excellency the Ambassador when they were alone together for a few moments after dinner.

“Yes,” Waldron replied. “I am expecting permission, and if so I shall have audience at once.”

The Ambassador’s grey face lit up with a faint smile, as he shook his head.

“I fear, my dear Waldron, that you will not get permission. The Powers must look after their own perils.”

Hubert, glad enough to escape from the official atmosphere, left the Embassy shortly afterwards, and after killing time for an hour in the club – where he chatted with Colonel Sibileff, the Russian military attaché, and young Count Montoro, one of the jeunesse dorée of the Eternal City – walked back to his rooms to see if any reply was forthcoming from London. He had given orders to Sheppard, the concierge at the Embassy, to send round at once any telegram addressed to him.

“Any message?” he asked eagerly of Peters as he let himself in with his latch-key.

“Yes, sir, a telegram arrived from the Embassy only two minutes ago.”

His master tore it open with eager, trembling fingers, but, alas! it was in cipher! He had never thought of that.

Dashing downstairs he tore back to the Via Venti Settembre, and in the chancellerie sat down and impatiently worked it out, placing each decipher over the code letter until the whole message ran as follows:

“Situation already reported from Vienna. Later inquiries show report exaggerated. Tension no doubt exists, but not sufficient to warrant breach of regulations.”

Hubert Waldron ground his teeth in despair. Downing Street had given him a polite but firm refusal.

And with that he was compelled to be satisfied, even though he knew that war was contemplated and was actually imminent.

He was now upon the horns of a dilemma. To wilfully disregard his instructions from London was impossible. What, he wondered, did the later inquiries in Vienna reveal?

He remembered his promise to the Princess. At all hazards he must make a flying visit to the Belgian capital. But during those six days which he must of necessity be absent, what might not occur? A great disaster was fast-approaching.

The Ambassador had gone to the theatre, therefore he left him a note, and again returning to his rooms, he sat down and scribbled a few lines to Her Highness, telling her of his departure. This he posted later on at the railway station soon after midnight, after which he entered the long, dusty wagon-lit marked “Roma-Torino-Parigi.”

Chapter Eighteen.
Told in the Café Métropole

Weary and fagged Waldron descended from the sleeping-car at the Gare de Lyon in Paris twenty hours later and dispatched a telegram to the address Lola had given him. Then he drove in a taxi across the French capital, and next morning found himself in the Grand Hotel in gay little Brussels – awaiting a reply.

About eleven o’clock it came – a message by express making an appointment to meet at noon at the Café Métropole a little farther up the boulevard.

Hubert was wasting no time. He had not lost a single moment since leaving the Eternal City, and on that rush northward his mind was ever centred upon the crisis between the two Powers which had evidently occurred.

He had left word with Peters that if any person called, or anyone rang up on the telephone, the reply was that he had left Rome on urgent business for three or four days. On no account was his man to say whither he had gone.

He flung off his coat and cast himself upon the bed to rest for an hour. But the noise in the busy boulevard outside was irritating, worse even than the roar of the great international express which had borne him half across Europe.

Presently he washed, changed his clothes, and then went forth to the café, a popular rendezvous which he had known when, six years before, he had served temporarily at the Brussels Legation.

It was a huge, square, open place, with walls tiled to represent various Bacchanalian pictures, and many tables, upon half of which were laid cloths for the déjeuner. Being winter there were only a dozen tables set on the pavement outside, but in summer there are a hundred spread over the broad footway, and in an evening the place, being a highly papular resort, is crowded to overflowing by the chattering, bearded Bruxellois and their female friends.

At that hour, however, the place was nearly empty as Hubert entered, his sharp eyes gazing around. Then suddenly he saw a youngish man in grey overcoat and wearing a Tyrolese hat of dark green plush, seated in a far corner.

He rose and smiled as Waldron entered, and the latter instantly recognised him as the secret lover – the man who had travelled with them down the Nile, and whose attitude towards Lola had so completely disarmed all suspicion.

The two men lifted hats to each other in the foreign manner, and then Hubert exclaimed with a pleasant smile:

“This is a strange renewal of our acquaintance, M’sieur Pujalet, is it not?”

“Hush?” exclaimed the other warningly. “Not Pujalet here – Petrovitch, if you please!” and a mysterious expression crossed his dark, rather handsome, features.

“As you wish, of course,” replied Waldron with a bright laugh. “You, of course, know the object of my mission? The – ”

He hesitated, for he was naturally cautious, and it had suddenly occurred to him at that second that this Frenchman was, no doubt, in ignorance of the true station of the woman he loved, just as he himself had been. So the word “Princess” died from his lips.

“Mademoiselle asked you to give me a letter, did she not?” said the man politely in French. “I am sure, M’sieur Waldron, I do not know how to thank you sufficiently for making this long journey in order to meet me.”

“No thanks are necessary,” the other replied. “I am simply Mam’zelle’s messenger,” he laughed, producing the letter from his pocket-book and handing it to him.

“Ah! but this is really a great service you have done both of us,” he declared earnestly. “One that I fear I shall never be able to repay,” he declared, taking the letter in his eager hands.

Waldron, watching keenly, saw that the man’s fingers trembled visibly. That letter contained some message of greatest import to him, without a doubt. Yet he held it unopened – not daring, it seemed, to break the seal and learn the truth.

“Candidly,” Waldron said, now sitting back easily in a chair opposite Pujalet, “I wondered why it could not be entrusted to the post. It would in that case have reached you two days earlier.”

“Ah! there are some things one does not exactly care to trust to the post even though registered.”

“If a packet is insured it is rarely lost – even in Italy where the post is so uncertain and insecure. The Administration of Posts and Telegraphs does not care to be called upon to pay an indemnity.”

Pujalet did not reply. And by his silence Waldron was convinced that he feared the letter might have been tampered with and opened – that the secret it contained might be revealed.

If this were so, then, after all, it was more than probable that he did really know Lola’s actual identity!

And again, what had Her Highness meant when she had hinted at blackmail! Why, too, had not Pujalet travelled to Rome himself instead of burying himself in Brussels.

From that moment Waldron viewed Henri Pujalet with suspicion. Why should he, a Frenchman, be passing there as a Servian, and living in obscurity? His manner, from the very first moment when he had seen him with Lola in his arms under those dark palms in far-off Wady Haifa, had been suspicious. For some reason – why, he could not himself tell – Hubert felt a bitter antagonism towards the Frenchman. Surely it was a foolish fancy of Her Royal Highness to allow herself to love that man – a person whose movements were, on the face of them, not those of an honourable man.

Yet, on the other hand, Waldron remembered how devoted the pair had seemed towards each other. And it was only because of this, because of his intense interest and admiration for Lola, that he had declared himself her friend, and had undertaken that mad rush across Europe on her behalf.

“Please disregard me entirely,” he said to the Frenchman, “if you wish to open your letter,” and taking out his cigarette-case he selected one and slowly lit it, the while covertly watching the man before him as he broke the seal and drew forth a sheet of paper.

Pujalet eagerly devoured what was written there, while Waldron, from the opposite side of the little marble table, watched his countenance keenly.

He saw a sudden expression of blank amazement. Then his sharp, dark eyes narrowed, and surprise gave way to a distinct expression of evil.

Whatever the Princess’s missive contained, it certainly caused him both annoyance and alarm. The man’s astute cleverness, however, was shown by the manner in which he made pretence of disregarding it and treating it with nonchalance.

He smiled as he looked again into the face of his companion, though it was but a strange, sickly smile, like that seen upon a criminal’s face on listening to his sentence. And without a word he signalled to a waiter and called for a cognac.

Waldron refused his invitation to drink, but watched him as he tossed off the petit verre at a single gulp.

“I regret if the news I have brought is unwelcome,” Waldron remarked, as he drew slowly at his cigarette and watched the smoke curling upwards. “But m’sieur must forgive me.”

“Oh, no,” he laughed, “the news is not unwelcome in the least. At first I regarded it as such, but on mature reflection I see it is not,” he declared, quite unperturbed.

But Waldron knew from the man’s manner that he was lying. He felt that Henri Pujalet was not the charming, educated man which he had believed him to be on the Nile.

“I hope Mademoiselle has not been – well, indiscreet,” the Englishman remarked with a smile. “Ladies so often are.”

“Ah, yes. Well – she has, truth to tell, been just a little indiscreet. But it is nothing,” he declared, “really nothing whatever.”

“Is there any reply I can convey to her?” asked Waldron. “I am leaving for Paris at four o’clock.”

“So soon – eh? Will you not remain and be my guest at dinner this evening?” urged the other. “Do. You must be tired and want rest.”

“Ah, no. I much regret, M’sieur Pujalet. But I have to be back at my post at the Embassy at once. I travel to Italy direct – just as I came.”

“Of course. You are a diplomat! I clean forgot!” exclaimed the man before him. “Ah! yours must be a most interesting profession! I have several good friends at the foreign Embassies in Paris. But I heard yesterday that trouble seems to be brewing in Europe – another war-cloud, they say.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Waldron, in an instant interested. “I know nothing of it. Who told you?”

Pujalet seemed upon his guard in an instant.

“Oh – er – I – well, somebody here in this café last night was telling us that secret mobilisation orders had been given.”

“Secret mobilisation! Where?”

The Frenchman hesitated and reflected.

“In Austria – I believe,” was his reply. “But, really, I did not take much notice.”

Hubert Waldron held his breath for a few seconds. Was the great secret already out? The political gossip of the cafés was very often correct. “Was the man unknown to you?”

“Quite. While I was seated over yonder with a friend of mine, a banker of Liège, the man came in, greeted his friend, and joined us. And then they began to chat. Personally, I’m tired of all these war alarms. They come too frequently, being set about by unscrupulous operators on the Bourses.”

“Then you don’t believe the rumour – eh?”

“I never believe rumours which I hear in such circumstances as those. Not until I have some confirmation,” the man declared.

“I have not seen the papers to-day. Is there any mention of the crisis?” Hubert asked.

“None that I have seen,” Pujalet replied. “It is merely an alarmist rumour, no doubt.”

Waldron lit another cigarette and reflected deeply.

It was distinctly curious and certainly most alarming that the fact which was regarded as such a dead secret in Vienna should have been openly discussed in that café in Brussels on the previous night. On his journey he had carefully watched the principal French and Italian papers, but there was no mention whatever of the affair. Besides, before leaving Rome he had arranged that if anything fresh leaked out regarding the crisis a telegram should meet him on his arrival at the Gare de Lyon.

With that innate cautiousness and shrewd discretion which was inborn in him, and which had placed him above others in the profession of diplomacy, he carefully questioned Henri Pujalet further, asking him the opinion held by the stranger regarding the pending crisis, and other such-like questions.

But the mind of the man seated before him seemed an utter blank regarding what had transpired.

“All I know is that the man told us that Austria is secretly preparing for war, and that in a few days Europe would be aflame. I naturally put him down to be one of those alarmist cranks with whom one so often comes into contact – a man who exaggerates the gossip of the Bourse and repeats it as actual fact with embroidery of his own.”

“Your friend was a banker?” Waldron remarked. “Perhaps the man had received some inside knowledge from Vienna for the purpose of operating on the Bourse?”

“He may have done,” replied the other thoughtfully. “But really I don’t know. I didn’t take much notice of his words.”

Waldron said nothing for a few moments.

“And your reply to Mam’zelle?” he asked at last.

“If I bring it to you at the Grand by three o’clock will that be convenient to you?”

“Quite,” was the reply, and then the two men parted, Hubert taking a taxi up to the British Legation in the Rue de Spa, where he had a pleasant luncheon with Hugh Bennett, the Minister, and his wife, returning to the Grand at three o’clock, where in his room he received a sealed letter from the Frenchman’s hand.

It was addressed “To Mademoiselle Lola Duprez” and not to the Princess Luisa of Savoy, as Hubert had half expected.

“I can, alas! do no more than thank you most warmly and deeply both on my own behalf and upon Mam’zelle’s,” said Pujalet in his polite Parisian manner. “By coming here you have rendered a great service to us both – one that I can never in all my life forget.”

But Hubert Waldron, though he placed the letter in his pocket, held the man in distinct antipathy. He could read men’s minds better than most of his fellows. It was his profession as a diplomat.

And in the heart of Henri Pujalet, that man who had come up out of the desert from nowhere, he felt that there was a hidden yet distinct evil.

Upon him on that grey, wintry afternoon as he drove to the station to catch the express back to Paris there fell a feeling that a crisis – a dangerous and dramatic crisis – was imminent.

Ah! had he but known the truth – had he had but sight of what the Princess had written in that fatal letter he had conveyed to her lover – how differently would he have acted!

But, alas! he travelled back to the Eternal City bearing the bitter reply of the Princess’s secret lover – a reply by which her own young life was held in the balance, which crushed her soul, which held her in breathless terror, and, alas! caused her to long for the dark oblivion of death.