The Great Impersonation Part 50

Seaman thrust his hand into his pocket and threw the revolver upon the table.

"You are quite right," he acknowledged. "Take care of it for me. I took it with me to Ireland, because one never knows what may happen in that amazing country."

Dominey swept it carelessly into the drawer of the desk at which he was sitting.

"Our weapons, from now on," Seaman continued, "must be the weapons of guile and craft. You and I will have, alas! to see less of one another, Dominey. In many ways it is unfortunate that we have not been able to keep England out of this for a few more months. However, the situation must be dealt with as it exists. So far as you are concerned you have practically secured yourself against suspicion. You will hold a brilliant and isolated place amongst those who are serving the great War Lord. When I do approach you, it will be for sympathy and a.s.sistance against the suspicions of those far-seeing Englishmen!"

Dominey nodded.

"You will stay the night?" he asked.

"If I may," Seaman a.s.sented. "It is the last time for many months when it will be wise for us to meet on such intimate terms. Perhaps our dear friend Parkins will take vinous note of the occasion."

"In other words," Dominey said, "you propose that we shall drink the Dominey cabinet hock and the Dominey port to the glory of our country."

"To the glory of our country," Seaman echoed. "So be it, my friend.--Listen."

A car had pa.s.sed along the avenue in front of the house. There was the sound of voices in the hall, a knock at the door, the rustle of a woman's clothes. Parkins, a little disturbed, announced the arrivals.

"The Princess of Eiderstrom and--a gentleman. The Princess said that her errand with you was urgent, sir," he added, turning apologetically towards his master.

The Princess was already in the room, and following her a short man in a suit of sombre black, wearing a white tie, and carrying a black bowler hat. He blinked across the room through his thick gla.s.ses, and Dominey knew that the end had come. The door was closed behind them. The Princess came a little further into the room. Her hand was extended towards Dominey, but not in greeting. Her white finger pointed straight at him. She turned to her companion.

"Which is that, Doctor Schmidt?" she demanded.

"The Englishman, by G.o.d!" Schmidt answered.

The silence which reigned for several seconds was intense and profound.

The coolest of all four was perhaps Dominey. The Princess was pale with a pa.s.sion which seemed to sob behind her words.

"Everard Dominey," she cried, "what have you done with my lover? What have you done with Leopold Von Ragastein?"

"He met with the fate," Dominey replied, "which he had prepared for me.

We fought and I conquered."

"You killed him?"

"I killed him," Dominey echoed. "It was a matter of necessity. His body sleeps on the bed of the Blue River."

"And your life here has been a lie!"

"On the contrary, it has been the truth," Dominey objected. "I a.s.sured you at the Carlton, when you first spoke to me, and I have a.s.sured you a dozen times since, that I was Everard Dominey. That is my name. That is who I am."

Seaman's voice seemed to come from a long way off. For the moment the man had neither courage nor initiative. He seemed as though he had received some sort of stroke. His mind was travelling backwards.

"You came to me at Cape Town," he muttered; "you had all Von Ragastein's letters, you knew his history, you had the Imperial mandate."

"Von Ragastein and I exchanged the most intimate confidences in his camp," Dominey said, "as Doctor Schmidt there knows. I told him my history, and he told me his. The letters and papers I took from him."

Schmidt had covered his face with his hands for a moment. His shoulders were heaving.

"My beloved chief!" he sobbed. "My dear devoted master! Killed by that drunken Englishman!"

"Not so drunk as you fancied him," Dominey said coolly, "not so far gone in his course of dissipation but that he was able to pull himself up when the great incentive came."

The Princess looked from one to the other of the two men. Seaman had still the appearance of a man struggling to extricate himself from some sort of nightmare.

"My first and only suspicion," he faltered, "was that night when Wolff disappeared!"

"Wolff's coming was rather a tragedy," Dominey admitted. "Fortunately, I had a secret service man in the house who was able to dispose of him."

"It was you who planned his disappearance?" Seaman gasped.

"Naturally," Dominey replied. "He knew the truth and was trying all the time to communicate with you."

"And the money?" Seaman continued, blinking rapidly. "One hundred thousand pounds, and more?"

"I understood that was a gift," Dominey replied. "If the German Secret Service, however, cares to formulate a claim and sue me--"

The Princess suddenly interrupted. Her eyes seemed on fire.

"What are you, you two?" she cried, stretching out her hands towards Schmidt and Seaman. "Are you lumps of earth--clods--creatures without courage and intelligence? You can let him stand there--the Englishman who has murdered my lover, who has befooled you? You let him stand there and mock you, and you do and say nothing! Is his life a sacred thing?

Has he none of your secrets in his charge?"

"The great G.o.d above us!" Seaman groaned, with a sudden white horror in his face. "He has the Prince's memoirs! He has the Kaiser's map!"

"On the contrary," Dominey replied, "both are deposited at the Foreign Office. We hope to find them very useful a little later on."

Seaman sprang forward like a tiger and went down in a heap as he almost threw himself upon Dominey's out-flung fist. Schmidt came stealing across the room, and from underneath his cuff something gleamed.

"You are two to one!" the Princess cried pa.s.sionately, as both a.s.sailants hesitated. "I would to G.o.d that I had a weapon, or that I were a man!"

"My dear Princess," a good-humoured voice remarked from the window, "four to two the other way, I think, what?"

Eddy Pelham, his hands in his pockets, but a very alert gleam in his usually vacuous face, stood in the windowed doorway. From behind him, two exceedingly formidable-looking men slipped into the room. There was no fight, not even a struggle. Seaman, who had never recovered from the shock of his surprise, and was now completely unnerved, was handcuffed in a moment, and Schmidt disarmed. The latter was the first to break the curious silence.

"What have I done?" he demanded. "Why am I treated like this?"

"Doctor Schmidt?" Eddy asked pleasantly.

"That is my name, sir," was the fierce reply. "I have just landed from East Africa. We knew nothing of the war when we started. I came to expose that man. He is an impostor--a murderer! He has killed a German n.o.bleman."

"He has committed _lese majeste_!" Seaman gasped. "He has deceived the Kaiser! He has dared to sit in his presence as the Baron Von Ragastein!"

The young man in flannels glanced across at Dominey and smiled.

"I say, you two don't mean to be funny but you are," he declared. "First of all, there's Doctor Schmidt accuses Sir Everard here of being an impostor because he a.s.sumed his own name; accuses him of murdering a man who had planned in cold blood--you were in that, by the by, Schmidt--to kill him; and then there's our friend here, the secretary of the society for propagating better relations between the business men of England and Germany, complaining because Sir Everard carried through in Germany, for England, exactly what he believed the Baron Von Ragastein was carrying out here--for Germany. You're a curious, thick-headed race, you Germans."

"I demand again," Schmidt shouted, "to know by what right I am treated as a criminal?"