The Mischief-Maker Part 53

"Is it true that you are doing so badly at the Foreign Office?" she asked bluntly.

A little flush mounted almost to his forehead.

"I have had the devil's own luck," he muttered.

"I can't take up a newspaper," she continued bitterly, "without finding it full of abuse of you. They say that during six weeks the _entente cordiale_ has vanished. They say that you have lost the friendship of France, that she trusts us no longer, and that Germany's tone becomes more threatening and more bullying every day, solely on account of your weakness."

"We can't afford to risk a war," Carraby explained. "I am a Radical Minister. I have represented a Radical const.i.tuency ever since I came into Parliament. What the devil should I have to say to my people if within a couple of months of taking office we were plunged into war?"

"I do not pretend," Mrs. Carraby remarked, "to be an active politician, but I have heard it said that the best way to avoid war is to show that you are not afraid of it. They say that that is where Sir Julien Portel was so splendid. Do you know that the leading article of one of your own papers this morning declares that Germany would never have dared to have said so much to us if she had not known that she had only a puppet to deal with in the Cabinet? You know what all the other papers are hinting at? Is it true, Algernon, that you gave two hundred thousand pounds to the party?"

"Whether it is true or not," Carraby retorted, "it makes no difference.

I wanted this post, wanted it for your sake as much as my own, and I wish to Heaven that it was at the bottom of the sea! I'd resign to-morrow if I could do so with dignity. I can't now, of course. Every one would say I was chucked. To make things worse," he went on savagely, "there come these infernal letters of Portel's!"

Mrs. Carraby raised her eyebrows.

"Why, I've heard it said that those letters are the one hope this country has! I have heard it said that but for those letters France and England would be as far apart to-day as they ever were. I heard it said only this afternoon that those letters were our only hope of peace.

They were compared with the letters of Junius, whoever he was. Lord Cardington told me himself that they were the most splendid political prose he had ever read in his life."

"That may be true enough," Carraby growled, "but they make it all the harder for me. No doubt Portel was a good Minister. No doubt he was doing very well in his post. Now he writes these letters every one remembers it, every one is asking for him back again. It's h.e.l.l, Mabel!

I wish to G.o.d we'd let the man alone!" Mrs. Carraby looked at her husband steadfastly. She was a little taller than he. She looked at him, from his well-brushed hair to the trim patent boots which adorned his small feet. She looked at him and in those strange-colored eyes of hers were unmentionable things. She turned away and walked to the window. In imagination she was back again in Julien's rooms. She lived again through those few minutes. If he had answered differently!

Outside in the square the newsboys were shouting. She had stood before the window for some time when a familiar name fell upon her ears. She turned around and touched the bell.

"What is it that you want?" her husband asked.

"A paper," she replied.

A very correct butler brought her the _Pall Mall Gazette_ a moment or two later. She scanned it eagerly. Then it slipped from her shuddering fingers. She turned upon her husband.

"He is dead!" she cried. "Can't you read it? 'Death of an Englishman in an explosion in Paris. Mr. Kendricks, a journalist, seriously injured; Sir Julien Portel, the ex-Cabinet Minister,--dead!'"

She stood as though turned to stone. Then something in her husband's face seemed to bring her back to the present. She turned upon him. Her face was suddenly lit with some strange, quivering fire. It was one of the moments of her life.

"You miserable worm!" she shrieked. "You dare to stand there and smile because a man is dead! You!"

He tried to draw himself up, tried to rebuke her. He might as well have tried to stem a torrent.

"I've done my best to share your rotten, scheming life," she cried, "to help you in your dirty ways, and to crawl up into the places we coveted! Once I saw the truth. Once a real man was kind to me and I saw the difference. I've felt it in my heart ever since. For your sake and my own, for the sake of our rotten, miserable ambitions, I ruined him and sent him to his death. He is dead, do you hear? You and I did it!

We are murderers! And to think that I did it for you! That you--such a creature as you--might take his place!"

She threw up her hands high above her head. There had been people who had doubted her good looks. No one at that instant would have denied her beauty. Carraby's eyes were fixed upon her and he was afraid. Even when she had cast herself face downward upon the couch, and lay with her head buried in her hands, he dared not go near. He stood there gazing at her across the room. Perhaps he, too, though his understanding was less, tasted a little of the poison!

In the splendid library of his palace in Berlin, the maker of toys leaned back in his chair after a long and successful day's work. There lingered upon his lips still the remnants of a grim smile, which the dictation of a dispatch to London had just evoked. His secretary gathered up his papers. His master was disposed to be genial.

"My young friend," he remarked, "those letters from Paris--they were stopped just in time, eh?"

"Just in time, indeed, Highness," the young man replied. "I have friends who write me from there. They a.s.sure me that their effect was tremendous. The cessation of them was indeed an act of Providence."

Prince Falkenberg's lips relaxed. There were hard lines at the corners of his mouth. Yet if this were indeed a smile, it was no pleasant thing to look upon!

"An act of Providence, without a doubt!" he exclaimed,--"Providence which watches always over the destinies of our dear Fatherland!"

"I shall bring you now, Highness, the foreign papers?" the young man suggested.

"If you please," his master replied. "I read them now, thank Heaven, with an easier feeling."

The young man retreated and reappeared in a few minutes with a pile of newspapers. Prince Falkenberg rose and stretched himself, lit a long black cigar and threw himself into a comfortable chair before the high window.

"Your Highness will take some coffee, perhaps?" the young man asked.

"Presently."

The great Minister unfolded his newspapers. A reference in the English _Times_ perplexed him. He turned to the journal which only a few days ago he had opened with almost a shudder. He undid the wrapper, shook it open and looked at it. Then suddenly he sat like a man turned to stone. The cigar burnt out between his teeth, his eyes were riveted upon that page, the black letters seemed to have become lurid. The sentences stabbed, he was face to face with the impossible. The paper which he read was dated on the preceding day. Before him was a fourth article, dated from Paris, dated less than forty-eight hours ago, signed "Julien Portel." The t.i.tle of the article was "The World's Great Mischief-Maker!" He read on, read from that first sentence to the last, read the naked truth about himself, saw his motives exposed, his secret visits to Paris derided, his foibles photographed. He saw himself the laughing stock of Europe. Then he leaned over and rang the bell.

"Neudheim," he said, "let it be given out that I leave to-night for Falkenberg as usual. Let the automobile be prepared for a long journey.

I leave in half an hour."

The young man stared. He had fancied that those flying visits of his master's for a time were to be discontinued.

"Your Highness goes south?" he asked.

"I drive all night," Prince Falkenberg replied. "See that the Count Rudolf is prepared to accompany me. Quick! Give the orders."

CHAPTER XIII

ESTERMEN'S DEATH-WARRANT

In the untidy salon of his bachelor apartments in the Boulevard Maupa.s.sant Estermen awaited the coming of his master in veritable fear and trembling. In all his experience he had never been compelled to face a crisis such as this. There had been small failures, punished, perhaps, by a sarcastic word or biting sentence. There had been no failure to compare with this one! Herr Freudenberg deliberately, and of his own free choice, was accustomed to take huge risks. When they came he accepted them, but when they were not inevitable he as sedulously avoided them. The wrecking of Julien's apartments in the Rue de Montpelier was by far the most hazardous enterprise which had been attempted since the days of the toymaker's first secret visits to Paris. Half a dozen human beings had been done to death in a manner which invited and even challenged the attentions of the French police.

A terrible risk had been run and run in vain. The blow had been struck at the very moment when its object was unattainable! Estermen shivered as he tried to imagine for himself the coming interview. Gone, he feared, was his life of pleasant luxury among the flesh-pots and easy ways of Paris; his bachelor apartments, occupied in name by him but of which the real tenant was his dreaded master. And behind all this apprehension lurked another grisly and terrible fear! For the twentieth time during the last few minutes he peered through the closely drawn Venetian-blind, and his blood ran cold. On the pavement opposite, before the small table of a cafe, a man was sitting--the same man! For two days he had been there--a gaunt and silent person with a wonderful trick of gazing away into s.p.a.ce from the columns of his newspaper. But Estermen knew all about that! He knew, even, the man's name! He knew that he was one of the most persistent and successful of French detectives. His name was Jean Charles and he had never known failure.

Estermen looked at him through the blind and his pale face was ugly with fear.

The moment arrived. The long, gray traveling car, covered with dust, swung around the corner and stopped below. Herr Freudenberg was travel-stained and almost unrecognizable in his motor clothes as he stepped out and pa.s.sed into the block of apartments. Contrary to his usual custom, he did not at once present himself before the man who awaited him in fear and trembling. Estermen heard him enter his own suite of rooms on the other side of the stairway and give a few brief orders. Then there was a peremptory knock at the door. Herr Freudenberg was announced and entered.

To the man who had been waiting for his sentence there was something terrible in the grim impa.s.sivity of Prince Falkenberg's features. His face was set and white and sphinx-like. Only his eyes shone with a fierce, unusual fire.

"What have you to say, Estermen?" he demanded.

"It was a miracle," Estermen faltered. "Sir Julien descended the stairs with the copy in his hand to speak to a caller. For seventeen hours he had been in his rooms, for the following seventeen hours he would probably have been there, too. For the intervening thirty seconds he happened to be upon the pavement. It was a miracle!"

This was the end of all the specious story which Estermen had gone over so often to himself! Yet he had done his cause no harm, for the few sentences he spoke were the truth.

"You have discovered his present whereabouts?" his master demanded.