The Wiles of the Wicked Part 46

We pressed forward, and there saw a thin grey-haired woman who had guilt written plainly upon her drawn white face. She had overheard all our conversation, and had been compelled to remain in that chamber, there being no outlet.

"Joliot!" gasped Mabel, amazed. "My maid!" Then, addressing the cowering, trembling woman, she demanded the truth.

We stood there astonished. There was a silence, long and painful. The contortions of the guilty woman's features were horrible; in her black eyes burned a fierce light, and she trembled in every limb.

"Yes," she cried hoa.r.s.ely, after the question had been repeated, "I killed him! I killed him because I was jealous! I thought that instead of coming to visit your Highness he, in reality, came to visit Miss Grainger. Therefore without knowing why I did it, I dashed into the room where Miss Grainger was at the piano and attacked her. The Prince rose quickly and stretched out his arm to save her. Then rus.h.i.+ng upon him I stabbed him to the heart! Since that day," she added, in her low voice, scarcely audible, "since that day I have lived upon the meagre charity of Roesch, and yesterday came here to take up a position as Miss Grainger's maid."

"Your interests were mutual in the preservation of your secret, therefore you resolved to adjust your differences and live together, eh?" remarked Hickman.

She gave vent to a shrill peal of hideous laughter, as though there were something humorous in that grim and terrible tragedy. It jarred upon our nerves, but it also explained to us the ghastly truth.

The woman Natalie Joliot was hopelessly insane.

"Your Highness recognises the state of the wretched woman's mind,"

observed Edna Grainger, with a pitying look. "She has been so ever since the homicidal frenzy which seized her on that fatal night, and I have now taken her beneath my charge, for with me she is as docile as a child."

The truth was a startling one. We all three stood by in wondering silence. The crime had been committed in a sudden access of madness by that miserable creature who could not be held responsible for her actions.

"Roesch and Gechkuloff, with their elaborate preparations for the a.s.sa.s.sination of the heir to the Bulgarian throne, were murderers at heart, but, by that strange combination of circ.u.mstances which so often render truth stranger than fiction, their work was accomplished by another hand," I remarked.

"There seems no doubt," said Edna, "that large sums were raised in London and in Paris upon the deed executed by the young Prince, who evidently had no knowledge of its true nature, and during the first six months before the hue-and-cry as to his disappearance all was plain sailing. When, however, suspicion arose that the heir had met with foul play they feared to continue using the deed, and hit upon the expedient of the concessions which I induced you to negotiate."

"And these two men, Roesch and Gechkuloff, where are they?" inquired Hickman.

"They were in England yesterday. The mystery surrounding the whereabouts of Prince Alexander has been used for political purposes in Bulgaria, with the result that the Ministry has been forced to resign.

The defalcations of the head of the Treasury and his a.s.sistant being discovered, they were both forced to fly. They are, I believe, on their way to Australia."

"We must arrest them," said Hickman briefly. "Such a pair of villains must, not be allowed to go scot free."

"And to you," exclaimed Mabel, turning to me with the bright light of unshed tears in her fine eyes, "to your patience and careful watchfulness is due the unravelling of this extraordinary mystery, which might otherwise have remained an enigma always."

She took my hand. I saw in her beautiful countenance that love-look as of old. But I bent over her bejewelled fingers as a courtier would over those of a princess of an Imperial House, my heart too full for words.

The madwoman railed at us, shrieking and hurling imprecations interspersed with all sorts of rambling sentences, while Edna held her tightly by the wrist and strove to calm her.

The scene was a hideous one. Neither of us could bear it longer, therefore we withdrew, leaving Hickman with Edna and her charge.

The chronicle of this strange chapter of my life's history is finished.

There is no more to tell, save perhaps to explain--as Sir Henry Blundell, the specialist on mental diseases, explained to me in his consulting-room in Harley Street--the cause of my six lost years. Such an experience, it seemed, was not unknown in medical science, and he made it clear to me that the blow I had accidentally dealt myself in Hickman's rooms had so altered the balance of my brain--already affected by the cab accident during my blindness--that my intellect stopped like a watch. I lost all knowledge of the past, and from the moment of recovering consciousness commenced an entirely new life. This extended through the long period, nearly six years, until I had struck my head against the marble statue in the drawing-room at Denbury, when my brain, restored again to its normal capacity, lost all impression of events which had occurred during its abnormal state. This, of course, accounted for my extraordinary unconscious life, my inverted tastes, and my parting with the woman I loved so fondly.

And what of her, you ask?

She had, during that period of my unconsciousness, become satiated by the gaiety of the brilliant Court at Vienna, and the tragic death of her devoted mother, the Empress, at the hand of Luccheni, the anarchist, caused her to prefer a life quiet, free, and untrammelled. Knowing her royal birth, however, I dared not ask her hand in marriage, and it was not until many weeks later, after the woman Natalie Joliot had been confined as a homicidal patient in Woking Asylum, Edna Grainger had, owing to Mabel's clemency, escaped to the continent, the ex-Minister Roesch and his companion Gechkuloff had been extradited from Bow Street to Sofia to take their trial for their gigantic defalcations upon the State Treasury, and I had sold Denbury and made an end of the financial business which stood in my name, that she complained to me of her loneliness.

With eager, trembling heart I took her white hand in mine and put to her the question. I knew it was presumptuous, almost unheard of. But, reader, you may readily imagine what overwhelming joy arose within me when she threw her arms pa.s.sionately about my neck, and as answer raised her face and gave me a warm fond kiss.

Our life to-day is very even, very uneventful, idyllically happy. Under her second t.i.tle of Countess of Klagenfurt we were soon afterwards married. We spent part of our time at Heaton, with which she is charmed now that it is swept and garnished, and the remainder at her own mediaeval Castle of Mohaes, one of the great ancestral estates of the Hapsbourg-Lorraines in the Tyrol, not far from Innsbruck, which was presented to her as a marriage gift by the Emperor.

Her Imperial Highness the Archd.u.c.h.ess Marie-Elizabeth-Mabel no longer exists. At the outset I made it quite plain that I had not written here my true name. I did so at my wife's suggestion, for although my real name is probably known to most of those who read this record of my strange adventures, yet the world is still in ignorance of Mabel's actual social position. She said that she had no desire to be pointed at as a Princess who married a commoner, and I have, of course, respected her wish.

She sacrificed all for my sake, and peace and joy are ours at last.

With a fond and devoted love she gave up everything in order to become my wife, and as such has renounced for ever that world in which she was born--the world of Purple and Fine Linen.

The End.