Her Royal Highness Part 45

"The gentleman whom you spoke with at the station in Rome last night--a foreigner."

Waldron started. Could he mean Henn Pujalet?

"A Frenchman?"

"_Si, signore_. His behaviour was curious, therefore I came here with him. I have made a discovery. Will you come here? If you leave by the two-eighteen from Rome--the Milan express--you can be here soon after five. I would return to Rome but I have no one here whom I can trust to follow if he leaves," Pucci explained.

Waldron felt that in the circ.u.mstances to leave Rome was impossible--and yet on further reflection he saw that if the King summoned him to audience would it not be best to be absent from the capital and thus gain time for action? The brigadier, Pucci, was not a man ever to follow false scents. He must have discovered something gravely mysterious. Was it possible that he had found out that the elegant Frenchman was the lover of Princess Luisa!

He had only a few seconds to make up his mind. "Very well, Pucci. If you think it necessary I will leave by the train you mention. Meet me at the station."

"_Benissimo, signore_," answered the voice faintly dying away, as it does upon some trunk-telephone lines.

Waldron tried to question him further, when the querulous voice of the female clerk at the Exchange declared that the time was up, and promptly cut him off without further ceremony. Telephone operators are no respecters of persons, whether one Is in Paris, Pekin, Petersburg, or Paddington.

Swallowing a sandwich at the station buffet, and travelling without luggage, Hubert Waldron entered a first-cla.s.s compartment of the express, which that afternoon was well-filled by foreigners leaving Rome for the north--the reason being that the Roman season, now over, Society was making for Paris and London, as fast as it could. There is always a headlong rush at the end of the season, be it in Egypt, on the Riviera, from Algeria or from any French or German watering-place. It is always helter-skelter to the capitals, regardless of comfort or of expense, and the Compagnie des Wagons-lits reaps a rich harvest always.

The journey from Rome up the wooded valley of the winding Tiber, through a country rich in ruins of the ancient Etruscans, lay through the real heart of Italy, delightfully picturesque, yet for Hubert in his state of mind it held no attraction. He sat in the compartment together with two elderly Englishwomen of the quiet, _pension_ type, and a young and rather foppish German student, impatient to meet the detective, and hear from him the result of his observations.

Orte, high up amid its most delightful surroundings, was pa.s.sed at last, and then, after several stoppages--though the train was termed an express--Orvieto, situate upon the top of its steep rock was reached, a Gibraltar on land, an invulnerable fortress in the days of the Etruscan League, and in mediaeval times a great stronghold of the Guelphs, and often affording refuge to the Popes.

The station lay below the town, which latter was reached by a funicular railway through a long, dark tunnel beneath the fortress. And upon the platform, as the train ran in, Hubert discerned a rather insignificant-looking man in shabby black and somewhat down at heel--a man at whom no one would cast a second glance. It was the brigadier, Pucci.

Hubert descended and crossed towards him, but to his surprise the detective turned away and did not appear to recognise him.

Indeed Pucci hurried off quickly as though business had called him elsewhere, and ere the diplomat could approach he was already out of the station.

In a secluded corner, away from the view of other arriving pa.s.sengers, the detective halted, saying with relief:

"_Madonna mia, signore_! That was a narrow escape of being detected."

"Why?" inquired Hubert in surprise.

"Why, did you not see who arrived by the train with you?"

"No," replied the Englishman. "I was not watching."

"Her Royal Highness the Princess Luisa alighted from your train."

"Her Highness?" he gasped utterly dumbfounded.

"Yes; but I hope she has not seen you," Pucci remarked dubiously.

"Then Pujalet is here--still at the hotel," said Hubert, for he at once realised the object of Lola's visit there.

"_Si, signore_. Presently I will tell you what I have by the merest chance discovered," Pucci replied. "But we must be extremely wary--or the Princess may see us. She is evidently on her way to the hotel to meet your friend the Frenchman. We will let her go, and follow quickly afterwards. Last night a complot was afoot--some desperate plot--But my suspicions were aroused, and by some action of yours--I know not what-- it was frustrated."

"But what do you know, Pucci?" Hubert Waldron demanded breathlessly.

"Tell me quickly."

"I will tell you presently--after we have ascertained the motive of this journey of Her Highness," replied the detective quietly. "Ah! I am glad you have come here, Signor Waldron. There is something in progress which is an entire mystery to me--something which I believe that you alone will be able to explain."

"But you have said there was a plot which was frustrated last night. Of what was its nature?" The detective did not reply. His head was turned towards the roadway, which his quick eyes were watching intently.

"Her Highness has gone up to the hotel," he said. "Let us hasten and watch. I will explain all later. Come--we have not time to lose. This fellow, Flobecq, is a very slippery customer."

"Flobecq!" echoed Hubert Waldron, starting in amazement.

"Yes. His name is Flobecq, yet I suppose that is not the name by which you know him--eh?"

"Flobecq!" gasped Hubert Waldron. "You are dreaming. Surely that is not his name."

"Yes, signore, I tell you it is. His name is Mijoux Flobecq!"

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

THE BOND REVEALED.

"The whole affair last night was a complete fiasco, thanks to you!"

"I know it, alas!"

"And all through your infernal friends.h.i.+p with Waldron?"

"I cannot help it. I did my very best, Henri."

"Your best!" sneered the Frenchman. "You actually allowed him to take the tracings from you when you already had them in your possession!

Faugh! It is all too childish."

"Childis.h.!.+" Lola echoed in anger. "Ah, yes, I know. What affection have you now for me--you who declared that you were mine--that--"

"Love is out of the question," the man replied brutally. "With me it is a matter of business. We must all live. You--a Royal Princess--are in no want. I, agent of the Foreign Office at Vienna, am in constant want of money. You gave me plans that were useless. I merely asked you to contrive to obtain for me the missing tracings."

"In return for my letters to you!" she cried, in bitter reproach.

But the man merely laughed as he replied:

"Have I not told you, my dear Lola, it is with me purely a matter of finance, not of sentiment." They were together in a small, plainly furnished sitting-room on the first floor of the mediaeval Palazzo Bisenzi, now occupied by the Hotel Belle Arti, in ignorance that every word spoken could be overheard by the Englishman and his companion.

The two latter were listening intently at the door of an adjoining room--for in Italian hotels the communicating doors are always an invitation to the eavesdropper. The old place had frescoed walls and ceilings, and in some rooms the floors were of marble.

"And because I have failed, you will carry out your disgraceful threat-- eh? You told me so on the telephone this morning," she asked in a low, nervous voice.

"You have failed purposely--because you did not intend that I should gain knowledge of that military secret. I know how strenuously active that English friend of yours has been in endeavouring to elucidate the mystery of the theft--and now, thanks to you, he has succeeded," replied Mijoux Flobecq, _alias_ Henri Pujalet, the well-known spy of Austria-- the man to whom, though young, the authorities in Vienna had practically entrusted the direction of her wide network of spies across the face of Europe. So cleverly had he concealed his ident.i.ty that even Ghelardi-- the great Ghelardi, whose boast it was that he knew every secret agent of importance in Europe--had been utterly unaware that Henri Pujalet and Mijoux Flobecq were one and the same!

Hubert had long ago heard him spoken of as a man whose phenomenal successes in espionage had been most remarkable for their cleverness, ingenuity, and daring. The foreign policy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had practically been based upon his reports--as that of Italy was based upon those of Luigi Ghelardi--and in every chancellerie in Europe the name of Flobecq was synonymous of all that was crafty, cunning, and unscrupulous.

The official head of Austria's Secret Service was a stout and rather slow-speaking, plethoric man of middle-age, who had graduated under Azeff in Russia, and who was well-known to Ghelardi. But Mijoux Flobecq was a man of meteoric fame, a man who had recently come to be regarded in almost legendary light as one of the most remarkable of the unseen and unknown characters in European espionage.