The Lady in the Car
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The advent of his Highness had raised Mrs Northover to the very pinnacle of the social scale in Stamford. Times without number she tried to obtain from Nellie the true state of affairs, but the girl was sly enough to preserve her lover’s secret.
If the truth were yet known to the family of Hesse-Holstein, all sorts of complications would assuredly ensue. Besides, it would, he felt certain, bring upon him the displeasure of the Emperor. He must go to Potsdam, and announce to the Kaiser his engagement with his own lips.
And so little Nellie Northover, the chosen Princess of Hesse-Holstein, the girl destined to become husband of the ruler of a principality half the size of England, and the wealthiest of the German princes, often wandered the country roads alone, and tried to peer into her brilliant future. What would the girls of Stamford say when they found that Nellie Northover was actually a princess! Why, even the Marchioness who lived at the great ancestral mansion, mentioned in Tennyson’s well-known poem, would then receive her!
And all through the mere failing of a motor-car clutch at that tiny obscure Belgian village.
The Reverend Thomas gradually grew stronger while guest of Mr Northover, and both he and the Prince, together with the Northovers, Mr Henry Ashdown, the assistant manager of the bank who lived on the premises, and others of the Northovers’ friends went for frequent runs in the nobleman’s car.
The Prince never hedged himself in by etiquette. Every friend of Northover at once became his friend; hence, within a fortnight, his Highness was the most popular figure in that quaint old market town.
One afternoon while the Prince and the clergyman were walking together up the High Street, they passed a thin, pale-faced man in dark grey flannels.
Glances of recognition were exchanged, but no word was uttered.
“Max is at the ‘George,’ isn’t he?” asked the Prince.
“Yes,” replied his companion. “Arrived the night before last, and having a particularly dull time, I should think.”
“So should I,” laughed the Prince.
That evening, the two ladies being away at the Milton Hound Show, they took Northover and his assistant, Ashdown, after their business, over to Peterborough to bring them back. Ashdown was some ten years younger than his chief, and rather fond of his whisky and soda. At the Great Northern Hotel in Peterborough they found the ladies; and on their return to Stamford the whole party dined together at the Prince’s hotel, an old-fashioned hostelry with old-fashioned English fare.
And so another fortnight went past. The autumn winds grew more chilly, and the leaves fell with the advance of October.
Nellie constantly met the Prince, in secret, the only person knowing the truth besides themselves being the Parson, who had now become one of the girl’s particular friends.
While the Prince was dressing for dinner one evening, Charles being engaged in putting the links in his shirt-cuffs, he suddenly asked:
“Max is still in Stamford, I suppose?”
“I believe so, your Highness.”
“Well, I want you to take this up to London to-night, Charles.” And he drew from a locked drawer a small sealed packet about four inches square, looking like jewellery. “You’ll see the address on it. Take it there, then go to the Suffolk Hotel, in Suffolk Street, Strand, and wait till I send you instructions to return.”
“Very well, your Highness,” answered the man who always carried out his master’s instructions with blind obedience.
Next day, in conversation with Mr Northover, the Prince expressed regret that he had been compelled to discharge his man Charles at a moment’s notice.
“The man is a thief,” he said briefly. “I lost a valuable scarf-pin the other day – one given me by the Emperor. But I never suspected him until a few days ago when I received an anonymous letter telling me that my trusted man, Charles, had, before I took him into my service, been convicted of theft, and was, indeed, one of a gang of clever swindlers! I made inquiries, and discovered this to be the actual truth.”
“By Jove!” remarked the Reverend Thomas. “Think what an escape the Prince has had! All his jewellery might have suddenly disappeared!”
“How very fortunate you were warned!” declared Mr Northover. “Your correspondent was anonymous, you say?”
“Yes. Some one must have recognised him in London, I think, and, therefore, given me warning. A most disagreeable affair – I assure you.”
“Then you’ve lost the Emperor’s present?” asked Nellie.
“Yes,” sighed the Prince; “It’s gone for ever. I’ve given notice to the police. They’re sending a detective from London to see me, I believe, but I feel certain I shall never see it again.”
This conversation was repeated by Mrs Northover to her husband, when he returned from business that evening.
About the same hour, however, while the Prince was smoking with his clerical friend in his private room at the hotel, the waiter entered, saying that a Mr Mason had called upon his Highness.
“That’s the man from Scotland Yard!” exclaimed the Prince aloud. “Show him up.”
A few moments later a rather pale-faced, fair-haired man in shabby brown tweeds was ushered in, and the waiter, who knew the story of Charles’s sudden discharge, retired.
“Good evening, Prince,” exclaimed the new-comer. “I got your wire and came at once.” At the same time he produced from his pocket a small cartridge envelope containing something slightly bulky, but carefully sealed.
“Right! Go over there, Max, and help yourself to a drink. You’re at the ‘George,’ I suppose?”
“No. I’ve got a room here – so as to be near you – in case of necessity, you know,” he added meaningly.
The two men exchanged glances.
It was evident at once that Mr Mason was no stranger, for he helped himself to a cigarette uninvited, and, mixing a small drink, drained it off at a single gulp.
Then, after chatting for a quarter of an hour or so, he went out “just to get a wash,” as he put it.
The Prince, when he had gone, turned over the small packet in his hand without opening it.
Then he rose, walked to the window, and in silence looked out upon the old church opposite, deep in thought.
The Parson, watching him without a word, knit his brows, and pursed his lips.
Next morning the Prince sent Garrett with the car to London, as he wanted some alteration to the hood, and that afternoon, as he crossed the marketplace, he again met Max. Neither spoke. A glance of recognition was all that passed between them. Meanwhile, the detective from London had been making a good many inquiries in Stamford, concerning the associates and friends of the discharged valet Charles.
The latter was, the detective declared, an old hand, and his Highness had been very fortunate in getting rid of him when he did.
That evening Mr and Mrs Ashdown invited the Prince and the clergyman to dinner, at which they were joined by the sweet-faced Nellie and her father and mother. With true provincial habit, the party broke up at ten-thirty, and while the Parson walked home with the Northovers, his Highness lit a cigar and strolled back to the hotel alone.
Until nearly two o’clock he sat smoking, reading, and thinking – thinking always of pretty Nellie – and now and then glancing at the clock. After the church-bell had struck two he had a final “peg,” and then turned in.
Next morning, when the waiter brought his coffee, the man blurted forth breathlessly:
“There’s been a great robbery, your Highness, last night. The London and North Western Bank has been entered, and they say that four thousand pounds in gold has been stolen.”
“What!” gasped the Prince, springing up. “Mr Northover’s bank?”
“Yes, sir. The whole town is in an uproar! I’ve told Mr Mason, and he’s gone down to see. They say that a week ago a youngish man from London took the empty shop next door to the bank, and it’s believed the thieves were secreted in there. There doesn’t seem any evidence of any of the locks being tampered with, for the front door was opened with a key, and they had keys of both the doors of the strong-room. The police are utterly mystified, for Mr Northover has one key, and Mr Ashdown the other, and the doors can’t be opened unless they are both there together. Both gentlemen say their keys have never left them, and none of the burglar-alarms rang.”
“Then it’s an absolute mystery – eh,” remarked the Prince, utterly astonished. “Perhaps that scoundrel Charles has had something to do with it! He went to the bank for me on several occasions!”
“That’s what Mr Mason and the other police officers think, sir,” the waiter said. “And it seems that the men must have got out the coin, brought it into the empty shop, carried it through the back of the premises and packed it into a dark-green motor-car. A policeman out on the Worthorpe Road, saw the car pass just before two o’clock this morning. There were two men in it, besides the driver.”
The Prince dressed hastily, and was about to rush down to the bank to condole with Northover when the latter burst into his room in a great state of mind.
“It’s an absolute mystery, and so daring!” he declared. “The thieves must have had duplicate keys of the whole bank! They left all the notes, but cleared out every bit of gold coin. We had some unusually heavy deposits lately, and they’ve taken three thousand four hundred and thirty-two pounds!”
“What about that man who took the shop next door?”
“He’s perfectly respectable, the police assure me. He knows nothing about it. He’s hardly finished stocking the place with groceries, and opens the day after to-morrow. His name is Newman.”
“Then how did they get their booty away?”
“That’s the mystery. Unless through the back of the shop next door. No motor-car came along the street in the night, for Ashdown’s child was ill, and Mrs Ashdown was up all night and heard nothing. The means by which they got such a heavy lot of coin away so neatly is as mysterious as how they obtained the keys.”
“Depend upon it that my scoundrelly valet has had a finger in this!” the Prince declared. “I’ll assist you to try and find him. I happen to know some of his friends in London.”
Northover was delighted, and at the police-station the superintendent thanked his Highness for his kind promise of assistance. Mr Mason was ubiquitous, and the parson full of astonishment at the daring coup of the unknown thieves. Two bank directors came down from town in the afternoon, and after a discussion, a full report was telegraphed to New Scotland Yard.
That same evening the Prince went up to London, accompanied by the keen-eyed Mr Mason, leaving the Parson still the guest of Mr Northover.
The latter, however, would scarcely have continued to entertain him, had he known that, on arrival at King’s Cross, his Highness and Mr Mason took a cab to a certain house in Hereford Road, Bayswater, where Charles and Garrett were eagerly awaiting him. In the room were two other men whom the Prince shook by the hand and warmly congratulated.
Charles opened the door of the adjoining room, a poorly furnished bedroom, where stood a chest of drawers. One drawer after the other he opened.
They were full of bags of golden sovereigns!
“Those impressions you sent us, Prince, gave us a lot of trouble,” declared the elder of the two men, with a pronounced American accent. “The keys were very difficult to make, and when you sent us word that the parson had tried them and they wouldn’t act, we began to fear that it was no go. But we did the trick all right, after all, didn’t we? Guess we spent a pretty miserable week in Stamford, but you seemed to be having quite a good time. Where’s the Sky-pilot?”
“He’s remaining – convalescent, you know. And as for Bob Newman, he’ll be compelled to carry on that confounded grocery business next door for at least a couple of months – before he fails, and shuts up.”
“Well,” exclaimed the man Mason, whom everybody in Stamford – even the police themselves – believed to be a detective. “It was a close shave! You know, Prince, when you came out of the bank after dinner and I slipped in past you, I only just got into the shadow before that slip of a girl of Northover’s ran down the stairs after you. I saw you give her a kiss in the darkness.”
“She deserved a kiss, the little dear,” replied his Highness, “for without her we could never have brought off so complete a thing.”
“Ah! you always come in for the good things,” Charles remarked.
“Because I’m a prince,” was his Highness’s reply.
The police are still looking for the Prince’s valet, and his Highness has, of course, assisted them. Charles, however, got away to Copenhagen to a place of complete safety, and he being the only person suspected, it is very unlikely that the bank will ever see their money again – neither is Nellie Northover ever likely to see her prince.
Chapter Three
The Mysterious Sixty
When the smart chauffeur, Garrett, entered the cosy chambers of his Highness Prince Albert of Hesse-Holstein, alias Charles Fotheringham, alias Henry Tremlett, in Dover Street, Piccadilly, he found him stretched lazily on the couch before the fire. He had exchanged his dinner jacket for an easy coat of brown velvet; between his lips was a Russian cigarette of his pet brand, and at his elbow a brandy and soda.
“Ah! Garrett,” he exclaimed as the chauffeur entered. “Come here, and sit down. Shut the door first. I want to talk to you.”
As chauffeur to the Prince and his ingenious companions, Garrett had met with many queer adventures and been in many a tight corner. To this day he wonders he was not “pinched” by the police a dozen times, and certainly would have been if it were not that the gay, good-looking, devil-may-care Prince Albert never left anything to chance. When a coup was to be made he thought out every minute detail, and took precaution against every risk of detection. To his marvellous ingenuity and wonderful foresight Garrett, with his friends, owed his liberty.
During the three years through which he had thrown in his lot with that select little circle of “crooks,” he had really had a very interesting time, and had driven them thousands of miles, mostly on the Continent, in the big “Mercédès” or the “sixty” six-cylinder “Minerva.”
His Highness’s share in the plunder had been very considerable. At his bankers he possessed quite a respectable balance, and he lived in easy affluence the life of a prince. In the drawing-rooms of London and Paris he was known as essentially a ladies’ man; while in Italy he was usually Henry Tremlett, of London, and in France he was Charles Fotheringham, an Anglo-Frenchman and Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur.
“Look here, Garrett,” he said, raising himself on his elbow and looking the man in the face as he tossed his cigarette in the grate. “To-day, let’s see, is December 16. You must start in the car to-morrow for San Remo. We shall spend a week or two there.”
“To-morrow!” the chauffeur echoed. “The roads from Paris down to the Riviera are pretty bad just now. I saw in the paper yesterday that there’s heavy snow around Valence.”
“Snow, or no snow, we must go,” the Prince said decisively. “We have a little matter in hand down there – you understand?” he remarked, his dark eyes still fixed upon the chauffeur.
The man wondered what was the nature of the coup intended.
“And now,” he went on, “let me explain something else. There may be some funny proceedings down at San Remo. But just disregard everything you see, and don’t trouble your head about the why, or wherefore. You’re paid to be chauffeur, Garrett – and paid well, too, by your share of the profits – so nothing else concerns you. It isn’t, sparklers we’re after this time – it’s something else.”
The Prince who, speaking English so well, turned his birth and standing to such good account, never told the chauffeur of his plans. His confederates, indeed, were generally kept completely in the dark until the very last moment. Therefore, they were all very frequently puzzled by what seemed to be extraordinary and motiveless actions by the leader of the party of adventurers.
The last coup made was in the previous month, at Aix-les-Bains, the proceeds being sold to the old Jew in Amsterdam for four thousand pounds sterling, this sum being divided up between the Prince, the Parson, a neat-ankled little Parisienne named Valentine Déjardin, and Garrett. And they were now going to spend a week or two in that rather dull and much over-rated little Italian seaside town, where the sharper and crook flourish to such a great extent in spring – San Remo.
They were evidently about to change their tactics, for it was not diamonds they were after, but something else. Garrett wondered as the Count told him to help himself to a whisky and soda what that “something else” would turn out to be.
“I daresay you’ll be a bit puzzled,” he said, lazily lighting a fresh cigarette, “but don’t trouble your head about the why or wherefore. Leave that to me. Stay at the Hotel Regina at San Remo – that big place up on the hill – you know it. You’ll find the Parson there. Let’s see, when we were there a year ago I was Tremlett, wasn’t I? – so I must be that again, I suppose.”
He rose from his couch, stretched himself, and pulling a bookcase from the high old-fashioned wainscoting slid back one of the white enamelled panels disclosing a secret cavity wherein, Garrett knew, reposed a quantity of stolen jewels that he had failed to get rid of to the Jew diamond dealer in Amsterdam, who acted in most cases as receiver.
The chauffeur saw within that small cavity, of about a foot square, a number of little parcels each wrapped in tissue paper – jewels for which the police of Europe for a year or so had been hunting high and low. Putting his hand into the back the Prince produced a bundle of banknotes, from which he counted one “fifty” and ten fivers, and handed them to his man.
“They’re all right. You’ll want money, for I think that, after all, you’d better go to San Remo as a gentleman and owner of the car. Both the Parson and I will be perfect strangers to you – you understand?”
“Perfectly,” was Garrett’s reply, as he watched him replace the notes, push back the panel into its place, and move the bookcase into its original position.
“Then get away to-morrow night by Newhaven and Dieppe,” he said. “If I were you I’d go by Valence and Die, instead of by Grenoble. There’s sure to be less snow there. Wire me when you get down to Cannes.” And he pushed across his big silver box of cigarettes, one of which the chauffeur took, and seating himself, listened to his further instructions. They, however, gave no insight into the adventure which was about to be undertaken.
At half-past seven on the following night, with his smartly-cut clothes packed in two suit-cases, his chauffeur’s dress discarded for a big leather-lined coat of dark-green frieze and motor-cap and goggles, and a false number-plate concealed beneath the cushion, Garrett drew the car out of the garage in Oxford Street, and sped along the Embankment and over Westminster Bridge on the first stage of his long and lonely journey.
The night was dark, with threatening rain, but out in the country the big searchlight shone brilliantly, and he tore along the Brighton road while the rhythmic splutter of his open exhaust awakened the echoes of the country-side. With a loud shriek of the siren he passed village after village until at Brighton he turned to the left along that very dangerous switchback road that leads to Newhaven.
How he shipped the car, or how for four weary days – such was the hopeless state of the roads – he journeyed due south, has no bearing upon this narrative of an adventurer’s adventure. Fortunately the car ran magnificently, the engines beating in perfect time against rain and blizzard, and tyre-troubles were few. The road – known well to him, for he had traversed it with the Prince at least a dozen times to and from Monte Carlo – was snow-covered right from Lyons down to Aix in Provence, making progress difficult, and causing him constant fear lest he should run into some deep drift.
At last, however, in the bright Riviera sunshine, so different to the London weather he had left behind five days ago, and with the turquoise Mediterranean lying calm and picturesque on his right, he found himself passing along the Lower Corniche from Nice through Beaulieu, Monaco, and Mentone to Ventimiglia, the Italian frontier. Arrived there, he paid the Customs deposit at the little roadside bureau of the Italian dogana, got a leaden seal impressed upon the front of the chassis, and drew away up the hill again for a few short miles through Bordighera and Ospedaletti to the picturesque little town of San Remo, which so bravely but vainly endeavours to place itself forward as the Nice of the Italian Riviera.
The Hotel Regina, the best and most fashionable, stands high above the sea-road, embowered in palms, oranges, and flowers, and as Garrett turned with a swing into the gateway and ran up the steep incline on his “second,” his arrival, dirty and travel-worn as he was, caused some stir among the smartly dressed visitors taking their tea al fresco.
With an air of nonchalance the gentleman chauffeur sprang out, gave over the mud-covered car to a man from the hotel garage, and entering the place, booked a pretty but expensive sitting-room and bedroom overlooking the sea.
Having tubbed and exchanged his rough tweeds for grey flannels and a straw hat, he descended to see if he could find the Parson, who, by the list in the hall, he saw was among the guests. He strolled about the town, and looked in at a couple of cafés, but saw nothing of the Prince’s clever confederate.
Not until he went in to dinner did he discover him.
Wearing a faultless clerical collar and perfect-fitting clerical coat, and on his nose gold pince-nez, he was sitting a few tables away, dining with two well-dressed ladies – mother and daughter he took them to be, though afterwards he found they were aunt and niece. The elder woman, handsome and well-preserved, evidently a foreigner from her very dark hair and fine eyes, was dressed handsomely in black, with a bunch of scarlet roses in her corsage. As far as Garrett could see, she wore no jewellery.
The younger of the pair was certainly not more than nineteen, fair-haired, with a sweet girlish face, blue eyes almost childlike in their softness, and a pretty dimpled cheek, and a perfectly formed mouth that invited kisses. She was in pale carnation – a colour that suited her admirably, and in her bodice, cut slightly low, was a bunch of those sweet-smelling flowers which grow in such profusion along the Italian coast as to supply the European markets in winter.
Both women were looking at Garrett, noticing that he was a fresh arrival.
In a Riviera hotel, where nearly every guest makes a long stay, a fresh arrival early in the season is always an event, and he or she is discussed and criticised, approved or condemned. Garrett could see that the two ladies were discussing him with the Reverend Thomas, who glared at him for a moment through his glasses as though he had never before seen him in his life, and then with some words to his companions, he went on eating his fish.
He knew quite well of Garrett’s advent, but part of the mysterious game was that they did not recognise each other.
When dinner was over, and everyone went into the hall to lounge and take coffee, Garrett inquired of the hall-porter the names of the two ladies in question.
“The elder one, m’sieur,” he replied, in French, in a confidential tone, “is Roumanian, the Princess Charles of Krajova, and the young lady is her niece, Mademoiselle Dalrymple.”
“Dalrymple!” he echoed. “Then mademoiselle must be English!”
“Certainly, m’sieur.”
And Garrett turned away, wondering with what ulterior object our friend “the Parson” was ingratiating himself with La Princesse.
Next day, the gay devil-may-care Prince, giving his name as Mr Henry Tremlett, of London, arrived, bringing the faithful Charles, to whose keen observation more than one successful coup had owed its genesis. There were now four of them staying in the hotel, but with what object Garrett could not discern.
The Prince gave no sign of recognition to the Parson or the chauffeur. He dined at a little table alone, and was apparently as interested in the two women as Garrett was himself.