“What about refreshments?” said Anthony. “Where does the conference take place? Here?”
“If you please, sir,” said Battle, “I’ve a fancy for not leaving this room until morning. You’ll see why when you’ve heard the story.”
“Then I’ll go and forage,” said Anthony.
Bill went with him and they returned with a tray of glasses, siphons and other necessaries of life.
The augmented syndicate established itself comfortably in the corner by the window, being grouped round a long oak table.
“It’s understood, of course,” said Battle, “that anything that’s said here is said in strict confidence. There must be no leakage. I’ve always felt it would come out one of these days. Gentlemen like Mr. Lomax who want everything hushed up take bigger risks than they think. The start of this business was just over seven years ago. There was a lot of what they call ‘reconstruction’ going on—especially in the Near East. There was a good deal going on in England, strictly on the Q.T. with that old gentleman, Count Stylptitch, pulling the strings. All the Balkan States were interested parties, and there were a lot of royal personages in England just then. I’m not going into details, but something disappeared—disappeared in a way that seemed incredible unless you admitted two things—that the thief was a royal personage and that at the same time it was the work of a high-class professional. M. Lemoine here will tell you how that well might be.”
The Frenchman bowed courteously and took up the tale.
“It is possible that you in England may not even have heard of our famous and fantastic King Victor. What his real name is, no one knows, but he is a man of singular courage and daring, one who speaks five languages and is unequalled in the art of disguise. Though his father is known to have been either English or Irish, he himself has worked chiefly in Paris. It was there, nearly eight years ago, that he was carrying out a daring series of robberies and living under the name of Captain O’Neill.”
A faint exclamation escaped Virginia. M. Lemoine darted a keen glance at her.
“I think I understand what agitates Madame. You will see in a minute. Now we of the Sûreté had our suspicions that this Captain O’Neill was none other than ‘King Victor,’ but we could not obtain the necessary proof. There was also in Paris at the time a clever young actress, Angèle Mory, of the Folies Bergères. For some time we had suspected that she was associated with the operations of King Victor. But again no proof was forthcoming.
“About that time, Paris was preparing for the visit of the young King Nicholas IV of Herzoslovakia. At the Sûreté we were given special instructions as to the course to be adopted to ensure the safety of His Majesty. In particular we were warned to superintend the activities of a certain revolutionary organization which called itself the Comrades of the Red Hand. It is fairly certain now that the Comrades approached Angèle Mory and offered her a huge sum if she would aid them in their plans. Her part was to infatuate the young king, and decoy him to some spot agreed upon with them. Angèle Mory accepted the bribe and promised to perform her part.
“But the young lady was cleverer and more ambitious than her employers suspected. She succeeded in captivating the king who fell desperately in love with her and loaded her with jewels. It was then that she conceived the idea of being—not a king’s mistress, but a queen! As everyone knows, she realized her ambition. She was introduced into Herzoslovakia as the Countess Varaga Popoleffsky, an offshoot of the Romanovs, and became eventually Queen Varaga of Herzoslovakia. Not bad for a little Parisian actress! I have always heard that she played the part extremely well. But her triumph was not to be long lived. The Comrades of the Red Hand, furious at her betrayal, twice attempted her life. Finally they worked up the country to such a pitch that a revolution broke out in which both the king and queen perished. Their bodies, horribly mutilated and hardly recognizable, were recovered, attesting to the fury of the populace against the lowborn foreign queen.
“Now, in all this, it seems certain that Queen Varaga still kept in with her confederate, King Victor. It is possible that the bold plan was his all along. What is known is that she continued to correspond with him, in a secret code, from the Court of Herzoslovakia. For safety the letters were written in English, and signed with the name of an English lady then at the Embassy. If any inquiry had been made, and the lady in question had denied her signature, it is possible that she would not have been believed, for the letters were those of a guilty woman to her lover. It was your name she used, Mrs. Revel.”
“I know,” said Virginia. Her colour was coming and going unevenly. “So that is the truth of the letters! I have wondered and wondered.”
“What a blackguardly trick,” cried Bill indignantly.
“The letters were addressed to Captain O’Neill at his rooms in Paris, and their principal purpose may have light shed upon it by a curious fact which came to light later. After the assassination of the king and queen, many of the Crown Jewels which had fallen, of course, into the hands of the mob, found their way to Paris, and it was discovered that in nine cases out of ten the principal stones had been replaced by paste—and mind you, there were some very famous stones among the jewels of Herzoslovakia. So as a queen, Angèle Mory still practised her former activities.
“You see now where we have arrived. Nicholas IV and Queen Varaga came to England and were the guests of the late Marquis of Caterham, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Herzoslovakia is a small country,
