The officer's manner was deferential. He had had to deal with many men of considerable position. But this was the first time he had been brought into contact with a Cabinet Minister, even of junior rank.

He felt that it was a fresh step up the ladder he had set for his own climbing. He had made his visit there late in the hope that the Cabinet Minister might be induced to give him a protracted and uninterrupted interview, and was pleasantly surprised at the manner in which his explanation was received.

"You see, sir," he said, "it's always a difficulty with us, dealing with a busy public man. So I took a chance, because there's got to be a lot of close talk done."

But Ruxton denied the need for apology.

"As a matter of fact I'm glad you've called--now. If it had been earlier I should not have been so pleased." He laughed, and the smiling eyes of the officer noted the laugh carefully.

"That's all right then, sir."

The two men pa.s.sed up-stairs to Ruxton's study, and, while he revelled in the enjoyment of one of his host's best cigars, Purdic bluntly set out the objects he sought in this late visit.

"Now, Mr. Farlow," he began, "we've been on this thing some days now, and we're still groping around like a pair of babes in the wood. We've located a few bits. We've discovered certain suspicious circ.u.mstances, but nothing's led anywhere, and we're just as far off finding this Princess as if we were dodging icebergs up around the Pole. And do you know why, sir?"

Ruxton was not without ideas on the subject, but he nevertheless shook his head.

"No," he said. He was lounging in the chair which had claimed him nearly all the evening.

The other cleared his throat.

"Because you've set up a brick wall between me and the job you've set me at. The wall's high and thick, and it's plastered with Government political secrecy. You mustn't mind my speaking this way, sir. You see, you want certain work done, and I want to do it. But miracles don't concern me, and that's what you're asking of me, unless you break down that wall. With due respect, sir, it's no use asking men of my profession to disentangle a skein of fine thread and refuse to let 'em handle the skein. It can't be done; that's all."

Ruxton nodded, and the man with the smiling face went on.

"I want to know what lies behind, sir. That's what I've come here for to-night. You'll either tell me, or you won't. You are the best judge of what is at stake, and whether you are justified in disclosing secrets in the hope of discovering the whereabouts of the Princess. The question is, is the discovery of her worth the risk? From the moment I began on this I saw the direction things were taking. Now, this man Va.s.silitz is a foreigner. All the servants at Redwithy are foreigners.

The lady herself is a foreign--princess. Her record during the war tells of her Polish origin. There were three Polands: Russian, Austrian and German. She claimed Russian, and was known by a Russian-sounding name. Her t.i.tle sounds German. That's all the history of her I have got. But if I'm any judge there's a lot more, and in that additional history lies the secret of her present disappearance. Well, sir, that's my case, and I put it to you. If you cannot see your way to telling me anything more, I can hold out very little hope. I shall naturally continue to work the matter, but----"

The man was still smiling his involuntary smile, which was due to a curious facial formation. Nor could Ruxton help realizing the perfect mask it became. But his demands were startling and a little disconcerting. He rose from his chair and began to pace the room, his preoccupation finding expression in the gnawing of one of his finger-nails.

The other watched him through the veil of smoke which hung upon the warm air of the room. Finally he came to a halt on the rug before the fire.

"Yes, it's political," he admitted. Then, with a curious upward jerk of his head, and a hot light in his dark eyes: "d.a.m.nably political--and secret."

"Yes?"

Ruxton laughed.

"You want more; much more. You want it all." He shook his head. "But you can't have it. That's been the devil of it, eh? No, I can't tell you all you want to know. But I can tell you this much. It's your brains--our brains against all the arch-devilry of the German Government, backed by no less a person than the----"

The detective gave a long, low whistle.

"It's as serious as that?" He stirred in his chair.

"Serious? It's likely to involve the death of anybody concerned. Not only the victims of these machinations, but of those who interfere on their behalf. There, that's all I can say of what lies behind, and you must be satisfied, or pretend to be. Meanwhile I can tell you something which is going to be helpful to us, which I couldn't have told you if you had paid your visit an hour or so earlier. I have discovered a means by which I fancy the Princess can be rescued from these German demons."

Ruxton turned, and again flung himself into his chair. He was smiling with confidence and hope. The officer insinuated his chair nearer and waited. Every faculty was alert. The other took no notice of his movements. He was absorbed in his own thoughts. He had taken a great decision, and all his imaginative faculties were at work piecing together the pictured details.

The officer coughed. The long pause was becoming too extended for his patience. Ruxton started. He looked round and smiled.

"Listen to this," he said, "and tell me what you think."

It was well past midnight when Detective-Inspector Purdic rose to take his departure. The automatic smile on his face had broadened noticeably, and Ruxton felt that now, at least, it was inspired. He, too, was smiling. His own decision had met with something more than approval from the professional. The man had caught something of the quiet daring of the brain which had been keen enough to penetrate the meaning of certain obscure signs, and reckless enough to evolve a plan of action which promised a possibility of defeating all the trickery against which they were pitted.

Furthermore, the officer had been able to point certain vital matters, and offer suggestions in several directions of importance out of his long experience. Between them they had matured carefully, and placed in concrete form, a plan which, under any other conditions of a less grave nature, must have appeared the veriest of forlorn hopes, and which either of them would certainly have cla.s.sed amongst the schemes of the most advanced cases confined within the four walls of a lunatic asylum.

"I'm glad I came, sir," said the officer, in his blunt fashion. "I had my doubts about it. It didn't seem to offer much hope, seeing I was dealing with a Cabinet Minister who hadn't seen his way, so far, to opening out on official secrets of his own accord; and on that score, I admit, it was no use. But you've done better than that, sir. You've taught me something which twenty years of my own business wasn't able to teach me--and it's in my own line, too. I sort of feel, sir, some one's going to wake up with a horrid start, and--it won't be us.

Good-night, sir, and thank you. I'll set everything in train without delay. I shall take the five men I mentioned with me when I go north to-morrow, and look to the local police for any other force we may need."

"Good." Ruxton shook him by the hand. "I'll see to the other side of it in--my own way. Good-night, and thank you for coming."

CHAPTER XXV

THE SWEETNESS OF LIFE

Von Salzinger was in a bad mood. He was feeling the effects of close personal contact with the authority which he had been bred to acknowledge, to obey. In the abstract he admitted the right of it. In practice he had little enough complaint. But in personal contact with the administrators of it the tyranny became maddening. For once in his life he realized how far short of a free-acting, free-thinking being he really was, in spite of the considerable rank of Captain-General to which he had risen.

He possessed all the dominating personality of his race, all the hectoring brutality of his fellow-Prussians. He had no difficulty in submitting to a system which he found pleasure in enforcing upon those who acknowledged his authority, but to endure the personal meting out of such discipline by Von Berger was maddeningly irritating. He felt that his a.s.sociation with the all-powerful intimate of the Emperor was nearing the breaking-point, and when that point was reached he knew that whatever breaking took place he was bound to be the chief sufferer.

His irritation lasted all day. He had received a number of definite instructions, as though he were some insignificant underling. Von Berger had dictated his requirements. And Von Salzinger was galled, galled and furious. Nor was it until Von Berger had taken his departure that he felt he could again breathe freely.

Then had come a letter by hand. It was a letter for Vita, who remained in his charge. But though he read the letter, carefully steaming it open and re-sealing it so that detection was well-nigh impossible, and its contents proved satisfactory, still his temper underwent little betterment.

The day wore on filled with the many duties which Von Berger had demanded of him, and which he almost automatically fulfilled. He saw many callers. He held many consultations. He delivered many instructions in that harsh autocratic manner which he resented in Von Berger. But it was not until after he had dined amply in the evening, and his gastronomic senses had been indulged with an amplitude of good wine and savory fare, that he began to forget the glacial frigidity of the man who had power to reduce his own dominating personality to the level of an anaemic lackey.

After dinner he moved out onto the terrace which fronted the dining-room. It was a splendid night with a bright full moon. It was chilly but refreshing, and Von Salzinger, whatever else his habits might be, loved the fresh air. He paced the broad walk under the moon, and every now and then his eyes were turned upon a distant portion of the upper part of the mansion, where shone the lights of Vita's apartments. At last he seemed to have decided some momentous matter, and returned within the house and flung aside the heavy overcoat he was enveloped in.

The heaviness of his military figure was carefully toned under the perfect lines of his evening clothes. But the rigidity of his square shoulders and back would not be denied. Then, too, the shape of his head. He was Prussian, so Prussian, and every inch a soldier of the Hohenzollern dynasty.

He made his way down the long corridors which led towards a distant wing of the house, and pa.s.sed on up-stairs.

Vita's days had become poignant with bitterness and self-reviling. But the despair in her grey eyes had lessened, and all the youthful beauty had returned to her cheeks. Her abject dread had given place to a condition of dreary hope which left her haunted only by the hideous memory of the price she had yet to pay.

Her mood was one of self-abas.e.m.e.nt and self-loathing. She told herself that she was purchasing life, or the chance of it, with all that was best in her. Sacrifice? She had told herself that she was sacrificing her love for her father's life. It was so. She knew she would sacrifice anything to safeguard that. But as time pa.s.sed, and her dejected mood gained ascendancy, she began to question her purpose with a deplorable cynicism that, in reality, was no part of her nature.

She reminded herself of the cowardice she knew to be hers. How much of the sacrifice she asked was for her father, and how much for herself?

Then came the self-castigation. She was afraid to die. She knew she was afraid. And, in utter self-contempt, she told herself she was flinging away the honest love of a man, of which she could never be worthy, as the price of her life. Yes, there was no denying the truth. She valued life--her miserable life--at a price greater than anything else. Her love? It was a poor thing. It was beneath contempt. She could sell herself to this brutal Prussian that she might live on to see the sun rise for a few more seasons, a few more miserable years of conscious existence.

Such were her feelings as she sat before the cheerful blaze of the fire in her apartment. The evening had closed in, her evening meal had been brought her, and finally cleared away. She had no desire for occupation. There was only thought left her--painful, hideous thought.

Everything had gone awry. All plans seemed to have miscarried. She, and her father, and her lover had been out-man[oe]uvred by the Prussian machine, and now, now there only remained a sordid struggle for life itself.

But she was roused, as once before she had been roused, from the depths of her misery by the coming of the man whom she now knew her whole future life was bound to. She heard the door open and close. She did not turn from the contemplation of her fire. Why need she? It was one of her jailers. If it were the women she did not desire to see them. If it were Von Berger she would allow him no sight of her misery. If it were Von Salzinger----