LITMIR.BIZ

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started. ‘For you only,’ he said, unconsciously lowering his voice. ‘Miss Racksole, I particularly wish that no one here should know that I was in Paris last spring.’

      ‘An affair of State?’ she smiled.

      ‘An affair of State,’ he replied soberly. ‘Even Dimmock doesn’t know. It was strange that we should be fellow guests at that quiet out-of-the-way hotel—strange but delightful. I shall never forget that rainy afternoon that we spent together in the Museum of the Trocadéro. Let us talk about that.’

      ‘About the rain, or the museum?’

      ‘I shall never forget that afternoon,’ he repeated, ignoring the lightness of her question.

      ‘Nor I,’ she murmured corresponding to his mood.

      ‘You, too enjoyed it?’ he said eagerly.

      ‘The sculptures were magnificent,’ she replied, hastily glancing at the ceiling.

      ‘Ah! So they were! Tell me, Miss Racksole, how did you discover my identity?’

      ‘I must not say,’ she answered. ‘That is my secret. Do not seek to penetrate it. Who knows what horrors you might discover if you probed too far?’ She laughed, but she laughed alone. The Prince remained pensive—as it were brooding.

      ‘I never hoped to see you again,’ he said.

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘One never sees again those whom one wishes to see.’

      ‘As for me, I was perfectly convinced that we should meet again.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because I always get what I want.’

      ‘Then you wanted to see me again?’

      ‘Certainly. You interested me extremely. I have never met another man who could talk so well about sculpture as the Count Steenbock.’

      ‘Do you really always get what you want, Miss Racksole?’

      ‘Of course.’

      ‘That is because your father is so rich, I suppose?’

      ‘Oh, no, it isn’t!’ she said. ‘It’s simply because I always do get what I want. It’s got nothing to do with Father at all.’

      ‘But Mr Racksole is extremely wealthy?’

      ‘Wealthy isn’t the word, Count. There is no word. It’s positively awful the amount of dollars poor Papa makes. And the worst of it is he can’t help it. He told me once that when a man had made ten millions no power on earth could stop those ten millions from growing into twenty. And so it continues. I spend what I can, but I can’t come near coping with it; and of course Papa is no use whatever at spending.’

      ‘And you have no mother?’

      ‘Who told you I had no mother?’ she asked quietly.

      ‘I—er—inquired about you,’ he said, with equal candour and humility.

      ‘In spite of the fact that you never hoped to see me again?’

      ‘Yes, in spite of that.’

      ‘How funny!’ she said, and lapsed into a meditative silence.

      ‘Yours must be a wonderful existence,’ said the Prince. ‘I envy you.’

      ‘You envy me—what? My father’s wealth?’

      ‘No,’ he said; ‘your freedom and your responsibilities.’

      ‘I have no responsibilities,’ she remarked.

      ‘Pardon me,’ he said; ‘you have, and the time is coming when you will feel them.’

      ‘I’m only a girl,’ she murmured with sudden simplicity. ‘As for you, Count, surely you have sufficient responsibilities of your own?’

      ‘I?’ he said sadly. ‘I have no responsibilities. I am a nobody—a Serene Highness who has to pretend to be very important, always taking immense care never to do anything that a Serene Highness ought not to do. Bah!’

      ‘But if your nephew, Prince Eugen, were to die, would you not come to the throne, and would you not then have these responsibilities which you so much desire?’

      ‘Eugen die?’ said Prince Aribert, in a curious tone. ‘Impossible. He is the perfection of health. In three months he will be married. No, I shall never be anything but a Serene Highness, the most despicable of God’s creatures.’

      ‘But what about the State secret which you mentioned? Is not that a responsibility?’

      ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘That is over. That belongs to the past. It was an accident in my dull career. I shall never be Count Steenbock again.’

      ‘Who knows?’ she said. ‘By the way, is not Prince Eugen coming here to-day? Mr Dimmock told us so.’

      ‘See!’ answered the Prince, standing up and bending over her. ‘I am going to confide in you. I don’t know why, but I am.’

      ‘Don’t betray State secrets,’ she warned him, smiling into his face.

      But just then the door of the room was unceremoniously opened.

      ‘Go right in,’ said a voice sharply. It was Theodore Racksole’s. Two men entered, bearing a prone form on a stretcher, and Racksole followed them.

      Nella sprang up. Racksole stared to see his daughter.

      ‘I didn’t know you were in here, Nell. Here,’ to the two men, ‘out again.’

      ‘Why!’ exclaimed Nella, gazing fearfully at the form on the stretcher, ‘it’s Mr Dimmock!’

      ‘It is,’ her father acquiesced. ‘He’s dead,’ he added laconically. ‘I’d have broken it to you more gently had I known. Your pardon, Prince.’ There was a pause.

      ‘Dimmock dead!’ Prince Aribert whispered under his breath, and he kneeled down by the side of the stretcher. ‘What does this mean?’

      ‘The poor fellow was just walking across the quadrangle towards the portico when he fell down. A commissionaire who saw him says he was walking very quickly. At first I thought it was sunstroke, but it couldn’t have been, though the weather certainly is rather warm. It must be heart disease. But anyhow, he’s dead. We did what we could. I’ve sent for a doctor, and for the police. I suppose there’ll have to be an inquest.’

      Theodore Racksole stopped, and in an awkward solemn silence they all gazed at the dead youth. His features were slightly drawn, and his eyes closed; that was all. He might have been asleep.

      ‘My poor Dimmock!’ exclaimed the Prince, his voice broken. ‘And I was angry because the lad did not meet me at Charing Cross!’

      ‘Are you sure he is dead, Father?’ Nella said.

      ‘You’d better go away, Nella,’ was Racksole’s only reply; but the girl stood still, and began to sob quietly. On the previous night she had secretly made fun of Reginald Dimmock. She had deliberately set herself to get information from him on a topic in which she happened to be specially interested and she had got it, laughing the while at his youthful crudities—his vanity, his transparent cunning, his absurd airs. She had not liked him; she had even distrusted him, and decided that he was not ‘nice’. But now, as he lay on the stretcher, these things were forgotten. She went so far as to reproach herself for them. Such is the strange commanding power of death.

      ‘Oblige me by taking the poor fellow to my apartments,’ said the Prince, with a gesture to the attendants. ‘Surely it is time the doctor came.’

      Racksole felt suddenly at that moment he was nothing but a mere hotel proprietor with an awkward affair on his hands. For a fraction of a second he wished he had never bought the Grand Babylon.

      A quarter of an hour later Prince Aribert, Theodore Racksole, a doctor, and an inspector of police were in the Prince’s reception-room. They had just come from an antechamber, in which lay the

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