Page:Bailey - Call Mr Fortune (Dutton, 1921).djvu/194

Rh anything to her mother? Or is there a traitor in my camp? Spoleto—that little actress?"

"Here's the traitor, sir." Reggie took out of his pocket the Hottentot Venus.

"Good heavens!" The Prince took her affectionately. "My new palæolithic Venus."

"You left her in the library at the Tormouth school. There are not many men in the world who have a Hottentot Venus to lose. So she suggested to me that the Prince of Ragusa was taking action with regard to Hilda Crowland."

"You have a great deal of acumen, Mr. Fortune," said the Prince, and the sound of the cable broke off the conversation.

There is a hospital at Tormouth. The Comte de Spoleto went on shore to bring off its X-ray man. Reggie stretched himself in a deck chair to wait events. They were not long in arriving. A shore boat brought off the Hon. Stanley Lomas, dapper as ever, and a woman whom Reggie identified by her hair and her magnificent figure as the mother of Hilda—Mrs. Crowland—the Princess of Ragusa. Reggie went down the gangway to meet them.

Lomas sprang out of the boat. The Princess was handed out and went up the gangway. "Good God, Fortune!" Lomas shook hands. "You're a wonder! How did you bring them back?"

"Genius—just genius."