Page:Bailey - Call Mr Fortune (Dutton, 1921).djvu/28

Rh the hatpin won't miss a chance. These Royal families they're a criss-cross of criminal tendencies. Hohenzollerns, Hapsburgs, Pragas, Wittelsbachs—look at the heredity."

"There was another running-down case here tonight. The man was killed—fractured skull. He was left on the road too. And another queer thing—he was much the same build as the Archduke Maurice."

"Good Gad!" Sir Lawson was startled out of his omniscient manner, an event unknown in Reggie's experience. "There's something devilish in it. Fortune. One murder—the wrong man dead—and then try again at once the same way. Imagine the creature looking at that poor dead wretch and jumping on the car again to drive it on at the other man. Diabolical! Diabolical!"

"I don't think I have much imagination, sir," said Reggie, who was not impressed by ineffective emotion.

There was a gentle tap at the door, a nurse came and was given her instructions, and the two men went down to the Archduke Leopold.

He had changed his clothes. He was now in a claret-coloured velvet which did violence to his complexion and his pale beard. He sat in the smoking-room with a book on the entomology of Java and a glass of eau sucrée. He smiled at them and waved them to chairs.