Page:The Secret of Chimneys - 1987.djvu/126

 “Ah, there you are,” he remarked. “Let me introduce you to Baron—er—er—and Captain Andrassy. Mr. Anthony Cade.”

The Baron stared at Anthony with growing suspicion.

“Mr. Cade?” he said stiffly. “I think not.”

“A word alone with you, Baron,” said Anthony. “I can explain everything.”

The Baron bowed, and the two men walked down the terrace together.

“Baron,” said Anthony. “I must throw myself upon your mercy. I have so far strained the honor of an English gentleman as to travel to this country under an assumed name. I represented myself to you as Mr. James McGrath—but you must see for yourself that the deception involved was infinitesimal. You are doubtless acquainted with the works of Shakespeare, and his remarks about the unimportance of the nomenclature of roses? This case is the same. The man you wanted to see was the man in possession of the Memoirs. I was that man. As you know only too well, I am no longer in possession of them. A neat trick, Baron, a very neat trick. Who thought of it, you or your principal?”

“His Highness’s own idea it was. And for anyone but him to carry it out he would not permit.”

“He did it jolly well,” said Anthony, with approval. “I never took him for anything but an Englishman.”

“The education of an English gentleman did the Prince receive,” explained the Baron. “The custom of Herzoslovakia it is.”

“No professional could have pinched those papers better,” said Anthony. “May I ask, without indiscretion, what has become of them?”

“Between gentlemen,” began the Baron.

“You are too kind, Baron,” murmured Anthony. “I’ve never been called a gentleman so often as I have in the last forty-eight hours.”

“I to you say this—I believe them to be burnt.”

“You believe, but you don’t know, eh? Is that it?”

“His Highness in his own keeping retained them. His purpose it was to read them and then by the fire to destroy them.”

“I see,” said Anthony. “All the same, they are not the kind of light literature you’d skim through in half an hour.”