Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/339

Rh man representing Santini was assassinated?" asked Kampf, again stroking his beard.

"No. As soon as Woodroffe recognized me as a visitor he left — for Hamburg."

"He was afraid to face you because of the ransacking of the British Consul's safe at Leghorn," remarked the Princess, who at the same moment took Elma's hand tenderly in her own and looked at her. Then, turning to me, she said: "What you have told us to-night, Mr. Gregg, throws a new light upon certain incidents that had hitherto puzzled us. The mystery of it all is a great and inscrutable one — the mystery of this poor unfortunate girl, greatest of all. But both of us will endeavour to help you to elucidate it; we will help poor Elma to crush her enemies — these cowardly villains who have maimed her."

"Ah, Princess!" I cried. "If you will only help and protect her, you will be doing an act of mercy to a defenceless woman. I love her — I admit it. I have done my utmost: I have striven to solve the dark mystery, but up to the present I have been unsuccessful, and have only remained, even till to-day, the victim of circumstance."

"Let her stay with me," the kindly woman answered, smiling tenderly upon my love. "She will be safe here, and in the meantime we will endeavour to discover the real and actual truth."

And in response I took the Princess's hand and pressed it fervently. Although that striking, white-headed man and the rather stiff, formal woman in black were the leaders of the great and all-powerful