Читать книгу Her Royal Highness: A Romance of the Chancelleries of Europe - Le Queux William - Страница 8

While Waldron and his friend were discussing matters, shouts suddenly arose everywhere – the golden pig had entered and was being touched for luck by everyone, and men raised their glasses to each other, to wish one another “A Happy New Year.” The Christian year had opened, but the Egyptians in fezes only smiled and acknowledged the compliment. Their year had not yet commenced.

“Well,” exclaimed Jack Jerningham at last. “You haven’t told me much about Beatriz.”

“Why should I, my dear fellow, when there’s nothing to tell?”

“Ah, I’m glad to hear that,” was his friend’s quick response, apparently much relieved, for the fascination of the handsome ballerina for Hubert Waldron was the gossip of half the Embassies of Europe. Hubert was a rising man, the son of a great diplomat, but that foolish infatuation would, if continued, most certainty stand in the way of his advancement. Many of his friends, even the Ambassador’s wife, had given him broad hints that the friendship was a dangerous one. Yet, unfortunately, he had not heeded them.

Every man who is over head and ears in love thinks that his adored one is the perfect incarnation of all the virtues. Even when Waldron had heard her discussed in the Casino, that smart club in the Calle de Alcata, he refused to credit the stories told of her, of the magnificent presents she received from admirers, and more especially from the favoured one, the septuagenarian Duke of Villaneuva y Geltru.

“Why are you so glad to hear it?” Hubert asked, his brow slightly knit, for after all it was a sore subject.

“Well, to tell you the truth, because there is so much gossip flying about.”

“What gossip?”

“Of course you know quite well. Why ask me to repeat it, old chap?”

“But I don’t,” was the other’s reply.

“Well,” exclaimed Jerningham after a pause, “perhaps you are, after all, like most men – you close your ears to the truth because you love her.”

“Yes, Jack, I admit it. I do love her.”

“Then the sooner you realise the actual truth, the better,” declared the other with almost brutal abruptness.

“What truth?”

“My dear fellow, I know – nay, everybody knows – your foolish, quixotic friendship with the girl. You love her, and naturally you believe her to be all that is your ideal. But I assure you she’s not.”

“How in the name of Fate can you know?” asked the diplomat, starting up angrily.

“Well – I’ve been in Spain a lot, remember. I’ve seen and heard things. Why, only a week ago in this very hotel I met old Zeigler, of the German Embassy at Madrid, and he began to discuss her.”

“And what did he say, pray?”

“What everybody else says, that – well, forgive me for saying so – but that you are a fool to continue this dangerous friendship with a woman whose notoriety has now become European.”

“Why should people interest themselves in my affairs?” he cried in angry protest.

“Who knows? It’s the same the world over. But I suppose you know that Beatriz has gone to London with the old Duke?”

“It does not surprise me. She asked me to accompany her and to introduce her, but I couldn’t get back from here in time.”

“She asked you, well knowing that you were tied by the leg – eh?” laughed Jack. “Well, my dear fellow,” he sighed, “I think you’re terribly foolish to continue the acquaintanceship. It can only bring you grief and sorrow. Think of what she was, and what she is now. Can any girl rise from obscurity in such a short time without the golden ladder? Ask yourself.”

“You need not cast ugly insinuations,” was Hubert’s angry retort, yet truth to tell, that fact had ever been in his mind – a suspicion the first seeds of which had been sown one night in the Casino Club, and which had now grown within his heart.

“Please forgive me if I’ve hurt your feelings, but we’re old friends and you know how very blunt I am. It’s my failing,” he said in a tone of apology. “But the name of the fair Beatriz has of late been coupled with half a dozen admirers. When I was in Madrid four months ago I heard that Enrique de Egas, the director of the opera, was her very intimate friend, and also that young Juan Ordonez had given her a pearl necklace worth eighteen thousand pounds, while there were whispers concerning Pedro de Padras, Conrado Giaquinto, Sanchez Ferrer and several other nuts of the Spanish nobility with whom you are acquainted. They laugh at you behind your back.”

“Yes,” Hubert responded, quite undisturbed. “But surely you know that it gratifies the vanity of those young bloods of Madrid if their names are coupled with that of a pretty woman. It is the same in Vienna, the same in Rome.”

“Ah, my dear fellow, I see you are hopelessly in love,” declared the other. “I was – once. But the scales fell from my eyes just in time, as I sincerely hope they will fall from yours.”

Waldron remained silent. In his pocket lay a letter which he had received only that morning from Beatriz, dated from the Carlton Hotel in London, a letter full of expressions of undying affection, and of longing to be again at his side.

Were those her true sentiments, he wondered? Had Jack Jerningham, on the other hand, told him the bitter truth? He had first met her a couple of months after her arrival in Madrid when she, poor and simply dressed, was dancing at the Trianon, and as yet unknown. Young Regan, one of the attachés, had introduced her, and the trio had had supper together at Lhardy’s, in the Carrera de San Jeronimo, and on the following day he had taken her for a drive in the El Retero, the beautiful park of Madrid, and afterwards to the Plaza de Toros where the famous Sevilian Espada Ricardo Torres, known to all Spain as “Bombita,” dispatched five bulls after some marvellous pases de pecho, redondos and cambiados before giving the estocada, or death-blow.

He remembered the hot afternoon and the breathless tension of the multitude as “Bombita” with his red cloth met the rush of the infuriated bull, stepped nimbly aside and then plunged his sword downwards through the animal’s neck into its heart. Then came the roar of wild applause in which his dark-haired companion joined with such enthusiasm that her cheeks glowed red with excitement.

In that crowded bar, thick with tobacco smoke and noisy with the laughter of well-dressed men, the beautiful face of the dancer who, since that blazing well-remembered day, had won fame all over Europe, rose before him in the mists. Did he really love her, he asked himself as Jack Jerningham sat at his side, now smoking in silence. Yes he did, alas! he did.

And yet how strange – how very foolish, after all. He, Hubert Waldron, who for years had lived the exotic social life of diplomacy, who, being a smart, handsome man, had received the smiles and languishing glances of a thousand women of all ages, had fallen in love with that girl of the people – the daughter of a drunken dock labourer.

His friend Jerningham watched him covertly and wondered what was passing in his mind.

“I hope I haven’t offended you, Waldron,” he ventured to exclaim at last. “Perhaps I ought not to have spoken so frankly.”

“Oh, you haven’t offended me in the least, my dear old chap,” was the other’s open reply. “I may have been a fool. Probably I am. But tell me frankly are you really certain that all these stories concerning Beatriz have any foundation in fact?”

“Any foundation?” echoed the other, staring at him with his blue eyes. “You have only to go about the capital with your ears open, and you will hear stranger and more scandalous stories than those. There is the husband, you know, the cab-driver, who threatened the Duke with divorce, and has been paid a hundred thousand pesetas as hush-money.”

“Is that a fact?” gasped his friend. “Are you quite certain of it? I can’t really believe it.”

“I’m quite certain of it. Ask Carreno, the advocate in the Calle Mayor. He made the payment, and told me with his own lips. The story is common property all over Madrid.”

Waldron’s countenance changed, but he made no reply.

“The woman and her husband are making a very substantial harvest out of it, depend upon it, Hubert. Therefore I do, as your old pal, beg of you to reconsider the whole situation. Is it really judicious for you to be associated any longer with her? I know I have no right to dictate to you – or even to make the suggestion. But I venture to do so for your own sake.”

“I know! I know!” was his impatient reply. “Yes. I’ve been a fool, no doubt, Jack – a damned idiot.”

“No; don’t condemn yourself until you have made your own inquiries. When you get back to the Embassy look around and learn the truth. Then I hope you will become convinced of the foundation of my allegations. When you are, let me know, old chap, won’t you?”

At that moment a stout, elderly man, accompanied by another a trifle his junior, who wore the button of the Legion d’Honneur in the lapel of his dress-coat, elbowed their way laboriously up to the bar.

Jack Jerningham’s quick eyes discerned them, whereupon in amazement he ejaculated in a low whisper the somewhat vulgar expression:

“Good God!”

Hubert looked up and saw old Jules Gigleux.

“What?” he asked in surprise.

“Why, look at the elder man – that old fellow with the white, close-cropped hair. Don’t you know him?” he asked in a low voice, indicating Lola’s uncle.

“Know him? Yes. He’s been up the Nile with us. He is a Frenchman named Gigleux.”

“Gigleux!” echoed his friend. “By Gad! and a rather good alias. No, my dear fellow. Look at him well. He is the greatest and most cunning secret agent Germany has ever possessed – the arch-enemy of England, the Chief of the German Secret Service – an Italian whose real name is Luigi Ghelardi, though he goes by a dozen aliases. It is he who controls the whole service of German espionage throughout the world, and he is the unscrupulous chief of the horde of spies who are infesting the Eastern counties of England and preparing for ‘the day.’”

At that second the man referred to glanced across and nodded pleasant recognition with Waldron, though he apparently had no knowledge of his companion.

“Is that really true?” gasped Hubert, utterly astounded and aghast, staring open-mouthed at Lola’s uncle.

“Most certainly. I know him by sight, only too well.”

“Then that accounts for the fact that I found him prying into my belongings in my cabin up the Nile!” exclaimed his friend, to whom the truth had come as an astounding and staggering revelation. And so the dainty Lola – the girl of mystery – was niece of the chief spy of England’s enemies.