Grey had set apart the books and papers that had to do either directly or indirectly with his case, because he saw in them a circumstantial defence to the charges which were still hanging over him at home. To his use of them for this purpose Minna and her sister gladly consented, and so when that evening, after having been cropped and clean-shaven by Johann, he bade the little household good-bye and was driven into town to the Grand Hotel K?nigin Anna, he carried this evidence with him.

It was, as has been observed, a day rife with revelations. The discoveries of its daylight hours were of incalculable value, but the disclosures reserved for the night were of even more consequence. The train that afternoon had brought from Paris a large company of visitors intent upon viewing the pomp and panoply of a royal293 funeral, and among them were the remaining members of that gay little dinner party at Armenonville the week before.

The Van Tuyls ran into them at the hotel on their return from the Fahler farm, and Hope immediately had an inspiration.

“I’m going to give a dinner tonight,” she said, “just the most informal sort of a dinner in our salon. And I want you all to come. It doesn’t make any difference whether you have your trunks or not. You are not expected to dress. I’m going to treat you to a surprise.”

The women were all curiosity on the instant and showed it. The men accepted politely, but declared that the hostess was attraction sufficient.

Hope had made the proposition on impulse, and it was too late to draw back when she caught her father’s disapproving eye.

“I’m not at all sure,” he commented, once they were alone, “that this thing is wise. Carey isn’t yet out of the woods, and the story of his alleged embezzlement and all that is too fresh to have been forgotten. Explanations at a dinner party aren’t pleasant things. We know he is innocent,294 but you don’t want to put him on trial before a jury of your guests.”

But Hope was staunch in her loyalty.

“Our verdict will be sufficient,” she answered, bravely. “If I had stopped to think of all you say I probably shouldn’t have asked them, but as it is I’m glad I did it. It clears the situation at once. They must know from my having promised to be his wife and your having given your consent, that he is innocent.”

Nicholas Van Tuyl shrugged his shoulders.

“Perhaps,” he replied, a little doubtfully, “perhaps; but, my dear girl, don’t hint at the Prince business. The Fahlers will keep their mouths closed for the sake of their dead relative, but no injunction of secrecy would still the tongues of Mrs. Dickie and Lady Constance.”

Hope demurred.

“It’s such an interesting story,” she protested, “and I am a woman!”

“But the Government here does not want it to get out.”

“And I’d like to know what we owe to the Government,” the girl inquired. “I don’t want295 to be disobedient, father dear, but I can’t promise to control myself under provocation.”

Again Mr. Van Tuyl shrugged his shoulders. His daughter was his idol and he was as yarn in her hands.

When Grey arrived and was told of the plan, he received the tidings somewhat ruefully. He complained that his trunks were still at the Residenz Schloss, and that, in the torn and bedraggled raiment he was wearing, to pose as the object of interest at a dinner party, no matter how informal, was apt to be a little trying, to say the least. But O’Hara, who had driven into town with him, came to the rescue. He and Grey were very nearly of a size, and as he was the fortunate possessor of two evening suits he promptly placed one of them at Grey’s disposal.

Nevertheless, in spite of this satisfactory overcoming of a grave difficulty, Grey was not present when the party sat down to dinner; for, as he was about to join the company, Nicholas Van Tuyl broke in upon him, carrying in his hand a note which had just been delivered by an orderly from the Royal Hospital.

296 “You’ll have to go, won’t you?” he asked, as Grey ran his eye over the page.

It was from Chancellor von Ritter and was addressed to the banker.

“If you are in communication with Mr. Grey,” it read, “send him here with all speed. The man Lutz can last only a few hours. He is anxious to make an ante-mortem statement, but insists that Mr. Grey shall be present when he makes it.”

And so Grey rushed off in a cab, and as the dinner party took their places at table in the Van Tuyl salon, he was climbing the Royal Hospital stairs to the little white room in which lay dying the young man who had served him faithfully for over two years as valet, only to fall by reason of avarice into the r?le of villain in his life’s melodrama.

The eyes that looked up at him from dark, cavernous depths in a face pale as chalk had in them an appeal that touched a chord of his sympathy, and for the moment he forgot the injuries he had suffered and remembered only the services he had experienced at those hands, which lay limp297 and waxen-yellow against the spotless white of the coverlet.

The small room was somewhat crowded. Chancellor von Ritter was there with a notary and a stenographer; near the window stood a soldier, whose very presence seemed an irony, which he appeared to recognise in retiring as far as the limits of the tiny chamber would permit; and there, too, of course, was the inevitable nun-like nurse in significantly immaculate muslin and the great flaring headdress of her sisterhood.

“He seems a little stronger at the moment,” whispered the Chancellor; “you came at an opportune time. He has been asking for you all the afternoon.”

The nurse was moistening the sufferer’s lips. When she finished, Grey spoke to him.

“I am sorry to see you here, Lutz,” he said, simply.

His breathing, he noticed, was very short and laboured.

“I’m obliged to you for coming, sir,” he replied, and his voice was stronger than one would have expected. “I’ve got a lot to tell you; but it’s298 so late now I don’t know whether I’ll be able.” He paused between his sentences in an effort to husband his waning strength. “I was a good enough fellow once, Mr. Grey, wasn’t I?”

Grey nodded.

“Yes,” he agreed, with sincerity, “you were all right, Lutz.”

“I never really meant you any harm, sir,” he went on. “It seemed to me that it would be a good thing for you.”

The Chancellor motioned to the stenographer, who drew his chair closer to the bedside and took a note-book and pencil from his pocket.

“Afterwards,” Lutz continued, “after Dr. Schlippenbach died and I knew we couldn’t keep you under the spell any more, I got frightened; and then I drank a good deal, and I—yes, I was crazy at times. Absinthe, Mr. Grey. I wasn’t used to it, and it turned my head. I thought to save myself I must get rid of you. I tried to smother you with gas that night last week in Paris. Captain Lindenwald knew of it. He was afraid of you, too. He said suspicion would fall on Baron von Einhard; that we would never be299 suspected. And when I failed he went to Baron von Einhard and—how much he got I don’t know; but the Baron paid him to go away and leave you, agreeing that he would put you where you would never be heard of again. Then we came here, with a story about your being mad and being locked up in a Paris sanitarium. It was the only thing we could do. I............