Prince Rajput Singh, the mythical only son of the Nazir of Hydrabad, descended on Chicago two weeks later accompanied by J. Herbert Denby, the distinguished authority on Far Eastern affairs. Their arrival at the Senate Hotel just before the dinner hour was a spectacular divertissement, to say the least, and one well calculated to make the unsuspecting general public sit up and take notice.
His Royal Highness wore a great gray cloak when he passed through the main entrance of the hotel flanked on his right by the impeccable Mr. Denby and preceded by two massive and upstanding Hindus whose bearded faces were frozen into a semblance of stoical indifference that was as grim and forbidding as a box-office man’s impenetrable and imperturbable mask. On his head he wore a white turban trimmed with golden braid and his feet were encased in richly embroidered red slippers with turned-up toes.
He paused for a moment, surveying with a condescending air the crowd of gaping men which filled the lobby, and then clapped his hands sharply twice. The Hindu attendants moved into position back of him. Another pause and then, with a gesture of surpassing elegance he dropped the cloak from his shoulders into their waiting arms. No Roman emperor had ever done it better, Mr. Denby thought to himself. The prince stood revealed in a gorgeous silken robe which was such a shimmering mass of color that it almost made one blink to look at it. Purples, flaming shades of orange and greens which seemed to suggest the rank lush foliage of some tropical jungle were the predominating shades. The robe was admirably designed to set off to the best advantage the dark and finely chiseled features of His Royal Highness, who greeted the manager of the hotel with an air of haughty reserve that was positively imperial in its implications.
His progress through the lobby to the elevator was made amid a silence that Mr. Denby afterwards paradoxically referred to as “audible” and when the clanging doors closed behind him and he was shot up to his quarters on the third floor, the feelings of all the awed onlookers found expression in a concerted gasp.
Jimmy Martin, watching the proceedings from behind the cover of a newspaper which he pretended to be reading while he sprawled over a great leather chair, chuckled quietly to himself and agreed that he was a grand little stage manager. Then he slipped out on to windswept Michigan avenue and walked briskly away to his own hotel. He longed to remain and watch his drama unfold, but discretion warned him that it would be well for him to keep in seclusion for the present, inasmuch as representatives of the fourth estate would undoubtedly descend on the hotel shortly in a body.
Prince Rajput Singh graciously received the gentlemen of the press an hour later and discoursed at length upon the past, present and future of India. Hearing that his distinguished friend, the Sahib Denby, whom he had entertained some years ago at his father’s palace while the former was traveling in the far east, was planning a lecture tour he had decided, he said, to visit America himself and lend his aid to the project.
“It has been long dream of my existence,” he announced grandly, picking his words carefully, “to assist in bringing to new world of the west the culture and wisdom of the east. You have made wonderful discoveries in the world of material things. We have long ago found the secret of the soul. It is well we should make ourselves friends.”
The prince posed for flashlight photographs sitting in a great arm chair with his Hindu attendants, arms folded, standing erect and immovable behind him. All in all a pleasant time was had by everyone concerned and the results in the newspapers on the following morning were all that the most optimistic and sanguine publicity promoter could have desired. Two and three column pictures of His Royal Highness were given prominent positions and each interview was tagged with a paragraph announcing the first of Mr. Denby’s lectures which was to be given a day later in the grand ballroom of the hotel. The prince, it was announced, would supplement the lecturer’s remarks with a little talk of his own.
Jimmy Martin, calling on him for the purpose of giving him a few more instructions concerning his general deportment and demeanor on the morrow, was somewhat dazzled by the splendor of his surroundings and by the extent of the apartment assigned to him. There were five rooms in all, overlooking the lake, and there was a canopied bed on a raised platform in one of them as well as other evidences of extreme luxury to which he was not accustomed. He hunted up his friend, the assistant manager of the hotel.
“Say, Wilkins,” he said cautiously. “I’ve been up to see this prince you’ve got stopping here. That’s some set of rooms. I wonder what they’re going to set him back.”
“That’s the royal suite,” replied Wilkins. “We don’t get much of a chance to get any real royalty very often, and I’m making the old boy a special rate. Mr. Denby arranged for it. We’re only going to charge him two hundred dollars a day.”
“My God,” stammered Jimmy, almost swallowing his cigarette and clutching the other by the arm, “you can’t do a thing like that.”
The look of hopeless distress on the press agent’s face caused the hotel man to laugh uproariously, for a moment, but he checked himself suddenly.
“What’s the idea?” he inquired. “Why can’t we? You act as if we were going to charge the bill to you.”
“Maybe you are, old man,” was Jimmy’s response as he led Wilkins over to the latter’s little office. “I want to slip you a little side-line of conversation that you’ve got to promise to keep Masonic.”
So it came to pass that in the quiet sanctity of the little office Jimmy outlined certain unpublished details concerning the activities and real mission of Prince Rajput Singh though he said nothing about that dusky gentleman’s previous condition of servitude. He represented him as being a genuine Indian nobleman, temporarily down on his luck, who had consented to assist in a carefully contrived and ingenious scheme of indirect advertising.
“Have a heart, old man,” he pleade............