Hurricane Island. Henry Brereton Marriott Watson

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СКАЧАТЬ but Holgate, ignoring the obvious retort on me, pursued a different subject.

      "Upon my soul, I envy people like those millionaires. Here am I working like a navvy for a bare living, never been able to marry; Pye probably in the same case; and you, doctor?"

      "No; I'm a bachelor," I answered.

      "Well, take us three—no doubt in our different walks every bit as capable as Mr. Morland on his Wall Street, or wherever it is. It isn't a righteous distribution of this world's goods."

      "It is odd," said I, speaking my thoughts, "how you came to take up this life."

      "The sort of blunder," said Holgate, "that is made in three cases out of four. I hankered after it in my teens, and once out of them it was too late. Who is going to adapt a youth of twenty-one, without capital, to a commercial life, or a legal life, or a medical life? There is no changing the dice. When the hands are dealt you must abide by them."

      "Yes, we are all waifs," said I sententiously, not being greatly interested in the argument.

      "When I came back from my last voyage," pursued Holgate, "I was in Paris for a bit, and went into the Comédie one night, and–"

      I never heard the rest of Holgate's reminiscence, for the word regarding the theatre suddenly sent a message to my memory and lighted it up instantaneously. I said aloud, and with some excitement,

      "Trebizond!"

      Holgate ceased talking, and Pye removed his cigarette hastily.

      "What, may we venture to ask, is Trebizond?" he said presently.

      I smiled foolishly. "Oh, it is only that I have made a discovery," I said, "a small discovery."

      Again there was silence.

      "Perhaps we are worthy to hear it," suggested Holgate equably.

      Pye still held his cigarette between his fingers and looked at me out of his gold-rimmed glasses.

      "Oh, nothing much," said I, and glanced at my watch. "I'm sorry, I must see my patient safe for the night. I'll look in again."

      I left them and went upstairs, knocking on the boudoir door. Miss Morland opened it.

      "Mlle. Châteray is still sleeping," she said formally.

      "I will leave a dose with her maid," I replied, "so that if it be necessary it may be given in the night."

      "You will, of course, be in attendance if required," she said coldly.

      I bowed.

      "I am paid for it, madam," I answered, though I must confess to a hostile feeling within my heart.

      "I think, then, that is all," she said, and I took my dismissal at the hands of the arrogant beauty with an internal conflict of anger and admiration.

      I did not return to Pye, but went to my own cabin in an irritable condition. It ought not to have mattered to me that the sister of a millionaire, my employer, should treat me more or less as a lackey; but it did. I threw myself on my bunk and took down a book at random from my little shelf. Out of its pages tumbled an evening news-sheet which I now remembered to have bought of a screaming boy as I hurried into the dock gates on the previous afternoon. I had not had time to look at it in my various preoccupations, but, after all, it was the last news of my native land I should have for some time, and so I opened it and began the perusal.

      It was one of those half-penny journals which seem to combine the maximum of vulgarity with a minimum of news. But I passed over the blatant racing items and murder trials with less than my customary distaste, and was rambling leisurely through the columns when I was arrested by a paragraph and sat up briskly. It was the tail that interested me.

      "… It is stated that Prince Frederic is in London. The name of the lady who has so infatuated him is Mlle. Yvonne Trebizond, the well-known prima donna."

      I had recalled the name Trebizond during Holgate's talk, and it seemed strange now that this second discovery should fall so coincidently. The face of Mlle. Châteray had taken me back, by a sudden gust of memory, to certain pleasant days in Paris before I was banished to the East End. I had frequented the theatres and the concert-rooms, and I remembered the vivacious singer, a true comédienne, with her pack of tricks and her remarkable individuality. Mlle. Châteray, then, was no other than Yvonne Trebizond, and–

      I looked down at the paper and read another sentence, which, ere that illumination, had had no significance, but now was pregnant with it.

      "The prince has the full support and sympathy of his sister, Princess Alix."

      I rose abruptly. I can keep my own counsel as well as a lawyer's clerk, but I saw no reason in the world for it now. I had left my glass untouched and my cigar unlit in Pye's cabin. I went back forthwith to finish both.

      The pair were still seated as if expecting me.

      "Patient all right, doctor?" inquired Holgate.

      I nodded. "Mr. Pye," I said, "I find my discovery has amplified itself. When I was here it was of small dimensions. Now it has grown to the proportions of a—well, a balloon," I ended.

      Both men gazed at me steadily.

      "Out with it, man," urged the third officer.

      "I have your permission?" I asked the lawyer's clerk, smiling.

      "When you have told me what it is, I will tell you," said he, gravely jocose.

      I put the paper in Holgate's hands, and pointed to the paragraph. He read it slowly aloud and then looked up.

      "Well?" he asked.

      "I am going to tell you something which you know," I said, addressing Pye. "The lady in the deck cabin is Mlle. Trebizond."

      Holgate started. "Good Heavens!" he exclaimed, but Pye was quite silent, only keeping his eyes on me.

      "I recognized her, but couldn't name her," I went on. "Now it has come back to me."

      "Which means, of course," said Pye unemotionally, "that Mr. Morland is–"

      "The Prince," said Holgate with a heavy breath.

      Pye resumed his cigarette. "With all these sensations, my dear Holgate," he remarked, "I have forgotten my duty. Perhaps you will help yourself."

      Holgate did so. "Good Heavens!" he said again, and then, "I suppose, if you're right, that we carry Cæsar and his fortunes. He has got off with the lady and the plunder."

      "The plunder!" I echoed.

      He indicated the paragraph, and I read now another sentence which I had overlooked.

      "The prince has expressed his intention, according to rumour, of marrying as he chooses, and as he inherits more than a million pounds from his mother, he is in a position to snap his fingers at the Empress. In that case, no doubt, he would follow precedent, and take rank as an ordinary subject."

      I looked up at Holgate.

      "We carry Cæsar and his fortune," he said with a smiling emphasis on the singular, and then he waved his arm melodramatically. "And to think we are all paupers!" and grinned СКАЧАТЬ