Harper's Bazaar/Madame Seeks a Prince

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

“Nicholas Kornstamm was not in the least true to type. His weakness was the eternal one of his Oriental attitude toward the other sex. He paid tribute to it on many an occasion.”

 

MADAME SEEKS A PRINCE

The Story of a Quittance That Was Gained by Proxy

By E. Phillips Oppenheim

Illustrated by Marshall Frantz

THE crowds had melted away from the front of the Hotel de Ville at Cannes when the Honorable Eric Brownleys and his friend Sidney Trench, both aspiring politicians and junior members of the European Congress then in session there, came out together. The former made a little grimace as he noticed the emptying street. .

“No interest in us whatever,” he observed. “The fact that I am private secretary to an English Cabinet Minister seems to leave these people unmoved. Not an upraised hat—not even a bunch of flowers.”

“Seems too bad,” his friend sympathized. “Especially when you're lugging that infernal portfolio about, so that every one shall know that you're part of the show.”

Eric Brownleys summoned a little carriage.

“Not even a photographer,” he grumbled. “We will just leave this at the hotel and go and read the papers in front of the Casino.”

They drove through the clean sunlit streets with their ever-present air of holiday-making, called at the hotel for a few minutes and sauntered back to the Casino. They bought English newspapers at the kiosk and sat down to read under the red-striped umbrellas. Trench, an exceedingly British young man, ordered English tea and, ignoring the rest of the news, devoted himself to an article on the cricket prospects for the forthcoming season. The article was absorbing. It was not until he had finished the last line, and decided that, on the evidence, every county except his own had a chance for the championship, that he chanced to notice a somewhat remarkable change in his companion's demeanor. The Times had slipped through his fingers onto the ground and lay there unnoticed. His hands were clasping the sides of his chair. He was looking out across the harbor, looking at nothing in particular, but with that set strange expression in his eyes which seems to come with a sense of danger.

“Hello, Eric!” his friend exclaimed. “Anything wrong?”

THE Honorable Eric Brownleys forced himself back into the present. The effort was obvious.

“Not exactly wrong,” he rejoined, stooping and picking up the paper. 'There was something here which reminded me—well, of a time in my life I should rather like to forget. We all have those qualms, you know, especially when one is going to be married.”

Trench snorted.

“You're not going to play the man of sentiment, I hope,” he protested. “Anyhow you'd better postpone it for a minute. Here come Peggy and all the crowd.”

Peggy, a very popular person, followed by a little crowd of satellites and companions, bore down upon the two young men. She was more generally known as Lady Margaret Rossiter, and she had been engaged for exactly three days to Eric Brownleys. It was a very satisfactory arrangement and everybody was pleased about it.

“Dear me,” she laughed. “How interesting! The British statesmen taking a rest. What's in that glass, Eric?”

“Sirup and soda water, Peggy. Wouldn't suit you.”

She made a little grimace. :

“Come and have some tea in the Casino,” she invited. “We're going to touch them up at baccarat afterwards. And Eric, are you good for a cruise to-morrow? Your show isn't sitting, is it?”

“I'm afraid not,” he answered doubtfully. “I—well, a matter of fact, I am afraid I shall have to go over to Nice.

“To Nice! Whatever for?”

“A silly errand,” he admitted. “But I'm afraid I shall have to go.”

“Why don't you go this evening?” she suggested. “You'll have lots of time before dinner, and you hate baccarat.”

“It's an idea,” he agreed, “if I could borrow a car. It isn't as far as Nice, either. It's only to Cagnes.”

“You can have the Rolls-Royce,” she assured him. “We can walk back to the villa. It's only a few yards. I very nearly didn't have it out at all.”

“You really mean it?”

“Of course. Don't be late for dinner. Some people are coming. And good luck to you on your mysterious errand, whatever it may be.”

“'I am afraid we have rather broken his spirit,' Cardinge confessed. 'He used to tell us who he was fifty times a day for the first week.”

“Mysterious errand!” Eric Brownleys, a few minutes later, sat back in a corner of the car with the Times a crumpled heap upon the opposite seat and cursed that errand and all that had led to it. He was thirty-seven years old; far enough removed from the follies and weaknesses of his somewhat callow youth. Things had changed for him vastly during the last twelve years, and more settled too had entirely destroyed his love of adventure. the memories conjured up by that short notice be a become almost a nightmare over which he brooded gloomily as he neared his destination.

A CHANGE in the weather corresponding to his own state of depression came about as, after a pause for inquiries in Cagnes, they turned on instead and swung up the steep, narrow road that led to the hills. The sky had become gray and leaden and a mistral was blowing across from the mountain air was white with falling blossoms as the car mounted the long avenue. The wheat fields were bent as though a wave were passing over them. Spiky buds from the chestnut trees fell all around him. The rose petals caught and tossed by the wind came down to lie like velvety snow on the broad empty piazza. There was no sign of life in the villa, the chairs outside were unoccupied. He gave a little shiver as he stepped out and rang the bell.

The coming of Madame amazed him. In the darkened room he was unable to appreciate at first the subtleties of her wonderful preservation It was the Madame of fifteen years ago whose fingers he raised to his lips, her smile a little more languid perhaps, her movements more sedate, her voice carrying the same note.

“You are almost the last, my dear Eric, to obey the call,” she told him. “Where have you been?”

“I was in Washington for six months on a special mission,” he answered, “and afterwards in Tokyo. Very few of my letters have reached me and I only saw the summons in the Times this afternoon. Tell me about some of the others.”

“Hugh Cardinge has bought a farm just opposite, and spends a great deal of time with us, although he has obtained his quittance,” she confided. “Then Sir John Fardell paid us a brief visit,” she added, with a gleam of humor in her eyes.

“Good old Johnny!” Eric laughed. “He's married the richest and the largest woman in the United States.”

“A romance of the studio,” Madame murmured.

“Johnny was always a little after the shekels. Even in the Montmartre he loved the flesh-pots. But Cardinge—I'm interested in Cardinge. Fancy his settling down here!”

“He arrived in rags,” Madame said. “Landed at Marseilles from a South American tramp steamer and walked all the way. You seem to have been the successful one, Eric—heir to an earldom now, they tell me, private secretary to a Cabinet Minister, and engaged to Lady Margaret Rossiter.”

HE WAS a little startled. “You've kept tabs on me pretty well,” he observed.

“I hear things,” she admitted. “Do you want your quittance?”

“I do indeed,” he assured her. “More than ever because I'm going to be married.”

“You will have to earn it,” she warned him.

He moved restlessly in his place. The room with its rather heavy hangings and dim light seemed suddenly oppressive.

It was over-filled with flowers, or perhaps their perfume was a little stifling on account of the lack of air. Opposite to him, Madame, so reminiscent of the past, seemed yet to have lost some note of humanity, to have become the effigy of herself.

“They have their quittances, those others, I suppose,” he remarked. “'My own confession is not a serious matter, but I want it back before I am married.”

“You can have your quittance,” she repeated, “when you have earned it, as the others have done.”

“What can I do?” he asked, a little despairingly. “In the old days I had neither name nor future and nothing mattered. To-day I have both.”

There was a trace of scorn in her slowly parted lips.

“Bourgeois,” she murmured.

“We all revert,” he declared, a little stubbornly. “My grandfather was a shopkeeper. I've got to run straight now whether I want to or not. It happens that I do want to.”

“My dear Eric,” she sighed, “you are very simple. One can only make use of people for what they are. I can only make use of you in your present character—a young man of the highest respectability, engaged to be married, a budding diplomat.”

“And entirely at your service so long as that is understood,” he put in.

“You have been attending the meetings of the European Congress at Cannes every day,” she went on. “You know the delegates?”

“I have met them all,”

“The man from the new East, Nicholas Kornstamm?”

“I know him very slightly. We have to be civil. No one wants to be anything more to those people.”

“You don't know him well enough, for instance, to bring him out here to see me?”

“Great heavens, no!” the young man replied. “There's been nothing doing in social amenities with that crowd. And you, Madame—I should have thought that you would have been the last person in the world to have had anything to do with them.”

Madame smiled cryptically.

“Life brings us strange acquaintances at times,” she said. “It is necessary that I meet Nicholas Kornstamm. Come, don't look so blank, Eric. You are more or less a diplomatist, aren't you? There is more than one side to your brain. You know how things stand between us. I repeat that it is necessary that I meet Nicholas Kornstamm.”

“It is a rotten business,” the young man grumbled, “and I tell you frankly I don't see how to set about it. Kornstamm and I never exchange more than the commonest civilities.”

“You shall have your cue,” Madame promised him.

“In that case, of course, I will do my best,” he assured her.

NICHOLAS KORNSTAMM was not in the least true to type. A representative of one of those new States whose amazing and eruptive appearance had transformed the map of Europe, there was nothing in common between him and the unkempt, uncivilized crowd of emissaries who had at first flooded the Western capitals. He was a small man with rather delicate features, carefully dressed, and well versed in the social decencies of life. There were rumors that he had been valet to a Swedish nobleman in Paris. At any rate he spoke French and English with equal ease and was far more tolerant in his outlook than either his predecessors or his co-agitators. His weakness was the eternal one of his Oriental attitude toward the other sex. He paid tribute to it on many an occasion; noticeably a few days after Eric Brownleys' visit to the villa.

Two women looked at him as he lounged on the steps of the Sporting Club—an elder woman and a younger one, both, it seemed to him, beautiful, both, it seemed, of the world against which he was in arms. The elder woman wore a wonderful coat of ermine, and, if there was a suggestion of artificality about her looks, the artifice was skilful enough to be attractive. The girl was beautiful, too, but very young. They had most certainly looked at him as he had stood aside to let them pass. He hesitated for a moment, abandoned the idea of moving on to the Salon Privé and returned to the Club. ,

They were watching one of the roulette tables when he entered the room, recognized by several habitués, obviously people of consequence. Kornstamm had been unfortunate so far in his attempt at adventures. A young American married lady, temporarily separated from her husband, who had seemed to him promising, he had found the next evening among the professional dancers at a night restaurant. A little milliner at Cannes, whom he had even taken out to dine, had proved a still greater disappointment. These women, however, without a doubt, were of a different class. They knew who he was. They had betrayed their interest. If only they would sit down and play he would maneuver for a seat near. Unfortunately, however, they seemed to have too many acquaintances,

A gleam of hope came to him at last. Eric Brownleys had stopped to speak to them and he remembered with interest that the Englishman, during the last two days, had been almost civil to him. It was a slim chance perhaps, but he made the most of it. When Eric left his friends he took care to catch his eye. The recognition afforded to him was almost normal. He took his courage into his hands and spoke.

“More amusing than Cannes, Mr. Brownleys,” he remarked.

Eric nodded.

“I'm rather glad that show's over,” he observed. “Are you off back again this week?”

“On Saturday,” the other answered, “Would you care for a cocktail?”

For a single moment Eric hesitated. He even wondered whether the price he was paying was not exorbitant. A moment later he pushed the thought away from him.

“Thanks very much,” he said. “I'll have a whisky and soda, if you don't mind.”

They made their way to the bar and exchanged polite inanities until the diplomat from the East found the courage for which he sought.

“If one might be permitted to say so,” he mumbled, “I admire very greatly the ladies with whom you were speaking in the roulette room.”

Eric choked back his instinctive desire to kick his companion, and nodded with affected carelessness.

“A very charming woman, Madame de Soyau,” he observed. “Her niece, too, is very attractive.”

“Madame is French?” Kornstamm inquired.

“American, I believe. She married a Frenchman. She is, by the way, rather interested in your country. Would you care to be presented?”

“It would afford me the greatest happiness,” Kornstamm assented with enthusiasm.

The introduction was effected within the next few minutes. Madame was gracious, although her attitude sometimes was inclined to be cryptic. Kornstamm, however, when the time for his dismissal had arrived, was exultant. He was invited to the villa on the following afternoon, for the purpose of explaining to Madame the new map of Eastern Europe.

ONCE more, with the passing of midday, the mistral came sobbing and booming down from the hills. The sky was suddenly overcast, the olive trees bent their head showing the silver of their leaves, the fields of young wheat were like waves of the sea, even the sturdy vines shook, and the petals from the stripped blossoms of the fruit trees floated down to sink into sad little heaps in the sheltered places. Sky and sea were alike gray. The loungers at the little cafés found their way inside. Only the workers in the fields pursued their tasks unmoved—a glance at the hills, a shrug of the shoulders, then back to the work which must be done. Even Kornstamm, as the car which had been sent to fetch him at the station climbed the last ascent and neared the villa, was conscious of a chill sense of depression. It was a sun palace, this flower-hung building with its solitary tower in the background, the remains of the old château; but with the wind strip ping the petals from the flowers and these gray skies, there was something sinister about its air of seclusion. Inside, however, everything was different. It was an attribute of Madame that she never failed to surround herself with an atmosphere of luxury. There were white rugs, thickly piled in marble hall, and upon the marble stairway. With the first threat of the mistral the chauffage had been lit, and the atmosphere of the place was warm and exotic. Madame, stretched upon a sofa, gave her hand to her visitor without moving.

“So you have come,” she exclaimed. “I was not sure whether it was to-day or to-morrow that we were to expect you. My niece will be glad. So am I. You don't find the house too warm?”

“Not in the least,” he assured her. “In my own country we have all the cold we can face out of doors. Indoors we keep our rooms at a higher temperature than you do.”

“Tell me about yourselves,” she enjoined, “you of the new race who mean to unmake and remake the world. You have many sins piled up against you. How do you justify yourselves?”

Kornstamm's sense of humor was almost negligible. Nevertheless, he smiled. life,” b

“There is indeed nothing new in life,” he declared. “I feel as though I were the defensive. We're doing our best, Madame, to assist in the birth of a nation. It is a terrible sponsorship. Sometimes we fail. In the main we are succeeding.”

Madame sank a little lower into her cushions.

“Tell me about it,” she ordered.

WHEN his voice died away, after almost half-an-hour's monologue, it seemed at first as if Madame slept, though her eyes were wide open. She moved a little restlessly in her place.

“You are eloquent, Mr. Kornstamm,” she said.

“I have a great cause behind me,” he answered

“I have heard you without interruption,” she continued. “You have represented your side of the matter well. I must confess that I should like to hear one of your peasants speak.”

“For that, Madame, I fear that you must come to my own country.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“It would be worth while,” she mused, “if one believed—but never mind that. I have a fancy to show you some parts of this villa. You would like to look over it?”

“Without a doubt, Madame,” he assented.

She rose and led him from the room. She showed him briefly the little winter garden, the dining-room, her boudoir. Then she led him along a flagged way to the tower, the sole remnant of the old château. The lower room was furnished only with a few benches. It had the chill air of a dungeon. Madame shivered.

“Mount but one flight,” she invited, pointing to a ladder staircase. “You will find there a surprise for you.”

“Madame will not accompany me?” he asked politely.

“You will find another guide there,” she replied.

Kornstamm, a little intrigued, climbed the ladder. It was perhaps Mademoiselle he would find. But when he got to the top, it was a man whom he found waiting for him—a man of not wholly prepossessing appearance. Cardinge, who had been writing at a table, looked up at the sound of the voices. He watched Kornstamm's head and shoulders appear. Then he rose to his feet. The visitor stepped out into the room. He looked about him with a little courteous shiver. The place without doubt had a sinister appearance.

“Madame has indicated that you will be my guide, sir,” he announced with a bow. “I frankly confess, however, that I have no desire for further exploration. The villa itself is charming, but there appears, if I may say so, to be something a little crude about this ruin. It reminds me,” he added, looking round—“well, I will not say of what.”

Madame's head and shoulders appeared at the top of the stairway. Cardinge stepped forward and assisted her. She came into the room shaking the dust from her gown.

“I had hoped, Mr. Kornstamm,” she said, “that it might have reminded you of a little room in the prison of St. Joseph at Minkt.”

Kornstamm stood for a moment as still as though turned to stone.

“I do not understand,” he muttered.

“Very soon,” Madame replied, “all will be made clear to you. It was my wish to reproduce as far as possible the interior of that prison as it has been revealed to me. Hugh, read Mr. Kornstamm the letter I have entrusted to you.”

“A letter!” Kornstamm exclaimed.

CARDINGE drew a sheet of paper from his pocket. It was not a sheet of ordinary writing-paper. It more closely resembled one side of a large sugar bag, coarse and crumpled in places.

“It is your wish that I read this, Madame?” he inquired.

“At once.”

“But I do not understand,” Kornstamm began—

“At once,” Madame reiterated, and there was a new note in her voice.

He protested no further. Cardinge smoothed out the letter and read—

Madame:

The fates have played me a strange trick. After four years of torture here, during which I have never once seen an English or French newspaper, there came into my hands to-day a copy of the Times. I have read your summons. Nothing in the world would give me such great joy as to respond to it. But behold me here—an unclean, half-starved thing, unmurdered, because my poor carcass seems unworthy of the bullet which would mercifully end my sufferings. I have dragged out these days without decency, without hope, side by side always with the dreadful harbingers of death. Yet the breath lingers in my body. do not know why. I only know that I resent it. Yesterday « newcomer here, a warder, took pity upon me. He threw in the newspaper left by a traveler in the town hotel. He has promised to post this letter. Well, even if he does, I fear that I have little to hope for. Yet you, Madame, most lovable though most terrible of mistresses, had one amazing trait You would take the life yourself of a faithless friend or servant and kick his body into the dust, but those of your Virgins who served you faithfully, you allowed no one to touch, I have known you risk life, fortune, and freedom on behalf of the least worthy of us. I die here, Madame, for no sin save that I am an aristocrat of my country and have fought as a man should for his family and his order. But enough of that. I call to you for help, Madame, and may it come before another winter, or my blood will have frozen and my bones snapped.

And, if no help is possible, then, Madame, accept this excuse that I may not answer your summons, and with it, my farewell.

Paul of Smolatensk.

CARDINGE folded up the letter quietly and remained with his eyes fixed upon Madame. Kornstamm looked from one to the other and back to the staircase over which the trap-door had fallen. Surely it could not be possible that he had blundered through this land of roses into tragedy. He seemed a changed man as he stood there. His air of trim and curled perfection had left him. Even his mustache drooped. He was a small man, with a mean-looking mouth, who was confronted with unexpected danger.

“I do not understand,” he protested, “why this letter has been read to me.”

“I should have 'explained,' Madame said smoothly. “The letter is from an old friend of mine—Prince Paul of Smolatensk. You will remember him as the commander of an army and a very gallant general. His death was reported some four years ago.”

“One is inclined to regret the inaccuracy of the report,” Kornstamm snarled.

“Death is sometimes merciful,” Madame replied. “Paul lives, it appears, in misery and torture.”

“On my return, Madame,” Kornstamm promised, “I will inquire into the conditions of this man's imprisonment, if indeed the letter is genuine. I will see if anything can be done to alleviate his discomforts.”

Madame and Cardinge had changed places. The latter now was guarding the trap-door. Madame had taken the chair from which he had risen. Her head drooped a little backwards. She smiled.

“Is that all you can promise?” she asked.

“I do not know,” Kornstamm rejoined. “I might inquire when I return into the circumstances of his detention. It is possible that a certain measure of freedom might be arranged.”

“When you return?” Madame repeated softly.

“So I have said.”

“But,” she pointed out, “you will not be returning just yet.”

“I have taken my place in the train to Berlin on Sunday,” Kornstamm announced.

Madame shook her head.

“That,” she told him, “was premature. The day that Prince Paul of Smolatensk is free and not before.”

He laughed contemptuously, though uneasily.

“I defy you to keep me,” he said. “I am a subject of a friendly country and an official personage.”

“And I,” Madame retorted, “am myself and I do as I choose.”

There was a tense moment of silence. Then Kornstamm shook himself, and struggled against his gathering forebodings.

“This is absurd,” he insisted. “You cannot keep me here against my will. I shall be missed, searched for beyond a doubt.”

“You flatter yourself,” Madame assured him coolly. “I doubt whether any one will miss you unless you have failed to pay your bill. Your colleagues, as you know, left this afternoon. I cannot conceive any one thinkig it worth while to search for you. I will imagine that you are off on some adventure. You have already established a reputation, I understand, for unexplained abscences from your hotel.”

Kornstamm scowled.

“Very well,” he submitted. “Do what you will with me.”

Madame rose to her feet.

“Excellent!” she exclaimed. “My friend here and I will do our best to reproduce the conditions of your prison at Minkt. I fear that we shall err on the side of luxury. Our water is more drinkable, and our bread, I fancy, not so coarse. Still, as you see, we have stripped the place of rugs, and I think I can promise you that you will not pampered as regards diet.”

“Before this goes any further,” Kornstamm demanded, “tell me exactly terms of my liberty.”

“A telegram to the governor of the prison at Minkt,” Madame replied, “ordering him to release Prince Paul and advance him the funds for his journey here.”

“Thank you,” Kornstamm sneered. “I only wanted to know.”

Madame rose and walked toward the trap-door. Kornstamm made a rush for it, but Cardinge's hand was upon his throat. He swung him round and felt him all over.

“No weapons,” he announced. “I don't suppose you'd have the pluck to use a pistol, though, if you had it.”

Kornstamm used an ugly word, and Cardinge sent him scowling across the room, dizzy with a blow on the side of his face.

“Bread and water at ten,'” Madame declared, looking backwards. “Make as much noise as you like. The servants are expecting it.”

“You'll pay for this,'” Kornstamm shouted after them, as he heard the bolt drawn in the trap-door.

CAGNES and the hillside was itself again one afternoon about three weeks later when a car from Nice turned in at the avenue. The sunlight glowed and burned in the heart of the olive trees and in the bosom of the hills. The little vines flourished with the glory of it. The blue waters of the Mediterranean glittered with a million pin-pricks of fire. The great piazza was more overhung than ever with the drooping pink and white blossoms. Madame, standing on the topmost step in her cool white gown—Madame watching the slim figure who leaned back in a corner of the touring car—seemed suddenly to have borrowed youth and joy from their sun-drawn sweetness. Perhaps her eyes looked back for a moment into the world which lay behind; the world which the pulses of youth made beautiful; the world where romance flourished as bountifully as the roses that hung on every side of her. For Madame grew younger with the pity which shone in her eyes, as the car drew up, and its solitary occupant, tall still, but bent, the specter of a gray, handsome man, stepped out and came toward her with nervous footsteps. He seemed even to welcome the support of her hand.

“Madame,” he murmured, “I have obeyed. But how the miracle was worked for me, I do not know. I have a fancy that you could tell me.”

“Presently, Paul,” she promised, leading him to a chair. “You have had a long journey.”

The servants came out, the car was dismissed. Wine and fruit were spread upon the table. The voice of the traveler grew stronger. Madame became herself again—a little stony, a vital force working from behind a mask.

“You remember Cardinge?” she asked, as Hugh came out at her summons.

The two men shook hands. Smolatensk passed his fingers over his forehead a little wearily.

“I remember,” he acknowledged, “but the effort of memory pains. Soon it will be better. I have had a long journey—Budapest, Trieste, Venice, Genoa—yet every breath of air from the carriage was glorious. Now I must know the riddle of it all, Madame. I never believed that they would let me go.”

Madame smiled.

“A little comedy,” she told him. “The tragedy was at your end. We, perhaps, have had the amusement; you, the suffering. Come!”

They took him through the villa to the tower, up the stairs, through the trap-door. He found himself in a perfectly bare room with whitewashed walls and windows too high to let in more than a slit of light. The only article of furniture in the room was a single hard chair and upon this, with folded arms, a small man was seated—a small, unshaven man from whom the conceit had gone, whose mouth was drooping, and whose eyes were like the eyes of vermin. He was a very unpleasant looking spectacle.

“Here,” Madame announced, “is your unwilling liberator. He is not a pleasant looking object, is he? We have been compelled, also, to keep him clean. Otherwise we have tried to reproduce in this little chamber the conditions of Minkt.”

Smolatensk shook his head.

“This is a palace,” he assured “But who is the man?”

“I am afraid we have rather broken his spirit,” Cardinge confessed. “He used to tell us who he was fifty times a day for the first week. His name is Nicholas Kornstamm. He was second envoy and representative of your nation at the recent conference here He has also a position there which, I understand, is practically equivalent to our Lord Chief Justice.”

“You kidnapped him?” Smolatensk gasped.

“Why not?” Madame demanded. “One must have one's amusement. I had Cardinge here, too. He stayed on purpose to help. Kornstamm,” she went on, “this is Prince Paul of Smolatensk. Stand up and bow to your superior.”

Kornstamm rose to his feet. Twice he tried to speak and choked back the words, He feared Cardinge no more than a coward fears any other man, but the sound even of Madame's voice filled him with terror.

“I have kept my word,” he faltered.

Madame smiled.

“And you are free,” she rejoined. “Mr. Cardinge will give you your coat and waistcoat and the car which brought the Prince here is waiting to take you to Nice.”

“To Nice,” he muttered, already on his way to the staircase.

They all three descended, Kornstamm a little unsteadily. Cardinge took him to his own room, restored him his coat and waistcoat, escorted him out to the piazza, and gave him some wine. He drank eagerly and held out his glass for more.

“Better go steady at first,” Cardinge advised him. “You've got heaps of money in your pocketbook, I noticed. I should recommend you to spend an hour at the coiffeur's in Nice. The train through to Italy goes at three o'clock.”

“How do you know,” Kornstamm demanded, “that it is not to the police I shall go?”

Cardinge laughed scornfully.

“What Chief of Police in France,” he asked, “would listen to your story? What Frenchman is there who would not throw up his hat with joy to think that one of you self-appointed plutocrats had been forced to taste for a little time some of the degradation you have brought upon others? Why, Prince Paul is one of France's heroes! Upon my word, if you promise to go to the Chief of Police, I almost think I must come in to Nice with you!”

“My Government at least will have something to say about this,” Kornstamm threatened.

“Perhaps. But what Government will they find to listen to them?” Cardinge plied contemptuously.

CLAIRE came out upon the piazza just as the car drove off. She waved her to the scowling figure. a

“You might have let me in for the finish, she complained.

Cardinge shrugged his shoulders.

“One can never tell with this breed of person,” he observed. 'There might have been trouble.”

“And the Prince?” she asked breathlessly.

“Madame is showing him the south gardens. I left them in the rose arbor. The Prince is drinking in the sunshine as a thirsty man drinks wine, and Madame has forgotten all about her complexion.”

A voice came from the garden below, a little raised for Madame, yet with something of its old quality of music.

“Claire, send Denise with my parasol at once.”

(The last of this series of stories will appear in the April issue)