The Adventures of Miss Gregory/The Elopement
VII
THE ELOPEMENT
IN the hall of that particular Berlin hotel which balances the stuffy inconvenience of its private apartments by the ornate spaciousness of its public rooms, Mrs. Seton-Howe was entertaining a small circle of her acquaintances with tea and prattle. She was a pale, eager woman whose husband had his being, and presumably his uses, on the fringe of the diplomatic service; and she was to be met with here and there on the continent of Europe, always established in a reputable hotel, always a hostess on a minute scale, and always equipped with an interesting version of the current subject of gossip. A certain ambassador once said of her that her instrument in the concert of the powers was the tinkling cymbal.
Her guests were diplomatic and consular ladies and Miss Gregory—the last-named newly arrived in Berlin, and encountered by Mrs. Seton-Howe in a shop. Her chair was withdrawn to the edge of the circle that surrounded Mrs. Seton-Howe's tea-table, and she seemed content to sit outside the ring of irresponsible tongues and play the part of an audience of one to a platform of five. There was nothing in any of them that could enhance the pages of her note-book; they were not figures that would have a place in the rich chronicle of her travels, the noble stout volume that was the goal of her wayfaring. She let her thoughts wander while they chattered, and looked idly about her at the grandeur of gilt and moulding that made her feel as if she were drinking tea in a cathedral.
A fellow traveller would have noted a subtle change in Miss Gregory, now that she had crossed the frontier from Russia and was definitely in real Europe again. It was not merely that she was in possession of the trunks that had been forwarded from England to meet her in Berlin, and was attired in their contents—clothes of that exquisite inconspicuousness which is above all the fashions. It was more than that. She seemed to have changed her front to deal with a world in which men and women have a more complicated equipment than one finds on the East Coast of Africa, for example. Her quick, enterprising face looked about her with an undiminished courage; but there was a quality of reserve to supplement it. She was back in that world where manners count for as much as men, and she was prepared to handle it with fitting ceremony.
She was recalled to consciousness by a name that was mentioned. Mrs. Seton-Howe, always hard on the trail of the scandal of the moment, was talking vigorously. There had been, within the last few days, an elopement. A lady of a small royal house had vanished from the institution in which her august relatives had confined her in the hope of curing her of a fancy for a non-royal admirer; and the affair had leaked into the papers. Mrs. Seton-Howe, it appeared, knew all about it.
"They called it nerves," she was saying; "but everybody knew what the trouble was. Even as a quite young girl she was—queer!"
"Was she?" inquired one of her hearers.
"Oh, yes. There was talk of marrying her to one of the Altstadts—Prince Maximilian, you know; but it fell through. And the next thing was, she was sent to a home for her nerves. The trouble about the American man was hushed up, and he, I think, resigned and went back to the States."
"Did you know him?" inquired a consular lady.
"Know him? Mr. Van Cuyp? Of course I knew him," answered Mrs. Seton-Howe. "He had a beard. I didn't like him. But—why!"
She turned to Miss Gregory.
"You were in Paris when the Czar was there?" she said. "Of course you were. Then you must remember Mr. Van Cuyp, too?"
"Van Cuyp!" repeated Miss Gregory. "A Dutchman?"
"No; an American. Don't you remember him?"
"It's so long ago," said Miss Gregory apologetically.
Mrs. Seton-Howe looked at her thoughtfully. "Yes," she said. "And did n't you accompany your brother, the General, on that mission to the Kronberg Court? You must have seen her too?"
"I met so many royalties then," said Miss Gregory, "and I spoke German so badly, that I really can't remember which was which. Stupid of me, is n't it?"
"How strange!" said Mrs. Seton-Howe coldly, and turned again to the more profitable converse with her other guests.
"When I knew her," she told them, "she was a dark, thin girl with the silliest way of staring at people; I was n't a bit surprised when I heard of her affair with the American, and that she had been sent to a home."
"Was she pretty?" inquired the wife of an attaché.
"Oh, no," Mrs. Seton-Howe replied, "not pretty; merely unusual! Still,"—with a glance at Miss Gregory,—"one could hardly help remembering her."
Miss Gregory smiled absently and was silent. It was the easiest way to induce the others to overlook her. She had her reasons for not wishing to be questioned about the Kronberg affair. She let the talk flow on, and presently took her leave.
Mrs. Seton-Howe glanced at her broad back as she went.
"Wonderfully preserved, isn't she?" she remarked in a low tone. "But her memory—she 'll be quite an old woman soon!"
There is a special fate whose function it is to misguide the adventurous and see that their powers do not run to waste for lack of material to work upon. Miss Gregory had turned her back upon the East and arrived in Germany, where life is ordered by rule; yet, within a week of her advent, she found herself, as if by design, moving in the midst of the matter that sowed the newspapers with large head-lines and kept Mrs. Seton-Howe talking.
She had been visiting friends to the east of Berlin, and was returning to the city by one of those trains whose progress consists chiefly of stoppages at dreary little stations, neat as toys, lettered all over with notices beginning, with the word Verboten. It was already evening, and growing dark; and Miss Gregory, with nothing to read and no one to talk to, found each succeeding stoppage more exasperating than the last. She had the ladies' compartment of the train to herself, and had been occupying her mind with experiments on the heating apparatus, controlled by a mysterious lever, when the train slid through a cutting, and came to a standstill again at the station where the affair began.
"Does n't anybody either get in or out of this train?" Miss Gregory wondered indignantly, and then composed herself swiftly to the incurious and semi-torpid aspect proper to travel in the more civilized lands. The tall station-master was opening the door of her compartment to admit a couple of travellers. Miss Gregory, with her hands in her lap, lifted her eyes slowly to inspect them as they took their seats opposite to her.
The station-master slammed the door and the-train resumed its spasmodic progress. When it was clear of the station, Miss Gregory looked up again. One of her fellow travellers was plainly a maid, a servant; it was the other whom she found interesting. She was a woman still short of thirty years of age, dressed with an extreme simplicity, and she showed to the light of the overhead lamp a thin, painful, desperate face. She leaned back against the cushions as if she were shrinking from an attack, and, though she held her features rigid, her fingers were fidgeting in a nervous agony. Her attitude, her expression spoke of an overmastering terror; the woman was tense as a fiddle-string with fear and fatigue.
Miss Gregory had forgotten to hide her inspection of her, and found suddenly that her gaze was being returned.
"Why do you look at me?" demanded the other, with a breathless energy. "You have been staring. Why?"
"Oh, I'm sorry!" exclaimed Miss Gregory, genuinely abashed.
The maid leaned over quickly and laid a hand on the younger woman's arm, as if to hush her. The other shook her off.
"Do you know me?" she demanded of Miss Gregory. "Is that why you stare?"
"Yes," said Miss Gregory gently, "I know who you are."
The maid gave her a troubled look, and then turned to her mistress, who was sitting bolt upright, staring at Miss Gregory.
"You know?" she questioned fearfully. "You—you have been sent"
Miss Gregory was all at sea. She had recognized her travelling companion, thanks to an average memory for faces, and a certain interest with which she had observed, years before, a silent, unsmiling girl standing by a king's side at a court ball. But the rest was still incomprehensible to her. She only knew that the weary, strained woman before her was in fear of her.
"Nobody has sent me anywhere," she said. "If you had not asked me, I should not have spoken to you. As it is, if there is any help I can give, anything I can do"
"Help!" repeated the other vaguely.
The maid leaned across to Miss Gregory. "Pardon, Madame," she said. "But her Highness is incognito. She was—er—startled to be recognized."
Miss Gregory nodded. Her Highness was still staring, as if it cost her an effort to bring her mind to bear on this encounter. A momentary touch of vacancy in her manner suddenly gave Miss Gregory the clue she needed, and she understood everything. She remembered now: this was the Princess concerning whom there had been talk; she had been spoken of in connection with the retirement of a young American diplomat; it had been said that her mind was deranged, and that she had been placed under restraint in some private institution or other. The tale had gone the round of Europe, supported by occasional official denials, and now it returned to Miss Gregory. She took a moment for consideration. The wayside station, the fear and weariness, the dust on the dress of the Princess and her companion, all told their tale. This was not an ordinary journey, but a flight.
Miss Gregory fixed a masterful eye on the maid, who met it unwillingly.
"I have no doubt I understand," she said. "I hope you are not acting on your own responsibility. If you are not, I shall be glad to give any help in my power; but I must be sure that I am not helping you to compromise your mistress."
"Oh, Madame!" protested the maid, alarmed at the grey-haired stranger's authority. "But I assure you"
Miss Gregory shook her head. "It is not your assurances that I require," she said.
There was a consultation on the other side of the carriage, carried on in whispers, while Miss Gregory, in her corner seat, looked out of the window at the dark landscape to help their deliberation to as much privacy as possible. The toot of the engine, thus signalling that it was about to stop at another station, made them hurry their conclusion.
"Madame!"
It was the Princess who spoke, and Miss Gregory turned to listen gravely.
"We are arriving at a station," said the Princess, speaking with a sort of timid hurry. "It is possible—somebody may look into the train. If you can help"
"If I can I will," Miss Gregory assured her. "And afterwards perhaps you will tell me what troubles you, so that I may help further."
Only the guard of the train put his head in at the window, while they were in the station, to inquire if they were all going to Berlin. Miss Gregory nodded an answer, and he left them. The Princess and her companion sat tensely still and silent; for them the minutes of waiting were allies leagued on the side of their pursuers. Both sighed with relief when at last the engine made up its mind to go on, and the station swung backward past their windows.
When only the night and the shapes of wayside trees spied upon them, Miss Gregory approached the matter of explanation. It would have been hard for almost any other person to impose himself upon the reluctant confidence of the Princess, but Miss Gregory had advantages conferred by nature. Honesty was written large upon her countenance, the rigid, impregnable honesty of her class and kind, and therewith was all the weight of her kindly and forceful personality. She made an atmosphere about her of refuge and support; and the poor, distraught woman was only too willing to accept the aid she offered and depend upon her.
Once started, the whole story came out with a rush. The American diplomat, it seemed, was a person of persistence; he was not only still extant, but it was he who was the moving spirit in this adventure. "Daniel," the Princess called him, rousing in Miss Gregory's mind the image of a bearded young man with a meditative smile and a slow, pleasant voice whom she had known in Paris years before. The weight of royal displeasure had not availed to crush Daniel. Through all the years of her confinement, while doctors and nurses, acting on the assumption that she was insane, had undermined her sanity, Daniel had been moving in the background of circumstance, active with bribes and stratagems; and on three occasions an elopement and a marriage in France had been frustrated by the merest accident. This time, also, there had been an accident. The Princess had found her way from the house cleared for her; men had been bought wholesale, and one, so far as Miss Gregory could gather, had been beaten about the head; but Daniel, who was to have been in waiting with a motor-car, had not turned up. The Princess and her maid had found themselves at the appointed place with none to meet them; and, after waiting as long as was safe, they had walked through a belt of pine woods to the station. Their joint money barely afforded them tickets to Berlin; and, once clear of the place of her detention, with the flavour of freedom new in her mouth, the Princess had insisted on going on. She had no plans and scarcely any hopes—only the desperation of an escaped prisoner who runs toward the horizon until he drops. A vague idea that somewhere behind the tangle of her life Daniel moved, and would emerge to save her, possessed her faculties; in that faith, she went forward blindly.
Miss Gregory heard her in silence, merely helping her out with sympathetic nods from time to time. The tale was told with a disjointed energy, but she gained from it a sufficiently clear conception of both the Princess and her American lover. It had the true quality of the old romance. The Princess, with her shaken intelligence, had a touch of the simplicity and general feebleness of medieval heroines; and Daniel, labouring loyally and patiently to set her free, stood for the knight. She liked the half-glimpses she got of Daniel's methods. Now it was a nurse won over to his interest, now a man convinced against his better judgment that Daniel was harmless. Once or twice it was a man hit accurately on some tender part of his anatomy; in such instances, Daniel had been pressed for time.
She turned from these reflections to a consideration of the matter in hand. There seemed yet to be one chance for the Princess. Daniel owned automobiles, two or three of them,—and stabled them at a garage in Berlin. Neither the Princess nor her maid knew where the garage was; but the mere fact presented a possibility. Miss Gregory deposited it at the back of her mind for future reference.
It was past nine o'clock when they rattled at last into the Friedrichstrasse station at Berlin, arriving from the darkness to the lights and clamour of that terminus. Here, too, they passed unnoticed; it seemed that the news of the Princess' flight had not yet been passed along, and they had outdistanced the precautions which would spread over the country like the rings that widen where a stone is thrown into still water. None stayed them as they passed forth from the station and came out to the lively street opposite the great station, with its rows of lighted hotels staring down over the pavement.
Miss Gregory was not sure of her next step.
"The difficulty is," she explained, "that the hotel where I am staying is just the place where you are most likely to be recognized."
"I will not go to a hotel," said the Princess quickly.
Miss Gregory looked at her anxiously. The safe ending to her journey seemed to have stirred her to something like gaiety, and in her voice, as she spoke, there were notes of hysterical excitement. She stood on the pavement, staring down the long street at the leisurely prosperous people who throng Berlin when the lamps are lighted, and the hand with which she touched Miss Gregory's arm trembled. The maid, on the other side, explained in a whisper.
"They call them hotels, the places in which her Highness has been—treated," she said.
"Well, then," said Miss Gregory, "what would you like to do?"
"To do?" repeated the Princess. "I should—yes, I should like to go for a walk."
"A walk?" repeated Miss Gregory, in surprise. "But, please"
The Princess smiled thoughtfully, and turned to the right, toward where, at the end of a length of street, the lights of Unter den Linden tilled the distance with a soft, luminous haze. She set off at an uneasy pace, leaving her companions to follow or not, as they might think fit.
"Is she—wilful as a rule?" asked Miss Gregory of the maid. She had an idea that this manner of behaviour might lie at the back of the Princess' misfortunes.
"Sometimes," replied the maid, with feeling, "she is simply dreadful. There have been times, Madame, when only force could make her submit to rules. When Monsieur Daniel failed to appear this afternoon, I would have turned back—me! But her Highness would not be advised; and thus we are here, on the pavement of a street, like canaille. And what will come of it who can say?"
"We will let her walk a little first," said Miss Gregory, carefully keeping the Princess in sight. "But later we must manage to bring her somewhere where I can telephone. We've got to find that garage, somehow."
The Princess walked slowly, as young princesses are taught to walk by those who shape them for their curious and narrow destiny. She passed, with a faint, fixed smile, between the promenading groups, erect and aloof. Miss Gregory felt some anxiety lest those citizens, accustomed to look on while royalty went by, should recognize the mien and manner with which she went through their midst. At the corner of Unter den Linden she paused to look for some moments at one of the finest streets in the world; and here a roving gallant marked her, and raised his hat in the hope of making her acquaintance.
Fortunately, Miss Gregory was dose behind and saw the salute, or the affair might have gone to unpleasant lengths, for the Princess acknowledged it with a gracious little bow. The gallant grinned, and was approaching to speak when Miss Gregory thrust her way forward and met him with the stern menace of her gaze and her impeccable respectability of appearance. He was a dashing young person, but his courage had its limits, and before that front of power his gay address broke and failed. He mumbled something and backed away.
"I know this street," said the Princess musingly. "When I was a little girl, I stayed here for a week, at a house up there."
She pointed toward that end of the street which is overlooked by the imperial castle.
"Would you not like some supper?" suggested Miss Gregory, eager to get to the neighbourhood of a telephone.
"Not yet," answered the Princess tranquilly. "I will walk first. Let us go this way."
She led the way toward Berlin's chief park, the Tiergarten, and there was nothing for Miss Gregory to do but walk at her side. The Princess was happy in mere liberty and novelty of scene, relishing both too deeply to admit any other consideration to her thoughts. The years of "treatment" had had their effect: they had disturbed the mind which in the end they must have overthrown. Even "Daniel" was not present in the Princess' consciousness for the while; she was feeling her way gropingly through a maze of fresh sensations, intent upon each new sight as it presented itself. She looked about her, as she went, like a child in a museum, where every object is a mystery or a revelation, and did it, withal, with a certain effect of pleasant condescension that made Miss Gregory wonder. It was not merely a woman of uncertain intelligence whom she had to steer through a labyrinth of difficulties to a refuge: it was a woman bred and trained to regard herself as immune from the small exigencies which have so large a part in most people's lives. She could not even cross the road like any one else; her manner of effecting that transit almost amounted to a revelation of her identity.
It was a big, chubby policeman who saw her coming, with the grey hairs of Miss Gregory in attendance upon her, and the demure maid walking behind. He was standing dreamily in the roadway; but, as his eyes rested on the little group, he woke alarmingly to life. Shopkeepers taking their ease after a day of business might overlook the salient quality in the Princess, but not a policeman grown stout in the service of shepherding royalty, who had brooded patiently, while standing to rigid attention as they went by, upon the manners that characterized those well-fed demi-gods. He surveyed them for a couple of seconds with a shrewd stare, then held up the traffic—the swift evening traffic of Unter den Linden—while they crossed the road. He did not do it with any unobtrusiveness; he was too enthusiastic a royalist for that. It was not the almighty hand of the London constable that he employed, nor the useful club of New York, but his conspicuous and crowd-attracting sword.
"Halt!" he barked stridently to the cabs and motors, and began to run, backward and forward, signalling with his weapon.
Miss Gregory, who lacked none of the passionate sense of privacy that belongs to her race, repressed with difficulty an impulse to run, to desert the Princess and leave her to the tender mercies of the reverent policeman and dutiful crowds. This was more than she had bargained for. As she crossed the road at the Princess' elbow, she felt the blood sting in her cheeks, while a cold thrill crawled about her spine. It was not the imminent danger of discovery and arrest that disturbed her; it was the rapidly growing groups that looked on, and the bulging self-satisfaction of the fat policeman who had done it all. To his machine-like salute the Princess returned her formal little bow. Miss Gregory could have beaten her in rage and impatience.
"Now we 'll be followed," she whispered, as they reached the opposite pavement and turned toward the vast arch of the Brandenburg Gate. "Every loafer in the street will hang at our heels till we are tracked down and taken!"
"Why?" inquired the Princess innocently.
Miss Gregory decided not to waste an answer.
But they were not followed. The fat policeman did not understand why royal-looking ladies should go on foot through the evening streets, but he did understand that they must not be followed. For such exercise of intelligence fatter men than he had received promotion and other rewards. A brief uproar, that made Miss Gregory look back anxiously, was caused by his methods of turning back those who would have come after them. He had a noisy way with him, but it sufficed.
They came, at that leisurely pace which the Princess affected, to the splendid broad road and the gentle trees of the Tiergarten, where the Siegesaller is bordered with white marble memories of Germany's rulers. Few people were here; only lovers walked in absorbed couples, and spared no attention for three women who passed through the shadows and spoke little. Miss Gregory was turning over in her mind the expedient of threatening to leave the Princess to herself if she did not forthwith come to a cab, and so to a telephone, when the latter stopped by one of the marble heads.
"Yes," said Miss Gregory; "what is it?"
"My grandfather," said the Princess. "He is handsome—not?"
"Very," agreed Miss Gregory doubtfully, abandoning thoughts of her expedient. She was a good conservative, and, after all, there is a decency to be considered in dealing with a woman who claims kinship with statues erected in public places. Such people are the world's wards; and the world, which is peremptory enough with its children, must use them with a certain ceremony.
The Princess stared thoughtfully at the marble bust.
"He was a good old man," she said. When I was quite little, I used to know him. A king, but kind, always kind. Once when my governess beat me he comforted me, and I asked him to kill her. I thought he could do anything because he was a king. He took me on his knee and laughed very kindly. 'Kings can't kill people,' he told me, 'but people can kill kings. That's why you and I must always be polite and obedient, for fear they get tired of us.' When he died I had no friend left."
She made a queer little gesture as if she called the marble head to witness, and turned hack again toward the entrance to the park.
It was when they were already at the beginning of Unter den Linden that a man, who had observed them for some minutes, came forward as if to pass them, and managed to brush against Miss Gregory. For such as he the spot is favourable; the trees intercept the lights, and a quick-fingered practitioner can turn the fact to advantage. This one, however, was not so dexterous but that Miss Gregory felt his hand as it brushed her skirt expertly and found and entered her pocket. She could move as quickly as a swordsman, and the man uttered a shrill oath as he found his wrist grasped and himself pushed back against the wall.
"You struggle," threatened Miss Gregory, "and I will shout!"
She spoke an efficient if not an idiomatic German. It had served so far with the Princess, and it was entirely comprehensible to the thief. He looked up into her strong, serious face, and began to whine.
"I wasn't trying to steal. I was only going to pass, and then you caught hold of me"
"No," said Miss Gregory decisively. "No; that won't do."
His shifty, shrewd eyes measured her and estimated the chances of her mercy. Women were sentimental, in his experience.
"I am starving," he tried. "I have had no food to-day. Lady, let me go."
The Princess had halted beside Miss Gregory and was looking on with a sort of horrified amusement.
"Yes, let him go," she said. "He is—ugly." ·
He was ugly, a lean, furtive-eyed man with a three days' beard and the cut of a galley slave in his whining humility. Only the cities spawn such creatures; they are fungus-growths of the trodden pavements; they move like secret worms in the interstices of civilization.
"Yes, I 'll let him go," said Miss Gregory. The thief looked up alertly at the word. "But"
She held him with her hard eyes and let his wrist drop. While he stood where she had thrust him, she put her hand into her pocket and brought forth the purse he would have stolen, a comfortable morocco-leather pouch with a gold clasp. She held it loosely in her hand. A more mettlesome robber than the creature before her would have snatched it and made good his escape easily enough; but she had taken the gauge of her man.
"This was what you wanted?" she said. "Yes? Well, if you will do what I ask you shall have it."
"What?" The thief was incredulous.
She unclasped it and let him see its contents, a desirable wad of paper money, some gold pieces, and various silver coins. It was the right bait; it looked compact and opulent, a heart-warming handful of ready money for a hard-working criminal.
"Was wollen Sie?" inquired the thief eagerly. "What is it you want?"
"You know this city well?" inquired Miss Gregory. He gave a quick assent. "Yes! Well, have you ever heard of a gentleman, an American, named Van Cuyp?"
The Princess uttered a surprised exclamation. The thief shook his head.
"Van Kipe?" suggested Miss Gregory. "Van Koop? Van Kape? No? Well, this gentleman that I speak of has automobiles, and keeps them in a garage somewhere."
"Ah!" The thief seemed to see light.
"You can find that garage—not? Perhaps you have friends who can help you. What do you think?"
"What if I find it?"
"Then you arc to give a message. Mr. Van Cuyp is to come with a car to—" She hesitated and thought. "He is to come here, where we are now, and wait. Tell him—er—tell him—let me see."
"What is your name?" she inquired of the Princess swiftly. "Margaretha? Yes."
Then to the thief: "Tell him that Fräulein Margaretha is here. Nothing else. Come with him and you shall have the purse. Do you understand? Can you do it?"
The thief, it seemed, had his pride. He drew himself up with a certain assurance.
"If the garage is in Berlin," he said, "I will find it in half an hour. Sehen Sie—I have a connection!"
"Go, then," bade Miss Gregory, and he went swiftly.
"And now," said Miss Gregory, "now for some supper."
There is a great café which flares at the corner where the Friedrichstrasse enters Unter den Linden, and it never closes. Throughout the night, its lights signal its costly hospitality to the street like votive lamps at an altar to appetite. Here a word to the waiter will furnish the alien patron with a newspaper from his own country, whatever that country may be; the New York Herald hangs on the wall alongside of the Bulawayo Chronicle. To this electric-lit oasis Miss Gregory led the Princess and her maid, and found for them a little table as far as possible from the street. It was the only means she could devise to keep the Princess stationary, and it was at least better than wandering at her side through the crowds in which she might at any moment be recognized. The outcome of the affair, its failure or success, now rested on the faith of a thief; the chances of the city streets must determine it. Miss Gregory, resigning herself like a good fatalist to the inevitable, gave her mind to the examination of the wine-list. The part of an amateur providence is wearying, and she was conscious of an appetite.
She might have found her meal more satisfactory if the Princess had not shown so plainly that she had never been in a public restaurant before. The place was fairly full; folk talked and laughed vivaciously, and the tables accommodated a fine variety of city types. The Princess stared with all her eyes at this undreamed-of development in the life of those whom she knew chiefly as inhabitants of the crowded side-walks, who stared at the carriages of their betters.
"Do they come here every night?" she asked Miss Gregory. "Or is this a fête?"
"No, it's not a fête," replied Miss Gregory.
"They are very gay," commented the Princess. "I did n't expect to see people so gay."
"You will find a lot of happy people wherever you go," Miss Gregory assured her—"even poor people, much too poor to come to places like this—people with so little to be glad about that it makes one wonder. Most people, in fact, have a lot of happiness."
"Have they?" said the Princess. "But that is strange."
Food and a glass of wine had helped Miss Gregory back to optimism.
"You won't find it strange soon," she declared. "Only let us get word to Mr. Van Cuyp, and your happiness will begin, too."
The Princess blinked like a puzzled child.
"Ah, Daniel!" she said. "Yes, if I could find Daniel"
"You must eat something," said Miss Gregory. "You need it. And drink some of this wine. And then we'll go and see if Daniel has arrived. No; we can't go till you have eaten something."
The Princess, by good fortune, was docile for the while and obeyed Miss Gregory simply. But the interest of the scene about her was too strong, and she could not refrain from staring at it and making comments on her neighbours. Miss Gregory would have liked to linger out an hour in the café, to save futile walking up and down; but presently the Princess' behaviour began to attract attention, and she was fain to go.
"It's too soon to hope, yet," she said, as they came out, "but we 'll walk down and see. It's time we had some good luck to keep us cheerful."
They recrossed the Friedrichstrasse and went down toward the Brandenburg Gate, all of them somewhat restored to strength and courage by their meal. A hundred paces farther on, the maid stopped short and uttered a fatuous little giggle.
"I can see it," she said. "I can see it. It is waiting for us—the great auto of Monsieur Daniel."
"Be quiet!" ordered Miss Gregory. "There are lamps, but it may be some one else. Come along quickly."
The big lamps stared solemnly, cutting a swath of light through the mild night; it was not till they were close upon them that Miss Gregory was touched with fear that the thief might have brought some enemy—the police or other officials. But there was no longer time to hide the Princess and reconnoitre the position, and a moment later a fur-coated man had sprung forward, and her fears were at an end.
"Daniel!" cried the Princess.
"Margaret!" answered he.
Miss Gregory, the maid, and the thief smiled benevolently upon their meeting.
"But look here!" said Daniel. "We 've got no time to waste on explanations. My trouble was running down a schoolmaster; and when I got to the place you were n't there. But, say, who's this?"
"You remember me in Paris, Mr. Van Cuyp," suggested Miss Gregory, offering her hand.
"Why, of course—Miss Gregory."
"I found her wandering," explained Miss Gregory, "and took her under my wing. That's all. I would n't wait to be grateful, if I were you. They 'll be searching this city like a pocket pretty soon."
Mr. Van Cuyp grinned. "I 'll come round and thank you properly one of these days," he said. "But it's not such a bad hurry that I can't say that I'm grateful. You see, when Margaret wasn't there I had to come away, but, in case of trouble, I stopped on the road and cut down a couple of lengths of telegraph-wire. Still, we 've got to be moving."
"Good-bye, then," said Miss Gregory. "Happiness and prosperity to you both. You 'll be married to-morrow, I suppose? I'd have sent you a present if there'd been time."
"We 'll send you one instead," said Van Cuyp gaily. "Have you said good-bye to Miss Gregory, Margaret? Right!"
"Now, don't make a mess of things by being arrested for furious driving," exhorted Miss Gregory, as he climbed to his seat after setting the engine going.
He leaned toward her confidentially. "Watch me!" he said.
Miss Gregory watched, and shook her head disapprovingly as the great car moved away and shot at once into a speed that imperilled life and limb at each yard of its progress.
"I suppose that I must n't put it into the book," she said to herself regretfully; "but it's a pity."
She had forgotten the thief. He, conscious of a task performed expertly, ranged alongside with smiles.
"If the high-born lady would like a cab," he said, "I will allow her to keep two marks."