The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim (books to read now txt) 📕

Dominey nodded.

“You will stay the night?” he asked.

“If I may,” Seaman assented. “It is the last time for many months when it will be wise for us to meet on such intimate terms. Perhaps our dear friend Parkins will take vinous note of the occasion.”

“In other words,” Dominey said, “you propose that we shall drink the Dominey cabinet hock and the Dominey port to the glory of our country.”

“To the glory of our country,” Seaman echoed. “So be it, my friend.⁠—Listen.”

A car had passed along the avenue in front of the house. There was the sound of voices in the hall, a knock at the door, the rustle of a woman’s clothes. Parkins, a little disturbed, announced the arrivals.

“The Princess of Eiderstrom and⁠—a gentleman. The Princess said that her errand with you was urgent, sir,” he added, turning apologetically towards his master.

The Princess was already in the room, and following her a short man in a suit of sombre black, wearing a white tie, and carrying a black bowler hat. He blinked across the room through his thick glasses, and Dominey knew that the end had come. The door was closed behind them. The Princess came a little further into the room. Her hand was extended towards Dominey, but not in greeting. Her white finger pointed straight at him. She turned to her companion.

“Which is that, Doctor Schmidt?” she demanded.

“The Englishman, by God!” Schmidt answered.

The silence which reigned for several seconds was intense and profound. The coolest of all four was perhaps Dominey. The Princess was pale with a passion which seemed to sob behind her words.

“Everard Dominey,” she cried, “what have you done with my lover? What have you done with Leopold Von Ragastein?”

“He met with the fate,” Dominey replied, “which he had prepared for me. We fought and I conquered.”

“You killed him?”

“I killed him,” Dominey echoed. “It was a matter of necessity. His body sleeps on the bed of the Blue River.”

“And your life here has been a lie!”

“On the contrary, it has been the truth,” Dominey objected. “I assured you at the Carlton, when you first spoke to me, and I have assured you a dozen times since, that I was Everard Dominey. That is my name. That is who I am.”

Seaman’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. For the moment the man had neither courage nor initiative. He seemed as though he had received some sort of stroke. His mind was travelling backwards.

“You came to me at Cape Town,” he muttered; “you had all Von Ragastein’s letters, you knew his history, you had the Imperial mandate.”

“Von Ragastein and I exchanged the most intimate confidences in his camp,” Dominey said, “as Doctor Schmidt there knows. I told him my history, and he told me his. The letters and papers I took from him.”

Schmidt had covered his face with his hands for a moment. His shoulders were heaving.

“My beloved chief!” he sobbed. “My dear devoted master! Killed by that drunken Englishman!”

“Not so drunk as you fancied him,” Dominey said coolly, “not so far gone in his course of dissipation but that he was able to pull himself up when the great incentive came.”

The Princess looked from one to the other of the two men. Seaman had still the appearance of a man struggling to extricate himself from some sort of nightmare.

“My first and only suspicion,” he faltered, “was that night when Wolff disappeared!”

“Wolff’s coming was rather a tragedy,” Dominey admitted. “Fortunately, I had a secret service man in the house who was able to dispose of him.”

“It was you who planned his disappearance?” Seaman gasped.

“Naturally,” Dominey replied. “He knew the truth and was trying all the time to communicate with you.”

“And the money?” Seaman continued, blinking rapidly. “One hundred thousand pounds, and more?”

“I understood that was a gift,” Dominey replied. “If the German Secret Service, however, cares to formulate a claim and sue me⁠—”

The Princess suddenly interrupted. Her eyes seemed on fire.

“What are you, you two?” she cried, stretching out her hands towards Schmidt and Seaman. “Are you lumps of earth⁠—clods⁠—creatures without courage and intelligence? You can let him stand there⁠—the Englishman who has murdered my lover, who has befooled you? You let him stand there and mock you, and you do and say nothing! Is his life a sacred thing? Has he none of your secrets in his charge?”

“The great God above us!” Seaman groaned, with a sudden white horror in his face. “He has the Prince’s memoirs! He has the Kaiser’s map!”

“On the contrary,” Dominey replied, “both are deposited at the Foreign Office. We hope to find them very useful a little later on.”

Seaman sprang forward like a tiger and went down in a heap as he almost threw himself upon Dominey’s out-flung fist. Schmidt came stealing across the room, and from underneath his cuff something gleamed.

“You are two to one!” the Princess cried passionately, as both assailants hesitated. “I would to God that I had a weapon, or that I were a man!”

“My dear Princess,” a good-humoured voice remarked from the window, “four to two the other way, I think, what?”

Eddy Pelham, his hands in his pockets, but a very alert gleam in his usually vacuous face, stood in the windowed doorway. From behind him, two exceedingly formidable-looking men slipped into the room. There was no fight, not even a struggle. Seaman, who had never recovered from the shock of his surprise, and was now completely unnerved, was handcuffed in a moment, and Schmidt disarmed. The latter was the first to break the curious silence.

“What have I done?” he demanded. “Why am I treated like this?”

“Doctor Schmidt?” Eddy asked pleasantly.

“That is my name, sir,” was the fierce reply. “I have just landed from East Africa. We knew nothing of the war when we started. I came to expose that man. He is an impostor⁠—a murderer! He has killed a German nobleman.”

“He has committed lèse majesté!” Seaman gasped. “He has deceived the Kaiser! He has dared to sit in his presence