Chapter V: When Titled Women Stoop to Conquer
13. The next entry:
"My ammunition was no good!... But I am at a loss to understand what
they are trying to do with ME.... Certainly I don't look like a very
important personage in my present state.... Yet my captors are not
treating me very badly ... aside from being locked up in this deserted
villa with its broken chairs and vacant picture frames and general air
of hasty abandonment there's nothing to disturb the tranquillity of my
reflections except the recurring tramp of the muffled sentry below
my broken window ... this building has a sort of Byzantine cut in its
architectural design.... On the other side of the valley there's a
minaret or two visible through the smoky haze.... Off to the left I
can make out quite distinctly the outlines of a Greek Cross.... The
road leading toward that Cross looks like the work of a Muscovite
engineer,--which speaks well for it.... It's built of the same
material as the one over the mountains from Tiflis to Vladicaucaz and
Kislovodsk.... I MUST BE ON RUSSIAN SOIL!... But what is mystifying
to me is, how did that veiled girl of the Métropole manage to know
the SENTRY who is guarding my person so methodically down below?... She has been here twice, now, and talks to him very confidentially.... QUATSCH! if she thinks to find any jewelry clinging to my person she'll have to fry me to get it out."
14. Then this entry:
"The veiled Métropole Nemesis was to see the sentry today.... She seemed to be quite happy about something and looked up in the direction of my window a number of times.... She was eating some of those champagne-colored rose leaves that are crystallized by the firm of Demitrof at Moscow and sold as confections to the ladies of the Court!... What does it mean?... Furthermore, if that sentry is not the same man who acted as valet to Prince Galitzyn at Monte Carlo when Delcassé, Grey and Galitzyn (otherwise "Count Techlow") were gliding about the Grand Hôtel de Londres!
"The mystery is solved....
"That Métropole woman was the companion to Countess C---- at the
Nouvel Hôtel Louvre the day I met her at Monte Carlo!... and this man
was the same fellow she was supping her café Turc and smoking her
Medijeh cigarettes with out on the Terrace Gardens of the Hôtel de
Londres the night I was waiting for an American millionaire to break
away from the Hungarian noblewoman at the table decorated with La
France roses and the same kind of roses pinned to her corsage.... The
American, if he ever sees this in print, will remember the lady with
the wonderful jewels flashing from her wrists and neck and whom the
man with the Boulanger moustache at the adjoining table was trying
hard to flirt with ... the same dark-eyed Juno that same American
met in the Salle des Étrangers at the Casino, the following day about
noon.... Well, that is the connection!... But I did not observe that
that wonderful lady wore any large SAPPHIRE that night ... nor when
she changed her quarters from the Nouvel to the London did she
need any such jewelry to have all the spendthrifts of Europe at her
feet.... If she was a 'Princess' then I was completely fooled.... I never saw a real Princess, except Eulalia, who knew how to be democratic enough to select an American for a quiet exchange of ideas ... the rest, no matter how desperately they may want to be free from Court restraint and bodyguards, remind me of the poor little caged girls at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Seville!... Well, so my captors have some connection with the Countess C----([Cszecheny] Chechany)--with the Tolna Festetics of Hungary.... And this is strange, for I had surmised that SHE, at least, would be friendly to MY mission, if she knows anything at all about its origin.... She should aid me to reach Odessa instead of having me sandbagged and cooped up here in this Soviet cage.... I'm certain this Métropole lady is a TRAITOR to the Countess now, and will have me murdered if I don't produce that sapphire of the princess."
15. This entry may serve to identify the author of the diary: