“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?”
“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 _lese majeste_!” Seaman gasped. “He has deceived the Kaiser! He has dared to sit in his presence as the Baron Von Ragastein!”