“Would you have one of your constables take this to the embassy and give it to the first secretary?” he said, handing the letter to Wyatt. “If he is asked who gave it to him, he is to say he doesn’t know, but that he was told to wait for an answer.”
Wyatt looked at him, at the impression the ring had made in the red wax, then nodded.
“Do it,” he said, giving the note to Tucker. Tucker saluted, went outside, and spoke to one of the constables who was on duty outside the hotel.
The constable walked with a policeman’s measured pace to the embassy and rapped the brass door knocker. Branza, the white-haired majordomo, opened the door, and the constable gave him the note. The majordomo took it, glanced at the seal, and went inside, closing the door behind him.
A minute went by, two minutes. By the light of the gaslight that was almost directly overhead, Wyatt and the others in the hotel writing room could see the constable standing patiently in front of the embassy door. Then the door opened again, and Colonel Katarov came out with the letter in his hand.
“Who gave you this?” he asked sharply.
“Sergeant Tucker,” said the constable.
“And where did he get it? Where is the man who wrote it?”
“I don’t know, sir. All I know is that Sergeant Tucker told me to give it to you and wait for your answer.”
“I see,” said Katarov. He looked at the constable, then up the street at the hotel, which he knew Wyatt was using as his command post. “Very well. Tell the man who wrote the letter that there is someone else I must consult. I will do that immediately by telegraph. But in the meantime, tentatively, we agree.”
“Yes, sir,” said the constable. And saluting, he turned and walked with the same unhurried pace back to the hotel, where he repeated what Katarov had said to Wyatt, Jasper, and all the others in the writing room.
“Do you know whom he must consult?” Wyatt asked Jasper.
“Yes.”
“How long will it take?”
“It is evening now, but he should hear before noon tomorrow.”
“And in the meantime?”
“We wait, and you continue your watch on the embassy. But at least we know that the boy is safe.”
“If you trust them, yes,” said Wyatt.
“You mean you do not trust them?”
“I don’t know. There are times when I don’t trust anybody.” He turned as the door of the writing room opened and another constable, the partner of the one who had caught Sara and Andrew, came in holding Markham by the collar of his jacket.
“Here’s another one, sir,” he said to Wyatt. “The other two came out the back door. But this one, he came down the drainpipe like a blinking Barbary ape.”
“You were in the embassy, too?” said Wyatt. “Yes, sir. Sara and Andrew went in first and created a diversion so I could slip in and go upstairs.”
“You did go upstairs?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why?”
“To see if the Vickery boy was there.” He paused. “And he is.”
“You mean you saw him?”
“Yes, sir. He’s in the big room at the top of the stairs—the one the ambassador is supposed to be sick in.”
“You’re sure about that?” said Jasper with great intensity. “You saw him with your own eyes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you! I won’t forget this!” And, his face alight, he ran out of the writing room, across the hotel lobby, and out into the street.
“Jasper! Wait a minute, you impatient fool!” called Wyatt. “Where the devil do you think you’re going?”
It was a question that required no answer. Running like a Rugby back who has scooped up a loose ball, Jasper was pounding up the street toward the embassy.
15
Reunion
Wyatt ran out of the hotel also, followed by Tucker, Daniel, and the three young people. But hard as they ran, they were not quick enough. Before they were anywhere near the embassy, Jasper had reached the door and was rattling the knocker, raising it and bringing it down again and again as rapidly and hard as he could. Andrew and the others could hear it from some distance off, and the clamor inside the embassy must have been deafening. By the time they ran up, Branza, the white-haired majordomo, was opening the door.
“Villainous rascal!” he said angrily. “What do you do? How dare you make so unseemly a noise?”
Pushing him aside so vigorously that he staggered and almost fell, Jasper ran past him and up the stairs. Hurrying in through the open door, Wyatt caught and steadied the elderly man. Then as Tucker, Daniel, and the three young people arrived, the door of the first secretary’s office opened, and Colonel Katarov, startled by the thunder of the knocker, came storming out. He was asking indignant questions in Rumanian, but when he saw Wyatt, he switched to English.
“What are you doing here?” he said furiously. “How dare you come in here when I forbade you to do so? As for the rest of you, out! Get out and stay out!”
“Forgive me, Colonel,” said Wyatt quietly. “You should know that I would not come in here without a good reason. And I have a very good one. We were following a man who might be very dangerous, hoping to catch him before he burst in here. But we were too late.”
“It was he who used the door knocker that way?” Katarov asked Branza. And when the elderly majordomo nodded, “Where is he?”
But before Branza could answer, there was a loud noise from upstairs as Jasper drove his heel at the locked door. He did it again, and the door crashed open.
“Benesh!” called Katarov, and he said something rapid and excited in his native tongue. Benesh came hurrying into the entrance hall and, when Katarov repeated what he had said, he stiffened, took a revolver from a holster under his jacket, and started for the stairs. But as he reached the bottom step, he paused. For Jasper, with young Michael in his arms, was coming down the stairs.
“You!” said Katarov.
“Why are you surprised?” said Jasper. “You got my note.”
“Yes. But I did not realize.… Stop! Stay where you are! Nothing has been settled yet! Stop or Benesh will shoot the boy!”
“You would not dare!”
“Would I not? You know what is at stake and what we have done so far! Do you think I would let anything—sheer sentimentality—stop me now? Benesh!”
This last was an order, and Benesh raised his revolver and aimed it at the boy. Jasper looked at him, down at the child whose eyes were closed, probably because of the drug he had been given, then up again.
“Yes,” he said. “I suppose you would do it. You’re quite capable of it.”
“Indeed we are!” said Katarov. He turned his head. “Branza, get the boy, take him to my office, and stay with him until these intruders are gone.
The majordomo hesitated a moment, then bowed slightly.
“Yes, Colonel,” he said.
He went up the first two steps of the stairs to where Jasper stood and held out his arms. Jasper, his face pale and set, held the boy tightly for a moment longer, pressing the blond head against his chest, then he placed the boy in Branza’s arms.
Branza turned and, carrying the boy carefully, went down the two steps to where Katarov and Benesh waited. Then, instead of going past them to Katarov’s office, he kept walking in his usual controlled and almost stately manner toward the open door.
Katarov stared for a moment, unable to understand what was happening.
“Branza, wait!” he said. “What are you doing? Where are you going?” Then, as he realized what it meant, “Benesh, quick! Stop him!”
Benesh fired, and Branza stumbled. The bullet had hit him in the shoulder, and the blood welled out of the hole in his dark jacket and trickled down his back. But straightening up, he continued walking—out of the embassy door and into the street. Gun ready, Benesh ran after him. But the moment he stepped outside the door, Tucker clamped a huge hand on his wrist.
“Forgive me, sir,” he said
, quietly, taking the gun, in spite of Benesh’s struggles. “What happens in your embassy may be your affair, but we do not permit guns in the streets of London.”
Now Jasper ran down the last few stairs and out of the embassy. Tucker had tossed the gun to one of the constables and was holding up the wounded majordomo when Jasper reached them.
“Are you badly hurt, Branza?” he asked.
“I don’t think so, Your Highness,” he said. “Just my shoulder, but … you’d better take the boy.”
“I will,” said Jasper, taking the child back again. “And I’ll not forget this. But why did you do it?”
“Why? I didn’t know who he was, though I probably should have. But once I saw you and did know.…” He grimaced, his knees started to buckle, and he would have fallen if Tucker had not been holding him up.
By this time, Wyatt, Daniel, and the young people had joined them.
“Get him to a hospital right away,” Wyatt said.
“Yes, sir,” said Tucker. “Give me a hand, Beckett,” he said to a constable, who put an arm around Branza, too, and began helping him up the street toward a four-wheeler that had been halted by the activity in front of the embassy.
“Is Mrs. Vickery at the hotel?” Jasper asked Wyatt.
“Yes.”
Jasper went up the street and, noting the way he carried the child, Andrew suddenly realized something he should have realized before—why he had been so concerned about the boy.
Verna and Mrs. Vickery must have heard the shot and seen that something was going on in front of the embassy, because they were coming out of the hotel as Jasper and the others approached it.
Seeing the child, Mrs. Vickery stopped dead for a moment, then flew toward them.
“Is he all right?” she asked, holding out her arms.
“Yes,” said Jasper, giving her the child.
“Are you sure?”
“Look,” he said.
The child had been blinking sleepily during the last few minutes, opening his eyes, then closing them again. Now he opened them wide, looked up, and said, “Mummy.”
“Michael!” she said. “Yes, he does seem to be all right. Oh, thank heaven! Thank …” For the first time she looked—really looked—at Jasper, and the color drained from her face.
“George!” she whispered.
“Yes, darling.”
“But they said … they said.…”
“I know.”
“Here,” said Verna. “Give me the child.”
She took the boy from his bewildered mother; and then Mrs. Vickery, sobbing, was in Jasper’s arms, and he was kissing her and holding her as close as he had been holding the child.
“Well,” said a drawling voice, “I seem to have come at a very opportune time.” It was Chadwick.
“Yes,” said Wyatt. “Very opportune.”
“Boy all right?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Then, with Foreign Office discretion, “I won’t ask how you got him out.”
“No, don’t,” said Wyatt. “Though actually it wasn’t we who did it.”
“Ah,” said Chadwick. “And this is …?” he asked, nodding toward Jasper.
“Yes,” said Wyatt. Then as Jasper released Mrs. Vickery and glanced at them. “Your Highness,” he said, “this is Blaine Chadwick of our Foreign Office. His Highness, Prince Maximilian George of Moldavia.”
“Your Highness,” said Chadwick, bowing.
“Mr. Chadwick,” said Jasper, bowing in return.
“Prince?” said Mrs. Vickery. “I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake. This is my husband, George Vickery.” Then her slight frown of surprise gave way to outright puzzlement. “But, George, why are you dressed that way? You look like a Gypsy.”
“It’s a long story, my dear,” said Jasper. “And I’d just as soon not go into it in so public a place.”
“I don’t think you should,” said Verna. “Let’s go in there,” she said, nodding toward the hotel. “Then you can not only be more private, but we can put young Michael to bed until we’re ready to go back to our place.”
16
Royal Explanation
“How is he now?” asked Jasper as Mary Vickery came into the writing room some ten minutes later.
“Fine.”
“Asleep?”
“Half asleep and half awake. One of the chambermaids is with him and I told him we’d both be up to take him home in a little while.” Then, hurrying across the room to him, “I can’t believe this, darling! To have both of you back again, you and Michael!”
“I know,” said Jasper, embracing her. “Here, sit down.”
He pulled out a chair and placed it next to the one Verna was sitting in.
“Thank you,” she said, sitting. “Now tell me everything—where you’ve been, why you’re dressed that way, and particularly why Inspector Wyatt called you Prince Something or Other.”
“He did it because I am.”
“A prince? But that’s impossible!”
“No. I’ve often wished it weren’t true. But I’m afraid it is.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m not surprised. It’s a complicated story.” He looked at Wyatt, who sat on one of the desks near Chadwick and the young people. “How much do you know?”
“I guessed some things early on and discovered more of them later. But I certainly don’t know everything, so I’d like to hear it all from the beginning.”
“Very well. As the inspector indicated,” he said to his wife, “I am Prince Maximilian George of Moldavia, nephew of King Charles of Rumania and next in line to the throne.”
Mrs. Vickery still looked at him blankly. “But how is that possible? Aren’t you British?”
“No. I’m Rumanian.”
“But you haven’t the slightest trace of an accent.”
“My English is much better than my Rumanian, which my friend, Captain Dimitroff here,” he nodded to the Gypsy who had called himself Daniel, “insists I speak with an English accent. The truth is that my mother was English—her father was the English ambassador—I had an English nurse from the beginning and was sent to school in England from the time I was ten.”
“But why didn’t you let anyone know who you were? Why did you call yourself Vickery?”
“It was my mother’s name. She and my father agreed that it would make things difficult for me to go to an English public school with a Rumanian name and title. So I used her last name and my second name, first at public school and then at Cambridge.”
“All right. I can understand why you might do that to begin with. But why didn’t you tell me the truth later on?”
“In the beginning, when we first met, I didn’t think it mattered one way or another. Or rather, until I got to know you well, I wasn’t sure whether you’d like me more with a title or less, so I decided to say nothing about it. Also, things were changing and I had another reason for keeping quiet about who I was.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I was fourteen, my mother died. As you can imagine, that was a great loss to me because we had been very close. The following year, my father married again, this time—to the satisfaction of his brother, King Charles—he married a titled Rumanian lady.”
“Countess Sylvia of Severin,” said Chadwick.
“Yes,” said Jasper, whom Andrew still had difficulty thinking of as a prince. “She was the widow of Count Nicholas of Severin, one of our oldest families, and she had a son, two years younger than I, named John. This began the change, because the countess did everything she could to drive a wedge between my father and me, telling my father that my studies should not be interrupted by the long trip home to Rumania and making me feel uncomfortable and out of place when I did go home.”
“Didn’t you realize what she was doing?” asked Wyatt.
“Yes, but I didn’t care too much. I loved England, particularly later when I was married and had a child. And though I had been studying politica
l economy because I thought it would be useful when I returned to Rumania, I began to think perhaps I wouldn’t go back. That I would remain here. As a matter of fact, I was offered a post at Cambridge that I was considering. Then, about a year ago, my father died.”
“Was that the telegram you received that upset you so much?” said Mrs. Vickery. “When you said something serious had happened and you had to go to Bucharest right away?”
“Yes. There was no time to tell you everything before I left, but I thought I would when I returned. Because, since King Charles had no children, when my father died, I became next in line for the throne.”
“But you still didn’t tell me,” said Mrs. Vickery.
“No. Because while I was in Bucharest for my father’s funeral, I began to realize something I should have been aware of long before. That my stepmother and stepbrother, Count John, were plotting against me—plotting to have John succeed to the throne instead of me.”
“What made you realize it?” asked Chadwick.
“First of all, there was an attempt to kill me that I thought was an accident, but my friend, Mitya, here, assured me was not.”
“I know was not,” said Dimitroff. “I recognized driver of carriage that almost ran him down.”
“Mitya is the son of my father’s aide de camp and best friend,” said the prince. “He began looking out for me the way his father looked out for my father. But the person who really made me understand what was going on was Count Rozarin, the Rumanian ambassador to England.”
“Ah,” said Chadwick. “We wondered about that. We always had great respect for the count.”
“So did I. He was a good friend of my father—though he hadn’t been able to get him to see what the countess was up to. He got me to see it very clearly, however, and we had a long talk about it. He advised me to return to England and let things go for a while to see if they would develop as we thought they might. It was when I realized that they were doing so—and developing very quickly—that I decided to leave Cambridge and move to Somerset. Because it became clear to me that if I was in danger, then Mary and my son might be also.”
“But why didn’t you tell me who you were then?” asked Mrs. Vickery.
The Case of the Watching Boy (Andrew Tillet, Sara Wiggins & Inspector Wyatt Book 9) Page 11
