‘No. It was from the servants that I learned the Prince was going to England.’
‘It is a blind, rest assured. Keep the strictest watch, and do not allow him to leave Brussels without you. I shall come by the next train.’
I rang off the communication, and hastened to make the necessary preparations for a journey of which I could not foresee the end.
On alighting in the Belgian capital I was met by my faithful henchman, who informed me with sparkling eyes that he had succeeded, by means of a bribe, in ascertaining from a clerk in the Foreign Office that a passport had been granted to the Comte de Saint Pol and secretary, travelling to Berlin.
If anything had been needed to convince me that the journey of Prince Napoleon had a serious purpose, these concealments would have done so. I was now confident that I was on the right track, and I did not grudge the fatigue involved in a journey across Europe.
I ordered Fouqué, as my man was named, to resume his watch on the Prince’s abode, while I waited at the station from which the Berlin express takes its departure. It was understood that we were both to proceed by the same train as the Comte de Saint Pol and his companion.
No hitch occurred; the Prince, accompanied by his secretary and my agent, duly arrived to take their seats in the train, and the four of us alighted together in the capital of Germany. I had spent the interval in considering my plan of action. I was so far from foreseeing the true cause of Prince Napoleon’s mysterious journey, that I expected to find him closeted the next day with the German Emperor, imparting the confidence which Garnier had refused to me. The event proved very different.
As soon as the two travellers had taken up their quarters in a hotel, whither, it is needless to say, we accompanied them, the secretary was sent out on an errand by himself. Fouqué, of course, followed, and came back in about an hour with the startling information that the secretary had been to the Russian Embassy.
The meaning of this proceeding flashed upon me at once. The real destination of the Prince was not Berlin, but Petersburg. He was merely passing a few hours in Berlin in order to confuse the trail, and he had sent his passport to the Embassy to be viséd for Russia.
In order to make sure that my surmise was correct, I decided to make use of my implied authority to act on behalf of the German Government. I ordered Fouqué to force his way bodily into the Count’s apartment, announce himself as an agent of the Berlin police, and demand to see the stranger’s passport. The ruse was completely successful, and I learned that the yellow seal of the Russian Eagle had been affixed to the paper.