I did not reply to Baron Heckscher for a few seconds. It was obvious, of course, that matters had taken a new turn, and I sat thinking how to use the situation to Minna's best advantage.
"Now that you are reasonable, we will go back a little way," I said deliberately. "What do you mean by asking me my motive?"
"Presumably you have some strong motive and some object to gain. Though for the purposes of this interview, as you say, I am willing to call you the Prince von Gramberg, or anything else you like, I have proofs that you are nothing of the kind. Apparently you are an adventurer. Certainly you have been Heinrich Fischer, an actor at Frankfort, and that within a year or two. You were there for several years, and have been identified beyond question. What you were before then I neither know nor care. You have played the part of the Prince von Gramberg, and played it with plenty of dash, spirit, skill, and shrewdness. But men don't do these things for no object. You have run an hourly risk of detection as an impostor, and have certainly rendered yourself liable to heavy imprisonment; indeed, proceedings are already in course for your prosecution. Why, then, have you acted in this way?"
"Those are my private affairs," I answered after a pause; "and until you can disprove my assertion I remain the Prince von Gramberg, if you please."
"As you will, your Highness." He gave the title with excellent irony. "I may tell you that when the information reached us it was at the request of the countess's only surviving relative that she was removed from your custody."
"You mean the Baroness Gratz. I had already suspected her treachery; but you will save much trouble by keeping to the plain truth. Your object was not to get the countess out of my custody, but into your own, so that while this plot to place her on the throne had apparently been engineered in her interest it was the Ostenburg heir who should benefit. It was your work to put forward that scoundrel von Nauheim as her husband, so that when she had been ruined by him she would be impossible as a claimant for the throne. We may as well be frank."
He made a movement of anger at this, and then asked sharply:
"If what you say of him be true, how did you know it?"
"We may pass that by," I replied, with a wave of the hand; "sufficient that I did know him. To save her from such a fate has been my motive."
"You have aimed high, young man; but the Countess Minna von Gramberg's hand is not for an ex—for the present Prince von Gramberg." He made the change of phrase with dry significance. "She herself quite understands that."