1. [The "Imperial Marriage"]
  2. [Complications]
  3. [Chalice]
  4. [Ephraim Ziegler]
  5. [Althea's Story]
  6. [A Stroke of Luck]
  7. [Preliminary Steps]
  8. [Trapped]
  9. [A Perilous Crisis]
  10. [In the Hands of the Police]
  11. [My Return]
  12. [Murder]
  13. [In the House of Death]
  14. [The Murderer]
  15. [Baron von Ringheim]
  16. [My Rôle as a Conspirator]
  17. ["W. Mischen's" Warehouse]
  18. [The Luck Turns]
  19. [Von Felsen Gains his End]
  20. [A Bride Elect]
  21. [Like a Dog at Heel]
  22. [In Search of the Baron]
  23. [In the Grip of an Enemy]
  24. [From Peril to Peril]
  25. [An Awkward Plight, indeed]
  26. [A Charge of Murder]
  27. [Once Again in the Toils]
  28. [Dragen Again]
  29. [Just in Time]
  30. [The End]

CHAPTER I

THE "IMPERIAL MARRIAGE"

When the Kaiser planned the marriage between his kinswoman, the Princess von Altenvelt, and his handsome favourite, the Prince von Graven--the "Imperial Marriage," as the Court gossips styled it--there did not appear to be even the remotest possibility that it could ever be any concern of mine.

The news was almost the last I sent through to my paper, the London Newsletter, for I heard of it just before I resigned my position as Berlin Special Correspondent, on succeeding to my uncle's fortune. I had remained on in the capital, ostensibly to give a lift to my successor, my old Varsity chum, Gerald Bassett, but in reality for a reason which no one knew, except my sister, Bessie. And she only guessed it was on Althea's account.

Sisters have a knack of ferreting out these secrets, and I gathered that she had guessed mine because she had dropped more than one hint that Althea, being a great friend of hers, would be very welcome as a sister-in-law.

That was the position when, at a dance one night, Hugo von Felsen told me with a grin on his thin long malicious face that the Imperial Marriage was in danger because Prince von Graven had fallen in love with Althea and she with him.

I had always detested von Felsen, and had only tolerated him in my newspaper days because, as the son of a powerful Minister, Count von Felsen, he could sometimes be tapped for valuable information. The fact that this news came from him made it seem even worse than it was.

"You can see for yourself," he added. "There they are, together. All Berlin knows about it. Look, everybody is watching them"; and his close-set cunning eyes were fixed on my face as if he knew how his words would affect me, and was pleased.

"They are worth looking at, anyhow," I answered, with a shrug of indifference. They were. In my eyes Althea was the most beautiful girl in the room. The type of a lovely brunette, with perfectly moulded features, large lustrous eyes instinct with tenderness and sympathy, and a figure of consummate grace. But then I looked at her with the eyes of a lover. The Prince was also strikingly handsome. Tall, with a soldierly bearing, and as fair as Althea was dark, his face was marred only by the weakness of the mouth.