It was a fair presumption, however, that he was trying to find her. His knowledge of the Prince's visit to me that morning showed that some one was shadowing the Prince, and the spy had carried the news straight to von Felsen. I had certainly blundered badly in letting the Prince come to Althea's hiding-place.
He had known also of my visit to Chalice; and then it occurred to me that Hagar Ziegler had been used for that purpose. The Steiners were Jews, and she might well be a friend. I recalled her manner when she had come hurrying out as I stood in the hall. She had been going to leave the house. Was it to carry word to him, and had she brought him there to wait for me when I left?
The whole business was a very ugly complication, and the best thing would be for us to smuggle Althea out of Berlin while I set to work to straighten it out.
I returned home, both puzzled and ill at ease, to report the result of my interview with Chalice; and Bessie met me with news of another twist in the skein.
"Aunt Charlotte has arrived, Paul," she said, with a very long face.
"The deuce! Why she wasn't to come for a week or so."
"Well, she's here anyway. You'd better come up to her room and see her at once"; and she turned and ran upstairs. "She does these odd things, you know."
My aunt was a particularly nervous person, and about the last we wanted to have in the house at such a time. I followed Bessie, wondering what sort of explanation of Althea's presence I could make.
"Have you told her about Althea?" I asked.
"She will only think she is staying with us in the ordinary way," replied Bessie, pausing with her hand on the door-knob. "And you'd better be careful. She has one of her headaches after the travelling. You know what she is at such times."