XIV
Passengers for Kürschdorf by the Orient Express change cars at Munich, which, if the train is on time, is reached at 12.24 on the day following the departure from Paris. On this particular Monday the express was nearly forty minutes late, and, as the connecting train was timed to start at 1.02, the transfer was of necessity accomplished with somewhat undignified expedition. That it was accomplished at all, however, and that the quartet, of which Carey Grey was one, was so fortunate as to secure a compartment to itself, were subjects for mutual congratulation.
The journey from the French to the Bavarian capital had been rife with explanations. To Hope Van Tuyl, Grey had made the entire situation most clear, though he considerately refrained from revealing any feature or incident that would tend to alarm her. In his interview with Minna von Altdorf he had brought to bear all the tact of which he was possessed. It was no easy matter for him, in view of his duplicity that day at Versailles, to make her a completely veracious statement of the facts; and it was especially difficult because of her veneration for her great-uncle, the late Herr Schlippenbach, whom Grey could not but regard as an egregious knave.
She had been startled, surprised, pained, and bewildered by turns as he told her the story, but she never once questioned the truth nor doubted the honesty of the narrator.
“I simply can’t understand it,” she said, with distress in her pathetic eyes. “Why should Great-uncle Schlippenbach do such a thing? Why should he? How could he?”
“And I am just as much in the dark as you are,” Grey answered, soothingly. “I have thought it over continually, and I can’t arrive at any satisfactory conclusion. I don’t remember ever having seen him, and why he should have selected me for this great honour—for, after all, it is an honour to be elevated to the throne, isn’t it?” he laughed—“I can’t imagine.”
“We always knew he was eccentric,” the Fraülein went on. “He had most marvellous ideas on certain subjects, but I won’t believe he was criminal. He must have been just a little bit insane.”
And then Grey asked her how it came that she joined the little party in London.