Lawrence waited until the room was dark and then slipped out unnoticed. He would have liked to remain and see the rest of Edestone’s most interesting pictures which had started off with those taken in Newfoundland and included a series not shown at Buckingham Palace. But he had an exciting task before him. The idea of posing as a Royal Prince in the magnificent uniform of the Imperial Hussars with nodding plumes and flowing military cape, his coat-of-arms emblazoned on his left shoulder, appealed to his dramatic instincts, as did the danger to his passion for adventure.
He was brave, but unlike Edestone his was the bravery of an unthinking recklessness rather than that of a perfectly balanced mind which, contemptuous of the body that carries it, forces that body to do its bidding.
The fact that Edestone had offered him an unheard of reward had made little impression, going in one ear and out of the other. He would accept it as lightly as it had been offered because he himself would have made exactly the same offer under the same circumstances. Whenever he wanted anything he paid the price, even if it took his last cent. It was no incentive to action now, as he would have gladly paid for the privilege of playing this big part in this wonderful melodrama—a melodrama which he was prepared at any time to see change into a tragedy, with him the dead hero.
He found that his Bowery boy Fred, under the pretext that it was customary in the best New York “high society,” had bullied the German flunkeys into bringing all of the officers’ helmets and cloaks upstairs and laying them out on a bed in one of the chambers on the second floor, from which place it was easy for him to smuggle all he wanted into Lawrence’s room. Lawrence found him there waiting to help him “make up.”
Turning up the collar of his dress coat so as to hide his white shirt front, the masquerader buckled on the sabre that Fred handed to him. Without changing his trousers he put on his riding boots and spurs, which with the busby and cloak, a pair of white kid gloves, and a small blond moustache completed his disguise. Standing thus in the middle of the room with the door open, he waited until Fred signalled that the coast was clear. He then stepped quickly across the hall and into the elevator, closely followed by Fred, who closed the door. When they were perfectly safe from interruption, he adjusted his costume and his false moustache to his entire satisfaction, pinning the cloak securely together with large safety pins to prevent it from flying open. Then as the elevator passed the main floor on its way to the basement, he made a gesture of derision.
Fred got out of the car and again carefully reconnoitred. Finding that the passage leading to the garden was clear and that there was no one in the billiard room, which was between the elevator and the outside door, he signalled and Lawrence walked out into the garden at the side of the Embassy.
It was quite dark there, but not dark enough to prevent the soldiers, who were stationed about to watch this door, from seeing him as he stood perfectly still as if hesitating which way to turn.
Observing that he was an officer, they saluted and stood at attention. Then as he moved forward and they saw the insignia on his cloak they signalled in some mysterious manner to the next post, who in turn passed it down the line that Royalty was at large and that they must be careful not to be caught napping.
Accordingly, as Lawrence emerged from the semi-darkness and came around to the front of the Embassy, every soldier was standing at attention and the different officers, after looking searchingly but most respectfully at him to satisfy themselves who he was, stepped back and allowed him to pass, while they stood like pieces of stone.
Lawrence did not deign even to notice them, but, reeling unsteadily in his gait, passed them without even acknowledging their salute.