Count Rodolphe d’Egloffstein-Wolfsburg, or as he now preferred to be called, Rodolphe Wolf, was in Paris. He had returned as though from the grave, and was apparently living in seclusion in an exceedingly unfashionable apartment over the fishing-tackle shop beside the Seine. It was over two years since report had declared him to be dead, and I had congratulated myself upon an escape from what had seemed an inevitable disaster; yet that report was false. He was alive, and I had no doubt that he meant mischief.
Yet why did Yolande fear him? This fact puzzled me. They had been acquainted in the old days, it was true, but what cause she had to hate him I could not discern. Something had passed between them of which I had remained in ignorance. Strange, too, that the Austrian Ambassador should introduce him at the Baroness’s reception! With what motive? I wondered. Surely he must know from the Diplomatic List that I was now in Paris, and that at any sign of hostility on his part I should expose him and explain the whole truth. He was playing a dangerous game, whatever it was; and I, too, felt myself to be in deadly peril.
I sat there trying to review the situation with calmness, but could see no solution of the problem. The truth was that, believing him to be dead, I had given no heed to that sealed chapter of my history, and now the ghastly truth had fallen upon me as a thunderbolt. Sibyl had met and liked him. She had in her ignorance declared d’Egloffstein-Wolfsburg to be a charming fellow. There was a touch of grim humour in the situation.
Fate seems sometimes to conspire against us. At such times it is no use kicking against the pricks. The proper course is to accept misfortune with the largest amount of good-humour possible in the circumstances, and just to treat one’s sorrows lightly until they pass. This is, I am aware, counsel excellent in kind, but extremely difficult to follow. At that moment I felt crushed beneath the weight of sudden misfortune. All my future seemed dark and hopeless, without a single ray of happiness.
The mystery surrounding Yolande’s actions, the suspicion resting upon the Countess of having made a dastardly attempt upon her daughter’s life, the manner in which knowledge of our secret despatch had been obtained and our diplomatic efforts thereby checkmated, and the reason of the sudden appearance in Paris of my most bitter enemy, formed a problem which, maddening in its complexity, appeared to admit of no solution.
Two men of my acquaintance came up and shook my hand in passing, but what words I uttered I have no idea. My thoughts were, at that hour, when the Place de l’Opéra was bathed in the crimson afterglow, far away from the busy whirl of central Paris, away in that peaceful forest glade where took place that incident by which I so narrowly escaped with my life. The whole scene came before me now. I remembered every detail of that night long ago.
Bah! My cigar tasted bitter, and I flung it across the pavement into the gutter. Would that I could have put from me all recollection as easily as I cast that remnant away! Alas! I knew that such a course was impossible. The ghost of the past had arisen to overshadow the future.
Next day at noon I sat with the Ambassador in his private room discussing the political outlook. He had exchanged telegraphic despatches with Downing Street during the morning, and I knew from the deciphers which I had made that never in the course of my career as a diplomatist had the European situation been so critical.
Try how we would in Madrid, in Berlin, and in Vienna, we could obtain absolutely no confirmation of our suspicions that Ceuta had been sold by Spain to France. At the first rumours of the impending sale of this strategic point the machinery of our secret service in the various capitals had been set to work, and under the ubiquitous Kaye no stone had been left unturned in order to get at the real truth of this grave menace to England’s power in the Mediterranean.
His Excellency, leaning back in his favourite cane chair, was grave and thoughtful, for again he had declared: