“Ah, Waldron?” he cried in his usual cheery way, “I received your message, and came here to find you. They told me that you were here, with Lola. Well? You have a report to make, I suppose. What is it? Lola,” he said, addressing Her Highness, “I fear I must ask you to leave us. I have some business to talk over with Mr Waldron.”
“I ask Your Majesty’s pardon,” the diplomat said; “but I would beg that Her Royal Highness be allowed to remain. My report closely concerns her.”
“Concerns her! How?”
“If Your Majesty will have patience with me I will explain,” Hubert replied, and then, as briefly and tersely as possible, he related to the King the series of startling and exciting events recorded in the preceding chapters—how Lola, at the instigation of the Austrian spy, Flobecq, in guise of lover, was induced to go in secret to the private safe of the Minister of War and thence abstract the plans of the new frontier defences. He explained, too, how these being found useless without the key—though in secret Austria mobilised her army in readiness for a descent upon her neighbour at the moment that key was forthcoming—Flobecq, the cunning scoundrel in the employ of the Vienna Foreign Office, had blackmailed the unfortunate Princess by threatening to publish her letters if she did not dare further—and steal the key plan.
“And you, it seems, entered His Excellency’s cabinet just in the very nick of time,” the King said, both surprised yet gratified. “Yes, Waldron, I am seldom mistaken in my man,” he went on, “and when I called you and asked you to assist me, as your respected father assisted my own father, I felt that I could trust you. My confidence has not been misplaced. By your staunch friendship to me—not loyalty, because you are loyal only to your own Sovereign, my good brother—you have saved my beloved nation, saved an international complication which must have cost Europe a terrible war. And more—you have saved my madcap little niece’s honour. And why?” he demanded suddenly.
Hubert did not answer for several moments.
“Well, I will be frank, Your Majesty,” he responded. “Because ever since we met in Egypt and I believed her to be Lola Duprez, niece of the cantankerous old Gigleux, we have been most excellent friends. I have only done my duty towards her as a friend, and towards you as Sovereign of Italy, at whose Court I am humbly attached as servant of my own King.”
“Waldron!” exclaimed His Majesty, “to-night I sleep securely for the first time for several months. The war-cloud has been dispersed—and by you. You have my heartfelt thanks—the thanks of a man who has the misfortune perhaps of being born a King.” And he gripped the diplomat’s hand warmly in his own, and looked into his face as only one man can look at another who returns thanks from the very depths of his heart. “We can only reflect, Waldron,” added the King in a low, earnest voice, “upon how many lives might have been sacrificed, of what ruin and desolation must have resulted and of the terrible horrors of modern warfare that have been averted by your devotion to Lola, to myself, and to my own beloved Italy!”
But Hubert Waldron was thinking only of Lola. His Majesty’s eulogy was lost upon him.
He bowed low, and declared himself as the devoted servant of Italy and her Sovereign, as his father had been before him.