"Yes. But it is a strenuous life, I assure you," I declared, laughing.
"The Crown-Prince sometimes goes abroad incognito," he said, pausing and looking me straight in the face.
"Yes—sometimes," I admitted.
"He was in Rome in the first week of last December. He disappeared from Potsdam, and the Emperor and yourself were extremely anxious as to what had become of him. He had gone to Berlin alone, without any attendant, and completely disappeared. Yet, while you were all making secret inquiries, and fearing lest the truth should leak out to the Press, His Imperial Highness was living as plain Herr Wilhelm Nebelthau in an apartment at Number Seventeen, Lungtevere Mellini. Isn't that so?"
I stared agape at the Spaniard.
I thought myself the only person who knew that fact—a fact which the Crown-Prince had revealed to me in the strictest secrecy.
Could this man Martinez Aranda be an agent of police? Yet that seemed quite impossible.
"You appear to have a more intimate knowledge of His Highness's movements than I have myself," I replied, utterly amazed at the extent of the man's information.
His dark, sallow face relaxed into a mysterious smile, and he bent to make another stroke without replying.
"His Highness should be very careful in the concealment of his movements when he is incognito," he remarked presently.