After some search I found the latter lolling at his ease in his own smoking-room in the private apartments, reading a French novel and consuming cigarettes.
"Hulloa, Heltzendorff! Well, what's the trouble?" he asked. "I see something is wrong from your face."
"The man Aranda is here," I replied.
"Here!" he gasped, starting up and flinging the book aside. "Who let him in?"
"I don't know, but he is below demanding to see you."
"Has he made any statement? Has he told anybody what he knows?" demanded the Crown-Prince, who at that moment presented what might be termed a white-livered appearance, cowed, and even trembling. In his slant eyes showed a look of undisguised terror, and I realized that the truth, whatever it might be, was a damning and most disgraceful one.
"I can't see him, Heltzendorff," he whined to me. "See him; hear what he has to say—and—and you will keep my secret? Promise me."
I promised. And I should have kept that promise were it not for his brutal and blackguardly acts after the outbreak of war—acts which placed him, with his Imperial father, beyond the pale of respectable society.
I was turning to leave the room, when he sprang towards me with that quick agility of his, and, placing his white, manicured hand upon my arm, said:
"Whatever he may say you will not believe—will you?"