As Herr Nebelthau he went in secret to Rome as guest of the vivacious Claudia, whose maid was none other than the thief-girl of the Montmartre, Lizette Sabin. This girl, whose intellect had become weakened, was entirely under the influence of the clever adventurer Aranda. On the second night after the arrival of the Crown-Prince in Rome, he and the actress had taken supper together in her apartment, after which a fierce quarrel had arisen between them.
Seized by a fit of remorse, the variety singer blankly refused to further betray the man to whom her advancement in her profession was due, whereupon His Highness grew furious at being thwarted at the last moment. After listening to his insults, "La Bella" openly declared that she intended to reveal the whole truth to the Italian official in question. Then the Crown-Prince became seized by one of those mad, frenzied fits of uncontrollable anger to which he is at times, like all the Hohenzollerns, subject, and with his innate brutality he took up a bottle from the table and struck the poor girl heavily upon the skull, felling her like a log. Afterwards with an imprecation on his lips, he walked out. So terribly injured was the girl that she expired just before noon next day. Not, however, before she had related the whole circumstances to the maid, Lizette, and to the man Aranda, who, truth to tell, had placed the maid in the actress's service with a view of robbing her of her jewels. He saw, however, that, with the death of Claudia Ferrona, blackmail would be much more profitable.
Having heard this amazing story, I was careful to lock the Spaniard in the room, and then returned to where the Crown-Prince was so anxiously awaiting me.
Half an hour later the adventurer left the Palace, bearing in his pocket a draft upon the private banking house of Mendelsohn, in the Jägerstrasse in Berlin, for two hundred and fifty thousand marks.
In return for that draft the wily Spaniard signed a declaration that he had invented the whole story, and that there was not a word of truth in it.
It was only, however, when I placed that document into the hands of the Crown-Prince that His Imperial Highness breathed freely again.
SECRET NUMBER NINE
THE CROWN-PRINCE'S ESCAPADE IN LONDON
It was five o'clock on a bright September morning when His Imperial Highness climbed with unsteady gait the three flights of stairs leading to the handsome flat which he sometimes rented in a big block of buildings half-way along Jermyn Street when he made secret visits to London.