“Oh?” he exclaimed, placing his hands beneath his coat-tails, a habit of his when about to enter any earnest consultation. “Why?”
“Well, if you desire to know the truth,” I said, “it concerns my marriage.”
“Ah, of course!” he observed, with deep sorrow. “I had quite forgotten that unfortunate affair. Yet time will cause you to forget. You are young, remember, Deedes—very young, compared with an old stager like myself.”
“It is scarcely likely that I shall forget so easily,” I said, after a slight pause. “Since I have been in Paris I have made a discovery that has bewildered me. I confide in you because you are the only person who knows the secret of my wife’s flight.”
“Quite right,” he said, regarding me with those piercing eyes shaded by their grey shaggy, brows. “If I can assist you or give you advice I am always pleased, for the romance of your marriage is the strangest I have ever known.”
“Yes,” I acquiesced, “and the truth I have accidentally learnt still stranger. I have discovered that my wife was never Ella Laing, as I had believed, but that she really is the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Nicolayevna of Russia.”
“The Grand Duchess!” he cried, amazed, his eyes aflame in an instant. “Are you certain of this; have you absolute proof?”
“Absolute. I have seen her, and she has admitted it, and told me that she masqueraded in England as Ella Laing because she desired to avoid Court etiquette for a time,” I said.
“Grodekoff lied,” he growled in an ebullition of anger. “I recognised her at the Embassy ball when you pointed her out, yet the Ambassador assured me that Her Highness was at that moment in Russia. We have both been tricked, Deedes. But he who laughs last laughs longest.”
He had folded his arms and was standing resolutely before me, gazing upon the dead green carpet deep in thought.