I feel that you will
understand me better than anyone else in the world. And yet why
should you understand me? Again, I don't know. Miss Racksole, I
will disclose to you the whole trouble in a word. Prince Eugen, the
hereditary Grand Duke of Posen, has disappeared. Four days ago I
was to have met him at Ostend. He had affairs in London. He
wished me to come with him. I sent Dimmock on in front, and
waited for Eugen. He did not arrive. I telegraphed back to
Cologne, his last stopping-place, and I learned that he had left
there in accordance with his programme; I leamed also that he had
passed through Brussels. It must have been between Brussels and
the railway station at Ostend Quay that he disappeared. He was
travelling with a single equerry, and the equerry, too, has vanished.
I need not explain to you, Miss Racksole, that when a person of the
importance of my nephew contrives to get lost one must proceed
cautiously. One cannot advertise for him in the London Times.
Such a disappearance must be kept secret. The people at Posen and
at Berlin believe that Eugen is in London, here, at this hotel; or,
rather, they did so believe. But this morning I received a cypher
telegram from - from His Majesty the Emperor, a very peculiar
telegram, asking when Eugen might be expected to return to
Posen, and requesting that he should go first to Berlin. That
telegram was addressed to myself.
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