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Updated: June 29, 2025
It was very evident to me that this casket contained something of the greatest possible interest to several people, including in particular His Serene Highness, the Duke of Rittersheim. When, then, Ethel, St. Nivel and I had crowded all the visits to theatres and matinees we could into the intervening two days, we sat taking our last luncheon in England, probably, for some time to come.
Nivel was in the smoking-room; Dolores and Ethel were in the state-room of the latter, holding one of those long important feminine conferences most delightful, I understood, to themselves in which dress was the pièce de résistance, with perhaps a little gossip about Ethel's conquests in Aquazilia; they were legion! Mrs.
Nivel the whole of the incident of the shooting of the beater by the Duke of Rittersheim. "Well, that's the limit," commented Jack, taking the cigar out of his mouth; "he must be a cool-headed scoundrel. I never heard of such nerve!" "It's a nice thing to have a brute like that on one's track, isn't it?" I remarked dejectedly; "it makes life hardly worth living."
"Very clever of you, Jack," I answered, "and I'm very much obliged to you for thinking of it, but I am glad that the poor devil didn't take it after all. I believe it to be my duty to take it to Don Juan d'Alta, even at the risk of my life." St. Nivel sat thinking a moment or two; then he spoke. "Why do you use the term 'poor devil'?" he asked, "when you speak of the robber chief?"
Nivel, having an unlimited command of money, ordered pretty nearly everything they were advised to take, with the result that we required a small pantechnicon van to take our combined luggage. There was, however, one thing I was very particular about, and upon which I took the advice of an old friend who had travelled much.
The keeper touched his forelock and commenced his descent of the spiral staircase. Meanwhile, Lady Ethel, her brother and I mounted up to the top. We passed the room in which I had been imprisoned, and went up a very much narrower flight of steps to the roof, coming out at a little door which was standing open. The roof was flat and covered with lead. "Take care how you tread," cried St. Nivel.
Nivel turned to the keeper. "Give me the brandy flask," he said. The man produced it, and my cousin poured some out in the little silver cup attached to it. "It's a lucky thing for you, Bill," he observed, while I greedily drank the brandy down, "that I thought of bringing this flask with me this morning. Ethel was against it; she's a total abstainer."
Nivel and I began to look askance at banquets, Don Juan came to me one day and took me aside into his garden. I purposely led him away from the direction of the reptile houses of which I had a holy horror, and we sauntered down a shady avenue of palms. "There is one place of interest near Valoro, Mr. Anstruther," he said, "which I should much like to show you and Lord St.
"Look here, Bill," he cried, flourishing a newspaper before my eyes. "Look here, some one has got his deserts at last!" I took the paper from him and read the paragraph he pointed to; it was headed "Tragic Death of the Duke of Rittersheim." I paused, put down the newspaper, and looked at St. Nivel.
From the front of the train there arose a great hubbub, a chorus of exclamations in Spanish. "I thought so," remarked St. Nivel; "you'd better look sharp, Bill, if you want to make that packet safe." As he spoke, he held out towards me an open cigar-box which he had taken out of the rack. Then I saw what he was aiming at; he wished me for some reason to hide my packet among the cigars in the box.
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