A Prince to Order

Grey's awakening was as gradual as a clouded dawn. For a time dreams and realities intermingled. Then slowly a partial consciousness of his physical being obtruded: his fingers were clutching a silken coverlet; he turned on his side and the linen pillow-case was cool to his cheek; through half-open eyelids a sweep of pale blue became visible. Later he realised that he was in a curtained bed and that the blue was the colour of the draperies. He lay still for a long while-drowsy, inert, his sensibilities numb. Presently the ticking of a clock became audible, and then a rumble of street sounds.

At the same moment a throbbing pain in his head asserted itself. With an effort he sat up, his hands pressed against his2 temples, his mind groping. Then in a flash the unfamiliarity of his surroundings aroused him suddenly, sharply, like a cold plunge, and his brain cleared a trifle. His memory went staggering back after the night before; but the mists descended again and the way grew dark, and he could remember no night without its morning.

He put his feet to the floor and stood up, but a dizziness overcame him, and he sank back upon the bed, weak and limp. His heart was beating tumultuously and his breath came in short, quick gasps. After a little these abnormalities passed and he raised himself on one elbow, resting his cheek on his hand. At the contact he started, amazed, bewildered. In some unaccountable manner he had grown a beard. His hand ran from his cheek to his chin. Close-cropped at the sides it was here an inch long and trimmed to a point, and his moustache was one of several months' culture and training. He fancied he was dreaming and would awaken presently to find himself clean-shaven, as he had been for years.

And now, he remembered; after all, it was quite clear. He had been to the opera last night,3 had gone from there to the club, had returned home late, and, having a pressing business appointment at ten this morning, had dragged himself out of bed at eight, still fagged and aggravatingly sleepy. Now he had just had his coffee, and while Lutz was shaving him he was dozing and dreaming.

But how wonderfully real the transformation all seemed! He grew curious as to how he looked with beard and moustache, and, crawling out between the pale-blue velvet curtains, he sought a mirror. The revelation was dumfounding. He, Carey Grey, who from infancy had been as dark as a Spaniard, was as blond as a Norseman. He ran his fingers through his hair, tousled it, going closer to the glass to make sure that there was not some optical illusion. He puffed out his lip and pulled at his moustache until his lowered eyes could see it, and he thrust his chin forward and turned up the point of his beard with the back of his hand until it, too, came within the range of his vision. If this were a dream, he told himself, never before had dream been so real. If it were a reality, never before had reality been so mystifying.

4 His puzzled survey of himself was followed by a minute inspection of the room into which he had been so mysteriously transported. Its general aspect was foreign; its detail distinctly French. The walls were panelled and medallioned. The bed from which he had risen was one of a pair, each with its gilded papier maché frieze and its looped-back blue velvet curtains. At the head of each bed were six pillows and another of down at the foot. The full-length mirror into which he had gazed was duplicated between two windows. Upon the mantel was a bronze and gilt clock, flanked by partially burned candles in brass sticks. Two tables, a couch, a washstand, a cheffonier, three chairs and a wardrobe completed the furnishing. A couple of companion pictures, unmistakably French both in conception and execution, decorated two of the wall panels. The hands of the clock stood at twenty minutes of four. He crossed to a window with three sets of curtains and three sets of cord loops all of a tangle, and looked out.

For the spectacle that confronted him he was not prepared. The change in his appearance had5 indeed been incomprehensible; the strangeness of the room in which he awakened was inexplicable; but to discover at a glance that he was no longer on his native soil, that without his knowledge he had been carried across sea and land and dropped into a Paris hotel on the Boulevard des Italiens, was not only inconceivable but terrifying. He was very pale, and his brain was reeling. Twice he drew trembling fingers across his eyes, as if to wipe out the kaleidoscope of the street below; but when he looked again the view was even more convincing. It was a bit of the French Capital with which he was almost as familiar as with that part of Fifth avenue lying within range of his club windows or with that portion of Broad street near Wall into which he had been wont to glance from his office in the Mills Building.

He turned away from it as from a nightmare, and, sitting down, tried to think. The idea that he was dreaming was not tenable. He knew that he was very wide awake and thoroughly possessed of his faculties. His head still ached with a dull, swollen, congested sensation such as follows a too6 riotous night, but he could recall nothing of the cause. It occurred to him now that he had read in the newspapers of cases where men had lost their memory for months and had wandered into remote states or countries. This must be the explanation. And in his aberration he had given way to some freak of fancy, had grown a beard and then had had it and his hair bleached corn colour. Men under similar mental derangement, he recollected, forgot their names and homes. Perhaps he had been in the same plight. Now, however, his mind was clear on those points, at least, and he thanked God for his restoration.

Then he wondered how long he had been away. That night at the opera and the club; that morning he had risen early to keep an engagement, and had dozed off while his valet was shaving him-why, that was midwinter; and now, if he could judge by the trees on the boulevard, and the tables in front of the Café Riche across the road, and the straw hats, it must be early summer-late May or June; possibly, indeed, July. And all this time his friends at home-his mother, his fiancée, his partner-were probably thinking him dead. What7 a relief it would be to them to get the cablegrams he would send, telling that he was alive and well and was returning by the first steamer!

He smiled as he got up and went to the cheffonier and the wardrobe in search of clothes. He was thinking of the sensation the papers in New York must have made over his disappearance; the theories they must have advanced and the pictures they must have published. And then the tragic side of the affair took hold of him, and he put himself in his mother's place, in Hope's place, and fancied he could appreciate, in a way at least, their anxiety as the days passed without tidings, and their grief and despair as weeks quadrupled into months.

Having discovered an assortment of garments, including a bathrobe of pongee silk, he looked about for a tub. Across the passage he found a bathroom, and a dip into cold water relieved his headache and balanced his nerves. When at length he was in attire which, while quite as unfamiliar as his yellow hair and beard, was nevertheless tasteful and well fitting, he emerged from his room, locked the door and started forth on a tour8 of investigation. His curiosity had grown with his dressing, enhanced, perhaps, by his failure to find in any drawer, closet, or pocket a scrap of writing or printing from which he could gain a clue concerning his recent past. His sole discovery indeed had been a wallet containing two fifty-franc notes and a trunk key.

A tall, round-faced portier in green livery smiled and bowed, rather obsequiously he thought, as he passed out through the wide portal into the boulevard. Then the commingled scent of asphalt and macadam and burning charcoal-that characteristically Parisian odour-smote his olfactories, and before his eyes was the afternoon panorama of the gayest of Paris thoroughfares. It was the newspaper hour, and a kiosk in front of the hotel was being besieged by a horde, each hungry for his favourite journal. Every man that passed had a paper in his hand or in his pocket. Some were reading as they walked. On the roadway carriages, fiacres, omnibuses were crowding, and Grey noted, with a sense of old friends returned, the varnished hats of the cochers. The chairs under the awnings of the cafés were filling,9 and the white-aproned waiters were coming and going with their inevitable bustle of trays and glasses.

At the corner of the rue St. Anne he crossed to the north side of the boulevard and turned into the rue Taitbout, in which, he remembered, there was a telegraph office, for he meant to lose no time in despatching his cables. As he picked his way through the narrow street the messages took form, and on reaching the office it was but the labour of a moment to put them on paper, poke them in through the little window and pay the stipulated toll. To his mother he wired:

Safe and well. Sailing first steamer. H?tel Grammont.

And the others-one addressed to Hope Van Tuyl, East Sixty-fourth street, New York, and one to "Malgrey," the code name of the stock brokerage firm in which he was a junior partner-were similar.

Rejoining the throng of pedestrians on the boulevard, he sauntered leisurely towards the Avenue de l'Opéra, his mind still busy with conjectures.

The billboards in front of the Théatre du Vaudeville10 caught his eye, but the attractions they announced made no impression. At the groups of idlers seated at little round tables before the Café Américain he scarcely glanced and his own unfamiliar reflection in the plate glass of the shop windows he failed utterly to recognise. He crossed the Place de l'Opéra without so much as turning his head, and halting at the far corner stepped in under the ample awning of the Café de la Paix and found a seat. Of the waiter who approached him he ordered a mazagran and some Egyptian cigarettes, and when they were brought he sat for some time, heedless of his surroundings, his brain racked with futile speculations.

"Pardon, monsieur!"

Someone in passing had inadvertently touched his foot and was apologising. Startled out of his reverie he looked up, and his face lighted. Instantly he was on his feet.

"Frothingham, by all that's good!" he exclaimed.

The other, tall, straight and swarthy, turned upon him a look in which mystification and suspicion fought for supremacy.

11 "Really," he said, coldly, "I-I don't remember ever having--"

"Of course, of course," Grey interrupted, not without some embarrassment, "I can quite understand that you shouldn't recognise me. You see, I-well, I'm Carey Grey."

Mr. Frothingham's demeanour showed no change.

"Carey Grey," he repeated, icily; "I used to know a Carey Grey in New York, a member of the Knickerbocker and the union; but he was nearly as dark as I am, and besides-why, he's dead."

"If you don't mind sitting down a bit," Grey went on, as he staggered under the news of his own demise, "I'll try to explain. I'm Carey Grey, just the same-the Carey Grey, of the Knickerbocker and the union, and I'm not dead."

Frothingham recognised his voice now, and mystification routed suspicion from the field. He took a chair and Grey sat down, too, with the marble-topped table between them.

"First and foremost," Grey began, "tell me what day of the month it is."

12 "The fourteenth."

"Of what?"

"Of June, of course."

"And of the week?"

"Thursday."

"Thanks. I hadn't the slightest idea."

Frothingham fancied the man had gone mad.

"The whole thing is most extraordinary," Grey went on, and then he proceeded to relate his afternoon's experience, while his listener preserved an interested but incredulous silence.

"Can't remember a blessed thing," the narrator concluded, "since that morning last winter-I suppose it was last winter. What year is this?"

He was told.

"Yes, it was last winter, then-January, if I'm not mistaken."

Frothingham looked thoughtful and counted back. He wondered whether it was insanity or drugs, or-cunning.

"You must have heard something of it," Grey went on, eagerly. "Did the newspapers say I was dead?"

"I think that was the ultimate conclusion."

13 "I suppose they searched for me?"

"Oh, yes, they searched. They followed up every clue. There were columns in the papers for days-yes, for weeks."

Grey sighed audibly.

"I can't understand it," he said, with something of distress in his voice; "I never thought my head was weak. To be sure, I'd been under rather a strain, with the market in the unsettled condition it was, but my memory was always clear enough. Why, I could give you the closing price and highest and lowest of about every active stock on the list, day after day, without an error of an eighth. By the way, do you know how things have been going in the Street? What's New York Central now-and St. Paul?"

"Really, I have lost track, Grey," replied Frothingham indifferently.

"I must get a Paris Herald," the man who had been out of the world for five months continued; "I'm the modern Rip Van Winkle. Thousands of things have happened-must have happened, and I'm in blank ignorance. I just cabled to New York-to Mallory, my partner, and--"

14 "You what!" exclaimed Frothingham, in amazement.

"Cabled to Mallory. You know him-Dick Mallory, my partner. He'll be surprised to hear I'm alive, I suppose."

"Good God, man!"

"What's the matter?"

The two sat staring at each other across the table, each a picture of sudden startled bewilderment.

"Then you really don't know?" Frothingham asked. "Oh, that's impossible! You can't make me believe-see here, Carey, you're very clever and all that, but you don't think for one minute, do you, that you are taking me in? I did fancy for a little while that you'd gone off your head; but I was wrong. You're sharp and shrewd, and you feared I had recognised you and that that was why I stumbled over your foot; so you made up your mind that you'd block my game by recognising me and telling me this pipe dream. Oh, come, come, be fair! You know; and you know that I know."

Grey caught his breath sharply as this torrent15 of insult surged upon him. The blood rushed to his face only to desert it. His fists doubled instinctively, and he rose to his feet, white with indignant anger.

"Take that back!" he commanded, in a hoarse whisper. "Take it back, I say, or I'll--"

There was no mistaking his earnestness, his determination; no, nor at this juncture, his honesty. Frothingham was convinced even against his judgment.

"Oh, I say," he retorted, mildly, "don't make a scene, old chap. If I said anything, I-I-well, of course you don't understand. I see it now. I'm sure I was wrong, and I ask your pardon. There now, sit down."

"I don't know that I care to," Grey replied, the words of the other still rankling. "I'm not used to being called a blackguard. I've never in my life done anything to be seriously ashamed of, and nobody has ever dared, until this day, to utter such an insinuation."

Frothingham was silent for a moment, the mere suggestion of a smile on his lips. He calmly unbuttoned one of his gloves and then buttoned it again.

16 "God forbid," he said, without looking up, "that I should be the first to imply anything; but-I wish you would sit down, Grey!-you say you've lost count for five months, and-well, there are some things that you ought to know."

Grey resumed his seat. Now the man was talking reasonably. Of course there were things that he ought to know-hundreds of things probably in which he was personally interested. The thought instantly became appalling. What, indeed, might not have happened in five months? Where had he been during that time? And what had he been doing?

"Yes," he admitted, "you are quite right, I suppose. One of the things, for instance, is--"

"One of the things, for instance, is," repeated the other, interrupting him, "that you left New York suddenly-disappeared totally and-you ought to know this for your own salvation-under a cloud."

Grey started, and the colour that had returned to his face fled again. He leaned across the table, resting his arms on its marble top.

"Under a cloud!" he exclaimed, breathlessly.17 "My God, Frothingham! What do you mean?"

"I'd rather not go into details," was the answer, given very quietly. "It's not a pleasant position that I have chosen for myself, and I prefer that you don't question me. What you have told me-and I'm satisfied now it is the truth-has put another light on the whole business. And you really cabled to New York?"

"Not half an hour ago. I sent three."

"It's too late, I suppose, to stop them."

"I fancy so."

"I'd see, if I were you. It is important."

"But why? For God's sake, man, tell me why."

"No," said Frothingham, rising; "you'd better read about it for yourself. It will be more satisfactory. You can find a file of the New York Herald at the office of the Paris paper. It's only a block or so away, you know. Look up last January. But I'd try to stop those cables first. I must be off now; I've got an appointment." And he joined the now much augmented throng on the promenade.

18 Grey dropped a five-franc piece on the table, and hurried into a fiacre that stood in waiting.

"Rue Taitbout, 46," he directed.

But when he reached there it was to learn that his messages had been dispatched and that no power on earth could recall them.