The Princess frowned at him. “I suppose I am much obliged to you, Mr. Fortune. I wish to hear more of your part in the affair.” Reggie, he has confessed, trembled. The Princess swept on. She opened the door of the music-room. She revealed Hilda and Spoleto. Hilda was being vehemently kissed. Reggie fled. Professional instinct, he explains, took him back to his patient. “I am very pleased to tell you, sir, that there is no serious injury to the arm. Rest and good nursing are all that is now needed.” His Highness laughed like a boy and began to chatter--all about himself. Reggie broke in at the first chance. “It is a satisfaction to me that I leave you in such good spirits, sir.” His Highness overflowed with gratitude. He did not know how to thank Mr. Fortune--what to offer him. “If I might have this little lady, sir.” Reggie took up the Hottentot Venus. “It would be a pleasant memento of an interesting adventure.” And so he went off with the Hottentot Venus in his pocket. He hurried on deck to the uneasy Lomas. “You were right, Lomas. You are always right. We have no _locus standi_. And where’s that shore boat?” They embarked hurriedly and rowed away from the royal house of Ragusa. “In heaven,” said Reggie, “there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. That’s why I’m going there. Look at her”--he produced the Hottentot Venus--“she’s the only sensible woman I ever knew. Lomas, my dear old man, do you know you will have to explain all this to your sister?” The Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department groaned aloud. CASE VI THE BUSINESS MINISTER PHASE I.--THE SCANDAL “‘Oh, to be in England now that April’s here,’” said Reggie Fortune as, trying to hide himself in his coat, he slipped and slid down the gangway to his native land. The Boulogne boat behind him, lost in driving snow, could be inferred from escaping steam and the glimmer of a rosette of lights. “The Flying Dutchman’s new packet,” Reggie muttered, and hummed the helmsman’s song from the opera, till a squall coming round the corner stung what of his face he could not bury like small shot. He continued to suffer. The heat in the Pullman was tinned. He did not like the toast. The train ran slow, and whenever he wiped the steamy window he saw white-blanketed country and fresh swirls of snow. So he came into Victoria some seven hours late, and it had no taxi. He said what he could. You imagine him, balanced by the two suit-cases which he could not bear to part with, wading through deep snow from the Tube station at Oxford Circus to Wimpole Street, and subsiding limp but still fluent into the arms of Sam his factotum. And the snow went on falling.