Impostors and imposture -- Fiction; Short stories; Swindlers and swindling -- Fiction; Thieves -- Fiction
Not often did the Majestic, so freely patronised by the stockbroker and
the newly-rich, hold as guest any person equalling the Prince in social
distinction, yet at the same time so modest and retiring. The blatant
persons overcrowding the hotel that August Sunday, those pompous,
red-faced men in summer clothes and white boots, and those over-dressed
women in cream silk blouses and golden chatelaines, mostly denizens of
Kensington or Regent's Park, had been surprised when an hour ago he had
walked along the hall and gone outside to speak with his chauffeur. He
was so very good-looking, such a sportsman, and so very English they
whispered. And half of those City men's wives were instantly dying for
an opportunity of speaking with him, so that they could return to their
suburban friends and tell of their acquaintance with the cousin of his
Imperial Majesty the Kaiser.
But Prince Albert of Hesse-Holstein was thinking of other things. He
had no use for that over-fed Sunday crowd, with their slang chatter,
their motor-cars and their gossip of "bithneth," through which he had
just passed. He drew half a dozen times at his yellow Russian
cigarette, tossed it away, and lit another.
He was thinking of his visitor who had just left, and--well, there
remained a nasty taste in his mouth. The man had told him something--
something that was not exactly pleasant. Anyhow, he had got rid of him.
So Prince Albert Ernst Karl Wilhelm, head of the great house of
Hesse-Holstein, grand-cross of the Orders of the Black Eagle, Saint Sava
and the Elephant, and Commander of St Hubert and of the Crown of Italy,
returned again to the balcony, smoked on, and watched.
In the meantime, in the big hall below, sat a well-dressed elderly lady
with her daughter, a pretty, fair-haired, blue-eyed girl of twenty, a
dainty figure in white, who wore a jade bangle upon her left wrist.
They were Americans on a tour with "poppa" through Europe. Mr Robert
K. Jesup, of Goldfields, Nevada, had gone to pay a pilgrimage to
Stratford-on-Avon, while his wife and daughter were awaiting him in
Brighton.
With the inquisitiveness of the American girl Mary Jesup had obtained
the "Almanach de Gotha" from the reading-room, and both mother and
daughter were, with difficulty, translating into English the following
notice of the Prince's family which they found within the little
red-covered book:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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