The Dark Star

Neeland turned and looked at Rue, who, conscious of his excitement,

flushed brightly, yet never suspecting what he was about to say.

The Princess said quietly: "Yes, tell her, Jim. It is better she should know. Until now it has

not been necessary to mention the matter, or I should have done so."

Rue, surprised, still prettily flushed with expectancy, looked with

new curiosity from one to the other.

Neeland said: "Ilse Dumont, known on the stage as Minna Minti, is the divorced wife

of Eddie Brandes."

At the mention of a name so long hidden away, buried in her memory,

and almost forgotten, the girl quivered and straightened up, as though

an electric shock had passed through her body.

Then a burning colour flooded her face as at the swift stroke of a

lash, and her grey eyes glimmered with the starting tears.

"You'll have to know it, darling," said the Princess in a low voice.

"There is no reason why you should not; it no longer can touch you.

Don't you know that?"

"Y-yes----" Ruhannah's slowly drooping head was lifted again; held

high; and the wet brilliancy slowly dried in her steady eyes.

"Before I tell you," continued Neeland, "what happened to me through

Ilse Dumont, I must tell you what occurred in the train on my way to

Paris.... May I have a cigarette, Princess Naïa?"

"At your elbow in that silver box."

Rue Carew lighted it for him with a smile, but her hand still

trembled.

"First," he said, "tell me what particular significance those papers

in the olive-wood box have. Then I can tell you more intelligently

what happened to me since I went to Brookhollow to find them."

"They are the German plans for the fortification of the mainland

commanding the Dardanelles, and for the forts dominating the Gallipoli

peninsula."

"Yes, I know that. But of what interest to England or France or

Russia----"

"If there is to be war, can't you understand the importance to us of

those plans?" asked the Princess in a low, quiet voice.

"To--'us'?" he repeated.

"Yes, to us. I am Russian, am I not?"

"Yes. I now understand how very Russian you are, Princess. But what

has Turkey----"

"What is Turkey?"

"An empire----"

"No. A German province."

"I did not know----"

"That is what the Ottoman Empire is today," continued the Princess

Mistchenka, "a Turkish province fortified by Berlin, governed from

Berlin through a Germanised Turk, Enver Pasha; the army organised,

drilled, equipped, officered, and paid by the Kaiser Wilhelm; every

internal resource and revenue and development and projected

development mortgaged to Germany and under German control; and the

Sultan a nobody!"

"I did not know it," repeated Neeland.

"It is the truth, mon ami. It is inevitable that Turkey fights if

Germany goes to war. England, France, Russia know it. Ask yourself,

then, how enormous to us the value of those plans--tentative, sketchy,

perhaps, yet the inception and foundation of those German-made and

German-armed fortifications which today line the Dardanelles and the

adjacent waters within the sphere of Ottoman influence!"