In the preceding autumn I completed my first novel.  I carried it around to publishers till I grew to hate it as one hates a Nemesis, and when finally I did place it, it was with a publisher who had just started in business and was necessarily obscure.  I bowed politely to my dreams of literary fame and became wholly absorbed in my journalistic work.  When the book came out I could not but admire the excellence of the bookmaking, but as I looked through the reviews and found no mention save in “books received,” I threw the book aside and vowed that it should be my last.  The publisher wrote me that he was surprised that the book had not caught on, as he considered the story unusually clever.  “Merit is one thing,” he said, “but luck is another.”  I have found this to be true, not only in literature, but in all walks of life where fame and money are the goals.  Phyllis wrote me that she thought the book “just splendid”; but I took her praise with a grain of salt, it being likely that she was partial to the author, and that the real worth of the book was little in comparison with the fact that it was I who wrote it.

One morning in early June I found three letters on my desk.  The first was from Hillars.  He was in Vienna.

“My dear son,” it ran, “there is another rumpus.  The Princess disappeared on the 20th of last month.  They are hunting high and low for her, and incidentally for me.  Why me, is more than I can understand.  But I received a letter from Rockwell of the American Legation warning me that if I remained in Austria I should be apprehended, put in jail, hanged and quartered for no other reason on earth than that they suspect me having something to do with her disappearance.  Due, I suppose, to that other miserable affair.  Though I have hunted all over the Continent, I have never seen the Princess Hildegarde since that night at B——.  Where shall I find her?  I haven’t the least idea.  But as a last throw, I am going to the principality of Hohenphalia, where she was born and over which she rules with infinite wisdom.  The King is determined that she shall wed Prince Ernst.  He would take away her principality but for the fact that there would be a wholesale disturbance to follow any such act.  If I ever meet that watch dog of hers, the Count von Walden, the duffer who gave me my conge, there will be trouble.  The world isn’t large enough for two such men as we are.  By the way, I played roulette at the Casino last night and won 3,000 francs.  Well, au revoir or adieu as the case may be.  They sell the worst whiskey here you ever heard of.  It’s terrible to have an educated palate.

“Hillars.”