There was nothing for it but to return as best we might to the Erzherzog Johann, crestfallen, and telegraph particulars to the police in London.

Charles and I ran across post-haste to England to track down the villain.  At Southampton Row we found the legal firm by no means penitent; on the contrary, they were indignant at the way we had deceived them.  An impostor had written to them on Lebenstein paper from Meran to say that he was coming to London to negotiate the sale of the schloss and surrounding property with the famous millionaire, Sir Charles Vandrift; and Sir Charles had demonstratively recognised him at sight as the real Count von Lebenstein.  The firm had never seen the present Graf at all, and had swallowed the impostor whole, so to speak, on the strength of Sir Charles’s obvious recognition.  He had brought over as documents some most excellent forgeries—­facsimiles of the originals—­which, as our courier and interpreter, he had every opportunity of examining and inspecting at the Meran lawyers’.  It was a deeply-laid plot, and it had succeeded to a marvel.  Yet, all of it depended upon the one small fact that we had accepted the man with the long moustache in the hall of the schloss as the Count von Lebenstein on his own representation.

He held our cards in his hands when he came in; and the servant had not given them to him, but to the genuine Count.  That was the one unsolved mystery in the whole adventure.

By the evening’s post two letters arrived for us at Sir Charles’s house:  one for myself, and one for my employer.  Sir Charles’s ran thus:—­

“HIGH WELL-BORN INCOMPETENCE,—­

“I only just pulled through!  A very small slip nearly lost me everything.  I believed you were going to Schloss Planta that day, not to Schloss Lebenstein.  You changed your mind en route.  That might have spoiled all.  Happily I perceived it, rode up by the short cut, and arrived somewhat hurriedly and hotly at the gate before you.  Then I introduced myself.  I had one more bad moment when the rival claimant to my name and title intruded into the room.  But fortune favours the brave:  your utter ignorance of German saved me.  The rest was pap.  It went by itself almost.

“Allow me, now, as some small return for your various welcome cheques, to offer you a useful and valuable present—­a German dictionary, grammar, and phrase-book!

“I kiss your hand.

“No longer

“VON LEBENSTEIN.”

The other note was to me.  It was as follows:—­

“DEAR GOOD MR. VENTVORTH,—­

“Ha, ha, ha; just a W misplaced sufficed to take you in, then!  And I risked the TH, though anybody with a head on his shoulders would surely have known our TH is by far more difficult than our W for foreigners!  However, all’s well that ends well; and now I’ve got you.  The Lord has delivered you into my hands, dear friend—­on your own initiative.  I hold my cheque, endorsed