“He met with the fate,” Dominey replied, “which he had prepared for me.  We fought and I conquered.”

“You killed him?”

“I killed him,” Dominey echoed.  “It was a matter of necessity.  His body sleeps on the bed of the Blue River.”

“And your life here has been a lie!”

“On the contrary, it has been the truth,” Dominey objected.  “I assured you at the Carlton, when you first spoke to me, and I have assured you a dozen times since, that I was Everard Dominey.  That is my name.  That is who I am.”

Seaman’s voice seemed to come from a long way off.  For the moment the man had neither courage nor initiative.  He seemed as though he had received some sort of stroke.  His mind was travelling backwards.

“You came to me at Cape Town,” he muttered; “you had all Von Ragastein’s letters, you knew his history, you had the Imperial mandate.”

“Von Ragastein and I exchanged the most intimate confidences in his camp,” Dominey said, “as Doctor Schmidt there knows.  I told him my history, and he told me his.  The letters and papers I took from him.”

Schmidt had covered his face with his hands for a moment.  His shoulders were heaving.

“My beloved chief!” he sobbed.  “My dear devoted master!  Killed by that drunken Englishman!”

“Not so drunk as you fancied him,” Dominey said coolly, “not so far gone in his course of dissipation but that he was able to pull himself up when the great incentive came.”

The Princess looked from one to the other of the two men.  Seaman had still the appearance of a man struggling to extricate himself from some sort of nightmare.

“My first and only suspicion,” he faltered, “was that night when Wolff disappeared!”

“Wolff’s coming was rather a tragedy,” Dominey admitted.  “Fortunately, I had a secret service man in the house who was able to dispose of him.”

“It was you who planned his disappearance?” Seaman gasped.

“Naturally,” Dominey replied.  “He knew the truth and was trying all the time to communicate with you.”

“And the money?” Seaman continued, blinking rapidly.  “One hundred thousand pounds, and more?”

“I understood that was a gift,” Dominey replied.  “If the German Secret Service, however, cares to formulate a claim and sue me—­”

The Princess suddenly interrupted.  Her eyes seemed on fire.

“What are you, you two?” she cried, stretching out her hands towards Schmidt and Seaman.  “Are you lumps of earth—­clods—­creatures without courage and intelligence?  You can let him stand there—­the Englishman who has murdered my lover, who has befooled you?  You let him stand there and mock you, and you do and say nothing!  Is his life a sacred thing?  Has he none of your secrets in his charge?”

“The great God above us!” Seaman groaned, with a sudden white horror in his face.  “He has the Prince’s memoirs!  He has the Kaiser’s map!”