



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




The Lady in the Car
By William Le Queux
Published by J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.
This edition dated 1908.

The Lady in the Car, by William Le Queux.

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THE LADY IN THE CAR, BY WILLIAM LE QUEUX.

PREFACE.

AN APOLOGY.

I hereby tender an apology to the reader for being compelled, in these
curious chronicles of an adventurous motorist and his actions towards
certain of his female acquaintances, to omit real names, and to
substitute assumed ones.  With the law of libel looming darkly, the
reason is obvious.

Since the days when, as lads, we played cricket together at Cheltenham
"the Prince," always a sportsman and always generous to the poor, has
ever been my friend.  In the course of my own wandering life of the past
dozen years or so, I have come across him in all sorts of unexpected
places up and down Europe, and more especially in those countries beyond
the Danube which we term the Balkans.

For certain of his actions, and for the ingenuity of his somewhat
questionable friends, I make no apology.  While the game of
"mug-hunting" remains so easy and so profitable, there will be always
both hunters and hunted.  As my friend's escapades were related to me,
so have I set them down in the following pages, in the belief that my
readers may perhaps care to make more intimate acquaintance with the
clever, fearless, and altogether remarkable man whose exploits have
already, from time to time, been referred to in guarded and mysterious
terms by the daily press.

William Le Queux.

CHAPTER ONE.

HIS HIGHNESS'S LOVE AFFAIR.

The Prince broke open a big box of choice "Petroffs," selected one, lit
it slowly, and walked pensively to the window.

He was in a good mood that morning, for he had just got rid of a
troublesome visitor.

The big _salon_ was elegantly furnished with long mirrors, gilt chairs
covered with sky-blue silk upholstery, a piano, and a pretty
writing-table set close to the long window, which led out to a balcony
shaded by a red-and-white sun-blind--the _salon_ of the best suite in
the Majestic, that huge hotel facing the sea in King's Road, Brighton.

He was a tall, well-set-up man of about thirty-three; dark-haired,
good-looking, easy-going, and refined, who, for the exception of the
slightest trace of foreign accent in his speech, might easily have been
mistaken for an Englishman.  In his well-cut dark brown flannels and
brown shoes he went to the balcony, and, leaning over, gazed down upon
the sun-lit promenade, full of life and movement below.

His arrival a few days before had caused quite a flutter in the big
hotel.  He had not noticed it, of course, being too used to it.  He
travelled a great deal--indeed, he was always travelling nowadays--and
had learned to treat the constant endeavours of unknown persons to
scrape acquaintance with him with the utter disregard they deserved.

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:

"Evangeliques--Souche: Widukind III, comte de Schwalenberg (principaute
de Holstein), 1116-1137; bailli a Arolsen et acquisition du chateau de
Hesse vers, 