Windsor/The Christmas Princess

by Edgar Wallace

THE CHRISTMAS PRINCESS

By EDGAR WALLACE

Author of "Sanders of the River,'" "The Keepers of the King's Peace,'" "Sandi the King-Maker," etc.

THERE were times when John Bennett Watson, abbreviated for office purposes to "J. B.," wished he were not the managing director of the Western Commercial Corporation—moments when he envied the manager of the Broad Street branch of the Southern and Eastern Bank. This in spite of the fact that he was a normal man of thirty-something, without any business worries whatever, enjoying the best of health and an income which, at a moderate estimate, was twenty times larger than the hard-worked bank manager's.

J. B. was a man who in no circumstances interfered in other people's affairs; meddlers he loathed; outside folks who knew how things could be done better he abominated; and yet there were certain domestic arrangements of the Southern and Eastern Bank that he would alter.

Gray, the manager, a harassed little man with a straggling beard, came over to see him about a draft, and John made an awkward dive to the matter that at once intrigued and irritated him.

"You are very busy at the bank, Mr. Gray?"

"Yes," sighed Gray, rising and gathering up his documents, "too busy. With the annual audit coming on, the slump in industrials, the heavy cash balances I must carry to meet end of the quarter demands, I look like to have a happy New Year. Good morning!"

"I was working late in my office the other night," said John, hastily arresting the official's departure, "and, looking across the road, I saw a girl working at eleven o'clock. She was still working when I left, and the next morning I saw her at her desk when I arrived."

The manager scratched his beard. "Who can that be, now?" he asked absently. "Oh, yes, that is Miss Welford, She was secretary to our late accountant. Poor fellow! He died, leaving things in a terrible muddle, and if it wasn't for the fact that she has an instinct for banking, and has got his department work at her finger-tips, I should be in a fearful muddle. She is the only member of my staff that I would leave on the premises alone, I assure you."

"I thought I'd met her somewhere," said John carelessly and most untruthfully.

"I dare say," said the bank manager. "She is the sort of girl who has moved in a very good set. Her father lost his money in the rubber slump. By the way, rubber is a market that looks like reviving, Mr. Watson."

"I dare say," said John, to whom the fluctuations of the rubber market meant less than nothing. "I think I remember her—Annie Welford, isn't it?"

The manager shook his head. "I don't know—'F. G.' her initials are." He frowned. "I never trouble about the names of people. Oh, yes, it's Frances, that's the name. I've often thought she's quite a good-looking girl."

"You've often thought that, have you?" said John scornfully.

The man was scarcely human, and yet he was loath to let him go, and searched around in his mind for some excuse for detaining him.

"Where do you go for Christmas, Mr. Gray?"

"Home," said the other, showing the first sign of animation. "The two days in the year I look forward to are Good Friday and Christmas Day. Christmas is the one day I can't work and can be really a perfectly happy man. I sit in front of a fire, and my children read to me or tell me Christmas stories, and that's my idea of a perfectly happy day."

"Great Heavens!" said John, aghast. "You are human, after all. Though I confess that if anybody tried to tell me a Christmas story on Christmas Day, I should go and look for a hatchet. And your staff—do they work?"

"I'm sorry to say that headquarters won't allow that," said the manager regretfully. "It would add to my enjoyment considerably if I knew that somebody else was working."

John took an instant dislike to him, had thoughts of changing his bank.

"Do you mean to tell me you would let her—them, I mean—work on Christmas Day? Why, it would be disgraceful!" he said hotly.

When the bank manager had gone, John strode over the carpeted floor of his office and stood staring across at the trim figure visible—more visible than he had hoped—from the window.

"Quite a good-looking girl!"

He smiled at the impertinence of the man. She was beautiful—the complete satisfaction of all his uncatalogued requirements. If he could only hear her speak! He shrank from the possibility of disillusionment. What would she do on Christmas Day, he wondered? Hold revel in her suburban home, possibly in the company of her sweetheart. He made a little grimace at the thought. Yet it was perfectly ridiculous to suppose that such a girl would be without admirers, and that from their hosts she should not have given preference to one over all the rest.

If Gray had been just a little more human, it would have been possible to secure an introduction, though he shrank even from that prospect.

He was staring at her when the girl looked up, saw his dim figure behind the window-pane, and, as though conscious that she had been the object of his scrutiny, got up quickly from the table, switched on the light, and pulled down the blind. It was the first time she had ever noticed him, he reflected glumly, and it was not very promising that her acknowledgment of his admiration should be so emphatically resentful.

John Watson went back to his bachelor flat in St. James's with a feeling that the day had not been well spent, and that something in this one-sided intimacy had gone out of his life. He could no longer picture himself speaking to her, could weave no more dreams in which she played a complacent and agreeable part. Drawing the blind seemed to shut out even the visions that a pipe and a fire and a sprawling terrier bring to the most unimaginative. He must needs fall back upon the princess.

Her Serene Highness had been a figure of speculation from the day when old Nurse Crawley, who attended his infant needs, and was locally credited with being possessed of the devil, predicted that he would inherit a great fortune and marry a princes—a faith from which she never wavered all the days of her life. Fortune had come unexpectedly and vastly, and had been doubled and trebled by his own peculiar genius. But the princess remained amongst the glowing and shadowy shapes of the fire, less tangible than the blue smoke that curled from his pipe.

And now the princess bored him. He wanted to meet "F. G. Welford." He wanted badly to meet her—first, to apologise for his rudeness, and then to ask her—well, just to ask her if life held any greater attraction than the balancing of a late accountant's books.

The blind was drawn the next morning when he looked out. It was drawn on the morning of Christmas Eve. He had brought his bag to the office, and lost two trains in the hope that she might relent. She was inexorable.

He always travelled to Katterdown by train because the cottage—it had been his father's before him—had no accommodation for a car, and somehow his big limousine did not attune with the atmosphere of that faded and fragrant place.

The taxicab that took him to the station was half-way up Broad Street when he saw her. She was walking toward the office—had evidently been out to tea—and his cab was near enough to the side-walk to give him the nearest view of her face he had yet had. He drew his breath at the sight of her, and for a second was seized with an insane desire to stop the cab, get out, and, on some desperate excuse or other, speak to her. But before he could commit that folly she was gone.

Gray was a slave-driver, he decided, a sweater, a man of no sensibility or feeling. Christmas Eve! And to allow a girl to work! Perhaps the cunning devil had lied to him, and she was working on Christmas Day. He hated the unhappy Mr. Gray, hated his baldness, his beard and all that was of him. Such a man had no soul, no proper appreciation of values. He was a cold-blooded exploiter of all that was best and noblest in humanity.

By the time he had reached Bullham Junction, John Bennett Watson was better balanced in mind, could chuckle at his own extravagances without wondering at them, which was ominous.

There was no conveyance at the station, and he walked through the one street of Bullham to "The Red Lion."

"Excuse me, Mr. Watson."

He turned to see the rubicund countenance and the blue coat of a policeman.

"Happy Christmas, Mr. Watson! You going out to Katterdown?"

"Why, yes, sergeant, as soon as I can get a cab."

"Likely you'll see my dog Mowser round about the village. He's a rare fellow for Katterdown; there's a dog there he's always fighting. Will you send him home with a flea in his ear? Give him a whack, and he'll go. Getting into bad habits, that dog. Comes home in the middle of the night and scratches the door till I let him in."

J. B. smiled and promised.

Mowser, a bedraggled wire-haired terrier, he found literally on the doorstep of the cottage, and Mowser's feud had evidently found expression in violence, for he was slightly tattered. John took him in and fed him. The hour was late, and he decided to send him back in the morning—an arrangement wholly agreeable to Mowser, who finished his scraps and went to sleep under the kitchen table.

So small was Katterdown Cottage that the man and his wife who acted as caretakers had no accommodation and slept at the village—a risky proceeding, as an insurance company had told him, but one which he preferred, for there were memories about this little house, with its thatched roof and Elizabethan chimneys, which were very pleasant, and the presence of strangers was insufferable. Here for ten years John Watson had wakened to hail the Christmas morn and listen to the silvery bells of the parish church, and had spent the morning in the sheltered garden, tending those hardy plants that reveal their treasures in bleak December. For ten Christmas Eves he had sat, huddled up in the big, chintz-covered chair, with a pipe and a book and his pleasant thoughts, listening to the drip of rain or the thin whine of the wind, or, on one never-to-be-forgotten Christmas Eve, watching the snowflakes building white cobwebs in the corner of every pane. It was half-past eleven, and he had risen with a yawn to stretch himself, preparatory to going upstairs to bed, when there came to him from outside a sound which was familiar. He passed down the little passage, unbolted the front door, and stepped into the garden.

Out of the darkness came the peculiar and distinctive sound of an aeroplane's engines that were not running sweetly, and presently, peering overhead, he saw the shadow of great wings. Suddenly a blinding white light showed in the skies, illuminating fields and road, so brilliant that Katterdown Parish Church, a mile away, was visible. The light swooped in a circle, coming lower and lower, and finally vanished behind the privet fence of the Hermitage field, its radiance throwing the trim boundary hedge into silhouette.

Going back into the cottage for his coat, Watson ran through the garden, across the road, and, vaulting the gate, stumbled over the frozen plough-land to the place where the landing lights of the big machine were flickering to extinction.

"Hello!" called a voice, and John answered the hail, and presently came up with the two men who were standing by the under-carriage. One was lighting a cigarette, and the newcomer caught a momentary glimpse of his face, long, white, and blackly bearded. The other he could not see, but it was he who spoke.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"Katterdown, six miles from Petworth," Watson answered. "You got down without accident?"

There was no reply for a few seconds, and then the bearded man laughed softly. "We got down, but not without accident," he said, a dry note in his voice. "Is there a house where——"

Here he stopped and said something to his companion in an undertone. The short man grunted an inquiry in the same tone, and—

"I'll ask," he said. "Are we near to a village?"

"No, not nearer than a mile," said Watson. "I have a cottage, but it is rather isolated."

"Wife and family?"

John laughed quietly. "No," he said, "I am all alone."

Again the whispered colloquy.

"It may sound a little—unusual and impertinent, these questions," said the tall man at last, "but we have a passenger who, for State reasons, is travelling incognita. I must take you this much into my confidence and tell you that she ought not to be within a thousand miles of England. May I therefore rely upon your discretion?"

Dumbfounded, John Watson listened, his sense of adventure piqued. "Certainly you may rely upon me," he said. "I am a bachelor and live alone—I usually come to Katterdown to spend Christmas—and I haven't even a servant in the house. I was born here and have a certain sentimental feeling towards the place. I am giving you confidence for confidence—my name is Watson, by the way."

"Thank you," said the other simply. "My name is James—Colonel Alfred James."

He walked towards the machine, and John heard him speak. "You may descend, Highness," he said.

His eyes now accustomed to the darkness, J. B. saw a slim figure descend, and waited whilst the two men and the woman spoke together in a whisper. So far as he could gather, the lady said little, but the conversation continued for so long that John began to feel the cold.

"Will you come this way?" he called.

"Lead on," said the gruff voice of the smaller man, and the owner of Katterdown Cottage led the way to the gate, and, after some delay, opened it and ushered them across the road into the cottage.

The tall Colonel James followed, carrying two heavy bags; then came the girl, and thirdly the shorter of the two, a round, red-faced man with a slight moustache and a pair of mall eyes that were set a trifle too close together.

The big man deposited the bags on the floor of the sitting-room.

"I present you, Mr. Watson, to Her Serene Highness Princess Irene of Maritza," he said. "Her Highness has a very dear friend in London, but, owing to certain family objections—in which I feel sure you will not be interested—it has been necessary for Her Highness to make a surreptitious and in some ways unauthorised trip to London. Whilst we realise that to land in England without a passport and without the necessary authority from the Home Office constitutes a technical offence, my friend and I have gladly undertaken the risk to serve one to whose fiancé we are under a heavy debt of obligation."

All the time he had been speaking, John's wondering gaze had never left the girl's pale face. She stood with eyes downcast, hands lightly clasped in front of her, and only once during the interview did she look up. Presently John found his voice, though he spoke with extraordinary difficulty.

"I shall be happy to place my room at the disposal of Her Highness," he said.

"You have no telephone here?" asked the little man suddenly.

John shook his head. "No," he said, with a half smile, "we have nothing quite so modern at Katterdown Cottage, except a very modern bathroom leading from my room. May I show Your Highness the way?"

The tall man inclined his head gravely. "Will you go first, please?" he said.

Lighting a candle, John went up the narrow stairs, opened the door of his chamber, a cosy room with its old four-poster and its log fire smouldering in the grate.

"This will do very well," said the tall man, who had followed him. "In here, Your Highness."

He put his hand on the girl's arm and led her into the room. Then, coming out quickly, he closed the door behind him. At the foot of the stairs stood the little fat man, grotesquely huge in his leather coat, and as grotesquely ridiculous in his leather headgear.

"Her Highness is comfortable," said the bearded man. "You can go to work on the machine. Do you think you can get it right by the morning?"

"I ought to have it right in two hours," said the other, "but we couldn't possibly take off in the dark. I don't know the size of the field. It's plough-land, too, and that'll make it a bit more difficult, but I'll certainly be ready for you at daybreak."

With that he was gone, leaving John alone with the Colonel.

"Will you come into the sitting-room?" asked John.

"I think not," replied James. "You see, Mr. Watson, my responsibility is a great one. Certain things have happened in London which have reduced Her Highness to the verge of despair. She has enemies—personal enemies, you understand—who would not hesitate to take her life."

He pulled up his leather coat and from his pocket slipped out a long-barrelled Browning and snapped back the jacket.

"I will not detain you any longer, Mr. Watson. You may go to bed with the full assurance that you have rendered an inestimable service to what was once a great ruling house."

John laughed softly. "Unfortunately," he said, "I have no bed, and if you mean that you are going to sit up all night, you have relieved me of a great embarrassment, for I should have had no place to offer you but the settee in my sitting-room. You are welcome to that."

James shook his head. "I will remain here," he said, and sat on the lower stair. Suddenly he got up. "Is your sitting-room beneath your bedroom?"

John nodded.

"Should I hear any—any noise above?"

"Undoubtedly," said John. "Every floor in this old house creaks."

"Then I will join you. It is inclined to be draughty here."

He accompanied his host into the sitting-room and stripped the leather coat he was wearing, pulled off his helmet, and sank, with a luxurious sigh, into the deep armchair that John had vacated when the sound of the aeroplane's engines had come to his ears.

"Christmas Eve, eh?" said the Colonel. He extracted a cigarette from his case and tapped it thoughtfully on his thumb-nail. Then, seeing John's eyes resting on the pistol that lay on the table by his elbow, he asked: "Looks a little theatrical, don't you think? I suppose firearms are not in your line, Mr. Watson?"

"I have an automatic at my London flat," said John, with a smile, "but I can't say that I get a great deal of pistol practice. Do you seriously mean that you would use that in certain extremities?"

The big man blew a cloud of smoke to the ceiling and nodded. "I mean that," he said curtly.

"How fascinating!" said J. B. "And how un-Christmaslike!"

The other smiled broadly.

"There are one or two things about you that puzzle me," J. B. went on slowly.

"Such as?"

"Well"—he hesitated—"did the Princess come to where the aeroplane was? I presume it was somewhere outside of London?"

"We picked her up in a car," said the other shortly.

"I see," said J. B. "How queer!"

"What is queer?" frowned James.

"The whole thing," said J. B. Watson. "You can't say that it is a usual experience for a bachelor to have a princess drop on to him from the clouds. And, for a reason which you won't want me to explain, I am especially interested in princesses. It goes back to a very old prophecy that was made by my nurse."

There was a slight movement above their heads.

"Excuse me," said James, and, rising quickly, ran up the stairs.

The sound of a low-voiced conversation floated down to John Watson, and, after a while, the footsteps of James upon the stairs. When he came in he was looking a little worried.

"Did Her Highness require anything?"

"Nothing." This time the man's voice was curt. "She wanted to know when the machine would be ready, that is all."

They sat in complete silence for half an hour, till John rose.

"I'll make some coffee, or I shall go to sleep. And you would like some coffee, too?"

James hesitated. "Yes, I think I should. I'll come with you and see you make it," he said.

A sleeping Mowser lifted his wiry head inquiringly as the two men came into the kitchen, and watched them with unconcern, till, realising that nothing in the shape of food was imminent, he tucked his head between his paws and went to sleep again.

James took a chair and watched the percolator working without comment, and J. B. could not escape a feeling that he stood in relationship to the man as a convict stands to a prison guard, and this impression was strengthened when, the coffee made, his guest walked behind him to the sitting-room again. It was some time before the steaming cups had cooled sufficiently to drink, and John took a sip and made a wry face.

"Do you take sugar?" he asked. "Because I do."

He went back to the kitchen, but this time the man did not accompany him. But he was standing in the doorway when J. B. returned,

"You took some time to find it," he said gruffly, and saw that his tone was a mistake, for he went on, with a laugh and a return to his old suavity: "Forgive my infernal cheek, but this little adventure of ours has got on my nerves."

"I couldn't find it," said John. "My caretaker discovers a new place to hide her stores every visit I make to the cottage."

He dropped two lumps into his coffee and stirred it, and, finding that the bearded Colonel desired to do nothing more than to smoke an endless chain of cigarettes, he took down a book from the shelf and began to read.

Presently the heavy boots of the smaller man sounded on the paved pathway outside the cottage, and John jumped up. "That must be your friend," he said, and went to admit him.

The pilot, for such he seemed to be, came in, grimy of face and black of hands. "I've put it right," he said. "You can be ready to move as soon as you like. I have explored the field, and there's plenty of room to take her off."

"Go back to the machine and stand by," said the other sharply. And then, to John: "I am extremely obliged to you for your courtesy, and I'm glad we have not had to trespass longer on your hospitality. And may I add the thanks of the Princess to mine!"

"You may," said John.

James ran up the stairs and knocked at the bedroom door. "I am ready, Your Highness."

There was a pause, and then the key was turned and the door opened. It closed again upon the man, and all that John Watson could hear was the murmur of voices through the ceiling.

He laughed softly, pure joy in every note. So old Nurse Crawley had been right, after all, and a princess had come into his life, and the prophecy might yet be fulfilled.

The door was opened, two pairs of feet descended the stairs, and presently James stood in the light of the table-lamp which flowed through the open door of the sitting-room into the passage. In each hand he carried a bag, and behind him was a muffled figure in a fur coat, who kept her face steadily averted from John's eyes.

"I thank you again, Mr. Watson. If I have put you to any expense——"

"None whatever," said John politely.

He stood with his back to the fire and watched. He heard James put down his bag and turn the handle of the door, but it did not move. He tried again, feeling for the bolts, and, finding that the door was of stout oak and the lock of ancient solidity, he came back to the sitting-room.

"I can't open your door, Mr. Watson."

"Very true," said John pleasantly, "very true!"

The man's brows gathered in a frown of suspicion. "What do you mean—very true?" he asked harshly.

"You can't open it because I've locked it, and the key is in my pocket," said John.

Instantly the automatic appeared in James's hand. "Give me that key," he said coldly, "or there'll be a village tragedy that will mystify the reporters. I ought to have shot you, anyway," he said, "and there's still time, if you don't—give me that key!"

John shook his head. His hands were still behind him, and, with a smothered exclamation of rage, the man pressed the trigger. There was a dull click.

"I took the precaution of unloading your pistol when you went upstairs an hour or two ago, Mr. James, or Colonel James, as the case may be," said John in his conversational tone. "I have also sent—viâ the back door—attached to the collar of a small and intelligent dog, an urgent message to the Bullham police to put in as early an appearance as possible. I've been expecting them for the last five minutes."

With a roar of rage, the big man sprang at him, and, as he did so, John withdrew his right hand and struck at his assailant with the poker, which he had held throughout the interview. Quick as a cat, the man dodged the blow, and in another instant he had gripped the other in his powerful hands. J. B. wrenched his left arm free and struck twice at the man, but his padded coat softened the blows, and it was not until a lucky blow caught Colonel James under the jaw that he went floundering to the ground. There was the sound of voices outside. John took the key from his pocket and flung it at the foot of the terrified girl.

"Open the door, quick, Miss Welford!" he hissed, and turned to leap on his half-maddened adversary, who had thrown open his coat and was groping for a second pistol. Before it could be drawn, the room was full of people, and he went down under the weight of two policemen and the local blacksmith.

*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*

"This is the real miracle play," said John. "But to make the miracle complete, you've got to stay here and have dinner, Miss Welford."

"But what I can't understand is, how you recognised me?" asked the puzzled girl.

"I not only know your name, but I know the whole story," said John. "You were working at the bank late, and these two gentlemen, who must have long planned the coup, broke into the vault to secure the very large sum in ready cash which would be on the bank premises on Christmas Eve. They then discovered that you were among the treasures that the bank contained——"

"I heard the noise and went down. They took me away with them in the car because they were afraid that I should identify them. When the machine came down, they swore that if I betrayed them they would not only kill me, but kill you also. They had to explain me, so I became a princess, But how did you know that I was not?"

"I knew you were a princess all right," said John. "I've known you were a princess ever since I started peeping into your palace window."

She drew a long breath. "Oh, were you the man?" she said. "I've often wondered since. I never knew you."

"You know me now, and you will know me much better. Will you stay and have Christmas dinner with me?"

She looked at him quickly, then dropped her eyes. "I think I will," she said. "I owe you so much, Mr.——"

"On Christmas Day," he interrupted, "I am 'John,' even to my enemies." And she smiled.

"I don't feel like an enemy," she said.