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  The de Frémonds had made the best of the good impression they had created and almost before anyone realised what had happened, the Princesse had been appointed a Lady-in-Waiting and the Prince was always to be found at the Council of Foreign Ministers.

  While the Duke was speaking with the Prince, Amé attempted to look round the very fine Reception room. Decorated with panels of pale blue brocades, with great vases of Sèvres china set out on inlaid tables, it made a perfect background for the silks and satins of the ladies present and for the orders and decorations of the men.

  The jewellery worn by the Princesse was rivalled, if not equalled, by that of her other guests, and Amé found herself feeling curiously unadorned and had no idea that she stood out in contrast and looked like a young nymph strayed from some woodland glade against the sophisticated frills and furbelows of the other women.

  It was past the dinner hour and the Duke was wondering what was keeping his host and hostess. He had even drawn his watch from his vest pocket to look at the time when he heard Amé, who was standing beside him, give a sudden gasp.

  He turned to see what had upset her and saw that the Cardinal de Rohan had at that moment ascended the stairs and was speaking to his host and hostess. His dissolute face above the scarlet cassock was genial enough and yet Amé felt herself begin to tremble and only at a quick glance from the Duke did she then force herself to speak pleasantly to the man who was at that moment being presented to her by Isabella.

  There was, however, a sinking feeling in her heart as a few seconds later the Prince de Condé offered her his arm and they followed the slow procession in to dinner. There were two strangers at Amé’s side and, though she made every effort to respond to their efforts to please and amuse her, she found her eyes going every so often to the Duke further up the table, as if in looking at him she found reassurance.

  Both Isabella and Hugo appeared quite unperturbed and yet she could not prevent herself from feeling frightened and knowing that the tips of her fingers were cold and that her cheeks were flushed.

  The dinner party was not very large, about thirty people. It was an excellent meal served on gold plate, There was a footman behind every chair and the conversation was both gay and witty.

  Slowly, as the hours passed, Amé felt her fear subsiding. There was, she told herself, nothing to be afraid of. The Cardinal had not recognised her when she was presented to him at Versailles. Indeed why should he when he had never seen her before? And tonight, like that of all the other ladies, her hair was powdered so she need not be anxious of his noticing what the Duke had called ‘an unusual combination’ of red hair and blue eyes.

  Besides, had he been suspicious, he had had over a week in which to voice his suspicions. She had been here, there and everywhere at every party, at every fête, at the Opera and at endless dinner parties at which doubtless the Cardinal’s spies could, if they so wished, have had a good look at her.

  ‘I am being absurd,’ she told herself and yet the feeling of uneasiness persisted. Why, she had no idea.

  It was towards the end of the dinner that the conversation became general. The Princesse had started it by talking about the astrologer Bailly whom, it appeared, nearly everyone in Paris had consulted.

  The Princesse related how he had told her things that she had longed to know and also a secret known to no one save herself.

  One of the other guests, however, denounced Bailly as an impostor and swore by some clairvoyant who he said lived in a hovel down by one of the quays, but who was infallible when it came to predictions of the future.

  The Duke listened to the controversy with amusement. He was well aware that the interest in occultism was a fashionable fad that was sweeping all Paris.

  It was said that the Duc de Chartres shared the dangerous and illicit curiosity of his forbears, one of whom it was claimed had been able to rouse the Devil. The Duc himself, he had been told, was mad over talismans and constantly wore on his person a phylactery consecrated by a famous cabalist, Samuel Jacoby Falk. But the Duc was not the only one, the Cardinal de Rohan was completely infatuated with the Comte Cagliostro.

  People told of strange ceremonies that had been taking place in the Cardinal’s Palace. The Duke had not believed such stories or he had discounted the majority of them until now when the Cardinal bent forward to his hostess and said,

  “Have you ever met Comte Cagliostro?”

  The Princesse shook her head. “No, Monsignor, but I have heard a great deal about him. As I expect you know, there are many stories of how he can rejuvenate old women and make them young again and even raise those who are dead back to life. I am sure most of them are untrue.”

  “On the contrary,” the Cardinal replied, “they are as true as the Gospels.”

  “Do you really say that in all sincerity, Monsignor?” the Princesse enquired.

  A hush had fallen over the table and everyone leaned forward to hear the Cardinal’s reply. In answer he held out his Papal ring. It was a magnificent solitaire diamond engraved with the Cardinal’s Coat of Arms.

  “Do you see that ring?” he asked. “That was made by the Comte in his crucible.”

  There was a murmur of astonishment and then the Cardinal continued,

  “That is not all. He makes gold. He made in front of me, five or six thousand Livres worth. I shall have more still and he will make me the richest Prince in Europe!”

  “But, Monsignor, this is incredible,” the Princesse exclaimed. “Can we really credit it that this ring was made by magic forces?”

  “I solemnly assure you it is so. As for magic, there is nothing that the Comte cannot do. He is a magician, one of the greatest the word has ever known.”

  The astonishment of the guests at the dinner party was obvious, both by the expression on their faces and the excited conversation that immediately arose. Only the Duke remained unmoved, his lips curved a little in a cynical disbelieving smile, his eyes seeming to watch the excitement around him as if he was the only onlooker at a play in which everyone else was taking part.

  As if his detachment communicated itself to the Cardinal, he looked across the table at him and held out his hand.

  “You have not examined my ring, my dear Duke.”

  “It appears a very fine specimen,” the Duke replied, “but Your Eminence must forgive me if I am a little sceptical of the claims of the gentleman of whom you speak so glowingly. I heard of the Comte and Comtesse when they were in London. They were not very successful there, as I expect you know.”

  “So many of the English are unbelievers,” the Cardinal snorted.

  “And I am afraid that I am amongst them all when it comes to believing that diamonds and gold can be manufactured by magic,” the Duke declared,

  “My dear fellow, I can prove these things to you,” the Cardinal replied, leaning across the table.

  “In that case my mind must remain open,” the Duke smiled.

  “I will prove it,” the Cardinal repeated.

  “But when?” somebody asked.

  The Duke’s calm disbelief seemed to have damped down some of the excitement among the guests. Where before there had only been exclamations of astonishment, now the murmur of argument could be heard.

  “I will prove it whenever it is most convenient to Your Grace,” the Cardinal said, then added, “Why not tonight?”

  “Tonight?”

  It was the Princesse who had repeated the last words.

  “Why not?” the Cardinal enquired. “I will send my coach immediately to where the Comte is lodging. I will ask him to return in it to my Palace and we will all repair there when dinner is finished. You shall see the Comte himself, you shall talk with him and we will ask him to show you some of his secrets of the future. You, Princesse, speak of Bailly. You will see that Bailly is only a joke when you compare him with Comte Cagliostro and what he can achieve.”

  “I shall, of course, be very interested,” the Princesse said.

  “You will be thrille
d and delighted, dear lady,” the Cardinal corrected, “and you, Duke, you, like myself, shall acknowledge Divine forces at work.”

  There was nothing the Duke could say. He saw too late where his disbelief had carried them. He glanced down the table at Amé, well aware of her anxiety and that there was a look of appeal in her eyes as they sought his and then, above the chatter of the guests talking on as to the possibilities and impossibilities of the Comte Cagliostro’s claims, the Duke heard the Cardinal’s voice,

  “I am delighted, my dear Princesse,” he was saying, “that this should have occurred tonight. I have, as it happens, a very important question to ask the Comte myself. It will be yet another test of his infallible powers. A novice is missing from one of my Convents. She has been missing now for over ten days and no one can find her. We will ask Comte Cagliostro where she may be hidden. He will tell us, you can be sure of that. Tonight our search will be at an end!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “But what could have happened to this – novice?” the Princesse asked.

  The Cardinal looked at her in what appeared to the Duke, who was watching him, to be rather a strange manner.

  “Who can fathom the workings of the female mind?” His Eminence replied with a faint smile on his lips. “The young woman has escaped for the moment but doubtless she will be brought to heel.”

  “But surely a novice from a Convent would have no money and no clothes save those she stood up in?” someone asked.

  The Cardinal shrugged his shoulders eloquently.

  “Who knows but that she may have had an accomplice? Indeed she may have received help from some misguided benefactor.”

  As he spoke, he glanced across the table at the Duke.

  “You were passing the Convent de la Croix that night, my dear Duke, yet you saw nothing untoward?”

  “I changed horses on the road to Chantilly,” the Duke replied, “but I was unable to be of help to your emissaries who cross-questioned me most thoroughly over my breakfast the following morning.”

  The lady on the Duke’s left gave a little cry of laughter.

  “Were they suspecting you of abducting the lady?” she enquired.

  “I believe that was the purport of their questions,” the Duke assured her gravely. “Unfortunately I was, at the time they were asking me about, more concerned with missing my overdue dinner.”

  “How ungallant!” she replied, “and it does not tally with the reputation that has preceded Your Grace from London.”

  “You must not believe all you hear,” the Duke said quietly.

  “Then indeed I am disappointed,” she told him flirtatiously. “Well, it is a mystery that is as yet unsolved,” the Cardinal remarked, “but I believe that the Comte Cagliostro will undoubtedly solve it for us.”

  “I hope so, indeed I hope so,” the Princesse remarked fervently. “Think what might have happened to that poor girl, alone in the world, penniless and perhaps hungry!”

  “Was she pretty?” someone asked down the table.

  “That appears to be a question of some importance, but I regret I cannot answer it,” the Cardinal replied, “I have never seen her.”

  “How remiss of you, Monsignor,” the sprightly lady on the Duke’s left said reproachfully, “and I believed you so assiduous in your duties!”

  There was laughter at this. The Cardinal raised his hand with the flashing diamond up to his face as if in pretended embarrassment. The conversation became general, everyone making suggestions as to what might have happened to the novice who had escaped from the Convent, some ribald, some obscene and some so nonsensical that they raised a laugh by their very absurdity.

  The Duke, without appearing to look closely at Amé, was aware that the colour, which had risen to her cheeks when the Cardinal first spoke of the escaped novice, had now ebbed away, leaving her curiously pale but very composed.

  Isabella was acting the part of a disinterested observer with a cleverness that might have been expected of her. She joked and laughed with the gentlemen on the either side of her and vowed that, if she had ever been placed in a Convent, she would have run away in the first twenty-four hours.

  “Think of being cooped up with a whole lot of women!” she exclaimed. “I assure you I would die with the boredom of it.”

  Only Hugo and the Princesse were both looking serious, the Duke noted, Hugo because the expression was habitual to him and the Princesse because she had a soft and tender heart.

  She was genuinely concerned with the suffering of the girl who had escaped. She, with more imagination than the rest of her guests, could perhaps visualise a little of the terror of being completely alone in the world, unsheltered, unprotected and without sustenance.

  Half to comfort her and also because he was anxious that the Cardinal should not think he was evading the question or was anxious to change the subject, the Duke said,

  “If your Eminence’s bodyguard did not manage to find the young lady in the immediate environment of the Convent, perhaps it is logical to imagine that she might then have eloped with a packman or found ways of obtaining a lift across country into Spain or Italy.”

  Before the Cardinal could reply the Princesse gave a cry.

  “But. how could she elope with anyone?” she enquired. “There is no chance of the nuns in the Convent coming into contact with men.”

  “Indeed I had no idea they were so cloistered,” the Duke commented.

  There was a frown now between the Cardinal’s eyes.

  “Nuns in the Convent de la Croix tend the sick,” he said, “and travellers who ask for assistance.”

  “You think that she might have met someone like that?” the Princesse asked.

  “My dear lady, it is impossible to know what to think,” the Cardinal replied suavely.

  The Princesse lay back in her chair.

  “It is worrying that a young girl should disappear and no trace of her be found. I cannot understand how Your Eminence can remain so unperturbed about it.”

  “On the contrary, it has, I assure you, caused me a lot of anxious thought,” the Cardinal said. “But our troubles are now at an end. I cannot think now why I did not consult my good friend before, the one man who is infallible where mysteries are concerned. My excuse must be that we have had so many more important matters to discuss when we were together.”

  “Such as the making of gold?” the Princesse remarked with a touch of asperity in her voice.

  “Exactly,” the Cardinal replied.

  There appeared to the Duke to be a sudden tension between his hostess and the Cardinal. He wondered why the Princesse de Frémond was so concerned about this unknown young woman. He decided that there were perhaps deep-running currents here.

  Turning to the lady on his left, who, from her conversation, appeared to be informed of most things, he enquired of her who the Princesse de Frémond was before her marriage. She mentioned a name that made the Duke start.

  “Surely,” he asked, “in that case our hostess is a relation of His Eminence, the Cardinal?”

  “But of course,” his informant replied. “Her father is in fact the Cardinal’s first cousin. They were poor, miserably poor, I have heard, and it was undoubtedly a brilliant match for her to marry the Prince de Frémond. He inherited great wealth and some of the best estates in the Ardennes.”

  The Duke would have asked further questions but at that moment the Princesse rose to her feet.

  Dinner was at an end. As they moved into the salon, the Cardinal talked unceasingly of the wonders the Comte Cagliostro had been able to show him. He spoke of the Comte with a reverence and admiration that would, at any other time, have amused the Duke, knowing as he did what a very poor reception the so-called magician had received in London and how he had spent a month in the King’s Bench prison for fraud.

  He would indeed have laughed at the whole thing as ridiculous and put the Cardinal down as being merely a gullible fool if he had not felt apprehensive of what lay ahead.

/>   Suppose after all that Comte Cagliostro had some clairvoyant powers. Suppose he was clever enough to point out Amé as the novice whom the Cardinal was seeking.

  The Duke could see the denouement only too clearly and yet, logically speaking, he could not believe that such a thing was possible.

  If it had been possible, he would not have faced the Comte but made some excuse to leave the party, taking Amé with him. However, he saw that such a course would arouse suspicions only too obviously. The fact that his coach had been on the road that evening was enough to make him suspect, however much he might protest his innocence.

  The Cardinal and his spies may have found nothing to date, yet there was no reason to believe that they did not still watch his movements. In fact the very tone in which the Cardinal had spoken tonight told the Duke that the idea was still in his Eminence’s mind that he might in some way have been instrumental in helping Amé to escape.

  It was a situation without a precedent and the Duke did not know how to act for the best. If it was a trap, he was fairly caught. If, as he hoped, it was all a matter of chance, then the only thing to do was to behave quite naturally and do nothing that would arouse further suspicion.

  Perhaps in this instance the magic and occultism of the Comte would fail.

  If he was worried, the Duke knew that Isabella was worried too. He saw the quick warning glance she gave him and pretending that her bracelet had come undone and that she wished him to fasten it, she drew him aside under the light of the crystal chandelier and said in a low voice,

  “What shall we do, Sebastian? They say the man is miraculous. If that is so, Amé will be discovered.”

  “To leave now would be fatal,” the Duke replied.