"The Amateur Queen"

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 201, 26 August 1930, Page 18

"The Amateur Queen"

By RUSSELL STANNARD.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS,

VIVIEN CLEMENT opened a photographer's studio in London; she lived alone except for her Persian cat Josephine. EDWARD CARR, a young man working in the motor-car showrooms opposite, is her customer. One day a foreigner, PRINCE PAUL MIDANTI, comes to the studio and asks Vivien if she will take the photograph of a child. It must be done in the greatest secrecy in the country. Vivien agrees, and that same evening Midanti calls for her and her apparatus in a large car. Edward Carr,' who has developed a great interest for Vivien, sees, with misgivings, the car bearing Vivien away. Two days later when there was still no sign of Vivien, Carr determines to break into her llat and find a clue as to her whereabouts. He discovers Midanti's card with a Knightsbridge address. The address is that of the Solvarian Legation. Calling there, he can elicit no information concerning the whereabouts of either Midanti or Vivien. The next day he receives a letter from Vivien telling him not to worry, that she is with friends. She gives no address, however, and Carr is still dissatisfied. He determines to find her. Working on a clue, Carr drives to a little village near Guildford, in Surrey. He is followed the whole way. As lie approaches the house where he believes Vivien to be, he is suddenly seized from behind. Blindfolded and bound, he is taken into the house, where he is interviewed. His captors say they will release him only if he will promise not to interfere again, and to keep silence about the events of that evening. He refuses. Suddenly he finds he is alone-;-a prisoner. Nevertheless, he is treated like a guest. The following day Vivien visits him. She tells him she is engaged in an astonishing secret undertaking. She admits there may be some danger, and, for that reason, Carr .is anxious to join her. Prince Midanti agrees to include him, if he will swear to secrecy, even before knowing the nature of the enterprise. Carr agrees to everything so that he may be near Vivien. He then motors back to town to settle his affairs, in the expectation that several weeks will elapse before he will be free to return to his usual life. CHAPTER X. A Road Attack. Vivien waited until he had lit a cigarette and then she said "I will tell you. what happened before and after the night of my supposed disappearance. That day a. stranger called; —a dark man, who passed me in the street just about the time you first spoke to me when I was hanging up the graphs.

"He called at the studio. It was the Prince. He asked me to take the photograph of a child. The picture was to be made in a country house in conditions of the utmost secrecy.

"I was convinced that it was an honourable commission, and drove down there one night in his car." "I saw you," .said Carr. "Otherwise you might never have found me."

"Oh yes, I would. The real clue was in your studio, the .Prince's card on your divan."

"How dreadful," said Vivien. "Gross carelessness, but I was not then committed to the cause. Well, the Prince drove me here, and I took the pictures and developed and printed them according to plan." "And who was this child?" he asked.

She did not answer immediately, and then she whispered, "the infant King of Solvaria!"

"What! But the country has been a republic since " "Since the revolution, the exiled King and Queen have been living in England. They were supposed to be living incognito in South America. They never went there, for very high influences in this country enabled them to come here under assumed names, and in the greatest secrecy." \ "But the child, is it the only—"

"They were childless when they left their own country," said Vivien. "There might „not have been a revolution if there had been an heir to the throne born before the trouble began, trouble started by a certain great Power because the King would have nothing to do with plans to embroil Europe in another war.

"The baby was born in England and has transformed the situation, for the news has already reached Solvaria and is being whispered among the peasantry, who are 80 per cent of the population, and have remained loyal to the throne." "But how can this baby be the king?" asked Carr, now almost as excited as Vivien.

"The King, its father, died a month before it was born, but that, we believe, is not known to anyone in Solvaria, and it is most important that the news should not leak out until our plans have been carried much further."

"And the Queen?"

"The Queen," whispered Vivien, "is here in this house, but she is ill. She did not recover from the shock of the King's death, and the birth 1 of the baby made her worse. The doctors fear that she may not be strong enough to go out of the house for many months, perhaps a year. It is a great tragedy. The King and Queen were very young when they left their country. The Queen was only eighteen when she married, and now she is only twenty-four." "And what was the idea behind this photograph you have taken?" "The boy is now two years old and already bears a striking resemblance to the late King. His own people will have no doubt about it when they see the photograph. "Thousands of copies have been printed and are already on their way to Solvaria to be smuggled into the country and circulated by the loyalists. They say that the country is sick and tired of a republic and wants a king again. That is impossible, of course, until the boy has grown up, but they would appoint a Regent." , "The Prince?"

?'Yes, Solvaria was one of England's oldest friends until the Republican regime. We owe a great deal to the Solvarians in the past." "That is true," said Carr. "But what puzzles me is why you were selected to take the photographs. Why didn't they get one of their own countrymen to do it, it would have been simple enough for one of the company here to buy a decent outfit and make the. picture here in the greatest secrecy instead of bringing an entire stranger into the show."

Vivien smiled mysteriously.

"That is a secret that will be revealed to you later on. But I can tell you this, that as soon as I knew all the circumstances, as soon as I met the Queen, I volunteered, in fact I implored them, to let me help in any way I could in the movement to restore the throne.

"Thay put no sort of pressure upon me, although let me tell you they were very pleased."

"I should jolly well think they were," said Carr.

"Well, that is all we are going to tell you at present," saicl Vivien, "i wonder if you tlrink it worth while?"

"Worth while!" replied Carr. "Its big—a bigger thing than I should ever have dreamed of. It s a chance of doing a bit for England too."

He leaned forward so that his cheek almost touched Vivien's, for you

"Must I tell you again_ that sentiment is barred," said Vivien, but she sounded unconvincing.

The next morning breakfast was a very early meal and an unusually silent one, for everyone was preoccupied; there was a certain tension, inevitable in the circumstances.

The Prince was studying a map of the route from Surrey to the Devonshire coast, and as Carr had done the journey I many times, he was able to advise as to the best way to go. Exactly as the clock in the hall began to strike nine, the first car containing j Eosetta, Vivien,. the Prince and Voder | moved down the drive, the second car containing the other members of the expedition leaving ten minutes later. Canregretfully left his Gleam in the garage at Six Chimneys. "We shall not leave Exeter until after dark," said the Pr'iiice, "so anyone who ( would care to may go out this evening, to the cinema or something." Rosetta laughed. "This is going to be a much better film story than any we are likely to see," she said. "What a pity we can't have it done?" The Prince looked at Carr. "That would be excellent if it were practicable, and it would begin with the unceremonious arrival at Six Chimneys of Mr. Edward Carr and his sudden conversion to the cause at the invitation of Miss Vivien Clement." "It should begin before that," said Carr, when the laughter had subsided. I "It should give the close-up of the arrival of a very distinguished and mysterious personage at Vivien's studio and their subsequent mysterious departure in a costly limousine —this being the last seen of the beauteous Vivien, and there should be a picture of the Gleam in it somewhere, if only as a piece of useful publicity." The talk was light-hearted all the way to Exeter. They had lunch at an old inn and not being pressed' for time, in view of their wait at Exeter, they strolled about a country town, and Vivien and Carr had an .hour to themselves. By tea time they had gone sufficiently far west to have fresh clotted cream served with blackberry jam, and they had a late dinner at Exeter. At eleven o'clock they left for the coast, having by prearrangement met the second car .outside the town and then gone on ahead again. "If Paljnin has got wind of anything we may have a little trouble before we get on board," said the Prince. "But the ladies need not be nervous," he added reassuringly. "Who is Pahriin?" asked Carr. Rosetta put a gloved hand on his shoulder and whispered. "The head of the Republic's Secret Service in England. He does not know the truth, but he suspects the Prince of monarchial sympathies and is always nosing around trying to find out something." "How extremely interesting," murmured Carr. "There is absolutely nothing lacking in this plot so far as I can see. What would these Government agents do if they knew what we were up to?" "They would naturally try to stop us," said the Prince. As he spoke there was a loud report from under the car, followed immedi- ; ately by another, and Marzer, who was driving, pulled up suddenly and ex- : claimed: 1 "Burst tyres and they were new a ' week ago." 1 It was a fine niglit 011 a lonely part 1 of the road from Exeter to Okehampton, and all.got out to see what the damage 1 was. ! "Two punctures at once —extraordini. ary," said the Prince. , Carr flashed a torch under the car. "It is not extraordinary—considering ' that there are enough nails here to set ' up an ironmonger," he said. 3 In the light of the torch they saw that the road was thickly strewn with large i nails.

"They have not been here long," said Carr, picking up a handful. "Look, they are brand new." "It does look like Palmin," said the Prince. Then he added: "The others will be here in a few minutes. They have three spare tyres that will fit either car and we have two. So long as we don't run into many more of these traps we ought to get to the coast well before daylight." "After Okehampton we could go by the longer route to the coast, and so avoid any other little obstacles they may have arranged," suggested Rosetta. This plan was agreed upon. The men quickly had the wheels jacked up and the punctured tyres replaced. Then they, waited for the other car. "I estimate that the others should have been here ten minutes ago," said the Prince, looking at his watch. "Probably they met with some nails which we somehow dodged," said Marzer. (To be continued daily.)