?'

'Not necessarily at once. It could be so managed. Twig?' Mr Sampson
Levi laughed. 'I've carried these little affairs through before. After
marriage it might be allowed to leak out. And you know the Princess
Anna's fortune is pretty big! Now, Mr Racksole,' he added, abruptly
changing his tone, 'where do you suppose Prince Eugen has disappeared
to? Because if he doesn't turn up to-day he can't have that million.
To-day is the last day. To-morrow the money will be appropriated,
elsewhere. Of course, I'm not alone in this business, and my friends
have something to say.'

'You ask me where I think Prince Eugen has disappeared to?'

'I do.'

'Then you think it's a disappearance?'

Sampson Levi nodded. 'Putting two and two together,' he said, 'I do. The
Dimmock business is very peculiar--very peculiar, indeed. Dimmock was
a left-handed relation of the Posen family. Twig? Scarcely anyone knows
that.

He was made secretary and companion to Prince Aribert, just to keep him
in the domestic circle. His mother was an Irishwoman, whose misfortune
was that she was too beautiful. Twig?' (Mr Sampson Levi always used this
extraordinary word when he was in a communicative mood.) 'My belief
is that Dimmock's death has something to do with the disappearance of
Prince Eugen.

The only thing that passes me is this: Why should anyone want to make
Prince Eugen disappear? The poor little Prince hasn't an enemy in the
world. If he's been "copped", as they say, why has he been "copped"? It
won't do anyone any good.'

'Won't it?' repeated Racksole, with a sudden flash.

'What do you mean?' asked Mr Levi.

'I mean this: Suppose some other European pauper Prince was anxious
to marry Princess Anna and her fortune, wouldn't that Prince have an
interest in stopping this loan of yours to Prince Eugen? Wouldn't he
have an interest in causing Prince Eugen to disappear--at any rate, for
a time?'

Sampson Levi thought hard for a few moments.

'Mr Theodore Racksole,' he said at length, 'I do believe you have hit on
something.'

Chapter Twelve ROCCO AND ROOM NO. 111

ON the afternoon of the same day--the interview just described had
occurred in the morning--Racksole was visited by another idea, and
he said to himself that he ought to have thought of it before. The
conversation with Mr Sampson Levi had continued for a considerable time,
and the two men had exchanged various notions, and agreed to meet again,
but the theory that Reg