minutes.
He is certain the Prince stole the diamonds, but he did not
tell his daughter so. He informed her he was bringing her a
present of a new typewriting machine, and also a young woman from
Chicago who could write shorthand and would look after the Princess's
correspondence--act as secretary, in fact; for it seems the Princess
has a larger correspondence than she can reasonably attend to, and she
appears therefore to yearn for a typewriter. The old man tells me she is
very careless about her letters, never being able to find anything
she wants, and leaving them about a good deal, so he thinks she needs
someone to look after her affairs; and I have a suspicion that her
father fears she may leave some compromising letter about, so he wishes
to ward off a divorce case."

"No, I fancy you are mistaken there. The father hasn't the slightest
idea that there can be anything wrong with his daughter. It is probable
the Princess has written some libellous statements about her husband,
and it is quite likely the Prince is a brute and that young von
Schaumberg is a most charming person."

"Well, as I was saying," continued Hardwick, "the old man cabled his
daughter that he is bringing her a secretary and a typewriter. He
engaged a female Pinkerton detective to enter the castle as secretary to
the Princess and, if possible, to solve the diamond mystery. She is a
young woman who, when she left Chicago, was very anti-English, but
she became acquainted on the steamer with a young Englishman who was
tremendously taken with her, and so at Liverpool she quite calmly broke
her engagement with the old man and fulfilled a new engagement she had
made with the young man by promptly marrying him--special license, I am
told. Old Briggs has therefore a new typewriting machine on his hands,
and so I was going to propose to you that you take the place of the
Chicago Pinkerton person. Briggs has become so disgusted with all these
detective women that he abandoned the idea of sending a female detective
with the machine, and doesn't imagine that whoever is sent will be
either a detective or a newspaper woman. I was introduced to him the
other day by one of those lucky chances which sometimes put interesting
items of news in our way, and he told me the whole story, requesting me
to recommend someone who wrote shorthand and understood the typewriter.
I am to dine with him this evening, and I shall cordially recommend you.
I may say that Briggs ha