CHAPTER V

THE LAST OF THE CIRCLE

I shall repeat here the story the Russian told me. I made notes of it later in my hotel room, and the facts are exact. In the summer of 1918, Mary Rose Breese was married to the Count Giering-Trelovitch in Riga, Russia. She was then eighteen, and extraordinarily beautiful. Disillusionment had not yet written boredom into her fragile features. The Count was twenty-five.

Unlike most unions of this kind, no sordid motives marred their relationship. The Count was handsome, witty, a brave soldier and sportsman. His estates were flourishing. He insisted he would accept no dowry. He had met Mary Rose Breese during a visit to America and theirs had been a story-book romance. The Russian laid great emphasis upon this point. “It was enough to make you cry tears of pleasure,” he exclaimed with Slavic sentimentality. “Just to see them together. In these days such romances are so rare!”

The marriage ceremony took place in the Giering-Trelovitch castle. There was the quality of a bygone age in the preparations for this festive event. From all parts of Europe friends of the Count poured into Riga. The Count kept open house, and when he could no longer accommodate the thousands of guests, local mansions and even cottages were requisitioned. The Count’s peasants toiled and feasted with their master.

Several days before the ceremony, Mr. and Mrs. Breese arrived with the bride, and Henry, then a youth of fifteen. Mrs. Breese, of course, was proud to be the prospective mother-in-law of a Count, which somehow offset the sad fact that possession of a married daughter would officially end that youth to which she clung so tenaciously.

The moment she arrived, she took charge of matters in characteristic fashion. The Count was too happy to interfere. Mr. Breese was not so pleased at events. He said he’d prefer to have an American for a son-in-law, but he had been too preoccupied to venture any but the mildest objections.

Mr. Breese received a wire from a business associate, Gordon Rice, several days before the ceremony. An important transaction with some French industrialists was in progress, and Rice requested Mr. Breese’s presence in Paris. Realizing he could not desert his daughter at her wedding, he telegraphed Rice, inviting him to the ceremony, suggesting they could discuss the matter in Riga. Rice arrived, which accounts for his presence in the former Russian city.

At that time, Guy Thomas had known Mrs. Breese only casually. She had met him several months before. He had come to Paris as gigolo to a harmless old lady who wanted to see the sights. But the harmless old lady discarded him in favor of a native guide, and Thomas was left without funds. He was struck with an inspiration and wired Mrs. Breese of his desire to be of assistance to her. Mrs. Breese, reflecting that she would be alone in Paris for several weeks after the ceremony, promptly hired him as her temporary social secretary--and Guy Thomas hurried to the feast.

Upon consulting my notes, I find that the name of the man who was murdered was the Baron Peter Setovski, whose estates adjoined those of the Count Giering-Trelovitch. The murder took place two days after the marriage ceremony. The Baron Peter Setovski was not a guest at the wedding. He was the one man the Count had not invited. It was brought out later that the two men had quarrelled shortly before the wedding on some trivial boundary dispute, and the Count, who was hot-headed and impulsive, broke off all relations with his neighbor.

The murder had taken place in the Baron’s bedroom, about midnight, two days after the lavish wedding ceremony which is still recalled in Riga for its prodigal splendor. The Baron was found slumped upon the floor of his bedroom, shot through the heart. None of the numerous servants had heard the shot.

The only visitor the Baron had received that night was the Count Giering-Trelovitch. Examined by the police, the Count said that he had gone to his neighbor offering reconciliation. The Count could not explain satisfactorily why he had chosen the hour of midnight for such a mission except that he always did things impulsively. He said he had been so profoundly happy that the quarrel with his neighbor disturbed him, and when everyone had gone to bed he had ridden over to the Baron’s estate to see him. He said that the breach had been healed, the Baron had drunk a glass of vodka with him in friendship, and he, the Count, had returned to his home and his bride.

Although the police were reluctant to arrest the young nobleman, they were compelled to warn him not to leave the country. Detectives insisted upon prowling about the estate, and what had once been the scene of unrestrained festivity became the laboratory of a crime.

Of course, the Countess at first refused to believe a word against her husband, despite the damning circumstantial evidence. Mrs. Breese and Mr. Breese, however, were for once united in the opinion that it was distinctly up to the bridegroom to clear himself. It was at this time that the Russian detective was summoned to help unravel the mystery.

After a lengthy talk with the Count, my informant was convinced that the solution of the murder lay elsewhere. He promptly set to work.

But shortly after he arrived, Mrs. Breese insisted she must go home, and suggested her daughter go with her. Mary Rose Breese, now the Countess Giering-Trelovitch, fell in with the plan, for the atmosphere of suspicion and hostility that followed the murder of the Baron was hardly in keeping with the glorious honeymoon she had pictured to herself. But she did not want to leave the Count behind, and suggested he come with them. Unfortunately, he had not told her he was practically under house arrest, and when this confession was extorted from him, she was horrified.

Then, events beyond the power of Mrs. Breese intervened. The Russian revolution, long smouldering, now blazed in full force, and reached even Riga, long after it was an accomplished fact in Petrograd. The local police were ousted, and the murder of the Baron was swallowed in the explosion. The Count fled with the Breese ménage to Paris.

But if the Count was no longer in danger from official prosecution, suspicion still clung to him. He noted in despair that his bride became more and more reluctant to meet him. Matters were not helped when his estates were confiscated and he was left a pittance. Now his position was difficult indeed.

One morning Mrs. Breese, in her high-handed fashion, announced that she was sailing for America in a few days. Her daughter, she said, would accompany her. The meaning of this was perfectly clear to the Count. Heart-broken, despondent at his reverses, he stolidly consented to a divorce.

“I myself was in Paris then,” the Russian said. “I, too, had to flee, for although I am not a Czarist in spirit, my connection with the police damned me in the eyes of the revolutionists. Naturally, I spent a good deal of time with the Count, for I had grown to like him very, very much.

“I remember he asked me to go to the railroad station with him to see them off, for the divorce was to be gotten quietly and the proprieties were to be observed. Mrs. Breese was very insistent upon that. I notice that in her own case she was not so discreet. However, as I say, we went to say good-bye at the Gare du Nord. Mrs. Breese treated the Count very coldly. She seemed to be finished with him forever, and her manner indicated as much. Mr. Breese, too, didn’t make matters particularly pleasant.

“But the Countess was affected, despite her pose. I could see that. I suspected that she had cried many nights when she was alone, and I was sure, too, that if it had not been for her mother, who dominated her, she would never have lost faith in my friend. But what will you? Some people are born to dominate, and others to be dominated. I could see that the girl was putty in her mother’s hands, and the Count realized that, too. It was tragic, for their romance had been beautiful.

“When they left finally, the Count was so melancholy that I was afraid he would do something foolish. I did my best to cheer him up. Finally I said, for my reputation was at stake, that despite the extraordinary difficulties of the case, I would do my best to clear his name. And then, I assured him, his bride would receive him to her arms again. Of course, I didn’t tell him that in my opinion Mrs. Breese had cast him off as a son-in-law not because he was under suspicion, but because he had become a poor man.

“Fortunately, the Count had rescued some family jewels, and I had some small investments in London. We had enough to live on and to travel in a modest way. The Count acquired the hobby of etchings from his father, and I encouraged him to visit the museums and to keep his mind occupied. We wandered around Europe, and had a fairly pleasant time. Then, because the Count insisted, we went to America.

“We had both been reading the newspapers assiduously. The one thing that kept the Count buoyant was the fact that his bride never remarried. But when he tried to see her, she refused to meet him--at the insistence, I think, of her mother. Even during the trial, when the Count thought he could be of at least moral support to his wife, she consistently avoided him. Once they met, but the Countess did not say a word, and wouldn’t listen to him.

“When we read in the newspapers that they were coming here, nothing I could say would dissuade the Count from coming here, too. And then, after thinking out the case, I reached the conclusion that perhaps it was wise. For, by a strange coincidence, these very people, with the exception of Mr. Breese, were present at the time of the murder of the Baron Peter Setovski. And I feel that I have never been nearer to a solution. Tell me----”

The Russian plied me with questions, some of them so minute and trivial that I could not attach any importance to them. I must recite all the events of the trial, all the testimony. I recounted some of the adventures of the yacht, although I did not feel free to tell of the escapade of the Breese boy.

Then he insisted that I come with him at once to his flat to meet his friend, the Count Giering-Trelovitch. Although the hour was late I could not refuse, for I felt strangely drawn to this unfortunate young man whose story he had told me. I discovered that the two Russians shared a tiny apartment on the Malecon. The Count himself had just returned from a lonely promenade, he said. The morning newspaper was under his arm.

“This gentleman,” the detective presented me, “has come down with Mrs. Breese and her family on the yacht. He has seen your wife.”

The Count, who was prepared to be formally polite, now wrung my hand with embarrassing cordiality.

“That is the best news I have heard in many years!” he exclaimed, his rather melancholy blue eyes lighting up. “How is she? Is she well? Is she happy? What did she say? How does she look?”

There was an engaging boyish impulsiveness about his manner now that quite won me. I could see now what the detective meant when he said that the Count’s wedding was a story-book romance. If the Princes that walk the earth are paunchy, given to gout and short-temper, this young man defied nature and upheld art at least pictorially. Blond, finely featured, slender and graceful of carriage, he had been designed to blend with the fragile loveliness of Mary Rose Breese.

“What did she wear? She dressed so exquisitely always.” For the life of me, I could not tell him. He seemed disappointed, baffled. “But what did she say? Didn’t she say anything?”

I explained that I had but little opportunity to talk with her. But I said she seemed well and, as far as I could tell, happy.

He sighed, as if relieved. “I have been trying to see her. Boris Sergeivitch has undoubtedly told you my story. I feel she needs me, but what can I do? If you could get a message to her----”

But here I was called upon to explain that my relations with the Breese family had been severed. He seemed downcast.

“If I felt,” he said, “that she really didn’t want to see me, I would disappear and she would never hear a word from me. But it’s her mother who’s back of this. I know! That woman!” He seemed to sink in a brown study. “She should be punished.”

The detective had apparently been paying little attention to his friend. He had picked up the morning paper--the morning edition of the Havana Post, and was reading its spare columns with absorbed interest. Suddenly he whistled, as if in surprise. I turned to him. The Count, too, looked up.

“Read this,” the detective commanded, pointing with a stubby forefinger to a paragraph noting the American visitors to the city.

It was recorded here that Mr. Henry Breese, Sr., had arrived by airplane from Miami and was stopping at the Sevilla-Biltmore. I re-read the paragraph to make sure my eyes had not deceived me. I wondered, amazed, what motive could prompt the elderly Breese to come to the city to which his divorced wife had fled.

“Interesting!” the Russian exclaimed, and then to the Count: “Read this, my friend.” The young man took the newspaper from him and examined it. “It is now complete!”

I looked blank. The Count peered down at him, puzzled.

“The last of the circle is here!” the detective continued meditatively. “The absent one has arrived!”