On one point Robin was adamantine. He refused positively to have his
identity disclosed at this time, and Gourou had to say to the
newspapers that the Prince was even then on his way to Vienna,
hurrying homeward as fast as steel cars could carry him. He admitted
that the young man had arrived on the _Jupiter_ that morning,
having remained in the closest seclusion all the way across the
Atlantic.
This equivocation necessitated the most cautious rearrangement of
plans on the part of the Baron. He was required to act as though he
had no acquaintance with either of the three travellers stopping at
the Ritz, although for obvious reasons he took up a temporary abode
there himself. Moreover, he had to telegraph the Prime Minister in
Edelweiss that the Prince was not to be budged, and would in all
likelihood postpone his return to the capitol. All of which stamped
the honest Baron as a most prodigious liar, if one stops to think of
what he said to the reporters.
The newspapers also printed a definite bit of news in the shape of a
despatch from New York to the effect that Mr.
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