He was so very good-looking, such a sportsman, and so very English they whispered. The blatant persons overcrowding the hotel that August Sunday, those pompous, red-faced men in summer clothes and white boots, and those over-dressed women in cream silk blouses and golden chatelaines, mostly denizens of Kensington or Regent’s Park, had been surprised when an hour ago he had walked along the hall and gone outside to speak with his chauffeur. Not often did the Majestic, so freely patronised by the stockbroker and the newly-rich, hold as guest any person equalling the Prince in social distinction, yet at the same time so modest and retiring. He travelled a great deal – indeed, he was always travelling nowadays – and had learned to treat the constant endeavours of unknown persons to scrape acquaintance with him with the utter disregard they deserved.
He had not noticed it, of course, being too used to it. His arrival a few days before had caused quite a flutter in the big hotel.
MUG LIFE PYRMONT FULL
In his well-cut dark brown flannels and brown shoes he went to the balcony, and, leaning over, gazed down upon the sun-lit promenade, full of life and movement below.
He was a tall, well-set-up man of about thirty-three dark-haired, good-looking, easy-going, and refined, who, for the exception of the slightest trace of foreign accent in his speech, might easily have been mistaken for an Englishman. The big salon was elegantly furnished with long mirrors, gilt chairs covered with sky-blue silk upholstery, a piano, and a pretty writing-table set close to the long window, which led out to a balcony shaded by a red-and-white sun-blind – the salon of the best suite in the Majestic, that huge hotel facing the sea in King’s Road, Brighton.
He was in a good mood that morning, for he had just got rid of a troublesome visitor. The Prince broke open a big box of choice “Petroffs,” selected one, lit it slowly, and walked pensively to the window.
As my friend’s escapades were related to me, so have I set them down in the following pages, in the belief that my readers may perhaps care to make more intimate acquaintance with the clever, fearless, and altogether remarkable man whose exploits have already, from time to time, been referred to in guarded and mysterious terms by the daily press. While the game of “mug-hunting” remains so easy and so profitable, there will be always both hunters and hunted. In the course of my own wandering life of the past dozen years or so, I have come across him in all sorts of unexpected places up and down Europe, and more especially in those countries beyond the Danube which we term the Balkans.įor certain of his actions, and for the ingenuity of his somewhat questionable friends, I make no apology. Since the days when, as lads, we played cricket together at Cheltenham “the Prince,” always a sportsman and always generous to the poor, has ever been my friend. With the law of libel looming darkly, the reason is obvious. I hereby tender an apology to the reader for being compelled, in these curious chronicles of an adventurous motorist and his actions towards certain of his female acquaintances, to omit real names, and to substitute assumed ones.
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