The Vanishing Prince
shot him through the body where he sat, so that he tumbled off the table like lumber.
The police rushed to lift him; Sir Walter stood speechless; and then, with a strange and weary gesture, Horne Fisher spoke.
"You are indeed a type of the Irish tragedy," he said. "You were entirely in the right, and you have put yourself in the wrong."
The prince's face was like marble for a space; then there dawned in his eyes a light not unlike that of despair. He laughed suddenly and flung the smoking pistol on the ground.
"I am indeed in the wrong," he said. "I have committed a crime that may justly bring a curse on me and my children."
Horne Fisher did not seem entirely satisfied with this very sudden repentance; he kept his eyes on the man and only said, in a low voice, "What crime do you mean?"
"I have helped English justice," replied Prince Michael. "I have avenged your king's officers; I have done the work of his hangman. For that truly I deserve to be hanged."
And he turned to the police with a gesture that did not so much surrender to them, but rather command them to arrest him.
This was the story that Home Fisher told to Harold March, the journalist, many years after, in a little, but luxurious, restaurant near Picca-
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