Part 56 (1/2)

”A few minutes ago,” Bernadine answered. ”He tried to make his instructions as clear as possible. We are jointly interested in a small matter which needs immediate action.”

She led the way to the study.

”It seems strange,” she remarked, ”that you and he should be working together. I always thought that you were on opposite sides.”

”It is a matter of chance,” Bernadine told her. ”Your husband is a wise man, Baroness. He knows when to listen to reason.”

She threw open the door of the study, which was in darkness.

”'If you will wait a moment,” she said, closing the door, ”I will turn on the electric light.”

She touched the k.n.o.bs in the wall and the room was suddenly flooded with illumination. At the further end of the apartment was the great safe.

Close to it, in an easy chair, his evening coat changed for a smoking jacket, with a neatly tied black tie replacing his crumpled white cravat, the Baron de Grost sat awaiting his guest. A fierce oath broke from Bernadine's lips. He turned toward the door only in time to hear the key turn. Violet tossed it lightly in the air across to her husband.

”My dear Bernadine,” the latter remarked, ”on the whole, I do not think that this has been one of your successes. My keys, if you please.”

Bernadine stood for a moment, his face dark with pa.s.sion. He bit his lip till the blood came, and the veins at the back of his clenched hands were swollen and thick. Nevertheless, when he spoke he had recovered in great measure his self-control.

”Your keys are here, Baron de Grost,” he said, placing them upon the table. ”If a bungling amateur may make such a request of a professor, may I inquire how you escaped from your bonds, pa.s.sed through the door of a locked warehouse and reached here before me?”

The Baron de Grost smiled as he pushed the cigarettes across to his visitor.

”Really,” he said, ”you have only to think for yourself for a moment, my dear Bernadine, and you will understand. In the first place, the letter you sent me signed 'Greening' was clearly a forgery. There was no one else anxious to get me into their power, hence I a.s.sociated it at once with you. Naturally, I telephoned to the chief of my staff--I, too, am obliged to employ some of these un-uniformed policemen, my dear Bernadine, as you may be aware. It may interest you to know, further, that there are seven entrances to the warehouse in Tooley Street.

Through one of these something like twenty of my men pa.s.sed and were already concealed in the place when I entered. At another of the doors a motor-car waited for me. If I had chosen to lift my finger at any time, your men would have been overpowered and I might have had the pleasure of dictating terms to you in my own office. Such a course did not appeal to me. You and I, as you know, dear Count von Hern, conduct our peculiar business under very delicate conditions, and the least thing we either of us desire is notoriety. I managed things, as I thought, for the best.

The moment you left the place my men swarmed in. We kindly, but gently, ejected your guard, released Greening and my clerk, and I pa.s.sed you myself in Fleet Street, a little more comfortable, I think, in my forty-horsepower motor-car than you in that very disreputable hansom.

As to my presence here, I have an entrance from the street there which makes me independent of my servants. The other details are too absurdly simple; one need not enlarge upon them.”

Bernadine turned slowly to Violet.

”You knew?” he muttered. ”You knew when you brought me here?”

”Naturally,” she answered. ”We have telephones in every room in the house.”

”I am at your service,” Bernadine declared, calmly.

De Grost laughed.

”My dear fellow,” he said, ”need I say that you are free to come or go, to take a whiskey and soda with me, or to depart at once, exactly as you feel inclined? The door was locked only until you restored to me my keys.”

He crossed the room, fitted the key in the lock and turned it.

”We do not make war as those others,” he remarked, smiling.

Bernadine drew himself up.

”I will not drink with you,” he said, ”I will not smoke with you. But some day this reckoning shall come.”