Part 24 (1/2)

”You are two men,” she said presently when Hentzi and his employer were a little ahead of them. For a moment Trent was thoroughly alarmed. What did she know?

He had always known that it was a fallacy to a.s.sume because he had seen none on his midnight wanderings that he had been un.o.bserved. In a vast house such as Castle Radna there were nooks and crannies where frightened servants or timid guests might hide from him momentarily only to denounce him later.

”What do you mean?” he asked teeing up her ball. He had not answered her immediately.

”That you are two men. There may be three of you but I have seen two already. There is the timid, servile creature accepting a coin or a blow and eating with the servants as among his equals. I hate that man. The other is a creature that every now and then looks out of your eyes like a bird of prey. It is the man who drives the great car over the mountain pa.s.ses as though it were on a smooth boulevard. It is the man who beat big Peter Sissek to the earth with tight lips and eyes that flashed.

That is a man I could love.”

He could feel her arm brush against his own. There was a caressing tenderness in her voice.

”Tell me, which is the real you?”

Anthony Trent looked straight ahead of him.

”If you slice your ball,” he said, ”you'll get into the rough. Golf, like other things is largely a matter of self control.”

”I could kill you,” she said, her eyes blazing.

”Think of my wife and children,” he answered with a grin.

”That is why,” she retorted. ”The count is right. One should have only contempt for lackeys. I honor you too much as it is.”

”Fine!” Trent observed, ”suits me all right. How many quarterings of n.o.bility have you Mademoiselle Pauline?”

”I at least am an _artiste_,” she flung back at him. ”To be the most graceful skater in the world and to have earned more in a week than you in a year is something which puts me as far above you as Count Michael Temesvar.”

”Absolutely,” Trent agreed, ”take your mas.h.i.+e here and go back slowly and don't look up for three seconds after hitting the ball.”

Pauline was certainly a splendidly athletic woman. She held herself magnificently and was at her best this morning but merely to be with her bored the pseudo-chauffeur who had thoughts only for Daphne. Daphne could have given her two strokes a hole and a beating, he reflected.

Gloom seized on him as he wondered if ever again he would see her. He was in peril in Castle Radna even as an honest worker. Peter Sissek had sworn to pay him for the beating. Half of Trent's energies were consumed in going over his car to make sure the bolts and nuts were tight and had not been loosened maliciously.

And in his position as an emissary of the Earl of Rosecarrel he was in danger of the most vivid kind. He was a spy in a house which sheltered a princeling who might yet force Europe into war. If it were discovered he possessed this secret nothing could save him. It was a sinister, dour pile of stone, this Castle Radna utterly unlike the Cornish castle with its rose gardens, its fountains and the charm of country life. He could well believe that in his present dwelling tragedies has been enacted of which no knowledge had filtered through to the larger world. Oddly enough it was during the day when he was peacefully employed as Alfred Anthony that he was most obsessed by despondency. When the servants were long abed and asleep and the silences of the early hours hung about the great corridors and halls Anthony Trent came into his own. His rubbershod feet were noiseless in the stone pa.s.sages and his two pa.s.s keys opened every locked door. He was possessed of all secrets it seemed to him. Here he was free to wander like a ghost in banquet hall and corridor. None walked so silently as he.

Pauline did not talk to him any more that morning but the count was affable.

”Ah, Arlfrit,” he cried, ”tomorrow your work commences. Yes. You leave for Fiume at daybreak and meet the Ungarisch-Kroatische boat. This time you will go alone as you will have a pa.s.senger beside you as you return.

You will wait at the _Hotel de l'Europe_. The boat gets to her dock at eleven and my guests will drive immediately to the motor. Make speed back for you must go to Agram and back before dinner.”

”That will be going some!” Trent commented.

”For what reason do you suppose I buy a Lion car and a chauffeur if not to do what my other automobiles and chauffeurs cannot do? Why do you imagine I introduce a Londoner into my servants hall, a brawling man who a.s.saults good Peter Sissek if not because he must travel fast and safely?”

But the count was not angry. He was in that good humor which comes to all men who having been in the habit of taking seven for a last hole make it in four. Pauline had taken six and he had not permitted his record to be clouded by allowing Trent (as Pauline suggested) to see what he could do it in.

Anthony Trent started on his trip when it was as yet hardly light. He was singularly carefree. The repulsive Sissek was not at his side and he was free to wander about the seaport town, locate the cable offices and make certain arrangements that might contribute to future safety.

That he was invariably able to make such good time was due mainly to the absence of traffic along the Maria Louisa road. Not yet had the old prosperity come back to Europe and there were more automobiles in Allenhurst, New Jersey, than all Croatia.

He was bound to admit that the group of people he took from the _Hotel de l'Europe_ lived up to all the traditions of mysterious fiction. There were two men, middle aged and plainly used to power, and a very pretty vivacious dark woman of five and thirty to whom her escorts paid profound attention. The seat beside Trent was occupied by the lady's maid. The black morocco dressing case she held inexorably upon her knees was marked with a coronet. The woman was hard-faced, elderly and uncommunicative. Trent noticed that her mistress was in that deep mourning which European women affect.