The Secret of the Silver Car, Wyndham Martyn [best novels to read to improve english txt] 📗

tops of the others. When dawn came he was in no better plight.

The position in which Anthony Trent found himself was by far the most serious of his career. Hitherto he had faced imprisonment at most. Now capture meant without doubt—death. He had, without thinking of the folly of his utterance, told Count Michael that he knew of the presence of the guests unsuspected by the great powers.

Count Michael had probably staged the supposed escape of the prince and supplied a convenient corpse for his interment. Unrest was in every portion of what had once been the dual monarchy. Beggars on horseback were riding to a fall and the Balkan volcano was near eruption. And Anthony Trent, alone of those opposed to Count Michael’s party, knew where was hidden the man whom the count was coaching for his big role. His escape would mean disaster. By this time no doubt passing countrymen had recognized their overlord and released him. But for lack of a compass Anthony Trent should even now have been at a port where he could escape to a friendly vessel.

He remembered what Lord Rosecarrel had told him of Count Michael’s character and autocratic power. Although theoretically shorn of his former absolutism it was unlikely that peasants who worked on his hands and still felt their dependence upon him should question Count Michael’s actions. World news which spreads rapidly among the herded workers in factories crept slowly among these land tillers. They had enough to eat and drink and were grateful for that after their years of fighting.

Now that capture was imminent Trent knew that the document must be destroyed. But even in this he delayed hoping his usual luck might cling to him and make the sacrifice unnecessary.

He abandoned the automobile. Its wheels were embedded in black viscid mud and to extricate them the engine would have to run on low speed and announce the car’s position to such as might already be seeking him. If he could pass the day uncaptured he might at night be able to free the car of its imprisoning mud and make his escape. He had woodcraft enough to be able to mark down the spot where the Panhard was hidden.

It was high noon when Anthony Trent came in sight of a farm. A big dog came toward him with sharp, staccato inquiring barks. He had a way of making dogs his friends and soon the animal was wagging a welcoming tail. Trent satisfied his hunger and thirst with a meal of early plums and lighted his last Woodbine. The Croatian farmers of the district in which he found himself were horsebreeders to a man. It was an industry which the government had always approved and encouraged. Without a doubt in the distant barns there was some favorite animal which might bear Trent to safety if his car had been discovered. The watch dog, now satisfied that the stranger was one to be adored, would prove no obstacle.

Trent nestled back in some drying hay, well out of sight, he supposed, of observers and dropped into a profound sleep. It was the unusual spectacle of the watch dog sitting by the mound of hay that attracted the notice of the farmer. He supposed that the animal—part hound and part draft dog—had run some animal to earth. When the farmer saw that the stranger slept there for whom he had, under Count Michael’s direction, scoured the forest since dawn, he wisely brought assistance. Thus it was that Anthony Trent, rudely brought back to an unsympathetic earth, found himself seized, bruised and bound before he had time to recover his senses or put up a fight.

Peter Sissek it was who carried him to the recovered Panhard and threw him violently to the floor. And for every blow that Trent had struck Sissek in fair fight the Croatian returned with interest now that his conqueror was bound and hopeless. One of Peter’s assistants sat on the seat brandishing the revolver which had been the count’s. He talked incessantly, threatening no doubt and insulting the captive, and punctuating his invective with kicks that bruised the American’s ribs sorely.

He was carried past a mob of jeering servants when the castle was reached and put in a room which had been used as a dungeon for five hundred years. As he looked about the stone walled cell with its narrow windows through which his body could scarcely pass even though the heavy bars were sawn through, he knew his professional skill would avail him nothing.

There was one safeguard for gaolers which he sighed to see. Inside the door was a cage of iron where a keeper might stand and be protected from the sudden onslaught of a waiting prisoner. Thus the most usual form of escape was taken from him.

Hentzi was his first visitor, poor rotund, posing Hentzi who had liked Alfred Anthony largely because he supposed it was a semi-educated London cockney who listened to his worldly wisdom. When he had learned from his master that this pretended chauffeur was the third of the Rosecarrel adherents who had made desperate attempts he supposed him to be of high degree. With amusement Anthony Trent saw the change in his manner. Although disgraced and in prison Hentzi paid the respect that he invariably accorded to birth. He told himself that it was because he noted the instincts of blue blood that he had found pleasure in talking with Alfred Anthony. Trent’s careless manner which had sometimes seemed overbold in a chauffeur was now explained.

“I grieve very much to see the marks of violence inflicted upon you by a clod like Peter Sissek,” he began.

“I knocked the same clod out when he wasn’t looking,” Trent returned “so he had a kick coming. You didn’t come to be merely polite Hentzi, what is it? Torture? Boiling oil?”

“It will not be boiling oil,” Hentzi answered seriously.

Anthony Trent looked at him searchingly. Of course Hentzi had his purpose in coming here; and that he did not deny the possibility of a Croatian third degree convinced the American that the danger he anticipated was real and near. So far as Count Michael’s power went in his own castle of Radna his prisoner might be in medieval times. Trent was a danger to be nullified and a single life was hardly worthy of consideration in the game the count was playing.

To lose his life was bitter enough; but to lose it after failing and so be denied another chance to make good was agonizing. Hentzi gathered nothing from his scrutiny of the other man’s battered face. He saw that the forced and rather vacuous grin which Anthony Trent had worn when he lived another part was gone. Only the powerful, brooding, hawklike look which he had occasionally seen for a flash now remained. He did not doubt but that this was the true character of the man a great English noble had chosen for a dangerous mission.

“You will remain here until the count returns,” Hentzi announced.

“How long?” Trent snapped.

“A week certainly; more likely two.”

“What will happen then?”

Hentzi sighed. His master’s violence often frightened him. He came of a peace-loving family.

“That I cannot say.”

“I can’t go without a daily shave,” Trent said yawning, “And I need cigarettes and the London papers. You can get them for me?”

“The razor I dare not,” Hentzi said. “The rest you shall have.”

“Afraid I shall commit suicide? You ought to be glad if I did. It would save Count Michael a lot of trouble. That cage there prevents my slitting the throat of a keeper. A child with a gun could poke the barrel through the bars and put me out of business. Come Hentzi, be human. I will not live with whiskers. I swear to do myself no damage or anyone else either.”

“You give me the word of a man of noble birth?” Hentzi inquired anxiously. “You cannot conceal your origin from me. You may not wish it known but I know.”

Anthony Trent kept a straight face. Hentzi had always amused him.

“Hentzi,” he said seriously, “I must preserve my incognito at all costs. That you appreciate, but if it will make you more comfortable I will tell you that in my own country there is not a man who has the right to call himself my superior or go in to dinner before me.”

Hentzi’s bow was most profound. He had known it all along. This was assuredly the venturesome holder of an ancient title, a man of high birth and born to great honor. Hentzi’s own Sheffield blades were at his disposal.

SAINT ANTHONY

Count Michael returned to his castle after Trent had been for fifteen days a prisoner.

The prince and his suite were now safely hidden in a far Carpathian retreat and there was no evidence in Castle Radna of their occupancy. It had been a dreadful moment when Count Temesvar found himself tied to a tree and his plans in danger of disclosure to his enemies. He had no opportunity of knowing as yet to what use Alfred Anthony had put his knowledge.

The London papers told him only that Lord Rosecarrel was the new Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and was already making friends with the Balkans and cementing an ancient alliance with Greece. That was bad enough in all conscience. But if it were known that he had hidden a prince whose only use to him would be the furtherance of his political ambitions he would be denounced by the government under which he lived.

The easy going, pleasure loving and almost amiable side of Count Michael’s nature was for the moment put aside. The man who took pride in his swift travelling Lion and his occasional long drive at golf was banished by the need of the moment for possessing certain and wholly accurate knowledge of what Alfred Anthony was and what he had done.

Anthony Trent when he was brought before the count saw this at a glance. He was Francis the First in his arbitrary moods, the mood that made that versatile monarch sweep friends to destruction and visit wrath on them who had offended.

He was led, manacled, between Peter Sissek and old Ferencz and brought to the big room in which the Chubbwood safe was placed. Hentzi hovered nervously in the background.

“I have sent for you,” Count Michael said, “so that you may have the opportunity of making a confession.”

“It is thoughtful of you,” Trent told him, “but I have no confession to make. I have some complaints however. I dislike my present quarters. They are verminous and draughty.”

“Is it possible,” the count said slowly, “that you fail to understand your position?”

“What is my position?” Anthony Trent countered.

“You are a nameless prisoner absolutely in my power. There is none in the outer world to help you. Those other two who came told me as much. They were sworn not to ask mercy of me or help of my lord Rosecarrel.”

“The cases are not parallel,” Trent returned equably, “They asked no mercy of you. I don’t either. They did not expect help of—what was the name you mentioned?”

“The man for whom you risk death is the Earl of Rosecarrel. He cannot aid you.”

Trent shook his head.

“Never heard of him. I wonder what put it into your brain that I had any definite plans in coming here except to get a position which you forced on

“Why did you take a certain document from my pocket and leave much money? No, no. It is idle to fence. I have learnt from London that you were only in the Lion factory a few days and that previously nothing was known of you. You