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

“Hurt me!” He flung a little key across the table to Hentzi. “Take them off,” he commanded.

Trent examined his reddened wrists with a frown.

“This should never have been done,” he declared. Then he turned to Hentzi. “I need a cigarette.”

“I did not bring you here to smoke,” Count Michael said acidly. “I brought you here to interrogate you. Remember that.”

“I have been without a decent smoke for nearly two weeks,” Trent returned, “And I want one. Unless I have some I shall not answer any one of your interrogations. Think it over, count.”

Hentzi looked at the American reproachfully. He had supplied his prisoner with the best of tobacco. That he had done so surreptitiously robbed him of the privilege of recrimination. The two guards not understanding a word of the conversation could not deny Trent’s statements.

Count Michael Temesvar looked closely at his former chauffeur. He was standing on the rich red rug between the two windows. He was biting his lips; his face twitched and his fingers worked nervously. It was plain that he suffered as drug takers do when deprived of their poisons.

There was a cedar lined silver box of cigarettes on the little table by Pauline’s chair. This Hentzi was commanded to place before the prisoner. Anthony Trent’s symptoms were admirably assumed. He inhaled and exhaled in silent delight and his face grew more peaceful. But he was still unsettled and nervous. The count, remembering his iron-nerved driver, attributed the change as much to imprisonment and fear as to lack of tobacco. In a sense it was a tribute to his power over the man who had thwarted him. He watched Trent stride up and down by the two windows and ascribed it to a growing sense of the ordeal about to be undergone.

“I’ve got to keep moving,” Trent said, “I’ve been tied up in a kennel for two weeks.”

“If you must I shall permit it,” the other answered. “But I warn you that the length of this table must be your limit. Otherwise my faithful men may have to shoot. You understand?”

“Perfectly,” Trent said growing more affable. “I even give you my parole d’honneur not to go near the doors. Why rush on certain death?”

“You are growing sensible,” Count Michael said smiling. “I knew it would come. As you say, why rush on certain death? It is foolish. More, it is unnecessary and to do so wastes one’s energy. I have not yet had time to learn your name and rank but I am treating with you as an equal.”

“Thank you!” Trent retorted. “If you call locking me up in a verminous, rat-haunted cell treating me as an equal I’m hardly grateful.”

“I dare take no risks,” the count assured him. “You men who came here for my lord Rosecarrel are different from others. I have not forgotten that Sir Piers Edgcomb killed three of my honest lads before he died. There are others who would have treated you less well than I. Now, where is the paper you stole from me and say you burned?”

“What is the fate of ashes tossed to the four winds?”

“It was never burned,” the other snapped. “Somewhere it exists in your pocket where I saw you place it. Remember this before you answer. If by your aid alone I find it you may leave this castle.”

“How?” Trent demanded. “To walk into ambush outside?”

“There will be twenty square miles of country where none dare touch you. Do you need more than that, you, who cast aspersions on the courage of others? Is it possible you are afraid?”

“What is the other alternative?”

“To join your friends.” The count laughed cordially. The idea seemed to amuse him. “To make the third grave. First the trainer, then the butler and last the chauffeur. I wonder what your chief will send me next.”

“He will have no need to send anyone else,” Trent said affably. By this time his nervousness had disappeared and he was cool and calm as ever.

“You mean he will give up the attempt?”

“Why should there be another when I have already succeeded?”

“This is bravado,” the count cried. It was his turn to be nervous now. The importance he attached to the possession of the paper seemed out of all proportion to its value. Trent knew little of the great eternal European game of politics. For a few moments in Paris the New World had its glance at the complicated working but forgot it when booming trade held sway and salesmen took the place of diplomats. The elimination of the new Foreign Secretary meant a great deal to Count Michael. The other knowledge which Trent stored in his mind was equally dangerous but there were others who could attend to that. No matter what part Anthony Trent played the count had assigned him the role of the defeated.

“It happens to be the truth,” Trent returned.

He could see that Pauline was now listening intently. Her pose of antagonism to the stranger was swept away by her anxiety for his safety. Her heart thrilled to see him standing there, debonair, smiling, dominating. It seemed madness to her, this avowal of success.

“Yon are learning wisdom,” Count Michael commented.

“We may define the term differently,” Trent smiled. “I did not burn the paper.”

“Ah!” the count breathed excitedly. “Now we have it.”

“I preferred to keep it so that I could assure the Right Honourable the Earl of Rosecarrel, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, that I had indeed succeeded. You will understand my feelings. Perhaps it was bravado but none seems to believe that such papers ever do get burned. You, count, seemed to doubt it.”

“Where is it?” the count snapped. “Your life depends on your truth.”

“I have put it in a safe place,” Trent said, resuming his pacing of the room.

The count’s excitement banished the air of toleration he had with difficulty affected toward one he hated.

“Where is it?” he bellowed.

Anthony Trent was smiling and his eyes were bright. It was one of his moments.

“I am going to fetch it,” he said urbanely.

Long ago he had made a careful survey of the possibilities of the room in which he stood. He had thoroughly scrutinized windows and doors as likely aids to future needs.

Every pair of eyes in that great room was turned on him. Sissek and Ferencz understanding no word only saw that he was unmoved, unruffled, almost joyous in the presence of the great Count Michael. They could not understand it at all. They only hated him the more.

Hentzi was rather thrilled with the spectacle. Here was a young and handsome man of a type he had longed to be, no doubt the bearer of an historic title, who in the presence of great peril dared to laugh at the head of all the Temesvars.

Count Michael felt the constricting collar that now almost choked him. These other two who had preceded Alfred Anthony met death bravely but they acknowledged failure. But this man was different. It was almost as though he thought himself the victor. What else would have nerved him to bandy words with his gaoler?

But of them all it was Pauline who watched him most eagerly, and most feared for his safety. He seemed incredibly rash to antagonize the count still further. Few guessed the cruelties to which he could sink when his amour propre was wounded. She had made up her mind that the man she loved so wholly should not suffer. So far the count had no reason to suspect her interest in the stranger. His first jealousy had passed when she protested how needless it was. He trusted women with few of his political secrets but she knew Trent was a marked man because he had stumbled on the identity of the princely guest. Therefore he would suffer unless her woman’s wit could aid him. Knowing the count’s vanity so well she perceived that every moment of this unperturbed attitude added to the severity of the punishment his prisoner would receive.

“You are going to fetch it!” Count Michael said thickly. “Is it permitted to ask how and when?”

“By all means,” Trent said graciously. “I am going to fetch it now and thus.”

He made a lightning quick leap toward the window where Hentzi was sitting in a low chair and then a dive over the secretary’s shoulder. Through the small panes of glass he went like a hurled rock. The shade torn from its roller wrapped itself about his head and shielded him from flying glass and piercing splinters.

Two shots rang out and he heard Hentzi’s voice raised in a shriek of agony. There were other sounds which drowned even this. The count’s voice bellowed forth instructions. He could hear Peter Sissek and Ferencz shouting and then, as another shot followed him into the courtyard Pauline’s cry rang high above all other sounds.

Trent landed on his shoulder, bruised but not seriously hurt. When he pulled the enveloping window shade from his face he was amazed to see that the room from which he had come was now in darkness. He could hear the men thrashing about it in a fury of rage at being unable to find the way of pursuit. Whether failure of the current was the cause or someone had pressed the button, the delay was of incalculable value.

Trent raced across the paved courtyard and pried open the door of what had been the prince’s apartment. It was unoccupied as was that of the adjoining room where the military aide had slept.

At the bedroom door leading to the corridor he listened carefully but heard no sound. He opened it quietly to come upon a servant passing by. It was an unmannerly fellow who had often jeered at him when they used the common table, a tall, awkward, stooping creature with a malicious face. His eyes opened wide when he saw it was the detested English chauffeur. Visions of reward darted across his brain and he made a movement as to apprehend the foreigner.

He was instantly gripped with a hold, which agonized him as he sought to break it, and forced into the bedroom from which Trent had just come. Then the door was locked and he was a prisoner. When, a minute later his master and the others came bursting through, he supposed them to be other than they were and hid under a bed where the redoubtable Sissek pursued him and beat him soundly until his identity was established.

Leaving him in the room Trent made his way carefully to the armoire, that rock of refuge in a weary land, and entered it noiselessly.

It was established that no stranger could have left the castle by any of its exits. Such as were not barred had servants near them. It was clear that Alfred Anthony was concealed somewhere in the vast building. His capture was only the matter of time, the result of careful searching.

This search was gone about systematically Count Michel directing his men personally. It was the count’s theory that one of his bullets, the first shot at which Hentzi had screamed because of its nearness to his head, had wounded the fleeing man, and that he would sooner or later be traced by a trail of blood.

Hardly had plans been made for the disposition of the searchers than an agitated footman reported Peter Sissek’s wife with dire news. She was brought before her employer trembling with excitement.

“Excellency,” she cried, “He has escaped in the English car.”

Pauline at the count’s side clutched his arm.

“Thank God!” she breathed.

“They shall suffer who let him pass,” the count roared, “Swine, children of swine, spawn of the devil.”

“Let me go after him Excellency,” Peter Sissek pleaded.