Pimpernel and Rosemary, Baroness Orczy [i have read the book a hundred times .txt] 📗

huddled-up heap, wrapped in a dirty, military coat, and with his peaked cap pulled down over his face. The innkeeper appeared rather scared. He took hold of the military coat and pulled it open, and immediately he clapped his hand to his mouth, smothering a scream. The cap rolled off the chauffeur’s head, and his right arm dropped down the side of the car. One man who stood quite near, not knowing probably that the two ladies were there, cried excitedly:

“God in heaven! The man has been shot-dead!”

XXV

There was no one there quite so self-possessed as Elza. Even Rosemary had some difficulty in smothering a cry. The innkeeper jumped down from the seat as if he had been driven away by a whip; the peasants gesticulated and jabbered in an undertone. Rosemary looked at Elza and clutched her hand more tightly against her own body. Elza’s face was the colour of lead, her lips looked purple, even her large, blue eyes appeared colourless. Her hand was as cold as ice and shook in Rosemary’s strength-giving clasp. But to the eyes of all these peasants and subordinates she appeared perfectly calm, and after a moment or two she turned to the group of jabbering, gesticulating peasants and asked quite quietly:

“Which of you first saw the motor draw up?”

“I heard the noise, gracious countess,” the Jew volunteered, “as the car drew up outside the door, and⁠—”

“And I saw the soldier jump down,” a young labourer broke in excitedly. “He ran⁠—”

“Very well,” Elza said coldly. “Now you, and you,” she went on and pointed to the innkeeper and to the labourer, “come inside and tell me what you have seen. Will you come, too, darling?” she asked Rosemary.

Finally she turned to her own man Feri:

“One of you,” she said, “had better go to the gendarmerie. They ought to have been here by now.”

Then she went into the inn; the Jew and the labourer followed, and the peasants, having looked their fill at the car, or else scared by that lifeless bundle in the chauffeur’s seat, crowded together in the doorway of the inn. But Rosemary lagged behind for a moment, examining the car as if she expected the huge, shabby thing to yield up the key of its own mystery. But in the body of the car there was nothing, except the cushions and the dust and the huddled figure of the dead chauffeur, with the head fallen forward on the breast, and the arm hanging over the side of the car. Rosemary turned away from it at first with a shudder, but almost despite her will her eyes turned back to gaze again at that huddled-up heap and the limp arm, from beneath the coat-sleeve of which a thin filet of blood trickled drop by drop to the ground.

And suddenly something white and crisp fell from the lifeless hand into the dust at Rosemary’s feet. She stooped and picked it up. Fortunately the jabbering peasants were not looking this way, and Feri had walked off to the gendarmerie. What Rosemary had picked up was a letter addressed to “Lady Tarkington.” She tore open the envelope and read:

“A very clumsy attempt, dear lady. As you see, it has led to no good. Your two protégés are now under my direct care, and you have little more than a fortnight in which to write the newspaper articles which I want.”

The letter was signed “Naniescu.” Rosemary slipped it into the pocket of her gown, and then she went into the inn. The peasants all made way for her, and then crowded again in the doorway, trying to hear what was going on. Rosemary thought the long, low room one of the stuffiest and most evil-smelling places she had ever been in. It was very dark, the light only feebly penetrating through two tiny, impracticable windows, the panes of which were covered in dust. The only breath of fresh air that could possibly find its way in would have been through the door, but that was blocked now by a solid bundle of perspiring humanity. From the low raftered ceiling hung strings of onions and maize, and in a corner of the room, on a low table which was apparently used as a counter, were numerous bottles and a number of pewter mugs. The odour in the room was a mixture of dirt, onions and silvorium. But Elza, who sat beside the table with the innkeeper and the peasants before her, appeared quite unconscious of smells or dirt. She was questioning the labourer, who apparently was the only man who had actually witnessed the arrival of the motorcar into the village.

“I saw it come, gracious countess,” he said, with obvious pride in his own importance, “and I saw it draw up outside here. There was a soldier sitting near the chauffeur.”

“And he was in the driving seat?” Elza asked.

“Yes, gracious countess, the soldier was driving when I first saw the car come along the road.”

“And the other man?”

“Well, gracious countess, I saw a sort of heaped-up bundle beside the chauffeur. I did not know there was another man.”

“Well, then what happened?”

“The car slowed down, gracious countess, and drew up outside here. Then the soldier jumped up; he stepped over the heaped-up bundle and got out of the car.”

“Yes, and then?”

“He took the thing which I thought was just a bundle covered with a military coat, and pushed it into the driver’s seat. After that he ran away as fast as he could.”

“In which direction?”

“Where he had come from, gracious countess. There was another car waiting for him there about half a kilometre away.”

“Another car?”

“Yes; I didn’t see it come, but I heard it slow down and come to a halt. The soldier ran all the way. He jumped into that other car, and it drove away in the direction of Cluj.”

After that another man stepped in from the doorway and volunteered the information that he had seen the second car