By Wit of Woman - Arthur W. Marchmont (e textbook reader .TXT) 📗

use either Gilmore or von Dreschler as you please. Names are of small account after what has happened here."

"Where is Madame d'Artelle?"

"She has done that which might be expected of her in a crisis like this—run away. She is probably across the frontier now."

"But I have just had a letter from her begging me to come here at once; written evidently in great agitation."

"There are enough hours in a night to allow of many short letters being written. She was intensely agitated when she fled!"

"You seem to be cool enough."

"My nerves are of a different order from hers. Besides, I have nothing to fear in all this."

"How is it that you are here at all?"

"I am not Madame d'Artelle, and therefore not accountable for my actions or movements to you."

"You left Pesth yesterday—when did you return?"

"If you consult a time table you can see at what hours the trains reach the city, and can judge for yourself which I was likely to be in."

"You can answer me or not, as you please," he said angrily; "but you will have to account for your presence here."

"Why?" and I looked at him meaningly. He passed the question off with a shrug of the shoulders.

"That is your first mistake, Count Gustav. You must keep your temper better than that, or it will betray you."

He affected to laugh; but there was no laughter in his eyes.

"Well, if Madame was only fooling me with her letter I suppose I may as well go again," he said lightly.

"You know that you have no thought of going. Why are you afraid to put the questions which are so close to your lips?"

I was getting my thrusts well home each time, and was goading him to anger, as well as starting his fears of me.

"Why was that letter written?"

"Because of what has happened here."

"What has happened?"

"Yes, that is one of the questions. I can tell you." I paused and added slowly: "The man you sent here came to do the work you planned."

He bit his lip hard, and his hands gripped the back of the chair behind which he stood. "You delight in mysteries, I know," he sneered.

"Your sneer does not hide the effect of my news, Count Gustav. You know there is no mystery in that for you—and there is none for me. Put your second question."

"What do you mean? I don't understand you."

"That is not true. You want to ask me where your brother is."

"I'll ask that or any other if you wish," he replied, attempting a jaunty, indifferent air. "Where is he?"

"God have more mercy on you than you had on him. You have already seen the answer to your question in the drawn blinds of the room where you last saw him alive."

Strive as he would he could not but shrink under my words and tone. His fingers strained on the chair back, his breath laboured, his colour fled, and his eyes—those hardy, laughing, dare-devil eyes—fell before my gaze. He had to pause and moisten his lips before he could reply.

"If you mean that any harm has come to him," he said, speaking at first with difficulty and hesitation, but gathering firmness as he proceeded; "there will be a heavy reckoning for some one. Who is in the house beside you?" He did not dare to look up yet.

"You coward!" I cried, with all the contempt I felt.

This stung him to fury. "If you have had a hand in this and seek to shield yourself by abusing me, it will not help you. I tell you that."

"Seek to shield myself! I should not stoop to seek so paltry a shield as you could be, whether you were white with fear or flushed with selfish purpose. I do not need a shield. I know the truth, Count Gustav. I know all your part in it, from your motive to the final consummation of your treacherous plan. And what I know to-day, all Austria, all the world, shall know to-morrow."

That was enough. He looked up then, his eyes full of hate of me. I saw his purpose take life and shape in his thoughts. If with safety to himself, he could have struck me down as I stood facing him, he would have done it; but he had what he believed a safer plan in his mind. To have me imprisoned and the secret buried with me.

His new purpose gave him clearer directness of thought at once, and he began to work toward it cunningly. "I can understand and let pass your wild sayings at such a moment, Miss Gilmore. Such a thing as this has, of course, unstrung you..."

"Oh, it is to be a madhouse, is it," I broke in, interpreting for him his secret thought. "I had expected only a prison. You cannot do it, Count Gustav. I am prepared."

But my jeer did not move him. The force of his first surprise was spent, and he was now close set upon the use he intended to make of my presence. He knew the peril which my threat held for him.

"It is singular under the circumstances that you regard yourself in danger of imprisonment, Miss Gilmore; I hope not significant. If you would like to offer any explanation, it is of course open to you to do so."

"I think it probable that there will be an explanation before you leave, Count Gustav; but what in particular should I explain now?"

"We shall require one of—what you say has happened here. Who is in the house?"

"Myself and the servants."

"The manservant was sent away and his place taken by another. By whose orders?"

"Mine."

"I shall need to see him."

"Like Madame d'Artelle, he has gone."

"He was here last night?"

"Certainly."

He shrugged his shoulders. The answer suited him admirably. "He was in your employ," he said, drily.

"I have nothing to conceal," I replied, putting as much doggedness into my manner as a guilty person might have used at the first glimpse of the net closing round him.

"It is a very grave case."

"I can see that—but I know who did what was done as well as who instigated it."

"You were a witness of it, you mean?"

"Of course I mean nothing of the kind. I did not see the blow struck; but I was not asleep at the time; and the instant the alarm was given I was on the spot, and I can identify all concerned."

"Who do you say struck the blow?"

"I did not say. But you know perfectly well the man you sent here to strike it. And so do I."

"You actually charge me with being concerned in having my own brother assassinated?" he cried with well assumed indignation. "It is infamous!"

"Infamous, of course—but true."

"I mean such a charge, madam," he declared, sternly. "I will speak no further with you. You will of course remain here until the agents of the police arrive."

"I have no wish to leave. I tell you I am innocent."

"You at least are found here alone; you admit having fled from the city yesterday and returned surreptitiously; you brought your own man here and sent my brother's away; you have a motive strong enough to account for all in your resentment of my brother's treatment of you; and you seek to put the foulness upon me with an elaborate story that you know the man who did this to have been brought here by me."

"It has a very ugly look, I admit—but there is a flaw in it, none the less."

"That is for others to investigate, madam. I will go to the room. It is locked. Where is the key?"

I took it from my pocket and handed it to him.

"Another significant fact," he said, as we went out of the room and crossed the hall. "I will go in alone."

"No, I have a right to be present."

"It is most unseemly; as unseemly as your smile. My poor Karl." He spoke as if he were genuinely dismayed at the blow, sighed deeply, paused to brace himself for the task, and then entered.

The room was gloomy enough to make it impossible to see anything clearly; but I had arranged the sofa pillow on the couch and covered it with the rug.

He was really affected; although not in the way he intended me to believe. He crossed slowly to the couch and stood by it, as if lacking courage to turn back the rug.

I went to the window and drawing the curtain let the blind up and the sunlight in.

He was now very pale, and his hands twitched restlessly.

"You do not dare to look on the brother whose murder you planned," I said, with cold distinctness.

"How dare you say that, at such a time, madam," he cried fiercely; and taking the rug he turned it back gently.

I laughed.

The laugh so enraged him that he tore off the rug and swore a deep, heavy oath.

"What does this mean?"

"That I think we may pull up the rest of the blinds and open the windows and let the fresh air in;" and with another laugh I did as I said.

I turned to find him overcome by the sudden reaction from the strain and the new problem I had set. He was sitting on the couch with his face buried in his hands.

CHAPTER XX MY ARREST

I stepped out into the sunlight glad of the fresh air in contrast to the dismal closeness of the room. I was quite willing to give Count Gustav a few minutes in which to puzzle over the reasons for the trick I had played him.

He would be quite sure that I had some deep purpose in it all. You can always gamble on it that cunning people will credit you with cunning; and I had said enough to him to cause him profound uneasiness.

It took him longer than I had expected to decide upon his next step; for I had already anticipated what that step would be. He would go through with the plan of having me arrested. I was certain of that; because it was the only means, short of murdering me, by which he could ensure my silence.

But the pretext for the arrest was now so flimsy that in making it he would have many difficulties to face—especially when I brought General von Erlanger on to the scene of action. But before I did that, I had some very pointed things to say.

I was perfectly easy in mind now as to the result of the trouble. I was going to win. I felt it. I could afford to be confident; and I took great care that he should see this for himself.

I knew presently that he was watching me closely, so I began to sing light-heartedly. I flitted about from bush to bush and gathered a little bouquet of flowers; and spent some minutes in arranging them, holding them at a distance and viewing them critically with my head on one side—for all the world as though their arrangement were just the one thing that fully engrossed my thoughts.

Then I carried them into the room and touched the bell, telling the woman who answered it to bring me some water; and as I placed them in a vase I said, as if to myself, and with a nonchalant laugh: "They will brighten up my cell wonderfully."

The little prick of the words irritated him and he scowled.

"I am surprised people call you Gustav of the laughing eyes," I bantered. "You are very handsome, of course, but I have never heard you laugh really gaily."

He forgot sufficiently to swear; and I pretended to be greatly shocked. "I hope you are not going to be violent; but I thought it just as well you should know there is a woman in the house, and that she should see you. Have you got over your disappointment yet—or do you think the body is in the sofa pillow?"

It was aggravating of course; the truth, flippantly suggested, frequently is; and he was in that mood when small jibes galled.

"You are