Grey dined that evening across the Boulevard at the Maison Dorée, in
company with Fräulein von Altdorf and Herr Captain Lindenwald; and, as
the officer insisted that it was advisable for them to avoid as much
as possible the public eye, the trio dined in a _cabinet particulier_
on the second floor with windows open on the street. It was not a very
gay dinner, in spite of the Herr Captain’s efforts to infuse some mirth
into it. Miss von Altdorf was apparently still grief-stricken over her
great-uncle’s sudden death, and though she strove valiantly to smile
at Lindenwald’s essays at wit and to respond with some animation to
Grey’s less jocose but cheerful observations, it was with such palpable
exertion as to rather discourage her would-be entertainers.
Her youth was a surprise to the American. At first sight he had fancied
her three or four-and-twenty, but he was satisfied now that she could
not be more than eighteen. Her figure was distinctly girlish.
She was all in white, from her great ostrich-plumed hat of Leghorn
straw to her tiny canvas bottines, because, young as she was, she
entertained prejudices against conventional mourning, and exercised
them. It was a question, however, whether in black or white she was
more beautiful. In the death-chamber Grey had seen her sombre-robed
and had pronounced her rarely lovely, and now in raiment immaculately
snowy she was equally alluring. Her expression was naturally pensive
and her recent sorrow had given to her big, deep-set, long-lashed blue
eyes a pathos that awoke the tenderest emotions. As the American gazed
at her across the table he experienced a thrill of sentiment that
was undeniable, and he had but to glance at Lindenwald to see in his
contemplation the same fervency of soul.
“I should like it,” Grey said to her when the dinner was about over
and he was burning his cognac over his coffee, “if you would take a
trip with me tomorrow into the country. We will start early and have
_déjeuner_ at some inn, under the trees. It will do you a world of
good.”
Something very like a frown gathered on Lindenwald’s brow, but it
passed before he spoke.
“Do not forget my warning, Herr Arndt,” he interjected. “It would
perhaps be safer for me to accompany Fraülein von Altdorf.”
“I will chance it,” Grey replied, decisively. “I feel that I, too, need
a little outing.”
“It will be lovely, Uncle Max,” the girl responded, with more animation
than she had previously shown. “Let us go to Versailles. I have never
been, and I have read so much about it.”
“Versailles it shall be, my dear,” he answered, lighting a cigarette,
while Lindenwald brushed his hand across his brow to hide a scowl.
Grey’s broken, unrefreshing, dreamful slumber of the night before,
followed by a tiresome, distressing day, resulted early in the evening
in a drowsiness that he could not shake off. For a while he dozed in a
chair by an open window, but when the clock had struck eleven he arose
and prepared for bed, and in a little while he was sleeping soundly
behind his blue velvet curtains.
The night, however, was warm and close after the rain of the day, and,
as the hours wore on, the sleeper grew restless and turned uneasily
from side to side, by-and-by waking at each turning and seeking a
cool spot between the sheets. At length sleep forsook him altogether,
and he lay quite wide awake peering into the darkness in an effort to
distinguish objects. But the night was very black and the room was
enveloped in a pall of ink, save where the reflection from the street
lamps spread patches of dim yellow light on wall and ceiling. The
stillness, too, was oppressive. The boulevard was dead, and within
doors no sound except the monotonous ticking of the clock on the
mantel-shelf was audible.
He waited longingly for the clock to strike that he might know how many
hours must elapse before the dawn; and as he waited, his senses alert,
there broke softly on the silence the stealthy tread of feet in the
passage on the other side of the wall near which he lay. No sooner had
he heard the footsteps than they ceased, and the sound was succeeded
by a muffled, metallic clicking from the direction of his door. With
Lindenwald’s warning in mind he had turned the key in the lock before
retiring, and he recalled this now with a sense of satisfied security;
but even as he did so he was conscious of the door being pushed slowly
but creakingly ajar, and then the tread that he had heard without he
heard within. He held his breath, not in affright, for he was, he
realised, wonderfully composed, but lest he scare away the intruder
before the object of his visit was made plain.
Another second and a figure had crossed in the dim light that came
from one of the windows. It was a rather undersized figure, Grey
thought, but its attitude was crouching, almost creeping, and he might
be deceived. Quickly a hand went to the cord loops at either side of
the casements and dropped the curtains, and now the room was devoid
of even the dim illumination from the street lamps. Then again, for a
heart-beat, there was a blade of light visible as the visitor’s arm
shot quickly between the lowered window hangings and drew cautiously
together the open sashes, first one and then the other.
The steps now approached the bed--very slowly, haltingly, as though the
intruder stopped at each footfall to listen. Grey waited, with every
muscle tense, his nerves a-strain, wondering, speculating as to this
night prowler’s next move. For a little while his approach ceased and
the suspense grew maddening. The man had evidently halted in the centre
of the room. Then there came the faintest tinkle of glass touched to
glass, so faint that the ticking of the clock made question whether it
was not imagination; and then the stealthy stepping was resumed, but
more nearly silent than before, until the man in the bed, with heart
pounding, teeth shut tight and breath indrawn and held, knew that the
other was there beside him--leaning in over him, between the curtains,
with a hand outstretched....
Blindly, into the pitch dark, with all its power of nerve and muscle,
Grey’s clenched fist shot upward just as a cloth, wet with a liquid
so suffocatingly volatile as to stagger him for the instant, dropped
on his face. He heard a startled cry, half moan, half groan, and then
a crash as a body reeled backward and, losing its balance, toppled
over a chair. On his feet in a flash, Grey made haste to follow up his
advantage. His foot touched his fallen assailant and he flung his full
weight down upon him, groping wildly in the dark to find his arms and
pinion them. But the fellow wriggled like a worm--twisting agilely,
squirming from under his clutch--and his arms evaded capture. Locked in
a desperate embrace they rolled over and over, now half rising to their
knees, now thrown back again, upsetting tables and chairs, pounding
their heads stunningly on floor and wall, clutching at each other’s
hair, gripping each other’s throats--a wrestling match in which science
had neither time nor place; a struggle for capture on the part of one,
and for escape on the part of the other.
Grey was the stronger of the two, the heavier, the more muscular, but
his foe was all elasticity, wiry, resilient, untiring, indomitable. The
minutes passed without any apparent advantage to either. The smaller
man was swearing in four languages and Grey was breathing hard. The
noise they were making, as they rose and fell and overturned furniture,
was thunderous. Each moment Grey expected the house would be awakened
and assistance would arrive. Perspiration was pouring from his every
pore; his pyjamas were in ribbons, his body and limbs half naked.
Vainly he strove to strike and stun his adversary. His blows were
dodged as if by instinct and his knuckles were bleeding where they had
come in contact with the floor.
At length he succeeded in laying hold of the fellow’s face, his nose
and mouth in his iron grasp, but instantly the jaws wrenched open and
then closed savagely with Grey’s finger between viciously incisive
teeth. A cry of pain escaped him as for the smallest moment a wave of
faintness swept over him, and then he felt his antagonist slipping
sinuously from under him and he grabbed wildly for a fresh hold. He
caught a wrist and tried to cling to it, but the teeth were cutting to
the bone, grinding on the joint, and the wrist slid through his grasp
and the head followed in a twinkling. He rolled over and lunged out
again, but the steely jaws had at that instant released his mangled
finger, and even as he was striving to reach, struggling pantingly
to his knees, he heard the door open quickly and he knew that he was
alone.
He sank back to a sitting posture, breathing hard and deeply, but the
air seemed suddenly to have grown thick and foul and choking, and
he clambered to his feet and sought in the darkness for a window.
Presently the touch of the curtains rewarded him. He thrust them
frantically aside, pushed open the sashes and then dropped down again
with his head and shoulders far out over the balcony, drinking in the
cool, fresh air of the very early morning.
And it was here, in this position, a minute later that Johann, who had
after considerable deliberation decided to investigate the cause of the
disturbance, found him pale and exhausted, with the remnants of his
pyjamas spattered with blood from his bleeding finger.
“Oh, Herr Arndt,” he cried, in perturbation, “what has happened? Have
you tried to kill yourself? Oh, it is suffocating here! The gas--the
room is full of gas.”
Johann helped Grey to his feet, sat him in a chair by the window, and
having discovered the four gas jets of the chandelier which depended
from the ceiling in the centre of the room turned full on, he turned
them off, opened the other window and threw wide the door to effect a
draft. Then he lighted the candles and returned to make an inventory of
his master’s injuries.
“I’m not very much hurt, Johann,” Grey assured him; “but it was a
pretty tough scrimmage while it lasted, and the brute did give my
finger a biting. He had teeth like a saw and jaws like a vise. His
original idea was asphyxiation, I suppose. He fancied I was asleep and
that he would make it my last. By the way, look in the bed over there.
You’ll find a chloroformed handkerchief, I think.”
“And was it for robbery, do you imagine, Herr Arndt, that he came?”
Johann asked, as he went toward the bed.
“God knows,” Grey answered. “It looks rather professional when a fellow
unlocks your door with a pair of nippers. The key was in the lock, you
see.”
“You did not see his face, Herr Arndt? You would not know him?”
“I’m not a cat, Johann, and I cannot see in the dark.”
Then the valet hastened away to investigate, but returned without any
information worth the calling. He had aroused the _portier_ only to
learn that the street door had not been opened in two hours either for
ingress or egress. Whoever the depredator was he must either have come
in early and remained hidden or have entered through some unbarred
window in the rear of the hotel, probably escaping by the same means.
Having made his report Johann bathed and bound Grey’s finger, drew a
bath for him, got out clean nightwear, remade the bed, and, just as the
clock struck the half-hour after four, left him once more alone, still
with the chloroformed handkerchief in his hand, which he was examining
carefully for the third time. But it was merely a square piece of fine
hemstitched linen without any distinguishing mark whatever. In that,
certainly, there was no clue to his visitor.
But just as he was about to blow out his candles his foot trod on
something hard, and he stooped and picked up a seal ring. It was very
heavy and richly chased, and it bore an elaborately engraved coat of
arms. In that last despairing clutch at the fellow’s hand he had
evidently stripped this from his finger--this which could not but
prove damaging evidence of his identity. The heraldic device was to
Grey unfamiliar, but it would be a comparatively easy matter to learn
to what family it belonged. Indeed, he had a vague recollection of
having noticed a ring of this pattern on the little finger of Baron von
Einhard’s ungloved hand the afternoon before in the hotel reading-room;
but the pattern was not uncommon, and-- but it was preposterous to
fancy that a man of his position, no matter what Lindenwald had said,
no matter what his reputation for chicanery, craft, and cunning, would
personally undertake a deliberate attempt at homicide. Such impossible
characters might figure in melodramas, but in real life they were out
of the question. And then he looked at the ring again, turning it over
and inspecting it very minutely in the light of the candle flame.
Captain Lindenwald, when he was told of the affair, was quite sure
it was von Einhard even before he was shown the ring, and when that
was forthcoming he was willing to swear to it. The arms, he declared,
were the von Einhard arms, and the ring could have been worn by no
one save the Baron himself. He was for putting the matter in the hands
of the police and thus avoiding future dangers, but after a little
deliberation he realised that such a course would be impracticable. For
the present it was absolutely necessary, he knew, to reveal nothing as
to his and his charge’s whereabouts. Too much was known already; and
general publicity, even though it put von Einhard where he could do no
personal harm, would more greatly imperil the carrying out of the plans
that were indispensable.
This, at least, was the impression he conveyed to Grey, though he was,
as usual, most guarded in his choice of words. Never yet, the American
observed, had he directly spoken of his mission, nor had he once so
much as intimated to him that he knew him as other than Herr Max Arndt.
That he was a crown prince _en route_ to the bedside of his dying sire
Captain Lindenwald had zealously refrained from uttering save to a
third party under stress of unusual circumstance, and then in a tone so
low that he could not reasonably be expected to hear.
“If I may be permitted,” the Captain requested, “I will keep this ring
for a little. I may run across von Einhard, and I should like to give
him this one hint that his attempt on your life is known to us.”
But for some reason which he could not define Grey demurred.
“I have a whim to wear it,” he said, replacing it upon his finger; and
Lindenwald made no further plea.