Norman Benedict had removed Kate Strong’s legging and the long buttoned
shoe that had covered her sprained ankle, and had deftly bound up the
injured member with a handkerchief, after he had relieved the pain by
applying cold water and a gentle massage.
“You have been very kind to me,” said Kate, gratefully, as she leaned
back on the sofa and realized how much more comfortable the reporter’s
skill had made her feel. “I owe you a great debt of gratitude.” How much
she was indebted to Benedict she did not fully realize, for he had been
under a strong temptation to follow Rudolph at any cost when he had
learned that the lodge-keeper was the very Rexanian he had come up into
Westchester to find.
“Your man, there,” said Benedict, questioningly, glancing at his watch,
“has he been long in your service?”
“Several years,” answered Kate. “I believe he was exiled from Rexania
after the revolution of ten years ago.”
Her remark tended to increase the reporter’s interest in the lodge-keeper.
“They are a curious people, those Rexanians,” he remarked, drawing a
chair toward the sofa and seating himself where he could watch Kate’s
face. “I have seen something of them on the East Side.”
Kate felt an almost irresistible desire to confess to the youth that
they were a race in which she took at that moment an interest that was
founded on a most unhappy incident.
“You see,” Benedict went on, noting the animated expression on her
face, “I am a newspaper reporter, Miss Strong, and in my work I come
into contact with many curious phases of life and queer kinds of people
in New York. Of course you have never met a Rexanian, excepting your
lodge-keeper, Rudolph?”
“Oh, but I have,” cried Kate, who did not fully realize that her accident
had rendered her slightly feverish and therefore somewhat more loquacious
than usual. “A Rexanian dined at our house in the city a few nights ago.
He had come over on the steamer with my father and mother. He was a very
charming man.”
There was something in her voice that impressed Benedict as peculiar.
“One of the Rexanian nobility, of course?” he asked, diplomatically.
“Yes,” she answered, with some hesitation. “He was a count—Count
Szalaki.” Her face flushed as the thought flashed through her mind
that her frankness in the presence of a newspaper reporter was, to say
the least of it, indiscreet. But there were many influences at work to
render Kate Strong less reticent than she ordinarily was by habit and
temperament. The sudden disappearance of their Rexanian guest and the
shadow that had been cast upon his memory by her family had made her
impatient to clear up the mystery that surrounded the only man who had
ever fully satisfied the romantic longings that pertained to her youth
and her self-centred nature.
That Ned Strong was fitted neither by temperament nor by experience to
solve a problem that grew more and more inexplicable as time passed, his
sister well knew. Already he had lost interest in a mystery that grew
more important to Kate the longer it remained unsolved. She herself was
powerless to prosecute a line of inquiry that, she felt sure, would, if
carried forward to the end, exonerate the Rexanian whose melancholy and
fascinating face had impressed her as that of a man whose soul was too
lofty for subterfuge and fraud.
Fate had thrown her into the enforced companionship of a man whose
journalistic training had thoroughly fitted him for solving mysteries of
the kind that now weighed upon her overwrought mind. Conflicting emotions
warred within her. She possessed many of the prejudices and all the
self-control that pertain to the real patrician; added to these was a
maidenly fear that somebody might discover the secret that agitated her
heart—a secret that she hardly dared to whisper to herself. On the other
hand, she had grown almost desperate in her anxiety to learn something
more of Count Szalaki, to receive an explanation of his seemingly
churlish silence that would vindicate her innermost conviction that he
was what her fancy painted him. Perhaps under other circumstances her
natural disinclination to grow too confidential with a man about whom
she knew almost nothing would have prevailed, but the reaction following
her accident had rendered her will-power less active than usual and her
inclination to give way to an impulse stronger.
“Count Szalaki!” exclaimed Norman Benedict, musingly. Suddenly an
expression of eagerness crossed his face. “His name was on the passenger
list of one of the incoming steamers recently. I noticed it at the time.
And so he is a Rexanian! That is very interesting. You were kind enough
to say a moment ago, Miss Strong, that you owe me a debt of gratitude.
That is hardly true, for what I have done for you has been a pleasure to
me. But, frankly, you can do me a kindness. I should very much like to
meet Count Szalaki.”
A mournful expression rested on Kate Strong’s face.
“I am sorry,” she said regretfully, “but I cannot gratify your wish.
We—we—don’t know where Count Szalaki is.”
Norman Benedict sprang up in excitement. There was something in the
girl’s face and voice that revived the nervous tremor that had affected
him when the tremendous possibilities of the hints thrown out by Ludovics
had first seriously impressed him.
“Do you mean to tell me,” he asked, eagerly, “that Count Szalaki has
disappeared?”
“We have seen and heard nothing of him since the night he dined with us,”
answered Kate.
The reporter paced up and down the room impatiently.
“What do you know about him?” he cried, at length. “Are you sure, Miss
Strong, that—that his title was genuine?”
Kate had found the reporter’s excitement contagious, and she did not
notice the bald discourtesy of his question. Her desire to gain Benedict
as an ally in her efforts to re-establish the reputation of her father’s
guest had become irresistible.
“We know,” she admitted, “that there is no such title as that of Count
Szalaki in Rexania.”
Norman Benedict stood still and looked down at her with an expression of
eager interest on his face for which she could not satisfactorily account.
At that moment the carriage in which Rudolph had gone on his futile
mission in search of a physician rattled up to the gate, and before the
reporter could put further questions to Kate the lodge-keeper had entered
the room.
“The doctor will be here directly, Miss Strong,” said Rudolph, nervously.
“Shall I dismiss the carriage?”
“Let the carriage wait,” answered Norman Benedict, harshly. Striding up
to the pale-faced Rexanian, he said, in a stern voice:
“Did you ever hear in Rexania, man, of a certain Count Szalaki?”
It was, in a sense, a random shot, but it struck home. Rudolph’s face
looked like a mask of bluish-white paste in the twilight gloom of
the darkening chamber. He put up his hand, as if to ward off a blow.
Kate Strong strained her eyes to catch the changing expression on the
Rexanian’s countenance. A deep silence fell upon the trio. Suddenly the
answer came to the reporter’s question, but not from Rudolph Smolenski.
Muffled by distance, but unmistakable in its horrid import, there echoed
from the manor-house the ugly crash of a pistol-shot.