She was a striking girl, of medium height and slender form, but it was her face that fascinated me, with its delicately molded features, intense unfathomable eyes of dark brown, and lips that showed her idealistic, high-strung temperament.
“Please,” he soothed, “get yourself together, please—try! What is the matter?”
She looked about, as if she feared that the very walls had eyes and ears. Yet there seemed to be something bursting from her lips that she could not restrain.
“My life,” she cried wildly, “my life is at stake. Oh—help me, help me! Unless I commit a murder to-night, I shall be killed myself!”
The words sounded so doubly strange from a girl of her evident refinement that I watched her narrowly, not sure yet but that we had a plain case of insanity to deal with.
“A murder?” repeated Kennedy incredulously. “You commit a murder?”
Her eyes rested on him, as if fascinated, but she did not flinch as she replied desperately, “Yes—Baron Kreiger—you know, the German diplomat and financier, who is in America raising money and arousing sympathy with his country.”
“Baron Kreiger!” exclaimed Kennedy in surprise, looking at her more keenly.
We had not met the Baron, but we had heard much about him, young, handsome, of an old family, trusted already in spite of his youth by many of the more advanced of old world financial and political leaders, one who had made a most favorable impression on democratic America at a time when such impressions were valuable.
Glancing from one of us to the other, she seemed suddenly, with a great effort, to recollect herself, for she reached into her chatelaine and pulled out a card from a case.