This was thrown out to test me.
"I should refuse no position offered to me, I can assure you, if it were offered rightfully. But I am not the Prince's nephew."
"You are sufficiently like him to satisfy me, and I'm a good deal mistaken if you have not a good deal of his Highness's spirit. But now it is useless to talk any more here. You will go with us, of course? he asked abruptly.
"Of course I will do nothing of the sort."
"Very well, then, I suppose we must go alone. Steinitz!" he called sharply, jerking his head as if bidding the other to unlock the door; and he himself made as if to leave the room.
My back was to the second man, and before I even suspected treachery he sprang upon me from behind, pinioned my arms, and bound them, while the elder man held a revolver pointed right between my eyes.
"I am sorry you have driven me to do this," he said; "for I am perhaps making you a deadly enemy when I would rather serve you with my life if necessary. But my master's orders are imperative. We are playing for high stakes there, and have to throw boldly at times. Your presence is necessary at the castle, and my instructions are to take you there, free or by force. Will you go without compelling me to use force?"
I looked calmly at his revolver. There was no fear he would fire.
"We can scarcely cross the empire in a procession of this kind," I said, meeting his stern look with a smile and a shrug of the shoulders.
"We shall not try," he answered promptly. "We shall go as doctors—you as a mad patient, who has escaped from an asylum. I have come prepared with the necessary papers; and I need not remind you that your own actions here have helped this plan."