“And you are a friend of Count Ladislas Tuleski? You are, no doubt, aware that he is a suspect.”
I smiled as I thought of my friend’s airy impulsiveness and almost butterfly repudiation of responsibility. “I am surprised he should be suspected of doing anything seriously.”
“He is,” was the snappy reply. “And his friends are naturally objects of interest just now. Where is he?”
“I don’t know. I heard of him last in London.”
“And you are from London? It is at least a coincidence. Do you know Count Peter Valdemar?”
“I believe I met him once.” I remembered that I had seen him at my friend’s hotel in London.
“Another coincidence,” he returned drily. There was a pause during which he regarded me fixedly, pretty much as though I were a criminal. “You would perhaps, like to shew me all your papers, to satisfy me of the truth of your story.”
That was what an American would call “the limit.”
I got up and opened the door. “I have told you the truth and I don’t allow any man to question my word. You’d better go before I lose my temper.”
I stood six feet without bootheels; I had been the heaviest number five in my college eight that Corpus had had for years; and was in the pink of condition. He saw that I meant business and rose.