“You told him the reason—that the money was a dowry?”
“Of course, and he immediately checkmated me by saying he was already married to the Duchess and that the consent to the marriage must be dated back.”
“He is a daring fellow. It was a tight corner. What did you say?”
“I couldn’t alter the date, of course, for the reason that I could not write in the same hand, so I put up what we Americans term a bluff,” and I described to him what had passed, withholding, of course, all mention of Helga and her part in it.
“It was very clever, M. Denver. And why did you not come away?”
“If I had come the papers would have been placed in the hands of the Powers’ representatives at once. I stayed, therefore, in the hope of finding the means to avert such a catastrophe.”
“That was almost reckless, but under the circumstances no more than I should have expected.” He was a fiend at the game of implied suggestion, and again I was convinced he had secret information of some kind. “But in the end you found you could do nothing?” he continued. “They made you a prisoner.”
Why did he use that plural? What “they” had he in his mind?
“A prisoner in effect, because, if I left, Boreski meant to use the papers at once. But I could have left at any moment.”
He smiled and nodded.