"You saved her too, then?" The thin talon-like hand clutched Billy's like a vise.
"No," answered Saunderson reluctantly, beginning to see how matters stood.
"Where is she then?" was the eager question.
"See here, Cal, you haven't given me a chance to tell you how I came to be there. I'm just aching for the opportunity too. You don't know it, but I had a bet with Jackson that you'd go over there when the matter became known to you. Naturally I took more than a casual interest in Krovitch after that. Reports got disturbing, so I ran the Bronx over to sort of hang around until needed. To be perfectly frank, I was looking for you. When the skipper called me that morning and said some one was swimming for the boat I took a long guess that it was you. The first time you sank the launch was almost on top of you. We pulled you out of the very claws of a Cossack."
"But the girl?—But Her Grace of Schallberg?" It was pitiable how abject a strong man could become.
"If that was the Duchess of Schallberg, Cal, a second Russian picked her up, apparently unconscious, and made off with her—toward the Austrian shore. Just why he went that way no one seemed to know. His comrades fired after them. No, don't start; no one hit. Bum shots, those Asiatics."
Seeing the terrible pressure under which Carter was laboring, the nurse came forward at this juncture and sent Saunderson away. For some unaccountable reason Carter could not force the conviction on himself that serious evil had befallen Trusia. Hope departs only with life. Paradoxical as it may seem, he worried not about her safety, but about the dangers which, without his aid, she could overcome only with great difficulty. Such is the egotism of love. He reverted anxiously to the story of her questionable rescue. Who could the Cossack have been—why hadn't he returned to his comrades? Why,—why,—why? Question followed question, like the alarm bells at a fire. At last he wearily fell asleep.
He opened his eyes the second time to find the day was gathering darkness from the corners and niches of the room.
"Nurse," he called. In an instant, silent as the gloaming, she approached the bed. "Might I have my mail? It must have been accumulating for months."
"You must not read," she said firmly.