“It would have been a reckless thing to do,” answered the gigantic Posnovitch.
Posadowski put up his hand deprecatingly.
“Allow me to explain,” he said, in a firm voice. “We dare not let this evidence leave our hands. It would cost us our lives if your enemies found that we had betrayed them. And they are very keen-witted. They have placed you under surveillance at your hotel: if you examined these documents at your rooms they would know of it, and our efforts to protect you would be vain.”
Count Szalaki’s face wore an expression of bewilderment and uncertainty. He was frank and unsuspicious by nature, but the atmosphere of a court had done much to destroy that confidence in his fellow-man that pertained to his temperament and his years. The men surrounding him impressed him favorably. They seemed to him to belong to that class of Rexanians—merchants and men of affairs who desired no change in the government—who had always been in Rexopolis the firmest friends of his house. But he hesitated to put himself in their power. In a strange land, surrounded by customs and conditions with which he was unfamiliar, he began to feel that he might be in even greater peril than that which surrounded him at all times in the palace at Rexopolis. It was simply a choice between two evils that confronted him, and he had about decided to defy the danger which, he had been told, menaced him from a general conspiracy, rather than place himself in a closed carriage with the bewhiskered men at his side, when Posadowski, observing the prince’s indecision, said:
“It is not surprising, your royal highness, that you find yourself in a quandary. We say that we are your friends. That is no proof that we tell the truth. But time is precious. We can wait no longer. I will convince you on the instant that you can trust us.”
The arch-conspirator drew a letter from a pocket in his coat.
“One moment,” he said, moving nearer to the light, with the letter in his hand. “Is there anything familiar to you in my face?”
The youth from whose grasp a throne was slipping glanced keenly at Posadowski’s countenance.
“Truly,” he said, “I seem to have seen your face before. Your name is——?”
“Posadowski,” answered the Rexanian.