“Let the carriage wait,” answered Norman Benedict, harshly. Striding up to the pale-faced Rexanian, he said, in a stern voice:
“Did you ever hear in Rexania, man, of a certain Count Szalaki?”
It was, in a sense, a random shot, but it struck home. Rudolph’s face looked like a mask of bluish-white paste in the twilight gloom of the darkening chamber. He put up his hand, as if to ward off a blow. Kate Strong strained her eyes to catch the changing expression on the Rexanian’s countenance. A deep silence fell upon the trio. Suddenly the answer came to the reporter’s question, but not from Rudolph Smolenski.
Muffled by distance, but unmistakable in its horrid import, there echoed from the manor-house the ugly crash of a pistol-shot.
CHAPTER XIX.
Mrs. Brevoort and Ned Strong had found, upon inquiry at the club-house, that Kate had not been seen since she had wheeled away with them. They stood at a corner of the piazza and held council with each other.
“How careless you have been, Mr. Strong!” Mrs. Brevoort was saying, chidingly. “It is well that you have decided never to marry. How can a man who loses track of a sister hope to keep his eye on a wife?”
“You are exacting,” he returned. “Why should I expect to perform miracles? I am not possessed of second-sight, nor of eyes in the back of my head. But, Mrs. Brevoort, it is a condition, not a theory, that confronts us, as a famous man once said. Now, if you are tired of wheeling, won’t you walk over to our old house with me? Kate did not come down the hill, you remember. I am inclined to think that something may have happened to her wheel, and that she stopped to have Rudolph, our lodge-keeper, repair it. It is not much of a walk, by a short cut I know how to make.”