For a while they travelled without further speech, save when an imperious "Brake!" from the Princess indicated that the pace must be checked in order for a corner to be rounded without mishap.
Under the stone viaduct of the railway they flew, winding in and out of pine woods, sometimes catching a glimpse of the golden lights of Riefinsdorf, and sometimes of the moonlit ivory of the mighty Klauigberg.
"You are sure that Father Bernhardt and Dr. Matti must have been killed?" asked Gloria at length.
"Without reasonable doubt. They have gone to their long homes, which, according to all theory, should be widely separated. That's as may be. The man I'm sorry for is poor Karl, who was feeling really happy till I clapped the drugged antimacassar over his head."
Trafford waited to hear his sentiments echoed, but Gloria said nothing. Her silence pained him; under the circumstances it seemed ungenerous.
Then occurred something which cannot be verbally described,—so far as the sensations of the three human beings were concerned; for, to be suddenly checked in a lightning descent and hurled incontinently into deep snow, produces a complexity of emotions incapable of being recorded through the medium of ink. What happened to the bob-sleigh is a matter of more precise fact. The front part struck violently against some hard object, the steering runners were wrenched round at right angles to the body of the sleigh, the whole thing skidded viciously on the ice, and finally buried its nose in the flanking wall of snow.
"Are you hurt, Gloria?" called out Trafford from his couch of crystals, as soon as he had sufficient breath to frame the question.
There was no answer. Within a few yards of him Karl was sitting up with an expression of dazed bewilderment that was almost comic to behold. Trafford rose and made his way with infinite difficulty to the run. Discovering his revolver lying by the side of the track, he picked it up and examined it. It was uninjured and the cartridges still undetonated.
"Gloria!" he called.
"Yes—I'm all right," came a voice somewhere from the neighbourhood of Karl. "I'm only a bit shaken. I couldn't answer before. I hadn't—any—breath."