A thousand kroners! He could have shouted for glee. But caution came to him in time. He looked around to find that Selim had awakened and was sitting up rubbing his eyes.
CHAPTER XX
RENWICK QUESTIONS
Had the man observed him when he was counting his money? The hazard of his position made Renwick suspicious. Selim was a crafty rogue as his conversation with the officer at the Visegrader Gate had shown, and one of Zubeydeh's breed needed watching. But the man yawned and stretched his arms, then got up and looked about with so genuine an air of drowsiness and fatigue that Renwick concluded that he had been mistaken. How much or how little Selim had been told of Renwick's affair the Englishman did not know. But the man had already done him a service and might be in a position to help him further. So he decided upon an attitude of friendliness and gratitude which might perhaps be measured by a few of his eighteen kroners but no more.
It was about three o'clock, when having met no adventures upon the way, they reached the farm of Selim Ali upon the border of the Romanja Plain. Twenty hours at a stretch, nine of which had been spent in the tension of his escape, were more than Renwick's strength permitted, and he sank upon the straw pallet to which Selim assigned him, weary and shaken, and with a hand which instinctively clutched the lining of his trousers where his money was pinned, he fell into a deep sleep, from which he did not awaken until the sun was high in the heavens.
He did not rise at once, but lay on his cot, gazing at the ceiling, his mind adjusting itself slowly to his situation. He felt for the money in the lining of his trousers. It had not been touched. If Selim had discovered the notes in Renwick's possession he was either without design upon them or had concluded to postpone its consummation until some later hour. Where was the man? Renwick wanted to talk to him. He heard the sound of a voice in another part of the house, and getting up went outside and walked around to the rear of the building. A young woman in Turkish costume was washing some clothing in a tub by the door.
Renwick greeted her with a bow and a smile, and asked for Selim. She pointed toward a distant field, and then asked if he desired food. Renwick thanked her and replied that he would wait until Selim returned, and went back to bed. There, some moments later the woman brought him coffee, bread, and excellent soup, which the Englishman devoured hungrily, not aware until the moment that it was precisely food he required. When he had finished eating, he smoked a cigarette and planned his pilgrimage.
He had but two known facts with regard to the flight of Captain Goritz with his prisoner; first, the automobile had gone through the Kastele in the direction of the Visegrader Gate, over the very road by which Renwick had come with Selim; second, the object of Captain Goritz was to reach the German border as speedily as possible.
The fact that Goritz had left town by this road to the north and east indicated one of two things: that Goritz, seeking the more quietly to escape from the town, had chosen the road through the Kastele quarter, intending to make a détour over the mountains and reach the Bosna road, by which he would go straight through Hungary and Austria to his destination; the other inference was that Goritz had chosen the more easterly road to the north in order to avoid passing through Austria, seeking the shortest road into Silesia, through central Hungary and Galicia by way of Cracow. It seemed probable that Goritz had already reached Germany, and yet even this was no assured fact. If Goritz had chosen to return through Austria by the main traveled roads, by Bosna, by Agram, or by Budapest, there was scarcely a chance that he could have eluded the agents of the watchful Windt. The plot against the life of the Archduke had consummated in his death. Marishka had failed, but with her failure had come a restitution of her complete rights as an Austrian citizen. Herr Windt, no longer seeking to restrain her actions, would wish to save her from the results of her own imprudences, redoubling his efforts to come between Goritz and the German border.