"Allah will bless you."
"A hundred kroner—that is blessing enough for one day, Stefan Thomasevics," he laughed.
"Adieu!" said Renwick, and walked bravely off into the starlight.
CHAPTER XXI
AN IMPERSONATION
At least he now had a goal—"the center of the map, near the top"—the Tatra region by which Goritz had passed (if he had not been intercepted) into Galicia and so into Germany. Aside from the value of Selim's information, one other fact stood out. The secret service men who had visited Selim a month ago had not returned. Did this mean that Herr Windt had already succeeded in closing the door of escape? The passes through the Carpathians could of course be easily guarded and closed, for there were few of them accessible to traffic by automobile. Was Renwick's goal, after all, to be there and not beyond? He had put in one summer in the Tatra region with Captain Otway of the Embassy, and he knew the district well,—a country of mountain villages, feudal castles, and rugged roads. Otway had been interested in the military problems of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and Renwick remembered the importance of the Tatra as a natural barrier to Russian ambitions. The shortest automobile road into Silesia lay to the east of the Tatra range—and the passes through the Carpathians at this point were few and well known. By process of elimination, Renwick had at last assured himself that his first theory was tenable, for Selim had confirmed it. A hundred conjectures flashed into the Englishman's mind as he trudged onward, to be one by one dismissed and relegated to the limbo of uncertainty. But assuming that Selim had told the truth, Renwick had found the trail, and would follow wherever it might lead him, to its end.
His idea of traveling afoot by night and of hiding by day, at least for the first part of his journey, was born of the desire to leave nothing to chance. His own capture meant internment until the end of the war, or possibly an exchange for some Austrian in England. But they should not catch him! Concealed in his belt he wore the American revolver, and carried some cartridges which Zubeydeh had restored to him.
The weather fortunately had been fine, and the days and nights in the open were rapidly restoring him to strength. The discomfort at the wound in his body which had bothered him for a few days had disappeared. He was well. And with health came hope, faith even, in the star of his fortunes. It took him two weeks to reach Polishka, below which he crossed the Save at night in a boat which he found moored to the bank, and daylight found him at a small village through which a railroad ran north towards the plains of the Danube. Here he paused dead-tired for food and rest.
The innkeeper, who spoke German fairly well, swallowed Renwick's story, his taste somewhat stimulated by the sight of the ten-kroner piece which the Englishman used in paying for his breakfast.