"You here?" I said, addressing the Countess, and disregarding him altogether. "What on earth does this mean? Have I gone mad?"
She was quite equal to the emergency. There was not a tremor in her voice when she replied.
"Not at all mad, my dear Sir George. It simply means that you have to thank me for saving you from a terrible death. Quite by chance I became aware that there was an anarchist plot in preparation against yourself and certain other members of your Government. To have revealed my knowledge to the Authorities would have been to implicate several of my dear, but misguided, friends, while to have appealed to them for mercy would have been as useless as it would have been dangerous. I therefore took what I deemed the next best course, and removed you out of the reach of harm."
"Can this be true?" I asked, for the whole thing seemed too wildly improbable.
"You surely would not doubt the Countess's word," Conrad put in.
I paid no attention to him, however.
"But if there was a plot against me, why did you not warn me?" I continued. "I could then have taken steps to insure my own safety."
"Impossible," she replied. "You would have communicated with the Police at once. No, the only thing was to act as we did, and I think, since you are still alive, that you have every reason to be thankful that we adopted such prompt measures."
I remembered the precautions that had been taken to prevent my leaving the brougham, and the peculiar smell of gas which had caused me to lose consciousness. No; I felt convinced in my own mind that the story the Countess had told me was pure fiction—that is to say, so far as any desire went to save me from harm. However, I was wise enough to control myself, and to appear to credit her assertion.