“A straight line—a goal!”
The line from Nietzsche swam through his head. He felt supremely satisfied with life. The message from Steccho had reached him at the hotel and he had come himself. As he was directed by the sleepy houseman to the room at the top of the first flight of stairs, he balanced the boy’s destiny for him. Was it wiser to silence him now or on the voyage back? He would leave it to Georges. Yet not even to him would he give the pleasure of receiving the royal rubies. He lit a cigarette at the head of the stairs and tapped on the door.
There was dead silence within. He tried the knob, and found the key turned on the inner side.
“Open,” he said curtly. “It is I.”
Steccho obeyed slowly. He had been sitting on the narrow cot, his head buried in his hands. His shirt was open at the throat as if it had choked him. In the dim light from the one gas-jet his face looked haggard and yellow under his long, straight, disheveled hair.
“You have kept me waiting.” Jurka closed the door behind him, standing with his back to it. “Where are the jewels?”
The blood rushed to Steccho’s head. He threw back his hair with a quick movement of his head, and smiled in the old servile way.
“I have them all, excellenza. One moment only. You can swear to me by your own life that I shall find all well at Rigl, that they will be there to greet me, my mother and little Maryna?”
Around the lips of the Count there curved an amused smile.
“I swear to you I will send you where they are,” he said slowly.