He slammed the door and went out. If he had waited for a moment, he would have seen a look in Mr Bunker’s face that he had never seen before. He half started from his chair to follow, and then sat down again and thought with his lips very tight set.
All at once they broke into a smile that was grimmer than anything the Baron had known.
“I accept your challenge, Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg,” he said to himself; “but the weapons I shall choose myself.”
He took a telegraph form, wrote and despatched a [pg 163] wire, and then with considerable haste proceeded to pack. Within an hour he had left the hotel.
* * * * *
When a servant, later in the day, was performing, under the Baron’s directions, the same office for him, a series of discoveries that still further disturbed his peace of mind were jointly made. Not only the more sporting portions of his wardrobe but his gun and cartridges as well, had vanished, and, search and storm as he liked, there was not a trace of them to be found.
“Ze rascal!” he muttered; “I did not zink he was zief as well.”
It is hardly wonderful that he arrived at Brierley station in anything but an amiable frame of mind. There, to his great annoyance and surprise, he found no signs of Sir Richard’s carriage; there were no stables near, and, after fuming for some time on the platform, he was forced to leave his luggage with the station-master and proceed on foot to Brierley Park.
He arrived shortly before seven o’clock, after a dark and muddy tramp, and, still swearing under his breath, pulled the bell with indignant energy.
“I am ze Baron von Blitzenberg, bot zere vas no carriage at ze station,” he informed the butler in his haughtiest tones.