"You do, Steve? Why can't you tell me now?"
"I can, but I want to make sure that they will be of some use to you before I do. If I told you some things I know, they might make you change your plans, and then they might not be of any value, after all. They might only put you off. You see, when I first found out these things about the way he had treated you, I didn't know you and didn't have any reason at all to suppose that I ever would, or that I'd ever even see you. New York's a long way off—and, of course, I was more interested in what was going on here, because I knew that this war might come along at any moment, and I was here just to see what I could do for Servia and to interfere with the things we had reason to suppose Mike Hallo was doing for the Austrians."
"Of course. I can understand that, Steve. There wasn't any reason for you to do as much as you did, and to take all the interest you did in me, when you didn't know anything about me."
"Well, at first I just wanted to help you because I hated him so. I thought there was a chance to spoil the trick he was trying to play on you. When I found that he was planning to get rid of you by having you arrested before you could get back to the American consulate I wanted to trip him up."
"You certainly did a lot for me, Steve. I don't know whether I'll ever be able to get anything out of him, but if I do it will be due to you. If they had ever got me out of here and away to Buda-Pesth, I'd never have been able to come back, even if they had not managed to trump up some charge against me and kept me in prison for a long time."
"Oh, they would have done that, Dick, of course. That was the idea. And it's very easy for them to manage such things here. As easy as it used to be in France before the revolution there."
"What are we going to do now, Steve?"
Dick looked down at the helpless figures of the two men on the floor. Neither of the scouts had paid much attention to them as yet, but now they leaned down and examined them.
"They're not badly hurt," said Steve, contemptuously. "They saw the crate falling and so did I. And they tried to jump. So it didn't fall full on top of them, but struck glancing blows on their heads and almost pushed them out of the way. I don't see how you ever got it going at all, all by yourself! It looks terribly heavy."
"I think it was because it wasn't very well balanced, Steve. If it had been turned the other way probably I couldn't have budged it. But the heavy end was on top, which made it go over. I sort of jumped at it, and that gave it the start."