“I had to choose, either to fly with them, and thereby endanger us all still further, or allow myself to be taken. That last seemed best, and I think—I am sure—I was right.”
“Did you know the soldiers were coming?”
“No. That, by the way, was Selinski’s doing,—Cassavetti, as you call him.”
“Cassavetti!” I exclaimed. “Why, he was dead weeks before!”
“True, but the raid was in consequence of information he had supplied earlier. He was a double-dyed traitor. The papers she—the papers that were found in his rooms in London proved that amply. He had sold information to the Government, and had planned that the Countess Anna should be captured with the others, after he had induced her to return, by any means in his power.”
“But—but—he couldn’t have brought her back!” I exclaimed. “For she only left London the day after he was murdered, and she was at Ostend with you next day.”
“Who told you that?” he asked sharply.
“An Englishman I saw by chance in Berlin, who had met her in London, and who knew you by sight.”
He sat silent, in frowning thought, for a minute or more, and then said slowly: