“Not yet, my dear friend,” he answered, laughing. “You are going to be my guest, you know. Will it not please you to enjoy my society once more? To be sure. And I—I shall not wish to part with you again soon.”
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
“Only that I arrest you, Robert Harcliffe, in the name of the Emperor!”
“On what charge?” I asked.
“Murder, for one,” returned the smiling Valcour. “Afterward you may answer for conspiracy.”
“Pardon me, Senhor Valcour,” said the little man, in a soft voice. “The gentleman is already under arrest—in the Emperor’s name.”
Valcour turned upon him fiercely, but his eyes fell as he encountered the other’s passive, unemotional countenance.
“Is it so, Captain Mazanovitch? Then I will take the prisoner off your hands.”
The little man spread out his palms with an apologetic, deprecating gesture. His eyes seemed closed—or nearly so. He seemed to see nothing; he looked at neither Valcour nor myself. But there was something about the still, white face, with its frame of iron-gray, that compelled a certain respect, and even deference.
“It is greatly to be regretted,” he said, gently; “and it grieves me to be obliged to disappoint you, Senhor Valcour. But since this man is a prisoner of the police—a state prisoner of some importance, I believe—it is impossible to deliver him into your hands.”