“But I want to hear your story of the affair. Please stay.”
“Do not think me rude, countess. But as Mr. Freeman says, we have some things to talk over. So good-night.”
She saw the changeless determination beneath his apparent calm. There was nothing more that she could say. He knew what he was walking into, and any further warning to him would be but a warning to Freeman.
“Good-night,” she breathed. And clinging to a chair-back, her face ghastly, she watched the two go out.
“I have a sleigh waiting below,” said Freeman as they went down. “I wanted to be unobserved, so I left the driver behind. We can ride about and talk. Let’s go through the State Garden; there’ll be no danger of our being overheard there.”
Drexel knew well why Freeman suggested that lonely park, sure to be deserted at this midnight hour. But he acquiesced, for it suited his own purpose no less than Freeman’s.
They got into the little backless sleigh, Freeman took the reins in his left hand and slipped his ungloved right into his overcoat pocket. The horse was of that big, black, powerful breed the rich of Russia have developed for carriage service. At Freeman’s word he sprang away at a swift trot, and they sped along the broad Fontanka Canal, Drexel listening to a clever fabrication of Freeman’s escape. He kept the tail of his eye on Freeman’s pocketed right hand, for he knew what that hand clutched, and held himself in tense readiness for that hand’s first swift, hostile move.
They entered the park—broad, white, with the hush of midnight brooding upon it. Drexel’s eye never left that right hand, which he knew would now dart out at any moment.
He preferred to choose the moment himself. He slipped an arm behind Freeman’s back as if to support himself.
“Freeman,” he said in the same quiet tone in which he had thus far spoken, “there is one thing that I know which I have not yet told you.”