That evening Adelbert called to see his friend, the locksmith in the University Place. He possessed, he said, a padlock of which he had lost the key, and which, being fastened to a chest, he was unable to bring with him. A large and heavy padlock, perhaps the size of his palm.
When he left, he carried with him a bundle of keys, tied in a brown paper.
But he did not go back to his chest. He went instead to the thicket around the old gate, which was still termed the “Gate of the Moon,” and there, armed with a lantern, pursued his investigations during a portion of the night.
When he had finished, old Adelbert, veteran of many wars, one-time patriot and newly turned traitor, held in his shaking hands the fate of the kingdom.
CHAPTER XXVI. AT THE INN
The Countess Loschek was on her way across the border. The arrangements were not of her making. Her plan, which had been to go afoot across the mountain to the town of Ar-on-ar, and there to hire a motor, had been altered by the arrival at the castle, shortly after the permission was given, of a machine. So short an interval, indeed, had elapsed that she concluded, with reason, that this car now placed at her disposal was the one which had brought that permission.
“The matter of passports for the border is arranged, madame,” Black Humbert told her.
“I have my own passports,” she said proudly.
“They will not be necessary.”