Paul thought for a moment and then said:
"Lend me a hand."
They pushed the body towards the ditch by the road-side, rolled it in and covered it with dead branches.
"I shall go back to the villa," he said. "You walk on until you come to the first cluster of houses. Wake the people and tell them the story of how Karl was murdered by his chauffeur and how you ran away. The time which it will take to inform the police, to question you and to telephone to the villa is more than I need."
She took alarm:
"But the Comtesse Hermine?"
"Have no fear there. Granting that I do not deprive her of her power of doing mischief, how could she suspect you, when the police-investigations will hold me alone to account for everything? Besides, we have no choice."
And, without more words, he started the engine, took his seat at the wheel and, in spite of the woman's frightened entreaties, drove off.
He drove off with the same eagerness and decision as though he were fulfilling the conditions of some new plan of which he had fixed every detail beforehand and as though he felt sure of its success.
"I shall see the countess," he said to himself. "She will either be anxious as to Karl's fate and want me to take her to him at once or she will see me in one of the rooms in the villa. In either case I shall find a method of compelling her to reveal the name of the castle in which Élisabeth is a prisoner. I shall even compel her to give me the means of delivering her and helping her to escape."