He spent several hours in dozing, glad of this rest, which he needed so badly, and feeling very easy in his mind, because, now that Karl was dead, the Comtesse Hermine absent and Élisabeth in a place of safety, there was nothing for him to do but to await the normal course of events.
At ten o'clock he was visited by a general who endeavored to question him and who, receiving no satisfactory replies, grew angry, but with a certain reserve in which Paul observed the sort of respect which people feel for noted criminals. And he said to himself:
"Everything is going as it should. This visit is only a preliminary to prepare me for the coming of a more serious ambassador, a sort of plenipotentiary."
He gathered from the general's words that they were still looking for the prince's body. They were now in fact looking for it beyond the immediate precincts, for a new clue, provided by the discovery and the revelations of the chauffeur whom Paul and Bernard had imprisoned in the garage, as well as by the departure and return of the motor car, as reported by the sentries, widened the field of investigation considerably.
At twelve o'clock Paul was provided with a substantial meal. The attentions shown to him increased. Beer was served with the lunch and afterwards coffee.
"I shall perhaps be shot," he thought, "but with due formality and not before they know exactly who the mysterious person is whom they have the honor of shooting, not to mention the motives of his enterprise and the results obtained. Now I alone am able to supply the details. Consequently . . ."
He so clearly felt the strength of his position and the necessity in which his enemies stood to contribute to the success of his plan that he was not surprised at being taken, an hour later, to a small drawing-room in the villa, before two persons all over gold lace, who first had him searched once more and then saw that he was fastened up with more elaborate care than ever.
"It must," he thought, "be at least the imperial chancellor coming all the way from Berlin to see me . . . unless indeed . . ."
Deep down within himself, in view of the circumstances, he could not help foreseeing an even more powerful intervention than the chancellor's; and, when he heard a motor car stop under the windows of the villa and saw the fluster of the two gold-laced individuals, he was convinced that his anticipations were being fully confirmed.
Everything was ready. Even before any one appeared, the two individuals drew themselves up and stood to attention; and the soldiers, stiffer still, looked like dolls out of a Noah's ark.