“I ask you again,” repeated Armitage, “whether you follow me. There must be no mistake.”
Oscar, anxious to take his own part in the conversation, prodded Zmai in the ribs with a pistol barrel, and the big fellow growled and nodded his head.
“There is a house in the outskirts of Vienna where you have been employed at times as gardener, and another house in Geneva where you wait for orders. At this latter place it was my great pleasure to smash you in the head with a boiling-pot on a certain evening in March.”
The man scowled and ejaculated an oath with so much venom that Armitage laughed.
“Your conspirators are engaged upon a succession of murders, and when they have removed the last obstacle they will establish a new Emperor-king in Vienna and you will receive a substantial reward for what you have done—”
The blood suffused the man’s dark face, and he half rose, a great roar of angry denial breaking from him.
“That will do. You tried to kill me on the King Edward; you tried your knife on me again down there in Judge Claiborne’s garden; and you came up here to-night with a plan to kill my man and then take your time to me. Give me the mail, Oscar.”
He opened the letters which Oscar had brought and scanned several that bore a Paris postmark, and when he had pondered their contents a moment he laughed and jumped from the table. He brought a portfolio from his bedroom and sat down to write.
“Don’t shoot the gentleman as long as he is quiet. You may even give him a glass of whisky to soothe his feelings.”
Armitage wrote: