“And yet, Mr. Secret-Agent? A new mystery?”
“Perhaps. For I do not quite make out your friends. Herr Harlberg comes for sport, here to a wild farmhouse, yet he does not shoot, nor does he seem very keen about it. For I made a point of talking sport and he yawned; he was as bored as a man can well be. Then their connexion with our amiable friend from Rozsnyo.”
“What do you make out of that?” Von Tressen asked eagerly.
“Nothing,” was the blunt answer; “nothing as yet, that is. But I shall hope to unriddle that little enigma before long. For I fancy there is some peculiar bond between them. They are rather more than acquaintances or even friends, or my faculty of observation is less than I take it to be.”
“What reason have you for that idea?”
“Merely certain signs that came under my observation, slight enough in themselves, but together quite significant. I am accustomed to putting two and two together, and I don’t want to boast, but if I had been a dense numskull, who could not take in what was going on before his eyes, why, our Chancellor would hardly have chosen me for the business. I can tell you one thing, my friend. The Count looked black when he heard you had strolled off with the young lady. Yes; there was murder in his eye, for all the grin on his lips.”
“And he immediately came after us?”
“Like a panther. I called him back, just for the fun of the thing, and as he turned impatiently I saw the face without the grin. It was not pretty.”
The subject was broken off by an exclamation from Von Tressen.
“Look! Is not that yonder our friend of last night?”