“We all heard it, Count, but no one believed a word of it. To us it was only one more attempt to take away your character.”
“But she might have believed it!” cried Usk violently. “It might have pained her most awfully. Why didn’t you cry out, Uncle Cyril, even if you were shot the next moment? At least she would have known that their whole story was a lie.”
“Would she?” asked Cyril. “My dear Usk, do you think my enemies would not have been able to arrange things so as to give her greater pain still? As it happened, Prince Pelenko was able to do his part without departing from the apparent truth, but do you think he would have objected to go a little beyond it if necessary? Would it have been much consolation to my wife to learn that I had shot myself, whether accidentally or otherwise, when in Mlle. Garanine’s company? You may say that it would have been no worse than to hear that I was in her company living, but you must remember that I fully expected to be able to escape with Paschics in two or three days at most. If I had thought I should be a prisoner for more than three months!—well, I may tell you that many and many a time I have wished I had called out as you suggest, and taken the consequences.”
“I think I hear them moving upstairs,” interrupted Usk, and he went to the door and listened, but came back almost immediately, sitting down at the table with the same gloomy face.
“Go ahead, Count!” said Mr Hicks. “I want to know right now what happened.”
“Nothing happened for some time, except that Mlle. Garanine threw out hints which were evidently intended to make me believe that I was merely wanted out of the way for a day or two while a revolution was carried through in Thracia. It was an ingenious idea, for, of course, with Michael out of the kingdom, and most of the Ministers away at his wedding, the time would have been well chosen, but I knew I must have had some inkling of it if things had gone so far, and I was prepared to believe anything rather than what she told me. I felt pretty certain that it was the affairs of Palestine, and not of Thracia, which were concerned, and that I was wanted out of the way for a good deal longer than a day or two. I saw several ways in which they might try to manage it, but I reserved my judgment until we stopped at that accursed house down there——” he waved his hand towards the hill at the back of the inn. “If you knew what it has been to be certain that there were friends and safety within a mile of me, and yet to be unable to take a step towards them——! I should like to tear that house down stone by stone, and make it a desolation for ever——”
“And bury Dr Gregorescu and his Dardanians under the ruins?” asked Mr Hicks.
“No,” said Cyril calmly. “That would be too good for them. That man has made me twenty years older in these three months. I saw the whole plot as soon as I was face to face with him and heard his name, and it was the very worst of the alternatives I had imagined. You will wonder how I knew. Well, I don’t think I am a coward generally. Hicks, you and I have been in some tight places together; what do you say?”
“No man less so, Count.”
“Thanks. But there is one thing before which I am an abject coward, and that is poison. Not ordinary poison—just going to sleep and not waking up again—nor even the fancy kinds which twist you up into an arch before they’ve done with you, but one particular kind of poison, the thought of which used to give me the horrors whenever I let myself remember it while I was in Thracia. Taken in small quantities, it doesn’t destroy life, only the mind—takes away a man’s memory, leaves him a sort of perpetual child, do you see? The knowledge of it is hereditary in one family, but for generations it has been at the service of the Scythian Government, and occasionally it has been used—not too often, so as to awaken suspicion, but just to get rid effectually of some troublesome person whose death might cause remark. All those years when I was practically the only barrier between Ernestine and Michael and a Scythian protectorate, I went in deadly fear of this devilish stuff. Of course I took precautions. Paschics and Dietrich were staunch, if all the rest of my household were traitors, but there was always the danger of the thing’s being administered in some one else’s house. I inquired secretly into the subject, and got some interesting information by bribing disappointed Secret Service agents, so that I had some faint idea of the nature and properties of the drug. Then I had an exhaustive list made of the members of the family that prepared it, and their various marriages, so that if I found myself in the neighbourhood of any of them I might be on my guard. In the last generation, one of the daughters married a Dacian named Gregorescu. Now you see why I knew my fate as soon as I heard the doctor’s name. He was at the house, waiting to receive me, and Mlle. Garanine delivered me over to him in the most matter-of-fact way. She herself returned into Dardania at once—on horseback, I presume, for the carriage could not cross the mountains, and was laid up in the Pelenko stables—and the two men with revolvers went with her. But we were no better off for that. The house was guarded by a small army of Dardanians, who kept watch day and night, though of course I didn’t find this out at once. My idea was to disarm the doctor’s suspicions by pretending to swallow whole the notion of the Thracian plot, and I harped on the subject till late at night. I pointed out that it could not possibly be successful, but that I would make it worth his while if he would release me at once. I appealed to his cupidity, his ambition, everything I could think of, and at last he thought it advisable to pretend to yield. He would think it over, and let me know in the morning, he said, and in any case I might be sure my captivity should be as pleasant as he could make it. I had refused supper, but would I drink a little glass of benedictine with him to show there was no ill-feeling? This was what I had been expecting, and I agreed at once, only thankful he had chosen liqueur and not coffee, which would have been much more difficult to manage. The benedictine looked just as usual, except that I could just distinguish a very slight—almost imperceptible—cloudiness about the glass at my end of the tray.”