"Let us try," he said, briefly, reaching a couple of foils from a corner.
We fought for some few minutes, when with a quick movement he disarmed me with a wrench.
"You are well enough," he said. "Nay, do not look so downfallen, man." He smiled, noticing my foolish look. "It was but a trick of the wrist, and better men than you have deemed it no shame for Von Bieberstein to disarm them. Now, listen," he continued, laying aside his foil. "To-night the Duchess Hedwig holds a council of the chief of her supporters in the house she and her sister the Princess have taken in Great Coram Square, Bloomsbury. The council will be held after the Princess Elsa has retired to her own apartments in a different wing of the house. It is there I must see her, and lay such proof of the plot before her as will persuade her to fly. You, for your part, will be an unobserved observer of the Duchess's council, for the double purpose of identifying the persons present, and of guarding me against possible interruption."
"But of the danger to the Princess," I began. "Is she not——"
"The fact of her being at liberty to-day is an indication that no immediate villainy is contemplated," broke in my companion.
"But how in the world can she be harmed here in London?" I exclaimed. "She cannot be poisoned or shot, without investigation exposing the whole dastardly plot."
"A very different medium will be employed," he replied. "I have good reason for believing that dynamite——"
"Dynamite!" I exclaimed, incredulously.
"Ay, dynamite, man!" he replied, grimly. "You have already told me we are not in the seventeenth century, and in a modern crime the perpetrators will undoubtedly use modern weapons."
"But how, man?" I commenced, by no means convinced.