“Well, that incident is not yet forgotten,” the Englishman said with a curious smile.
“I don’t follow you.”
“Well, in this hotel there are three agents of police now waiting to place you under arrest as a spy of Austria,” he said very quietly; “therefore I think, M’sieur Flobecq, you really must admit that, in this particular game, I just now hold most of the honours—eh?”
The spy’s face darkened. He saw himself checkmated for the first time by a better and more ingenious man.
“You will hand me over those letters at once,” Waldron went on, “or I shall call into this room the inspector of the Sûreté who is anxious to arrest you on charges of espionage. And they have been wanting you now for fully seven months, remember. But they are not yet tired. Oh, dear no! The Sûreté is never tired of waiting. If it is ten years, the penalty for espionage in France is the same!” Hubert added, with a grin of triumph.
In an instant Mijoux Flobecq flew into a passion, declaring that the Englishman should never regain possession of the incriminating correspondence for which he had so heartlessly practised blackmail upon Her Royal Highness.
“I defy you!” he cried with a sneer. “I have arranged the price with my friend, Stein. And he shall have the letters for publication—to reveal to Europe how, even in Royal circles, traitors exist?”
“Traitors!” cried Hubert, advancing towards him threateningly. “Repeat that word, and, by gad! I’ll strangle you—you blackguard! The Princess Luisa is no traitor. You have held her in an evil bondage—you, the agent of your taskmasters in Vienna—you, who with your devilish cunning, hoped to betray Italy into Austria’s hands.”
Hubert Waldron was intensely angry, now that he had cast that outrageous reflection upon Lola’s honour.
“Now, once and for all, I demand those letters?” he added, facing Flobecq very determinedly.