He remembered what Lord Rosecarrel had told him of Count Michæl's character and autocratic power. Although theoretically shorn of his former absolutism it was unlikely that peasants who worked on his lands and still felt their dependence upon him should question Count Michæl's actions. World news which spreads rapidly among the herded workers in factories crept slowly among these land tillers. They had enough to eat and drink and were grateful for that after their years of fighting.
Now that capture was imminent Trent knew that the document must be destroyed. But even in this he delayed hoping his usual luck might cling to him and make the sacrifice unnecessary.
He abandoned the automobile. Its wheels were embedded in black viscid mud and to extricate them the engine would have to run on low speed and announce the car's position to such as might already be seeking him. If he could pass the day uncaptured he might at night be able to free the car of its imprisoning mud and make his escape. He had woodcraft enough to be able to mark down the spot where the Panhard was hidden.
It was high noon when Anthony Trent came in sight of a farm. A big dog came toward him with sharp, staccato inquiring barks. He had a way of making dogs his friends and soon the animal was wagging a welcoming tail. Trent satisfied his hunger and thirst with a meal of early plums and lighted his last Woodbine. The Croatian farmers of the district in which he found himself were horsebreeders to a man. It was an industry which the government had always approved and encouraged. Without a doubt in the distant barns there was some favorite animal which might bear Trent to safety if his car had been discovered. The watch dog, now satisfied that the stranger was one to be adored, would prove no obstacle.
Trent nestled back in some drying hay, well out of sight, he supposed, of observers and dropped into a profound sleep. It was the unusual spectacle of the watch dog sitting by the mound of hay that attracted the notice of the farmer. He supposed that the animal—part hound and part draft dog—had run some animal to earth. When the farmer saw that the stranger slept there for whom he had, under Count Michæl's direction, scoured the forest since dawn, he wisely brought assistance. Thus it was that Anthony Trent, rudely brought back to an unsympathetic earth, found himself seized, bruised and bound before he had time to recover his senses or put up a fight.
Peter Sissek it was who carried him to the recovered Panhard and threw him violently to the floor. And for every blow that Trent had struck Sissek in fair fight the Croatian returned with interest now that his conqueror was bound and hopeless. One of Peter's assistants sat on the seat brandishing the revolver which had been the count's. He talked incessantly, threatening no doubt and insulting the captive, and punctuating his invective with kicks that bruised the American's ribs sorely.
He was carried past a mob of jeering servants when the castle was reached and put in a room which had been used as a dungeon for five hundred years. As he looked about the stone walled cell with its narrow windows through which his body could scarcely pass even though the heavy bars were sawn through, he knew his professional skill would avail him nothing.
There was one safeguard for gaolers which he sighed to see. Inside the door was a cage of iron where a keeper might stand and be protected from the sudden onslaught of a waiting prisoner. Thus the most usual form of escape was taken from him.
Hentzi was his first visitor, poor rotund, posing Hentzi who had liked Alfred Anthony largely because he supposed it was a semi-educated London cockney who listened to his worldly wisdom. When he had learned from his master that this pretended chauffeur was the third of the Rosecarrel adherents who had made desperate attempts he supposed him to be of high degree. With amusement Anthony Trent saw the change in his manner. Although disgraced and in prison Hentzi paid the respect that he invariably accorded to birth. He told himself that it was because he noted the instincts of blue blood that he had found pleasure in talking with Alfred Anthony. Trent's careless manner which had sometimes seemed overbold in a chauffeur was now explained.
"I grieve very much to see the marks of violence inflicted upon you by a clod like Peter Sissek," he began.