"I knocked the same clod out when he wasn't looking," Trent returned, "so he had a kick coming. You didn't come to be merely polite Hentzi, what is it? Torture? Boiling oil?"
"It will not be boiling oil," Hentzi answered seriously.
Anthony Trent looked at him searchingly. Of course Hentzi had his purpose in coming here; and that he did not deny the possibility of a Croatian third degree convinced the American that the danger he anticipated was real and near. So far as Count Michæl's power went in his own castle of Radna his prisoner might be in medieval times. Trent was a danger to be nullified and a single life was hardly worthy of consideration in the game the count was playing.
To lose his life was bitter enough; but to lose it after failing and so be denied another chance to make good was agonizing. Hentzi gathered nothing from his scrutiny of the other man's battered face. He saw that the forced and rather vacuous grin which Anthony Trent had worn when he lived another part was gone. Only the powerful, brooding, hawklike look which he had occasionally seen for a flash now remained. He did not doubt but that this was the true character of the man a great English noble had chosen for a dangerous mission.
"You will remain here until the count returns," Hentzi announced.
"How long?" Trent snapped.
"A week certainly; more likely two."
"What will happen then?"
Hentzi sighed. His master's violence often frightened him. He came of a peaceloving family.