"My friend?" Trent exclaimed.
"Certainly," the count returned, "Lord Rosecarrel's military attaché at Constantinople. Your innocence amuses me. You no doubt know that I owned that great horse Daliborka a winner of the Grand Prix. I was dissatisfied with my trainer and asked friends at the Jockey Club in Paris to recommend me someone. Captain Hardcastle disguised himself much as you have done. He was no longer an aristocrat, an officer of a great regiment, but a trainer who was an ex-jockey. He was a good trainer and a great horseman. Daliborka's time trials were marvelous. I entered him for the great races in England. My new trainer was so jealous of his horse he would have no strangers near and none was allowed to follow him in his rides through the grass meadows." Count Michæl laughed softly, "Yes, I was deceived, made a fool of, as you have it but I can confess it as I do in your case with the satisfaction that the last laugh, the last trick will be mine. It was my laugh at the last with Captain Hardcastle. You are interested?"
"I was in Paris when Daliborka won," Trent said. "I made money on him. Most certainly I'm interested."
"Captain Hardcastle wished for the document which you say you have destroyed. He obtained it. He did not seek to escape as you have done down the main roads. No. No. He had studied the country profoundly with all the topographical knowledge gained at the Staff College. He had such complete charge of my large stables that none questioned his right to do as he chose and I was too busy at the time even to see him. He planned his route carefully. He found out a path to the sea where there would wait him a yacht. It was, oddly enough, the same steam yacht in which my lord Rosecarrel makes his cruises. At intervals he placed my horses, horses he had trained for steeple chases. But the first stretch of the journey, ten miles of velvet turf he had planned to ride Daliborka. It is sufficient to tell you that we knew his plans in time. He was to start at midnight. It happened that I passed his quarters at half past eleven and detained him in talk, talk that gave him no uneasiness."
"Then, thinking I was safely here he rushed to the little outbuilding where my great black horse was saddled. He sprang to its back quickly. And as he did so we lit a torch so that he might see how we laughed last. It was a black horse indeed, but a work horse, a slow placid beast which we had substituted. I have never seen real despair seize on a brave man as it did when he saw he had failed. I enjoyed it very much Arlfrit.
"The stable hands who had always resented his iron discipline, the discipline of the soldier, took their vengeance of him in my absence. They are rough, these brave fellows of mine, and do not know their strength."
"You mean," Trent snapped, "you let them murder a man who was probably tied as I am tied now?"
Count Michæl shrugged his shoulders.
"A man who puts his head in the lion's den must not complain if the lion be hungry. This is my house and I do not welcome thieves. Then there was Sir Piers Edgcomb. I was never sure of him. A big man, slow of movement and who spoke German so well I believed him to be of Bavaria. He was my butler. These country bred servants of mine do well enough in most things but the niceties of table service as I see in your own country are beyond them.