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He had no intention of allowing Jules Chauvenet's assassins to kill him, or of being locked up in a Washington jail as the false Baron von Kissel. If he admitted that he was not John Armitage, it would be difficult to prove that he was anybody else a fact touching human testimony which Jules Chauvenet probably knew perfectly well.
Then followed a story, veiled in careful phrases, but based, so the article recited, upon information furnished by a gentleman of extensive acquaintance on both sides of the Atlantic, that Baron von Kissel, under a new pseudonym, and with even more daring effrontery, had within a fortnight sought to intrench himself in the most exclusive circles of Washington.
He ceased suddenly and she anticipated the question at which he had faltered, and answered, a little icily: "I do not consider it any of my business to meddle in your affairs with my brother. He undoubtedly believes you are the impostor who palmed himself off at Bar Harbor as the Baron von Kissel. He was told so " "By Monsieur Chauvenet." "So he said." "And of course he is a capital witness.
While you were sick the fraudulent Von Kissel was arrested in Australia, and I believe some of the newspapers apologized to you handsomely." "That was very generous of them;" and Armitage shifted his position slightly. A white skirt had flashed again in the Claiborne garden and he was trying to follow it. At the same time there were questions he wished to ask and have answered.
The Baron stated the case in these words: "You know and have talked with this man Armitage; you saw the device on the cigarette case; and asked an explanation, which he refused; and you know also Chauvenet, whom we suspect of complicity with the conspirators at home. Armitage is not the false Baron von Kissel we have established that from Senator Sanderson beyond question.
"Because I have a pledge to keep and a work to do, and if I were forced to defend myself from the charge of being the false Baron von Kissel, everything would be spoiled.
She dropped a lump of sugar into her coffee-cup and read his hurried scrawl: "What do you think has happened now? I have fourteen dollars' worth of telegrams from Sanderson wiring from some God-forsaken hole in Montana, that it's all rot about Armitage being that fake Baron von Kissel. Where, may I ask, does this leave me? And what cad gave that story to the papers?
"Then I will tell you what I have not told any one else that I know very well that you are not the person who appeared at Bar Harbor three years ago and palmed himself off as the Baron von Kissel." "You know it you are quite sure of it?" he asked blankly. "Certainly. I saw that person at Bar Harbor.
He laughed as though at the remembrance of something amusing, and held the little company while he bent over a candle to light a cigar. "With all due respect to our American host, I must say that a title in America goes further than anywhere else in the world. I was at Bar Harbor three years ago when the Baron von Kissel devastated that region.
This Committee of Seven consisted of members of the firms of: Brown Brothers & Co.; Guaranty Trust Co.; Harris, Forbes & Co.; Kissel, Kinnicutt & Co.; Wm. A. Read & Co.; Remick, Hodges & Co., and White, Weld & Co.
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