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"Thank you very much, Hinge. That will do." Hinge went away, and I sat down to think this new matter over. Of course I had never been foolish enough to suppose that Brunow had given me any information of value against his party, outside the one admission that he had been hired by the Baroness Bonnar; but here was sudden proof of the incompleteness of his confession.
The Baroness Bonnar was before me when I called, and I found her there in the daintiest and most becoming of visiting costumes, chatting away with excellent tact and unfailing vivacity. She gave Miss Rossano time to welcome me, and then assailed me at once with laudation's of my devotion and courage, which I received, I know, with an extremely evil grace.
He will be the final judge of what is to be done; but until he comes I shall do my duty, and it is no part of my duty to allow my niece to listen to the persuasions of a man who has only too clearly proved his powers in that way already." "Only a few weeks ago," I said, desperately, "I had an interview with the Baroness Bonnar, in which I warned her not to intrude upon your society again."
F. O. Wade, Crown Prosecutor, Dr. Bonnar and others. But early in the spring Starnes moved on to Dawson. The rush was setting in and with Inspector F. Harper and a few men he had to hold the place for law and order during a sort of interregnum period. No civil courts were established till Judge McGuire came, and to administer the law under such conditions was always trying. But it was done.
That corner of the long and narrow chamber was so dim, and the intervening lamps and candles sent up such a glare between, that I was not quite certain of her identity; but I felt a shock of surprise in the mere fancy that this was the Baroness Bonnar. I made a movement to one side, and, shading my eyes from the light, made her out with certainty. It was the Baroness Bonnar, and no other.
He has been betrayed to the Austrians, and is at this minute in their hands. The prime mover in that matter is the Baroness Bonnar, and her tool was the Honorable George Brunow." Now surely one would have thought that a charge so plain and dreadful was at least worth investigation, and it had not entered my mind to conceive that even an angry woman could fail to take some sort of account of it.
As a matter of fact, as I found out not so long afterwards, the Baroness Bonnar was no more a baroness than I was a baron, but simply and merely an adventuress who had spent some time on the Vienna stage, where she had secured no great success. She was now one of that almost innumerable band of spies who lived at that time in the service of the Austrian government.
If Baroness Bonnar had not had the skill to bedevil cleverer men than myself, and men twenty times as experienced, she would never have risen to the position of eminence she occupied. We parted on the understanding that she was to pay no more visits to Lady Rollinson's house, but was to do her loyal best to avoid Violet and her chaperon.
The thought of the Baroness Bonnar, fresh from contact with her, coming into Violet's presence was anything but agreeable. I am not much of a prude, and was never disposed to hound a woman down for an error in love; but the plain English of the matter was that no woman who would care to know Constance Pleyel had a right to exchange a word with Violet.
"Would it ever have occurred to you to guess that the Baroness Bonnar is neither more nor less than a paid Austrian spy, and that Miss Constance Pleyel is, in all probability, her confederate?" She looked at me with an incredulity so open that I felt it to be an insult, and she preserved the same disdainful silence. "I came here yesterday," I continued, "to consult Violet "
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