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Updated: May 4, 2025
The ball, hard as it had been driven, stopped in mid-air over the net, hung there for a moment, then dropped on Brenda's side and rolled to her feet again. She picked it up, walked to the net with it in her hand, and said quite good-humouredly: "I think you're a bit too smart for me, Mr Phadrig.
It was not the words but the challenge in them that impelled her to rise from her chair, aided by Merrill's hand, and not the one that the Prince held out, and walk across the lawn towards Phadrig. She took no notice of him. She just stooped and picked up the ball and carried it back to her chair.
He was perfectly certain now that Phadrig Amena held the key to the conspiracy which had resulted in the disappearance of Prince Zastrow. Oscarovitch had vanished. He had been traced to Copenhagen, and then absolutely lost sight of. Three agents, all picked experts, had been put on to watch Phadrig and the Pentanas, as they were known to him, and within a fortnight they had all died.
It was too much, as he would have put it, to take lying down, and so, greatly daring, he took a couple of strides towards Phadrig, and said with a snarl in his voice: "I guess you mean really if you wish, Mr Miracle-Worker. It was mighty clever, however you did it, but you haven't got me to believe that physical laws are frauds yet. You want me to pick that ball up?"
They had established the identity between Phadrig, the poor seller of curios, and Phadrig Amena, the worker of miracles, whom all the smart set in London was talking about; and here he was in this miserable, shabby room, dressed in clothes that no pawnbroker would advance a couple of shillings on, smiling and bowing before them as though they were lords of the earth, and he the man who had sent three men and a woman to their deaths by, as it were, a mere word of command a worm beneath their feet.
"The mention of the Prince seems to have affected your nerves. Are you acquainted with His Highness?" "Me? I? Why, how should I know a great man like the noble Prince? No, no; of course I know him as a very grand and great gentleman, but that is all, really all, my dear Phadrig." "Yes, yes, of course," said the Egyptian, once more in his gentle voice; "would not be likely, would it?
"Certainly, Professor if you can now," replied Phadrig, with a little twitch of his lips which might have been a smile, or something else. Hoskins van Huysman was a strong man, and he knew it. Not very many years before, he had been able to shoulder a sack of flour and take it away at a run, and now he could bend a poker across his shoulders without much trouble.
Brenda ran out of the circle and gave him one. He took it and gripped it in a fist that looked made to hold things. Phadrig glanced at the ball, and said quietly: "Follow me!" Then he turned away, and, in spite of all the Professor's efforts to hold it, the ball somehow slipped through his fingers and fell on to the lawn.
"Those are hard words, mein Herr," said Phadrig, still speaking in German. "I your prisoner! Why? What have I done to make this outrage on English law possible?" "You will do better to come, Mr Amena," said Hendry, in his quiet official tone; "it will save a good deal of trouble both to you and us. It must be the same in the end, you know.
She rose from her chair and went to her favourite tree; Merrill followed her with a ready penknife. They came back with a fine half-blown rose on a leafy twig about nine inches long. As she held it out to Phadrig he declined it with a bow and a wave of his hand, saying: "I thank you, Miss Marmion, but it will be better for me not to touch it.
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