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I think you'll have no more trouble negotiating your loan or your love affair, Count," added Craig, turning on his heel. He was in no mood to receive the congratulations of the supercilious Wachtmann.
"I believe he is ill," explained Craig. "At any rate, he evidently suspects almost every one about him except his daughter. As nearly as I could gather, however, he does not suspect Wachtmann himself. Miss Brixton seemed to think that there were some enemies of the Count at work. Her father is a secretive man.
It was so politely contemptuous that I could almost have throttled him. "We are waiting to see Mr. Brixton," explained Kennedy. "What is the latest from the Near East?" Wachtmann asked, with the air of a man expecting to hear what he could have told you yesterday if he had chosen. There was a movement of the portieres, and a woman entered. She stopped a moment. I knew it was Miss Brixton.
In fact, as I recall it, one of the foreign bankers who is trying to interest him is that Count Wachtmann who, everybody says, is engaged to Miss Brixton, and is staying at the house at Woodrock. Craig, are you sure nobody is hoaxing you?" "Read that," he replied laconically, handing me a piece of thin letter-paper such as is often used for foreign correspondence.
"Very well," agreed Brixton. "I shall arrange to have you met at the station and brought here as secretly as I can." He sighed, as if admitting that he was no longer master of even his own house. Kennedy was silent during most of our return trip to New York. As for myself, I was deeply mired in an attempt to fathom Wachtmann. He baffled me.
She had recognised Kennedy, but her part was evidently to treat him as a total stranger. "Who are these men, Conrad?" she asked, turning to Wachtmann. "Gentlemen of the press, I believe, to see your father, Yvonne," replied the count. It was evident that it had not been mere newspaper talk about this latest rumored international engagement.
But before Conrad could get into the car this fellow, who had the engine running, started it. Conrad jumped into another car that was waiting at the station. He overlook us and dodged in front so as to cut the chauffeur off from the ferry." "Curse that villain of a chauffeur," muttered Wachtmann, looking down at the wounded man.
There isn't a chance of an alarm from the house. I'll cut all the wires the last thing before I leave. Good-bye." All at once it dawned on me what they were planning the kidnapping of Brixton's only daughter, to hold her, perhaps, as a hostage until he did the bidding of the gang. Wachtmann's chauffeur was doing it and using Wachtmann's car, too. Was Wachtmann a party to it? What was to be done?
As we waited in the big leather chairs Kennedy was sketching roughly on a sheet of paper the plan of the house, drawing in the location of the various wires. The door opened. We had expected John Brixton. Instead, a tall, spare foreigner with a close-cropped moustache entered. I knew at once that it must be Count Wachtmann, although I had never seen him.
"Ah, I beg your pardon," he exclaimed in English which betrayed that he had been under good teachers in London. "I thought Miss Brixton was here." "Count Wachtmann?" interrogated Kennedy, rising. "The same," he replied easily, with a glance of inquiry at us. "My friend and I are from the Star" said Kennedy. "Ah! Gentlemen of the press?" He elevated his eyebrows the fraction of an inch.
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