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Updated: June 12, 2025
As I think over the whole business my mind grows addled, and I feel as though I had been kicked by a horse." Shirley laughed softly, keeping the note open before her and referring to it musingly as she stirred her coffee. She could not answer any of Dick's questions, but her interest in the contest between Armitage and Chauvenet was intensified by this latest turn in the affair.
It was a strange place for the delivery of such a message, and the strangeness of it was intensified to Shirley by the curious glance that passed between John Armitage and Jules Chauvenet. Shirley remembered afterward that as the attaché's words rang out in the room, Armitage started, clenched his hands, and caught his breath in a manner very uncommon in men unless they are greatly moved.
Now let this gentleman ride away, and I shall stay here until I have quite assured you that you are mistaken about him." She signaled Chauvenet to mount, holding the mystified and reluctant mountaineer with her eyes. Her heart was thumping fast and her hand shook a little as she tightened her grasp on the rein. She addressed Chauvenet in English as a mark of good faith to their captor.
It was near midnight when he reached the tavern and climbed the rickety stairway to the room where the two men waited. Chauvenet opened the door at his approach, and they cried aloud as the great figure appeared before them and the lamplight fell upon his dark blood-smeared face. "The letters!" snapped Chauvenet. "Is the message safe?" demanded Durand. "Lost; lost; they are lost!
Armitage pointed down the road with his riding-crop. As Chauvenet walked slowly away, swinging his stick, Armitage turned toward the hotel. The shadow of night was enfolding the hills, and it was quite dark when he found Oscar and the horses. He mounted, and they rode through the deepening April dusk, up the winding trail that led out of Storm Valley.
He soothed the restless animals in low tones, the light of his cigarette shaking oddly in the dark with the movement of his lips. The horse ceased to plunge; Zmai held its rider erect with his left arm while the right drew the sack down over the head and shoulders of the prisoner. "Tie him," said Chauvenet; and Zmai buckled a strap about the man's arms and bound them tight.
He had known when he left Geneva that he had not done with Jules Chauvenet; but the man's prompt appearance surprised Armitage. He ran over the names of the steamers by which Chauvenet might easily have sailed from either a German or a French port and reached Washington quite as soon as himself.
If you had not been so intent on matters of state you would undoubtedly have found her here. As it is, you are now obliged to see her on her native soil. A month in Washington may do much for you. She is beautiful and reasonably rich. Her brother, the tall captain, is said to be the best horseman in the American army." "Humph! He is an ass," ejaculated Chauvenet.
The Winkelried crowd are safe behind the bars in Vienna, and publicity can do us no harm." "Drive on!" ejaculated Chauvenet. As the buckboard started, Baron von Marhof and Judge Claiborne rode up, and watched the departure from their saddles. "That's the end of one chapter," remarked Judge Claiborne. "They're glad enough to go," said Dick. "What's the latest word from Vienna?"
He had underrated Armitage's courage and daring; he wished to make no further mistakes, and he walked back toward the hotel with apparent good grace. Armitage spoke now in a very different key, and the change displeased Chauvenet, for he much affected ironical raillery, and his companion's sterner tones disconcerted him.
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