The Secret of the Silver Car by Wyndham Martyn (best classic romance novels txt) 📕

“Absolutely,” Trent agreed, “take your mashie here and go back slowly and don’t look up for threes seconds after hitting the ball.”

Pauline was certainly a splendidly athletic woman. She held herself magnificently and was at her best this morning but merely to be with her bored the pseudo-chauffeur who had thoughts only for Daphne. Daphne could have given her two strokes a hole and a beating, he reflected. Gloom seized on him as he wondered if ever again he would see her. He was in peril in Castle Radna even as an honest worker. Peter Sissek had sworn to pay him for the beating. Half of Trent’s energies were consumed in going over his car to make sure the bolts and nuts were tight and had not been loosened maliciously.

And in his position as an emissary of the Earl of Rosecarrel he was in danger of the most vivid kind. He was a spy in a house which sheltered a princeling who might yet force Europe into war. If it were discovered he possessed this secret nothing could save him. It was a sinister, dour pile of stone, this Castle Radna utterly unlike the Cornish castle with its rose gardens, its fountains and the charm of country life. He could well believe that in his present dwelling tragedies has been enacted of which no knowledge had filtered through to the larger world. Oddly enough it was during the day when he was peacefully employed as Alfred Anthony that he was most obsessed by despondency. When the servants were long abed and asleep and the silences of the early hours hung about the great corridors and halls Anthony Trent came into his own. His rubber shod feet were noiseless in the stone passages and his two pass keys opened every locked door. He was possessed of all secrets it seemed to him. Here he was free to wander like a ghost in banquet hall and corridor. None walked so silently as he.

Pauline did not talk to him any more that morning but the count was affable.

“Ah, Arlfrit,” he cried, “tomorrow your work commences. Yes. You leave for Fiume at daybreak and meet the Ungarisch-Kroatische boat. This time you will go alone as you will have a passenger beside you as you return. You will wait at the Hotel de I’Europe. The boat gets to her dock at eleven and my guests will drive immediately to the motor. Make speed back for you must go to Agram and back before dinner.”

“That will be going some!” Trent commented.

“For what reason do you suppose I buy a Lion car and a chauffeur if not to do what my other automobiles and chauffeurs cannot do? Why do you imagine I introduce a Londoner into my servants hall, a brawling man who assaults good Peter Sissek if not because he must travel fast and safely?”

But the count was not angry. He was in that good humor which comes to all men who having been in the habit of taking seven for a last hole make it in four. Pauline had taken six and he had not permitted his record to be clouded by allowing Trent (as Pauline suggested) to see what he could do it in.

Anthony Trent started on his trip when it was as yet hardly light. He was singularly carefree. The repulsive Sissek was not at his side and he was free to wander about the seaport town, locate the cable offices and make certain arrangements that might contribute to future safety. That he was invariably able to make such good time was due mainly to the absence of traffic along the Maria Louisa road. Not yet had the old prosperity come back to Europe and there were more automobiles in Allenhurst, New Jersey, than all Croatia.

He was bound to admit that the group of people he took from the Hotel de I’Europe lived up to all the traditions of mysterious fiction. There were two men, middle aged and plainly used to power, and a very pretty vivacious dark woman of five and thirty to whom her escorts paid profound attention. The seat beside Trent was occupied by the lady’s maid. The black morocco dressing case she held inexorably upon her knees was marked with a coronet. The woman was hard-faced, elderly and uncommunicative. Trent noticed that her mistress was in that deep mourning which European women affect.

Trent tried the maid in English but she made no answer at all. He strained his ears to catch what language was being talked behind him but the Lion was a car of tremendous wheel base and the passengers were removed too far from him.

Once or twice in the old days, particularly in the case of the Sinn Fein plot Anthony Trent had found his lack of knowledge of German a handicap. This linguistic failing was now remedied. He had studied the tongue carefully; and as languages were easily acquired by him had some fair proficiency in it.

He was not certain whether it was a trap or a genuine desire to know that made the woman after a whispered talk with the lady in black say to him suddenly, “Wenn vir nur nicht unwerfen; die Strassen sind nicht besonders hier zu Lande.”

It was his first impulse to tell her that she would not be upset and that they would soon get on to the better roads. Then he remembered Alfred Anthony knew but little of any tongue but his own. He smiled at her and shrugged his shoulders.

“Try it in English,” he commanded smiling. “No speak Dutch.”

She did not take the trouble to answer. It was, he decided, a trap to find if he understood. Perhaps it was counted in his favor, this ignorance of continental tongues.

At Agram he fetched six other people. He found that Sissek and another chauffeur had been busy also. Hentzi, always desirous of impressing those beneath him in rank, told Trent he was to be guest tonight at a table which would hold some of the great ones of the country.

“Will Pauline be among those present?” Trent asked.

“Pauline!” Hentzi sneered, “there will be gracious, high-born ladies at the table and among these our Pauline has no part. She knows that.”

“What time do you dine?” Trent asked. It was now seven o’clock and Hentzi was not in evening dress.

“At half past eight. There is one among us who likes the late dinners of the English and his likings must be obeyed even by Count Michael.”

“An Englishman?” Trent queried.

“My friend,” Hentzi said impressively, “if he could take all the British and all the Americans and sink them in mid-ocean he would be entirely happy. I do not think you understand world politics, eh?”

“I follow the racing and footer news,” Trent confessed. “I’m not so much on politics. A set of grafters if you ask me.”

Trent spent an hour on his car. He filled the tanks with gasoline and saw that his spare tires were ready and made the little adjustments that only sensitive fingers may perform. As a rule he drove the car straight into the garage and backed out. Tonight he backed into it. There might be the sudden need to utilize every moment.

Hentzi’s news was good. A dinner of state commencing at half past eight would be continued long after dark. Of necessity the count would be there and undoubtedly the officer and his royal master would grace the board. Entrance could easily be made through their room and over the courtyard to the Count Michael’s apartment. There would be time for a thorough search.

The kitchens were full of bustling maids assisting the cooks. There was so much confusion that Trent helped himself amply to what food he desired and strolled out to the garage to eat it. More than half was stowed away in his car. If he were able to get away that night, as he hoped, it might come in handily for breakfast.

His plan was to place the treaty draft in an envelope already addressed and stamped and mail it at Fiume. After that he would take the car into Italy if possible and make for Venice whence he could come easily to England.

The servants saw him take a candle and walk wearily to his room. They remembered he had been up before dawn broke. Not one of them had any suspicions that he was aught but what he represented himself to be.

At half past ten Anthony Trent, looking through the carved oaken musicians gallery twenty feet above the floor of the banqueting hall, beheld a notable company assembled. When he saw that the prince had at his side the vivacious dark lady, he remembered that the weekly pictorial papers had often presented her to their readers. She was the daughter of a royal house lately at war with his country. To her diplomatic skill and love of intrigue was due many checks to allied plans. It was said she ruled her husband absolutely and loved him little.

Trent recognized the two men he had brought with him. They were in evening dress as was Count Michael and decorated with many orders, of St. Stephen of Hungary among others. The military attache bristled with medals and there were others in brilliant uniforms.

No other woman was present but the princess. Her jewels made Trent’s mouth water. No doubt the maid had carried them at his side for several hours and would, for all he had to do with it, carry them back. Not for a moment dare he think of taking them. It was obvious that the count would make no outcry about the loss of the draft if that alone were taken. He would piece things together and understand the riddle of Alfred Anthony. But were the valuables of his guests taken it might be a police matter.

So great was the buzz of conversation that Trent could catch no memorable phrase. Here and there was a name he had heard of but that was all. He noticed that Hentzi was not a guest despite his boasting. This in itself was awkward for the secretary might be even now in the big room to which the master criminal was bound. He was relieved presently to observe Hentzi hovering on the outskirts of the room directing the servants, a sort of super-major-domo.

It was exactly eleven when he crossed the dark courtyard and opened one of the long French windows of Count Michael’s room. It was in darkness. A little water driven power plant supplied some of the chief rooms of Castle Radna with electric light and he was able, after screening the windows to flood the room with light. It was an apartment the counterpart in size and decoration of the one occupied by the prince, across the courtyard.

Almost the first thing Anthony Trent saw was the safe. And as he looked on it he knew his hopes were in vain and the draft of the treaty could remain there indefinitely for all his skill availed or all the knowledge of the greatest “petemen” would aid, had he possessed it.

Count Michael Temesvar was not one of those who entrusted precious things to insecure keeping. It was a Chubbwood burglar proof safe of a type Trent had heard of but never before seen. The double-dialled cannon ball safe of the American maker was the nearest approach to this gleaming mocking thing which faced him. There was no chance that any forcing screw or wedge could damage the bolts. The locks were so protected that drilling was impossible and no nitro-glycerine could be used. The oxy-acetylene blowpipe,