While his late worshippers were trampling his memory in the mire, the Baron von Blitzenberg, deserted and dejected, his face still buried in his hands, endured the slow passage of the doleful afternoon. Unlike the prisoner at The Lash, who, by a coincidence that happily illustrates the dispensations of Providence, was undergoing at the same moment an identical ordeal, the Baron had no optimistic, whimsical philosophy to fall back upon. Instead, he had a most tender sense of personal dignity that had been egregiously outraged--and also a wife. Indeed, the thought of Alicia and of Alicia's parent was alone enough to keep his head bowed down.
"Ach, zey most not know," he muttered. "I shall give moch money--hondreds of pound--not to let zem find out. Oh, what for fool have I been!"
So deeply was he plunged in these sorrowful meditations, and so constantly were they concerned with the two ladies whose feelings he wished to spare, that when a hum of voices reached his ear, one of them strangely --even ominously--familiar, he only thought at first that his imagination had grown morbidly vivid. To dispel the unpleasant fancies suggested by this imagined voice, he raised his head, and then the next instant bounded from his chair.
"Mein Gott!" he muttered, "it is she."
Too thunderstruck to move, he saw his prison door open, and there, behold! stood the Countess of Grillyer, a terrible look upon her high-born features, a Darius at either shoulder. In silence they surveyed one another, and it was Mr. Maddison who spoke first.
"Guess this is a friend of yours," he observed.
One thought and one only filled the prisoner's mind --she must leave him, and immediately.
"No, no; I do not know her!" he cried.
"You do not know me?" repeated the Countess in a voice rich in promise.
"Certainly I do not."
"She knows you all right," said the millionaire.
"Says she does," put in Ri in a lower voice; "but I wouldn't lay much money on her word either."
"Rudolph! You pretend you do not know me?" cried the Countess between wrath and bewilderment.
"I never did ever see sochlike a voman before," reiterated the Baron.
"What do you say to that, ma'am?" inquired Mr. Maddison.
"I say--I blush to say--that this wretched young man is my son-in-law," declared the Countess.
As she had come to the house inquiring merely for Lord Tulliwuddle, and been conducted straight to the prisoner's cell, the stupefying effect of this announcement may readily be conceived.
"What!" ejaculated the Dariuses.
"It is not true! She is mad! Take her avay, please!" shouted the Baron, now desperate in his resolution to say or do anything, so long as he got rid of his formidable relative.
The Countess staggered back.
"Is he demented?" she inquired.
"Say, ma'am," put in Ri, "are you the mother of Miss Constance Herringay?"
"Of----? I am Lady Grillyer!"
"See here, my good lady, that's going a little too far," said the millionaire not unkindly. "This friend of yours here first calls himself Lord Tulliwuddle, and then the Baron von something or other.
Well, now, that's two of the aristocracy in this under-sized apartment already. There's hardly room for a third--see? Can't you be plain Mrs. Smith for a change?"
The Countess tottered.
"Fellow!" she said in a faint voice, "I--I do not understand you."
"Thought that would fetch her down," commented Ri.
"Lead her back to ze train and make her go to London!" pleaded the Baron earnestly.
"You stick to it, you don't know her?" asked Mr. Maddison shrewdly.
"No, no, I do not!"
"Is her name Lady Grillyer?"
"Not more zan it is mine!"
"Rudolph!" gasped the Countess inarticulately.
"He is--he WAS my son!"
"Stoff and nonsense!" roared the Baron. "Remove her!--I am tired."
"Well," said Mr. Maddison, "I guess I don't much believe either of you; but whether you know each other or not, you make such a remarkably fine couple that I reckon you'd better get acquainted now. Come, Ri."
And before either Countess or Baron could interpose, their captors had slipped out, the key was turned, and they were left to the dual enjoyment of the antique apartment.
"Teufel!" shouted the Baron, kicking the door frantically. "Open him, open him! I vill pay you a hondred pound! Goddam! Open!"
But only the gasps of the Countess answered him.
It is generally conceded that if you want to see the full depths of brutality latent in man, you must thoroughly frighten him first. This condition the Countess of Grillyer had exactly succeeded in fulfilling, with the consequence that the Baron, hitherto the most complacent and amiable of sons-in-law, seemed ambitious of rivalling the Turk. When he perceived that no answer to his appeals was forthcoming, dark despair for a moment overcame him. Then the fiendishly ingenious idea struck him--might not a woman's screams accomplish what his own lungs were unable to effect?
