"Yes, sir. One of them spoke to me yesterday, and it was he who told us to-day that if we didn’t go we should be in trouble. He behaved shameful, and wanted to put us out there and then without our boxes; but cook she up and told him she wasn’t going without hers, and then he gave us an hour to clear out in."
"Well done, Martha," I exclaimed, as the cook came downstairs. I explained to her that the men had not been the police, and endeavoured to allay the fears of them both.
I succeeded after some difficulty, and they agreed to remain.
"That fellow said he’d come back in an hour to see that we had gone," said Martha, a woman with a great deal of spirit. "I hope he will come"; and she nodded her head with an emphasis which promised him a warm reception.
"I don’t expect you’ll see him here again. Now, a last question. Did they say anything to you about the supposed crime for which I was to be arrested?"
"They went on awful about you, sir," replied Martha. "You was a conspirator, and a murderer, and you’d either run away to get out of their hands or had killed yourself; and I don’t know what else. But you were never coming back. That was certain."
"Well, here I am, you see; so you can tell how much to believe of the rest."
"They said they had warrants for you, sir," put in Ellen. "They showed me some papers; and the Fräulein told me afterwards they had, and that she was going away in order to prevent any harm coming to you."
"Well, we’ll soon have things all right again," I replied, and went off to change my clothes and view the results of the men’s work.
I thought I could understand it all, I guessed that the man who had fired at me on the previous night had mistaken my fall for the result of his shot, and had accordingly reported that the attempt had been successful. With me out of his way, von Felsen had only to recover possession of the stolen paper, the keys and the confessions he had written, to find his hand once more on the controlling lever of everything so far as Althea was concerned.
That was what the search meant, and that it had been complete, the evidence of my own eyes showed. But it had not been successful, any the more for that. The stolen paper was safe in Brussels, and I had been in such a cyclone hurry to get after the Baron on the previous night, that I had not stayed to look the other things up, but had thrust them into the first place which had caught my eye. This had been the large upright iron stove in the hall among the kindling wood and paper. And there I found them.