“Number nine; Johann will show you.” He acted as if he had something more to say, but a glance from the round-faced porter silenced him. Maurice lost much by not seeing this glance. He followed the messenger up the stairs.
There were no transoms. The corridor was devoid of illumination. The porter struck a match and held it close to the panel of a door under which a thread of light streamed.
“This is it, Herr,” he bawled, so loudly that Maurice started.
“There was no need of waking the dead to tell me,” he growled.
The door opened, and before Maurice could brace himself--for the interior of the room made all plain to him--he was violently pushed over the threshold on to his knees. He was up in an instant. The room was filled with soldiers, foot soldiers of the king, so it seemed.
“What the devil is this?” he demanded, brushing his knees and cursing himself because he had not brought his Colt when fate had put it almost in his hand.
“It is a banquet, young man. We were waiting for the guest of honor.”
Maurice turned to the speaker, and saw a medium-sized man with gray hair and a frosty stubble of a mustache. He wore no insignia of office. Indeed, as Maurice gazed from one man to the next he saw that there were no officers; and it came to him that these were not soldiers of the king. He was in a trap. He thought quickly. Fitzgerald was in trouble, perhaps on his account. Where was he?
“I do not see my friend who sprained his ankle,” he said coolly.
This declaration was greeted with laughter.
“Evidently I have entered the wrong room,” he continued imperturbably. He stepped toward the door, but a burly individual placed his back to it.
“Am I a prisoner, or the victim of a practical joke?”
“Either way,” said the man with the frosty mustache.
“You have recently formed a dangerous acquaintance, and we desire to aid you in breaking it.”
“Are you aware, gentlemen--no, I don't mean gentlemen--that I am attached to the American legation in Vienna, and that my person is inviolable?”
Everybody laughed again--everybody but Maurice.
“Allow me to correct you,” put in the elderly man, who evidently was the leader in the affair. “You are not attached; you are detached. Gentlemen, permit me, M. Carewe, detache of the American legation in Vienna, who wishes he had stayed there.”