"Don"t congratulate him yet," she cried, the flush deepening. "I may be a very, very great disappointment to him, and a never-ending nuisance."
"I"m sure you will--will be all right," I floundered. Then I resorted to gaiety. "You see, I"ve spent a lot of time trying to--to make another woman of you, and so I"m confident he"ll find you quite satisfactory."
She laughed gaily. "What a goose you are!" she cried.
I flushed painfully, for, I give you my word, it hurt to have her laugh at me. She sobered at once.
"Forgive me," she said very prettily, and I forgave her. "Do you know we"ve never given the buried treasure another thought?" she went on, abruptly changing the subject. "Are we not to go searching for it?"
"But it isn"t there," said I, steeling my heart against the longing that tried to creep into it. "It"s all balderdash."
She pouted her warm red lips. "Have you lost interest in it so soon?"
"Of course, I"ll go any time you say," said I, lifelessly. "It will be a lark, at all events."
"Then we will go this very afternoon," she said, with enthusiasm.
My ridiculous heart gave a great leap. "This very afternoon," I said, managing my voice very well.
She arose. "Now I must scurry away. It would not do for Mr. Bangs to find me here with you. He would be shocked."
I walked beside her to the chair that stood below the portrait of Ludwig the Red, and took her hand to a.s.sist her in stepping upon it.
"I sincerely hope this chap you"re going to marry, Countess, may be the best fellow in the world," said I, still clasping her hand.
She had one foot on the chair as she half-turned to face me.
"He is the best fellow in the world," she said.
I gulped. "I can"t tell you how happy I shall be if you--if you find real happiness. You deserve happiness--and love."
She gripped my hand fiercely. "I want to be happy! I want to be loved!
Oh, I want to be loved!" she cried, so pa.s.sionately that I turned away, unwilling to be a witness to this outburst of feeling on her part. She slipped her hand out of mine and a second later was through the frame.
I had a fleeting glimpse of a slim, adorable ankle. "Good-bye," she called back in a voice that seemed strangely choked. The spring in the gold mirror clicked. A draft of air struck me in the face. She was gone.
"What an infernal fool you"ve been," I said to myself as I stood there staring at the black hole in the wall. Then, I gently, even caressingly swung old Ludwig the Red into place. There was another click. The incident was closed.
A very few words are sufficient to cover the expedition in quest of the legendary treasures of the long dead Barons. Mr. Bangs accompanied us. Britton carried a lantern and the three Schmicks went along as guides. We found nothing but cobwebs.
"Conrad," said I, as we emerged from the last of the underground chambers, "tell me the truth: was there ever such a thing as buried treasure in this abominable hole?"
"Yes, mein herr," he replied, with an apologetic grin; "but I think it was discovered three years ago by Count Hohendahl and Count Tarnowsy."
We stared at him. "The deuce you say!" cried I, with a quick glance at the Countess. She appeared to be as much surprised as I.
"They searched for a month," explained the old man, guiltily. "They found something in the walls of the second tier. I cannot say what it was, but they were very, very happy, my lady." He now addressed her.
"It was at the time they went away and did not return for three weeks, if you remember the time."
"Remember it!" she cried bitterly. "Too well, Conrad." She turned to me. "We had been married less than two months, Mr. Smart."
I smiled rather grimly. "Count Tarnowsy appears to have had a great run of luck in those days." It was a mean remark and I regretted it instantly. To my surprise she smiled--perhaps patiently--and immediately afterward invited Mr. Bangs and me to dine with her that evening. She also asked Mr. p.o.o.pend.y.k.e later on.
p.o.o.pend.y.k.e! An amazing, improbable idea entered my head.
_p.o.o.pend.y.k.e!_
The next day I was very busy, preparing for the journey by motor to the small station down the line where I was to meet Mrs. t.i.tus and her sons. It seemed to me that every one who knew anything whatever about the arrangements went out of his way to fill my already rattle-brained head with advice. I was advised to be careful at least one hundred times; first in regard to the running of the car, then as to road directions, then as to the police, then as to the ident.i.ty of the party I was to pick up; but more often than anything else, I was urged to be as expeditious as possible and to look out for my tires.
In order to avoid suspicion, I rented a big German touring car for a whole month, paying down a lump sum of twelve hundred marks in advance.
On Thursday morning I took it out for a spin, driving it myself part of the time, giving the wheel to Britton the remainder.
(The year before I had toured Europe pretty extensively in a car of the same make, driving alternately with Britton, who besides being an excellent valet was a chauffeur of no mean ability, having served a London actress for two years or more, which naturally meant that he had been required to do a little of everything.)
We were to keep the car in a garage across the river, drive it ourselves, and pay for the up-keep. We were therefore quite free to come and go as we pleased, without the remotest chance of being questioned. In fact, I intimated that I might indulge in a good bit of joy-riding if the fine weather kept up.
Just before leaving the castle for the ferry trip across the river that evening, I was considerably surprised to have at least a dozen brand new trunks delivered at my landing stage. It is needless to say that they turned out to be the property of Mrs. t.i.tus, expressed by _grande vitesse_ from some vague city in the north of Germany. They all bore the name "Smart, U. S. A.," painted in large white letters on each end, and I was given to understand that they belonged to my own dear mother, who at that moment, I am convinced, was sitting down to luncheon in the Adirondacks, provided her habits were as regular as I remembered them to be.
I set forth with Britton at nine o"clock, in a drizzling rain. There had been no rain for a month. The farmers, the fruit-raisers, the growers of grapes and all the birds and beasts of the field had been begging for rain for weeks. No doubt they rejoiced in the steady downpour that came at half-past nine, but what must have been their joy at ten when the very floodgates of heaven opened wide and let loose all the dammed waters of July and August (and perhaps some that was being saved up for the approaching September!) I have never known it to rain so hard as it did on that Thursday night in August, nor have I ever ceased reviling the fate that inst.i.tuted, on the very next day, a second season of drought that lasted for nearly six weeks.
But we went bravely through that terrible storm, Britton and I, and the vehement Mercedes, up hill and down, over ruts and rocks, across bridges and under them, sozzling and swishing and splashing in the path of great white lights that rushed ahead of us through the gloom.
At half-past eleven o"clock we were skidding over the cobblestones of the darkest streets I have ever known, careening like a drunken sailor but not half as surely, headed for the Staatsbahnhof, to which we had been directed by an object in a raincoat who must have been a policeman but who looked more like a hydrant.
"Britton," said I, wearily, "have you ever seen anything like it?"
"Once before, sir," said he. "Niagara Falls, sir."
CHAPTER XV
I TRAVERSE THE NIGHT
We were drenched to the skin and bespattered with mud, cold and cheerless but full of a grim excitement. Across the street from the small, poorly lighted railway station there was an eating-house. Leaving the car in the shelter of a freight shed, we sloshed through the shiny rivulet that raced between the curbs and entered the clean, unpretentious little restaurant.
There was a rousing smell of roasted coffee pervading the place. A sleepy German waiter first came up and glanced sullenly at the mud-tracks we left upon the floor; then he allowed his insulting gaze to trail our progress to the lunch counter by means of a perfect torrent of rain-water drippings. He went out of the room grumbling, to return a moment later with a huge mop. Thereupon he ordered us out of the place, standing ready with the mop to begin the cleansing process the instant we vacated the stools. It was quite clear to both of us that he wanted to begin operations at the exact spot where we were standing.
"Coffee for two," said I, in German. To me anything uttered in the German language sounds gruff and belligerent, no matter how gentle its meaning. That amiable sentence: "Ich liebe dich" is no exception; to me it sounds relentless. I am confident that I asked for coffee in a very mild and ingratiating tone, in direct contrast to his command to get out, and was somewhat ruffled by his stare of speechless rage.
"Zwei," said Britton, pointing to the big coffee urn.
The fellow began mopping around my feet--in fact, he went so far as to mop the tops of them and a little way up my left leg in his efforts to make a good, clean job of it.
"Stop that!" I growled, kicking at the mop. Before I could get my foot back on the floor he skilfully swabbed the spot where it had been resting, a feat of celerity that I have never seen surpa.s.sed. "d.a.m.n it, don"t!" I roared, backing away. The resolute mop followed me like the spectre of want. Fascinated, I found myself retreating to the doorway.