The Secret of the Silver Car Part 20

"No. No," Hentzi cried nervously, "that is suicide. We have been satisfied to take six hours."

"With 'orses?" Alfred Anthony demanded, "pretty good time with 'orses, but this is a Lion."

Hentzi sat on the front seat during the long drive and pointed out the path. On the whole he was a good natured man but he did not permit the count's chauffeur to forget that he was talking to the count's secretary. Hentzi had formerly been a clerk in the estate office of the Temesvar family and had been promoted to his present position because he was faithful and a good linguist.

He was afraid of the count. Trent could detect a fear of him whenever the name was mentioned. When Hentzi warned the new chauffeur to be careful if his employer was in an angry mood the American demanded the reason.

"If I do my duty," said the pseudo mechanic, "he can't hurt me."

"You talk as a child talks," Hentzi laughed. "He will do as he likes and as the devils that are in him at the moment. He fears neither G.o.d, man, nor devil. Pauline only may mock when he rages."

"Who is Pauline?" Trent asked, "the missus?"

"The Countess," Hentzi said with dignity, "is in perpetual retreat with the Ursuline sisters near Vienna."

"Is Pauline the daughter?"

"His daughters are married." Hentzi laughed, "Castle Radna is not a place where it is wise to ask questions. You think because his excellency was cheerful when you last saw him he is like that always? I tell you if Pauline has been unkind he may visit it on you. I prefer that he does. I am tired of his humours and you are younger and stronger."

"You don't mean he might hit me?" Trent cried.

Hentzi seemed to find Trent's anxious manner amusing.

"Most certainly he will," the secretary a.s.sured him, "but you need not be alarmed. He will fling you gold when his temper has spent itself."

"I'm not going to let any man strike me," Trent said doggedly. "It would raise the devil in me and I might be sorry for it."

"You would," Hentzi said thinking that the chauffeur meant he might lose his job.

Anthony Trent, instead, was thinking that he might, in order to succeed in his venture, have to submit to indignities that would be torture to one of his temperament. It would not be wise to let the secretary know this so he turned the subject to the woman who dare laugh when the count was angry.

"Who is Pauline?" he asked.

"She was a skater from the Winter Palace in Berlin. She is beautiful or she would not be at Castle Radna; she is clever or she could not control Count Michael who has broken many women's hearts. She is bad or she would not have driven the countess from her home. For myself I hate her and the men and women with whom she fills the place."

"So they keep a lot of company up there?"

"Company!" Hentzi replied, "there is no such castle in Europe. I have seen life in Buda and Vienna but up there! You may be sure when the master drinks champagne the servants will drink _shlivovitza_. But do not think they are all Pauline's friends. No. No. The great of the world come there too and Pauline's friends are banished. You will drive great personages up from Fiume and you will not know who they are or what their errand."

"Is the count a politician?"

Hentzi laughed with good natured contempt at such a nave query. Not to know Michael, Count Temesvar's reputation in the field of world politics was to admit ignorance of all the troubled currents which worried kings and presidents.

He was rudely brought back from his lofty att.i.tude by the sudden stopping of the car. He was almost thrown from his seat.

"Look!" Trent cried, pointing to a piece of close cropped turf, "a golf green as I live."

"What of it?" Hentzi snapped, "what do you know of golf?"

"I used to be a caddie," Trent lied glibly. "Who plays there?"

"The count because his doctor tells him to. I because I hate it, and Pauline that her figure may remain seductive. Thank G.o.d there are but nine holes! It encourages our master to have one man who always plays worse than he. Look, that is the castle."

Almost under the shadows of Mount Sljeme the rugged building lay. Around it, nestling at its gates were many other lesser stone buildings which Hentzi told him were stables, dwellings and out-houses. It was situated in the _Zagorje_ or land beyond the hills and had, despite its fine gardens and the green turf of the links a forbidding air.

When the Lion was run into its garage Hentzi introduced the new chauffeur to the man with whom he was to live, a man who with his wife had one of the cottages outside the castle wall. Peter Sissek, the man, was unfriendly from the start. He resented the importation of a chauffeur with the new car as a slight to his own skill. But as he spoke only Croatian and Hungarian, and Trent understood neither tongue, his grievances were not voluble.

CHAPTER NINE

_PAULINE_

Anthony Trent met Pauline in rather a curious way. He had been a week at Castle Radna and had not been commanded to drive the count. Then Hentzi had informed him Count Michael was sick of a bad cold. Sissek by virtue of being senior in the Temesvar service tried to get the new man to help him with his own cars but Trent absolutely declined.

He had a.s.sumed a certain post in order to carry out a design but his duties lay with the Lion car and he left the Croatian grumbling and set out for a tour of inspection. Naturally his steps led him to the little golf course a mile distant. There were no long holes and the course was hardly trapped at all. It was just the kind of place elderly men, who played a weak game, would revel in.

By the first tee was a little rustic pavilion. Through the windows Trent could see three or four golf bags. The temptation was too strong to resist. He picked the locks with the blade of a pocket knife and found himself in a comfortable room. The count's golf bag contained excellent clubs and plenty of b.a.l.l.s. He looked at the b.a.l.l.s and knew the count's game instantly. They were bitten into by the irons of a strong man.

Trent shuddered at the gashes and then, selecting a new ball and a putter and driver went out on the nearby green. It was sheltered from all observation and he putted for a few minutes.

In the distance he could see the first green. It looked to be a little under three hundred yards distant; and it lay beneath, sweetly tempting to a long driver.

Anthony Trent had for some years now lived a life in which he denied himself nothing. He had reached out for such treasures as only a millionaire may buy. The question of right or wrong in the matter of using his employer's clubs bothered him little. He did not want to be observed in case the privilege were denied him.

He teed up his ball, made a few preliminary swings and then struck the white sphere with perfectly timed strength. He watched it rise, fall and roll almost to the edge of the green. He would certainly make it in three.

Then he turned round to look into the astonished face of a very beautiful woman. There was something in the general effect, quickly seen, which reminded him of Lady Daphne; but as he looked he saw this girl was older. He doubted the genuineness of the golden hair and he saw that art had aided nature in the facial make-up. But she was no more than eight and twenty and her figure differed from Daphne's slim, almost boyish slightness. She was dressed in a curious shade of green. It was a tint he thought he had never seen before until he looked into her eyes and saw it there reflected.

Pauline had known the count had engaged a chauffeur from London but she a.s.sumed him to be of the usual type. She had no idea that the man who had just made such a superb drive was he. Pauline had been used to much social enjoyment of a sort and while Count Michael had been away she had to behave circ.u.mspectly. She was dull and she was bored; and now, as though an answer to prayer, Fate had sent her a handsome young man who stood like a bronze statue as he followed the flight of the ball.

Since the count had given permission for the families of the neighbouring landowners to use his course she imagined it to be one of these or perhaps a guest at some local mansion.

Anthony Trent was never one who made a habit of the pursuit of the fair.

His profession had taught him caution. Almost always the feminine element had brought the great criminals to peril. There had been one or two harmless flirtations but his love for Daphne was the great affair of his life. He groaned when he looked into Pauline's bold eyes and saw admiration looking from them. Other women had looked at him like that.

Pauline was absolute at Castle Radna. Her enmity might be very harmful.

Her friendship might be ruinous.

He a.s.sumed the bearing of Alfred Anthony which he had abandoned unconsciously. He even touched his cap to the lady as a servant who habitually wears livery should do. She frowned as he did so.

"Who are you?" she said in German.

"I'm the new chauffeur, miss," he returned in English.

"What are you doing here, then?"

"Having a bit of a game," he said with an air of timidity. "I hope you won't tell the guv'nor."