The clearness of the Count's conscience may be gauged when it is narrated that no sooner had he dismissed the stump of his cigar toward the grate than he dropped into a peaceful doze and remained placidly unconscious of his perils for the space of an hour or more. He was then awakened by the sound of a key being gently turned, and his opening eyes rested upon a charming vision of Julia Wallingford framed in the outline of the door.
"Hush!" she whispered; "I--I have brought a note for you!"
Smoothing his hair as he met her, the Count thanked her with an air of considerable feeling, and took from her hand a twisted slip of paper.
"It was brought by a messenger--a man in a kilt, who came in a motor car. I didn't know whether father would let you have it, so I brought it up myself."
"Is the messenger waiting?"
"No; he went straight off again."
Unrolling the scrap he read this brief message scrawled in pencil and evidently in dire haste--"All is lost! I am prisoner! Go straightway to London for help from my Embassy.
"R. VON B."
"Good heavens!" he exclaimed aloud.
"Is it bad news?" asked Julia, with a solicitude that instantly suggested possibilities to his fertile brain.
"Horribly!" he said. "It tells of a calamity that has befallen a very dear friend of mine! Oh, Rudolph, Rudolph! And I a helpless prisoner!"
As he anticipated, this outburst of emotion was not without its effect.
"I am so sorry!" she said. "I--I don't believe, Count Bunker, you are as guilty as father says!"
"I swear to you I am not!"
"Can I--help you?"
He thought swiftly.
"Is there any one about the house just now?"
"Oh yes; the keeper is stationed in the hall!"
"Miss Wallingford, if you would atone for a deep injury which you have inadvertently done an innocent man, bring me fifty feet of stout rope! And, I say, see that the door of the bicycle house is left unlocked.
Will you do this?"
"I--I'll try."
A sound on the stairs alarmed her, and with a fleeting smile of sympathy she was gone and the door locked upon him again.
Again the time passed slowly by, and he was left to ponder over the critical nature of the situation as revealed by the luckless Baron's intelligence. Clearly he must escape to-night, at all hazards.
"What's that? My rope?" he wondered.
But it was only the arrival of his dinner, brought as before upon a tray and set just within the door, as though they feared for the bearer's life should he venture within reach of this desperate adventurer from Uruguay.
"A very large dish for a very small appetite," he thought, as he bore his meal over to the bed and drew his chair up before it.
It looked indeed as though a roasted goose must be beneath the cover. He raised it, and there, behold! lay a large coil of excellent new rope. The Count chuckled.
"Commend me to the heart and the wit of women!
What man would ever have provided so dainty a dish as this? Unless, indeed" (he had the breadth of mind to add) "it happened to be a charming adventuress who was in trouble."
Drinking the half pint of moderate claret which they had allowed him to the happiness and prosperity of all true-hearted women, he could not help regretting that his imprisoned confederate should be so unlikely to enjoy similar good fortune.
"He went too far with those two dear girls. A woman deceived as he has deceived them will never forgive him. They'd stand sentry at his cell-door sooner than let the poor Baron escape," he reflected commiserately, and sighed to think of the disastrous effect this mishap might have both upon his friend's diplomatic career and domestic felicity.
While waiting for the dusk to deepen, and endeavoring to console himself for the lack of cigars with the poor remedy of cigarettes, he employed his time profitably in tying a series of double knots upon the line of rope. Then at last, when he could see the stars bright above the trees and hear no sound in the house, he pulled his bed softly to the open window, and to it fastened one end of his rope securely. The other he quietly let drop, and losing not an instant followed it hand under hand, murmuring anathemas on the rough wall that so scraped his evening trousers.
On tiptoe he stole to the door through which the bicycle had gone. It yielded to a push, and once inside he ventured to strike a match.
"By Gad! I've a choice of half a dozen," he exclaimed.
It need scarcely be said that he selected the best; and after slitting with his pocket-knife the tires of all the others, he mounted and pedalled quietly down the drive. The lodge gates stood open; the road, a trifle muddy but clear of all traffic, stretched visible for a long way in the starlight; the breeze blew fair behind him.
"May Providence guide me to the station," he prayed, and rode off into the night.
