accompanied by hazzard and smith, i went over the castle from top to bottom, in quest of the reason for tarnowsy's prompt acceptance of my demand. we made no doubt that he had a good and sufficient reason for wanting the place, and but one thing suggested itself to our imagination: his absolute certainty that treasure was hidden somewhere about the venerable pile, treasure of considerable magnitude, you may be sure, or he would not have revealed such alacrity in accepting my terms. sentiment had nothing to do with this surprising move on his part. that was all bosh. he had an ulterior motive, and it was for me to get the better of him at his own game if i could. while i was eager to get rid of the castle at any price, i did not relish the thought of being laughed at for a fool by maris tarnowsy after he had laid his greedy hands upon treasure that had been mine without my knowledge.

he was no fool. the castle meant nothing to him as a home or as an investment. no doubt he would blow it to pieces in order to unearth the thing he knew its walls secreted.

we spent two unprofitable days in going over the place, and in the end sank down tired, defeated and without the slightest evidence in our possession that so much as a half crown lay hidden there as treasure-trove. i gave in and announced that if tarnowsy could find anything worth having he was entitled to it so far as i was concerned, and i wouldn't begrudge him a farthing's worth.

he telegraphed that he would arrive on the morning of the third day, accompanied by his lawyer, a notary and an architect. my four guests departed in haste by the late night train, after extracting a promise from me to join them in vienna when i was no longer the master of schloss rothhoefen. i rather relished the thought of a brief vacation!

then, like the spider, i crept back into my web and waited for the foolish fly, knowing all the time that he would have the better of me in the long run.

i confess to a feeling of sadness in parting with the place, after all, elephantine though it was in every sense of the word. within its grey and ancient walls that beautiful thing called love had come to me, to live with me forever. it had come unbidden, against my will, against my better judgment, and in spite of my prejudices, but still it was a thing to cherish and to hold in its virgin youth all through the long years to come. it would always be young and sweet and rose-coloured, this unrequited love of mine. walking through the empty, dismantled rooms that had once been hers, i grew sick with longing, and, in something like fear, fled downward, absurd tears blinding my eyes. verily, i was a fool,—a monstrous, silly fool!

tarnowsy was as bland and smiling as a may morning as he came jauntily down the great hall to where i awaited him.

"i am here incognito, my dear smart," he said, extending his gloved hand, which i took perforce. "sub rosa, you might say," he went on with a wry smile. "a stupid, unchivalric empire has designs upon me, perfunctorily perhaps, but it's just as well not to stir up the monkeys, as you americans would put it."

"our late friend, the baron, was not totally without friends, i take it," said i drily.

he made a grimace. "nor enemies," he declared. "brave men usually have more enemies than friends, and he was a brave man, a truly brave man. because he was a brave man i have no feeling of regret over the outcome of our—er—meeting. it is no honour to kill a coward, mr. smart."

he introduced his three companions. i was surprised to see that the lawyer was not the fawning schymansky, and later on inquired for him. tarnowsy laughed. "poor old schymansky! he is in prison."

"aha! i am not surprised," said i.

"he was my second, poor chap. it did not occur to him to run away after the—er—duel. they had to make an example of some one. his trial comes up next week. i am afraid he may be dealt with rather harshly. i miss him dreadfully. but let us come to the matter in hand, mr. smart. i daresay your time is valuable. you have no objection to my going over the place with mr. saks, i am sure. he is the architect who is to rebuild the castle for me. my attorney and mr. pooly,—the notary,—will, with your assistance, draw up the proper contracts preliminary to the formal transfer, and i will sign them with you upon my return."

"would it not be better to discuss the question of payments before we go any further, count tarnowsy?"

"you will be paid in cash, mr. smart, the instant the deed is transferred," he said coldly.

i followed him to the top of the stairs which descended to the basement of the castle. it was rather significant that he elected to explore the lower regions first of all.

"i shall accompany you," said i deliberately.

a faint scowl came into his face. he eyed me fixedly for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and said that his only desire was to avoid putting me to any unnecessary trouble. if i cared to come, he would be more than grateful. "it isn't necessary to visit the cellars, saks," he said to the architect. "ample time for that sort of rummaging. i particularly want your opinion on the condition of the intersecting walls on this floor and above. my scheme of improvements, mr. smart, contemplates the enlargement of these halls by throwing them into one."

"a very simple process," said i, "if the whole structure doesn't topple down upon your heads while you're about it."

"i shall contrive to save my scalp, mr. smart, no matter what happens. it is very precious to me."

we went over the castle rather hurriedly, i thought, but he explained that saks merely wanted a general idea of the structure; he would return another day to make a careful inspection.

"i daresay you are surprised that i should be willing to pay double your original price for schloss rothhoefen," he ventured, pausing in the corridor to light a cigarette. we were on our way to the top of the east wing.

"oh, no," i said calmly. "i am aware that treasure is buried here. as a matter of fact, i've tried to unearth it myself, but without success. i wish you better luck."

"thanks," said he laconically, after the first swift glance of inquiry. "it is doubtless a fairy tale, handed down by tradition. i take no stock in it. my principal object in acquiring rothhoefen is to satisfy a certain vanity which besets me. i have it on excellent authority that my ex-father-in-law,—the man titus, you know,—talks of buying the property and performing the stupendous, characteristic american feat of removing it, stone and timber, just as it is, to his estate north of new york city. no one but a vulgar, purse-proud american would think of doing such a thing."

the news staggered me. could there be anything in what he said? if it was true that jasper titus contemplated such a quixotic move, there could be but one compelling force behind the whim: sentiment. but not sentiment on the part of jasper titus.

"i cannot believe that he considers doing such a thing," i said rather blankly. "you see, if any one should know, i am that one. he has not approached me, of that you may be sure."

he did not appear to be interested. "my information is not authoritative, mr. smart," said he. "it came to me through my representatives who conferred with his lawyers a fortnight ago in regard to certain difficulties that had existed between us. from what they were able to gather, the idea has taken root in the old man's head. now, i want to buy this place for no other reason than to tell him that he hasn't enough money in his possession to purchase it from me. d'you see? vanity, you may call it, as i do, but it pleases me to coddle it."

very thoughtfully i strode along beside him. would i be serving the countess ill or well by selling the place to tarnowsy? it was her whim, of course, and it was a foolish one.

"suppose that he offered you twice what you are to pay me for the place," said i, struck by a sudden thought.

he laughed easily. "you will not, it seems, acquit me of cupidity, mr. smart. i should not sell to him under any consideration. that is final. take it or leave it."

by this time we were in the rooms once occupied by the countess. he glanced about the apartment carelessly.

"deserted, i observe," he remarked with a queer smile.

my heart almost stood still. "eh? what do you mean?"

"if i am not mistaken, these are the rooms once occupied by your valet's wife. am i right?"

i steadied myself. "she has gone away," i said. "couldn't stand the climate."

"i see," said he, but he was still smiling. "how does your valet stand it?"

"nicely," said i, with a conscious blush.

"i mean the separation, of course."

"certainly. he is used to it."

"isn't it rather odd that he should still think she is here, in the castle?"

"does he?" i murmured.

"i inquired for her when i encountered him downstairs. he said she was quite well this morning, except for a headache."

"she is subject to headaches, i believe," said i, with the utmost nonchalance. he lifted his right eyebrow slightly, but said no more on the subject.

a pile of rubbish lay heaped in one corner of the room, swept up and left there by the big schmicks to await the spring house cleaning season i presume. tarnowsy at first eyed the heap curiously, then rather intently. suddenly he strode across the room and gingerly rooted among the odds and ends with the toe of his highly polished boot.

to my horror a dilapidated doll detached itself and rolled out upon the floor,—a well-remembered treasure of rosemary's and so unique in appearance that i doubt if there was another in the world like it. indeed, i have a distinct recollection of being told that the child's father had painted in the extraordinary features and had himself decorated the original flaxen locks with singular stripes of red and white and blue, a sardonic tribute to the home land of her mother.

i turned away as he stooped and picked up the soiled, discarded effigy. when next i looked at him, out of the corner of my eye, he was holding the doll at arm's length and staring at it with a fixed gaze. i knew that he recognised it. there could be no doubt in his mind as to the identity of that tell-tale object. my heart was thumping fiercely.

an instant later he rejoined me, but not a word did he utter concerning the strange discovery he had made. his face was set and pallid, and his eyes were misty. involuntarily i looked to see if he had the doll in his hand, and in that glance observed the bulging surface of his coat pocket.

in silence we stood there awaiting the reappearance of saks, who had gone into one of the adjoining rooms. i confess that my hand trembled as i lighted a fresh cigarette. he was staring moodily at the floor, his hands clasped behind his back. something smacking of real intelligence ordered me to hold my tongue. i smoked placidly, yet waited for the outburst. it did not come. it never came. he kept his thoughts, his emotions to himself, and for that single display of restraint on his part i shall always remember him as a true descendant of the nobility.

we tramped down the long flights of stairs side by side, followed by the superfluous mr. saks, who did all of the talking. he was, i think, discoursing on the extraordinary ability of ancient builders, but i am not absolutely certain. i am confident tarnowsy did not hear a word the fellow said.

in my study we found poopendyke and the two strangers.

"have you made out the papers?" demanded the count harshly. an ugly gleam had come to his eyes, but he did not direct it toward me. indeed, he seemed to avoid looking at me at all.

"yes, count tarnowsy," said the lawyer. "they are ready for the signatures."

"perhaps mr. smart may have reconsidered his offer to sell," said tarnowsy. "let him see the contracts."

"i have not reconsidered," i said quietly.

"you may sign here, mr. smart," said the notary, as he gave me the document, a simple contract, i found.

"jasper titus will offer more than i can afford to pay," said the count. "please do not feel that i am taking an unfair advantage of you. i am absolutely certain that he wants to buy this place for—his granddaughter, a descendant of barons."

the significance of this remark was obvious, and it was the nearest he ever came to uttering the conviction that had been formed in that illuminating five minutes upstairs. if he suspected,—and i think he did,—he preferred not to ask the questions that must have been searing his curious brain. it was a truly wonderful demonstration of self-restraint. i would have given much to have been able to read his innermost thoughts, to watch the perplexed movements of his mind.

"schloss rothhoefen is yours, count tarnowsy," said i. "it is for you to say whether his whim shall be gratified."

his lips twitched. i saw his hand touch the bulging coat-pocket with a swift, passing movement.

"will you be good enough to sign, mr. smart?" he said coldly. he glanced at his watch. "my time is valuable. when can you give possession?"

"the day the deed is transferred."

"that will be in less than three days. i have satisfied myself that the title is clear. there need be no delay."

we signed the contract after i had requested poopendyke to read it aloud to me. it called for the payment of fifty thousand kronen, or a little over two thousand pounds sterling, at the time of signing. his lawyer handed me a package of crisp banknotes and asked me to count them. i did so deliberately, the purchaser looking on with a sardonic smile.

"correct," said i, laying the package on the table. he bowed very deeply.

"are you satisfied, mr. smart, that there are no counterfeits among them?" he inquired with polite irony. then to his lawyer: "take the gentleman's receipt for the amount in the presence of witnesses. this is a business transaction, not a game of chance." it was the insult perfect.

as he prepared to take his departure, he assumed an insinuating air of apology, and remarked to me:

"i owe you an apology, mr. smart. there was a time when i did you an injustice. i suspected you of keeping your mistress here. pray forgive my error."

five days later i was snugly ensconced in the ducal suite at the bristol, overlooking the kartnerring-strasse, bereft of my baronial possessions but not at all sorry. my romance had been short-lived. it is one thing to write novels about mediaeval castles and quite another thing to try to write a novel in one of them. i trust i may never again be guilty of such arrant stupidity as to think that an american-born citizen can become a feudal baron by virtue of his dollars and cents, any more than an american-born girl can hope to be a real, dyed-in-the-wool countess or duchess because some one needs the money more than she does. it would be quite as impossible, contrariwise, to transform a noble duke into a plain american citizen, so there you are, even up.

my plans were made. after a fortnight in vienna, i expected to go west to london for the autumn, and then back to new york. strange to relate, i was homesick. never before had my thoughts turned so restlessly, so wistfully to the haunts of my boyhood days. i began to long for the lights of broadway (which i had scornfully despised in other days), and the gay peacockery of fifth avenue at four in the afternoon. it seemed to me that nowhere in all the world was life so joyous and blithe and worth while as in "old new york"; nowhere were the theatres so attractive, nowhere such restaurants. even, in retrospect, the subway looked alluring, and as for the fifth avenue stages they were too beautiful for words. ah, what a builder of unreal things a spell of homesickness may become if one gives it half a chance!

as for schloss rothhoefen, i had it on excellent authority (no less a person than conrad schmick himself) that barely had i shaken the dust of the place from myself before the new master put into execution a most extraordinary and incomprehensible plan of reconstruction. in the first place, he gave all the servants two weeks' notice, and then began to raze the castle from the bottom upward instead of the other way round, as a sensible person might have been expected to do. he was knocking out the walls in the cellars and digging up the stone floors with splendid disregard for that ominous thing known as a cataclysm. the grave question in the minds of the servants was whether the usual and somewhat mandatory two weeks' notice wouldn't prove a trifle too long after all. in fact, hawkes, with an inspiration worthy of an office boy, managed to produce a sick grand-mother and got away from the place at the end of one week, although having been paid in full for two.

the day on which i left for paris still saw tarnowsy at work with his masons, heroically battering down the walls of the grim old stronghold, and i chuckled to myself. it was quite evident that he hadn't found the hiding place up to that time.

after several days in paris, i took myself off to london. i was expecting letters at claridge's, where i always take rooms, not because i think it is the best hotel in london but because i am, to some extent, a creature of habit. my mother took me to claridge's when i was a boy and i saw a wonderful personage at the door whom i was pleased to call the king. ever since then i have been going to claridge's and while my first king is dead there is one in his place who bids fair to live long, albeit no one shouts encouragement to him. he wears the most gorgeous buttons i've ever seen, and i doubt if king solomon himself could have been more regal. certainly not nebuchadnezzar. he works from seven in the morning until seven at night, and he has an imperial scorn for anything smaller than half a sovereign.

there were many letters waiting there for me, but not one from the countess aline. i had encouraged the hope that she might write to me; it was the least she could do in return for all that i had done for her, notwithstanding my wretched behaviour on the last day of our association. while i had undoubtedly offended in the most flagrant manner, still my act was not unpardonable. there was tribute, not outrage in my behaviour.

poopendyke fidgeted a good deal with the scanty results of my literary labours, rattling the typed pages in a most insinuating way. he oiled his machine with accusative frequency, but i failed to respond. i was in no mood for writing. he said to me one day:

"i don't see why you keep a secretary, mr. smart. i don't begin to earn my salt."

"salt, mr. poopendyke," said i, "is the cheapest thing i know of. now if you had said pepper i might pause to reflect. but i am absolutely, inexorably opposed to rating anything on a salt basis. if you—"

"you know what i mean," he said stiffly. "i am of no use to you."

"ah," said i triumphantly, "but you forget! who is it that draws the salary checks for yourself and britton, and who keeps the accounts straight? who, i repeat? why, you, mr. poopendyke. you draw the checks. isn't that something?"

"if—if i didn't know you so well, i wouldn't hesitate to call you a blooming fool, mr. smart," said he, but he grinned as he said it.

"but he who hesitates is lost," said i. "this is your chance, don't let it slip." he looked at me so steadily for a moment that i was in some fear he would not let it slip.

before i had been in london a week it became perfectly clear to me that i could not stretch my stay out to anything like a period of two months. indeed, i began to think about booking my passage home inside of two weeks. i was restless, dissatisfied, homesick. on the ninth day i sent poopendyke to the booking office of the steamship company with instructions to secure passage for the next sailing of the mauretania, and then lived in a state of positive dread for fear the confounded american tourists might have gobbled up all of the cabins. they are always going home it seems to me, and they are always trying to get on a single unfortunate ship. in all my experience abroad, i've never known a time when americans were not tumbling over each other trying to get back to new york in time to catch a certain train for home, wherever that may be. but poopendyke managed it somehow. he must have resorted to bribery.

i awoke one morning to find a long and—i was about to say interesting—letter from the countess! it was a very commonplace communication i found on the third or fourth reading. the sum and substance of its contents was the information that she was going to virginia hot springs with the family for a month or two and that lord amberdale was to join them there.

it appeared that her father, being greatly overworked, was in need of a rest, and as the golf links at hot springs are especially designed to make it easy for rich men, his doctor had ordered him to that delightful resort. she hoped the rest would put him on his feet again. there was a page or so of drivel about amberdale and what he expected to do at the new york horse show, a few lines concerning rosemary; and a brief, almost curt intimation that a glimpse or two of me would not be altogether displeasing to her if i happened to be coming that way.

it may be regarded as a strange coincidence that i instructed britton that very evening to see that my golf clubs were cleaned up and put into good shape for a little practice on a course near london, where i had been put up by an english author, and who was forever ding-donging at me to come out and let him "put it all over me." i went out and bought a new brassie to replace the one destroyed by the experimenting rocksworth youth, and before i got through with it had a new putter, a niblick and a spoon, neither of which i needed for the excellent reason that i already possessed a half dozen of each.

keyed up to a high pitch of enthusiasm, i played golf for ten days, and found my friend to be a fine sportsman. like all englishmen, he took a beating gracefully, but gave me to understand that he had been having a good deal of trouble with rheumatism or neuritis in his right elbow. on the last day we played he succeeded in bringing me in two down and i've never seen neuritis dispersed so quickly as it was in his case. i remember distinctly that he complained bitterly of the pain in his elbow when we started out, and that he was as fit as a fiddle at the eighteenth hole. he even went so far as to implore me to stay over till the next sailing of the mauretania.

but i took to the high seas. mr. poopendyke cabled to the homestead at hot springs for suitable accommodations. i cannot remember when i had been so forehanded as all that, and i wonder what my secretary thought of me. my habit is to procrastinate.

i almost forgot to mention a trifling bit of news that came to me the day before sailing. elsie hazzard wrote in great perturbation and at almost unfeeling length to tell me that count tarnowsy had unearthed the supposedly mythical rothhoefen treasure chests and was reputed to have found gold and precious jewels worth at least a million dollars. the accumulated products of a century's thievery! the hoard of all the robber barons! tarnowsy's!

strange to say i did not writhe nor snarl with disappointment and rage. i took the news with a sang froid that almost killed poor poopendyke. he never quite got over it.

nor was i especially disturbed or irritated by the telegram of condolence i received on board ship from tarnowsy himself. he could not resist the temptation to gloat. i shall not repeat the message for the simple reason that i do not wish to dignify it by putting it into permanent form. we were two days out when i succeeded in setting my mind at rest in respect to aline, countess tarnowsy. i had not thought of it before, but i remembered all of a sudden that i held decided scruples against marrying a divorced woman. of course, that simplified matters. when one has preconceived notions about such matters they afford excellent material to fall back upon, even though he may have disregarded them after a fashion while unselfishly thinking of some one else. as i say, the recollection of this well-defined though somewhat remorseless principle of mine had the effect of putting my mind at rest in regard to the countess. feeling as strongly as i did about marriage with divorcees, she became an absolutely undesirable person so far as matrimony was concerned. i experienced a rather doubtful feeling of relief. it was not so hard to say to myself that lord amberdale was welcome to her, but it was very, very difficult to refrain from adding the unamiable words: "damn him."

this rigid, puritanical principle of mine, however, did not declare against the unrighteousness of falling in love with a divorcee.