norman benedict had removed kate strong’s legging and the long buttoned shoe that had covered her sprained ankle, and had deftly bound up the injured member with a handkerchief, after he had relieved the pain by applying cold water and a gentle massage.

“you have been very kind to me,” said kate, gratefully, as she leaned back on the sofa and realized how much more comfortable the reporter’s skill had made her feel. “i owe you a great debt of gratitude.” how much she was indebted to benedict she did not fully realize, for he had been under a strong temptation to follow rudolph at any cost when he had learned that the lodge-keeper was the very rexanian he had come up into westchester to find.

“your man, there,” said benedict, questioningly, glancing at his watch, “has he been long in your service?”

“several years,” answered kate. “i believe he was exiled from rexania after the revolution of ten years ago.”

her remark tended to increase the reporter’s interest in the lodge-keeper.

“they are a curious people, those rexanians,” he remarked, drawing a chair toward the sofa and seating himself where he could watch kate’s face. “i have seen something of them on the east side.”

kate felt an almost irresistible desire to[101] confess to the youth that they were a race in which she took at that moment an interest that was founded on a most unhappy incident.

“you see,” benedict went on, noting the animated expression on her face, “i am a newspaper reporter, miss strong, and in my work i come into contact with many curious phases of life and queer kinds of people in new york. of course you have never met a rexanian, excepting your lodge-keeper, rudolph?”

“oh, but i have,” cried kate, who did not fully realize that her accident had rendered her slightly feverish and therefore somewhat more loquacious than usual. “a rexanian dined at our house in the city a few nights ago. he had come over on the steamer with my father and mother. he was a very charming man.”

there was something in her voice that impressed benedict as peculiar.

“one of the rexanian nobility, of course?” he asked, diplomatically.

“yes,” she answered, with some hesitation. “he was a count—count szalaki.” her face flushed as the thought flashed through her mind that her frankness in the presence of a newspaper reporter was, to say the least of it, indiscreet. but there were many influences at work to render kate strong less reticent than she ordinarily was by habit and temperament. the sudden disappearance of their rexanian guest and the shadow that had been cast upon his memory by her family had made her impatient to clear up the mystery that surrounded the only man who had ever fully satisfied the romantic longings[102] that pertained to her youth and her self-centred nature.

that ned strong was fitted neither by temperament nor by experience to solve a problem that grew more and more inexplicable as time passed, his sister well knew. already he had lost interest in a mystery that grew more important to kate the longer it remained unsolved. she herself was powerless to prosecute a line of inquiry that, she felt sure, would, if carried forward to the end, exonerate the rexanian whose melancholy and fascinating face had impressed her as that of a man whose soul was too lofty for subterfuge and fraud.

fate had thrown her into the enforced companionship of a man whose journalistic training had thoroughly fitted him for solving mysteries of the kind that now weighed upon her overwrought mind. conflicting emotions warred within her. she possessed many of the prejudices and all the self-control that pertain to the real patrician; added to these was a maidenly fear that somebody might discover the secret that agitated her heart—a secret that she hardly dared to whisper to herself. on the other hand, she had grown almost desperate in her anxiety to learn something more of count szalaki, to receive an explanation of his seemingly churlish silence that would vindicate her innermost conviction that he was what her fancy painted him. perhaps under other circumstances her natural disinclination to grow too confidential with a man about whom she knew almost nothing would have prevailed, but the reaction following her accident had rendered her will-power less active than[103] usual and her inclination to give way to an impulse stronger.

“count szalaki!” exclaimed norman benedict, musingly. suddenly an expression of eagerness crossed his face. “his name was on the passenger list of one of the incoming steamers recently. i noticed it at the time. and so he is a rexanian! that is very interesting. you were kind enough to say a moment ago, miss strong, that you owe me a debt of gratitude. that is hardly true, for what i have done for you has been a pleasure to me. but, frankly, you can do me a kindness. i should very much like to meet count szalaki.”

a mournful expression rested on kate strong’s face.

“i am sorry,” she said regretfully, “but i cannot gratify your wish. we—we—don’t know where count szalaki is.”

norman benedict sprang up in excitement. there was something in the girl’s face and voice that revived the nervous tremor that had affected him when the tremendous possibilities of the hints thrown out by ludovics had first seriously impressed him.

“do you mean to tell me,” he asked, eagerly, “that count szalaki has disappeared?”

“we have seen and heard nothing of him since the night he dined with us,” answered kate.

the reporter paced up and down the room impatiently.

“what do you know about him?” he cried, at length. “are you sure, miss strong, that—that his title was genuine?”

kate had found the reporter’s excitement contagious, and she did not notice the bald[104] discourtesy of his question. her desire to gain benedict as an ally in her efforts to re-establish the reputation of her father’s guest had become irresistible.

“we know,” she admitted, “that there is no such title as that of count szalaki in rexania.”

norman benedict stood still and looked down at her with an expression of eager interest on his face for which she could not satisfactorily account.

at that moment the carriage in which rudolph had gone on his futile mission in search of a physician rattled up to the gate, and before the reporter could put further questions to kate the lodge-keeper had entered the room.

“the doctor will be here directly, miss strong,” said rudolph, nervously. “shall i dismiss the carriage?”

“let the carriage wait,” answered norman benedict, harshly. striding up to the pale-faced rexanian, he said, in a stern voice:

“did you ever hear in rexania, man, of a certain count szalaki?”

it was, in a sense, a random shot, but it struck home. rudolph’s face looked like a mask of bluish-white paste in the twilight gloom of the darkening chamber. he put up his hand, as if to ward off a blow. kate strong strained her eyes to catch the changing expression on the rexanian’s countenance. a deep silence fell upon the trio. suddenly the answer came to the reporter’s question, but not from rudolph smolenski.

muffled by distance, but unmistakable in its horrid import, there echoed from the manor-house the ugly crash of a pistol-shot.