"You don’t appear to understand that you have to explain your connexion with the Polish party," he retorted.
"My explanation is easy. I had two objects--one, to save the Baron von Ringheim; the other, to catch von Felsen tripping. I have succeeded in both. He knows that and more than that. And I can of course prove everything."
"What does this mean?" he asked von Felsen, who was staring at me in dire fear about what I meant to tell.
"I gave him twenty-four hours in which to get out of the country. Let him tell you under what circumstances. That’ll clear the ground."
Von Felsen was too frightened to attempt a reply, however; and he sat eyeing us both uneasily, and pulling at his fingers with little nervous jerks.
"The matter’s a thousand times more serious than you think, Borsen, and if I did the right thing, I should send straight for the police and hand him over to them. But if he makes a clean breast of it, and if the things are done which I require, I’m willing to hold my tongue."
"You think you are in a position to make terms," cried Borsen with some show of indignation.
"I don’t think it. I know it. You have two things to get into your head. In the first place, that this fellow is a most infernal scoundrel, and that I have found him out; and in the second, that I am in possession of that paper which was stolen from the Count’s office, and of the set of duplicate keys which enabled the thief to steal it."
"What do you mean?" He was intensely excited on the instant.
"Look there;" and I pointed at von Felsen, who was cowering down in his chair in a condition of abject terror.
"Do you mean that he----? My God, is it possible?" he cried horror-struck.
"Yes, that is just what I do mean. Let him tell you himself. If he won’t then, I will; and I shall add the rest. The rest is blacker still."
It was some time before von Felsen could bring himself to speak, and then he gave a long rambling story of how he had been in Ziegler’s power, and had been forced to disclose secret after secret, until the theft of the papers had been the climax. Questions from me brought out the rest--that he had brought Baron von Ringheim to Berlin; had let him know where Althea was in order to entrap me; and all the rest of it, including my abduction by Dragen, and the attempts on my life.