"I don’t know what you mean by that," he answered, wagging his head.
I affected to take offence. "It’s enough for my purposes that I do. Is it worth while to try and fool me? I don’t take to it easily, you know."
"Then don’t pretend that von Felsen isn’t in all this with you. I know too much. And now, look here, I’ll tell you the real object of this visit. Von Felsen is trying a fool’s game with me, and it has to stop. I know he daren’t go against you, Ziegler, and you daren’t go against me; even if your friendship for me were less than it is."
My tone alarmed him. "What is he doing? I have influence with him, of course."
"What he is doing may turn out to touch you pretty closely; but never mind what it is for the present. Give me a line to him--that I am your friend and that anything he does against me is the same as if done against you."
"Of course I will," he consented. He wrote a few lines quickly and handed them to me.
"Herr Bastable is a great friend of mine. Any service to him is a service to me; and the reverse.
"That will do. And now a last word. Not a syllable to him or any one of what has passed between us to-day."
"I give you my honour, my dear Herr Bastable," he agreed readily.
"I shall hear if you talk, mind; and if I do--well I shall take it as a sign that I am to talk on my side. And I shall." I left him with that and walked out of his office on excellent terms with myself.
I was convinced that von Felsen was so tight in the toils that the letter I had obtained would frighten him consumedly. But I little thought of the grim results which were to flow from that afternoon’s conversation.
I hurried home as fast as I could, and it was fortunate that I did so. As my cab drew up at the house, I found von Felsen and Dormund at the open door. I saw the move at once, without von Felsen’s smug explanation. "Herr Dormund has a question to put to your sister, Bastable, about Fräulein Althea."
"I trust I am not intruding, Herr Bastable," said Dormund apologetically; "but Herr von Felsen tells me Miss Bastable has expressed the wish to give me important information."
"Von Felsen is wrong. My sister does not know any more than I do; but come into my den here and I’ll see if she is at home," I replied indifferently.