"Upon my word, I can't remember. Why do you ask?"
Time was too precious for Paul to insist. The woman's opinion of the Comtesse Hermine did not matter much. He asked:
"For the present, yes. The prince is on the first floor, at the back; she is on the same floor, but in front."
"If I let her know that Karl has had an accident and that he has sent me, his chauffeur, to tell her, will she see me?"
"Does she know Karl's chauffeur, whose place I took?"
"No. He was a soldier whom Karl brought with him from Belgium."
They pushed the body towards the ditch by the road-side, rolled it in and covered it with dead branches.
"I shall go back to the villa," he said. "You walk on until you come to the first cluster of houses. Wake the people and tell them the story of how Karl was murdered by his chauffeur and how you ran away. The time which it will take to inform the police, to question you and to telephone to the villa is more than I need."
"Have no fear there. Granting that I do not deprive her of her power of doing mischief, how could she suspect you, when the police-investigations will hold me alone to account for everything? Besides, we have no choice."
And, without more words, he started the engine, took his seat at the wheel and, in spite of the woman's frightened entreaties, drove off.
He drove off with the same eagerness and decision as though he were fulfilling the conditions of some new plan of which he had fixed every detail beforehand and as though he felt sure of its success.
"I shall see the countess," he said to himself. "She will either be anxious as to Karl's fate and want me to take her to him at once or she will see me in one of the rooms in the villa. In either case I shall find a method of compelling her to reveal the name of the castle in which Élisabeth is a prisoner. I shall even compel her to give me the means of delivering her and helping her to escape."
But how vague it all was! The obstacles in the way! The impossibilities! How could he expect circumstances to be so complaisant as first to blind the countess' eyes to the facts and next to deprive her of all assistance? A woman of her stamp was not likely to let herself be taken in by words or subdued by threats.