“It’s really most interesting to study your cousin’s methods,” he said presently. “He seems to take particular pleasure in telling one what he knows will not be believed. It was quite absurd to offer such a fool explanation, if he really wished to explain—and none knows it better than Lotzen. It was just as though he had said to Moore: ‘Tell the Archduke Armand, I’ve been in the library, I’ve accomplished what I went for, and he may go to the devil, with my compliments.’”
“That’s very well, as an exposition of Lotzen’s methods,” said Armand; “but what concerns me is his motive; what was it he went for?”
“The Book of Laws, possibly,” Courtney replied.
“Nonsense—he knows it’s not in the library—if it were, I would have had it days ago.”
“And how does he know you haven’t got it?”
“How! Because I’d have produced it to prove my title.”
Courtney smiled. “Certainly you would—if it proved your title; but if it didn’t?”
“No, I don’t—you overlook the fact that no one has ever seen that decree, and that Lotzen is entitled to assume it was not executed—that the whole story is fabricated, and that you have made away with the Book in order to throw the election into the House of Nobles; and so to have a chance for the Crown, when, in reality, you are entitled to none.”
“Lotzen understands perfectly that Dehra told the truth,” said Armand; “and that I’ve not got the Book—for my part, I’m almost ready to accept her notion that he has it.”
Courtney leaned back in his chair, and studied the smoke rings he sent whirling upwards.
“I can’t agree with you,” he said; “indeed, since his visit to the library, I’m more convinced than ever that he hasn’t the Book. He pretends to have it, so as to mislead you in your search.”
“More likely, in your view of him,” said Armand, “it is to decoy me into a trap where he can make an end of me.”
“I believe you’ve guessed it,” said Courtney, after a moment’s thought; “and what is more, it’s the key to Lotzen’s plan of campaign, and it proves conclusively his murderous purpose. I’d be very shy of information that points Book-ward, unless you know the informant; above everything, don’t be fooled by the device of a rendezvous, or a tattling servant.”
“True enough; and yet I must not let slip any chance that might lead to the recovery of the Book; my equivocal position demands that it be found, both to vindicate Dehra’s story and to justify my own claim to the Succession. Indeed, to my mind, I have no chance whatever unless Frederick’s decree is produced. However, Lotzen won’t use such hoary artifices; he will have some simple little plot that will enmesh me by its very innocence. As a schemer against him I’m not even an ‘also ran.’”
