"Yes, yes; go, dearest, with Monsieur Picot," urged his wife, her beautiful eyes charged with anguished entreaty.
"For your sake, let it be as you wish," answered Gerald sadly.
At this juncture there came a loud knocking at some door below stairs.
"Venez, monsieur--vite, vite!" said Picot.
Gerald hastily kissed his wife, gripped the Russian's hand for a moment, and then followed the mountebank.
"It will not be wise to keep our friends waiting," said Karovsky. Then turning to Miss Primby: "Madame, will you oblige me by taking charge of these trifles for a little while?" With that he handed her a card-case, a pocket-book stuffed with papers, and a bunch of keys.
"They will be mighty clever if they get them out of here," muttered Miss Primby as the articles disappeared in the capacious depths of some hidden pocket.
The knocking was repeated in louder and more imperative terms than before.
"Let the door be opened," said Karovsky to Margery; then he addressed a few words hurriedly in a low tone to Mrs. Brooke.
The door at the foot of the stairs, which Margery in her alarm had taken the precaution to fasten, had apparently been originally put there with the view of more effectually separating the upper part of the house from the lower, probably at a time when the domicile was divided between two families. This door Margery now unbolted without a word; and without a word, after flashing a bull's-eye in her face, a sergeant of police and two men pushed past her and tramped heavily upstairs.
"Mr. Gerald Brooke, commonly known by the name of Stewart?" said the sergeant interrogatively as he advanced into the room, while his two men took up positions close to the door.
The Russian turned--he had been in the act of lighting a cigarette at the fireplace. "Who are you, sir, and by what right do you intrude into this apartment?" he demanded haughtily.
The sergeant went a step or two nearer and laying a hand on his shoulder, said: "Gerald Brook; you are charged on a warrant with the wilful murder of the Baron Otto von Rosenberg on the 28th of June last at Beaulieu, near King's Harold, and you will have to consider yourself as my prisoner."
The Russian dropped his cigarette. "There is some strange mistake," he said. "I never either saw or spoke to the Baron von Rosenberg on the 28th of last June."