“You are a man after my own liking,” said the hag, chuckling.  “I can foresee that you will go far and perish in a blaze of glory!  Listen!  There are troublous times when an unscrupulous and ambitious soldier may make his mark and carve a good slice out of the great, rich cake called Europe.  Aid me, and I will aid you.  Yes, Herr Major, it is one potentate speaking with another,” the singular woman went on with sinister pride, and trying to draw her shrunken form into straightness; “I rule an army of my own, camped by cohorts in the capitals of Europe—­dating farther back than your own, and, perhaps, as formidable.  It is we who spy out the weak spots in great cities.  The next time, we shall swarm into the doomed city in a mass and we shall devour its wealth and luxuries until we are gorged.  But for the day, it will be glut enough for me to have the life’s blood of this man.  You cannot honor him with single combat, it appears.  Then, let me propose another mode to finish him.”

The major was silent.  Standing high in the ranks of the police, he was not sure how closely he might ally himself with this avowed leader of the evil-doers, who announced the pillage of a metropolis.  She took his silence for consent or approval, for she jauntily continued: 

“The house-maid has told me all they are hatching.  They have a chaise always ready and passports to mask the departure of the young man as a clerk going abroad.  But for precaution, they will not have him go to the train at the depot; he might be questioned and the discrepancies in the passport be perceived.  The chaise is to convey him down the line, and he will get on the cars at a rural depot where the gendarme and ticket-seller will be dull and easily hoodwinked.”

“Very neat,” said Von Sendlingen, appreciating the plan at its due value.  “I always said old Daniels was no fool.”

“What more easy than to post a couple of the horse patrol on the road—­young, hot-headed fellows with restless fingers on the triggers?  The youth will certainly refuse to surrender, whereupon, bang, bang! he falls into the ditch with a brace of bullets in his body.  You and I will have an enemy the less.  This is not the way I planned it in my dreams, but we must take our revenge with the sauce fate serves it up to us ’on the table of Fact.’”

“The scheme is plausible.”

“Feasible! especially will it work like well-oiled machinery if you play your part of lure creditably.”

“My part?” questioned the major.

“Yes, yours.  With a sorrowful eye and a smooth face, I confess I could not confront the man I hate as strongly as his father.  You are different—­you are an arch-villain—­a born diplomatist who wears the very mask for this task and has no face, no compunction, no pity of his own.  Go into that house, ask for Herr Daniels—­that is the Jew player’s non-professional name—­and see him and his daughter, perhaps, the young student,