“Yes.”

“Suppose you begin at the beginning—­and tell me just what you know.”

It was a halting, nervous tale poorly told.  Carl, with his fastidious respect for a careful array of facts, found it trying.  By a word here or a sentence there, he twisted the mass of imperfect information into conformity and pieced it out with knowledge of his own.

“So,” said he coldly, “you thought to stab me the night of the storm and stabbed Poynter.  Fool!  Why,” he added curtly, “did you later spy upon my cousin’s camp when Tregar had expressly forbidden it?”

It was an unexpected question.  Themar flushed uncomfortably.  Carl had a way of reading between the lines that was exceedingly disconcerting.  His information, he said at length after an interval of marked hesitancy, had been too meager.  He had listened at the door once when the Baron had spoken of Miss Westfall to his secretary.  A housemaid had frightened him away and he had bolted upstairs—­to attend to something else while they were both safely occupied.  Rather than work blindly as he needs must if he knew no more, he had sought to add to his information by spying on her camp.

It was unconvincing.

“So,” said Carl keenly, “Baron Tregar does not trust you!”

Themar’s lip curled.

“The Baron knew of your ten days in my cousin’s house?”

Again the marked hesitancy—­the flush.

“Yes,” said Themar.

“You’re lying,” said Carl curtly.  “If you wish to go back—­”

Themar moistened his dry lips and shuddered.

“No,” he whispered, “he did not know.”

“Why?”

Themar fell to trembling.  This at least he must keep locked from the grim, ironic man by the window.

“You’re playing double with Tregar and with me,” said Carl hotly.  “I thought so.  Very well!” Smiling infernally, he drew from his pocket the finger-stretchers.

“Excellency!” panted Themar.

“Why did you serve in my cousin’s house without the knowledge of the Baron?”

“If—­if the secret was harmful to Houdania,” blurted Themar desperately, spurred to confession by the clank of the metal in Carl’s hand, “I—­I could sell the paper to Galituria!”

The nature of the admission was totally unexpected.  Carl whistled softly.

“Ah!” said he, raising expressive eyebrows.

“My mother,” said Themar sullenly, “was of Galituria.  There is hatred there for Houdania—­a century’s feud—­”

“And you in the employ of the rival province hunting this to earth!  What a mess—­what a mess!”

Followed a battery of merciless questions punctuated by the diabolic clank of metal.

Themar had been deputed solely to report to Baron Tregar—­

“And murder me!” supplemented Carl curtly.

“Yes,” said Themar.  “Under oath I was to obey Ronador’s commands without question.  But he did not even trust me with the cipher message of instruction.  That was mailed to the Baron’s Washington address written in an ink that only turned dark with the heat of a fire.  I too was sent to Washington.  Ronador knew nothing of the Baron’s trip to Connecticut.”