“I will give you my instructions when I meet you there,” said Falcon. “Go now.”
She turned and walked calmly up the staircase toward her bedroom on the upper floor.
“I must be dreaming,” Lauengram said. “That is no woman. It is Satan with breasts.”
“Ah, but what breasts!” said Hentzau.
“What do we do now?” said Lauengram.
“Do? Why, we do what Satan tells us,” Hentzau said, grinning. “Didn’t you hear? Our pay is being doubled. Go on with you. Get Michael and drive His Would-Be Majesty to Zenda. I’ll join you later.”
“She said for both of us to go,” said Lauengram.
Hentzau winked at him. “I have some unfinished business to attend to.”
He went over to Bersonin’s corpse and retrieved his sabre, examining it to see that it was not damaged.
“I believe that if she were really Satan, you would still not be deterred,” said Lauengram. “I shall have to have a long talk with the others. We did not bargain for this.”
“Do what you will,” said Hentzau. “As for me, I go my own way.”
“You always have. But you may have gone out of your depth this time,” Lauengram told him. “A woman like that is no fit mate for any man.”
“Yes, well, I am not just any man,” said Hentzau. He tossed off a casual salute to Lauengram and followed Falcon up the stairs.
He had one very immediate purpose in mind, but his thoughts were racing. Suddenly, everything had changed. The balance of power had shifted and new opportunities were beginning to present themselves. He had to consider them all quite carefully. He took the stairs two at a time, then moved briskly down the hall towards Sophia’s rooms. He paused outside and tried the door. It was unlocked. He smiled to himself and pushed it open.
She was not there. He called her name several times, but there was no answer. He frowned as he walked through the suite, determining that it was in fact empty. Where the devil had the woman gone? Systematically, he searched every room on the floor. There was no sign of her. Outside, he heard the coach driving away and he went to a window in time to see it turn into the street with Albert driving. Had she gone in the coach? But no, she had ordered both of them to go and she would have wanted to know why he was absent. She had to be still in the house somewhere. He searched every room in the mansion, ignoring the frightened servants until it finally occurred to him to question them, but no one had seen her. It was as if she had simply disappeared.
Hentzau sat down and ordered one of the servants to bring him some wine. He smoked a cigarette. Clearly, there had to be a way out of the house he did not know about. But what was the woman up to? The thing to do now was to consider all the aspects of the situation and find the one that would most benefit Rupert Hentzau. He would have to alter his own plans for tonight now.
On the other hand, he thought, perhaps not. One had to explore all options.
It was late and the streets were mostly empty as the royal coach drove from the palace.
“It was very kind of you to see me home,” said Flavia. “It was not necessary, you know.”
“A fine suitor I would be,” said Finn, “if I simply had the coach deliver you to your door as if you were a package.”
Flavia suppressed a smile. “It would not have been the first time,” she said.
“I’ve treated you dreadfully, haven’t I?” said Finn. “I don’t know what could have been wrong with me. From now on, I shall make it up to you, I promise.”
She looked at him and smiled. Finn felt wretched. The worst part of it all was that he really liked her. He had never been very good at concealing such things and she obviously was responding, which had been the whole idea. However, now he was beginning to have regrets, for her sake.
“Poor Michael,” he said to change the subject. “He did not even stay for dessert.”
Flavia shook her head. “You pushed him too far, Rudolf. There was murder in his eyes when he looked at you tonight.”
“Is that what it was? And I believed it to be indigestion!”
“You may joke,” she said, “but where before he may have envied you, you have now given him more than enough reason to truly despise you. You made him out to be a fool in front of everyone. I beg you to be wary of him, Rudolf. I fear that he may stop at nothing.”
“You worry too much,” Finn said. “It is merely the rivalry of brothers and nothing more.”
“Surely you do not believe that.”
“Well, perhaps not,” said Finn, “but he brought it on himself. He should not have had the woman bait me in that manner. Especially in your presence.”
“I do not think that I have ever met a woman quite so brazen in my life,” said Flavia. “I had heard about the countess. One cannot avoid such gossip; but seeing her tonight, I believe it all. That woman would be capable of anything.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Finn, thinking that it was the understatement of the year, if not the century.
“She is very beautiful, though, is she not?” said Flavia, not looking at him.
“I suppose,” said Finn, “if one cares for the type.”
“Do men…” she hesitated. “Do men find such women to be desirable?”
“I am sure that many do.”
“Do you?”
“That is an impertinent question.”
“Forgive me. I did not mean to be-”
“Oh, for goodness sake, I was only joking,” Finn said.
“Oh. I see.”
“In answer to your question, I will be frank. In a word, yes.”
“You are forthright, at least.”
“I had not finished. It is one thing to respond to a woman physically, and don’t blush. Remember that you asked.”
“I did, indeed.”
“And it is quite another thing to look beyond the senses and consider a woman-or a man, for that matter-for what goes on inside the head. In some cases, as was the case with me for far too long, I fear, nothing goes on at all. In others, what goes on within is a far cry from what appears without. In Countess Sophia’s case, I have the strong impression that what goes on within is very like snakes writhing.”
Flavia shuddered. “Lord, Rudolf, what a thought! I had not suspected that your imagination was so lurid.”
“Drink can do that to a man,” said Finn, wryly.
“And how do you perceive what goes on inside my own head?” she said, with a slight smile.
“To answer that would be impertinent of me,” said Finn.
“How diplomatically you avoid the question,” she said, chuckling.
“Diplomacy, in many situations, is merely a tool to prevent one’s looking foolish,” Finn said.
“How statesmanlike you are becoming!”
“It comes of spending hours on end with Sapt,” Finn said. “Once I began to actually listen to him, I discovered him to be the very font of wisdom.”
“I simply cannot stop marveling at the change in you,” she said. “You are like a different man.” She pursed her lips and cocked her head to one side, saying in a joking manner, “I am beginning to suspect that you are not Rudolf at all, but some imposter who is his double. Tell me the truth, what have you done with the real king?”
“The truth? He’s being kept in the dungeons of Zenda Castle. It’s all a plot of Michael’s.”
The coach came to a halt before her house.
“That was a poor jest,” she said. “The way Michael looked at you tonight, I can almost believe that he would be capable of such a thing. Remember, Rudolf, that you have no heir as yet. If anything should happen to you, the throne would surely go to Michael.”
“Are you so frightened for me?” Finn said.
The sincerity in her face stabbed him to the heart. “You have changed so, Rudolf, almost overnight, it is as if… as if you really were another man. I feel as if we have met for the first time. You spoke of what appears without
