this infernal place was extraordinary. "Well, if I'm not very much mistaken, you were physicked, and it was Baxter's doing."
"But why?"
"Ah! That's yet to be discovered. But you may bet your bottom dollar it was some part of their devilish conspiracy. I'm as certain of that as that we are here now. Now here's another point. Do you remember my running out of the Casino last night? Well, that was because I saw Nikola standing in the roadway watching us."
"Are you certain! How could he have got here? And what could his reasons be for watching us?"
"Why, can't you see? To find out how his plot is succeeding, to be sure."
"And that brings us back to our original question—what is that plot?"
"That's rather more difficult to answer! But if you ask my candid opinion I should say nothing more nor less than to make you prisoner and blackmail your father for a ransom."
For some minutes neither of us spoke. The outlook seemed too hopeless for words, and the Marquis was still too weak to keep up an animated conversation for any length of time. He sat leaning his head on his hand. But presently he looked up again.
"My poor father!" he said. "What a state he will be in!"
"And what frets me more," I returned, "how he will regret ever having listened to my advice. What a dolt I was not to have told him of my suspicions."
"You must not blame yourself for that. I am sure my father would hold you as innocent as I do. Now let us consider our position. In the first place,
