the money. The head keeper then hurried to the château and informed his master.”
“Did Frau Grumbach hear the details?” asked Dagobert. He was anxious that the gruesome details should be kept from her.
“Yes. She rose at once, and it was she who asked Herr Grumbach to send immediately for Herr Dagobert. I do not know, of course, how the murder happened, but I believe the circumstances were——”
Dagobert stopped him. He did not wish to hear any more. It was an old principle of his never to listen to second-hand testimony before beginning an investigation.
“When did you leave?” he asked the chauffeur.
“Four o’clock, sharp, Herr Dagobert. And I was here at six to the minute.”
“What is the distance?”
“Ninety-six kilometers.”[1]
“In two hours. Not so bad. Of course, we'll have to do better on the way back.”
“But, Herr Dagobert―”
“Do better, I said. That is hardly asking too much of a sixty-horse-power Mercedes. I am taking a stop-watch along, and shall time you. Listen, Marius: for every minute under two hours in your running time back to the chateau, I will give you two kronen. If ever time is money, it is in these cases.”
Marius, from his own standpoint, agreed with this view; and they reached Palting Castle in one hour and thirty-two minutes. Marius, with undisguised satisfaction, collected his merited reward of fifty-six kronen.
Frau Grumbach, who was waiting on the terrace, ran down the wide stairway when she saw Dagobert’s patriarchal head rise from the big car, welcoming her old friend even more cordially than usual. She was pale and very much upset by the terrible occurrence. Dagobert’s presence calmed her somewhat,—she knew that now everything would be done to exact full atonement for the crime.
“I have waited breakfast for you,” she began. “But we have only twenty minutes in which to eat. At half past eight the Judicial Commission will meet here to begin the investigation. My husband has gone to get the Commission together now.”
- ↑ Sixty miles.
