Page:Roy Norton--The unknown Mr Kent.djvu/69



OR what seemed to Kent a long and perilous time, the car jolted and slipped, and ran at a fearsome speed over long level stretches, up hills, over mountain roads, and at last rushed noisily up a harsh incline and across what he surmised had once been a moat bridge, to come to a halt in a courtyard, where it stood and steamed like a spent racer finishing a course.

"Well! What's wanted?"

A night watchman, flashing an electric torch, challenged them, and they climbed out to observe that the storm was abating, that off on one horizon stars were shining through a cloud opening, and that they stood in front of a huge and gloomy old pile that Kent knew must be the Castle Hertz.

"The baron is within?" asked the chancellor.

"Without a doubt. And asleep as such an honest man should be," was the watchman's surly response.

"He must be aroused," grunted the chancellor.

"Not by me!" exclaimed the watchman. "I'm an old man with a family dependent on me. Can't you gentlemen wait until morning?" [65]