The captive still sat on his chair. The terrific noise and bustle of breaking down the door seemed not to have aroused him from his lethargy, but when Prince Aribert spoke to him in German he looked at his uncle. ‘Will you not come with us, Eugen?’ said Prince Aribert; ‘you needn’t stay here any longer, you know.’ ‘Leave me alone,’ was the strange reply; ‘leave me alone. What do you want?’ ‘We are here to get you out of this scrape,’ said Aribert gently. Racksole stood aside. ‘Who is that fellow?’ said Eugen sharply. ‘That is my friend Mr Racksole, an Englishman--or rather, I should say, an American--to whom we owe a great deal. Come and have supper, Eugen.’ ‘I won’t,’ answered Eugen doggedly. ‘I’m waiting here for her. You didn’t think anyone had kept me here, did you, against my will? I tell you I’m waiting for her. She said she’d come.’ ‘Who is she?’ Aribert asked, humouring him. ‘She! Why, you know! I forgot, of course, you don’t know. You mustn’t ask. Don’t pry, Uncle Aribert. She was wearing a red hat.’ ‘I’ll take you to her, my dear Eugen.’ Prince Aribert put his hands on the other’s shoulder, but Eugen shook him off violently, stood up, and then sat down again. Aribert looked at Racksole, and they both looked at Prince Eugen. The latter’s face was flushed, and Racksole observed that the left pupil was more dilated than the right. The man started, muttered odd, fragmentary scraps of sentences, now grumbling, now whining. ‘His mind is unhinged,’ Racksole whispered in English. ‘Hush!’ said Prince Aribert. ‘He understands English.’ But Prince Eugen took no notice of the brief colloquy. ‘We had better get him upstairs, somehow,’ said Racksole. ‘Yes,’ Aribert assented. ‘Eugen, the lady with the red hat, the lady you are waiting for, is upstairs. She has sent us down to ask you to come up. Won’t you come?’ ‘Himmel!’ the poor fellow exclaimed, with a kind of weak anger. ‘Why did you not say this before?’ He rose, staggered towards Aribert, and fell headlong on the floor. He had swooned. The two men raised him, carried him up the stone steps, and laid him with infinite care on a sofa. He lay, breathing queerly through the nostrils, his eyes closed, his fingers contracted; every now and then a convulsion ran through his frame. ‘One of us must fetch a doctor,’ said Prince Aribert. ‘I will,’ said Racksole. At that moment there was a quick, curt rap on the french window, and both Racksole and the Prince glanced round startled. A girl’s face was pressed against the large window-pane. It was Nella’s. Racksole unfastened the catch, and she entered. ‘I have found you,’ she said lightly; ‘you might have told me. I couldn’t sleep. I inquired from the hotel-folks if you had retired, and they said no; so I slipped out. I guessed where you were.’ Racksole interrupted her with a question as to what she meant by this escapade, but she stopped him with a careless gesture. ‘What’s this?’ She pointed to the form on the sofa.