Curiously enough, while not one of the innkeeper's relics was missing,
Hatszegi's box with the 4,000 ducats had disappeared. A little later it
was found in the bed of the stream--empty of course.
Makkabesku was a very long time coming to, but he contrived at last, in
a very tremulous voice, to tell Hatszegi the somnambulistic case of the
double shots, nay he called Heaven to witness that Fatia Negra had
caught the bullets in his hands as if they were flies.
"You're a fool," cried Hatszegi angrily. "I suppose you fired above his
head on both occasions."
"But then you ought to see the marks of the bullets on the opposite
wall."
And it was a fact that, look as they might, they found no trace of a
bullet on the walls or anywhere else.
CHAPTER XV
WHO IT WAS THAT RECOGNIZED FATIA NEGRA
The events at the Mikalai _csarda_ considerably upset Hatszegi. He
returned home very sulky and was unusually ungracious towards Henrietta.
There were several violent scenes between them, in the course of which
the baron twitted his wife with having betrayed him and hinted that it
was all in consequence of her own and her brother's bad conduct that she
had been disinherited by her grandfather. He revealed to her that he
knew everything. He was well aware, he said, that in her girlhood she
had had a rascally young attorney as a lover and had thereby incurred
her grandfather's anger.
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