“The assassin, I presume, as he had to make a quick getaway,” Nicholas suggested.

“Or Patrascue himself, which I consider more likely,” I said. “He wanted to scare me into implicating Dragomir.”

“Oh, so he thinks Dragomir did it, does he? Interesting. I had the same suspicions myself,” Nicholas said.

“In his case I don’t think he cares whether Dragomir was guilty or not. He has a long-standing feud with the man—I couldn’t exactly get to the bottom of it, but he’d love to frame Dragomir. I didn’t play along and refused to be intimidated.”

“Quite right,” Anton said. “I love British girls, don’t you, Nick? Such pillars of strength. Think of Boudicca.” He reached across and gave my knee a squeeze.

“Behave yourself, Toni. You can’t have more than one at a time, you know,” Nick said, laughing.

“I don’t see why not. The more the merrier, that’s my motto. In fact I’m rather miffed that I wasn’t born a Turk. I’d have enjoyed a harem. It would have been a challenge to see how many I could get through in one night.”

“You are offending this young lady’s sensibilities,” Nicholas said.

“No, really,” I said, laughing, but Anton stood up. “I shall go and find Belinda,” he said. “She loves to hear of my exploits and she is quite willing to add to them.”

“That young man will have to learn to take life seriously one day,” Nicholas said as soon as Anton was out of hearing. “Father rather despairs of him. Too bad he was born a prince. He’d have done well as a film star in Hollywood, I feel—or better yet a stuntman.”

I looked around. The ladies had begun their bridge game. An old man was holding forth to several of the young counts. I moved closer to Nicholas. “About what I wanted to tell you,” I said.

“Oh, yes. You’ve discovered something important?”

“Very important, especially to you,” I said and related exactly how I remembered the incident. “So it was your glass that he took,” I concluded.

For a while Nicholas said nothing. Then he sighed. “It’s rather sobering, isn’t it? One lives with the threat of assassination, I suppose, but it’s still a shock when it comes close to home. Then it’s obviously some infernal anarchist. Probably did as Patrascue suggested and paid one of the servants to do his dirty work.”

“You can’t think of anyone else who might want you dead?” I asked. “Nobody here who bears you animosity?”

Nicholas gave a wry smile. “I’ve always thought of myself as a likeable sort of chap,” he said. “Not the kind that makes enemies.”

“But if it was a political assassination, why not aim for your father rather than you?”