Seven had been the hour named by his intention--it was a little after six o'clock when he heard a knock upon his bedroom door and started up wondering who called him at such an hour.
"Who is there, what do you want?" he cried, with the bedclothes still about his shoulders. No one answered this, but the knock was repeated, a decisive knock as of one who meant to win admittance.
"All right, I will come in a minute," was now his answer; to which he added the question--"Is that you, Count? Do you know it's only just six o'clock?"
He opened the door and found himself face to face with the hotel valet, an amiable young Frenchman by the name of Malette.
"Monsieur," said the man, "will you please come at once? There has been an accident--his excellency is very ill."
"An accident to the Count? Is it serious, Malette?"
"It is very serious, monsieur. They say that he will not live. The doctors are with him--I thought that you would wish to know immediately."
Alban turned without a word and began to put on his clothes. His hands were quite cold and he trembled as though stricken by an ague. When he had found a dressing-gown, he huddled it on anyhow and followed Malette down the corridor.
"When did this happen, Malette?"
"I do not know, monsieur. One of the servants chanced to pass his excellency's door and saw something which frightened him. He called the concierge and they waked the Herr Director. Afterwards they sent for the police."
"Do they think that the Count was assassinated, then?"
"Ah, that is to find out. The officers will help us to say. Will you go in at once, monsieur, or shall I tell the Herr Director?"
Alban said that he would go at once. The young fear to look upon the face of death and he was no braver than others of his age. A terrible sense of dread overtook him while he stood before the door and heard the hushed whispers of those about it. Here a giant police officer had already taken up his post as sentinel and he cast a searching glance upon all who approached. There were two or three privileged servants standing apart and discussing the affair; but a stain upon a crimson carpet was more eloquent of the truth than any word. Alban came near to swooning as he stepped over it and entered the room without word or knock.
They had laid the Count upon the bed and dragged it to the window to husband the light. Two doctors, hastily summoned from a neighboring hospital, worked like heroes in their shirt sleeves--a nurse in a gray dress stood behind them holding sponge and bandages. At the first glance, the untrained onlooker would have said that Sergius Zamoyski was certainly dead. The intense pallor of his face, the set eyes, the stiffened limbs, spoke of the rigor mortis and the finality of tragedy. None the less, the surgeons went to work as though all might yet be saved. Uttering their orders in the calm and measured tones of those whom no scene of death could unnerve, they were unconscious of all else but the task before them and its immediate achievement. When they had need of anything, they spoke to the Herr Director of the hotel who passed on his commands in a sharp decisive tone to a porter who stood at his heels. Near by him stood the Chief of the Police, Zaniloff, a short burly man who wore a dark green uniform and held his sheathed sword lightly in his left hand. These latter looked up when the door opened, but the doctors took no notice whatever. There was an overpowering odor of anaesthetics in the room although the windows had been thrown wide open.