Then I fell headlong on the road--tripped up! I understood.

They had stretched a rope across my path; as I fell a man bounded up from either side, and I found the rope slack under my body.

There I lay on my face; a man knelt on me, others held either hand; my face was pressed into the mud of the road, and I was like to have been stifled; my hand-bag had whizzed away from me.

Then a voice said: "Turn him over." I knew the voice; it was a confirmation of the fears which I had lately been at such pains to banish.

It justified the forecast of Anton von Strofzin, and explained the wager of the Count of Luzau-Rischenheim--for it was Rischenheim's voice.
They caught hold of me and began to turn me on my back.