Beaumanoir and Felix fortified the position Page 155Beaumanoir and Felix fortified the positionPage 153
Joan was the first to credit him. She ran to the window. "Oh, Alec, it is true!" she cried. "I was watching the crowd before you came, and it looks quite different now. Hundreds of men have gathered, and they are armed with knives and pistols. Something has made them angry, and the two soldiers are becoming alarmed. Oh, my dear, my dear! misfortune and I have come to you hand in hand!"
"It seems to me that you and Felix have saved my life," said Alec quietly. "Now, Beaumanoir, you and I must fortify the position. Joan, stand with your back to the wall between the windows. Felix, watch the houses opposite, and don't let the enemy take us in flank without warning. Thank goodness for an oak sideboard and a heavy table! Are you ready, Berty? Heave away, then! We shall occupy a box in the front row when Stampoff arrives with his hussars! By Jove! what a day! Twelve hours in that scorching sun and Joan waiting here all the time! Well, wonders will never cease! I wish we had one of those live shells we were experimenting with this morning. It would come in handy when the first panel gives way."
Joan'seyes could not leave Alec. She followed each movement of his lithe, strongly knit frame as he and Beaumanoir hauled the heavy pieces of furniture into position behind the door. She was not fully alive as yet to the real menace of the gesticulating mob surging in the street beneath, and her thoughts ran riot in the newly discovered paradise of being loved and in love.
For Alec had asked no questions, listened to no explanations. When he entered the room, he found her, half turned from the window, conscious that he was near, though trying to persuade her throbbing heart that Felix would not depart from an implied promise by sending him to her without warning. She strove to utter some words of greeting. Before she could speak, Alec's arms were around her, and he was kissing her lips, her forehead, her hair. She saw him as through a mist. Her first fleeting impression was that he had become older, sterner, more commanding. Kingship had set its seal on him. A short month of power had stamped lines on his face that would never vanish. But that sense ofimperiousness was quickly dispelled by the enchantment of her presence.
Somehow, almost without spoken word, he brought the thrilling conviction that he was hungering for her. The light in his eyes, the overwhelming ardor of his embrace, the magnetic force that leaped the intervening space while yet they were separated by half the length of the room,—these things bewildered, charmed, subdued her wholly, and she kindled under them ere her brain could summon to aid the feeblest of remonstrances.
She abandoned the nebulous idea of protest when she found that she in turn was clinging to him, giving kiss for kiss with a delirious intensity that refused to be denied. Nevertheless, the sheer joy of her emotions frightened her, and she was endeavoring to subdue its too sensuous expression when Beaumanoir opened the door, to close it again hurriedly. She recovered her faculties slowly. She was still quivering under the stress of that moment of ineffable delight, and her brown eyes sparkled with the glow of a soul on fire, and she was brought back to earth only by the knowledge that Felix, standing at his post near a window, was on the verge of collapse.
The sideboard contained a flask of brandy, which Pauline had insisted on stowing in a dressing bag in case of illness. Joan, glad of the pretext to do some commonplace thing, thankful for the mere utterance of commonplace words, called for help.
"Please remove the table for an instant," shecried. "Felix is ill, and I want to get at some cognac that is in the cellarette."
"Ill! He was lively enough in the street a minute ago, singing like a thrush," said Alec cheerily, though he did not fail to pull the table clear of the cupboard. "What is it, my Humming Bee?" he demanded, turning to Poluski. "Is it a surfeit of excitement, or late hours, or what?"
"I am yielding to the unusual, my King," crackled the Pole's voice thinly. "During three whole days I have done naught but think, and that would incommode an elephant, leave alone a rat like me."
"Rat, indeed! When we are all out of this trap, Felix, you must tell me what caused your alarming exercise of brain power. Already you have bothered me to guess how you fathomed the pretty scheme you are now upsetting."
"There, dear Felix, drink that, and you will soon feel strong again," put in Joan.
"Ha, dear Felix, am I? I expected to be called anything but that after breaking my word so disgracefully!"
"You are forgiven," said she with a tender smile at Alec.
Beaumanoir, discreetly peeping through the window over Poluski's shoulder, saw something that perplexed him.
"I say, Alec," he exclaimed, "I thought you told me that Stampoff's man Bosko was a thoroughly reliable sort of chap."
"I have always found him so."
"Well, just at present he looks jolly like a deserter. He is making a speech to the mob and tearing off his uniform obligato. The other joker is scared to death."
"Bosko making a speech! Why, he never says anything but 'Oui, monsieur,' or 'Non, monsieur,' which is all the French he knows. Well, this is a day of wonders, anyhow."
Neglecting the precautions he had insisted on a minute earlier, Alec himself went to the window and drew Joan with him. There were two other windows in the room; but the four clustered in the one deep recess, for the thick walls of this old building were meant to defy extremes of heat and cold. By this time one of the two orderlies had dismounted and was stamping on his smart cavalry jacket and plumed shako, thus announcing by eloquent pantomime, that he was discarding forever the livery of a tyrant.
The mob in the street was now swollen to unrecognizable dimensions, and Alec's charger, which Bosko was holding, resented the uproar by lashing out viciously with his heels. A man who had narrowly escaped being kicked drew a revolver, fired, and the spirited Arab fell with a bullet in its brain. The dastardly act was cheered; for the Seventh Regiment remembered that this same white horse had stumbled and thrown King Theodore on the day of his murder.
"Oh, the coward, the hateful coward!" wailedJoan, and two of the men muttered expressions of opinion that must be passed over in silence.
But Felix happened to be watching Bosko, and noted the black rage that convulsed his face when the Arab dropped dead at his feet. The Albanian's feelings mastered him only for an instant.
He began at once to harangue the crowd again, evidently offering to lead his own horse out of harm's way, and loudly bidding his frightened comrade to do likewise.
A path was being cleared when some one looked up at the window, and a fierce yell proclaimed the King's presence. Bosko was forgotten. Sight of their quarry had frenzied the pack.
"Down everyone!" cried Alec, bending double and dragging Joan with him.
Several panes of glass were starred with little round holes, mortar fell from the ceiling, and the crackle of shots below showed that revolvers were popular in Delgratz. But Felix had seen enough to set his shrewd wits working.
"That man of yours—is Bosko his name?—is no fool," said he, when they had crept from the glass strewn area into the shelter of the stout wall. "He is gulling your beloved subjects, Alec. He realizes that trouble is brewing, and he means to steal off and bring help. Fortunately, my brave Sobieski will be at the President's house by this time, and your guards may arrive before those cutthroats in the street decide to storm the hotel."
"Sobieski—who is he?" asked Alec.
"A waiter in the restaurant. I have pledged you to buy him a café in Warsaw if the troops come speedily."
"Make it a brewery, Alec," said Beaumanoir; "these bounders mean business."
A constant fusillade of bullets was now tearing the windows to atoms, and shattering the ceiling on the other side of the room. Lord Adalbert was justified in offering liberal terms for relief.
The King, standing with one arm thrown round Joan's shoulders, felt the tremors she strove vainly to repress. "Don't be afraid, sweetheart. They cannot reach us here," he said. "I have one unknown protector, it seems, and I feel sure that Felix is right about Bosko. The only drawback is that our friendly waiter may find some difficulty in persuading the officers on duty at Monsieur Nesimir's house that we are in danger. We must risk that."
"Oh, to safeguard against delay, I told him to ask for the Prince," said Felix.
"What Prince?"
"Your father, of course. Ha! Name of a good little gray man! You don't know that Prince Michael and your mother are in Delgratz."
"Mark cock!" cried Beaumanoir, as a bullet flew breast high across the room and imbedded itself in the inner wall. The heroes of the Seventh Regiment were firing from the upper floors of the houses opposite.
Alec did not seem to heed. The look of blank amazement on his face proved that he had ridden straight from the review ground to the university, whereas a call at the President's house would have enlightened him.
"It is true, dear," whispered Joan. "They came with us from Paris; in the same train, that is. We all arrived at Delgratz this morning. Your mother spoke to me on the platform at Vienna."
He smiled with something of the old careless humor of Paris days. "I suppose everything is for the best," he said. "Nothing surprises me now, not even this," and he nodded cheerfully toward the landing and stairs, whence a rush of footsteps and clamor of voices were audible.
The handle of the door was wrenched violently, and shots were fired into the lock and at the panels; but the wood was seasoned and stanch, and nothing short of a rifle would drive a bullet through. The door creaked and strained under the pressure of the mutineers' shoulders. Had it not been reinforced by the solid sideboard and equally heavy table, it must have given way. As it was, no four men in Delgratz could hope to force an entrance, and no more than four could attack it simultaneously.
It was noteworthy that no one called on the King to come out. These hirelings, enraged against a ruler who had brought to the Danube a new evangel of justice and uprightness, of honest government and clean handed service to the State, made no pretenseof requesting a hearing for their grievances. They had planned to shoot him in cold blood while he and his three companions were momentarily delayed by the barrier of the bullock cart in front of the corner café. Balked of this easy means of attaining their end, they were still sure of success. But their cries and curses were intended only for self encouragement. Not even the bloodstained Seventh Regiment had the effrontery to ask their victim to admit them.
There was a momentary quieting of their wild beast fury when the door resisted their utmost efforts. Joan tried to persuade her tortured mind that the conspiracy had failed.
"They will not dare to remain," she whispered. "They know that assistance may arrive at any moment. Listen, they are going now!"
"Are you gentlemen armed?" asked Felix, grimly.
"Yes, with riding whips," said Alec. "For my part, I have refused to carry any more dangerous weapon; though it is true that I entered Delgratz with a sword in my hand," he added, remembering with a twinge his imagining of Joan's ready laugh when she heard of Prince Michael's brown paper parcel.
"Pity you don't possess a revolver apiece. They would prove useful when the panels are broken, which will happen just as soon as these high spirited politicians on the landing secure axes," went on Felix remorselessly.
He wanted Joan to realize the certain fate thatawaited her once the door gave way. Concealment was useless, and he hoped she would faint before the end came.
"What price the leg of a chair?" asked Beaumanoir.
The Pole bent his gleaming gray eyes on the Briton with a curious underlook of inquiry. "No, no. We can do better than that. You would be shot before you could strike a blow. Joan, please crawl past the window and stand upright in the corner close to the wall. You follow, Alec. I go next, and this young gentleman, who must be Lord Adalbert Beaumanoir, since he has all the outward signs of the British aristocracy, will place himself near the door. If he does exactly what I tell him, we still have a fighting chance."
The change of position advised by Poluski rendered them safe from their assailants' bullets until the door was actually off its hinges and the furniture thrust aside. In the last resort, Alec meant to show himself at a window and offer a fair target to the men in the houses across the street. When he fell the shooting from that quarter would cease. Then, acting on his precise instructions, Beaumanoir and Felix must lift Joan through another window and allow her to drop to the pavement. It was not far. She might escape uninjured, and there was a possibility that the mob would spare a woman who was an utter stranger, one in no way mixed up in Kosnovian affairs.
Time enough to take this final step when their defense was forced, and that would be soon. In all likelihood, he had not much more than a minute to live, and he devoted that minute to Joan.
"Sweetheart," he murmured tenderly, "you saw the beginning of my career as a King, and it seems that you are fated to see its end. Have you forgotten what Pallas Athene said to Perseus? It is not so long ago, that morning in the Louvre. But why did you run away from Paris? Why have you not written? If you knew how I hoped for a word from you! My heart told me you loved me; but even one's heart likes to be assured that it is not mistaken."
He was looking into her eyes. The fantasy seized her that he was able to read her secret soul, and she swept aside any thought of concealment. "Alec," she said, "tell me truly, are we in danger of death?"
"I am," he replied simply. It was better so, he thought.
"Then I thank God that I am here to die with you."
He dared not hint that she might escape. "We still have a remote chance," he went on. "Let us talk of ourselves, not of death."
"But I don't want to die, Alec," she whispered brokenly. "I want to live, dear. I want to live and be your wife. Oh, Alec, let us ask Heaven for one year of happiness, one short year——" Shechoked, and the tears so bravely repressed hitherto dimmed her glorious eyes. Her piteous appeal increased the torment of his impotence. His face grew marble white beneath the bronze, and he bent in mute agony over her bowed head.
Felix, crouching behind Beaumanoir, assured himself that the King and his chosen lady were momentarily deaf to all else than the one supreme fact that each loved the other. He sighed, and touched the stalwart Beaumanoir's shoulder, which he was just able to reach with uplifted hand.
"Drop on your knees," he said. "I want to tell you something."
"You think it is high time I said my prayers—eh, what?"
Yet the younger man obeyed, since there was a calm authority in the pinched and wrinkled face raised to his that seemed to despise the uproar of the mob. Felix was singularly unmoved by the bestial din. He evidently cared naught for the continuous shooting from street and houses, or the renewed outburst on the stairs that welcomed the arrival of axes and sledge hammers rifled from a neighboring shop.
"Pay heed to what I am going to say," he muttered, bringing his mouth close to Beaumanoir's ear, "I don't wish Joan or the King to know what we are doing. They will be wise after the event, not before, which is often the better part of wisdom. Have you a steady hand? Will you flinch if I askyou to destroy every man on the other side of that door?"
Beaumanoir twisted his head round and grinned. "If asking will do the trick, try me!" said he.
Felix took from an inner pocket of his coat a gunmetal cigarcase. He pressed a spring, and the lid flew open. Inside were four cigar shaped cylinders, each studded with a number of tiny knobs. He withdrew a cylinder, and from a small cup in its base obtained six percussion caps, which he proceeded to adjust on the iron nipples.
"My own patent!" he exclaimed, with an air of pride that was grotesque under the conditions. "Each cigar is a bomb, warranted to clear any ordinary room of its occupants. It does not discriminate. It will dismember the most exalted personages."
"By gad!" ejaculated Beaumanoir, shrinking away slightly.
Felix pressed closer in his enthusiasm. "The point carrying the detonators is loaded with lead. If properly handled, it is sure to fly with that end in front. You take it between your thumb and second finger, thus, and poise it by placing the tip of the first finger behind it, thus; but you must throw hard, and wait until the upper part of the door is smashed, and you can fling it clear, or three ounces of dynamite will explode in front of your nose, with disastrous effect. I will have a second bomb ready if the first one fails; but it will not."
"By gad!" said Beaumanoir again, gazing at the deadly contrivance as if fascinated by it. He could retreat no farther, being jammed against the sideboard.
"Do you understand?" demanded Felix coolly.
"Perfectly. Is it—er—Russian or Spanish?"
"Neither. I call it the International. Are you ready?"
A thunderous blow shook the door. Another and another fell on lock and hinges.
"Felix!" said Alec, turning from Joan and stooping over the hunchback.
"Don't bother me, I am busy," growled the Pole.
"But we must act. We are done for now, and Joan must be saved. I mean to draw the enemy's fire. When I am hit, you and Beaumanoir must take Joan to the third window over there—take her by force if necessary——"
"My good Alec, at present you are a King without power. Please don't talk nonsense. Keep in your corner, pacify Joan, and leave the rest to me."
"Felix," and Alec's tone grew curt and sharp, "this is no time for jest! Look, you madman, the door is splitting! Is Joan to die, then, to please your whim? Either attend to me or stand aside!"
Poluski groaned. He was such an amalgam of contrarieties that he hated the notion of explaining to a monarch the subtle means he had devised for ridding the world of its unpopular rulers. Where Alec was concerned, the bomb ought to remain atrade secret, so to speak. He would not have trusted even Beaumanoir with its properties had he not known that his own nerve would fail at the critical moment. For that was Felix Poluski's weakness. He could not use his diabolical invention—an anarchist in theory, in practice he would not harm a fly.
"I think just as much of Joan as you!" he blazed back at the pallid man whose next step promised to lead to the grave. "I am King here, not you! Keep yourself and Joan out of harm's way, and don't interfere! Stand flat against the wall, both of you! Back, I say! There is the first axhead! Now you, who were born a lord, be ready to lord it over these groundlings!"
He whirled round on Beaumanoir, and Alec saw in his friend's hand some object, what he could not guess, while Felix carried a similar article in reserve, as it were. The little man's earnestness was so convincing that the King could not choose but believe that some scheme that offered salvation was in train. But it might fail! The door might be forced before his own desperate alternative could be adopted, and the consequences to Joan of failure were too horrible to be risked. A panel shivered into splinters and the muzzles of two revolvers frowned through the aperture.
"Wait!" bellowed Poluski; for Beaumanoir's hand was raised.
Lord Adalbert did more than wait. With thequickness born of many a hard won victory on the polo ground, his free left hand flew out and grasped the wrist behind one of the pistols. He pulled fiercely and irresistibly. An arm appeared, and a yell of pain signalized a dislocated shoulder.
The weapon exploded harmlessly and fell to the floor. A living stop gap now plugged the first hole made by the ax wielders, while the writhing body of their comrade interfered with further operations.
Beaumanoir gave an extra wrench, and his victim howled most dolorously. He slipped the bomb into his coat pocket.
"Pick up that revolver, Alec," he cried. "If it is still loaded it will help us to hold the fort."
The King rushed forward, and butted against Beaumanoir in his haste. Felix, whose skin was always sallow, became livid; but nothing happened, and he snatched the bomb from its dangerous resting place. Then he burst into a paroxysm of hysterical laughter which drowned for an instant a new hubbub in the street.
Alec, hastily examining his prize, found that three chambers were loaded. He was about to search for a crack in the door through which he could fire at least one telling shot, when his ear caught the prancing of horses on the paving stones.
Joan, thoroughly enlightened now as to their common peril, had behaved with admirable coolness since Alec implored her not to stir from the corner between door and window. She was sure they wouldall be killed, and her lips moved in fervent prayer that death might be merciful in its haste; but she was not afraid; that storm of tears had been succeeded by a spiritual exaltation that rescued her from any ignoble panic. Yet her senses were strained to a tension far more exhausting than the display of emotion natural to one plunged without warning into the most horrible of the many horrors of civil war, and she had heard, long before the others, the onrush of cavalry and the stampede of the mob.
So, when her eyes met Alec's, and she saw that questioning look in his face, she smiled at him with a radiant confidence that was astounding at such a moment.
"Heaven has been good to us, dear," she said. "Your soldiers are here. Your enemies are running away. Listen! they are fighting now on the stairs. The unhappy men who raved for our lives will lose their own. Can nothing be done to save them?"
He ran to the window. Those leaden blasts that had swept the room from the first floors of the opposite houses had ceased, and not one potvaliant marksman of them all was to be seen; but the street was full of hussars, and directly beneath, mounted on an excited horse, Stampoff was giving furious orders which evidently demanded an energetic storming of the hotel entrance.
Alec threw open the window and leaned out. "Just in time, old friend!" he cried.
Stampoff heard him and looked up. "God'sbones!" he roared. "Here is the King safe and sound. At them, my children! Dig them out with your sabers! Don't leave a man alive!"
"Stop!" shouted Alec. "No more slaughter! I forbid it!"
Stampoff wheeled round on his charger and addressed the press of soldiers who had been unable to take any part in the street clearing, since the mob broke and fled when the first rank of plumed caps and flashing swords became visible.
"You hear, my children," he vociferated. "Don't harm anybody who does not resist. The King's commands must be obeyed."
Joan, of course, could only guess what was being said; but she could not fail to recognize the sounds of conflict on the stairs. Men are strangely akin to tigers when they see red, and the tiger's roar when he pounces on a victim differs greatly from his own death scream. Alec, powerless to move Stampoff, who believed, rightly, as it transpired, that the ringleaders were foremost in the attack, turned to Beaumanoir.
"Release that fellow," he said. "If I am able to make my voice heard through the racket, I can put an end to this butchery."
Beaumanoir let go the arm, and a body fell on the other side of the door.
"You are too late, I hope," he said quietly. "My prisoner took the knock just before you spoke. I felt it run through him. He shook like a ponyunder the spur. And you're wrong, you know. This gang must be cleared out." He peered through the broken panel. "It's all over," he added. "No flowers, by request."
Felix was peering up at them with his bright crafty eyes. "Queer thing!" he growled. "In my first honest fight I have been on the side of tyranny. If you young gentlemen will be good enough to remove the barricade and give orders to have the passage cleared, I can go back to the cup of coffee I left in the restaurant. Meanwhile, Joan must be taken to her room. She is going to faint, and the Lord only knows what has become of her maid!"
Alec was at Joan's side before Felix had made an end. "You will not break down now, sweetheart," he cried. "All danger is over, and, with God's help, you will never witness such a scene in Delgratz again!"
"I feel tired," she sighed. "I know quite well I am safe, Alec. Somehow, I hardly thought you and I should die to-day. We have things to do in the world, you and I; but those horrid men frightened me by their shrieks. It must be awful to pass into the unknown—like that!"
She sighed again. To her strained vision Alec suddenly assumed the aspect of Henri Quatre's gilded statue on the Pont Neuf. It did not seem to be in the least remarkable that the statue should leap from his horse and take her in his arms. She wasabsolutely happy and content. She felt she could rest there awhile in safety.
So, when the door was opened, the King experienced no difficulty in carrying Joan through a scene of bloodshed that would certainly never have been blotted from her mind had she remained conscious. Stampoff's commands had been obeyed, and the place reeked of the shambles; but the girl was happily as heedless of its nightmare horrors as the thirty-one men who lay there dead or dying.
Alec bore her out into the street. The sight of him was greeted by a sustained cheer from the troops and the loyal citizens who were now threatening a riot of curiosity and alarm, since the news had gone round that the King was being done to death by a rebellious soldiery in the Fürst Michaelstrasse, and Delgratz was hurrying to the rescue.
Joan, revived a little by the fresh air and bewildered by the shouting throng that pressed around the King, opened her eyes. "Where am I?" she whispered, delightfully ignorant of the fact that she was nestling in Alec's arms under the gaze of many hundreds of his subjects.
"I am sending you to my mother, dear," he replied. "Felix and your maid will be here in a moment, and they will take you to her in a carriage. You cannot remain at the hotel, and you will be well cared for in Monsieur Nesimir's house."
"Are you coming, Alec?" she asked, scanning his face like a timid child.
"Soon, quite soon."
"Then I am content," she said, and the cloud descended again for a brief space.
Pauline, unfortunately, happened to be in the kitchen when the fray began. She was nearly incoherent with fright; but Felix managed to reassure her, and piloted her skilfully out of the hotel by an exit that concealed the gruesome staircase.
The glittering escort of soldiers surrounding the carriage pressed into the King's service served to complete the illusion insisted on by Poluski, and Pauline rejoined her mistress, firm in the conviction that the tumult was an outlandish Serbian method of merrymaking.
Alec, having seen the carriage started on its short journey, approached Stampoff and wrung his hand. "It was a near thing, General," he said. "Five minutes later and we should have been in another world."
He spoke in French, and Beaumanoir heard him.
"Not a bit of it," said he. "That anarchist johnny carries about with him the finest assortment of bombs.—By the way, where is the bally thing? I'll swear I put it in my pocket when I grabbed that joker through the door."
His hurried search was not rewarded, and Alec, scarcely understanding him, asked Stampoff who had given the alarm.
"Bosko, of course. He came tearing up to the War Office like a madman. Had any other broughtthe same message I really should not have believed it."
"Then you heard nothing of a waiter from this hotel, a waiter named Sobieski?"
"Nothing, your Majesty. Bosko was undoubtedly the first to arrive with the news, and all was quiet at the President's as I rode past. I noted that especially. By the way, Prince Michael is here; came this morning, I am told. The Princess accompanied him. Does your Majesty intend going to them at once? I have already sent an orderly to announce your safety."
Alec looked at his watch. "Five minutes past four," he said. "No, General, I am due at the university. I like to be punctual; but this slight delay was unavoidable. I shall see you at dinner to-night, and I suppose you will clear the city of these idiots of the Seventh Regiment before sunset. By the way, a word before we part. You saw the lady whom I brought from the hotel and placed in the carriage?"
"Saw her, your Majesty? Judas! Thirty years ago I should have striven to rescue her myself."
"It was she who rescued me, General, she and the little humpbacked man. Exactly how they managed it I do not know as yet; but to-night you shall hear the whole story. At present, it is enough that you should be told the one really important fact. She is my promised wife."
With a smile and a farewell hand-wave, Alecmounted a troop horse and rode away with Beaumanoir in the direction of the university.
Stampoff looked after him with an expression of utmost dismay on his weatherbeaten face. "Gods!" he muttered. "A wife, and a pretty foreigner too, that is a bird of another color! What will Prince and Princess Delgrado say now, I wonder? What will Kosnovia say, when it is in every man's mind that you should marry a Serb? And what mad prank of fortune sent her here to-day? By thunder! I thought things were quieting down in Delgratz; but I was wrong—they are just beginning to wake up!"
BeforeJoan's carriage had traveled a hundred yards it was halted by a loud command. An officer, galloping at the head of a detachment of cavalry, sought news of the King, and an escorted vehicle coming from the upper end of Fürst Michaelstrasse promised developments. Joan was startled back into consciousness by the sudden stoppage. The excited babble going on without was incomprehensible and therefore alarming, nor did the polite assurances of the officer, as he bent in the saddle and peered in at the window while he aired his best French, serve to still this fresh tumult in her veins.
"What is he saying?" she asked Felix, turning her frightened eyes from the urbane personage on horseback to Poluski's intent face.
"He was sent to rescue the King," was the explanation. "He says the bodyguard received warning less than two minutes ago."
"Tell him the King is safe now."
"Oh, he knows that already. What puzzled him is the fact that the troops at the War Ministry,which lies beyond the President's house, should have reached there before him."
"What does it matter, since help came in time? Please bid the coachman go on. I—I would like to be the first to let Princess Delgrado know that her son has escaped from those horrid men. Who were they? Why should they want to kill Alec?"
Felix did not obey her bequest instantly. He exchanged some hasty words with the strange officer, who chanced to be Drakovitch, and answered Joan's questions only when the cab resumed its journey. "Have you forgotten the part played by the Seventh Regiment in the recent history of Delgratz?" he cried.
"I remember something about them. Alec disbanded them. Oh—they were the soldiers who revolted and murdered the late King and Queen."
"Exactly. Do women ever read the newspapers intelligently, I wonder? You state a most remarkable fact, considering that this is Delgratz and your future capital, as coolly as if it had happened in Kamchatka."
"But still I do not understand why they should turn against Alec. I have at least sufficient intelligence to recall the avowed object of their crime,—the restoration of the Delgrado line."
Felix smiled. If Joan was able to defend herself, she was certainly making a rapid recovery. "That is a mere hazy recollection of their afterthought. Of all despotisms, save me from a military one, andsoldiers who slay Kings are the worst of despots. If there were no Kings, there would be few soldiers, Joan. Put that valuable truism away among the other wise saws that govern your life. You will appreciate its truth, and the even greater truth of its converse, when you are a Queen. But soldiers are stupid creatures, obviously so, since killing is no argument, or the word philosopher would mean a man armed with a bludgeon. If they do away with a tyrant and elect his successor, they are apt to acquire the habit. Soldiers are meant to obey, not to rule, and these Kosnovian Kingmakers were not patriots but cutthroats."
Joan buried her face in her hands. The thought came unbidden that in some inexplicable way she shared with the infamous Seventh Regiment a large measure of responsibility for Alec's dangerous kingship.
"Mademoiselle is ill. Why trouble her with your silly chatter?" demanded Pauline angrily.
"Eh, what the deuce? My name isn't Balaam," retorted Felix.
"Nor am I a donkey, monsieur. If it wasn't for you, miladi would now be happy in her little apartment in the Place de la Sorbonne. I keep my ears open, me!"
"I said nothing about your ears, Madame Pauline," tittered Felix.
The Frenchwoman's homely features reddened, and a vitriolic reply was only half averted by thelurching of the carriage through a gateway. Joan looked out, and her eyes were moist.
"I possess two good friends in Delgratz, and I hope they will not quarrel on my account," she said, with a piteous smile that silenced the woman. Poluski's mouth twisted.
"We are not quarreling, my belle," he cried. "Pauline thinks I brought you here, whereas your presence is clearly an act of Providence. Being a modest person, I naturally protested."
If Joan was not utterly bewildered by the whirligig of events, and more than ever unnerved now at the near prospect of meeting Prince and Princess Delgrado in the perhaps unwelcome guise of their son's affianced wife, she would certainly have discovered that Felix was saying the first thing that came uppermost in his mind. The outcome must have been a quick mental review of the day's incidents in order to hit upon the special item he was trying to conceal, though it is probable that no girl of Joan's candid nature would ever guess the suspicion rapidly maturing to a settled belief in the Pole's acute brain.
For Captain Drakovitch, the officer who led the bodyguard in their belated ride to the King's aid, had told him that a waiter, John Sobieski by name, had arrived breathless at the President's house many minutes before the actual alarm was given. Sobieski had sobbed out some incoherent words about the King, and the Seventh Regiment; but Prince Michael, who was in the courtyard, snapped up the man immediately,bidding him hold his tongue, and hurrying him inside the building. Once there, Sobieski became more confused than ever. Prince Michael obviously regarded him as a crazy rumor-monger until Nesimir appeared. The latter, by reason of his local knowledge, instantly appreciated the true significance of an attack on the King in a crowded thoroughfare by a gang whom Sobieski was sure he had identified correctly.
Nevertheless, precious time had been consumed by the elder Delgrado's interference. The President acted with promptitude; but the outcome was clear. If it had not been for Bosko, the King must have fallen.
"Gods!" vowed Drakovitch in his emphatic story to Felix, "there were we lounging about smoking cigarettes while his Majesty was in a fair way to be cut in pieces! A nice state of affairs! If some one had not warned Stampoff, we might have been too late!"
"Better not mention it in public," was Poluski's advice. "The mere notion of the resultant disaster would make Prince Michael seriously ill. Moreover, such things grow in the telling, and the story will be traced back to you."
The other had agreed, and Felix followed his own counsel by withholding from Joan all knowledge of the unpleasant mischance that had nearly cost the lives of the King and his companions in the besieged hotel. But his thoughts were busy, and, when hefound Sobieski detained in the entrance hall, he consigned Joan and her maid to the care of a servant, briefly explaining that they were to be taken to Princess Delgrado, and forthwith questioned his fellow countryman.
Sobieski was quaking with fear. The scornful disbelief expressed by Prince Michael had discomfited him at the beginning, and now he was practically under arrest until his connection with the outrage was investigated officially. One of Stampoff's messengers had already announced the King's safety, or by this time Sobieski must have become the lunatic Prince Michael took him to be.
"What then, my friend, they did not credit your tale, I hear?" said Felix genially, and the sound of his voice drove some of the misery from the waiter's pallid cheeks.
"It was my fault, monsieur. I ran so fast that I lost my breath and the gentleman could not understand me."
"Ah, is that it? Did you speak Polish?"
"No, no, monsieur. I always speak Serbian here."
"And what did you say?"
"Just what you told me to say,—that the King was in danger and that the President was to send troops instantly to the Fürst Michaelstrasse. Then the old gentleman, he whom they call Prince Michael, came up and said he did not believe a word of it."
"Mon Dieu! He understood you, it appears?"
"Perhaps not, monsieur. I made a hash of it,especially when I told him Monsieur Poluski sent me."
"Sure you mentioned that?"
"Quite sure, monsieur. It was then he ordered me inside the house. The mention of your name seemed to annoy him. For a little while he could say nothing but 'Poluski, Poluski! Is he in it?' I swore you had nothing to do with the plot, monsieur, but had acted throughout as the King's friend; then he stormed at me again, and called me a blockhead for coming to the palace with such a mad story. He asked me what I thought would have been the consequence if the Princess heard me, and I said I knew nothing about any Princess; I was only quite sure the King would be slain if some one did not hasten to his rescue."
"But some one had more sense, some one listened?" said Felix dryly.
"Ah, yes. When the President came down the stairs, Prince Michael went to meet him, laughing all the time at my romancing, as he called it. But I shouted out, being quite desperate then, and Monsieur Nesimir heard me. Of course, by that time, I was in such a state that my knees shook. I was certain the King would be found dead, and perhaps you, monsieur, and then would there be no one to prove that I was not mixed up in the affair, so people would think I ran to the palace in order to save my own skin. I nearly dropped with fear, feeling that so many minutes were being lost, andthat made me more nervous than ever when I was answering Monsieur Nesimir's questions."
Poluski's worn face exhibited no more emotion than if he was a graven image, but his voice was sympathetic. "At any rate, everything has ended happily, friend John," said he. "The King is alive, you did your duty, and you will find him not unmindful of your services. By whose order are you detained here?"
The excited waiter began to snivel. "I don't know, monsieur. Pray intercede for me and have me set at liberty, or I shall lose my situation if it gets about that I have been arrested. My patron will have nothing to do with politics. He says his business is to sell beer and coffee, and all parties are equally fond of his goods."
Felix, who was already being eyed askance by the presidential hangers-on in the entrance lobby, returned to the courtyard and appealed to the officer in charge of the escort. A brief conversation with an official elicited the fact that Sobieski awaited Prince Michael's commands.
"Then bring Prince Michael here," said Poluski.
"Monsieur!" An astounded flunky could say no more; but this impudent hunchback was in no wise abashed.
"Exactly, Monsieur Felix Poluski wishes to see his Excellency at once. Tell him that, and it will suffice."
The lackey was forced to yield, and, much to hissurprise, Prince Michael did not hesitate an instant in obeying that imperative summons. An expression of annoyance flitted across his florid features when he found Poluski standing near the trembling waiter; but he tackled the situation with nonchalance.
"Have you been here long, Felix?" he inquired. "No one told me you had arrived. Your young lady friend has been taken to the Princess—at her own request, I am given to understand. Dreadful business, this unforeseen attack on my son, isn't it? I must confess that I didn't credit a word of it when this poor fellow rushed in with his broken tale. Ah, by the way, I gave some orders in my alarm that may have been misinterpreted." He dug a hand into a pocket; but withdrew it, empty.
"His Majesty will see to it that you are suitably rewarded," he said to Sobieski. "Meanwhile, you have my hearty thanks, and I regret that any hasty words of mine should have caused you inconvenience. You can go at once, of course."
Sobieski made off, well pleased that his stormy career in the whirlpool of state affairs was ended. But Felix shook hands with him and said quietly:
"I will not forget."
Prince Michael seized Poluski's arm with a fine assumption of dignified cordiality. "So it was really you who sent that stammering youth with such an astounding message? Come, then. Tell me all about it. Was Alec actually in peril?"
He drew Felix up the stairs, out of earshot ofthe servants and orderlies in the wide hall. Felix sniffed.
"Odd thing," he grinned. "You are a Prince and I am an anarchist, yet both of us need a nip of brandy when we are disturbed. But I have the better of you in one respect, my dear Michael. My hand doesn't shake. Now, yours——"
The clasp on his arm loosened, lost some of its friendliness, and Prince Delgrado stood for an instant on the stairs.
"I tried to show a calm front before the others; but the predicament my son was in found the weak place in my armor," he said.
"My case exactly," said Felix. "Joan diagnosed the symptoms, and dosed me with cognac. You, I imagine, were your own physician."
"Ah, since you mention the lady, who is she?"
"Joan? A female divinity, one of the few charming women left in the world."
"Admirable! One can associate those qualities with residence in Paris; but in Delgratz, Felix, one finds them unusual—shall I say out of place?"
"If I were you, Monseigneur, I would learn to regard her in a totally different light. Joan ought to be at home here, because she is your prospective daughter in law."
Michael Delgrado could govern his nervous system with some measure of success when words were the only weapons that threatened. He did not flinch now; but threw open the door of the nearest room onthe upper floor. It chanced to be the apartment in which President Nesimir had received Alec and Stampoff on that memorable morning, barely a month ago, when the young King came to Delgratz to claim his patrimony. Neither man was aware of the coincidence that led Michael to slam the door, place his back against it, and gurgle a question:
"Are you jesting, Felix?"
"Quarter of an hour ago I was on the point of being introduced to a grim personage who would have squeezed the last joke out of me," said Poluski. "His name was Death, Pallida Mors, who steps with even stride from the huts of the poor to the palace of the King, and he gave me such a fright that I shall be in no mood all day for any display of humor. Why, man, don't you realize that I have been under this roof fully five minutes without experiencing the slightest desire to sing?"
"But, Felix, do be in earnest for once. What is this you tell me? How can Alexis III. marry this woman, this adventuress?"
Poluski's big gray eyes narrowed into slits, and the hump on his shoulders became more pronounced as his head drooped forward a little; but his smooth tones did not falter, and his uneasy hearer thought he found a note of friendly commiseration in them.
"A hard word, Michael, hard and unjust. Joan is no adventuress," he said. "We old birds are too ready to condemn a young and pretty woman who falls in love with a King; but in the present instancecriticism is disarmed, since Joan was in love with Alec when he had no more worldly wealth than the endowment of your princely name, and when his chance of becoming King of Kosnovia was as remote as—what shall I say?—well, as your own."
Michael came away from the door and stood looking out at the window. It afforded a partial view of the courtyard and the fairly wide street beyond the gate. "I know, of course, that your ideas and mine on these subjects differ very greatly," he said after a pause, and with a perceptible return to his grandiose manner; "but as you say rightly, both of us are old enough to realize that a reigning King can marry none but a Princess of some royal house. Again, the King of Kosnovia must marry a Serb. There you have two fixed principles, so to speak, each of which renders it impossible for a lady who rejoices apparently in no other name than Joan——"
"Joan Vernon," put in Felix, producing a cigarcase, an exact replica of that containing the bombs, and selecting one of the long thin cigars he favored.
"Ah, certainly. The Princess spoke to her in Vienna, and ascertained her name then. Well, Miss Joan Vernon cannot, by the very nature of things, become Queen of Kosnovia. It is not that I disapprove of the notion, Felix; it is simply impossible."
Poluski struck a match and began to smoke furiously. Delgrado probably expected him to say something; but he waited in vain, since Felix seemedto be far more perturbed by the suspected existence of a hole in the outer wrapping of the cigar, and futile efforts to close it with the tip of a finger, than by the princely hinting at a morganatic marriage.
Perforce, Prince Michael resumed the discussion. "I am stating the facts calmly and without prejudice," he said. "I assume that you are not misleading me or that some sort of lovers' vows exists between these young people?"
He paused again. Poluski was triumphant. He had found the hole, applied the surgical method of a tourniquet by pressure, and the cigar was drawing perfectly.
"Having said so much, Felix, you might be sufficiently communicative in other respects," growled Delgrado, turning angrily from the window.
"Parbleu!I left you to do the talking, Monseigneur. This devil of a cigar has been bored by a weevil, and was broken winded till I stopped the leak. You were saying?"
"That Alec Delgrado might have married your young friend; but King Alexis III. cannot."
"He will," said Felix, grinning complacently.
"If he does, it will cost him his throne."
"Poof! For a man of the world, Michael, you utter opinions that are singularly inept. I think you were driving just now at the accepted theory of royal alliances? If it holds good for Alec, it affects you, his father. You didn't marry a Princess, but happily secured a good, honest Americanlady, sufficiently endowed with good, honest American dollars to keep you in luxury throughout your useless life. If there is some law which says that Alec cannot make Joan a Queen, the same law would prevent him from being a King. But it doesn't. King he is, and King he will remain as long as it pleases God to keep him in good health and save him from the miserable rascals who tried to assassinate him to-day—and their like. What you want, Michael, is a friend who is not afraid to warn you. Now, for the hour, kindly regard me as filling that useful capacity. After twenty-five years of extravagance you have managed, I suppose, to exhaust your excellent wife's fortune. You came to Delgratz this morning for the express purpose of drawing fresh supplies from the Kosnovian treasury. Well, you haven't met your son yet; but when you suggest that he should begin to impoverish his people to maintain you in idle pomp in Paris, I fancy you will find him adamant. That is not his theory of governing. If it was, he would neither marry Joan nor be alive at this moment, since Heaven saw fit to intrust me with the control of both his bride and his life.
"One thing more I have to say, Michael, and then I have finished, unless you press me too hardly. Let us suppose Alec had fallen in to-day's attempt. Whom do you think would succeed him? Michael V. Not for five minutes! You know now, and I have known all along, that the real instigator of the May outbreak was Julius Marulitch and his Greekbear leader, Constantine Beliani. You were inspired, Michael, when you resigned your claims in favor of your son. Those two meant to put you forward as their puppet and shove you to the wall as soon as the Delgrado line was restored and they were able to pull the strings here in safety. They never dreamed that Alec, the careless, happy-go-lucky boy, the polo player and haunter of studios, would prove a stumbling block in the path of royal progress. You were a mere pawn, Michael. They counted on pushing you out of the way as easily as if you were a baby in a perambulator. What was true a month ago is more true now. Go down on your knees and thank Heaven that it saw fit to preserve your son's life this afternoon; for his life alone stands between you and the abyss!
"Now, I have spoken, and—name of a good little gray man!—you don't seem to like the hearing. But do not forget what I have said, Michael. I have poured forth a stream of golden words. It will be well for you if you are never called on to apply other test to their value than your own judgment; for as sure as the day dawns that you dream of reigning in Delgratz, so surely will you dig your own grave with a shovel lent by the devil."
Poluski ceased, and apparently expected no answer. He, too, went to a window and gazed out at the sunlit vista of graveled courtyard and yellow buildings.
Already there were long patches of shade; for theday was closing. A foot regiment marched past the palace gates, and Prince Michael might have remembered that in Delgratz a sentry with a loaded rifle guards each street after sunset. But his bloated face was curiously haggard, and his prominent eyes looked at the soldiers with the unconscious aspect of a man whose castle in Spain had suddenly proved itself the most deceptive of mirages. Perhaps, for a brief space, he saw himself as Felix saw him, and a species of horror may have fallen on him at the mere conceit that another man was able to peep into his heart and surprise there the foul notion that had seized him when John Sobieski brought the tidings of his son's desperate plight.
Be that as it may, Prince Michael Delgrado offered no reply to the decrepit, poverty stricken artist who had dared to unmask him in such exceedingly plain terms. Not a word passed between them during many minutes. The shuffling tramp and dust of the regiment died away, and the thoroughfare beyond the gates had resumed its normal condition when a new animation was given to the courtyard by a loud order and the hurried assembly of the guard.
"Good!" said Felix contentedly. "Here comes the King! Your Excellency will now receive confirmation of some of my statements. As for the rest, if I am proved right in some respects, it will be a first rate idea to accept the remainder without proof."
Delgrado shot a baleful glance at the hunchback;but ignored his comment. "If it is not indiscreet of a parent to betray some interest in a son's prospective happiness, may I venture again to inquire who Miss Joan Vernon is?"
"I think I answered you."
"In general terms. Feminine divinity and charm should be the characteristics of all brides; but these delectable beings do not enter the world fully formed, like Venus Aphrodite newly risen from the sea of Cyprus."
"Oh, to me it suffices that she exists, and is Joan. I have known her a whole year, during her student life in Paris, in fact. Your simile was well chosen, Monseigneur. Aphrodite came with the spring, and so came Joan."
"And before Paris?"
"The New England section of America, I believe. Her mother died when Joan was a child; her father was in the navy and was drowned."
"An artist, you say?"
"Artistic would be the better description. She is too rich ever to paint well."
"Rich!"
"As artists go. She has an income of two hundred pounds a year."
"Ah, bah!"
"Don't be so contemptuous of five thousand francs. They go a long way—with care. I believe that my dear Joan spends all her money on dress, and keeps soup in the pot by copying pictures. But she willmake a lovely Queen.Saperlotte!I must paint her in purple and ermine."
Yielding to the spell of the vision thus conjured up, Felix forgot his racked nerves and sang lustily a stanza from "Masaniello." Prince Michael flung out of the room to meet his son; but the strains followed him down the stairs.
Yet Poluski was thinking while he sang, and the burden of his thought was that this anxious father had asked him no word as to the scene in that bullet swept room, nor the means whereby Alec and his friends were snatched from death.
Very different was the meeting between Joan and Princess Delgrado. The panic stricken mother, scarce crediting the assurance given her by the President's family that there were no grounds for the disquieting rumors that arose from Sobieski's appeal for help, was in an agony of dread when the first undoubted version of the true occurrence was brought by Stampoff's courier.
The arrival of Joan, of one who had actually been in her son's company until the danger was passed, though helping to dispel her terror, aroused a consuming desire to learn exactly what had happened. Joan, of course, could only describe the siege and their state of suspense until the soldiers cleared the street of the would-be assassins. As to the motive of the outrage or the manner in which it reached its sudden crisis, she had no more knowledge than the Princess, and a quite natural question occurred tothe older woman when Joan told how Felix Poluski had startled the King and herself by his warning cry.
"My son had gone to visit you, then?" she said, not without a shadow of resentment at the fact that he had discovered this girl's whereabouts readily enough, though seemingly there was none to tell him that his father and mother were in the city and longing to see him.
Joan flushed at the words; but her answer carried conviction. "I do not yet understand just how or when Felix discovered that the King's life was threatened," she said; "but there can be no doubt it was a ruse on his part to distract the attention of the mob when he told his Majesty that I was in the hotel.—I chanced to be looking out—and I was very angry with Felix when I saw that he had stopped the King and was evidently informing him of my presence."
"Then my son did not know you were in Delgratz?"
"He had no notion I was any nearer than Paris."
"What an amazing chapter of accidents that you should be in Delgratz to-day, and, under Providence, become the means of saving Alec's life; for it is quite clear to me now that had he gone a few yards farther he would have been shot down without mercy!"
Joan colored even more deeply. Her pride demanded that she should no longer sail under a falseflag, yet it was a seeming breach of maidenly reserve that she should announce her own betrothal. It would have come easier if she could claim more consideration from this kind faced, pleasant voiced woman than was warranted by the casual acquaintance of a railway journey. But Alec had sent her to his mother, and Joan's nature would not permit her to carry on the deception, though it might be capable of the most plausible explanation afterward.
"I feel I ought to tell you," she said, and the blood suddenly ebbed away from her face to her throbbing heart. "Alec and I were friends in Paris. We were fond of each other; but gave not much heed to it, since I was poor and he told me he had his way to make in the world. He wrote to me a few days ago, asking me to marry him. I did not know what to say, when chance threw in my way a commission to copy a picture in this very city. Put in such words, it all sounds very mad and unconvincing; but it is true, and it is equally true that I should never have acknowledged to-day that I returned his love if—if I did not think—for a few awful minutes—that we should both be killed. And—and—I wanted to die in his arms!"
Joan began to cry, and Princess Delgrado cried too, and it was in tears that King Alexis III. found them when he had returned Prince Michael's stately greeting and was told that the young American lady who had come from the shattered hotel was in his mother's room.