CHAPTER XXVIIAN UNWISE MERCY
“YOU have taken an unfair advantage, Princess, of my willingness to serve you,” he said, with a dark smile.
“I am again, as I might have expected, the victim of your treachery,” Ruperta retorted, full of scornful anger.
He made a deprecating gesture. “You must blame me no more now. The business is out of my hands. The treatment of which you may complain is not mine. I am no longer a free agent.”
His meaning was as obvious as was its falsehood. Ompertz took a step forward.
“Free agent or not, Count,” he said bluffly, “I shall make bold to hold you responsible for the outrage suffered by Lieutenant von Bertheim at the hands of your men. I was just wishing for an interview with you.”
The Count was eyeing him full of stern malignity. “And having chanced upon it, what do you want to say, my fine fellow?” he asked contemptuously.
The ugly look on the soldier’s face deepened. “Only this,” he answered threateningly. “That unless you give an instant order for our friend’s release, this fine fellow will take upon himself to run you through, and that without delay.”
A streak of moonlight falling through the trees showed a smile of ineffable scorn on the Count’s strong face. Italso glinted on the barrel of a pistol which he suddenly presented full at the soldier’s breast.
“Silence, you dog!” he commanded. “You need a lesson in the manners befitting a lady’s presence. If you speak another word it will be your last.”
Ruperta sprang between them. “Count, if you harm this man your life shall pay for it. I swear. I have power that may astonish you before long. Yes; I will have you hanged if you do not instantly release the Lieutenant.”
“You are quite mistaken, Princess,” he replied seriously. “The Lieutenant is not my prisoner.”
“You liar,” she cried, beside herself with indignation at the way he was playing with her. “You will tell me next he is not in your house, in your keeping.”
“It is true enough,” he replied coolly. “But I have no power to release him. Perhaps you have, Highness.”
The sneer was worthy of him; he had come to hate this woman whom he might not love.
“We shall see,” she returned. “You refuse?”
“I fear I must—even at the risk of the penalty which your Highness has foreshadowed.”
“Very well, then,” she said. “You shall see how I will keep my word. Come, Captain.”
She turned to Ompertz and prepared to move away.
“Permit me to escort you back to his Excellency,” Irromar said. “He charged me to look after you, and my responsibility is strict.”
“Your responsibility!” she echoed scornfully. “Surely, Count, you have forfeited any claim to that I will never enter your abominable den again.”
“It is most unfortunate,” he replied, with a somewhat mocking show of apology, “that I should have to bear the brunt and odium of your Chancellor’s actions. Surely, Princess,” he continued, as though urged merely by his innate love of setting his actions in a false light, “you must be aware that it was a risky thing to attemptto continue your elopement under the Baron’s very eye; an eye which looks not too favourably on the Lieutenant’s pretensions. I should certainly have warned you against any such mad attempt, had I not thought that your good sense made it unnecessary.”
Ruperta turned from him, disdainfully impatient. “I cannot discuss the matter with you, Count, especially as I have good reasons for believing no word you say.”
He gave a shrug. “It is most unfortunate, I must repeat, this persistence in imagining my ill-will. As for your interest in the Lieutenant’s welfare, I can only refer you to Baron Rollmar, to whom it is now my duty to conduct you.”
He advanced to her with outstretched hand. She shrank from him. Ompertz whispered a word to her as he fell back a pace. These movements altered the relative positions of the three. Ruperta had scarcely caught the soldier’s whisper, but she was quick-witted enough to divine his intention. She suffered Irromar to lay his hand on her arm. It gave her an excuse for struggling—to make a sudden clutch at the hand which held the pistol. Simultaneously Ompertz gave a swift spring, and, as Ruperta’s hold hampered the Count from turning to meet his attack, seized him from behind and got his arm tightly round his neck.
Irromar was a very Hercules, but now he was taken at a disadvantage, and Ompertz was of strength far above the average. It was a fierce joy to him to find his muscles round that lying throat, and in a very few seconds he had the Count half-throttled on the ground. Then the pistol was wrested away, and their enemy lay at their mercy.
“Now let me put an end to the villain,” Ompertz gasped, as with fingers gripping the Count’s throat and knee pressing on his chest he held out his hand for the pistol.
Ruperta’s hold hampered the Count“Ruperta’s hold hampered the Count from turning to meet his attack.”Page276.
“Ruperta’s hold hampered the Count from turning to meet his attack.”Page276.
“Ruperta’s hold hampered the Count from turning to meet his attack.”
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But Ruperta refused. Perhaps the livid, distortedface showed her too vividly the horror of such a midnight deed, and obscured the sense of expediency.
“No,” she objected. “We cannot. He must not die here—like this.”
“Then you give Lieutenant von Bertheim’s life for his,” Ompertz urged, bitterly baulked. “In Heaven’s name, let me put a bullet through his lying brain, and do a good deed for once.”
But she would not consent. “If he swears on his honour that he will release the Lieutenant, his life shall be spared,” she said.
Ompertz groaned at the throwing away of this chance. “His honour! You will repent it if you trust to that,” he said, as he tightened his grip on the Count’s throat, since he might not shoot him.
But Ruperta saw his intention, and insisted that he should relax his hold. “You hear, Count?” she said.
“I swear,” he gasped.
“Of course he swears,” growled Ompertz.
For some moments Irromar lay panting; the soldier looking down on him with a grim hankering that was almost comic. Suddenly, from a position in which most men would have been helpless, the Count, who seemed one compact mass of muscle, contrived by a convulsive effort to throw himself on his side, and a desperate struggle began. The suddenness of the effort had taken Ompertz by surprise, and so at some disadvantage. Still, he welcomed the renewed struggle, since it gave him an excuse for shooting. But once, when he might have fired with deadly effect, he hesitated through fear of hitting Ruperta who had seized one of the Count’s arms, and then, when he did fire, the bullet seemed to take no effect at all. With an exclamation of disappointment, he dropped the pistol, and set himself to grapple in deadly earnest with his formidable adversary. But great as was his strength, it was pitted now against one of the strongest sets of muscles in Europe. Little by little theCount got the advantage, he was a skilful wrestler and knew all the tricks of that art, so that not even Ruperta’s weight hanging on to his arm made the struggle evenly balanced. Before long he was able to force Ompertz backwards and, by a dexterous twist, to spring clear of him. It was only just in time, for Ruperta had taken Ompertz’ sword, and was only hesitating to use it from fear of striking the wrong man as they swayed and turned in their desperate encounter.
Now the Count was free. “Quick! the sword!” Ompertz cried, as he recovered his balance and sprang to her for the weapon. There was a loud laugh of mockery, and, almost before Ompertz had turned to rush after him, the Count had disappeared in the darkness. Sword in hand, the soldier followed as best he could, only to be brought up very soon by the manifest hopelessness of the pursuit and the fear of missing the Princess. To her he returned, baffled and fuming.
“I said you would regret it, Highness,” was his reproachful greeting.
She was pale and trembling slightly from the excitement. “It cannot be helped,” she replied, with a touch of authority. “I am sorry for your sake, but I could not have the man, whatever his crimes, done to death like that.”
“He has the devil in him,” Ompertz exclaimed wrathfully. “Now between him and the Chancellor, who has the infernal touch too, I fear, you may say good-bye to the chance of getting the Lieutenant free. And I had my prayer answered and my fingers round that villain’s throat. It was wicked to fling away the chance.”
“Yes, I am sorry now,” Ruperta agreed, showing not half the intense regret she felt. “But I am not going to submit myself tamely as a victim to these outrages and false dealings. I am going to Beroldstein.”
“You, Princess? To Beroldstein?”
“Alone,” she answered resolutely. “I will appealto the King of Drax-Beroldstein, since the Duke of Waldavia, my own father, cannot help me.”
“But the King of Drax-Beroldstein,” Ompertz objected, “is not Ludovic, but Ferdinand.”
“So much the better,” she returned. “It makes my task less disagreeable and scarcely more doubtful.”
He recognized the hideous complications which made her plan so hopeless, yet he saw no sufficient reason for breaking his pledge of secrecy. After all, Ludovic’s release was the great thing to try for; in the interests of that, the less known of his identity the better.
“I may go with you, Princess? The horses——”
“No,” she replied. “I should like your escort, but cannot take you hence. It will be something for me to know that one trusty heart is left near Ludovic. But I fear. What can you do for my Ludovic against those cruel villains, the Count and Rollmar?” She turned away in an access of heart-chilling despair, then next moment had recovered herself.
“Come, let us not lose another instant,” she said resolutely. “You must find me an escort among the soldiers. Surely there are some who will run this risk for their Princess, for any woman, indeed, who is in such a dire strait as I.”
He told her of certain good fellows there whose acquaintance he had made in the guard-room, and who, he was sure, would be ready to risk their lives in this service for her.
“If all goes well, they shall not be losers for standing by me in my extremity. At least they are human; Rollmar is a fiend.”
They came to the three horses—bitter suggestion of their failure—mounted, and made their way towards the spot where the men were encamped. Ompertz’s thoughts were divided between admiration for this courageous girl and sadness at the thought of how small was her chance of success.
But the affair, he told himself, was too difficult for his poor brain; he could see no light through the darkness; only hope that chance, after leaving them so terribly in the lurch, might once again stand their friend and accomplish what seemed beyond the scope of every imaginable plan.
By a difficult path they arrived presently, after many a hindrance from wood and rock, within a stone’s throw of where the troops lay encamped. Leaving Ruperta in a place of safety, or, at least, in concealment, Ompertz went forward to find his men for the purpose.
Half an hour later he, with many misgivings, had taken leave of the Princess who, with an escort of three stout fellows, started off through the forest to strike the nearest point of the main road to Beroldstein. Ruperta had supplemented Ompertz’s explanation by an appeal to the men to stand by her in her distress. She knew, she said, the risk her escort would be running; how those who guarded her flight would do so at the peril of their lives, and she would accept no service that, with this knowledge, was not freely given. But Ompertz, a shrewd judge of, at any rate, certain characters, had made no mistake in choosing the men. Their records were not, perhaps, of the best repute, but they were three staunch dare-devils, who would think no more of giving up their prospects and lives at a word from the Princess than of passing their mug of beer to a thirsty comrade. They had instantly and heartily sworn to see her through her long ride, or give their lives in her service, and she felt she need have no fear of their failing her. So they set off.
The first part of the journey was slow and difficult enough; however, one of the men knew the country and was confident that they could not lose their way. Nevertheless, the darkness of the forest hampered their progress, but, with the dawn, the track, too, grew lighter as the party emerged upon a hilly stretch of heath.
“We are now but a mile from the great road,” said the man who knew the way.
They could push on now at a smart pace; time, Ruperta felt, was everything, and all through the long hours of darkness her impatience had been torture. It was not many minutes before the broad coach-road came in sight beyond a belt of woodland which fringed it. Just before they reached it, hastening over the grassy road, one of the men, who was riding a few paces ahead, held up a warning hand.
As they reined up, the ring of horses’ hoofs fell upon their ears. The man quickly threw himself from the saddle and crept forward to the corner whence he could get a view of the road. Next instant he came rushing back, motioning them to turn aside among the trees.
“Horsemen coming fast! Quick! They may be after Her Highness. Quick, under the trees!”
They had scarcely taken cover, when the other party rode by at a quick pace. Four men, with a fifth at their head, riding in haste and looking neither to the right nor left. The figure of the leader was unmistakable.
“It is Count Irromar,” Ruperta exclaimed under her breath. “In pursuit of me.”
She was wrong. It was the Count, but he was not in search of her. He was riding post-haste to Beroldstein on business of his own.