‘Fifteen men on a dead man’s chestYo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.’”
Old Adelbert rather doubted the possibility of fifteen men on one dead man’s chest, but he nodded gravely. “A spirited song,” he observed.
Bobby edged closer to the window. “I’ve got the cave already.”
“So!”
“Here, in the Park. It is a great secret. I’d like to show it to you. Only it’s rather hard to get to. I don’t know whether you’d care to crawl through the bushes to it.”
“A cave—here in the Park?”
“I’ll take you, if you’d like to see it.”
Old Adelbert was puzzled. The Park offered, so far as he knew, no place for a cave. It was a plain, the site of the old wall; and now planted in grass and flowers. He himself had seen it graded and sown. A cave!
“Where?”
“That’s a secret. But I’ll show it to you, if you won’t tell.”
Old Adelbert agreed to silence. In fact, he repeated after the boy, in English he did not understand, a most blood-curdling oath of secrecy, and made the pirate sign—which, as every one knows, is a skull and crossbones—in the air with his forefinger.
“This cave,” he said, half smiling, “must be a most momentous matter!”
Until midday, when the Railway opened for business, the old soldier was free. So the next morning, due precautions having been taken, the two conspirators set off. Three, rather, for Tucker, too, was now of the band of the black flag, having been taken in with due formality a day or two before, and behaving well and bravely during the rather trying rites of initiation.
Outside the thicket Bobby hesitated. “I ought to blindfold you,” he said. “But I guess you’ll need your eyes. It’s a hard place to get to.”
Perhaps, had he known the difficulties ahead, old Adelbert would not have gone on. And; had he turned back then, the history of a certain kingdom of Europe would have been changed. Maps, too, and schoolbooks, and the life-story of a small Prince. But he went on. Stronger than his young guide, he did not crawl, but bent aside the stiff and ungainly branches of the firs. He battled with the thicket, and came out victorious.. He was not so old, then, or so feeble. His arm would have been strong for the King, had not— “There it is!” cried Bobby.
Not a cave, it appeared at first. A low doorway, barred with an iron grating, and padlocked. A doorway in the base of a side wall of the gate, and so heaped with leaves that its lower half was covered.
Bobby produced a key. “I broke the padlock that was on it,” he explained. “I smashed it with a stone. But I got another. I always lock it.”
Prolonged search produced the key. Old Adelbert’s face was set hard. On what dungeon had this boy stumbled? He himself had lived there many years, and of no such aperture had he heard mention. It was strange.
Bobby was removing the leaf-mould with his hands. “It was almost all covered when I found it,” he said, industriously scraping. “I generally close it up like this when I leave. It’s a good place for pirates, don’t you think?”
“Excellent!”
“I’ve brought some things already. The lock’s rusty. There it goes. There are rats. I hope you don’t mind rats.”
The door swung in, silently, as though the hinges had been recently oiled; as indeed they had, but not by the boy.
“It’s rather dirty,” he explained. “You go down steps first. Be very careful.”
He extended an earthy hand and led the old man down. “It’s dark here, but there’s a room below; quite a good room. And I have candles.”
Truly a room. Built of old brick, and damp, but with a free circulation of air. Old Adelbert stared about him. It was not entirely dark. A bit of light entered from the aperture at the head of the steps. By it, even before Bobby had lighted his candle, he saw the broken chair, the piece of old carpet, and the odds and ends the child had brought.
“I cook down here sometimes,” said Bobby, struggling with matches that had felt the damp. “But it is very smoky. I should like to have a stove. You don’t know where I can get a secondhand stove, do you? with a long pipe?”
Old Adelbert felt curiously shaken. “None have visited this place since you have been here?” he asked.
“I don’t suppose any one knows about it. Do you?”
“Those who built it, perhaps. But it is old, very old. It is possible—”
He stopped, lost in speculation. There had been a story once of a passageway under the wall, but he recollected nothing clearly. A passageway leading out beyond the wall, through which, in a great siege, a messenger had been sent for help. But that was of a passage; while this was a dungeon.
The candle was at last lighted. It burned fitfully, illuminating only a tiny zone in the darkness.
“I need a lantern,” Bobby observed. “There’s a draft here. It comes from the other grating. Sometime, when you have time, I’d like to see what’s beyond it. I was kind of nervous about going alone.”
It was the old passage, then, of course. Old Adelbert stared as Bobby took the candle and held it toward a second grated door, like the first, but taller.
“There are rats there,” he said. “I can hear them; about a million, I guess. They ate all the bread and bacon I left. Tucker can get through. He must have killed a lot of them.”
“Lend me your candle.”
A close examination revealed to old Adelbert two things: First, that a brick-lined passage, apparently in good repair, led beyond the grating. Second, that it had been recently put in order. A spade and wheelbarrow, both unmistakably of recent make, stood just beyond, the barrow full of bricks, as though fallen ones had been gathered up. Further, the padlock had been freshly oiled, and the hinges of the grating. No unused passage this, but one kept in order and repair. For what?
Bobby had adjusted the mask and thrust the knife through the belt of his Norfolk jacket. Now, folding his arms, he recited fiercely,
“‘Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest.Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!’”
“A spirited song,” observed old Adelbert, as before. But his eyes were on the grating.
That evening Adelbert called to see his friend, the locksmith in the University Place. He possessed, he said, a padlock of which he had lost the key, and which, being fastened to a chest, he was unable to bring with him. A large and heavy padlock, perhaps the size of his palm.
When he left, he carried with him a bundle of keys, tied in a brown paper.
But he did not go back to his chest. He went instead to the thicket around the old gate, which was still termed the “Gate of the Moon,” and there, armed with a lantern, pursued his investigations during a portion of the night.
When he had finished, old Adelbert, veteran of many wars, one-time patriot and newly turned traitor, held in his shaking hands the fate of the kingdom.
The Countess Loschek was on her way across the border. The arrangements were not of her making. Her plan, which had been to go afoot across the mountain to the town of Ar-on-ar, and there to hire a motor, had been altered by the arrival at the castle, shortly after the permission was given, of a machine. So short an interval, indeed, had elapsed that she concluded, with reason, that this car now placed at her disposal was the one which had brought that permission.
“The matter of passports for the border is arranged, madame,” Black Humbert told her.
“I have my own passports,” she said proudly.
“They will not be necessary.”
“I will have this interview at my destination alone; or not at all.”
He drew himself to his great height and regarded her with cold eyes. “As you wish,” he said. “But it is probably not necessary to remind madame that, whatever is discussed at this meeting, no word must be mentioned of the Committee, or its plans.”
Although he made no threat, she had shivered. No, there must be no word of the Committee, or of the terror that drove her to Karl. For, if the worst happened, if he failed her, and she must do the thing they had set her to do, Karl must never know. That card she must play alone.
So she was not even to use her own passports! Making her hasty preparations, again the Countess marveled. Was there no limit to the powers of the Committee of Ten? Apparently the whole machinery of the Government was theirs to command. Who were they, these men who had sat there immobile behind their masks? Did she meet any of them daily in the Palace? Were the eyes that had regarded her with unfriendly steadiness that night in the catacombs, eyes that smiled at her day by day, in the very halls of the King? Had any of those shrouded and menacing figures bent over her hand with mocking suavity? She wondered.
A hasty preparation at the last it was, indeed, but a careful toilet had preceded it. Now that she was about to see Karl again, after months of separation, he must find no flaw in her. She searched her mirror for the ravages of the past few days, and found them. Yet, appraising herself with cold eyes, she felt she was still beautiful. The shadows about her eyes did not dim them.
Everything hung on the result of her visit. If Karl persisted, if he would marry Hedwig in spite of the trouble it would precipitate, then indeed she was lost. If, on the other hand, he was inclined to peace, if her story of a tottering throne held his hand, she would defy the Committee of Ten. Karl himself would help her to escape, might indeed hide her. It would not be for long. Without Karl’s support the King’s death would bring the Terrorists into control. They would have other things to do than to hunt her out. Their end would be gained without her. Let them steal the Crown Prince, then. Let Hedwig fight for her throne and lose it. Let the streets run, deep with blood and all the pandemonium of hell break loose.
But if Karl failed her?
Even here was the possibility of further mischance. Suppose the boy gone, and the people yet did not rise? Suppose then that Hedwig, by her very agency, gained the throne and held it. Hedwig, Queen of Livonia in her own right, and Karl’s wife!
She clenched her teeth.
Over country roads the machine jolted and bumped. At daybreak they had not yet reached the border. In a narrow lane they encountered a pilgrimage of mountain folk, bent for the shrine at Etzel.
The peasants drew aside to let the Machine pass, and stared at it. They had been traveling afoot all night, and yet another day and a night would elapse before they could kneel in the church.
“A great lady,” said one, a man who carried a sleeping child in his arms.
“Perhaps,” said a young girl, “she too has made a pilgrimage. All go to Etzel, the poor and the rich. And all receive grace.”
The Countess did not sleep. She was, with every fiber of her keen brain, summoning her arguments. She would need them, for she knew—none better—how great a handicap was hers. She loved Karl, and he knew it. What had been her strength had become her weakness.
Yet she was composed enough when, before the sun was well up, the machine drew up in the village before the inn where Mettlich had spent his uneasy hours.
Her heavy veils aroused the curiosity of the landlord. When, shortly after, his daughter brought down a letter to be sent at once to the royal hunting-lodge, he shrugged his shoulders. It was not the first time a veiled woman had come to his inn under similar circumstances. After all, great people are but human. One cannot always be a king.
The Countess breakfasted in her room. The landlord served her himself, and narrowly inspected her. She was not so young as he had hoped, but she was beautiful. And haughty. A very great person, he decided, incognito.
The King was hunting, he volunteered. There were great doings at the lodge. Perhaps Her Excellency would be proceeding there.
She eyed him stonily, and then sent him off about his business.
So all the day she ate her heart out in her bare room. Now and then the clear sound of bugles reached her, but she saw no hunters. Karl followed the chase late that day. It was evening before she saw the tired horses straggling through the village streets. Her courage was oozing by that time. What more could she say than what he already knew? Many agencies other than hers kept him informed of the state of affairs in Livonia. A bitter thought, this, for it showed Karl actuated by love of Hedwig, and not by greed of power. She feared that more than she feared death.
She had expected to go to the lodge, but at nine o’clock that night Karl came to her, knocking at the door of her room and entering without waiting for permission.
The room was small and cozy with firelight. Her scarlet cloak, flung over a chair, made a dash of brilliant color. Two lighted candles on a high carved chest, and between them a plaster figure of the Mother and Child, a built-in bed with white curtains—that was the room.
Before the open fire Olga Loschek sat in her low chair. She wore still her dark traveling dress; and a veil, ready to be donned at the summons of a message from Karl, trailed across her knee. In the firelight she looked very young—young and weary. Karl, who had come hardened to a scene, found her appealing, almost pathetic.
She rose at his entrance and, after a moment of surprise, smiled faintly. But she said nothing, nor did Karl, until he had lifted one of her cold hands and brushed it with his lips.
“Well!” he said. “And again, Olga!”
“Once again.” She looked up at him. Yes, he was changed. The old Karl would have taken her in his arms. This new Karl was urbane, smiling, uneasy.
He said nothing. He was apparently waiting for her to make the first move. But she did not help him. She sat down and he drew a small chair to the fire.
“There is nothing wrong, is there?” he said. “Your note alarmed me. Not the note, but your coming here.”
“Nothing—and everything.” She felt suddenly very tired. Her very voice was weary. “I sent you a letter asking you to come to the castle. There were things to discuss, and I did not care to take this risk of coming here.”
“I received no letter.”
“No!” She knew it, of course, but she pretended surprise, a carefully suppressed alarm.
“I have what I am afraid is bad news, Olga. The letter was taken. I received only a sheet of blank paper.”
“Karl!” She leaped to her feet.
She was no mean actress. And behind it all was her real terror, greater, much greater, than he could know. Whatever design she had on Karl’s pity, she was only acting at the beginning. Deadly peril was clutching her, a double peril, of the body and of the soul.
“Taken! By whom?”
“By some one you know—young Larisch.”
“Larisch!” No acting there. In sheer amazement she dropped back from him, staring with wide eyes. Nikky Larisch! Then how had the Terrorists got it? Was all the world in their employ?
“But—it is impossible!”
“I’m sorry, Olga. But even then there is something to be explained. We imprisoned him—we got him in a trap, rather by accident. He maintained that he had not made away with the papers. A mystery, all of it. Only your man, Niburg, could explain, and he—”
“Yes?”
“I am afraid he will never explain, Olga.”
Then indeed horror had its way with her. Niburg executed as a spy, after making who knew what confession! What then awaited her at the old castle above the church at Etzel? Karl, seeing her whitening lips, felt a stirring of pity. His passion for her was dead, but for a long time he had loved her, and now, in sheer regret, he drew her to him.
“Poor girl,” he said softly. “Poor girl!” And drew his hand gently over her hair.
She shivered at his touch. “I can never go back,” she said brokenly.
But at that he freed her. “That would be to confess before you are accused,” he reminded her. “We do not know that Niburg told. He was doomed anyhow. To tell would help nothing. The letter, of course, was in code?”
“Yes.”
She sat down again, fighting for composure.
“I am not very brave,” she said. “It was unexpected. In a moment I shall be calmer. You must not think that I regret the risk. I have always been proud to do my best for you.”
That touched him. In the firelight, smiling wanly at him, she was very like the girl who had attracted him years before. Her usual smiling assurance was gone. She looked sad, appealing. And she was right. She had always done her best for him. But he was cautious, too.
“I owe you more than I can tell you,” he said. “It is the sort of debt that can never be paid. Your coming here was a terrible risk. Something urgent must have brought you.”
She pushed back her heavy hair restlessly.
“I was anxious. And there were things I felt you should know.”
“What things?”
“The truth about the King’s condition, for one. He is dying. The bulletins lie. He is no better.”
“Why should the bulletins lie?”
“Because there is a crisis. You know it. But you cannot know what we know—the living in fear, the precautions, everything.”
“So!” said Karl uneasily. “But the Chancellor assured me—” He stopped. It was not yet time to speak of the Chancellor’s visit.
“The Chancellor! He lies, of course. How bad things are you may judge when I tell you that a hidden passage from the Palace has been opened and cleared, ready for instant flight.”
It was Karl’s turn to be startled. He rose, and stood staring down at her. “Are you certain of that?”
“Certain!” She laughed bitterly. “The Terrorists Revolutionists, they call themselves—are everywhere. They know everything, see everything. Mettlich’s agents are disappearing one by one. No one knows where, but all suspect. Student meetings are prohibited. The yearly procession of veterans is forbidden, for they trust none, even their old soldiers. The Council meets day after day in secret session.”
“But the army—”
“They do not trust the army.”
Karl’s face was grave. Something of the trouble in Livonia he had known. But this argued an immediate crisis.
“On the King’s death,” the Countess said, “a republic will be declared. The Republic of Livonia! The Crown Prince will never reign.”
She shivered, but Karl was absorbed in the situation.
“Incredible!” he commented. “These fears are sometimes hysterias, but what you say of the preparations for flight—I thought the boy was very popular.”
“With some. But when has a child stood between the mob and the thing it wants? And the thing they cry for is liberty. Down with the royal house! Down with the aristocracy!”
She was calm enough now. Karl was listening, was considering, looked uneasy. She had been right. He was not for acquiring trouble, even by marriage.
But, if she had read Karl, he also knew her. In all the years he had known her she had never been reckless. Daring enough, but with a calculating daring that took no chances. And yet she had done a reckless thing by coming to him. From under lowered eyelids he considered her. Why had she done it? The situation was serious enough, but even then— “So you came to-day to tell me this?”
She glanced up, and catching his eyes, colored faintly. “These are things you should know.”
He knew her very well. A jealous woman would go far. He knew now that she was jealous. When he spoke it was with calculating brutality. “You mean, in view of my impending marriage?”
So it was arranged! Finally arranged. Well, she had done her best. He knew the truth. She had told it fairly. If, knowing it, he persisted, it would be because her power over him was dead at last.
“Yes. I do not know how far your arrangements have gone. You have at least been warned.”
But she saw, by the very way he drew himself up and smiled, that he understood. More than that, he doubted her. He questioned what she had said.
The very fact that she had told him only the truth added to her resentment.
“You will see,” she said sullenly.
Because he thought he already saw, and because she had given him a bad moment, Karl chose to be deliberately cruel. “Perhaps!” he said. “But even then if this marriage were purely one of expediency, Olga, I might hesitate. Frankly, I want peace. I am tired of war, tired of bickering, tired of watching and being watched. But it is not one of expediency. Not, at least, only that. You leave out of this discussion the one element that I consider important, Hedwig herself. If the Princess Hedwig were to-morrow to be without a country, I should still hope to marry her.”
She had done well up to now, had kept her courage and her temper, had taken her cue from him and been quiet and poised. But more than his words, his cruel voice, silky with friendship, drove her to the breaking point. Karl, who hated a scene, found himself the victim of one, and was none the happier that she who had so long held him off was now herself at arm’s length, and struggling.
Bitterly, and with reckless passion, she flung at him Hedwig’s infatuation for young Larisch, and prophesied his dishonor as a result of it. That leaving him cold and rather sneering, she reviewed their old intimacy, to be reminded that in that there had been no question of marriage, or hope of it.
“I am only human, Olga,” he said, in an interval when she had fallen to quiet weeping. “I loved you very sincerely, and for a long time. Marriage between us was impossible. You always knew that.”
In the end she grew quiet and sat looking into the fire with eyes full of stony despair. She had tried and failed. There was one way left, only one, and even that would not bring him back to her. Let Hedwig escape and marry Nikky Larisch—still where was she? Let the Terrorists strike their blow and steal the Crown Prince. Again—where was she?
Her emotions were deadened, all save one, and that was her hatred of Hedwig. The humiliation of that moment was due to her. Somehow, some day, she would be even with Hedwig. Karl left her there at last, huddled in her chair, left full of resentment, the ashes of his old love cold and gray. There was little reminder of the girl of the mountains in the stony-eyed woman he had left sagged low by the fire.
Once out in the open air, the King of Karnia drew a long breath. The affair was over. It had been unpleasant. It was always unpleasant to break with a woman. But it was time. He neither loved her nor needed her. Friendly relations between the two countries were established; and soon, very soon, would be ratified by his marriage.
It was not of Olga Loschek, but of Hedwig that he thought, as his car climbed swiftly to the lodge.
Hedwig had given up. She went through her days with a set face, white and drawn, but she knew now that the thing she was to do must be done. The King, in that stormy scene when the Sister prayed in the next room, had been sufficiently explicit. They had come on bad times, and could no longer trust to their own strength. Proud Livonia must ask for help, and that from beyond her border.
“We are rotten at the core,” he said bitterly. “An old rot that has eaten deep. God knows, we have tried to cut it away, but it has gone too far. Times are, indeed, changed when we must ask a woman to save us!”
She had thrown her arms over the bed and buried her face in them. “And I am to be sacrificed,” she had said, in a flat voice. “I am to go through my life like mother, soured and unhappy. Without any love at all.”
The King was stirred. His thin, old body had sunk in the bed until it seemed no body at all. “Why without love?” he asked, almost gently. “Karl knows our condition—not all of it, but he is well aware that things are unstable here. Yet he is eager for the marriage. I am inclined to believe that he follows his inclinations, rather than a political policy.”
The thought that Karl might love her had not entered her mind. That made things worse, if anything—a situation unfair to him and horrible to herself. In the silence of her own room, afterward, she pondered over that. If it were true, then a certain hope she had must be relinquished—none other than to throw herself on his mercy, and beg for a nominal marriage, one that would satisfy the political alliance, but leave both of them free. Horror filled her. She sat for long periods, dry-eyed and rigid.
The bronze statue of the late Queen, in the Place, fascinated her in those days. She, too, had been only a pawn in the game of empires; but her face, as Hedwig remembered it, had been calm and without bitterness. The King had mourned her sincerely. What lay behind that placid, rather austere old face? Dead dreams? Or were the others right, that after a time it made no difference, that one marriage was the same as another?
She had not seen Nikky save once or twice, and that in the presence of others. On these occasions he had bowed low, and passed on. But once she had caught his eyes on her, and had glowed for hours at what she saw in them. It braced her somewhat for the impending ordeal of a visit from Karl.
The days went on. Dressmakers came and went. In the mountains lace-makers were already working on the veil, and the brocade of white and gold for her wedding-gown was on the loom. She was the pale center of a riot of finery. Dressmakers stood back and raised delighted hands as, one by one; their models were adjusted to her listless figure.
In the general excitement the Crown Prince was almost forgotten. Only Nikky remained faithful; but his playing those days was mechanical, and one day he was even severe. This was when he found Prince Ferdinand William Otto hanging a cigarette out of a window overlooking the courtyard, and the line of soldiers underneath in most surprising confusion. The officer of the day was not in sight.
Nikky, entering the stone-paved court, and feeling extremely glum, had been amazed to see the line of guards, who usually sat on a bench, with a sentry or picket, or whatever they called him, parading up and down before them—Nikky was amazed to see them one by one leaping into the air, in the most undignified manner. Nikky watched the performance. Then he stalked over. They subsided sheepishly. In the air was the cause of the excitement, a cigarette dangling at the end of a silk thread, and bobbing up and down. No one was to be seen at the window above.
Nikky was very tall. He caught the offending atom on its next leap, and jerked it off. As he had suspected, it was one of his own, bearing an “N” and his coat of arms.
The Crown Prince received that day, with the cigarette as an excuse, a considerable amount of Nikky’s general unhappiness and rage at the world.
“Well,” said Prince Ferdinand William Otto, when it was over, “I have to do something, don’t I?”
It was Miss Braithwaite’s conviction that this prank, and several other things, such as sauntering about with his hands in his pockets, and referring to his hat as a “lid,” were all the result of his meeting that American boy.
“He is really not the same child,” she finished. “Oskar found him the other day with a rolled-up piece of paper lighted at the end, pretending he was smoking.”
The Chancellor came now and then, but not often. And his visits were not cheering. The Niburg affair had left its mark on him. The incident of the beggar on the quay was another scar. The most extreme precautions were being taken, but a bad time was coming, and must be got over somehow.
That bad time was Karl’s visit.
No public announcement of the marriage had yet been made. It was bound to be unpopular. Certainly the revolutionary party would make capital of it. To put it through by force, if necessary, and, that accomplished, to hold the scourge of Karnia’s anger over a refractory people, was his plan. To soothe them with the news of the cession of the seaport strip was his hope.
Sometimes, in the early morning, when the King lay awake, and was clearer mentally than later in the day, he wondered. He would not live to see the result of all this planning. But one contingency presented itself constantly. Suppose the Crown Prince did not live? He was sturdy enough, but it was possible. Then Hedwig, Queen of Karnia, would be Queen of Livonia. A dual kingdom then, with Karl as Hedwig’s consort, in control, undoubtedly. It would be the end of many dreams.
It seemed to him in those early hours, that they were, indeed, paying a price. Preparations were making for Karl’s visit. Prince Hubert’s rooms were opened at last, and redecorated as well as possible in the short time at command, under the supervision of the Archduchess. The result was a crowding that was neither dignified nor cheerful. Much as she trimmed her own lean body, she decorated. But she was busy, at least, and she let Hedwig alone.
It was not unusual, those days, to find Annunciata, flushed with exertion, in the great suite on an upper floor, in the center of a chaos of furniture, shoving chairs about with her own royal arms, or standing, head on one side, to judge what she termed the composition of a corner. Indignant footmen pushed and carried, and got their wigs crooked and their dignified noses dirty, and held rancorous meetings in secluded places.
But Annunciata kept on. It gave her something to think of in place of the fear, that filled her, made her weary enough to sleep at night.
And there was something else that comforted her.
Beyond the windows of the suite was a flat roof, beneath which was the ballroom of the Palace. When the apartment was in use, the roof was made into a garden, the ugly old walls hidden with plants in tubs and boxes, the parapet edged with flowers. It was still early, so spring tulips were planted now on the parapet, early primroses and hyacinths. In the center an empty fountain was cleared, its upper basins filled with water vines, its borders a riot of color. When the water was turned on, it would be quite lovely.
But it was not the garden on the roof which cheered Annunciata. It had, indeed, rather sad memories. Here had Hubert’s young wife kept her cages of birds, fed with her own hands, and here, before Otto was born, she had taken the air in a long chintz-covered chair.
Annunciata, overseeing the roof as she had overseen the apartment, watched the gardeners bringing in their great loads of plants from the summer palace, and saw that a small door, in a turret, was kept free of access. To that door, everything else failing, the Archduchess pinned her faith. She carried everywhere with her a key that would open it.
Long ago had the door been built, long ago, when attacking forces, battering in the doors below, might swarm through the lower floors, held back on staircases by fighting men who retreated, step by step, until, driven at last to the very top, they were apparently lost. More than once; in bygone times the royal family had escaped by that upper door, and the guard after them. It was known to few.
The staircase in the wall had passed into legend, and the underground passage with it. But they still existed, and had recently been put in order. The Chancellor had given the command; and because there were few to be trusted, two monks from the monastery attached to the cathedral had done the work.
So the gardeners set out their potted evergreens, and covered the primroses on the balustrade against frost, and went away. And the roof had become by magic a garden, the walls were miniature forests, but the door remained—a door.
On a desperate morning Hedwig threw caution to the winds and went to the riding-school. She wore her old habit, and was in the ring, but riding listlessly, when Nikky and Otto appeared.
“And eat.” Nikky was saying. “He always eats. And when I take him for a walk in the park, he digs up bones that other dogs have buried, and carries them home with him. We look very disreputable.” The Crown Prince laughed with delight, but just then Nikky saw Hedwig, and his own smile died.
“There’s Hedwig!” said Prince Ferdinand William Otto. “I’m rather glad to see her. Aren’t you?”
“Very glad, indeed.”
“You don’t look glad.”
“I’m feeling very glad inside.”
They rode together, around and around the long oval, with its whitewashed railing, its attendant grooms, its watchful eyes overhead. Between Nikky and Hedwig Prince Ferdinand William Otto laughed and chattered, and Hedwig talked a great deal about nothing, with bright spots of red burning in her face.
Nikky was very silent. He rode with his eyes set ahead; and had to be spoken to twice before he heard.
“You are not having a very good time, are you?” Prince Ferdinand William Otto inquired anxiously. To tell the truth, he had been worried about Nikky for some days. Nikky had been his one gleam of cheerfulness in a Palace where all was bustle and excitement and every one seemed uneasy. But Nikky’s cheerfulness had been forced lately. His smile never reached his eyes. “I haven’t done anything, have I?” he persisted.
“Bless you, no!” said Nikky heartily. “I—well, I didn’t sleep well last night. That’s all.”
He met Hedwig’s glance squarely over the head of the Crown Prince.
“Nor did I,” Hedwig said.
Later, when the boy was jumping, they had a moment together. The Crown Prince was very absorbed. He was just a little nervous about jumping. First he examined his stirrups and thrust his feet well into them. Then he jammed his cap down on his head and settled himself, in the saddle, his small knees gripping hard.
“It’s higher than usual, isn’t it?” he inquired, squinting at the hurdle.
The riding-master examined it. “It is an inch lower than yesterday, Your Royal Highness.”
“Perhaps we’d better have it the same as yesterday,” said the boy, who was terribly afraid of being afraid.
Then, all being adjusted, and his mouth set very tight, indeed, Prince Ferdinand William Otto took the first jump, and sailed over it comfortably.
“I don’t mind at all, after the first,” he confided to the riding-master.
“Are you angry that I came?” asked Hedwig.
“Angry? You know better.”
“You don’t say anything.”
“Hedwig,” said Nikky desperately, “do you remember what I said to you the other day? That is in my heart now. I shall never change. That, and much more. But I cannot say it to you. I have given my word.”
“Of course they would make you promise. They tried with me, but I refused.” She held her chin very high. “Why did you promise? They could not have forced you. They can do many things, but they cannot control what you may say.”
“There are reasons. Even those I cannot tell you. It would be easier, Hedwig, for me to die than to live on and see what I must see. But I cannot even die.” He smiled faintly. “You see, I am not keeping my promise.”
“I think you will not die,” said Hedwig cruelly. “You are too cautious.”
“Yes, I am too cautious,” he agreed heavily.
“You do not know the meaning of love.”
“Then God grant I may never know, if it is worse than this:”
“If I were a man, and loved a woman, I would think less of myself and more of her. When I saw her unhappy and being forced to a terrible thing, I would move heaven and earth to save her.”
“How would you do it?” said Nikky in a low tone.
Hedwig shrugged her shoulders. “I would find a way. The world is large. Surely, if one really cared, it could be managed. I should consider my first duty to her.”
“I am a soldier, Highness. My first duty is to my country.”
“You?” said Hedwig, now very white. “I was not speaking of you. I was speaking of a man who truly loved a woman.”
She rode away, and left him there. And because she was hurt and reckless, and not quite sane, she gave him a very bad half-hour. She jumped again, higher each time, silencing the protests of the riding-master with an imperious gesture. Her horse tired. His sides heaved, his delicate nostrils dilated. She beat him with her crop, and flung him again at the hurdle.
Prince Ferdinand William Otto was delighted, a trifle envious. “She jumps better than I do,” he observed to Nikky, “but she is in a very bad humor.”
At last, his patience exhausted and fear in his heart, Nikky went to her. “Hedwig,” he said sternly. “I want you to stop this childishness. You will kill yourself.”
“I am trying very hard to.”
“You will kill your horse. Look at him.”
For answer she raised her crop, but Nikky bent forward and caught the reins.
“How dare you!” she said furiously.
For answer Nikky turned and, riding beside her, led her weary horse out of the ring. And long training asserted itself. Hedwig dared not make a scene before the waiting grooms. She rode in speechless rage, as white as Nikky, and trembling with fury. She gave him no time to assist her to dismount, but slipped off herself and left him, her slim, black-habited figure held very straight.
“I’m afraid she’s very angry with you,” said the Crown Prince, as they walked back to the Palace. “She looked more furious than she did about the fruitcake.”
That afternoon Nikky went for a walk. He took Toto with him, and they made the circuit of the Park, which formed an irregular circle about the narrow streets of the old citadel where the wall had once stood. He walked, as he had done before, because he was in trouble, but with this difference, that then, he had walked in order to think, and now he walked to forget.
In that remote part where the Gate of the Moon stood, and where, outside, in mediaeval times had been the jousting-ground, the Park widened. Here was now the city playground, the lake where in winter the people held ice carnivals, and where, now that spring was on the way, they rode in the little cars of the Scenic Railway.
An old soldier with a wooden leg, and a child, were walking together by the lake, and conversing seriously. A dog was burying a bone under a near-by tree. Toto, true to his instincts, waited until the bone was covered, and then, with calm proprietorship, dug it up and carried it off. Having learned that Nikky now and then carried bones in his pockets, he sat up and presented it to him. Nikky paying no attention at first, Toto flung it up in the air, caught it on his nose, balanced it a second, and dropped it. Then followed a sudden explosion of dog-rage and a mix-up of two dogs, an old soldier, a young one, a boy, and a wooden leg. In the end the wooden leg emerged triumphant, Toto clinging to it under the impression that he had something quite different. The bone was flung into the lake, and a snarling truce established.
But there had been a casualty. Bobby had suffered a severe nip on the forearm, and was surveying it with rather dazed eyes.
“Gee, it’s bleeding!” he said.
Nikky looked worried, but old Adelbert, who had seen many wounds, recommended tying it up with garlic, and then forgetting it. “It is the first quarter of the moon,” he said. “No dog’s bite is injurious at that time.”
Nikky, who had had a sniff of the bone of contention, was not so easy in his mind. First quarter of the moon it might be, but the bone was not in its first quarter. “I could walk home with the boy,” he suggested, “and get something at a chemist’s on the way.”
“Will it hurt?” demanded Bobby.
“We will ask for something that will not hurt.”
So it happened that Bobby and Tucker, the two pirates, returned that day to their home under the escort of a tall young man who carried a bottle wrapped in pink paper in his hand, and looked serious. Old Pepy was at home. She ran about getting basins, and because Nikky had had his first-aid training, in a very short time everything was shipshape, and no one the worse.
“Do you suppose it will leave a scar?” Bobby demanded.
“Well, a little one, probably.”
“I’ve got two pretty good ones already,” Bobby boasted, “not counting my vaccination. Gee! I bet mother’ll be surprised.”
“The Americans,” said Pepy, with admiring eyes fixed on their visitor, “are very peculiar about injuries. They speak always of small animals that crawl about in wounds and bring poison.”
“Germs!” Bobby explained. “But they know about germs here, too. I, played with a boy one, afternoon at the Scenic Railway—my father is the manager, you know. If you like, I can give you some tickets. And the boy said a fig lady he had was covered with germs. We ate it anyhow.”
Nikky looked down smilingly. So this was the American lad! Of course. He could understand Otto’s warm feeling now. They were not unlike, the two children. This boy was more sturdy, not so fine, perhaps, but eminently likable. He was courageous, too. The iodine had not been pleasant, but he had only whistled.
“And nothing happened to the other boy, because of the germs?”
“I don’t know. He never came back. He was a funny boy. He had a hat like father’s. Gee!”
Nikky took his departure, followed by Pepy’s eyes. As long as he was in sight she watched him from the window. “He is some great person,” she said to Bobby. “Of the aristocracy. I know the manner.”
“A prince, maybe?”
“Perhaps. You in America, you have no such men, I think, such fine soldiers, aristocrats, and yet gentle. The uniform is considered the handsomest in Europe.”
“Humph!” said Bobby aggressively. “You ought to see my uncle dressed for a Knight Templar parade. You’d see something.”
Nikky went down the stairs, with Toto at his heels, a valiant and triumphant Toto, as becomes a dog who has recently vanquished a wooden leg.
At the foot of the staircase a man was working replacing a loosened tile in the passage; a huge man, clad in a smock and with a bushy black beard tucked in his neck out of the way. Nikky nodded to him, and went out. Like a cat Black Humbert was on his feet, and peering after him from the street door. It was he, then, the blond devil who, had fallen on them that night, and had fought as one who fights for the love of it! The concierge went back to the door of his room.
Herman Spier sat inside. He had fortified his position by that trip to the mountains, and now spent his days in Black Humbert’s dirty kitchen, or in errand-running. He was broiling a sausage on the end of a fork.
“Quick!” cried Black Humbert. “Along the street, with a black dog at his heels, goes one you will recognize. Follow him, and find out what you can.”
Herman Spier put the sausage in his pocket—he had paid for it himself, and meant to have it—and started out. It was late when he returned.
He gave Nikky’s name and position, where his lodgings were, or had been until now. He was about to remove to the Palace, having been made aide-de-camp to the Crown Prince.
“So!” said Black Humbert.
“It is also,” observed Herman Spier, eating his sausage, “this same one who led the police to Niburg’s room. I have the word of the woman who keeps the house.”
The concierge rose, and struck the table with his fist. “And now he comes here!” he said. “The boy upstairs was a blind. He has followed us.” He struck the sausage furiously out of Herman’s hand. “Tonight the police will come. And what then?”
“If you had taken my advice,” said the clerk, “you would have got rid of that fellow upstairs long ago.” He picked up the sausage and dusted it with his hand. “But I do not believe the police will come. The child was bitten. I saw them enter.”
Nevertheless, that night, while Herman Spier kept watch at the street door, the concierge labored in the little yard behind the house. He moved a rabbit hutch and, wedging his huge body behind it, loosened a board or two in the high wooden fence.
More than the Palace prepared for flight.
Still later, old Adelbert roused from sleep. There were footsteps in the passage outside, the opening of a door. He reflected that the concierge was an owl and, the sounds persisting, called out an irritable order for quiet.
Then he slept again, and while he slept the sounds recommenced. Had he glanced out into the passage, then, he would have seen two men, half supporting a third, who tottered between them. Thus was the student Haeckel, patriot and Royalist, led forth to die.
And he did not die.