“Only on the side toward the Countess’ room. It would do us no good to get in there. The other side is stone—look.”
It was true. Stone, roughly cemented over. A month’s job at the least, to dig through that without proper tools, and we had no idea where we’d be if we did get through. “The wall into the hall is thinner than that,” John went on, “but it wouldn’t be much good to us. They’d find any hole we dug in it before it was big enough to get through. This may have been a cellar or a barracks before they made it into—guest rooms. There’s probably a guard in the hall, anyway.”
“Yes.”
“That leaves the ceiling or the floor, or the bars. The ceiling is too high to reach, so let’s try the floor. We want to go down, anyway, so let’s start. Besides, the boards are wide and old.”
“And fastened together with nice little wooden pegs instead of nails.”
“Dowels, you call them,” John said. “If we select a shortish board and dig out said dowels, we might get through to something interesting.”
John had a pen knife, too, a little larger than mine, but no bowie knife. We selected a suitable board after a little search. Fifteen minutes loosened the board. The wood had shrunk a little in the years since it had been laid, and we dug the dowels out almost easily. Then, by sticking our little fingers into the holes and pulling upward gently and together, we raised the board from the floor. I looked into the hole before we had it up more than a few inches. There was only darkness below. John blew out our candle, and we took the board away, and peered down. There was a room much like ours below; though it was dark, we could see its outlines. It was quite empty. Looking farther we saw that the door was closed, and it smelled damp and musty, but not poisonously so. It was also bare of any sort of furniture, which indicated that it was never used.
“I’ll jump down,” John said, “and have a go at those bars. I may be able to get them out. Better make a lump under the bedclothes, so if that man comes back he’ll think I’m asleep; and drop the board back in place after I’m through. If I have to get up again you can tie the sheets together for a rope.” Then he dropped through the hole, and I wrapped my overcoat around most of the blankets, which made a passable body except for the head. I finally decided on an old brown angora sweater from the painting stuff where it had been used as packing, with John’s cap tipped at an angle over it, as though to keep the light out of his eyes. Then I carried the candle to the other side of the room, and decided that it was a good enough mummy to deceive a casual eye in that light. There was one rug in the room. Instead of replacing the board I decided to throw it over the hole, and pulled the table over that. Then I turned to Helena’s side of the room.
In order to get her out we must break down the wall that separated us. I couldn’t quite see leaving her without trying to do something about it. I pulled a package of four canvasses strapped together over to the wall, and behind it I dug a small hole in the cement with my gold knife. I knew that Helena heard me because I presently heard her moving some things about in her room, and then she began digging, too. I wanted to warn her about hiding the dust from the hole, but decided that a woman would think of that.
I had not dug more than a few minutes before my knife snapped off at the handle. The jeweller who made it had not reinforced it for cement digging. I had no other sharp instrument, so I had to stop. I could hear Helena still at it on the other side, though. Then John called to me, and I pulled the carpet away from the hole in the floor.
“In my painting stuff,” he said, “you will find a large wooden box marked ‘etching’ on the cover. In that is some paraffin and a bottle of acid in a wooden barrel with a screw top. You might dig out a couple of small brushes, too, from the other stuff, and give them to me.”
“What’s all that for?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m going to try etching through the bars,” he explained, “it’s so damp here that they are pretty well rusted through anyway. I can do it easily if there’s enough of the acid.”
“You’d better work quietly down there,” I said, “they’ll be bringing our dinner any moment now.”
I felt quite sure as I went to look for the things that I should not find the acid, as undoubtedly the Black Ghost would consider it a very dangerous weapon. I was mistaken, however, or else they did not know what it was. Probably they considered all painting materials harmless. There was about five ounces of the stuff—enough to rout a small army if anyone had the indecency to throw it in a man’s eyes. I made sure the top of the container was safely screwed on again before I handed it down to John. I knelt and lifted the edge of the rug and was reaching downward as far as possible to meet John’s hand, when a key was turned in the door. John’s fingers had just closed over the wooden barrel of acid. I dropped the other things perforce, trusting to the creaking of the opening door to mask the sound of their fall. I was trying to look as though I were tying my shoe as the man entered with our dinner. I continued to tie it serenely after the door opened, merely glancing up and saying “guten Abend” in what I hoped would pass for a casual tone of voice.
This time there were two men instead of one. One carried the heavy tray of food, and I was hungry enough to be glad it was heavy, the other held a lantern, and stayed near the door. By the time the first man had put the tray on the table I had straightened up, and was moving toward him quite calmly.
“The Herr Fakat Zol,” he said, rather elaborately, “presents his compliments to the gnädigen Herrn, and regrets that he cannot entertain them at dinner.”
I have always read about heroes who remained calm in all emergencies, and now I had found that when one of them happened to me, I was not calm and therefore not a hero. I felt nervous and jumpy even after the men had gone and locked the door again, which was a little hard on my self esteem since it had been such a small emergency.
When I dared to look down again John was standing just where he had been when I handed him the acid. He had not moved even to pick up the things I had dropped.
“We missed by an eyelash having to dine with the Black Ghost,” I told him. “Come on up and eat.”
“Not on your life.” He shook his head, excitedly, “it would take half an hour to get me up there and down again. Have to rig up the sheets to climb by. Can’t spare the time. Give me some food through the hole, and I think we may make it before midnight. The moon will come up soon after, so we can’t risk it later.”
I gave him soup in a coffee cup, and two huge sandwiches with thick-sauced meat in them, and an apple. Then I smeared his plate with gravy, and a few edges of meat, to look as though he had eaten, and ate my own dinner. Later when John had finished the soup I rinsed the cup and gave him coffee in it. Then I put even the apple core back on the tray, and finally stuck the knife and fork he should have eaten with in some of the gravy. Altogether it was an artistic job, that tray. I took off one knife with a prayer that its absence would not be noticed.
I did not dare start work on the wall again until the tray should be taken away, and while I sat waiting idly I thought over Helena’s position, and decided that John was right about not wanting to get her out. She had been meddling very seriously in the affairs of a country that was as foreign to her as it was to us. The Rheatian government would probably not help her under the circumstances, the Alarians would hate her, and if she got out she would rush straight to Herrovosca. The Black Ghost, I felt sure, would release her when—and if—there was no further end to be served by keeping her quiet. That would be when Yolanda and Maria Lalena had been driven out of the country. And Conrad was right, of course, from every standpoint, especially that of expediency. An unpopular dowager and an unknown and inexperienced girl could not hope to keep peace and a throne in a tumultuous country like Alaria.
However, in spite of my feeling that she should be left behind, as soon as the tray had been removed I started back at the wall again with my stolen table knife. Reasoning that a woman should be left to the mercy of a masked bandit was one thing, and not trying to get her out was another.
It must have been two hours before our knives met through the wall. Then we examined the sides of the hole, and found that we had been playing the fool. The wall was of concrete laid on a modern steel lath, and not a single layer of lath, but a double one, with about four inches between where the joists ran up. All we had accomplished was a more direct method of communication than our yarn telegraph.
I put my mouth as close to the hole as possible, “Helena!” I said.
“Yes, Marshall,” she answered. “I have seen how hopeless it is, and it’s quite all right. The important thing is for one of you to get out. If you could stab the guard when he brings the tray—”
“So that’s the sort of thing the Balkans have taught a lady from Boston?” I asked. “Suppose your grandmother Collins could hear you now? Anyway, we’d have to stab two of them at the door of this room, and no one knows how many more before the way out of this nest was clear. No, that may have been all right in the eighteenth century, but I’m afraid we shouldn’t get away with it.” Then I told her about the loosened board and the acid. “If you could tell us how to get to Herrovosca without a car after we leave this place—” I finished.
“I can’t,” she said, “I’ve only the most hazy idea where we may be.”
“South or southwest of the place where we were captured.”
“I did not know even that,” she said. “We must be somewhere near the Visichich’s manor. We’re not in it. The country there is hilly, but not rocky and bare like the cliff out of that window. No, we’re still in the mountains. I think,” she went on, “if we only knew just where we are, and how to get here, we should hold the key to the control of Alaria—if we had some loyal troops.”
“I fear,” I said, “that two ‘ifs’ make a negative.”
“If that’s supposed to be funny,” she said, “I think it’s ill-timed.”
“It wasn’t,” I assured her, solemnly. “I was only trying to point out that this man’s secrecy is strength for him but not strength for anyone trying to undermine him. I just don’t believe that the people who believe in the supernatural Black Ghost would listen even if he were unmasked before them. They would merely say that the man who was unmasked was an impostor, and the Black Ghost would go right on.”
“That’s what I mean,” she said, cryptically, “these legends have endured for eight hundred years, and now a living man has conceived the idea of impersonating them, and making political capital out of the impersonation.”
“I believe it’s more than that,” I answered, “this ghost held an army back not a hundred years ago. And this stronghold bears all the earmarks of a place that has been built for centuries. Isn’t the Black Ghost rather a secret society?”
“That has been kept secret for eight hundred years?” she laughed. “I find it less fantastic to believe in the supernatural. A secret society it might be, but not a society that has been kept secret for centuries.”
“Yet here it all is,” I said, “and the food’s not ghostly, at any rate.”
“A ghost would be the lesser miracle,” she answered.
“And a real man the greater danger,” I said.
“Much the greater danger, Marshall, if you don’t get to the Queen. I have a pass that will take you to her through all accredited government barriers, but don’t forget that there may be no accredited government by now. They did not search me—thought it quite useless, I suppose. Your Black Ghost asked me if I carried any despatches or state papers, and when I gave him my word of honor that I did not, he sent me down here. Decent of him.” Through one of the diamond shaped spaces in the lath she handed me a small folded paper. “I hid it in my shoe,” she said. “It’s as good a hiding place as any. I shall be far safer here than you are, so do not hesitate on my account. A friend of the Queen will be treated with respect, so don’t worry.”
I took the paper from her, and placed it in my own shoe. Then I pushed the canvasses against the hole in the wall again, and went over to see how John was progressing. As I looked down through the floor I found him prying at the remaining bars with one that was already loose. At each pull they moved, but the opening was still closed effectively against our escape. I looked at my watch. It was a few minutes to eleven. I called down to John, “What do you say I come down there? The two of us ought to get that out pretty easily.”
“If we had another lever,” he said, “but we haven’t, and if anyone comes into that room while you are down here the game will be up. I’ll have it out in a few minutes now. The acid gave out, but I weakened all the bars with it. I couldn’t hold it where I wanted it, and it ran down the stone. We’ll have to be careful getting out of here or we’ll be burned by it.”
“I’ll bring a blanket from the bed,” I said.
“Yes,” John agreed, “and get out a couple of socks from that black bag, and a clean collar apiece, and four handkerchiefs, and a comb and the jar of salve. Also I want some water to wash my hands in before we go. Might as well be civilised if we’re going to pay our first call on Royalty. And say good-bye to your cousin for me, with apologies and regrets.”
I obeyed all his instructions and stuffed the things into my pockets. I had hardly finished when I heard a sharp crack from the room below. I went to the hole in the wall again and called through to Helena, “He’s got the bars out, and I am going now. I hope and pray you may be safe.”
“And you,” she said, “don’t forget that the Black Ghost wears a ruby ring. All my prayers go with you. À dieu.”
“À dieu,” I replied, feeling pretty mean about leaving her, but not seeing anything else to do. I pushed a blanket through the hole in the floor, then tied the water pitcher to a torn pillow case, and let that down, after which I dropped down myself, carefully, so that the rug would fall back smoothly over the hole. The longer they puzzled over how we had got out the more time we should have to get away.
“Don’t think about your cousin now,” John said, “there’s very little chance of our being useful to her if we stay, whereas if we should really manage to get away we might conceivably be able to get back here again with a rescue party.”
“The rescue will be accomplished another way,” I said, “if at all.”
John showed me his hands then, they were raw with burns and blisters. “Good Lord,” I said, “you can’t go with hands like that.”
“Don’t be silly,” he answered, “that’s what I want the handkerchiefs and salve for. Time’s precious, but I guess we’ll save it by using a little sense.” He soaked his wounds carefully in the clean water, and then held them out while I applied the salve. It must have been a stinging dose, but he stood it well. Then I put the jar back in my pocket, and arranged the blanket in the window so that what acid remained there should not burn us or our clothes. John climbed through first. I waited and slowly counted ten before I followed. The drop was really quite short. I let myself down from the ledge, holding fast by my hands until I was hanging flat against the wall of the building. Then I let go. It was all very simple. Almost too simple. I suspected an ambush any moment as we went down the path single file. Overhead, the stars were shining; below us, far down the valley, a single light flickered, though whether it was a signal light or in a cabin we could not tell. Then, suddenly, the stars and the light below us were cut off. We had entered a tunnel. I was sure then, that we were trapped after all. It had been too easy a matter, getting out of the place. The end of the path must be blocked, and all that we had won was the pleasure of spending the night outdoors.
But I was wrong. The tunnel was a long one, but unguarded, and fairly straight. It was damp, however, and very slippery underfoot, and there were bats in it. Once or twice we brought up square against a wall, but we always found, a moment or so later, that the way continued at an angle. It was pitch dark, of course, and though I had brought candles and some matches from our room, we did not dare to strike a light.
At last, ahead of us, we saw a star. I stopped, and spoke in the lowest whisper I could manage, to urge John to extra caution. Without a light we had no means of knowing how much longer the tunnel was, and at its end there would undoubtedly be a guard. We must go carefully.
That last few yards was so slow and silent that it seemed like years before we saw the sky above and not ahead of us. The path was still narrow, and, like that we had seen below our prison windows, a mere ledge along the cliff. There was no one on the path itself, but on a level a little above it, with a rifle at his shoulder, his body silhouetted against the sky from where we crouched, stalked a sentinel. He was guarding not only the path where we were, but another that branched off from it as well. The other must be the important one or he would have stayed down on our level. A short flight of stone steps connected the two. I could just see them in the darkness. John dropped to his knees, close to the low retaining wall, and, step by slow step, began making his way across the open space. I dropped to my knees, too, but merely to be less obvious in case the man should flash a light. I could not see John after a moment or two. He disappeared into the darkness. There was no way for me to tell how far he had crawled, for he literally made not a sound. Two bats circled round and round over our heads, swooping close to the sentinel at times. I did not know whether they would prove a help to us in distracting the man’s attention, or, by coming too close to us, betray us. Our fate seemed to hang on a bat’s whim.
I waited a long time before I dared begin my slow and rather painful crawl. I had to lift my knee quite off the ground at each advance, because the roll of a pebble would have been suicidal. I passed the steps at last. They marked the end of the sentinel’s beat. I waited for him to turn before I moved again. Before he returned I had taken four steps. He was above me, and just four steps behind, when, careful as I had been, I struck a loose stone with my knee, and sent it rolling a yard or two across the path. The sentinel turned suddenly. I heard him. I jumped to my feet, and ran. Three shots sounded, but I did not stop. A moment later John was beside me. We wasted no breath talking, but ran on desperately until he stumbled and fell. He tripped me as he went down, and we lay for a second, listening for our pursuers. There was no sound. We had left the path and were no longer on the edge of the cliff, though still on a side hill, but overhead trees arched so that we could not see the stars. We were in a forest, which meant that we had come quite far down the mountain, and were in a valley, for on the exposed upper slopes there were no trees. We must have run a mile at least.
“There’s no one after us,” John said.
“What does that mean, do you suppose?”
“Either that we lost the way in the darkness or that they can’t be bothered with catching us. What I think is that if we find our way to the high road we’ll walk into more of the gang, and if we are lost in the mountains, as we may be, we don’t count. I was lost in quite civilised woods in northern Connecticut once, for a day and a night. This may not be funny before we’re through. There won’t be any friendly neighbors to come out looking for us. That get-away was too easy.”
“Don’t be so gloomy,” I said, “being lost is probably our only hope of getting away. We can steer south-west by the stars.”
“That’s all very well to suggest,” John said, “but there is a lot of rough going around here, and while we twist north and east and all the ways between to get around gullies and boulders, who is going to tell us we are really going south-west? I tried that steering by the stars business in Connecticut and it’ll be the same sort of thing here only worse.”
“You think we should try to find the high road, then?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “I don’t think it’s going to matter much what we try to find. It’s going to be entirely a matter of luck—good luck or bad luck. What I chiefly hope is that there aren’t any more Fakat Zols working on their own around here.”
I told him I thought that very unlikely, because one strong bandit would clean up all the little ones in short order, and he agreed. “Let’s just keep on down this slope,” he said. “At least it’s down hill, and south. We’ll undoubtedly have to climb up again before we’re through, and twist around a lot, but we may come out.”
It was a nightmare journey. At every slightest sound we stopped to listen. The hillside was smooth enough so that in spite of the darkness we had little difficulty keeping on it, but there were a thousand noises in the night that brought us up short to listen again.
We must have walked for more than an hour, when at last a pale gleam on the highest branches of some trees told us that the moon was up. Suddenly we heard unmistakable footsteps, and a beam of light from an electric torch showed us a path, sloping downward, directly ahead of us. John and I hid as well as we could behind the trees. Unfortunately our cover was poor. They were pines and sparse, with little underbrush, but the night was dark, and by crouching low we hoped to escape notice. The steps approached, there was no attempt at concealment, so we judged that the person approaching must be one of the Black Ghost’s men. The light flashed again on the path, nearer, in a wide sweep, blinding to us, who had been in darkness so long. We waited without moving.
Suddenly a second swathe of light fell across John’s face. I saw him distinctly from my partial cover. The light stopped an instant, flashed wider, across me, and then went out.
There was a moment’s silence, as I edged toward the figure that had held the light. Before I reached it there was a scuffle a few feet to my left. I rushed toward it. It was a short fight. The man seemed to have little strength, but a great deal of determination to get away. He was nothing to our combined forces. In a moment John had him down, and I tied his hands behind him with my handkerchief. As an all-purpose tool, I recommend the humble handkerchief. Then, while I held our prisoner, John felt about on the path for the electric torch. After a moment he found it. By its light we stared at our capture. His hat had fallen off, and long chestnut hair tumbled loose about his—her, shoulders. She wore well-cut riding breeches, and was young and very good looking, though she was glaring at us furiously.
“Hell!” I said.
“My God,” said John. “It’s the Countess Visichich!”
“’ow did you get away?” she demanded. “They told me you ’ad got out, but I couldn’t wait to find out ’ow. I never could see what ’arm you would do anyway—only ’e wanted to be sure. And you lied to me yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” I echoed—“why, so it was only yesterday. At a guess I should have said week before last.”
“What are we going to do now?” John asked crossly. “We can’t tie her up and leave her here. We can’t take her with us, and if we let her go she’ll bring all of the gang down on us before we even know where we are.”
“Why not let me go?” she suggested, pleasantly.
“That isn’t so easy,” John said, and sounded so sorry that I almost laughed at him.
“You are gentlemen,” she continued, “what else can you do?”
“Thank you,” I said. “We are complimented, but after all, you do present difficulties.”
“I come of honorable antecedents,” she said, proudly.
“And take them seriously,” I suggested.
“Of course she does,” John took her part sternly.
“If you will let me go,” she offered, “I swear I will say nothing of ’aving seen you for, say, twenty-four hours. Will that be long enough?”
I agreed, gloomily, but John was more enthusiastic. “Of course, Countess, of course, it will be quite enough. We really ought to see you home, but there are difficulties, you know. Forgive us, won’t you?”
“Oh, we are not civilised ’ere,” she laughed. “I am quite safe on this mountain alone, I assure you. No one could be safer. You might untie my hands, though, if you don’t mind.”
John made a wry face, and let me do it, his own hands being in a state of skinlessness that would have been embarrassing to him if she had seen them, to say nothing of being painful.
“We couldn’t quite,” I said, “tie a lady up and leave her helpless on a wild mountain side. It’s nice of you to help us out of our difficulties. Have you a watch, by the way?”
“A watch?” she echoed. “Yes, what for?”
“Will you give us your word to wait here for half an hour before you start on again?”
“Oh, I say,” John interrupted. “That’s a bit thick, you know. She can’t do that, Carvin. She’s all alone, and she ought to get home as quickly as possible.”
“Ten minutes?” she offered.
“Very well,” I grumbled at her. “Ten minutes, then. It’s not very long, though.” I untied her wrists, and turned to continue our way down the mountain, taking advantage of the path.
“You ’ave been very kind,” she said, suddenly, “I will do more for you. Something I should not do. If you go straight down that path you will meet the men of the Black Ghost. They are in camp at the foot of the mountain. If they had not been, you would have been followed. If you watch carefully, about one kilometer from ’ere you will find a path that branches off to the left. Keep to that, and you will come to a dirt road in the valley. Follow that road and you will come to another that will lead to Herrovosca, but farther west than the road of the Pass. I think you will prefer that. But I must warn you that even the road I suggest is not free from danger for you.”
“Awfully good of you,” John said.
“It would have been safer for you to ’ave killed me or to ’ave left me for wild animals to kill. I feel I am making you a very small payment on a great debt.”
John was about to make some more remarks, so I took him firmly by the arm. “Only ten minutes,” I reminded him. “Come, now, and don’t waste time. We have to travel a long way.” He came, then, a little unwillingly, and with several backward glances to where we had left her sitting on a stone, slowly twisting up her long hair and shoving it under her hat in that seductive way women have with hair. When we were quite out of earshot I was surprised to hear John ask me, “shall we follow her directions or not?” I had supposed him too much under the spell of her personality to doubt her.
“Why not?” I said. “Since we have no idea where we are, and she seems rather a decent sort, even to me, who have not fallen a victim to her charms. I don’t see why she shouldn’t do us a good turn to repay our decent treatment of her.”
“That’s what I thought,” John said contentedly. “I’m glad you think so, too. She must have a swell time up here, swashbuckling around these mountains. Exactly my idea of the right way to spend a lifetime.”
I laughed, though I was in the act of stumbling over a twig. Swashbuckling around a lot of bleak mountains in the dark was my idea of no way to spend a lifetime, or even a small part of it, and I said so. However, when we found the branch path to the left, we followed it, still going down the mountain, and, I hoped, not too far from the general direction of Herrovosca. The only thing that really puzzled me was her remark about the Black Ghost’s men being in camp. Just what did that mean? For one thing, that they weren’t up at their mountain stronghold, which accounted for our escape. But it would mean more than that. It probably meant trouble somewhere.
The moon was full and high in the heavens when we finally came out on the roadway. A narrow, muddy roadway, deep with ruts. “A dirt road” had been the Countess’ description, I found it rather an understatement. It was a dirty road. I hoped John liked it, but I didn’t ask him. By that time I was too tired to waste energy asking silly questions. In the dark it was hard to judge distances or time, but I felt it should be near dawn. We must have followed it for two miles or more when the sound of a car drove us off the road. There was a high stone wall on either side at that point, and John said he’d rather be captured again than attempt to climb it, and he was sure he couldn’t make it if he did try. The lamps of the car showed us plainly to its occupants, and they came to a sudden stop beside us. A voice addressed us in Alarian, John cursed sibilantly in English, and the voice adopted that language obligingly, asking who we were and why we were there.
I replied, “Our car broke down, and we had to leave it. We are trying to find help, and I fear we have lost our way.”
“You are going away from the ’ighway. It is be’ind you about seven miles. Where did you leave your car?”
That question was a difficult one. However, John answered it quickly enough. “We don’t know,” he said. “We’ve been walking, it seems, for years. We lost our way before the moon came up. We thought we’d find a house on this road, but it apparently goes nowhere.”
“It goes,” the man said, sternly, “to Visichich Manor. If you will get in we will take you with us, but don’t be ’eadstrong because we ’ave revolvers.”
There was no means of resisting them. We were exhausted and unarmed and John was suffering with his burned hands. We were seven miles from the highway, and heaven only knew how many miles from any inn or town on that highway. Altogether, we were fairly caught. John climbed slowly into the car, a little saddened, I feared, with the realisation that the Visichich woman had set us a trap. Not a mean trap, but a trap, for all that. She would undoubtedly keep her word and say nothing to anyone about having seen us, but she had arranged that we should not be a menace to the Black Ghost. My admiration for her increased a little. I wondered whether John would feel that way.
It was a seven-passenger car. Our captors let down the two small seats in the tonneau, so that we sat facing them. They were right, of course. The state of the country was too unsettled to take chances. Our story of the broken car would not hold water, because they would not have passed any abandoned car on the way—unless, and that might be true—they had not come from the highway, but from the Black Ghost’s camp, which might be between their manor house and the road. It was possible they had not heard of our escape, and they still might believe our story. And there were twenty-four hours in which Countess Katerina would not tell them. There was still some hope we might get to Herrovosca.
We rode on in silence for about twenty minutes, bumping uncomfortably over the bad road. Then we thundered through an archway and into an open space before the long low white building which we had first seen from the customs house. The ancient archway through which we had come, and the tower and wall connected with it, might have belonged to a fortress. A single light showed in the house. The driver of the car got down first and helped us out, then preceded us up to the door, and knocked loudly on it. Presently a servant came, and only then did our hosts get out. They kept discreetly behind us as we entered the wide hallway, and the driver showed us the way into a room at the right. It was an interesting room. The walls were white, the iron hardware was handwrought and I thought very old. Three hanging lamps supplied light of the oil age. The furniture was of that peculiarly ornate character which usually graces southern and central European homes. Against their severe white walls and rich carpets it loses the tawdry appearance that it would have among the gimcracks of our homes.
The chauffeur and the servant remained in the doorway, in case we should make any disturbances, of course. I decided we would not. We stood in silence for several minutes, looking each other over quite frankly, each pair of us wondering how the other pair might fit into the complicated scheme of things in this Balkan state. The elder of our captors was a man of medium height, grey haired, with a beard and a mustache. Both their mouths had the same ruthless line as the Countess Katerina’s and they both had the same relieving lines of humor around their amber-brown eyes. Altogether they were not an alarming pair, and I judged they came to the same conclusion about us, for they relaxed in a moment or two, and the older man spoke. “Sit down gentlemen,” he invited.
We obeyed willingly. We had walked enough that night to make sitting welcome.
“Now, about that car,” he went on. “Perhaps you will tell me some details of it? I will have a man search for it in the morning.”
“By morning,” John said easily, “it will quite likely have been stripped beyond recognition by the bandits that I hear are in these mountains.”
The two men looked merely mildly surprised at the mention of bandits. “Bandits?” the younger inquired pleasantly, “you ’ave ’eard there are bandits ’ere?”
“Yes,” John went on, “we were very anxious not to meet any of them when our car broke down. I can imagine a mountain bandit, supreme in his power and responsible to no one, could be a most unpleasant person to meet on a dark night. Especially so for two unarmed men.”
“Who has told you of bandits?” The younger man seemed only slightly interested, as though he asked merely out of politeness.
“We heard of them before we left Rheatia.”
“Oh, Rheatia!” He dismissed Rheatia as though that overgrown neighbor of his were not worth mentioning. “In Rheatia you will ’ear many tales. The only bandit I know of in these mountains is Fakat Zol, the Black Ghost. You may ’ave ’eard of ’im?”
“Yes,” John said, slowly, “that was the name.”
“The ghost of Fakat Zol,” the man went on, slowly, “of course ’e is not a ghost, but it is true ’e maintains almost an army in the mountains. That is why the Rheatians ’ate him. ’is band ’as defeated them several times when they were bent on aggression. That is ’istory. No one goes through the Pass unless Fakat Zol permits. It ’as always been so. That is, it ’as been so for eight hundred years, which is long enough. He rules by superstition, tradition and right. Our ’istory is full of incidents of ’is appearance. ’e is like your English Robin ’ood, but become immortal.”
“We are Americans,” John corrected.
“The same thing.” He shrugged his shoulders. “You come from Rheatia?”
“We came through Rheatia.”
“You ’ave business in Alaria?”
We went through the old story of the writer and the artist. I was so tired of it I wished that it might be safe to change our professions for a little variety.
“At present,” the younger man said slowly, “Alaria is not a ’ealthy place for strangers.”
“No?” I was all innocence, or tried to be. “Is there some trouble?”
“There seems to be a slight uneasiness since the King’s death. You cannot tell what it may lead to. For the present I think we are all very tired. Let us continue our discussion in the morning.”
He had not asked for passports, but I realised that by morning he would have made inquiries, and know exactly who we were. Our escape would undoubtedly be reported to him even if his daughter kept her word. There was nothing to do but allow ourselves to be led off to bed, hoping that we should be put where we could get out easily, though even if we got out of the house, there would still be the wall and its gate to pass. However, we were at least several miles nearer Herrovosca than we had been at midnight. We must content ourselves with that reflection and get some sleep, since we could not do anything else.
They took us to a room in the ancient tower. It was quite comfortable enough to have been intended as a guest room instead of a prison cell, though it was not large. The walls were a good four feet thick, of solid stone, and we climbed up three flights of stairs to get to it. The view in the very early dawn was magnificent. Rolling hills to the south and west, and to the north and east, higher and yet higher and more jagged rose the mountains, all bathed in the romantic light just before the sun shows itself.
“We really accomplished a big night’s work getting out of that piece of scenery,” John said, “I guess we deserve a rest.”
I dressed his hands again with fresh water and the remaining handkerchiefs. They looked better than I had thought they would. Then we went to bed.
The staircase by which we had come to our room did not end at our floor, but went on, whether to a roof or another floor I could not see. Outside on the landing a guard settled himself in a chair against our door. A few minutes after we were in bed I heard a low conversation between him and another man, then footsteps went upwards. As I lay quietly, looking out toward the highest mountains, I caught suddenly a flash of distant light from one of the lower peaks. It came and went intermittently, flashing in code, as they had flashed in code from the customs house to the tower we were now in. No doubt they were flashing a message about us, but that wasn’t important. What was important was that the point from which they were being answered was now visible, and must be the stronghold of Fakat Zol. I spent the next hour drawing a careful sketch of the mountain peaks, with an indication of the one from which the signals came, and put the sketch in my shoe under the pass from the Queen. Then I lay down again, feeling like the best of counter-plotters. I wondered what my quiet newspaper friends at home would think of me. They didn’t think they were quiet, but the best they could do for excitement was a night at a speakeasy, or a little poker, with an occasional big murder case to liven the day’s work. And with that comforting thought I went to sleep.
I dreamed of witches in Salem being crushed by the weight of huge stones on their chests. I was a witch, and the stone struck suddenly, and was followed by a shout from the onlookers, and then by another. I sat up in bed, sneezing, and found that a large piece of plaster had fallen from the ceiling, and struck me on the chest. The dust was so bad I felt choked. I looked up at the place from which it had fallen, and saw a large hole, and in it a man’s face peering down at us. He was not altogether a pleasant looking person, and seemed to be more the night club type than a wily politician who would deserve imprisonment. He had bulgy dark eyes, a curly brown mustache and thick wet lips above a three days’ growth of beard. He was speaking to us in Alarian.
“We don’t speak Alarian,” I said. “Sorry, can’t understand you.”
The man immediately switched to English, “Quick, you hide the plaster,” he ordered, “they will not know, perhaps. Be quick, I tell you, they may come any time.”
John lay looking up at him, “Oh, all right,” he said. “We’ll do that for you, but you needn’t be so upset about it.” He got out of bed slowly, groaning with the stiffness of his muscles. I slid out as carefully as I could so as not to disturb the plaster. Then I looked at John’s hands. They were much improved. “Be all right in a few days,” John said. “Really not bad at all now, they have stopped smarting entirely.” The man above scolded at us. “Time for that later,” he said, “hide the plaster, now, quick.”
“Shut up!” I ordered, “I’ll hide that plaster when and if I get good and ready.”
He replied in a string of Alarian which I judged to be oaths of no mean venom. For a moment he left the hole, probably to tear his hair. I then rebandaged John’s hands, and when I had finished, the man above was again peering down through his hole and seemed inclined to treat us with less abruptness. At least he was silent while I pulled the bed apart, found two mattresses on it, spread all of the plaster I could gather up between them, and then remade the bed, taking a great deal of trouble to have it look as much as possible as though it had been slept in. My efforts did not satisfy John. He laughed at me, lay down on the bed, and rolled around on it. When he got up again the bed was perfect. It was tumbled just enough.