“There is one place beside the washing table,” I was directed again. I didn’t wish the man any harm, and for the time being, of course, we were friends of the Visichiches’ enemies, but he was peculiarly irritating. However, I picked up the piece beside the washstand, and tossed it out of the window. He grunted a protest, but said nothing. I had barely finished when there came a knock at the door, and when I had opened it, a man gave us a large can of hot water, a flat leather case containing seven old-fashioned razors—one for each day in the week and I hoped we shouldn’t have time to use them—a whisk broom, two tooth brushes, a cake of perfumed toilet soap, and a note. The latter bore no signature. It read, simply, “When you are ready to come down stairs, knock on the door. The man will be waiting for you. We will discuss our affairs over lunch.”
John, meanwhile, had been dressing. His hands handicapped him a little, but not seriously. “You’re not to get them wet,” I said, and I washed his face for him, and shaved him. It was a risky business with the open razors, but I accomplished it with no great casualties, and then brushed our clothes, and shined our shoes with a towel.
“Oh, for a whole lot of clean clothes, and a cold shower,” I said, remembering with a sigh the little pleasant luxuries of life back home. The common people in the Balkans look on bathing as at least unorthodox, if not actually sinful, and very unhealthy, and the upper classes have only progressed beyond the Saturday night stage if they have lived in more civilised communities. In other words, the people of the Balkans live as our grandparents did.
At last we were ready, but before we knocked on the door we whispered “Good-bye” to the man above us. He had recovered his poise, and smiled down quite pleasantly.
“Gentlemen,” he spoke very softly because of the man outside the door. “Tell me, gentlemen, you are guests here? You are friends of the Count Visichich?”
“Not in the least,” John answered, casually, “we are very probably prisoners here, though no one has said so yet.”
“Ah,” the face above was suddenly wreathed in smiles. He looked almost a decent sort of chap when he smiled, and vaguely familiar. Probably, I considered, because he was so very much the night club type.
“If you find you are not prisoners,” he asked, “where will you go?”
“We had started for Herrovosca,” I answered. “If they let us we’ll go there.”
He smiled again, this time almost supplicatingly. “And you are Americans, yes?”
“Yes, we told you that.”
“I know, I know. Will you take a message for me in Herrovosca, if you can get to it? But if you cannot go yourselves will you write it to someone I will tell you?”
“Is it likely to get us into trouble?” I asked.
“Trouble?” he shook his head so protestingly, so innocently, that I knew he was lying. “Trouble? Oh, no, gentlemen, not possible.” And then he stopped and thought for a moment. “Wait, only, please,” he said, and was gone for a few seconds. When he reappeared he reached down through the hole, and gave me a folded piece of paper. His arm was covered with a loose brown sleeve of rough material, but the hand was smooth and white and the nails were polished. The hand and the sleeve did not match at all. I took the paper and turned it over. There was nothing on the outside.
“Open it,” he directed, still smiling ingratiatingly, “it is instructions that will admit you to the presence of the Queen Yolanda. My message is to her.”
“Is this the message?” I asked. It looked too short.
“No,” he said. “The message is for you to tell her. I do not wish to write it on paper. Perhaps someone would find it, then it might make you trouble. You will tell the Queen—h’m—there is no need, perhaps, to tell her anything, except that I am here, and I wrote that paper. Only when you see her, tell her how I look. See, carefully, and that will be enough. Yes, gentlemen. You will do that?”
“Yes,” I said. “If we are able to get to the Queen we will certainly tell her about you, but don’t you want to tell us your name?”
“No,” he said, “no. I think I will not tell my name. Only tell her how I look, and if you cannot see her, write to her. It will be enough. À dieu, gentlemen, I willnevaireforget you have help me. I will always be most grateful to you.”
His face disappeared again. John and I exchanged glances. He smiled a little, shrugged his shoulders, and I took off my shoe and put the third piece of paper in the heel. It began to feel stuffed, and the lace spread a little wider than that on the other foot.
Then we knocked on the door, and heard the key grate in the lock, and our prison was opened. I closed the door behind us, and noticed that there was no guard on the stairs below except the man who preceded us. Above, I heard the scrape of a boot, and knew that there was a guard outside the door of the man with the polished finger nails. He had a chance, then, to get out, by dropping down to our bed, which would dull the sound of his fall, and the door of our room was not locked now.
We were bowed through the door of a large dining room, and John said “Oh” appreciatively, as he saw it. Like the whole house, the walls and woodwork were white, with heavy wrought iron hardware of intricate patterns showing smartly black against it. The furniture was polished or painted with scenes and portraits, or covered with colored leather or vivid brocades. It was fresh and bright, and I liked it. John spoke in praise of it. “My God,” he said, “it would be priceless in New York. The decorators would go mad with excitement.” He leaned down to examine a series of tiny brilliant medallions painted on the top of a chest. “But what a crime it would be to move it,” he said. “Here it is perfect, with the mountains outside as a complement.”
“It’ll make a pleasant memory,” I said. “I’m getting pretty fond of home, suddenly. It was nice and comfortable there.”
“Yes,” John said. “Yes, I suppose so.” But he didn’t sound as though he meant it entirely. He was absorbed in studying the lovely old furniture.
Our two captors came in, then. They looked refreshed and ready for the day. I knew that we did not. In spite of our brushing and shaving we were still bedraggled and rumpled and unpresentable. The last two days and nights had been almost as hard on our appearance as on our feelings, but we must have been a great improvement on the two unshaven tramps they had found on the road the night before. The elder introduced himself. “I am Colonel Count Visichich,” he said. “This is my son, Lieutenant Count Ivan Visichich, in charge of the customs house at the foot of the Pass. I have also a daughter who will be ’ere in a moment. When she arrives we will eat lunch. Meanwhile it would be well to sit down. You gentlemen are probably not yet fully rested. I am afraid you ’ad a difficult time last night.”
We sat on a long carved bench with a crimson damask cushion. It was under a window and faced the door. John was absorbed in two very old portraits that hung across the room. He was so much absorbed in them, indeed, that he did not notice the Countess Visichich when she entered the room.
“Katerina,” said the Colonel, “I wish to present the two gentlemen of whom I spoke to you. Gentlemen, this is my daughter, Countess Katerina Visichich.”
We both hesitated, to see whether she would show any sign of having seen us before. She did not, but bowed formally. She was keeping the letter of her word to us. I was not surprised. I had already decided that she probably would do that. She had the courteous manners of a Frenchwoman, together with a barbaric sense of honor, and a fearlessness that was the result of her half civilised surroundings and not-too-distant nomad ancestors. She smiled at us candidly. “My father and brother tell me you came ’ere late last night,” she said. “Just before I returned myself, in fact. Yesterday was very busy for many of us, it would seem. I am so glad you—’appened to find your way here. It was better as sleeping on the road, no?” Her eyes teased us, she might be our jailor but she was a pleasant and a friendly one. “You ’ave ’urt your ’ands,” she went on concernedly, to John. “Please, may I be of service? I have studied in the ’ospitals—almost I am a nurse. Come with me—yes?—and I will fix them.”
She led John out of the room, talking as they went, while the two Visichich men entertained me assiduously for a quarter of an hour until she chose to bring John back again, his hands swathed in great white mounds of gauze. They were no doubt very professional, but they looked ridiculous, and I saw that he meant to get them off again as soon as possible. “I have been very cruel to ’im,” she announced, “but my cruelty was of a moment only, and he is already almost well again of it.” They smiled at each other, and we sat down to lunch. We were treated like guests of the house. I hoped that was an omen of release, but somehow I doubted it. I could not see why they should let us go, and I was right. After we had finished the meal, they led us to the garden. As we stepped out into the sunlight the old Count said, gently, “You gentlemen will find time a little ’eavy on your ’ands, I fear. So long as you do not go beyond the archway you are quite free to wander as you will through the garden as long as we remain at ’ome. I regret that we must leave late this afternoon, and must then request you to return to the tower for a time. I am sure you understand me without further explanation.” He offered us cigarettes, and as we took them he said, “I ’ave warned you, gentlemen. This is an uncivilised country.” It might be uncivilised, but the manners of its people were perfect. I began to wish that a few of my former bosses could have said threatening things—or unthreatening ones, for that matter—half so pleasantly. He seemed to be laughing at some kindly joke, as he waved his hand at us, and turned away into the house followed by his son. The Countess Katerina stepped down to a low, tiled terrace. “Come look at my roses for a moment,” she called, “then I shall be obliged to leave you, too. I am a very busy woman—so much ’ousekeeping!” She laughed a little. That might easily be a joke, though I could imagine the Countess Katerina an excellent housekeeper. European ladies, especially southern European ladies, waste very little of their time going to parties as American ones do. They learn, instead, every step in the primitive keeping of their homes—spinning, weaving, lace-making and all the rest of the thousand arts that with us are represented by the corner delicatessen and the department store. Not that I suspected the Countess Katerina of leaving us to make lace. For that day at least I was sure her cares were not of the house.
We looked at the roses. Beautiful roses, in a sunken garden, to protect them from the cold winds of the mountains. Countess Katerina broke off a lovely peach-colored bud and put it in John’s buttonhole; she took less time when she did it for me.
“Do you grow roses in America?” she asked.
I laughed. “Yes,” I confessed, “in fact, at the last formal dinner I went to before I came away the conversation was so horticultural you might easily have supposed it a gardener’s convention.”
She looked a little puzzled at that until John explained the nature of a convention. “In Alaria,” she said, “there are not many rose gardens. This is the finest in the country. I ’ad an English aunt, the wife of my uncle. She made this garden, with brick walls around it, like England. We do not use many bricks ’ere. There is so much stone. But she would ’ave it, and I like it. Every year there is a man in London who sends us new flowers. They are so nice.” She pulled a small red one, “See—’ow sweet it smells?” She poked it at John’s nose, then at mine. From the house there was a shout, then a bell began to ring, like an old-fashioned fire-bell. There was more shouting in a different tone. Countess Katerina turned and ran back without a word.
“Our friend from the room upstairs has been missed,” I said.
“She’s a swell girl,” John said by way of answer.
“Don’t be a fool,” I protested, “everybody is busy hunting that chap who dropped the plaster on us. If we look around we may find a way out while they are looking for him.”
“It seems a mean advantage to take of her,” John began, but he blushed as he caught my look, and said, “Oh, all right. Yes, of course, I suppose we must. Come along, then, quietly, and let’s see what we can find.”
We walked up the five steps from the rose garden, and tried to be as casually inconspicuous as possible. A car snorted and pop-popped to our right, and then the motor started and it drove away, cut-out open, roaring like a plane. A second followed in a moment. Two men shouted. Another appeared above us on the roof of the old tower, his head just showing above the battlements. Some electrical instrument up there began making a fizzy noise like a radio, but as there were no aerials visible I decided it must be a daytime version of the heliograph. A radio would be too public for these people, and a telephone too easily put out of order.
The manor was really a collection of buildings strung together after the fashion of northern New England farm houses, but these were less geometric. They had been built to conform to the shape of the hill rather than with any studied plan. The wall which circled the whole was high enough to keep off marauders, but not high enough for any defense against determined attack. The house itself was a maze of walls and gateways constituting, so far as we were concerned, an inner series of barriers against escape. Thus the garage, to the right of the place we stood when the two cars went out, was only a few feet from us, but in order to reach it we turned in the opposite direction, through an opening in a low stable, passed an enclosed yard full of chickens and ducks, with a pond in the center, and a movable pen containing two sheep busily engaged in cropping the lawn, through another gateway with a crude wooden gate, into another yard with a cow, past the cow, and there, on our left, was the garage, and in it, at the back, stood a third car. I walked forward a few steps to a spot where I could see the outer gate. A sentry was walking back and forth on the inside, but the gate itself was open. I nodded to John, who immediately climbed in. Behind us, in the garden, the Countess called, anxiously. “Quick,” John whispered, “they’ve missed us.” I jumped in behind the wheel. The key was in the lock. I slipped into high, and let out the clutch very slowly as I stepped on the gas with the other foot. The car moved, and began to creep forward almost noiselessly. Before the sentry saw us we had reached him. He jumped aside just in time to save himself, and we were through the forbidden gate. The road sloped suddenly downward, then to the right in a sharp curve. Just as we rounded it two shots rang out behind us.
“All right,” I said. “Nothing hit.”
“Nothing but me,” said John.
“Where?” I demanded, alarmed, and swung the car in an abrupt and rutty curve. He groaned. “Right arm. I don’t think I’m going to do anything strange, faint or anything like that, but you can’t tell. If I do, don’t pay any attention, for God’s sake, but keep on going. Good driving, old man. We’d never have made it if you had stopped to shift gears.”
“Luck,” I said. As it was, with a strange car. “It might have stalled just as well as not. Hold on to the seat, we’ll have to make as good time as we can for a while in spite of your arm. If they catch up with us they’ll shoot us up some more.”
For the next three miles, perhaps, we drove down the rough and muddy road, then John slowly slumped down in his seat, so that I had to slow the car while I held him so that he would not fall on the gear lever. I felt guilty that I was always urging that we escape, and John was always getting hurt doing it.
It seemed years before I reached the high road. Before then I had slowed down with the realisation that since we had the last car in the garage, danger must lie ahead of us, and not behind. We had two passes to the Queen in Herrovosca, so our lack of passports would probably be overlooked except by the Black Ghost’s adherents, who would shut us up again in any case if they caught us. John had only fainted, but I had no idea how badly he might be hurt. My first concern was to get him to a doctor, though that was a dangerous business, with everyone but the legal authorities against us, in a country where the legal authorities had almost become fugitives.
The high road where we turned into it was deserted, except for an old donkey cart with a small girl driving. She looked too stupid to be a menace even if she had wished. About three miles farther on we came to a small village. There was nowhere to go but through it, so I drove boldly, if not straight, up the main street. It was not very much like our main streets in America. Here were small thatched-roof houses, many only one story high. The vehicles in the street were propelled by ox, horse, mule and donkey power, most of them had solid squeaking wooden wheels. I felt John move. He sat up.
“How’s your arm?” I asked.
“Feels better, thanks. Aches like the devil, still, but this isn’t so bad. It was the jolting over those ruts that did me up. I’ll last all right now till we get to a doctor in Herrovosca. You go right on driving.”
We left the little village behind us and came suddenly upon a branch road leading to the left. I turned down it unhesitatingly. Anything would be better than to stay on the main road where they were looking for us.
“That’s right,” John agreed. “Safer. I may be the family invalid, but we’ve got to get to Herrovosca.”
The road was dirt, but smooth enough to make fairly good time, although there was more traffic than I had expected. Then we came into another town, this one much larger than the last. The houses were higher, and closer together. There was still more traffic, and in a moment as we neared the center of the village, the streets became full of standing vehicles. There was, however, almost no person in sight. Those that were still moving were going in the same direction we were. Even children were conspicuously absent. It was with greater and greater difficulty that I found space for the car to move. At last, in sight of the large square that seems to form the center of all Alarian towns, as it does of all New England towns, we came, perforce, to a stop. Four slow-moving vehicles closed in behind us, with still more coming, effectually blocking that way out. Ahead of us a vast crowd mulled, shouting, gesticulating. We were stopped again. I began to feel that Herrovosca was the ultimate and dearly attainable goal of those who had served a proper term in purgatory.
From somewhere in the distance, standing, apparently, on the fountain in the center of the square, a man was addressing the crowd. A man, as I could see, with a long white beard, and long white hair that reached to his shoulders. He held a staff in his hand, with a crucifix on the top. More vehicles came up behind us, their occupants jumping out, and rushing on to the square. Here, undoubtedly, was news, if we could get someone to interpret it for us, but the first need was for a doctor, since we had to halt, anyway.
John could walk alone, but I helped him out to make sure. We skirted our way around the standing vehicles, and found a crooked alley, empty of people, and at its end, near the square, there was a doctor’s sign. I rang the old-fashioned bell. There was no answer. I rang again, and still again. At last I heard slow feet shuffling a little, and the door was opened grudgingly by an old, deaf woman, who waited for us to speak, scowling, with her hand to her ear. I took refuge in signs, pointing to John’s arm, and repeating the one word, “doctor,” the same in so many languages that I hoped she might understand it. She beckoned us to follow her, and shambled along the passage, grunting as she walked. Presently we heard shouts and the revivalistic sound of the white-beard’s voice, and then we were ushered into a room overlooking the square. There the old woman left us, shutting the door carefully behind her.
While we waited I looked out of the window. We were not half a city block from the fountain and the man on it. It was a remarkable thing to watch, though we did not know what it was all about. He seemed to be having difficulties with his audience. He was answering questions from all sides at once, and dramatically waving his arms. From our vantage point we could see his face plainly when he turned in our direction. He was younger than his white hair suggested, and rather fine looking in a patriarchal fashion reminiscent of moving picture Bible scenes. His eyes were large and dark, his nose aquiline. Words were audible to us, but we could not understand them. At last a man came into the room, and I turned as I heard him close the door behind me. He seemed excited. I spoke to him in German, and hoped that he believed me when I told him that we had been shot at on the highway, probably by robbers, and my friend must have his wound dressed.
“What is the matter with your hands?” he asked John.
“I blistered them fixing our car,” John replied innocently, “and a very charming young lady insisted upon bandaging them up in this absurd way.” He reached for a pair of surgical scissors the doctor had laid out, to take the bandages off, but I stopped him. “You are better off that way,” I said, “let them be, for a while. You don’t want to do anything with your hands, anyway, so what is the difference?”
The doctor gave us a suspicious look, but got to work, though he divided his attention somewhat between John and the scene out of the window. Twice, a woman dashed into the room and shouted something at him, at which he grew still more excited.
“I wish you would tell us what this is all about,” I said, “who is the man on the fountain?”
“A mad monk,” he said, “who says he is sent by God to lead the people of Alaria to a holier form of government. He is an old hermit who is said to have worked miracles. He is quite mad but some of the people believe him and there will be trouble here unless something is done.”
“Why not arrest him?” I asked.
The doctor shook his head. “We would not dare,” he said. “In Alaria the supernatural is always a higher power than any other. But we have one sure savior.”
“Who?” John asked, though I saw he knew the answer.
“Fakat Zol, the Black Ghost,” the doctor said, simply. “If you do not keep quiet I cannot help hurting you. Ourhetmanhas sent a message to him. He will come soon, I hope.”
“Do Alarian ghosts always come when they are sent for?” I asked.
“This is a live ghost,” the doctor answered, winding yards of bandage around John’s arm. “It is fortunate, too, for with a strange impostor in Herrovosca, to be crowned as Queen, and a prophet here, raising a mob, we need something more than police to keep order.”
“But surely,” I said, “if this Princess can establish her identity that will be the end of the trouble?”
“That has been the beginning of the trouble,” the doctor said, coldly. “No pretender can ever establish his identity to everyone’s satisfaction, nor can one ever be proved a fraud to everyone’s conviction. There will always be some who believe or disbelieve and make trouble. But something will happen. The Black Ghost, or Prince Conrad, who is the rightful king, will find a way to arrange matters.”
“Then,” I asked, “there are two rulers in Alaria now?”
“No,” he answered, “there is only one ruler in Alaria.”
“Conrad?” John asked.
“No, the Black Ghost,” the doctor answered, and laughed.
“And who is the Black Ghost?” I asked, “does anyone know? Is he just a bandit chief, or an Alarian in good standing who plays this part as a side issue?”
The doctor frowned. “There must be some who know,” he said, “but they do not tell. The great mass of the people believe he is really the old crusader, Fakat Zol. Even many of his followers believe that. If it were not so he would have no power. As it is, if that statue of the Holy Virgin should step down from the front of the church and the Black Ghost said it was a trick of the devil, the people would believe the Black Ghost.” He tied the end of the bandage, and began putting away his instruments.
“Thank you,” John said, “and now we must go back to our car. Alarian politics are not for us, even though a prophet and the ghost of a crusader are about to do battle before our eyes. I’d like to see it so I could tell about it when we’re home again where things like that don’t happen. Still, we started for Herrovosca, and as soon as this meeting breaks up enough to let us through the streets, we must go on. Also, our car will be robbed if we leave it alone.”
“Two Americans going to Herrovosca in a car,” the doctor said ruminatively.
“Yes,” John answered, “thanks for doing my arm—if you’ll let us settle our bill now—”
The noise in the square was increasing momentarily. The prophet’s voice was no longer audible above the shouts of the townsfolk. Suddenly a stone crashed through a window not far away. We could hear the breaking glass, and then the storm broke. The doctor turned to us, “You had better wait here,” he said, “it won’t be safe for you to go out, even by the back way. Besides, you gentlemen have not yet explained to me this gunshot wound. The only bandits of the mountains are Fakat Zol’s men. They do not fire on harmless travellers. In order that you may remain here quite safely I will lock the door as I go out.” He smiled, not pleasantly, and went out quite suddenly. The key turned in the lock on the other side of the door. I started to intercept him, but since I had been standing by the window and he had been beside the door while he spoke, I was too late. We were prisoners again.
“If,” said John, “we ever get back to a slightly less hospitable country I shall feel lonely and neglected. This sound of keys that turn in locks has grown to be a familiar lullaby.”
“Let’s see what they do to the prophet,” I said, and went back to the window. The sound of keys turning in locks had become so familiar to me that I scarcely paid any attention to it. John, exhausted by his wound and its dressing, stayed on the sofa.
“Funny,” he groaned, “that of all the doctors in Alaria we should have happened to come to this man, who is obviously such a staunch adherent of Conrad’s.”
“Not funny a bit,” I said, “it would have been a bit of amazing luck if we had happened to find one who wasn’t. Those two women are not exactly popular heroines.”
Outside was the greatest confusion. The prophet was no longer on the fountain. In his place half a dozen men were standing, all speaking at once, but no one paying much attention to them. Every once in a while a stone crashed through a window, or someone screamed. Then, from somewhere to the left, came the sound of a trumpet. “The gendarmes!” I cried. “Listen, John.”
The crowd parted slowly, and into the square rode a small troop of cavalry. We were in a second story window, and I could see uninterruptedly from the moment they entered the square. At their head rode the Black Ghost, on a black horse, his crusader’s cross showing white against his breast. All his men were in black, and rode black horses, and every man in the troop wore a short black mask across the upper part of his face. Only the Black Ghost was entirely covered, even to the hands.
“Enter the villain of the piece,” I said. “It’s our old friend, Fakat Zol.”
“I guess that lets us out of our week-end in Herrovosca,” John said, “I wonder where he’ll send us now, and what he has done with the Countess Waldek? She thought we’d have her message delivered by now. I wonder who the devil he is, anyway?”
“Devil is right,” I said, “and that door is far too thick to smash without being heard, even supposing there’s no one guarding the other side of it. Too bad. This is our only chance for a getaway. This time they’ll shut us up so we can’t get out.”
“There’s the window,” said John.
“With your wounded arm? You’d never be able to get through that crowd. They’d jostle you and you’d faint again.”
There was a narrow iron balcony outside the window and it was not so very high above the street. We could have dropped without any special risk, perhaps, if there had not been such a crowd below, and if, on a similar balcony belonging to the next room, the doctor and various members of his household had not been standing. They were shouting and cheering, “Fakat Zol! Fakat Zol! Fakat Zol!”
The black troop rode straight through the square to the fountain. There they paused, and Fakat Zol, scorning the eminence of the masonry beside him, raised one arm straight above his head in the fashion made famous by the Fascisti. It is a dramatic gesture, and he was a dramatic personification of direct action and force to people to whom pageantry is the outward and visible sign of authority. And he was more than that. He was a holy creature, a saint, supernatural, a subject for worship and the hero of an infinite number of legends. Friends and enemies alike were his publicity agents.
“I’d like to know,” I said, “that Helena’s safe, though I’m damned if I think she deserves to be. So far as I can see she’s an out-and-out political meddler.”
“She probably has the best of intentions,” John answered, “and I don’t like to think of her in trouble, but I quite agree. Still, I think we must try to deliver her message to the Queen, though I’m inclined to wish no one had ever interfered with Conrad. That girl Maria Lalena, or whoever she is, is too young to know what she’s about.”
I agreed, decidedly.
“Pretty girl, too,” said John, thoughtfully. “We mustn’t be too hard on them, though it’s the craziest scheme I ever heard of even if she really is the Princess.”
“Yes,” I said, “I’d like to know who thought of the whole silly plot in the first place, and who persuaded my poor cousin to go into it. Being Queen of a poverty-stricken, unsettled Balkan country isn’t my idea of a proper destiny for a young girl who ought to be going to dances and having a lot of trips to Paris, and all that sort of thing.”
“Queen Yolanda thought of it,” John said, “it fairly reeks of her.”
“Thought of what?” I asked. “Killing her son, or only of importing this girl to take his place?”
“Oh,” John said. “Suppose Fakat to be responsible for killing Bela, what more natural than that a lady who had been practically the ruler of the country for a number of years should object to relinquishing her place to an old hermit brother-in-law, and want to keep her position as mother of a weak, or at least inexperienced ruler? No doubt it had got to be a habit.”
“Don’t be too sure,” I interposed, “it may quite well be that the girl really is the Princess. If the old lady had wanted her only daughter brought up away from the court, what could be more natural than that she should give her to her only disinterested friend, a woman whom she could trust, and who lived nearby, and yet outside the country?”
“Yes,” John admitted, “not that it is going to make much difference, as I see it. Her fate isn’t going to be determined by her identity, but by Conrad and the Black Ghost. My guess is that they mean to assassinate her as quietly as possible, blame it on someone else, and take the throne.”
I agreed, but said that it wasn’t any of our affair, anyway, but that we must get Helena’s message to the Queen.
“All I wish,” John said, “is that I were sure that that nice Countess Visichich were not mixed up in the assassination part. That I should hate.”
“Our business at present,” I said, “is to get out of this place before we are returned with thanks to the more careful custody of our black-masked friend. We may be able to save the girl’s life, and save Countess Visichich from even a reflected guilt in her death.”
“Bravo,” said John, “and a splendid chance of escape we’d have hopping on the heads of that mob out there. You might try picking the lock of that door, though.”
“Ever try it?”
“No.”
“Besides, we haven’t anything to pick it with. Have to have something in the way of tools.”
“Oh, for a woman with hairpins.”
“Those days are passed. They all have cropped hair except your favorite Countess Visichich.”
“She’d do nicely. Still, if we were to raise some sort of disturbance—”
“Have to be a good deal of disturbance before it would be heard over this excitement.”
“Couldn’t we set the house on fire?”
“That’s arson. After all, we’re not criminals, and there’s strong practical objection in that we’d probably be burned up in it before they noticed.”
“Yes, but if we made a smudge, and they thought it was on fire—”
“I’m afraid there’d still be more chance of smothering ourselves than of attracting their attention.”
He gave up the idea, then, and we both sat down gloomily to wait. The crowd outside calmed down, and little by little it thinned, as the excitement faded. The Black Ghost went into the house next door, and his troop sat their horses under our window. The mob was still disturbed, and from time to time a new center of argument would bubble up, and die out again after a few shouts. The presence of the black masked horsemen was wonderfully soothing.
At last the key turned again in the lock and the doctor reappeared. “This way, gentlemen, if you please,” he said. John rose a little unsteadily, and we followed the doctor down a corridor, and through two rooms and a heavy door in a thick wall, into a dining room. Behind a long table, in a high-backed, red-cushioned chair, sat Fakat Zol in state. Around him were grouped three of his followers in their outlandish uniform, and several men of the town, looking very important with reflected mystery.
The Black Ghost spoke in a somewhat husky voice. “We meet again, a little sooner than I expected.”
He had taken off the gloves that covered his hands when I saw him from the window. He waved John to a chair with a hand that should have worn a ruby ring. Automatically I looked for it. It was not there.
John answered him, smiling, and seeming to have lost his weakness. “Perhaps a little sooner than any of us wished,” he suggested.
“I am sorry you ’ave suffered a wound,” the Black Ghost went on, “and yet I am very glad that it brought you ’ere. I am sure Doctor Carlo ’as given you the best of medical care, and I ’ope you are not in pain.”
He seemed very much concerned, yet I would not allow myself to be deceived. He was a bandit. We were to be disposed of by him, and though he was as pleasant as ever, I felt that something was wrong. It was not that he seemed displeased with us, quite the contrary. But he seemed changed. John noticed it, too. He was staring at him thoughtfully. The accent was the same, but the voice, for all its huskiness, was more debonair. I argued that a sudden success had wrought the change. That was bad for us, in one way, yet it might be that we could count on him now to be more magnanimous to two American citizens. Still, who would ever know anything about it if he were not?
“You ’ave escaped twice from my—er—our—’ospitality. They say the number three is symbolic of good luck.”
“A singular recurrence of good luck, certainly,” said John.
“Exactly. The Black Ghost brings good luck to ’is friends. Though you ’ave opposed yourselves to me, I feel that you would like to be my friends. Is that not so?”
“That might be true if we knew you better,” John said.
The Black Ghost laughed. “That is what I mean,” he said. “I believe you gentlemen wish to go to Herrovosca to see Queen Yolanda. At least that is the way I interpreted the news of the ’ole between your room and that occupied by a certain lady. Now, it may be a surprise to you if I withdraw my objection to your going there. As prisoners, gentlemen, you are very troublesome. I think I would rather ’ave you for friends. If you will give me your word of honor to say nothing of what you ’ave learned of the politics of the Visichich family, or of the location of the castle in the mountains, you may go to Herrovosca. Except, I ask you to do me a favor.”
“And what sort of favor can we do you?” I asked, feeling that it would probably prove a joker.
“I ’ave a passenger for you as far as Herrovosca.”
“A passenger?” I repeated, stupidly.
“Yes. Only one.”
“May we ask the identity of this passenger?”
“It is the self-styled prophet who was preaching from the fountain. ’e is a mad monk, a ’ermit, who takes every opportunity to preach sedition to people who believe ’im a saint. ’e is suppose to ’ave effected a few miraculous cures. ’e is a great fakir, but ’armless except at a time like this, when any slight disturbance may create a civil war. I do not wish to arrest ’im ’ere for fear the people may take ’is part. ’e ’as refused to go with my men to Herrovosca, though ’e wishes to go there, but ’e ’as agreed to go with two American tourists. If you will not take ’im I will arrest ’im, but this way may prevent bloodshed.”
“That sounds most reasonable,” said John.
“It is best that you should not speak to ’im, nor to answer ’im if ’e speaks to you. ’e ’as also promised not to speak, though I am not so sure ’e will keep ’is word. You will drive by the straight road, going through the city as far as the church of St. Nicholas. There you will turn to the left. Do not mistake that. At the Central Bridge you will be met by police who will remove the Prophet from the car, and you will be free to do, from that time forward, whatever it may please you, even so far as a visit to our Dowager Queen.”
“Well,” said John, “of all the topsy-turvy countries I’ve ever been in—though, of course, that is no affair of ours.”
“None,” said the Black Ghost, “unless, of course, you would wish to make it so.”
“And the alternative?” I asked.
“The alternative—will be to return to the frontier under guard—immediately.”
“We’re not interested in the alternative,” John said. “Are we, Carvin?”
Of course I had to protest that we were not. I wasn’t, really, either, though I was beginning to wish we’d stop somewhere a little while.
“The Doctor Carlo’s most charming wife ’as prepared some food for you to eat upon the journey,” the Black Ghost went on. “That is so you need not stop on the way. There is no ’urry to ’ave you arrive there, but I do not wish you to stop with your passenger, ’e might jump out.”
“We haven’t enough petrol,” I said.
The Black Ghost turned to one of his men, and gave an order in Alarian. “Your tank will be filled immediately,” he said. “Anything else you wish?”
“We should like our passports back,” I suggested.
“Ah, your passports. Oh, yes, to be sure. I shall ’ave to send for them, but I promise you shall ’ave them back again.” He turned to the doctor and spoke again in Alarian. The doctor fumbled in his pocket and drew out a card with an official-looking stamp on it. The Black Ghost motioned him to give it to me.
“That,” he explained, “is a pass that will take you through any police lines. With it you will be able to reach the servants in the Royal Palace. No doubt you ’ave been provided with some means of gaining an interview with the Queen after that. Can you think of anything else you will require?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Naturally,” he continued, “you will do your passenger no ’arm of any sort on the way. I think he will not try to make any trouble for you. You give me your word of honor, gentlemen?”
“My word of honor,” I answered.
“Mine, also,” said John.