CHAPTER VIICONCERNING THE MYSTERY OF A PRINCE
IT was a dull room, Drexel’s prison, and Drexel’s presence did not brighten it. To have met and loved and lost a girl all within the space of twenty-four hours, was hardly an experience to make a man enlivening company. Most of the time he lay upon the old sofa, gruffly refusing when Ivan drew out the cards with the purpose of easing his tedium, paying no heed to the young fellow’s chatter, and no heed to the pair’s going and coming. His every nerve throbbed with the anguish of her loss, an anguish that he felt would never leave him.
And added to that anguish was the bitterness of humiliation. Brought up as one among the most exclusive and powerful, he could not escape a pride in his position; nor could he escape the knowledge that in Chicago those wise mothers who could calculate what a man would grow to be in a decade or two considered him the catch of the city. Yet he had been refused by an unknown girl, a girl whose rich clothes, possibly the only good ones she had ever worn, had been admittedly supplied her as a disguise. And more, this girl he loved with allhis being had scorned him in scathing words—him and his giant projects.
Certainly enough to gloom any man. But Drexel had yet a further reason for despair. Many a man, refused, even scorned as he had been, had stuck grimly to his suit and in the end won her he loved. But, in faith, how was a lover stubbornly to persevere when there was no loved one against whom to aim his perseverance? Ah, that was the worst of it all—he was never to see her again.
Four more days he lived in this gloomy aloofness, and during this time Ivan and Nicolai settled into a routine management of their task; one would sleep and the other guard, and on two occasions one or the other had left the house for his period off duty. During these days, though there was no abatement of the anguish, Drexel thought often of the utter uselessness of his being held a prisoner. What intention had he of giving the slightest aid toward the capture of Sonya? Would she not be just as safe if he were free?
Plans for escape haunted his mind. But escape was not so easy. True, the one hundred and thirty pounds of either of his captors would have been nothing to his one hundred ninety, but Ivan or Nicolai, whichever it was, always had the black pistol in readiness, and always had his quick eyes upon him. Before he could leap upon his guard, or before he could burst the window and spring out or shout for the police, there would be a deadlybullet in him. Besides, leaping from the window, even should he escape the bullet, would probably mean serious injury upon the cobblestones below; and shouting for help would mean his capture, and the capture of Ivan and Nicolai. He did not wish to involve them in trouble, for he liked the queer pair. And, moreover, this move might endanger the safety of Sonya. No, if he escaped, his escape must bring no risk upon these hostile friends; it had to be an escape from the police as well as from revolutionists.
In the end his escape proved to be a comparatively simple matter. In the afternoon of the fifth day of his captivity Nicolai turned over the watch to Ivan and sallied forth. It had been part of Drexel’s craft to lie upon his couch, appearing to nap much of the time, thinking that thus he could best watch his jailers and throw them off their guard. He was now stretched upon the sofa, his semblance that of a sleeping man. Ivan looked at him, looked at the table which needed clearing after their late lunch, a chore which he could easily do if the prisoner slept—then tip-toed to Drexel’s side, gazed at him with his sharp eyes, then bent low to make certain.
Suddenly Drexel’s arms shot up. His left hand, with a powerful wrench, tore the pistol from Ivan’s grasp, the right closed upon the little fellow’s throat. Drexel had some knowledge of anatomy, and with all his force he pressed his thumb up under the jaw against the pneumogastric nerve. Ivan struggledconvulsively beneath this paralyzing pressure—weakened—then quieted into limp unconsciousness. Instantly Drexel thrust his handkerchief into Ivan’s mouth, tied this gag securely, and by the time Ivan’s eyes fluttered open had him bound hand and foot with the ropes prepared for his own confinement.
“Excuse me, comrade,” said he, gazing down at his late captor. “But I did not want to impose upon your hospitality any longer, and I did not see any other way to leave. I really am sorry if I hurt you—for I like you, Ivan.”
As he slipped into his big coat, Ivan tugged impotently at his bonds. “Well—good-bye, my lad,” said Drexel. “And tell your people they have nothing in the world to fear from me. I’m as safe outside as I would be in here with your guns against my chest.”
He picked up his Browning and was putting it in his pocket when he caught a look of longing in Ivan’s eyes. He laid the pistol on the table.
“Keep it as a little souvenir,” he said, and with a friendly wave of the hand he unlocked the door and went out.
But misfortune was not yet done with him. As he started to creep down the stairway a step creaked and the boarding-house keeper came into the hall. “The devil!” he ejaculated and barred the foot of the stairs with his powerful body.
“Ivan! Nicolai!” he shouted.
For an instant Drexel regretted the pistol he hadgiven Ivan, but there was no time to return for it. He plunged down at his big antagonist; the man set his body and opened his arms to grapple with the escaping prisoner. But Drexel was not minded to get into that detaining clutch. He sent his fist into the other’s chest; the boarding-house keeper, true Russian that he was, knew nothing of the art of boxing, and in the instant that he gasped and floundered Drexel drove a blow into his unguarded solar plexis. He went down in a heap, and Drexel sprang by him and out into the court.
Ahead of him lay danger from arrest by the police. But he knew that if once he could get back to the Hotel Europe he would be safe, for no police official would dream of identifying the hunted American with the cousin-to-be of Prince Berloff. Though but little after three, night had already fallen. The darkness was an aid, and with the shawl collar of his shuba turned up so that only nose and eyes were visible, he slipped across and out of the court, and hailed the first swift-looking sleigh he met. He offered the driver double fare, the driver laid on his whip, and half an hour later he walked nonchalantly into the official-filled Hotel Europe.
He found his uncle had arrived from America only that morning. The old man was overjoyed to see him, and Drexel would have felt a pleasure no less than his uncle’s had it not been for the pain of his love.
John Howard was a sturdy, upstanding old man of close upon seventy, with a shaggy-browed, clean-shavenface, and shrewd gray eyes that could twinkle humorously or glint like steel; a man feared and admired by his friends, feared and hated by his enemies. He had made his great fortune as America’s great fortunes have been made, by his superior might, by thinking solely of his own gain, and thinking little or none about such matters as law, or ethics, or the other fellow, or the public; and he believed his methods just and proper. There was no surface suavity about him, no hypocritical pretense; he was bluff and outspoken—he was just what he was.
Uncle and nephew went down to the cafe together, as Mrs. Howard and Alice were out making calls. Mr. Howard was full of the great traction deal—the deal that was to be his climatic exit, and Drexel’s triumphant entrance, as a great financial figure—and he rapidly sketched a summary of the developments of the three months that Drexel had been in Russia. They had practically got control of all the street-railway franchises of Chicago for a long term; and had acted so quietly that the city had not a guess of what was going on. They expected to break up the system into separate lines and discontinue the transfers, and thus get millions of extra nickels a year from the people; and to reorganize, and in that process to net some fifteen million dollars from unsophisticated investors by the everyday miracle of turning water into stock; and to perform some of the other feats of financiallegerdemain by which kings of business win and maintain their sovereignty. All of which astute and mighty brigandage seemed as proper and legitimate to Drexel as it did to his uncle. One was a founder of a business school, the other an apt pupil; and the fundamental idea of that school was that one’s business concerned no one but one’s self.
“Now tell me about things here,” said Mr. Howard. “I’ve talked with your aunt, but I want to hear from you. You’ve quite got over that—eh—little feeling for Alice?”
“Quite,” said Drexel.
“I knew you would.” He nodded his head. “And Alice? You remember when the news of the engagement came to us in Chicago, you spoke of an affair—not like yours, but a real one—between her and Jack Hammond. Has she been acting much like the romantic damsel with a broken heart?”
Visions of his pretty cousin rose before Drexel’s mind—at balls splendid with brilliant uniforms and glittering gowns—at grand dinners where sat none but those of proud and noble lineage; and at all he saw Alice dazzled, happy, exulting with girlish pride that her place was soon to be among the highest of these.
“Much of a heartbreak?” persisted the old man.
“I must admit,” Drexel acknowledged slowly, “that Jack Hammond doesn’t seem to trouble her much.”
“Just as I told you it would be!”
They were silent a moment, during which Drexel bowed to a woman sitting at a near-by table; and he gave an inward start as he saw the tall, well-dressed man with a swart Mephistophelian handsomeness, who sat at table with her. It was Freeman, the terrorist.
Mr. Howard’s sharp eyes had followed his nephew’s glance. “Say, but she’s a stunner!” he ejaculated.
And she was—a superb compromise between blond and brunette, in the first fulness of womanhood, with the ease and grace and rather confident smile of the acknowledged beauty, and gowned in a green robe that had all the richness and distinction that the Parisian modistes of French St. Petersburg could give it.
“Who is she?” Mr. Howard asked.
“Countess Baronova. She’s a widow. Her husband was killed in the Japanese war.”
Mr. Howard looked the young man straight in the face. “Bevare o’ vidders, my boy,” he said solemnly.
“Needn’t worry—nothing doing there,” Drexel returned; but he did not see fit to add that it was not from lack of encouragement from the widow.
“Yes, sir, a stunner!” his uncle repeated. “And now, tell me, Henry—what do you think of our prince?”
“You have not seen him yet?”
“No. He had an audience with the Czar to-day, Alice told me. How do you size him up?”
Drexel’s eyes fell to the cloth and he hesitated. “As a prince? Or as a man?”
“Both. First as a prince. O. K., isn’t he? You remember that as soon as your aunt cabled me from Paris about the engagement, I cabled the proper parties to investigate him. They said he was the real thing.”
“Oh, he’s the real thing all right. He belongs to the highest nobility—hasn’t played the deuce with his fortune—is a man of great political power.”
“Good! Agrees exactly with the reports sent me. Just what sort of an official is he?”
“There you have me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I don’t know.”
“Don’t know! And been knocking around with him for three months!”
“Oh, I have asked him, once or twice. But he answered he did not exactly know himself. He said he guessed he was a sort of consulting attorney to the Government. He is frequently closeted with this general and that governor, with the minister of this and the minister of that, and is summoned every now and then to see the Czar. That’s all I know, and the few people I’ve discreetly quizzed about him seem to know no more.”
“A sort of mystery, eh?”
“In a way—yes; though he makes light of therebeing anything mysterious in his position. He says he really has no official status at all, that he is no more than a private gentleman. In fact, if he were an official he’d have to be in St. Petersburg more than he is; most of his time he spends on an estate about fifty miles away.”
“Yes, Alice spoke of that estate; she said we were going out there to a house party day after to-morrow. The prince part of him sounds all right. How about the man?”
“He will doubtless call when he returns from the Czar. That will answer your question.”
The shrewd old eyes looked deep. “I see you don’t like him.”
“Put it the other way.”
“Don’t like you—eh? Why?”
“I can only give you a guess.”
“Your guess is as good as most men’s certainties. Go on.”
“Well—the fact is, he found out about—about Alice and me, you know.”
The uncle nodded. “And he’s a little suspicious—jealous. That’s one reason. What else?”
“Well, you know of course what he is marrying Alice for. Money. Not that he’s hard up. But he’s ambitious—terrifically ambitious. He dreams of becoming the greatest man in the empire, next to the Czar. He——”
“It sounds to me like we’d picked out a good one!” broke in his uncle.
“He knows that in this poverty-stricken country nothing will help him forward like money—for he already has birth and brains. Well, he has learned from aunt about the arrangement you have been so good as to make for me—about your going to give me a part of your fortune, and your going to leave its management, even when it’s Alice’s, in my hands. He wants entire control of it all as soon as he can get it; the use of the lump sum will forward his plans much better than the use of the income alone. So he looks upon me as an obstacle between him and his ambition. That’s the other reason for his not loving me.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s enough, isn’t it?”
“Well, then—why don’t you like him? Not just because he’s marrying Alice?”
“I wouldn’t stop liking Jack Hammond if Alice were to marry Jack.”
“What is the reason then?”
Drexel hesitated. “I can’t explain. Nothing definite. He’s rather cold, and formal, and distant. But that isn’t it. It’s just a sort of uneasy feeling that I have when with him. I guess that’s really all. In fact— But there he comes now.”