Long Live the King by Mary Roberts Rinehart (page 3)

On the stairs his lightness counted. His bare feet made no sound. He could hear behind him the great mass of Humbert, hurling itself down. Haeckel ran as he had never run before. The last flight now, with the concierge well behind, and liberty two seconds away.

He flung himself against the doors to the street. But they were fastened by a chain, and the key was not in the lock.

He crumpled up in a heap as the concierge fell on him with fists like flails.

Some time later, old Adelbert heard a sound in the corridor, and peered out. Humbert, assisted by the lodger, Spier, was carrying to the attic what appeared to be an old mattress, rolled up and covered with rags. In the morning, outside the door, there was a darkish stain, however, which might have been blood.

CHAPTER XIII

IN THE PARK

At nine o’clock the next morning the Chancellor visited the Crown Prince. He came without ceremony. Lately he had been coming often. He liked to come in quietly, and sit for an hour in the schoolroom, saying nothing. Prince Ferdinand William Otto found these occasions rather trying.

“I should think,” he protested once to his governess, “that he would have something else to do. He’s the Chancellor, he?”

But on this occasion the Chancellor had an errand, the product of careful thought. Early as it was, already he had read his morning mail in his study, had dictated his replies, had eaten a frugal breakfast of fruit and sausage, and in the small inner room which had heard so many secrets, had listened to the reports of his agents, and of the King’s physicians. Neither had been reassuring.

The King had passed a bad night, and Haeckel was still missing. The Chancellor’s heart was heavy.

The Chancellor watched the Crown Prince, as he sat at the high desk, laboriously writing. It was the hour of English composition, and Prince Ferdinand William Otto was writing a theme.

“About dogs,” he explained. “I’ve seen a great many, you know. I could do it better with a pencil. My pen sticks in the paper.”

He wrote on, and Mettlich sat and watched. From the boy his gaze wandered over the room. He knew it well. Not so many years ago he had visited in this very room another bright-haired lad, whose pen had also stuck in the paper. The Chancellor looked up at the crossed swords, and something like a mist came into his keen old eyes.

He caught Miss Braithwaite’s glance, and he knew what was in her mind. For nine years now had come, once a year, the painful anniversary, of the death of the late Crown Prince and his young wife. For nine years had the city mourned, with flags at half-mast and the bronze statue of the old queen draped in black. And for nine years had the day of grief passed unnoticed by the lad on whom hung the destinies of the kingdom.

Now they confronted a new situation. The next day but one was the anniversary again. The boy was older, and observant. It would not be possible to conceal from him the significance of the procession marching through the streets with muffled drums. Even the previous year he had demanded the reason for crape on his grandmother’s statue, and had been put off, at the cost of Miss Braithwaite’s strong feeling for the truth. Also he had not been allowed to see the morning paper, which was, on these anniversaries, bordered with black. This had annoyed him. The Crown Prince always read the morning paper – especially the weather forecast.

They could not continue to lie to the boy. Truthfulness had been one of the rules of his rigorous upbringing. And he was now of an age to remember. So the Chancellor sat and waited, and, fingered, his heavy watch-chain.

Suddenly the Crown Prince looked up. “Have you ever been on a scenic railway?”, he inquired politely.

The Chancellor regretted that he had not.

“It’s very remarkable,” said Prince Ferdinand William Otto. “But unless you like excitement, perhaps you would not care for it.”

The Chancellor observed that he had had his share of excitement, in his, time, and was now for the ways of quiet.

Prince Ferdinand William Otto had a great many things to say, but thought better of it. Miss Braithwaite disliked Americans, for instance, and it was quite possible that the Chancellor did also. It seemed strange about Americans. Either one liked them a great deal, or not at all. He put his attention to the theme, and finished it. Then, flushed with authorship, he looked up. “May I read you the last line of it?” he demanded of the Chancellor.

“I shall be honored, Highness.” not often did the Chancellor say “Highness.” Generally he said “Otto” or “my child.”

Prince Ferdinand William Otto read aloud, with dancing eyes, his last line: “‘I should like to own a dog.’ I thought,” he said wistfully, “that I might ask my grandfather for one.”

“I see no reason why you should not have a dog,” the Chancellor observed.

“Not one to be kept at the stables,” Otto explained. “One to stay with me all the time. One to sleep on the foot of the bed.”

But here the Chancellor threw up his hands. Instantly he visualized all the objections to dogs, from fleas to rabies. And he put the difficulties into words. No mean speaker was the Chancellor when so minded. He was a master of style, of arrangement, of logic and reasoning. He spoke at length, even, at the end, rising and pacing a few steps up and down the room. But when he had concluded, when the dog, so to speak, had fled yelping to the country of dead hopes, Prince Ferdinand William Otto merely gulped, and said:

“Well, I wish I could have a dog!”

The Chancellor changed his tactics by changing the subject. “I was wondering this morning, as I crossed the park, if you would enjoy an excursion soon. Could it be managed, Miss Braithwaite?”

“I dare say,” said Miss Braithwaite dryly. “Although I must say, if there is no improvement in punctuation and capital letters – “

“What sort of excursion?” asked His Royal Highness, guardedly. He did not care for picture galleries.

“Out-of-doors, to see something interesting.”

But Prince Ferdinand William Otto was cautious with the caution of one who, by hoping little, may be agreeably disappointed. “A corner-stone, I suppose,” he said.

“Not a corner-stone,” said the Chancellor, with eyes that began to twinkle under ferocious brows. “No, Otto. A real excursion, up the river.”

“To the fort? I do want to see the new fort.”

As a matter of truth, the Chancellor had not thought of the fort. But like many another before him, he accepted the suggestion and made it his own. “To the fort, of course,” said he.

“And take luncheon along, and eat it there, and have Hedwig and Nikky? And see the guns?”

But this was going too fast. Nikky, of course, would go, and if the Princess cared to, she too. But luncheon! It was necessary to remind the Crown Prince that the officers at the fort would expect to have him join their mess. There was a short parley over this, and it was finally settled that the officers should serve luncheon, but that there should be no speeches. The Crown Prince had already learned that his presence was a sort of rod of Aaron, to unloose floods of speeches. Through what outpourings of oratory he had sat or stood, in his almost ten years!

“Then that’s settled,” he said at last. “I’m very happy. This morning I shall apologize to M. Puaux.”

During the remainder of the morning the Crown Prince made various excursions to the window to see if the weather was holding good. Also he asked, during his half-hour’s intermission, for the great box of lead soldiers that was locked away in the cabinet. “I shall pretend that the desk is a fort, Miss Braithwaite,” he said. “Do you mind being the enemy, and pretending to be shot now and then?”

But Miss Braithwaite was correcting papers. She was willing to be a passive enemy and be potted at, but she drew the line at falling over. Prince Ferdinand William Otto did not persist. He was far too polite. But he wished in all his soul that Nikky would come. Nikky, he felt, would die often and hard.

But Nikky did not come.

Came German and French, mathematics and music and no Nikky. Came at last the riding-hour – and still no Nikky.

At twelve o’clock, Prince Ferdinand William Otto, clad in his riding-garments of tweed knickers, puttees, and a belted jacket, stood by the schoolroom window and looked out. The inner windows of his suite faced the courtyard, but the schoolroom opened over the Place – a bad arrangement surely, seeing what distractions to lessons may take place in a public square, what pigeons feeding in the sun, what bands with drums and drum-majors, what children flying kites.

“I don’t understand it,” the Crown Prince said plaintively. “He is generally very punctual. Perhaps – “

But he loyally refused to finish the sentence. The “perhaps” was a grievous thought, nothing less than that Nikky and Hedwig were at that moment riding in the ring together, and had both forgotten him. He was rather used to being forgotten. With the exception of Miss Braithwaite, he was nobody’s business, really. His aunt forgot him frequently. On Wednesdays it was his privilege – or not; as you think of it – to take luncheon with the Archduchess; and once in so often she would forget and go out. Or be in, and not expecting him, which was as bad.

“Bless us, I forgot the child,” she would say on these occasions.

But until now, Nikky had never forgotten. He had been the soul of remembering, indeed, and rather more than punctual. Prince Ferdinand William Otto consulted his watch. It was of gold, and on the inside was engraved:

“To Ferdinand William Otto from his grandfather, on the occasion of his taking his first communion.”

“It’s getting rather late,” he observed.

Miss Braithwaite looked troubled. “No doubt something has detained him,” she said, with unusual gentleness. “You might work at the frame for your Cousin Hedwig. Then, if Captain Larisch comes, you can still have a part of your lesson.”

Prince Ferdinand William Otto brightened. The burntwood photograph frame for Hedwig was his delight. And yesterday, as a punishment for the escapade of the day before, it had been put away with an alarming air of finality. He had traced the design himself, from a Christmas card, and it had originally consisted of a ring and small Cupids, alternating with hearts. He liked it very much. The Cupids were engagingly fat. However, Miss Braithwaite had not approved of their state of nature, and it had been necessary to drape them with sashes tied in neat bows.

The pyrography outfit was produced, and for fifteen minutes Prince Ferdinand William Otto labored, his head on one side, his royal tongue slightly protruded. But, above the thin blue smoke of burning, his face remained wistful. He was afraid, terribly afraid, that he had been forgotten again.

“I hope Nikky is not ill,” he said once. “He smokes a great many cigarettes. He says he knows they are bad for him.”

“Certainly they are bad for him,” said Miss Braithwaite. “They contain nicotine, which is a violent poison. A drop of nicotine on the tongue of a dog will kill it.”

The reference was unfortunate.

“I wish I might have a dog,” observed Prince Ferdinand William Otto.

Fortunately, at that moment, Hedwig came in. She came in a trifle defiantly, although that passed unnoticed, and she also came unannounced, as was her cousinly privilege. And she stood inside the door and stared at the Prince. “Well!” she said.

Prince Ferdinand William Otto was equal to the occasion. He hastily drew out his pocket-handkerchief and spread it over the frame. But his face was rather red. A palace is a most difficult place to have a secret in.

“Well?” she repeated; with a rising inflection. It was clear that she had not noticed the handkerchief incident. “Is there to be no riding-lesson to-day?”

“I don’t know. Nikky has not come.”

“Where is he?”

Here the drop of nicotine got in its deadly work. “I’m afraid he is ill,” said Prince Ferdinand William Otto. “He said he smoked too many cigarettes, and – “

“Is Captain Larisch ill?” Hedwig looked at the governess, and lost some of her bright color.

Miss Braithwaite did not know, and said so. “At the very least,” she went on, “he should have sent some word. I do not know what things are coming to. Since His Majesty’s illness, no one seems to have any responsibility, or to take any.”

“But of course he would have sent word,” said Hedwig, frowning: “I don’t understand it. He has never been so late before, has he?”

“He has never been late at all,” Prince Ferdinand William Otto spoke up quickly.

After a time Hedwig went away, and the Crown Prince took off his riding-clothes. He ate a very small luncheon, swallowing mostly a glass of milk and a lump in his throat. And afterward he worked at the frame, for an hour, shading the hearts carefully. At three o’clock he went for his drive.

There were two variations to the daily drive: One day they went up the river – almost as far as the monastery; the next day they went through the park. There was always an excitement about the park drive, because the people who spied the gold- wheeled carriage always came as close as possible, to see if it was really the Crown Prince. And when, as sometimes happened, it was only Hedwig, or Hilda, and Ferdinand William Otto had been kept at home by a cold, they always looked disappointed.

This was the park day. The horses moved sedately. Beppo looked severe and haughty. A strange man, in the place of Hans, beside Beppo, watched the crowd with keen and vigilant eyes. On the box between them, under his hand, the new footman had placed a revolver. Beppo sat as far away from it as he dared. The crowd lined up, and smiled and cheered. And Prince Ferdinand William Otto sat very straight; and bowed right and left, smiling.

Old Adelbert, limping across the park to, the Opera, paused and looked. Then he shook his head. The country was indeed come to a strange pass, with only that boy and the feeble old King to stand between it and the things of which men whispered behind their hands. He went on, with his head down. A strange pass indeed, with revolution abroad in quiet places, and a cabal among the governors of the Opera to sell the opera-glass privilege to the highest bidder.

He went on, full of trouble.

Olga, the wardrobe woman, was also on her way to the Opera, which faced the park. She also saw the carriage, and at first her eyes twinkled. It was he, of course. The daring of him! But, as the carriage drew nearer, she bent forward. He looked pale, and there was a wistful droop to his mouth. “They have punished him for the, little prank,” she muttered. “That tight-faced Englishwoman, of course. The English are a hard race.” She, too, went on.

As they drew near the end of the park, where the Land of Desire towered, Prince Ferdinand William Otto searched it with eager eyes. How wonderful it was! How steep and high, and alluring! He glanced sideways at Miss Braithwaite, but it was clear that to her it was only a monstrous heap of sheet-iron and steel, adorned with dejected greenery that had manifestly been out too soon in the chill air of very early spring,

A wonderful possibility presented itself. “If I see Bobby,” he asked, “may I stop the carriage and speak to him?”

“Certainly not.”

“Well, may I call to him?”

“Think it over,” suggested Miss Braithwaite. “Would your grandfather like to know that you had done anything so undignified?”

He turned to her a rather desperate pair of eyes. “But I could explain to him,” he said. “I was in such a hurry when I left, that I’m afraid I forgot to thank him. I ought to thank him, really. He was very polite to me.”

Miss Braithwaite sat still in her seat and said nothing. The novelty of riding in a royal carriage had long since passed away, but she was aware that her position was most unusual. Not often did a governess, even of good family, as she was, ride daily in the park with a crown prince. In a way, on these occasions, she was more royal than royalty. She had, now and then, an inclination to bow right and left herself. And she guarded the dignity of these occasions with a watchful eye. So she said nothing just then. But later on something occurred to her. “You must remember, Otto,” she said, “that this American child dislikes kings, and our sort of government.” Shades of Mr. Gladstone – our sort of government! “It is possible, isn’t it, that he would resent your being of the ruling family? Why not let things be as they are?”

“We were very friendly,” said Ferdinand William Otto in a small voice. “I don’t think it would make any difference.”

But the seed was sown in the fertile ground of his young mind, to bear quick fruit.

It was the Crown Prince who saw Bobby first.

He was standing on a bench, peering over the shoulders of the crowd. Prince Ferdinand William Otto saw him, and bent forward. “There he is!” he said, in a tense tone. “There on the – “

“Sit up straight,” commanded Miss Braithwaite.

“May I just wave once? I – “

“Otto!” said Miss Braithwaite, in a terrible voice.

But a dreadful thing was happening. Bobby was looking directly at him, and making no sign. His mouth was a trifle open, but that was all. Otto had a momentary glimpse of him, of the small cap set far back, of the white sweater, of two coolly critical eyes. Then the crowd closed up, and the carriage moved on.

Prince Ferdinand William Otto sat back in his seat, very pale. Clearly Bobby was through with him. First Nikky had forgotten him, and now the American boy had learned his unfortunate position as one of the detested order, and would have none of him.

“You see,” said Miss Braithwaite, with an air of relief, “he did not know you.”

Up on the box the man beside Beppo kept his hand on the revolver. The carriage turned back toward the Palace.

Late that afternoon the Chancellor had a visitor. Old Mathilde, his servant and housekeeper, showed some curiosity but little excitement over it. ‘She was, in fact, faintly resentful. The Chancellor had eaten little all day, and now, when she had an omelet ready to turn smoking out of the pan, must come the Princess Hedwig on foot like the common people, and demand to see him.

Mathilde admitted her, and surveyed her uncompromisingly. Royalties were quite as much in her line as they were in the Crown Prince’s.

“He is about to have supper, Highness.”

“Please, Mathilde,” begged Hedwig. “It is very important.”

Mathilde sighed. “As Your Highness wishes,” she agreed, and went grumblingly back to the study overlooking the walled garden.

“You may bring his supper when it is ready,” Hedwig called to her.

Mathilde was mollified, but she knew what was fitting, if the Princess did not. The omelet spoiled in the pan.

The Chancellor was in his old smoking-coat and slippers. He made an effort to don his tunic, but Hedwig, on Mathilde’s heels, caught him in the act. And, after a glance at her face, he relinquished the idea, bowed over her hand, and drew up a chair for her.

And that was how the Chancellor of the kingdom learned that Captain Larisch, aide-de-camp to His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, had disappeared.

“I am afraid it is serious,” she said, watching him with wide, terrified eyes. “I know more than you think I do. I – we hear things, even in the Palace.”

Irony here, but unconscious. “I know that there is trouble. And it is not like Captain Larisch to desert his post.”

“A boyish escapade, Highness,” said the Chancellor. But, in the twilight, he gripped hard at the arms of his chair. “He will turn up, very much ashamed of himself, to-night or to-morrow.”

“That is what you want to believe. You know better.”

He leaned back in his chair and considered her from under his heavy brows. So this was how things were; another, and an unlooked-for complication. Outside he could hear Mathilde’s heavy footstep as she waited impatiently for the Princess to go. The odor of a fresh omelet filled the little house. Nikky gone, perhaps to join the others who, one by one, had felt the steel of the Terrorists. And this girl, on whom so much hung, sitting there, a figure of young tragedy.

“Highness,” he said at last, “if the worst has happened, – and that I do not believe, – it will be because there is trouble, as you have said. Sooner or later, we who love our country must make sacrifices for it. Most of all, those in high places will be called upon. And among them you may be asked to help.”

“I? What can I do?” But she knew, and the Chancellor saw that she knew.

“It is Karl, then?”

“It may be King Karl, Hedwig.”

Hedwig rose, and the Chancellor got heavily to his feet. She was fighting for calmness, and she succeeded very well. After all, if Nikky were gone, what did it matter? Only –

“There are so many of you,” she said, rather pitifully. “And you are all so powerful. And against you there is only – me.”

“Why against us, Highness?”

“Because,” said Hedwig, “because I care for some one else, and I shall care for him all the rest of my life, even if he never comes back. You may marry me to whom you please, but I shall go on caring. I shall never forget. And I shall make Karl the worst wife in the world, because I hate him.”

She opened the door and went out without ceremony, because she was hard-driven and on the edge of tears. In the corridor she almost ran over the irritated Mathilde, and she wept all the way back to the Palace, much to the dismay of her lady in waiting, who had disapproved of the excursion anyhow.

That night, the city was searched for Nikky Larisch, but without result.

CHAPTER XIV

NIKKY DOES A RECKLESS THING

Nikky Larisch had been having an exciting time. First of all, he exchanged garments with the chauffeur, and cursed his own long legs, which proved difficult to cover adequately. But the chauffeur’s long fur ulster helped considerably. The exchange was rather a ticklish matter, and would have been more so had he not found a revolver in the fur coat pocket. It is always hard to remove a coat from a man whose arms are tied, and trousers are even more difficult. To remove trousers from a refractory prisoner offers problems. They must be dragged off, and a good thrust from a heavy boot, or two boots, has been known to change the fate of nations.

However, Nikky’s luck stood. His prisoner kicked, but owing to Nikky’s wise precaution of having straddled him, nothing untoward happened.

Behold, then, Nikky of the brave heart standing over his prostrate prisoner, and rolling him, mummy fashion, in his own tunic and a rug from the machine.

“It is cold, my friend,” he said briefly; “but I am a kindly soul, and if you have told me the truth, you will not have so much as a snuffle to remind you of this to-morrow.”

“I have told the truth.”

“As a soldier, of course,” Nikky went on, ” I think you have made a mistake. You should have chosen the precipice. But as a private gentleman, I thank you.”

Having examined the knots in the rope, which were very well done, indeed, and having gagged the chauffeur securely, Nikky prepared to go. In his goggles, with the low-visored cap and fur coat, he looked not unlike his late companion. But he had a jaunty step as he walked toward the car, a bit of swagger that covered, perhaps, just a trifle of uneasiness.

For Nikky now knew his destination, knew that he was bound on perilous work, and that the chances of his returning were about fifty-fifty, or rather less.

Nevertheless, he was apparently quite calm as he examined the car. He would have chosen, perhaps, a less perilous place to attempt its mysteries, but needs must. He climbed in, and released the brakes. Then, with great caution, and considerable noise, he worked it away from the brink of the chasm, and started off.

He did not know his way. Over the mountains it was plain enough, for there was but one road. After he descended into the plain of Karnia, however, it became difficult. Sign-posts were few and not explicit. But at last he found the railroad, which he knew well – that railroad without objective, save as it would serve to move troops toward the border. After that Nikky found it easier.

But, with his course assured, other difficulties presented themselves. To take the letter to those who would receive it was one thing. But to deliver it, with all that it might contain, was another. He was not brilliant, was Nikky. Only brave and simple of heart, and unversed in the ways of darkness.

If, now, he could open the letter and remove it, substituting – well, what could he substitute? There were cigarette papers in his pocket. Trust Nikky for that. But how to make the exchange?

Nikky pondered. To cut the side of the envelope presented itself. But it was not good enough. The best is none too good when one’s life is at stake.

The engine was boiling hard, a dull roaring under the hood that threatened trouble. He drew up beside the road and took off the water-cap. Then he whistled. Why, of course! Had it not been done from time immemorial, this steaming of letters? He examined it. It bore no incriminating seal.

He held the envelope over the water-cap, and was boyishly pleased to feel the flap loosen. After all, things were easy enough if one used one’s brains. He rather regretted using almost all of his cigarette papers, of course. He had, perhaps, never heard of the drop of nicotine on the tongue of a dog.

As for the letter itself, he put it, without even glancing at it, into his cap, under the lining. Then he sealed the envelope again and dried it against one of the lamps. It looked, he reflected, as good as new.

He was extremely pleased with himself.

Before he returned to the machine he consulted his watch. It was three o’clock. True, the long early spring night gave him four more hours of darkness. But the messenger was due at three, at the hunting-lodge in, the mountains which was his destination. He would be, at the best, late by an hour.

He pushed the car to its limit. The fine hard road, with its border of trees, stretched ahead. Nikky surveyed it with a soldier’s eye. A military road, or he knew nothing – one along which motor-lorries could make express time. A marvelous road, in that sparsely settled place. Then he entered the forest, that kingly reserve in which Karl ran deer for pastime.

He was nearing his destination.

On what the messenger had told him Nikky hung his hope of success. This was, briefly, that he should go to the royal shooting-box at Wedeling, and should go, not to the house itself, but to the gate-keeper’s lodge. Here he was to leave his machine, and tap at the door. On its being opened, he was to say nothing, but to give the letter to him who opened the door. After that he was to take the machine away to the capital, some sixty miles farther on.

The message, then, was to the King himself. For Nikky, as all the world, knew that Karl, with some kindred spirits, was at Wedeling, shooting. That is, if the messenger told the truth. Nikky intended to find out. He was nothing if not thorough.

Nikky had lost much of his jaunty air by that time. On the surface he was his usual debonair self; but his mouth was grim and rather contemptuous. This was Karl’s way: to propose marriage with a Princess of Livonia, and yet line the country with his spies! Let him but return, God willing, with his report, and after that, let them continue negotiations with Karl if they dared.

When at last the lights of the lodge at the gate of Wedeling gleamed out through the trees, it was half-pass three, and a wet spring snow was falling softly. In an open place Nikky looked up. The stars were gone.

The lodge now, and the gate-keeper’s house. Nikky’s heart hammered as he left the car – hammered with nervousness, not terror. But he went boldly to the door, and knocked.

So far all was well. There were footsteps within, and a man stepped out into the darkness, closing the door behind him. Nikky, who had come so far to see this very agent, and to take back a description of him, felt thwarted. Things were not being done, he felt, according to specification. And the man spoke, which was also unexpected.

“You have the letter?” he asked.

“It is here.” Luckily he did not speak the patois.

“I will take it.”

Nikky held it out. The man fumbled for it, took it.

“Orders have come,” said the voice, “that you remain here for the night. In the morning you are to carry dispatches to the city.”

Poor Nikky! With his car facing toward the lodge, and under necessity, in order to escape, to back it out into the highway! He thought quickly. There was no chance of overpowering his man quickly and silently. And the house was not empty. From beyond the door came the sounds of men’s voices, and the thud of drinking-mugs on a bare table.

“You will take me up to the house, and then put the car away until morning.”

Nikky breathed again. It was going to be easy, after all. If only the road went straight to the shooting-box itself, the rest was simple. But he prayed that he make no false turning, to betray his ignorance.

“Very well,” – he said.

His companion opened the door behind him. “Ready, now,” he called. “The car is here.”

Two men rose from a table where they had been sitting, and put on greatcoats of fur. The lamplight within quivered in the wind from the open door. Nikky was quite calm now. His heart beat its regular seventy-two, and he even reflected, with a sort of grim humor, that the Chancellor would find the recital of this escapade much to his taste. In a modest way Nikky felt that he was making history.

The man who had received the letter got into the machine beside him. The other two climbed into the tonneau. And, as if to make the denouement doubly ridiculous, the road led straight. Nikky, growing extremely cheerful behind his goggles, wondered how much petrol remained in the car.

The men behind talked in low tones. Of the shooting, mostly, and the effect of the snow on it. They had been after pheasants that day, it appeared.

“They are late to-night,” grumbled one of them, as the house appeared, full lighted. “A tardy start to-morrow again!”

“The King must have his sleep,” commented the other, rather mockingly.

With a masterly sweep, Nikky drew up his machine before the entrance. Let them once alight, let him but start his car down the road again, and all the devils of the night might follow. He feared nothing.

But here again Nikky planned too fast. The servant who came out to open the doors of the motor had brought a message. “His Majesty desires that the messenger come in,” was the bomb-shell which exploded in Nikky’s ears.

Nikky hesitated. And then some imp of recklessness in him prompted him not to run away, but to see the thing through. It was, after all, a chance either way. These men beside the car were doubtless armed – one at least, nearest him, was certainly one of Karl’s own secret agents. And, as Nikky paused, he was not certain, but it seemed to him that the man took, a step toward him.

“Very well,” said Nikky, grumbling. “But I have had a long ride, and a cold one. I need sleep.”

Even then he had a faint hope that the others would precede him, and that it would be possible to leap back to the car, and escape. But, whether by accident or design, the group closed about him. Flight was out of the question.

A little high was Nikky’s head as he went in. He had done a stupid thing now, and he knew it. He should have taken his letter and gone back with it. But, fool or not, he was a soldier. Danger made him calm.

So he kept his eyes open. The shooting-box was a simple one, built, after the fashion of the mountains, of logs, and wood-lined. The walls of the hall were hung with skins and the mounted heads of animals, boar and deer, and even an American mountain sheep, testifying to the range of its royal owner’s activities as a hunter. Great pelts lay on the floor, and the candelabra were horns cunningly arranged to hold candles. The hall extended to the roof, and a gallery half-way up showed the doors of the sleeping-apartments.

The lodge was noisy. Loud talking, the coming and going of servants with trays, the crackle of wood fires in which whole logs were burning, and, as Nikky and his escort entered, the roaring chorus of a hunting-song filled the ears.

Two of the men flung off their heavy coats, and proceeded without ceremony into the room whence the sounds issued. The third, however, still holding the letter, ushered Nikky into a small side room, a sort of study, since it contained a desk. For kings must pursue their clerical occupations even on holiday. A plain little room it was, containing an American typewriter, and beside the desk only a chair or two upholstered in red morocco.

Nikky had reluctantly removed his cap. His goggles, however, he ventured to retain. He was conscious that his guide was studying him intently. But not with suspicion, he thought: Rather as one who would gauge the caliber of the man before him. He seemed satisfied, too, for his voice, which had been curt, grew more friendly.

“You had no trouble?” he asked.

“None, sir.”

“Did Niburg say anything?”

Niburg, then, was the spy of the cathedral. Nikky reflected. Suddenly he saw a way out. It was, he afterward proclaimed, not his own thought. It came to him like a message. He burned a candle to his patron saint, sometime later, for it.

“The man Niburg had had an unfortunate experience, sir. He reported that, during an evening stroll, before he met me, he was attacked by three men, with the evident intention of securing the letter. He was badly beaten up.”

His companion started. “Niburg,” he said. “Then – ” He glanced at the letter he held. “We must find some one else,” he muttered. “I never trusted the fellow. A clerk, nothing else. For this work it takes wit.”

Nikky, sweating with strain; felt that it did, indeed. “He was badly used up, sir,” he offered. “Could hardly walk, and was still trembling with excitement when I met him.”

The man reflected. A serious matter, he felt. Not so serious as it might have been, since he held the letter. But it showed many things, and threatened others. He touched a bell. “Tell his, Majesty,” he said to the servant who appeared, “that his messenger is here.”

The servant bowed and withdrew.

Nikky found the wait that followed trying. He thought of Hedwig, and of the little Crown Prince. Suddenly he knew that he had had, no right to attempt this thing. He had given his word, almost, his oath, to the King, to protect and watch over the boy. And here he was, knowing now that mischief was afoot, and powerless. He cursed himself for his folly.

Then Karl came in. He came alone, closing the door behind him. Nikky and his companion bowed, and Nikky surveyed him through his goggles. The same mocking face he remembered, from Karl’s visit to the summer palace, the same easy, graceful carriage, the same small mustache. He was in evening dress, and the bosom of his shirt was slightly rumpled. He had been drinking, but he was not intoxicated. He was slightly flushed, his eyes were abnormally bright. He looked, for the moment; rather amiable. Nikky was to learn, later on, how easily his smile hardened to a terrifying grin. The long, rather delicate nose of his family, fine hair growing a trifle thin, and a thin, straight body this was Karl, King of Karnia, and long-time enemy to Nikky’s own land.

He ignored Nikky’s companion. “You brought a letter?”

Nikky bowed, and the other man held it out. Karl took it.

“The trip was uneventful?”

“Yes, sire.”

“A bad night for it,” Karl observed, and glanced at the letter in his hand. “Was there any difficulty at the frontier?”

“None, sire.”

Karl tore the end off the envelope. “You will remain here to-night,” he said. “To-morrow morning I shall send dispatches to the city. I hope you have petrol. These fellows here – ” He did not complete the sentence. He inserted two royal fingers into the envelope and drew out – Nikky’s cigarette papers!

For a moment there was complete silence in the room. Karl turned the papers over.

It was then that his face hardened into a horrible grin. He looked up, raising his head slowly.

“What is this?” he demanded, very quietly.

“The letter, sire,” said Nikky.

“The letter! Do you call these a letter?”

Nikky drew himself up. “I have brought the envelope which was given me.”

Without a word Karl held out papers and envelope to the other man, who took them. Then he turned to Nikky, and now he raised his voice. “Where did you get this – hoax?” he demanded.

“At the cathedral, from the man Niburg.”

“You lie!” said Karl. Then, for a moment, he left Nikky and turned on his companion in a fury. He let his royal rage beat on that unlucky individual while the agent stood, white and still. Not until it was over, and Karl, spent with passion, was pacing the floor, did Nikky venture a word.

“If this is not what Your Majesty expected,” he said, “there is perhaps an explanation.”

Karl wheeled on him. “Explanation!”

“The man Niburg was attacked, early last evening, by three men. They beat him badly, and attempted to rob him. His story to me, sire. He believed that they were after the letter, but that he had preserved it. It is, of course, a possibility that, while he lay stunned, they substituted another envelope for the one he carried.”

Karl tore the envelope from the agent’s hands and inspected it carefully. Evidently, as with the agent, the story started a new train of thought. Nikky drew a long breath. After all, there was still hope that the early morning shooting would have another target than himself.

Karl sat down, and his face relaxed. It was stern, but no longer horrible. “Tell me this Niburg’s story,” he commanded.

“He was walking through the old city,” Nikky commenced, “when three men fell on him. One, a large one, knocked him insensible and then went through his pockets. The others – “

“Strange!” said Karl. “If he was insensible, how does he know all this?”

“It was his story, sire,” Nikky explained. But he colored. “A companion, who was with him, ran away.”

“This companion,” Karl queried. “A dark, heavy fellow, was it?”

“No. Rather a pale man, blond. A – ” Nikky checked himself.

But Karl was all suavity. “So,” he said, “while Niburg was unconscious the large man took the letter, which was sealed, magically opened it, extracted its contents, replaced them with – this, and then sealed it again!”

The King turned without haste to a drawer in his desk, and opened it. He was smiling. When he faced about again, Nikky saw that he held a revolver in =his hand. Save that the agent had taken a step forward, nothing in the room had changed. And yet; for Nikky everything had changed.

Nikky had been a reckless fool, but he was brave enough. He smiled, a better smile than Karl’s twisted one.

“I have a fancy,” said King Karl, “to manage this matter for myself. Keep back, Kaiser. Now, my friend, you will give me the packet of cigarette papers you carry.”

Resistance would do no good. Nikky brought them out, and Karl’s twisted smile grew broader as he compared them with the ones the envelope had contained.

“You see,” he said, “you show the hand of the novice. You should have thrown these away. But, of course, all your methods are wrong. Why, for instance, have you come here at all? You have my man – but that I shall take up later. We will first have the letter.”

But here Nikky stood firm. Let them find the letter. He would not help them. But again he cursed himself. There had been a thousand hiding-places along the road – but he must bring the incriminating thing with him, and thus condemn himself!

Now commenced a curious scene, curious because one of the actors was Karl of Karnia himself. He seemed curiously loath to bring in assistance, did Karl. Or perhaps the novelty of the affair appealed to him. And Nikky’s resistance to search, with that revolver so close, was short-lived.

Even while he was struggling, Nikky was thinking. Let them get the letter, if they must. Things would at least be no worse than before. But he resolved that no violence would tear from him the place where the messenger was hidden. Until they had got that, he had a chance for life.

They searched his cap last. Nikky, panting after that strange struggle, saw Kaiser take it from the lining of his cap, and pass it to the King.

Karl took it. The smile was gone now, and something ugly and terrible had taken its place. But that, too, faded as he looked at the letter.

It was a blank piece of note-paper.

CHAPTER XV

FATHER AND DAUGHTER

With the approach of the anniversary of his son’s death, the King grew increasingly restless. Each year he determined to put away this old grief, and each year, as his bodily weakness increased, he found it harder to do so. In vain he filled his weary days with the routine of his kingdom. In vain he told himself that there were worse things than to be cut off in one’s prime, that the tragedy of old age is a long tragedy, with but one end. To have out-lived all that one loves, he felt, was worse by far. To have driven, in one gloomy procession after another, to the old Capuchin church and there to have left, prayerfully, some dearly beloved body – that had been his life. His son had escaped that. But it was poor comfort to him.

On other years he had had the Crown Prince with him as much as possible on this dreary day of days. But the Crown Prince was exiled, in disgrace. Not even for the comfort of his small presence could stern discipline be relaxed.

Annunciata was not much comfort to him. They had always differed, more or less, the truth being, perhaps, that she was too much like the King ever to sympathize fully with him. Both were arrogant, determined, obstinate. And those qualities, which age was beginning to soften in the King, were now, in Annunciata, in full strength and blooming.

But there was more than fundamental similarity at fault. Against her father the Archduchess held her unhappy marriage.

“You did this,” she had said once, when an unusually flagrant escapade had come to the ears of the Palace. “You did it. I told you I hated him. I told you what he was, too. But you had some plan in mind. The plan never materialized, but the marriage did. And here I am.” She had turned on him then, not angrily, but with cold hostility. “I shall never forgive you for it,” she said.

She never had. She made her daily visit to her father, and, as he grew more feeble, she was moved now and then to pity for him. But it was pity, nothing more. The very hands with which she sometimes changed his pillows were coldly efficient. She had not kissed him in years.

And now, secretly willing that Hedwig should marry Karl, she was ready to annoy him by objecting to it.

On the day after her conversation with General Mettlich, she visited the King. It was afternoon. The King had spent the morning in his study, propped with pillows as was always the case now, working with a secretary. The secretary was gone when she entered, and he sat alone. Over his knees was spread one of the brilliant rugs that the peasants wove in winter evenings, when the snow beat about their small houses and the cattle were snug in barns. Above it his thin old face looked pinched and pale.

He had passed a trying day. Once having broken down the Chancellor’s barrier of silence, the King had insisted on full knowledge; with the result that he had sat, aghast, amid the ruins of his former complacency. The country and the smaller cities were comparatively quiet, so far as demonstrations against the Government were concerned. But unquestionably they plotted. As for the capital, it was a seething riot of sedition, from the reports. A copy of a newspaper, secretly printed and more secretly circulated, had brought fire to the King’s eyes. It lay on his knees as his daughter entered.

Annunciata touched her lips to his hand. Absorbed as he was in other matters, it struck him, as she bent, that Annunciata was no longer young, and that Time w as touching her with an unloving finger. He viewed her graying hair, her ugly clothes, with the detached eye of age. And he sighed.

“Well, father,” she said, looking down at him, “how do you feel?”

“Sit down,” he said. The question as to his health was too perfunctory to require reply. Besides, he anticipated trouble, and it was an age-long habit of his to meet it halfway.

Annunciata sat, with a jingling of chains. She chose a straight chair, and faced him, very erect.

“How old is Hedwig?” demanded the King

“Nineteen.”

“And Hilda?”

“Sixteen.”

He knew their ages quite well. It was merely the bugle before the attack.

“Hedwig is old enough to marry. Her grandmother was not nineteen when I married her.”

“It would be better,” said Annunciata, “to marry her while she is young, before she knows any better.”

“Any better than what?” inquired the King testily.

“Any better than to marry at all.”

The King eyed her. She was not, then, even attempting to hide her claws. But he was an old bird, and not to be caught in an argumentative cage.

“There are several possibilities for Hedwig,” he said. “I have gone into the matter pretty thoroughly. As you know, I have had this on my mind for some time. It is necessary to arrange things before I – go.”

The King, of course, was neither asking nor expecting sympathy from her, but mentally, and somewhat grimly, he compared her unmoved face with that of his old friend and Chancellor, only a few nights before.

“It is a regrettable fact,” he went on, “that I must leave, as I shall, a sadly troubled country. But for that – ” he paused. But for that, he meant, he would go gladly. He needed rest. His spirit, still so alive, chafed daily more and more against its worn body. He believed in another life, did the old King. He wanted the hearty handclasp of his boy again. Even the wife who had married him against her will had grown close to him in later years. He needed her too. A little rest, then, and after that a new life, with those who had gone ahead.

“A sadly troubled country,” he repeated.

“All countries are troubled. We are no worse than others.”

“Perhaps not. But things are changing. The old order is changing. The spirit of unrest – I shall not live to see it. You may, Annunciata. But the day is coming when all thrones will totter. Like this one.”

Now at last he had pierced her armor. “Like this one!”

“That is what I said. Rouse yourself, Annunciata. Leave that little boudoir of yours, with its accursed clocks and its heat and its flub-dubbery, and see what is about you! Discontent! Revolution! We are hardly safe from day to day. Do you think that what happened nine years ago was a flash that died as it came? Nonsense. Read this!”

He held out the paper and she put on her pince-nez and read its headings, a trifle disdainfully. But the next moment she rose, and stood in front of him, almost as pale as he was. “You allow this sort of thing to be published?”

“No. But it is published.”

“And they dare to say things like this? Why, it – it is – “

“Exactly. It is, undoubtedly.” He was very calm. “I would not have troubled you with it. But the situation is bad. We are rather helpless.”

“Not – the army too?”

“What can we tell? These things spread like fires. Nothing may happen for years. On the other hand, tomorrow -!”

The Archduchess was terrified. She had known that there was disaffection about. She knew that in the last few years precautions at the Palace had been increased. Sentries were doubled. Men in the uniforms of lackeys, but doing no labor, were everywhere. But with time and safety she had felt secure.

“Of course,” the King resumed, “things are not as bad as that paper indicates. It is the voice of the few, rather than the many. Still, it is a voice.”

Annunciata looked more than her age now. She glanced around the room as though, already, she heard the mob at the doors.

“It is not safe to stay here, is it?” she asked. “We could go to the summer palace. That, at least, is isolated.”

“Too isolated,” sail the King dryly. .”And flight! The very spark, perhaps, to start a blaze. Besides,” he remind her, “I could not make the journey. If you would like to go, however, probably it can be arranged.”

But Annunciata was not minded to go without the Court. And she reflected, not unwisely, that if things were really as bad as they appeared, to isolate herself, helpless in the mountains, would be but to play into the enemy’s hand.

“To return to the mater of Hedwig’s marriage,” said the King. “I – “

“Marriage! When our very lives are threatened!”

“I would be greatly honored,” said the King, “if I might be permitted to finish what I was saying.”

She had the grace to flush.

“Under the circumstances,” the King resumed, “Hedwig’s marriage takes on great significance – great political significance.”

For a half-hour then, he talked to her. More than for years, he unbosomed himself. He had tried. His ministers had tried. Taxes had been lightened; the representation of the people increased, until; as he said, he was only nominally a ruler. But discontent remained. Some who had gone to America and returned with savings enough to set themselves up in business, had brought back with them the American idea.

He spoke without bitterness. They refused to allow for the difference between a new country and an old land, tilled for many generations. They forgot their struggles across the sea and brought back only stories of prosperity. Emigration had increased, and those who remained whispered of a new order, where each man was the government, and no man a king.

Annunciata listened to the end. She felt no pity for those who would better themselves by discontent and its product, revolt. She felt only resentment that her peace was being threatened, her position assailed. And in her resentment she included the King himself. He should have done better. These things, taken early enough, could have been arranged.

And something of this she did not hesitate to say. “Karnia is quiet enough,” she finished, a final thrust.

“Karnia is better off. A lowland, most of it, and fertile.” But a spot of color showed in his old cheeks. “I am glad you spoke of Karnia. Whatever plans we make, Karnia must be considered.”

“Why? Karnia does not consider us.”

He raised his hand. “You are wrong. Just now, Karnia is doing us the honor of asking an alliance with us. A matrimonial alliance.”

The Archduchess was hardly surprised, as one may believe. But she was not minded to yield too easily. The old resentment against her father flamed. Indifferent mother though she was, she made capital of a fear for Hedwig’s happiness. In a cold and quiet voice she reminded him of her own wretchedness, and of Karl’s reputation.

At last she succeeded in irritating the King – a more difficult thing now than in earlier times, but not so hard a matter at that. He listened quietly until she had finished, and then. sent her away. When she had got part way to the door, however, he called her back. And since a king is a king, even if he is one’s father and very old, she came.

“Just one word more,” he said, in his thin, old, highbred voice. “Much of your unhappiness was of your own making. You, and you only, know how much. But nothing that you have said can change the situation. I am merely compelled to make the decision alone, and soon. I have not much time.”

So, after all, was the matter of the Duchess Hedwig’s marriage arranged, a composite outgrowth of expediency and obstinacy, of defiance and anger. And so was it hastened.

Irritation gave the King strength. That afternoon were summoned in haste the members of his Council: fat old Friese, young Marschall with the rat face, austere Bayerl with the white skin and burning eyes, and others. And to them all the King disclosed his royal will. There was some demur. Friese, who sweated with displeasure, ranted about old enemies and broken pledges. But, after all, the King’s will was dominant. Friese could but voice his protest and relapse into greasy silence.

The Chancellor sat silent during the conclave, silent, but intent. On each speaker he turned his eyes, and waited until at last Karl’s proposal, with its promises, was laid before them in full. Then, and only then, the Chancellor rose. His speech was short. He told them of what they all knew, their own insecurity. He spoke but a word of the Crown Prince, but that softly. And he drew for them a pictures of the future that set their hearts to glowing – a throne secure, a greater kingdom, freedom from the cost of war, a harbor by the sea.

And if, as he spoke, he saw not the rat eyes of Marschall, the greedy ones of some of the others, but instead a girl’s wide and pleading ones, he resolutely went on. Life was a sacrifice. Youth would pass, and love with it, but the country must survive.

The battle, which was no battle at all, was won. He had won. The country had won. The Crown Prince had won. Only Hedwig had lost. And only Mettlich knew just how she had lost.

When the Council, bowing deep, had gone away, the Chancellor remained standing by a window. He was feeling old and very tired. All that day, until the Council met with the King, he had sat in the little office on a back street, which was the headquarters of the secret service. All that day men had come and gone, bringing false clues which led nowhere. The earth had swallowed up Nikky Larisch.

“I hope you are satisfied,” said the King grimly, from behind him. “It was your arrangement.”

“It was my hope, sire,” replied the Chancellor dryly.

The necessity for work brought the King the strength to do it. Mettlich remained with him. Boxes were brought from vaults, unlocked and examined. Secretaries came and went. At eight o’clock a frugal dinner was spread in the study, and they ate it almost literally over state documents.

On and on, until midnight or thereabouts. Then they stopped. The thing was arranged. Nothing was left now but to carry the word to Karl.

Two things were necessary: Haste. The King, having determined it, would lose no time. And dignity. The granddaughter of the King must be offered with ceremony. No ordinary King’s messenger, then, but some dignitary of the Court.

To this emergency Mettlich rose like the doughty old warrior and statesman that he was. “If you are willing, sire,” he said, as he rose, “I will go myself.”

“When?”

“Since it must be done, the sooner the better. To-night, sire.”

The King smiled. “You were always impatient!” he commented. But he looked almost wistfully at the sturdy and competent old figure before him. Thus was he, not so long ago. Cold nights and spring storms had had no terrors for him. And something else he felt, although he said nothing – the stress of a situation which would send his Chancellor out at midnight, into a driving storm, to secure Karl’s support. Things must be bad indeed!

“To the capital?” he asked.

“Not so far. Karl is hunting. He is at Wedeling.” He went almost immediately, and the King summoned his valets, and was got to bed. But long after the automobile containing Mettlich and two secret agents was on the road toward the mountains, he tossed on his narrow bed. To what straits had they come indeed! He closed his eyes wearily. Something had gone out of his life. He did not realize at first what it was. When he did, he smiled his old grim smile in the darkness.

He had lost a foe. More than anything perhaps, he had dearly loved a foe.

CHAPTER XVI

ON THE MOUNTAIN ROAD

The low gray car which carried the Chancellor was on its way through the mountains. It moved deliberately, for two reasons. First, the Chancellor was afraid of motors. He had a horseman’s hatred and fear of machines. Second, he was not of a mind to rouse King Karl from a night’s sleep, even to bring the hand of the Princess Hedwig. His intention was to put up at some inn in a village not far from the lodge and to reach Karl by messenger early in the morning, before the hunters left for the day.

Then, all being prepared duly and in order, Mettlich himself would arrive, and things would go forward with dignity and dispatch.

In the mean time he sat back among his furs and thought of many things. He had won a victory which was, after all, but a compromise. He had chosen the safe way, but it led over the body of a young girl, and he loathed it. Also, he thought of Nikky, and what might be. But the car was closed and comfortable. The motion soothed him. After a time he dropped asleep.

The valley of the Ar deepened. The cliff rose above them, a wall broken here and there by the offtake of narrow ravines, filled with forest trees. There was a pause while the chains on the rear wheels were supplemented by others in front, for there must be no danger of a skid. And another pause, where the road slanted perilously toward the brink of the chasm, and caution dictated that the Chancellor alight, and make a hundred feet or so of dangerous curve afoot.

It required diplomacy to get him out. But it was finally done, and his heavy figure, draped in its military cape, went on ahead, outlined by the lamps of the car behind him. The snow was hardly more than a coating, but wet and slippery. Mettlich stalked on, as one who would defy the elements, or anything else, to hinder him that night.

He was well around the curve, and the cliff was broken by a wedge of timber, when a curiously shaped object projected itself over the edge of the bank, and rolling down, lay almost at his feet. The lamps brought it into sharp relief – a man, gagged and tied, and rolled, cigar shaped, in an automobile robe.

The Chancellor turned, and called to his men. Then he bent over the bundle. The others ran up, and cut the bonds. What with cold and long inaction, and his recent drop over the bank, the man could not speak. One of the secret-service men had a flask, and held it to his lips. An amazing situation, indeed, increased by the discovery that under the robe he wore only his undergarments, with a soldier’s tunic wrapped around his shoulders. They carried him into the car, where he lay with head lolling back, and his swollen tongue protruding. Half dead he was, with cold and long anxiety. The brandy cleared his mind long before he could speak, and he saw by the uniforms that he was in the hands of the enemy. He turned sulkily silent then, convinced that he had escaped one death but to meet another. Twenty-four hours now he had faced eternity, and he was ready.

He preferred, however, to die fully clothed, and when, in response to his pointing up the bank and to his inarticulate mouthings, one of the secret police examined the bit of woodland with his pocket flash, he found a pair of trousers where Nikky had left them, neatly folded and hung over the branch of a tree. The brandy being supplemented by hot coffee from a patent bottle, the man revived further, made an effort, and sat up. His tongue was still swollen, but they made out what he said. He had been there since the night before. People had passed, a few peasants, a man with a cart, but he could not cry out, and he had hesitated to risk the plunge to the road. But at last he had made it. He was of Karnia, and a King’s messenger.

“I was coming back from the barrier,” he said thickly, “where I had carried dispatches to the officer in charge. On my return a man hailed me from the side of, the road, near where you found me. I thought that he desired to be taken on, and stopped my car. But he attacked me. He was armed and I was not. He knocked me senseless, and when I awakened I was above the road, among trees. I gave myself up when the snow commenced. Few pass this way. But I heard your car coming and made a desperate effort.”

“Then,” asked one of the agents, “these are not your clothes?”

“They are his; sir.”

The agent produced a flash-light and inspected the garments. Before the Chancellor’s eyes, button by button, strap on the sleeve, star on the cuff, came into view the uniform of a captain of his own regiment, the Grenadiers. Then one of his own men had done this infamous thing, one of his own officers, indeed.

“Go through the pockets,” he continued sternly.

Came, into view under the flash a pair of gloves, a box of matches, a silk handkerchief, a card-case. The agent said nothing, but passed a card to the Chancellor, who read it without comment.

There was silence in the car.

At last the Chancellor stirred. “This man – he took your car on?”

“Yes. And he has not returned. No other machine has passed.”

The secret-service men exchanged glances. There was more to this than appeared. Somewhere ahead, then, was Nikky Larisch, with a motor that did got belong to him, and wearing clothing which his victim described as a chauffeur’s coat of leather, breeches and puttees, and a fur greatcoat over all.

“Had the snow commenced when this happened?”

“Not then; sir. Shortly after.”

“Go out with the driver,” the Chancellor ordered one of his men, “and watch the road for the tracks of another car. Go slowly.”

So it was that, after an hour or so, they picked up Nikky’s trail, now twenty-four hours old but still clear, and followed it. The Chancellor was awake enough by this time, and bending forward. The man they had rescued slept heavily. As the road descended into the foothills, there were other tracks in the thin snow, and more than once they roused Nikky’s victim to pick out his own tire marks. He obeyed dully. When at last the trail turned from the highway toward the shooting-box at Wedeling, Mettlich fell back with something between a curse and a groan.

“The fool!” he muttered. “The young fool! It was madness.”

At last they drew up at an inn in the village on the royal preserve, and the Chancellor, looking rather gray, alighted. He directed that the man they had rescued be brought in. The Chancellor was not for losing him just yet. He took a room for him at the inn, and rather cavalierly locked him in it.

The dull-eyed landlord, yawning as he lighted the party upstairs with candles, apparently neither noticed nor cared that the three of them surrounded a fourth, and that the fourth looked both sullen and ill.

The car, with one of the secret-service men, Mettlich sent on to follow Nikky’s trail, and to report it to him. The other man was assigned to custody of the chauffeur. The Chancellor, more relieved than he would have acknowledged, reflected before a fire and over a glass of hot milk that he was rather unpropitiously bringing Karl a bride!

It was almost four in the morning when the police agent returned. The track he had followed apparently led into the grounds of Wedeling,, but was there lost in many others. It did not, so far as he could discover, lead beyond the lodge gates.

The Chancellor sipped his hot milk and considered. Nikky Larisch a prisoner in Karl’s hands caused him less anxiety than it would have a month before. But what was behind it all?

The inn, grumbling at its broken rest, settled down to sleep again. The two secret-service agents took turns on chairs outside their prisoner’s door, glancing in occasionally to see that he still slept in his built-in bed.

At a little before five the man outside the prisoner’s door heard something inside the room. He glanced in. All was quiet. The prisoner slept heavily, genuine sleep. There was no mistaking it, the sleep of a man warm after long cold and exhaustion, weary after violent effort. The agent went out again, and locked the door behind him.

And as the door closed, a trap-door from the kitchen below opened softly under the sleeping man’s bed. With great caution came the landlord, head first, then shoulders. The space was cramped. He crawled up, like a snake out of a hole, and ducked behind the curtains of the bed. All was still quiet, save that the man outside struck a match and lighted a pipe.

Half an hour later, the Chancellor’s prisoner, still stiff and weak, was making his way toward the hunting-lodge.

Kaiser saw him first, and found the story unenlightening. Nor could Karl, roused by a terrified valet, make much more of it. When the man had gone, Karl lay back among his pillows and eyed his agent.

“So Mettlich is here!” he said. “A hasty journey. They must be eager.”

“They must be in trouble,” Kaiser observed dryly. And on that uncomplimentary comment King Karl slept, his face drawn into a wry smile.

But he received the Chancellor of Livonia cordially the next morning, going himself to the lodge doorstep to meet his visitor, and there shaking hands with him.

“I am greatly honored, Excellency,” he said, with his twisted smile.

“And I, sire.”

But the Chancellor watched him from under his shaggy brows. The messenger had escaped. By now Karl knew the story, knew of his midnight ride over the mountains; and the haste it indicated. He sheathed himself in dignity; did the Chancellor, held his head high and moved ponderously, as became one who came to talk of important matters, but not to ask a boon.

Karl himself led the way to his study, ignoring the chamberlain, and stood aside to let Mettlich enter. Then he followed and closed the door.

“It is a long time since you have honored Karnia with a visit,” Karl observed. “Will you sit down?”

Karl himself did not sit. He stood negligently beside the mantel, an arm stretched along it.

“Not since the battle of the Ar, sire,” replied the Chancellor dryly. He had headed an army of invasion then.

Karl smiled. “I hope that now your errand is more peaceful.”

For answer the Chancellor opened a portfolio he carried, and fumbled among its papers. But, having found the right one, he held it without opening it. “Before we come to that, sire, you have here, I believe, detained for some strange reason, a Captain Larisch, aide-de-camp” – he paused for effect – “to His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince of Livonia.”

Karl glanced up quickly. “Perhaps, if you will describe this – gentleman – “

“Nonsense,” said the Chancellor testily. “you have him. We have traced him here. Although by what authority you hold him I fail to understand. I am here to find out what you have done with him.” The paper trembled in the old man’s hand. He knew very well Karl’s quick anger, and he feared for Nikky feared horribly.

“Done with him?” echoed Karl. “If as Captain Larisch you refer to a madman who the night before last – “

“I do, sire. Madman is the word.”

Of course, it is not etiquette to interrupt a king. But kings were no novelty to the Chancellor. And quite often, for reasons of state, he had found interruptions necessary.

“He is a prisoner,” Karl said, in a new tone, stern enough now. “He assaulted and robbed one of my men. He stole certain documents. That he has not suffered for it already was because – well, because I believed that the unfortunate distrust between your country and mine, Excellency, was about to end.”

A threat that, undoubtedly. Let the arrangement between Karnia and Livonia be made, with Hedwig to seal the bargain, and Nikky was safe enough. But let Livonia demand too much, or not agree at all, and Nikky was lost. Thus did Nikky Larisch play his small part in the game of nations.

“Suppose,” said Karl unctuously, “that we discuss first another more important matter. I confess to a certain impatience.” He bowed slightly.

The Chancellor hesitated. Then he glanced thoughtfully at the paper in his hand.

Through a long luncheon, the two alone and even the servants dismissed, through a longer afternoon, negotiations went on. Mettlich fought hard on some points, only to meet defeat. Karl stood firm. The great fortresses on the border must hereafter contain only nominal garrisons. For the seaport strip he had almost doubled his price. The railroad must be completed within two years.

“Since I made my tentative proposal,” Karl said, “certain things have come to my ears which must be considered. A certain amount of unrest we all have. It is a part of the times we live in. But strange stories have reached us here, that your revolutionary party is again active, and threatening. This proposal was made to avoid wars, not to marry them. And civil war – ” He shrugged his shoulders.

“You have said yourself, sire, that we all have a certain discontent.”

“The Princess Hedwig,” Karl said suddenly. “She has been told, of course?”

“Not officially. She knows, however.”

“How does she regard it?”

The Chancellor hesitated. “Like most young women, she would prefer making her own choice. But that,” he added hastily, “is but a whim. She is a lovable and amiable girl. When the time comes she will be willing enough.”

Karl stared out through one of the heavily curtained windows. He was not so sure. And the time had gone by when he would have enjoyed the taming of a girl. Now he wanted peace – was he not paying a price for it? – and children to inherit his well-managed kingdom. And perhaps – who knows? – a little love. His passionate young days were behind him, but he craved something that his unruly life had not brought him. Before him rose a vision of Hedwig her frank eyes, her color that rose and fell, her soft, round body.

“You have no reason to believe that she has looked elsewhere?”

“None, sire,” said the Chancellor stoutly.

By late afternoon all was arranged, papers signed and witnessed, and the two signatures affixed, the. one small and cramped – a soldier’s hand; the other bold and flowing – the scrawl of a king. And Hedwig, save for the ceremony, was the bride of Karl of Karnia.

It was then that the Chancellor rose and stretched his legs. “And now, sire,” he said, “since we are friends and no longer enemies, you will, I know, release that mad boy of mine.”

“When do you start back?”

“Within an hour.”

“Before that time,” said Karl, “you shall have him, Chancellor.”

And with that Mettlich was forced to be content. He trusted Karl no more now than he ever had. But he made his adieus with no hint of trouble in his face.

Karl waited until the machine drove away. He had gone to the doorstep with the Chancellor, desiring to do him all possible honor. But Mettlich unaccustomed to democratic ways, disapproved of the proceeding, and was indeed extremely uncomfortable, and drew a sigh of relief when it was all over. He was of the old order which would keep its royalties on gilded thrones and, having isolated there in grandeur, have gone about the business of the kingdom without them.

Karl stood for a moment in the open air. It was done, then, and well done. It was hard to realize. He turned to the west, where for so long behind the mountains had lurked an enemy. A new era was opening; peace, disarmament, a quiet and prosperous land. He had spent his years of war and women. That was over.

>From far away in the forest he heard the baying of the hounds. The crisp air filled his lungs. And even as he watched, a young doe, with rolling eyes, leaped across the drive. Karl watched it with coolly speculative eyes.

When he returned to the study the agent Kaiser was already there. In the democracy of the lodge men came and went almost at will. But Karl, big with plans for the future, would have been alone, and eyed the agent with disfavor.

“Well?” he demanded.

“We have been able to search the Chancellor’s rooms, sire,” the agent said, “for the articles mentioned last night – a card-case, gloves, and a silk handkerchief, belonging to the prisoner upstairs.

He is Captain Larisch, aide-de-camp to the Crown Prince of Livonia.”

He had, expected Karl to be, impressed. But Karl only looked at him. “I know that,” he said coldly. “You are always just a little late with your information, Kaiser.”

Something like malice showed in the agent’s face. “Then you also know, sire, that it is this Captain Larisch with whom rumor couples the name of the Princess Hedwig.” He stepped back a pace or two at sight of Karl’s face. “You requested such information, sire.”

For answer, Karl pointed to the door.

For some time after he had dismissed the agent, Karl paced his library alone. Kaiser brought no unverified information. Therefore the thing was true. Therefore he had had his enemy in his hand, and now was pledged to let him go. For a time, then, Karl paid the penalty of many misdeeds. His triumph was ashes in his mouth.

What if this boy, infatuated with Hedwig, had hidden somewhere on the road Olga Loschek’s letter? What, then, if he recovered it and took it to Hedwig? What if –

But at last he sent for the prisoner upstairs, and waited for him with both jealousy and fear in his eyes.

Five minutes later Nikky Larisch was ushered into the red study, and having bowed, an insolent young bow at that, stood and eyed the King.

“I have sent for you to release you,” said Karl. Nikky drew a long breath. “I am grateful, sire.”

“You have been interceded for by the Chancellor of Livonia, General Mettlich, who has just gone.”

Nikky bowed.

“Naturally, since you said nothing, of your identity, we could not know that you belonged to His Majesty’s household. Under the circumstances, it is a pleasure to give you your freedom.”

Nikky, bowed again.

Karl fixed him with cold eyes. “But before you take leave of us,” he said ironically, “I should like the true story of the night before last. Somehow, somewhere, a letter intended for me was exchanged for a blank paper. I want that letter.”

“I know no more than you, sire. It is not reasonable that I would have taken the risk I took for an envelope containing nothing.”

“For that matter,” said His Majesty, “there was nothing reasonable about anything you did!”

And now Karl played his trump card, played it with watchful eyes on Nikky’s face. He would see if report spoke the truth, if this blue-eyed boy was in love with Hedwig. He was a jealous man, this Karl of the cold eyes, jealous and passionate. Not as a king, then, watching a humble soldier of Livonia, but as man to man, he gazed at Nikky.

“For fear that loyalty keeps you silent, I may say to you that the old troubles between Karnia and Livonia are over.”

“I do not understand, sire.”

Karl hesitated. Then, with his twisted smile, he cast the rigid etiquette of such matters to the winds. “It is very simple,” he said. “There will be no more trouble between these two neighboring countries, because a marriage has to-day been arranged – a marriage between the Princess Hedwig, His Majesty’s granddaughter, and myself.”

For a moment Nikky Larisch closed his eyes.

CHAPTER XVII

THE FORTRESS

The anniversary of the death of Prince Hubert dawned bright and sunny. The Place showed a thin covering of snow, which clung, wet and sticky, to the trees; but by nine o’clock most of it had disappeared, and Prince Ferdinand William Otto was informed that the excursion would take place.

Two motors took the party, by back streets, to the landing-stage. In the first were Annunciata, Hedwig, and the Countess, and at the last moment Otto had salvaged Miss Braithwaite from the second car, and begged a place for her with him. A police agent sat beside the chauffeur. Also another car, just ahead, contained other agents, by Mettlich’s order before his departure – a plain black motor, without the royal arms.

In the second machine followed a part of the suite, Hedwig’s lady in waiting, two gentlemen of the Court, in parade dress, and Father Gregory, come from his monastery at Etzel to visit his old friend, the King.

At the landing-stage a small crowd had gathered on seeing the red carpet laid and the gilt ropes put up, which indicated a royal visit. A small girl, with a hastily secured bouquet in her hot hands, stood nervously waiting. In deference to the anniversary, the flowers were tied with a black ribbon!

Annunciata grumbled when she saw the crowd, and the occupants of the first car looked them over carefully. It remained for Hedwig to spy the black ribbon. In the confusion, she slipped over to the little girl, who went quite white with excitement. “They are lovely,” Hedwig whispered, “but please take off the black ribbon.” The child eyed her anxiously. “It will come to pieces, Highness.”

“Take the ribbon from your hair. It will be beautiful.”

Which was done! But, as was not unnatural, the child forgot her speech, and merely thrust the bouquet, tied with a large pink bow, into the hands of Prince Ferdinand William Otto.

“Here,” she said. It was, perhaps, the briefest, and therefore the most agreeable presentation speech the Crown Prince had ever heard.

Red carpet and gold ropes and white gloves these last on the waiting officers – made the scene rather gay. The spring sun shone on the gleaming river, on the white launch with its red velvet cushions, on the deck chairs, its striped awnings and glittering brass, on the Crown Prince, in uniform, on the bouquet and the ribbon. But somewhere, back of the quay, a band struck up a funeral march, and a beggar, sitting in the sun, put his hand to his ear.

“Of course,” he said, to no one in particular. “It is the day. I had forgotten.”

The quay receded, red carpet and all. Only the blare of the band followed them, and with the persistence of sound over water, followed them for some time. The Crown Prince put down the bouquet, and proceeded to stand near the steersman.

“When I am grown up,” he observed to that embarrassed sailor, “I hope I shall be able to steer a boat.”

The steersman looked about cautiously. The royal guests were settling themselves in chairs; with rugs over their knees. “It is very easy, Your Royal Highness,” he said. “See, a turn like this, and what happens? And the other way the same.”

Followed a five minutes during which the white launch went on a strange and devious course, and the Crown Prince grew quite hot and at least two inches taller. It was, of course, the Archduchess who discovered what was happening. She was very disagreeable about it.

The Archduchess was very disagreeable about everything that day. She was afraid to stay in the Palace, and afraid to leave it. And just when she had begun to feel calm, and the sun and fresh air were getting in their work, that wretched funeral band had brought back everything she was trying to forget.

The Countess was very gay. She said brilliant, rather heartless things that set the group to laughing, and in the intervals she eyed Hedwig with narrowed eyes and hate in her heart. Hedwig herself was very quiet. The bouquet had contained lilies-of-the-valley, for one thing.

Miss Braithwaite knitted, and watched that the Crown Prince kept his white gloves clean.

Just before they left the Palace the Archduchesss had had a moment of weakening, but the Countess had laughed away her fears.

“I really think I shall not go, after all,” Annunciata had said nervously. “There are reasons.”

The Countess had smiled mockingly. “Reasons!” she said. “I know that many things are being said. But I also know that General Mettlich is an alarmist;” purred the Countess. “And that the King is old and ill, and sees through gray glasses.”

So the Archduchess had submitted to having a plumed and inappropriate hat set high on her head, regardless of the fashion, and had pinned on two watches and gone.

It was Hedwig who showed the most depression on the trip, after all. Early that morning she had attended mass in the royal chapel. All the household had been there, and the King had been wheeled in, and had sat in his box, high in the wall, the door of which opened from his private suite.

Looking up, Hedwig had seen his gray old face set and rigid. The Court had worn black, and the chapel was draped in crepe. She had fallen on her knees and had tried dutifully to pray for the dead Hubert. But her whole soul was crying out for help for herself.

So now she sat very quiet, and wondered about things.

Prince Ferdinand William Otto sat by the rail and watched the green banks flying by. In one place a group of children were sailing a tiny boat from the bank. It was only a plank, with a crazy cotton sail. They shoved it off and watched while the current seized it and carried it along. Then they cheered, and called good-bye to it.

The Crown Prince leaned over the rail, and when the current caught it, he cheered too, and waved his cap. He was reproved, of course, and some officious person insisted on tucking the rug around his royal legs. But when no one was looking, he broke a flower from the bouquet and flung it overboard. He pretended that it was a boat, and was going down to Karnia, filled with soldiers ready to fight.

But the thought of soldiers brought Nikky to his mind. His face clouded. “It’s very strange about Nikky,” he said. “He is away somewhere. I wish he had sent word he was going.”

Hedwig looked out over the river.

The Archduchess glanced at Miss Braithwaite. “There is no news?” she asked, in an undertone.

“None,” said Miss Braithwaite.

A sudden suspicion rose in Hedwig’s mind, and made her turn pale. What if they had sent him away? Perhaps they feared him enough for that! If that were true, she would never know. She knew the ways of the Palace well enough for that. In a sort of terror she glanced around the group, so comfortably disposed. Her mother was looking out, with her cool, impassive gaze. Miss Braithwaite knitted. The Countess, however, met her eyes, and there was something strange in them: triumph and a bit of terror, too, had she but read them. For the Countess had put in her plea for a holiday and had been refused.

The launch drew up near the fort, and the Crown Prince’s salute of a certain number of guns was fired. The garrison was drawn up in line, and looked newly shaved and very, very neat. And the officers came out and stood on the usual red carpet, and bowed deeply, after which they saluted the Crown Prince and he saluted them. Then the Colonel in charge shook hands all round, and the band played. It was all very ceremonious and took a lot of tine.

The new fortress faced the highroad some five miles from the Karnian border. It stood on a bluff over the river, and was, as the Crown Prince decided, not so unlike the desk, after all, except that it had a moat around it.

Hedwig and the Countess went with the party around the fortifications. The Archduchess and Miss Braithwaite had sought a fire. Only the Countess, however, seemed really interested. Hedwig seemed more intent on the distant line of the border than on anything else. She stood on a rampart and stared out at it, looking very sad. Even the drill – when at a word all the great guns rose and peeped over the edge at the valley below, and then dropped back again as if they had seen enough – even this failed to rouse her.

“I wish you would listen, Hedwig,” said the Crown Prince,