FOUND IN THE COURTYARD OF THE INN
Through the thronged courtyard Johann was led directly to the office of the Minister of Private Intelligence. Not, however, before Josef had attempted to communicate with him. This privilege Carter denied. Nevertheless he was unable to prevent a covert exchange of triumphant glances between the Hereditary Servitor and the closely watched messenger. This argued that the two were in league. Josef followed, unbidden.
As they entered his official sanctum, Sobieska looked up, and, as he arose, a genuine surprise passed, cloudlike, across his face. He appreciated at a glance that something unusual had occurred. He bowed Trusia to a seat, directing a well-defined look of inquiry toward Carter. The latter merely shrugged his shoulders, implying that it was not his affair.
Sobieska consulted his watch, which lay on the table beside him, while he turned sternly to Johann. "Why aren't you in Schallberg?" he demanded; "you had despatches, as well as a cable to send for Major Carter."
"I have that cable still, Excellency," he grunted.
"What, you didn't transmit it?"
"No," the man answered boldly. Seeing the volcanic wrath awakening behind the Minister's sleepy eyes, he hastened to explain.
"I went to his room," he said, pointing fiercely at Carter, "he gave me a sealed envelope. After I had taken it he handed me a large sum of money—a fortune to a peasant. He told me to let no one see it but the telegraph operator at Schallberg."
"That is true," said Carter. "It was a business transaction, a communication relating to my personal affairs."
"I am an ignorant man," whimpered the messenger, stimulated by a mental contemplation of his supposed injuries, "but I was made the tool of that traitor—that spy." His eyes, red from excessive potations, glared with hatred as he pointed to Carter.
"Be careful, sir," broke in indignant Trusia, "remember the gentleman is one of our Aides and bears a commission in the royal army. Would you taste the whip?"
"Better that than the noose he planned for me," sulkily retorted the peasant.
"You had better be precise," said Sobieska.
"Well, if you will have it, I'll tell you," the man answered. Emboldened by an encouraging murmur from Josef he continued.
Carter held up his hand. "Wait a moment," he exclaimed as he turned appealingly to Trusia. "Highness, this may be of greatest interest to some one not present when Johann, the messenger, was apprehended. It may also be of secret importance to Krovitch, to Your Highness. Is Josef necessary here? Surely he can offer neither testimony nor enlightenment."
Though cautioned to stay within call, Josef was dismissed to his unrevealed disappointment.
"Now, go ahead, Johann," commanded the Privy Counselor, when the sound of receding footsteps assured him that Josef was no longer in earshot.
"I never had so much money at one time," continued the messenger, manifestly ill at ease since the departure of Josef. "I began to wonder why the stranger had given it to me for so simple a service. When the dumb man ponders overlong he seeks counsel. That was my case. My friend and I sat and talked of it and as we talked we drank.
"My friend said that the reason for keeping it secret was the person to whom it was written. At first I laughed at him. It could mean nothing. He pushed the brandy toward me and laughed too. I supposed he thought the same. Then I began to turn it over in my head, and as it seemed possible it might mean something, I besought him how such a thing could be. He replied by asking to whom the letter was addressed. I said in a foreign language,—English I do not understand. He pondered and said it might be sent by a spy to the Russian police. He added that it might mean hanging for me; I was afraid it was so, then in my fright I drank more brandy. My head reeled, but I was less afraid. I laughed once more. I asked him what he would do. He requested to see the letter. I was angry. 'Fool,' he said, 'not to open it; just to see the address. That will tell. No one will know.' I gave it to him. He pushed the brandy to me as he puzzled over the odd letters. When I looked up from the bottle, he was staring at me, his eyes big and scared. 'It is as I thought,' he said, in a whisper one uses near the graveyard at night. I hardly knew what to do, Excellency, so I wandered in the forest. I fear I was drunk from the brandy. The rest Her Highness can tell you," and the man wiped the perspiration from his brow.
"We found him skulking in the forest; not twenty minutes ago," supplemented Trusia. "His actions were so mysterious and his speech so reprehensible that we brought him here."
Carter, regarding the whole affair as a delusion—a bubble soon broken, brought the matter to an issue.
"Don't you think," he suggested confidently, "that Johann should produce the incriminating document. I think it will turn out to be a certain message to one Henry Jarvis, Broker, William Street, New York." He came forward to stand beside Sobieska at the table, as Johann took out a bulky envelope from a dispatch box and placed it before the Minister. Trusia, too, had drawn near. The trio started involuntarily as they read the address of Russia's sub-minister of Secret Police in Warsaw staring them in the face. Trusia gasped and turned white. Sobieska walked to the door, closed it gently and returned to the table.
"Who was your friendly counselor?" he demanded of Johann.
"I dare not tell you," the fellow replied doggedly.
"If I have to ask Posner at the inn, it will go hard with you, Johann."
"He does not know; we did not drink at Posner's."
"That is certainly a clever imitation of my writing," said Carter, who had been carefully studying the characters on the envelope. Sobieska looked up. "You do not believe me capable of communicating with your enemies!" He appealed to the girl, whose white face was staring at the oblong packet lying on the table.
"I do not know what to believe," she said as she struggled to keep back the tears. "Open it, Sobieska." The latter complied and scanned the communication.
"This," he said, looking up gravely, "purports to be a preliminary report of Calvert Carter and Todcaster Carrick to their immediate superior in the Imperial Secret Police at Warsaw. It contains a further promise of early developments and the coming of a King to Krovitch. It is signed 'Calvert Carter.'"
Sobieska reached so suddenly forward to touch a call bell that Johann jumped. A gray-haired sergeant entered.
"A corporal and file," was Sobieska's command. Carter straightened himself haughtily. Were they going to arrest him for this forgery?
"Count Sobieska," he began indignantly, while Johann's dull eyes brightened.
"Wait, please," was the Minister's only comment.
Carter turned to Her Grace to remonstrate against such an indignity, but her head was turned from him. There were footsteps, rhythmic, orderly, at the door. It opened to admit the corporal and his men. Vividly it recalled to Carter another such scene when he was a judge and——
"Put Johann under arrest," came the curt interruption to his thoughts from the lips of Sobieska. "If you permit any one to communicate with him, it will mean a court martial for all of you," said the Minister.
The sudden and unexpected reversal of the preconceived program was too much for the messenger, as, cursing and struggling, he was hustled toward the door. As the heavy oak panel swung to upon the prisoner, he muttered something which caught the waiting ear of Sobieska, who glanced toward his princess to see if she had heard. Satisfied that she had not, he swept a triumphant look at Carter, who was dumbfounded at the turn affairs had taken. The American stretched out his hand to the Krovitzer.
"Paul Zulka's friends are to be trusted," said Sobieska. "You have already made a personally vindictive enemy," he continued; "have you any idea who it is?" The indolent wink accompanying the inquiry cautioned Carter not to name any one if he had.
"I have," replied Calvert, who had understood the signal.
"Don't name him then, at present," requested the Minister.
"Why not?" queried an indignant Trusia, "as Major Carter is innocent, this wretch must be punished at once."
"Your Highness," respectfully counseled the Privy Counselor, "Major Carter has been in our country too short a time even to be sure of his friends, much less of his enemies. His surmises, therefore, might be unwarranted, and might put a perfectly innocent person under suspicion. Be assured," he asserted vehemently, "I will thoroughly sift out this matter in my official capacity. Whether it confirms his premonitions or not, you will learn in due time. I am inclined to believe that Johann was intended to fall into your hands, but with a different intent. Either that or the message was meant for Russia, the risk to be shouldered upon Carter. May I employ Josef," he requested blandly, "as a messenger to Colonel Sutphen?"
"Certainly," she replied, and the old fellow was sent for.
There was neither tremor nor twitch on his impassive countenance as he responded to the summons, although he must have missed Johann and knew not what had transpired.
"You are to take this note to Colonel Sutphen at once," said Sobieska curtly. "At once," he reiterated with emphasis, "don't even wait for a hat. Your trip and return will be timed," he was fairly warned. "It is of the utmost importance," the Minister remarked impressively as he handed the retainer a hastily scrawled but securely sealed note. Josef might have been carrying the order for his own execution, for all he knew, but he did not permit any outward sign of trepidation to show in his face. With commendable alacrity he left the room on his mission, watched by Sobieska in the doorway. Returning, with hardly concealed impatience, the Minister begged of Her Grace to be excused for the time being and requested the assistance of Carter.
"Yes, Sobieska, go," she said. "I am as anxious as you can be to reach the bottom of this mystery. Somehow, I cannot help feeling that there is something inimical to my country in it all."
"Pray God that it is not so," said the Minister as he bowed her from the office. No sooner was she gone than the two men faced each other, the same thought in their minds, the same name on their lips.
"Josef," they said in the same breath.
"There's not a minute to lose," continued the Minister. "That is why I trumped up that message to get him out of the way. We must search his room immediately, before he has a chance to forestall us. Come," he said, grasping Carter's arm.
Together they mounted stairways, plunged down passages, grim and shadow infested, until the Servitor's room was reached. The barrenness of the place seemed to be sufficient guarantee for the honesty of its usual occupant. A table without a drawer, no closet and some burned-out logs in the large fireplace afforded but scant hiding places. Sobieska carefully tapped each board separately to ascertain if a secret receptacle had been formed in such a fashion, but the floor was perfectly solid. He tried the flagging of the hearth as well as the brick arch of the fireplace with no more success. He was about to acknowledge failure when Carter accidentally turned over one of the charred logs lying at his feet. An exclamation burst from the Minister's lips.
Minute and scattered fragments of paper, saved from the blaze by the bulk of the log above them, lay scattered on the hearth. These Sobieska pounced upon eagerly.
Further search bore no fuller fruit, so with their meagre harvest the pair descended to the office again. Here the Krovitzer, piecing the fragments together, and pasting them on a sheet of paper, laid them before Carter.
"There," said the Minister, "are the experiments in your handwriting. Now wait until he comes back."
"But how did he get a copy?" queried the puzzled American.
"Easy enough," replied Sobieska. "He kept those papers he took from you in the cell yesterday. Your passport furnished your signature. He's a clever rascal. Substituted the forgery for the other letter, while Johann drank. Either that or they're in league together, which I am not prepared to believe, yet. In any event we must get a new messenger."
"Tell me," said the curious Carter, "how came you to suspect Josef, as you read the letter Johann had with him?"
Sobieska smiled indulgently. "A man of your varied metropolitan experience would scarcely write a letter as he would a thesis for a University degree. Whoever wrote that epistle had doubtless a work of rhetoric at his elbow, fearful of mistakes. Look at it yourself," and he pushed the paper over to Carter. It was, indeed, a studied composition of good proportions and well rounded sentences.
"I have heard you talk," continued his instructor, "and I felt satisfied that Major Carter, if a spy, would hardly have wasted his efforts in such a prim presentation of his facts." He glanced at his watch. "He would have doubtless used cipher. Josef is due in just one minute now. There he comes," he said, as there was a low rap at the door. "Come in."
Punctuality outdone, Josef entered and handed Sobieska a note. Without even glancing at it, the latter tossed it on the table. Picking up the sheet on which were the pasted fragments, he handed it to the Servitor, watching him closely with narrowing eyes. Without a tremor the paper was received, examined, read, and handed back to Sobieska with a smile.
"Well, Excellency?"
"Ever see that before, Josef?"
"I think so, Excellency. Did you find them in my room?" he inquired with quiet effrontery.
"They were found there. I found them," replied Sobieska coolly, not yet despairing of breaking down the impassive wall with which Josef had surrounded his thoughts.
"Then I have seen them before," the Servitor answered as though courteously acknowledging an irrefutable logic. "I took them there to interpret them," he said as if willing to make an explanation though not admitting any necessity. "I found them beneath a certain window last night—in the courtyard of the inn," he concluded with a significant glance at Carter. Then boldly his eyes challenged both men.
"It's a lie," said Carter contemptuously. Josef smiled.
"Your word—the word of a stranger—against mine," he sneered. "Shall I appeal to Her Highness?"
"Her Highness knows everything," hazarded Sobieska. "From Johann," he added deliberately.
There was a start, if you call the slightest flicker of the eyelids such—to show that the shot had told; then Josef, calm as before, inquired,
"Then of what interest can these scraps of paper be?"
"Be careful, Josef," interrupted Carter, whose anger had not yet been appeased, "that you do not pick up something deadly—in the courtyard of the inn, something like a revolver bullet."
The fellow bowed mockingly to the last speaker, then turning to Sobieska said, "May I go, Excellency?" Sobieska nodded assent.
"Wait," said Carter, and Josef paused.
"You say you found these papers—in the courtyard of the inn," said Carter endeavoring to connect the man with the mishap to the auto, "any place near the carriage shed?"
The Servitor smiled and assumed a non-committal aloofness.
"Why," he asked as, turning, he left the room.
Following a short talk with the Minister of Private Intelligence, Carter took his departure, and, as he rode thoughtfully back to the inn, he was startled to see a distraught Carrick arise from a stone by the highway.
"Why, Carrick," he cried with a premonitive feeling of some new evil, "what brings you here?"
"Been huntin' for you for nearly three hours, sir. I could not bide there, sir, till I 'ad seen you."
Carter, dismounting, took the bridle rein over his arm and walked alongside the Cockney, who in detail recited the story of a meeting of Josef and Johann in the wood, which, unseen by them, he had watched, and which in every detail corroborated the recital of Johann and the surmises of Sobieska.
"What do you think of it, sir?" he concluded.
Carter shook his head gravely.
"I can't say, Carrick. Keep your eyes and ears open, but do not say a word to any one but me of this or anything else you happen to notice about Josef. There's some game going on that I have not fathomed yet.
"Tod Carrick," he continued in a burst of affectionate consideration, "you're a good faithful soul. Here's my hand. I do not believe you have had a mouthful to eat to-day. Now, have you?"
The Cockney smiled.
"I forgot, sir," he answered almost shyly, elated with the words of approval he had won.