THE BLACK GHOST
OF THE HIGHWAY
BY
GERTRUDE LINNELL
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
NEW YORK · TORONTO
1931
LINNELL
THE BLACK GHOST OF THE HIGHWAY
COPYRIGHT · 1931
BY LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
FIRST EDITION
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOR E. B. S.
THE BLACK GHOST
OF THE HIGHWAY
CHAPTER I
The roads at the crossing were wide and smooth, with cool woods on either side, but beyond them to the left rose the high, jagged, yellow-and-black mass of the mountains, bare on their upper reaches, and wooded in the shelter of the valleys, a splintered peak or two farthest inland showing snowcapped even in August. They dominated the narrow strip of fertile, hilly land between them and the sea, abrupt, savage, Central European. One of the roads led up through a cloven valley and was engulfed in it, the other ran more levelly along the sea coast. John stopped while we stared. It was not the first time that we had stopped in the last few days just to look at a landscape. The whole journey through these lands of astounding languages and suddenly varying costumes had been painted in opalescent sunlight and vivid shadows, but since morning we had been nearing the mountains. Now we found ourselves under them, but not yet in them, and two roads, equally wide and enticing, led forward to unmarked destinations.
“It’s the road to the left,” I said, looking at the map. “It seems to branch off about here, but it might be a little farther on. It’s hard to tell with no markers.”
“Anyway, let’s not take it,” John objected. “Why pass up another day or so of driving? You never know what you may find if you don’t know where you’re going.”
I agreed.
“Helena doesn’t expect us any particular day, so that’s all right,” I said. “Let’s take the wrong road.”
It was a very long and beautiful wrong road. The mountains changed their angles, but did not move from their commanding position to our left. The sea became bluer, the sun climbed higher, and then presently, we were turning inland. We passed only small villages, or isolated farms, their buildings connected, in true Central-European fashion, by a series of little walled courts, where pigs and chickens, cows, human beings, dogs, donkeys, and even mules and horses mingled but did not stop. With firm faith in the brakes of passing cars they overflowed into the highway. John dodged them all expertly, having had almost a week of practise at it, and presently we came suddenly to a customs house with a barrier across the road.
“This must be the Alarian frontier,” John said. “There’s always something at the end of a road. Shall we go through?”
“Why not?” I said. “We’re here, and we can get back to Helena’s across the mountains. There’s a rather famous Pass. Handsome scenery.”
“There are no shortcuts to beauty,” he proclaimed, grinning. “The farther we go the better it gets. Where’s your passport?”
The inspector peered into the tonneau of our car, and seemed pained by the number of tightly strapped pieces he saw there. He gratefully accepted a pair of cigars from me, and then dutifully read our names with a thick accent, so that John became Yohn Coltaire, and I Marr-s-hall Carrr-veen. Our likenesses puzzled him a little. He stared from them to us several times before he decided that they were, after all, passable. He then waved us through the barrier, and we came, a hundred yards or so farther on, to a second barrier, where the performance was repeated, in the same order, as though rehearsed, like a comic opera chorus. The only difference was the uniform of the examiners. We were then given gracious permission to enter the realm of King Bela of Alaria.
“Chap I know,” John said, “went all through here last year and wrote a book about it. He said the roads were fine and the food and wines even better, if you like garlic and mutton. And he’s never tired of raving about the people. Maybe we’d better stop and do some painting.”
“You don’t have to go to Waldek,” I said. “If you’re seeking refuge in working I can go there by train alone.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “Of course I want to go to Waldek. Those mountains make me feel as though they ought to be set down on canvas.”
“Work’s pretty fascinating,” I agreed, “if you’re not doing any.”
“That’s not true,” John objected. “I’m not doing any, and don’t want to, but once I start I like it. You’ll see when we get to Waldek.”
“The mountains are there, too,” I promised him.
“I know,” he answered. “And I’ve never visited a Countess in a mediæval castle. I’m expecting a couple of ghosts and a bookful of legends, to say nothing of all the neighbors in for Kaffee Klatsch, and the feudal retainers in costume.”
“I hope so,” I said. “I feel a bit doubtful myself. I’ve never been to Waldek, and it’s eight years since I’ve seen Helena.”
“The grand finale to a perfect trip,” he enthused politely. “Reunion with a lost cousin and her beautiful daughter, the Countess Marie.”
“Only don’t blame me,” I warned, “if she isn’t. I haven’t seen the kid since she was about twelve or so. She was thin and pig-tailed then, and over fond of sticky French pastry and marrons glacés.”
“She’s probably grown fat on them in eight years, and had a permanent wave. Still, I always hope for the best, and sometimes I’m surprised by getting something like it. Look at that, for instance.”
We had topped the crest of a long, rolling hilltop, to the sudden edge of a low cliff, and looked almost directly upon the historic and fantastic city of Herrovosca, capital of Alaria. It was the first time either of us had ever seen an Oriental city. Geographically, of course, Herrovosca is not Oriental, but the Turks occupied it too long for it ever to look like a European city again. The houses below were whitewashed, or color washed, the shrubbery was thick and of an unbelievably luscious and vivid green, as I imagine the green of an oasis to be, with flecks of bright flowers to accent it and slender poplars pointed heavenward like minarets of silver. From the hilltop we looked almost directly down on the new part of the town. Pleasant villas were set back in their gardens behind high white walls, awninged roofs showed bright among the trees, the bright face of a small lake flashed, and through the center of the city flowed a river, crossed by a dozen bridges. Everything on our side of the river was new and bright, with ample space for trees. On the opposite bank there was little greenery except for a park that covered a small rocky hill. In the park was a huge old building, a massive grey stone structure with long wings of lighter stone that had been added later. Obviously it was the Royal Palace, the abode of the only Christian bachelor King in the world. Around the whole district was a double line of fortifications in perfect preservation. The outer wall crossed two of the bridges and was continued on our side of the river. In mediæval days the Herrovoscans did not dare to leave their defense to chance and the perfection of the walls suggested that the mediæval period was a very recent fact.
At the foot of the little hill on which the Royal Palace stood, was a large square, flanked by a Cathedral on one side, and by two large, official-looking buildings on the other two, with the park of the Palace forming the fourth. It was all very quiet and peaceful. Not a sound came up to us from the city, though we were very close to it. We passed a few cars, some market and trucking wagons drawn by mules, horses and oxen in mixed pairs, a scattering of foot passengers, laden donkeys, and riders, each making its own special sound; but from the city there was only silence. It seemed unnaturally still, like a dead town.
“It’s the wind,” John said, practically. “It’s carrying the sound away from us. Odd effect, though, isn’t it?”
“It’s the most scene-painterish city I ever saw in real life,” I said. It was hard to believe that it was real, but as we rolled down the hill sounds of activity gradually rose to meet us. As we crossed the river over one of the wide stone bridges, the first impression of unnatural quiet was erased. Herrovosca was like all cities, noisy, busy, self-centered, and its color faded a little as we approached. John turned away from the wide thoroughfare leading from the bridge, and followed several short narrow streets. They were quaint and full of atmosphere, both ocular and olfactory, but so short that in a few moments we found ourselves on another wide avenue, lined with trees and flowers, their wide walks dotted with nurse maids in gay caps with colored streamers, men and women of less than the highest class making quite a business of their promenade, staring at the fine, open carriages and cars in which the great ladies drove, and the handsome horses being ridden by young officers of the army. We were so much amused by the people that we almost drove past a gendarme who motioned us to one side so that two lancers might ride down the center of the street, tiny blue pennons waving from the tip of their long lances. A victoria followed, drawn by a handsome pair of black stallions. Behind that were two more lancers with four soldiers following on motor cycles. In the victoria were two ladies. One of them was bowing from right to left, graciously acknowledging the salutes of her subjects. The Queen Mother, of course. She was as handsome as her pictures, and of a conscious presence, like a great actress. She stared slightly as she bowed to us. Evidently tourists were not plentiful in Alaria.
John fell in behind the cortege, driving slowly of necessity. We had a Baedeker, but did not bother to open it. It was so much pleasanter to wander on haphazard. When we came to a side street that looked interesting, we turned into it again. It smelt strongly of cheese and other native food products. White walls, grated windows, cobblestones, were everywhere, and nearly all of the lower classes wore their bright native costumes. There were so many of them, and so many uniforms, that civilian clothes became conspicuous. Practically no one lowly enough to walk wore them except the promenaders on the avenue.
“That’s the way people ought to dress,” John approved. “Bright colors. Makes you feel cheerful.”
After we had been driving about for some minutes we came suddenly out of the twisting maze of streets, and found ourselves in the large square we had seen from the hill above the city. John stopped the car to look around us. If he had not we should have been run into by a large dark car travelling very fast. It turned into the open gates of the Palace park. The sentries jumped out of the way and managed to salute almost at the same time as it charged up the steep short hill with a roar of its open motor. We caught just a glimpse of a young girl alone in the tonneau. She was leaning forward in an eager and excited pose. I probably should not have noticed her otherwise. Almost before that car had disappeared another followed it, with another lone passenger, this time a thin man, and two liveried servants. Though his car was travelling at the same frantic rate as the first, the thin man was leaning back as though time meant nothing to him.
“Something’s going on,” John said. “That’s what always happens sooner or later to spoil any trip.”
“Excitement?” I asked.
“Yes,” John said, disgustedly. “Something you can’t be in on because you’re a stranger.”
“Look how pleasant and peaceful this square is,” I protested.
It was quite a beautiful square, paved with huge blocks of red and black marble. The roadway ran around the four sides, but the two cars that passed us had driven across the center. Royal prerogative, probably. Facing us rose the great bulk of the Cathedral, built of some dark stone, so weathered that it seemed almost black. Its twin spires had once been gilded, but were now a rusty red. To our right and left were the two large grey buildings of obviously official character, and further to the right rose the Royal Palace on its rocky, park-like hill. A stone wall ran around it, and, toward the square, where a tower jutted down, it almost touched the wall, just beyond two colossal wrought-iron gates. Farther back, a light and fanciful covered bridge had been added, reaching from the wall to the Cathedral, and offering the members of the Royal Household a private entrance to the church. Its architecture was Renaissance, and it might have been a part of Versailles, so graceful and completely French was its style. It was a noticeable contrast to the Cathedral and the Palace. Through its rows of glazed windows I could see the blue sky beyond.
“Let’s stay here a few days,” I suggested. “We can amuse ourselves, though the place looks so quiet and tranquil I don’t suppose anything will ever happen here again.”
“That’s a fine reason for staying in a place.” John snorted.
“You could paint,” I offered.
“Let’s find a hotel,” he said. “I’m hungry, and I’d like to get a bath before dinner. You probably have to announce your intention to bathe well ahead here.”
Artists and actors, I have noticed, are always thinking of food. In John’s case it is not poverty but appetite. If he had less money he might be a better artist. Not that he can’t paint, but that his money buys him so many more vivid amusements that he doesn’t. He stepped on the starter, but before he got the motor running a great bell began to toll. At first we thought it came from the Cathedral in front of us, but in a moment we realised that it was in the great tower of the fortress-Palace. It was twenty minutes past three, too early for an Angelus, and no clock rings at twenty minutes past an hour. It boomed solemnly, funereally.
“Sounds like a death knell,” John said. “But if any member of the Royal Family were dead the Queen wouldn’t have been driving around the city as she was half an hour ago, bowing to the populace. She’s supposed to be hard boiled, but she’d have to be pretty icy to manage that.”
The bell tolled on, and as it rang, people began running into the square. They were excited, gesticulating, talking rapidly. Obviously the bell had some serious significance. I called in German to several people before one would stop. And, as he answered, the Cathedral bell began ringing, and others all over the city followed it.
“Der König ist tod!”
The King was dead. It must have been very sudden, then. Assassinated, probably. To Balkan rulers assassination is almost a natural form of death.
And still the people came. More and more thickly they packed the square.
“We’d better get out of this,” John said, and started the motor, “if we don’t we’ll be hemmed in by the crowd, and won’t be able to.” But we were already hemmed in. We moved ahead not more than a few feet, the crowds were coming too fast to let us through. A man in a blue blouse climbed on the running board. He had a full red beard and shining brown eyes.
“How did the King die?” I asked.
“They are all saying different things,” the man replied, “but all I know is that the King is dead, and there will be trouble in Herrovosca.”
“Revolution?” I asked.
“Who knows? Perhaps. The Soviet—a republic—perhaps the Prince Conrad may be clever enough and strong enough to hold the throne—who knows? And the Queen will not be idle.”
“But the King died suddenly?”
“Oh, very suddenly. I saw him myself only this morning. He was driving out with some friends. Two cars full. Going up to the mountains to hunt, I heard, and not an hour ago the Queen was driving through the streets as she does every day when the weather is fine.”
“Not such a comfortable moment to time our visit,” I said. “There’ll probably be just enough trouble here to be a bother.”
“I suppose so,” John said, “and we don’t understand the language enough to be in the fun. Let’s go on tomorrow to your Cousin Helena’s place and leave the Alarians to settle their difficulties without us.”
“Yes,” I agreed. I was afraid that he would want to stay. “She’ll be glad enough to see someone from home, at least she ought to be. She hasn’t for a long enough time. We can’t very well go on today. It’ll be too late by the time we’ve had dinner.”
The whole city seemed to be alive with the sound of the bells. And, then, quite suddenly, they stopped. Not quite all at once. The Palace bell stopped first, and then the Cathedral bell, and then all the others, one after another. In the odd silence that followed we looked at each other in something like alarm, for the populace was silent, too, and a silent populace may so easily be a dangerous one. In a moment, though, they all began shouting, in cumulative waves of noise, louder and more frantically. Little groups formed around leaders. Speakers began haranguing all who would listen, and if the silence had been ominous the din was enormously more so.
“Do not be alarmed,” our bearded giant counselled. “The knell has been tolled for King Bela. Now you will hear, they will ring again for the new King. Prince Conrad has become King Conrad the Fourth.”
As he spoke a carillon sounded from the Cathedral, playing a fine marching hymn. Voices took up the melody, the whole square swayed and sang, the men’s heads were uncovered, many people dropped to their knees, others shouted above the singing.
The King was dead. The city was singing a greeting to the new King, and praying that his reign might be a happy and a prosperous one. I remembered, as I sat listening to those bells, all the troubles of Alaria in the last years. Yolanda, the Queen Mother, was a German; an energetic, politically-minded woman who had ruled her husband and bettered the condition of the country relentlessly, without ever winning anything from her adopted people but dislike. Her husband, and her elder son, and a daughter, had been assassinated seven or eight years before. I counted back. It was after I had seen Helena in Paris. Someone, how or why I could not remember, had thrown a bomb. Bela, the younger son, had become King, with his mother as Regent until he was eighteen. Then he had ruled badly and erratically, partly dominated by his mother, whose unpopularity he shared and augmented by his cruelty and by refusing to marry. He was not more than twenty-five or six, but already he had become a figure of motley reputation, his name linked with that of a half dozen ladies of prominence in their chosen profession. He was an irresponsible and rather savage wastrel. I could just remember having seen a few mentions of a Prince Conrad, the heir to the throne, who was reputed to be on extremely bad terms with his cousin the King, and was consequently living more or less in retirement. Now the bells were calling him from obscurity to a throne. I wondered if he knew yet that he was a king.
The carillons ceased, one by one, as the tolling had ceased, and a new bell began sounding from the Cathedral. The ringing seemed to have been going on for hours. I felt deafened, tired. I glanced at my watch. It was quarter past four, an hour since the first bell had tolled.
The man beside us explained, “Now they will proclaim Conrad King, from the steps of the Cathedral. If he is in the city he will appear. Wait only, you will see it all.”
We waited, of course. We had to, since all the others apparently wanted to see it all, too. Such part of the crowd as could get near enough climbed on our car. We watched while more minutes went by.
The other bells were still, only the great bell of the Cathedral boomed on and on. Then through the windows of the bridge we saw the silhouettes of several figures pass. A murmur ran through the crowd.
Slowly the great door of the Cathedral opened. Behind it there was revealed an impressive group. Ceremonially they advanced to the top of the steps. There were probably twenty soldiers first. They turned, and spread out fanwise. Then came four officers in brilliant uniforms, to stand in front of the soldiers, their gold braid shining. Next came nine men in sober black, their ages and figures widely varied. They took their places in front of the officers. Then came the Queen Mother, draped theatrically, and becomingly, in black crepe, leaning on the arm of another man in black. She walked to the very edge of the steps and stood there in an attitude so simple as to suggest a pose. A cheer started in several parts of the square at once, but before it gained any volume it died out again in little ripples of surprise and chatter. The red-bearded man beside us was talking so hard in Alarian with a dozen people at once that he could not answer our questions. A slender girl in white and a tall thin man in black were coming through the Cathedral doorway. I was reasonably certain they were the two who had rushed past us in their cars when we first came into the square. No wonder they had been in a hurry. The man, obviously, was Prince Conrad, but I wondered who the girl in white could be. She was in an important position on the platform, yet I could not remember that there was any woman in the Royal Family of Alaria except the Queen Mother. I wondered if Bela could have married secretly one of the many girls whose pictures had been in the papers with his.
The crowd began to cheer in earnest at the sight of Conrad, and in staccato counterpoint rose also flashes of disapproval, and some of the people were merely silent. I held my breath. This wasn’t my country, it was all a lot of hocus-pocus, and the government of Alaria was nothing to me anyway, but I was thrilled for all that. I couldn’t help myself, and John was like a child with a toy.
“The King! The King! King Conrad!” shouted our red-bearded man.
“Who is the girl in white?” John asked him for the dozenth time, and at last he answered. “No one knows,” he said, “I never saw her before. Perhaps Conrad will soon be married. They will tell us presently.”
Conrad held up his hand for silence, and the Queen Mother, whose head had been bowed in her grief, raised it in a triumphant gesture, as though instead of having reached the end of a long reign at the death of her son, she had just begun a new one. It was the gesture of a woman of courage. She had always had that, certainly. Queen Yolanda of Alaria had made her name the symbol of the successful and beautiful, but domineering and unpopular, woman, full of energy and even of genius. I was suddenly sorry for Yolanda. For years she had been lending her Royal name to every project that offered her money—especially in America. No doubt she shared the usual European view that America was so far beyond the limits of the known world that what she might authorise on that broad continent did not matter. She had written for the magazines, endorsed cigarettes, extended her illustrious hospitality to wealthy but otherwise socially dubious persons. Alaria had benefitted by her scheming. So, no doubt, had she. The country had for years been too poor to afford hospitals or other public improvements. It had also been too poor to afford her the array and the surroundings suitable to a queen. What she wanted she had acquired by the means she found possible. But she had reached the end of her road. Even her ingenuity would not be able to find a way out of giving up the crown of her adopted country to Conrad, and he had opposed her openly for years.
And then Conrad began to speak. The crowd listened with interest. Our guide translated for us in a whisper, very quickly and roughly. The first part of his speech was a eulogy of King Bela. There wasn’t much to be said in praise of that young man, but what there was Conrad said. From Bela he turned to praise Yolanda for her energy, her enterprise, her cleverness in the face of all obstacles and difficulties. Then he spoke of Bela’s father, and what a happy family they had been until that terrible day of the assassination. He described the dreadful moment when the bomb had burst, and the drive back to the Palace, the mother weeping tragically over her children and her dead husband. The scene in the Palace when the royal physician had declared the King and his elder son dead. The little Princess Maria Lalena was yet alive. The mother’s misery because of the child’s wounds, her prayers for her life.
All that was known to the crowd. They listened politely, even interestedly, but little murmurs of impatience began to float about that he should tell again a tale so old and so well known, and having so little to do with his own accession to the throne. But still he spoke on, and suddenly he said something that brought gasps from the crowd. Our interpreter forgot us again until John pulled at his arm. Conrad then was ushering forward the girl in white, the soldiers presented arms at the gesture. The girl bowed, her hands crossed on her breast, like a picture of some early Christian martyr. The red-beard’s eyes were wide with amazement, “The Princess!” he cried, “The dead Princess! It is she! Viva Maria Lalena! Viva, viva! The Queen! She is the Queen!”
John was almost as excited as the man himself, “That girl in white?” he demanded.
“Yes, yes, the one in white, who else? They will hold the coronation festivities in two weeks’ time. We have not had a reigning queen since the days of good Queen Anna, two hundred years ago. She will be another Queen Anna, and we will all be prosperous and happy as our ancestors were in the days of Queen Anna! Viva! Viva!” and he threw his hat in the air and caught it again, to show his approval.
But in other parts of the crowd there was less enthusiasm. One woman in a red shawl was hissing through strong white teeth, her brown face alight with venom. The crowd surged forward toward the steps. If the new slim Queen had been there alone they might have done her some harm, but Yolanda stood on one side of her, and Conrad on the other, and each of them looked quite capable of holding any mere crowd at bay.
“That girl in white,” John said, “is the prettiest little thing I ever saw—appealing. Poor child, she looks dazed.”
A short man in a red blouse began shouting then, others echoed him, “Conrad, Conrad! Maria Lalena is dead—Impostor—Conrad! Conrad!”
And Conrad, slim and black on the Cathedral steps, seemed to grow in height. The crowd moved and swayed and pushed and shouted. They were growing more and more excited. In their efforts to get a better view, the people left a lane in front of our car.
“There’s your chance,” I urged. “Start the car, and let’s get away, now.”
“It’s a fine show, free,” John objected.
“It’s not going to be free, long,” I said. “There are a lot of police over there, and if they start getting ugly we’ll probably spend a month or so in a smelly jail for having been present, though foreign.”
“All right,” John agreed, and started the engine. Little by little he inched his way along. Our interpreter lost his hat and jumped off our running board. A woman with a baby took his place. The baby was crying. The woman’s hair had come unpinned, and covered her shoulders in a dark curly mass, not too clean. The car crawled along slowly, stopped, rolled on for another slow foot or two. Not far to the right a narrow alley opened, leading apparently to some back door in one of the government buildings. The turbulence grew. Conrad was speaking again, but we could not understand him. Then there were more people coming up the alley, but they were so anxious to see that they ran around the car, and let us through, foot by foot: we obstructed their view.
It was almost half a city block down the alley, which was practically a tunnel. The corner was difficult. Probably ours was the first car that had attempted it, but by edging forward and back, and bending one mudguard a little, we made it. Then a few feet and we were in a street again, a street we might have thought crowded an hour ago. However, we could get through it slowly, and then, quite suddenly, there was no more crowd, only scattered, running figures, all going the same way, toward the square, the Princess, Conrad, and the Queen.
“Do you suppose we can get food in this town?” John asked. I didn’t. The whole population seemed to be either in the square or on its way there. Every house and shop was closed and barred.
“Barricaded inside as well is my guess,” John said, “for there’s very likely to be a lot of trouble for someone here tonight unless something is done to stop it. Yolanda has played a trump, but now it’s Conrad’s turn, and he talked to the crowd as though he knew what he was about. If he wants the throne, and he isn’t assassinated, I’m betting on him, for all of Maria Lalena’s pretty, childish appeal.”
“Still,” I said, “if he wants the throne he’s gummed his own game a bit, presenting her to the world as the Queen. I don’t see how he can expect to eat his own words later and remain much of a favorite.”
“All the same,” John went on, “he has waited a long time, and he doesn’t look as though he were fool enough to let a couple of women all dressed up for the last act get away with an eleventh hour conjuring trick to grab his throne away again.”
“He must want peace,” I protested, “more than a throne, or he never would have made that speech. And I’m all for that little Princess. Sweet sixteen, and baby eyes.”
“Nice to look at,” John agreed, “but not quite the stuff to cope with the ubiquitous Soviet and all the other problems of a modern state. I’d rather do my rooting for Prince Conrad. I think he looks like a decent chap.”
“All right,” I said, “but I suggest that you do any rooting in English. Then no one will understand you and it won’t get us in trouble with the authorities. And now, I have a fine suggestion. Let’s beat it for the frontier and Castle Waldek.”
John agreed to that, but added a proviso that we beat it fast because we probably should not be allowed to cross the frontier after whatever moment the authorities might have settled as the right one to close the Pass to strangers. Mountain roads would probably be inconvenient in the dark, anyway. My watch showed seven minutes past six. It was three hours since we had first stopped in the Cathedral Square. “We may have time, tonight,” I said, “though I doubt it. Let’s get out of here anyway. Once we are out of the city we will be able to forget all about the affairs of the Alarian Royal Family, and good riddance, too.”
“Stick-in-a-rut,” said John, “I was just beginning to enjoy myself.”
All the traffic was headed in the opposite direction, so we made excellent time. There were no road signs in the city, but I guided our career by a combination of the Baedeker map and the sun. We were lucky, and came out on the right road after only one short detour. When we found it, it was a wide city street, closely lined with beautiful houses, with grass and trees before them. Soon it became a street of villas, and then quite suddenly we were in the real country, with the high mountains of the frontier looming ahead of us in the distance.
We drove probably five or six miles before we came to a small town with an inn. We stopped there long enough to buy cold meat, sliced bread, and a bottle of warm wine so that we could eat as we drove. I took the wheel, and munched contentedly. The bread was heavy, dark, peasant’s fare, the wine was the commonest, and the meat mere boiled mutton, but we were hungry enough to enjoy it, while feeling a little sorry to be on the road again, and even I was a little sorrier that our way did not lie in the path of riots and revolutions. I was just thinking that it was a pity, in a way, not to have stayed, when john spoke. “Of course all that was none of our business,” he said, “and if we had stayed we should probably have been jailed as spies and died of boredom and bad food and dirt, and I know I’m talking nonsense, but I have a small boy’s hankering to be back in the middle of that square.”
“Don’t worry,” I cautioned, “we’re not out of Alaria yet, though we’ll go back if you say so.”
However, like two civilised men, though we both really wanted to go back, we did not want to enough to turn the car around, or perhaps we were ashamed to admit it to each other. In any case we continued on our way toward the frontier and Helena. I took out my desire for excitement in driving faster.
The customs house on the Alarian side of the frontier was a small stone and stucco building at the bottom of a steep incline. Straight ahead the road rose toward the Pass. It was lonely at the foot of the mountains, and the shadows were deep enough to breed superstition. No wonder the people could believe that queer old legend of the Black Ghost, so famous as to be mentioned even by Baedeker. The shadowy rocky masses ahead of us provided a perfect setting for any ghost, particularly a black one.
“There’s something about this fool country,” John said, “that I like. I suppose it would be ghastly dull to live here, but I’d almost be willing to have a whack at it. Consider that as a permanent home, for instance, and compare it with a neat suburban house in Brookline.”
On our right was a high hill, about a mile or so away, but the air was clear enough so that we could see it distinctly. On the rocky top of the hill a long white manor house stood as though it had grown there. Probably once it had been fortified to resist an army. No doubt it had been called upon to do so not long ago. I could imagine its owners swooping down on travellers through the Pass and exacting tolls with a heavy hand. Perhaps, I thought, they might have been responsible for the legend of the Black Ghost, though it looked like a pretty solid home for a phantom.
We drew up, perforce, before the customs house. Alaria had taken no chances when she built it there. The road narrowed to make its way between two sharp high walls of rock, which had been supplemented by masonry and a gateway with tightly closed, wrought iron gates. I produced my passport, and John not only offered his for examination, but a bill of sale for the car, a round dozen French cards of varying sizes and colors permitting him to drive and to circulate and what not in the streets of Paris. “They’re so impressive-looking,” he explained to me, with his un-Bostonian grin.
A common soldier took them and gave them to a sergeant. The sergeant looked wise, turned them all over to examine the reverse sides, and held them to the light to look for a watermark. No doubt that would be quite as illuminating to an Alarian as Paris driving permits. At last he shook his head dubiously, and took the whole lot inside the building.
After a moment or two he returned and beckoned to us.
“It’s their damned revolution following us up,” John said, “and it would have been a lot more fun to be detained in Herrovosca than it will here.”
“You never can tell,” I said, “we may find doom, or romance, or any number of amusing things ahead.”
CHAPTER II
We did not like to leave our luggage to the mercy of the lounging soldiers, but there was nothing to do but follow the sergeant into the customs house.
Inside there was a rather dirty, not too large, room, with a single heavy table on which lay cards that had been obviously laid down so as not to disturb a game that would be resumed as soon as we had been disposed of. An army officer of evidently small importance sat behind the card table. He bowed as we entered, but did not offer us seats. It was John’s car, so I let him do the talking. He had had the bright idea of offering that ridiculous collection of French souvenirs of bureaucracy as evidence that we were fit persons to be allowed to dodge a revolution. I stood in the window to watch the luggage. The sergeant who had ushered us in went to the door and lighted a lantern such as we called a bull’s eye when I was a child. I hadn’t seen one in years. They had been useful before the days of electric torches. The Alarian sergeant was flashing signals with it. Knowing neither the Alarian language nor any telegraphic or heliographic code, I did not bother to watch the flashes, but contented myself with looking to see whether he would be answered. He could only be sending a message about us.
It was, of course, from the white manor house that the answer came. It was the only building in sight. The residence of a superior officer, no doubt, and telephone service either disconnected or not trusted or not available. The under officer rapped suddenly on the table.
“May I claim your attention, gnädiger Herr?” It was not a question but a command. He ordered me to stay away from the window. We were, then, suspicious characters. I obeyed, but satisfied my pride by sitting down without permission. He cleared his throat and glared, then began talking volubly, but very little, so it seemed to me, to the point. “And who is it your intention to see while you are in Rheatia?” he asked, among a lot of other things. John had his mouth open to answer, when I spoke at random, suddenly determined to tell nothing that was not necessary.
“We are in search of beautiful scenery,” I announced, with a comprehensive wave of my hand. “We are strangers both in Alaria and Rheatia. We have no ultimate destination.”
John showed no surprise. He did not even glance at me. No doubt he thought I wished to spare Helena any possible gossip which our visit might occasion among the rough soldiers. And I had had some such idea, but I felt more that our character as innocuous American tourists had been somewhat impaired by John’s nonsense with the Parisian permits. A small country is always suspicious, and at the moment the Alarians were right to be suspicious of anyone.
The officer asked more questions, addressing them to me, now. They were for the most part the same questions he had asked John. How long had we had the car, where had we come from, where did we live in the United States, what was our occupation? Everything, indeed, except whether we had any dutiable merchandise. Obviously he was merely filling in time, while he waited for someone to come. It was quite useless to do more than be polite. A large fly droned against the window, the soldiers outside gossiped in gradually louder tones, while the sun slid down slowly, point by point, behind an invisible Herrovosca. It began to grow darker, and John was openly fidgeting, when we heard a car approaching, its cut-out wide open after the now familiar Balkan custom. The officer hastily lighted two kerosene lamps, and a moment or two later the car stopped. We heard the door slam. The officer rose, expectantly. We followed suit, and turned to face the doorway and the official who should enter.
But it wasn’t an official who came in. It was a woman.
I stared in surprise, not only because I had expected a man, but because this was a new kind of woman to me. She was tall, and handsomely built—that’s not so new, nor was any one thing about her. After all, a newspaper man sees a lot of women, sees them with reddish-brown hair that is red in the lamplight, sees them with tawny eyes, almost the color of a cat’s, sees them with clear olive skin, warm and sunny, and sees them with a ruthless yet luscious mouth. But he rarely sees all those things in one woman, and combined with a direct and forceful authority of manner, but without any loss of femininity. Her figure, which was less voluptuous than most Central European women’s, was covered with gold-embroidered green velvet. She wore a gold chain around her neck, and rings and earrings, but no hat, and her velvet dress was cut like the peasants’, tight bodice, short bolero jacket, and full, long skirt. She might have stepped out of a mediæval play, but she was not theatrical, as the Queen Mother was. John was staring at her, more delighted than I have ever seen him. She was returning his stare with little humorous lines curled around her mouth and the corners of her eyes. I deduced that she was quite accustomed to admiration.
“I hope,” John said to me in English, “that our passports are all wrong and keep us here forever.”
“I cannot imagine,” she took him up quickly, “why you could wish such a thing.” John had the decency to blush.
“I did not know you spoke English,” he apologised.
“It is sometimes a little fretting,” she replied, “when I do not say so, soon.”
And I decided that she was no knee-high sport. Her manner was neither over friendly nor severe. Her presence was a tonic; we had both forgotten our annoyance at waiting so long. She had too much personality to make a comfortable companion; she was, in fact, a creature to admire; a woman to wear a crown or lead armies; a Pompadour or a Joan of Arc; an actress or a politician. John had grown a full inch taller, he had a new poise, he was all gallantry and charm. As I looked at him I realised that she had done the same thing to me, that I was standing before her, all attention, waiting for any small jot of notice she might care to bestow on me. I felt that if she had stood on the Cathedral steps at Herrovosca instead of that slim little girl in white there would have been no question of revolution. This woman had the authoritative presence of Queen Yolanda, and a friendly, gracious manner besides.
She looked at John for a full half minute, without once blinking those yellow eyes, then she turned to me, and I felt that I should have been more careful when I dressed. My shoes had not been properly shined, and the spot where I had spilled the wine must show, and I had worn the same collar all day, and my hair needed combing, but in spite of my many defects, she was kind enough to smile at me.
“These gentlemen ’ave passports?” she asked of the officer, holding out her hand for them. She laughed at the Paris driving cards. “You ’ave forgotten, per’aps, to bring your diploma from a school?” she asked John, quite seriously. “I imagine you ’ave gone to one?”
“And,” he admitted, “my insurance policy. But I will be quite happy to write home for them if you wish. I should be delighted to wait here until they come.”
“That,” she answered, not displeased, “is just the way all the Americans speak in the books I ’ave read. Your passports seem to be quite in order. What is your destination in Rheatia?”
John looked so chagrined that I answered, “We are merely tourists, we have no real destination. I am a writer, Mr. Colton is an artist, we mean to write and paint, but so far we have not stopped long enough to do any work.”
“Ah, then you are Marshall Carvin? You may proceed,” she permitted, sweetly. She referred to the passports for another moment, then handed them back to us with a smile. “Au revoir, messieurs.”
“Thank you,” I acknowledged. “Au revoir, madame.”
John had lost the smartness of his manner when he first saw her. “I hope you will forgive me for being too enthusiastic about your country,” he said. “We are a naturally effusive nation, and are sometimes led into overdoing things, through excess of appreciation. We even sing praises to things so unreachable as the moon.”
She smiled again, looking straight at John, “Oh, I am sure the moon is not unreachable—by songs and praises,” she said. “Au revoir, messieurs.”
“And I wonder,” John murmured as we climbed into the car again, “just why she said ‘au revoir’ instead of ‘à dieu’—”
I humored him by saying the thing he obviously wanted to hear. “Perhaps she wanted to see you again.”
“Oh,” John grinned, “you think she is a booster for Alaria—bigger and better tourists—and more of them—sort of thing? All the same I wonder who the devil she can be. She didn’t even consult that idiot officer, just waved us out, and they let us go. And that car was a Hispano-Suiza.”
“And none too good for her?” I suggested. “Did you notice the regal air of the lady? Or the gold embroidery on the green velvet? We’ll have to ask Helena who she is. It would be a good thing to know, because, for all she is ornamental, and so very charming, I should hate to oppose that lady seriously.”
“Sure you would,” John chortled enthusiastically, “she knows what she wants, but she has nice, warm eyes, and a woman with warm, pleasant eyes is always manageable.” With which bit of optimism he drove on through the Pass, too intent on dreaming to talk any more.
The sun had touched the top of the western hills when we left the customs house. The mountains ahead of us raised their black jagged mass in the ruddy light, coppery and blown bare except in the valleys, where the trees showed dark and shadowy now.
The road was surprisingly good, for a mountain road in that distant part of the world. The rocks closed in around us almost within a stone’s throw of the customs house. The engine climbed bravely for an unbelievable time before it succumbed to the grade and made a shift necessary. Up and up and up, and then down a little, and then up again and a long way around a projecting ledge, into a gorge that made John switch on the lights suddenly; past that, and up again, then through a small wooded valley, and never a side road or a human being in sight, or any signs of habitation except a half dozen tiny cabins high above the road, and, a few times, narrow winding trails that would have been fit for a mule or perhaps a horse, but bad for a car. It was the wildest country I had ever driven through, and though the day had been almost hot, it was cold at that altitude. A narrow young moon came out and added by its familiar brilliance to the wild, deep shadows on either side of us.
And then, almost suddenly, we began to go down, and came upon a barrier across the road, with a small stone building beside it. It was the Rheatian customs. We had forgotten all about that. The frontier, of course, was somewhere back in the mountains. I remembered it as I had seen it traced in a dash-and-dot line on the Baedeker map. Each country, for the safety and comfort of its men, no doubt, ignored the rocky strip of no-man’s-land with its dozen or so inhabitants,—if there were more they were hidden well—and placed its customs houses miles apart.
We stopped and honked the horn, and presently a soldier came with an electric torch in one hand and a red and a white table napkin in the other. He glanced casually at our passports, asked us if we had any tobacco or spirits, and then waved us on, too intent to get back to his dinner to prove our statements by examination. We bade him “Gute nacht,” as he opened the gates, but he did not wait even for us to get through them before he had gone back to his dinner.
A few hundred yards farther and we were out of that dismal country, on a lower spur of the mountains, with lights twinkling through the trees below us, and soon there were fields and fences and farm animals, and a trim hamlet where we asked the way to Waldek, and were directed with German politeness to continue as we were going, “but three kilometers farther, then turn to the left, and at the top of the hill you will see the castle directly ahead.”
We were at the top of the hill almost before we knew it, looking down into the little valley where Helena’s widowhood had made her sole mistress. It was prosperously cultivated, and dotted with little thatched farm houses. Beyond, high on a jagged hill, rose the dark towers of the castle, with lights in the lower windows. It was a fairy-book sort of place, with cypress trees cutting clean lines into the sky, less wild and warlike than the manor house on the Alarian side of the mountains, yet stern with the feudal flavor of an old ballad. Over it loomed a thunder cloud, cut at jagged intervals by lightning.
“Entirely up to specifications,” John said, as we dipped into the valley. “We’ll stay here and do some painting.”
“Right,” I said, “she’ll be glad to have us, so don’t worry about that.”
The steep grade to the castle we made with difficulty, in slippery, sticky mud, through a driving rain. The car coughed and sputtered, but climbed steadily enough, and we finally arrived, wet, but hopeful of food and rest, at Helena’s ancient threshold. We rolled across a wooden bridge over the old moat that had once protected the Waldeks from invading hordes, then I climbed out stiffly, and rattled the great, wrought-iron knocker that hung on the gate, and presently footsteps came toward us. The gate swung open in two giant halves. We entered a large courtyard. At one side, part of an ancient stable had been converted into a garage. Two servants carried the luggage from the car, and another presently came to lead us to the living quarters of the castle.
“Spooky place,” John muttered.
“Nonsense,” I said, “you’re afraid it’s going to be dull, and you are trying to cook up an excuse to leave, which isn’t decent, before you’ve even met your hostess. Wait till you see Marie, too. I’ve a hunch she’s going to be rather a nice little thing, in spite of the pastries and marrons glacés.”
Helena came to receive us in the great Hall. It was hung with ancient embroideries, and furnished like a department store. Antique French upholstery, Turkish carpets, Russian enamels, English prints, Asiatic vases, Chinese jades, and a hundred other varieties of bibelots combined themselves, under the immensity of the carved stone groinings, into a somehow beautiful whole. John was impressed.
“What a joy to see you in this lonely place!” Helena smiled at us, a little wearily, perhaps. “I had your letter, and was delighted. How did you come? By Herrovosca? Oh. Did you stop there? Such a lovely city—or—did this terrible news hurry you through?” Her voice sounded strained, she talked too fast, and her eyes were certainly anxious. Also she twisted her hands when she talked. While I was a police reporter I saw lots of women do that: women accused of crimes, or whose children were lost.
“Do you think there will be trouble?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said, as though relieved to hear the words.
“But surely that will not affect you, across the frontier?” said John, looking at her hard.
“We are very near the frontier.” She smiled, nervously, “and very lonely.”
“You don’t have visitors often?” I asked.
“Not now, especially, with this trouble in Alaria.”
“Does that affect your visitors?” John asked, interested.
“Naturally. The political situation has been strained for so long. There have been two open attempts on Prince Conrad’s life. There is a rumor that Bela was responsible but I cannot believe that. And now Bela killed. The other rumor makes me wonder if Conrad is not responsible, but there were so many who would have liked to see him dead.”
“How was he killed?” I asked.
“That is a queer thing,” she said. “He was out hunting with several friends. He became separated from most of them, and when they missed him and searched they found his body terribly crushed at the foot of a cliff. Two of the friends who went with him have disappeared. Of course, the mountains are dangerous for climbing, but there is little doubt that he was thrown down. They know it is Bela because he was fully dressed, and wore all his jewelry. Yolanda said his face was horrible, crushed beyond recognition. Oh, dear, if I only knew what is happening in Herrovosca.”
We told her what we had seen. She leaned forward, listening intently. “The poor, poor, Queen,” she murmured when we told of her appearance in the street as we entered the city. “She had known of Bela’s death for three hours then.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Oh, news travels fast here,” she said. “In order to avert possible trouble she went for her usual drive. That is what it means to be a queen. Never a moment that does not belong to the people. She is a wonderful, wonderful woman. You cannot imagine how wonderful a woman, Marshall, unless you know her. Go on, tell me what happened next.”
We told her the story of the afternoon in Herrovosca. When we reached the description of the girl in white she jumped up suddenly. “How did they receive her?” she asked, excitedly.
“Pretty well, on the whole,” John said.
“There was no trouble? What did Conrad do?”
“He made a splendid address to introduce her, and the crowd seemed to want to listen to him.”
“Oh, yes, I was afraid of that. That is bad,” Helena interrupted. “Conrad is the cleverest man in Alaria, but he is not so clever as the dear Queen. Oh, you don’t know how she has planned and worked with never a thought of herself. She knew that Bela must be assassinated sooner or later. He was so desperately hated, you see. And after Conrad had been shot at twice, we knew that something more must happen. Yolanda tried to guide Bela, but even when he did good things he managed to make himself even more unpopular. He was so tactless, so careless and stubborn and profligate. He was jealous of Conrad, and loathed being a king. He even hated Alaria. He would have abdicated long ago if Yolanda had not prevented him. She played on his dislike of Conrad to prevent his giving up the throne to him. Of course there are a lot of reasons to think it may be Conrad who has assassinated Bela, but what worries me is that whoever did strike at Bela may strike at Marie, too. Oh, but I can’t think of that. I won’t think of it.”
“Marie?” I asked, suddenly realising that we had not seen Marie. “Marie, Helena?”
She laughed sharply, walking up and down that long hall—laughed and cried, and then stumbled into a chair, and began sobbing desperately. I felt helpless before this phase of feminine grief. She wanted to talk, to tell us about it all, and yet just telling was too much for her. I patted her shoulder, awkwardly, I fear, and motioned John back when I saw him start for the bell. That, I was sure, was not the right thing to do. Helena wanted to confide in people of her own sort. She had been among her Rheatian servants too long, and lonely. We had arrived at an opportune time. Soon she would stop crying and feel better. I had seen women in hysterics before.
And I was right. In a few minutes she sat up straight again. “Yes, Marie,” she said, quite calmly. “The girl I called my daughter, Maria Lalena, Princess of Alaria. Queen of Alaria, now, if God is being gracious to her.”
“You mean,” I asked, trying to remember all I could of Marie, “you never had a daughter?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, “I had a daughter. But my Marie—died, and Yolanda gave Maria Lalena to me to bring up. It was her idea. We all thought, then, that the monarchy would fall any day, with only a boy on the throne, and a bad boy at that. I went to Yolanda in her grief. A lonely widow, bereft of her child, to another lonely woman in a worse plight.”
“I didn’t know she was a friend of yours,” I said.
“Since she is a queen it is more correct to put it the other way,” she said. “She has honored me with her friendship ever since my marriage. I am probably the only intimate she has, because I am the only one who has no political interest in her, but only a personal one. I have not even profited in a social way, since I have lived here so quietly, in order not to attract attention to Maria Lalena.”
“That’s why I haven’t seen you,” I put in.
“Yes. You haven’t seen me since I was in Paris with Marie. Poor Marie. To me she is merged in Maria Lalena. It is as though they were one person and my child. I have loved her like my own child. And then this noon—was it only this noon?—it seems a week ago, at least—they phoned to send Marie. I wanted to go with her, but Yolanda said it was best not, so I sent her alone in my car, and the car has not come back. Oh, we have been so careful of her. She has not been in Herrovosca since the day she came here, after the awful affair of that bomb. Think what it must have meant to her today, to brave the mob in that square, with Conrad beside her, her only spokesman.”
“Poor child,” John said, “but she looked very calm and very charming, and Conrad was really nice about it.”
“He’s not to be trusted. Not to be trusted for a moment.”
“Aren’t you perhaps prejudiced because he and the Queen are enemies?”
“Perhaps, but there is something very strange about Conrad. He goes off to that old manor house of his—”
“Not the one near the frontier customs house?” John asked.
“No, no, that is the Count Visichich’s place. The young Count is in charge of the post there. Why?”
We told her about the young woman in green velvet.
“Katerina,” she said, “the old Count’s daughter, Countess Katerina Visichich. She dresses like that, and it was just as well you didn’t tell her you were coming here. You’d have stayed there for a while on some pretext or other. Being Americans, she did not suspect you. Probably she knows her mistake by now, though. They are not fools, those Visichiches. Strong supporters of Conrad’s, intimate friends of his, too. He lives about ten miles from their place, nearer Herrovosca. The Visichich men are probably busy brewing trouble somewhere while Katerina watches the road into Rheatia. This is the only way through the mountains for ninety miles in one direction and sixty in the other. And the only other important way is the railroad tunnel. You were lucky to get through.” She rose suddenly and moved about the room restlessly. “If I could only get word from Alaria. Oh, they know. They will send news when they can. They are afraid of Conrad—and of Katerina and the Black Ghost and the Soviets and the Republicans, and the people Bela has antagonized. There are so many people to be afraid of here.”
“The others, naturally,” John interrupted, “but why should you be afraid of the Black Ghost? You surely don’t believe in ghosts?”
“Not in most ghosts,” Helena answered, “but the Black Ghost I do believe in. Since the first Turkish occupation of Alaria he and his band have guarded the Pass. The legend is that the leader was a Knight Templar. At least he always wears the white cross of the Templars on his breast.”
“And has done so for eight hundred years?” I asked. “Oh, come, now, Helena, really.”
“And has done so from time to time at least, for eight hundred years,” Helena answered, and I knew by her voice that she was quite convinced of the truth of her statement, “and I can’t see the necessity for laughing at my belief. I have seen him on the Pass. He was looking down at me when I came back from Herrovosca one day. He was standing on a shelf of rock overlooking the road. It was dusk, but I saw him quite plainly. The chauffeur saw him, too, and almost ran the car off the road, he was so frightened. I am afraid, too.”
“You imagined it,” I said.
“No,” she stated, firmly, “I did not imagine that. But even if you don’t believe in it, do me the favor to stay here with me a few days. Take a few day’s leave from the twentieth century, and visit me in these middle ages, will you?”
“We began our leave from the twentieth century this afternoon,” John said, “in the square at Herrovosca. And certainly we’ll stay, won’t we, Carvin?”
“Of course,” I agreed, “with the greatest eagerness. As a matter of fact you simply couldn’t pry me away.”
“And not just a few days,” John announced, “we’re on indefinite leave from modernity. We’ll stay until everything is quiet again.”
Helena shook her head. “No,” she said. “That would be forever. A few days will cheer me up, nicely, and I’ll be most grateful. Of course you’ve had no dinner. It must be nine o’clock or after. I’ll have some food brought for you. Will you go to your rooms first?”
We went meekly, without argument.
Fifteen minutes later, by the sort of miracle common in large European households, we were served with a complete and beautifully cooked dinner. Helena nibbled a bit at first, and then began to eat hungrily, as she conquered her worry talking about it. About half past ten she insisted that we must be tired, as of course we were, and urged us off to bed. She looked exhausted, so we went obediently up to the three rooms that had been allotted to us. As I threw open the long window in my bedroom I saw that the rain had stopped. The night was clear and quiet, and I turned in with never a further thought of Marie or any other disturbing thing.
I don’t know quite how long I slept, but I awoke, feeling stifled, from a nightmare of a roaring motor car and a jumbled impression of Conrad, Marie, Yolanda and the Countess Visichich. I got up and went for air to the window. Outside, a narrow gallery ran along one whole side of the castle. I put on my dressing gown and, trying to shake off the unpleasant impression of my dream, walked slowly along, looking down over the face of the cliff below. An eagle surveying the valley from his eyrie could have had no more unbroken view of the world of mankind below him. I thought that the gallery would end at the corner, but when I reached it I found that it continued along one of the irregular juts on the north face of the castle, where the rising ground had been made into a garden. Tall cypress trees cut their sharp silhouettes against the starlit sky. It was all so beautiful that I wandered on down a short flight of steps to where a marble bench showed white under the dark green of the shrubbery. There I sat down and felt in my pocket for a cigarette. I usually keep a package and matches in that pocket, but this time they were missing, so I merely sat still and did nothing.
And suddenly I was glad I had not lit a match that would have made my presence obvious, for I distinctly saw a dark figure—the figure of a man—come through the bushes, and approach the castle. I rose and followed, feeling that midnight prowlers should be watched, though I realised that this might easily be a friendly, though silent, visitor.
He approached the blank wall of the castle. Its great stone bulk loomed above, sinister in the dim starlight, and then, without a sound, the man disappeared.
Now, I am prejudiced against prowling figures that disappear suddenly while I am watching them. It was a new experience to me, and I felt that the world was not living up to its proper matter-of-fact character. I went to the spot where he had last been visible. A tall bush grew there, beside a vine that clung to the old wall of the castle. Under the bush—I felt carefully—was only stone wall. The vine was very thick, and cast a deeper blackness in the dark, but so far as I could feel there was no door there. Yet a man had been in that spot, and was gone, and somewhere in that great mass of stonework Helena was quite probably out of earshot of any of her servants.
I went quickly back to our rooms, and awoke John to tell him what I had seen. He put on shoes and trousers and a dressing gown and went down into the garden to watch, while I went inside to find and warn Helena.
I found the great hall, and then knew in a general way where her rooms were, because she had waved vaguely toward them as she talked during the evening. However, the old castle was such a rambling, crooked pile, that I should probably never have found my way if I had not roused a maid who came rushing at me with a tall candle lighting a thick white cotton nightgown.
“Madame will not be disturbed,” she proclaimed, gloomily, Cassandra-like, “every night she locks her door, and no one dares go near her. Not for my life, gnädiger Herr, would I knock at her door.”
“Show me the door, then,” I said, “and I will knock.”
“No, the Herrschaften must understand, if I disobey her, my lady will send me away forever, and then how will my old mother and father live?”
I fished an American dollar from my pocket. It is an all-potent open sesame in Europe. The girl’s eyes opened wide, her hand stretched out, then she drew it back, and shook her head, longingly, “I dare not, wohlgeborner Herr,” she said, politely.
“Show me her door, merely, and I will knock, and never tell her how I found it,” I offered, and put the dollar in her fingers. She looked at me, then at the dollar. Then, as nonchalantly as though she were putting it in a gold-mesh purse, she lifted her nightgown, and placed the dollar safely inside a long thick woollen stocking. She seemed to be quite dressed under the nightgown.
“That door,” she said, and pointed down the hall, and then she ran away, shamelessly. Her candle flickered down the corridor, and was gone.
The indicated door was wider than its neighbors; wider and heavier. It had a somber and secretive air about it. I paused, as I raised my hand to knock, and then, amused that a mere wooden door should awe me, I knocked, and waited. After a moment I knocked again, and called. Then the door opened, and Helena stood before me, still fully dressed. Behind her the room was dimly lighted by not more than three or four candles.
“You are safe?” I asked.
Her voice was so calm as to be almost cold as she answered slowly, “Safe? Why should I not be safe? My door is locked and no one can get to me.”
“I was afraid something might have happened to you,” I said, “because I was in the garden just now, and I distinctly saw a man prowling around. Finally he disappeared into what seemed to be the blank wall of the castle.”
She laughed, then, a little. “Oh, Marshall,” she said, “I am afraid I led you to expect too much tonight, telling you that we lived in the middle ages here. Better go back to bed, and don’t dream dreams. Everything will come right in the morning. Good night, Marshall. Thanks for coming to see.”
“I tell you, Helena, I saw—”
“You dreamed, Marshall.”
“Are you quite sure there isn’t an old secret passage into the castle?”
“If there had been my husband would have told me about it. I’ve lived here a number of years, you know.”
“There are others who’ve lived here longer.”
“My husband’s ancestors built the place. I am afraid you have been reading novels.”
“I saw a man prowling in the garden. And he disappeared into a stone wall.”
“One of the servants, probably.”
“If he was, he didn’t want to be seen.”
“Oh, probably he came to see one of the maids. I can’t watch them all the time.”
“You shouldn’t be so far away from everyone, it isn’t safe.”
“Don’t worry, Marshall,” she answered. She was so calm that, half convinced, I began to think that I had been making a lot of fuss over nothing, when a crash sounded behind her, like a small table going over, and one of the candles went out. I could tell that because the room was a shade darker after the crash than before. Helena did not move. I waited for her to look around, or make some explanation. She was silent.
“Very well,” I said. “Good night, Helena,” and turned away, a little hurt and angry. Then I remembered how fast and excitedly she had talked before dinner, and tried once more. “You’re sure you’re all right?”
“Believe me,” she answered, “I am in no need of protection, but thanks for coming, Marshall.” She closed the door, then. It was no affair of mine, of course, if she did not want it to be. Though I was her only living relative, I had never seen much of her. I was an outsider and an interloper. I went back to my room, and then down into the garden to find John. We sat again on the white bench where I had first seen the prowler.
A tiny crack of light showed down the center of a corner window, just above us. I decided that that must be one of Helena’s windows. That would be likely, for they overlooked the garden and the valley, too. A beautiful location. I showed John the point where I had last seen the figure that had so mysteriously disappeared. And then we both saw something that I had missed before. It lay just at the foot of the bush that I still felt must mask a secret entrance into the castle. A small square of white. We stooped together, and our heads bumped. John came up from the affray, rubbing his head, but with the paper. I am only five years older than John, but I was born a little slower.
“I am going to wait here,” he said. “Take it inside and have a look.”
“It proves there was someone here,” I said.
“I never doubted it,” he replied.
“Helena said she did.”
“There may have been someone there, forcing her to speak as she did.”
I had thought of that, too. “I have a feeling that something’s wrong,” I told him, “but it’s so hard to butt in when you don’t know. After all, I haven’t seen Helena for eight years. I haven’t known her well since her marriage. That’s twenty years, and there’s all this Alarian business.”
I held the paper closely inside my hand until I gained the safety of our sitting room, where I pulled the open curtain tight across the window before I looked at it. The air of the old place had so caught me that I felt I might be looking on the key to some mystery of life and death.
I cannot speak Alarian, but German is spoken in Rheatia and I do speak German. Alarian is a Turkish language written in Latin characters with a large number of borrowed words. I know nothing of Turkish, but its general appearance is familiar to me. I learned a lot of things as a boy, collecting stamps. At least I can distinguish that language group from other groups, which isn’t much of a feat. This paper was slightly crumpled. On it, in ink, were scrawled twelve words that I was quite sure were Alarian. Not one word could I distinguish, yet I suddenly felt guilty staring at that note intended for other eyes. Only the language had saved me from reading it. I stuffed the thing in my pocket, and started back for John. We must stop spying. Probably the whole business was nonsense, anyway, and if not, the man who had come may have been a messenger from the Queen, and it was conceivable that she would not wish him to discover that she had confided in us. Probably she regretted that confidence, now. We were outsiders, we could do her harm, but no good.
When I got back to the bench, John was gone. He was not near the bush, either. I sat down to wait. No use hurrying and scurrying around a dark garden in frantic search for a missing man when that man was six feet one, and as heavy as John. Still, I felt uneasy. If there were one midnight prowler, there might so easily be two. And the bench where I was sitting was open on all sides. I went back to the bush, and leaned against the wall. It was a good enough place to wait, since we had not agreed on any meeting place. The time seemed eternal. I was getting sleepy again. The garden was still. Too still. Only the leaves rustled a little. I could almost imagine that I could hear the stars gossiping among themselves. Something that was probably an owl made a cool, fluttering sound. I shifted my position. Where could he be? And suddenly I fell backward. The wall had given way, something fell on me and I heard a muttered curse. An unseen pair of hands threw me into some bushes. I tried to scramble to my feet, but the bushes were full of thorns. I have hated roses ever since. I scratched my face and hands in my efforts, then something struck me glancingly on the jaw, and I fell back again.