The Black Ghost of the Highway

by Gertrude Linnell

CHAPTER III

After an eternity I got to my feet from the doubled-up position I had fallen in. My ears were singing, and I should have felt dizzy if there had been any light. Strange how many sensations depend on light for their realisation. I stumbled against things in my path. Yet there was no sound of any sort, and I suddenly realised that I was following nothing. The figure that had struck me was gone. Only two things I was certain of—there was a secret passage, and two figures had passed me, not one.

I stopped for a moment at the marble bench to recover my equilibrium. What a fool I was making of myself, to be sure, prowling around in the night like a school-boy, looking for impossible adventures.

A step, quite near me, interrupted—I rose, and waited in the shadow of a tree. Stealthily the step came closer, a slinking, soft-footed step. I saw the fellow dimly outlined before me. He was a big man, bigger than I. The rose scratches stung on my face and hands. I was very quiet, and so was he. It was so dark, I could see him only indistinctly. I got ready to jump on him if he came any closer. I saw him stop, and knew he had seen me. Suddenly he had me by the shoulders, and I spun around and landed in the path. I struck back, took a blow on the face, stumbled and fell, caught at his legs, got him fairly around the knees, and with a quick jerk heaved him sideways into a dim mass of bushes on the other side of the path. I hoped they were rose bushes.

I was well winded, and I knew he must be, too. I counted five slowly before I got to my feet. He was just struggling up when I reached him again. I got his neck in the crook of my elbow, and dragged him toward the castle. He was choking too much to make any outcry, and I had caught him too suddenly for him to do much else. His hands tore at my arm frantically. It was not far. As I reached the steps he got me by the ankle, and we went down in a heap, but I never let go my hold of his throat. I knew that if I lost that he would have me, since he was heavier than I. He must be got up those steps and into the light. We struggled desperately, yet, somehow, though we were both wrenching at each other, step by step we were getting up to the balcony. The man had become impossible to handle, and I should never have managed it if at the last he had not almost pushed me before him. Apparently he wanted to go into the castle as much as I. We rolled along the balustrade a few steps, and then he picked me off my feet, and ran, half dragging me with him. I kicked at him, and we fell again. In the scuffle I got away from him a step or two. The everlasting darkness was on my nerves. I wanted to see. He caught me again, before we reached the French window, hurled me through it, into the room, and against the leg of a table.

I was up again almost as soon as I was down, and at him, but I did not strike. Instead, I sank back breathless on the nearest chair.

The man was John.

For a few moments we grunted and gurgled at each other in unison. I ached all over. My face was scratched. My knees were bleeding, my chest was constricted from the violence of my efforts John was almost as badly off. He sat opposite me, staring dazedly.

“You’re a tough old nut to crack,” he said, finally, “I thought you were another of them.”

“Sorry,” my words jerked out with difficulty, “one of them came out of that secret passage. I was leaning against the door, and he fell over me, and then chucked me into some rose bushes. All scratched up. I thought he was coming back. Wanted a look at him in the light.”

“Same here,” he said, “what did the paper say?”

“Oh, paper.” I had almost forgotten the paper. “In Alarian. Can’t read it.”

“Oh, well, I was standing looking over the garden wall. I heard a noise below it, and there was a car at the foot of the cliffs. While I was standing there a man came up behind me, and hit me on the head, then he chucked me aside, and they went right past. Two of them. One had on a heavy cloak. I saw them quite definitely, though it was so dark. I’m sure of it. They went down over the wall. Must be a path. I considered trying to follow them, but decided it was too risky for any use unless I had a torch or at least some matches. They had a car down there. I heard the motor start.”

I considered. “I hope Helena knows what she is about,” I said. “I feel as though I should do something, and yet—she gave me quite plainly to understand she wanted to be let alone. John! There were two men who got into that car? I’m sure there was only one who attacked me, and only one who went into the castle. Only—was the second figure a man, John?”

“You mean, was the second figure a woman?”

“Exactly.”

“I think—perhaps—it may have been.”

“Was she going willingly, John?”

“Apparently. But there may have been mental compulsion as easily as physical.”

“I hate to butt in,” I said, “but I think we’d better go back to Helena’s rooms, and see what we can find, don’t you?”

“I do.” John was quite decided. He began dressing hurriedly. I followed suit. My joints could ache later, flapping a dressing gown around dim cold halls is undignified.

“Still,” I suggested, “I’ve been turned out of Helena’s rooms once this evening. She shut the door purposefully, which was her privilege, of course. But it makes me hesitant to go back again at this hour. After all, she’s our hostess.”

“She’s a woman, and alone,” John said, “and there was someone in that room. You know that. That someone may have been threatening her while she was talking to you.”

“Yes.”

“And she denied that anyone was there.”

“She said she was not in need of protection.”

“But suppose she’s been kidnapped while you hesitate to bother her?”

“The man who came may very easily have been a messenger from Queen Yolanda. She was expecting news.”

“Or from Conrad. She’s afraid of Conrad.”

“Yes, and rightly. I shouldn’t like her if I were Conrad. After all, she has conspired to keep him off the throne.”

“Exactly. He has a case against her, and he looks like the sort of person who sees things through.”

“Efficiently, I should say. Yes. What do you suggest, then?”

“Go back and see if she is there still, and all right. We know the man is gone, now. If she is there she will be free to explain, and I can’t see what harm we can do.”

“Come with me, then,” I said, “you’re right, of course.”

I knocked at the door as I had knocked the first time. There was no answer. Undoubtedly Helena had more rooms than one behind her door, as John and I had. She might be in the farthest of her suite, and could not hear our knock, but I did not believe that for a moment. For better or worse, I was sure she had gone. Nevertheless, I pounded with my fist, and added another bruise to my growing collection. Silence. At last I turned around and kicked with the heel of my shoe. If she were there she must hear that, but there was no answer.

Then another problem presented itself. Helena was gone. What should we do next? Follow her in our car? Or break down the door? Or do nothing? The door was too heavy to be broken open with less than an axe.

John said casually, as though he broke into ladies’ apartments every morning of his life, “perhaps her maid has a key.” He walked off down the passage. I waited quietly until he came back. I was too sore to move. He had two men with him and the maid who had worn woollen stockings under her nightgown. She seemed to be dressed in the same way still, so I decided that it was quite probably merely her usual nightly attire. One of the men carried an iron crowbar, the maid a bunch of keys. They were all talking excitedly, and when they saw me they broke out afresh. They assured me that Madame would kill them all if they opened her door. The maid was crying. No one dared disturb madame, ever.

“The fact remains,” I said, “we distinctly saw a man enter and two people leave this house tonight. And there was someone in madame’s room. Now she does not answer. It must be she either is not there, or she cannot answer. It is our duty to find out.”

“The gnädige Gräfin,” the maid said, in her dismal voice, “knows many things of enormous importance, of which we know nothing. She has friends in high places.”

“And,” John said, impressively, “she has also enemies in high places. We wish her only good. Come, open the door at once.” His tone had its effect. He held out his hand, and the maid gave him the keys, indicating a large brass one, with an ornamental handle. John turned it in the lock, and in silence flung open the door.

Behind it were three rooms opening into each other. All three were quite empty. A long desk was piled neatly with papers in the study, a shawl lay where it had been dropped on the back of a chair. Bookcases lined the walls, the books soberly in their places. An American magazine lay on an easy chair by the window. We passed on to a dressing room. There, too, everything was in order, though one or two bureau drawers were open. Beyond the dressing room was the bedroom. It was like the others. A pair of satin slippers lay where they had been kicked, in the middle of the floor, otherwise nothing was disturbed.

“Madame is gone!” the maid cried in wonder.

“Not here!” echoed the two men.

John went to the desk in the study and stood drumming his fingers on the cover of an account book. The servants waited respectfully for us to speak. The maid looked much more cheerful in the face of possible tragedy.

“It may be all right,” I said, “we know that. But it also may not be.” I turned to the servants, “Have you extra petrol for our car?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, gnädiger Herr,” they answered in chorus. We had achieved a good deal of prestige in the last few minutes.

“Yes,” John said, “you’re right, Carvin. It would take them ten minutes to get down that hill and into the car. Whatever path there is isn’t visible at night, and it can’t be very good. They went not twenty minutes ago, I’m sure. They won’t have so much of a start—not more than fifteen minutes. They won’t think we are following, and I can show a bit of speed, too. Come along, hurry up. I’ll see the gas put in and get the car into the yard while you get our things. Be sure you bring me a cap and some cigarettes, and a coat—it’s cold on that Pass.”

It was a quarter to five by the clock on the dash as the big gates opened for us for the second time. It had been a quarter past eight as we drove in through them. Our carefully planned visit to Helena had lasted barely nine hours.

Before us our lamps cast a long white trail on the still muddy road. John stepped on the accelerator and we leaped ahead down the hill. In a moment we were going so fast that in his effort to hold the car on the winding road, he sat still and tense, moving only at the curves, and then so studiedly that he seemed almost automatic. The speedometer climbed up and up, then dropped somewhat for a sharp curve, then climbed again. We were making an almost impossible pace for so winding a road. I reflected that if another car should appear ahead of us we were unlikely ever to know it. The wreck would be so complete that it was not necessary to worry about it. It is only half wrecks that are terrifying. A neat, quick smashing is a more or less jolly end to a life that is only interesting at intervals. This happened to be very much one of the intervals, however. Certainly I didn’t want to be wrecked before we had sifted the mystery, and found Helena.

As we neared the bottom of the hill, the whole valley proved to be bathed in mist thick enough to cloud the windshield, so that John was forced to lean out of the car to see the road, which was wet and a little slippery. I busied myself pushing up the glass. It was hard to manage at that pace, but I got it up just in time, for a moment after John righted himself we passed a car facing in the opposite direction, mending a tire. They seemed, in the quick glance I spared them, to have finished. A man was throwing the blown shoe into the tonneau. The whole thing flashed by so suddenly that I scarcely gave it a thought, except that as we skinned past I heard a shout that flashed by as quickly as the car from which it came.

“Lucky miss, that,” John grunted.

“Fools to stay so far on the road.”

“It’s a lonely road. Not many cars here at any time, almost none at this time of night. I wonder if they were going to Waldek? Perhaps we should have stopped to find out. I’ve just thought of something. They aren’t going to let us through the Rheatian customs house.”

“Why not? They let us through the other way.”

“That was reasonable. This isn’t, and we haven’t any possible explanation that will make it sound so.”

“We must overtake Helena, then,” I said, doubtfully, “before they reach the customs house.”

“That’s our only chance, and we are almost there, too. It wasn’t far, you remember.”

We were heading due south again, rising steadily toward the Pass. On the smooth surface of the road the kilometers were going past us two to the minute and more. I decided that the speedometer must be out of order. We couldn’t really be doing eighty, almost without fluctuation, yet as I looked out at the side, the landscape slipped by so fast I couldn’t count it.

Then, as we began to climb, the indicator fell back slowly from eighty to seventy-five, to seventy, a sudden drop to sixty, stayed there for a moment, then when we climbed sharply again it went down to thirty and below.

Even at thirty we had some reserve. John suddenly stepped on the gas as we rounded a curve and saw before us the low stone building that served the Rheatians for a customs house. Between it and us was no iron gate barring the way, and not more than a hundred feet to go. We zoomed forward with a fierce roar, and before I had time to realise what had happened, we were through the barrier, heading for the Alarian side of the Pass, with no chance that anyone could catch up with us before we caught up with Helena.

“Great work,” I said, trying to sound casual, “but perhaps the Rheatians may not think it so funny that we did that. We’re caught neatly enough now between the two customs houses, in the bleakest bit of country I’ve ever been in. In the name of mercy why didn’t you stop?”

John laughed, “She’s your cousin,” he said, “you said you wanted to follow her and I am following. If you don’t like it you should. I’ve been doing a bit of fancy driving tonight, setting a record, I’ll bet, for this stretch of road. What’s a Rheatian government to us? It was their own fault anyway, for leaving the gate open. We can just say we didn’t see it.”

We seemed to be crawling, then, by contrast to our former speed. We wound around mountains, zig-zagging on the edges of precipices, coming out miles beyond on some horse shoe curve a few hundred feet away as the crow flies. The first grey light of the dawn was just showing it to us. When we had gone through the other way it had been too dark to see. Once behind us, and twice ahead of us, I saw the flash of lights, whether they were car lights or not I could not tell. They might be the signal lights of some frontier guard announcing our approach—or Helena’s.

We had been driving so fast that it seemed we should have overtaken any other car if there was one. I began to doubt that they had taken the Herrovosca road at all, unless they were equalling our speed on some matter of life and death while we were left outlawed between two customs houses, chasing butterflies over deserted and eerie mountain passes.

We came abruptly to a stop. Just between two high rock walls, where the road had been graded steeply, a white barricade had been placed. Our lights picked it up in time to come to a neat stop a foot or two too soon to crash. The brakes shrieked like a dog in torture. I reached for our passports. As well to put up a bluff, anyway. We might get by.

We didn’t.

“Damned frontier guards,” John started, and stopped. Two men in black with black masks over their unshaven faces covered us with hard-boiled modern shotguns, while two others climbed into the car. Then the two with the guns stepped on the running boards on either side, others pulled the barricade off the road far enough for our car to squeeze by, and one of the men poked his gun insinuatingly into John’s face.

“They’re the funniest looking lot of frontier guards I ever saw,” I whispered, uncomfortably.

“They’re bandits, dressed up like this, and a smelly crew, too,” John said, happily, “unless we’re still asleep and dreaming at Castle Waldek.”

I did not resist. There were too many of them to make it feasible. When the gun came away from his face for a moment, John knocked its owner down with his fist, but all they did was tie him up tight with a rope end. I was surprised that they were so gentle. They tied our hands behind us, and bandaged our eyes with our own handkerchiefs. I wondered why men so much in need of baths themselves should have the finesse to use a gentleman’s own handkerchief to tie across his eyes. Obviously someone had told them to do it. I felt happier after I had thought that out.

They pulled us out of the car, felt us over carefully for weapons, and then shoved us into the tonneau on top of all the painting stuff. It was uncomfortable, especially since we could neither see what was in our way, nor move it with our hands tied behind us. John cursed in a low but definite tone. I considered silence a little better policy, and finally wriggled myself into a position where I was almost lying down, and had slipped the handkerchief half off my eyes. I could see out on one side of the car. The stars were still visible, though the sky was beginning to lighten. We were heading south, roughly, I decided, by trying to average up our twistings. South, by south-west. That meant that we were crossing the mountain ridge as we had come, but not by the road, for we were bumping over dirt, and uneven, sloping rock, alternately. Herrovosca would have lain about due south-west, if I remembered my map correctly. Not that a map would be of any appreciable value to us in our present plight. In fact, I judged that it might easily be some little time before we should have any further use for a map. The only consolation to me was the beautiful excuse our capture made for our irregular position between the two customs houses, without benefit of stamp on our passports. That was small enough consolation, however, for the discomfort of a sharp and heavy box end that kept jouncing into my shin. I tried again and again to kick it out of the way, but without budging it.

After a long time of slow and bumpy running, with the sun just beginning to show pinkly on some of the highest peaks, we came, at last, to a stop. Our guards led us out of the car and we went, since the alternative seemed to be a dozen or so holes from the business ends of their shot guns. They still were not rough with us, but they discovered my loose bandage, and tightened it firmly. Then they started us marching.

We were led slowly along a rough path, a man on either side. John I could hear still cussing occasionally. He had been interrupted in what, to him, was the marathon of the century, and he was displeased. All about us rose the lovely smells of high altitude in late summer. As we climbed up—and it was always up—I began almost to hear the light, as the blind say they can hear color. I had never been able to understand that before. I had always thought they were merely trying to express some esoteric yearning after the things that were denied to them, rather than that they really felt and heard things that by us are seen only. But, blindfolded as I was, I found that they are literally right, and that our sense of seeing is so much stronger that it blinds us to the less acute sensitiveness of the other organs. Partly by hearing, partly by that sixth sense of the blind, I knew that we passed through a thriving hamlet of people, not men alone, but women and children. When at last we were stopped, I knew that we were in a large room. I was somewhat prepared when the bandages were removed, and we could look around. But I was not entirely prepared for what I saw.

The room was hung with tapestries that must have been worth a fortune. The light came from a window of finely leaded glass. Before us was a work table on which were spread maps and papers, and closely typed sheets that might have been a report. It looked for all the world like the work desk of some busy army officer during the war. A few books were neatly piled at one side. A servant was placing two chairs before the desk, and a voice said in German, “Sit down, gentlemen.” But, though I saw all that, and obeyed the order to sit, and though it was all far from what I had expected to see then, I was not really interested in it. What did interest me was the man who sat behind the desk. I first saw his long white hands, thin and blue-veined. He wore a ring with an enormous ruby—the most enormous I had ever seen actually worn—a ring for a king in a play.

From the slim, restless hands, that might have been the hands of a great musician, my eye followed up his figure. Black. Dull, black sleeves, with no relieving white at the wrists. He wore a sort of soutane, and across the breast was sewn a white Templar’s cross. Not only was there no white collar showing at the neck, there was no neck, either. His whole head was masked by a black silk hood, that covered his throat and face down to the shoulders, with slits for the mouth and for the eyes, which showed as black as his dress. The man might have the hands of a musician and the ring of a king, but he must be a bandit, else why the obvious disguise as the Black Ghost of the Pass?

“My men have unfortunately made a mistake, gentlemen,” the man in the mask spoke suavely, in German, “I hope you understand me.”

“Yes,” I answered, and then explained, hoping our nationality would prove some sort of protection, “we are Americans.”

“We will talk in English, then,” he replied, which was the only effect the mention of the United States had on him. His voice reminded me vividly of the Countess Visichich’s, and I wondered if he could be a relative of hers until I decided that it was only a similar accent.

“I am very sorry for this mistake,” he went on, “but I shall be obliged to keep you ’ere for a few days, probably. Otherwise you will not be inconvenienced—that is, if all is as I ’ope it is. I shall be very ’appy if you will be so kind as to answer a few questions I shall like to ask you.”

“By all means,” John put in glibly.

“In the first place, I should like to know where you ’ave bought your car?”

Memories of those Paris driving cards flashed through my mind. “In Havre,” John said. “Here is the bill of sale, if you wish to see it.” I was glad John had decided to be pleasant to him. It was our only hope, of course. He might really intend to let us go. Quite probably they had made a mistake. I could hope they had, but in the meantime we were most certainly his prisoners, and no man wears a mask unless he does not wish to be recognised, and he does not wish to go unrecognised unless he is doing something at least outside, if not definitely opposed to the law.

“’ow long ago?”

“About two months.”

“In ’avre, two months ago, ’m. And just where do you expect to be two months from now? I mean by that, what were your plans, for the next two months?”

“I am a painter,” John said quickly. “You’ll find a lot of my kit in the car. That’s almost all there is in the tonneau. I wanted to find new things to paint. My friend here is a writer with a taste for scenery, so he came, too. He has a typewriter in with my painting stuff.”

“May I see your passports?”

We gave them to him. He examined them in detail, and finally nodded and laid them down on the desk.

“Most orderly,” he said, bowing, “except for one thing. Your last stamp was on the Rheatian frontier yesterday, and there is also an Alarian stamp of the same day, which means that you drove yesterday across the pass into Rheatia, yet, strangely, there is no return stamp, and I do not understand ’ow that can be.”

“Oh, simple enough,” John announced airily. “We had got as far as the Rheatian customs house, and had the stamp put on our passports, when we changed our minds about going into Rheatia, and started back again.”

“Which, no doubt, is also supposed to account for the fact that your engine was most unusually ’ot. You passed through the Alarian customs, I ’ave been informed, at sundown yesterday, and I understand from your story that you have been driving backward and forward on the Pass ever since. A most enormous passion for scenery that leads you to feast your eyes upon it in the dark.”

He was having a bit of fun with us, but John went on blandly, “Oh, yes, that motor always heats up.”

The Black Mask laughed aloud, and John grinned and shrugged his shoulders. “As a matter of fact,” he acknowledged a little sheepishly, “I was driving fast. I like to drive fast. That’s why we drive at night. It’s the only time to be sure of having a clear road.”

The Black Mask laughed again. “That is such a good answer,” he said, gently, “that I shall ’ave to remember it for some time when I may be asked such a question. ’owever, I am in great need of information at the moment, so that even my appreciation of your ingenuity must not interfere with it. Either you were running away from something, or seeking something. Now, gentlemen, which was it?”

We were both silent, each hoping the other would think of something to say. Neither of us did.

“Really not such a difficult question,” the Black Ghost went on, smoothly. “You might ’ave been following something, but there was nothing on the road a’ead of you. Ah, I see, you thought you were following something.” He had been looking directly at John, and even I saw John’s surprise, though he tried to hide it. “So. But if anyone was following you we shall soon know it. The barricade was replaced ten minutes after you were—shall we say—deflected?”

It had been down ten minutes, though. If Helena had been travelling at nearly our pace she had got through. Thanks to us, then, for she had not been ahead of us—if she had been going to Herrovosca at all, and I believed she had. I began thinking how lucky we had been for her, when the telephone on the Black Ghost’s desk rang sharply. He made us a slight bow of apology as he picked up the instrument. It seemed a strangely out of place thing for a bandit in a fancy dress costume to answer a telephone like a New York business man, yet he did it quite as naturally. The government customs office had no telephone, but a mountain bandit did. A bandit, of course, would find it necessary to be more efficient than Bela’s government would bother to be. Not for more than half a minute did the Black Ghost listen. Then he said something hard and sharp into the mouthpiece, hung it back on its stand, and sat silent for a moment. When he turned back to us his manner had changed.

“So,” he said, “you were leading the way. Clever. But it did not prove a good plan because the other car lagged just a little too far be’ind. I was quite deceived in you. I cannot imagine where her Majesty finds so many ad’erents. She is a remarkably resourceful woman. You will per’aps answer a few questions truthfully, because I shall find the answers anyway. Are your passports real or are they falsified? I ask because it seems so remarkable that two men of your apparent standing should be willing to interfere in a matter that may so easily become very unpleasant for you.”

“Our passports are quite in order,” I answered, “except for the slight discrepancy of the Rheatian border stamp.”

“Most remarkable,” was his comment. “May I enquire why you were willing to do such a risky thing?”

“The gate was open,” John answered, “and I was in a hurry. I really drove through without thinking.”

“May I enquire again why you were in such a ’urry?”

I decided that we had better tell at least a part of the truth. What could be the harm now in telling that we were following Helena? “What you say about leading the way,” I began, “I do not altogether understand. We were following someone, but she did not know it. You say there was no one ahead of us on that road. We passed a car mending a tire, but facing the other way. That must have been the leading car. The road was wet and slippery, and when the tire went they may very easily have skidded so that they turned around. We were so intent on hurrying to catch them that we went by without thinking of that. Very stupid indeed.”

“Ah. Surely you will not object to tell me who this leader was?”

“My cousin,” I said.

“So. Another artist, this unnamed cousin?”

“No. Does it matter?”

“To me, yes, gentlemen. I quite understand your ’esitancy. A lady’s name should not be mentioned before a bandit. ’owever, I am becoming ’ungry. Breakfast is waiting for all of us when we ’ave finished our little talk. I will tell you a few things that will ’elp you to talk, I think. Countess Waldek was an American lady. She came from Boston, I ’ave ’eard. It is not impossible that she is the cousin. It becomes more possible when I tell you that she ’as been captured by my men, and is on ’er way ’ere. I think I will not let ’er see you. It may be better so. I ’eard already that she would ’ave a cousin to visit her sometime soon. I believe now that you arrived last evening. That is so, is it not?”

“We did arrive.”

“You made a very short visit, gentlemen, after so long a trip.”

“Yes.”

“You passed through Herrovosca yesterday.” He pronounced the H hard, almost like a K. “Did you, by any chance, learn of the events that were passing in the Cathedral Square?”

“We were there,” I said.

“Ah. And you recognised the new Queen?”

“No,” I said.

“No?” he crowded a good deal of disbelief into that word. “Ah,” he continued, “but per’aps you do not see this one-time American lady often?”

“No,” I said again.

“So. And per’aps she does not confide in you by letter?”

“I haven’t had a letter from her in a year,” I said.

“No? Then ’ow did you come so exactly to Herrovosca when you could be useful?”

“We started on a casual, friendly trip, and wrote to her that we were coming,” I said. “We had no idea that anything was about to happen, and unless you are accusing Countess von Waldek of participating in the assassination of King Bela I don’t see how you can imagine she knew.”

“I am not accusing the lady of that,” he answered, “but of conspiring to keep the rightful king from the throne. And I will relieve your natural anxiety. I have not detained ’er to ’arm her, but for ’er own safety. She is an intimate friend of Queen Yolanda. She brought up as ’er daughter the very pretty young girl who ’as been presented to a doubting people as the Princess Maria Lalena. It is a somewhat girlish prank to play on grown people, whether she is the true Princess or not. Even in the Balkans it is what the English call a bit thick to ’ide the heir to a throne for eight years. But it ’as been played at such a moment that if it is not ’andled very carefully it may lead to a very serious situation. To civil war, per’aps, that ’as been threatening for a long time, but might ’ave been averted. You follow me?”

“Perfectly,” I said. “You mean that Prince Conrad would have been strong enough to hold the throne, but that he may not be able to hold it for this girl.” I wasn’t sure at all that that was what he meant, but I thought I could find out by putting it that way.

The Black Ghost laughed, “Now I know,” he said, “that you know much about this situation. And I will tell you more. Not secrets, but things that I wish known, though you will not ’ave the chance to tell them for some time, I regret. Now, first, I ’ave the greatest personal regard for this cousin of yours. She is a very lovely lady, but she is not a politician. If she were not a very loyal friend of the Queen she would not trouble ’erself about such things, and that would be right. She makes trouble for ’erself, talking, and she will make trouble also for Prince Conrad. It is because I wish to stop ’er talking that when the Queen’s car went through the Pass tonight, I put up the barricade, and waited for ’er to come back. I guessed she would be in it. My men made a most annoying mistake when they caught you instead, for I do not like to disturb citizens of large countries. Also, you ’ave learned too much of my retreat ’ere. It is awkward, but you must stay now, for a little, as my most honored guests.” He bowed deeply.

“We are flattered,” I said, and laughed at him. I decided that even if he were a bandit I liked him.

“We appreciate your hospitality,” John grinned at him. “I assure you I never stayed anywhere that offered to be more diverting.”

“I am glad,” the Black Ghost said, simply. “I will explain some more things to you that you may not understand. I do not wish to boast, but for the moment I rule Alaria, since I command the only troops of whose loyalty anyone can be sure. That is true. There were to ’ave been three factions in the country. Now there are four. The Dowager Queen still leads one. With Bela’s—removal—we thought that Prince Conrad would succeed to that place, and I would support ’im with my troops and my loyal followers. They are many. Prince Conrad ’as always kept ’is personal influence dormant in the interest of peace. For the same reason ’e ’as been forced to support the new Queen. She is to be dressed in white in contrast to my black garb, and the Reds’ arm bands. They are the third party ’ere. The Republicans are the fourth. They ’ave various ’eads. It is always so with Republicans. Bela was a libertine and a fool. Three times ’e attempted to kill Prince Conrad. Twice by ’iring men to shoot at ’im, and once ’e put poison in some wine with ’is own ’and. Fortunately ’e looked too eager, and Prince Conrad did not drink the wine. ’e was so ’ated that ’is removal was a necessity if civil war was to be averted. Probably even ’is mother was relieved if she would acknowledge it. ’e was to ’er a bridge to power. While she did not ’ave a ’and in ’is removal, I am sure, when it came it gave ’er a chance she ’ad most carefully prepared, to bring forward this little girl in white. A sweet and pretty little girl. I am very sorry for ’er. The Countess Waldek ’as been a most loyal friend. There is something magic in a personal friend who is also a queen, especially for a very democratic American.”

“Americans are apt to be loyal friends,” I defended Helena almost automatically. I was beginning to feel she needed defense, which was a disloyal thought.

“It does not matter very seriously to me,” he went on, “if later you should reach Herrovosca. When Prince Conrad is in power ’e can show the American Minister very quickly that you were concerning yourselves in affairs that are outside the proper province of American citizens. I shall detain you ’ere only until after the coronation, as a precaution. Queen Yolanda ’as indulged in one trick, and this is not a time for tricks. We must consolidate the interests of the Royal Family, and to do that we must be opportunists. And now we may all go in to breakfast. Pray go first, gentlemen. Since I was stabbed in the back I allow no one to walk be’ind me.”

We preceded him across the hall, and into the dining room, where we ate alone with the Black Ghost.

The meal was excellent, and we talked of Paris, and the races, and our trip across Europe, and the weather. The Black Ghost had been everywhere, and seemed inclined to make himself agreeable. After we had finished he spoke to the man who had served us, and four more bandits entered the room.

“I am sorry, gentlemen,” he said suavely, “believe me, as my English governess used to say, this ’urts me worse than it does you. It is necessary for me to occupy myself with other things than your entertainment. ’owever, you will be lodged, I think, not uncomfortably, and no doubt you will wish to sleep. You ’ave driven most of the night. I ’ave given orders that you are to receive your luggage, but as it will not contain any weapons or papers when it is delivered to you, it might be as well that you give me your keys, though we ’ave a man who is quite expert with locks. And since I already ’ave your passports, both the Alarian and Rheatian governments, while not altogether friendly to me, will still act as my lieutenants in guarding you, in case you should effect the impossible and escape this place. You could not very well leave this no-man’s-land without passports. I tell you this that you may more easily compose yourselves to rest, gentlemen.” He waved his hand in a wide and graceful gesture so that the ruby flashed handsomely. We both bowed, and followed our jailors. As a matter of fact I was quite content to stay. Helena was there, we might be of some service to her, and when we were released we would probably be relieved of the necessity of explaining the discrepancy in our passports. My only sorrow was that the luggage in the car consisted mainly of John’s painting kit. All the rest was safely, but inconveniently, at Castle Waldek.

We were led down a long dark stone-paved hallway, with several doors leading from it. Most of the doors were open, for light and air, since there was no other means of ventilating the passage. I glanced through them as we passed, noting the rooms. One was a handsome bedchamber, hung in crimson damask. The Black Ghost had luxurious tastes. Another had three beds in it, and little else—for his more important lieutenants, I judged. No doubt they gave him only part time service. A third, also a bedroom, was less cluttered with furniture than the others. A great bunch of wild flowers stood in the window, and a row of bottles on a dressing table proclaimed it a woman’s room. Surprised, I looked more carefully. On a chair at the foot of the bed lay a green velvet gown embroidered in gold thread. I had seen the gown before, in the customs house at the Alarian entrance to the Pass.

CHAPTER IV

I said nothing to John about the velvet gown. I knew that if I did he would keep me awake talking about all its possible ramifications. Besides, it wasn’t any business of mine. We were led down a damp flight of stone steps, and along another corridor into a part of the building where the floors were wood. I was glad of that because stone floors are cold. We were shown into a room with a heavily barred window, the door of iron bound oak. Its dull thud as it closed told the story of its solidity. I went to the window and found that it overlooked a deep cañon whose opposite wall was sheer and rocky. We could see nothing else except, below us, about two stories down on that side, where the building conformed to the shape of the mountain, a ledge path, with a stone wall along it. I guessed that it might be the path by which we had climbed to this eyrie.

I was very sleepy, and so was John, so we lay down on the only bed, fully dressed, and the next thing I knew the sun was pouring in the window. We were facing west. I looked at my watch. It had stopped, but from the position of the sun, I guessed it to be, roughly, around five o’clock. It would begin to be dark inside a couple of hours. I lay still for a minute, wondering what had awakened me. Then a heavy door shut with a dull thud. It was in the next room, I decided, and noticed at the same time that the walls must be much thinner than the doors or I could not have heard the sound so plainly.

Then I heard voices. They were too dim to distinguish words, but there was a man’s voice and a woman’s. I tiptoed to the wall, and placed my ear against it but could not distinguish words. In a moment the door to the other room closed again, and I walked away from the wall just in time. The lock rattled, and then our door swung inward on its hinges, creaking rustily. Not used much, I noted, which mattered to us in that it suggested that the Black Ghost was not in the habit of harboring many prisoners. A man entered, carrying a tray of food.

“We had orders not to bring lunch because it was thought you would be sleeping,” he said in German, “the Herr Fakat Zol trusts that you have not been inconvenienced.”

“And who,” I asked, “may the Herr Fakat Zol be?”

“The Black Ghost,” he answered, “his name is Fakat Zol.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yes, we were sleeping. I only just wakened. My watch has stopped. Would you mind telling me the time?”

“I have not a watch, gnädiger Herr, I cannot tell you exactly,” he answered, “but it should be half past four. It is the afternoon coffee on the tray and the paper from Herrovosca.”

John got off the bed sleepily, and the man left us.

More from lack of occupation than for any other reason, I opened the paper. Of course I could not read it. In the exact center of the front page was the portrait of a woman. John came over and stared at the paper over my shoulder. I pointed to the name under the portrait. It read: “Maria Lalena, Rhenia Alariavni.” Which, of course it took no great knowledge of the language to know meant “Maria Lalena, Queen of Alaria.” There was another picture on each side of Maria Lalena’s. One was Conrad’s—we read that, too, and felt like sleuths doing it—and the other was a drawing of the Black Ghost, white Templar’s cross and all. Under it was the legend, “Fakat Zol” and more that we could not understand. And glancing through the rest of the paper, each column seemed peppered with the three names. There was a fourth I feared to find, and did not. It was Helena, Countess Waldek. If Prince Conrad had attacked the validity of Maria Lalena’s claim the name Waldek would have appeared. It did not.

“What do you make of it?” John asked.

“Oh, Conrad is waiting for something to start, that’s all. You remember what the Black Ghost said yesterday about being an opportunist?”

“He’s right, too,” John said, “whatever happens can only be to Conrad’s advantage. This business of raking that girl up was only a mad idea that couldn’t possibly succeed, even in a crazy-quilt country like this. She isn’t the Princess, she’s your cousin’s daughter.”

“You don’t know that,” I said, “and even if it is true Conrad isn’t going to start anything himself, he’s too afraid of a civil war.”

“Why do you think that? Because the Black Ghost said so? Do you suppose he really knows much?”

“I do think he knows much,” I said, “which is merely guess work, of course. I was very much impressed with him. But I have another reason for thinking Conrad wants peace. He wouldn’t have made that speech on the Cathedral steps if he hadn’t.”

“Yes, that’s true,” John admitted. “I wish we could read this paper.”

“Nonsense,” I laughed, “a lot of reporters have got themselves a few interviews, and filled the paper with them. I don’t believe a thing has happened since yesterday. Everyone is waiting to see what his neighbor is going to do about it.”

“I bow to your superior knowledge,” John laughed, “let’s drink the coffee.”

“I have discovered something,” I said, as we poured it out. “There is a woman in the next room.”

“The Countess Waldek?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “the wall is too thick to tell, but it is very probable.”

“We ought to be able to communicate with her if it is,” John began to be interested.

“We might dig a hole in the wall,” I suggested.

“Monte Cristo!” he laughed. “That takes too long. I know an easier way. Got a long piece of string?”

“No,” I said. “Why should I have? I don’t save string.”

“Must have a long cord,” he said, fussing in one of his bags. I felt in my pockets hopelessly. I knew quite well I had no string.

“Are you any good,” he asked suddenly, “at puzzles?”

“No,” I said. “I’m not.”

“Nor, I suppose,” he went on, “do you know anything about knitting?”

“It’s a pity,” I said, “that they didn’t shut your grandmother up here with you instead of me.”

“Yes,” he said. “She is a nice, helpful old lady. However, if, between us, we can manage to unravel that nice handmade sock which cost me half a guinea in London, we will have a long piece of yarn which will immediately put us in communication with the lady next door.”

“I’ll do that,” I said, “nothing easier. During the war they used to send me the most horrible socks from home, and I found an old Frenchwoman who knitted them all up again into good ones. I unravelled them for her, to be sure she would finish before we moved on.” I laid the sock flat on the edge of a wooden chair, took out my slender little gold pen knife which I reflected would have been much more useful to two Monte Cristos if it had been four times as large, with a rough bone handle, though for slicing off the top of the sock it was admirable. After that all I did was pull at it until it began to unravel, and then I went on pulling until in a few minutes we had a very long piece of wool yarn, lying curled at our feet. It took us an hour, then, to untangle it again. I remembered too late that I had learned to wind as I unravelled, to avoid that untangling process. We had to light a candle before we were through. When we had it all wound single, John decided he wanted it wound double, so we started all over again.

“It would have been less trouble,” I said, “to have dug a hole in the wall.”

“You would say that, now that we are all ready to start operations,” he answered. He then wrote a short note, tucked it into the ball, tied one end of the yarn to the window bar, thrust his arm outside and began throwing the ball toward the next room, and then pulling it back again. I was afraid that before he managed to throw it into the other window the ball of yarn would be frayed beyond use, but I was wrong. John often takes the long way around, but he usually gets there. To my surprise the ball was caught and the line pulled taut. Then we waited, a long time it seemed to me, until at last the yarn slackened, and then John untied it, and pulling very gently on the double loop, finally reached a place on its length where a note had been tied. We opened it eagerly. “Yes,” it began, “I am Helena Waldek. How did you get here? I presume you must have been in that car that passed us last night on the road. We are uncomfortable here, but I think in no personal danger. If you get out before I do please go to Herrovosca to Marie. She may need your help to get away. The Queen is so helpless, she has only her wits now against almost everybody. She sent for me because even Marie has grown hard to manage. I have no hope of getting out in time to be of any help, but they may release you because you are Americans. If they do you must take a message to the Queen. It is most important. Tell her that the Black Ghost wears a ruby ring. I will not tell you what that implies because it will be safer for you not to know. But it is of the utmost importance that the Queen should know it. I cannot tell you how important. It makes their danger far greater than before. Burn this note. H. W.”

It was a desperate note, and Helena, of course, must be desperate. Whoever Maria Lalena might really be, she had been Helena’s daughter for eight years, anyway. And if she were Marie Waldek, she was in very great personal danger. This Black Ghost would not even consider her, and I couldn’t blame him very much. She had committed a serious offense. And she could not count on popular help. Mobs are never respecters of persons.

“‘Tell the Queen that the Black Ghost wears a ruby ring,’” John quoted.

“That means,” I said, “that she has recognised the ring, and that the Queen does not know who he is.”

“Yes,” John said, slowly, “Yes. We ought to get out of this. And we ought to hurry. This is a particularly nasty mess for those two women.”

“Helena and Marie?” I asked.

“No. Marie and the Queen. Helena is safer right here, I believe, than she would be anywhere. They aren’t afraid of her while she’s here, and they are afraid of the other two. It’s not normal to hurt people unless you are afraid of them. I think we ought to try to take that message to Yolanda, and try to get it there before anything breaks that the Black Ghost may consider an opportunity, and turn to his own advantage at their cost.”

“I agree,” I said, “but I hope we don’t get caught. It’s been a nice world so far.”

“Don’t worry,” John said, “I think we have a friend among our jailors.”

“The Black Ghost?” I asked, “don’t fool yourself. He is merely showing off his gentlemanly manners.”

John laughed, “I know that,” he said, “but as we came down the hall I saw a green velvet gown in one of those rooms, and unless it’s a uniform, it belongs to the Countess Visichich.”

“I saw that,” I said. “I wasn’t going to tell you.”

He laughed. “Afraid to spoil my faith in the lady’s morals?” he asked. “Nonsense, Carvin. I don’t know anything about her, but she’s politician first, and I’d be willing to put a big wager on her—well, on her being mostly just politician, at least so far. She had an unattached look about the eyes.”

“And you think she’ll help us to escape?”

“Oh, no, not at all. But I don’t think she’d let us face a firing squad if we were caught trying to escape.”

“That may be,” I acknowledged, “but I’m not going to count on it too heavily. It would be so easy to shoot first and tell her afterward.”

John went to the Window and twisted his arms through the bars, to shake them. I remembered reading somewhere that it was a trick prisoners developed. The bars were solid.

“The walls are fairly thin,” I suggested.

“Only on the side toward the Countess’ room. It would do us no good to get in there. The other side is stone—look.”

It was true. Stone, roughly cemented over. A month’s job at the least, to dig through that without proper tools, and we had no idea where we’d be if we did get through. “The wall into the hall is thinner than that,” John went on, “but it wouldn’t be much good to us. They’d find any hole we dug in it before it was big enough to get through. This may have been a cellar or a barracks before they made it into—guest rooms. There’s probably a guard in the hall, anyway.”

“Yes.”

“That leaves the ceiling or the floor, or the bars. The ceiling is too high to reach, so let’s try the floor. We want to go down, anyway, so let’s start. Besides, the boards are wide and old.”

“And fastened together with nice little wooden pegs instead of nails.”

“Dowels, you call them,” John said. “If we select a shortish board and dig out said dowels, we might get through to something interesting.”

John had a pen knife, too, a little larger than mine, but no bowie knife. We selected a suitable board after a little search. Fifteen minutes loosened the board. The wood had shrunk a little in the years since it had been laid, and we dug the dowels out almost easily. Then, by sticking our little fingers into the holes and pulling upward gently and together, we raised the board from the floor. I looked into the hole before we had it up more than a few inches. There was only darkness below. John blew out our candle, and we took the board away, and peered down. There was a room much like ours below; though it was dark, we could see its outlines. It was quite empty. Looking farther we saw that the door was closed, and it smelled damp and musty, but not poisonously so. It was also bare of any sort of furniture, which indicated that it was never used.

“I’ll jump down,” John said, “and have a go at those bars. I may be able to get them out. Better make a lump under the bedclothes, so if that man comes back he’ll think I’m asleep; and drop the board back in place after I’m through. If I have to get up again you can tie the sheets together for a rope.” Then he dropped through the hole, and I wrapped my overcoat around most of the blankets, which made a passable body except for the head. I finally decided on an old brown angora sweater from the painting stuff where it had been used as packing, with John’s cap tipped at an angle over it, as though to keep the light out of his eyes. Then I carried the candle to the other side of the room, and decided that it was a good enough mummy to deceive a casual eye in that light. There was one rug in the room. Instead of replacing the board I decided to throw it over the hole, and pulled the table over that. Then I turned to Helena’s side of the room.

In order to get her out we must break down the wall that separated us. I couldn’t quite see leaving her without trying to do something about it. I pulled a package of four canvasses strapped together over to the wall, and behind it I dug a small hole in the cement with my gold knife. I knew that Helena heard me because I presently heard her moving some things about in her room, and then she began digging, too. I wanted to warn her about hiding the dust from the hole, but decided that a woman would think of that.

I had not dug more than a few minutes before my knife snapped off at the handle. The jeweller who made it had not reinforced it for cement digging. I had no other sharp instrument, so I had to stop. I could hear Helena still at it on the other side, though. Then John called to me, and I pulled the carpet away from the hole in the floor.

“In my painting stuff,” he said, “you will find a large wooden box marked ‘etching’ on the cover. In that is some paraffin and a bottle of acid in a wooden barrel with a screw top. You might dig out a couple of small brushes, too, from the other stuff, and give them to me.”

“What’s all that for?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m going to try etching through the bars,” he explained, “it’s so damp here that they are pretty well rusted through anyway. I can do it easily if there’s enough of the acid.”

“You’d better work quietly down there,” I said, “they’ll be bringing our dinner any moment now.”

I felt quite sure as I went to look for the things that I should not find the acid, as undoubtedly the Black Ghost would consider it a very dangerous weapon. I was mistaken, however, or else they did not know what it was. Probably they considered all painting materials harmless. There was about five ounces of the stuff—enough to rout a small army if anyone had the indecency to throw it in a man’s eyes. I made sure the top of the container was safely screwed on again before I handed it down to John. I knelt and lifted the edge of the rug and was reaching downward as far as possible to meet John’s hand, when a key was turned in the door. John’s fingers had just closed over the wooden barrel of acid. I dropped the other things perforce, trusting to the creaking of the opening door to mask the sound of their fall. I was trying to look as though I were tying my shoe as the man entered with our dinner. I continued to tie it serenely after the door opened, merely glancing up and saying “guten Abend” in what I hoped would pass for a casual tone of voice.

This time there were two men instead of one. One carried the heavy tray of food, and I was hungry enough to be glad it was heavy, the other held a lantern, and stayed near the door. By the time the first man had put the tray on the table I had straightened up, and was moving toward him quite calmly.

“The Herr Fakat Zol,” he said, rather elaborately, “presents his compliments to the gnädigen Herrn, and regrets that he cannot entertain them at dinner.”

I have always read about heroes who remained calm in all emergencies, and now I had found that when one of them happened to me, I was not calm and therefore not a hero. I felt nervous and jumpy even after the men had gone and locked the door again, which was a little hard on my self esteem since it had been such a small emergency.

When I dared to look down again John was standing just where he had been when I handed him the acid. He had not moved even to pick up the things I had dropped.

“We missed by an eyelash having to dine with the Black Ghost,” I told him. “Come on up and eat.”

“Not on your life.” He shook his head, excitedly, “it would take half an hour to get me up there and down again. Have to rig up the sheets to climb by. Can’t spare the time. Give me some food through the hole, and I think we may make it before midnight. The moon will come up soon after, so we can’t risk it later.”

I gave him soup in a coffee cup, and two huge sandwiches with thick-sauced meat in them, and an apple. Then I smeared his plate with gravy, and a few edges of meat, to look as though he had eaten, and ate my own dinner. Later when John had finished the soup I rinsed the cup and gave him coffee in it. Then I put even the apple core back on the tray, and finally stuck the knife and fork he should have eaten with in some of the gravy. Altogether it was an artistic job, that tray. I took off one knife with a prayer that its absence would not be noticed.

I did not dare start work on the wall again until the tray should be taken away, and while I sat waiting idly I thought over Helena’s position, and decided that John was right about not wanting to get her out. She had been meddling very seriously in the affairs of a country that was as foreign to her as it was to us. The Rheatian government would probably not help her under the circumstances, the Alarians would hate her, and if she got out she would rush straight to Herrovosca. The Black Ghost, I felt sure, would release her when—and if—there was no further end to be served by keeping her quiet. That would be when Yolanda and Maria Lalena had been driven out of the country. And Conrad was right, of course, from every standpoint, especially that of expediency. An unpopular dowager and an unknown and inexperienced girl could not hope to keep peace and a throne in a tumultuous country like Alaria.

However, in spite of my feeling that she should be left behind, as soon as the tray had been removed I started back at the wall again with my stolen table knife. Reasoning that a woman should be left to the mercy of a masked bandit was one thing, and not trying to get her out was another.

It must have been two hours before our knives met through the wall. Then we examined the sides of the hole, and found that we had been playing the fool. The wall was of concrete laid on a modern steel lath, and not a single layer of lath, but a double one, with about four inches between where the joists ran up. All we had accomplished was a more direct method of communication than our yarn telegraph.

I put my mouth as close to the hole as possible, “Helena!” I said.

“Yes, Marshall,” she answered. “I have seen how hopeless it is, and it’s quite all right. The important thing is for one of you to get out. If you could stab the guard when he brings the tray—”

“So that’s the sort of thing the Balkans have taught a lady from Boston?” I asked. “Suppose your grandmother Collins could hear you now? Anyway, we’d have to stab two of them at the door of this room, and no one knows how many more before the way out of this nest was clear. No, that may have been all right in the eighteenth century, but I’m afraid we shouldn’t get away with it.” Then I told her about the loosened board and the acid. “If you could tell us how to get to Herrovosca without a car after we leave this place—” I finished.

“I can’t,” she said, “I’ve only the most hazy idea where we may be.”

“South or southwest of the place where we were captured.”

“I did not know even that,” she said. “We must be somewhere near the Visichich’s manor. We’re not in it. The country there is hilly, but not rocky and bare like the cliff out of that window. No, we’re still in the mountains. I think,” she went on, “if we only knew just where we are, and how to get here, we should hold the key to the control of Alaria—if we had some loyal troops.”

“I fear,” I said, “that two ‘ifs’ make a negative.”

“If that’s supposed to be funny,” she said, “I think it’s ill-timed.”

“It wasn’t,” I assured her, solemnly. “I was only trying to point out that this man’s secrecy is strength for him but not strength for anyone trying to undermine him. I just don’t believe that the people who believe in the supernatural Black Ghost would listen even if he were unmasked before them. They would merely say that the man who was unmasked was an impostor, and the Black Ghost would go right on.”

“That’s what I mean,” she said, cryptically, “these legends have endured for eight hundred years, and now a living man has conceived the idea of impersonating them, and making political capital out of the impersonation.”

“I believe it’s more than that,” I answered, “this ghost held an army back not a hundred years ago. And this stronghold bears all the earmarks of a place that has been built for centuries. Isn’t the Black Ghost rather a secret society?”

“That has been kept secret for eight hundred years?” she laughed. “I find it less fantastic to believe in the supernatural. A secret society it might be, but not a society that has been kept secret for centuries.”

“Yet here it all is,” I said, “and the food’s not ghostly, at any rate.”

“A ghost would be the lesser miracle,” she answered.

“And a real man the greater danger,” I said.

“Much the greater danger, Marshall, if you don’t get to the Queen. I have a pass that will take you to her through all accredited government barriers, but don’t forget that there may be no accredited government by now. They did not search me—thought it quite useless, I suppose. Your Black Ghost asked me if I carried any despatches or state papers, and when I gave him my word of honor that I did not, he sent me down here. Decent of him.” Through one of the diamond shaped spaces in the lath she handed me a small folded paper. “I hid it in my shoe,” she said. “It’s as good a hiding place as any. I shall be far safer here than you are, so do not hesitate on my account. A friend of the Queen will be treated with respect, so don’t worry.”

I took the paper from her, and placed it in my own shoe. Then I pushed the canvasses against the hole in the wall again, and went over to see how John was progressing. As I looked down through the floor I found him prying at the remaining bars with one that was already loose. At each pull they moved, but the opening was still closed effectively against our escape. I looked at my watch. It was a few minutes to eleven. I called down to John, “What do you say I come down there? The two of us ought to get that out pretty easily.”

“If we had another lever,” he said, “but we haven’t, and if anyone comes into that room while you are down here the game will be up. I’ll have it out in a few minutes now. The acid gave out, but I weakened all the bars with it. I couldn’t hold it where I wanted it, and it ran down the stone. We’ll have to be careful getting out of here or we’ll be burned by it.”

“I’ll bring a blanket from the bed,” I said.

“Yes,” John agreed, “and get out a couple of socks from that black bag, and a clean collar apiece, and four handkerchiefs, and a comb and the jar of salve. Also I want some water to wash my hands in before we go. Might as well be civilised if we’re going to pay our first call on Royalty. And say good-bye to your cousin for me, with apologies and regrets.”

I obeyed all his instructions and stuffed the things into my pockets. I had hardly finished when I heard a sharp crack from the room below. I went to the hole in the wall again and called through to Helena, “He’s got the bars out, and I am going now. I hope and pray you may be safe.”

“And you,” she said, “don’t forget that the Black Ghost wears a ruby ring. All my prayers go with you. À dieu.”

“À dieu,” I replied, feeling pretty mean about leaving her, but not seeing anything else to do. I pushed a blanket through the hole in the floor, then tied the water pitcher to a torn pillow case, and let that down, after which I dropped down myself, carefully, so that the rug would fall back smoothly over the hole. The longer they puzzled over how we had got out the more time we should have to get away.

“Don’t think about your cousin now,” John said, “there’s very little chance of our being useful to her if we stay, whereas if we should really manage to get away we might conceivably be able to get back here again with a rescue party.”

“The rescue will be accomplished another way,” I said, “if at all.”

John showed me his hands then, they were raw with burns and blisters. “Good Lord,” I said, “you can’t go with hands like that.”

“Don’t be silly,” he answered, “that’s what I want the handkerchiefs and salve for. Time’s precious, but I guess we’ll save it by using a little sense.” He soaked his wounds carefully in the clean water, and then held them out while I applied the salve. It must have been a stinging dose, but he stood it well. Then I put the jar back in my pocket, and arranged the blanket in the window so that what acid remained there should not burn us or our clothes. John climbed through first. I waited and slowly counted ten before I followed. The drop was really quite short. I let myself down from the ledge, holding fast by my hands until I was hanging flat against the wall of the building. Then I let go. It was all very simple. Almost too simple. I suspected an ambush any moment as we went down the path single file. Overhead, the stars were shining; below us, far down the valley, a single light flickered, though whether it was a signal light or in a cabin we could not tell. Then, suddenly, the stars and the light below us were cut off. We had entered a tunnel. I was sure then, that we were trapped after all. It had been too easy a matter, getting out of the place. The end of the path must be blocked, and all that we had won was the pleasure of spending the night outdoors.

But I was wrong. The tunnel was a long one, but unguarded, and fairly straight. It was damp, however, and very slippery underfoot, and there were bats in it. Once or twice we brought up square against a wall, but we always found, a moment or so later, that the way continued at an angle. It was pitch dark, of course, and though I had brought candles and some matches from our room, we did not dare to strike a light.

At last, ahead of us, we saw a star. I stopped, and spoke in the lowest whisper I could manage, to urge John to extra caution. Without a light we had no means of knowing how much longer the tunnel was, and at its end there would undoubtedly be a guard. We must go carefully.

That last few yards was so slow and silent that it seemed like years before we saw the sky above and not ahead of us. The path was still narrow, and, like that we had seen below our prison windows, a mere ledge along the cliff. There was no one on the path itself, but on a level a little above it, with a rifle at his shoulder, his body silhouetted against the sky from where we crouched, stalked a sentinel. He was guarding not only the path where we were, but another that branched off from it as well. The other must be the important one or he would have stayed down on our level. A short flight of stone steps connected the two. I could just see them in the darkness. John dropped to his knees, close to the low retaining wall, and, step by slow step, began making his way across the open space. I dropped to my knees, too, but merely to be less obvious in case the man should flash a light. I could not see John after a moment or two. He disappeared into the darkness. There was no way for me to tell how far he had crawled, for he literally made not a sound. Two bats circled round and round over our heads, swooping close to the sentinel at times. I did not know whether they would prove a help to us in distracting the man’s attention, or, by coming too close to us, betray us. Our fate seemed to hang on a bat’s whim.

I waited a long time before I dared begin my slow and rather painful crawl. I had to lift my knee quite off the ground at each advance, because the roll of a pebble would have been suicidal. I passed the steps at last. They marked the end of the sentinel’s beat. I waited for him to turn before I moved again. Before he returned I had taken four steps. He was above me, and just four steps behind, when, careful as I had been, I struck a loose stone with my knee, and sent it rolling a yard or two across the path. The sentinel turned suddenly. I heard him. I jumped to my feet, and ran. Three shots sounded, but I did not stop. A moment later John was beside me. We wasted no breath talking, but ran on desperately until he stumbled and fell. He tripped me as he went down, and we lay for a second, listening for our pursuers. There was no sound. We had left the path and were no longer on the edge of the cliff, though still on a side hill, but overhead trees arched so that we could not see the stars. We were in a forest, which meant that we had come quite far down the mountain, and were in a valley, for on the exposed upper slopes there were no trees. We must have run a mile at least.

“There’s no one after us,” John said.

“What does that mean, do you suppose?”

“Either that we lost the way in the darkness or that they can’t be bothered with catching us. What I think is that if we find our way to the high road we’ll walk into more of the gang, and if we are lost in the mountains, as we may be, we don’t count. I was lost in quite civilised woods in northern Connecticut once, for a day and a night. This may not be funny before we’re through. There won’t be any friendly neighbors to come out looking for us. That get-away was too easy.”

“Don’t be so gloomy,” I said, “being lost is probably our only hope of getting away. We can steer south-west by the stars.”

“That’s all very well to suggest,” John said, “but there is a lot of rough going around here, and while we twist north and east and all the ways between to get around gullies and boulders, who is going to tell us we are really going south-west? I tried that steering by the stars business in Connecticut and it’ll be the same sort of thing here only worse.”

“You think we should try to find the high road, then?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “I don’t think it’s going to matter much what we try to find. It’s going to be entirely a matter of luck—good luck or bad luck. What I chiefly hope is that there aren’t any more Fakat Zols working on their own around here.”

I told him I thought that very unlikely, because one strong bandit would clean up all the little ones in short order, and he agreed. “Let’s just keep on down this slope,” he said. “At least it’s down hill, and south. We’ll undoubtedly have to climb up again before we’re through, and twist around a lot, but we may come out.”

It was a nightmare journey. At every slightest sound we stopped to listen. The hillside was smooth enough so that in spite of the darkness we had little difficulty keeping on it, but there were a thousand noises in the night that brought us up short to listen again.

We must have walked for more than an hour, when at last a pale gleam on the highest branches of some trees told us that the moon was up. Suddenly we heard unmistakable footsteps, and a beam of light from an electric torch showed us a path, sloping downward, directly ahead of us. John and I hid as well as we could behind the trees. Unfortunately our cover was poor. They were pines and sparse, with little underbrush, but the night was dark, and by crouching low we hoped to escape notice. The steps approached, there was no attempt at concealment, so we judged that the person approaching must be one of the Black Ghost’s men. The light flashed again on the path, nearer, in a wide sweep, blinding to us, who had been in darkness so long. We waited without moving.

Suddenly a second swathe of light fell across John’s face. I saw him distinctly from my partial cover. The light stopped an instant, flashed wider, across me, and then went out.

CHAPTER V.

There was a moment’s silence, as I edged toward the figure that had held the light. Before I reached it there was a scuffle a few feet to my left. I rushed toward it. It was a short fight. The man seemed to have little strength, but a great deal of determination to get away. He was nothing to our combined forces. In a moment John had him down, and I tied his hands behind him with my handkerchief. As an all-purpose tool, I recommend the humble handkerchief. Then, while I held our prisoner, John felt about on the path for the electric torch. After a moment he found it. By its light we stared at our capture. His hat had fallen off, and long chestnut hair tumbled loose about his—her, shoulders. She wore well-cut riding breeches, and was young and very good looking, though she was glaring at us furiously.

“Hell!” I said.

“My God,” said John. “It’s the Countess Visichich!”

“’ow did you get away?” she demanded. “They told me you ’ad got out, but I couldn’t wait to find out ’ow. I never could see what ’arm you would do anyway—only ’e wanted to be sure. And you lied to me yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” I echoed—“why, so it was only yesterday. At a guess I should have said week before last.”

“What are we going to do now?” John asked crossly. “We can’t tie her up and leave her here. We can’t take her with us, and if we let her go she’ll bring all of the gang down on us before we even know where we are.”

“Why not let me go?” she suggested, pleasantly.

“That isn’t so easy,” John said, and sounded so sorry that I almost laughed at him.

“You are gentlemen,” she continued, “what else can you do?”

“Thank you,” I said. “We are complimented, but after all, you do present difficulties.”

“I come of honorable antecedents,” she said, proudly.

“And take them seriously,” I suggested.

“Of course she does,” John took her part sternly.

“If you will let me go,” she offered, “I swear I will say nothing of ’aving seen you for, say, twenty-four hours. Will that be long enough?”

I agreed, gloomily, but John was more enthusiastic. “Of course, Countess, of course, it will be quite enough. We really ought to see you home, but there are difficulties, you know. Forgive us, won’t you?”

“Oh, we are not civilised ’ere,” she laughed. “I am quite safe on this mountain alone, I assure you. No one could be safer. You might untie my hands, though, if you don’t mind.”

John made a wry face, and let me do it, his own hands being in a state of skinlessness that would have been embarrassing to him if she had seen them, to say nothing of being painful.

“We couldn’t quite,” I said, “tie a lady up and leave her helpless on a wild mountain side. It’s nice of you to help us out of our difficulties. Have you a watch, by the way?”

“A watch?” she echoed. “Yes, what for?”

“Will you give us your word to wait here for half an hour before you start on again?”

“Oh, I say,” John interrupted. “That’s a bit thick, you know. She can’t do that, Carvin. She’s all alone, and she ought to get home as quickly as possible.”

“Ten minutes?” she offered.

“Very well,” I grumbled at her. “Ten minutes, then. It’s not very long, though.” I untied her wrists, and turned to continue our way down the mountain, taking advantage of the path.

“You ’ave been very kind,” she said, suddenly, “I will do more for you. Something I should not do. If you go straight down that path you will meet the men of the Black Ghost. They are in camp at the foot of the mountain. If they had not been, you would have been followed. If you watch carefully, about one kilometer from ’ere you will find a path that branches off to the left. Keep to that, and you will come to a dirt road in the valley. Follow that road and you will come to another that will lead to Herrovosca, but farther west than the road of the Pass. I think you will prefer that. But I must warn you that even the road I suggest is not free from danger for you.”

“Awfully good of you,” John said.

“It would have been safer for you to ’ave killed me or to ’ave left me for wild animals to kill. I feel I am making you a very small payment on a great debt.”

John was about to make some more remarks, so I took him firmly by the arm. “Only ten minutes,” I reminded him. “Come, now, and don’t waste time. We have to travel a long way.” He came, then, a little unwillingly, and with several backward glances to where we had left her sitting on a stone, slowly twisting up her long hair and shoving it under her hat in that seductive way women have with hair. When we were quite out of earshot I was surprised to hear John ask me, “shall we follow her directions or not?” I had supposed him too much under the spell of her personality to doubt her.

“Why not?” I said. “Since we have no idea where we are, and she seems rather a decent sort, even to me, who have not fallen a victim to her charms. I don’t see why she shouldn’t do us a good turn to repay our decent treatment of her.”

“That’s what I thought,” John said contentedly. “I’m glad you think so, too. She must have a swell time up here, swashbuckling around these mountains. Exactly my idea of the right way to spend a lifetime.”

I laughed, though I was in the act of stumbling over a twig. Swashbuckling around a lot of bleak mountains in the dark was my idea of no way to spend a lifetime, or even a small part of it, and I said so. However, when we found the branch path to the left, we followed it, still going down the mountain, and, I hoped, not too far from the general direction of Herrovosca. The only thing that really puzzled me was her remark about the Black Ghost’s men being in camp. Just what did that mean? For one thing, that they weren’t up at their mountain stronghold, which accounted for our escape. But it would mean more than that. It probably meant trouble somewhere.

The moon was full and high in the heavens when we finally came out on the roadway. A narrow, muddy roadway, deep with ruts. “A dirt road” had been the Countess’ description, I found it rather an understatement. It was a dirty road. I hoped John liked it, but I didn’t ask him. By that time I was too tired to waste energy asking silly questions. In the dark it was hard to judge distances or time, but I felt it should be near dawn. We must have followed it for two miles or more when the sound of a car drove us off the road. There was a high stone wall on either side at that point, and John said he’d rather be captured again than attempt to climb it, and he was sure he couldn’t make it if he did try. The lamps of the car showed us plainly to its occupants, and they came to a sudden stop beside us. A voice addressed us in Alarian, John cursed sibilantly in English, and the voice adopted that language obligingly, asking who we were and why we were there.

I replied, “Our car broke down, and we had to leave it. We are trying to find help, and I fear we have lost our way.”

“You are going away from the ’ighway. It is be’ind you about seven miles. Where did you leave your car?”

That question was a difficult one. However, John answered it quickly enough. “We don’t know,” he said. “We’ve been walking, it seems, for years. We lost our way before the moon came up. We thought we’d find a house on this road, but it apparently goes nowhere.”

“It goes,” the man said, sternly, “to Visichich Manor. If you will get in we will take you with us, but don’t be ’eadstrong because we ’ave revolvers.”

There was no means of resisting them. We were exhausted and unarmed and John was suffering with his burned hands. We were seven miles from the highway, and heaven only knew how many miles from any inn or town on that highway. Altogether, we were fairly caught. John climbed slowly into the car, a little saddened, I feared, with the realisation that the Visichich woman had set us a trap. Not a mean trap, but a trap, for all that. She would undoubtedly keep her word and say nothing to anyone about having seen us, but she had arranged that we should not be a menace to the Black Ghost. My admiration for her increased a little. I wondered whether John would feel that way.

It was a seven-passenger car. Our captors let down the two small seats in the tonneau, so that we sat facing them. They were right, of course. The state of the country was too unsettled to take chances. Our story of the broken car would not hold water, because they would not have passed any abandoned car on the way—unless, and that might be true—they had not come from the highway, but from the Black Ghost’s camp, which might be between their manor house and the road. It was possible they had not heard of our escape, and they still might believe our story. And there were twenty-four hours in which Countess Katerina would not tell them. There was still some hope we might get to Herrovosca.

We rode on in silence for about twenty minutes, bumping uncomfortably over the bad road. Then we thundered through an archway and into an open space before the long low white building which we had first seen from the customs house. The ancient archway through which we had come, and the tower and wall connected with it, might have belonged to a fortress. A single light showed in the house. The driver of the car got down first and helped us out, then preceded us up to the door, and knocked loudly on it. Presently a servant came, and only then did our hosts get out. They kept discreetly behind us as we entered the wide hallway, and the driver showed us the way into a room at the right. It was an interesting room. The walls were white, the iron hardware was handwrought and I thought very old. Three hanging lamps supplied light of the oil age. The furniture was of that peculiarly ornate character which usually graces southern and central European homes. Against their severe white walls and rich carpets it loses the tawdry appearance that it would have among the gimcracks of our homes.

The chauffeur and the servant remained in the doorway, in case we should make any disturbances, of course. I decided we would not. We stood in silence for several minutes, looking each other over quite frankly, each pair of us wondering how the other pair might fit into the complicated scheme of things in this Balkan state. The elder of our captors was a man of medium height, grey haired, with a beard and a mustache. Both their mouths had the same ruthless line as the Countess Katerina’s and they both had the same relieving lines of humor around their amber-brown eyes. Altogether they were not an alarming pair, and I judged they came to the same conclusion about us, for they relaxed in a moment or two, and the older man spoke. “Sit down gentlemen,” he invited.

We obeyed willingly. We had walked enough that night to make sitting welcome.

“Now, about that car,” he went on. “Perhaps you will tell me some details of it? I will have a man search for it in the morning.”

“By morning,” John said easily, “it will quite likely have been stripped beyond recognition by the bandits that I hear are in these mountains.”

The two men looked merely mildly surprised at the mention of bandits. “Bandits?” the younger inquired pleasantly, “you ’ave ’eard there are bandits ’ere?”

“Yes,” John went on, “we were very anxious not to meet any of them when our car broke down. I can imagine a mountain bandit, supreme in his power and responsible to no one, could be a most unpleasant person to meet on a dark night. Especially so for two unarmed men.”

“Who has told you of bandits?” The younger man seemed only slightly interested, as though he asked merely out of politeness.

“We heard of them before we left Rheatia.”

“Oh, Rheatia!” He dismissed Rheatia as though that overgrown neighbor of his were not worth mentioning. “In Rheatia you will ’ear many tales. The only bandit I know of in these mountains is Fakat Zol, the Black Ghost. You may ’ave ’eard of ’im?”

“Yes,” John said, slowly, “that was the name.”

“The ghost of Fakat Zol,” the man went on, slowly, “of course ’e is not a ghost, but it is true ’e maintains almost an army in the mountains. That is why the Rheatians ’ate him. ’is band ’as defeated them several times when they were bent on aggression. That is ’istory. No one goes through the Pass unless Fakat Zol permits. It ’as always been so. That is, it ’as been so for eight hundred years, which is long enough. He rules by superstition, tradition and right. Our ’istory is full of incidents of ’is appearance. ’e is like your English Robin ’ood, but become immortal.”

“We are Americans,” John corrected.

“The same thing.” He shrugged his shoulders. “You come from Rheatia?”

“We came through Rheatia.”

“You ’ave business in Alaria?”

We went through the old story of the writer and the artist. I was so tired of it I wished that it might be safe to change our professions for a little variety.

“At present,” the younger man said slowly, “Alaria is not a ’ealthy place for strangers.”

“No?” I was all innocence, or tried to be. “Is there some trouble?”

“There seems to be a slight uneasiness since the King’s death. You cannot tell what it may lead to. For the present I think we are all very tired. Let us continue our discussion in the morning.”

He had not asked for passports, but I realised that by morning he would have made inquiries, and know exactly who we were. Our escape would undoubtedly be reported to him even if his daughter kept her word. There was nothing to do but allow ourselves to be led off to bed, hoping that we should be put where we could get out easily, though even if we got out of the house, there would still be the wall and its gate to pass. However, we were at least several miles nearer Herrovosca than we had been at midnight. We must content ourselves with that reflection and get some sleep, since we could not do anything else.

They took us to a room in the ancient tower. It was quite comfortable enough to have been intended as a guest room instead of a prison cell, though it was not large. The walls were a good four feet thick, of solid stone, and we climbed up three flights of stairs to get to it. The view in the very early dawn was magnificent. Rolling hills to the south and west, and to the north and east, higher and yet higher and more jagged rose the mountains, all bathed in the romantic light just before the sun shows itself.

“We really accomplished a big night’s work getting out of that piece of scenery,” John said, “I guess we deserve a rest.”

I dressed his hands again with fresh water and the remaining handkerchiefs. They looked better than I had thought they would. Then we went to bed.

The staircase by which we had come to our room did not end at our floor, but went on, whether to a roof or another floor I could not see. Outside on the landing a guard settled himself in a chair against our door. A few minutes after we were in bed I heard a low conversation between him and another man, then footsteps went upwards. As I lay quietly, looking out toward the highest mountains, I caught suddenly a flash of distant light from one of the lower peaks. It came and went intermittently, flashing in code, as they had flashed in code from the customs house to the tower we were now in. No doubt they were flashing a message about us, but that wasn’t important. What was important was that the point from which they were being answered was now visible, and must be the stronghold of Fakat Zol. I spent the next hour drawing a careful sketch of the mountain peaks, with an indication of the one from which the signals came, and put the sketch in my shoe under the pass from the Queen. Then I lay down again, feeling like the best of counter-plotters. I wondered what my quiet newspaper friends at home would think of me. They didn’t think they were quiet, but the best they could do for excitement was a night at a speakeasy, or a little poker, with an occasional big murder case to liven the day’s work. And with that comforting thought I went to sleep.

I dreamed of witches in Salem being crushed by the weight of huge stones on their chests. I was a witch, and the stone struck suddenly, and was followed by a shout from the onlookers, and then by another. I sat up in bed, sneezing, and found that a large piece of plaster had fallen from the ceiling, and struck me on the chest. The dust was so bad I felt choked. I looked up at the place from which it had fallen, and saw a large hole, and in it a man’s face peering down at us. He was not altogether a pleasant looking person, and seemed to be more the night club type than a wily politician who would deserve imprisonment. He had bulgy dark eyes, a curly brown mustache and thick wet lips above a three days’ growth of beard. He was speaking to us in Alarian.

“We don’t speak Alarian,” I said. “Sorry, can’t understand you.”

The man immediately switched to English, “Quick, you hide the plaster,” he ordered, “they will not know, perhaps. Be quick, I tell you, they may come any time.”

John lay looking up at him, “Oh, all right,” he said. “We’ll do that for you, but you needn’t be so upset about it.” He got out of bed slowly, groaning with the stiffness of his muscles. I slid out as carefully as I could so as not to disturb the plaster. Then I looked at John’s hands. They were much improved. “Be all right in a few days,” John said. “Really not bad at all now, they have stopped smarting entirely.” The man above scolded at us. “Time for that later,” he said, “hide the plaster, now, quick.”

“Shut up!” I ordered, “I’ll hide that plaster when and if I get good and ready.”

He replied in a string of Alarian which I judged to be oaths of no mean venom. For a moment he left the hole, probably to tear his hair. I then rebandaged John’s hands, and when I had finished, the man above was again peering down through his hole and seemed inclined to treat us with less abruptness. At least he was silent while I pulled the bed apart, found two mattresses on it, spread all of the plaster I could gather up between them, and then remade the bed, taking a great deal of trouble to have it look as much as possible as though it had been slept in. My efforts did not satisfy John. He laughed at me, lay down on the bed, and rolled around on it. When he got up again the bed was perfect. It was tumbled just enough.

“There is one place beside the washing table,” I was directed again. I didn’t wish the man any harm, and for the time being, of course, we were friends of the Visichiches’ enemies, but he was peculiarly irritating. However, I picked up the piece beside the washstand, and tossed it out of the window. He grunted a protest, but said nothing. I had barely finished when there came a knock at the door, and when I had opened it, a man gave us a large can of hot water, a flat leather case containing seven old-fashioned razors—one for each day in the week and I hoped we shouldn’t have time to use them—a whisk broom, two tooth brushes, a cake of perfumed toilet soap, and a note. The latter bore no signature. It read, simply, “When you are ready to come down stairs, knock on the door. The man will be waiting for you. We will discuss our affairs over lunch.”

John, meanwhile, had been dressing. His hands handicapped him a little, but not seriously. “You’re not to get them wet,” I said, and I washed his face for him, and shaved him. It was a risky business with the open razors, but I accomplished it with no great casualties, and then brushed our clothes, and shined our shoes with a towel.

“Oh, for a whole lot of clean clothes, and a cold shower,” I said, remembering with a sigh the little pleasant luxuries of life back home. The common people in the Balkans look on bathing as at least unorthodox, if not actually sinful, and very unhealthy, and the upper classes have only progressed beyond the Saturday night stage if they have lived in more civilised communities. In other words, the people of the Balkans live as our grandparents did.

At last we were ready, but before we knocked on the door we whispered “Good-bye” to the man above us. He had recovered his poise, and smiled down quite pleasantly.

“Gentlemen,” he spoke very softly because of the man outside the door. “Tell me, gentlemen, you are guests here? You are friends of the Count Visichich?”

“Not in the least,” John answered, casually, “we are very probably prisoners here, though no one has said so yet.”

“Ah,” the face above was suddenly wreathed in smiles. He looked almost a decent sort of chap when he smiled, and vaguely familiar. Probably, I considered, because he was so very much the night club type.

“If you find you are not prisoners,” he asked, “where will you go?”

“We had started for Herrovosca,” I answered. “If they let us we’ll go there.”

He smiled again, this time almost supplicatingly. “And you are Americans, yes?”

“Yes, we told you that.”

“I know, I know. Will you take a message for me in Herrovosca, if you can get to it? But if you cannot go yourselves will you write it to someone I will tell you?”

“Is it likely to get us into trouble?” I asked.

“Trouble?” he shook his head so protestingly, so innocently, that I knew he was lying. “Trouble? Oh, no, gentlemen, not possible.” And then he stopped and thought for a moment. “Wait, only, please,” he said, and was gone for a few seconds. When he reappeared he reached down through the hole, and gave me a folded piece of paper. His arm was covered with a loose brown sleeve of rough material, but the hand was smooth and white and the nails were polished. The hand and the sleeve did not match at all. I took the paper and turned it over. There was nothing on the outside.

“Open it,” he directed, still smiling ingratiatingly, “it is instructions that will admit you to the presence of the Queen Yolanda. My message is to her.”

“Is this the message?” I asked. It looked too short.

“No,” he said. “The message is for you to tell her. I do not wish to write it on paper. Perhaps someone would find it, then it might make you trouble. You will tell the Queen—h’m—there is no need, perhaps, to tell her anything, except that I am here, and I wrote that paper. Only when you see her, tell her how I look. See, carefully, and that will be enough. Yes, gentlemen. You will do that?”

“Yes,” I said. “If we are able to get to the Queen we will certainly tell her about you, but don’t you want to tell us your name?”

“No,” he said, “no. I think I will not tell my name. Only tell her how I look, and if you cannot see her, write to her. It will be enough. À dieu, gentlemen, I will nevaire forget you have help me. I will always be most grateful to you.”

His face disappeared again. John and I exchanged glances. He smiled a little, shrugged his shoulders, and I took off my shoe and put the third piece of paper in the heel. It began to feel stuffed, and the lace spread a little wider than that on the other foot.

Then we knocked on the door, and heard the key grate in the lock, and our prison was opened. I closed the door behind us, and noticed that there was no guard on the stairs below except the man who preceded us. Above, I heard the scrape of a boot, and knew that there was a guard outside the door of the man with the polished finger nails. He had a chance, then, to get out, by dropping down to our bed, which would dull the sound of his fall, and the door of our room was not locked now.

We were bowed through the door of a large dining room, and John said “Oh” appreciatively, as he saw it. Like the whole house, the walls and woodwork were white, with heavy wrought iron hardware of intricate patterns showing smartly black against it. The furniture was polished or painted with scenes and portraits, or covered with colored leather or vivid brocades. It was fresh and bright, and I liked it. John spoke in praise of it. “My God,” he said, “it would be priceless in New York. The decorators would go mad with excitement.” He leaned down to examine a series of tiny brilliant medallions painted on the top of a chest. “But what a crime it would be to move it,” he said. “Here it is perfect, with the mountains outside as a complement.”

“It’ll make a pleasant memory,” I said. “I’m getting pretty fond of home, suddenly. It was nice and comfortable there.”

“Yes,” John said. “Yes, I suppose so.” But he didn’t sound as though he meant it entirely. He was absorbed in studying the lovely old furniture.

Our two captors came in, then. They looked refreshed and ready for the day. I knew that we did not. In spite of our brushing and shaving we were still bedraggled and rumpled and unpresentable. The last two days and nights had been almost as hard on our appearance as on our feelings, but we must have been a great improvement on the two unshaven tramps they had found on the road the night before. The elder introduced himself. “I am Colonel Count Visichich,” he said. “This is my son, Lieutenant Count Ivan Visichich, in charge of the customs house at the foot of the Pass. I have also a daughter who will be ’ere in a moment. When she arrives we will eat lunch. Meanwhile it would be well to sit down. You gentlemen are probably not yet fully rested. I am afraid you ’ad a difficult time last night.”

We sat on a long carved bench with a crimson damask cushion. It was under a window and faced the door. John was absorbed in two very old portraits that hung across the room. He was so much absorbed in them, indeed, that he did not notice the Countess Visichich when she entered the room.

“Katerina,” said the Colonel, “I wish to present the two gentlemen of whom I spoke to you. Gentlemen, this is my daughter, Countess Katerina Visichich.”

We both hesitated, to see whether she would show any sign of having seen us before. She did not, but bowed formally. She was keeping the letter of her word to us. I was not surprised. I had already decided that she probably would do that. She had the courteous manners of a Frenchwoman, together with a barbaric sense of honor, and a fearlessness that was the result of her half civilised surroundings and not-too-distant nomad ancestors. She smiled at us candidly. “My father and brother tell me you came ’ere late last night,” she said. “Just before I returned myself, in fact. Yesterday was very busy for many of us, it would seem. I am so glad you—’appened to find your way here. It was better as sleeping on the road, no?” Her eyes teased us, she might be our jailor but she was a pleasant and a friendly one. “You ’ave ’urt your ’ands,” she went on concernedly, to John. “Please, may I be of service? I have studied in the ’ospitals—almost I am a nurse. Come with me—yes?—and I will fix them.”

She led John out of the room, talking as they went, while the two Visichich men entertained me assiduously for a quarter of an hour until she chose to bring John back again, his hands swathed in great white mounds of gauze. They were no doubt very professional, but they looked ridiculous, and I saw that he meant to get them off again as soon as possible. “I have been very cruel to ’im,” she announced, “but my cruelty was of a moment only, and he is already almost well again of it.” They smiled at each other, and we sat down to lunch. We were treated like guests of the house. I hoped that was an omen of release, but somehow I doubted it. I could not see why they should let us go, and I was right. After we had finished the meal, they led us to the garden. As we stepped out into the sunlight the old Count said, gently, “You gentlemen will find time a little ’eavy on your ’ands, I fear. So long as you do not go beyond the archway you are quite free to wander as you will through the garden as long as we remain at ’ome. I regret that we must leave late this afternoon, and must then request you to return to the tower for a time. I am sure you understand me without further explanation.” He offered us cigarettes, and as we took them he said, “I ’ave warned you, gentlemen. This is an uncivilised country.” It might be uncivilised, but the manners of its people were perfect. I began to wish that a few of my former bosses could have said threatening things—or unthreatening ones, for that matter—half so pleasantly. He seemed to be laughing at some kindly joke, as he waved his hand at us, and turned away into the house followed by his son. The Countess Katerina stepped down to a low, tiled terrace. “Come look at my roses for a moment,” she called, “then I shall be obliged to leave you, too. I am a very busy woman—so much ’ousekeeping!” She laughed a little. That might easily be a joke, though I could imagine the Countess Katerina an excellent housekeeper. European ladies, especially southern European ladies, waste very little of their time going to parties as American ones do. They learn, instead, every step in the primitive keeping of their homes—spinning, weaving, lace-making and all the rest of the thousand arts that with us are represented by the corner delicatessen and the department store. Not that I suspected the Countess Katerina of leaving us to make lace. For that day at least I was sure her cares were not of the house.

We looked at the roses. Beautiful roses, in a sunken garden, to protect them from the cold winds of the mountains. Countess Katerina broke off a lovely peach-colored bud and put it in John’s buttonhole; she took less time when she did it for me.

“Do you grow roses in America?” she asked.

I laughed. “Yes,” I confessed, “in fact, at the last formal dinner I went to before I came away the conversation was so horticultural you might easily have supposed it a gardener’s convention.”

She looked a little puzzled at that until John explained the nature of a convention. “In Alaria,” she said, “there are not many rose gardens. This is the finest in the country. I ’ad an English aunt, the wife of my uncle. She made this garden, with brick walls around it, like England. We do not use many bricks ’ere. There is so much stone. But she would ’ave it, and I like it. Every year there is a man in London who sends us new flowers. They are so nice.” She pulled a small red one, “See—’ow sweet it smells?” She poked it at John’s nose, then at mine. From the house there was a shout, then a bell began to ring, like an old-fashioned fire-bell. There was more shouting in a different tone. Countess Katerina turned and ran back without a word.

“Our friend from the room upstairs has been missed,” I said.

“She’s a swell girl,” John said by way of answer.

“Don’t be a fool,” I protested, “everybody is busy hunting that chap who dropped the plaster on us. If we look around we may find a way out while they are looking for him.”

“It seems a mean advantage to take of her,” John began, but he blushed as he caught my look, and said, “Oh, all right. Yes, of course, I suppose we must. Come along, then, quietly, and let’s see what we can find.”

We walked up the five steps from the rose garden, and tried to be as casually inconspicuous as possible. A car snorted and pop-popped to our right, and then the motor started and it drove away, cut-out open, roaring like a plane. A second followed in a moment. Two men shouted. Another appeared above us on the roof of the old tower, his head just showing above the battlements. Some electrical instrument up there began making a fizzy noise like a radio, but as there were no aerials visible I decided it must be a daytime version of the heliograph. A radio would be too public for these people, and a telephone too easily put out of order.

The manor was really a collection of buildings strung together after the fashion of northern New England farm houses, but these were less geometric. They had been built to conform to the shape of the hill rather than with any studied plan. The wall which circled the whole was high enough to keep off marauders, but not high enough for any defense against determined attack. The house itself was a maze of walls and gateways constituting, so far as we were concerned, an inner series of barriers against escape. Thus the garage, to the right of the place we stood when the two cars went out, was only a few feet from us, but in order to reach it we turned in the opposite direction, through an opening in a low stable, passed an enclosed yard full of chickens and ducks, with a pond in the center, and a movable pen containing two sheep busily engaged in cropping the lawn, through another gateway with a crude wooden gate, into another yard with a cow, past the cow, and there, on our left, was the garage, and in it, at the back, stood a third car. I walked forward a few steps to a spot where I could see the outer gate. A sentry was walking back and forth on the inside, but the gate itself was open. I nodded to John, who immediately climbed in. Behind us, in the garden, the Countess called, anxiously. “Quick,” John whispered, “they’ve missed us.” I jumped in behind the wheel. The key was in the lock. I slipped into high, and let out the clutch very slowly as I stepped on the gas with the other foot. The car moved, and began to creep forward almost noiselessly. Before the sentry saw us we had reached him. He jumped aside just in time to save himself, and we were through the forbidden gate. The road sloped suddenly downward, then to the right in a sharp curve. Just as we rounded it two shots rang out behind us.

“All right,” I said. “Nothing hit.”

“Nothing but me,” said John.

“Where?” I demanded, alarmed, and swung the car in an abrupt and rutty curve. He groaned. “Right arm. I don’t think I’m going to do anything strange, faint or anything like that, but you can’t tell. If I do, don’t pay any attention, for God’s sake, but keep on going. Good driving, old man. We’d never have made it if you had stopped to shift gears.”

“Luck,” I said. As it was, with a strange car. “It might have stalled just as well as not. Hold on to the seat, we’ll have to make as good time as we can for a while in spite of your arm. If they catch up with us they’ll shoot us up some more.”

For the next three miles, perhaps, we drove down the rough and muddy road, then John slowly slumped down in his seat, so that I had to slow the car while I held him so that he would not fall on the gear lever. I felt guilty that I was always urging that we escape, and John was always getting hurt doing it.

CHAPTER VI

It seemed years before I reached the high road. Before then I had slowed down with the realisation that since we had the last car in the garage, danger must lie ahead of us, and not behind. We had two passes to the Queen in Herrovosca, so our lack of passports would probably be overlooked except by the Black Ghost’s adherents, who would shut us up again in any case if they caught us. John had only fainted, but I had no idea how badly he might be hurt. My first concern was to get him to a doctor, though that was a dangerous business, with everyone but the legal authorities against us, in a country where the legal authorities had almost become fugitives.

The high road where we turned into it was deserted, except for an old donkey cart with a small girl driving. She looked too stupid to be a menace even if she had wished. About three miles farther on we came to a small village. There was nowhere to go but through it, so I drove boldly, if not straight, up the main street. It was not very much like our main streets in America. Here were small thatched-roof houses, many only one story high. The vehicles in the street were propelled by ox, horse, mule and donkey power, most of them had solid squeaking wooden wheels. I felt John move. He sat up.

“How’s your arm?” I asked.

“Feels better, thanks. Aches like the devil, still, but this isn’t so bad. It was the jolting over those ruts that did me up. I’ll last all right now till we get to a doctor in Herrovosca. You go right on driving.”

We left the little village behind us and came suddenly upon a branch road leading to the left. I turned down it unhesitatingly. Anything would be better than to stay on the main road where they were looking for us.

“That’s right,” John agreed. “Safer. I may be the family invalid, but we’ve got to get to Herrovosca.”

The road was dirt, but smooth enough to make fairly good time, although there was more traffic than I had expected. Then we came into another town, this one much larger than the last. The houses were higher, and closer together. There was still more traffic, and in a moment as we neared the center of the village, the streets became full of standing vehicles. There was, however, almost no person in sight. Those that were still moving were going in the same direction we were. Even children were conspicuously absent. It was with greater and greater difficulty that I found space for the car to move. At last, in sight of the large square that seems to form the center of all Alarian towns, as it does of all New England towns, we came, perforce, to a stop. Four slow-moving vehicles closed in behind us, with still more coming, effectually blocking that way out. Ahead of us a vast crowd mulled, shouting, gesticulating. We were stopped again. I began to feel that Herrovosca was the ultimate and dearly attainable goal of those who had served a proper term in purgatory.

From somewhere in the distance, standing, apparently, on the fountain in the center of the square, a man was addressing the crowd. A man, as I could see, with a long white beard, and long white hair that reached to his shoulders. He held a staff in his hand, with a crucifix on the top. More vehicles came up behind us, their occupants jumping out, and rushing on to the square. Here, undoubtedly, was news, if we could get someone to interpret it for us, but the first need was for a doctor, since we had to halt, anyway.

John could walk alone, but I helped him out to make sure. We skirted our way around the standing vehicles, and found a crooked alley, empty of people, and at its end, near the square, there was a doctor’s sign. I rang the old-fashioned bell. There was no answer. I rang again, and still again. At last I heard slow feet shuffling a little, and the door was opened grudgingly by an old, deaf woman, who waited for us to speak, scowling, with her hand to her ear. I took refuge in signs, pointing to John’s arm, and repeating the one word, “doctor,” the same in so many languages that I hoped she might understand it. She beckoned us to follow her, and shambled along the passage, grunting as she walked. Presently we heard shouts and the revivalistic sound of the white-beard’s voice, and then we were ushered into a room overlooking the square. There the old woman left us, shutting the door carefully behind her.

While we waited I looked out of the window. We were not half a city block from the fountain and the man on it. It was a remarkable thing to watch, though we did not know what it was all about. He seemed to be having difficulties with his audience. He was answering questions from all sides at once, and dramatically waving his arms. From our vantage point we could see his face plainly when he turned in our direction. He was younger than his white hair suggested, and rather fine looking in a patriarchal fashion reminiscent of moving picture Bible scenes. His eyes were large and dark, his nose aquiline. Words were audible to us, but we could not understand them. At last a man came into the room, and I turned as I heard him close the door behind me. He seemed excited. I spoke to him in German, and hoped that he believed me when I told him that we had been shot at on the highway, probably by robbers, and my friend must have his wound dressed.

“What is the matter with your hands?” he asked John.

“I blistered them fixing our car,” John replied innocently, “and a very charming young lady insisted upon bandaging them up in this absurd way.” He reached for a pair of surgical scissors the doctor had laid out, to take the bandages off, but I stopped him. “You are better off that way,” I said, “let them be, for a while. You don’t want to do anything with your hands, anyway, so what is the difference?”

The doctor gave us a suspicious look, but got to work, though he divided his attention somewhat between John and the scene out of the window. Twice, a woman dashed into the room and shouted something at him, at which he grew still more excited.

“I wish you would tell us what this is all about,” I said, “who is the man on the fountain?”

“A mad monk,” he said, “who says he is sent by God to lead the people of Alaria to a holier form of government. He is an old hermit who is said to have worked miracles. He is quite mad but some of the people believe him and there will be trouble here unless something is done.”

“Why not arrest him?” I asked.

The doctor shook his head. “We would not dare,” he said. “In Alaria the supernatural is always a higher power than any other. But we have one sure savior.”

“Who?” John asked, though I saw he knew the answer.

“Fakat Zol, the Black Ghost,” the doctor said, simply. “If you do not keep quiet I cannot help hurting you. Our hetman has sent a message to him. He will come soon, I hope.”

“Do Alarian ghosts always come when they are sent for?” I asked.

“This is a live ghost,” the doctor answered, winding yards of bandage around John’s arm. “It is fortunate, too, for with a strange impostor in Herrovosca, to be crowned as Queen, and a prophet here, raising a mob, we need something more than police to keep order.”

“But surely,” I said, “if this Princess can establish her identity that will be the end of the trouble?”

“That has been the beginning of the trouble,” the doctor said, coldly. “No pretender can ever establish his identity to everyone’s satisfaction, nor can one ever be proved a fraud to everyone’s conviction. There will always be some who believe or disbelieve and make trouble. But something will happen. The Black Ghost, or Prince Conrad, who is the rightful king, will find a way to arrange matters.”

“Then,” I asked, “there are two rulers in Alaria now?”

“No,” he answered, “there is only one ruler in Alaria.”

“Conrad?” John asked.

“No, the Black Ghost,” the doctor answered, and laughed.

“And who is the Black Ghost?” I asked, “does anyone know? Is he just a bandit chief, or an Alarian in good standing who plays this part as a side issue?”

The doctor frowned. “There must be some who know,” he said, “but they do not tell. The great mass of the people believe he is really the old crusader, Fakat Zol. Even many of his followers believe that. If it were not so he would have no power. As it is, if that statue of the Holy Virgin should step down from the front of the church and the Black Ghost said it was a trick of the devil, the people would believe the Black Ghost.” He tied the end of the bandage, and began putting away his instruments.

“Thank you,” John said, “and now we must go back to our car. Alarian politics are not for us, even though a prophet and the ghost of a crusader are about to do battle before our eyes. I’d like to see it so I could tell about it when we’re home again where things like that don’t happen. Still, we started for Herrovosca, and as soon as this meeting breaks up enough to let us through the streets, we must go on. Also, our car will be robbed if we leave it alone.”

“Two Americans going to Herrovosca in a car,” the doctor said ruminatively.

“Yes,” John answered, “thanks for doing my arm—if you’ll let us settle our bill now—”

The noise in the square was increasing momentarily. The prophet’s voice was no longer audible above the shouts of the townsfolk. Suddenly a stone crashed through a window not far away. We could hear the breaking glass, and then the storm broke. The doctor turned to us, “You had better wait here,” he said, “it won’t be safe for you to go out, even by the back way. Besides, you gentlemen have not yet explained to me this gunshot wound. The only bandits of the mountains are Fakat Zol’s men. They do not fire on harmless travellers. In order that you may remain here quite safely I will lock the door as I go out.” He smiled, not pleasantly, and went out quite suddenly. The key turned in the lock on the other side of the door. I started to intercept him, but since I had been standing by the window and he had been beside the door while he spoke, I was too late. We were prisoners again.

“If,” said John, “we ever get back to a slightly less hospitable country I shall feel lonely and neglected. This sound of keys that turn in locks has grown to be a familiar lullaby.”

“Let’s see what they do to the prophet,” I said, and went back to the window. The sound of keys turning in locks had become so familiar to me that I scarcely paid any attention to it. John, exhausted by his wound and its dressing, stayed on the sofa.

“Funny,” he groaned, “that of all the doctors in Alaria we should have happened to come to this man, who is obviously such a staunch adherent of Conrad’s.”

“Not funny a bit,” I said, “it would have been a bit of amazing luck if we had happened to find one who wasn’t. Those two women are not exactly popular heroines.”

Outside was the greatest confusion. The prophet was no longer on the fountain. In his place half a dozen men were standing, all speaking at once, but no one paying much attention to them. Every once in a while a stone crashed through a window, or someone screamed. Then, from somewhere to the left, came the sound of a trumpet. “The gendarmes!” I cried. “Listen, John.”

The crowd parted slowly, and into the square rode a small troop of cavalry. We were in a second story window, and I could see uninterruptedly from the moment they entered the square. At their head rode the Black Ghost, on a black horse, his crusader’s cross showing white against his breast. All his men were in black, and rode black horses, and every man in the troop wore a short black mask across the upper part of his face. Only the Black Ghost was entirely covered, even to the hands.

“Enter the villain of the piece,” I said. “It’s our old friend, Fakat Zol.”

“I guess that lets us out of our week-end in Herrovosca,” John said, “I wonder where he’ll send us now, and what he has done with the Countess Waldek? She thought we’d have her message delivered by now. I wonder who the devil he is, anyway?”

“Devil is right,” I said, “and that door is far too thick to smash without being heard, even supposing there’s no one guarding the other side of it. Too bad. This is our only chance for a getaway. This time they’ll shut us up so we can’t get out.”

“There’s the window,” said John.

“With your wounded arm? You’d never be able to get through that crowd. They’d jostle you and you’d faint again.”

There was a narrow iron balcony outside the window and it was not so very high above the street. We could have dropped without any special risk, perhaps, if there had not been such a crowd below, and if, on a similar balcony belonging to the next room, the doctor and various members of his household had not been standing. They were shouting and cheering, “Fakat Zol! Fakat Zol! Fakat Zol!”

The black troop rode straight through the square to the fountain. There they paused, and Fakat Zol, scorning the eminence of the masonry beside him, raised one arm straight above his head in the fashion made famous by the Fascisti. It is a dramatic gesture, and he was a dramatic personification of direct action and force to people to whom pageantry is the outward and visible sign of authority. And he was more than that. He was a holy creature, a saint, supernatural, a subject for worship and the hero of an infinite number of legends. Friends and enemies alike were his publicity agents.

“I’d like to know,” I said, “that Helena’s safe, though I’m damned if I think she deserves to be. So far as I can see she’s an out-and-out political meddler.”

“She probably has the best of intentions,” John answered, “and I don’t like to think of her in trouble, but I quite agree. Still, I think we must try to deliver her message to the Queen, though I’m inclined to wish no one had ever interfered with Conrad. That girl Maria Lalena, or whoever she is, is too young to know what she’s about.”

I agreed, decidedly.

“Pretty girl, too,” said John, thoughtfully. “We mustn’t be too hard on them, though it’s the craziest scheme I ever heard of even if she really is the Princess.”

“Yes,” I said, “I’d like to know who thought of the whole silly plot in the first place, and who persuaded my poor cousin to go into it. Being Queen of a poverty-stricken, unsettled Balkan country isn’t my idea of a proper destiny for a young girl who ought to be going to dances and having a lot of trips to Paris, and all that sort of thing.”

“Queen Yolanda thought of it,” John said, “it fairly reeks of her.”

“Thought of what?” I asked. “Killing her son, or only of importing this girl to take his place?”

“Oh,” John said. “Suppose Fakat to be responsible for killing Bela, what more natural than that a lady who had been practically the ruler of the country for a number of years should object to relinquishing her place to an old hermit brother-in-law, and want to keep her position as mother of a weak, or at least inexperienced ruler? No doubt it had got to be a habit.”

“Don’t be too sure,” I interposed, “it may quite well be that the girl really is the Princess. If the old lady had wanted her only daughter brought up away from the court, what could be more natural than that she should give her to her only disinterested friend, a woman whom she could trust, and who lived nearby, and yet outside the country?”

“Yes,” John admitted, “not that it is going to make much difference, as I see it. Her fate isn’t going to be determined by her identity, but by Conrad and the Black Ghost. My guess is that they mean to assassinate her as quietly as possible, blame it on someone else, and take the throne.”

I agreed, but said that it wasn’t any of our affair, anyway, but that we must get Helena’s message to the Queen.

“All I wish,” John said, “is that I were sure that that nice Countess Visichich were not mixed up in the assassination part. That I should hate.”

“Our business at present,” I said, “is to get out of this place before we are returned with thanks to the more careful custody of our black-masked friend. We may be able to save the girl’s life, and save Countess Visichich from even a reflected guilt in her death.”

“Bravo,” said John, “and a splendid chance of escape we’d have hopping on the heads of that mob out there. You might try picking the lock of that door, though.”

“Ever try it?”

“No.”

“Besides, we haven’t anything to pick it with. Have to have something in the way of tools.”

“Oh, for a woman with hairpins.”

“Those days are passed. They all have cropped hair except your favorite Countess Visichich.”

“She’d do nicely. Still, if we were to raise some sort of disturbance—”

“Have to be a good deal of disturbance before it would be heard over this excitement.”

“Couldn’t we set the house on fire?”

“That’s arson. After all, we’re not criminals, and there’s strong practical objection in that we’d probably be burned up in it before they noticed.”

“Yes, but if we made a smudge, and they thought it was on fire—”

“I’m afraid there’d still be more chance of smothering ourselves than of attracting their attention.”

He gave up the idea, then, and we both sat down gloomily to wait. The crowd outside calmed down, and little by little it thinned, as the excitement faded. The Black Ghost went into the house next door, and his troop sat their horses under our window. The mob was still disturbed, and from time to time a new center of argument would bubble up, and die out again after a few shouts. The presence of the black masked horsemen was wonderfully soothing.

At last the key turned again in the lock and the doctor reappeared. “This way, gentlemen, if you please,” he said. John rose a little unsteadily, and we followed the doctor down a corridor, and through two rooms and a heavy door in a thick wall, into a dining room. Behind a long table, in a high-backed, red-cushioned chair, sat Fakat Zol in state. Around him were grouped three of his followers in their outlandish uniform, and several men of the town, looking very important with reflected mystery.

The Black Ghost spoke in a somewhat husky voice. “We meet again, a little sooner than I expected.”

He had taken off the gloves that covered his hands when I saw him from the window. He waved John to a chair with a hand that should have worn a ruby ring. Automatically I looked for it. It was not there.

John answered him, smiling, and seeming to have lost his weakness. “Perhaps a little sooner than any of us wished,” he suggested.

“I am sorry you ’ave suffered a wound,” the Black Ghost went on, “and yet I am very glad that it brought you ’ere. I am sure Doctor Carlo ’as given you the best of medical care, and I ’ope you are not in pain.”

He seemed very much concerned, yet I would not allow myself to be deceived. He was a bandit. We were to be disposed of by him, and though he was as pleasant as ever, I felt that something was wrong. It was not that he seemed displeased with us, quite the contrary. But he seemed changed. John noticed it, too. He was staring at him thoughtfully. The accent was the same, but the voice, for all its huskiness, was more debonair. I argued that a sudden success had wrought the change. That was bad for us, in one way, yet it might be that we could count on him now to be more magnanimous to two American citizens. Still, who would ever know anything about it if he were not?

“You ’ave escaped twice from my—er—our—’ospitality. They say the number three is symbolic of good luck.”

“A singular recurrence of good luck, certainly,” said John.

“Exactly. The Black Ghost brings good luck to ’is friends. Though you ’ave opposed yourselves to me, I feel that you would like to be my friends. Is that not so?”

“That might be true if we knew you better,” John said.

The Black Ghost laughed. “That is what I mean,” he said. “I believe you gentlemen wish to go to Herrovosca to see Queen Yolanda. At least that is the way I interpreted the news of the ’ole between your room and that occupied by a certain lady. Now, it may be a surprise to you if I withdraw my objection to your going there. As prisoners, gentlemen, you are very troublesome. I think I would rather ’ave you for friends. If you will give me your word of honor to say nothing of what you ’ave learned of the politics of the Visichich family, or of the location of the castle in the mountains, you may go to Herrovosca. Except, I ask you to do me a favor.”

“And what sort of favor can we do you?” I asked, feeling that it would probably prove a joker.

“I ’ave a passenger for you as far as Herrovosca.”

“A passenger?” I repeated, stupidly.

“Yes. Only one.”

“May we ask the identity of this passenger?”

“It is the self-styled prophet who was preaching from the fountain. ’e is a mad monk, a ’ermit, who takes every opportunity to preach sedition to people who believe ’im a saint. ’e is suppose to ’ave effected a few miraculous cures. ’e is a great fakir, but ’armless except at a time like this, when any slight disturbance may create a civil war. I do not wish to arrest ’im ’ere for fear the people may take ’is part. ’e ’as refused to go with my men to Herrovosca, though ’e wishes to go there, but ’e ’as agreed to go with two American tourists. If you will not take ’im I will arrest ’im, but this way may prevent bloodshed.”

“That sounds most reasonable,” said John.

“It is best that you should not speak to ’im, nor to answer ’im if ’e speaks to you. ’e ’as also promised not to speak, though I am not so sure ’e will keep ’is word. You will drive by the straight road, going through the city as far as the church of St. Nicholas. There you will turn to the left. Do not mistake that. At the Central Bridge you will be met by police who will remove the Prophet from the car, and you will be free to do, from that time forward, whatever it may please you, even so far as a visit to our Dowager Queen.”

“Well,” said John, “of all the topsy-turvy countries I’ve ever been in—though, of course, that is no affair of ours.”

“None,” said the Black Ghost, “unless, of course, you would wish to make it so.”

“And the alternative?” I asked.

“The alternative—will be to return to the frontier under guard—immediately.”

“We’re not interested in the alternative,” John said. “Are we, Carvin?”

Of course I had to protest that we were not. I wasn’t, really, either, though I was beginning to wish we’d stop somewhere a little while.

“The Doctor Carlo’s most charming wife ’as prepared some food for you to eat upon the journey,” the Black Ghost went on. “That is so you need not stop on the way. There is no ’urry to ’ave you arrive there, but I do not wish you to stop with your passenger, ’e might jump out.”

“We haven’t enough petrol,” I said.

The Black Ghost turned to one of his men, and gave an order in Alarian. “Your tank will be filled immediately,” he said. “Anything else you wish?”

“We should like our passports back,” I suggested.

“Ah, your passports. Oh, yes, to be sure. I shall ’ave to send for them, but I promise you shall ’ave them back again.” He turned to the doctor and spoke again in Alarian. The doctor fumbled in his pocket and drew out a card with an official-looking stamp on it. The Black Ghost motioned him to give it to me.

“That,” he explained, “is a pass that will take you through any police lines. With it you will be able to reach the servants in the Royal Palace. No doubt you ’ave been provided with some means of gaining an interview with the Queen after that. Can you think of anything else you will require?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Naturally,” he continued, “you will do your passenger no ’arm of any sort on the way. I think he will not try to make any trouble for you. You give me your word of honor, gentlemen?”

“My word of honor,” I answered.

“Mine, also,” said John.

“Then you will start immediately. Oh, one thing more. Your passenger may understand any language that you do. Kindly say nothing to each other during the trip. There will be no necessity for speech.” He waved his hand, and four of his black-masked followers went with us, out of the house, by the same back way we had entered. The alley was crowded now, but not too much so for passage back to the car, where another Black Mask was already filling the gas tank from two large tin cans. We would have got in the front seat, but our guards stopped us, and we stood waiting until two more Black Masks joined us, leading the Prophet between them. They put him in front next to me, standing close to him to prevent his jumping out. He was followed by a large crowd who eyed us all curiously.

Meanwhile John got into the tonneau, and I heard him say “damn!” in a surprised tone. “All right?” I asked. “Yes,” he answered, “quite. Get in.” I mounted beside the prophet. “Straight ahead on this road,” directed one of the masked men, “make no turning until you come back to the main road, then turn to your left. About a hundred kilometers farther.”

I started the car with a groan of relief. We were again on our much-interrupted way to Herrovosca. The road was too full of people to make quick time at first, but as soon as we were out of the congested area I stepped on the gas. At last there seemed to be nothing between us and our goal, though I could not help wondering what had happened to make the Black Ghost change his mind about letting us go. However, just driving again without feeling hunted was such fun that I relaxed presently, for the first time in days, and stepped on the accelerator, hard.

We came to the wide, metalled main road, and made splendid time. Farther on we topped a hill, and saw below us again the broad, fertile valley beyond which was Herrovosca. In the distance I could just see, a little mistily, the towers and roofs of the city. My watch had stopped the night before, but by the position of the sun I judged it to be about the same time of day we had passed this way three days before, fatuously running away from possible trouble. We made splendid time. I wanted to comment on it to John, but remembered in time not to speak. I glanced back at him. He was smoking quietly, and winked at me. He was having a fine Roman holiday.

In half an hour or so more we would be in the city again, and rid of our passenger and our responsibilities. The prophet sat straight and silent all the way, holding fast to his cross-handled staff, his eyes fixed on the city with a fanatic intensity. It was quite evident he was not expecting arrest there. It was a little cruel of us to deceive him, I felt.

We passed the little inn where we had bought bread and mutton and wine on our way to Helena’s. Gradually the small houses grew more frequent, they assumed the style of villas, their gardens became more ornamental, the traffic was heavier, and then we were suddenly in the city again, where we had so often despaired of being. The shadows were lengthening. I did not remember the way very well, but he had said straight to the church of St. Nicholas, then right—or left?—to the river. I could not remember which it was, so I tried to think of all the things the Black Ghost had said, but still I could not determine whether it was right or left. Then I came to the church of St. Nicholas, and slowed down while I motioned to John. He pointed to the right. I turned that way. I did not know the bridges by name, but I knew that Central Bridge must be a large one, so I drove on until we came to a large bridge. I drove beyond it, and then turned widely so as not to stop the car, and drove back, looking for gendarmes. There were none. I decided that that was the wrong bridge, and drove on farther the same way, until I came to another. There were no gendarmes there, either, so I went on still farther. And at the next there were also no gendarmes, so I continued, but came suddenly to the high city wall, with a great gate through it. There were no more bridges, so I turned around to go back. But there was not so much space to turn there, and I had to stop and back and stop and back again. The second time I stopped, the prophet suddenly opened the door at his side, and jumped out. He stood for a moment beside the car, holding up three fingers of his right hand in blessing. We had been told not to harm him or to speak to him, so I left him there, not knowing what else to do with him. As soon as we saw some gendarmes we could tell them where we had left him. John said “what the hell!”

I said, “what could I do?”

“Nothing,” he answered. “It was their fault not to meet us. You either drove faster than they expected or didn’t go to the right bridge. We ought to have grabbed him, but there is a reason back here why I couldn’t.”

“Oh, it’s their own fault,” I said. “Are you all in?”

“No,” he said. “Keep on moving and I’ll tell you. We have a second passenger. He’s hidden under the robe back here. I stepped on him as I got into the car in that town. I almost gave the show away saying ‘damn.’ It’s the chap who dropped the plaster on us. He was in the car before we left Visichich manor, and he seems to want to stay hidden.”

“So while they were looking for him outside the manor,” I said, “he was in the car?”

“They were not looking for me,” answered a muffled voice. “There was another riot. There will be many. I heard them talking about it when they took the other cars. I was afraid they would take this one, too, but they did not. They had not missed me. But now I must quickly be taken to the Palace. No one must see me.”

“Why should we take you to the Palace?” John asked. “For all we know you may be an assassin. We don’t even know any name to call you by, right or wrong.”

“I cannot tell you my name,” the man said, “but I did give you a pass to the Queen, did I not? If you will try to use that you will see that it will be honored.”

“You may have stolen it.”

“I will write you another, and you may see me write it. It also will be honored.”

“The Queen knows you, then?”

“Yes, yes, she knows me. But I am in great danger here if anyone should see me. I have enemies. Enemies to the King. Enemies to the Queen.”

“John,” I said, “if he’ll write another pass, and you see him do it, and they think it is all right at the Palace, I guess we’d better take him up there. But we won’t vouch for him.”

There was a half-choked expletive from under the blanket, which stopped abruptly, and then changed to saccharine sweetness. “Any way you like, gentlemen,” the voice said. “Stop the car while I write, but be sure there is no one to see me. I cannot write while the car moves.”

We went through the little ceremony without mishap. John compared the signatures on the two passes. “Whatever this is meant for,” he said, “it is quite illegible, but the two look exactly alike.”

“All right,” I agreed, “we’ll go, but I shall tell the guards that we do not know the man, and are not responsible for him, and that I shall feel safer if he is carefully watched.”

“I don’t care what you tell the guards,” came from under the robe. “Only I wish to be taken to the Royal Palace, and queeck. Perhaps you know what has been happening since I was in prison?”

I heard John say, “why, yes, a little, I guess. Though we don’t really know much of what has been going on the last two days. We’ve been about as much out of touch as you have. Of course you knew the King is dead?”

“Oh. The King is dead! No, I did not know that.”

“Yes, assassinated.”

“Ah. The poor King! And is Conrad already in power in the Palace, then?”

“No. The Queen sprung a surprise on everybody. She produced a princess everyone thought was dead. Maria Lalena is Queen of Alaria now.”

“Maria Lalena!” the voice whispered, and I could not tell whether the man was laughing or sobbing, but his voice was shaking. “You are sure the Queen did that, not Conrad?”

“Look here,” I said. “This doesn’t sound right to me. Who the devil are you, anyway?”

“That I must not tell you.”

“I am afraid to take you to the Palace unless you do.”

“I am a monk,” he said, “attached to the service of the Royal Family. I was King Bela’s confidant, and, in many things, the Queen’s also, but of this Princess Maria Lalena I knew nothing. Gentlemen, I beg of you, take me to the Royal Palace.”

And, still doubting the safety and wisdom of the course, I did.

A sentry stood motionless on either side of the gate. John leaned forward, and showed the pass the monk had written. “Do you know that signature?” He asked in German. The man saluted smartly. “Yes, sir,” he answered. “Certainly I know it, but we have orders to allow no one to enter here without a special pass signed within twenty-four hours. I am sorry.”

“Oh,” John said. “I did not notice that that had a date. Here, anyway, is one signed within twenty-four hours, for I saw it signed myself.” He offered the second of our passenger’s signed slips of paper.

For answer, the two sentries stared for an instant, and then thrust their bayonets at us, and called out. Two more men appeared from behind the gate.

“You are under arrest,” said the first man.

CHAPTER VII

Of course we were accustomed to being arrested, but this was a different matter from the other times. This might be a criminal offense. Foreigners, without passports, and with only a mad story about how they had lost them, trying to obtain entrance to the Royal Palace with a strange man hidden under a robe in the back of the car. And Helena, the only person who could vouch for us, a prisoner of the Black Ghost.

“What for?” John asked truculently.

“Because you must repeat that story to a higher officer,” the man answered. “If you saw that paper signed within twenty-four hours it is a forgery. The city of Herrovosca is under martial law.”

“Wait,” I said, holding up my hand with all the authority I could muster. I was frightened, and it seemed ridiculous to have come through so many difficulties only to be arrested at the very end of our journey, almost within speaking distance of the Queen. A few passersby added themselves, gaping, to the group of soldiers.

“We really have a legitimate errand to the Queen,” I said. “We only showed you those passes to see whether you thought them real. We suspected them ourselves. Here.” I offered him the red card that the Black Ghost had given us. He stared at it in surprise, and said, indifferently, “Yes, of course. This will let you through any police lines. If you drive your car on the wrong side of the street, and show this, it will be forgiven, but it makes no mention of the Royal Palace, and though I do not say so, there are many of these cards, and you may have stolen this one. You must go before the Colonel tomorrow.”

Tomorrow! Even that was not so bad as the presence of that man in the back of the car. While they were about to discover him at any moment, and we were under arrest, we certainly did not want to proclaim his presence. I cursed myself for a fool not to have told the soldiers about him immediately. We had only agreed to take him to the Palace, and we had done that. Now quite a crowd was collecting around us.

“Wait a moment,” I said. “I realise that you must take every precaution. You are right to do that, of course.” I stooped, took off my shoe, and since they looked suspiciously at me, I held it up in plain sight, while I removed the paper Helena had given me. Then I laid the shoe on the seat beside me.

For the first time the guard looked impressed. “Countess von Waldek,” he said. “Ah, yes, Countess von Waldek we know, and have had orders for three days to admit her immediately when she comes, but she does not come. She has disappeared. You will have to show this as well to the Colonel tomorrow.” He opened the front door, and another man opened the back one.

“You are making a mistake,” I said. “Our business is urgent, we—”

John interrupted me. “I must tell you, then,” he began, “that—”

John was too impulsive. Besides, I saw that we must declare the presence of the man in back or perhaps suffer serious consequences if they found him first. I interrupted John.

“We have come,” I said, “from Visichich Manor. We were asked to bring to Herrovosca a—”

But I got no farther than that, for there appeared suddenly on the other side of the square a large open car, and in it sat the new Queen Maria Lalena in a long veil of white mourning crepe and looking as sweet and pretty as a Queen of the May. The car, like most Royal cars, was travelling at a swift pace, and was preceded and followed by soldiers on motor cycles, but it had to slow down as it neared the now large crowd that had collected around us, blocking the gate. In the sudden movement as it approached a voice shouted, “See! See! The impostor! She is dressed like the Holy Virgin! Blasphemer!”

A figure lunged forward from the edge of the group. It was all so quick and unexpected that I must have acted instinctively, as one does sometimes in a moment of impending accident. Mechanically. I can remember the act, but not any thought on my part that directed it. My hand closed over the shoe that I had laid on the seat beside me, and I flung it at the upraised arm of the man who had shouted. The only conscious thought I had was a sudden realisation of his identity.

It was the prophet.

I had come all the way from home, through three imprisonments, for the purpose of hitting a false prophet with an old shoe.

But I did hit him. The shoe struck him squarely in the face just as he threw something round and black, and the something round and black hurtled high above the white head of the Queen Maria Lalena, and fell far beyond her on the deserted pavement of the square, where it burst with such a roar as I had not heard since I left the trenches in 1918.

Everybody began shouting at once. The crowd pushed and surged until I thought our car would be turned over. John and I were jerked out roughly, and held against the Palace wall by the soldiers, while the crowd, which seemed to double with each passing second, yelled at us. All the doors of the car were open. The rug, under which the mysterious man of the plaster had hidden, was gone, and so was he. It was the only bright spot in our last disaster. We no longer had to explain him, at least. I felt I wanted to laugh about that, but didn’t dare. People might think I was laughing at them. Someone struck me in the face. I slipped sideways and cut my shoeless foot on a sharp stone. John cursed in English, and I could just hear him above the din. The soldiers were doing all they could for us, but they were hopelessly outnumbered by the mob. Step by step we were half dragged, half pushed, toward the Palace gate. It was only a short distance, but each inch was being fought for, hard. A woman in a red dress spat at us, a man kicked me deliberately on the shin. I couldn’t get my balance quick enough to kick back, and the soldiers were holding my arms. At last, our lungs almost bursting, we half fell through the gate, which was closed behind us amid furious shouts and threatening gestures from the crowd. I found myself on the calm side of the barrier, sitting in the middle of the roadway, too dazed for the moment to care. I closed my eyes in relief, but I wasn’t allowed to sit quietly. A soldier pulled at me, and made me go behind the wall, where I could not be seen from the street. There was a stone coping there and I sat on it. John, battered and grimy, and making a wry face over his arm, but with his eyes shining with excitement, grinned at me delightedly.

“I see now,” he announced to any who cared to listen, which was me, “why war was a noble career in the days when it was fought like that. There’s some point in being allowed by the rules to kick a man and know it was a good job.”

“You’re a disreputable looking savage,” I told him.

“And a bit of a wreck, yourself,” he chortled at me. “I hand it to these soldiers. They’re a swell bunch of guys.”

The swell bunch of guys began wrapping a stout rope around his good arm, tying it effectually to his body. I protested violently, but the only attention they paid to me was to tie my wrists. They were all talking so hard that no one would answer a question or speak to us at all. I stopped trying to do anything more, and just leaned back against the wall, too exhausted to worry even in the face of our latest capture.

“We should have stayed,” John said to me, “at Visichich Manor. That Countess is a damned nice girl. I wish she were here now, she’d get us out of this mess.”

“While we are wishing,” I said, “we might as well wish a little higher. I wish the Black Ghost were here.”

“Which one?” John asked, grinning.

“Oh,” I said. “Were there two, do you think?”

“I know it,” John said. “And what is more, I think I know who the second one is.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Not here,” he said. “I’ll tell you as soon as we are alone.”

“Well,” I said, “both men’s manners were charming, and his—or their—prison is well appointed. It would be rather acceptable after this last scrap. I’m tired.”

“Yes,” John agreed. “Especially as we have no guarantee that the Herrovosca jail won’t be ratty. Joke on you, though. Afraid to stay in a town where there might be a riot, and then get into mess after mess. And don’t forget we’re wrong all the way around now. There isn’t a faction here that hasn’t at least one count against us. We’re messengers to the Queen, but we brought a regicide to town. We promised to be friendly toward the Black Ghost, but didn’t deliver the prophet to the gendarmes. We are friends of Helena’s, but she has disappeared, and we were about the last people to see her so far as anyone can prove. The Visichiches were nice to us, but we stole their car and took off their prisoner. We’re Americans, but we haven’t any good excuse for not having our passports, and, anyway, I rather think they thought you threw that bomb. Probably I was the only person who saw what you did. And a lot of good my testimony will be.”

“What do we do next?” I asked.

“Whatever offers,” John said, confidently.

From outside came the sound of motor cars. Our captors opened the gate, and more soldiers came through. Two grasped my arms tightly, two more grasped John, more formed a lane, and they started leading us toward the square again.

We had been actually inside the Palace wall, and now we were going out again, without having seen the Queen. I groaned, but we could not start a war with the whole Alarian army.

They got us out to the sidewalk. The mob had not diminished in size, but it was subdued by the new soldiers. Our appearance was the signal for redoubled shoutings, and the line of guards was jostled so hard that we were delayed on our way to the large black car—a proper Black Maria—drawn up at the curb, its black yawning interior waiting for us.

“Guess I might as well resign,” John said. “Being a queen’s messenger doesn’t seem to be my metier. Hereafter I suppose I’ll have to stick to painting. I’m afraid I’m better at it.”

The noise grew confusing. There were shouts in front of us, and shouts to both sides, and even, I thought, shouts behind us. The line of soldiers suddenly closed altogether, and instead of forcing us into the Black Maria, we were led back again inside the Palace gate, nor, this time, were we stopped there, but led up the incline toward the Palace itself.

“Going to take us out by a back gate and save trouble,” John said. “We tried saving trouble, but we learned better, didn’t we?”

We did not go up the great state stairs that led to the huge arched doorway, but to a small door under the staircase, along an almost dark corridor with a cold stone floor. We were inside the Palace at last, but not in the way we had expected to get there. I was too discouraged to care much what they did to us. John might be cheerful. Being wounded, the soldiers had protected him better than they had me, and he had both his shoes. My only immediate interest was in stepping as lightly as possible on my unshod foot, but I retained a faith that the future would sometime permit me to leave Alaria. Nobody ever loved any country less than I did that fantastic, mediæval kingdom at that moment. I did not even care that we had failed in our errand.

We reached a room with a soft carpet, for which my foot was grateful. It was a blue carpet, without figures, and never made in Alaria. Indeed, the color was so unexpected, underfoot in a country of bare stone floors or bright Oriental rugs that I summoned interest enough to look around me. White enamelled French furniture, upholstered in pink and blue striped silk, and on a mantel bright French porcelain vases with a clock to match. I reflected that Palace dungeons were more daintily furnished than any we had hitherto been lodged in.

A door was opened, and we were ushered through it, into a less formal room, where, at last, and when we least expected to see her, sat Queen Yolanda.

She was draped, like a Ziegfeld Niobe, in heavy black, and sat before a large and elaborately carved desk. Beside her, flushed with excitement, her eyes bright, but frightened, stood Maria Lalena. She nodded when she saw us, and said something I did not hear to Queen Yolanda. The soldiers stood very close to us so that we should not be able to make any attack upon their royal persons.

I was beyond being surprised, but it was somewhat unexpected. It was also the first time I had ever been ushered into the presence of two Queens, and I was not sure just what might be the proper ritual. John smiled ecstatically, bowed deeply, and said, “your Majesties.”

Both ladies returned the bow, formally. Yolanda spoke then. It was the first time I had heard her. Her voice was throatily vibrant. “Why do you bring these gentlemen here like criminals?” she demanded. “Have you so little regard for your Queen’s life that you arrest her saviors?”

The officer with us protested. “Your Majesty, this is the man who threw the bomb.”

Maria Lalena said, excitedly, “No, no, it isn’t. He threw something that made the bomb go wild. I saw it. I was looking straight at him.”

Queen Yolanda spoke again resonantly. “You should know your business better than that. Untie those ropes.” She turned to us. “We are very grateful, and we apologise for our soldiers’ mistake. They have been stupidly rough with you. Forgive them, they thought you assassins. We sent for you to thank you, and also because her Majesty tells me that you were in a dangerous situation at the gate. We acted as quickly as we could.”

“Please sit down, do,” Maria Lalena spoke quickly. “I am afraid you are hurt.”

Yolanda turned to look at her annoyedly. I was glad enough of the opportunity. I sat down, and shoved my stockinged foot under the chair. John sat beside me.

“We should apologise,” he said, “for our appearance. We would not willingly have presented ourselves before your Majesties in such a dishevelled state, but we were, as you know, given no choice. We were under the impression, in fact, that we were being taken to prison.”

Yolanda said “Yes, yes, to be sure,” very stiffly, while she stared at us crossly for having sat down. She could set her stage magnificently, she could play her part with conviction and authority amid insuperable difficulties, but she could not make her audience love her. It was amazing to me that she had been right often enough, and clever enough, to keep her place in spite of all the hatred she stirred up. They were so different, those two women facing us. The person who would take Yolanda’s place must have brains and experience, and Maria Lalena was so young and untried, though she was pretty and appealing. Her eyes were amazing. She was looking at John now as she had looked at a counter of pastries in Paris eight years ago. There was the same hopeful, wistful, long-lashed glance. Quite irresistible. She turned the same look on me, and then dropped her eyes. That was what she used to do about the pastries. Drop her eyes after one lingering, devastating glance, and the family bought them for her.

Yolanda was sitting in silence. She knew how to use the old stage tricks. In a second, from the vantage point of her high backed, red damask chair, she would graciously give us permission to retire.

I spoke before she should have an opportunity. “Your Majesty, we have brought you a message from the Countess Waldek.”

Maria Lalena answered, and jumped from her chair to do it. Even Yolanda sat up a little straighter.

“Oh,” Maria Lalena cried, “oh, where is she? Is she safe?”

Yolanda admonished her in a low voice, sibilant with annoyance. She sat down again.

“Yes,” I answered, “she is quite safe.”

“Give it to me,” commanded Yolanda, holding out her hand.

“It is a verbal message,” I answered. “We were to tell you that the Black Ghost wears a ruby ring.”

Maria Lalena stared at us in blank surprise. The message meant nothing to her. If it meant anything to Yolanda she hid it effectively. She said merely, “oh, yes, a code we had arranged. Thank you very much.”

“That’s all very well,” John answered, “but he does wear a ruby ring.”

“Oh,” Maria Lalena cried in surprise, “how do you know?”

Yolanda glared. “Do you happen to know where the Countess is at present?”

“When we last saw her,” I said, “she was a prisoner at the Black Ghost’s stronghold in the mountains.”

Maria Lalena gave a loud gasp.

“You saw her there?” asked Yolanda, interested at last.

“We were imprisoned in the next room to hers. We escaped, but were unfortunately not able to release her.”

“I see,” she said, slowly, and her voice lost its fine resonances, and became almost sharp. “You gentlemen will wish to refresh yourselves. You should probably also see a doctor, for I fear my overzealous guards have not been as careful of your well-being as I could wish. Meanwhile I have one small favor to ask of you. You brought to Herrovosca a man hidden in the back of your car. He came up to the Palace during the trouble at the gate. I wish that you should say nothing of this man to anyone. You will give me your word?”

“Certainly,” I said.

“And who,” Maria Lalena asked, her eyes turned wide and frightened toward her mother, “was the man they brought here? Was that who was locked in here with you when I came to tell you about these gentlemen?”

“That,” said Yolanda, drily, “is just what I do not wish discussed.”

“But surely I may know?” the girl persisted. I saw that her hands were trembling. She had had a bad fright with the bomb.

“You? Certainly.” Yolanda’s voice was honeyed. “The man is a monk who has left his monastery to bring me consolation in my sorrow.” But her voice sounded triumphant. A monk, and with manicured finger nails? The sleeve was a monk’s sleeve, but he had a mustache and not more than three days’ beard.

“A monk?” asked Maria Lalena, uneasily. “Then why not speak of his coming?”

“That,” Yolanda answered, firmly, “we can easily discuss later. These gentlemen are exhausted, and we must not keep them any longer. Some other time, perhaps.”

“There is still the matter of Countess Waldek,” John protested. “I should like to know that you will send a rescue expedition to her.”

Queen Yolanda answered coldly, “You can surely leave that to us, Countess Waldek is our affair.”

John took a long breath. “Not altogether, your Majesty. She is Mr. Carvin’s cousin, and that makes her partly our affair.”

Maria Lalena jumped up from her chair. “Oh,” she cried, “then you are—now isn’t that splendid? I see now, you came straight from the Black Ghost’s den.”

“No,” I said, “not quite. We were forcibly detained at Visichich Manor last night—”

“Visichich Manor?” Yolanda spoke almost crossly. “I thought you said you were prisoners in the Black Ghost’s mountain stronghold. Surely you don’t think that they are the same?”

“Oh, no,” John was gently explanatory. “We were held in both places.”

“In two days?”

“A day and a half.”

Maria Lalena laughed as though she were pleased. “Americans are like that,” she approved. “And I’m so excited to see you. I know who you are now. I knew you were coming, you see. I—”

Queen Yolanda interrupted her with a quick sentence in Alarian. She flushed, sat down again, and went on more hesitantly. “Now I feel as though I had some real friends here.”

Yolanda sat staring at her stonily. “You have many friends,” she said severely. “These gentlemen—”

But Maria Lalena had started, and was not to be stopped. Yolanda had pulled all the strings, but the puppet was dancing to her own tune. “Go on,” she said, leaning forward, “tell me all about what happened next.”

John cleared his throat, and then spoke carefully. “There was a very minor little excitement at Visichich Manor while we were talking to the Countess Katerina, and we had a chance to get into the garage, and stole a car. Afterward we found this monk in the tonneau under a rug. Ridiculous, wasn’t it?”

Yolanda said stiffly, “not at all.”

Maria Lalena shook her head, sadly. “I always did think those Visichiches were a funny lot,” she murmured. “Do they know much about this monk?”

“I haven’t the least idea,” said John, smoothly. “He can probably tell you more than we can.”

“He is not to be questioned,” Yolanda announced.

“Well,” Maria Lalena said. “Colonel Count Visichich is in the Palace. I saw him. I think we should send for him, my mother. Confront him with these gentlemen. Perhaps he wouldn’t be so mysterious then.”

Yolanda flushed a little, but she answered gently, “No, my dear, by no means. Later we will attend to all that. Now these gentlemen must be allowed to refresh themselves.” She leaned forward to press a button on her desk.

“Oh, do you want to go?” Maria Lalena asked us. “Wouldn’t you rather find out all about this now?”

A servant appeared, and Maria Lalena spoke quickly to him in Alarian. Yolanda glared, and her hands clenched angrily. The servant went out. We all waited in uncomfortable silence, until, very quickly, the Count Visichich came in. He was very dapper, very punctilious, and very ready for anything until he saw us. Then he looked startled. I decided that he had not yet heard of our escape. That was quite possible if he had left the manor in one of the first two cars. His mouth opened for a second, before he recovered his composure. He made deep bows to the two Queens, and to us, and then stood stock still with conscious poise.

The ladies acknowledged his salutation solemnly, Yolanda sitting back in her crimson chair, while Maria Lalena shivered in excitement. A wise, wise, woman and an over-eager frightened child. There was just the shadow of satisfaction on Count Visichich’s face as the girl spoke. He was ready enough for anything she might have to say. I felt sorry for her. She was frightened, but she didn’t yet know what a bad corner she was in, or that we were in it, too. We had delivered our message at last, and were probably worse off than ever. There wasn’t a chance that we would be allowed to leave the Palace without being re-arrested under any one of a half dozen possible charges. And neither of the two women who were supposed to be the rulers of the country would be able to help us. I tried hard to plan something, but my brain was a blank.

“Count Visichich,” said Maria Lalena, “I want to know a lot of things, if you please. The first of them is, what, exactly is the nature of the relationship between your family and Prince Conrad?” Yolanda shivered perceptibly.

Count Visichich answered suavely, surely, with just a touch of irony in his pleasant voice, “Prince Conrad is a member of the Royal Family, a cousin of your Majesty’s, and as such he ’as always found me a loyal subject, a friend, if I may be allowed the term.”

“And what,” she pursued, relentlessly, “is your relation, then, to the Black Ghost of the Pass?”

“We are good Catholics,” the Count answered, with the trace of a smile, “and as such we pray daily to the Saints, but ’ave no traffic with the restless ghosts of dead men, even though they may ’ave been ’eroes and patriots in life.”

Yolanda looked up as though she were amused. Maria Lalena spoke quickly, “I did not mean the ghost of a dead hero or patriot,” she answered, “but the masked man who plays the part of the Black Ghost. Who is he? Do you serve him or us?”

Count Visichich looked surprised. He did it excellently. “Is someone masquerading as the Black Ghost?” he asked.

“The Black Ghost imprisoned these gentlemen,” Maria Lalena was growing more and more nervous, “and when they escaped from him you imprisoned them at Visichich Manor. Why—”

“Ah,” Count Visichich looked as though he understood everything at last. “I think these gentlemen will tell you quite willingly that my son and I discovered them walking on the road that leads to our ’ome. It was late at night, and they ’ad only a mysterious story to tell about a car that they ’ad abandoned somewhere be’ind us. There was no car be’ind us because we ’ad just come over that road, and must ’ave seen it. We took the very natural precaution of insisting that they accept our hospitality for the night. We gave them every comfort and treated them as guests. They will surely acknowledge this.”

“Oh, quite,” John said. “You were delightful. We did not deserve nearly such charming entertainment as we received, and we were almost as disreputable looking tramps as we are now.”

“Then why did you run away?” Maria Lalena asked.

“Because we wished to tell her Majesty, Queen Yolanda, what had happened to the Countess von Waldek,” John said, smoothly.

“You mean,” Marie Lalena said, “to tell her that the Black—”

“These gentlemen,” said Yolanda quickly, “should be allowed to—”

“Exactly,” I interrupted. “My friend—”

Count Visichich interrupted again. He was not going to let us leave before he had found out, if he could, what we had told Yolanda about the Black Ghost. And if he found out, something sudden would probably happen to us.

“These gentlemen,” he said, smiling, “would only seek out more adventures if they left here. I assure you they are most astoundingly avid for excitement. They cannot stay in one place for more than a few hours. That is the reason why they ran away from us, of course. Your Majesty cannot, surely, be in doubt as to the fidelity of our family. For ’undreds of years we ’ave been loyal to the Crown. We wish only the long and successful continuance of the dynasty, and peace to the country. Prince Conrad is of one mind with us. He, also, is bending every effort to avert any possible trouble. He telephoned to me personally this morning when there was a riot in Pranga, and I went there. I advised him to stay ’ere, as it is the most important city. My son and I went to Pranga, and quieted the disturbance there. We were brought word that there ’ad been the beginning of a riot in Vorgo also, but that it ’ad been stopped. I left my son in Pranga, and came on ’ere to be ready to help in case of any disturbance. I am ’ere to obey any orders your Majesties may care to give.”

Yolanda sat still silent in her high red chair. She had a fine poker face. Maria Lalena looked relieved. I had an idea at last. I whispered to John out of one side of my mouth, “If you would faint we could get out of here—best way.”

He did not turn his head to whisper back, “Faint yourself, if you want to. I’m staying.”

I knew we ought to get out, but I didn’t want to, either. My nose for news would have made going hard, if I may be allowed so high sounding a term for ordinary curiosity.

Count Visichich was speaking slowly again, watching Maria Lalena. “You said something about the Black Ghost a few moments ago—per’aps I can clear up something for you if you will tell me what it is?”

“Nothing, nothing at all,” Yolanda said, icily. “Her Majesty is very tired. She has had a great shock. She should rest. Come, my dear.”

“No,” Maria Lalena said, nervously, “I don’t want to rest.”

Count Visichich said thoughtfully, “I was talking to Prince Conrad when you so kindly sent for me. Perhaps Your Majesty would wish to allow ’im to explain any matter that may be troubling you?”

“Yes,” Maria Lalena agreed, a little doubtfully. Yolanda looked resigned. She touched the bell again. If she had been French or American she would have shrugged her shoulders. The same servant appeared to receive the order. Maria Lalena spoke to him first, and then Yolanda beckoned him to her, and gave him a further whispered instruction. He presently returned to usher in Prince Conrad, who bowed almost reverently to the two Queens, his tall figure quite graceful, his face serious but a little quizzical, his eyes very black under straight brows. We rose formally. I balanced uncomfortably on my one shoe. Yolanda bowed, and motioned him to another high-backed red damask chair, like that on which she throned herself. Then she nodded to Count Visichich and to us, and we all sat down again, neatly and a little absurdly, like a row of dolls in a toy shop. If we were going to have exposures that might shake dynasties we were to have them, at least, with the most polite formalities.

“This is a very important conference,” Maria Lalena said in words. The tone of her voice said, “I wish I were a long way out of all this, and had someone’s shoulder to cry on, but I’ve got to do something. Anything is better than just letting things drift.”

“So I judged,” said Prince Conrad, looking at us, pointedly.

“These gentlemen,” Maria Lalena continued, “are a cousin of—of Countess von Waldek’s and a friend of his. They know a great many things.”

“They are lucky to know,” he answered, gently. “There are so many things that I only suspect.”

She flushed, and looked quite miserable for a moment, but his smile was amused, candid, tolerant, absolutely without rancor; she took a little courage from it, and went on, “something should be done. The Black Ghost and his band imprisoned these gentlemen, and are now holding my very dear—my very dear Countess von Waldek up in the mountains in a castle, or whatever it is. I beg you, dear Prince, to organise a rescue expedition to put an end to his disgraceful banditry.”

Prince Conrad looked at her and then at us, and then slowly took from his pocket a jewelled gold cigarette case, and with a movement that asked permission of the ladies without words, he selected a cigarette with his left hand, then closed the case, and put it back in his pocket, holding the cigarette ready to light. On the hand that held it blazed a ruby ring. A ring fit for a king, large enough for a king in a play.