The queen had begun to listen before now; her eyes were fixed on Sapt, and she had stretched out one arm to him, as if imploring him to read her his riddle. But a few words had in truth declared his device plainly enough in all its simplicity. Rudolf Rassendyll was dead, his body burnt to a cinder, and the king was alive, whole, and on his throne in Strelsau. Thus had Sapt caught from James, the servant, the infection of his madness, and had fulfilled in action the strange imagination which the little man had unfolded to him in order to pass their idle hours at the lodge.
Suddenly Mr. Rassendyll spoke in clear, short tones.
“This is all a lie, Sapt,” said he, and his lips curled in contemptuous amusement.
“It’s no lie that the lodge is burnt, and the bodies in it, and that half a hundred of the peasants know it, and that no man could tell the body for the king’s. As for the rest, it is a lie. But I think the truth in it is enough to serve.”
The two men stood facing one another with defiant eyes. Rudolf had caught the meaning of the great and audacious trick which Sapt and his companion had played. It was impossible now to bring the king’s body to Strelsau; it seemed no less impossible to declare that the man burnt in the lodge was the king. Thus Sapt had forced Rudolf’s hand; he had been inspired by the same vision as we, and endowed with more unshrinking boldness. But when I saw how Rudolf looked at him, I did not know but that they would go from the queen’s presence set on a deadly quarrel. Mr. Rassendyll, however, mastered his temper.
“You’re all bent on having me a rascal,” he said coldly. “Fritz and Bernenstein here urge me; you, Sapt, try to force me. James, there, is in the plot, for all I know.”
“I suggested it, sir,” said James, not defiantly or with disrespect, but as if in simple dutiful obedience to his master’s implied question.
“As I thought—all of you! Well, I won’t be forced. I see now that there’s no way out of this affair, save one. That one I’ll follow.”
We none of us spoke, but waited till he should be pleased to continue.
“Of the queen’s letter I need say nothing and will say nothing,” he pursued. “But I will tell them that I’m not the king, but Rudolf Rassendyll, and that I played the king only in order to serve the queen and punish Rupert of Hentzau. That will serve, and it will cut this net of Sapt’s from about my limbs.”