A Dash for a Throne

by Arthur W. Marchmont

I slipped to the window then, and, not being afraid of making a noise, I unfastened the shutters to find the catch of the window, and was in the act of undoing that when I heard steps approaching the door across the hall. In a moment I replaced the shutters, slipped back to my chair, and was yawning heavily when the door was opened and the officer came in.

"They report to me that you have been making some disturbance here," he said shortly. "I will, therefore, leave a man in the room with you."

I cursed the clumsiness of my ruse, which had thus frustrated the chance of my escape.

"I decline to submit to such an indignity, sir," I said angrily. "I will have no jailer here."

But my protest, like everything else with this wooden idiot, passed unheeded, and one of the men was told to stand by the door inside.

For a moment I was in despair. My first thought was to try and bribe him, but I abandoned the idea as readily, for I saw that if I failed he would report the attempt to the officer, and I should be in a worse plight than ever. Yet the thought that time was flying, and von Nauheim getting farther and farther away with Minna, while I was condemned to this helpless inactivity, was like hell to me. Then a last and desperate scheme suggested itself to me. The room was lighted by an oil lamp, and my thought was to try and extinguish it, and escape in the consequent confusion and darkness. I knew now that in a moment I could open the window.

Keeping up my character for eccentricity, I jumped to my feet so suddenly that the man started and grasped his weapon, and, declaring that I was cold—though the evening was stifling, and my rage made me as hot as a fever patient—I began to stamp up and down the room, taking care at first to keep well away from the window, lest he should suspect my object. Next I declared that the lamp smelt vilely, and I set it down near the stove, and opened the little door that the fumes might escape up the flue. My next step was to whip the cover off the table, and throw it around my shoulders.

The man kept his eyes steadily on me, obviously regarding me as more than half insane, but he made no attempt to interfere with me, and I continued my monotonous march backward and forward, backward and forward, until I noticed that his vigilant watch was gradually being relaxed. Then I altered my direction slightly, until each turn took me nearer and nearer to the window, and at last I prepared to make my effort.

"Turn that lamp down a bit, it stinks," I said, with a vigorous grimace of disgust, and, without in the least suspecting my intention, he went to do it.

For a moment his back was toward me, and at that instant I snatched the cloth from my shoulders and threw it with all my force at the lamp, enveloping both it and the man as he was bending over it to do as I had requested.