Unfortunately it did not; and the only good I got from it was a gag, which effectively put an end to my making sufficient noise to attract attention. Luck was against me, for only a few minutes after the gag had been applied some one rapped at the door. I tried hard to make some kind of appeal for assistance, but it was futile, and I had to sit there and listen to the knocking. Presently the person, whoever it was, gave up, and with a sinking heart I heard the sound of his footsteps dying away.
The man still sat facing me, with a beastly smile on his lips; no doubt he was overjoyed to see my struggles. Presently, however, he began to speak in a low voice hardly above a whisper; and somehow that added to the horror of my position.
"I am glad I stopped your mouth in time; it would have hurt me to have finished everything before you have realised things more fully. And if my time had been cut short by any interruption from outside, your Majesty would naturally never have known all that I intend telling you, all those details which will make your journey to Paradise so pleasant.
"Have you any preference as to where I should begin? Perhaps you would like to know who I am. Well, that is soon told; I am the son of the man you had murdered, you did not know that Ivan the King had a son, did you? He had, perhaps more than one, for he was rather given to promiscuous love affairs; but only one need worry you--I shall be quite sufficient.
"I know how my father died, Prince Alexis told me; I know he was always a liar, but he told the truth about this. When I heard, I swore that you should pay for it. Since then your debt has been mounting up, for I was left destitute, and think how long that was ago, and imagine my misery all those years, having to do any manual labour that I could obtain, in order to keep from starving. You have to pay for all that.
"The most difficult thing I ever had to do was to keep my face from portraying my delight when you walked in so sweetly this evening. I have been trying to get near you for years, and at last luck has been kind to me; nothing could have worked out so well if it had been planned. To begin with, that old fool Bjornston is out for the night, out of Karena even, and the other two assistants are after their lady-loves. It is hardly likely that the two fair Karenians will allow them to return, or at any rate until our little business is over."
He stood up and moved away behind my chair, so that I could not see what he was doing; but I heard him moving about. Then he came back again, in his hands a rope, and at the end of the rope a heavy mass of stone.
"Do you see this, your Majesty, can you guess what it is for?"
I looked at it, then at him, and raising my eyebrows turned my head aside, then quickly back again. God! how lucky that he was examining the knot in the rope, for had he been looking at me he must have noticed my nervous start, a movement that I could not control, for I could have sworn that I had seen a face at the window. I shook my head from side to side, and caught another glimpse of the window, but there was no face there, and my spirits, which had gone bounding up, dropped like a stone. So, then, there was really no hope for me, there was no way out, and I was doomed to die just when life was at its fullest, just when the greatest of all my hopes was to be fulfilled. I turned sick with despair at the thought of the effect my disappearance would have upon my wife. The man was talking again:
"It will serve a good purpose, and keep you down nicely."