The trumpeter of Krakow

by Eric P. Kelly

Through the opened door of the tower room came suddenly the voice of Joseph, “You can sleep for the rest of the night, father,” he said. “I will sound the Heynal at every hour; the hourglass is plain to read and I shall make no error.”

“It was lucky to hit upon a night when they were together,” thought Peter. “We can bind the old one and make the young one show us the way to the prize.”

Joseph had just spread a manuscript before him on the table in the tower room and had moved a taper close to it to begin reading, when he heard a sudden noise just outside the door. Turning about sharply, he was just in time to see the door thrown violently open, and then three men rushed toward him before he could even assume a defensive attitude; he was absolutely powerless. One man held his arms as closely gripped as in a vise, while the two others leaped upon Pan Andrew as he rose, dazed with astonishment, from the little bed.

A fourth man stood in the doorway. His hands were at his hips and he laughed merrily. “Ho—ho—my merry singing birds,” he said. “We meet again high up above the noisy world where none can come to disturb us.” Then his brows darkened and he asked, “Do you know why I am here?”

Joseph shuddered. This man was the same that had met his father on the first day that he had seen Krakow—this was the man that had incited the crowd in the Rynek to stone his people—this was the voice that he had heard while he lay bound hand and foot in the small room of his lodgings. But at the same time he wondered what had brought the man back to the city. He had already obtained the prize, Joseph thought, after the risk and danger of the first trial. Was it, perhaps, that he wished to avenge himself upon his father for the incident of the cart?

Joseph made a motion as if to cross himself at thought of this, for here they were high up in the air above the city, and nothing would be easier than to hurl a man from the summit into the graveyard below and none would know of it until morning came and they found the lifeless victim.

Pan Andrew, however, looked at the intruder steadily. “No,” he said, very deliberately, “I do not know why you are here. But I do know you now, Peter of the Button Face, sometimes called Bogdan—it is strange that I did not recognize you that morning when you threatened me.”

Peter took notice in no way of Pan Andrew’s latter statement. He heard only the negative answer. Apparently he had not expected it.

“You do not? You lie! . . . Do you think that I do not know everything?” He pushed his way in and held the candle close to the prisoner’s face. “I say to you that I have come all this way to get what I want; I have the means for doing it, too, and I have men in this company that would rather see a dog like you dead than alive. Now come—if you value your skin. Where have you hidden the Great Tarnov Crystal?”

Joseph leaped with a thrill. This, then, was the prize that they had brought from the Ukraine—a crystal, the “Great Tarnov Crystal,” whose loss the father had not ceased to mourn. But, after all, was a crystal something that men valued so highly? If it were a diamond or a precious stone there might be some reason for so much covetousness, but a mere crystal—why, he himself knew caves in the Ukraine where one might knock rock crystals from the walls. But perhaps this had a certain significance.