Truxton King: A Story of Graustark

by George Barr McCutcheon

It was true love for both of them. The young prince pledged himself to marry her, despite all opposition; he was ready to give up his noble inheritance for the sake of love. But there were other forces greater than a young man's love at work. The all-powerful ruler of an Empire learned of this proposed mesalliance and was horrified. Two weeks afterward the prince was called. The will of the Crown was made known to him and—he obeyed. Olga Platanova was cast aside but not forgotten. He became the husband of an unloved, scrawny lady of diadems. When the situation became more than he could bear he blew out his brains.

When Olga heard the news of his death she was not stricken by grief. She cried out her joy to a now cloudless sky, for he had justified the great love that had been theirs and would be theirs to the end of time.

From a passive believer in the doctrines of her father and his circle she became at once their most impassioned exponent. Over night she changed from a gentle-hearted girl into a woman whose breast flamed with a lust for vengeance against a class from which death alone could free her lover. She threw herself, heart and soul, into the deliberations and transactions of the great red circle: her father understood and yet was amazed.

Then he was put to death by the class she had come to hate. One more stone in the sepulchre of her tender, girlish ideals. When the time came she travelled to Graustark in response to the call of the Committee of Ten; she came prepared to kill the creature she would be asked to kill. And yet down in her heart she was sore afraid.

She was there, not to kill a man grown old in wrongs to her people, but to destroy the life of a gentle, innocent boy of seven!

There were times when her heart shrank from the unholy deed she had been selected to perform; she even prayed that death might come to her before the hour in which she was to do this execrable thing in behalf of the humanity she served. But there was never a thought of receding from the bloody task set down for her—a task so morbid, so horrid that even the most vicious of men gloated in the satisfaction that they had not been chosen in her place. Weeks before she came to Graustark Olga Platanova had been chosen by lot to be the one to do this diabolical murder. She did not flinch, but came resolute and ready. Even the men in the Committee of Ten looked upon the slender, dark-eyed girl with an awe that could not be conquered. She had not the manner of an assassin, and yet they knew that she would not draw back; she was as soft and as sweet as the Madonnas they secretly worshipped, and yet her heart was steeled to a purpose that appalled the fiercest of them.

On a Saturday night, following the last visit of Truxton King to the armourer, the Committee of Ten met in the underground room to hear the latest word from one who could not be with them in person, but was always there in spirit—if they were to believe his most zealous utterances. The Iron Count Marlanx, professed hater of all that was rich and noble, was the power behind the Committee of Ten. The assassination of the little Prince and the overthrow of the royal family awaited his pleasure: he was the man who would give the word.

Not until he was ready could anything be done, for Marlanx had promised to put the Committee of Ten in control of this pioneer community when it came under the dominion of anarchists.

Alas, for the Committee of Ten! The wiliest fox in the history of the world was never so wily as the Iron Count. Some day they were to find out that he was using them to pull his choicest chestnuts from the fire.

The Committee was seated around the long table in the stifling, breathless room, the armourer at the head. Those who came by way of the sewer had performed ablutions in the queer toilet room that once had been a secret vault for the storing of feudal plunder. What air there was came from the narrow ventilator that burrowed its ways up to the shop of William Spantz, or through the chimney-hole in the ceiling. Olga Platanova sat far down the side, a moody, inscrutable expression in her dark eyes. She sat silent and oppressed through all the acrid, bitter discussions which carried the conclave far past the midnight hour. In her heart she knew that these men and women were already thinking of her as a regicide. It was settled—it was ordained. At Spantz's right lounged Peter Brutus, a lawyer—formerly secretary to the Iron Count and now his sole representative among these people. He was a dark-faced, snaky-eyed young man, with a mop of coarse black hair that hung ominously low over his high, receding forehead. This man was the chosen villain among all the henchmen who came at the beck and call of the Iron Count.