Well, if it had to be, it must be. If he could not learn the secret, at least no one else should. Before morning it would be buried for ever under the waters of the Baltic, and he would revenge himself on the daughter for that which the father refused to do. If Franklin Marmion would not give him the sceptre of the World-Empire, then Nitocris should be his wife and Empress if she would, and if not, his slave and plaything, as he had sworn to Phadrig the Egyptian. The fortress-castle of Oscarburg, on the lonely wooded shore of Viborg Bay, had kept many a secret safely before now, and it would keep this one. Every retainer in the Castle, every man, woman, and child on the estates for leagues around, was his, body and soul, as their fathers before them had been the blind, unquestioning serfs of his fathers. There his word was law, and his will was fate. There was no "liberty" within his domains, since no man wanted it, or would have understood it had it been given to him.
When their argument was over they parted, apparently the best of friends. Franklin Marmion went to bed calmly curious as to what was going to happen, and Oscarovitch paid a visit to his captain.
A little after three that morning he opened the door of the Professor's state-room very gently and looked in. The room was dark, and he listened. A soft, just audible sound of breathing came from the bed. It was the breathing of a man fast asleep. He pressed the spring of his electric lamp, and turned the thin ray on to the water-bottle in the rack over the wash-stand. It was half-empty, and a glass stood on the table in the middle of the room. Then the ray fell on the face of the sleeping man. It was as Prince Zastrow's face had been the last night he went to sleep in the Castle of Trelitz—rather the face of a corpse than that of a living man. His captain stood behind him, and he turned and whispered:
"He is ready. Are the men below?"
"All, Highness, save Grovno at the wheel and Hartog on the look-out. They will see nothing, as they did before," came the whispered reply.
"Very well, then. You and I can manage this between us. You have the line?"
The captain nodded, and they went into the room, softly closing the door. In a few minutes they came out again, carrying between them a long bundle of blankets lashed from end to end with thin line. They took it aft along the alloway and out on to the lower deck by the stern. Two iron doors of a port used for coaling stood open on the starboard side. On the deck lay a couple of pigs of iron lashed together. These the captain made fast to one end of the bundle and lifted them towards the port. Oscarovitch took hold of the other end. They lifted it. The weights dropped outside the port, and the bundle followed them. The captain started up, clasped his hands to his forehead, and said in a gasping whisper:
"Holy God, Highness, what have we done?"
"What do you mean, Derevskin? You have obeyed my orders; that is all. Is it not enough for you?"
"Yes, Highness—but who or what was that man? Was he really a man?"