It was a moment of crisis. Things had reached a head, and in a minute unless something was done there would be a hideous massacre.
With upraised hands Karl plunged boldly forward and addressed the crowd. He spoke, but no word was audible. A deafening chorus of jeers and curses stifled his utterance. Pale, leonine, unflinching, he faced the rabid throng. Then suddenly Trafford and Father Bernhardt descended from the sleigh. Between them, and with the help of Doctor Matti, they dragged the Iron Maiden out on to the snow of the courtyard. The Princess bent forward in an agony of entreaty, but the ex-priest silenced her with a word. Then quick as thought Trafford seized the isolated monarch, pushed him inside the Eisenmädchen, and with an apparently great effort shut the doors slowly on his victim. The horror took the crowd by surprise. They had come lusting for blood but not for torture. A low intake of the breath made simultaneously by a hundred throats gave a vast sibilant sound. Men looked at each other in frozen horror. A woman burst into high hysterical laughter. Then with a sudden impulse born of guilty remorse, the huge concourse began to slink away from the scene. At first by twos and threes, then by tens and twenties, then in one universal struggling rush. In a few minutes the only occupants of the courtyard were the royal party, the guard—and the Iron Maiden.
"Close the gates, please, Traun-Nelidoff," ordered Saunders.
Mechanically the officer did as he was bid. General Meyer was looking at his boots with a vacant stare. Beads of perspiration were standing on his brow. Von Bilderbaum was rubbing snow in an absent-minded way on his wife's face, the lady having swooned in his arms.
"You let him do it—you let him do it," muttered Mrs. Saunders reproachfully to her husband.
"Yes, I let him do it," he answered. "It was Trafford's own idea, and shows how near genius lies to madness. You see, there were no spikes in the Iron Maiden; they were all in Trafford's overcoat pocket."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"CAPTAIN" TRAFFORD
In his room in the Hôtel Concordia, Nervy Trafford was standing before a long looking-glass, surveying his mirrored image with an ever-recurring smile. Two days had passed since the Strafeburg had fallen, two busy days in the nation's history, and this particular morning found him arrayed in the uniform of a Grimland Staff-Captain.
The dark green tunic with its fur trimming and black braiding suited his face and figure admirably. He twirled his moustaches, and disengaged his sword from between his legs, and his smile broadened to a laugh.