Old Adelbert’s hands twitched. “He is but a child,” he said, “but already he knows his rank.”
“It will be wise for him to forget it.” His tone was ominous. Adelbert glanced up quickly, but the Terrorist had seen his error, and masked it with a grin. “Children forget easily,” he said, “and by this secret knowledge of yours, old comrade, all can be peacefully done. Until you brought it to me, we were, I confess, fearful that force would be necessary. To admit the rabble to the Palace would be dangerous. Mobs go mad at such moments. But now it may be effected with all decency and order.”
“And the plan?”
“I may tell you this.” The concierge shoved his plate away and bent over the table. “We have set the day as that of the Carnival. On that day all the people are on the streets. Processions are forbidden, but the usual costuming with their corps colors as pompons is allowed. Here and there will be one of us clad in red, a devil, wearing the colors of His Satanic Majesty. Those will be of our forces, leaders and speech-makers. When we secure the Crown Prince, he will be put into costume until he can be concealed. They will seek, if there be time, the Prince Ferdinand William Otto. Who will suspect a child, wearing some fantastic garb of the Carnival?”
“But the King?” inquired old Adelbert in a shaking voice. “How can you set a day, when the King may rally? I thought all hung on the King’s death.”
The concierge bent closer over the table. “Doctor Wiederman, the King’s physician, is one of us,” he whispered. “The King lives now only because of stimulants to the heart. His body is already dead. When the stimulants cease, he will die.”
Old Adelbert covered his eyes. He had gone too far to retreat now. Driven by brooding and trouble, he had allied himself with the powers of darkness.
The stain, he felt, was already on his forehead. But before him, like a picture on a screen, came the scene by which he had lived for so many years, the war hospital, the King by his bed, young then and a very king in looks, pinning on the breast of his muslin shirt the decoration for bravery.
He sat silent while the concierge cleared the table, and put the dishes in a pan for his niece to wash. And throughout the evening he said little. At something before midnight he and his host were to set out on a grave matter, nothing less than to visit the Committee of Ten, and impart the old soldier’s discovery. In the interval he sat waiting, and nursing his grievances to keep them warm.
Men came and went. From beneath the floor came, at intervals, a regular thudding which he had never heard before, and which he now learned was a press.