Yolanda did not move. She, of course, had known the identity of the
Black Ghost since we had given her Helena’s message. Maria Lalena sat
staring at the ring with eyes that seemed hypnotised. Her face was
white, but she gathered all her courage, and lifted her chin to look
squarely at him. Her voice trembled a little as she spoke, “Hail, Fakat
Zol, Guardian Spirit of Alaria,” she cried.
Prince Conrad looked at her, and lifted his eyebrows. Then he continued
deliberately lighting his cigarette, and turned to us. “So you are
actually ’ere!” he said, cheerfully. “Men after my own ’eart. If I were
the ruler of Alaria I should offer you posts that would tempt you to
stay ’ere. This country needs men who can do the impossible.”
“Not impossible at all,” John apologised. “Luck was with us.”
“That is always true when the impossible is accomplished,” the Prince
answered. “I am lucky, myself, and I like to surround myself with lucky
men. Luck is a state of mind, and a most useful one. Your Majesty, may I
recommend these very excellent and lucky men to your consideration? If
you ’ave a use for professional escapers—and we all may ’ave—there are
not many men alive who could escape from two arrests in two days.”
“At that,” John said, not too modestly, “it was really four, counting
the trouble at the Palace gate, and that at Vorgo.”
“You see?” Prince Conrad said to Maria Lalena. “What did I tell you? It
is stupendous.”
“Let us be serious,” she pleaded.
“Certainly,” agreed the Prince. “If you wish. I merely thought to save
us all embarrassment, for you will notice that when one is serious in a
situation like this, one becomes—dare I suggest such a thing?—just a
trifle ridiculous.”
Yolanda turned towards him disagreeably. “You always see situations so
clearly,” she said, “but before we worry about such small
considerations, I have a question to ask you. No doubt you will be glad
to tell, and I prefer to ask you rather than Count Visichich or any
other of your supporters. Who is the man the Visichiches found it
necessary to imprison in their manor?”
For the fraction of a second Prince Conrad lost his amused air of
authority. He stared at Yolanda in surprise. I could not tell whether he
was a little sorry for her or upset for himself. I knew then that the
man, whoever he might be, was no monk.
“’ow did you learn there was such a man?” he asked.
“Will you tell me who he is?” she repeated. I knew she must know who he
was, she would not have been so anxious not to talk about him if she had
been in any doubt. She was marking time, and making him uncomfortable
while she did it.
“I prefer not,” he replied gently.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I merely wanted to make sure,” she said,
“whether, as I supposed, you were a party to his imprisonment. I now
know you were.” She was smiling; for the first time since I had seen
her, showing some human feeling. I heard a footstep in the corridor. A
note of triumph came into her voice. “You are right not to answer, our
Cousin Conrad,” she said, theatrically. “That was a question whose
answer will be most embarrassing to you. No man can be both Prince and
bandit forever.”
“Quite true,” Conrad agreed, affably. “The time must come when he will
take his rightful place.”
The door opened again, and the servant appeared for an instant to bow
low before a monk in a brown habit, with the very unmonklike face we had
seen through the ceiling at Visichich manor. The only change was that
now he was shaved. Yolanda rose, the other men rose. We followed suit,
perforce. Only Maria Lalena remained seated, staring at him as though
she were looking at a ghost.
Yolanda’s rich voice almost intoned, “Bela, my son that was dead, is
alive again. Bela the King has returned to his throne.” She moved half
across the room, giving up her high-backed crimson chair to him. He took
it without a glance at her.
“Very good,” he said. “Just the people I wished most to see, and all
together, waiting for me. Perhaps, my very hated Cousin Conrad, you will
put out your cigarette, since the King has not given you permission to
smoke in his presence?”
With a graceful gesture Conrad dropped the offending luxury into a tray
on the desk, and bowed, ceremoniously. Bela swaggered in his sarcasm
like an angry schoolboy. If he could have spit fire he would have been
pleased to do it, I am sure.
“I was never amused by affairs of state,” he went on, his small boy’s
fury mounting, minute by minute, “so we will not spend too much of my
time on the matters before us. It would seem that several people wish to
rule this small and undesirable portion of Europe. Some of you I have
even seen wax quite sentimental over the place. I think it fit for
breeding pigs, and it has certainly been used extensively for the
purpose.” He stopped a moment to show his fangs while we had time to
digest his stupid venom. “I have had three days away from my mother
lately, for the first time in eight years, and I really enjoyed them.
Also, I did some thinking.”
“Also for the first time in eight years?” Conrad asked in a mild voice.
“Silence!” Bela ordered angrily. “I have come to a decision. Probably
you will all be astonished. I am only sorry that I must please you in
this. I can think of no way out of that. According to the constitution
of Alaria I am, with a few restrictions, the absolute ruler of this
country. I can do everything except imprison men without a fair trial in
due course of law. My subjects have relegated that privilege to
themselves. They do not even limit themselves to ordinary people who
would not be missed. They imprison their King. If it had not been that
they are careless, and that Americans are thoughtless meddlers, I should
still be languishing in a tower room with a splendid view of the
particular mountain where the Black Ghost has his eyrie. I could see the
heliograph signals he sent to my very disloyal subjects, the
Visichiches.”
“Your Majesty,” Count Visichich bowed, apologetically, “the disloyalty I
readily admit, but if the eyrie of the Black Ghost were on the mountain
to which you refer we should have lodged Your Majesty somewhere with a
less extensive view. The mountain to which you refer is merely a
convenient point from which the signals are relayed to a few of his many
strongholds.”
And I had wasted an hour’s sleep drawing a picture of that peak.
“Indeed?” Bela shivered with temper, and slapped a book down on the desk
before him so hard that it bounced up again a full two inches. “These
children’s games,” he went on, “are of very little importance. I do not
even seek to punish you, since I am not permitted your license, and I
have no stomach for the slow law. If I could see a way to clap you all
into tower rooms and dungeons, I would leave you to rot there. My
ancestors devised excellent and most suitable tortures for disloyal
subjects. I should enjoy reviving them but I have more important things
to occupy me. I have made two momentous decisions. Momentous for Alaria.
The first concerns my too competent and intriguing mother, the most
ubiquitous Queen in Europe. Just what part she played in my imprisonment
I do not know. I was trying to make her tell me when this girl,” he made
a motion toward Maria Lalena, “started such a hullaballoo outside this
door that I retired until the matter should have been attended to.
Something about a bomb and a riot at the gate. My suspicion remains
unsatisfactorily denied. It does not matter. She was, in any case, far
too ready with a substitute for me.” He turned to Yolanda insolently.
“You,” he said. “While I thought you devoted to me, I could forgive your
assumption of power, but now that I know that your devotion was only to
your own place in the world I do not forgive you anything. While I can
still issue commands you will leave Alaria, never to return. Go now. I
have ordered a car and four soldiers to accompany you. Your maids can
follow with your personal belongings. You are to leave immediately.” He
banged hard at the bell on the desk. When the servant answered he spit
two words at him, and an officer appeared. Yolanda was staring at him
unbelievingly, but his large wet mouth was curled back in so ugly a
snarl that she read the answer to any plea she might make without
further words.
“The devil take you!” she cried, letting her anger mar her carefully
built-up theatricalism. “I hope you fail as ignominiously as you would
have done many times during the last eight years if I had not guided and
protected you. I provided against all contingencies, not your death
alone. I foresaw this also, and provided against it with good American
government bonds. Quite a lot of them. I shall live very comfortably in
Switzerland or England or anywhere else that shall please me, and I hope
you all may have as bad luck as my ungrateful son will surely bring upon
himself.”
She swept out of the room without any other farewell, her long crepe
veil brushing against the son for whom she had donned it a little
prematurely.
Bela laughed as the door closed. Then he turned back to Prince Conrad.
“Now I shall really surprise you,” he said. “I have decided to do what I
have always wished, and what now seems to have become a necessity if I
am to have any pleasure at all. I have decided to abdicate. You will be
so glad of that that you will pay me four million francs a year for the
rest of my life.”
Four million francs—about a hundred and sixty thousand dollars. A
generous income, but not really an exorbitant price to pay for the
peaceful removal of this dangerously petulant and vindictive young man.
“Four million francs.” Conrad was evidently considering the bargain
seriously.
“Four million francs,” Maria Lalena gasped, “why that would build the
new hospital—”
“Be quiet,” Bela snarled at her. “I have named my terms. The alternative
is that I stay and throw the lot of you into prison on charges of
conspiracy and treason, of which you are most certainly guilty. You
might not be convicted, but there would inevitably be civil war. This
way I agree to remain dead to Alaria.”
“Oh, we accept your terms without question,” Conrad said, calmly.
“Good,” Bela cried. “Then I leave you now to struggle with this mare’s
nest as best you may. I hope you get into a lot of trouble, but that you
remain in power, since, if you do not, my allowance will cease, and I
have made no provision for the future as my mother did. If I had known
that, I should not have been so firm with her.”
“In the matter of offence,” Conrad said drily, “it may be more
profitable to receive than to give.”
Bela shrugged his shoulders. “Nevertheless I enjoyed sending her away,”
he said, “and if it may have been costly, a King’s enjoyment should not
be niggardly. And you will be prompt in your payments to me, for if you
should not be you will know that I will come alive again, and gladly see
you all torn apart by the populace.” He pushed back the high throne
chair roughly, and walked to the door where he stopped to deliver a last
thrust.
“I leave you that girl for a legacy,” he announced, “and I hope you
never discover whether she is the Princess or not.” He slammed the door
and was gone.
After a moment Maria Lalena spoke. “You will discover immediately that I
am not,” she said in a small, tired voice. “I tell you so. My mother
rushed me into this and gave me no time to think. It was something she
and Queen Yolanda devised. I believed the whole thing until I had time
to think, then I knew I could not be the Princess, since I remembered my
life at Waldek before she was killed.”
“Still,” Conrad interrupted, “I ’ave publicly proclaimed you Maria
Lalena and Queen of Alaria. If I now declare I made a mistake—it is
awkward.”
“Very,” she agreed. “I throw myself contritely on your mercy, and beg
that since you have committed sins yourself, posing as the Black Ghost,
and imprisoning King Bela, you will pardon and help me.” She turned on
him her melting glance, but this time it did not remind me of Parisian
pastry. It was sweet, but honest.
“I will most certainly pardon and ’elp you,” he promised, going over to
her. “But the sins you ’ave named will always be my greatest pride. They
’ave saved my country from revolution. Shall I explain? It might be as
well, I think. We are all friends ’ere and even Count Visichich is
ignorant of a few things that ’ave taken place. Not that I keep anything
from ’im, but that there was no time for explanations.
“First, I will state that I am the only man in Alaria who can see the
country through this storm. You ’ave discovered that I ’ave been the
Black Ghost. That was my idea, but the part ’as been played by all of
us, even by the Countess Katerina Visichich.”
John interrupted to say, “yes, but I recognised her in Vorgo. It should
be done by a man.”
“Ah?” said Conrad. “You are the first who ’as done that.” He continued,
“After the accession of Bela I saw that something must be done. I
considered the possibilities and decided that the legend of the Black
Ghost was the only one that offered a sure way to the loyalties of the
people. There ’ave always been communities of semi-bandits in the
mountains. When they were attacked they simply separated and ’id until
their attackers tired themselves out. They burned charcoal part of the
time, and were a continual but rather petty annoyance to travellers
through the Pass, and to neighboring villages. It is because of them
that Visichich manor is so well fortified. Like most mountaineers they
were backward, illiterate, fierce in loyalties and ’ates, and very
superstitious. I donned the dress of Fakat Zol, and went among them with
more money than they ’ad seen in a ’undred years, and won them easily. I
drilled them, gave them medical care, repaired their fortresses, and
made them the nucleus of a real power. That power must continue. It is
the greatest and most loyal force we ’ave.” He paused. “I am talking a
great deal,” he apologised with a smile, “I beg your pardon. I confess I
am a little proud of my secret soldiery.”
He paused again, and then went on. “You will wish to understand about
Bela’s imprisonment. It was necessary to remove Bela. I could not quite
bring myself to murder ’im, though since he ’ad tried three times to
murder me, it would ’ave been justified. I am not afraid to kill men for
revenge, or for another’s benefit, per’aps, but I am too much a Royalist
to kill my King that I might mount ’is throne myself. To imprison ’im
for my own safety and the peace of Alaria was a different matter. With
Count Visichich I arranged the coup very elaborately. ’e would appear to
’ave been thrown down a precipice, and the body at the bottom would be
found dressed in ’is clothes, complete, but the face too crushed for
recognition. The friends with whom ’e ’unted that day would ’ave
separated from ’im all but two, and those two were badly in debt. They
are now in Switzerland, and receive an allowance from me so they will be
silent. Bela was to stay quietly in Visichich Manor until ’is beard grew
long enough so that with ’is mustache cut shorter and a tonsure ’e would
not be easily recognised. Then I should ’ave ’im taken to one of the
mountain castles, where ’e would be surrounded by as many books and
wines and phonographs as ’e wished. We would say ’e was a mad monk, and
that would explain all he said. It was a perfect plan, but I fear that
my friends and I are not good jailors. We lack experience. You
gentlemen,” he smiled at us amusedly, “would probably ’ave shown a
natural aptitude for such a problem. I wish I ’ad known you in time. May
I inquire whether your facility in escaping is the result of much
experience or are you untrained geniuses?”
“I fear we must immodestly claim genius,” John admitted.
“’owever,” Prince Conrad considered, still smiling, “you are Americans,
and I ’ave been informed that lawbreaking and the related arts enjoy a
great vogue in that remarkable country.”
John grinned back at him. “Yes,” he admitted, “we have an innate love of
swashbuckling for which our more conventional forms of endeavor offer no
outlet.”
Prince Conrad laughed good-naturedly. “Touché,” he said. “With your
permission I will proceed with my story. Our cousin, the ex-Queen
Yolanda,” he fondled the _ex_ lovingly, “is a determined and clever
woman. She summoned me to the Palace, but only some hours after the news
of Bela’s supposed death reached ’er. In the meantime she ’ad driven
through the city as was her ’abit, and telephoned to ’er friend Countess
von Waldek to send this young lady speeding across the country. When I
arrived, very quickly, as you can imagine, on the ’eels of her message
to me, she brought forward the little Princess Maria Lalena, whom I ’ad
seen dead with my own eyes eight years before. The country was seriously
divided into factions, and the Royal Family remained in power only
because no one had disturbed the _status quo_. If we made a misstep that
would ’ave been a bad moment. She ’ad me, and she knew it. If I ’ad
refused to present Maria Lalena to a wondering people, she would ’ave
done it ’erself. I agreed to sponsor ’er, not because I believed ’er a
Princess; but because I knew that if I did not, Queen Yolanda would
raise such a storm as our poor government would never be able to
weather, even with the ’elp of my loyal small army from the mountains,
and all my ’ocus-pocus. Speed was essential. The crown must be offered
to someone, so its proper heir offered it to a usurper.”
Maria Lalena seemed to be on the verge of tears. She raised her wide
eyes to Conrad, “I am so helpless,” she pleaded, “I never wanted to do
it, and now you are the only person who can help me.”
“I ’ave thought of a way,” he said, quite gently, in a tone he had not
used before. “It is a little drastic, but will at once restore me to my
throne, and resolve all these difficulties, yours, and ours.”
She seemed surprised for a moment until she realised what he meant, and
then she blushed, and there were tears in her eyes. “Oh, Prince Conrad!”
she said, managing to look like something off the top of a wedding cake,
bright and pretty and very, very delicate and sweet. She lacked all the
magnificence of Countess Katerina. She would probably be the perfect
wife for Conrad, he could swash enough for any family, even a Royal one.
Her eyes were acclaiming him marvelous, and there was no doubt that she
meant it. Her cheeks were winsomely pink, her hands clasped ecstatically
at her throat. I felt rather proud to have a Queen for a cousin, and
such a pretty one. Conrad was smiling down at her in pleased surprise.
He had suggested a cool affair of state and found a worshipper. He was
flattered. He took her hands in his and kissed them both formally, but
with a look which promised less formality later.
“For the moment,” he said, very gently, “I must give my attention to
these dull affairs, with your permission.”
“Of course,” she said softly. “Affairs of state must always come first
to a King.”
I had felt a little cynical for the first moment or two, remembering the
pastries. But why should I be? Conrad was a handsome man, a romantically
ill-treated Prince, a forceful person, an idol for any young girl. And
she was a pretty, sweet little thing. Any man would think that.
Appealingly pathetic and gentle. Her adoration would be agreeable even
to a Prince.
Conrad turned to us, and his manner had become a little hurried. The
time had come to get us out of the way.
“There are several things to be said to you,” he announced. “But for the
moment I will be quick. First, I must apologise. We ’ave been most
unkind to you. I was not merely making conversation when I suggested
earlier that you be offered posts in Alaria. You are lucky men, and we
need luck ’ere. If we can find something interesting for you to do will
you consider the offer to stay?”
“Not I, though I am very grateful to you for thinking of it,” I said. “I
am for the quiet life as soon as I can find another shoe.”
“To be sure,” he answered. “As you wish. You will always be welcome
’ere, but I understand your feeling. I fear you ’ave not tasted the
pleasures of Alaria.”
“Oh,” John protested. “Really, now! I’ve never had a better time in my
life.” He was grinning like a naughty boy who expects to be reproved.
“I’d like to stay. There is a job here I should like to have, and I
happen to know it is open.”
“Good,” Conrad said, smiling at his enthusiasm. “And what is your
choice?”
John answered quickly, “I should like to be the Black Ghost.”
Prince Conrad laughed at that, appreciatively. “Ah,” he said, “but
unfortunately you ’ave been misinformed. That post is not open.”
“Neither,” John said pointedly, “is the throne of Alaria.”
Conrad laughed again. “Under similar circumstances, I wish you all
success—” he said, and would have said more except that John broke into
his speech.
“Good-bye to your Majesties,” he cried, and started for the door,
dragging me with him. We were through it before I caught my breath.
“You’ll tear my sleeve off,” I protested. “Don’t slam that door, this is
a palace. What’s the matter, anyway? Where are you going?”
“You don’t know where we’re going?” John laughed. “I can’t drive a car
with this arm.” He was piloting me down long corridors and back and
forth among servants and guards who stared but did not interfere. “We’re
going to Katerina, of course, and you have to do the driving. Come
along.”
“Her father was right there,” I said, “and you ran off without saying
good-bye to him.”
“If I’m successful,” he grinned, “I’ll have plenty of time to talk to
him, and if I’m not it doesn’t matter. Anyway, it would have been lèse
majesté to stay there any longer. Even you should have seen that.” We
rushed down more corridors, and then, just outside, we found the car
standing in a row of others. John greeted it with a low whoop of
triumph.
“Step into it, old man, and step on it,” he urged. “Let’s get there
before it’s too late to make a call on a lady.”
And so, for the third time in three days we drove rather wildly over the
road between Herrovosca and the Pass. I recognised as we saw them again,
a hundred unconsidered landmarks, a house of a deep pink, with
white-flowering vines growing over it, a pair of light bay horses in a
field, twin poplars beside a brook, long strings of mushrooms and
garlics hanging at the windows of the peasants’ cottages, and always,
across the wide, fertile valley, the towering, dark jagged mountains of
the frontier, rocky, barren on their upper surfaces, orange where the
sun fell on them.
“Don’t drive like the tortoise,” John urged. “I’ve always wanted to
swashbuckle, and now is my chance. Step on it.”
I stepped, and the little familiar landmarks hurtled by. We thundered
around corners, and past crossroads, and the Providence that keeps watch
over fools and lovers protected us, so that presently we saw the customs
house, and turned off to the right, down the long, rutty road that leads
to Visichich manor.
“It’s only this morning we left here,” I reminisced. The road was worse
than I remembered, but it wasn’t stopping us much.
“Honk the horn,” John ordered. “I think it is just over that hill.”
I honked the horn, loud and long, and as I came in sight of the manor
wall, the gate opened to us.
“That’s an omen,” I said, and drove under the arch, and up to the door
of the old house. I was pretty much excited myself, anticipating a warm
welcome and all the little pleasant attentions I had missed the last
three days.
It was a very old and beautiful stone doorway, and the carving of the
oak door was worn with long use. It opened to us as we approached, and
there stood Katerina on the threshold, in her green velvet gown, smiling
ecstatically, her hair shining against the light like an aureole, her
eyes bright with pleasure.
“I rub my magic lamp and you appear,” said John.
“They signalled to me from the customs house,” she answered. “I knew you
must be coming here. Did you forget something?”
He jumped out of the car, and caught her hand. “Never,” he promised. “I
couldn’t do that.”
Her voice trembled happily as she answered, “do you know, I rather
thought you would come?”
“You asked me in Vorgo,” he smiled. “You said the affairs of this
country might become mine if I chose. I have chosen. That’s why I went
away from here, and why I came back.”
“The best of reasons,” she answered, teasingly, “patriotism! But are you
always so sudden in your entrances and your exits?”
“I’m too entranced ever to make another exit,” he said, and together
they went into the old house.
I muttered something about putting the car in the garage, but there was
no one to pay any attention to me, so I stayed where I was.