THE ABDUCTION
The war riots continued in Serajoz with ever-increasing violence.
Following the unsatisfactory events of the morning, Fenton spent
several hours in Varden's automobile on a mission that took him to many
parts of the city.
Late in the afternoon he returned, to find his host in a state of great
perturbation.
"Things are certainly happening thick and fast," declared Varden. "The
other side are prepared to stop at nothing, Fenton. The princess has
been carried off!"
Fenton, too stunned for speech, listened with his mind in a turmoil,
while Varden proceeded with a hurried and disjointed explanation. A
note had just reached him from Anna Petrowa, containing the startling
information that an attempt at abduction would be made. Shortly after
two o'clock, on the instructions issued by her royal father, Olga had
set out for Kail Baleski in a carriage with the customary retinue for
travel. In the meantime the alert Anna had learned of a plan,
formulated in the Miridoff camp, to have the princess abducted on the
road and carried up to the hill country.
"But," protested Fenton in angry amazement, "what purpose can be
served? It seems just as senseless as it is incredible!"
"The purpose is not hard to find," replied Varden. "The princess will
serve as a hostage. Efforts will be made to force Prince Peter to
withdraw the pressure he is exerting on the King by threats of violence
to the princess.
"Miridoff, of course, will not appear in this," went on Varden. "It
will be made to appear on the surface that the abduction has been the
work of brigands. The princess will be carried up into the hill
country and not released until Peter has been brought to terms."
"But how do you know they have carried her off? It is one thing to
plan a daring coup of this kind, and another to accomplish it."
"As a matter of fact, Don, I don't suppose that they have actually got
their hands on her yet, but there is no reason to suppose that they
won't do so. Carriage travel is slow in this country, and Olga would
hardly have reached Kail Baleski yet. As that is practically the start
of the hill country they'll make the attempt thereabouts."
"Then it's not too late," said Fenton with a sense of partial relief.
"I'm going to borrow your machine. There's a chance that I can
overtake her in time."
In another minute Fenton was settled in the tonneau of the car, which
rolled through the streets of the Ironian capital with a speed that
increased as they neared the open country.
* * * * *
Ironia is a country of extremes. Unusual wealth rubs elbows with
abject poverty. Grand palaces line the Lodz in Serajoz, and in the
narrow streets close on either side human beings fight for a meagre
existence.
The same rule of contrast holds with reference to the Ironian
character. The peasantry are honest, hospitable, devout and ignorant.
The upper classes, the aristocracy, who control the mining and
industrial enterprises from which Ironian wealth emanates, are sharp,
clever and quite unscrupulous. Only in the few old families which had
managed to escape extinction in the Turkish wars does the innate
nobility of the peasant character, purified by education and
refinement, show itself. Peter was typical of the aristocratic
minority; Miridoff of the majority.
Fenton discovered to what a sharp degree the law of contrast was
carried in this picturesque country when the driver turned out of the
crowded streets of Serajoz and guided his car with a steadily
increasing hum along one of the wonderfully well preserved Roman roads
that run out in all directions from the capital city, like the fingers
of an out-stretched land. Back in Serajoz every evidence was to be
seen of advanced civilisation. In the country they soon passed out of
the area where their car was accepted as a matter of course. Fifteen
miles from the city their progress through the many villages that
dotted the road became marked by confusion and clatter, the peasants
staring in open-mouthed amazement at the spectacle of the fast-moving
car. It was quite apparent that the automobile was still an object of
almost superstitious wonder to these simple souls.
The excitement which attended their progress became more marked when
the driver turned off the main road and struck through a maze of
winding side-roads that circled along the foot-hills on a gradually
ascending grade. Crouched back in the swaying tonneau, a prey to fear
and worry, Fenton made frequent use of the only Ironian word that he
had learned before starting on this headlong pursuit, "Faster." The
driver, who reverenced the car with the same zeal that a Christian will
sometimes show in the study of an Oriental creed, obeyed with gleeful
alacrity. He had always wanted to know just how fast it could be made
to go, this devil-wagon with its intricate buttons and levers, the
secrets of which he had studied in the same spirit as he would have
approached the formulæ of a sorcerer. Having at last found a passenger
of the same frame of mind as himself, Jaleski leaned over the wheel
with a smile that brought his beaked nose down with a still more
pronouncedly owl-like suggestion, and the wheels fairly lifted off the
ground. The car skimmed along the curving highways; ascended steep
grades with a graceful ease of a powerful bird on the wing; dashed
through villages like a puffing, black Juggernaut; and spread a trail
of chattering, fear-stricken peasantry in its wake.
To Fenton the ecstatic Jaleski seemed like a genie crouched over the
edge of a magic carpet, guiding it with supernatural speed across an
earthly continent. He expected that every minute would be his last,
though he made no effort to stave off the impending doom.
But Jaleski proved an artist at the wheel. He brought the imagination
of the East to the manipulation of the levers and bars of the
materialistic West, and seemed to be able to coax extra speed from them
without relaxing his perfect control. He appeared to tell by instinct
just what lay beyond the next bramble-obscured turn in the road. He
had an extra sense for knowing when to turn out for unseen obstacles.
Fenton began to feel that a sorcerer was at the wheel.
They came in record time to the quaint little village of Kail Baleski,
which shelters itself at the very base of the foot-hills, and has not
changed in any detail for the last two hundred years. They found the
place in a state of wildest turmoil. Crowds of villagers stood in the
one street along which the village straggles with a vague suggestion of
child-built blocks. As Jaleski regretfully brought the car to a stop
they were surrounded by a mob who waved their arms and jabbered
incessantly. Jaleski picked the purport of it from the babel of talk,
and, turning a tragic face on his passenger, endeavoured to relate the
disturbing news.
After questioning him impatiently in imperfect German, Fenton gave up
the effort to establish intelligent communication, and climbed from the
car. He reproached himself bitterly for having started out on so
important a mission without bringing an interpreter along.
Finally, however, he perceived a possible means out of his dilemma.
Walking down the street toward them came the village priest, benevolent
and white-haired, in a worn cassock and rusty clerical hat that bespoke
either the poverty of the neighbourhood or the ascetic character of the
wearer. The old priest's face was clouded with the same trouble that
stared so unmistakably and yet so unintelligibly from the brown faces
of the villagers. Fenton addressed him eagerly in French, haltingly in
German and finally in English. And, wonder of wonders, at the last
attempt he found that he had tuned his C.Q.D. message to the lingual
receiver of the old cleric.
"I speak some Eenglish," said the priest slowly. "Once was I in
London. Your Milton and your Shakespeare, of much have I read."
"Fine, Father!" said Fenton, shaking the priest's hand warmly, much to
the amazement of the villagers, who had backed away respectfully at the
approach of the shabby old man. "Can you tell me what it's all about?
Has anything happened to her highness?"
Slowly and haltingly the priest told him of the happenings that had so
upset the usually placid village. Early in the morning a messenger had
come with the news that her highness, the Princess Olga, was to arrive
that day. Prompt preparations had been started at the castle, the
towers of which, standing up above the dark tops of the trees, could be
dimly made out in the distance. An hour before, the royal carriage had
driven into the village with a frightened driver, a partly stunned
serving-man and an hysterical maid-in-waiting--but no princess. The
equippage had been held up by a band of armed men about two miles back
on the road. The Princess Olga had been taken from the carriage,
placed on a horse and carried off with businesslike celerity. After
frightening the servants by a threat to shoot them, the band had
disappeared into the thickly wooded country through which a narrow pack
trail led up into the hills. Such was the information that the padre
retailed with saddened inflection to Fenton.
The latter, now that his worst fears were confirmed, lost no time in
deciding on his course of action. He would first get whatever
information could be secured from the servants, and then strike north
for Kirkalisse, the northern estates of Miridoff, to which Olga would
probably be taken. He was confident that he could cover the distance
during the night if a capable guide could be secured. In the meantime
he would send a messenger to Varden with the news and urge that
assistance be supplied at once.
With the priest in tow to act as interpreter, Fenton interviewed the
members of the prince's household who had figured in the hold-up. They
gave voluble descriptions of the incident, but no information that was
of any value to the impatient Canadian. The band had been very
numerous, very fierce and armed like so many living arsenals--the
serving people emphasised these facts with much reiteration--but
nothing more definite in the way of a description could be obtained.
The driver of the carriage, who saw in Fenton one whose version of the
affair might carry weight, poured into the Canadian's ear a verbal
eruption of harsh consonants which the priest interpreted as a recital
of the valiant fight that he (the driver) and the other male member of
the party had put up before they allowed their beautiful mistress to be
carried off.
"He must be a valiant fighter," declared Fenton, "to maul these
brigands the way he says he did and come off without a scratch himself!"
They were standing in front of the little village inn, and consequently
their words sounded quite clearly on the street. He heard a sharp
exclamation from a dust-laden stranger who was plodding his way wearily
through the knots of villagers.
"Great Scott! Is it English I hear?" cried the stranger.
Coming forward he deposited his bundle on the road and shook Fenton's
hand with every evidence of keen delight.