SHOWING HOW THE KING KEPT HIS APPOINTMENT
Joan's eyes could not leave Alec. She followed each movement of his
lithe, strongly knit frame as he and Beaumanoir hauled the heavy pieces
of furniture into position behind the door. She was not fully alive as
yet to the real menace of the gesticulating mob surging in the street
beneath, and her thoughts ran riot in the newly discovered paradise of
being loved and in love.
For Alec had asked no questions, listened to no explanations. When he
entered the room, he found her, half turned from the window, conscious
that he was near, though trying to persuade her throbbing heart that
Felix would not depart from an implied promise by sending him to her
without warning. She strove to utter some words of greeting. Before she
could speak, Alec's arms were around her, and he was kissing her lips,
her forehead, her hair. She saw him as through a mist. Her first
fleeting impression was that he had become older, sterner, more
commanding. Kingship had set its seal on him. A short month of power had
stamped lines on his face that would never vanish. But that sense of
imperiousness was quickly dispelled by the enchantment of her presence.
Somehow, almost without spoken word, he brought the thrilling conviction
that he was hungering for her. The light in his eyes, the overwhelming
ardor of his embrace, the magnetic force that leaped the intervening
space while yet they were separated by half the length of the
room,--these things bewildered, charmed, subdued her wholly, and she
kindled under them ere her brain could summon to aid the feeblest of
remonstrances.
She abandoned the nebulous idea of protest when she found that she in
turn was clinging to him, giving kiss for kiss with a delirious
intensity that refused to be denied. Nevertheless, the sheer joy of her
emotions frightened her, and she was endeavoring to subdue its too
sensuous expression when Beaumanoir opened the door, to close it again
hurriedly. She recovered her faculties slowly. She was still quivering
under the stress of that moment of ineffable delight, and her brown eyes
sparkled with the glow of a soul on fire, and she was brought back to
earth only by the knowledge that Felix, standing at his post near a
window, was on the verge of collapse.
The sideboard contained a flask of brandy, which Pauline had insisted on
stowing in a dressing bag in case of illness. Joan, glad of the pretext
to do some commonplace thing, thankful for the mere utterance of
commonplace words, called for help.
"Please remove the table for an instant," she cried. "Felix is ill, and
I want to get at some cognac that is in the cellarette."
"Ill! He was lively enough in the street a minute ago, singing like a
thrush," said Alec cheerily, though he did not fail to pull the table
clear of the cupboard. "What is it, my Humming Bee?" he demanded,
turning to Poluski. "Is it a surfeit of excitement, or late hours, or
what?"
"I am yielding to the unusual, my King," crackled the Pole's voice
thinly. "During three whole days I have done naught but think, and that
would incommode an elephant, leave alone a rat like me."
"Rat, indeed! When we are all out of this trap, Felix, you must tell me
what caused your alarming exercise of brain power. Already you have
bothered me to guess how you fathomed the pretty scheme you are now
upsetting."
"There, dear Felix, drink that, and you will soon feel strong again,"
put in Joan.
"Ha, dear Felix, am I? I expected to be called anything but that after
breaking my word so disgracefully!"
"You are forgiven," said she with a tender smile at Alec.
Beaumanoir, discreetly peeping through the window over Poluski's
shoulder, saw something that perplexed him.
"I say, Alec," he exclaimed, "I thought you told me that Stampoff's man
Bosko was a thoroughly reliable sort of chap."
"I have always found him so."
"Well, just at present he looks jolly like a deserter. He is making a
speech to the mob and tearing off his uniform obligato. The other joker
is scared to death."
"Bosko making a speech! Why, he never says anything but '_Oui,
monsieur_,' or '_Non, monsieur_,' which is all the French he knows.
Well, this is a day of wonders, anyhow."
Neglecting the precautions he had insisted on a minute earlier, Alec
himself went to the window and drew Joan with him. There were two other
windows in the room; but the four clustered in the one deep recess, for
the thick walls of this old building were meant to defy extremes of heat
and cold. By this time one of the two orderlies had dismounted and was
stamping on his smart cavalry jacket and plumed shako, thus announcing
by eloquent pantomime, that he was discarding forever the livery of a
tyrant.
The mob in the street was now swollen to unrecognizable dimensions, and
Alec's charger, which Bosko was holding, resented the uproar by lashing
out viciously with his heels. A man who had narrowly escaped being
kicked drew a revolver, fired, and the spirited Arab fell with a bullet
in its brain. The dastardly act was cheered; for the Seventh Regiment
remembered that this same white horse had stumbled and thrown King
Theodore on the day of his murder.
"Oh, the coward, the hateful coward!" wailed Joan, and two of the men
muttered expressions of opinion that must be passed over in silence.
But Felix happened to be watching Bosko, and noted the black rage that
convulsed his face when the Arab dropped dead at his feet. The
Albanian's feelings mastered him only for an instant.
He began at once to harangue the crowd again, evidently offering to lead
his own horse out of harm's way, and loudly bidding his frightened
comrade to do likewise.
A path was being cleared when some one looked up at the window, and a
fierce yell proclaimed the King's presence. Bosko was forgotten. Sight
of their quarry had frenzied the pack.
"Down everyone!" cried Alec, bending double and dragging Joan with him.
Several panes of glass were starred with little round holes, mortar fell
from the ceiling, and the crackle of shots below showed that revolvers
were popular in Delgratz. But Felix had seen enough to set his shrewd
wits working.
"That man of yours--is Bosko his name?--is no fool," said he, when they
had crept from the glass strewn area into the shelter of the stout wall.
"He is gulling your beloved subjects, Alec. He realizes that trouble is
brewing, and he means to steal off and bring help. Fortunately, my brave
Sobieski will be at the President's house by this time, and your guards
may arrive before those cutthroats in the street decide to storm the
hotel."
"Sobieski--who is he?" asked Alec.
"A waiter in the restaurant. I have pledged you to buy him a cafe in
Warsaw if the troops come speedily."
"Make it a brewery, Alec," said Beaumanoir; "these bounders mean
business."
A constant fusillade of bullets was now tearing the windows to atoms,
and shattering the ceiling on the other side of the room. Lord Adalbert
was justified in offering liberal terms for relief.
The King, standing with one arm thrown round Joan's shoulders, felt the
tremors she strove vainly to repress. "Don't be afraid, sweetheart. They
cannot reach us here," he said. "I have one unknown protector, it seems,
and I feel sure that Felix is right about Bosko. The only drawback is
that our friendly waiter may find some difficulty in persuading the
officers on duty at Monsieur Nesimir's house that we are in danger. We
must risk that."
"Oh, to safeguard against delay, I told him to ask for the Prince," said
Felix.
"What Prince?"
"Your father, of course. Ha! Name of a good little gray man! You don't
know that Prince Michael and your mother are in Delgratz."
"Mark cock!" cried Beaumanoir, as a bullet flew breast high across the
room and imbedded itself in the inner wall. The heroes of the Seventh
Regiment were firing from the upper floors of the houses opposite.
Alec did not seem to heed. The look of blank amazement on his face
proved that he had ridden straight from the review ground to the
university, whereas a call at the President's house would have
enlightened him.
"It is true, dear," whispered Joan. "They came with us from Paris; in
the same train, that is. We all arrived at Delgratz this morning. Your
mother spoke to me on the platform at Vienna."
He smiled with something of the old careless humor of Paris days. "I
suppose everything is for the best," he said. "Nothing surprises me now,
not even this," and he nodded cheerfully toward the landing and stairs,
whence a rush of footsteps and clamor of voices were audible.
The handle of the door was wrenched violently, and shots were fired into
the lock and at the panels; but the wood was seasoned and stanch, and
nothing short of a rifle would drive a bullet through. The door creaked
and strained under the pressure of the mutineers' shoulders. Had it not
been reinforced by the solid sideboard and equally heavy table, it must
have given way. As it was, no four men in Delgratz could hope to force
an entrance, and no more than four could attack it simultaneously.
It was noteworthy that no one called on the King to come out. These
hirelings, enraged against a ruler who had brought to the Danube a new
evangel of justice and uprightness, of honest government and clean
handed service to the State, made no pretense of requesting a hearing
for their grievances. They had planned to shoot him in cold blood while
he and his three companions were momentarily delayed by the barrier of
the bullock cart in front of the corner cafe. Balked of this easy means
of attaining their end, they were still sure of success. But their cries
and curses were intended only for self encouragement. Not even the
bloodstained Seventh Regiment had the effrontery to ask their victim to
admit them.
There was a momentary quieting of their wild beast fury when the door
resisted their utmost efforts. Joan tried to persuade her tortured mind
that the conspiracy had failed.
"They will not dare to remain," she whispered. "They know that
assistance may arrive at any moment. Listen, they are going now!"
"Are you gentlemen armed?" asked Felix, grimly.
"Yes, with riding whips," said Alec. "For my part, I have refused to
carry any more dangerous weapon; though it is true that I entered
Delgratz with a sword in my hand," he added, remembering with a twinge
his imagining of Joan's ready laugh when she heard of Prince Michael's
brown paper parcel.
"Pity you don't possess a revolver apiece. They would prove useful when
the panels are broken, which will happen just as soon as these high
spirited politicians on the landing secure axes," went on Felix
remorselessly.
He wanted Joan to realize the certain fate that awaited her once the
door gave way. Concealment was useless, and he hoped she would faint
before the end came.
"What price the leg of a chair?" asked Beaumanoir.
The Pole bent his gleaming gray eyes on the Briton with a curious
underlook of inquiry. "No, no. We can do better than that. You would be
shot before you could strike a blow. Joan, please crawl past the window
and stand upright in the corner close to the wall. You follow, Alec. I
go next, and this young gentleman, who must be Lord Adalbert Beaumanoir,
since he has all the outward signs of the British aristocracy, will
place himself near the door. If he does exactly what I tell him, we
still have a fighting chance."
The change of position advised by Poluski rendered them safe from their
assailants' bullets until the door was actually off its hinges and the
furniture thrust aside. In the last resort, Alec meant to show himself
at a window and offer a fair target to the men in the houses across the
street. When he fell the shooting from that quarter would cease. Then,
acting on his precise instructions, Beaumanoir and Felix must lift Joan
through another window and allow her to drop to the pavement. It was not
far. She might escape uninjured, and there was a possibility that the
mob would spare a woman who was an utter stranger, one in no way mixed
up in Kosnovian affairs.
Time enough to take this final step when their defense was forced, and
that would be soon. In all likelihood, he had not much more than a
minute to live, and he devoted that minute to Joan.
"Sweetheart," he murmured tenderly, "you saw the beginning of my career
as a King, and it seems that you are fated to see its end. Have you
forgotten what Pallas Athene said to Perseus? It is not so long ago,
that morning in the Louvre. But why did you run away from Paris? Why
have you not written? If you knew how I hoped for a word from you! My
heart told me you loved me; but even one's heart likes to be assured
that it is not mistaken."
He was looking into her eyes. The fantasy seized her that he was able to
read her secret soul, and she swept aside any thought of concealment.
"Alec," she said, "tell me truly, are we in danger of death?"
"I am," he replied simply. It was better so, he thought.
"Then I thank God that I am here to die with you."
He dared not hint that she might escape. "We still have a remote
chance," he went on. "Let us talk of ourselves, not of death."
"But I don't want to die, Alec," she whispered brokenly. "I want to
live, dear. I want to live and be your wife. Oh, Alec, let us ask Heaven
for one year of happiness, one short year----" She choked, and the
tears so bravely repressed hitherto dimmed her glorious eyes. Her
piteous appeal increased the torment of his impotence. His face grew
marble white beneath the bronze, and he bent in mute agony over her
bowed head.
Felix, crouching behind Beaumanoir, assured himself that the King and
his chosen lady were momentarily deaf to all else than the one supreme
fact that each loved the other. He sighed, and touched the stalwart
Beaumanoir's shoulder, which he was just able to reach with uplifted
hand.
"Drop on your knees," he said. "I want to tell you something."
"You think it is high time I said my prayers--eh, what?"
Yet the younger man obeyed, since there was a calm authority in the
pinched and wrinkled face raised to his that seemed to despise the
uproar of the mob. Felix was singularly unmoved by the bestial din. He
evidently cared naught for the continuous shooting from street and
houses, or the renewed outburst on the stairs that welcomed the arrival
of axes and sledge hammers rifled from a neighboring shop.
"Pay heed to what I am going to say," he muttered, bringing his mouth
close to Beaumanoir's ear, "I don't wish Joan or the King to know what
we are doing. They will be wise after the event, not before, which is
often the better part of wisdom. Have you a steady hand? Will you flinch
if I ask you to destroy every man on the other side of that door?"
Beaumanoir twisted his head round and grinned. "If asking will do the
trick, try me!" said he.
Felix took from an inner pocket of his coat a gunmetal cigarcase. He
pressed a spring, and the lid flew open. Inside were four cigar shaped
cylinders, each studded with a number of tiny knobs. He withdrew a
cylinder, and from a small cup in its base obtained six percussion caps,
which he proceeded to adjust on the iron nipples.
"My own patent!" he exclaimed, with an air of pride that was grotesque
under the conditions. "Each cigar is a bomb, warranted to clear any
ordinary room of its occupants. It does not discriminate. It will
dismember the most exalted personages."
"By gad!" ejaculated Beaumanoir, shrinking away slightly.
Felix pressed closer in his enthusiasm. "The point carrying the
detonators is loaded with lead. If properly handled, it is sure to fly
with that end in front. You take it between your thumb and second
finger, thus, and poise it by placing the tip of the first finger behind
it, thus; but you must throw hard, and wait until the upper part of the
door is smashed, and you can fling it clear, or three ounces of dynamite
will explode in front of your nose, with disastrous effect. I will have
a second bomb ready if the first one fails; but it will not."
"By gad!" said Beaumanoir again, gazing at the deadly contrivance as if
fascinated by it. He could retreat no farther, being jammed against the
sideboard.
"Do you understand?" demanded Felix coolly.
"Perfectly. Is it--er--Russian or Spanish?"
"Neither. I call it the International. Are you ready?"
A thunderous blow shook the door. Another and another fell on lock and
hinges.
"Felix!" said Alec, turning from Joan and stooping over the hunchback.
"Don't bother me, I am busy," growled the Pole.
"But we must act. We are done for now, and Joan must be saved. I mean to
draw the enemy's fire. When I am hit, you and Beaumanoir must take Joan
to the third window over there--take her by force if necessary----"
"My good Alec, at present you are a King without power. Please don't
talk nonsense. Keep in your corner, pacify Joan, and leave the rest to
me."
"Felix," and Alec's tone grew curt and sharp, "this is no time for jest!
Look, you madman, the door is splitting! Is Joan to die, then, to please
your whim? Either attend to me or stand aside!"
Poluski groaned. He was such an amalgam of contrarieties that he hated
the notion of explaining to a monarch the subtle means he had devised
for ridding the world of its unpopular rulers. Where Alec was concerned,
the bomb ought to remain a trade secret, so to speak. He would not have
trusted even Beaumanoir with its properties had he not known that his
own nerve would fail at the critical moment. For that was Felix
Poluski's weakness. He could not use his diabolical invention--an
anarchist in theory, in practice he would not harm a fly.
"I think just as much of Joan as you!" he blazed back at the pallid man
whose next step promised to lead to the grave. "I am King here, not you!
Keep yourself and Joan out of harm's way, and don't interfere! Stand
flat against the wall, both of you! Back, I say! There is the first
axhead! Now you, who were born a lord, be ready to lord it over these
groundlings!"
He whirled round on Beaumanoir, and Alec saw in his friend's hand some
object, what he could not guess, while Felix carried a similar article
in reserve, as it were. The little man's earnestness was so convincing
that the King could not choose but believe that some scheme that offered
salvation was in train. But it might fail! The door might be forced
before his own desperate alternative could be adopted, and the
consequences to Joan of failure were too horrible to be risked. A panel
shivered into splinters and the muzzles of two revolvers frowned through
the aperture.
"Wait!" bellowed Poluski; for Beaumanoir's hand was raised.
Lord Adalbert did more than wait. With the quickness born of many a
hard won victory on the polo ground, his free left hand flew out and
grasped the wrist behind one of the pistols. He pulled fiercely and
irresistibly. An arm appeared, and a yell of pain signalized a
dislocated shoulder.
The weapon exploded harmlessly and fell to the floor. A living stop gap
now plugged the first hole made by the ax wielders, while the writhing
body of their comrade interfered with further operations.
Beaumanoir gave an extra wrench, and his victim howled most dolorously.
He slipped the bomb into his coat pocket.
"Pick up that revolver, Alec," he cried. "If it is still loaded it will
help us to hold the fort."
The King rushed forward, and butted against Beaumanoir in his haste.
Felix, whose skin was always sallow, became livid; but nothing happened,
and he snatched the bomb from its dangerous resting place. Then he burst
into a paroxysm of hysterical laughter which drowned for an instant a
new hubbub in the street.
Alec, hastily examining his prize, found that three chambers were
loaded. He was about to search for a crack in the door through which he
could fire at least one telling shot, when his ear caught the prancing
of horses on the paving stones.
Joan, thoroughly enlightened now as to their common peril, had behaved
with admirable coolness since Alec implored her not to stir from the
corner between door and window. She was sure they would all be killed,
and her lips moved in fervent prayer that death might be merciful in its
haste; but she was not afraid; that storm of tears had been succeeded by
a spiritual exaltation that rescued her from any ignoble panic. Yet her
senses were strained to a tension far more exhausting than the display
of emotion natural to one plunged without warning into the most horrible
of the many horrors of civil war, and she had heard, long before the
others, the onrush of cavalry and the stampede of the mob.
So, when her eyes met Alec's, and she saw that questioning look in his
face, she smiled at him with a radiant confidence that was astounding at
such a moment.
"Heaven has been good to us, dear," she said. "Your soldiers are here.
Your enemies are running away. Listen! they are fighting now on the
stairs. The unhappy men who raved for our lives will lose their own. Can
nothing be done to save them?"
He ran to the window. Those leaden blasts that had swept the room from
the first floors of the opposite houses had ceased, and not one
potvaliant marksman of them all was to be seen; but the street was full
of hussars, and directly beneath, mounted on an excited horse, Stampoff
was giving furious orders which evidently demanded an energetic storming
of the hotel entrance.
Alec threw open the window and leaned out. "Just in time, old friend!"
he cried.
Stampoff heard him and looked up. "God's bones!" he roared. "Here is
the King safe and sound. At them, my children! Dig them out with your
sabers! Don't leave a man alive!"
"Stop!" shouted Alec. "No more slaughter! I forbid it!"
Stampoff wheeled round on his charger and addressed the press of
soldiers who had been unable to take any part in the street clearing,
since the mob broke and fled when the first rank of plumed caps and
flashing swords became visible.
"You hear, my children," he vociferated. "Don't harm anybody who does
not resist. The King's commands must be obeyed."
Joan, of course, could only guess what was being said; but she could not
fail to recognize the sounds of conflict on the stairs. Men are
strangely akin to tigers when they see red, and the tiger's roar when he
pounces on a victim differs greatly from his own death scream. Alec,
powerless to move Stampoff, who believed, rightly, as it transpired,
that the ringleaders were foremost in the attack, turned to Beaumanoir.
"Release that fellow," he said. "If I am able to make my voice heard
through the racket, I can put an end to this butchery."
Beaumanoir let go the arm, and a body fell on the other side of the
door.
"You are too late, I hope," he said quietly. "My prisoner took the knock
just before you spoke. I felt it run through him. He shook like a pony
under the spur. And you're wrong, you know. This gang must be cleared
out." He peered through the broken panel. "It's all over," he added. "No
flowers, by request."
Felix was peering up at them with his bright crafty eyes. "Queer thing!"
he growled. "In my first honest fight I have been on the side of
tyranny. If you young gentlemen will be good enough to remove the
barricade and give orders to have the passage cleared, I can go back to
the cup of coffee I left in the restaurant. Meanwhile, Joan must be
taken to her room. She is going to faint, and the Lord only knows what
has become of her maid!"
Alec was at Joan's side before Felix had made an end. "You will not
break down now, sweetheart," he cried. "All danger is over, and, with
God's help, you will never witness such a scene in Delgratz again!"
"I feel tired," she sighed. "I know quite well I am safe, Alec. Somehow,
I hardly thought you and I should die to-day. We have things to do in
the world, you and I; but those horrid men frightened me by their
shrieks. It must be awful to pass into the unknown--like that!"
She sighed again. To her strained vision Alec suddenly assumed the
aspect of Henri Quatre's gilded statue on the Pont Neuf. It did not seem
to be in the least remarkable that the statue should leap from his horse
and take her in his arms. She was absolutely happy and content. She
felt she could rest there awhile in safety.
So, when the door was opened, the King experienced no difficulty in
carrying Joan through a scene of bloodshed that would certainly never
have been blotted from her mind had she remained conscious. Stampoff's
commands had been obeyed, and the place reeked of the shambles; but the
girl was happily as heedless of its nightmare horrors as the thirty-one
men who lay there dead or dying.
Alec bore her out into the street. The sight of him was greeted by a
sustained cheer from the troops and the loyal citizens who were now
threatening a riot of curiosity and alarm, since the news had gone round
that the King was being done to death by a rebellious soldiery in the
Fuerst Michaelstrasse, and Delgratz was hurrying to the rescue.
Joan, revived a little by the fresh air and bewildered by the shouting
throng that pressed around the King, opened her eyes. "Where am I?" she
whispered, delightfully ignorant of the fact that she was nestling in
Alec's arms under the gaze of many hundreds of his subjects.
"I am sending you to my mother, dear," he replied. "Felix and your maid
will be here in a moment, and they will take you to her in a carriage.
You cannot remain at the hotel, and you will be well cared for in
Monsieur Nesimir's house."
"Are you coming, Alec?" she asked, scanning his face like a timid child.
"Soon, quite soon."
"Then I am content," she said, and the cloud descended again for a brief
space.
Pauline, unfortunately, happened to be in the kitchen when the fray
began. She was nearly incoherent with fright; but Felix managed to
reassure her, and piloted her skilfully out of the hotel by an exit that
concealed the gruesome staircase.
The glittering escort of soldiers surrounding the carriage pressed into
the King's service served to complete the illusion insisted on by
Poluski, and Pauline rejoined her mistress, firm in the conviction that
the tumult was an outlandish Serbian method of merrymaking.
Alec, having seen the carriage started on its short journey, approached
Stampoff and wrung his hand. "It was a near thing, General," he said.
"Five minutes later and we should have been in another world."
He spoke in French, and Beaumanoir heard him.
"Not a bit of it," said he. "That anarchist johnny carries about with
him the finest assortment of bombs.--By the way, where is the bally
thing? I'll swear I put it in my pocket when I grabbed that joker
through the door."
His hurried search was not rewarded, and Alec, scarcely understanding
him, asked Stampoff who had given the alarm.
"Bosko, of course. He came tearing up to the War Office like a madman.
Had any other brought the same message I really should not have
believed it."
"Then you heard nothing of a waiter from this hotel, a waiter named
Sobieski?"
"Nothing, your Majesty. Bosko was undoubtedly the first to arrive with
the news, and all was quiet at the President's as I rode past. I noted
that especially. By the way, Prince Michael is here; came this morning,
I am told. The Princess accompanied him. Does your Majesty intend going
to them at once? I have already sent an orderly to announce your
safety."
Alec looked at his watch. "Five minutes past four," he said. "No,
General, I am due at the university. I like to be punctual; but this
slight delay was unavoidable. I shall see you at dinner to-night, and I
suppose you will clear the city of these idiots of the Seventh Regiment
before sunset. By the way, a word before we part. You saw the lady whom
I brought from the hotel and placed in the carriage?"
"Saw her, your Majesty? Judas! Thirty years ago I should have striven to
rescue her myself."
"It was she who rescued me, General, she and the little humpbacked man.
Exactly how they managed it I do not know as yet; but to-night you shall
hear the whole story. At present, it is enough that you should be told
the one really important fact. She is my promised wife."
With a smile and a farewell hand-wave, Alec mounted a troop horse and
rode away with Beaumanoir in the direction of the university.
Stampoff looked after him with an expression of utmost dismay on his
weatherbeaten face. "Gods!" he muttered. "A wife, and a pretty foreigner
too, that is a bird of another color! What will Prince and Princess
Delgrado say now, I wonder? What will Kosnovia say, when it is in every
man's mind that you should marry a Serb? And what mad prank of fortune
sent her here to-day? By thunder! I thought things were quieting down in
Delgratz; but I was wrong--they are just beginning to wake up!"