Things were going very wrong for Nikky Larisch.
Not handsome, in any exact sense, was Nikky, but tall and straight,
with a thatch of bright hair not unlike that of the Crown Prince, and
as unruly. Tall and straight, and occasionally truculent, with a narrow
rapier scar on his left cheek to tell the story of wild student days,
and with two clear young eyes that had looked out humorously at the
world until lately. But Nikky was not smiling at the world these days.
Perhaps, at the very first, he had been in love with the princess, not
the woman. It had been rather like him to fix on the unattainable and
worship it from afar. Because, for all the friendliness of their growing
intimacy, Hedwig was still a star, whose light touched him, but whose
warmth was not for him. He would have died fighting for her with a smile
on his lips. There had been times when he almost wished he might. He
used to figure out pleasant little dramas, in which, fallen on the
battlefield, his last word, uttered in all reverence, was her name. But
he had no hope of living for her, unless, of course, she should happen
to need him, which was most unlikely. He had no vanity whatever,
although in parade dress, with white gloves, he hoped he cut a decent
figure.
So she had been his star, and as cold and remote. And then, that very
morning, whether it was the new cross-saddle suit or whatever it was,
Hedwig had been thrown. Not badly--she was too expert for that. As a
matter of fact, feeling herself going, she had flung two strong young
arms around her horse’s neck, and had almost succeeded in lighting on
her feet. It was not at all dramatic.
But Nikky’s heart had stopped beating. He had lifted her up from where
she sat, half vexed and wholly ashamed, and carried her to a chair. That
was all. But when it was all over, and Hedwig was only a trifle wobbly
and horribly humiliated, Nikky Larisch knew the truth about himself,
knew that he was in love with the granddaughter of his King, and that
under no conceivable circumstances would he ever be able to tell her so.
Knew, then, that happiness and he had said a long farewell, and would
thereafter travel different roads.
It had stunned him. He had stood quite still and thought about it. And
Prince Ferdinand William Otto had caught him in the act of thinking; and
had stood before him and surveyed him anxiously.
“You needn’t look so worried, you know,” he protested. “She’s not really
hurt.”
Nikky came back, but slowly. He had in a few seconds already traveled a
long way along the lonely road. But he smiled down at the little Prince.
“But she might have been, you know. It--it rather alarmed me.”
Prince Ferdinand William Otto was for continuing the subject. He blamed
the accident on the new riding-suit, and was royally outspoken about it.
“And anyhow,” he finished, “I don’t like her in boy’s clothes. Half of
her looks like a girl, and the rest doesn’t.”
Nikky, letting his eyes rest on her, realized that all of her to him was
wonderful, and forever beyond reach.
So that night he started out to think things over. Probably never before
in his life had he deliberately done such a thing. He had never, as a
fact, thought much at all. It had been his comfortable habit to let the
day take care of itself. Beyond minor problems of finance--minor because
his income was trifling--he had considered little. In the last border
war he had distinguished himself only when it was a matter of doing, not
of thinking.
He was very humble about himself. His young swagger was a sort
of defiance. And he was not subtle. Taken suddenly, through the
Chancellor’s favor, into the circles of the Court, its intrigues and
poisoned whispers passed him by. He did not know they existed. And he
had one creed, and only one: to love God, honor the King, and live like
a gentleman.
On this boy, then, with the capacity for suffering of his single-minded
type, had fallen the mantle of trouble. It puzzled him. He did not
exactly know what to do about it. And it hurt. It hurt horribly.
That night, following the Archduchess’s confidence, he had stood under
the Palace windows, in the Place, and looked up. Not that he expected to
see Hedwig. He did it instinctively, turning toward her hidden presence
with a sort of bewildered yearning. Across his path, as he turned away,
had passed the little procession of the priest and the Sacrament. He
knelt, as did the lovers and the passers-by, and when he got up he
followed the small flame of the lamp with his eyes as far as he could
see it.
This was life, then. One lived and suffered and yearned, and then came
death. Were there barriers of rank over there? Or were all equal, so
that those who had loved on earth without hope might meet face to face?
The tinkle of the bell grew fainter. This weight that he carried, it
would be his all his life. And then, one day, he too would hear the bell
coming nearer and nearer, and he would die, without having lived.
But he was young, and the night was crisp and beautiful. He took a long
breath, and looked up at the stars. After all, things might not be so
bad. Hedwig might refuse this marriage. They were afraid that she
would, or why have asked his help? When he thought of King Karl, he drew
himself up; and his heels rang hard on the pavement. Karl! A hard man
and a good king--that was Karl. And old. From the full manhood of his
twenty-three years Nikky surveyed Karl’s almost forty, and considered it
age.
But soon he was bitter again, bitter and jealous. Back there in the
palace they were plotting their own safety, and making a young girl pay
for it. He swore softly.
It was typical of Nikky to decide that he needed a hard walk. He
translated most of his emotions into motion. So he set off briskly,
turning into the crowded part of the city. Here were narrow, winding
streets; old houses that overhung above and almost touched, shutting
out all but a thin line of sky; mediaeval doorways of heavy oak and iron
that opened into courtyards, where once armed men had lounged, but where
now broken wagons and other riffraff were stored.
And here it was that Nikky happened on the thing that was to take him
far that night, and bring about many curious things. Not far ahead of
him two men were talking. They went slowly, arm in arm. One was talking
loquaciously, using his free arm, on which hung a cane, to gesticulate.
The other walked with bent head.
Nikky, pausing to light a cigarette, fell behind. But the wind was
tricky, and with his third match he stepped into a stone archway,
lighted his cigarette, buttoned his tunic high against the chill, and
emerged to a silent but violent struggle just ahead. The two men had
been attacked by three others, and as he stared, the loquacious one went
down. Instantly a huge figure of a man outlined against the light from a
street-lamp, crouched over the prostrate form of the fallen man. Even
in the imperceptible second before he started to run toward the group,
Nikky saw that the silent one, unmolested, was looking on.
A moment later he was in the thick of things and fighting gloriously.
His soldierly cap fell off. His fair hair bristled with excitement. He
flung out arms that were both furious and strong, and with each blow the
group assumed a new formation. Unluckily, a great deal of the fighting
was done over the prostrate form of Peter Niburg.
Suddenly one of the group broke away, and ran down the street. He ran
rather like a kangaroo, gathering his feet under him and proceeding by
a series of leaps, almost as if he were being shamefully pricked from
behind. At a corner he turned pale, terror-stricken eyes back on that
sinister group, and went on into the labyrinth of small streets.
But disaster, inglorious disaster, waited for Nikky. Peter Niburg, face
down on the pavement, was groaning, and Nikky had felled one man and was
starting on a second with the fighting appetite of twenty-three, when
something happened. One moment Nikky was smiling, with a cut lip, and
hair in his eyes, and the next he was dropped like an ox, by a blow from
behind. Landing between his shoulder-blades, it jerked his head back
with a snap, and sent him reeling. A second followed, delivered by a
huge fist.
Down went Nikky, and lay still.
The town slept on. Street brawls were not uncommon, especially in
the neighborhood of the Hungaria. Those who roused grumbled about
quarrelsome students, and slept again.
Perhaps two minutes later, Nikky got up. He was another minute in
locating himself. His cap lay in the gutter. Beside him, on his back,
lay a sprawling and stertorous figure, with, so quick the downfall, a
cane still hooked to his arm.
Nikky bent over Peter Niburg. Bending over made his head ache
abominably.
“Here, man!” he said. “Get up! Rouse yourself!”
Peter Niburg made an inarticulate reference to a piece of silk of
certain quality, and lay still. But his eyes opened slowly, and he
stared up at the stars. “A fine night,” he said thickly. “A very
fine--” Suddenly he raised himself to a sitting posture. Terror gave him
strength. “I’ve been robbed,” he said. “Robbed. I am ruined. I am dead.”
“Tut,” said Nikky, mopping his cut lip. “If you are dead, your spirit
speaks with an uncommonly lusty voice! Come, get up. We present together
a shameful picture of defeat.”
But he raised Peter Niburg gently from the ground and, finding his knees
unstable, from fright or weakness, stood him against a house wall.
Peter Niburg, with rolling eyes, felt for his letter, and, the saints be
praised, found it.
“Ah!” he said, and straightened up. “After all it is not so bad as I
feared. They got nothing.”
He made a manful effort to walk, but tottered reeled. Nikky caught him.
“Careful!” he said. “The colossus was doubtless the one who got us boxy,
and we are likely to feel his weight for some time. Where do you live?”
Peter Niburg was not for saying. He would have preferred to pursue his
solitary if uncertain way. But Nikky was no half Samaritan. Toward Peter
Niburg’s lodging, then, they made a slow progress.
“These recent gentlemen,” said Nikky, as they rent along, “they are,
perhaps, personal enemies?”
“I do not know. I saw nothing.”
“One was very large, a giant of a man. Do you now such a man?”
Peter Niburg reflected. He thought not. “But I know why they came,” he
said unguardedly. “Some early morning, my friend, you will hear of man
lying dead in the street, That man will be I.”
“The thought has a moral,” observed Nikky. “Do not trust yourself
out-of-doors at night.”
But he saw that Peter Niburg kept his hand over breast-pocket.
Never having dealt in mysteries, Nikky was slow recognizing one. But, he
reflected, many things were going on in the old city in these troubled
days.
Came to Nikky, all at once; that this man on his arm might be one of the
hidden eyes of Government.
“These are difficult times,” he ventured, “for those who are loyal.”
Peter Niburg gave him a sidelong glance. “Difficult indeed,” he said
briefly.
“But,” said Nikky, “perhaps we fear too much. The people love the boy
Prince. And without the people revolution can accomplish nothing.”
“Nothing at all,” assented Peter Niburg.
“I think,” Nikky observed, finding his companion unresponsive, “that,
after I see you safely home, I shall report this small matter to the
police. Surely there cannot be in the city many such gorillas as our
friend with the beard and the huge body.”
But here Peter Niburg turned even paler. “Not--not the police!” he
stammered.
“But why? You and I, my friend, will carry their insignia for some days.
I have a mind to pay our debts.”
Peter Niburg considered. He stopped and faced Nikky. “I do not wish the
police,” he said. “Perhaps I have said too little. This is a private
matter. An affair of jealousy.”
“I see!”
“Naturally, not a matter for publicity.”
“Very well,” Nikky assented. But in his mind was rising, dark suspicion.
He had stumbled on something. He cursed his stupidity that it meant, so
far, nothing more than a mystery to him. He did not pride himself on his
intelligence.
“You were not alone, I think?”
Peter Niburg suddenly remembered Herman, and stopped.
“Your friend must have escaped.”
“He would escape,” said Peter Niburg scornfully. “He is of the type that
runs.”
He lapsed into sullen silence. Soon he paused before a quiet house, one
of the many which housed in cavernous depths uncounted clerks and other
small fry of the city. “Good-night to you,” said Peter Niburg. Then,
rather tardily. “And my thanks. But for you I should now--” he shrugged
his shoulders.
“Good-night, friend,” said Nikky. “And better keep your bed to-morrow.”
He had turned away, and Peter Niburg entered the house.
Nikky inspected himself in the glow of a street lamp. Save for
some dust, and a swollen lip, which he could not see, he was not
unpresentable. Well enough, anyhow, for the empty streets. But before
he started he looked the house and the neighborhood over carefully. He
might wish to return to that house.
For two hours he walked, and resumed his interrupted train of
thought--past the gloomy University buildings, past the quay, where
sailed the vessels that during peaceful times went along the Ar through
the low lands of Karnia to the sea. At last, having almost circled the
city, he came to the Cathedral. It was nearly midnight by the clock in
the high tower. He stopped and consulted his watch. The fancy took him
to go up the high steps, and look out over the city from the colonnade.
Once there, he stood leaning against a column, looking out. The sleeping
town appealed to him. Just so had it lain in old feudal times, clustered
about the church and the Palace, and looking to both for protection. It
had grown since then, had extended beyond the walls which sheltered
it, had now destroyed those walls and, filling in the moat, had built
thereon its circling parks. And other things had changed. No longer, he
reflected gloomily, did it look to the palace, save with tolerance and
occasional disloyalty. The old order was changing. And, with all his hot
young heart, Nikky was for the old order.
There was some one coming along the quiet streets, with a stealthy,
shuffling gait that caught his attention. So, for instance, might a
weary or a wounded man drag along. Exactly so, indeed, had Peter Niburg
shambled into his house but two hours gone.
The footsteps paused, hesitated, commenced a painful struggle up the
ascent. Nikky moved behind his column, and waited. Up and up, weary step
after weary step. The shadowy figure, coming close, took a form, became
a man--became Peter Niburg.
Now, indeed, Nikky roused. Beaten and sorely bruised, Peter Niburg
should have been in bed. What stealthy business of the night brought him
out?
Fortunately for Nikky’s hiding-place, the last step or two proved too
much for the spy. He groaned, and sat down painfully, near the top. His
head lolled forward, and he supported it on two shaking hands. Thus he
sat, huddled and miserable, for five minutes or thereabouts. The chime
rang out overhead the old hymn which the little Crown Prince so often
sang to it:
“Draw me also, Mary mild,
To adore Thee and thy Child!
Mary mild,
Star in desert drear and wild.”
Time had gone since the old church stood in a desert drear and wild, but
still its chimes rang the old petition, hour after hour.
At ten minutes past the hour, Nikky heard the engine of an automobile.
No machine came in sight, but the throbbing kept on, from which he
judged that a car had been stopped around the corner. Peter Niburg
heard it, and rose. A moment later a man, with the springiness of youth,
mounted the steps and confronted the messenger.
Nikky saw a great light. When Peter Niburg put his hand to his
breast-pocket, there was no longer room for doubt, nor, for that matter,
time for thinking. As a matter of fact, never afterward could Nikky
recall thinking at all. He moved away quietly, hidden by the shadows of
the colonnade. Behind him, on the steps, the two men were talking. Peter
Niburg’s nasal voice had taken on a whining note. Short, gruff syllables
replied. Absorbed in themselves and their business, they neither heard
nor saw the figure that slipped through the colonnade, and dropped, a
bloodcurdling drop, from the high end of it to the street below.
Nikky’s first impulse, beside the car, was to cut a tire. By getting his
opponent into a stooping position; over the damaged wheel, it would be
easier to overcome him. But a hasty search revealed that he had lost
his knife in the melee. And second thought gave him a better plan. After
all, to get the letter was not everything. To know its destination would
be important. He had no time to think further. The messenger was coming
down the steps, not stealthily, but clattering, with the ring of nails
in the heels of heavy boots.
Nikky flung his long length into the tonneau, and there crouched. It
was dark enough to conceal him, but Nikky’s was a large body in a small
place. However, the chauffeur only glanced at the car, kicked a tire
with a practiced foot, and got in.
He headed for the open country. Very soon his passenger knew that he
was in for a long ride possibly, a cold ride certainly. Within the city
limits the car moved decorously, but when the suburbs were reached, the
driver put on all his power. He drove carefully, too, as one who must
make haste but cannot afford accident.
Nikky grew very uncomfortable. His long legs ached. The place between
the shoulders where the concierge had landed his powerful blows throbbed
and beat. Also he was puzzled, and he hated being puzzled. He was
unarmed, too. He disliked that most of all. Generally speaking, he felt
his position humiliating. He was a soldier, not a spy. His training had
been to fight, not to hide and watch.
After a time he raised his head. He made out that they were going east,
toward the mountains, and he cursed the luck that had left his revolver
at home. Still he had no plan but to watch. Two hours’ ride, at their
present rate, would take them over the border and into Karnia.
Nikky, although no thinker, was not a fool, and he knew rather better
than most what dangers threatened the country from outside as well.
Also, in the back of his impulsive head was a sort of dogged quality
that was near to obstinacy. He had started this thing and he would see
it through. And as the car approached the border, he began to realize
that this was not of the Terrorists at home, but something sinister,
abroad.
With a squealing of brakes the machine drew up at the frontier. Here was
a chain across the highway, with two sets of guards. Long before they
reached it, a sentry stepped into the road and waved his lantern.
Nikky burrowed lower into the car, and attempted to look like a rug. In
the silence, while the sentry evidently examined a passport and flashed
a lantern over the chauffeur, Nikky cursed the ticking of his watch, the
beating of his own heart.
Then came a clanking as the chain dropped in the road. The car bumped
over it, and halted again. The same formalities, this time by Karnian
sentries. A bit more danger, too, for the captain in charge of the guard
asked for matches, and dangled a careless hand over the side, within a
few inches of Nikky’s head. Then the jerk following a hasty letting-in
of the clutch, and they were off again.
For some time they climbed steadily. But Nikky, who knew the road, bided
his time. Then at last, at two o’clock, came the steep ascent to the
very crest of the mountain, and a falling-back, gear by gear, until they
climbed slowly in the lowest.
Nikky unfolded his length quietly. The gears were grinding, the driver
bent low over his wheel. Very deliberately, now that he knew what he
was going to do, Nikky unbuttoned his tunic and slipped it off. It was a
rash thing, this plan he had in mind, rash under any circumstances, in
a moving car particularly rash here, where between the cliff and a
precipice that fell far away below, was only a winding ribbon of uneven
road.
Here, at the crucial moment, undoubtedly he should have given a last
thought to Hedwig. But alas for romance! As a matter of honesty, he
had completely forgotten Hedwig. This was his work, and with even the
hottest of lovers, work and love are things apart.
So he waited his moment, loveless, as one may say, and then, with one
singularly efficient gesture, he flung his tunic over the chauffeur’s
head. He drove a car himself, did Nikky--not his own, of course; he was
far too poor--and he counted on one thing: an automobile driver acts
from the spinal cord, and not from the brain. Therefore his brain may
be seething with a thousand frenzies, but he will shove out clutch and
brake feet in an emergency, and hold them out.
So it happened. The man’s hands left the wheel, but he stopped his
car. Not too soon. Not before it had struck the cliff, and then taken a
sickening curve out toward the edge of the precipice. But stop it did,
on the very edge of eternity, and the chauffeur held it there.
“Set the hand brake!” Nikky said. The lamps were near enough the edge to
make him dizzy.
The chauffeur ceased struggling, and set the hand brake. His head
was still covered. But having done that, he commenced a struggle more
furious than forceful, for both of them were handicapped. But Nikky had
steel-like young arms from which escape was impossible.
And now Nikky was forced to an unsoldier-like thing that he afterward
tried to forget. For the driver developed unexpected strength, refused
to submit, got the tunic off his head, and, seeing himself attacked by
one man only, took courage and fell to. He picked up a wrench from the
seat beside him, and made a furious pass at Nikky’s head. Nikky ducked
and, after a struggle, secured the weapon. All this in the car, over the
seat back.
It was then that Nikky raised the wrench and stunned his man with it. It
was hateful. The very dull thud of it was sickening. And there was a bad
minute or two when he thought he had killed his opponent. The man had
sunk down in his seat, a sodden lump of inanimate human flesh. And
Nikky, whose business, in a way, was killing; was horrified.
He tried to find the pulse, but failed--which was not surprising, since
he had the wrong side of the wrist. Then the unconscious man groaned.
For a moment, as he stood over him, Nikky reflected that he was having
rather a murderous night of it.
The chauffeur wakened, ten minutes later, to find himself securely
tied with his own towing rope, and lying extremely close to the edge of
death. Beside him on the ground sat a steady-eyed young man with a cut
lip. The young man had lighted a cigarette, and was placing it carefully
in the uninjured side of his mouth.
“Just as soon as you are up to it,” said Nikky, “we shall have a little
talk.”
The chauffeur muttered something in the peasant patois of Karnia.
“Come, come!” Nikky observed. “Speak up. No hiding behind strange
tongues. But first, I have the letter. That saves your worrying about
it. You can clear your mind for action.” Suddenly Nikky dropped his
mocking tone. To be quite frank, now that the man was not dead, and
Nikky had the letter, he rather fancied himself. But make no mistake--he
was in earnest, grim and deadly earnest.
“I have a fancy, my friend,” he said, “to take that letter of yours on
to its destination. But what that destination is, you are to tell me.”
The man on the ground grinned sardonically. “You know better than to ask
that,” he said. “I will never tell you.”
Nikky had thought things out fairly well, for him, in that ten minutes.
In a business-like fashion he turned the prostrate prisoner on his side,
so that he faced toward the chasm. A late moon showed its depth, and the
valley in which the Ar flowed swiftly. And having thus faced him toward
the next world, Nikky, throwing away his cigarette because it hurt
his lip, put a stone or two from the roadway behind his prisoner, and
anchored him there. Then he sat down and waited. Except that his ears
were burning, he was very calm.
“Any news?” he asked, at the end of ten minutes’ unbroken silence.
His--prisoner said nothing. He was thinking, doubtless. Weighing things,
too,--perhaps life against betrayal, a family against separation.
Nikky examined the letter again. It was addressed to a border town in
Livonia. But the town lay far behind them. The address, then, was a
false one. He whistled softly. He was not, as a fact, as calm as he
looked. He had never thrown a man over a precipice before, and he
disliked the idea. Fortunately, his prisoner did not know this. Besides,
suppose he did push him over? Dead men are extremely useless about
telling things. It would, as a fact, leave matters no better than
before. Rather worse.
Half an hour.
“Come, come,” said Nikky fiercely. “We are losing time.” He looked
fierce, too. His swollen lip did that. And he was nervous. It occurred
to him that his prisoner, in desperation, might roll over the edge
himself, which would be most uncomfortable.
But the precipice, and Nikky’s fierce lip, and other things, had got in
their work. The man on the ground stopped muttering in his patois, and
turned on Nikky eyes full of hate.
“I will tell you,” he said. “And you will free me. And after that--”
“Certainly,” Nikky replied equably. “You will follow me to the ends of
the earth--although that will not be necessary, because I don’t intend
to go there--and finish me off.” Then, sternly: “Now, where does the
letter go? I have a fancy for delivering it myself.”
“If I tell you, what then?”
“This: If you tell me properly, and all goes well, I will return and
release you. If I do not return, naturally you will not be released.
And, for fear you meditate a treachery, I shall gag you and leave you,
not here, but back a short distance, in the wood we just passed. And,
because you are a brave man, and this thing may be less serious than
I think it is, I give you my word of honor that, if you advise me
correctly, I shall return and liberate you.”
He was very proud of his plan. He had thought it out carefully. He had
everything to gain and nothing to lose by it--except, perhaps, his
life. The point was, that he knew he could not take a citizen of Karnia
prisoner, because too many things would follow, possibly a war.
“It’s a reasonable proposition,” he observed. “If I come back, you are
all right. If I do not, there are a number of disagreeable possibilities
for you.”
“I have only your word.”
“And I yours,” said Nikky.
The chauffeur took a final glance around; as far as he could see, and a
final shuddering look at the valley of the Ar, far below. “I will tell
you,” he said sullenly.