Gunzi laughed cynically: "To better parts, my friend, to better
parts."
"What do you mean? Has Budapest meant so little to you that already
you are tired of its attractions?"
The detective grinned. "Ho, ho, Comrade Szamuelly! Budapest is
finished for you and for me and for all good Communists. Our day is
over. You know it as well as I, friend. In my hunt for your cursed
White Knight I have here and there come across traces of a vast White
plot, fostered and prepared by the English devil in between times
when he has not been hunting you.
"I have ears in my head, I have eyes which can see well. In a few
weeks' time, perhaps not so long as that, the Commune will be
finished, and God keep us all from the clutches of the White Terror!
Mark my words, Comrade Szamuelly, and take heed of them if you are a
wise man: there will be a White Terror, as sure as my name is--is
supposed to be--Gunzi! Do you not think that the fathers, mothers,
sisters, and sons of some of the men you have hanged will clamour for
revenge? Eh? The answer is 'yes.' I would, so would you--if for no
other reason than that it would show our sympathy with the new
Government in wishing to be avenged on the old one, and it is wiser
to keep on the right side of governments in these days.
"I became a Communist with my eyes open, and they are still open, my
friend. That is why I go.... Whither? Well, I do not know. To
Austria perhaps, or Russia, where they have a good way with Whites,
or even Italy; anywhere, say I, rather than stop here."
To Szamuelly the words needed no confirmation; all that Gunzi had
just said he himself had suspected for some time, but desperately he
had continued to hope for the best.
"But--but you swore to get me the White Knight!"
Gunzi cursed. "I have tried, my friend, but one might as well try to
catch the raindrops as they fall. He is the Devil himself!--jealous
of you, perhaps, Comrade Szamuelly," and he laughed slyly at his own
humour.
"May Hell burn his bones!" The Communist looked nervously around him
with twitching eyes: "Gunzi, I cannot stand the strain! He is
everywhere! Where my Death Train goes he is there before me with the
message 'Szamuelly shall die!' I see him in the men who surround me;
even among my Terror Boys he must have his spies. My nerves are
fraying, my courage disappearing."
Gunzi laughed heartlessly: "You are going just the same way as did
Commissary Gonnard. I have never seen such a jelly-bag in all my
life as he at the end of one day. He fled here, to Budapest, but
finally the White Knight caught him, and hanged him from the
Suspension Bridge."
"But how can he get me--how can he?" Desperately the white-faced
Szamuelly put the question, a very different Szamuelly from the one
who had scornfully sneered at the first threats of the White Knight.
"I am surrounded by my faithful Terror Boys--they guard me now night
and day--how can he get past them?"
The detective shrugged his shoulders: "Don't ask me, friend; I do not
know. All I say is that he will in the long run. Besides, didn't
you yourself say you thought he had a spy among them? Take my
advice. Do as I am doing. Pack and fly for it, my friend!" and with
the sound of Gunzi's mocking laughter in his ears Szamuelly stumbled
from the room.
By the time he reached the street his face was chalky, his lips
trembled nervously. Gunzi's words haunted him; somehow they had rung
so prophetically in his ears. He felt his nerve cracking. His only
hope, the one man he felt could have tracked the White Knight, was
fleeing, not only from the city, but from the country altogether.
Now there was no one to guard him against the machinations of the
White Knight! His Terror Boys ... in their brutal way they were
brave enough, possibly thoroughly loyal, but Szamuelly had no faith
in them; all their bravery was of no use compared with the White
Knight's cunning, all their loyalty was likely to evaporate at the
sight of the White Knight's well-filled purse.
Two Terror Boys walked by his side. "What's the matter, comrade?"
asked one. "You do not look yourself."
Szamuelly shrugged his shoulders helplessly: "I am not, my friend.
To-day I have received bad news--news which affects you--I--all of
us."
"Bad news which affects us all! What can that be? The only bad news
you could give us would be that neither wine nor women remained in
the world."
Szamuelly laughed shortly: "Yet, my friend, what I have to say is
worse than that. The Commune is finished, the days of commissaries
ended."
The Terror Boys looked at him as if they wondered what madness had
come over their leader.
"You are not well," growled the second guard, who had not yet spoken.
Szamuelly turned upon him in a temper: "Fools, fools! So you think I
am mad! Blockheads, can't you see the truth when it is thrust before
you? Let me put it to you in a way you will understand. To-night I
leave Budapest for Russia, or Austria, or Italy--anywhere, so long as
I escape."
The two Terror Boys stopped in their walk and gazed at Szamuelly with
strained expressions. He had spoken in words which they understood.
If he were fleeing, he, after Bela Kun the leading light of the Red
Terror, then indeed the good days must be finished. They knew their
Szamuelly, and no longer did they doubt the truth. It was no trick
to get rid of them.
Yet a certain suspicion suggested itself to one of them. "It is not
the White Knight?" he queried.
Szamuelly shivered at the mention of the name, yet he would have
hotly denied the imputation had he not realized the fruitlessness of
so doing. Besides, a plan was formulating in his brain.
"I will be frank with you, comrades," he said, after a pause. "I am
afraid of the White Knight. Yet listen. If I thought that the
Soviet were likely to last I would dare the Enemy of the Commune to
do his worst, for I should have all of you, my friends, to guard me
against this cursed _bourgeois_; but ... let us continue in our walk.
I want to make all the necessary arrangements...."
"To scuttle?"
"Ay, my friends, to scuttle."
There was food for thought in what he had said, and each of his
guards digested in his mind the astounding news of which he had just
been made cognizant. The one who spoke little thought the harder.
"My friend," he said softly to Szamuelly, "even though you flee there
is still--the White Knight!"
"Well!" Szamuelly turned on him savagely. "Do you not think I know
that as well as you?"
"Yes, yes. But listen, Comrade Szamuelly. Would you not feel safer
if you had a comrade--or, say, two good comrades--with you when you
escape?"
The second Terror Boy laughed shortly. "My God You are right. Two
good comrades, eh, Szamuelly! Three of us--we three--could put up a
fight against even the White Knight."
Szamuelly's eyes gleamed. So easily had they fallen into the trap
which he had laid for them! "Bravo my friends! Then that is
settled. We will go together but ... listen! Supposing that the
rest of our comrades hear the news. They too will want to come."
"Why should they?" asked the soft-tongued one.
"Exactly!" agreed Szamuelly. "Then when shall it be?"
"The sooner the better, if what you say in true."
Could the guard have been at the Soviet meeting taking place at that
very moment he would not have needed to add that last rider. Amidst
an atmosphere of stark tragedy Bela Kun was resigning the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In a halting, tearful tone he was
informing his followers of the truth--that the Red Army had
collapsed, the Rumanians had crossed the Tisza, the Whites had
already brought about their _coup d'état_, while all over the country
red geraniums were being discarded for white roses, and the Red
ensign of bloody Communism was being supplanted by the national flag.
Forcefully he drove home the truth: the day of the Commune was ended,
and those who valued their necks more than the power they had wielded
for the last six months could do worse than resign; he himself set
the example.
So fell the Dictatorship of the Proletariat on July 30, 1919, and the
government of Hungary was transferred to the Presidency of Peidl, who
appointed ministers instead of commissaries, and called his
government a "Workmen's Government."
In the meanwhile, with the assistance of his two comrades, Szamuelly
prepared for flight, blithely abandoning his fellow-murderers to
their fate.
In less than an hour he was packed, while outside the building
throbbingly awaited the motor-car which was to rush him and his two
Terror Boys to the station to catch the first train to Austria.
With a hasty look to see that he had left nothing behind, for the
last time he closed the door of the apartment which he had
confiscated a few months previously.
There was a grin on the faces of the two Terror Boys who sat in the
car. They saw nothing of treachery in their flight, only a
satisfaction that they were one jump ahead of their
fellow-Terrorists, that they were escaping the threatened upheaval,
of which the others, left behind, would have to bear the brunt. That
is why they smiled--or at any rate why one smiled. The soft-tongued
guard smiled because the White Knight had paid even more handsomely
than usual for certain information, and several crisp Bank of England
notes reposed comfortably in the lining of his dirty regimental coat.
For the first time for weeks Szamuelly actually felt light of
heart--not because he was giving up his position of official
murderer, not really because he feared the White uprising, but
because he was leaving the White Knight behind, escaping beyond reach
of the White Knight's vengeance.
He nodded cheerfully to the Terrorist who sat at the steering-wheel:
"Go ahead, comrade! There is just time in which to catch that train."
The guard depressed the clutch, and with a grinding whine of
annoyance the engine slipped into low. Szamuelly settled himself
comfortably. A few hours now and he would be able actually to
breathe without feeling a queer catch somewhere inside just near his
heart.
He looked round, a last parting glance at the streets of Budapest,
then suddenly he sobbed with a consuming terror, one which clutched
his heart in a violent, chilling constriction, a fear which fluttered
through his body, freezing his very marrow, draining the blood from
his face and leaving it deathly white.
Barely five yards behind followed another car; beside the driver sat
the White Knight, tense and expressionless like the grim figure of
Fate.
There was no doubt as to his identity. His face pale with a
consuming fury, his scars throbbed redder in contrast. His steely
eyes bored hypnotically into Szamuelly's, and in them the Communist
read a mocking surety of victory--his death-warrant.
A month ago he would have plucked his revolver from its holster and
opened fire on the audacious pursuer, but now--he was paralysed with
fright, his nerve entirely gone. He could only gasp, and crouch
further into the body of the car.
"Oh, God!" he moaned. "Oh, God! Oh, God!" Then with a shriek he
raised his voice, "Quicker, quicker!" and the Terrorist who was
driving looked round with a startled air. "Quicker!" screamed
Szamuelly, and the pace increased till the already shaky sides of the
automobile began to rock unsteadily.
Szamuelly looked back; the relative positions of the two cars had
scarcely changed ... once again he looked into the eyes of the White
Knight....
He leaned forward. "Comrade, for God's sake ... the aerodrome! ...
Behind us the White Knight ... lose his car, we will fly to
Russia...."
The driver looked behind him, and the car swayed ominously toward an
oncoming automobile as his nerveless fingers suddenly lost their firm
grip on the wheel. Just in time the smooth-tongued one clutched and
held the wheel on a straighter course.
The narrow escape from a terrible collision only served to make the
driver turn still whiter, but at the same time he was filled with a
desperate desire to escape, and instinctively he turned his attention
to the car--anything to draw away from the dreaded White Knight--and
his foot pressed still harder on the accelerator.
He knew the streets well, did Szamuelly's driver, for once upon a
time, before he had been imprisoned for robbery with violence, he had
been a chauffeur. Filled with a determination to lose their pursuer,
without the slightest slackening, without a warning note, he shot off
down a side road.
The car rocked over to a dangerous angle, but by a miracle settled
down again, and the next second was away in the distance, even while
Francis Bakocz, who was driving the pursuing car, little suspecting
the sudden manœuvre, overshot the road and, with the brakes
shrieking and wailing, came to a stop too late, so that he had to
reverse and back. By the time he was in the side road Szamuelly's
car had disappeared.
Francis looked at the White Knight inquiringly, but Wenzel was
puzzled. As the car turned the Terrorist in his pay had shot his arm
up into the air, and his pointing finger had waved in the direction
of the heavens. It was a signal; that much Wenzel could guess; but
what was its portent he could not gather.
Francis drove wildly on, tearing down the side road at breakneck
speed, unheeding the cursing pedestrians who shook their fists and
growled; but Szamuelly's Terrorist knew his work, and there was no
sign of the car in front. To stop and inquire would be waste of
time--in the meantime Szamuelly would escape--but there was
apparently nothing else to be done; but, even as Francis slowed up,
Wenzel suddenly turned, an idea germinating in his mind.
"Francis, quick, is there an aerodrome in this direction?"
The boy, for he was scarcely more in years, even if the last few
months had aged him in experience, nodded.
Wenzel laughed. "That is where he has gone. For God's sake, get
there quickly!"
In the meantime Szamuelly's car was nearing the aerodrome.
Aeroplanes were waiting--he could see them, their outstretched wings
gleaming whitely in the sun, their pilots scattered about the field.
The car drew up, steaming, and Szamuelly tumbled out.
"Comrade," he gasped to one of the pilots, "I am Comrade Szamuelly, a
People's Commissary. I ... I seek a consultation in Russia with
Lenin, concerning the glorious future of a united European Soviet.
You will take me there. I will pay you well--very well--many
thousands of crowns."
"Why shouldn't I, comrade? I am fond of money. Come to-morrow and I
will see what I can do."
"To-morrow? To-morrow is of no use--I must go now, at once ... this
very minute!" His voice rose, and the pilot looked at him with a
questioning glance.
"You are in a hurry, comrade! What bites you? Lenin is not dying,
is he?"
"Delay not, for God's sake, comrade! The White Knight is after us.
He may arrive at any minute now." It was the smooth-tongued one who
spoke.
His words were not without effect. The pilot's face creased into
ugly lines, and he turned upon Szamuelly with a threatening air:
"Oh, ho, my friend! You do not speak altogether the truth. The
White Knight! I have heard of him too often for my own peace of
mind. You had best find some one else to take you. I do not relish
hanging from the Suspension Bridge." He turned away.
"I will make it ten, twenty thousand crowns, comrade, if you will but
take me." He was sobbing now.
The pilot laughed harshly. "Of what use are twenty thousand crowns
in Hell, my friend? I prefer to spend them in Budapest. Find some
one else."
With streaming tears Szamuelly begged the pilots, one after another,
to take him to Russia. Once there, so he told them, they would be
safe from the White Knight's vengeance. But his pleas were of no
avail. They--who did not yet know the Commune was cracking up, even
at that very moment--had no wish to abandon Hungary yet, and besides,
they sneered, there were Rumanian planes and Czech planes to pass
before Russia was reached, and they had had enough fighting to last
them for a while.
Before five minutes had passed Szamuelly knew his quest was useless,
and also by that time the train to Austria would be gone; before the
next went, God alone knew what might happen! There was only one way
out of the country.
He turned to his fellow-Terrorists. "Comrades, drive like Hell for
the Austrian frontier. It is the only thing left now."
They bought petrol, for Szamuelly was afraid to confiscate, and
started off, five minutes before Wenzel and Francis arrived. While
the White Knight remained under cover Francis made inquiries.
The pilots looked at him with suspicion when he asked if Szamuelly
had been there, but he seemed too young to be connected with the
White Knight, so they grinned and told him that he was not likely to
see the commissary any more.
"Why?" They laughed when Francis put the question. "Because he is
on his way to Austria. The White Knight is after him."
"The White Knight! Who the Hell is he?" asked Francis naïvely. In
asking the question he had meant to be diplomatic, but when ten
minutes passed before they had finished telling him all about the
White Knight he cursed himself for being such an idiot.
At length he got away. Wenzel's face hardened when he heard the news.
"Well?" he said, and gazed at Francis.