By the time he turned the corner of the stairs, the beautiful lady had
risen from her seat in the back room and walked into the dining-room at
the front. A heavily-built, dark-bearded man was standing inside the
door as if waiting for her.
"I could do nothing with him," she said at once, in her soft voice,
speaking quite prettily and gently, as if what she said was the most
natural thing in the world. "I managed the little trick of the sprained
foot really well, and got him into the house. He is an amiable boy with
perfect manners, and I thought it might be easy to surprise him into
saying more than he knew he was saying. You can generally do that with
children and young things. But he either knows nothing or has been
trained to hold his tongue. He's not stupid, and he's of a high spirit.
I made a pathetic little scene about Samavia, because I saw he could be
worked up. It did work him up. I tried him with the Lost Prince rumor;
but, if there is truth in it, he does not or will not know. I tried to
make him lose his temper and betray something in defending his father,
whom he thinks a god, by the way. But I made a mistake. I saw that. It's
a pity. Boys can sometimes be made to tell anything." She spoke very
quickly under her breath. The man spoke quickly too.
"Where is he?" he asked.
"I sent him up to the drawing-room to look for a book. He will look for
a few minutes. Listen. He's an innocent boy. He sees me only as a gentle
angel. Nothing will _shake_ him so much as to hear me tell him the truth
suddenly. It will be such a shock to him that perhaps you can do
something with him then. He may lose his hold on himself. He's only a
boy."
"You're right," said the bearded man. "And when he finds out he is not
free to go, it may alarm him and we may get something worth while."
"If we could find out what is true, or what Loristan thinks is true, we
should have a clue to work from," she said.
"We have not much time," the man whispered. "We are ordered to Bosnia at
once. Before midnight we must be on the way."
"Let us go into the other room. He is coming."
When Marco entered the room, the heavily-built man with the pointed dark
beard was standing by the easy-chair.
"I am sorry I could not find the book," he apologized. "I looked on all
the tables."
"I shall be obliged to go and search for it myself," said the Lovely
Person.
She rose from her chair and stood up smiling. And at her first movement
Marco saw that she was not disabled in the least.
"Your foot!" he exclaimed. "It's better?"
"It wasn't hurt," she answered, in her softly pretty voice and with her
softly pretty smile. "I only made you think so."
It was part of her plan to spare him nothing of shock in her sudden
transformation. Marco felt his breath leave him for a moment.
"I made you believe I was hurt because I wanted you to come into the
house with me," she added. "I wished to find out certain things I am
sure you know."
"They were things about Samavia," said the man. "Your father knows them,
and you must know something of them at least. It is necessary that we
should hear what you can tell us. We shall not allow you to leave the
house until you have answered certain questions I shall ask you."
Then Marco began to understand. He had heard his father speak of
political spies, men and women who were paid to trace the people that
certain governments or political parties desired to have followed and
observed. He knew it was their work to search out secrets, to disguise
themselves and live among innocent people as if they were merely
ordinary neighbors.
They must be spies who were paid to follow his father because he was a
Samavian and a patriot. He did not know that they had taken the house
two months before, and had accomplished several things during their
apparently innocent stay in it. They had discovered Loristan and had
learned to know his outgoings and incomings, and also the outgoings and
incomings of Lazarus, Marco, and The Rat. But they meant, if possible,
to learn other things. If the boy could be startled and terrified into
unconscious revelations, it might prove well worth their while to have
played this bit of melodrama before they locked the front door behind
them and hastily crossed the Channel, leaving their landlord to discover
for himself that the house had been vacated.
In Marco's mind strange things were happening. They were spies! But that
was not all. The Lovely Person had been right when she said that he
would receive a shock. His strong young chest swelled. In all his life,
he had never come face to face with black treachery before. He could not
grasp it. This gentle and friendly being with the grateful soft voice
and grateful soft eyes had betrayed--_betrayed_ him! It seemed impossible
to believe it, and yet the smile on her curved mouth told him that it
was true. When he had sprung to help her, she had been playing a trick!
When he had been sorry for her pain and had winced at the sound of her
low exclamation, she had been deliberately laying a trap to harm him.
For a few seconds he was stunned--perhaps, if he had not been his
father's son, he might have been stunned only. But he was more. When
the first seconds had passed, there arose slowly within him a sense of
something like high, remote disdain. It grew in his deep boy's eyes as
he gazed directly into the pupils of the long soft dark ones. His body
felt as if it were growing taller.
"You are very clever," he said slowly. Then, after a second's pause, he
added, "I was too young to know that there was any one so--clever--in
the world."
The Lovely Person laughed, but she did not laugh easily. She spoke to
her companion.
"A _grand seigneur_!" she said. "As one looks at him, one half believes
it is true."
The man with the beard was looking very angry. His eyes were savage and
his dark skin reddened. Marco thought that he looked at him as if he
hated him, and was made fierce by the mere sight of him, for some
mysterious reason.
"Two days before you left Moscow," he said, "three men came to see your
father. They looked like peasants. They talked to him for more than an
hour. They brought with them a roll of parchment. Is that not true?"
"I know nothing," said Marco.
"Before you went to Moscow, you were in Budapest. You went there from
Vienna. You were there for three months, and your father saw many
people. Some of them came in the middle of the night."
"I know nothing," said Marco.
"You have spent your life in traveling from one country to another,"
persisted the man. "You know the European languages as if you were a
courier, or the __portier__ in a Viennese hotel. Do you not?"
Marco did not answer.
The Lovely Person began to speak to the man rapidly in Russian.
"A spy and an adventurer Stefan Loristan has always been and always will
be," she said. "We know what he is. The police in every capital in
Europe know him as a sharper and a vagabond, as well as a spy. And yet,
with all his cleverness, he does not seem to have money. What did he do
with the bribe the Maranovitch gave him for betraying what he knew of
the old fortress? The boy doesn't even suspect him. Perhaps it's true
that he knows nothing. Or perhaps it is true that he has been so
ill-treated and flogged from his babyhood that he dare not speak. There
is a cowed look in his eyes in spite of his childish swagger. He's been
both starved and beaten."
The outburst was well done. She did not look at Marco as she poured
forth her words. She spoke with the abruptness and impetuosity of a
person whose feelings had got the better of her. If Marco was sensitive
about his father, she felt sure that his youth would make his face
reveal something if his tongue did not--if he understood Russian, which
was one of the things it would be useful to find out, because it was a
fact which would verify many other things.
Marco's face disappointed her. No change took place in it, and the blood
did not rise to the surface of his skin. He listened with an
uninterested air, blank and cold and polite. Let them say what they
chose.
The man twisted his pointed beard and shrugged his shoulders.
"We have a good little wine-cellar downstairs," he said. "You are going
down into it, and you will probably stay there for some time if you do
not make up your mind to answer my questions. You think that nothing can
happen to you in a house in a London street where policemen walk up and
down. But you are mistaken. If you yelled now, even if any one chanced
to hear you, they would only think you were a lad getting a thrashing
he deserved. You can yell as much as you like in the black little
wine-cellar, and no one will hear at all. We only took this house for
three months, and we shall leave it to-night without mentioning the fact
to any one. If we choose to leave you in the wine-cellar, you will wait
there until somebody begins to notice that no one goes in and out, and
chances to mention it to the landlord--which few people would take the
trouble to do. Did you come here from Moscow?"
"I know nothing," said Marco.
"You might remain in the good little black cellar an unpleasantly long
time before you were found," the man went on, quite coolly. "Do you
remember the peasants who came to see your father two nights before you
left?"
"I know nothing," said Marco.
"By the time it was discovered that the house was empty and people came
in to make sure, you might be too weak to call out and attract their
attention. Did you go to Budapest from Vienna, and were you there for
three months?" asked the inquisitor.
"I know nothing," said Marco.
"You are too good for the little black cellar," put in the Lovely
Person. "I like you. Don't go into it!"
"I know nothing," Marco answered, but the eyes which were like
Loristan's gave her just such a look as Loristan would have given her,
and she felt it. It made her uncomfortable.
"I don't believe you were ever ill-treated or beaten," she said. "I tell
you, the little black cellar will be a hard thing. Don't go there!"
And this time Marco said nothing, but looked at her still as if he were
some great young noble who was very proud.
He knew that every word the bearded man had spoken was true. To cry out
would be of no use. If they went away and left him behind them, there
was no knowing how many days would pass before the people of the
neighborhood would begin to suspect that the place had been deserted, or
how long it would be before it occurred to some one to give warning to
the owner. And in the meantime, neither his father nor Lazarus nor The
Rat would have the faintest reason for guessing where he was. And he
would be sitting alone in the dark in the wine-cellar. He did not know
in the least what to do about this thing. He only knew that silence was
still the order.
"It is a jet-black little hole," the man said. "You might crack your
throat in it, and no one would hear. Did men come to talk with your
father in the middle of the night when you were in Vienna?"
"I know nothing," said Marco.
"He won't tell," said the Lovely Person. "I am sorry for this boy."
"He may tell after he has sat in the good little black wine-cellar for a
few hours," said the man with the pointed beard. "Come with me!"
He put his powerful hand on Marco's shoulder and pushed him before him.
Marco made no struggle. He remembered what his father had said about the
game not being a game. It wasn't a game now, but somehow he had a strong
haughty feeling of not being afraid.
He was taken through the hallway, toward the rear, and down the
commonplace flagged steps which led to the basement. Then he was marched
through a narrow, ill-lighted, flagged passage to a door in the wall.
The door was not locked and stood a trifle ajar. His companion pushed it
farther open and showed part of a wine-cellar which was so dark that it
was only the shelves nearest the door that Marco could faintly see. His
captor pushed him in and shut the door. It was as black a hole as he had
described. Marco stood still in the midst of darkness like black velvet.
His guard turned the key.
"The peasants who came to your father in Moscow spoke Samavian and were
big men. Do you remember them?" he asked from outside.
"I know nothing," answered Marco.
"You are a young fool," the voice replied. "And I believe you know even
more than we thought. Your father will be greatly troubled when you do
not come home. I will come back to see you in a few hours, if it is
possible. I will tell you, however, that I have had disturbing news
which might make it necessary for us to leave the house in a hurry.
I might not have time to come down here again before leaving."
Marco stood with his back against a bit of wall and remained silent.
There was stillness for a few minutes, and then there was to be heard
the sound of footsteps marching away.
When the last distant echo died all was quite silent, and Marco drew a
long breath. Unbelievable as it may appear, it was in one sense almost
a breath of relief. In the rush of strange feeling which had swept over
him when he found himself facing the astounding situation up-stairs, it
had not been easy to realize what his thoughts really were; there were
so many of them and they came so fast. How could he quite believe the
evidence of his eyes and ears? A few minutes, only a few minutes, had
changed his prettily grateful and kindly acquaintance into a subtle and
cunning creature whose love for Samavia had been part of a plot to harm
it and to harm his father.
What did she and her companion want to do--what could they do if they
knew the things they were trying to force him to tell?
Marco braced his back against the wall stoutly.
"What will it be best to think about first?"
This he said because one of the most absorbingly fascinating things he
and his father talked about together was the power of the thoughts which
human beings allow to pass through their minds--the strange strength of
them. When they talked of this, Marco felt as if he were listening to
some marvelous Eastern story of magic which was true. In Loristan's
travels, he had visited the far Oriental countries, and he had seen and
learned many things which seemed marvels, and they had taught him deep
thinking. He had known, and reasoned through days with men who believed
that when they desired a thing, clear and exalted thought would bring it
to them. He had discovered why they believed this, and had learned to
understand their profound arguments.
What he himself believed, he had taught Marco quite simply from his
childhood. It was this: he himself--Marco, with the strong boy-body, the
thick mat of black hair, and the patched clothes--was the magician. He
held and waved his wand himself--and his wand was his own Thought. When
special privation or anxiety beset them, it was their rule to say, "What
will it be best to think about first?" which was Marco's reason for
saying it to himself now as he stood in the darkness which was like
black velvet.
He waited a few minutes for the right thing to come to him.
"I will think of the very old hermit who lived on the ledge of the
mountains in India and who let my father talk to him through all one
night," he said at last. This had been a wonderful story and one of his
favorites. Loristan had traveled far to see this ancient Buddhist, and
what he had seen and heard during that one night had made changes in his
life. The part of the story which came back to Marco now was these
words:
"_Let pass through thy mind, my son, only the image thou wouldst desire
to see a truth. Meditate only upon the wish of thy heart, seeing first
that it can injure no man and is not ignoble. Then will it take earthly
form and draw near to thee. This is the law of that which creates._"
"I am not afraid," Marco said aloud. "I shall not be afraid. In some way
I shall get out."
This was the image he wanted most to keep steadily in his mind--that
nothing could make him afraid, and that in some way he would get out of
the wine-cellar.
He thought of this for some minutes, and said the words over several
times. He felt more like himself when he had done it.
"When my eyes are accustomed to the darkness, I shall see if there is
any little glimmer of light anywhere," he said next.
He waited with patience, and it seemed for some time that he saw no
glimmer at all. He put out his hands on either side of him, and found
that, on the side of the wall against which he stood, there seemed to be
no shelves. Perhaps the cellar had been used for other purposes than the
storing of wine, and, if that was true, there might be somewhere some
opening for ventilation. The air was not bad, but then the door had not
been shut tightly when the man opened it.
"I am not afraid," he repeated. "I shall not be afraid. In some way I
shall get out."
He would not allow himself to stop and think about his father waiting
for his return. He knew that would only rouse his emotions and weaken
his courage. He began to feel his way carefully along the wall. It
reached farther than he had thought it would.
The cellar was not so very small. He crept round it gradually, and, when
he had crept round it, he made his way across it, keeping his hands
extended before him and setting down each foot cautiously. Then he sat
down on the stone floor and thought again, and what he thought was of
the things the old Buddhist had told his father, and that there was a
way out of this place for him, and he should somehow find it, and,
before too long a time had passed, be walking in the street again.
It was while he was thinking in this way that he felt a startling thing.
It seemed almost as if something touched him. It made him jump, though
the touch was so light and soft that it was scarcely a touch at all, in
fact he could not be sure that he had not imagined it. He stood up and
leaned against the wall again. Perhaps the suddenness of his movement
placed him at some angle he had not reached before, or perhaps his eyes
had become more completely accustomed to the darkness, for, as he turned
his head to listen, he made a discovery: above the door there was a
place where the velvet blackness was not so dense. There was something
like a slit in the wall, though, as it did not open upon daylight but
upon the dark passage, it was not light it admitted so much as a lesser
shade of darkness. But even that was better than nothing, and Marco drew
another long breath.
"That is only the beginning. I shall find a way out," he said.
"I _shall_."
He remembered reading a story of a man who, being shut by accident in
a safety vault, passed through such terrors before his release that he
believed he had spent two days and nights in the place when he had been
there only a few hours.
"His thoughts did that. I must remember. I will sit down again and begin
thinking of all the pictures in the cabinet rooms of the Art History
Museum in Vienna. It will take some time, and then there are the
others," he said.
It was a good plan. While he could keep his mind upon the game which had
helped him to pass so many dull hours, he could think of nothing else,
as it required close attention--and perhaps, as the day went on, his
captors would begin to feel that it was not safe to run the risk of
doing a thing as desperate as this would be. They might think better of
it before they left the house at least. In any case, he had learned
enough from Loristan to realize that only harm could come from letting
one's mind run wild.
"A mind is either an engine with broken and flying gear, or a giant
power under control," was the thing they knew.
He had walked in imagination through three of the cabinet rooms and was
turning mentally into a fourth, when he found himself starting again
quite violently. This time it was not at a touch but at a sound. Surely
it was a sound. And it was in the cellar with him. But it was the
tiniest possible noise, a ghost of a squeak and a suggestion of a
movement. It came from the opposite side of the cellar, the side where
the shelves were. He looked across in the darkness, and in the darkness
saw a light which there could be no mistake about. It _was_ a light, two
lights indeed, two round phosphorescent greenish balls. They were two
eyes staring at him. And then he heard another sound. Not a squeak this
time, but something so homely and comfortable that he actually burst out
laughing. It was a cat purring, a nice warm cat! And she was curled up
on one of the lower shelves purring to some new-born kittens. He knew
there were kittens because it was plain now what the tiny squeak had
been, and it was made plainer by the fact that he heard another much
more distinct one and then another. They had all been asleep when he had
come into the cellar. If the mother had been awake, she had probably
been very much afraid. Afterward she had perhaps come down from her
shelf to investigate, and had passed close to him. The feeling of relief
which came upon him at this queer and simple discovery was wonderful. It
was so natural and comfortable an every-day thing that it seemed to make
spies and criminals unreal, and only natural things possible. With a
mother cat purring away among her kittens, even a dark wine-cellar was
not so black. He got up and kneeled by the shelf. The greenish eyes did
not shine in an unfriendly way. He could feel that the owner of them was
a nice big cat, and he counted four round little balls of kittens. It
was a curious delight to stroke the soft fur and talk to the mother cat.
She answered with purring, as if she liked the sense of friendly human
nearness. Marco laughed to himself.
"It's queer what a difference it makes!" he said. "It is almost like
finding a window."
The mere presence of these harmless living things was companionship. He
sat down close to the low shelf and listened to the motherly purring,
now and then speaking and putting out his hand to touch the warm fur.
The phosphorescent light in the green eyes was a comfort in itself.
"We shall get out of this--both of us," he said. "We shall not be here
very long, Puss-cat."
He was not troubled by the fear of being really hungry for some time. He
was so used to eating scantily from necessity, and to passing long hours
without food during his journeys, that he had proved to himself that
fasting is not, after all, such a desperate ordeal as most people
imagine. If you begin by expecting to feel famished and by counting the
hours between your meals, you will begin to be ravenous. But he knew
better.
The time passed slowly; but he had known it would pass slowly, and he
had made up his mind not to watch it nor ask himself questions about it.
He was not a restless boy, but, like his father, could stand or sit or
lie still. Now and then he could hear distant rumblings of carts and
vans passing in the street. There was a certain degree of companionship
in these also. He kept his place near the cat and his hand where he
could occasionally touch her. He could lift his eyes now and then to the
place where the dim glimmer of something like light showed itself.
Perhaps the stillness, perhaps the darkness, perhaps the purring of the
mother cat, probably all three, caused his thoughts to begin to travel
through his mind slowly and more slowly. At last they ceased and he fell
asleep. The mother cat purred for some time, and then fell asleep
herself.