WHAT HAPPENED AT TRELITZ
It was the 6th of June again.
Once more Prince Zastrow rode with Ulik von Kessner and Alexis Vollmar
and the attendant huntsmen up the avenue of pines leading to the gate of
the Castle of Trelitz, but now accompanied by two unseen Presences which
belonged at once to their own world and also to another and wider one.
Once more the great doors opened and they passed into the trophy-decked,
skin-carpeted hall: and once more they were welcomed by the stately,
silken-clad woman who came down the broad staircase to greet her lord
and his guests. Emil von Zastrow, last and worthiest scion of his
ancient line, the very _beau ideal_ of youthful strength and manly
dignity, ran half-way up the stairs to meet his lady and his love, and
then the men went away to their rooms, while the Princess Hermia, true
housewife as well as princess, betook herself to the pleasant task of
making sure that all the preparations for dinner were complete.
The dinner was served in one of the smaller rooms, in the modern wing of
the Castle, on an oval table. The Prince sat at one end faced by his
beautiful consort. To his right sat his guest, Alexis Vollmar, and a
tall, handsome, but somewhat hard-featured woman of about thirty, with
the clear blue eyes and thick, yellow-gold hair which proclaimed her a
daughter of the northern German lowlands. This was Hulda von Tyssen, the
Princess's companion and lady-in-waiting. They were faced by a stout,
powerfully-built man with a full beard and moustache _à la_ Friedrich,
Ulik von Kessner, High Chamberlain of Boravia. Captain Alexis Vollmar
was a typical Russian officer of the younger school, tall, well-set-up,
and good-looking after the Muscovite fashion. He had distinguished
himself in the Far East, but just now he preferred the serene atmosphere
of Boravia to the thunder-laden air of Holy Russia.
The talk was of hunting and war and politics and the chances of the
Russian revolution, and on this latter subject it was perfectly
unrestrained, for all knew that the Powers had made a secret compact by
which they bound themselves, in the event of the fall of the Romanoff
Dynasty and the Arch-Ducal oligarchy--which all Europe would be very
glad to see the last of--to support Prince Zastrow as elective candidate
for the vacant throne.
The Revolutionary leaders had been sounded on the subject, and were
found strongly in favour of the scheme. It meant a return to the ancient
principle of elected monarchy, and Prince Zastrow, though now a German
ruling prince, represented the union of two of the oldest and noblest
families in Russia and Poland. Moreover, he had pledged himself to a
Constitution which, without going to Radical or Socialistic extremes,
embodied all that the moderate and responsible adherents of the
Revolutionary cause desired or considered suitable for the people in
their present stage of political development--which, of course, meant
everything that Oscar Oscarovitch did not want.
After dinner they went out through the long French windows on to a
verandah which overlooked a vast sea of forest, lying dark and seemingly
limitless under the fading daylight and the radiance of the brightening
moon. Since their marriage day the Prince had made it a bargain that
whenever they dined _en famille_, his wife should prepare his coffee
with her own hands. She even roasted the berries and ground them
herself, and, as many a time before, she did it to-night in the
seclusion of the little room set apart for that and similar purposes.
She was alone in the physical sense, for the two watching Presences were
invisible to her, and so, for all she knew, no one saw her measure
twenty drops of a colourless fluid from a little blue bottle into the
coronetted cup of almost transparent porcelain which had been one of her
wedding presents to her husband.
After a couple of cups of coffee and half a dozen half-smoked
cigarettes, the Prince stretched his long legs out, struggled with a
yawn, and said in a sleepy voice:
"My Princess, you must ask our guests to excuse me. I am tired after the
long day in the sun; and so, if I may, I will go to bed."
He rose, and the rest rose at the same moment. He bowed his good-night,
and the two saluted. The Princess followed him into the dining-room.
The unseen watchers stood by the end of the great heavily-hung bed, in
the midst of which lay Prince Zastrow, seemingly sinking into the
slumber of death. Von Kessner leaned over and raised an eyelid, and said
to the Princess, who was standing on the other side, the single word:
"Unconscious." She bent forward for a moment as though she were bidding
a silent farewell to the man to whom she had pledged her maiden troth,
then straightened up and walked like some beautiful simulacrum of a
woman towards the door which Vollmar held open for her....
The earth-hours passed, and the two men kept their watch by the bed,
conversing now and then in whispers between long intervals of anxious
silence, until three strokes sounded from the bell of the Castle clock.
The whole household, save one fair woman, who, in softly-slippered feet,
was pacing the floor of her bedroom, was fast asleep, and the days of
sentries were far past. Von Kessner gently lifted one of the arms lying
on the coverlet of the bed and let it fall. It dropped as the arm of a
man who had just died might have done. Again he raised an eyelid, this
time with some difficulty. The eyeball beneath was fixed and glassy as
that of a corpse. He nodded across the bed to the Russian, and together
they turned the bedclothes down to the foot. Then from under the bed he
pulled out a bundle of grey skins which he spread on the floor beside
the bed. It was a sleeping bag such as hunters use in winter on the
snow-swept plains and forests of Northern Europe. Vollmar turned the
head-flap back. Then they lifted the body of the Prince from the bed,
slid it into the sack, and buttoned the flap down over the face.
"That Egyptian's drug has worked well," whispered Von Kessner.
Vollmar nodded, and whispered back:
"I wish I had a handful of it. But it is time. He will be ready for us
now."
Even as he spoke the locked door opened, as it were of its own accord,
and Phadrig stood in the room dressed in the livery of the Prince's
coachman. Von Kessner and Vollmar turned grey as he bowed, and
whispered:
"The doors are open, Excellencies, and all is ready!"
Then the three lifted the shapeless bag and carried it with noiseless
tread down to the hall and out through the half-open doors to where a
carriage drawn by four black horses stood waiting. Though there was no
one in charge of them, they stood as still as though carved out of
blocks of black marble until the body of the Prince had been laid in the
carriage and Von Kessner and Vollmar had taken their places beside it.
Then Phadrig mounted the box, shook the reins, and the rubber-shod
horses moved silently away at a trot, which, as soon as the main road
was reached, became a gallop only a little less silent than the trot.
The carriage turned aside from the road, and ran down a broad forest
lane till it stopped by the shore of a little sandy inlet. The bow of a
long black boat was resting on the sand, and six closely-blindfolded men
were sitting on the thwarts with oars out. Another stood on the beach
with the painter in his hands. The body of the Prince was carried from
the carriage to the boat, and laid in the stern sheets. Von Kessner and
Vollmar remained on board, and Phadrig went back to the carriage. At a
short word of command the oarsman backed hard, and the boat slid off the
sand into the smooth water of the little cove. Then she shot away and
melted into the light haze which hung over the outside sea.
The boat stopped under the shadow of the long, low-lying black hull of a
four-funnelled destroyer. A rope dropped from the deck and was made fast
by Vollmar in the bow. The blindfolded crew were helped up the ladder
which hung over the side and taken below forward. Then came a sharp
order: "All hands below"; and when the deck was deserted, Von Kessner
and Vollmar went up the ladder and were met on deck by Oscar Oscarovitch
in civilian dress. There was another man beside him in the uniform of a
lieutenant. He slacked off the tackle falls of the davits under which
the boat had brought up, dropped down the ladder and hooked them on.
When he got back to the deck the four men hauled first on one tackle
and then on the other, till the boat was up flush with the deck. The
falls were belayed, and Oscarovitch got into the boat and opened the
flap of the sleeping-sack. He touched the spring of an electric
pocket-lamp and looked upon the calm, cold features of his rival. Then
he buttoned down the flap again and returned to the deck. The four went
down into the cabin: glasses were filled with champagne, and as
Oscarovitch raised his to his lips, he said:
"Count and Captain Vollmar, I am satisfied. Let us drink to the New
Empire of the Russias and the sceptre of Ivan the Terrible!"
"And his illustrious successor!" added Von Kessner.
Within half an hour a small boat was lowered; the Chamberlain and
Vollmar got into it and rowed away toward the cove. The Russian officer
went on to the little bridge, signalled "full speed ahead" to the
engine-room, and then took the wheel. The screws ground the water astern
into foam, the black shape leapt forward and sped away eastward into the
glimmering dawn with its silent passenger lying in the swinging boat,
and the unseen watchers standing by the helmsman....
More earth-hours passed. The sun rose upon a lonely sea. The destroyer
stopped, and a white speck on the eastward horizon rapidly grew into the
white shape of a large yacht flying through the water at a tremendous
speed. In a few minutes she was almost alongside. She swung round in a
sharp curve, slowed down and dropped a boat. Oscarovitch and the
lieutenant lowered the destroyer's boat till it touched the water. The
other came alongside, and the body of Prince Zastrow was transferred to
it, and Oscarovitch followed it. Four men from the yacht's boat jumped
on board the destroyer and hauled hers up. The other was backed to the
ladder and they came on board. A silent salute passed between
Oscarovitch and the lieutenant, and a few minutes later the yacht's boat
was hoisted to the davits, and the white shape was growing smaller and
dimmer amidst the light haze that lay on the water shimmering under the
slanting rays of the rising sun.
Morning grew into noon, noon faded into evening, and evening darkened
into night. The yacht ran into a wide-opening gulf between two
forest-clad points, on the southern of which twinkled the lights of a
large town. These were soon left behind by the flying yacht, and as a
vast sea of fleecy cloud drifted up from the north-east and spread its
veil across the path of the half moon, a little cluster of lights
gleamed out on the port bow. Her bowsprit swerved to the left till it
pointed directly to them. Presently she slowed down and ran into a
little land-locked bay surrounded with dense pine woods which came down
almost to the water's edge, swung round and slowed up alongside a wooden
jetty. From this a broad road, cut straight through the forest, sloped
steeply up to a plateau on which stood a gaunt, grey, turreted castle,
the very picture of the sea-robbers' home that it had been in the days
of Oscarovitch's not very remote ancestors. Up this road and into the
outer gate across the lowered drawbridge the sleeping-sack and the
insensible man within were borne. Through the keep-yard it was taken
into the Castle and up to a large room in the eastern turret,
comfortably furnished, and containing a bed almost as luxurious as that
in which Prince Zastrow had lain down to sleep the evening before.
Oscarovitch preceded the men who carried him, and was met at the door by
a grey-haired, keen-eyed man, who bowed before him, and said in a low
tone:
"May I presume to ask if this is my charge, Highness?"
"It is, Doctor Hugo; and I give him into your hands with every
confidence that you will restore your patient to health as quickly as
any man in Europe could do. I must leave immediately, and so I trust
everything to you. All care must be taken of him. He must want for
nothing that you can give him--except liberty."
Oscarovitch returned the doctor's assenting bow and left the room. In
half an hour the yacht was flying at full speed over the smooth waters
of the Baltic, heading a little to the south of West.