THE COMMITTEE OF TEN
It has been said before that Truxton King was the unsuspecting object of
interest to two sets of watchers. The fact that he was under the
surveillance of the government police, is not surprising when we
consider the evident thoroughness of that department; but that he should
be continually watched by persons of a more sinister cast suggests a
mystery which can be cleared up by visiting a certain underground room,
scarce two blocks from the Tower of Graustark. It goes without saying
that corporeal admittance to this room was not to be obtained easily. In
fact, one must belong to a certain band of individuals; and, in order to
belong to that band, one must have taken a very solemn pledge of eternal
secrecy and a primal oath to devote his life to certain purposes, good
or evil, according to his conscience. By means of the friendly Sesame
that has opened the way for us to the gentler secrets, we are permitted
to enter this forbidding apartment and listen in safety to the ugly
business of the Committee of Ten.
There were two ways of reaching this windowless room, with its low
ceilings and dank airs. If one had the secret in his possession, he
could go down through the mysterious trap door in the workshop of
William Spantz, armourer to the Crown; or he might come up through a
hidden aperture in the walls of the great government sewer, which ran
directly parallel with and far below the walls of the quaint old
building. One could take his choice of direction in approaching this
hole in the huge sewer: he could come up from the river, half a mile
away, or he could come down from the hills above if he had the courage
to drop through one of the intakes.
It is of special significance that the trap door in Spantz's workshop
was reserved for use by the armourer and his more fastidious
comrades--of whom three were women and one an established functionary in
the Royal Household. One should not expect ladies to traverse a sewer if
oilier ways are open to them. The manner of reaching the workshop was
not so simple, however, as you might suppose. The street door was out of
the quest ion, with Dangloss on the watch, day and night. As much as can
be said for the rear door. It was necessary, therefore, that the favored
few should approach the shop by extraordinary paths. For instance, two
of the women came through friendly but unknown doors in the basements of
adjoining houses, reaching the workshop by the narrow stairs leading up
from a cobwebby wine-cellar next door. Spantz and Olga Platanova, of
course, were at home in the place. All of which may go to prove that
while ten persons comprised the committee, at least as many more of the
shopkeepers in that particular neighbourhood were in sympathy with their
secret operations.
So cleverly were all these means of approach concealed and so stealthy
the movements of the Committee, that the existence of this underground
room, far below the street level, was as yet unsuspected by the police.
More than that, the existence of the Committee of Ten as an organisation
was unknown to the department, notwithstanding the fact that it had been
working quietly, seriously for more than a year.
The Committee of Ten represented the brains and the activity of a rabid
coterie in Edelweiss, among themselves styled the Party of Equals. In
plain language, they were "Reds." Less than fifty persons in Graustark
were affiliated with this particular community of anarchists. For more
than a year they had been preparing themselves against the all-important
hour for public declaration. Their ranks had been augmented by
occasional recruits from other lands; their literature was circulated
stealthily; their operations were as secret as the grave, so far as the
outside world was concerned. And so the poison sprung up and thrived
unhindered in the room below the street, growing in virulence and power
under the very noses of the vaunted police of Edelweiss, slowly
developing into a power that would some day assert itself with
diabolical fury.
There were men and women from Axphain and Dawsbergen in this seed circle
that made Edelweiss its spreading ground. They were Reds of the most
dangerous type--silent, voiceless, crafty men and women who built well
without noise, and who gave out nothing to the world from which they
expected to take so much.
The nominal leader was William Spantz, he who had a son in the Prince's
household, Julius Spantz, the Master-of-arms. Far off in the hills above
the Danube there lived the real leader of this deadly group--the Iron
Count Marlanx, exile from the land of his birth, hated and execrated by
every loyal Graustarkian, hating and execrating in return with a tenfold
greater venom. Marlanx, the man who had been driven from wealth and
power by the sharp edict of Prince Robin's mother, the lamented Yetive,
in the days of her most glorious reign,--this man, deep in his raging
heart, was in complete accord with the desperate band of Reds who
preached equality and planned disaster.
Olga Platanova was the latest acquisition to this select circle. A word
concerning her: she was the daughter of Professor Platanova, one time
oculist and sociologist in a large German University. He had been one of
the most brilliant men in Europe and a member of a noble family. There
was welcome for him in the homes of the nobility; he hobnobbed, so to
speak, with the leading men of time Empire. The Platanova home in Warsaw
was one of the most inviting and exclusive in that great, city. The
professor's enthusiasm finally carried him from the conservative paths
in which he had walked; after he had passed his fiftieth year he became
an avowed leader among the anarchists and revolutionists in Poland, his
native state. Less than a year before the opening of this tale he was
executed for treason and conspiracy against the Empire.
His daughter, Olga, was recognised as one of the most beautiful and
cultured young women in Warsaw. Her suitors seemed to be without number;
nor were they confined to the student and untitled classes with whom she
was naturally thrown by force of circumstance. More than one lordly
adventurer in the lists of love paid homage to her grace and beauty.
Finally there came one who conquered and was beloved. He was the son of
a mighty duke, a prince of the blood.
It was true love for both of them. The young prince pledged himself to
marry her, despite all opposition; he was ready to give up his noble
inheritance for the sake of love. But there were other forces greater
than a young man's love at work. The all-powerful ruler of an Empire
learned of this proposed mesalliance and was horrified. Two weeks
afterward the prince was called. The will of the Crown was made known to
him and--he obeyed. Olga Platanova was cast aside but not forgotten. He
became the husband of an unloved, scrawny lady of diadems. When the
situation became more than he could bear he blew out his brains.
When Olga heard the news of his death she was not stricken by grief. She
cried out her joy to a now cloudless sky, for he had justified the great
love that had been theirs and would be theirs to the end of time.
From a passive believer in the doctrines of her father and his circle
she became at once their most impassioned exponent. Over night she
changed from a gentle-hearted girl into a woman whose breast flamed with
a lust for vengeance against a class from which death alone could free
her lover. She threw herself, heart and soul, into the deliberations and
transactions of the great red circle: her father understood and yet was
amazed.
Then he was put to death by the class she had come to hate. One more
stone in the sepulchre of her tender, girlish ideals. When the time came
she travelled to Graustark in response to the call of the Committee of
Ten; she came prepared to kill the creature she would be asked to kill.
And yet down in her heart she was sore afraid.
She was there, not to kill a man grown old in wrongs to her people, but
to destroy the life of a gentle, innocent boy of seven!
There were times when her heart shrank from the unholy deed she had been
selected to perform; she even prayed that death might come to her before
the hour in which she was to do this execrable thing in behalf of the
humanity she served. But there was never a thought of receding from the
bloody task set down for her--a task so morbid, so horrid that even the
most vicious of men gloated in the satisfaction that they had not been
chosen in her place. Weeks before she came to Graustark Olga Platanova
had been chosen by lot to be the one to do this diabolical murder. She
did not flinch, but came resolute and ready. Even the men in the
Committee of Ten looked upon the slender, dark-eyed girl with an awe
that could not be conquered. She had not the manner of an assassin, and
yet they knew that she would not draw back; she was as soft and as sweet
as the Madonnas they secretly worshipped, and yet her heart was steeled
to a purpose that appalled the fiercest of them.
On a Saturday night, following the last visit of Truxton King to the
armourer, the Committee of Ten met in the underground room to hear the
latest word from one who could not be with them in person, but was
always there in spirit--if they were to believe his most zealous
utterances. The Iron Count Marlanx, professed hater of all that was rich
and noble, was the power behind the Committee of Ten. The assassination
of the little Prince and the overthrow of the royal family awaited his
pleasure: he was the man who would give the word.
Not until he was ready could anything be done, for Marlanx had promised
to put the Committee of Ten in control of this pioneer community when it
came under the dominion of anarchists.
Alas, for the Committee of Ten! The wiliest fox in the history of the
world was never so wily as the Iron Count. Some day they were to find
out that he was using them to pull his choicest chestnuts from the fire.
The Committee was seated around the long table in the stifling,
breathless room, the armourer at the head. Those who came by way of the
sewer had performed ablutions in the queer toilet room that once had
been a secret vault for the storing of feudal plunder. What air there
was came from the narrow ventilator that burrowed its ways up to the
shop of William Spantz, or through the chimney-hole in the ceiling.
Olga Platanova sat far down the side, a moody, inscrutable expression in
her dark eyes. She sat silent and oppressed through all the acrid,
bitter discussions which carried the conclave far past the midnight
hour. In her heart she knew that these men and women were already
thinking of her as a regicide. It was settled--it was ordained. At
Spantz's right lounged Peter Brutus, a lawyer--formerly secretary to the
Iron Count and now his sole representative among these people. He was a
dark-faced, snaky-eyed young man, with a mop of coarse black hair that
hung ominously low over his high, receding forehead. This man was the
chosen villain among all the henchmen who came at the beck and call of
the Iron Count.
Julius Spantz, the armourer's son, a placid young man of goodly physical
proportions, sat next to Brutus, while down the table ranged others deep
in the consideration of the world's gravest problems. One of the women
was Madame Drovnask, whose husband had been sent to Siberia for life;
and the other, Anna Cromer, a rabid Red lecturer, who had been driven
from the United States, together with her amiable husband: an assassin
of some distinction and many aliases, at present foreman in charge of
one of the bridge-building crews on the new railroad.
Every man in the party, and there were eight, for Olga was not a member
of the Ten, wore over the lower part of his face a false black beard of
huge dimensions. Not that they were averse to recognition among
themselves, but in the fear that by some hook or crook Dangloss or his
agents might be able to look in upon them--through stone walls, as it
were. They were not men to belittle the powers of the wonderful Baron.
As it sat in secret conclave, the Committee of Ten was a
sinister-looking group.
Brutus was speaking. "The man is a spy. He has been brought here from
America by Tullis. Sooner or later you will find that I am right."
"It is best to keep close watch on him," advised one of the men. "We
know that he is in communication with the police and we know that he
visits the Castle, despite his declaration that he knows no one there.
To-day's experience proves that. I submit that the strictest caution be
observed where he is concerned."
"We shall continue to watch his every movement," said William Spantz.
"Time will tell. When we are positive that he is a detective and that he
is dangerous, there is a way to stop his operations."
His son grinned amiably as he swept his finger across his throat. The
old man nodded.
"Dangloss suspects more than one of us" ventured Brutus, his gaze
travelling toward Olga. There was lewd admiration in that steady glance.
"But we'll fool the old fox. The time will soon be here for the blow
that frees Graustark from the yoke. She will be the pioneer among our
estates, we the first of the individuals in equality; here the home seat
of perfect rulership. There is nothing that can stop us. Have we not the
most powerful of friends? Who is greater and shrewder than Count
Marlanx? Who could have planned and perfected an organization so
splendid? Will any one dispute this?"
He had the floor, and having the floor means everything to a Red. For
half an hour he spoke with impassioned fervour, descanting furiously on
the amazing virtues of his wily master and the plans he had arranged. It
appeared in the course of his remarks that Marlanx had friends and
supporters in all parts of Graustark. Hundreds of men in the hills,
including honest shepherds and the dishonest brigands who thrived on
them, coal miners and wood stealers, hunters and outlaws were ready to
do his bidding when the time was ripe. Moreover, Marlanx had been
successful in his design to fill the railway construction crews with the
riff-raff of all Europe, all of whom were under the control of leaders
who could sway them in any movement, provided it was against law and
order. As a matter of fact, according to Brutus, nearly a thousand
aliens were at work on the road, all of them ready to revolt the instant
the command was given by their advisers.
Something that the Committee of Ten did not know was this: those alien
workmen were no less than so many hired mercenaries in the employ of the
Iron Count, brought together by that leader and his agents for the sole
purpose of overthrowing the Crown in one sudden, unexpected attack,
whereupon Count Marlanx would step in and assume control of the
government. They had been collected from all parts of the world to do
the bidding of this despised nobleman, no matter to what lengths he
might choose to lead them. Brutus, of course, knew all this: his
companions on the Committee were in complete ignorance of the true
motives that brought Marlanx into their operations.
With a cunning that commands admiration, the Iron Count deliberately
sanctioned the assassination of the little Prince by the Reds, knowing
that the condemnation of the world would fall upon them instead of upon
him, and that his own actions following the regicide would at once stamp
him as irrevocably opposed to anarchy and all of its practices!
In the course of his remarks, Peter Brutus touched hastily upon the
subject of the little Prince.
"He's not very big," said he, with a laugh, "and it won't require a very
big bomb to blow him to smithereens. He will--"
"Stop!" cried Olga Platanova, springing to her feet and glaring at him
with dilated eyes. "I cannot listen to you! You shall not speak of it in
that way! Peter Brutus, you are not to speak of--of what I am to do!
Never--never again!"
They looked at her in amazement and no little concern. Madame Drovnask
was the first to speak, her glittering eyes fastened upon the drawn,
white face of the girl across the table.
"Are you going to fail? Are you weakening?" she demanded.
"No! I am not going to fail! But I will not permit any one to jest about
the thing I am to do. It is a sacred duty with me. But, Madame
Drovnask--all of you, listen--it is a cruel, diabolical thing, just the
same. Were it not in behalf of our great humanity, I, myself, should
call it the blackest piece of cruelty the world has ever known. The
slaughter of a little boy! A dear, innocent little boy! I can see the
horror in all of your faces! You shudder as you sit there, thinking of
the thing I am to do. Yes, you are secretly despising me, your
instrument of death! I--I, a girl, I am to cast the bomb that blows this
dear little body to pieces. I! Do you know what that means? Even though
I am sure to be blown to pieces by the same agent, the last thing I
shall look upon is his dear, terrified little face as he watches me hurl
the bomb. Ah!"
She shuddered violently as she stood there before them, her eyes closed
as if to shut out the horrible picture her mind was painting. There
were other white faces and ice-cold veins about the table. The sneer on
Anna Cromer's face deepened.
"She will bungle it," came in an angry hiss from her lips.
Olga's lids were lifted. Her dark eyes looked straight into those of the
older woman.
"No," she said quietly, her body relaxing, "I shall not bungle it."
William Spantz had been watching her narrowly, even suspiciously. Now
his face cleared.
"She will not fail," he announced calmly. "Let there be no apprehension.
She is the daughter of a martyr. Her blood is his. It will flow in the
same cause. Sit down, Olga, my dear. We will not touch upon this subject
again--until--"
"I know, uncle," she said quietly, resuming her seat and her attitude of
indifference.
The discussion went back to Truxton King. "Isn't it possible that he is
merely attracted by the beauty of our charming young friend here?"
ventured Madame Drovnask, after many opinions had been advanced
respecting his interest in the shop and its contents. "It is a habit
with Americans, I am told."
"Miss Platanova is most worthy of the notice of any man," agreed Brutus,
with an amiable leer. Olga seemed to shrink within herself. It was plain
that she was not a kindred spirit to these vicious natures.
"It is part of his game," said Julius Spantz. "He knows Olga's past; he
is waiting for a chance to catch her off her guard. He may even go so
far as to make pretty love to you, cousin, in the hope that--no offence,
my dear, no offence!" Her look had silenced him.
"Mr. King is not a spy," she said steadily.
"Well," concluded William Spantz, "we are safe if we take no chances
with him. He must be watched all the time. If we discover that he is
what some of us think he is, there is a way to end his usefulness."
"Let him keep away from the shop downstairs," said Peter Brutus, with a
sidelong glance at the delicate profile of the girl down the table.
She smiled suddenly, to the amazement of her sinister companions.
"Have no fear, Brutus. When he hears that you object, he will be very
polite and give us a wide berth," she said. Peter flushed angrily.
"He doesn't mean any good by you," he snapped. "He'll fool you
and--poof! Away he goes, rejoicing."
She still smiled. "You have a very good opinion of me, Peter Brutus."
"Well," doggedly, "you know what men of his type think of shopgirls.
They consider them legitimate prey."
"And what, pray, do men of your type think of us?" she asked quietly.
"Enough of this," interposed William Spantz. "Now, Brutus, what does
Count Marlanx say to this day two weeks? Will he be ready? On that day
the Prince and the Court are to witness the unveiling of the Yetive
memorial statue in the Plaza. It is a full holiday in Graustark. No man
will be employed at his usual task and--"
Brutus interrupted him. "That is the very day that the Count has asked
me to submit to the Committee. He believes it to be the day of all days.
Nothing should go amiss. We conquer with a single blow. By noon of that
day, the 26th of July, the Committee of Ten will be in control of the
State; the new regime will be at hand. A new world will be begun, with
Edelweiss as the centre, about which all the rest shall revolve. We--the
Committee of Ten--will be its true founders. We shall be glorified
forever--"
"We've heard all this before, Brutus," said Julius Spantz unfeelingly,
"a hundred times. It's talk, talk, talk! What we need now is action. Are
we sure that the Count will be prepared to do all that he says he will
on the 26th of July? Will he have his plans perfected? Are his forces
ready for the stroke?"
"Positively. They await the word. That's all I can say," growled Peter.
"The death of the Prince is the signal for the overthrow of the present
government and the establishment of the new order of equal humanity."
"After all," mused Julius, Master-at-arms in the Castle, "it is more
humane to slay the Prince while he is young. It saves him from a long
life of trouble and fear and the constant dread of the very thing that
is to happen to him now. Yes, it is best that it should come soon." Down
in his heart, Julius loved the little Prince.
For an hour longer the Committee discussed plans for the eventful day.
Certain details were left for future deliberations; each person had his
part to play and each one was settled in his or her determination that
nothing should go amiss.
The man they feared was Dangloss. They did not fear God!
When they dispersed for the night, it was to meet again three days hence
for the final word from Marlanx, who, it seems, was not so far away that
communication with him was likely to be delayed. A sword hung over the
head of Truxton King, an innocent outsider, and there was a prospect
that it would fall in advance of the blow that was intended to startle
the world. Olga Platanova was the only one who did not look upon the
sprightly American as a spy in the employ of the government--a
dangerously clever spy at that.
Up in the distant hills slept the Iron Count, dreaming of the day when
he should rule over the new Graustark--for he would rule!--a smile on
his grizzled face in reflection of recent waking thoughts concerning the
punishment that should fall swiftly upon the assassins of the beloved
Prince Robin.
He would make short shrift of assassins!