Part 11

Grey nodded, dissembling. He was studying Count von Ritter as he spoke; noting every accent, every inflection, every expression, in an endeavour to decide whether he were innocent or guilty. Thus far he had been inclined to regard him as honest. It hardly seemed possible that one occupying his position could stoop to such chicanery. And the head of the university appeared likewise as too impregnably placed to be open to suspicion. The Budavian Minister and the Budavian Consul, however, he concluded could not be guiltless.

“And how did Captain Lindenwald chance to be chosen to meet me on my arrival in England?” he asked.

“Captain Lindenwald,” answered the Chancellor, “is an officer of the Royal household--he was the late King’s equerry--and he is, moreover, the brother of our Minister to the United States.”

Grey smiled in spite of himself. Of Lindenwald’s complicity he had had no doubt from the first. The fact that the Budavian Minister at Washington was his brother made it all the more probable that that dignitary was also criminally involved.

“Now, just one more matter, Count,” the American continued. “Can you tell me anything of this Baron von Einhard?”

The Chancellor shrugged his square shoulders.

“The Baron is a supporter of Prince Hugo,” he answered.

“That much I know,” Grey returned. “And in his loyalty to his leader he is apt to be unscrupulous to the Prince’s opponents?”

Count von Ritter smiled a trifle cynically.

“I have been led to understand so,” he answered.

“He would pay well, I suppose, to get Prince Max out of the way just at this juncture? Is it not so?”

“The price asked would probably not deter him.”

“And Captain Lindenwald--But no, of course not. It is silly of me to suggest such a possibility. You are satisfied of that officer’s fealty, I am sure?”

The Chancellor straightened in his seat and leaned forward with an exhibition of concern that had hitherto been lacking.

“You do not make yourself altogether clear, your Royal Highness,” he ventured. “Am I to understand that you have reason to suspect that Captain Lindenwald and the Baron von Einhard are----”

“Pardon me,” interrupted Grey, pleased nevertheless at the awakened interest of the Chancellor, “I did not say so. I merely asked a question. You are satisfied of Captain Lindenwald’s entire honesty and loyalty, are you not?”

“The Captain,” von Ritter replied, guardedly, “has not been as eager as I could have wished at times, but I have never regarded him as venal.”

“Then his explanation of why he left me in Paris, without so much as a word as to his going, and why that night an attempt was made to abduct me by persons in the employ of Baron von Einhard--I suppose he has made such an explanation--was entirely satisfactory to you?”

Grey sprung the question suddenly and noted scrutinisingly the effect.

The Chancellor’s usually immobile features gave perceptible token of his surprise. His bushy brows raised the merest trifle, and his keen black eyes widened.

“His story was, I must confess, not altogether satisfactory, your Royal Highness,” he answered, quietly; “it was, I may say, lacking in detail.”

“I would suggest,” continued Grey, in a tone equally repressed, “that you question him in the line I have indicated.”

The Chancellor bowed.

“I have to thank you,” he said, gravely. “I shall do so. That is very certain.”

Grey arose and Count von Ritter got to his feet instantly. The American stood for a moment in indecision, very tall, very erect. There was no denying that he looked every inch the Prince. Whether to declare that he was not he hurriedly debated. Meanwhile the Chancellor was still striving to detect the madness of which Lindenwald had spoken. To each question he had given the most searching mental scrutiny; to each gesture, to each intonation he had paid the closest heed, but he had discovered practically no indication of the malady charged. With Grey’s next utterance, however, all the fabric of his assurance fell crumbling.

“Count von Ritter,” he said--he had been for a moment gazing out through the window at the varied landscape now dimming with the dusk, but as he spoke he turned and faced the Chancellor--“Count von Ritter, I can delay no longer in confiding to you a matter so grave that I scarcely know how to frame it in words. May I ask you to again be seated?” And he waved his hand towards the settee from which the Count had risen.

The Chancellor seated himself without speaking, and Grey resumed his place in the chair near him.

“The reason I have asked you what I have,” continued he, speaking slowly and with more than his usual deliberation, “is that I have been--I was about to say astounded, but that is too weak a word--I have been stunned and dumfounded by the proved credulity of a nation which has the reputation, next to Russia, of possessing the most astute diplomats in all Europe. That a government so fortified could be tricked into placing its sceptre in the hands of an American citizen, whose ancestry shows no trace of Budavian blood and whose antecedents are an open book, seems out of all reason; and yet it is precisely what you and your confrères, Count, have, as is now conclusively evidenced, been led into.”

Upon the Chancellor’s face was an expression which Grey could not fathom. He was neither startled nor incensed. There was, indeed, just the faintest suspicion of amusement in his keen black eyes, mingled with a spirit of kindly indulgence.

“You mean,” he said, quietly, “that you are not the heir?”

“Most assuredly,” Grey answered, in amazement at his companion’s inscrutable manner, “I am no more the Prince of Kronfeld than I am the Prince of Wales. I am Carey Grey, of New York, an American born and bred, who was drugged, hypnotised, mesmerised or what you please; made unknowingly to commit a theft, made unknowingly to cross the Atlantic, to travel under a false name, to attempt to usurp a title and a throne.”

Count von Ritter’s foot tapped the floor nervously. He laced his long, knotted fingers and unlaced them again.

“This is a very grave matter,” he said, his voice low and steady, “and I shall lose no time in looking into it. As you say, such a thing would appear beyond the bounds of reason. Your Royal High--I beg your pardon! Mr. Grey, did I understand?” And there was a humouring leniency, not to say pity, in his tone--“you can imagine how much this statement of yours at this late hour will involve in the way of complications.”

“That you were not enlightened earlier, Count,” Grey continued, “was due to my desire to learn just how far the conspiracy had been carried. As a matter of fact, until I reached Anslingen this afternoon I had no positive assurance that the affair had gone further than Herr Schlippenbach and Captain Lindenwald. Of their intentions I was well satisfied, but concerning the chances for the ultimate success of their plans I was in the dark.”

Again the two men stood up.

“And now,” said the Chancellor, “as to dinner. A state banquet has been prepared at which your--pardon me!--at which _His_ Royal Highness was to have presided. Under the circumstances, however, I presume you would prefer not to attend. If I may be permitted,” he added, tactfully, “I will explain that His Royal Highness is indisposed.”

“Thank you,” Grey acquiesced, cheerily; “that’s the better course--the only course, in fact. Unless you can yourself join me--and I suppose that is impossible--I’ll dine alone here. And afterward I should like a conveyance to the Hotel Königin Anna. I have some friends there that I must see this evening.”

The Chancellor bowed. The next moment he was gone, and Grey crossed to the open window and stood for a long while lost in thought. Meanwhile the gloom deepened over the valley and the room behind him grew dark.

He was awakened from his reverie by a rapping on the door, and in response to his permission to enter Johann came in, followed by porters with his luggage. Then the candles were lighted, and a little later his dinner was served.

Afterward he got into his evening clothes, and when he was quite ready he sent Johann to see if the carriage he had ordered was in waiting. But the boy returned with dismay mantling his usually placid features.

“The carriage is not coming, your Royal Highness,” he said, with an accent of apology, as though the fault was his.

“Not coming?” Grey repeated in astonishment. “Why is it not coming?”

“None has been ordered, your Royal Highness.”

“Then order one at once.”

“I tried to, your Royal Highness; but I was not permitted.”

Grey’s customary calmness gave way to palpable irritation.

“What the devil do you mean?” he asked. “Am I a prisoner here?”

Johann’s distress increased.

“It is not I, your Royal Highness, on whom the blame lies. Outside this door is a guard. He will not let me pass. He will not let your Royal Highness pass. He has orders.”

The American strode angrily towards the door.

“We will see,” he said, determinedly.

Outside a soldier was standing.

“What does this mean?” he asked, in as repressed a tone as he could muster. “Why will you not let my man do as I bid him?”

The sentry saluted respectfully.

“I have been ordered by my commanding officer, your Royal Highness,” he answered.

“Ordered to what?” cried Grey.

“Ordered, your Royal Highness, to permit no one to leave the Flag Tower.”

And he saluted again.

XVII

The realisation that he was a prisoner aroused in Carey Grey a spirit of revolt. He thought that he had calculated the cost. He had foreseen that his confession would bring about complications, and had counted on perhaps a long and trying investigation, but he had not imagined that he would be deprived of his liberty pending the question’s settlement. The fact that he had been honest should of itself, he argued, have entitled him to consideration; but his frankness had been misjudged and his candour rewarded with punishment.

Smarting under the indignity, he wrote a witheringly sarcastic note to Count von Ritter, and demanded that the guard should see to its expeditious delivery. At the end of an hour he received a brief reply:

“The Chancellor,” it read, “regrets deeply that he is unable to aid Mr. Grey. The Chancellor repeated his interview of the early evening to His Highness, the Prince Regent, and it is by His Highness’s command that the present temporary restraint exists.”

Thereupon Grey set about devising some means of escape; but the barred windows and the armed guard, which, he learned from Johann, was not alone at his door but on the landings above and below and surrounding the Tower as well, were seemingly insurmountable obstacles. He thought of bribery, and as an entering wedge endeavoured to have a note taken to Miss Van Tuyl, offering a sum of money out of all proportion to the service, but the offer was phlegmatically declined.

It was very late before he threw himself upon the great high bed in the dingy bedchamber and tried to snatch a few hours’ sleep; and he was up again at dawn. But if his slumber had been brief, Johann’s had even been briefer. He had spent hours in conversation with the soldier in the passage, and he had gathered at least one fact of interest, if not of importance--there were other prisoners on the floor above. How many, he was unable to learn, and of the strength of the guard he was also uninformed. There would be a change, though, at seven o’clock, and then it would be possible to ascertain.

From the window of the library which was over the Tower door the approach of the relief and the departure of the night watch could be seen. The bars were too close to permit of a head being thrust between them, but the barracks were at some distance from the Palace, and the route, Johann said, lay diagonally across the uppermost terrace in full view of this particular window. There Grey watched, and promptly at seven, as the bell in the Bell Tower on another corner of the quadrangle clanged the hour, a cornet sounded and seven armed infantry men came marching over the stone pavement. That, he concluded, meant one man on each of the three landings and four men on guard below. Not counting the guard on the floor above, there were six against two, and escape under these conditions appeared hopeless. If, however, the prisoners on the floor above could be communicated with and a plan of concerted action agreed upon there might be a fighting chance of success. But the question was, how to reach them. The ceilings were high and the floors thick, and to invent and execute a code of signals by rapping would be a tedious and not at all promising undertaking. Nevertheless Grey was more than half inclined to try it. By piling one piece of furniture on another the ceiling could be reached readily enough, and by giving each letter of the alphabet its number it would be possible to hammer out words. Those above might not be able to hear or, hearing, might not be clever enough to understand, but the American was desperate, and, notwithstanding the odds against him, he determined after some little consideration to make the effort.

Upon a large table in the centre of the _salon_ he and Johann lifted a smaller one which they brought from the library, and upon this in turn they placed a chair. To the top of this edifice Grey climbed, armed with a heavy walking-stick, with which he began a series of regular and irregular blows upon the heavy oaken panelling which ceiled the room. Having continued this for something like three minutes without intermission, he paused in the hope of some response. But none was forthcoming, and he repeated the signalling with increased vigour. When he halted again there was a distinct reply--an exact reproduction, in fact, of his rhythm--and the serious, anxious expression he had worn gave way to one of relief, if not indeed of triumph.

His next move was to repeat in strokes the entire alphabet, beginning with one for A, two for B, and so on. This was a long and rather laborious operation, but when he had finished he was given the prompt gratification of an alert understanding from those above, for immediately taking the cue, the answering thuds spelled out the word “window,” and turning his glance in the direction of the barred casement he saw hanging there, at the end of an improvised string made of torn and tied strips of linen, a fluttering piece of paper.

With a single bound he reached the floor, and the next instant he was reading with eager interest the pencilled words:

“Write what you wish to say, attach it, pull gently twice, and we will raise it.”

“Johann,” he cried, enthusiastically, “see this! If those fellows have as much nerve as they have wit we’ll soon be out of here, all right.”

And while Johann read and smiled his approval Grey sat down and wrote.

For an hour or more questions and answers, propositions and suggestions, went back and forth from floor to floor by means of this novel line of communication, and by the end of that time a complete scheme of escape with all its details had been arranged and was mutually understood.

There were two prisoners above--a gentleman and his man; just as there were two prisoners below--a gentleman and his man. Who the two gentlemen were was not asked by either. That they were guarded in the Flag Tower was proof that their offences were political merely. Nevertheless, the two gentlemen resented the indignity put upon them, and both were anxious to escape. The two men were loyal to their masters and could be depended upon to act with valour. The gentleman above was unarmed, but the gentleman below had a revolver. The time agreed upon for the delivery was two o’clock in the morning. As that hour sounded from the Bell Tower the guards on their respective floors were to be called in on some pretext, overpowered and stripped of their uniforms, which would be donned by the two gentlemen. Their weapons would be appropriated, likewise, and thus disguised and armed it would be comparatively easy to make captive the guard on the first landing. There would then remain but the four soldiers outside the Tower, and the chances of their subduing were largely in favour of the prisoners, three of whom would by this time be as well equipped as the watch, while the fourth would have Grey’s revolver. The advantage is invariably with the surprising party, and the plan was to take the guardsmen unawares and effect their capture before they were even conscious of attack.

All this having been definitely decided on there was nothing to do but wait, and the hours, for Grey at least, dragged interminably. Again and again at intervals he rehearsed the plan with Johann, so that there could be no possible chance of error, but this after a while grew monotonous and he looked about for something interesting to read. The books he found in the library, however, were not diverting. They were for the most part historical and written in the heaviest of German; nevertheless their very ponderousness was in a way an advantage. They provoked somnolence, and late in the afternoon the uninterested reader fell asleep and was so snugly wrapped in slumber when his dinner was brought in that Johann found it a rather difficult task to rouse him. He had slept but little the night before, and his rest on the train the night previous to that had been broken and fitful. His nerves needed just this repose, and when he finally awakened it was with a clearer eye and a steadier hand. He ate heartily of the distinctively Teutonic dishes that were provided, and when he finished he remarked to Johann on his general fitness, indulging in an Americanism which the valet vainly tried to interpret.

“I feel tonight, Johann,” he said, stretching himself with arms extended and fists doubled, “that I could lick my weight in wildcats and paint whole townships red.”

As the hours wore away he sat with one leg thrown over the arm of his chair, smoking placidly and with evident enjoyment. It was not until some time after the Bell Tower had bellowed its single note that Grey alluded to the business of the night.

“Everything is ready, is it, Johann?” he asked; “where are the thongs you made from the sheet?”

“Safe in my coat pockets, your Highness,” the youth answered.

“Now you may bring me my revolver,” the American continued; “it is on the cheffonier in my dressing-room.”

The revolver was brought, and Grey examined its chambers once again to make sure that it was fully loaded. Then, throwing the end of his cigar through an open window, he lighted a cigarette and continued in desultory talk with his valet.

A few minutes before two he rose and went into his dressing-room, which separated the _salon_ from the bedchamber. In the latter candles were alight, but the dressing-room was in darkness. He stepped behind the curtains, close to the wall, and stood there, silent, hidden, and shortly from the Bell Tower solemnly sounded the hour. Simultaneously Johann tried the door which gave from the little library on to the landing. But it was locked and bolted from without. Then he hammered loudly, a little excitedly; and very promptly the bolt was drawn and the key turned.

“Quick!” he cried to the guard, who swung open the heavy oaken planking. “Quick! His Royal Highness is ill! I fear that he is dying! Come!” And he started off hurriedly, the soldier following unsuspectingly.

In a second the little comedy was played. At the entrance to the dressing-room Johann stepped back and the guardsman went in ahead, to find his arms caught in a flash from behind by Grey and held hard and fast in spite of his struggles, while Johann slung about his wrists the heavy linen thongs and knotted them with deft and muscular hands. Meanwhile the fellow was kicking and stamping viciously, but, barring a barked shin for Johann and a bruised toe for Grey, the effects were not material. And, once his arms were bound and the glittering barrel of the revolver brought to his attention, his rebellion ceased. Then Johann bound his feet as well, having first marched him into the bedchamber and compelled him, protesting, to stretch himself upon the high, old-fashioned bed.

Grey was in the act of unbuckling the captive’s belt when a pistol shot, muffled but unmistakable, echoed from overhead, and he stopped, breathless, just as a hoarse shriek split the silence which for an instant followed the report. The door from the library to the landing had been left open, and from that direction now came a scuffle of feet on stone, mingled with a succession of crashing, thumping, jolting noises, alarmed shouts and angry imprecations.

Through the three connecting rooms Grey dashed, revolver in hand and with Johann close at his heels. The lantern the guard had left on the landing had been knocked over and was out, but by the light from the open doorway they at once discovered the huddled, distorted body of a man, whose groans added to the bedlam of hurrying feet and excited voices from below and oaths, cries, and sounds of struggle from above.

And as they looked there came bounding down the stairs, by jumps of a half-dozen or more steps at a time, another figure, followed by futile shot after shot from rapidly belching revolver and rifle. The fugitive’s feet landed on the groaning, doubled heap on the landing, and that he did not stumble to his death was a miracle. But he kept his balance, flashed by down the next winding flight, and, striking the first of the ascending guards, toppled him backwards against his followers.

For the space of a heart-beat Grey and Johann paused, staring at each other. In that instant of his passing both had recognised the fleeing prisoner. It was Captain Lindenwald.

And then, as they stood inert, the guard from above, his rifle still smoking, reached the landing, tripped over the crumpled body and went staggering, lurching, clutching at the air, towards the confusion below.

The moment for action had now come; and Grey, calm and collected in spite of the flurry of events, motioning to Johann to follow, ran swiftly down the stone stairs, which, once they were out of the meagre glow from the library, grew dark as Erebus. The struggling, swearing, wriggling mass blocked the way at the next landing, but Grey and the lad, guided by the sounds, were not taken unawares. They were, moreover, for the moment on their feet, which no one of the others was; and though they were caught by desperate hands and more than once dragged to their knees, their clothing torn and ripped, their hands scratched, and their arms and legs wellnigh disjointed, they kept their wits and gained the last flight of steps without serious injury.

Down this they veritably hurled themselves, and with no further impediment to delay them reached the open door of the Tower and dashed out onto the stone flagging of the upper terrace, into the brilliant starlight of the early morning.

“So far, so good,” said Grey, inhaling deeply of the cool, clear air; and catching Johann’s sleeve he pulled him back into the shadow of the buttress. “But,” he added, “we are not free yet, are we? The gates of the Palace Gardens are locked at night, I suppose.”

“Yes, your Royal Highness,” the youth answered.

“Never mind that Royal Highness business now, Johann,” he directed; “Herr Arndt will do for the present. I’m no more a Royal Highness than you are.”

“Yes, Herr Arndt,” acquiesced Johann, imperturbably, without change of tone, “and the walls are very high.”

“Nevertheless, we had better move on in the direction of some exit,” Grey advised, in a whisper; “it won’t do to stop here. They may come rushing down on us at any minute. You know the way; you lead.”