CHAPTER XXI

SHOWS HOW THE GREAT SWORD SPOKE TO SCANLON

But the automobile voyagers had not returned when the two men reached Schwartzberg.

“Campe is taking plenty of time, as per request,” observed Mr. Scanlon, as they settled down to wait. “Unless,” and he looked at the other, “you think something has happened to him.”

But Ashton-Kirk shook his head.

“No,” said he. “Just at this time I think Campe is perfectly safe from Alva and his crowd. When you first came to me with the story I felt that the matter was one of life and death--that it would not wait an hour. But after studying things hereabouts for a little I saw that in this I had been mistaken. The criminals will not be in a hurry to murder Campe. He is the last of his family, and they want what he knows, or can give, more than they want his life.”

It was fully five o’clock, and the dusk was thickening when they heard the heavy braying of the auto horn outside. A little later the two ladies whisked past the library door, and then Campe entered, dusty, and with an eager look.

“You must have had a good run,” said Ashton-Kirk.

“I kept them away as long as I could without attracting their attention. But,” and the eager look increased, “what news?”

“We’ve looked around a bit,” said Ashton-Kirk, “both inside and outside; and we saw a number of things which interested us greatly.”

Campe stood looking at the speaker for a moment; then he said:

“I can see that you are not ready to tell me the result of your investigation. Very well. But when the time comes,” and here his lips twitched a little, “don’t delay.”

At dinner Miss Knowles was very lovely, and the elder lady was flushed and animated.

“An automobile trip,” thought Bat, as he listened to the spinster’s chatter “should be prescribed for the good lady frequently. It’s done her good.”

“Baron Steuben received no more than his due when Congress granted him lands and honours,” she was saying to Ashton-Kirk. “But Count Hohenlo was overlooked disgracefully.”

“He had little popular or official recognition,” replied the crime specialist. “But he lived in the hearts of those who knew him, and they wrote him down in their memories as a gallant soldier, a true friend and a lover of freedom.”

Then Miss Hohenlo talked of the letters written by the old hero; of the journals he had kept in court and camp; of his plans and intentions; of his adventures. Her eyes were no longer dull; her plain face was full of spirit; her gestures, no longer affected, were sharp and stirring. And while she talked Miss Knowles was very quiet, listening with attention. And, as she did so, Mr. Scanlon watched her, speculatively.

“Still on the lookout,” mused the big man, “still with her eyes and ears open. I never saw any one stick closer to a job than she does. But what she hopes to get out of the talk of the maiden lady I can’t understand.”

After dinner, as Miss Hohenlo was passing from the room, Scanlon saw Ashton-Kirk overtake Miss Knowles as she was about to follow. The singular eyes of the crime specialist were fixed upon her face intently, and when he spoke his voice was so low-pitched that none but the girl could hear. But whatever it was he said, she turned pale and Bat saw her hands tremble. Then without a word of answer she cast a frightened look about her and disappeared. Ashton-Kirk turned to Campe.

“Perhaps you’d care for a game of billiards,” said he. Then seeing the young man’s surprised look, he added: “I’d be glad to join you myself, but I think I’ll have my hands rather full of other things. Your aunt would, I dare say, be delighted.”

Campe continued to look at the speaker for a moment, then he said slowly:

“Why, yes, very likely she would. She’s very clever with the cue, you know.”

Fifteen minutes later, as Ashton-Kirk and Scanlon sat in the library, the big man patiently awaiting the other’s pleasure, the click of the balls began to come from the billiard room. Ashton-Kirk stood up.

“Now,” said he, and Scanlon followed him into the hall. Quietly they went until they reached the door of the room where the tapestries hung. Here they entered and found Miss Knowles, pale, tall and with the frightened look still in her eyes, standing in the middle of the floor.

Ashton-Kirk closed the door gently, and turning faced the girl.

“Now,” thought Mr. Scanlon, “for a showdown. Here is where the golden Helen is to be brought up with a sharp turn.”

“Miss Knowles,” spoke the detective, quietly, “may I ask just how long you have known what I am?”

“I thought I knew you--when I first saw your face,” answered the girl in a low voice. “But I did not place you. It was not until I had heard your name that I knew you. You had been pointed out to me once at a Departmental reception at Washington.”

“I see,” said the other. Then with a smile: “You seem a trifle startled that day when you recognized me.”

“I was,” replied the girl, “for your appearance as Schwartzberg meant only one thing to me: That all that I had suspected was true--that Frederic was fearfully in danger--and that you had been sent for to trace out his enemies.”

“Ha!” said Mr. Scanlon, and Ashton-Kirk glanced at him with a smile.

“I rather thought it was something like that,” said the latter gentleman. “But there are a number of other questions I’d like to have you answer, so that there will be no mistake as to your position in the matter. Do you mind my asking them?”

“Why, no,” she said.

“On the night that you heard the thunderous noise out among the hills, and Mr. Campe madly rushed out to look for his tormentors, how did it come that you stood beside him when he was discovered, wounded?”

The girl looked surprised.

“I had followed--thinking to help him.”

“How soon after?”

“A moment or two.”

Again Ashton-Kirk looked at Scanlon.

“Between the time you saw Campe without at the gate, and the time you got downstairs, I think it could have happened.”

“It could,” replied Mr. Scanlon.

“There are a number of little things which Mr. Scanlon could not understand,” said the crime specialist to the girl. “For example, how he came to see you in the hall, apparently looking for some one, on the night he discovered the housebreakers.”

“He saw me?” She looked at Scanlon. “When?”

“When you lighted the match. But I heard you before that--talking to the fellow who jumped through the window.”

“You heard me talking to----” the girl was amazed; then a sudden thought seemed to come to her, and she stopped. “And then,” she said, searching Scanlon’s face, “what did I do?”

“You went away,” replied the big man. “I heard you go down the hall. But you came back, and it was then you struck the match.”

The girl’s golden head shook slowly.

“I did not go away and return,” she said.

“But I heard----”

“The first woman you heard was not I!”

It was now Mr. Scanlon’s turn to stare.

“Miss Knowles,” said he, “I don’t want you to think I’m trying to put anything at your door that shouldn’t be there. But you expected something to happen that night--I saw it in your face in the afternoon.”

The girl did not reply for a moment; she looked at him, steadily.

“I think I know what you mean,” she said, at last. “It was when you spoke of Mr. Ashton-Kirk coming that night. I was frightened then, as I was frightened a while ago when I was asked to await him here. I felt sure that if he were expected something was about to happen.”

Mr. Scanlon frowned.

“You see,” said he, “these are queer times, and when a fellow get mixed up in such, and sees things that he don’t fathom, about the only way open to him is to ask to have them explained.”

“I think I can understand that feeling very well,” she said. “There are many things for which I too have sought an explanation.”

“When you left the room that night of the burglar’s visit,” said Bat, “and while I was telling Campe and his man what had happened, you did it very quietly.”

“I had a reason,” said the girl. “I hurried away to find the person whom I’d been seeking when you saw me strike the match.”

“Well, were you successful?”

“I was. I saw who opened the gate and liberated your prisoner.”

Mr. Scanlon mopped his face, which had grown suddenly heated.

“The wind’s changing,” said he to the crime specialist. “It’s beginning to blow from a new quarter altogether.”

But Ashton-Kirk was looking at the girl. “You see how it is?” said he.

“Yes,” she replied. “And now that I do, I think it very strange that it did not occur to me before. But I was so full of the thought of helping Mr. Campe, even though he did treat me like a child and refused to confide in me, that I never dreamed any one might suspect me of being one of those who were threatening him.”

She turned to Scanlon.

“I thought all the time that you would understand. That is why I hinted at this and that, and called your attention in an indirect way to those things which excited my suspicions.

“And, oh,” with a gesture, “there were so many of them. I suspected the people at the inn from the beginning because I once saw a crippled man there who had been a friend of Mr. Campe’s father in Mexico, and who afterward, for some reason, became his enemy. The strange footprints which I’d see of a morning upon the river bank put dread into my heart, and the stealthy figures that I’d see there sometimes of a night, as I looked from my window, filled me with fear. I then began to suspect a traitor in Schwartzberg, and took to searching and prying and listening; and on the night when I found the door to the vault standing open and saw a stranger ascending the stairs, I felt sure of it.”

“Was that the night that Mrs. Kretz shut the door, and there was a pistol shot, and you cried out?” asked Bat.

“Yes,” replied Miss Knowles. “But,” she went on, “I think I had other reasons to be suspicious. As you say, Mr. Scanlon, these are queer times. Things here are odd--strange; like yourself, I do not understand them. What is there about this harp,” and she laid her hand upon the instrument, “which attracts me so strongly--for what purpose is it being used other than the melody a player it could strike from its strings? Take that great blade upon the wall,” here she turned her face toward the two-handed sword resting against the strip of tapestry between the windows. “It seems evident enough--there does not look to be anything about it of a secret nature. And yet there is! But I don’t know what, though I have tried to discover many and many times; and I have stolen it away to my room more than once. But it was no use.” There was a short silence, then she went on, to Scanlon: “On the night that you followed Mr. Campe and me out along the path, and you told the story of the officer whose sword trailed upon the ground, I felt sure that you had discovered something about this weapon, and were, perhaps, trying to convey it to me secretly. But I saw afterward that this was not so.”

“Tell me,” said Scanlon, who felt much as if the floor were slipping from under his feet, “what was the idea of the walk on that night?”

“Mr. Campe was depressed; his spirit was sinking; he shook with fear of what was outside. I knew that facing a danger was tonic, while cowering at the mental picture of it was spirit-killing. So I thought it would do him good if he went out, voluntarily, if only for a few moments--no matter what the danger. Of course he did not understand why I wanted him to go; neither did Kretz, who protested very strongly.”

Bat looked at the crime specialist, who smiled in an amused sort of way; then he said to the girl:

“You say you took the sword to your room to examine it? How about the harp? Ever take that away with you?”

“I have,” replied Miss Knowles. “Some nights ago I secreted it on the floor above, and when everything was quiet I went there.”

“You sat in an alcove behind some curtains,” said Bat. “It was dark. The window was open. You picked at the strings of the harp, but made no sound.”

“You saw me?” the girl seemed startled.

“I did. What were you doing?”

“What I had seen done more than once before. And I was trying to understand.”

Once more Scanlon looked toward Ashton-Kirk, and now that gentleman spoke.

“This interest in Schwartzberg as to the location of the wind of an evening. You noticed it?”

“Yes.” The girl’s blue eyes went to the speaker, full of interest. “But, like the other things, I could never understand it.”

“You saw some one strike the harp strings at night at an open window; was it always the same window?”

“No.”

“It depended upon the direction of the wind--the window selected always opened in the direction from which the breeze was blowing.”

“Yes.”

“Did that not suggest something to you?”

“It did. A signal. But,” with a gesture, “it could not have been. There was no sound.”

Ashton-Kirk turned to the harp; his long supple fingers ran over the strings, and they responded stirringly. Bat Scanlon leaned toward Miss Knowles.

“I think,” said he, “I’ve got just one more question to ask you, and here it is: What about that package that came the other day--the one with the blank paper in it?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” The girl seemed weary with the things which she did not understand. “It was like the other packages that came here. Always blank paper; never a single thing which would lead me to even guess at what they meant.”

“When you saw the man Alva in the moonlight,” spoke Ashton-Kirk, addressing Scanlon, his fingers still gently plucking at the harp strings, “did you pay particular attention to the hill he had selected?”

“It was a high one,” said Bat. “But I think that’s all.”

“There was another advantage,” said the special detective. “There were no intervening trees. From that hilltop to Schwartzberg there is one clear sweep.”

He ceased strumming at the harp and his eyes went toward the sword upon the wall. A step or two, and he had it in his hands.

“It brought fortune to the Hohenlos, eh?” said he, and his eyes seemed dreamy as he gazed at it. “A good blade!” Then the eyes lifted, and he continued: “Those strings, Scanlon, where are they?”

“Here,” said the big man, taking the tangled mass from his coat pocket, and offering it to the other.

“Pull one out. That’s it. Thanks.”

Ashton-Kirk took the proffered string; it was quite long, and trailed upon the floor in a soiled heap. Starting at a point close to the hilt, he began wrapping the string around the sword blade.

The big man watched his friend narrowly as he worked with the string and the sword blade. He felt that in this, queer as the proceeding seemed, there was to be an explanation of some things that had gone before.

“Kirk’s the fellow to explain them,” he told himself, as he watched. “He’s never in a hurry to do it, of course; and maybe that’s the reason why he never makes a mistake. But explain them he does; and don’t let that get away from you.”

Miss Knowles was also intensely interested; she followed the fingers of the special detective with the utmost attention. Carefully Ashton-Kirk wrapped the string about the great blade. Often he paused and inspected what he had done, as though to make sure that it was what he wanted.

“The romance which might attach to a weapon of this sort,” said he, “is endless.” Slowly he worked, and carefully. Every moment or two he paused and surveyed what he had done. “For history, poetry, drama, all tell us that such blades were forged when romance was thick upon every hand. What backs has it hung across in journeys through strange lands? What strong hands have clasped its hilt as the desert’s dust showed the cohorts of the infidel? What scaling ladders has it mounted? What castle walls has it topped? What helmets and plates of proof has it rung upon? What captive damsels has it freed? What number of the oppressed and helpless has its hiss and its swing released from tyranny? What stout squires have ridden behind its owner? What brawny lanz-knechts have cheered to see it flash, and have pressed after it into the heat of the fight?

“And now,” continued the crime specialist, “to what base uses has it come. From being the weapon of a hero, it becomes the means of one criminal communicating with another.”

“What!” exclaimed Scanlon.

“Look!”

Ashton-Kirk held the sword, hilt up, and with the flat of it toward them. To the amazement of the big man, he saw lettered in black ink, down the length of the closely wrapped string:

W A T C H

S C A N L O N