CHAPTER XXIV ON THE TRAIL OF THE CONSPIRATORS

The effect of this announcement upon the boys was of course electrical.

“Quick!” whispered Buck to his companions, “let’s get right out of here and call the police. We’ll nab the scoundrels as they try to leave.”

“No, sit still, Buck,” Ned said in an equally cautious tone. “The arrest of these four conspirators wouldn’t necessarily stamp out the plot. For as bold and big a scheme as this, there must also be a good many others implicated. It may be more important to capture them than these fellows. Besides, even if we were to call in the police and have these four arrested, we couldn’t actually prove anything against them.”

“True enough,” agreed Bob. “What do you propose to do, Ned?”

“This: I’ll sit quietly here. You and Buck get up leisurely, bid me good night and appear to leave. Instead of that, each of you secrete himself somewhere near the bottom of the stairs leading up to this gallery. When the men here get up to leave, I’ll follow the man with the cape muffled around his face, and you boys each take one of the others.”

“But there are four of them and only three of us,” objected Buck.

“That’s all right. I don’t think that the shabby man with the dirty finger nails is anything more than a mere tool anyhow, so we can afford to let him go. You, Bob, shadow the little fat man with the rings, you, Buck, trail the fellow with the big black beard. Follow them around all night if necessary, but make sure that you trace them to their homes finally. We can all meet with Alan at the _Ocean Flyer_ over in the Prater at, say, sunrise by the latest.”

This scheme struck the other boys as feasible and soon Bob and Buck drifted off as arranged, leaving Ned alone at the table. He had sat there, seemingly half asleep, for perhaps ten minutes more, when the four conspirators arose from their table together and started down the stairs. Ned followed slyly at a safe distance, screened by the jostling crowd.

All four men passed out of the place in company, chatted for a minute or two at the street entrance and then parted. The ruffianly looking individual plunged straightway into the nearest alley, after a furtive look behind him. The pudgy man with the wicked pig’s eyes and bejeweled rings took a taxicab at the curb stall and chugged away, followed by Bob in a second taxi. The herculean black-beard, after leisurely lighting a cigar, walked aimlessly a little way down the thoroughfare; paused and felt of his hip pocket as if to make sure that something quite important was still there; and at last he too hailed a taxicab and disappeared, with Buck still in his wake.

The fourth conspirator--he who kept his face so carefully concealed in the collar of his cape--stood thoughtfully in the lighted doorway of the dance hall until all of his companions were gone. Then he glanced with affected nonchalance at the faces in the crowd around him and turning, strolled slowly westward along the street. Ned followed.

At the second square the man suddenly quickened his pace until it was all that Ned could do to keep up with him. At the fifth square, he all at once wheeled about abruptly and stared after him; then plunged into an ill-lighted side street. By the time that Ned got to the corner, the quarry was just turning the next corner, running at top speed.

Ned sprinted after him, turned the corner and found himself again on a brightly-lighted thoroughfare thronged with revelers. The man had vanished into the crowd. Bitter disappointment choked Ned until suddenly he saw his man again, this time on the opposite side of the street, hesitating as if at a loss which way to go. Finally he again turned westward, with Ned keeping closer on his heels this time.

Thus the pursuit went on for more than an hour’s time. Had not the boy been himself a good walker, the man would soon have tired him out. The chase ended at last in what your Viennese calls “Die Innere Stadt,” (The Inner Town) which lies in the heart of the city and is the most aristocratic section. The Hofburg, or Imperial Palace is there, the palaces of many of the nobility, the government offices, the now abandoned foreign legations, the opera house and principal hotels.

The man in the cloak strode swiftly past the hotel section into the palatial residence district. He now had the manner of one who knew exactly where he was going and was in a hurry to get there.

At the gates of a great iron fence enclosing the park-like grounds of one of the palatial residences with which the street was lined, the stranger paused, then entered without a glance behind him. Ned followed him swiftly up the gravel walk, to drop flat behind a spreading rosebush as his quarry wheeled like a flash and stood stock still, staring intently back at the street.

For a few moments the boy dared scarcely to breathe. Then, to his relief, the man again turned, but instead of mounting the imposing flight of stone steps, flanked by two carved lions bearing an armorial crest in their mouths, he slipped a key into a little half-concealed postern door and vanished inside, leaving the door slightly ajar behind him.

Ned hesitated but an instant, then himself plunged into the yawning black hole. It was so dark that he had to grope his way forward with hands outstretched in front of him, shuffling his feet along, one after the other. Scarcely had he gone three steps forward when two muscular hands closed around his throat from behind, half strangling him, and a heavy voice boomed through the narrow confines of the entry:

“Ho! Emil, Oscar, Friedrich! This way! Hurry! I have caught a burglar!”

Ned’s sight began to blur. There was a loud buzzing in his ears and sparks of red, vivid blue and yellow light danced before his eyes. He was helpless in the iron clutch of the man behind him. Then came the heavy sound of running feet and three husky servants in livery arrived and overpowered him. One tripped him flat on his face, while the others bound his arms immovably to his sides with a piece of rope. They mauled him about and gave him a couple of kicks for good measure.

“Bring him up here,” commanded the master of the house abruptly, leading the way up a narrow little flight of stairs.

As Ned stumbled upward, pushed by the excited serving-men, he saw for the first time that a very comely young woman was standing at the head of the staircase, with a loose dressing gown thrown around her, just as if she had been frightened from her bed by the noise of the scuffle and shouts below stairs.

“What are you doing here, Marya?” demanded the mysterious man in the cape in what seemed to Ned to be an unjustifiably gruff tone. “Why aren’t you in bed where you belong at this hour?”

The girl’s hands were pressed to her heart, but she was making a brave effort to conceal her agitation.

“Oh, I thought--I hoped that--father?” This last in piteous appeal.

The man in the cloak scowled savagely and shoved her aside, while he and his men pushed Ned into a large, sumptuously furnished room.

“I know what you thought well enough,” he growled. “You thought that Racoszky, that scoundrelly husband of yours, had come and tried to see you secretly. That’s what you thought! Well, you are a fool and, though I’m ashamed to say it, a daughter of mine at the same time. Look at him as much as you want, Marya! You see that this doesn’t happen to be your husband. Instead, he is a rascally fellow who--you can go now, men!” The servitors went out silently. “Instead of that, he is a fellow who has been dogging my footsteps for the last hour or so and whom I trapped at the foot of the stairs there just to find out who he was and why he has followed me in this way.”

Ned did not quail before the menace in his captor’s eye. Instead it is to be doubted if he even had heard his last words. One poignant thought was ringing through his head:

Marya? The man in the cloak whom he knew to be a conspirator was her father and he had called her the wife of Lieutenant Racoszky.

Then this would-be assassin was none other than old Count Polnychek of Budapest!