CHAPTER XI

THE ABDUCTION

The war riots continued in Serajoz with ever-increasing violence. Following the unsatisfactory events of the morning, Fenton spent several hours in Varden's automobile on a mission that took him to many parts of the city.

Late in the afternoon he returned, to find his host in a state of great perturbation.

"Things are certainly happening thick and fast," declared Varden. "The other side are prepared to stop at nothing, Fenton. The princess has been carried off!"

Fenton, too stunned for speech, listened with his mind in a turmoil, while Varden proceeded with a hurried and disjointed explanation. A note had just reached him from Anna Petrowa, containing the startling information that an attempt at abduction would be made. Shortly after two o'clock, on the instructions issued by her royal father, Olga had set out for Kail Baleski in a carriage with the customary retinue for travel. In the meantime the alert Anna had learned of a plan, formulated in the Miridoff camp, to have the princess abducted on the road and carried up to the hill country.

"But," protested Fenton in angry amazement, "what purpose can be served? It seems just as senseless as it is incredible!"

"The purpose is not hard to find," replied Varden. "The princess will serve as a hostage. Efforts will be made to force Prince Peter to withdraw the pressure he is exerting on the King by threats of violence to the princess.

"Miridoff, of course, will not appear in this," went on Varden. "It will be made to appear on the surface that the abduction has been the work of brigands. The princess will be carried up into the hill country and not released until Peter has been brought to terms."

"But how do you know they have carried her off? It is one thing to plan a daring coup of this kind, and another to accomplish it."

"As a matter of fact, Don, I don't suppose that they have actually got their hands on her yet, but there is no reason to suppose that they won't do so. Carriage travel is slow in this country, and Olga would hardly have reached Kail Baleski yet. As that is practically the start of the hill country they'll make the attempt thereabouts."

"Then it's not too late," said Fenton with a sense of partial relief. "I'm going to borrow your machine. There's a chance that I can overtake her in time."

In another minute Fenton was settled in the tonneau of the car, which rolled through the streets of the Ironian capital with a speed that increased as they neared the open country.

* * * * *

Ironia is a country of extremes. Unusual wealth rubs elbows with abject poverty. Grand palaces line the Lodz in Serajoz, and in the narrow streets close on either side human beings fight for a meagre existence.

The same rule of contrast holds with reference to the Ironian character. The peasantry are honest, hospitable, devout and ignorant. The upper classes, the aristocracy, who control the mining and industrial enterprises from which Ironian wealth emanates, are sharp, clever and quite unscrupulous. Only in the few old families which had managed to escape extinction in the Turkish wars does the innate nobility of the peasant character, purified by education and refinement, show itself. Peter was typical of the aristocratic minority; Miridoff of the majority.

Fenton discovered to what a sharp degree the law of contrast was carried in this picturesque country when the driver turned out of the crowded streets of Serajoz and guided his car with a steadily increasing hum along one of the wonderfully well preserved Roman roads that run out in all directions from the capital city, like the fingers of an out-stretched land. Back in Serajoz every evidence was to be seen of advanced civilisation. In the country they soon passed out of the area where their car was accepted as a matter of course. Fifteen miles from the city their progress through the many villages that dotted the road became marked by confusion and clatter, the peasants staring in open-mouthed amazement at the spectacle of the fast-moving car. It was quite apparent that the automobile was still an object of almost superstitious wonder to these simple souls.

The excitement which attended their progress became more marked when the driver turned off the main road and struck through a maze of winding side-roads that circled along the foot-hills on a gradually ascending grade. Crouched back in the swaying tonneau, a prey to fear and worry, Fenton made frequent use of the only Ironian word that he had learned before starting on this headlong pursuit, "Faster." The driver, who reverenced the car with the same zeal that a Christian will sometimes show in the study of an Oriental creed, obeyed with gleeful alacrity. He had always wanted to know just how fast it could be made to go, this devil-wagon with its intricate buttons and levers, the secrets of which he had studied in the same spirit as he would have approached the formulæ of a sorcerer. Having at last found a passenger of the same frame of mind as himself, Jaleski leaned over the wheel with a smile that brought his beaked nose down with a still more pronouncedly owl-like suggestion, and the wheels fairly lifted off the ground. The car skimmed along the curving highways; ascended steep grades with a graceful ease of a powerful bird on the wing; dashed through villages like a puffing, black Juggernaut; and spread a trail of chattering, fear-stricken peasantry in its wake.

To Fenton the ecstatic Jaleski seemed like a genie crouched over the edge of a magic carpet, guiding it with supernatural speed across an earthly continent. He expected that every minute would be his last, though he made no effort to stave off the impending doom.

But Jaleski proved an artist at the wheel. He brought the imagination of the East to the manipulation of the levers and bars of the materialistic West, and seemed to be able to coax extra speed from them without relaxing his perfect control. He appeared to tell by instinct just what lay beyond the next bramble-obscured turn in the road. He had an extra sense for knowing when to turn out for unseen obstacles. Fenton began to feel that a sorcerer was at the wheel.

They came in record time to the quaint little village of Kail Baleski, which shelters itself at the very base of the foot-hills, and has not changed in any detail for the last two hundred years. They found the place in a state of wildest turmoil. Crowds of villagers stood in the one street along which the village straggles with a vague suggestion of child-built blocks. As Jaleski regretfully brought the car to a stop they were surrounded by a mob who waved their arms and jabbered incessantly. Jaleski picked the purport of it from the babel of talk, and, turning a tragic face on his passenger, endeavoured to relate the disturbing news.

After questioning him impatiently in imperfect German, Fenton gave up the effort to establish intelligent communication, and climbed from the car. He reproached himself bitterly for having started out on so important a mission without bringing an interpreter along.

Finally, however, he perceived a possible means out of his dilemma. Walking down the street toward them came the village priest, benevolent and white-haired, in a worn cassock and rusty clerical hat that bespoke either the poverty of the neighbourhood or the ascetic character of the wearer. The old priest's face was clouded with the same trouble that stared so unmistakably and yet so unintelligibly from the brown faces of the villagers. Fenton addressed him eagerly in French, haltingly in German and finally in English. And, wonder of wonders, at the last attempt he found that he had tuned his C.Q.D. message to the lingual receiver of the old cleric.

"I speak some Eenglish," said the priest slowly. "Once was I in London. Your Milton and your Shakespeare, of much have I read."

"Fine, Father!" said Fenton, shaking the priest's hand warmly, much to the amazement of the villagers, who had backed away respectfully at the approach of the shabby old man. "Can you tell me what it's all about? Has anything happened to her highness?"

Slowly and haltingly the priest told him of the happenings that had so upset the usually placid village. Early in the morning a messenger had come with the news that her highness, the Princess Olga, was to arrive that day. Prompt preparations had been started at the castle, the towers of which, standing up above the dark tops of the trees, could be dimly made out in the distance. An hour before, the royal carriage had driven into the village with a frightened driver, a partly stunned serving-man and an hysterical maid-in-waiting--but no princess. The equippage had been held up by a band of armed men about two miles back on the road. The Princess Olga had been taken from the carriage, placed on a horse and carried off with businesslike celerity. After frightening the servants by a threat to shoot them, the band had disappeared into the thickly wooded country through which a narrow pack trail led up into the hills. Such was the information that the padre retailed with saddened inflection to Fenton.

The latter, now that his worst fears were confirmed, lost no time in deciding on his course of action. He would first get whatever information could be secured from the servants, and then strike north for Kirkalisse, the northern estates of Miridoff, to which Olga would probably be taken. He was confident that he could cover the distance during the night if a capable guide could be secured. In the meantime he would send a messenger to Varden with the news and urge that assistance be supplied at once.

With the priest in tow to act as interpreter, Fenton interviewed the members of the prince's household who had figured in the hold-up. They gave voluble descriptions of the incident, but no information that was of any value to the impatient Canadian. The band had been very numerous, very fierce and armed like so many living arsenals--the serving people emphasised these facts with much reiteration--but nothing more definite in the way of a description could be obtained. The driver of the carriage, who saw in Fenton one whose version of the affair might carry weight, poured into the Canadian's ear a verbal eruption of harsh consonants which the priest interpreted as a recital of the valiant fight that he (the driver) and the other male member of the party had put up before they allowed their beautiful mistress to be carried off.

"He must be a valiant fighter," declared Fenton, "to maul these brigands the way he says he did and come off without a scratch himself!"

They were standing in front of the little village inn, and consequently their words sounded quite clearly on the street. He heard a sharp exclamation from a dust-laden stranger who was plodding his way wearily through the knots of villagers.

"Great Scott! Is it English I hear?" cried the stranger.

Coming forward he deposited his bundle on the road and shook Fenton's hand with every evidence of keen delight.