Part 20

"I wish I dared, Arnold, but I am afraid to take the risk. The time-table is at the best of times irregular. Supposing instead of the Death Train it were another we wrecked? Suppose an unexpected express were to come the other way? No, no, Arnold! I must rely upon this," and he fondly patted the rifle which was stretched out in front of him, significantly turned in the direction of the barricade.

"Do you think you will get the opportunity--that your courage will not fail you at the last moment?"

The White Knight laughed softly: "Would you hesitate to kill a rat, Arnold? To me the life of Szamuelly is less than that of the meanest rodent. As for the rest, I can only hope that he will not suspect the truth and cringe into the farthest corner of the coach."

"Will not your constant warnings prepare him for all eventualities? Tell me, Geoffrey, would not a swift, silent blow be just as feasible? I do not understand the reason of your repeated messages to him."

"When should I ever get an opportunity for the swift blow? He is surrounded night and day. From the very first he has had his men under an Army discipline, and set guards. No prince threatened by anarchists has ever been better protected. No, Arnold, do not think I play for melodramatic effect.

"No will however strong, no courage however deep, is proof in the long run against the insidious prickings of fear. Threats, if sustained long enough, are like the dripping of water on the hardest rock, the succession of footsteps upon the toughest stone.

"Sooner or later his nerve will crack. He will begin to suspect even his own men, and when suspicion once enters the mind nothing will drive it out again. When that time comes he will hesitate to sleep lest during those hours a knife should be plunged into his bosom. He will fear to eat lest the food should be poisoned. When he reaches that stage he will flee from the Death Train, from his Terror Boys, perhaps even from Budapest, and then he will be my prey, and I shall kill him with more pleasure than I should have in exterminating a rabid dog."

"That is, of course, if you do not succeed to-night, or at any other time?"

"To-night is my one opportunity. The trick will not work twice."

"Why not shoot him when he stops at the villages? From a near-by window..."

"And if I missed? Arnold, I have seen that butcher hang men and torture children for the mere love of cruelty. He scarcely seeks excuses for his vile work. What would happen to the villagers if, as I have said, I missed him? How many would he hang in revenge?"

"I am dull-witted to-night, Geoffrey."

"You are too happy to think of anyone or anything, my dear chap," Wenzel said softly; then he sighed. "I envy you, Arnold, but I am glad, deuced glad! You have earned your reward and Cecile...."

Arnold laughed happily: "I had not meant to say a word to her, but last night ... you must have noticed the moon, Geoffrey; it seemed to have a smirk on its face, and when I looked at it, it seemed to wink at me and then grin derisively. The next thing I knew the words were out of my mouth, Cecile was in my arms, her lips pressing against mine.... I wonder why I am telling you all this, Geoffrey? I had always thought that a man's sensations on such a night were sacred to himself alone."

In his heart Wenzel agreed, for every word that Arnold uttered flayed his soul, seared into his heart, and reminded him of another night when the moon had winked at him in the same way, and a similar torrent of passionate words had forced themselves from his lips.... Memories! Memories! Was he never going to be free of them? Memories of Zita! Memories of Elizabeth! His heart cried out in agony, but his voice was calm when he answered:

"Because your happiness is mine, Arnold." His lips curved ironically as he wondered dimly whether his lips had ever uttered a greater lie.

There was a short silence, but Arnold was bubbling over with too great a joy to remain quiet very long.

"Do you know, Geoffrey, this is the first time we have talked together, alone like this, since the day you walked free from the hands of the Communists? All this time my curiosity has remained unappeased. How in the name of God did you deceive them? Your--your scars, Geoffrey, what happened to them? Why have you avoided the _château_? Why have you restlessly moved about from place to place, as though some one forced you ever onwards? Before then I--I had thought----"

"Stop!" Wenzel heard the fatal words before they were even uttered. "As my friend, Arnold, do not question me; do not endeavour to awaken cherished thoughts which must be for ever buried and forgotten."

"Geoffrey, I am sorry! I did not realize. I----"

"Arnold, please!" His voice was weary. "Remember this. I have no personal feelings left. They are dead, killed in the first case by the Communists, and then again by----" Just in time he stopped himself. Another moment and he might have mentioned Elizabeth's name. "As for the scars... Arnold, I battled with myself for hours that morning. When I awoke in a cell and realized that the Communists had me at last, I knew it to be but a matter of hours before I should be dispatched from this world, but I was not unprepared. When I first became the White Knight I knew that the possibility of my being captured eventually was a hundred to one on, so I took necessary precautions. But for one thing, however, I should never have made use of them.

"You never suspected my down-at-heel boots as harbouring any means of escape, did you, Arnold? As a matter of fact, they were not down-at-heel, for both heels were hollow. Inside were two thick sticks of grease-paint, Arnold. I rubbed them well into the wounds; rubbed and rubbed until at last each scar was erased in turn, the thick grease-paint effectively hiding them. After that I powdered them well, so that nothing was noticeable except a white pallor over the whole of my face. Then, on top of it all, dirt; not just a coat of dust which might wipe off, but thick, ingrained dirt. Have you ever rubbed dirt into a greasy substance? It was perfectly effective, as you know."

"Good Lord, it is amazing! Yet--forgive me if I hurt your feelings--that much I understand; but the wound across your scalp, your eyebrow, and--and--your twisted cheek?" He choked slightly; it was hard to mention such things to the White Knight himself.

Wenzel smiled softly to himself. Poor old Arnold! How his words stumbled!

"I had prepared for all that, Arnold. I had ready a little pad, a tiny strip of flesh-coloured canvas, on to which was stuck a not inconsiderable portion of my own hair from another part of the scalp. Liquid gum, similar to that used in theatrical circles, was more than sufficient to keep the shaped canvas in its place. Then I dyed my hair, parted it on the other side--what parting I could induce my cropped hair to display--brushed the remainder the other way, and that scar was concealed.

"My eyebrow I treated in exactly the same way. As for my mouth, a tiny little ivory chip inside did the trick, by pulling and keeping the flesh more or less as it should be naturally. Incidentally, it hurt like the Devil, but against that it helped disguise my voice, so it served a double purpose.

"My changed appearance plus a likely story and a possibility of leading them on the track of the White Knight earned me my freedom. I had but one thing to fear--that they would hang me from pure spite, but--I must be more than a bad penny, for here I am."

Had Arnold been less in a state of profound fascination he might have detected the bitter tinge which crept into his leader's last words; even now there was still one question he wished to ask.

"Geoffrey, old man, I have never heard anything more marvellous in all my life, yet won't you tell me why you hesitated, that morning in your cell, to make your plans for escape, and what, at the last moment, made you change your mind?" There was a wistful note in his voice. In his present happiness he wished all his friends to share it.

Purposely the White Knight ignored the first part of the question. "The thought of this moment," Wenzel replied, and again he patted his rifle. "Szamuelly must die." Suddenly he shot out his hand and grasped Terhune's arm. "Listen!" he said harshly.

From afar off they heard a faint murmuring, a tremulous, echoing vibration.

"The Death Train!" whispered Arnold.

Wenzel laughed throatily, and for the first time in weeks there was a happy timbre in his tone.

The noise of the shrieking monster pounding toward them through the night grew louder, and some way off its fiery beacon flashed into view as it rounded a curve. Swaying in its stride it thundered forward; then with a wild groan, wrung protestingly from it by the fierce application of the brakes, it slowed up until it came to a stop, scarcely fifty yards from the warning red light, snorting its fury into the air.

The immediate neighbourhood of the Death Train was lit up by the blaze of light from within, and the two watchers were able to see the hurried exit of several men from the second coach, clambering down to the ground and running forward into the night.

With a steady hand the White Knight swung round the sight of his rifle; unwaveringly it pointed to the exit of the first coach, and there waited....

The men who had rushed forward to investigate returned once again into the radius of the light. They were gesticulating wildly. A window swung up, a smooth, purring voice, which the White Knight believed to be that of Szamuelly, rang out, questioning.

The rifle swung round, pointing significantly toward the man at the window, but the White Knight was not sure, so he waited. There must be no mistake that night.

The man withdrew his head from the window. Almost immediately he emerged from the obscurity of the exit, and the White Knight saw that he had made no mistake. It was indeed Szamuelly!

Szamuelly was talking excitedly, but he was standing still; the rifle moved slightly, the White Knight's finger quivered for the fatal pull, but--the Devil protects his own! At the sight of the arch-fiend Wenzel's wrath blazed up anew, shaking him in its grip. A tiny shadow floated before his eyes, the sharp outline of the Communist against the light became dim and obscure.

Desperately the White Knight realized his prey was moving back into the coach again, doubtless to sleep while his men moved the obstruction. Unless he fired now it might be too late. His index finger tightened. The next moment the air resounded with the terrifying crash of six explosions; the glass of the coach was shattered, the bullets ricochetted in every direction, there was a moan of pain as one of the Terrorists spun round and dropped to the ground, but--Szamuelly remained upright, unhurt, and untouched. Even as Wenzel noted the fact he saw the Communist darting for cover. With a sob in his throat he realized the ghastly truth. He had failed!

The next moment there was a fusillade from the train, as the Terrorists snatched their ever-ready revolvers from their holsters and opened fire in the direction from which the shots had come; but they did no good, for Wenzel and Terhune were already speeding from the spot in the automobile by which they had arrived.

"Not yet, Arnold, not yet has Szamuelly's time come." The White Knight sobbed the words as he drove the car along the pitch-dark road. "But it will! I swear it will! Szamuelly must die! Szamuelly shall die!"

_CHAPTER XX_

In the fading days of the Red Terror events succeeded each other with precipitance. The fury of the people against their bloody leaders grew more intense, until at length the members of the Soviet began to tremble in their shoes.

By threats and wholesale murder they endeavoured to squash the national awakening, but in vain. The starving people could not buy food, for all the thousands of white Soviet paper crowns they might flourish: the peasants would not sell their goods for worthless money.

No longer were the Red troops keeping back the Rumanians or the Czechs; the Peace Conference was awakening to a true realization of affairs in Budapest.

Now one by one the rats began to leave the sinking ship, and among the first batch was Gunzi, the astute detective, who knew which side his bread was buttered.

Well guarded, the shivering Szamuelly called at his apartment one day, to find Gunzi in the throes of packing up, for he who had come to Budapest with nothing had already collected enough from what pickings had been left by the time he arrived there to fill three large trunks, themselves confiscated in the name of the Soviet Government.

Szamuelly frowned. "Hullo, Comrade Gunzi, where are you off to?"

Gunzi laughed cynically: "To better parts, my friend, to better parts."

"What do you mean? Has Budapest meant so little to you that already you are tired of its attractions?"

The detective grinned. "Ho, ho, Comrade Szamuelly! Budapest is finished for you and for me and for all good Communists. Our day is over. You know it as well as I, friend. In my hunt for your cursed White Knight I have here and there come across traces of a vast White plot, fostered and prepared by the English devil in between times when he has not been hunting you.

"I have ears in my head, I have eyes which can see well. In a few weeks' time, perhaps not so long as that, the Commune will be finished, and God keep us all from the clutches of the White Terror! Mark my words, Comrade Szamuelly, and take heed of them if you are a wise man: there will be a White Terror, as sure as my name is--is supposed to be--Gunzi! Do you not think that the fathers, mothers, sisters, and sons of some of the men you have hanged will clamour for revenge? Eh? The answer is 'yes.' I would, so would you--if for no other reason than that it would show our sympathy with the new Government in wishing to be avenged on the old one, and it is wiser to keep on the right side of governments in these days.

"I became a Communist with my eyes open, and they are still open, my friend. That is why I go.... Whither? Well, I do not know. To Austria perhaps, or Russia, where they have a good way with Whites, or even Italy; anywhere, say I, rather than stop here."

To Szamuelly the words needed no confirmation; all that Gunzi had just said he himself had suspected for some time, but desperately he had continued to hope for the best.

"But--but you swore to get me the White Knight!"

Gunzi cursed. "I have tried, my friend, but one might as well try to catch the raindrops as they fall. He is the Devil himself!--jealous of you, perhaps, Comrade Szamuelly," and he laughed slyly at his own humour.

"May Hell burn his bones!" The Communist looked nervously around him with twitching eyes: "Gunzi, I cannot stand the strain! He is everywhere! Where my Death Train goes he is there before me with the message 'Szamuelly shall die!' I see him in the men who surround me; even among my Terror Boys he must have his spies. My nerves are fraying, my courage disappearing."

Gunzi laughed heartlessly: "You are going just the same way as did Commissary Gonnard. I have never seen such a jelly-bag in all my life as he at the end of one day. He fled here, to Budapest, but finally the White Knight caught him, and hanged him from the Suspension Bridge."

"But how can he get me--how can he?" Desperately the white-faced Szamuelly put the question, a very different Szamuelly from the one who had scornfully sneered at the first threats of the White Knight. "I am surrounded by my faithful Terror Boys--they guard me now night and day--how can he get past them?"

The detective shrugged his shoulders: "Don't ask me, friend; I do not know. All I say is that he will in the long run. Besides, didn't you yourself say you thought he had a spy among them? Take my advice. Do as I am doing. Pack and fly for it, my friend!" and with the sound of Gunzi's mocking laughter in his ears Szamuelly stumbled from the room.

By the time he reached the street his face was chalky, his lips trembled nervously. Gunzi's words haunted him; somehow they had rung so prophetically in his ears. He felt his nerve cracking. His only hope, the one man he felt could have tracked the White Knight, was fleeing, not only from the city, but from the country altogether. Now there was no one to guard him against the machinations of the White Knight! His Terror Boys ... in their brutal way they were brave enough, possibly thoroughly loyal, but Szamuelly had no faith in them; all their bravery was of no use compared with the White Knight's cunning, all their loyalty was likely to evaporate at the sight of the White Knight's well-filled purse.

Two Terror Boys walked by his side. "What's the matter, comrade?" asked one. "You do not look yourself."

Szamuelly shrugged his shoulders helplessly: "I am not, my friend. To-day I have received bad news--news which affects you--I--all of us."

"Bad news which affects us all! What can that be? The only bad news you could give us would be that neither wine nor women remained in the world."

Szamuelly laughed shortly: "Yet, my friend, what I have to say is worse than that. The Commune is finished, the days of commissaries ended."

The Terror Boys looked at him as if they wondered what madness had come over their leader.

"You are not well," growled the second guard, who had not yet spoken.

Szamuelly turned upon him in a temper: "Fools, fools! So you think I am mad! Blockheads, can't you see the truth when it is thrust before you? Let me put it to you in a way you will understand. To-night I leave Budapest for Russia, or Austria, or Italy--anywhere, so long as I escape."

The two Terror Boys stopped in their walk and gazed at Szamuelly with strained expressions. He had spoken in words which they understood. If he were fleeing, he, after Bela Kun the leading light of the Red Terror, then indeed the good days must be finished. They knew their Szamuelly, and no longer did they doubt the truth. It was no trick to get rid of them.

Yet a certain suspicion suggested itself to one of them. "It is not the White Knight?" he queried.

Szamuelly shivered at the mention of the name, yet he would have hotly denied the imputation had he not realized the fruitlessness of so doing. Besides, a plan was formulating in his brain.

"I will be frank with you, comrades," he said, after a pause. "I am afraid of the White Knight. Yet listen. If I thought that the Soviet were likely to last I would dare the Enemy of the Commune to do his worst, for I should have all of you, my friends, to guard me against this cursed _bourgeois_; but ... let us continue in our walk. I want to make all the necessary arrangements...."

"To scuttle?"

"Ay, my friends, to scuttle."

There was food for thought in what he had said, and each of his guards digested in his mind the astounding news of which he had just been made cognizant. The one who spoke little thought the harder.

"My friend," he said softly to Szamuelly, "even though you flee there is still--the White Knight!"

"Well!" Szamuelly turned on him savagely. "Do you not think I know that as well as you?"

"Yes, yes. But listen, Comrade Szamuelly. Would you not feel safer if you had a comrade--or, say, two good comrades--with you when you escape?"

The second Terror Boy laughed shortly. "My God You are right. Two good comrades, eh, Szamuelly! Three of us--we three--could put up a fight against even the White Knight."

Szamuelly's eyes gleamed. So easily had they fallen into the trap which he had laid for them! "Bravo my friends! Then that is settled. We will go together but ... listen! Supposing that the rest of our comrades hear the news. They too will want to come."

"Why should they?" asked the soft-tongued one.

"Exactly!" agreed Szamuelly. "Then when shall it be?"

"The sooner the better, if what you say in true."

Could the guard have been at the Soviet meeting taking place at that very moment he would not have needed to add that last rider. Amidst an atmosphere of stark tragedy Bela Kun was resigning the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In a halting, tearful tone he was informing his followers of the truth--that the Red Army had collapsed, the Rumanians had crossed the Tisza, the Whites had already brought about their _coup d'état_, while all over the country red geraniums were being discarded for white roses, and the Red ensign of bloody Communism was being supplanted by the national flag.

Forcefully he drove home the truth: the day of the Commune was ended, and those who valued their necks more than the power they had wielded for the last six months could do worse than resign; he himself set the example.

So fell the Dictatorship of the Proletariat on July 30, 1919, and the government of Hungary was transferred to the Presidency of Peidl, who appointed ministers instead of commissaries, and called his government a "Workmen's Government."

In the meanwhile, with the assistance of his two comrades, Szamuelly prepared for flight, blithely abandoning his fellow-murderers to their fate.

In less than an hour he was packed, while outside the building throbbingly awaited the motor-car which was to rush him and his two Terror Boys to the station to catch the first train to Austria.

With a hasty look to see that he had left nothing behind, for the last time he closed the door of the apartment which he had confiscated a few months previously.

There was a grin on the faces of the two Terror Boys who sat in the car. They saw nothing of treachery in their flight, only a satisfaction that they were one jump ahead of their fellow-Terrorists, that they were escaping the threatened upheaval, of which the others, left behind, would have to bear the brunt. That is why they smiled--or at any rate why one smiled. The soft-tongued guard smiled because the White Knight had paid even more handsomely than usual for certain information, and several crisp Bank of England notes reposed comfortably in the lining of his dirty regimental coat.

For the first time for weeks Szamuelly actually felt light of heart--not because he was giving up his position of official murderer, not really because he feared the White uprising, but because he was leaving the White Knight behind, escaping beyond reach of the White Knight's vengeance.

He nodded cheerfully to the Terrorist who sat at the steering-wheel: "Go ahead, comrade! There is just time in which to catch that train."

The guard depressed the clutch, and with a grinding whine of annoyance the engine slipped into low. Szamuelly settled himself comfortably. A few hours now and he would be able actually to breathe without feeling a queer catch somewhere inside just near his heart.

He looked round, a last parting glance at the streets of Budapest, then suddenly he sobbed with a consuming terror, one which clutched his heart in a violent, chilling constriction, a fear which fluttered through his body, freezing his very marrow, draining the blood from his face and leaving it deathly white.

Barely five yards behind followed another car; beside the driver sat the White Knight, tense and expressionless like the grim figure of Fate.

There was no doubt as to his identity. His face pale with a consuming fury, his scars throbbed redder in contrast. His steely eyes bored hypnotically into Szamuelly's, and in them the Communist read a mocking surety of victory--his death-warrant.

A month ago he would have plucked his revolver from its holster and opened fire on the audacious pursuer, but now--he was paralysed with fright, his nerve entirely gone. He could only gasp, and crouch further into the body of the car.