Part 17

Hindwood jumped to his feet as though there was no time to be lost. “I'm going to find out. I have an appointment with the Governor of Hungary. If he rejects my offer, I shall demand----”

“And if he refuses----?”

“I shall play my winning-card. Don't ask me what it is. But if I play it, I shall need your help. You've talked of crucifixion: I may provide you with the chance. How many of these----?” He pointed to the sleeping outcasts.

Varensky's eyes were shining. “I've four hundred: three hundred veterans of Denikin's and Kolchak's armies and a hundred girl-soldiers of the Battalions of Death.”

“Have them warned.”

As he turned on his heel, he saw that Anna had wakened. She cried out after him. He dared not face her. Leaping down the stairs, he went at a run across the courtyard. It was only when the door into the street had closed behind him, that he realized that Santa was panting at his elbow.

VI

Mists were clearing. The sun had emerged fiery above a mountain-range of clouds. As they hurried in search of their hotel, they caught glimpses of the Danube, spanned by many bridges, and on the further bank the palace-crowned heights of Buda. The ancient city looked imperially beautiful. There was a touch of the East about it, a lavishness and rose-tinted whiteness. Its quays and pavements shone wet, as though they had been daubed with lacquer. It seemed incredible that behind its gold-splashed walls the ghosts of hunger gathered.

During their absence from the Ritz, a transformation had been effected. All signs of disorder had been banished. In place of the untimely Bacchanalians, stiff-bosomed waiters stood guard over neat tables with a solicitous air which was bewilderingly normal. Even the breakfast menu gave the lie to starvation.

They took their seats in silence, eating without interest whatever was set before them. Hindwood's sensations were those of a man who has given way to his emotions at a theatre. It was as though the lights had gone up, shaming him in public. There had been nothing to warrant his surrender to sentiment. He totaled up the accumulated incentives: he had witnessed a street-riot, people slain at the frontier, the hideous contrast between the death train and dancing--and last of all Varensky. But these things in themselves constituted no argument; the cause that lay behind them was still conjectural. As for Varensky, whatever he had said was unreliable. His wish was parent to his thought. He was a man born to stir up turbulences, which he considered it his mission to pacify. He was dangerous as a forest-fire: one spark of his wild idealism made the whole world lurid. In the breath of adversity he became a sheet of flame, destructive and self-destroying. His goal was the vanishing-point, in the No Man's Land between desire and things attainable.

Hindwood writhed at remembering the ease with which his judgment had been unseated. In his weakness he had given a promise, which it would be folly to fulfill and dishonorable to withdraw. He glanced across at Santa. How was she taking this return to normality?

She met his eyes with passionate adoration. “It was god-like of you.”

He pretended ignorance. “What?”

“Your self-denial. You've given up everything--Anna, ambition, money--all the things you worship.”

He assumed a judicial expression. “Perhaps not. It mayn't be necessary.”

“But it will.”

“If it is,” he said, “I shall stick to my contract. But I've reason to believe we've exaggerated.”

“Would to God we had!”

Her fervor disturbed him. He leaned across the table. “You don't mean to tell me you accept this bogey story about starving millions marching? There's a sense of security this morning. Surely you must have felt it?”

She shook her head. “We've had a meal--that's all. Within a mile from here I could show you a hospital where five hundred babies sit shivering like monkeys. They're wrapped in paper; they've never known what it was not to be hungry from the day they were born. I could take you to the workmen's quarter, where naked men and women would squirm at your feet like dogs; they're too weak to walk. I could lead you past the bread-lines, already forming----”

He stayed her by covering her hand. “I'm not denying it. When countries make wars they have to pay penalties.”

The storm that was brewing betrayed itself in her eyes. “What are you denying?”

“Don't let's make a scene,” he urged. “My promise holds if I find that circumstances warrant it. In a little while I'm seeing the Governor of Hungary; after that I'll be sure. While I'm gone, I have one request to make of you: keep your room and talk to nobody.”

She rose from the table in suppressed defiance.

“Why?”

“For your own safety. It was lucky I slept across your threshold last night. Your door was tried.”

Her smile accused him. “By whom?”

“If I'm not mistaken, by the man who afterwards tracked us through the fog.”

She turned away as though she were finished with him. When she found that he was following, she delivered a parting shot. “You told me this to frighten me. Did you think you could make me your accomplice in cowardice?”

VII

So these were the rewards of knight-errantry! In his anger he was glad to be rid of her. He was free at last. She'd been nothing but an embarrassment. If she were to attempt a reconciliation, he would turn his back on her. It wasn't likely that he'd put his neck into the same noose twice.

Little by little from resenting her, he began to suspect her. Had she been using him as a cat's-paw in a deeper game? Every man with whom she had ever associated, she had destroyed; could she be expected, to show more mercy to a man by whom she had been rejected? Her husband's words came back: “When she has added you to her list of victims, if she gives you time before she kills you, remember that I warned you.”

Everything to do with her became distorted when interpreted in the light of treachery. The pathos of her unrequited affection had been a mask; her humanitarianism had been a cloak for her designs. When he retraced his relations with her, it seemed glaringly probable that from the start she had been the agent of his financial rivals, placed by them on board the _Ryndam_ with the definite intention of accomplishing his ruin. Except for her final error in tactics, she would have attained her object. He had escaped by the narrowest of margins.

But the other people who had come upon the scene, where did they stand? Were they her puppets, jumping whichever way she pulled the wires, or were they her active co-conspirators? Varensky and the Little Grandmother were undoubtedly her puppets; she employed their enthusiasms to serve her purposes. Anna was her victim--a woman wronged and cheated, infinitely dear to him and tragic. It was Captain Lajos who troubled him. The more he thought about him, the more certain he became that the Captain and Santa were hand in glove. The farce which they had enacted on the train had been prearranged with a view to intimidating him. His most unnerving information, concerning the menace of starving millions, had come from the Captain. And there was a further fact, which had been disquieting him all morning: it was Captain Lajos who had tried Santa's door last night.

What did they think to gain by their plotting? Having pondered the conundrum, he decided that their object was to thwart his schemes for grasping world-power, and that the means they had chosen were to compel him to give for nothing the hoards of food which he had intended that Europe should buy.

Well aware that this theory was far from covering all the facts, he was still feeling his way through a quagmire of surmise, when a visitor was announced. In the foyer he found an officer, resplendently uniformed, waiting to escort him to his audience at the Royal Palace. He was whizzed away in a handsome car. As he traveled, his companion entertained him with anecdotes, grimly humorous, of Bela Kun's reign of terror.

“Experiments of that sort soon disprove themselves,” he said cheerfully. “We live through them and go on again.”

“And your country is going on again?” Hindwood inquired.

“Emphatically. Signs of revival are already apparent.”

“But what about Russia? How's revival possible without security?”

The officer laughed carelessly. “I catch your meaning; you've heard this latest about Bolshevism's downfall. In our part of the world we pay no heed to rumors; they're inventions of political opportunists or of gamblers in the international exchange. Even if this latest is true, it's the best thing that could have happened.”

Hindwood twisted in his seat that he might lose nothing of his companion's expression. “The best thing in the long run--that's granted. But meanwhile, because of the breakdown in organization, over a hundred million Russians are likely to die.”

Again the officer laughed, stretching his long legs. “The fittest will survive. One has to die somehow. The last war was fought because the world was too crowded. Famine's nature's cure for overpopulation.”

The remark sounded singularly ill-timed, coming from a man whose country was also starving. Hindwood frowned. “A heartless cure and, thank goodness, not the only one.”

“Not more heartless than civilized society's, which encourages armed nations to strangle each other with every filthy invention of science. When you forbid Nature to correct matters in her own way, sooner or later you find yourself with a war on your hands. The matter's very simple: so many mouths to fill and so many rations. When the mouths are in excess of the rations, some one has to go short. The people who are selected to go short can either drop in their tracks or fight. If they fight and win, the result's the same--some one else has to go without. The adjustment's automatic.”

“The thought of death,” Hindwood suggested quietly, “especially of other people's death, doesn't seem to trouble you.”

“That's natural. Killing and dying are my trade.”

Brutal as was the point of view, after Santa's sentimental fallacies, there was something honest and direct about these bald assertions.

Hindwood spoke again. “What applies to Russia, applies equally to Hungary. My errand at the Palace is to offer sufficient food to keep your country alive. According to your theory, I'm interfering with Nature's laws. I'm doing something economically immoral. I ought to leave you to your fate.”

To his amazement he was met with a polite concurrence. “That's how I regard it.”

It was impossible to credit the man's sincerity. Hindwood glanced aside, irritated and shocked. He was seeking a motive for such disinterested frankness. There was nothing more to say.

He had been so much absorbed in the conversation that he had not noticed their direction. They were skimming high above the Danube, crossing a bridge that spanned the sunlit gulf in giant strides. Behind lay Pest, modern as a second Paris; in front lay Buda, ancient and scarcely Christian, still bearing the marks of its Turkish occupation. On reaching the further bank, the ascent to the Palace begun to climb.

It was just as they were reaching the top that Hindwood was for a second time startled by the ghost of memory. Peering down on him from the ramparts, with its head between its paws, was a snow-white Russian wolf-hound. The next moment they had passed beneath an arch, between saluting sentries, and had halted in the Palace-yard.

VIII

The Yard was an immobile sea of faces. As far as eye could reach, soldiers were drawn up in close formation. It was clear that this was no ceremonial parade. The men were in full marching order; their field-kitchens were smoking in the background. They had the look of troops equipped for action, expecting to take the offensive at any moment. This much he saw as he was hurried into the Palace, before the great doors clanged behind him.

He found himself on the threshold of a magnificence that he had not imagined existed. Everywhere his eyes rested, they encountered riches accumulated through the centuries. Pictures and tapestries gazed down on him from the walls, chronicling the glory of the bygone Hapsburgs. Suits of mail, gold-inlaid and gem-studded, stood like knights of old, leaning on their swords. He followed his escort up a marble staircase, along endless corridors, from which doors opened into silent apartments, giving yet fresh vistas of royal splendors.

At last, in the far distance, the passage was blocked by a gigantic figure that might have escaped from Grand Opera; it stood so stiff and motionless that he mistook it for a wax-work. It was garbed as a halberdier, in parti-colored hose and shining armor. Only when the eyes moved did he realize that he was gazing at one of the Palace-guards. When the password had been given, they were allowed to slip behind a curtain. In the ante-room he was told to wait. His escort vanished through the inner-doors. A moment later the doors reopened and his escort beckoned.

He was aware of a blaze of light, lofty walls, tall windows, a tapestried room ornately furnished and a treacherously polished expanse of floor. A man was rising from behind an ormolu table. He was a man utterly simple and modern--the last man one would have expected to find in the pomp of medieval surroundings. His face was clean-shaven, bluff and wind-tanned. In his navy-blue suit he looked more like a yachtsman than the Governor of a State.

He was approaching with his hand outstretched. “I couldn't do less than receive you,” he was saying.

The words, though spoken pleasantly, sounded like a dismissal.

“Perhaps your Excellency has forgotten the purpose of my errand?”

“Not in the least. Let's sit down; we can talk more informally. The trouble is that you've come too late. Crises as acute as ours have a knack of settling themselves.”

Hindwood accepted a cigarette that was proffered. He took his time while he lit it. “Your solution is mustering in the Palace-yard. My food-supplies are no longer needed. Is that what you intend me to understand?”

“Exactly.”

“Your Excellency spoke just now of crises settling themselves. Did you mean that so many of your countrymen have died that at last there's sufficient food to go round?”

“Far from it. Our shortage is greater than ever.”

“I judged as much.” Hindwood tapped his ash casually. “I only arrived last night, but in the time I've been in Budapest I've seen the death-train, the bread-lines, the utter destitution. I've reason to believe that Bolshevism has collapsed and that millions of outcast Russians are marching. They're moving westward.”

He paused, himself skeptical of the preposterous assertion he was about to make. Then he remembered the words he had learnt from Captain Lajos and repeated them like a lesson.

“They're sweeping westward like a pestilence. They're loping like gaunt wolves. They're drawing nearer, like Death swinging his scythe. Poland will go down before them first. Its famished people will join them. Your turn will come next. The march will never halt till the empty bellies have been filled. They can't be filled till the whole of Europe has been swamped by revolution, unless----” He paused again, waiting for encouragement. When the steady gray eyes still regarded him attentively, he continued, “Unless I fill them.”

“Or unless,” said his Excellency like a man commenting on the weather, “I destroy them.”

There was a deep quiet. So Varensky had been a true prophet. It was the end of the world they were discussing--the end of truth, justice, mercy, everything that was kind.

Across the silence a bugle-call spurted like a stream of blood.

“You see my position?” his Excellency resumed reasonably. “If I buy from you, I prolong the agony; worse still, I run my country further into debt. If I give the call to arms, many of us will die; but it's better to die fighting than from hunger. Besides, in the topsy-turvydom of war, who knows, we may find ourselves arrayed on the winning side.” Hindwood was too stunned to think quickly. He was still refusing to believe the worst. “I miss your point. Would your Excellency mind explaining?”

“My point's simple enough. The condition of Hungary and of the whole of Central Europe is due to two causes: the first that we made a world-war; the second that we lost it. The victors had a right to exact a penalty, but look at what they've done. We were exhausted; nevertheless, if they'd told us what we owed them, we'd have paid them. Instead of that, they cloaked revenge with idealism. They constituted themselves evangelists, fore-ordained to reform us. With their gospel of self-determination, they gave every racial hostility within our borders a voice. They carved us up into bickering factions, which they called nations, and bestowed on them the power to make themselves annoying behind new frontiers. They dipped their hands into our national resources and made gifts to their favorites. Transylvania was our granary; it went to Rumania. Bohemia was our coal-supply; the Czechs have it, Hungary is no longer self-supporting. We have our factories, but no fuel to run them; our skilled workmen, but no means of employing them. On every side we're fenced in by mushroom democracies drawing sustenance from what was once our body. The wrong they have done us is the motive of their hate. We European countries fall into three categories: the robbers, the receivers of stolen goods and the pillaged. There's no intercourse between us; confidence is at an end. Our currency has become worthless as the paper on which it's printed. There's no flow of trade. We each have too much of one commodity and none whatsoever of others--too many factories here, too much wheat there, too much coal in another place. We're rival storekeepers, overstocked in certain lines, who refuse to take down our shutters. If we could forget our quarrels and club together, we'd have all the means of life. We deserve our fate, you'll say. But no--it was the Allies' surgeons who carved us into impotence and on top of that imposed indemnities. We have nothing to eat, so we prefer to fight.”

“But what do you gain by it?”

His Excellency smiled. “Everything or nothing. We can't be worse off. The Russian menace may prove to be our salvation. The Red Terror has vanished; the Famine Terror has taken its place. If the starving hordes pouring westwards aren't halted, civilization will be blotted out by savagery. And who's to halt them? Not the Allies. Their common people are rebellious; they know that in the last war they were as much cheated and exploited as any of the enemy whom they routed. And not their politicians and profiteers; they're too bloated with their spoils. It's the story of Rome repeating itself. The obesity which follows victory has conquered the conquerors. Their fighting days are ended; they'll have to hire mercenaries. The only mercenaries available are the nations they have trampled. Hungary holds herself for hire at a price.”

“What price?”

“The restoration of her old frontiers.”

Hindwood spoke eagerly. “No one shall die. We've had enough of dying. I have a better solution--bread. My food-trains should be arriving tonight or to-morrow. I wired for them before I left Vienna. I'll build a wall of bread from the Black Sea to the Baltic.”

“And who'll pay you?”

“No one.”

The answer had been totally unexpected. His Excellency glanced sharply across his shoulder as though seeking advice. Hindwood followed his direction and saw to his amazement that the tapestry, hanging behind the ormolu table, was agitated. Throughout the interview an unseen audience had been present. His Excellency turned back.

“You shall neither give nor sell. I may admire your humanity, but in Hungary I forbid you to build what you so picturesquely call your wall of bread. Austria, as I know, has already refused you; in Poland you will receive the same answer. Things have advanced too far for there to be any harm in telling you; moreover, I owe it to you to be frank. I represent a class which the democracy of the Allies has totally disinherited--the class of the landed gentry and the old nobility. However matters might improve in our respective countries, our lot would be in no way benefited. The Peace of the Allies uprooted aristocracy and planted in its stead a raw Republicanism. The estates of men like myself, whether Austrian, Polish, Russian or Hungarian, have been in our families for centuries. They were grants from Kings for loyalty and services. Now that our Kings have been sent into exile, our entire status is in jeopardy. Our rank and privileges have become a jest. To-morrow or the next day, where it has not happened already, we shall join our Kings in banishment; our wealth will be confiscated. The excuse of a new war is the chance of European Monarchists. Banded together, we may snatch back our authority and set up the thrones which the Allies have toppled. So long as the people starve, they will follow us. Monarchy is the symbol of their lost contentment; they'll fight for it if we make its restoration their battle-cry. But if once we were to allow you to give them bread----”

Hindwood sprang to his feet. The time had come to play his winning-card. “They would lay down their arms,” he cried triumphantly. “They shall lay them down. By to-morrow they shall be fed.”

Again the tapestry rustled. For a moment it seemed that some one was about to disclose himself. Then all grew quiet.

“I have given you your answer,” said his Excellency.

Hindwood laughed. “And I can force your hand. I shall appeal to the people over your head.”

Without further ceremony, he swung round on his heel and departed.

On regaining the hotel he went in search of Santa. She was not there. He betook himself to her room to await her coming. One hour, two hours slipped by. He began to be anxious. In the appearance of the room there was nothing to distress him; all her belongings were intact. When he made inquiries of the hotel staff, they professed entire ignorance of her whereabouts.

Apart from the concern he felt for her safety, she was utterly essential to his plans. It was necessary that he should get in touch with Varensky; without Varensky and his four hundred veterans he was helpless. When his food-trains arrived, he would need them. He made repeated efforts to rediscover the mildewed barracks; every time he missed his direction. For fear of spies, he did not dare to ask; he remembered Santa's warning, that to be seen with Varensky meant death. Day faded. Darkness fell. She had not returned.

It was nearing midnight when word reached him that the first of his trains was in the freight-yard. It had been given the right of way from Holland and had been rushed straight through under an armed guard. He was powerless to turn the information to account. Wearied with anxiety, he had begun to prepare for bed, when, without knocking, the door was burst open. Captain Lajos entered. His face was haggard. He was fierce and breathless.

“You've heard?”

“I've heard nothing.”

“She's been captured.”

“By whom?”

“Prince Rogovich.”

Hindwood clapped his hand to his forehead. Either he or this man was mad.

“It's impossible. Rogovich is dead.”

“And I tell you he's at the Palace. He was there behind the tapestry this morning. She's with him now and he's torturing her.”

“Then why are you here, if you care for her so much?”

“That you may help me rescue her.”

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH--THE VANISHING POINT

I

SPURRED into haste by the Captain's air of calamity. Hindwood had commenced to dress. During the few minutes that it took him to hurry into his clothes he thought furiously: with the result that by the time he was clad for departure, he seated himself obstinately on the edge of the bed. Meanwhile, in the belief that he was being followed, the Captain had led the way into the passage. He had now returned and stood filling the doorway, a turbulent figure in his gorgeous uniform of the Royal Hussars.