The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  He wore his new uniform, in honor of the day. Suddenly he felt that he could not wear it any longer. He had no right to any uniform. He who had sold his country was of no country.

  He went slowly out and up the staircase, dragging his wooden leg painfully from step to step. He heard the concierge come in below, his heavy footsteps reechoed through the building. Inside the door he called furiously to his niece. Old Adelbert heard him strike a match to light the gas.

  On the staircase he met the Fraulein hurrying down. Her face was strained and her eyes glittering. She hesitated, as though she would speak, then she went on past him. He could hear her running. It reminded the old man of that day in the Opera, when a child ran down the staircase, and, as is the way of the old, he repeated himself: "One would think new legs grew in place of old ones, like the claws of sea-creatures," he said fretfully. And went on up the staircase.

  In his room he sat down on a straight chair inside the door, and stared ahead. Then, slowly and mechanically, he took off his new uniform and donned the old one. He would have put on civilian clothes, had he possessed any. For by the deeds of that day he had forfeited the right to the King's garb.

  It was there that Black Humbert, hurrying up, found him. The concierge was livid, his massive frame shook with excitement.

  "Quick!" he said, and swore a great oath. "To the shop of the cobbler Heinz, and tell him this word. Here in the building is the boy."

  "What boy?"

  The concierge closed a great hand on the veteran's shoulder. "Who but the Crown Prince himself!" he said.

  "But I thought—how can he be here?"

  "Here is he, in our very hands. It is no time to ask questions."

  "If he is here—"

  "He is with the Americans," hissed the concierge, the veins on his forehead swollen with excitement. "Now, go, and quickly. I shall watch. Say that when I have secured the lad, I shall take him there. Let all be ready. An hour ago," he said, raising his great fists on high, "and everything lost. Now hurry, old wooden leg. It is a great night."

  "But—I cannot. Already I have done too much. I am damned. I have lost my soul. I who am soon to die."

  "YOU WILL GO."

  And, at last, he went, hobbling down the staircase recklessly, because the looming figure at the stair head was listening. He reached the street. There, only a block away, was the cobbler's shop, lighted, but with the dirty curtains drawn across the window.

  Old Adelbert gazed at it. Then he commended his soul to God, and turned toward the Palace.

  He passed the Opera. On Carnival night it should have been open and in gala array, with lines of carriages and machines before it. It was closed, and dreary. But old Adelbert saw it not at all. He stumped along, panting with haste and exhaustion, to do the thing he had set himself to do.

  Here was the Palace. Before it were packed dense throngs of silent people. Now and then a man put down a box, and rising on it, addressed the crowd, attempting to rouse them. Each time angry hands pulled him down, and hisses greeted him as he slunk away.

  Had old Adelbert been alive to anything but his mission, he would have seen that this was no mob of revolutionists, but a throng of grieving people, awaiting the great bell of St. Stefan's with its dire news.

  Then, above their heads, it rang out, slow, ominous, terrible. A sob ran through the crowd. In groups, and at last as a whole, the throng knelt. Men uncovered and women wept.

  The bell rang on. At its first notes old Adelbert stopped, staggered, almost fell. Then he uncovered his head.

  "Gone!" he said. "The old King! My old King!"

  His face twitched. But the horror behind him drove him on through the kneeling crowd. Where it refused to yield, he drove the iron point of his wooden leg into yielding flesh, and so made his way.

  Here, in the throng, Olga of the garderobe met him, and laid a trembling hand on his arm. He shook her off, but she clung to him.

  "Know you what they are saying?" she whispered. "That the Crown Prince is stolen. And it is true. Soldiers scour the city everywhere."

  "Let me go," said old Adelbert, fiercely.

  "They say," she persisted, "that the Chancellor has made away with him, to sell us to Karnia."

  "Fools!" cried old Adelbert, and pushed her off. When she refused to release him, he planted his iron toe on her shapely one and worked his way forward. The crowd had risen, and now stood expectantly facing the Palace. Some one raised a cry and others took it up.

  "The King!" they cried. "Show us the little King!"

  But the balcony outside the dead King's apartments remained empty. The curtains at the long windows were drawn, save at one, opened for air. The breeze shook its curtains to and fro, but no small, childish figure emerged. The cries kept up, but there was a snarl in the note now.

  "The King! Long live the King! Where is he?"

  A man in a red costume, near old Adelbert, leaped on a box and lighted a flaming torch. "Aye!" he yelled, "call for the little King. Where is he? What have they done with him?"

  Old Adelbert pushed on. The voice of the revolutionist died behind him, in a chorus of fury. From nowhere, apparently, came lighted box-banners proclaiming the Chancellor's treason, and demanding a Republic. Some of them instructed the people to gather around the Parliament, where, it was stated, leading citizens were already forming a Republic. Some, more violent, suggested an advance on the Palace.

  The crowd at first ignored them, but as time went on, it grew ugly. By all precedent, the new King should be now before them. What, then, if this rumor was true? Where was the little King?

  Revolution, now, in the making. A flame ready to blaze. Hastily, on the outskirts of the throng, a delegation formed to visit the Palace, and learn the truth. Orderly citizens these, braving the terror of that forbidding and guarded pile in the interests of the land they loved.

  Drums were now beating steadily, filling the air with their throbbing, almost drowning out the solemn tolling of the bell. Around them were rallying angry groups. As the groups grew large, each drum led its followers toward the Government House, where, on the steps; the revolutionary party harangued the crowd. Bonfires sprang up, built of no one knew what, in the public squares. Red fire burned. The drums throbbed.

  The city had not yet risen. It was large and slow to move. Slow, too, to believe in treason, or that it had no king. But it was a matter of moments now, not of hours.

  The noise penetrated into the very wards of the hospital. Red fires bathed pale faces on their pillows in a feverish glow. Nurses gathered at the windows, their uniforms and faces alike scarlet in the glare, and whispered together.

  One such group gathered near the bedside of the student Haeckel, still in his lethargy. His body had gained strength, so that he was clothed at times, to wander aimlessly about the ward. But he had remained dazed. Now and then the curtain of the past lifted, but for a moment only. He had forgotten his name. He spent long hours struggling to pierce the mist.

  But mostly he lay, or sat, as now, beside his bed, a bandage still on his head, clad in shirt and trousers, bare feet thrust into worn hospital slippers. The red glare had not roused him, nor yet the beat of the drums. But a word or two that one of the nurses spoke caught his ear and held him. He looked up, and slowly rose to his feet. Unsteadily he made his way to a window, holding to the sill to steady himself.

  Old Adelbert had been working his way impatiently. The temper of the mob was growing ugly. It was suspicious, frightened, potentially dangerous.

  The cry of "To the Palace!" greeted his ears he finally emerged breathless from the throng.

  He stepped boldly to the old stone archway, and faced a line of soldiers there. "I would see the Chancellor!" he gasped, and saluted.

  The captain of the guard stepped out. "What is it you want?" he demanded.

  "The Chancellor," he lowered his voice. "I have news of the Crown Prince."

  Magic words, indeed. Doors opened swiftly before them. But time was flying, too. In his
confusion the old man had only one thought, to reach the Chancellor. It would have been better to have told his news at once. The climbing of stairs takes time when one is old and fatigued, and has but one leg.

  However, at last it way done. Past a room where sat Nikky Larisch, swordless and self-convicted of treason, past a great salon where a terrified Court waited, and waiting, listened to the cries outside, the beating of many drums, the sound of multitudinous feet, old Adelbert stumped to the door of the room where the Council sat debating and the Chancellor paced the floor.

  Small ceremony tow. Led by soldiers, who retired and left him to enter alone, old Adelbert stumbled into the room. He was out of breath and dizzy; his heart beat to suffocation. There was not air enough in all the world to breathe. He clutched at the velvet hangings of the door, and swayed, but he saw the Chancellor.

  "The Crown Prince," he said thickly, "is at the home of the Americans." He stared about him. Strange that the room should suddenly be filled with a mist. "But there be those—who wait—there—to capture him."

  He caught desperately at the curtains, with their royal arms embroidered in blue and gold. Shameful, in such company, to stagger so!

  "Make—haste," he said, and slid stiffly to the ground. He lay without moving.

  The Council roused then. Mettlich was the first to get to him. But it was too late.

  Old Adelbert had followed the mist to the gates it concealed. More than that, sham traitor that he was, he had followed his King.

  CHAPTER XXXVIII. IN THE ROAD OF THE GOOD CHILDREN

  Haeckel crept to a window and looked out. Bonfires were springing up in the open square in front of the Government House. Mixed with the red glare came leaping yellow flames. The wooden benches were piled together and fired, and by each such pyre stood a gesticulating, shouting red demon.

  Guns were appearing now. Wagons loaded with them drove into the Square, to be surrounded by a howling mob. The percentage of sober citizens was growing—sober citizens no longer. For the little King had not been shown to them. Obviously he could not be shown to them. Therefore rumor was right, and the boy was gone.

  Against the Palace, therefore, their rage was turned. The shouts for the little King turned to threats. The Archbishop had come out on the balcony accompanied by Father Gregory. The Archbishop had raised his hands, but had not obtained silence. Instead, to his horror and dismay, a few stones had been thrown.

  He retired, breathing hard. But Father Gregory had remained, facing the crowd fearlessly, his arms not raised in benediction, but folded across his chest. Stones rattled about him, but he did not flinch, and at last he gained the ears of the crowd. His great voice, stern and fearless; held them.

  "My friends," he said, "there is work to be done, and you lose time. We cannot show you the King, because he is not here. While you stand there shrieking, his enemies have their will of him. The little King has been stolen from the Palace."

  He might have swayed them, even then. He tried to move them to a search of the city. But a pallid man, sweating with excitement, climbed on the shoulders of two companions, and faced the crowd.

  "Aye, he is stolen," he cried. "But who stole him? Not the city. We are loyal. Ask the Palace where he is. Ask those who have allied themselves with Karnia. Ask Mettlich."

  There was more, of course. The cries of "To the Palace!" increased. Those behind pushed forward, shoving the ones ahead toward the archway, where a line of soldiers with fixed bayonets stood waiting.

  The Archduchess and Hilda with a handful of women, had fled to the roof, and from there saw the advance of the mob. Hedwig had haughtily refused to go.

  It had seemed to Hedwig that life itself was over. She did not care very much. When the Archbishop had been driven back from the balcony, she foresaw the end. She knew of Nikky's treason now, knew it in all its bitterness, but not all its truth. And, because she had loved him, although she told herself her love was dead, she sought him out in the room where he sat and waited.

  She was there when old Adelbert had brought his news and had fallen, before he could finish, Nikky had risen; and looked at her, rather stonily. Then had followed such a scene as leaves scars, Hedwig blaming him and forgiving him, and then breaking down and begging him to flight. And Nikky, with the din of the Place in his ears, and forbidden to confront the mob, listening patiently and shaking his head. How little she knew him; after all, to think that he would even try to save himself. He had earned death. Let it come.

  He was not very clear himself as to how it happened. He had been tricked. But that was no excuse. And in the midst of her appeal to him to save himself, he broke in to ask where Olga Loschek was.

  Hedwig drew herself up. "I do not know," she said, rather coldly.

  "But after all," Nikky muttered, thinking of the lady-in-waiting, "escape is cut off. The Palace is surrounded."

  For a moment Hedwig thought she had won. "It is not cut off," she said. And spoke of the turret door, and whither it led. All at once he saw it all. He looked at her with eyes that dilated with excitement, and then to her anger, shot by her and to the room where the Council waited. He was just in time to hear old Adelbert's broken speech, and to see him reel and fall.

  At the hospital, Haeckel, the student, stood by his window, and little by little the veil lifted. His slow blood stirred first. The beating of drums, the shrieks of the crowd, the fires, all played their part. Another patient joined him, and together they looked out.

  "Bad work!" said the other man.

  "Aye!" said Haeckel. Then, speaking very slowly, and with difficulty, "I do not understand."

  "The King is dead." The man watched him. He had been of interest to the ward.

  "Aye," observed, Haeckel, still uncomprehending. And then, "Dead—the King?"

  "Dead. Hear the bell."

  "Then—" But he could not at once formulate the thought in his mind. Speech came hard. He was still in a cloud.

  "They say," said the other man, "that the Crown Prince is missing, that he has been stolen. The people are frenzied."

  He went on, dilating on the rumors. Still Haeckel labored. The King! The Crown Prince! There was something that he was to do. It was just beyond him, but he could not remember. Then, by accident, the other man touched the hidden spring of his memory.

  "There are some who think that Mettlich—"

  "Mettlich!" That was the word. With it the curtain split, as it were, the cloud was gone. Haeckel put a hand to his head.

  A few minutes later, a strange figure dashed out of the hospital. The night watchman had joined the mob, and was at that moment selecting a rifle from a cart. Around the cart were students, still in their Carnival finery, wearing the colors of his own corps. Haeckel, desperate of eye, pallid and gaunt, clad still in his hospital shirt and trousers; Haeckel climbed on to the wagon, and mounted to the seat, a strange, swaying figure, with a bandage on his head. In spite of that, there were some who knew him.

  "Haeckel!" they cried. The word spread. The crowd of students pressed close.

  "What would you do?" he cried to them. "You know me. You see me now. I have been done almost to death by those you would aid. Aye, arm yourselves, but not against your King. We have sworn to stand together. I call on you, men of my corps, to follow me. There are those who to-night will murder the little King and put King Mob on the throne. And they be those who have tortured roe. Look at me! This they have done to me." He tore the bandage off and showed his scarred head. "'Quick!" he cried. "I know where they hide, these spawn of hell. Who will follow me? To the King!"

  "To the King!"

  They took up the cry, a few at first, then all of them. More than his words, the gaunt and wounded figure of Haeckel in the cart fought for him. He reeled before them. Two leaped up and steadied him, finally, indeed, took him on their shoulders, and led the way. They made a wedge of men, and pushed through the mob.

  "To the little King!" was the cry they raised, and ran, a flying wedge of white, fantastic figures. Th
ose who were unarmed seized weapons from the crowd as they passed. Urged by Haeckel, they ran through the streets.

  Haeckel knew. It was because he had known that they had done away with him. His mind, working now with almost unnatural activity, flew ahead to the house in the Road of the Good Children, and to what might be enacting there. His eyes burned. Now at last he would thwart them, unless— Just before they turned into the street, a horseman had dashed out of it and flung himself out of the saddle. The door was bolted, but it opened to his ring, and Nikky faced the concierge, Nikky, with a drawn revolver in his hand, and a face deathly white.

  He had had no time to fire, no time even to speak. The revolver flew out of his hand at one blow from the flail-like arms of the concierge. Behind him somewhere was coming, Nikky knew, a detachment of cavalry. But he had outdistanced them, riding frenziedly, had leaped hedges and ditches across the Park. He must hold this man until they came.

  Struggling in the grasp of the concierge, he yet listened for them. From the first he knew it was a losing battle. He had lost before. But he fought fiercely, with the strength of a dozen. His frenzy was equaled by that of the other man, and his weight was less by a half. He went down finally and lay still, a battered, twisted figure.

  The cavalry, in the mean time, had lost the way, was riding its foam-flecked horses along another street, and losing, time when every second counted.

  But Black Humbert, breathing hard, had heard sounds in the street, and put up the chain. He stood at bay, a huge, shaken figure at the foot of the stone staircase. He was for flight now. But surely—outside at the door some one gave the secret knock of the tribunal, and followed it by the pass-word. He breathed again. Friends, of course, come for the ammunition. But, to be certain, he went to the window of his bureau, and looked out through the bars. Students!

  "Coming!" he called. And kicked at Nikky's quiet figure as he passed it. Then he unbolted the door, dropped the chain, and opened the door.