Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26)

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  And so it happened that Hemmington Main and the priest he had brought from Sovgrad started off with their guide upon the road toward the royal hunting lodge before the automobile containing the false prince and his two victims had covered more than half the distance from the inn to their destination.

  All during the journey Gwendolyn Bass’ brain was a-whirl with mad schemes for escape from the fate which the ambitions of her mother had ordained for her; but nowhere, through the impenetrable darkness of the forest road, could she find an opportunity to put to the test of action a single one of them, and at last the machine turned into the royal preserves onto a fairly good road where the speed of the machine made escape without injury impossible.

  The few servants at the hunting lodge had received their instructions from Prince Boris at the time when he had exchanged identities with The Rider, and now they welcomed the returning bandit as though he had indeed been the son of King Constans of Karlova, though once out of his presence their sneers of contempt were unrestrained.

  At The Rider’s command the two women were shown to apartments on the second floor, and while they removed the dust of the road from their garments and faces a lunch was served in a small breakfast room on the main floor of the lodge.

  The three had scarcely seated themselves at the table before a servant appeared to announce the arrival of a young man accompanied by a priest.

  “Ah!” exclaimed The Rider; “they arrived sooner than I had hoped. Show the good man in, and take care of his guide in the servants’ quarters.”

  But when the priest was ushered into the breakfast room, his ‘guide’ followed close at his heels though a servant in the royal livery did his best to prevent him. Gwendolyn Bass was the first to see the face of the young man behind the priest and at sight of it she half rose from her chair with a little exclamation of relief and surprise.

  “Hemmy!” she cried, and at the name Mrs. Bass turned and saw Mr. Hemmington Main standing directly behind her. Main was looking at them with a puzzled expression upon his face. Nowhere could he see aught of his new found friend, but as his eyes fell upon the face of the man seated at the table with Mrs. Bass and Gwendolyn they went wide in consternation, for he recognized at once the features of the crown prince of Karlova whom he had seen pass his hotel that morning in Demia.

  “What are you doing here, Mr. Main?” demanded Mrs. Bass.

  “I have come to marry Gwendolyn,” replied the young man. “You see I have brought a priest with me. Awfully sorry, Mrs. Bass; but I’m bound to have her. I wouldn’t have been a party to this thing if it hadn’t seemed the only way to save Gwen from a worse fate; but what I can’t understand is what his highness is doing here and where my friend The Rider is. Anyway, it’s all right; you won’t be detained or bothered as soon as Gwen and I are married — I’ll see to all that.”

  “I do not know what you are talking about, Mr. Main,” snapped Mrs. Bass; “but unless you are quite mad you will go away at once. His Royal Highness, Prince Boris of Karlova, has honored Gwendolyn with a proposal of marriage; and that is why he sent for this holy man. How you happened to accompany him I can not understand — do you know this person, Prince Boris?”

  “Never saw him before,” replied The Rider, and then, turning to Main: “You’d better get out of here and get out quick.”

  Gwendolyn Bass had risen from the table, and now she crossed to Hemmington Main’s side.

  “Oh, Hemmy,” she cried, “don’t let them marry me to this awful man.”

  “You bet your life, I won’t,” replied Main, and as he spoke he put an arm about her which imparted to Gwendolyn Bass the first sensation of hope and safety which she had experienced in many a long day.

  The Rider rose from his chair. His ugly countenance was drawn into a savage scowl. In the breast of his military tunic was the revolver that he could not be persuaded to part with even for an instant. As he advanced upon Hemmington Main he drew the weapons from its hiding place, At sight of it the servants scampered for safety, the priest hopped nimbly out of range, and Mrs. Bass screamed in terror.

  Main shoved Gwendolyn quickly to one side lest she be injured should the man fire, and at the same instant drew his own weapon. The two shots blended into a single sharp report as the men pressed the triggers of their weapons simultaneously. The Rider clutched his side and stumbled forward, falling to the floor upon his face. Hemmington Main stood there, white and rigid, looking down upon the fallen man. Gwendolyn Bass cowered, wide-eyed, against the wall, while her mother ran forward to the side of the wounded bandit.

  “God help us, Hemmington Main!” cried the older woman, “you have killed the crown prince of Karlova!”

  Chapter Twelve

  THE PRINCESS MARY stumbled onward and upward through the darkness until it seemed to her that her aching limbs could bear her no farther. At last she stopped.

  “You are tired, Miss Bass?” asked her captor.

  “I cannot take another step,” replied the princess. “Kill me if you will; but I cannot go on.”

  “And you, Mrs. Bass?” turning to Carlotta.

  “I am tired,” replied the frightened woman; “but I think I can keep up — maybe I can assist her — er — my daughter.”

  “No, I’ll see to that,” said the bandit, and without even a by-your-leave he lifted the princess into his strong arms and resumed the upward scramble.

  The girl struggled for a moment to free herself.

  “Put me down, please,” she commanded in icy tones, “I prefer to walk.”

  “But you just said that you couldn’t take another step,” he reminded her, without the slightest indication of any intention to obey her wish. “We can’t remain out here all night, you know; and anyway we’ll soon be at my camp.” He very near added that he wished it was many miles farther, since he had gathered the lithe little form into his arms.

  Strands of wavy, soft hair blew now and again against his cheek, and to his nostrils came the delicate aroma of a subtle perfume, such as marks the woman of refinement. The girl’s beauty together with the close contact of her warm body aroused in her captor a yearning for that which had always seemed to elude him — one within his own, limited class who might command from him such a love as this girl must command from the young American for whom he had stolen her; one, too, who would give back in equal measure a like love.

  The Princess Mary felt the broad bosom against which she was held rise in a deep sigh. She thought the man a most remarkable brigand. She had always heard such frightful tales of the atrocities of The Rider that she had rather expected some show of brutality upon his part, though her judgement had satisfied her that he would offer them no real harm or indignities so long as there remained the hope of obtaining a fat ransom for them. Now she found herself wondering why he sighed — could it be that the fellow had a heart, after all.

  “Why,” asked the Princess Mary, being as she was rather a creature of impulse— “Why do you sigh?”

  The brigand laughed. “I fear,” he answered, “that I am after all, a rather sentimental cutthroat — and you really would like to know why I sighed? Well,” and he did not wait for her reply, “I will tell you, though I promise you that you will laugh at me. I was sighing because in all the world from which such as I may choose a love there is no girl like you.”

  The Princess Mary stiffened and turned her face away. “Put me down at once!” she commanded, and the bandit could not but note the regal haughtiness of her tones. “Put me down, fellow, I shall not be insulted — I can die; but I cannot brook your familiarity.”

  “You asked me,” he reminded her patiently, “why I sighed. I told you merely the truth.” There was just a faint trace of levity in his voice, as though he endeavored to suppress a laugh, which aroused still further the ire of the spoiled little princess. She struggled to free herself from his arms; but he only held her the more tightly.

  “You can’t walk you know,” he said; “and we can’t sit by the side of t
he trail forever; so you must let me carry you, and you must not make it difficult. As a matter of fact,” he added, as though on second thought, “I can’t say that I mind if you do struggle just a little — it makes it necessary for me to hold you just so much tighter.”

  “You beast!” Her exclamation was a veritable explosion.

  “What do you expect of a highwayman?” he asked. “If you were a native, now, of either Margoth or Karlova you would be familiar with the reputation of The Rider and know that you were mighty lucky not to have your ears cut off by this time.”

  The Princess Mary almost shuddered; but being a brave little princess she didn’t, quite. She knew only too well the sinister reputation of The Rider — for the time she had forgotten it in a strange sensation of security which had dominated her almost from the moment that she had fallen into the hands of the bandit — somehow it didn’t seem possible that this man could have it in him to harm a defenseless woman. He inspired, in her at least, most inexplicably, a feeling the precise opposite of that which he should have inspired. She could not feel the terror he should have inspired.

  Occasionally the man halted to turn back with a courteous word to Carlotta, regretting the fact that he could be of no assistance to her, and inquiring most solicitously how she fared. Poor Carlotta was so terror stricken that she could only mumble incoherent replies, for which the Princess Mary was thankful — the good woman had very nearly divulged their identities already. The princess could not fail to note, though, the courteous deference in the voice of the bandit when he spoke to ‘Mrs. Bass,’ and her interest in her captor grew accordingly. Could this really be the rough, brutal cutthroat who had terrorized two frontiers for years, who had successfully defied both the gendarmerie and soldiery of two nations, and robbed and murdered at his own sweet will? It was incredible. Why he had the well modulated voice of a cultured gentleman, and he spoke English with that refined precision which marks the use of that language by the educated European a fact which her American education revealed to her.

  It was well after midnight when they reached their destination — a little high walled ravine, deep in the mountain fastness of the frontier, and the girl saw before her in the moonlight a rough log shack surrounded by a number of soiled and tattered tents.

  A sentry challenged their approach, covering them with his rifle; and at the sound of his voice two score burly ruffians came running from their blankets as though experience had taught them to sleep with their ears wide open and their hands upon their weapons.

  “It is I, The Rider,” called the man in reply to the challenge.

  The sentry lowered his rifle and stepped forward. The others pressed around.

  “Get some food for the ladies,” commanded the new comer, and then, turning to one of the brigands. “Did a young man come with a priest?”

  The fellow addressed shook his head negatively.

  “When he does, bring them to me,” said The Rider, “and now some of you prepare beds in the shack for the ladies, they are tired after their long climb.”

  Within the shack a grimy lantern was lighted which scarce relieved the gloom sufficiently to display the filthy squalor of the interior. As he ushered his guests within, The Rider stood in the doorway behind them.

  “I am sorry,” he said, “that I have no better accommodations to offer you; but by tomorrow I am sure that the very reasonable terms I shall ask for your release will be gladly accepted, and that you will then be able to continue upon your journey to Sovgrad. Food will be brought you, after which you may retire with every confidence that you will not be molested and sleep in as perfect security as though you occupied your own beds at home.”

  The Rider remained until one of his men had brought some cold meat and a kettle of soup, and lighted a fire in the dilapidated stove which stood precariously upon three legs at one side of the single room of the old building. The light from the lantern gave the Princess Mary her first opportunity to note the features of her captor, and if she had before been struck by the suavity of his speech and the courtesy of his manners she was now doubly impressed by the nobility of his countenance and bearing.

  To her surprise she saw before her a young and handsome man upon whose fine features lay no trace of brutality or degeneracy. The mask which had hidden half his face at the moment he had confronted them upon the Roman road he had long since discarded as an uncomfortable nuisance, and he now stood before her with bared head waiting silently for the man to be done with the building of the fire and the heating of the soup, as though loath to leave his prisoners alone with his fellow brigand.

  A troubled expression clouded his eyes as another bandit entered with an armful of filthy blankets, which he threw down upon the dirty floor in a corner of the room. He took a step toward the two women.

  “I am sorry, Miss Bass,” he said, “that you and your mother should be compelled to spend the night in so uncouth and repulsive a place; but I assure you that it cannot now be helped. One whom I expected, and whose presence would have made it possible for you to immediately continue your journey to Sovgrad is not here, and we must await him. Upon his coming and the amiable concurrence of your mother in my plans depends your prompt release — the terms will not be difficult.”

  “And what, may I ask,” demanded the princess, “is the amount of our ransom?”

  The light of the lantern played upon the girl’s hair and upon her comely features. It revealed the lines of her trim little figure, and the haughty tilt of her royal head which needed no diadem to distinguish it from the heads of ordinary, mortal maids. The Rider had half glimpsed, half guessed the beauty of his younger captive — or at least he had thought that he had; but the revealment of her features in the flickering light of the sordid lantern had left him almost dizzy with the intoxication of the actuality. It was not the beauty of perfection which enthralled him, as it enthralled all who looked upon the Princess Mary of Margoth, for perfection, as measured by the standards of art, was not there. The little nose was a trifle too short, the upper lip a bit too long, the cheek bones just a hair higher than perfection demands, perhaps; but the whole was so moulded, and so animated by that indefinable something which is the essence of beauty that The Rider would have sworn that in all the world there existed no more beautiful woman than this daughter of a plebeian American millionaire, and he sighed because she was promised to another, forgetting for the moment that a still more formidable barrier separated them.

  So long he stood in silence looking at the girl that she finally repeated her question, quite peremptorily, and with a little stamp of her foot,

  “I asked you, fellow,” she said, “the amount of the ransom you demand.”

  The man who had been working over the stove had cocked an ear when he had heard the girl addressed as Miss Bass, and now he puttered about in an effort to prolong his work in the room that he might learn more of the prisoners and the amount of the ransom. The name was familiar, for the passage of the wife and daughter of Abner J. Bass through almost any civilized country on the globe was heralded broadcast upon the front pages of the news papers, together with various estimates of the many millions which they represented. The fellow, a stupid lout, could not recall where he had heard the name, yet there was something about it which aroused his attention and held his interest.

  The Rider could not repress a smile at the manner in which the girl addressed him, and he hastened to reply, as though always he had been accustomed to obey the haughty commands of an impervious master.

  “The ransom,” he said “will not be in money. I know that the wife and daughter of Abner J. Bass could command a fabulous sum should I demand it; but I shall not demand a cent of money.”

  “What shall you demand, then?” asked the princess.

  “Something rather more valuable than a the riches of Abner J. Bass,” replied the man, and, after a pause, “the hand of his daughter in marriage.”

  Both Carlotta and the Princess Mary went white as the full signif
icance of this statement sank into their understandings. The former gave a little scream and moved closer to the princess as though to protect her royal charge from the contaminating touch of the bandit. The princess realized that her plight was a sore one, and that it might be better to conciliate rather than offend her captor.

  “You do not understand what you require,” she said. “It is absolutely impossible that you and I should wed. Name a ransom that may be paid in money, and it will be paid gladly; but do not lose all by attempting to force such preposterous terms upon us.”

  “Wait!” said The Rider. “You do not understand. I am not asking your hand for myself; but for another whom I understand you would gladly wed would your mother permit. Your freedom, therefore, depends upon my ability to obtain from her the necessary consent to your immediate marriage to Mr. Hemmington Main, who is on his way here now with a priest who will perform the ceremony.”

  Then The Rider looked eagerly from one to the other for evidence of the expected effect of his announcement. The girl should have been quite overcome by joy; but she was not. She appeared, on the contrary, far from relieved and even a little piqued. Could it be that the Princess Mary of Margoth was, after all, angered to discover that the bandit had not wanted her for himself at all, but for another? Impossible, and yet a princess is, whether she will or no, a woman; and Prince Boris of Karlova, even in the guise of a notorious cutthroat, was a most prepossessing figure.

  The bandit at the stove gasped as he heard the terms of the ransom and learned the identity of the captives. A cunning expression crossed his stupid face, as, satisfied with what he had heard, he slunk from the building and hastened to the tents of his fellows to communicate his store of intelligence.

  “You have made a mistake,” said the princess. “I do not wish to marry Mr. Main, and as you say that you have no wish for a money ransom may I ask you to return us to our car and let us go our way?”