Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated), page 640
Mastrovin spoke at last. If Jaikie’s news was a shock to him he did not show it. He was smiling like a large, sleepy cat.
“What you tell us is very interesting,” he said. “But we have much more to learn from you, Mr Galt.”
“I can’t tell you anything more.”
“I think you can. At any rate, we will endeavour to help your memory.”
Jaikie, who had been rather pleased with himself, found his heart sink. There was a horrid menace behind that purring voice. Only the little shiver across his forehead kept him cool.
“I demand to be released at once,” he said. “As an Englishman you dare not interfere with me, since you have nothing against me.”
“You propose?”
“To go back to the Juventus camp, and then to go home to England.”
“The first cannot be permitted. The second — well, the second depends on many things. Whether you will ever see England again rests with yourself. In the meantime you will remain in our charge — and at our orders.”
He rasped out the last words in a voice from which every trace of urbanity had departed. His face, too, was as Jaikie remembered it in the Canonry, a mask of ruthlessness.
And then, like an echo of his stridency, came a grinding at the door. It was locked and someone without was aware of that fact and disliked it. There was a sound of a heavy body applied to it, and, since the thing was flimsy, the lock gave and it flew open. Jaikie’s astonished eyes saw a young Greenshirt officer, and behind him a quartet of hefty Juventus privates.
He learned afterwards the explanation of this opportune appearance. A considerable addition had been made to Ashie’s wing, and it was proposed to billet the newcomers in the town. Accordingly a billeting party had been despatched to arrange for quarters, and it had begun with the principal inns. At this particular inn, which stood in a retired alley, the landlord had not been forthcoming, so the party had explored on their own account the capacities of the building. They had found their way obstructed by sundry odd-looking persons, and, since Juventus did not stand on ceremony, had summarily removed them from their path. A locked door to people in their mood seemed an insult, and they had not hesitated to break it open.
With one eye Jaikie saw that Mastrovin and Dedekind had their fingers on pistol triggers. With the other he saw that the Greenshirt had no inkling who the two were. His first thought was to denounce them, but it was at once discarded. That would mean shooting, and he considered it likely that he himself would stop a bullet. Besides, he had at the back of his head a notion that Mastrovin might malgré lui prove useful. By a fortunate chance he knew the officer, who had been the hooker of the forwards against whom he had played football, and to whom he had afterwards been introduced. He saw, too, that he was recognised. So he gave the Juventus salute and held out his hand.
“I’m very glad to see you,” he said. “I was just coming to look for you. I surrender myself to you. It’s your business to arrest me and take me back to camp. The fact is, I broke bounds yesterday and went on the spree. No, there was no parole. I meant to return last night, but I was detained. I shall have to have it out with the Praefectus. I deserve to be put in irons, but I don’t think he’ll be very angry, for I have a good many important things to tell him.” Jaikie had managed to sidle towards the door, so that he was close to the Greenshirts.
The officer was puzzled. He recognised Jaikie as a friend of the Praefectus and one for whose football capacities he had acquired a profound respect. Moreover, the frankness of his confession of irregular conduct disarmed him.
“Why should I arrest you?” he stammered in his indifferent English.
“Because I am an escaped prisoner. Discipline’s discipline, you know, though a breach of it now and then may be good business.”
The young officer glanced at the morose figures at the table. Happily he did not see the pistols which they fingered. “Who are these?” he asked.
“Two people staying in this inn. Bagmen — of no consequence. . . . By the way, I wonder what fool locked that door?”
The young man laughed. “It is a queer place this, and I do not like it. Few of the rooms are furnished, and the landlord has vanished, leaving only boorish servants. But I have to find billets for three companies before evening, and in these times one cannot be fastidious.” He paused. “You are not — how do you say it? — pulling my foot?”
“Lord, no. I’m deadly serious, and the sooner I see the Praefectus the better.”
“Then I will detail two men to escort you back to camp. We will leave this place, which is as bare as a rabbit-warren. I apologise, sirs, for my intrusion.” He bowed to the two men at the table, and, to Jaikie’s amusement, they stood up and solemnly bowed in return.
Jaikie spent a somnolent afternoon in the tent of the Praefectus, outside of which, at his own request, an armed sentry stood on guard.
“Don’t curse me, Ashie,” he said when its owner returned. “I know I’ve broken all the rules, so you’ve got to pretend to treat me rough. Better say you’re deporting me to headquarters for punishment. I want some solid hours of your undivided attention this evening, for I’ve the deuce of a lot to tell you. After dinner will be all right. Meantime, I want a large-scale map of Evallonia — one with the Juventus positions marked on it would be best. Any word of the Countess Araminta?”
“Yes, confound her! She has started to move. Moving on Krovolin, which is the Monarchists’ headquarters. Devil take her for an abandoned hussy. Any moment she may land us in bloody war.”
“All the more reason why you and I should get busy,” said Jaikie.
“You have blood on your forehead,” Ashie told him that evening, when at last the Praefectus was free from his duties. “Have you been in a scrap?”
“That comes of having a rotten mirror. I thought I had washed it all off. No, I had no scrap, but I got my nose bled. By Mastrovin — or rather by one of his minions.”
Ashie’s eyes opened. “You seem to have been seeing life. Get on with your story, Jaikie. We’re by ourselves, and if you tantalise me any longer I’ll put you in irons.”
Jaikie told the last part first — a sober narrative of kidnapping, an unpleasant journey, a night’s lodging, a strictly truthful talk with two dangerous men, and the opportune coming of the Greenshirt patrol. Ashie whistled.
“You were in a worse danger than you knew. I almost wish it had come to shooting, for there were enough Greenshirts in Tarta this morning to pull that inn down stone by stone. I should love to see Mastrovin in his grave. But I daresay he would have taken you with him, and that would never do. . . . Well, I’ve got the end of your tale. Now get back to the beginning. How did you get into the park?”
“Easily enough, but your people made it a slow business. By the way, I wish you would have up a lad called Ivar and explain to him that I was unavoidably prevented from keeping my engagement with him. He’s a pleasant chap, and I shouldn’t like him to think me a crook. The park was easy, but the castle was a tougher proposition. I had to do rather a fine bit of roof-climbing, and it was then that Mastrovin’s fellows saw me, when I was spidering about the battlements. However, in the end I found an open window and got inside and met a pleasant little party. English all of them, except Prince Odalchini.”
“Good Lord, what were they doing there?”
“Justifying Mastrovin’s suspicion that England is mixed up with the Evallonian Monarchists. I think they are going to be rather useful people, for they are precisely of your own way of thinking. So is Prince Odalchini, and he believes he can persuade Count Casimir and the rest of his crowd. At any rate, he is going to have a dashed good try.”
“But I don’t understand,” said the puzzled Ashie. “Persuade him about what?”
“Listen very carefully and you’ll hear, and prepare for shocks.” Jaikie proceeded to recount the conversation at the castle, and when he mentioned the Archduke Hadrian, Ashie sat up. “He’s my godfather,” he said; “but I never saw him. No one has. I thought he was dead.”
“Well, he isn’t. He’s alive but bedridden, and it’s only his name we want. Ashie, my dear, within a week the Monarchists are going to put the Archduke Hadrian on the throne. Only it won’t be the Archduke, but another, so to speak, of the same name. One of the visitors at the castle is sufficiently like him to pass for him — except with his intimates, of whom there aren’t any here. Then in another week Juventus butts in in all the majesty of its youth, ejects the dotard, and sets up Prince John, and everybody lives happy ever after.”
Ashie’s reactions to this startling disclosure were many. Bewilderment, doubt, incredulity, even a scandalised annoyance chased each other across his ingenuous face. But the final residuum was relief.
“Jaikie,” he asked hoarsely, “was that notion yours?”
“No. My line is tactics, not grand strategy. The notion came from the man who is going to play the part of the Archduke. He’s an old Scotsman, and his name is McCunn, and he’s the best friend I ever had in my life. Ashie, I want to ask a special favour of you. Mr McCunn is playing a bold game, and I’ll back him to see it through. I don’t know how much you’ll come into it yourself, but if you do I want you to do your best for him. There may be a rough-house or two before he escapes over the frontier, and if you have a chance, do him a good turn. Promise.”
“I promise,” said Ashie solemnly. “But for heaven’s sake tell me more.”
“You tell me something. Would the rank-and-file of Juventus stand for Prince John?”
“They would. Ninety-nine per cent. of them.” But his face was doubtful, so that Jaikie asked where the snag was.
“It’s Cousin Mintha. I don’t know how she’ll take it.”
“That’s my job. I’m off to-morrow at break of day. You’ll have to let me go, and find me a motor-bicycle.”
“You’re going to Mintha?”
“I must. Every man to his job, and that’s the one I’ve been allotted. I can’t say I fancy it. I’d sooner have had any other, but there it is, and I must make the best of it. You must give me all the tips you can think of.”
“You’d better get hold of Doctor Jagon first. He is Mintha’s chief counsellor.”
“Good. I know him — met him in Scotland. A loquacious old dog, but honest.”
“How are you going to get Prince John out of the Monarchist crowd into Mintha’s arms?”
“He isn’t with the Monarchists. He’s lost.”
“Lost! That spikes our guns.”
“Officially lost. He disappeared a few days ago from the place in the Tirol where Count Casimir had him hidden. The Count thought that Mastrovin had pinched him, and Mastrovin — well, I don’t know what Mastrovin thought, but he’s raking heaven and earth to find him. Nobody knows where he is except the little party that dined last night in the castle. That’s why Casimir will be friendly to the idea of the Archduke, for he has mislaid his Prince.”
“Where is he?” Ashie demanded.
“I had better not tell you. It would be wiser for you not to know — at present. But I promise you I can lay my finger on him whenever we want him. What you’ve got to do is to put it about that he’s with Juventus. That will prepare people’s minds and maybe force your cousin’s hand. I did a useful bit of work this morning, for I told Mastrovin that Prince John was with the Countess Araminta. That means, I hope, that he will go there after him and annoy your cousin into becoming a partisan.”
Ashie looked at his friend with admiration slightly tempered by awe.
“Mintha is a little devil,” he said slowly; “but she’s a turtle-dove compared to you.”
CHAPTER IX. NIGHT IN THE WOODS
The great forest of St Sylvester lies like a fur over the patch of country through which the little river Silf — the Amnis Silvestris of the Romans — winds to the Rave. At the eastern end, near the Silf’s junction with the main river, stands the considerable town of Krovolin; south of it stretch downs studded with the ugly headgear of oil wells; and west is the containing wall of the mountains. It is pierced by one grand highway, and seamed with lesser roads, many of them only grassy alleys among the beeches.
At one of the cross-roads, where the highway was cut at right angles by a track running from north to south, two cars were halted. The Evallonian summer is justly famed for its settled weather, but sometimes in early August there falls for twenty-four hours a deluge of rain, if the wind should capriciously shift to the west. The forest was now being favoured with such a downpour. All day it had rained in torrents, and now, at eleven o’clock at night, the tempest was slowly abating. It was dark as pitch, but if the eyes had no work for them, the ears had a sufficiency, for the water beat like a drum in the tops of the high trees, and the drip on the sodden ground was like the persistent clamour of a brook.
One of the cars had comprehensively broken down, and no exploration of its intestines revealed either the reason or the cure. It was an indifferent German car, hired some days before in the town of Rosensee; the driver was Peter Wappit, and the occupants were Prince Odalchini and Dickson McCunn. The party from the other car, which was of a good English make, had descended and joined the group beside the derelict. Three men and two women stood disconsolately in the rain, in the glow of the two sets of headlights.
Prince Odalchini had not been idle after the momentous evening session in the House of the Four Winds. He had his own means of sending messages in spite of the vigilance of the Juventus patrols, and word had gone forthwith to the Monarchist leaders and to the secretaries of the Archduke Hadrian far away in the French chateau. It had been a more delicate business getting the castle party out of the castle confines. The road used was that which led through the cellars of the Turk’s Head, and the landlord Proser, who had now to be made a confidant, had proved a tower of strength. So had Randal Glynde, whose comings and goings seemed to be as free and as capricious as the wind. The cars — and Peter Wappit — had been duly fetched from the Cirque Doré or wherever else they had been bestowed, and early that morning, before Tarta was astir, two batches of prosperous-looking tourists had left the inn, after the hearty farewells which betoken generous tipping. Their goal was the town of Krovolin, but the route they took was not direct. Under Prince Odalchini’s guidance — no one would have recognised the Prince, for Mr Glynde had made him up to look like an elderly American with a goatee — they made a wide circuit among the foothills, and entered the Krovolin highway by a route from the south-west.
The weather favoured them, for the Tarta streets were empty when they started, and they met scarcely a traveller on the roads. There was one exception, for about four miles from the town their journey was impeded by part of a travelling circus, which seemed to be bearing south. Its string of horses and lurching caravans took a long time to pass in the narrow road, and during the delay the proprietor of the circus appeared to offer his apologies. This proprietor, a tall, fantastically dressed being with a ragged beard, conversed with various members of the party while the block ahead was being cleared, and much of his conversation was in low tones and in a tongue which was neither German nor Evallonian.
The five figures in the rain had a hurried conference. The oldest of them seemed to be the most perturbed by the contretemps. He peered at a map by the light of the lamps, and consulted his watch.
“Krovolin is less than thirty kilometres distant,” he said. “We could tow this infernal car if we had such a thing as a rope, which we haven’t. We can wait here for daylight. Or one car can go on to Krovolin and send out help.”
“I’m for the last,” said Sir Archie. “I would suggest our all stowing into my car, but it would mean leaving our kit behind, and in these times I don’t think that would be safe. I tell you what. You and Mr McCunn get into my car and Peter will drive you. Janet and Alison and I will wait behind with the crock, and you can send help for us as soon as you can wake up a garage.”
Prince Odalchini nodded. “I think that will be best,” he said. “I can promise that you will not have long to wait, for at Casimir’s headquarters there is ample transport. I confess I do not want to be delayed, for I have much to do. Also it is not wise for me to be loitering in St Sylvester’s woods, since at present in this country I am somewhat contraband goods. Mr McCunn too. It is vital that no mishap should befall him. You others are still free people.”
“Right,” said Archie, and began moving the kit of his party from his own car to the derelict. “You’d both be the better of a hot bath and a dressing-down, for you’ve been pretty well soaked all day. We’ll begin to expect the relief expedition in about an hour. If I can get this bus started, where do I make for in Krovolin?”
“The castle of Count Casimir,” was the answer. “It is a huge place, standing over Krovolin as the House of the Four Winds stands over Tarta.”
When the tail-lights of his own car had disappeared, Archie set himself to make another examination of Dickson’s, but without success. It was a touring car with a hood of an old-fashioned pattern, which during the day had proved but a weak defence against the weather. The seats were damp and the floor was a shallow pool. Since the rain was lessening, Archie managed to dry the seats and invited the women to make themselves comfortable. Janet Roylance and Alison had both been asleep for the past hour, and had wakened refreshed and prepared to make the best of things. Janet produced chocolate and biscuits and a thermos of coffee, and offered supper, upon which Alison fell ravenously. Archie curled his legs up on the driver’s seat and lit his pipe.
“I’m confoundedly sleepy,” he said. “A long day in the rain always makes me sleepy. I wonder why?” A gout of wet from the canvas of the hood splashed on his face. “This is a comfortless job. Looks as if the fowls of the air were one up on us to-night. I’ll get a crick in my neck if I stick here longer, and I’d get out and roost on the ground if it weren’t so sloppy. ‘A good soft pillow for my good grey head’ — how does the thing go?”
