We did not like to leave our luggage to the mercy of the lounging soldiers, but there was nothing to do but follow the sergeant into the customs house.
Inside there was a rather dirty, not too large, room, with a single heavy table on which lay cards that had been obviously laid down so as not to disturb a game that would be resumed as soon as we had been disposed of. An army officer of evidently small importance sat behind the card table. He bowed as we entered, but did not offer us seats. It was John’s car, so I let him do the talking. He had had the bright idea of offering that ridiculous collection of French souvenirs of bureaucracy as evidence that we were fit persons to be allowed to dodge a revolution. I stood in the window to watch the luggage. The sergeant who had ushered us in went to the door and lighted a lantern such as we called a bull’s eye when I was a child. I hadn’t seen one in years. They had been useful before the days of electric torches. The Alarian sergeant was flashing signals with it. Knowing neither the Alarian language nor any telegraphic or heliographic code, I did not bother to watch the flashes, but contented myself with looking to see whether he would be answered. He could only be sending a message about us.
34It was, of course, from the white manor house that the answer came. It was the only building in sight. The residence of a superior officer, no doubt, and telephone service either disconnected or not trusted or not available. The under officer rapped suddenly on the table.
“May I claim your attention, gn?diger Herr?” It was not a question but a command. He ordered me to stay away from the window. We were, then, suspicious characters. I obeyed, but satisfied my pride by sitting down without permission. He cleared his throat and glared, then began talking volubly, but very little, so it seemed to me, to the point. “And who is it your intention to see while you are in Rheatia?” he asked, among a lot of other things. John had his mouth open to answer, when I spoke at random, suddenly determined to tell nothing that was not necessary.
35“We are in search of beautiful scenery,” I announced, with a comprehensive wave of my hand. “We are strangers both in Alaria and Rheatia. We have no ultimate destination.”
John showed no surprise. He did not even glance at me. No doubt he thought I wished to spare Helena any possible gossip which our visit might occasion among the rough soldiers. And I had had some such idea, but I felt more that our character as innocuous American tourists had been somewhat impaired by John’s nonsense with the Parisian permits. A small country is always suspicious, and at the moment the Alarians were right to be suspicious of anyone.
36The officer asked more questions, addressing them to me, now. They were for the most part the same questions he had asked John. How long had we had the car, where had we come from, where did we live in the United States, what was our occupation? Everything, indeed, except whether we had any dutiable merchandise. Obviously he was merely filling in time, while he waited for someone to come. It was quite useless to do more than be polite. A large fly droned against the window, the soldiers outside gossiped in gradually louder tones, while the sun slid down slowly, point by point, behind an invisible Herrovosca. It began to grow darker, and John was openly fidgeting, when we heard a car approaching, its cut-out wide open after the now familiar Balkan custom. The officer hastily lighted two kerosene lamps, and a moment or two later the car stopped. We heard the door slam. The officer rose, expectantly. We followed suit, and turned to face the doorway and the official who should enter.
But it wasn’t an official who came in. It was a woman.
37I stared in surprise, not only because I had expected a man, but because this was a new kind of woman to me. She was tall, and handsomely built—that’s not so new, nor was any one thing about her. After all, a newspaper man sees a lot of women, sees them with reddish-brown hair that is red in the lamplight, sees them with tawny eyes, almost the color of a cat’s, sees them with clear olive skin, warm and sunny, and sees them with a ruthless yet luscious mouth. But he rarely sees all those things in one woman, and combined with a direct and forceful authority of manner, but without any loss of femininity. Her figure, which was less voluptuous than most Central European women’s, was covered with gold-embroidered green velvet. She wore a gold chain around her neck, and rings and earrings, but no hat, and her velvet dress was cut like the peasants’, tight bodice, short bolero jacket, and full, long skirt. She might have stepped out of a medi?val play, but she was not theatrical, as the Queen Mother was. John was staring at her, more delighted than I have ever seen him. She was returning his stare with little humorous lines curled around her mouth and the corners of her eyes. I deduced that she was quite accustomed to admiration.
“I hope,” John said to me in English, “that our passports are all wrong and keep us here forever.”
“I cannot imagine,” she took him up quickly, “why you could wish such a thing.” John had the decency to blush.
“I did not know you spoke English,” he apologised.
38“It is sometimes a little fretting,” she replied, “when I do not say so, soon.”
And I decided that she was no knee-high sport. Her manner was neither over friendly nor severe. Her presence was a tonic; we had both forgotten our annoyance at waiting so long. She had too much personality to make a comfortable companion; she was, in fact, a creature to admire; a woman to wear a crown or lead armies; a Pompadour or a Joan of Arc; an actress or a politician. John had grown a full inch taller, he had a new poise, he was all gallantry and charm. As I looked at him I realised that she had done the same thing to me, that I was standing before her, all attention, waiting for any small jot of notice she might care to bestow on me. I felt that if she had stood on the Cathedral steps at Herrovosca instead of that slim little girl in white there would have been no question of revolution. This woman had the authoritative presence of Queen Yolanda, and a friendly, gracious manner besides.
39She looked at John for a full half minute, without once blinking those yellow eyes, then she turned to me, and I felt that I should have been more careful when I dressed. My shoes had not been properly shined, and the spot where I had spilled the wine must show, and I had worn the same collar all day, and my hair needed combing, but in spite of my many defects, she was kind enough to smile at me.
“These gentlemen ’ave passports?” she asked of the officer, holding out her hand for them. She laughed at the Paris driving cards. “You ’ave forgotten, per’aps, to bring your diploma from a school?” she asked John, quite seriously. “I imagine you ’ave gone to one?”
“And,” he admitted, “my insurance policy. But I will be quite happy to write home for them if you wish. I should be delighted to wait here until they come.”
“That,” she answered, not displeased, “is just the way all the Americans speak in the books I ’ave read. Your passports seem to be quite in order. What is your destination in Rheatia?”
John looked so chagrined that I answered, “We are merely tourists, we have no real destination. I am a writer, Mr. Colton is an artist, we mean to write and paint, but so far we have not stopped long enough to do any work.”
40“Ah, then you are Marshall Carvin? You may proceed,” she permitted, sweetly. She referred to the passports for another moment, then handed them back to us with a smile. “Au revoir, messieurs.”
“Thank you,” I acknowledged. “Au revoir, madame.”
John had lost the smartness of his manner when he first saw her. “I hope you will forgive me for being too enthusiastic about your country,” he said. “We are a naturally effusive nation, and are sometimes led into overdoing things, through excess of appreciation. We even sing praises to things so unreachable as the moon.”
She smiled again, looking straight at John, “Oh, I am sure the moon is not unreachable—by songs and praises,” she said. “Au revoir, messieurs.”
“And I wonder,” John murmured as we climbed into the car again, “just why she said ‘au revoir’ instead of ‘à dieu’—”
I humored him by saying the thing he obviously wanted to hear. “Perhaps she wanted to see you again.”
41“Oh,” John grinned, “you think she is a booster for Alaria—bigger and better tourists—and more of them—sort of thing? All the same I wonder who the devil she can be. She didn’t even consult that idiot officer, just waved us out, and they let us go. And that car was a Hispano-Suiza.”
“And none too good for her?” I suggested. “Did you notice the regal air of the lady? Or the gold embroidery on the green velvet? We’ll have to ask Helena who she is. It would be a good thing to know, because, for all she is ornamental, and so very charming, I should hate to oppose that lady seriously.”
“Sure you would,” John chortled enthusiastically, “she knows what she wants, but she has nice, warm eyes, and a woman with warm, pleasant eyes is always manageable.” With which bit of optimism he drove on through the Pass, too intent on dreaming to talk any more.
The sun had touched the top of the western hills when we left the customs house. The mountains ahead of us raised their black jagged mass in the ruddy light, coppery and blown bare except in the valleys, where the trees showed dark and shadowy now.
42The road was surprisingly good, for a mountain road in that distant part of the world. The rocks closed in around us almost within a stone’s throw of the customs house. The engine climbed bravely for an unbelievable time before it succumbed to the grade and made a shift necessary. Up and up and up, and then down a little, and then up again and a long way around a projecting ledge, into a gorge that made John switch on the lights suddenly; past that, and up again, then through a small wooded valley, and never a side road or a human being in sight, or any signs of habitation except a half dozen tiny cabins high above the road, and, a few times, narrow winding trails that would have been fit for a mule or perhaps a horse, but bad for a car. It was the wildest country I had ever driven through, and though the day had been almost hot, it was cold at that altitude. A narrow young moon came out and added by its familiar brilliance to the wild, deep shadows on either side of us.
43And then, almost suddenly, we began to go down, and came upon a barrier across the road, with a small stone building beside it. It was the Rheatian customs. We had forgotten all about that. The frontier, of course, was somewhere back in the mountains. I remembered it as I had seen it traced in a dash-and-dot line on the Baedeker map. Each country, for the safety and comfort of its men, no doubt, ignored the rocky strip of no-man’s-land with its dozen or so inhabitants,—if there were more they were hidden well—and placed its customs houses miles apart.
We stopped and honked the horn, and presently a soldier came with an electric torch in one hand and a red and a white table napkin in the other. He glanced casually at our passports, asked us if we had any tobacco or spirits, and then waved us on, too intent to get back to his dinner to prove our statements by examination. We bade him “Gute nacht,” as he opened the gates, but he did not wait even for us to get through them before he had gone back to his dinner.
A few hundred yards farther and we were out of that dismal country, on a lower spur of the mountains, with lights twinkling through the trees below us, and soon there were fields and fences and farm animals, and a trim hamlet where we asked the way to Waldek, and were directed with German politeness to continue as we were going, “but three kilometers farther, then turn to the left, and at the top of the hill you will see the castle directly ahead.”
44We were at the top of the hill almost before we knew it, looking down into the little valley where Helena’s widowhood had made her sole mistress. It was prosperously cultivated, and dotted with little thatched farm houses. Beyond, high on a jagged hill, rose the dark towers of the castle, with lights in the lower windows. It was a fairy-book sort of place, with cypress trees cutting clean lines into the sky, less wild and warlike than the manor house on the Alarian side of the mountains, yet stern with the feudal flavor of an old ballad. Over it loomed a thunder cloud, cut at jagged intervals by lightning.
“Entirely up to specifications,” John said, as we dipped into the valley. “We’ll stay here and do some painting.”
“Right,” I said, “she’ll be glad to have us, so don’t worry about that.”
45The steep grade to the castle we made with difficulty, in slippery, sticky mud, through a driving rain. The car coughed and sputtered, but climbed steadily enough, and we finally arrived, wet, but hopeful of food and rest, at Helena’s ancient threshold. We rolled across a wooden bridge over the old moat that had once protected the Waldeks from invading hordes, then I climbed out stiffly, and rattled the great, wrought-iron knocker that hung on the gate, and presently footsteps came toward us. The gate swung open in two giant halves. We entered a large courtyard. At one side, part of an ancient stable had been converted into a garage. Two servants carried the luggage from the car, and another presently came to lead us to the living quarters of the castle.
“Spooky place,” John muttered.
“Nonsense,” I said, “you’re afraid it’s going to be dull, and you are trying to cook up an excuse to leave, which isn’t decent, before you’ve even met your hostess. Wait till you see Marie, too. I’ve a hunch she’s going to be rather a nice little thing, in spite of the pastries and marrons glacés.”
46Helena came to receive us in the great Hall. It was hung with ancient embroideries, and furnished like a department store. Antique French upholstery, Turkish carpets, Russian enamels, English prints, Asiatic vases, Chinese jades, and a hundred other varieties of bibelots combined themselves, under the immensity of the carved stone groinings, into a somehow beautiful whole. John was impressed.
“What a joy to see you in this lonely place!” Helena smiled at us, a little wearily, perhaps. “I had your letter, and was delighted. How did you come? By Herrovosca? Oh. Did you stop there? Such a lovely city—or—did this terrible news hurry you through?” Her voice sounded strained, she talked too fast, and her eyes were certainly anxious. Also she twisted her hands when she talked. While I was a police reporter I saw lots of women do that: women accused of crimes, or whose children were lost.
“Do you think there will be trouble?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said, as though relieved to hear the words.
“But surely that will not affect you, across the frontier?” said John, looking at her hard.
“We are very near the frontier.” She smiled, nervously, “and very lonely.”
“You don’t have visitors often?” I asked.
“Not now, especially, with this trouble in Alaria.”
47“Does that affect your visitors?” John asked, interested.
“Naturally. The political situation has been strained for so long. There have been two open attempts on Prince Conrad’s life. There is a rumor that Bela was responsible but I cannot believe that. And now Bela killed. The other rumor makes me wonder if Conrad is not responsible, but there were so many who would have liked to see him dead.”
“How was he killed?” I asked.
“That is a queer thing,” she said. “He was out hunting with several friends. He became separated from most of them, and when they missed him and searched they found his body terribly crushed at the foot of a cliff. Two of the friends who went with him have disappeared. Of course, the mountains are dangerous for climbing, but there is little doubt that he was thrown down. They know it is Bela because he was fully dressed, and wore all his jewelry. Yolanda said his face was horrible, crushed beyond recognition. Oh, dear, if I only knew what is happening in Herrovosca.”
48We told her what we had seen. She leaned forward, listening intently. “The poor, poor, Queen,” she murmured when we told of her appearance in the street as we entered the city. “She had known of Bela’s death for three hours then.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Oh, news travels fast here,” she said. “In order to avert possible trouble she went for her usual drive. That is what it means to be a queen. Never a moment that does not belong to the people. She is a wonderful, wonderful woman. You cannot imagine how wonderful a woman, Marshall, unless you know her. Go on, tell me what happened next.”
We told her the story of the afternoon in Herrovosca. When we reached the description of the girl in white she jumped up suddenly. “How did they receive her?” she asked, excitedly.
“Pretty well, on the whole,” John said.
“There was no trouble? What did Conrad do?”
“He made a splendid address to introduce her, and the crowd seemed to want to listen to him.”
49“Oh, yes, I was afraid of that. That is bad,” Helena interrupted. “Conrad is the cleverest man in Alaria, but he is not so clever as the dear Queen. Oh, you don’t know how she has planned and worked with never a thought of herself. She knew that Bela must be assassinated sooner or later. He was so desperately hated, you see. And after Conrad had been shot at twice, we knew that something more must happen. Yolanda tried to guide Bela, but even when he did good things he managed to make himself even more unpopular. He was so tactless, so careless and stubborn and profligate. He was jealous of Conrad, and loathed being a king. He even hated Alaria. He would have abdicated long ago if Yolanda had not prevented him. She played on his dislike of Conrad to prevent his giving up the throne to him. Of course there are a lot of reasons to think it may be Conrad who has assassinated ............