After an eternity I got to my feet from the doubled-up position I had fallen in. My ears were singing, and I should have felt dizzy if there had been any light. Strange how many sensations depend on light for their realisation. I stumbled against things in my path. Yet there was no sound of any sort, and I suddenly realised that I was following nothing. The figure that had struck me was gone. Only two things I was certain of—there was a secret passage, and two figures had passed me, not one.
I stopped for a moment at the marble bench to recover my equilibrium. What a fool I was making of myself, to be sure, prowling around in the night like a school-boy, looking for impossible adventures.
68A step, quite near me, interrupted—I rose, and waited in the shadow of a tree. Stealthily the step came closer, a slinking, soft-footed step. I saw the fellow dimly outlined before me. He was a big man, bigger than I. The rose scratches stung on my face and hands. I was very quiet, and so was he. It was so dark, I could see him only indistinctly. I got ready to jump on him if he came any closer. I saw him stop, and knew he had seen me. Suddenly he had me by the shoulders, and I spun around and landed in the path. I struck back, took a blow on the face, stumbled and fell, caught at his legs, got him fairly around the knees, and with a quick jerk heaved him sideways into a dim mass of bushes on the other side of the path. I hoped they were rose bushes.
69I was well winded, and I knew he must be, too. I counted five slowly before I got to my feet. He was just struggling up when I reached him again. I got his neck in the crook of my elbow, and dragged him toward the castle. He was choking too much to make any outcry, and I had caught him too suddenly for him to do much else. His hands tore at my arm frantically. It was not far. As I reached the steps he got me by the ankle, and we went down in a heap, but I never let go my hold of his throat. I knew that if I lost that he would have me, since he was heavier than I. He must be got up those steps and into the light. We struggled desperately, yet, somehow, though we were both wrenching at each other, step by step we were getting up to the balcony. The man had become impossible to handle, and I should never have managed it if at the last he had not almost pushed me before him. Apparently he wanted to go into the castle as much as I. We rolled along the balustrade a few steps, and then he picked me off my feet, and ran, half dragging me with him. I kicked at him, and we fell again. In the scuffle I got away from him a step or two. The everlasting darkness was on my nerves. I wanted to see. He caught me again, before we reached the French window, hurled me through it, into the room, and against the leg of a table.
I was up again almost as soon as I was down, and at him, but I did not strike. Instead, I sank back breathless on the nearest chair.
The man was John.
70For a few moments we grunted and gurgled at each other in unison. I ached all over. My face was scratched. My knees were bleeding, my chest was constricted from the violence of my efforts John was almost as badly off. He sat opposite me, staring dazedly.
“You’re a tough old nut to crack,” he said, finally, “I thought you were another of them.”
“Sorry,” my words jerked out with difficulty, “one of them came out of that secret passage. I was leaning against the door, and he fell over me, and then chucked me into some rose bushes. All scratched up. I thought he was coming back. Wanted a look at him in the light.”
“Same here,” he said, “what did the paper say?”
“Oh, paper.” I had almost forgotten the paper. “In Alarian. Can’t read it.”
“Oh, well, I was standing looking over the garden wall. I heard a noise below it, and there was a car at the foot of the cliffs. While I was standing there a man came up behind me, and hit me on the head, then he chucked me aside, and they went right past. Two of them. One had on a heavy cloak. I saw them quite definitely, though it was so dark. I’m sure of it. They went down over the wall. Must be a path. I considered trying to follow them, but decided it was too risky for any use unless I had a torch or at least some matches. They had a car down there. I heard the motor start.”
71I considered. “I hope Helena knows what she is about,” I said. “I feel as though I should do something, and yet—she gave me quite plainly to understand she wanted to be let alone. John! There were two men who got into that car? I’m sure there was only one who attacked me, and only one who went into the castle. Only—was the second figure a man, John?”
“You mean, was the second figure a woman?”
“Exactly.”
“I think—perhaps—it may have been.”
“Was she going willingly, John?”
“Apparently. But there may have been mental compulsion as easily as physical.”
“I hate to butt in,” I said, “but I think we’d better go back to Helena’s rooms, and see what we can find, don’t you?”
“I do.” John was quite decided. He began dressing hurriedly. I followed suit. My joints could ache later, flapping a dressing gown around dim cold halls is undignified.
72“Still,” I suggested, “I’ve been turned out of Helena’s rooms once this evening. She shut the door purposefully, which was her privilege, of course. But it makes me hesitant to go back again at this hour. After all, she’s our hostess.”
“She’s a woman, and alone,” John said, “and there was someone in that room. You know that. That someone may have been threatening her while she was talking to you.”
“Yes.”
“And she denied that anyone was there.”
“She said she was not in need of protection.”
“But suppose she’s been kidnapped while you hesitate to bother her?”
“The man who came may very easily have been a messenger from Queen Yolanda. She was expecting news.”
“Or from Conrad. She’s afraid of Conrad.”
“Yes, and rightly. I shouldn’t like her if I were Conrad. After all, she has conspired to keep him off the throne.”
“Exactly. He has a case against her, and he looks like the sort of person who sees things through.”
“Efficiently, I should say. Yes. What do you suggest, then?”
73“Go back and see if she is there still, and all right. We know the man is gone, now. If she is there she will be free to explain, and I can’t see what harm we can do.”
“Come with me, then,” I said, “you’re right, of course.”
I knocked at the door as I had knocked the first time. There was no answer. Undoubtedly Helena had more rooms than one behind her door, as John and I had. She might be in the farthest of her suite, and could not hear our knock, but I did not believe that for a moment. For better or worse, I was sure she had gone. Nevertheless, I pounded with my fist, and added another bruise to my growing collection. Silence. At last I turned around and kicked with the heel of my shoe. If she were there she must hear that, but there was no answer.
Then another problem presented itself. Helena was gone. What should we do next? Follow her in our car? Or break down the door? Or do nothing? The door was too heavy to be broken open with less than an axe.
74John said casually, as though he broke into ladies’ apartments every morning of his life, “perhaps her maid has a key.” He walked off down the passage. I waited quietly until he came back. I was too sore to move. He had two men with him and the maid who had worn woollen stockings under her nightgown. She seemed to be dressed in the same way still, so I decided that it was quite probably merely her usual nightly attire. One of the men carried an iron crowbar, the maid a bunch of keys. They were all talking excitedly, and when they saw me they broke out afresh. They assured me that Madame would kill them all if they opened her door. The maid was crying. No one dared disturb madame, ever.
“The fact remains,” I said, “we distinctly saw a man enter and two people leave this house tonight. And there was someone in madame’s room. Now she does not answer. It must be she either is not there, or she cannot answer. It is our duty to find out.”
“The gn?dige Gr?fin,” the maid said, in her dismal voice, “knows many things of enormous importance, of which we know nothing. She has friends in high places.”
75“And,” John said, impressively, “she has also enemies in high places. We wish her only good. Come, open the door at once.” His tone had its effect. He held out his hand, and the maid gave him the keys, indicating a large brass one, with an ornamental handle. John turned it in the lock, and in silence flung open the door.
Behind it were three rooms opening into each other. All three were quite empty. A long desk was piled neatly with papers in the study, a shawl lay where it had been dropped on the back of a chair. Bookcases lined the walls, the books soberly in their places. An American magazine lay on an easy chair by the window. We passed on to a dressing room. There, too, everything was in order, though one or two bureau drawers were open. Beyond the dressing room was the bedroom. It was like the others. A pair of satin slippers lay where they had been kicked, in the middle of the floor, otherwise nothing was disturbed.
“Madame is gone!” the maid cried in wonder.
“Not here!” echoed the two men.
76John went to the desk in the study and stood drumming his fingers on the cover of an account book. The servants waited respectfully for us to speak. The maid looked much more cheerful in the face of possible tragedy.
“It may be all right,” I said, “we know that. But it also may not be.” I turned to the servants, “Have you extra petrol for our car?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, gn?diger Herr,” they answered in chorus. We had achieved a good deal of prestige in the last few minutes.
“Yes,” John said, “you’re right, Carvin. It would take them ten minutes to get down that hill and into the car. Whatever path there is isn’t visible at night, and it can’t be very good. They went not twenty minutes ago, I’m sure. They won’t have so much of a start—not more than fifteen minutes. They won’t think we are following, and I can show a bit of speed, too. Come along, hurry up. I’ll see the gas put in and get the car into the yard while you get our things. Be sure you bring me a cap and some cigarettes, and a coat—it’s cold on that Pass.”
It was a quarter to five by the clock on the dash as the big gates opened for us for the second time. It had been a quarter past eight as we drove in through them. Our carefully planned visit to Helena had lasted barely nine hours.
77Before us our lamps cast a long white trail on the still muddy road. John stepped on the accelerator and we leaped ahead down the hill. In a moment we were going so fast that in his effort to hold the car on the winding road, he sat still and tense, moving only at the curves, and then so studiedly that he seemed almost automatic. The speedometer climbed up and up, then dropped somewhat for a sharp curve, then climbed again. We were making an almost impossible pace for so winding a road. I reflected that if another car should appear ahead of us we were unlikely ever to know it. The wreck would be so complete that it was not necessary to worry about it. It is only half wrecks that are terrifying. A neat, quick smashing is a more or less jolly end to a life that is only interesting at intervals. This happened to be very much one of the intervals, however. Certainly I didn’t want to be wrecked before we had sifted the mystery, and found Helena.
78As we neared the bottom of the hill, the whole valley proved to be bathed in mist thick enough to cloud the windshield, so that John was forced to lean out of the car to see the road, which was wet and a little slippery. I busied myself pushing up the glass. It was hard to manage at that pace, but I got it up just in time, for a moment after John righted himself we passed a car facing in the opposite direction, mending a tire. They seemed, in the quick glance I spared them, to have finished. A man was throwing the blown shoe into the tonneau. The whole thing flashed by so suddenly that I scarcely gave it a thought, except that as we skinned past I heard a shout that flashed by as quickly as the car from which it came.
“Lucky miss, that,” John grunted.
“Fools to stay so far on the road.”
“It’s a lonely road. Not many cars here at any time, almost none at this time of night. I wonder if they were going to Waldek? Perhaps we should have stopped to find out. I’ve just thought of something. They aren’t going to let us through the Rheatian customs house.”
“Why not? They let us through the other way.”
“That was reasonable. This isn’t, and we haven’t any possible explanation that will make it sound so.”
79“We must overtake Helena, then,” I said, doubtfully, “before they reach the customs house.”
“That’s our only chance, and we are almost there, too. It wasn’t far, you remember.”
We were heading due south again, rising steadily toward the Pass. On the smooth surface of the road the kilometers were going past us two to the minute and more. I decided that the speedometer must be out of order. We couldn’t really be doing eighty, almost without fluctuation, yet as I looked out at the side, the landscape slipped by so fast I couldn’t count it.
Then, as we began to climb, the indicator fell back slowly from eighty to seventy-five, to seventy, a sudden drop to sixty, stayed there for a moment, then when we climbed sharply again it went down to thirty and below.
80Even at thirty we had some reserve. John suddenly stepped on the gas as we rounded a curve and saw before us the low stone building that served the Rheatians for a customs house. Between it and us was no iron gate barring the way, and not more than a hundred feet to go. We zoomed forward with a fierce roar, and before I had time to realise what had happened, we were through the barrier, heading for the Alarian side of the Pass, with no chance that anyone could catch up with us before we caught up with Helena.
“Great work,” I said, trying to sound casual, “but perhaps the Rheatians may not think it so funny that we did that. We’re caught neatly enough now between the two customs houses, in the bleakest bit of country I’ve ever been in. In the name of mercy why didn’t you stop?”
John laughed, “She’s your cousin,” he said, “you said you wanted to follow her and I am following. If you don’t like it you should. I’ve been doing a bit of fancy driving tonight, setting a record, I’ll bet, for this stretch of road. What’s a Rheatian government to us? It was their own fault anyway, for leaving the gate open. We can just say we didn’t see it.”
81We seemed to be crawling, then, by contrast to our former speed. We wound around mountains, zig-zagging on the edges of precipices, coming out miles beyond on some horse shoe curve a few hundred feet away as the crow flies. The first grey light of the dawn was just showing it to us. When we had gone through the other way it had been too dark to see. Once behind us, and twice ahead of us, I saw the flash of lights, whether they were car lights or not I could not tell. They might be the signal lights of some frontier guard announcing our approach—or Helena’s.
We had been driving so fast that it seemed we should have overtaken any other car if there was one. I began to doubt that they had taken the Herrovosca road at all, unless they were equalling our speed on some matter of life and death while we were left outlawed between two customs houses, chasing butterflies over deserted and eerie mountain passes.
We came abruptly to a stop. Just between two high rock walls, where the road had been graded steeply, a white barricade had been placed. Our lights picked it up in time to come to a neat stop a foot or two too soon to crash. The brakes shrieked like a dog in torture. I reached for our passports. As well to put up a bluff, anyway. We might get by.
We didn’t.
82“Damned frontier guards,” John started, and stopped. Two men in black with black masks over their unshaven faces covered us with hard-boiled modern shotguns, while two others climbed into the car. Then the two with the guns stepped on the running boards on either side, others pulled the barricade off the road far enough for our car to squeeze by, and one of the men poked his gun insinuatingly into John’s face.
“They’re the funniest looking lot of frontier guards I ever saw,” I whispered, uncomfortably.
“They’re bandits, dressed up like this, and a smelly crew, too,” John said, happily, “unless we’re still asleep and dreaming at Castle Waldek.”
I did not resist. There were too many of them to make it feasible. When the gun came away from his face for a moment, John knocked its owner down with his fist, but all they did was tie him up tight with a rope end. I was surprised that they were so gentle. They tied our hands behind us, and bandaged our eyes with our own handkerchiefs. I wondered why men so much in need of baths themselves should have the finesse to use a gentleman’s own handkerchief to tie across his eyes. Obviously someone had told them to do it. I felt happier after I had thought that out.
83They pulled us out of the car, felt us over carefully for weapons, and then shoved us into the tonneau on top of all the painting stuff. It was uncomfortable, especially since we could neither see what was in our way, nor move it with our hands tied behind us. John cursed in a low but definite tone. I considered silence a little better policy, and finally wriggled myself into a position where I was almost lying down, and had slipped the handkerchief half off my eyes. I could see out on one side of the car. The stars were still visible, though the sky was beginning to lighten. We were heading south, roughly, I decided, by trying to average up our twistings. South, by south-west. That meant that we were crossing the mountain ridge as we had come, but not by the road, for we were bumping over dirt, and uneven, sloping rock, alternately. Herrovosca would have lain about due south-west, if I remembered my map correctly. Not that a map would be of any appreciable value to us in our present plight. In fact, I judged that it might easily be some little time before we should have any further use for a map. The only consolation to me was the beautiful excuse our capture made for our irregular position between the two customs houses, without benefit of stamp on our passports. That was small enough consolation, however, for the discomfort of a sharp and heavy box end that kept jouncing into my shin. I tried again and again to kick it out of the way, but without budging it.
84After a long time of slow and bumpy running, with the sun just beginning to show pinkly on some of the highest peaks, we came, at last, to a stop. Our guards led us out of the car and we went, since the alternative seemed to be a dozen or so holes from the business ends of their shot guns. They still were not rough with us, but they discovered my loose bandage, and tightened it firmly. Then they started us marching.
85We were led slowly along a rough path, a man on either side. John I could hear still cussing occasionally. He had been interrupted in what, to him, was the marathon of the century, and he was displeased. All about us rose the lovely smells of high altitude in late summer. As ............