Of course we were accustomed to being arrested, but this was a different matter from the other times. This might be a criminal offense. Foreigners, without passports, and with only a mad story about how they had lost them, trying to obtain entrance to the Royal Palace with a strange man hidden under a robe in the back of the car. And Helena, the only person who could vouch for us, a prisoner of the Black Ghost.
“What for?” John asked truculently.
“Because you must repeat that story to a higher officer,” the man answered. “If you saw that paper signed within twenty-four hours it is a forgery. The city of Herrovosca is under martial law.”
199“Wait,” I said, holding up my hand with all the authority I could muster. I was frightened, and it seemed ridiculous to have come through so many difficulties only to be arrested at the very end of our journey, almost within speaking distance of the Queen. A few passersby added themselves, gaping, to the group of soldiers.
“We really have a legitimate errand to the Queen,” I said. “We only showed you those passes to see whether you thought them real. We suspected them ourselves. Here.” I offered him the red card that the Black Ghost had given us. He stared at it in surprise, and said, indifferently, “Yes, of course. This will let you through any police lines. If you drive your car on the wrong side of the street, and show this, it will be forgiven, but it makes no mention of the Royal Palace, and though I do not say so, there are many of these cards, and you may have stolen this one. You must go before the Colonel tomorrow.”
Tomorrow! Even that was not so bad as the presence of that man in the back of the car. While they were about to discover him at any moment, and we were under arrest, we certainly did not want to proclaim his presence. I cursed myself for a fool not to have told the soldiers about him immediately. We had only agreed to take him to the Palace, and we had done that. Now quite a crowd was collecting around us.
200“Wait a moment,” I said. “I realise that you must take every precaution. You are right to do that, of course.” I stooped, took off my shoe, and since they looked suspiciously at me, I held it up in plain sight, while I removed the paper Helena had given me. Then I laid the shoe on the seat beside me.
For the first time the guard looked impressed. “Countess von Waldek,” he said. “Ah, yes, Countess von Waldek we know, and have had orders for three days to admit her immediately when she comes, but she does not come. She has disappeared. You will have to show this as well to the Colonel tomorrow.” He opened the front door, and another man opened the back one.
“You are making a mistake,” I said. “Our business is urgent, we—”
John interrupted me. “I must tell you, then,” he began, “that—”
John was too impulsive. Besides, I saw that we must declare the presence of the man in back or perhaps suffer serious consequences if they found him first. I interrupted John.
“We have come,” I said, “from Visichich Manor. We were asked to bring to Herrovosca a—”
201But I got no farther than that, for there appeared suddenly on the other side of the square a large open car, and in it sat the new Queen Maria Lalena in a long veil of white mourning crepe and looking as sweet and pretty as a Queen of the May. The car, like most Royal cars, was travelling at a swift pace, and was preceded and followed by soldiers on motor cycles, but it had to slow down as it neared the now large crowd that had collected around us, blocking the gate. In the sudden movement as it approached a voice shouted, “See! See! The impostor! She is dressed like the Holy Virgin! Blasphemer!”
A figure lunged forward from the edge of the group. It was all so quick and unexpected that I must have acted instinctively, as one does sometimes in a moment of impending accident. Mechanically. I can remember the act, but not any thought on my part that directed it. My hand closed over the shoe that I had laid on the seat beside me, and I flung it at the upraised arm of the man who had shouted. The only conscious thought I had was a sudden realisation of his identity.
It was the prophet.
202I had come all the way from home, through three imprisonments, for the purpose of hitting a false prophet with an old shoe.
But I did hit him. The shoe struck him squarely in the face just as he threw something round and black, and the something round and black hurtled high above the white head of the Queen Maria Lalena, and fell far beyond her on the deserted pavement of the square, where it burst with such a roar as I had not heard since I left the trenches in 1918.
203Everybody began shouting at once. The crowd pushed and surged until I thought our car would be turned over. John and I were jerked out roughly, and held against the Palace wall by the soldiers, while the crowd, which seemed to double with each passing second, yelled at us. All the doors of the car were open. The rug, under which the mysterious man of the plaster had hidden, was gone, and so was he. It was the only bright spot in our last disaster. We no longer had to explain him, at least. I felt I wanted to laugh about that, but didn’t dare. People might think I was laughing at them. Someone struck me in the face. I slipped sideways and cut my shoeless foot on a sharp stone. John cursed in English, and I could just hear him above the din. The soldiers were doing all they could for us, but they were hopelessly outnumbered by the mob. Step by step we were half dragged, half pushed, toward the Palace gate. It was only a short distance, but each inch was being fought for, hard. A woman in a red dress spat at us, a man kicked me deliberately on the shin. I couldn’t get my balance quick enough to kick back, and the soldiers were holding my arms. At last, our lungs almost bursting, we half fell through the gate, which was closed behind us amid furious shouts and threatening gestures from the crowd. I found myself on the calm side of the barrier, sitting in the middle of the roadway, too dazed for the moment to care. I closed my eyes in relief, but I wasn’t allowed to sit quietly. A soldier pulled at me, and made me go behind the wall, where I could not be seen from the street. There was a stone coping there and I sat on it. John, battered and grimy, and making a wry face over his arm, but with his eyes shining with excitement, grinned at me delightedly.
204“I see now,” he announced to any who cared to listen, which was me, “why war was a noble career in the days when it was fought like that. There’s some point in being allowed by the rules to kick a man and know it was a good job.”
“You’re a disreputable looking savage,” I told him.
“And a bit of a wreck, yourself,” he chortled at me. “I hand it to these soldiers. They’re a swell bunch of guys.”
The swell bunch of guys began wrapping a stout rope around his good arm, tying it effectually to his body. I protested violently, but the only attention they paid to me was to tie my wrists. They were all talking so hard that no one would answer a question or speak to us at all. I stopped trying to do anything more, and just leaned back against the wall, too exhausted to worry even in the face of our latest capture.
“We should have stayed,” John said to me, “at Visichich Manor. That Countess is a damned nice girl. I wish she were here now, she’d get us out of this mess.”
“While we are wishing,” I said, “we might as well wish a little higher. I wish the Black Ghost were here.”
205“Which one?” John asked, grinning.
“Oh,” I said. “Were there two, do you think?”
“I know it,” John said. “And what is more, I think I know who the second one is.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Not here,” he said. “I’ll tell you as soon as we are alone.”
“Well,” I said, “both men’s manners were charming, and his—or their—prison is well appointed. It would be rather acceptable after this last scrap. I’m tired.”
206“Yes,” John agreed. “Especially as we have no guarantee that the Herrovosca jail won’t be ratty. Joke on you, though. Afraid to stay in a town where there might be a riot, and then get into mess after mess. And don’t forget we’re wrong all the way around now. There isn’t a faction here that hasn’t at least one count against us. We’re messengers to the Queen, but we brought a regicide to town. We promised to be friendly toward the Black Ghost, but didn’t deliver the prophet to the gendarmes. We are friends of Helena’s, but she has disappeared, and we were about the last people to see her so far as anyone can prove. The Visichiches were nice to us, but we stole their car and took off their prisoner. We’re Americans, but we haven’t any good excuse for not having our passports, and, anyway, I rather think they thought you threw that bomb. Probably I was the only person who saw what you did. And a lot of good my testimony will be.”
“What do we do next?” I asked.
“Whatever offers,” John said, confidently.
From outside came the sound of motor cars. Our captors opened the gate, and more soldiers came through. Two grasped my arms tightly, two more grasped John, more formed a lane, and they started leading us toward the square again.
We had been actually inside the Palace wall, and now we were going out again, without having seen the Queen. I groaned, but we could not start a war with the whole Alarian army.
207They got us out to the sidewalk. The mob had not diminished in size, but it was subdued by the new soldiers. Our appearance was the signal for redoubled shoutings, and the line of guards was jostled so hard that we were delayed on our way to the large black car—a proper Black Maria—drawn up at the curb, its black yawning interior waiting for us.
“Guess I might as well resign,” John said. “Being a queen’s messenger doesn’t seem to be my metier. Hereafter I suppose I’ll have to stick to painting. I’m afraid I’m better at it.”
The noise grew confusing. There were shouts in front of us, and shouts to both sides, and even, I thought, shouts behind us. The line of soldiers suddenly closed altogether, and instead of forcing us into the Black Maria, we were led back again inside the Palace gate, nor, this time, were we stopped there, but led up the incline toward the Palace itself.
“Going to take us out by a back gate and save trouble,” John said. “We tried saving trouble, but we learned better, didn’t we?”
208We did not go up the great state stairs that led to the huge arched doorway, but to a small door under the staircase, along an almost dark corridor with a cold stone floor. We were inside the Palace at last, but not in the way we had expected to get there. I was too discouraged to care much what they did to us. John might be cheerful. Being wounded, the soldiers had protected him better than they had me, and he had both his shoes. My only immediate interest was in stepping as lightly as possible on my unshod foot, but I retained a faith that the future would sometime permit me to leave Alaria. Nobody ever loved any country less than I did that fantastic, medi?val kingdom at that moment. I did not even care that we had failed in our errand.
We reached a room with a soft carpet, for which my foot was grateful. It was a blue carpet, without figures, and never made in Alaria. Indeed, the color was so unexpected, underfoot in a country of bare stone floors or bright Oriental rugs that I summoned interest enough to look around me. White enamelled French furniture, upholstered in pink and blue striped silk, and on a mantel bright French porcelain vases with a clock to match. I reflected that Palace dungeons were more daintily furnished than any we had hitherto been lodged in.
A door was opened, and we were ushered through it, into a less formal room, where, at last, and when we least expected to see her, sat Queen Yolanda.
209She was draped, like a Ziegfeld Niobe, in heavy black, and sat before a large and elaborately carved desk. Beside her, flushed with excitement, her eyes bright, but frightened, stood Maria Lalena. She nodded when she saw us, and said something I did not hear to Queen Yolanda. The soldiers stood very close to us so that we should not be able to make any attack upon their royal persons.
I was beyond being surprised, but it was somewhat unexpected. It was also the first time I had ever been ushered into the presence of two Queens, and I was not sure just what might be the proper ritual. John smiled ecstatically, bowed deeply, and said, “your Majesties.”
Both ladies returned the bow, formally. Yolanda spoke then. It was the first time I had heard her. Her voice was throatily vibrant. “Why do you bring these gentlemen here like criminals?” she demanded. “Have you so little regard for your Queen’s life that you arrest her saviors?”
The officer with us protested. “Your Majesty, this is the man who threw the bomb.”
210Maria Lalena said, excitedly, “No, no, it isn’t. He threw something that made the bomb go wild. I saw it. I was looking straight at him.”
Queen Yolanda spoke again resonantly. “You should know your business better than that. Untie those ropes.” She turned to us. “We are very grateful, and we apologise for our soldiers’ mistake. They have been stupidly rough with you. Forgive them, they thought you assassins. We sent for you to thank you, and also because her Majesty tells me that you were in a dangerous situation at the gate. We acted as quickly as we could.”
“Please sit down, do,” Maria Lalena spoke quickly. “I am afraid you are hurt.”
Yolanda turned to look at her annoyedly. I was glad enough of the opportunity. I sat down, and shoved my stockinged foot under the chair. John sat beside me.
“We should apologise,” he said, “for our appearance. We would not willingly have presented ourselves before your Majesties in such a dishevelled state, but we were, as you know, given no choice. We were under the impression, in fact, that we were being taken to prison.”
211Yolanda said “Yes, yes, to be sure,” very stiffly, while she stared at us crossly for having sat down. She could set her stage magnificently, she could play her part with conviction and authority amid insuperable difficulties, but she could not make her audience love her. It was amazing to me that she had been right often enough, and clever enough, to keep her place in spite of all the hatred she stirred up. They were so different, those two women facing us. The person who would take Yolanda’s place must have brains and experience, and Maria Lalena was so young and untried, though she was pretty and appealing. Her eyes were amazing. She was looking at John now as she had looked at a counter of pastries in Paris eight years ago. There was the same hopeful, wistful, long-lashed glance. Quite irresistible. She turned the same look on me, and then dropped her eyes. That was what she used to do about the pastries. drop her eyes after one lingering, devastating glance, and the family bought them for her.
Yolanda was sitting in silence. She knew how to use the old stage tricks. In a second, from the vantage point of her high backed, red damask chair, she would graciously give us permission to retire.
212I spoke bef............