There was a moment’s silence, as I edged toward the figure that had held the light. Before I reached it there was a scuffle a few feet to my left. I rushed toward it. It was a short fight. The man seemed to have little strength, but a great deal of determination to get away. He was nothing to our combined forces. In a moment John had him down, and I tied his hands behind him with my handkerchief. As an all-purpose tool, I recommend the humble handkerchief. Then, while I held our prisoner, John felt about on the path for the electric torch. After a moment he found it. By its light we stared at our capture. His hat had fallen off, and long chestnut hair tumbled loose about his—her, shoulders. She wore well-cut riding breeches, and was young and very good looking, though she was glaring at us furiously.
“Hell!” I said.
135“My God,” said John. “It’s the Countess Visichich!”
“’ow did you get away?” she demanded. “They told me you ’ad got out, but I couldn’t wait to find out ’ow. I never could see what ’arm you would do anyway—only ’e wanted to be sure. And you lied to me yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” I echoed—“why, so it was only yesterday. At a guess I should have said week before last.”
“What are we going to do now?” John asked crossly. “We can’t tie her up and leave her here. We can’t take her with us, and if we let her go she’ll bring all of the gang down on us before we even know where we are.”
“Why not let me go?” she suggested, pleasantly.
“That isn’t so easy,” John said, and sounded so sorry that I almost laughed at him.
“You are gentlemen,” she continued, “what else can you do?”
“Thank you,” I said. “We are complimented, but after all, you do present difficulties.”
“I come of honorable antecedents,” she said, proudly.
136“And take them seriously,” I suggested.
“Of course she does,” John took her part sternly.
“If you will let me go,” she offered, “I swear I will say nothing of ’aving seen you for, say, twenty-four hours. Will that be long enough?”
I agreed, gloomily, but John was more enthusiastic. “Of course, Countess, of course, it will be quite enough. We really ought to see you home, but there are difficulties, you know. Forgive us, won’t you?”
“Oh, we are not civilised ’ere,” she laughed. “I am quite safe on this mountain alone, I assure you. No one could be safer. You might untie my hands, though, if you don’t mind.”
John made a wry face, and let me do it, his own hands being in a state of skinlessness that would have been embarrassing to him if she had seen them, to say nothing of being painful.
“We couldn’t quite,” I said, “tie a lady up and leave her helpless on a wild mountain side. It’s nice of you to help us out of our difficulties. Have you a watch, by the way?”
“A watch?” she echoed. “Yes, what for?”
137“Will you give us your word to wait here for half an hour before you start on again?”
“Oh, I say,” John interrupted. “That’s a bit thick, you know. She can’t do that, Carvin. She’s all alone, and she ought to get home as quickly as possible.”
“Ten minutes?” she offered.
“Very well,” I grumbled at her. “Ten minutes, then. It’s not very long, though.” I untied her wrists, and turned to continue our way down the mountain, taking advantage of the path.
“You ’ave been very kind,” she said, suddenly, “I will do more for you. Something I should not do. If you go straight down that path you will meet the men of the Black Ghost. They are in camp at the foot of the mountain. If they had not been, you would have been followed. If you watch carefully, about one kilometer from ’ere you will find a path that branches off to the left. Keep to that, and you will come to a dirt road in the valley. Follow that road and you will come to another that will lead to Herrovosca, but farther west than the road of the Pass. I think you will prefer that. But I must warn you that even the road I suggest is not free from danger for you.”
138“Awfully good of you,” John said.
“It would have been safer for you to ’ave killed me or to ’ave left me for wild animals to kill. I feel I am making you a very small payment on a great debt.”
John was about to make some more remarks, so I took him firmly by the arm. “Only ten minutes,” I reminded him. “Come, now, and don’t waste time. We have to travel a long way.” He came, then, a little unwillingly, and with several backward glances to where we had left her sitting on a stone, slowly twisting up her long hair and shoving it under her hat in that seductive way women have with hair. When we were quite out of earshot I was surprised to hear John ask me, “shall we follow her directions or not?” I had supposed him too much under the spell of her personality to doubt her.
“Why not?” I said. “Since we have no idea where we are, and she seems rather a decent sort, even to me, who have not fallen a victim to her charms. I don’t see why she shouldn’t do us a good turn to repay our decent treatment of her.”
139“That’s what I thought,” John said contentedly. “I’m glad you think so, too. She must have a swell time up here, swashbuckling around these mountains. Exactly my idea of the right way to spend a lifetime.”
I laughed, though I was in the act of stumbling over a twig. Swashbuckling around a lot of bleak mountains in the dark was my idea of no way to spend a lifetime, or even a small part of it, and I said so. However, when we found the branch path to the left, we followed it, still going down the mountain, and, I hoped, not too far from the general direction of Herrovosca. The only thing that really puzzled me was her remark about the Black Ghost’s men being in camp. Just what did that mean? For one thing, that they weren’t up at their mountain stronghold, which accounted for our escape. But it would mean more than that. It probably meant trouble somewhere.
140The moon was full and high in the heavens when we finally came out on the roadway. A narrow, muddy roadway, deep with ruts. “A dirt road” had been the Countess’ description, I found it rather an understatement. It was a dirty road. I hoped John liked it, but I didn’t ask him. By that time I was too tired to waste energy asking silly questions. In the dark it was hard to judge distances or time, but I felt it should be near dawn. We must have followed it for two miles or more when the sound of a car drove us off the road. There was a high stone wall on either side at that point, and John said he’d rather be captured again than attempt to climb it, and he was sure he couldn’t make it if he did try. The lamps of the car showed us plainly to its occupants, and they came to a sudden stop beside us. A voice addressed us in Alarian, John cursed sibilantly in English, and the voice adopted that language obligingly, asking who we were and why we were there.
I replied, “Our car broke down, and we had to leave it. We are trying to find help, and I fear we have lost our way.”
“You are going away from the ’ighway. It is be’ind you about seven miles. Where did you leave your car?”
141That question was a difficult one. However, John answered it quickly enough. “We don’t know,” he said. “We’ve been walking, it seems, for years. We lost our way before the moon came up. We thought we’d find a house on this road, but it apparently goes nowhere.”
“It goes,” the man said, sternly, “to Visichich Manor. If you will get in we will take you with us, but don’t be ’eadstrong because we ’ave revolvers.”
There was no means of resisting them. We were exhausted and unarmed and John was suffering with his burned hands. We were seven miles from the highway, and heaven only knew how many miles from any inn or town on that highway. Altogether, we were fairly caught. John climbed slowly into the car, a little saddened, I feared, with the realisation that the Visichich woman had set us a trap. Not a mean trap, but a trap, for all that. She would undoubtedly keep her word and say nothing to anyone about having seen us, but she had arranged that we should not be a menace to the Black Ghost. My admiration for her increased a little. I wondered whether John would feel that way.
142It was a seven-passenger car. Our captors let down the two small seats in the tonneau, so that we sat facing them. They were right, of course. The state of the country was too unsettled to take chances. Our story of the broken car would not hold water, because they would not have passed any abandoned car on the way—unless, and that might be true—they had not come from the highway, but from the Black Ghost’s camp, which might be between their manor house and the road. It was possible they had not heard of our escape, and they still might believe our story. And there were twenty-four hours in which Countess Katerina would not tell them. There was still some hope we might get to Herrovosca.
143We rode on in silence for about twenty minutes, bumping uncomfortably over the bad road. Then we thundered through an archway and into an open space before the long low white building which we had first seen from the customs house. The ancient archway through which we had come, and the tower and wall connected with it, might have belonged to a fortress. A single light showed in the house. The driver of the car got down first and helped us out, then preceded us up to the door, and knocked loudly on it. Presently a servant came, and only then did our hosts get out. They kept discreetly behind us as we entered the wide hallway, and the driver showed us the way into a room at the right. It was an interesting room. The walls were white, the iron hardware was handwrought and I thought very old. Three hanging lamps supplied light of the oil age. The furniture was of that peculiarly ornate character which usually graces southern and central European homes. Against their severe white walls and rich carpets it loses the tawdry appearance that it would have among the gimcracks of our homes.
144The chauffeur and the servant remained in the doorway, in case we should make any disturbances, of course. I decided we would not. We stood in silence for several minutes, looking each other over quite frankly, each pair of us wondering how the other pair might fit into the complicated scheme of things in this Balkan state. The elder of our captors was a man of medium height, grey haired, with a beard and a mustache. Both their mouths had the same ruthless line as the Countess Katerina’s and they both had the same relieving lines of humor around their amber-brown eyes. Altogether they were not an alarming pair, and I judged they came to the same conclusion about us, for they relaxed in a moment or two, and the older man spoke. “Sit down gentlemen,” he invited.
We obeyed willingly. We had walked enough that night to make sitting welcome.
“Now, about that car,” he went on. “Perhaps you will tell me some details of it? I will have a man search for it in the morning.”
“By morning,” John said easily, “it will quite likely have been stripped beyond recognition by the bandits that I hear are in these mountains.”
The two men looked merely mildly surprised at the mention of bandits. “Bandits?” the younger inquired pleasantly, “you ’ave ’eard there are bandits ’ere?”
“Yes,” John went on, “we were very anxious not to meet any of them when our car broke down. I can imagine a mountain bandit, supreme in his power and responsible to no one, could be a most unpleasant person to meet on a dark night. Especially so for two unarmed men.”
145“Who has told you of bandits?” The younger man seemed only slightly interested, as though he asked merely out of politeness.
“We heard of them before we left Rheatia.”
“Oh, Rheatia!” He dismissed Rheatia as though that overgrown neighbor of his were not worth mentioning. “In Rheatia you will ’ear many tales. The only bandit I know of in these mountains is Fakat Zol, the Black Ghost. You may ’ave ’eard of ’im?”
“Yes,” John said, slowly, “that was the name.”
“The ghost of Fakat Zol,” the man went on, slowly, “of course ’e is not a ghost, but it is true ’e maintains almost an army in the mountains. That is why the Rheatians ’ate him. ’is band ’as defeated them several times when they were bent on aggression. That is ’istory. No one goes through the Pass unless Fakat Zol permits. It ’as always been so. That is, it ’as been so for eight hundred years, which is long enough. He rules by superstition, tradition and right. Our ’istory is full of incidents of ’is appearance. ’e is like your English Robin ’ood, but become immortal.”
“We are Americans,” John corrected.
146“The same thing.” He shrugged his shoulders. “You come from Rheatia?”
“We came through Rheatia.”
“You ’ave business in Alaria?”
We went through the old story of the writer and the artist. I was so tired of it I wished that it might be safe to change our professions for a little variety.
“At present,” the younger man said slowly, “Alaria is not a ’ealthy place for strangers.”
“No?” I was all innocence, or tried to be. “Is there some trouble?”
“There seems to be a slight uneasiness since the King’s death. You cannot tell what it may lead to. For the present I think we are all very tired. Let us continue our discussion in the morning.”
147He had not asked for passports, but I realised that by morning he would have made inquiries, and know exactly who we were. Our escape would undoubtedly be reported to him even if his daughter kept her word. There was nothing to do but allow ourselves to be led off to bed, hoping that we should be put where we could get out easily, though even if we got out of the house, there would still be the wall and its gate to pass. However, we were at least several miles nearer Herrovosca than we had been at midnight. We must content ourselves with that reflection and get some sleep, since we could not do anything else.
They took us to a room in the ancient tower. It was quite comfortable enough to have been intended as a guest room instead of a prison cell, though it was not large. The walls were a good four feet thick, of solid stone, and we climbed up three flights of stairs to get to it. The view in the very early dawn was magnificent. Rolling hills to the south and west, and to the north and east, higher and yet higher and more jagged rose the mountains, all bathed in the romantic light just before the sun shows itself.
“We really accomplished a big night’s work getting out of that piece of scenery,” John said, “I guess we deserve a rest.”
I dressed his hands again with fresh water and the remaining handkerchiefs. They looked better than I had thought they would. Then we went to bed.
148The staircase by which we had come to our room did not end at our floor, but went on, whether to a roof or another floor I could not see. Outside on the landing a guard settled himself in a chair against our door. A few minutes after we were in bed I heard a low conversation between him and another man, then footsteps went upwards. As I lay quietly, looking out toward the highest mountains, I caught suddenly a flash of distant light from one of the lower peaks. It came and went intermittently, flashing in code, as they had flashed in code from the customs house to the tower we were now in. No doubt they were flashing a message about us, but that wasn’t important. What was important was that the point from which they were being answered was now visible, and must be the stronghold of Fakat Zol. I spent the next hour drawing a careful sketch of the mountain peaks, with an indication of the one from which the signals came, and put the sketch in my shoe under the pass from the Queen. Then I lay down again, feeling like the best of counter-plotters. I wondered what my quiet newspaper friends at home would think of me. They didn’t think they were quiet, but the best they could do for excitement was a night at a speakeasy, or a little poker, with an occasional big murder case to liven the day’s work. And with that comforting thought I went to sleep.
149I dreamed of witches in Salem being crushed by the weight of huge stones on their chests. I was a witch, and the stone struck suddenly, and was followed by a shout from the onlookers, and then by another. I sat up in bed, sneezing, and found that a large piece of plaster had fallen from the ceiling, and struck me on the chest. The dust was so bad I felt choked. I looked up at the place from which it had fallen, and saw a large hole, and in it a man’s face peering down at us. He was not altogether a pleasant looking person, and seemed to be more the night club type than a wily politician who would deserve imprisonment. He had bulgy dark eyes, a curly brown mustache and thick wet lips above a three days’ growth of beard. He was speaking to us in Alarian.
“We don’t speak Alarian,” I said. “Sorry, can’t understand you.”
The man immediately switched to English, “Quick, you hide the plaster,” he ordered, “they will not know, perhaps. Be quick, I tell you, they may come any time.”
150John lay looking up at him, “Oh, all right,” he said. &ldquo............