167The high road where we turned into it was deserted, except for an old donkey cart with a small girl driving. She looked too stupid to be a menace even if she had wished. About three miles farther on we came to a small village. There was nowhere to go but through it, so I drove boldly, if not straight, up the main street. It was not very much like our main streets in America. Here were small thatched-roof houses, many only one story high. The vehicles in the street were propelled by ox, horse, mule and donkey power, most of them had solid squeaking wooden wheels. I felt John move. He sat up.
“How’s your arm?” I asked.
“Feels better, thanks. Aches like the devil, still, but this isn’t so bad. It was the jolting over those ruts that did me up. I’ll last all right now till we get to a doctor in Herrovosca. You go right on driving.”
We left the little village behind us and came suddenly upon a branch road leading to the left. I turned down it unhesitatingly. Anything would be better than to stay on the main road where they were looking for us.
“That’s right,” John agreed. “Safer. I may be the family invalid, but we’ve got to get to Herrovosca.”
168The road was dirt, but smooth enough to make fairly good time, although there was more traffic than I had expected. Then we came into another town, this one much larger than the last. The houses were higher, and closer together. There was still more traffic, and in a moment as we neared the center of the village, the streets became full of standing vehicles. There was, however, almost no person in sight. Those that were still moving were going in the same direction we were. Even children were conspicuously absent. It was with greater and greater difficulty that I found space for the car to move. At last, in sight of the large square that seems to form the center of all Alarian towns, as it does of all New England towns, we came, perforce, to a stop. Four slow-moving vehicles closed in behind us, with still more coming, effectually blocking that way out. Ahead of us a vast crowd mulled, shouting, gesticulating. We were stopped again. I began to feel that Herrovosca was the ultimate and dearly attainable goal of those who had served a proper term in purgatory.
169From somewhere in the distance, standing, apparently, on the fountain in the center of the square, a man was addressing the crowd. A man, as I could see, with a long white beard, and long white hair that reached to his shoulders. He held a staff in his hand, with a crucifix on the top. More vehicles came up behind us, their occupants jumping out, and rushing on to the square. Here, undoubtedly, was news, if we could get someone to interpret it for us, but the first need was for a doctor, since we had to halt, anyway.
John could walk alone, but I helped him out to make sure. We skirted our way around the standing vehicles, and found a crooked alley, empty of people, and at its end, near the square, there was a doctor’s sign. I rang the old-fashioned bell. There was no answer. I rang again, and still again. At last I heard slow feet shuffling a little, and the door was opened grudgingly by an old, deaf woman, who waited for us to speak, scowling, with her hand to her ear. I took refuge in signs, pointing to John’s arm, and repeating the one word, “doctor,” the same in so many languages that I hoped she might understand it. She beckoned us to follow her, and shambled along the passage, grunting as she walked. Presently we heard shouts and the revivalistic sound of the white-beard’s voice, and then we were ushered into a room overlooking the square. There the old woman left us, shutting the door carefully behind her.
170While we waited I looked out of the window. We were not half a city block from the fountain and the man on it. It was a remarkable thing to watch, though we did not know what it was all about. He seemed to be having difficulties with his audience. He was answering questions from all sides at once, and dramatically waving his arms. From our vantage point we could see his face plainly when he turned in our direction. He was younger than his white hair suggested, and rather fine looking in a patriarchal fashion reminiscent of moving picture Bible scenes. His eyes were large and dark, his nose aquiline. Words were audible to us, but we could not understand them. At last a man came into the room, and I turned as I heard him close the door behind me. He seemed excited. I spoke to him in German, and hoped that he believed me when I told him that we had been shot at on the highway, probably by robbers, and my friend must have his wound dressed.
“What is the matter with your hands?” he asked John.
171“I blistered them fixing our car,” John replied innocently, “and a very charming young lady insisted upon bandaging them up in this absurd way.” He reached for a pair of surgical scissors the doctor had laid out, to take the bandages off, but I stopped him. “You are better off that way,” I said, “let them be, for a while. You don’t want to do anything with your hands, anyway, so what is the difference?”
The doctor gave us a suspicious look, but got to work, though he divided his attention somewhat between John and the scene out of the window. Twice, a woman dashed into the room and shouted something at him, at which he grew still more excited.
“I wish you would tell us what this is all about,” I said, “who is the man on the fountain?”
“A mad monk,” he said, “who says he is sent by God to lead the people of Alaria to a holier form of government. He is an old hermit who is said to have worked miracles. He is quite mad but some of the people believe him and there will be trouble here unless something is done.”
“Why not arrest him?” I asked.
172The doctor shook his head. “We would not dare,” he said. “In Alaria the supernatural is always a higher power than any other. But we have one sure savior.”
“Who?” John asked, though I saw he knew the answer.
“Fakat Zol, the Black Ghost,” the doctor said, simply. “If you do not keep quiet I cannot help hurting you. Our hetman has sent a message to him. He will come soon, I hope.”
“Do Alarian ghosts always come when they are sent for?” I asked.
“This is a live ghost,” the doctor answered, winding yards of bandage around John’s arm. “It is fortunate, too, for with a strange impostor in Herrovosca, to be crowned as Queen, and a prophet here, raising a mob, we need something more than police to keep order.”
“But surely,” I said, “if this Princess can establish her identity that will be the end of the trouble?”
173“That has been the beginning of the trouble,” the doctor said, coldly. “No pretender can ever establish his identity to everyone’s satisfaction, nor can one ever be proved a fraud to everyone’s conviction. There will always be some who believe or disbelieve and make trouble. But something will happen. The Black Ghost, or Prince Conrad, who is the rightful king, will find a way to arrange matters.”
“Then,” I asked, “there are two rulers in Alaria now?”
“No,” he answered, “there is only one ruler in Alaria.”
“Conrad?” John asked.
“No, the Black Ghost,” the doctor answered, and laughed.
“And who is the Black Ghost?” I asked, “does anyone know? Is he just a bandit chief, or an Alarian in good standing who plays this part as a side issue?”
174The doctor frowned. “There must be some who know,” he said, “but they do not tell. The great mass of the people believe he is really the old crusader, Fakat Zol. Even many of his followers believe that. If it were not so he would have no power. As it is, if that statue of the Holy Virgin should step down from the front of the church and the Black Ghost said it was a trick of the devil, the people would believe the Black Ghost.” He tied the end of the bandage, and began putting away his instruments.
“Thank you,” John said, “and now we must go back to our car. Alarian politics are not for us, even though a prophet and the ghost of a crusader are about to do battle before our eyes. I’d like to see it so I could tell about it when we’re home again where things like that don’t happen. Still, we started for Herrovosca, and as soon as this meeting breaks up enough to let us through the streets, we must go on. Also, our car will be robbed if we leave it alone.”
“Two Americans going to Herrovosca in a car,” the doctor said ruminatively.
“Yes,” John answered, “thanks for doing my arm—if you’ll let us settle our bill now—”
175The noise in the square was increasing momentarily. The prophet’s voice was no longer audible above the shouts of the townsfolk. Suddenly a stone crashed through a window not far away. We could hear the breaking glass, and then the storm broke. The doctor turned to us, “You had better wait here,” he said, “it won’t be safe for you to go out, even by the back way. Besides, you gentlemen have not yet explained to me this gunshot wound. The only bandits of the mountains are Fakat Zol’s men. They do not fire on harmless travellers. In order that you may remain here quite safely I will lock the door as I go out.” He smiled, not pleasantly, and went out quite suddenly. The key turned in the lock on the other side of the door. I started to intercept him, but since I had been standing by the window and he had been beside the door while he spoke, I was too late. We were prisoners again.
“If,” said John, “we ever get back to a slightly less hospitable country I shall feel lonely and neglected. This sound of keys that turn in locks has grown to be a familiar lullaby.”
“Let’s see what they do to the prophet,” I said, and went back to the window. The sound of keys turning in locks had become so familiar to me that I scarcely paid any attention to it. John, exhausted by his wound and its dressing, stayed on the sofa.
“Funny,” he groaned, “that of all the doctors in Alaria we should have happened to come to this man, who is obviously such a staunch adherent of Conrad’s.”
176“Not funny a bit,” I said, “it would have been a bit of amazing luck if we had happened to find one who wasn’t. Those two women are not exactly popular heroines.”
Outside was the greatest confusion. The prophet was no longer on the fountain. In his place half a dozen men were standing, all speaking at once, but no one paying much attention to them. Every once in a while a stone crashed through a window, or someone screamed. Then, from somewhere to the left, came the sound of a trumpet. “The gendarmes!” I cried. “Listen, John.”
The crowd parted slowly, and into the square rode a small troop of cavalry. We were in a second story window, and I could see uninterruptedly from the moment they entered the square. At their head rode the Black Ghost, on a black horse, his crusader’s cross showing white against his breast. All his men were in black, and rode black horses, and every man in the troop wore a short black mask across the upper part of his face. Only the Black Ghost was entirely covered, even to the hands.
177“Enter the villain of the piece,” I said. “It’s our old friend, Fakat Zol.”
“I guess that lets us out of our week-end in Herrovosca,” John said, “I wonder where he’ll send us now, and what he has done with the Countess Waldek? She thought we’d have her message delivered by now. I wonder who the devil he is, anyway?”
“Devil is right,” I said, “and that door is far too thick to smash without being heard, even supposing there’s no one guarding the other side of it. Too bad. This is our only chance for a getaway. This time they’ll shut us up so we can’t get out.”
“There’s the window,” said John.
“With your wounded arm? You’d never be able to get through that crowd. They’d jostle you and you’d faint again.”
178There was a narrow iron balcony outside the window and it was not so very high above the street. We could have dropped without any special risk, perhaps, if there had not been such a crowd below, and if, on a similar balcony belonging to the next room, the doctor and various members of his household had not been standing. They were shouting and cheering, “Fakat Zol! Fakat Zol! Fakat Zol!”
The black troop rode straight through the square to the fountain. There they paused, and Fakat Zol, scorning the eminence of the masonry beside him, raised one arm straight above his head in the fashion made famous by the Fascisti. It is a dramatic gesture, and he was a dramatic personification of direct action and force to people to whom pageantry is the outward and visible sign of authority. And he was more than that. He was a holy creature, a saint, supernatural, a subject for worship and the hero of an infinite number of legends. Friends and enemies alike were his publicity agents.
“I’d like to know,” I said, “that Helena’s safe, though I’m damned if I think she deserves to be. So far as I can see she’s an out-and-out political meddler.”
179“She probably has the best of intentions,” John answered, “and I don’t like to think of her in trouble, but I quite agree. Still, I think we must try to deliver her message to the Queen, though I’m inclined to wish no one had ever interfered with Conrad. That girl Maria Lalena, or whoever she is, is too young to know what she’s about.”
I agreed, decidedly.
“Pretty girl, too,” said John, thoughtfully. “We mustn’t be too hard on them, though it’s the craziest scheme I ever heard of even if she really is the Princess.”
“Yes,” I said, “I’d like to know who thought of the whole silly plot in the first place, and who persuaded my poor cousin to go into it. Being Queen of a poverty-stricken, unsettled Balkan country isn’t my idea of a proper destiny for a young girl who ought to be going to dances and having a lot of trips to Paris, and all that sort of thing.”
“Queen Yolanda thought of it,” John said, “it fairly reeks of her.”
“Thought of what?” I asked. “Killing her son, or only of importing this girl to take his place?”
180“Oh,” John said. “Suppose Fakat to be responsible for killing Bela, what more natural than that a lady who had been practically the ruler of the country for a number of years should object to relinquishing her place to an old hermit brother-in-law, and want to keep her position as mother of a weak, or at least inexperienced ruler? No doubt it had got to be a habit.”
“Don’t be too sure,” I interposed, “it may quite well be that the girl really is the Princess. If the old lady had wanted her only daughter brought up away from the court, what could be more natural than that she should give her to her only disinterested friend, a woman whom she could trust, and who lived nearby, and yet outside the country?”
“Yes,” John admitted, “not that it is going to make much difference, as I see it. Her fate isn’t going to be determined by her identity, but by Conrad and the Black Ghost. My guess is that they mean to assassinate her as quietly as possible, blame it on someone else, and take the throne.”
I agreed, but said that it wasn’t any of our affair, anyway, but that we must get Helena’s message to the Queen.
“All I wish,” John said, “is that I were sure that that nice Countess Visichich were not mixed up in the assassination part. That I should hate.”
181“Our business at present,” I said, “is to get out of this place before we are returned with thanks to the more careful custody of our black-masked friend. We may be able to save the girl’s life, and save Countess Visichich from even a reflected guilt in her death.”
“Bravo,” said John, “and a splendid chance of escape we’d have hopping on the heads of that mob out there. You might try picking the lock of that door, though.”
“Ever try it?”
“No.”
“Besides, we haven’t anything to pick it with. Have to have something in the way of tools.”
“Oh, for a woman with hairpins.”
“Those days are passed. They all have cropped hair except your favorite Countess Visichich.”
“She’d do nicely. Still, if we were to raise some sort of disturbance—”
“Have to be a good deal of disturbance before it would be heard over this excitement.”
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