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Title: The House of the Four Winds
Author: Buchan, John (1875-1940)
Date of first publication: July 1935
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Hodder and Stoughton, July 1935
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 23 February 2013
Date last updated: 23 February 2013
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1047

This ebook was produced by:
David T. Jones, Mary Meehan, Al Haines
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net






                     THE HOUSE OF THE FOUR WINDS

                           BY JOHN BUCHAN


                     _Casa dei Quattro Venti,
                 fumida prua del Vascello protesa
                         nella tempesta._

                                 D'ANNUNZIO.

    HODDER AND STOUGHTON
    LIMITED LONDON

    FIRST PRINTED JULY 1935


    _Made and Printed in Great Britain._
    _Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ltd., London and Aylesbury._




                               NOTE


The earlier doings of some of the personages in this tale will be found
recorded in _Huntingtower_ and _Castle Gay_.

                                                      J. B.


     _The characters in this book are entirely imaginary and have no
     relation to any living persons_




CONTENTS


                                                       PAGE

          PROLOGUE                                        9

       I. THE MAN WITH THE ELEPHANT                      27

      II. THE HOUSE OF THE FOUR WINDS                    44

     III. DIVERSIONS OF A MARIONETTE                     68

      IV. DIFFICULTIES OF A REVOLUTIONARY                98

       V. SURPRISING ENERGY OF A CONVALESCENT           115

      VI. ARRIVALS AT AN INN                            129

     VII. "SI VIEILLESSE POUVAIT"                       150

    VIII. SPLENDIDE MENDAX                              174

      IX. NIGHT IN THE WOODS                            196

       X. AURUNCULEIA                                   212

      XI. THE BLOOD-RED ROOK                            228

     XII. THE STREET OF THE WHITE PEACOCK               253

    XIII. THE MARCH ON MELINA                           274

          ENVOI                                         313




PROLOGUE


Great events, says the philosophic historian, spring only from great
causes, though the immediate occasion may be small; but I think his law
must have exceptions. Of the not inconsiderable events which I am about
to chronicle, the occasion was trivial, and I find it hard to detect the
majestic agency behind them. What world-force, for example, ordained
that Mr Dickson McCunn should slip into the Tod's Hole in his little
salmon-river on a bleak night in April; and, without changing his
clothes, should thereafter make a tour of inspection of his young lambs?
His action was the proximate cause of this tale, but I can see no
profounder explanation of it than the inherent perversity of man.

The performance had immediate consequences for Mr McCunn. He awoke next
morning with a stiff neck, an aching left shoulder, and a pain in the
small of his back--he who never in his life before had had a touch of
rheumatism. A vigorous rubbing with embrocation failed to relieve him,
and, since he was accustomed to robust health, he found it intolerable
to hobble about with a thing like a toothache in several parts of his
body. Dr Murdoch was sent for from Auchenlochan, and for a fortnight Mr
McCunn had to endure mustard plasters and mustard baths, to swallow
various medicines, and to submit to a rigorous diet. The pains declined,
but he found himself to his disgust in a low state of general health,
easily tired, liable to sudden cramps, and with a poor appetite for his
meals. After three weeks of this condition he lost his temper. Summer
was beginning, and he reflected that, being now sixty-three years of
age, he had only a limited number of summers left to him. His gorge rose
at the thought of dragging his wing through the coming delectable
months--long-lighted June, the hot July noons with the corncrakes busy
in the hay, the days on August hills, red with heather and musical with
bees. He curbed his distaste for medical science, and departed to
Edinburgh to consult a specialist.

That specialist gave him a purifying time. He tested his blood and his
blood pressure, kneaded every part of his frame, and for the better part
of a week kept him under observation. At the end he professed himself
clear in the general but perplexed in the particular.

"You've never been ill in your life?" he said. "Well, that is just your
trouble. You're an uncommonly strong man--heart, lungs, circulation,
digestion, all in first-class order. But it stands to reason that you
must have secreted poisons in your body, and you have never got them
out. The best prescription for a fit old age is a bad illness in middle
life, or, better still, a major operation. It drains off some of the
middle-age humours. Well, you haven't had that luck, so you've been a
powder magazine with some nasty explosives waiting for the spark. Your
tom-fool escapade in the Stinchar provided the spark, and here you
are--a healthy man mysteriously gone sick. You've got to be pretty
careful, Mr McCunn. It depends on how you behave in the next few months
whether you will be able to fish for salmon on your eightieth birthday,
or be doddering round with two sticks and a shawl on your seventieth."

Mr McCunn was scared, penitent and utterly docile. He professed himself
ready for the extremest measures, including the drawing of every tooth
in his head.

The specialist smiled. "I don't recommend anything so drastic. What you
want first of all is an exact diagnosis. I can assess your general
condition, but I can't put my finger on the precise mischief. That needs
a technique which we haven't developed sufficiently in this country.
Next, you must have treatment, but treatment is a comparatively simple
affair if you first get the right diagnosis. So I am going to send you
to Germany."

Mr McCunn wailed. Banishment from his beloved Blaweary was a bitter
pill.

"Yes, to Germany. To quite a pretty place called Rosensee, in Saxon
Switzerland. There's a _kurhaus_ there run by a man called Christoph.
You never heard his name, of course--few people have--but he is a
therapeutic genius of the first order. You can take my word for that.
I've known him again and again pull people out of their graves. His main
subject is nerves, but he is good for everything that is difficult and
mysterious, for in my opinion he is the greatest diagnoser in the
world.... By the way, you live in Carrick? Well, I sent one of your
neighbours to Rosensee last year--Sir Archibald Roylance--he was having
trouble with a damaged leg--and now he walks nearly as well as you and
me. It seems there was a misplaced sinew which everybody else had
overlooked.... Dr Christoph will see you three times a day, stare at
you like an owl, ask you a thousand questions and make no comment for at
least a fortnight. Then he will deliver judgment, and you may take it
that it will be right. After that the treatment is a simple matter. In a
week or two you will be got up in green shorts and a Tyrolese hat and an
alpenstock and a rope round your middle, climbing the little rocks of
those parts.... Yes, I think I can promise you that you'll be fit and
ready for the autumn salmon."

Mr McCunn, trained to know a competent man when he saw him, accepted the
consultant's prescription, and rooms were taken for him at the Rosensee
_kurhaus_. His wife did not accompany him for three reasons: first, she
had a profound distaste for foreign countries and regarded Germany as
still a hostile State; second, she could not believe that rheumatism,
which was an hereditary ailment in her own family, need be taken
seriously, so she felt no real anxiety about his health; third, he
forbade her. She proposed to stay at Blaweary till the end of June, and
then to await her husband's return at a Rothesay hydropathic. So early
in the month Mr McCunn a little disconsolately left these shores. He
took with him as body-servant and companion one Peter Wappit, who at
Blaweary was game-keeper, forester and general handy-man. Peter, having
fought in France with the Scots Fusiliers, and having been two years a
prisoner in Germany, was believed by his master to be an adept at
foreign tongues.

       *       *       *       *       *

Nor was there any profound reason in the nature of things why Lord
Rhynns, a well-preserved gentleman of sixty-seven, should have tumbled
into a ditch that spring at Vallescure and broken his left leg. He was
an active man and a careful, but his mind had been busy with the
Newmarket entries, so that he missed a step, rolled some yards down a
steep slope of rock and bracken, and came to rest with a leg doubled
unpleasantly under him. The limb was well set, but neuritis followed,
with disastrous consequences to the Rhynns _mnage_. For his wife, whose
profession was a gentle invalidism, found herself compelled to see to
household affairs, and as a result was on the verge of a nervous
break-down. The family moved from watering-place to watering-place,
seeking a cure for his lordship's affliction, till at the mountain
village of Unnutz Lady Rhynns could bear it no longer. A telegram was
despatched to their only child requiring her instant attendance upon
distressed parents.

This was a serious blow to Miss Alison Westwater, who had been making
very different plans for the summer. She was then in London, living with
her Aunt Harriet, who two years before had espoused Mr Thomas Carlyle
Craw, the newspaper magnate. It was the Craws' purpose to go north after
Ascot to the Westwater house, Castle Gay, in the Canonry, of which Mr
Craw had a long lease, and Alison, for whom a very little of London
sufficed, had exulted in the prospect. Now she saw before her some
dismal weeks--or months--in an alien land, in the company of a
valetudinarian mother and a presumably irascible father. Her dreams of
Scotland, to which she was passionately attached, of salmon in the
Callowa and trout in the hill lochs and bright days among the heather,
had to be replaced by a dreary vista of baking foreign roads, garish
foreign hotels, tarnished pine-woods, tidy clothes and all the things
which her soul abominated.

There was perhaps more of a cosmic motive in the determination that
summer of the doings of Mr Dougal Crombie and Sir Archibald Roylance,
for in their cases we touch the fringe of high politics. Dougal was now
a force, almost _the_ force, in the Craw Press. The general manager, Mr
Archibald Bamff, was growing old, he had taken to himself a wife, and
his fancy toyed pleasantly with retirement to some country hermitage. So
in the past year Dougal had been gradually taking over his work, and,
since he had the complete confidence of Mr Craw, and the esteem of Mr
Craw's masterful wife, he found himself in his early twenties charged
with much weighty and troublesome business. He was a power behind the
throne, and the more potent because few suspected his presence. Only one
or two people--a Cabinet minister, an occasional financial magnate, a
few highly placed Government officials--realised the authority that was
wielded by this sombre and downright young man. Early in June he set out
on an extensive Continental trip, the avowed purpose of which was to
look into certain paper-making concerns which Mr Craw had acquired after
the war. But his main object was not disclosed, for it was deeply
secret. Mr Craw had long interested himself in the republic of
Evallonia, his sympathies being with those who sought to restore the
ancient monarchy. Now it appeared that the affairs of that country were
approaching a crisis, and it was Dougal's mission to spy out the land.

As for Sir Archibald Roylance, he had been saddled with an honourable
but distasteful duty. He had been the better part of two years in the
House of Commons, and had already made a modest mark. He spoke
infrequently and always on matters which he knew something about--the
air, agriculture, foreign affairs--and his concise and well-informed
speeches were welcomed amid the common verbiage of debate. He had become
parliamentary private secretary to the Under-Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, who had been at school with him. That summer the usual
Disarmament Conference was dragging its slow length along; it became
necessary for Mr Despenser, the Under-Secretary, to go to Geneva, and
Sir Archie was ordered to accompany him. He received the mandate with
little pleasure. The session that summer would end early, and he wanted
to get to Crask, for he had been defrauded of his Easter holiday in the
Highlands. Geneva he believed might last for months, and he detested the
place, which, as Lord Lamancha had once said, was full of the ghosts of
mouldy old jurisconsults, and the living presence of cosmopolitan bores.
But his spirits had improved when he discovered that he might take Janet
with him.

"We'll find a chance of slipping away," he told his wife. "One merit of
these beastly conferences is that they are always adjourning. We'll hop
it into eastern Europe or some other fruity place. Hang it all, now that
I've got the use of both legs, I don't see why we shouldn't climb a
mountain or two. Dick Hannay's yarns have made me rather keen to try
that game."

Certain of these transmigrations played havoc with the plans of Mr John
Galt, of St. Mark's College, Cambridge, who, having just attained a
second class in his Tripos and having so concluded his university
career, felt himself entitled to an adequate holiday. He had intended to
make his headquarters at Blaweary, which was the only home he had ever
known, and thence to invade the Canonry, fishing its lochs and sleeping
in its heather. But Blaweary would presently be shut up in Mr McCunn's
absence, and if Alison Westwater was not at Castle Gay, the Canonry lost
all its charm. Still, he must have some air and exercise. The summer
term had been busy and stuffy, and to a Rugby player there were few
attractions in punts among lilied backwaters. He would probably have to
go alone to the Canonry, but his fancy had begun to toy with another
scheme--a walking-tour in south-eastern France or among the Jura
foothills, where new sights and smells and sounds would relieve his
loneliness. It was characteristic of him that he never thought of
finding a male companion; for the last two years Alison had been for him
the only companion in the world.

On the 13th of June he was still undecided, but that night his thoughts
were narrowed to a happy orbit. For Alison was dining with him before
her journey abroad, and together they were going on to a party which the
Lamanchas were giving to the delegates to an international conference
then in session in London. For one evening at least the world was about
to give him all he desired.

It was a warm night, but the great room at Maurice's was cool with fans
and sunblinds, though every table was occupied. From their corner, at
the foot of the shallow staircase which is the main entrance, they had
an excellent view of the company. There seemed to be a great many
uniforms about, and a dazzling array of orders, no doubt in view of the
Lamancha function. It was easy to talk, for at Maurice's there is no
band till supper-time.

"You shouldn't have brought me here, Jaikie," said Alison. "It's too
extravagant. And you're giving me far too good a dinner."

"It's a celebration," was the answer. "I've done with Cambridge."

"Are you sorry?"

"No. I liked it, for I like most things, but I don't want to linger over
them."

The girl laughed merrily, and a smile slowly crept into Jaikie's face.

"You're quite right," he said. "That was a priggish thing to say, but
it's true, all the same."

"I know. I never met anyone who wasted so little time in regrets. I wish
I were like you, for I want anything I like to go on for ever. Cambridge
must have slipped off you like water off a duck's back. What did you get
out of it?"

"Peace to grow up. I've very nearly grown up now. I have discovered most
of the things I can do and the things I can't. I know the things I like
and the things I don't."

Alison knitted her brows. "That's not much good. So do I. The thing to
find out is, what you can do _best_ and what you like _most_. You told
me a year ago that that was what you were after. Have you decided?"

"No," was the glum answer. "I think I have collected the material, so to
speak, but I haven't sorted it out. I was looking to you to help me this
summer in the Canonry, and now you're bolting to Italy or somewhere."

"Not Italy, my dear. A spot called Unnutz in the Tirol. You're not very
good at geography."

"Mayn't I come too?"

"No, you mayn't. You'd simply loath it. A landscape like a picture
postcard. Tennis and bumble-puppy golf and promenades, all in smart
clothes. Infinite boring evenings when I have to play picquet with Papa
or talk hotel French to Mamma's friends. Besides, my family wouldn't
understand you. You haven't been properly presented to them, and Unnutz
is not the place for that. You wouldn't be at your best there."

Two people passed on the way to their table, a tall young man with a
lean ruddy face, and a pretty young woman, whose hair was nearly as
bright a thing as Alison's. The young woman stopped.

"My dear Allie," she cried, "I haven't seen you for ages. Archie, it's
Cousin Allie. They tell me you're being dragged abroad, the same as us.
What's your penitentiary? Ours is Geneva."

"Mine's a place in the Tirol. Any chance of our meeting?"

"There might be. Archie has a notion of dashing about, for apparently an
international conference is mostly adjournments. He's so spry on his
legs since Dr Christoph took him in hand that he rather fancies himself
as a mountaineer. What's your address?"

The lady scribbled it down in a notebook which she took from her bag,
nodded gaily, and followed her husband and a waiter to their own table.
Alison looked after them.

"That's the nicest couple on earth. She was Janet Raden, a sort of
cousin of mine. Her husband, Archie Roylance ..."

Jaikie interrupted.

"Great Scot! Is that Sir Archibald Roylance? I once knew him pretty
well--for one day. I've told you about the Gorbals Diehards and
Huntingtower. He was the ally we enlisted--lived at a place called the
Mains of Garple. Ask Mr McCunn about him. I've often wondered when I
should see him again, for I felt pretty certain I would--some day. He
hasn't changed much."

"He can't change. Sir Archie is the most imperishable thing God ever
created. He'll be a wild boy till he's ninety. Even with Janet to steady
him I consider him dangerous, especially now that he has no longer a
game leg.... Hullo, Jaikie. We're digging into the past to-night. Look
who's over there."

She nodded towards a very brilliant table where some twenty people were
dining, most of them in uniform. Among them was a fair young man in
ordinary evening dress, without any decorations. He suddenly turned his
face, recognised Alison, and, with a word of apology to the others, left
his seat and came towards her. When she rose and curtsied, Jaikie had a
sudden recollection.

"It is Miss Westwater, is it not?" said the young man, bowing over her
hand. "My adorable preserver! I have not forgotten Prince Charlie and
the Solway sands."

He turned to Jaikie.

"And the Moltke of the campaign, too! What is the name? Wait a minute. I
have it--Jaikie. What fun to see you again! Are you two by any happy
chance espoused?"

"Not yet," said Alison. "What are you doing in England, sir?"

"Holidaying. I cannot think why all the world does not holiday in
England. It is the only really peaceful and pleasant place."

"How true, sir! I have to go abroad to-morrow, and I feel like an
exile."

"Then why do you go?"

"I am summoned by neglected parents. To Unnutz, in the Tirol."

The young man's pleasant face grew suddenly grave.

"Unnutz. Above the Waldersee, in the Firnthal?"

"The same. Do you know it, sir?"

"I know it. I do not think it a very good place for a holiday--not this
summer. But if it becomes unpleasant you can return home, for you
English are always free to travel. But I should be careful in Unnutz, my
dear Miss Westwater, and I should take Mr Jaikie with you as a
protector."

He shook hands and departed smiling, but he left on the two the
impression of an unexpected solemnity.

"What do you suppose is worrying Prince John?" Alison asked.

"The affairs of Evallonia. You remember at Castle Gay we thought the
Republic would blow up any moment and that a month or two would see
Prince John on the throne. That's two years ago and nothing has
happened. Dougal is out there now looking into the situation. He may
ginger them up."

"What makes him so solemn about Unnutz? By all accounts it's the
ordinary gimcrack little foreign watering-place. He talked of it as if
it were a sort of Chicago slum."

"He is a wise man, for he said you should take me with you."

They had reached the stage of coffee and cigarettes, and were now more
free to watch their neighbours. It was a decorous assembly, in
accordance with the tradition of Maurice's, and the only gaiety seemed
to be among the womenkind of Prince John's party. The Prince's own face
was very clear in the light of an overhanging lamp, and both Alison and
Jaikie found themselves watching it--its slight heaviness in repose, its
quick vivacity when interested, the smile which drew half its charm from
a most attractive wrinkling around the eyes.

"It is the face of a prince," said Alison, "but not of a king--at any
rate, not the kind of king that wins a throne. There's no dynamite in
it."

"What sort of face do you give makers of revolutions?" Jaikie asked.

The girl swung round and regarded him steadily.

"Your sort," she said. "You look so meek and good that everybody loves
you. And wise, wise like an old terrier. And yet, in the two years I
have known you, you have filled up your time with the craziest things.
First"--she counted on her fingers--"you went off to Baffin Island to
trade old rifles for walrus ivory."

Jaikie grinned. "I made seventy-three pounds clear: I call that a
success."

"Then you walked from Cambridge to Oxford within a day and a night."

"That was a failure. I was lame for a fortnight and couldn't play in the
Welsh match."

"You went twice as a deck hand on a Grimsby trawler--first to Bear
Island and then to the Whales' Back. I don't know where these places
are, but they sound beastly."

"They were. I was sick most of the time."

"Last and worst, it was only your exams and my prayers that kept you
from trying to circumnavigate Britain in a sailing canoe, when you would
certainly have been drowned. What do you mean by it, Jaikie? It looks as
if you were as neurotic as a Bloomsbury intellectual, though in a
different way. Why this restlessness?"

"I wasn't restless. I did it all quite calmly, on purpose." Into
Jaikie's small face there had come an innocent seriousness.

"You see," he went on, "when I was a small boy I was rather a hardy
citizen. I've told you about that. Then Mr McCunn civilised me, which I
badly needed. But I didn't want it to soften me. We are living in a
roughish world to-day, and it is going to get rougher, and I don't want
to think that there is any experience to which I can't face up. I've
been trying to keep myself tough. You see what I mean, Alison?"

"I see. It's rather like painting the lily, you know. I wish I were
going to the Canonry, for there's a lot of things I want to have out
with you. Promise to keep quiet till I come back."

The Lamanchas' party was so large and crowded that Alison and Jaikie
found it easy to compass solitude. Once out of the current that sucked
through the drawing-rooms towards the supper-room there were quiet nooks
to be discovered in the big house. One such they found in an alcove,
where the upper staircase ascended from the first floor, and where, at a
safe distance, they could watch the procession of guests. Alison pointed
out various celebrities to the interested Jaikie, and a number of
relations with whom she had no desire to have closer contact. But on one
of the latter she condescended to details. He was a very tall man, whose
clothes, even in that well-dressed assembly, were conspicuous for their
elegance. He had a neatly trimmed blond beard, and hair worn a little
longer than the fashion and as wavy as a smart woman's coiffure. They
only saw his profile as he ascended the stairs, and his back as he
disappeared into the main drawing-room.

"There's another cousin of mine," said the girl, "the queerest in all
our queer clan. His name is Randal Glynde, and he has been everything in
his time from cow-puncher to film star, not to mention diplomat, and
various sorts of soldier, and somebody's private secretary. The family
doesn't approve of him, for they never know what he'll do next, but he
was very nice to me when I was a little girl, and I used to have a
tremendous _culte_ for him."

Jaikie was not listening, for he felt very depressed. This was his last
hour with Alison for months, and the light had suddenly gone out of his
landscape. He had never been lonely in his life before he met her,
having at the worst found good company in himself; but now he longed
for a companion, and out of the many millions of the world's inhabitants
there was only one that he wanted.

"I can't go to Scotland," he said. "Blaweary is impossible, and if I
went into the Canonry with you not there I'd howl."

"Poor Jaikie!" Alison laid a hand upon his. "But it's only another bit
of the toughening you're so fond of. I promise to write to you a great
deal, and it won't be long till the autumn. You won't be half as lonely
as I."

"I wish I thought that," said Jaikie, brightening a little. "I like
being alone, but I don't like being lonely. I think I'll go abroad too."

"Why don't you join Mr McCunn?"

"He won't let me. He's doing a cure and is forbidden company."

"Or Dougal?"

"He wouldn't have me either. He thinks he's on some silly kind of secret
service, and he's as mysterious about it as a sick owl. But I might go
for a tramp somewhere. My finances will just run to it."

"Hullo, here's Ran," said Alison. The tall man with the fair beard had
drifted towards them, and was now looking down on the girl. On a closer
view he appeared to be nearer forty than thirty. Jaikie noticed that he
had Alison's piercing blue eyes, with the same dancing light in them.
There and then, being accustomed to rapid judgments, he felt well
disposed towards the tall stranger.

"Alison dear." Mr Glynde put his hand on the girl's head. "I hear that
your father has at last achieved gout."

"No. It's neuritis, which makes him much angrier. He would accept gout
as a family legacy, but he dislikes unexpected visitations. I go out to
him to-morrow."

"Unnutz, isn't it? A dreary little place. I fear you won't enjoy it, my
dear."

"Where have you come from, Ran? We last heard of you in Russia."

"I have been in many places since Russia." Mr Glynde's voice had an odd
quality in it, as if he were gently communing with himself. "After a
time in deep water I come up to breathe, and then go down again."

"You've chosen very smart clothes to breathe in."

"I always try to suit my clothes to my company. It is the only way to be
inconspicuous."

"Have you been writing any more poetry?"

"Not a word in English, but I have written some rather charming things
in medival Latin. I'll send you them. It is the best tongue for a
vagabond."

Alison introduced Jaikie.

"Here's another of your totem, Cousin Ran. You can't corrupt him, for he
is quite as mad as you."

Mr Glynde smiled pleasantly as he shook hands, and Jaikie had an
impression that his eyes were the most intelligent that he had ever
seen, eyes which took in everything, and saw very deep, and had a mind
behind them that did not forget. He felt too that something in his own
face pleased the other, for there was friendliness behind the
inquisition.

"He has just finished Cambridge, and finds himself at a loose end. He is
hesitating between Scotland and a tramp on the Continent. What do you
advise?"

"When you are young these decisions may be fateful things. I have always
trusted to the spin of a coin. I carry with me a Greek stater which has
made most of my decisions for me. What about tossing for it?"

He took from the pocket of his white waistcoat a small gold coin and
handed it to Jaikie.

"It's a lucky coin," he said. "At least it has brought me infinite
amusement. Try it."

Jaikie had a sudden queer feeling that the occasion had become rather
solemn, almost sacramental. "Heads Scotland, tails abroad," he said and
tossed. It fell tails.

"Behold," said Mr Glynde, "your mind is made up for you. You will wander
along in the white dust and drink country wine and doze in the woods,
knowing that the unseen Powers are with you. Where, by the way, did you
think of going? You have no preference? You have been very little
abroad? How fortunate to have all Europe spread out for your choice. But
I should not go too far east, Mr Galt. Keep to the comfortable west if
you want peace. If you go too far east this summer, you may find that
the spin of my little stater has been rather too fateful."

As Jaikie put Alison into a taxi, he observed Mr Glynde leaving the
house on foot with a companion. He had a glimpse of that companion's
face, and saw that it was Prince John of Evallonia.




I THE MAN WITH THE ELEPHANT


The inn at Kremisch, the Stag with the Two Heads, has an upper room so
bowed with age that it leans drunkenly over the village street. It is a
bare place, which must be chilly in winter, for the old casement has
many chinks in it, and the china stove does not look efficient, and the
rough beechen table, marked by many beer mugs, and the seats of
beechwood and hide are scarcely luxurious. But on this summer night to
one who had been tramping all day on roads deep in white dust under a
merciless sun it seemed a haven of ease. Jaikie had eaten an admirable
supper on a corner of the table, a supper of cold ham, an omelet, hot
toasted rye-cakes and a seductive cheese. He had drunk wine tapped from
a barrel and cold as water from a mountain spring, and had concluded
with coffee and cream in a blue cup as large as a basin. Now he could
light his pipe and watch the green dusk deepen behind the onion spire of
the village church.

The milestones in his journey had been the wines. Jaikie was no
connoisseur, and indeed as a rule preferred beer, but the vintage of a
place seemed to give him the place's flavour and wines made a diary of
his pilgrimage. His legs bore him from valley to valley, but he drank
himself from atmosphere to atmosphere. He had begun among strong
burgundies which needed water to make a thirst-quenching drink, and
continued through the thin wines of the hills to the coarse red stuff
of south Germany and a dozen forgotten little local products. In one
upland place he had found a drink like the grey wine of Anjou, in
another a sweet thing like Madeira, and in another a fiery sherry. Each
night at the end of his tramp he concocted a long drink, and he stuck
manfully to the juice of the grape; so, having a delicate palate and a
good memory, he had now behind him a map of his track picked out in
honest liquors.

Each was associated with some vision of sun-drenched landscape. He had
been a month on the tramp, but he seemed to have walked through
continents. As he half dozed at the open window, it was pleasant to let
his fancy run back along the road. It had led him through vineyards grey
at the fringes with dust, through baking beet-fields and drowsy
cornlands and solemn forests; up into wooded hills and flowery meadows,
and once or twice almost into the jaws of the great mountains; through
every kind of human settlement, from hamlets which were only larger
farms to brisk burghs clustered round opulent town-houses or castles as
old as Charlemagne; by every kind of stream--unfordable great rivers,
and milky mountain-torrents, and reedy lowland waters, and clear brooks
slipping through mint and water-cress. He had walked and walked, seeking
to travel and not to arrive, and making no plans except that his face
was always to the sunrise. He was very dimly aware at any moment of his
whereabouts, for his sole map was a sketchy thing out of a Continental
Bradshaw.

But he had walked himself into contentment. At the start he had been
restless and lonely. He wished that he could have brought Woolworth, now
languishing at Blaweary, but he could not condemn that long-suffering
terrier to months of quarantine. He wrote disconsolate letters to Alison
in his vile handwriting, and received from her at various
_postes-restantes_ replies which revealed the dullness of her own life
at Unnutz. She had nothing to write about, and it was never her habit to
spoil good paper with trivial reflections. There was a time at the start
when Jaikie's mind had been filled with exasperating little cares, so
that he turned a blank face to the world he was traversing. His
future--what was he to do now that he was done with Cambridge?
Alison--his need of her grew more desperate every day, but what could he
offer her worthy of her acceptance? Only his small dingy self, he
concluded, with nothing to his credit except a second-class degree, some
repute at Rugby football, and the slenderest of bank balances. It seemed
the most preposterous affair of a moth and a star.

But youth and the sun and wide spaces played their old healing part. He
began to rise whistling from his bed in a pinewood or in a cheap country
inn, with a sense that the earth was very spacious and curious. The
strong aromatic sunlight drugged him into cheerfulness. The humours of
the road were spread before him. He had learned to talk French fairly
well, but his German was scanty; nevertheless, he had the British
soldier's gift of establishing friendship on a meagre linguistic basis,
and he slipped inside the life of sundry little communities. His passion
for new landscapes made every day's march a romance, and, having a love
of the human comedy, he found each night's lodging an entertainment. He
understood that he was looking at things in a new perspective. What had
seemed a dull track between high walls was now expanding into open
country.

Especially he thought happily about Alison. He did not think of her as a
bored young woman with peevish parents in a dull health resort, but as
he knew her in the Canonry, an audacious ally in any venture, staunch as
the hills, kind as a west wind. So far as she was concerned, prudential
thoughts about the future were an insult. She was there waiting for him
as soon as he could climb to her high level. He encountered no delicacy
of scene or weather but he longed to have her beside him to enjoy it. He
treasured up scraps of wayside humour for her amusement, and even some
shy meditations which some day he would confide to her. They did not go
into his letters, which became daily scrappier--but these letters now
concluded with what for Jaikie were almost the messages of a lover.

He was in a calmer mood, too, about himself. Had he been more
worldly-wise he might have reflected that some day he must be a rich
man. Dickson McCunn had no chick nor child nor near relation, and he and
Dougal were virtually his adopted sons. Dougal was already on the road
to wealth and fame, and Dickson would see that Jaikie was well provided
for. But characteristically he never thought of that probability. He had
his own way to make with no man's aid, and he was only waiting to
discover the proper starting-point. But a pleasing lethargy possessed
him. This delectable summer world was not the place for making plans.
So far he was content with what he had done. Dickson had drawn him out
of the depths into the normal light of day, and it had been his business
to accustom his eyes to it. He was aware that, without Cambridge, he
would have always been a little shy and suspicious of the life of a
class into which he had not been born; now he knew it for what it was
worth, and could look at it without prejudice but also without glamour.
"Brother to a beggar, and fellow to a king"--what was Dougal's phrase?
Jaikie was no theorist, but he had a working philosophy, with the notion
at the back of his head that human nature was much the same everywhere,
and that one might dig out of the unlikeliest places surprising virtues.
He considered that he had been lucky enough to have the right kind of
education for the practice of this creed.

But it was no philosopher who sat with his knees hunched on the
window-seat, but a drowsy and rather excited boy. His travels had given
him more than content, for in these last days a faint but delicious
excitement had been creeping into his mind. He was not very certain of
his exact whereabouts on the map, but he knew that he had crossed the
border of the humdrum world and was in a land of enchantments. There was
nothing in the ritual of his days to justify this; his legs like
compasses were measuring out the same number of miles; the environment
was the same, the slow kindly peasants, the wheel of country life, the
same bright mornings and cool evenings, the same plain meals voraciously
eaten, and hard beds in which he fell instantly asleep. He could speak
little of the language, and he did not know one soul within a hundred
miles. He was the humblest of pilgrims, and the lowness of his funds
would presently compel his return. Nevertheless, he was ridiculously
expectant. He laughed at himself, but he could not banish the mood. He
was awaiting something--or something was awaiting him.

The apple-green twilight deepened into emerald, and then into a velvet
darkness, for the moon would rise late, and a haze obscured the stars.
Long ago the last child had been hunted from the street into bed. Long
ago the last villagers had left the seat under the vine trellis where
they had been having their evening sederunt. Long ago the oxen had been
brought into the byres and the goats driven in from the hillside. A
wood-wagon had broken down by the bridge, and the blacksmith had been
hammering at its axle, but his job was finished, and a spark of a lamp
beaconed the derelict cart. Otherwise there was no light in earth or
heaven, and no sound except the far-away drone of a waterfall in the
high woods and an occasional stirring of beasts in byre or stable.
Kremisch was in the deep sleep of those who labour hard, bed early, and
rise with the dawn. Jaikie grew drowsy. He shook out his pipe, drew a
long breath of the cool night air, and rose to take the lamp from the
table and ascend to his bedroom.

Suddenly a voice spoke. It came from the outer air at about the level of
the window. And it asked in German for a match.

Balaam was not more startled by the sudden loquacity of his ass than was
Jaikie by this aerial summons. It shook him out of his sleepiness and
made him nearly drop the lamp. "God bless my soul," he said--his chief
ejaculation, which he had acquired from Mr McCunn.

"He will," said the voice, "if you'll give me a light for my cigarette."

The spirit apparently spoke English, and Jaikie, reassured, held the
lamp to the darkness of the open casement. There was a face there,
suspended in the air, a face with cheeks the colour of a dry beech leaf
and a ragged yellow beard. It was a friendly face, and in the mouth was
an unlit cigarette.

"What are you standing on?" Jaikie asked, for it occurred to him that
this must be a man on stilts. He had heard of these as a custom in
malarial foreign places.

"To be accurate, I am sitting," was the answer. "Sitting on an elephant,
if you must know. An agreeable female whom I call Aurunculeia. Out of
Catullus, you remember. Almost his best poem."

Jaikie lit a match, but the speaker waved it aside. "I think, if you
don't mind," he said, "I'll come in and join you for a minute. One
doesn't often meet an Englishman in these parts, and Aurunculeia has no
vulgar passion for haste. As you have no doubt guessed, she and I are
part of a circus--an integral and vital part--what you might call the
_primum mobile_. But we were detained by a little accident. I was
asleep, and we strayed from the road and did havoc in a field of
marrows, which made some unpleasantness. So our lovely companions have
faded and gone ahead to savour the fleshpots of Tarta, while we follow
at our leisure. You have never ridden on an elephant? If you go slow
enough, believe me it is the very poetry of motion, for you are part, as
it were, of a cosmic process. How does it go? 'Moved round in earth's
diurnal course, With rocks and stones and trees.'"

A word was spoken in a lower tone, there was the sound of the shuffling
of heavy feet, and a man stepped lightly on to the window-sill and
through the casement. His first act was to turn up the wick of the lamp
on the table, and light his cigarette at its funnel.

Jaikie found himself gazing at a figure which might have been the Pied
Piper. It was very tall and very ragged. It wore an old tunic of
horizon-blue from which most of the buttons had gone, a scarlet
cummerbund, and flapping cotton trousers which had once been white. It
had no hat, and besides its clothes, its only other belonging was a long
silver-mounted porcupine quill, which may have been used for the
encouragement of Aurunculeia.

The scarecrow looked at Jaikie and saw something there which amused him,
for he set his arms akimbo and laughed heartily. "How nature creeps up
to art!" he cried. "Had this been an episode in a novel, it would have
been condemned for its manifest improbability. There was an impish
propulsive power about my little gold stater."

He took a small coin from his pocket and regarded it affectionately.
Then he asked a question which brought Jaikie out of his chair. "Have
you any news of Cousin Alison, Mr Galt?"

Slowly, to Jaikie's startled sight, the features of the scarecrow became
the lineaments of the exquisite Mr Randal Glynde. The neat hair was now
shaggy and very dusty, the beard was untrimmed, and every semblance of
respectability had gone from his garments. But the long lean wrists were
the same, the long slim fingers, and the penetrating blue eyes.

Mr Glynde replaced the stater in some corner of his person, and beamed
upon Jaikie. He stretched an arm and grasped the jug of wine of which
Jaikie had drunk about half, took a long pull at it, and set it down
with a wry face.

"Vinegar," he said. "I had forgotten that the Flosgebirge wine sours in
an hour. Do not trouble yourself, Mr Galt, for I have long ago supped.
We were talking about Cousin Alison, for whom I understand you have a
kindness. So have I. So gracious is my memory of her that I have been
reciting verses in her honour in the only tongue in which a goddess
should be hymned.

    _Alison, bella puella candida,_
    _Quae bene superas lac et lilium_
    _Album, quae simul rosam rubidam_
    _Aut expolitum ebur Indicum,_
    _Pande, puella, pande capillulos_
    _Flavos, lucentes ut aurum nitidum._

What puzzles me is whether that is partly my own or wholly John the
Silentiar's. I had been reading John the Silentiar, but the book was
stolen from me, so I cannot verify.... No, I will not sleep here. I must
sleep at Tarta, though it will be broad daylight before I shut my eyes.
Tatius, my manager, is a worthy man, but he is to Meleager my clown as
acid to a raw wound, and without me to calm them they will be presently
rubbing each other's noses in the mud."

"Are you a circus proprietor?" Jaikie asked.

Mr Glynde nodded pleasantly.

"In me you see the sole proprietor of the epochal, the encyclopdic, the
grandiose Cirque Dor of Aristide Lebrun. The epithets are not mine, but
those of the late Aristide, who these three years has been reposing in
full evening dress in the cemetery of Montlry. I purchased the thing
from his widow, stock-in-trade, good-will and all--even the gentle
Aurunculeia. I have travelled with it from the Pyrenees to the
Carpathians and from the Harz to the Apennines. Some day, who knows, I
will widen these limits and go from the Sierra-Nevada to the Urals, and
from the Jotunheim to Parnassus. Geography has always intoxicated me."

"I understand the fun of travelling," said Jaikie, "but isn't a circus
rather heavy baggage to lug after you?"

"Ah, no. You do not realise the power of him who carries with him a
little world of merriment, which can be linked to that substratum of
merriment which is found in every human species. No fumbling for him--he
finds the common touch at once. He must suit himself of course to
various tastes. Clowning in one place, horse-tricks in a second, the
sweet Aurunculeia in a third. The hills have different fancies from the
valleys, and the valleys from the plains. The Cirque Dor is small, but
I flatter myself it is select. We have as fine white barbs as ever came
out of Africa, and Meleager my clown has the common denominator of
comedy at which all Europe can laugh. No women. Too temperamental and
troublesome. My people quarrel in every known tongue, but, being males,
it is summer lightning.... Ah, Mr Galt, I cannot explain to you the
intoxication of shifting camp weekly, not from town to town, but from
one little human cosmos to another. I have the key which unlocks all
doors, and can steal into the world at the back of men's minds, about
which they do not speak to their politicians and scarcely even to their
priests.

"I have power, too," Mr Glynde went on; "for I appeal to something old
and deep in man's nature. Before this I have wrecked a promising
insurrection through the superior charm of my circus over an meute in a
market-place. I have protected mayors and burgomasters from broken
heads, and maybe from cut throats, by my mild distractions. And I have
learned many things that are hidden from diplomats and eager
journalists. I, the entertainer, the _fils de joie_, I am becoming an
expert, if I may say so modestly, on the public opinion of Europe--or
rather on that incoherent soul which is greater than opinion."

"Well, and what do you make of it?" Jaikie asked. He was fascinated by
his visitor, the more so as he was a link with Alison, but sleep was
descending upon him like an armed man, and he asked the conventional
question without any great desire to hear the answer.

"Bad," said Mr Glynde. "Or, since a moral judgment is unnecessary, shall
I say odd? We are now in the midst of the retarded liquidation of the
war. I do not mean debts and currencies and economic fabrics, but
something much more vital--the thoughts of men. The democracies have
lost confidence. So long as they believed in themselves they could make
shift with constitutions and parliaments and dull republics. But once
let them lose confidence, and they are like children in the dark,
reaching out for the grasp of a strong hand. That way lies the dictator.
It might be the monarch if we bred the right kind of king.... Also there
is something more dangerous still, a stirring of youth, disappointed,
aggrieved youth, which has never known the discipline of war.
Imaginative and incalculable youth, which clamours for the moon and may
not be content till it has damaged most of the street lamps.

"But you nod," said Mr Glynde rising. "I weary you. You must to bed and
I to Tarta. I must not presume upon the celestial patience of
Aurunculeia."

Jaikie rose too and found the tall man's hand on his shoulder. He
observed sleepily that his visitor's face, now clear in the lamplight,
had changed, the smile had gone from it, and the eyes were cool and
rather grave. Also the slight artifice of his speech, which recalled an
affected Cambridge don of his acquaintance, was suddenly dropped.

"I gave you certain advice," said Mr Glynde, "when you spun my stater in
London. I told you that if you wanted peace you should stick to the
west. You are pretty far east, Mr Galt, so I assume that a quiet life is
not your first object. You have been walking blindly and happily for
weeks waiting for what the days brought forth. Have you any very clear
notion where you have got to?"

"I'm rather vague, for I have a rotten map. But I know that I've come to
the end of my money. To-morrow I must turn about and make for home. I
mean to get to Munich and travel back by the cheapest way."

"Three and a quarter miles from Kremisch the road to Tarta drops into a
defile among pine-trees. At the top there are two block-houses, one on
each side of the highway. If you walked that way armed guards would
emerge from the huts and demand your passport. Also they would make an
inquisition into your baggage more peremptory than most
customs-officers. That is the frontier of Evallonia."

Jaikie's sleepiness left him. "Evallonia!" he cried. "I had no notion I
was so near it."

"You have read of Evallonia in the English press?"

"Yes, and I have heard a lot about it. I've met Evallonians too--all
sorts." He counted on his fingers. "Nine--ten, including Prince John."

"Prince John! Ah, you saw him at Lady Lamancha's party."

"I saw him two years before that in Scotland, and had a good deal to do
with him. With the others, too. I can tell you who they were, for I'm
not likely to forget them. There were six Republicans--Mastrovin,
Dedekind, Rosenbaum, Ricci, Calaman, and one whose name I never knew--a
round-faced fellow in spectacles. There were three Monarchists--Count
Casimir Muresco, Doctor Jagon and Prince Odalchini."

The tall man carefully closed the window, and sat down again. When he
spoke it was in a low voice.

"You know some very celebrated people. I think I can place you, Mr Galt.
You are called Jaikie, are you not, by your friends? Two years ago you
performed a very notable exploit, which resulted in the saving of
several honest men and the confounding of some who were not so honest.
That story is famous in certain circles. I have laughed over it often,
not dreaming that one day I should meet the hero."

Jaikie shifted nervously, for praise made him unhappy. "Oh, I didn't do
anything much. It was principally Alison. But what has gone wrong with
Evallonia? I've been expecting ever since to hear that the Monarchists
had kicked out Mastrovin and his lot, but the whole thing seems to have
fizzled."

Mr Glynde was regarding him with steady eyes, which even in the dim
light seemed very bright.

"It has not fizzled, but Evallonia at this moment is in a critical
state. It is no place for a quiet life, but then I do not think that is
what you like.... Mr Galt, will you forgive me if I ask you a personal
question? Have you any duty which requires your immediate return home?"

"None. But I've finished my money. I have just about enough to get me
back."

"Money is nothing--that can be arranged. I would ask another question.
Have you any strong interest in Evallonian affairs?"

"No. But some of my friends have--Mr Craw, the newspaper man, for
example, and Dougal Crombie, his chief manager."

Mr Glynde brooded. "You know Mr Craw and Mr Crombie? Of course you
would. But you have no prepossession in the matter? Except an
inclination to back your friends' view?"

"Yes. I thought Prince John a decent fellow, and I liked the queer old
Monarchist chaps. Also I greatly disliked Mastrovin and his crowd. They
tried to bully me."

The other smiled. "That I am sure was a bad blunder on their part." He
was silent for a minute, and then he laid a hand on Jaikie's knee. "Mr
Galt," he said solemnly, "if you continued your walking-tour to-morrow
eastward down the wooded glen, and passed the frontier--I presume your
passport is in order?--you would enter a strange country. How strange I
have no time to tell you, but I will say this--it is at the crisis of
its destiny and any hour may see a triumph or a tragedy. I believe that
you might be of some use in averting tragedy. You are a young man, and,
I fancy, not indisposed to adventure. If you go home you will be out of
danger in that happy cosseted world of England. If you go on, you will
certainly find danger, but you may also find wonderful things for which
danger is a cheap price. How do you feel about it?"

Jaikie felt many things. Now he knew why all day he had had that curious
sense of expectation. There was a queer little flutter at his heart.

"I don't know," he said. "It's all rather sudden. I should want to hear
more about it."

"You shall. You shall hear everything before you take any step which is
irrevocable. If you will make one day's march into Evallonia, I will
arrange that the whole situation is put honestly before you.... But no!
I have a conscience. I can foretell what you will decide, and I have no
right even to bring you within the possibility of that decision, for it
will mean danger--it may even mean death. You are too young to gamble
with."

"I think," said Jaikie, "I should like to put my nose inside Evallonia
just to say I'd been there. You say I can come back if I don't like it.
Where's that little coin of yours? It sent me out here, and it may as
well decide what I do next."

"Sportsman," said Mr Glynde. He produced the stater and handed it to
Jaikie, who spun it--"Heads go on, tails go home." But owing to the dim
light, or perhaps to sleepy eyes, he missed his catch, and the coin
rolled on the floor. He took the lamp to look for it, and behold it was
wedged upright in a crack in the board--neither heads nor tails.

Mr Glynde laughed merrily. "Apparently the immortal Gods will have no
part in this affair. I don't blame them, for Evallonia is a nasty
handful. The omens on the whole point to home. Good night, Mr Galt. We
shall no doubt meet in England."

"I'll sleep on it," said Jaikie. "If I decide to go on a little farther,
what do I do?"

"You will reach Tarta by midday, and just beyond the bridge you will see
a gipsy-looking fellow, short but very square, with whiskers and
earrings and a white hat with 'Cirque Dor' embroidered on it in
scarlet. That is Luigi, my chief fiddler. You will ask him the way to
the Cirque, and he will reply in French, which I think you understand,
that he knows a better restaurant. After that you will be in his charge.
Only I beg of you to keep your mind unbiased by what I have said, and
let sleep give you your decision. Like Cromwell I am a believer in
Providences, and since that wretched stater won't play the game, you
must wait for some other celestial guidance."

He opened the casement, spoke a word in an unknown tongue, and a heavy
body stirred in the dust below. Then he stepped lightly into the velvet
darkness, and there followed a heaving and shuffling which presently
died away. When a minute later the moon topped the hill, the little
street was an empty silver alley.




II THE HOUSE OF THE FOUR WINDS


The night brought no inspiration to Jaikie, for his head was no sooner
on his chaff-filled pillow than he seemed to be awake in broad daylight.
But the morning decided him. There had been an early shower, the dust
was laid in the streets, and every cobble of the side-walk glistened.
From the hills blew a light wind, bearing a rooty fragrance of pine and
moss and bracken. A delicious smell of hot coffee and new bread ascended
from below; cats were taking their early airing; the vintner opposite,
who had a face like a sun, was having a slow argument with the
shoemaker; a pretty girl with a basket on her arm was making eyes at a
young forester in velveteen breeches and buckskin leggings; a promising
dog-fight was in progress near the bridge, watched by several excited
boys; the sky above had the soft haze which promises a broiling day.

Jaikie felt hungry both for food and enterprise. The morning's freshness
was like a draught of spring water, and every sense was quick and
perceptive. He craned his head out of the window, and looked back along
the way he had come the night before. It showed a dull straight vista
between trees. He looked eastward, and there, beyond the end of the
village, the world dropped away, and he was looking at the blue heavens
and a most appetising crook in the road, which seemed to hesitate, like
a timid swimmer, before plunging downwards. There could be no question
about it. On this divinest of mornings he refused dully to retrace his
steps. He would descend for one day into Evallonia.

He breakfasted on fried eggs and brook trout, paid a diminutive bill,
buckled on his knapsack, and before ten o'clock had left Kremisch behind
him. The road was all that it had promised. It wound through an upland
meadow with a strong blue-grey stream to keep it company, and every now
and then afforded delectable glimpses of remote and shining plains. The
hills shouldered it friendlily, hills with wide green rides among the
firs and sometimes a bald nose of granite. Jaikie had started out with
his mind chiefly on Randal Glynde, that suddenly-discovered link with
Alison. Evallonia and its affairs did not interest him, or Mr Glynde's
mysterious summons to adventure. His meditations during recent weeks had
been so much on his own land and the opportunities which it might offer
to a deserving young man that he was not greatly concerned with the
doings of foreigners, even though some of them were his acquaintances.
But he was strongly interested in Mr Glynde. He had never met anybody
quite like him, so cheerful and secure in his absurdities. The meeting
with him had rolled from Jaikie's back many of the cares of life. The
solemnity with which he had proposed a visit to Evallonia seemed in the
retrospect to be out of the picture and therefore negligible. Mr Glynde
was an apostle of fantasy and his seriousness was itself a comedy. The
memory of him harmonised perfectly with this morning world, which with
every hundred yards was unveiling a new pageant of delight.

Presently he forgot even Mr Glynde in the drama of the roadside. There
was a pool in the stream, ultramarine over silver sand, with a very big
trout in it--not less than three pounds in weight. There was a bird
which looked like a dipper, but was not a dipper. There was a hawk in
the sky, a long-winged falcon of a kind he had never seen before. And on
a boulder was perched--rarity of rarities--an unmistakable black
redstart.... And then the glen seemed to lurch forward and become a
defile, down which the stream dropped in a necklace of white cascades.
At the edge was a group of low buildings, and out of them came two men
carrying rifles.

Jaikie looked with respect at the first Evallonians he had seen on their
native heath. They were small men with a great breadth of shoulder, and
broad good-humoured countenances--a typical compound, he thought, of
Slav and Teuton. But their manner belied their faces, for they were
almost truculent, as if they had been soured by heavy and unwelcome
duties. They examined everything in his pack and his pockets, they
studied his passport with profound suspicion, and they interrogated him
closely in German, which he followed with difficulty. Several times they
withdrew to consult together; once they retired into the block-house,
apparently to look up some book of regulations. It was the better part
of an hour before they allowed him to pass. Then something ingenuous in
Jaikie's face made them repent of their doubts. They grimaced and shook
hands with him, and shouted _Grss Gott_ till he had turned a corner.

"Evallonia is a nervous country," thought Jaikie. "Lucky I had nothing
contraband on me, or I should be bankrupt."

After that the defile opened into a horseshoe valley, with a few miles
ahead the spires of a little town. He saw the loop of a river, of which
the stream he had followed must be a tributary. On the north side was
something which he took for a hill, but which closer inspection revealed
to be a dwelling. It stood high and menacing, with the town huddled up
to it, built of some dark stone which borrowed no colour from the bright
morning. On three sides it seemed to be bounded by an immense park, for
he saw great spaces of turf and woodland which contrasted with the
chessboard tillage of other parts of the plain.

A peasant was carrying hay from a roadside meadow. Jaikie pointed to the
place and asked its name.

The man nodded. "Yes, Tarta."

"And the castle?"

At first the man puzzled; then he smiled. He pronounced a string of
uncouth vocables. Then in halting German: "It is the great Schloss. I
have given you its name. It means the House of the Four Winds."

As Jaikie drew nearer the town he saw the reason why it was so called.
Tarta stood in the mouth of a horseshoe and three glens debouched upon
it, his own from the west and two other sword-cuts from the north and
south. It was clear that the castle must be a very temple of Aeolus.
From three points of the compass the winds would whistle down the
mountain gullies, and on the east there was no shelter from the
devilments bred in the Asian steppes.

Before noon he was close to the confines of the little town. His stream
had ceased to be a mountain torrent, and had expanded into broad
lagoons, and just ahead was its junction with the river. Over the latter
there was a high-backed bridge flanked by guard-houses, and beyond a
jumble of masonry which promised narrow old-world streets. The castle,
seen at closer range, was more impressive than ever. It hung over the
town like a thundercloud, but a thundercloud from which the lightnings
had fled, for it had a sad air of desolation. No flag flew from its
turrets, no smoke issued from its many chimneys, the few windows in the
great black sides which rose above the streets were like blind eyes. Yet
its lifelessness made a strong appeal to Jaikie's fancy. This bustling
little burgh under the shadow of a medival relic was like a living
thing tied to a corpse. But was it really a corpse? He guessed at its
vast bulk stretching northward into its wild park. It might have turned
a cold shoulder on Tarta and yet within its secret demesne be furiously
alive. Meantime it belied its name, for not a breath of wind stirred in
the sultry noon. Somewhere beyond the bridge must be Luigi, the chief
fiddler of the Cirque Dor. He hoped that Luigi would take him where he
could get a long drink.

He was to get the drink, but not from Luigi's hands. On the side of the
bridge farthest from the town the road passed through a piece of rough
parkland, perhaps the common pasturage of the medival township. Here a
considerable crowd had gathered, and Jaikie pressed forward to discover
the reason of it. Down the road from Tarta a company of young men was
marching, with the obvious intention of making camp in the park; indeed,
certain forerunners had already set up a grove of little shelter-tents.
They were remarkable young men, for they carried themselves with
disciplined shoulders, and yet with the free swing from the hips of the
mountaineer. Few of them were tall, but their leanness gave the
impression of a good average height, and they certainly looked amazingly
hard and fit. Jaikie, accustomed to judge physique on the Rugby field,
was impressed by their light-foot walk and their easy carriage. They
were not in the least like the Wandervgel whom he had met on many
German roads, comfortable sunburnt folk out for a holiday. These lads
were in serious training, and they had some purpose other than
amusement.

As they passed, the men in the crowd saluted by raising the left hand
and the women waved their handkerchiefs. In the rear rode a young man, a
splendid figure on a well-bred flea-bitten roan. The rank-and-file wore
shorts and green shirts open at the neck, but the horseman had breeches
and boots and a belted green tunic, while a long hunting-knife swung at
his middle. He was a tall fellow with thick fair hair, a square face and
dark eyebrows--a face with which Jaikie was familiar in very different
surroundings.

Jaikie, in the front row of the crowd, was so overcome with amazement
that his left hand remained unraised and he could only stare. The
horseman caught sight of him, and he too registered surprise, from
which he instantly recovered. He spoke a word to the ranks; a man fell
out, and beckoned Jaikie to follow. The other spectators fell back from
him as from a leper, and he and his warder followed the horse's tail
into the open space, where the rest were drawing up in front of the
tents.

Then the horseman turned to him.

"Salute," he said.

Jaikie's arm shot up obediently.

The leader cast an eye over the ranks, and bade them stand easy and then
fall out. He dismounted, flinging his bridle to an orderly. "Follow me,"
he said to Jaikie in English, and led him to a spot on the river-bank,
where a larger tent had been set up. Two lads were busy there with kit
and these he dismissed. Then he turned to Jaikie with a broad grin.
"What on earth are you doing here?" he asked.

"Give me a drink first, Ashie," was the answer.

The young man dived into the tent and produced a bottle of white wine, a
bottle of a local mineral water, and two tumblers. The two clinked
glasses. Then he gave Jaikie a cigarette. "Now," he said, "what's your
story?"

"I have been across half Europe," said Jaikie. "I must have tramped
about five hundred miles. My money's done, and I go home to-morrow, but
I thought I'd have a look inside Evallonia first. But what are _you_
doing, Ashie? Is it Boy Scouts or a revolution?"

The other smiled and did not at once reply. That was a mannerism which
the University of Cambridge had taught him, for when Count Paul Jovian
(he had half a dozen other Christian names which we may neglect) entered
St. Mark's he had been too loquacious. He and a cousin had shared
lodgings, and at first they were not popular. They had an unpleasant
trick of being easily insulted, talking about duels, and consequently
getting their ears boxed. When they migrated within the College walls,
the dislike of the cousin had endured, but Count Paul began to make
friends. Finally came a night when the cousin's trousers were removed
and used to decorate the roof, as public evidence of dislike, while Paul
was unmolested. That occasion gave him his nickname, for he was
christened Asher by a piously brought-up contemporary, the tribe of
Asher having, according to the Book of Judges, "abode in its breaches."
"Ashie" he had remained from that day.

Jaikie had begun by disliking him, he was so noisy and strange and
flamboyant. But Count Paul had a remarkable gift of adapting himself to
novel conditions. Presently his exuberance quieted down, he became more
sparing in speech, he developed a sense of humour and laboured to
acquire the idiom of their little society. In his second year he was
indistinguishable from the ordinary English undergraduate. He had a
pretty turn of speed, but it was found impossible to teach him the Rugby
game; at boxing too he was a complete duffer; but he was a brilliant
fencer, and he knew all that was to be known about a horse. Indeed, it
was in connection with horses that Jaikie first came to like him. A
groom from a livery stable lost his temper with a hireling, who was
badly bitted and in a fractious temper. The Count's treatment of the
case rejoiced Jaikie's heart. He shot the man into the gutter, eased the
bit, and quieted the animal with a curious affectionate gentleness.
After that the two became friends, in spite of the fact that the Count's
taste for horses and hunting took him into a rather different set. They
played together in a cricket eleven of novices called the "Cads of all
Nations," who for a week of one long vacation toured the Midlands, and
were soundly beaten by every village team.

There was a tough hardihood about the man which made Jaikie invite him
more than once to be his companion in some of his more risky
enterprises--invitations regretfully refused, for some business always
took Ashie home. That home Jaikie knew to be in Eastern Europe, but he
had not associated him with Evallonia. There was also an extreme
innocence. He wanted to learn everything about England, and took Jaikie
as his mentor, believing that in him he had found the greatest common
measure of the British people. Whether he learned much may be doubted,
for Jaikie was too little of a dogmatist to be a good instructor. But
they slipped into a close friendship, and rubbed the corners off each
other's minds.

"I know what I'm doing," said Ashie at last; "but I am not quite sure
where it will finish. But that's a long story. You're a little devil,
Jaikie, to come here at the tag-end of your holiday. If you had come a
month ago we might have had all sorts of fun."

He had relapsed into the manner of the undergraduate, but there was
something in him now which made it a little absurd. For the figure
opposite Jaikie was not the agreeable and irresponsible companion he had
known. Ashie looked desperately foreign, without a hint of Cambridge
and England; bigger too, more mature, and rather formidable. The thick
dark eyebrows in combination with the fair hair had hitherto given his
appearance a touch of comedy; now the same brows bent above the grey
eyes had something in them martial and commanding. Rob Roy was more of a
man on his native heath than on the causeways of Glasgow.

"If you can arrange to stay here for a little," said Ashie, "I promise
to show you life."

"Thank you very much, but I can't. I must be off home to-morrow--a
week's tramping, and then the train."

"Give me three weeks."

"I'm sorry, but I can't." Jaikie found it hard to sort out his feelings,
but he was clear that he did not want to dally in Evallonia.

Ashie's voice became almost magisterial.

"What are you doing here to-day?" he asked.

"I'm lunching with a friend and going back to Kremisch in the evening."

"Who's your friend?"

"I'm not quite sure of his name." Jaikie's caution told him that Mr
Glynde might have many _aliases_. "He's in a circus."

Ashie laughed--almost in the old light-hearted way. "Just the kind of
friend you'd have. The Cirque Dor? I saw some of the mountebanks in the
streets.... You won't accept my invitation? I can promise you the most
stirring time in your life."

"I wish I could, but--well, it's no use, I can't."

"Then we must part, for I have a lot to do."

"You haven't told me what you're doing."

"No. Some day I will--in England, if I ever come back to England."

He called one of his scouts, to whom he said something in a strange
tongue. The latter saluted and waited for Jaikie to follow him. Ashie
gave him a perfunctory handshake--"Good-bye. Good luck to you"; and
entered his tent.

The boy led Jaikie beyond the encampment, and, with a salute and a long
stare, left him at the entrance to the bridge. A clock on a steeple told
him that it was a quarter-past twelve, pretty much the time that Mr
Glynde had appointed. The bridge was almost empty, for the sight-seers
who had followed Ashie's outfit had trickled back to their midday meals.
Jaikie spent a few minutes looking over the parapet at the broad waters
of the river. This must be the Rave, the famous stream which sixty miles
on flowed through the capital city of Melina. He watched its strong
current sweep past the walls of the great Schloss, which there dropped
sheer into it, before in a wide circuit it formed the western boundary
of the castle park. What an impregnable fortress, he thought, must have
been this House of the Four Winds in the days before artillery, and how
it must have lorded it over the little burgh under its skirts!

There was a gatehouse on the Tarta side of the bridge, an ancient
crumbling thing bright with advertisements of the Cirque Dor. Beyond it
a narrow street wound under the blank wall of the castle, ending in a
square in which the chief building was a baroque town-house. From where
Jaikie stood this town-house had an odd apologetic air, a squat thing
dwarfed by the Schloss, like a dachshund beside a mastiff. The day was
very warm, and he crossed over from the glare of one side of the street
to the shadow of the other. The place was almost empty, most of the
citizens being doubtless engaged with food behind shuttered windows.
Jaikie was getting hungry, and so far he had looked in vain for Mr
Glynde's Luigi. But as he moved towards the central square a man came
out of an entry, and, stopping suddenly to light a cigarette, almost
collided with him. Jaikie saw a white cap and scarlet lettering, and had
a glimpse of gold earrings and a hairy face. He remembered his
instructions.

"Can you show me the way to the Cirque Dor?" he asked.

The man grinned. "I will lead you to a better restaurant," he said in
French with a villainous accent. He held out his hand and shook Jaikie's
warmly, as if he had found a long-lost friend. Then he gripped him by
the arm and poured forth a torrent of not very intelligible praise of
the excellence of the cuisine to which he was guiding him.

Jaikie found himself hustled up the street and pulled inside a little
dark shop, which appeared to be a combination of a bird-fancier's and a
greengrocer's. There was nobody there, so they passed through it into a
court strewn with decaying vegetables and through a rickety door into a
lane, also deserted. After that they seemed to thread mazes of mean
streets at a pace which made the sweat break on Jaikie's forehead, till
they found themselves at the other end of the town, where it ebbed away
into shacks and market-gardens.

"I am very hungry," said Jaikie, who saw his hopes of luncheon
disappearing.

"The Signor must have patience," was the answer. "He has still a little
journey before him, but at the end of it he will have honest food."

Luigi was an adept at under-statement. He seemed to wish to escape
notice, which was easy at this stagnant hour of the day. Whenever anyone
appeared he became still as a graven image, with an arresting hand on
Jaikie's arm. They chose such cover as was available, and any track they
met they crossed circumspectly. The market-gardens gave place to
vineyards, which were not easy to thread, and then to wide fields of
ripe barley, hot as the Sahara. Jaikie was in good training, but this
circus-man Luigi, though he looked plump and soft, was also in no way
distressed, never slackening pace and never panting. By and by they
entered a wood of saplings which gave them a slender shade. At the far
end of it was a tall palisade of chestnut stakes, lichened and silvery
with age. "Up with you," said Luigi, and gave Jaikie a back which
enabled him to grasp the top and swing himself over. To his annoyance
the Italian followed him unaided, supple as a monkey.

"Rest and smoke," he said. "There is now no reason for hurry except the
emptiness of your stomach."

They rested for ten minutes. Behind them was the palisade they had
crossed, and in front of them glades of turf, and wildernesses of fern
and undergrowth, and groves of tall trees. It was like the New Forest,
only on a bigger scale.

"It is a noble place," said Luigi, waving his cigarette. "From here it
is seven miles to Zutpha, where is a railway. Tarta in old days was
only, so to say, the farmyard behind the castle. From Zutpha the guests
of the princes of this house were driven in great coaches with
outriders. Now there are few guests, and instead of a coach-and-eight a
Ford car. It is the way of the world."

When they resumed their journey it was at an easier pace. They bore to
their left, and presently came in view of what had once been a formal
garden on a grandiose scale. Runnels had been led from the river, and
there was a multitude of stone bridges and classic statuary and rococo
summer-houses. Now the statues were blotched with age, the bridges were
crumbling, and the streams were matted beds of rushes. Beyond, rising
from a flight of terraces, could be seen the huge northern faade of the
castle, as blank as the side it showed to Tarta. It had been altered and
faced with a white stone a century ago, but the comparative modernity of
this part made its desolation more conspicuous than that of the older
Gothic wings. What should have been gay with flowers and sun-blinds
stood up in the sunlight as grim as a deserted factory; and that,
thought Jaikie, is grimmer than any other kind of ruin.

Luigi did not take him up the flights of empty terraces. Beyond the
formal garden he turned along a weedy path which flanked a little lake.
On one side was the cyclopean masonry of the terrace wall, and, where it
bent at an angle, cloaked by a vast magnolia, they came suddenly upon a
little paved court shaded by a trellis. It was cool, and it was heavily
scented, for on one side was a thicket of lemon verbena. A table had
been set for luncheon, and at it sat two men, waited on by a footman in
knee breeches and a faded old coat of blue and silver.

"You are not five minutes behind time," said the elder of the two.
"Anton," he addressed the servant, "take the other gentleman indoors and
see to his refreshment." ... To Jaikie he held out his hand. "We have
met before, Mr Galt. I have the honour to welcome you to my poor house.
Mr Glynde I think you already know."

"You expected me?" Jaikie asked in some surprise.

"I was pretty certain you would come," said Mr Glynde.

Jaikie saw before him that Prince Odalchini whom two years ago he had
known as one of the tenants of the Canonry shooting of Knockraw. The
Prince's hair was a little greyer, his well-bred face a little thinner,
and his eyes a little darker round the rims. But in the last burned the
same fire of a gentle fanaticism. He was exquisitely dressed in a suit
of white linen with a tailed coat, and shirt and collar of
turquoise-blue silk--blue and white being the Odalchini liveries. Mr
Randal Glynde had shed the fantastic garments of the previous night, but
he had not returned to the modishness of his English clothes; he wore an
ill-cut suit of some thin grey stuff that made him look like a
_commis-voyageur_ in a smallish way of business, and to this part he had
arranged his hair and beard to conform. To his outfit a Guards tie gave
a touch of startling colour.

"We will not talk till we have eaten," said the Prince. "Mr Galt must
have picked up an appetite between here and Kremisch."

Jaikie had one of the most satisfying meals of his career. There was an
omelet, a dish of trout, and such peaches as he had never tasted before.
He had acquired a fresh thirst during his journey with Luigi, and this
was assuaged by a white wine which seemed to be itself scented with
lemon verbena, a wine in slim bottles beaded with the dew of the
ice-cellar. He was given a cup of coffee made by the Prince's own hands,
and a long fat cigarette of a brand which the Prince had specially made
for him in Cairo.

"Luigi spoke the truth," said Mr Glynde smiling, "when he said that he
would conduct you to a better restaurant."

The footman withdrew and silence fell. Bees wandered among the
heliotrope and verbena and pots of sapphire agapanthus, and even that
shady place felt the hot breath of the summer noon. Sleep would
undoubtedly have overtaken Jaikie and Mr Glynde, but for the vigour of
Prince Odalchini, who seemed, like a salamander, to draw life and
sustenance from the heat. His high-pitched, rather emotional voice kept
his auditors wakeful. "I will explain to you," he told Jaikie, "what you
cannot know or have only heard in a perversion. I take up the history of
Evallonia after Prince John sailed from your Scotch loch."

He took a long time over his exposition, and as he went on Jaikie found
his interest slowly awakening. The cup of the abominations of the
Republican Government had apparently long ago been filled. Evallonia was
ready to spew them out, but unfortunately the Monarchists were not quite
ready to take their place. This time it was not trouble with other
Powers or with the League of Nations. Revolutions had become so much
the fashion in Europe that they were taken as inevitable, whether their
purpose was republic, monarchy, or dictatorship. The world was too weary
to argue about the merits of constitutional types, and the nations were
too cumbered with perplexed economics to have any desire to meddle in
the domestic affairs of their neighbours. Aforetime the Monarchists had
feared the intervention of the Powers or some finding of the League, and
therefore they had sought the mediation of British opinion. Now their
troubles were of a wholly different kind.

Prince Odalchini explained. Communism was for the moment a dead cause in
Evallonia, and Mastrovin and his friends had as much chance of founding
a Soviet republic as of plucking down the moon. Mastrovin indeed dared
not show himself in public, and the present administration of his
friends staggered along, corrupt, incompetent, deeply unpopular. It
would collapse at the slightest pressure. But after that?

"Everywhere in the world," said the Prince, "there is now an uprising of
youth. It does not know what it seeks. It did not know the hardships of
war. But it demands of life some hope and horizon, and it is determined
to have the ordering of things in its hands. It is conscious of its
ignorance and lack of discipline, so it seeks to inform and discipline
itself, and therein lies its danger."

"Ricci," he went on. "You remember him in the Canonry?--a youngish man
like a horse-dealer. At that time he was a close ally of the Republican
Government, but eighteen months ago he became estranged from it--he and
Count Jovian, who was not with the others in Scotland. Well, Ricci had
an American wife of enormous wealth, and with the aid of her money he
set out to stir up our youth. He had an ally in the Jovian I have
mentioned, who was a futile vain man, like your Justice Shallow in
Shakespeare, easily flattered and but little respected, but with a quick
brain for intrigue. These two laid the foundations of a body called
Juventus, which is now the strongest thing in Evallonia. They themselves
were rogues, but they enlisted many honest helpers, and soon, like the
man in the _Arabian Nights_, they had raised a jinn which they could not
control. Jovian died a year ago--he was always sick--and Ricci is no
longer the leader. But the thing itself marches marvellously. It has
caught the imagination of our people and fired their pride. Had we an
election, the Juventus candidates would undoubtedly sweep the board. As
it is, it contains all the best of Evallonian youth, who give up to it
their leisure, their ambition and their scanty means. It is in its way a
noble thing, for it asks only for sacrifice, and offers no bribes. It
is, so to speak, a new Society of Jesus, sworn to utter obedience. But,
good or ill, it has most damnably spiked the guns of us Royalists."

Jaikie asked why.

"Because it is arrogant, and demands that whatever is done for Evallonia
it alone shall do it. The present Government must go, and at once, for
it is too gross a scandal. If we delay, there will be a blind revolution
of the people themselves. You will say--let Juventus restore Prince
John. Juventus will do nothing of the kind, since Prince John is not its
own candidate. If we restore him, Juventus will become anti-Monarchist.
What then will it do? I reply that it does not yet know, but there is a
danger that it may set up one of its own people as dictator. That would
be tragic, for in the first place Evallonia does not need or desire a
dictator, being Monarchist by nature, and in the second place Juventus
does not want a dictatorship either. It is Nationalist, but not Fascist.
Yet the calamity may happen."

"Has Juventus any leader who could fill the bill?" Jaikie asked.

The Prince shook his head. "I do not think so--therefore its action
would be only to destroy and obstruct, not to build. Ricci with his
wife's millions is now discredited; they have used him and cast him
aside. There are some of the very young with power I am
told--particularly a son of Jovian's."

"Is his name Paul?" Jaikie asked, and was told yes.

"I know him," he said. "He was at Cambridge with me. I have just seen
him, for about two hours ago he stood me a drink."

The Prince in his surprise upset the coffee-pot, and even the
sophisticated eyes of Mr Glynde opened a little wider.

"You know Paul Jovian? That is miraculous, Mr Galt. Will you permit me
to speak a word in private with Mr Glynde? There are some matters still
too secret even for your friendly ears."

The two withdrew and left Jaikie alone in the alcove among bees and
butterflies and lemon verbena. He was a little confused in his mind, for
after a solitary month he had suddenly strayed into a place where he
seemed to know rather too many people. Embarrassing people, all of whom
pressed him to stay longer. He did not much like their country. It was
too hot for him, too scented and airless. He was not in the least
interested in the domestic affairs of Evallonia, either the cantrips of
Ashie or the solemn intrigues of the Prince. It was not his world; that
was a cool, bracing upland a thousand miles away, for which he had begun
to feel acutely homesick. Alison would soon be back in the Canonry, and
he must be there to meet her. He felt that for the moment he was fed up
with foreign travel.

The two men returned, and sat down before him with an air of purpose.

"Where did you find Count Paul?" the Prince asked.

"On the Kremisch side of the Tarta bridge. He was going into camp with a
detachment of large-sized Boy Scouts."

"You know him well?"

"Pretty well. We have been friends ever since his first year. I like
him--at least I liked him at Cambridge, but here he seems a rather
different sort of person. He wanted me to stay on in Evallonia--to stay
for three weeks."

The two exchanged glances.

"So!" said the Prince. "And your answer?"

"I refused. He didn't seem particularly well pleased."

"Mr Galt, we also make you that proposal. Will you be my guest here in
Evallonia for a little--perhaps for three weeks--perhaps longer? I
believe that you can be of incalculable value to an honest cause. I
cannot promise success--that is not commanded by mortals--but I can
promise you an exciting life."

"That was what I said to you last night," said Mr Glynde smiling. "My
little stater would give you no guidance, but the fact that you have
ventured into Evallonia encourages me to hope."

Jaikie at the moment had no desire for excitement. He felt limp and
drowsy and oppressed; the Prince's luncheon had been too good, and this
scented nook choked him; he wanted to be somewhere where he could
breathe fresh air. Evallonia was wholly devoid of attractions.

"I don't think so," he said. "I'm tremendously honoured that you should
want me, but I shouldn't be any use to you, and I must get home."

"You are not to be moved?" said Mr Glynde.

Jaikie shook his head. "I've had enough of the continent of Europe."

"I understand," said Mr Glynde. "I too sometimes feel that satiety, and
think I must go home." He turned to the Prince. "I doubt if we shall
persuade Mr Galt. I wish Casimir were here. Where, by the way, is he?"

The Prince replied with a word which sounded to Jaikie like "Unnutz," a
word which woke a momentary interest in his lethargic mind.

"What then do you propose to do?" The Prince turned to him.

"Go back to Kremisch to-night, sleep there and set off home to-morrow."

"What must be must be. But I do not think it wise for you to start yet
awhile. Let us go indoors, and I will show you some of the few household
gods which poverty has left me."

Jaikie spent an hour or two pleasantly in the cool chambers of the great
house. The place was shabby but not neglected, and there were treasures
there which, judiciously placed on the market, might well have restored
the Odalchini fortunes. He looked at long lines of forbidding family
portraits; at a little room so full of masterpieces that it was a
miniature Salle Carre; at one of the finest collections of armour in
the world; and at a wonderful array of sporting trophies, for the
Odalchinis had been famous game-shots. He was given tea at a little
table in the hall quite in the English fashion. But very soon he became
restless. The sun was getting low, and he had a considerable distance to
walk before supper.

"You had better go first to the Cirque Dor," said Mr Glynde. "There I
will meet you, and show you the way out of the town. You have been in
dangerous territory, Mr Galt, and must be circumspect in leaving it. No,
we cannot go together. I will take a different road and meet you there.
Luigi will guide you. You will cross the park by the way you came, and
Luigi will be waiting for you outside the pale."

"I am sorry," said the Prince. He shook hands with so regretful a face,
and his old eyes were so solemn that Jaikie had a moment of compunction.
When he left the castle the cool of the evening was beginning, and the
twilight scents came freshly and pleasantly to his nostrils. This was a
better place than he had thought, and he felt more vigorous and
enterprising. He had the faintest twinge of regret about his decision.
After all, there was nothing to call him home, for there would be no
Dickson McCunn there yet awhile, and no Dougal, and perhaps no Alison.
But there would be the Canonry, and he fixed his mind upon its
delectable glens as he retraced his path of the morning. One of Jaikie's
endowments was an almost perfect instinct for direction, and he struck
the high chestnut pale pretty much at the spot where he had first
crossed it.

Getting over without Luigi's help was a difficult business, and,
Jaikie's energy being wholly employed in the task, he did not trouble to
prospect the land.... He tumbled over the top and dropped into what
seemed to be a crowd of people.

Strong hands gripped him. A cloth was skilfully wound round his face,
blinding his eyes and blanketing his voice. Another wrapped his arms to
his side, and a third bound his legs. He struggled, but his sense of the
physical superiority of his assailants was so great that he soon gave it
up; he was like a thin rabbit in the clutch of an enormous gamekeeper.
Yet the hands were not unkindly, and his bandages, though effective,
were not painful.

He was carried swiftly along for a few minutes and then placed in some
kind of car. Somebody sat down beside him. The car was started, and
bumped for a little along very rough roads.... Then it came to a highway
and moved fast.... Jaikie had by this time collected his thoughts, and
they were wrathful. His first alarm had gone, for he reflected that
there was no one likely to mean mischief to him. He was pretty certain
what had happened. This was Prince Odalchini's way of detaining an
unwilling guest. Well, he would presently have a good deal to say to the
Prince and to Mr Glynde.

The car slowed down, and his companion, whoever he was, began with deft
hands to undo his bonds. First he loosed his legs. Then, almost with the
same movement, he released his arms and drew the bandages from his face.
Then he snapped a switch which lit up dimly the interior of the
limousine in which the blinds had been drawn.

Jaikie found himself looking at the embarrassed face of Ashie.




III DIVERSIONS OF A MARIONETTE


I

Miss Alison Westwater dropped with a happy sigh beside a bed of wild
strawberries still wet with dew, and proceeded to make a second
breakfast. It was still early morning--not quite seven o'clock--but she
had been walking ever since half-past five, when she had broken her fast
on a cup of coffee and a last-night's roll provided by a friendly
chamber-maid. She had left the highway, which, switchbacking from valley
to valley, took the traveller to Italy, and had taken a forest track
which after a mile or two among pines came out on an upland meadow, and
led to a ridge, the spur of a high mountain, from which the kingdoms of
the earth could be surveyed. The sky was not the pale turquoise bowl
which in her own country heralded a perfect summer day, but an intense
sapphire; the shadows were also blue, and the sunshine where it fell was
a blinding essential light without colour, so that the grass looked like
snowdrifts. The air had an aromatic freshness which stung the senses,
and Alison drew great breaths of it till her throat was as cold as if
she had been drinking spring water.

This was her one satisfactory time in the day. The rest of her waking
hours were devoted to a routine which seemed void alike of mirth or
reason. Her father's neuritis had almost gone, but so had his good
humour, and it was a very peevish old gentleman that she accompanied in
pottering walks by the lake-side or in aimless motor drives on blinding
hot highways. Lord Rhynns was particular about his food, and the hotel
cuisine did not please him, so he was in the habit of sampling, without
much success, whatever Unnutz produced in the way of caf and
konditorei. He was also particular about his clothes, and since he
dressed always in the elder fashion of tight trousers, coloured
waistcoat, stiff collar and four-in-hand tie, he was generally warm and
correspondingly irascible. Her mother did not appear till after midday,
and required a good deal of coddling, for, having been driven out of her
accustomed beat, she found herself short of acquaintances and quite
unable to plan out her days. One curious consequence was that both, who
had habituated themselves to a life of Continental vagrancy, suddenly
began to long passionately for home. His lordship remembered that the
shooting season would soon begin in the Canonry, and was full of sad
reminiscences of the exploits of his youth, while to her ladyship came
visions of the cool chambers and the smooth and comforting ritual of
Castle Gay.

"I am a marionette," Alison had written to Jaikie. "I move at the jerk
of a string, and it isn't my parents that pull it. It's this ghastly
place, which has invented a rgime for the idle middle-classes of six
nations. I defy even you to break loose from it. I do the same things
and make the same remarks and wear the same clothes every day at the
proper hour. I'm a marionette and so are the other people--quite nice
they are, and well-mannered, and friendly, but as dead as salted
herrings. A good old-fashioned bounder would be a welcome change. Or a
criminal."

As she sat on the moss she remembered this sentence--and something else.
Unnutz was mainly villas and hotels, but there was an old village as a
nucleus--wooden houses built on piles on the lake shore, and one or two
narrow twisting streets with pumpkins drying on the shingle roofs. There
was a bathing-place there very different from the modish thing on the
main promenade, a place where you dived in a hut under a canvas curtain
into deep green water, and could swim out to some fantastic little rock
islets. She had managed once or twice to bathe there, and yesterday
afternoon she had slipped off for an hour and had had a long swim by
herself. Coming back she had recognised in a corner of the old village
the first face of an acquaintance she had met since she came to Unnutz.
Not an acquaintance exactly, for he had never seen her. But she
remembered well the shaggy leonine head, the heavy brows and the forward
thrust of the jaw. She had watched those features two years ago during
some agonised minutes in the library of Castle Gay, till Mr Dickson
McCunn had adroitly turned melodrama into farce, and she was not likely
to forget them. She remembered the name too--Mastrovin, the power behind
the Republican Government of Evallonia. Had not Jaikie told her that he
was the most dangerous underground force in Europe?

What was this dynamic personage doing in a dull little Tirolese health
resort? Was her wish to be granted, and their drab society enlivened by
a criminal?

The thought only flitted across her mind, for she had other things to
think about. She must make the most of her holiday, for by half-past ten
she must be back to join her father in his _petit djeuner_ on the hotel
verandah. Usually she had the whole hillside to herself, but this
morning she had seen a car on the road which led to the high pastures.
It had been empty, standing at the foot of one of the tracks which
climbed upward through the pines. Someone else had her taste for early
mornings in the hills. It had annoyed her to think that her sanctuary
was not inviolable. She hoped that the intruder, whoever he or she was,
was short in the wind and would not get higher than the wood.

She got up from her lair among the strawberries and wandered across the
meadow, where every now and then outcrops of rock stuck grey noses
through the flowers. She had a drink out of an ice-cold runnel. She saw
a crested tit, a bird which she had never met before, and screwed her
single field-glass into her eye to watch its movements. Also she saw a
kite high up in the blue, and, having only once in her life met that
type of hawk, regarded him with a lively interest. Then she came to a
little valley the top of which was a ravine in the high rocks, and the
bottom of which was muffled in the woods. There was a woodcutter's
cottage here, wonderfully hidden in a cleft, with the pines on three
sides and one side open to the hill. Where Alison stood she looked down
upon it directly from above, and could observe the beginning of its
daily life. She had been here before, and had seen an old woman, who
might have come out of Grimm, carrying pails of water from a pool in the
stream.

Now instead of the old woman there was a young man, presumably her son.
He came slowly from the cottage and moved to the fringe of the trees,
where a path began its downhill course. He possessed a watch, for he
twice consulted it, as if he were keeping an appointment. His clothes
were the ordinary forester's--baggy trousers of homespun, heavy
iron-shod boots, and an aged velveteen jacket with silver buttons. He
carried himself well, Alison thought, better than most woodmen, who were
apt to be round-shouldered and slouching.

A second man came out of the wood--also a tall man, but dressed very
differently from the woodcutter, for he wore flannels and a green
Homburg hat. "My motorist," thought Alison. "He must know something
about the woods, for the way through them to this cottage isn't easy to
find."

The newcomer behaved oddly. He took off his hat. The woodcutter gave him
his hand and he bowed over it with extreme respect. Then the woodcutter
slipped his arm in his and led him towards the cottage.

Alison in her perch far above put the glass to her eye and got a good
view of the stranger. There could be no mistake. Two years ago she had
sat opposite him at dinner at Castle Gay and at breakfast at Knockraw.
She recognised the fine shape of his head, and the face which would have
been classically perfect but for the snub nose. One did not easily
forget Count Casimir Muresco.

But who was the other? Noblemen with nine centuries of pedigree behind
them do not usually bow over the hands of foresters and uncover their
heads. She could not see his face, for it was turned away from her, but
before the two entered the cottage she had no doubt about his identity.
She was being given the back view of the lawful monarch of Evallonia.

From that moment Alison's boredom vanished like dew in the sun. She
realised that she had stumbled upon the fringe of great affairs. What
was it that Prince John had said to her at the dinner at Maurice's? That
Unnutz was not a very good place for a holiday that summer, that it
might be unpleasant, but that, being English, she would always be free
to get away. That could only mean that something momentous was going to
happen at Unnutz. What was Prince John doing disguised as a woodcutter
in this remote and secret hut?... What was Count Casimir, architect of
revolutions, doing there so early in the morning? Plots were being
hatched, thought the girl in a delicious tremor of excitement. The
curtain was about to rise on the play, and, unknown to the actors, she
had a seat in a box.

And then suddenly she remembered the face she had seen the afternoon
before in the lakeside alley. Mastrovin! He was the deadly enemy of
Count Casimir and the Prince. He must know, or suspect, that the Prince
was in the neighbourhood. Casimir probably knew nothing of Mastrovin's
presence. But she, Alison, knew. The thought solemnised her, for such
knowledge is as much a burden as a delight.

Her first impulse was to scramble down the hillside to the cottage,
break in on the conspirators, and tell them what she knew. But she did
not move, for it occurred to her that she might be more useful, and get
more fun out of the business, if she remained silent. She waited for
ten minutes till the two men appeared again. This time she had a good
view of the woodcutter through her glass, and she recognised the comely
and rather heavy countenance of Prince John. Casimir took a ceremonious
leave and started down the track through the forest. Alison, who knew
all the paths, followed him at a higher level. She wanted to discover
whether or not his steps had been dogged.

Alison had taught Jaikie many things, and he had repaid her by
instructing her in some of his own lore. He had made her almost as
artful and silent a tracker as himself, and under his tuition she had
brought to a high pitch her own fine natural sense of direction. Like a
swift shadow she flitted through the pines, now on bare needle-strewn
ground, now among tangles of rock and whortleberry. The route she took
was almost parallel to Casimir's, but now and then she had to make a
circuit to avoid some rocky dingle, and there were times when she had to
cast back or cast ahead to trace him. It was rough going in parts, and
since Casimir showed a remarkable turn of speed she had sometimes to
slither down steeps and sometimes to run. By and by came glimpses of the
valley below, and at last through a thinning of the pines she saw the
last twisting of the hill-path before it debouched on the highway.
Presently she saw the waiting car, and the tracker, being a little ahead
of the tracked, sank down among the whortleberries to await events.

Casimir appeared, going warily, with an eye on the white strip of high
road. It was still empty, for the Firnthal does not rise early. He
reached the car, and examined it carefully, as if he feared that
someone might have tampered with it in his absence. Satisfied, he took
the driver's seat, backed on to the high road, and set out in the
direction of Italy.

Alison observed his doings with only half an eye, for between her and
the car she had seen something which demanded attention. She was now
some two hundred yards above the road, and the ground immediately below
her was occupied by a little rock-fall much overgrown with fern and
scrub. There was something among the bushes which had not been put there
by nature. Her glass showed her that that something was the head of a
man. It was a bare head, with grizzled hair and one bald patch at the
back, and she knew to whom it belonged. Mastrovin was not in Unnutz for
the sake of the excellent sulphur baths or the mountain air.

Alison slipped out of her lair and as noiselessly as she could crawled
to her right along the slope of the hill. She struck the path by which
Casimir had descended, a path which was, so to speak, the grand trunk
road from the hills, and which a little higher forked in several
directions. Waiting a moment to get her breath, she made a hasty bouquet
of some blue campanulas and sprigs of whortleberry and then sauntered
down the path, a little flushed, a little untidy about the hair and wet
about the shoes, but on the whole a creditable specimen of early-rising
vigorous maidenhood.

Mastrovin, when she came in sight of him, was descending the hill and
had already reached the high road. He had covered his head with a green
hat, and wore a dark green suit of breeches, and Norfolk jacket, just
like any other tourist in a mountain country. Alison's whistling caught
his ear, and at the foot of the track he stopped to wait for her.

"_Grss Gott!_" he said, forcing his harsh features into amiability. "I
have been looking for a friend. Have you seen anyone--any man--up in the
woods? My friend is tall and walks fast, and his clothes are grey."

One of Alison's accomplishments was that she understood German
perfectly, and spoke it with fluency and a reasonable correctness. But
it occurred to her that it would not be wise to reveal this talent; so
she pretended to follow Mastrovin with difficulty and to puzzle over one
word, and she began to answer in the purest Ollendorff.

"You are English?" he asked. "Speak English, please. I understand it."

Alison obeyed. She explained that she had indeed met a man in the high
woods, though she had not specially remarked his clothes. She had passed
him, and thought that he must have returned soon after, for she had not
seen him on her way down. She described minutely the place of
meeting--on the right-hand road at the main fork, near the brow of the
hill, and not far from the rock called the Wolf Crag which looked down
on Unnutz--precisely the opposite direction from the woodcutter's hut.

Mastrovin thanked her with a flourish of his hat. "I must now to
breakfast," he said. "There is a _gasthaus_ by the roadside where I will
await my friend, if he is not already there."


II

Usually the two miles to Unnutz were the one black spot in the morning's
walk, for they were flat and dusty and meant a return to the house of
bondage. But to-day Alison was scarcely conscious of them, for she was
thinking hard, with a flutter at her heart which was half-painful and
half-pleasant. Prince John was here in retreat for some purpose, and
Count Casimir was in touch with him; that must mean that things were
coming to a head in Evallonia. Mastrovin, his bitterest enemy, was on
the trail of Casimir, and must know that Prince John was in the
neighbourhood. That meant trouble. Her false witness that morning might
send Mastrovin on a wild-goose chase to the wrong part of the forest,
but it was very certain that he must presently discover the Prince's
hermitage. The Prince and Casimir might suspect that their enemies were
looking for them, but they did not know that Mastrovin was in Unnutz.
She alone knew that, and she must make use of her knowledge. Casimir had
gone off in the direction of Italy; therefore she must warn the Prince,
and that must be done secretly when she could be certain that she was
not followed. She had begun to plan a midnight journey, for happily she
had a room giving on a balcony, from which it would be easy to reach the
ground. To her surprise she found that she looked forward with no relish
to the prospect; if she had had company it would have been immense fun,
but, being alone, she felt only the weight of a heavy duty. She longed
passionately for Jaikie.

Entering the hotel by a side door, she changed into something more like
the regulation toilet of Unnutz, and sought her father on the verandah.
For once Lord Rhynns was in a good humour.

"A little late, my dear," he complained mildly. "Yes, I have had a
better night. I am beginning to hope that I have got even with my
accursed affliction." Then, regarding his daughter with complacent eyes,
he became complimentary. "You are really a very pretty girl, Alison,
though your clothes are not such as gentlewomen wore in my young days."
With a surprising touch of sentiment he added, "You are becoming very
like my mother."

Taking advantage of her father's urbanity, Alison broached the question
of going home.

"Presently, my dear. Another week, I think, should set me right. Your
mother is anxious to leave--a sudden craving for Scotland. We shall go
for a little to Harriet at Castle Gay--she has been more than kind about
it, and Craw has behaved admirably. I am told he has the place very
comfortable, and I have always found him conduct himself like a
gentleman. Money, my dear. Ample means are not only the passport to the
name of gentility, but they create the thing itself. In these days it is
not easy for a pauper to preserve his breeding.

"By the way," he continued, "some friends of ours arrived here this
morning. They are breakfasting more elaborately than we are in the
_salle--manger_. The Roylances. Janet Roylance, you remember, was old
Cousin Alastair Raden's second girl."

"What!" Alison almost shrieked. It was the best news she could have got,
for now she could share her burden of responsibility. In the regrettable
absence of Jaikie the Roylances were easily the next best.

"Yes," her father went on. "They have been at Geneva, and have come on
here for a holiday. Sir Archibald, they tell me, is making a
considerable name for himself in politics. For a young man in these days
he certainly has creditable manners."

His lordship finished his coffee, and announced that he proposed to go
to his sitting-room till luncheon to write letters. Alison dutifully
accompanied him thither, paid her respects to her mother, who was also
in a more cheerful mood, and then hastened downstairs. In the big
dining-room she found the pair she sought at a table in one of the
windows. Alison flung herself upon Janet Roylance's neck.

"You've finished breakfast? Then come outdoors and smoke. I know a quiet
corner beside the lake. I must talk to you at once. You blessed angels
have been sent by Heaven just at the right moment."

When they were seated where a little half-moon of shrubbery made an
enclave above the blue waters of the Waldersee, Sir Archie offered
Alison a cigarette.

"No, thank you. I don't smoke. If I did it would be a pipe, I'm so sick
of the cigarette-puffing hussy. First of all, what brought you two
here?"

Sir Archie grinned. "The Conference has adjourned till Bolivia settles
some nice point with Uruguay."

"We came," said Janet, "because we are free people with no plans and we
knew that you were here. We thought we should find you moribund with
boredom, Allie, but you are radiant. What has happened? Have the parents
turned over a new leaf?"

"Papa is quite good and nearly well. Mamma has actually begun to crave
for Scotland. There's no trouble at present on the home front. But the
foreign situation is ticklish. This place is going to be the scene of
dark doings, and I can't cope with them alone. That's why I hugged you
like a bear. Have you ever heard of Evallonia?"

"I have," said Janet, "for I sometimes read the Craw Press."

"We've expected a revolution there," said Sir Archie, "any time these
last two years. But something seems to have gone wrong with the timing."

"Well, that has been seen to. The blow-up must be nearly ready, and it's
going to start in this very place. Listen to me very carefully. The
story begins two years ago in Castle Gay."

Briefly but vigorously Alison told the tale of the raid on the Canonry
and the discomfiture by Jaikie and Dickson McCunn of Mastrovin and his
gang. ("Jaikie?" said Sir Archie. "That's the little chap we saw with
you at Maurice's? I was in a scrap alongside him years ago. Janet knows
the story. Good stamp of lad.") She sketched the personalities of the
three Royalists and the six Republicans, and she touched lightly upon
Prince John. She described the face seen the afternoon before in the old
village, and her sight that morning of the Prince and Casimir at the
woodcutter's hut. The drama culminated in Mastrovin squatted like a
partridge in the scrub above Casimir's car.

"Mastrovin!" Sir Archie brooded. "He was at Geneva as an Evallonian
delegate. Wonderful face of its kind, but it would make any English jury
bring him in guilty of any crime without leaving the box. He was very
civil to me. I thought him a miscreant but a sportsman, though I
wouldn't like to meet him alone on a dark night. He looked the kind of
chap who wasn't afraid of anything--except the other Evallonian female.
You remember her, Janet?"

His wife laughed. "Shall I ever forget her? You never saw such a girl,
Allie. A skin like clear amber, and eyes like topazes, and the most
wonderful dark hair. She dressed always in bright scarlet and somehow
carried it off. Archie, who as you know is a bit of a falconer,
remembered that in the seventeenth century there was a hawk called the
Blood-red Rook of Turkey, so we always called her that. She was a
Countess Araminta Something-or-other."

Alison's eyes opened. "I know her--at least, I have met her. She was in
London the season before last. Her mother was English, I think, and
hence her name. She rather scared me. She wasn't a delegate, was she?"

"No," said Archie. "She held a watching brief for something. I can tell
you she scared old Mastrovin. He didn't like to be in the same room with
her, and he changed his hotel when she turned up at it."

"Never mind the Blood-red Rook," said Alison. "Mastrovin is our problem.
I don't care a hoot for Evallonian politics, but having once been on
the Monarchist side I'm going to stick to it. Evallonia is apparently at
boiling-point. The Monarchist cause depends upon Prince John. Mastrovin
is for the Republic or something still shadier, and therefore he is
against Prince John. That innocent doesn't know his enemy is about, and
Casimir has gone off in the direction of Italy. Therefore we have got to
do something about it."

"What puzzles me," said Archie, "is what your Prince is doing in Unnutz,
which isn't exactly next door to Evallonia, and why he should want to
get himself up as a peasant?"

"It puzzles me, too, but that isn't the point. It all shows that things
are getting warm in Evallonia. What we have got to do is to dig Prince
John out of that hut before Mastrovin murders or kidnaps him, and stow
him away in some safer place. I considered it rather a heavy job for me
alone, but it should be child's play for the three of us. Don't tell me
you decline to play."

During the last few minutes of the conversation Archie's face had been
steadily brightening.

"Of course we'll play," he said. "You can count us in, Alison, but I'm
getting very discreet in my old age, and I must think it over pretty
carefully. It's a chancy business purloining princes, however good your
intentions may be. The thing's easy enough, but it's the follow-up that
matters.... Wait a second. I've always believed that the best
hiding-place was just under the light. What about bringing him to this
hotel to join our party?"

"As Prince John or as a woodcutter?" Janet asked.

"As neither," said Archie. "My servant got 'flu in Geneva, and I had to
leave him behind. How would the Prince fancy taking on the job? I can
lend him some of my clothes. Is he the merry class of lad that likes a
jape?"

The luncheon-gong boomed. "We can talk about that later," said Alison.
"Meanwhile, it's agreed that we three slip out of this place after dark.
We'll take your car part of the way, and there's a moon, and I can guide
you the rest. We daren't delay, for I'm positive that this very night
Mastrovin will get busy."

Sir Archie arose with mirth in his eye, patted his hair and squared his
shoulders. A boy approached and handed him a telegram.

"It's from Bobby Despenser," he announced. "The Conference has resumed
and he wants me back at once. Well, he can whistle for me."

He tore the flimsy into small pieces.

"Take notice, you two," he said, "that most unfortunately I have not
received Bobby's wire."


III

On the following morning three people sat down to a late breakfast in a
private sitting-room of the Htel Kaiserin Augusta. All three were a
little heavy about the eyes, as if their night's rest had been broken,
but in the air of each was a certain subdued excitement and
satisfaction.

"My new fellow is settling down nicely," said Sir Archie, helping
himself to his third cup of coffee. "Answers smartly to the name of
McTavish. Lucky I brought the real McTavish's passport with me. Curious
thing, but the passport photograph isn't unlike him, and he has almost
the same measurements. I've put some sticking-plaster above his left eye
to correspond to the scar that McTavish got in Mespot, and I've had a go
at his hair with scissors--he objected pretty strongly to that, by the
way. I've put him into my striped blue flannel suit, which you could
tell for English a mile away, and given him a pair of my old brown
shoes. Thank God, he's just about my size. I'm going to buy him a black
Homburg--the shops here are full of them--and then he'll look the very
model of a gentleman's gentleman, who has had to supplement his London
wardrobe locally."

"But, Archie, he has the kind of face that you can't camouflage," said
Janet. "Anyone who knows him is bound to recognise him."

Her husband waved his hand. "'_N'ayez pas peur, je m'en charge_,' as old
Perriot used to say at Geneva. He won't be recognised, because no one
will expect him here. He's in the wrong environment--under the light, so
to speak, which is the best sort of hiding-place. He won't go much out
of doors, and I've got him a cubby-hole of a bedroom up in the attics.
Not too comfortable, but Pretenders to thrones must expect to rough it a
bit. He'll mess with the servants, who are of every nationality on
earth, and I've told him to keep his mouth shut. Like all royalties,
he's a dab at languages, and speaks English without an accent, but I'm
teaching him to give his words a Scotch twist. He tumbled to it straight
off, and says 'Sirr' just like my old batman. If anyone makes trouble
I've advised him to dot him one on the jaw in the best British style.
He looks as if he could swing a good punch."

The small hours of the morning had been a stirring time for the party.
They had left the hotel by Alison's verandah a little before midnight,
and in Archie's car had reached the foot of the forest path, meeting no
one on the road. Then their way had become difficult, for it was very
dark among the pines, and Alison had once or twice been at fault in her
guiding. The moon rose when they were near the crest of the hill, and
after that it had been easy to find the road to the hut through the
dew-drenched pastures. There things marched fast. There was pandemonium
with two dogs, quieted with difficulty by Alison, who had a genius for
animals. The old woman, who appeared with a stable-lantern, denied
fiercely that there was any occupant of the hut except herself, her
husband being dead these ten years and her only son gone over the
mountains to a wedding. She was persuaded in the end by Alison's mention
of Count Casimir, and the three were admitted.

Then Prince John had appeared fully dressed, with what was obviously a
revolver in his pocket. He recognised Alison and had heard of Sir
Archie, and things went more smoothly. The news that Mastrovin was on
his trail obviously alarmed him, but he took a long time to be convinced
about the need for shifting his residence. Clearly he was a docile
instrument in the hands of the Monarchists, and hesitated to disobey
their orders for fear of spoiling their plan. Things, it appeared, were
all in train for a revolution in Evallonia, at any moment he might be
required to act, and Unnutz had been selected as the council-chamber of
the conspirators. On this point it took the united forces of the party
to persuade him, but in the end he saw reason. Alison clinched the
matter. "If Mastrovin and his friends get you, it's all up. If you come
with us it may put a little grit in the wheels, but it won't smash the
machine. Remember, sir, that these men are desperate, and won't stick at
trifles. They were desperate two years ago at Castle Gay, but now it is
pretty well your life or theirs, and it had better be theirs."

When he allowed himself to be convinced his spirits rose. He was a young
man of humour, and approved of Sir Archie's proposal that he should go
to their hotel. He liked the idea of taking the place of the absent
McTavish, and thought that he could fill the part. There only remained
to give instructions to the old woman. If anyone came inquiring, she was
not to deny the existence of her late guest, though she was to profess
ignorance of who or what he was. Her story was to be that he had left
the preceding afternoon with his belongings on his back. She did not
know where he had gone, but believed that it was over the mountains to
the Vossthal, since he had taken the path for the Vossjoch.

The journey back had been simple, though Alison had thought it wise to
make a considerable detour. It had been slightly complicated by the good
manners of the Prince, since he persisted in offering assistance to
Janet and Alison, who needed it as little as a chamois. They had reached
the hotel just before daybreak, and had entered, they believed, without
being observed. That morning Sir Archie had explained to the manager
about the delayed arrival of his servant, and the name of Angus McTavish
had been duly entered in the hotel books with the Roylances' party.

"And now," said Archie, "he's busy attending to my dress-clothes. What
says the Scriptures? 'Kings shall be thy ministers and queens thy
nursing mothers.' We're getting up in the world, Janet. I'm going to
raise a chauffeur's cap for him, and I want him to take your parents,
Alison, out in the car this afternoon to accustom the neighbourhood to
the sight of a new menial. As for me, I propose to pay another visit to
the hut. There's bound to have been developments up that way, and we
ought to keep in touch with them. I'll be an innocent tourist out for a
walk to observe birds."

"What worries me," said Janet, "is how we are going to keep the
Monarchists quiet. We may have Count Casimir here any moment, and that
will give the show away."

"No, it won't. I mean, he won't. I left a letter for him which will give
him plenty to think about."

Janet set down her coffee-cup. "What did you say in the letter?" she
demanded severely.

"McTavish wrote it--I only dictated the terms. He quite saw the sense of
it. It was by way of being a piteous cry for help. It said he had been
pinched by Mastrovin and his gang, and appealed to his friends to fly to
his rescue. Quite affecting it was. You see the scheme? We've got to
keep McTavish cool and quiet on the ice till things develop. If Casimir
and his lot are looking for him in Mastrovin's hands they won't trouble
us. If Mastrovin is being hunted by Casimir he won't be able to hunt
McTavish. What you might call a cancelling out of snags."

His wife frowned. "I wonder if you've not been a little too clever."

"Not a bit of it," was the cheerful answer. "Ordinary horse sense. As
old Perriot said, '_N'ayez pas peur_----'"

"Archie," said Janet, "if you quote that stuff again I shall fling the
coffee-pot at you."


IV

Sir Archie did not return till nine o'clock that evening, for he had
walked every step of the road and had several times lost his way. He
refreshed himself in the sitting-room with sandwiches and beer, while
Janet and Alison had their after-dinner coffee.

"How did McTavish behave?" he asked Alison.

"Admirably. He drives beautifully and both Papa and Mamma thought he was
Scotch. The only mistake was that he treated us like grandees, and held
the door open with his cap in his hand. How about you? You look as if
you had been seeing life?"

"I've had a trying time," said Sir Archie, passing a hand through his
hair. "There has been a bit of a row up at the hut. No actual violence,
but a good deal of unpleasantness."

"Have you been fighting?" Janet asked, observing a long scratch on her
husband's sunburnt forehead.

"Oh, that scratch is nothing, only the flick of a branch. But I've been
through considerable physical tribulation. Wait till I get my pipe lit
and you'll have the whole story....

"I reached the hut between four and five o'clock in what John Bunyan
calls a pelting heat. Ye gods, but it was stuffy in the pinewoods, and
blistering hot on the open hillside! I made pretty good time, and
arrived rather out of condition, for my right leg--my game leg as
was--wasn't quite functioning as it should. Well, there was the old
woman, and in none too good a temper. Poor soul, she had been
considerably chivvied since we last saw her. It seemed that we were just
in time this morning, for Mastrovin and his merry men turned up about an
hour after we left. It was a mercy we didn't blunder into them in the
wood, and a mercy that we had the sense to hide the car a goodish
distance from where the track starts. Mastrovin must have spent
yesterday in sleuthing, for he had the ground taped, and knew that
McTavish had been in the hut at supper. He had three fellows with him,
and they gave the old lady a stiff time. They didn't believe her yarn
about McTavish having started out for the Vossthal. They ransacked every
corner of the place, and put in some fine detective work examining beds
and cupboards and dirty dishes, besides raking the outhouses and beating
the adjacent coverts. In the end they decided that their bird had flown
and tried to terrorise the old lady into a confession. But she's a tough
ancient, and by her account returned them as good as they gave. She
wanted to know what concern her great-nephew Franz was of theirs, poor
Franz that had lost his health working in Innsbruck and had come up into
the hills to recruit. All their bullying couldn't shake her about
great-nephew Franz, and in the end they took themselves off, leaving her
with a very healthy dislike of the whole push.

"Then, very early this morning, Count Casimir turned up and got his
letter. It put him in a great taking. She said he grew as white as a
napkin, and he started to cross-examine her about the hour and the
manner of the pinching of McTavish. That was where I had fallen down,
for I had forgotten to tell her what was in the letter. So she gave a
very confused tale, for she described him as going off with us,
mentioning the women in the party, and she also described Mastrovin's
coming, and from what she said I gathered that he got the two visits
mixed up. What specially worried him was that Mastrovin should have had
women with him, and he was very keen to know what they were like. I
don't know how the old dame described you two--I should have liked to
hear her--but anyway, it didn't do much to satisfy the Count. She said
that he kept walking about biting his lips, and repeating a word that
sounded like 'Mintha.' After that he was in a hurry to be off, but
before leaving he gave her an address--I've written it down--with which
she was to communicate if she got any news.

"I was just straightening out the story for her--I thought it right to
get her mind clear--and explaining that we had got McTavish safe and
sound, but that it was imperative in his own interests that Count
Casimir should believe there had been dirty work, when what do you think
happened? Mastrovin turned up, accompanied by a fellow who looked like a
Jew barber out of a job. He didn't recognise me and looked at me very
old-fashioned. I was sitting in a low chair, and got up politely to
greet him, when I had an infernal piece of bad luck. I sprang every
blessed muscle in my darned leg. You see, it hadn't been accustomed to
so much exercise for a long time, and the muscles were all flabby. Gad,
I never knew such pain! It was the worst go of cramp I ever heard of. My
toes stuck out like agonising claws--my calf was a solid lump of
torment--the riding muscle above the knee was stiff as a poker and as
hard as iron. I must have gone white with pain, and I was all in a cold
sweat, and I'm dashed if I could do anything except wallow in the chair
and howl.

"Well, Mastrovin wasn't having any of that. He gave me some
rough-tonguing in German, and demanded of the old woman what kind of
mountebank I was. But she had taken her cue--pretty quick in the uptake
she is--or else she thought I was having a paralytic stroke. I was all
dithered with the pain and couldn't notice much, but I saw that she had
got off my shoes and stockings and had fetched hot water to bathe my
feet. Then the barber-fellow took a hand, for he saw I wasn't playing a
game. I daresay he was some kind of medico and he knew his business. He
started out to massage me, beginning with the lower thigh, and I
recognised the professional touch. In a few minutes he had me easier,
and you know the way the thing goes--suddenly all the corded muscles
dropped back into their proper places, and I was out of pain, but limp
as chewing-gum.

"Then Mastrovin began to ask me questions, first in German, and then in
rather better English than my own. I gave him my name, and his face
cleared a little, for he remembered me from Geneva. He was quite polite,
but I preferred his rough-tonguing to his civility. A nasty piece of
work that lad--his eyes are as cold as a fish's, but they go through you
like a gimlet. I was determined to outstay him, for I didn't want him to
be giving the old lady the third degree, which was pretty obviously what
he had come for. So I pretended to be down and out, and lay back in her
chair gasping, and drank water in a sad invalidish way. I would have
stuck it out till midnight, but friend Mastrovin must have been pressed
for time, for after about half an hour he got up to go. He offered to
give me a hand down the hill, but I explained that I wasn't yet ready to
move, but should be all right in an hour or so. I consider I brought off
rather a creditable piece of acting, for he believed me. I also told him
that I had just popped in to Unnutz for a night and was hurrying back to
Geneva. He knew that the Conference had been resumed, but said that he
himself might be a little late.... That's about all. I gave him twenty
minutes' law and then started home. D'you mind ringing the bell, Janet?
I think I'll have an omelet and some more beer. Where's McTavish?"

"At his supper, I expect. What I want to know, Archie, is our next step.
We can't go on hiding royal princes in the butler's pantry. McTavish
will revolt out of sheer boredom."

"I don't think so." Archie shook a sapient head. "McTavish is a patient
fellow, and has had a pretty strict training these last years. Besides,
life is gayer for him here than up at that hut, and the food must be
miles better. We've got to play a waiting game, for the situation is
obscure. I had a talk with him this morning, and by all accounts
Evallonian politics are a considerable mix-up."

"What did he tell you?" Alison asked sharply. She felt that to Archie
and Janet it was all a game, but that she herself had some
responsibility.

"Well, it seems that the revolution is ready to the last decimal--the
press prepared, the National Guard won over, the people waiting, and the
Ministers packing their portmanteaux. The Republican Government will go
down like ninepins. But while the odds are all on the monarchy being
restored, they are all against its lasting very long. It appears that in
the last two years there has been a great movement in Evallonia of all
the younger lot. They're tired of having the old 'uns call the tune and
want to play a sprig themselves. I don't blame 'em, for the old 'uns
have made a pretty mess of it."

"Is that the thing they call Juventus?" Alison asked. "I read about it
in _The Times_."

"Some name like that. Anyhow, McTavish tells me it's the most formidable
thing Evallonia has seen for many a day. They hate the Republicans, and
still more Mastrovin and his Communists. But they won't have anything to
do with Prince John, for they distrust Count Casimir and all that lot.
Call them the 'old gang,' the same bouquets as we hand to our elder
statesmen, and want a fresh deal with new measures and new men. They're
said to be more than half a million strong, all likely lads in hard
condition and jolly well trained--they've specialised in marksmanship,
for which Evallonia was always famous. They have the arms and the money,
and, being all bound together by a blood oath, their discipline is the
stiffest thing on earth. Oh, and I forgot to tell you--they wear green
shirts--foresters' green. They have a marching song about the green of
their woodlands, and the green of their mountain lakes, and the green
shirts of Evallonia's liberators. It's funny what a big part fancy
haberdashery plays in the world to-day."

"Have they a leader?" Alison asked.

"That's what I can't make out. There doesn't seem to be any particular
_roi de chemises_--that's what Charles Lamancha used to call me in my
dressy days. But apparently the thing leads itself. The fact we've got
to face is that if Casimir puts McTavish on the throne, which apparently
he can do with his left hand, Juventus will kick him out in a week, and
McTavish naturally doesn't want that booting. That's why he has been so
docile. He sees that the right policy for him is to lie low till things
develop."

"Then our next step must be to get in touch with Juventus," said Alison.

Janet opened her eyes. "You're taking this very seriously, Allie," she
said.

"I am," was the answer. "You see, I was in it two years ago."

"But how is it to be done?" Archie asked. "McTavish doesn't know. He
doesn't know who the real leaders are--nor Casimir, and certainly not
Mastrovin. You see, the thing is by way of being a secret society, sort
of jumble-up of Boy Scouts, Freemasons and the Red Hand. They have their
secret pass-words, and the brightest journalist never sticks his head
into one of their conclaves. They can spot a Monarchist or Republican
spy a mile off, and don't stand on ceremony with 'em. They have a badge
like Hitler's swastika--an open eye--but, apart from their songs and
their green shirts, that's their only public symbol."

"My advice," said Janet, "is that we keep out of it, and restore the
Prince to the sorrowing Count Casimir as soon as we can get in touch
with him. You go back to Scotland with your family, Allie, and Archie
and I will pop down into Italy."

There was a knock at the door and a waiter brought in the evening post.
One letter was for Alison, which she tore open eagerly as soon as she
saw the handwriting. She read it three times and then raised a flushed
face.

"It's from Jaikie," she said, and there was that in her voice which made
Archie and Janet look up from their own correspondence. "Jaikie, you
know--my friend--Mr Galt that I told you about. He is somewhere in
Evallonia."

"My aunt!" exclaimed Archie. "Then there will be trouble for somebody."

"There's trouble for him. He seems to have got into deep waters. Listen
to what he says."

She read the following:

     "I am in a queer business which I am bound to see through. But I
     can't do it without your help. Can you manage to get away from your
     parents for a few days, and come to Tarta, just inside the
     Evallonian frontier? You take the train to a place called Zutpha,
     where you will be met. If you can come wire Odalchini, Tarta, the
     time of your arrival. I wouldn't bother you if the thing wasn't
     rather important, and, besides, I think you would like to be in
     it."

"Short and to the point," commented the girl. "Jaikie never wastes
words. He has a genius for understatement, so if he says it is rather
important it must be tremendously important.... Wait a minute.
Odalchini! Prince Odalchini was one of the three at Knockraw two years
ago. Jaikie has got mixed up with the Monarchists."

Archie was hunting through his notebook. "What did you say was the name
of the place? Tarta? That's the address Casimir gave the old woman to
write to if she had any news. Schloss Thingumybob--the second word has
about eight consonants and no vowels--Tarta, by Zutpha. Your friend
Jaikie has certainly got among the Monarchists."

"Hold on!" Alison cried. "What's this?" She passed round the letter for
inspection. It was a sheet of very common note-paper with no address on
it, but in the top left-hand corner there was stamped in green a neat
little open eye with some hieroglyphic initials under it.

"Do you see what that means?" In her excitement her voice sank to a
whisper. "Jaikie is in touch with the Juventus people. This letter was
sent with their consent--or the consent of one of them, and franked by
him."

"Well, Allie?" Janet asked.

"Of course I'm going. I must go. But I can't go alone, for Papa wouldn't
allow it. He and Mamma have decided to return to Scotland this week to
Aunt Harriet at Castle Gay. You and Archie must go to Tarta and take me
with you."

"Isn't that a large order? What about McTavish?"

"We must take him with us, for then we'll have all the cards in our
hands. It's going to be terribly exciting, but I can promise you that
Jaikie won't fail us. You won't fail me either?"

Janet turned smilingly to her husband. "What about it, Archie?"

"I'm on," was the answer. "I've been in a mix-up with Master Jaikie
before. Bobby Despenser can whistle for me. The difficulty will be
McTavish, who's a compromising piece of goods, but we'll manage somehow.
Lord, this is like old times, and I feel about ten years younger. 'It
little profits that an idle king, matched with an aged wife....' Don't
beat me, Janet. We're both ageing.... I always thought that the Almighty
didn't get old Christoph to mend my leg for nothing."




IV DIFFICULTIES OF A REVOLUTIONARY


When Jaikie saw who his captor was, his wrath ebbed. Had it been Prince
Odalchini it would have been an outrage, but since it was Ashie, it was
only an undergraduate "rag" which could easily be repaid in kind. But
his demeanour was severe.

"What's the meaning of these monkey tricks?" he demanded.

"The meaning is," Ashie had ceased to smile, "that you have deceived me.
What about your business with your circus friend? I had you followed--I
was bound to take every precaution--and instead of feeding in a
pot-house you run in circles like a hunted hare and end up at the
Schloss. I had my men inside the park, and when I heard what you were up
to I gave orders that you should be brought before me. You went straight
from me to the enemy. What have you to say to that?"

Ashie's words were firm, but there was dubiety in his voice and a hint
of uncertainty in his eye; this the other observed, and the sight wholly
removed his irritation. Ashie was talking like a book, but he was
horribly embarrassed.

"Well, I'm blowed!" said Jaikie. "Who the blazes made you my keeper?
Let's get this straightened out at once. First, what I said was strictly
true. I was going to lunch with my friend from the circus. If your
tripe-hounds had been worth their keep they would have seen me meet
him--a fellow with the name of the circus blazoned on his cap. The
choice of a luncheon place was his own and I had nothing to do with it.
As a matter of fact, I happened to know the man he took me to, Prince
Odalchini--I met him two years ago in Scotland. Have you got that into
your fat head?"

"Will you please give me the gist of your conversation with Prince
Odalchini?"

"Why on earth should I? What has it got to do with you? But I'll tell
you one thing. He was very hospitable and wanted me to stay a bit with
him--same as you. I said no, that I wanted to go home, and I was on my
way back when I fell in with your push and got my head in a bag. What do
you mean by it? I'm sorry to tell you that you have taken a liberty--and
I don't allow liberties."

"Prince Odalchini is the enemy, and we are in a state of war."

"Get off it. He's not my enemy, and I don't know anything about your
local scraps. I told you I would have nothing to do with them, and I
told the Prince the same."

"So you talked of Evallonian affairs?" said Ashie.

"Certainly. What else was there to talk about? Not that he told me much,
except that there was likely to be trouble and that he wanted me to stay
on and see the fun. I told him I wasn't interested in his tin-pot
politics and I tell you the same."

This had the effect which Jaikie intended, and made Ashie angry.

"I do not permit such language," he said haughtily. "I do not tolerate
insults to my country. Understand that you are not in your sleek
England, but in a place where gentlemen defend their honour in the old
way."

"Oh, don't be a melodramatic ass. I thought we had civilised you at
Cambridge and given you a sense of humour, but you've relapsed into the
noble savage. I've been in Evallonia less than one day and I know
nothing about it. Your politics may be all the world to you, but they're
tin-pot to me. I refuse to be mixed up in them."

"You've mixed yourself up in them by having intercourse with the enemy."

"Enemy be blowed! I talked for an hour or two to a nice old man who gave
me a dashed good luncheon, and now you come butting in with your
detective-novel tricks. I demand to be deported at once. Otherwise I'll
raise the hairiest row about the kidnapping of a British subject. If you
want international trouble, I promise you you'll get it. I don't know
where we are, but here's this car, and you've got to deliver me at
Kremisch by bedtime. That's the least you can do to make amends for your
cheek."

Jaikie looked out of the window and observed that they had halted on
high ground, and that below them lights twinkled as if from an
encampment. For a moment he thought that he had struck the Cirque Dor.
And then a bugle sounded, an instrument not generally used in circuses.
"Is that your crowd down there?" he asked.

Ashie's face, even in the dim interior light of the car, showed
perplexity. He seemed to be revolving some difficult question in his
mind. When he spoke again there was both appeal and apology in his
voice. Jaikie had an authority among his friends which was the stronger
because he was wholly unconscious of it and in no way sought it. His
personality was so clean-cut and his individuality so complete and
secure that, while one or two gave him affection, all gave him respect.

"I'll apologise if you like," said Ashie. "I daresay what I did was an
outrage. But the fact is, Jaikie, I badly want your help. Your advice,
anyway. I'm in a difficult position, and I don't see my road very
clearly. You see, I'm an Evallonian, and this is Evallonian business,
but I've got a little outside the atmosphere of my own country. That's
to the good, perhaps, for this thing is on the biggest scale and wants
looking at all round it. That's why I need your help. Give me one night,
and I swear, if you still want me to, I'll deliver you at Kremisch
to-morrow morning and trouble you no more."

Jaikie was the most placable of mortals, he had a strong liking for
Ashie, and he was a little moved by the anxious sincerity of his voice.
He had half expected this proposal.

"All right," he said, "I'll give you one night. Have your fellows
pinched my kit?"

Ashie pointed to a knapsack on the floor of the car, which he promptly
shouldered. "Let's get out of this," he said. He spoke a word to the
driver, who skipped round and opened the door, standing stiffly at the
salute. Then he led the way down the little slope into the meadow of the
twinkling lights. Presently he had to give a pass-word, and three times
had to halt for that purpose before they reached his tent. The gathering
was far larger than that which Jaikie had seen at the Tarta bridge, and
he noticed a considerable number of picketed horses.

"What are these chaps after?" he asked.

"We are riding the marches," was the answer. "What at Cambridge they
call beating the bounds. It is not desirable that for the present we
should operate too near the capital."

There were two tents side by side and separated by a considerable space
from the rest, as if to ensure the commander's privacy. A sentry stood
on guard whom Ashie dismissed with an order. He led Jaikie into the
bigger of the tents. It was furnished with a camp mattress, two folding
chairs, and a folding table littered with maps. "You will sleep next
door. You may have a companion for the night, but of that I speak later.
Meantime, let us dine. I can only offer you soldiers' fare."

The fare proved excellent. A mushroom omelet was brought in by one of
the green-shirts, and cups of strong coffee. There was a dish of
assorted cold meats, and a pleasantly mild cheese. They drank white
wine, and Ashie insisted on Jaikie tasting the native liqueur. "It is
made from the lees of wine," he told him. "Like the French _marc_, but
not so vehement."

When the meal was cleared away Jaikie lit his pipe and Ashie a thin
black cigar. "Now for my story," the latter said. "There is one fact
beyond question. The rotten Republican Government is doomed, and hangs
now by a single hair which a breath of wind can destroy. But when the
hair has gone, what then?"

He told much the same tale that Jaikie had heard that day from Prince
Odalchini, but with a far greater wealth of detail. Especially he
expounded the origin and nature of Juventus, with which he had been
connected from the start. "Most of this is common knowledge," he said,
"but not all--yet. We are not a secret society, but we have our _arcana
imperii_." He described its beginnings. Ricci had designed it as a
counter-move against the Monarchists, but it had soon turned into
something very different, a power detached indeed from the Monarchists
but altogether hostile to the Republic, and Ricci, the used instead of
the user, had been flung aside. "It was no less than a resurgence of the
spirit of the Evallonian nation," he said solemnly.

He explained how it had run through the youth of the country like a
flame in stubble. "We are a poor people," he said, "though not so poor
as some, for we are closer to the soil, and less dependent upon others.
But we have been stripped of some of our richest parts where industry
flourished, and many of us are in great poverty. Especially it is hard
for the young, who see no livelihood for them in their fathers'
professions, and can find none elsewhere. Evallonia, thanks to the
jealous Powers, has been reduced to too great an economic simplicity,
and has not that variety of interests which a civilised society
requires. Also there is another matter. We have always made a hobby of
our education, as in your own Scotland. Parents will starve themselves
to send their sons to Melina to the university, and often a commune
itself will pay for a clever boy. What is the consequence? We have an
educated youth, but no work for it. We have created an academic
proletariat and it is distressed and bitter."

Ashie told his story well, but his language was not quite his native
wood-notes. Jaikie wondered whose reflections he was repeating. He
wondered still more when he launched into an analysis of the exact
feelings of Evallonian youth. There was a subtlety in it and an acumen
which belonged to a far maturer and more sophisticated mind.

"So that is that," he concluded. "If our youth is to be satisfied and
our country is to prosper, it is altogether necessary that the
Government should be taken to pieces and put together again on a better
plan. What that plan is our youth must decide, and whatever it is it
must provide them with a horizon of opportunity. We summon our people to
a new national discipline under which everyone shall have both rights
and duties."

Where had Ashie got these phrases, Jaikie asked himself--"_arcana
imperii_," "academic proletariat," "horizon of opportunity"? There must
be some philosopher in the background. "That sounds reasonable enough,"
was all he said.

"It is reasonable--but difficult. Some things we will not have.
Communism, for one--of that folly Europe contains too many awful
warnings. We have had enough talk of republics, which are the dullest
species of oligarchy. Evallonia, having history in her bones, is a
natural monarchy. Her happiest destiny would be to be like England."

"That is all right then," said Jaikie. "You have Prince John."

Ashie's face clouded.

"Alas! that is not possible. For myself I have nothing against the
Prince. He represents our ancient line of kings, and he is young, and he
is well spoken of, though I have never met him. But he is fatally
compromised. His supporters, who are about to restore him, are indeed
better men than our present mis-governors, but they are relics--fossils.
They would resurrect an old world with all its stupidities. They are as
alien to us as Mastrovin and Rosenbaum, though less hateful. If Prince
John is set upon the throne, it is very certain that our first duty will
be regretfully to remove him--regretfully, for it is not the Prince that
we oppose, but his following."

"I see," said Jaikie. "It _is_ rather a muddle. Are the Monarchists only
a collection of stick-in-the-muds?"

"You can judge for yourself. You have seen Prince Odalchini, who is one
of the best. He worships dead things--he speaks the language of a
vanished world."

Once again Jaikie wondered how Ashie, whose talk had hitherto been
chiefly of horses, had managed to acquire this novel jargon.

"You want a king, but you won't--or can't--have the Prince. Then you've
got to find somebody else. What's your fancy? Have you a possible in
your own rank?"

Ashie knit his brows. "I do not think so. We have admirable regimental
officers and good brigadiers, but no general-in-chief. Juventus was a
spontaneous movement of many people, and not the creation of one man."

"But you must have leaders."

"Leaders--but no leader. The men who presided at its birth have gone.
There was Ricci, who was a trickster and a coward. He has washed himself
out. There was my father, who is now dead. I do not think that he would
have led, for he was not sure of himself. He had great abilities, but he
was too clever for the common run of people, and he was not trusted. He
was ambitious, and since his merits were not recognised, he was always
unhappy, and therefore he was ineffective. I have inherited the prestige
of his name, but the Almighty has given me a more comfortable nature."

"Why not yourself?" Jaikie asked. "You seem to fill the bill. Young and
bold and not yet compromised. Ashie the First--or would it be Paul the
Nineteenth? I'll come and grovel at your coronation."

Jaikie's tone of badinage gave offence.

"There is nothing comic in the notion," was the haughty answer. "Four
hundred years ago my ancestors held the gates of Europe against the
Turk. Two centuries before that they rode in the Crusades. The house of
Jovian descends straight from the Emperors of Rome. I am of an older and
prouder race than Prince John."

"I'm sure you are," said Jaikie apologetically. "Well, why not have a
shot at it? I would like to have a pal a reigning monarch."

"Because I cannot," said Ashie firmly. "I am more confident than my
father, God rest his soul, but in such a thing I do not trust myself.
Your wretched England has spoiled me. I do not want pomp and glory. I
should yawn my head off in a palace, and I should laugh during the most
solemn ceremonials, and I should certainly beat my Ministers. I desire
to remain a private gentleman and some day to win your Grand National."

Jaikie whistled.

"We have certainly spoiled you for this game. What's to be done about
it?"

"I do not know," was the doleful answer. "For I cannot draw back. There
have been times when I wanted to slip away and hide myself in England.
But I am now too deep in the business, and I have led too many people to
trust me, and I have to consider the honour of my house."

"Honour?" Jaikie queried.

"Yes, honour," said Ashie severely. "Have you anything to say against
it?"

"N-o-o. But it's an awkward word and apt to obscure reason."

"It is a very real thing, which you English do not understand."

"We understand it well enough, but we are shy of talking about it.
Remember the inscription in the Abbey of Thelme--'_Fais ce que
voudrais_, for the desires of decent men will always be governed by
honour.'"

Ashie smiled, for Rabelais, as Jaikie remembered, had been one of the
few authors whom he affected.

"That doesn't get one very far," he said. "I can't leave my friends in
the lurch any more than you could. I have been forced in spite of myself
into a position out of which I cannot see my way, and any moment I may
have to act against my will and against my judgment. That's why I want
your advice."

"There are people behind you prodding you on? Probably one in
particular? Who is it?"

"I cannot say."

"Well, I can. It's a woman."

Ashie's face darkened, and this time he was really angry. "What the
devil do you mean? What have you heard? I insist that you explain."

"Sorry, Ashie. That was a silly remark, and I had no right to make it."

"You must mean something. Someone has been talking to you. Who? What?
Quick, I have a right to know."

Ashie had mounted a very high horse and had become unmistakably the
outraged foreign grandee.

"It was only a vulgar guess," said Jaikie soothingly. "You see, I know
you pretty well, Ashie. It isn't easy to shift you against your will. I
couldn't do it, and I don't believe any of your friends could do it.
You've become a sensible chap since we took you in hand, and look at
things in a reasonable way. You're not the kind of fellow to run your
head against a stone wall. Here you are with all the materials of a
revolution in your hands and you haven't a notion what to do with them.
It's no good talking about honour and about loyalty to your crowd when
if you go on you are only going to land them in the soup. And yet you
seem determined to go on. Somebody has been talking big to you and
you're impressed. From what I know of you I say that it cannot be a man,
so it must be a woman."

Ashie's face did not relax.

"So you think I'm that kind of fool! The slave of a sentimental
woman?... The damnable thing is that you're right. The power behind
Juventus is a girl. Quite young--just about my own age. A kinswoman of
mine, too, sort of second cousin twice removed. I'll tell you her name.
The Countess Araminta Troyos."

Jaikie's blank face witnessed that he had never heard of the lady.

"I've known her all my life," Ashie went on, "and we have been more or
less friends, though I never professed to understand her. Beautiful? Oh
yes, amazingly, if you admire the sable and amber type. And brains! She
could run round Muresco and his lot, and even Mastrovin has a healthy
respect for her. And ambition enough for half a dozen Mussolinis. And
her power of--what do you call the damned thing?--mass-persuasion?--is
simply unholy. She is the soul of Juventus. There's not one of them that
doesn't carry a picture postcard of her next his heart."

"What does she want? To be Queen?"

"Not she, though she would make a dashed good one. She's old-fashioned
in some ways, and doesn't believe much in her own sex. Good sane
anti-feminist. She wants a man on the throne of Evallonia, but she's
going to make jolly well sure that it's she who puts him there."

"I see." Jaikie whistled gently through his teeth, which was a habit of
his. "Are you in love with her?"

"Ye gods, no! She's not my kind. I'd as soon marry a were-wolf as Cousin
Mintha."

"Is she in love with you?"

"No. I'm positive no. She could never be in love with anybody in the
ordinary way. She runs for higher stakes. But she mesmerises me, and
that's the solemn truth. When she orates to me I feel all the pith
going out of my bones. I simply can't stand up to her. I'm terrified of
her. Jaikie, I'm in danger of making a blazing, blasted fool of myself.
That's why I want you."

Ashie's cheerful face had suddenly become serious and pathetic, like a
puzzled child's, and at the sight of it Jaikie's heart melted. He was
not much interested in Evallonia, but he was fond of Ashie, now in the
toils of an amber and sable Cleopatra. He could not see an old friend
dragged into trouble by a crazy girl without doing something to prevent
it. A certain _esprit de sexe_ was added to the obligations of
friendship.

"But what can I do?" he asked. "I don't know the first thing about
women--I've hardly met any in my life--I'm no match for your cousin."

"You can help me to keep my head cool," was the answer. "You stand for
the world of common sense which will always win in the long run. When
I'm inclined to run amok you'll remind me of England. You'll lower the
temperature."

"You want me to hold your hand?"

"Just so. To hold my hand."

"Well," said Jaikie after a pause. "I don't mind trying it out for a
fortnight. You'll have to give me free board and lodging, or I won't
have the money to take me home."

Ashie's face cleared so miraculously that for one uncomfortable moment
Jaikie thought that he was about to be embraced. Instead he shook hands
with a grip like iron.

"You're a true friend," he said. "Come what may, I'll never forget
this.... There's another thing. Unless we're to have civil war there
must be some arrangement. Somebody must keep in touch with the
Monarchists, or in a week there will be bloody battles. Juventus has cut
off all communication with the enemy and burned its boats, but it cannot
be allowed to go forward blindly, and crash head-on into the other side.
I want a _trait d'union_, and you're the man for it. I can't do it, for
I'm too conspicuous--I should be found out at once, and suspected of
treachery. But you know Prince Odalchini. You've got to be my
go-between. How do you fancy the job?"

Jaikie fancied it a good deal. It promised amusement and a field for his
special talents.

"It won't be too easy," Ashie went on. "You see, you're by way of being
my prisoner. All my fellows by this time know about your visit to the
Prince and my having you kidnapped. We've tightened up the screws in
Juventus, and I daren't let you go now."

"Then if I hadn't decided to stay, you'd have kept me by force?" Jaikie
demanded.

"No. I would have delivered you at Kremisch according to my promise, but
it would have been an uncommon delicate job, and I should have had to do
the devil of a lot of explaining. I've given out that you are an English
friend, who is not hostile but knows too much to be safe. So you'll have
to be guarded, and your visits to the House of the Four Winds will have
to be nicely camouflaged. Lucky I'm in charge of Juventus on this side
of the country."

"You've begun by handicapping me pretty heavily," said Jaikie. "But I'll
keep my word and have a try."

An orderly appeared at the tent door with a message. Ashie looked at his
watch.

"Your stable-companion for the night has arrived," he said. "I think
you'd better clear out while I'm talking to him. He's an English
journalist, and rather a swell, I believe, who has been ferreting round
for some weeks in Evallonia. It won't do to antagonise the foreign press
just yet--especially the English, so I promised to see him to-night and
give him some dope. But I'll see that he's beyond the frontier to-morrow
morning. We don't want any Paul Prys in this country at present."

"What's his name?" Jaikie asked with a sudden premonition.

Ashie consulted a paper. "Crombie--Dougal Crombie. Do you know him?"

"I've heard of him. He's second in command on the Craw Press, isn't he?"

"He is. And he'll probably be a sentimental royalist, like the old fool
who owns it."

Long ago in the Glasgow closes there had been a signal used among the
Gorbals Die-hards, if one member did not desire to be recognised when
suddenly confronted by another. So when Mr Crombie was ushered into the
tent and observed beside the Juventus commander a slight shabby figure,
which pinched its chin with the left hand and shut its left eye, he
controlled his natural surprise and treated Ashie as if he were alone.

"May I go to bed, sir?" Jaikie asked. "I'm blind with sleep, and I won't
be wakened by my fellow-guest."

Ashie assented, and Jaikie gave the Juventus salute and withdrew,
keeping his eyes strictly averted from the said fellow-guest.

He did not at once undress, but sat on the sleeping valise and thought.
His mind was not on the House of the Four Winds and the difficulties of
keeping in touch with Prince Odalchini; it was filled with the picture
of an amber and sable young woman. That he believed to be the real snag,
and he felt himself unequal to coping with it. In the end, on note-paper
which Ashie had given him, he wrote two letters. The first was to Miss
Alison Westwater and the second to Prince Odalchini; then he got into
pyjamas, curled himself inside the valise, and was almost at once
asleep.

He was wakened by being poked in the ribs, and found beside him the
rugged face of Dougal illumined by a candle.

"How on earth did you get here, Jaikie?" came the hoarse whisper.

"By accident," was the sleepy answer. "Ran into Ashie--that's Count
Paul--knew him at Cambridge. I'm a sort of prisoner, but I'll be all
right. Don't ask me about Evallonia, for you know far more than me."

"I daresay I do," said Dougal. "Man, Jaikie, this is a fearsome mess. Mr
Craw will be out of his mind with vexation. Here's everything ripe for a
nice law-abiding revolution, and this dam-fool Juventus chips in and
wrecks everything. I like your Count Paul, and he has some rudiments of
sense, but he cannot see that what he is after is sheer lunacy. The
Powers are in an easy temper, and there would be no trouble about an
orderly restoration of the old royal house. But if these daft lads
start running some new dictator fellow that nobody ever heard of, Europe
will shut down like a clam. Diplomatic relations suspended--economic
boycott--the whole bag of tricks. It's maddening that the people who
most want to kick out the present Government should be working to give
it a fresh lease of life, simply because they insist on playing a lone
hand."

"I know all that," said Jaikie. "Go away, Dougal, and let me sleep."

"I tell you what"--Dougal's voice was rising, and he lowered it at
Jaikie's request--"we need a first-class business mind on this job.
There's just one man alive that I'd listen to, and that's Mr McCunn.
He's at Rosensee, and that's not a thousand miles off, and he's quite
recovered now and will likely be as restless as a hen. I'm off there
to-morrow morning to lay the case before him."

"Good," Jaikie answered. "Now get to bed, will you?"

"I must put him in touch with Count Casimir and Prince Odalchini--the
big Schloss at Tarta is the place--that's the Monarchist centre. And
what about yourself? How can I find you?"

"If I'm not hanged," said Jaikie drowsily, "it will be at the same
address. I'll turn up there some time or other. I wish you'd put these
two letters in your pocket, and post them to-morrow when you're over the
frontier. And now for pity's sake let me sleep."




V SURPRISING ENERGY OF A CONVALESCENT


Mr Dickson McCunn sat in a wicker chair with his feet on the railing of
a small verandah, and his eyes on a wide vista of plain and forest which
was broken by the spires of a little town. Now and then he turned to
beam upon a thick-set, red-haired young man who occupied a similar chair
on his left hand. He wore a suit of grey flannel, a startling pink shirt
and collar, and brown sude shoes--things so foreign to his usual wear
that they must have been acquired for this occasion. He was looking
remarkably well, with a clear eye and a clear skin to which recent
exposure to the sun had given a becoming rosiness. His hair was a little
thinner than two years ago, but no greyer. Indeed, the only change was
in his figure, which had become more trim and youthful. Dougal judged
that he had reduced his weight by at least a stone.

He patted his companion's arm.

"Man, Dougal, I'm glad to see you. I was thinking just yesterday that
the thing I would like best in the world would be to see you and Jaikie
coming up the road. I've been wearying terribly for the sight of a
kenned face. I knew you were somewhere abroad, and I had a sort of
notion that you might give me a look in. Are they making you comfortable
here? It's not just the place I would recommend for a healthy body, for
they've a poor notion of food."

"Me?" he exclaimed in reply to a question. "I've never been better in my
life. It's a perfect miracle. I walked fifteen miles the day before
yesterday and never turned a hair. I'll give the salmon a fright this
back-end. I tell you, Dougal, Dr Christoph hasn't his equal on this
earth. He's my notion of the Apostles that could make the lame walk and
the blind see. When I came here I was a miserable decrepit body that
couldn't sleep, and couldn't take his meat, and wanted to lie down when
he had walked a mile. He saw me twice a day, and glowered and glunched
at me, like an old-fashioned minister at the catechising, and asked me
questions--he's one that would speir a whelk out of its shell. But he
wouldn't deliver a judgment--not him--just told me to possess my soul in
patience till he was ready. He made me take queer wee medicines, and he
prescribed what I was to eat. Oh, and I had what they call massage--he
was a wonder at that, for he seemed to flype my body as you would flype
a stocking. And I had to take a daft kind of bath, with first hot water
and then cold water dropping on me from the ceiling and every drop like
a rifle bullet. I thought I had wandered into a demented hydropathic....
Then after three weeks he spoke. 'Mr McCunn,' he says, 'I'm happy to
tell you that there's nothing wrong with you. There's been a heap wrong,
but it's gone now, the mischief is out of your system, and all you have
to do is to build your system up. You will soon be able to eat what you
like,' he says, 'and the more the better, and you can walk till you
fall down, and you can ride on a horse'--not that I was likely to try
that--'and I don't mind if you tumble into the burn. You're a well man,'
he says, 'but I'd like to keep you here for another three weeks under
observation.' Oh, and he wrote a long screed about my case for the
Edinburgh professor--I've got a copy of it--I don't follow it all, for
it is pretty technical and Dr Christoph isn't very grand at English. But
the plain fact is, that I've been a sick man and am now well, and that
in five days' time I'll be on the road for Blaweary, singing the 126th
Psalm

    "_Among the heathen say the Lord_
    _Great things for us hath wrought._"

Mr McCunn hummed a stave from the Scots metrical version to a dolorous
tune.

"You've been enjoying yourself fine," said Dougal.

The other pursed his lips. "I would scarcely say that. I've enjoyed the
fact of getting well, but I haven't altogether enjoyed the process.
There were whiles when I was terrible bored, me that used to boast that
I had never been bored in my life. The first weeks it was like being
back at the school. I had my bits of walks prescribed for me, and the
hours when I was to lie on my back and rest, and when I sat down to my
meals there was a nurse behind my chair to see that I ate the right
things and didn't forget my medicine. I had an awful lot of time on my
hands. I doddered about among the fir-woods--they're a careful folk, the
Germans, and have all the hillsides laid out like gentlemen's
policies--nice tidy walks, and seats to sit down on, and directions
about the road that I couldn't read. I'll not deny that it's a bonny
countryside--in its way, but the weather was blazing hot and I got
terrible tired of these endless fir-trees. It's a monotonous place, for
when you get to the top of one rig there's another of the same shape
beyond, covered with the same woods. Man, I got fair sick for a sight of
an honest bald-faced hill.

"Indoors," he went on, "it was just the same. It's all very well to be
told to rest and keep your mind empty, but that was never my way. I
brought out a heap of books with me, and was looking forward to getting
a lot of quiet reading done. But the mischief was that I couldn't settle
to a book. I had intended to read the complete works of Walter Savage
Landor--have you ever tried him, Dougal? I aye thought the quotations
from him I came across most appetising. But I might as well have been
reading a newspaper upside down, for I couldn't keep my mind on him. I
suppose that my thoughts having been so much concerned lately with my
perishing body had got out of tune for higher things. So I fell back on
Sir Walter--I'm not much of a hand at novels, as you know, but I can
always read Scott--but I wasn't half through _Guy Mannering_ when it
made me so homesick for the Canonry that I had to give it up. After that
I became a mere vegetable, a bored vegetable."

"You don't look very bored," said Dougal.

"Oh, it's been different the last weeks, when the doctor told me I was
cured, for I've been pretty nearly my own master. I've had some grand
long walks--what you would call training walks, for I was out just for
the exercise and never minded the scenery. I've sweated pounds and
pounds of adipose tissue off my bones. I hired a car, too, and got Peter
Wappit to drive it, and I've been exploring the countryside for fifty
miles round. I've found some fine scenery and some very respectable
public-houses. You'll be surprised that I mention them, but the fact is
that my mind has been dwelling shamelessly on food and drink. I've never
been so hungry in all my days. I'm allowed to eat anything I like, but
the trouble is that you can't get it in this house. The food is
deplorable for a healthy man. Endless veal, which I cannot bide--and
what they call venison, but is liker goat--and wee blue trouts that are
as wersh as the dowp of a candle--and they've a nasty habit of eating
plums and gooseberries with butcher's meat. I'll admit the coffee is
fine, but they've no kind of notion of tea. Tea has always been my
favourite meal, but here you never see a scone or a cookie--just things
like a baby's rusks, and sweet cakes that you very soon scunner at. So
I've had to supplement my diet at adjacent publics.... I tell you what,
Dougal, Peter is a perfect disgrace. It's preposterous that a man should
have been two years in jyle in Germany and have picked up so little of
the language. He just stammers and glowers and makes noises like a
clocking hen, and it's me that has to do the questioning, with about six
words of the tongue and every kind of daft-like grimace and contortion.
If the Germans weren't an easy-tempered folk we'd have had a lot of
trouble.

"But, thank God," said Mr McCunn, "that's all very near by with. I've
got back my health and now I want something to occupy my mind and body."
He pushed back his chair, stood up, doubled his fists and made playful
taps at Dougal's chest to prove his vigour.

"What about yourself, Dougal?" he said. "Let's hear what you've been up
to. Is Mr Craw still trying to redd up the affairs of Europe?"

"He is. That's the reason I'm out here. And that's the reason I've come
to see you. I want your advice."

"In that case," said Mr McCunn solemnly, "we'd be the better of a drink.
Beer is allowed here, and it's a fine mild brew. We'll have a tankard
apiece."

"Now," said he, when the tankards had been brought, and he was
comfortably settled again in his chair, "I'm waiting on your story.
Where have you come from?"

"From Evallonia."

For a moment or two Dickson did not speak. The word set his mind digging
into memories which had been heavily overlaid. In particular he recalled
an autumn night on a Solway beach when in the moonlight a cutter swung
down the channel with the tide. He saw a young man under whose greatcoat
was a gleam of tartan, and he remembered vividly a scene which for him
had been one of tense emotion. On the little finger of his left hand he
wore that young man's ring.

"Aye, Evallonia," he murmured. "That's where you would be. And how are
things going in Evallonia?"

"Bad. They couldn't be worse. Listen, Mr McCunn, and I'll give you the
rudiments of a perfectly ridiculous situation."

Dickson listened, and his occasional grunts told of his lively interest.
When Dougal had finished, he remained for a little silent and frowning
heavily. Then he began to ask questions.

"You say the Monarchists have got everything arranged and can put Prince
John on the throne whenever they're so minded? Can they put up a good
Government?"

"I think so. They've plenty of brains among them and plenty of
experience. Count Casimir Muresco is a sort of lesser Cavour. I've seen
a good deal of him and can judge. You'll remember him?"

"Aye, I mind him well. I thought he had some kind of a business head.
Prince Odalchini was a fine fellow, but a wee thing in the clouds. What
about the Professor--Jagon, I think they called him?"

"He has gone over to Juventus. Discovered that it fulfilled his notion
of democracy. He was a maggotty old body."

"Well, he'll maybe not be much loss. You say that there's a good
Government waiting for Evallonia, but that this Juv-Juventus
thing--that's Latin isn't it?--won't hear of it because they didn't
invent it themselves. What kind of shape would they make at running the
country?"

"Bad, I think. They've brains, but no experience, and not much common
sense. They're drunk with fine ideas and as full of pride as an old
black-cock, but they're babes and sucklings at the job of civil
administration."

"But they've power behind them?"

"All the power there is in Evallonia. They've an armed force uncommon
well trained and disciplined--you never saw a more upstanding lot of
lads. The National Guard, which is all the army that is permitted under
the Peace Treaty, is good enough in its way, but it's small, and the
people don't give a hang for it. Juventus has captured the fancy of the
nation, and with these Eastern European folk, that means that the battle
is won. They can no more make a good Government than they could square
the circle, but they can play the devil with any Government that they
don't approve of. You may say that the real motive power in Evallonia
to-day is destructive. But they'll have to set up some sort of
figure-head--one of themselves, though there's nobody very obvious--and
that will mean an infernal mess, the old futile dictatorship ran-dan,
and no end of trouble with the Powers. I've the best reason to be
positive on that point, for Mr Craw has seen----" and he mentioned
certain august names.

Dickson asked one other question. "What about the Republicans?"

Dougal laughed. "Oh, their number's up all right. Whoever is top-dog,
they're bound to be the bottom one for many a day. They've their bags
packed waiting to skip over the frontier. But they'll do their best, of
course, to make the mischief worse. Mastrovin, especially. If he's
caught in Evallonia he'll get short shrift, but he'll be waiting outside
to put spokes in the wheels."

"Yon's the bad one," said Dickson reflectively. "When he is thrawn, he
has a face that's my notion of the Devil.... It seems that Juventus is
the proposition we have to consider. What ails Juventus at Prince John?"

"Nothing. They've no ill-will to him--only he's not their man. What they
dislike is his supporters."

"Why?"

"Simply because they're the old gang and associated in their minds with
all the misfortunes and degradation of Evallonia since the War. Juventus
is thinking of a new world, and won't have any truck with the old.
They're new brooms, and are blind to the merits of the old besoms.
They're like laddies at school, Mr McCunn--when catties come in they
won't look at a bool or a girr."

Dickson whistled morosely through his teeth.

"I see," he said. "Well, it looks ugly. What kind of advice do you want
from me?"

"I want a business-like view of the situation from a wise man, and you
can't get that in Evallonia."

"But how in the name of goodness can I give you any kind of view when I
don't know the place or the folk?"

"I've tried to put the lay-out before you, and I want the common sense
of a detached observer. You may trust my facts. I've done nothing but
make inquiries for the last month, for the thing is coming between Mr
Craw and his sleep. I've seen Count Casimir and all his lot and talked
with them till my brain was giddy. I've taken soundings in Evallonian
public opinion, to which I had pretty good access."

"Have you seen much of Juventus?"

Dougal drew down the corners of his mouth.

"Not a great deal. You see, it's a secret society, and you can no more
get inside it than into a lodge of Masons. I've talked, of course, to a
lot of the rank-and-file, and I can judge their keenness and their
popular support. There was one of them I particularly wanted to see--a
woman called Countess Troyos--but I was warned that if I went near her
she would have me shot against a wall--she's a ferocious Amazon and
doesn't like journalists. But I managed to get an interview with one of
the chiefs, a certain Count Paul Jovian, a son of the Jovian that was
once a Republican Minister. It was that interview that gave me the
notion of coming to you, for this Count Paul has some rudiments of
sense, and has lived a lot in England, and I could see that he was
uneasy about the way things were going. He didn't say much, but he
hinted that there ought to be some sort of compromise with the
Monarchists, so there's one man at any rate that will accept a
reasonable deal.... And Jaikie whispered as much to me before I left."

"Jaikie!" The word came almost like a scream from the startled Mr
McCunn. "I thought he was on a walking-tour in France."

"Well, he has walked into Evallonia. He was with Count Paul, whom it
seems he knew at Cambridge. He told me he was a prisoner."

"How was he behaving himself?"

"Just as Jaikie would. Pretending to be good and meek and sleepy. The
same old flat-catcher. If Juventus knew the type of fellow Jaikie was
they wouldn't rest till they saw him safe in bed in the Canonry."

Dickson grinned. "I'm sure they wouldn't." But the grin soon faded. He
strode up and down the little verandah with his head bowed and his hands
clasped behind his back. He did this for perhaps five minutes, and then,
with a "Just you bide here" to his companion, he disappeared into the
house.

He was absent for the better part of an hour, and when he returned it
was with a gloomy and puzzled countenance.

"I got the Head Schwester to telephone for me to Katzensteg to the
aerodrome. There's some jukery-pukery on, and it seems I can't get a
machine for the job. The frontier is closed to private planes and only
the regular air service is allowed."

"Whatever do you want an aeroplane for?" Dougal asked.

"To get to Evallonia," said Dickson simply. "I've never been in one, but
they tell me it's the quickest way to travel. There'll be nothing for it
but to go by road. I'll have to attend strictly to the map, for Peter
has no more sense of direction than a sheep."

"But what will you do when you get there?"

"I thought of having a crack with Prince Odalchini in the first
place...."

"The thing's impossible," Dougal cried. "Man, the country is already
almost in a state of siege. Juventus won't let you near the Prince.
They're sitting three-deep round his park wall. They carted me over the
frontier yesterday with instructions that I wasn't to come back if I
valued my life--and, mind you, I had their safe conduct."

"All the same, I must find some way of getting to him." In Dickson's
voice there was a note of dismal obstinacy which Dougal knew well.

"But it's perfectly ridiculous," said Dougal. "I wish to Heaven I had
never come here. You can't do a bit of good to anybody and you can do
the devil of a lot of harm to yourself."

"I can see the place and some of the folk, and give you that business
advice you said you wanted."

"You'll see nothing except the inside of a guard-room," Dougal wailed.
"Listen to reason, Mr McCunn. I must be in Vienna to-morrow, for I have
to sign a contract about paper for Mr Craw. Stay quietly here till I
come back, and then maybe we'll be able to think of a plan."

"I can't," said Dickson. "I must go at once.... See here, Dougal. Do you
observe that ring?" He held up his left hand. "I got it two years back
come October on the Solway sands. 'I've gotten your ring, Sire,' I says
to him, 'and if I get the word from you I'll cross the world.' Well, the
word has come. Not direct from Prince John, maybe, but from what they
call the logic of events. I would think shame to be found wanting. It's
maybe the great chance of my life.... Where more by token is his Royal
Highness?"

"How should I know?" said Dougal wearily. "Not in Evallonia, but lurking
somewhere near, waiting on a summons that will likely never come. Poor
soul, I don't envy him his job.... And you're going to stick your head
into a bees' byke, when nobody asks you to. You say it's your sense of
duty. If that's so, it's a misguided sense not very different from
daftness. My belief is that the real reason is that you're looking for
excitement. You're too young. You're like a horse with too much corn.
You're doing this because it amuses you."

"It doesn't," was the solemn answer. "Make no mistake about that,
Dougal. I'm simply longing to be back at Blaweary. I want to be on the
river again--I hear the water's in fine trim--and I want to get on with
my new planting--I'm trying Douglas firs this time.... I don't care a
docken for Evallonia and its politics. But I'm pledged to Prince John,
and in all my sixty-three years I've never broken my word. I'm sweir to
go--I'll tell you something more, I'm feared to go. I've never had much
truck with foreigners, and their ways are not my ways, and I value my
comfort as much as anybody. That was why I tried to get an aeroplane,
for I thought it would commit me and get the first plunge over, for I
was feared of weakening. As it is I'll have to content myself with the
car and that sumph Peter Wappit. But some way or other I'm bound to go."

Dougal's grim face relaxed into an affectionate smile.

"You're a most extraordinary man. I'll not argue with you, for I know
it's about as much good as making speeches to a tombstone. I'll go back
to Evallonia as soon as my business is finished, and I only hope I don't
see your head stuck up on a spike on Melina gate-house."

"Do you think that's possible?" Dickson asked with a curious mixture of
alarm and rapture.

"Not a bit of it. I was only joking. The worst that can happen is that
you and Peter will be sent back over the border with a flea in your ear.
If Juventus catches you they'll deport you as a harmless lunatic.... But
for God's sake don't get into the same parish as Mastrovin."




VI ARRIVALS AT AN INN


Sir Archibald Roylance drove a motor-car well but audaciously, so that
he disquieted the nerves of those who accompanied him; his new servant
McTavish drove better, and with a regard for the psychology of others
which made a journey with him as smooth as a trip in the Scotch express.
The party left Unnutz early in the morning before the guests of the
Kaiserin Augusta were out of bed, and since they had many miles to
cover, Archie insisted on taking McTavish's place for a spell every
three hours. All day under a blue sky they threaded valleys, and
traversed forests, and surmounted low passes among the ranges, and since
the air was warm and the landscape seductive, they did not hurry unduly.
Lunch, for example, on a carpet of moss beside a plunging stream,
occupied a full two hours. The consequence was that when they came out
of the hills and crossed the Rave and saw before them the lights of the
little railway station of Zutpha, it was already evening. Clearly not a
time to pay a call upon Prince Odalchini, who did not expect them.
Archie inquired of McTavish where was the nearest town, and was told
Tarta, where the inn of the Turk's Head had a name for comfort. All the
party was hungry and a little weary, so it was agreed to make for Tarta.

The car took a country road which followed the eastern side of Prince
Odalchini's great park. Passing through Zutpha village, Archie, whose
turn it was then to drive, noticed a number of youths who appeared to be
posted on some kind of system. They stared at the car, and at first
seemed inclined to interfere with it. But something--the road it was
taking or the badges on the front of its bonnet--satisfied them, a word
was passed from one to the other, and they let it go. They wore shorts,
and shirts of a colour which could not be distinguished in the dark.

"Juventus," Archie turned his head to whisper. "We've come to the right
shop. Thank heaven the lads don't want to stand between us and dinner."

Soon the road, which had lain among fields of maize and beet, turned
into the shadow of woods, and was joined by many tributary tracks.
Archie, who had a good sense of direction, knew the point of the compass
where Tarta lay, and had an occasional glimpse of the park paling on his
right to keep him straight. He was driving carelessly, for the road
seemed deserted, and his mind was occupied in wondering what kind of
fare the Turk's Head would give them, when in turning a corner he saw a
yard or two ahead a stationary car, drawn up dangerously in a narrow
place. He clapped on his brakes, for there was no room to pass it, since
its nose was poked beyond the middle of the road, and came to a
standstill in a crooked echelon, his off front wheel all but touching
its running board.

Archie, like many casual people, was easily made indignant by casualness
in others. On this occasion surprise made him indignant in his own
language. "You fool!" he shouted. "Will you have the goodness to shift
your dashed perambulator?"

One man sat stiffly at the wheel. The other was apparently engaged in
examining a map with the assistance of the headlight. It was the latter
who replied.

"Peter," he said, "they're English. Thank God for that."

The map-student straightened himself, and stood revealed in the glare of
the big acetylene lamps as a smallish man in a tweed ulster. He took off
his spectacles, blinked in the dazzle, and came deferentially towards
Archie. His smile was so ingratiating that that gentleman's irritation
vanished.

"That's a silly thing to do," was all he said. "If my brakes hadn't been
good we'd have had a smash."

"I'm awful sorry. Peter lost his head, I doubt. You see, we've missed
our road."

Something in the voice, with its rich Scots intonation, in the round
benignant face, and in the friendly peering eyes stirred a recollection
in Archie which he could not place. But he was not allowed time to drag
the deeps of his memory. Alison from the back seat descended like a
tornado, and was grasping the stranger's hand.

"Dickson," she cried, "who'd have thought of finding you here? You're a
sight for sore eyes."

The little man beamed.

"'Deed, so are you, Miss Alison. Mercy, but it's a queer world."

"This is Sir Archie Roylance. You know him? Aren't you a neighbour of
his?"

Dickson extended a grimy hand.

"Fine I know him, though I haven't seen him for years. D'you not mind
the Gorbals Die-hards, Sir Archibald, and Huntingtower where you and me
fought a battle?"

"Golly, it's McCunn!" Archie exclaimed. "And not a day older----"

"And that," said Alison, waving a hand towards the back of her car, "is
my cousin Janet--Lady Roylance."

Dickson bowed, and, since he was too far off to shake hands, also
saluted.

"Proud to meet you, mem. This is a fair gathering of the clans. I never
thought when I started this morning to run into a covey of friends." The
encounter seemed to have lifted care from his mind, for he beamed
delightedly on each member of the party, not excluding McTavish.

"But what are you doing here?" Alison repeated. "I thought you were ill
and at some German cure place."

"I've been miraculously restored to health," said Dickson solemnly. "And
I'm here because I want to have a word with a man. You know him, Miss
Alison--Prince Odalchini."

"But that's what we're here for too," the girl said.

"You don't tell me that. Have you tried to get inside his gates? That's
what I've been seeking to do, and they wouldn't let me."

"Who wouldn't let you?"

"A lot of young lads in short breeks and green sarks. My directions were
to go to a place called Zutpha, which was the proper way in. I found the
lodge gates all right, but they were guarded like a penitentiary. I told
the lads who I was seeking and got a lot of talk in a foreign language.
I didn't understand a word, but the meaning was plain enough that if I
didn't clear out I would get my neck wrung. One of them spoke German,
and according to Peter what he said was the German for 'Go to hell out
of this.' So I just grinned at them and nodded and told Peter to turn
the car, for I saw it was no good running my head against a stone dyke.
So now I'm looking for a town called Tarta, where I can bide the night
and think things over."

"But what do you want with Prince Odalchini?"

"It's a long story, and this is not the place to tell it. It was Dougal
that set me off. Dougal Crombie--you remember him at Castle Gay?"

"Dougal! You have seen him?"

"No farther back than the day before yesterday. He's in Vienna now. He
came seeking me, for Dougal's sore concerned about this Evallonia
business. Jaikie is in it, too. He had seen Jaikie."

"Where is Jaikie?" Alison asked, her voice shrill with excitement.

"Somewhere hereabouts. Dougal says he's a prisoner and in the hands of
the same lads that shoo'ed me away from the Prince's gates."

Here Archie intervened. "This conference must adjourn," he said. "We're
all famishing and Mr McCunn is as hungry as the rest of us. Dinner is
the first objective. I'll back my car, and you"--he addressed Peter
Wappit--"go on ahead. It's a straight road, and the town isn't five
miles off. We can't talk here by the roadside, especially with Alison
shrieking like a pea-hen. If Juventus has got the wind up, it's probably
lurking three deep in these bushes."

The hostelry of the Turk's Head drew its name from the days when John
Sobieski drove the Black Sultan from the walls of Vienna. Part of it was
as old as the oldest part of the Schloss, and indeed at one time it may
have formed an outlying appanage of the castle. In the eighteenth
century, in the hey-day of the Odalchinis, it was a cheerful place,
where great men came with their retinues, and where in the vast kitchen
the Prince's servitors and foresters drank with the townfolk of Tarta.
It still remained the principal inn of the little borough, but Tarta had
decayed, and it stood on no main road, so while its tap-room was
commonly full, its guest-rooms were commonly empty. But the landlord had
been valet in his youth to the Prince's father, and he had a memory of
past glories and an honest pride in his profession; besides, he was a
wealthy man, the owner of the best vineyard in the neighbourhood. So the
inn had never been allowed to get into disrepair; its rambling
galleries, though they echoed to the tread of few guests, were kept
clean and fresh; the empty stalls in the big stables were ready at a
moment's notice for the horses that never came; there was good wine in
the cellars against the advent of a connoisseur. It stood in an alley
before you reached the market-place, and its courtyard and back parts
lay directly under the shadow of the castle walls.

The newcomers were received like princes. The landlord was well disposed
to English milords, the class to which, from a glance at his card, he
judged Archie to belong. Janet and Alison were his notion of handsome
gentlewomen, for, being swarthy himself, he preferred them blonde; the
two chauffeurs looked respectable; Dickson he could not place, but he
had the carelessness of dress which in a Briton suggested opulence. So
there was a scurrying of chambermaids in the galleries and a laborious
preparation of hip-baths; the cars were duly bestowed in one of the old
coach-houses, and the landlord himself consulted with Archie about
dinner. McTavish and Peter were to be accommodated with their meals in a
room by themselves--in old days, said the landlord, it had been the
sitting-room of the Imperial couriers. The ladies and gentlemen would
dine at the hour fixed in the grand parlour, which had some famous
ancient carvings which learned men journeyed many miles to see. They
would have the room to themselves--there were no other guests in the
house.... He departed to see to the wine with a candlestick as large as
a soup tureen.

The dinner was all that the landlord had promised. There was trout from
the hills--honest, speckled trout--and a pie of partridges slain
prematurely--and what Archie pronounced to be the best beef he had eaten
outside England--and an omelet of kidneys and mushrooms--and little
tartlets of young raspberries. It was a meal which Dickson was to regard
as an epoch in his life; for, coming after the bare commons of Rosensee,
it was a sort of festival in honour of his restored health. They drank a
mild burgundy, and a sweet wine of the Tokay clan, and a local liqueur
bottled forty years ago, and the coffee with which they concluded might
have been brewed by the Ottoman whose severed head decorated the inn's
sign.

"Dickson," Alison asked solemnly, "are you really and truly well again?"

"I'm a new man," was the answer. "Ay, and a far younger man. I aye
said, Miss Alison, that I was old but not dead-old. I've an awful weight
of years behind me, but for all that at this moment I'm feeling younger
than when I retired from business. They tell me that you've been to Dr
Christoph too, Sir Archibald?"

"He's a warlock," said Archie. "I had got as lame as a duck, and he made
me skip like a he-goat on the mountains. I daren't presume too far, of
course, or the confounded leg may sour on me. I got the most foul cramps
the other day after a hill walk."

"Same with me," said Dickson. "The doctor says I may be a well body till
the end of my days if I just go easy. I'm not very good at ca'ing canny,
so no doubt I'll have my relapses and my rheumatic turns. But that's a
small cross to bear. It's not half as bad as the gout that the old
gentry used to get."

"Everybody," said Archie, "has gout--or its equivalent. It's part of
man's destiny. _Chacun  son got_, as they say in Gaul."

The miserable witticism was very properly ignored. It was Alison who
brought them back to business. "I want to hear what Dougal said," she
told Dickson. "I came here because Jaikie wrote telling me to. I haven't
a notion where he is--I thought he was on his way home by this time.
Archie and Janet came to keep me company. We're all bound for the same
house--if we can get in. Now tell me--very slowly--everything that
Dougal said."

Dickson, as well as he could, expounded Dougal's reading of Evallonian
affairs. There was nothing new to his auditors in the exposition, for
it was very much what they already knew from McTavish.

"What I don't understand," said Alison, "is what Dougal thought you
could do, Dickson."

"I suppose," was the modest answer, "that he wanted a business-like view
of the situation."

"But how could you give him that when you know so little about it?"

"That's just what I told him. I said that before I could help to redd up
the mischief I had to discover exactly what the mischief was. That's why
I came on here."

"You're a marvel," said Alison with wide eyes. "I didn't know you were
so keen about Evallonia."

"I'm not. I don't care a docken about Evallonia. But, you see, I'm under
a kind of bond, Miss Alison. You'll mind the night in the Canonry when I
saw Prince John off in a boat. He gave me this ring"--he held up his
left hand--"and I said to him that if ever I got the word I would cross
the world to help him."

"He sent for you?"

"Not exactly. But the poor young man is evidently in sore difficulties,
and I--well, I remembered my promise. I daresay he'll be the better of a
business mind to advise him. Dougal, I could see, thought me daft, but
I'm sane enough. I don't particularly fancy the job, for I'm wearying to
get home, but there it is. I thought I'd first have a crack with Prince
Odalchini and get the lay-out right. And then----"

"Then?"

"Then I must find Prince John, and the dear knows how I'll manage
that."

A glance from Alison prevented Archie from saying something.

"It's more important," she said, "that you should find Jaikie."

"I daresay that will be the way of it," Dickson smiled. "He's a
prisoner, and at Zutpha to-day I thought I would soon be a prisoner too,
and would run up against Jaikie in some jyle."

"Jaikie," said Alison, "told me to come here, for he needed me. That
means that sooner or later he'll be here too. They can't prevent us
getting into the House of the Four Winds if we're Prince Odalchini's
friends. It isn't war yet."

"It is not a bad imitation." A new voice spoke, and the four at the
table, who had been intent on their talk, turned startled faces to the
door. A tall man had quietly insinuated himself into the room, and was
now engaged in turning the key in the lock. He had a ragged blond beard,
and a face the colour of an autumn beech leaf: he wore an ill-cut grey
suit and a vulgar shirt; also he had a Brigade tie.

"Good evening," he said pleasantly. "How are you, Roylance?
Proser--that's the landlord--is a friend of mine and told me you were
here." He smiled and bowed to Janet, and then he stopped short,
registering extreme surprise on a face not accustomed to such
manifestations. "Cousin Alison! My dear, what magic spirited you here?"

"Thank God!" Alison exclaimed fervently. "I've been thinking of you all
day, Ran, and longing to get hold of you. This is Mr Dickson McCunn, who
is a friend of Jaikie--you remember Jaikie at the Lamanchas? I don't
know why you're here--I don't quite know why any of us are here--but
here we are, and we must do something. By the way, you were saying as
you slunk in----?"

"I was observing that the present state of affairs was a rather good
imitation of war. How shall I put it? The Monarchists control the centre
of Evallonia and the capital and can strike there when they please.
Juventus is in power round the whole circumference of the country. They
control its outlets and inlets--a very important point."

"That's why they are besieging the castle here?"

"Not besieging. Keeping it under observation. There has been as yet no
overt act of hostility."

"But they are taking prisoners. They've pinched Jaikie."

Mr Glynde's _nil admirari_ countenance for a second time in five minutes
registered surprise.

"Jaikie?" he cried. "What do you mean?"

"He is in the hands of Juventus. He has been seen in captivity. Do you
know anything about him?" Alison's voice had the sharpness of anxiety.

"I had the pleasure of meeting your Jaikie a few days ago up in the
hills. I encouraged him to pay a visit to Evallonia. I helped to
entertain him at luncheon with Prince Odalchini, when we tried to make
him prolong his visit. You see, I had taken a fancy to Mr Jaikie and
thought that he might be useful. I was to meet him that evening, but he
never turned up, so I assumed that he was tired of my company, and had
gone back across the frontier as he intended. It seems that I have
misjudged him. He is a prisoner of Juventus, you say? That must be the
doing of his friend Count Paul, and it looks as if all parties were
competing for his company. Well, it may not be a bad thing, for it
gives us an ally in the enemy's camp. You look troubled, Alison dear,
but you needn't worry. Count Paul Jovian is not a bad sort of fellow,
and I am inclined to think that Jaikie is very well able to look after
himself."

"I'm not worrying about Jaikie, but about ourselves. I came here because
Jaikie sent for me, and that means that he expects to meet me. He named
Prince Odalchini's house. But how are we to get into it, if Juventus
spends all its time squatting round it?"

"I think that can be managed," said Mr Glynde. "You have greatly
relieved my mind, my dear. If Jaikie means to come to the House of the
Four Winds, he will probably manage it, and he may be a most valuable
link with the enemy. You must understand that Juventus is by no means
wholly the enemy, but may with a little luck become a friend.... By the
way, just how much do you know about the situation?"

He proceeded by means of question and answer to probe their knowledge,
directing his remarks to Alison at first, but later to Dickson, when he
perceived that gentleman's keenness.

"I must tell you one piece of bad news," and his voice became grave. "I
have just heard it. Prince John was in hiding in a certain place,
waiting for the summons, for everything depends on his safety, and all
precautions had to be taken. But his enemies discovered his retreat, and
he has been kidnapped. We know who did it--Mastrovin, the most dangerous
and implacable of them all."

He was puzzled to find that the announcement did not solemnise his
hearers. Indeed, with the exception of Dickson, it seemed to amuse them.
But Dickson was aghast.

"Mercy on us!" he cried. "That's an awful business. I mind Mastrovin,
and a blackguard murdering face he had. I must away at once----"

"It is the worst thing that could have happened," Mr Glynde continued.
"They may kill him, and with him the hope of Evallonia. In any case it
fatally disarranges the Monarchist plans.... What on earth is amusing
you, Roylance?" he concluded testily.

Archie spoke, in obedience to a nod from Alison.

"Sorry," he said. "But the fact is we got in ahead of old Mastrovin. We
were at Unnutz, and saw what he was up to, so we nipped in and pinched
the Prince ourselves."

"Good God!" Mr Glynde for a moment could only stare. "Who knows about
that?"

"Nobody, except us."

"Where have you put him?"

"At this moment he is upstairs having his supper along with Mr McCunn's
chauffeur. His present job is to be my servant--name of
McTavish--passport and everything according to Cocker."

For the third time that evening Mr Glynde was staggered. He rose and
strode about the room, and his blue eyes had a dancing light in them.

"I begin to hope," he cried. "No, I begin to be confident. This freak of
fate shows that the hussy is on our side." He took a glass from the
sideboard and filled himself a bumper of the local liqueur. "I drink to
you mountebanks. You have beaten all my records. I have always loved
you, Janet. I adore you, Alison, my dear, and I have been writing you
some exquisite poetry. _Eructavit cor meum_ as the Vulgate says--now I
shall write you something still more exquisite. Roylance, you are a man
after my own heart. Where are you going?" he asked, for Dickson had
risen from the table.

"I thought I would go up and have a word with His Royal Highness."

"You'll do nothing of the kind. Sit down. And drop the Royal Highness
business." Mr Glynde pulled a chair up to the table and leaned his
elbows on it. "We must go very carefully in this business. You have done
magnificently, but it's still dangerous ground. You say nobody knows of
it except ourselves. Well, not another soul must know of it. Mastrovin
is out to kill or spirit away Prince John--he must believe that the
Prince is lost. Casimir and the Monarchists must believe that Mastrovin
is the villain and go out hot on his trail--that will have the advantage
of demobilising the Monarchists, which is precisely what is wanted at
present. The Prince must be tucked away carefully till we want him--and
when and how we will want him depends on the way things go. Oh, I can
tell you we have scored one mighty big point which may give us the game
and the rubber. But he can't stay here as your servant."

"It's a pretty good camouflage," said Archie. "He's the image of a
respectable English valet, and I'm dashed if he hasn't picked up a
Scotch accent, like the real McTavish. You'd have to examine him with a
microscope before you spotted the Prince. He's a first-class actor, and
it amuses him, so he puts his heart into it."

"Nevertheless it is too dangerous. You people will be moving in the wrong
circles, and sooner or later he'll give himself away, or somebody will
turn up that has known him from childhood. Luckily he hasn't been much
in Evallonia since he was a boy, but you never know. We must bury him
deeper.... Wait a moment. I have it. He shall go into my circus. You may
not know that I'm a circus proprietor, Alison dear--the Cirque
Dor--Glynde, late Aristide Lebrun--the epochal, the encyclopdic, the
grandiose. We are encamped in the environs of Tarta, and every night
sprigs of Juventus, who are admitted at half-price, applaud our
performances. The Prince shall join my staff--I will devise for him some
sort of turn--he will be buried there as deep as if he were under the
Rave. It will be a joyful irony that the enemies who are looking for him
will applaud his antics. Then some day, please God, we will take him out
of tights and grease-paint and give him a throne."

Mr Glynde had become a poet, but he had not ceased to be a conspirator.
"To-morrow morning," he told Archie, "you will inform the landlord that
you are sending your chauffeur home by road with your car. The cars will
take your baggage to Zutpha, while you will walk there at your leisure
through a pleasant country to catch the evening train. Proser is a good
man, but it is unkind to burden even a good man with too much knowledge.
Roylance's chauffeur will not again be heard of. I will arrange about
your baggage and the cars."

"And what about us?" Archie asked.

"Before the evening--well before the evening, I hope--you will be in the
House of the Four Winds."

The party took an affectionate farewell of the landlord next morning,
their baggage was piled into the cars, luncheon baskets were furnished,
and Proser was informed that they meant to drive a mile or two till they
cleared the town, and then to spend the day walking the woods on the
left bank of the Rave, and catch the evening train at Zutpha. The cars
would go straight to the railway station. There was no sign of Mr Randal
Glynde.

McTavish, however, had been well coached. They crossed the Rave Bridge,
passed the common where Jaikie had first met Count Paul, and plunged
into a thick belt of woodland which covered all the country between the
foothills and the river. Here there was no highway but many forest
tracks, one in especial much rutted by heavy wagons and showing the
prints of monstrous feet. The reason of this was apparent after a mile
or so, when a clearing revealed the headquarters of the Cirque Dor. It
was not its show-ground--that was in the environs of Tarta--but its
base, where such animals were kept as were not immediately required. It
was guarded by a stout palisade, and many notices warning the public
that wild beasts lived there, and that they must not enter.

Mr Glynde was awaiting them, and one or two idlers hung around the gate.
Archie caught, too, what he thought was a glimpse of a green shirt.
Randal received them with the elaborate courtesies of a circus
proprietor welcoming distinguished patrons. The chauffeurs of the two
cars he directed how to proceed to Zutpha. "They will return by another
road in due course," he whispered to Alison, "but it is altogether
necessary that they should be seen to leave this place."

Of what followed no member of the party had a very clear recollection.
They were taken to a tent less odoriferous than the rest, and provided
with white caps on which the name of the circus was embroidered in
scarlet. "We give a matinee to-day," said Randal, "an extra performance
asked for by Tarta. It will be in a dance-hall, and the programme is in
Luigi's hands--gipsy dances and songs and fiddling, for we are no mere
vulgar menagerie. You will accompany the artistes back to Tarta. Trust
me, you will not be suspected. The Cirque Dor has become a common
object of the seashore."

So Archie and Janet, Alison and Dickson, joined a party which crowded
into an old Ford bus, and jolted back the way they had come. The
dance-hall proved to be a building not far from the Turk's Head, and it
was already packed when the company arrived and entered by a side door.
Randal deposited the four in a little room behind the stage. "You will
lunch out of your baskets," he told them, "while I supervise the start
of the show. When it is in full swing I will come back."

So while fiddles jigged a yard or two off and the feet and hands of
Tarta citizens applauded, the four made an excellent meal and conversed
in whispers. The circus cap was becoming to Alison and Janet, and it
made Archie look like a professional cricketer, but on Dickson's head it
sat like an incongruous cowl out of a Christmas cracker. "A daft-like
thing," he observed, "but I'm long past caring for appearances. I
doubt," he added prophetically, "that there'll be a lot of dressing-up
before we're through with this business. It's a pity that I've the kind
of face you cannot properly disguise. Providence never meant me to be a
play-actor."

Randal did not return for a good hour. He seemed satisfied. "The coast
is clear," he said, "and I've just had word from my camp that everything
is all right there. Now we descend into the deeps, and I'm afraid it
will be rather a dusty business. You can leave the circus caps behind,
and put on your proper headgear. I hope you two women have nothing on
that will spoil."

He led them down a rickety wooden stair into a basement in which were
stored many queer properties; then out of doors into a small dark
courtyard above which beetled the walls of the castle. In a corner of
this was a door, which he unlocked, and which led to further stables,
this time of ancient stone. There followed a narrow passage, another
door, and then a cave of a room which contained barrels and shelves and
smelt of beer.

"We are now in the cellars of the Turk's Head," Randal expounded.
"Proser knows this road, and he knows that I know it, but he does not
know of our present visit."

From the beer cellar they passed into a smaller one, one end of which
was blocked by a massive wooden frame containing bottles in tiers.
Randal showed that one part of this frame was jointed, and that a
section, bottles and all, formed a door. He pulled this back, and his
electric torch revealed a low door in a stone wall. It was bolted with
heavy ancient bolts, but they seemed to have been recently in use, for
they slipped easily back. Now he evidently expected it to open, but it
refused. There was a keyhole, but no key.

"Some fool must have locked it," he grumbled. "It must have been Proser,
and I told him to leave the infernal thing open. I'm extremely sorry,
but you'll have to wait here till I get a key. It's filthy dirty, but
you won't suffocate."

They did not suffocate, but they had a spell of weary waiting, for the
place was pitch-dark and no one of them had a light. Dickson tried to
explore in the blackness, and ran his head hard against an out-jutting
beam, after which he sat down on the floor and slept. Archie smoked five
cigarettes, and did his best to keep up a flow of conversation. "This is
the Middle Ages right enough," he said. "We're making burglarious entry
into an ancient Schloss, and I feel creepy down the spine. We didn't
bargain for this Monte Cristo business, Janet, when we left Geneva. And
the last thing I heard that old ass Perrier say there was that the
medival was out of date." But by and by he too fell silent, and it was
a dispirited and headachy company that at last saw the gleam of Mr
Glynde's torch.

"I humbly apologise," said Randal, "but I had a devil of a hunt for
Proser. He had gone to see a cousin about his confounded vines. He
swears he never locked the door, so it must have been done from the
other side. The people in the Schloss are evidently taking no chances.
But I've got the key."

The thing opened readily, and the explorers repeated their recent
performance, threading a maze of empty cellars till they came to a door
which led to a staircase. For a long time they seemed to be climbing a
spiral inside a kind of turret, and came at last to a stage where thin
slits of windows let in the daylight. Archie peered out and announced
that in his opinion it must be about six o'clock. At last they reached a
broad landing, beyond which further steps appeared to ascend. But there
was also a door, which Randal tackled confidently as if he expected it
to open at once.

It refused to budge. He examined it and announced that it was locked.
"It is always kept open," he said. "I've used it twenty times lately.
What in thunder is the matter with it to-day?"

It was very plain what the matter was. It had been barricaded by some
heavy object on the other side. It moved slightly under his pressure,
but the barricade held fast.

"The nerves of this household have gone to blazes," he said. "Roylance,
lend a hand, and you, McCunn. We must heave our weight on it."

They heaved their weight, but it did not yield; indeed, they heaved till
the three men had no breath left in them. There was a creaking and
grinding beyond, but the heavy body, whatever it was, held its ground.
They laboured for the better part of an hour, and by and by made a tiny
aperture between door and doorpost. The door was too strong to splinter,
but Archie got a foot in the crack and, supported by vigorous pressure
from behind, slowly enlarged it. Then something seemed to topple down
with a crash beyond the door, and they found that it yielded. They
squeezed past a big Dutch armoire, from the top of which had fallen a
marble torso of Hercules.

Randal was now on familiar ground. The noise they had made had woken no
response in the vast silent house. He led them through stone passages,
and then into carpeted corridors, and through rooms hung with tapestries
and pictures. There was no sign of servants or of any human life, but
Janet and Alison, feeling the approach of civilisation, tried to tidy
their hair, and Mr McCunn passed a silk handkerchief over a damp
forehead. At last, when it seemed that they had walked for miles, Randal
knocked at a door and was bidden enter.

It was a small room lined with books, aglow with the sunset which came
through a tall window. In a chair sat an old man in a suit of white
linen, and on a couch beside him a youthful and dishevelled figure which
was refreshing itself with a glass of beer.




VII "SI VIEILLESSE POUVAIT"


Mr John Galt had reason to seek refreshment, for he had had an eventful
afternoon.

He had spent two days not unpleasantly in the camp of that wing of
Juventus which Ashie commanded. ("Wing" was their major unit of
division: they borrowed their names from the Romans, and Ashie was
"Praefectus Alae.") He was a prisoner, but in honourable captivity--an
English friend of the Commander, detained not because he was hostile,
but because of the delicacy of the situation. Ashie introduced him to
the subordinate officers, and he found them a remarkable collection.
There were old soldiers among them who attended to the military side,
but there were also a number of young engineers and business men and
journalists, who all had their special duties. Juventus, it appeared,
was not only a trained and disciplined force, the youth of a nation in
arms for defence and, it might be, offence; it was also an organisation
for national planning and economic advancement. The recruits were
brigaded outside their military units in groups according to their
training and professions, and in each group were regular conferences and
an elaborate system of education. Jaikie attended a meeting of an oil
group, oil being one of Evallonia's major industries, and was impressed
by the keenness of the members and the good sense of the discussions, so
far as they were explained to him. This was no mere ebullition of
militarism, but something uncommonly like a national revival. He
realised that it was not one man's making. A leader would no doubt be
necessary when Juventus took a hand in politics, but the movement itself
had welled up from below. It was the sum of the spontaneous efforts of a
multitude of people of all types and degrees, who had decided that they
were tired of toy-shops and blind alleys and must break for open
country.

Jaikie was a good mixer and very soon had made friends among the
rank-and-file as well as among the officers. His meek cheerfulness and
the obvious affection which the Commander showed for him were passports
to their good-will. The language he found to be scarcely a difficulty at
all. Most of the Evallonian youth had at least a smattering of English
and many spoke it well, for it had long been in the schools the one
obligatory foreign tongue. The second day he played in a Rugby game, a
purifying experience on a torrid afternoon. Sports and gymnastics had a
large part in Juventus, and every afternoon was consecrated to them.
Ashie must have spread his fame, for he was invited to join the Blue
fifteen, and was permitted to fill his old place at right wing
three-quarters. It was a fierce, swift and not very orthodox game, the
forwards doing most of the work, and the tackling being clumsy and
uncertain. But he found that one or two of his side had a fair notion of
the business, and some of them had certainly a fine turn of speed. One
especially, the centre three-quarter next him, had clearly played a good
deal, and now and then there was quite a creditable bout of passing.
Jaikie had not a great deal of work to do, but in the second half he
got the ball and scored a try, after a spectacular but not very
difficult run down the field. However, that kind of run was apparently
new to Evallonia, and it was received by the spectators with delirious
applause.

Afterwards, when he was having a drink, Ashie introduced him to the
centre, whose name was Ivar. The boy regarded him with open-eyed
admiration.

"You have played for the English college of the Praefectus?" he asked
respectfully.

"For a good deal more than that," said Ashie. "Mr Galt is one of the
most famous players in the world. He is what they call an International,
and is the pride of his nation, which is Scotland."

Ivar gasped.

"Scotland! That is a famous land. I have read romances about it. Its men
dress like women but fight like lions. It loves freedom and has always
helped other people to become free."

Jaikie had a walk with Ivar within the limits of the cantonment and
discovered a strong liking for the boy's solemn enthusiasm. Ivar, it
appeared, was a young electrical engineer and had been destined to a
post in Brazil when Juventus called him. Now his ambition was limited to
the immediate future, the great patriotic effort which the next few
weeks would demand. He did not talk of it, for Juventus was schooled to
reticence, but the light of it was in his eyes. But he spoke much of
Evallonia, and Jaikie learned one thing from him--there was complete
loyalty to the ideal of the cause, but no one leader had laid his spell
upon it. Ivar mentioned with admiration and affection many
names--Ashie's among them--but there was no one that dominated the rest.
"When we triumph," he said, "we will call to our aid all good men."

"Including the Monarchists?" Jaikie asked.

"Including the Monarchists, if they be found worthy."

They stood for a little on a ridge above the camp, where ran the high
road along which Ashie's car had brought him. It was a clear evening and
there was a wide prospect. Jaikie, who had his countrymen's uneasiness
till he had the points of the compass in his head, was now able to
orientate his position. The camp was in a crook of the Rave before it
bent eastward in the long curve which took it to Melina. To the south he
saw the confines of a big park, and to the east the smoke of a far-away
train.

Ivar was glad to enlighten him.

"That is the nearest railway," he said. "The station of Zutpha is four
miles off, beyond where you see the cornfield in sheaf. Yes, that is a
nobleman's park, the castle called the House of the Four Winds. At the
other side is the little city of Tarta, once a busy place, but now
mouldering."

Jaikie asked who owned the castle.

"It is Prince Odalchini," said the boy with a grave face. "A famous
house, the Odalchinis, and we of Juventus are not rootless Communists to
despise ancient things. But this Prince Odalchini is an old man and he
becomes foolish. He is a crazy Monarchist, and would bring back the old
ways unchanged. Therefore he is closely watched by us. We do not permit
any entry into his domain, or any exit except by our leave."

Jaikie cast his eye over the wide expanse of forest and pasture.

"But how can you watch so big a place when you have so many other things
to do? It must be eight or nine miles round."

"It is part of our training," said Ivar simply. "The main entrances are
of course picketed. For the rest, we have our patrols, and they are very
clever. We Evallonians have sharp eyes and a good sense for country, and
we have been most of us in our time what you call Boy Scouts, and many
of us are hill-bred or forest-bred. We have our woodcraft and our
field-craft. Believe me, Prince Odalchini is as securely guarded as if
battalions of foot lined his park fence. Not a squirrel can enter
without our knowing it."

"I see," said Jaikie, feeling a little depressed. His eye crossed the
Rave and ran along a line of hills ten miles or so to the west. They
were only foot-hills, two thousand feet high at the most, but beyond he
had a glimpse of remote mountains. He saw to his left the horseshoe in
which Tarta and its Schloss lay--he could not see the pass that led to
Kremisch, since it was hidden by a projecting spur. To the north the
hills seemed to dwindle away into a blue plain. Just in front of him
there was a deeply-recessed glen, the containing walls of which were
wooded to the summit, but at the top the ridge was bare, and there was a
cleft shaped like the backsight of a rifle. In that cleft the sun was
most spectacularly setting.

Ivar followed his gaze. "That is what we call the Wolf's Throat. It is
the nearest road to the frontier. There in that cleft is the western
gate of Evallonia."

As Jaikie looked at the nick, sharp cut against the crimson sky, he had
a sudden odd sensation. Beyond that cleft lay his old life. Down here in
this great shadowy cup of Evallonia was a fantastic world full of
incalculable chances. These chances pleasurably excited him, but there
were dregs of discomfort in his mind; he felt that he had been enticed
here and that something in the nature of a trap might close on him. Now
Jaikie had a kind of claustrophobia, and anything like a trap made him
feel acutely unhappy, so it comforted him to see the outlet. That
blazing rifle-backsight among the hills was the road to freedom. Some
day soon he might have to use it, and it was good to know that it was
there.

That night he observed after supper that he must be getting on with his
job, and Ashie agreed. "I was just going to say the same thing myself,"
he said. "The air is full of rumours, and we can't get a line on what
the Monarchists mean to do. There must be some hitch in their plans. We
hear from Melina that there's not a Minister left in the place, only
clerks carrying on, and that the National Guard are standing-to, waiting
orders. We shall probably come on a Minister or two very soon trying to
cross the frontier, but our orders are to speed their journey. We don't
want a pogrom. What worries me is Cousin Mintha. She is in the south,
among the oil-fields, and it looks as if she were on the warpath and
moving towards Melina. We are nothing like ready for that, and she may
put everything in the soup. The Monarchists must be allowed to show
their hand first, but in this darned fog nobody knows anything. So the
sooner you get inside the House of the Four Winds, my lad, the better
for everybody."

"Can't you release me on parole?" Jaikie asked.

"Impossible. If you were caught in this neighbourhood and I had let you
out on parole, I should be suspected of double-dealing, and I can't
afford that with Mintha on her high horse. No, you must escape and go
off on the loose, so that if you are caught I can deal with you firmly.
I may have to put you in irons," he added with a grin.

"It won't be easy to get into that castle," said Jaikie. "I've had a
word with the young Ivar and they seem to have taped every yard."

"Well, that's just where your genius comes in, my dear. I put my
Evallonians high, but I'm prepared to back you as a strategist against
them every time. Look at the way you ran round the Green backs this
afternoon."

"Then there's the getting in here again."

"That will be all right if you don't take too long. I can have your tent
shut up all day and give out that you've a touch of malaria and mustn't
be disturbed.... We can make sure that you leave camp unnoticed, for
I'll tell you the dispositions. Then it's up to you to get inside the
Schloss and out again and be back here early in the night. I can tell
you the best place to enter our lines."

"All right," said Jaikie a little dolefully. "My only job is to dodge
your lads and have a heart-to-heart talk with the Prince. What about
him, by the way? Mayn't he have a posse of keepers taking pot-shots at
any intruder?"

"No, that's not his way. You have only us to fear. Be thankful that you
can reduce your enemies to one lot. Ours seem to produce a fresh crop
daily. I've just heard that one of Mastrovin's gang has been seen pretty
near here. If Mastrovin turns up there's likely to be dirty work."

       *       *       *       *       *

Jaikie went out literally with the milk. Every morning the neighbouring
farms sent up milk for the camp in great tin drums borne in little
ponycarts, and with them a batch of farm boys. Discipline was relaxed on
these occasions, and Ashie had indicated one route which the milk convoy
invariably followed. Jaikie, in much-stained flannel bags and a rough
tweed jacket and ancient shoes, might easily pass as an Evallonian
rustic. So he trotted out of camp behind a milk-cart, his hands
assisting an empty drum to keep its balance. A hundred yards on and he
slipped inconspicuously into the roadside scrub.

The weather was cooler than it had been of late, and there was a light
fresh wind blowing from the hills. Jaikie felt rejuvenated, and began to
look forward to his day's task with a mild comfort. He did not believe
that any patrols of Juventus could prevent him from getting inside the
park. After that the job would be harder. He remembered the gentle
fanaticism in Prince Odalchini's eyes, and considered that it might be
difficult to get him to agree to any counsels of moderation, or even to
listen to them. He might regard Jaikie as one who had deliberately gone
over to the other side. But Randal Glynde, if he were there, would
help--Jaikie hoped he would be there. And there was just a chance that
Alison might have turned up. It was this last thought that strung up his
whole being to a delicious expectation.

As he expected, it was not very difficult to get inside the park. His
prospect from the ridge the night before had given him his bearings. He
realised that his former entrance with Luigi had been on the east side,
not far from the road between Zutpha and Tarta; now he was on the north
side, where there was no road following the boundary, and thick coverts
of chestnut undergrowth extended right up to the paling. He did not find
it hard to locate the Juventus cordon. The patrols made their rounds
noiselessly and well, but he discovered from their low whistles the
timing of their beats, and when it would be safe to make a dash. But it
took an unconscionable time, and it was midday before his chance came,
for he was determined to take no needless risks. There was a point where
the high paling was broken by the mossy and ruinous posts of an old
gateway. That was the place he had selected, and at exactly seventeen
minutes past twelve he slipped over like a weasel and dropped into the
fern of the park.

He travelled a few hundred yards, and then halted to lunch off some
biscuits and chocolate provided by Ashie. Then with greater freedom he
resumed his journey. Beneath him the ground fell away to a small stream,
a tributary of the Rave, which had been canalised in a broad stone
channel. There was no bridge, but for the convenience of the
estate-labourers a plank had been laid across it. Beyond was a glade of
turf, at the end of which he could see the beginning of a formal garden.
This was very plain sailing, and he became careless, forgetting that
Juventus might have their patrols inside the park as well as without....
Suddenly, when he was within a few yards of the culvert, swinging along
and humming to himself, he found his feet fly from beneath him. He had
been tripped up neatly by a long pole, and the owner sat himself heavily
on his chest.

Convinced after the first movement that he was hopelessly outmatched in
physical strength, Jaikie did not struggle. Vain resistance he had
always regarded as folly. His assailant behaved oddly. He ejaculated
something as the result of a closer inspection, and then removed himself
from his prisoner's chest. But he did not relax a tight grip on his arm.
Jaikie observed with some surprise that he was in the hands of Ivar.

Ivar's surprise was greater. His arms imprisoned Jaikie's to his sides,
and to a spectator the couple must have had a lover-like air.

"Mr Galt!" he gasped. "What the devil are you doing here?"

"You may well ask," said Jaikie pleasantly. "The fact is, I've broken
bounds. I wanted to have a look at that Schloss. D'you mind not gripping
my shoulder so hard? You've got me safe enough."

"You have escaped?" said Ivar solemnly. "You have not been permitted to
come here on parole?"

"No. Count Paul did not give me permission--he knows nothing about
it--this is my own show. But look here, Ivar, you're a sensible chap
and must listen to reason. I'm on your side, and I'm trying to help your
cause in my own way. I have special reasons for being here which I can't
explain to you now. I mean to be back in camp this evening--I'll pledge
you my word of honour for that. So if you're wise you'll let me go and
never say a word about having seen me."

Ivar's face showed the confusion of his feelings.

"You know all about me," Jaikie went on. "You know I'm a friend of the
Praefectus. Well, I'm trying to help him, without his knowledge--that's
why I'm here. You won't interfere with me if you've the interests of
Juventus at heart."

The boy's face had changed from bewilderment to sternness.

"I cannot let you go. You are my prisoner and you must return with me.
It is not for me to use my discretion. I must obey my orders, and the
orders are clear."

There was that in his eye which warned Jaikie that argument was futile.
The discipline of Juventus allowed no quibbling. But Jaikie continued to
plead, judging meantime the distance from the culvert and the plank.
Then he seemed to give it up as a bad job. "All right," he said. "So be
it. I daresay it's the only thing you can do, but it's infernal hard
luck on me. The Praefectus will think I have been trying to double-cross
him, and I honestly wanted to help him. You believe that, don't you?"

Ivar, remembering his admiration of yesterday, relented so far as to say
that he did. Jaikie's surrender, too, caused him to relax the tightness
of his grip, and in an instant Jaikie acted. With an eel-like twist he
was out of his clutches and Ivar found himself sprawling on the slope.
Before he had found his feet Jaikie had skipped over the culvert and had
kicked the plank into the water. The two faced each other across a gully
which was too broad to jump, and to cross which meant the descent and
ascent of slimy stone walls.

"Let's talk sense," said Jaikie. "You know you haven't an earthly chance
of catching me. You've done your duty, in arresting me--only I've
escaped, which is your rotten luck. Now listen. I'm going on to
reconnoitre that house, never mind why. But, as I told you, I'm on your
side, and on Count Paul's side, and I'm coming back. I'll have to wait
till it's darkish--eight or nine o'clock perhaps, I daresay. Will your
lads be on duty then?"

Something in Jaikie's tone impressed Ivar. "I shall be on duty," he
said. "I return here for my second tour at eight o'clock."

"Well, I'll come back this way, and I'll surrender myself to you. I
don't want to outrage your discipline. You can march me to the camp, and
hand me over to the Praefectus, and it will be my business to make my
peace with him. Have you got that right?"

But Ivar's sense of duty was not to be beguiled. He started to climb
down into the culvert. "Ass!" said Jaikie as he turned and trotted off
in the direction of the castle. He dived into one of the side glades,
and when he had reached the first terrace wall and looked back he saw
that his pursuer had halted not very far from the culvert. Perhaps, he
thought, there was some order of Juventus which confined their patrols
to a certain distance inside the park bounds.

Jaikie, as he threaded the terrace paths, and climbed stairways between
neglected creepers and decaying statuary, discovered that he had come to
the northern end of the Schloss, which was one of the last-century
additions, castellated, battlemented, topped with bogus machicolations.
The great house had looked deserted on his first visit, but now it had
the air of a forsaken mausoleum. He turned the flank of it and moved
along the weedy upper terrace, looking for the door by which he and the
Prince had entered after luncheon. He found it, but it was locked and
apparently barricaded. He found other doors, but they were in the same
condition. The House of the Four Winds seemed to have prepared itself
for a siege.

This was discouraging. It occurred to him that the Prince might have
departed, but in that case Juventus would have known of it and would not
be maintaining its vigilant beleaguerment. He retired to the terrace
wall, from which he could get a good view of the tiers of windows. All
of them were blind and shuttered. If there were people in the castle
they were dwelling in the dark. This he knew was the side where the
chief living-rooms were, and if there were inmates anywhere it would be
here.

At last his quick eyes caught sight of something on the third floor. It
was a window open a little at the top. It was dark, but that might be
because of blinds and not of shutters--the sun was so placed that it was
hard to judge of that. By that window, and by that window only, he
might effect an entrance.

It was an easy conclusion to reach, but the ways and means were not
easy. Beneath each line of windows ran a narrow ledge along which it
might be just possible to make a traverse. But the question was how to
reach that ledge, for there were no friendly creepers on the great blank
stone faade. Jaikie, moving stealthily in the cover of pots and
statues, for he had an ugly feeling that he might be under hostile
observation, reconnoitred carefully the whole front. Something told him
that he was not alone in this business; he had the sense that somewhere
else on that terrace there were human beings engaged perhaps in the same
enterprise. Could Juventus have flung out their scouts thus far? He
scarcely believed it, judging from Ivar's behaviour, but he had no time
for nervousness, for the day was getting on and he had still his main
work to do.

The front yielded him nothing. But at the flanking tower which he had
first approached he got a glimmer of hope. There was a fire escape which
had been allowed to fall into disrepair, but which was certainly still
climbable. The question was would it give access to the ledge below the
window? He thought that it might, and started to ascend.

Many of the rungs were rotten, and he had to move with extreme caution;
indeed, at one moment he feared that the whole contraption would break
loose from the wall. Now his early training proved its worth, for he was
without a suspicion of vertigo, and could look down unmoved from any
height. The fire-escape led up to the third story, and he found that by
stepping to his left he could stand on the sill of a narrow window in
the gap between the tower and the main faade. He got his hands on the
ledge and to his relief found it broader than he had hoped--at least a
foot and a half of hard stone. The difficulty would be to draw himself
up on to it.

He achieved this, not without some tremor of the heart, for a foot and a
half is not much of a landing-place. Very cautiously he laid himself
along it, and then slowly raised himself to his feet. By turning his
head he had a glimpse of a great swimming landscape running out into
blue distances--he did not look twice, for even his cool head grew a
little giddy at the sight. With his face to the wall of the castle he
began to side-step along the ledge.

It proved far simpler than he had feared, for the stone was firm. He
passed window after window, all closed and shuttered, till his heart
began to sink. Had he blundered after all? Surely the window he had
marked had been the fifth from the right.... And then he came to one
which, as he approached it, seemed suddenly to move. A hand was lifting
the lower sash, and an old face looked out into the sunlight.

Jaikie took a firm grip of the inner sill, for he felt that anything
might happen, and the terrace was a long way below. "Prince Odalchini,"
he said, "I've come back."

The old face scarcely changed. Its eyes peered and blinked a little at
the uncouth figure which seemed to be hanging in air.

"I'm Galt," said the figure. "Do you mind me coming in?"

"Ah, yes--Mr Galt," said the voice. "Certainly come in. You are very
welcome. I do not think anyone has attempted that ledge since for a bet
I did it as a boy. But my effort was limited to the traverse between two
windows. You have come all the way from the North Tower! Magnificent!
You will desire, I think, some refreshment."

       *       *       *       *       *

Dickson McCunn sat in a deep armchair sipping a mammoth cup of tea.
Prince Odalchini had offered every kind of refreshment, but it had taken
time to dig the old housekeeper and the older butler out of the
cavernous lower regions, and indeed Janet and Alison had had to descend
themselves and help to make tea. All seven were now sitting in the
Prince's cabinet, and for the last quarter of an hour the conversation
had been chiefly an examination of Jaikie by the Prince and Randal
Glynde. Dickson listened with only half an ear, for Jaikie was
confirming what they already knew. He was more intent on savouring the
full strangeness of this experience.

Two days ago he had been an ordinary convalescent at a German kurhaus,
on the eve of returning to the homely delights of Blaweary. Now he found
himself inside an old stone palace which was in a state of siege, a
palace which he had entered like a rat through mysterious cellars. His
mind kept casting back to the spring morning nine--or was it ten?--years
ago, when, being freed for ever from the routine of business, he had set
out on a walking-tour, and had found himself in another great house
among desperate folk. He remembered his tremors and hesitations, and
that final resolve which he had never regretted, which indeed had been
the foundation of all his recent happiness. Was he destined to face
another crisis? Looking back, it seemed to him that everything had been
predestined. He had left the shop and set out on his travels because he
was needed at Huntingtower. Had Providence decreed that Dr Christoph
should give him back his health simply that he should come here?

Dickson felt solemn. He had that Calvinistic belief in the guidance of
Allah which is stronger than any Moslem's, and he had also the perpetual
expectation of the bigoted romantic.... But he was getting an old man,
too old for cantrips. His eye fell upon Prince Odalchini, who was also
old, though he seemed to have grown considerably younger in the past
half-hour. He felt that he had misjudged the Prince; his face was
shrewder than he had thought, and he seemed to be talking with
authority. Jaikie, too. Dickson was not following the talk, but Jaikie's
gravity was impressive, and the rest were listening to him eagerly. He
felt a sudden uprush of pride in Jaikie. He was a different being now
from the pallid urchin of Huntingtower, who had wept bitterly when he
was getting dangerous.

His eyes roamed round the walls, taking in a square of old tapestry, and
a line of dark kit-kat portraits. The window showed a patch of golden
evening sky. The light caught Alison's hair, and he began to wonder
about her and Jaikie. Would they ever be man and wife? It would be a
queer match between long descent and no descent at all--but it was a
queer world, and nothing could be queerer than this place. Janet and
Archie belonged to a familiar sphere, but Mr Glynde was like nothing so
much as the Pied Piper of Hamelin. What was he, Dickson McCunn, doing
among such outlandish folk? Dougal had said that they wanted his advice;
but he felt as impotent as Thomas the Rhymer no doubt felt when he was
consulted on the internal affairs of Fairyland.... Still, common sense
was the same all the world over. But what if common sense was not wanted
here, but some desperate quality of rashness, some insane
adventurousness? He wished he were twenty years younger, for he
remembered Prince John. He was sworn to do his best for the exiled
monarch, and that very morning with a break in his voice he had renewed
the pledge to the chauffeur McTavish.

By this time he was coming out of his dreams, and hearing something of
the conversation. As he finished his tea Jaikie was putting the heart of
his problem in staccato sentences, and Prince Odalchini and Mr Glynde
with gloomy faces were nodding their assent. Something in the words
stirred a reminiscence....

"I mind," said Dickson out of the depths of his chair.

It was the first time he had spoken, and the others turned to him, so
that he felt a little embarrassed.

"I mind," he said, "when Jimmy Turnbull was running for Lord Provost of
Glasgow. He was well liked and far the best man for the job, but the
feck of the Town Council didn't fancy his backers, and if it had come to
the vote Jimmy would have been beat. So Tam Dickson--he was my own
cousin and was Baillie then and afterwards Lord Provost himself--Tam
was the wily one and jerked his brains to think of a way out. What he
did was this. He got Jimmy's friends to drop Jimmy and put up one David
Duthie, who was a blethering body that was never out of the papers. He
had a sore job persuading them, he told me, but he managed it in the
end. The consequence was that the very men that were opposed to Jimmy's
backers, now that he was quit of them, took up Jimmy, and since they
were a majority of the Council he was triumphantly elected."

Dickson's apologue was received with blank faces by the others, with the
exception of Randal Glynde. Into that gentleman's eyes came a sudden
comprehending interest, and Dickson saw it and was encouraged. His own
mind was awaking to a certain clearness.

"If Prince John didn't exist," he asked, "is there anybody else the
Monarchists could put up?"

"There is no one," said Prince Odalchini sadly. "There is, of course,
his uncle, the late king's brother, the Archduke Hadrian, but he is
impossible."

"Tell us about the Archduke," said Dickson.

"He is an old man, and very frail. He has not been in Evallonia for many
years, and even his name is scarcely remembered. He is believed to be
one of the greatest living numismatologists, and he has given his life
to his hobby. I alone of the Evallonian nobility have kept in touch with
him, and it was only yesterday that I had a letter from his secretary.
His Royal Highness is a bachelor, and for long has lived in a chateau in
France near Chantilly, scarcely going beyond his park walls. He is as
strict a recluse as any medival hermit. Now he is bedridden, and I fear
cannot have many months to live."

Prince Odalchini rose, opened a cabinet, and took out a photograph.

"That is His Royal Highness, taken two years ago at my request, for I
desired to have a memento of him. In my youth he was kind to me."

He handed it to Dickson, who studied it carefully. It showed a man not
unlike Mr Pickwick or the great Cavour, with a round face, large
innocent eyes, and grey hair thinning on the temples--a man of perhaps
seventy years, but, so far as could be judged from the photograph, still
chubby and fresh-complexioned. It was passed round the company. Janet
and Archie scarcely glanced at it, but Mr Glynde looked at it and then
looked at Dickson, and his brow furrowed. Jaikie did the same, and when
it came to Alison she cried out--"Why, Dickson, it might be you, if your
hair was greyer."

"I was just thinking that," was the answer. Dickson retrieved the
photograph and studied it again.

"What size of a man is he?" he asked. His clearness of mind was becoming
acid.

"Shortish, about your own height," said the Prince.

"Umphm! Now what hinders you to do the same with the Archduke as my
cousin Tam Dickson did with David Duthie? Jaikie says that Juventus
would be for Prince John but for you and your friends. Well, if you run
the Archduke, they'll take up Prince John, and since you tell me they'll
have the upper hand of you, they'll put Prince John on the throne.
D'you see what I mean? It's surely common sense."

This speech had a considerable effect on the others. Archie laughed
idiotically, and Mr Glynde found it impossible to remain seated. But
Prince Odalchini only shook his head.

"Ingenious," he said, "but impossible. His Royal Highness is old and
frail and bedridden. He would not consent, and even if he consented, he
would be dead before he reached Evallonia."

Dickson's mind was moving by leaps to a supreme boldness.

"What for should he come near Evallonia? He need never leave his
chateau, and indeed the closer he lies there the better. It's not his
person, but his name that you want.... See here, Prince. You say that
nobody in Evallonia knows him, and few have ever seen him, but that
there's a general notion of what he looks like. Can you persuade your
friends to change their minds about Prince John and declare for the
Archduke as the older and wiser man and more suited for this crisis? If
you do that, and put him or something like him on the throne, Juventus
will come along in a week and fling him out and set up Prince John, and
then you'll all be happy together."

The company was staring at him open-mouthed and wide-eyed, all except
Prince Odalchini, who seemed inclined to be cross.

"But I tell you we cannot get His Royal Highness," he said.

"I said 'or something like him,'" was Dickson's answer. His mind was now
as limpid as an April morning.

"What on earth do you mean?"

"I mean somebody you can pass off as the Archduke."

"And where shall we find him?" The Prince's tone was ironical.

"What about myself?" said Dickson.

For an instant there was utter silence.

Prince Odalchini's face showed a range of strong emotions, anger,
perplexity, incredulity and then something that was almost hope. When he
spoke, his words were inadequate to his feelings. "Are you mad?" he
asked.

"'Deed I'm not. I came here as a business man to give you my advice, and
there it is. It's a perfectly simple proposition, and there's just the
one answer. By the mercy of God I'm reasonably like the old man, though
I'm a good deal younger, and anyway there is nobody to tell the differ.
I'm willing to take the chance, though I suppose it will be high treason
if I'm grippit, for I'm not going back on my word to Prince John. I'll
see yon lad with his hinder parts on the throne before I leave
Evallonia, or my name's not Dickson McCunn."

"You realise that you would be running tremendous risks?"

"Ugh, ay, but I've taken risks before this. The only thing I stipulate
is that I'm not left too long on the throne, for I wouldn't be up to the
job. I might manage a week before I went skelping across the
frontier--but not more."

Prince Odalchini's expression had changed. There was now respect in it,
and excitement, and a twitching humour.

"I think you are the boldest man I have ever met," he said.

"Never heed that," said Dickson. "My knees will likely be knocking
together before I've done. What I want to know is, can you persuade the
rest of your lot, Muresco particularly, to agree to this plan?"

The Prince considered. "It may be difficult, but I think it can be done.
After all, it is the only way."

"And can you upset the Republic and set up the Archduke?"

"Beyond doubt. For a little while--that is to say."

"Last and most important, can Juventus be persuaded to accept Prince
John?"

It was Jaikie who answered.

"I believe they could. Count Paul would jump at him, and so would the
rank-and-file. I don't know about the other leaders. There's a woman who
matters a good deal."

"Prince John must marry her then. That's all. We're desperate folk and
we're not going to stick at trifles." Dickson was in that mood of
excited authority which always with him followed the taking of a great
resolution. "But, Jaikie, it's terrible important that, if I get that
far, Juventus must force me to abdicate in a week--I couldn't manage
longer. It would be an awful business if at my time of life I was kept
cocked up on a throne I didn't want. There's just the one job for you,
and that's to manage Juventus, and, mind, I've trusted you often and
never known you fail. Away with you back to your camp, for there's no
time to lose."

"We dine in half an hour," said Prince Odalchini.

"Well, let's get pencil and paper and work out the details."

But they did not immediately get to business, for Alison rose and
ceremoniously embraced Mr McCunn. Her kiss was like that of Saskia's
years before in the house of Huntingtower; it loosed a force of unknown
velocity upon the world.

       *       *       *       *       *

The twilight had fallen when Jaikie emerged from one of the terrace
doors, which was promptly locked behind him. He proposed to return the
way he had come and surrender himself to Ivar. After that he and Ashie
must hold high converse. He had a task before him of immense difficulty
and his head was already humming with plans. But Dickson's certainty had
given him hope, and he thanked his stars that he had not gone home, for
now he was in the kind of adventure he had dreamed of, and his comrades
were the people he loved best in the world. This was his notion of
happiness.

He must hurry, if he was not to miss Ivar, so he short-circuited his
route, by dropping from the successive terrace walls instead of going
round by the stairways.... At the last of them he found that he had
dropped into a human embrace which was strict and powerful, but not
friendly.

His instinct of the afternoon had been right. Others besides himself had
been lurking among the paths and statues of the terraces.




VIII SPLENDIDE MENDAX


Jaikie's captors, whoever they were, meant business. Before the sack was
slipped over his head a cloth, sticky and sweet-smelling, was twisted
round his mouth. He was vaguely aware of struggling against an immense
suffocating eiderdown, and that was his last conscious moment for
perhaps ten minutes. These minutes should have been hours if the
intentions of his ill-wishers had been fulfilled. But in Jaikie they had
struck a being oddly constituted. Just as it was nearly impossible to
make him drunk, so he was notably insensitive to other forms of dope.
Had he ever had to face a major operation, the ansthetist would have
had a difficult time with him. Moreover, his nose had come into contact
with something hard and was bleeding copiously, which may have
counteracted the stuff on the bandage. The consequence was that he
presently regained his senses, and found himself in a position of
intense bodily discomfort. He was being borne swiftly along by persons
who treated him with no more respect than as if he were a bundle of
faggots.

He was a good deal frightened, but his anger was greater than his
fright, and it was directed against himself. For the third time within a
week he had stumbled blindly into captivity--first Ashie, then Ivar that
very day, and now some enemy unknown. What had become of the caution on
which he had prided himself? He had been an easy victim because he had
had no thought for anything but the immediate future, and had not
recognised that he had been walking among hidden fires. He reproached
himself bitterly. Ashie had trusted him, Prince Odalchini had trusted
him, and he had proved himself only a blundering child. What especially
rankled was that he must break his pledge to Ivar. That dutiful youth
would be looking for him near the boundary of the park, and would set
him down as a common liar.

Indignation, especially against one's self, is a wonderful antidote to
fear. It also tends to sharpen the wits. Jaikie, with a horrid crick in
his neck and a back aching from rough treatment, began to think hard and
fast. Who was responsible for this outrage? Certainly not Prince
Odalchini or anyone connected with the House of the Four Winds. Not
Juventus. Ivar was the only Greenshirt who knew of his visit to the
castle, and Ivar was too much of a gentleman to resort to these brigand
tricks. So far his conclusions were clear, but they were only negative.
Who would want to capture him? Somebody who knew about his new job?--But
the only people in the secret were his friends in the castle. Somebody
who had a grudge against Prince Odalchini?--But that could only be
Juventus, and he had ruled Juventus out. Somebody who had a grievance
against himself?--But he was a humble stranger unknown in Evallonia.
Somebody who hated Juventus and the Prince alike and who suspected him
as a liaison between them?--Now, who filled that bill? Only the present
Republican Government in Evallonia. But all his information was to the
effect that that Government was shaking in its shoes, and that its
members were making their best speed to the frontier. They could have
neither leisure nor inclination to spy thus effectively on a castle at
whose gates the myrmidons of Juventus were sitting.

And then suddenly he remembered what Ashie had told him and Prince
Odalchini had repeated. Behind the effete Republic was a stronger and
darker power.... A horrid memory of Mastrovin came to his mind, the face
which had glowered on him in the room in the Portaway Hydropathic, the
face which he had seen distorted with fury in the library of Castle
Gay--the heavy shaven chin, the lowering brows, the small penetrating
eyes--the face which Red Davie had described as that of a maker of
revolutions.... The thought that he might be in Mastrovin's hands sent a
shiver down his aching spine. The man had tried to kidnap Prince John
and had been foiled by Alison. He must be desperate with all his plans
in confusion, a mad dog ready to tear whatever enemy he could get his
fangs into.

Jaikie's fears must have stopped well short of panic, for he had enough
power of reflection left to wonder where he was being taken. He was no
longer in the park or the garden, for the feet of his bearers sounded as
if they were on some kind of pavement. He had an impression, too, that
he was not in the open air, but inside a masoned building. It could not
be the castle, for he had heard that evening from Alison of her entry
through the cellars and the difficulties of the route; if that approach
was so meticulously guarded, it was probable that the same precautions
had been taken with all.... And then it occurred to him that, since the
great building abutted on the town of Tarta, there must be other ways
into the streets from the park, through outhouses and curtilages, for
once the burgh had been virtually part of the castle. No doubt these
were now disused and blocked up, but some knowledge of them might linger
in queer places.

His guess was confirmed, for presently it was plain that his bearers
were in a low and narrow passage. There seemed to be at least three of
them, and they went now in Indian file--crouching as he could tell from
their movements, and now and then pushing him before them. He felt his
legs grating on rough stone. Once his foot caught in a crevice, and his
ankle was nearly twisted when it was dragged out of it. The place was a
sort of drain, and it seemed to him miles long; the air was warm and
foul, and he was inert not from policy, but from necessity, for he could
hardly breathe inside the sack. Once or twice his bearers seemed to be
at fault, for they stopped and consulted in muffled voices. These halts
were the worst of all, for there loomed before Jaikie the vision of the
death of a sewer rat.

Then the passage manifestly widened, the air grew fresher, and there
came the sound of flowing water. He remembered that he had seen runnels
of water in the Tarta streets, effluents from the Rave, and he realised
that he had been right--they were now underneath the town. After that he
was only dimly conscious of his whereabouts. He believed that the party
were ascending--not stairs, but an inclined tunnel. There came a point
in which they moved with extreme caution, as if people were near,
people who must not hear or see them. There followed the grating of an
opening door, then another and another, and even through the folds of
the sack Jaikie recognised that they were in some kind of dwelling.
There was the feel in the air of contiguity to human uses....

The end came when he was suddenly dumped on a wooden floor, and one of
the party struck a light. The sack was taken from his head, and he was
laid on a truckle-bed where were some rough blankets and an unbleached
pillow. He had already decided upon his course, so he kept his eyes shut
and breathed heavily as if he were still under the opiate. The three men
left the room, taking the candle with them, and locking the door behind
them, so that all he saw was their retreating backs and these told him
nothing. They looked big fellows in nondescript clothes, indoor or
outdoor servants.

Jaikie's first feeling was of intense relief. Whatever happened to him,
at any rate he was not going to be stifled in a drain. He lay for a
little breathing free air and gasping like a fish on the shingle. His
second feeling was that all his bones were broken, but that he was too
tired to care. There were various other feelings, but they all blended
into a profound fatigue. In about three minutes Jaikie was asleep.

He must have slept a round of the clock, and he awoke in a state of
comparative bodily ease, for Rugby football had inured him to rough
handling. The room was a small one, evidently little used, for it had no
furniture but a bed; it looked like an attic in an unprosperous inn. Its
one dormer window looked over a jumble of roofs to a large blank wall.
But since it faced east, it caught the morning sunlight, and the dawn of
the wholesome day had its effect on Jaikie's spirits. The ugly little
fluttering at his heart had gone. He had only himself to thank for his
troubles, he decided, and whatever was in store for him he must keep his
head, and not be the blind fool of the past week. He had awakened with
one thought in his mind. Prince John was the trump card. It was Prince
John that Mastrovin was looking for--if indeed Mastrovin was his
captor--and it was for him, Jaikie, to be very wary at this point. Was
there any way in which he could turn his present predicament to the
advantage of his mission? He had a shadow of a notion that there might
be.

The door was unlocked and breakfast was brought him, not by one of his
bearers of the night before, but by an ancient woman with a not
unpleasing face. She gave him "_Grss Gott_" in a friendly voice. Since
she spoke German like all the Tarta people, and since the breakfast of
coffee and fresh rolls looked good, he was encouraged to ask for some
means of washing. She nodded, and fetched a tin basin of water, soap, a
towel, a cracked mirror and a broken comb, doubtless part of her own
toilet equipment. Jaikie washed the blood from his face, scrubbed from
his hands some of the grime of last night's cellars, dusted his clothes,
and tidied up his unruly hair. Then he made a hearty meal, lit a pipe
and lay down on the bed to think.

He was not left long to his reflections. The door opened and two men
entered, who may or may not have been his captors. They were clearly
not countrymen, for they had the pallor of indoor workers, and the
stoop which comes from bending many hours in the day. They had solemn
flat faces with a touch of the Mongol in them, and one of them very
civilly restored to Jaikie a knife which had dropped out of his pocket.
They beckoned to him to follow them, and when he obeyed readily they
forbore to take his arm, but one went before and one behind him. He was
escorted down a narrow wooden staircase, and along a passage to a room
at the door of which they knocked ceremonially. Jaikie found himself
thrust into a place bright with the morning sun, where two men sat
smoking at a table.

He recognised them both. One was a tall man with a scraggy neck and a
red, pointed beard, a creature of whipcord muscles and large lean bones,
who seemed to be strung on wires, for his fingers kept tapping the
table, and his eyelids were always twitching. Jaikie remembered his
name--it was Dedekind, who had been left with the Jew Rosenbaum to keep
guard in the Castle Gay library when the others searched the house. The
second was beyond doubt Mastrovin, a little older, a little balder, but
formidable as ever. It was not the library scene that filled Jaikie's
mind as he looked at them, but that earlier episode, in the upper room
of the Portaway Hydropathic, when they had cross-examined an alcoholic
little journalist. That scene stuck in his memory, for it had been for
him one of gross humiliation. They had bullied him, and he had had to
submit to be bullied, and that he could not forget. Hate was a passion
in which he rarely indulged, but he realised that he cordially hated
Mastrovin.

Could they recognise him? Impossible, he thought, for there could be no
link between that cringing little rat and the part he now meant to play.
He also was two years older, and in youth one changes fast. So he
confronted the two men with a face of cold wrath, but there was a tremor
beneath his coolness, for Mastrovin's horrid little eyes were very keen.

"Your name?" Mastrovin barked. "You are English?"

"I should like to know first of all who you are and what you mean by
your insolence?" Jaikie spoke in the precise accent of a Cambridge don,
very unlike the speech of the former reporter of the Craw Press.

Mastrovin bent his heavy brows. "You will be wise to be civil--and
obedient. You are in our power. You have been found at suspicious work.
We are not men to be trifled with. You will speak, or you will be made
to speak, and if you lie you will suffer for it. A second time, your
name?"

For some obscure reason the man's tone made Jaikie feel more cheerful.
This was common vulgar bullying, bluffing on a poor hand. He thought
fast. Who did they think he was? He had noticed that at the first sight
of him the faces of both men had fallen. Had he been arrested because
they believed that he was Prince John?

"I am English," he said. "An English traveller. Is this the way that
Evallonia welcomes visitors?"

"You are English, no doubt, and therefore you are suspect. It is known
that the English are closely allied with those who are plotting against
our Government."

"Oh, I see." Jaikie shrugged his shoulders and grinned. "You think I'm
taking a hand in your politics. Well, I'm not. I don't know the first
thing about them, and I care less. But if you're acting on behalf of the
Government, then I daresay you're right to question me. I'll tell you
everything about myself, for I've nothing to conceal. My name is John
Galt. I've been an undergraduate at Cambridge and I have just finished
with the University. I've been taking a holiday walking across Europe,
and I came into Evallonia exactly four days ago. I'll give you every
detail about what I've been doing since."

While smoking his after-breakfast pipe, he had made up his mind on his
course. He would tell the literal truth, which he hoped to season with
one final and enormous lie.

"You have proof of what you say?" Mastrovin asked.

Jaikie took from his breast pocket the whole of its contents, which were
not compromising. There was a lean pocket-book with very little money in
it, his passport, the stump of a cheque book, and one or two Cambridge
bills. Fortunately, Alison's letters from Unnutz were in his rucksack.

"There's every paper I've got," he said and laid them on the table.

Mastrovin studied the bundle and passed it to Dedekind.

"Now you will recount all your doings since you came to Tarta. Be
careful. Your story can be checked."

Jaikie obliged with a minute recital. He described his meeting with his
Cambridge friend, Count Paul Jovian. He explained that he knew Prince
Odalchini slightly and had letters to him, and that he had called on him
at the castle and stayed to lunch. He described his ambush by Ashie, and
his life in the Juventus camp. On this Mastrovin asked him many
questions, to which he replied with a great air of unintelligent
honesty. "They were always drilling and having pow-wows," he said, "but
I couldn't make out what they were after. All I did was to play
football. I'm rather good at that, for I play for Scotland."

"Now we will have your doings of yesterday," said Mastrovin grimly.

Jaikie replied with expansive details. "I was getting tired of the camp.
You see, I was a sort of prisoner, though Heaven knows why. I suppose it
had something to do with your soda-water politics. Anyway, I was fed up
and wanted a change--besides, I had promised to see Prince Odalchini
again. So I slipped out of the camp and had a pretty difficult time
getting into the castle grounds. The Juventus people were patrolling
everywhere, and I had a bit of a scrap with one of them. Then I had a
still more difficult time getting inside the castle. I had to climb in
like a cat-burglar." Jaikie enlarged with gusto on the sensational
nature of that climb, for he believed that Mastrovin's people had been
somewhere on the terrace and must have seen him. It looked as if the
guess was correct, for Mastrovin seemed to accept his story.

"Within the castle you saw--whom?" he barked. He had a most unpleasant
intimidating voice.

"I saw the Prince, and dined with him. There were one or two other
people there, but I didn't catch their names. One was an English Member
of Parliament, I think."

"So!" Mastrovin nodded to Dedekind. "And when you had dined you left?
Where were you going?"

"I was going back to the camp. I hadn't given my parole or anything of
the kind, but I felt that I was behaving badly to my friend. Though he
had made me prisoner he treated me well, and I am very fond of him. I
proposed to go back and tell him what I had done."

"He knew of your visit to the castle?"

"Not he. I took French leave. But I didn't like to leave Evallonia
without having an explanation with him. Besides, I doubt if I could have
managed it with his scouts everywhere. When your ruffians laid hands on
me, I was going back the way I had come in the morning."

Mastrovin talked for a little with Dedekind in a tongue unknown to
Jaikie. Then he turned upon him again his hanging countenance.

"You may be speaking the truth. You say you have no interest in the
affairs of Evallonia. If that be so, you can have no objection to doing
the Government of the Republic a service. It is threatened by many
enemies, with some of whom you have been consorting. You must have heard
talk--much talk--in the camp of your friend Jovian and in the castle of
Prince Odalchini. You will tell me all that you heard. It will be to
your interest, Mr Galt, to be frank, and it will be very much to your
disadvantage to be stubborn."

Jaikie put up a very creditable piece of acting. He managed to produce
some sort of flush on his pale face, and he put all the righteous
indignation he could muster into his eyes. It was not all acting, for
once again this man was threatening him, and he felt that little shiver
along the forehead which was a sign of the coming of one of his cold
furies.

"What the devil do you mean? Do you think that I spy on my friends? I
know that Juventus is opposed to your Government, and being a stranger I
take no sides. There was much talk in the camp, and I didn't understand
what it was all about. But if I had I would see you and your Government
in Tophet before I repeated it."

Dedekind looked ugly and whispered something to Mastrovin, which was no
doubt a suggestion that means might be found for making Jaikie speak.
Mastrovin whispered back what may have been an assurance that such means
would come later. Jaikie could not tell, for he knew no Evallonian. But
he was a little nervous lest he should have gone too far. He did not
want to put a premature end to these interrogations.

Mastrovin's next words reassured him. He actually forced his heavy face
into a show of friendliness.

"I respect your scruples," he said. "We have no desire to outrage your
sense of honour. Besides, there is not much that Juventus does of which
we are not fully informed. They are our declared enemies and against
them we use the methods of war. But your friend Prince Odalchini is
surely in a different case. He has lived peacefully under republican
rule, though he has no doubt a preference for a monarchy. We bear him no
ill-will, but we are anxious that he should not compromise himself by an
alliance with Juventus. It was for that reason that you were brought
here, that we might probe what relation there was between the two, for
we were aware that you had come from the Juventus camp. You can have no
objection to telling us what is Prince Odalchini's frame of mind and
what things were spoken of in the castle."

Jaikie smiled pleasantly. "That's another pair of shoes.... The Prince
is sick of politics. He is angry with Juventus, and asked me pretty much
the same questions as you. But he is an old man and a tired one, and all
he wants is to be left alone. He doesn't like these patrols sitting
round his park and letting nobody in that they don't approve of. When I
met him in England he was a strong Monarchist, but I don't think there
is much royalism left in him now."

Mastrovin was interested. "No? And why?"

"Because he thinks the Monarchists so feeble. He was very strong on that
point with the English Member of Parliament--what was his name? Sir
Archibald Something-or-other." Jaikie was now talking like a man wholly
at his ease.

"He thinks them feeble, does he? What are his reasons?"

"Well, one of them is that they have mislaid their trump card--their
Prince John. I must say that sounds fairly incompetent."

"So he said that?" Mastrovin's interest had quickened.

"Yes. But it wasn't only losing Prince John that he blamed them for, but
for their failure to discover who had got him. It seems that they
believe he has been kidnapped by your people, or rather by the left wing
of your people. Prince Odalchini mentioned a name--something like
Merovingian--it began with an M, anyway. But that appears to have been a
completely false scent."

"Prince Odalchini thinks it a false scent?" Mastrovin's voice was
suddenly quiet and gentle.

"Yes, because they now know where he is." Jaikie had ceased to be a
witness in the box, and was talking easily as if to a club acquaintance.
He launched his mendacious bomb-shell in the most casual tone, as if it
were only a matter of academic interest. "It's Juventus that have Prince
John. Not the lot here, but the division a hundred miles south that is
holding the oil-fields. There's a woman in command. I remember her name,
because it was so fantastic--the Countess Araminta Troyos."

There was dead silence for a second or two. Mastrovin's eyes were on the
table, and Dedekind's fingers ceased to beat their endless tattoo.

"So you see," Jaikie concluded lightly, "Prince Odalchini is naturally
sick of the whole business. I would like to see him out of the country
altogether, for Evallonia at present seems to me no place for an old
gentleman who only asks for a quiet life."

Mastrovin spoke at last. If Jaikie's news was a shock to him he did not
show it. He was smiling like a large, sleepy cat.

"What you tell us is very interesting," he said. "But we have much more
to learn from you, Mr Galt."

"I can't tell you anything more."

"I think you can. At any rate, we will endeavour to help your memory."

Jaikie, who had been rather pleased with himself, found his heart sink.
There was a horrid menace behind that purring voice. Only the little
shiver across his forehead kept him cool.

"I demand to be released at once," he said. "As an Englishman you dare
not interfere with me, since you have nothing against me."

"You propose?"

"To go back to the Juventus camp, and then to go home to England."

"The first cannot be permitted. The second--well, the second depends on
many things. Whether you will ever see England again rests with
yourself. In the meantime you will remain in our charge--and at our
orders."

He rasped out the last words in a voice from which every trace of
urbanity had departed. His face, too, was as Jaikie remembered it in the
Canonry, a mask of ruthlessness.

And then, like an echo of his stridency, came a grinding at the door. It
was locked and someone without was aware of that fact and disliked it.
There was a sound of a heavy body applied to it, and, since the thing
was flimsy, the lock gave and it flew open. Jaikie's astonished eyes saw
a young Greenshirt officer, and behind him a quartet of hefty Juventus
privates.

He learned afterwards the explanation of this opportune appearance. A
considerable addition had been made to Ashie's wing, and it was
proposed to billet the newcomers in the town. Accordingly a billeting
party had been despatched to arrange for quarters, and it had begun with
the principal inns. At this particular inn, which stood in a retired
alley, the landlord had not been forthcoming, so the party had explored
on their own account the capacities of the building. They had found
their way obstructed by sundry odd-looking persons, and, since Juventus
did not stand on ceremony, had summarily removed them from their path. A
locked door to people in their mood seemed an insult, and they had not
hesitated to break it open.

With one eye Jaikie saw that Mastrovin and Dedekind had their fingers on
pistol triggers. With the other he saw that the Greenshirt had no
inkling who the two were. His first thought was to denounce them, but it
was at once discarded. That would mean shooting, and he considered it
likely that he himself would stop a bullet. Besides, he had at the back
of his head a notion that Mastrovin might _malgr lui_ prove useful. By
a fortunate chance he knew the officer, who had been the hooker of the
forwards against whom he had played football, and to whom he had
afterwards been introduced. He saw, too, that he was recognised. So he
gave the Juventus salute and held out his hand.

"I'm very glad to see you," he said. "I was just coming to look for you.
I surrender myself to you. It's your business to arrest me and take me
back to camp. The fact is, I broke bounds yesterday and went on the
spree. No, there was no parole. I meant to return last night, but I was
detained. I shall have to have it out with the Praefectus. I deserve to
be put in irons, but I don't think he'll be very angry, for I have a
good many important things to tell him." Jaikie had managed to sidle
towards the door, so that he was close to the Greenshirts.

The officer was puzzled. He recognised Jaikie as a friend of the
Praefectus and one for whose football capacities he had acquired a
profound respect. Moreover, the frankness of his confession of irregular
conduct disarmed him.

"Why should I arrest you?" he stammered in his indifferent English.

"Because I am an escaped prisoner. Discipline's discipline, you know,
though a breach of it now and then may be good business."

The young officer glanced at the morose figures at the table. Happily he
did not see the pistols which they fingered. "Who are these?" he asked.

"Two people staying in this inn. Bagmen--of no consequence.... By the
way, I wonder what fool locked that door?"

The young man laughed. "It is a queer place this, and I do not like it.
Few of the rooms are furnished, and the landlord has vanished, leaving
only boorish servants. But I have to find billets for three companies
before evening, and in these times one cannot be fastidious." He paused.
"You are not--how do you say it?--pulling my foot?"

"Lord, no. I'm deadly serious, and the sooner I see the Praefectus the
better."

"Then I will detail two men to escort you back to camp. We will leave
this place, which is as bare as a rabbit-warren. I apologise, sirs, for
my intrusion." He bowed to the two men at the table, and, to Jaikie's
amusement, they stood up and solemnly bowed in return.

       *       *       *       *       *

Jaikie spent a somnolent afternoon in the tent of the Praefectus,
outside of which, at his own request, an armed sentry stood on guard.

"Don't curse me, Ashie," he said when its owner returned. "I know I've
broken all the rules, so you've got to pretend to treat me rough. Better
say you're deporting me to headquarters for punishment. I want some
solid hours of your undivided attention this evening, for I've the deuce
of a lot to tell you. After dinner will be all right. Meantime, I want a
large-scale map of Evallonia--one with the Juventus positions marked on
it would be best. Any word of the Countess Araminta?"

"Yes, confound her! She has started to move. Moving on Krovolin, which
is the Monarchists' headquarters. Devil take her for an abandoned hussy.
Any moment she may land us in bloody war."

"All the more reason why you and I should get busy," said Jaikie.

"You have blood on your forehead," Ashie told him that evening, when at
last the Praefectus was free from his duties. "Have you been in a
scrap?"

"That comes of having a rotten mirror. I thought I had washed it all
off. No, I had no scrap, but I got my nose bled. By Mastrovin--or rather
by one of his minions."

Ashie's eyes opened. "You seem to have been seeing life. Get on with
your story, Jaikie. We're by ourselves, and if you tantalise me any
longer I'll put you in irons."

Jaikie told the last part first--a sober narrative of kidnapping, an
unpleasant journey, a night's lodging, a strictly truthful talk with two
dangerous men, and the opportune coming of the Greenshirt patrol. Ashie
whistled.

"You were in a worse danger than you knew. I almost wish it had come to
shooting, for there were enough Greenshirts in Tarta this morning to
pull that inn down stone by stone. I should love to see Mastrovin in his
grave. But I daresay he would have taken you with him, and that would
never do.... Well, I've got the end of your tale. Now get back to the
beginning. How did you get into the park?"

"Easily enough, but your people made it a slow business. By the way, I
wish you would have up a lad called Ivar and explain to him that I was
unavoidably prevented from keeping my engagement with him. He's a
pleasant chap, and I shouldn't like him to think me a crook. The park
was easy, but the castle was a tougher proposition. I had to do rather a
fine bit of roof-climbing, and it was then that Mastrovin's fellows saw
me, when I was spidering about the battlements. However, in the end I
found an open window and got inside and met a pleasant little party.
English all of them, except Prince Odalchini."

"Good Lord, what were they doing there?"

"Justifying Mastrovin's suspicion that England is mixed up with the
Evallonian Monarchists. I think they are going to be rather useful
people, for they are precisely of your own way of thinking. So is
Prince Odalchini, and he believes he can persuade Count Casimir and the
rest of his crowd. At any rate, he is going to have a dashed good try."

"But I don't understand," said the puzzled Ashie. "Persuade him about
what?"

"Listen very carefully and you'll hear, and prepare for shocks." Jaikie
proceeded to recount the conversation at the castle, and when he
mentioned the Archduke Hadrian, Ashie sat up. "He's my godfather," he
said; "but I never saw him. No one has. I thought he was dead."

"Well, he isn't. He's alive but bedridden, and it's only his name we
want. Ashie, my dear, within a week the Monarchists are going to put the
Archduke Hadrian on the throne. Only it won't be the Archduke, but
another, so to speak, of the same name. One of the visitors at the
castle is sufficiently like him to pass for him--except with his
intimates, of whom there aren't any here. Then in another week Juventus
butts in in all the majesty of its youth, ejects the dotard, and sets up
Prince John, and everybody lives happy ever after."

Ashie's reactions to this startling disclosure were many. Bewilderment,
doubt, incredulity, even a scandalised annoyance chased each other
across his ingenuous face. But the final residuum was relief.

"Jaikie," he asked hoarsely, "was that notion yours?"

"No. My line is tactics, not grand strategy. The notion came from the
man who is going to play the part of the Archduke. He's an old Scotsman,
and his name is McCunn, and he's the best friend I ever had in my life.
Ashie, I want to ask a special favour of you. Mr McCunn is playing a
bold game, and I'll back him to see it through. I don't know how much
you'll come into it yourself, but if you do I want you to do your best
for him. There may be a rough-house or two before he escapes over the
frontier, and if you have a chance, do him a good turn. Promise."

"I promise," said Ashie solemnly. "But for heaven's sake tell me more."

"_You_ tell me something. Would the rank-and-file of Juventus stand for
Prince John?"

"They would. Ninety-nine per cent. of them." But his face was doubtful,
so that Jaikie asked where the snag was.

"It's Cousin Mintha. I don't know how she'll take it."

"That's my job. I'm off to-morrow at break of day. You'll have to let me
go, and find me a motor-bicycle."

"You're going to Mintha?"

"I must. Every man to his job, and that's the one I've been allotted. I
can't say I fancy it. I'd sooner have had any other, but there it is,
and I must make the best of it. You must give me all the tips you can
think of."

"You'd better get hold of Doctor Jagon first. He is Mintha's chief
counsellor."

"Good. I know him--met him in Scotland. A loquacious old dog, but
honest."

"How are you going to get Prince John out of the Monarchist crowd into
Mintha's arms?"

"He isn't with the Monarchists. He's lost."

"Lost! That spikes our guns."

"Officially lost. He disappeared a few days ago from the place in the
Tirol where Count Casimir had him hidden. The Count thought that
Mastrovin had pinched him, and Mastrovin--well, I don't know what
Mastrovin thought, but he's raking heaven and earth to find him. Nobody
knows where he is except the little party that dined last night in the
castle. That's why Casimir will be friendly to the idea of the Archduke,
for he has mislaid his Prince."

"Where is he?" Ashie demanded.

"I had better not tell you. It would be wiser for you not to know--at
present. But I promise you I can lay my finger on him whenever we want
him. What you've got to do is to put it about that he's with Juventus.
That will prepare people's minds and maybe force your cousin's hand. I
did a useful bit of work this morning, for I told Mastrovin that Prince
John was with the Countess Araminta. That means, I hope, that he will go
there after him and annoy your cousin into becoming a partisan."

Ashie looked at his friend with admiration slightly tempered by awe.

"Mintha is a little devil," he said slowly; "but she's a turtle-dove
compared to you."




IX NIGHT IN THE WOODS


The great forest of St Sylvester lies like a fur over the patch of
country through which the little river Silf--the Amnis Silvestris of the
Romans--winds to the Rave. At the eastern end, near the Silf's junction
with the main river, stands the considerable town of Krovolin; south of
it stretch downs studded with the ugly headgear of oil wells; and west
is the containing wall of the mountains. It is pierced by one grand
highway, and seamed with lesser roads, many of them only grassy alleys
among the beeches.

At one of the cross-roads, where the highway was cut at right angles by
a track running from north to south, two cars were halted. The
Evallonian summer is justly famed for its settled weather, but sometimes
in early August there falls for twenty-four hours a deluge of rain, if
the wind should capriciously shift to the west. The forest was now being
favoured with such a downpour. All day it had rained in torrents, and
now, at eleven o'clock at night, the tempest was slowly abating. It was
dark as pitch, but if the eyes had no work for them, the ears had a
sufficiency, for the water beat like a drum in the tops of the high
trees, and the drip on the sodden ground was like the persistent clamour
of a brook.

One of the cars had comprehensively broken down, and no exploration of
its intestines revealed either the reason or the cure. It was an
indifferent German car, hired some days before in the town of Rosensee;
the driver was Peter Wappit, and the occupants were Prince Odalchini and
Dickson McCunn. The party from the other car, which was of a good
English make, had descended and joined the group beside the derelict.
Three men and two women stood disconsolately in the rain, in the glow of
the two sets of headlights.

Prince Odalchini had not been idle after the momentous evening session
in the House of the Four Winds. He had his own means of sending messages
in spite of the vigilance of the Juventus patrols, and word had gone
forthwith to the Monarchist leaders and to the secretaries of the
Archduke Hadrian far away in the French chateau. It had been a more
delicate business getting the castle party out of the castle confines.
The road used was that which led through the cellars of the Turk's Head,
and the landlord Proser, who had now to be made a confidant, had proved
a tower of strength. So had Randal Glynde, whose comings and goings
seemed to be as free and as capricious as the wind. The cars--and Peter
Wappit--had been duly fetched from the Cirque Dor or wherever else they
had been bestowed, and early that morning, before Tarta was astir, two
batches of prosperous-looking tourists had left the inn, after the
hearty farewells which betoken generous tipping. Their goal was the town
of Krovolin, but the route they took was not direct. Under Prince
Odalchini's guidance--no one would have recognised the Prince, for Mr
Glynde had made him up to look like an elderly American with a
goatee--they made a wide circuit among the foothills, and entered the
Krovolin highway by a route from the south-west.

The weather favoured them, for the Tarta streets were empty when they
started, and they met scarcely a traveller on the roads. There was one
exception, for about four miles from the town their journey was impeded
by part of a travelling circus, which seemed to be bearing south. Its
string of horses and lurching caravans took a long time to pass in the
narrow road, and during the delay the proprietor of the circus appeared
to offer his apologies. This proprietor, a tall, fantastically dressed
being with a ragged beard, conversed with various members of the party
while the block ahead was being cleared, and much of his conversation
was in low tones and in a tongue which was neither German nor
Evallonian.

The five figures in the rain had a hurried conference. The oldest of
them seemed to be the most perturbed by the _contretemps_. He peered at
a map by the light of the lamps, and consulted his watch.

"Krovolin is less than thirty kilometres distant," he said. "We could
tow this infernal car if we had such a thing as a rope, which we
haven't. We can wait here for daylight. Or one car can go on to Krovolin
and send out help."

"I'm for the last," said Sir Archie. "I would suggest our all stowing
into my car, but it would mean leaving our kit behind, and in these
times I don't think that would be safe. I tell you what. You and Mr
McCunn get into my car and Peter will drive you. Janet and Alison and I
will wait behind with the crock, and you can send help for us as soon as
you can wake up a garage."

Prince Odalchini nodded. "I think that will be best," he said. "I can
promise that you will not have long to wait, for at Casimir's
headquarters there is ample transport. I confess I do not want to be
delayed, for I have much to do. Also it is not wise for me to be
loitering in St Sylvester's woods, since at present in this country I am
somewhat contraband goods. Mr McCunn too. It is vital that no mishap
should befall him. You others are still free people."

"Right," said Archie, and began moving the kit of his party from his own
car to the derelict. "You'd both be the better of a hot bath and a
dressing-down, for you've been pretty well soaked all day. We'll begin
to expect the relief expedition in about an hour. If I can get this bus
started, where do I make for in Krovolin?"

"The castle of Count Casimir," was the answer. "It is a huge place,
standing over Krovolin as the House of the Four Winds stands over
Tarta."

When the tail-lights of his own car had disappeared, Archie set himself
to make another examination of Dickson's, but without success. It was a
touring car with a hood of an old-fashioned pattern, which during the
day had proved but a weak defence against the weather. The seats were
damp and the floor was a shallow pool. Since the rain was lessening,
Archie managed to dry the seats and invited the women to make themselves
comfortable. Janet Roylance and Alison had both been asleep for the past
hour, and had wakened refreshed and prepared to make the best of things.
Janet produced chocolate and biscuits and a thermos of coffee, and
offered supper, upon which Alison fell ravenously. Archie curled his
legs up on the driver's seat and lit his pipe.

"I'm confoundedly sleepy," he said. "A long day in the rain always makes
me sleepy. I wonder why?" A gout of wet from the canvas of the hood
splashed on his face. "This is a comfortless job. Looks as if the fowls
of the air were one up on us to-night. I'll get a crick in my neck if I
stick here longer, and I'd get out and roost on the ground if it weren't
so sloppy. 'A good soft pillow for my good grey head'--how does the
thing go?"

"'Were better than this churlish turf of France.'" Alison completed the
quotation. "Have some coffee. It will keep you awake."

"It won't. That's my paradoxical constitution. Coffee makes me
sleepier." He looked at his watch. "Moon's due in less than an hour. I
call this a rotten place--not the sound of a bird or beast, only that
filthy drip. I say, you know, you two look like a brace of owls in a
cage."

It was not an inept comparison for the women in their white waterproofs,
which caught dimly the back-glow of the side-lamps. The place was
sufficiently eery, for the trees were felt rather than seen, and the
only food for the eye was the glow made by the head-lights on the
shining black tarmac of the highway. The car had been pushed on to the
turf with its nose close to the main road, opposite where the track from
the north debouched. Archie to cheer himself began a song, against which
his wife stoutly protested.

"That's sacrilege," she said. "This is a wonderful place, for there must
be fifteen miles of trees round us in every direction. Be quiet, Archie,
and, if you can't dose and won't have any supper, think good thoughts."

"The only good thought I have is the kind of food Count Casimir will
give us. Is he the sort of fellow that does himself well, Alison? You're
the only one of us that knows him. I want beefsteaks--several of 'em."

"I think so," the girl answered. "He praised our food at Castle Gay and
he gave me a very good breakfast at Knockraw. But the breakfast might
have been Prince John's affair, for he was a hungry young man.... I
wonder where _he_ is now. I don't think he was with Ran's outfit when we
passed it this morning."

"We have properly dissipated our forces," said Archie. "However, that's
a good rule of strategy if you know how to concentrate them later. I
wonder where Jaikie is?"

"Poor Jaikie!" Alison sighed. "He has an awful job before him, for he is
as shy as an antelope really, though he does brazen things. He'll be
scared into fits by the Countess Araminta. Dickson was the one to deal
with her."

"He may fall in love with her," said Archie. "Quite possible, though
she's not the sort I fancy myself. Very beautiful, you know. When I
first saw her I thought her wonderful sunburn came out of a bottle, and
I considered her too much of a movie star, but when I found it was the
gift of Heaven I rather took to her. But Jaikie will have to stand up to
her or she'll eat him. I say, Janet, how much use do you think Prince
Odalchini is?"

"Good enough for a day with the bitch pack on the hills," was the
drowsy answer. "Not much good for the Vale and the big fences."

"Just my own notion. He's too old, and though he's a brave old boy, I
don't see him exactly leading forlorn hopes. What about Count Casimir,
Alison?"

The girl shook her head. "I'm not sure. He talks too much."

"Too romantic, eh?"

"Too sentimental. Dickson's romantic, which is quite a different thing."

"I see. Well, I take it there's no question about the Countess. By all
accounts she's a high-powered desperado. Apart from her it looks as if
this show was a bit short of what Bobby Despenser calls 'dynamic
personages,' and that what there are are mostly our own push. There's
McCunn--no mistake about him. And Jaikie--not much mistake about Jaikie.
And there's your lunatic cousin Glynde. To think that when I saw him at
Charles Lamancha's party two months ago, I thought him rather a nasty
piece of work--too much the tailor's model and the pride of the Lido.
Who'd have guessed that he was a cross between a bandit and a bard?"

Conversation had dispelled Archie's languor.

"This promises to be a merry party," he said. "The trouble is to know
how and when it will stop and what kind of heads we'll have in the
morning. Do you realise the desperate way we're behaving? We're taking a
hand in another fellow's revolution, and some of us have taken charge of
it. And, more by token, who are we? A retired Glasgow grocer that wants
to keep a crazy promise--and a Rugger tough from Cambridge--and a girl
I've purloined from her parents--and a respectable married woman--and
myself, an ornament of the Mother of Parliaments, who should be sitting
at Geneva before a wad of stationery making revolutions for ever
impossible.... Hullo, what's this?"

There was a noise like that of a machine-gun which rapidly grew louder,
and down the side road from the north came the lights of a
motor-bicycle. Its rider saw the lamps of the car, slowed down, skidded
on the tarmac, and came to a standstill in a clump of fern. A soaked and
muddy figure stood blinking in the car lights. So dirty was his face
that two of the three did not recognise him. But Alison in a trice was
out of the car with a cry of "Jaikie."

Mr John Galt had had a laborious day. Ashie had prepared for him a pass,
giving him safe conduct to the camp of the Countess Araminta, but had
warned him that, except for Juventus, it was of no use, and that
Juventus had few representatives in the piece of country through which
he must travel. He had also provided a map, and the two had planned an
ingenious course, which would take him to the oil-fields by unfrequented
by-ways. It had proved too ingenious, for Jaikie had lost his way, and
gone too far west into the foothills. The blanket of low clouds and the
incessant rain made it impossible for him to get a prospect, and the
countryside seemed empty of people. The only cottages he passed were
those of woodcutters whose speech he could not understand, and when he
mentioned place-names he must have mispronounced them, for they only
shook their heads. His only clue was the Silf, of which he struck the
upper waters after midday. But no road followed the Silf, which ran in
a deep ravine, and he was compelled to bear north again till he found a
road which would take him south through the forest. But he knew now his
position on the map, and he hoped to reach his destination before dark,
when his machine began to give trouble. Jaikie was a poor mechanic and
it took him three hours before he set the mischief right. By this time
the dark skies were darkening further into twilight. There was no
shelter for the night in the forest, so he decided to struggle on till
at any rate he was out of the trees. The map showed a considerable
village on the southern skirts which would surely provide an inn.

His lamp gave him further trouble, for it would not stay lit. He had
been soaked since early in the day, for Ashie could not provide him with
overalls, and his shabby mackintosh was no protection against the
deluge. He was also hungry, for he had long ago finished his supply of
biscuits and chocolate. The consolations of philosophy, of which he had
a good stock, were nearly exhausted when he skidded on the tarmac of the
trunk highway.

Archie laughed boisterously.

"I was just saying that we had dangerously dispersed our forces, but now
we've begun to concentrate. Where have you been, my lad?"

Jaikie, grinning sheepishly at Alison, shook the water from his ancient
hat, and pushed back a lock of hair which had straggled over his left
eye.

"I've been circumnavigating Evallonia. I daresay I've come two hundred
miles."

"Was that purpose or accident?"

"Accident. I've been lost most of the day up on the edge of the hills.
And I've got a relic of a bicycle. But what are you doing here?"

"Accident, too. This car of McCunn's soured on him, so we sent him and
the Prince on to Krovolin in mine, and Janet and Alison and I are
waiting here like Babes in the Wood till we're rescued."

"Have you any food to spare?" Jaikie asked. He had recovered his
spirits, and saw his misadventures in a more cheerful light, since they
had led to this meeting.

Alison gave him some coffee out of the thermos and the remains of the
biscuits.

"You're a grisly sight, Jaikie," she said severely. "I've seen many a
tattie-bogle that looked more respectable."

"I know," he said meekly. "I've been looking a bit of a ragamuffin for a
long time, but to-day has put the lid on it."

"You simply can't show yourself to the Countess like that. You look like
a tramp that has been struck by lightning and then drowned."

"I thought I might find an inn where I could tidy up and get my clothes
dried."

"Nothing will tidy you up. Juventus are a dressy lot, you know, and
they'll set the dogs on you."

"But I have letters from Ashie." He dived into his inner pocket and drew
forth a sodden sheaf. "Gosh! they're pulp! The rain's got at them and
the ink has run. They're unreadable. What on earth am I do?"

"You're a child of calamity. Didn't you think of oilskin or brown
paper?... You'd better come on with us to Krovolin for a wash and brush
up, and Prince Odalchini will find you more decent clothes."

Jaikie shook his head. "I must obey orders. That's the first rule of
Juventus, and I belong to Juventus now. Properly speaking, I'm at
present your enemy.... I must be getting on, for I've a big job before
me. I'm glad you pushed off the Prince and Mr McCunn, for they also have
their job. You three are only camp-followers."

"You're an ungrateful beast," said Alison indignantly, "to call us
camp-followers, when you know I came hundreds of miles because you said
you needed me.... Get off then to your assignation. A pretty figure
you'll cut in a lady's bower!"

Jaikie's face fell. "Lord, but duty is an awful thing! I funk that
interview more than anything I remember. What, by the way, is her proper
name? I must get that right, for Ashie, who's her cousin, calls her
Mintha."

"She is the Countess Araminta Troyos--have you got that? How do you
propose to approach her? Mr Galt to see the Countess on private
business? Or a courier from the Praefectus of the Western Wing?"

"I'm going first to the Professor man--what's his name--Doctor Jagon. He
won't make much of this mass of pulp, but he may remember me from the
Canonry. Anyway, I think I can persuade him that I'm honest."

Jaikie was in the act of wheeling his machine into the track which ran
south when he started at a shout of Archie's, and turning his head saw
the glow of a great car lighting up the aisle among the trees.

"Well done the Prince," said Archie. "Gad, he's done us proud and sent
two cars--there's another behind."

"But they're coming from the wrong direction," said Janet.

An avalanche of light sped through the darkness, and the faces of the
waiting four took on an unearthly whiteness. This was a transformation
so sudden and startling that each remained motionless--Jaikie with his
hand on his bicycle, Alison holding the thermos, Janet with her head
poked out of the car, and Archie with one foot on the step. The lights
halted, and the two cars were revealed. They were big roadsters with
long rakish bonnets, and in each were two men.

Jaikie happened to be nearest, and he was the first to recognise the
occupants. The man at the wheel he did not know, and what he could see
of his face was only a long nose between his hat and the collar of his
waterproof. But the other who sat beside him was unmistakable. He saw
the forward-thrusting jaw, the blunt nose, and the ominous eyes of
Mastrovin.

His first thought was to get off, for he considered that he alone of the
four was likely to be interfered with. But unfortunately the recognition
had been mutual. Mastrovin cried a sharp word of command which brought
the two men out of the second car, and he himself with surprising
agility leaped on to the road. Jaikie found himself held by strong hands
and looking into a most unfriendly face.

"I am in luck," said Mastrovin. "We did not finish our conversation the
other day, Mr--Galt, I think you said the name was? I am glad to have
the opportunity of continuing it, and now I think we shall not be
interrupted."

"Sorry," said Jaikie, "but I can't wait."

"Sorry," was the answer, "but you must."

Jaikie found his hands wrenched from the bicycle handles and his person
in the grip of formidable arms. He observed that Mastrovin had turned
his attention to the others.

"How are you, Mr Mastrovin?" he heard Archie say in a voice of falsetto
cheerfulness. "We met, you remember, at Geneva?"

"We have met since," was the answer. "We met in a hut in the mountains
at Unnutz." There was an unpleasant suggestion in his tone that that
meeting had not been satisfactory.

Mastrovin peered within the car and saw Janet, who apparently did not
interest him. But Alison was a different matter. He must have had a good
memory for faces, for he instantly recognised her.

"Another from Unnutz," he said. "A young lady who took early morning
walks in the hills. So!" He cried a word to the driver of his car, which
Jaikie did not understand. Then he faced Sir Archie, his brows drawn to
a straight line and his mouth puckered in a mirthless smile.

"You are the English who have been in the House of the Four Winds. I did
not think I was mistaken.... Two of you I have seen elsewhere--at the
time I suspected you and now I know. You have meddled in what does not
concern you, and you must take the consequences."

He rasped out the final words in a voice which made it plain that these
consequences would not be pleasant. Archie, whose temper was rising,
found himself looking into the barrel of a pistol held in a very steady
hand.

"Do not be foolish," Mastrovin said. "We are four armed men, and we do
not take chances. You will accompany us--you and the women. You are in
no danger if you do as I bid you, but it is altogether necessary that
for a little you should be kept out of mischief."

Archie's angry protests were checked on his lips, they were so
manifestly futile. Janet and he were ordered into the first car, where
Mastrovin took the seat opposite them. They were permitted to take their
baggage, and that was bundled into the second car, whither Alison
accompanied it. The man who was holding Jaikie asked a question, oddly
enough in French, to which Mastrovin replied by bidding him put the
"little rat" beside the luggage. Jaikie found himself on a folding seat
with a corner of Archie's kit-bag in his ribs and Alison sitting before
him.

The cars sped down the Krovolin road, and after some five miles they
passed another car coming in the opposite direction. That, thought
Jaikie, must be the relief sent by Prince Odalchini.... He was in what
for him was a rare thing, a mood of black despair. Partly it was due to
his weary and sodden body, but the main cause was that he had suddenly
realised the true posture of affairs. He had slipped idly into this
business, as had the others, regarding it only as an amusing game, a
sort of undergraduate "rag." There was a puzzle to solve, where wits and
enterprise could come into play, but the atmosphere was _opra-bouffe_,
or at the best comedy. The perplexed Ashie was a comic figure; so were
Prince Odalchini and the Monarchists; so was the formidable Countess
Mintha; so even two days ago had seemed Mastrovin. Alison and Janet and
Archie were all votaries of the comic spirit.

But now he realised that there were darker things. Mastrovin's pistol
had suddenly dispelled the air of agreeable farce, and opened the veils
of tragedy. The jungle was next door to the formal garden--and the
beasts of the jungle. As in the library of Castle Gay two years before,
he had a glimpse of wolfish men and an underworld of hideous things.
That night for the second time he had been called a rat by Mastrovin and
his friends, but the insult did not sting him, for he was in the depths
of self-abasement. The bitter thought galled his mind that he had
brought Alison into a grim business. For that he was alone responsible,
and he saw no way out. It was bad that he should be compelled to fail
Ashie, for his mission was now hopeless, but it was worse that Alison
should have to pay for his folly. Mastrovin would never let them go, and
if things went ill with Mastrovin's side he would make them pay the
penalty.... And he was utterly helpless. He knew nothing of the country
and could not speak the tongue, he had no money, and only a boy's
strength. Prince Odalchini and Dickson might persist in their plot and
Juventus continue its high career, but Alison and Janet and Archie and
he were out of it for ever, prisoners in some dim underworld of
Mastrovin's contriving.

They came out of the forest to find that the rain had stopped and that
the moon was rising among ragged clouds. He saw a gleam of water and
what looked like the spires of a city. They were being taken to
Krovolin, and presently they approached the first houses of its western
faubourg.... And then something happened which brought a thin ray of
hope to Jaikie's distressed soul. There were lights in an adjacent
field, and from them came the strains of a fiddle. It was playing
Dvork's _Humoresque_, and that was the favourite tune of Luigi of the
Cirque Dor.




X AURUNCULEIA


The familiar melody brought only a momentary refreshment to Jaikie's
spirit. The feeling was strong upon him that he had stumbled out of
comedy into a melodrama which might soon darken into tragedy. As they
entered the city of Krovolin, this mood was increased by the sight of
unmistakable pistols in the hands of his guards. Some kind of watch was
kept at the entrance, for both cars were stopped and what sounded like
pass-words were exchanged. Krovolin he knew was the headquarters of the
Monarchists, but Mastrovin, having spent all his life in intrigue, was
not likely to be stopped by so small a thing as that. It was like his
audacity to have domiciled himself in the enemy's camp, and he probably
knew most of that enemy's secrets. Jaikie dismissed the thought of
appealing to these Monarchist sentries and demanding to be taken to
Count Casimir, for he was convinced that at that game he would be
worsted. Besides, he could not talk the language.

The hour was late, and there were few people in the well-lit street
which descended to the bridge of the river. The cars turned along the
edge of the water over vile cobbles, and presently wove their way into a
maze of ancient squalor. This was the Krovolin of the Middle Ages,
narrow lanes with high houses on both sides, the tops of which bent
forward so as to leave only a slender ribbon of sky. Up a side alley
they went, and after many twistings came to the entrance of a yard. Here
they were clearly expected, for a figure stood on watch outside, who
after a word with Mastrovin opened a pair of ancient rickety gates. The
car scraped through with difficulty, and Jaikie found himself in a
cobbled space which might once have been the courtyard of a house. Now
the moon showed it as a cross between a garage and a builder's yard, for
it held two other cars, a motor-lorry, and what looked like the debris
of a recent earthquake. When he got out he promptly fell over a heap of
rubble and a sheaf of spades. Somebody had recently been digging there.

He was given no time to prospect. Mastrovin came forward, bowed to
Alison and shepherded her to the side of Janet and Archie. Two men took
charge of the baggage, and the party were conducted indoors. For a
moment Jaikie was left alone, and his hopes rose--perhaps he was too
humble for Mastrovin's attentions. He was speedily undeceived, for the
man who had been with Mastrovin at Tarta gave an order, and the fellow
who had been outside the gate clutched Jaikie's arm. He was also a
prisoner, only a more disconsidered one than the others. He was pushed
through a door and prodded down a passage and up a narrow staircase,
till he reached a little room smelling abominably of garlic. It was a
bedroom, for there was a truckle bed and a deal table carrying on it the
stump of a candle. His conductor nodded to the bed, on which he flung
Jaikie's rucksack, and then departed, after locking the door.

There was a window which seemed to look out upon a pit of darkness. It
was not shuttered, but the sashes were firmly bolted. By bending low
Jaikie could see upwards to a thin streak of light. The room must be on
the street side, and what he saw was a strip of moonlit sky. It must
also be on the first floor, for he had ascended only one flight of
stairs. If this was meant as a prison it was an oddly insecure one.

But all thought of immediate escape was prevented by the state of his
body. He was immeasurably weary, and so sleepy that his eyes were gummed
together, a condition which with him usually followed a day of hard
exercise in the rain. The stuffiness of the place increased his
drowsiness. He sat on the edge of the bed and tried to think, but his
mind refused to work. He must have sleep before he could do anything. He
stripped off his sodden clothes, and found that he was not so wet as he
had feared--of his under-garments only the collar and sleeves of his
shirt had suffered. He hung them to dry on rusty nails with which the
walls were abundantly provided. There were plenty of bedclothes and they
seemed clean, so, wrapping his naked body in them, he was presently
asleep.

He woke to a dusty twilight, but there was a hum out-of-doors which
suggested that it was full day. A glance from the window showed him that
though the sun had not yet got into the alley the morning's life had
begun. The place was full of people, and by standing on the sill he
could see their heads beneath him. He had been right--the room was on
the first story. It bulged out above the street, so his vision was
limited; he saw the people in the middle and on the other side, but not
those directly beneath him.

He was very hungry, for he had had scanty rations the day before, and he
wondered if breakfast was included in this new rgime. There was no sign
of it, so he turned his attention to the window. It was of an
old-fashioned type, with folding sashes secured by slim iron bars which
ran into sockets where they were held by padlocks. Jaikie was a poor
mechanic, but he saw that these bolts would be hard to tamper with. If
the place were kept sealed up like this no wonder the air was foul.
Fortunately the sun could not make itself felt in that cavern of a
street, but, all the same, by noon it would be an oven.

This was a disheartening thought, and it took the edge off his appetite.
What he particularly wanted was something to drink, beer for preference,
but he would have made shift with water. He lay down on the bed, for to
look out of the sealed window only distressed him.

As the morning advanced he must have slept again, for the opening of the
door woke him with a start. The newcomer was Mastrovin.

He looked very square and bulky in that narrow place, and he seemed to
be in an ugly temper. He walked to the window and examined the
fastenings. Jaikie observed for the first time that there were no
shutters. What if he smashed the glass and dropped into the street? It
could not be more than ten yards, and he was as light on his feet as a
cat.

Mastrovin may have guessed his thought, for he turned to him with a sour
smile.

"Do not delude yourself, Mr--Galt, isn't it? That window is only the
inner works of this fortress. Even if you opened it you would be no
better off. The outer works would still have to be passed, and they are
human walls, stronger than stone and lime."

"Am I to have any breakfast?" Jaikie asked. "I don't suppose it's any
good asking you what you mean by bringing me here. But most gaolers feed
their prisoners."

"I am the exception. Life at present is too hurried with me to preserve
the amenities. But a word from you will get you breakfast; liberty
also--conditional liberty. You cannot be released just at once, but I
will have you taken to a more comfortable place. That word is the
present address of Prince John."

Mastrovin spoke as Jaikie remembered once hearing a celebrated statesman
speak when on a visit to Cambridge--slowly, pronouncing his words as if
he relished the sound of them, giving his sentences an oratorical swing.
It was certainly impressive.

"I haven't the remotest idea," he said, speaking the strictest truth.

"Let me repeat," said Mastrovin with a great air of patience. "The
English have long been suspected of dabbling in Monarchist plots. That I
have already told you. You have been at Tarta in the House of the Four
Winds, which is the home of such plots. Did not my people pick you out
of it? You admitted to me that you were acquainted with Prince
Odalchini. Where, I ask you now, is Prince Odalchini's master?"

"I tell you, I don't know. As I told you at Tarta, I heard a rumour
that he was with some lady called the Countess Troyos."

"That rumour is a lie," said Mastrovin fiercely. "For a moment I
believed it, but I have since proved it a lie. What is more, when you
told it me you knew it was a lie. I repeat my question."

The formidable eyebrows were drawn together, and the whole man became an
incarnate menace. Jaikie, empty, headachy, sitting in his shabby clothes
on the edge of the bed, felt very small and forlorn. He sometimes felt
like that, and on such occasions he would have given all he possessed
for another stone of weight and another two inches of height.

"I don't know," he said. "How should I know? I'm an ordinary English
tourist who came to Evallonia by accident. I don't know anybody in it
except Prince Odalchini ... and Count Paul Jovian--and you."

"You will know a good deal more about me very soon, my friend. Listen.
You are lying--I am a judge of liars, and I can read your face. You are
a friend of the three other English--the man and the two women--I find
you in the forest in their company. Of these other English I know
something. I last saw them in the neighbourhood of Prince John, and it
is certain that they know where he has gone and what he is now doing.
That knowledge I demand to share--and at once."

"I don't know what the others know, but I know what I don't know. Though
you kept me here till I had a long grey beard I couldn't give you any
other answer."

"You will not stay long enough to grow a beard. Only a little time, but
it will not be a pleasant time. You will do what I ask, I think. The
others--the others are, as you say in England, of the gentry--a
politician and baronet--two ladies of birth. I hold such distinctions as
less than rotten wood, but I am a man of the world, and now and then I
must submit to the world's valuation.... But you are of a different
class. You are of the people, the new educated proletariat on which
England prides herself.... With you I can use elementary methods....
With the others in time, if they are stubborn ... but with you, now."

He spat out the last words with extraordinary venom. No doubt he thought
that in that moment he was being formidable, but as a matter of fact to
Jaikie he had ceased to be even impressive. He had insulted him,
threatened him, had wakened the small efficient devil that lived at the
back of his mind. Jaikie was very angry, and with him wrath always
blanketed fear. He saw Mastrovin now, not as a sinister elemental force,
but as a common posturing bully.

He yawned.

"I wish you'd send me up some breakfast," he said. "A cup of coffee, if
you've nothing else."

Mastrovin moved to the door.

"You will get no food until you speak. And no drink. Soon this room will
be as hot as hell, and may you roast in it!"

The exhilaration of Jaikie's anger did not last long, though it left
behind it a very solid dislike. He realised that he had got himself into
an awkward place, from which every exit seemed blocked. But what struck
cold at his heart was the peril of Alison. He had heard at the House of
the Four Winds of her days at Unnutz, and he realised that Mastrovin had
good grounds for connecting her and Janet and Archie with Prince John's
disappearance. He must have suspected them from the start, and the sight
of the trio at Tarta had clinched his suspicions.

Jaikie tried to set out the case soberly and logically. Prince John was
for Mastrovin the key of the whole business. If he could lay hands on
him he could render the Monarchists impotent. He was probably clever
enough to have foreseen the possibilities of Juventus taking up the
Prince's cause, for without the Prince or somebody like him Juventus
would spend its strength on futilities. So long as it had no true
figure-head it was at the mercy of Mastrovin and his underworld gang.
The settlement of Evallonia was the one thing the latter must prevent:
the waters must be kept troubled, for only then could he fish with
success.... Jaikie saw all that. He saw Mastrovin's purpose, and knew
that he would stop at nothing to effect it, for he was outside the pale
of the decencies. He meant to try to starve Jaikie himself into
submission; but, far worse, he would play the same game with Alison and
Janet. All four had stumbled out of a bright world into a medival gloom
which stank horribly of the Inquisition.

For a moment his heart failed him. Then his sense of feebleness changed
into desperation. He knew that the lives of the other three depended on
him, and the knowledge stung him into action. Never had he felt so small
and feeble and insignificant, but never so determined. A memory came to
him of that night long ago at Huntingtower when the forlorn little band
of the Gorbals Die-hards had gone into action. He remembered his cold
fury, which had revealed itself in copious tears. Nowadays he did not
weep, but if there had been a mirror in the room it would have shown a
sudden curious pallor in his small face.

He set to work on the window. His rucksack had been searched for
weapons, but he had in his pocket what is known as a sportsman's knife,
an implement with one blade as strong as a gully, and with many gadgets.
He could do nothing with the bolts and the padlocks, but he might cut
into the supporting wood.

It proved an easier task than he had feared. The windows across the
street were shuttered, so he could work without fear of detection. The
socket of the lower bolt had a metal plate surrounding it, but the upper
was fair game for his knife. The wood was old and hard, but after
labouring for an hour or two he managed to dig out the square into which
the bolt fastened. That released the top of one window, and he turned to
the harder job of the bottom.

Here he had an unexpected bit of luck. There seemed something queer
about the lower padlock, and to his joy he found that he could open it.
It had been locked without the tongue being driven home. This was
providential, for the lower part was solidly sheathed in metal and his
knife would have been useless. With some difficulty he drew the stiff
bolts, and one half of the window was at his disposal.

Very gingerly he pushed it open. A hot breath of air came in on him from
the baking alley, but it was fresh air and it eased his headache. Then
cautiously he put his head out and looked down upon the life of the
street.

Mastrovin had not been bluffing. There were strong outworks to this
fortress, and the outworks were human. Few people were about, perhaps
because it was the time for the midday meal. It was a squalid enough
place, with garbage in the gutters, but it had one pleasant thing, a
runnel of water beside the pavement on the other side, no doubt a leat
from the Rave or the Silf. The sight of the stream made his thirst
doubly vexatious, but he had no time to think of it, for something else
filled his eye. There were men on guard--two below his window, and one
on the kerb opposite. This last might have seen him, but happily he was
looking the other way.

Jaikie drew in his head and shut the window.

That way lay no hope of escape. If he dropped into the street it would
be into such arms as had received him on Prince Odalchini's terrace.

This was disheartening, but at first he was not greatly disheartened.
The fact that he had made an opening into the outer world had given him
an illogical hope. Also he could now abate the stuffiness of his
prison-house. The place was still an oven, but the heat was not
stifling. In time evening would come--and night. Might not something be
done in the darkness? He had better try to sleep.

But as he lay on the bed he found that his thoughts, quickened by
anxiety for Alison, ran in a miserable whirligig and that hope was very
low. Mastrovin was taking no chances. Before night he would probably
examine the window; in any case his ruffians below were likely to be on
stricter duty. His own bodily discomfort added to his depression, for
his tongue was like a stick and he was sick with hunger. A man, he knew,
could fast for many days if only he had water, but if he had neither
food nor drink his strength would soon ebb.

What, he wondered, was Alison doing? Enduring the same misery? Not
yet--though that would come unless he could bestir himself. But she and
Janet and Archie must be pretty low in mind.... He remembered that he
was failing Prince Odalchini and Ashie, and doing nothing about the duty
which had been assigned him. But that was the least of his troubles.
This infernal country might go hang for all he cared. What mattered was
Alison.

One thought maddened him--that the four of them had gone clean out of
the ken of their friends. It would be supposed that at the moment he was
with the Countess Araminta, and no one would begin to ask questions.
About the other three there might be some fuss, for the relief car would
find the derelict in the forest. Also his motor-bicycle, though again
that would mean nothing to anybody. Archie and his party were expected
to join Dickson and Prince Odalchini at Count Casimir's headquarters.
When they did not arrive and the derelict was found there would no doubt
be a hue-and-cry. But to what effect? Mastrovin would have covered his
tracks, and the last place to look for the missing would be the slums of
Krovolin. The best hiding-place was under the light.

The street had been almost noiseless in the early afternoon, when good
citizens were taking their siesta. About three it woke up a little.
There was a drunken man who sang, and from the window Jaikie saw the
tops of greengrocers' carts moving country-wards, after the forenoon
market. After that there was silence again, and then the tramp of what
sounded like a police patrol. Between four and five there was
considerable movement and the babble of voices. Perhaps the street was a
short cut between two popular thoroughfares; at any rate it became
suddenly quite a lively place. There were footsteps outside his door,
and Jaikie closed the window in a hurry and lay back on the bed. Was
Mastrovin about to pay him another visit? But whoever it was thought
better of it, and he heard the steps retreating down the stairs. They
had scarcely died away, when out of doors came a sound which set
Jaikie's nerves tingling. Someone was playing on a flute, and the tune
was Dvork's _Humoresque_.

He flew to the window and cautiously looked out. There was no watcher on
the opposite pavement. Quite a number of people were in the street,
shop-girls and clerks for the most part on their way home. A beggar was
playing in the gutter, playing a few bars and then supplicating the
passers-by. His face was towards Jaikie, who observed that he wore a
gipsy cap of cats' skins and for the rest was a ruin of rags. Underneath
the cap there was a glimpse of dark southern eyes and a hairy unshaven
face.

The man as he played kept an eye on Jaikie's window when he was not
ogling the shop-girls. The light in the street was poor, and he seemed
to be looking for something and to be uncertain if he had found it.
Jaikie stuck his head farther out, and this seemed to give the man what
he sought. He took his eyes off the window, finished his tune, and held
out his cap for alms. Jaikie saw the gleam of earrings. Then he blew
into his flute, pocketed it, and started to shamble inconspicuously down
the gutter till in a minute he was lost to view.

Jaikie shut the window and resolutely stretched himself on the bed. But
now his mood had wholly changed. Luigi had seen him. The Cirque Dor
knew his whereabouts. Soon it would be dark, and then Randal Glynde
would come to his rescue.

So complete was his trust in Mr Glynde that he forebore to speculate on
the nature of the rescue. Had he done so he might have been less
confident. Here in this squalid place Mastrovin was all powerful, and he
had his myrmidons around him. The Cirque Dor could produce no fighting
men; besides, any attempt at violence would probably mean death for
those on whose behalf it was used. Mastrovin had the manners of the
jungle.... Jaikie thought of none of these things. His only fear was of
a second visit from his gaoler, when, if he proved recalcitrant, he
might be removed to other quarters in this dark rabbit-warren. At all
costs he must remain where Luigi had seen him.

Jaikie had now forgotten both his thirst and hunger. As the room
darkened into twilight he lay listening for footsteps on the stairs. The
falling of plaster, the scurrying of rats, the creaking of old timbers
threw him into a sweat of fear. But no steps came. The noises of the
street died away, and the place began to settle into its eery nightly
quiet.

Suddenly from out of doors came a tumultuous and swelling sound. At
first Jaikie thought that a rising had broken out in some part of the
city, for the noise was that of many people shouting. But there were no
shots, and the tumult had no menace in it. It grew louder, so it was
coming nearer. He looked into the darkness, and far on his right he saw
wavering lights, which from their inconstancy must be torches held in
unsteady hands. The thing, whatever it was, was coming down this street.

There was a patter of feet below him, and he saw a mob of urchins, the
forerunners of the procession, who trotted ahead with frequent backward
glances. The light broadened till the alley was bright as day, but with
a fearsome murky glow. It was torches, sure enough, carried and waved by
four half-naked figures with leopard-skin mantles and chaplets of
flowers on their heads. Behind them came four cream-coloured ponies,
also garlanded, drawing a sort of Roman chariot, and in that chariot was
a preposterous figure who now and then stood on its head, now and then
balanced itself on the chariot's rim, and all the time kept up a shrill
patter and the most imbecile grimaces. He recognised Meleager, the clown
of the Cirque Dor.

Jaikie knew that the moment had come. The rescue party had arrived and
he must join it. But how? It was not halting; in a moment Meleager's
chariot had passed on, and he was looking down on zebras ridden by
cowboys. It was not a big circus, and the procession could not last
long, so he must get ready for action.

He noticed that it was hugging his side of the street, so that the
accompanying crowd was all on the far pavement. That meant that
Mastrovin's watchers could not keep their places just below him. Did
Randal Glynde mean him to drop down and move under the cover of the
cavalcade? That must be it, he thought. He opened the window wide, and
sat crouched on the sill.

Then he noticed another thing. The whole procession was not lit up, but
clusters of torches and flares alternated with no lights at all, and the
dark patches were by contrast very dark. He must descend into one of
these tracts of blackness.

Marie Antoinette, or somebody like her, had just passed in a gaudy
illuminated coach, and he made ready to drop into her wake. But a
special tumult warned him that something odd was following. Though an
unlit patch succeeded, the crowd on the opposite kerb seemed to be
thicker. Straining his eyes to the right he saw a huge shadow moving up
the alley, so close to his side of the street that it seemed to be
shouldering the houses. It was high, not six feet below his perch, and
it was broad, for it stretched across to the very edge of the runnel of
water. And it moved fast, as fast as the trotting ponies, though the
sound of its movement was lost in the general din.

It was under him, and, clutching his rucksack, he jumped for it. A hand
caught his collar, and dumped him between two pads. He found himself
looking up at the stars from the back of the elephant Aurunculeia.

He lay still for a time, breathing in the clean air, while Mr Glynde was
busy with his duties as mahout. Presently they were out of the narrow
street, and Aurunculeia swung more freely now that dust was under her
and not cobbles.

"You did well," said Mr Glynde. "I did not overrate your intelligence."

Jaikie roused himself.

"Thank God you came," he said. "I don't know how to thank you. But the
job isn't finished, for there are three other people left in that
beastly house."

"So I guessed," said Mr Glynde. "Well, everything in good time. First we
must get you safely off. We cut things pretty fine, you know. Just as
you joined our convoy someone came into your room with a light. I got a
glimpse of his face and it was familiar. At present he is probably
looking for you in the street.... But he may push his researches
farther."




XI THE BLOOD-RED ROOK


Jaikie was not conscious of most of that evening's ride. Thirty-six
hours of short commons and the gentle swaying of Aurunculeia made him
feel slightly sea-sick and then very drowsy. He found a strap in the
trappings through which he crooked his arm, and the next he knew he was
being lifted down a step-ladder by Randal Glynde in a place which smelt
of horses and trodden herbage.

Mr Glynde was a stern host. He gave him a bowl of soup with bread broken
into it, but nothing more. "You must sleep before you eat properly," he
said, "or you'll be as sick as a dog." Jaikie, who was still a little
light-headed, would have gladly followed this advice, when something in
Randal's face compelled his attention. It was very grave, and he
remembered it only as merry. The sight brought back to him his immediate
past, and the recollection of the stifling room in the ill-omened house
effectively dispelled his drowsiness. He had left Alison behind him.

"I can't stay here," he croaked. "I must get the others out.... That
man's a devil. He'll stick at nothing.... What about Count Casimir? He's
a big swell here, isn't he? and he has other Monarchists with him....
Where are we now? I should get to him at once, for every hour is
important." Then, as Randal remained silent, with the same anxious eyes,
he said, "Oh, for God's sake, do something. Make a plan. You know this
accursed country and I don't."

"You have just escaped from the most dangerous place in Europe," said
Randal solemnly. "I think you are safe now, but it was a narrower thing
than you imagine. The wild beast is in his lair, and a pretty
well-defended lair it is. You may smoke him out, but it may be a bad
thing for those he has got in the lair beside him."

Jaikie's wits were still muddled, but one feeling was clear and strong,
a horror of that slum barrack in the mean street.

"Are there no police in Krovolin?" he demanded.

"The ordinary police would not be much use in what has been a secret
rendezvous for years. The place is a honeycomb. You might plant an army
round it, and Mastrovin would slip out--and leave ugly things behind
him."

Jaikie shuddered.

"Then I'm going back. You don't understand.... I can't go off and leave
the others behind. You see, I brought your cousin here ... Alison----"
He ended his sentence with something like a moan.

Randal for the first time smiled. "I expected something like that from
you. It may be the only way--but not yet. Alison and the Roylances are
not in immediate danger. At present to Mastrovin they are important
means of knowledge. When that fails they may become hostages. Only in
the last resort will they be victims."

"Give me a cigarette, please," said Jaikie. He suddenly felt the clouds
of nausea and weariness roll away from him. He had got his second wind.
"Now tell me what is happening."

Randal nodded to a sheaf of newspapers on the floor of the caravan.

"The popular press, at least the Monarchist brand of it, announces that
the Archduke Hadrian has crossed the Evallonian frontier. One or two
papers say that he is now in Krovolin. They all publish his
portrait--the right portrait. Prince Odalchini's staff-work is rather
good."

Jaikie found himself confronted with a large-size photograph of Dickson
McCunn. It must have been recently taken, for Mr McCunn was wearing the
clothes which he had worn at Tarta.

"I have other news," Randal continued, "which is not yet in the press.
The Archduke, being an old man, is at present resting from the fatigue
of his journey. To-morrow afternoon, accompanied by his chief
supporters, he will move to Melina through a rejoicing country. It has
all been carefully stage-managed. His escort, two troops of the National
Guard, arrive here in the morning. The distance is only fifteen miles,
and part of the road will be lined with His Royal Highness's soldiers.
Melina is already occupied on his behalf, and the Palace is being
prepared for his reception."

"Gosh!" said Jaikie. "How are people taking that?"

"Sedately. The Evallonians are not a politically-minded nation. They are
satisfied that the hated Republic is no more, and will accept any
Government that promises stability. As for His Royal Highness, they have
forgotten all about him, but they have a tenderness for the old line,
and they believe him to be respectable."

"He is certainly that. How about Juventus?"

"Juventus is excited, desperately excited, but not about the Archduke.
They regard him as a piece of antiquated lumber, the last card of a
discredited faction. But the rumour has gone abroad that Prince John has
joined them, and that has given them what they have been longing for, a
picturesque figure-head. I have my own ways of getting news, and the
same report has come in from all the Wings. The young men are huzzaing
for the Prince, who like themselves is young. Their presses are
scattering his photograph broadcast. Their senior officers, many of whom
are of the old families, are enthusiastic. Now at last the wheel has
come full circle for them--they have a revolution of youth which is also
a restoration, and youth will lead it. They are organised to the last
decimal, remember, and they have the bulk of the national feeling behind
them, except here in Krovolin and in the capital. They are sitting round
the periphery of Evallonia waiting for the word to close in.
Incidentally they have shut the frontier, and are puzzled to understand
how the Archduke managed to cross it without their knowledge. When the
word is given there will be a march on Melina, just like Mussolini's
march on Rome. There is only one trouble--the Countess Araminta."

"Yes. What about her?" was Jaikie's gloomy question.

"That young woman," said Randal, "must be at present in a difficult
temper and not free from confusion of mind. She has not been consulted
about Prince John; therefore she will be angry. All Juventus believes
that the Prince is now with her Wing, but she knows that to be untrue.
She has not seen His Royal Highness since she was a little girl....
Besides, there's another complication. I said that Juventus was waiting.
But not the Countess. Some days ago she took the bit between her teeth,
and started to march on Krovolin. My information is that to-night she is
encamped less than ten miles from this city. To-morrow should see her at
its gates."

"Then she'll pinch Mr McCunn before he starts."

"Precisely. At any rate there will be fighting, and for the sake of the
future it is very necessary that there should be no fighting. At the
first rifle-shot the game will get out of hand."

"Can't you get him off sooner?"

"Apparently no. Some time is needed for the arrangements in Melina, and
already the programme has had to be telescoped."

"What a hideous mess! What's to be done? She must be stopped."

"She must. That is the job to which I invite your attention."

"Me!" The ejaculation was wrung from Jaikie by a sudden realisation of
the state of his garments. His flannel bags were shrunken and to the
last degree grimy, his tweed jacket was a mere antique, his shoes gaped,
his hands and presumably his face were black with dust. Once again he
felt, sharp as a toothache, his extreme insignificance.

Randal followed his glance. "You are certainly rather a scarecrow, but I
think I can make you more presentable. You must go. You see, you are
the last hope."

"Couldn't you----?" Jaikie began.

"No," was the decided answer. "I have my own work to do, which is as
vital as yours. There is one task before you. You must get her to halt
in her tracks."

"She won't listen to me."

"No doubt she won't--at first. She'll probably have you sent to whatever
sort of dungeon a field force provides. But you have one master-card."

"Prince John?"

"Prince John. She must produce him or she will be put to public shame,
and she hasn't a notion where to look for him. She is a strong-headed
young woman, but she can't defy the public opinion of the whole of
Juventus. You alone know where the Prince is."

"I don't."

"You will be told ... So you can make your terms. From what I remember
of her you will have a rough passage, but you are not afraid of the
tantrums of a minx."

"I am. Horribly."

Randal smiled. "I don't believe you are really afraid of anything."

"I'm in a desperate funk of one thing, and that is, what is going to
happen to Alison."

"So am I. You are fond, I think, of Cousin Alison. Perhaps you are
lovers?"

Jaikie blushed furiously.

"I have been in love with her for two years."

"And she?"

"I don't know. I hope ... some day."

"You are a chilly Northern pair of children. Well, she is my most
beloved and adored kinswoman, and for her sake I would commit most
crimes. We are agreed about that. It is for the sake of Alison and the
sweet Lady Roylance that you and I are going into action. I wait in
Krovolin and keep an eye on Mastrovin. He is a master of ugly
subterranean things, but I also have certain moles at my command. There
will be a watch kept on the Street of the White Peacock--that is the
name of the dirty alley--a watch of which our gentleman will know
nothing. When the Cirque Dor mobilises itself it has many eyes and
ears. For you the task is to immobilise the Countess. Your price is the
revelation of Prince John. Your reason, which she will assuredly ask, is
not that the Archduke should get safely off to Melina--for remember your
sympathies are with Juventus. It is not even that the coming revolution
must not be spoiled by bloodshed, and thereby get an ill name in Europe.
She would not listen to you on that matter. It is solely that your
friends are in the power of Mastrovin, whom she venomously hates. If she
enters Krovolin Mastrovin will be forced into action, and she knows what
that will mean."

Jaikie saw suddenly a ray of hope.

"What sort of woman is she?" he asked. "Couldn't I put it to her that
she has not merely to sit tight, but has to help to get my friends out
of Mastrovin's clutches? I can't do anything myself, for I don't know
the place or the language. But she is sure to have some hefty fellows
with her to make up a rescue party. She can't refuse that if she's
anything of a sportsman. It's a fair deal. She'll have the Prince if
she gives me my friends. By the way, I suppose you can produce the man
when I call for him?"

"I can. What's more, I can give you something if she asks for proof.
It's the mourning ring prepared for his late Majesty, which only the
royal family possess. She'll recognise it."

Randal's gravity had slightly melted. "I think you could do with a drink
now," he said. "Brandy and soda. I prescribe it, for it's precisely what
you need. Do you know, I think you have hit upon the right idea. Get her
keen on doing down Mastrovin, and she won't bother about the price.
She's an artist for art's sake. Make it a fight between her and the
Devil for the fate of three innocents and she'll go raging into battle.
I believe she has a heart, too. Most brave people have."

As he handed Jaikie his glass, he laughed.

"There's a good old English word that exactly describes your appearance.
You look 'varminty'--like a terrier that has been down a badger's earth,
and got its nose bitten, and is burning to go down again."

       *       *       *       *       *

The car, a dilapidated Ford, fetched a wide circuit in its southward
journey, keeping well to the west of Krovolin, and cutting at right
angles the road from the forest of St Sylvester. The morning was hazy
and close, but after the last two days it seemed to Jaikie to be as
fresh as April. They crossed the Silf, and saw it winding to its
junction with the Rave, with the city smoking in the crook of the two
streams. Beyond the Rave a rich plain stretched east towards the
capital, and through that plain Dickson that afternoon must make his
triumphant procession. Even now his escort would be jingling
Krovolin-wards along its white roads.

Jaikie had recovered his bodily vigour, but never in his life had he
felt so nervous. The thought of Alison shut up in Mastrovin's den gnawed
like a physical pain. The desperate seriousness of his mission made his
heart like lead. It was the kind of thing he had not been trained to
cope with; he would do his best, but he had only the slenderest hope.
The figure of the Countess Araminta grew more formidable the more he
thought about her. Alison at Tarta had called her the Blood-red
Rook--that had been Lady Roylance's name for her--and had drawn her in
colours which suggested a cross between a vampire and a were-wolf. Wild,
exotic, melodramatic and reckless--that had been the impression left on
his mind. And women were good judges of each other. He could deal with a
male foreigner like Ashie whom Cambridge had partially tamed, but what
could he do with the unbroken female of the species? He knew less about
women than he knew about the physics of hyperspace.

His forebodings made him go over again his slender assets. He knew the
line he must take, provided she listened to him. But how to get an
audience? The letters which Ashie had given him, being written on
official flimsies, had been reduced to a degraded pulp by the rain, and
he had flung them away. He had nothing except Randal's ring, and that
seemed to him an outside chance. His one hope was to get hold of Dr
Jagon. Jagon would remember him from the Canonry--or on the other hand
he might not. Still, it was his best chance. If he were once in Jagon's
presence he might be able to recall himself to him, and Jagon was the
Countess's civilian adviser. But his outfit might never get near Jagon;
it might be stopped and sent packing by the first sentry.

It was not a very respectable outfit. The car was a disgrace. He himself
had been rigged up by Randal in better clothes than his own duds, but he
realised that they were not quite right, for the Cirque Dor was
scarcely abreast of the fashions. He had a pair of riding breeches of an
odd tubular shape, rather like what people at Cambridge wore for
beagling, and they were slightly too large for him. His coat was one of
those absurd Norfolk jacket things that continentals wear, made of
smooth green cloth with a leather belt, and it had been designed for
someone of greater girth than himself. He had, however, a respectable
pair of puttees, and his boots, though too roomy, were all right, being
a pair of Randal's own. He must look, he thought, like a shop-boy on a
holiday, decent but not impressive.

Then for the first time he took notice of the chauffeur. He was one of
the circus people, whom Randal had vouched for as a careful driver who
knew the country. The chief point about the man's appearance was that he
wore a very ancient trench burberry, which gave him an oddly English
air. He was apparently middle-aged, for he had greying side whiskers.
His cheeks had the pallor which comes from the use of much grease-paint.
There was nothing horsy about him, so Jaikie set him down as an
assistant clown. He looked solemn enough for that. He wondered what
language he spoke, so he tried him in French, telling him that their
first business was to ask for Professor Jagon.

"I know," was the answer. "The boss told me that this morning."

"Where did you learn English?" Jaikie asked, for the man spoke without
the trace of an accent.

"I am English," he said. "And I picked up a bit of French in the war."

"Do you know Evallonia?"

"I've been here off and on for twenty years."

The man had the intonations of a Londoner. It appeared that his name was
Newsom, and that he had first come to Evallonia as an under-chauffeur in
a family which had been bankrupted by the war. He had gone home and
fought on the British side in a Royal Fusilier battalion, but after the
Armistice he had again tried his fortune in Evallonia. His luck had been
bad, and Mr Glynde had found him on his uppers, and given him a job in
the circus. Transport was his principal business, but he rather fancied
himself as a singer, and just lately had been giving Meleager a hand.
"We're a happy family in the old Cirque," he said, "and don't stick by
trade-union ways. I can turn my hand to most anything, and I like a bit
of clowning now and then. The trouble is that the paint makes my skin
tender. You were maybe noticing that I'm not very clean shaved this
morning." And he turned a solemn mottled face for Jaikie's inspection.

In less than an hour they came out of the woods into a country of
meadows which rose gently to a line of hills. They also came into an
area apparently under military occupation. A couple of Greenshirts
barred the road. Jaikie tried them in English, but they shook their
heads, so he left it to Newsom, who began to explain in Evallonian
slowly, as if he were hunting for words, and with an accent which to
Jaikie's ears sounded insular. There was a short discussion, and then
the Greenshirts nodded and stood aside. "They say," said Newsom, "that
Dr Jagon's quarters are at the farm a kilometre on, but they believe
that he is now with the Wing-Commander. But they don't mind our calling
on him. I said you were an old friend of his, and brought important news
from Krovolin."

The next turn of the road revealed a very respectable army on the march.
The night's bivouac had been in a broad cup formed by the confluence of
two streams. There was a multitude of little tents, extensive
horse-lines, and a car park, and already there were signs that movement
was beginning. Men were stamping out the breakfast fires, and saddling
horses, and putting mule teams to transport wagons, and filling the
tanks of cars. "I must hurry," thought Jaikie, "or that confounded woman
will be in Krovolin this afternoon." His eye caught a building a little
to the rear of the encampment which had the look of a small
hunting-lodge. The green and white flag of Juventus was being lowered
from its flagstaff.

There was no Jagon at the farm, but there was a medical officer who
understood English. To him Jaikie made the appeal which he thought most
likely to convince. He said he was a friend of the Professor--had known
him in England--and brought a message to him of extreme importance.

The officer rubbed his chin. "You are behind the fair," he said. "You
come from Krovolin? Well, we shall be in Krovolin ourselves in three
hours."

"That is my point," said Jaikie. "There's something about Krovolin which
you should hear. It concerns Mastrovin."

The name produced an effect.

"Mastrovin! You come from him?" was the brusque question.

"Only in the sense that I escaped last night from his clutches. I've
something to tell the Professor about Mastrovin which may alter all your
plans."

The officer looked puzzled.

"You are English?" he demanded. "And he?" He nodded towards Newsom.

"Both English, and both friends of Juventus. I came here as a tourist
and stumbled by accident on some important news which I thought it my
duty to get to Professor Jagon. He is the only one of you I know. I tell
you, it's desperately important."

The officer pondered.

"You look an honest little man. I have my orders, but we of the special
services are encouraged to think for ourselves. The Professor is at this
moment in conference with the Praefectus, and cannot be interrupted. But
I will myself take you to headquarters, and when he is finished I will
present you. Let us hurry, for we are about to march."

He stood on the footboard of the car, and directed Newsom along a very
bumpy track, which skirted the horse-lines, and led to the courtyard of
the hunting-lodge. Here was a scene of extreme busyness. Greenshirts
with every variety of rank-badges were going in and out of the building,
a wagon was being loaded with kit, and before what seemed to be the
main entrance an orderly was leading up and down a good-looking chestnut
mare. Out of this door merged the burly figure of a man, with a black
beard and spectacles, who was dressed rather absurdly in khaki shorts
and a green shirt, the open neck of which displayed a hairy chest.

"The Professor," said the medical officer. He saluted. "Here is an
Englishman, sir, who says he knows you and has an urgent message."

"I have no time for Englishmen," said Jagon crossly. His morning
conference seemed to have perturbed him.

"But you will have time for me," said Jaikie. "You remember me, sir?"

The spectacled eyes regarded Jaikie sourly. "I do not."

"I think you do. Two years ago I came to breakfast with you at Knockraw
in Scotland. I helped you then, and I can help you now."

"Tchut! That is a long-closed chapter." But the man's face was no longer
hostile. He honoured Jaikie with a searching stare. "You are that little
Scotsman. I recall you. But if you come from my companions of that time
it is useless. I have broken with them."

"I don't come from them. I come from the man you beat two years ago--I
escaped from him twelve hours ago. I want to help you to beat him
again."

Jagon looked at the medical officer and the medical officer looked at
Jagon. The lips of both seemed to shape, but not to utter, the same
word. "I think the Englishman is honest, sir," said the officer.

"What do you want?" Jagon turned to Jaikie.

"Five minutes' private talk with you."

"Come in here. Keep an eye on that chauffeur"--this to the officer. "We
know nothing about him."

"I'm an Englishman, too," said Newsom, touching his cap.

"What the devil has mobilised the British Empire this morning?" Jagon
led Jaikie into a little stone hall hung with sporting trophies and then
into a cubby-hole where an orderly was packing up papers. He dismissed
the latter, and shut the door.

"Now let's have your errand. And be short, for we move in fifteen
minutes."

Jaikie felt no nervousness with this hustled professor. In half a dozen
sentences he explained how he had got mixed up in Evallonia's business,
but he did not mention Prince Odalchini, though he made much of Ashie.
"I want to see the Countess Araminta. And you, who know something about
me, must arrange it."

"You can't. The Praefectus sees no strangers."

"I must. If I don't she'll make a godless mess of the whole business."

"You would tell her that?" said Jagon grimly. "The Praefectus is not so
busy that she cannot find time to punish insolence."

"It isn't insolence--it's a fact. I didn't talk nonsense to you at
Knockraw, and it was because you believed me that things went right. You
must believe me now. For Heaven's sake take me to the Countess and let's
waste no more time."

"You are a bold youth," said the Professor. "Bold with the valour of
ignorance. But the Praefectus will see no one. Perhaps this evening
when we have entered Krovolin----"

"That will be too late. It must be now."

"It cannot be. I have my orders. The Praefectus is not one to be
disobeyed." The eyes behind the spectacles were troubled, and the black
beard did not hide the twitching of the lips. He reminded Jaikie of a
don of his acquaintance in whom a bonfire in the quad induced a nervous
crisis. His heart sank, for he knew the stubbornness of the weak.

"Then I am going direct to the Countess."

A clear voice rang outside in the hall, an imperative voice, and a
woman's. Jaikie's mind was suddenly made up. Before Jagon could prevent
him, he was through the door. At the foot of the stairs were two
Greenshirts at attention, and on the last step stood a tall girl.

Indignation with the Professor and a growing desperation had banished
Jaikie's uneasiness. He saluted in the Greenshirt fashion and looked her
boldly in the face. His first thought was that she was extraordinarily
pretty. What had Alison meant by drawing the picture of a harpy? She was
dressed like Ashie in green riding breeches and a green tunic, and the
only sign of the Blood-red Rook was her scarlet collar and the scarlet
brassard on her right arm. Her colouring was a delicate amber, her eyes
were like pools in a peaty stream, and her green forester's hat did not
conceal her wonderful dead-black hair. Her poise was the most arrogant
that he had ever seen, for she held her little head so high that the
world seemed at an infinite distance beneath her. As her eyes fell on
him they changed from liquid topaz to a hard agate.

She spoke a sharp imperious word and her voice had the chill of water on
a frosty morning.

Audacity was his only hope.

"Madam," said Jaikie. "I have forced myself upon you. I am an
Englishman, and I believe that you have English blood. I implore your
help, and I think that in turn I can be of use to you."

She looked over his head, at the trembling Jagon and the stupefied
Greenshirts. She seemed to be asking who had dared to disobey her.

"I take all the blame on myself," said Jaikie, trying to keep his voice
level. "I have broken your orders. Punish me if you like, but listen to
me first. You are leading a revolution, and in a revolution breaches of
etiquette are forgiven."

At last she condescended to lower her eyes to him. Something in his face
or his figure seemed to rouse a flicker of interest.

"Who is this cock-sparrow?" she asked, and looked at Jagon.

"Madam," came the trembling answer, "he is a Scotsman who once in
Scotland did me a service. He is without manners, but I believe he means
honestly."

"I see. A _revenant_ from your faulty past. But this is no time for
repaying favours. You will take charge of him, Professor, and be
responsible for him till my further orders." And she passed between the
sentries towards the door.

Jaikie managed to plant himself in her way. He played his last card.

"You must listen to me. Please!" He held out his hand.

It was his face that did it. There was something about Jaikie's small,
wedge-shaped countenance, its air of innocence with just a hint of
devilry flickering in the background, its extreme and rather forlorn
youth, which most people found hard to resist. The Countess Araminta
looked at him and her eyes softened ever so little. She looked at the
outstretched hand in which lay a ring. It was a kind of ring she had
seen before, and the momentary softness left her face.

"Where did you get that?" she demanded in a voice in which imperiousness
could not altogether conceal excitement.

"It was given me to show to you as a proof of my good faith."

She said something in Evallonian to the guards and the Professor, and
marched into the cubby-hole which Jaikie had lately left. "Follow," said
the Professor hoarsely. "The Praefectus will see you--but only for one
minute."

Jaikie found himself in a space perhaps six yards square, confronting
the formidable personage the thought of whom had hitherto made his spine
cold. Rather to his surprise he felt more at his ease. He found that he
could look at her steadily, and what he saw in her face made him
suddenly change all his prearranged tactics. She was a young woman, but
she was not in the least a young woman like Alison or Janet Roylance. He
was no judge of femininity, but there was not much femininity here as he
understood it.... But there was something else which he did understand.
Her eyes, the way she held her head, the tones of her voice had just
that slightly insecure arrogance, that sullen but puzzled
self-confidence, which belonged to a certain kind of public-school boy.
He had studied the type, for it was not his own, and he had had a good
deal to do with the handling of it. One had to be cautious with it, for
it was easy to rouse obstinate, half-comprehended scruples, but it was
sound stuff if you managed it wisely. His plan had been to propose a
bargain with one whom he believed to be the slave of picturesque
ambitions. In a flash he realised that he had been mistaken. If he
suggested a deal it would be taken as insolence, and he would find
himself pitched neck-and-crop into the yard. He must try other methods.

"Countess," he said humbly, "I have come to you with a desperate appeal.
You alone can help me."

He was scrupulously candid. He told how he had come to Evallonia, of his
meeting with Ashie, of his visit to Prince Odalchini. He told how he had
brought Alison and the Roylances to the House of the Four Winds. "It was
none of my business," he admitted. "I was an interfering fool, but I
thought it was going to be fun, and now it's liker tragedy."

"The Roylances," she repeated. "They were at Geneva. I saw them there.
The man is the ordinary English squire, and the woman is pleasant. Miss
Westwater too I know--I have met her in England. Pretty and
blonde--rather fluffy."

"Not fluffy," said Jaikie hotly.

She almost smiled.

"Perhaps not fluffy. Go on."

He told of Mastrovin, sketching hurriedly his doings in the Canonry two
years before. He described the meeting in the Forest of St Sylvester,
when he himself had been on the way to the Countess with letters from
Ashie. "I can't give you them," he said, "for the rain pulped them." He
described the house in the Street of the White Peacock and he did not
mince his words. But he skated lightly over his escape, for he felt that
it would be bad tactics to bring Randal Glynde into the story at that
stage.

There could be no question of her interest. At the mention of Mastrovin
her delicate brows descended and she cross-examined him sharply. The
Street of the White Peacock, where was it? Who was with Mastrovin? She
frowned at the name of Dedekind. Then her face set.

"That rabble is caught," she said. "Trapped. To-night it will be in my
hands."

"But the rabble is desperate. You have an army, Countess, and you can
surround it, but it will die fighting with teeth and claws. And if it
perishes my friends will perish with it."

"That I cannot help. If fools rush in where they are not wanted they
must take the consequences."

"You don't wish to begin with a tragedy. You have the chance of a
bloodless revolution which for its decency will be unlike all other
revolutions. You mustn't spoil it. If it starts off with the murder of
three English its reputation will be tarnished."

"The murders will have been done by our enemies, and we shall avenge
them."

"Of course. But still you will have taken the gloss off Juventus in the
eyes of England--and of Europe."

"We care nothing for foreign opinion."

Jaikie looked her boldly in the eyes.

"But you do. You must. You are responsible people, who don't want merely
to upset a Government, but to establish a new and better one. Public
opinion outside Evallonia will mean a lot to you."

Her face had again its arrogance.

"That is dictation," she said, "and who are you to dictate?"

"I am nobody, but I must plead for my friends. And I am hot on your
side. I want you to begin your crusade with an act of chivalry."

"You would show me how to behave?"

"Not I. I want you to show me and the world how to behave, and prove
that Juventus stands for great things. You are strong enough to be
merciful."

He had touched the right note, for her sternness patently unbent.

"What do you want me to do?" Her tone was almost as if she spoke to an
equal.

"I want you to halt where you are. I want you to let me have half a
dozen of your best men to help me to get my friends out of Mastrovin's
hands. If we fail, then that's that. If we succeed, then you occupy
Krovolin and do what you like with Mastrovin. After that you march on
Melina with a good conscience and God prosper you!"

She looked at him fixedly and her mouth drew into a slow smile.

"You are a very bold young man. Are you perhaps in love with Miss
Westwater?"

"I am," said Jaikie, "but that has nothing to do with the point. I
brought her to this country, and I can't let her down. You know you
could never do that yourself."

Her smile broadened.

"I am to stop short in a great work of liberation to rescue the
lady-love of a preposterous Englishman."

"Yes," said Jaikie, "because you know that you would be miserable if you
didn't."

"You think you can bring it off?"

"Only with your help."

"I am to put my men under your direction?"

"We'll make a plan together. I'll follow any leader."

"If I consent, you shall lead. If I am to trust you in one thing I must
trust you in all."

Jaikie bowed. "I am at your orders," he said.

She continued to regard him curiously.

"Miss Westwater is noble," she said. "Are you?"

Jaikie puzzled at the word. Then he understood.

"No, I'm nobody, as I told you. But we don't bother about these things
so much in England."

"I see. The Princess and the goose-boy. I do not quarrel with you for
that. You are like our Juventus, the pioneer of a new world."

Jaikie knew that he had won, for the agate gleam had gone out of her
eyes. He had something more to say and he picked his words, for he
realised that he was dealing with a potential volcano.

"You march on Melina," he said, "you and the other wings of Juventus.
But when you march you must have your leader."

Her eyes hardened. "What do you know of that?" she snapped.

"I have seen the newspapers and I have heard people talking." Jaikie
walked with desperate circumspection. "The Republic has fallen. The
Monarchists with their old man cannot last long. Juventus must restore
the ancient ways, but with youth to lead."

"You mean?" Her eyes were stony.

"I mean Prince John," he blurted out, with his heart sinking. She was
once more the Valkyrie, poised like a falcon for a swoop. He saw the
appropriateness of Alison's name for her.

"You mean Prince John?" she repeated, and her tone was polar ice.

"You know you can't put a king on the throne unless you have got him
with you. Juventus is wild for Prince John, but nobody knows where he
is. I know. I promise to hand him over to you safe and sound."

There were many things in her face--interest, excitement, relief, but
there was also a rising anger.

"You would make a bargain with me?" she cried. "A huckster's
bargain--with _me_!"

Strangely enough, the surprise and fury in her voice made Jaikie cool.
He knew this kind of tantrum, but not in the Countess's sex.

"You mustn't talk nonsense, please," he said. "I wouldn't dare to make a
bargain with you. I appealed to you, and out of your chivalry you are
going to do what I ask. I only offer to show my gratitude by doing what
I can for you. Besides, as I told you, I'm on your side. I mean what I
say. You can go back on me and refuse what I ask, and I'll still put you
in the way of getting hold of Prince John, if you'll give me a couple of
days. I can't say fairer than that. A mouse may help a lion."

For a second or two she said nothing. Then her eyes fell.

"You are the first man," she said, "who has dared to tell me that I was
a fool."

"I didn't," Jaikie protested, with a comfortable sense that things were
going better.

"You did, and I respect you for it. I see that there was no insult. What
I do for you--if I do it--I do because I am a Christian and a good
citizen.... For the other thing, what proof have you that you can keep
your word?"

Jaikie held out the ring. The Countess took it, studied the carving on
the carnelian, and returned it. She was smiling.

"It is a token and no more. If you fail----"

"Oh, have me flayed and boiled in oil," he said cheerfully. "Anything
you like as long as you get busy about Mastrovin."

She blew a silver whistle, and spoke a word to the orderly who entered.
Then Jagon appeared, and to him she gave what sounded like a string of
orders, which she enumerated on her slim gloved fingers. When he had
gone she turned to Jaikie.

"I have countermanded the march for to-day. Now we go to choose your
forlorn hope. You will lunch with me, for I have some things to say to
you and many to ask you. What is your name, for I know nothing of you
except that you are in love with Miss Westwater and are a friend of my
cousin Paul?"

"Galt," she repeated. "It is not dignified, but it smells of the honest
earth. You will wait here, Galt, till I send for you."

Jaikie, left alone, mopped his brow, and, there being no chairs in the
place, sat down on the floor, for he felt exhausted. He was not
accustomed to this kind of thing.

"Public-school," he reflected. "Best six-cylinder model. Lord, how I
love the product and dislike the type! But fortunately the type is
pretty rare."




XII THE STREET OF THE WHITE PEACOCK


Jaikie rubbed the dust from his eyes, for he had landed in a heap of
debris, and looked round for Newsom. Newsom was at his elbow, having
exhibited an unexpected agility. He was still a little puzzled to learn
how Newsom came to be with him. After his business with the Countess he
had found him waiting with the car, stubbornly refusing to move till he
had the word from his master. He had despatched him with a message to
Randal Glynde and the man had returned unbidden. "Boss's orders," he had
explained. "The boss says I'm to stick to you, sir, till he tells me to
quit." And when in the evening the expeditionary force left the camp
Newsom had begged for a place in it, had indeed insisted on being with
Jaikie in whatever part the latter was cast for. It was not "boss's
orders" this time, but the plea of a sportsman to have a hand in the
game, and Jaikie, looking at the man's athletic figure and remembering
that he was English, had a little doubtfully consented. Now he was more
comfortable about that consent. At any rate Newsom was an adept at
climbing walls.

The Countess had allowed him to pick six Greenshirts, herself showing a
most eager interest in their selection. They were all young townsmen,
for this was not a job for the woodlander or mountaineer, and four of
them could speak English. All were equipped with pistols, electric
torches, and the string-soled shoes of the country. As reserves he had
twenty of a different type, men picked for their physique and fighting
value. He thought of them as respectively his scouts and his
shock-troops. He had made his dispositions pretty much in the void, but
he reasoned that he wanted light men for his first reconnaissance, and
something heavier if it came to a scrap. His judgment had been sound,
for when in the evening the party, by devious ways and in small groups,
concentrated at the Cirque Dor encampment, he found that Randal Glynde
had had the same notion.

Randal, having had the house in the Street of the White Peacock for some
time under observation, and knowing a good deal about its antecedents,
had come to certain conclusions. The place was large and rambling, and
probably contained cellars extending to the river, for in old days it
had been the dwelling of a great merchant of Krovolin. There was no
entrance from the street, the old doorway having been built up, and
coming and going was all by the courtyard at the back. The prisoners
might be anywhere inside a thousand square yards of masonry, but the
odds were that they were lodged, as Jaikie had been, in rooms facing the
street. The first thing was to get rid of the watchers there, and this
was the immediate task of the six Greenshirts. But it must be done
quickly and circumspectly so as not to alarm the inmates. There were
five watchers by day and three by night, the latter taking up duty at
sundown. If a part of the Cirque passed through the street in the first
hours of the dark, it would provide excellent cover for scragging the
three guards, and unobtrusively packing them into one of the vans. The
street must be in their hands, for it was by the street-front that
escape must be made. Randal, who had become a very grave person, was
insistent upon the need for speed and for keeping the business with his
watchers secret from Mastrovin. Mastrovin must not be alarmed, for, like
Jaikie, he feared that, if he were cornered too soon, he would have
recourse to some desperate brutality.

It was Jaikie's business to get inside the house, and the only way was
by the courtyard at the back. Randal had had this carefully
reconnoitred, and his report was that, while the gate was kept locked
and guarded, the wall could be climbed by an active man. It was
impossible to do more than make a rudimentary plan, which was briefly
this. Jaikie was to get into the courtyard, using any method he pleased,
and to overpower, gag, and bind the guard. Randal had ascertained that
there was never more than a single guard. For this purpose he must have
a companion, since his fighting weight was small. His hour of entrance
must be 10 p.m., at which time the Six were to deal with the watchmen in
the street. Their success was to be notified to Jaikie by Luigi's
playing of Dvork's _Humoresque_ on his fiddle, which in that still
quarter at that hour of night would carry far.

Then there was to be an allowance of one hour while the Six kept watch
in the street, and Jaikie, having entered the house, discovered where
the prisoners were kept. After that came the point of uncertainty. It
might be possible to get the prisoners off as inconspicuously as Jaikie
himself had made his departure. On the other hand, it might not, and
force might have to be used against desperate men. At all costs the
crisis, if it came, was to be postponed till eleven o'clock, at which
time the reserves, the Twenty, would arrive in the courtyard. It was
assumed that Jaikie would have got the gates open so that they could
enter. He must also have opened the house door. Two blasts on his
whistle would bring the rescuers inside the house, and then God prosper
the right!

That last sentence had been the parting words of Randal, who had no part
allotted him, being, as he said, an ageing man and no fighter. Jaikie
remembered them as he crouched in the dust of the courtyard and peered
into the gloom. So far his job had been simple. A way up the wall had
been found in a corner where an adjacent building slightly abutted and
the stones were loose or broken. He had lain on the top and examined the
courtyard in the dying light, and he had listened intently, but there
had been no sight or sound of the watchman. Then, followed by Newsom, he
had dropped on to soft rubble, and lain still and listened, but there
was no evidence of human presence. The place was empty. Satisfied about
this, he had examined the gate. He had been given some elementary
instruction in lock-picking that evening at the Cirque, and had brought
with him the necessary tools. But to his surprise they were not needed.
The gate was open.

A brief reconnaissance showed him that the courtyard was different from
what it had been on his arrival two days ago. The medley of motorcars
had gone. The place was bare, except for the heaps of stone and lime in
the corner where someone seemed to have been excavating ... Jaikie did
his best to think. What was the meaning of the unlocked gate? Someone
must be coming there that night and coming in a hurry. Or someone must
be leaving in a hurry. Why had Mastrovin suddenly opened his defences?
The horrid thought came to him that Mastrovin might be gone, and have
taken Alison and the others with him. Was he too late? The mass of the
house rose like a cliff, and in that yard he seemed to be in a
suffocating cave. Far above him he saw dimly clouds chasing each other
in the heavens, but there was no movement of air where he sat. The place
was so silent and lifeless that his heart sank. Childe Roland had come
to the Dark Tower, but the Dark Tower was empty.

And then he saw far up on its faade a light prick out. His momentary
despair was changed to a furious anxiety. There was life in the place,
and he felt that the life was evil and menacing. The great blank shell
held a brood of cockatrices, and among them was what he loved best in
the world. Hitherto the necessity for difficult action had kept his mind
from brooding too much on awful presentiments. He had had to take one
step at a time and keep his thoughts on the leash. There had been
moments when his former insouciance had returned to him and he had
thought only of the game and not of the consequences.... Indeed, in the
early evening, as he approached Krovolin, he had had one instant of the
old thrill. Far over the great plain of the Rave, from the direction of
the capital, had come the sound of distant music and dancing bells. He
had known what that meant. Mr Dickson McCunn was entering his loyal city
of Melina.

But now he knew only consuming anxiety and something not far from
terror. He must get inside the house at once and find Alison. If she had
gone, he must follow. He had a horrid certainty that she was in extreme
peril, and that he alone was to blame for it.... He got to his feet and
was about to attempt the door, when something halted him.

It was the sound of a fiddle, blanketed by the great house, but dropping
faint liquid notes in the still air. It held him like a spell, for it
seemed a message of hope and comfort. One part of the adventure at any
rate had succeeded, and the Six were in occupation of the Street of the
White Peacock. It did more, for it linked up this dark world with the
light and with his friends. He listened, he could not choose but listen,
till the music died away.

It was well that he did so, for Newsom's hand pulled him down again.
"There's someone at the gate," he whispered. The two crouched deeper
into the shadows.

The gate was pushed open, and a man entered the courtyard. He had an
electric torch which he flashed for a moment, but rather as if he wanted
to see that the torch was in working order than to examine the place.
That flash was enough to reveal the burly form of Mastrovin. He shut the
gate behind him, but he did not lock it. Evidently he expected someone
else to follow him. Then he walked straight to the excavation, and,
after moving some boards aside, he disappeared into it.

The sight of Mastrovin switched Jaikie from despondency into vigorous
action. "After him," he whispered to Newsom. Clambering over the rubble
they looked down a steep inclined passage, where a man might walk if he
crouched, and saw ahead of them the light of Mastrovin's torch. It
vanished as he turned a corner.

The two followed at once, Newsom hitting his head hard on the roof.
Jaikie did not dare to use his own torch, but felt his way by the wall,
till he came to a passage debouching to the right. That was the way
Mastrovin had gone, but there was no sign of his light. Jaikie felt that
he could safely look about him.

They were in a circular space whence several passages radiated. That by
which they had come was new work, with the marks of pick and shovel
still on it. But the other passages were of ancient brick, with stone
roofs which might have been new two centuries ago. Yet in all of them
was the mark of recent labour, a couple of picks propped up against a
wall, and spilt lime and rubble on the floor. Jaikie deduced that the
passage from the upper air was not the only task that Mastrovin's men
had been engaged in; they had been excavating also at the far ends of
some of the other passages.

He did not stop, for their quarry must not be lost track of. He turned
up the alley Mastrovin had taken, feeling his way by the wall.

"There's wiring here," he whispered to Newsom.

"I spotted that," was the answer. "Someone's up to no good."

Presently they reached a dead end, and Jaikie thought it safe to use his
torch. This revealed a steep flight of steps on the left. It was a
spiral staircase, for after two turnings they had a glimpse of light
above them. Mastrovin was very near. Moreover, he was speaking to
someone. The voice was quite distinct, for the funnel of the staircase
magnified it, but the words were Evallonian, which Jaikie did not
understand.

But Newsom did. He clutched Jaikie's arm, and with every sentence of
Mastrovin's that clutch tightened. Then some command seemed to be issued
above, and they heard the reply of Mastrovin's interlocutor. The light
wavered and moved, and presently disappeared, for Mastrovin had gone on.
But there came the sound of feet on the stairs growing louder. The other
man was descending--in the dark.

It was a tense moment in Jaikie's life. He took desperate hold of his
wits, and reasoned swiftly that the man descending in the dark would
almost certainly hug the outer wall, the right-hand wall of the spiral,
where the steps were broader. Therefore he and Newsom must plaster
themselves against the other wall. The staircase was wide enough to let
two men pass abreast without touching. If they were detected he would go
for the stranger's throat, and he thought he could trust Newsom to do
the same.

The two held their breath while the man came down the stairs. Jaikie,
sensitive as a wild animal, realised that his guess had been right--the
man was feeling his way by the outer wall. Newsom's shoulder was
touching his, and he felt it shiver. Another thing he realised--the
stranger was in a hurry. That was to the good, for he would not be so
likely to get any subconscious warning of their presence.

For one second the man was abreast of them. There was a waft of some
coarse scent, as if he were a vulgar dandy. Then he was past them, and
they heard him at the foot of the stairs groping for the passage.

Jaikie sat down on a step to let his stifled breath grow normal. But
Newsom was whispering something in his ear.

"I heard their talk," he gasped. "I've got their plan.... They are going
to let the Countess occupy the town.... She must cross the river to get
to Melina.... They've got the bridge mined, and will blow it up at the
right moment ... and half the place besides.... God, what swine!"

To Jaikie the news was a relief. That could only be for the morrow, and
in the meantime Mastrovin would lie quiet. That meant that his prisoners
would be in the house. The cockatrices--and the others--were still in
their den.

But Newsom had more to say.

"There are people coming here--more people. That fellow has gone to
fetch them."

Jaikie, squatted in the darkness, hammered at his wits, but they would
not respond. What could these newcomers mean? What was there to do in
the house that had not been done? Mastrovin had the bridge mined, and
half the town as well, and could make havoc by pressing a button. He had
his cellars wired, and new passages dug. All that was clear enough. But
why was he assembling a posse to-night?...

Then an idea struck him. If the gates were open to let people in, they
were open to let the same people out. And they might take others with
them.... He had it. The prisoners were to be removed that night, and
used in Mastrovin's further plans. When he had struck his blow at
Juventus they might come in handy as hostages. Or in the last resort as
victims.

From the moment that he realised this possibility came a radical change
in Jaikie's outlook. The torments of anxious love were still deep in his
soul, but overlying them was a solid crust of hate. His slow temper was
being kindled into a white flame of anger.

He looked at his watch. It was one minute after half-past ten. The
Twenty would not arrive till eleven.

"I must go on," he whispered. "I must find what that brute is after and
where he keeps my friends.... You must go back and wait in the yard.
Please Heaven our fellows are here before the others. If they are, bring
them up here--I'll find some way of joining up with you.... If the
others come first, God help us all. I leave it to you."

As he spoke he realised sharply the futility of asking a cockney
chauffeur to hold at bay an unknown number of the toughest miscreants in
Evallonia. But Newsom seemed to take it calmly. His voice was steady.

"I'll do my best, sir," he said. "I'm armed, and I used to be a fair
shot. Have you a pair of clippers in that packet of tools you brought?"

Jaikie dived into his pocket and handed over the desired article.

"Good," said Newsom. "I think I'll do a spot of wire-cutting." And
without another word he began to feel his way down.

Jaikie crept upward till the stairs ended in a door. This was unlocked,
as he had expected, for Mastrovin was leaving his communications open
behind him. Inside all was black, so he cautiously flashed his torch.
The place was dusty and unclean, a passage with rotting boards on the
floor and discoloured paper dropping from the walls. He tip-toed along
it till it gave on to a small landing from which another staircase
descended. Here there were two doors and he cautiously tried the
handles. One was locked, but the other opened. It was dark inside, but
at the far end there was a thin crack of light on the floor. There must
be a room there which at any rate was inhabited.

The first thing he did, for he had put out his torch, was to fall with a
great clatter over some obstacle. He lay still with his heart in his
mouth, waiting for the far door to be thrown open. But nothing happened,
so he carefully picked himself up and continued with extreme
circumspection. There were chairs and tables in this place, a ridiculous
number of chairs, as if it had been used as a depository for lumber, or
perhaps as a council-chamber. He had no further mishap, and reached the
streak of light safely.... There were people in that farther room; he
could hear a voice speaking, and it sounded like Mastrovin's.

Another thing he noticed, and that was the same odd smell of coarse
scent which he had sniffed as the man passed him on the stairs. The
odour was like a third-rate barber's shop, and it came through the door.

He could hear Mastrovin talking, rather loud and very distinct, like a
schoolmaster to stupid pupils. He was speaking English too.

"You are going away," he was saying. "Do you understand? I will soon
visit you--perhaps in a day or two. I do not think you will try to
escape, but if you do, I warn you that I have a long arm and will pluck
you back. And I will punish you for it."

The voice was slow and patient as if addressed to backward children. And
there was no answer. Mastrovin must be speaking to his prisoners, but
they did not reply, and that was so unlike Sir Archie that a sudden
horrid fear shot into Jaikie's mind. Were they dying, or sick or
wounded? Was Alison?...

He waited no longer. Had the door been triple-barred he felt that he had
the strength to break it down. But it opened easily.

He found himself in a small, square, and very high room, wholly without
windows, for the air entered by a grating near the ceiling. It smelt
stuffy and heavily scented. Mastrovin sat in an armchair, with behind
him a queer-looking board studded with numbered buttons. There was a
clock fixed on the wall above it which had a loud solemn tick.

The three prisoners sat behind a little table. Archie looked as if he
had been in the wars, for he had one arm in a sling, and there was a
bloodstained bandage round his head. He sat stiffly upright, staring
straight in front of him. So did Janet, a pale unfamiliar Janet, with
her hair in disorder and a long rent in one sleeve. Like her husband,
she was looking at Mastrovin with blank unseeing eyes. Alison sat a
little apart with her arms on the table and her head on her arms. He saw
only her mop of gold hair. She seemed to be asleep.

All that Jaikie took in at his first glance was the three prisoners.
What devilry had befallen them? He had it. They had been drugged. They
were now blind and apathetic, mindless perhaps, baggage which Mastrovin
could cart about as he chose. There had evidently been a row, and Archie
had suffered in it, but now he was out of action. It was the sight of
Alison's drooped head that made him desperate, and also perfectly cool.
He had not much hope, but at any rate he was with his friends again.

This reconnaissance took a fraction of a second. He heard Mastrovin
bark, "Hands up!" and up shot his arms.

There were two others in the room, Dedekind with his red pointed beard,
and a sallow squat man, whom he remembered in the Canonry. What was his
name? Rosenbaum?

It was the last who searched him, plucking the pistol from his breeches
pocket. Jaikie did not mind that, for he had never been much good with a
gun. For the first time he saw the clock on the wall, and noted that it
stood at a quarter to eleven. If he could spin out that quarter of an
hour there was just the faintest chance, always provided that
Mastrovin's reinforcements did not arrive too soon.

"I have come back," he said sweetly. "I really had to get some decent
clothes, for I was in rags."

"You have come back," Mastrovin repeated. "Why?"

"Because I liked your face, Mr Mastrovin. I have the pleasantest
recollection of you, you know, ever since we met two years ago at
Portaway. Do you remember the Hydropathic there and the little Glasgow
journalist that you cross-examined? Drunken little beast he was, and you
tried to make him drunker. Have you been up to the same game with my
friends?"

He glanced at Archie, trying to avoid the sight of Alison's bowed head.
To his surprise he seemed to detect a slight droop of that gentleman's
left eye. Was it possible that the doping had failed, and that the
victims were only shamming?... The clock was at thirteen minutes to
eleven.

Mastrovin was looking at him fixedly, as if he were busy reconstructing
the past to which he had alluded.

"So," he said. "I have more against you than I imagined."

"You have nothing against me," said Jaikie briskly. "I might say I had a
lot against you--kidnapping, imprisonment, no food or drink, filthy
lodgings, and so forth. But I'm not complaining. I forgive you for the
sake of your face. You wanted me to tell you something, but I couldn't,
for I didn't know. Well, I know now, and I've come back to do you a good
turn. You would like to know where Prince John is. I can tell you."

Jaikie stopped. His business was to spin out this dialogue.

"Go on," said Mastrovin grimly. He was clearly in two minds whether or
not this youth was mad.

"He is with the Countess Troyos. I know, for I saw him there this
morning."

"That is a lie."

"All right. Have it your own way. But when you blow up the bridge here
to-morrow you had better find out whether I am speaking the truth,
unless you want to kill the Prince. Perhaps you do. Perhaps you'd like
to add him to the bag. It's all the same to me, only I thought I'd warn
you."

He was allowed to finish this audacious speech, because Mastrovin was
for once in his masterful life fairly stupefied. Jaikie's purpose was to
anger him so that he might lay violent hands on him. He thought that,
unless they took to shooting, he could give them a proof of the eel-like
agility of the Gorbals Die-hards, not to speak of the most famous
three-quarter back in Britain. He did not think they would shoot him,
for they were sure to want to discover where he had got his knowledge.

He certainly succeeded in his purpose. Mastrovin's face flushed to an
ugly purple, and both Dedekind and Rosenbaum grew a little paler. The
last-named said something in Evallonian, and the three talked excitedly
in that language. This was precisely what Jaikie wanted. He observed
that the clock was now at eight minutes to the hour. He also noted that
Alison, though her head was still on the table, was looking sideways at
him through her fingers, and that her eyes had an alertness unusual in
the doped.

Suddenly he heard a shot, muffled as if very far off. This room was in
the heart of the house, and noises from the outer world would come
faintly to it, if at all. But he had quick ears, and he knew that he
could not be mistaken. Was the faithful Newsom holding the bridge alone
like Horatius? He could not hold it long, and there were still five
deadly minutes to go before the Twenty could be looked for....

Yet it would take more than five minutes to get the prisoners out of the
house and the gate. That danger at any rate had gone. What remained was
the same peril which had brooded over the library at Castle Gay, before
Dickson McCunn like a north wind had dispersed it. These wild beasts of
the jungle, if cornered, might make a great destruction. Here in this
place they were all on the thin crust of a volcano. He did not like that
board with studs and numbers behind Mastrovin's head.

Again came the faint echo of shots. This time Mastrovin heard it. He
said something to Dedekind, who hurried from the room. Rosenbaum would
have followed, but a word detained him. Mastrovin sat crouching like an
angry lion, waiting to spring, but not yet quite certain of his quarry.

"Stand still," he told Jaikie, who had edged nearer Alison. "If you move
I will kill you. In a moment my friend will return, and then you will
go--ah, where will you go?"

He sucked his lips, and grinned like a great cat.

There were no more shots, and silence fell on the place, broken only by
the ticking of the clock. Jaikie did not dare to look at the prisoners,
for the slightest movement on his part might release the fury of the
wild beast in front of him. He kept his eyes on that face which had now
become gnarled like a knot in an oak stump, an intense concentration of
anxiety, fury and animal power. It fascinated Jaikie, but it did not
terrify him, for it was like a monstrous gargoyle, an expression of some
ancient lust which was long dead. He had the impression that the man was
somehow dead and awaited burial, and might therefore be disregarded....

He strove to stir his inertia to life, but he seemed to have become
boneless. "It's you that will be dead in a minute or two," he told
himself, but apathetically, as if he were merely correcting a
misstatement. Anger had gone out of him, and had taken fear with it, and
only apathy remained. He felt Mastrovin's eyes beginning to dominate and
steal his senses like an ansthetic. That scared him, and he shifted his
gaze to the board on the wall, and the clock. The clock was at three
minutes after eleven, but he had forgotten his former feverish
calculation of time.

The door opened. Out of a corner of his eye he saw that Dedekind had
returned. He noted his red beard.

Jaikie was pulled out of his languor by the behaviour of Mastrovin, who
from a lion couchant became a lion rampant. He could not have believed
that a heavy man well on in years could show such nimbleness. Mastrovin
was on his feet, shouting something to Rosenbaum, and pointing at the
newcomer the pistol with which he had threatened Jaikie.

The voice that spoke from the door was not Dedekind's.

"Suppose we lower our guns, Mr Mastrovin?" it said. "You might kill
me--but I think you know that I can certainly kill you. Is it a
bargain?"

The voice was pleasant and low with a touch of drawl in it. Jaikie, in a
wild whirling survey of the room, saw that it had fetched Alison's head
off her hands. It woke Janet and Archie, too, out of their doll-like
stare. It seemed to cut into the stuffiness like a frosty wind, and it
left Jaikie in deep bewilderment, but--for the first time that
night--with a lively hope.

Mr Glynde sniffed the air.

"At the old dodge, I see," he said. "You once tried it on me, you
remember. You seem to have struck rather tough subjects this time." He
nodded to the Roylances and smiled on Alison.

"What do you want?" The words seemed to be squeezed out of Mastrovin,
and came thick and husky.

"A deal," said Randal cheerfully. "The game is against you this time.
We've got your little lot trussed up below--also my old friend, Mr
Dedekind."

"That is a lie."

Randal shrugged his shoulders.

"You are a monotonous controversialist. I assure you it is true. There
was a bit of a tussle at first before our people arrived, and I'm afraid
two of yours were killed. Then the rest surrendered to superior numbers.
All is now quiet on that front."

"If I believe you, what is your deal?"

"Most generous. That you should get yourself out of here in ten minutes
and out of the country in ten hours. We will look after your transport.
The fact is, Mr Mastrovin, we don't want you--Evallonia doesn't want
you--nobody wants you. You and your bravos are back numbers. Properly
speaking, we should string you up, but we don't wish to spoil a good
show with ugly episodes."

Randal spoke lightly, so that there was no melodrama in his words, only
a plain and rather casual statement of fact. But in that place such
lightness was the cruellest satire. And it was belied by Randal's eyes,
which were as sharp as a hawk's. They never left Mastrovin's pistol hand
and the studded board behind his head.

Mastrovin's face was a mask, but his eyes too were wary. He seemed about
to speak, but what he meant to say will never be known. For suddenly
many things happened at once.

There was the sound of a high imperious voice at the door. It opened and
the Countess Araminta entered, and close behind her a wild figure of a
man, dusty, bleeding, with a coat nearly ripped from his back.

The sight of the Countess stung Mastrovin into furious life. A sense of
death and fatality filled the room like a fog. Jaikie sprang to get in
front of Alison, and Archie with his unwounded arm thrust Janet behind
him. In that breathless second Jaikie was conscious only of two things.
Mastrovin had fired, and then swung round to the numbered board; but,
even as his finger reached it he clutched at the air and fell backward
over the arm of his chair. There was a sudden silence, and a click came
from the board as if a small clock were running down.

Then Jaikie's eyes cleared. He saw a pallid Rosenbaum crouching on the
floor. He saw Randal lower his pistol, and touch the body of Mastrovin.
"Dead," he heard him say, "stone dead. Just as well perhaps."

But that spectacle was eclipsed by other extraordinary things. The
Countess Araminta was behaving oddly--she seemed to be inclined to sob.
Around his own neck were Alison's arms, and her cheek was on his, and
the thrill of it almost choked him with joy. He wanted to weep too, and
he would have wept had not the figure of the man who had entered with
the Countess taken away what breath was left in him.

It was Newsom the chauffeur, transfigured beyond belief. He had become a
younger man, for exertion had coloured his pallid skin, his whiskers had
disappeared, and his touzled hair had lost its touch of grey. He held
the Countess with one arm and looked ruefully at his right shoulder.

"Close shave," he said. "The second time to-night too. First casualty in
the Revolution." Then he smiled on the company. "Lucky I cut the wires,
or our friend would have dispersed us among the planets."

The Countess had both hands on his arm, and was looking at him with
misty eyes.

"You saved my life," she cried. "The shot was meant for me. You are a
hero. Oh, tell me your name."

He turned, took her hand, bent over it and kissed it.

"I am Prince John," he said, "and I think that you are going to be kind
enough to help me to a throne."

She drew back a step, looked for a second in his face, and then
curtseyed low.

"My king," she said.

Her bosom heaved under her tunic, and she was no more the Praefectus but
a most emotional young woman.... She looked at Randal and Jaikie, and at
Janet and Archie, as if she were struggling for something to relieve her
feelings. Then she saw Alison, and in two steps was beside her and had
her in her arms.

"My dear," she said, "you have a very brave lover."




XIII THE MARCH ON MELINA


I

In Krovolin's best hotel, the Three Kings of the East, Jaikie enjoyed
the novel blessings of comfort and consideration. By the Countess's
edict Alison, the Roylances and he were at once conducted there, and the
mandate of Juventus secured them the distinguished attentions of the
management. The released prisoners were little the worse, for they had
not been starved as Jaikie had been, and the only casualty was Archie,
who had been overpowered in a desperate effort the previous morning to
get into the Street of the White Peacock. The doping had been clumsily
managed, for some hours before Jaikie's arrival the three had been given
a meal quite different from the coarse fare to which they had been
hitherto treated. They were offered with it a red wine, which Archie at
his first sip pronounced to be corked. Alison had tasted it, and,
detecting something sweet and sickly in its flavour, had suspected a
drug, whereupon Janet filled their glasses and emptied them in a corner.
"Look like sick owls," she advised, when they were taken to Mastrovin's
sanctum, where the overpowering scent was clearly part of the treatment.
Mastrovin's behaviour showed that her inspiration had been right, for he
had spoken to them as if they were somnambulists or half-wits....

On the following morning Jaikie, feeling clean and refreshed for the
first time for a week, descended late to the pleasant restaurant which
over-looked the milky waters of the Rave. The little city sparkled in
the sunlight, and the odour and bustle of a summer morning came as
freshly to his nose and ears as if he had just risen from a sick-bed. He
realised how heavy his heart had been for days, and the release sent his
spirits soaring.... But his happiness was more than the absence of care,
for last night had been an epoch in his life, like that evening two
years before when, on the Canonry moor, Alison had waved him good-bye.
For the first time he had held Alison in his arms and felt her lips on
his cheek. That delirious experience had almost blotted out from his
memory the other elements in the scene. As he dwelt on it he did not see
the dead Mastrovin, and the crouched figure of Rosenbaum, and the
Countess Araminta on the verge of tears, or hear the ticking of the
clock, and the pistol shot which ended the drama; he saw only Alison's
pale face and her gold hair like a cloud on his shoulder, and heard that
in her strained voice which he had never heard before.... Jaikie felt
the solemn rapture of some hungry, humble saint who finds his pulse
changed miraculously into the ambrosia of Paradise.

A waiter brought him the morning paper. He could not read it, but he
could guess at the headlines. Something tremendous seemed to be
happening in Melina. There was a portrait of the Archduke Hadrian, edged
with laurels and roses, and from it stared the familiar face of Mr
McCunn. There was a photograph of a street scene in which motor-cars
and an escort of soldiers moved between serried ranks of presumably
shouting citizens. In one, next to a splendid figure in a cocked hat,
could be discerned the homely features of Dickson.

He dropped the paper, for Alison had appeared, Alison, fresh as a
flower, with the colour back in her cheeks. Only her eyes were still a
little tired. She came straight to him, put her hands on his shoulders,
and kissed him. "Darling," she said.

"Oh, Alison," he stammered. "Then it's all right, isn't it?"

She laughed merrily and drew him to a breakfast table in the window.
"Foolish Jaikie! As if it would ever have been anything else!"

There was another voice behind him, and Jaikie found another fair head
beside his.

"I shall kiss you too," said Janet Roylance, "for we're going to be
cousins, you know. Allie, I wish you joy. Jaikie, I love you. Archie?
Oh, he has to stay in bed for a little--the doctor has just seen him.
He's all right, but his arm wants a rest, and he got quite a nasty smack
on the head.... Let's have breakfast. I don't suppose there's any hope
of kippers."

As they sat down at a table in the window Alison picked up the
newspaper. She frowned at the pictures from Melina. Her coffee grew cold
as she puzzled over the headlines.

"I wish I could read this stuff," she said. "Everything seems to have
gone according to plan, but the question is, what is the next step? You
realise, don't you, that we've still a nasty fence to leap. We've got
over the worst, for the Blood-red Rook has taken Prince John to her
bosom. She'll probably insist on marrying him, for she believes he
saved her life, and I doubt if he is man enough to escape her. Perhaps
he won't want to, for she's a glorious creature, but--Jaikie, I think
you are lucky to have found a homely person like me. Being married to
her would be rather like domesticating a Valkyrie. You managed that
business pretty well, you know."

"I don't deserve much credit, for I was only fumbling in the dark. Mr
Glynde was the real genius. Do you think he arranged for the Countess to
turn up, or was it an unrehearsed effect? If he arranged it he took a
pretty big risk."

"I believe she took the bit in her teeth. Couldn't bear to be left out
of anything. But what about Cousin Ran? He has disappeared over the
skyline, and the only message he left was that we were to go back to
Tarta and await developments. I'm worried about those developments, for
we don't know what may happen. Everything has gone smoothly--except of
course our trouble with Mastrovin--but I'm afraid there may be an ugly
snag at the end."

"You mean Mr McCunn?"

"I mean the Archduke Hadrian, who is now in the royal palace at Melina
wishing to goodness that he was safe home at Blaweary."

"I trust him to pull it off," said Jaikie.

"But it's no good trusting Dickson unless other people play up. Just
consider what we've done. We've worked a huge practical joke on
Juventus, and if Juventus ever came to know about it everything would be
in the soup. Here you have the youth of Evallonia, burning with
enthusiasm and rejoicing in their young prince, whom they mean to make
king instead of an elderly dotard. What is Juventus going to say if they
discover that the whole thing has been a plant to which their young
prince has been a consenting party? Prince John's stock would fall
pretty fast. You've wallowed in _supercherie_ from your cradle, Jaikie
dear, so you don't realise how it upsets ordinary people, especially if
they are young and earnest."

Jaikie laughed. "I believe you are right. Everybody's got their own
_panache_, and the public-school notion of good form isn't really very
different from what in foreigners we call melodrama. I mean, it's just
as artificial."

"Anyhow, there's not a scrap of humour in it," said Alison. "The one
thing the Rook won't stand is to be made ridiculous. No more will
Juventus. So it's desperately important that Dickson should disappear
into the night and leave no traces. How many people are in the plot?"

Jaikie as usual counted on his fingers.

"There's we three--and Sir Archie--and Ashie--and Prince John--and
Prince Odalchini--and I suppose Count Casimir and maybe one or two other
Monarchists. Not more than that, and it's everybody's interest to keep
it deadly secret."

"That's all right if we can be certain about Dickson getting quietly
away in time. But supposing Juventus catches him. Then it's bound to
come out. I don't mean that they'll do him any harm beyond slinging him
across the frontier. But he'll look a fool and we'll look fools--and,
much more important, Prince John will look a fool and a bit of a
knave--and the Monarchist leaders, who Ran says are the only people
that can help Juventus to make a success of the Government.... We must
get busy at once. Since that ruffian Ran has vanished, we must get hold
of Prince John."

But it was not the Prince who chose to visit them as they were finishing
breakfast, but the Countess Araminta. Jaikie had seen her in camp as
Praefectus, and was prepared to some extent for her air of command, but
the others only knew her as the exotic figure of London and Geneva, and
as the excited girl whose nerves the night before had been stretched to
breaking-point. Now she seemed the incarnation of youthful vigour. The
door was respectfully held open by an aide-de-camp, and she made an
entrance like a tragedy queen. She wore the uniform of Juventus, but her
favourite colour glowed in a cape which hung over one shoulder. There
was colour too in her cheeks, and her fine eyes had lost their
sullenness. Everything about her, her trim form, the tilt of her head,
the alert grace of her carriage, spoke of confidence and power. Jaikie
gasped, for he had never seen anything quite like her. "_Incessu patuit
dea_," he thought, out of a vague classical reminiscence.

They all stood up to greet her.

"My friends, my good friends," she cried. She put a hand on Jaikie's
shoulder, and for one awe-stricken moment he thought she was going to
kiss him.

She smiled upon them in turn. "Your husband is almost well," she told
Janet. "I have seen the doctor.... What do you wish to do, for it is for
you to choose? I must go back to my camp, for here in Krovolin during
the next few days the whole forces of Juventus will concentrate. I
shall be very busy, but I will instruct others to attend to you. What
are your wishes? You have marched some distance with Juventus--do you
care to finish the course, and enter Melina with us? You have earned the
right to that."

"You are very kind," said Janet. "But if you don't mind, I believe we
ought to go home. You see, my husband should be in Geneva ... and I'm
responsible for my cousin Alison.... I think if Archie were here he
would agree with me. Would it be possible for us to go back to Tarta and
rest there for a day or two? We don't want to leave Evallonia till we
know that you have won, but--you won't misunderstand me--I don't think
we should take any part in the rest of the show. You see, we are
foreigners, and it is important that everybody should realise that this
is your business and nobody else's. My husband is a member of our
Parliament, and there might be some criticism if he were mixed up in
it--not so much criticism of him as of you. So I think we had better go
to Tarta."

Janet spoke diffidently, for she did not know how Juventus might regard
the House of the Four Winds and its owner. But to her surprise the
Countess made no objection.

"You shall do as you wish," she said. "Perhaps you are right and it
would be wise to have no foreign names mentioned. But you must not think
that we shall be opposed and must take Melina by storm. We shall enter
the city with all the bells ringing."

She saw Janet's glance fall on the newspaper on the floor.

"You think there is a rival king? Ah, but he will not remain. He will
not want to remain. The people will not want him. Trust me, he will
yield at once to the desire of his country."

"What will you do with the Archduke?" Alison asked.

"We will treat him with distinguished respect," was the answer. "Is he
not the brother of our late king and the uncle of him who is to be our
king? If his health permits, he will be the right-hand counsellor of the
Throne, for he is old and very wise. At the Coronation he will carry the
Sacred Lamp and the Mantle of St Sylvester, and deliver with his own
voice the solemn charge given to all Evallonia's sovereigns."

Alison groaned inwardly, having a vision of Dickson in this august rle.

"I must leave you," said the Countess. "You have done great service to
my country's cause, for which from my heart I thank you. An evil thing
has been destroyed, which could not indeed have defeated Juventus but
which might have been a thorn in its side."

"Have you got rid of Mastrovin's gang?" Jaikie asked.

She looked down on him smiling, her hand still on his shoulder.

"They are being rounded up," she replied; "but indeed they count for
nothing since he is dead. Mastrovin is not of great importance--not now,
though once he was Evallonia's evil genius. At the worst he was capable
of murder in the dark. He was a survivor of old black days that the
world is forgetting. He was a prophet of foolish crooked things that
soon all men will loath."

Her voice had risen, her face had flushed, she drew herself up to her
slim height, and in that room, amid the debris of breakfast and with the
sun through the long windows making a dazzle of light around her, the
Countess Araminta became for a moment her ancestress who had ridden with
John Sobieski against the Turk. To three deeply impressed listeners she
expounded her creed.

"Mastrovin is dead," she said; "but that is no matter, for he and his
kind were dead long ago. They were _revenants_, ghosts, hideous futile
ghosts. They lived by hate, hating what they did not understand. They
were full of little vanities and fears, and were fit for nothing but to
destroy. Back-numbers you call them in England--I call them shadows of
the dark which vanish when the light comes. We of Juventus do not hate,
we love, but in our love we are implacable. We love everything in our
land, all that is old in it and all that is new, and we love all our
people, from the greatest to the humblest. We have given back to
Evallonia her soul, and once again we shall make her a great nation. But
it will be a new nation, for everyone will share in its government." She
paused. "All will be sovereigns, because all will be subjects."

She was a true actress, for she knew how to make the proper exit. Her
rapt face softened. With one hand still on Jaikie's shoulder she laid
the other on Alison's head and stroked her hair.

"Will you lend me your lover, my dear?" she said. "Only for a
little--since he will join you at Tarta. I think he may be useful as a
liaison between Juventus and those who doubtless mean well but have been
badly advised."

Then she was gone, and all the colour and half the light seemed to have
left the room.

"Gosh!" Jaikie exclaimed, when they were alone. "It looks as if I were
for it." He remembered the phrase about subjects and sovereigns as
coming from a philosopher on whom at Cambridge he had once written an
essay. No doubt she had got it from Dr Jagon, and he had qualms as to
what might happen if the public-school code got mixed up with
philosophy.

Janet looked grave.

"What a woman!" she said. "I like her, but I'm scared by her. The
Blood-red Rook is not the name--she's the genuine eagle. I'm more
anxious than ever about Mr McCunn. Juventus is a marvellous thing, but
she said herself that it was implacable. There's nothing in the world so
implacable as the poet if you attempt to guy his poetry, and that's what
we have been doing. There's going to be a terrible mix-up unless Dickson
can disappear in about two days and leave no traces behind him; and I
don't see how that's to be managed now that he is planted in a palace in
the middle of an excited city."

To three anxious consultants there entered Prince John. Somehow or other
he had got in touch with his kit, for he was smartly dressed in a suit
of light flannels, with a rose in his buttonhole.

"I'm supposed to be still incognito," he explained, "and I have to lurk
here till the concentration of Juventus is complete. That should be some
time to-morrow. Sir Archie is all right. I've just seen him, and he is
to be allowed to get up after luncheon. I hope you can control him,
Lady Roylance, for I can't. He is determined to be in at the finish, he
says, and was simply blasphemous when I told him that he was an alien
and must keep out of it. It won't do, you know. You must all go back to
Tarta at once. He doesn't quite appreciate the delicacy of the situation
or what compromising people you are."

"We do," said Janet. "We've just had a discourse from the Countess. You
won't find it easy to live up to that young woman, sir."

Prince John laughed.

"I think I can manage Mintha. She is disposed to be very humble and
respectful with me, for she has always been a staunch royalist. Saved
her life, too, she thinks--though I don't believe Mastrovin meant his
shot for her--I believe he spotted me, and he always wanted to do me in.
She's by way of being our prophetess, but she is no fool, and, besides,
there's any number of sober-minded people to keep her straight. What I
have to live up to is Juventus itself, and that will take some doing.
It's a tremendous thing, you know, far bigger and finer than any of us
thought, and it's going to be the salvation of Evallonia. Perhaps more
than that. What was it your Pitt said--'Save its country by its efforts
and Europe by its example'? But it's youth, and youth takes itself
seriously, and if anybody laughs at it or tries to play tricks with it
he'll get hurt. That's where we are rather on the knife-edge."

"My dear Uncle Hadrian," he went on, "is in bed at home in France and
reported to be sinking. That is Odalchini's last word, and Odalchini has
the affair well in hand. My uncle's secretary is under his orders, and
not a scrap of news is allowed to leave the chateau."

"The Countess seems to be better disposed to Prince Odalchini," said
Janet.

"She is. Odalchini has opened negotiations with Juventus. He has let it
be known that he and his friends will not contest my right to the
throne, and that the Archduke has bowed to this view and proposes to
leave the country. Of course he speaks for Casimir and the rest. That is
all according to plan. Presently His Royal Highness will issue a
proclamation resigning all claims. But in the meantime our unhappy
Scotch friend is masquerading in the palace of Melina--in deep
seclusion, of course, for the Archduke is an old and frail man, and is
seeing no one as yet--but still there, with the whole capital agog for a
sight of him. You will say, smuggle him out and away with him across the
frontier. But Juventus has other ideas--Mintha has other ideas. There is
to be a spectacular meeting between uncle and nephew--a noble
renunciation--a tender reconciliation--and the two surviving males of
the Evallonian royal house are to play a joint part in the restoration
of the monarchy. Juventus has the good sense to understand that it needs
Casimir and his lot to help it to get the land straight, and it thinks
that that will be best managed by having its claimant and their claimant
working in double harness. I say 'Juventus thinks,' but it's that hussy
Mintha who does the thinking, and the others accept it. That's the curse
of a romantic girl in politics.... So there's the tangle we're in. There
will be the devil to pay if the Archduke isn't out of the country within
three days without anyone setting eyes on him, and that's going to be a
large-size job for somebody."

"For whom?" Jaikie asked.

"Principally for you," was the answer. "You seem to get all the worst
jobs in this business. You're young, you see--you're our Juventus."

"She says I have to go with her."

"You have to stay here. I asked for you. Thank Heaven she has taken an
enormous fancy to you. Miss Alison needn't be jealous, for Mintha has
about as much sex as a walking-stick. I daresay she would insist on
marrying me, if she thought the country needed it, but I shall take
jolly good care to avoid that. No warrior-queen for me.... All of you
except Jaikie go back to Tarta this afternoon, and there Odalchini will
keep you advised about what is happening. Jaikie stays here, and as soon
as possible he goes to Melina. Don't look so doleful, my son. You won't
be alone there. Randal Glynde, to the best of my belief, is by this time
in the palace."

       *       *       *       *       *

Late that afternoon Janet and Alison, accompanied by a bitterly
protesting Archie, left Krovolin for the House of the Four Winds. Next
day there began for Jaikie two crowded days filled with a manifold of
new experiences. The wings of Juventus, hitherto on the periphery of
Evallonia, drew towards the centre. The whole business was a masterpiece
of organisation, and profoundly impressed him with the fact that this
was no flutter of youth, but a miraculous union of youth and experience.
Three-fourths of the higher officers were mature men, some of them
indeed old soldiers of Evallonia in the Great War. The discipline was
military, and the movements had full military precision, but it was
clear that this was a civilian army, with every form of expert knowledge
in it, and trained more for civil reconstruction than for war.

Dr Jagon, who embraced him publicly, enlarged on its novel character.
"It is triumphant democracy," he declared, "purged of the demagogue. Its
root is not emotion but reason--sentiment, indeed, of the purest, but
sentiment rationalised. It is the State disciplined and enlightened. It
is an example to all the world, the pioneer of marching humanity. God be
praised that I have lived to see this day."

Prince John's presence was formally made known, and at a review of the
wings he took his place, in the uniform of Juventus, as
Commander-in-Chief. The newspapers published his appeal to the nation,
in which he had judiciously toned down Dr Jagon's philosophy and the
Countess's heroics. Presently, too, they issued another document, the
submission of the Monarchist leaders. City and camp were kindled to a
fervour of patriotism, and addresses poured in from every corner of the
land.

On the afternoon of the second day Jaikie was summoned to the Prince's
quarters, where the Countess and the other wing commanders were present.
There he was given his instructions. "You will proceed at once to
Melina, Mr Galt," said the Prince, "and confer with Count Casimir
Muresco, with whom I believe you are already acquainted. To-morrow we
advance to the capital, of whose submission we have been already
assured. We desire that His Royal Highness the Archduke should be
associated with our reception, and we have prepared a programme for the
approval of His Royal Highness and his advisers. On our behalf and on
behalf of Juventus you will see that this programme is carried out. I
think that I am expressing the wishes of my headquarters staff."

The wing commanders bowed gravely, and the Countess favoured Jaikie with
an encouraging smile. He thought that he detected in Prince John's eye
the faintest suspicion of a wink. As he was getting into his car, with
an aide-de-camp and an orderly to attend him, Ashie appeared and drew
him aside.

"For God's sake," he whispered, "get your old man out of the way. Shoot
him and bury him if necessary."

"I'd sooner shoot the lot of you," said Jaikie.

"Well, if you don't you'd better shoot yourself. And me, too, for I
won't survive a fiasco. Mintha has got off on her high horse, and
Juventus is following her. She has drawn up a programme of ceremonies a
yard long, in which your old fellow is cast for a principal part.
There'll be bloody murder if they find themselves let down. They're a
great lot, and my own lot, but they won't stand for ragging."


II

Dickson, enveloped in a military great-coat and muffled up about the
neck because of his advanced age and indifferent health, enjoyed his
journey in the late afternoon from Krovolin to Melina. He sat beside
Prince Odalchini on the back seat of a large Daimler, with Count Casimir
opposite him. There were police cars in front and behind, and a
jingling escort of National Guards who made their progress slow. The
movement, the mellow air, the rich and sunlit champaign raised his
spirits and dispelled his nervousness. His roving eye scanned the
landscape and noted with pleasure the expectant villagers and the
cheering group of countrymen. On the outskirts of the capital a second
troop of Guards awaited them, and as they entered by the ancient River
Port there was a salute of guns from the citadel and every bell in every
steeple broke into music. It had been arranged, in deference to His
Royal Highness's frailty, that there should be no municipal reception,
but the streets were thronged with vociferous citizens and the click of
cameras was like the rattle of machine-guns.

The cars swung through what looked like a Roman triumphal arch into a
great courtyard, on three sides of which rose the huge baroque Palace.
At this point Dickson's impressions became a little confused. He was
aware that troops lined the courtyard--he heard a word of command and
saw rifles presented at the salute. He was conscious of being tenderly
assisted from his car, and conducted between bowing servants through a
high doorway and across endless marble pavements. Then came a shallow
staircase, and a corridor lined with tall portraits. He came to anchor
at last in what seemed to be a bedroom, though it was as big as a
church. The evening was warm, but there were fires lit in two
fireplaces. As he got out of his great-coat he realised that he was
alone with Prince Odalchini and Count Casimir, each of whom helped
himself to a stiff whisky-and-soda from a side-table.

"Thank Heaven that is over," cried the latter. "Well over, too. Your
Royal Highness will keep your chamber to-night, and you will be valeted
by my own man. Do not utter one word, and for God's sake try to look as
frail as possible. You are a sick man, you understand, which is the
reason for this privacy. To-morrow you will have to show yourself from
one of the balconies to the people of Melina. To-morrow, too, I hope
that your own equerry will arrive. It is better that you should be alone
to-night. You realise, I think, how delicate the position is? Silence
and great bodily weakness--these are your trump cards. It may be a
little lonely for you, but that is inevitable."

Dickson looked round the immense room, which was hung with tapestries
depicting the doings in battle of the sixteenth-century King John of
Evallonia. From the windows there was a wide view over the glades of the
park with a shining river at the end. The two fires burned brightly, and
on a bed like a field he observed his humble pyjamas. His spirits were
high.

"Ugh," he said, "I'll do fine. This is a cheery place. I'll not utter a
cheep, and I'll behave as if I was a hundred years old. I hope they'll
send me up a good dinner, for I'm mortal hungry."

Dickson spent a strange but not unpleasant evening. Count Casimir's
valet proved to be an elderly Frenchman whose reverence for royalty was
such that he kept his eyes downcast and uttered no word except
"Altesse," and that in a tone of profound humility. Dickson was
conducted to an adjoining bathroom, where he bathed in pale-blue scented
water. In the bathroom he nearly drowned himself by turning on all the
taps at once, but he enjoyed himself hugely splashing the water about
and watching it running in marble grooves to an exit. After that he was
enveloped in a wonderful silk dressing-gown, which hid the humbleness of
his pyjamas--pyjamas from which he observed that the name-tag had been
removed.

The dinner served in his bedroom was all that his heart would wish, and
its only blemish was that, from a choice of wines offered him, he
selected a tokay which tasted unpleasantly like a medicine of his
boyhood, so that he was forced to relapse upon a whisky-and-soda. "Even
in a palace life may be lived well," he quoted to himself from a
favourite poet. After dinner he was put to bed between sheets as fine as
satin, and left with a reading-lamp on his bedside table surrounded by a
selection of fruit and biscuits. He turned out the lamp, and lay for
some time watching the glow of the fire and the amber twilight in the
uncurtained windows. Outside he could hear the tramp of the sentries and
far off the rumour of crowded streets. At first he was too excited to be
drowsy, for the strangeness of his position came over him in gusts, and
his chuckles were mingled with an unpleasant trepidation. "You'll need
to say your prayers, Dickson my man," he told himself, "for you're in
for a desperate business. It's the kind of thing you read about in
books." But the long day had wearied him, and he had dined abundantly,
so before long he fell asleep.

He woke to a bright morning and a sense of extreme bodily well-being. He
drank his tea avidly; he ran off the hot bath which had been prepared
for him, and had a cold one instead. He took ten minutes instead of five
over his exercises, and two instead of five over his prayers. He put on
his best blue suit--he was thankful he had brought it from Rosensee--and
a white shirt and a sober tie, for he felt that this was no occasion for
flamboyance in dress. From all his garments he noted with interest that
the marks of identification had been removed. As he examined his face in
the glass he decided that he did not look the age of the Archduke and
that he was far too healthily coloured for a sick man, so he rubbed some
of the powder which Count Casimir had given him over his cheeks and well
into his thinning hair. The result rather scared him, for he now looked
a cross between a consumptive and a badly made-up actor. At breakfast he
was compelled to exercise self-denial. He could have eaten everything
provided, but he dared not repeat his performance at dinner the night
before, so he contented himself with three cups of coffee, a peach, and
the contents of the toast rack. The servants who cleared away saw an old
man resting on a couch with closed eyes, the very image of a
valetudinarian.

After that time hung heavy on his hands. It was a fine morning and he
felt that he could walk twenty miles. The sound of the bustle of an
awaking city, and the view from the windows of miles of sunburnt grass
and boats on the distant river, made him profoundly restless. His great
bedroom was furnished like a room in a public building, handsomely but
dully; there was nothing in it to interest him, and the only book he had
brought was Sir Thomas Browne, an author for whom at the moment he did
not feel inclined. Urn-burial and a doctor's religion were clean out of
the picture. A sheaf of morning papers had been provided, but he could
not read them, though he observed with interest the pictures of his
entry into Melina. He prowled about miserably, taking exercise as a man
does in the confined space of a ship's deck.

Then it occurred to him that he might extend his walk and do a little
exploration. He cautiously opened the door and looked into a deserted
corridor. The place was as empty and as silent as a tomb, so there could
be no risk in venturing a little way down it. He tried one or two doors
which were locked. One opened into a vast chamber where the furniture
was all in dust sheets. Then he came to a circular gallery around a
subsidiary staircase, and he was just considering whether he might
venture down it when he heard voices and the sound of footsteps on the
marble. He skipped back the road he had come, and for an awful minute
was uncertain of his room. One door which he tried refused to open, and
the voices were coming nearer. Happily the next door on which he hurled
himself was the right one, and he dropped panting into an armchair.

This adventure shook him out of all his morning placidity. "I won't be
able to stand this place very long," he reflected. "I can't behave like
a cripple, when I'm fair bursting with health. It's worse than being in
jyle." And then an uglier thought came to him. "I've got in here easy
enough, but how on earth am I going to get out? I must abdicate, and
that's simple, but what's to become of me after that? How can I
disappear, when there will be about a million folk wanting a sight of
me?"

He spent a dismal forenoon. He longed for some familiar face, even Peter
Wappit, who had been sent back to Tarta. He longed especially for
Jaikie, and he indulged in some melancholy speculations as to that
unfortunate's fate. "He had to face the daft Countess," he thought, "and
Jaikie was always terrible nervous with women." Then he began to be
exasperated with Count Casimir and Prince Odalchini, who had left him in
this anxious solitude. And Prince John. It was for Prince John's sake
that he had come here, and unless he presently got some enlightenment he
would go out and look for it.

He was slightly pacified by the arrival of both the Count and Prince
Odalchini about midday, for both were in high spirits. Luncheon was
served to the three in his bedroom, a light meal at which no servants
were present and they waited on themselves. They had news of high
importance for him. Prince John was with Juventus--had been accepted
with acclamation by Juventus and not least by the Countess Araminta.
Juventus was in a friendly mood and appeared willing to accept the
overtures of the Monarchists, who had already informed it that the
Archduke would not resist what was plainly the desire of the people, but
would relinquish all claims to the throne. "We must prepare your
abdication," said Count Casimir. "It should be in the papers to-morrow,
or the day after at the latest. For the day after to-morrow Juventus
will reach Melina."

"Thank God for that," said Dickson. "I'll abdicate like a shot, but what
I want to know is, how I'm to get away. I must be off long before they
arrive, for yon Countess will be wanting my blood."

"I hope not," said the Count. "Juventus will have too much on its hands
to trouble about a harmless old gentleman."

"I'm not worrying about Juventus," said Dickson gloomily. "It's the
woman I'm thinking about, and from all I've heard I wouldn't put it past
her."

"One of your difficulties will be the Press," Prince Odalchini said.
"Correspondents are arriving here from all quarters of Europe--mostly by
the air, since the frontiers are closed."

"Here! This is awful," cried the alarmed Dickson. "I know the breed, and
they'll be inside this place and interviewing me, and where will we all
be then?"

"I think not. You are well guarded. But there's one man I'm uncertain
about. He flew here this morning from Vienna, and I don't quite know
what to do about him. He's not a correspondent, you see, but the
representative of the English Press group that has always been our chief
ally."

"What's his name?" Dickson asked with a sudden hope.

The Prince drew a card from his pocket. "Crombie," he read. "The
right-hand man of the great Craw. I haven't seen him, but he has written
to me. I felt that I was bound to treat him with some consideration, so
he is coming here at three o'clock."

"You'll bring him to me at once," said Dickson joyfully. "Man, you know
him--you saw him in the Canonry--a lad with a red head and a dour face.
It's my old friend Dougal, and you can trust him to the other side of
Tophet. You'll bring him straight up, and you'll never let on it's me.
He'll get the surprise of his life."

Mr McCunn was not disappointed. Dougal at three o'clock was duly ushered
into the room by Count Casimir. "Your Royal Highness, I have to present
Mr Crombie of the Craw Press," he said, and bowed himself out.

Dougal made an awkward obeisance and advanced three steps. Then he
stopped in his tracks and gaped.

"It's you!" he stammered.

"Ay, it's me," said Dickson cheerfully. "You didn't know what you were
doing when you whippit me out of Rosensee and sent me on my travels.
This was my own notion, and I'm sort of proud of it. I got it by minding
what happened when Jimmy Turnbull was running for Lord Provost of
Glasgow, and his backers put up David Duthie so that the other and
stronger lot could run Jimmy. You'll mind that?"

"I mind it," said Dougal hoarsely, sinking into a chair.

"And by the mercy of Providence it turned out that I was the living
image of the old Archduke. It has answered fine. Here I am as His Royal
Highness, the brother of his late Majesty, and Juventus has gone daft
about Prince John, and I'm about to abdicate, and in two-three days
Prince John will be King of Evallonia and not a dog will bark. I think
I've done well by that young man."

"Ay, maybe you have," said Dougal grimly. "But the question is, what is
to become of _you_? This is not the Glasgow Town Council, and Evallonia
is not Scotland. How are you going to get out of this?"

"Fine," Dickson replied, but less confidently, for Dougal's solemn face
disquieted him. "There's not a soul knows about it, except two or three
whose interest it is to keep quiet. When I've abdicated I'll just slip
cannily away, and be over the border before Juventus gets here."

"You think that will be easy? I only arrived this morning, but I've seen
enough to know that the whole of Melina is sitting round the palace like
hens round a baikie. They're for you and they're for Prince John, and
they want to see the two of you make it up. And half the papers in
Europe have sent their correspondents here, and I know too much about my
own trade to take that lightly. To get you safely out of the country
will be a heavy job, I can tell you."

"I'll trust my luck," said Dickson stoutly, but his eyes were a little
anxious. "Thank God you're here, Dougal."

"Yes, thank God I'm here. The trouble with you is you're too brave. You
don't stop to think of risks. Suppose you're found out. Juventus is a
big thing, a bigger thing than the world knows, but it's desperate
serious, and it won't understand pranks. Won't understand, and won't
forgive. At present it's inclined to be friendly with the Monarchists,
and use them, for it badly needs them. But if it had a suspicion of this
game, Count Casimir and Prince Odalchini and the rest would be in the
dock for high treason. And yourself! Well, I'm not sure what would
happen to you, but it wouldn't be pleasant."

"You're a Job's comforter, Dougal. Anyway, it's a great thing to have
you here. I wish I had Jaikie too. You'll come and bide here, for I'll
want you near me?"

"Yes, I'd better move in. I'll see the Count about it at once. Some of
us will have to do some pretty solid thinking in the next twenty-four
hours."

Dougal found Count Casimir in a good humour, for he had further news
from Krovolin. It appeared that Juventus not only forgave the putting
forward of the Archduke, but applauded it as a chance of making the
monarchical restoration impressive by enlisting both the surviving males
of the royal house. The Countess Araminta was especially enthusiastic,
and an elaborate programme had been drawn up--first the meeting of
Prince John and his uncle--then the presentation to Melina of the young
man by the old--and last, the ceremonial functioning of the Archduke at
the Coronation.

"The wheel has come full circle," said the Count. "Now all the land is
royalist. But it is the more incumbent upon us to proceed with caution,
for a slip now would mean a dreadful fall. We must get our friend away
very soon."

At this conference a third person was present--Randal Glynde, so very
point-device that his own employees would scarcely have recognised in
him the scarecrow of the Cirque Dor. His hair and beard were trimly
barbered, the latter having been given a naval cut, and his morning suit
was as exquisite a thing as the clothes he had worn at the Lamanchas'
party. "I am His Royal Highness's chief equerry," he told Dougal, "just
arrived from France. The news will be in the evening papers. Since I
speak Evallonian I can make life a little easier for him."

Dougal had listened gloomily to Count Casimir's exposition of the
spectacular duties which Juventus proposed for the Archduke.

"You haven't told Mr McCunn that?" he demanded anxiously, and was
informed that the Count had only just heard it himself.

"Well, you mustn't breathe a word of it to him. Not on your life. He's
an extraordinary man, and though I've studied him for years, I haven't
got near the bottom of him. He's what you might call a desperate
character. What other man would have taken on a job like this--for fun?
For fun, remember. He has always been like that. He thinks it was his
promise to Prince John, but that was only a small bit of it. The big
thing for him was that he was living up to a notion he has of himself,
and that notion won't let him shirk anything, however daft, if it
appeals to his imagination. He's the eternal adventurer, the only one
I've ever met--the kind of fellow Ulysses must have been--the heart of a
boy and the head of an old serpent. I've been trying to solemnise him by
telling him what a needle-point he's standing on--how hard it will be
for him to get away, and what a devil's own mess there'll be if he
doesn't. He was impressed, and a little bit frightened--I could see
that--but in a queer way he was pleased too. He'll go into it with a
white face and his knees trembling, but he'll go through with it, and by
the mercy of God he'll get away with it. But just let him know what
Juventus proposes and he won't budge one step. The idea of a Coronation
and his carrying the Sacred Lamp and all the rest of it would fair go
to his head. He would be determined to have a shot at it and trust to
luck to carry him through. Oh, I know it's sheer mania, but that's Mr
McCunn, and when he sticks his hoofs into the ground traction engines
wouldn't shift him.... You've got that clear? I want you to arrange for
me to move in here, for I ought to be near him."

Count Casimir bowed. "I accept your reading of him," he said, "and I
shall act on it." Then he added, rather to Randal than to Dougal, "I
believe he was originally a Glasgow grocer. The provision-trade in
Scotland must be a remarkable profession."

Dickson had on the whole a pleasant evening. In the first place he had
Mr Glynde, an exquisite velvet-footed attendant, whose presence made
other servants needless except for the mere business of fetching and
carrying. Then he enjoyed the business of writing his abdication. The
draft was prepared by Count Casimir, but he took pains to amend the
style, assisted by Randal, in whom he discovered a literary connoisseur
of a high order. I am afraid that the resulting document was a rather
precious composition, full of Stevensonian cadences and with more than a
hint of the prophet Isaiah. Happily Count Casimir was there to turn it
into robust Evallonian prose.

Dickson and Randal dined alone together, and the former heard with
excitement of the doings in the Street of the White Peacock. The peril
of Alison and the Roylances, not to speak of Jaikie, made him catch his
breath, and the manner of Mastrovin's end gave him deep satisfaction.

"I'm glad yon one is out of the world," he said. "He was a cankered
body. It was your shot that did it? What does it feel like to kill a
man?"

"In Mastrovin's case rather like breaking the back of a stoat that is
after your chickens. Have you ever been the death of anyone, Mr McCunn?"

"I once had a try," said Dickson modestly. Then his thoughts fastened on
Jaikie.

"You tell me he's safe and well? And he gets on fine with the Countess?"

"He promises to be her white-headed boy. She is a lady of violent likes
and dislikes, and she seems to have fallen completely for Master Jaikie.
Prince John, of course, is deep in his debt. I think that if he wants it
he might have considerable purchase at the new Court of Evallonia."

"Do you say so? That would be a queer profession for a laddie that came
out of the Gorbals. There's another thing." Dickson hesitated. "I think
Jaikie is terrible fond of Miss Alison."

Randal smiled. "I believe that affair is going well. Last night, I
fancy, clinched it. They clung together like two lovers."

Dickson's eyes became misty.

"Well--well. It's a grand thing to be young. That reminds me of
something where I want you to help me, Mr Glynde. My will was made years
ago, and is deposited with Paton and Linklater in Glasgow. I haven't
forgot Jaikie, but I think I must make further and better provision for
him, as the lawyers say. I've prepared a codicil, and I want it signed
and witnessed the morn. I've determined that Jaikie shall be
well-tochered, and if Miss Alison has the beauty and the blood he at any
rate will have the siller. No man knows what'll happen to me in the
next day or two, and I'd be easier in my mind if I got this settled."

"To-morrow you must stay in bed," said Randal, as he said good night.
"You must profess to be exceedingly unwell."

Dickson grinned. "And me feeling like a he-goat on the mountains!"


III

Next day an unwilling Dickson kept his bed. He had the codicil of his
will signed and witnessed, which gave him some satisfaction. Randal
translated for him the comments of the Evallonian Press on his
abdication, and he was gratified to learn that he had behaved with a
royal dignity and the self-abnegation of a patriot. But after that he
grew more restless with every hour.

"What for am I lying here?" he asked repeatedly. "I should be up and off
or I'll be grippit."

"Juventus works to a schedule," Randal explained, "and its formal entry
into Melina is timed for to-morrow. The Press announces to-day that you
are seriously indisposed, and therefore you cannot appear in public
before the people, which is what Melina is clamouring for. News of your
being confined to bed this morning has already been issued, and a
bulletin about your health will be published at midday. You appreciate
the position, Mr McCunn?"

"Fine," said Dickson.

"It is altogether necessary that you get away in good time, but it is
also necessary that you have a good reason for your going--an excuse for
Melina, and especially for Juventus. They are not people whose plans can
be lightly disregarded. If there is to be peace in Evallonia, Count
Casimir and his friends must be in favour with Juventus, and that will
not happen if we begin by offending it. We must get a belief in your
critical state of health firm in the minds of the people, and our excuse
for your going must be that any further excitement would endanger your
life. So we must move carefully and not too fast. Our plan is to get you
out of here to-night very secretly, and the fact that you did not leave
till the question of your health became urgent will, we hope, convince
Juventus of our good intentions."

"That's maybe right enough," said Dickson doubtfully, "but it's a poor
job for me. I have to lie here on my back, and I've nothing to read
except Sir Thomas Browne, and I can't keep my mind on him. I'm getting
as nervous as a peesweep."

Luncheon saw an anxious company round his bed, Prince Odalchini, Count
Casimir, Dougal and Mr Glynde. They had ominous news. The advanced
troops of Juventus had arrived, a picked body who had been instructed to
take over the duty of palace guards. They had accordingly replaced the
detachment of National Guards, which had been sent to occupy the
approaches to the city. There had been no difficulty about the
transference, but it appeared that there was going to be extreme
difficulty with the palace's new defenders. For these Juventus
shock-troops had strict orders, and a strict notion of fulfilling them.
No movement out of the city was permitted for the next twenty-four
hours. No movement out of the Palace was permitted for the same period.
Count Casimir had interviewed the officer commanding and had found him
respectful but rigid. If any member of the Archduke's entourage wished
to leave it would be necessary to get permission by telephone from
headquarters at Krovolin.

"I do not think that Juventus is suspicious," said the Count. "It is
only its way of doing business. It has youth's passion for meticulous
detail."

"That puts the lid on it for us," said Dougal. "We can't ask permission
for Mr McCunn to leave, for Juventus would be here in no time making
inquiries for itself. And it will be an awful business to smuggle him
out. I can tell you these lads know their work. They have sentries at
every approach, and they are patrolling every yard of the back parts and
the park side. Besides, once he was out of here, what better would he
be? He would have still to get out of the city, and the whole
countryside between here and Tarta is policed by Juventus. They are
taking no chances."

There were poor appetites at luncheon. Five reasonably intelligent men
sat in a stupor of impotence, repeating wearily the essentials of a
problem which they could not solve. They must get Dickson away within
not more than twenty hours, and they must get him off in such a manner
that they would have a convincing story to tell Juventus. Dickson sat up
in his bed in extreme discomposure, Dougal had his head in his hands,
Count Casimir strode up and down the room, and even Randal Glynde
seemed shaken out of his customary insouciance. Prince Odalchini had
left them on some errand of his own.

The last-named returned about three o'clock with a tragic face.

"I have just had a cipher telegram," he said. "I have my own means of
getting them through. The Archduke Hadrian died this morning at eleven
o'clock. His death will not be announced till I give the word, but the
announcement cannot be delayed more than two days--three at the most.
Therefore we must act at once. There is not an hour to waste."

"There is not an hour to waste," Casimir cried, "but we are an eternity
off having any plan."

"I'm dead," said Dickson. "At least the man I'm pretending to be is
dead. Well, I'll maybe soon be dead myself." His tone was almost
cheerful, as if the masterful comedy of events had obliterated his own
cares.

"There is nothing to do but to risk it," said Prince Odalchini. "We must
go on with our plan for to-night, and pray that Juventus may be obtuse.
The odds I admit are about a thousand to one."

"And on these crazy odds depends the fate of a nation," said Casimir
bitterly.

       *       *       *       *       *

To this miserable conclave entered Jaikie--Jaikie, trim, brisk and
purposeful. He wore the uniform of a Juventus staff-officer, and on his
right arm was the Headquarters brassard. To Dickson's anxious eyes he
was a different being from the shabby youth he had last seen at Tarta.
This new Jaikie was a powerful creature, vigorous and confident, the
master, not the plaything, of Fate. He remembered too that this was
Alison's accepted lover. At the sight of him all his fears vanished.

"Man Jaikie, but I'm glad to see you," he cried. "You've just come in
time to put us right."

"I hope so," was the answer. "Anyway, I've come to represent Juventus
Headquarters here till they take over to-morrow."

He looked round the company, and his inquiring eye induced Casimir to
repeat his mournful tale. Jaikie listened with a puckered brow.

"It's going to be a near thing," he said at last. "And we must take some
risks.... Still, I believe it can be done. Listen. I've brought a
Headquarters car with the Headquarters flag on the bonnet. Also I have a
pass which enables me and the car and anyone I send in the car to go
anywhere in Evallonia. I insisted on that, for I expected that there
might be some trouble. That is our trump card. I can send Mr McCunn off
in it, and that will give us a story for Juventus to-morrow.... But on
the other hand there is nothing to prevent the Juventus sentries from
looking inside, and if they see Mr McCunn--well, his face is
unfortunately too well known from their infernal papers, and they have
their orders, and they're certain to insist on telephoning to Krovolin
for directions, and that would put the fat in the fire. We must get them
into a frame of mind when they won't want to look too closely. Let me
think."

"Ay, Jaikie, think," said Dickson, almost jovially. "It must never be
said that a Gorbals Die-hard was beat by a small thing like that."

After a little Jaikie raised his head.

"This is the best I can do. Mr McCunn must show himself to Melina. In
spite of his feebleness and the announcement in the Press to-day, he
must make an effort to have one look at his affectionate people. Ring up
the newspaper offices, and get it into the stop-press of the evening
papers that at seven o'clock the Archduke will appear on the palace
balcony. You've got that? Then at a quarter-past seven my car must be
ready to start. You must go with it, Prince. Have you a man of your own
that you can trust to drive, for I daren't risk the Juventus chauffeur."

Prince Odalchini nodded. "I have such a man."

"What I hope for is this," Jaikie went on. "The Juventus guards, having
seen the Archduke on the balcony a few minutes before, and having
observed a tottering old man who has just risen from a sick-bed, won't
expect him to be in the car. I'll have a word with their commandant and
explain that you are taking two of your servants to Tarta, and that you
have my permission, as representing the Headquarters staff."

He stopped.

"But there's a risk, all the same. If they catch a glimpse of Mr McCunn
they will insist on ringing up Krovolin. I know what conscientious
beggars they are, and I'm only a staff-officer, not their commander.
Couldn't we do something to distract their attention at the critical
moment?" He looked towards Randal with a sudden inspiration.

Mr Glynde smiled.

"I think I can manage that," he said. "If I may be excused, I will go
off and see about it."

As the hour of seven chimed from the three and thirty towers of Melina,
there was an unusual bustle in the great front courtyard of the Palace.
The evening papers had done their work, rumour with swift foot had sped
through the city, and the Juventus sentries had permitted the entrance
of a crowd which the Press next day estimated as not less than twenty
thousand. On the balcony above the main portico, flanked by a row of
palace officials, stood a little group of men. Some wore the uniform of
the old Evallonian Court, and Jaikie alone had the Juventus green. They
made a passage, in which appeared Count Casimir and Prince Odalchini,
both showing the famous riband and star of the White Falcon. Between
them they supported a frail figure which wore a purple velvet
dressing-gown and a skull-cap, so that it looked like some very ancient
Prince of the Church. It was an old man, with a deathly white face, who
blinked his eyes wearily, smiled wanly, and bowed as with a great effort
to the cheering crowds. There was a dignity in him which impressed the
most heedless, the dignity of an earlier age, and an extreme fragility
which caught at the heart. The guards saluted, every hat was raised, but
there was some constraint in the plaudits. The citizens of Melina felt
that they were in the presence of one who had but a slender hold on
life.

Dickson was stirred to his depths. The sea of upturned faces moved him
strangely, for he had never before stood on a pinnacle above his
fellow-men. He did not need to act his part, for in that moment he felt
himself the authentic Archduke, an exile returning only to die. He was
wearing a dead man's shoes. Next day the papers were to comment upon
the pathetic spectacle of this old man bidding _Ave atque vale_ to the
people he loved.

The car was waiting in a small inner courtyard. It was a big limousine
with the blinds drawn on one side, so that the interior was but dimly
seen. Dickson entered and sat himself in the duskiest corner, wearing
the military overcoat in which he had arrived, with the collar turned up
and a thick muffler. Dougal took the seat by the driver. The car moved
through the inner gateway and came into the outer court, which was the
private entrance to the Palace. At the other end the court opened into
the famous thoroughfare known as the Avenue of the Kings, and there
stood the Juventus sentries.

The Headquarters flag fluttered at the car's bonnet, and Prince
Odalchini's hand through the open window displayed the familiar green
and white Headquarters pass. The sentries saluted, and their officer,
whom Jaikie had already interviewed, nodded and took a step towards the
car. It may have been his intention to examine the interior, but that
will never be known, for his activities were suddenly compelled to take
a different form.

In the Avenue was a great crowd streaming away from the ceremony in the
main palace courtyard. The place was broad enough for thousands, and the
sounding of the car's horn had halted the press and made a means of
egress. But coming from the opposite direction was a circus procession,
which, keeping its proper side of the road, had got very close to the
palace wall. It had heard the horn of the car and would have stopped,
but for the extraordinary behaviour of an elephant. The driver of the
animal, a ridiculous figure of a man in flapping nankeen trousers, an
old tunic of horizon blue and a scarlet cummerbund, apparently tried to
check it, but at the very moment that the car was about to pass the gate
it backed into the archway, scattering the Juventus guards.

There was just room for the car to slip through, and, as it swung into
the avenue, Dickson, through a crack in the blind, saw with delight that
his retreat was securely covered by the immense rump of Aurunculeia.


IV

The last guns of the royal salute had fired, and the cheering of the
crowds had become like the murmur of a distant groundswell. The entrance
hall of the Palace was lined with the tall Juventus guards, and up the
alley between them came the new King-designate of Evallonia. There was
now nothing of McTavish and less of Newsom about Prince John. The
Juventus uniform well became his stalwart figure, and he was no more the
wandering royalty who for some years had been the sport of fortune, but
a man who had found again his land and his people. Yet in all the group,
in the Prince and his staff and in the wing commanders, there was a
touch of hesitation, almost of shyness, like schoolboys who had been
catapulted suddenly into an embarrassing glory. The progress from
Krovolin to Melina had been one long blaze of triumph, for again and
again the lines of the escort had been broken by men and women who
kissed the Prince's stirrup, and it had rained garlands of flowers. The
welcome of Melina had been more ceremonial, but not less rapturous, and
they had listened to that roar of many thousands, which, whether it be
meant in love or in hate, must make the heart stand still. All the
group, even the Countess Araminta, had eyes unnaturally bright and faces
a little pale.

At the foot of the grand staircase stood Count Casimir and Jaikie. Ashie
translated for the latter the speeches that followed. The Count dropped
on his knee.

"Sire," he said, "as the Chamberlain of the king your father I welcome
you home."

Prince John raised him and embraced him.

"But where," he asked, "is my beloved uncle? I had hoped to be welcomed
by him above all others." His eye caught Jaikie's for a moment, and what
the latter read in it was profound relief.

"Alas, Sire," said the Count, "His Royal Highness's health has failed
him. Being an old man, the excitement of the last days was too much for
him. A little more and your Majesty's joyful restoration would have been
clouded by tragedy. The one hope was that he should leave at once for
the peace of his home. He crossed the frontier last night, and will
complete his journey to France by air. He left with profound
unwillingness, and he charged me to convey to Your Majesty his sorrow
that his age and the frailty of his body should have prevented him from
offering you in person his assurances of eternal loyalty and affection."

The Countess's face had lost its pallor. Once again she was the
Blood-red Rook, and it was on Jaikie that her eyes fell, eyes
questioning, commanding, suspicious. It was to her rather than to
Prince John that he spoke, having imitated the Count and clumsily
dropped on one knee.

"I was faithful to your instructions, Sire," he said, "but a higher
Power has made them impossible. I was assured that you would not wish
this happy occasion to be saddened by your kinsman's death."

He saw the Countess's lips compressed as if she checked with difficulty
some impetuous speech. "True public-school," thought Jaikie. "She would
like to make a scene, but she won't."

Prince John saw it too, and his manner dropped from the high ceremonial
to the familiar.

"You have done right," he said aloud in English. "Man proposeth and God
disposeth. Dear Uncle Hadrian--Heaven bless him wherever he is! And now,
my lord Chamberlain, I hope you can give us something to eat."




ENVOI


Down in the deep-cut glen it had been almost dark, for the wooded hills
rose steeply above the track. But when the horses had struggled up the
last stony patch of moraine and reached the open uplands the riders
found a clear amber twilight. And when they had passed the cleft called
the Wolf's Throat, they saw a great prospect to the west of forest and
mountain with the sun setting between two peaks, a landscape still
alight with delicate, fading colours. Overhead the evening star twinkled
in a sky of palest amethyst. Involuntarily they halted.

Alison pointed to lights a mile down the farther slope.

"There are the cars with the baggage," she said, "and the grooms to take
the horses back. We can get to our inn in an hour. You are safe,
Dickson, for we are across the frontier. Let's stop here for supper, and
have our last look at Evallonia."

Mr McCunn descended heavily from his horse.

"Ay, I'm safe," he said. "And to-morrow there will be a telegram from
France saying I'm dead. Well, that's the end of an auld song." He kicked
vigorously to ease his cramped legs, and while Dougal and Sir Archie
took the food from the saddle-bags and the two women spread a tablecloth
on a flat rock, he looked down the ravine to the dim purple hollow which
was the country they had left.

Jaikie's last word to Dougal at Melina had been an injunction to make
the end crown the work. "Be sure and have a proper finish," he had told
him. "You know what he is. Let him think he's in desperate danger till
he's over the border. He would break his heart if he thought that he was
out of the game too soon." So Dougal had been insistent with Prince
Odalchini. "You owe Mr McCunn more than you can ever repay, and it isn't
much that I ask. He must believe that Juventus is after him to bring him
back. Get him off to-night, and keep up the pretence that it's deadly
secret. Horses--that's the thing that will please his romantic soul."

So Dickson had all day been secluded in the House of the Four Winds, his
meals had been brought him by Dougal, and Peter Wappit had stood sentry
outside his chamber door. As the afternoon wore on his earlier composure
had been shot with restlessness, and he watched the sun decline with an
anxious eye. But his spirits had recovered when he found himself hoisted
upon an aged mare of Prince Odalchini's, which was warranted quiet, and
saw the others booted and spurred. He had felt himself living a moment
of high drama, and to be embraced and kissed on both cheeks by Prince
Odalchini had seemed the right kind of farewell. The ride through
secluded forest paths had been unpleasant, for he had only once been on
a horse in his life before, and Archie bustled them along to keep up the
illusion of a perilous flight. Dougal, no horseman himself, could do
nothing to help him, but Alison rode by his side, and now and again led
his beast when he found it necessary to cling with both hands to the
saddle.

But once they were in the mountain cleft comfort had returned, for now
the pace was easy and he had leisure for his thoughts. He realised that
for days he had been living with fear. "You're not a brave man," he told
himself. "The thing about you is that you're too much of a coward to
admit that you're afraid. You let yourself in for daft things because
your imagination carries you away, and then for weeks on end your knees
knock together.... But it's worth it--you know it's worth it, you old
epicurean," he added, "for the sake of the relief when it's over." He
realised that he was about to enjoy the peace of soul which he had known
long ago at Huntingtower on the morning after the fight.

But this time there was more than peace. He cast an eye over his
shoulder down the wooded gorge--all was quiet--he had escaped from his
pursuers. The great adventure had succeeded. Far ahead beyond the
tree-tops he saw the cleft of the Wolf's Throat sharp against the
sunset. In half an hour the frontier would be passed. His spirit was
exalted. He remembered something he had read--in Stevenson, he
thought--where a sedentary man had been ravished by a dream of galloping
through a midnight pass at the head of cavalry with a burning valley
behind him. Well, he was a sedentary man, and he was not dreaming an
adventure, but in the heart of one. Never had his wildest fancies
envisaged anything like this. He had been a king, acclaimed by shouting
mobs. He had kept a throne warm for a friend, and now he was vanishing
into the darkness, an honourable fugitive, a willing exile. He was the
first grocer in all history that had been a Pretender to a Crown. The
clack of hooves on stone, the jingling of bits, the echo of falling
water were like strong wine. He did not sing aloud, for he was afraid of
alarming his horse, but he crooned to himself snatches of spirited
songs. "March, march, Ettrick and Teviotdale" was one, and "Jock o'
Hazeldean" was another.

       *       *       *       *       *

Even on that hill-top the summer night was mild, and the fern was warm,
baked by long hours of sun. The little company felt the spell of the
mountain quiet after a week of alarums, and ate their supper in silence.
Dickson munched a sandwich with his face turned east. He was the first
to speak.

"Jaikie's down there," he said. "I wonder what will become of Jaikie?
He's a quiet laddie, but he's the dour one when he's made up his mind.
Then he's like a stone loosed from a catapult. But I've no fear for
Jaikie now he has you to look after him." He turned to beam upon Alison
and stroked her arm.

"He doesn't know what to do," said the girl. "We talked a lot about it
in the summer. He went on a walking-tour to think things out and
discover what he wanted most."

"Well, he has found that out," said Dickson genially. "It's you, Miss
Alison. Jaikie's my bairn, and now I've got another in yourself. I'm
proud of my family. Dougal there is already a force for mischief in
Europe."

Dougal grinned. "I wonder what Mr Craw will say about all this. He'll be
over the moon about it, and he'll think that he and his papers are
chiefly responsible. Humbug! There are whiles when I'm sick of my job.
They talk about the power of the Press, and it is powerful enough in
ordinary times. The same with big finance. But let a thing like Juventus
come along, and the Press and the stock exchange are no more than penny
whistles. It's the Idea that wins every time--the Idea with brains and
guts behind it."

"Youth," said Janet. "Yes, youth is the force in the world to-day, for
it isn't tired and it can hope. But you have forgotten Mr McCunn. He
made the success of Juventus possible, for he found it its leader. It's
a pity the story can't be told, for he deserves a statue in Melina as
the Great Peacemaker."

"It's the same thing," said Dougal. "He's youth."

"In two months' time I'll be sixty-three," said Dickson.

"What does that matter? I tell you you're young. Compared to you Jaikie
and I are old, done men. And you're the most formidable kind of youth,
for you've humour, and that's what youth never has. Jaikie has a little
maybe, but nothing to you, and I haven't a scrap myself. I'll be a
bigger man than Craw ever was, for I haven't his failings. And Jaikie
will be a big man, too, though I'm not just sure in what way. But though
I become a multi-millionaire and Jaikie a prime minister, we will
neither of us ever be half the man that Mr McCunn is. It was a blessed
day for me when I first fell in with him."

"Deary me," said Dickson. "That's a grand testimonial, but I don't
deserve it. I have a fair business mind, and I try to apply it--that's
all. It was the Gorbals Die-hards that made me. Eight years ago I
retired from the shop, and I was a timid elderly body. The Die-hards
learned me not to be afraid."

"You don't know what fear is," said Dougal.

"And they made me feel young again."

"You could never be anything but young."

"You're wrong. I'm both timid and old--the best you can say of me is
that, though I'm afraid, I'm never black-afraid, and though I'm old, I'm
not dead-old."

"That's the best that could be said about any mortal man," said Archie
solemnly. "What are you going to do now? After this game of king-making,
won't Carrick be a bit dull?"

"I'm going back to Blaweary," said Dickson, "to count my mercies, for
I'm a well man again. I'm going to catch a wheen salmon, and potter
about my bits of fields, and read my books, and sit by my fireside. And
to the last day of my life I'll be happy, thinking of the grand things
I've seen and the grand places I've been in. Ay, and the grand friends
I've known--the best of all."

"I think you are chiefly a poet," said Alison.

Dickson did not reply for a moment. He looked at her tenderly and seemed
to be pondering a new truth.

"Me!" he said. "I wish I was, but I could never string two verses
together."


THE END

       *       *       *       *       *

    OLIVER CROMWELL
    BY JOHN BUCHAN

HILAIRE BELLOC in _The London Mercury_.--"Of the effect of time on this
book I have no doubt at all. It will stand permanently as the one book
necessary to every student of Cromwell and it will not be rivalled or
superseded."


    THE KING'S GRACE
    BY JOHN BUCHAN

_Evening Standard._--"In prose unequalled for descriptive power, in
measured phrase and chosen word, the panorama of conflict is unrolled.
It has never been done better--it is doubtful if it ever will be."


    NOVELS AND STORIES BY
    JOHN BUCHAN


    THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS
    GREENMANTLE
    MR STANDFAST
    THE PATH OF THE KING
    HUNTINGTOWER
    MIDWINTER
    THE THREE HOSTAGES
    JOHN MACNAB
    THE DANCING FLOOR
    WITCH WOOD
    THE RUNAGATES CLUB
    THE COURTS OF THE MORNING
    CASTLE GAY
    THE BLANKET OF THE DARK
    THE GAP IN THE CURTAIN
    A PRINCE OF THE CAPTIVITY
    THE FREE FISHERS
    THE HALF-HEARTED
    THE MOON ENDURETH

    _and two omnibus books_

    THE FOUR ADVENTURES OF RICHARD HANNAY
    THE ADVENTURES OF SIR EDWARD LEITHEN

       *       *       *       *       *

     Transcriber's Note: Hyphen variations left as printed.

     Because the breve character cannot be reproduced in ASCII, the
     composer's name has been rendered as Dvork.




[End of The House of the Four Winds, by John Buchan]
