There were two ways of reaching this windowless room, with its low ceilings and dank airs. If one had the secret in his possession, he could go down through the mysterious trap door in the workshop of William Spantz, armourer to the Crown; or he might come up through a hidden aperture in the walls of the great government sewer, which ran directly parallel with and far below the walls of the quaint old building. One could take his choice of direction in approaching this hole in the huge sewer: he could come up from the river, half a mile away, or he could come down from the hills above if he had the courage to drop through one of the intakes.
It is of special significance that the trap door in Spantz’s workshop was reserved for use by the armourer and his more fastidious comrades—of whom three were women and one an established functionary in the Royal Household. One should not expect ladies to traverse a sewer if oilier ways are open to them. The manner of reaching the workshop was not so simple, however, as you might suppose. The street door was out of the quest ion, with Dangloss on the watch, day and night. As much as can be said for the rear door. It was necessary, therefore, that the favored few should approach the shop by extraordinary paths. For instance, two of the women came through friendly but unknown doors in the basements of adjoining houses, reaching the workshop by the narrow stairs leading up from a cobwebby wine-cellar next door. Spantz and Olga Platanova, of course, were at home in the place. All of which may go to prove that while ten persons comprised the committee, at least as many more of the shopkeepers in that particular neighbourhood were in sympathy with their secret operations.
So cleverly were all these means of approach concealed and so stealthy the movements of the Committee, that the existence of this underground room, far below the street level, was as yet unsuspected by the police. More than that, the existence of the Committee of Ten as an organisation was unknown to the department, notwithstanding the fact that it had been working quietly, seriously for more than a year.
The Committee of Ten represented the brains and the activity of a rabid coterie in Edelweiss, among themselves styled the Party of Equals. In plain language, they were “Reds.” Less than fifty persons in Graustark were affiliated with this particular community of anarchists. For more than a year they had been preparing themselves against the all-important hour for public declaration. Their ranks had been augmented by occasional recruits from other lands; their literature was circulated stealthily; their operations were as secret as the grave, so far as the outside world was concerned. And so the poison sprung up and thrived unhindered in the room below the street, growing in virulence and power under the very noses of the vaunted police of Edelweiss, slowly developing into a power that would some day assert itself with diabolical fury.
There were men and women from Axphain and Dawsbergen in this seed circle that made Edelweiss its spreading ground. They were Reds of the most dangerous type—silent, voiceless, crafty men and women who built well without noise, and who gave out nothing to the world from which they expected to take so much.
The nominal leader was William Spantz, he who had a son in the Prince’s household, Julius Spantz, the Master-of-arms. Far off in the hills above the Danube there lived the real leader of this deadly group—the Iron Count Marlanx, exile from the land of his birth, hated and execrated by every loyal Graustarkian, hating and execrating in return with a tenfold greater venom. Marlanx, the man who had been driven from wealth and power by the sharp edict of Prince Robin’s mother, the lamented Yetive, in the days of her most glorious reign,—this man, deep in his raging heart, was in complete accord with the desperate band of Reds who preached equality and planned disaster.
Olga Platanova was the latest acquisition to this select circle. A word concerning her: she was the daughter of Professor Platanova, one time oculist and sociologist in a large German University. He had been one of the most brilliant men in Europe and a member of a noble family. There was welcome for him in the homes of the nobility; he hobnobbed, so to speak, with the leading men of time Empire. The Platanova home in Warsaw was one of the most inviting and exclusive in that great, city. The professor’s enthusiasm finally carried him from the conservative paths in which he had walked; after he had passed his fiftieth year he became an avowed leader among the anarchists and revolutionists in Poland, his native state. Less than a year before the opening of this tale he was executed for treason and conspiracy against the Empire.
His daughter, Olga, was recognised as one of the most beautiful and cultured young women in Warsaw. Her suitors seemed to be without number; nor were they confined to the student and untitled classes with whom she was naturally thrown by force of circumstance. More than one lordly adventurer in the lists of love paid homage to her grace and beauty. Finally there came one who conquered and was beloved. He was the son of a mighty duke, a prince of the blood.
It was true love for both of them. The young prince pledged himself to marry her, despite all opposition; he was ready to give up his noble inheritance for the sake of love. But there were other forces greater than a young man’s love at work. The all-powerful ruler of an Empire learned of this proposed mesalliance and was horrified. Two weeks afterward the prince was called. The will of the Crown was made known to him and—he obeyed. Olga Platanova was cast aside but not forgotten. He became the husband of an unloved, scrawny lady of diadems. When the situation became more than he could bear he blew out his brains.
When Olga heard the news of his death she was not stricken by grief. She cried out her joy to a now cloudless sky, for he had justified the great love that had been theirs and would be theirs to the end of time.
From a passive believer in the doctrines of her father and his circle she became at once their most impassioned exponent. Over night she changed from a gentle-hearted girl into a woman whose breast flamed with a lust for vengeance against a class from which death alone could free her lover. She threw herself, heart and soul, into the deliberations and transactions of the great red circle: her father understood and yet was amazed.
Then he was put to death by the class she had come to hate. One more stone in the sepulchre of her tender, girlish ideals. When the time came she travelled to Graustark in response to the call of the Committee of Ten; she came prepared to kill the creature she would be asked to kill. And yet down in her heart she was sore afraid.
She was there, not to kill a man grown old in wrongs to her people, but to destroy the life of a gentle, innocent boy of seven!
There were times when her heart shrank from the unholy deed she had been selected to perform; she even prayed that death might come to her before the hour in which she was to do this execrable thing in behalf of the humanity she served. But there was never a thought of receding from the bloody task set down for her—a task so morbid, so horrid that even the most vicious of men gloated in the satisfaction that they had not been chosen in her place. Weeks before she came to Graustark Olga Platanova had been chosen by lot to be the one to do this diabolical murder. She did not flinch, but came resolute and ready. Even the men in the Committee of Ten looked upon the slender, dark-eyed girl with an awe that could not be conquered. She had not the manner of an assassin, and yet they knew that she would not draw back; she was as soft and as sweet as the Madonnas they secretly worshipped, and yet her heart was steeled to a purpose that appalled the fiercest of them.
On a Saturday night, following the last visit of Truxton King to the armourer, the Committee of Ten met in the underground room to hear the latest word from one who could not be with them in person, but was always there in spirit—if they were to believe his most zealous utterances. The Iron Count Marlanx, professed hater of all that was rich and noble, was the power behind the Committee of Ten. The assassination of the little Prince and the overthrow of the royal family awaited his pleasure: he was the man who would give the word.
Not until he was ready could anything be done, for Marlanx had promised to put the Committee of Ten in control of this pioneer community when it came under the d
ominion of anarchists.
Alas, for the Committee of Ten! The wiliest fox in the history of the world was never so wily as the Iron Count. Some day they were to find out that he was using them to pull his choicest chestnuts from the fire.
The Committee was seated around the long table in the stifling, breathless room, the armourer at the head. Those who came by way of the sewer had performed ablutions in the queer toilet room that once had been a secret vault for the storing of feudal plunder. What air there was came from the narrow ventilator that burrowed its ways up to the shop of William Spantz, or through the chimney-hole in the ceiling. Olga Platanova sat far down the side, a moody, inscrutable expression in her dark eyes. She sat silent and oppressed through all the acrid, bitter discussions which carried the conclave far past the midnight hour. In her heart she knew that these men and women were already thinking of her as a regicide. It was settled—it was ordained. At Spantz’s right lounged Peter Brutus, a lawyer—formerly secretary to the Iron Count and now his sole representative among these people. He was a dark-faced, snaky-eyed young man, with a mop of coarse black hair that hung ominously low over his high, receding forehead. This man was the chosen villain among all the henchmen who came at the beck and call of the Iron Count.
Julius Spantz, the armourer’s son, a placid young man of goodly physical proportions, sat next to Brutus, while down the table ranged others deep in the consideration of the world’s gravest problems. One of the women was Madame Drovnask, whose husband had been sent to Siberia for life; and the other, Anna Cromer, a rabid Red lecturer, who had been driven from the United States, together with her amiable husband: an assassin of some distinction and many aliases, at present foreman in charge of one of the bridge-building crews on the new railroad.
Every man in the party, and there were eight, for Olga was not a member of the Ten, wore over the lower part of his face a false black beard of huge dimensions. Not that they were averse to recognition among themselves, but in the fear that by some hook or crook Dangloss or his agents might be able to look in upon them—through stone walls, as it were. They were not men to belittle the powers of the wonderful Baron.
As it sat in secret conclave, the Committee of Ten was a sinister-looking group.
Brutus was speaking. “The man is a spy. He has been brought here from America by Tullis. Sooner or later you will find that I am right.”
“It is best to keep close watch on him,” advised one of the men. “We know that he is in communication with the police and we know that he visits the Castle, despite his declaration that he knows no one there. Today’s experience proves that. I submit that the strictest caution be observed where he is concerned.”
“We shall continue to watch his every movement,” said William Spantz. “Time will tell. When we are positive that he is a detective and that he is dangerous, there is a way to stop his operations.”
His son grinned amiably as he swept his finger across his throat. The old man nodded.
“Dangloss suspects more than one of us” ventured Brutus, his gaze travelling toward Olga. There was lewd admiration in that steady glance. “But we’ll fool the old fox. The time will soon be here for the blow that frees Graustark from the yoke. She will be the pioneer among our estates, we the first of the individuals in equality; here the home seat of perfect rulership. There is nothing that can stop us. Have we not the most powerful of friends? Who is greater and shrewder than Count Marlanx? Who could have planned and perfected an organization so splendid? Will any one dispute this?”
He had the floor, and having the floor means everything to a Red. For half an hour he spoke with impassioned fervour, descanting furiously on the amazing virtues of his wily master and the plans he had arranged. It appeared in the course of his remarks that Marlanx had friends and supporters in all parts of Graustark. Hundreds of men in the hills, including honest shepherds and the dishonest brigands who thrived on them, coal miners and wood stealers, hunters and outlaws were ready to do his bidding when the time was ripe. Moreover, Marlanx had been successful in his design to fill the railway construction crews with the riff-raff of all Europe, all of whom were under the control of leaders who could sway them in any movement, provided it was against law and order. As a matter of fact, according to Brutus, nearly a thousand aliens were at work on the road, all of them ready to revolt the instant the command was given by their advisers.
Something that the Committee of Ten did not know was this: those alien workmen were no less than so many hired mercenaries in the employ of the Iron Count, brought together by that leader and his agents for the sole purpose of overthrowing the Crown in one sudden, unexpected attack, whereupon Count Marlanx would step in and assume control of the government. They had been collected from all parts of the world to do the bidding of this despised nobleman, no matter to what lengths he might choose to lead them. Brutus, of course, knew all this: his companions on the Committee were in complete ignorance of the true motives that brought Marlanx into their operations.
With a cunning that commands admiration, the Iron Count deliberately sanctioned the assassination of the little Prince by the Reds, knowing that the condemnation of the world would fall upon them instead of upon him, and that his own actions following the regicide would at once stamp him as irrevocably opposed to anarchy and all of its practices!
In the course of his remarks, Peter Brutus touched hastily upon the subject of the little Prince.
“He’s not very big,” said he, with a laugh, “and it won’t require a very big bomb to blow him to smithereens. He will—”
“Stop!” cried Olga Platanova, springing to her feet and glaring at him with dilated eyes. “I cannot listen to you! You shall not speak of it in that way! Peter Brutus, you are not to speak of—of what I am to do! Never—never again!”
They looked at her in amazement and no little concern. Madame Drovnask was the first to speak, her glittering eyes fastened upon the drawn, white face of the girl across the table.
“Are you going to fail? Are you weakening?” she demanded.
“No! I am not going to fail! But I will not permit any one to jest about the thing I am to do. It is a sacred duty with me. But, Madame Drovnask—all of you, listen—it is a cruel, diabolical thing, just the same. Were it not in behalf of our great humanity, I, myself, should call it the blackest piece of cruelty the world has ever known. The slaughter of a little boy! A dear, innocent little boy! I can see the horror in all of your faces! You shudder as you sit there, thinking of the thing I am to do. Yes, you are secretly despising me, your instrument of death! I—I, a girl, I am to cast the bomb that blows this dear little body to pieces. I! Do you know what that means? Even though I am sure to be blown to pieces by the same agent, the last thing I shall look upon is his dear, terrified little face as he watches me hurl the bomb. Ah!”
She shuddered violently as she stood there before them, her eyes closed as if to shut out the horrible picture her mind was painting. There were other white faces and ice-cold veins about the table. The sneer on Anna Cromer’s face deepened.
“She will bungle it,” came in an angry hiss from her lips.
Olga’s lids were lifted. Her dark eyes looked straight into those of the older woman.
“No,” she said quietly, her body relaxing, “I shall not bungle it.”
William Spantz had been watching her narrowly, even suspiciously. Now his face cleared.
“She will not fail,” he announced calmly. “Let there be no apprehension. She is the daughter of a martyr. Her blood is his. It will flow in the same cause. Sit down, Olga, my dear. We will not touch upon this subject again—until—”
“I know, uncle,” she said quietly, resuming her seat and her attitude of indifference.
The discussion went back to Truxton King. “Isn’t it possible that he is merely attracted by the beauty of our charming young friend here?” ventured Madame Drovnask, after many opinions had been advanced respecting his interest in the shop and its contents. “It
is a habit with Americans, I am told.”
“Miss Platanova is most worthy of the notice of any man,” agreed Brutus, with an amiable leer. Olga seemed to shrink within herself. It was plain that she was not a kindred spirit to these vicious natures.
“It is part of his game,” said Julius Spantz. “He knows Olga’s past; he is waiting for a chance to catch her off her guard. He may even go so far as to make pretty love to you, cousin, in the hope that—no offence, my dear, no offence!” Her look had silenced him.
“Mr. King is not a spy,” she said steadily.
“Well,” concluded William Spantz, “we are safe if we take no chances with him. He must be watched all the time. If we discover that he is what some of us think he is, there is a way to end his usefulness.”
“Let him keep away from the shop downstairs,” said Peter Brutus, with a sidelong glance at the delicate profile of the girl down the table.
She smiled suddenly, to the amazement of her sinister companions.
“Have no fear, Brutus. When he hears that you object, he will be very polite and give us a wide berth,” she said. Peter flushed angrily.
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 81