“Indeed? Is it a good match, Baron?”
The Baron smiled. “I think so. He has been a trifle wild, but I believe he has settled down. Splendid family. He is desperately in love, as you may have noted.”
“I hadn’t thought much about it. Is she in love with him?”
“She sees a great deal of him,” was the diplomatic answer.
Truxton considered well for a minute or two, and then bluntly asked:
“Would you mind telling me just who she is, Baron? What is her name?”
Dangloss was truly startled. He gave the young man a quick, penetrating glance; then a set, hard expression came into his eyes.
“Do you mean, sir, that you don’t know her?” he asked, almost harshly.
“I don’t know her name.”
“And you had the effrontery to—My excellent friend, you amaze me. I can’t believe it of you. Why, sir, how dare you say this to me? I know that Americans are bold, but, by gad, sir, I’ve always looked upon them as gentlemen. You—”
“Hold on, Baron Dangloss,” interrupted Truxton, very red in the face. “Don’t say it, please. You’d better hear my side of the story first. She went to school with my sister. She knows me, but, confound it, sir, she refuses to tell me who she is. Do you think that is fair? Now, I’ll tell you how it came about.” He related the story of the goldfish and the pinhook. The Baron smiled comfortably to himself, a sphinx-like expression coming into his beady eyes as he stared steadily on ahead; her trim grey back seemed to encourage his admiring smile.
“Well, my boy, if she elects to keep you in the dark concerning her name, it is not for me to betray her,” he said at the end of the recital. “Ladies in her position, I dare say, enjoy these little mysteries. If she wants you to know, she’ll tell you. Perhaps it would be well for you to be properly, officially presented to her hi—to the young lady. Your countryman, Mr. Tullis, will be glad to do so, I fancy. But let me suggest: don’t permit your ingenuousness to get the better of you again. She’s having sport with you on account of it. We all know her propensities.”
It was dusk when they entered the northern gates. Above the Castle, King said good-bye to Tullis and the Countess, gravely saluted the sleepy Prince, and followed Mr. Hobbs off to the heart of the city. He was hot with resentment. Either she had forgotten to say good-bye to him or had wilfully decided to ignore him altogether; at any rate, she entered the gates to the Castle grounds without so much as an indifferent glance in his direction.
Truxton knew in advance that he was to have a sleepless, unhappy night.
In his room at the hotel he found the second anonymous letter, unquestionably from the same source, but this time printed in crude, stilted letters. It had been stuck under the door, together with some letters that had been forwarded from Teheran.
“Leave the city at once. You are in great danger. Save yourself!”
This time he did not laugh. That it was from Olga Platanova he made no doubt. But why she should interest herself so persistently in his welfare was quite beyond him, knowing as he did that in no sense had he appealed to her susceptibility. And what, after all, could she mean by “great danger”? “Save yourself!” He sat for a long time considering the situation. At last he struck the window sill a resounding thwack with his fist and announced his decision to the silent, disinterested wall opposite.
“I’ll take her advice. I’ll get out. Not because I’m afraid to stay, but because there’s no use. She’s got no eyes for me. I’m a plain impossibility so far as she’s concerned. It’s Vos Engo—damn little rat! Old Dangloss came within an ace of speaking of her as ‘her Highness.’ That’s enough for me. That means she’s a princess. It’s all very nice in novels, but in real life men don’t go about picking up any princess they happen to like. No, sir! I might just as well get out while I can. She treated me as if I were a yellow dog today—after I’d been damned agreeable to her, too, standing between her and the lightning. I might have been struck. I wonder if she would have been grateful. No; she wouldn’t. She’d have smiled her sweetest, and said: “wasn’t it lucky?”
He picked up the note once more. “If I were a storybook hero, I’d stick this thing in my pocket and set out by myself to unravel the mystery behind it. But I’ve chucked the hero job for good and all. I’m going to hand this over to Dangloss. It’s the sensible thing to do, even if it isn’t what a would-be hero in search of a princess aught to do. What’s more, I’ll hunt the Baron up this very hour. Hope it doesn’t get Olga into trouble.”
He indulged in another long spell of thoughtfulness. “No, by George, I’ll not turn tail at the first sign of danger. I’ll stay here and assist Dangloss in unravelling this matter. And I’ll go up to that Witch’s hole before I’m a day older to have it out with her. I’ll find out where the smoke came from and I’ll know where that eye went to.” He sighed without knowing it. “By Jove, I’d like to do something to show her I’m not the blooming duffer she thinks I am.”
He could not find Baron Dangloss that night, nor early the next day. Hobbs, after being stigmatised as the only British coward in the world, changed his mind and made ready to accompany King to the hovel in Ganlook Gap.
By noon the streets in the vicinity of the Plaza were filled with strange, rough-looking men, undeniably labourers.
“Who are they?” demanded King, as they rode past a particularly sullen, forbidding crowd at the corner below the city hail.
“There’s a strike on among the men who are building the railroad,” said Hobbs. “Ugly looking crowd, eh?”
“A strike? ’Gad, it’s positively homelike.”
“I heard a bit ago that the matter has been adjusted. They go back to work tomorrow, slight increase in pay and a big decrease in work. They were to have had their answer today. Mr. Tullis, I hear, was instrumental in having the business settled without a row.”
“They’d better look out for these fellows,” said King, very soberly. “I don’t like the appearance of ’em. They look like cut-throats.”
“Take my word for it, sir, they are. They’re the riff-raff of all Europe. You should have seen them of a Sunday, sir, before the order went out closing the drinking places on that day. My word, they took the town. There was no living here for the decent people. Women couldn’t go out of their houses.”
“I hope Baron Dangloss knows how to handle them?” in some anxiety. “By the way, remind me to look up the Baron just as soon as we get back to town this evening.”
“If we ever get back!” muttered the unhappy Mr. Hobbs. Prophetic lamentation!
In due time they rode into the sombre solitudes of Ganlook Gap and up to the Witch’s glen. Here Mr. Hobbs balked. He refused to adventure farther than the mouth of the stony ravine. Truxton approached the hovel alone, without the slightest trepidation. The goose-herd grandson was driving a flock of geese across the green bowl below the cabin. The American called out to him and a moment later the youth, considerably excited, drove his geese up to the door. He could understand no English, nor could Truxton make out what he was saying in the native tongue. While they were vainly haranguing each other the old woman appeared at the edge of the thicket above the hut. Uttering shrill exclamations, she hurried down to confront King with blazing eyes. He fell back, momentarily dismayed. Her horrid grin of derision brought a flush to his cheek; he faced her quite coolly.
“I’ll lay you a hundred gavvos that the kettle and smoke experiment is a fake of the worst sort,” he announced, after a somewhat lengthy appeal to be allowed to enter the hut as a simple seeker after knowledge.
“Have it your own way! Have it your own way!” she cackled.
“Tell you what I’ll do; if I can’t expose that trick in ten minutes, I’ll make you a present of a hundred gavvos.”
She took him up like a flash, a fact which startled and disconcerted him not a little. Her very eagerness augured ill for his proposition. Still, he was in for it; he was determined to get inside the hut and solve the mystery
, if it were possible. Exposure of the Witch would at least attract the interest if not the approval of a certain young lady in purple and fine linen. That was surely worth while.
With a low, mocking bow, the shrivelled hag stood aside and motioned for him to precede her into the hovel. He looked back at Mr. Hobbs. That gentleman’s eyes seemed to be starting from his head.
“A hundred gavvos is a fortune not easily to be won,” said the old dame. “How can I be sure that you will pay me if you lose?”
“It is in my pocket, madam. If I don’t pay, you may instruct your excellent grandson to crack me over the head. He looks as though he’d do it for a good deal less money, I’ll say that for him.”
“He is honest—as honest as his grandmother,” cried the old woman. She bestowed a toothless grin upon him. “Now what is it you want to do?”
They were standing in the centre of the wretched living-room. The goose-boy was in the door, looking on with strangely alert, questioning eyes, ever and anon peering over his shoulder toward the spot where Hobbs stood with the horses. He seldom took his gaze from the face of the old woman, a rat-like smile touching the corners of his fuzz-lined lips.
“I want to go through that kitchen, just to satisfy myself of one or two things.” King was looking hard at the crack in the kitchen door. Suddenly he started as if shot.
The staring, burning eye was again looking straight at him from the jagged crack in the door!
“I’ll get you this time,” he shouted, crossing the room in two eager leaps. The door responded instantly to his violent clutch, swung open with a bang, and disclosed the interior of the queer little kitchen.
The owner of that mocking, phantom eye was gone!
Like a frantic dog, Truxton dashed about the little kitchen, looking in every corner, every crack for signs of the thing he chased. At last he paused, baffled, mystified. The old woman was standing in the middle of the outer room, grinning at him with what was meant for complacency, but which struck him at once as genuine malevolence.
“Ha, ha!” she croaked. “You fool! You fool! Search! Smell him out! All the good it will do you! Ha, ha!”
“By gad, I will get at the bottom of this!” shouted Truxton, stubborn rage possessing him. “There’s some one here, and I know it. I’m not such a fool as to believe—Say! What’s that? The ceiling! By the eternal, that scraping noise explains it! There’s where the secret trap-door is—in the ceiling! Within arm’s reach, at that! Watch me, old woman! I’ll have your spry friend out of his nest in the shake of a lamb’s tail.”
The hag was standing in the kitchen door now, still grinning evilly. She watched the eager young man pound upon the low ceiling with a three-legged stool that he had seized from the floor.
“I don’t see how he got up there so quickly, though. He must be like greased lightning.”
He was pounding vigorously on the roughly boarded ceiling when the sharp voice of the old woman, raised in command, caused him to lower the stool and turn upon her with gleaming, triumphant eyes. The look he saw in her face was sufficient to check his enterprise for the moment. He dropped the stool and started toward her, his arms extended to catch her swaying form. The look of the dying was in her eyes; she seemed to be crumpling before him.
He reached her in time, his strong arms grasping the frail, bent figure as it sank to the floor. As he lifted her bodily from her feet, intent upon carrying her to the open air, her bony fingers sank into his arm with the grip of death, and—could he believe his ears!—a low, mocking laugh came from her lips.
Down where the pebbly house-yard merged into the mossy banks, Mr. Hobbs sat tight, still staring with gloomy eyes at the dark little hut up the glen. His sturdy knees were pressing the skirts of the saddle with a firmness that left no room for doubt as to the tension his nerves were under. Now and then he murmured “My word!” but in what connection it is doubtful if even he could tell. A quarter of an hour had passed since King disappeared through the doorway: Mr. Hobbs was getting nervous.
The shiftless, lanky goose-herd came forth in time, and lazily drove his scattered flock off into the lower glen.
The horses were becoming impatient. To his extreme discomfort, not to say apprehension, they were constantly pricking their ears forward and snorting in the direction of the hovel; a very puzzling circumstance, thought Mr. Hobbs. At this point he began to say “dammit,” and with some sense of appreciation, too.
Presently his eye caught sight of a thin stream of smoke, rather black than blue, arising from the little chimney at the rear of the cabin. His eyes flew very wide open; his heart experienced a sudden throbless moment; his mind leaped backward to the unexplained smoke mystery of the day before. It was on the end of his tongue to cry out to his unseen patron, to urge him to leave the Witch to her deviltry and come along home, when the old woman herself appeared in the doorway—alone.
She sat down upon the doorstep, pulling away at a long pipe, her hooded face almost invisible from the distance which he resolutely held. He felt that she was eyeing him with grim interest. For a few minutes he waited, a sickening doubt growing up in his soul. A single glance showed him that the chimney was no longer emitting smoke. It seemed to him that the old woman was losing all semblance of life. She was no more than a black, inanimate heap of rags piled against the door-jamb.
Hobbs let out a shout. The horses plunged viciously. Slowly the bundle of rags took shape. The old woman arose and hobbled toward him, leaning upon a great cane.
“Whe—where’s Mr. King?” called out Hobbs.
She stopped above him and he could see her face. Mr. Hobbs was chilled to the bone. Her arm was raised, a bony finger pointing to the treetops above her hovel.
“He’s gone. Didn’t you see him? He went off among the treetops. You won’t see him again.” She waited a moment, and then went on, in most ingratiating tones: “Would you care to come into my house? I can show you the road he took. You—”
But Mr. Hobbs, his hair on end, had dropped the rein of King’s horse and was putting boot to his own beast, whirling frantically into the path that led away from the hated, damned spot! Down the road he crashed, pursued by witches whose persistence put to shame the efforts of those famed ladies of Tam O’Shanter in the long ago; if he had looked over his shoulder, he might have discovered that he was followed by a riderless horse, nothing more.
But a riderless horse is a gruesome thing—sometimes.
CHAPTER IX
STRANGE DISAPPEARANCES
The further adventures of Mr. Hobbs on this memorable afternoon are quickly chronicled, notwithstanding the fact that he lived an age while they were transpiring, and experienced sensations that would still be fresh in his memory if he lived to be a hundred.
He was scarcely well out of sight of the cabin when his conscience began to smite him: after all, his patron might be in dire need of his services, and here he was, fleeing from an old woman and a whiff of smoke! Hobbs was not a physical coward, but it took more than a mile of hard-ridden conscience to bring his horse to a standstill. Then, with his heart in his mouth, he slowly began to retrace his steps, walking where he had galloped a moment before. A turn in the road brought him in view of something that caused him to draw rein sharply. A hundred yards ahead, five or six men were struggling with a riderless bay horse.
“My Gawd!” ejaculated Hobbs. “It’s his horse! I might have known!”
He looked eagerly for his patron. There was no sign of him, so Hobbs rode slowly forward, intent upon asking the woodmen—for such they appeared to be—to accompany him to the glen, now but a short distance ahead.
As he drew nearer, it struck him forcibly that the men were not what he had thought them to be. They were an evil-looking lot, more like the strikers he had seen in the town earlier in the day. Even as he was turning the new thought over in his mind, one of them stepped out of the little knot, and, without a word of warning, lifted his arm and fired point blank at the little Englishman. A pistol ball whizze
d close by his head. His horse leaped to the side of the road in terror, almost unseating him.
But Hobbs had fighting blood in his veins. What is more to the point, he had a Mauser revolver in his pocket. He jerked it out, and, despite a second shot from the picket, prepared to ride down upon the party. An instant later half a dozen revolvers were blazing away at him. Hobbs turned at once and rode in the opposite direction, whirling to fire twice at the unfriendly group. Soon he was out of range and at leisure. He saw the futility of any attempt to pass them. The only thing left for him to do was to ride as quickly as possible to the city and give the alarm: at the same time, to acquaint the police with the deliberate assault of the desperadoes.
His mind was so full of the disaster to Truxton King—he did not doubt for an instant that he had been destroyed by the sorceress—that he gave little thought to his own encounter with the rascals in the roadway. He had come to like the impetuous young man with the open purse and the open heart. Despite his waywardness in matters conventional to the last degree he could not but admire him for the smile he had and the courage that never failed him, even when the smile met the frown of rebuke.
Riding swiftly through the narrow, sunless defile he was nearing the point where the road connected with the open Highway; from there on the way was easy and devoid of peril. Suddenly his horse swerved and leaped furiously out of stride, stumbling, but recovering himself almost instantaneously. In the same second he heard the sharp crack of a firearm, far down the unbroken ravine to his left. A second shot came, this time from the right and quite close at hand. His horse was staggering, swaying—then down he crashed, Hobbs swinging clear barely in time to escape being pinioned to the ground. A stream of blood was pouring from the side of the poor beast. Aghast at this unheard of wantonness, the little interpreter knew not which way to turn, but stood there dazed until a third shot brought him to his senses. The bullet kicked up the dust near his feet. He scrambled for the heavy underbrush at the roadside and darted off into the forest, his revolver in his hand, his heart palpitating like mad. Time and again as he fled through the dark thickets, he heard the hoarse shouts of men in the distance. It dawned upon him at last that there had been an uprising of some kind in the city—that there was rioting and murder going on—that these men were not ordinary bandits, but desperate strikers in quest of satisfaction for grievances ignored.
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 86