The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories

by George Barr McCutcheon

  At last, when he could scarcely drag his feet after him, they came to a halt. A consultation followed, but he could not understand a word. This much he knew: they were in the hills directly above the northern gates. Two of the men went forward, moving with extreme caution. In half an hour they returned and the march was resumed.

  Their next halt came sooner than he expected. The vague, black shadow of a lightless house loomed up before them. In a twinkling he was hustled across the road and into a door. Then down a flight of stairs, through pitchy darkness, guided by two of the men, a whispered word of advice now and then from the Yankee saving him from perilous stumbles. He was jerked up sharply with a command to stand still. A light flashed suddenly in his face, blinding him for the moment. Voices in eager, quick conversation came to his ears long before his eyes could take in the situation.

  Soon he saw that they were in a broad, bare cellar; three men in heavy black beards were in earnest conversation with several of his captors; all were gesticulating fiercely.

  His Newport companion enlightened him, between puffs of the pipe he was struggling with. “Here’s where we say good-bye, young fellow. We turn you over to these gents, whoever they are. I’m sort of out of it when they get to jabberin’ among themselves. I can understand ’em when they talk slow, but, say, did you ever hear a flock of Union Square sparrows chirp faster than them fellers is talkin’ now? Nix. You go into the village gay with these Schwabs by the sewer line, I guess.” Truxton pricked up his ears. “The old man has had a hole chopped in the sewer here, they tell me, and it’s a snap to get into the city. Not very clean or neat, but it gets you there. Well, so long! They’re ready, I see. They don’t monkey long when they’ve got a thing to do. I’d advise you not to be too stubborn when they get you to headquarters; it may go easier with you. I’m not so damned bad, young feller. It’s just the business I’m in—and the company.”

  King felt a thrill of real regard for the rascal. He nodded his thanks and tried to smile. The fellow grinned and slapped him on the shoulder, unobserved by the others. In another moment his guardianship was transferred; he was being hurried across the cellar toward an open doorway. Down a few stone steps he was led by the bearded crew, and then pushed through a hole in what appeared to be a heavy brick wall. He realised at once where he was. The gurgle of running water, the odor of foul airs came up to him. It was the great sewer that ran from the hills through the heart of the city, flushed continuously by a diverted mountain stream that swept down from above.

  He was wading in cold water over a slippery bottom, tightly held by two men, the third going ahead with the lantern. Always ahead loomed the black, opaque circle which never came nearer, never grew smaller. It was the ever receding wall of darkness.

  He did not know how long they traversed the chill sewer in this fashion. In time, however, the water got deeper; rats began to scurry along the sides of the circle or to swim frantically on in front of the disturbers. The smells were sickening, overpowering. Only excitement, curiosity, youth—whatever you may care to term it-kept him up and going. The everlasting glory of youth never ends until old age has provided the surfeit of knowledge; the strife to see ahead, to find out what is to be, to know,—that is youth. Youth dies when curiosity ends. The emotion is even stronger than the dread of what may lie beyond in the pallid sea of uncertainty.

  His bones were chilled and creaking with fatigue. He was remorselessly hungry. There was water, but he could not drink it.

  At last the strange journey ended. They came to a niche in the slimy wall. Up into this the men climbed, dragging him after them. The man above was cautiously tapping on what appeared to be solid masonry. To King’s surprise a section of the wall suddenly opened before them. He was seized from above by strong hands and literally jerked through the hole, his companions following. Up narrow steps, through a sour-smelling passage and—then, into a long, dimly lighted room, in the centre of which stood a long table.

  He was not permitted to linger here for long, but passed on into a small room adjoining. Some one, speaking in English, told him to sit down. The gag was removed from his stiff, inflamed mouth.

  “Fetch him some water,” said a voice that he was sure he recognised—a high, querulous voice.

  “Hello, Spantz,” articulated Truxton, turning to the black-bearded, bent figure.

  There was an instance of silence. Then Spantz spoke, with a soft laugh: “You will not know so much tomorrow, Herr King. Give him the water, man. He has much to say to us, and he cannot talk with a dry throat.”

  “Nor an empty stomach,” added King. He drank long of the pitcher that was held to his lips.

  “This is not the Regengetz,” growled a surly voice.

  “You mean, I don’t eat?”

  “Not at midnight, my friend.”

  “It seems to be an all-night joint.”

  “Enough,” cried Spantz. “Bring him out here. The others have come.”

  King was pushed out into the larger room, where he was confronted by a crowd of bewhiskered men and snaky-eyed women with most intellectual nose-glasses. It required but a glance to convince him that the whiskers were false.

  For nearly an hour he was probed with questions concerning his business in Edelweiss. Threats followed close upon his unsatisfactory answers, though they were absolutely truthful. There was no attempt made to disguise the fact that they were conspiring against the government; in fact, they were rather more open than secretive. When he thought of it afterward, a chill crept over him. They would not have spoken so openly before him if they entertained the slightest fear that he would ever be in a position to expose them.

  “We’ll find a way to make you talk tomorrow, my friend. Starving is not pleasant.”

  “You would not starve me!” he cried.

  “No. You will have the pleasure of starving yourself,” said a thin-eyed fellow whom he afterward knew as Peter Brutus.

  He was thrown back into the little room. To his surprise and gratification, the bonds on his wrists were removed. Afterward he was to know that there was method in this action of his gaolers: his own utter impotency was to be made more galling to him by the maddening knowledge that he possessed hands and feet and lungs—and could not use them!

  He found a match in his box and struck it. There was no article of furniture. The floor was bare, the walls green with age. He had a feeling that there would be rats; perhaps lizards. A search revealed the fact that his purse, his watch and his pocket-knife were missing. Another precious match showed him that there were no windows. A chimney hole in the ceiling was, perhaps, the only means by which fresh air could reach this dreary place.

  “Well, I guess I’m here to stay,” he said to himself. He sat down with his back to the wall, despair in his soul. A pitiful, weak smile came to him in the darkness, as he thought of the result of his endeavour to “show off” for the benefit of the heartless girl in rajah silk. “What an ass I am,” he groaned. “Now she will never know.”

  Sleep was claiming his senses. He made a pillow of his coat, commended himself to the charity of rats and other horrors, and stretched his weary bones upon the relentless floor.

  “No one will ever know,” he murmured, his last waking thought being of a dear one at home.

  CHAPTER XI

  UNDER THE GROUND

  Day and night were the same to the occupant of the little room. They passed with equal slowness and impartial darkness. Five days that he could account for crawled by before anything unusual happened to break the strain of his solitary, inexplicable confinement. He could tell when it was morning by the visit of a bewhiskered chambermaid with a deep bass voice, who carried a lighted candle and kicked him into wakefulness. The second day after his incarceration began, he was given food and drink. It was high time, for he was almost famished. Thereafter, twice a day, he was led into the larger room and given a surprisingly hearty meal. Moreover, he was allowed to bathe his face and hands and indulge in half an hour’s futile str
etching of limbs. After the second day few questions were asked by the men who had originally set themselves up as inquisitors. At first they had treated him with a harshness that promised something worse, but an incident occurred on the evening of the second day that changed the whole course of their intentions.

  Peter Brutus had just voiced the pleasure of the majority by urging the necessity for physical torture to wring the government’s secrets from the prisoner. King, half famished, half crazed by thirst, had been listening to the fierce argument through the thin door that separated the rooms. He heard the sudden, eager movement toward the door of his cell, and squared himself against the opposite wall, ready to fight to the death. Then there came a voice that he recognised.

  A woman was addressing the rabid conspirators in tones of deadly earnestness. His heart gave a bound. It was the first time since his incarceration that he had heard the voice of Olga Platanova, she who had warned him, she who still must be his friend. Once more he threw himself to the floor and glued his ear to the crack; her voice had not the strident qualities of the other women in this lovely company.

  “You are not to do this thing,” she was saying. King knew that she stood between her companions and the door. “You are not to touch him! Do you hear me, Peter Brutus? All of you?”

  There followed the silence of stupefaction, broken at last by a voice which he recognised as that of old man Spantz.

  “Olga! Stand aside!”

  “No! You shall not torture him. I have said he is no spy. I still say it. He knows nothing of the police and their plans. He has not been spying upon us. I am sure of it.”

  “How can you be sure of it?” cried a woman’s voice, harsh and strident.

  “He has played with you,” sneered another.

  “I will not discuss the point. I know he is not what you say he is. You have no right to torture him. You have no right to hold him prisoner.”

  “God, girl, we cannot turn him loose now. He must never go free again. He must die.” This was from Spantz.

  “We cannot release him, I grant you,” she said, and Truxton’s heart sank. “Not now, but afterward, yes. When it is all over he can do no harm. But, hear me now, all of you. If he is harmed in any way, if he is maltreated, or if you pursue this design to starve him, I shall not perform my part of the work on the 26th. This is final.”

  For a full minute, it seemed to King, no one spoke.

  “You cannot withdraw,” exclaimed Peter Brutus. “You are pledged. You are sworn. It is ordained.”

  “Try me, and see if I will not do as I say. He is to be treated kindly so long as we hold him here and he is to be released when the committee is in power. Then he may tell all that he knows, for it will be of no avail. He cannot escape, that you know. If he were a spy I would offer no objection to your methods. He is an American gentleman, a traveller. I, Olga Platanova, say this to you. It is not a plea, not a petition; it is an ultimatum. Spare him, or the glorious cause must suffer by my defection.”

  “Sh! Not so loud, girl! He can hear every word you say!”

  “Why should it matter, madam? He is where he can do no harm to our cause. Let him hear. Let him understand what it is that we are doing. Are we ashamed of our duty to the world? If so, then we are criminals, not deliverers. I am not ashamed of what God wills me to do. It is horrible, but it is the edict of God. I will obey. But God does not command us to torture an innocent man who happens to fall into our hands. No! Let him hear. Let him know that I, Olga Platanova, am to hurl the thing that is to destroy the life of Prince Robin. I am not afraid to have him know today what the world will know next week. Let him hear and revile me now, as the world will do after it is over and I am gone. The glory will be mine when all the people of this great globe are joined to our glorious realm. Then the world will say that Olga Platanova was not a beast, but a deliverer, a creator! Let him hear!”

  The listener’s blood was running cold. The life of Prince Robin! An assassination! “The thing that will destroy!” A bomb! God!

  For half an hour they argued with her, seeking to turn her from the stand she had taken; protesting to the last stage, cursing her for a sentimental fool. Then they came to terms with her. Truxton King owed his life to this strange girl who knew him not at all, but who believed in him. He suffered intensely in the discovery that she was, in the end, to lend herself to the commission of the most heartless and diabolical of crimes—the destruction of that innocent, well-worshipped boy of Graustark.

  “You must be in love with this simple-minded American, who comes—” Peter Brutus started to say at one stage of the discussion, when the frail girl was battling almost physically with her tormentors.

  “Stop! Peter Brutus, you shall not say that! You know where my love lies! Don’t say that to me again, you beast!” she had cried, and Brutus was silenced.

  Truxton was brought into the room a few minutes later. He was white with emotion as he faced the Committee of Ten. Before a word could be addressed to him he blurted out:

  “You damned cowards! Weak as I am, I would have fought for you, Miss Platanova, if I could have got through that door. Thank you for what you have done to convince these dogs! I would to God I could save you from this thing you are pledged to do. It is frightful! I cannot think it of you! Give it up! All of you, give this thing up! I will promise secrecy—I will never betray what I have heard. Only don’t do this awful thing! Think of that dear little boy—”

  Olga Platanova cried out and covered her eyes with her hands, murmuring the words “dear little boy” over and over again. She was led from the room by William Spantz. Peter Brutus stood over King, whose arms were held by two stalwart men.

  “Enough!” he commanded. “We spare you, not for her sake, but for the sake of the cause we serve. Hear me: you are to be held here a prisoner until our plans are consummated. You will be properly fed and cared for. You have heard Miss Platanova say that she will cook the food for you herself, but you are not to see her. Do not seek to turn her from her purpose. That you cannot do. She is pledged to it; it is irrevocable. We have perhaps made a mistake in bringing you here: it would have been far wiser to kill you in the beginning, but—”

  King interrupted him. “I haven’t the least doubt that you will kill me in the end. She may not be here to protect me after—after the assassination.”

  “She is prepared to die by the same bomb that slays the Prince,” was all that Brutus would say in response to this, but King observed the sly look that went round amongst them. He knew then that they meant to kill him in the end.

  Afterward, in his little room, he writhed in the agony of helplessness. The Prince, his court, the government—all were to be blasted to satisfy the end of this sickening conspiracy. Loraine! She, too, was doomed! He groaned aloud in his misery and awe.

  Food and water came after that, but he ate and drank little, so depressed had he become. He sought for every means of escape that suggested itself to him. The walls, the floors, the doors, the stairway to the armourer’s shop—all were impassable, so carefully was he guarded. From time to time he heard inklings of the plot which was to culminate on the fatal 26th; he did not get the details in particular, but he knew that the bomb was to be hurled at the Prince near the entrance to the plaza and that Marlanx’s men were to sweep over the stricken city almost before the echo died away.

  There was a telegraph instrument in the outer room. He could hear it ticking off its messages day and night, and could hear the discussion of reports as they came in or went out. It soon became clear to him that the wire connected the room with Marlanx’s headquarters near Balak in Axphain, a branch instrument being stationed in the cave above the Witch’s hut. He marvelled at the completeness of the great conspiracy; and marvelled more because it seemed to be absolutely unknown to the omnipresent Dangloss.

  On his third night he heard the Committee discussing the failure of one of Marlanx’s most cunning schemes. The news had come in over the wire and it created no small a
mount of chagrin among the Red conspirators. That one detail in their mighty plot should go contrary to expectations seemed to disturb them immeasurably. King was just beginning to realise the stupendous possibilities of the plot; he listened for every detail with a mind so fascinated by horror that it seemed hardly able to grasp the seriousness of his own position.

  It seemed that Marlanx deemed it necessary—even imperative—to the welfare of the movement, that John Tullis should be disposed of summarily before the crucial chapter in their operations. Truxton heard the Committee discussing the fiasco that attended his first attempt to draw the brainy, influential American out of the arena. It was clear that Marlanx suspected Tullis of a deep admiration for his wife, the Countess Ingomede; he was prepared to play upon that admiration for the success of his efforts. The Countess disappeared on a recent night, leaving the court in extreme doubt as to her fate. Later a decoy telegram was sent by a Marlanx agent, informing Tullis that she had gone to Schloss Marlanx, never to return, but so shrewdly worded that he would believe that it had been sent by coercion, and that she was actually a prisoner in the hands of her own husband. Tullis was expected to follow her to the Castle, bent on rescue. As a matter of fact, the Countess was a prisoner in the hills near Balak, spirited away from her own garden by audacious agents of the Iron Count. Tullis was swift to fall into the trap, but, to the confusion of the arch-plotter, he was just as swift to avoid the consequences.

  He left Edelweiss with two secret service men, bound for Schloss Marlanx. All unknown to him, a selected company of cutthroats were in waiting for him on the hills near the castle. To the amazement of the conspirators, he suddenly retraced his tracks and came back to Edelweiss inside of twenty-four hours, a telegram stopping him at Gushna, a hundred miles down the line. The message was from Dangloss and it was in cipher. A trainman in the service of Marlanx could only say, in explanation, that the American had smiled as he deciphered the dispatch and at once left the carriage with his men to await the up-train at six o’clock.