CHAPTER 10

At the door of the H?tel Grammont, Grey and O’Hara stood for some little time in conversation. As they were about to part, O’Hara asked: “You haven’t a revolver, have you?”

“No,” Grey answered, carelessly. “Shall I need one, do you think?”

“After your experience of last night it seems to me it would be just as well to sleep with one under your pillow.”

Grey laughed.

“I don’t fancy I shall be disturbed again,” he said.

“I’ll run over to my place and get you one,” O’Hara insisted. “I shall be back in ten minutes.”

As he went off at a brisk walk Grey turned into the wide passage that gave entrance to the court. The portier was not visible, but at the foot of the narrow stairway to the right a man who in the150 dim light had the appearance of one of the hotel valets, addressed him.

“Captain Lindenwald has returned, Monsieur Arndt,” he said, quietly, respectfully; “he met with an accident and has come back. He begs that Monsieur Arndt will see him before retiring.”

For a moment Grey stood silent in surprise.

“An accident?” he queried, recovering himself.

“Yes, monsieur. His train ran into an open switch at Villieurs. His leg is broken in two places, and he is injured internally. I will show monsieur to his room.”

As he led the way to the floor above and along a passage towards the back of the house where Herr Schlippenbach’s room had been, Grey marvelled over this new twist in the thread of fate. That the Captain had returned to this hotel and had sent for him argued, he thought, that there must have been some mistake or misunderstanding as to his departure. If he had meant to desert his charge he would not under any circumstances have acted in this fashion. Perhaps—indeed it was quite possible—he had left a letter which some stupid French servant had failed to deliver,151 or it might simply have been his intention to spend Sunday out of Paris, giving Lutz and Johann permission to take a brief holiday as well. O’Hara had said something about their luggage being gone, but that might have been an error, too.

At a turn in the passage Grey’s guide halted before a door and rapped, playing, as it were, a sort of brief tattoo on the panel with his knuckles; and at the same time a waiter passed on his way to the rear stairway.

An instant later the door was opened by someone who shielded himself behind it. The man who had led the way and done the rapping stepped back, and the American, his eyes a little dazzled by the light, put a foot across the threshold. Just what followed Grey never exactly knew. A myriad brilliant, sparkling, rapidly darting specks of fire filled his vision. In his ears was a thunderous rushing sound like a storm sweeping through a forest—a swollen river churning through rocky narrows. His body seemed dropping through interminable space, gaining momentum with every foot of its fall, but shooting straight, straight downward without a swerve; the lights flashing152 by him, the winds roaring past him as he sped. An agony of apprehension seized him. He was going to be crushed to atoms; mangled, broken, distorted. He tried to raise his arms, to clutch at the impalpable, but they were held down as if by leaden weights. To bend a knee, to lift a foot, to cry out, were alike impossible of achievement. And then, with a crash that split his ears, that tore every joint asunder, that racked every nerve, muscle, sinew and tendon, the end came. The myriad sparks, like the countless flashing facets of countless diamonds, were drowned in blackest night and the terrifying rush of furious winds and frantic waves was hushed in a silence profound and awful—the blackness and the silence of unconsciousness.

Very gradually, but in much shorter time than he fancied, or than his assailants expected, he recovered command of his faculties and became aware that he was lying upon a couch, an improvised gag in his mouth, his arms pinioned in a most uncomfortable way at his sides, and his feet bound together with cords that cut cruelly into the flesh of his ankles. He realised then that he had153 been led into a trap and had been sandbagged or otherwise assaulted as he entered it. His mind was still busy with Lindenwald and his motives, he fancied at first that he was responsible for this outrage, and warily, between his lashes, with his eyes scarcely opened, he glanced about the room in search of this gallant member of the Budavian royal household.

There were, however, but two persons present, and Lindenwald was not one of them. One was the little man whom he had mistaken for a hotel valet and who had lured him to his downfall; and the other was a tall, burly, bearded fellow, with a low forehead and sinister, bloodshot eyes. The two were standing near an open window and the larger man had in his hands a thick hempen rope, one end of which Grey observed was knotted about the heavy post of an old-fashioned mahogany bedstead which stood against the opposite wall. On more careful inspection he saw that the man was deliberately making a slip knot of the pattern known as a hangman’s noose. The only light in the room was that given by a single candle, but it sufficed for Grey to gather these details.

154 The smaller man leaned out of the window for a moment, and on drawing in his head he turned to the other with the remark:

“The carriage is there. Make haste with your knot. I’m not in love with this business.”

He spoke in German and his partner replied in the same tongue.

“Have patience,” he said, calmly; “it’s a heavy body we’ve got to lower and the knot must be strong. There’s plenty of time. He won’t come to himself for hours, and there’s no fear of anyone interrupting us now.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” was the reply, in a tone of nervous apprehension; “we have been here too long as it is. If we should fail at the last minute, the Baron would——”

“S—sh!” warned the other, “no names is safer. Just another wrapping now and she’ll hold all right. Some wrap it seven times and some only five, but I’m giving it nine, to be sure.”

He had scarcely finished the sentence when a blow, aggressive and imperious, sounded on the door. The younger man started nervously, but155 the other just phlegmatically lowered his work and raised his head.

“What’s that mean?” he whispered.

“God knows!” the other replied, agitatedly. “What’s to be done?”

“Done? Nothing. Keep still, that’s all. Blow out that candle,” he commanded. Though he spoke very low his voice penetrated and Grey caught every word.

Again a heavy blow struck the door, repeated blows, accompanied by a demand:

“Ouvrez la porte!”

The voice was O’Hara’s. Grey recognised it with a thrill. He had returned with the revolver, and not finding him in his room had set out in search of him. But how, he wondered, could he have traced him here? And then he thought of the waiter he had seen in the passage, who had evidently recognised him. Yes, the waiter must have told.

Now Grey heard other voices outside. There was the shuffling, too, of many feet. Still, the men within made no sound. The candle had been extinguished and the darkness was intense.

156 The knocking became clamorous. There was a general ominous murmur like low growling thunder from the other side of the door.

Bang! bang! bang! resounded the blows.

“Open the door! Open at once or I’ll break it down,” O’Hara roared.

Grey’s enforced silence and inertia were maddening. He bit at his gag, contorted his mouth, tugged at his arms, but could accomplish nothing, beyond a wriggling change of position.

“Perhaps they have gone,” he heard someone say, whose voice was sonorous, “perhaps they have gone. Escaped by the window. There is no light there; and no sound.”

“Stop!” It was O’Hara speaking. “Listen!”

With an effort Grey squirmed to the edge of the couch and dropped his bound body to the floor with a thud that echoed through the silent room.

“Damn him!” he heard the bigger of his two companions hiss through his teeth.

From outside there came a yell of triumph; and then a heavy, crashing, catapultian mass fell upon the fragile portal. There was a crackling, splintering sound of wood rent apart, and through the157 aperture thus made, in the dim light of the single gas-jet in the passage, O’Hara came plunging with half a dozen of the hotel employés at his heels.

At the same instant a head disappeared below the sill of the window, and the rope from the bedpost was stretched taut and creaking with the weight of two descending bodies.

The Irishman, crossing the room in a flash, missed the form of his prostrate friend by a hair’s-breadth and dived headlong for the open casement. But quick as he was the fleeing scapegraces, realising their danger, were even more speedy. As his head shot out into the night the strain on the rope relaxed and there came up from the darkness below a patter of feet on the stone flagging of the alley. His pistol was in his hand and he fired once—twice—three times—blindly into the blackness beneath, guided only by the echo of those retreating footsteps.

Meanwhile, one of the Frenchmen—Baptiste, the waiter, by the way, who had told O’Hara that he saw Monsieur Arndt enter this room—was removing the gag from Grey’s mouth, while others158 were cutting the cords that bound his limbs. For a moment the American’s view of the Irishman’s broad back was cut off by those surrounding him, but the next minute he was on his feet and—but in that instant O’Hara had disappeared. Clutching the dangling rope, he had swung himself out of the window and had slid down nimbly in pursuit.

Grey’s impulse was to follow, but at the first step he reeled dizzily and would have fallen had not Baptiste thrown an arm about him and aided him to a chair. His head was aching splittingly and his legs and arms were numb. For a little while he was lost to everything save the racking torture of physical pain. Then the voluble, excited clatter of the men about him recalled him to a sense of what had happened.

“What are you standing here for?” he cried, vexedly. “Get down to the street, every one of you. Monsieur O’Hara may need you. Off, I say. Be quick!”

“But, monsieur,” urged Baptiste, hanging back as the other five made a hasty exit, “is it not that monsieur would like a surgeon?”

159 “Surgeon be damned!” yelled Grey, excitedly. “Out with you!”

But in five minutes they were back again in augmented numbers, with O’Hara accompanied by a sergent de ville at their head.

“They got clean away, the beggars,” the Irishman announced; and then seeing Grey very white, he exclaimed: “Are you hurt, lad? What in God’s name did they do to you, the scalawags?”

“I’m only a little knocked up,” the American answered, with a forced smile; “it was a pretty hard rap on the head they gave me, though.”

The police officer had taken out a notebook, and now he began to ask questions. There was very little, however, that anyone could tell him. Grey described his assailants as accurately as he knew how, and gave him the benefit of his suspicions.

“By whom was the room engaged?” asked the sergent, addressing Baptiste; but Baptiste did not know. Then a messenger was sent to arouse the portier, who had been abed for an hour or more, and when at length he came in, still rubbing his eyes, the information that he gave conveyed nothing.

160 The room, he said, was taken that evening by a man of ordinary appearance who gave the name of Schmidt. His brother and a friend would occupy it, he told the portier, and he paid one day’s rent in advance.

“Was the man tall or short?” asked the officer.

The portier shrugged his stalwart shoulders.

“I do not know,” he replied.

“Was he dark or fair?”

“I cannot tell you, monsieur,” he repeated; “I did not notice.”

“Of what age?”

“It is impossible that I should conjecture, monsieur,” with another shrug.

Grey laughed, sneeringly. “He evidently paid more than room rent,” he said to O’Hara. “The Baron von Einhard is very clever.”

And when, a little while after, he thought of looking through his pockets he had reason to reiterate and emphasise this opinion. Not a penny of his money had been touched; his watch and chain were still in his possession, as were indeed all of his belongings save one. The ring of the Prince of Kronfeld alone was missing.