CHAPTER II

We did not like to leave our luggage to the mercy of the lounging soldiers, but there was nothing to do but follow the sergeant into the customs house.
Inside there was a rather dirty, not too large, room, with a single heavy table on which lay cards that had been obviously laid down so as not to disturb a game that would be resumed as soon as we had been disposed of. An army officer of evidently small importance sat behind the card table. He bowed as we entered, but did not offer us seats. It was John’s car, so I let him do the talking. He had had the bright idea of offering that ridiculous collection of French souvenirs of bureaucracy as evidence that we were fit persons to be allowed to dodge a revolution. I stood in the window to watch the luggage. The sergeant who had ushered us in went to the door and lighted a lantern such as we called a bull’s eye when I was a child. I hadn’t seen one in years. They had been useful before the days of electric torches. The Alarian sergeant was flashing signals with it. Knowing neither the Alarian language nor any telegraphic or heliographic code, I did not bother to watch the flashes, but contented myself with looking to see whether he would be answered. He could only be sending a message about us.
34It was, of course, from the white manor house that the answer came. It was the only building in sight. The residence of a superior officer, no doubt, and telephone service either disconnected or not trusted or not available. The under officer rapped suddenly on the table.
“May I claim your attention, gn?diger Herr?” It was not a question but a command. He ordered me to stay away from the window. We were, then, suspicious characters. I obeyed, but satisfied my pride by sitting down without permission. He cleared his throat and glared, then began talking volubly, but very little, so it seemed to me, to the point. “And who is it your intention to see while you are in Rheatia?” he asked, among a lot of other things. John had his mouth open to answer, when I spoke at random, suddenly determined to tell nothing that was not necessary.
35“We are in search of beautiful scenery,” I announced, with a comprehensive wave of my hand. “We are strangers both in Alaria and Rheatia. We have no ultimate destination.”
John showed no surprise. He did not even glance at me. No doubt he thought I wished to spare Helena any possible gossip which our visit might occasion among the rough soldiers. And I had had some such idea, but I felt more that our character as innocuous American tourists had been somewhat impaired by John’s nonsense with the Parisian permits. A small country is always suspicious, and at the moment the Alarians were right to be suspicious of anyone.
36The officer asked more questions, addressing them to me, now. They were for the most part the same questions he had asked John. How long had we had the car, where had we come from, where did we live in the United States, what was our occupation? Everything, indeed, except whether we had any dutiable merchandise. Obviously he was merely filling in time, while he waited for someone to come. It was quite useless to do more than be polite. A large fly droned against the window, the soldiers outside gossiped in gradually louder tones, while the sun slid down slowly, point by point, behind an invisible Herrovosca. It began to grow darker, and John was openly fidgeting, when we heard a car approaching, its cut-out wide open after the now familiar Balkan custom. The officer hastily lighted two kerosene lamps, and a moment or two later the car stopped. We heard the door slam. The officer rose, expectantly. We followed suit, and turned to face the doorway and the official who should enter.
But it wasn’t an official who came in. It was a woman.
37I stared in surprise, not only because I had expected a man, but because this was a new kind of woman to me. She was tall, and handsomely built—that’s not so new, nor was any one thing about her. After all, a newspaper man sees a lot of women, sees them with reddish-brown hair that is red in the lamplight, sees them with tawny eyes, almost the color of a cat’s, sees them with clear olive skin, warm and sunny, and sees them with a ruthless yet luscious mouth. But he rarely sees all those things in one woman, and combined with a direct and forceful authority of manner, but without any loss of femininity. Her figure, which was less voluptuous than most Central European women’s, was covered with gold-embroidered green velvet. She wore a gold chain around her neck, and rings and earrings, but no hat, and her velvet dress was cut like the peasants’, tight bodice, short bolero jacket, and full, long skirt. She might have stepped out of a medi?val play, but she was not theatrical, as the Queen Mother was. John was staring at her, more delighted than I have ever seen him. She was returning his stare with little humorous lines curled around her mouth and the corners of her eyes. I deduced that she was quite accustomed to admiration.
“I hope,” John said to me in English, “that our passports are all wrong and keep us here forever.”
“I cannot imagine,” she took him up quickly, “why you could wish such a thing.” John had the decency to blush.
“I did not know you spoke English,” he apologised.
38“It is sometimes a little fretting,” she replied, “when I do not say so, soon.”
And I decided that she was no knee-high sport. Her manner was neither over friendly nor severe. Her presence was a tonic; we had both forgotten our annoyance at waiting so long. She had too much personality to make a comfortable companion; she was, in fact, a creature to admire; a woman to wear a crown or lead armies; a Pompadour or a Joan of Arc; an actress or a politician. John had grown a full inch taller, he had a new poise, he was all gallantry and charm. As I looked at him I realised that she had done the same thing to me, that I was standing before her, all attention, waiting for any small jot of notice she might care to bestow on me. I felt that if she had stood on the Cathedral steps at Herrovosca instead of that slim little girl in white there would have been no question of revolution. This woman had the authoritative presence of Queen Yolanda, and a friendly, gracious manner besides.
39She looked at John for a full half minute, without once blinking those yellow eyes, then she turned to me, and I felt that I should have been more careful when I dressed. My shoes had not been properly shined, and the spot where I had spilled the wine must show, and I had worn the same collar all day, and my hair needed combing, but in spite of my many defects, she was kind enough to smile at me.
“These gentlemen ’ave passports?” she asked of the officer, holding out her hand for them. She laughed at the Paris driving cards. “You ’ave forgotten, per’aps, to bring your diploma from a school?” she asked John, quite seriously. “I imagine you ’ave gone to one?”
“And,” he admitted, “my insurance policy. But I will be quite happy to write home for them if you wish. I should be delighted to wait here until they come.”
“That,” she answered, not displeased, “is just the way all the Americans speak in the books I ’ave read. Your passports seem to be quite in order. What is your destination in Rheatia?”
John looked so chagrined that I answered, “We are merely tourists, we have no real destination. I am a writer, Mr. Colton is an artist, we mean to write and paint, but so far we have not stopped long enough to do any work.”
40“Ah, then you are Marshall Carvin? You may proceed,” she permitted, sweetly. She referred to the passports for another moment, then handed them back to us with a smile. “Au revoir, messieurs.”
“Thank you,” I acknowledged. “Au revoir, madame.”
John had lost the smartness of his manner when he first saw her. “I hope you will forgive me for being too enthusiastic about your country,” he said. “We are a naturally effusive nation, and are sometimes led into overdoing things, through excess of appreciation. We even sing praises to things so unreachable as the moon.”
She smiled again, looking straight at John, “Oh, I am sure the moon is not unreachable—by songs and praises,” she said. “Au revoir, messieurs.”
“And I wonder,” John murmured as we climbed into the car again, “just why she said ‘au revoir’ instead of ‘à dieu’—”
I humored him by saying the thing he obviously wanted to hear. “Perhaps she wanted to see you again.”
41“Oh,” John grinned, “you think she is a booster for Alaria—bigger and better tourists—and more of them—sort of thing? All the same I wonder who the devil she can be. She didn’t even consult that idiot officer, just waved us out, and they let us go. And that car was a Hispano-Suiza.”
“And none too good for her?” I suggested. “Did you notice the regal air of the lady? Or the gold embroidery on the green velvet? We’ll have to ask Helena who she is. It would be a good thing to know, because, for all she is ornamental, and so very charming, I should hate to oppose that lady seriously.”
“Sure you would,” John chortled enthusiastically, “she knows what she wants, but she has nice, warm eyes, and a woman with warm, pleasant eyes is always manageable.” With which bit of optimism he drove on through the Pass, too intent on dreaming to talk any more.
The sun had touched the top of the western hills when we left the customs house. The mountains ahead of us raised their black jagged mass in the ruddy light, coppery and blown bare except in the valleys, where the trees showed dark and shadowy now.
42The road was surprisingly good, for a mountain road in that distant part of the world. The rocks closed in around us almost within a stone’s throw of the customs house. The engine climbed bravely for an unbelievable time before it succumbed to the grade and made a shift necessary. Up and up and up, and then down a little, and then up again and a long way around a projecting ledge, into a gorge that made John switch on the lights suddenly; past that, and up again, then through a small wooded valley, and never a side road or a human being in sight, or any signs of habitation except a half dozen tiny cabins high above the road, and, a few times, narrow winding trails that would have been fit for a mule or perhaps a horse, but bad for a car. It was the wildest country I had ever driven through, and though the day had been almost hot, it was cold at that altitude. A narrow young moon came out and added by its familiar brilliance to the wild, deep shadows on either side of us.
43And then, almost suddenly, we began to go down, and came upon a barrier across the road, with a small stone building beside it. It was the Rheatian customs. We had forgotten all about that. The frontier, of course, was somewhere back in the mountains. I remembered it as I had seen it traced in a dash-and-dot line on the Baedeker map. Each country, for the safety and comfort of its men, no doubt, ignored the rocky strip of no-man’s-land with its dozen or so inhabitants,—if there were more they were hidden well—and placed its customs houses miles apart.
We stopped and honked the horn, and presently a soldier came with an electric torch in one hand and a red and a white table napkin in the other. He glanced casually at our passports, asked us if we had any tobacco or spirits, and then waved us on, too intent to get back to his dinner to prove our statements by examination. We bade him “Gute nacht,” as he opened the gates, but he did not wait even for us to get through them before he had gone back to his dinner.
A few hundred yards farther and we were out of that dismal country, on a lower spur of the mountains, with lights twinkling through the trees below us, and soon there were fields and fences and farm animals, and a trim hamlet where we asked the way to Waldek, and were directed with German politeness to continue as we were going, “but three kilometers farther, then turn to the left, and at the top of the hill you will see the castle directly ahead.”
44We were at the top of the hill almost before we knew it, looking down into the little valley where Helena’s widowhood had made her sole mistress. It was prosperously cultivated, and dotted with little thatched farm houses. Beyond, high on a jagged hill, rose the dark towers of the castle, with lights in the lower windows. It was a fairy-book sort of place, with cypress trees cutting clean lines into the sky, less wild and warlike than the manor house on the Alarian side of the mountains, yet stern with the feudal flavor of an old ballad. Over it loomed a thunder cloud, cut at jagged intervals by lightning.
“Entirely up to specifications,” John said, as we dipped into the valley. “We’ll stay here and do some painting.”
“Right,” I said, “she’ll be glad to have us, so don’t worry about that.”
45The steep grade to the castle we made with difficulty, in slippery, sticky mud, through a driving rain. The car coughed and sputtered, but climbed steadily enough, and we finally arrived, wet, but hopeful of food and rest, at Helena’s ancient threshold. We rolled across a wooden bridge over the old moat that had once protected the Waldeks from invading hordes, then I climbed out stiffly, and rattled the great, wrought-iron knocker that hung on the gate, and presently footsteps came toward us. The gate swung open in two giant halves. We entered a large courtyard. At one side, part of an ancient stable had been converted into a garage. Two servants carried the luggage from the car, and another presently came to lead us to the living quarters of the castle.
“Spooky place,” John muttered.
“Nonsense,” I said, “you’re afraid it’s going to be dull, and you are trying to cook up an excuse to leave, which isn’t decent, before you’ve even met your hostess. Wait till you see Marie, too. I’ve a hunch she’s going to be rather a nice little thing, in spite of the pastries and marrons glacés.”
46Helena came to receive us in the great Hall. It was hung with ancient embroideries, and furnished like a department store. Antique French upholstery, Turkish carpets, Russian enamels, English prints, Asiatic vases, Chinese jades, and a hundred other varieties of bibelots combined themselves, under the immensity of the carved stone groinings, into a somehow beautiful whole. John was impressed.
“What a joy to see you in this lonely place!” Helena smiled at us, a little wearily, perhaps. “I had your letter, and was delighted. How did you come? By Herrovosca? Oh. Did you stop there? Such a lovely city—or—did this terrible news hurry you through?” Her voice sounded strained, she talked too fast, and her eyes were certainly anxious. Also she twisted her hands when she talked. While I was a police reporter I saw lots of women do that: women accused of crimes, or whose children were lost.
“Do you think there will be trouble?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said, as though relieved to hear the words.
“But surely that will not affect you, across the frontier?” said John, looking at her hard.
“We are very near the frontier.” She smiled, nervously, “and very lonely.”
“You don’t have visitors often?” I asked.
“Not now, especially, with this trouble in Alaria.”
47“Does that affect your visitors?” John asked, interested.
“Naturally. The political situation has been strained for so long. There have been two open attempts on Prince Conrad’s life. There is a rumor that Bela was responsible but I cannot believe that. And now Bela killed. The other rumor makes me wonder if Conrad is not responsible, but there were so many who would have liked to see him dead.”
“How was he killed?” I asked.
“That is a queer thing,” she said. “He was out hunting with several friends. He became separated from most of them, and when they missed him and searched they found his body terribly crushed at the foot of a cliff. Two of the friends who went with him have disappeared. Of course, the mountains are dangerous for climbing, but there is little doubt that he was thrown down. They know it is Bela because he was fully dressed, and wore all his jewelry. Yolanda said his face was horrible, crushed beyond recognition. Oh, dear, if I only knew what is happening in Herrovosca.”
48We told her what we had seen. She leaned forward, listening intently. “The poor, poor, Queen,” she murmured when we told of her appearance in the street as we entered the city. “She had known of Bela’s death for three hours then.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Oh, news travels fast here,” she said. “In order to avert possible trouble she went for her usual drive. That is what it means to be a queen. Never a moment that does not belong to the people. She is a wonderful, wonderful woman. You cannot imagine how wonderful a woman, Marshall, unless you know her. Go on, tell me what happened next.”
We told her the story of the afternoon in Herrovosca. When we reached the description of the girl in white she jumped up suddenly. “How did they receive her?” she asked, excitedly.
“Pretty well, on the whole,” John said.
“There was no trouble? What did Conrad do?”
“He made a splendid address to introduce her, and the crowd seemed to want to listen to him.”
49“Oh, yes, I was afraid of that. That is bad,” Helena interrupted. “Conrad is the cleverest man in Alaria, but he is not so clever as the dear Queen. Oh, you don’t know how she has planned and worked with never a thought of herself. She knew that Bela must be assassinated sooner or later. He was so desperately hated, you see. And after Conrad had been shot at twice, we knew that something more must happen. Yolanda tried to guide Bela, but even when he did good things he managed to make himself even more unpopular. He was so tactless, so careless and stubborn and profligate. He was jealous of Conrad, and loathed being a king. He even hated Alaria. He would have abdicated long ago if Yolanda had not prevented him. She played on his dislike of Conrad to prevent his giving up the throne to him. Of course there are a lot of reasons to think it may be Conrad who has assassinated Bela, but what worries me is that whoever did strike at Bela may strike at Marie, too. Oh, but I can’t think of that. I won’t think of it.”
“Marie?” I asked, suddenly realising that we had not seen Marie. “Marie, Helena?”
50She laughed sharply, walking up and down that long hall—laughed and cried, and then stumbled into a chair, and began sobbing desperately. I felt helpless before this phase of feminine grief. She wanted to talk, to tell us about it all, and yet just telling was too much for her. I patted her shoulder, awkwardly, I fear, and motioned John back when I saw him start for the bell. That, I was sure, was not the right thing to do. Helena wanted to confide in people of her own sort. She had been among her Rheatian servants too long, and lonely. We had arrived at an opportune time. Soon she would stop crying and feel better. I had seen women in hysterics before.
And I was right. In a few minutes she sat up straight again. “Yes, Marie,” she said, quite calmly. “The girl I called my daughter, Maria Lalena, Princess of Alaria. Queen of Alaria, now, if God is being gracious to her.”
“You mean,” I asked, trying to remember all I could of Marie, “you never had a daughter?”
51“Oh, yes,” she said, “I had a daughter. But my Marie—died, and Yolanda gave Maria Lalena to me to bring up. It was her idea. We all thought, then, that the monarchy would fall any day, with only a boy on the throne, and a bad boy at that. I went to Yolanda in her grief. A lonely widow, bereft of her child, to another lonely woman in a worse plight.”
“I didn’t know she was a friend of yours,” I said.
“Since she is a queen it is more correct to put it the other way,” she said. “She has honored me with her friendship ever since my marriage. I am probably the only intimate she has, because I am the only one who has no political interest in her, but only a personal one. I have not even profited in a social way, since I have lived here so quietly, in order not to attract attention to Maria Lalena.”
“That’s why I haven’t seen you,” I put in.
“Yes. You haven’t seen me since I was in Paris with Marie. Poor Marie. To me she is merged in Maria Lalena. It is as though they were one person and my child. I have loved her like my own child. And then this noon—was it only this noon?—it seems a week ago, at least—they phoned to send Marie. I wanted to go with her, but Yolanda said it was best not, so I sent her alone in my car, and the car has not come back. Oh, we have been so careful of her. She has not been in Herrovosca since the day she came here, after the awful affair of that bomb. Think what it must have meant to her today, to brave the mob in that square, with Conrad beside her, her only spokesman.”
52“Poor child,” John said, “but she looked very calm and very charming, and Conrad was really nice about it.”
“He’s not to be trusted. Not to be trusted for a moment.”
“Aren’t you perhaps prejudiced because he and the Queen are enemies?”
“Perhaps, but there is something very strange about Conrad. He goes off to that old manor house of his—”
“Not the one near the frontier customs house?” John asked.
“No, no, that is the Count Visichich’s place. The young Count is in charge of the post there. Why?”
We told her about the young woman in green velvet.
53“Katerina,” she said, “the old Count’s daughter, Countess Katerina Visichich. She dresses like that, and it was just as well you didn’t tell her you were coming here. You’d have stayed there for a while on some pretext or other. Being Americans, she did not suspect you. Probably she knows her mistake by now, though. They are not fools, those Visichiches. Strong supporters of Conrad’s, intimate friends of his, too. He lives about ten miles from their place, nearer Herrovosca. The Visichich men are probably busy brewing trouble somewhere while Katerina watches the road into Rheatia. This is the only way through the mountains for ninety miles in one direction and sixty in the other. And the only other important way is the railroad tunnel. You were lucky to get through.” She rose suddenly and moved about the room restlessly. “If I could only get word from Alaria. Oh, they know. They will send news when they can. They are afraid of Conrad—and of Katerina and the Black Ghost and the Soviets and the Republicans, and the people Bela has antagonized. There are so many people to be afraid of here.”
“The others, naturally,” John interrupted, “but why should you be afraid of the Black Ghost? You surely don’t believe in ghosts?”
54“Not in most ghosts,” Helena answered, “but the Black Ghost I do believe in. Since the first Turkish occupation of Alaria he and his band have guarded the Pass. The legend is that the leader was a Knight Templar. At least he always wears the white cross of the Templars on his breast.”
“And has done so for eight hundred years?” I asked. “Oh, come, now, Helena, really.”
“And has done so from time to time at least, for eight hundred years,” Helena answered, and I knew by her voice that she was quite convinced of the truth of her statement, “and I can’t see the necessity for laughing at my belief. I have seen him on the Pass. He was looking down at me when I came back from Herrovosca one day. He was standing on a shelf of rock overlooking the road. It was dusk, but I saw him quite plainly. The chauffeur saw him, too, and almost ran the car off the road, he was so frightened. I am afraid, too.”
“You imagined it,” I said.
55“No,” she stated, firmly, “I did not imagine that. But even if you don’t believe in it, do me the favor to stay here with me a few days. Take a few day’s leave from the twentieth century, and visit me in these middle ages, will you?”
“We began our leave from the twentieth century this afternoon,” John said, “in the square at Herrovosca. And certainly we’ll stay, won’t we, Carvin?”
“Of course,” I agreed, “with the greatest eagerness. As a matter of fact you simply couldn’t pry me away.”
“And not just a few days,” John announced, “we’re on indefinite leave from modernity. We’ll stay until everything is quiet again.”
Helena shook her head. “No,” she said. “That would be forever. A few days will cheer me up, nicely, and I’ll be most grateful. Of course you’ve had no dinner. It must be nine o’clock or after. I’ll have some food brought for you. Will you go to your rooms first?”
We went meekly, without argument.
56Fifteen minutes later, by the sort of miracle common in large European households, we were served with a complete and beautifully cooked dinner. Helena nibbled a bit at first, and then began to eat hungrily, as she conquered her worry talking about it. About half past ten she insisted that we must be tired, as of course we were, and urged us off to bed. She looked exhausted, so we went obediently up to the three rooms that had been allotted to us. As I threw open the long window in my bedroom I saw that the rain had stopped. The night was clear and quiet, and I turned in with never a further thought of Marie or any other disturbing thing.
I don’t know quite how long I slept, but I awoke, feeling stifled, from a nightmare of a roaring motor car and a jumbled impression of Conrad, Marie, Yolanda and the Countess Visichich. I got up and went for air to the window. Outside, a narrow gallery ran along one whole side of the castle. I put on my dressing gown and, trying to shake off the unpleasant impression of my dream, walked slowly along, looking down over the face of the cliff below. An eagle surveying the valley from his eyrie could have had no more unbroken view of the world of mankind below him. I thought that the gallery would end at the corner, but when I reached it I found that it continued along one of the irregular juts on the north face of the castle, where the rising ground had been made into a garden. Tall cypress trees cut their sharp silhouettes against the starlit sky. It was all so beautiful that I wandered on down a short flight of steps to where a marble bench showed white under the dark green of the shrubbery. There I sat down and felt in my pocket for a cigarette. I usually keep a package and matches in that pocket, but this time they were missing, so I merely sat still and did nothing.
57And suddenly I was glad I had not lit a match that would have made my presence obvious, for I distinctly saw a dark figure—the figure of a man—come through the bushes, and approach the castle. I rose and followed, feeling that midnight prowlers should be watched, though I realised that this might easily be a friendly, though silent, visitor.
He approached the blank wall of the castle. Its great stone bulk loomed above, sinister in the dim starlight, and then, without a sound, the man disappeared.
58Now, I am prejudiced against prowling figures that disappear suddenly while I am watching them. It was a new experience to me, and I felt that the world was not living up to its proper matter-of-fact character. I went to the spot where he had last been visible. A tall bush grew there, beside a vine that clung to the old wall of the castle. Under the bush—I felt carefully—was only stone wall. The vine was very thick, and cast a deeper blackness in the dark, but so far as I could feel there was no door there. Yet a man had been in that spot, and was gone, and somewhere in that great mass of stonework Helena was quite probably out of earshot of any of her servants.
I went quickly back to our rooms, and awoke John to tell him what I had seen. He put on shoes and trousers and a dressing gown and went down into the garden to watch, while I went inside to find and warn Helena.
I found the great hall, and then knew in a general way where her rooms were, because she had waved vaguely toward them as she talked during the evening. However, the old castle was such a rambling, crooked pile, that I should probably never have found my way if I had not roused a maid who came rushing at me with a tall candle lighting a thick white cotton nightgown.
59“Madame will not be disturbed,” she proclaimed, gloomily, Cassandra-like, “every night she locks her door, and no one dares go near her. Not for my life, gn?diger Herr, would I knock at her door.”
“Show me the door, then,” I said, “and I will knock.”
“No, the Herrschaften must understand, if I disobey her, my lady will send me away forever, and then how will my old mother and father live?”
I fished an American dollar from my pocket. It is an all-potent open sesame in Europe. The girl’s eyes opened wide, her hand stretched out, then she drew it back, and shook her head, longingly, “I dare not, wohlgeborner Herr,” she said, politely.
“Show me her door, merely, and I will knock, and never tell her how I found it,” I offered, and put the dollar in her fingers. She looked at me, then at the dollar. Then, as nonchalantly as though she were putting it in a gold-mesh purse, she lifted her nightgown, and placed the dollar safely inside a long thick woollen stocking. She seemed to be quite dressed under the nightgown.
60“That door,” she said, and pointed down the hall, and then she ran away, shamelessly. Her candle flickered down the corridor, and was gone.
The indicated door was wider than its neighbors; wider and heavier. It had a somber and secretive air about it. I paused, as I raised my hand to knock, and then, amused that a mere wooden door should awe me, I knocked, and waited. After a moment I knocked again, and called. Then the door opened, and Helena stood before me, still fully dressed. Behind her the room was dimly lighted by not more than three or four candles.
“You are safe?” I asked.
Her voice was so calm as to be almost cold as she answered slowly, “Safe? Why should I not be safe? My door is locked and no one can get to me.”
“I was afraid something might have happened to you,” I said, “because I was in the garden just now, and I distinctly saw a man prowling around. Finally he disappeared into what seemed to be the blank wall of the castle.”
61She laughed, then, a little. “Oh, Marshall,” she said, “I am afraid I led you to expect too much tonight, telling you that we lived in the middle ages here. Better go back to bed, and don’t dream dreams. Everything will come right in the morning. Good night, Marshall. Thanks for coming to see.”
“I tell you, Helena, I saw—”
“You dreamed, Marshall.”
“Are you quite sure there isn’t an old secret passage into the castle?”
“If there had been my husband would have told me about it. I’ve lived here a number of years, you know.”
“There are others who’ve lived here longer.”
“My husband’s ancestors built the place. I am afraid you have been reading novels.”
“I saw a man prowling in the garden. And he disappeared into a stone wall.”
“One of the servants, probably.”
“If he was, he didn’t want to be seen.”
“Oh, probably he came to see one of the maids. I can’t watch them all the time.”
“You shouldn’t be so far away from everyone, it isn’t safe.”
62“Don’t worry, Marshall,” she answered. She was so calm that, half convinced, I began to think that I had been making a lot of fuss over nothing, when a crash sounded behind her, like a small table going over, and one of the candles went out. I could tell that because the room was a shade darker after the crash than before. Helena did not move. I waited for her to look around, or make some explanation. She was silent.
“Very well,” I said. “Good night, Helena,” and turned away, a little hurt and angry. Then I remembered how fast and excitedly she had talked before dinner, and tried once more. “You’re sure you’re all right?”
“Believe me,” she answered, “I am in no need of protection, but thanks for coming, Marshall.” She closed the door, then. It was no affair of mine, of course, if she did not want it to be. Though I was her only living relative, I had never seen much of her. I was an outsider and an interloper. I went back to my room, and then down into the garden to find John. We sat again on the white bench where I had first seen the prowler.
63A tiny crack of light showed down the center of a corner window, just above us. I decided that that must be one of Helena’s windows. That would be likely, for they overlooked the garden and the valley, too. A beautiful location. I showed John the point where I had last seen the figure that had so mysteriously disappeared. And then we both saw something that I had missed before. It lay just at the foot of the bush that I still felt must mask a secret entrance into the castle. A small square of white. We stooped together, and our heads bumped. John came up from the affray, rubbing his head, but with the paper. I am only five years older than John, but I was born a little slower.
“I am going to wait here,” he said. “Take it inside and have a look.”
“It proves there was someone here,” I said.
“I never doubted it,” he replied.
“Helena said she did.”
“There may have been someone there, forcing her to speak as she did.”
64I had thought of that, too. “I have a feeling that something’s wrong,” I told him, “but it’s so hard to butt in when you don’t know. After all, I haven’t seen Helena for eight years. I haven’t known her well since her marriage. That’s twenty years, and there’s all this Alarian business.”
I held the paper closely inside my hand until I gained the safety of our sitting room, where I pulled the open curtain tight across the window before I looked at it. The air of the old place had so caught me that I felt I might be looking on the key to some mystery of life and death.
65I cannot speak Alarian, but German is spoken in Rheatia and I do speak German. Alarian is a Turkish language written in Latin characters with a large number of borrowed words. I know nothing of Turkish, but its general appearance is familiar to me. I learned a lot of things as a boy, collecting stamps. At least I can distinguish that language group from other groups, which isn’t much of a feat. This paper was slightly crumpled. On it, in ink, were scrawled twelve words that I was quite sure were Alarian. Not one word could I distinguish, yet I suddenly felt guilty staring at that note intended for other eyes. Only the language had saved me from reading it. I stuffed the thing in my pocket, and started back for John. We must stop spying. Probably the whole business was nonsense, anyway, and if not, the man who had come may have been a messenger from the Queen, and it was conceivable that she would not wish him to discover that she had confided in us. Probably she regretted that confidence, now. We were outsiders, we could do her harm, but no good.
66When I got back to the bench, John was gone. He was not near the bush, either. I sat down to wait. No use hurrying and scurrying around a dark garden in frantic search for a missing man when that man was six feet one, and as heavy as John. Still, I felt uneasy. If there were one midnight prowler, there might so easily be two. And the bench where I was sitting was open on all sides. I went back to the bush, and leaned against the wall. It was a good enough place to wait, since we had not agreed on any meeting place. The time seemed eternal. I was getting sleepy again. The garden was still. Too still. Only the leaves rustled a little. I could almost imagine that I could hear the stars gossiping among themselves. Something that was probably an owl made a cool, fluttering sound. I shifted my position. Where could he be? And suddenly I fell backward. The wall had given way, something fell on me and I heard a muttered curse. An unseen pair of hands threw me into some bushes. I tried to scramble to my feet, but the bushes were full of thorns. I have hated roses ever since. I scratched my face and hands in my efforts, then something struck me glancingly on the jaw, and I fell back again.