Arms and the Woman by Harold MacGrath (read aloud books .TXT) 📖

When the vehicle did start it was with a rapidity which alarmed me. Corner after corner was turned, and the lights went by in flashes. It was taking a long time to reach my hotel, I thought. Suddenly it dawned upon me that the direction we were going was contrary to my instructions. I tried to open the window, but it refused to move. Then I hammered on the pane, but the driver was deaf, or purposely so.

"Hi there!" I thoughtlessly yelled in English, "where the devil are you going?"

No one paid any attention to my cries. It was becoming a serious matter. The lights grew fewer and fewer, and presently there were no lights at all. We were, I judged, somewhere in the suburbs. I became desperate and smashed a window. The carriage stopped so abruptly that I went sprawling to the bottom. I was in anything but a peaceful frame of mind, as they say, when the door swung open and I beheld, standing at the side of it, the officer who had accompanied me from the frontier.

"What tomfoolery is this?" I demanded. I was thoroughly incensed.

"It means that Herr will act peacefully or be in danger of a broken head," was the mind-easing reply of my quondam fellow passenger. The driver then came down from the box, and I saw that he was the officer who had joined us at the station.

"If it is a frolic," I said, "one of your beer hall frolics, the sooner it is ended the better for you."

The two laughed as if what I had said was one of the funniest things imaginable.

"Get out!"

"With pleasure!" said I.

Directly one of them lay with his back to the ground and the other was locked in my embrace. I had not spent four years on the college campus for intellectual benefits only. And indignation lent me additional strength. My opponent was a powerful man, but I held him in a grip of rage. Truthfully, I began to enjoy the situation. There is something exhilarating in the fighting blood which rises in us now and then. This exhilaration, however, brought about my fall. In the struggle I forgot the other, who meantime had recovered his star-gemmed senses. A crack from the butt of his pistol rendered me remarkably quiet and docile. In fact, all became a vacancy till the next morning, and then I was conscious of a terrible headache, and of a room with a window through which a cat might have climbed without endangering its spine-a very dexterous cat.

"Well," I mused, softly nursing the lump on my head, "here's the devil to pay, and not a cent to pay him with."

It was evident that, without knowing it, I had become a very important personage.


CHAPTER VII

I saw some rye bread, cold meat and a pitcher of water on the table, and I made a sandwich and washed it down with a few swallows of the cool liquid. I had a fever and the water chilled it. There was a lump on the back of my head as large as an egg. With what water remained I dampened my handkerchief and wound it around the injury. Then I made a systematic search through my clothes. Not a single article of my belongings was missing. I was rather sorry, for it lent a deeper significance to my incarceration. After this, I proceeded to take an inventory of my surroundings. Below and beyond the little window I saw a wide expanse of beautiful gardens, fine oaks and firs, velvet lawns and white pebbled roads. Marble fountains made them merry in the roseate hue of early morning. A gardener was busy among some hedges, but beyond the sound of my voice. I was a prisoner in no common jail, then, but in the garret of a private residence. Having satisfied myself that there was no possible escape, I returned to my pallet and lay down. Why I was here a prisoner I knew not. I thought over all I had written the past twelvemonth, but nothing recurred to me which would make me liable to arrest. But, then, I had not been arrested. I had been kidnapped, nothing less. Nothing had been asked of me; I had made no statement. It had been all too sudden. Presently I heard footsteps in the corridor, and the door opened. It was mine enemy. He locked the door and thrust the key into his pocket. One of his eyes was decidedly mouse-colored. The knuckles of my hand were yet sore. I smiled; he saw the smile, his jaws hardening and his eyes threatening.

"I am sorry," I said. "I should have hit you on the point of your chin; but I was in a great hurry. Did you ever try raw meat as a poultice?"

"Enough of this," he snapped, laying a pistol on the table. I was considered dangerous; it was something to know that. "You must answer my questions."

"Must?"

"Must."

"Young man you have no tact. You are not an accomplished villain," said I, pleasantly. "You should begin by asking me how I spent the night, and if there was not something you could do for my material comfort. Perhaps, however, you will first answer a few questions of mine?"

"There are only two men whose questions I answer," he said.

"And who might they be?"

"My commander and the King. I will answer one question-the reason you are here. You are a menace to the tranquility of the State."

"Oh; then I have the honor of being what is called a prisoner of State? Be careful," I cried, suddenly; "that pistol might go off, and then the American Minister might ask you in turn some questions, disagreeable ones, too."

"The American Minister would never know anything about it," said he, gruffly. "But have no fear; I should hesitate to soil an innocent leaden bullet in your carcass."

"Be gentle," I advised, "or when we meet again I shall feel it my duty to dull the lustre of your other eye."

"Pah!" he ejaculated. "We are indebted to the French for the word canaille, which applies to all Americans and Englishmen."

"Now," said I, climbing off the pallet, "I shall certainly do it."

"I warn you not to approach me," he cried, his fingers closing over the pistol.

"Well, I promise not to do it now," I declared, going over to the window. I found some satisfaction in his nervousness; it told me that he feared me. "What place is this; a palace?"

"Answer this question, sir: Why did you cross the frontier when you were expressly forbidden to do so?"

"I forbidden to cross the frontier?" My astonishment was indescribable. "Young man, you have made a blunder of some sort. I am not a Socialist or an Anarchist. I have never been forbidden to cross the frontier of any country. Your Chancellor is one of the best friends I have in the world. I went to school with his son."

He rocked to and fro on the table, laughing honestly and heartily. "You do not lack impudence. Are you, or are you not, the London correspondent of the New York ---?"

"I certainly am."

"You admit it?" eagerly.

"I see no earthly reason why I should not."

"When did you last visit this city?"

"Several years ago."

"Several years ago?" incredulously.

"Exactly. Have you ever seen me before?"

"No. But it was a little less than two years ago when you were here."

"It is scarcely polite," said I, "to question the veracity of a man you never saw before and of whom you know positively nothing." Suddenly my head began to throb again and I grew dizzy. "You hit me rather soundly with that pistol. Still, your eye ought to be a recompense."

He replied with a scowl.

"Perhaps your name is ---"

"Winthrop, John Winthrop, if that will throw any light on the subject."'

"One name is as good as another," with a smile of unbelief.

"That is true. What's in a name? There is little difference, after all, between the names of the nobility and the rabble."

"You are determined to irritate me beyond measure," said he. A German is the most sensitive man in the world as regards his title.

"Grant that I have some cause. And perhaps," observing him from the corner of my eye, "it is because you smoke such vile tobacco."

Remembering the incident in the railway carriage, he smiled in spite of the gravity of the situation.

"It was the best I had," he said; "and then, it was done in self-defence. I'll give you credit for being a fearless individual. But you haven't answered my question."

"What question?"

"Why you returned to this country when you were expressly forbidden to do so."

"I answered that," said I. "And now let me tell you that you may go on asking questions till the crack of doom, but no answer will I give you till you have told me why I am here, I, who do not know you or what your business is, or what I am supposed to have done."

He began to look doubtful. He thumped the table with the butt of the pistol.

"Do you persist in affirming that your name is Winthrop?"

"These gardens are very fine. I could see them better," said I, "if the window was larger."

"Perhaps," he cried impatiently, "you do not know where she is?"

"She?" I looked him over carefully. There was a perfectly sane light in his eyes. "Am I crazy, or is it you? She? I know nothing about any she!"

"Do you dare deny that you know of the whereabouts of her Serene Highness the Princess Hildegarde, and that you did not come here with the purpose to aid her to escape the will of his Majesty? And do you mean-Oh, here, read this!" flinging me a cablegram.

The veil of mystery fell away from my eyes. I had been mistaken for Hillars. Truly, things were growing interesting. I bent and picked up the cablegram and read:


"COUNT VON WALDEN: He has left London and is on his way to the capital. Your idea to allow him to cross the frontier is a good one. Undoubtedly he knows where the Princess is in hiding. In trapping him you will ultimately trap her. Keep me informed."


The name signed was that of a well-known military attaché at the Embassy in London. I tossed back the cablegram.

"Well?" triumphantly.

"No, it is not well; it is all very bad, and particularly for you. Your London informant is decidedly off the track. The man you are looking for is in Vienna."

"I do not believe you! It is a trick."

"Yes, it is a trick, and I am taking it, and you have lost a point, to say nothing of the time and labor and a black eye.