Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

“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.”

“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.”

We 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.”

“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?”

She 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?”

“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.”

“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.

“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?”

“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.

“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.

Fifteen 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.

And 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.

Now, 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.

“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, gnädiger 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.

“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.”

She 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.”

“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.

A 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.”

I 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.

I 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.

When 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.