Chapter VI: Part II (1)

I. BARNEY RETURNS TO LUTHA

“What’s the matter, Vic?” asked Barney Custer of his sister. “You look peeved.”

“I am peeved,” replied the girl, smiling. “I am terribly peeved. I don’t want to play bridge this afternoon. I want to go motoring with Lieutenant Butzow. This is his last day with us.”

“Yes. I know it is, and I hate to think of it,” replied Barney; “but why in the world do you have to play bridge if you don’t want to?”

“I promised Margaret that I’d go. They’re short one, and she’s coming after me in her car.”

“Where are you going to play—at the champion lady bridge player’s on Fourth Street?” asked Barney, grinning.

His sister answered with a nod and a smile. “Where you brought down the wrath of the lady champion upon your head the other night when you were letting your mind wander across to Lutha and the Old Forest, instead of paying attention to the game,” she added.

“Well, cheer up, Vic,” cried her brother. “Bert’ll probably set fire to the car, the way he did to their first one, and then you won’t have to go.”

“Oh, yes, I would; Margaret would send him after me in that awful-looking, unwashed Ford runabout of his,” answered the girl.

“And then you WOULD go,” said Barney.

“You bet I would,” laughed Victoria. “I’d go in a wheelbarrow with Bert.”

But she didn’t have to; and after she had driven off with her chum, Barney and Butzow strolled down through the little city of Beatrice to the corn mill in which the former was interested.

“I’m mighty sorry that you have to leave us, Butzow,” said Barney’s partner. “It’s bad enough to lose you, but I’m afraid it will mean the loss of Barney, too. He’s been hunting for some excuse to get back to Lutha, and with you there and a war in sight I’m afraid nothing can hold him.”

“I don’t know but that it may be just as well for my friends here that I leave,” said Butzow seriously. “I did not tell you, Barney, all there is in this letter”—he tapped his breastpocket, where the foreign-looking envelope reposed with its contents.

Custer looked at him inquiringly.

“Besides saying that war between Austria and Serbia seems unavoidable and that Lutha doubtless will be drawn into it, my informant warns me that Leopold had sent emissaries to America to search for you, Barney, and myself. What his purpose may be my friend does not know, but he warns us to be upon our guard. Von der Tann wants me to return to Lutha. He has promised to protect me, and with the country in danger there is nothing else for me to do. I must go.”

“I wish I could go with you,” said Barney. “If it wasn’t for this dinged old mill I would; but Bert wants to go away this summer, and as I have been away most of the time for the past two years, it’s up to me to stay.”

As the three men talked the afternoon wore on. Heavy clouds gathered in the sky; a storm was brewing. Outside, a man, skulking behind a box car on the siding, watched the entrance through which the three had gone. He watched the workmen, and as quitting time came and he saw them leaving for their homes he moved more restlessly, transferring the package which he held from one hand to another many times, yet always gingerly.

At last all had left. The man started from behind the box car, only to jump back as the watchman appeared around the end of one of the buildings. He watched the guardian of the property make his rounds; he saw him enter his office, and then he crept forward toward the building, holding his queer package in his right hand.

In the office the watchman came upon the three friends. At sight of him they looked at one another in surprise.

“Why, what time is it?” exclaimed Custer, and as he looked at his watch he rose with a laugh. “Late to dinner again,” he cried. “Come on, we’ll go out this other way.” And with a cheery good night to the watchman Barney and his friends hastened from the building.

Upon the opposite side the stranger approached the doorway to the mill. The rain was falling in blinding sheets. Ominously the thunder roared. Vivid flashes of lightning shot the heavens. The watchman, coming suddenly from the doorway, his hat brim pulled low over his eyes, passed within a couple of paces of the stranger without seeing him.

Five minutes later there was a blinding glare accompanied by a deafening roar. It was as though nature had marshaled all her forces in one mighty, devastating effort. At the same instant the walls of the great mill burst asunder, a nebulous mass of burning gas shot heavenward, and then the flames settled down to complete the destruction of the ruin.

It was the following morning that Victoria and Barney Custer, with Lieutenant Butzow and Custer’s partner, stood contemplating the smoldering wreckage.

“And to think,” said Barney, “that yesterday this muss was the largest corn mill west of anywhere. I guess we can both take vacations now, Bert.”

“Who would have thought that a single bolt of lightning could have resulted in such havoc?” mused Victoria.

“Who would?” agreed Lieutenant Butzow, and then, with a sudden narrowing of his eyes and a quick glance at Barney, “if it WAS lightning.”

The American looked at the Luthanian. “You think—” he started.

“I don’t dare think,” replied Butzow, “because of the fear of what this may mean to you and Miss Victoria if it was not lightning that destroyed the mill. I shouldn’t have spoken of it but that it may urge you to greater caution, which I cannot but think is most necessary since the warning I received from Lutha.”

“Why should Leopold seek to harm me now?” asked Barney. “It has been almost two years since you and I placed him upon his throne, only to be rewarded with threats and hatred. In that time neither of us has returned to Lutha nor in any way conspired against the king. I cannot fathom his motives.”

“There is the Princess Emma von der Tann,” Butzow reminded him. “She still repulses him. He may think that, with you removed definitely and permanently, all will then be plain sailing for him in that direction. Evidently he does not know the princess.”

An hour later they were all bidding Butzow good-bye at the station. Victoria Custer was genuinely grieved to see him go, for she liked this soldierly young officer of the Royal Horse Guards immensely.

“You must come back to America soon,” she urged.

He looked down at her from the steps of the moving train. There was something in his expression that she had never seen there before.

“I want to come back soon,” he answered, “to—to Beatrice,” and he flushed and smiled at his own stumbling tongue.

For about a week Barney Custer moped disconsolately, principally about the ruins of the corn mill. He was in everyone’s way and accomplished nothing.

“I was never intended for a captain of industry,” he confided to his partner for the hundredth time. “I wish some excuse would pop up to which I might hang a reason for beating it to Europe. There’s something doing there. Nearly everybody has declared war upon everybody else, and here I am stagnating in peace. I’d even welcome a tornado.”

His excuse was to come sooner than he imagined. That night, after the other members of his family had retired, Barney sat smoking within a screened porch off the living-room. His thoughts were upon a trim little figure in riding togs, as he had first seen it nearly two years before, clinging desperately to a runaway horse upon the narrow mountain road above Tafelberg.

He lived that thrilling experience through again as he had many times before. He even smiled as he recalled the series of events that had resulted from his resemblance to the mad king of Lutha.

They had come to a culmination at the time when the king, whom Barney had placed upon a throne at the risk of his own life, discovered that his savior loved the girl to whom the king had been betrothed since childhood and that the girl returned the American’s love even after she knew that he had but played the part of a king.

Barney’s cigar, forgotten, had long since died out. Not even its former fitful glow proclaimed his presence upon the porch, whose black shadows completely enveloped him. Before him stretched a wide acreage of lawn, tree dotted at the side of the house. Bushes hid the stone wall that marked the boundary of the Custer grounds and extended here and there out upon the sward among the trees. The night was moonless but clear. A faint light pervaded the scene.

Barney sat staring straight ahead, but his gaze did not stop upon the familiar objects of the foreground. Instead it spanned two continents and an ocean to rest upon the little spot of woodland and rugged mountain and lowland that is Lutha. It was with an effort that the man suddenly focused his attention upon that which lay directly before him. A shadow among the trees had moved!

Barney Custer sat perfectly still, but now he was suddenly alert and watchful. Again the shadow moved where no shadow should be moving. It crossed from the shade of one tree to another. Barney came cautiously to his feet. Silently he entered the house, running quickly to a side door that opened upon the grounds. As he drew it back its hinges gave forth no sound. Barney looked toward the spot where he had seen the shadow. Again he saw it scuttle hurriedly beneath another tree nearer the house. This time there was no doubt. It was a man!

Directly before the door where Barney stood was a pergola, ivy-covered. Behind this he slid, and, running its length, came out among the trees behind the night prowler. Now he saw him distinctly. The fellow was bearded, and in his right hand he carried a package. Instantly Barney recalled Butzow’s comment upon the destruction of the mill—“if it WAS lightning!”

Cold sweat broke from every pore of his body. His mother and father were there in the house, and Vic—all sleeping peacefully. He ran quickly toward the menacing figure, and as he did so he saw the other halt behind a great tree and strike a match. In the glow of the flame he saw it touch close to the package that the fellow held, and then he was upon him.

There was a brief and terrific struggle. The stranger hurled the package toward the house. Barney caught him by the throat, beating him heavily in the face; and then, realizing what the package was, he hurled the fellow from him, and sprang toward the hissing and sputtering missile where it lay close to the foundation wall of the house, though in the instant of his close contact with the man he had recognized through the disguising beard the features of Captain Ernst Maenck, the principal tool of Peter of Blentz.

Quick though Barney was to reach the bomb and extinguish the fuse, Maenck had disappeared before he returned to search for him; and, though he roused the gardener and chauffeur and took turns with them in standing guard the balance of the night, the would-be assassin did not return.

There was no question in Barney Custer’s mind as to whom the bomb was intended for. That Maenck had hurled it toward the house after Barney had seized him was merely the result of accident and the man’s desire to get the death-dealing missile as far from himself as possible before it exploded. That it would have wrecked the house in the hope of reaching him, had he not fortunately interfered, was too evident to the American to be questioned.

And so he decided before the night was spent to put himself as far from his family as possible, lest some future attempt upon his life might endanger theirs. Then, too, righteous anger and a desire for revenge prompted his decision. He would run Maenck to earth and have an accounting with him. It was evident that his life would not be worth a farthing so long as the fellow was at liberty.

Before dawn he swore the gardener and chauffeur to silence, and at breakfast announced his intention of leaving that day for New York to seek a commission as correspondent with an old classmate, who owned the New York Evening National. At the hotel Barney inquired of the proprietor relative to a bearded stranger, but the man had had no one of that description registered. Chance, however, gave him a clue. His roadster was in a repair shop, and as he stopped in to get it he overheard a conversation that told him all he wanted to know. As he stood talking with the foreman a dust-covered automobile pulled into the garage.

“Hello, Bill,” called the foreman to the driver. “Where you been so early?”

“Took a guy to Lincoln,” replied the other. “He was in an awful hurry. I bet we broke all the records for that stretch of road this morning—I never knew the old boat had it in her.”

“Who was it?” asked Barney.

“I dunno,” replied the driver. “Talked like a furriner, and looked the part. Bushy black beard. Said he was a German army officer, an’ had to beat it back on account of the war. Seemed to me like he was mighty anxious to get back there an’ be killed.”

Barney waited to hear no more. He did not even go home to say good-bye to his family. Instead he leaped into his gray roadster—a later model of the one he had lost in Lutha—and the last that Beatrice, Nebraska, saw of him was a whirling cloud of dust as he raced north out of town toward Lincoln.

He was five minutes too late into the capital city to catch the eastbound limited that Maenck must have taken; but he caught the next through train for Chicago, and the second day thereafter found him in New York. There he had little difficulty in obtaining the desired credentials from his newspaper friend, especially since Barney offered to pay all his own expenses and donate to the paper anything he found time to write.

Passenger steamers were still sailing, though irregularly, and after scanning the passenger-lists of three he found the name he sought. “Captain Ernst Maenck, Lutha.” So he had not been mistaken, after all. It was Maenck he had apprehended on his father’s grounds. Evidently the man had little fear of being followed, for he had made no effort to hide his identity in booking passage for Europe.

The steamer he had caught had sailed that very morning. Barney was not so sorry, after all, for he had had time during his trip from Beatrice to do considerable thinking, and had found it rather difficult to determine just what to do should he have overtaken Maenck in the United States. He couldn’t kill the man in cold blood, justly as he may have deserved the fate, and the thought of causing his arrest and dragging his own name into the publicity of court proceedings was little less distasteful to him.

Furthermore, the pursuit of Maenck now gave Barney a legitimate excuse for returning to Lutha, or at least to the close neighborhood of the little kingdom, where he might await the outcome of events and be ready to give his services in the cause of the house of Von der Tann should they be required.

By going directly to Italy and entering Austria from that country Barney managed to arrive within the boundaries of the dual monarchy with comparatively few delays. Nor did he encounter any considerable bodies of troops until he reached the little town of Burgova, which lies not far from the Serbian frontier. Beyond this point his credentials would not carry him. The emperor’s officers were polite, but firm. No newspaper correspondents could be permitted nearer the front than Burgova.

There was nothing to be done, therefore, but wait until some propitious event gave him the opportunity to approach more closely the Serbian boundary and Lutha. In the meantime he would communicate with Butzow, who might be able to obtain passes for him to some village nearer the Luthanian frontier, when it should be an easy matter to cross through to Serbia. He was sure the Serbian authorities would object less strenuously to his presence.

The inn at which he applied for accommodations was already overrun by officers, but the proprietor, with scant apologies for a civilian, offered him a little box of a room in the attic. The place was scarce more than a closet, and for that Barney was in a way thankful since the limited space could accommodate but a single cot, thus insuring him the privacy that a larger chamber would have precluded.

He was very tired after his long and comfortless land journey, so after an early dinner he went immediately to his room and to bed. How long he slept he did not know, but some time during the night he was awakened by the sound of voices apparently close to his ear.

For a moment he thought the speakers must be in his own room, so distinctly did he overhear each word of their conversation; but presently he discovered that they were upon the opposite side of a thin partition in an adjoining room. But half awake, and with the sole idea of getting back to sleep again as quickly as possible, Barney paid only the slightest attention to the meaning of the words that fell upon his ears, until, like a bomb, a sentence broke through his sleepy faculties, banishing Morpheus upon the instant.

“It will take but little now to turn Leopold against Von der Tann.” The speaker evidently was an Austrian. “Already I have half convinced him that the old man aspires to the throne. Leopold fears the loyalty of his army, which is for Von der Tann body and soul. He knows that Von der Tann is strongly anti-Austrian, and I have made it plain to him that if he allows his kingdom to take sides with Serbia he will have no kingdom when the war is over—it will be a part of Austria.

“It was with greater difficulty, however, my dear Peter, that I convinced him that you, Von Coblich, and Captain Maenck were his most loyal friends. He fears you yet, but, nevertheless, he has pardoned you all. Do not forget when you return to your dear Lutha that you owe your repatriation to Count Zellerndorf of Austria.”

“You may be assured that we shall never forget,” replied another voice that Barney recognized at once as belonging to Prince Peter of Blentz, the one time regent of Lutha.

“It is not for myself,” continued Count Zellerndorf, “that I crave your gratitude, but for my emperor. You may do much to win his undying gratitude, while for yourselves you may win to almost any height with the friendship of Austria behind you. I am sure that should any accident, which God forfend, deprive Lutha of her king, none would make a more welcome successor in the eyes of Austria than our good friend Peter.”

Barney could almost see the smile of satisfaction upon the thin lips of Peter of Blentz as this broad hint fell from the lips of the Austrian diplomat—a hint that seemed to the American little short of the death sentence of Leopold, King of Lutha.

“We owed you much before, count,” said Peter. “But for you we should have been hanged a year ago—without your aid we should never have been able to escape from the fortress of Lustadt or cross the border into Austria-Hungary. I am sorry that Maenck failed in his mission, for had he not we would have had concrete evidence to present to the king that we are indeed his loyal supporters. It would have dispelled at once such fears and doubts as he may still entertain of our fealty.”

“Yes, I, too, am sorry,” agreed Zellerndorf. “I can assure you that the news we hoped Captain Maenck would bring from America would have gone a long way toward restoring you to the confidence and good graces of the king.”

“I did my best,” came another voice that caused Barney’s eyes to go wide in astonishment, for it was none other than the voice of Maenck himself. “Twice I risked hanging to get him and only came away after I had been recognized.”

“It is too bad,” sighed Zellerndorf; “though it may not be without its advantages after all, for now we still have this second bugbear to frighten Leopold with. So long, of course, as the American lives there is always the chance that he may return and seek to gain the throne. The fact that his mother was a Rubinroth princess might make it easy for Von der Tann to place him upon the throne without much opposition, and if he married the old man’s daughter it is easy to conceive that the prince might favor such a move. At any rate, it should not be difficult to persuade Leopold of the possibility of such a thing.

“Under the circumstances Leopold is almost convinced that his only hope of salvation lies in cementing friendly relations with the most powerful of Von der Tann’s enemies, of which you three gentlemen stand preeminently in the foreground, and of assuring to himself the support of Austria. And now, gentlemen,” he went on after a pause, “good night. I have handed Prince Peter the necessary military passes to carry you safely through our lines, and tomorrow you may be in Blentz if you wish.”

II. CONDEMNED TO DEATH

For some time Barney Custer lay there in the dark revolving in his mind all that he had overheard through the partition—the thin partition which alone lay between himself and three men who would be only too glad to embrace the first opportunity to destroy him. But his fears were not for himself so much as for the daughter of old Von der Tann, and for all that might befall that princely house were these three unhung rascals to gain Lutha and have their way with the weak and cowardly king who reigned there.

If he could but reach Von der Tann’s ear and through him the king before the conspirators came to Lutha! But how might he accomplish it? Count Zellerndorf’s parting words to the three had shown that military passes were necessary to enable one to reach Lutha.

His papers were practically worthless even inside the lines. That they would carry him through the lines he had not the slightest hope. There were two things to be accomplished if possible. One was to cross the frontier into Lutha; and the other, which of course was quite out of the question, was to prevent Peter of Blentz, Von Coblich, and Maenck from doing so. But was that altogether impossible?

The idea that followed that question came so suddenly that it brought Barney Custer out onto the floor in a bound, to don his clothes and sneak into the hall outside his room with the stealth of a professional second-story man.

To the right of his own door was the door to the apartment in which the three conspirators slept. At least, Barney hoped they slept. He bent close to the keyhole and listened. From within came no sound other than the regular breathing of the inmates. It had been at least half an hour since the American had heard the conversation cease. A glance through the keyhole showed no light within the room. Stealthily Barney turned the knob. Had they bolted the door? He felt the tumbler move to the pressure—soundlessly. Then he pushed gently inward. The door swung.

A moment later he stood in the room. Dimly he could see two beds—a large one and a smaller. Peter of Blentz would be alone upon the smaller bed, his henchmen sleeping together in the larger. Barney crept toward the lone sleeper. At the bedside he fumbled in the dark groping for the man’s clothing—for the coat, in the breastpocket of which he hoped to find the military pass that might carry him safely out of Austria-Hungary and into Lutha. On the foot of the bed he found some garments. Gingerly he felt them over, seeking the coat.

At last he found it. His fingers, steady even under the nervous tension of this unaccustomed labor, discovered the inner pocket and the folded paper. There were several of them; Barney took them all.

So far he made no noise. None of the sleepers had stirred. Now he took a step toward the doorway and—kicked a shoe that lay in his path. The slight noise in that quiet room sounded to Barney’s ears like the fall of a brick wall. Peter of Blentz stirred, turning in his sleep. Behind him Barney heard one of the men in the other bed move. He turned his head in that direction. Either Maenck or Coblich was sitting up peering through the darkness.

“Is that you, Prince Peter?” The voice was Maenck’s.

“What’s the matter?” persisted Maenck.

“I’m going for a drink of water,” replied the American, and stepped toward the door.

Behind him Peter of Blentz sat up in bed.

“That you, Maenck?” he called.

Instantly Maenck was out of bed, for the first voice had come from the vicinity of the doorway; both could not be Peter’s.

“Quick!” he cried; “there’s someone in our room.”

Barney leaped for the doorway, and upon his heels came the three conspirators. Maenck was closest to him—so close that Barney was forced to turn at the top of the stairs. In the darkness he was just conscious of the form of the man who was almost upon him. Then he swung a vicious blow for the other’s face—a blow that landed, for there was a cry of pain and anger as Maenck stumbled back into the arms of the two behind him. From below came the sound of footsteps hurrying up the stairs to the accompaniment of a clanking saber. Barney’s retreat was cut off.

Turning, he dodged into his own room before the enemy could locate him or even extricate themselves from the confusion of Maenck’s sudden collision with the other two. But what could Barney gain by the slight delay that would be immediately followed by his apprehension?

He didn’t know. All that he was sure of was that there had been no other place to go than this little room. As he entered the first thing that his eyes fell upon was the small square window. Here at least was some slight encouragement.

He ran toward it. The lower sash was raised. As the door behind him opened to admit Peter of Blentz and his companions, Barney slipped through into the night, hanging by his hands from the sill without. What lay beneath or how far the drop he could not guess, but that certain death menaced him from above he knew from the conversation he had overheard earlier in the evening.

For an instant he hung suspended. He heard the men groping about the room. Evidently they were in some fear of the unknown assailant they sought, for they did not move about with undue rashness. Presently one of them struck a light—Barney could see its flare lighten the window casing for an instant.

“The room is empty,” came a voice from above him.

“Look to the window!” cried Peter of Blentz, and then Barney Custer let go his hold upon the sill and dropped into the blackness below.

His fall was a short one, for the window had been directly over a low shed at the side of the inn. Upon the roof of this the American landed, and from there he dropped to the courtyard without mishap. Glancing up, he saw the heads of three men peering from the window of the room he had just quitted.

“There he is!” cried one, and instantly the three turned back into the room. As Barney fled from the courtyard he heard the rattle of hasty footsteps upon the rickety stairway of the inn.

Choosing an alley rather than a street in which he might run upon soldiers at any moment, he moved quickly yet cautiously away from the inn. Behind him he could hear the voices of many men. They were raised to a high pitch by excitement. It was clear to Barney that there were many more than the original three—Prince Peter had, in all probability, enlisted the aid of the military.

Could he but reach the frontier with his stolen passes he would be comparatively safe, for the rugged mountains of Lutha offered many places of concealment, and, too, there were few Luthanians who did not hate Peter of Blentz most cordially—among the men of the mountains at least. Once there he could defy a dozen Blentz princes for the little time that would be required to carry him into Serbia and comparative safety.

As he approached a cross street a couple of squares from the inn he found it necessary to pass beneath a street lamp. For a moment he paused in the shadows of the alley listening. Hearing nothing moving in the street, Barney was about to make a swift spring for the shadows upon the opposite side when it occurred to him that it might be safer to make assurance doubly sure by having a look up and down the street before emerging into the light.

It was just as well that he did, for as he thrust his head around the corner of the building the first thing that his eyes fell upon was the figure of an Austrian sentry, scarcely three paces from him. The soldier was standing in a listening attitude, his head half turned away from the American. The sounds coming from the direction of the inn were apparently what had attracted his attention.

Behind him, Barney was sure he heard evidences of pursuit. Before him was certain detection should he attempt to cross the street. On either hand rose the walls of buildings. That he was trapped there seemed little doubt.

He continued to stand motionless, watching the Austrian soldier. Should the fellow turn toward him, he had but to withdraw his head within the shadow of the building that hid his body. Possibly the man might turn and take his beat in the opposite direction. In which case Barney was sure he could dodge across the street, undetected.

Already the vague threat of pursuit from the direction of the inn had developed into a certainty—he could hear men moving toward him through the alley from the rear. Would the sentry never move! Evidently not, until he heard the others coming through the alley. Then he would turn, and the devil would be to pay for the American.

Barney was about hopeless. He had been in the war zone long enough to know that it might prove a very disagreeable matter to be caught sneaking through back alleys at night. There was a single chance—a sort of forlorn hope—and that was to risk fate and make a dash beneath the sentry’s nose for the opposite alley mouth.

“Well, here goes,” thought Barney. He had heard that many of the Austrians were excellent shots. Visions of Beatrice, Nebraska, swarmed his memory. They were pleasant visions, made doubly alluring by the thought that the realities of them might never again be for him.

He turned once more toward the sounds of pursuit—the men upon his track could not be over a square away—there was not an instant to be lost. And then from above him, upon the opposite side of the alley, came a low: “S-s-t!”

Barney looked up. Very dimly he could see the dark outline of a window some dozen feet from the pavement, and framed within it the lighter blotch that might have been a human face. Again came the challenging: “S-s-t!” Yes, there was someone above, signaling to him.

“S-s-t!” replied Barney. He knew that he had been discovered, and could think of no better plan for throwing the discoverer off his guard than to reply.

Then a soft voice floated down to him—a woman’s voice!

“Is that you?” The tongue was Serbian. Barney could understand it, though he spoke it but indifferently.

“Yes,” he replied truthfully.

“Thank Heaven!” came the voice from above. “I have been watching you, and thought you one of the Austrian pigs. Quick! They are coming—I can hear them;” and at the same instant Barney saw something drop from the window to the ground. He crossed the alley quickly, and could have shouted in relief for what he found there—the end of a knotted rope dangling from above.

His pursuers were almost upon him when he seized the rude ladder to clamber upward. At the window’s ledge a firm, young hand reached out and, seizing his own, almost dragged him through the window. He turned to look back into the alley. He had been just in time; the Austrian sentry, alarmed by the sound of approaching footsteps down the alley, had stepped into view. He stood there now with leveled rifle, a challenge upon his lips. From the advancing party came a satisfactory reply.

At the same instant the girl beside him in the Stygian blackness of the room threw her arms about Barney’s neck and drew his face down to hers.

“Oh, Stefan,” she whispered, “what a narrow escape! It makes me tremble to think of it. They would have shot you, my Stefan!”

The American put an arm about the girl’s shoulders, and raised one hand to her cheek—it might have been in caress, but it wasn’t. It was to smother the cry of alarm he anticipated would follow the discovery that he was not “Stefan.” He bent his lips close to her ear.

“Do not make an outcry,” he whispered in very poor Serbian. “I am not Stefan; but I am a friend.”

The exclamation of surprise or fright that he had expected was not forthcoming. The girl lowered her arms from about his neck.

“Who are you?” she asked in a low whisper.

“I am an American war correspondent,” replied Barney, “but if the Austrians get hold of me now it will be mighty difficult to convince them that I am not a spy.” And then a sudden determination came to him to trust his fate to this unknown girl, whose face, even, he had never seen. “I am entirely at your mercy,” he said. “There are Austrian soldiers in the street below. You have but to call to them to send me before the firing squad—or, you can let me remain here until I can find an opportunity to get away in safety. I am trying to reach Serbia.”

“Why do you wish to reach Serbia?” asked the girl suspiciously.

“I have discovered too many enemies in Austria tonight to make it safe for me to remain,” he replied, “and, further, my original intention was to report the war from the Serbian side.”

The girl hesitated for a while, evidently in thought.

“They are moving on,” suggested Barney. “If you are going to give me up you’d better do it at once.”

“I’m not going to give you up,” replied the girl. “I’m going to keep you prisoner until Stefan returns—he will know best what to do with you. Now you must come with me and be locked up. Do not try to escape—I have a revolver in my hand,” and to give her prisoner physical proof of the weapon he could not see she thrust the muzzle against his side.

“I’ll take your word for the gun,” said Barney, “if you’ll just turn it in the other direction. Go ahead—I’ll follow you.”

“No, you won’t,” replied the girl. “You’ll go first; but before that you’ll raise your hands above your head. I want to search you.”

Barney did as he was bid and a moment later felt deft fingers running over his clothing in search of concealed weapons. Satisfied at last that he was unarmed, the girl directed him to precede her, guiding his steps from behind with a hand upon his arm. Occasionally he felt the muzzle of her revolver touch his body. It was a most unpleasant sensation.

They crossed the room to a door which his captor directed him to open, and after they had passed through and she had closed it behind them the girl struck a match and lit a candle which stood upon a little bracket on the partition wall. The dim light of the tallow dip showed Barney that he was in a narrow hall from which several doors opened into different rooms. At one end of the hall a stairway led to the floor below, while at the opposite end another flight disappeared into the darkness above.

“This way,” said the girl, motioning toward the stairs that led upward.

Barney had turned toward her as she struck the match, obtaining an excellent view of her features. They were clear-cut and regular. Her eyes were large and very dark. Dark also was her hair, which was piled in great heaps upon her finely shaped head. Altogether the face was one not easily to be forgotten. Barney could scarce have told whether the girl was beautiful or not, but that she was striking there could be no doubt.

He preceded her up the stairway to a door at the top. At her direction he turned the knob and entered a small room in which was a cot, an ancient dresser and a single chair.

“You will remain here,” she said, “until Stefan returns. Stefan will know what to do with you.” Then she left him, taking the light with her, and Barney heard a key turn in the lock of the door after she had closed it. Presently her footfalls died out as she descended to the lower floors.

“Anyhow,” thought the American, “this is better than the Austrians. I don’t know what Stefan will do with me, but I have a rather vivid idea of what the Austrians would have done to me if they’d caught me sneaking through the alleys of Burgova at midnight.”

Throwing himself on the cot Barney was soon asleep, for though his predicament was one that, under ordinary circumstances might have made sleep impossible, yet he had so long been without the boon of slumber that tired nature would no longer be denied.

When he awoke it was broad daylight. The sun was pouring in through a skylight in the ceiling of his tiny chamber. Aside from this there were no windows in the room. The sound of voices came to him with an uncanny distinctness that made it seem that the speakers must be in this very chamber, but a glance about the blank walls convinced him that he was alone.

Presently he espied a small opening in the wall at the head of his cot. He rose and examined it. The voices appeared to be coming from it. In fact, they were. The opening was at the top of a narrow shaft that seemed to lead to the basement of the structure—apparently once the shaft of a dumb-waiter or a chute for refuse or soiled clothes.

Barney put his ear close to it. The voices that came from below were those of a man and a woman. He heard every word distinctly.

“We must search the house, fraulein,” came in the deep voice of a man.

“Whom do you seek?” inquired a woman’s voice. Barney recognized it as the voice of his captor.

“A Serbian spy, Stefan Drontoff,” replied the man. “Do you know him?”

There was a considerable pause on the girl’s part before she answered, and then her reply was in such a low voice that Barney could barely hear it.

“I do not know him,” she said. “There are several men who lodge here. What may this Stefan Drontoff look like?”

“I have never seen him,” replied the officer; “but by arresting all the men in the house we must get this Stefan also, if he is here.”

“Oh!” cried the girl, a new note in her voice, “I guess I know now whom you mean. There is one man here I have heard them call Stefan, though for the moment I had forgotten it. He is in the small attic-room at the head of the stairs. Here is a key that will fit the lock. Yes, I am sure that he is Stefan. You will find him there, and it should be easy to take him, for I know that he is unarmed. He told me so last night when he came in.”

“The devil!” muttered Barney Custer; but whether he referred to his predicament or to the girl it would be impossible to tell. Already the sound of heavy boots on the stairs announced the coming of men—several of them. Barney heard the rattle of accouterments—the clank of a scabbard—the scraping of gun butts against the walls. The Austrians were coming!

He looked about. There was no way of escape except the door and the skylight, and the door was impossible.

Quickly he tilted the cot against the door, wedging its legs against a crack in the floor—that would stop them for a minute or two. Then he wheeled the dresser beneath the skylight and, placing the chair on top of it, scrambled to the seat of the latter. His head was at the height of the skylight. To force the skylight from its frame required but a moment. A key entered the lock of the door from the opposite side and turned. He knew that someone without was pushing. Then he heard an oath and heavy battering upon the panels. A moment later he had drawn himself through the skylight and stood upon the roof of the building. Before him stretched a series of uneven roofs to the end of the street. Barney did not hesitate. He started on a rapid trot toward the adjoining roof. From that he clambered to a higher one beyond.

On he went, now leaping narrow courts, now dropping to low sheds and again clambering to the heights of the higher buildings, until he had come almost to the end of the row. Suddenly, behind him he heard a hoarse shout, followed by the report of a rifle. With a whir, a bullet flew a few inches above his head. He had gained the last roof—a large, level roof—and at the shot he turned to see how near to him were his pursuers.

Fatal turn!

Scarce had he taken his eyes from the path ahead than his foot fell upon a glass skylight, and with a loud crash he plunged through amid a shower of broken glass.

His fall was a short one. Directly beneath the skylight was a bed, and on the bed a fat Austrian infantry captain. Barney lit upon the pit of the captain’s stomach. With a howl of pain the officer catapulted Barney to the floor. There were three other beds in the room, and in each bed one or two other officers. Before the American could regain his feet they were all sitting on him—all except the infantry captain. He lay shrieking and cursing in a painful attempt to regain his breath, every atom of which Barney had knocked out of him.

The officers sitting on Barney alternately beat him and questioned him, interspersing their interrogations with lurid profanity.

“If you will get off of me,” at last shouted the American, “I shall be glad to explain—and apologize.”

They let him up, scowling ferociously. He had promised to explain, but now that he was confronted by the immediate necessity of an explanation that would prove at all satisfactory as to how he happened to be wandering around the rooftops of Burgova, he discovered that his powers of invention were entirely inadequate. The need for explaining, however, was suddenly removed. A shadow fell upon them from above, and as they glanced up Barney saw the figure of an officer surrounded by several soldiers looking down upon him.

“Ah, you have him!” cried the newcomer in evident satisfaction. “It is well. Hold him until we descend.”

A moment later he and his escort had dropped through the broken skylight to the floor beside them.

“Who is the mad man?” cried the captain who had broken Barney’s fall. “The assassin! He tried to murder me.”

“I cannot doubt it,” replied the officer who had just descended, “for the fellow is no other than Stefan Drontoff, the famous Serbian spy!”

“Himmel!” ejaculated the officers in chorus. “You have done a good day’s work, lieutenant.”

“The firing squad will do a better work in a few minutes,” replied the lieutenant, with a grim pointedness that took Barney’s breath away.

III. BEFORE THE FIRING SQUAD

They marched Barney before the staff where he urged his American nationality, pointing to his credentials and passes in support of his contention.

The general before whom he had been brought shrugged his shoulders. “They are all Americans as soon as they are caught,” he said; “but why did you not claim to be Prince Peter of Blentz? You have his passes as well. How can you expect us to believe your story when you have in your possession passes for different men?

“We have every respect for our friends the Americans. I would even stretch a point rather than chance harming an American; but you will admit that the evidence is all against you. You were found in the very building where Drontoff was known to stay while in Burgova. The young woman whose mother keeps the place directed our officer to your room, and you tried to escape, which I do not think that an innocent American would have done.

“However, as I have said, I will go to almost any length rather than chance a mistake in the case of one who from his appearance might pass more readily for an American than a Serbian. I have sent for Prince Peter of Blentz. If you can satisfactorily explain to him how you chance to be in possession of military passes bearing his name I shall be very glad to give you the benefit of every other doubt.”

Peter of Blentz. Send for Peter of Blentz! Barney wondered just what kind of a sensation it was to stand facing a firing squad. He hoped that his knees wouldn’t tremble—they felt a trifle weak even now. There was a chance that the man might not recall his face, but a very slight chance. It had been his remarkable likeness to Leopold of Lutha that had resulted in the snatching of a crown from Prince Peter’s head.

Likely indeed that he would ever forget his, Barney’s, face, though he had seen it but once without the red beard that had so added to Barney’s likeness to the king. But Maenck would be along, of course, and Maenck would have no doubts—he had seen Barney too recently in Beatrice to fail to recognize him now.

Several men were entering the room where Barney stood before the general and his staff. A glance revealed to the prisoner that Peter of Blentz had come, and with him Von Coblich and Maenck. At the same instant Peter’s eyes met Barney’s, and the former, white and wide-eyed came almost to a dead halt, grasping hurriedly at the arm of Maenck who walked beside him.

“My God!” was all that Barney heard him say, but he spoke a name that the American did not hear. Maenck also looked his surprise, but his expression was suddenly changed to one of malevolent cunning and gratification. He turned toward Prince Peter with a few low-whispered words. A look of relief crossed the face of the Blentz prince.

“You appear to know the gentleman,” said the general who had been conducting Barney’s examination. “He has been arrested as a Serbian spy, and military passes in your name were found upon his person together with the papers of an American newspaper correspondent, which he claims to be. He is charged with being Stefan Drontoff, whom we long have been anxious to apprehend. Do you chance to know anything about him, Prince Peter?”

“Yes,” replied Peter of Blentz, “I know him well by sight. He entered my room last night and stole the military passes from my coat—we all saw him and pursued him, but he got away in the dark. There can be no doubt but that he is the Serbian spy.”

“He insists that he is Bernard Custer, an American,” urged the general, who, it seemed to Barney, was anxious to make no mistake, and to give the prisoner every reasonable chance—a state of mind that rather surprised him in a European military chieftain, all of whom appeared to share the popular obsession regarding the prevalence of spies.

“Pardon me, general,” interrupted Maenck. “I am well acquainted with Mr. Custer, who spent some time in Lutha a couple of years ago. This man is not he.”

“That is sufficient, gentlemen, I thank you,” said the general. He did not again look at the prisoner, but turned to a lieutenant who stood near-by. “You may remove the prisoner,” he directed. “He will be destroyed with the others—here is the order,” and he handed the subaltern a printed form upon which many names were filled in and at the bottom of which the general had just signed his own. It had evidently been waiting the outcome of the examination of Stefan Drontoff.

Surrounded by soldiers, Barney Custer walked from the presence of the military court. It was to him as though he moved in a strange world of dreams. He saw the look of satisfaction upon the face of Peter of Blentz as he passed him, and the open sneer of Maenck. As yet he did not fully realize what it all meant—that he was marching to his death! For the last time he was looking upon the faces of his fellow men; for the last time he had seen the sun rise, never again to see it set.

He was to be “destroyed.” He had heard that expression used many times in connection with useless horses, or vicious dogs. Mechanically he drew a cigarette from his pocket and lighted it. There was no bravado in the act. On the contrary it was done almost unconsciously. The soldiers marched him through the streets of Burgova. The men were entirely impassive—even so early in the war they had become accustomed to this grim duty. The young officer who commanded them was more nervous than the prisoner—it was his first detail with a firing squad. He looked wonderingly at Barney, expecting momentarily to see the man collapse, or at least show some sign of terror at his close impending fate; but the American walked silently toward his death, puffing leisurely at his cigarette.

At last, after what seemed a long time, his guard turned in at a large gateway in a brick wall surrounding a factory. As they entered Barney saw twenty or thirty men in civilian dress, guarded by a dozen infantrymen. They were standing before the wall of a low brick building. Barney noticed that there were no windows in the wall. It suddenly occurred to him that there was something peculiarly grim and sinister in the appearance of the dead, blank surface of weather-stained brick. For the first time since he had faced the military court he awakened to a full realization of what it all meant to him—he was going to be lined up against that ominous brick wall with these other men—they were going to shoot them.

A momentary madness seized him. He looked about upon the other prisoners and guards. A sudden break for liberty might give him temporary respite. He could seize a rifle from the nearest soldier, and at least have the satisfaction of selling his life dearly. As he looked he saw more soldiers entering the factory yard.

A sudden apathy overwhelmed him. What was the use? He could not escape. Why should he wish to kill these soldiers? It was not they who were responsible for his plight—they were but obeying orders. The close presence of death made life seem very desirable. These men, too, desired life. Why should he take it from them uselessly? At best he might kill one or two, but in the end he would be killed as surely as though he took his place before the brick wall with the others.

He noticed now that these others evinced no inclination to contest their fates. Why should he, then? Doubtless many of them were as innocent as he, and all loved life as well. He saw that several were weeping silently. Others stood with bowed heads gazing at the hard-packed earth of the factory yard. Ah, what visions were their eyes beholding for the last time! What memories of happy firesides! What dear, loved faces were limned upon that sordid clay!