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hand delicately gloved in pearl-gray kid, for young Anton was a leader of the Strelsau dandies.

“Ah, my dear Fritz!” said he. “I am glad I hold no appointment at court. How dreadfully active you all are! I thought you were settled at Zenda for a month?”

“The queen changed her mind suddenly,” said I, smiling. “Ladies do, as you know well, you who know all about them.”

My compliment, or insinuation, produced a pleased smile and a gallant twirling of his moustache.

“Well, I thought you’d be here soon,” he said, “but I didn’t know that the queen had come.”

“You didn’t? Then why did you look for me?”

He opened his eyes a little in languid, elegant surprise. “Oh, I supposed you’d be on duty, or something, and have to come. Aren’t you in attendance?”

“On the queen? No, not just now.”

“But on the king?”

“Why, yes,” said I, and I leaned forward. “At least I’m engaged now on the king’s business.”

“Precisely,” said he. “So I thought you’d come, as soon as I heard that the king was here.”

It may be that I ought to have preserved my composure. But I am not Sapt nor Rudolf Rassendyll.

“The king here?” I gasped, clutching him by the arm.

“Of course. You didn’t know? Yes, he’s in town.”

But I heeded him no more. For a moment I could not speak, then I cried to the cabman:

“To the palace. And drive like the devil!”

We shot away, leaving Anton open-mouthed in wonder. For me, I sank back on the cushions, fairly aghast. The king lay dead in the hunting-lodge, but the king was in his capital!

Of course, the truth soon flashed through my mind, but it brought no comfort. Rudolf Rassendyll was in Strelsau. He had been seen by somebody and taken for the king. But comfort? What comfort was there, now that the king was dead and could never come to the rescue of his counterfeit?

In fact, the truth was worse than I conceived. Had I known it all, I might well have yielded to despair. For not by the chance, uncertain sight of a passer-by, not by mere rumor which might have been sturdily denied, not by the evidence of one only or of two, was the king’s presence in the city known. That day, by the witness of a crowd of people, by his own claim and his own voice, ay, and by the assent of the queen herself, Mr. Rassendyll was taken to be the king in Strelsau, while neither he nor Queen Flavia knew that the king was dead. I must now relate the strange and perverse succession of events which forced them to employ a resource so dangerous and face a peril so immense. Yet, great and perilous as they knew the risk to be even when they dared it, in the light of what they did not know it was more fearful and more fatal still.





CHAPTER X. THE KING IN STRELSAU

MR. RASSENDYLL reached Strelsau from Zenda without accident about nine o’clock in the evening of the same day as that which witnessed the tragedy of the hunting-lodge. He could have arrived sooner, but prudence did not allow him to enter the populous suburbs of the town till the darkness guarded him from notice. The gates of the city were no longer shut at sunset, as they had used to be in the days when Duke Michael was governor, and Rudolf passed them without difficulty. Fortunately the night, fine where we were, was wet and stormy at Strelsau; thus there were few people in the streets, and he was able to gain the door of my house still unremarked. Here, of course, a danger presented itself. None of my servants were in the secret; only my wife, in whom the queen herself had confided, knew Rudolf, and she did not expect to see him, since she was ignorant of the recent course of events. Rudolf was quite alive to the peril, and regretted the absence of his faithful attendant, who could have cleared the way for him. The pouring rain gave him an excuse for twisting a scarf about his face and pulling his coat-collar up to his ears, while the gusts of wind made the cramming of his hat low down over his eyes no more than a natural precaution against its loss. Thus masked from curious eyes, he drew rein before my door, and, having dismounted, rang the bell. When the butler came a strange hoarse voice, half-stifled by folds of scarf, asked for the countess, alleging for pretext a message from myself. The man hesitated, as well he might, to leave the stranger alone with the door open and the contents of the hall at his mercy. Murmuring an apology in case his visitor should prove to be a gentleman, he shut the door and went in search of his mistress. His description of the untimely caller at once roused my wife’s quick wit; she had heard from me how Rudolf had ridden once from Strelsau to the hunting-lodge with muffled face; a very tall man with his face wrapped in a scarf and his hat over his eyes, who came with a private message, suggested to her at least a possibility of Mr. Rassendyll’s arrival. Helga will never admit that she is clever, yet I find she discovers from me what she wants to know, and I suspect hides successfully the small matters of which she in her wifely discretion deems I had best remain ignorant. Being able thus to manage me, she was equal to coping with the butler. She laid aside her embroidery most composedly.

“Ah, yes,” she said, “I know the gentleman. Surely you haven’t left him out in the rain?” She was anxious lest Rudolf’s features should have been exposed too long to the light of the hall-lamps.

The butler stammered an apology, explaining his fears for our goods and the impossibility of distinguishing social rank on a dark night. Helga cut him short with an impatient gesture, crying, “How stupid of you!” and herself ran quickly down and opened the door—a little way only, though. The first sight of Mr. Rassendyll confirmed her suspicions; in a moment, she said, she knew his eyes.

“It is you, then?” she cried. “And my foolish servant has left you in the rain! Pray come in. Oh, but your horse!” She turned to the penitent butler, who had followed her downstairs. “Take the baron’s horse round to the stables,” she said.

“I will send some one at once, my lady.”

“No, no, take it yourself—take it at once. I’ll look after the baron.”

Reluctantly and ruefully the fat fellow stepped out into the storm. Rudolf drew back and let him pass, then he entered quickly, to find himself alone with Helga in the hall. With a finger on her lips, she led him swiftly into a small sitting-room on the ground floor, which I used as a sort of office or place of business. It looked out on the street, and the rain could be heard driving against the broad panes of the window. Rudolf turned to her with a smile, and, bowing,

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