The Mummy and Miss Nitocris: A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension by Griffith (best classic novels .TXT) 📗

till he prays to all his gods, if he has any, that he may die. He shall hunger without eating, thirst without drinking, lie down without sleeping, have wealth that he cannot spend, and palaces so hideously haunted that he dare not live in them, until, when men wish to illustrate the uttermost extreme of human misery, they shall point to Prince Oscarovitch. I, the Queen, have said it!"

Then, with a swift change of voice and manner, she laid her hands on her father's shoulders, kissed him, and murmured:

"Good-night, Dad—at least as far as this world is concerned."[Pg 251]

CHAPTER XXI WHAT HAPPENED AT TRELITZ

It was the 6th of June again.

Once more Prince Zastrow rode with Ulik von Kessner and Alexis Vollmar and the attendant huntsmen up the avenue of pines leading to the gate of the Castle of Trelitz, but now accompanied by two unseen Presences which belonged at once to their own world and also to another and wider one. Once more the great doors opened and they passed into the trophy-decked, skin-carpeted hall: and once more they were welcomed by the stately, silken-clad woman who came down the broad staircase to greet her lord and his guests. Emil von Zastrow, last and worthiest scion of his ancient line, the very beau ideal of youthful strength and manly dignity, ran half-way up the stairs to meet his lady and his love, and then the men went away to their rooms, while the Princess Hermia, true housewife as well as princess, betook herself to the pleasant task of making sure that all the preparations for dinner were complete.

The dinner was served in one of the smaller rooms, in the modern wing of the Castle, on an oval table. The Prince sat at one end faced by his beautiful consort. To his right sat his guest,[Pg 252] Alexis Vollmar, and a tall, handsome, but somewhat hard-featured woman of about thirty, with the clear blue eyes and thick, yellow-gold hair which proclaimed her a daughter of the northern German lowlands. This was Hulda von Tyssen, the Princess's companion and lady-in-waiting. They were faced by a stout, powerfully-built man with a full beard and moustache à la Friedrich, Ulik von Kessner, High Chamberlain of Boravia. Captain Alexis Vollmar was a typical Russian officer of the younger school, tall, well-set-up, and good-looking after the Muscovite fashion. He had distinguished himself in the Far East, but just now he preferred the serene atmosphere of Boravia to the thunder-laden air of Holy Russia.

The talk was of hunting and war and politics and the chances of the Russian revolution, and on this latter subject it was perfectly unrestrained, for all knew that the Powers had made a secret compact by which they bound themselves, in the event of the fall of the Romanoff Dynasty and the Arch-Ducal oligarchy—which all Europe would be very glad to see the last of—to support Prince Zastrow as elective candidate for the vacant throne.

The Revolutionary leaders had been sounded on the subject, and were found strongly in favour of the scheme. It meant a return to the ancient principle of elected monarchy, and Prince Zastrow, though now a German ruling prince, represented the union of two of the oldest and noblest families in Russia and Poland. Moreover, he had pledged himself to a Constitution which, without going to[Pg 253] Radical or Socialistic extremes, embodied all that the moderate and responsible adherents of the Revolutionary cause desired or considered suitable for the people in their present stage of political development—which, of course, meant everything that Oscar Oscarovitch did not want.

After dinner they went out through the long French windows on to a verandah which overlooked a vast sea of forest, lying dark and seemingly limitless under the fading daylight and the radiance of the brightening moon. Since their marriage day the Prince had made it a bargain that whenever they dined en famille, his wife should prepare his coffee with her own hands. She even roasted the berries and ground them herself, and, as many a time before, she did it to-night in the seclusion of the little room set apart for that and similar purposes. She was alone in the physical sense, for the two watching Presences were invisible to her, and so, for all she knew, no one saw her measure twenty drops of a colourless fluid from a little blue bottle into the coronetted cup of almost transparent porcelain which had been one of her wedding presents to her husband.

After a couple of cups of coffee and half a dozen half-smoked cigarettes, the Prince stretched his long legs out, struggled with a yawn, and said in a sleepy voice:

"My Princess, you must ask our guests to excuse me. I am tired after the long day in the sun; and so, if I may, I will go to bed."[Pg 254]

He rose, and the rest rose at the same moment. He bowed his good-night, and the two saluted. The Princess followed him into the dining-room.

The unseen watchers stood by the end of the great heavily-hung bed, in the midst of which lay Prince Zastrow, seemingly sinking into the slumber of death. Von Kessner leaned over and raised an eyelid, and said to the Princess, who was standing on the other side, the single word: "Unconscious." She bent forward for a moment as though she were bidding a silent farewell to the man to whom she had pledged her maiden troth, then straightened up and walked like some beautiful simulacrum of a woman towards the door which Vollmar held open for her....

The earth-hours passed, and the two men kept their watch by the bed, conversing now and then in whispers between long intervals of anxious silence, until three strokes sounded from the bell of the Castle clock. The whole household, save one fair woman, who, in softly-slippered feet, was pacing the floor of her bedroom, was fast asleep, and the days of sentries were far past. Von Kessner gently lifted one of the arms lying on the coverlet of the bed and let it fall. It dropped as the arm of a man who had just died might have done. Again he raised an eyelid, this time with some difficulty. The eyeball beneath was fixed and glassy as that of a corpse. He nodded across the bed to the Russian, and together they turned the bedclothes down to the foot. Then from under the bed he[Pg 255] pulled out a bundle of grey skins which he spread on the floor beside the bed. It was a sleeping bag such as hunters use in winter on the snow-swept plains and forests of Northern Europe. Vollmar turned the head-flap back. Then they lifted the body of the Prince from the bed, slid it into the sack, and buttoned the flap down over the face.

"That Egyptian's drug has worked well," whispered Von Kessner.

Vollmar nodded, and whispered back:

"I wish I had a handful of it. But it is time. He will be ready for us now."

Even as he spoke the locked door opened, as it were of its own accord, and Phadrig stood in the room dressed in the livery of the Prince's coachman. Von Kessner and Vollmar turned grey as he bowed, and whispered:

"The doors are open, Excellencies, and all is ready!"

Then the three lifted the shapeless bag and carried it with noiseless tread down to the hall and out through the half-open doors to where a carriage drawn by four black horses stood waiting. Though there was no one in charge of them, they stood as still as though carved out of blocks of black marble until the body of the Prince had been laid in the carriage and Von Kessner and Vollmar had taken their places beside it. Then Phadrig mounted the box, shook the reins, and the rubber-shod horses moved silently away at a trot, which, as soon as the[Pg 256] main road was reached, became a gallop only a little less silent than the trot.

The carriage turned aside from the road, and ran down a broad forest lane till it stopped by the shore of a little sandy inlet. The bow of a long black boat was resting on the sand, and six closely-blindfolded men were sitting on the thwarts with oars out. Another stood on the beach with the painter in his hands. The body of the Prince was carried from the carriage to the boat, and laid in the stern sheets. Von Kessner and Vollmar remained on board, and Phadrig went back to the carriage. At a short word of command the oarsman backed hard, and the boat slid off the sand into the smooth water of the little cove. Then she shot away and melted into the light haze which hung over the outside sea.

The boat stopped under the shadow of the long, low-lying black hull of a four-funnelled destroyer. A rope dropped from the deck and was made fast by Vollmar in the bow. The blindfolded crew were helped up the ladder which hung over the side and taken below forward. Then came a sharp order: "All hands below"; and when the deck was deserted, Von Kessner and Vollmar went up the ladder and were met on deck by Oscar Oscarovitch in civilian dress. There was another man beside him in the uniform of a lieutenant. He slacked off the tackle falls of the davits under which the boat had brought up, dropped down the ladder and hooked them on. When he got back to the deck the four men[Pg 257] hauled first on one tackle and then on the other, till the boat was up flush with the deck. The falls were belayed, and Oscarovitch got into the boat and opened the flap of the sleeping-sack. He touched the spring of an electric pocket-lamp and looked upon the calm, cold features of his rival. Then he buttoned down the flap again and returned to the deck. The four went down into the cabin: glasses were filled with champagne, and as Oscarovitch raised his to his lips, he said:

"Count and Captain Vollmar, I am satisfied. Let us drink to the New Empire of the Russias and the sceptre of Ivan the Terrible!"

"And his illustrious successor!" added Von Kessner.

Within half an hour a small boat was lowered; the Chamberlain and Vollmar got into it and rowed away toward the cove. The Russian officer went on to the little bridge, signalled "full speed ahead" to the engine-room, and then took the wheel. The screws ground the water astern into foam, the black shape leapt forward and sped away eastward into the glimmering dawn with its silent passenger lying in the swinging boat, and the unseen watchers standing by the helmsman....

More earth-hours passed. The sun rose upon a lonely sea. The destroyer stopped, and a white speck on the eastward horizon rapidly grew into the white shape of a large yacht flying through the water at a tremendous speed. In a few minutes she was almost alongside. She swung round in a sharp curve, slowed down and dropped[Pg 258] a boat. Oscarovitch and the lieutenant lowered the destroyer's boat till it touched the water. The other came alongside, and the body of Prince Zastrow was transferred to it, and Oscarovitch followed it. Four men from the yacht's boat jumped on board the destroyer and hauled hers up. The other was backed to the ladder and they came on board. A silent salute passed between Oscarovitch and the lieutenant, and a few minutes later the yacht's boat was hoisted to the davits, and the white shape was growing smaller and dimmer amidst the light haze that lay on the water shimmering under the slanting rays of the rising sun.

Morning grew into noon, noon faded into evening, and evening darkened into night. The yacht ran into a wide-opening gulf between two forest-clad points, on the southern of which twinkled the lights of a large town. These were soon left behind by the flying yacht, and as a vast sea of fleecy cloud drifted up from the north-east and spread its veil across the path of the half moon, a little cluster of lights gleamed out on the port bow. Her bowsprit swerved to the left till it pointed directly to them. Presently she slowed down and ran into a little land-locked bay surrounded with dense pine woods which came down almost to the water's edge, swung round and slowed up alongside a wooden jetty. From this a broad road, cut straight through the forest, sloped steeply up to a plateau on which stood a gaunt, grey, turreted castle, the very picture[Pg 259] of the sea-robbers' home that it had been in the days of Oscarovitch's not very