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achieve a certain hopeful content when the door to his prison
opened and Peter of Blentz, black and scowling, entered.
At his elbow was Captain Ernst Maenck.
"Leopold has defeated the Austrians," announced the
former. "Until you returned to Lutha he considered the Aus-
trians his best friends. I do not know how you could have
reached or influenced him. It is to learn how you accom-
plished it that I am here. The fact that he signed your
pardon indicates that his attitude toward you changed sud-
denly--almost within an hour. There is something at the
bottom of it all, and that something I must know."
"I am Leopold!" cried the king. "Don't you recognize me,
Prince Peter? Look at me! Maenck must know me. It was I
who wrote and signed the American's pardon--at the point
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of the American's revolver. He forced me to exchange cloth-
ing with him, and then he brought me here to this room
and left me."
The two men looked at the speaker and smiled.
"You bank too strongly, my friend," said Peter of Blentz,
"upon your resemblance to the king of Lutha. I will admit
that it is strong, but not so strong as to convince me of the
truth of so improbable a story. How in the world could the
American have brought you through the castle, from one
end to the other, unseen? There was a guard before the
king's door and another before this. No, Herr Custer, you
will have to concoct a more plausible tale.
"No," and Peter of Blentz scowled savagely, as though to
impress upon his listener the importance of his next utterance,
"there were more than you and the king involved in his
sudden departure from Blentz and in his hasty change of
policy toward Austria. To be quite candid, it seems to me
that it may be necessary to my future welfare--vitally neces-
sary, I may say--to know precisely how all this occurred,
and just what influence you have over Leopold of Lutha.
Who was it that acted as the go-between in the king's nego-
tiations with you, or rather, yours with the king? And what
argument did you bring to bear to force Leopold to the
action he took?"
"I have told you all that I know about the matter,"
whined the king. "The American appeared suddenly in my
apartment. When he brought me here he first blindfolded
me. I have no idea by what route we traveled through the
castle, and unless your guards outside this door were bribed
they can tell you more about how we got in here than I
can--provided we entered through that doorway," and the
king pointed to the door which had just opened to admit
his two visitors.
"Oh, pshaw!" exclaimed Maenck. "There is but one door
to this room--if the king came in here at all, he came
through that door."
"Enough!" cried Peter of Blentz. "I shall not be trifled
with longer. I shall give you until tomorrow morning to make
a full explanation of the truth and to form some plan whereby
you may utilize once more whatever influence you had
over Leopold to the end that he grant to myself and my
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associates his royal assurance that our lives and property
will be safe in Lutha."
"But I tell you it is impossible," wailed the king.
"I think not," sneered Prince Peter, "especially when I tell
you that if you do not accede to my wishes the order of the
Austrian military court that sentenced you to death at Bur-
gova will be carried out in the morning."
With his final words the two men turned and left the
room. Behind them, upon the floor, inarticulate with terror,
knelt Leopold of Lutha, his hands outstretched in supplica-
tion.
The long night wore its weary way to dawn at last. The
sleepless man, alternately tossing upon his bed and pacing
the floor, looked fearfully from time to time at the window
through which the lightening of the sky would proclaim the
coming day and his last hour on earth. His windows faced
the west. At the foot of the hill beneath the castle nestled
the village of Blentz, once more enveloped in peaceful si-
lence since the Austrians were gone.
An unmistakable lessening of the darkness in the east
had just announced the proximity of day, when the king
heard a clatter of horses' hoofs upon the road before the
castle. The sound ceased at the gates and a loud voice broke
out upon the stillness of the dying night demanding en-
trance "in the name of the king."
New hope burst aflame in the breast of the condemned
man. The impostor had not forsaken him. Leopold ran to
the window, leaning far out. He heard the voices of the
sentries in the barbican as they conversed with the new-
comers. Then silence came, broken only by the rapid foot-
steps of a soldier hastening from the gate to the castle. His
hobnail shoes pounding upon the cobbles of the courtyard
echoed among the angles of the lofty walls. When he had
entered the castle the silence became oppressive. For five
minutes there was no sound other than the pawing of the
horses outside the barbican and the subdued conversation
of their riders.
Presently the soldier emerged from the castle. With him
was an officer. The two went to the barbican. Again there
was a parley between the horsemen and the guard. Leo-
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pold could hear the officer demanding terms. He would
lower the drawbridge and admit them upon conditions.
One of these the king overheard--it concerned an assur-
ance of full pardon for Peter of Blentz and the garrison; and
again Leopold heard the officer addressing someone as "your
majesty."
Ah, the impostor was there in person. Ach, Gott! How
Leopold of Lutha hated him, and yet, in the hands of this
American lay not only his throne but his very life as well.
Evidently the negotiations proved unsuccessful for after a
time the party wheeled their horses from the gate and rode
back toward Blentz. As the sound of the iron-shod hoofs
diminished in the distance, with them diminished the hopes
of the king.
When they ceased entirely his hopes were at an end,
to be supplanted by renewed terror at the turning of the
knob of his prison door as it swung open to admit Maenck
and a squad of soldiers.
"Come!" ordered the captain. "The king has refused to
intercede in your behalf. When he returns with his army he
will find your body at the foot of the west wall in the court-
yard."
With an ear-piercing shriek that rang through the grim
old castle, Leopold of Lutha flung his arms above his head
and lunged forward upon his face. Roughly the soldiers
seized the unconscious man and dragged him from the room.
Along the corridor they hauled him and down the wind-
ing stairs within the north tower to the narrow slit of a
door that opened upon the courtyard. To the foot of the
west wall they brought him, tossing him brutally to the stone
flagging. Here one of the soldiers brought a flagon of water
and dashed it in the face of the king. The cold douche re-
turned Leopold to a consciousness of the nearness of his
impending fate.
He saw the little squad of soldiers before him. He saw
the cold, gray wall behind, and, above, the cold, gray sky
of early dawn. The dismal men leaning upon their shadowy
guns seemed unearthly specters in the weird light of the
hour that is neither God's day nor devil's night. With diffi-
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culty two of them dragged Leopold to his feet.
Then the dismal men formed in line before him at the
opposite side of the courtyard. Maenck stood to the left of
them. He was giving commands. They fell upon the doomed
man's ears with all the cruelty of physical blows. Tears
coursed down his white cheeks. With incoherent mumblings [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]