A Son of the Immortals Part 20

He smiled with something of the old careless humor of Paris days. "I suppose everything is for the best," he said. "Nothing surprises me now, not even this," and he nodded cheerfully toward the landing and stairs, whence a rush of footsteps and clamor of voices were audible.

The handle of the door was wrenched violently, and shots were fired into the lock and at the panels; but the wood was seasoned and stanch, and nothing short of a rifle would drive a bullet through. The door creaked and strained under the pressure of the mutineers' shoulders. Had it not been reinforced by the solid sideboard and equally heavy table, it must have given way. As it was, no four men in Delgratz could hope to force an entrance, and no more than four could attack it simultaneously.

It was noteworthy that no one called on the King to come out. These hirelings, enraged against a ruler who had brought to the Danube a new evangel of justice and uprightness, of honest government and clean handed service to the State, made no pretense of requesting a hearing for their grievances. They had planned to shoot him in cold blood while he and his three companions were momentarily delayed by the barrier of the bullock cart in front of the corner cafe. Balked of this easy means of attaining their end, they were still sure of success. But their cries and curses were intended only for self encouragement. Not even the bloodstained Seventh Regiment had the effrontery to ask their victim to admit them.

There was a momentary quieting of their wild beast fury when the door resisted their utmost efforts. Joan tried to persuade her tortured mind that the conspiracy had failed.

"They will not dare to remain," she whispered. "They know that a.s.sistance may arrive at any moment. Listen, they are going now!"

"Are you gentlemen armed?" asked Felix, grimly.

"Yes, with riding whips," said Alec. "For my part, I have refused to carry any more dangerous weapon; though it is true that I entered Delgratz with a sword in my hand," he added, remembering with a twinge his imagining of Joan's ready laugh when she heard of Prince Michael's brown paper parcel.

"Pity you don't possess a revolver apiece. They would prove useful when the panels are broken, which will happen just as soon as these high spirited politicians on the landing secure axes," went on Felix remorselessly.

He wanted Joan to realize the certain fate that awaited her once the door gave way. Concealment was useless, and he hoped she would faint before the end came.

"What price the leg of a chair?" asked Beaumanoir.

The Pole bent his gleaming gray eyes on the Briton with a curious underlook of inquiry. "No, no. We can do better than that. You would be shot before you could strike a blow. Joan, please crawl past the window and stand upright in the corner close to the wall. You follow, Alec. I go next, and this young gentleman, who must be Lord Adalbert Beaumanoir, since he has all the outward signs of the British aristocracy, will place himself near the door. If he does exactly what I tell him, we still have a fighting chance."

The change of position advised by Poluski rendered them safe from their a.s.sailants' bullets until the door was actually off its hinges and the furniture thrust aside. In the last resort, Alec meant to show himself at a window and offer a fair target to the men in the houses across the street. When he fell the shooting from that quarter would cease. Then, acting on his precise instructions, Beaumanoir and Felix must lift Joan through another window and allow her to drop to the pavement. It was not far. She might escape uninjured, and there was a possibility that the mob would spare a woman who was an utter stranger, one in no way mixed up in Kosnovian affairs.

Time enough to take this final step when their defense was forced, and that would be soon. In all likelihood, he had not much more than a minute to live, and he devoted that minute to Joan.

"Sweetheart," he murmured tenderly, "you saw the beginning of my career as a King, and it seems that you are fated to see its end. Have you forgotten what Pallas Athene said to Perseus? It is not so long ago, that morning in the Louvre. But why did you run away from Paris? Why have you not written? If you knew how I hoped for a word from you! My heart told me you loved me; but even one's heart likes to be a.s.sured that it is not mistaken."

He was looking into her eyes. The fantasy seized her that he was able to read her secret soul, and she swept aside any thought of concealment.

"Alec," she said, "tell me truly, are we in danger of death?"

"I am," he replied simply. It was better so, he thought.

"Then I thank G.o.d that I am here to die with you."

He dared not hint that she might escape. "We still have a remote chance," he went on. "Let us talk of ourselves, not of death."

"But I don't want to die, Alec," she whispered brokenly. "I want to live, dear. I want to live and be your wife. Oh, Alec, let us ask Heaven for one year of happiness, one short year----" She choked, and the tears so bravely repressed hitherto dimmed her glorious eyes. Her piteous appeal increased the torment of his impotence. His face grew marble white beneath the bronze, and he bent in mute agony over her bowed head.

Felix, crouching behind Beaumanoir, a.s.sured himself that the King and his chosen lady were momentarily deaf to all else than the one supreme fact that each loved the other. He sighed, and touched the stalwart Beaumanoir's shoulder, which he was just able to reach with uplifted hand.

"Drop on your knees," he said. "I want to tell you something."

"You think it is high time I said my prayers--eh, what?"

Yet the younger man obeyed, since there was a calm authority in the pinched and wrinkled face raised to his that seemed to despise the uproar of the mob. Felix was singularly unmoved by the b.e.s.t.i.a.l din. He evidently cared naught for the continuous shooting from street and houses, or the renewed outburst on the stairs that welcomed the arrival of axes and sledge hammers rifled from a neighboring shop.

"Pay heed to what I am going to say," he muttered, bringing his mouth close to Beaumanoir's ear, "I don't wish Joan or the King to know what we are doing. They will be wise after the event, not before, which is often the better part of wisdom. Have you a steady hand? Will you flinch if I ask you to destroy every man on the other side of that door?"

Beaumanoir twisted his head round and grinned. "If asking will do the trick, try me!" said he.

Felix took from an inner pocket of his coat a gunmetal cigarcase. He pressed a spring, and the lid flew open. Inside were four cigar shaped cylinders, each studded with a number of tiny k.n.o.bs. He withdrew a cylinder, and from a small cup in its base obtained six percussion caps, which he proceeded to adjust on the iron nipples.

"My own patent!" he exclaimed, with an air of pride that was grotesque under the conditions. "Each cigar is a bomb, warranted to clear any ordinary room of its occupants. It does not discriminate. It will dismember the most exalted personages."

"By gad!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Beaumanoir, shrinking away slightly.

Felix pressed closer in his enthusiasm. "The point carrying the detonators is loaded with lead. If properly handled, it is sure to fly with that end in front. You take it between your thumb and second finger, thus, and poise it by placing the tip of the first finger behind it, thus; but you must throw hard, and wait until the upper part of the door is smashed, and you can fling it clear, or three ounces of dynamite will explode in front of your nose, with disastrous effect. I will have a second bomb ready if the first one fails; but it will not."

"By gad!" said Beaumanoir again, gazing at the deadly contrivance as if fascinated by it. He could retreat no farther, being jammed against the sideboard.

"Do you understand?" demanded Felix coolly.

"Perfectly. Is it--er--Russian or Spanish?"

"Neither. I call it the International. Are you ready?"

A thunderous blow shook the door. Another and another fell on lock and hinges.

"Felix!" said Alec, turning from Joan and stooping over the hunchback.

"Don't bother me, I am busy," growled the Pole.

"But we must act. We are done for now, and Joan must be saved. I mean to draw the enemy's fire. When I am hit, you and Beaumanoir must take Joan to the third window over there--take her by force if necessary----"

"My good Alec, at present you are a King without power. Please don't talk nonsense. Keep in your corner, pacify Joan, and leave the rest to me."

"Felix," and Alec's tone grew curt and sharp, "this is no time for jest!

Look, you madman, the door is splitting! Is Joan to die, then, to please your whim? Either attend to me or stand aside!"

Poluski groaned. He was such an amalgam of contrarieties that he hated the notion of explaining to a monarch the subtle means he had devised for ridding the world of its unpopular rulers. Where Alec was concerned, the bomb ought to remain a trade secret, so to speak. He would not have trusted even Beaumanoir with its properties had he not known that his own nerve would fail at the critical moment. For that was Felix Poluski's weakness. He could not use his diabolical invention--an anarchist in theory, in practice he would not harm a fly.

"I think just as much of Joan as you!" he blazed back at the pallid man whose next step promised to lead to the grave. "I am King here, not you!

Keep yourself and Joan out of harm's way, and don't interfere! Stand flat against the wall, both of you! Back, I say! There is the first axhead! Now you, who were born a lord, be ready to lord it over these groundlings!"

He whirled round on Beaumanoir, and Alec saw in his friend's hand some object, what he could not guess, while Felix carried a similar article in reserve, as it were. The little man's earnestness was so convincing that the King could not choose but believe that some scheme that offered salvation was in train. But it might fail! The door might be forced before his own desperate alternative could be adopted, and the consequences to Joan of failure were too horrible to be risked. A panel shivered into splinters and the muzzles of two revolvers frowned through the aperture.

"Wait!" bellowed Poluski; for Beaumanoir's hand was raised.

Lord Adalbert did more than wait. With the quickness born of many a hard won victory on the polo ground, his free left hand flew out and grasped the wrist behind one of the pistols. He pulled fiercely and irresistibly. An arm appeared, and a yell of pain signalized a dislocated shoulder.

The weapon exploded harmlessly and fell to the floor. A living stop gap now plugged the first hole made by the ax wielders, while the writhing body of their comrade interfered with further operations.

Beaumanoir gave an extra wrench, and his victim howled most dolorously.

He slipped the bomb into his coat pocket.

"Pick up that revolver, Alec," he cried. "If it is still loaded it will help us to hold the fort."

The King rushed forward, and b.u.t.ted against Beaumanoir in his haste.