The Game and the Candle Part 32

The walk to the garage was accomplished as often before. Several times they pa.s.sed men whom Allard recognized as belonging to the secret service, and doubtless pa.s.sed many more whom he did not know, all letting the Emperor's favorite go by, unquestioned, with his companion.

But he sighed with relief when they finally reached the garage and he stepped into the low, silver-gray machine beside his pretended chauffeur. A man flung open the wide doors, Adrian bent forward with truly professional ease and nonchalance, and they were out in the damp night air.

Through the humming, fevered city they slipped, merely one of many vehicles. The streets were filled with walking people, without destination or object, walking only from consuming restlessness or excitement. The murmur of countless voices rose above the throbbing voice of the automobile as it wound in and out among the crowds. On every corner men were collected in groups, noisy or quiet according to their cla.s.s, but alike in grim earnestness. Policemen and soldiers were everywhere; spurred by the Emperor's threat, the chief of police was sifting the city grain by grain for the criminal of the morning.

Not to the cathedral did the gray car take its flight, and Allard's amazement reached its culmination when they halted before one of the capital's main hotels, under the glaring electric lights. For the first time it dawned upon him that there was an object behind the apparent capriciousness of the trip.

"I am to descend?" he hazarded, as his companion did not speak.

"No; you are to wait for me."

"I--you--"

Adrian deliberately stepped down and crossed the bright, crowded sidewalk into the lobby, deigning no explanation whatever. Utterly stupefied, powerless to interfere, Allard watched him; saw him hand a card to the attendant who advanced, then follow on into an elevator and disappear. The huge hall was filled with chatting men and women, many of them moving in the court or diplomatic circles; to the watcher's excited fancy it seemed impossible that they should not recognize the slight, erect figure; it seemed that Adrian's ident.i.ty cried out from every leisurely movement, every turn of the small imperious head. But presently the attendant returned alone, tranquil and smiling.

It was fully an hour that Allard waited, each of the sixty minutes an hour in itself. Many of those pa.s.sing knew and bowed to him; some came over to congratulate him on the day's escape or to ask questions concerning it. One or two ladies paused with their escorts to shower him with effusive compliments. Knowing nothing of Adrian's intentions, he dared not even a.s.sume the partial protection of his mask. The climax arrived with the vibrating roar of another automobile, which fell into silence behind him as Count Rosal came placidly around to greet his friend.

"You, Allard," he welcomed languidly. "I thought you were on duty every night."

"Not this evening; the Emperor," he recollected the fiction told Dalmorov, "the Emperor is busy with some plans."

"I have been with the Regent. Do you believe it, the accident has made him look years younger. There must be some tonic in gunpowder and sulphur fumes. But you, you appear rather upset and pale; or is it these abominable lights?"

"It has been a hard day. I am too tired to be amusing, Rosal."

Rosal put his foot on the running-board without the least sign of going away.

"Then why are you not at home?" he very naturally inquired.

"Because I had an errand; I was too nervous to rest."

"Waiting for some one?"

"My chauffeur."

Rosal settled his eye-gla.s.s, extracted a case of cigarettes which he proceeded to offer to Allard, and himself selected one of the contents.

"Tell me," he said confidentially, "is it true that the Emperor took scarcely any interest in the Regent's escape?"

"No." Allard watched a descending elevator with keen anxiety; the fear that Adrian had been decoyed into some trap was becoming unbearable, yet it was impossible to go in search of him.

"They say so at the palace, and all over the city. They say he did not even give a word of praise to you."

Aroused to justice as well as a desire to shield Stanief, Allard withdrew his eyes from the hotel entrance to regard his visitant.

"Does this seem so?" he demanded irritably, and pushed aside his coat to permit a glimpse of the fiery gem he wore.

Rosal's cigarette fell to the pavement; the idle patrician was well skilled in matters heraldic.

"That!" he cried, dazzled and envious.

Allard shrugged his shoulders and leaned back.

"Were you going somewhere?" he asked.

"Oh, no; just trying to avoid being bored. Every felicitation, my dear Allard; that is superb. You have nothing to fear from next week, evidently. Vasili told me yesterday that Dalmorov was speaking so kindly of you that it positively alarmed him. The baron praised everything you had ever done, from the time you came aboard the _Nadeja_ at New York.

And he asked all manner of questions about the trip over and the Grand Duke's fondness for you."

"Yes?" Allard responded absently. He could see an illuminated clock down the street, and he resolved that when the hand reached the hour he would defy Adrian's order and go in quest of him.

"Yes. A jealous animal, Dalmorov. New family; the t.i.tle is only three generations old. I shall go to Paris next week; he never liked me very much, and there is a new singer at the Theatre Francais. _Tiens_, here is your man!"

Allard turned sharply, catching his breath. Rosal, who knew the Emperor so well,--could he be deceived? Certainly he could not keep the secret if it were learned, not if the mines, exile and sudden death itself awaited his disclosure; every club in the capital could have afforded tales of "_ce bon bavard Rosal_."

Adrian came through the vestibule and across the sidewalk with absolute composure. At Rosal he barely glanced while raising his gloved hand in conventional salute to the owner of the car.

"Good night, Rosal," Allard said pointedly.

Rosal did not move from his position, blocking entrance to the machine and surveying the arrival with mild interest.

"This is the chauffeur who drives over the limit about once a month?" he asked, with genuine continental and aristocratic insolence to a supposed inferior. "My man, do not apply to me for a position when your master tires of you; you are too expensive a luxury."

Adrian saluted imperturbably.

"He is English, he understands no French," Allard interposed. "Really, Rosal, I am in haste."

"The Emperor will want you? Alisov told me his Imperial Majesty was particularly difficult to-day, so I do not envy you. He is never facile, eh? Once more, congratulations."

Adrian's white teeth flashed in the electric light as he averted his face from the unconscious Rosal and entered the automobile. He was still smiling under his mask when he sent the machine leaping forward.

"I would have given a good deal to have heard your unbiased reply to that, Allard," he remarked.

"I fear you would not have been flattered, sire," was the grim answer.

"I have spent an unendurable evening. Let me implore you to return to the palace."

"Eventually. Put on your mask; we are going driving."

Allard obeyed in dumb protest, his powers of remonstrance exhausted, and resigned himself to as disagreeable an hour's sport as he could imagine. But it was almost enough for the time being to feel his charge beside him in comparative security.

As if impelled by perversity, Adrian drove through one swarming avenue after another, across the square and down the street where the morning's attack had taken place, swinging finally into the dark, deserted park.

Too early in the season, too late at night, for promenaders, the quietness here was in vivid contrast to the scenes just left.

Tired out by excitement and strain, bearing the constant aching regret for Stanief's setting star, Allard had been gradually lulled into mesmeric quiescence by the shifting lights and shadows. And by a freak of exhausted nerves, it was old things thrust out of sight for years which took shape out of the dark and dragged their ugliness before him in a strange waking nightmare. He forgot the risk of accident, the danger of the return through the city, but he saw Desmond's rugged face framed in the doorway of the cottage above the Hudson and felt the anguish of the abandonment to worse than death. Pictures of his trial rose persistently, details of the intolerably bitter months of prison lashed his pride.

"You spoke?" Adrian's cool voice broke in.

"Pardon, sire; an old pain caught my breath."

Unnoticed by one of its pa.s.sengers, the automobile increased its speed, rocking softly from side to side, leaping with cat-like lightness the inequalities of the road. One might have imagined that the driver also fled from his own thoughts through the empty parkways. Allard saw nothing; here in the heart of Europe, by the Emperor's side, the hateful gray walls had closed around him and he relived the unlivable. He was stifling, suffocating, with the sweet spring air singing past like a strong wind.