The Vultures Part 19

"It is too risky," said some one, almost in Martin's ear, in Polish, but Cartoner heard it. "We must kill him and be done with it."

There was an odd silence for a moment, only broken by the stealthy feet of the gate-keeper coming forward to join the group. Then Cartoner spoke, quietly and collectedly. His nerve was so steady that he had taken time to reflect as to which tongue to make use of. For all had disadvantages, but silence meant death.

"This near fore-shoe," he said in French, turning to his horse, "is nearly off. It has been loose all the way from Wilanow. This is a foundry, is it not? There must be a hammer and some nails about."

Martin gave a sort of gasp of relief. For a moment he had thought there was no loop-hole.

Cartoner looked towards the door, and the light fell full upon his patient, thoughtful face. The faces of the men standing in a half-circle in front of him were in the dark.

"Good! He's a brave man!" muttered the man who had spoken in Martin's ear. It was Kosmaroff. And he stepped back a pace.

"Yes," said Martin, hastily, "this is a foundry. I can get you a hammer."

His right hand was opening and shutting convulsively. Cartoner glanced at it, and Martin put it behind his back. He was rather breathless, and he was angrily wishing that he had the Englishman's nerve.

"You might tell these men," he said, in French, "of my mishap; perhaps one of them can put it right, and I can get along home. I am desperately hungry. The journey had been so slow from Wilanow."

He had already perceived that Kosmaroff understood both English and French, and that it was of him that Martin was afraid. He spoke slowly, so as to give Martin time to pull himself together. Kosmaroff stepped forward to the horse and examined the shoe indicated. It was nearly off.

Martin turned, and explained in Polish that the gentleman had come for a hammer and some nails--that his horse had nearly lost a shoe. Cartoner had simply forced him to become his ally, and had even indicated the line of conduct he was to pursue.

"Get a hammer--one of you," said Kosmaroff, over his shoulder, and Martin bit his lip with a sudden desire to speak--to say more than was discreet. He took his cue in some way from Cartoner, without knowing that wise men cease persuading the moment they have gained consent.

Never comment on your own victory.

Never had Cartoner's silent habit stood him in such good stead as during the following moments, while a skilled workman replaced the lost shoe. Never had he observed so skilled a silence, or left unsaid such dangerous words. For Kosmaroff watched him as a cat may watch a bird.

Behind, were the barred gates, and in front, the semicircle of men, whose faces he could not see, while the full light glared through the open doorway upon his own countenance. Two miles from Warsaw--a dark autumn night, and eleven men to one. He counted them, in a mechanical way, as persons in face of death nearly always do count, with a cold deliberation, their chances of life. He played his miserable little cards with all the skill he possessed, and his knowledge of the racial characteristics of humanity served him. For he acted slowly, and gave his enemies leisure to see that it would be a mistake to kill him. They would see it in time; for they were not Frenchmen, nor of any other Celtic race, who would have killed him first and recognized their mistake afterwards. They were Slavs--of the most calculating race the world had produced--a little slow in their calculations. So he gave them time, just as Russia must have time; but she will reach the summit eventually, when her farsighted policy is fully evolved--long, long after reader and writer are dust.

Cartoner gave the workman half a rouble, which was accepted with a muttered word of thanks, and then he turned towards the great doors, which were barred. There was another pause, while the gate-keeper looked inquiringly at Kosmaroff.

"I am very much obliged to you," said Cartoner to Martin, who went towards the gate as if to draw back the bolt. But at a signal from Kosmaroff the gate-keeper sprang forward and opened the heavy doors.

Martin was nearest, and instinctively held the stirrup, while Cartoner climbed into the saddle.

"Saved your life!" he said, in a whisper.

"I know," answered Cartoner, turning in his saddle to lift his hat to the men grouped behind him. He looked over their heads into the open doorway, but could see nothing. Nevertheless, he knew where were concealed the arms brought out into the North Sea by Captain Cable in the _Minnie_.

"More than I bargained for," he muttered to himself, as he rode away from the iron-foundry by the river. He put his horse to a trot and presently to a canter along the deserted, dusty road. The animal was astonishingly fresh and went off at a good pace, so that the man sent by Kosmaroff to follow him was soon breathless and forced to give up the chase.

Approaching the town, Cartoner rode at a more leisurely pace. That his life had hung on a thread since sunset did not seem to affect him much, and he looked about him with quiet eyes, while the hand on the bridle was steady.

He was, it seemed, one of those fortunate wayfarers who see their road clearly before them, and for whom the barriers of duty and honor, which stand on either side of every man's path, present neither gap nor gate.

He had courage and patience, and was content to exercise both, without weighing the changes of reward too carefully. That he read his duty in a different sense to that understood by other men was no doubt only that which this tolerant age calls a matter of temperament.

"That Cartoner," Deulin was in the habit of saying, "takes certain things so seriously, and other things--social things, to which I give most careful attention--he ignores. And yet we often reach the same end by different routes."

Which was quite true. But Deulin reached the end by a happy guess, and that easy exercise of intuition which is the special gift of the Gallic race, while Cartoner worked his way towards his goal with a steady perseverance and slow, sure steps.

"In a moment of danger give me Cartoner," Deulin had once said.

On more than one occasion Cartoner had shown quite clearly, without words, that he understood and appreciated that odd mixture of heroism and frivolity which will always puzzle the world and draw its wondering attention to France. The two men never compared notes, never helped each other, never exchanged the minutest confidence.

Joseph P. Mangles was different. He spoke quite openly of his work.

"Got a job in Russia," he had stolidly told any one who asked him.

"Cold, unhealthy place." He seemed to enter upon his duties with the casual interest of the amateur, and, in a way, exactly embodied the att.i.tude of his country towards Europe, of which the many wheels within wheels may spin and whir or halt and grind without in any degree affecting the great republic. America can afford to content herself with the knowledge of what has happened or is happening. Countries nearer to the field of action must know what is going to happen.

Cartoner rode placidly to the stable where he had hired his horse, and delivered the beast to its owner. He had no one in Warsaw to go to and relate his adventures. He was alone, as he had been all his life--alone with his failures and his small successes--content, it would seem, to be a good servant in a great service.

He went to the restaurant of the Hotel de France, which is a quiet place of refreshment close to the Jasna, which has no political importance, like the restaurant of the Europe, and there dined. The square was deserted as he stumbled over the vile pavement towards his rooms. The concierge was sitting at the door of the quiet house where he had taken an apartment. All along the street the dvornik of every house thus takes his station at the half-closed door at nightfall. And it is so all through the town. It is a Russian custom, imported among others into the free kingdom of Poland, when the great empire of the north cast the shadow of its protecting wing over the land that is watered by the Vistula. So, no man may come or go in Warsaw without having his movements carefully noted by one who is directly responsible to the authorities for the good name of the house under his care.

"The poet is in. There is a letter up-stairs," said the door-keeper to Cartoner, as he pa.s.sed in. Cartoner's servant was out, and the lamps were turned low when he entered his sitting-room. He knew that the letter must be the reply to his application for a recall. He turned up the lamp, and, taking the letter from the table where it lay in a prominent position, sat down in a deep chair to read it at leisure.

It bore no address, and prattled of the crops. Some of it seemed to be nonsense. Cartoner read it slowly and carefully. It was an order, in brief and almost brutal language, to stay where he was and do the work intrusted to him. For a man who writes in a code must perforce avoid verbosity.

XV

A TALE HALF TOLD

The heart soon accustoms itself to that existence which is called living upon a volcano. Prince Bukaty had indeed known no other life, and to such as had daily intercourse with him he was quite a peaceful and jovial gentleman. He had brought up his children in the same atmosphere of strife and peril, and it is to be presumed that the fit had survived, while the unfit princess, his wife, had turned her face to the wall quite soon, not daring to meet the years in which there could be no hope of alleviation.

The prince's friends were not in Warsaw; many were at the mines. Some lived in Paris; others were exiled to distant parts of Russia. His generation was slowly pa.s.sing away, and its history is one of the grimmest stories untold. Yet he sat in that bare drawing-room of a poor man and read his _Figaro_ quite placidly, like any bourgeois in the safety of the suburb, only glancing at the clock from time to time.

"He is late," he said once, as he folded the paper, and that was all.

It was nearly eleven o'clock, and Martin had been expected to return to dinner at half-past six. Wanda was working, and she, too, glanced towards the clock at intervals. She was always uneasy about Martin, whose daring was rather of the reckless type, whose genius lay more in leadership than in strategy. As to her father, he had come through the sixties, and had survived the persecution and the dangers of Wielopolski's day--he could reasonably be expected to take care of himself. With regard to herself, she had no fear. Hers was the woman's lot of watching others in a danger which she could not share.

It was nearly half-past eleven when Martin came in. He was in riding-costume and was covered with dirt. His eyes, rimmed with dust, looked out of a face that was pale beneath the sunburn. He threw himself into a chair with an exclamation of fatigue.

"Had any dinner?" asked his father.

Wanda looked at her brother's face, and changed color herself. There was a suggestion of the wild rose in Wanda's face, with its delicate, fleeting shades of pink and white, while the slim strength of her limbs and carriage rather added to a characteristic which is essentially English or Polish. For American girls suggest a fuller flower on a firmer stem.

"Something has happened," said Wanda, quietly.

"Yes," replied Martin, stretching out his slight legs.

The prince laid aside his newspaper, and looked up quickly. When his attention was thus roused suddenly his eyes and his whole face were momentarily fierce. Some one had once said that the history of Poland was written on those deep-lined features.

"Anything wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing that affects affairs," replied Martin. "Everything is safe."

Which seemed to be catch-words, for Kosmaroff had made use of almost the identical phrases.

"I am quite confident that there is no danger to affairs," continued Martin, speaking with the haste and vehemence of a man who is anxious to convince himself. "It was a mere mischance, but it gave us all a horrid fright, I can tell you--especially me, for I was doubly interested.