Trusia Part 3

Carrick laughed. "Overtime, sir. Hundred miles an hour till we get there wouldn't be too fast for me." He turned his attention again to the machine and the rutty way before him.

The other drew out a road map which he consulted with trained eyes that correctly approximated both locality and distances. Slowly refolding it he replaced it in an inner pocket. Being in a mood that antic.i.p.ated much at the end of the journey, he was not loath to break into his chauffeur's taciturnity.

"Well, cheer up. Even at this rate we ought to make Schallberg by sunset. It's eight o'clock now."

"Seems more than an hour since I 'ad my breakfast."

"I know, but no man's stomach is a safe timepiece, Carrick. On the road I could name at least six meal times by that organ of mine."

For a few miles the jolting of the machine over rough places punctuated their progress with a conversational hiatus.

The rarely occasional peasants working in the fields or plodding along the way, paused in their occupations to regard the novel vehicle with stolid wonderment.

"Seems odd, sir," hazarded Carrick when a comparatively smooth piece of road permitted more than monosyllabic profanity, "seems odd that we've seen ten women to one man so far. These are all 'has beens.' No young chaps workin' in the fields. What do you make of it, sir?"

"The ones not already drafted for Manchuria are dodging Russian conscription most likely."

"Think so, sir?" Carrick's tone raised a question.

"Why? Don't you?"

"Oh, I don't know, sir. They've all taken it on the run for some reason or other. Maybe the Krovitch army is already mobilized."

"Egad, Carrick, that _is_ a possibility. I never thought of that.

Suppose I expected them to wait for us. We don't want to miss the opening gun. Hump her up for all she's worth. Full speed and never mind the jolts."

The chauffeur bent readily to the task and their further advance into the country of their hopes was such that boded ill to any bewildered fowl that might recklessly seek to cross in front of them. The dial indicated seventy miles an hour.

"Suppose this were Fifth Avenue." Carter bent over to a.s.sure himself of the speed as he spoke.

"Umph. We won't go into that, sir. Too 'arrowing to think of. You'd have to mortgage everything to pye the fines. Any'ow you'd go into bankruptcy after you'd bailed me out." Carrick paused to view the route before them. "That's a pretty steep 'ill a'ead, sir. Mybe we'd better stop at the top and reconnoitre a bit. We ought to get a good view from there.

It looks too bloomin' rocky for this rate any'ow."

"Where are the gla.s.ses?" inquired his companion with unconcealed eagerness, fumbling about in the locker beneath the seat. "Never mind, I have them," he said, producing the binoculars.

At the crest of the Here they stopped to view the panorama of the Beyond.

From the height on which they halted, they looked out upon a wilderness of which they had no previous conception, for the hill they had just ascended had masked it from view.

Below them, at a distance of about two miles, as far as the eye could see from left to right stretched a black and dense forest of unknown antiquity. Behind and beyond it at increasing distances peak upon lofty peak, mountain after mountain, like Babel, reached upward for the sky.

Of these the one nearest and directly in front of the knights errant claimed attention.

"Looks like a giant coal scuttle, sir," said Carrick the trite. The description was apt, for the freak of nature which confronted them.

Towering high above its neighbors this mountain was unusual. Some outraged t.i.tan in his ire had, in some long-forgotten aeon, apparently seized and turned upon its head the top-heavy crest, whose form roughly speaking was of a reversed truncated cone. Upon the wide plateau at the top, with battlemented walls and towers outlined against a turquoise sky, stood a high pitched castle whose topmost turrets seemed suspended from the heavens above them.

"Can you myke out the flag, sir?" Carrick asked anxiously, seeing that his master was viewing the donjon critically through the gla.s.ses.

Much depended on the nationality of the standard, which, hardly visible at that distance, was only discernible as a blur upon the blue of the otherwise immaculate sky. The castle undoubtedly commanded that highway on the far side of the wood along which they must pa.s.s. Carter had descended into the road and was eagerly adjusting the focus for a better view.

"Can't make it out exactly. It's not Russian for one thing. Field's red.

Device is blue. Dragon or something. Have to take a chance till we get a nearer look."

Carrick, meanwhile, was peering intently down the road ahead of him where it disappeared into the midnight gloom of the forest. His alert eyes had noted two or three objects emerge from among the trees and stop.

"Look there, sir," and his outstretched arm indicated the direction while Carter swung his gla.s.ses around to the place.

"Videttes," he exclaimed without looking up. "Sizing us up through gla.s.ses, eh?"

"Russians?" The chauffeur's excitement was manifest, for he was frowning in a vain endeavor to discern the distant specks.

"I don't know. We're in sort of a fix," was the answer as Carter looked up at Carrick with a frank laugh. The dilemma was not causing him much alarm. "If they are," he continued, "we're dished unless we can get by them. I'll take a chance anyhow. We won't stop to investigate. Right through the woods as if the devil was after us," with which instructions he leaped into the machine.

Carrick grinned. Such orders were just to his taste. A touch on the lever and the automobile shot down the hillside at a speed more rapid than Terror's own. Nearing the scattered outposts, whose frightened horses flattened themselves against adjacent fences, the occupants of the touring car were greeted by a shower of bullets, all of which went wide owing to the disconcerted aim of the sentries, who seemed to fly by the autoists in phantom shapes as the wood was safely gained. Once in its tree-protected road they never relaxed speed until five miles had been placed between them and possible pursuit.

"That's done with, anyway," remarked Carter jubilantly. He turned and faced his comrade whom the hum of bullets had exhilarated.

"Were they Russians? Did you notice anything?"

Carrick laughed outright. Peal followed peal before he could control himself. "I just saw one 'oss, sir. 'E was bally well scared. I'll never forget 'is look,--eyes bulging and mouth open as if 'e was going to swallow a whole hyrick. After spying 'im I couldn't 'ave looked at 'is rider if I 'ad tried."

"Well, they'll have trouble overtaking us anyhow if they were children of the Czar. Look, Carrick," he continued, indicating the wider and more frequent patches of sunlight flecking the road, "it's lighting up. We'll soon be out of the woods."

"Better not halloa till we are, Mr. Carter."

"Gad, that's a prophecy all right. Our way is blocked." The machine came to an abrupt halt.

Not far distant the exit from the forest disclosed to plain view an extensive segment of open country to the southward.

"Not less than a thousand in that bunch," commented Carrick with gloomy reference to a dense throng of men along the road outside the forest.

"Mixed troops. 'Ow many more there are we can't see for these bloomin'

trees."

"Certainly are cavalry and infantry. But they don't appear to be paying much attention to this end of the road. They're all looking the other way. That black and gold hussar uniform beats the gray and silver of the foot. I don't believe they're Russians," Carter concluded with a joyful start. "Those uniforms! Since we can't go back, we'd better go ahead."

With apparent unconcern they boldly emerged from the woodland.

To their left, about fifty yards back from the highway, stood a quaint old inn built against a sheer cliff face which in the air seemed to bend over the puny habitation. To the right stretched fields under cultivation, but beaten hard under the feet of ten thousand men in the uniform already noticed.

A little group of officers, well mounted, stood together in the commons before the hostelry. They caught but the momentary attention of the interlopers, which, as by some hypnotic influence, was drawn to one of three men quietly conversing on the stone porch of the inn.

He was short and spare of figure, lean and colorless of face, while about him hung an atmosphere of grayness.

As the puffing automobile drew up to the steps he turned quietly to survey its occupants, vividly contrasting the surprise displayed by his two companions. One of these was evidently the innkeeper from the professional air of deference which tempered even his amazement, while the other, square of jowl and deep of eye, was a peasant.

These latter could divert attention for but the moment from the gray man, their companion, whose face seemed set in a habitual, cynical smile, the intent of which was inscrutable. The deep creases running from the corners of the mouth to the narrow nostrils showed the expression was habitual and without the saving grace of mirthfulness.

Without a doubt he was of those who gain the dislike of the cla.s.s from which they are derived and usually not more than the tolerance of those with whom they are thrown in daily contact. Carter admitted after a critical survey that the Gray Man, as he mentally dubbed him, was an exception to this rule. Though he bore every external evidence of being of the upper servant cla.s.s, there were power and masterly cunning disclosed in every line of the set face. He was of those who, in times of great crises, if they do not attain to power always pa.s.s through dangers which engulf n.o.bler men, to emerge with profit if not with honor from even a nation's downfall. That behind the grinning mask lay a wide knowledge of the working of the human mind, Carter saw, as the Gray Man's crafty eyes weighed the repugnance he knew he had inspired. As their glances met, uncontrollably, a challenge gleamed in that of the autoist which was answered by a cold defiance on the part of the elder man.

Meanwhile the boniface, who had achieved a partial composure, hurried forward to greet the travelers.