The prisoner of Zenda
Michael’s face when he sees a pair of us!” and the merry laugh rang out
again.
“Seriously,” observed Fritz von Tarlenheim, “I question Mr. Rassendyll’s
wisdom in visiting Strelsau just now.”
The King lit a cigarette.
“Well, Sapt?” said he, questioningly.
“He mustn’t go,” growled the old fellow.
“Come, colonel, you mean that I should be in Mr. Rassendyll’s debt,
if--”
“Oh, ay! wrap it up in the right way,” said Sapt, hauling a great pipe
out of his pocket.
“Enough, sire,” said I. “I’ll leave Ruritania today.”
“No, by thunder, you shan’t--and that’s sans phrase, as Sapt likes it.
For you shall dine with me tonight, happen what will afterwards. Come,
man, you don’t meet a new relation every day!”
“We dine sparingly tonight,” said Fritz von Tarlenheim.
“Not we--with our new cousin for a guest!” cried the King; and, as Fritz
shrugged his shoulders, he added: “Oh! I’ll remember our early start,
Fritz.”
“So will I--tomorrow morning,” said old Sapt, pulling at his pipe.
“O wise old Sapt!” cried the King. “Come, Mr. Rassendyll--by the way,
what name did they give you?”
“Your Majesty’s,” I answered, bowing.
“Well, that shows they weren’t ashamed of us,” he laughed. “Come, then,
cousin Rudolf; I’ve got no house of my own here, but my dear brother
Michael lends us a place of his, and we’ll make shift to entertain you
there;” and he put his arm through mine and, signing to the others to
accompany us, walked me off, westerly, through the forest.
We walked for more than half an hour, and the King smoked cigarettes
and chattered incessantly. He was full of interest in my family, laughed
heartily when I told him of the portraits with Elphberg hair in our
galleries, and yet more heartily when he heard that my expedition to
Ruritania was a secret one.
“You have to visit your disreputable cousin on the sly, have you?” said
he.
Suddenly emerging from the wood, we came on a small and rude
hunting-lodge. It was a one-storey building, a sort of bungalow, built
entirely of wood. As we approached it, a little man in a plain livery
came out to meet us. The only other person I saw about the place was
a fat elderly woman, whom I afterwards discovered to be the mother of
Johann, the duke’s keeper.
“Well, is dinner ready, Josef?” asked the King.
The little servant informed us that it was, and we soon sat down to a
plentiful meal. The fare was plain enough: the King ate heartily, Fritz
von Tarlenheim delicately, old Sapt voraciously. I played a good
knife and fork, as my custom is; the King noticed my performance with
approval.
“We’re all good trenchermen, we Elphbergs,” said he. “But what?--we’re
eating dry! Wine, Josef! wine, man! Are we beasts, to eat without
drinking? Are we cattle, Josef?”
At this reproof Josef hastened to load the table with bottles.
“Remember tomorrow!” said Fritz.
“Ay--tomorrow!” said old Sapt.
The King drained a bumper to his “Cousin Rudolf,” as he was gracious--or
merry--enough to call me; and I drank its fellow to the “Elphberg Red,”
whereat he laughed loudly.
Now, be the meat what it might, the wine we drank was beyond all price
or praise, and we did it justice. Fritz ventured once to stay the King’s
hand.
“What?” cried the King. “Remember you start before I do, Master
Fritz--you must be more sparing by two hours than I.”
Fritz saw that I did not understand.
“The colonel and I,” he explained, “leave here at six: we ride down to
Zenda and return with the guard of honour to fetch the King at eight,
and then we all ride together to the station.”
“Hang that same guard!” growled Sapt.
“Oh! it’s very civil of my brother to ask the honour for his regiment,”
said the King. “Come, cousin, you need not start early. Another bottle,
man!”
I had another bottle--or, rather, a part of one, for the larger half
travelled quickly down his Majesty’s throat. Fritz gave up his attempts
at persuasion: from persuading, he fell to being persuaded, and soon we
were all of us as full of wine as we had any right to be. The King began
talking of what he would do in the future, old Sapt of what he had
done in the past, Fritz of some beautiful girl or other, and I of the
wonderful merits of the Elphberg dynasty. We all talked at once, and
followed to the letter Sapt’s exhortation to let the morrow take care of
itself.
At last the King set down his glass and leant back in his chair.
“I have drunk enough,” said he.
“Far be it from me to contradict the King,” said I.
Indeed, his remark was most absolutely true--so far as it went.
While I yet spoke, Josef came and set before the King a marvellous old
wicker-covered flagon. It had lain so long in some darkened cellar that
it seemed to blink in the candlelight.
“His Highness the Duke of Strelsau bade me set this wine before the
King, when the King was weary of all other wines, and pray the King to
drink, for the love that he bears his brother.”
“Well done, Black Michael!” said the King. “Out with the cork, Josef.
Hang him! Did he think I’d flinch from his bottle?”
The bottle was opened, and Josef filled the King’s glass. The King
tasted it. Then, with a solemnity born of the hour and his own
condition, he looked round on us:
“Gentlemen, my friends--Rudolf, my cousin [‘tis a scandalous story,
Rudolf, on my honour!), everything is yours to the half of Ruritania.
But ask me not for a single drop of this divine bottle, which I will
drink to the health of that--that sly knave, my brother, Black Michael.”
And the King seized the bottle and turned it over his mouth, and drained
it and flung it from him, and laid his head on his arms on the table.
And we drank pleasant dreams to his Majesty--and that is all I remember
of the evening. Perhaps it is enough.
CHAPTER 4
The King Keeps His Appointment
Whether I had slept a minute or a year I knew not. I awoke with a start
and a shiver; my face, hair and clothes dripped water, and opposite me
stood old Sapt, a sneering smile on his face and an empty bucket in his
hand. On the table by him sat Fritz von Tarlenheim, pale as a ghost and
black as a crow under the eyes.
I leapt to my feet in anger.
“Your joke goes too far, sir!” I cried.
“Tut, man, we’ve no time for quarrelling. Nothing else would rouse you.
It’s five o’clock.”
“I’ll thank you, Colonel Sapt--” I began again, hot in spirit, though I
was uncommonly cold in body.
“Rassendyll,” interrupted Fritz, getting down from the table and taking
my arm, “look here.”
The King lay full length on the floor. His face was red as his hair,
and he breathed heavily. Sapt, the disrespectful old dog, kicked him
sharply. He did not stir, nor was there any break in his breathing. I
saw that his face and head were wet with water, as were mine.
“We’ve spent half an hour on him,” said Fritz.
“He drank three times what either of you did,” growled Sapt.
I knelt down and felt his pulse. It was alarmingly languid and slow. We
three looked at one another.
“Was it drugged--that last bottle?” I asked in a whisper.
“I don’t know,” said Sapt.
“We must get a doctor.”
“There’s none within ten miles, and a thousand doctors wouldn’t take
him to Strelsau today. I know the look of it. He’ll not move for six or
seven hours yet.”
“But the coronation!” I cried in horror.
Fritz shrugged his shoulders, as I began to see was his habit on most
occasions.
“We must send word that he’s ill,” he said.
“I suppose so,” said I.
Old Sapt, who seemed as fresh as a daisy, had lit his pipe and was
puffing hard at it.
“If he’s not crowned today,” said he, “I’ll lay a crown he’s never
crowned.”
“But heavens, why?”
“The whole nation’s there to meet him; half the army--ay, and Black
Michael at the head. Shall we send word that the King’s drunk?”
“That he’s ill,” said I, in correction.
“Ill!” echoed Sapt, with a scornful laugh. “They know his illnesses too
well. He’s been ‘ill’ before!”
“Well, we must chance what they think,” said Fritz helplessly. “I’ll
carry the news and make the best of it.”
Sapt raised his hand.
“Tell me,” said he. “Do you think the King was drugged?”
“I do,” said I.
“And who drugged him?”
“That damned hound, Black Michael,” said Fritz between his teeth.
“Ay,” said Sapt, “that he might not come to be crowned. Rassendyll here
doesn’t know our pretty Michael. What think you, Fritz, has Michael no
king ready? Has half Strelsau no other candidate? As God’s alive, man,
the throne’s lost if the King show himself not in Strelsau today. I know
Black Michael.”
“We could carry him there,” said I.
“And a very pretty picture he makes,” sneered Sapt.
Fritz von Tarlenheim buried his face in his hands. The King breathed
loudly and heavily. Sapt stirred him again with his foot.
“The drunken dog!” he said; “but he’s an Elphberg and the son of his
father, and may I rot in hell before Black Michael sits in his place!”
For a moment or two we were all silent; then Sapt, knitting his bushy
grey brows, took his pipe from his mouth and said to me:
“As a man grows old he believes in Fate. Fate sent you here. Fate sends
you now to Strelsau.”
I staggered back, murmuring “Good God!”
Fritz looked up with an eager, bewildered gaze.
“Impossible!” I muttered. “I should be known.”
“It’s a risk--against a certainty,” said Sapt. “If you shave, I’ll wager
you’ll not be known. Are you afraid?”
“Sir!”
“Come, lad, there, there; but it’s your life, you know, if you’re
known--and mine--and Fritz’s here. But, if you don’t go, I swear to you
Black Michael will sit tonight on the throne, and the King lie in prison
or his grave.”
“The King would never forgive it,” I stammered.
“Are we women? Who cares for his forgiveness?”
The clock ticked fifty times, and sixty and seventy times, as I stood in
thought. Then I suppose a look came over my face, for old Sapt caught me
by the hand, crying:
“You’ll go?”
“Yes, I’ll go,” said I, and I turned my eyes on the prostrate figure of
the King on the floor.
“Tonight,” Sapt went on in a hasty whisper, “we are to lodge in the
Palace. The moment they leave us you and I will mount our horses--Fritz
must stay there and guard the King’s room--and ride here at a gallop.
The King will be ready--Josef will tell him--and he must ride back with
me to Strelsau, and you ride as if the devil were behind you to the
frontier.”
I took it all in in a second, and nodded my head.
“There’s a chance,” said Fritz, with his first sign of hopefulness.
“If I escape detection,” said I.
“If we’re detected,” said Sapt. “I’ll send Black Michael down below
before I go myself, so help me heaven! Sit in that chair, man.”
I obeyed him.
He darted from the room, calling “Josef! Josef!” In three minutes he was
back, and Josef with him. The latter carried a jug of hot water, soap
and razors. He was trembling as Sapt told him how the land lay, and bade
him shave me.
Suddenly Fritz smote on his thigh:
“But the guard! They’ll know! they’ll know!”
“Pooh! We shan’t wait for the guard. We’ll ride to Hofbau and catch a
train there. When they come, the bird’ll be flown.”
“But the King?”
“The King will be in the wine-cellar. I’m going to carry him there now.”
“If they find him?”
“They won’t. How should they? Josef will put them off.”
“But--”
Sapt stamped his foot.
“We’re not playing,” he roared. “My God! don’t I know the risk? If
they do find him, he’s no worse off than if he isn’t crowned today in
Strelsau.”
So speaking, he flung the door open and, stooping, put forth a strength
I did not dream he had, and lifted the King in his hands. And as he did
so, the old woman, Johann the keeper’s mother, stood in the doorway.
For a moment she stood, then she turned on her heel, without a sign of