Part 28 (1/2)

Miss Lambart found her very charming and attractive, and was in no haste to leave such pleasant companions.h.i.+p for the dull and unpleasant atmosphere of Muttle Deeping Grange. It was past seven therefore when the Little Deeping fly brought her to it; and she went to the archduke with her news.

She found him in the condition of nervous excitement into which he always fell before meals, too excited, indeed, to listen to her with sufficient attention to understand her at the first telling of her news. He was some time understanding it, and longer believing it. It annoyed him greatly. He was taking considerable pleasure in standing on a pedestal before the eyes of Europe as the bereaved Hohenzollern sire. His first, and accurate, feeling was that Europe would laugh consumedly when it learned the truth of the matter. His second feeling was that his n.o.ble kinsman, who had been saying wonderful, stirring things about the Terror's manifesto and the stolen princess, would be furiously angry with him.

He began to rave himself, fortunately in his own tongue of which Miss Lambart was ignorant. Then when he grew cooler and paler his oft-repeated phrase was: ”Eet must be 'ushed!”

Miss Lambart did not tell him that Sir Maurice had taken every care that the affair should not be hushed up. She did not wish every blow to strike him at once. Then the dinner-bell rang; and in heavy haste he rolled off to the dining-room.

Miss Lambart was betaking herself to her bedroom to dress, when the archduke's equerry, the young mustached Count Zerbst came running up the stairs, bidding her in the name of his master come to dinner at once, as she was. She took no heed of the command, dressed at her ease, and came down just as the archduke, perspiring freely after his struggle with the hors-d'oeuvres, soup and fish, was plunging upon his first entree.

He ate it with great emphasis; and as he ate it he questioned her about the place where his daughter was encamped and the friends she was encamped with. Miss Lambart described the knoll and its position as clearly as she could, and of the Twins she said as little as possible.

Then he asked her with considerable acerbity why she had not exercised her authority and brought the princess back with her.

Miss Lambart said that she had no authority over the princess; and that if she had had it, the princess would have disregarded it wholly, and that it was impossible to haul a recalcitrant Hohenzollern through miles of wood by force, since the persons of Hohenzollerns were sacrosanct.

The archduke said that the only thing to do was to go himself and summon home his truant child. Miss Lambart objected that it would mean hewing expensively a path through the wood wide enough to permit his pa.s.sage, and it was improbable that the owner of the wood would allow it. Thereupon the baroness volunteered to go. Miss Lambart with infinite pleasure explained that for her too an expensive path must be hewn, and went on to declare that if they reached the knoll, there was not the slightest chance of their finding the princess in its caves.

The archduke frowned and grunted fiercely in his perplexity. Then he struck the table and cried:

”Count Zerbst shall do eet! To-morrow morning! You shall 'eem lead to ze wood. 'E shall breeng 'er.”

Miss Lambart protested that to wander in the Deeping woods with a German count would hardly be proper.

”Brobare? What ees 'brobare'?” said the archduke.

”_Convenable_,” said Miss Lambart.

The archduke protested that such considerations must not be allowed to militate against his being set free to return to Ca.s.sel-Na.s.sau at the earliest possible moment. Miss Lambart said that they must. In the end it was decided that a motor-car should be procured from Rowington and that Miss Lambart should guide the archduke and the count to the entrance of the path to the knoll, the count should convey to the princess her father's command to return to the Grange, and if she should refuse to obey, he should haul her by force to the car.

Miss Lambart made no secret of her strong conviction that he would never set eyes, much less hands, on the princess. Count Zerbst's smooth pink face flushed rose-pink all round his fierce little mustache, which in some inexplicable, but unfortunate, fas.h.i.+on accentuated the extraordinary insignificance of his nose; his small eyes sparkled; and he muttered fiercely something about ”sdradegy.” He looked at Miss Lambart very unamiably. He felt that she was not impressed by him as were the maidens of Ca.s.sel-Na.s.sau; and he resented it. He resolved to capture the princess at any cost.

The archduke fumed furiously to find, next morning in the _Morning Post_ the true story of his daughter's disappearance; and he was fuming still when the car came from Rowington. It was a powerful car and a weight-carrier; Miss Lambart, who had telephoned for it, had been careful to demand a weight-carrier. With immense fuss the archduke disposed himself in the back of the tonneau which he filled with billowy curves. The moment he was settled in it Miss Lambart sprang to the seat beside the driver, and insisted on keeping it that she might the more easily direct his course.

They were not long reaching the wood; and the chauffeur raised no objection to taking the car up the broad turfed aisle from which ran the path to the knoll. At the entrance of it the count stepped out of the car; and the archduke gave him his final instructions with the air of a Roman father; he was to bring the princess in any fas.h.i.+on, but he was to bring her at once.

In a last generous outburst he cried: ”Pooll 'er by the ear! Bud breeng 'er.”

The count said that he would, and entered the path with a resolute and martial air. Miss Lambart was not impressed by it. She thought that in his tight-fitting clothes of military cut and his apparently tighter-fitting patent leather boots he looked uncommonly out of place under the green wood trees. She remembered how lightly the Twins and the princess went; and she had the poorest expectation of his getting near any of them. Also, as they had come up the aisle of the woods she had been a.s.sailed by a late but serious doubt, whether a weight-carrying motor-car was quite the right kind of vehicle in which to approach the lair of the Twins with hostile intent. Its powerful, loud-throbbing engine had seemed to her to advertise their advent with all the competence of a trumpet.

Her doubt was well-grounded. The quick ears of Erebus were the first to catch its throbbing note, and that while it was still two hundred yards from the entrance of the path to the knoll. Ever since the departure of Miss Lambart and Sir Maurice the Twins had been making ready against invasion, conveying their provisions and belongings to the secret caves.

The secret caves had not been secret before the coming of the Twins to the knoll. They were high up on the outer face of it, airy and well lighted by two inaccessible holes under an overhanging ledge. But the entrance to them was by a narrow shaft which rose sharply from a cave in the heart of the knoll. On this shaft the Twins had spent their best pains for two and a half wet days the year before; and they had reduced some seven or eight feet of it to a pa.s.sage fifteen inches high and eighteen inches broad. The opening into this pa.s.sage could, naturally, be closed very easily; and then, in the dim light, it was hard indeed to distinguish it from the wall of the cave. It had been a somewhat difficult task to get their blankets and provisions through so narrow a pa.s.sage; but it had been finished soon after breakfast.

They were on the alert for invaders; and as soon as they were quite sure that the keen ears of Erebus had made no mistake and that a car was coming up the board aisle, the princess and the Terror squirmed their way up to the secret caves; and Erebus closed the pa.s.sage behind them, and with small chunks filled in the interstices between the larger pieces of stone so that it looked more than ever a part of the wall of the cave. Then she betook herself to a point of vantage among the bushes on the face of the knoll, from which she could watch the entrance of the path and the coming of the invaders.

The archduke, lying back at his ease in the car, and smoking an excellent cigar, spoke with a.s.surance of catching the one-fifteen train from Rowington to London and the night boat from Dover to Calais. Miss Lambart wasted no breath encouraging him in an expectation based on the efforts of Count Zerbst on the knoll. She stepped out of the car and strolled up and down on the pleasant turf. Presently she saw a figure coming down the aisle from the direction of Little Deeping; when it came nearer, with considerable pleasure she recognized Sir Maurice.

When he came to them she presented him to the archduke as the discoverer of his daughter's hiding-place. The archduke, mindful of the fact that Sir Maurice had given the true story of the disappearance to the world, received him ungraciously. Miss Lambart at once told Sir Maurice of the errand of Count Zerbst and of her very small expectation that anything would come of it. Sir Maurice agreed with her; and the fuming archduke a.s.sured them that the count was the most promising soldier in the army of Ca.s.sel-Na.s.sau. Then Sir Maurice suggested that they should go to the knoll and help the count. Miss Lambart a.s.sented readily; and they set out at once. They skirted the barriers of thorns in the path and came to the knoll. It was quiet and seemed utterly deserted.

They called loudly to the count several times; but he did not answer.

Miss Lambart suggested that he was searching the caves and that they should find him and help him search them; they plunged into the caves and began to hunt for him. They did not find the count; neither did they find the princess nor the Twins. They shouted to him many times as they traversed the caves; but they had no answer.