The Prince Commands: Being Sundry Adventures of Michael Karl, Sometime Crown Prince & Pretender to the Thrown of Morvania (6 page)

“The Cathedral Square,” announced the American. “We must see that too,” he pointed to the Cathedral.

Michael Karl thought privately that he wasn't going to have much time for sight-seeing and he wasn't going to be able to go about too openly. The Prince looked back at the Cathedral; it was pretty impressive, but he'd probably never see it any closer. He didn't foresee, for how could he, the Battle of the Cathedral Steps.

Out of the Cathedral Square into a proud avenue of stately homes they went. Above every door all the fabled monsters of heraldry winked or blinked, and family coats-of-arms were carved, to be pitted by the sand-filled wind which came roaring up from the Lower Town in winter time.

“Here we are.” The roadster stopped at last before a house in the middle of the row. As if he had been at watch for their coming, as indeed he had, a roundish little man with close-clipped gray hair appeared like a jack-in-the-box on the door steps and came hastening down to greet them.

“Dominde, Dominde!” he cried excitedly, rubbing his hands together.

“Hello, Jan, and how goes things?” asked Ericson stepping out stiffly.

“Very well, Dominde,” beamed the little man.

“That is good. And now if you will summon Breck and Kanda, my friend has had an accident and will have to be helped in.”

“Of course, of course, Dominde.” The little man clucked like a hen and looked at Michael Karl pityingly as he turned back to the house. In no time at all he was back like a fussy, too-plump tug with a couple of six-foot steamers of footmen in tow.

With the help of Breck and Kanda Michael Karl was brought in and comfortably established before an open fire in the library of the house. Still a little dazed by the magnificence of the footmen's powdered heads and rich livery, and the stateliness of the apartment he found himself in, Michael Karl settled back to see what would happen next.

Jan popped in, followed by Kanda with a tray. “I thought, Dominde,” he began rather humbly, “that you might require refreshment after your journey.”

The silent Kanda placed the tray on the desk, and they bowed themselves out together. Ericson lounged over to inspect the tray. “Coffee and—milk. That must be for you, the efficient Jan would never dare bring me milk,” he smiled down at Michael Karl, and Michael Karl grinned back.

“I suppose you expect me to get all hot and bothered over Jan thinking me young enough to enjoy milk, but I do. So you can just hand it over, Mr. Man.”

And Michael Karl sipped from the tall glass while the American glanced through the pile of letters on his desk. He did it very untidily, letting the opened envelopes drift to the floor instead of putting them in the basket by his side, Michael Karl noted with disapproval.

“What am I doing now?” Ericson asked suddenly. Michael Karl flushed as he realized that he had been staring at his host.

“I was thinking,” he said ruefully, “what my guardian would have done to me if I had thrown papers around like that. Though I'm not denying that it's a relief to do it sometimes.”

“You're a very orderly person aren't you, John Stephenson?” asked the American. His eyes had their amused look. “But you see I was brought up to throw things around and have some one pick them up for me. Perhaps if I had had your guardian instead of”—he checked himself quickly.

“You wouldn't have liked my guardian—” began Michael Karl to cover the pause. He wondered what Ericson had been about to say.

“That reminds me, hadn't you better cable him that you are all right? He'll probably learn through the newspapers of the Crown Prince's capture and he will be worrying.”

“My guardian,” replied Michael Karl with some truth, “washed his hands of me when I started on this fool trip.”

Ericson looked at him with some surprise. “I can hardly believe that, but I suppose it's so. And now you're going to bed.”

“But it isn't even noon yet,” protested Michael Karl.

“Those feet of yours are going to get their chance to rest.”

So Breck and Kanda were sent for again and Michael Karl found himself in a room which he thought would be a comfortable size for a Union Station but was far too large for a bedroom. And in spite of all his protests he was, fifteen minutes later, half sitting, half lying in a bed big enough for one of the small steamers. It could, he discovered after experimenting, be shut off from the room by heavy crimson velvet curtains.

“How do you like it?” asked the American from the door. He crossed the room to dump a couple of books and three of the reddest apples Michael Karl had ever seen on the bed. “Something to keep you busy,” he commented as Michael Karl examined his spoils.

“It's very nice,” said Michael Karl looking about him, “but don't you think that it's rather on the large side?”

“This is very small compared to the Royal bedroom in the Palace. I think a whole army could comfortably hold maneuvers there.”

Jan poked his gray head around the corner of the door. “Dominde,” he said in his humble voice, “the telephone demands your attendance.”

“Sorry. If there's anything you want, ring.” Ericson looped the velvet bell cord in reach of Michael Karl's hand and hurried out.

Michael Karl picked up the books.
The History of Rein Fortress,
he read aloud,
The History of the Karloffs in Rein.

He put them down and frowned uncertainly. Did the American—guess anything? Why had they left the Inn so suddenly when Michael Karl had been assured that it was perfectly safe to stay, and why had the American delivered that little speech about the duty of Royalty as if he had known that Michael Karl was planning to—well, desert? And now these books about Rein and the Karloffs. Michael Karl shook his head. He wasn't going to worry about the future. Well, not just yet, at least.

Snuggling back into his pillows he selected the reddest and hardest of the apples to sink his teeth into while he opened
The History of Rein Fortress,
and began to read.

Chapter VI

Of A Chance Discovery And A Passage Underground

“What are you doing?”

Michael Karl looked up guiltily from piling the peeling of his breakfast orange in a topheavy tower. “I'm thinking,” he answered soberly.

He had been up and about, only hobbling to be sure, for the past two days and it was a week since his surprising adventures in the mountains.

“And do you always frown so horribly when you are thinking?” inquired Ericson.

“Was I frowning?” asked Michael Karl in some surprise.

“If you don't believe me, go and think in front of a mirror and see what happens. And what were you thinking about?”

“How I am going to return the Cross without being seen.”

“Are you going to return it?”

Michael Karl was startled. “Of course. Why not?”

The American looked away. “Oh, just an idea of mine. Thought that you'd like to return it to its owner when he's ransomed.”

“I never want to see the Crown Prince again,” said Michael Karl in a low voice, his fingers busy with the bits of peeling.

“Are you sure?” There was an odd note in the American's voice, and again Michael Karl wondered just how much or how little his host really knew.

“Yes,” answered Michael Karl firmly and demolished his tower with a sweep of his hand.

“What are you going to do to-day?” Ericson asked a moment later. There was a faint trace of disappointment in his voice as if he had looked for something long hoped for and found it missing. Michael Karl felt queerly to blame, but he wasn't going to give up his new-found freedom for a friend's disappointment if that was what the American had hoped for.

“Oh, I don't know,” he answered carelessly. “The usual thing I suppose. There isn't much I can do now.”

“I'm going to be busy in the library. I wish you'd go out a little.”

Michael Karl shook his head. “Too many know me, I can't risk being seen. I'll attempt it tonight after dark. I'm going to get my books out of the library. You're not to be disturbed this morning I suppose?”

“No. Do you know, you're making me a mighty fine secretary, John. I wish I could persuade you to stay on. I'd never got all that material ready for the article on Morvanian witchcraft if it hadn't been for your help.”

Michael Karl folded his napkin and arose to his feet. “My dear sir, I am overwhelmed,” he said with an excellent imitation of his late aide-de-camp's heel clicking bow. “And now to work. I shall be in the anteroom as usual if you need me.”

The American smiled with lazy admiration. “Keeping the old man to it, aren't you? You hurry away from the breakfast table all full of zeal because you know it will shame me into working too. Some morning I'm going to defy you and sit right here for another cup of coffee. I wonder if you're so busy when I'm not watching you?”

“Pop in and see,” suggested Michael Karl.

Ericson shook his head. “I couldn't, that squeaky board in the hall would always warn you in time. You go over the mail this morning and answer everything you can. I hate to write letters, and you seem to enjoy it so you might as well answer mine. Don't interrupt me unless the palace burns down or something. And don't let Jan in to tell some tale of woe, you handle him.

“And don't worry about the Cross,” he added as he opened the library door. “I'll find some way for you to return it.”

Michael Karl seated himself before the table in the anteroom. It was interesting work, this answering of mail and reading up of history to help his host, and it made him feel that he was not quite so useless. He wished that he might accept the American's offer and stay on as a secretary.

Jan appeared with the morning mail and laid it carefully on the table. The little man always carried the mail basket as if it contained something breakable.

“Good morning, Dominde,” he smiled humbly and backed out, bowing very low at Michael Karl's hearty answer.

The mail went into two piles, those private and those pertaining to business, but it was a long green envelope which excited all Michael Karl's interest this morning. Ericson had told him about these green envelopes, but this was the first time he had seen one. It never came by post, but was delivered by hand and was not to be opened, but to be taken to the American sealed.

Wondering about it, he pushed it into the table drawer for safe keeping and went about answering the rest. As Ericson said, Michael Karl liked to write letters, perhaps because he had never written any before, and was developing a flair for the difficult business. He seemed to know by instinct what to say and how to say it.

The volume of the American's mail often surprised him. There were so many letters from such queer people. Every one seemed to know that Ericson was collecting unusual facts about the country and its customs, he wanted to do a sort of travel book about Morvania, and they wrote in things that they knew.

A horse trader in this morning's mail had sent in a long description of some odd points about his trade in the northern mountains. He seemed to be an educated man who noticed everything and Michael Karl enjoyed his letter, and ended by putting it in the basket marked “To be Filed,” for the American kept files of all sorts of odds and ends of information.

There was a badly spelt and written letter, accompanied by a crude map, all about a little known pass over the Laub Mountains, which joined the horse trader's letter after a careful and more legible copy had been made and clipped to the original.

One or two circulars from advertising companies were put aside, for Michael Karl had learned that while Ericson allowed him to answer almost all letters he was not to throw away any until the American had seen them.

The mail was opened and a rough draft of the answer was carefully pinned to each letter, for the typewriter was in the library, and Michael Karl had to wait until noon before he could enter. He believed that Ericson spent the morning working on his book, for he always disappeared in there at nine o'clock and did not come out until twelve, during which time he kept the door locked and every one was forbidden entrance.

Michael Karl piled the letters neatly and turned to his books. At the American's suggestion he was studying the mountain dialect of Morvania, going over each morning's study with Kanda who was a mountaineer. Also he was reading the history of Rein. The books Ericson had lent him during his enforced stay in bed had given him the desire to learn more about the ancient capital of Morvania.

He was deep in the mysteries of an irregular verb when Jan came timidly in.

“Dominde, Dominde Ericson has gone out, he says that you may use the library now if you wish.”

Michael Karl glanced at the clock on the mantel. “But it's only ten-thirty,” he said in surprise. Ericson had always used the library until twelve before.

“The Dominde was suddenly called away.”

“All right.” Michael Karl laid down his book and shuffled his papers together.

There was a fire burning in the library though the month was May, for these stone-walled houses of the Upper Town with their backs tight against the Fortress rock were cool and damp even on the warmest of days. Michael Karl spread out his papers on the American's clean desk; as untidy as he was in most things, the top of Frank Ericson's desk was always kept neat. Although Michael Karl suspected that he just opened one of the drawers and brushed things in when he was ready to leave.

His fingers flew over the keyboard of the typewriter. Typewriting was the one modern accomplishment which for some reason the Colonel had ordered him taught. Probably he did it because Michael Karl was the only one who could read Michael Karl's handwriting. The clock struck half past eleven when he finished the last letter and laid them all carefully on the desk awaiting Ericson's scrawled signature.

He still had the horse trader and mountaineer letters to file and a list to make of all the informative letters which had come in that week. And he was busy at that task when Jan summoned him to lunch. It was not until he passed through the anteroom on his way to the dining room that he remembered the green envelope.

The table drawer was perhaps not the safest place for it. He held it in his hand and looked around, if he could carry it with him—His boots! It wouldn't be the first time he had concealed something in the tops of his boots. He still had on Heinrich's too large ones which made it all the better. Michael Karl tucked the green envelope into the top of his riding boot.

He was still wearing the green breeches and tunic which had been given him in the Crown Inn. None of Ericson's clothes would fit him, and in these he could better keep up the fiction of being some sort of a secretary chauffeur.

The American was not there for lunch but that was nothing unusual, he didn't eat more than half of his meals at the house. Michael Karl tasted the spicy dishes with some satisfaction. He was growing to like Morvanian cooking so well that Ericson had laughingly warned him about his waistline.

Feeling well fed, drowsy, and very much at peace with the world Michael Karl limped back to the library. He was safe from all but unexpected interruptions until four when Jan would bustle in with the afternoon tea, and Ericson would lounge in to pour himself the cup he never drank and sit telling Michael Karl interesting things about his day's work until his tea cooled and he ordered it taken away in disgust. In all the time Michael Karl had been there he had never seen the American drink his tea.

The list of the week's letters had been made, neatly copied and laid on Ericson's desk for his attention, and Michael Karl felt free to return to his language studies. He had a method all his own for the learning of irregular verbs which he was using this afternoon. One said the verb over three or four times looking at the book and then the book was put aside. Fixing his eyes firmly on the opposite wall, Michael Karl would try to picture the word spelled out letter by letter on its polished surface.

“I-a-g—g—What does come next?” Michael Karl sternly repressed the desire to look in the book and began again. “I-A-G—” But again it refused to form under his eyes. Perhaps that corner in the panel made too much of a shadow and so distracted his attention. Why that was queer, none of the other panels had that odd shadowed corner in them.

He laid down his book and crossed the room. The shadow in the panel provoked his curiosity. Why, part of the wall was sticking out! With his finger nails he caught and tugged at the edge. Something gave way and the whole panel swung out noiselessly like a door.

It must be the secret passage of which Ericson had told him. Without thinking he boldly clambered through. On a shell beside the door lay a flashlight. Then Ericson or some one in the house used the passage and used it often enough to leave the light there.

Michael Karl remembered things which had puzzled him, Ericson's intimate knowledge of the palace and its inhabitants for instance. He hesitated—would it be exactly playing the game to follow the passage and learn its secret? If Ericson had wanted him to know about it wouldn't he have told him?

And then he thought of the Cross. What better way of returning it unseen than to use the secret passage? He examined the inner fastening of the panel so that he would be sure to get it open again and picked up the torch. As the panel clicked shut behind him he felt a little tingle of excitement run up his back. He was off adventuring again.

The passage ran straight for a couple of yards and then ended in a flight of narrow stone steps. Michael Karl eyed them doubtfully, his feet were apt even now to protest when tried too much. But the excitement of adventure made him try it.

The air in the passage was chill but fresh and there was none of the dank sliminess which Michael Karl had always associated with underground passages. He must be inside the mountain itself, climbing the distance between the Pala Horn and the Palace Fortress.

The stairs were bisected suddenly by a deep landing. There was the outline of a door on the right wall and in it an inch above the level of Michael Karl's eyes the narrow slit of a peephole. He stretched on tiptoe to use it. But all he could see was dense darkness, and the distant sound of water made him think that this door led into the ancient dungeons.

There were more stairs after he left the dungeon door, but no more landings and at last he found himself at the top of the stairs in a long narrow hall. A crack of light, again to his right, showed him a second door and peephole. This time he looked into a wide hall with a marble stairway and crimson carpet, which took his breath away with their splendor. From the American's stories he identified it with the stairway leading to the throne room.

Beside a farther door there was a pair of powdered footmen who far surpassed Breck and Kanda in gorgeousness, and a wooden sentry pacing back and forth. He waited a while to see if anything would happen but the sentry was as stiff as ever and the footmen just stood, so Michael Karl went on.

The scene from the next peephole showed him what seemed to be a gun room. He was greatly tempted to try this door and step out a second or two to examine the ancient swords and guns in the wall racks but his prudence won. From the gun room steps led up again. Michael Karl began to think that this secret passage was overprovided with stairs.

When the next beam of light betrayed a peephole to him, he had no idea where he was. The secret door seemed to be some distance from the floor and his view was somewhat curtailed by the back of a tall chair. Then he understood he was in the throne room behind the throne itself!

The room was deserted and this time Michael Karl's curiosity won. He pushed down on the lever at the side and the door slipped back. Michael Karl wondered at its noiselessness until his hand came away greasy from the lever. The door had been recenty oiled. But, of course, the American must come and go through all the doors at his will. Michael Karl stepped out, leaving the door ajar behind him; he pulled a thick fold of the crimson velvet hangings into the crack as a further safeguard against its closing.

The vacant throne was the most impressive thing he had ever seen. It stood on a four-step dais under a crimson canopy with a silver standard draped over its back. He knew that to be the Royal Standard which followed the king into battle.