The Prince Commands: Being Sundry Adventures of Michael Karl, Sometime Crown Prince & Pretender to the Thrown of Morvania (9 page)

“We'll be standing behind the curtains in the drawing room,” Ericson assured him.

The Duke laughed and left them.

“There,” said Ericson, “goes the brains of the Royalist Party in Rein. He has played the hardest sort of a double game for the last nine months. There hasn't been a minute of the day or night that he hasn't been ready to feel the prick of a dagger between his shoulders. And yet, to hear him talk, you would believe that all of this has been the most amusing sort of sport.”

“I like him,” said Michael Karl impulsively.

Ericson nodded. “The only people who don't are a few worthies whom you saw this evening. That Council, with the exception of Lukrantz and Johann, is a gathering of the biggest bunch of crooks in the country.

“Oberdamnn is just an inefficient bungler who uses his position for what he can get out of it and who is afraid of his own shadow. Kafner wants power. He would be perfectly happy as a prime minister under some figurehead king. Laupt is just plain wolf and the nastiest one of the crowd.

“The Archbishop is pretty old, and I don't think he knows what it's all about even yet. They promised him some lands which the Church and the State have been quarreling over for the past two centuries, so he's satisfied.

“Kamp wants revolution, the bloodier the better. In his dreams he sees himself a sort of Morvanian Lenin. Though the truth about Kamp is that he really believes the stuff he preaches and that makes him dangerous.

“Then we come to Cobentz. He is an example of everything a nobleman should not be. There are some very black stories about him, and we have proof that more than half of them are true. He made a fortune out of the Laubcrantz sulphur mines, but I should hate to have to tell how he mistreated his slavelike working people to do it. His own class will have nothing to do with him with the exception of one or two petty nobles of his own sort. The throne is his goal, of course. He has Karloff blood. And he's as dangerous as a cornered rat because he never fights in the open. His enemies are apt to be found in some dark street with a dagger between their shoulders or just disappear altogether.”

Michael Karl was remembering something, something which the Werewolf had flung at him as a taunt. “Did Cobentz ever have anything to do with a building called the ‘Lion Tower'?” he asked.

The American jumped to his feet, and strode down the room. When he returned to answer, his voice was curiously muffled.

“The Lion Tower is his military command, and as long as the Council is ruling he has full power there. What goes on behind its walls is one of the many things he will answer for some day. What do you know of the Lion Tower?”

“When the Werewolf was questioning me, he ac- cused me of being responsible for something which happened there,” explained Michael Karl.

“The taking of that tower is Johann's job. Whatever secrets it conceals will be known then. But I think that the Werewolf will enjoy meeting ‘ Cobentz if he gets the chance,” said the American softly. “And let us hope he gets it soon.”

There was a timid rap at the great doors, and at Ericson's loud “Come in,” Jan sidled around.

“Dominde, the Dominde Lukrantz is here.”

“Show him in,” the American commanded in a voice which sent the little man almost running from the room.

Lukrantz bustled in. His hair was just as ruffled and his eyes were blazing just as they had been in the Council Chamber. He carried a fat brief-case which he dropped on the nearest chair as he entered.

“Good evening,” he nodded towards them both.

“Sit down, Herr Lukrantz. We are both more than glad to see you. This is High Highness, Prince Michael Karl.”

Even Ericson had to laugh at the open-mouthed wonder of the man.

“Yes, it's perfectly true,” he said answering the bewildered look Lukrantz gave him. “His Highness is one of us. Now doesn't that sound just like a secret society of bomb throwers? We should all be wearing beards or black masks. Yes, His Highness is one of us and he brought us some very interesting news this evening. You may tell your story again, boy.”

Thus encouraged, Michael Karl told the story of the secret passage and what he had overheard there for the second time that evening.

“Watch out, Lukrantz, they're after your hide now,” said the American when he had finished. “Johann is going to fall in with their plans. He is leaving the city to-morrow.”

“But—” Lukrantz had begun to protest.

“He is coming back again,” Ericson interrupted to reassure him. “In fact I believe that if you visited us to-morrow evening you would find him sitting right here. It is you we will have to watch out for.”

Lukrantz smiled grimly. “I'm taking every precaution I can until after the sixteenth.” He turned to Ericson with pathetic eagerness, “You are sure Urlich Karl will strike then?”

“He has given his word. Unless something happens to hasten matters, you may print the proclamation I gave you on the morning of the sixteenth. And by nightfall Rein will be Urlich Karl's.”

Lukrantz sighed. “It is almost too much to hope for. And now to business. I have those plans you wanted of the mountain forts.”

He reached for his brief-case and ruffled through the many papers it contained until he found two flimsy slips covered with meaningless wiggly lines.

“Good!” applauded Ericson. “And with some information I got this morning”— He turned to Michael Karl. “Will you please get the horse trader's letter and that map of the northern pass which came in this morning. And with this information,” he continued, “our success in this part of the country is assured. I shall send it on to-night.”

Lukrantz eyed the steel files almost with awe. “There is more material in there about Morvania than was ever gathered together by any one man before. The thing's a treasure chest.”

“That is the advantage of being a prospective author. The cabinet stays there day in and day out, dusted by a housemaid every morning, and no one would believe me if I told them that there is information in there which would wipe a kingdom off the map.

“And now,” he spread the papers Michael Karl had handed him out on his desk, “let's see what our allies over the mountains will need.”

Chapter IX

In Which Two Plot And One Acts

Michael Karl missed Duke Johann's grand exit the next morning for the simple reason that he overslept. So if Ericson watched from behind the drawing-room curtain he watched alone, but Michael Karl had cause to believe that the American was far from the drawing-room curtains at the moment when the Duke's car purred down the Pala Horn.

When he as last dashed guiltily down the stairs, Michael Karl found the dining room empty and the table cleared, but for a note addressed to him in the American's sprawling hand.

I am sorry I can't be there to see Johann make his exit [he read], but I have gone to beard a certain wolf in his den. Should you have cause to reach me suddenly, send a messenger to the flower market on the bridge. At the far end is a lame man selling shrubs. The messenger is to ask for yellow roses, and the man will reply that he has none. Then the messenger will say: “Yellow roses need the sun.” The answer will be: “The sun rises on the sixteenth.” Simple, isn't it, and quite melodramatic. But you see, Michael Karl, you quite stepped out of modern life when you chose to complicate matters by becoming a pretender to the throne in Morvania. And I think that the above ritual matches well with secret passages and werewolves. Don't you agree with me?

And now I really must be off. If you find time too heavy on your hands, you may amuse yourself copying the material in the second drawer of the library desk. Console Johann for my absence and leave everything to him. Shall I give your regards to the Werewolf?

Yours in haste,

F.E.

Michael Karl memorized the formula of the sun and the yellow roses while he finished his lonely breakfast. He rather wistfully wondered what Ericson was doing in the mountains as he went into the library to busy himself with the contents of the second drawer.

But work could no longer hold his interest with the panel of the secret passage before him, and a calendar on the desk shrieking the fact that this was the fourteenth and that the all important sixteenth was but two days away. Half-heartedly he attempted to copy one of the papers but, after spoiling three sheets and tearing the fourth badly when he pulled it out of the typewriter, he gave it up as a bad job and went to look out of the window which fronted a short street running into the Pala Horn.

Rein was very quiet that morning. Even the sellers of fruit and flowers who fearlessly invaded the Pala Horn shouting their wares were now nowhere to be seen. Michael Karl, thinking of the brew which he had been preparing the night before, didn't like that quiet. It savored too much of a lull before the storm.

For the first time since his coming to Rein he wanted to be out. He wanted to see the Cathedral Square, the markets, to walk the dark alleys of the Bargo, to be doing something. Ericson was off to see that strange ally and perhaps Prince, the Werewolf; Johann was busy pulling wool over the eyes of the Council, Lukrantz had his part to play with his newspapers, but Michael Karl had to sit and wait. And he began to realize that that was the hardest part of all.

The two hours that followed were the dullest that Michael Karl had ever known. He tried his copying again, he made a restless tour of the downstairs rooms, he even picked up his language studies, but nothing held his interest. The panel fascinated him and he was tempted to try it, but it refused to yield to his fingers and he guessed shrewdly that the American had locked it in some way to keep him out of mischief.

He was staring out of the window for the tenth time when Jan came fluttering in, his pudgy hands shaking in distress, with a wild-haired Lukrantz at his heels.

“Where is he?” demanded the editor.

“He's gone to meet the Werewolf,” answered Michael Karl, rightly thinking that Lukrantz meant the American.

“That is bad, bad.” The editor sank into a chair and looked up at Michael Karl with real distress in his face. “We must get word to him. Kellermann, whom we have depended upon, has betrayed the plan for the sixteenth. If we can't reach the mountain men we are finished.”

“It looks,” Michael Karl pulled open the upper desk drawer and took out the snub-nosed revolver which he had always seen there, “as if I'm going to want some yellow roses after all.”

Lukrantz sat and stared at him a bit stupidly.

“What do you want to tell Ericson?” asked Michael Karl as he loaded the revolver from a box of cartridges and filled his breeches pocket with the remainder.

“Just that Kellermann has betrayed us and that we need instructions. I wish Johann were here”—

“Speak of the devil,” announced a cool voice from the doorway. The tall Duke, lazy as ever, stood there.

Lukrantz was out of his chair and at the Duke's side in an instant. “Kellermann” — he began shrilly.

“Has gone over to Laupt,” finished the Duke for him. “Oh, yes, I heard all about it, and as there was no further use in my leaving the city to please Kafner I came back. And where are you going, Your Highness?” he asked sharply as Michael Karl started out of the door.

“To warn Ericson,” answered Michael Karl mistrusting the look the Duke gave him.

“I'm sorry, Your Highness, but I must insist that you are too valuable to play the role of messenger boy. We have several who can do that very nicely.”

“But I am going to do it.” Michael Karl didn't say that aloud. He had an idea that Prince or no Prince that was not the sort of thing he would care to say to the Duke. After all there was no use quarreling over the fact that he was going. Let them think that he had given up and was being a nice obedient boy.

With reluctance he answered, “All right. I am ready to do anything you wish me to.”

“It is most kind of Your Highness to accept matters in this manner. Though,” the Duke smiled, “from what I have heard you are not always so amiable. And now if you will excuse us, Your Highness. Lukrantz, the plans for the North”—

Johann led the editor towards the desk, and their voices trailed off into half whispers. Michael Karl stiffened. Treat him like a baby would they? Well!

He tiptoed upstairs and raided the American's room for a certain black leather coat. For May the mountains would be very cold. He transferred the loose shells into one of the large patch pockets on the coat and crammed his peaked chauffeur's cap into the other.

The library door was closed when he came downstairs, but some one spoke quite loudly as he passed it.

“Of course, he will try it, Lukrantz, but Benner is outside, and he won't get far.”

Michael Karl gave the door a low bow. “Thank you, Your Grace,” he said softly, “I know now how not to go.”

He turned aside and pushed through the door which led to the service quarters. As he went down a narrow hall past a half-open door he caught a glimpse of Breck, his magnificent livery coat laid aside, polishing knives like any other lowly mortal while Jan was restlessly passing to and fro frowning over a printed list in his hand.

Certain tempting smells betrayed the kitchen, and a dampish, sudsy odor of the laundry. This was his chance. The laundry gave upon a square side yard where, upon the occasion, he had seen a thin sharp-faced woman wrestling with wet sheets and a slack line.

Michael Karl tried the door, and it swung open easily beneath his touch. The room was dimly lighted, and the outer door he was searching for stood ajar upon the stone paved court. He stopped to pull on the cap and fold the coat over his arm hoping to give a good imitation of a chauffeur on important business.

The stone-paved yard had a blue, painted door leading into the side street. Michael Karl's heart sank as he pushed at it; the thing was locked. But as he stepped to one side to see if he could climb the wall he saw tucked between two loose bricks the missing key. It took but a second to pull it out, unlock the door, and step into the street.

He locked the door behind him and tossed the key over the wall. When they found it lying there they would think that it had fallen out of its hiding place. Michael Karl pulled the peaked cap a little over one eye so that it set at the exact rakish angle demanded by young chauffeurs, and set off briskly down the deserted street. His adventuring had begun again.

This side street led into the Pala Horn, and a block away lay the Cathedral Square. The silvery chimes in the tall bell tower marked the hour of high noon as Michael Karl crossed the square to the avenue, which, if he had remembered Ericson's directions correctly, would lead him straight to the bridge of the flower market.

He shifted the leather coat from his right to his left arm so the revolver in the inner breast pocket would stop bumping against his side. The same recklessness which had betrayed him the night he left the Royal Train was urging him on.

Rein evidently went home for its dinner. All along the streets he could see the shop assistants, the prosperous merchants and the shoppers going home. Shop after shop was closed with a neat sign, the Morvanian “Out to Lunch,” he supposed, on the door.

Michael Karl walked a little faster. After all it would never do to reach the flower market and find the man with the shrubs gone.

With a sudden dip the avenue swung downwards to meet the old bridge. Like the day when he had first seen it, it was a mass of color. A whole basket of deep purple violets was framed in clumps of yellow daffodils and some pale pink rose-like flowers. The flower, girls were filling their wide aprons with tight little bunches of bright green ferns and quaint nosegays of their wares to hawk in the upper market place.

Walking slowly as if inspecting each dealer's flowers Michael Karl crossed the bridge until he came at last to the place he was seeking. Prickly shrubs uprooted, even a small tree or two, whose roots were carefully wrapped in sacking, hedged in a merry fellow who had a laugh and cheery greeting for every passer-by.

A stout, flabby-faced man was pricing a small tree and looking more than annoyed at the cripple's comments, each emphasized with a prod of his rubber-tipped cane. At last the customer pulled out his purse and carefully counted some coins into the young man's hand. He picked up his little tree and marched off looking very important while the cripple limped out into the street and busied himself with rearranging the shrubs to cover the gap left by the sapling.

Michael Karl swallowed uncertainly and stepped up to him.

“What can I do for you, friend?” asked the man cheerily, looking up at Michael Karl's approach.

“Have you any yellow roses?” Michael Karl saw the man's eyes widen, and he hesitated before he answered.

“They are not common at this season of the year.”

Michael Karl nodded. “It is true that yellow roses need the sun.”

“But then,” the man laughed gaily as if he were telling some amusing story, “the sun will rise on the sixteenth.”

“Very well.” Michael Karl waited. He was to obey the flower merchant's instructions, it seemed.

“A friend of mine may have some really yellow roses,” began the man thoughtfully; “if you wish you might try there. Go straight ahead until you come to the sign of the Four Horses and inquire there for Franz Ultmann. Ask him for roses.”

“Straight on?”

“Yes. Good hunting, friend.”

“Thank you,” and with a pleasant nod Michael Karl went on wondering just how large a cog in Ericson's machine was the flower merchant.

He was in the New Town now, and his way led him by the flapping Union Jack and the carved lions of the British Embassy and the cross-looking eagle and stars and stripes of its American neighbor. How long ago was it that he had claimed American citizenship? Maybe after the excitement was over he would make use of the passport which still lay in the drawer of his bedroom table.

The street curved around the river bank and he came upon what must have been, when it was built, a country inn. A sign of four wild-looking horses swung over the entrance to its courtyard which was now almost choked with a very large ox cart and a very small roadster. Close to the wall a draggled cock and two greedy hens hunted their dinner fearlessly among the hay upon which the unyoked oxen were making a meal. The sleepy dog by the door aroused himself to snap at an annoying fly as Michael Karl stepped over him.

The long low room of the inn parlor wasn't crowded. A brightly dressed farmer, the apparent owner of the ox cart, and one other customer were talking to the plump and pretty barmaid. The man at the bar turned away after a moment and smiled cheerily at Michael Karl.

“Hot, ain't it?” he asked, wiping the shining red spot above his scanty fringe of sandy hair with a handkerchief printed in a pattern of horses’ heads. He was a short, stocky man and the wide riding breeches and cloth gaiters he wore made him look very wide indeed.

“It certainly is.” Michael Karl agreed. The man seemed a friendly person. He stepped to the bar and spoke to the plump maid who was busily engaged in rubbing up the glasses.

“Where may I find Herr Franz Ultmann?” he inquired.

She looked at him, her eyes round with surprise. “That's him, there,” she pointed with a pudgy, none too clean, finger to the man in the gaiters. “Herr Ultmann,” she raised her voice to almost a shout though the man she addressed was no more than three feet away, endeavoring to light a very large and smelly pipe, “here's one that'll be a-lookin’ for ye.”

Michael Karl turned to Ultmann. “I've come to see about some yellow roses,” he said. “The man at the flower market said you might have some early ones.”

Franz Ultmann screwed up his eyes. “That I do. Will ye come and see ‘em, Lad? My car be outside. And here's somethin’ for that noo ribbon, m'dear.” He tossed the barmaid a coin and went out into the courtyard, followed by Michael Karl.

“'Tis funny how these yellow roses be,” he said, holding open the door of the very small roadster for Michael to enter. “They need the sun. I'm told that we'll be a-havin’ a very warm sun on the six- teenth. I'm head stable manager to Duke Johann, not that the Duke keeps up his stable very much since the war, but I raise my roses on the side, and a pretty thing I make out of it in a good season. But I did better in the days when the old king ruled. More goin’ and comin’ and the ladies bought from me. Especially yellow roses.