“Dame, our matters seem speeding fairly. It is full three months since I sent the shrewd and handsome Count Detzin on his devilish mission to my brother’s daughter Constance. If he fail, we are not wholly safe; but if he do succeed, no power can bar our girl from being Duchess e’en though ill fortune should decree, she never should be Duke!”
“My heart is full of bodings, yet all may still be well.”
“Tush, woman! Leave the owls to croak. To bed with ye, and dream of Brandenburgh and grandeur!”
C
HAPTER
II.
F
ESTIVITY
A
ND
T
EARS
.
S
IX DAYS AFTER
the occurrences related in the above chapter, the brilliant capital of the Duchy of Brandenburgh was resplendent with military pageantry, and noisy with the rejoicings of loyal multitudes; for Conrad, the young heir to the crown, was come. The old Duke’s heart was full of happiness, for Conrad’s handsome person and graceful bearing had won his love at once. The great halls of the palace were thronged with nobles, who welcomed Conrad bravely; and so bright and happy did all things seem, that he felt his fears and sorrows passing away and giving place to a comforting contentment.
But in a remote apartment of the palace a scene of a different nature was transpiring. By a window stood the Duke’s only child, the Lady Constance. Her eyes we’re red and swollen, and full of tears. She was alone. Presently she fell to weeping anew, and said aloud:
“The villain Detzin is gone—has fled the dukedom! I could not believe it at first, but alas! it is too true. And I loved him so. I dared to love him though I knew the Duke my father would never let me wed him. I loved him—but now I hate him! With all my soul I hate him! Oh, what is to become of me! I am lost, lost, lost! I shall go mad!
C
HAPTER
III.
T
HE
P
LOT
T
HICKENS.
A
FEW MONTHS DRIFTED BY.
All men published the praises of the young Conrad’s government and extolled the wisdom of his judgments, the mercifulness of his sentences, and the modesty with which he bore himself in his great office. The old Duke soon gave everything into his hands, and sat apart and listened with proud satisfaction while his heir delivered the decrees of the crown from the seat of the premier. It seemed plain that one so loved and praised and honored of all men as Conrad was, could not be otherwise than happy. But strangely enough, he was not. For he saw with dismay that the Princess Constance had begun to love him! The love of the rest of the world was happy fortune for him, but this was freighted with danger! And he saw, moreover, that the delighted Duke had discovered his daughter’s passion likewise, and was already dreaming of a marriage. Every day somewhat of the deep sadness that had been in the princess’ face faded away; every day hope and animation beamed brighter from her eye; and by and by even vagrant smiles visited the face that had been so troubled.
Conrad was appalled, he bitterly cursed himself for having yielded to the instinct that had made him seek the companionship of one of his own sex when he was new and a stranger in the palace—when he was sorrowful and yearned for a sympathy such as only women can give or feel, he now began to avoid his cousin. But this only made matters worse, for, naturally enough, the more he avoided her, the more she cast herself in his way. He marvelled at this at first; and next it startled him. The girl haunted him; she hunted him; she happened upon him at all times and in all places, in the night as well as in the day. She seemed singularly anxious. There was surely a mystery somewhere.
This could not go on forever. All the world talking about it. The Duke was beginning to look perplexed. Poor Conrad was becoming a very ghost through dread and dire distress. One day as he was emerging from a private ante-room attached to the picture gallery, Constance confronted him, and seizing both his hands in hers, exclaimed:
“Oh, why do you avoid me? What have I done—what have I said, to lose your kind opinion of me—for surely I had it once? Conrad, do not despise me, but pity a tortured heart? I cannot, cannot hold the words unspoken longer, lest they kill me—I
LOVE YOU,
C
ONRAD!
There, despise me if you must, but they
would
be uttered!”
Conrad was speechless. Constance hesitated a moment, and then, misinterpreting his silence, a wild gladness flamed in her eyes, and she flung her arms about his neck and said:
“You relent! you relent! You
can
love me—you
will
love me! Oh, say you will, my own, my worshipped Conrad!”
Conrad groaned aloud. A sickly pallor overspread his countenance, and he trembled like an aspen. Presently, in desperation, he thrust the poor girl from him, and cried:
“You know not what you ask! It is forever and ever impossible!” And then he fled like a criminal and left the princess stupefied with amazement. A minute afterward she was crying and sobbing there, and Conrad was crying and sobbing in his chamber. Both were in despair. Both saw ruin staring them in the face.
By and by Constance rose slowly to her feet and moved away, saying:
“To think that he was despising my love at the very moment that I thought it was melting his cruel heart! I hate him! he spurned me—did this man—he spurned me from him like a dog!”
C
HAPTER
IV.
T
HE
A
WFUL
R
EVELATION.
T
IME PASSED ON.
A settled sadness rested once more upon the countenance of the good Duke’s daughter. She and Conrad were seen together no more now. The Duke grieved at this. But as the weeks wore away, Conrad’s color came back to his cheeks and his old-time vivacity to his eye, and he administered the government with a clear and steadily ripening wisdom.
Presently a strange whisper began to be heard about the palace. It grew louder; it spread farther. The gossips of the city got hold of it. It swept the dukedom. And this is what the whisper said:
“The Lady Constance hath given birth to a child!”
When the lord of Klugenstein heard it, he swung his plumed helment thrice around his head and shouted:
“Long live Duke Conrad!—for lo, his crown is sure, from this day forward! Detzin has done his errand well, and the good scoundrel shall be rewarded!”
And he spread the tidings far and wide, and for eight-and-forty hours no soul in all the barony but did dance and sing, carouse and illuminate, to celebrate the great event, and all at proud and happy old Klugenstein’s expense.
C
HAPTER
V.
T
HE
F
RIGHTFUL
C
ATASTROPHE.
T
HE TRIAL WAS AT HAND.
All the great lords and barons of Brandenburgh were assembled in the Hall of Justice in the ducal palace. No space was left unoccupied where there was room for a spectator to stand or sit. Conrad, clad in purple and ermine, sat in the premier’s chair, and on either side sat the great judges of the realm. The old Duke had sternly commanded that the trial of his daughter should proceed, without favor, and then had taken to his bed broken-hearted. His days were numbered. Poor Conrad had begged, as for his very life, that he might be spared the misery of sitting in judgment upon his cousin’s crime, but it did not avail.
The saddest heart in all that great assemblage was in Conrad’s breast.
The gladdest was in his father’s. For, unknown to his daughter “Conrad,” the old Baron Klugenstein was come, and was among the crowd of nobles, triumphant in the swelling fortunes of his house.
After the heralds had made due proclamation and the other preliminaries had followed, the venerable Lore! Chief Justice said:
“Prisoner, stand forth!”
The unhappy princess rose and stood unveiled before the vast multitude. The Lord Chief Justice continued:
“Most noble lady, before the great judges of this realm it hath been charged and proven that out of holy wedlock your Grace hath given birth unto a child, and by our ancient law the penalty is death, excepting in one sole contingency, whereof his Grace the acting Duke, our good Lord Conrad, will advertise you in his solemn sentence now; wherefore, give heed.”
Conrad stretched forth the reluctant sceptre, and in the self-same moment the womanly heart beneath his robe yearned pityingly toward the doomed prisoner, and the tears came into his eyes. He opened his lips to speak, but the Lord Chief Justice said quickly:
“Not there, your Grace, not there! It is not lawful to pronounce judgment upon any of the ducal line,
SAVE FROM THE DUCAL THRONE!”
A shudder went to the heart of poor Conrad, and a tremor shook the iron frame of his old father likewise. C
ONRAD HAD NOT BEEN CROWNED—
dared he profane the throne? He hesitated and turned pale with fear. But it must be done. Wondering eyes were already upon him. They would be suspicious eyes if he hesitated longer. He ascended the throne. Presently he stretched forth the sceptre again, and said:
“Prisoner, in the name of our sovereign lord, Ulrich, Duke of Brandenburgh, I proceed to the solemn duty that hath devolved upon me. Give heed to my words. By the ancient law of the land, except you produce the partner of your guilt and deliver him up to the executioner, you must surely die. Embrace, this opportunity—save yourself while yet you may. Name the father of your child!”
A solemn hush fell upon the great court—a silence so profound that men could hear their own hearts beat. Then the princess slowly turned, with eyes gleaming with hate, and pointing her finger straight at Conrad, said:
“Thou art the man!”
An appalling conviction of his helpless, hopeless peril struck a chill to Conrad’s heart like the chill of death itself. What power on earth could save him! To disprove the charge, he must reveal that he was a woman; and for an uncrowned woman to sit in the ducal chair was death! At one and the same moment, he and his grim old father swooned and fell to the ground.
[The remainder of this thrilling and eventful story will
NOT
be found in this or any other publication, either now or at any future time.]
The truth is, I have got my hero (or heroine) into such a particularly close place, that I do not see how I am ever going to get him (or her) out of it again—and therefore I will wash my hands of the whole business, and leave that person to get out the best way that offers—or else stay there. I thought it was going to be easy enough to straighten out that little difficulty, but it looks different now.
[If
Harper’s Weekly
or the New York
Tribune
desire to copy these initial chapters into the reading columns of their valuable journals, just as they do the opening chapters of
Ledger
and
New York Weekly
novels, they are at liberty to do so at the usual rates, provided they “trust.”]
THE MOMENT OF DECISION
S
TANLEY
E
LLIN
Having begun this anthology with the distinguished Stanley Ellin, it is our great good fortune that he wrote two riddle stories, so we can end with him as well.
“The Moment of Decision” was adapted to a sixty-minute television show on
The U.S. Steel Hour
in 1961. The lead actor was a former song and dance man who got the opportunity to show what he could do as a dramatic actor. He seems to have passed the test, as Fred Astaire went on to many other non-singing, non-dancing roles.
Other Stanley Ellin works were filmed, notably
The House of Cards
(1969), a Hitchcockian international thriller that starred George Peppard and Inger Stevens, and featured Orson Welles, based on his novel of the same name;
Nothing But the Best
(1964), the dark comedy starring Alan Bates and directed by Clive Donner, based on his short story, “The Best of Everything”; and
Big Night
(1951), based on his first novel,
Dreadful Summit
, directed by Joseph Losey and starring John Barrymore, Jr.
Sunburn
(1979) starring Farah Fawcett was very loosely based on his novel
The Bind
, but Ellin should not be blamed for it in any way.
“The Moment of Decision” was first published in the March 1955 issue of
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
.
THE MOMENT OF DECISION
BY
S
TANLEY
E
LLIN
H
UGH
L
OZIER WAS THE EXCEPTION
to the rule that people who are completely sure of themselves cannot be likable. We have all met the sure ones, of course—those controlled but penetrating voices which cut through all others in a discussion, those hard forefingers jabbing home opinions on your chest, those living Final Words on all issues—and I imagine we all share the same amalgam of dislike and envy for them. Dislike, because no one likes to be shouted down or prodded in the chest, and envy, because everyone wishes he himself were so rich in self-assurance that he could do the shouting down and prodding.
For myself, since my work took me regularly to certain places in this atomic world where the only state was confusion and the only steady employment that of splitting political hairs, I found absolute judgments harder and harder to come by. Hugh once observed of this that it was a good thing my superiors in the department were not cut of the same cloth, because God knows what would happen to the country then. I didn’t relish that, but—and there was my curse again—I had to grant him his right to say it.
Despite this, and despite the fact that Hugh was my brother-in-law—a curious relationship when you come to think of it—I liked him immensely, just as everyone else did who knew him. He was a big, good-looking man, with clear blue eyes in a ruddy face, and with a quick, outgoing nature eager to appreciate whatever you had to offer. He was overwhelmingly generous, and his generosity was of that rare and excellent kind which makes you feel as if you are doing the donor a favor by accepting it.