The Lost Prince (13 page)

‘I hope you are not hurt,’ Marco said.

She bit her lip and clutched his shoulder very hard with her slim hand.

‘I have twisted my ankle,’ she answered. ‘I am afraid I have twisted it badly. Thank you for saving me. I should have had a bad fall.’

Her long, dark eyes were very sweet and grateful. She tried to smile, but there was such distress under the effort that Marco was afraid she must have hurt herself very much.

‘Can you stand on your foot at all?’ he asked.

‘I can stand a little now,’ she said, ‘but I might not be able to stand in a few minutes. I must get back to the house while I can bear to touch the ground with it. I am so sorry. I am afraid I shall have to ask you to go with me. Fortunately it is only a few yards away.’

‘Yes,’ Marco answered. ‘I saw you come out of the house. If you will lean on my shoulder, I can soon help you back. I am glad to do it. Shall we try now?’

She had a gentle and soft manner which would have appealed to any boy. Her voice was musical and her enunciation exquisite.

Whether she was Spanish or Italian, it was easy to imagine her a person who did not always live in London lodgings, even of the better class.

‘If you please,’ she answered him. ‘It is very kind of you. You are very strong, I see. But I am glad to have only a few steps to go.’

She rested on his shoulder as well as on her umbrella, but it was plain that every movement gave her intense pain. She caught her lip with her teeth, and Marco thought she turned white. He could not help liking her. She was so lovely and gracious and brave. He could not bear to see the suffering in her face.

‘I am so sorry!’ he said, as he helped her, and his boy’s voice had something of the wonderful sympathetic tone of Loristan’s. The beautiful lady herself remarked it, and thought how unlike it was to the ordinary boy-voice.

‘I have a latchkey,’ she said, when they stood on the low step.

She found the latchkey in her purse and opened the door. Marco helped her into the entrance hall. She sat down at once in a chair near the hat stand. The place was quite plain and old-fashioned inside.

‘Shall I ring the front doorbell to call someone?’ Marco inquired.

‘I am afraid that the servants are out,’ she answered. ‘They had a holiday. Will you kindly close the door? I shall be obliged to ask you to help me into the sitting room at the end of the hall. I shall find all I want there – if you will kindly hand me a few things. Someone may come in presently – perhaps one of the other lodgers – and, even if I am alone for an hour or so, it will not really matter.’

‘Perhaps I can find the landlady,’ Marco suggested. The beautiful person smiled.

‘She has gone to her sister’s wedding. That is why I was going out to spend the day myself. I arranged the plan to accommodate her. How good you are! I shall be quite comfortable directly, really. I can get to my easy chair in the sitting room now I have rested a little.’

Marco helped her to her feet, and her sharp, involuntary exclamation of pain made him wince internally. Perhaps it was a worse sprain than she knew.

The house was of the early-Victorian London order. A ‘front lobby’ with a dining room on the right hand, and a ‘back lobby’, after the foot of the stairs was passed, out of which opened the basement kitchen staircase and a sitting room looking out on a gloomy flagged back yard enclosed by high walls. The sitting room was rather gloomy itself, but there were a few luxurious things among the ordinary furnishings. There was an easy chair with a small table near it, and on the table were a silver lamp and some rather elegant trifles. Marco helped his charge to the easy chair and put a cushion from the sofa under her foot. He did it very gently, and, as he rose after doing it, he saw that the long, soft dark eyes were looking at him in a curious way.

‘I must go away now,’ he said, ‘but I do not like to leave you. May I go for a doctor?’

‘How dear you are!’ she exclaimed. ‘But I do not want one, thank you. I know exactly what to do for a sprained ankle. And perhaps mine is not really a sprain. I am going to take off my shoe and see.’

‘May I help you?’ Marco asked, and he kneeled down again and carefully unfastened her shoe and withdrew it from her foot. It was a slender and delicate foot in a silk stocking, and she bent and gently touched and rubbed it.

‘No,’ she said, when she raised herself, ‘I do not think it is a sprain. Now that the shoe is off and the foot rests on the cushion, it is much more comfortable, much more. Thank you, thank you. If you had not been passing I might have had a dangerous fall.’

‘I am very glad to have been able to help you,’ Marco answered, with an air of relief. ‘Now I must go, if you think you will be all right.’

‘Don’t go yet,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘I should like to know you a little better, if I may. I am so grateful. I should like to talk to you. You have such beautiful manners for a boy,’ she ended, with a pretty, kind laugh, ‘and I believe I know where you got them from.’

‘You are very kind to me,’ Marco answered, wondering if he did not redden a little. ‘But I must go because my father will –’

‘Your father would let you stay and talk to me,’ she said, with even a prettier kindliness than before. ‘It is from him you have inherited your beautiful manner. He was once a friend of mine. I hope he is my friend still, though perhaps he has forgotten me.’

All that Marco had ever learned and all that he had ever trained himself to remember, quickly rushed back upon him now, because he had a clear and rapidly working brain, and had not lived the ordinary boy’s life.
Here was a beautiful lady of whom he knew nothing at all but that she had twisted her foot in the street and he had helped her back into her house. If silence was still the order, it was not for him to know things or ask questions or answer them. She might be the loveliest lady in the world and his father her dearest friend, but, even if this were so, he could best serve them both by obeying her friend’s commands with all courtesy, and forgetting no instruction he had given.

‘I do not think my father ever forgets anyone,’ he answered.

‘No, I am sure he does not,’ she said softly. ‘Has he been to Samavia during the last three years?’

Marco paused a moment.

‘Perhaps I am not the boy you think I am,’ he said. ‘My father has never been to Samavia.’

‘He has not? But – you are Marco Loristan?’

‘Yes. That is my name.’

Suddenly she leaned forward and her long lovely eyes filled with fire.

‘Then you are a Samavian, and you know of the disasters overwhelming us. You know all the hideousness and barbarity of what is being done. Your father’s son must know it all!’

‘Everyone knows it,’ said Marco.

‘But it is your country – your own! Your blood must burn in your veins!’

Marco stood quite still and looked at her. His eyes told whether his blood burned or not, but he did not speak. His look was answer enough, since he did not wish to say anything.

‘What does your father think? I am a Samavian myself, and I think night and day. What does he think of the rumour about the descendant of the Lost Prince? Does he believe it?’

Marco was thinking very rapidly. Her beautiful face was glowing with emotion, her beautiful voice trembled. That she should be a Samavian, and love Samavia, and pour her feeling forth even to a boy, was deeply moving to him. But howsoever one was moved, one must remember that silence was still the order. When one was very young, one must remember orders first of all.

‘It might be only a newspaper story,’ he said. ‘He says one cannot trust such things. If you know him, you know he is very calm.’

‘Has he taught you to be calm too?’ she said pathetically. ‘You are only a boy. Boys are not calm. Neither are women when their hearts are wrung. Oh, my Samavia! Oh, my poor little country! My brave, tortured country!’ and with a sudden sob she covered her face with her hands.

A great lump mounted to Marco’s throat. Boys could not cry, but he knew what she meant when he said her heart was wrung.

When she lifted her head, the tears in her eyes made them softer than ever.

‘If I were a million Samavians instead of one woman, I should know what to do!’ she cried. ‘If your father were a million Samavians, he would know, too. He would find Ivor’s descendant, if he is on the earth, and he would end all this horror!’

‘Who would not end it if they could?’ cried Marco, quite fiercely.

‘But men like your father, men who are Samavians, must think night and day about it as I do,’ she impetuously insisted. ‘You see, I cannot help pouring my thoughts out even to a boy – because he is a Samavian. Only Samavians care. Samavia seems so little and unimportant to other people. They don’t even seem to know that the blood she is pouring forth pours from human veins and beating human hearts. Men like your father must think, and plan, and feel that they must – must find a way. Even a woman feels it. Even a boy must. Stefan Loristan cannot be sitting quietly at home, knowing that Samavian hearts are being shot through and Samavian blood poured forth. He cannot think and say
nothing
!’

Marco started in spite of himself. He felt as if his father had been struck in the face. How dare she say such words! Big as he was, suddenly he looked bigger, and the beautiful lady saw that he did.

‘He is my father,’ he said slowly.

She was a clever, beautiful person, and saw that she had made a great mistake.

‘You must forgive me,’ she exclaimed. ‘I used the wrong words because I was excited. That is the way with women. You must see that I meant that I knew he was giving his heart and strength, his whole being, to Samavia, even though he must stay in London.’

She started and turned her head to listen to the sound of someone using the latchkey and opening the front door. The someone came in with the heavy step of a man.

‘It is one of the lodgers,’ she said. ‘I think it is the one who lives in the third floor sitting room.’

‘Then you won’t be alone when I go,’ said Marco. ‘I am glad someone has come. I will say good morning. May I tell my father your name?’

‘Tell me that you are not angry with me for expressing myself so awkwardly,’ she said.

‘You couldn’t have meant it. I know that,’ Marco answered boyishly. ‘You couldn’t.’

‘No, I couldn’t,’ she repeated, with the same emphasis on the words.

She took a card from a silver case on the table and gave it to him.

‘Your father will remember my name,’ she said. ‘I hope he will let me see him and tell him how you took care of me.’

She shook his hand warmly and let him go. But just as he reached the door she spoke again.

‘Oh, may I ask you to do one thing more before you leave me?’ she said suddenly. ‘I hope you won’t mind. Will you run upstairs into the drawing room and bring me the purple book from the small table? I shall not mind being alone if I have something to read.’

‘A purple book? On a small table?’ said Marco.

‘Between the two long windows,’ she smiled back at him.

The drawing room of such houses as these is always to be reached by one short flight of stairs.

Marco ran up lightly.

chapter fourteen

marco does not answer

By the time he turned the corner of the stairs, the beautiful lady had risen from her seat in the back room and walked into the dining room at the front. A heavily built, dark-bearded man was standing inside the door as if waiting for her.

‘I could do nothing with him,’ she said at once, in her soft voice, speaking quite prettily and gently, as if what she said was the most natural thing in the world. ‘I managed the little trick of the sprained foot really well, and got him into the house. He is an amiable boy with perfect manners, and I thought it might be easy to surprise him into saying more than he knew he was saying. You can generally do that with children and young things. But he either knows nothing or has been trained to hold his tongue. He’s not stupid, and he’s of a high spirit. I made a pathetic little scene about Samavia, because I saw he could be worked up. It did work him up. I tried him with the Lost Prince rumour; but, if there is truth in it, he does not or will not know. I tried to make him lose his temper and betray something in defending his father, whom he thinks a god, by the way. But I made a mistake. I saw that. It’s a pity. Boys can
sometimes be made to tell anything.’ She spoke very quickly under her breath. The man spoke quickly too.

‘Where is he?’ he asked.

‘I sent him up to the drawing room to look for a book. He will look for a few minutes. Listen. He’s an innocent boy. He sees me only as a gentle angel. Nothing will
shake
him so much as to hear me tell him the truth suddenly. It will be such a shock to him that perhaps you can do something with him then. He may lose his hold on himself. He’s only a boy.’

‘You’re right,’ said the bearded man. ‘And when he finds out he is not free to go, it may alarm him and we may get something worthwhile.’

‘If we could find out what is true, or what Loristan thinks is true, we should have a clue to work from,’ she said.

‘We have not much time,’ the man whispered. ‘We are ordered to Bosnia at once. Before midnight we must be on the way.’

‘Let us go into the other room. He is coming.’

When Marco entered the room, the heavily built man with the pointed dark beard was standing by the easy chair.

‘I am sorry I could not find the book,’ he apologised. ‘I looked on all the tables.’

‘I shall be obliged to go and search for it myself,’ said the Lovely Person.

She rose from her chair and stood up smiling. And at her first movement Marco saw that she was not disabled in the least.

‘Your foot!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s better?’

‘It wasn’t hurt,’ she answered, in her softly pretty voice and with her softly pretty smile. ‘I only made you think so.’

It was part of her plan to spare him nothing of shock in her sudden transformation. Marco felt his breath leave him for a moment.

‘I made you believe I was hurt because I wanted you to come into the house with me,’ she added. ‘I wished to find out certain things I am sure you know.’

‘They were things about Samavia,’ said the man. ‘Your father knows them, and you must know something of them at least. It is necessary that we should hear what you can tell us. We shall not allow you to leave the house until you have answered certain questions I shall ask you.’

Then Marco began to understand. He had heard his father speak of political spies, men and women who were paid to trace the people that certain governments or political parties desired to have followed and observed. He knew it was their work to search out secrets, to disguise themselves and live among innocent people as if they were merely ordinary neighbours.

They must be spies who were paid to follow his father because he was a Samavian and a patriot. He did not know that they had taken the house two months before, and had accomplished several things during their apparently innocent stay in it. They had discovered Loristan and had learned to know his outgoings and incomings, and also the outgoings and incomings of Lazarus, Marco, and The Rat. But they meant, if possible, to learn other things. If the boy could be startled and terrified into unconscious revelations, it might prove
well worth their while to have played this bit of
melodrama
before they locked the front door behind them and hastily crossed the Channel, leaving their landlord to discover for himself that the house had been vacated.

In Marco’s mind strange things were happening. They were spies! But that was not all. The Lovely Person had been right when she said that he would receive a shock. His strong young chest swelled. In all his life, he had never come face to face with black treachery before. He could not grasp it. This gentle and friendly being with the grateful soft voice and grateful soft eyes had betrayed –
betrayed
him! It seemed impossible to believe it, and yet the smile on her curved mouth told him that it was true. When he had sprung to help her, she had been playing a trick! When he had been sorry for her pain and had winced at the sound of her low exclamation, she had been deliberately laying a trap to harm him. For a few seconds he was stunned – perhaps, if he had not been his father’s son, he might have been stunned only. But he was more. When the first seconds had passed, there arose slowly within him a sense of something like high, remote disdain. It grew in his deep boy’s eyes as he gazed directly into the pupils of the long soft dark ones. His body felt as if it were growing taller.

‘You are very clever,’ he said slowly. Then, after a second’s pause, he added, ‘I was too young to know that there was anyone so – clever – in the world.’

The Lovely Person laughed, but she did not laugh easily. She spoke to her companion.

‘A grand seigneur!’ she said. ‘As one looks at him, one half believes it is true.’

The man with the beard was looking very angry. His eyes were savage and his dark skin reddened. Marco thought that he looked at him as if he hated him, and was made fierce by the mere sight of him, for some mysterious reason.

‘Two days before you left Moscow,’ he said, ‘three men came to see your father. They looked like peasants. They talked to him for more than an hour. They brought with them a roll of parchment. Is that not true?’

‘I know nothing,’ said Marco.

‘Before you went to Moscow, you were in Budapest. You went there from Vienna. You were there for three months, and your father saw many people. Some of them came in the middle of the night.’

‘I know nothing,’ said Marco.

‘You have spent your life in travelling from one country to another,’ persisted the man. ‘You know the European languages as if you were a courier, or the
portier
in a Viennese hotel. Do you not?’

Marco did not answer.

The Lovely Person began to speak to the man rapidly in Russian.

‘A spy and an adventurer Stefan Loristan has always been and always will be,’ she said. ‘We know what he is. The police in every capital in Europe know him as a sharper and a vagabond, as well as a spy. And yet, with all his cleverness, he does not seem to have money. What did he do with the bribe the Maranovitch gave him for betraying what he knew of the old fortress? The boy doesn’t even suspect him. Perhaps it’s true that he knows nothing. Or perhaps it is true that he has
been so ill-treated and flogged from his babyhood that he dare not speak. There is a cowed look in his eyes in spite of his childish swagger. He’s been both starved and beaten.’

The outburst was well done. She did not look at Marco as she poured forth her words. She spoke with the abruptness and impetuosity of a person whose feelings had got the better of her. If Marco was sensitive about his father, she felt sure that his youth would make his face reveal something if his tongue did not – if he understood Russian, which was one of the things it would be useful to find out, because it was a fact which would verify many other things.

Marco’s face disappointed her. No change took place in it, and the blood did not rise to the surface of his skin. He listened with an uninterested air, blank and cold and polite. Let them say what they chose.

The man twisted his pointed beard and shrugged his shoulders.

‘We have a good little wine cellar downstairs,’ he said. ‘You are going down into it, and you will probably stay there for some time if you do not make up your mind to answer my questions. You think that nothing can happen to you in a house in a London street where policemen walk up and down. But you are mistaken. If you yelled now, even if anyone chanced to hear you, they would only think you were a lad getting a thrashing he deserved. You can yell as much as you like in the black little wine cellar, and no one will hear at all. We only took this house for three months, and we shall leave it tonight without mentioning the fact to anyone.
If we choose to leave you in the wine cellar, you will wait there until somebody begins to notice that no one goes in and out, and chances to mention it to the
landlord
– which few people would take the trouble to do. Did you come here from Moscow?’

‘I know nothing,’ said Marco.

‘You might remain in the good little black cellar an unpleasantly long time before you were found,’ the man went on, quite coolly. ‘Do you remember the peasants who came to see your father two nights before you left?’

‘I know nothing,’ said Marco.

‘By the time it was discovered that the house was empty and people came in to make sure, you might be too weak to call out and attract their attention. Did you go to Budapest from Vienna, and were you there for three months?’ asked the inquisitor.

‘I know nothing,’ said Marco.

‘You are too good for the little black cellar,’ put in the Lovely Person. ‘I like you. Don’t go into it!’

‘I know nothing,’ Marco answered, but the eyes which were like Loristan’s gave her just such a look as Loristan would have given her, and she felt it. It made her uncomfortable.

‘I don’t believe you were ever ill-treated or beaten,’ she said. ‘I tell you, the little black cellar will be a hard thing. Don’t go there!’

And this time Marco said nothing, but looked at her still as if he were some great young noble who was very proud.

He knew that every word the bearded man had spoken was true. To cry out would be of no use. If they went
away and left him behind them, there was no knowing how many days would pass before the people of the neighbourhood would begin to suspect that the place had been deserted, or how long it would be before it occurred to someone to give warning to the owner. And in the meantime, neither his father nor Lazarus nor The Rat would have the faintest reason for guessing where he was. And he would be sitting alone in the dark in the wine cellar. He did not know in the least what to do about this thing. He only knew that silence was still the order.

‘It is a jet-black little hole,’ the man said. ‘You might crack your throat in it, and no one would hear. Did men come to talk with your father in the middle of the night when you were in Vienna?’

‘I know nothing,’ said Marco.

‘He won’t tell,’ said the Lovely Person. ‘I am sorry for this boy.’

‘He may tell after he has sat in the good little black wine cellar for a few hours,’ said the man with the pointed beard. ‘Come with me!’

He put his powerful hand on Marco’s shoulder and pushed him before him. Marco made no struggle. He remembered what his father had said about the game not being a game. It wasn’t a game now, but somehow he had a strong haughty feeling of not being afraid.

He was taken through the hallway, toward the rear, and down the commonplace flagged steps which led to the basement. Then he was marched through a narrow, ill-lighted, flagged passage to a door in the wall. The door was not locked and stood a trifle ajar.
His companion pushed it farther open and showed part of a wine cellar which was so dark that it was only the shelves nearest the door that Marco could faintly see. His captor pushed him in and shut the door. It was as black a hole as he had described. Marco stood still in the midst of darkness like black velvet. His guard turned the key.

‘The peasants who came to your father in Moscow spoke Samavian and were big men. Do you remember them?’ he asked from outside.