The Lost Prince (21 page)

When Marco opened the door, the young soldier who had escorted him from the Hof-Theatre was standing outside. He looked as uninterested and stolid as before, as he handed in a small flat package.

‘You must have dropped it near your seat at the Opera,’ he said. ‘I was to give it into your own hands. It is your purse.’

After he had clumped down the staircase again, Marco and The Rat drew a quick breath at one and the same time.

‘I had no seat and I had no purse,’ Marco said. ‘Let us open it.’

There was a flat limp leather note-holder inside. In it was a paper, at the head of which were photographs of the Lovely Person and her companion. Beneath were a few lines which stated that they were the well known spies, Eugenia Karovna and Paul Varel, and that the bearer must be protected against them. It was signed by the Chief of the Police. On a separate sheet was written the command: ‘Carry this with you as protection.’

‘That is help,’ The Rat said. ‘It would protect us, even in another country. The Chancellor sent it – but you made the strong call – and it’s here!’

There was no street lamp to shine into their windows when they went at last to bed. When the blind was drawn up, they were nearer the sky than they had been in the Marylebone Road. The last thing each of them saw, as he went to sleep, was the stars—and in their dreams, they saw them grow larger and larger, and hang like lamps of radiance against the violet-velvet sky above a ledge of a Himalayan Mountain, where they listened to the sound of a low voice going on and on and on.

chapter twenty-two

a night vigil

On a hill in the midst of a great Austrian plain, around which high Alps wait watching through the ages, stands a venerable fortress, almost more beautiful than anything one has ever seen. Perhaps, if it were not for the great plain flowering broadly about it with its wide-spread beauties of meadow-land, and wood, and dim toned buildings gathered about farms, and its dream of a small ancient city at its feet, it might – though it is to be doubted – seem something less a marvel of medieval picturesqueness. But out of the plain rises the low hill, and surrounding it at a stately distance stands guard the giant majesty of Alps, with shoulders in the clouds and god-like heads above them, looking on – always looking on – sometimes themselves ethereal clouds of snow-whiteness, sometimes monster bare crags which pierce the blue, and whose unchanging silence seems to know the secret of the everlasting. And on the hill which this august circle holds in its embrace, as though it enclosed a treasure, stands the old, old, towered fortress built as a citadel for the Prince Archbishops, who were kings in their domain in the long past centuries when the splendor
and power of ecclesiastical princes was among the greatest upon earth.

And as you approach the town – and as you leave it – and as you walk through its streets, the broad calm empty-looking ones, or the narrow thoroughfares whose houses seem so near to each other, whether you climb or descend – or cross bridges, or gaze at churches, or step out on your balcony at night to look at the mountains and the moon – always it seems that from some point you can see it gazing down at you – the citadel of Hohen-Salzburg.

It was to Salzburg they went next, because at Salzburg was to be found the man who looked like a hairdresser and who worked in a barber’s shop. Strange as it might seem, to him also must be carried the Sign.

‘There may be people who come to him to be shaved – soldiers, or men who know things,’ The Rat worked it out, ‘and he can speak to them when he is standing close to them. It will be easy to get near him. You can go and have your hair cut.’

The journey from Munich was not a long one, and during the latter part of it they had the wooden-seated third-class carriage to themselves. Even the drowsy old peasant who nodded and slept in one corner got out with his bundles at last. To Marco the mountains were long-known wonders which could never grow old. They had always and always been so old! Surely they had been the first of the world! Surely they had been standing there waiting when it was said ‘Let there be Light’. The Light had known it would find them there. They were so silent, and yet it seemed as if they said
some amazing thing – something which would take your breath from you if you could hear it. And they never changed. The clouds changed, they wreathed them, and hid them, and trailed down them, and poured out storm torrents on them, and thundered against them, and darted forked lightnings round them. But the mountains stood there afterwards as if such things had not been and were not in the world. Winds roared and tore at them, centuries passed over them – centuries of millions of lives, of changing of kingdoms and empires, of battles and world-wide fame which grew and died and passed away; and temples crumbled, and kings’ tombs were forgotten, and cities were buried and others built over them after hundreds of years – and perhaps a few stones fell from a mountainside, or a fissure was worn, which the people below could not even see. And that was all. There they stood, and perhaps their secret was that they had been there forever and ever. That was what the mountains said to Marco, which was why he did not want to talk much, but sat and gazed out of the carriage window.

The Rat had been very silent all the morning. He had been silent when they got up, and he had scarcely spoken when they made their way to the station at Munich and sat waiting for their train. It seemed to Marco that he was thinking so hard that he was like a person who was far away from the place he stood in. His brows were drawn together and his eyes did not seem to see the people who passed by. Usually he saw everything and made shrewd remarks on almost all he saw. But today he was somehow otherwise absorbed.
He sat in the train with his forehead against the window and stared out. He moved and gasped when he found himself staring at the Alps, but afterwards he was even strangely still. It was not until after the sleepy old peasant had gathered his bundles and got out at a station that he spoke, and he did it without turning his head.

‘You only told me one of the two laws,’ he said. ‘What was the other one?’

Marco brought himself back from his dream of reaching the highest mountain-top and seeing clouds float beneath his feet in the sun. He had to come back a long way.

‘Are you thinking of that? I wondered what you had been thinking of all the morning,’ he said.

‘I couldn’t stop thinking of it. What was the second one?’ said The Rat, but he did not turn his head.

‘It was called the Law of Earthly Living. It was for every day,’ said Marco. ‘It was for the ordering of common things – the small things we think don’t matter, as well as the big ones. I always remember that one without any trouble. This was it: Let pass through thy mind, my son, only the image thou wouldst desire to see become a truth. Meditate only upon the wish of thy heart – seeing first that it is such as can wrong no man and is not ignoble. Then will it take earthly form and draw near to thee. This is the Law of That which Creates.’

Then The Rat turned round. He had a shrewdly reasoning mind.

‘That sounds as if you could get anything you wanted, if you think about it long enough and in the right way,’
he said. ‘But perhaps it only means that, if you do it, you’ll be happy after you’re dead. My father used to shout with laughing when he was drunk and talked about things like that and looked at his rags.’

He hugged his knees for a few minutes. He was remembering the rags, and the fog-darkened room in the slums, and the loud, hideous laughter.

‘What if you want something that will harm somebody else?’ he said next. ‘What if you hate someone and wish you could kill him?’

‘That was one of the questions my father asked that night on the ledge. The holy man said people always asked it,’ Marco answered. ‘This was the answer: Let him who stretcheth forth his hand to draw the lightning to his brother recall that through his own soul and body will pass the bolt.’

‘Wonder if there’s anything in it?’ The Rat pondered. ‘It’d make a chap careful if he believed it! Revenging yourself on a man would be like holding him against a live wire to kill him and getting all the volts through yourself.’

A sudden anxiety revealed itself in his face.

‘Does your father believe it?’ he asked. ‘Does he?’

‘He knows it is true,’ Marco said.

‘I’ll own up,’ The Rat decided after further reflection – ‘I’ll own up I’m glad that there isn’t anyone left that I’ve a grudge against. There isn’t anyone – now.’

Then he fell again into silence and did not speak until their journey was at an end. As they arrived early in the day, they had plenty of time to wander about the marvellous little old city. But through the wide streets and through the narrow ones, under the archways into
the market gardens, across the bridge and into the square where the ‘glockenspiel’ played its old tinkling tune, everywhere the Citadel looked down and always The Rat walked on in his dream.

They found the hairdresser’s shop in one of the narrow streets. There were no grand shops there, and this particular shop was a modest one. They walked past it once, and then went back. It was a shop so humble that there was nothing remarkable in two common boys going into it to have their hair cut. An old man came forward to receive them. He was evidently glad of their modest patronage. He undertook to attend to The Rat himself, but, having arranged him in a chair, he turned about and called to someone in the back room.

‘Heinrich,’ he said.

In the slit in Marco’s sleeve was the sketch of the man with smooth curled hair, who looked like a hairdresser. They had found a corner in which to take their final look at it before they turned back to come in. Heinrich, who came forth from the small back room, had smooth curled hair. He looked extremely like a hairdresser. He had features like those in the sketch – his nose and mouth and chin and figure were like what Marco had drawn and committed to memory. But –

He gave Marco a chair and tied the professional white covering around his neck. Marco leaned back and closed his eyes a moment.

‘That is NOT the man!’ he was saying to himself. ‘He is NOT the man.’

How he knew he was not, he could not have explained, but he felt sure. It was a strong conviction. But for the
sudden feeling, nothing would have been easier than to give the Sign. And if he could not give it now, where was the one to whom it must be spoken, and what would be the result if that one could not be found? And if there were two who were so much alike, how could he be sure?

Each owner of each of the pictured faces was a link in a powerful secret chain; and if a link were missed, the chain would be broken. Each time Heinrich came within the line of his vision, he recorded every feature afresh and compared it with the remembered sketch. Each time the resemblance became more close, but each time some persistent inner conviction repeated, ‘No; the Sign is not for him!’

It was disturbing, also, to find that The Rat was all at once as restless as he had previously been silent and preoccupied. He moved in his chair, to the great discomfort of the old hairdresser. He kept turning his head to talk. He asked Marco to translate divers questions he wished him to ask the two men. They were questions about the Citadel – about the Monchsberg – the Residenz – the Glockenspiel – the mountains. He added one query to another and could not sit still.

‘The young gentleman will get an ear snipped,’ said the old man to Marco. ‘And it will not be my fault.’

‘What shall I do?’ Marco was thinking. ‘He is not the man.’

He did not give the Sign. He must go away and think it out, though where his thoughts would lead him he did not know. This was a more difficult problem than he had ever dreamed of facing. There was no one to ask
advice of. Only himself and The Rat, who was nervously wriggling and twisting in his chair.

‘You must sit still,’ he said to him. ‘The hairdresser is afraid you will make him cut you by accident.’

‘But I want to know who lives at the Residenz?’ said The Rat. ‘These men can tell us things if you ask them.’

‘It is done now,’ said the old hairdresser with a relieved air. ‘Perhaps the cutting of his hair makes the young gentleman nervous. It is sometimes so.’

The Rat stood close to Marco’s chair and asked questions until Heinrich also had done his work. Marco could not understand his companion’s change of mood. He realised that, if he had wished to give the Sign, he had been allowed no opportunity. He could not have given it. The restless questioning had so directed the older man’s attention to his son and Marco that nothing could have been said to Heinrich without his observing it.

‘I could not have spoken if he had been the man,’ Marco said to himself.

Their very exit from the shop seemed a little hurried. When they were fairly in the street, The Rat made a clutch at Marco’s arm.

‘You didn’t give it?’ he whispered breathlessly. ‘I kept talking and talking to prevent you.’

Marco tried not to feel breathless, and he tried to speak in a low and level voice with no hint of exclamation in it.

‘Why did you say that?’ he asked.

The Rat drew closer to him.

‘That was not the man!’ he whispered. ‘It doesn’t matter how much he looks like him, he isn’t the right one.’

He was pale and swinging along swiftly as if he were in a hurry.

‘Let’s get into a quiet place,’ he said. ‘Those queer things you’ve been telling me have got hold of me. How did I know? How could I know – unless it’s because I’ve been trying to work that second law? I’ve been saying to myself that we should be told the right things to do – for the Game and for your father – and so that I could be the right sort of aide-de-camp. I’ve been working at it, and, when he came out, I knew he was not the man in spite of his looks. And I couldn’t be sure you knew, and I thought, if I kept on talking and interrupting you with silly questions, you could be prevented from speaking.’