Prince Cecil: XVI

Chapter XVI.

Business As Usual

The back of Daleth’s restaurant looked the same as Cecil remembered it that night that seemed so long ago when he had first joined the underground. The same dumpster stood beneath the same window and by its aid Cecil and Mikhailov effected an entrance. Cecil rang up the watch shop on the telephone in Daleth’s living room and in fifteen minutes Karotski and Leiber appeared.
‘Well, so there you are,’ said Karotski as he entered, but he started as he saw Cecil and exclaimed, ‘What happened to you?’
Cecil stared at him, puzzled.
‘What’s the matter with your eye?’ added Leiber. ‘It’s blue.’
‘Oh, that,’ said Cecil. ‘It’s nothing. We had a bit of a scrap, that’s all.’
‘I think I did that,’ said Mikhailov in embarrassment. ‘I didn’t know who he was.’
‘You didn’t, eh?’ said Karotski.
‘It wasn’t his fault,’ explained Cecil. ‘I insulted him. And it doesn’t hurt anymore, anyway.’
‘You should ask Daleth for a beef steak to put on it,’ suggested Leiber.
‘That’s all very well,’ said Karotski drily. ‘What I want to know is, who is this person, anyway?’
‘He’s the new commander in chief of the imperial army,’ said Cecil. ‘Speaking of beef steak, would you mind asking Daleth to send up some supper for him? When did you last eat, Mik?’
‘Can’t remember; couldn’t care,’ said Mikhailov who was sprawled in a chair with his hands behind his head, enjoying the momentary lull. ‘Lead me to the larder. I’m not particular.’
‘We’ll see to that presently,’ said Karotski sharply. ‘But where have you been all this time? I thought you’d gone to see Kaparthy but when I talked to her she said you’d left hours ago and started worrying like a woman that something had happened to you.’
‘We got picked up by the SO,’ said Cecil and was prevented from saying more by the start Karotski and Leiber made simultaneously.
‘Impossible!’ said Karotksi. ‘Then how are you here?’
‘We escaped,’ said Cecil.
‘The deuce you did! What on earth do you mean? Did they actually arrest you?’
‘Not really arrested; we were apprehended,’ Cecil explained. ‘They took us in for questioning—’
‘Stop,’ said Karotski. ‘They took you in where?’
‘To the SO headquarters.’
‘There?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then how did you get away?’
‘I found the breaker room and cut the main power cable.’
‘And—got out?’
‘Yes. None of their alarms worked and the fence was useless.’
Karotski stared alternately at Cecil and Mikhailov, completely amazed.
‘So you were actually in that place,’ said Leiber.
‘What did you tell them?’ asked Karotski, coming out of his amazement and snapping into practicality again.
‘I didn’t tell them anything,’ said Cecil. ‘Zköllmann told me a lot, though—oh, I say!’
‘What?’
‘I forgot!’ said Cecil. ‘Sir Andrew Fletcher—they know about him. Zköllmann said so.’
‘They know about all of us, probably,’ said Karotski drily.
‘They suspect Leiber, but they don’t know about you—I’m pretty sure of that,’ said Cecil. ‘As long as they don’t know who you are we’re still all right.’
‘So they know about Fletcher, do they?’ said Karotski, ruminating.
‘Do you think they’ll kill him?’ asked Cecil.
‘Not right away, I should think. They’ve probably known about him for a few days at least and they haven’t arrested him yet—probably so they could watch him and get information.’
Karotski crossed his arms in thought.
‘Well,’ he continued; ‘that knocks out one of our chances. It was a small chance in the first place but now it’s non-existent.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Cecil.
‘We were going to ask him to try to contact the SIS,’ said Leiber. ‘We thought they might get us the men we need for an uprising.’
‘It was a straw and we, as drowning men, had to clutch at it,’ said Karotski. ‘The idea was impractical anyway. Even if the SIS wanted to help us, there wouldn’t be enough of them. We need an army.’
‘An army,’ repeated Cecil.
He sank into a chair despondently.
‘I’ve been an ass, Mik,’ he said ruefully. ‘That recording we did—I don’t know why I didn’t think of it—’
‘Yes, what of it?’ asked Mikhailov. ‘I was wondering what had become of all that.’
‘I switched it for the recording of Miss Kaparthy’s performance,’ explained Cecil. ‘A man was supposed to come and take it away to the radio broadcasting building so they could air it over the wireless.’
‘Over the wireless!’ exclaimed Mikhailov. ‘Do you mean that they played that song on every wireless in Pyromania? And all that row in the background too!’
‘It was the best way I could think of to make sure a lot of the Silver Heels heard it,’ said Cecil. ‘But even if they do hear it, they won’t know where to find us so they can join our forces. I didn’t think about it before. It was stupid of me. How could I have been so stupid?’
He felt not only embarrassed but absolutely silly. The plan had seemed a good one when he had first come up with it, but now that the excitement and danger were past his idea seemed sillier every minute.
‘What are you two talking about?’ said Karotski impatiently.
‘Never mind,’ said Cecil. ‘We tried to find some recruits but we failed and it was my fault. What an ass I am. I don’t know why I thought I could help Miss Kaparthy.’
They sat—or stood—in silence for several moments. No one could think of anything to say or anything to do. They were at the end of their wits and there seemed absolutely nothing left to try.
‘Speaking of Kaparthy,’ said Karotski, to whom the deference due a lady’s name meant nothing; ‘she told when I called her that she had something to tell you.’
‘Something to tell me?’ said Cecil, surprised. ‘What was it?’
‘I don’t know. She didn’t tell me. I told her we didn’t know where you were and she started to worry like I said before.’
‘Then I’d better go see her,’ said Cecil.
He put on his cap and made for the door.
‘You’re not going out again, are you?’ asked Leiber. ‘You just got in.’
‘The SO will be looking for you,’ said Karotski.
‘I won’t be gone long,’ said Cecil and then remembering his previous adventures added, ‘Hopefully.’
He dashed down the stairs and into the dining area of Daleth’s restaurant. It was extraordinarily late—nearing ten o’clock—and the restaurant was of course deserted. Even Daleth was not at his usual place behind the counter. Only one lamp was lit and it hung in the centre of the room, throwing shadows into the farthest corners. And yet the place was not deserted after all: at one of the darkest tables sat a woman wrapped in a black opera cloak. Cecil stopped short.
‘Great Scot!’ he gasped.
Miss Kaparthy looked up.
‘There you are!’ she said.
Cecil glanced quickly around but there was nobody else to be seen. He hurried silently to her table and she rose as he came up.
‘How did you find us?’ asked Cecil.
‘Sir Andrew told me.’
‘Sir Andrew!’
‘Yes. Just before he was arrested.’
Cecil laid a hand on the table, suddenly feeling dizzy.
‘When?’ he said.
‘Half an hour ago.’
He did a rapid sum: they had arrested Sir Andrew just after Cecil and Mikhailov had escaped from the SO headquarters.
‘He wanted me to tell you,’ explained Miss Kaparthy. ‘I know it’s dangerous for me to be here, but there was no one else to come. I may have been followed—but I don’t think I was.’
Cecil bit his lip. It had been his fault that Sir Andrew had been arrested. If he had never gone to his house the first day the SO might never had had any evidence against the consul.
‘I’m glad you’re safe,’ said Miss Kaparthy. ‘Karotski didn’t know what had happened to you, and—’
‘You know his name, then?’ asked Cecil quickly.
‘Sir Andrew told me their names--Aleph's and Gimel's. He thought I might need to know them.
‘But Karotski really shouldn’t have called me earlier,’ she went on, as if to herself. ‘They may recognise him by his voice, now.’
‘Are you going to tell him about Sir Andrew?’ asked Cecil.

‘Will you tell them? I don’t know what they look like, and I think it would be better if I don’t see them.’
‘I’ll tell them,’ said Cecil.
‘I’ll go, then, before I’m caught.’
‘Karotski said you wanted to tell me something.’
‘Yes, I did,’ she said, pausing. ‘—I wanted to ask you something. It’s about those men.’
‘What men?’ he asked, startled.
‘The men who have been coming to my house all evening. They’ve been coming since eight o’clock.’
‘What sort of men are they?’
‘All sorts. One was a plumber, another was a bus driver, one was the second cello from the Skolzor Philharmonic Orchestra whom I’ve known for several years… They all asked me what the song meant that was played this evening over the wireless. It was supposed to be the performance this evening but it wasn’t. There was some mistake. I thought perhaps you knew something about it.’
‘Oh…’ said Cecil, suddenly remembering. ‘Yes, it was I. I’m sorry not to have asked you first but of course there wasn’t time. Those men you were talking about—how many were there?’
‘Over a dozen—in spite of the curfew—and then there were the telephone callers. There were dozens of those.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘I told them to wait in the church—it’s never locked up and the police don’t bother it much. I told them I’d explain things as soon as I could.’
‘Thank you!’ said Cecil turning rapidly towards the door.
‘But who are they?’ asked Miss Kaparthy.
‘I’m going to find out, but I think I know,’ said Cecil over his shoulder.
‘Your Highness, wait!’ said Miss Kaparthy.
Cecil paused with one hand on the door knob and looked back. She stood with a look of confusion mixed with a strange sort of hope.
‘I listened to the broadcast—’ she said. ‘—that song was so queer, I’ve never heard it before—and the voice was a man’s—Your Highness, whose voice was it?’
‘It was a friend of mine,’ said Cecil. ‘I can’t explain just now—isn’t he a wonderful singer?—Goodbye!’
And he dashed out of the restaurant into the darkness.

When he returned to the restaurant half an hour later, she was gone, but Karotski, Leiber, and Mikhailov were all still in the upstairs room; Mikhailov was eating a plateful of steak and potatoes, Leiber was making notes in a little brown notebook, and Karotski was striding up and down the room with his usual impatience.
‘Well?’ said several voices in unison as Cecil entered.
‘Capital!’ said Cecil. ‘I’ve found our army.’
‘Who? How?’
‘The Silver Heels,’ he said. ‘Mikhailov, our broadcast did it. You remember the Silver Heels, don’t you?’ (This he said to Karotski and Leiber.)
‘The king’s guard,’ said Karotski.
‘Yes,’ said Cecil. ‘They were the only ones who kept fighting for him in the take-over. They’re all as true as steel and as loyal as they ever were. Mik here’s one of them.’
‘I congratulate you,’ said Karotski. ‘Now just where is this army, as you call it?’
‘Miss Kaparthy found them—or they found her. They thought she was the one who had put that song over the wireless, you see and so they called her and wanted to know all about it. She sent them all down to the church and I found them waiting there. I told them to stand by for further orders. I’ve got all their names and telephone numbers—there’s thirty-four of them, and every one of them knows five or six more who may join us. That makes over a hundred and fifty.’
‘Provided those others will join us,’ observed Karotski.
‘And provided they don’t all know the same five or six,’ added Leiber.
‘Besides, what good would one hundred and fifty men do us? We’d need several hundred at least,’ said Karotski.
‘Maybe not,’ said Cecil.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I’ve been thinking. There may be a way to take over with only a few men,’ said Cecil. ‘Isn’t there some sort of—of—what do you call it? –Some place where all the different government branches connect up to?’
‘Nerve-centre?’ suggested Mikhailov.
‘Yes—a place like the breaker room in the SO headquarters where, if you got control of it, you’d be able to mess up all the Javotskis at once? –Keep them from being able to do anything, I mean.’
Karotski and Leiber stared at Cecil as he said this, then slowly looked at each other.
‘By gum!’ said Leiber.
Karotski nodded.
‘The radio tower,’ he said.
‘The radio tower?’ asked Cecil.
‘It’s the Javotski mouthpiece,’ explained Karotski. ‘Every bit of news that Pyromanians get is through the wireless—not counting the newspapers, but they’re slow and we can count them out. If we got hold of the radio broadcasting station and sent round the news that Wakjavotski was dead and the prince had returned, we’d have the whole country rallied behind us in an hour.’
‘Really?’ said Mikhailov in excitement.
‘But we’d have to kill Wakjavotski,’ said Cecil.
‘That will be done,’ replied Karotski.
‘And we’d have to keep the Javotskis from figuring out what’s going on,’ said Mikhailov.
‘That, too, will be done,’ said Karotski.
He was no longer speaking of the operation as if it were simply an idea but as if it were a settled plan. He had thrown off all uncertainty and spoke as matter-of-factly as if he were simply out-lining a business scheme.
‘When?’ said Leiber.
‘To-morrow night,’ said Karotski.
‘Come,’ he added. ‘We can make the plans at the watch shop.’
Cecil, Leiber, and Mikhailov hurried after him as he strode out the door and down to the street. They went straight to the watch shop and up to the little room at the top of the stairs where Leiber’s great grandfather clock ticked stolidly.
‘Got the key?’ asked Karotski of Leiber.
‘Yes, here it is,’ said Leiber, taking out an old skeleton key and putting it into a keyhole in the little door on the front of the clock. Inside was the case where the heavy pendulum swung back and forth. Leiber reached into this space and pulled, from some secret nook, a sheaf of papers. These were maps of streets and floor plans of the government buildings. He and Karotski spread them out on the table.
‘There are two main executive organs of the government,’ said Karotski; ‘—the radio station and the main telephone hub. Those are the two ways the Javotskis get information to each other. With those two neutralised, enough confusion would be created to allow us to carry out the necessary operations for over-throwing the government.
‘First of all, Wakjavotski’s death is imperative. We can’t get the army without that prerequisite. Once the army is won over, the SO will be easy to knock out. Baden, Grosse, and Limbrugher must all be put out of action. This won’t be too difficult: they are always guarded, but several of our agents in SO uniforms (which can be procured) can arrest them without the guards intervening.
‘Here is the radio broadcasting station,’ said Karotski, drawing a circle on one of the maps. ‘This here,’ he said, making a tick mark on a nearby building; ‘—is a safe-house. It’s empty, and we shall make it our headquarters for to-morrow night. From there I’ll direct the operations by telephone.
‘Once Wakjavotski is dead,’ he continued; ‘I’ll give the codeword for the start of operations—the codeword will be Sevastopol.
‘There are three approaches to the radio station,’ he went on, addressing Mikhailov. ‘Here they are: the Grimes Boulevard, Bendzler Street, and 24th Avenue. The Silver Heels will guard all three approaching streets. You’ll want to make a rush on one of the doors of the station—either the front or back.’
‘How many guards are there?’ asked Mikhailov.
‘Eight all together.’
‘Heavily armed?’
‘Rifles and revolvers for most of them. There are two machine-gunners.’
‘Easily managed,’ replied Mikhailov.
‘There are only four second-storey windows and they command only the boulevard and 24th Avenue. That means the back door can’t be guarded from the second storey, as it opens onto Bendzler Street.’
‘It can be barricaded,’ said Mikhailov.
‘How many men will you require?’
‘Twenty to effect an entrance; after that, I’ll take as many as I can get to hold the building.’
‘What will you do for weapons?’
‘We’ll use the guards’ and any others that come to hand.’
‘We’ve a few among ourselves, but not many. You may be required to hold that building for some time, depending on how smoothly things go. How long do you think you can hold out?’
‘I should think an hour at least,’ said Mikhailov. ‘We’ll hold out to the death, of course.’
‘What about the main telephone hub?’ interposed Leiber.
‘Vau can manage that,’ Karotski replied. ‘He has his switchboard job still—he’ll be able to cut the connection to the palace for at least half an hour. That will be time enough for us to organise our forces.’
‘But what about Wakjavotski?’ asked Cecil. ‘How are we going to kill him?’
‘That is the one difficulty,’ said Karotski. ‘It would have to be done by one man alone; a large body wouldn’t have a chance of getting in and we haven’t enough men for that, anyway.’
‘But how is even one of us to get in?’ asked Cecil. ‘Miss Kaparthy wouldn’t tell me the secret way into the palace.’
‘There are other ways of getting in,’ said Karotski. ‘One of us might be able to do it in disguise.’
‘But they don’t let anyone in at all—except for Wakjavotski’s henchmen.’
‘They let scientists in, I hear,’ said Mikhailov. ‘The Superior is always interested in new machines.’
‘That’s so!’ said Karotski. ‘One of our men will enter, then, under pretence of demonstrating an invention.’
‘They’ll be sure to search him first, to make sure he’s unarmed,’ said Leiber.
‘The invention he will be demonstrating will be that special type of hand gun we got from the spy in Sofia,’ said Karotski.
He got down on his knees on the floor, pulled up a loose floorboard, drew out the weapon in question, and laid it on the table.
‘Wakjavotski isn’t familiar with this type of weapon yet, and I’m sure he’ll find it interesting.’
‘The guards will make sure it isn’t loaded,’ said Mikhailov, admiring the weapon.
‘But the assassin will have to load it in order to demonstrate how it fires,’ said Karotski. ‘He’ll demonstrate on Wakjavotski.’
‘There’s one problem, still,’ said Mikhailov. ‘Whoever does it won’t have a chance to escape—the guards will shoot him as soon as he’s killed Wakjavotski.’
‘The guards will probably be stunned at first,’ said Karotski. ‘That will give our man a few seconds. That pistol holds three cartridges. There are usually only two guards. Nobody will be alarmed by the sound of gunshots because Wakjavotski is always shooting things in his laboratory, so very likely our agent will be permitted to walk calmly out of the palace. If not, he could make use of the guards’ weapons.’
‘But it’s still a very slim chance,’ said Mikhailov.
‘Well, for the matter of that,’ said Karotski unconcernedly; ‘I’ll do it myself.’
‘You can’t!’ said Cecil. ‘We need you to direct the operations.’
‘He can direct them,’ said Karotski, pointing at Mikhailov.
‘I shall be busy,’ said Mikhailov. ‘Anyway, I don’t know the plans as well as you do. –And you’re the one who has to give the speech over the wireless.’
‘He’s right,’ said Leiber. ‘I shall have to do it.’
Nobody spoke for a moment because they all suddenly realised that Leiber was right. There was only one person who had the steady mind and cool nerves necessary to kill Wakjavotski with a single bullet in a split second, and that person was Leiber. Whether he could silence the guards before they gave the alarm and escape afterwards from the palace, was not so certain, but if Leiber could not do it, no one else could.
Karotski’s coolness evaporated. He stood still, staring at Leiber with a look of horror in his eyes. His lips tried to articulate a protest but not a sound came from them. He struggled and his face turned ashy while the hair at his temples grew damp.
Leiber returned his tortured gaze without flinching.
‘Do you think I’m going to let you go in there?’ asked Karotski, recovering his voice with difficulty. ‘You’ll die. You can’t make it. You’re important to this plan, too.’
‘This is my part in it,’ said Leiber.
‘Leiber, I won’t let you,’ said Karotski.
‘You know yourself it has to be me.’
‘No!’ said Karotski, and then added in a mutter, ‘You’ve suffered enough already.’
‘We’ve come this far already,’ said Leiber practically and unaffectedly. ‘Now we’ve got to give it everything we have left.’
Karotski said nothing.
‘I’ll get out,’ said Leiber reassuringly.

Karotski turned his face to the wall and said no more. Cecil and Mikhailov felt embarrassed. The only one who was at his ease, strangely enough, was Leiber. But Leiber had always accepted everything with the same imperturbable calm. When a person has been through enough hardship, he develops not only a stout exterior but a solid core as well. Mere events can no longer shake him.

Prince Cecil: XV.

Chapter XV.

In the Jaws of the State

They were marched through two steel doors and led first of all into a small room on the right where they were searched for weapons. The SO officers confiscated Cecil’s pistol and he was glad that he had left his sword in Leiber’s shop where it was safe. Mikhailov, of course, had nothing and they seemed to think the worse of him for it, searching him over and over again until they were quite satisfied that he was unarmed.
When this welcoming ceremony was concluded, Cecil and Mikhailov were taken down the main hallway to an office. I should mention that they were guarded by the whole group of SO officers that had picked them up from the police station (there were six total). The office they were unceremoniously ushered into looked no different from any other ordinary office and the man who sat behind the desk looked very like an ordinary man. Cecil recognised him at once, though, as Zköllmann.
Cecil was able now to form a better idea of the SO chief’s appearance than he had been able to through the moth hole in the curtain in the little cathedral office. Zköllmann looked to be about thirty-four or thirty-five, had thin brown hair brushed straight back from his forehead, and wore the inescapable black uniform of the SO. There was nothing remarkable about his features and, seen on the street, he might have looked like a hundred other random people were it not for a manner he had of walking about with as much definite design and inflexible purpose as an incarnation of Fate.
He was almost handsome, and Cecil found himself wondering if this was really the man whom everyone was so afraid of—until Zköllmann laid aside the papers he had been examining and looked directly at him.
There was something sinister in those calculating, impersonal eyes. They might almost have been described as machine-like were it not for something deep in them far more terrifying than the mere automation of a machine. Cecil was suddenly reminded of the look of terror Miss Kaparthy had worn when those eyes were turned on her in the cathedral, and he understood it.
He was in his turn subjected to as thorough a scrutiny as he had taken of Zköllmann. The SO chief gazed at him with a look of mild interest and he seemed to be plumbing him through and through, though he gave not a glance to Mikhailov. Cecil felt as if everything about him were being learnt by that look and the tiny hope that they perhaps did not know who he was and which he had clutched at now disappeared. It was quite obvious that they knew.
‘Put them in detention until I have time to see to them,’ said Zköllmann to the head officer. ‘You can put that one through preliminary.’
This last he said with a slight gesture towards Mikhailov. They were marched out of the office and down the hallway again. The hallways in the building were made of concrete, the walls were unpainted and the floors were untiled, and the only lighting was from circular fixtures placed in the centre of the ceilings at measured intervals. The noise of their steps echoed endlessly down those long corridors, unshaken by any other sound.
The hallway they were led down ended in a T and here three of the guards turned to the left with Mikhailov, leaving the other two officers and Cecil to take the right. There was not time to say much. Cecil managed to catch hold of Mikhailov’s hand and give it a parting shake.
‘Sorry Mik,’ he muttered.
‘“Bullets in the front” is the old Guards’ watchword,’ said Mikhailov with a salute. Cecil thought he looked more excited than worried. The truth was that Mikhailov had led a boring life for so long that anything exciting happening at last appealed to him, no matter what the form.
One of the officers gave Mikhailov an unecessarily hard poke in the ribs with a luger and Cecil heard their footsteps echoing away down the hall. He could not see them, though, because he was being marched down the hall in the opposite direction.
He followed the officer in front of him down the seemingly-interminable labrynth of concrete corridors, the surroundings to Cecil looking strikingly similar to a very bad dream. As he went along he forced himself to concentrate. He knew well enough the reason he had been brought to the SO headquarters—they meant to interrogate him. Whatever happened, he must not allow a word to cross his lips that could give the game away. This would be difficult, he knew—perhaps impossible.
He was determined to be brave, but would he be able to outlast the SO? He pinched himself as hard as he could and tried to multiply the pain mentally a hundred times. If they hurt him as bad as that would he give in? He did not think so, but how could he be sure?
As he was thinking thus they stopped at a door in the wall and marched Cecil through it into another office. This was not for interrogation—they were taking another more thorough search of him. This time it was not for weapons but for anything that might give them information. Cecil was glad that Karotski had taken the precaution of making sure that Cecil carried nothing incriminating.
After the examination they went out again and turned down another passage where there were small doors along the walls at close intervals. They stopped before one of these, which one of the officers opened, and Cecil was thrust inside and the door was banged shut after him.
It was a very small space he was shut into. The walls were four feet by four feet and smooth straight up to the ceiling with no variation save for a small ventilator tube high up in one wall. The only light was from a bare bulb in the ceiling. The little space was as cold and cheerless as the inside of a safe or an icebox.
It was quite apparent that there was no possible way of escape, yet it always pays to make sure, so Cecil went round the walls three times, examining them and testing them for weak points. The space was so small that the task was soon completed and Cecil was far more convinced than he would have liked to be that his prison was a secure one.
Having satisfied himself on this point, he set to thinking about his next course of action. He was not the only one the SO would force to talk—Mikhailov would be questioned as well; he was probably being questioned already. But Mikhailov did not know anything.
‘Poor Mikhailov,’ he thought. ‘I hadn’t any right to get him mixed up in all this. If I get a chance to get clear I won’t leave this place without him—that’s a promise.’
This resolution set his mind at rest somewhat and he set again to thinking out a plan of escape. He had a fairly good idea of what would happen to him. They would come after a while and take him out of the cell to be interrogated. That would require them to take him down those corridors again. He would be guarded well and the guards would have their guns on him but at least there would be a better chance of escaping then. He did not know his way around the building and from what he had seen of it so far he knew it to be very large and confusing, but this was yet another obstacle he would have to overcome.
There was another possibility that he might be able to escape from the interrogation room. Probably it would not be so hard to get out of as his cell was and the door might not be locked. It was true that he would be watched the whole time, but men were not as impregnable as concrete walls and they could not watch every second.
There would be the yard to get across too, and the wire fence to get through. He had no idea how he would manage these, but he determined to concentrate on each step seperately. Whatever happened, he must make an attempt. An attempt was better than nothing.
As each new obstacle presented itself, a wave of fear rushed over him. It was all so hopeless. Of course there was no way of escape. Cecil knew this, but he also knew that funking was the one thing between possible success and certain failure. He remembered the awful terror that had gripped him in the vaults under the cathedral and knew that if he once let fear get a hold on him, he should not be able to conquer it.
And conquer it he must, for Mikhailov’s sake—for Miss Kaparthy’s—for Pyromania’s. They all depended on him now. Besides, he was determined that the SO should not triumph. He had come too far for that.
The bolt of his door shot back with a sharp clang and the door swung open. An officer stood in the corridor with two guards on either side of him. They had come to take him to the interrogation chamber.
Cecil stepped out and fell into step behind the officer. The two guards brought up the rear and though Cecil did not glance back he knew their pistols were trained on his back. As he went down the hall he made an effort to take bearings of his surroundings, but every door and corridor looked the same.
‘I would not suggest that you attempt to escape,’ said the officer, seeming to divine Cecil’s intentions. ‘Every door in this building has an electric alarm bell that will go off if the door is opened by anyone other than the administration. Furthermore, there are guards patrolling all corridors and on sentry duty at every exit. The yard is surrounded by high-voltage electric wire that kills on contact. The sentry towers are equipped with spotlights and machine guns. Allow me to inform you that no one has ever escaped from here.’
As he rattled on through this impressive list Cecil saw his chances of escape growing fewer and slimmer. Yet underneath it all there seemed something lurking—a sense, almost a certainty, of the existence of some sort of weakness in all these elaborate precautions. They seemed too perfect; they were specialized down to the smallest detail and therefore it seemed that something obvious had been over-looked. Cecil had no idea what this weakness could be, but the certainty that it existed grew stronger as he followed the officer down the corridor.
They soon arrived before a door which the officer opened and led the way through. Cecil followed and they entered a room with very little furniture and no sort of decoration on the walls, which were painted a dull grey. In the middle of the room was a chair and in it sat Mikhailov with his arms and legs strapped to the wood.
His eyes met Cecil’s and they both started slightly from the shock of the sudden meeting. Cecil stopped and opened his mouth to say something but the officer, without even looking back, said, ‘Speaking among prisoners is forbidden.’ Cecil felt the muzzles of the guards’ pistols pressed into his back and he shut his mouth and followed the officer, looking back over his shoulder at Mikhailov.
Things looked rather bad for both of them, but Cecil felt cheered just the slightest bit by the encounter. At least he knew where Mikhailov was and that would make it easier to rescue him when the time came.
He was led through a door on the far side of the room into yet another office that looked exactly like the first except that the only pieces of furniture in it were a desk and a chair behind it. There were two other doors in this room. One looked as if it led out into the hallway while another smaller door in the back of the room looked as if it opened into an office. As he looked at these two doors Cecil felt with a sudden instinct that anything in this den of deceit and fraud could not be what it was made to appear to be. It was the feeling he had had in the corridor a minute before that there must be some weakness beneath this seeming impregnability and he felt with the same certainty that, if he were to escape from that room, it would be through the little door in the back.
As these thoughts raced through his mind the said door opened and Zköllmann came into the room. He shut the door behind him, paused for a moment, surveying Cecil, then took a seat behind the desk.
‘Cecil Montellescue,’ he said, gazing probingly at Cecil with his inscrutable eyes. ‘Aged twelve years; in the lower fourth form at Mapleton, boys’ college, Sudbury, England. Makes good marks in Latin; speaks German fluently; deft hand with a pistol; owns private wireless set. Collects stamps; fond of tether ball; won a prize in composition last month; dislikes brussels sprouts.’
He said all this as if reading it off of a piece of paper—only he was not reading, he kept his eyes fixed on Cecil the whole time and had got it all by memory.
‘You see, we know all about you,’ he went on. ‘We’ve been keeping an eye on you ever since you first fled Pyromania. Our agents are observant and there isn’t anything about you that we are not informed about. Very likely we know more about you than you know about yourself. For instance, if you turn the tail of your jacket over you will find the number 36478 stitched on it.’
Cecil did so and found that it was the truth.
‘Here is a brief overview of your movements so far,’ said Zköllmann, going from memory still. ‘You reentered Pyromania on the 4:11 express on Monday afternoon. You were arrested by a patrol in the Grohcohr region and liberated by British SIS agents. Thereafter you went to the British consul who gave you shelter and introduced you to the underground. You joined forces with the insurgents and helped to steal a truck full of dynamite with which you and your compatriots blew up the conference room of the palace in an attempt to wipe out Wakjavotski and his three top ministers.
‘Failing this, you fled through the sewers and you and you alone managed to crawl through a drain into the tank bunker. From there you got hold of an army truck and escaped with a convoy. You drove the truck into an alley and hid in the national cathedral. While there you came into contact with Csilla Kaparthy who assisted you to escape. You rejoined the underground and began a campaign to enlist recruits into your forces.
‘Quite a lot accomplished in just three and a half days, but you did not manage to conceal your movements from us. The number on your jacket was from the shop that cleaned it and by it we were able to trace you. The clothes were bought and taken away this morning by a member of your band, Leiffer.’
Cecil almost fell for it. He had already opened his mouth to correct Zköllmann when he suddenly snapped it shut again. This was the way the SO got information from their prisoners—one of the ways, at least. They gave the prisoner a detailed account of the truth, carefully edited for their own purposes, and drew inferences from his responses. They didn’t know for certain that Leiber was a member of the underground, but all it would have taken to prove it was for Cecil to have said his name and shown that he knew him.
Cecil now understood what Karotski had meant when he had said that Cecil would wish he had never heard their real names. It was a terribly dangerous thing to know and he, Cecil, had very nearly betrayed one of his best friends.
‘Disguised thus you went to speak to Csilla Kaparthy at the theatre this afternoon,’ went on Zköllmann with scarcely a pause. ‘Oh, we didn’t know about it at the time—we would have arrested you then if we had—we found out about it shortly afterwards and by that knowledge traced you this far. It appears that after the concert, you went to a low sort of public house, involved yourself in a brawl, and were thrown out in company with a low and desperate sort of character—that soldier in the other room.’
Cecil said nothing. He now knew how the SO worked and he realised that this was a mental battle between himself and Zköllmann. He must be on his toes all the time, never missing the slightest detail. He must guard his lips closely and be sure that nothing passed them that could endanger the others in any way.
It was a dangerous game that must be played in the dark. Cecil did not know how much of the truth the SO knew or guessed, but still there were some things he could gather from what Zköllmann had told him. In the first instance, the SO did not know how many SIS agents had helped him to escape. This he was sure of because it was one of the few details that Zköllmann had neglected to include. The SO knew that there were at least two because the soldiers at the outpost had seen two, they could guess that there were probably more, but they could not be certain exactly how many. Therefore, the SIS agents had an advantage over the SO.
There was another thing that the SO did not know and that was what Aleph’s real name was. As long as that was a secret the underground could continue to operate. This Cecil was sure they would try to get out of him and he must be on his guard.
There was yet a third and last thing that Cecil knew and that Zköllmann didn’t—that was the secret paper he had found in Schumm’s office, and as he thought of it Cecil felt a sudden touch of pity for the SO chief. Zköllmann did not know about the threat hanging over him, and though he might have known everything else, it was not enough to save him.
Cecil knew a little about Zköllmann because Karotski had told him about him. The SO was Zköllmann’s own brain-child to which, though he had based it off of other secret police organisations such as the Gestapo or the KGB, he had given his own practical improvements. He had taken it from a mere idea to the most concise, organised, secretive, and deadly force in Pyromania. He was certainly a genius, but apart from that there was little that anyone knew about him. He had no friends, no family. He remained inscrutable—a black man against a black background.
And all his work—his life too, perhaps—was to come to an abrupt end as soon as Baden gave the word. Everyone comes up against Fate at one time or other—no one can take on the rest of the world without being bested at last by some part of it. For a moment Cecil almost felt that Zköllmann was only another person like himself and no one to be afraid of.
As he thought of all this, he had been looking absently at Zköllmann’s SO badge. He glanced up at Zköllmann’s face and suddenly saw those cold eyes fixed on him as they had been unwaveringly from the beginning and as he returned their gaze he saw something in them that he had not noticed before—a cold, passive hatred. This man had cut himself off from the rest of mankind and no human feeling or sentiment could reach him anymore across the unbridgeable gulf he himself had made. And as Cecil looked at those eyes he was afraid again.
Zköllmann had stopped talking. He was leaning back in his chair, regarding Cecil, possibly realising that Cecil had not been paying attention to what he had just been saying. Their eyes met like the clicking together of two magnetic poles but Cecil looked away again quickly. There was silence for a few moments—it seemed almost a puzzled silence because Zköllmann had seen the look of pity on Cecil’s face.
‘Have you ever tried reading minds?’ asked Zköllmann. His tone was suddenly conversational.
‘No,’ said Cecil in confusion.
‘It’s an interesting study, psychoanalysis—why people do what they do. Most people act on a set system from which mentally they are unable to deviate. A strong mind can identify these systems and predict exactly what such minds will do. You’d be surprised how narrow the groove is that the human brain runs in and how simple it is to crack—like a code.’
‘But you’ve missed half of it,’ said Cecil, surprising himself by this outburst for he had not intended to say anything. ‘People have feelings too—not just minds. Sometimes they do things that don’t make sense because…because they feel that they ought to.’
‘But you can predict even erratic behaviour,’ said Zköllmann. ‘It’s all because of how a person thinks.’
‘Not always,’ said Cecil. ‘You can’t tell how a person will feel about something unless you’ve felt the same way; and you haven’t. You’ve probably never had any feelings at all.’
Zköllmann didn’t say anything for a few minutes and chewed on the end of a pen.
‘Tell me if I’m right,’ he said, taking the pen out of his mouth suddenly. ‘You want to save Csilla Kaparthy’s brother, you know he is interned here, and you hope to find out exactly where.’
This was coming at him from a side-wind with a vengeance and Cecil was thrown mentally off-balance for a moment. It was quite true that that very idea had been lurking in the back of his mind and Zköllmann’s precision rather unnerved him. But he was not concerned with concealing the fact that he wanted to help Miss Kaparthy’s brother and at any rate, he was rather sure that Zköllmann was working mostly from guess work, as in the case of Leiber.
‘You don’t know why I want to save him,’ he said. ‘You think it’s all nonsense.’
‘It’s because you have a disproportionate set of ideals.’
‘I told you so!’ said Cecil. ‘If that’s true, then I can’t succeed.’
‘You won’t,’ said Zköllmann.
‘Watch me!’
‘You’re a prisoner yourself. You can’t get away from here.’
‘You’re a prisoner too—you don’t trust anybody; you’re afraid to go out alone. You don’t believe in anything. I’d rather be shut up in a box than be the kind of prisoner you are!’
Zköllmann remained impassive.
‘Pretty soon,’ he said; ‘you and that soldier in the other room will be feeling very unhappy. Then we will get what we need to know from you both. After that you will be shot.’
‘Thank you,’ said Cecil. ‘Now I shall not be in suspense about what is going to happen to me.’
Zköllmann said nothing and looked at him with an uninterpretable face. What he thought would have been impossible to say, but at that moment Cecil looked and sounded more like a prince than he ever had before.
‘Put him in cell 407,’ said Zköllmann with the end of the pen in his mouth again.
The officer and the two guards, who had been standing by the door all that time saying nothing, came forward and marched Cecil out through the room in which Mikhailov was going through ‘preliminary’ to the hallway again. This time they took Cecil to a different corridor full of narrow cell doors.
The officer paused before one of the doors and looked around.
‘Did he say 407 or 411?’ he asked one of the guards.
The guard could not remember, so the officer went down several doors to check cell 411. The guards watched the officer with bored expressions. Cecil realised that this was his chance…

Mikhailov had seen Cecil enter and depart with a great deal of apprehension. What were they doing to Cecil? What would they do to him? As for Mikhailov, so far he had only been asked his name, occupation, and address. The simple questions had been asked over and over again until Mikhailov began to wonder if they expected him to tell them something different each time.
‘What is your age?’ asked the SO officer who had the office of interrogator.
This was a new question, at any rate.
‘I’m twenty-nine,’ said Mikhailov glibly.
‘Where do you live?’
‘I already told you.’
‘Answer the question.’
Mikhailov suppressed a sigh and repeated the information with ill-concealed impatience.
‘What did you do after you left the army?’
‘I worked in a factory.’
‘You said before that you worked for a newspaper.’
‘I did that too.’
‘What is your—’
‘Eugensz Mikhailov,’ he interrupted.
‘That’s not the question.’
‘Oh, sorry.’
‘The question is, what is your occupation now?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Would you like me to swear to it before the court?’ asked Mikhailov sarcastically.
‘What is your age?’
‘Eighty-seven!’ cried Mikhailov.
The officer turned away and wrote something down on a piece of paper. There was another officer and three guards in the room as well; the guards were standing watchfully by the doors and the second officer was leaning up against the wall scrutinising Mikhailov in the hopes of making him nervous. They all looked up as the door to the further room opened and Zköllmann came in. Mikhailov had not been paying attention but he snapped his head up as he heard the click of Zköllmann’s boots coming towards him.
‘Hullo,’ he thought; ‘here’s the old head buzzard himself. Now I’m in for it!’
Zköllmann strode up and the officer handed him a paper. He looked at what the officer had written, looked at Mikhailov, and handed back the paper.
‘Put him through the next phase,’ he said.
And without another word he left the room.
The officer went to a desk in the corner and opened a drawer. The other officer came forward and turned on a light that hung directly over Mikhailov’s head and that shed an unpleasantly brilliant light over him. At the same time one of the guards turned out the other lights in the room so that Mikhailov was left in a little island of lemon-yellow radiance. He could scarcely see the interrogating officer and the probing voice seemed to come to him from some disembodied being.
‘What is your name?’
He answered, haltingly.
‘Where do you live?’
Again he replied, but his mind seemed strangely confused and he scarcely realised what he said.
‘What is your occupation?’
No answer came to his lips. His many different occupations floated before his mind, interspersed with many that he had never had. He shut his eyes and tried fiercely to concentrate.
The voice went on without waiting for him to answer.
‘Why did you go to the cinema to-night?’
‘I didn’t,’ he said, growing more bewildered. ‘It was the theatre…’
‘What time did the program end?’
‘I don’t know…It was over when we got there…’
‘Who unlocked the door?’
‘There was no key…we couldn’t open it…’
‘What was in the back room?’
‘Ho!’ cried Mikhailov so suddenly that he heard the officer drop his pen. ‘Do you mean you don’t know?’
‘Answer the question,’ came the reply.
‘Then you didn’t go inside the back room?’ asked Mikhailov.
‘Answer the question.’
‘You answer mine. You keep asking me questions that you already know the answer to; well, now I’ve found one that you don’t know and I’m not going to tell you.’
The truth was that Mikhailov didn’t know any more than the SO what was in the back room of the theatre, simply because he hadn’t been able to see anything when he was inside it. The SO, he thought, wanted to know what he and Cecil had been doing at the theatre. That he had been there they knew—they had gotten that much out of him with their backwards questions—but they could not fathom what business Cecil had had there and they wanted very much to know. Well, let them ask him: he would let them think there was something particularly important in that back room.
‘Answer the following questions yes or no,’ came the voice of the interrogator. ‘Did you take the prince to your flat?’
‘What prince?’
‘Answer yes or no.’
‘What flat?’
‘Did you or didn’t you?’
‘Did I what?’
The officer stepped up to where Mikhailov could see his boots at the edge of the circle of light on the floor.
‘So, you choose to be troublesome? Perhaps you’ll prefer the next phase.’
‘Maybe,’ said Mikhailov.
‘Shut up! Holben,’ said the first officer to the one leaning up against the wall; ‘is the next phase ready?’
‘Oh yes,’ came the officer’s voice unconcernedly. ‘It’s been ready for a good while.’
‘Do you hear?’ said the interrogating officer, turning again to Mikhailov. ‘Maybe you’d like to hear how the next phase works.’
‘No,’ said Mikhailov.
‘Ha! Here’s how: we will turn off the light; we will even let you out of this chair. You will be taken to another room and there something very unpleasant will happen to you. Have you ever wondered what it is like to go mad? Well, it is quite possible that you will have your curiosity satisfied on that point. Some people have gone into that room quite sane and come out quite otherwise…’

Cecil dashed down the passage, paused, and pressed himself up against a door. His lungs gasped for breath but he struggled to put them off with a few slow gulps of air. His ears strained for the sound of his pursuers’ footsteps.
They were coming: he could hear them just a few corridors down. They were not running, but were stalking at a steady, inexorable pace. They were in no hurry, for they knew they had him and that there was no way of escape for him. Weren’t there alarms on every door?
The footsteps were coming closer. They were in the next hallway but one now. Cecil could rest no longer. He darted out of the doorway and hurried on down the corridor, glancing at each door as he passed it in a desperate attempt to find a hiding place.
He turned the corner and found himself in a dead end. The corridor ran only a few feet and ended with a blank wall. There was not so much as a window. He glanced back. It was too late to go back down the corridor the way he had come. There was one door in the wall on his right, but it was of heavy steel and looked as if it would be locked. Then Cecil looked again. The door had not been shut properly. There was the slimmest crack between the door and the jam and he could see that the latch had not caught.
On the door hung a sign with a picture of a skull and crossbones and beneath it the words:

WARNING!
Risk of electric shock! Serious injury or death could occur. No one allowed to enter except for an experienced electrician.

Cecil opened the door and went in.

‘So, you think you’d prefer a change?’ asked the SO officer as the guards unstrapped Mikhailov’s arms from the chair. ‘You don’t like this room, eh?’
‘Oh, there’s nothing the matter with the room,’ said Mikhailov. ‘It’s the company I object to.’
‘We shall not be the ones putting you through the next phase,’ said the officer. ‘That is reserved for the professionals. We’ll be interested in hearing how you do, however.’
‘Remind me to tell you,’ said Mikhailov.
He was not feeling as pert as he sounded. ‘Still,’ he thought; ‘as long as they’re pitching into me maybe they’ll be too busy to do much to the prince.’
‘You will soon learn how to behave to your superiors,’ said the officer. ‘Before you’re done, you’ll be grovelling to us.’
‘How much do you wager?’ asked Mikhailov.
‘I’ll give you fifty to one,’ the officer replied sarcastically, gritting his teeth.
‘Here’s the one!’ said Mikhailov and fetched him a straight left to the jaw.
It was the neat sort of stroke that had felled Cecil, although to do Mikhailov justice, he had not hit Cecil half so hard or enjoyed it half so much. The officer spread out on the floor, stunned for a moment. A guard darted forward and raised his tommy gun.
‘Put that down!’ said the officer who had not been hit. ‘You know we need him still.’
But the officer on the floor took out a pistol and, before the others could stop him, fired straight at Mikhailov’s head. Fortunately he was still dizzy and his aim was off. One of the other guards tried to stop him before he fired a second shot. There was a momentary struggle; then suddenly the room was plunged into darkness.
It was a darkness so thick and complete that not a thing could be seen.
‘You idiot!’ said the officer who had not fired the pistol. ‘You’ve hit the light!’
The guards who were pinning Mikhailov’s hands behind his back felt him suddenly break away.
‘He’s escaping! Stop him! Don’t let him get past!’ they cried.
The door of the room opened but oddly enough the corridor was just as impenetrably dark as the room they were in and they only knew the door had opened by the sound it made.
‘He’s making a break for it! Get him, quick!’
There was a rumble of booted feet through the doorway and down the corridor. Then silence crept back into the room.
‘Well, that’s got rid of them,’ said a voice in the darkness and that voice was Mikhailov’s.
A second voice emerged from the gloom.
‘Are you in there, Mik?’
‘Cecil! Where are you?’
‘Here I am. I cut the main breaker and put out the power. We’ve got to get out of here quick before they bring torches. Follow me.’
Mikhailov shuffled toward the sound of Cecil’s shoes somewhere at the other end of the room.
‘I say,’ said Mikhailov sharply; ‘this isn’t the right door.’
‘I know,’ said Cecil. ‘If we go down the corridor they’ll find us. We’ve got to try to get out this way.’
‘Are you sure we can?’
‘We’ll find out,’ said Cecil.
‘I say, you should have seen the row a minute ago,’ said Mikhailov as they made their way into the next room.
It was the room where Cecil had spoken to Zköllmann.
‘Here’s the desk,’ said Cecil, bumping up against it. ‘The door’s behind it—here it is.’
‘Where does it lead?’ asked Mikhailov.
‘We’ll see,’ said Cecil.
The door was not locked. The space it led into did not seem to be an office or a corridor.
‘Snug in here,’ remarked Mikhailov. ‘Who’s been stuffing their coats in here?’
‘It seems to be some sort of a closet,’ said Cecil. ‘I wish I had my electric torch!’
But he didn’t have it, nor even a match. The SO had taken all his possessions away.
‘Here’s another door,’ said Cecil.
‘Let’s hope it leads somewhere airier; I’m stifling.’
‘Snakes!’ said Cecil.
He had opened the door (which was not locked) and the two prisoners had been greeted with a gust of fresh air. They were outside the building. The queer little door had been a back door of sorts for the SO headquarters. I will here tell you something that Cecil did not find out until later. This outer door was usually locked but the lock was electric and worked automatically. By cutting off the power Cecil had rendered every lock in the building useless. None of the alarms were working either.
It was a very dark night they emerged into, but the darkness was not so black as inside the building. The searchlights were of course all out of order and so the yard Cecil and Mikhailov were in was lit only by the stars. Their light twinkled faintly off the electric fence twenty meters away.
Parties of dark figures traversed the yard with electric torches but the light from these could only illumine small spaces at a time and Cecil and Mikhailov found them easy to dodge. They had reached the wire without incident and Cecil had already put his leg through when Mikhailov suddenly hesitated.
‘What if they get the electricity back on just when we’re half-way through?’ he asked.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Cecil. ‘They won’t get it on too soon. I took care of that.’They clambered through the taut wires and slipped out onto the street, the first two prisoners to ever escape from that gloomy citadel.

Prince Cecil: XIV.

Chapter XIV.

The King’s Own

They went up one black street and down another, coming gradually to a very poor section of the city and onto a street that ran down between two rows of very dilapidated and dubious-looking buildings.The man entered a forbidding doorway in one of the buildings, went up several rickety flights of stairs, and at last stopped to put a key in the hole of a begrimed door. The faint glow from a street lamp outside shone through the dirty window and illuminated a dull number 47 that hung on the door.
The man seemed to have some trouble opening the door but he got it open at last after turning the key back and forth several times, vociferating against the stubborness of the lock, and finally delivering a series of violent blows to the rotten wood with his foot.
‘There!’ he exclaimed. ‘Come in. It’s not much, I’m afraid, but I’ll turn on the light—no there’s no electricity, that’s right—well, light a candle, then, and then we can talk.’
Cecil followed him in. A faint light from the street lamp came in through the blind-less windows, but not much could be discerned in the semi-obscurity until the man had lighted a candle. Even then Cecil did not see much because there was not much to be seen. The little room was bare except for a bed made up on the floor, the candle, a shaving glass hung on the wall, and a lot of dirt collected in one corner.
The man saw Cecil’s glance resting on the dirt and hastened to explain.
‘I borrow a broom from the family downstairs to sweep up each morning, but they haven’t a dustpan so I just sweep it into the corner.’
He seemed rather embarrassed about it so Cecil changed the subject.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Eugensz Mikhailov. What’s yours?’
‘Cecil Montellescue. How long have you been out of the army?’
‘Ever since Wakjavotski came to power. The Guards were disbanded then.’
‘I know,’ said Cecil, walking around the bare room to examine it closer. ‘Well, what did you do after that?’
‘I tried to get a job but it wasn’t so easy. First I was a clerk in a goods store, but that didn’t suit me so I went to sea on an oil tanker, but I didn’t like the sea so I came back and tried my hand at journalism, but I couldn’t make it pay so I got a job in a factory. I hated it, but I stuck to it until two months ago when the economy went down again and they turned me out. I don’t know where I’ll go next.’
‘How do you manage to live in the meantime?’ asked Cecil.
‘Oh, I get by. First I sold my chairs and ate standing up, then I sold my table and ate sitting on the bed. Then I sold the bed. I haven’t had electricity for over a week because I haven’t paid the electric bill—there it is hanging on the doorknob; it won’t be paid for a while, I guess. I have to be out of this apartment by morning because the rent’s due then and I haven’t got it. I only had a few coppers left this evening and they weren’t enough for the rent, so I went down to the bar to get a drink with them. But I didn’t have enough to get drunk on so here I am sober and with no money and that’s a bad place to be.’
Cecil looked around the little room and saw that the guardsman had not forgotten his military discipline. The floor certainly corroborated his story of being swept regularly, the one window was free of dirt, and the bed, though only made up of one blanket, was neatly made. Mikhailov himself was equally presentable. His clothes, although shabby, were brushed and mended and Cecil could see that, if he had spent the last of his money on a drink, he had spent what little he had had before that on a shave and a haircut. It was the sign of a gentleman to think about his appearance first and his stomach afterwards.
‘But what became of your inheritance?’ asked Cecil. ‘All the Guardsmen came from the aristocracy.’
‘There is no aristocracy anymore,’ said Mikhailov. ‘Wakjavotski abolished all the titles and redistributed all the wealth. Anyway, I’m a younger son and didn’t have much to begin with. My poor brother lost everything.’
‘I suppose all the other Silver Heels are as badly off as you?’ inquired Cecil.
‘Lots of them,’ said Mikhailov. ‘Most of them are vagabonds looking for work and barely managing to scrape by. Some went into other branches of the armed forces but most of them that did were imprisoned, sent to labour camps, reduced to the ranks, or shot. It is to the credit of the battalion that not one of the Guardsmen have made it to a high rank in the army: only knaves get up there.’
‘Are there very many Silver Heels left?’
‘There were a thousand when we were disbanded,’ Mikhailov replied. ‘I don’t know how many are left now.’
‘I suppose they’re all scattered about the country?’ said Cecil.
‘Most of them, I suppose. Every once in awhile I come across one—you can always tell a Silver Heel by his boots. We never sell our boots.’
‘I know,’ said Cecil.
‘It’s sort of a point of honour with us. It’s a symbol of the battalion and all that, you know—where we got our nickname after all. And they’re first-rate boots besides.’
‘What was the silver on the heels for in the first place?’ asked Cecil.
Mikhailov snapped to attention, bringing his heels together with a professional click.
‘That’s what they’re for,’ he said. None of the other battalions have boots like it—ours is the only one.’
‘Do you think,’ said Cecil; ‘that the other Silver Heels—any that are left—would still be loyal to the monarchy?’
‘They would,’ said Mikhailov. ‘I can vouch for any Silver Heel that he’d be loyal yet after all these years. We don’t change—and we don’t like dictators.’
‘If that’s the case, then I’ve a job for you,’ said Cecil.
‘What’s that?’ asked Mikhailov, drawing himself up to attention while his eyes gleamed with interest. ‘Shall we storm the palace and arrest Wakjavotski and his henchmen?’
‘I should like to,’ said Cecil; ‘but it’s more complicated than that.’
‘Say the word! There isn’t a Guardsman who wouldn’t come like a dog to the whistle if he heard you were here to lead us. We’ve been knocked around a good bit, but we’re tough and ready to fight.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Cecil. ‘You know what happens to people the Javotskis catch, don’t you?’
He thought of Major Erlich and he wanted to be sure he was not getting anyone into danger without his realising it.
‘Oh, never mind their silly secret police: we’re not afraid of them. We’re going to change all that,’ said Mikhailov, optimistically. ‘We’ll make so many changes in this country you won’t know it anymore.’
‘Do you really think we will?’ asked Cecil.
He gazed at Mikhailov’s face as the candle light flickered over it. It was a handsome face, with plenty of youthfullness despite the hard times it had seen. It looked like a brave, good face too, Cecil thought. Mikhailov was not like Karotski with his alternating fits of devotion and defeatism, nor like Leiber with his solid determination and cheerful endurance. The Silver Heel was a different sort of person entirely and Cecil was still trying to decide just what sort.
‘Of course we will!’ Mikhailov exclaimed, flapping his cap vigourously against his arm to dust it. ‘We’ll give Pyromania the regular go-over. Everything Wakjavotski changed we’ll change back again. We’re going to stage the grandest coup d’etat that was ever seen in history!’
He paused in his enthusiasm.
‘Aren’t we?’
‘Yes,’ said Cecil. ‘We are.’
‘Well, I thought so. That’s why you’re here, after all, isn’t it? Ho! but it’ll be fun, pitching into the Javotskis. I’ve been wanting to for a good long while—ever since they knocked us to pieces in the overthrow. We’ve an old score to settle with them, all right.’
He had grown very excited and marched up and down the room, swinging his arms. Cecil watched him and grew excited as well.
‘Your last stand, you mean,’ he said. ‘—when you defended my father against the rebels?’
‘Last stand? Pooh! We’ll show Wakjavotski we’ve fight left in us still. The last stand will be on his side, you can bet on it. We’ll run the dirty propagandists out of the city.’
‘So we shall!’ said Cecil.
‘We’ll show them a thing or two! We’re the old Guards yet! Do you know what day it is to-morrow?’
Cecil didn’t.
‘It’s the birthday of the battalion. Nobody knows who organised it or when or what for but we know what day is its birthday. We used to celebrate it every year in fine style with oysters and champagne and songs—you know the battalion song, don’t you?’
‘No,’ said Cecil.
‘Call yourself a Guardsman—even an honourary one—and don’t even know the Guards Song? Listen, I’ll sing it for you.’
He threw back his head and threw out his chest and seemed for the moment to forget entirely that he was in a rickety apartment with sleeping people in the rooms around him. For a brief moment he was back in the old Pyromania, singing for a table full of the King’s Own and his strong baritone rang out like a trumpet call.
Here is the Guards Song:

When Attila came down to waste the plain
With all his howling hordes,
Who sent him back to the hills again?
The King’s Own Royal Guards!
When Charlemagne of the Franks appeared
Who made his armies flee?
Who tweaked his nose and pulled his beard?
The Seventh Cavalry!

Chorus:
We never have run from danger;
We always have faced the foe;
Wherever it’s hot we’re on the spot
And we never have missed a show! (ho! ho!)
So here’s to the Seventh Royal Guards
And here’s to the men who are made
Of Iron and Steel and a Silver Heel
To serve in the King’s Brigade (hurrah!)
To fight for the King’s Brigade!

When Caesar crossed the Rubicon
Rome was the prize he won;
But the King’s Own Guards would have scampered on
And come back home with the sun!
Alexander cried when he had no more
Nice worlds to conquer, ‘tis true,
But we would have hunted up three or four
And conquered ‘em for him too.

2nd Chorus:
We never have run from danger;
We always have faced the foe;
Wherever it’s hot we’re on the spot
And we never have missed a show! (ho! ho!)
Then cheer for the King’s Own Royal Guards,
And cheer for the hearts that are free;
Then hip hurrah! for a lark and a row,
Cheer, boys, cheer! We’ll show them how
For the tow-row-row-row-tow-row-row
Seventh Royal Guards Cavalry!

It was a bold, boastful, robust sort of song that made you want to jump up on the table to sing it. Cecil felt when he heard it as if he wanted to go out and hit someone in the eye or make some other violent demonstration.
‘It’s bully!’ he exclaimed.
‘I used to play it on my trombone,’ said Mikhailov; ‘but I haven’t got it anymore.’
One of the other lodgers pounded on the wall just then and shouted at them to be quiet. Cecil’s and Mikhailov’s voices dropped to lower tones.
‘We’ve got to get down to business,’ said Cecil. ‘How many Silver Heels can you get?’
‘I don’t know for sure. I only know the whereabouts of a few, but they might know of others.’
‘Well how many can you get together by to-morrow night?’
‘By to-morrow night?’
‘Yes, we need them by then at the very latest.’
‘I don’t know… they’re scattered all about the country, you know. It would take more than one day, I should think.’
‘But we haven’t any more time!’ said Cecil desperately. ‘We’ve got to have them to-morrow.’
‘We can’t,’ said Mikhailov simply. ‘There’s no way to get the word out to them all by to-morrow. We have to be careful anyhow or we’ll all be arrested.’
‘I know,’ groaned Cecil.
He put his head into his hands and thought hard.
‘That song—’ he said; ‘the battalion song—if you sang that to-morrow in some public place, wouldn’t they remember what day it is and think something was afoot—a rebandment or something like that? Perhaps we could put in an extra verse or something to tell them that they’re needed, and if they knew that, I’m sure they’d come to help us. If we could only find a place where a lot of ‘em would be!’
‘We could try the unemployment office,’ said Mikhailov. ‘There’s always a long line outside it and I daresay there’d be quite a few Silver Heels there.’
‘No, I’ve got it!’ exclaimed Cecil, springing to the door. ‘It’s the very perfect idea! Come with me quickly!’

* * * * *

‘What is this place?’ asked Mikhailov, staring up at the solemn brick wall before which they stood.
‘It’s a theatre,’ said Cecil. ‘You’re going to give a performance of the Silver Heels song.’
‘How will we get in?’
‘There’s a window up there. I think I could get through it if you gave me a leg up.’
‘It might be locked.’
‘I’ve a tool that forces open windows. Boy scout motto, you know: ‘Be Prepared’. Now for the leg up.’
Getting in was not so very difficult for Cecil, but the window was too small for Mikhailov to get through.
‘Wait here,’ said Cecil. ‘I’ll go round and unlock the door.’
He stumbled about in the dark room until he found the door to the corridor. It was the same corridor he had come down only a few hours before and the floor of it was still covered with cables which tripped him up. He could not find a lightswitch anywhere and had to resort to his electric torch to find the outer door.
The door however could not be unlocked even from the inside without the key. Cecil tried for several minutes without any luck. He went back to the window and reported to Mikhailov, who was waiting in the alley.
‘What do we do then?’ asked Mikhailov.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Cecil. ‘Let me see if I can find the recording instruments.’
‘Are we going to record it? I’m not that good of a singer.’
‘You’ll have to do because I don’t know the words,’ said Cecil, his voice growing farther away as he made his way to the back of the room.
‘Got them!’ he said, appearing at the window a few minutes later. ‘Catch hold!’
A microphone came through the window and a long cord slithered after it.
‘What do I do with it?’ asked Mikhailov.
‘Wait until I get these wires connected,’ replied Cecil.
He was fumbling about inside the room where the recording equipment was, examining the instruments with the aid of his electric torch.
‘There,’ he said. ‘That ought to do the trick. All right now, sing! Sing good and loud.’
Mikhailov hesitated.
‘Are you sure it’s hooked up right?’ he asked.
‘It should be. Go ahead!’ said Cecil.
The guardsman cleared his throat and began the song with spirit. His voice sounded strange in the silent, empty alleyway and bounced off the hard walls at him as if he were singing in a very large shower cell.
‘That’s fine!’ whispered Cecil at the end of the first chorus. ‘Go on and sing the rest.’
As he spoke two dark figures appeared at the end of the alley and shone the beam of a torch down the length of it.
‘Keep singing!’ said Cecil.
The light shone full on Mikhailov, singing for all he was worth and Cecil, with his head sticking out of the window. There was a high-pitched squeal as one of the guards blew his whistle.
‘Don’t stop; I’ll hold them off,’ said Cecil.
A bevy of uniformed figures came down the alley at the run but half-way down they stopped as a sharp report echoed against the narrow walls.
‘Come on, it’s only a burst light-bulb!’ said the police-sergeant.
They came on with a vengeance. Cecil clambered out of the window to meet them and was collared by the foremost—but only for a moment, for the policeman retreated almost immediately with a shriek and a flash of blue light as Cecil electrocuted him with a frayed wire.
Mikhailov sang on in the midst of the cacophony with admirable calm. He had reached the middle of the second chorus before he was dragged bodily from the microphone by two policemen.
Then there was a regular row. Cecil and Mikhailov both did some good work in the alley that evening and accounted for five black eyes among the policemen, all told. More were arriving all the time though and the uneven fight was rapidly growing ever more lopsided.
Mikhailov fetched a policeman a good clip on the ear and sent him smashing up against the door in the wall, which burst with a loud crack.
‘Come on!’ said Cecil, catching hold of Mikhailov’s arm and pulling him through the aperture.
They stumbled down the dark back corridor, the policemen fumbling after them, and ducked into the room with the recording instruments. There were a lot of tripping and falling noises in the corridor and several of the policemen imprecated against wires in general and live wire specifically. Cecil had just time to take the record, slip it into a sleeve, and set it in lieu of the the original before the police found the door and entered. He and Mikhailov slipped through a second door, down a narrow passage, into the wings, and onto the stage.
The whole of the huge theatre was dark. The great crystal chandeliers were extinguished, the footlights were doused. Only a pale gleam shone from the exit signs above the rear doors. For a moment Cecil and Mikhailov experienced the awe of first-time performers, the next the pursuing policemen floundered out of the wings and made the worst stage entrance ever seen in that theatre.
There was a sharp scuffle in the dark and several policemen were precipitated into the orchestra pit. Then Cecil and Mikhailov escaped into the wings and dashed through a door, up a flight of steps, and onto a catwalk. They could hear, in the darkness, several policemen come onto the catwalk behind them, treading carefully so as not to trip and fall onto the stage, which was quite dangerously far below them. Cecil looked over his shoulder but could see scarcely anything. He got confused in the darkness and did not know which way he was going and the next instant set his foot down on vacuity. He felt himself plunge forward and threw out his arms, seeking for something to catch hold of.
His right arm was seized firmly, he was hauled bodily back onto the catwalk, and Mikhailov’s voice whispered in his ear, ‘That was a close shave.’
‘Thanks,’ whispered Cecil and followed Mikhailov more carefully to the end of the catwalk which descended in another flight of steps.
Here at last they were cornered. A group of the policemen had known the layout of the theatre better than Cecil and Mikhailov did and had and gone round to cut them off. They made a rush for it but it was useless against superior numbers. They were summarily handcuffed and led away to the station.
‘Never mind,’ said Cecil to Mikhailov in a low voice. ‘A man is coming to the theatre to-night for the recording. He’ll take it to the—’
‘Hi! ’nough of your lip!’ said a policeman, cuffing him.
The two conspirators spoke no more but the mutual glances they exchanged said, ‘First chance we get, we shake these blighters.’

* * * * *

‘All right, you two,’ said the police chief as he sat behind the desk at the station, examining a paper the sergeant had given him. ‘Amassed quite a list of charges between the two of you, didn’t you?’
He whistled.
‘Out after curfew; disturbing the peace; singing subversive songs; housebreaking; assaulting the police; resisting arrest; damaging private property’ (that was the microphone—Mikhailov had hit one of the policemen with it); ‘and attempting to escape. Not a pretty record, I’m afraid. You’ll get quite a few years for it.’
‘Oh, sir,’ said Cecil. ‘Please don’t put us in prison, sir.’
‘We won’t do it again,’ said Mikhailov.
‘You certainly won’t,’ said the police chief sternly. ‘We’ve got enough evidence against you to dispense with a jury, but you’ll get your court date anyhow, seeing as we’re always fair and above-board here in Pyromania. You’re going to spend to-night in the lock-up and see that you don’t pile up a few more years on your sentence with bad behaviour. Give me your names and occupations and no dallying about it.’
‘I haven’t got an occupation,’ said Cecil. ‘I’m only twelve years old.’
‘You are, are you?’ asked the chief indignantly. ‘What do your parents mean, letting you run about the streets at night? They ought to be ashamed!’
‘I don’t have any parents; I’m an orphan.’
‘In that case, what do you mean by subverting an unprotected child?’ asked the chief, confronting Mikhailov angrily. ‘Don’t you realise you’re setting him up for a life of crime by your unhealthy influence? Isn’t it bad enough that you’ve ruined your own life without having to drag this poor boy down with you? You’re old enough to know better!’
‘What, me?’ asked Mikhailov, taken by surprise.
‘I will never understand why criminals delight so in felony,’ harangued the police chief, moved in spite of himself. ‘Doesn’t it mean anything to you that we police slave to keep this country free of crime? –Day and night, winter and summer, in all weather. Don’t you care that the crime rate is increasing? I don’t understand! Where’s the fun in it?’
‘The fun in what?’ asked Mikhailov.
‘In wrecking and smashing things. Doesn’t it matter to you that people spend hours at machines making useful items? Then you criminals come along and break in—steal—vandalise—all for the sheer devilry of it.’
‘Is that why you became a policeman?’ asked Cecil in surprise.
‘There certainly isn’t any other reason to become one,’ said the chief. ‘What thanks do we ever get for all the work we do? The pay isn’t very good, the work hours are terrible, and the SO is always coming in here and telling us our business just as if they owned us.’
‘I say,’ said Cecil, interrupting him and pointing to the paper. ‘What’s that for?’
‘What?’ asked the chief. ‘These are the charges against you. If you don’t like them you can say something at the trial, but it’s no good arguing here.’
‘I mean the Javotski thingummy at the top of the page,’ said Cecil. ‘Don’t they use the state seal on documents anymore?’
‘No, not anymore,’ said the chief. ‘We had to burn all the old letterhead when Wakjavotski came to power.’
The symbol for the Javotski party was a black circle on a red ground with a black bar placed across the circle diagonally—the symbol interpreted almost universally as ‘Do Not.’ You can see it on any Javotski flag.
‘That’s too bad,’ said Cecil. ‘The state seal is nicer and looks a lot more prestigious.’
‘Yes, it was a bit more colourful,’ admitted the chief. ‘That’s all part of the old regime, though—it was the king’s family crest.’
‘I still like it better,’ said Cecil.
‘You probably don’t even know what it looks like,’ scoffed the chief (he hadn’t yet figured out who Cecil was). ‘That was before your time, I should think.’
‘I know what it looks like,’ protested Cecil. ‘I can tell you the blazon: Gules, a bordure Or, a lion rampant Argent tongued Sable, all topped with an eagle displayed Or, a mantle covering all Gules bordered Or tied up with braid with tassels Or lined ermine, topped with a pavilion with eight tassels Sable interspersed with seven fleur-de-lys Or, and crowned with a royal crown Or. Below a banner Gules with fess Argent with the motto: Semper Idem Sable.’
(You will recall that Cecil was fond of Heraldry.) Here is what the Montellescue crest and state seal of Pyromania looks like.

‘You must have read that somewhere,’ said the chief.
‘It’s just the way of saying how it looks,’ said Cecil. ‘It’s easy to understand if you know what the terms mean.’
‘Yes, well; enough of all that,’ said the chief. ‘You’re wasting valuable time. Look here, I hate to have to put you in the clink at your age, but don’t you see I haven’t got any other choice? It will only be for one night.’
As he was speaking the outer door opened and several figures with familiar black uniforms entered the office.
‘Just a minute, Bubol,’ said the foremost of these to the police chief. ‘We’ll take control of the prisoners.’
At a signal from him, two of the SO officers presented pistols at Cecil and Mikhailov and motioned them towards the door.
‘Now see here,’ said the police chief, getting to his feet protestingly. ‘These prisoners were picked up by my force and they’re my responsibility. You can’t just come in here and carry them off.’
‘Take it up with the Superior!’ said the head SO officer.
‘I will!’ said the police chief firmly. ‘I’m tired of your high-and-mighty ways. You think you can just walk in here and do whatever you like. Well, this is my office and these are my prisoners. I won’t sign a release form.’
‘You don’t have to,’ said the SO officer. ‘You’re under arrest, former police chief Bubol. Don’t try to leave this building. Prisoners, march!’
And the whole bevy of them left the office as abruptly as they had entered it, leaving the police chief stunned at his desk.
It had all been done so fast that Cecil’s mind had barely been able to keep up. His heart sank as they were marched out. The police chief had at least been a principled person and Cecil might have been able to do something with him, but now that they were in the hands of the SO there was no hope for them.
He and Mikhailov were deposited into a black SO car and the steel shuttered doors closed upon them. They had no chance to speak to each other without being overheard because only a barred partition separated them from the front of the car. One of the three SO officers leaned over the back of the front seat and covered them with a pistol through the bars while the second talked with the third who was driving. Several more followed in a separate car, so the prisoners were very well-guarded.
The black automobiles wound down the streets far above the speed limits, impervious to the laws of their country. Cecil scarcely noticed where he was being taken: he was trying too hard to think of a way to escape. Things were looking the darkest they had yet—but he knew that he must get away. Everything depended on him now.
He was so intent on his problem that he did not look up until his eyes were half blinded by the glare of a search light. Then he blinked and squinted through the windshield at the place they were entering. It was a wide enclosure bounded by a high wire fence. At intervals along the fence stood sentry towers equipped with spotlights. The car was approaching a squared concrete building that bore on its front the symbol of the SO, for this was their headquarters and the place where all high-priority political prisoners were interned. None of them ever came back out.

Prince Cecil: XIII.

Chapter XIII.

Cecil Meets a Vagrant

The street on which Miss Kaparthy lived ran down for several blocks and ended abruptly in an iron paling with a gate in it. Enclosed within this paling was the park, which was very extensive and took up nearly a hundred acres of the central part of the city. It was the same park that ran between Sir Andrew Fletcher’s house and the consulate building, although that part of it was only a narrow arm.
It was a nice park, as parks go. The river ran through the middle of it and the white paved paths were thickly set with trees and lampposts and park benches. Cecil thought it would save time and withal be safer to go back to the watch shop as much of the way as he could along the park’s quiet winding lanes and anyway, he needed time to think about things.
The lampposts were not lit because nobody was supposed to come there after dark, but there was a three-quarter moon which threw a milky grey light over everything and hundreds of fireflies. The night had ripened so far that the little yellow-green creatures had gone to the very tops of the trees, twinkling like shore lights signaling to a distant vessel. They reminded Cecil of the night he had run away from Mapleton and of the fireflies on the cricket field.
What had he come to Pyromania for, after all? Pyromania was as enslaved as ever and now Cecil had even more troubles than when he had started. Why had he promised Miss Kaparthy that he would save her brother? Reflecting on his decision, he felt that he had promised simply because someone had to do it and he knew nobody else could. But could he do it himself? It was, after all, impossible.
He reached the river and turned down a path that ran along by its bank. The moonlight ran along over the water at his side, keeping pace with his strides. There were no big noises--only the gentle murmuring of the river, the light rustle of trees, and the night wind. The city, the war, and the Javotskis seemed thousands of miles away. Cecil might have been in Regent's Park or Kensington Gardens.
He turned onto another path and passed through a grove of trees. Just beyond in a clear space where the moon shone fully stood a bronze statue on a pedestal. There had once been scores of statues in the park--mostly of kings or national heroes--but they had been torn down by the Javotskis. This one was one of their replacements--a figure of Plato. Cecil approached it and found that whatever had been written on the pedestal initially had been painted over with plaster, but the plastering was old and beginning to crumble away. He bent down and rubbed his knuckles over the rough surface until he was able to make out the following legend:

Roland III by the grace of God king of Pyromania

He glanced quickly up at the statue again. It was quite obviously Plato. He got down on his hands and knees and began to search about in the grass. The park was regularly tended and no litter or stones were to be found loose on the ground but Cecil found something hard half buried in the earth at the base of the pedestal. It was a stone hand. He brushed the dirt off it and gazed at it silently in the moonlight. Roland the III had been his father.
He left the bit of marble behind in the grass and continued along the path as it pursued a leisurely course across the lawn and under a second grove of trees. A clock somewhere in the city struck eight faintly and far away, but in the moonlit park Cecil felt as if he were in a timeless place, lost in the mists of a thousand years. It seemed a place where nothing was real--the very trees looked as though if you tried to touch them they would disappear. Yet all around him Cecil felt the old grandeur of his ancestors, deposed and trodden underfoot but still with a stern dignity, and he seemed to see the things he had always believed in--honour and chivalry and truth--embodied in the lampposts and the empty pedestals, all whitely surreal and washed in a hopeless moonshine.
He was the last of the Montellescues. He was alone and wandering in the night an empty dream-world that was the old Pyromania. It seemed to be trying to speak to him--like something making one last attempt before it falls silent forever. He thought he knew what it said--that the things that are the most definite are the hardest of all to see; that what is most true is only accepted by faith; and that the highest, brightest ideals only become real when they are lived out in quiet, unseen acts of service and sacrifice.
It hadn’t come to him all at once, but bit by bit and he had only realised it that night in the park because it was the first opportunity he had had to think about it properly. He had come back to his country to be king but now his throne, the war, Karotski and Leiber--even Pyromania--did not seem to matter so much as one lonely, ill prisoner and the promise Cecil had made to Miss Kaparthy.
Still that promise seemed impossible to keep. But as he wandered on through the deserted park Cecil began to feel that somehow he would do it. He didn’t know how—the impossibility of it did not change, but he felt somehow that there was something stronger than impossibility—and that It was on his side.
He threw away the core of the apple and found himself before another wrought-iron gate. This was the one which led out into the lower part of the city—the part where he was going. There were scarcely any people about on the streets—only one or two automobiles with authorised government plates. Cecil trotted down the silent sidewalks past the deserted shops, skirting the circle of light round the base of each lamppost.
Suddenly he stopped and drew back against the window of the shop behind him. A policeman was coming down the street making his nightly rounds. Cecil glanced around but could see nowhere to hide. There was the shop behind him. It was certainly shut up—but then, it was a pub, and Cecil had learned from Karotski and Leiber that some pubs stayed open after the curfew, only they did business in a darkened back room. He tried the door.
It wasn’t locked. He opened it and slipped inside, expecting to find himself in a dark and empty room, but instead found that a dim lamp gleamed above a bar and lighted indifferently a small room populated by three or four people. The heavy wooden shutters in the window kept the uncertain light from escaping into the street and no one spoke or made a noise—a strange state of affairs for a bar room.
‘What do you want?’ asked the man behind the bar, seeing Cecil.
‘There’s a policeman outside,’ explained Cecil.
‘Did he see you?’ asked the man, seeming to understand completely Cecil’s predicament.
‘No. I don’t think so. Do you mind if I stay here for a little while?’
‘Not if you don’t make any noise. Shop’s shut up but I don’t mind a visitor or two.’
Cecil could see that the man did not mind ‘visitors’ as long as they paid for their drinks. Even policemen sometimes came to these surreptitious establishments and did not usually report the owners’, as these were the only places a constable could get a drink after the curfew.
Cecil ordered root beer and sat down to drink it at a table in the furthest corner of the room. The corner, although small and dark, was shared by a man in a threadbare uniform who sat with his chair tipped back and his feet on the table, rocking his chair on two legs in a sort of doze.
He did not speak to Cecil or even seem to notice him, and Cecil decided it was best not to speak to him either. He let his eyes wander around the room, decorated as it was with the usual government posters although here they were defaced by pencil markings made by disgruntled or simply bored citizens.
His eyes gravitated back, almost against his inclination, to the man who shared the table. There was something fascinating in this rough individual, although there was really nothing remarkable about his appearance. He looked to be in his late twenties, and he was the usual sort of person one sees in a pub except that there seemed to be something gentlemanly about him despite his shabbiness. He wore an old army cap pulled down over his eyes, an old army uniform, and old cavalry boots. Cecil, examining him, noticed for the first time a gleam of metal on the man’s boot heels. It was a little silver C, like a sickle moon, and there was one on each boot. Cecil leaned forward closer to look.
‘Eh?’ said the man, noticing him for the first time and seeing his curiosity. ‘What is it?’
‘I was looking at your boots,’ Cecil explained.
‘Well, what’s the matter with ‘em?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Then mind your own business.’
The man pulled his cap lower over his eyes and folded his arms.
‘You must have been in the 7th Guards cavalry once,’ Cecil went on, undaunted.
‘Why?’
‘Because your boots have silver heels.’
The man let his chair down on all four of its legs and looked Cecil straight on.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘I was just wondering if you got them second-hand,’ said Cecil carelessly.
The man who had seemed to be half asleep a moment before became in two seconds so undeniably awake that he jumped to his feet and knocked Cecil down —chair and all—with a blow from his fist.
For a moment Cecil lay on the floor trying to get his wits back, for the man had hit him very hard. If he had had time for it he might have felt like crying because his chin hurt very much. I don’t say that he would have cried, but only felt like it; but in any case he didn’t have a chance to do anything of the sort because the proprietor of the pub came up just then with an angry air.
‘Enough of this!’ he said. ‘I run an exemplary bar and I don’t permit fighting. If you two hotheads want to fight you can do it out on the street and be arrested there!’
And with that he caught either of them by the collar and thrust them out so forcefully (being a well-built man) that Cecil fell down again and the other man staggered a good bit, though this may have been due in part to the empty glass he had left on the table. The door was shut on them and it happened to be a very good thing that the policeman had passed on.
Cecil picked himself up and looked at the man, wondering how to apologise. It did not look as if it would be easy. The man had recovered his balace with the aid of a lamppost and now stood with his hands in his pockets and an air of dejection, shaking his head now and then as if he were still dizzy. Cecil was rather lightheaded himself from the blow he had gotten, but the night air was clearing that up quickly and he had only had root beer.
‘Look here,’ he addressed the man, extending his hand; ‘I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t mean to get you thrown out.’
‘What of it?’ said the man, with his back to Cecil and his shoulders hunched up. ‘I deserved it. Hitting a kid…’
‘I thought you would,’ said Cecil. ‘That’s why I deliberately insulted you.’
‘Deliberately, eh?’ asked the man, turning to look at him curiously.
‘Yes,’ said Cecil. ‘I knew you would get angry if you were really a Silver Heel.’
‘Well, I hope you are convinced,’ said the man. ‘I am a Silver Heel. What of it?’
‘In that case,’ said Cecil; ‘you once belonged to one of the most elite corps in the Pyromanian army.’
‘Yes, once,’ said the man with a snort like that a very sophisticated person would give who has just sniffed an unpleasant odour. ‘But that’s long past. Who cares about the Silver Heels anymore? Just a lot of mendicants and ne'er-do-wells—nobody wants them; nobody needs them; the police say, “Get along, you blighter!” whenever they see one. Look at me! I’m a disgrace. What does it matter and what do I care?’
‘I don’t know what you care,’ said Cecil; ‘but I’m glad I found you because this is terribly important. Look here.’
He took from his pocket a small silver pin. It was made up of two crossed spears with a crown superimposed on them and beneath it the words, Pro Regis.
The soldier started as if he recognised it.
‘Where did you get that?’ he asked.
‘The Pyromanian royal princes are always enrolled in the Guards’ list honourarily,’ said Cecil.
‘The royal princes? Then you’re a—’
‘Yes,’ said Cecil. ‘I’m a prince—the prince, actually—the only one.’
The man did not seem to be able to speak. He stared at Cecil dumbfounded.
‘You’ve got a pin like this too, haven’t you?’ Cecil asked.
‘Yes,’ stammered the man; ‘—on my collar.’
‘I didn’t see it. Well, would you like to do service for your king again?’
The man jerked his head back like a Prussian salute and looked Cecil squarely in the eye.
‘Do you dare to ask me that?’ he said with a fierce excitement; then added as a sort of afterthought, ‘—Your Highness?’
He turned away and put his hands in his pockets, tipping his face upwards and contemplating the stars. Then, as if his feelings would not be satisfied by this weak demonstration, he took his hands from his pockets, snatched off his battered army cap, and ran his fingers through his hair.
‘Ha!’ he said.
He turned suddenly back to Cecil, fell on one knee and kissed the prince’s hand, jumped up again, tossed his cap up in the air, caught it, and flung it onto the pavement, shouting, ‘Bravo!’
Cecil had grown to expect people to be delightedly surprised when they found out who he was, but in spite of this he was taken aback by this man’s unusual expression of feeling.
‘Hush! Not so loud,’ he enjoined. ‘You’ll have a policeman on us if you don’t look sharp.’
‘No,’ said the man. ‘Can’t talk here, can we? Come along with me—come along to my flat…we can talk comfortably there.’
And without another word of explanation he turned and went off up the street, leaving Cecil staring after him in amazement. Cecil stood where he was a moment only. Then with a quick resolve he set off after the soldier. He did not know but that he might be led into a trap—he did not know that the soldier was loyal, after all. He had taken chances before, but he could hardly expect his luck to hold out forever. Still, he followed in the wake of the hurrying figure in front of him, feeling intuitively that he was not being led into a trap—that he was, on the contrary, about to make a revolutionary discovery.

Prince Cecil: XII.

Chapter XII.

‘There Was a Time…’

‘It was a good performance this evening,’ said Zköllmann conversationally, leaning up against the wall as if he intended to stay awhile. ‘You sounded particularly well.’
He paused for a reply but she didn’t speak.
‘In fact, you sang far better than you have for a long time,’ he went on. ‘The audience liked it.’
‘Did they?’ said Csilla.
‘You sounded like you did when you were younger and you used to put more feeling into your singing. You’ve improved in tone and clarity since, but you’ve lost much of the emotion.’
‘Have you turned critic too now?’ she asked.
‘That’s not in my line of business. There was a difference though and there must be something behind it. You must have had good news of some sort.’
‘There’s never any good news.’
She sat rigidly, waiting for him to finish bothering her and go. His conversation was oppressive and at the back of her mind lurked the possibility that Cecil might suddenly come back while Zköllmann was there.
‘That sounds like a platitude. And it’s true too, there isn’t such a thing as good news anymore. I do have some news for you, though, good or bad, as you choose to take it. I saw your brother this morning.’
‘You did?’ she said, her reserve falling away and her gaze, which had been kept studiously away from him, suddenly darting to his face. ‘Where? In the labour camp? Is he still alive? Is he well? What’s happened to him?’
Her eyes were bright and impatient; she felt herself trembling but for a moment she made no effort to conceal her eagerness.
‘No, he is not in the labour camp anymore,’ said Zköllmann. ‘He tried to escape last night but he was caught. Right now he is at the SO headquarters.’
The eagerness faded out of her face and something inside her seemed to drop like a heavy weight.
‘He’s there?’ she said.
‘Since two o’clock this morning.’
‘What are you going to do to him?’ she whispered.
‘We’ve had to keep him for informational reasons,’ said Zköllmann. ‘Another prisoner escaped with him and was fortunate enough to actually get away. So far, despite our efforts, your brother has refused to give us any clue as to where he is.’
Csilla covered her face.
‘Oh, poor Ferenc!’ she said.
‘Of course you remember what was mentioned to you before—last night, to be exact,’ said Zköllmann.
She made no reply and kept her face covered but she knew that he knew she was listening.
‘Are you still sure you won’t give us the information?’
‘Yes,’ was the muffled reply.
‘Don’t say it so quickly. You should think about it first. We don’t have anything against your brother and we’d spare him interrogation just as soon as not, but he has chosen to be difficult, so what can we do? I personally don’t think he will hold out very long.’
She took her hands away from her face and though her eyes were full of tears she spoke quite steadily.
‘He will never tell anything that would hurt another person,’ she said; ‘and neither will I—no matter what you do.’
‘I didn’t mean he would talk,’ said Zköllmann. ‘I meant he wouldn’t survive long. He has pneumonia.’
‘Haven’t you hurt him enough?’ she pleaded. ‘He hasn’t done anything.’
‘That rests with you.’
‘With me?’ she said, as if talking to herself. ‘Why must it? Oh, what can I do?’
‘Don’t be sentimental,’ said Zköllmann in a practical tone. ‘You’ve played the loyal spy admirably but you knew you couldn’t keep it up for ever. You’re breaking.’
‘Yes,’ she thought; ‘What is the use? He knows he has me. What shall I do? How stupid I sounded just now--why did I say that? I’m not making sense. My mind must be giving way; I shall not be able to hold out much longer. What shall I do? What shall I do?’
‘Remember I told you before,’ said Zköllmann; ‘that it would be over for you when you gave us what we wanted. Now you know what I mean.’
‘It won’t do you any good,’ she cried, standing up and confronting him. ‘I’ll never tell you anything. You must do what you will do—I can’t stop you. But I’ll never betray them to you for Ferenc’s life.’
‘You think not?’ he asked.
‘I know it,’ she said. ‘I may be weak—I suppose if you kept onto me for long enough I should give in, but before that happens I will kill myself.’
For a minute they faced each other. Csilla tried with all her might to quell her trembling and look him in the eye, and as she did so he gave her a look which said as plain as speaking,
‘You would, would you?’
Something came up in her throat just then. It was a cry—for what, she didn’t know: it couldn’t be for help for there was no one to help her. With the last strength she had left she managed to force it down and keep her lips pressed tightly together. She must never cry out before this man; never let him know how hard she was struggling to withstand him. She turned away and covered her face again. She heard the door open and close and when she uncovered her eyes she was alone. She waited a moment, then put on her cloak and went out.
At the stage door her accompanist stopped her.
‘Pardon, mademoiselle,’ said the Belgian; ‘a young man gave me this to give to you.’
‘A young man?’ she repeated.
‘Yes—actually, to be quite precise, it was a little boy. He gave no name.’
It was a bunch of red geraniums.
‘Thank you, Gerand,’ she said.
‘May I be permitted to say, mademoiselle, your singing this evening was wonderful—magnificent. Never have I heard you sing so well.’
‘Thank you, Gerand,’ she said.
‘Good night, mademoiselle.’
‘Good night,’ she said.
He left and the theatre was dark and deserted. One light burned backstage because the janitor had still to come and clean up. Csilla stood looking down at the geraniums. She felt very tired and the tears that stood in her eyes fell down suddenly onto the petals of the flowers.
She drew her cloak about her and left the theatre for the darkening streets.

* * * * *

Cecil quickened his pace to a run for the avenues were beginning to empty and the curfew would soon be in effect. Daleth’s restaurant stood on a street a little over a quarter of a mile from the theatre and it was here that Karotski had arranged to meet him and report success.
Daleth was not behind the counter playing his concertina this evening; he was brushing crumbs from one of the clean white tablecloths. Several diners were interspersed throughout the room eating their suppers hurriedly so as to be home before the curfew. Daleth turned as Cecil came in and, without a word, pointed to the door which led to the back staircase.
Karotski was waiting in Daleth’s room.
‘Did you see Major Erlich?’ asked Cecil.
‘No, I didn’t,’ said Karotski.
‘What happened?’
‘Tell me your news first. What did she say?’
‘It’s no good. She can’t put the other spies at risk. She couldn’t help me at all.’
‘Then we’re finished.’
‘Why? What’s up with the major?’
‘I went to his house this afternoon,’ said Karotski. ‘There was nobody there. I waited around until I found someone who could tell me where he was and finally his housekeeper showed up. I asked her a few questions and she told me everything. Erlich was arrested by the SO this morning.’

* * * * *

There were only a few vehicles still out on the roads. Csilla left the old section of the city and came to streets full of shops and restaurants, all closed or closing up. She walked as if in a dream, finding her way mechanically because she had been that way so often. A part of her seemed to have died that evening and the faint spark of hope that had warmed her for one short moment had burnt out. The sidewalk in front of her blurred and she stumbled as she came to the end of the pavement.
There was a rushing sound and the quick blare of a horn as an automobile swept past her. Suddenly she felt her arm grasped firmly and someone pulled her back onto the sidewalk. She looked up and saw no one; then looked down and saw Cecil.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘Where did you come from?’ she asked confusedly.
‘I came after you--I had to--is anything the matter?’
‘No, I’m all right,’ she said.
‘You looked as if something were wrong, and you almost walked right in front of that car. Can I walk you home?’
‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘It’s all right,’ he said, putting her arm through his and leading her across the street. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘You might be seen.’
‘It can’t be helped; I have to talk to you anyway.’
‘What is it?’
‘I can’t tell you here. Wait until we get to your house.’
He pulled his cap lower over his face with his free hand and quickened their pace. They were both silent all the rest of the way.
Miss Kaparthy lived in rooms in a row of houses on a street that ran down to the park. It was a quiet part of the city, just a few blocks from the government buildings and across the park from the iron bridge. There were trees and lampposts along the sidewalks.
‘Is this the one?’ asked Cecil, as they came up the steps of one of the houses.
‘Yes,’ said Miss Kaparthy. ‘Wait until I unlock the door.’
She put a silver key into the lock and the door opened to admit them into a dark hallway. Miss Kaparthy led Cecil into a small room opening off of it and turned on a lamp.
It was a cosy little flat furnished with definite feminine taste. There were flowers on the curtains and wallpaper and the furniture showed unmistakeable signs of a lack of masculine use—the antimacassars had not been balled up and tossed into corners, the pillows were not smashed, and there was no cigar ash anywhere to be seen.
Miss Kaparthy sank down onto a sofa while Cecil tentatively took an ottoman.
‘I’m sorry to have to bother you again like this,’ he said in some embarrassment, for the floral surroundings did not put him at ease. They reminded him of the parlours of some of his schoolmates whose mothers were very particular.
‘Why did you follow me?’ asked Miss Kaparthy. ‘I thought you were angry with me.’
‘Angry with you!’ said Cecil in confusion. ‘I thought you’d be angry with me for showing up at the performance. But I say, you were really good to-night.’
‘How did you find me?’ she asked.
‘Ka—I mean, someone—told me the way to your house and I thought I should be able to overtake you. You see, we’ve got to have your help. Otherwise, we’re all washed up.’
‘You mean to tell you how to contact the agents in the Hundred Circles?’
‘There isn’t any other way,’ said Cecil. ‘I say, are you sure you’re all right? You weren’t taken ill suddenly like people in books, were you? You look as if something were wrong.’
‘I’ll tell you what happened to-night,’ she said slowly, and Cecil, looking at her, thought she looked not so much ill as simply very tired.
‘Zköllmann came to see me this evening—’ she began.
‘Zköllmann!’ said Cecil indignantly. ‘Why doesn’t he leave you alone? Is that what made you—Oh, please don’t!’
He stopped and stared at her uncomfortably. She was crying. He hated it when ladies cried. It made one feel so dreadfully embarrassed: he hadn’t the least idea how to make her stop.
‘Please don’t—here, here’s my handkerchief.’
‘No, I have one,’ she said. ‘I shall be all right in a minute.’
‘Zköllmann came to see me, as I said,’ she went on. ‘He wants to make me tell him things about the spies in the Hundred Circles. It’s important to them and they’ll get the information any way they possibly can. That includes ways that…we would…’
‘Torture?’ asked Cecil.
‘A different kind of torture--it’s all mental. It’s the worst kind.’
She stopped and looked at Cecil.
‘I have a brother,’ she said.
‘You do?’ said Cecil in surprise. 'I thought you lived alone.'
‘I do live alone. I have no family but my brother. He is the only person I have left in the world.’
‘That’s why,’ she continued after a moment; ‘when I was caught as a spy, they didn’t kill me. They knew they could hurt me worse than that. They arrested my brother and put him into a labour camp. I never heard anything of him for two years and I thought he was dead. Zköllmann told me to-night that he is still alive and that they are going to torture him unless I do what they want.’
‘But you won’t!’ said Cecil anxiously.
She shook her head.
‘They’ve tried to make me tell them before but they are all the more determined now because of the war. I know I can’t tell them, and yet—yet if they come to me day after day—if they tell me that my brother…I don’t know but maybe I would tell them. I will hold out as long as I can, but I don’t know how much more I can bear!’

And she looked at him with the eyes of one who had borne a lot.
‘I told Zköllmann that I would kill myself before I gave in,’ she said; ‘but he didn’t believe me and I don’t know that I believe myself. I stood it to-night but how shall I stand it day after day? I’m afraid of what I might do! My poor brother!’
She had stopped crying but her lips were pressed so closely together that they were nearly white and her hands nervously twisted her handkerchief into a knot.
‘There must be a way to save him,’ said Cecil.
She raised her head and looked at him.
‘No, there is no way to save him,’ she said. ‘Have you seen the SO headquarters? No one gets out of there alive. It’s a horrible place.’
She shuddered.
‘But if we could free Pyromania—’ began Cecil.
‘But we can’t!’ she said. ‘I can’t give you the information. It’s even more dangerous to do it now, can’t you see?’
She pressed her fingers against her temples hopelessly.
‘I know I’m a coward, and I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘You’re not a coward,’ said Cecil.
‘I am,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid of them.’
‘But you haven’t given in anyway,’ said Cecil firmly.
‘Maybe I shall,’ she said.
‘No, you won’t,’ said Cecil. ‘I know you won’t.’
‘How do you know?’ she asked.
Cecil couldn’t answer. He did not want to think of her being crushed by the Javotskis. She was helpless and she needed him. He got up from the ottoman and stood in the centre of the floor with his hands in his pockets.
‘I’m going to save your brother,’ he said solemnly.
‘How?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know yet,’ he replied; ‘but somehow I’m going to—I promise you that.’
‘Don’t promise,’ she said. ‘It’s impossible.’
‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Cecil. 'I'll find a way.'
She looked at him for a long time without saying anything. Her mind seemed far away.
‘You’re so young,’ she said at last. ‘You don’t remember what Pyromania was like before the Javotskis came. There was a time when people could live without fear and hate. Once I was not afraid. I remember when I was a very little girl I once went to visit my aunt and uncle in the countryside. I went on the train and I thought I was going on a great journey. I played all day in the shade of a big tree and in the afternoon my uncle took me for a walk down a road between long fields of rye. We walked for miles—my uncle had to carry me back and I brought home an armful of flowers. I don’t know why I remember that day so clearly, when I’ve forgotten so many other things. I’ve always looked back on it as the happiest day of my life and always found that no matter how happy I’ve been, I’ve never felt again the same feeling I had then when I was five years old. I lived in a different world then. The world keeps changing so that I don’t know what it is or what it means, but I know that I was happy then and now I am not and that the world I lived in then is gone for ever. I shall never see it again.’
They were both silent.
‘I forgot,’ said Cecil suddenly; ‘I was supposed to tell you before only I just now thought of it.’
‘What?’ she said.
‘It’s about Zköllmann,’ he said. ‘We need your help to get rid of him. If we killed him, there might be a way of rescuing your brother. And at any rate we’ve got to kill Zköllmann. He knows too much about us.’
She was gazing at the floor thoughtfully.
‘You’ve seen the SO agents,’ she said. ‘They always come in pairs.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Cecil. ‘They don’t dare to operate on their own.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They’re always afraid of being stabbed in the back—even Zköllmann. The only place he ever goes without another agent is to see me.’
‘Well, why does he?’ asked Cecil.
‘He knows me very well, that’s why. When there are two of them I don’t care—they can do what they like and I only laugh at them—but when there’s only one I can’t laugh, I have to be serious, and then I’m afraid of them.’
‘But that’s why we want your help,’ said Cecil. ‘The only time we can kill Zköllmann is when he's alone.’
‘But I can’t help you kill him all the same,’ she said.
‘You’d only have to tell us when he comes and we’d do it.’
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘Please don’t blame me. I know you won’t understand, but I can’t. I couldn’t give up another person—even someone like Zköllmann—to be shot from behind. Maybe it’s because I’m a woman, but I couldn’t do it. It’s murder.’
‘He’s a murderer,’ said Cecil, but with scarcely any conviction.
‘He’s a horrible man,’ she said slowly. ‘I have never known anyone so cruel. But for all that, he is a person. I don’t want you to kill him.’
She looked up.
‘It’s strange, and I can’t explain it,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I should feel the way I do. He may hurt innocent people—my brother too, probably—but I can’t feel that we ought to do wrong to try to make things better.’
Cecil was silent, thinking hard.
‘I know I’m weak,’ said Miss Kaparthy.
‘No,’ said Cecil. ‘I feel that way too. I don’t want to kill him either.’