Prince Cecil: XX.

Chapter XX.

The Shadows Flee

The noise gradually died away and the room became very still, only the slither of settling rubble could be heard. Cecil raised his head and looked about him. He almost expected the laboratory to be gone and to see only the roofless dome of space about him, but the room was still there and had only sustained a few cracks in one wall.
He got slowly to his feet and his eyes turned to where Wakjavotski lay sprawled beneath the table. A trickle of blood had appeared on the bald spot on the top of his head where Cecil had hit him and he lay very still. Cecil wondered anxiously if he were dead.
He did not trouble just then to find out, though. He was thinking of the Silver Heels and how much longer they would be able to hold the radio building. He felt that he had very little time.
The door of the laboratory was unlocked. Cecil went out and closed it behind him. Under the table where he had dropped it as he fell, lay the useful automatic, but Cecil had completely forgotten about it. He turned to go up the corridor the way he had come—the way that led to Wakjavotski’s audience chamber—but he stopped as he heard running footsteps echoing down the concrete passage.
It was the two guards who kept watch on either side of the audience chamber door. Alarmed by the explosion, they had come to reconnoitre. They caught sight of Cecil as they rounded a bend in the corridor and immediately stopped short.
‘Stop!’ shouted one, drawing his pistol.
There was only one other way to run, apart from back into the laboratory. Behind Cecil the corridor ran on further and turned at a right angle. He turned and dashed around the corner just as the guard sent a bullet into the wall behind him. As Cecil rounded the corner the first thing he saw was a glowing red exit sign up near the ceiling and beneath it somewhere a metal door. But at the same time he saw this he saw something else and stopped short. Between him and the door stood a figure in a black uniform—Zköllmann.
Cecil caught his breath with a jerk. He had so nearly made it. If only he had been a few seconds sooner! Zöllmann had only just come in—the door was still swinging to and as Cecil stood he heard it shut with a small click.
Where had Zköllmann been all this time? What had made him so late? He had left Miss Kaparthy’s house more than half an hour before, and her house was only about ten minutes from the Royal Palace. Zköllmann had had plenty of time to make arrangements and to send over Kuhn and Schneck. Why he had not come sooner himself was a mystery, but here he was arriving, by some enormous chance, at exactly the right moment and in exactly the right place—though what had made him choose that little-used back door was a mystery, too.
And here he was. Cecil had known, somehow, all along that he couldn’t beat Zköllmann. The SO chief’s black shadow had seemed to pursue him everywhere and he had always felt that it would get him in the end. And now here he was face to face with his worst enemy and he could hear the guards’ feet pounding down the corridor behind him.
He had stood there for only two or three seconds but it felt like several minutes. He stared at Zköllmann, his chest heaving, wondering what the SO chief would do. But Zköllmann did nothing. He stood as Cecil did, staring before him. His eyes looked strangely unsettled—Cecil had never seen them look other than cold and serene. Then, before Cecil had a chance to realise what he was doing, Zköllmann had thrust the door open out into the night and had stepped back against the wall.
Cecil did not understand. What did he mean to do to him? He searched Zköllmann’s face, but it was as impassive as ever. He heard the guards turning the corner behind him…. And the next moment he was through the door and free.

He did not stop running for several blocks. The night wind came rushing lightly up the avenue and blew Cecil’s hair back from his face. He could hear from the direction of the radio tower the sound of shots and, more ominously, the dull boom of field guns.
But his way did not lie in that direction. He turned and trotted up the street away from the sounds, their distant rattle urging him to hurry. As he went, he noticed the singular desertion of the city, as Csilla had noticed it earlier that evening. Far down the road ahead of him he heard a lorry engine and two headlights turned off of a side street and came towards him.
The lorry pulled up as it came alongside Cecil. Two soldiers sat in the cab and half a dozen more put their heads out of the back.
‘Heard the news?’ they asked.
‘What news?’
‘Just got it over the wireless; the prince has come back.’
‘Where are you going?’ asked Cecil.
‘To help out the revolution. Seen anything going on?’
‘There was a row up in the palace,’ said Cecil. ‘I just came from there.’
‘Have they got him—the prince?’
‘No. I’m the prince.’
‘Hurrah!’ came a cry from the soldiers in the back of the lorry.
‘Where are you going? Hop in, we’ll take you there.’
‘What about your oath to Wakjavotski?’ asked Cecil.
‘Hang Wakjavotski!’
‘But your oath—’
‘Hang the oath!’
‘Do you think that’s honourable?’
‘Hang honour, too!’
Cecil gave up and climbed into the cab.
‘Do you know how to get to the SO headquarters from here?’ he asked.

The SO headquarters were surprisingly quiet as the lorry pulled up to the gates. It seemed as if the occupants were oblivious of what was going on in the rest of the city that night. Very likely they were not, but Zköllmann had left no orders and nobody there acted without them.
Cecil and the soldiers entered the guardhouse forcefully and found only one officer on duty, sitting behind a large desk. Cecil stepped up to him.
‘We’d like to get in,’ he said.
The officer raised an eyebrow.
‘You would, would you?’ he said. ‘Whose orders?’
‘Mine,’ said Cecil. ‘Wakjavotski isn’t dictator anymore, and from now on you’ll take orders from me.’
‘And may I ask who you are?’
‘I’m the prince. Now let us in, please.’
The officer regarded him for a moment in silence. Then, instead of obeying, he rose and addressed the soldiers in a commanding tone.
‘Who gave you permission to leave your barracks?’ he asked. ‘Report to your officers immediately. You’ll be tried later for your insubordination.’
The soldiers stared at him doubtfully. He spoke with a good deal of authority and it was difficult for them to know exactly what to do. Cecil could see them hesitating.
Then, through the half open door, they heard the sound of raucous singing punctuated by hoots and yells. The song was a sea chanty and the voices approached so suddenly that almost before Cecil was aware of it, the room was full of wild sailors.
‘Where’s Zköllmann?’ they shouted. ‘We want Zköllmann!’
‘He isn’t here,’ Cecil informed them.
‘Well, this chap will do,’ they said, surging towards the SO officer.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Cecil.
‘We heard the news on the wireless,’ replied the sailors. ‘The prince has come back! Down with Wakjavotski! Booh! We’re going to string this thug up from the nearest lamppost, and any of the rest of the secret police we find.’
So saying, they laid rough hands on the SO officer. There was a scuffle and a deadened bang followed by a salty oath.
‘Stop,’ said Cecil. ‘I won’t allow violence.’
‘Violence!’ exclaimed a sailor. ‘He’s the one who winged me with his filthy silenced automatic!’
‘I’ll take that, sir,’ said Cecil, taking the pistol from the officer’s hand. ‘Now, you’d better let us in like a good fellow. It’s a cell or a lamppost—take your choice.’
The officer sulkily pressed a button and the gates outside the guardhouse swung open.
‘You’ll have to unlock the door of the building for us, too,’ said Cecil.
The officer pressed a second button and, with Cecil covering him with the pistol, led them all to the SO building.
The place was well-lit but quiet and no one seemed to be about. They entered an office filled with file cabinets. Cecil opened these and began to take out keys of different cells.
‘Let out anyone you find locked up,’ he said, handing the keys to the soldiers and sailors. ‘—And lock up anyone you find out. This officer will do for starters.’

* * * * *

For nearly forty-five minutes Csilla had sat before the microphone, pouring into it every appeal she could think of for help and support. She knew she had the people’s ear and she knew that she could not have it for very long. All the while in the ears rang the sound of fierce fighting. The Silver Heels were holding out as they’d said they would, gallantly, bravely, and hopelessly.
The Pyromanians had heard many of Wakjavotski’s speeches over their wirelesses, but the speech this evening was far different from anything they had ever heard. It was a simple cry for help by the voice that had so often cheered them and given them hope to go on. Csilla didn’t have a script. She talked, and when she couldn’t think of anything more to say, she sang.
Her voice was at last beginning to crack from the uninterupted exercise. Her mind, too, was growing weary. If only help would come!
She stopped in the middle of a sentence and listened. All was suddenly still outside the radio building. She sat tensely in the strained stillness, praying for the sound of a shot or the clatter of a sword. Not a sound came.
They had lost, then. They had only had a little amunition and not enough guns for all the men. They had held out far longer than anyone had thought possible, but now the revolution was over.
She heard the muffled sound of feet on the floor below and then the sound of a tread on the stairs. She waited. The door, as she watched it, opened and suddenly she felt as if her strained nerves were giving way. A familiar figure had entered.
‘Cecil!’ she cried, starting up.
She had thought he was still inside the palace—or captured. How had he come there? Had they really won, then? How could they have?
Cecil stepped into the room and paused. A man had followed him in. The man was terribly thin, and he coughed a good deal.
‘It’s your brother,’ explained Cecil. He had kept his promise

* * * * *

The night breeze made havoc of Cecil’s hair and tie as Karotski steered the SO staff car down the boulevards at a furious rate. The streets, so lately deserted, were now filled with people liberated at last from the curfew. Pyromania seemed to have come over in a body to the new government.
Karotski pulled up before a palace side entrance and got out of the car. Cecil followed him and Leiber and Mikhailov leaped out of the back. They entered through a side gate that had been left ajar. The palace seemed to be in confusion and none of the usual safety precautions were in place. A group of guards stood near a guard box beside the entrance, talking together in low voices.
‘What’s going on inside?’ they asked Karotski. ‘They called in a doctor… said something about the Superior and a concussion…’
‘Then he isn’t dead?’ asked Cecil with relief.
‘Get in there and arrest everyone who doesn’t swear immediate allegiance to the king!’ said Karotski.
‘What king?’ asked a guard, blinking.
‘Do as I say!’ said Karotski.
A little firmness was all that was required with palace guards. They glanced around, saw the fast-gathering crowds in the street, and hastened to obey.
Another vehicle pulled up before the gate—this time a police car—and Leiber and Mikhailov got out.
‘All quiet?’ asked Mikhailov.
‘They won’t give us any trouble,’ replied Karotski. ‘There’s enough of a crowd here; I’m going to give the proclamation from the palace steps.’
He entered through the door that the guards had left open and which the truant porter had left untended, and strode rapidly down the quiet hallways with Cecil at his heels. They reached the grand entrance and forced the door, which stuck badly (it hadn’t been used since Mussolini’s visit in 1935).
The white palace steps were awash in moonlight. Karotski fumbled at an electric panel concealed behind a pillar beside the door and turned on the electric lights, which lit up the steps and the front of the palace like a stage.
‘Pyromanians!’ shouted Karotski, and the crowds grew silent.
Cecil, standing beside Karotski, stared. He had never seen so many people in the street at one time before. –And this was not like the Javotski rallies: everyone was enjoying himself.
Suddenly the crowd began to ebb backwards like melted wax and three large shapes lumbered slowly into the space before the palace steps. The loud hum of their engines drowned out all other noise. They crawled like three giant beetles, one behind the other, and stopped just below where Cecil and Karotski stood.
They were Wakjavotski’s tanks, just arrived from their nine-mile journey from the fort.
As Cecil watched, the hatch of one swung up and an officer appeared from within. He gazed round at the scene and as he did so, two more officers appeared from the hatches of the other two tanks.
Cecil stared at the three of them, feeling that they looked somehow familiar.
‘I say!’ exclaimed the first officer in a British accent, and suddenly Cecil recognised them. They were the SIS agents.
‘Well, we found these tanks on their way here and we decided to bring ‘em the rest of the way ourselves,’ said the one who had first spoken. ‘We thought they might be useful, but it looks like the revolution is over.’
It was.

Prince Cecil: XIX.

Chapter XIX.

The Prince and the Pyromaniac

Cecil was startled nearly out of his skin by a loud buzzing. He leapt away from the door but, realising that the sound came from within the office, he again approached the crack and peered in. He could see only a narrow portion of the opposite wall of the room, a slice of a desk, and a man’s arm as it reached across and switched on the intercommunication device. It was the device that was making the buzzing.
‘Yes?’ came the man’s voice.
‘Krassok! Come here at once!’ exclaimed the machine. ‘I need you!’
‘Yes, Your Excellency; right away!’ said Krassok.
The sound of a chair hastily pushed back and knocked over gave Cecil warning and he ducked out of the way just in time as Krassok burst out of the office and hurried off down the hallway.
Cecil prepared to follow him, but cautiously waited for a moment to allow for a safe following distance. As he stood outside the office, the intercommunication system buzzed again. Krassok was too far down the hallway to hear it and it buzzed on gratingly. Cecil, annoyed and suddenly curious, stepped into the office and flipped the switch on the machine.
‘Yes?’ he said, trying to sound like Krassok.
‘Never mind; don’t come here,’ said the Excellency’s voice, sounding harsher than usual over the wires. ‘I don’t need you anymore. Find Baden—he’s here somewhere, I think—and tell him to come to my study.’
‘All right,’ said Cecil.
‘What?’
‘I mean, yes, Your Excellency.’
‘Get on, then, and don’t let the moss grow on your back. And do something about that hoarseness.’
Cecil flipped off the mechanism almost before Wakjavotski had finished talking and hurried from the room. He knew where Wakjavotski was now and he must find him without loss of time. Everything depended on haste.
The first corridor ended in a T and Cecil turned to the right. He followed the passage for several yards and then took a turn to the left. He may have taken three such turns, or perhaps four—he was never afterwards sure. The feeling of haste kept him moving, his mind whirling and a queer beating in his head. The hallway he was following was dim and he didn’t realise that it was a dead end until he was brought up against a wall with no outlet on either side.
He stared around him in confusion and realised that he had completely lost his bearings. Somehow or other he had gotten turned around and he had no idea where he was or how to get from there to Wakjavotski’s study. He couldn’t even remember much of the palace floorplan anymore.
He heard steps somewhere in the distance and looked back the way he had come just in time to see the butler of his previous acquaintance passing the end of the corridor with a tray of glasses and a sparkling decanter. Cecil suddenly remembered the servants’ conversation and knew that he was taking the tray to Wakjavotski. Here was a chance of finding him.
Cecil silently sprinted down the corridor and onto the one which the butler was traversing, but the servant had been walking quickly and had already turned a corner. Cecil hurried after him, desperate lest he should be lost again. He was too anxious to take care where he was going and he had turned the corner and gotten halfway down the corridor when he suddenly found himself face down in the red carpet with an angry alarm bell ringing somewhere above him.
He half raised himself on his hands and looked back. Behind him a trip-wire crossed the corridor two inches above the floor and one of his shoes was still entangled in it.
The alarm continued to ring. Cecil made an effort to get up, but found that he could not. The uninterrupted nervous strain of the past few days was taking its toll all at once and his last scrap of energy was running out of him like water through sand.
‘Get up,’ Cecil told himself mentally. ‘Don’t just lie there, you ass. You’ll be caught! You’ve got to get up!’
But his tired limbs wouldn’t listen and he sank once more into the carpet, face downwards. Almost subconsciously he heard hurried footsteps coming down the corridor and in a moment he felt a host of hands taking hold of him as if he were being seized by some sort of human octopus.
He was dragged to his feet and opened his eyes to see that the hands belonged to four or five guards who surrounded him, eyeing him suspiciously.
‘All right, now,’ said one of the guards. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’
Cecil could make no reply. With a start he saw the butler with the tray coming back down the corridor towards them. He had come to see what the commotion was about, but when he saw Cecil, he looked unconcerned.
‘Him!’ he said. ‘He’s only the repair man’s boy. He’s all right; he’s been here for hours. I saw him just a little while ago in the back foyer, mending a register.’
‘Where’s your boss?’ asked a guard of Cecil.
‘In the cellar,’ replied Cecil truthfully.
‘I say those alarm wires are more of a nuisance than they’re worth,’ said another guard. ‘I tripped one myself yesterday.’
They looked nearly convinced and had relaxed their hold on Cecil when one of them said suddenly, ‘The repair man didn’t have a boy. I was there when they let him in, and I didn’t see any boy.’
The leader hesitated.
‘Well, von der Grosse said to bring any boys we found to him,’ he said; ‘so we may as well take him along and let the marshal have him.’
‘He’ll just laugh at us and call us a lot of alarmists.’
‘That’s better than calling us idiots for letting him get away. Come on!’
The guards took hold of Cecil more firmly and began to half-push, half-drag him down the corridor. With so many of them holding on to him, Cecil frequently fell down and when he did they pulled him along even more roughly.
He was hauled into a small, carpeted room—a smoking room, it looked like—and set on his feet. His knees smarted from a red carpet-burn on each and his collar had nearly come off. He stood between two guards with the rest behind him and before him sat von der Grosse in an armchair.
Von der Grosse had been reading a book but when they came in he flung it aside and leaped up with more rapidity than one would have expected a man of his build capable of.
‘What! Ha!’ he said.
‘He tripped an alarm in one of the passages,’ said a guard. ‘You said—’
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ interrupted von der Grosse. ‘Yes! you’ve done a good night’s work.’
He looked so pleased that he left no doubt whatever in Cecil’s mind that the field-marshal knew who he was.
‘Excellent, excellent!’ said von der Grosse, rubbing his sides. ‘An event of great moment!’
The guards looked hopeful.
‘Is there a reward for him, sir?’ they asked.
‘You will all receive promotions,’ said von der Grosse, grandly; ‘for capturing a crown prince.’
‘Well, well, well,’ he said, addressing Cecil. ‘Do you know, you look a great deal like your father. Ha! won’t Zköllmann be upset! He’s had his men out searching for you for days and here I come and pick you up as easy as that!’
He stood, grinning, and advanced a step towards Cecil.
‘Surrender your weapons, if you please,’ he said.
Cecil hesitated, then slowly handed over his pistol. Von der Grosse took it with the air of a military commander accepting a general’s sword and ponderously resumed his seat.
‘Do you know who I am?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Cecil.
‘Oh, you do?’ said von der Grosse, surprised.
‘My father made you a general,’ said Cecil.
‘Oh yes, so he did,’ said von der Grosse, beginning to look awkward. ‘I remember it…A fine man—a splendid fellow—hem—but not a good king. No…Well, I suppose we don’t need introductions, then. Do you know, I’ve had all the guards on the look-out for you on purpose. I knew you’d come here!’
‘Why?’ asked Cecil suddenly. ‘I should have thought this was the last place you’d expect me. Didn’t you think I’d try to get back to England?’
‘They would have thought so—the SO, I mean,’ said von der Grosse. ‘That is exactly what a plebian would do and they are plebians and think like plebians. No, but I know better—I understand another person of noble blood. –I’m of noble blood myself. That’s why I’m the only one who could catch you. I’m one of the last of the well-born Pyromanians.’
‘More shame to you, then!’ said Cecil.
‘Shame? Dishonour? Never! Why do you say so?’ asked von der Grosse, really looking slightly anxious.
‘You ought to know better,’ said Cecil. ‘You were one of the ones who rebelled against my father.’
‘Yes, because I thought it was best for the country,’ said von der Grosse; ‘—not for any personal motive. I acted out of lofty principles. That’s more than can be said for the others. Wakjavotski—what does he know about such things? Tradition, precedent, the aristocracy…he wipes it all out like that!’ (This he said with a sweep of his hand.) ‘They’re all the same—they’re all shopkeepers, the lot of them! Before the revolution Baden was nothing but a penniless gambler, hounded by his creditors; Limbrugher was a mere mechanic; Wakjavotski himself was just a poor college professor; and Zköllmann—nobody knows much about Zköllmann, but I heard he used to work in a department store. They all look down on me—they call me “Grosse” just like that! No notice of my title—they don’t like it because they can’t lay claim to any good blood of their own. Guttersnipes, the whole crew of them!’
‘Well, why do you go along with them, then?’ asked Cecil.
‘I have to. What can I do? That’s progress. Tradition hasn’t got a chance in this world.’
‘I’d give it one,’ said Cecil. ‘You might let me go, you know. You might join my forces. Think of your ancestors! They wouldn’t have turned their prince over to a lot of rebels.’
‘I’m not going to hand you over either, but all the same, you’re my prisoner and I’m not going to let you go.’
‘Why not?’ asked Cecil.
‘Because,’ said von der Grosse; ‘you’d turn me back into a general again.’
Cecil was silent.
‘No,’ said von der Grosse. ‘I don’t want to hand you over to those scoundrels. They’ve no idea of what’s due royalty. They’d just shoot you out of hand in some low prison yard. I wouldn’t do that. There’s tradition, you know. Anyway, I caught you myself, and it’s my right to decide what I’m going to do with you.’
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Cecil.
‘In the old army,’ explained von der Grosse; ‘if an officer were convicted of a dishonourable act, he was given permission to shoot himself.’
‘I don’t want to shoot myself,’ said Cecil.
‘Well, if he refused to shoot himself, his friends did it for him. But that was in the old days. I think you’d prefer to die as your father did—by firing squad.’
Von der Grosse went to the window and looked out.
‘Ah, good,’ he said. ‘There’s a moon. We shall have light to see by. Are you ready? I’ll give you time. Do you want to write anything?’
‘No,’ said Cecil.
‘Then come with me,’ said von der Grosse. ‘You guards, come, too. There’s rifles in that case against the wall: bring ‘em and follow us.’
Von der Grosse led them through a side door which opened into a dark room with beams of moonlight laid across the flagged floor and potted plants dispersed about it. It was the conservatory, and it opened through French windows onto a terrace that went down in stone steps into the garden.
There were no lights in the garden, but it was full of moonlight and brightly illuminated. Although Wakjavotski never went outside, the garden was well-tended and of all the palace, it had changed the least since the dictator’s occupation. The wide, smooth lawns sloped in gentle curves beneath old elms and oaks. Flower beds with late-summer flowers scented the night air.
It was all so quiet and peaceful that one would never have thought momentous events were happening. Cecil tried desperately to put his thoughts in order. Strangely, only one thought would come to him—that of Miss Kaparthy alone in her apartment, waiting for the telephone to ring with the signal.
But there wouldn’t be any signal. There wouldn’t be any revolution. There would only be an execution in the palace rose garden.
Von der Grosse drew up the guards—there were five of them—in a line with their rifles ready.
‘Stand there, Your Highness,’ he said to Cecil. ‘In front of that wall.’ Then to the soldiers, he said, ‘All right, straighten up, there! You—you’re a sergeant, aren’t you? –sound the call.’
It was impossible not to notice that he was enjoying himself immensely. This was not because he was a particularly cruel man, but the fun of carrying out a military operation on his own without Wakjavotski’s leave, and of getting the better of Zköllmann, was to him both novel and irresistible.
At the same time, he was also edgy and impatient. The SO were too much in the habit of popping up in the middle of things and spoiling them.
‘Ready!’ called the sergeant.
The guards raised their rifles.
‘There’s not enough light to aim by,’ said one.
‘Use your torches, then,’ said von der Grosse; ‘and hurry up!’
Cecil was blinded the next minute by the beams of several torches shone directly in his face. He squinted but could see nothing but the relentless light.
‘Ready!’ called the sergeant again. ‘Aim!’
‘Hold!’ came a completely different voice.
‘Fire!’ shouted von der Grosse.
But the soldiers lowered their rifles uncertainly. The beams of the torches turned away and Cecil looked for the new comer.
He could see two vague shadows standing behind the guards. The moonlight came from behind them and only their silhouettes were clearly visible, but their uniforms seemed to be black. Von der Grosse blustered up to them and tried to put them off.
‘Look here,’ he said; ‘you’re interrupting a military proceeding. I’m the one in charge here.’
‘No, you aren’t,’ said one of the figures coolly. ‘We’ve just received orders from Zköllmann to postpone any proceedings until he arrives.’
‘I don’t take orders from Zköllmann!’
‘We do. Take that prisoner back inside.’
‘I won’t!’ said von der Grosse. ‘I won’t be bossed by a mere—a mere—what are you, a lieutenant?’
‘First lieutenant. It doesn’t matter what you do, Grosse. Our orders are to take charge of this prisoner.’
‘You can take charge of him after we’ve finished the execution,’ said von der Grosse.
‘Guards, take him inside,’ said the officer and the guards, to von der Grosse’s consternation, complied.
‘Hopeless,’ thought Cecil as they dragged him back across the quiet garden. ‘Zköllmann knows where I am. If only I’d been a bit faster, I might have beaten him! And if only I hadn’t been caught!’
But of course there was no use in looking back.
The guards hauled him into a back entry where they were curtly dismissed by the two officers. The officers led Cecil in a more cordial, though at the same time a more deadly manner into a small parlour adjoining. As they came into the stronger light, Cecil suddenly recognised them as the two SO officers he had seen in the cathedral—Kuhn and Schneck.
‘Well, we got rid of Grosse, anyway—the old elephant!’ said Kuhn.
‘He does get tiresome at times,’ admitted Schneck. ‘He wouldn’t be bossed by a mere lieutenant.’
They turned their attention to Cecil, making him put his hands on his head while they searched him thoroughly. They found no weapons because von der Grosse had already taken Cecil’s pistol, but they discovered an eraser, two pencils, several coins (which they pocketed), a small notebook, and a packet of cigarettes, which they were disappointed to find were only candy.
‘There’s nothing more, then,’ said Schneck; ‘but to wait until Zköllmann comes.’
They began to smoke and talk about horse races and motion pictures. They did not pay any more attention to Cecil because they were not afraid that he would escape. He would not have gotten far before their keen senses detected him and they liked to make a prisoner to feel that they had eyes in the backs of their heads.
Cecil glanced about the room gloomily and his gaze rested on a gun lying on a small round table. It was a hand gun, black and gleaming. One of the officers had put it down while they were searching Cecil and had left it there. Cecil was closer to it than they were…their backs were turned…
‘Been to one of those?’ asked Kuhn, as they examined a picture on the wall of a Javotski rally.
‘About a hundred,’ replied Schneck. ‘They make you stand so you don’t fall asleep.’
Cecil edged closer to the table.
‘Close, I should think, with all those people.’
‘Nothing to the Nazi rallies. I wouldn’t go within fifty miles of Berchtesgaden when they’ve got one of those on.’
‘Who would want to go there anyway?’
‘Put your hands up, both of you!’
The two officers turned and looked at Cecil. He stood with the pistol in his left hand and his right in his pocket. He had taken off the repair man’s jacket, as it was useless as a disguise and growing too hot anyway.
‘There’s just one thing I want of you,’ said Cecil. ‘Take me to Wakjavotski. Then I’ll let you go—although you don’t deserve it.’
They gazed at him coolly.
‘Why don’t you ask for the Hope Diamond while you’re at it?’ asked Schneck. ‘Take you to Wakjavotski? Impossible!’
‘Why?’
‘We don’t feel like it,’ explained Kuhn.
‘Doesn’t this make any difference?’ asked Cecil, raising the gun and squinting along the short barrel.
‘Not really. That’s my gun,’ said Schneck.
Cecil grew suddenly cold.
‘It’s loaded,’ he said weakly.
‘Sure it is—with water. Nice replica, isn’t it?’
‘Where’d you find it?’ asked Kuhn.
‘A mail order catalogue. It’s made in Japan. Go ahead,’ he went on, addressing Cecil; ‘—shoot.’
Cecil fumbled desperately at the chamber. It was but too true that the gun was a fake. He returned it slowly to his pocket.
‘I wonder what’s keeping the chief?’ said Kuhn in a bored manner.
‘Call the entrance and see,’ said Schneck.
Kuhn went to a telephone that stood on a corner table and picked it up.
‘Get me the official entrance,’ he said. ‘…Hello, porter: has Zköllmann arrived yet? No?’
He hung up.
‘Late,’ he said.
‘Here, give it to me,’ said Schneck. ‘He’s had time enough. We’ll go to the top.’
‘Wakjavotski?’ asked Kuhn in surprise.
Schneck put the telephone to his ear without answering and spoke to the palace operator.
‘Gretta, get me His Superiorship’s office,’ he said airily.
He waited while the line rang. Several seconds passed and he began to grow impatient. Cecil at last took pity on him.
‘He’s in his study,’ he said.
Schneck gave him a black look and smacked the cradle down.
‘Never mind; get me his study,’ he said shortly into the receiver. ‘Hello? Hoch Wakjavotski! Yes, Your Excellency, this is Lieutenant Schneck. We have the prince here. Yes, right away. Goodbye—oh—hoch Wakjavotski!’
He hung up.
‘Well, you wanted us to take you to him,’ he said to Cecil, as he headed towards the door. ‘Come on!’
‘Go on,’ said Kuhn to Cecil, presenting a pistol.
Cecil turned without a word and followed Schneck out while Kuhn brought up the rear.
Down the hallways lately so bewildering, at a measured pace between the two black-coated figures Cecil went, watching the walls file past hung with pictures of Wakjavotski and red bordered flags. Again and again the face of the dictator confronted him in the grey photographs, always in a new position and with a new expression.
They arrived before the audience chamber and the guards on either side of the door admitted them without the slightest change in their leaden expressions. Through the large room Schneck led Cecil, then he paused at last before the door of the study and knocked tentatively.
The two officers waited tensely in the silence that followed, and Cecil realised that they were afraid of Wakjavotski—possibly the only thing they were afraid of. He himself was not afraid at all. He had come to the palace to find Wakjavotski, after all, and now at last he was going to, even if it were not in the way he had expected.
‘Come in!’ came the dictator’s voice, and they entered.

Cecil blinked and looked around him. The quiet study, the bookshelves full of books, the lamp, the desk, the balding man who sat behind the desk, all reminded him irresistibly of that evening he had been called into the Head’s office at Mapleton. It gave him a strange feeling of somehow ending where he had begun. It was like one of those wild dreams where you travel over the whole world and wake up again in your own bedroom.
Wakjavotski dismissed the two officers.
‘I’ll just take care of that,’ he said, divesting Cecil of the pistol, which was sticking out of his jacket pocket. ‘We wouldn’t want any unpleasantness, would we?’
He sat down behind the desk again.
‘Zköllmann told me he’d have you sometime this evening,’ said Wakjavotski. ‘I was beginning to wonder what was taking him so long about it.’
Cecil put his hands into his pockets and surveyed the dictator across the desk. Wakjavotski was sitting and Cecil was standing which put them nearly at eye level, Cecil having the advantage by an inch or two.
‘Puny,’ remarked Wakjavotski, returning his surveillance. ‘Didn’t they feed you properly at your school? No wonder you ran away.’
‘That wasn’t why I ran away,’ said Cecil.
‘Oh yes, I know—I know all about that. You came here to try to kick me out. I’m not afraid of you, see?’
‘Not now that you’ve got the gun.’
‘I never was afraid of you! You were never anything more than a pesky nuisance and in a few minutes I’m going to remove you for good!’
‘Well, I’m not afraid of you either,’ replied Cecil. ‘So we’re even.’
There was silence for a minute. Then Wakjavotski spoke again.
‘That tie!’ he said.
‘What about it?’
The dictator had risen slightly and leaned over his desk to peer more closely at Cecil’s school tie.
‘So you’re a Mapletonian, are you?’ he said. ‘Ha!’
‘What’s the matter with that?’
‘Nothing,’ said Wakjavotski, sitting down again. ‘I used to know the head at Mapleton—Brickers, his name was. We went to college together. Of all the collaborative coincidences!’
Cecil found that he was not surprised at this unexpected circumstance.
‘Well, I’m sorry Brickers didn’t get any nobler ideals into your head while you were at Mapleton,’ went on Wakjavotski.
‘He said a lot about how you can’t have progress by war,’ said Cecil.
‘He never would be convinced otherwise,’ said Wakjavotski. ‘But war is necessary to preliminary forms of progress.’
‘Maybe he was wrong about some other things, too,’ said Cecil. ‘Just like you are.’
‘I’m not wrong about anything! You’ve gall to come in here and tell me what’s what. Don’t you think I know more than you do?’
‘I should think you know a lot more than I do,’ said Cecil. ‘But you’re wrong about most of it.’
‘Wrong? Ha!’ said Wakjavotski. ‘What’s wrong is ignorant little minds like yours that try to get in the way of progress. You can work your contemptible wiles, but you’ll never be able to stop the tide of advancement. You are like a beetle trying to stop a steam-roller. You’ll be squashed so flat no one will be able to tell you were ever there!’
‘You see,’ said Cecil; ‘you think that progress is good, no matter what sort it is. But that’s not true.’
‘Aha!’ said Wakjavotski, eyeing him sidewise. ‘So you’ve found that out, have you? Progress is a word like many another whose sole use is to fool the people. It sounds good, see? Of course you can have progress in more than one direction, but no one need think about that unless someone tells him so. What progress really means, and what they don’t know it means, is that everything is going just the way I want it to.’
‘You think that as long as you get what you want in the end, it doesn’t matter how you got it,’ said Cecil. ‘But that isn’t true, either.’
‘Why shouldn’t it be? I have got what I want, haven’t I? What’s stopped me? And what’s going to stop me from getting what I haven’t got yet?’
‘You think there isn’t a God,’ said Cecil.
‘Oh yes,’ said Wakjavotski, smirking. ‘Oh yes. You think there is one, don’t you?’
‘There is,’ said Cecil.
‘Then answer me this!’ said Wakjavotski. ‘How do you reconcile assassination and subterfuge and insurrection and terrorism and all the other evils you’ve been mixed up in, with the Bible’s teachings, eh?’
Cecil was silent for a minute, thinking.
‘I’m inclined to pity you,’ said Wakjavotski in a didactic tone. ‘You’ve been duped. –Excessively so, if you think that by blowing me up you’ve got divine justice on your side. But I don’t suppose your lamentable mental condition is entirely your fault—you’re only the victim of a faulty educational system. After all, when crammed together in a school, boys naturally develop violent tendencies. They’re very like a pack of wolves. –Only the latent strain of primeval savagery must be particularly strong in you to give you such an excessive thirst for violence. Most boys are content with killing cats.’
‘I didn’t come here tonight to kill you,’ replied Cecil evenly.
‘What did you come for, then?’
‘I was only going to tie you up and leave you somewhere where nobody would find you until the revolution was over.’
Wakjavotski laughed.
‘Oh yes,’ he said; ‘the coup d’etat—the Glorious Revolution! Ha! –With your group of lunatics from the local insane assylum! A splendid effort, but I’m afraid it’s all over by now.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Cecil, confused.
‘That bunch of nuts that tried to take over the radio station. –Of all things!’
‘The Silver Heels!’
‘The Silver Heels!’ said Wakjavotski, sobering slightly. ‘So it was the Silver Heels, was it? Hmph! The idiots! We beat them before—haven’t they gotten enough? Well, I can see how you cherished hopes of success, but I’m afraid they were ill-founded. After all, it’s been eleven years. Most of the Silver Heels must be in their forties or fifties by now and probably dreadfully out of shape. They’re no match for the younger generation. You can’t bring back the past, you know.’
Cecil leaned against the desk, the realisation that he was now completely alone settling on him like a weight. There was nothing to be done now—there was no point in giving the codeword; the Silver Heels had been the last hope. He looked at Wakjavotski, sitting across the desk from him and grinning, and seemed suddenly to see the face of his headmaster.
He never had been afraid of Wakjavotski, but now he suddenly realised that he was not afraid of his headmaster either, and he had been afraid of him once. He had been afraid of him because he had been afraid that his headmaster was right.
That fear was gone forever. In the last few days Cecil had learned that what he had always believed to be true really was. He wondered how he could ever have doubted it.
‘Why not?’ he said.
‘Why not?’ said Wakjavotski, cudgeling his brains for a clue to the prompting behind the question. ‘Why not? Oh—why can’t you bring back the past? Because it’s gone—dead—buried. Mankind is impelled onward by the force of events.’
‘But maybe it isn’t buried,’ said Cecil.
‘Oh yes, it’s buried all right. And good riddance!’
‘It still happened,’ said Cecil. ‘And it can happen again.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Wakjavotski, who wasn’t laughing anymore. ‘Do you mean that because Pyromania once was a monarchy it can become one again? Or do you mean that because I was able to overthrow the government you’ll be able to do it, too?’
‘I mean that one of us is right and the other is wrong,’ said Cecil. ‘And the one who is right will win.’
‘Who’s right, then?’ demanded Wakjavotski. ‘You’re no more right than I am. Why should it be right for you to come here and start a revolution, eh? What about loving your enemies, eh? Or do you think the end justifies the means, too?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Cecil.
‘Then what did you come here for?’
‘I came to stop you,’ said Cecil.
‘Stop me from what?’
‘From making war with France and Britain.’
‘And how did you mean to do it? The same way I did eleven years ago, didn’t you?’
‘No!’ said Cecil. ‘Nobody wanted you to be dictator. You got the army on your side and forced everyone into doing what you wanted. That wasn’t right. And that wasn’t what I was going to do.’
‘You were going to lead a quiet, pacifistic protest, I suppose?’
‘I didn’t know what I was going to do until I got here to-night,’ admitted Cecil. ‘Now I know. I’m going to stop you somehow. –And you can’t stop me.’
‘Can’t stop you?’ said Wakjavotski incredulously. ‘I have stopped you! I have every one of your underground agents behind bars and I’ve cleaned up your insurrection with the Silver Heels. Twenty minutes ago they attacked the radio tower and by now they are thoroughly defeated. We sent out enough troops to crush them in five minutes. I’ll show you!’
He picked up the telephone on his desk and called up the army headquarters.
‘Hello,’ he said; ‘is Grosse there? Not back yet? All right, second in command? Get him on the line! …Yes, General, I want a report on that little—hem—demonstration at the radio tower. I gather your men have—what? Not yet? Well, what’s the matter with you—you’ve had time enough, haven’t you?! More than you expected?! Shut up! Stop that insurrection, do you hear me? Instantaneously!! Get the field guns! Get howitzers! Get the tanks down there! Yes! The tanks, I say! I don’t care if you have to blow up the whole block! We can build a new radio tower! Now get moving!! You’d better have that crummy bunch cleaned up before another quarter of an hour or I’ll have you demoted!’
As he shouted these injunctions into the telephone a tingling feeling rushed over Cecil, starting at his spine and running all the way to his fingers and toes. They were still fighting! There was hope yet!
Wakjavotski slammed the receiver down and looked at Cecil in some embarrassment.
‘Hem, yes. Well,’ he said. ‘We’ll soon have that business taken care of. I can see that you think you’ve got one over on me. Well, I just might be able to persuade you otherwise!’
He got up from the desk and stamped angrily to the door.
‘Come with me!’ he said.
Cecil got up and followed him, wondering. The dictator led him through the audience chamber and through a door in the back of it, down a cement-floored hallway and into a stark, cold room—Wakjavotski’s laboratory.
‘You are about to become the first person, besides myself and the scientists who worked on it, to see my secret weapon,’ he said. ‘It was just finished this afternoon.’
He went to a door at the far end of the room and flung it back against the wall with a clang. It opened onto a narrow, cistern-like space. The surrounding concrete walls shot upwards out of sight and as Cecil approached, he could see at the top of the shaft only a small square of dark sky with two or three stars in it. In the centre of this shaft stood an odd object—something like an inverted carrot with its nose pointing to the heavens.
‘A rocket,’ said Cecil.
‘Years ahead of its time,’ said Wakjavotski. ‘The Germans haven’t got anything like it yet. It can go farther and carry more explosives than they’ve dreamed possible. And its accuracy is deadly. I could hit a fly with it. Isn’t it a gorgeous specimen?’
‘How does it work?’ asked Cecil.
‘That wire on its nose is part of the steering device. I can use wireless signals to control it. Are you curious as to its target?’
‘Yes,’ said Cecil.
‘I’m having it shipped to the Baltic coast tonight. It’s final destination is London—St. Paul’s cathedral, to be precise, but we can’t hope for too much on the first try. All that talk about having to take the channel ports before we can attack Great Britain is nonsense now that we have these missiles. A few of these dispersed among the French and English and they’ll be suing for peace as fast as they can draw up the papers.’
‘You can’t win a war just by frightening people,’ said Cecil.
‘Oh yes, I can!’ said Wakjavotski. ‘I can do anything I want to with this weapon.’
It really seemed as if he could, and Cecil nearly forgot about saving Pyromania. For a moment the only thing in the world that seemed important was preventing that rocket from being fired.
‘I thought you’d like it,’ said Wakjavotski. ‘That’s why I’m showing it to you. You’re so fond of blowing things up.’
Cecil clenched his fists. It was that Thing towering up above his head that did it. Up to that minute, as long as he had gone on talking, he hadn’t felt as if he’d lost yet. But now he could think of nothing more to say. His mind was numb and he had no more strength to go on fighting. He wanted suddenly to lie down and give it all up.
He stood with his hands in the pockets of his trousers—they were the trousers he had worn the evening before at the theatre—and as he sank his hands further into his pockets the tips of his fingers touched something dry and crumbling, like dead leaves. He brought these out and looked at them. In his palm lay two or three withered brown petals that had once been red. Geraniums!
The petals reminded him somehow of Miss Kaparthy, and she reminded him somehow of the feeling he had had since the beginning that this adventure was a sort of fairy tale of which he was the knight. The laboratory seemed a dungeon and Wakjavotski seemed an ogre and the great menacing rocket seemed a great grey dragon. --And dragons could be killed.
‘You’re making a mistake,’ said Cecil.
‘Oh no, I’m not,’ said Wakjavotski. ‘I thought about shooting it at the French first, but I didn’t want to waste it and I thought it would make more of a sensation in England.’
‘I didn’t mean that kind of mistake,’ said Cecil. ‘You’re making a mistake in something else.’
‘Well, what, then?’
‘I was just thinking,’ said Cecil. ‘If I had known, when I left England, that I was going to die without doing what I meant to do…would I have tried to do it anyway? I was thinking that…And I was thinking that I would.’
Wakjavotski snorted.
‘Because,’ Cecil went on; ‘the things I’ve fought for don’t die just because I stop fighting for them. They go on forever. They’re the sort of things that can’t be killed. I wonder what you would have done if you had known, eleven years ago when you took over, that you were going to die to-night (you might, you know; it’s not impossible), just before you’d really been successful--if you had known that that would happen then, would you have done all those things you did? …Or would you have done something very different?’
Wakjavotski stared at Cecil with his mouth open.
‘You’re mad!’ he cried, which is what all villains cry when they don’t know what else to say.
‘I’m not mad,’ said Cecil.
Wakjavotski had never had trouble screaming. It had become rather a habit with him. But now, suddenly, when he most wanted to do it, he found that he only choked and strangled. He wrestled with his rage for a moment, but it overcame him at last and he snatched a pistol from his pocket and fired it full in Cecil’s face.
The range was point-blank and he couldn’t have missed. But even inanimate objects seemed possessed with the spirit of anarchy that night. The pistol, instead of doing what he wanted it to, only sent out a stream of water which, although it drenched Cecil, made no other visible impression. In his excitement Wakjavotski had accidentally pulled out Cecil's pistol instead of his own, and Cecil's was, as you will recall, only a water-gun.
Cecil gasped and blinked the water from his eyes. He had not been expecting such a violent reaction from the dictator, but it had wakened him from the langour which hung heavily on him and snapped his mind to full alertness.
Wakjavotski stood staring for one moment at the pistol, remembering with remorse that he had left his own gun in his study; the next moment he descended on Cecil, swinging the pistol and uttering a choleric cry. Cecil, ducking, ran to the table on which lay the sledge hammer and automatic that Wakjavotski used to test inventions, snatched up the sledge hammer, and, with the wooden handle—not the hammer end—struck Wakjavotski a blow over the head.
The dictator slumped to the ground, stunned. Without a pause, Cecil caught up the automatic and ran to the door in the wall. Raising his hand, he fired into the fuse end of the rocket. There was a hiss and a blinding flash as the room filled with acrid smoke. Cecil caught hold of the metal door and with all his might flung it shut.
There was a rumbling in the room, then a rushing, and then the ground, walls, ceiling, and everything else shook with a vibration like the earthquake of the Apocalypse.

Strange stories went abroad the following day, apparently originating from many different sources many miles apart. It was said that a strange cosmic disturbance occurred that night—a sort of supernova or great star explosion. A glittering fiery ball had shot upwards, arcing over the capital city; had diminished to a sparkling point; and had at last erupted in a violent explosion that had shaken pictures from the walls of buildings and cracked ceilings. The next morning a cloud of sulpherous gasses was still visible in the sky.
At one time it might have been one of Cecil’s greatest disappointments to have missed seeing the rocket’s explosion, but at that moment, as he lay stunned on the floor of the laboratory in the trembling and smoke filled air, he didn’t think about that at all.