“They have us in range!” cried the Brigand Boustremovitch.
“That’s what all the noise is about!” cried a henchman.
“Better beat it, Boss,” advised another.
“We will sell our lives dearly!” cried the one-time terror of the Glagolitic Alps.
In the secret cell in the upper wall, Magnus sat up on his straw.
“What was that?” he cried. He had an absolutely terrible taste in his mouth.
Cornet Eszterhazy, having retrieved his horse from the livery stable where he had left it, the better to assist the Count Calmar stretch his train-trip-rusted legs, cantered along towards the Palace, his mind pleasantly at ease as usual. Now and then something beckoned to the corner of his eye ... a quaint old shop, weather-worn sign, Bookbinder, Old Books for Sale, but who would wish to dismount and rummage among old books? Or a mountebank bound in chains from which, when sufficient small coins were produced, would emerge, straining and groaning, or some drunken wretch lying half in the road, or... He turned the horse and cantered back; what else had caught his eye he was not quite aware, but there was some pressing thought to go back and see... where had it been? He looked to right and left; presently — sure enough! Halfway up the next, half-empty block, he saw something lying in the road; thither he went to get it.
If it were not the very same English cap which Magnus had been wearing not long before, then it was its twin; and as not that many people in Bella would have had an English cap, very likely it was indeed the same: how came it there?
The drunken wretch in the gutter had pulled himself out of it and was now propped against a lamp-post; he addressed Eszterhazy.
“It fell out of a wagon, like, my lord —”
“When? What wagon? Who —”
“A fish-wagon. Come rattling along and knock me right over; help a poor veteran of the Wendish Wars, my lord; no friends at Headquarters and so hence no pension; to buy a nibble of bread, my lord?”
“A noggin of rum would be more like it —”
“Well, there’s that, my lord. There’s that. ‘Man liveth not by bread alone,’ as the Scripture tell us. Thank you, my lord! Thank you!”
The cornet bethought him a moment, trotting back to the broader street. The cap had fallen out of a wagon. Why had “Count Calmar,” or “Count Calmar’s” cap, been inside a wagon? A fish-wagon? On the spur of the moment, he turned and headed back to the Grand Hotel Windsor-Lido. And there in the grand lobby he saw the Baron Borg uk Borg, literally wringing his hands.
“Cornet! Cornet! There’s a report that His Maj — that Count Calmar — he was late, he was late, he did not in fact return — that he was seen being attacked and forced into a fish-wagon! A fish-wagon! The King of Scandia and Froreland! Not alone the possible danger to the poor young man, young and impetuous though he sometimes is — and heedless — it is only the Crown which keeps the Two Kingdoms together — it is nothing that I shall surely be forced to resign and that they will send me to be a petty postmaster at some Skrae trading-post on the Arctic Ocean —”
“Is this his cap?”
The courtier seized it, sniffed it, turned it partly inside out. “Essence of Lilac, his very hair-tonic; and look! Look! The label!”
GOUSTAW GOUSTAWSON HABERDASHER, S’BRIG.
“Then immediately we must notify your Minister and the Police.”
The Baron moved hand and face in a slight gesture of deep despair. “I have already despatched messengers to both, but — I don’t at all understand — they say there is some disturbance in the central section of the city and that the messengers may have some difficulty getting through to —”
The suave and practiced smile on the glossy face of the assistant manager vanished at Eszterhazy’s peremptory manner. “Yes, of course, Cornet, the Grand Hotel Windsor-Lido does have a private contract telegraph office, just next the cashier’s . . . but there seems to be some trouble on the line, and I am afraid that —”
A privy councillor walked by, curling his large moustache and conveying on his arm a handsome younger woman who, whoever she was, was certainly not the frow privy councillor; he raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement of the assistant manager’s sycophantic smile; again the smile vanished abruptly.
“This foreign milord, Baron Borg, is on an important mission; you will go with him and see that a constant attempt is made to get his telegrams through and you will remain with him until then or even longer if he asks you. We would hate to commandeer this place.” Thus spake Cornet Eszterhazy.
With a word or two and a salute, he left, walking rather rapidly to the alley where the horse waited for him. Yet, upset as he was, he could not but laugh a little as he recalled his own brash words.
We!
He quickly remounted his horse, and, looking up as he did so, he saw, flying rather low overhead, an eagle . . . and another eagle . . . and another .. . and another ... and another .. . and . ..
The Turkish Legate in Bella at that time was Selim Ghazi Effendi, commonly called “Grizzly Pasha,” who had been exiled from Paris for gross peculation and other high misdemeanors; and now spent his days and his nights stupefied with opium, which he smoked (mingled with Latakia and Makedonia and Otto de Rose) in his huge mother-of-pearl- inlaid hookah. Now, as the Great Big Bell boomed on, and he vaguely heard the sole sound which filled the sky, he looked from a dream which he saw very clearly in his charcoal brazier of the Blessed Houri dancing in Paradise ... a place which he was pleased but not surprised to observe very much resembled his former villa near Neuilly. He said, “Mmmuhhh?”
The Legation’s kawas appeared at his elbow. “Shadow of the Shadow of God,” the kawas said, “the giaours are saying that the Troops of the Faithful are at the portals of this stinking city.”
Grizzly Pasha said. “ Mmmuhhh ...”
By and by he gestured. “At once, Shadow of the Shadow of God,” the kawas said.
Presently the rather lop-sided coach which, once a year, the Legate was roused to ride to the Exchequer, where a token rent for Little Byzantia was paid over to him for transmittal to Constantinople — the rest being more crisply sent on via Coutt’s Bank — the coach, accompanied by five gaunt and elderly Kurd lancers (mounted upon five equally elderly and gaunt horses, and looking like a quincunx of quixotes); the coach rolled out of the grounds of the Legation and into the East Ward ...
Most of the telegraphers having left their keys to go home and protect their families, the police had resorted to the Army heliograph; this device (aided by telescope) now flashed the news that Turkish troops have been seen in the east ward; the sugar, butter, and flour dealers at once doubled their prices and prepared to barricade their premises.
It was in the mind of the Pasha merely to indicate that the building they were approaching was to be appropriated for the benefit of his younger brother; what he said, however, was “Mmm ...” and then, his tongue suddenly clearing somewhat, “That one —” The coach turned in the carriage-path, rolled up to the porte-cochere; stopped. The Pasha promptly dozed off. The Bulgarian Minister was playing backgammon with the wife of the Bulgarian First Secretary, when a startled servant informed him that the Turkish Legate had arrived.