CHAPTER XXVIII
A FEARSOME DILEMMA
AS I plunged along in my wild ride through the quickly darkening gloom, I began to take stock of my position and shape some kind of plans. Beyond the statement that the lane would lead me to Sofia, I had not a notion of where I was, and the twists and turns of the road along which I was galloping madly soon caused me to lose all knowledge of the direction in which Sofia lay.
But this did not trouble me very much. I was mounted on a splendid animal; I was armed, for I found the Captain’s revolver in the holster; and I had money in my pockets enough to more than serve any needs likely to arise.
I did not much fear any serious pursuit. The same timely friendship which had led Captain Wolasky to venture so much for me would, I was sure, suffice to induce him to lead the pursuit in any direction but that which he knew I should take; and after I had covered a few miles I halted and listened again for any sounds of followers. There was not a sound, and after that I determined to proceed leisurely, and so spare my horse for any effort should I stumble across any patrolling party of troops.
My wish was, of course, to push for the frontier; but, as the city lay between me and the west road, and as moreover I knew neither how to find a way round the city, and thus avoid the risk of crossing it, nor my road to the frontier, should I ever be able to get through Sofia safely, I was much puzzled what course to take.
I could of course trust to the chance of being able to make inquiries as I went, but there was so much risk in such a course that I feared it. If I was to get through safely, I knew I must ride for the most part at night, because the daylight spelt a double danger to me. It was practically certain that the main road would be infested by Kolfort’s men, and the chances of my being able to evade them all were infinitesimal.
Another scheme suggested itself to me—hazardous, no doubt—but possibly not so dangerous as the alternative. Markov had given me a plan of his route to the frontier, with a list of the places and persons where he had arranged for the relays of horses; but in the confusion and hurry of my departure from Sofia I had left this behind me. It was not of much consequence so long as he had been present to act as guide, but without him it had become of vital importance. My present idea was therefore to risk a return to my own house, get the paper, which was locked up in a secret cabinet in my library, and perhaps remain hidden in the house during the following day, setting out on my journey to the frontier when darkness came to help me.
The obstacle to the scheme was, of course, the possibility that my house might be in the possession of Kolfort’s agents, and that I might run my head into a trap. But the house contained so many secret ways and passages that this risk was greatly lessened; and I reckoned that I could at least effect an entrance without being discovered, and if I found the project impossible could leave it again. In any case, the possession of the plan of route was so essential to me under the circumstances that I made up my mind to run the risk of the venture.
I had first to find my way to the city, however, and in this I was singularly fortunate. I had ridden some three or four hours when the moon rose, and soon afterwards, to my intense satisfaction, my cross road came out at a point which I recognised as being some four or five miles from my house. I quickened my pace, therefore, riding very warily, and, wherever possible, cantering on the turf, until I came out on the heath which was close to the mouth of the underground passage leading under my grounds. I would not trust myself to use that because its secret was known to Kolfort’s agents; but I chose a path which led me to another gate of the garden.
I dismounted there, unlocked the gate, drew my horse under the shadow of some trees, fastened him, and, thrusting the revolver into my belt for use in case of need, crept forward to reconnoitre the house.
Every window at the back was in darkness, even to the kitchens, and the place seemed empty and deserted. Keeping well within the shadow of the walls, I stole round with the utmost caution to the front, taking care that every footfall should be deadened by either the turf or the soft mould of the flower beds.
In the front there was a faint light from one window; a carriage stood in the roadway, and, near the gates opening from the drive, I saw one or two moving shadows of men.
The carriage surprised and startled me. Obviously someone was taking a keen interest in my concerns, and was inside the house; and I had to consider whether I dared to venture any further with my plan in the face of such added danger. A minute’s thought determined me to proceed, however. What I had feared was the presence of a fairly large number of men holding possession of the house; but there was no sign of this, and if only one or two attendants were with this visitor, whoever it might be, they would not have an easy task to capture me, while I should not have a difficult one to avoid them.
At the side where I stood there was a small opening into a passage that led straight to my library, and, unlocking it very softly, I entered, and stole along it on tiptoe, feeling my way by the wall in the pitchy darkness. There were several doors leading off from the narrow passage to different parts of the house, and at each of these I stood and listened intently, venturing to unlock one or two of them with my master-key. In this way I was able to satisfy myself that not a soul was in the lower part of the house, and, assured by this knowledge, I crept up the stone staircase that led to the library.
The need for absolute silence on my part increased with every step, and when I reached the top I drew off my heaving riding boots and moved at a snail’s pace, my stockinged feet making no noise whatever.
The entrance to the passage from the room had been masked very cleverly. It was formed by a revolving panel in the wall, which swung on well-oiled pivots and opened behind a sham cabinet, through the painted glass doors of which care had been taken to allow of anyone who stood in the cabinet both hearing and seeing all that went on in the room. I moved the panel inch by inch with infinite care and caution, and as I did so heard the sound of voices.
I started, and almost lost my presence of mind as I recognised the deep, gruff tone of General Kolfort, followed by the soft, dulcet, seductive laugh of the Countess Bokara. Passing noiselessly through the panel, I entered the cabinet, and the sight that met my eyes made me almost cry out in astonishment.
The wily old Russian had for once met more than his match. He was seated in a chair with his arms fastened behind the back of it, staring up, with leaden face and fear-filled eyes, into the face of the woman who stood over him with a long, deadly-looking dagger in her raised hand, passion and hate blazing in her eyes, and making the blade tremble in her grasp so that the light quivered and danced on the steel as the taunting, scoffing words flowed volubly from her lips.
“Yes, you are to die. I lured you here for the purpose—lured you, as you say, with lies about the secret proofs of this Count’s guilt which I could put into your hands. A single movement, and my blade strikes home to its sheath in your treacherous old heart!”
The words came through her clenched teeth, and she looked a very she-devil as she gloated over her helpless and cowering victim. He might well cower, for if ever the lust for human blood was written on a human face, it was there in every line of hers.
“What do you want?” he asked at length.
“Nothing but revenge. Nothing but that you shall feel before you die some of the pain and horror you and your cursed agents and spies have made my Prince endure for months past; nothing but to know that at last our accounts are squared, and what you tried and failed to do with me I have tried and succeeded in doing with you; nothing but your life, murderer!”
“You can name your own terms,” he said again; and I saw him glance about him as if in desperate search of some faint hope of escape from the menacing knife. She saw the glance too, and laughed, a fiend’s laugh, scornful, sneering, and utterly loathsome.
“You may look where you will, but you remember your own condition—alone in the house. Alone, that you might not be seen with me, or perhaps might trap me with more of your damnable treachery. Well, you’ve had your way, and we are alone; but it’s the trapper who is trapped, the spider who is caught in his own web. I’m glad you are afraid of death. I thought it would be so, you are so prompt and quick to order the deaths of others. And now you want to find proofs that will enable you to have this Englishman put out of your way, something to give a colour to your order for his removal; and when your men had searched here and found nothing strong enough, you swallowed the bait I put to you, to guide you to the place where you should find all you wanted and more.”
“He is no friend of yours.”
“What is that to me? You are my enemy, and here helpless in my power. The great, powerful, ruthless, implacable enemy of my Prince and of Bulgaria here alone, fastened like a child to a chair by the hand of a woman. Where is your power now? Will it help you to unfasten even a strand of your bonds? Will it bring a single soul to your aid? Will it stay by a second the plunge of my knife, or turn by so much as a hair’s breadth the point from your heart? Were you as feeble as the meanest and weakest of your victims, you could not be more helpless than alone here with me.”
The bloodthirsty fury of this unsexed demon was a hateful sight. Had she plunged her knife into the man’s heart in a paroxysm of rage I could have understood the passion which impelled her to her act of revenge, but it was loathsome to see her standing gloating over the wretched, quivering old man. I made up my mind to stop her; and I was about to dash into the room to tear the knife from her grasp, for I could stand the sight no longer, when a thought inspired by his fear struck me. Like a flash of light a way to safety for me darted into my mind. If he was the coward at heart she had proved him I could turn his fears to good account, and in a moment I turned as anxious to save his life as I was to end the intolerable sight of her cruel, tigerish, callous gloating.
“You have tried to murder my Prince, and now you have dragged him from his throne to some of your vile Russian prisons,” she began again, when I burst open the doors of my hiding-place, darted upon her before she could recover from her start of surprise, and, pushing her back, stood between her and the General.
“You!” she cried in a voice choking with baffled passion, and looking for all the world as though she would spring on me.
“Silence!” I said sternly. “This has gone on too long already. I will have no murder of this kind done here.”
I heard the old man behind me give a deep sigh of relief, and, glancing round, I saw that his head had dropped back on his shoulders. He had fainted in the sudden relaxation of the terrible strain, and with his dead white face upturned, open-mouthed and staring-eyed, he looked like a corpse.
But I could give him no more than a glance, for I dared not keep my eyes from the wild woman before me.
“You know he came here to find proofs to justify him in ordering your death?”
“I heard you taunt him with it just now; but I can protect myself.”
“I did not come to kill him for that.”
“I care nothing for your motives; I will not have him killed here,” I returned in the same stern, decisive tone.
She eyed me viciously, like a baulked tigress.
“You will not?” The words came in a low, strenuous, menacing voice that fitted with her tigress look.
“No, I will not;” and at that, without another word, she flung herself upon me, wrought up to such a pitch of madness in her reckless yearning to do the deed she had come to do upon Kolfort that she would have plunged the knife into my heart to clear me out of her path. She struggled with the strength and frenzy of madness, turning the knife as I clutched and held her wrist until it gashed my hand, while she strained every nerve and muscle of her lithe, active body in the desperate efforts to get past me and wrench her wrist from my grip.
She was now in all truth a madwoman.
It was a grim, fierce, gruesome struggle, for her strength was at all times far beyond that of a woman, and her mania increased it until I could scarce hold her in check. Had I been a less powerful man she would certainly have beaten me; but I thrust her away again, though I could not get the dagger from her, and was preparing myself for a renewal of the struggle, when, with a scream for help that resounded through the house, she turned her wild eyes on me, now gleaming with her madness, and hissed:
“He seeks the proofs to kill you! He shall have them in my dead body! My blood is on you! My murder shall give him the proofs he needs!”
She cried again for help in the same ear-piercing screech; and, before I could devise her meaning, she turned the blade against herself, plunged it into her own heart, and, with a last half-finished scream, fell to the floor with a sickening thud.
In an instant I saw the method in her madness. The General had seen me in the room; he was now unconscious; there was no witness of her self-murder; my hand was streaming with the blood from the gashes of her knife; it was in my house it happened; her screams for help must have been heard outside. The suggestive proofs that I had slain her were enough to convince anyone of my guilt, and in another moment I should have the General’s men thundering at the door, not only to stop my flight, but to have me denounced as a murderer.
Surely never was a man in a more desperate plight, and for the moment I knew not in my desperation what to do.
A glance at General Kolfort showed me he was still unconscious, and I rushed to him and shook him in the frenzy of my despair. But he gave no sign of returning consciousness, and the white face rolled from side to side as the head shook nervelessly on the limp, flaccid neck.
I clenched my hands and breathed hard in my concentrated efforts to think coherently and form some plan of action, and I cursed aloud in my wrath the fiend of a woman who had brought me to this pass of peril. I had no thought for her, dead though she was, but wild, raging, impotent hate.
Mere flight was no use. If I were charged with this awful deed I should be proscribed as a murderer, and the charge would dog my footsteps wherever I went and rest on me always, till I should be dragged perhaps to a felon’s death. These thoughts flashed like lightning through my mind in the seconds that followed, crazing, bewildering, and frightening me till the drops stood cold and thick on my brow and my hands grew clammy with the dew of fear.
Then came the sounds of men running on the gravel outside, and I listened to them in positively fascinated, helpless irresolution.
Another second and the men were knocking loudly at the house door; and still I could not move. My feet were chained by a palsy of fear to the floor, my breath came in gasps so that I was like to choke, and when the knocking was repeated I could do no more than turn and stare helplessly in the direction of the sound like a crazy idiot. My brain seemed to have stayed every function except to fill me with this awesome conviction of deadly inevitable peril.
The knocking was repeated for the third time, and I heard the voices of the men calling to be admitted. I felt that in a minute more the end must come, and still I could do nothing but stare in imbecile apathy and wait for it.
Never can I efface the horror of that terrible moment.
Then suddenly it seemed to pass. I thought clearly again, the instincts of self-preservation reasserted themselves, and I cursed myself for the invaluable time I had lost.
But it might not even now be too late.