The Terrible Twins Part 28

Miss Lambart found her very charming and attractive, and was in no haste to leave such pleasant companions.h.i.+p for the dull and unpleasant atmosphere of Muttle Deeping Grange. It was past seven therefore when the Little Deeping fly brought her to it; and she went to the archduke with her news.

She found him in the condition of nervous excitement into which he always fell before meals, too excited, indeed, to listen to her with sufficient attention to understand her at the first telling of her news. He was some time understanding it, and longer believing it. It annoyed him greatly. He was taking considerable pleasure in standing on a pedestal before the eyes of Europe as the bereaved Hohenzollern sire. His first, and accurate, feeling was that Europe would laugh consumedly when it learned the truth of the matter. His second feeling was that his n.o.ble kinsman, who had been saying wonderful, stirring things about the Terror's manifesto and the stolen princess, would be furiously angry with him.

He began to rave himself, fortunately in his own tongue of which Miss Lambart was ignorant. Then when he grew cooler and paler his oft-repeated phrase was: "Eet must be 'ushed!"

Miss Lambart did not tell him that Sir Maurice had taken every care that the affair should not be hushed up. She did not wish every blow to strike him at once. Then the dinner-bell rang; and in heavy haste he rolled off to the dining-room.

Miss Lambart was betaking herself to her bedroom to dress, when the archduke's equerry, the young mustached Count Zerbst came running up the stairs, bidding her in the name of his master come to dinner at once, as she was. She took no heed of the command, dressed at her ease, and came down just as the archduke, perspiring freely after his struggle with the hors-d'oeuvres, soup and fish, was plunging upon his first entree.

He ate it with great emphasis; and as he ate it he questioned her about the place where his daughter was encamped and the friends she was encamped with. Miss Lambart described the knoll and its position as clearly as she could, and of the Twins she said as little as possible.

Then he asked her with considerable acerbity why she had not exercised her authority and brought the princess back with her.

Miss Lambart said that she had no authority over the princess; and that if she had had it, the princess would have disregarded it wholly, and that it was impossible to haul a recalcitrant Hohenzollern through miles of wood by force, since the persons of Hohenzollerns were sacrosanct.

The archduke said that the only thing to do was to go himself and summon home his truant child. Miss Lambart objected that it would mean hewing expensively a path through the wood wide enough to permit his pa.s.sage, and it was improbable that the owner of the wood would allow it. Thereupon the baroness volunteered to go. Miss Lambart with infinite pleasure explained that for her too an expensive path must be hewn, and went on to declare that if they reached the knoll, there was not the slightest chance of their finding the princess in its caves.

The archduke frowned and grunted fiercely in his perplexity. Then he struck the table and cried:

"Count Zerbst shall do eet! To-morrow morning! You shall 'eem lead to ze wood. 'E shall breeng 'er."

Miss Lambart protested that to wander in the Deeping woods with a German count would hardly be proper.

"Brobare? What ees 'brobare'?" said the archduke.

"_Convenable_," said Miss Lambart.

The archduke protested that such considerations must not be allowed to militate against his being set free to return to Ca.s.sel-Na.s.sau at the earliest possible moment. Miss Lambart said that they must. In the end it was decided that a motor-car should be procured from Rowington and that Miss Lambart should guide the archduke and the count to the entrance of the path to the knoll, the count should convey to the princess her father's command to return to the Grange, and if she should refuse to obey, he should haul her by force to the car.

Miss Lambart made no secret of her strong conviction that he would never set eyes, much less hands, on the princess. Count Zerbst's smooth pink face flushed rose-pink all round his fierce little mustache, which in some inexplicable, but unfortunate, fas.h.i.+on accentuated the extraordinary insignificance of his nose; his small eyes sparkled; and he muttered fiercely something about "sdradegy." He looked at Miss Lambart very unamiably. He felt that she was not impressed by him as were the maidens of Ca.s.sel-Na.s.sau; and he resented it. He resolved to capture the princess at any cost.

The archduke fumed furiously to find, next morning in the _Morning Post_ the true story of his daughter's disappearance; and he was fuming still when the car came from Rowington. It was a powerful car and a weight-carrier; Miss Lambart, who had telephoned for it, had been careful to demand a weight-carrier. With immense fuss the archduke disposed himself in the back of the tonneau which he filled with billowy curves. The moment he was settled in it Miss Lambart sprang to the seat beside the driver, and insisted on keeping it that she might the more easily direct his course.

They were not long reaching the wood; and the chauffeur raised no objection to taking the car up the broad turfed aisle from which ran the path to the knoll. At the entrance of it the count stepped out of the car; and the archduke gave him his final instructions with the air of a Roman father; he was to bring the princess in any fas.h.i.+on, but he was to bring her at once.

In a last generous outburst he cried: "Pooll 'er by the ear! Bud breeng 'er."

The count said that he would, and entered the path with a resolute and martial air. Miss Lambart was not impressed by it. She thought that in his tight-fitting clothes of military cut and his apparently tighter-fitting patent leather boots he looked uncommonly out of place under the green wood trees. She remembered how lightly the Twins and the princess went; and she had the poorest expectation of his getting near any of them. Also, as they had come up the aisle of the woods she had been a.s.sailed by a late but serious doubt, whether a weight-carrying motor-car was quite the right kind of vehicle in which to approach the lair of the Twins with hostile intent. Its powerful, loud-throbbing engine had seemed to her to advertise their advent with all the competence of a trumpet.

Her doubt was well-grounded. The quick ears of Erebus were the first to catch its throbbing note, and that while it was still two hundred yards from the entrance of the path to the knoll. Ever since the departure of Miss Lambart and Sir Maurice the Twins had been making ready against invasion, conveying their provisions and belongings to the secret caves.

The secret caves had not been secret before the coming of the Twins to the knoll. They were high up on the outer face of it, airy and well lighted by two inaccessible holes under an overhanging ledge. But the entrance to them was by a narrow shaft which rose sharply from a cave in the heart of the knoll. On this shaft the Twins had spent their best pains for two and a half wet days the year before; and they had reduced some seven or eight feet of it to a pa.s.sage fifteen inches high and eighteen inches broad. The opening into this pa.s.sage could, naturally, be closed very easily; and then, in the dim light, it was hard indeed to distinguish it from the wall of the cave. It had been a somewhat difficult task to get their blankets and provisions through so narrow a pa.s.sage; but it had been finished soon after breakfast.

They were on the alert for invaders; and as soon as they were quite sure that the keen ears of Erebus had made no mistake and that a car was coming up the board aisle, the princess and the Terror squirmed their way up to the secret caves; and Erebus closed the pa.s.sage behind them, and with small chunks filled in the interstices between the larger pieces of stone so that it looked more than ever a part of the wall of the cave. Then she betook herself to a point of vantage among the bushes on the face of the knoll, from which she could watch the entrance of the path and the coming of the invaders.

The archduke, lying back at his ease in the car, and smoking an excellent cigar, spoke with a.s.surance of catching the one-fifteen train from Rowington to London and the night boat from Dover to Calais. Miss Lambart wasted no breath encouraging him in an expectation based on the efforts of Count Zerbst on the knoll. She stepped out of the car and strolled up and down on the pleasant turf. Presently she saw a figure coming down the aisle from the direction of Little Deeping; when it came nearer, with considerable pleasure she recognized Sir Maurice.

When he came to them she presented him to the archduke as the discoverer of his daughter's hiding-place. The archduke, mindful of the fact that Sir Maurice had given the true story of the disappearance to the world, received him ungraciously. Miss Lambart at once told Sir Maurice of the errand of Count Zerbst and of her very small expectation that anything would come of it. Sir Maurice agreed with her; and the fuming archduke a.s.sured them that the count was the most promising soldier in the army of Ca.s.sel-Na.s.sau. Then Sir Maurice suggested that they should go to the knoll and help the count. Miss Lambart a.s.sented readily; and they set out at once. They skirted the barriers of thorns in the path and came to the knoll. It was quiet and seemed utterly deserted.

They called loudly to the count several times; but he did not answer.

Miss Lambart suggested that he was searching the caves and that they should find him and help him search them; they plunged into the caves and began to hunt for him. They did not find the count; neither did they find the princess nor the Twins. They shouted to him many times as they traversed the caves; but they had no answer.

This was not unnatural, seeing that he left the knoll just before they reached it. He had mounted the side of it, calling loudly to the princess. He had gone through half a dozen caves, calling loudly to the princess. No answer had come to his calling. He had kept coming out of the labyrinth on to the side of the knoll. At one of these exits, to his great joy, he had seen the figure of a little girl, dressed in the short serge skirt and blue jersey he had been told the princess was wearing, slipping through the bushes at the foot of the knoll. With a loud shout he had dashed down it in pursuit and plunged after her into the wood. Her sunbonnet was still in sight ahead among the bushes, and by great good fortune he succeeded in keeping it in sight. Once, indeed, when he thought that he had lost it for good and all, it suddenly reappeared ahead of him; and he was able to take up the chase again. But he did not catch her. Indeed he did not lessen the distance between them to an extent appreciable by the naked eye.

For a delicate princess she was running with uncommon speed and endurance. Considering his dress and boots and the roughness of the going, he, too, was running with uncommon speed and endurance. It was true that his face was a very bright red and that his so lately stiff, tall, white collar lay limply gray round his neck. But he was not near enough to his quarry to be mortified by seeing that she was but faintly flushed by her efforts and hardly perspiring at all. All the while he was buoyed up by the a.s.surance that he would catch her in the course of the next hundred yards.

Then his quarry left the wood, by an exceedingly small gap, and ran down a field path toward the village of Little Deeping. By the time the count was through the gap she had a lead of a hundred yards. To his joy, in the open country, on the smoother path, he made up the lost ground quickly. When they reached the common, he was a bare forty yards behind her. He was not surprised when in despair she left the path and bolted into the refuge of an old house that stood beside it.

Mopping his hot wet brow he walked up the garden path with a victorious air, and knocked firmly on the door. Sarah opened it; and he demanded the instant surrender of the princess. Sarah heard him with an exasperating air of blank bewilderment. He repeated his demand more firmly and loudly.

Sarah called to Mrs. Dangerfield: "Please, mum: 'ere's a furrin gentleman asking for a princess. I expect as it's that there missing one."

"Do nod mock! She 'ees 'ere!" cried the count fiercely.

Then Mrs. Dangerfield came out of the dining-room where she had been arranging flowers, and came to the door.

"The princess is not here," she said gently.

"But I haf zeen 'er! She haf now ad once coom! She 'ides!" cried the count.

At that moment Erebus came down the hall airily swinging her sunbonnet by its strings. The eyes of the count opened wide; so did his mouth.

"I expect he means me. At least he's run after me all the way from the knoll here," said Erebus in a clear quiet voice.

The count's eyes returned to their sockets; and he had a sudden outburst of fluent German. He did not think that any of his hearers could understand that portion of his native tongue he was using; he hoped they could not; he could not help it if they did.

Mrs. Dangerfield looked from him to Erebus thoughtfully. She did not suppose for a moment that it was mere accident that had caused the count to take so much violent exercise on such a hot day. She was sorry for him. He looked so fierce and young and inexperienced to fall foul of the Twins.

Erebus caught her mother's thoughtful eye. At once she cried resentfully: "How could I possibly tell it was the sunbonnet which made him think I was the princess? He never asked me who I was. He just shouted once and ran after me. I was hurrying home to get some salad oil and get back to the knoll by lunch."

"Yes, you would run all the way," said Mrs. Dangerfield patiently.

"Well, you'd have run, too, Mum, with a foreigner running after you!

Just look at that mustache! It would frighten anybody!" cried Erebus in the tone of one deeply aggrieved by unjust injurious suspicions.

"Yes, I see," said her mother with undiminished patience.

She invited the count to come in and rest and get cool; and she allayed his fine thirst with a long and very grateful whisky and soda. He explained to her at length, three times, how he had come to mistake Erebus for the flying princess, for he was exceedingly anxious not to appear foolish in the eyes of such a pretty woman. Erebus left them together; she made a point of taking a small bottle of salad oil to the knoll. They had no use for salad oil indeed; but it had been an after-thought, and she owed it to her conscience to take it. That would be the safe course.

In the meantime the archduke was sitting impatiently in the car, looking frequently at his watch. He had expected the count to return with the princess in, at the longest, a quarter of an hour. Then he had expected Miss Lambart and Sir Maurice to return with the count and the princess in, at the longest, a quarter of an hour. None of them returned. The princess was sitting on a heap of bracken in the highest of the secret caves, and the Terror was taking advantage of this enforced quiet retirement to brush out her hair. The count sat drinking whisky and soda and explained to Mrs. Dangerfield that he had not really been deceived by the sunbonnet and that he was very pleased that he had been deceived by it, since it had given him the pleasure of her acquaintance. Miss Lambart and Sir Maurice sat on a bank and talked seriously about everything and certain other things, but chiefly about themselves and each other.

So the world wagged as the archduke saw the golden minutes which lay between him and the one-fifteen slipping away while his daughter remained uncaught. He chafed and fumed. His vexation grew even more keen when he came to the end of his cigar and found that the thoughtless count had borne away the case. He appealed to the chauffeur for advice; but the chauffeur, a native of Rowington and ignorant of Beaumarchais, could give him none.

At half past twelve the archduke rose to his full height in the car, bellowed: "Zerbst! Zerbst! Zerbst!" and sank down again panting with the effort.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The archduke bellowed: "Zerbst! Zerbst! Zerbst!"]

The chauffeur looked at him with compa.s.sionate eyes. The archduke's bellow, for all his huge round bulk, was but a thin and reedy cry. No answer came to it; no one came from the path to the knoll.

"P'raps if I was to give him a call, your Grace," said the chauffeur, somewhat complacent at displaying his knowledge of the right way to address an archduke.