Karlov

“ The world rejects you."
"Wait and see, damned bourgeoisie!" thundered Karlov, not alive to the fact that he was being baited.
"Bourgeoisie? Yes, I am of the middle class; the rogue on top and the fool below. I see. The rogue and the fool cannot combine unless the bourgeoisie is obliterated. Go on. I am interested."
"Under the soviet the government shall be everything."
"As it was in Prussia."
Karlov ignored this. "The individual shall never again become rich by exploiting the poor."
Karlov strove to speak calmly. Gregor's willingness to discuss the aims of the proletariat confused him. ”

“ If in the end Karlov strayed into the net the use of the service for private ends would be justified.
Lord, those green stones! Well, why not? Something in the world worth a hazard. What had he in life but this second grand passion? There shot into his mind obliquely an irrelevant question. Supposing, in the old days, he had proceeded to reach for Molly as he was now reaching for the emeralds—a bit lawlessly? ”

“ Boris Karlov, if indeed it were he, would lead the way. Hadn't Stefani and Boris been boyhood friends, and hadn't Stefani betrayed the latter in some political affair? He wasn't sure; but a glance among his 1912 notes would clear up the fog.
But that young chap! Who was he? Cutty set his process of logical deduction moving. Karlov—always supposing that gorilla was Karlov—had come in from the west. So had the young man. Gregor's inclinations had been toward the aristocracy; at least, that had been the impression. A Bolshevik would not seek haven with a man like Gregor, as this young man had. ”

“ Gregor laughed sardonically. “Will there be creative genius under your rule? Will you not suffocate it by taking away the air that energizes it—ambition? You will have all the present marvels of invention to start with, but will you ever go beyond? Have you read history and observed the inexorable? I doubt it. What is progress? A series of almost imperceptible steps.”
“Which capitalism has always obstructed,” flung back Karlov.
“Which capitalism has always made possible. Curb it, yes; but abolish it, as you have done in unhappy Russia! ”

“ Karlov was ready at all times to expound the theories that appealed to his dark yet simple mind—humanity overturned as one overturned the sod in the springtime to give it new life.
“To give the proletariat what is his.”
“Ha!” said the little man on the cot. “What is his?”
“That which capitalism has taken away from him.”
“The proletariat. The lowest in the human scale—and therefore the most helpless. They shall rule, say you. My poor Russia! Beaten and robbed for centuries, and now betrayed by a handful of madmen—with brains atrophied on one side! You are a fool, Boris. ”

“ He was growing tired, winded; he had not gone into battle fresh. He knew that many of his blows had gone home. Any ordinary man would have dropped; but Karlov came on again and again.
And all the while Karlov was not fighting Cutty; he was endeavouring to remove him. He was an obstacle. What Karlov wanted was that head the girl was holding in her arms; to grind his heel into it. Had Cutty stepped aside Karlov would have rushed for the other man.
"Kitty, the door, the door!" Cutty shouted in despair, taking a terrible kick on the thigh. "The door!" ”

“ If ever he laid his hands upon the drums he would buy something gorgeous for Kitty. Little thoroughbred!
Time for work. Without doubt Karlov had cellar exits through this warehouse or the other. The job on hand would be first to locate these exits, and then to the trap on the roof. With his pocket lamp blazing a trail he went down to the cellar and carefully inspected the walls that abutted those of the house. ”

“ Glass! He had cut his hand. The beggars had covered the trap with cement and broken glass, sealing it. It would take time to cut round the trap; and even then he wouldn't be sure; they might have nailed it down from the inside. The worst of it was he would have to do the work himself; and in the meantime Karlov would have a fair wind for his propaganda gas, and perhaps the disposal of the drums to some collector who wasn't above bargaining for smuggled emeralds. Odd, though, that Karlov should have made a prisoner of Coles. What lay behind that manoeuvre? Well, this trap must be liberated ”

“ He's the spark, the hand on the plunger. The powder is all ready in this land of ours; our job is to keep off the sparks until we can spread the stuff so it will only go puff instead of bang. This man Karlov is bad medicine for democracy. Poor devil!"
"Why do you say that?"
"Because I'm honestly sorry for them. This fellow Karlov has suffered. He is now a species of madman nothing will cure. He and his kind have gained their ends in Russia, but the impetus to kill and burn and loot is still unchecked. ”

“ Was Karlov afraid or had he some new trick up his sleeve? It was not possible that he had given up Hawksley. He was probably planning an attack from some unexpected angle. To be sure that Karlov would not find reason to associate him with Kitty, Cutty had remained indoors during the daytime and gone forth at night in his dungarees.
Problem Two was quite as formidable. The secret agent who had passed as a negotiator for the drums of jeopardy had disappeared. That had sinister significance. Karlov did not intend to sell the drums ”

“ Wanted to become an American citizen. He would have been tolerably safe in England. Here he would never be free of danger. A ranch. The beggar would have a chance out there in the West. The anarchist and the Bolshevik were town cooties. His one chance, actually. The poor devil! Kitty had the right idea. It was a mighty fine thing, these times, to be a citizen under the protection of the American doctrine.
Three hundred thousand! And Karlov had got that along with the drums. The devil's own for luck! The fool would be able to start some fine ructions with all that capital behind him. ”

“ Three days after the trumpets were heard, and the army marched from Schleswig to return no more; but the general—the same General Bauer who served under Suwarrow in the famous campaigns of Italy—made a plentiful provision for his poor relatives, and sent the miller's only son, his namesake, Karl, to Court for his education, Karl rose to a high place in the household of the Czar, and it was his son, Karlovitch Bauer, who prepared so specious a trap for our advanced guard on the Bulganak—a trap happily rendered useless by the skill and foresight of our leader, the good and brave Lord Raglan. ”

“ They are mostly wooden; but here there are none of the mediæval survivals of an old German town—none of the elaborate carvings that speak of ancient civilization and the taste of old merchant princes. Such relics one does not find in the Sclavonic East of Europe. Karlovac is situated well for trade. She lies on the Kulpa, which connects her with the Savian and Danubian commercial basins, and into which, hard by, debouches the Korana, opening out a valley route into the mountains of North-West Bosnia ”

“ Of Karlovac and its inhabitants proper there is little to chronicle except that the inhabitants possess a certain gift of inventiveness; for a report spread through the town in no time that we had walked from Rotterdam for a bet, and the report did all the more credit to the fertility of the Karlovatzan imagination in that it had no particle of foundation whatsoever. The town is divided into the citadel and fortified part, containing the churches, official houses, and a chilling square; and the Varoš or suburb, which comprises the bulk of the houses. There is nothing here of interest ”

“ But about Karl. His mind had undoubtedly become unhinged and, after escaping from Holland, he found his way to the house where she was employed, learnt that she had been arrested (you see, the red stitches on her handkerchief, which everyone had supposed were laundry marks, turned out to be plans of Hampton Court Maze and the most direct route to Swan and Selfinsons) , and, seizing the rifle, he rushed from the house (it was the night the Russians passed through Aberdeen and Upper Norwood) and———"
Stephen apologised to me.
"Karl shall be no more," he said. "Karl the ubiquitous is dead." ”

“ He was both perfumed and powdered, and carried an elegant little sword with brilliants in the hilt.
The interest died from Karl’s blue eyes and a look of cold disgust took its place; the Englishman was not the Swede’s idea of a warrior. Nor was Karl in his old jackboots, worn blue great-coat with the rubbed leather buttons, his black taffeta stock and soiled leather gloves, his stiff air and ungracious look, the Englishman’s idea of a King.
Karl wore a light peruke and a three-cornered hat; his face was impassive and cold, and he gave a bare salute in return for the Duke’s greeting. ”

“ At the pitiable sight Karl leaped up, his look dark with chagrin.
"King of Heaven!" he cried, "have I lived to see my first-born fear-stricken--my son a coward?"
"Hold, king!" broke in an old berserk, with generous boldness. "You do both yourself and the bairn a wrong. The lad's now witless. Till the luckless stone struck him down, he rode beside me, blithe of heart in the midst of the battle-din. No man in all our wedge cast a dart with truer aim. I myself saw him pierce two Saxons. He's yet witless." ”

“ You are a—person whom we fling out like sweepings, now that our eyesight returns, and accuse of common stealing. Go and be—!"
Nothing ever had so disgusted and astonished Kaiser Karl as this treatment,—not of Marlborough, whom he regarded only as he would have done a pair of military boots or a holster-pistol of superior excellence, for the uses that were in him,—but of the Kaiser Karl his own sublime self, the heart and focus of Political Nature; left in this manner, now when the sordid English and Dutch declined spending blood and money for him farther. ”

“ KARL gazed at the speaker in wonder. He a king? Always to live amongst the wearers of the purple? To be responsible for the welfare of half the world? It was unthinkable! But Zar Boris, the murderer of his own father—he must be punished, and at the hands of the son!
"I'll do it," he said simply. "That is, I'll do whatever you have planned in the way of exterminating the Zar. Then we'll talk of the new empire. But how is the Zar to be overcome? I thought he was invincible, with his Moon men and terrible weapons."
"Ah! That, my boy, is where our scientists have triumphed. ”

“ What beasts men are, my Karl! And yet to me you are above all other men, a prince amongst your fellows, and never did I love you so distractedly as that first night at the shooting-box, when I read the scorn in your eyes as you rejected me. ”

“ Karl wore his plain uniform with black cravat and top-boots.
He had now completely recovered from his sickness—the sickness engendered by a soft life—and was at the height of his great strength and perfect hardihood; he had filled out to the proportions of a Viking, could live on bread and water, go without food for days, sleep on the ground in midwinter with no covering but his cloak, and no pillow save one of straw. ”

“ The minister gazed at him with the questioning curiosity and amazement that this young man had never failed to rouse in his heart.
Karl was now twenty-two years of age; a temperate, active, and simple life had developed his already splendid constitution into perfect hardihood; physically he was like the ancient Vikings whose exploits formed the subject of the sole literature he cared to read; tall, in fine proportion, with powerful shoulders and slender hips, and with the easy carriage of the soldier and the horseman, a creature of bone and muscle, nerve and sinew perfectly attuned. ”

“ And all the more so because Karl saw neither the pathos nor the tragedy of his situation, and disposed his cooks and grooms, his pastors and clerks, with as much gravity as he had disposed his veteran troops before Varsovia or Klissow.
Yet he was more moved than Grothusen had ever seen him, save in the Turkish camp at Pruth. Something of the old Viking fury that could only be satisfied by an orgy of blood was upon him, apart from his real conviction that it would be dishonor to depart peaceably; he lusted to fight. ”

“ With these words, spoken too dryly to savour of pomp or bombast, Karl smiled at the young Palatine of Posen, and left the room with a brief salute to the others.
“He will make himself King of Poland,” said Stanislaus Leczinski, as the door closed.
“He will not,” answered Count Piper, with a touch of sarcasm in his voice. “That would be too ordinary an exploit to please His Majesty’s temper.”
“What can he do more astonishing or more magnificent than to take a crown from his enemy’s brow to place on his own!” exclaimed the young Palatine, turning his frank, pleasant face towards the Swede. ”

“ The grandson of Karl the Hammer was gathering his might to strike the pagans such another blow as had shattered their host on the plains of Touraine.
The royal pavilion stood in the heart of the camp, close to the river's bank. Above its peak floated the gold-bright folds of the three-forked standard, and the scores of messengers that came and went told that Karl the King was busied with the affairs of his vast realm. Those who passed in saw first a striking assemblage of the king's liegemen,--long-robed priests, counts in full war-gear, and court officials, ornate with silks and jewels. ”

“ But both the achievements and the character of Karl were extraordinary; his victories were owing to his personal genius, the discipline of his army to his own efforts, the austere behavior of his men, so rare in the soldiers of a conquering army, to his own example.
There was no danger or hardship that he had not shared with his meanest soldier, and if they did not cherish that warm devotion for him that men have felt for leaders more human in their weaknesses, at least they accorded him an awed respect that did not permit them to murmur at his most severe regulations. ”