Satrap

“ It seemed indeed as though some strange influence were dominating Sapt; he went about the work like a man who is hardly awake. They placed the bodies each where the living man would be by night—the King in the guest-room, the huntsman in the sort of cupboard where the honest fellow had been wont to lie. They dug up the buried dog, Sapt chuckling convulsively, James grave as the mute whose grim doings he seemed to travesty: they carried the shot-pierced earth-grimed thing in, and laid it in the King's room. ”

“ Sapt began to know exactly how far he could lead or drive, and when he must follow.
“We’re playing against time,” I added. “Every day we leave the King where he is there is fresh risk. Every day I masquerade like this, there is fresh risk. Sapt, we must play high; we must force the game.”
“So be it,” he said, with a sigh.
To cut the story short, at half-past eleven that night Sapt and I mounted our horses. Fritz was again left on guard, our destination not being revealed to him. It was a very dark night. I wore no sword, but I carried a revolver, a long knife, and a bull’s-eye lantern. ”

“ To lay on the king the full blame for what he was would have been rank injustice. Sapt was not guilty of it, but his disappointment was bitter that all our efforts had secured no better ruler for Ruritania. Sapt could serve, but he liked his master to be a man.
“Ay, I’m afraid the lad’s work here is done,” he said, as I shook him by the hand. Then a sudden light came in his eyes. “Perhaps not,” he muttered. “Who knows?”
A man need not, I hope, be deemed uxorious for liking a quiet dinner alone with his wife before he starts on a long journey. ”

“ When did you make that decision?"
"This moment. I would to God I had made it twenty-four hours ago. As it is—" he shrugged—"why, twenty-four hours of her have been enough for me as they would have been for any man—a mercenary, self-seeking little baggage with the soul of a trull. Bah!" He shuddered in disgust of himself and her.
"Ah! That makes it easier for you," said M. de Sautron, cynically.
"Don't say it, Charles. It is not so. Had you been less of a fool, you would have warned me sooner." ”

“ For a while there was silence between father and son, then the latter spoke.
"It is my prayer, O my father, that thou art resolved to depose the faithless Sakr-el-Bahr from the command of this expedition."
Asad considered his son with a sombre eye. "Even now the galeasse should be setting out if the argosy is to be intercepted," he said. "If Sakr-el-Bahr does not command, who shall, in Heaven's name?"
"Try me, O my father," cried Marzak.
Asad smiled with grim wistfulness. "Art weary of life, O my son, that thou wouldst go to thy death and take the galeasse to destruction?" ”

“ Nothing save assassination suggested itself to the constable; a quarrel and a duel offered no security; and Sapt was not Black Michael, and had no band of ruffians to join him in an apparently unprovoked kidnapping of a distinguished nobleman.
“I can think of nothing,” muttered Sapt, rising from his chair and moving across towards the window in search of the fresh air that a man so often thinks will give him a fresh idea. He was in his own quarters, that room of the new chateau which opens on to the moat immediately to the right of the drawbridge as you face the old castle ”

“ Even before the match was struck I saw a dark body lying across the passage.
"A dead man!" I guessed instantly.
"Why, no," said Sapt, striking a light: "a dead dog, Fritz."
An exclamation of wonder escaped me as I fell on my knees. At the same instant Sapt muttered, "Aye, there's a lamp," and Stretching up his hand to a little oil lamp that stood on a bracket, he lit it, took it down, and held it over the body. It served to give a fair, though unsteady, light, and enabled us to see what lay in the passage. ”

“ With Marzak following at her heels, she swept like a fury into the darkened room where Asad took his ease.
"What is this I hear, O my lord?" she cried, in tone and manner more the European shrew than the submissive Eastern slave. "Is Sakr-el-Bahr to go upon this expedition against the treasure-galley of Spain?"
Reclining on his divan he looked her up and down with a languid eye. "Dost know of any better fitted to succeed?" quoth he.
"I know of one whom it is my lord's duty to prefer to that foreign adventurer. One who is entirely faithful and entirely to be trusted. ”

“ It is my desire that he sail as thy lieutenant on this voyage, and that thou be his preceptor even as I was thine of old."
Now here was something that pleased Sakr-el-Bahr as little as it pleased Marzak. Knowing the bitter enmity borne him by the son of Fenzileh he had every cause to fear trouble if this project of Asad's were realized.
"As I was thine of old!" he answered with crafty wistfulness. "Wilt thou not put to sea with us to-morrow, O Asad? There is none like thee in all Islam,, and what a joy were it not to stand beside thee on the prow as of old when we grapple with the Spaniard." ”

“ The Queen had begun to listen before now; her eyes were fixed on Sapt, and she had stretched out one arm to him, as if imploring him to read her his riddle. But a few words had in truth declared his device plainly enough in all its simplicity. Rudolf Rassendyll was dead, his body burnt to a cinder, and the King was alive, whole, and on his throne in Strelsau. Thus had Sapt caught from James the servant the infection of his madness, and had fulfilled in action the strange imagination which the little man had unfolded to him in order to pass their idle hours at the lodge. ”

“ It was the phlegmatic Sapper—the base materialist—who broke the news first.
With an expression of great relief on his face he gazed over the top of the trench. "Thank 'Eavens! you can't make a sixteenth, mate. The whole plurry tree's nah poo."
"Nah poo," murmured Bendigo Jones. "Nah poo. What is nah poo?" He stood up and peered over the top also. "I see no change. To some eyes it might seem that the tree had fallen; to mine it lives for ever—fragrant and cool." He descended and trod heavily on the General's toe. "To you, sir, as a man of understanding, I give my morning's labours. ”

“ Writing now of what his own eyes beheld, Lord Henry tells us how Sir John leapt to snatch a weapon from the armoured walls; how Sakr-el-Bahr barked out a single word in Arabic, and how at that word a half-dozen of his supple blackamoors sprang upon the knight like greyhounds upon a hare and bore him writhing to the ground.
Lady Henry screamed; her husband does not appear to have done anything, or else modesty keeps him silent on the score of it. Rosamund, white to the lips, continued to look on, whilst Lionel, overcome, covered his face with his hands in sheer horror. ”

“ Lovers count neither time nor danger; but Sapt counted both, and no more than a moment had passed before, with eager imperative gestures, he beckoned them to enter the room. The queen obeyed, and Rudolf followed her.
“Let nobody in, and don’t say a word to anybody,” whispered Sapt, as he entered, leaving Bernenstein outside. The young man was half-dazed still, but he had sense to read the expression in the constable’s eyes and to learn from it that he must give his life sooner than let the door be opened. So with drawn sword he stood on guard. ”

“ There, in the bright moonlight, on the far side of the broad terrace, close by the line of tall trees that fringed its edge, we saw Rudolf Rassendyll pacing slowly up and down, with his hands behind his back and his eyes fixed on the arbiter of his fate, on her who was to make him a king or send him a fugitive from Strelsau.
"There he is, madame," said Sapt. "Safe enough!"
The Queen did not answer. Sapt said no more, and of the rest of us none spoke. We stood watching him as he struggled with his great issue: a greater surely has seldom fallen to the lot of any man born in a private station. ”

“ Old Sapt, having done his work, suddenly turned talkative.
"That moon there," he said, pointing his square thick forefinger at the window, "is a mighty untrustworthy lady. I’ve known her wake a villain's conscience before now."
"I've known her send a lover's to sleep," laughed young Bernenstein, rising from his table, stretching himself, and lighting a cigar.
"Aye, she’s apt to take a man out of what he is," pursued old Sapt. "Set a quiet man near her, and he dreams of battle; an ambitious fellow, after ten minutes of her, will ask nothing better than to muse all his life away. ”

“ Then Sapt spoke in a low, hoarse whisper:
"It is not the king. Don't kiss him; he's not the king."
She drew back for a moment; then, with an arm still round my neck, she asked in superb indignation:
"Do I not know my love? Rudolf, my love!"
"It is not the king," said old Sapt again; and a sudden sob broke from tender-hearted Fritz.
It was the sob that told her no comedy was afoot.
"He is the king!" she cried. "It is the king's face—the king's ring—my ring! It is my love!"
"Your love, madame," said old Sapt, "but not the king. The king is there in the castle. ”

“ But Marzak shrugged his shoulders with make-believe contempt. "I knew he would refuse the mark I set," said he. "As for the olive-branch, it is so large a butt that a child could not miss it at this distance."
"If a child could not, then thou shouldst not," said Sakr-el-Bahr, who had so placed himself that his body was now between Marzak and the palmetto bale. "Let us see thee hit it, O Marzak." And as he spoke he raised his cross-bow, and scarcely seeming to take aim, he loosed his shaft. ”

“ The old fellow shrugged his shoulders.
“All young men like to ride abroad now and again, why not the King?” said he; and Sapt’s laugh left his opinion of my motives undisturbed.
“You should always trust a man,” observed Sapt, fitting the key in the lock, “just as far as you must.”
We went in and reached the dressing-room. Flinging open the door, we saw Fritz von Tarlenheim stretched, fully dressed, on the sofa. He seemed to have been sleeping, but our entry woke him. He leapt to his feet, gave one glance at me, and with a joyful cry, threw himself on his knees before me. ”

“ None the less, take care not to speak of the only woman whose name I reverence."
And then turning at bay, as even the rat will do, Lionel sprang upon him, with clawing hands outstretched to reach his throat. But Sakr-el-Bahr caught him in a grip that bent him howling to his knees.
"You find me strong, eh?" he gibed. "Is it matter for wonder? Consider that for six endless months I toiled at the oar of a galley, and you'll understand what it was that turned my body into iron and robbed me of a soul." ”

“ In another quarter of an hour Castelroc would return.
Oh, if I could only have that quarter of an hour free, so that I might yet go to the Rue du Bac!
Then the thought of escape suggested itself, and I was astonished that it had not occurred to me before. The next instant, however, I laughed inwardly—the choke-pear prevented me from laughing aloud—as I remembered how impossible it was. But I set myself to think.
If only I could release my hands! But how? I glanced about me. My sword lay on the ground, but I could devise no means of employing it. ”

“ And then from the background came an inarticulate sound, a strangled, snarling sob from Lionel.
Sakr-el-Bahr turned slowly. He eyed the fellow a moment in silence, then he laughed.
"Ha! My sometime brother. A pretty fellow, as God lives is it not? Consider him Rosamund. Behold how gallantly misfortune is borne by this pillar of manhood upon which you would have leaned, by this stalwart husband of your choice. Look at him! Look at this dear brother of mine."
Under the lash of that mocking tongue Lionel's mood was stung to anger where before it had held naught but fear. ”

“ Sakr-el-Bahr smiled grimly. "It is an impatience well known to me, my lord, where she is concerned," he answered slowly. "I boiled with it myself for five interminable years. To make an end of it I went a distant perilous voyage to England in a captured Frankish vessel. Thou didst not know, O Asad, else thou wouldst...."
"Bah!" broke in the Basha. "Thou'rt a huckster born. There is none like thee, Sakr-el-Bahr, in any game of wits. Well, well, name thine own price, strike thine own profit out of my impatience and let us have done." ”

“ So when the King's soldiers entered the room to seize him he waited until they came very near, and then he twisted the ring the Fairy Godmother had given him, and bing—flat on their backs the soldiers fell, bumping their heads like anything.
"Good-by," cried Pranc, waving his hand to the Snooping Bug, "I'm going home."
"Wait," shouted the Snooping Bug, "I'll go with you."
"No," replied the Prince, "I've had quite enough of snoopers and snooping bugs. You stay where you are."
Then he jumped over the prostrate soldiers and out the door of the palace. ”

“ Bethink thee of all the bounty these hands have lavished on thee. Thou art my own lieutenant, and mayest one day be more. In Algiers there is none above thee save myself. Art, then, so thankless as to deny me the first thing I ask of thee? Truly is it written 'Ungrateful is Man.'"
"Didst thou know," began Sakr-el-Bahr, "all that is involved for me in this...."
"I neither know nor care," Asad cut in. "Whatever it may be, it should be as naught when set against my will." Then he discarded anger for cajolery. He set a hand upon Sakr-el-Bahr's stalwart shoulder. "Come, my son. ”

“ You're very dark in here, Sapt. Why don't you draw back the curtains?": and the King moved towards the curtain behind which Rudolf was.
"Allow me, sire," cried Sapt, darting past him and laying a hand on the curtain.
A malicious gleam of pleasure shot into Rischenheim's eyes.
"In truth, sire," continued the Constable, his hand on the curtain, "we were so interested in what the Count was saying about his dogs——"
"By heaven, I forgot!" cried the King. "Yes, yes, the dogs. Now tell me, Count——"
"Your pardon, sire," put in young Bernenstein, "but breakfast waits." ”