“Ready!” he shouted to Steinmetz. “Come!”
The German ran in, and Paul closed the barricade.
The rabble poured in at the open door, screaming and shouting. Bloodstained, ragged, wild with the madness of murder, they crowded to the barricade. There they stopped, gazing stupidly at Paul.
“The Moscow Doctor—the Moscow Doctor!” passed from lip to lip. It was the women who shouted it the loudest. Like the wind through a forest it swept out of the room and down the stairs. Those crowding up pushed on and uttered the words as they came. The room was packed with them.
“Yes!” shouted Steinmetz, at the top of his great voice, “and the prince!”
He knew the note to strike, and struck with a sure hand. The barricade was torn aside, and the people swept forward, falling on their knees, grovelling at Paul’s feet, kissing the hem of his garment, seizing his strong hands in theirs.
It was a mighty harvest. That which is sown in the people’s hearts bears a thousandfold at last.
“Get them out of the place—open the big doors,” said Paul to Steinmetz. He stood cold and grave among them.
Some of them were already sneaking toward the door—the ringleaders, the talkers from the towns—mindful of their own necks in this change of feeling.
Steinmetz hustled them out, bidding them take their dead with them. Some of the servants reappeared, peeping, white-faced, behind curtains. When the last villager had crossed the threshold, these ran forward to close and bar the great doors.
“No,” said Paul, from the head of the stairs, “leave them open.”
So the great doors stood defiantly open. The lights of the state staircase flared out over the village as the peasants crept crestfallen to their cottages. They glanced up shamefacedly, but they had no word to say.
Steinmetz, in the drawing-room, looked at Paul with his resigned semi-humorous shrug of the shoulders.
“Touch-and-go, mein lieber!” he said.
“Yes; an end of Russia for us,” answered the prince.
He moved toward the door leading through to the old castle.
“I am going to look for Etta,” he said.
“And I,” said Steinmetz, going to the other entrance, “am going to see who opened the side door.”
XLIII
Behind the Veil
“Will you come with me?” said Paul to Maggie. “I will send the servants to put this room to rights.”
Maggie followed him out of the room, and together they went through the passages, calling Etta and looking for her. There was an air of gloom and chilliness in the rooms of the old castle. The outline of the great stones, dimly discernible through the wallpaper, was singularly suggestive of a fortress thinly disguised.
“I suppose,” said Paul, “that Etta lost her nerve.”
“Yes,” answered Maggie doubtfully; “I think it was that.”
Paul went on. He carried a lamp in one steady hand.
“We shall probably find her in one of these rooms,” he said. “It is so easy to lose one’s self among the passages and staircases.”
They passed on through the great smoking-room, with its hunting trophies. The lynx, with its face of Claude de Chauxville, grinned at them darkly from its pedestal.
Halfway down the stairs leading to the side door they met Steinmetz coming hastily up. His face was white and drawn with horror.
“You must not go down here,” he said, in a husky voice, barring the passage with his arm.
“Why not?”
“Go up again!” said Steinmetz breathlessly. “You must not go down here.”
Paul laid his hand on the broad arm stretched across the stairway. For a moment it almost appeared to be a physical struggle, then Steinmetz stepped aside.
“I beg of you,” he said, “not to go down.”
And Paul went on, followed by Steinmetz, and behind them, Maggie. At the foot of the stairs a broader passage led to the side door, and from this other passages opened into the servants’ quarters, and communicated through the kitchens with the modern building.
It was evident that the door leading to the grassy slope at the back of the castle was open, for a cold wind blew up the stairs and made the lamps flicker.
At the end of the passage Paul stopped.
Steinmetz was a little behind him, holding Maggie back.
The two lamps lighted up the passage and showed the white form of the Princess Etta lying huddled up against the wall. The face was hidden, but there was no mistaking the beautiful dress and hair. It could only be Etta. Paul stooped down and looked at her, but he did not touch her. He went a few paces forward and closed the door. Beyond Etta a black form lay across the passage, all trodden underfoot and dishevelled. Paul held the lamp down, and through the mud and blood Claude de Chauxville’s clear-cut features were outlined.
Death is always unmistakable, though it be shown by nothing more than a heap of muddy clothes.
Claude de Chauxville was lying across the passage. He had been trodden underfoot by the stream of maddened peasants who had entered by this door which had been opened for them, whom Steinmetz had checked at the foot of the stairs by shooting their ringleader.
De Chauxville’s scalp was torn away by a blow, probably given with a spade or some blunt instrument. His hand, all muddy and bloodstained, still held a revolver.
The other hand was stretched out toward Etta, who lay across his feet, crouching against the wall. Death had found and left her in an attitude of fear, shielding her bowed head from a blow with her upraised hands. Her loosened hair fell in a long wave of gold down to the bloodstained hand outstretched toward her. She was kneeling in De Chauxville’s blood, which stained the stone floor of the passage.
Paul leaned forward and laid his fingers on the bare arm, just below a bracelet which gleamed in the lamplight. She was quite dead. He held a lamp close to
