The conversation at breakfast and luncheon had been maintained by Steinmetz—always collected and a little humorous. It was now dinner time. The whole castle was brilliantly lighted, as if for a great assembly of guests. During the last week a fuller state—a greater ceremony—had been observed by Paul’s orders, and Steinmetz had thought more than once of that historical event which appealed to his admiration most—the Indian Mutiny.
Maggie was in the drawing-room alone. She was leaning one hand and arm on the mantelpiece, looking thoughtfully into the fire. The rustle of silk made her turn her head. It was Etta, beautifully dressed, with a white face and eyes dull with suspense.
“I think it is warmer tonight,” said Maggie, urged by a sudden necessity of speech, hampered by a sudden chill at the heart.
“Yes,” answered Etta. And she shivered.
For a moment there was a little silence and Etta looked at the clock. It was ten minutes to seven.
A high wind was blowing, the first of the equinoctial gales heralding the spring. The sound of the wind in the great chimney was like the moaning of high rigging at sea.
The door opened and Steinmetz came in. Etta’s face hardened, her lips closed with a snap. Steinmetz looked at her and at Maggie. For once he seemed to have no pleasantry ready for use. He walked toward a table where some books and newspapers lay in pleasant profusion. He was standing there when Paul came into the room. The prince glanced at Maggie. He saw where his wife stood, but he did not look at her.
Steinmetz was writing something on half a sheet of notepaper, in pencil. He pushed it across the table toward Paul, who drew it nearer to him.
“Are you armed?” were the written words.
Paul crushed the paper in the hollow of his hand and threw it into the fire, where it burned away. He also glanced at the clock. It was five minutes to seven.
Suddenly the door was thrown open and a manservant rushed in—pale, confused, terror-stricken. He was a giant footman in the gorgeous livery of the Alexis.
“Excellency,” he stammered in Russian, “the castle is surrounded—they will kill us—they will burn us out—”
He stopped abashed before Paul’s pointing finger and stony face.
“Leave the room!” said Paul. “You forget yourself.”
Through the open doorway to which Paul pointed peered the ashen faces of other servants huddled together like sheep.
“Leave the room!” repeated Paul, and the man obeyed him, walking to the door unsteadily with quivering chin. On the threshold he paused. Paul stood pointing to the door. He had a poise of the head—some sudden awakening of the blood that had coursed in the veins of hereditary potentates. Maggie looked at him; she had never known him like this. She had known the man, she had never encountered the prince.
The big clock over the castle boomed out the hour, and at the same instant there arose a roar like the voice of the surf on a Malabar shore. There was a crashing of glass almost in the room itself. Already Steinmetz was drawing the curtains closer over the windows in order to prevent the light from filtering through the interstices of the closed shutters.
“Only stones,” he said to Paul, with his grim smile; “it might have been bullets.”
As if in corroboration of his suggestion the sharp ring of more than one firearm rang out above the dull roar of many voices.
Steinmetz crossed the room to where Etta was standing, white-lipped, by the fire. Her clenched hand was gripping Maggie’s wrist. She was half hidden behind her cousin. Maggie was looking at Paul. Etta was obviously conscious of Steinmetz’s gaze and approach.
“I asked you before to tell me all you knew,” he said. “You refused. Will you do it now?”
Etta met his glance for a moment, shrugged her shoulders, and turned her back on him. Paul was standing in the open doorway with his back turned toward them—alone. The palace had never looked so vast as it did at that moment—brilliantly lighted, gorgeous, empty.
Through the hail of blows on the stout doors, the rattle of stones at the windows, the prince could hear yells of execration and the wild laughter that is bred of destruction. He turned and entered the room. His face was gray and terrible.
“They have no chance,” he said, “of effecting an entrance by force; the lower windows are barred. They have no ladders, Steinmetz and I have seen to that. We have been expecting this for some days.”
He turned toward Steinmetz as if seeking confirmation. The din was increasing. When the German spoke he had to shout.
“We can beat them back if we like. We can shoot them down from the windows. But”—he paused, shrugged his shoulders, and laughed—“what will you! This prince will not shoot his father’s serfs.”
“We must leave you,” went on Paul. “We must beware of treachery. Whatever happens, we shall not leave the house. If the worst comes, we make our last stand in this room. Whatever happens, stay here till we come.”
He left the room, followed by Steinmetz. There were only three doors in the impregnable stone walls; the great entrance, a side door for use in times of deep snow, and the small concealed entrance by which the starosta was in the habit of reaching his masters.
For a moment the two men stood at the head of the stairs listening to the wild commotion. They were turning to descend the state stairs when
