"Is the messenger waiting?"

"No; he went straight off again."

Unrolling the scrap he read this brief message scrawled in pencil and evidently in dire haste—

"All is lost! I am prisoner! Go straightway to London for help from my Embassy.

"R. VON B."

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed aloud.

"Is it bad news?" asked Julia, with a solicitude that instantly suggested possibilities to his fertile brain.

"Horribly!" he said. "It tells of a calamity that has befallen a very dear friend of mine! Oh, Rudolph, Rudolph! And I a helpless prisoner!"

As he anticipated, this outburst of emotion was not without its effect.

"I am so sorry!" she said. "I—I don't believe, Count Bunker, you are as guilty as father says!"

"I swear to you I am not!"

"Can I—help you?"

He thought swiftly.

"Is there any one about the house just now?"

"Oh yes; the keeper is stationed in the hall!"

"Miss Wallingford, if you would atone for a deep injury which you have inadvertently done an innocent man, bring me fifty feet of stout rope! And, I say, see that the door of the bicycle house is left unlocked. Will you do this?"

"I—I'll try."

A sound on the stairs alarmed her, and with a fleeting smile of sympathy she was gone and the door locked upon him again.

Again the time passed slowly by, and he was left to ponder over the critical nature of the situation as revealed by the luckless Baron's intelligence. Clearly he must escape to-night, at all hazards.

"What's that? My rope?" he wondered.

But it was only the arrival of his dinner, brought as before upon a tray and set just within the door, as though they feared for the bearer's life should he venture within reach of this desperate adventurer from Uruguay.

"A very large dish for a very small appetite," he thought, as he bore his meal over to the bed and drew his chair up before it.

It looked indeed as though a roasted goose must be beneath the cover. He raised it, and there, behold! lay a large coil of excellent new rope. The Count chuckled.

"Commend me to the heart and the wit of women! What man would ever have provided so dainty a dish as this? Unless, indeed" (he had the breadth of mind to add) "it happened to be a charming adventuress who was in trouble."

Drinking the half pint of moderate claret which they had allowed him to the happiness and prosperity of all true-hearted women, he could not help regretting that his imprisoned confederate should be so unlikely to enjoy similar good fortune.

"He went too far with those two dear girls. A woman deceived as he has deceived them will never forgive him. They'd stand sentry at his cell-door sooner than let the poor Baron escape," he reflected commiserately, and sighed to think of the disastrous effect this mishap might have both upon his friend's diplomatic career and domestic felicity.

While waiting for the dusk to deepen, and endeavoring to console himself for the lack of cigars with the poor remedy of cigarettes, he employed his time profitably in tying a series of double knots upon the line of rope. Then at last, when he could see the stars bright above the trees and hear no sound in the house, he pulled his bed softly to the open window, and to it fastened one end of his rope securely. The other he quietly let drop, and losing not an instant followed it hand under hand, murmuring anathemas on the rough wall that so scraped his evening trousers.

On tiptoe he stole to the door through which the bicycle had gone. It yielded to a push, and once inside he ventured to strike a match.

"By Gad! I've a choice of half a dozen," he exclaimed.

It need scarcely be said that he selected the best; and after slitting with his pocket-knife the tires of all the others, he mounted and pedalled quietly down the drive. The lodge gates stood open; the road, a trifle muddy but clear of all traffic, stretched visible for a long way in the starlight; the breeze blew fair behind him.

"May Providence guide me to the station," he prayed, and rode off into the night.



CHAPTER XXXIII

Suppose the clock be set back four-and-twenty hours, and behold now the Baron von Blitzenberg, the diplomatist and premier baron of Bavaria, engaged in unhappy argument with himself. Unhappy, because his reason, though so carefully trained from the kindergarten upward, proved unable to combat the dismal onsets of superstition.

"Pooh! who cares for an old picture?" Reason would reiterate.

"It is an omen," said Superstition simply; and Reason stood convicted as an empty braggart.

But if Time be the great healer, Dinner is at least a clever quack, and when he and old Mr. Rentoul had consumed well-nigh a bottle and a half of their host's port between them, the outlook became much less gloomy. A particularly hilarious evening in the drawing-room completed the triumph of mind over what he was now able to term "jost nonsense," and he slept that night as soundly as the Count was simultaneously slumbering in Sir Justin's bed-room. And there was no unpleasant awakening in the Baron's case. On the contrary, all nature seemed in a conspiracy to make the last day of his adventure pleasant. The sun shone brightly, his razors had an excellent edge, sausages were served for breakfast, and when he joined the family afterwards he found them as affectionately kind as a circle of relations. In fact, the Baron had dropped more than one hint the night before of such a nature that they had some reason for supposing relationship imminent. It is true Eva was a little disappointed that the actual words were not yet said, and when he made an airy reference to paying a farewell call that morning upon their neighbors at Lincoln Lodge, she exhibited so much disapproval in her air that he said at once—

"Ach, vell, I shall jost go after lonch and be back in an hour and a half. I jost vish to say good-bye, zat is all."

Little guessing how much was to hang upon this postponement, he drove over after luncheon with a mind entirely reassured. With only an afternoon to be safely passed, no mishap, he was sure, could possibly happen now. If indeed the Maddisons chose to be offended with him, why, then, his call would merely be the briefer and he would recommend Eva for the post of Lady Tulliwuddle without qualification. It was his critics who had reason to fear, not he.

Miss Maddison was at home, the staff of footmen assured him, and, holding his head as high as a chieftain should, he strode into her sanctuary.

"Do I disturb you?"

He asked this with a quicker beating heart. Not Eleanor alone, but her father and Ri confronted him, and it was very plain to see that a tempest was in the brewing. Her eyes were bright with tears and indignation; their brows heavy with formidable frowns. At the first moment of his entering, extreme astonishment at seeing him was clearly their dominant emotion, and as evidently it rapidly developed into a sentiment even less hospitable.

"Why, this beats the devil!" ejaculated Mr. Maddison; and for a moment this was the sole response to his inquiry.

The next to speak was Ri—

"Show it him, Poppa! Confront him with the evidence!"

With ominous deliberation the millionaire picked up a newspaper from the floor, where apparently it had been crumpled and flung, smoothed out the creases, and approached the Baron till their noses were in danger of collision. While executing this manoeuvre the silence was only broken by the suppressed sobbing of his daughter. Then at last he spoke.

"Our mails, sir, have just arrived. This, sir, is 'The Times' newspaper, published in the city of London yesterday morning."

He shook it in the Baron's face with a sudden vehemence that caused that nobleman to execute an abrupt movement backward.

"Take it," continued the millionaire—"take it, sir, and explain this if you can!"

So confused had the Baron's mind become already that it was with difficulty he could decipher the following petrifying announcement—

"Tulliwuddle—Herringay.—In London, privately, Lord Tulliwuddle to Constance, daughter of Robert Herringay."

The Baron's brain reeled.

"Here is another paragraph that may interest you," pursued Mr. Maddison, turning the paper outside in with an alarmingly vigorous movement, and presenting a short paragraph for the Baron's inspection. This ran—

"PEER AND ACTRESS.

"As announced in our marriage column, the wedding took place yesterday, privately, of Lord Tulliwuddle, kinsman and heir of the late peer of that name, so well known in London and Scottish society, and Miss Constance Herringay, better known as 'Connie Fitz Aubyn,' of the Gaiety Theatre. It is understood that the young couple have departed for the Mediterranean."

In a few seconds given him to prepare his mind, the Baron desperately endeavored to imagine what the resourceful Bunker would say or do under these awful circumstances.

"Well, sir?" said Mr. Maddison.

"It is a lie!"

"A lie?"

Ri laughed scornfully.

"Mean to say no such marriage took place?"

"It vas not me."

"Who was it, then?"

"Anozzer man, perhaps."

"Another Lord Tulliwuddle?" inquired the millionaire.

"Zey have made a mistake mit ze name. Yes, zat is how."

"Can it be possible?" cried Eleanor eagerly, her grief for the moment forgotten.

"No," said her father; "it is not possible. The announcement is confirmed by the paragraph. A mistake is inconceivable."

The Baron thought he perceived a brilliant idea.

"Ach, it is ze ozzer Tollvoddle!" he exclaimed. "So! zat is it, of course."

"You mean to say there is another peerage of Tulliwuddle?"

"Oh, yes."

"Fetch Debrett, Ri!"

But Ri had already not only fetched Debrett, but found the place.

"A darned lie. Thought so," he observed succinctly.

The luckless diplomatist was now committed to perdition.

"It is not in ze books," he exclaimed. "It is bot a baronetcy."

"A baronetcy!"

"And illegitimate also."

"Sir," burst forth Ri, "you are a thundering liar! Is this your marriage notice?"

The Baron changed his tactics.

"Yes!" he declared.

Eleanor screamed.

"Don't fuss, Eleanor," said her father kindly. "That ain't true, anyhow. Why, the day before yesterday he was throwing that darned hammer."

"Which came down last night in our yard with the head burst!" added Ri contemptuously. "Found you out there too!"

"Is that so!" exclaimed his father.

"That is so, sir!"

The three looked at him, and it was hard to say whether indignation or contempt was more prominent in their faces. This was more than he could endure.

"I vill not be so looked at!" he cried; "I vill leave you!"

"No you won't!" said Ri.

And the Baron saw his retreat cut of by the athletic and determined young man.

"Before you leave, we have one or two questions to ask you," said Mr. Maddison. "Are you Lord Tulliwuddle, or are you not?"

"Yes!—No!" replied the Baron.

"Which, sir?"

Expanding his chest, he made the awe-inspiring announcement—

"I am moch greater zan Tollyvoddle! I am ze Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg!"

"Another darned lie!" commented Ri.

Mr. Maddison laughed sardonically; while Eleanor, with flashing eyes, now joined in the attack upon the hapless nobleman.

"You wretched creature! Isn't it enough to have shammed to be one peer without shamming to be another?"

"Bot I am! Ja, I swear to you! Can you not see zat I am noble?"

"Curiously enough we can't," replied Mr. Maddison.

But his daughter's scepticism was a little shaken by the fervor of his assurances.

"But, Poppa, perhaps he may be a German peer."

"German waiter, more likely!" sneered Ri. "What shall we do with him? Tar and feathers, I guess, would just about suit his complaint."

"No, Ri, no," said his father cautiously. "Remember we are no longer beneath the banner of freedom. In this benighted country it might lead into trouble. Guess we can find him accommodation, though, in that bit of genuine antique above the harness-room. It's fitted with a very substantial lock. We'll make Dugald M'Culloch responsible for this BARON till the police take him over."

Vain were the Baron's protests; and upon the appearance of Dugald M'Culloch, fisherman and factotum to the millionaire, accompanied by three burly satellites, vain, he perceived, would be the most desperate resistance. He plead the privileges of a foreign diplomatist, threatened a descent of the German army upon Lincoln Lodge, guaranteed an intimate acquaintance with the American ambassador—"Who vill make you sorry for zis!" but all without moving Mr. Maddison's resolution. Even Eleanor whispered a word for him and was repulsed, for he overheard her father replying to her—

"No, no, Eleanor; no more a diplomatist than you would have been Lady Tulliwuddle. Guess I know what I'm doing."

Whereupon the late Lord Tulliwuddle, kilt and all, was conveyed by a guard of six tall men and deposited in the bit of genuine antique above the harness-room. This proved to be a small chamber in a thick-walled wing of the original house, now part of the back premises; and there, with his face buried in his hands, the poor prisoner moaned aloud—

"Oh, my life, she is geblasted! I am undone! Oh, I am lost!"

"Will it be so bad as that, indeed?"

He looked up with a start, and perceived Dugald, his jailor, gazing upon him with an expression of indescribable sagacity.

"The master will be sending me with his car to tell the folks at Hechnahoul," added Dugald.

Still the Baron failed to comprehend the exchange of favors suggested by his jailor's sympathetic voice.

"Go, zen!" he muttered, and bent his head.

"You will not be wishing to send no messages to your friends?"

At last the prisoner understood. For a sovereign Dugald promised to convey a note to the Count; for five he undertook to bribe the chauffeur to convey him to The Lash, when he learned where that gentleman was to be found. And he further decided to be faithful to his trust, since, as he prudently reflected—

"If he will be a real chentleman after all it shall not be well to be hard with him. And if he will not be, nobody shall know."

The Baron felt a trifle less hopeless now, yet so black did the prospect remain that he firmly believed he should never be able to raise his head again and meet the gaze of his fellow-men; not at least if he stayed in that room till the police arrived.



CHAPTER XXXIV

Not even the news of Flodden brought direr dismay to Hechnahoul than Mr. Maddison's brief note. Lord Tulliwuddle an impostor? That magnificent young man a fraud? So much geniality, brawn, and taste for the bagpipes merely the sheep's clothing that hid a wandering wolf? Incredible! Yet, on second thoughts, how very much more thrilling than if he had really been an ordinary peer! And what a judgment on the presumption of Mr. and Mrs. Gallosh! Hard luck on Eva, of course—but, then, girls who aspire to marry out of their own station must expect this kind of thing.

The latter part of this commentary was naturally not that of the pretender's host and hostess. In the throes of their anger and chagrin their one consoling reflection was that no friends less tried than Mr. and Mrs. Rentoul happened to be there to witness their confusion. Yet other sufferers since Job have found that the oldest friends do not necessarily of er the most acceptable consolation.

"Oh, oh! I feel like to die of grief!" wailed poor Mrs. Gallosh.

"Aye; it's an awful smack in the eye for you," said Mr. Rentoul sagely.

"Smack in the eye!" thundered his host. "It's a criminal offence—that's what it is! It's a damned swindle! It's a——"

"Oh, hush, hush!" interrupted Mrs. Rentoul in a shocked voice. "What words for a lady to hear! After all, you must remember you never made any inquiries."

"Inquiries! What for should I be making inquiries about my guests? YOU never dropped a word of such a thing! Who'd have listened if I had? It was just Lord Tulliwuddle this and Lord Tulliwuddle that from morning to night since ever he came to the Castle."

"Duncan's so simple-minded," groaned Mrs. Gallosh.

"And what were you, I'd like to know? What were you?" retorted her justly incensed spouse. "Never a word did I hear, but just that he was such an aristocratic young man, and any one could see he had blue blood in his veins, and stuff of that kind!"

"I more than once had my own doubts about that," said the alcohol expert with a knowing wink. "There was something about him—— Ah, well, he was not exactly my own idea of a lord."

"YOUR idea?" scoffed his oldest and best of friends. "What do YOU know of lords, I'd like to know?"

"Well, well," answered the sage peaceably, "maybe we've neither of us had much opportunity of judging of the nobility. It's just more bad luck than anything else that you should have gone to the expense of setting up in style in a lord's castle and then having this downcome. If I'd had similar ambeetions it might have been me."

This soft answer was so far from turning away wrath, that Mrs. Rentoul again felt compelled to stem the tide of her host's eloquence.

"Oh, hush!" she exclaimed; "I'd have fancied you'd be having no thoughts beyond your daughter's affliction."

"My Eva! my poor Eva! Where is the suffering child?" cried Mrs. Gallosh. "Duncan, what'll she be doing?"

"Making a to-do like the rest of the women-folk," replied her husband, with rather less sympathy than the occasion seemed to demand.

In point of fact Eva had disappeared from the company immediately after hearing the contents of Mr. Maddison's letter, and whatever she had been doing, it had not been weeping alone, for at that moment she ran into the room, her face agitated, but rather, it seemed, with excitement than grief.

"Papa, lend me five pounds," she panted.

"Lend you—five pounds! And what for, I'd like to know?"

"Don't ask me now. I—I promise to tell you later—some time later."

"I'll see myself——! I mean, you're talking nonsense."

Eva's lip trembled.

"Hi, hist! Eva, my dear," said Mr. Rentoul; "if you're wanting the money badly, and your papa doesn't see his way——"

He concluded his sentence with a wink and a dive into his trousers-pocket, and a minute later Eva had fled from the room again.

This action of the sage, being at total variance to his ordinary habits (which indeed erred on the economical side), was attributed by his irate host—with a certain show of reason—to the mere intention of annoying him; and the conversation took a more acrimonious turn than ever. In fact, when Eva returned a few minutes later she was just in time to hear her father thunder in an infuriated voice—

"A German waiter, is he? Aye, that's verra probable, verra probable indeed. In fact I might have known it when I saw you and him swilling a bottle and a half of my best port together! Birds of a feather—aye, aye, exactly!"

The crushing retort which the sage evidently had ready to heap upon the fire of this controversy was anticipated by Miss Gallosh.

"He isn't a German waiter, papa! He is a German BARON—and an ambassador, too!"

The four started and stared at her.

"Where did you learn that?" demanded her father.

"I've been talking to the man who brought the letter, and he says that Lord Tulli—I mean the Baron—declares positively that he is a German nobleman!"

"Tuts, fiddlesticks!" scoffed her father.

"Verra like a whale," pronounced the sage.

"I wouldn't believe what HE said," declared Mrs. Gallosh.

"One can SEE he isn't," said Mrs. Rentoul.

"The kind of Baron that plays in a German band, perhaps," added her husband, with a whole series of winks to give point to this mot.

"He's just a scoundrelly adventurer!" shouted Mr. Gallosh.

"I hope he'll get penal servitude, that's what I hope," said his wife with a sob.

"And, judging from his appearance, that'll be no new experience for him," commented the sage.

So remarkably had their judgment of the late Lord Tulliwuddle waxed in discrimination. And, strange to say, his only defender was the lady he had injured most.

"I still believe him a gentleman!" she cried, and swept tearfully from the room.



CHAPTER XXXV

While his late worshippers were trampling his memory in the mire, the Baron von Blitzenberg, deserted and dejected, his face still buried in his hands, endured the slow passage of the doleful afternoon. Unlike the prisoner at The Lash, who, by a coincidence that happily illustrates the dispensations of Providence, was undergoing at the same moment an identical ordeal, the Baron had no optimistic, whimsical philosophy to fall back upon. Instead, he had a most tender sense of personal dignity that had been egregiously outraged—and also a wife. Indeed, the thought of Alicia and of Alicia's parent was alone enough to keep his head bowed down.

"Ach, zey most not know," he muttered. "I shall give moch money—hondreds of pound—not to let zem find out. Oh, what for fool have I been!"

So deeply was he plunged in these sorrowful meditations, and so constantly were they concerned with the two ladies whose feelings he wished to spare, that when a hum of voices reached his ear, one of them strangely—even ominously—familiar, he only thought at first that his imagination had grown morbidly vivid. To dispel the unpleasant fancies suggested by this imagined voice, he raised his head, and then the next instant bounded from his chair.

"Mein Gott!" he muttered, "it is she."

Too thunderstruck to move, he saw his prison door open, and there, behold! stood the Countess of Grillyer, a terrible look upon her high-born features, a Darius at either shoulder. In silence they surveyed one another, and it was Mr. Maddison who spoke first.

"Guess this is a friend of yours," he observed.

One thought and one only filled the prisoner's mind—she must leave him, and immediately.

"No, no; I do not know her!" he cried.

"You do not know me?" repeated the Countess in a voice rich in promise.

"Certainly I do not."

"She knows you all right," said the millionaire.

"Says she does," put in Ri in a lower voice; "but I wouldn't lay much money on her word either."

"Rudolph! You pretend you do not know me?" cried the Countess between wrath and bewilderment.

"I never did ever see sochlike a voman before," reiterated the Baron.

"What do you say to that, ma'am?" inquired Mr. Maddison.

"I say—I blush to say—that this wretched young man is my son-in-law," declared the Countess.

As she had come to the house inquiring merely for Lord Tulliwuddle, and been conducted straight to the prisoner's cell, the stupefying effect of this announcement may readily be conceived.

"What!" ejaculated the Dariuses.

"It is not true! She is mad! Take her avay, please!" shouted the Baron, now desperate in his resolution to say or do anything, so long as he got rid of his formidable relative.

The Countess staggered back.

"Is he demented?" she inquired.

"Say, ma'am," put in Ri, "are you the mother of Miss Constance Herringay?"

"Of——? I am Lady Grillyer!"

"See here, my good lady, that's going a little too far," said the millionaire not unkindly. "This friend of yours here first calls himself Lord Tulliwuddle, and then the Baron von something or other. Well, now, that's two of the aristocracy in this under-sized apartment already. There's hardly room for a third—see? Can't you be plain Mrs. Smith for a change?"

The Countess tottered.

"Fellow!" she said in a faint voice, "I—I do not understand you."

"Thought that would fetch her down," commented Ri.

"Lead her back to ze train and make her go to London!" pleaded the Baron earnestly.

"You stick to it, you don't know her?" asked Mr. Maddison shrewdly.

"No, no, I do not!"

"Is her name Lady Grillyer?"

"Not more zan it is mine!"

"Rudolph!" gasped the Countess inarticulately. "He is—he WAS my son!"

"Stoff and nonsense!" roared the Baron. "Remove her!—I am tired."

"Well," said Mr. Maddison, "I guess I don't much believe either of you; but whether you know each other or not, you make such a remarkably fine couple that I reckon you'd better get acquainted now. Come, Ri."

And before either Countess or Baron could interpose, their captors had slipped out, the key was turned, and they were left to the dual enjoyment of the antique apartment.

"Teufel!" shouted the Baron, kicking the door frantically. "Open him, open him! I vill pay you a hondred pound! Goddam! Open!"

But only the gasps of the Countess answered him.

It is generally conceded that if you want to see the full depths of brutality latent in man, you must thoroughly frighten him first. This condition the Countess of Grillyer had exactly succeeded in fulfilling, with the consequence that the Baron, hitherto the most complacent and amiable of sons-in-law, seemed ambitious of rivalling the Turk. When he perceived that no answer to his appeals was forthcoming, dark despair for a moment overcame him. Then the fiendishly ingenious idea struck him—might not a woman's screams accomplish what his own lungs were unable to effect? Turning an inflamed and frowning countenance upon the lady who had intrusted her daughter's happiness to his hands, he addressed her in a deep hissing voice—

"Shcream, shcream, voman! Shcream loudly, or I vill knock you!"

But the Countess was made of stern stuff. Outraged and frightened though she was, she yet retorted huskily—

"I will not scream, Rudolph! I—I demand an explanation first!"

Executing a step of the sword-dance within a yard of her, he reiterated

"Shcream so zat zey may come back!"

She blinked, but held her ground.

"I insist upon knowing what you mean, Rudolph! I insist upon your telling me! What are you doing here in that preposterous kilt?"

The Baron's wits brightened with the acuteness of the emergency.

"Ha!" he cried, "I vill take my kilt off—take him off before your eyes this instant if you do not shcream!"

But she merely closed her eyes.

"If you dare! If you dare, Rudolph, I shall inform your Emperor! And I will not look! I cannot see you!"

Whether in deference to imperial prejudices, or because a kiltless man would be thrown away upon a lady who refused to look at him, the Baron regretfully desisted from this project. At his wits' end, he besought her—

"Make zem take you avay, so zat you vill be safe from my rage! I do not trost myself mit you. I am so violent as a bull! Better zat you should go; far better—do you not see?"

"No, Rudolph, no!" replied the adamant lady. "I have come to guard you against your own abandoned nature, and I shall only leave this room when you do!"

She sat down and faced him, palpitating, but immovable; and against such obstinacy the unhappy Rudolph gave up the contest in despair.

"But I shall not talk mit her; oh, Himmel, nein!" he said to himself; and in pursuance of this policy sat with his back turned to her while the shadows of evening gradually filled the room. In vain did she address him: he neither answered nor moved. Indeed, to discourage her still further, he even summoned up a forced gaiety of demeanor, and in a low rumble of discords sang to himself the least respectable songs he knew.

"His mind is certainly deranged," thought the Countess. "I must not let him out of my sight. Ah, poor Alicia!"

But in time, when the dusk was thickening so fast that her son-in-law's broad back had already grown indistinct of outline, and no voice or footstep had come near their prison, her thoughts began to wander from his case to her own. The outrageous conduct of those Americans in discrediting her word and incarcerating her person, though overshadowed at the time by the yet greater atrocity of the Baron's behavior, now loomed up in formidable proportions. And the gravity of their offence was emphasized by an unpleasant sensation she now began to experience with considerable acuteness.

"Do they mean to starve us as well as insult us?" she wondered.

The Baron's thoughts also seemed to have drifted into a different channel. He no longer sang; he fidgeted in his chair; he even softly groaned; and at last he actually changed his attitude so far as to survey the dim form of his mother-in-law over one shoulder.

"Oh, ze devil!" he exclaimed aloud. "I am so hongry!"

"That is no reason why you should also be profane," said the Countess severely.

"I did not speak to you," retorted the Baron, and again a constrained silence fell on the room.

The Baron was the first to break it.

"Ha!" he cried. "I hear a step."

"Thank God!" exclaimed the Countess devoutly.

In the blaze of a stable lantern there entered to them Dugald M'Culloch, jailor.

"Will you be for any supper?" he inquired, with a politeness he felt due to prisoners with purses.

"I do starve!" replied the Baron.

"And I am nearly fainting!" cried the Countess.

Both rose with an alacrity astonishing in people so nearly exhausted, and made as though they would pass out. With a deprecatory gesture Dugald arrested them.

"I will bring your supper fery soon," said he.

"Here?" gasped the Countess.

"It is the master's orders."

"Tell him I vill have him ponished mit ze law, if he does not let me come out!" roared the Baron.

Their jailor was courtesy itself; but it was in their prison that they supped—a silent meal, and very plain. And, bitterest pill of all, they were further informed that in their prison they must pass the night.

"In ze same room!" cried the Baron frantically. "Impossible! Improper!"

Even his mother-in-law's solicitude shrank from this vigil; but with unruffled consideration for their comfort their guardian and his assistants made up two beds forthwith. The Baron, subdued to a fierce and snarling moodiness, watched their preparations with a lurid eye.

"Put not zat bed so near ze door," he snapped.

In his ear his jailor whispered, "That one's for you, sir, and dinna put off your clothes!"

The Baron started, and from that moment his air of resignation began to affront the Countess as deeply as his previous violence. When they were again alone, stretched in black darkness each upon their couch, she lifted up her voice in a last word of protest—

"Rudolph! have you no single feeling for me left? Why didn't you stab that man?"

But the Baron merely retorted with a lifelike affectation of snoring.



CHAPTER XXXVI

For a long time the Baron lay wide awake, every sense alert, listening for the creak of a footstep on the wooden stair that led up from the harness-room to his prison. What else could the strange words of Dugald have meant, save that some friend proposed to climb those stairs and gently open that stubborn door? And in this opinion he had been confirmed when he observed that on Dugald's departure the key turned with a silence suggesting a recently oiled lock. His bed lay along the wall, with the head so close to the door that any one opening it and stretching forth a hand could tweak him by the nose without an effort (supposing that were the object of their visit). Clearly, he thought, it was not thus arranged without some very special purpose. Yet when hour after hour passed and nothing happened, he began to sleep fitfully, and at last, worn out with fruitless waiting, dropped into a profound slumber.

He was in the midst of a harassing dream or drama, wherein Bunker and Eva played an incoherent part and he himself passed wearily from peril to peril, when the stage suddenly was cleared, his eyes started open, and he became wakefully conscious of a little ray of light that fell upon his face. Before he could raise his head a soft voice whispered urgently,

"Don't move!"

With admirable self-control he obeyed implicitly.

"Who is zere?" he whispered back.

The voice seemed for a moment to hesitate, and then answered—

"Eleanor Maddison!"

He started so audibly that again she breathed peremptorily—

"Hush! Lie still till I come back. You—you don't deserve it, but I want to save you from the disgrace of arrest."

"Ach, zank you—mine better angel!" he murmured, with a fervor that seemed not unpleasing to his rescuer.

"You really are a nobleman in trouble?"

"I swear I am!"

"And didn't mean anything really wrong?"

"Never—oh, never!"

More kindly than before she murmured—

"Well, I guess I'll take you out, then. I've bribed Dugald, so that's all right. When my car's ready I'll send him up for you. You just lie still till he comes."

From which it appears that Count Bunker's appreciation of the sex fell short of their meed.

Hardly daring to breathe for fear of awakening his fellow-prisoner, trembling with agitation, and consumed by a mad impatience for action, the Baron passed five of the longest minutes he had ever endured. At the end of that time he heard a stealthy step upon the stairs, and with infinite precautions threw off his bedclothes and sat upright, ready for instant departure. But how slowly and with what a superfluity of precaution his jailor moved! When the door at length opened he wondered that no ray of light fell this time.

"Dugald!" he whispered eagerly.

"Hush!" replied a softer voice than Dugald's; as soft, indeed, as Eleanor's, yet clearly different.

"Who is zat?" he gasped.

"Eva Gallosh!" said the silken voice. "Oh, is that you?"

"Yes—yes—it is me."

"And are you really a Baron and an ambassador?"

"Oh yes—yes—certainly I am."

"Then—then I've come to help you to escape! I've bribed Dugald—and I've got a dog-cart here. Come quickly—but oh, be very quiet!"

For a moment the Baron actually hesitated to flee from that loathed apartment. It seemed to him that if Fortune desired to provide him with opportunities of escape she might have had the sense to offer these one at a time. For how could he tell which of these overtures to close with? A wrong decision might be fatal; yet time unquestionably pressed.

"Mein Gott!" he muttered irresolutely, "vich shall I do?"

At that moment the other bed creaked, and, to his infinite horror, he heard a suspicious voice demand—

"Is that you talking, Rudolph?"

Poor Eva, who was quite unaware of the presence of another prisoner, uttered a stifled shriek; with a cry of "Fly, quickly!" the Baron leaped from his bed, and headlong down the wooden stairs they clattered for freedom.

A dim vision of the thrice-bribed Dugald, screeching, "The car's ready for ye, sir!" but increased their speed.

Outside, a motor car stood panting by the door, and in the youthful driver, turning a pale face toward them in the lamp's radiance, the Baron had just time to recognize his first fair deliverer.

"Good-bye!" he whispered to his second, and flung himself in.

Some one followed him; the door was slammed, and with a mighty throbbing they began to move.

"Rudolph! Rudolph!" wailed a voice behind them.

"Zank ze goodness SHE is not here!" exclaimed the Baron.

"Whisht! whisht!" he could hear Dugald expostulate.

With a violent start he turned to the fellow-passenger who had followed him in.

"Are you not Dugald?" he demanded hoarsely.

"No—it's—it's me! I dursn't wait for my dog-cart!"

"Eva!" he murmured. "Oh, Himmel! Vat shall I do?"

Only a screen of glass separated his two rescuers, and the one had but to turn her head and look inside, or the other to study with any attention the roll of hair beneath their driver's cap, in order to lead to most embarrassing consequences. Not that it was his fault he should receive such universal sympathy: but would these charming ladies admit his innocence?

"How thoughtful of Dugald to have this car——" began Eva.

"Hush!" he muttered hoarsely. "Yes, it was thoughtful, but you most not speak too loudly."

"For fear——?" she smiled, and turned her eyes instinctively toward their driver.

"Excuse me," he muttered, sweeping her as gently as possible from her seat and placing her upon the floor.

"It vill not do for zem to see you," he explained in a whisper.

"How awful a position," he reflected. "Oh, I hope it may still be dark ven we get to ze station."

But with rising concern he presently perceived that the telegraph posts along the roadside were certainly grown plainer already; he could even see the two thin wires against a paling sky; the road behind was visible for half a mile; the hill-tops might no longer be confounded with the clouds-day indubitably was breaking. Also he recollected that to go from Lincoln Lodge to Torrydhulish Station one had to make a vast detour round half the loch; and, further, began to suspect that though Miss Maddison's driving was beyond reproach her knowledge of topography was scarcely so dependable. In point of fact she increased the distance by at least a third, and all the while day was breaking more fatally clear.

To discourage Miss Gallosh's efforts at conversation, yet keep her sitting contentedly upon the floor; to appear asleep whenever Miss Maddison turned her head and threw a glance inside, and to devise some adequate explanation against the inevitable discovery at the end of their drive, provided him with employment worthy of a diplomatist's steel. But now, at last, they were within sight of railway signals and a long embankment; and over a pine wood a stream of smoke moved with a swelling roar. Then into plain view broke the engine and carriage after carriage racing behind. Regardless of risk, he leaped from his seat and flung up the window, crying—

"Ach, look! Ve shall be late!"

"That train is going north," said Eleanor. "Guess we've half an hour good before yours comes in."

So little can mortals read the stars that he heaved a sigh of relief, and even murmured—

"Ve have timed him very luckily!"

Ten minutes later they descended the hill to Torrydhulish Station. The north-going train had paid its brief call and vanished nearly from sight again; no one seemed to be moving about the station, and the Baron told himself that nothing worse remained than the exercise of a little tact in parting with his deliverers.

"Ach! I shall carry it off gaily," he thought, and leaping lightly to the ground, exclaimed with a genial air, as he gave his hand to Eva.

"Vell! Now have I a leetle surprise for you, ladies!"

Nor did he at all exaggerate their sensation.

"Miss Maddison!"

Alas, that it should be so far beyond the power of mere inky words to express all that was implied in Eva's accents!

"Miss Gallosh!"

Nor is it less impossible to supply the significance of Eleanor's intonation.

"Ladies, ladies!" he implored, "do not, I pray you, misunderstand! I vas not responsible—I could not help it. You both VOULD come mit me! No, no, do not look so at me! I mean not zat—I mean I could not do vizout both of you. Ach, Himmel! Vat do I say? I should say zat—zat——"

He broke off with a start of apprehension.

"Look! Zere comes a man mit a bicycle! Zis is too public! Come mit me into ze station and I shall eggsplain! He waves his fist! Come! you vould not be seen here?"

He offered one arm to Eva, the other to Eleanor; and so alarming were the gesticulations of the approaching cyclist, and so beseeching the Baron's tones, that without more ado they clung to him and hurried on to the platform.

"Come to ze vaiting-room!" he whispered. "Zere shall ve be safe!"

Alack for the luck of the Baron von Blitzenberg! Out of the very door they were approaching stepped a solitary lady, sole passenger from the south train, and at the sight of those three, linked arm in arm, she staggered back and uttered a cry more piercing than the engine's distant whistle.

"Rudolph!" cried this lady.

"Alicia!" gasped the Baron.

His rescuers said nothing, but clung to him the more tightly, while in the Baroness's startled eyes a harder light began to blaze.

"Who are these, Rudolph?"

He cleared his throat, but the process seemed to take some time, and in the meanwhile he felt the grip of his deliverers relax.

"Who is that lady?" demanded Eleanor.

"His wife," replied the Baroness.

The Baron felt his arms freed now; but still his Alicia waited an answer. It came at last, but not from the Baron's lips.

"Well, here you all are!" said a cheerful voice behind them.



CHAPTER XXXVII

They turned as though they expected to see an apparition. Nor was the appearance of the speaker calculated to disappoint such expectations. Their startled eyes beheld indeed the most remarkable figure that had ever wheeled a bicycle down the platform of Torrydhulish Station. Hatless, in evening clothes with blue lapels upon the coat, splashed liberally with mud, his feet equipped only with embroidered socks and saturated pumps, his shirt-front bestarred with souvenirs of all the soils for thirty miles, Count Bunker made a picture that lived long in their memories. Yet no foolish consciousness of his plight disturbed him as he addressed the Baron.

"Thank you, Baron, for escorting my fair friends so far. I shall now take them off your hands."

He smiled with pleasant familiarity upon the two astonished girls, and then started as though for the first time he recognized the Baroness.

"Baroness!" he cried, bowing profoundly, "this is a very unexpected pleasure! You came by the early train, I presume? A tiresome journey, isn't it?"

But bewilderment and suspicion were all that he could read in reply.

"What—what are YOU doing here?"

He was not in the least disconcerted.

"Meeting my cousins" (he indicated the Misses Gallosh and Maddison with an amiable glance), "whom the Baron has been kind enough to look after till my arrival."

Audaciously approaching more closely, he added, in a voice intended for her ear and the Baron's alone—

"I must throw myself, I see, upon your mercy, and ask you not to tell any tales out of school. Cousins, you know, don't always want their meetings advertised—do they, Baron?"

Alicia's eyes softened a little.

"Then, they are really your——"

"Call 'em cousins, please! I have your pledge that you won't tell? Ah, Baron, your charming wife and I understand one another."

Then raising his voice for the benefit of the company generally—

"Well, you two will want to have a little talk in the waiting-room, I've no doubt. We shall pace the platform. Very fit Rudolph's looking, isn't he, Baroness? You've no idea how his lungs have strengthened."

"His lungs!" exclaimed the Baroness in a changed voice.

Giving the Baron a wink to indicate that there lay the ace of trumps, he answered reassuringly—

"When you learn how he has improved you'll forgive me, I'm sure, for taking him on this little trip. Well, see you somewhere down the line, no doubt—I'm going by the same train."

He watched them pass into the waiting-room, and then turned an altered face to the two dumbfounded girls. It was expressive now solely of sympathy and contrition.

"Let us walk a little this way," he began, and thus having removed them safely from earshot of the waiting-room door, he addressed himself to the severest part of his task.

"My dear girls, I owe you I don't know how many apologies for presuming to claim you as my friends. The acuteness of the emergency is my only excuse, and I throw myself most contritely upon your mercy!"

This second projection of himself upon a lady's mercy proved as successful as the first.

"Well," said Eleanor slowly, "I guess maybe we can forgive you for that; but what I want to know is—what's happened?—who's who?—and where just exactly are we?"

"That's just what I want to know too," added Eva sadly.

Indeed, they both had a hint of tears in their eyes, and in their voices.

"What has happened," replied the Count, "is that a couple of thoughtless masqueraders came up here to play a little joke, and succeeded in getting themselves into a scrape. For your share in getting us out of it we cannot feel too grateful."

"But, who is——?" the girls began together, and then stopped, with a rise of color and a suspicion of displeasure in their interchange of eyes.

"Who is who? Well, my friend is the Baron von Blitzenberg; and the lady is, as she stated, his wife."

"Then all this time——" began Eva.

"He was married!" Eleanor finished for her. "Oh, the heartless scoundrel! To think that I rescued him!"

"I wouldn't have either!" said Eva; "I mean if—if I had known he treated you so badly."

"Treated ME! I was only thinking of YOU, Miss Gallosh!"

"Dear ladies!" interposed the Count with his ready tact, "remember his excuse."

"His excuse?"

"The beauty, the charm, the wit of the lady who took by storm a heart not easily captured! He himself, poor fellow, thought it love-proof; but he had not then met HER. Think mercifully of him!"

He was so careful to give no indication which of the rival belles was "her," that each was able to take to herself a certain mournful consolation.

"That wasn't MUCH excuse," said Eleanor, yet with a less vindictive air.

"Certainly not VERY much," murmured Eva.

"He ought to have thought of the pain he was giving HER," added Eleanor.

"Yes," said Eva. "Indeed he ought!"

"Yes, that is true," allowed the Count; "but remember his punishment! To be married already now proves to be less his fault than his misfortune."

By this time he had insidiously led them back to their car.

"And must you return at once?" he exclaimed.

"We had better," said Eleanor, with a suspicion of a sigh. "Miss Gallosh, I'll drive you home first."

"You're too kind, Miss Maddison."

"Oh, no!"

The Count assisted them in, greatly pleased to see this amicable spirit. Then shaking hands heartily with each, he said—

"I can speak for my friend with conviction, because my own regard for the lady in question is as deep and as sincere as his. Believe me, I shall never forget her!"

He was rewarded with two of the kindest smiles ever bestowed upon him, and as they drove away each secretly wondered why she had previously preferred the Baron to the Count. It seemed a singular folly.

"Two deuced nice girls," mused he; "I do believe I told 'em the truth in every particular!"

He watched their car dwindle to a scurrying speck, and then strolled back thoughtfully to purchase his ticket.

He found the signals down, and the far-off clatter of the train distinctly audible through the early morning air. A few minutes more and he was stepping into a first-class compartment, his remarkable costume earning (he could not but observe) the pronounced attention of the guard. The Baron and Alicia, with an air of mutual affection, entered another; both the doors were closed, everything seemed ready, yet the train lingered.

"Start ze train! Start ze train! I vill give you a pound—two pound—tree pound, to start him!"

The Count leaped up and thrust his head through the window.

"What the dickens——!" thought he.

Hanging out of the other window he beheld the clamant Baron urging the guard with frenzied entreaty.

"But they're wanting to go by the train, sir," said the guard.

"No, no. Zey do not! It is a mistake! Start him!"

Following their gaze he saw, racing toward them, the cause of their delay. It was a motor car, yet not the same that had so lately departed. In this were seated a young man and an elderly lady, both waving to hold back the train; and to his vast amazement he recognized in the man Darius Maddison, junior, in the lady the Countess of Grillyer.

The car stopped, the occupants alighted, and the Countess, supported on the strong arm of Ri, scuttled down the platform.

"Bonker, take her in mit you!" groaned the Baron, and his head vanished from the Count's sight.

Even this ordeal was not too much for Bunker's fidelity.

"Madam, there is room here!" he announced politely, as they swept past; but with set faces they panted toward the doomed von Blitzenberg.

All of the tragedy that the Count, with strained neck, could see or overhear, was a vision of the Countess being pushed by the guard and her escort into that first-class compartment whence so lately the Baron's crimson visage had protruded, and the voice of Ri stridently declaring—

"Guess you'll recognize your momma this time, Baron!"

A whistle from the guard, another from the engine, and they were off, clattering southward in the first of the morning sunshine.

Inadequately attired, damp, hungry, and divorced from tobacco as the Count was, he yet could say to himself with the sincerest honesty,

"I wouldn't change carriages with the Baron von Blitzenberg—not even for a pair of dry socks and a cigar! Alas, poor Rudolph! May this teach all young men a lesson in sobriety of conduct!"

For which moral reflection the historian feels it incumbent upon him, as a philosopher and serious psychologist, to express his conscientious admiration.



EPILOGUE

IT was an evening in early August, luminous and warm; the scene, a certain club now emptied of all but a sprinkling of its members; the festival, dinner; and the persons of the play, that gentleman lately known as Count Bunker and his friend the Baron von Blitzenberg. The Count was habited in tweeds; the Baron in evening dress.

"It vas good of you to come up to town jost to see me," said the Baron.

"I'd have crossed Europe, Baron!"

The Baron smiled faintly. Evidently he was scarcely in his most florid humor.

"I vish I could have asked you to my club, Bonker."

"Are you dissatisfied with mine?"

"Oh, no, no! But—— vell, ze fact is, it vould be reported by some one if I took you to ze Regents. Bonker, she does have me watched!"

"The Baroness?"

"Her mozzer."

"The deuce, Baron!"

The diplomatist gloomily sipped his wine.

"You did hush it all up, eh?" he inquired presently.

"Completely."

"Zank you. I vas so afraid of some scandal!"

"So were they; that's where I had 'em."

"Did zey write in moch anger?"

"No—not very much; rather nice letters, in fact."

The Baron began to cheer up.

"Ach, so! Vas zere any news of—ze Galloshes?"

"Yes, they seem very well. Old Rentoul has caught a salmon. Gallosh hopes to get a fair bag——"

"Bot did zey say nozing about—about Miss Eva?"

"The letter was written by her, you see."

"SHE wrote to YOU! Strange!"

"Very odd, isn't it?"

The Baron meditated for a minute and then inquired—

"Vat of ze Maddisons?"

"Well, I gather that Mr. Maddison is erecting an ibis house in connection with the aviary. Ri has gone to Kamchatka, but hopes to be back by the 12th——"

"And Eleanor—no vord of her?"

"It was she who wrote, don't you know."

"Eleanor—and also to you! Bot vy should she?"

"Can't imagine; can you?"

The Baron shook his head solemnly. "No, Bonker, I cannot."

For some moments he pondered over the remarkable conduct of these ladies; and then—

"Did you also hear of ze Wallingfords?" he asked.

"I had a short note from them."

"From him, or——"

"Her."

"So! Humph, zey all seem fond of writing letters."

"Why—have you had any too?"

"No; and I do not vant zem."

Yet his immunity did not appear to exhilarate the diplomatist.

"Another bottle of the same," said Bunker aside to the waiter.

. . . . . .

It was an hour later; the scene and the personages the same, but the atmosphere marvellously altered.

"To ze ladies, Bonker!"

"To HER, Baron!"

"To zem both!"

The genial heart, the magnanimous soul of Rudolph von Blitzenberg had asserted their dominion again. Depression, jealousy, repentance, qualms, and all other shackles of the spirit whatsoever, had fled discomfited. Now at last he saw his late exploits in their true heroic proportions, and realized his marvellous good fortune in satisfying his aspirations so gloriously. Raising his glass once more, he cried—

"Dear Bonker, my heart he does go out to you! Ach, you have given me soch a treat. Vunce more I schmell ze mountain dew—I hear ze pipes—I gaze into loffly eyes—I am ze noblest part of mineself! Bonker, I vill defy ze mozzer of my wife! I drink to you, my friend, mit hip—hip—hip—hooray!"

"You have more than repaid me," replied the Count, "by the spectacle you have provided. Dear Baron, it was a panorama calculated to convert a continent!"

"To vat should it convert him?" inquired the Baron with interest.

"To a creed even merrier than Socialism, more convivial than Total Abstinence, and more perfectly designed for human needs than Esperanto—the gospel of 'Cheer up.'"

"Sheerup?" repeated the Baron, whose acquaintance with the English words used in commerce and war was singularly intimate, but who was occasionally at fault with terms of less portentous import.

"A name given to the bridge that crosses the Slough of Despond," explained the Count.

The Baron still seemed puzzled. "I am not any wiser," said he.

"Never cease thanking Heaven for that!" cried Bunker fervently. "The man who once dubs himself wise is the jest of gods and the plague of mortals."

With this handsome tribute to the character and attainments of one of these heroes, and the Baronial roar that congratulated the other, our chronicle may fittingly leave them; since the mutual admiration of two such catholic critics is surely more significant than the colder approval of a mere historian.

THE END