The Prisoner of Zenda. Anthony Hope

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       CHAPTER 7

       His Majesty Sleeps in Strelsau

      I put my arm round Sapt’s waist and supported him out of the cellar, drawing the battered door close after me. For ten minutes or more we sat silent in the dining-room. Then old Sapt rubbed his knuckles into his eyes, gave one great gasp, and was himself again. As the clock on the mantelpiece struck one he stamped his foot on the floor, saying:

      “They’ve got the King!”

      “Yes,” said I, “‘all’s well!’ as Black Michael’s despatch said. What a moment it must have been for him when the royal salutes fired at Strelsau this morning! I wonder when he got the message?”

      “It must have been sent in the morning,” said Sapt. “They must have sent it before news of your arrival at Strelsau reached Zenda—I suppose it came from Zenda.”

      “And he’s carried it about all day!” I exclaimed. “Upon my honour, I’m not the only man who’s had a trying day! What did he think, Sapt?”

      “What does that matter? What does he think, lad, now?”

      I rose to my feet.

      “We must get back,” I said, “and rouse every soldier in Strelsau. We ought to be in pursuit of Michael before midday.”

      Old Sapt pulled out his pipe and carefully lit it from the candle which guttered on the table.

      “The King may be murdered while we sit here!” I urged.

      Sapt smoked on for a moment in silence.

      “That cursed old woman!” he broke out. “She must have attracted their attention somehow. I see the game. They came up to kidnap the King, and—as I say—somehow they found him. If you hadn’t gone to Strelsau, you and I and Fritz had been in heaven by now!”

      “And the King?”

      “Who knows where the King is now?” he asked.

      “Come, let’s be off!” said I; but he sat still. And suddenly he burst into one of his grating chuckles:

      “By Jove, we’ve shaken up Black Michael!”

      “Come, come!” I repeated impatiently.

      “And we’ll shake him up a bit more,” he added, a cunning smile broadening on his wrinkled, weather-beaten face, and his teeth working on an end of his grizzled moustache. “Ay, lad, we’ll go back to Strelsau. The King shall be in his capital again tomorrow.”

      “The King?”

      “The crowned King!”

      “You’re mad!” I cried.

      “If we go back and tell the trick we played, what would you give for our lives?”

      “Just what they’re worth,” said I.

      “And for the King’s throne? Do you think that the nobles and the people will enjoy being fooled as you’ve fooled them? Do you think they’ll love a King who was too drunk to be crowned, and sent a servant to personate him?”

      “He was drugged—and I’m no servant.”

      “Mine will be Black Michael’s version.”

      He rose, came to me, and laid his hand on my shoulder.

      “Lad,” he said, “if you play the man, you may save the King yet. Go back and keep his throne warm for him.”

      “But the duke knows—the villains he has employed know—”

      “Ay, but they can’t speak!” roared Sapt in grim triumph.

      “We’ve got ’em! How can they denounce you without denouncing themselves? This is not the King, because we kidnapped the King and murdered his servant. Can they say that?”

      The position flashed on me. Whether Michael knew me or not, he could not speak. Unless he produced the King, what could he do? And if he produced the King, where was he? For a moment I was carried away headlong; but in an instant the difficulties came strong upon me.

      “I must be found out,” I urged.

      “Perhaps; but every hour’s something. Above all, we must have a King in Strelsau, or the city will be Michael’s in four-and-twenty hours, and what would the King’s life be worth then—or his throne? Lad, you must do it!”