CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE IRON MAIDEN

While the Englishman was ski-running and saving the King's life, the American had spent an uneventful morning seeing the sights of the capital. Acting on his friend's advice he had visited the Reichs Museum, wherein were housed some extremely old Masters, some indifferent modern sculpture, and a wholly admirable collection of engravings by Albrecht Dürer. But Trafford's mind had wandered from pre-Raphaelite anatomy and marble modernities to a pair of dark eyes, a finely chiselled little nose, and a diminutive mouth, that were utterly unlike anything depicted by Botticelli, Fra Angelo, or the great Bavarian engraver.

Art had never held an important place in his mind, and on this fine January morning it competed feebly with a certain restless longing that had stolen over his ill-balanced nervous system, to the domination of his thoughts and the destruction of his critical faculties. He desired to be out in the open air, and he desired to see, and touch, and speak with a certain young woman who had passed herself off as his sister at his hotel, but who had disappeared into thin air long before he had tasted his _petit déjeuner_ of coffee and rolls. It was not, he told himself, that he was in love. Love,--as he conceived it,--was something akin to worship, a regard pure as the snows, passionless almost in its humility and reverence. For one woman he had felt that marvellous adoration; he would never feel it again for any woman in the world. But beauty appeals even to those who have suffered at beauty's hands, and the Princess Gloria was a maiden of such bewildering moods, so compounded of laughter and fierceness, of such human pathos and relentless purpose, that she was bound to have a disturbing effect on so responsive and sensitive a soul as his. He acknowledged the obsession, for it was patent and paramount. But he told himself that in his regard there were no deeps, certainly no worship; merely a desire to cultivate an attractive young woman whose habitual behaviour was as heedless of the conventions as his own.

But this desire took him out of the long galleries of the Reichs Museum into the slums of Weidenbruck, into the purlieus of the Goose-market and the Grassmarket, and into the network of narrow alleys round about the Schugasse. But the face and figure that were in his mind's eye refused to grace his bodily sight, and so,--having lost himself half a dozen times and gained a magnificent appetite,--he took a sleigh and drove back to the Hôtel Concordia.

In the middle of his meal Saunders arrived, and told him at full length of his morning's adventures. And, as Saunders had expected, Trafford's disappointment at having missed the exhilarating rencontre with Father Bernhardt was palpable and forcibly expressed.

"Confound your beastly luck!" he said. "And, I suppose,--thanks to your brilliant shooting, and tactful diplomacy,--the King got away."

"He got home safely with my wife and General Meyer three-quarters of an hour before I did," replied Saunders, ignoring the sarcasm. "They held up a train on the big stone viaduct, and I and Von Hügelweiler tapped one at a small station called Henduck. It is a pity you were not with us, Nervy."

Trafford ground his teeth. His companion was very irritating.

"What about this afternoon?" he asked despairingly.

"I'm afraid there won't be any excitements this afternoon," replied Saunders blandly. "I've got to accompany Karl to a bazaar in aid of distressed gentle-women. As you are dining to-night at the palace, we shall, of course, meet. Au revoir till then. You might well have another look at those Dürers."

"D---- the Dürers!" said Trafford angrily, as his friend left the dining-room. "And hang Saunders for a selfish brute!" he added to himself. "He lures me out to this infernal country, and then sends me to picture galleries and museums while he shoots people ski-jumping over his head." And with the air of an aggrieved man Trafford kindled an enormous cigar and sauntered forth into the hall.

As he did so, he was approached by the concierge.

"A letter, mein Herr," said the official: "a messenger left it a moment ago."

Trafford took it, and as he read his eyes opened in astonishment, and his mouth in satisfaction.

"_Dear Herr Trafford_," it ran. "_This is to thank you for what you did for me last night. You fight as well as you skate--and that is saying much. If you will meet me at the Collection of Instruments of Torture in the Strafeburg at three o'clock this afternoon, I shall try to be as fascinating as you could wish me--and take back any unkind word I may have spoken._"

_G.V.S._"

Trafford chuckled to himself. After all, he reflected, Saunders was not having all the fun. He had not mentioned his adventures of the previous evening to his friend, because he knew that Saunders would disapprove of his action in abetting Karl's enemies. He, however, was a free lance, and if he was not permitted to save the King's life, he might as well devote his energies to the equally romantic task of protecting the rebel Princess. And in his rapture at the unfolding prospect of unlimited fracas, he chuckled audibly.

Then, turning somewhat abruptly, he bumped into a gentleman, who must have been standing extremely close behind him. Instinctively he thrust his letter into his pocket, realising that the missive was not merely a private but a secret one. He half-feared that the person into whom he had cannoned,--and whose approach he ought to have heard on the marble-paved hall,--might have been covertly reading his letter over his shoulder; nor was he particularly reassured at finding that the individual in question was none other than General Meyer.

"I beg your pardon," began the Commander-in-Chief, "but I was not quite sure that it was you, as I could not see your face while you were reading your letter."

"My fault entirely," said Trafford genially. "Were you looking for me?"

"I was. I came to say that the command which his Majesty graciously issued to you to dine with him to-night is also extended to your sister."

"My sister!" repeated Trafford, in dazed accents.

Meyer smiled at the other's mystification. "I was informed at the bureau that your sister was staying at the hotel with you," he said blandly.

Instantly the fraud of the previous evening returned to Trafford's memory.

"She spent last night at the hotel," he said, "but she left early this morning."

"A brief visit!" was the General's comment.

"Extremely! She is on her way to Vienna. She--she took the opportunity of paying me a flying visit to see me compete for the King's Cup on the Rundsee. She went on by the 8:35 this morning."

Meyer nodded, as if appreciating the other's glibness.

"Would you think me very inquisitive," he went on, "if I asked at what hotel she will be staying in Vienna?"

"She is not going to a hotel," replied Trafford. "She is going to stay with my aunt,--my dear Aunt Martha,--whose address I cannot for a moment recall. I shall doubtless hear from her in a day or so, when I will communicate her whereabouts to you--if you particularly desire it."

"Please do not trouble," said the General, scrutinising his companion closely through his eye-glass. "But there is one further question I would put to you. How is it that Saunders does not even know that you have a sister?" Meyer's tones were of the blandest, but there was something in his look and bearing that bespoke suspicions that had become certainties. Trafford read danger in the mocking voice and smiling lips, and he grew wonderfully cool.

"That's dead easy!--she's only my half-sister," he replied. "We see little of each other. Saunders may well have never chanced to meet her or even hear of her. My half-sister, you know, detests men. In fact, my only fear of her going to Vienna is lest she should at once enter a nunnery and never be seen again."

Meyer dropped his eye-glass in a facial convulsion of admiration.

"Au revoir, Herr Trafford!" he said, with a gracious bow. "We meet at eight o'clock at the Palace to-night. But I am desolated at the idea of not seeing--your half-sister."

Shortly after the Commander-in-Chief's departure, Trafford donned his overcoat and sallied forth on foot to the Strafeburg. The beauty of the day was gone. The mist that had been dispelled by the noonday sun had settled down again on the city. The penetrating cold, born of a low temperature and a moisture-laden atmosphere, nipped and pinched the extremities, and ate its way behind muscles and joints till Trafford,--despite his warm coat,--was glad enough to reach the friendly shelter of the ancient prison-house. A half-krone procured him admission to the show-rooms of the famous building, and a young woman, angular of build and exceptionally tall, took him under her bony wing, and commenced to show him the objects of interest. Trafford had come to see something less forbidding than racks and thumb-screws, but for the moment the object of his visit being nowhere to be seen, he devoted a temporary interest to the quaint and sinister-looking objects displayed on all sides of him. These,--as has already been made clear,--were mainly the ingenious contrivements of filthy minds for the infliction of the utmost possible suffering on human beings. A judiciously-displayed assortment of racks, wheels, water-funnels, and other abominations, soon had the effect of making Trafford feel physically sick. Nor was his horror lessened by the custodian's monotonous and unemotional recital of the various uses to which the different pieces of mechanism could be put. And as his thoughts travelled back across the centuries to the time when men did devil's work of maiming and mutilating what was made in God's own image, a fearful fascination absorbed the American's mind, so that he quite forgot the Princess in a sort of frenzy of horror and wrathful mystification.

In the third room they visited,--a gaunt department of deeply-recessed windows and heavy cross-beams,--was an assortment of especially ferocious contrivements.

"This was used for those who made bad money," went on the long-limbed maiden, in her droning monotone, indicating a gigantic press which was capable of converting the human frame into the semblance of a pancake. "The coiner lay down here, and the weights were put on his chest----"

"Stop! for heaven's sake," ejaculated Trafford, white with emotion. "If I could get hold of one of those mediæval torturers I'd give him a good Yankee kick to help him realise what pain meant."

"I'm sure your kick would be a most enthusiastic one," said a voice at his elbow. A lady in handsome furs and a blue veil--a common protection, in Grimland, against snow-glare--was addressing him. Despite this concealment, however, Trafford did not need to look twice before recognising the Princess Gloria.

"You can leave us, Martha," commanded the Princess to the angular attendant. "I am quite capable of describing these horrors to this gentleman. I am sufficiently familiar with the Strafeburg, and shall quite possibly become more so." Then, as the obedient Martha withdrew her many inches from the room:

"I want to thank you for last night's work," she said to Trafford; "and if I may, to ask----"

"Charmed to have been of service," interrupted the American, and taking the Princess's hand, he bent low and kissed it. As he raised his head again there was a flush in his cheek and a fire in his eye that seemed portents of something warmer than the Platonism of a dead soul. "But don't resume the hospitality of the Concordia," he added. "Meyer suspects, and my lying capacities have been well-nigh exhausted."

"He has been cross-questioning you?"

"Most pertinaciously; but I lied with fluency and fervour."

The Princess laughed gaily.

"You are splendid!" she cried, clapping her hands with girlish excitement. "Do you know," she went on presently, "that the authorities, acting under Herr Saunders' advice, are going to adopt strenuous measures against us?"

"Is that anything new?"

"Not exactly. But they have decided to leave off trying to murder us, and are going to try and take us openly. The ex-Queen,--whose nerves are not very good,--has already crossed the frontier into Austria. Father Bernhardt has found several new hiding-places, and a brace of new revolvers."

"And you?" asked Trafford.

"Have found you," she answered with a frank smile.

"Admirable!" laughed the American. "But tell me, pray, how I can serve you."

"You will be dining at the Palace to-night. Find out all you can and report to me."

Trafford was silent. He was about to dine with the King, and he had certain scruples about the sacredness of hospitality. Quick as a flash the Princess read his silence, and bit her lip.

"Now then," she said, as if to change the subject, "let me play the part of showman. Here we have the famous 'Iron Maiden.'"

Trafford beheld a weird sarcophagus set upright against the wall, and rudely shaped like a human form. On the head were painted the lineaments of a woman's face, and the mediæval craftsman had contrived to portray a countenance of abominable cruelty, not devoid of a certain sullen, archaic beauty. A vertical joint ran from the crown of the head to the base, and the thing opened in the middle with twin doors. The Princess inserted a heavy key,--which was hanging from a convenient nail,--and displayed the interior.

"Now you see the charm of the thing," she went on, as the inside of the iron doors revealed a number of ferocious spikes. "The poor wretch was put inside, and the doors were slowly shut on him. See, there is a spike for each eye, one for each breast, and several for the legs. The embrace of the Iron Maiden was not a thing to be lightly undertaken."

"Of all the fiendish, hellish----"

"It was made by one Otto the Hunchback," pursued the Princess, "and it was so admired in its day, that the reigning monarch of Bavaria had a duplicate made, and it stands in the castle of Nuremberg to this day."

"When was this thing last used?" inquired Trafford in hoarse tones.

"It is said that the late Archbishop of Weidenbruck was killed in this way, three years ago," replied the Princess calmly.

Trafford was white with indignation.

"Who says so?" he demanded fiercely.

"Everybody. The King hated him, and he died of cancer--officially. I was told--and I honestly believe--that he was killed by torture, because when the troubles of 1904 were at an end, he openly incited the people to revolt."

"If that's true," said Trafford, "I shan't make much bones about siding with you against Karl XXII. And it won't worry my conscience reporting to you anything I may accidentally overhear at the dinner to-night."

"We can't fight in kid gloves," said the Princess with a sigh.

A sudden noise in the street without attracted his attention. Light as a bird, the Princess leaped into the embrasure of the window. Trafford followed suit. A company of soldiers was drawn up outside the building, and facing them was a fair-sized mob jeering and cheering ironically. A number of units were detached under an officer to either side of the building, and it was plain that the Strafeburg was being surrounded by the military. A second later there was the dull sound of hoofs on snow, and a squadron of cavalry entered the platz from another direction. Lined up at right angles to the Strafeburg, carbine on knee, they held the threatening mob in hand with the silent menace of ball and gunpowder.

Trafford and the Princess looked at each other in blank and silent amazement.

"This means business," said the latter, pale but composed. "The Guides and the King's Dragoons are not being paraded for nothing. Royalty is going to be arrested with the pomp and circumstance due to the occasion."

"They have discovered your presence here?"

"Obviously. I am caught like a rat in a trap."

Trafford scanned the bloodless but firm countenance, and admired intensely. Here was no hysterical school-girl playing at high treason for sheer love of excitement, but a young woman who was very much in earnest, very much distressed, and at the same time splendidly self-controlled. He stood a moment thinking furiously with knitted brows, hoping that his racing thoughts might devise some scheme for averting the impending tragedy. The room they were in was the last of a series, and possessed of but one door. To return that way was to come back inevitably to the entrance hall,--a proceeding which would merely expedite the intentions of their enemies. He looked hopelessly round the chamber, and he dashed across to the great stone fireplace. It would have formed an admirable place of concealment had not its smoke aperture been barred with a substantial iron grille.

"It's no use," sighed the Princess wearily. "I must face my fate. Perhaps the good burghers will effect a rescue."

"Not if the King's Dragoons do their duty," retorted Trafford grimly. "Mob-heroism is not much use against ball-cartridges."

"Then I must yield to the inevitable."

Trafford shook his head fiercely.

"That is just what you must not do!" he cried. For a moment he stood irresolute, running his hand through his stiff, up-standing hair.

"I've got some sort of an idea," he said at length.

Approaching a table whereon were displayed a number of torture implements, he selected a pair of gigantic pinchers that had been specially designed for tampering with human anatomy, and applied them vigorusly to the nuts which fixed the spikes of the Iron Maiden.

"Otto the Hunchback little knew that his _chef d'œuvre_ would be put to such a benevolent purpose as a refuge," he said, as he loosened and withdrew the spikes one by one from their rusty environment. "Given ten minutes' respite, and I'll guarantee a hiding-place no one in his senses will dream of searching."

"Quick, quick, quick!" cried the Princess in a crescendo of excitement, transformed again from a pale, hunted creature to a gleeful schoolgirl playing a particularly exciting game of hide-and-seek. "I hear them searching the other rooms. Quick!"

Trafford deposited the last spike in the pocket of his overcoat, and motioned to his companion to enter. When she had done so, he closed the doors, locked them, and put the key into his pocket with the spikes.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Quite comfy, thanks," answered a muffled voice.

Trafford contemplated the exterior of the Iron Maiden, and was pleased to note air-holes in the Maiden's ears. It had not been the intention of the mediæval tormentor that his victims should die of suffocation.

A few moments later there was the tread of martial steps along the passage, and the door was thrown open. Trafford buried himself in the contemplation of a water-funnel that had served to inconvenience human stomachs with an intolerable amount of fluid.

"Herr Trafford once again!"

The gentleman addressed looked up and beheld the grey-coated figure of General Meyer. Behind him with drawn swords were two officers of the Guides.

"Fancy meeting you again," went on the Commander-in-Chief, putting his eye-glass to his eye, and smiling his most innocent smile.

"Your presence is really more remarkable than mine," returned Trafford. "I am a stranger seeing the sights of Weidenbruck. You apparently are here on sterner business."

"I am here to effect an important arrest," drawled the General. "But perhaps you can aid us in our purpose," he went on in his blandest tones. "Have you by any possible chance seen a young woman hereabouts?"

"I saw one here only a few minutes back."

The General produced a note-book--the same in which he had jotted down the marks of the skating competition.

"This is most interesting," he said. "I need hardly ask you to be precise in your information, as your remarks will be taken down verbatim."

"I will be accuracy itself," said Trafford with mock seriousness.

"Good! When did you see this woman?"

"About a quarter of an hour ago."

"Her name?"

"I am ignorant of it."

"Her age?"

"I am bad at guessing ladies' ages; but I should say between twenty and thirty."

"Dark or fair?"

"Dark."

"I thought so. Her height--approximately?"

"Six foot two."

Meyer stiffened himself indignantly, and the eye-glass dropped from his eye.

"You are trifling, sir," he said angrily.

"Perhaps I have exaggerated," said Trafford calmly, "put down six foot one-and-a-half."

Meyer darted a sidelong glance at the American, and scribbled something in his book.

"Remember," he said, "that you may be called upon to substantiate that statement, and that false information----"

"He must be referring to Martha," broke in one of the attendant officers.

"Martha!" cried Trafford delightedly. "Yes, I believe that was her name. In return for half a krone she told me more in five minutes about instruments of torture than my wildest imagination had conceived possible."

"You have seen no one else?" rapped out the General.

"Till you arrived I have not seen a soul."

Meyer glanced round the room carefully. He looked under the several tables whereon the exhibits were displayed; he put his head up the great stone fireplace; his glance swept past the Iron Maiden, but it rested on it for a fraction of a second only.

"She is not here," he announced decisively, "this gentleman has been speaking the truth."

"A foolish habit of mine, but ineradicable," murmured Trafford ironically.

Meyer readjusted his eye-glass and turned, smiling, to the American.

"You behold in me," he said, "a disappointed man. For the second time in two days I have blundered. It is a coincidence, a strange coincidence. Also it is regrettable, for I am rapidly dissipating a hard-earned reputation for astuteness. Once again, au revoir, my dear Herr Trafford! We shall meet at dinner to-night, and I hope often. Gentlemen of the Guides, _vorwarts_!"