CHAPTER EIGHT

THE BARGAIN

For several seconds Trafford stood silent in the darkness, thinking furiously. What was the correct thing to say or do in such an unusual, almost painful, situation, he had not the faintest idea. But before speech suggested itself to his puzzled brain, his companion--not wholly successful in smothering the merriment that had instantly replaced her affectation of anger--had checked him with a warning "hush!"

Noiselessly the Princess tiptoed to the glazed partition that separated the inner chamber from the wine-shop, and drawing back a curtain gazed cautiously through the chink.

A couple of men--as indigent in appearance as the rest of the throng--had entered the shop and were talking to the landlord. The latter was all civility and smiles, but his customers were regarding the newcomers with glances of deep suspicion and resentment.

After gazing a few seconds, the Princess returned to Trafford, and taking him by the hand led him rapidly through another door into a street at the back.

"Krantz extinguished the light," she whispered. "It was not your head, stupid, that did it! It was the danger-signal agreed upon between us--there are a couple of police agents in the shop."

The touch of melodrama delighted Trafford, and the presence of danger destroyed much of his embarrassment. They were in a narrow lane, lighted at rare intervals, and half choked with snow. A bitter wind blew cheerlessly between lofty houses, but the stars burned clearly in the deep violet of the heavens.

"Where now?" he asked briefly.

"Home," answered the Princess curtly. "I'm going home--good-night!"

Trafford stood irresolute. A hand was offered him in farewell. It might be tactless to enforce his society any longer, but there were reasons--the hour and the gloom of the street if nothing else--why he could not leave her alone.

"I promised to see you home," he protested stubbornly. "I keep my promises."

"You are foolish," she returned, accepting the situation and walking briskly down the street. "This quarter of Weidenbruck is anything but a safe one, despite its present tranquillity. There are queer folk dwelling in these gabled old houses--men who live by the knife and the garote! You would be wise to reseek the civilisation of the Hôtel Concordia."

"Is it necessary to insult me?" bristling.

"Ah, but you found it necessary to insult me!" she retorted.

"In what way?" staring at her in astonishment.

"By making love--such love! You nearly blow your brains out for a silly American girl, and then have the impertinence to ask me--me, the Princess Gloria von Schattenberg--to marry you, informing me casually that your heart is dead and cold."

"But your heart is dead and cold, too," he argued fatuously. "And you were not willing to accept me. It seems that we are in the same boat. We offered too little, and we asked too much."

The Princess was momentarily silenced by his logic; womanlike, however, she refused to let things end in a logical conclusion.

"I am terribly angry with you," she persisted, nevertheless, with what Trafford could have sworn was a veritable wink.

"So I was led to suppose," he replied, rubbing his head.

His words and their accompanying action, tickled the Princess's risibilities, always lying just beneath the surface. She bit her lips in a desperate effort to control, but in a moment her fine, fearless laugh rang out merrily in the deserted street. Trafford gazed in amazement at his volatile companion, and then he laughed, too.

"Don't imagine that I am not angry because I'm laughing," declared the Princess. "I have--unfortunately, perhaps--a painfully acute sense of humour. I very often laugh when I am feeling most deeply."

But Trafford having commenced to laugh, gave way to roars of laughter. He had been accorded such varied treatment, such swiftly-changing moods, that he was quite uncertain as to what the next moment would bring forth; and the atmosphere of political intrigue and romantic adventure--with its picturesque setting of ancient houses and deep snow--lifted him into such regions of pure unreality that he laughed for very joy at the exhilarating absurdity of it all.

"Great Scott! To think I have lived eight-and-twenty years without discovering Grimland!" he exclaimed when able to catch his breath. "Princess, you must indeed forgive me.... It seems, besides dead hearts, we have in common a most lively sense of the ridiculous."

"I'll forgive you when you have seen me home," she replied. "But I absolutely repudiate the bargain we made at Herr Krantz's wine shop. We may have much in common ... but surely you don't suppose that I would marry a man with a dead heart?"

"As to the bargain, I surmised as much when you raised your hand to----" he broke off suddenly, and then added: "I suppose the deal is off, then? Well, perhaps it's just as well for both of us. May I ask where your home is?"

"My home--my home for to-night--is there," said the Princess, pointing across the street to an entrance, which bore the number forty-two.

Trafford looked up at a venerable structure, which raised its steep gable somewhat higher than its neighbours.

Light shone from a window on the second story. Otherwise the façade showed a blank front of closed shutters. Just as they were crossing the snow-encumbered road, a couple of men halted before the door in question, and one of them knocked loudly. The Princess and Trafford stopped automatically. Both scented danger, one from experience, the other from instinct. A friendly archway afforded complete concealment, and there, sheltered alike from gaze and the bitter wind, they awaited developments.

Trafford felt his arm gripped tight by a little hand, either from excitement or from a desire for protection.

"Those are Meyer's men," whispered the Princess.

Trafford nodded in reply. He was humming the Rothlied softly between his teeth. They watched for a silent moment, and then a woman answered the door. After a moment's palaver, the men went in. Simultaneously two more men glided into view from some invisible hiding-place, and took up their positions one on each side of the doorway.

"Are you armed?" asked the Princess in a whisper.

Trafford's eyes were like stars for brightness.

"I have my fists," he answered.

The Princess produced a tiny revolver from a satin handbag, which she pressed on her companion.

Trafford declined it curtly.

"I have my fists," he repeated.

The Princess regarded him with astonishment and a recrudescence of anger.

"They are trying to take my friend," she expostulated in low tones. "They will probably murder him. It is essential to my success that he escapes their clutches."

"He'll escape all right," said Trafford, with the unreasoning confidence of the born optimist; but the Princess stamped with annoyance at his folly.

Suddenly sounds of a struggle were heard from the direction of the lighted window on the second floor--sounds of shifting feet and reeling furniture, but no cry of human throat or crack of firearm.

"I must investigate this," said Trafford, but before he could take action there was a great crash of riven glass, and a dark form fell rolling and clutching from the shattered window into the street. The fall was considerable, but the snow broke its force, and the man stirred where he lay.

"Is it he?" asked the Princess breathlessly. "No, thank God!" she answered herself as the man raised a bearded face from the snow, and groaned in agony.

"Look out!" said Trafford, for there were sounds of men descending a staircase at breakneck speed, and as he spoke a dark form issued from the doorway. As it did so, one of the two men who were waiting without, threw a cloak over the head and arms of the emerging man. Simultaneously the other raised a weapon and struck. A half-second later and another man issued from the house, and leaped like a wild beast on the back of the enmeshed and stricken man.

This was too much for Trafford's tingling nerves. Leaving the Princess where she stood in the archway, he darted across the road with the speed of a football end going down the field under a punt to tackle the opposing fullback. His passage was rendered noiseless by the soft carpet of thick snow, and he arrived unseen and unheard at the scene of the mêlée. The man with the dagger was just about to strike again. He had been making desperate efforts to do so for several moments, but his would-be victim was struggling like a trapped tiger, and the heaving, writhing mass of humanity, wherein aggressors and quarry were inextricably entangled, offered no safe mark for the assassin's steel. However, just as his point was raised aloft with desperate intent, Trafford anticipated his action with a swinging blow on the side of the head. The man fell, dazed and stunned, against the wall. Trafford, with his fighting lust now thoroughly inflamed, turned his instant attention to the other aggressors. Now, however, he had no unprepared victim for his vigorous arm. A vile-looking ruffian, with low brow and matted hair, had extricated himself from the involved struggle, and was feeling for a broad knife that lay ready to hand in his leather belt.

With the swift acumen born of pressing danger, Trafford stooped down, and picking up a lump of frozen snow, dashed it in his enemy's face. A shrewd blow in the midriff followed this tactical success, and further punishment would have befallen the unhappy man had not his original victim, freed from two of his three aggressors, gained his feet, and in his effort to escape, cannoned so violently and unexpectedly into Trafford, that the enterprising American lost his balance and fell precipitately into the soft snow. When he regained his feet he saw a tall form flying rapidly down the street, with two assailants in hot pursuit.

"You've begun well!" said a soft voice in his ear. Trafford turned and faced the Princess.

"Begun well?" he repeated, brushing the snow from his person.

"A good beginning for your work of winning me a throne."

"I don't understand."

"Our bargain is on again," she declared, with suppressed enthusiasm, "unless you wish it otherwise?"

He looked into her fearless eyes, which fell at length before his own.

"We will let it stand," he agreed curtly. "But what of your friend?" he went on, "will he get away?"

"If he wishes," answered the Princess easily. "It would take more than two men to capture Father Bernhardt. I have no further anxiety on his account, but what about me--poor me?"

"About you?" he repeated, without understanding.

"Where am I to spend the night?"

Trafford passed his hand through his ruffled locks, dislodging therefrom several pieces of frozen snow. Then he looked at the man who had staggered under his blow against the wall, and who was eyeing them with a malignancy that bespoke rapid recuperation. The man who had fallen into the street had risen to his knees and was muttering something--a curse or a prayer--and might speedily exchange speech for action. The two pursuers of Father Bernhardt might return,--baffled of their prey and breathing threatenings and slaughter,--at any moment.

Trafford grasped the Princess's hand and dragged her across the street.

"Herr Krantz's wine shop," he insisted.

"Is in the occupation of spies," retorted the Princess.

"Then what----?"

"The Hôtel Concordia," proposed the Princess calmly.

"The Hôtel Concordia!" he echoed.

"Yes. Your sister has just arrived from England and wants a small room at the top of the house. Her luggage, naturally, has gone astray. You are a friend of Herr Saunders, and consequently above suspicion. Do not be alarmed, my friend, I shall leave early and I will pay for my bed and breakfast."

Trafford tugged each moustache violently in turn.

"So be it," he said at length. "It is all part of the bargain. Come, little new-found sister, let us find a sleigh to drive us to the Hôtel Concordia."