CHAPTER XII

ELZBIETKA MISSES THE BROKEN NOTE

Very much earlier on this same eventful night a girlish figure emerged from the door leading to Alchemist Kreutz’s lodgings on the third floor of the building where Pan Andrew lived, and stole quietly down the steps to the second floor. Here she rapped three times. In a space of perhaps a minute, the door was thrown back a little, and Joseph’s mother peered cautiously out through the crack.

“Come in, child,” she said heartily as she recognized Elzbietka’s face.

“What brings you out so late?” she inquired a moment later as she shot the heavy bolts back into place and secured the door. “Has the student Tring been troubling you or your uncle lately, or what is it? Sit there at the table where I was just finishing my sewing for the day and tell me the whole story.”

“Yes,” answered the girl, “it is the student Tring. He and uncle are in the loft now, and I am somewhat frightened—they have been talking more queerly than ever all this evening.”

“You must stay with me here this night,” the woman said. “It’s a shame that such a scholar as your uncle should have anything to do with that student, Tring. I fear that young man very much. He seems to me like one who has grown old and then become young again. When he looks at me with those great dark eyes it seems as if he were thinking of terrible things——”

“I will stay here, and gladly, mother,” she answered, for in these months of sweet acquaintanceship the affection of the woman and girl had become much like that which exists between mother and daughter, “but it is not that I fear anything, myself, from the student Tring. It is really my uncle’s conduct these few weeks that troubles me, and more especially his conduct since that night when the men came here to steal. He is so changed!”

“I have seen,” Joseph’s mother replied. “But has he ever been cruel to you?”

“Oh, no! Never that. But he is not at all as he was when we first came here to live. Then he was full of merriment, ready to talk or laugh with me, eager to go somewhere or to see something that would be of pleasure to us both. Now he does not seem to think of me, at all. He is always like one in a dream. Sometimes when I speak to him, he does not seem to hear. Other times he answers my questions queerly, saying things that I had not thought of. He is caught up in something that I fear, and something that has little good in it.”

“It’s the student Tring who has done all this.”

“Yes, I think that he has done much of it. They two are together every night, and they work together in the loft above my head. I can hear them moving about occasionally, though sometimes a terrible silence is all that there is.”

“My dear child,” the woman laid her work by for the moment, “this is always your home here. Come here when there is anything to trouble you. . . . The little bed is always yours. . . . We, too, are greatly troubled as well, as perhaps you know. Pan Andrew has not been the same since that accursed night. . . . Yet if one had but sense, we have here all that should make man happy: children, love, bread, and a house—why must men be always sighing and striving for that which they have not?”

“We were so happy before,” continued Elzbietka. “It seems to me that the student Tring has some charm over my uncle which he cannot resist.”

“Heaven help us,” exclaimed the woman, making the sign of the cross. “And have you any idea what is going on in the loft above you?”

“None.” The girl shuddered. “It is some terrible thing. To-night both men spoke in such a peculiar way that I was frightened when they first came together. And ever since that they have been speaking more wildly, I think, than ever before. My uncle keeps saying, ‘This will drive me mad,’ and Tring says to him again, ‘There is nothing of harm in it. Try once more.’ Then again there is silence and my uncle speaks shortly, mad things—and I was frightened and came here.”

“My poor child.”

“Just before I came downstairs Tring was speaking to my uncle as if he were just a common servant. And my uncle instead of being angry seemed to be trying to please the student. At last Tring said: ‘This, now, you must do. You must learn the secret which will change brass into gold. Once you have gold, then you have the power to do all that man can do. You can go about over the earth and see all that there is to see, you can study with the most famous masters and buy all that you please.’ He repeated over and over again the word ‘gold,’ and it seemed to me that while he was speaking my uncle was working at something, for he never answered a word.”

The woman shook her head. “I have known of those who sought to make gold out of baser metal. But no good ever befell them. . . .” Then thinking that she needed to draw the girl’s thoughts away from herself and her troubles, she said, “I am often lonely these nights when Joseph and his father are away. Yet I often listen for the sound of the trumpet in the church tower and I know that everything is well with them.”

“And I. Joseph begins at the second hour. We have a secret, he and I, and I always listen for him to play.”

“Bless your heart. Do you mean to say that you lie awake until the second hour?”

“I do when he is playing. For he is my best friend, and one should be loyal unto friends.”

“Can you tell when he is playing, and when the father?”

“I could easily at first. Now it is much harder, but I think that I could distinguish did I not know at what hours each played. His notes are not quite so pointed as the father’s, but they are becoming more and more like them all the time.”

The conversation ran to other matters and it grew late. Finally the woman made up a bed for the girl on a small couch which Joseph and his father had built. It was close to the outer door, and directly below the casement, over which a piece of tapestry hung; the window was open in this fair weather, and Elzbietka could easily hear noises from outside, especially the sound of the church bells and the trumpet, for the window faced in the direction of the tower. Joseph’s mother retired to the second room, where she slept when Joseph was at the church, and Elzbietka, without undressing, for she feared lest the alchemist should call her suddenly, threw herself on the couch and tried to sleep.

She found sleep impossible. Visions of some terrible thing happening to her uncle and the student kept her thoughts boiling like water in a kettle. She kept remembering the words that other people had said, the remarks made by other students, the whispers up and down the lane that Pan Kreutz was engaged in some terrible work of Black Magic.

It was a superstitious age, an age when people believed that powers of evil could be called upon, like human beings, to perform certain dark deeds—that souls of the dead forever haunted certain lonely places on earth and would answer a question if one but knew how to address them. If a black cat crossed one’s path, then bad luck was sure to follow; if an owl hooted at exactly midnight from the tower of some deserted church then the witches were riding through the air on brooms or branches; if a dog howled in the night it was a sign that some one living near by was about to die.

There were people who fostered such ideas for their own benefit. They were for the most part necromancers or magicians who took the gold of credulous ones for telling them of their own futures or for warding off some impending evil from them. Perhaps some few of these believed themselves honest; the greater number were thoroughly dishonest and unscrupulous, men who wore dark robes and practiced dark ways simply to frighten superstitious folk into giving them money. These magicians sold articles called “tokens” which were guaranteed to keep away certain evils. A little ball of black stone would prevent the possessor from being bitten by snakes. The little yellow, glasslike substance, created when lightning struck in sand and melted the fine particles, was greatly valued; crumbled and taken internally it would prevent stomach trouble. Worn about the neck in a small bag it would keep off lightning. Certain little bones from the bodies of cats, dogs, and hares had properties of benefit; the heart of a frog had many mystic qualities.

It was quite apparent in the case of the alchemist, Kreutz, that something was going on that was undermining his health and perhaps his reason. Such a change as had come over him was not at all normal in a man with such a strong body and mind as he possessed. And as Elzbietka lay awake thinking of one thing after another she became a prey to many strange fears, among them this one, that Kreutz was no longer the master of his own soul, that somehow the student Tring had become the master of it; that Tring had discovered something in his studies which he was working out at the expense of the man who naturally should have been his teacher and master.

The trumpet had in the meanwhile sounded the first hour, but still she was not able to sleep. Her natural thoughts of her uncle and Tring were followed by a flood of fanciful imaginings, and in them she saw the figures warped and distorted out of their natural proportions; persons who are sick and persons who carry troubles in their minds experience this frequently, at a time when the body is tired and aching for sleep and yet when the mind is overactive with worries. Her uncle at one minute of normal and ordinary size seemed at intervals to shrink or enlarge without warning; Tring was now a student of the collegiate type, now a nightmare of a thing with the head of a pumpkin that grew until the whole sky was filled with the darkness of his shadow. They were engaged in many nefarious enterprises: they were releasing great hordes of bats from baskets, bats that they had created out of old sandals; they were leaping into the air and catching huge birds like eagles which they were imprisoning under the roof of the loft; they were mixing fiery liquids that hissed and bubbled and foamed—they were doing a thousand things at once and all of them somehow of evil. For nearly an hour these phantoms of half sleep danced in her brain, and then suddenly the bell on the tower sounded twice.

“The second hour,” she exclaimed, the drowsy phantoms of her brain taking sudden flight.

The Heynal began. “That is Joseph,” she thought.

She was humming the tune, already following him note by note—she reached the place where the hymn ended, and ceased there, to wait until he began to play again from the second of the four windows. But the next second she realized to her vast amazement that Joseph had not stopped upon the broken note that came at the end of the Heynal, but had added a note or two, and brought the little hymn to an end in the way that pieces of music usually end.

Elzbietka sat upright on the bed, although she was quite certain that some trick had been played upon her by her senses. “Perhaps I was but half awake,” she thought. “I will listen more closely when he plays it the second time.”

He began to play from the south side. This time she did not hum the tune over but followed each note intently. When he had finished she realized that for the second time he had not stopped upon the broken note but had gone ahead with the additional notes which made the Heynal sound like a finished piece of music and not one that was broken off.

[Illustration: _The ending of the Heynal, showing the broken note._ _The Heynal as Joseph played it, showing the notes which he added._]

“He _is_ playing it wrongly,” she repeated to herself.

He played next on the east side but the wind carried the sound away this time. When he came to the last window, the window on the north, the sound came clearly to Elzbietka’s ears. “This time I shall know,” she said.

At first she thought that he was going to stop upon the broken note, for he hesitated there, but then he went on ahead as if to say, “I know that I should stop here, but am not stopping,” and added the extra notes which finished the strain, just as the young trumpeter would probably have finished it had he not been shot down by the Tartar bowman.

Elzbietka was off the bed and on her feet. . . . He had played it in such fashion deliberately! Joseph was far too good a trumpeter to make the same mistake at least three times.

But what—what—could it mean? That Joseph was in some trouble? But there was the great alarm bell, which once sounded would rouse the town in an incredibly short time. This bell was always employed in times of fire, invasion, defense, and such various events as riots, the visit of a foreign king, the declaration of war——

He certainly would not trifle with such a sacred thing as the Heynal for a mere pastime—therefore, why, why, why, did he not ring the bell?

There could be but one answer! The girl had half realized it with the very first false note of the first playing of the Heynal. This was a signal to her—to her, Elzbietka Kreutz! Joseph was in some strange, some unusual kind of distress! He counted upon her to remember the little secret that he had made in joking, he counted upon her to understand that he was in trouble. Why, perhaps he was even held by force—here her intuition actually leaped to the truth—perhaps some person was watching him so that he could not ring the bell!

Yes, it was for her ears that he was playing.

And she must act—she must help Joseph—at once—_at once_. Only, what was the wisest course? She could not bring herself to alarm the boy’s mother—should she call her uncle? He was still with Johann Tring in the loft—the light was there and there had been no sound of the student descending. Both, she knew, would laugh at her fears and send her back to bed. Therefore she moved quietly from the couch across the floor to the door where she threw back the bolts and drew the door open. Stepping across the threshold she closed the door and ascended to her own lodging where she procured the key to the outer door, and threw a cloak about her head and shoulders. In a very short time she was in the street.

At such an hour as this in the morning, it was dangerous for an unarmed man, and even more for an unarmed woman, to pass through the streets. Late roisterers were abroad, gamblers, drunkards, thieves, the very filth and scum of the city, were crouching in corners or picking the pockets of some man who had been struck down from behind. The city watch were preventive enough against crime if they responded in numbers large enough to cope with thieves and murderers who often worked in bands, but the law satisfied itself with treating most cruelly the few prisoners that fell into its clutches, and let the great majority of offenders go unmolested. Therefore a man’s best friend in dark city streets, particularly at such a late hour as this, was his good sword or cudgel.

Once outside the building wall Elzbietka breathed a prayer to her patron saint, the good Elizabeth, and observing in the bright light of the moon that the Street of the Pigeons was for the moment empty, kept her back close to the wall and edged her way slowly in the wall’s shadow to the cross street at the left, through which she had planned to dart for St. Ann’s Street, only a block distant. She was at the very corner and had climbed out from the sheltering buttress of the wall when there came the sound of men’s voices from the Street of the Pigeons directly behind her. Without turning about to see who was there she darted around the corner into the cross street and broke into a run over its rough cobbles.

Some one, however, had seen her. She heard a voice cry, “Who is there?” and there was the sound of feet pursuing her.

“A woman, as I live,” she heard a pursuer say as she dashed ahead. The moon seemed to hang over the very head of the cross street, so that none of the buildings threw a shadow. The pursuers had already turned the corner from the Street of the Pigeons and came flying ahead in great leaps and bounds.

She thought of Tartars and Peter of the Button Face, but it was no such folk as that who followed her. This small company of men was but a band of rags and tatters, beggars and petty thieves and filthy cozeners, seeking only to fleece some passer-by of a few grosz in order to get drinks or a hard corner in which to sleep. A girl of her age was just such prey as these wretched people sought, for they could plunder her without fear of harm, and her clothing or perhaps some bundle that she carried would bring a few coins for their need.

“Stop! Stop! We are friends,” the first of them called out. “We would not harm a woman in the street at such an hour. Listen, we will go with you where you are going.” But the tone of the voice only made Elzbietka run the harder.

Into St. Ann’s Street she turned at length, with the men close behind. Her one hope now was that Jan Kanty would answer his bell quickly, for if she did not slip inside almost immediately, the men following would catch up to her.

However, summons for help from Jan Kanty seldom waited long without an answer. He had been busy all that night with his writings, at which he worked incessantly, when he was not aiding some world-wrecked soul—writings which were to prove of inestimable value to the university and the whole world of culture after his death. Therefore the ringing of the bell took him but a few steps from his work. As he unlocked the door and flung it open the girl darted by him and into the house.

“It is I, Elzbietka Kreutz,” she said. “Good father, I come with news that needs action, I think, and that immediately. But first close the door, since there are some pursuing me.”

The scholar closed the door. If he felt astonishment at the sight of a young girl flying through the streets at such an hour, he did not show it. He was, as a matter of fact, used to all kinds of strange happenings. Even when the wretched beggars raced past the door wondering what had become of their victim, he had an impulse to go out and talk to them and eventually share his purse with them, since he knew that it was only poverty and starvation that drove them to such extremes. But recognizing the girl’s distress and her immediate need for him, he closed the door and led the way into his study.

“What has happened, daughter? Has there been a robbery again in the house or has thine uncle gotten himself into some difficulty? Something of the sort there is, I feel and know.”

She recited her story as best she could, for she was short-breathed from running and from her anxiety for Joseph. If only he would not smile! If only he would not think that she had been dreaming! But the venerable scholar was far from smiling.

“You are right,” he exclaimed spiritedly, almost before she had finished her tale. “There is no time to wait. He is in some grave danger which may the good God divert from him. Remain here where you will be safe. I will at once send a servant of the university to call the watch, and will go with them myself to the tower. I fear something of evil has happened.”

A few minutes later thirty men of the city watch, in heavy armor, were marching upon the church. They found first the church watchman securely bound in the churchyard and released him. Then they entered the tower through the unlocked door, and began silently and cautiously to climb the stairs.

In the meantime the band of Cossacks high up in the tower above had begun to grow weary of this excursion. At first the idea of an attack in mid-air, and in a church tower at that, had piqued their curiosity and aroused their thirst for adventure, since such an attack had heretofore been entirely outside their experience. And when earlier in the evening Peter had called for the ten volunteers he needed, not one man among them could be induced to remain behind.

But the affair had proved to be of a simplicity that had no appeal for men so bloodthirsty. In truth, so well had Peter’s plans been laid, and so secure from intrusion did they feel in this lofty stronghold, and so irksome was the waiting for their leader, that they had succumbed one by one to the drowsiness of the early morning hour and with the exception of the one man who stood guard over the trumpeter, they were sprawled out idly, or were dozing.

Therefore men of the city watch, when they had crept noiselessly to the top, surprised them completely. In truth they were captives before they were quite on their guard or realized what was happening. Pan Andrew’s guard himself did not have time to carry out the leader’s command—he was in fact made prisoner, as he was upon the point of delivering a deathblow.

While they were binding the last prisoner’s arms, Joseph came running and leaping up the steps and threw himself into his father’s embrace.

“Father, father,” he shouted excitedly, “it was Elzbietka who did this.” His eyes were shining as he thought about it. “Elzbietka—Elzbietka,” he kept repeating. “She heard me sound the trumpet in a different fashion from the way I usually sound it, for to-night I did not stop the Heynal upon the broken note, but played several notes more. She ran through the night alone to Jan Kanty’s and he aroused the city watch. I just met him at the foot of the stairs and he told me the whole story.”

“Bless the girl,” said the father, tears rising to his eyes. “And you, my son, how did you get free? I feared——”

“The man who was dragging me toward our home heard the watch marching through the street, and when he realized that they were going toward the church he took himself off like lightning into the darkness without another thought for me. But Elzbietka is at the scholar’s dwelling in the university building, waiting. I must go to her quickly and tell her all, and thank her that we are alive this night.”

Pan Andrew was busy with his own thoughts when the watch finally marched away with their prisoners.

The Great Tarnov Crystal! The Great Tarnov Crystal! That was what the Tartar said he had come for. Was it possible that the man had been telling the truth? For what other reason could he have surprised him thus in the tower? For what other reason the hurried expedition into the town with the boy, Joseph, and the instructions he had left with his men? If it had been revenge alone that the man was seeking, then he and Joseph would never have remained alive until now. But if the man had not obtained the crystal on the night of his attack upon his lodgings, then what in the name of heaven and earth had happened to it on that night, and where was the crystal now?