FullReads

My sister-in-law might have thought me cruel–but I did it.

CHAP XXIII AND SOME OTHER CHAPS

I know not how it was compassed, but that night Rupert of Glasgow was left bound and gagged against the door of the castle, and the night-bell pulled. And that night I was seated on the throne of the S’helpburgs. As I gazed at the Princess Flirtia, glowing in the characteristic beauty of the S’helpburgs, and admired her striking profile, I murmured softly and half audibly: “Her nose is as a tower that looketh toward Damascus.”

She looked puzzled, and knitted her pretty brows. “Is that poetry?” she asked.

“No” I said promptly. “It’s only part of a song of our great Ancestor.” As she blushed slightly, I playfully flung around her fair neck the jeweled collar of the Order of the S’helpburgs–three golden spheres pendant, quartered from the arms of Lombardy—with the ancient Syric motto, El Ess Dee.

She toyed with it a moment, and then said softly: “You have changed, Rupert. Do ye no ken hoo?”

I looked at her–as surprised at her dialect as at the imputation.

“You don’t talk that way, as you did. And you don’t say, ‘It WILL be twelve o’clock,’ when you mean, ‘It IS twelve o’clock,’ nor ‘I will be going out,’ when you mean ‘I AM.’ And you didn’t say, ‘Eh, sirs!’ or ‘Eh, mon,’ to any of the Court–nor ‘Hoot awa!’ nor any of those things. And,” she added with a divine little pout, “you haven’t told me I was ‘sonsie’ or ‘bonnie’ once.”

I could with difficulty restrain myself. Rage, indignation, and jealousy filled my heart almost to bursting. I understood it all; that rascally Scotchman had made the most of his time, and dared to get ahead of me! I did not mind being taken for the King, but to be confounded with this infernal descendant of a gamekeeper–was too much! Yet with a superhuman effort I remained calm–and even smiled.

“You are not well?” said the Princess earnestly. “I thought you were taking too much of the Strasbourg pie at supper! And you are not going, surely–so soon?” she added, as I rose.

“I must go at once,” I said. “I have forgotten some important business at Bock.”

“Not boar hunting again?” she said poutingly.

“No, I’m hunting a red dear,” I said with that playful subtlety which would make her take it as a personal compliment, though I was only thinking of that impostor, and longing to get at him, as I bowed and withdrew.

In another hour I was before Black Michael’s castle at Bock. These are lightning changes, I know–and the sovereignty of Trulyruralania WAS somewhat itinerant–but when a kingdom and a beautiful Princess are at stake, what are you to do? Fritz had begged me to take him along, but I arranged that he should come later, and go up unostentatiously in the lift. I was going by way of the moat. I was to succor the King, but I fear my real object was to get at Rupert of Glasgow.

I had noticed the day before that a large outside drain pipe, decreed by the Bock County Council, ran from the moat to the third floor of the donjon keep. I surmised that the King was imprisoned on that floor. Examining the pipe closely, I saw that it was really a pneumatic dispatch tube, for secretly conveying letters and dispatches from the castle through the moat beyond the castle walls. Its extraordinary size, however, gave me the horrible conviction that it was to be used to convey the dead body of the King to the moat. I grew cold with horror–but I was determined.

I crept up the pipe. As I expected, it opened funnel-wise into a room where the poor King was playing poker with Black Michael. It took me but a moment to dash through the window into the room, push the King aside, gag and bind Black Michael, and lower him by a stout rope into the pipe he had destined for another. Having him in my power, I lowered him until I heard his body splash in the water in the lower part of the pipe. Then I proceeded to draw him up again, intending to question him in regard to Rupert of Glasgow. But this was difficult, as his saturated clothing made him fit the smooth pipe closely. At last I had him partly up, when I was amazed at a rush of water from the pipe which flooded the room. I dropped him and pulled him up again with the same result. Then in a flash I saw it all. His body, acting like a piston in the pipe, had converted it into a powerful pump. Mad with joy, I rapidly lowered and pulled him up again and again, until the castle was flooded–and the moat completely drained! I had created the diversion I wished; the tenants of the castle were disorganized and bewildered in trying to escape from the deluge, and the moat was accessible to my friends. Placing the poor King on a table to be out of the water, and tying up his head in my handkerchief to disguise him from Michael’s guards, I drew my sword and plunged downstairs with the cataract in search of the miscreant Rupert. I reached the drawbridge, when I heard the sounds of tumult and was twice fired at,–once, as I have since learned, by my friends, under the impression that I was the escaping Rupert of Glasgow, and once by Black Michael’s myrmidons, under the belief that I was the King. I was struck by the fact that these resemblances were confusing and unfortunate! At this moment, however, I caught sight of a kilted figure leaping from a lower window into the moat. Some instinct impelled me to follow it. It rapidly crossed the moat and plunged into the forest, with me in pursuit. I gained upon it; suddenly it turned, and I found myself again confronted with MYSELF–and apparently the King! But that very resemblance made me recognize the Scotch pretender, Rupert of Glasgow. Yet he would have been called a “braw laddie,” and his handsome face showed a laughing good humor, even while he opposed me, claymore in hand.