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Title: The trail of the White Knight

Author: Bruce Graeme


        
Release date: May 17, 2026 [eBook #78700]

Language: English

Original publication: London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd, 1920

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78700

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRAIL OF THE WHITE KNIGHT ***






  _HARRAP'S SHILLING LIBRARY_



  _THE TRAIL OF THE
  WHITE KNIGHT_


  _By_

  _BRUCE GRAEME_

  _Author of
  "Blackshirt," "La Belle Laurine," etc._



  GEORGE G. HARRAP & CO. LTD.
  LONDON BOMBAY SYDNEY




  _First published October_ 1920
  by GEORGE G. HARRAP & Co., LTD
  39-41 Parker Street, Kingsway, London, W.C.2.
  _Reprinted:_ 1926; 1928; 1930; 1931; 1932.


  _Printed at Parkgate Printing Works, Dublin, by_ CAHILL & Co., LTD.,
  _London and Dublin_




  _HARRAP'S SHILLING LIBRARY_

  1. Pollyooly. Edgar Jepson.
  2. The Chinese Parrot. Earl Derr Biggers.
  3. Bluefeather. Laurence W. Meynell.
  4. The Gillespie Suicide Mystery.  Leonard R. Gribble.
  5. Death's Eye. Laurence W. Meynell.
  6. The Cathra Mystery. Adam Gordon Macleod.
  7. The Marloe Mansions Murder. Adam Gordon Macleod.
  8. Behind that Curtain. Earl Derr Biggers.
  9. The Mayfair Mystery. Henry Holt.
  10. The Death Gong. Selwyn Jepson.
  11. Blackshirt. Bruce Graeme.
  12. The Return of Blackshirt. Bruce Graeme.
  13. The Trail of the White Knight.  Bruce Graeme.
  14. The House of Fear. R. W. Service.
  15. Dead Men's Money. J. S. Fletcher.
  16. The Chestermarke Instinct. J. S. Fletcher.
  17. The Death of Laurence Vining. Alan Thomas.
  18. Inspector Frost's Jigsaw. H. Maynard Smith.




THE TRAIL OF THE WHITE KNIGHT


_PROLOGUE_

I

"Say again you love me," she pleaded.

"Silly one!  Have I not already told you more times than I can
count?" he chided.

She pouted slightly.  "Yes, dear one; but a woman can never hear too
often the words which mean so much to her."

"A woman!"  The man laughed softly.  "You are not a woman, Zita.
Why, you have yet to see your nineteenth birthday.  You are still
nothing but a child--yet--I love you, Zita."

"Are you then a grandfather, big Mr Englishman?" she mocked.

"No, but it is more than a month ago now since I celebrated my
twenty-fifth birthday."

The next few minutes were spent in silence as they walked along the
shady paths of Margaret Island.  Romance infused the soft, warm air
of the July night with its subtle infection; the surroundings in
which these two walked were reminiscent of Paradise.

On their right the darkness of the night was emphasized by the many
beautiful trees, the shadows of which, cast by the silvery light of
the moon above, were delicately traced upon the soft sward beneath,
and the simple majesty of the woods was disturbed only by the bright
lights of an electric tramcar, as it flashed past, raucously,
clangingly making its way from one end of the island to the other.

On their left the scene was still more beautiful, for past them
swiftly flowed the broad Danube, silently racing toward its outlet in
the Black Sea, carrying on its bosom the broad-bottomed boats of
commerce.

Just now these barges seemed like quaint, black shadows, moving with
an eerie silence.  There were, however, other craft, steamboats,
which shimmered and twinkled, their reflected lights dancing merrily
up and down upon the water.  These were the vessels which conveyed
the people across from either end of Margaret Island.

On the bank opposite was the old town of Ofen, better known as Buda.
From where the couple stood, quiet in the thoughts which gripped
them, they could see the lights of the royal palace scintillating in
the darkness.

From the upper end of the island they could hear faintly the plashing
of superfluous water as, from the bath-house, it falls in a pretty
cascade into the pond beneath.

Geoffrey Templeton wondered if there could possibly be any other
place in the world so wonderful as this, while Zita looked up at his
strong profile, thrown into relief by the ethereal light above, and
smiled slightly to herself, for she too was idealizing, contemplating
whether there could be another man in this world so splendid as he.

She looked at the moon, and even as she gazed upward a small black
cloud passed beneath, quite obscuring its silvery sheen.
Coincidently she remembered that on the morrow Geoffrey was to return
to England, his holiday at an end.

"Oh, Geoffrey, dear heart," she murmured softly, "must you indeed
depart to-morrow for your cold, cheerless England?"

He turned toward her, and, acting on the impulse of the moment,
seized her dainty hands within his and pressed them passionately.

"I wish I could say otherwise," he muttered hoarsely, "for I would
ask nothing better than to stop here with you always; but I have no
option.  We must part, darling, for six months.  It shall not be
longer, I swear it.  After all," he continued, "six months is but a
short time, and then, when I return, we can be married.  Cheer up,
little one, only twenty-four weeks, and then....  Smile, Zita, for
this night is our last one together, and it hurts me to see you sad."

Gently releasing her fingers, and catching her chin with his right
hand, he lifted her face gently so that they gazed into one another's
eyes.  Pluckily she attempted to smile, but instead a tiny tear,
escaping, rolled down her cheek, and seeing this Geoffrey drew nearer
to her, kissing it away before it found time to drop.

Quickly the hours sped by while they talked of the past....  Once
again he made her laugh as he reminded her of the time when he could
talk no Hungarian, when she, taking pity on his plight, instructed
him, until now he was proficient in the Magyar language.

They spoke of the future, the far-off time when he should return to
Budapest and claim her for his own, and together they planned the
time-to-be, discussed how long they would spend in England with his
people, and how long in Budapest with hers.

From not far away there was a discreet cough from Zita's chaperon,
and Geoffrey looked, dismayed, at his watch.

"Come, darling, this must be good night ... and _au revoir_."

Quickly the ferry conveyed them from the island back to Buda again,
where he hired a _fiacre_.

Back at her home, the wise and kindly chaperon discreetly
disappeared; once again Geoffrey clasped his future wife in his arms,
and, kissing the brimming tears away, made his _adieux_.

"In six months I shall return," were his last words, and the next
moment he was gone.

Early the next morning Geoffrey left for Paris; before him England,
behind him Budapest, the city of smiles, gaiety, and happiness.

"In six months I shall return."

The words echoed in his ears, and the hum of the wheels of the
_wagon-lit_ repeated after him: "Six months, six months!"

Once he looked out of the window, but he saw only an ominous haze
away in the east, heavy banks of thunder-laden clouds, obscuring his
last view of Budapest.

Even as the looming storm rolled up from the east that morning so did
other clouds spring up, this time political, born of a tiny puff of
blue smoke which was slowly emitted from the barrel of a revolver,
held in the hands of a fanatic; and less than a month later followed
the whirlwind, and the upheaval of Europe.  Geoffrey's dream was
past, buried in the heart of the bloody battlefield.



II

The War was over!  Peace had come again to Germany, France, England,
Italy, and the United States.  Over these countries there was once
more contentment, the happiness of a quickly reviving industry.  The
echoing boom of guns was no longer heard, air-raids were already but
a memory, telegraph boys ceased to be of heartrending significance.

Already war-scarred warriors were being demobilized; ex-soldiers were
returning to more peaceful employment; food, diverted from its
destination--headquarters--was becoming plentiful, of a better
quality.

War was over!  Now only time was needed, and these countries would be
their old selves again.  In Paris the statesmen were collecting to
discuss peace terms and reparations.

This was the position in March 1919 of the victors, and even of some
of the vanquished.  Germany, beaten and cowed, was now putting its
house in order.  Turkey, philosophically shrugging its shoulders, was
merely resuming life where it had been left off.

So busy were the victors celebrating victory, so engaged were the
vanquished making the best of their defeat, that the world overlooked
one country where peace had failed to find a harbour, where post-War
conditions were worse than during that awful period of war itself,
the country in which human jackals and vultures were already gathered
to disrupt and dissect an already breaking empire--Hungary.

Upon Hungary Lenin, from the fastnesses of Moscow, had already cast
his eyes, and so he sent out his lieutenants, schooled in fiendish
cruelty, inculcated with inhuman conceptions of government.

To Hungary came Bela Kun, the chief apostle of Lenin and Trotsky,
where, in an incredibly short time, he enrolled under his banner of
Communism criminals of all types, and elected leaders: Bohm, Pogany,
Agoston, Harcoq, and Szamuelly.

"Down with the _bourgeoisie_, long live the proletariat!" became the
cry, and to the echo of these hysterical screams poor Hungary
commenced the worst year throughout the pages of its history, during
which it was to live under a reign of terror worse even than the
French Revolution.

To Budapest, a seething hotbed of Communism, came Geoffrey Templeton
in search of the girl of whom he had dreamed during the long years of
war, the woman he had never forgotten.

Arriving at the East station, he was amazed by the dark, dismal
gloominess of the once glorious terminus.  Where before had wandered
well-dressed travellers, rubbing shoulders with gaily uniformed
officers of the Hungarian army, now slouched slovenly men and
starving women, while deeper in the gloom lurked ominous shadows.

On all sides suspicious glances were levelled at him from wolf-like
faces.  Here and there he espied men in leather uniforms, their caps
blazoning Red cockades, their belts an armoury in themselves.  They
were the dreaded Lenin Boys, a troop of murderers and criminals,
under the command of Josef Cserni, ex-sailor and late prisoner of war
in Russia.

These Lenin Boys were guaranteed immunity from all punishment for
murder or any other crime so long as their activities were confined
to the hated _bourgeoisie_ and did not involve the death of notable
Bolsheviks.

Their very appearance was terrifying, for they were chosen for their
height and fiery appearance.  As Geoffrey walked toward the entrance
one of these Boys pushed against him.

"_Bourgeois_," he hiccuped, and spat on the ground.

With blazing eyes Geoffrey turned round, and the soldier slunk away.
There was a hoarse laugh from one of the onlookers, but otherwise no
one took any notice of this incident.

It was in vain that Geoffrey searched for a vehicle to convey him to
an hotel.  No public conveyances of any kind were to be seen, only
here and there a charging motor-car, occupied, so far as he could
see, by groups of soldiers, or Communists, distinguishable by their
criminal countenances, their scarlet decorations.

He realized that to get anywhere he would have to walk, and so,
picking up his bag, he began to traverse the darkened streets.  Here
and there street-lights reflected upon advertisement hoardings,
blazing with Red posters, huge placards printed in red and black,
portraying immense and ghastly figures.

Geoffrey heard a sound of pattering footsteps behind him.  Out of the
dim shadows came the running figure of a man, breathing hoarsely.  He
passed in a flash, and then the Englishman heard other following
steps, and hoarse shouting.

"Long live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!" some one cried, then
suddenly there roared the sound of a shot, and a street-light just
ahead flicked out as its encasing glass tinkled to the ground.

"Death to the _bourgeois_!  Death!"

Geoffrey halted suddenly, startled.  What had happened?  Was this
Hungary, the Budapest he knew so well?  From a distance he heard more
shouts, further shots, and then silence once again.

"Good Gad!" he muttered to himself.  "I thought this was peace."

He had never dreamed, never imagined, when he had set out for
Budapest to go to his beloved, that he was to meet with this sort of
thing.  An icy chill seemed to settle round his heart.  What of Zita?

For the first time since his demobilization his spirits fell to zero.
For two weeks now he had been living in a Paradise of his own,
eagerly anticipating the moment when he should clasp the girl he
loved--woman, she would be now--once more in his arms.

He had had no reason to believe that this--this ghastly business was
taking place in Budapest.  "Death to the _bourgeoisie_!"  What did it
mean?  Revolution!  No, not even that, but worse.

With a white, set face he picked up his bag once more and commenced
to walk.  Now and again the silence was disturbed by hurrying
motor-cars, shouts, or sometimes shots.  The streets were practically
empty, and at this Geoffrey did not wonder any longer.

Later, he arrived at the Continental Hotel, a memory of its palatial
splendour still existing in his mind, but now it resembled nothing
more than a filthy building, its exterior no cleaner than its
interior, which was littered with dirt, and smelled evilly.

There were still guests--unkempt, unwashed men and women who lounged
about, spitting and smoking.  He stared with amazement at the scene
before him, disbelieving the evidence of his own eyes.

He was accosted presently by a clerk, who slouched up to him.

"What do you want?" the man growled.

Geoffrey eyed him silently.  "A room," he said presently, and the
clerk, under the Englishman's fixed glance, stirred uneasily.

"Supposing we have not got one?" he said.

"Supposing you look," replied Geoffrey quietly.

The clerk gave ground.  Entering his counter he banged a bell, and a
_pinczer_ approached.

"Take this man up to room 61," he ordered.

Without a word the waiter picked up Geoffrey's bag and led the way,
working the lift himself.

Room 61 was no cleaner than the vestibule.  As the electric light
threw its white glare over the room Geoffrey saw dozens of
blackbeetles swarming into hidden crannies.

The waiter hesitated.  Geoffrey put his hand in his pocket and pulled
out some coins.  "Come inside and shut the door," he ordered, then
presently, when the other had complied, and received a tip which made
his eyes glisten, asked: "Now, what does all this mean?  The War----"

"The War!"  The man laughed bitterly.  "Not the War, sir, but
revolution, Communism, Bolshevism."  His face became suspicious, and
his lips closed tightly.  "Why do you ask me?  You know as well as I
do."

Geoffrey shook his head.  "I do not.  I have only just arrived from
England."

The waiter looked up eagerly.  "You are English, sir?"

Geoffrey nodded.

"I was frightened.  There are spies, detectives, and _agents
provocateurs_ everywhere."

"Spies, detectives--I don't understand!"

"No, sir, you wouldn't.  You have won the War, and we have lost.  It
makes all the difference.  Hungary is now a republic--worse, in fact,
for we have a Soviet Government."

"Good God!"  Geoffrey was astounded, but recollections of Zita made
him urge the older man on with his story.  "Tell me more," he
suggested.

"It all began with Count Michael Karolyi.  He formed a republic, with
himself at the helm.  Not for long, sir.  The Communists took the
lead under Bela Kun, two days ago, and now we have the Commune,
another word for murder and pillage.

"I have heard it said that Szamuelly wants a three days' loot, three
days during which the comrades, the Communists, can steal and sack to
their hearts' content.  It may happen at any minute.  Sir, I cannot
tell you how bad it is!"  Two tears forced themselves out of the
man's eyes and slowly rolled down his puckered cheeks.

"You see," he continued presently, "myself, I am too old for these
ideas.  You grand folks, you treat the likes of us well.  I used to
make good money before the War came and spoilt it all."

"But what of the rich people, I mean the people who used to stay
here?  What of them?"

The waiter shook his head slowly.  "All penniless, sir, penniless.
Their money confiscated, their property stolen."  He dropped his
voice.  "Many of them are ... dead, murdered."

Geoffrey seemed only to hear his voice from a distance as the man
continued.  There was a buzzing in his ears, and his head was
reeling.  What of Zita?  What of her?  Supposing that she were ...
dead!

"Oh, God!" he moaned, and with an imperious motion he stopped the
waiter, and strode up and down.  Presently he turned again to the
other.  "Tell me," he asked anxiously, "has anything happened to the
people in the Erzebet-Korut?"

It was in the Erzebet-Korut that Zita lived with her father and
mother, the Count and Countess Rakoczy.

The man scratched his head.  "I have heard tell of--and yet--no, sir,
I am not sure."

Geoffrey could have shaken him by the shoulders.  "Go, now!" he
cried, and the old man passed out.

It was too late that night to do anything.  Geoffrey undressed and
threw himself into bed, yet scarcely slept.  He tossed and turned
from side to side, but all the time he could picture only Zita, who
appeared to be vaguely holding out her arms to him, just as she had
done when he had left her, over four years ago.

Sick with apprehension, he heard the hours gradually strike one after
another, and never was dawn more welcome.  He hastily dressed.

Not waiting for breakfast, he hurried to the Erzebet-Korut, and was
relieved to find that, if outside appearances could be taken as any
criterion, nothing had happened to the Rakoczy residence, since,
except for its dirty condition, it seemed untouched.

With a trembling heart he approached the entrance, and was presently
admitted.

Ten minutes later a white-faced man reeled out, stunned by the news
he heard, the story he had been told by the dying Countess, the tale
of how the Count, for his patriotic resistance to Communism, had been
proscribed an outlaw by Bela Kun, and had fled, accompanied by Zita,
for his life.

Zita and her kindly white-haired father outlaws in their own country,
liable to be shot at any moment!  Geoffrey groaned.  It seemed
unbelievable!  Only by an effort of will did he become his normal
self again as he walked back to the hotel.

Fortunately the Countess had been able to give him the address to
which her tiny family had fled, a small peasant cottage in Szugy on
the Ipoly.

Thither went Geoffrey, his vague haunting fear growing stronger as
the train advanced sluggishly through the quiet countryside.  The
hours passed slowly, but at length the train steamed into
Balassagyarmat.  Later Geoffrey arrived at Szugy.

Everything seemed quiet and peaceful--ominously so.  There was a
sense of brooding hurt, a solemn hush.  Yard by yard Geoffrey
advanced nearer to his destination, and all the time his heart beat a
wild tattoo, though now it was because of his nearness to Zita.  At
last he was really to see her, to feel her within his arms.

At last!  A small cottage was before him.  In front of it bloomed
early spring flowers, and the grass sprouted greenly.  A narrow
flagged path led up to the door, and along this Geoffrey stepped.
Another few moments, a second only...

The door was slightly open, and there was no answer to his knocks.
There was a slight smell, a tang which he could not define.

He pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The tang was that of blood, freshly spilled blood, that of the old
Count, whose gentle heart had brought him unwavering popularity
wherever he went.

He had been playing chess at the time.  Even now the chessboard and
the pieces still remained on the table: red _versus_ white, red
winning, the white king in check to them.

On the floor lay the Count--dead.  Opposite sat Zita, still and
motionless, her staring, horrified eyes fixed with a peculiar
intensity in front of her.

Calmly Geoffrey inspected the scene in front of him, quietly viewing
the tragedy.  Only his eyes flickered strangely.  He moved more into
the room, and bent over the corpse.  As he had thought.  Bayonet
wounds, here, there, and everywhere.  The helpless old man had been
literally stabbed to death by brutal, bestial murderers, pawns of
Bela Kun, the Dictator of the Proletariat.

Zita was untouched.  She had died as she watched her father's death,
her heart giving way under the strain, her hand clutching a
chess-piece, a piece which, had she finished her move, would have
released the white king from check by taking a red pawn.

The piece was--a white knight.




_CHAPTER I_

The surging crowds, swaying, shuffling, grumbling, waited impatiently
in the grim Parliament Square, as yet lit but faintly by the dawning
from the east.

A motley crew, a corrupt community; the scene was but a typical
picture of Budapest and all Hungary in the grip of revolution, a
revolt of the proletariat for government by the proletariat, the
shadow of Lenin falling upon an unhappy country, already torn by
years of recent strife and earlier suppression.

A country, monarchist to the core, now ground down by Soldiers'
Councils and Workers' Councils, headed by the Russian-taught Bela
Kun, and the bloodthirsty tyrant Tibor Szamuelly, his Terror Boys,
and the merciless Korvin-Klein.  Unhappy Hungary!

Down through the ages have trickled histories of the French
Revolution, the people _versus_ the '_aristos_.'  Too well is known
the toll of Madame Guillotine, and the cruel justice of Robespierre.
There have been written histories of the Revolution, of the howling
mobs, the vampire women; readers have felt a saddened pain at the
thought of fleeing _émigrés_, driven from their own country, the land
of their birth.

Yet how many are aware that in less than a year more horrible deeds,
more bloodthirsty deaths occurred during the dictatorship of Bela Kun
than during all the years of the French Revolution?

Even in the crowd which waited this morning there were whispers of
horrible tortures: of men, whose only crime was that of belonging to
the hated _bourgeoisie_, who were strung up by the hands and gagged
with the lighted ends of cigars and cigarettes; of others who were
bayoneted by the Terror Boys, and flung into a newly dug grave and
buried, even while the breath still remained in their bodies.

Other tales there were also, all too true unfortunately, of prisoners
of Szamuelly, of the proletariat, who were, incredible as it may
sound, flayed alive by their own countrymen.

Murder, theft, blackmail!  These were not crimes--merely the
prerogative of the proletariat.  To be a _bourgeois_!  There was no
worse sin in the calendar of Dante; and so the towns and villages of
Hungary ran red with the blood of the Hungarians, and all because the
shadow of Lenin fell upon the unhappy land.

"Well done, Bela Kun!  Well done, Szamuelly!" applauded Lenin, and,
thus encouraged, these two flung the war-battered country into the
maelstrom of bloody revolution, unheeded by the outside world, for
all Europe was itself only just free of the throes of a ghastly war.

Not a soul to aid the unhappy victims, not a man to stretch out a
helping hand--save one.

* * * * * *

"They keep us waiting.  See the rope swinging.  It is waiting too; it
has good work to do these days.  A good piece of hemp, comrade.  It
must love the blasted _bourgeoisie_, it embraces them so closely.
Maybe, though, it's bullets to-day.  A little piece of lead makes a
nice hole, eh! a nice hole!"

The speaker grinned evilly, and his companion chuckled likewise.
They were two of the many who waited, two Red-cockaded workmen who
were there to see men hanged to satisfy the sated appetite of
Korvin-Klein.

"They are a long time.  Perhaps they are holding a trial."

The one who answered was a contrast to his companion, for the first
speaker was as tall as Comrade George Garami was short, and as
scarred as the other was unpleasant.  They might have been a source
of humour, these two, to the hundreds who surrounded them, but people
did not laugh much these days.

"Pah!"  The tall man spat.  "Korvin-Klein knows how to treat the
pigs.  Trials!  What do they want trials for?  That is what I ask
you, comrade.  What do they want with trials?  Hang them, I say, and
quickly."

"Me too," agreed Garami, "but Bela Kun says the Allies may interfere."

The other man scowled.  "Not they.  The more we kill the better they
will be pleased.  It saves them the trouble."

Garami grinned.  "You speak well, comrade.  Only if it were the
Allies it might be you who would hang instead of the _bourgeois_
dogs.  There were those fifty Italian prisoners you said you
bayoneted----"

"Stop your mouth," muttered the scarred one.  "You talk too much,
you, George Garami.  Your tongue wags freely, friend, and maybe it
will lead you into trouble."

Garami grunted.  "What have I to fear, eh! friend Wenzel?  I am a
good Communist, me."

"So well you may be; but even good Communists have talked too much
lately.  It is said that they gossip too freely and that the White
Knight has long ears."

"The White Knight!  What and who may he be, comrade?"

Wenzel turned his hideously scarred face toward the smaller man.
"What, dolt, do you mean to say you have never heard of the White
Knight?"

"Should I question you otherwise?" asked Garami testily.

Wenzel burst into a harsh roar of raucous laughter, and the unusual
sound attracted the attention of others around him, and they turned
his way.  Wenzel, observing this, waved his arms wide, claiming their
attention.

"Sisters, comrades," he announced, "my little friend here has never
heard of the White Knight!"

There was no echoing smile of derision from his listeners; instead
Wenzel saw nothing but blank faces.

He raised his eyebrows.  "What!" he exclaimed, "have none of you yet
heard of the White Knight?"

Several shook their heads, and a woman called out: "Tell us, comrade,
of him.  Does he belong to the counter-revolution?"

Wenzel grinned, and the effect was so repulsive that the woman shrank
back in disgust.

"Tell you!  Gladly, comrades.  'Tis not often my lot to be the
town-crier.  I feel as important as a local commissary.

"Know you, then, that this White Knight is a mysterious being of
whom, so far, no one has yet any knowledge.  Maybe he is a man,
possibly a woman, or perhaps a bastard brat sent up from Hell to
assist the Devil's spawn, the _bourgeoisie_.

"He was first heard of about a month ago, when the People's
Commissary at Balassagyarmat arrested the outlaw Stephen Arpad.  It
was known to Bela Kun that this Stephen Arpad was indulging in
treasonable correspondence with traitors here in Budapest with a view
to establishing a White counter-revolution.

"Well, friends, Bela Kun awaited his time, but at last this dog Arpad
was arrested and thrown into the Balassagyarmat jail, and there he
was kept awaiting the time when Tibor Szamuelly should arrive to hang
him.

"On the night before Szamuelly arrived, what do you think happened,
friends?  Arpad escaped."

There was a deep-throated growl from the crowd, and Wenzel, realizing
that he was working them up, and appreciating the fact that he was at
the moment the centre of interest, became more bombastically
theatrical.

"Yes, comrades," he continued, his ugly face glowing malignantly,
"Arpad escaped, and there was no one to offer any explanation.  All
that was found in his cell was a small chess-piece, a white knight.

"What did Szamuelly do?  Why, he did what all good Communists should
do.  He hanged the commissary as a warning to others not to let good
hanging meat escape in the same way."

Wenzel roared with laughter; but there was no one to join in with
him.  Steeped in bloody thoughts and deeds, familiar with ghastly
sights, insane with revolutionary lust as they were, yet Wenzel
appalled them.

At least a head higher than the tallest of his listeners, he was
conspicuous, not only by his height, but likewise by his face, his
head, and his general appearance.

In the first place, his greasy cap, gaudily illuminated by a
brilliant Red cockade, the badge of the Communist and the
proletariat, did not entirely conceal his closely cropped head of
hair, naturally parted on the right-hand side by a vivid and
extraordinarily straight scar--one of the many which disfigured his
strange features.

Six scars there were, including the one described above.  There was
one which shaved his left eyebrow, one which scored his left cheek,
one which stretched from his mouth, pulling it perpetually out of
shape across to the lobe of his right ear, one small one just above,
and finally one across his throat, creating the ghastly impression
that the man had once endeavoured to commit suicide by inflicting
there, with a razor, a self-made wound.

Two of the scars, though obviously healed up, were so deeply
impressed into the skin that at times they betrayed traces of the
warm blood which flowed beneath.  His emotions aroused, these two
wounds flushed redly, as if on the point of reopening.

The effect of these blemishes was to make the man so hideously ugly
that it was disgusting to cast eyes upon him.

In himself he was of broad stature, and this, with his height, made
him lumbering and ungainly.  His hands were big and filthy, the nails
scratched and cracked, and worn down to the quick.

His clothes were greasy, frayed at the sleeves and at the bottom of
the trousers.  His boots were laced with string.

Repulsive was the only word to describe him.  Of the ravenous wolves,
of the cruel, barbarous vultures, dragged up by the Revolution from
the slums to which they belonged, this man, Istvan Wenzel, was, in
appearance at least, the most vicious, the most terrifying.

To the student of physiognomy he was a man of vice, and to his
lengthy list of undesirable traits might be added vanity.  Surrounded
by a city's scum, only a little better than himself, he was conscious
that he was, for the moment, the centre of interest, that his words
were creating attention: the fact that his fellow-Communists drew
away at his ghoulish laughter did not seem to wound his
sensibilities, even if he were possessed of any.

"Yes, comrades, he was the first prisoner to escape.  Yet there were
others, more of these _bourgeois_, who mysteriously vanished just in
time to escape the hangman's rope or our soldiers' bullets.  Each
time there was left behind a chess-piece, always the white knight,
and so the man who has been responsible for these escapes has become
known as the White Knight."

There was a shout from the rear.  "Ay, comrade, you say nothing but
the truth.  I have heard of this pig, the White Knight.  It is said
that he has sworn to rescue the Count Kalman Bakocz.  Comrade
Szamuelly is to take a hand in the game.  This White Knight will soon
be in Red Mourning, eh, friends?"

"Ay, ay," cried several, amidst a ripple of laughter.

There was a sudden stir, and the people swung round.  At the far end
of the square came into view a group of Red soldiers, laughing and
joking.  In their midst three prisoners walked unhappily, doomed to
die, condemned to death by the inhuman Korvin-Klein, the uneducated,
uncouth judge appointed by the Dictator to try all enemies of the
proletariat.

Pushing through the crowd, the soldiers made their way toward that
part of the square above which the stone lions proudly growled
defiance to the world.  Here the three victims were made to stand,
calmly awaiting their fate.

There was silence, a muttered word of command: the sharp resonant
clash of gun-fire echoed across the square, and three patriots
slipped to the ground, killed by Hungarian bullets that were fired by
Hungarian men at the command of a Hungarian.

Scarcely had the sound of the discharge died away when Wenzel laughed
loudly and slapped his friend Garami on the shoulder.

"Three more traitors sent about their business, eh, comrade!" he
cried.

Garami, rubbing his shoulder where Wenzel's hand had caught him,
laughed too.




_CHAPTER II_

It was eleven o'clock in Balassagyarmat, and the streets were
comparatively pitch dark.

The edict of the Dictator had gone forth--no lights after ten o'clock
P.M.--so that even if the gas and electricity had not failed the
result would have been the same, for were there not detectives,
Terror Boys, and People's Commissaries to see that the word of the
Workers' Council was obeyed?

Under the present _régime_ the houses and effects of all were the
common property of every one else: books, food, furniture; there was
nothing, if the occasion arose, to which the comrades of the Commune
could not help themselves.

Not many walked the streets.  Here and there drunken Red soldiers
staggered back to their billets, notwithstanding that prohibition was
in force.  Here and there a lurking shadow betokened a detective, or
sometimes a daring _bourgeois_ risking his life to visit friends.

Only People's Commissaries walked about openly, or members of the
local Soviet.

In some houses there was peace; here lived Communists who ran with
the hounds.  In some there was a significant quiet--_bourgeois_ who
were still left in safety, but who might yet run with the hares.

In one home, the residence of Count Kalman Bakocz, there was only
sorrow, a dull, hopeless, heart-gnawing despair.

A week ago Terror Boys had found their way into the house and
arrested the Count.  In vain his wife had pleaded for her husband's
liberty, unsuccessfully had his daughter Cecile added her pleas.  The
Red officer merely flicked his fingers, gave marching orders, and the
Count was torn from the bosom of his family and flung into jail, only
to be transferred the following morning to Budapest to await the
justice of Korvin-Klein.

Later his son, Francis, returned, and only with a great effort did
Cecile and her mother keep him back from invoking his friends to
assist him in what could only result in a futile attempt at rescue.

For one week the Countess lay prostrate, unable to eat for the fear
which gripped her heart in a vice.  Only the tender solicitude of
Cecile and the brave optimism of Francis kept her alive.

This was the seventh night after Count Bakocz's arrest, and again no
news other than that he was still alive.  The news-bringer thought
fit to withhold the fact that he was nigh on starving.

Despite the commands of the Dictator there was a tiny particle of
candle throwing a flickering light upon the shrunken, careworn
features of Countess Bakocz as she lay in bed, her daughter sitting
on one side, her son on the other.  Heavy curtains protected the
windows, so that not a gleam of light could escape the room, yet
nevertheless each one was quivering with tension which could not
altogether be concealed, and every time footsteps echoed in the
street outside Cecile held her breath in terror and Francis clenched
his fists.

Countess Bakocz weakly turned her head toward her son.  "What news,
son, what news to-night?"

Francis shrugged his shoulders slightly, and turned his eyes away as
he felt them filling with tears.  "Still no further news.  Father is
still--alive."  He swallowed hard.

"Nothing else, Francis?"  Even despair did not dim her proud eyes so
much that she missed the trembling of his lips.

"Nothing else."

His mother shook her head.  "Poor boy, poor boy.  You cannot lie,
Francis."  She stretched out her emaciated hand and placed it
tenderly upon his, which lay idly on the coverlet.  "Tell me, son, I
can bear it."

Unconsciously Francis turned a questioning gaze upon Cecile, who
nodded slightly.

"They say," he commenced chokingly, "that Father is--is to be tried
on--Mon--Monday."

There was no sound from the Countess, not a movement, but Francis
felt the hand clasping his jump convulsively, and her lower lip
twitched unceasingly.

"Mother dear, Mother darling, do not give up hope."  Cecile leaned
forward and kissed her on her bloodless forehead.  "Many things may
happen.  God will save him.  God will save him."

"God must have many tears to shed on our unhappy country," she
replied softly, and from this Cecile knew that her mother could not
even have it in her heart to put her trust in Heaven.

Nor could she blame her mother, for she wondered what evil any of
them could have done that they should be visited with this calamity.
For twenty years the Count and his family had lived in this selfsame
house, leading a God-fearing life.

To the house of his forefathers he had brought his wife twenty years
back, and there his daughter Cecile had been born a year later, and
two years afterward Francis.

During the War he had fought courageously for his country.  Now, with
the War scarcely at an end, he was seized by his countrymen and
thrown into jail.  His crime?  Raising his voice on behalf of his
unhappy people, beseeching the peasants to look into their hearts,
where, he said, they would find they wanted nothing of revolution,
wanted only peace to till the land and rear their children.

There was silence in the room; the candle burned smaller.  When that
was gone Cecile had another bit to put in its place, but after that
... In future they might not have even the welcoming flame of the
candle to cheer them; nothing but the dismal dark of the night.

Suddenly Francis raised his head.  He heard the hoot of an owl.

"'Tis Kirchhoff!" he cried, and running lightly across the room he
disappeared downstairs.

Cecile shivered ominously.  Kirchhoff brought only news, and "no news
was good news."  Was it that Francis had been misled?  Perhaps the
trial of her father had been that morning.  A little cry arose to her
throat, and her hand flew up to stop it, but too late.  Her mother
had heard; she looked at Cecile with the expression of a hunted deer.

"He is a long time," she said.  Cecile knew her mother's thoughts had
been following the trend of her own.

Was Francis never coming up again?  She wanted to scream
hysterically.  Surely he must know that they would be anxious.  The
seconds ticked by.  Not a movement from below, not a sound to be
heard.

Another moment and Cecile would have called, but there was a cautious
step, and almost as soon as she recognized the footsteps of Francis
she was conscious that there was some one with him.

Hypnotically she watched the door until it swung open.  So Francis
was bringing Kirchhoff up.  Why?  Why?  She trembled, but the man who
entered was not Kirchhoff, but a stranger.

"Mother dear, do not be excited, but there is news, wonderful news.
This gentleman has come from Buda.  He is Mr Arnold Terhune, of
London."

Countess Bakocz flashed a startled glance at her daughter.  An
Englishman!  A late foe, countryman of an enemy land with whom peace
had not yet been signed!  How could he bring good news?

Cecile did not meet her look, for she was gazing upon the young man
who entered, raptly assimilating the picture he presented.  Her
thoughts were that here was a man connected with good news.  If he
bore information which should hearten them all what matter his
nationality?

The Countess inclined her head coldly as the Englishman bowed.

"You must forgive my intrusion, Countess, but there is a matter of
great importance which I must discuss with you."

"I am at your service, monsieur."  Try as she might she could not
keep the chilling hauteur from her voice.

How different from Cecile, whose eyes were sparkling, and whose
cheeks were flushing!  He possessed a wonderful voice, this
Englishman who spoke their language with scarcely a trace of foreign
accent.

Arnold Terhune glanced around him.

"We are alone?"

A tear welled into the eyes of the Countess.  "Absolutely," she
replied, and the tinge of bitterness and hopelessness in her voice
betrayed its story of tragedy, its tale of faithless servants, of
forbidden friends.

The Englishman inclined his head.  "Then I may speak, for it is of
vital importance that what I have to say goes no further.  Countess,
I bear a message to you from one who is known as the White Knight."

"The White Knight!"  The exclamation was from Cecile.  With those
three words banished hope returned in full force.  The White Knight!
If the rumour of this mysterious person had not yet reached the
proletariat, the same could not be said of the persecuted
_bourgeoisie_ and the hunted aristocracy.  Like the spread of a
forest fire, the name of the White Knight had passed from mouth to
mouth with inconceivable rapidity.

Stories of his wonderful rescues had penetrated into every house and
home which sheltered one of the hated _bourgeoisie_, his saga was
told in whispers and in snatches.  To the gentle families of the
forgotten people his name was a glimpse of blue breaking in between
the heavy thunderclouds of revolution, a veritable star of hope,
shining undimmed through an overpowering blackness.

Countess Bakocz raised herself slightly on her elbows, and the blood
flowed into her face.  "The White Knight!" she whispered.  "God be
praised!  Then he knows of my husband's plight?"

"Too well, Countess.  Moreover, he plans to rescue him--has sworn to
do so."

"Sworn to rescue him!"  The Countess faintly repeated the words,
unable to credit the fact.  Then joyfully she spoke again.  "Cecile,
Francis, listen!  The White Knight is to return your father to us.
Oh, children, children, tell me I am not dreaming!  Make me believe
what I hear is true!"

Cecile's lips trembled suspiciously as she flung her arms around the
invalid.  "Oh, Mother darling, of course it is true!"  Across her
mother's shoulder her glance met that of Arnold Terhune.

His eyes held hers, clearly and firmly.  In that brief second there
was a change in both of them, though neither was conscious of the
fact.  They only felt an inexplicable stirring somewhere deep down
within them.

Arnold Terhune, though dressed in the dirty shapeless clothes of the
Hungarian labourer, with a three or four days' growth of hair upon
his chin, and a very close-cropped head, could not entirely conceal
the lithe, athletic grace with which he carried himself, any more
than his unshaven chin hid its firm strength.

Dressed more suitably, he would have been the personification of
virile English manhood.  He was inclined to be tall, just under six
feet, yet his hands and feet were unusually small.  His broad
shoulders hinted at robust health and physical strength; his slimmer
waist at a healthy life and arduous exercise.

Well might he have appealed to Cecile, who, herself, was remarkably
beautiful, and of a dusky, gipsy type.  Her dark, rippling hair
admirably set off her almost black eyes and pure olive complexion,
while her tiny lips curved seductively into a Cupid's bow.

Perhaps her only fault was a strained, pinched look, the result of
four years' privation, so soon succeeded by the worse rigours of the
revolution, and subsequent Commune.

Countess Bakocz turned eagerly to her visitor.  "Tell us, monsieur,
of this rescue.  When and how?  Oh, how I long to clasp my husband in
my arms again!  God be pleased to grant the White Knight success,
monsieur.  You will tell us his plans?"

Terhune smiled, then slowly shook his head.  "The White Knight alone
knows his plans, Countess.  He alone plots his _coups_."

"But you, monsieur, you know this White Knight?"

Terhune's face broke into a smile again, but this time there was
something of hero-worship, of reverence, in it.

"Yes, Countess, he is my friend, and leader."

"Your leader?  You work for the White Knight?"  Cecile it was who put
the question, and she clasped her hands together in her eager
excitement.

"Yes, m'selle.  I am his lieutenant.  I do what I can; it is so
little.  I wish I could do more, much more, for it makes my heart
bleed to see the Hungary I have always loved plunged into the present
chaos."

"You love Hungary, monsieur, yet you are an Englishman, an enemy!"
There was a gentle reproof in her tones as the Countess spoke.

"We are not our masters in war-time, Countess.  I fought for my
country, not for myself."

"Forgive me, monsieur."  The Countess was contrite.  "I should not
have said that, but I must plead my awful worry in excuse.  I was
surprised.  To fight against us--and now----!"

"We are already forgetting.  Deep in our hearts we English feel for
your nation.  We feel you have been the cat's-paw of German
diplomacy.  Now that humanity is being outraged by bestial tyranny,
we wish only to aid and assist.  Were circumstances different England
might do more, but her people do not know of your plight, have no
idea even of the revolution here.  Russia, yes, but Hungary ... Our
papers are full of peace and future prosperity."

"The White Knight, is he English too?"

Terhune nodded.  "Yes, Countess, he is, but I beg you not to question
me with regard to him.  It is his wish, his policy too, that he
remain merely a name, a myth.  His mystery is his second lieutenant."

The Countess buried her face in her hands and quietly sobbed, while
Terhune shuffled his feet uncomfortably, wondering what he had said
to have this effect.

Presently she looked up and smiled faintly.  "Forgive a woman's
tears, monsieur, but it grieves me that our unhappy country must look
to enemies for succour against our own people."

"Not entirely, Countess, for there are those in Vienna and in
Budapest who seek to form a counter-revolution, a White Army instead
of a red.  I may not mention names, but----"  His eloquent gesture
was expressive, and the three Hungarians who listened to him felt a
glow of warmth stealing through their bodies.

"But now, Countess, for the reason of my visit here.  There is
information I require, knowledge I must acquire.  Listen...."

It was half an hour later when Terhune slipped away, leaving behind
three people who in less than an hour had been pulled from the depths
of misery into the heights of hope and confidence.  While the
Countess dreamed of the future, of the time when she should see her
husband again, Francis pictured the adventure and the thrill of the
rescue, and wished he could help.  Cecile was quiet and thoughtful.
Too full for words at the thought of having her father with her once
again, she could not, nevertheless, banish the constantly recurring
picture of Arnold Terhune, standing in the light of the flickering
candle, his glance meeting hers across her mother's shoulder.




_CHAPTER III_

Consternation reigned at the meeting of the Workers' Council.  Bela
Kun had been sorting out his papers preparatory to suggesting fresh
edicts for the suppression of the _bourgeoisie_.

"Comrades," he had begun, when suddenly his eyes caught sight of a
paper on his table, on which his startled eyes read his own name, in
handwriting which he did not recognize, signed by the name "White
Knight."

Stopping short in his speech, he picked it up and hastily read its
message:


To BELA KUN,

Do not hope to execute the Count Bakocz.  I have sworn to rescue him,
and I never fail.

THE WHITE KNIGHT


Bela Kun swore.  "Listen, comrades," and he read the brief note out
to the members of the Council.

"My God! how did you get that?" shouted Szamuelly.

Bela Kun shook his head.  "I don't know.  It wasn't with my papers
when I left home."  He looked round with suspicion.

"What does it mean?" asked one.

Bela Kun sneered.  "What does it mean?  It means that this White
Knight is going to try to rescue Count Bakocz."

"Well, what does he want to warn you for?"

"I know why," interrupted Szamuelly.  "Because this man, this
_bourgeois_, having been successful once or twice in his ventures,
now imagines he is omnipotent."

"Has he always been successful?"  This from a man who sat farther
away, a small unpleasant-looking member, Garami, who had just
recently heard of the White Knight from Wenzel.

Bela Kun hesitated.  "Well--er--he has certainly been fortunate up to
the moment."

"I see," said Garami.  "And may I ask you, comrade, by what means the
dog has done this?"

"In many ways, Comrade Garami.  From reports I have had he is as
strong as an ape, as cunning as a monkey, as elusive as a cricket.
He has money, for in one case he bribed the jailer with more than I
have heard of for a long time.  Did he not?"  Bela Kun turned to
Szamuelly.

Szamuelly laughed unpleasantly.  "Yes, comrade.  I found the jailer
with the money in his pocket.  I hung the man, and appropriated the
crowns."

"As strong as an ape, I believe you said.  Why do you say this?"
Again Garami put a question.

Bela Kun frowned.  "You are in a questioning mood to-day, Garami."

"For a reason, comrade, which you will learn if you will answer my
question first."

"Well, if you must know, the reason we, Szamuelly and me, believe
that this traitor is strong is because he once overcame two of our
brave troops, put in charge of a prisoner, by cracking their heads
together."

Garami grinned unpleasantly.  "Supposing I can put you in touch with
a good comrade who isn't afraid of this _bourgeois_, this White
Knight, as he calls himself.  Would he be of use to you, comrade?"

Bela Kun thought for a moment.  "Would he act as jailer to Count
Bakocz, think you?"

Garami laughed.  "He would act as jailer to the Devil himself if it
so be there was good money to be earned."

"Who is this man?"

"Istvan Wenzel."

"Istvan Wenzel!" repeated another member.  "Ay, comrade, I know
Istvan Wenzel.  A good man, him.  As strong as an ox and as ugly as
sin.  His face would be enough to frighten this White Knight away, if
it is the man of whom I am thinking."

"You are thinking of the right man," Garami agreed.  "Wenzel can pick
up a man in each hand."

"Can you get in touch with him, Garami?" asked the Dictator.

"He lives but three flats below me."

"It is good.  Bring him to me to-morrow.  If he is all your praises
sing him to be, he ought well to be a match for this dog who writes
me these notes."

The next morning Wenzel accompanied Garami to Bela Kun.

The streets were full of cars in which sat members of the Workers'
Council, Administrators of the Country, or even People's
Commissaries.  They, who preached Socialism, Communism, and
Proletarianism, lived in ease and comfort, surrounded with goods,
food, and furniture filched from the _bourgeoisie_.

Meanwhile the people starved, and rode in tramcars of which the glass
was broken or missing.  If they were ignorant, uncouth, and wore the
Red cockade, they might be granted a food ticket and be allowed to
pay high prices for the privilege of eating to live.

If they were intellectual, if they lived and worked by the fruit of
their brains, if they were decent-living, moral, and religious, they
were _bourgeoisie_ and could starve.  There were no food tickets for
such as they.

So, though the city was gay with the red bunting which hung from
every roof and every window, stretched from house to house, and with
the music played by gipsy bands, beneath it all the people, the real
Hungarian people, like the proud Magyar aristocracy, wept, and the
tears were of blood.

Such thoughts as these did not worry the boisterous Wenzel or the sly
Garami, as they strode along the streets.

"It's good to be alive this morning, with the sun shining, and the
town all gay with flags and colour; what say you, Garami?"

"I am with you, comrade."

"What puzzles me is why the counter-revolution worry their heads
about changing it all.  Here we are, governed by ourselves, can help
ourselves to everything we want.  What more does anybody want?
That's what I say.  What more can one want?  Give me a bellyful, and
money in my pockets, and a woman now and again, and you can keep the
rest.  That's what I say.  Keep the rest."

"Ho, ho!" chortled Garami.  "You say that, you, Wenzel?  Who took the
best bed from the house at the corner of the Andrassy Ut?  Who
brought away the chairs and the sofa and the table from the home of
Pazmany, the Professor?  Who drinks his fill of wine, and forces his
way into the theatre?  That's what you say?"

Wenzel spat, as a passing automobile whizzed past.  "Bah!  You talk
like a babbling brook.  Come, the mention of wine and food makes me
feel empty.  Comrade Bela Kun must make haste.  I must eat."

In due course they were shown in to Bela Kun, who eyed the big Wenzel
up and down, and then smiled cunningly.

"You know why I wished to see you?" he questioned.

"Yes, comrade.  It's some one you want to guard the Count Bakocz from
being rescued."  He stretched out his long arms and opened wide his
huge hand, then slowly clenched his fingers together, and grinned
evilly.  "just let me get any of these _bourgeois_ between my two
hands and I'll wring their necks.  Curse them!"

"Then you will take the job on?"

"Yes--at a price, comrade."

"You needn't worry about money, Wenzel.  The Government pay well
those who are faithful to it."  He leaned forward and his eyes
narrowed.  "Only see you do not fail, my friend, for otherwise you
will find your own neck in a noose."

Wenzel burst into a bellow of raucous laughter.  "I shall not fail.
Don't you worry, comrade.  This White Knight has bitten off more than
he can chew.  I'm the man you want.  That's what I say.  It's me you
want."

"So be it."  Bela Kun waved them away.  "Don't forget, Comrade
Wenzel, don't let him escape.  You will hang heavier than the Count
Bakocz!"

* * * * * *

Sunday!  The day before the trial of Count Kalman Bakocz for treason.
Trial!  It was mockery to call the proceedings which occurred by this
name.

Counter-revolutionaries, enemies of the proletariat; all such who
were caught were imprisoned, and in due course, usually within
twenty-four hours, brought before Korvin-Klein.  Trial--judgment
should be the word!  There was no opportunity for defence, no
witnesses brought forward for the defendant.  Only prosecution and
execution.

In the prisons of Hungary were _bourgeois_ hostages, held by the
Communists against the possibility of hostile demonstrations from the
people who groaned beneath the heel of the Soviet.  Cast into prison,
herded, many of them together, into small filthy cells, they barely
subsisted.

Womenfolk were allowed to bring them what food they could obtain.
Baskets, bags, packages of food were handed in at the prison gates by
weeping women, for husbands, brothers, and sons.

The Red guards received the parcels and, when the women had gone, ate
the food themselves and drank the wine.  Occasionally, nay, more
often than not, these hostages, these prisoners, died.  That night
there would be a stealthy procession to the waterside, and presently
the waters of the Danube would part with a splash, and the body of
the prisoner would float down, to disappear for evermore.

Food would still arrive, relations never hearing the tragedy of their
loved ones, and the jeering Reds would gobble it up.  What stories
the grim walls of the Budapest prisons could tell of the Revolution
of 1919, what tales of death and torture!

Count Bakocz was granted a cell to himself.  The remorseless Soviet
had determined he should die, and there was to be no mistake.  So he
was taken away from fellow-prisoners and thrown into solitary
confinement, to see only the faces of his two jailers, one during the
day, and one during the night.

Always the ghastly, repulsive features of Wenzel haunted him, asleep
and awake.  At times he could not sleep.  Wenzel was for ever peeping
through the grill, and every time the Communist gave his guttural
laugh, and greeted him with rude, boisterous remarks.

"Well, my friend, still alive I see.  Ho, ho!  Too bad.  Fancy, you
have not been hanged or shot yet!  Too bad.  I must see what I can do
for you.

"Wouldn't you like to escape, my little chicken?  That wouldn't do at
all, for little Wenzel would hang in your place."  Then he would spit
through the grill.  "Pah!  The more you _bourgeois_ hang the better
pleased shall I be, that's what I say."

Three days, or rather three nights, Wenzel had guarded his prisoner,
and still no attempt had been made to rescue the Count.  Only Wenzel
laughed; the Workers' Council was becoming nervous, for regularly
each morning Bela Kun received a message from the White Knight.

Whence came the slips of paper he knew not, and once it was not a
message, but a tiny white piece of carved wood--a white knight.
Another time there were two knights, the white one untouched, but the
red carved in two.

This, with the knowledge that his Government was merely resting on
the brink of a volcano, gave Bela Kun no rest.  On all sides the
country was likely to be attacked, by Rumanians, by
Czecho-Slovakians, and by Serbs.

His life became harassed, and he in his turn tightened the
thumb-screws on the unfortunate _bourgeoisie_.  New laws were made
each day and flashed to every part of the country, there to be put
into force by the local People's Commissaries and the local councils.

"More than two people never to meet together in the street."  This,
amazing as it may seem, was actually put into force, and innocent
citizens were unable to stop and chat to friends for fear of
counter-revolution, of plot, and counter-plot.  Only Red soldiers
could jest together, or those who wore the Red emblem, or those who
met in Parliament Square to witness the execution of enemies of the
proletariat.

When Wenzel went on duty Garami was there to meet him.

"Ho, Wenzel!" he said, "to-night's the last opportunity to rescue
Count Bakocz.  You must keep your eye open--that is, if this
_bourgeois_ really intends to attempt a rescue."

Wenzel struck his chest.  "Why worry, you?  Do you believe that I
shall let pass anyone?  Bah!  This is the last night our friend
inside will ever live to see.  I must see him fall to-morrow.  Ha!
Old skin and bones won't dent the ground overmuch, comrade.  That's
what I say."

Garami looked pleased.  "Ay, comrade, it was a good thing I did for
every one, was it not, to have you put as jailer here.  You will not
forget, eh?"

Wenzel grinned.  "I shall not forget, friend.  One tenth of what I
make goes to you for the recommendation.  Easy money, comrade.  And
what if I am offered a bribe?"

"Hush!"  Garami looked round, startled, and reaching up he placed his
hand over the other man's mouth.  "Canst not keep a still tongue,
chatterer?"  He lowered his voice.  "A tenth to me, Wenzel, a tenth
to me."

"Ho!  Ho!  Ho!"  Wenzel opened his huge throat and roared with
laughter.  "And will you share a tenth of the rope, Jew?  Give me
less money and less rope, that's what I say.  Less money.  My neck
needs no gentle bandage, thank you, comrade."

Garami shrugged his shoulders.  "I meant nothing," he muttered
between his teeth.  "Well, good night, Wenzel.  There are soldiers
within call, good Red comrades, who will not hesitate to run a
_bourgeois_ through with bayonets.  If there is anything wrong,
shout."

"Yah!  Anything wrong!  What can be wrong?  If anyone comes I will
spit on them and they will run.  Good night, comrade.  Let no uneasy
dreams disturb you.  To-morrow Count Bakocz will--die."  His eyes
flashed joyfully, as if he were already watching the life blood
draining away from the victim's body, and his gloating expression
caused Garami to hurry the quicker away.

Ample preparations had been made to guard the prison well.  Posted in
different parts of the building were groups of Red soldiers.  No one
could enter without the knowledge of the guards, and even if
intruders were successful in this there was still the huge Wenzel to
overcome.

Garami breathed a little easier as he left the prison.  He had been
responsible for the appointment of Wenzel, and if anything should go
wrong he was not too sure of his comrades' affability, that he would
not hang side by side with his _protégé_.

That, therefore, was the position at ten o'clock on Sunday night, the
night before the prisoner was to be tried, which was, of course,
synonymous with death.  If the White Knight failed the Count would
die.

The hours wore on.  The soldiers sang and ate, drank and joked, and
Wenzel sat on his chair, outside the Count's cell, singing too, his
huge voice echoing through the dim corridors so that prisoners in
distant cells could not sleep.

At intervals he would open the grill to shout insults at the hapless
prisoner, picturing the death that would overtake him in the morning,
by all of which the Count remained unmoved.

He knew, just as every one else knew, that on the morrow he would
die, and so he gave his last thoughts to the family left behind at
Balassagyarmat.  If a tear rolled down his cheek it was not because
he was afraid of death.  His poor Elizabeth, his poor Cecile!  Only
the seventeen-year-old Francis to guard and protect them, and such
friends as could creep to them unseen.

What of his family at Balassagyarmat?  Since the night Arnold Terhune
had brought the news of the White Knight's oath they had heard
nothing.  When Sunday night arrived they did not attempt sleep.
Cecile and Francis joined their mother, and in the darkness they held
hands and comforted one another through the lonely hours.

With anxious hearts, with fear that the White Knight would fail
counter-balancing their hope that he would succeed, could they, by
some miracle, have seen the prison then, at two o'clock in the
morning, they might have flinched with horror, for still nothing had
happened.

The guards still talked and sang, Wenzel still sat on his stool.  The
only movement was that of a Red soldier who staggered about with
bottles of wine, liberally dosing the guards with liquor.

From somewhere or other he produced yet more bottles.  "Come along,
comrades, some more," he cried, and the guards grinned and held out
their mugs.

The soldier served them all.  "Let us--let--let us drink a toast," he
called out, "l-let us drink to the Revolution."

"Ay, ay," answered the men, and they drank deeply.

"Must take some to the others," muttered the proposer, and he
staggered away.

The noisy rowdyism gradually died away as the potent wine took
effect.  The drink must have been stronger than usual, for the Reds
found their heads nodding--nodding....  Ten minutes later every man
was sound asleep, and when the soldier returned who had, in his
generosity, visited the other guards all through the prison, and
served out drink to toast the Revolution, he chuckled, and
straightened up.

"Drunken swine," he muttered.  It was Arnold Terhune.

The first part of his task completed, there was now the hardest part
to perform.

With noiseless steps he traversed the corridors going in the
direction of Count Bakocz's cell.  At the actual corridor he came to
a halt and listened.  Round the corner he could hear the heavy
breathing of Wenzel, who now seemed quieter.

With scarcely a movement Terhune leaned forward till he could see
what was happening, and his heart leaped with joy as he noticed that
Wenzel, though seated with his back to the cell, was just slightly
turned away from him.

If he could but creep along without being seen or heard he hoped to
succeed in getting near enough to use a chloroform pad which he had
ready.  He determined to try.

Squeezing his back against the wall, and moving with the utmost
caution, he turned the corner.  If Wenzel should glance only just
slightly round now, he would be seen.  Breathing a prayer that Wenzel
would not move he advanced slowly forward.

Four feet, three feet, two feet.  Another few paces and he could jump
and catch the unconscious Wenzel unprepared, but at that moment
Wenzel turned.

For a second or two Terhune seemed paralysed with astonishment, until
Wenzel gave a roar, and would have jumped for him, but the Englishman
was infinitesimally quicker, and even as Wenzel commenced to move he
had quickly advanced the extra pace and with a dull thud brought a
revolver butt down upon Wenzel's defenceless head, and the jailer
collapsed with a groan.

Terhune worked with nightmare haste.  From his pocket he produced a
key, a duplicate of the original, and before Count Bakocz was even
aware of what was happening, had opened the cell-door and was pulling
the bewildered aristocrat away.

Terhune had not bargained on Wenzel's strength.  No sooner had the
echoing footsteps of the two men faded away in the distance than
Wenzel raised his ponderous frame from the floor and stumblingly
commenced the pursuit, blood pouring down his face and blinding his
eyes.

Whatever drug it was with which Terhune had doctored the guards'
wine, it could not have been a very powerful one, for even as the two
men rushed past several of the guards sat up, rubbing their eyes in
bewilderment, and by the time Wenzel was on the scene they were all
sitting up from the positions into which they had fallen.

The sight of Wenzel, his face and clothes covered in blood, rushing
into their midst, was their first intimation that anything was wrong.

"Dogs!  Beasts!" furiously shouted Wenzel.  "The prisoner has
escaped!"

There was a dramatic silence while the stupefied guards gazed at one
another, and observing this, Wenzel gabbled with rage.  "Fools,
dolts, idiots! follow them! follow me!" and rushing past them,
kicking them as he went, he led the pursuit, and the guards,
realizing at last what had happened, rushed pell-mell after him.

Wenzel was outside, staring up and down the street.

"Which way?" the guards cried, but Wenzel shook his head helplessly.

Some distance away two shadows darted across the dark street, but one
of the guards saw.  "That way, look!" he called; and the guards set
off in a ragged group, Wenzel leading them.

Here and there against an occasional light they saw twin shadows
fleeing from them, one stumbling and falling, the other pulling.

Gradually Wenzel and the guards caught up.  Another moment and the
two who were pursued would have been caught, but seeing this, they
parted company, one to fall helplessly to the ground, where he lay
without moving, and the other to speed still quicker away, till he
was lost from sight.

Wenzel struck a match.  The fallen one, his face smothered in the mud
of the road, was the Count.

"Ho, ho, comrades!" hoarsely cried out Wenzel in triumph, "back to
the jail with him.  Get up!" he ordered, and kicked the man at his
feet, but the Count did not move.  "Fainted.  Pah! the chicken.
Come, friends, carry him back.  I hope they will lash him for this."

The guards dragged the helpless man along the streets, till inside
the prison they let him fall, and there he lay, cold and stiff.

Suddenly Wenzel gave a cry, and with his already filthy handkerchief
wiped away the mud from the face of the prisoner, and having done so
gazed with stupefaction at what he saw.

It was not Count Bakocz who lay there, but a two or three days' old
corpse of another man, dressed in the Count's clothes.

The White Knight had won again.




_CHAPTER IV_

Because of the rigid censorship not one of the Budapest newspapers
hinted at the escape of Count Bakocz; yet the news was passed on from
mouth to mouth, was repeated and commented upon, until it finally
percolated into the uttermost environs of the city.  Disclaimed by
the risen scum, in their requisitioned mansions, acclaimed in the
sanctuaries of the refugees; by the first it was furtively believed
but outwardly denied, and by the second inwardly discredited but
optimistically confirmed.

At the Supreme Soviet Council, in permanent session at the Hapsburg
Palace, questions and answers were flung to and fro across the table.
Comrade blamed comrade, and easily aroused suspicions disfigured the
already brutal faces.

Their prey, like a plucked goose, hot and sizzling from the spit, had
been snatched from their watering mouths, and the anger of the rulers
of the nation was unbounded.  Their pride was insulted, their
prestige threatened.

They turned their knit and scowling brows toward Szamuelly, who
smiled banefully.

"Peace, comrades!  What matters the loss of one chicken from such a
well-filled run?  Who misses a single grain of wheat from a bushel?"

"Ho," said Pogany, "but do hens only inhabit the roost?  There are
also cocks which crow."

"Yes, and from one grain of wheat may spring many other grains,
remember, Comrade Szamuelly," cried another.

"Quite so, quite so, friends.  I agree with you, and that is why I
say--give me my way.  Three days' loot and pillage and I swear there
would be no cocks left to crow.  Death to the _bourgeoisie_!  Hang
the magnates!  Let them join the traitor Tisza.  What say you,
comrades?"

From several directions came affirmative cries.  "Well said,
Szamuelly! three days' sack."  "Well said!  'Tis what I say too."

Pleased with the reception of his words Szamuelly continued, his
voice rising higher as the prospect of the sanguinary feast for which
he had long been working seemed appreciably nearer.

"Remember, friends, the world looks upon us as disciples of Russia
to-day, to-morrow we may be leading other countries along the road to
freedom.  A glorious millennium is before us, yet there is still work
to be done and done well.  We have enemies working against us.  Any
moment may see a counter-revolution commencing.  We must strike now,
kill these pestilent rebels, and plant fear into the hearts of the
waverers.  As, in the past, we have been ruled by the whip, so now
must we govern with a rod of iron.  Kill, kill!  Let the red blood
spurting from the corpses of the _bourgeoisie_ carry its own
message."  He laughed.  "There will be many who will be pleased to
join our ranks afterwards."

He sat down, the big hall resounding with feverish applause, and only
the chosen of Lenin, Bela Kun, President of the Council, remained
silent.  His hate for his superiors, his lust for power, were not one
whit less than that of his bloodthirsty lieutenant, yet he feared to
say the word which would permit the execution of a measure which
might prove to be the blackest blot in the history of Hungary.

What streak of caution, what strange emotion restrained him, none can
say.  Perhaps he feared ghosts of the past, perhaps shadows of the
Hapsburgs, aghast at the sacrilege of this invasion of their sacred
domain, strung together his lips with spiritual threads.  Whatever it
may have been bleeding Budapest was spared; the ravenous wolves
contented themselves with spasmodic raids and petty pilfery.

"Not yet, Comrade Szamuelly.  The time is not yet.  You must wait.
Perhaps one day in the future----"

Szamuelly laughed scornfully.  "Wait!  Have we not waited all our
lives for the emancipation of the workmen?  Have we not planned and
plotted to gather the reins of government into our own hands, to rid
the country of the accursed gentry, the proud aristocracy?  Are we
all afraid?"  He spread his arms dramatically.

From one came a growl.  It was the sullen Pogany, the Minister for
War.  "Hold hard, Szamuelly! be careful whom you accuse of cowardice.
Yet I agree with Bela Kun.  'Tis better to wait.  We must be
recognized as a government by the Entente that the world may know
Communism is come to stay.  Besides, it is possible that we may go
too far----"

Szamuelly jumped up from his chair with a gesture of disgust.  "Bah!
A paltry excuse!  It is not going far enough which we should fear.
We must crush the dogs under our heels, grind them into the dust,
till their backbones are broken and their brains jellied.  It is a
dead man who does not strike one in the back."

It was Kunfi, the ex-journalist, who next interrupted.  "Very good,
Szamuelly, but in the meantime--what of the White Knight?  Can you
crush his bones so that he rescues no more of the _bourgeoisie_?  Can
you hang him in Parliament Square?"

There was a brief silence, and Szamuelly became, once again, the
centre of interest.

"If the rope does not break, comrades," he boasted.

Bela Kun smiled softly.  "Not so quickly, friend Szamuelly.  I have
now sent for one Wenzel who claimed to be a better man than the White
Knight, and yet--I am afraid Comrade Wenzel must hang.  At any moment
now he may arrive, and you shall hear, before he dies, how he fared."

"In the meantime----?"

"We will discuss affairs of State.  For instance, I am informed by
Comrade Agoston that there are treasures still untouched in the
Castle Gisella.  We ought to teach its occupants the meaning of the
word Communism.  What say you, friends?"

"Ay, ay."  The confirmation was unanimous.

Before anyone could speak again there was an interruption.  The doors
of the council chamber swung open and an officer of the Red Army
entered.

"Well!"  Annoyed by the intrusion, Bela Kun turned to the man, who
stood there, unshaven, dirty, and utterly disreputable.  Once he had
been a refractory private; but on the strength of a long record of
disciplinary breaches and subsequent punishment he was considered
worthy of a better rank in the proletarian army.

"Comrade Wenzel has disappeared."

Kunfi laughed gutturally.  "He took your threat to heart, comrade."

Bela Kun ignored his fellow-councillor and frowned at the officer.

"Friend, I gave you orders to arrest Comrade Wenzel.  How mean you he
has disappeared?"

The other shrugged his shoulders.  "Merely that when I arrived
Comrade Wenzel was not there.  Neither had he been at his room for
several days.  One cannot arrest an absent man."  He laughed
slightly, as if memory of the past tickled his sense of humour.

"Did you search his room?"

"Yes, and found----"

"What?"  Impatiently Bela Kim leaned forward.

The soldier stretched out his right hand, which was clenched.  Slowly
he opened his fingers, exposing on his palm something which made the
Communist sit upright with a slight start.  That at which he looked
was a white knight.

* * * * * *

The Great Hungarian Plain, awe-inspiring in its rugged splendour,
rises here and there to rocky peaks and granite eminences, upon many
of which stately castles and impregnable fortresses proudly rear
their turrets, for the Great Plain has been, for past centuries, the
Armageddon of Europe.  Here the fierce Magyars have stemmed the
invasion of the Turkish hordes, have battled and died for the Cross.
Here, too, at different times have the Roman Empire, Byzantium,
Friuli, and Saxony all paid tribute to the unconquerable fighters of
Hungary.

Now once again, not yet recovered from the ravages of the Great War,
it was to be the scene of a tussle, perhaps not so bloody in its
action, yet none the less significant in its outcome.  As Hungary, in
the past, had withstood the onslaught of the fanatics of the
Crescent, saved Europe from Mahomet, now in 1919 it was to fight for
Europe once again, for here, on the Plain, the encroaching Bolsheviks
were encountering the indomitable peasants, the tillers of the soil,
the defenders of the country.

The battle was not of swords, of guns, or of cannon, but of insidious
propaganda undermining common sense, of bombastic promises,
impossible innovations, promiscuous hangings, against all of which
only tradition and unswerving loyalty to the Fatherland made stand.

The saga of the Great Plain is unsung, the epic of its peasantry
unwritten, but the time will come when the world will awaken to its
obligations, and in all gratitude repay the debt it owes in story,
song, and history.  As yet, however, stunned by the years of travail,
bewildered by defeat, hypnotized by the imported emissaries of Lenin
and Trotsky, the peasants listened to the rantings of the Communists,
and slowly absorbed their teachings.  Twenty-five acres of land free
for each man--the prospect was enticing--to those who had worked the
day long for the big magnates, the autocratic landowners of Hungary,
as had their fathers, even their grandfathers, before them.  They
listened, and in the end their brows frowned, their faces creased
into ugly lines, and they looked toward the castles and the
fortresses and growled....

The Gisella Castle stood alone in its grandeur, the nearest town
three miles away.  Built many hundred years ago, its solid sides
seemed untouched by the passage of time.  If the outer walls were
green with moss they were nevertheless as formidable and
unapproachable as ever, prepared to yield only to modern high-powered
explosives.

Here lived Imre Kiss and his daughter Elizabeth, all unconscious that
away in Budapest Bela Kun and Company had cast envious eyes upon its
splendours; and so, on a sparkling spring morning, when all nature
seemed to sing with joy, they peacefully broke the fast.

Even Imre, conquering his fading sight only with the aid of
_pince-nez_, could not fail to notice an air of elation in
Elizabeth's manner as she joyfully partook of her meal.

"Why, daughter, what witchery are you up to this morning?  It is a
long time since I have seen you so happy."

Elizabeth glanced at him lovingly and smiled.  "Father dear, you have
not forgotten?"

"Forgotten!"  The old man wrinkled his forehead and peered at her
with a puzzled expression upon his face.  "Have I forgotten
something?  Does Francis, your cousin, visit us this day?"

She laughed crooningly, so that its music rippled and echoed round
the panelled hall.  "Father dear, it is the fifteenth to-day.  Does
that date mean nothing to you?"

He looked at her, dismayed.  "Bless my heart, child, it is your
birthday!  Dear, dear!  Then to-day you are twenty-three years of
age--and--and--" across the table his glance rested steadily upon
her, longer than it had done for many years, "--why, dearest child,
you are more beautiful than ever."

He gazed entranced upon the picture she presented.  Through the
leaded windows the sun was throwing a golden gleam, in the path of
which she sat, so that she was bathed in its brilliancy.

"My child--twenty-three to-day."  Murmuringly the words escaped; they
were but thoughts which passed through his mind.  "Just twenty years
ago--she--died, and now--yet did she die?  Is not my daughter
Elizabeth she, the other Elizabeth?  Are not those big, dark eyes, so
full of pride and sympathy too, her eyes?  It was when I first looked
into them that I worshipped her.  It is her chin you lift so proudly,
dear; there is no doubt that you are born and bred a Magyar.  You
love Hungary too, don't you, daughter?"

At the mention of the word Elizabeth's face changed yet again, just
as her expressions had altered following the trend of his reverie.
From joy and happiness to naïve pleasure at his praise, then sadness,
and a vague, indefinable longing.  Then once more her features
mirrored her thoughts.  Pride of birth, of race, of country!  Imre
needed no affirmation to his question.

He shook his head from side to side.  "But now, your birthday has
arrived and I have no present for you.  Tut, tut!  My memory is
becoming execrable.  Perhaps it is my work--I devote too much time to
it."

He looked away, out of the window, dreaming of his lifelong work, his
chosen task.  Once he had been a soldier, but that was many years
ago.  He married late, and when his beloved wife died he became a
scholar.  He dipped and delved into the past, until slowly there was
born within him a passion to write of the lives of the kings of
Hungary.  So he began when Elizabeth was but a child of ten.

Soon now, perhaps in two or three years, he would write "Finis," but
at times he feared, frightened that the Reaper would forestall him in
his cherished ambition.

Of late the apprehension had become deeper; it seemed to him that
there were moments when his heart fluttered strangely, and so he
flung himself into his work, studying from morning till night.  Thus
he had forgotten an important anniversary, and he chided himself.

He need not have done so.  Elizabeth understood and sympathized.  She
left her chair and knelt by his side, laying her head on his knees.

"Father darling, you must not say that.  Your work means as much to
me.  I long for the time when your name will ring throughout Hungary,
echo from town to town, and later trumpet to the world the glories of
our saintly kings, and all they have done for mighty Europe."

Bending forward so that his thick, snow-white locks swept over his
forehead, he placed his lips upon the masses of her black hair, after
which he ran his fingers through its tresses, lovingly caressing the
silky texture, admiring the healthy sheen.

"Well, well, child, let us hope that the time will come very soon.
But now, what news to-day from Budapest?  How proceeds the Peace
Conference in Paris?  Assuredly the Entente will be merciful to
broken Hungary.  England and America will not forget us."

Elizabeth frowned.  "Again there are no papers, Father.  I do not
understand their absence and I am nervous."

"Nervous!  God bless my soul!  What nonsense are you talking?  Why
should you be nervous?"

She sighed.  "I do not know.  It may be merely a vague impression,
yet since King Charles was dethroned----"

"Tut, tut, child!  Do you not believe that it was diplomacy on the
part of Count Michael Karolyi?  The Government is in his hands.  He
is inclined to the Left.  His Radical tendencies, we admit, are
pronounced, but he could not stab his friends in the back.  He is one
of our class, one of our own people.  Is not his wife the daughter of
our greatest statesman?  Fear not, child; rest your faith on Count
Karolyi."

For his sake she smiled suddenly and gaily jumped to her feet.  Yet
the worry was not altogether driven from Elizabeth's mind by her
father's optimism.

"Come, Father, to work."

"To work!  Ah!"  Imre's lined face softly wreathed into smiles, and
his eyes brightened.  Once more he would pick up his beloved pen, to
write in words of gold of past glories, all unaware of the ghastly
present.

Carefully, with the aid of a stick which now never left his side, he
rose to his feet, and made his way to the window.  Throwing it open
he gazed at the glorious vista before him, breathing in the pure air
of the Great Plain.

"What a morning!  Come, child, stand by me and tell me what you see.
Does the town still stand enshrouded by the filthy smoke of
industrialism?"

Elizabeth did not reply, and Imre became conscious that her grip upon
his arm was tightening.

"What is the matter, Elizabeth?" he asked, surprised.

"Father, there is a man riding towards us as if he were pursued by a
demon."

"Pshaw!  Do not all our horsemen ride thus?  Perhaps he brings us the
newspapers."

Elizabeth endeavoured to believe in this supposition, but receptive
to occult influence, a heritage of gipsy blood, she had a premonition
that the rapidly approaching rider bore news of ill-omen, and her
heart beat quicker with anxiety.

At last, after an apparently interminable period, he reached the
massive iron gates of the castle, and a moment later the clang of a
deep-toned bell resounded throughout the purlieus of the walls.

A brief interval, hurrying footsteps, and then Peczkai, from the
village, was shown in.

His face was covered with sweat and streaked with dirt, his clothes
were white with dust.  Gasping for breath he turned to the old man.

"Excellency!"  He could say no more, and Imre motioned him to be
quiet.  His hoarse breathing became easier.

"Excellency, the Communists are on their way here!"

"Communists!"  Imre gazed at the peasant in bewilderment.  "What mean
you?  I do not understand."

"The Communists, Excellency, are coming here, by order of the Soviet."

"Soviet!"  The old man choked and a hastily aroused temper began to
display itself.  Seeing him thus Elizabeth spoke to the man.

"You must tell us more, Peczkai.  What you have said to us is a
mystery.  We have had no news for some time now, our newspapers have
not arrived."

"God help you, then, when you hear the news.  The Karolyi Government
has resigned, and the country has been taken over by a group of Jews
who call themselves the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.  Hungary is
Bolshevik, Red.  The _bourgeoisie_ and the aristocracy are fleeing
for their lives.  Everything is nationalized, the property of the
country, and anyone may take what they please.  It is bloody
revolution, Excellency!"

They looked at the man incredulously, hesitating to believe a word he
said.  Yet Elizabeth was the first to realize the truth.

"Oh, Mother in Heaven!" she whispered to herself, yet the sound
pierced the stillness of the room with a sharp echo.

Imre, after a moment's hesitation, remained unmoved.  "Impossible!"
he announced, and his eyes flashed.  "Hungary turned Bolshevik!
Impossible!"  Proudly he lifted his head and met the peasant's steady
gaze.

Peczkai groaned.  "Excellency, I could not believe until I saw, with
my own eyes.  Red guards are everywhere, pillaging and looting in the
name of the Soviet.  Rumours have reached us from Budapest of death,
of mysterious disappearances.  Our late Prime Minister and many
others have been thrown into prison.  Excellency, you must believe!
The Communists are on the way here now!  Any moment they may arrive.
You must flee; it will be better so."

Hesitation to believe battled with a hopeless recognition of the
truth in Imre's heart.  He did not move or speak; just stood still
while the blood receded from his face and his eyes became shadowed
with an overwhelming horror.

While he wrote of Hungary's greatness, this, this unspeakable
sacrilege was taking place.  Hungary Red!  The country of St Stephen,
the birthplace of a long list of valiant warriors--Bolshevik!

"A chair, Elizabeth," he gasped weakly as, unable to bear the sudden
weight of sorrow, he felt his knees tottering.  Quicker than
Elizabeth Peczkai was beside him, holding the older man up in his
strong arms.

"Excellency, a short rest only.  Then you must go.  See, I will take
you, guide you to a safe place."

"Go!  Go!"  Slowly the bowed shoulders straightened, the head lifted,
and Peczkai saw Imre's eyes blazing with a kindled fire.  "Go!
Never!  Who are these Communists that I should leave my home, the
home of my father, and his father before him?  Who are these dogs
that I should forsake my castle?  Never!  Let them come.  I will
horsewhip them.  Not yet is my arm too weak to defend myself and my
daughter.  Go you, Peczkai, and dare these Bolsheviks to come near."

Despairingly the peasant glanced at Elizabeth, but vainly.  As she
stood there she smiled slightly, haughtily, disdainfully.  The spirit
of the fighting Magyars revealed itself in her womanly grace;
daughter of a generation of warriors, she feared neither friend nor
foe.  Once again Peczkai groaned.

"Excellency..."  He spread out an arm appealingly.

Imre smiled softly.  "God bless you, Peczkai."  There was much in his
voice which even the uncultured peasant recognized--gratitude,
tenderness, scorn, but above all, inflexible decision.

Peczkai, with a bowed head, helped Imre to a chair, and left the
room.  Bowed, for in the corner of each eye trickled a tear.  When
the awakening came...  He felt an infinite pity for them.

It was soon to come.  Even as Elizabeth went to the window to watch
the return of Peczkai to the village she saw in the distance the
approaching Communists.  Her lips curled scornfully.  There were many
of them, perhaps two dozen, or three--as they came nearer she
realized that even this estimate was too low.

"They come, Father."

She looked round.  He sat as if he had not heard.

So she waited at the windows, and the Communists came nearer till she
was able to see their faces, and for the first time feared.  Most of
them were villagers, led by a sprinkling of strangers, but the
vanguard was packed with cruel faces and criminal countenances.  Even
many of these men she knew, recognized them as incorrigibles,
vagabonds, ne'er-do-wells, every one of them an _habitué_ of prison.

Where were the police that these convicts were let loose?  She
experienced a thrill of horror: there, side by side with the
misdemeanants, walked the renegade police, no longer spick-and-span
in their uniforms, but dirty and dissolute, wearing conspicuously
their ensign of shame, the Red cockade.

"Oh, Mother in Heaven!" she breathed.

The awakening at last!  "Father, the gates! we must close them!  Then
we can defy them, snap our fingers at them."

Before he had time to reply she hurried from the room and called the
servants as she ran.

In the courtyard Joseph and Eugene the coachmen were watching the
Communists, whispering to each other in an undertone.  Then Elizabeth
was before them.

"Joseph, Eugene, the Bolsheviks are coming to occupy the castle.
Shut to the gates."

Neither man moved, just glanced uneasily at one another.

"Eugene, do you hear?"  The other servants were joining them, all but
the women.

The man looked up and scowled.  "Yes, mistress, I hear," but he made
no attempt to move.  Fear tugged at Elizabeth's heart, but the
servants did not suspect it, as before her burning looks their own
gaze gave way and fell.

"Then obey.  Shut to the gates and keep that rabble at a distance."

From the back a voice shouted: "Hold hard, mistress!  Don't you call
our friends names."  Elizabeth endeavoured to locate the voice, but
the man had hidden himself behind another servant.

"Friends!"  Her voice rang with contempt.  "Do you call those men
your friends?  Do you, Eugene, and you, George, or you, Bela?"

Only Eugene had the pluck to answer.  "I choose my own friends,
mistress.  Times are different now.  We are all alike, you and me and
Joseph."  He laughed coarsely.  "You are not our mistress now.  You
and me are comrades.  This castle belongs to the country, and me and
Joseph and all of us are going to share it."

Elizabeth did not waste time in words.  She stepped forward and flung
her hand across his face, and the force of it first whitened the skin
then left a livid weal.

There was a deadly silence.  One or two of the more timid servants
shrank back, still amenable to authority, but Eugene the coachman,
his face diffused with evil, stepped forward.  "You----"  He raised
his arm, but Joseph caught hold of it.

"Wait, Eugene, wait for the others.  In a few minutes our pretty
mistress will soon realize who governs the country now.  Comrade
Grocz knows how to deal with the _bourgeoisie_.  Besides..." he
whispered in the other's ear, and afterward they both grinned evilly.

For Elizabeth the end of the world might have come.  The servants to
revolt, the men who had been in their employ for years, whom she
could have sworn would be faithful to death!  She looked at the
gates.  Too late now to close them, for the villagers were on the
threshold.  She felt a sob rising in her throat at the treachery of
the men, but repressed it, and running to the gates stood in the
entrance, her arms spread.

Obedient to impulses not yet entirely driven from them the villagers
stopped.  Only the Communists from Budapest had the courage to
advance, and headed by Comrade Grocz they moved forward till they
stood in front of her.

"Well, my pretty miss, what do you want?"  Grocz laughed and spat on
the ground.

Elizabeth looked at him, a fierce anger blazing from her eyes.
"Dog!" she cried.  "Get back to your kennel."

Some one laughed, otherwise the silence was intense.  Elizabeth
appreciated the moment, took advantage of it.  Coolly ignoring the
strangers, she spoke to the villagers, among whom she had been
brought up since childhood, and her young voice clearly rang through
the air, reaching every man in the crowd.

"Men, what do you want?  Why come you here to-day?  Are you to be
turned into a crowd of barbarians at the command of a handful of Jews
from Budapest?  Are you so forgetful of your own independence that
you must blindly follow on the heels of a few mischief-makers who
seek only their own advancement?  Have you forgotten the four long
years of war?  Did you sacrifice yourselves for this?"

Perhaps her words might have had effect, but unconsciously she
touched upon the wrong topic.

"Bah!  Who started the War, who plunged us peasants into the hell of
battle?  You magnates, you landowners and blood-suckers.  You, who
fatten on the work we do for you at starvation pay; you, all of you,
started the War to grind us down more than ever!"

The words were greeted by a chorus of affirmative growls.  The tide
had turned and none knew it better than Comrade Grocz.

"Out of the way!  We cannot stand arguing here all day long.  Three
cheers for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!  Long live Bela Kun!
Come along, comrades, worthy Bela Kun has given us Castle Gisella.
Shall we let a little chit of a girl stand in our way?"

There was a restless movement.  "No, no, move on!"

Out of the corner of her eyes Elizabeth saw Imre approaching, and it
seemed to her that he leaned more heavily than usual upon his
supporting stick.  At all costs she felt she must keep the mob away.

"Back, back!"  She faced them desperately, and her dauntless bearing
impressed the villagers, so that once again they stopped.  It did
more: wavering servants, already ashamed of their deviation from
loyalty, lined up behind her, heedless of Eugene's cajoleries and
threats.

Unseen, unnoticed, Lenin's shadow fell across the _tableau_; the
ghastly influence of Bela Kun, the example of Tibor Szamuelly,
reached even here.  Sneering slightly, an ex-policeman, now a Red
guard, sighted his rifle and pulled the trigger.

The shot went wide, but only just, so that its flight whistled past
Elizabeth's ear.  The blood drained from her face, but she did not
move, and at this first sign of open hostility her courage deepened.
Nor was it without effect on the invaders.  Like a bone thrown into
the midst of a pack of starving wolves the shot released a flood of
pent-up passion.  Gone in a moment were memories of the past;
tradition, gratitude, and common sense, all were forgotten.

Jostling, pushing, and shouting out insulting epithets, the mob
advanced, led by Comrade Grocz.  Some one, she never knew whom,
caught her roughly by the shoulders, and she was flung aside like a
sack of coal, her dress tearing down to the waist and revealing her
underclothing.  Even then she might have stood up to them, but a pair
of arms weakly encircled her and held her back.

"My daughter, my child!  Elizabeth, you are not hurt?  The beasts,
the cowards!  Would that I were twenty, even ten years younger and I
would flog them out of the castle on their knees.  May I be cursed
that my limbs fail me, may I----"

She put her lingers to his lips, and mutely they stood still,
helplessly watching the Communists brush past, and the castle which
had withstood Mongols, Frenchmen, Germans, Turks, and Austrians fall
to the disciples of Karl Marx and Lenin.

* * * * * *

An hour later they ventured in again.  In the meantime they had
hidden in an outhouse, where one of the female servants found them.
To Elizabeth she brought another dress, though, when she looked,
Elizabeth did not recognize it.

"This is one of your own?" she said.

"Yes, mistress."

"But why did you not bring me one of mine?"

Looking everywhere but at her mistress the maid stammered an answer:
"I--I was afraid of the--the men, mistress."

Decently dressed again Elizabeth decided that her father and she
ought to return to the castle, and leaving the shelter of the
outhouse they crossed the courtyard.  No one was to be seen.

They entered, only to stop, aghast.  No wonder the maid had not
looked Elizabeth in the eye.  On every hand were damage and
destruction, from every corner ascended a stench of vile, unwashed
humanity.  The Communists were everywhere, lounging about, smoking
Imre's cigars and cigarettes, spitting on the floor, exchanging
obscene jokes.

Elizabeth closed her eyes to shut out the ghastly scene, and Imre
sobbed aloud.  His grand old castle, full of heirlooms, priceless
antiques, and less valuable pieces of furniture which had become dear
to the heart from long familiarity, ruined and desecrated by the
filthy hands of the vandals!

Mechanically they moved on.  Everywhere it was the same.  Destruction
abounded.  Tiny _objets d'art_ thrown into the grate, exquisite
tapestry pulled off the walls to clean the boots of the proletariat.

In due course Comrade Grocz saw them.

"Hullo, comrade! hullo, sister!"  He greeted them familiarly.  "Jolly
little place you have had here in the past.  So nice in fact that it
is a pity you have not had an opportunity of sharing it before.  By
order of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat your jewellery is
confiscated, together with all other objects of value.  Your castle
will be shared by good Communists.  I have allotted you two rooms to
yourselves, out of my generosity.  The rest will be common rooms.
Pass on, comrades; remember the Dictatorship of the Proletariat has
come to stay."  He moved, laughing harshly.

Dismayed, bewildered, Elizabeth and her father falteringly stumbled
along the passage.  Communists passed, bearing in their arms bundles
of clothes, pieces of furniture, cushions, pillows, but not one
appeared to notice them.  Were they not all equal now?

At last they found their rooms, traced them in that they were
unoccupied, and that on the floor were tossed their clothes, a paltry
few, transferred from their proper wardrobes by order of Comrade
Grocz.  Just two rooms; a bedroom each to the father and daughter
who, but a few hours ago, had owned the whole castle.

"I--I will go in--for a rest."  Keeping his face sedulously hidden
from his daughter, Imre mumbled the words beneath his breath and
tottered into his new bedroom.  She followed and caught hold of his
arm in support, but he waved her away.  "Go, my child--I want--want
to be alone."  There was a break in his voice, and hearing it
Elizabeth choked, conscious that there was a suspicious lump in her
own throat.

Imre sank into a chair, his head bowed.  Elizabeth tiptoed from the
room and quietly shut the door.

Not far away was a bathroom.  She would have washed, but she found
the bolt wrenched off.  Under the Bolshevik _régime_ there was to be
no privacy.  It was part of their policy, a Communistic theory, that
the sexes be thrown promiscuously together.  Even modesty was to be
State-owned.

Hardly conscious of her actions she returned to her room.  It seemed
hot, stuffy, and smelly from contact with the Communists.  She
crossed to the window and flung it open, breathing in the spring air
with deep gasps.  That at least was pure, perhaps the only pure thing
left in unhappy Hungary.

Somehow it surprised Elizabeth that Nature still smiled.  It did not
seem possible for anyone or anything to smile now.  Yet it was so.
The gentle breeze whispered its lullaby, the sun shone gaily, and the
fleecy clouds, leisurely wafting along, served to emphasize the
sparkling sapphire hue of the sky.

Below her, a sheer drop of fifty feet, the broad Danube flowed,
undisturbed in its course by human outrage.  Elizabeth was fascinated
by its tranquillity, its absolute disinterestedness.  It did not dash
more fiercely against its rock-bound walls, nor sing its song the
louder.  What meant war or revolution, massacre or murder to it?
Inexorably its waters flowed onward, unheeding mankind's plight.
Cruel Nature, heartless Danube!

In the meantime Imre, in the next room, suffered.  Though of late
years he had remained away from the wide world, given up the last
years of his life to scholarly pursuits, there had been a time when
he was young, when he had sipped of its pleasures, tasted lightly of
its vices.  As then he had known the world, and mankind in
particular, so now he trembled for his daughter.

What would happen when the wine cellar was opened, when the mellow
Tokay stirred up the passions of the men?  God! he dared not think.
Yet he knew he must think, and plan escape for Elizabeth.  What were
his castle, his lands, his money, compared to her?

He must be polite to the Communists; escape would be easier if they
did not suspect him.  He must think--carefully.  He gazed around, and
the scene--the clothes on the floor, the missing ornaments, the
disturbed bed--angered him, and he felt his temper bubbling over,
blinding his clarity of vision.

There was only one place to which he could go--his beloved study.  So
he made his way there, keeping guard on himself, and ignoring the
jeering Communists.  Once there he knew its atmosphere would assist
him to think more coherently, to plan a way to get the better of the
scum.

The study door was closed and no one about.  With a quick movement,
which twisted his lips with pain, he entered, and shut the door
behind him, breathing with relief.

So the _tableau_ was set, Imre Kiss by the door, leaning on his
stick, and Comrade Grocz by a massive desk, a bundle of manuscript in
one hand, a lighted match in the other.

And Imre--for the moment he did not fully comprehend the significance
of what he saw.  His brain was blank, chilled by the disappointment
at finding even here the sacrilegious presence of Communists.

Then the devouring flame of realization fired his blood.  His papers,
his sacred manuscripts, the work of years about to be destroyed!
Another few seconds and the match would have been applied.  There was
no fear within him at that moment, only a consuming rage, a murderous
hate, and a flaming, unquenchable spirit which oiled his limbs, swept
aside for the moment the ravages of time.  With a bellow of rage he
raised aloft his heavy walking-stick, and, rushing forward, crashed
it down upon the skull of the Communist.

Without a sound Comrade Grocz dropped to the ground.

By the time he came round again the papers were hidden where no
Communist's hands would ever find them, but the black soul of Grocz
shrieked for revenge.

It was nothing to him that, the precious manuscripts saved,
gentle-hearted Imre was bathing the Communist's head.  He only saw
the man who had stunned him.  He rose quickly to his feet, leaving
Imre on his knees.  Now was his chance.  He swung his foot forward.
His heavy-soled boot crashed into the old man's face, and Imre,
racked with pain, gently slid backward to the floor with a groan.




_CHAPTER V_

Budapest, and Comrade Grocz pleading to Bela Kun for satisfaction.

Bela Kun was sympathetic.  "Of course, comrade.  An insult to you is
an insult to the Soviet.  Go back to Castle Gisella and hang the old
man.  Do just as you like, but do not let him escape."  His eyes
flashed.  "Remember, Grocz, I shall hold you responsible.  The
_bourgeoisie_ must be exterminated."

Grocz smiled savagely.  "Thank you, comrade.  Do not fear.  I know of
a very good method of hanging.  It does it gradually.  But, comrade,
there is another matter.  There is a daughter."

"Ha!  A daughter.  Is she young?"

"Deliciously so."

"And pretty?"

"None more so."

Bela Kun grinned all over his misshapen face.  "Comrade Grocz, if I
were you----"

Grocz nodded his head.  "And afterwards?"

Bela Kun frowned.  "Let her join her pig of a father in Hell."

Grocz was confident.  "Leave that to me, comrade."

The train back was not due to leave for another hour, so Grocz sat at
the station buffet, surrounded by friends, whiling away the time.  It
was good that his old chum Brody came along.  There was a tale to
tell, so he told it, and in its recital it lost nothing of the drama.
As the cluster around him grew larger so his voice boomed louder.  It
was pleasing to be thus a centre of interest.

All the same he kept his eye on the clock.  There was work to be
done.  He wanted to see the old man at the end of a rope, his legs
kicking--better still there was Elizabeth....

At last the train puffed out, crowded to double its capacity, as were
all trains in those days, but Grocz saw to it that he had plenty of
room.  There was one window seat occupied by an old woman.  He thrust
her out of it, and then took her place, stretching his long legs
across to the opposite side.  Having settled himself comfortably he
pulled from his pocket a large cigar which had once belonged to Imre
Kiss, and read _The People's Voice_.

Little did he know that in the same train travelled Nemesis, that
among the group of Reds to whom he had boasted of what was to happen
later that night were Arnold Terhune and his mysterious leader, the
White Knight.

They did not speak to one another, the two Englishmen; each had
thoughts of his own.  But then it was not safe to talk of anything
but trivialities: for instance, the man in the opposite corner, with
his hawk nose, his cunning eyes, and close-cropped head might have
been a detective.

Dressed in the filthiest of rags, gathered from a garbage heap,
wearing the inevitable Red cockade, behaving like a bully and a
brute, Terhune was not conspicuous in any respect; but the same could
not be said of the White Knight.  Towering above many of the tallest
men, Geoffrey Templeton, alias Istvan Wenzel, could not disguise his
height, his rugged strength, nor even his hideous ugliness, from
which even the bestial Reds glanced away in disgust.

With his livid wounds Wenzel was a veritable ogre, an inhuman
monstrosity, terrifying in appearance.  There were times when Terhune
turned away his own eyes, retching at the sight of his leader.

The train rumbled on through the environs of the city until it
reached the country, and Terhune, comparing its impressive simplicity
with its tillers and its reapers who composed the occupants of the
carriage, could not arrive at any reconciliation of the situation.
Crowded slum-dwellers, living in filth and grime, rubbing shoulders
with the rich, imbibing the seeds of dissatisfaction, he could well
understand rising in revolution; but where there was beauty and
natural art, fresh air and immense open spaces--there, he felt, the
spread of revolution could only be a disease, a fostered and
malignant growth.

From reason for the creation of internal strife, Arnold's thoughts
passed on to its victims.  As always, his memory reverted to the
night when he had first seen Cecile, sitting in the flickering
candlelight by her mother's bedside.  He realized that he wanted to
see her again and again after that.  Perhaps, one day, when the
Bolshevik Government was overturned, when the country was released
from the grip of the octopus--but that time could only be in the
distant future.  He sighed, and, out of the corner of his eye,
glanced at the White Knight.

As usual, Wenzel's face was set in hard lines, his eyes staring
ahead, unblinkingly emotionless.  Of what was he thinking?  And
Arnold, aware of the tragedy in the life of Geoffrey Templeton, could
well guess.

The train steamed into a local station and the carriage cleared, so
that only Arnold and Wenzel were left, even the cunning-eyed man
taking his departure.  Arnold, somewhat suspicious of him, watched
his back disappearing into the exit of the station, and presently
noticed him walking along an adjacent street.  He breathed a sigh of
relief, glad to know that to all intents and purposes he had been
mistaken in his assumption of the character of the man.

After a wearisome wait the train continued its journey, and looking
toward the east Arnold saw that the sky was beginning to deepen into
a sombre grey.  Farther along the train some one was playing the
_Internationale_ on a violin, and the strains echoed along the
corridor.

Wenzel did not move, but continued to sit mutely awaiting the
journey's end, passively oblivious of anything other than what was
passing through his mind.  Arnold chafed at the silence, for now
that, to a certain extent, the necessity for caution was past, his
leader's attitude was uncanny.

"Geoffrey, old man, we are nearly there."

"Well?"  Not a muscle of his face moved.  Arnold moved across the
carriage so that he sat opposite, hoping that he might read the
expression of Wenzel's eyes, but he was disappointed.  Nothing was to
be glimpsed but an impenetrable blank, an expressionless stare.

Arnold wanted to talk.  "You have made your plans?" he asked.

Wenzel nodded.  "As far as possible."

"And those?"

"We will follow Grocz at a distance.  Soon after he has entered the
castle we will arrive with a message from Bela Kun, probably
something to do with the hanging of this old man.  Once inside our
wits must do the rest."

There was a silence, broken eventually by Arnold.

"Geoffrey, why did you not warn me it was you who were the guard that
night when we rescued the Count Bakocz?  When I felt my pistol butt
sink into your flesh I could have gasped with horror.  God!  It must
have hurt you."

"Not as much as it did you.  You scarcely bruised the skin."

"Even so, was there anyone else near by, save the Count, that we had
to act so realistically?"

"No."

"Then--why?" he asked desperately.

"Two men only have seen the White Knight, Arnold.  You are one, Apor
is the other.  My very plans centre on the secrecy which surrounds
me.  I fear even the gratitude of those I rescue.  I trust no
one--but you."

"And I--I am a poor help to you, Geoffrey.  Yours is the brain, I am
but the muscle.  Still, I am more than satisfied.  All my life I
shall thank God that I came across you that--that day.  If I never
prove of further use to the world I shall rest satisfied that I have,
even in such a small way, helped to alleviate the lot of an unhappy
nation, to counteract the ghastly ravages of the handful of murderers
who govern the country.

"When we were at school together, you and I, Geoffrey, when we used
to outvie one another to see who could be the most daring, I am sure
neither of us ever dreamed that ten years later we should be here, in
Hungary, doing what we are.  You were always the leader, though, even
in those days.  I could never equal you, for strength, for
daring--for anything."

"Yet, Arnold, if I was the leader, I had more than an able
lieutenant, even as I have to-day.  Schooldays!  They were long ago!
They were happy days, those.  I have changed.  You haven't, Arnold.
You are older, a trifle more solemn, but you have still that rugged,
unbendable spirit of loyalty.  The Spanish Inquisition would not have
persuaded you to betray a friend, Arnold."

Arnold flushed.  He was not used to praise of this kind from his
leader, and, embarrassed, he changed the subject.

"Once inside the castle, Geoffrey--are you not afraid of being
trapped?"

"Trapped!"  Scornfully Wenzel derided the suggestion.  "Am I so
brainless that I cannot hope to blind the eyes of the unintelligent
spawn?  Are my arms too weak to throttle a few of the accursed swine?
No, Arnold, I have no fear on that score."

"What of a rifle bullet?  Neither brains nor brawn, Geoffrey, can
successfully withstand the flight of a cartridge."

For the first time that day Wenzel smiled.  "Then shall I be glad,
Arnold.  Don't you realize that death is all I seek?  What is life to
me now?  Hell!  Hell, from morning till night.  My thoughts torture
me when I--I think of--Zita, poor little Zita dying from the shock of
seeing her father bayoneted to death by--by the muckrake of the
earth, the spewed-out refuse of the lowest type of humanity.  God!
All I wish is to kill, kill; murder the brutes as they murdered Zita."

So redly did his scars throb with the intensity of his passion that
it seemed to Arnold they might burst with the pressure.  Wenzel may
have guessed his thoughts, for he laughed harshly, hideously.

"God was still not satisfied with all He had done to me.  No, there
was more to come, Arnold, more to come.  First He took away my Zita,
killed my heart, chilled my soul, and then, when I wanted to die that
I might join her, when I murdered six bloody Bolsheviks and gave
myself up that I might perish by their bullets, what queer prank did
He play then?

"Let me be put up against the wall, let the Communists fire, let
every bullet strike me here and here--here--here--so that I fell, and
was left for dead, and yet--what then?  Let me live, live that I
might gaze in the mirror at myself and hate my own face as I hate the
Bolsheviks, detest myself as I would the Devil.

"Do you think I am blind that I cannot see the hellish scars which
score my face and head from side to side?  God!  I wish I couldn't.
It hurts so, it hurts so."

No longer were his eyes expressionless.  Once Arnold had looked into
the eyes of a dog, his body flattened beneath the tyres of a
motor-car, and what he saw then remained with him as a memory for
years.  Once again he saw the pictured story of unbearable pain, and
this time it was in Geoffrey's eyes.

If his body were on earth, his soul was in the deepest depths of
Hell.  If he lived it was only to look for death, the death which was
preferable to life.

The train rumbled on, and Comrade Grocz impatiently waited for the
journey to finish.

* * * * * *

By the time Grocz reached the castle it was practically pitch dark.
Eugene, the ex-coachman, met him at the gate.

"Back again, comrade?"

"Yes, back again, my friend, with good news."

Eugene grunted.  "He is to die?"

"Ay, my friend, at the end of a rope, over the battlements.  Then
when it is all over we will cut the rope and he will fall 'plop' into
the Danube.  What more could you want?"

"Nothing more.  Your scheme is excellent, yet I would give you
advice, comrade."  He paused.

"Well, say on," urged Grocz impatiently.

"Firstly I would, were I you, dispatch the old man to-night."

Grocz grinned in the darkness.  "Worry not, comrade.  I have already
decided to do that--and other things.  Only why do you say this?"

"Because I have heard rumours.  There are certain pig-headed
villagers who regard our friend as they would a god.  There are hints
of a rescue."

"What!"  Grocz's face blackened.  "Who would dare to dispute the
judgment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat?  Show me them, give
me their names, and I warrant good Comrade Tibor Szamuelly will soon
persuade them to change their minds."

"Quietly, comrade, quietly!  I know no names.  I have merely
overheard a conversation, and I say--to-night shut fast the gates,
post sentries, and give orders that no one may pass in, not even Bela
Kun himself."

Grocz thought for a moment or two, and then smacked his knee.  "Good
advice, my friend!  We will see that this is done."

Inside the castle he rapidly issued orders and the gates rolled to;
then Red guards, with loaded rifles, and a bottle of wine by their
side, were set to keep watch.

Having done this Grocz made his way into the depths of the castle.
Here were cells, built by Hungary's defenders, for Hungary's foes.
Here in one of them lay a Hungarian defender, placed there by a
Hungarian foe.

To Imre Kiss came Grocz, gloatingly.  "Well, old man, you can say
your prayers.  At midnight sharp, to-night, you die."

"And my daughter?"  Imre's voice quavered.  All day long, since he
had been dragged from above and thrown inside, he had neither heard
nor seen Elizabeth, and, sick with anxiety, he had lain on a rough,
mouldy heap of straw, hour after hour, praying to his Creator for his
daughter's safety, no thought of self, of his own fate, content to
die if his daughter be saved, unharmed.  In the light of the lantern
Imre saw the Communist nod his head.  "Don't you worry!  She is quite
all right."

"You--you are not going to kill her?  For God's sake let her remain
safe and sound!  Kill me, but leave her."

"Don't you worry, we will do that all right," replied Grocz brutally.

"You swear you will look after her?"

"Yes, I will look after her."

"God bless you," Imre murmured.  Then as he left the cell Grocz
laughed slightly.  Once again Imre saw his face clearly betrayed in
the light, and at that moment realized the fate in store for
Elizabeth.

The horror was too much for his heart.  With a tiny sigh he slipped
back, unconscious, to the straw-strewn floor.

In the meantime Elizabeth knew naught of what had happened to her
father.  So far as she was aware, the only occurrence was that some
time after she shut herself in her room the key clicked in its
socket.  When she tried the door it was locked.  From this she
assumed that her father had been treated in a like manner.

At midday one of her own servants, with downcast eyes, brought her up
a simple meal, set out upon a tray, and putting it down upon a small
table quickly made her exit without a word.

The afternoon dragged on interminably till it merged into the
evening.  Once again a meal was brought to her.  This time she
questioned the maid.

"Why do you not speak to me, Lenke?"

The woman glanced fearfully at her.  "Mistress, I have been forbidden
to speak to you or to answer any questions."

Elizabeth gazed with scorn at the trembling servant.  "Are you afraid
of the--the--animals?"

Lenke whimpered slightly.  "Mistress, they--they threaten to--to kill
me unless I obey their commands."

Elizabeth laughed.  "And you believe they would dare to do so?"

"Mistress, they would dare.  They--they are beasts!"  Her voice sank
to a whisper.  "Mistress, I heard a cry just before noon like a man
who--who had been mortally injured.  The voice was like that of
Ernest, the butler.  Mistress, mistress--"  Lenke fell on her knees,
and catching hold of Elizabeth's dress buried her face in its folds,
and sobbed--"Ernest--has--disappeared.  In his room were
only--bloodstains."

"Oh, Lenke!"  Elizabeth whispered to herself, and her face went
suddenly white.  It did not seem possible; Ernest to disappear so!
She tried to convince herself that the maid was lying, but if
Elizabeth needed any confirmation of the truth it was in Lenke's
attitude.

If that had happened, without any knowledge of it having reached her
until now, what other awful deeds might already have taken place?
Her father...

Frantically she bent down and clutched Lenke by the shoulders till
the servant moaned with pain.  "Lenke--Lenke--my father--your master,
is he safe?"

Lenke gazed with horror at her mistress, then she broke free from
Elizabeth's grasp, ran across the room to the door, and disappeared
outside.  The key turned.  Elizabeth was once again alone.

The terror depicted in the maid's face--her significant dismay at the
question--her orders to answer no questions--seized with
consternation Elizabeth sank into a chair as she felt her limbs
trembling.

Question after question raced through her mind, queries which could
not be answered.  As though an icy blast were blowing through her
room she shivered with a cold fear.  The unconquerable spirit which
did not wilt beneath the horror of the day was stricken down at the
thought of her father.  Where was he now, what had happened to him?
Feverishly she crossed to the door and hammered upon it till her
hands turned red.  For a long time there was no movement, but
presently she heard a shuffle along the passage outside.

The door opened, a Red guard stood there.

"My father, where is he?  Quick, for the love of mercy tell me!" she
pleaded.

The Red guard scowled at her.  "Is that all you want?"

"Yes, yes.  Tell me, please, I cannot bear the anxiety."

He did not reply.  Instead he seized his rifle, and placing the butt
to her waist pushed with all his might.  Elizabeth went hurtling
across the room, to fall with a crash against the wall.

The man laughed brutally and slammed the door.

More hours passed.  Elizabeth never knew how many, but it seemed a
score or so.  The room was in pitch darkness.  Racked with physical
pain from her bruised body, mentally a prey to an overwhelming fear,
she sat in a chair, sick and dazed.  So Grocz found her when, bearing
aloft a flickering candle, which he set down, he visited her to make
her acquainted with the orders of the Dictator of the Proletariat.

"I have brought you a light."

She looked up at him dully.  "My father--won't you tell me, please?
Where is he?  What are you going to do with him?"

Grocz frowned.  "Swing the old man to perdition."

The shock paralysed her muscles.  She could only look up at him
dumbly, trying to pull together her scattered thoughts, to make some
coherency of his words.

"So shall suffer all enemies of the Commune," he boasted.  "So should
you too, my pretty lady, and yet--" he moistened his thick, sensuous
lips--"it would be a pity if the world lost such a charming young
person.  My efforts with the Soviet have served you, sweet Elizabeth,
and they have put your life in my hands.

"Fear not, you shall not die, though your father hangs at midnight.
I shall myself see that the work is faithfully carried out."  He
paused, and unconsciously his fingers touched his head, still bruised
and tender where Imre's stick had caught it.  "Afterwards--" he
bowed--"afterwards, pretty lady, you may expect me here.  Your life
is mine, I shall make good use of it.  See, I will leave you this
candle till then.  It shall not be said that I was unkind to the
little lady whose life I have saved."  With which he withdrew from
the room, his eyes flickering as he shut the door.




_CHAPTER VI_

"Ho, there!"

Two men stood outside the castle gates, cursing beneath their breath.

On the other side a Communist laughed noisily.

"Hullo, comrades!  What want you at this time of night?"

"We come with a message to Comrade Grocz from Bela Kun."

The Communist laughed again, and turned to his companion, whose
besotted face grinned vacantly.  "A good joke, eh, my friend!  A
message from Bela Kun.  What was it good Comrade Grocz told us?
'Open not the gates even to Bela Kun himself.'  Ha, ha!  You will
have to come again to-morrow, friends."  He swayed unsteadily on his
feet.

"Open!  Our message is important."  Wenzel's voice hardened.  "Unless
Bela Kun's orders are obeyed your necks may stretch."

Imre's potent wine had done its work well.  "Who cares for Bela Kun?
To-morrow I may be the Dictator, or at least a commissary.  Or else
my friend here.  Good night, brothers.  Come again to-morrow."  Arm
in arm the two guards turned their backs and reeled into the interior
of the castle, carrying with them the flask of wine.

The darkness, unrelieved by even the light of moon or stars, hid
everything within a cloak of invisibility, so that even the castle
itself was but a blur, revealed only by flickering gleams of
illumination from a few windows.  That, and one other thing.  On top
of the castle itself three men, working by the light of four or five
lanterns, moved busily about to the accompaniment of hammering.  They
were erecting the gallows from which Imre was shortly to hang.

Wenzel cursed at the sudden, unforeseen obstacle in the fulfilment of
his plans.  "Hell!  May the Devil seize him!  Do you think Comrade
Grocz suspected he was being followed, Arnold?"

"No, I think not," Terhune replied slowly.

"Then why the order not to let in even Bela Kun himself?"

Arnold shrugged his shoulders.  "A sense of authority in the first
place, but there is a worse aspect.  After the hanging Grocz wishes
no interruption in his filthy schemes."

Wenzel's muscles tightened.  "God grant me the chance to grip his
soft throat between my thumbs," he muttered between his teeth.  "But
now, is there another way in?  Let us explore, Arnold."

Stumbling along the uneven rocky surface, Wenzel and his lieutenant
proceeded to examine, as far as possible, the geography of the
castle.  Keeping well beneath the shadow of the outer battlements
they knew they were safe from the observation of those within the
castle.  It would be only Communists or sentries actually above them
on the battlements who would be likely to hear or see them--an
unlikely contingency.

Presently they came to one corner; here the wall turned off at right
angles to make a second side of the square in which the castle was
built.  Continuing, the two Englishmen turned also.  For perhaps two
hundred feet they crept along without discovering any sign of another
door.

Suddenly Wenzel stopped, restraining Arnold by a touch on his arm,
his keen ears having become aware of a strange, sighing echo, a noise
hollowly flung at them from out of the darkness.  He felt the
influence of a cold wind, a sensation of space.

He looked ahead, then beneath him, and gasped slightly.  Deep down
below, an inestimable distance, were lights eerily waving to and fro.
Another few steps and they might have hurtled into the depths before
them.

The lights puzzled him; he could make nothing definite of their
fantastic action.  What, too, was the soughing below?  All at once
the solution occurred to him.  The lights below were reflections of
others above.

"The Danube!" he breathed softly.

"Good Lord!"  Arnold was horrified.  "Another few steps and----"

"Perhaps."

That was all!  Coolly indifferent to the possibility of having just
escaped death, the White Knight passed again to the front of Arnold
and they retraced their steps.  They reached the gates again, and
with the utmost caution passed by in front of them, then explored the
other side of the castle.

There it was just the same.  After the turn, a couple of hundred
yards' walk, and then the blowing wind, the sensation of space.  The
castle needed battlements on three sides only, for the fourth was
impregnable; Nature in the shape of a precipitous drop to the river
provided protection enough.

"Well?"

Arnold detected a grim note of interrogation in Wenzel's voice.
"There seems no hope of admittance," he answered.

"There has got to be.  Do you think I am content to let the old man
hang, and his daughter be violated?"

"What can you do?  If Grocz meant all he said at the station buffet,
Imre Kiss will hang at twelve."

"He was deadly serious, Arnold, else why the gallows?"  He pointed to
the castle roof where the men had been working, to notice that there
was now no sign of them.  The work was finished, the deadly
instrument ready for its victim.

"The swine!"  In the intensity of his emotion Arnold hissed the word
between set teeth.  "And yet----?"

There was no need for him to complete his unspoken question.  The
White Knight answered it after a slight pause.  "Arnold, there is one
way.  I am going to scale the battlements."

"Geoffrey--you can't!  They must be twenty feet high or more and
probably smooth as glass."

"Yet I am going to try," and there was a finality in his voice which
permitted of no opposition.  Arnold, knowing that his leader would
make the attempt, failed to see any prospect of success.  If there
had been but a modicum of light, a single gleam of illumination by
which to see footholds, find weaknesses in the solid structure of
which advantage might be taken, then, however hazardous and foolhardy
the task might have seemed, there was at least a possibility of
triumph.  But in the present circumstances...

The White Knight laughed slightly, and the next moment he was by the
wall, his hands and feet feeling for the slightest crack, the
smallest protuberance which would afford him a hold.

The moss was thick in parts, and deceiving.  It felt firm and secure,
yet it needed little pressure to tear its roots from the stonework,
and was a hindrance rather than a help, for pieces fell into Wenzel's
face, and into his eyes.

At last his groping fingers found a tiny indent where the mortar had
crumbled away.  Not deep enough for him to insert his finger-tips
even as far as the first joint, yet he deemed it sufficient.  He took
a firm grip, and by sheer force lifted his tall body a few inches and
pressed his toes against the wall, until one foot felt resistance
beneath it.  So he advanced the first step upward.

Carefully he released his left hand.  His weight pulled at the
fingers of the other, but he tightened his muscles, and somehow he
clung, supported by the toes of one foot.

With his free hand he felt for another hold, and presently found one,
scarcely better than the first, but good enough.  He took hold, swung
away, and, as before, pulled himself up till he could use both hands.

He moved upward, inch by inch, somehow finding fingerholds where the
fierce weather had, through the centuries, crumbled the stone; but
mainly it was sheer strength, fortified by force of will, which
helped him up, for he held on tenaciously, even when his position was
precarious, when the slightest weakening would have sent him slipping
down.

Up and up!  Presently, for all he knew, he might have been nearly to
the top, or yet not above the height of Terhune's head, for soon he
lost count of time and sense of distance.

Presently it became an effort to think; his brain reiterated
monotonously: "Hold on, hold on."  He must hold on; that much he
knew; so he held on, step by step, inch by inch.

Something wet trickled on his face; he thought it was moisture from
the squeezed moss, till it rolled upon his dry lips, and tasted warm
and salty to his tongue.  He knew then that it was blood from his
fingers where the skin was wearing through.

Up and up!  His muscles were tearing and aching from the strain; his
body suffered as if it had been tortured on the rack.  He felt that
it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the superhuman
effort, but he was aware that he must continue, knowing if he fell it
would mean death, and though he would have welcomed oblivion, there
was work to be done first.

More important than the rescue of Imre Kiss was that of his daughter
Elizabeth.  A man can die but once, and hanging is short and sweet,
but the girl--she would die a thousand deaths if once the foul beast
Grocz laid hands upon her, and yet remain alive, and live thereafter
suffering the tortures of the damned.

Up and up!  Suddenly he laughed aloud.  God! he had nearly gone that
time.  The blood streamed down his arm, spurted over his clothes,
even dripped on Terhune who waited below, pressed close against the
wall with outstretched arms just in case he could catch the White
Knight should he fall.  Terhune heard the laughter and, never
dreaming that it was an escape of pent-up relief from his leader,
trembled for the White Knight, believing he had heard a Communist
somewhere on the battlements.

Wenzel wondered at himself.  Why had he laughed?  For what in Hades
was he climbing the wall?  Why not drop and go to sleep?  Sleep, that
was it!  He was tired; he could move no more.

Perhaps for thirty seconds he remained still, while his brain, dazed
by the tremendous strain his body had suffered, whirled and twisted
in mental gymnastics.  For a brief period he could not collect his
thoughts; then out of the fog of uncertainty something in his heart
repeated once again: "Up--up."

Up and up!  Somehow he held on, even when it seemed to him that to
continue was impossible, until at last the top.  One final clamber
and he was on the broad, level wall.  Weakly he slithered down and
lay stretched out, while he gasped loudly for breath.

The strain over, his brain renewed its functions, and he was able to
think intelligently, so he allowed himself five minutes for recovery.
This period of time he estimated, then he rose to his feet, ready for
the next part of the programme.

Somewhere or other he believed there were bound to be stairs leading
down into the castle courtyard.  These he knew he could only find by
feeling for them, so he set out along the wall, step by step.

He was not long in his search.  Having traversed some fifteen yards
or so he came to a small tower.  Suspecting that the stairs might be
inside he entered, to find his surmise correct.  The tower was a
shield for a circular staircase leading from below.

Treading with the utmost caution he ventured down, and at length
arrived at the courtyard.  Even there not a single man was to be
seen, though he could hear them, for inside the castle there was a
noise of music and singing.  Deprive the Hungarian of his music, and
part of his life is erased.

The tune was dimly reminiscent; and a grim smile creased the features
of the White Knight.  Well might it strike a chord in his memory!  It
was the _Marseillaise_!  Altered and transposed almost out of
recognition so that even Rouget de Lisle might not have identified
it, the song howled by the drunken villagers was basically the same
as that which had fired the blood of other revolutionaries in other
times, in another land.

The tune was Hungarianized, the words modernized by a local poet; but
the spirit of the singers was not altered one iota.  So had the
people of France sung their hymn, drinking from their bottles under
the frowning fortifications of Paris, and their thoughts had been the
same, their aspirations similar.  The uprooting of law and order, the
disruption of the country--what mattered so long as they had
government for the mass by the mass?  That the rule of the mass
proved even more despotic, still more unjust than before, was a
matter of no account at all.

The large iron-bound doors of the castle proper stood wide open, and
for this Wenzel breathed a sigh of thankfulness.  His entrance should
be comparatively easy.

From the shadows outside he looked into the large hall.  Not yet had
the invaders managed to destroy all semblance of its beauty.  The
stately walls still rose grandly up to the raftered roof; its upper
panels, beyond the reach of the peasants, were still adorned with the
trophies of centuries of war and sport.

It was the floor which had suffered most; its polish was
irretrievably ruined, damaged by the contact of heavy boots, and the
mess and filth which littered it.  There, too, sprawled the filthy
bodies of the Communists, drunkenly sleeping off the effects of a
day's carousal.

Those who were still able to remain awake were piled around a
platform which occupied part of the left side of the hall.  Here were
the musicians, babbling in their cups, and yet still musical.

As Wenzel glanced around he noticed one significant fact.  There was
not one person looking in the direction of the door.  Now was his
chance to gain admittance inside without becoming a centre of
interest!  Once within he believed he might not have to fear
discovery; for one thing, they all looked too drunk to notice the
presence of a stranger, and, again, even if he were seen, he trusted
that the villagers would take him to be one of the Budapest
contingent, while the Communists from the city might assume him to
belong to the peasants' party.

Pulling his cap well over his head, swathing his chin and neck in his
dirty scarf, and slouching his shoulders to lessen his height, Wenzel
unsteadily crossed the threshold into the midst of the unpleasant
company, and sank into a chair while he looked around.  Most of them
had not yet troubled to take off hats or coats, so he did not remove
his either.

In front of him he saw a magnificent staircase, wide enough to take
twelve men abreast, which led to the upper floor.  By the platform
was another door through which men staggered in, now and again, food
or drink in their hands, so Wenzel assumed that it led to the
kitchens.

Otherwise, barring the front entrance, through which he himself had
entered, he could see no other door.  He frowned slightly.  He felt
that there should be another exit--one by which the servants could
make their way into other parts of the house without using either the
kitchen or the main staircase.

If there was one he did not see it, so he made up his mind to use the
stairs, for even as he looked, a Communist stumbled down, holding on
to the carved banisters for support.  If one could use them, why not
another?

The _Marseillaise_ finished, the _Internationale_ rang out.  There
was a burst of enthusiasm, and the noise of the chorus boisterously
rolled round the hall with a deafening din.

Wenzel rose from his chair, deeming the time a good one to move.  He
crossed the hall to the staircase.  With his foot on the first stair
he stopped.  Some one was entering the hall by a door just two or
three yards to the side of him, a panelled door which swung on its
hinges, and had been invisible to him before because it merged into
the pattern of the wall.

It was decidedly a less conspicuous entrance to the other part of the
house.  In case he should be observed he slipped and rolled to the
floor.  When he arose the door was in front of him, so the next
second he was on the other side, and at once was conscious of a
welcome silence after the noise of the hall.

The passage ahead of him was lit only in one place, by a faint light
escaping from a room on the right; from a slightly discernible
flicker and the soft yellowness of its gleam Wenzel guessed it to be
that of an oil lamp.

There was, apparently, no one about; Wenzel wondered if it were too
much to hope that all the Bolsheviks were congregated together.  If
so, and if he could but find where Imre and his daughter were, to
escape would be a matter of extreme simplicity.

There was no object in moving secretively; he shuffled along the
passage until he was level with the lighted room.  With a quick
sideward glance he looked within, but it was empty.

He moved on, and the passage turned sharply to the left.

Having turned the corner Wenzel found the darkness more accentuated,
for there were no other lights to be seen, and the illumination from
the lamp in the room he had just passed had no effect.

Feeling his way along by the wall he penetrated further into the
heart of the castle.  He came to another corner, and as he turned he
became conscious of approaching footsteps.

The castle seemed all corners.  The next moment a man walked suddenly
into view from the left, carrying a candle in his hand.  Wenzel
darted back into the shelter of the passage from which he had just
emerged, a plan of action already forming in his brain.

The other man came nearer.  Wenzel crouched for a spring.  Then as
the Communist turned into his passage Wenzel moved.  With his left
arm he grasped the man round the body in an unavoidable embrace,
while he used his right hand to seize the man's throat, and gently
squeeze the windpipe between thumb and first finger.

The candle dropped and sizzled out; the comrade tried convulsively to
free himself, but he was helpless.  Wenzel increased the pressure of
his arms and felt his victim sag limply.  Then he released his hold
on the man's throat, but quickly transferred his hand to the mouth,
pressing it fiercely so that no sound could escape.

"Quick, you dog," he said in a low voice, "tell me, where is Imre
Kiss?"

He released his hand from the man's mouth so that the other might
speak.  The man breathed hoarsely, his body panting as he pulled the
air into his lungs with deep gulps.

"Down in the cells," he croaked.

"You know the way?"

The Communist hesitated.  Wenzel tightened the arm which encircled
the man's waist till the unfortunate prisoner felt the air leaving
his body again with a rush.

"Yes, yes," he muttered hoarsely.  "I have just come from there."

"For what reason?"

"Comrade Grocz sent me with this message: 'Tell the old man to say
his prayers; it is nearly time for him to die.'"

In his fury Wenzel unconsciously increased the pressure of his arm,
and the Communist whimpered in agony.

"Mercy, mercy," he gasped, "you are killing me!"

Wenzel grunted, but eased up.  The man might yet prove to be of use,
otherwise...

"Pick up that candle, light it, and lead me to Imre Kiss.  If you
fail, or if you raise the slightest alarm--the Devil has a special
reception for such as you, my friend, so if you do not want to see
him yet awhile----"

Without a word the Communist pulled some matches from his pocket,
and, striking one, looked for the dropped candle.  This he picked up
and relit.  Holding it with fingers which shook and trembled in fear
he began to retrace his steps.

Presently they came to stairs which led downward; cold, stone stairs
which, in the past, many a prisoner had trodden but once--going down.
The air was fetid from the moss-covered walls and lack of
ventilation, the atmosphere chilly and gruesome.

The Communist pointed to the dark depths: "Imre Kiss is in the second
cell on the left."

Wenzel did not waste time in words.  He roughly caught the man by his
arms, and with a jerk swung him forward, and the unwilling guide
crept down.

There was a murmuring cry from one of the cells.

"Hear my prayers, O Lord!  Guard Elizabeth from the foul hands of the
beast; take my life but save hers.  In Thy infinite justice destroy
the man who would dare lay hands upon her.  In Thy Omnipotency,
protect her this night; show mercy to her who hath ever revered Thy
Name."

Conscious, suddenly, of intruders, Imre ceased his invocation.  He
saw the light of the candle, the two Communists--his call had come.

He threw himself on his knees, his arms outstretched toward them.
"Save my daughter! for God's sake rescue her from the arms of that
brute!  You shall be well rewarded.  But tell the truth to my
friends, and on my sacred oath you will receive a thousand crowns,
ten thousand crowns, the whole of my fortune, my castle!  I will give
you a note of hand; it will be honoured I swear."

His voice broke; he could say no more, and, believing his appeal
futile, he collapsed to the floor with a sob.

The door of the cell was locked.  Wenzel turned to the guide with a
growl.  "The key."

"Comrade Grocz has it."

Wenzel swore.  The door was an unexpected obstacle.  Unsuspecting the
cells he had not worried about keys.  There was no door made to
withstand the force of his shoulders, but the iron-barred gate...

He seized the candle from the hand of the other.  If there were one
single flaw, a weakness...  But he found no sign of such, only that
the rust of ages had eaten into the metal.  Wenzel passed the candle
back to the Communist.

If only his arms had not suffered from the strain of that gruelling
climb, if only his hands were not still raw and hard with dried
blood; but Wenzel knew he would have to make the attempt even if his
back broke.  There was still echoing in his memory Imre's prayer....

He stood with his back to the door, which was composed solely of iron
bars.  His arms hung down by his side, his hands gripping a cross
bar.  Carefully he placed his feet into position.  He was ready.

With a slowly increasing force he pushed, with his feet, his hands,
his back, pushed until his limbs were as taut as the iron bars
themselves.  Nothing happened, so he increased the pressure, and the
sweat burst from his forehead and trickled down his face.

A little more and he would be finished, his strength exhausted.
Despairingly he thrust again--the rusted iron lock moved, bent
beneath the strain, and then burst; the door swung in, and Wenzel,
lurching forward with it, tumbled to the floor, while the Communist
felt his knees weaken at the joints, wondering whether it were the
Devil himself he watched.  For twenty seconds no one moved, then
Wenzel rose to his feet and turned to Imre Kiss: "Come, there is no
time to waste."

Heavily the old man followed Wenzel out, his legs scarcely bearing
him.  Not yet did Imre realize that he was being rescued.  "I am
ready," he whispered.

In the meantime Wenzel stood before the trembling Communist, his lips
twisted in an ugly grin.  "The candle," he ordered, and hypnotized by
the fierce eyes the agitator from Budapest passed the guttering
tallow over.

There was no mercy in Wenzel's soul then.  Somehow he must dispose of
the Communist, otherwise there would soon be a warning shout.  He
could not lock him up.  His arm leaped upward as he clenched his
fist.  There was a dull thud as it came into contact with the man's
chin.  The Communist's head jerked back, and he slithered to the
ground.  There would be no fear of disturbance from him.

Imre felt sick.  "Why did you do that?" he murmured.

"It was the only way," Wenzel replied harshly.  "Otherwise he might
have raised an alarm."

"An alarm!"  Imre's trembling fingers waveringly flew to his mouth,
and slowly his eyes brightened in hope.  "You--you are here to rescue
me?"

"You and your daughter, Elizabeth."

Imre tried to speak, his lips quivered; but his brain was overwhelmed
by a rushing flood of relief, and the words refused to come.  He
could only stare at Wenzel; yet all his unspoken gratitude was in
that look, in the curving smile, in the fading lines, and in the eyes
which streamed with tears of joy and happiness.

"Come, we must not stop here."  Wenzel's voice was gentle; more so
than it had been for many months.  "First you must show me the way to
the roof."

"The roof? ... But ... but ... why?"

Wenzel's face hardened.  "Question me not, but lead."  And Imre Kiss,
who, because of the way in which his rescuer had wrapped his face,
could see nothing but his eyes, led the way without another word.

There was an incident on the way up to the roof.  They heard
approaching voices: Imre turned round helplessly to the White Knight.
Wenzel picked the other man up and flung him across his shoulders
like a sack of flour.

Two Communists staggered into them.  "Ho, ho!" leered one.  "Our
friend carries a man to his room.  Why is it a man you choose to take
to your room, comrade?" and he dug Wenzel in the ribs.  "What is the
matter with him?"

"He is fuller with wine than a barrel."

"Oh, ho!  Have they found some more?"

"It flows like the Danube in the hall.  I am just going down to have
my fill."

The two Communists exchanged glances.  "It will be a big one," said
one, "we had better get there first."

When Wenzel set Imre upon his feet again, the old man turned to him.
"That was clever," he said simply.

At last they reached the roof, and crossed to where the gallows stood
awaiting its victim.  Imre shuddered.

The long length of rope with its running noose, the noose which was
never to tighten, was there, prepared.  Wenzel observed the fact
grimly.  It was for this that he had come.  He stepped forward and
pulled the rope from the supports, and having untied the noose
estimated the length.

"Seventeen feet," he surmised, "a drop of from four or five feet,
allowing for tying."  Turning to Imre he asked: "Is there a direct
way from here to the battlements on the right, or must we descend to
the courtyard and cross?"

"No; there is an exterior staircase--a modern innovation.  My own, as
a matter of fact."

"Huh!  It may save your life."  Wenzel laughed shortly.  "You
scarcely foresaw this when you had it built?"

"God forbid!"

A few seconds later they were on the battlements at the spot where
Wenzel had climbed scarcely an hour ago.  He formed his lips into a
circle, and a hoot of an owl rang through the quiet night, to be
echoed from below.

Wenzel turned to Imre: "Listen carefully to my instructions.  I shall
drop you by means of this rope to where my friend stands below.  It
is five feet short.  When it reaches its capacity I shall tug it
twice.  Then you must untie yourself and drop.  When you meet my
friend you and he must go at once to the nearest village.  Afterwards
Terhune--my lieutenant--will know what to do.  You understand?  You
must set off at once."

"But--but my daughter?"

There was a rasp in Wenzel's voice when he answered: "You must obey
me."

It did not take a moment to fix the rope round Imre's waist.
Afterward the old man climbed over the parapet, and Wenzel commenced
to lower him.  Foot by foot the hemp passed through his hands till it
came to the end.  He lifted it slightly and lowered it.  Then he
raised it again for the second tug, and a calamity occurred.

The rasping fibre bit into his tender hand, where it suddenly scraped
a nerve.  Involuntarily his hand unclasped--and Imre dropped, the
rope with him.

The loss of it was a blow: Wenzel had been relying on it to let down
Elizabeth and himself.  But there was no time to waste in vain
regrets.  It was more than possible Grocz might send down further
insulting messages to his prisoner, and once the escape was
discovered it would be awkward for both the girl and himself unless
they were away by then.

Awaiting only Arnold's signal that Imre was safe, Wenzel commenced
cautiously to feel his way to the roof and back again to the stairs
which led into the castle.  He had learned from Imre the position of
Elizabeth's room and now he made his way toward it.

There was no one about.  Still more fortunate proved the fact that
the key was in the door.  He unlocked it and entered.

The room was in pitch darkness; the candle which Grocz had left had
already burned down to nothing.  Hearing him, Elizabeth gave a
muffled shriek.

"Fear not, mademoiselle."

Three simple words, but to Elizabeth they represented a suggestion of
unexpected comradeship.  The deep, resonant tone of his voice echoed
round the room.

"Fear not!"  A cultured voice at last, when all she had heard that
day had been the slurring accents of the uncouth, the uneducated.

"Fear not!"  Whatever words that voice might have conveyed to her
hearing none could have been more superfluous, for the deep notes
inspired trust, revealed the voice of a gentleman.

Just as her father had done, Elizabeth sobbed slightly at the
unexpected possibility of succour which was so suddenly held out
before her, dazzling in its promise.  Once again the strain of the
occult within warned her that the man whose voice had floated to her
through the darkness was a friend, even though he had not told her so.

"Mademoiselle, I have come to rescue you."  If she had needed proof
his words supplied it.

"Oh, thank God!" she murmured.  "For if--if that man had come to me I
would have died....  But--my father----"

"Is already safe and sound."

Wenzel heard a soft, cooing laugh.  "Oh, monsieur, how can I thank
you?  Whatever can I say or do to show my gratitude?  My father safe!
It sounds--wonderful.  You have done this?"

"I have."  Impatiently he replied, but if his manner was brusque she
did not notice it.

In a low, vibrant voice, which grew softer as she approached him, she
poured out her gratitude in full measure: "Monsieur, what you have
done this night will for ever live within my memory.  On every
anniversary of this date I shall bless your name, remember every word
you speak, picture to myself every line of your face----"

"Stop!"  Fiercely, passionately he hurled the word at her, for the
pain of her gentle thoughts seared into his heart with a rending,
tearing gash.  "Every line of his face."  God!  Why had she said
that?  How well he knew that once she saw his face each line of it
would indeed be for ever depicted in her memory--but not in the way
she believed.  Its forbidding distortion would haunt her, its
satyr-like grimness would represent a horror from which she would
turn away in fear and loathing.

"I want neither your thanks nor your remembrance.  Do you not realize
that at any moment your father's escape may be discovered?  Get
ready!" he ordered, and his words cut through the intervening space
with the sharpness of a rapier.

Bewildered and confused by his attitude she could only answer in a
low undertone: "I am ready."  What type of man was it who had so
suddenly slipped into her life?  Intuition, her sense of hearing,
everything suggested that her unseen rescuer was a gentleman, yet his
last words were those of a blustering bully, a coarse and domineering
adventurer.

"Then come."  He stretched out his arm, and his hand came into
contact with her wrist.  He seized it firmly, and pulled her roughly
to the door.

With the other hand upon the door-handle he stopped dead, as suddenly
from below there was a reverberating shout, a rumbling yell of rage.
Wenzel's lips compressed, and unconsciously he tightened his grip
upon her arm, till she could stand it no longer, and she screamed
slightly with the agony.

He thought it was fear: "Keep quiet; there is still time to escape."

She writhed at the scorn in his voice, but she knew that in spite of
his optimism escape was rapidly becoming impossible.  Once the rabble
downstairs took it into their heads to make sure she was still
safe----

The noise swelled louder, as a drunken fury seized the crowd.
"Where's the girl?  Hang her! ... Death to the _bourgeoise_!  Where's
her room?"

Clearly the shouts echoed along the passages; and then there was a
noise of pounding steps, a clamorous yelling.  Worked into a frenzy
the mob was on its way up.

Wenzel would have pulled her out in an attempt to avoid the
Communists, but her knowledge of the castle warned her that they were
hemmed in, that they were being approached from both ways.

"Too late.  We are cut off."  Quite calmly she informed him of the
fact, so that even he could not fail to appreciate the lack of fear
in her voice.

"You are not afraid?" he asked quickly.

"If my father is safe--no," she replied quietly.

He secured the key, and turned it in the lock, breathing a sigh of
thankfulness that the door was strongly built, the lock more so.  For
a short while it would resist the onslaught of the attackers, and in
that time he might yet find a means of escape.

"Tell me quickly, is there no other way out, no other door?"

"But one door and one window."

"The window----"

She did not hear the finish of his sentence for the deafening din
outside.  Like a pack of wolves the crowd was gathered to batten on
the flesh of the innocent girl, and like the animals whose human
prototypes they were they raised their voices at the scent of prey.

When they found the door locked their anger knew no bounds.  With
fists and feet they beat upon the stout door till it shivered beneath
the assault.  "Kill her!  Hang her!" they shouted, and only one
expostulated with them.

Mad with rage at the thought of his victim escaping his clutches,
even at the end of the hangman's rope, Comrade Grocz tried in vain to
stem the flood.  Above the roar of other voices his stridently rose:
"Comrades, comrades, the girl is mine.  She was given to me by Bela
Kun, the Dictator of the Proletariat.  You shall not kill her!  Stop,
stop, I say!"

He might have attempted to prevent a raincloud bursting.  "Get away,
Grocz.  She must die."

"But she was given to me!" he shrieked.

"Yah!  Yah!"  Two or three laughed boisterously, and one cried out:
"You forget, Comrade Grocz, that the Dictatorship has abolished all
private ownership."

"Ay!  Kill her!  Hang the girl!"

"Stop!  Stop!"  Grocz grew desperate.  "Listen.  Do not kill her ...
let us share her, as all good Communists should."

As though at a signal the wild noise now ceased, while this fresh
aspect of the situation slowly burned itself into the obtuse minds of
the Communists.

Wenzel had to close his eyes; a red filmy cloud floated before them,
summoned by the boiling fury which surged up from his heart.  Only
with an effort of will did he pull himself together and think
rationally--he wanted to throw open the door, throttle the vile
laughter of the men with his hands, smash them with his fists, pound
them to death.

He knew that she had heard, for he heard her catch in her breath with
a gush of horror, and felt her trembling.  This time he could not
mock her weakness.

"The window," he prompted.

"Had the worst come, I should have--have thrown myself out."

"You mean--suicide?"

"Yes," she breathed softly.  "May Heaven forgive me for the thought."

"What is below?--the courtyard?"

"No, the Danube, fifty feet down."

"The Danube!"  So her room was on the fourth side of the castle?  A
fifty-foot drop--but if it were a clear fall into the water there
would be at least a chance.  "Is it a clear drop?"

"Practically.  The cliff at this part overhangs the edge of the
water, and the castle is built on the extreme edge.  With a good jump
one might avoid the bank."

"Yet you spoke of suicide!"

"The current, monsieur, runs swiftly at this part.  No one could hope
to swim against it."

Outside the Communists understood at last, and now, urged on by a
different kind of excitement, the tumultuous clatter recommenced.
"Break open the door!  Let us feast our eyes upon her beauty."  The
pressure of weight was beginning to have its effect, for the door
cracked suspiciously.

So it seemed that Death might claim him at last!  Wenzel felt a glow
of contentment stealing over him.  Perhaps Zita waited for him,
there, just beyond the Veil, with outstretched arms....

"Mademoiselle, are you prepared to jump?"

"Gladly.  Death can be no worse than--than----  Oh, Mother in Heaven,
what has happened to our unhappy country?  Monsieur, I am ready."

Not too soon.  The door was groaning and splitting.  She guided him
to the window, and flung it open.  Wenzel felt her raise herself up
until she was standing on the ledge.  He did the same, and so tall
was the window that he, for all his height, could yet stand upright.

Before them was a grim blackness, an abyss of gloom.  Not even was
there the light of a star to twinkle a message of confidence.  Behind
them an equal density, and men whose souls were blacker still.
Nothing but impenetrable darkness in every direction.

The moment was awe-inspiring, soul-crushing.  There was a sensation
of immensity, a feeling of unfathomable depth.  When they jumped it
would be--whither?--where?  Perhaps, by a trickery of fate, on to the
cruel rocks which bordered the river, and which would crush their
bodies into pulp; or perhaps into shallow water where they would
split open on the river bed.

"You are still not afraid?" he asked.

"Yes, but ready."  Her voice was firm and steady, and Wenzel felt a
sudden thrill of admiration at her nerve and courage.  All at once it
seemed to him a pity that such a woman should die.  Still...

Even as the door gave way he picked her up in his arms.  Bracing his
legs he jumped....

He experienced no particular feeling, just a hotch-potch of different
sensations--of suffocation, of helplessness, the noise of raging
winds and rushing waters, eternity, and finally a shock, which left
him dazed and stunned, as they entered the water.

Down, down, and still down.  His lungs were bursting.  There was no
question of thought.  It was instinct which made him curve his body
so that their hurtling flight to the bottom was diverted; it was the
inevitable fight for life which set his legs kicking, shooting his
body up to the surface again.

Then air, precious life-provoking air.  He filled his lungs with deep
soul-satisfying gulps, and soon consciousness returned to him.
Elizabeth was still in his arms, limp and motionless, and Wenzel
believed she was stunned.  Better so--she might have struggled.

Already his thoughts were turning toward life, and while before
jumping he had welcomed death, now he wanted to live, to reach the
bank, to carry his precious burden to a place of safety.

With this resolve came the knowledge that Elizabeth had not
exaggerated the strength of the current.  He felt it now pulling, now
boisterously twisting and pushing them along hither and thither; but
all the time insidiously, inexorably drawing them along on its bosom.

If Elizabeth--if he--were to live he must strike out for the bank.
Somehow he shifted the girl until she was half across his back, so
that he could hold her with one hand, then with the other he
commenced to swim.

He found it easy.  With sure, even strokes he gradually progressed,
and buoyed up with enthusiasm and confidence he believed it would be
a matter of minutes only before he reached the river bank.  The
current, apparently, was not so strong as it seemed.

Yet the minutes dragged by.  Surely now, he thought, he must be in
the shallows.  He stopped short, and trod water, attempting to feel
bottom, but his feet met with no resistance.

Once again his arm and his legs thrashed out--then, all at once, he
realized the truth.  No wonder the going was easy, for he was
swimming with the current instead of across it!

He turned to his right, and instantly experienced the rush of the
water, for now he made no progress forward, but was swept along,
broadside on.

He was tired, and the cold water began to chill him, but urged by an
impulse which he could not translate he struggled on, ignoring the
possibility of surrendering himself to the water and the waiting arms
of Death.  Elizabeth must live--that much he knew; and so he kept
going, kept on until his body was once again racked with pain.

He had done so much that night, what more could he do?  Why should he
do more?  If he gave up now he could sleep so easily, so peacefully!
His mind worked sluggishly.  One, two, three!  One, two three!  His
strong arm, though weakened by strain, continued to strike out
regularly.  His limbs moved like an automaton, but he still
progressed.

The rush of the water grew louder, and Wenzel's head began to sing.
Much more and it would be the end.  Much more... much more...  The
words twisted themselves into a refrain, and the music was in time to
his strokes.  Much more...

Something scraped the toe of his boot, again and yet again, and he
knew he had touched bottom.  A few more strokes and he discovered
that he could stand.  Somehow he stumbled through the water till it
dropped from his chin to his hips, from his waist to his ankles, and
then--there was no more water.

* * * * * *

When Elizabeth came to she was in a peasant's hut, lying in a crude
bed.  Across the room, bending over a log fire, a woman was cooking
something, the appetizing odour of which pervaded the room.

Elizabeth gazed around wonderingly, unable to collect her thoughts
together.  But presently she remembered.  One after another the vivid
details returned to her, concluding with the last terrible jump into
an inky nothingness....

Where was her unknown rescuer?  She looked around, but except for the
peasant woman she could see no one.  Then, on a chair she saw a note.
It was so brief that it brought the tears to her eyes; just:

  MADEMOISELLE,
      You are safe with this woman.
                                  _Adieu._


"_Adieu!_"  Good-bye!  She gazed away.

He had almost written _Au revoir_, for as he himself had laid her on
the rough blanket, and gazed upon her beauty, his lips had trembled.
It was not that she was really like the Zita he remembered, yet...




_CHAPTER VII_

The hour was past nine o'clock before the Council meeting broke up,
and Eugene Hamburger, Commissary for Agriculture, together with his
assistant, Apor, were free to leave.

For a while they walked together discussing the work of the day.

"Well, my friend, life is different from what it was in the old days.
You and me, what were we before the glorious days of the Revolution?
What were we all, who are, to-day, the proud leaders of the world?
Slaves of the capitalists, sweating and toiling for a meagre
pittance, living in slums and tenements, while our masters reaped the
harvest of our industry.  What did they do with the money?  Increase
our wages?  No!  Improve our houses, help our families?  No!  They
lazed away their useless lives in luxurious idleness; lived in
glorious palaces; travelled in handsome limousines."  Hamburger
chuckled.  "Times are not the same.  We are the nobles now, Apor, you
and I; we are the people who count."

"How can we be the nobles?  I thought we were all equal now?"  Apor
dryly put the question to the commissary.

"Stuff and nonsense!  You provoke me to anger, comrade; you are for
ever casting shadows upon the golden vista of Communist dreams."

"Well!  Well!" mollified Apor.  "You must remember that the brighter
the sun shines the blacker is the shadow.  Do not think I am not
satisfied.  My only question is: will it last?"

"Bah!  Croaking again!  Can it do otherwise?  How can anything be
altered?  Does not the Soviet control the country from top to bottom:
the Army, the post offices, the banks, the public services, and the
people?  Do you think the people would wish to rise against us, even
if they dared?  You are stupid, friend!  They have never been so well
off as they are to-day.  Free as the air, the poorest as rich as the
wealthiest, the affluent as destitute as the pauper.  The State owns
everything, and in the eyes of the State each one of us is equal.
Could life be better?"

"And yet the members of the Soviet ride about in motor-cars, and
their humble 'equals' walk to work!"

Hamburger's cheeks flushed.  "You argue absurdly, Apor.  The State
merely lends the motor-cars to the Soviet for their extra
responsibility."

"I see!"  Apor paused, as if thinking deeply.  "But the capitalists
of the old days, were they not entitled to motor-cars for their share
of responsibility?"

The commissary growled.  "You are impossible to-night, comrade.  You
see matters through a smoky pair of spectacles.  Much more, and I
shall suspect that you have views which do not agree with the
doctrines of Communism."

Apor answered smoothly: "Not at all, my friend.  I merely argue as
one equal to another.  We are as free as air, I think you said.
Except to think differently, eh, comrade?  But there, my tongue is
sharp from the vinegar I swallowed to-day.  I argue only that I can
have the benefit of your wisdom, to be even better assured of the
splendid principles of Communism."

Hamburger was pleased, for he laughed softly.  "It is a good thing I
know you as well as I do, Apor.  But there; have I not always thought
you a wise sort of a fellow, for all the queer kinks in your brain?
I think we part here.  I have to-day moved into my free quarters in
the Hotel Bristol.  Good night, Apor."

"Good night..."  Hamburger disappeared into the darkness of the
night, and Apor continued savagely to himself: "... and may your
bones rot on a dung heap, and your flesh feed the rats."

He turned on his heels and retraced his steps.  Presently, out of the
corner of his eye, he saw a lurking shadow move softly to his side
and walk with him.

"You are late to-night."

"Yes.  Their rhetoric becomes wilder as their courage strengthens."

"What do you mean?"

"What do I mean, Wenzel?  God! only what I say.  Their grip on the
country becomes firmer every day.  Unless something happens soon,
Hungary will be ruined beyond all power of recovery.  Already she is
weakening beneath the crushing ravages of these Russian-financed
Bolsheviks.  Yes, Wenzel, there is scarcely one who does not spend
Russian gold.  But where have you been the last two days?"

"Rescuing Imre Kiss and his daughter Elizabeth.  Have you heard?"

"Heard!"  Suddenly Apor exploded with laughter.  "My dear man, the
only thing which surprises me is that you did not hear the echo of
the howl which went up when the Council was made cognizant of their
escape.  For ten minutes nearly every man present shouted at once.
But how did you learn of their plans on the Castle Gisella?  When I
came to warn you, you had gone."

"Arnold overheard Grocz at the station.  He was boasting to his
friends of what he was going to do to the father--and the daughter.
Now, what news have you for me?"

"Bad, Wenzel; bad.  For once you have slipped.  Your identity is
known.  You are no longer safe in Budapest."

"Damn!"  Aghast at the information, Wenzel unconsciously spoke in
English, and Apor started.

"Hush, for God's sake!  Never more truly was it said that walls have
ears, Wenzel.  Detectives swarm all over the place.  A word in
English is enough to draw a dozen after you."

"Why?"

"Because already the rumour has gone round that the White Knight is
English."

Wenzel groaned.  "Refugees must have been babbling.  After all my
warnings, too!  Yet, tell me, how came they to connect Wenzel with
the White Knight?"

"Simply!  When Count Bakocz escaped they sent for you.  You were not
there and they searched your rooms and found--a white knight."

Wenzel swore again, this time beneath his breath.  To have left such
an easy clue behind him!

"What a fool I was, what a fool!  Now must I find fresh lodgings."

"No, Wenzel, you must go altogether.  They are hunting for you right
and left."

"Enough, Apor!"  There was a steely warning in his voice, but Apor
heeded it not.

"But, Wenzel, I am Hungarian born and bred, I, who have, under a
different name, suffered untold miseries at the hands of the
Bolshevik swine, I am prepared to give my life gladly, and doubtless
shall, to bring an end to the Red Terror.  But you--you are an
Englishman, a foreigner!  Why, already we Hungarians owe you far more
than we can ever hope to pay.  Why should you linger here, your life
forfeit the moment you are discovered?"

Wenzel did not at first reply, but when he did his voice was
curiously soft: "Dear friend, ask me not my reasons.  Sufficient that
even though death means nothing to me, should I allow you to stay
here in danger, you who act as my eyes and ears in the Soviet
Council, and yet fear to come myself?  Pursue not the question, Apor.
It hurts.  Now tell me the latest plans."

"Conditions are more terrible than ever, as I have already said; but,
worse still, petty counter-revolutions are springing up all over the
place."

The Englishman made an angry exclamation.  "Fools!  Why must they set
about such hazardous undertakings, which can only end in humiliating
defeat?  If they would only wait with patience just a little longer.
In Vienna there is already a movement afoot....  Yet I may not say
more--in fact, I know very little myself.  Soon I expect a friend
with news, but until then..."

"Do not blame them, Wenzel.  In one way--well, it is pleasing to note
that there are still Hungarians living who love their country, who
have not fallen under the thrall of the mouthing Bolshevik orators."

There was a significant undercurrent in his voice, almost of apology,
which did not escape Wenzel's keen ear.  They were passing under one
of the few street lamps which were still burning, and the Englishman
put out his hand and restrained the other, then swung him round so
that they were face to face.

"Apor, you are not joining any counter-revolutionary movement?"

Beneath his steady scrutiny Apor's eyes dropped, and Wenzel knew that
he had guessed the truth.

"Apor!  Why must you?  Don't you realize that the time is not yet?
You will only run your head into the loop which awaits it if you
continue; and if you do not fear death, won't you please try to
remember that, situated as at present, you are a most valuable spy?
There are more saved lives to your credit than fingers on your hand."

"I know!  I know!"  Apor shook his head helplessly, and there was an
unhappy crease just above his eyes.  "Yet my soul writhes every time
I look at the Red cockade.  It is the insignia of blood.  Supposing
one of the counter-revolutionary movements should turn out to be a
success and I were not in it?  I should never forgive myself."

Wenzel's voice was hard when he replied: "Yet, Apor, you must work
for me alone.  You cannot serve two taskmasters.  You are inflamed by
a fanatical patriotism, and yet, worthy as it may seem, you are
blinded by its light, you do not foresee its actualities.  Come,
Apor; if you love Hungary guard yourself from suspicion, keep free
from anything which may cast doubt upon you in the eyes of the
Council.  Now of these petty revolutions!  What happens?"

"Don't ask me!"  His voice cracked.  "It is awful!  The Council tells
Szamuelly, then the brute leers, and goes off to his Death Train; the
next day--he hangs Hungarians promiscuously.  Guilty or not guilty,
he strings up any man upon whom he can lay his hands and----"

There was a dramatic interruption.  Some twenty yards behind there
was a sudden burst of noise, a sound of running footsteps and hoarse
shouting, then a series of flickering flashes which heralded the
ensuing staccato explosions of several rifles.

Simultaneously there was a scream and the whistling screech of
bullets.  Wenzel grunted slightly.  He was unhurt, but it had been
but a matter of inches.  A little more to his right, and at least one
of the missiles would have found a billet.

"Quick, Apor, are you unhurt?"

"Only just."

"Then run like Hades.  It is another poor victim.  Whatever happens
we must not be found together."

Without another word they parted, and rapidly merged into the
darkness.

Presently Wenzel stopped, and from a distance watched.  Around the
figure of a man stretched out upon the pavement were grouped half a
dozen Red soldiers, laughing and joking.

One of them kicked the helpless, stricken man, and even at that
distance Wenzel heard the moan of pain.  Evidently the human hare was
still alive.

Two of the soldiers hoisted the man to his feet, then dragged him
along, and Wenzel followed, impelled by a curiosity he could not
define.  Perhaps for nearly a quarter of a mile the Bolsheviks pushed
and pulled the wounded sufferer, till at last they were near the
river.  The soldiers kept on until they were half-way across the
Francis Joseph Bridge, where it was pitch dark, and from where he was
Wenzel could see nothing.  Yet, all at once, there was a desperate
cry for help and then--a splash.  The Reds laughed boisterously, and
continued their way.  Presently there was silence.

The Englishman stood still, gazing into the blackness of the night.
The Danube sucked yet one more body into its depths.  There was a
distant rumble of thunder, from where a storm played round the hills
beyond old Buda, yet it seemed to Wenzel more a rolling chuckle of
laughter from Mars, as he watched and ticked off one more life in his
already long and fearful list.  To the fierce Roman god of war it
must have seemed almost as bloody a sport as a European war.

* * * * * *

Wenzel restlessly tossed and turned about in the small truckle-bed
which he had managed to secure for the night, vainly endeavouring to
woo his active mind into repose.

He found himself haunted by dreams and visions, jumbled together into
a confused sequence of events, in which but three pictures were
outstanding.  First and foremost he could see, once again, the scene
on the Francis Joseph Bridge, the wounded victim of Bolshevik
persecution, struggling desperately in the arms of the brutal Red
soldiers, being gradually lifted up for the final throw over the
parapet of the bridge.

Wenzel had seen death in many guises, till his heart had become
callous through familiarity.  He had himself killed Germans in hot
blood, and Hungarian Bolsheviks in cold blood, yet never had he
believed till now that death could be so ghastly, so savage and
ruthless.

It might have been the despairing cry which had rung through the
night air, the almost invisible surroundings in which the crime had
been committed; it might have been the echoing sound of the
significant splash; whatever it was, Wenzel could not altogether
dismiss the scene from his memory, it revolved, repeated, and
exaggerated itself.

Then, as the murder on the bridge faded away, it was succeeded by
another vivid picture; there on the floor lay Zita's father, his
corpse slashed and hacked, and Zita herself, dead from shock, her
eyes mirroring the terrible scene.

Yet there was one other image which floated before his eyes, hid
slightly by a multi-coloured haze--once again he held in his arms a
living, pulsating body, though limp and unconscious.  In his muscular
arms she lay as lightly as a feather, yet her soaking clothes had
wrapped themselves round her limbs, revealing and betraying every
curve, every line, so that he saw she was exquisitely formed,
beautiful in her tapering svelteness, her divinely proportioned shape.

The dark tresses of her hair were massed into a mystic aureole, a
dusky halo which emphasized the clarity of her sun-burned complexion.
He remembered the symmetry of her features, the daintiness of her
nose, the soft curve of her lips.

It was this fantasy which lingered longest in his dreams, so vivid in
one sense, and yet so ethereal.  When his thoughts idly hovered upon
Elizabeth he saw her so, but when he would have concentrated, have
definitely and indelibly implanted the picture in his memory, it
faded away like a puff of smoke.

Presently he realized that he was more wideawake than ever; his
brain, stirred by the imagery of his mental travels, was insistently
devoting itself to Zita--and to Elizabeth.

He was conscious of an overwhelming impulse to see Elizabeth again.
He wanted to compare her finely chiselled nostrils with those of
Zita, to discover whether they quivered sensitively with pride and
emotion as had Zita's, whether her eyes, too, glowed with an inward
fire.

He wanted to hear again Elizabeth speaking.  That night in the castle
her voice had been so full of throbbing music, so liquidly clear and
steady.  He wanted to feel once more the velvet softness of her skin,
the smooth, cool touch of her fingers.

He did not think it treachery to Zita to think thus, for she and
Elizabeth seemed so much alike.  In the thoughts of them both, in the
rapid replacement and displacement of their images in his vision,
their differences dissolved, and merged gradually into one; and the
face which smiled at him from the happy fastnesses of his dreams was
neither that of Zita nor that of Elizabeth.

Somewhere within him, though as yet he failed to realize it, the warm
blood was beginning to flow again; chilled and frozen by the death of
Zita, it was infinitesimally thawed by the thought of Elizabeth.
Something tugged at his heart-strings: he felt an overpowering
impulse to visit the Château Juhusz, where were Elizabeth and her
father, the Bakocz family, and others whom he had rescued.

He knew he could get there and back again to Budapest on the morrow;
the inclination strengthened as he thought the matter carefully over.
Finally he decided to make the journey, and in less than five minutes
he was asleep.

When he awoke the next morning the sun was shining in a cloudless
sky, and because of the strange, unaccountable exuberance of spirits
which enveloped him it was as if it were a good omen for his journey
to the Château Juhusz.

He knew that it was dangerous to venture into the streets in broad
daylight; it was well within the bounds of possibility that he might
be seen and recognized by any one of a dozen or so people: Bela Kun,
Szamuelly, or any one of the Council; Garami or one of the Red guards
at the prison; still more likely by one of the many detectives who
swarmed the city spying out enemies of the Commune and signs of
counter-revolutions.

Nevertheless, he was blithely contemptuous of the fact, believing it
to be one thing for them to see him, but another to catch him.  His
legs were capable of covering good ground in the event of a chase;
his arms he considered more than equal to two, or even three, of the
average stunted and degenerate Bolsheviks; and if it came to gunfire
there was in his hip-pocket a fully loaded revolver which he could
use effectively.

What he did was to wrap his dirty scarf more tightly round his neck,
and to pull his cap even further over his eyes; prepared for all
emergencies he ventured out and made his way to the station.

As he approached nearer his destination he was surprised by its
unusual quietness.  Where usually it was thronged with travellers,
Red guards, surly railwaymen, shouting newsboys, and all the medley
of types usually scattered around a railway terminus, this morning
there was comparatively no one to be seen, only here and there a
small group of people, gesticulating wildly, and arguing with one
another.

Not until he was immediately opposite the once handsome station did
he discover that all entrance to the platform was forbidden.

"What's the matter, comrade?" he asked of a Red guard who lounged
near.

"The railwaymen have struck for more money," replied the other.

It was grimly humorous, but Wenzel dared not display any sign of his
real feelings.  He spat on the ground.  "Ho!  May the fires burn
brighter in Hades, but your news is anything but good, comrade!
There is a pretty wench anxiously awaiting my arrival some miles off.
How am I going to reach her?"

The guard grinned.  "She will have to wait even longer than a day
unless you walk."

"Bah!  I don't believe you.  Wait until the Council takes the
situation in hand.  The strike will fizzle out like damp gunpowder."

"Perhaps."  The guard shrugged his shoulders.  "Anyway, I hear
Comrade Szamuelly is going to settle the dispute.  He has a winning
way with him, has Szamuelly."

"Ay!  Well, I hope he succeeds, that's what I say.  I hope he does."

Wenzel moved away, growling, but if the words which the Red guard
caught were enough to make him grin, they were nothing compared with
the fury which inwardly consumed the White Knight.

So much for good omens!  All his plans to visit the _château_ that
day, and return at night, completely shattered.

He walked heedlessly along the streets, utterly oblivious of the
people in his way, so that there were several into whom he banged,
passing on without a word, and because they were rapidly becoming
crushed and cowed by the Terror they continued meekly and
unprotestingly.

For perhaps twenty minutes he traversed the streets; not until then
did it occur to him that he might walk to the _château_.  It would be
a long and arduous tramp, but had he not been hardened to such by
four years of route marches?  To think the matter over he stopped for
coffee at one of the innumerable coffee-houses, many of which were
still carrying on a desultory trade.

The Château Juhusz, though more modern than the Castle Gisella, had
long ago fallen into decay, and in consequence had been deserted by
its owners.  Built during times of peace, it had been designed more
for comfort than utility, and so the ravages of time, which left
older and more strongly built residences comparatively untouched, had
eaten into the delicate fabric of the building and underpinned its
less solid foundations.

It was Apor who had suggested these quarters as an admirable
hiding-place for the hunted refugees, and Wenzel, examining its
situation with a critical eye, recognized its advantages.  Built deep
in a thick pine forest on the slope of a small valley, it was
encircled in every direction by well-wooded hills, and was completely
shut off from the world.  The nearest village was approximately ten
miles away; with it, naturally, the nearest railway station.

Who had built it in such an inaccessible spot, and why, Wenzel had
been unable to fathom, but at any rate it was more than admirable for
the purpose suggested by Apor.  If the Communists imagined for a
moment that the _ci-devant_ magnates, reared in the lap of luxury,
could eke out an existence inside the weather-scarred walls of the
_château_, they were content to leave them there unmolested; except
where prisoners came easily to their hands, plunder was of paramount
importance.  A ten-mile march over the hill-tops with no prospect of
loot at the other end would be a senseless waste of time--so the
retreat sheltered many who owed their lives to the White Knight.

By train and a subsequent walk the total distance was nearly forty
miles, but, remembering that the railway track curved fairly
considerably about twenty miles out of Budapest, Wenzel had a shrewd
suspicion that by road the distance might be appreciably less.

He paid his reckoning, quickly left the coffee-house, and made his
way toward the shopping district.  Some of the shops were open, but
their windows were lamentably bare.  In the Communistic dictionary
the word shopkeeper is synonymous with _bourgeois_, and so the Reds
in Budapest had the happy trick of descending upon the unfortunate
shopkeepers and, in the name of the Soviet, appropriating the greater
part of their goods, for the benefit, usually, of the reformed
battalions of Red guards.

Twice, in less than a quarter of a mile, Wenzel entered a possible
shop and inquired for a road-map of Hungary.  In each case the reply
was the same.  One of the men had tears in his eyes.

"If you had come but the day before yesterday I could have served
you.  Yesterday"--he choked--"the Red guards came in.  They were
marching to the front, they said, to send the cowardly Czechs
scuttling back to their own country, and therefore in the name of the
Government they demanded all my stock.  I must be patriotic, they
said.  They took everything, whether it was of use or not.  What they
did not want the men gave to their wives or mistresses.  I am
penniless now.  All I ... I can do is ... is to become a Communist
myself.  Perhaps I shall be better off then."

Eventually Wenzel secured what he wanted.  Poring over the map with
eager eyes he discovered that his assumption was correct.  By road,
so far as he could estimate, the distance would be not more than
twenty-seven to thirty miles.

Thirty miles!  A seven-hour walk at the most!  Wenzel glanced at his
watch.  There would just be time to get there before night blotted
out the unknown roads.  He memorized the map, deeming it unwise to
consult it more than necessary, and once having fixed the route in
his mind he set out.

The hours passed by.  About noon the sky clouded over, and Wenzel
cursed, afraid it presaged rain, but a westerly wind soon carried the
darkest patches along, and the sun shone again, though fitfully.

By this time he had left Buda well behind, and also O'-Buda, higher
up in the hills, built on the spot where once had flourished the
Roman colony of Aquincum.  Below him the city was spread out in a
panorama, the Danube glitteringly winding its way through the centre.
He found then he was not covering the distance he had estimated--the
road seemed for ever on the upward trend, and he realized, much to
his surprise, that even in seven months the physical frame can soften
slightly.

After several heavy-going miles the grade lessened, his walk became
easier, and before another two hours had passed his long legs had
more than made up the lost time.

He had something to eat at a little roadside tavern, though it was
scanty and poorly cooked, consisting of _Gulyas_, the national
Hungarian dish, a type of Irish stew.  This he washed down with an
inferior red wine.  For all that it was a princely repast compared
with the food obtainable in Budapest, where watery soup and bread
were sometimes the only means of subsistence.

At five o'clock he was at the foot of a hill, and within five miles
of his destination.  By now he was tired, his left heel was troubling
him; but his heart was light, and he hummed the air of a Hungarian
folk-song.  The top reached, he gazed at the scene before him.  The
hill dropped steeply to a valley, only to rise as quickly again to an
even higher elevation.  On the other side of the farther hill was the
_château_.

The picture was delightful: Nature appeared to have permitted herself
a free hand, and her subtle brush had not wavered in her task.  The
woods were dotted thickly but unevenly, and the blank spaces had been
filled up with either green patches of meadowland or else dark grey
areas of bare, rugged nakedness.

There was but one blemish: four thin, parallel lines, painfully stark
and uncamouflaged, forged their way from as far as one could see, and
betrayed the hand of man.  In callous comparison with the beauties of
the valley the railway lines represented human commercialism,
inexorable progress.

The sun was dipping rapidly now; Wenzel dared waste no time, and so
he stepped forward once more on the last stage of his journey, and
crossing the iron road to Budapest he soon mounted the second hill,
till reaching its highest peak he saw, a quarter of a mile below him,
the ruined mansion.

He threaded his way through the trees until they thinned out; then
through them he could see the _château_.  No wonder it was ignored by
the Communists.  The mere sight of it was nearly enough to damp his
newly born sensation of--of----  He shrugged his shoulders when he
tried to analyse his emotions.

Not many of the long French windows were whole, or even unharmed.
Most of them were devoid of any semblance of glass, just a few of
them still boasted cracked and broken remains.  The exterior woodwork
was dull and colourless, the tiles of the roof green with moss.

What were once gardens surrounding the building were now a wilderness
of cultivated plants turned to weeds.  The flagged paths almost lost
their identity below the drooping greenstuff; a mournful Mercury,
chipped and yellow, no longer poured out a cascade of pure water into
the fountain beneath, but stood up desolate and useless.

He had seen it before, but it seemed to him that its atmosphere was
more doleful than ever, an unwritten epitaph on the straits to which
the unhappy aristocrats had fallen.  He wondered what effect it had
upon its present occupiers.

His question was to be answered immediately, for even as he watched
three people issued from within, and he started slightly as he
recognized two of them.

In the middle was Terhune, with Elizabeth on his right, and on his
left one who could only be Cecile; for it was as if he were gazing at
her photograph, so vivid had been Arnold's many descriptions of her.

Eagerly he watched Elizabeth, noting every fleeting expression of her
face, every movement of her graceful body, and his heart sang a pæan
of joy as he realized that she more than fulfilled his picture of
her, built up from that brief period during which she had lain
unconscious in his arms.

For some few minutes his eyes followed her, till the vision of her as
he saw her now, her beauty emphasized vividly by the misted
background of the _château_, was engraven into his memory.

Not until then, not until he was satisfied that as often as he wished
in the future he would be able to visualize her so, did he turn his
attention to the other two.

Soon he smiled.  Even if he had not been previously aware of the
romance which had quickly budded in the hearts of Cecile and his
lieutenant, he could not have remained unaware of it now.  They were
both so palpably in love; both so absurdly young.

Even from the distance at which he was, decreasing every second as
they moved in his direction, he could see the smile which lighted up
their eyes as they turned to one another, and the alert, eager glance
which hovered upon their faces whenever the other spoke, eager to
drink in every word.

They reached the edge of the woods; much further and they might have
come face to face with Wenzel; but they turned in time.  He let them
get back to the doorway, then he rounded his lips, and the next
moment the harsh cry of an owl floated through the air.

The effect on the trio was humorous.  Terhune stopped suddenly as he
realized the significance of the call, and Elizabeth and Cecile
turned toward him in surprise.  Wenzel saw him listening, uncertain
whether he had heard aright; so he hooted again, and the next moment
saw and heard Terhune replying to him.

There had to be explanations; all at once the expression on the faces
of Terhune's companions turned from bewilderment to blazing, joyful
anticipation, and he saw Elizabeth's lips speak three words, and,
almost as if the echo of them had floated to his ears, knew that she
had repeated: "The White Knight!"

Next, Terhune was emphatically shaking his head.  Wenzel's eyes
twinkled--he knew well what they were pleading: to speak to the White
Knight, to see him--and then, immediately, the twinkle disappeared;
his face hardened with an inward pain.  Supposing they did see him,
supposing the gentle eyes of Elizabeth or Cecile should look upon his
ghastly features....

"Geoffrey!  You here!  I did not expect you.  You have brought some
one else?"

Wenzel shook his head.  "No.  I have come for no reason whatsoever.
A whimsy!  I was curious to know for myself how every one is faring."

"Happily, or rather as happily as is possible.  The _château_ is
heaven to most of the present inhabitants.  After being robbed of
everything they possessed, turned out of their homes, and then, if
they protested, hunted high and low; some even now cannot understand
what it is to spend an easy night without fearing what the morning
will bring.  Sometimes I wonder how it is that we are overlooked.
Still, if the devils should come"--his voice became grimmer--"there
is a rifle here for every man, with some to spare, and ammunition in
plenty."

"Good!  Any other news?"

"Francis Bakocz has been plaguing my life to ask you to let him help
us."

"Humph!"  Wenzel pursed his lips and looked toward the crumbling
pile.  "What do you think of him?  Would he be a good man or not?  We
could do with some one else: matters are becoming worse and worse in
Budapest."

"He has enough courage for two, and if pushed to it could act a part
well.  In my opinion he would have only one fault.  He would be
inclined to be reckless."

"A bad failing, Arnold.  Yet, all the same--I will speak to him.
Listen, friend!  As I am here I would like to talk to--to--one or two
for a while, but, as you know, there are--reasons why they must not
set eyes upon me.  To-night, therefore, find me a room.  It must be
pitch dark.  There I will receive Francis and Cecile Bakocz,
Elizabeth Kiss, and perhaps her father.  Go in now, and prepare
everything for me.  When you are ready, hoot, and I shall come."

Arnold returned to the _château_, a frown of puzzlement creasing his
forehead.  To-day Wenzel was different: hitherto he had taken no
interest in the people he had rescued; once they were safe in the
retreat they had passed from his mind, so that what he had done for
them might have been merely helping them across a crowded street.
Why, therefore, this sudden interest in the refugees?

He was met at the door by Cecile.

"You have seen him?"  The last word she uttered in a soft whisper,
breathing into it a subtle reverence.

Arnold nodded.  "Yes," he replied abstractedly.

She clasped her hands together.  "Oh!  If he only knew how much we
all wish to meet him, to thank and express our gratitude for all he
has done for us."

"Perhaps he does!"

She turned swiftly round, so that she was directly facing him.  "You
mean--he is coming--here, and soon?"

"To-night!"

"Oh!  Oh!"  Too full for words, Cecile could say nothing.  For days
she had prayed for the opportunity of speaking to the White
Knight--to him who had snatched her father from the very gates of
death.  Now at last it seemed that she was to have the opportunity.

"I--I shall see him then?"

Arnold hesitated.  He realized that he was going to have difficulty
in explaining the situation.

"Yes and no," he muttered slowly.  "You may be able to speak to him,
but not actually see him."

Two faint, twin lines betrayed themselves upon her forehead.  "Speak
to him but not see him!  I do not understand!"

"No, mademoiselle, I did not expect you to do so.  The White Knight
has instructed me to prepare a pitch-dark room in which to receive
you, and only in that room will you meet him."

She shook her head doubtfully.  "Yet still I do not comprehend."

Arnold hesitated.  "It is that no one shall recognize him."

For the moment she still did not realize, then her eyes filled with
tears, and when she spoke reproach and disappointment throbbingly
disclosed themselves in her voice.  "He is afraid of being betrayed!
How could he think that, when there is not one of us here who would
not sooner die than expose him to the Communists?  Does he not trust
us?"

"Mademoiselle, do not think that of him.  Of course he trusts you.
Could he do otherwise?"  Skilfully he endeavoured to change the
current of her thoughts by the implied compliment, but the hurt
rankled in her heart.

"Then what other reason has he for taking such precautions?"

"Why, plenty....  I--I mean, I do not know!  I do not question him!"
Arnold floundered, and silently cursed as he foresaw too well what
her next words would be.

"So he is not the only one who does not trust me," she replied
coldly.  "I am sorry, monsieur."

"Mademoiselle!"  Desperately he appealed to her.  "I did not mean
that; you are twisting my words.  Why--I--I would lay down my life to
serve you.  I--I----"  He stopped suddenly as he realized that his
heart was overpowering his head, thoughts which he supposed to be
locked in the deepest recesses of his being were forcing themselves
to utterance.  "Mademoiselle, I must go at once," he muttered.

"Very well!"  She shook her shoulders and turned aside.  With a
despairing look at her he slowly moved away, and so missed the
bewitching smile which sprang into her eyes as she watched him
disappearing down the passage.




_CHAPTER VIII_

An unrelieved blackness settled over the countryside before Arnold
intimated to Wenzel that everything was ready.  Only from the mansion
itself was there any illumination, for, despite all possible
precautions, from two or three windows came the dull gleam of
candlelight.  There were no curtains by which the unfortunate
refugees could conceal the light, so overcoats, cloaks, and other
articles of wearing apparel were made to serve instead.

Wenzel proceeded toward the _château_ until he was near enough to
glance in turn through several peep-holes.  The scene was anything
but cheering, and despite his hardened heart he could not help
feeling a tinge of pity for those inside.

The rooms within were bare of any semblance of furniture or
decoration other than what the occupiers themselves had made.  Naked
walls grimly frowned down upon bare floors, and in the general decay
one room was no better than the next.  In the majority of the
bedrooms the only beds consisted of dried leaves over which were
flung ladies' petticoats as sheets, men's overcoats as blankets.

Wenzel soon noted that the hands of the fairer sex had not remained
idle any more than those of the men.  Here and there were bunches of
wild flowers, their beautiful colours serving, in some cases, to help
hide some of the worst patches on the walls.  Pieces of fantastically
shaped wood had been tied round with pieces of ribbon, lace, or other
trimmings, and these were placed in positions where they could best
ornament the rooms.

In several cases the scene had been brightened by cleverly executed
charcoal drawings portrayed on the walls, and here and there Wenzel
glimpsed colours, though how the artist had obtained them he could
not guess.

The men had apparently set to work with a will, aided by what
carpenter's tools Arnold had managed to obtain for them, for there
were crudely fashioned chairs scattered about, or else uneven
three-legged stools.  In one room was a rough table.

Somehow Wenzel was grotesquely reminded of the _Swiss Family
Robinson_, of _Crusoe_, and other similar tales of boyhood days.  As
he looked in upon the _château_ it seemed to him as though the people
inside might also have been cast away on some desert island.  To
think that they were in the centre of a supposedly civilized
continent....

Arnold was waiting for him by the door.

"Everyone is madly anxious to speak to you," he said.

"I can see only a few," Wenzel answered curtly.

He knew beforehand that he was going to be embarrassed by their
gratitude, and it annoyed him.  "Haven't you told them, Arnold," he
continued testily, "that I am doing all this purely for revenge, and
to have a chance of killing some of the Communist brutes?  Haven't
you explained that their lives mean nothing to me?"

Arnold grinned in the darkness.  Perhaps he knew his leader better
than the White Knight knew himself.  "No, I haven't.  I have left
that for you to do.  However, who will you see first?"

"I think--Francis Bakocz!  Now take me to the room."

To the White Knight came Francis.

"Monsieur," he said to Wenzel, "I want to become one of your
lieutenants."

"Lieutenants!  Who told you I have assistants?"

Curtly the words were hurled at him through the dark, and Francis
started with surprise.  The mysterious White Knight's voice was hard
and cruel.

"No one," he faltered; "but there is yourself, and Monsieur Terhune,
and I believed there might be others."

"Why should you believe so?"

"I--I----  Monsieur, I do not understand you!  I imagined what I did
because the escapes you arranged were so wonderful, so marvellous.
It seemed to me that you must have many more to aid you.  Do you not
want me to--to--speak thus?"

Wenzel laughed grimly.  "I questioned you to discover whether they
were your ideas or some you might have heard."

"They were my own," Francis said quickly.  "No one knows anything of
you, though we often discuss you when Monsieur Terhune is away," he
admitted frankly.

"And you think I am a supernatural being?"

"Almost, monsieur!  My father, for instance!  When that hideous brute
of a jailer was put to guard him he gave up all hope.  Only you,
monsieur, could have got the better of that monster."

There was a brief silence, broken eventually by Wenzel: "You think
so?"

"I am certain of it," replied Francis, with boyish enthusiasm.  "From
what my father says of the jailer the man must have been an ogre.
Ugh! the very description of him makes the ladies shudder."  He
laughed slightly.  "Father's description might be that of the missing
link.  If ever he and I meet I shall kill him for all he did to my
father."

Again a silence, so long that Francis could not maintain his
composure.  "Monsieur!" he said.

"Go, go!"  Wenzel spoke in a muffled voice.  "I will let you know if
you can help me.  Only go now, and tell Terhune to come to me in ten
minutes' time."

The boy went, and Wenzel was left to thoughts which seared and
blistered.  "The missing link!"  He, who had once been handsome, who
could have once looked at himself in the mirror, and been satisfied
with its reflection of healthy, youthful virility, now "an ogre"!
Not even could he pretend to himself that his ugliness had been
exaggerated in the Count's eyes by the ghastly surrounding of the
prison, the apparent cruelty of the jailer.  He was not blind; there
were times when he was himself appalled by the picture thrown at him
out of the looking-glass.

Yet the hurt of Francis' words, though they cut deep into his
sensibilities, did not compare with the mental pain of his own
thoughts.  If a man thought that of him, what would be a woman's
feelings, how much worse would be the reaction on the more fragile
ideals of a young girl?

A seething disgust of himself swept upward from his heart; soon it
seemed to him that such a monstrosity, such a caricature of a man,
ought not to live.  Grimly it occurred to him that one day he might
be held up as an example to bad children, the threat of becoming like
him being used as a means of inducing them to yield to parental
authority.

His thoughts became more self-accusative and gruesome.  When the door
opened and some one entered he cursed that he had not said half an
hour to Francis instead of ten minutes.

"Arnold!  For God's sake leave me alone, man, for another twenty
minutes."

"Monsieur, it is not Arnold."

Wenzel sat perfectly still.  The low, vibrant intonation echoed the
music of the voice which had persistently rung in his ears the last
few days.

"Mademoiselle!  I did not expect you,"

'You know who it is then, monsieur?"

"You are Elizabeth Kiss."

She laughed softly.  "You must be able to see in the dark, monsieur.
My eyes cannot pierce the veil of blackness to observe even my hand,
and yet you recognize me!"

"It is not your face I recognize, mademoiselle, but your voice."

"But you heard it for so short a time that--that awful night."

"Yet I have not forgotten it.  It reminded me of some one I knew many
years ago."  A surging memory of his last day with Zita carried him
quickly back into the past, but it hurt so that he forced himself to
forget, to think only of the present.  "How came you here?  I was
expecting Terhune."

"I know," she replied softly.  "I overheard Francis telling Monsieur
Terhune.  I was afraid that perhaps you would refuse to see me, so I
slipped in beforehand."

"You did wrong!  Why did you?"

"Because I shall never rest with an easy conscience until I have told
you of the gratitude which is in my heart for all that you have done
for my father and for me."

"Stop!  Mademoiselle, believe me, I do not doubt that gratitude for
one minute, and if you wish to express it you can do so in no better
way than by dropping the subject immediately and never renewing it
again."

"But, monsieur, it seems so--so callous, so cold, to let it pass in
that way.  Yet, if you will not listen to all I would like to say in
regard to what you have done personally for my father and me, will
you at least let me tell you of what you have done for the nation?

"For years my father has been engaged in a stupendous literary task,
that of writing up the personal history of the Apostolic Kings of
Hungary, and the evolution of our race.  He has nearly finished--a
year, two years may see his task completed.  If he--he had died, the
history would have perished with him, for only he knows where the
work is hidden.  Monsieur, do you not feel proud that you have done
this for the nation?"

He was deeply stirred by the story she told him.

"I am glad you have told me," he said simply.

Beneath the thrall of her presence it did not occur to him then that
the saving of the history, or ten histories, should have meant
nothing compared with one human life, but at that moment he was
conscious only that she was speaking to him, and that slowly,
inexorably, he was beginning to fall in love with her.

This meeting only served to emphasize the attraction for her which,
almost against his will, had pulled him to the _château_, away from
Budapest.  He wished he could see her, watch her ever-changing
expressions, behold her again as he had beheld her outside the
_château_, and begrudged the cloak of darkness which blacked out her
marvellous eyes from his vision, the eyes which, close to, he had
seen covered by alabaster eyelids.

"Mademoiselle, there is a chair just here.  Will you not come closer
so that I can put you into it?"  Even to himself it was obvious that
his voice was deeper, more alive, and throbbing with an emotion he
could not control.

Elizabeth was conscious of the change, for she hesitated.  "I do not
mind standing, monsieur."

"Come!  I should feel more easy if you would sit."  He heard her move
slightly, then his outstretched hand came into contact with her arm.
Gently he slid his hand down to her wrist, and guided her to the
seat.  He felt her quivering gently within his grasp, and, aware of
her lack of fear, his heart leaped when it seemed to him that there
could be but one reason for her nervousness.

Reluctantly he withdrew his hand, and in doing so experienced a
sensation of chilling self-abnegation, and forcibly realized that
roseate-hued dreams were blinding his sense of reality.  The voice of
conscience interpolated its everlasting chant: to feel thus was
disloyalty to Zita; while revealed in a colder light the suggestion
that Elizabeth could reciprocate his sudden feelings in so short a
time became impossible.

His heart cried out in protest, so that when he next spoke there was
an unshed tear in his voice.

"Won't you tell me of yourself, mademoiselle?  Elizabeth Kiss!  It is
a pretty name."

"It is an old Hungarian name."

"It is prettier still in my language.  You know it?" he questioned.

She answered him in English.  "A little.  I learned it many years ago
when I was still at school."

The music of her voice seemed to echo and re-echo in the quietness of
the room.  Never had his own language sounded so exquisite.  Behind
each carefully pronounced word whispered a faint suggestion of an
accent, liquid and sibilant, like the ripple of a pure mountain
rivulet.  Each passing moment revealed to him a new charm in her, and
every new discovery wrapped him deeper in the meshes of a growing
adoration.

"You speak it splendidly, mademoiselle.  You must continue to talk to
me in English.  You were telling me of yourself."

"Was I?"  She laughed softly.  "There is so little to tell you.
Until the night you rescued us my life had been uneventful, monsieur.
I have lived all my life at the Castle Gisella, except only during my
schooldays, or whenever my father journeyed to Berlin, Paris, or
London.  Then he took me with him.

"I have been shut off from the world since 1914, though I have been
happy and content, except when hearing of the wounds my unhappy
country has suffered.  Not even of the Commune had my father and I
heard anything until a few minutes before we were invaded by the
villagers."

"You must suffer all the more then, now that your eyes are open?"

"Indeed, yes.  It has been terrible!  Each day we hear worse news,
until it seems that the woes of Hungary are unending."  Suddenly she
choked.  "Yesterday I received the worst information of all."

Wenzel frowned, wondering why he had not been informed by Terhune of
fresh facts.  Then he remembered that he had seen his lieutenant for
a few minutes only.

"Yes, yes," he impatiently prompted her.

"Yesterday Monsieur Terhune arrived at the _château_ with a fresh
visitor from Budapest----"

"Dregely?"

"Yes.  Poor Gobor Dregely.  He too has lost everything like the rest
of us.  This morning he and I were talking together of old times.  He
knew all my relations in Budapest, and--and--oh, monsieur, he told me
of the murder in the streets of my cousin, Coloman.  Coloman and his
friend were walking home one night; they met a group of drunken
Communists who demanded of them to hack the royal crown from their
uniforms.  Coloman refused and--and then--oh! it seems
impossible--one of the Communists snatched a revolver from his pocket
and shot down my cousin and his friend."  Her voice broke, and Wenzel
heard the sound of a stifled sob.

He breathed hoarsely.  Suddenly all other feelings were gone save
those of blind, murderous hate.  His hands clenched till the nails of
his fingers bit into the flesh of his palm, but he felt nothing of
the physical pain, only an overpowering mental anguish at the thought
of the brutal murder.  Always he felt thus upon hearing fresh
Communist horrors; this time it was intensified by the fact that one
of the victims was Elizabeth's cousin.

"Dregely--knows he who was that Communist, by any chance?"  Fiercely
he put the question to her, not daring to hope that she would be able
to reply in the affirmative.

Her voice hardened: "Yes.  Dregely was Coloman's friend, and by some
means found out.  He wanted revenge, but the Communist left Budapest."

"Yes, yes; but who was the murderer?"

"He was a People's Commissary, by name Comrade Gonnard.  When Dregely
searched for him he heard that Gonnard was touring the country,
preaching on behalf of the Commune for sanguinary measures against
the _bourgeoisie_.  Dregely would have followed, but he was
proscribed an outlaw, and so had to flee himself from the clutches of
the Communists.  Only now is he safe, thanks to the White Knight."

"Yes, I heard of Dregely's danger, and sent Terhune to help him.  But
this Comrade Gonnard"--his voice boomed with fury--"for what he has
done he will have to settle with the White Knight.  Do not worry,
mademoiselle; the White Knight will avenge your cousin, I swear by
the blood that Gonnard shed that the Communist shall die if I have to
follow him from one end of Hungary to another!"

"Oh, monsieur!"  She sighed.  "I believe I am gentle-natured, it
hurts me to see a fly struggling to escape the ruthless clutches of
the spider, yet my heart leaps with joy to hear you say that.  If
only I could be of assistance to you!"

"Perhaps you can," he breathed softly.

"Tell me quickly," she said eagerly.

He had not meant to let the words slip out, they were an echoing
murmur from his heart, and now he felt embarrassed, unable to think
what to say.  Once again the battle between his desires and his
sensitive conscience waged fiercely.  There was much he wished to
tell her, but all the time a mocking voice taunted him on his
forgetfulness.  What was his love worth, it asked, that he could
forget Zita so soon?  Less than two months ago he had stood over her
dead body and vowed remorseless revenge, and yet already his heart
was stirring at the proximity of another woman!

With pitiless insistency the hammer-strokes of his self-inflicted
arguments flayed his soul till he writhed in agony.  He forced
himself to thrust away the mental pictures of Elizabeth which
constantly depicted themselves in his imagination, and hardened his
voice in an endeavour to deceive himself as well as her.

He had nearly led himself into a trap.  There seemed to him only one
way out of it.  "You can help me by never mentioning a word to anyone
that I am going after Gonnard."

"Monsieur!"  Reproach battled with anger in her voice.

"I am sorry, but prattling tongues, even in this _château_, can do
inestimable damage.  Already some one, who, I do not know, has in
his--or her--gratitude kindly betrayed the fact to my enemies that I
am an Englishman.  Whether by accident or design I do not know.  In
any event, a word in English now is sufficient to raise a horde of
amateur and professional trackers on the trail of the unfortunate
speaker."

Elizabeth bit her lip, and wished it were within her power to
understand her mysterious rescuer.  In the first place, from what
little she had seen of him, he was utterly unlike the evenly
balanced, phlegmatic Englishmen whom she had previously met.  His
moods changed with the rapidity of a temperamental woman: he was
tender, fierce, calm, and tempestuous by turns.  At one moment his
voice throbbed with sympathy, the next it grated with bitter cynicism.

His lack of trust hurt her.  The pitch-dark room!  She tried to
persuade herself that there was some other reason, but in vain.  It
could only be that he feared to reveal his face even to her, in case
of treachery.  She rose to her feet.

"I must go, monsieur.  There are others who wish to express their
gratitude to you beside myself."  With an effort she kept her tone at
an even level, concealing the disappointment which she felt.

His thoughts were chaotic.  He did not want her to go so
quickly--there were still many questions he wished to put to her,
anything to keep her near him; but his lips seemed paralysed.

He was saved a final decision.  The door opened and Terhune's voice
rang out:

"Geoffrey, I am sorry to interrupt, but Apor is here with grave news."

Instantly his brain cleared.  "Mademoiselle, you will excuse me!"

Her lips twitched bitterly.  There was a faint note of pleasure in
his voice.  Evidently he was pleased to get rid of her!  "I will go
at once," she said.

Terhune guided her to the door, and when he came back Apor was with
him.

"Shall I light up now?  The window is well covered," asked Terhune.

"Yes, yes.  I am tired of the gloom."

When the candle was alight Apor turned to Wenzel.

"My only hope was that you would be here, though how I even guessed
that you might be I do not know.  Telepathy, no doubt.  How did you
get here?  There is not a single train running."

"Walked here," Wenzel grunted.

Apor whistled in surprise, and gazed at his leader with admiration in
his eyes.  "It must have been a hard walk, Wenzel.  For myself, I
confiscated a motor-car and left it in the woods three miles away.
Wenzel, if ever your help is needed, it is now, at once.  The Devil's
let loose.

"Just after three to-day the news came through to the Council that a
counter-revolution had broken out in Bira.  There was an uproar.
Szamuelly said that if the Soviet were to reign supreme all
counter-movements must be squashed.  For three hours he pleaded for a
free hand to take his Death Train to Bira to settle the revolution
his own way, but there were some there who hesitated at the idea.  In
the end he won.  I left at once and searched Budapest for you or
Terhune.  I found no trace, and something prompted me to try here.

"Wenzel, some time to-night the Death Train will leave Budapest for
Bira.  If it ever gets there, God help the poor devils!  Szamuelly is
a fiend incarnate.  Something must be done to stop him arriving.  If
we can but delay him twenty-four--or even twelve--hours one of us
might get there in the meantime, break the movement up, and get the
ringleaders of it to flee for their lives."

Wenzel nodded his head.  "You are right, Apor.  How many miles is it
to Bira from here?"

"Seventy."

"Good!  Then give Arnold your car.  Arnold, you must go at once to
Bira.  Fortunately only to-day I bought a map.  Here it is.  Drive
like Hell!  You ought to be there at the very most in six hours.  In
the meantime somehow or other we must delay the Death Train."

"But how?"  It was Apor who put the question.

Wenzel shrugged his shoulders.  An eloquent answer!  There followed a
silence while each of the three men racked their brains in an effort
to elucidate the problem.  The minutes ticked by.  Then, suddenly,
Wenzel turned to Apor:

"The line which runs in the valley the other side of the hill--is
that the direction to Bira?"  There was hope in his voice.

Apor nodded.  "Yes!" he said, but his expression was puzzled.

Noticing it Wenzel laughed slightly.  "Our course is clear, Apor, but
we must hurry.  You and I have work to do.  While Arnold hurries to
Bira we will go down into the valley.  There are plenty of tall trees
there."

"Well?"  Still Apor did not understand.

"Don't you see?" explained Wenzel impatiently.  "Arnold has a saw.
We will fell one of the trees and drag it across the lines.  It will
be apt to stop any train which comes along; the quicker it is
travelling the better havoc there will be."

There dawned in Apor's eyes a smile of triumph which slowly travelled
down to his mouth.  "What a wreck!  If there arc not a few dead Lenin
Boys afterwards----"  Suddenly he snarled: "The murderous brutes!  I
hope to God it may kill every one of them and smash the Death Train
to pieces!"

Wenzel smiled cruelly.  "Maybe it will, Apor.  Maybe it will.  Now
go, you, Arnold, to the car, and on to Bira, and you, Apor, bring me
that saw."

He chuckled as his two followers rapidly made their exit from the
room.  Then he blew out the candle, and moving to the window drew
aside the overcoat which covered it and gazed into the night.  There
was no compunction in his heart for what he was about to do--in fact,
it was not of Szamuelly and the Death Train of which he thought, but
Gonnard, the murderer of Elizabeth's cousin.

"And afterwards," he whispered to himself--"afterwards....  Take
heed, Comrade Gonnard, the White Knight is on your track.  May you
sleep well to-night!  You have not many more nights left."




_CHAPTER IX_

The darkness of the woods was overpowering.  When Wenzel ventured
out, followed by Terhune and Apor, he wondered how they were all
going to find their separate ways, but when he mentioned this to Apor
the Hungarian laughed.

"Do not worry.  I shall be able to guide you to the valley.  As for
Terhune," he turned to Arnold, "keep that star immediately above that
distant pine--the one over there on the peak--always in the same
position, and you will find yourself right on the road.  Then walk to
your left until you come to the car.  Keep straight on for two miles,
when you will arrive at cross-roads, take the right-hand road, and
after that--well, follow the map, and remember to take care of the
petrol.  It will only just be sufficient, I am afraid."

They saw Terhune stumbling through the trees, hands outstretched to
warn him of impeding obstacles, before they continued their own way.
After he had been following Apor for a short distance, it appeared to
Wenzel that the pseudo-Communist found his way with uncanny ease.

When he said so Apor laughed.  "You forget, Wenzel, I was born in
these parts, and in my younger days there were no automobiles.  We
had to horseback everywhere, and so became accustomed to making our
way about in the dark."

Soon they reached the summit.  "The valley is before us," Apor
announced.

"How the Devil can you tell?  Gad! it looks to me as black as the
nether regions.  You must have cat's eyes."

Apor laughed.  "A result of upbringing.  I cannot really see, so that
it is probably instinct which enables me to move about so easily."

He led the way, Wenzel following close on his heels, and for some
minutes they proceeded downward into the valley.  Then Apor stopped.

"Can you hear anything?" he asked, in a puzzled voice.

Wenzel listened acutely, but caught no sound other than the slight
movement of trees, the rustle of scuttling animals, and the grumbling
chirrup of disturbed birds.

"What kind of a noise do you mean?"

Apor hesitated.  "I scarcely know.  More like a distant hum."

Wenzel gazed into the darkness.  He did not expect to see anything,
for he believed trees to be on either side of him, but looking to his
left he saw a small, red reflection away in the far distance.

He caught Apor's arm in a pinching grasp.  "Look!"

Together they watched the curious glow; almost simultaneously they
realized that it was becoming larger, and then Wenzel too heard the
echo of a faint, whispering drone.

"What the Devil!..." exclaimed Apor.

The glow apparently increased--then they saw that it was not actually
growing larger, though this effect was caused by the fact that the
reflection was rapidly approaching in their direction.

It was Wenzel who first grasped the truth.  "Damn!  Oh, damn!" he
exclaimed.  "We are too late!  It is the Death Train!"

Apor could not contradict.  It was too evident now.  White billowing
masses of smoke, belched forth into the air, were lit up and reddened
by the reflection of the roaring boiler-fire.  Evidently it was
approaching at full speed, for the engine swung round a curve and the
watchers saw following a twinkling line of lights.  For a second
only, then the coaches were hidden again behind the smoke-clouds.

The effect was weird and unearthly.  Swirling into the air the smoke
formed briefly into strange, phantomesque, and terrifying shapes,
which gave way instantly as other puffs spread out and re-formed into
other ghoulish creations.

It might have been a burning chariot from Hell furiously driving
along toward them, fiendishly blazing its defiance into the night:
were it the Death Train, with Szamuelly inside, then indeed was the
description all the more applicable.

Filled with despair, Wenzel watched the progress of the train which
meant the collapse of all his plans.  At the rate the locomotive was
moving, Szamuelly would have reached Bira and completed his massacre
long before Arnold arrived, and more Hungarian lives would have been
lost in a fruitless cause.

He groaned, and hearing him Apor sobbed slightly.  "Satan is with
him.  Szamuelly must have altered his time-table.  Wenzel, I can't
look, I can't."  He sank to the ground and buried his face in his
hands.

By now the Death Train was passing below them, roaring onward,
screeching and wailing like a lost soul in agony.  Four coaches there
were, brilliantly lit; one flashingly revealed a party of men,
holding glasses in their hands, toasting.

Then no more, just the tail-light, mockingly winking its derision at
Wenzel, ominously reminiscent of blood--blood....

Fascinated, mentally stupefied, and partially mesmerized by its
malignant twinkle, Wenzel continued to watch the red light, and
wondered how soon it would be before its circumference dwindled to a
mere pin-prick, thence to fade away as the train vanished round the
next curve.

It was receding from him, but as yet he could still see it plainly.
He waited, and the minutes ticked by.  Still it was visible, also the
glow of the engine fire on the smoke.

"It has gone?"  There was a query in Apor's dull voice.

"Not yet."

"Not yet!  But surely...!"  Apor scrambled to his feet.  Then he
turned to Wenzel.  "My God!  Don't you see, Wenzel?  It has stopped!"

"Stopped!"  So that was why he could still see the wicked, red glare?
"What does that mean, Apor?  Is there a station there?"

"Not for another five miles."

They stood, side by side, watching, and waiting for the train to
resume its journey, but presently they noticed the clouds of smoke
diminishing.

Wenzel stirred at last.  "Apor, I am curious to know why Szamuelly
and his crew have stopped.  How far away do you imagine it to be?"

"It is hard to say.  Perhaps a mile, perhaps more."

"Then guide me there.  I am going to investigate."

Twenty-five minutes' journey brought them to the slope of the hill
just above where the train stood.  Now it was necessary to move with
caution, for the quiet night intensified sounds.  They could even
hear the sound of voices where the Terror Boys argued together.

Wenzel caught hold of Apor, as the Hungarian would have continued to
advance, and whispered in his ear: "I will go on alone, Apor; there
is light enough from the train to guide me."

The other man turned remonstratingly.  "But, Wenzel----"

Wenzel shook his head.  "Waste no words, Apor.  I know full well what
you would tell me.  I understand and sympathize.  Yet you must curb
your impatience.  If I should be recognized and escape no harm will
be done, but should you once be seen you could be of no further use
to me.  One thing more before I go.  If I get killed Terhune will
carry on my work.  Give him your allegiance, Apor, in the same spirit
as you have given it to me.  You will?"

Too moved for words the Hungarian held out his hand.  Wenzel gripped
it tightly, and knew he need have no doubt of his follower.  Then he
bent low and crept away through the trees toward the train.

He reached the fringe of the wood; before him the Death Train snorted
impatiently, radiating a brilliant glow of light, and Wenzel was able
to see for himself the ghastly thing of which he had heard so much.

It consisted all together of the four coaches; the first two he
noticed to be first-class saloon cars, the last two ordinary
third-class.  This fact he noted in a sweeping glance which embraced
the whole of the train; then he turned his inspection upon the two
Pullman cars, and as he noted one detail after another it seemed to
him that his eyes must be playing him a freakish trick.

He blinked once or twice, but when he looked again the picture
remained unaltered, and slowly the realization sank into his brain
that what he saw was no fleeting chimera, no fanciful dream, but
stark, actual fact.

He had travelled in _de luxe_ Pullmans of pre-War days, and
considered them the acme of comfort, yet they were cheerless and
commonplace compared with the coach which Szamuelly had adopted as
his home, and in which he now lived permanently, surrounded by his
guard of wicked Terrorists.

All the regular furnishings of the car had been stripped away;
instead was substituted gorgeous furniture, filched from the palaces
of the King of Hungary, or from the palatial town and country
residences of the magnates, from the castles of the aristocrats, the
_châteaux_ of the ruling Magyars.

The walls were hung with exquisite tapestry, worked long ages ago,
and depicting the glories of Hungary's past, the heroic deeds of
Losonczy at Tenescar, of Szondi at Dregel, Zrinyi at Szigetvar, and
vaguely Wenzel wondered how each thread, worked by dainty fingers,
must have twisted in shame and disgust, as it hung there and
witnessed other deeds, black and bloody, blotting the later pages of
Hungary's chivalrous history!

Beautiful bevelled mirrors were displayed upon the walls, and pure,
deep glass glitteringly reflected the fragile gilt Louis XVI
furniture which stood everywhere, its pink brocade dimly reminiscent
of another revolution, while lastly, in the centre of the first
coach, stood a delicate, feminine writing-table, its dainty carving
in harmony with the cushioned settle by its side.

To Wenzel, gazing into the lighted saloon from the shadows of the
wood, it was as though he might have been peeping from the dark,
overcast present into the brightness of the past.  Not one adornment
in the saloon but had survived many decades, not one piece which
could not have breathed the fame of Deak or Kossuth.

Wenzel wrenched his gaze away.  What of the third-class compartments
by which the train earned its ghastly title?  Therein travelled the
unfortunate prisoners of the Terrorists, therein the walls and floors
were bare of any ornament other than the rusty stains of dried blood
which covered them--the blood of the murdered.  Well was it named the
Death Train!

There in the two end carriages countless executions took place at the
command of Szamuelly, who sat at the fragile desk in the
parlour-coach.  At his word his captives were butchered, and their
bodies flung through the windows, so that the railway tracks of
Hungary during the days of the Red Terror were littered with naked
corpses.

With a shuddering gasp, which even he could not altogether restrain,
Wenzel turned his attention to the Terrorists themselves, who
strolled along the down track, glad of the opportunity to stretch
their legs.

In a sense they were uniformed, not only in costume but in face.
Most of them wore Army service uniforms, some with puttees, others
wore their trousers loose, but every one boasted the voluminous,
heavy overcoat and fatigue cap.  It was their features where the
similarity was mostly to be glimpsed, not in actual likeness, but in
the same degenerate cast, in the same surly, lowering glance, in the
same cruel, tightened lips, and receding forehead.

Only one stood out conspicuously.  Wenzel had a good view of him as
he stood still, right in a path of light.  He was a Jew, of small
stature, dressed in black, with leggings.  He was different.  His
hair, crinkly, curled, was not shaven to the scalp like the majority
of the others.  His forehead was high, and apparently intellectual,
his eyes open and fearless.

The lower part of his face was covered with a beard, but it was
carefully trimmed, and that, with his heavy moustache, gave him a
handsome appearance.  Wenzel would have believed him a prisoner of
the brutes who surrounded him, but, even as the White Knight was
watching, one of the Terrorists called to the Jew, and the name he
cried was "Kohn-Kerekes."

Kohn-Kerekes!  Szamuelly's favourite hangman!  The man who once had
an argument with Gustav Nick, a freed murderer and Terrorist, as to
whether it were possible to hang two or three men within the space of
five minutes!

This, then, was the trainload of murderers who were on their way to
Bira to put down the counter-revolution.  Something seemed to tighten
around Wenzel's heart at the mere thought.  Somehow he must delay
them, hold them back long enough for Arnold to get to Bira and warn
the rebels of Szamuelly's approach.  Yet how?

The engine was left unguarded, the engine-driver and his mate having
joined their fellow-Terrorists.  Wenzel's eyes flared with
suggestion.  He knew nothing of engines, yet he felt confident that
if he could but work his will on the levers, the handles, and all the
different controls, he was bound to do some damage or other.

He made up his mind to attempt the feat, but firstly he realized that
it would be necessary to cross the line and approach the engine from
the other side.  As far as he could see, all the Terrorists were on
the down track, some seated on the rails, some walking up and down,
so that, to judge from appearances, the farther side was apparently
unprotected.

He slunk farther back into the shadows of the trees, then took a
direction which would bring him well to the front of the train,
assuming that there he would be less likely to be seen, by reason of
being behind the light cast by the engine boiler-fire.

When he had traversed the distance of a hundred yards or so he
considered that he had gone far enough, and made his way toward the
track again.  Where the trees finished to make way for the iron lines
he paused, ready for the crossing.

He peered into the gloom on each side of him, and listened acutely
for any suggestion of an approaching Terrorist; but everything was
calm and peaceful.

Doubling his tall bulk he moved cautiously forward, and without a
sound crossed the track into the belt of wood the other side, and
once there made his way back again toward the train.

It was as he had suspected: all the men were congregated on one side
of the train, leaving the approach on the other absolutely clear,
though how long such a state of things was likely to continue he did
not know.  He realized that he must work at once or perhaps fail to
have another opportunity.

Poised ready for instant flight in the event of discovery he advanced
toward the train, step by step, and at each stride his eyes flickered
from side to side for any sign of interruption.

On the other side of the coaches he heard the chatter of their
tongues and the crunching movement of their feet as the Terrorists
walked to and fro.  By peering low between the carriage wheels he
could even see some of them, and knew that, contrariwise, if one of
them should chance to look his way, discovery would be inevitable,
and all chance gone of delaying the Death Train.

In a man's way he prayed that he might reach his destination.  As he
advanced and nothing happened he began to believe that Fortune was
playing into his hands.  At last!  The steps to the driver's platform
were before him.  He swung himself on to the engine with a lithe
movement, but even as he did so, a flashing glance toward the end of
the train made him aware that the driver and the fireman were slowly
strolling back to their allotted places.

He could not retreat, for now he was cut off.  He could not go
forward, for the dozens of Terrorists on the down track.  Swiftly he
glanced around, for hide himself he must.  There was only one
possible place: on top of a coach.

He clambered silently up the tender, and then, trusting to luck that
he would not be seen, hoisted himself on to the roof of the first
coach, and on his stomach wormed his way along.  He was only just in
time, for even as he reached the shadows he saw the driver and his
assistant mount the engine platform.

Despite the precariousness of his situation he could not help
appreciating the humour of it.  Undoubtedly, of the many predicaments
in which he had found himself from time to time since his adoption of
the role of White Knight, the present one was the most curious and
unusual.

By lifting his head slightly he could see the Terrorists below; so
visible were they to him, indeed, that he felt sure that he himself
must naturally be equally outstanding to anyone who should chance to
look up, until he reflected that he was above the radius of the light.

Their voices rose clearly to him, and concentrating on one couple,
who seemed either to be nearer than the others or talking more
loudly, he was able to hear their conversation.

"Three-quarters of an hour we have been here.  Why don't we get on
instead of hanging about?" said one.

"Obviously Szamuelly wants to get to Bira just after daybreak so that
he can catch the White Revolution in the act."

The questioner spat on the ground.  "Good enough, comrade; but as we
are here why not let us go right ahead?  A man hangs as well in the
dark.  Alternatively, we might as well have slept in Budapest.  There
are at least women there."

"Use your brains, Kerner.  If we should arrive in Bira too early
every one would be asleep, and if they should wake up to see us
standing in the station they would speedily forget to be White and
would don their Red cockade again.  Every one would be innocent, and
there would be no one to hang."  The speaker laughed.

"Well, and could we not have stopped in Buda, and have left there in
time to arrive in Bira soon after daybreak?"

"Perhaps Szamuelly thought we should not be too willing to get up."

"Huh!"  The first man grunted.  "Maybe he was right.  Once I tumble
into bed I prefer to stick there."

Wenzel did not listen any more--he had heard sufficient.  What need
to draw attention to an enemy in their midst by tampering with the
engine when, if the Terrorists below were to be believed, Szamuelly
was of his own accord delaying the train?  He could trust Arnold to
do his work well.  When Szamuelly arrived he would find no one upon
whom to wreak his sanguinary vengeance.

There remained nothing else for him to do but to make his escape from
the present situation as quickly as possible.  Unfortunately he could
not return as he had come, the engine-driver effectively barred the
way, but he believed that he might creep along to the edge of the
coach, and slip down the space in between it and the next one.

Still lying flat on his stomach, he moved gradually away from the
engine and nearer to his way of escape, but as he looked around he
began to realize that, just as a rat confidently enters the inviting
trap, only to find his exit barred, so was he too in a somewhat
similar position.

The Terror Boys were restless.  Groups of them sauntered in every
direction, many of them now encircled the train in a regular
promenade, and the White Knight, as he felt the cold penetrating
through his clothes, did not need to conjecture the reason for their
movements.

With the utmost care he wriggled into a position from where, at the
first favourable opportunity, he would be able to slip down to the
ground and scuttle back into the wooded slopes again, and waited.

The minutes ticked by--minutes which began to total into respectable
fractions of an hour--but still many of the Terror Boys kept up their
unceasing tour.  Round and round they marched till the blood glowed
as redly as possible in their wan and dissolute faces, and in the
meantime the White Knight became more and more chilled.

He longed to move, to circulate his freezing blood--to do, in fact,
what his enemies themselves were doing--but it seemed that Fate,
having once permitted him to board the train, was set on keeping him
there, irresponsibly transferring her favour to the other side;
coquettishly flirting, now with him, the next moment conspiring
against him.

Once there was a lull.  For some reason the Communists suddenly
assembled together in argument, and as the group swelled, so one side
of the train was left to itself.

Wenzel tensed himself for his escape, but even as he drew himself to
the edge, preparatory to clambering down to the buffers, the
engine-driver alighted and walked along, swinging his arms as he
moved.  By the time the man was warm again the promenade had
recommenced and Wenzel's opportunity had gone.

Later the Terrorists began to climb back into the train, and Wenzel's
eyes glistened with anticipation; but his hopes were very quickly
shattered.  Szamuelly, with the cunning of a serpent, set two guards,
one on each side of the train.

So the night passed.  Despite everything, his watch and his
discomfort, Wenzel fell into a fitful slumber--not sleep in the
actual sense of the word, but a restless jerky doze from which he
forced himself to awake every few minutes until his head ached with
the effort.

Without warning there was a grinding jerk.  Wenzel opened his eyes
with a start.  The train was moving; with a sense of dismay he
realized that eventually he must have given way and actually slept.
Now it was too late to escape--he was being carried with the Death
Train to Bira.

The engine gathered speed and, with its added velocity, rocked
unsteadily from side to side.  Then for Wenzel began a nightmare of
inconceivable hideousness.  He gripped hold of something--he never
knew what--and held to it with a tenacity which presently became
subconscious, but even so his body was turned, rolled, and banged on
the sloping roof.

The billowing clouds of smoke blew into his face until his throat and
nose were filled with cinders, and he felt sick from the taste of the
acrid fumes.  Somehow he repressed the burst of coughing which
threatened to seize him every second, but to do so he had to fill his
body with deep breaths which served to suck in still further supplies
of the smoke.

Fortunately there was enough wind from the east to keep the smoke
sufficiently away to enable him to retain consciousness, but in doing
so its scurrying rush deadened his senses and numbed his limbs and
bones.

Time ceased to be of consequence, he knew only that he must hold
tight if he wished to retain his life.  So, somehow, his fingers
continued to grip, even when his consciousness practically vanished.

The train pounded on, but except for a sensation of unreality he was
totally unaware of what else was happening.  From head to foot his
body ached and pained.  Bruised all over from the buffeting of the
train, frozen by the cold, deafened by the shrieking of the wind,
blinded by the smoke-dust, he believed then that Hades itself could
not contain more suffering, and he groaned slightly with the torture.

At last it was over.  He felt the train slowing down, and released
one hand to free his eyes from their covering of grime and dirt.
During the journey the day had dawned, and in the misty half-light he
saw the name of Bira written on the railway embankment in small,
white stones, and in the distance the station.

He knew that there was no time to be lost, so gathering up what
strength there was still left in his limbs he climbed down to the
buffers.  Quietly and ominously the train slid into the station and
quiveringly halted; the next moment Wenzel jumped to the ground,
crossed the lines, and was out of the station.

He dimly expected a hail, if not from the train, then perhaps from
the station, but he had not been noticed.  He breathed softly with
relief, and looked round.

There was an ominous, brooding silence, and over the neighbourhood in
which he was there seemed to hang a pall of oppression and
apprehension.  It was whispered by the wind which sighed sullenly
through the telegraph wires; it was told by the Red flags hung out at
intervals, which flapped angrily with staccato reports; it was
suggested by the tightly shut windows and doors.

Wenzel's face broke into a smile of gratification.  Evidently Arnold
had done his work well.  Not only was there no one about, but so
quickly had Bira turned Red again at the news of the approach of
Szamuelly that nowhere could Wenzel catch a glimpse of white.  There
was no work for Szamuelly's butcher hangmen in Bira.

All this he noted in a quick, fleeting glance, for a backward look at
the train revealed to him that its travellers were tumbling out in
pell-mell haste.  Wenzel knew that he must hide quickly.

Before the front of the station was a wide square.  He knew if he
doubled across it he might be seen.  Obviously it would be better to
hide on the station roof.  He looked up and noted that the stone
coping formed a convenient ladder upward.  A few seconds later he was
securely hidden, watching the movements of the Terrorists below.

Szamuelly, carefully guarded by four or five men, each of whom
flourished a serviceable revolver, sauntered toward the station, to
halt scarcely a yard or so from where Wenzel was hidden.

In quick, precise tones Szamuelly gave his orders, and small parties
of his men dispersed to different parts of the town.  In the
meantime, while he waited for their return, Szamuelly smoked a
cigarette and jested with his own special guard.

"Well, comrades, ready for your work, eh?"

One man grunted.  "Everything looks strange.  Where is the White
counter-revolution which we have come to suppress, may I ask?  There
are Red flags by the plenty, but I see no signs of the White cockade."

Szamuelly laughed grimly.  "The revolutionaries are skulking away.
We will drag the rats from their holes.  When they stand before me,
waiting for my verdict, we shall soon see by their faces whether they
are loyalists or not.  We will let go free all whose faces go
red--eh, friends?--and string up those who go white at the sound of
their sentence.  Will that not be judgment worthy of Solomon himself?"

Then the conversation drifted into more personal channels.  There was
a woman in Budapest whom one had seduced, and the tale was well worth
the telling.  As the story progressed the laughter of the listeners
became incessant.

Presently the Terror Boys returned, group by group.

"Where are the prisoners?" Szamuelly asked, and his voice grew
harsher as he heard the same answer from all quarters:

"There has been a mistake, comrade.  Bira is Red.  There is no
counter-revolutionary movement here.  The Red flag flies everywhere."

"Fools, dolts, idiots!  Do you think we have come all this way to go
back again like a lot of lost sheep?  If we cannot track out the
revolutionaries themselves then we must find their supporters with
whom to set an example.  When I leave here Bira will hesitate to tear
the Red flag down again.  Go on, boys, fetch them out."

Then followed a ghastly scene, which Wenzel viewed with indescribable
horror.  Filled with enthusiasm, the Terror Boys crossed the station
square and burst into surrounding houses.  Presently the air was
filled with the sounds of struggle; here and there the reverberating
echo of shots intermingled with the wailing of women, the pleading of
children.  Half dressed, unkempt, and dishevelled, the victims of the
Terror Boys were hustled across the square to the station, where they
were lined up before Szamuelly.

"Ho, you!"  Szamuelly strode up to one of the prisoners.  "So you are
one of the scum who saw fit to try and overthrow our glorious cause,
are you?"

"No, no, comrade, I swear I am not.  I am a loyal Communist.  For
God's sake, do not hang me!  My wife--she is giving birth to a child,
even at this minute.  Mercy, mercy, for the love of Christ!  Mercy!"

The trembling wretch sank on his knees, the tears ran down his
cheeks.  Szamuelly laughed.

"Is his face red or white, comrades?"

There was a roar of laughter from his followers, and the verdict was
unanimous: "White, Comrade Szamuelly, white!"

"Then he hangs.  Throw a rope over that tree yonder."

Willing hands were found to obey the injunction.  In less than a
minute a rope was thrown over a lower branch, a running loop formed,
and underneath it a chair was placed.

To it the victim was dragged and forced up upon the chair.  The loop
was adjusted round his neck.  Everything ready, Szamuelly crossed and
stood in front of the man.  He took the cigarette from his mouth, and
suddenly placed its lighted end upon the hapless victim's bare foot.
The poor wretch howled with pain, kicked backward, the chair fell
over, and the loop tightened....

There were seven other trees near by, and in less than twenty minutes
at every tree twisted and swayed a lifeless body at the end of a
rope.  After that Szamuelly was satisfied.

"Come along, comrades.  Do you think Bira will go White again?"

A hoarse growl of laughter arose.  "Not if they are wise."

So the Death Train steamed back to Budapest.  Its work was done.
Bira would not go White again.  Innocent or guilty, eight victims
hung warningly in the station square.

Wenzel--as his body had been chilled with cold the night before, so
now his heart and his emotions were frozen.  He could not think
coherently.  Civilization!  What progress had it made in the hearts
of these people?  They were more savage than the Turks their
forefathers had driven across the frontier centuries before.

There was but one thought dominant in Wenzel's mind then.  After
Gonnard, Szamuelly; after Gonnard, known murderer of two good
Hungarian men.  Szamuelly, the murderer of hundreds!

Szamuelly must die!  Of the chaotic thoughts which obsessed Wenzel
that was the one dominant factor.  Szamuelly must die!

The Death Train disappeared in the distance, and Wenzel watched it
with eyes which gleamed with an unbridled fury of hatred.  Even the
death of Elizabeth's cousin was as nothing compared with this crime,
but there was his word--the word of the White Knight--given to
Elizabeth.  Yet afterward...  Szamuelly must die!




_CHAPTER X_

Thirty-three miles away from Budapest is Aszod.

This town was almost as much a centre of Communism as Budapest; its
people took kindly to the doctrine of upheaval, and so they hoisted a
huge Red flag, which flapped in the wind from above the reformatory,
while a similar flag above the station advertised the politics of the
town.

In the days which followed Wenzel's unexpected trip to Bira,
Szamuelly put down the railwaymen's strike by the aid of a firm and
bloody hand.  With a sullen, menacing growl they resumed work, but if
to all outward appearances they quickly forgot their new woes, a dull
resentment against a self-elected autocracy smouldered in their
hearts, ready to blaze whenever the train to the torch of real
freedom might be lit, a sentiment not shared by the huge crowd which,
thronging the arrival platform, awaited the train from Budapest which
bore among its passengers a commissary, come to address the people of
Aszod.

As the commissary in question opened the carriage door he was greeted
by flourished handkerchiefs and a rousing storm of cheers.  It was
Comrade Gonnard.

Short, fat, with an adipose face, an unshaven chin, the ribbons,
floating around his neck, of an enormous Red cockade set in the lapel
of his coat, he was typical of the Communists who governed the
country.

His grossness was no less pronounced than was the evidence of low
mentality and criminal tendencies, betrayed by a receding chin, a
shelving, narrow forehead, and close, deep-set eyes; but this meant
nothing to the crowds who flocked to welcome him, to listen to his
bombastic eulogy, his crazy ranting.

The cheering having died down, he raised his hand, and obtained
immediate silence.  Striking a flamboyant attitude, he commenced his
speech.

"Comrades," he bellowed, "fellow-proletarians, I am here to-day on
behalf of the People's Council, to give you news of our satisfactory
progress, to give you an outline of our future programme.

"'A short time back our worthy comrade, Bela Kun, on behalf of the
Hungarian Soviet Republic, got into wireless communication with
Comrade Lenin, of the Russian Soviet, and sent the following message
to him:

"'Last night the Hungarian Proletariat seized all powers, established
the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and greets you as leader of the
International Proletariat.

"'The Social Democratic Party has adopted the Communist point of
view; the two parties have united.  We have named ourselves the
Hungarian Socialist Party.  We ask for instructions in this matter.
Bela Kun is Commissary for Foreign Affairs.  The Hungarian Soviet
offers the Russian Soviet a defensive and offensive alliance.  Fully
armed, we turn against all enemies of the Proletariat, and ask for
information concerning the military situation.'"

There was an outburst of cheering, to which Gonnard smiled and
smirked his acknowledgment.  Presently, when there was silence once
again, he continued:

"Comrades, to this historical message of love and goodwill to all
fellow-proletarians there came a reply, dictated by Lenin himself,
who spoke as follows:

"'Lenin speaking.  Hearty greetings to the Hungarian Soviet's
Proletarian Government, in particular to Comrade Bela Kun.  I have
just communicated your message to the Congress of the Communist Party
of Bolshevik Russia.  Enormous enthusiasm; we will send a report on
the military situation as soon as possible.  A permanent wireless
communication between Budapest and Moscow is absolutely necessary.
With Communistic greetings, Lenin.'"

The cheering with which the speaker's first message had been met was
entirely eclipsed by the terrific roar which went up as he read out
Lenin's reply.  Hats were thrown into the air, Red flags were waved
frantically, and in the madness which ensued there was scarcely one
present who realized the shame of it; the dishonour of the
Hungarians, descendants of the fiercest fighters, of the proudest
aristocracy in Europe, appealing to a foreign Government for
instructions.

So insidiously can propaganda work, the propaganda which had been
secretly distributed in the Army, in the Navy, and throughout the
workshops of Hungary for the past few months.  The cankerous root is
not more harmful to the animal body, the death-watch beetle does not
rot the heart of wood so quickly, as the propaganda of the gospel of
Bolshevism putrefies the common sense and saps the morality of a
working people.

"Comrades," shouted Gonnard once again, "well may you cheer at such
excellent news--Russia and Hungary hand in hand.  Together we will
spread the seed of Communism.  Already England is ripe to hail the
Red banner, and German workmen are more than willing to throw off the
shackles of their capitalist taskmasters.  France but awaits the
word, Italy seethes with discontent.  The workmen of the world await
the hour with eagerness, and will soon follow the glorious example of
Hungary by throwing off the heavy mantle laid upon them by the
_bourgeoisie_.

"Comrades, it is but a matter of time," he boasted.  "There is
nothing, now, to stand in the way of Proletarianism and the Commune."

From somewhere in the crowd a voice interrupted:

"What about the Enemy of the Commune?  What about the White Knight?"

There was silence, broken by a sudden growl from the crowd.  "Yes,
what about the White Knight?" cried one.  "What is the People's
Council going to do about the Enemy of the Commune?" shouted another.

Gonnard, bewildered and perplexed by this sudden turn to his oratory,
gazed stupidly at the crowd, and gave no reply.

"Speak louder.  I cannot hear!" called some one waggishly, and there
was a hoarse roar of laughter.

"But I don't understand," Gonnard spluttered.  "What do you
mean?--what are you talking about?--the Enemy of the Commune?--the
White Knight?--I don't understand!"

"You are a fine People's Commissary!  Never heard of the Enemy of the
Commune?  Ho! there's a fine comrade for you!" again some one from
the crowd called out.

Gonnard flushed a dull red.  "Well, then," he cried out angrily,
"supposing you tell me."

"I'll tell you," called out the same voice again.  "There's a man in
Aszod who calls himself the White Knight, the Enemy of the Commune,
who has vowed the downfall of the Soviet, and the death of all the
proletariat who stand in his way."

"Bah!" answered Gonnard, "the _bourgeois_--are you then frightened of
a _bourgeois_, comrades?"

There was dead silence again.  Gonnard laughed harshly.  "Cowards!"
he cried, "cowards, all of you!  Frightened by some half-witted
_bourgeois_ who calls himself by a strange name."  He sneered,
palpably.

"Ho, then, Comrade Gonnard," interrupted the same voice again, "can
you explain the death of Comrade Fejer and Comrade Pauler?  You may
be the next, my friend--or me."

The blood drained away from Gonnard's face.  Evidently this
suggestion had not yet occurred to him, but as the force of the man's
remarks struck him he twisted his head nervously from side to side,
perhaps already anticipating the death which he so richly deserved.

There was a taunting cry from several in the mob who observed this
fact.  "Look," cried one or two, "our People's Commissary turns white
about the gills!"

As the jeer sank home Gonnard heaved his heavy form more upright.
"Afraid, am I?" he shouted nastily.  "Well, then, if that's the case,
I'll just show you how far you are wrong.  If any of you before me
knows of this so-called Enemy of the Commune you can tell him from me
that in less than a week I'll string him up on the nearest tree I can
find!"

At his words there was a dramatic interruption.

From one of the houses which overlooked the station there was a
hearty roar of laughter, and then to the ears of Gonnard and the
crowd which surrounded him came the echo of a mocking voice.

"I accept your challenge, Comrade Gonnard.  But it is you who will
swing, not I!"

* * * * * *

Comrade Gonnard, as befitted a People's Commissary and a
representative of the Workers' Council, took up his headquarters at
the _château_ of Baron Szechenyi.

No formality about this.  He, together with local commissaries,
merely marched up to the _château_, seized it in the name of the
Soviet Government, and informed the Baroness that henceforward she
and her family would have to be content with three rooms.  The rest
of the house was then thrown open to the proletariat, and before
nightfall the _château_ was filled with the scum of Aszod.

Before the next day had passed the whole place was turned upside
down, while everything of value had disappeared, confiscated by any
who cared to help themselves, for was not the meaning of the Commune
that anything possessed by one belonged to all?  "What is yours is
mine, what is mine is mine own," might have been the motto of the
Communist; or--abbreviated--"Thine--mine."

Notwithstanding his doctrine, Gonnard took care that the finest room
in the house should be allocated to himself, and, once settled down,
he awaited the local detective whom he had immediately put on the
track of the mysterious White Knight who had so publicly and
audaciously taken up his challenge.

Not at once had the crowd moved when the White Knight announced
himself.  They were stupefied with astonishment, and it was not until
Gonnard, in a paroxysm of temper, thrashed his arms about and ordered
his audience to chase the man that anyone moved.

When at last a movement rippled through the crowd there ensued a
scene of confusion.

"Which house?" "Where?" "What was he like?" were questions answered
by "This house," "That house," "The one over in the corner," nearly
every house being mentioned in turn.  Confused, the mob sheepishly
turned from side to side; while all the time Gonnard profanely swore
at them to chase the interrupter, but no one moved until a young
fellow at the back led the way.

Three or four houses in turn were entered, searched, and secretly
looted, but there was no trace of the Enemy, who had long since made
himself scarce.  As to his description, so many had positively seen
him and were able to give reliable information that, collectively, he
might have been anything from a red-headed dwarf to a fiery-eyed,
black-bearded giant.

Gonnard's anger over, fear stepped into its place, and, scarcely
giving the people time to report their failure, he summoned
detectives and ordered them to hunt down the "criminal" who had dared
defy a People's Commissary, even though he were an ex-convict,
released when Bela Kun opened wide the prison gates to enrol recruits
as Red adherents.

In the evening came Gunzi.

"Well," snapped Gonnard, "what news?"

The detective shrugged his shoulders.  "None."

"None!" exploded the Commissary.  "The Devil take it, what are you
men here for?  No wonder the _bourgeoisie_ still walk around,
unchecked.  I thought Aszod was loyal to the Commune.  Are you all
fools?"

The other man flushed.  "Hold hard, comrade.  Don't be too easy with
your words.  'Tis not so long ago that you yourself were on the wrong
side of cell bars at Budapest.  I do not forget faces quite so
easily.  You had another name then.  Let me see.  It was for
desertion, and robbery with violence.  You, my friend, have reason to
be thankful that the people are in power, and not the aristocracy."

There was an awkward silence.  Gonnard had not realized that he might
be recognized, though actually this could make little difference to
his position.  He was only one among many.

"I'm sorry, friend, if I spoke hastily," he mumbled presently.  "Now
tell me more of this White Knight.  What is he?  Who is he?"

Gunzi laughed.  "The Devil himself, it would seem.  The first we
heard of him here in Aszod was about a week ago.  One morning we
found, pasted over the official posters of the Soviet Government,
slips of paper bearing the words: 'Proletarians, beware.  Nemesis is
on your track.  The White Knight.  An Enemy of the Commune.'"

"Nemesis!  Who is he?  That's not a Hungarian name," said Gonnard.

"I knew not, till I asked the schoolmaster, who roared with laughter
when I asked him."  The detective's eyes narrowed.  "He is a
_bourgeois_, that schoolmaster.  Him I will soon put into prison."

"But Nemesis?" prompted Gonnard.

"Oh, yes, Nemesis.  He told me Nemesis was a daughter of Nyx, a
person who metes out punishment to the unjust.  Bah!  They think to
get the better of good proletarians with their long words and foreign
names.  Wait until I get my hands upon this woman, Nemesis, or the
White Knight either."

"What about Fejer and Pauler?"

Gunzi pursed his lips.  "Ask me not, Gonnard.  All I know is that
they were both found dead, and each had in one of his pockets--a
white knight!"

His sibilant voice lowered itself toward the finish of the sentence,
and Gonnard shivered.  "It is you who will hang, not I."  Again in
his ears rang the confident challenge hurled at him across the heads
of the populace.  Supposing he failed in his boast, and, worse,
supposing the Enemy of the Commune were successful! ...

Involuntarily his hand flew to his throat and he loosened his shirt
collar.  It was rather too tight to be pleasant.  Gunzi's mouth
slowly widened into a grin.

There was a knock at the door.  "Come in!" cried Gonnard, and there
entered a small boy of about eleven years of age, dressed in clothes
far too large for him, which, judging from the cut and the material,
had been filched from one of the _bourgeois_ residences.

"A letter for you, comrade," announced the newcomer, his remark
punctuated by an oath.  The gamins of Hungary spent a royal time
during the Commune.  Released by order of the Soviet from all
authority whatsoever, of their parents or of their school-teachers,
they revelled in their freedom and made the most of their opportunity.

Gonnard glared at the boy.  "What do you mean, son?  A letter for me?
Where from?"

The messenger grinned.  "Don't get excited, comrade.  It's not from a
lady.  I was walking down the Palyaudvar-utcza when a man came up to
me and asked me if I would like to earn ten crowns.  'Make it twenty
crowns,' I said to him, 'and I'm your man.'  'All right,' he growled.
'See, here's a letter.  Take it up to Comrade Gonnard, who is living
in the _château_ of Baron Szechenyi.  He will be pleased to get it.'
Then he gave me this letter, and I immediately brought it along.
Give me a crown, comrade, and you can have it."

Gonnard scowled.  "Son of a pig, hand it over."  He half rose from
his seat, and the boy quickly tossed it on to the table in front of
him.

Clutching the envelope Gonnard slit it open with his dirty thumb, and
pulled out a folded piece of paper.  This he opened, and then, as he
read, choked with fury.

"My God," he called out hoarsely to the detective, "read this!"  With
a livid face he held it out to Gunzi, who perused it, his forehead
lifting slightly in his surprise:


Within a week you will hang, Comrade Gonnard, and so the death of two
honest Hungarian officers will be avenged.

THE WHITE KNIGHT


While Gunzi reread the message, studying the handwriting, searching
for the watermark of the paper, or any other clue which might
ultimately lead to the disclosure of the mysterious White Knight,
Gonnard cast back his memory in retrospection.

It was one night some months before.  Budapest lay covered in a white
mantle of snow, which happily concealed the garbage and rubbish
littering the streets.  He and two other Communists were straggling
home.  Fortunately the streets were empty; people were afraid to
wander much those nights, for parties of ex-Russian prisoners and
numbers of ex-soldiers, disbanded but not disarmed, roamed the
countryside, shooting and pillaging, even daring to enter the towns.

The three Communists wandered on, hazy with drink, their revolvers
spitting fire, which, in lieu of finding human billets, broke lamp
after lamp, window after window.

They had nearly reached their quarter when round the corner strode
two officers of the demobilized Hungarian Army, their uniforms still
glistening with the emblem of the royal crown.

The sight maddened the Communists, for the majority of ex-soldiers,
who for four years had, day in and day out, pluckily withstood the
forces of invading hordes, who, indeed, had fought for this very
emblem, now would tremblingly hack it off at the command of a few of
their own countrymen.

Lining up, they stopped the two officers, and hoarsely ordered them
to strip, their revolvers pointing with unpleasant directness at the
stomachs of the two men.

With a haughty motion of the chin the elder of the two, disdaining
the drunken men, stepped forward, and would have passed, but
Gonnard's pistol flashed, and a crumpled body slumped to the ground,
where it was quickly accompanied by the corpse of the second officer.
Thus died two who escaped the bayonets of Hungary's enemies to die of
the bullets of Hungary's men--the red of their blood gradually dyed
the pure white of the snow--the insignia of the Crown blemished by
the symbol of Communism.

Like a wraith he saw again the haughty officer falling--falling
toward him; the accusing eyes approaching nearer, the outstretched
hands grasping for his throat....

He called out chokingly, and the ghost dissolved into the smoke of a
cigarette which the placid urchin of the streets blew out of his
mouth in thick clouds.

Gonnard's dazed glance wandered from side to side--from the face of
the grinning messenger to the puzzled countenance of the detective.
How came this spectre from the past?  How knew the White Knight that
he was the murderer?

"Well?" asked Gunzi inquiringly.

"Nothing--nothing," muttered Gonnard.  "I want to know about that
note."

The detective turned it over and over in his fingers.  "No clue of
any kind."  He turned to the boy.  "What was the man like who gave
you this?  Can you describe him?"

"Yes, of course," answered the urchin, and Gonnard and Gunzi leaned
forward, a gleam of hope lighting up their faces.  "He was tall,
though not too tall, say about--about as high as my father, who is
bigger than either of you, comrades.  His eyes were a greeny blue, or
perhaps brown, I forget now.  His hair was a darkish brown, nearly
black in parts, and he was dressed as you, not quite so well as I."

Gonnard groaned.  The explanation might fit anyone in the world.
"Get out!" he shouted.  The boy turned tail and ran, wondering what
had happened.

Gunzi grinned.  "Not of very much assistance, comrade.  Apparently
the Devil is not as conspicuous as I had believed."

Gonnard turned upon the detective with an ugly snarl.  "Cease your
prattling, Gunzi.  This is no laughing matter."  His eyes narrowed
into mere slits, and he leaned forward in the other's direction,
gazing fiercely at him.  "Listen, my friend.  It is written that the
past is past.  I am a People's Commissary now, and have the ear of
Bela Kun.  It will be a bad day for you, Gunzi, if by next week you
have not laid this cursed _bourgeois_ by the heels.  This day week
some one is going to hang, and if it is not the White
Knight--comrade, you have a nice soft neck.  It would be a pity to
see its tender skin black and blue, rasped and bruised by a rope.  Do
you think it within the bounds of possibility that you might bring
this dog to me--soon?"

His bombast did not worry the rat-faced Gunzi.  He shrugged his
shoulders.  "To-day week should be an interesting one.  Yet it will
not be I who will hang--and it might not be the White Knight, friend."

With that he strolled from the room and left the ex-convict and
murderer alone with his thoughts.




_CHAPTER XI_

Comrade Gonnard spent an unpleasant night.  At supper he both dined
and wined in unwise manner, so that no sooner had he laid his head
upon the pillow than he became conscious of the fact.  Whatever his
feelings awake, they were mild compared to the succession of
nightmares which visited him asleep.  It was an ill-tempered and
uneasy comrade who arose at a late hour next morning.

He drank his coffee with a gulp, and opened his newspaper.  There was
a note pinned to the front page:

  Still six days, Comrade Gonnard.
                          THE WHITE KNIGHT


His face whitened to a chalky pallor; he gazed at the warning with
dilated eyes.

For the rest of the day his mind dwelt upon matters which were of
anything but a pleasant nature.  At every step he winced perceptibly
and kept an uneasy eye upon the door and the window.  Though he had
been warned that there were still six more days for him to live, he
was convinced in his own mind that the White Knight was bluffing,
that the blow might be struck at any moment.

The day passed, and, despite his experience of the night before,
Gonnard again indulged in a heavy meal.  The consequence was that his
dreams were even worse; his fears, in conjunction with his groaning
stomach, wreaked havoc with his inner consciousness.  As the night
passed, the vision of the White Knight appeared more frequently, and
in different guises, each one of which was more terrible than the
last.  When he was awakened by the welcome sunlight, which came
streaming in through a crack in the shutters, he found himself in a
sweat which poured off his forehead and down his body.

A newspaper, brought in to him with his breakfast by a friendly
Communist, lay on the table alongside his coffee.  With trembling
fingers he unfolded it, and gasped with relief to find that this time
its creases hid no terrifying message.  He almost enjoyed his
breakfast.

Then arrived the post.  There was a letter for him; the writing was
feminine; there was a faint, lingering suspicion of perfume.  A
letter to him from a woman!  His eyes glistened with anticipation.
He inserted his bulgy forefinger and hastily slit open the envelope.

It was no _billet-doux_; only once again the fatal warning:

  Five days more, Comrade Gonnard.
                        THE WHITE KNIGHT


The words faded away in the misty film which covered his eyes, and
his shaking fingers dropped the letter so that it fluttered to the
floor.

The days passed.  Each morning he received another revised
message--by telegram, by telephone, once again by the post, and then,
on the last day, by Gunzi.

The detective looked tired and haggard.  For six days he had scarcely
slept; clue after clue he had followed in vain.  The White Knight was
more elusive than the _fata Morgana_.

When he saw Gonnard he stopped short in surprise and swore, and
Gonnard, seeing him, clutched his arm frantically:

"You have found him, Gunzi?"

"No."

The word was like a death-knell; Gonnard sank back into a chair,
shaking in every limb, and Gunzi eyed him scornfully.  He had not
seen the commissary for five days, but in that time the once gross
and fleshy Communist had shrunk till the skin hung from him in
pouches.

His flickering, restless eyes unceasingly switched from one direction
to another, his drumming fingers everlastingly beat a tattoo upon the
object nearest to them.  His clothes positively hung from him and
were buttoned only here and there; his boots were not even laced.

Gunzi stared at the wreck of a man and could scarcely believe him to
be the same as the bombastic commissary who had arrived the week
before to teach the people of Aszod the benefits of the Commune.

"Oh, God!  Oh, God!" Gonnard whispered.  "Gunzi, you must find him or
he will kill me.  His messages haunt me wherever I go.  I have not
dared to go out for the last three days lest I should be stabbed, or
shot in the back, or crushed by a passing automobile."  His voice
rose to a shriek.  "For God's sake, Gunzi, tell me you know where the
White Knight is hiding, that you will arrest him to-day, at once, and
save my life!  You do know where he is, don't you?"

Gunzi turned away: "No, comrade, I do not."

Gonnard gazed at him incredulously, his head unconsciously wagging
from side to side.  "You don't?  But ... but you are ... are a
detective."

Gunzi shrugged his shoulders.  "Nevertheless, friend, I have searched
Aszod from end to end, I who know it so well, but I have not traced
the White Knight.  There is not a building I have not visited, not a
single source of supply which I have not tapped, yet in vain.  How
can I describe him?  No one knows what he is like."

"The telegram he sent me!  I forwarded it on to you."

"I got some sort of description--enough, in fact, for me to track the
sender."

"What!"  Gonnard sat up.  At the sudden suggestion of a possible
success on Gunzi's part a remnant of his courage returned, and hope
gleamed from his eyes.  "You have tracked him?  You arrested him?"

The detective smiled grimly.  "Of course I did.  He is in prison now."

Gonnard looked bewildered.  "Then ... why...  Surely I ... I am
safe...."

"You jump to conclusions too hastily.  The sender of the telegram was
not the White Knight, friend.  He was paid by the White Knight to
send the telegram to you."

"Then ... then he must have seen the White Knight?"

"'Tall, though not very tall, about so high, perhaps a trifle bigger.
His eyes were brown, or blue, they might have been either.  His hair
was inclined to blond, and he was dressed like any other man.'  That
was his description!" Gunzi jeered.  "I left him in prison.  The
change may improve his memory.  In the meantime I have a message for
you."

Never suspecting what was coming, Gonnard was but mildly curious.
His head was too full of other thoughts.  "Well?"

"I was on my way to you, comrade.  There was a meeting near the
station.  I stopped for a short time to listen.  When it was all over
a crowd of us moved away.  Some one touched me on the shoulder and
whispered in my ear: 'Tell Comrade Gonnard, to-morrow.'  I looked
round, but ... he might have been one of a dozen."

The commissary's mouth worked spasmodically.  He endeavoured to
speak, but his tongue was paralysed.  His twitching nerves betrayed
the panic which embraced him, and his head drooped.

"Cheer up, friend; do not let your fears get the better of you.
Surround yourself with a few of the Red guards; you must have a
pocketful of crowns else you cannot be much of a commissary.  Grease
a few palms.  The White Knight is only a man after all."

Gonnard looked up.  "Gunzi, I am afraid," he whispered hoarsely.

The detective shrugged his shoulders.  "Then you had better do as I
suggest as soon as you can.  Meanwhile ... I think I will go and see
our friend who sent the telegram."

Gonnard, shivering with apprehension, watched the detective depart.
Gunzi had failed, the White Knight was at liberty.  He clutched his
throat with his hands.  He seemed to feel the rasp of the rope.

"Oh, Father in Heaven!  Oh, Holy Mary!"  Again and again he breathed
aloud these words.  Life was so precious, so dear to him, and
to-morrow he might die, hang as he had seen a man hanged scarcely a
month back when Szamuelly had sat in judgment at one of the wayside
stations.

Clearly and concisely, as though he were at a cinema watching the
unfolding of a photographic drama, he remembered the horror depicted
on the man's face as he was marched toward the gallows.  Vividly he
recollected the sudden jerk, the body stiffening....  "Save me, our
Father, save me!" he wailed, his uneducated mentality incapable of
varying his conjurations.  "Oh; God, save me!"

The curtain at the window stirred slightly.  With a sudden jerk which
set his heart tumbling and beating Gonnard turned his fear-shot eyes
in that direction.  He saw it was but a sudden puff of wind, but it
might have been the White Knight, and at the mere idea he whimpered
to himself.

Well had Wenzel summed up the character of the Communist.  As
reparation for the death of Coloman, Gonnard was suffering the
tortures of the damned.  Conscience and cowardice were taking their
toll of the man.

Somewhere in the streets a clock chimed, and Gonnard started.  Eleven
o'clock.  Another thirteen hours and the morrow would arrive and then
...  He crouched back into the chair, his hands warding off an
invisible horror.  To-morrow the White Knight would come for him and
he would hang ... hang....

Mentally unhinged by the White Knight's repeated warnings, it never
occurred to Gonnard that, as Gunzi had suggested, he might easily
have surrounded himself by wily guards who would have been more than
sufficient to protect the commissary against the cunning of the White
Knight.  Yet, with an uncanny insight, Wenzel had foreseen the
consequences of his melodramatic policy.

It was not from bravado, or a leaning toward the theatrical, that
Wenzel sent the warning messages to Gonnard.  He wished to create the
impression of omnipotence, to hypnotize his victim into positive
belief in the powers of the White Knight.  Then he had intended to
play a similar trick to the one he had perpetrated in Budapest when
he had rescued the Count Bakocz.

He had played his cards well, but, as he was to discover, he had not
under- but over-estimated the courage of his opponent.  Gunzi's
message destroyed the last remnants of Gonnard's courage.

That the White Knight could touch the shoulder of the detective who
was searching for him, actually speak into his ear, and yet get
safely away, hinted to Gonnard of the supernatural.

Vague imaginings disturbed him.  Anything was preferable to his
present misery--even death.  Supposing--merely supposing--he hanged
himself.  The White Knight would be cheated, he himself peaceful and
content at last.

The idea haunted him, and he laughed suddenly at the picture of the
White Knight's face.  Perhaps it was the sound of his own insensate
mirth which brought him to his senses; when he realized the thoughts
which had been passing through his mind he shuddered, and once again
his everlasting prayer to God left his lips.

His terror increased when, after what seemed but a few minutes,
seconds almost, a near-by clock struck the hour of midday.  Another
hour gone by--another hour nearer his death!

Something snapped in his brain.  He must run, leave Aszod behind him,
get to Budapest.  Bela Kun would protect him, Bela Kun would see that
the White Knight did not carry out his threat.

Just as he had arisen from his bed, dirty and unshaven, he scurried
from the _château_.  Without hat or coat he gained the streets, and
blindly fled from a horror which, in his own conscience, pursued him
even through the streets, and all the time he seemed to see, some
distance behind, a vague, terrifying creature which mocked and gibed
at him, yet which always kept apace.

There was no train to Budapest for hours.  So said the porter as he
spat on the ground.

The pursuing phantom laughed and gibed when Gonnard glanced behind,
and the commissary's trembling knees felt weaker.  Somehow or other
he must get to Budapest!  Bela Kun would save him!

There was a motor-car outside the station.  Its engine groaned and
snorted, wasting away confiscated petrol.  Once it had belonged to
the Thokoly family, but that was before the Revolution.  Since then
the local commissary had commandeered it.  At the moment its present
owner was purchasing tobacco.

The loud clamour of its carbonized cylinders attracted the attention
of another commissary.  To Gonnard it seemed to say: "To Bud-a-pest
... to Bud-a-pest."

What matter to whom it belonged?  It was a way of escape from Aszod,
a method of transportation to Budapest.  For the first time for a
week a watery smile parted his lips, and the next moment he had
stepped into the driver's seat, let out the clutch, and was noisily
traversing the empty streets.

The houses thinned out, the intervals between them became larger, and
soon he was in the country.  Of the direction in which he was
travelling he had not the remotest idea, all he knew was that Aszod
and the White Knight were being left behind.

At last he dared to look behind him.  For a moment he believed the
road to be clear, but when he glanced to his side there was the
haunting, visionary avenger, keeping apace, laughing derisively....

"Keep away!  Holy Mary, keep him away!" he shrieked, and pressed his
foot still harder on the accelerator, and the automobile shot
forward.  In vain!  With incessant, terrified glances he realized
that the shapeless form, the chimera of his guilty fear, was joined
by two other wraiths, which fell ... and fell ... even as had fallen
two Hungarian officers.

The car flew on along the rutted roads.  The rusted speedometer
ticked away mile after mile, but Gonnard drove blindly forward.  What
matter which direction he took?  Behind him the vengeance of the
White Knight.  If once he stopped he might hang....

For hours the car with its solitary passenger careered on unchecked,
taking first this road, then that; its bonnet pointing now to the
east, now to the west.

The hour might have been five, six, or seven o'clock.  Gonnard knew
not.  The passage of miles meant more to him than the passing time.
Moreover, he felt somewhat easier.  The last time he had looked he
had failed to see the two officers.  They had disappeared, left
behind, while the White Knight had seemed to be flagging.

He wanted to look again, but dared not, lest he should discover that
they were back.  The urge continued, and slowly his glance slipped
round to his side, then to his back, and his heart seemed to bubble
over with unexpected relief.  The White Knight was gone too, he had
outstripped his avenger.  He was safe ... safe ... safe!

He patted and fondled the car with a loving air, and with his fears
dissolving common sense stepped in, making him realize that he must
find his way to Budapest before dark, the darkness of which he was
still afraid.

He passed through one or two villages.  He did not recognize them,
but when he slowed down and inquired his way of the inhabitants they
jerked their thumbs forward with a surly air.  Rumours were in the
air; hangings had been more frequent; and latterly they were not
quite so sure in their own minds that the dictum of Budapest was all
that it was represented to be.

Conscious of an easier mind than he had possessed for the last week,
Gonnard gradually turned his thoughts into more pleasant channels
than that of the death he believed he had barely escaped.  Once he
arrived in Budapest he meant to make up for the past week.

Firstly he would put himself under the protection of Bela Kun.  Then
afterward, perhaps a good meal, and the company of a charming woman,
whose lips would not be too backward....  In the days of the
Revolution there were many such.  There were mothers to be kept
alive, or younger brothers and sisters.  They had to be fed....  The
saddest sights of Budapest during the days of the Red Terror were the
women whose gentle, innocent souls were besmirched and befouled so
that others might subsist.

The road was inclining upward; in the distance was a group of hills
which Gonnard seemed to recognize.  Soon he was sure.  They were the
hills of Budapest.  He would soon reach the city now.

Soon--soon--soon; the purring of the wheels on the road sang the
refrain.  Despite its age the car took the gradient well, and mounted
higher into the hills.

Here the forestry encroached on the cultivated land: or, perhaps more
correctly, cultivation ceased to invade the forest.  There was a
sweet smell of dewy vegetation in the air, the scent of pine and
herbs.

The last remnant of fear faded from Gonnard's mind, routed by the
thought of what lay before him in Budapest.  He sucked in his lips
appreciatively, already enjoying in anticipation that which would be
reality within a few hours.

Should he pick a fair or a dark woman; one inclined to plumpness
or----?  There was a staccato report, a slackening in the speed of
the car, and an unpleasant grinding sound.

Gonnard swore, and now that his courage had returned it was the Devil
he invoked.  A puncture!  He applied the brake, shut off the engine,
and the car glided to a standstill.  The commissary jumped out; then,
not without a frightened glance to the rear to make quite sure the
White Knight was still not to be seen, he inspected the tyre.

It was perfectly flat, the cause of the trouble obvious, for not far
from the valve a large nail was embedded in the outer cover.  There
was only one thing to be done.  Gonnard cursed, and with smouldering
fury in his heart hastened to look under the seat for the necessary
repair appliances.

Fortunately everything needful was in its proper place, so stripping
off his coat he set to work.  In twenty minutes the repair was
completed, and as he let down the jack he spat on the road, a mark of
relief.

It was at that moment he became conscious of a sound to his right.
He spun round, his body slumping into a crouching position, his eyes
gleaming with terror.  He waved his hands weakly to ward off the
coming horror, but as the sound continued his appearance changed.
From fear, his expression changed to puzzlement, then gradually
broadened into cunning amusement and bestial anticipation.  The sound
which had arrested him was that of a woman singing.

A woman!  His thick, sensuous tongue licked his dry lips caressingly.
Had not his thoughts dwelt for the last half-hour or so on women?
Now, suddenly, there was one within less than a hundred yards from
him, and by the sound of her voice she was young.  To the commissary
it seemed Fate had sent her.  If she were alone...

Stealthily he crept into the forest, and made his way in the
direction from which floated the clear, low notes of the singer.
Carefully he threaded his way through the trees, and with every
footstep he took his thoughts became baser and more beastly.

He halted behind a near-by tree, where he remained, as he became
assured that the woman was approaching.  He did not have to wait
long.  From out of the tangle of greenery a vague form materialized,
until at last, as she emerged from behind a large shrub, she became
fully revealed to the lustful eyes of the Communist.

He sucked in his breath with a slight gasp, and his eyes gleamed
still more brightly with the flare of his aroused passion.  The gods
were kind!  Never before had he seen a more beautiful woman, a more
delicate shape, nor so divine a form.  Even his wildest dreams were
surpassed by the reality.

She had been picking flowers; her arms were filled with beautiful
forest blossoms, piled up in cascades until they reached her chin,
framing the fascinating face above.

Gonnard grinned mirthlessly.  She was the fairest flower--a few yards
more and she would be in his arms...

He remained motionless: the woman passed by.  Rapidly he stepped
behind her, and catching her wrists wrenched them apart.  The wild
flowers of the forest dropped mutely to the mossy carpet beneath.

Mentally stunned by the shock Elizabeth did not even attempt to
struggle.  The next moment Gonnard gagged her mouth with one filthy
handkerchief, and tied her arms behind her with another.  Then he
lifted her in his arms, and leering into her face grinned derisively
at her blazing eyes.  He turned back to the car again.

Now what of the White Knight!  His fears were gone, there were better
thoughts to occupy his mind.  Indeed the gods were kind!  He cranked
up the engine, and swung into the driver's seat.  It would not be
long before they arrived in Budapest, and then...  He chuckled to
himself as the car started forward.




_CHAPTER XII_

In the meanwhile, back in Aszod, Wenzel awaited the hour of eight,
when the plans which he had laid so carefully should commence to
fructify.  He knew that Gunzi was searching the city for him; at
times he had shadowed the detective to assure himself that the other
was not too warm on the scent.

Cunningly he had arranged that Gunzi should track him soon after
eight, and for that purpose had left behind a host of clues.  When
the plans materialized Gunzi would learn of the whereabouts of the
White Knight.  He would arrive just too late.  Alarmed by the
closeness of the detective the White Knight would have fled.

Gunzi, he knew, would hurry back to Gonnard.  What would be the
reaction?  The White Knight had not set Francis Bakocz to study the
habits of the commissary before Gonnard moved on to Aszod and
remained unaware that he would turn to wine and women.

In the days of the Revolution English money meant much.  With the
crown falling and falling a few Treasury notes would buy a man's
soul, and would still more encourage a woman, who already hated the
Communists for all they had done to her young sister, to listen with
a willing ear to Wenzel's suggestions.

A rendezvous--a pretty woman--potent wine--and in the middle of the
supper--retribution.

It was a pretty scheme and there were no loopholes.  Even if Gonnard
should fail to fall into the baited trap he was prepared with an
alternative--but the White Knight was confident of his man.  At seven
o'clock Arnold would arrive.  Wenzel glanced at his watch; just
four-fifteen, and therefore time to set his plans in motion.

He lounged out of the room he had confiscated together with several
Reds in the name of the Commune.  Downstairs one of his
fellow-proletarians was just entering.

"What, going out?  You are a queer fellow, comrade--different from
the rest of us.  We sleep all day, and at night..."  He grinned.
"Well, I could take you to several little haunts, my friend.  Why
don't you join us?  I know a pretty blonde; her lips are redder than
a ripened cherry, and warmer than the hot springs of Margaret Island.
She would bring life into those dull eyes of yours, and set your
blood racing."

"Women!"  Wenzel shrugged his shoulders.  "What do I want of women?
I have had a surfeit of them until I am tired of their monotonous
caresses."

The other looked at him enviously.  "You are a lucky fellow.  A case
of beauty and the beast, eh?"

Wenzel turned upon him, and the Communist saw that in his eyes which
made him feel afraid.  "All right, comrade," he added hastily; "I was
only joking, of course."

Wenzel growled, "Keep your jests to yourself, friend, for sometimes
they are like curses and chickens--and come home to roost," then
turning away he lounged out.

For some time he walked heedlessly.  "Beauty and the beast!"  So
hideous was he that even his own sex were conscious of the fact!  For
the first me he wondered what Arnold thought of him.  Did he too see
his leader in the same light?

Remorselessly he forced the trend of his thoughts into other
directions.  He knew from past experience the after-effect of too
much communing with himself on that subject, for the bitterness of
his thoughts ate into his soul, and the world became a black
place--too black, for was there not supposed to be a better one
elsewhere?

He saw a train steaming into the station from Budapest, and, more to
keep his thoughts occupied than for any other reason, he joined the
throng of idle sightseers who lounged near the entrance watching the
exit of the passengers.

The people streamed through; some hesitatingly, pausing outside to
look around and find their different ways; others, with a contempt
bred of familiarity, dispersed quickly and decisively along the
adjacent streets.

Suddenly Wenzel stiffened, and frowned slightly.  Arnold was supposed
to arrive by a later train, yet he was even now jostling his way
through a party who clustered round a newsboy.

Not seeing Wenzel, Arnold would have passed on, but the White Knight
stepped forward.

"Hullo, comrade!" he cried loudly.  "So you are back again?  How go
things in Budapest?"

"Well, my friend; well."  Arnold's expression never altered.  "Our
troops beat back the enemy in every direction, and the People's
Government becomes stronger and more fully recognized every day.  It
is said that the Allies have expressed a desire to treat with our
great leader, Bela Kun."

"Excellent, excellent!  Come, Stephen, I will see you home.  You
shall tell me more."

They moved on, talking evenly until the people thinned out.

"One of Gunzi's men was near by," explained Wenzel.  "But now, why
come you by an earlier train?"

Arnold's face clouded over.  "Bad news, Wenzel; bad news.  Apor was
caught corresponding with the Whites and has been arrested."

Wenzel's face turned pale with passion.  "The fool, the fool!  Why
did he?  Did I not give him strict injunctions to serve me alone?
Now, not only must he suffer for his folly, but you, I, and others of
his own people, as well.  My eyes and ears cut off from me, my plans
prejudiced: if he dies it is no more than he deserves."

"He will die, Wenzel."  There was a quiet suggestion in Arnold's
voice which Wenzel did not fail to perceive.

"You are right, Arnold.  Korvin-Klein is merciless, there is no hope
for him."

"None at all?"  There was wistful pleading in Arnold's voice.

"You liked him, did you not, Arnold?  So did I.  Now you hint at
rescue.  But what of my mission here?  I have sworn Gonnard shall
die, to-night will see the fulfilment of my vow.  Afterwards we will
go to Budapest."

"To-morrow will be too late, Geoffrey; surely Gonnard can wait?  Is
not the life of Apor more to be desired than the death of a
Communist?"

"Be quiet!"  His voice rasped with anger.  "My plans are all
prepared.  Nothing must be allowed to upset them."

For a little while they walked along in silence, but eventually
Arnold spoke: "I do not understand you to-day, Geoffrey.  Has Gonnard
done you any personal injury that his death should be of more
importance than the life of one who has served you faithfully?  We
may not save Apor--I cannot see how such a feat could possibly be
carried out successfully--yet it will hurt me always if I--no, I say,
we, Geoffrey--do not, at least, make an attempt."

The White Knight knew how true were the words of his lieutenant.  In
speaking aloud to Arnold he had been arguing with himself.  If he
went to Budapest Gonnard would escape his clutches, perhaps never to
fall into them again, and then what of his word to Elizabeth?  He had
sworn that Gonnard should die--Gonnard, the murderer of Elizabeth's
cousin.  On the other hand, there was Apor.  Had not Apor risked his
life, time after time, to get him news of the movements of the
Communists, information which was of the utmost importance to the
White Knight in his rescue of the unfortunate victims of Bolshevik
persecution?  Had not Apor, descendant of generations of warring
aristocrats, demeaned himself, humbled his pride, to serve in the
enemy ranks that he might more usefully aid the White Knight?  Was
all that service to count for naught?

Wenzel sighed.  "You are right, Arnold.  Gonnard must wait.  We will
catch the next train to Budapest."

They turned toward the station, and as they approached Wenzel looked
behind him, smiling grimly: "What an unpleasant day Gonnard will
spend to-morrow waiting for the blow to fall!"

* * * * * *

Gonnard knew Budapest as he knew the lines of his face.  There was
not a criminal resort with which he had not been acquainted in the
old days of law and order, while the number of more or less habitable
quarters where he might lie securely hidden from the prying eyes of
the detectives, and to which he had the _entrée_, was well into
double figures.

To one of these he drove the helpless Elizabeth.  As he brought the
car to a halt he gave a quick glance up and down the narrow road, but
fortunately no one was about, so with a deft movement, which was hard
to associate with one of his clumsy build, he picked her up in his
arms, and with scarcely any effort carried his burden within, up the
four flights of stairs to the whitewashed attic, and there carefully
locked the door behind him.

Once safely there, apparently unnoticed, he plucked the gag from her
mouth.

"Well, well," he mocked, "here you are, little chicken, and here you
will remain until I have finished with you."  Like all cowards he was
a bully at heart, and he spoke with blustering braggadocio.

She gazed at him unflinchingly.  "What do you want of me?" she asked
calmly.

The question set him roaring with laughter.  "Ho, ho!  Innocent one!
So you do not know for what I have brought you here to my little
love-nest?  Ho, ho!  Think it well over, my sweet, and see if you
cannot find out before I return."  Suddenly his attitude became
menacing.  "Sit down!" he ordered.

Elizabeth laughed slightly.  "You are a fool," she said easily.  "Do
you think you can hold me here against my will?  I have only to raise
my voice and I do not doubt that I should have half a dozen people
flocking to my aid--in addition to the police."

He seemed to find humour in her answer, for his face again broadened
to a grin.  "You think so?  Let me assure you to the contrary.  In
the first place, people who live in this district mind their own
business.  Half a dozen ... flocking ... your aid..."  He could not
finish for the laughter which consumed him.  "Women have screamed for
help before now, but no one has interfered.  We have more manners
than that.  As for the police----  We live in different days, my
sweet: the police do not arrest commissaries."

"So you are a commissary?"  Elizabeth looked at him with a quiet
scorn, which pierced even his hide, and his eyes narrowed.

"Say all you want, my lady.  It will be my turn later on.  Yes, I am
a commissary.  You and your kind no longer rule the country; the
proletariat have arisen.  Government for the people by the people is
our watchword, with no more magnates living like princes on sweated
gold."

Elizabeth did not speak in reply to this diatribe.  Despite her
defiant attitude her heart beat with a throbbing intensity.  She knew
her danger and endeavoured to think of a way out, but she was
conscious of a hysterical panic which for all her courage she could
not repress, and the knowledge clouded her reason.

In the meantime Gonnard continued speaking.  "Too proud to talk, eh?
Well, well!  You will learn reason very soon."  His eyes lit, and he
stepped up to her, so that she shrank away with a repulsing gesture.
"Why should I wait?" he asked thickly.  "Why should I wait?  You and
me----"  Then he calmed down.

"No.  I will get rid of the car first, and see Bela Kun.  Just as
well he should know that----"  He broke off short and glanced at
Elizabeth.

Then, without the slightest warning, he clasped her in his arms,
turned her round, and inspected the strength of her bonds.  He
laughed grimly.  "You will be safe enough.  You won't undo that
handkerchief in a hurry.  And just in case you should make too much
noise----"  With a quick movement he forced her mouth open and
inserted the gag again.

Elizabeth helplessly watched his ungainly form as he lumbered across
the room.  Under ordinary circumstances she would have shrunk from
him with loathing.  Now, in his power, it seemed to her that he was
even more horrible, still more the chimera of an unbalanced
imagination.

Gurgling deep down in his throat he unlocked the door, then turned
and blew a kiss across the room.  She shuddered slightly, and his
mirth rang out coarsely.  Then he was gone, and she heard his
footsteps heavily descending the stairs.

She listened acutely.  The echo of his steps grew fainter, until it
faded away; but presently she heard the whir of the motor below, then
the chug-chug of the engine as it progressed along the narrow street,
until that too died away, and an unnerving silence ensued.

Tired of standing she sat on a wooden chair, which wobbled
unsteadily, and nearly threw her to the floor, but she managed to
save herself by thrusting out a foot against the wall.

Her mouth hurt abominably--the plugged handkerchief nearly choked
her, while a fold of it tickled the back of her throat until she felt
a spasm of vertigo.  Her wrists smarted with the rub of her bonds,
and her bones ached from the cramped position she had been forced to
occupy during the drive into Budapest.

Her physical pain, however, was as nothing to the mental anguish
which pricked and tortured her.  Over and over again she chided
herself for her folly in venturing so far from the _château_.
Conscience played havoc with her nerves; she realized that the
discovery of her presence might create danger for the rest of the
refugees, and that if that were not so her disappearance might
subsequently have a similar effect, for she knew too that, as soon as
the fact was discovered that she was missing, search-parties would be
organized, and as they failed to find her they would surely venture
farther and farther afield.  Was it not likely that in doing so they
might come into contact with curious peasants, or be seen by
suspicious Communists?

Her father--of what would he be thinking?  What would be his
sensations as the hours passed and no good news of her arrived?  She
rocked slightly in the agony of her thoughts, and the chair very
nearly tilted over.

There was one other, too, of whom she scarcely dared to think.  The
White Knight, the man who had risked his life again and again to
rescue her father and herself, what would he think of her?

Her remorse was more than she could bear, and tears started to her
eyes for the first time in fifteen years.  With an effort she rose to
her feet, and paced the floor as far as its limits would allow,
hoping that with the physical effort her thoughts would plague her to
a lesser degree.

Presently she crossed to the window and gazed down upon the road
beneath, then at the houses opposite, and she realized that, if the
depressing environment and the ill-cared-for state of the buildings
counted for anything, the commissary had not exaggerated his claims
to seclusion.

The street was dismal and unkempt; it radiated an evil atmosphere, a
suggestion of mystery.  Here and there people moved about, but, such
is the force of habit, even though the Government was now in the
hands of the criminal community, and everything was done to favour
instead of incarcerate the criminal, the denizens of this quarter
still continued to slink warily, casting uneasy glances from side to
side.

The women were drab, their faces were hard and starved, while the men
were brutal, their shaven heads intensifying the criminal cast of
their faces.  Horrified by all she saw, nevertheless Elizabeth could
not withdraw from the window.  It was all so new to her who had
always lived on the broad, clean plains, who had seen only village
life, except for glimpses of the world, now and again, from hotel
windows.

A deep thinker and a student of physiognomy, she believed she would
have been deeply interested had she been in more happy circumstances.
As it was, studying the neighbourhood as far as the narrow compass of
the window would permit, the sight did not help her to minimize her
plight; rather it assumed, every second, an uglier garb, and she
laughed mirthlessly.  Supposing she were rescued, say, by any of the
residents of the neighbouring buildings?  It seemed a moot point as
to whether she would be any better off, for her one thought then was
whether any one face which she saw from the window was more evil than
the next.

A minute later and, with a feeling of uncontrollable horror, she had
to reverse her theory.  There swung into her vision a tall man--like
most tall men, stooping slightly.  He was dressed in filthy clothes,
a cap was crammed over his head and eyes, a scarf wound round his
neck.  He walked as did Gonnard, with a shuffling, uncouth gait.

At first she saw nothing of his face, but he stopped by the wall to
light a cigarette, and apparently his cap must have caught on
something sharp.  Puffing the cigarette he stepped forward on his
walk, and the hat came off his head.

For a brief second he gazed upward in surprise: it was then that
Elizabeth realized that of all the vile, brutal faces which she had
seen in the last half-hour there was not one to be compared with that
upon which she now gazed.

Its monstrous ugliness hurt her, the blood-red scars which deformed
his head and face sickened her, and her lips trembled.  Supposing
that it were he, not Gonnard, who held her prisoner....

She saw him snatch his cap from the wall.  His lips moved, and she
had no doubt that he cursed blasphemously.  He would have crammed his
hat back on his head when suddenly it seemed that her fixed gaze was
magnetically riveting his attention.  He looked upward, his eyes
travelled toward her window.

With a shudder she jerked her head backward that he should not see
her ... and the White Knight, wondering what impulse had made him
glance upward, continued his way toward the rendezvous he had made
with Arnold when they had parted at the station.




_CHAPTER XIII_

That night the sun had scarcely buried itself beneath the rim of the
horizon when Gunzi entered a low-class bar in a quarter scarcely a
stone's-throw from where Elizabeth was imprisoned.

Many things had happened that day in Aszod.  In the morning the White
Knight had been daring enough to touch him on the shoulder, whisper a
message in his ear, and yet dissolve into the crowd without betraying
himself in the slightest to the detective, and Gunzi, who could
conceive only that the White Knight had singled him out for the
purpose of fooling him, seethed with fury against the audacious
_bourgeois_.

He had masked it when giving Gonnard the whispered message.  He
realized that the terror caused by the constant succession of
warnings was part and parcel of the White Knight's plan, in which
case it obviously suited him to assist it to its fulfilment, for he
was certain that sooner or later the White Knight would betray his
hand.

After leaving Gonnard he worked diligently all the morning, but with
no tangible result, and his anger increased, and burned within his
breast like a smouldering fire.  Then, in the afternoon, he came
across his first clue.  The man in prison recovered his memory, not
so much as regards his description of the White Knight, but as to an
address where the mysterious avenger had once stayed.

There was only one small matter: if it should be definitely proved
that his information was correct he was to be released
unconditionally.  Gunzi, who aimed for bigger fry, was more than
agreeable to this proposal.

When Gunzi investigated, it was to find that the White Knight had
gone from there, but--"Look you, comrade, I had my suspicions of him.
He did not seem a true Communist, and he talked in his sleep.  One
night when I was passing his door I heard the name of Comrade Gonnard
mentioned, whoever he may be, and this man was turning, twisting, and
swearing vengeance."

"Yes, yes; but where went he after leaving you?"  Gunzi could
scarcely control his patience.

"Ah! friend, maybe I can tell you, maybe I cannot.  Yet, some time
after he left me, I saw him coming out of a house in another part of
the city.  Where was it?  Well, comrade, am I not about to tell you?
Why should I hurry?..."  And the detective had to listen for ten
minutes to unimportant and loquacious meandering, but in the end he
learned a fresh address.

Scarcely daring to hope he rushed post-haste across the town.  The
door was opened by a smiling-faced, buxom woman.  Did she have a man
so--and Gunzi described to the best of his ability as much as he knew
of the White Knight--staying at her charming residence?

"Why, yes, comrade, of course I knew him, but he left me four days
ago.  Hearing that the _château_ of Zoltan Giesswein was to be taken
over by the Communists, he told me he intended to confiscate one of
the rooms for himself.  He seemed a studious young man.  He was kind
and kissed me when he left."

Later, Gunzi arrived at the _château_ of Zoltan Giesswein, once
magnate and owner of a huge steel-works, now a refugee in Vienna,
devoting his time to the formation of a White Army.

Here the men were more loth to answer questions, for they, unlike the
others, had not been coached in their answers.  What did it matter to
Gunzi, they asked, if such a man now lived at the _château_?  In no
uncertain words they told him to look for himself.  Yet in the end he
secured the information for which he had been seeking.

"Him!"  The man to whom the detective put the question laughed
scornfully.  "He is out all day, yes, and he is out now.  But he will
be back, comrade, do not worry.  A cold-blooded fish--women do not
interest him; he told me so this very afternoon.  Tried to make me
believe he had had too many.  As if any man can have too many women!"

"So he will be back to-night?"

"I am not his mother.  He did not tell me so."

"But you think he will?"

"Bah!  I have no doubt that he will.  Myself, I believe he is afraid
of the dark.  He will be back.  An early worm!"

There were no longer any doubts left in Gunzi's mind that he had
tracked his man, and chuckling to himself in triumph he hurried back
to Gonnard to let the commissary hear the good news.

When he looked for Gonnard the man had disappeared.  The detective
could make neither head nor tail of the mystery, and with a sinking
heart came to the conclusion that the White Knight had succeeded in
his revenge, cleverly anticipating his ultimatum by a day, and he
realized the full cunning of the daily warnings.

For all that, where was the missing Gonnard?  With a tenacity worthy
of a better cause Gunzi set to work again, and fitted together, piece
by piece, a possible solution.

The commissary had fled in fear; and from the facts he had collected
Gunzi could not believe that he had scuttled to anywhere save
Budapest.  Determining to wait only long enough to arrest the Enemy
of the Commune, he resolved to follow.

He waited--in vain.  Night arrived, and in the end he realized that
the White Knight too must have hurried to Budapest, more than
probably on the heels of Gonnard.

Under the new _régime_ Gunzi had no superiors.  It was in his own
hands to depart instantly for the capital.  As for the necessary
funds ... down one quiet road he saw an old man shuffling along.  At
the pistol's point, and in the name of the Commune, Gunzi forced him
to turn out his pockets, and fortunately secured enough cash to get
him to Budapest and back, with the possibility of a drink or two in
between.

Arriving late in Budapest he made his way to a place he knew well, a
beershop which defied the official regulations as to the sale of
intoxicating liquor, and the White Knight, recognizing him, knew that
the Fates were playing into his hands, for he could have wished for
no better tool than Gunzi to use in the plot already fermenting in
his head for the rescue of his lieutenant from the clutches of the
Communists.

He followed Gunzi in and sat a couple of tables away.  With a loud
but unsteady voice he ordered drink.  His rough tones were heard even
above the din of voices and clatter of glasses; several pairs of
eyes, observing him, twinkled significantly.

For a while Wenzel remained quiet, drinking steadily, but after a
time he shuffled uneasily.

"More drink!" he shouted, and a fresh bottle of wine was placed on
the table before him.  He filled his glass, rose to his feet, and
banged loudly.  The noise of argument ceased, and he became a centre
of interest.

"Here ... here's to the Commune!" he toasted, and with a wavering
hand, which caused the wine to slop over the rim of the glass down
the front of his clothes, he guided the glass to his lips and drank
heavily.

"Hear!  Hear!"  There was an echoing chorus, and the toast was drunk.

Wenzel refilled his glass, and once again pounded on the table.
"And--and damnation--to all Whites!" he bellowed.

There was muttered laughter.  The fellow was becoming amusing, and
for the sake of the fun they began to encourage him.  Once again they
drank his toast.

"Go on, go on!" some one called out encouragingly.

Wenzel blinked, his head wagged stupidly from side to side.  "And
death to all those who say otherwise," he hiccupped, and drained a
third glass.

There was an unrestrained roar of laughter: "Keep it up, keep it up!"

Wenzel refilled his glass, the wine spilling all over the table in
the effort: "And may--the--damned traitor Apor--die soon."

There was a silence.  This was news.

"What's that you say?  Who is Apor?"  Questions were hurled at him
from all quarters of the tavern.

Wenzel looked blearily around.  "What!  Have you not heard yet of the
arrest of Apor, assistant--assistant to Comrade Eugene Hamburger,
Commissary for--for--for Agriculture?" he asked thickly.

There was a stir of interest.  "No, no.  Tell us, friend."

"Tell you!  Why not?  Have I not heard the story from Comrade
Hamburger himself?  This Apor was a good Communist, yet secrets of
the Soviet drifted out, and the Council wondered why.  One--one day a
detective searched this Apor's correspondence.  What do you think he
found, friends?"  He paused dramatically, and looked round with a
triumphant grin.  "He discovered, comrades, that Apor was a spy,
corresponding with Vienna, acting for the Whites."

There was a wild roar of anger from his listeners, but Wenzel held up
a shaking hand.

"Peace--peace, friends.  There is more to tell you.  Not only was
Apor a spy for the Whites, he was also acting for one of whom we have
all heard ... heard.  The White Knight, friends, the White Knight."

There was a momentous silence, broken only by a gasp from Gunzi.
Then, suddenly, the tavern resounded with hoarse cries of anger.
Many rose to their feet.  "Death to the traitor, death!  Hang him!
Torture him!  Make him confess!  Make him tell of the White Knight!"

If Wenzel had hoped to create pandemonium he had undoubtedly achieved
success.  Presently the clamour subsided, and once more all eyes were
turned in the direction of Wenzel, who continued to stand upon his
feet, but only with an effort.  He swayed to and fro, his eyes
blinked and watered under the cap which was crushed down over them.
They could see only the lower part of his face, and that but
indistinctly, for the scarf which was wound round his neck and chin
reached as high as his lower lip.

Wenzel laughed gutturally.  "What--what use shouting, comrades?  Apor
will not die.  White Knight will rescue."  His speech became more
indistinct, and his audience feared that he would collapse in a
drunken stupor before his story was finished.  Some one dexterously
removed the half-finished bottle from the table.

At the same time this last statement was received incredulously.
Some one remonstrated: "Yah!  Yah!  You talk loudly, my friend.  How
could anyone rescue Apor?  Is he not in prison?"

"Apor in prison."  Wenzel laughed, and the saliva dribbled from the
corners of his mouth.  "Of course.  He is in Parliament--cells.  Yet
White Knight will rescue.  Easy enough."

"Bah!  I know the Parliament House cells, and I say that not even the
White Knight could rescue anyone from them."

Wenzel wagged a remonstrating finger.  "Yes, he could, just same I
could."

There was a roar of laughter, and Wenzel frowned.

"Tell us then," his hearers shouted, but Wenzel shook his head.  "You
might tell Bela Kun--I hang--keep my secrets--myself."

His talk was incoherent, the interest of the others began to lessen.
They had obtained all the news they could from him, and now they
wanted none of his drunken babblings and theories of impossible
rescue.

Yet there was one who leaned forward, eyes gleaming interestedly.
Gunzi knew well the potent influence of drink: in his time he had
secured many a guarded secret from a man "liquored up" to a degree of
nicety, and Gunzi, reading the signs, was convinced that the man to
whom he had been listening had reached that stage.

He moved his chair over to Wenzel's table: "Sit down, my friend, and
tell me.  I am interested."

Obediently Wenzel collapsed on to his chair, then glared malignantly
at the detective: "Why should--tell you and not--not--not other
people?"

Gunzi shrugged his shoulders.  "They are fools, they would believe
anything.  Myself, I would not.  I ask you to tell me so that I can
point out to you how impossible would be your plan."

For a moment he believed the Devil had been raised in the other man,
for Wenzel shot out a clawing hand which searched for the detective's
throat, while Gunzi shrank back, his small rat-face paling, but the
effort was too much for Wenzel.  His arm relaxed, fell heavily upon
the table, and his head followed suit.

Gunzi frowned.  Supposing he learned something of advantage to Bela
Kun!  It was not unlikely that the Dictator might reward him.  He
leaned forward and whispered: "More drink, eh, friend?"

His words had their effect.  Wenzel raised his head and blinked.
"Yes," he muttered, "if you pay."

"I will pay," Gunzi agreed eagerly, and ordered wine.  Slowly Wenzel
raised himself to a sitting position, and drank.

"Well, comrade, how would you rescue this traitor, Apor?" prompted
the detective.

"Easily.  Suppose ... suppose, for instance, I were this--this White
Knight.  Would I wait longer than early to-morrow morning rescue
Apor?  No, comrade, for if I were the White Knight I should hear that
to-morrow Apor--come before Korvin-Klein.  There--therefore should I
act even before the sun rises above the--the horizon.

"To Parliament House I should go with a letter from Bela Kun himself,
an order to release an unnamed prisoner."  Wenzel chuckled, and
looked cunningly up at Gunzi from the corners of his eyes.
Unconsciously his hand wandered to his breast pocket and patted it
caressingly.  "What would the jailers say?  'What want you ... this
prisoner?'  I should tell them.... 'Bela Kun's business.  Apor to be
hanged elsewhere....  Allies might hear of it ... interfere.'"

Gunzi smiled scornfully.  "A fool scheme, comrade.  The jailers would
smell a rat.  They would refuse to hand over the prisoner."

Wenzel leered.  "Yah!  You take me for big fool!  I am not that, no.
I am all ... I ... I would be all prepared.  Do I not know the jailer
would be curious?..."  Somehow the expression of his face changed,
and Gunzi saw a look of suspicion cross the features of the other.

"Why--why ask you all these questions?  What does it matter to you?"
His eyes seemed brighter, less bleary.

"Nothing, nothing at all, comrade."  Gunzi endeavoured to appease the
other: "You will drink again?"  The detective dreaded that the
symptoms of the drunken man might change.  At present he was docile;
just stupid and sleepy.  If he should become ferocious, should the
spirit of battle be aroused within him ... Gunzi had seen many a
drunken scrimmage in his time, and with a sinking heart realized that
the other man's temper was slowly rising.

Quickly he ordered the drinks.  Wenzel observed the bottle of wine
set before him, and wavered.  He stretched out a hand to grasp it,
and Gunzi sighed with relief.  The next moment Wenzel rose to his
feet and towered above Gunzi.  He seized the bottle and crashed it
down on the table, where it shivered to pieces, the wine spurting in
streams on to the floor.

"You--you spy!"  In a thick, unsteady voice Wenzel accused the
detective.  "I will not talk to you.  Perhaps I will kill you!"

There was drama in the air.  Once again Wenzel was the centre of
attraction, and several men near by tensed themselves, ready to
spring to Gunzi's help.  Wenzel gazed round him with a belligerent
air, but seemed to realize that the odds would be against him, for
with a growl he turned his back and swayingly zigzagged his way to
the door.  This he opened, and the next moment disappeared into the
night, and with scarcely another pause the tavern resumed its normal
appearance.

Nevertheless Gunzi was annoyed that he had not heard the finish of
the scheme, though he believed he had heard enough to assure him that
the White Knight intended to act before the early morning.  Some one
ought to be warned!

He communed with himself.  He had enough news to give Bela Kun to
warrant asking a favour in return.  If he waited until morning the
White Knight might have carried through his plans, and have liberated
Apor.  Then of what use would it be for Gunzi to approach him?

He made up his mind, called the waiter to him, and asked the way to
Bela Kun.  The man smiled.  "Bela Kun may be anywhere.  In the palace
of the Hapsburgs, in the Parliament building, or yet, and still more
likely, in Batthyany's Palace.  He likes good food, I am told, and
there is nightly a great feast there."

With rapid steps Gunzi made his way toward the Batthyany Palace, and
for the first time obtained a glimpse of Budapest under the Red
_régime_.  Everywhere he passed wholesale looting was taking place.
Savage Red guards and drunken Terrorists, riding wildly about in
confiscated automobiles, commandeered food and dwellings.

Other bands paid domiciliary visits in search of _bourgeois_ spies,
or refugees.  Hostages were arrested, to be kept in prison against
the good behaviour of the innocent _bourgeoisie_.

Even Gunzi was slightly surprised, though not shocked, and he was all
the more determined to gain a post in Budapest.  He began to have
visions of a life about which hitherto he had hardly dreamed.  In
Aszod, he realized, he had been too faithful to his duties, even if
he were indubitably a Communist.

He remembered the beautiful mansion in the Theresa Boulevard, and
because he had visions of it still in his mind's eye as he neared it,
its present appearance caused him to rub his eyes and wonder whether
he were dreaming.

In front of the house the pavement was heavily barricaded.  Lights
gleaming from the mansion behind the obstructions reflected on the
barrels of field-guns, machine-guns, and _Minnenwerfers_, while
before the gates were three heavy motor-lorries, armed with
machine-guns.

Here and there patrolled Lenin Boys, and Gunzi, looking through the
barricades, could see that each one was armed with revolver,
bowie-knife, and hand-grenades.

Gazing at the mansion in bewilderment, Gunzi compared it to a
fortress, and, as he was afterward to find, the imagery lost nothing
in the searchlight of reality.  It was indeed a veritable fortress.
Down in the cellars were stored an enormous amount of ammunition and
quantities of food.  Still more, it protected a host of Lenin Boys,
who, under the leadership of Josef Cserni, an ex-sailor of no mean
physical dimensions, terrorized the city of Budapest.

Evidently Gunzi was betraying too great an interest.  He felt
something boring into his ribs, and turning round found a Lenin Boy
covering him with a rifle.

"Well, comrade," the guard growled unpleasantly, "what do you want?
This part is unhealthy for sightseers and tourists."

"I am looking for Bela Kun."

"Well?"

"I have news for him, urgent and important news."

The Lenin Boy laughed shortly and jerked his thumb in the direction
of the palace: "I doubt that you have news more important than the
little lady who doubtless occupies his attention at the moment.  Try
and see him to-morrow, friend.  You will find him more inclined to
listen to affairs of State."

"To-morrow will be too late," protested Gunzi.  "Tell Bela Kun my
news concerns the White Knight."

"What!"  The guard lowered his rifle.  "That is different.  The
Devil!  Why did you not say so before?"

"Did you give me a chance?" asked Gunzi, but the other had not heard,
for with a muttered "Follow me!" he turned and was threading the
barricades toward the entrance of the Batthyany mansion.

Five minutes later Gunzi was taken to Bela Kun, and there received
another shock.  Partly warned by the waiter at the beerhouse, he had
realized that he would find the Dictator partaking of some sort of a
feast, but in no way was he prepared for the positive banquet which
was set out in one of the rooms.

The tables groaned with good food and wine, all commandeered, and
round them sat dozens of Terror Boys, already showing traces of the
orgy in which they were indulging.  Not only Terror Boys were there,
but many women, kidnapped earlier in the evening and forced to take a
part in the wild revels.

In the Batthyany Palace there was no evidence of the food shortage.
No one seeing the nightly feasts which took place would have
suspected that in Hungary people were starving for lack of
nourishment, that women sold their souls to keep homes going.  The
best of everything was served up to the four hundred odd Terror Boys
and the commissaries, with their wives and mistresses.  "The
Commune!"  One day in the future dictionaries will print another
definition of the word.  Perhaps--"mine--thine."  It will be
sufficient!  The true Communist may rant of "share--share!"  He can
afford to, he who has nothing to share!

Gunzi could readily conceive Bela Kun's dislike to being interrupted
after the business of the day was over.  On his knee sat a young
girl, perhaps nineteen or twenty years of age.  Her clothes were torn
in front from neck to waist, exposing here and there two snowy-white,
innocent breasts.  Her dainty little face was suffused with terror;
her dilated eyes, her trembling lips were ample evidence that she was
in torment--and Gunzi saw that she was but one of many.

When he saw the detective Bela Kun glanced up with an ugly frown.  "I
hear you have urgent news for me concerning the White Knight?  What
is it?  And listen, my friend, if it is not important----"  He left
the threat unspoken.

Gunzi, who in his own way was not unpossessed of his share of
courage, smiled slightly.  "Fear not, Comrade Bela Kun.  My
information is more than urgent.  It needs immediate attention.

"To-night I arrived in Budapest from Aszod and entered a tavern for a
glass of beer.  There I came across a man, half-drunk, who rose to
his feet and told the company at large that an assistant commissary,
by name Apor, had been arrested to-day."

Bela Kun's eyes narrowed.  "This grows interesting.  I thought the
fact of Apor's arrest was secret.  Go on."

"Next," continued Gunzi, "he told us the reason why.  Apor had been
found corresponding with the Whites in Vienna."  He looked at the
Dictator for confirmation, and the other nodded his head slightly.
"There was an uproar from his listeners, but this drunken fool had
not finished blurting out all his secrets.  He told us all something
else.  He said that Apor was also an emissary of the White Knight."

He stopped short.  With a roar of rage Bela Kun rose to his feet in a
turmoil of excitement, throwing the girl to the floor, where she lay,
sobbing.  Fiercely the Dictator peered into the face of the
detective, seeking to divert the direct stare of the other, but
Gunzi's glance did not waver.

"Satan!  If that is true----"

His words rang queerly to the astute detective.  "What do you mean,
comrade?" he asked hoarsely.  "Did you not know that?"

"No, by God, I did not!"

"Then," said Gunzi quietly, "that proves my theory.  The man who,
with a drink-loosened tongue, let me into all his secrets must have
been a member of the White Knight's gang."  He smiled scornfully.
"That must have been good wine!"

Bela Kun waved his hand impatiently.  "Tell me more."

"I got this man to talk.  He told me much; not all that I wanted, yet
sufficient to assure me that before the sun rises to-morrow Apor will
have been rescued."

"Impossible!  Apor is imprisoned in the cells beneath Parliament
House."

The detective shrugged his shoulders.  "Yet it is all planned.  The
White Knight has a letter from you, an order to release an unnamed
prisoner----"

He was interrupted by a hoarse growl of rage from the Dictator: "The
Devil!  He speaks the truth.  Some time back I wrote one out.  It
disappeared.  How did he get that?"  Light dawned in his mind.
"Apor!"

Gunzi nodded.  "You see, comrade, I do not exaggerate.  That much I
discovered, but that was all.  Not only will the White Knight rely
upon that letter, but he has some other plan up his sleeve.  What it
is I cannot tell.  If you wish to keep Apor prisoner you must act
now--immediately."

"You are right."  Bela Kun's face worked with the rage which consumed
him, but presently his face calmed, and slowly a smile--a grin of
wile and cunning--spread across his features.

"I think," he said, chuckling, "that for once the White Knight is
going to fail.  Before the sun rises to-morrow morning Apor will be
dead."

"You mean...?"  Gunzi raised his forehead inquiringly.

"I mean that I shall telephone immediately to Parliament House.  In
less than ten minutes' time a few trusty Red guards will convey Apor
to the Suspension Bridge and drop him into the Danube, bound hand and
foot, that the rat shall not struggle.  Do you not think that a good
scheme?"

"It is the only one," agreed Gunzi admiringly.




_CHAPTER XIV_

Two men crouched back deep in the shadows of Parliament House,
tensely waiting, waiting with a nervousness neither could conceal.

"Arnold, the time goes slowly.  I feel damnably afraid.  Supposing my
plan should miscarry, supposing I have failed to elucidate the
intricate workings of Bela Kun's twisted mind, I shall have signed
Apor's death-warrant just as if I had passed judgment on him myself."

"You can do no more, Geoffrey, than what you have done.  In any event
Apor would die."

"Never have I perpetrated such a thin, feeble plot, Arnold.  It has
so many weak links.  When Gunzi passes on the news to Bela Kun, the
Dictator may refuse to credit Gunzi's story; on the other hand, he
may be so enraged that he will telephone through to have the poor
fellow bayoneted right away.  Or, if Apor is to be flung into the
Danube, he may do it from Parliament House, and all we shall hear
will be a splash and--and Apor will be no more."  His voice broke
slightly.

"That--that, I am afraid, is your weakest link, Geoffrey."

"No, you are wrong there, Arnold, and it is upon my estimation of the
ingrained cruelty of the Red guards that I have staked the success of
my plans.  To you or me it would be an easy matter to dispose of--of
Apor.  A blow on the head, and over the balustrade into the river.
Nothing could be more quiet, more secretive.

"Such a programme fails to satisfy the Communists.  It is too quick
and too easy a death, so they drag their victims to one of the
bridges.  That takes time--every yard progressed is a mental,
poignant stab for the unfortunate prisoner.  Every step is punctuated
with a thrust from a rifle butt or the prick of a bayonet.  Fine
torture that, Arnold, and ... well, I hope to Heaven that they think
Apor worthy of it.  Otherwise he is doomed and----"

Some one stumbled in the distance, and with a warning touch on
Arnold's arm Wenzel stopped short, and the two Englishmen waited,
hoping against hope that Bela Kun would fall into the trap.  With
fierce eyes they watched the door from which the condemned prisoners
were led.  Would it open?--would it open?

The streets were quiet and comparatively deserted.  At night only the
Terror Boys, or slinking fugitives, ventured out, for there were
flying bullets, apt to hit the most innocent targets.  At night the
Red guards were even more belligerent.  Those who would live, or
remain unmolested, stayed indoors.

Thus the steps of the one whom Wenzel had heard in the distance
echoed loudly in the quietness, and the next instant the air
resounded with the notes of a jubilant song.  In quavering tones,
hideously out of tune, punctuated with hilarious bursts of laughter,
the inebriated singer disturbed the peace, and the effect was the
more weird for its jarring contrast to the air of tragedy in which
Budapest was steeped night and day.

Suddenly Wenzel swore.  Judging by the increasing clearness of the
wild sounds which the man uttered he was approaching Parliament
Square.  The White Knight clenched his fist with a desperate
intensity.  "May the Devil seize him, the drunken swine!" he
whispered.  "If his visit here should coincide----"

The door which they watched was opening, formless shapes could dimly
be seen issuing from it, and the next moment Wenzel knew that up to
this point his plot was a success, for in the vague, uncertain light
of an adjacent street lamp he could distinguish Apor, handcuffed,
surrounded by three armed Red guards.

The moment the door was shut behind the group the time for action
would have arrived.  Wenzel and Arnold gripped their revolvers by the
barrels, ready to bring them down upon the heads of the soldiers.

The drunkard came nearer, and Wenzel could have cried cut in agony.
Instead of proceeding with their ghastly business, the guards were
hesitating, looking curiously around.  The Englishmen shrank closer
into the shadows.  If they were seen...

For some reason the men seemed disinclined to slam the door, and
start.

"Hullo, comrade, what noise is that?" asked one.

The man to his right laughed slightly.  "Some one who has failed to
heed Bela Kun's instructions as to prohibition.  His row is enough to
awaken the dead.  What say you, friends--shall we knock him across
the head with our rifles and teach him a lesson?"

"You are envious, you," exclaimed the third man.  "Let us get this
job over.  I feel sleepy."

"Yes, leave the poor devil alone.  He is lucky to get it, that's what
I say."

The sanguinary one hesitated, and the damage was done.  The group had
been seen.  Steering an erratic course the drunken singer made toward
them.

"What ... matter...?  What are you men doing here?"

Wenzel stiffened.  The voice was reminiscent.  He peered through the
darkness, but the newcomer had his back toward him.

"Move on, comrade, and mind your own business."

"Who you telling--mind my business?  I am commissary--for me order
you about...."

"Hell!"  The guard who had originally suggested doing what Wenzel
longed to do turned upon the drunken man with an angry air: "Don't
you talk like that, my friend.  Get on, I say!"  He stretched out an
arm and roughly pushed the other, so that the commissary stumbled and
nearly fell.  By swinging round he saved himself, and then Wenzel saw
his face.

A wild sense of exhilaration bubbled up inside the White Knight.  How
wrong to think that Fate was playing against him!  How wrong, when it
was just the opposite!  How it was that the man came there, what he
was doing in Budapest, Wenzel could not even imagine, but at that
moment nothing mattered, nothing except that after all he could keep
his oath to Elizabeth, for there, in front of him, was Comrade
Gonnard.

he gripped Arnold's arm convulsively, and with the slightest hiss
Terhune signified that he was prepared.  Events were turning out more
propitious than either of them had dreamed.  For a brief space the
Red guards were interested in disposing of Gonnard, and without being
aware of it their vigilance had lessened.

Once again Wenzel's fingers conveyed a message, and the next instant
two silent forms leaped from the shadows of Parliament House.  There
were two sickening thuds, as two of the guards collapsed to the
ground with scarcely a moan.

The third man yelled with surprise.  Hypnotized by the sudden attack,
his limbs refused to move until he saw three shadows advancing toward
him with an uncanny quietness.

His hand darted to his belt; even as he pulled out the heavy Army
revolver his fingers tightened on the trigger, and a stream of
bullets whipped through the air, the attendant flickering flashes of
light momentarily lighting up the drama with a ghastly clarity.

Almost before the guard's last shot had finished echoing
reverberatingly round the square it was challenged by two new
reports, and even while Apor whirled round and dropped, and Gonnard,
the third man, grunted and gently collapsed, the guard shrieked, and
then he too slumped to the ground, where he lay still and motionless.

Wenzel was conscious that one other shadow still remained upright.
"Who is it?" he asked hoarsely.

"I am untouched--and you, Geoffrey?"

"Safe--but I am afraid Apor is down."

It was Apor himself who answered: "Only a flesh wound in the arm,
Wenzel."

"Thank God!  But now we must run like Hell.  Quick, Arnold, help
Apor."

Already Apor was making an effort to stumble to his feet, but his
manacled hands made the task difficult.  Arnold bent down and
practically lifted him to his feet.

"Away with you," Wenzel growled--his ear caught the sound of running
footsteps inside Parliament House--"they are coming."

For one second Arnold hesitated: "And you, Geoffrey?"

"Leave me, I will join you--later," he answered quietly.

There was no time to argue.  With a quick run Arnold and Apor
disappeared into the night _en route_ for a previously arranged
destination, and Wenzel laughed softly to himself.  Provided that
nothing unforeseen should happen, in five minutes' time Apor would be
safe, and once again the White Knight would have scored another
triumph.

He knew that he should run--he could hear the reinforcements,
shouting in their excitement, just inside the door.  Four, three more
paces and they would be in the open, their revolvers cocked ready to
spit at the shadow which he knew would be faintly visible to them.
Yet, before he left, there was one more task to do.

Gonnard was lying at his feet: alive or dead he knew not, nor was
there time to investigate.  That would do later.  He picked the body
up and flung it across his shoulder.  The first guard came through
the door, and Wenzel fired.  His aim was true, the man fell heavily.

There were dismayed cries from the others, and the rush ceased
suddenly.  It was all that Wenzel required.  He turned, and his long
legs carried him across the square and away into the friendly
darkness, while the bullying Red guards cowered back, shooting
indiscriminately from the cover of the protecting doorway.

There was no pursuit, and as Wenzel quickly drew farther away the
crackle of the shooting sounded fainter, until suddenly it stopped,
and the White Knight knew that revenge for the death of Elizabeth's
cousin was now certain.

He was well away, and rapidly drawing near the Suspension Bridge.  He
stopped short as he approached it, but there was not a soul to be
seen, and he continued on his way across it.  In the centre he halted
again, and slipped the unconscious commissary from his shoulder.

Gonnard was not dead.  His heart was thumping irregularly, but
strongly, and even as Wenzel laid him down the wounded man stirred,
moaned with pain, and spoke.

"My ankle!  What has happened?  My ankle, it hurts.  Where am I?"  He
spoke as though his mind were in a haze.

Wenzel bent over to him and whispered in his ear: "In the hands of
the White Knight, Comrade Gonnard, and to-day----"

He heard the Communist gasp.  There was a moment's silence, tense and
dramatic, then Gonnard shrieked with horror.  Wenzel clapped his hand
roughly over the mouth of the other, and the noise died away to a
faint gurgle.

With the other hand Wenzel fumbled in his coat.  Always prepared for
emergencies, there was a length of rope in his pocket.  Sternly and
unemotionally he adjusted a noose, and slipped it round the neck of
the commissary.  The other end he tied to the steelwork of the bridge.

Easily, as though he were lifting a baby, he raised the Communist up.
Once again he whispered in his ear: "The White Knight pays the debts
of two Hungarian officers, comrade."

Then he dropped the helpless commissary toward the water: Gonnard
fell the length of the rope, moaning.  The noose tautened--the corpse
swayed to and fro like a pendulum--and with a set face, on which
there was not the slightest expression of pity or horror, the White
Knight passed on his way.  In the country of lawlessness there was
but one law: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!"  His merely
the hand of judgment--alas, the only hand!

* * * * * *

"Suicide!" was the general verdict of the large crowd which gathered
round to watch the unusual spectacle of a man hanging in mid-air,
suspended from the bridge.

The news spread rapidly.  Some one recognized the corpse as that of a
commissary.  The rumour came to the ears of the Council, the meeting
was hurriedly adjourned, and many of its members hastened to the
bridge.

Some one pulled the body up.  The pockets were searched ... and the
Communists glanced affrightedly at one another.  There was no need to
explain the tiny piece of carved wood which the searchers discovered.

The white knight spoke for itself.




_CHAPTER XV_

When Elizabeth eventually awoke from her last unsettled sleep she
became conscious that her body was cramped, aching in every bone, and
she hazily wondered why.  Next she frowned, for her eyes failed to
recognize her surroundings.  Then she tried to flick from her face an
unruly, annoying hair, and not until she found it impossible to move
her arms did her mind become clear.

All at once she remembered the events of the day before--her
abduction, her agonized wait through the long hours for the return of
her jailer--and finally she recollected relaxing.  After that she
assumed she must have fallen asleep.

She still sat upright on the chair, the one and only article of
furniture in the attic other than an equally rickety table--and an
empty soap-box.  Her mouth caused her more terrible pain than she had
ever imagined existed, and she wondered how the hurt of it could have
allowed her to sleep.  Her arms felt numb and paralysed.

Despite everything she felt a wave of exhilaration: she was still
unharmed, uncontaminated.  It was almost a good omen.

This feeling did not last long, for gradually it evaporated, a blank
despair taking its place.  There was no means of knowing the time,
but a faint suspicion of chill in the air made her suspect it to be
still early morning.  Even so, it meant that she had been missing
from the _château_ for twelve or thirteen hours, sufficient time to
have confirmed the worst misgivings of her father and of her
fellow-refugees.

Thoughts of her father hurt.  His gentle soul would suffer from the
uncertainty of her fate.  What would he imagine had happened to her?
Would he suspect the truth?  She endeavoured to persuade herself that
such a thought would be farthest from his mind, but unfortunately she
realized only too well that one of the most possible solutions of her
disappearance would be what had actually occurred.

What would the White Knight say?  As not infrequently happened, her
thoughts turned toward her two brief recollections of her rescuer.
Extraordinarily enough, each time she had met him they had remained
in pitch darkness, so her only memory of him was his voice.

The thought of him thrilled her.  In thinking of him who was known as
the White Knight she became aware of an extraordinary glow of warmth
within her, as though, at the mention of his name, there was kindled
an inward fire.  Her blood pounded through her body all the more
hotly because of it, and, almost against her will, her brain visioned
dreams--light fairy fancies which airily danced to the blithe tune of
her innermost desires.

As yet she was unaware of the reason.  In her life of partial
seclusion, her father and his work had occupied the greater part of
her thoughts, so that his alone would not be the triumph when his
book finally saw the light of day.  Her work and her encouragement
had been invaluable to him.

With her day occupied, and her maternal instincts satisfied in the
loving care of her father, men had somehow failed to find a place
within the limit of her mental horizon.  Love, marriage, and
motherhood had been names only; to be venerated in due course
admittedly, but as yet relegated to some future time.

She naïvely believed her interest in the White Knight to be
unexpressed thanks for his deliverance of her father and herself from
the clutches of the Communists, and therefore it did not seem unusual
that the memory of the deep vibrant clarity of his voice should ring
so repeatedly in her ears.  Strangely enough, the quality of their
voices was to each of them a revelation of the other, for it had been
the fearlessness, the steadiness, the sweet cadence of Elizabeth's
tone which had first attracted the White Knight's attention, though
afterward her voice ceased to be remarkable because it inevitably
became an integral part of her charm and beauty.

She was convinced that, to judge by the little she knew of him, he
was all that an English gentleman should be, and so she was wont to
visualize him as being tall, and owning more than his fair share of
strength, for had he not fought the swift Danube current, landing
them both in safety--a feat she had previously believed impossible?

He had been excellently educated; his cultured voice assured her of
that; his accent, the result of four years' practice that he might
converse worthily with Zita, was irreproachable, his foreign
mannerisms discernible only to the acutest eye.

Of his age she was more uncertain.  Physically she would have
surmised that he was at the zenith of manhood; in strategy and
generalship he seemed apparently older by a score of years.  That
this last assumption might be correct she hated to admit, not
realizing that four tense years at the Front more than made up for a
thrice longer period lived under mor peaceful conditions.

As to his characteristics, she considered it scarcely incumbent upon
her to criticize one who risked his life daily to aid the helpless
nobility of a country against which he had but lately been fighting,
and in any event she could not conceive that in such a man there
could be anything other than good.

It was only about his looks that she was doubtful.  In her
imagination she saw him with strong but sympathetic blue eyes,
possibly shadowed by slightly heavy eyebrows.  His hair, she felt,
would be of a nut-brown colour, alive with crisp, irregular curls,
while his face surely would be long, consistent with his height.  His
nose undoubtedly was finely chiselled, his chin round, firmly
betraying the masterfulness of its owner.

The White Knight!  How applicable was the name!  He was indeed a
knight-errant, truly a 'White' knight as opposed to the 'Reds.'  Like
a legendary figure of the past, he might have arisen from the ashes
of forgotten heroes, have been a reincarnation of one of the saintly
king-warriors with whom the pages of Hungary's history abound.

Such was her dream-picture of him, such was the cloak of perfection
in which she had wrapped his personality!

* * * * * *

There was a sudden clamour in the street below, and Elizabeth
realized that for a brief time she had forgotten her plight in
contemplation of the White Knight.

She heard a voice shrieking, "Long live the Commune!" and shuddered.
How long would the hated Commune exist?  Had not the Communists
already dragged their country into the lowest depths of degradation,
without wishing to exist solely for the purpose of completing the
ruin?  During her stay in the _château_ she had learned the real
meaning of Communism, what it had done to her country, and to Russia
also.

She tried to struggle to her feet, but found that her legs were
lifeless.  The rigid attitude of her sleep had prevented the blood
from circulating; when she tried to stretch she found she could not
move her limbs.

Her under lip trembled slightly.  Sleep banished, dreams dissolved,
once again the full realization of her plight returned to her.  Why
had the Communist not returned?  How could she escape before he did?
Her eyes gleamed more brightly and her mouth tightened to control the
quivering muscles.  Her courage returned in full, overpowering even
the knowledge of her helplessness.  Had she not struggled for hours
the night before till her wrists bled, fruitlessly endeavouring to
free her hands?  Had she not worked her mouth till it was swollen and
sore to dispose of the gag, without the slightest suggestion of
success to encourage her?

For all that she would try once again.  Whatever she might suffer
now, it would be as nothing compared to what she would have to endure
should the commissary return.  Before anything, however, she realized
it was necessary to force her legs into activity again.

She began by concentrating all her will-power to fidget her toes
about.  For some time there was no response, so she tried tightening
the muscles of the limbs with spasmodic jerks.  The effort of doing
this caused her exquisite torture.  Acute, tormenting pains shot up
and down the arteries, so that she had to bite her lips to prevent a
moan escaping.

Again and again she worked her muscles so, till at last feeling
returned to her toes.  After that her work became easier, if more
painful, until finally she felt she could stand, and with a great
effort braced herself up to her feet.

She had overestimated the strength of her legs.  They were unable to
bear the weight of her body, and she fell to the ground with a heavy
crash which jarred every nerve in her body, twisting her arms until
she wondered if either of them was broken.

For ten minutes she remained as she had fallen, a hundred different
pains racking her body, while her brain havered on the borderline of
consciousness.  Only an indomitable will to refrain kept her from
fainting.

At the end of that time she recommenced her exertions, but now she
was in an even more awkward position than before.  There seemed only
one way of gaining her feet.  Rolling to the wall she placed her back
to it, and pushing with her slowly reviving legs gradually forced
herself upward until she stood.

She crossed to the window and looked down upon the street below, but
it was quieter.  Evidently the crowd who had just been noisily
acclaiming the merits of the Commune had departed for another
quarter; there were not more than half a dozen people in all to be
seen, of which number three were women and two children.

The sight served to cheer her more than anything else.  She felt that
if she could but escape from the room she might yet gain a safer part
of the city without molestation.  Yet--how to free her hands?

Despairingly she gazed round the room.  There seemed nothing in any
shape or form which could possibly assist her.  Obviously there was
but one thing to do--to continue twisting her wrists as much as
possible in the hope of finally loosening the handkerchief.

Perhaps half an hour passed, but it became more apparent that she was
no freer than she had been at first.  She angrily chided herself on
her woman's weakness, confident that a man could have wrenched his
hands apart from sheer strength.

She could feel her wrists bleeding again, the skin bruised by the
rasping of the material.  She did not know how much blood was
escaping, but there was enough to make her hands sticky, and she
became afraid that if the cloth should become saturated it might
shrink.

Feverishly she continued struggling, and for some time without any
signs of success, but suddenly her thumb slipped through into a fold.
She forced it higher and still higher till it hurt, but all at once
it was free.  The rest was easy.  While her index finger struggled to
follow suit, she forced the material farther down the hand, till a
few seconds later her arms were free, and her mouth too.

Then she cried--not from pain or fear, but from pure relief.  Only a
few seconds before she had believed her task impossible, and then,
unexpectedly, she had succeeded.  There remained now only the door.

Drying her tears she approached it and caught hold of the handle with
both hands.  Placing her feet against the wall, she pulled, but the
door held steadily, and presently she had to stop to regain her
breath, but for only two minutes or so, when once again she took up
her position.

Her hands turned on the handle; she pulled, and the door swung open.
Gonnard had thought it locked, but the key had merely turned in the
lock; the tumblers had not moved.  Elizabeth laughed, a trifle
hysterically.  She had pulled so hard, when all she need have done
was to have walked out....

What did it matter?  The way to freedom was before her, and, stopping
only to dust herself as far as possible, and wipe away as much of the
blood from her wrists as she could, she crept cautiously down the
steps and into the street.

* * * * * *

It would have been difficult to decide which of the three men walking
toward the Château Juhusz was the happiest.  Apor would have sworn it
to be himself.  During his brief imprisonment he had not been without
hope that the White Knight would rescue him, even if he was more than
fully aware of the difficulties which his leader would be bound to
encounter.

This supreme confidence upheld him, right until the time when he had
fallen asleep in his cell.  At the Communists' threats, at the brutal
jesting of his jailers, he had merely laughed lightly.  Somehow or
other the White Knight would rescue him!

Because of his high spirits the reaction was all the greater when, a
few hours later, he awoke to find a leering face bending over him.

"Come along, my friend, get up."  The words had rung ominously to
Apor's ear.

"And why?" he had asked.  The Red guard had grinned.

"Because why?" he had repeated.  "Because Bela Kun has just
telephoned through and ordered you to be taken at once to the
Suspension Bridge to be dropped over."

"My God!  But that would be murder.  Surely I am at least entitled to
a trial?"

The guard shrugged his shoulders.  "It is none of my business,
comrade.  Besides, what do you want a trial for?  The result would be
the same."

Apor could not deny it.  As assistant commissary he had seen more
than enough of the methods of the Communists to know how true was the
remark.

The blow had been a heavy one.  Convinced that for some mysterious
reason the Communists had suddenly changed their plans with regard to
him, he had been forced to realize how impossible it would be for the
White Knight to rescue him, and so, with a sinking heart, he had
resigned himself to fate, prepared to meet his death as a man should.

By the time the handcuffs were snapped upon his wrists he had given
up all hope of rescue, and though he walked with a steady step there
had been a bitter smile upon his lips.  He had not understood the
reason for the urgent need of his death--the Communists knew, of
course, of his connexion with the Whites, but as far as he was then
aware, they were not cognizant of the fact that he was also a member
of the White Knight's band.

So, in his own mind, Death had stood at his shoulder, and yet,
unbelievably, miraculously, he had been rescued.  Instead of being
dead he was alive, and his heart filled with a bubbling happiness.
No longer need he pretend; now he could openly declare himself a
White, and fight for the relief of his country from the clutches of
the Bolsheviks.

Arnold, on his part, was filled with a sense of satisfaction, and,
better still, a pleasurable anticipation.  Satisfied, because Apor
was safe, and pleased--more than pleased--because in a few minutes'
time he would see Cecile again, would look into her eyes, where he
hoped to see the flame of welcome, of gladness, because he was still
safe and unhurt.

Their love still remained unspoken, yet to themselves neither
disguised its existence, just as each recognized that it should
remain unrevealed until other times--better times--when the Red
octopus should be slaughtered.

And Wenzel ... in one stroke he had fulfilled his oath to Elizabeth
and, by an ingenious plan, had rescued Apor.  The one puzzling aspect
in the drama--namely, how it was that Gonnard was in Budapest--did
not worry him for long.  What mattered how he came there?  He had met
his fate, and Elizabeth was avenged.

Elizabeth!  It was because he was near Elizabeth that the White
Knight was conscious of an infectious gaiety in the air.  Within a
few minutes they would reach the clearing.  Then, while Apor and
Arnold went in, he would climb one of the bordering trees, and with
greedy eyes would watch every fleeting expression which would cross
her face, every graceful movement of her body, while she walked the
weedy gardens of the _château_ with Cecile, with Arnold, or with her
father.

He was content just to watch her so, to worship her from afar.
Beyond that he knew he might never dare venture.  If once she saw
him--his searing scars...  He visioned her face if that should ever
happen, and saw how it would twist into horror; how she would shrink
away in disgust.

He forced these thoughts from his brain and indulged in more roseate
dreams.  Arnold, he knew, understood, and would diplomatically
arrange that for a short time she should wander where he could best
see her.  Dear old Arnold!  What did it matter to him what happened
to Hungary?  What had been his reason for helping Hungary?  Only an
innate pity for the helpless, a gallant, old-fashioned quixotism, a
love of adventure, and, above all, friendship for the man who was now
his leader.  That was all!  Wenzel smiled to himself.  All,
originally, but now Arnold had another interest in Hungary.  He had
been rewarded.  Well, he deserved it.  He had risked his life for
Hungary, and sooner or later, if all went well, he would pluck one of
her choicest blooms for himself.

No brighter was the sun which bathed the country in its benevolent
smile than the thoughts of the three men and the faces of two.
Whatever his inward thoughts, Wenzel's expression never changed.  He
knew from past experience that, hideous as was his face in repose, it
became positively satanical when he smiled, for then his face
puckered up, his wounds twisted into grotesque shapes, and to look
upon him thus was as if looking upon the visage of a satyr, a mocking
mask of demon-like cunning.

They reached the edge of the clearing.  With a slight motion of his
head Wenzel sent his two friends forward, then climbed the branches
of an adjacent tree, from where he could see and yet remain unseen.

To his impatient glance it seemed as if Apor and Arnold lagged in
their walk to the _château_, but at last they disappeared within.
Not long to wait now!  A few minutes more and he would see Elizabeth!
Already he knew every sweet expression by heart.

It seemed hours before anything happened, though actually it was but
four to five minutes--just long enough for an hysterical father to
pour the story of Elizabeth's disappearance into Arnold's horrified
ears, and for the tired and despondent searchers to confirm and
corroborate.

Unsuspectingly Wenzel waited.  He wondered why Arnold had not yet
succeeded in enticing Elizabeth into the garden.  Then from his leafy
retreat he saw Arnold hurrying toward him.

Wenzel's eyes narrowed and his nerves seemed to tighten warningly.
There was something in Arnold's attitude, in his unusual walk and
expression, which prepared Wenzel for bad news.  He quickly swung
himself down from the tree, and dropped even as Arnold approached.

"What is it, Arnold?  There is something wrong?"

Arnold's glance wavered and dropped.  "There is, Geoffrey," he said
huskily.  "I--I--Elizabeth Kiss has--disappeared."

Wenzel battled with his emotions.  He felt a tigerish fury arising,
but knew that firstly he must hear all and not let his temper cloud
his reason.

"Tell me!" he said curtly.

"She told Cecile that she was going out to pick wild flowers as
usual--that was some time between four and five o'clock.  Cecile
suggested going as well, but Elizabeth laughingly commanded her to
finish the picture she was painting, and went alone.

"By six o'clock she had not returned.  Imre Kiss began to fidget, and
when at seven she was still missing he insisted on a search-party.

"They divided into groups.  One group headed towards the Budapest
road, and just near found a big bunch of flowers lying carelessly on
the ground, as if they had been suddenly dropped.  That was all!  All
night long they have searched, and there is still no sign of her."

"The Devil!  What does it mean?"  Suddenly Wenzel jerked his head
forward.  "Wheel tracks, footprints, were there marks of any kind on
the road?"

Arnold laughed bitterly: "No one thought of looking.  I asked the
same question."

Wenzel felt his blood seething: "Oh, heavens!  What idiots, what
stupendous fools!  Hell!  For what are brains made if people do not
use them?  Fools!  Fools!"  He clenched his hands in the agony of his
thoughts.  "And you, Arnold, what do you think?"

"Heaven only knows what to think!  So many things might have
happened.  A band of roving Communists may have seen
her--a--a--Hades!  Geoffrey, I hate to say it, but I must--a
licentious lunatic--Heaven alone knows!"

Wenzel bowed his head and groaned slightly.  "Oh, I hope not.  I have
not said anything to you, Arnold, but ... I can never hope for
anything else, yet just to watch her from a distance..."  Suddenly
his mood changed again.  His passionate temper--born the day he first
saw the foul ravishes of the Communists, and aggravated by the
mis-aimed bullet which had seared perilously near his brain--burst
its always unstable barriers, and Arnold saw deep into his leader's
soul, and for the first time saw how near twisting it had been but
for Elizabeth.  He realized also, if anything should happen to her,
how it still might warp.

With fierce, angry words Wenzel blasphemed his Maker, reviled the
world, and even cursed his parents who had brought him into it.  For
a brief space he was insane.  There was no one, not even Arnold
himself, who did not come beneath the flail of his wrath, and Arnold
flinched before the torrent of words which Wenzel released.

Presently he became calmer, and in the end he apologized in halting,
broken sentences.

"I am sorry, Arnold, but--four years I dreamed and planned--for four
years I dodged bullets, praying to God that I might live--I loved
Zita so, she was my beacon, the one star in the black, overcast
sky--full of hope I journeyed to Budapest, only to find her
dead--dead, Arnold, before my eyes, killed simply and solely by
horror....

"Can you wonder that my brain may have given way?  Since then I have
seen worse sights: Szamuelly hanging innocent men just for the love
of killing--gouging out their eyes for the pleasure of
torture--burying his victims alive for the sake of brutality.

"Then God was kind to me--I met Elizabeth.  I can never even let her
see me, yet--once again I have found a star to guide me, and if
anything happens to her too, if the Communists have----  Arnold, I
must not give way."  He stopped, his lips moved, while his teeth bit
into them.

"There, I am calm now....  Arnold, listen!"  His voice was crisper,
once again he was the White Knight, the leader.  "That road, near
which Elizabeth presumably disappeared, is the road to Budapest.  It
is quite possible that Elizabeth has been carried away to that city.
It is but the barest possibility, I admit, yet there must be no stone
left unturned, no avenue which must be left unexplored, to find
her--safe or--or otherwise.

"While I go to Budapest you must go the other way.  Francis can tour
the countryside between Budapest and here; Apor from here onward.

"If you should find her, meet me to-night, fifty yards from the
Tunnel, Pest Bank, on the left-hand side of the road, at nine-thirty
sharp.  If I am not there within forty minutes meet me the following
evening.  Now go.  I shall try to get that early train back to Buda."

With two seconds to spare Wenzel caught the overcrowded train to the
capital.  It meant lying on the roof, but as there were many doing
the same he was in no way conspicuous.  Not very long afterward he
was once again in the lions' den.

Outside the station there was a crowd, gathered in several groups.
Wenzel could see that a spirit of excitement prevailed; there were
many individual speakers, gesticulating less confidently, for they
were being heckled from every direction.  He would have passed
quickly on his way, anxious to get into the heart of the city, from
where he intended to commence his search for Elizabeth, but suddenly
his attention was arrested by the mention of the White Knight.

Even the most secret sessions of the Soviet Council were apt to be
noised abroad, and more than once, by joining Communistic gatherings,
he had garnered information which had subsequently proved invaluable
to him.

"Yes, comrades, despite all the boasting of the Supreme Council that
they would soon have detectives on the track of this White Knight,
this protector of the _bourgeoisie_, this Enemy of the Commune, as he
calls himself, he has been at work again, has flaunted the feeble
efforts of the detectives, and scarcely less than twelve hours ago
had the audacity to rescue again a prisoner from under the very noses
of the Red guards.

"Bah!  The fools!  Do you know the story, friends--would you like to
hear the details?  Eh!  I thought as much.  Yesterday morning an
assistant commissary, named Apor, was arrested by members of the
counter-espionage.  Apor was a White spy.  He was thrown into prison,
into one of the Parliament House cells.  You might have thought that
he would have been safe enough there.  So would I.  But listen.

"Late last night our worthy Dictator learned that Apor was more than
a White spy.  He discovered that the assistant commissary was one of
the White Knight's band.  That was news, was it not, friends?  What
did he do?  What you or I would have done, and wisely.

"He knew the White Knight would try and rescue his follower, so there
and then he telephoned through to Parliament House and ordered the
guards to throw this Apor into the Danube.  Yes, all of you, that was
Bela Kun's order, and no one can say it was wrong.

"In less than five minutes the Red guards left Parliament House with
their prisoner.  They had scarcely got outside the door of the
building when two of them were stunned, the third one shot dead, and
Apor, the traitor, the spy, was rescued!"

His next words were lost in the fierce growl which arose from the
crowd.  Question after question was asked of the speaker, but he
stood mute, holding up his hand for silence, and presently,
recognizing that he still had more to say, the audience quietened
down.

"That was not all!"  With fierce emphasis the man flung the words at
the surrounding crowd, and as they sunk into the brains of the people
there was a tense, dramatic silence.

"Yes, he did more than that!  This White Knight, disdainful of the
Commune and the weak efforts to catch him, hanged a commissary from
the middle of the Suspension Bridge."

Evidently the man had a sense of the dramatic.  He swayed his
listeners as he willed, and Wenzel saw a grin puckering the corners
of his lips as the crowd obeyed his unspoken commands.

The people raged and stormed.  "Death to the White Knight!  Search
him out!  Hang him!"  That and more they yelled and shouted, all the
while Wenzel wondered the reason for the enigmatic smile.  Evidently
the speaker had an axe to grind.

Wenzel was soon to know.  "Now, comrades, if Szamuelly were allowed a
free hand..."  So that was it!  A tout for Szamuelly.  Szamuelly the
murderer was not yet satisfied.  More and more blood must flow to
appease his appetite.

A tiny pin-prick of murderous hatred danced in the White Knight's
eyes.  Not yet had he forgotten Bira, and now Gonnard was out of the
way.  But first Elizabeth.

Now that he was in Budapest, where in the name of creation could he
look for her?  She might be in any one of a thousand buildings, even
assuming that she were indeed within the limits of the city.  She
might be to the north, south, east, or west.

At any rate, for what little good it might be, he had a fixed plan in
his head.  In the morning, which even now was nearly over, he would
call in at every coffee-house frequented by the Council and higher
members of the Commune.  There he might pick up scraps of
conversation or a slight clue, anything which might suggest any
connexion with the disappearance of Elizabeth.

In the coffee-houses, he knew, the talk was apt to veer round to
women.  If they all failed he would try the beer-taverns and the
wine-bars, where the men conversed together even more openly still of
their women-folk, and at one of them what would be more natural, or
unnatural, according to which way one thinks, than that the kidnapper
should boast of his capture?

The spouter outside the station continued to rant of Szamuelly.  It
was evident to Wenzel that he would do no good staying where he was,
and so he carelessly moved off, and was presently away from the
crowds, once again his mind reverting to Elizabeth.

With his thoughts centred upon her he began his weary search.




_CHAPTER XVI_

There are coincidences in real life which far outrival their nearest
cousins in fiction.  Life is a paradox, controlled by mysterious
forces of Nature which even the most learned of students does not
dare to criticize.

Coincidence it may have been, yet there is a more subtle explanation.
On that morning two minds were fixed upon each other.  Wenzel, as he
moved from coffee-house to coffee-house, was aware of one thing, was
obsessed by one thought, only--Elizabeth--he must find Elizabeth; and
so his brain disseminated his innermost resolves and desires, and
upon the wings of Nature's electric waves, for ever radiating through
the ether, were shed Wenzel's mental longings.

On her part Elizabeth crept through the streets of Budapest with a
furtive air.  She wandered hither and thither, up one street and down
the next, only knowing that she sought a station, or a neighbourhood
she knew, but afraid to ask, to question passers-by, lest she should
draw attention to herself.

Despair was in her attitude.  Even if she reached a station she had
no money with which to journey back to the _château_ again.  In the
sullen, uncouth faces which paraded the streets of the Communist
stronghold, where was one which she could recognize, where was one,
perhaps kindly and sympathetic, to which she might turn for succour?

There seemed not one.  In the days of the Red Terror Budapest was
safe only for the Terrorists, the Red guards, and their rabid
supporters.  The rest had fled or else kept within the scanty
security of their single rooms.

The very environment of the town filled her with a nervous dread,
brave and fearless though she was ordinarily.  In her plight there
was but one upon whom her thoughts turned.  The White Knight!  If
only he knew!

So, as she wandered aimlessly, she wondered what he would think of
her.  What would he do when he discovered her disappearance?  What
could he do?  She smiled bitterly to herself.  There was nothing.  In
all Hungary how could he possibly surmise that she was in Budapest?

She encouraged herself to think of him as she continued her search
for--what?  She herself scarcely knew.

Like magnet and steel they gradually drew together.  Neither of them
aware of the fact, their thoughts were, attracting one another,
picking up the broadcast messages, until suddenly, as each turned a
corner, they met with a force which sent her reeling to the wall, and
his hat to the ground.

Wenzel stared at her with a blank amazement.  Like a miracle she was
all at once before him, not a vision of her, but the real her,
panting for breath.  His eyes lit with a glare, a flash of triumph,
of love; his lips moved to shout out her name in a glad welcome; but
just in time he remembered.

He dared not do so.  She must never know him for what he was, never
realize that she had met the White Knight face to face; for his
romance would be broken, never to be mended.  He felt the horror with
which she would always in future regard him, for, with a bitterness
which cut into his heart, he saw it already rising in her eyes.

He did not misread her expression.  A cold wave of terror swept over
her as she recognized the face of the man who had looked up at her
window the night before.  Too vividly she remembered the scars, the
evilness of his looks.  She shrank away from him, sick and faint lest
he should take notice of her.  Even Gonnard before this man--and at
that moment she prayed to God that He might send the White Knight to
save her.

He saw on the other side of the road a man, whom he knew to be a
journalist, eyeing them queerly.  With a vile oath he crammed his cap
back on his head again, and spat on the ground.  With a leering
glance he moved on.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the newspaper man turn away, so
he looked back.  Elizabeth was hurrying off as quickly as her legs
could carry her.  Wenzel swung round on his heels.  He must not lose
her again.

While he discreetly followed her through the streets, Wenzel puzzled
over the strange problem of her sudden appearance.  The last thing he
expected was to find her at liberty.  At the same time his heart was
troubled with doubts--not of her, but of what horrors might have
happened to her in the meantime.

As the time passed, and the chase continued, along road after road,
he was forced to the conclusion that she was wandering aimlessly.
She was certainly making for no specific object, for first she headed
to the north or the east, then to the south or the west.

It was not until he saw her stop by a communal restaurant, and look
inside with a longing expression, that he remembered that in all
probability she was without money.  He saw her hesitate, move on, and
then retrace her footsteps.  Once again she faltered before the open
door.  Then with a determined movement she went within, and he
groaned.

Not knowing that Elizabeth, starved and miserable, and unable to
stand any longer the pangs of hunger which gripped her, had decided
to throw herself on the tender mercies of the proprietor, he was
convinced that his supposition with regard to her financial stability
was wrong, though he knew that she was doomed to disappointment.
Only those with the red food tickets of the manual labourers or the
blue ones of the intellectual workers were allowed to dine at the
communal restaurants, or even buy food at the shops.

Two minutes elapsed.  He frowned, imagining that, after all, she must
have obtained the necessary tickets, and that she was feeding.
Disturbed, he left his retreat--the shelter of an empty shop
window--and took two steps toward the restaurant.

At that moment Elizabeth emerged, dazed and bewildered by the truth.
In perhaps kinder tones than he had used for a long time the
proprietor had explained that matters were no longer as they used to
be--it was not of his own choice: in the old days he had served
ladies and gentlemen, and liked them well.  No, he dared not serve
her.  He had a wife and child; if he were thrown into prison for
surreptitiously feeding a _bourgeois_--he asked her pardon for using
the word--what would become of them?

As she came out Elizabeth felt the tears springing to her eyes.
Here, in Budapest, in a big middle-Europe city, the capital of a
large country--even then being carved up by the peacemakers in
Paris--her plight was no better than that of a castaway on a desert
island.  Surrounded by food of a kind, yet unable to eat any of it!
Passing thousands of people, yet not daring to speak to one of them!
Scarcely forty miles from the _château_, yet without the slightest
possibility of getting back there!

A bubble of hysterical laughter forced itself to her throat: then,
surprised at her own humour, she looked up, and her mirth died away.
As quickly as Wenzel had retreated to his shelter again, her sharp
eyes had seen and recognized him.

Instinct gave her an inkling of the truth: he was following her.  The
human vulture had scented his prey, and was merely waiting the
opportunity to pounce upon her.

The knowledge threw her into a state of panic.  Obsessed by the
terror with which the man of the scars inspired her, she hurried from
the spot, oblivious of everything except the fact that somehow or
other she must get away from him.

Just before she had been ready to drop with fatigue; now the
startling discovery supplied her with fresh vigour.  Forgetting that
her feet were sore, that blisters were developing, that her legs were
leaden, and her wrists smarting, she blindly threaded the streets in
an effort to shake off her pursuer.

So quickly did she travel, indeed, that she very nearly succeeded.
Not realizing that she had seen him, Wenzel still kept at a
reasonable distance, and thus came to a choice of roads, with no
inkling as to which one she had taken, for both streets curved
inwardly, thus effectively hiding the continuity of each one.

He felt the first warning of temper, a curious constriction in his
throat, but resolutely he conquered himself.  He realized that he
must take a chance.  She had come from the road on the left.
Hurrying as she was, he felt it would have been natural for her to
have taken the nearer one to her, and so he too took the same one,
increasing his pace considerably in an effort to catch her up.

He was wrong.  Elizabeth had not even realized that there were two
roads.  She had seen one ahead of her, and had crossed to it, but,
had she known, it would have been all the same.  The street was a
crescent, curving back to meet itself, and so for the second time
that day they met face to face.

She faltered and stopped; a moan escaped her lips.  All her efforts
for nothing, and with the realization of her failure returned a
consciousness of her weariness, and knowledge that she could continue
no longer.

She leaned against one of the trees which lined the street, her
breast heaving with despair and lack of breath.  One hand clutched
her throat, the other she rested over her heart as if to stay its
wild beating, and thus she waited, physically unable to continue her
flight.

Wenzel read her mind, realized that she had reached the limit of her
tether, and was glad, for in the meantime he had formed a plan in his
head, a scheme by which he could secure her safety, and yet not have
her suspect that he was the White Knight.

With a rapid glance in each direction he observed that there were but
three people to be seen, all women.  He lurched up to Elizabeth.

"Well, my little chicken, a fine chase you have led me."  His voice
was rasping and uncultured, and never for a moment did Elizabeth
connect it with another voice of which, even now, the memory echoed
in her ears.

She looked at him scornfully.  At her steady glance Wenzel felt a
glow of admiration, and at that moment loved her more than ever.  Her
quivering under lip betrayed the fact that her heart was sick with
fear, but otherwise her attitude was one of defiance, of cool
disregard for his blustering arrogance.

He shrugged his shoulders.  "Too proud to speak to me, are you, my
fine lady?  Well, that does not worry me.  When you hear what I have
to say you will soon change your tone."  He lowered his voice:
"Listen, I have news for you from the White Knight."

"The White Knight!"  There was a marvellous transformation, a bright
light dawned in her eyes, and her face was suffused with a newly
found relief and joy.  "You bring me news of the White Knight?  God
be praised!  How knew he that I was in Budapest?"

"Because he saw you early this morning, and sent me after you.  Why
did you hurry away from me?"

His question seemed to awaken suspicions in her mind, for she drew
herself up slightly.  "I will tell that to your master, the White
Knight," she said coldly, and then asked: "What is the message you
bring me?"

"Huh!  Is that all you have to say?  After all my trouble following
you round the city and awaiting a convenient opportunity to speak to
you!  Bah!  I have a good mind not to tell you."

Instantly she was apologetic.  "You will forgive me?" she said
prettily, and Wenzel had to turn his eyes away so that she should not
see into them and recognize the thoughts behind.  "I--I have been
frightened."

"Yes," he answered surlily, "I suppose so.  He said that you were to
come with me and I should take you to him."

"Oh!"  She clasped her hands together.  "Then I shall be able
actually to see him?  God be praised!  I thought I was lost, and yet
for the second time he has come to my rescue.  Where is he?"

"That's none of your business.  You wait and ask him yourself.  In
the meantime, come with me."

"I am ready," she said simply.

Wenzel himself did not know the neighbourhood in which they were, but
with the bump of locality strongly developed he proceeded in what he
believed to be the direction where a week ago he had found new
headquarters.  In the heart of the roughest district of Pest it was
there he believed he would be least suspected and least conspicuous.
Already he had seen in the same street many faces which, if not as
brutal and terrifying as his, were at least more decadent and
bestial, more sensuous and cunning.

He recognized it as a risk to take Elizabeth there, for she was too
beautiful not to be noticed, but, once in his room, he knew there was
less prospect of interference, and less likelihood of being detected
by a chance detective or spy, all of whom were too busy raking in the
_bourgeoisie_ and magnates from the better parts of the town to worry
about the criminal quarters, especially when, in the present lawless
times, their interference meant, more than ever, death.

The journey was long, and as the time passed vague suspicions
occurred to her that everything was not as her momentary optimism had
suggested, and in that spirit she began to see the situation in a
different light.

The man by her side had not once mentioned her name.  Certainly he
had said he was from the White Knight, but what proof had she that he
really was?  She had heard from Arnold and Francis that the White
Knight was known and hated throughout the Communist community of
Budapest, but on the other hand more than revered in the circles of
the persecuted.

It was therefore, she argued with herself, not impossible that her
present escort, calculating from her attitude that she was being
pursued, and perhaps not realizing that he himself was the guilty
one, had craftily used the name, hoping that it would act as a
password to her confidence.

More and more she became uneasy, and when she glanced up at the
scowling face of her guide all her terror of him returned.  Suddenly
she stopped, and when he looked round questioned him.

"Why did not the White Knight himself come after me?"

There was grim humour in her words which unfortunately he alone was
able to appreciate.

"Huh!  So you are suspicious of me, are you, my fine lady?  For why
do I work for this spawn of Satan, this _bourgeois_, the White
Knight?  Only because he pays me good money--money which I spend to
have a merry life.  There is nothing else to live for in these days
but money.  He pays me well, pretty one, but so would Comrade Bela
Kun.  I could give him a lot of information.  He would not be
suspicious of me, nor insult me with sneering glances and haughty
airs.

"Why did not the White Knight himself run after you?  Perhaps he knew
it would be a long chase--though his legs are longer than mine."  He
laughed at his own joke, then leered into her face so that she shrank
back.  "What do you take him for?  An idiot, a fool with the brains
of a babe?  If the White Knight ventured into the street he would be
torn to bits.  Now follow me again if you want to see him."

Without another word, without a look to see whether she was keeping
up with him, he strode on, and almost at once Elizabeth caught him
up.  There was so much truth in his words.  Not only that, but with a
queer feeling of constriction at her heart she realized that a false
move on her part might throw the mysterious Englishman into the hands
of his enemies.  Supposing through her the White Knight were
betrayed...?

The neighbourhood became more shabby, somehow reminiscent, and with a
shock Elizabeth recognized the street.  They were passing by the
building in which she had been imprisoned the previous evening.

Despite herself, doubts again began to arise in her mind.  That she
should be brought to the same street was too much a coincidence.
With a wrenching pain at her heart it seemed to her that, too late,
she saw through the whole plot.  The commissary, having discovered
her flight, had sent a friend out to search for her, and, like an
innocent child, she had believed that the man--of whom instinctively
she had been afraid--was an emissary of the White Knight.

Suddenly she reasoned to herself that the White Knight would never
put his faith in such an evil person as the man with the scars, and
with that thought she became conscious that it was now too late for
her to escape.

The knowledge proved too much.  Wenzel heard her gasp, and suddenly
realized that she was fainting; so with a rapid movement he put his
arm tightly round her waist, and holding her upright by sheer
strength forced her on until at last he came to his destination, and
turned into a dark and evil-smelling doorway where Elizabeth
collapsed into his arms.

More a result of exhaustion than anything else, her brief swoon was
soon over, and she revived just as Wenzel tenderly laid her on a
decrepit bed which stood in a dark corner, scarcely remaining upright.

She sat up weakly.  "You cur, oh, you cur!"  She spat the words out
with a fierce intensity, and two bright red spots glowed in her
cheeks.

Wenzel was amazed at the reception.  Not for a moment suspecting the
trend which her thoughts had taken, not even aware that she had been
near the neighbourhood before, he could not conjecture what her
unexpected words represented, but if he did not know the wherefore of
them, he understood their significance and saw how he could take
advantage of them.

"Ho, ho, my fine lady, more suspicions?"  He laughed mockingly.

"You have lied to me!" she panted breathlessly: "you do not know the
White Knight; you are no gallant helper of his.  Fool that I was not
to understand," she continued bitterly.  "You are a friend of the man
who kidnapped me.  Oh, Heaven, how cruel, how cruel!  To get away
safely once, only to be captured again."  She faltered, and, that he
should not see that her discovery was more than she could bear,
turned her head away.

A fierce glow of relief flooded the whole of his body.  In a few
words she herself had answered a question which he would never have
dared to ask.  Safe and sound, untouched and unhurt!  In his emotion
he laughed aloud, and Elizabeth shuddered, taking it to mean a
confirmation of her accusation.

At the same time her words gave him the clue he needed as to what had
happened, and also assured him that she would never, never suspect
the truth.  He would play up in earnest to the part which she had
allotted him, and so he spat upon the floor.

"Ho, ho!  So you are quick at putting two and two together, are you,
my dear lady?  You have made five of it this time.  You are right up
to a point.  You were missed--and not by the White Knight, oh,
no--and I was sent to look for you.

"But he won't see you again--not yet, anyway.  You are far too
pretty, my dear.  Why should I go to all that trouble for nothing?
It isn't every day I can pick up a fine prize like you for the
asking.  I am going to keep you for myself.

"You have heard of the White Knight, have you?  I thought the bait
would work."  He grinned.  "Well, well, the nearest you will see of
the White Knight for some time now is the one in the box over there.
While I am gone to tell my friend how I lost you, you can work out a
few chess problems and see whether the white knight can prevent his
queen being checkmated.  I shall be back--later."  With a roar of
significant laughter he walked from the room, and this time Elizabeth
heard the key turn unmistakably in the lock.

Her soul wilted, for whatever fear she had felt of Gonnard was
infinitesimal compared with the terror which she now experienced.
There was only one thing which prevented her giving way to the
hopeless despair that gripped her in its vice.  The few words which
he had spoken had flashingly supplied her with a possible scheme of
escape, and, only waiting till the sound of his footsteps had
completely faded away, she leaped from her bed, prepared to risk her
life on one throw of the dice.




_CHAPTER XVII_

A lurking shadow whistled sibilantly as Wenzel approached, and the
White Knight, recognizing its low note, knew that Arnold had kept his
appointment.

"No news for you, Geoffrey."  Arnold's voice was full of sympathy.

Wenzel laughed happily.  "But I have, old man," he announced.  "I
have discovered her.  Listen, walk along with me and I will tell you
everything."  And so, while they walked, talking carelessly, yet
withal keeping a wary eye open for Red guards and the Terrorists,
Wenzel retailed the story of his chance meeting with Elizabeth and
the subsequent happenings.

"And now, this is where you come in.  When I go back there I shall
play up to my part, and torture her mentally so that she will never
believe me anything other than the worst specimen of a Communist on
earth.

"About twenty minutes later you will burst in.  There must be a grand
battle, and in the end you will give me an upper-cut and I shall be
_hors de combat_.  Then you can hurry her away, and the deed will be
done.  Make up some tale or other as to how you discovered her.

"Only one thing, Arnold.  Never, under any circumstances, must she
ever suspect that I am the White Knight.  If you had but seen her
expression when she looked me full in the face!..."

In silence they walked along toward their destination, until at last
Wenzel halted.

"Look, Arnold, you had better have a drink while you are waiting.
Give me about a quarter of an hour, and then follow."

They parted with a handshake, and while Arnold dropped into an
illicit beer-tavern Wenzel passed on to where he had left Elizabeth.

There was no light in the room, but he could hear the sound of her
breathing.  He struck a match and illuminated a half-burned candle,
which, stuck in the neck of an empty wine-bottle, occupied a place of
honour on an old soap-box in the middle of the room.

Elizabeth was on the bed, gazing defiantly at him.

He laughed coarsely.  "Well, my little canary, are you glad I have
returned?"

She did not reply, but continued to gaze at him in a steadfast manner.

He advanced toward her with an ugly glare.  "Sulking, are you?  I
know what to do with perverse women."  He moved another step nearer
to her, his attitude became more menacing, but still there was no
sign of fear on her face, and he thrilled with admiration at her
bravery.

"Speak, you, or by God!  I will choke the breath out of your body
with my fingers," and he waved his hands before her.

"A gentleman," she said at last, "would take off his hat in the
presence of a lady."

He burst into a bellow of rude laughter.  "Do you call yourself a
lady?  Do you know what I have called you to all my friends?  I have
told them you are nothing but a----"

Before the fateful word was out of his mouth she was stung into
activity.  With faring cheeks she sprang up from the bed, her hand
flashed upward, and there was a sharp report as it came into contact
with his face.

His eyes sparkled.  It was just what he would have had her do.
Still, he had a part to play.  With a roar of rage he grabbed hold of
her in his arms and pressed her to him.

He felt her shudder convulsively, and tightened his muscles in
expectation of the struggle which he believed she would put up.  In
that he was unexpectedly surprised.  Her hand strayed to his side,
fumbled there for a moment, then dropped listlessly down again, and
she remained passive within his grasp.

He looked down upon her face, slightly bewildered by her lack of
resistance.  Her eyes were closed, and he wondered whether she had
fainted in horror, but even as he looked they flashed open.

There was a quizzical expression within them, a curious sense of
elation; and suddenly he became conscious of a feeling of uneasiness.
It was almost as if she had deliberately played for this moment.

Once again he looked into the depths of her eyes and saw therein a
mocking devil which gibbered at and scorned him.  A tempting,
overpowering sensation gripped hold of him.  Flashingly it occurred
to him that never again in his life would he hold her quiescent in
his arms.  Her lips were there, so red and inviting, so near to his.

He knew it was the last thing he should have ever dreamed of doing,
it being far from his nature to take advantage of a woman in his
power, but his leaping blood, hot with a fire of passion lit by her
glance and her position in his arms, mounted to his brain: the next
moment he bent over her and pressed his lips gently upon hers.

It might have been any time from five to ten seconds that they
remained thus; then, with a moan, she wrenched her arms upward and,
placing her hands upon his face, pushed with all her might and forced
him away from her.

Instantly he released hold of her, so she drew away from him and
tremblingly sat upon the bed, her fingers upon her lips.  Yet her
expression was not one of loathsome horror as he had expected;
instead it was one of bewilderment.

He wondered why, because he was not to know that during that long
kiss Elizabeth had received a surprise.  She had read his expression,
had seen quickly what was going to happen, and had been unable to
prevent it.  His burning lips had come into contact with hers, and
she had expected from them a bestial, sensuous kiss.  Instead their
pressure had been soft and loving, their contact caressing.

After that momentary pause there was a dramatic interruption, a
pounding on the door, the calling of gruff voices, and the next
moment six Terrorists burst into the room, Gunzi leading them.  The
White Knight knew then that he had reached the end of his race, that
capture, imprisonment, and death were ahead of him.

He leaped for the door, and quicker than the eye could follow his
fist had lifted once, twice, and two of the Red guards reeled
backward with a grunt of pain; then his hand flashed to his
hip-pocket, where reposed a loaded revolver, but just as his fingers
touched its ready butt something dug into his stomach, and he saw
that Gunzi, the detective from Aszod, had him covered.

With a shrug of his shoulders he resigned himself to his fate.  He
had expected it to come sooner or later, and now that it had
arrived...  Only one thing pained him.  Elizabeth would discover that
he was the White Knight.  He had hoped to remain but a mythical
figure in her memory, one of whom she could dream.  Now, if ever she
remembered him, it would be only to shudder.

Gunzi spoke.  Turning to Elizabeth he asked: "Is this the man?"

Elizabeth nodded.  "Yes, the man who stands there, a prisoner in your
hands, is the man for whom the Commune has long searched--the White
Knight!"

During his adventures Wenzel had succeeded in schooling his
expression; whatever his thoughts, they remained secret, being
mirrored neither upon his features nor in his eyes, but at this his
control gave way.  He could not believe the evidence of his
ears--Elizabeth, the woman whom he had twice saved from worse than
death, to betray him thus into the hands of his enemies!

It seemed to him that he must be in the throes of a violent,
unpleasant nightmare, and, as if to awaken himself, he shouted: "You
lie!  You lie!  I am a good Communist, me!  Believe her not,
comrades; she only seeks revenge----"

"But who denies it?" interrupted Gunzi smoothly.  "Of course she
seeks revenge, and rightly so.  Who are you, friend, to insult such a
worthy member of the Commune?  For your very threats to her she seeks
revenge."

He could not understand Gunzi's words.  "What mean you--threats?
What have I done to this woman that she should lie about me?"  His
voice was hoarse, not that his race was ended, but because Elizabeth,
of all people, had been the one to betray him.

Her ingratitude was beyond his comprehension; it was too ghastly that
this--this vile betrayal should be her thanks for everything he had
done for her and hers, as also for others of her country-people.

Gunzi, the rat-faced, smiled derisively: "You did not threaten her,
my friend--you did not, then, send her--this?"  From his pocket he
pulled out a tiny carved piece of wood, a white knight,
all-betraying, all-accusing.  "You did not, I suppose, send her this
as a threat, because she is a good Communist, because she would not
give way to your evil suggestions, eh, my friend?"  He turned to
Elizabeth: "He is but a craven fellow after all; I begin to wonder if
he is indeed the White Knight."

Elizabeth laughed scornfully: "Is not his letter, his threat, proof
enough?  Besides, doubtless he hides in one of his pockets another
such proof of his _bourgeois_ proclivities."

Gunzi smiled softly: "A good suggestion!"  He plunged his hands into
Wenzel's pockets.  In the first two there was nothing, but when the
detective tried another pocket, on the left-hand side, he laughed
triumphantly as he pulled out another small piece of carved wood.
Line for line it was identical with the one Elizabeth had sent him.
Side by side Gunzi placed them on the palm of his hand, and Wenzel
drew in his breath with a hiss of fury.  Like two peas from a pod,
neither differed from its twin by even a fraction of an inch.  Mutely
they convicted him.  They would be proof enough for Korvin-Klein.

Yet how had it got there?  Just as Wenzel knew that Gunzi's words
were lies, lies to weave around him a mesh of evidence from which it
would be impossible for him to escape, so was he positive that half
an hour ago every one of his pockets had been empty of all but money,
a revolver, a handkerchief, and finally a key to his room.

Suddenly he realized the truth, and his head bowed with the anguish
of his thoughts.  Elizabeth's eyes, her expression of triumphant
manœuvre, her failure to struggle when he had first grasped her in
his arms, the slight fumbling of her hand on his waist, finally his
suspicions that she had deliberately encouraged him to do what he had
done--now he understood.  The whole story was an open book before
him.  Elizabeth herself had dropped the white knight into his pocket,
just as Elizabeth had weaved the plot which was to be his undoing.

But Gunzi was speaking to her, and Wenzel listened, his heart sick
with sorrow.

"Here you are, my girl; here is the reward for capturing the White
Knight.  Bela Kun told me to give it you."  He laughed sourly: "You
did well to mention it in your letter to him."

So she had written to Bela Kun!  His temper, ever hovering near the
surface, for the second time that day broke beyond control.  With a
flash of his wrist he knocked the pistol from the hand of the Red
guard who had taken Gunzi's place, and it clattered to the ground.

Almost at once three other guards seized him, but he shook them off
almost as easily as he would have flicked a fly from his sleeve.
Gunzi stood before him, but Wenzel, using his arm as a flail, bowled
him head-first into a corner.

He stood before Elizabeth, and she shrank back as she gazed into his
flashing, murderous eyes.  He seemed a fiend incarnate, and she
shrieked, a long, piercing cry of terror which echoed through the
building and out into the street.

"Delilah!"  Just that one word he spoke, and raised his hand to
throttle her.  She read her fate in his expression.  His scars glowed
redly, his twisted mouth opened, exposing his teeth, and she closed
her eyes, unable to bear the sight of his terrible face.

Dimly at the back of his mind something whispered one word to
him--"Elizabeth!"  After all she was--Elizabeth, and his hands
dropped to his sides.  Then the guards were on him again, six of
them, with Gunzi making a seventh.

He was invulnerable.  With a fierce peal of laughter he battled with
them; the struggling mass of humanity swayed to and fro.  One, two,
three, and yet a fourth went to the floor.  He caught hold of a fifth
one and wrapped his arms round the guard, gradually squeezing the
breath out of the man, all the while using him as a cudgel, but--at
last Gunzi saw his opportunity.  The butt of his pistol lifted into
the air, and, driven downward with the full force of the detective's
arm, it descended with a dull thud on Wenzel's defenceless head.

The White Knight swayed indecisively.  The helpless guard dropped to
the floor, and then Wenzel too collapsed, sprawling across the guard.

It seemed the end.  A few minutes later Elizabeth was left alone, as
with difficulty the Red guards, not one of whom but displayed
evidence of some injury, carried away the heavy, helpless form of
their prisoner.

The door, having been burst open, would not shut properly, and
Elizabeth became aware of curious heads peeping in, for now that the
Communists had gone the curious neighbours and other residents of the
house ventured out to ascertain the meaning of the _fracas_.

Not daring to venture out that night Elizabeth determined to stay
where she was until morning, so she dragged the bed up to the door,
and in that way kept it closed.  In a few minutes' time she had the
pleasure of hearing the unwelcome curiosity-mongers depart.

Her emotions at that moment were indeed mixed, for while she still
trembled over what she believed to have been a narrow escape from
death, she was also very relieved.  By a clever ruse she had not only
rid herself of a man the very sight of whom filled her with
supernatural fear and loathing, but she had also done a service to
one whom she loved--a fact which she had at last come to realize--the
White Knight!

During her wanderings that day she had seen notices, "Death to the
White Knight!" and offers of a reward for his capture.  She had heard
the people's vituperation, the anathemas at the mere mention of his
name, and had realized how the hunt for him was up, how the
Communists were searching for him high and low.

What had she done?  Delivered into their hands one of their own vile
crowd, letting them believe that he was the White Knight.  Him they
would assuredly hang, and then, with the White Knight apparently
dead, the chase for him would cease, making his work of rescue twice
as easy--she did not allow herself to think that through her
denunciation an innocent man would hang.  She consoled herself that,
anyway, such as he more than deserved death.

Fondly believing that she had rendered a great service to her unknown
hero, her heart beat with gratitude to the kindly Fate which had
permitted her to give him a helping hand.

So ran the current of her thoughts, and intermingled with them were
two distinct scenes which constantly reverted to her mind.  The first
was of the kiss which Wenzel had implanted upon her unsuspecting
lips.  It had been as sweet as that of a lover, as gentle and
innocent as that of a child, when it might have been so different,
and as a paradox it puzzled her.  It was so absolutely foreign to his
nature as she knew it, and it seemed almost as though she had gazed
upon a slimy, weedy pond, from out the green vegetation of which had
peeped the pure whiteness of a water-lily.

When she closed her eyes she could feel again the velvet of his lips;
if she could have only thrust away the vision of his mutilated,
repulsive features she believed her heart might have thrillingly
responded--then she chided herself for the very thought.  So with an
effort she thrust from her mind the memory of the kiss, but in its
place was substituted, even more vividly, the moment when he had
stood before her, mad with rage.

"Delilah!"  Why had he termed her Delilah?  She had betrayed him, but
only in self-defence.  How could she have played Delilah to his
Samson?

Samson!  Him the name justly described--seven men hanging on to every
part of his body, their united strength against his, yet it had taken
a pistol-butt to defeat him, a treacherous blow from behind.

The next moment all these thoughts were driven from her mind as she
heard a pounding on the door.  Her heart leaped in dismay, then an
icy chill settled round it, while her nerves twitched.

She feared to give her imagination full play.  She seemed to see a
scene in the street, the scarred man recovering from his blow,
breaking loose, and returning for revenge.

The noise ceased abruptly, and suddenly the bed began to move as the
door was pushed inward.  A muttered shriek escaped her lips, and
Arnold cursed.  What was the White Knight doing, permitting her to
draw attention to them like that?  He pushed still harder, till at
last there was enough room for him to insert his body, and he
squeezed into the room.

There was no Wenzel, only Elizabeth gazing at him with an expression
of horror, which rapidly changed to one of incredulous amazement and
unutterable relief.  The next moment she jumped from the bed and ran
to him, buried her head on his shoulder, and now, with safety in
sight at last, gave way to a paroxysm of tears.

Arnold smoothed her hair compassionately.  He would far sooner Cecile
were in her place just for that brief moment, but at some future date
... and he smiled happily.

As for the White Knight, he could only conclude that for reasons best
known to himself he had changed his plans at the last moment, and had
no doubt that Elizabeth's subsequent words would give him a clue
which he might follow up.

"At last I have been able to reach you!" he murmured.  The sound of
his voice seemed to recall her.  She dried her eyes and drew away.

"How did you know I was here?" she asked.

During the time he had been waiting Arnold had concocted a story to
tell her.  He knew it to be thin, but hoped that, in her relief at
being rescued, she would not be too critical as to details.

"By the most slender coincidence in the world.  Of course,
immediately the White Knight, Apor, and myself arrived at the Château
Juhusz--we rescued Apor, by the way, but of that more presently--we
learned of your disappearance.

"In the meantime the search-parties who had been looking for you
discovered a pile of flowers dropped by the Budapest road, so,
putting two and two together, we assumed that you had been kidnapped.

"You might have been taken either way, so while I came to Budapest,
the White Knight went the other way, while Francis and Apor divided
the rest of the surrounding country between them.

"All day long I had been looking for you, then suddenly I saw you
with a very tall man.  I followed you nearly here, and then, just at
the last moment, lost you.  All this time I have been making discreet
inquiries, till at last I heard that a tall man, with a lady--and the
woman who told me described you to a nicety--had come into this
building.  Here I am.  I soon found out that none of the other rooms
sheltered you, and this was the last one.  When I started pushing the
door I heard you call out, and _voilà_!  I knew I had found you at
last."

He chuckled to himself.  It was not such a bad attempt after all.  He
had told his story with an histrionic ability which emphasized the
strongest links and shaded the weakest points.  Mentally he patted
himself on the back.

Yet, had he known it, he need not have worried.  Since at last she
felt safe Elizabeth was too full of her successful scheme in
disposing of an enemy and helping the White Knight to heed very
carefully what he had been telling her.

Almost before he had finished speaking she commenced to tell him.

"Listen, Monsieur Arnold, I have done a wonderful thing!  During my
adventures to-day I learned how the people here in Budapest rave of
and revile the White Knight, and that there was scarcely one who was
not on the look out for any clue which might deliver him into the
hands of the Commune.

"Listen!  Supposing one were delivered into their clutches whom they
believed to be the White Knight!  Supposing there were sufficient
proof to make them have no doubt that the right man was in their
hands!  Would this not be of invaluable assistance to your wonderful
leader?"

"Undoubtedly, mademoiselle.  Once the chase died down it would mean
that for a time the White Knight could come and go with far greater
safety, and it might be quite a little while before the Communists,
realizing that a trick had been perpetrated upon them, took up the
hunt again.  But, mademoiselle, I scarcely believe such an idea could
be successfully carried out."

Her eyes glowed with triumph.  "Yet, Monsieur Arnold, I have done
this!"

"You have done that!" he repeated in surprise.  "Good God!"

"Yes," she continued.  "By a most wonderful ruse I have deceived the
Communists.

"While I was imprisoned in this room--I will explain how that
happened later on--I came across a box of chess-pieces.  Naturally
there were two white knights among them.  I found also pencil and
paper, and I wrote to Bela Kun and threw the letter through the
window into the road.  I told him where he could find the White
Knight, whom I had recognized as such because I had found a white
knight in his pocket; and to make my betrayal all the more real I
pretended I was doing this for revenge.  Also I claimed the reward.

"Bela Kun acted upon my advice.  He sent six Red guards and a
detective to the place I mentioned.  There they found the man I had
described to them.  There was no doubt in their minds as to the
truth, but, even so, they received further proof, because another
white knight was found in his pockets--a white knight which I had put
there!"

"Good Lord!  But, mademoiselle, you are wonderful!  How on earth did
you manage to put that piece there?"

She hesitated for a moment.  "No," she said at last, "I do not think
I will tell you that."

Arnold did not press the matter.  He did not think it mattered much.
Lost in admiration for her skill, only reckoning the benefit which
his leader would receive from such a scoop, it mattered not to him
the why and the wherefore.

"Mademoiselle, I congratulate you with all my heart.  Your
achievement is marvellous!  But now for home--home before the man
with whom I saw you returns?"  There was a query in his voice.  He
wondered what had happened to Wenzel.

She laughed softly.  "You need not worry about him any more," she
said, and Arnold detected a note of triumph in her voice.  For a
moment he wondered at it.  Had she, then, disposed of Wenzel?  A
horrible, ghastly suspicion arose in his mind.

"Mademoiselle, what do you mean?"  His voice rose shrilly.

Elizabeth looked at him strangely.  There was something in his
suddenly anxious expression, a look of absolute consternation, which
frightened her.  Even in the uncertain light of the flickering candle
she saw his face pale and his eyes gleam wildly.

"What do I mean?" she repeated vacantly, and then faltered.  She felt
terrified.  Arnold's staring eyes--they seemed to hypnotize her.
"Monsieur, I--I mean that--that the man with whom you saw me, the man
who brought me here by trickery, is the man I have denounced to the
Commune as the White Knight."

Arnold could only stare and stare, his face conveying nothing but a
blank look of inconceivable horror and dismay.  His face was now
chalky white, and in contrast to the pallor his eyes seemed
abnormally large--accusing.

What had she done?  If he would only speak!

"Oh, Mother in Heaven!"  She could bear the anxiety no longer.
"Monsieur Arnold, for Heaven's sake tell me what is the matter!  Your
look...  I am afraid, my heart trembles...."

He spoke in emotionless tones, his voice devoid of any feeling
whatsoever:

"Nothing, mademoiselle, nothing, except--the man you have just
denounced into the hands of the Commune as the White
Knight--he--he--he is none other than--the White Knight himself."

There was a dead silence.  Elizabeth did not speak, simply gazed at
Arnold, then, without warning, dropped to the floor unconscious.  And
the Englishman laughed hysterically.




CHAPTER XVIII

Throughout the night Wenzel's head ached abominably from the blow it
had received, but by the time morning arrived, and a grinning,
jeering jailer brought him a meagre pittance of mouldy bread,
together with a cup of water, the pain began to ease somewhat, and he
was able to think more clearly.

Purely in passing curiosity he wondered how many hours it would be
before he died.  Actually he cared neither how soon nor when that
hour might be.  The death for which he had sought after the passing
of Zita and before the rebirth of love in his breast was to be his at
last.

The few minutes during which he learned from Elizabeth's own lips the
entire depth of her treachery had more than sufficed to wash away the
work of weeks.  Once again he was the sullen automaton, hating
creation, its Maker, and all who breathed and lived--even the
unfortunate victims of the Commune for whose rescue he was in the
main responsible.

He did not think of Elizabeth.  Having regained consciousness his
earlier flash of temper died away and he forgave her, realizing that
it was not the action itself which angered him, but the thought of
what had been the real impulse which had urged her to such a course.
The pitiable story was so easy to read.

In his imagination he could picture her as she probably had been
during his absence, when, somehow or other, she must have discovered
his identity.  Aghast--nay, possibly hypnotized by his personality
and satanical appearance--she had passed her knowledge on to the
Communists, probably shocked that such a man as he could live and not
be struck down by the wrath of God!

Then almost at once his thoughts changed and he saw it in a different
light.  He asked himself by what right Elizabeth had passed judgment
upon him.  If she possessed nothing other than a sense of gratitude
toward him for having saved her father from death, surely this should
have been sufficiently strong to have dissuaded her from the step she
had taken.

Yet among all the different aspects of her act which passed through
his mind there was just one which never occurred to him--the true
one.  That she had betrayed him as the White Knight all unknowing
that he was indeed the White Knight in very truth, and, still
further, that Elizabeth had done this that sha might be of service to
him, was never farther from his thoughts than during the time he
gloomed in a Parliament House cell, waiting for the moment when he
would be haled before Korvin-Klein.

In the meantime the Supreme Soviet Council, in session at the
Hapsburg Palace, was in high spirits.  The White Knight captured at
last!  It was almost too good to be true!

There they sat, the rulers of the ruined nation, discussing what
would be the finest form of death to mete out--and by the finest they
meant one which would give the hated Enemy of the Commune the most
exquisite torture, and themselves the greatest degree of pleasurable
gratification.

On one point they were all agreed.  Where or how he should die did
not matter so very much, but when--it could not be too soon.

"Come, comrades," pleaded Korvin-Klein, "why not hand him over to me?
I can assure you he will not escape, and I shall see to it that his
death is all that could be desired."

Pogany grunted: "What about Apor?  Did your men keep him safe and
sound?"

Klein flushed.  "You cannot blame that on me.  Who sent me orders by
telephone?--it was lucky I happened to be there----"

"Unlucky, I think," interrupted Kunfi.

The hunchback shrugged his shoulders.  "Look at it which way you
like.  As I was saying, who gave me orders last thing at night to
drop him in the Danube without a moment's delay?  Bela Kun!  If
Comrade Bela Kun had not 'phoned me he would still have been safe and
sound in the morning."

"Nothing of the sort, Korvin!" said Bela Kun bluntly.  "From the
information I received, the White Knight was coming to you with a
forged order for Apor's release.  It must have been just luck that
they were in Parliament Square at the very time your men were taking
him to his death."

"Do you really believe that, my friend?" asked Klein softly.

"Of course I do!" said Bela Kun truculently.

"Well, I don't, and I don't believe you do either.  You told me
yourself that the detective Gunzi came to you with a story which he
had heard from the lips of the man who, by Gunzi's description of
him, was undoubtedly the White Knight himself.  Gunzi was meant to
hear that story.  The whole thing was carefully planned and executed."

"What of it?"  Bela Kun frowned.  He might be the Dictator, but in
the Soviet they were all "comrades," and though it hurt him to
acknowledge equality with the others he could do nothing but suffer
it.

"Nothing.  I only want to point out that Apor's escape was not my
fault.  You fell into the trap and you alone are to blame.  You are
Dictator, so must take the responsibility."  Klein's attitude was
smoothly peaceful.

It might have developed into a stormy scene, but Szamuelly whispered
into the Dictator's ear, and after swallowing a lump in his throat
Bela Kun accepted the situation with a shrug of the shoulders.

"Very well, I will take the blame.  What matter the escape of the
sprat now that we have caught the whale?"

"Hear, hear!" agreed Bohm.

"Yes, and let us settle the question as to what to do with the
prisoner."

There was a chorus of confirmative growls, and several of them would
have spoken at once, but suddenly Szamuelly held up his hand.

"Let me say a few words, comrades," he said.  "Now that we have at
last the White Knight in our hands, why should we not have the full
benefit of our triumph?  I have a fancy to see this man, to see him
shiver with fear, perhaps to make him howl with pain.  What do you
all say?"

There was not much doubt as to the opinion of the rest of the
Council.  Only Agoston raised a protesting voice:

"One minute, comrades!  Where do you intend to see the White Knight?"

"Why, have him brought here, of course!"

"And is that safe?"

Korvin-Klein chuckled.  "As I have said once before, Comrade Agoston,
I am willing to take sole responsibility for his safety.  Leave that
to me, and if by a miracle he should escape--hang me instead."

Agoston subsided, and the motion was passed unanimously.
Korvin-Klein left the meeting to transport the hapless prisoner from
one side of the river to the other.

There was ample evidence that Klein valued his own neck.  With all
the precautions he took it would have been not only suicidal for
would-be rescuers, but in addition any such plan would have signed
the White Knight's death-warrant.

Not even daring to use the bridge, Klein commandeered a ferry-tug.
Cleared of all but the crew, it was firstly occupied by a guard of
twelve Terrorists.  These Terrorists, each with a cocked revolver in
his hand, took up positions round the deck.  Then was ushered on
board the prisoner, his wrists handcuffed, and, as an added
precaution, not only were his arms bound, but he was attached by a
long chain to Klein himself.

Four men, also with ready revolvers, surrounded Klein and his
prisoner.  Their sole instructions were to shoot the White Knight
dead on the slightest hint of rescue.

Finally, eight other guards posted themselves in various positions,
their duty to keep watch over the crew of the ferry.

From near by Arnold and Elizabeth watched, Arnold alert for any lead
of which he might take advantage, Elizabeth dull and faint with the
turmoil of her unceasing remorse.  So plainly did it seem to her that
the White Knight was going to his death that she clutched Arnold's
arm in an agonized grip and swayed slightly; for the moment he was
afraid she was about to swoon again.

Hastily he attempted to reassure her, but for all the cheerfulness he
forced into his voice his heart was sick with anxiety.  Too well he
realized that he might be gazing upon his friend for the last time.

The Council awaited with impatience the coming of the White Knight;
but when at last the doors of the large hall were thrown open, and in
the midst of twelve guards the prisoner was marched within, there was
a stir of interest, not unmixed with sighs of relief and exclamations
of triumph.

"There you are, friends!  Have I not carried out my bargain?"  Klein
bombastically patted himself on his narrow chest, then waved his hand
in the direction of Wenzel.

The Communists gazed upon their prisoner with a glance of unconcealed
curiosity, in which was intermingled a _soupçon_ of puzzlement, a
suspicion of disdain.

Standing before them in an attitude of hopeless dejection the White
Knight looked anything but a formidable opponent.  His filthy clothes
hung upon him as they would about a scarecrow, a comparison
intensified by the dirty scarf which covered up the lower part of his
face, and the cap which in a slovenly fashion rested low on his head,
almost covering his eyes.

Kunfi laughed scornfully: "That man the White Knight!  Ha!  You are
having your wish, Szamuelly.  Why he trembles with fear even before
we speak to him!  I am surprised.  I expected to see at least a man,
not a bundle of old clothes, a shivering worm."

The humour of the Communists was misplaced.  Themselves wearing
stolen clothes--suits from the wardrobes of the _châteaux_, shirts,
collars, and ties from the _appartements_ of the rich--their
criticism of the White Knight's garments merited the satire of
Voltaire, or of the more gentle Lamb.

Korvin-Klein now took command.  Walking up to the White Knight he
said genially: "So you were caught napping at last, my friend!  You
should have remembered that history usually repeats itself.  Exposed
by a woman!  You will be in good company, comrade, when you reach the
other side, and will have many sympathizers."

"I do not know what you mean.  Why have you arrested me?  Why am I a
prisoner?"  The prisoner's voice was weak and trembling.

Klein laughed derisively, and turned to his fellow-Communists: "Do
you hear that, all of you?  He wants to know why he is arrested.  Is
that not a good joke?"  He roared, and his mirth was echoed all round
the large hall, even the Terrorists joining in.  They were beginning
to be glad of Szamuelly's suggestion.  It looked as though Klein
would create an interesting scene.

The head of the Detective Department turned to the White Knight
again: "Just to humour you, I do not object to letting you know,
comrade.  It is because you are the White Knight, the self-styled
Enemy of the Commune, the champion of the _bourgeoisie_, the rescuer
of magnates."

There was a fresh outburst of hilarious laughter at Klein's long
recital of the White Knight's many titles.

The prisoner moaned slightly.  "I do not know what you are saying.  I
am no enemy of the Commune.  I am a good Communist.  Have I not
plenty of friends to prove it?  Please don't kill me, oh, please,
Comrade Korvin-Klein!  I am a poor innocent man who does not know
what you mean, who has never done a crown's worth of harm to anyone
except the _bourgeoisie_, and whose only fault is desiring a pretty
woman."

Klein looked at him queerly: "I suppose you don't deny you were
arrested last night by the Red guards?"

"Of course I don't," whined the other.

"And do you deny having fought with the Red guards to escape from
them?  Is that your idea of innocence?"

"I--I was nearly drunk, comrade.  I met a friend just earlier in the
evening, a tall man, nearly as tall as myself, who took me to a place
to get a drink.  He gave me two full bottles of wine all to myself."

"And then?" asked Klein sarcastically.

"Then he asked me if I would like to earn ten English pounds.  I said
yes.  He put something in my pocket, and told me a woman was
expecting him at such-and-such an address, but that he could not go.
Then he hinted that if I made myself nice to her--well, Comrade
Klein, you know what happens when one is nice to a woman."

Some one laughed aloud, and many of the listeners smiled, but no one
spoke.  Most of them were too interested.  Bela Kun, Szamuelly, and
Korvin-Klein were the exceptions.  These three more astute men were
conscious of a cold, chilly feeling.

"Well, well!"  Korvin-Klein looked at the prisoner steadily.
"Supposing we believe your story, perhaps you can describe the man
who gave you the money and told you to go to the room of this woman."

"Certainly, comrade, certainly," said the other eagerly.  "He was a
broad, tall man, nearly as tall as me, in fact, but he was hideously
ugly, his face was transfigured with scars.  He was a monster.  It
nearly made me sick to look at him."

"Hell!" shouted Szamuelly, "but he has described the White Knight
exactly.  We have heard the same description from Garami and Gunzi,
the detective from Aszod.  Besides, Bela Kun has seen the White
Knight."

"Of course I have," growled Bela Kun.  "I can see the rogue's face
before me now.  Bah! the man is merely describing himself: tightening
the noose round his neck.  Take off that scarf!"

With rough hands Klein seized the filthy scarf from the neck of the
other and tore it off.  There was a stupefied silence.  All eyes
turned in the direction of the prisoner, then, simultaneously,
switched round to the Dictator.

Bela Kun gazed with bewildered eyes at the man who stood before him,
bound and chained, and then rubbed his eyes frantically.  The
prisoner, the man they believed to be the White Knight, had not a
single scar of any kind apparent on his face or neck.

"Good God!  Good God!"  Bela Kun bellowed to Klein, but his next
words, in the hurry to escape, stuck in his throat, so that he merely
spluttered and choked.  Then, with an effort, he cleared his throat:

"Good God, Klein! that man is--is not the White Knight after all!  We
have all been hoaxed."

There was an instantaneous uproar.  The members of the Council sprang
to their feet, chairs went clattering to the ground, and the hall
echoed and re-echoed with the babel of tongues.  There were shouts of
rage; recriminations were hurled to and fro, while Bela Kun and
Korvin-Klein shrank away from the volume of hard words thrown at them.

Many, in their rage, pounded on the tables with their fists, others
gabbled incoherently, and there was not one present who did not help,
in some way or other, to swell the noise till the din became dreadful.

Only the prisoner remained quiet, his face twisted with anguish, and
white with the pasty pallor of fear.  But no one questioned the fact
that he most emphatically was not the White Knight; of this there was
not the slightest atom of doubt.

There were no disfiguring scars zigzagging across his face,
transforming it into a satanic and horrific mask.  It did not repel,
or create a violent sensation of monstrous iniquity.  Indeed, his
face was, if anything, inclined to be handsome, his complexion more
or less pure, and, perhaps, if it had not been for its almost deathly
whiteness, it might have even created an impression of health.

The commotion died away.  Szamuelly, his voice seething with fury,
spoke at length to Bela Kun:

"There cannot be a mistake, Bela Kun.  How can you prove that these
words are correct?"

"Easily.  If you do not believe me call Gunzi and Garami, both of
whom have seen and spoken to the White Knight."

"Right!" said Korvin-Klein, his mouth twisting with an ugly snarl.
"I will send for them both.  Then we shall see."

Rapidly he issued his orders.  The prisoner, his attitude already
easier, was taken on one side, while the members of the Supreme
Soviet Council discussed the situation.

"Hang him anyway, White Knight or no White Knight.  That's what I
say, my friends.  At any rate we shall be safe."  As usual Szamuelly
voted for death, and doubtless the others would have agreed--for
another life more or less made no difference--but the foxy
Korvin-Klein thought differently.

"Wait a minute, comrades.  Listen to what I have to say.  Let us
assume for the minute that a mistake has been made, that the man
there," and he jerked his thumb in the direction of the prisoner, "is
not the White Knight.  What does that mean?  One of two things.
Either we have been hoaxed--in which case, hang the man--or else last
night the White Knight discovered that, in some way, this woman was
betraying him, and knowing of the trap he really did persuade this
man to take his place.

"As I have already said, if it can be proved that the first
supposition is correct--well, I suggest a little better than hanging.
But I ask you, friends, would any sane man deliberately put himself
into our hands for the sake of hoaxing us?

"Again, in the second case, the prisoner might as well die.  Now
suppose it were all a genuine mistake on the part of the White
Knight--after all, I dare say he likes a woman as much as the rest of
us--do you not think it possible that he may try and meet this man to
discover how he got on with the White Knight's lady-love?

"Let him free, if it be proved that he is innocent.  Then let me set
a detective to track him.  Sooner or later he may meet the White
Knight.  Then we shall know what to do."

The point of the chief detective's arguments was too forceful not to
impress even the most obtuse mind, and, after a little hesitation,
that course was agreed upon by the Council.

Soon afterward came Gunzi.  In the meantime Korvin-Klein replaced the
muffler round the prisoner's chin.

Gunzi was asked whether the prisoner was the man he had arrested the
night before.

The detective looked surprised.  "Certainly," he answered, with an
assured air.

"And he is the same man whom you saw drinking in the beer-tavern the
night before?"

Gunzi looked at him carefully.  Again he answered in the affirmative,
and his tone was still as confident.

"Very well," said Klein, "now take off his scarf."

Slowly Gunzi unwound it, and as its last fold exposed the face of its
wearer the detective started back with surprise.

"But--but--but----" he stammered, and stopped.

"Well!"  Korvin-Klein barked out the word, and Gunzi looked nervous.
The detective eyed the prisoner, carefully noting every detail of the
face.  Then at last he turned.

"Except for one thing," he said, "this man might be the White Knight.
In many respects he is similar to the Enemy of the Commune, not only
in build, but also in facial expression, but--he is not the same man."

* * * * * *

Crowds were clustered round the Hapsburg Palace, for already it had
been bruited far and wide that the White Knight was within, appearing
before the Soviet Council.  Among those who stood well to the
forefront were Arnold and Elizabeth.

At first the chatter of the people was jubilant.  Then men from out
of the palace, dashing to and fro, excited the attention of the
throng, and soon afterward the whisper went round that everything was
not as it should be.

"What is it?  Why is every one talking so angrily and gesticulating
so?" Elizabeth asked.

Arnold shook his head.  "I don't understand.  Wait!  I will try to
find out."

Not far from them was a small group which, judging by the number of
people who approached questioningly, possessed more or less
authoritative information.  To it Arnold strolled casually.

"What is the matter, comrade?" he asked of one man.

The Communist swore.  "I don't know, but from what I can make out the
man they arrested last night is not the White Knight after all.  May
God smite down the fools for their mistake if it's true!"

Arnold's heart leaped, but the next moment he was convinced that the
man was making up the story to provoke an interest in himself.  He
moved on, but again and again the tale was the same.  The prisoner
inside was not the White Knight!

He turned back to Elizabeth.  "I do not understand it," he whispered.
"Do you know what they are saying?  That the man they captured last
night is not the White Knight."

Elizabeth's hand flew to her lips.  Only with an effort did she keep
from calling out in surprise.  For a few seconds her face beamed with
a celestial happiness, but as quickly it altered, and there returned
the engraven look of hopeless despair.

"I cannot believe it, Arnold.  I, who was there, know that the man
with the scars, the White Knight himself, was captured.  For some
reason best known to themselves the Communists are spreading the
rumour--perhaps because they wish to discourage attempts at rescue."

After that the time passed slowly.  From where they were Arnold and
Elizabeth could see men coming and going into the palace.  Firstly,
although they did not know it, went in Gunzi, then later Garami.
More time elapsed.  Suddenly Arnold gripped Elizabeth's wrist in a
steely grasp.

"Whatever you do," he muttered hoarsely, "don't make a sound,
but--look!"

Coming out of the palace door was the White Knight, but only those
two knew it.  To the rest of the crowd he was merely another man
making his exit from the palace.

He made his way somewhat in the direction where stood Arnold and
Elizabeth, but, as he came nearer, Arnold's heart turned cold with
disappointment.  Man though he was, he felt the tears springing to
his eyes, so great was the shock.

"Oh, God!" he whispered.  "I have made a mistake.  But in the
distance he was the image of Geoffrey."

Perhaps his eyes were clouded temporarily by his feeling of
despondency, or perhaps her eyes were more discerning.  At any rate
she recognized, not the face, but the garments.

"They are his clothes.  I will swear it.  Oh, Heaven!  Do I not
recognize every garment, every patch, every tear?  Monsieur, that man
must be the White Knight."

Arnold shook his head.  "God knows, mademoiselle, I would willingly
believe it, but--he is not the White Knight.  Look at his face!"

When Elizabeth looked she had to agree.  That man was not the White
Knight.

The hours passed, and gradually the crowd dispersed, for at last it
was officially confirmed--the Soviet had not caught the White Knight.

With the passing of time Arnold believed more and more that the
report was trickery on the Council's part.  It was the White Knight
who had been captured.  Had he not seen his leader a few hours ago at
the ferry, surrounded by two dozen Terrorists?

Now, with the other people gone, for Elizabeth and him to stop where
they were would have been making themselves conspicuous.

"Come," he said, and his voice was expressionless.  "Let us go.  We
must not stop here."

"But where?"

He spread out his arms.  "Back to the room where--where Geoffrey
was--captured."

"That will be my--my penance," she whispered.

"I know nowhere else," he apologized.  "I must guard you as I would
guard myself, for--for Geoffrey will be expecting that of me."

Somehow they made their way back, though the streets were crowded,
and their despondent spirits made the work of threading through all
the harder.  Stumbling up the stairs they reached the room and threw
open the door.  Arnold started.  Sitting on the bed was the man whom
they had seen in the crowd round the palace.

"What are you doing here?" he asked angrily.

Now that the man had cast aside not only his scarf, but also his hat,
he could see all the more easily that, despite a slight resemblance
to the White Knight, the man on the bed could no more be Wenzel than
he himself.  Not only was this man's face free from blemishes, but so
was his head.  Arnold knew well the vivid, blood-red scar which
scraped Wenzel's scalp, and in the mass of straight hair--almost
black when compared to the shade of Geoffrey's curly head--there was
not the slightest sign of it.

"Why shouldn't I be here?" mumbled the man.

"Because it happens to be my room.  Come on, comrade--outside!"
Arnold was in no mood for argument, and there was a dangerous glitter
in his eyes which should have warned the intruder.

The other man shrugged his shoulders.  "I was here before you," he
said.  "Mademoiselle can prove that."  He nodded his head in the
direction of Elizabeth.

Arnold clenched his fists.  "What do you mean?"

"What I say, my friend, that I was here last night, and thanks to her
ladyship"--his tone was hard--"arrested in mistake for the White
Knight."

"You--arrested in mistake--but----"  Then it was true, and the White
Knight was not in prison.  But, in that case, where was the White
Knight?

Elizabeth could have spoken in joy, but Arnold stopped her.  He
mistrusted the man.  It almost seemed as if there were a trap
somewhere.  He felt suddenly afraid.

"I do not know what you say," he said coolly.  "This lady has never
met the White Knight in all her life."

The man yawned.  "You said that very well, but--it isn't really the
truth, is it, Arnold?"  And then Arnold knew that despite the
evidence of his eyes the man who sat on the bed really was the White
Knight.




_CHAPTER XIX_

The faint light from the guttering candle was barely sufficient to
illuminate the tiny kitchen, for a draught blew in through a broken
window, twisting and flicking the flame from side to side.  Yet,
despite the shadows, there was no mistaking the figure of the man who
sat at the table, his head buried in his outstretched arms, his
shoulders shaking with emotion.

Through the cracked window watched the White Knight, and the pathos
of the scene hurt him, the silent grief, the loneliness of the
cottage, the very solitude of the man--a sorrow shared is a sorrow
halved, and yet there seemed no one to help carry the burden of the
unhappy man within.

Szamuelly in his Death Train had come and gone--the White Knight had
missed him by an hour--and somehow Wenzel could not doubt that the
anguish he now witnessed was a direct result of that flying visit.

He moved round to the door, and gently twisting the handle pushed and
entered.

The man at the table glanced up, and the White Knight saw that his
face was twisted with pain.

Dully he looked Wenzel up and down.  "What do you want?" he asked
tonelessly.

"A word or two with you," Wenzel replied.

Immersed in the depths of his own thoughts, the man did not
understand.  "What do want?" he asked for the second time.

Tragedy tinged the air, and Wenzel felt its influence.  "A few words,
comrade," he said quietly.  "I shall not keep you long."

After a time his meaning seemed to sink into the man's consciousness,
for suddenly the corners of his lips puckered downward.  "Go away,
friend.  I talk to no one to-night."

Wenzel did not move.  "Yet I would ask you to listen.  Tell me one
thing--when I looked through the window I saw your shoulders shaking;
your eyes seem red with weeping.  A man does not give way without
good cause.  Tell me your sorrow."

The man's eyes glittered, and he half rose from his seat.  "What the
Hell does it matter to you?  Get out!" he muttered savagely.  "Leave
me to myself."  But from the look of desperation in his eyes Wenzel
divined his purpose.

"No, my friend, not until I have spoken with you.  You must not kill
yourself.  It is not God's will."

"God!" The man sneered.  "There is no God, or if there is He has
forgotten Hungary.  Who are you to talk to me of God?  Have you had a
son butchered to death before your very eyes?  Have you heard your
son crying for death, shrieking with pain?--God, the murderous
hounds!  The devils!"

"You mean--Szamuelly?"

For a moment Wenzel regretted mentioning the name, for suddenly the
man's expression changed.  Sadness and heartache dissolved from his
face.  Instead, his features became distorted by a spasm of
unrelenting hatred.  His eyes gleamed wickedly, his lips drew back in
a snarl, exposing his coarse and rotted teeth, while his breath
hissed in the intensity of his feelings.

"Szamuelly!  Szamuelly!"  He choked.  "May his entrails rot in Hell!
May the vampires suck his blood!  May God blast his soul!  I curse
him, he and all of his, his sons and his sons' sons; his daughters,
his daughters' daughters, and all who may speak to them in
friendship!  Curse him, I say!  Curse him!"  With a sobbing cry the
man's head fell on to his crooked arms.

Wenzel neither spoke nor moved.  Gradually the paroxysm passed, then
the man looked up again, tears frankly falling from his eyes, and
dropping, with dismal splashes, upon the rough wooden table.

"The only son left to me here in the village.  Pity the grief of an
old man, friend, an old man who, five years ago, had a house full of
healthy sons around him.  Six there were--from twelve years of age to
thirty.  They were not a marrying sort, so remained with their old
father.

"Six of them, five years ago.  Two killed in 1915, one in 1916, and
another in 1917--blast the War!  Four sons out of five--and all for
nothing.  Have we not lost after all?  Is not Hungary beaten,
conquered, ground down?  Only one came back to me; he, together with
the youngest and me--we were going to start life anew, but, my God!
the eldest was forced to stop in Budapest and join the railway, to
sweat and toil for Bela Kun.

"I wish to Heaven both he and the youngest had been killed in the
War!  Better to die fighting, say I, battling against enemies, than
to--to be tortured to death in front of the eyes of your father by
your own countrymen.  Yes, comrade, that is what happened to my
youngest.  Just seventeen years of age, and Szamuelly--Szamuelly had
him hanged because he wouldn't wear the Red cockade.  He would have
killed me, because I too wouldn't have worn the cursed colour, but
the swine was in a hurry.

"'Tell what I have done to all would-be Whites,' he said, with a
laugh.  That's what he said to me, the father of the poor butchered
boy.  Oh, Jesus Christ, why have You deserted us in our hour of need?
Why do You not smite these heretics who spit on Your Cross? ... And
now, comrade, what do you want?"

It was as though the old man suddenly recollected that there was
another man present, for he ended with a snarl.

"I want--the help of you and your remaining son, comrade--I am the
White Knight."

The man gazed at him with incredulous eyes, his trembling lips, his
shaking hands testifying to the shock he had received, but, as the
fact filtered into his brain, he dropped suddenly to his knees, and
seizing Wenzel's hand in his own, he kissed it passionately, again
and again, until Wenzel, in embarrassment, withdrew it.

"The White Knight!  The White Knight!"  With the assistance of the
White Knight the old man shakily rose to his feet and tottered back
to his chair.  "God be praised!  You, Excellency, you are the man who
has sworn to kill Szamuelly, you, Excellency, are the White Knight,
the Enemy of the Commune, and you need my help, and the help of
my--only son...."  He drew himself up and gazed with steadfast eyes
at Wenzel.  "God forgive me!" he muttered piously.  "God forgive me
for my words.  He has not forgotten us....  And now, Excellency?"

His voice finished briskly, and the White Knight knew that he need
fear no betrayal from this man.

"Firstly," he said, "your promise.  You must not kill yourself."

The man gazed at him with reproach.  "Excellency, I am yours to
command."

"Good!  You are a railwayman?"

"Yes, Excellency."

"You are in the telegraph service?"

"Yes, Excellency."

"And your son?  I believe he also is in the telegraph department at
the Budapest terminus.  Is that not so?"

"Yes, Excellency."

"Good!  Your name, my friend, it is Hervesi?"

"Correct, Excellency."

"Now, listen, Hervesi; tell me firstly how you knew that I had sworn
to kill Szamuelly."

"I heard a week ago from my son in Budapest, Excellency.  He met a
man named Gunzi, who was searching for the White Knight.  'For why?'
asked my son.  'Because he threatens to kill our great Szamuelly,'
replied this Gunzi.  Then my son, so he told me, chuckled inwardly,
and made inquiries about the White Knight, and heard of all your
wonderful deeds, Excellency, so when I saw him three days ago he told
me all."

"Does he hear much news?"

"Plenty, Excellency.  He sleeps in the same room as a man named
Nyistor, a labourer who is now Assistant Commissary for Agriculture."

The White Knight smiled.  Matters were turning out far better than he
had ever expected.

"What thinks your son, then, Hervesi, of the Commune?"

The railwayman's face twisted into a snarl.  "As I, Excellency.  He
fought for glorious Hungary, for your country and mine, not for these
filthy Russian murderers."

"Not my country, Hervesi," said Wenzel quietly.

"Not your country, Excellency?"  The man looked puzzled.  "I do not
understand."

"I am not Hungarian--I am British."

"You--British?  Then you are--an enemy!"  Instantly Hervesi's face
became suspicious.

"Not an enemy of you or any other honest Hungarian, Hervesi.  Only an
enemy of the Commune.  I--I was engaged to a Hungarian lady, Hervesi,
but when I got back from the War I found that the Communists
had--killed her, killed her as surely as they killed your son."

"The swine, the swine!  So that is why you help us?  We Hungarians
never wanted to fight the British, Excellency, but we were the
puppets of German intrigue.  Why did England fight us?  We were--we
are friends of England."

"England does not forget the fact, Hervesi," but Wenzel said it with
a heavy heart, for even then the Peace Conference was disintegrating
the unhappy country, forgetting all ties of past friendship in the
wild, mad effort to punish the war-makers--and in doing so punished
only the cat's-paws of Germany, while Germany herself----  At that
stage the past was not yet past, and Wenzel hastened to turn the
subject.

"You are a thinker, Hervesi.  Good, it is so much the better.  But
listen.  It is true what your son has told you: I have sworn to kill
Szamuelly.  But my task is difficult.  In his Death Train he tears
across the country, never remaining in any one place, only just long
enough to kill honest Hungarians, and then he is gone again.  I
cannot catch him up.  Even to-night I am an hour late, even now
Szamuelly is many miles away from me.

"I must have an ally.  Your son can help me.  Whenever he can obtain
news of Szamuelly's destination he can wire through to you, so that I
can be there first, and by God's will I can fulfil my oath.  Do you
think he will do that for me, Hervesi?"

"Excellency, I answer for him as I answer for myself.  Szamuelly must
die," and all unconsciously he uttered the words which for weeks now
had haunted the White Knight.

* * * * * *

The country was stirring; the faint rumblings of discontent were
growing louder and more insistent, the seeds sown by the
counter-revolutionaries were ripening for the crop.  The honest
peasants were tired of selling their goods for the worthless paper
money of the Soviet, the workmen were realizing that fifty Soviet
crowns were of little more use than five blue crowns of the old
Austro-Hungarian Bank.

The knell of the Commune was sounding, the tocsin for liberty
ringing, and the people of Hungary were muttering angrily, ominously.
Only in Budapest was the call still unheeded, though not unheard, for
there Bela Kun and his cronies ruled supreme, and people were afraid
to express their feelings for fear of reprisals--revenge which might
come from Cserni, whose red car continually raced the streets of the
city, from Szamuelly with his Death Train, or from the inhuman spider
Korvin-Klein, who sat in his web devouring the virulent as well as
the inoffensive Whites with an impartiality only equalled by his
insatiable appetite.

Away in distant parts the Whites were openly preparing for battle.
The Vends of Western Hungary, forced to flee to Austria, were being
joined by Hungarian officers commanded by Baron Lehar.  In Szeged,
where the fuel of counter-revolution burned brightest, a White
Government was being formed, with Nicholas Horthy as Minister of War
and Paul Teleki as Foreign Secretary, while Generals Soos and Gombos
were organizing the White Army.

If the members of the Supreme Soviet Council, kept fully acquainted
with the situation by their numerous spies, were experiencing the
first warnings of their coming doom, under the thrall of the ranting
Bela Kun they hesitated to betray the fact.

With an incredible faith in his waning star, to the Dictator, any
omens of a dark future were hidden by roseate-hued visions of a World
Commune, with himself second only to Lenin or Trotsky.  With an
unbounded nerve, of which one could scarcely dream him capable, he
demanded of the Allies the fulfilment of their promise that on the
cessation of hostilities against the Czechs the Tisza should be
evacuated by the Rumanians, for day by day, keeping pace with the
atrocities committed by the Communists upon their own people, the
enemies of Hungary, Czecho-Slovakia, Serbia, and Rumania, were
advancing on all sides, sometimes repulsed, but more often gaining
the victory over the less organized Red guards.

That Clemenceau, President of the Peace Conference, treated his
message with disdain, ordering that Hungary should observe the
conditions of the Armistice before he would treat with the Soviet
Council, meant nothing to the impudent Dictator, who ironically
replied to Clemenceau that he, Bela Kun, doubted the power of the
President to impose his will upon the Rumanians or the Czechs.

Then, in defiance of the Peace Conference, he issued orders for
mobilization, and upon the walls of Hungary's villages and towns
appeared huge, glaring posters of a sailor's figure, running and
holding aloft a Red flag, which bore the inscription: "FEGYUERBE!"
Ex-soldiers, who for long years had fought the Serbians and Russians,
gazed upon the crude recruiting pictures, read the call "To Arms,"
and realized that fighting must continue, even while their friends
and relations who remained at home were stabbed in the back by the
self-chosen leaders of the nation for whom they would have to fight.

Thus Bela Kun and his satellites failed to heed the writing on the
wall--the passing of the Bavarian Soviet, the miscarriage of the
Austrian Soviet, the failure of the Russian Soviet to come to their
assistance--and laughed at the Allies, at the threatening armies of
the Whites, at the invading hordes of the neighbouring Slavs.

There was only one who really sensed the change--Szamuelly; in an
effort to intimidate the recalcitrants his Death Train tore from one
end of the country to the other, and all the time he hanged,
butchered, murdered, and the trail of corpses he left in his tracks
grew longer and longer.

From Szamuelly and his hangmen the innocent and guilty alike fled in
terror; and the volume of their curses grew louder, till their
reverberating echoes reached the ears of the spies, who in due course
then reported to the fiend himself.

At the constant repetition of the threats he merely laughed: it was
not the individual he feared, but the concerted whole.  In his
lightning trips he did not fail to notice the signs of the growing
White menace, and so he said to Bela Kun, "Kill!  Kill!  Kill!"
setting a good example.

Yet his day was to come, and Szamuelly had a hint of it one morning
when he received a letter addressed to him at the Batthyany Palace.

He slit open the envelope.  Inside was a plain post card on which
were written six words only:

    Szamuelly shall die.
                    THE WHITE KNIGHT


Szamuelly felt a surge of murderous hate toward the sender, and sent
for Gunzi.

When the detective arrived Szamuelly handed over the card to the
other.

"Look, Comrade Gunzi, look!  Here is another message which I have
to-day received through the post."

The detective took and inspected it with a quizzical eye.  "He seems
certain of himself," he muttered calmly.

Szamuelly smashed his fist down upon the table before him.  "Do you
think I sent for you to hear that?" he shouted furiously, but to the
acute ears of the detective there was an undercurrent of fear in the
voice of the other.

"Well, what do you want of me?" he asked coolly.

"Is there still no trace of the braggart?"

Gunzi shook his head, and his lips tightened.  "Not yet, comrade.  He
is as elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp, yet I shall trace him in the
end.  At Aszod, had not Gonnard fled to Budapest, I should have
arrested the White Knight, and by now he would be but a memory."

"Bah, child's talk!  Did you not arrest him here, in Budapest itself;
did you not actually imprison him in a cell underneath Parliament
House, and did not you and the fools on the Council let him free
against my advice?  I should have hanged that man whether he had been
the White Knight or not."

Gunzi bit his lip.  "Who could have foreseen that the White Knight
had such a cunning trick up his sleeve?  That day in the Hapsburg
Palace I would have sworn an oath it was not he."

"Even now I do not understand.  I cannot get Korvin-Klein to talk.
Was it or was it not the White Knight who appeared before us that
morning?"

"It was.  My men trailed him for a time, and then--he disappeared
entirely.  They reported to me.  I hurried to the room where I had
arrested him the night before and there I found a message from him
thanking me for my help in his escape."

"Yes, yes.  All that I know.  But what of his scars, the difference
in his expression, in the man himself?"

Gunzi shrugged his shoulders.  "The White Knight could most easily
tell you that.  Myself, I have only a theory."

"And that?"

"I believe that the White Knight's scars were nothing but
grease-paint.  During the night he wiped them off."

"Good God!"  Even into Szamuelly's unwilling eyes there crept a glow
of admiration, till suddenly he remembered the message he had just
received, and shivered.

"Gunzi, you must catch him soon.  I begin to feel nervous."

"Why should you?  You are surrounded by reliable men.  I do not think
even the White Knight can pierce through your gang of Terror Boys."

"But the White Knight is uncanny."

Gunzi sneered.  "The White Knight is human.  He baffled me for a
short time at Aszod, but in the end I got on his track.  Give me a
week or two longer and I shall bring him to you, and the next time...
I hope the Council will take your advice, Comrade Szamuelly, and hang
him anyway, right man or not."  A spasm of rage convulsed his face.
"God! to think we had the White Knight in our hands and let him go!"

* * * * * *

Hidden in a small copse some hundred yards distant from the track,
two men waited for the Death Train, which was due to thunder toward
them at any moment.  From where they were they could just see the red
light which sent out its warning ray from between the iron parallels,
and behind which lay a felled tree.

"Why the red light, Geoffrey, why the warning?  Would it not be
better to let the Death Train crash into the obstruction, and so send
it, Szamuelly, and all his hangmen to Hell together?"

"I wish I dared, Arnold, but I am afraid to take the risk.  The
time-table is at the best of times irregular.  Supposing instead of
the Death Train it were another we wrecked?  Suppose an unexpected
express were to come the other way?  No, no, Arnold!  I must rely
upon this," and he fondly patted the rifle which was stretched out in
front of him, significantly turned in the direction of the barricade.

"Do you think you will get the opportunity--that your courage will
not fail you at the last moment?"

The White Knight laughed softly: "Would you hesitate to kill a rat,
Arnold?  To me the life of Szamuelly is less than that of the meanest
rodent.  As for the rest, I can only hope that he will not suspect
the truth and cringe into the farthest corner of the coach."

"Will not your constant warnings prepare him for all eventualities?
Tell me, Geoffrey, would not a swift, silent blow be just as
feasible?  I do not understand the reason of your repeated messages
to him."

"When should I ever get an opportunity for the swift blow?  He is
surrounded night and day.  From the very first he has had his men
under an Army discipline, and set guards.  No prince threatened by
anarchists has ever been better protected.  No, Arnold, do not think
I play for melodramatic effect.

"No will however strong, no courage however deep, is proof in the
long run against the insidious prickings of fear.  Threats, if
sustained long enough, are like the dripping of water on the hardest
rock, the succession of footsteps upon the toughest stone.

"Sooner or later his nerve will crack.  He will begin to suspect even
his own men, and when suspicion once enters the mind nothing will
drive it out again.  When that time comes he will hesitate to sleep
lest during those hours a knife should be plunged into his bosom.  He
will fear to eat lest the food should be poisoned.  When he reaches
that stage he will flee from the Death Train, from his Terror Boys,
perhaps even from Budapest, and then he will be my prey, and I shall
kill him with more pleasure than I should have in exterminating a
rabid dog."

"That is, of course, if you do not succeed to-night, or at any other
time?"

"To-night is my one opportunity.  The trick will not work twice."

"Why not shoot him when he stops at the villages?  From a near-by
window..."

"And if I missed?  Arnold, I have seen that butcher hang men and
torture children for the mere love of cruelty.  He scarcely seeks
excuses for his vile work.  What would happen to the villagers if, as
I have said, I missed him?  How many would he hang in revenge?"

"I am dull-witted to-night, Geoffrey."

"You are too happy to think of anyone or anything, my dear chap,"
Wenzel said softly; then he sighed.  "I envy you, Arnold, but I am
glad, deuced glad!  You have earned your reward and Cecile...."

Arnold laughed happily: "I had not meant to say a word to her, but
last night ... you must have noticed the moon, Geoffrey; it seemed to
have a smirk on its face, and when I looked at it, it seemed to wink
at me and then grin derisively.  The next thing I knew the words were
out of my mouth, Cecile was in my arms, her lips pressing against
mine....  I wonder why I am telling you all this, Geoffrey?  I had
always thought that a man's sensations on such a night were sacred to
himself alone."

In his heart Wenzel agreed, for every word that Arnold uttered flayed
his soul, seared into his heart, and reminded him of another night
when the moon had winked at him in the same way, and a similar
torrent of passionate words had forced themselves from his lips....
Memories!  Memories!  Was he never going to be free of them?
Memories of Zita!  Memories of Elizabeth!  His heart cried out in
agony, but his voice was calm when he answered:

"Because your happiness is mine, Arnold."  His lips curved ironically
as he wondered dimly whether his lips had ever uttered a greater lie.

There was a short silence, but Arnold was bubbling over with too
great a joy to remain quiet very long.

"Do you know, Geoffrey, this is the first time we have talked
together, alone like this, since the day you walked free from the
hands of the Communists?  All this time my curiosity has remained
unappeased.  How in the name of God did you deceive them?  Your--your
scars, Geoffrey, what happened to them?  Why have you avoided the
_château_?  Why have you restlessly moved about from place to place,
as though some one forced you ever onwards?  Before then I--I had
thought----"

"Stop!"  Wenzel heard the fatal words before they were even uttered.
"As my friend, Arnold, do not question me; do not endeavour to awaken
cherished thoughts which must be for ever buried and forgotten."

"Geoffrey, I am sorry!  I did not realize.  I----"

"Arnold, please!"  His voice was weary.  "Remember this.  I have no
personal feelings left.  They are dead, killed in the first case by
the Communists, and then again by----"  Just in time he stopped
himself.  Another moment and he might have mentioned Elizabeth's
name.  "As for the scars...  Arnold, I battled with myself for hours
that morning.  When I awoke in a cell and realized that the
Communists had me at last, I knew it to be but a matter of hours
before I should be dispatched from this world, but I was not
unprepared.  When I first became the White Knight I knew that the
possibility of my being captured eventually was a hundred to one on,
so I took necessary precautions.  But for one thing, however, I
should never have made use of them.

"You never suspected my down-at-heel boots as harbouring any means of
escape, did you, Arnold?  As a matter of fact, they were not
down-at-heel, for both heels were hollow.  Inside were two thick
sticks of grease-paint, Arnold.  I rubbed them well into the wounds;
rubbed and rubbed until at last each scar was erased in turn, the
thick grease-paint effectively hiding them.  After that I powdered
them well, so that nothing was noticeable except a white pallor over
the whole of my face.  Then, on top of it all, dirt; not just a coat
of dust which might wipe off, but thick, ingrained dirt.  Have you
ever rubbed dirt into a greasy substance?  It was perfectly
effective, as you know."

"Good Lord, it is amazing!  Yet--forgive me if I hurt your
feelings--that much I understand; but the wound across your scalp,
your eyebrow, and--and--your twisted cheek?"  He choked slightly; it
was hard to mention such things to the White Knight himself.

Wenzel smiled softly to himself.  Poor old Arnold!  How his words
stumbled!

"I had prepared for all that, Arnold.  I had ready a little pad, a
tiny strip of flesh-coloured canvas, on to which was stuck a not
inconsiderable portion of my own hair from another part of the scalp.
Liquid gum, similar to that used in theatrical circles, was more than
sufficient to keep the shaped canvas in its place.  Then I dyed my
hair, parted it on the other side--what parting I could induce my
cropped hair to display--brushed the remainder the other way, and
that scar was concealed.

"My eyebrow I treated in exactly the same way.  As for my mouth, a
tiny little ivory chip inside did the trick, by pulling and keeping
the flesh more or less as it should be naturally.  Incidentally, it
hurt like the Devil, but against that it helped disguise my voice, so
it served a double purpose.

"My changed appearance plus a likely story and a possibility of
leading them on the track of the White Knight earned me my freedom.
I had but one thing to fear--that they would hang me from pure spite,
but--I must be more than a bad penny, for here I am."

Had Arnold been less in a state of profound fascination he might have
detected the bitter tinge which crept into his leader's last words;
even now there was still one question he wished to ask.

"Geoffrey, old man, I have never heard anything more marvellous in
all my life, yet won't you tell me why you hesitated, that morning in
your cell, to make your plans for escape, and what, at the last
moment, made you change your mind?"  There was a wistful note in his
voice.  In his present happiness he wished all his friends to share
it.

Purposely the White Knight ignored the first part of the question.
"The thought of this moment," Wenzel replied, and again he patted his
rifle.  "Szamuelly must die."  Suddenly he shot out his hand and
grasped Terhune's arm.  "Listen!" he said harshly.

From afar off they heard a faint murmuring, a tremulous, echoing
vibration.

"The Death Train!" whispered Arnold.

Wenzel laughed throatily, and for the first time in weeks there was a
happy timbre in his tone.

The noise of the shrieking monster pounding toward them through the
night grew louder, and some way off its fiery beacon flashed into
view as it rounded a curve.  Swaying in its stride it thundered
forward; then with a wild groan, wrung protestingly from it by the
fierce application of the brakes, it slowed up until it came to a
stop, scarcely fifty yards from the warning red light, snorting its
fury into the air.

The immediate neighbourhood of the Death Train was lit up by the
blaze of light from within, and the two watchers were able to see the
hurried exit of several men from the second coach, clambering down to
the ground and running forward into the night.

With a steady hand the White Knight swung round the sight of his
rifle; unwaveringly it pointed to the exit of the first coach, and
there waited....

The men who had rushed forward to investigate returned once again
into the radius of the light.  They were gesticulating wildly.  A
window swung up, a smooth, purring voice, which the White Knight
believed to be that of Szamuelly, rang out, questioning.

The rifle swung round, pointing significantly toward the man at the
window, but the White Knight was not sure, so he waited.  There must
be no mistake that night.

The man withdrew his head from the window.  Almost immediately he
emerged from the obscurity of the exit, and the White Knight saw that
he had made no mistake.  It was indeed Szamuelly!

Szamuelly was talking excitedly, but he was standing still; the rifle
moved slightly, the White Knight's finger quivered for the fatal
pull, but--the Devil protects his own!  At the sight of the
arch-fiend Wenzel's wrath blazed up anew, shaking him in its grip.  A
tiny shadow floated before his eyes, the sharp outline of the
Communist against the light became dim and obscure.

Desperately the White Knight realized his prey was moving back into
the coach again, doubtless to sleep while his men moved the
obstruction.  Unless he fired now it might be too late.  His index
finger tightened.  The next moment the air resounded with the
terrifying crash of six explosions; the glass of the coach was
shattered, the bullets ricochetted in every direction, there was a
moan of pain as one of the Terrorists spun round and dropped to the
ground, but--Szamuelly remained upright, unhurt, and untouched.  Even
as Wenzel noted the fact he saw the Communist darting for cover.
With a sob in his throat he realized the ghastly truth.  He had
failed!

The next moment there was a fusillade from the train, as the
Terrorists snatched their ever-ready revolvers from their holsters
and opened fire in the direction from which the shots had come; but
they did no good, for Wenzel and Terhune were already speeding from
the spot in the automobile by which they had arrived.

"Not yet, Arnold, not yet has Szamuelly's time come."  The White
Knight sobbed the words as he drove the car along the pitch-dark
road.  "But it will!  I swear it will!  Szamuelly must die!
Szamuelly shall die!"




_CHAPTER XX_

In the fading days of the Red Terror events succeeded each other with
precipitance.  The fury of the people against their bloody leaders
grew more intense, until at length the members of the Soviet began to
tremble in their shoes.

By threats and wholesale murder they endeavoured to squash the
national awakening, but in vain.  The starving people could not buy
food, for all the thousands of white Soviet paper crowns they might
flourish: the peasants would not sell their goods for worthless money.

No longer were the Red troops keeping back the Rumanians or the
Czechs; the Peace Conference was awakening to a true realization of
affairs in Budapest.

Now one by one the rats began to leave the sinking ship, and among
the first batch was Gunzi, the astute detective, who knew which side
his bread was buttered.

Well guarded, the shivering Szamuelly called at his apartment one
day, to find Gunzi in the throes of packing up, for he who had come
to Budapest with nothing had already collected enough from what
pickings had been left by the time he arrived there to fill three
large trunks, themselves confiscated in the name of the Soviet
Government.

Szamuelly frowned.  "Hullo, Comrade Gunzi, where are you off to?"

Gunzi laughed cynically: "To better parts, my friend, to better
parts."

"What do you mean?  Has Budapest meant so little to you that already
you are tired of its attractions?"

The detective grinned.  "Ho, ho, Comrade Szamuelly!  Budapest is
finished for you and for me and for all good Communists.  Our day is
over.  You know it as well as I, friend.  In my hunt for your cursed
White Knight I have here and there come across traces of a vast White
plot, fostered and prepared by the English devil in between times
when he has not been hunting you.

"I have ears in my head, I have eyes which can see well.  In a few
weeks' time, perhaps not so long as that, the Commune will be
finished, and God keep us all from the clutches of the White Terror!
Mark my words, Comrade Szamuelly, and take heed of them if you are a
wise man: there will be a White Terror, as sure as my name is--is
supposed to be--Gunzi!  Do you not think that the fathers, mothers,
sisters, and sons of some of the men you have hanged will clamour for
revenge?  Eh?  The answer is 'yes.'  I would, so would you--if for no
other reason than that it would show our sympathy with the new
Government in wishing to be avenged on the old one, and it is wiser
to keep on the right side of governments in these days.

"I became a Communist with my eyes open, and they are still open, my
friend.  That is why I go....  Whither?  Well, I do not know.  To
Austria perhaps, or Russia, where they have a good way with Whites,
or even Italy; anywhere, say I, rather than stop here."

To Szamuelly the words needed no confirmation; all that Gunzi had
just said he himself had suspected for some time, but desperately he
had continued to hope for the best.

"But--but you swore to get me the White Knight!"

Gunzi cursed.  "I have tried, my friend, but one might as well try to
catch the raindrops as they fall.  He is the Devil himself!--jealous
of you, perhaps, Comrade Szamuelly," and he laughed slyly at his own
humour.

"May Hell burn his bones!"  The Communist looked nervously around him
with twitching eyes: "Gunzi, I cannot stand the strain!  He is
everywhere!  Where my Death Train goes he is there before me with the
message 'Szamuelly shall die!'  I see him in the men who surround me;
even among my Terror Boys he must have his spies.  My nerves are
fraying, my courage disappearing."

Gunzi laughed heartlessly: "You are going just the same way as did
Commissary Gonnard.  I have never seen such a jelly-bag in all my
life as he at the end of one day.  He fled here, to Budapest, but
finally the White Knight caught him, and hanged him from the
Suspension Bridge."

"But how can he get me--how can he?"  Desperately the white-faced
Szamuelly put the question, a very different Szamuelly from the one
who had scornfully sneered at the first threats of the White Knight.
"I am surrounded by my faithful Terror Boys--they guard me now night
and day--how can he get past them?"

The detective shrugged his shoulders: "Don't ask me, friend; I do not
know.  All I say is that he will in the long run.  Besides, didn't
you yourself say you thought he had a spy among them?  Take my
advice.  Do as I am doing.  Pack and fly for it, my friend!" and with
the sound of Gunzi's mocking laughter in his ears Szamuelly stumbled
from the room.

By the time he reached the street his face was chalky, his lips
trembled nervously.  Gunzi's words haunted him; somehow they had rung
so prophetically in his ears.  He felt his nerve cracking.  His only
hope, the one man he felt could have tracked the White Knight, was
fleeing, not only from the city, but from the country altogether.
Now there was no one to guard him against the machinations of the
White Knight!  His Terror Boys ... in their brutal way they were
brave enough, possibly thoroughly loyal, but Szamuelly had no faith
in them; all their bravery was of no use compared with the White
Knight's cunning, all their loyalty was likely to evaporate at the
sight of the White Knight's well-filled purse.

Two Terror Boys walked by his side.  "What's the matter, comrade?"
asked one.  "You do not look yourself."

Szamuelly shrugged his shoulders helplessly: "I am not, my friend.
To-day I have received bad news--news which affects you--I--all of
us."

"Bad news which affects us all!  What can that be?  The only bad news
you could give us would be that neither wine nor women remained in
the world."

Szamuelly laughed shortly: "Yet, my friend, what I have to say is
worse than that.  The Commune is finished, the days of commissaries
ended."

The Terror Boys looked at him as if they wondered what madness had
come over their leader.

"You are not well," growled the second guard, who had not yet spoken.

Szamuelly turned upon him in a temper: "Fools, fools!  So you think I
am mad!  Blockheads, can't you see the truth when it is thrust before
you?  Let me put it to you in a way you will understand.  To-night I
leave Budapest for Russia, or Austria, or Italy--anywhere, so long as
I escape."

The two Terror Boys stopped in their walk and gazed at Szamuelly with
strained expressions.  He had spoken in words which they understood.
If he were fleeing, he, after Bela Kun the leading light of the Red
Terror, then indeed the good days must be finished.  They knew their
Szamuelly, and no longer did they doubt the truth.  It was no trick
to get rid of them.

Yet a certain suspicion suggested itself to one of them.  "It is not
the White Knight?" he queried.

Szamuelly shivered at the mention of the name, yet he would have
hotly denied the imputation had he not realized the fruitlessness of
so doing.  Besides, a plan was formulating in his brain.

"I will be frank with you, comrades," he said, after a pause.  "I am
afraid of the White Knight.  Yet listen.  If I thought that the
Soviet were likely to last I would dare the Enemy of the Commune to
do his worst, for I should have all of you, my friends, to guard me
against this cursed _bourgeois_; but ... let us continue in our walk.
I want to make all the necessary arrangements...."

"To scuttle?"

"Ay, my friends, to scuttle."

There was food for thought in what he had said, and each of his
guards digested in his mind the astounding news of which he had just
been made cognizant.  The one who spoke little thought the harder.

"My friend," he said softly to Szamuelly, "even though you flee there
is still--the White Knight!"

"Well!"  Szamuelly turned on him savagely.  "Do you not think I know
that as well as you?"

"Yes, yes.  But listen, Comrade Szamuelly.  Would you not feel safer
if you had a comrade--or, say, two good comrades--with you when you
escape?"

The second Terror Boy laughed shortly.  "My God You are right.  Two
good comrades, eh, Szamuelly!  Three of us--we three--could put up a
fight against even the White Knight."

Szamuelly's eyes gleamed.  So easily had they fallen into the trap
which he had laid for them!  "Bravo my friends!  Then that is
settled.  We will go together but ... listen!  Supposing that the
rest of our comrades hear the news.  They too will want to come."

"Why should they?" asked the soft-tongued one.

"Exactly!" agreed Szamuelly.  "Then when shall it be?"

"The sooner the better, if what you say in true."

Could the guard have been at the Soviet meeting taking place at that
very moment he would not have needed to add that last rider.  Amidst
an atmosphere of stark tragedy Bela Kun was resigning the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat.  In a halting, tearful tone he was
informing his followers of the truth--that the Red Army had
collapsed, the Rumanians had crossed the Tisza, the Whites had
already brought about their _coup d'état_, while all over the country
red geraniums were being discarded for white roses, and the Red
ensign of bloody Communism was being supplanted by the national flag.

Forcefully he drove home the truth: the day of the Commune was ended,
and those who valued their necks more than the power they had wielded
for the last six months could do worse than resign; he himself set
the example.

So fell the Dictatorship of the Proletariat on July 30, 1919, and the
government of Hungary was transferred to the Presidency of Peidl, who
appointed ministers instead of commissaries, and called his
government a "Workmen's Government."

In the meanwhile, with the assistance of his two comrades, Szamuelly
prepared for flight, blithely abandoning his fellow-murderers to
their fate.

In less than an hour he was packed, while outside the building
throbbingly awaited the motor-car which was to rush him and his two
Terror Boys to the station to catch the first train to Austria.

With a hasty look to see that he had left nothing behind, for the
last time he closed the door of the apartment which he had
confiscated a few months previously.

There was a grin on the faces of the two Terror Boys who sat in the
car.  They saw nothing of treachery in their flight, only a
satisfaction that they were one jump ahead of their
fellow-Terrorists, that they were escaping the threatened upheaval,
of which the others, left behind, would have to bear the brunt.  That
is why they smiled--or at any rate why one smiled.  The soft-tongued
guard smiled because the White Knight had paid even more handsomely
than usual for certain information, and several crisp Bank of England
notes reposed comfortably in the lining of his dirty regimental coat.

For the first time for weeks Szamuelly actually felt light of
heart--not because he was giving up his position of official
murderer, not really because he feared the White uprising, but
because he was leaving the White Knight behind, escaping beyond reach
of the White Knight's vengeance.

He nodded cheerfully to the Terrorist who sat at the steering-wheel:
"Go ahead, comrade!  There is just time in which to catch that train."

The guard depressed the clutch, and with a grinding whine of
annoyance the engine slipped into low.  Szamuelly settled himself
comfortably.  A few hours now and he would be able actually to
breathe without feeling a queer catch somewhere inside just near his
heart.

He looked round, a last parting glance at the streets of Budapest,
then suddenly he sobbed with a consuming terror, one which clutched
his heart in a violent, chilling constriction, a fear which fluttered
through his body, freezing his very marrow, draining the blood from
his face and leaving it deathly white.

Barely five yards behind followed another car; beside the driver sat
the White Knight, tense and expressionless like the grim figure of
Fate.

There was no doubt as to his identity.  His face pale with a
consuming fury, his scars throbbed redder in contrast.  His steely
eyes bored hypnotically into Szamuelly's, and in them the Communist
read a mocking surety of victory--his death-warrant.

A month ago he would have plucked his revolver from its holster and
opened fire on the audacious pursuer, but now--he was paralysed with
fright, his nerve entirely gone.  He could only gasp, and crouch
further into the body of the car.

"Oh, God!" he moaned.  "Oh, God!  Oh, God!"  Then with a shriek he
raised his voice, "Quicker, quicker!" and the Terrorist who was
driving looked round with a startled air.  "Quicker!" screamed
Szamuelly, and the pace increased till the already shaky sides of the
automobile began to rock unsteadily.

Szamuelly looked back; the relative positions of the two cars had
scarcely changed ... once again he looked into the eyes of the White
Knight....

He leaned forward.  "Comrade, for God's sake ... the aerodrome! ...
Behind us the White Knight ... lose his car, we will fly to
Russia...."

The driver looked behind him, and the car swayed ominously toward an
oncoming automobile as his nerveless fingers suddenly lost their firm
grip on the wheel.  Just in time the smooth-tongued one clutched and
held the wheel on a straighter course.

The narrow escape from a terrible collision only served to make the
driver turn still whiter, but at the same time he was filled with a
desperate desire to escape, and instinctively he turned his attention
to the car--anything to draw away from the dreaded White Knight--and
his foot pressed still harder on the accelerator.

He knew the streets well, did Szamuelly's driver, for once upon a
time, before he had been imprisoned for robbery with violence, he had
been a chauffeur.  Filled with a determination to lose their pursuer,
without the slightest slackening, without a warning note, he shot off
down a side road.

The car rocked over to a dangerous angle, but by a miracle settled
down again, and the next second was away in the distance, even while
Francis Bakocz, who was driving the pursuing car, little suspecting
the sudden manœuvre, overshot the road and, with the brakes
shrieking and wailing, came to a stop too late, so that he had to
reverse and back.  By the time he was in the side road Szamuelly's
car had disappeared.

Francis looked at the White Knight inquiringly, but Wenzel was
puzzled.  As the car turned the Terrorist in his pay had shot his arm
up into the air, and his pointing finger had waved in the direction
of the heavens.  It was a signal; that much Wenzel could guess; but
what was its portent he could not gather.

Francis drove wildly on, tearing down the side road at breakneck
speed, unheeding the cursing pedestrians who shook their fists and
growled; but Szamuelly's Terrorist knew his work, and there was no
sign of the car in front.  To stop and inquire would be waste of
time--in the meantime Szamuelly would escape--but there was
apparently nothing else to be done; but, even as Francis slowed up,
Wenzel suddenly turned, an idea germinating in his mind.

"Francis, quick, is there an aerodrome in this direction?"

The boy, for he was scarcely more in years, even if the last few
months had aged him in experience, nodded.

Wenzel laughed.  "That is where he has gone.  For God's sake, get
there quickly!"

In the meantime Szamuelly's car was nearing the aerodrome.
Aeroplanes were waiting--he could see them, their outstretched wings
gleaming whitely in the sun, their pilots scattered about the field.

The car drew up, steaming, and Szamuelly tumbled out.

"Comrade," he gasped to one of the pilots, "I am Comrade Szamuelly, a
People's Commissary.  I ... I seek a consultation in Russia with
Lenin, concerning the glorious future of a united European Soviet.
You will take me there.  I will pay you well--very well--many
thousands of crowns."

"Why shouldn't I, comrade?  I am fond of money.  Come to-morrow and I
will see what I can do."

"To-morrow?  To-morrow is of no use--I must go now, at once ... this
very minute!"  His voice rose, and the pilot looked at him with a
questioning glance.

"You are in a hurry, comrade!  What bites you?  Lenin is not dying,
is he?"

"Delay not, for God's sake, comrade!  The White Knight is after us.
He may arrive at any minute now."  It was the smooth-tongued one who
spoke.

His words were not without effect.  The pilot's face creased into
ugly lines, and he turned upon Szamuelly with a threatening air:

"Oh, ho, my friend!  You do not speak altogether the truth.  The
White Knight!  I have heard of him too often for my own peace of
mind.  You had best find some one else to take you.  I do not relish
hanging from the Suspension Bridge."  He turned away.

"I will make it ten, twenty thousand crowns, comrade, if you will but
take me."  He was sobbing now.

The pilot laughed harshly.  "Of what use are twenty thousand crowns
in Hell, my friend?  I prefer to spend them in Budapest.  Find some
one else."

With streaming tears Szamuelly begged the pilots, one after another,
to take him to Russia.  Once there, so he told them, they would be
safe from the White Knight's vengeance.  But his pleas were of no
avail.  They--who did not yet know the Commune was cracking up, even
at that very moment--had no wish to abandon Hungary yet, and besides,
they sneered, there were Rumanian planes and Czech planes to pass
before Russia was reached, and they had had enough fighting to last
them for a while.

Before five minutes had passed Szamuelly knew his quest was useless,
and also by that time the train to Austria would be gone; before the
next went, God alone knew what might happen!  There was only one way
out of the country.

He turned to his fellow-Terrorists.  "Comrades, drive like Hell for
the Austrian frontier.  It is the only thing left now."

They bought petrol, for Szamuelly was afraid to confiscate, and
started off, five minutes before Wenzel and Francis arrived.  While
the White Knight remained under cover Francis made inquiries.

The pilots looked at him with suspicion when he asked if Szamuelly
had been there, but he seemed too young to be connected with the
White Knight, so they grinned and told him that he was not likely to
see the commissary any more.

"Why?"  They laughed when Francis put the question.  "Because he is
on his way to Austria.  The White Knight is after him."

"The White Knight!  Who the Hell is he?" asked Francis naïvely.  In
asking the question he had meant to be diplomatic, but when ten
minutes passed before they had finished telling him all about the
White Knight he cursed himself for being such an idiot.

At length he got away.  Wenzel's face hardened when he heard the news.

"Well?" he said, and gazed at Francis.

The boy grinned.  "I am ready, monsieur."

Wenzel's eyes softened.  "Good lad!" he exclaimed quietly, and
Francis suddenly lost his fear of the hideous White Knight, whom he
had met personally for the first time only a few days previously.

So they started off.  Later they reached the road to the Austrian
frontier, and not until then did Francis open out the throttle.

For the first hour they saw nothing of the car ahead, but when they
made inquiries, at different farmhouses on the road, they heard that
Szamuelly's car had passed about half an hour previously, so Francis
increased the speed--so much so that by the time they had covered
another thirty miles Szamuelly's car was but ten to fifteen minutes
in advance of them.

While Francis was increasing his speed, the Terrorist in the car in
front was slowing down.  For the last two hours there had been no
trace of the White Knight, and gradually the spirits of the Terror
Boys, and even those of Szamuelly himself, rose higher.

Now there did not seem so much need for haste they began to linger,
to talk more boldly and exchange reminiscences.  Even the
smooth-tongued one spoke a little more, for supposing the White
Knight did not catch up again there was certainly enough money hidden
in his clothes to last him for some time; and he was equally prepared
to desert the White Knight as he had been his Communist leader.

The time passed by, and steadily the distance to the Austrian border
decreased.  Then suddenly Szamuelly saw, perhaps a mile back, a trail
of dust rising into the air.

"By God!  Look!"  The words burst from hie lips unconsciously.  The
two Terrorists glanced back.

The chauffeur groaned: "The White Knight!"  But his companion
unconsciously scratched the palm of his hand--more good English money
for his little store!

The Terrorist pressed down his foot, the car shot forward, and
underneath the wheels the road slid past too quickly for the eye to
follow; but Francis had seen them, and had the better car.

It was a long and thrilling chase; both cars were speeding to their
limit, but yard by yard the White Knight crept closer, till Szamuelly
was damp with a cold sweat.

A mile, half a mile, quarter of a mile, until at last the two cars
were within pistol-shot of one another, and the hour of the White
Knight's vengeance seemed very near.

Perhaps another fifteen minutes would have seen the two cars level,
and then...  Fate for once was against the White Knight.  With an
internal choking his car came to a gradual halt, and Francis swore.
"Petrol," he said briefly.  Fortunately there were spare tins behind,
but in the meantime Szamuelly drew away.

What were the feelings of Szamuelly when he saw the pursuing car come
to a sudden stop will never be known, but it must have seemed to him
then that some kindly angel had come to his aid, and his fear dropped
from him, so that, all at once, he was in the highest of spirits.  He
laughed, sang, and joked, confident that he had seen the last of the
White Knight.

The car drove on; there was an intoxicating spirit of cheerfulness
surrounding them.  On ... on to Austria!

Szamuelly gave one final glance back, and saw, in the far distance, a
rising cloud of dust, approaching with incredible rapidity, but fear
no longer reigned in his heart, for, as the Communist glanced from
side to side, he recognized Lajta Ujfalu in the distance, and knew
that before many minutes passed he would be safe in Austria.
Derisively he waved his hand.  "Good-bye, White Knight!" he called
out mockingly.  "Good-bye, Hungary!"

On ... on.  One thousand yards to safety, five hundred, four hundred
... and then--Nemesis!

As they passed a tiny copse there was a rain of bullets, and they saw
a group of hidden, uniformed men--Hungarian _gendarmerie_, already
self-organized at the first rumours of the Soviet's downfall.  The
driver sighed gently and collapsed.  The car jumped forward for
twenty yards--there was a tearing, rending crash--and the battered
skeleton of what just before had been a live, pulsating automobile
overturned.

Szamuelly staggered from out the wreckage.  Through the bloody film
which mistily obstructed his vision he saw men running toward him,
shouting and shooting; suddenly he felt a burning, searing pain which
vibrated through his body.  He wanted to fall, to give up, but an
instinct for life urged him forward.  He braced up and staggered
on--the frontier was just ahead--three hundred yards and he would be
safe....

The fear of death lent him wings--the excitement of the chase blinded
the eyes of the pursuing gendarmes--and suddenly Szamuelly knew he
was across the frontier....  Safe! ... Safe!  The Hungarians would
never dare to shoot now....  He lurched on and on, smiling grimly,
triumphantly.

The _gendarmes_ clustered together on the borderline, cursing, and
watched their prey escape.  There were no Austrian _Volkswehr_ to be
seen, but, scarcely recovered from the heavy yoke of the Soviet, they
feared to advance or to fire, and thus provoke international
complications.

Such was the position when, with a sobbing grind, Francis brought his
car to a stop.  The White Knight jumped out, but there was no need
for words.  Szamuelly had all but escaped ... two minutes more and he
would be beyond all hope of revenge.

With a rapid gesture Wenzel seized a rifle from out the hands of one
of the _gendarmes_, and, putting it to his shoulder, sighted the
staggering Communist.  The figure was small and moving
erratically....  Wenzel's hands shook unsteadily.  With an effort of
will he steadied them, and suddenly Szamuelly was clearly before his
eyes, dead between the forked sight.

The rifle flashed--for one vibrant, palpitating second nothing
happened.  Then Szamuelly just dropped--never to move again....

"Too good a death," grumbled the awakened people of Hungary when they
heard the news.

* * * * * *

That night Bela Kun, Weiss, Schwarz, Vago, Pogany, and Landler,
together with all their families, stole quietly into one of the
Budapest stations where a train was ready for them, steam up,
impatiently awaiting the guard's command.  The rats were
fleeing--escaping with the connivance of the new Peidl Government,
but, still more paradoxically, protected from their own people by an
escort supplied by the Italian military mission stationed in Budapest.

Only one was missing from the party--Szamuelly!  The clock ticked on,
the time passed rapidly.  In the end they could wait no longer.  The
guard signalled, the train steamed out, _en route_ to Austria; and so
passed out of the pages of history Bela Kun and his colleagues.  Once
again justice was denied the people of Hungary, for with the help of
the Allies the train reached and crossed the Austrian frontier, and
the Communists were safe--safe to live thereafter a life of ease,
when they ought to have hanged, while those they left behind,
betrayed by their leaders to the last, later suffered the extreme
penalty.  Even to this day it is said that somewhere in Russia Bela
Kun still lives.




_CHAPTER XXI_

Peace at last!  With the occupation of Budapest by the Rumanians a
sane Government was formed, inspired by a proclamation of the
Archduke Joseph, and if the city were still systematically robbed by
the Rumanian occupiers of what little was left to it, at any rate the
thefts, under the name of reparations, were more legal, and less
bitter.

To the gasping, starved citizens of Budapest the change was well
worth it.  At least they could walk the streets openly by day or
night without fear of sudden death, of molestation and imprisonment
which meant worse than death; they could, at any rate, obtain what
food there was, without producing red or blue tickets.

For the first time in months there was peace and happiness in the
hearts of the Hungarian people.  Their chins uplifted, their eyes
sparkling, they walked the streets of the cities, the highways and
the byways of the country.  Once again they had come into their own.

In less than a week the Château Juhusz was empty of all those who had
been living there: empty of them all save one.  No longer did the
decaying walls echo with the sound of voices, no longer were its
derelict rooms embellished with flowers, decorated with pieces of
carved wood and crude charcoal drawings.

No more did the Count and Countess Bakocz hold court in their pitiful
apology for a _salon_, nor did Imre Kiss, leaning still more heavily
on his walking-stick, pass from room to room, his head bowed with
thought, longing only once more to work upon his beloved manuscript,
to write "Finis" to his tale of the glories of the Kings of Hungary.

If the drooping _château_ sighed for the absence of the elder victims
of the Red Terror, how much more did it miss the youthful Francis,
with his tales of the White Knight's daring, with his unconcealed
pride in his first adventures under the Enemy of the Commune's
leadership, the infectious laughter of Elizabeth Kiss, and best of
all the flowering romance of Cecile and Arnold, their 'chance'
meetings in darkened corners, their timid whispers, their hidden
blushes.

Once again was the aged _château_ desolate, the sport of the wind
which mockingly howled round its crumbling gables, and of the rain
which dripped through its dissolving mortar, percolating into the
interior, revivifying the moss; once again the weeds grew bolder in
the grounds, already beginning to sprout where the amateur gardeners
had stamped them out, and, as they grew, so for the second time the
spirit of the _château_ decayed, after having been revived for a
brief period by the occupation by the pursued and outlawed nobility.

Dank and dismal, the _château_ drooped, cheerless and uninviting--a
home for nothing except for rats and mice, which once again invaded
its unfortified barriers, burrowing through its rotting wood, and for
the owls which snuggled back into their usurped corners.

Yet there was one who lived there still, one whose heart was as cold
as the draughts, whose spirits were as mournful as the dismal moaning
of the wind.

His work was finished.  The task of the White Knight was ended, and
here, where the woman he now cherished had lived, he attempted to
forget, to wash from his mind all thoughts of his two Hungarian loves.

He was successful in weaning his thoughts from Zita, for Time, the
master-healer, had washed his wound of the hurt: she was a lingering
memory, a sweet fragrance of yesterday.

It was his recollection of Elizabeth which tortured him.  She seemed
so real, so near, and yet so far away.  She was of the immediate
present, as real as Zita was just a fairy phantom from some delicious
dream.

When Geoffrey knew Hungary to be free at last from the tentacles of
the Red octopus he realized that his work was ended.  No more need to
rescue unhappy victims of the Terror, no longer the necessity to
counteract the evil purposes of the Communists, to hurry refugees
across the border, to assist the Whites in preparing their great
_coup d'état_.

What more could the world want of him now?  Bitterly he answered his
own query.  Nothing!  The world had no use for a vile, scarred,
atrocious specimen of humanity such as he.  It forgets so easily, and
once the world ceased to remember the honour, the glory, of the scars
of war, he would remain only a being of disgust, a revolting
spectacle, an object of pity.

Pity!  That would be worse than anything.  Pity!  Perhaps it would
be: "Poor Geoffrey--but, you know..."  The fatal "but."  There would
be no invitations for him--he might frighten the other guests!  Not
that he cared a damn; but supposing he married? ... And, like all
mental arguments, his thoughts finished where they began--with
Elizabeth.

Because of his attempted suicide--for he did not blink his eyes to
the fact that it was attempted suicide deliberately to invite the
Reds to murder him--he must bear a cross during the rest of his life.
That was his punishment--his face his cross.  Or was it rather his
hopeless love for Elizabeth?

Those were days of bitterness!  His brain no longer busy with schemes
and plans for the succour of others, his time no longer fully taken
up, his thoughts turned to himself and his future, and in desperation
he fled to the empty _château_ to work out his own salvation, to
forget!

To forget!  It was not long before he realized that of all the places
in which to do this he had chosen the worst.  What chance was there
of forgetting when every corner reminded him of Elizabeth--perhaps
she had sat there--or there--or there?  She--she had slept in that
room, he remembered--and that room became his shrine.

In the woods were the flowers she had loved so much--their sweet,
dewy smell was reminiscent of her, as was the purity of the white
flowers, for they were her soul, the richness of the red flowers, for
they were her cheeks, the softness of the pansies, for they were her
eyes.

The insects chirruped of her, the whispering of the wind through the
forest trees sang of her, the tiny brooklet running near by babbled
of her.  Worst of all the moon, the broad, round face of the moon, as
it majestically rose into the clear heavens, winked derisively at
him, or frowned at him, shedding its silver beams through the
interlaced boughs of the trees.

So the days passed, the heart of Geoffrey growing more sullen and
more cold, until the spirit of the White Knight wilted beneath the
triple load of misery, self-torture, and hopeless love.

The time arrived when he could not bear to look upon his own
reflection, so he ceased to shave and grew a long, silky beard and a
moustache.

He fed on what stores the refugees had left behind, and slept on the
rough bed which Arnold had used when he was at the _château_, living
the life of a hermit, trying to forget ... trying to forget ... and
failing!

* * * * * *

The moon was rising, just skirting the trees, when one night Geoffrey
became conscious of voices.

He was going to swear, but even as the words trembled on his lips he
started, for he recognized the voices.  Arnold and Elizabeth!  What
were they doing near the old _château_?  He was in one of the front
rooms, but like a wraith, and with as little noise, despite his great
size, he slipped out into the surrounding forest, suspecting that
they might enter the _château_.

The voices came nearer; they were chattering idly of current events
in Budapest, but half-way across the clearing Elizabeth raised her
hand and restrained Arnold.

"Please, monsieur," she said, and the sound of her voice stole
through the quiet air to where Geoffrey was hidden.  "Please,
monsieur, I would like to stop here."

Arnold obediently halted.  Then suddenly Elizabeth saw the old
fountain, and, crossing to it, stood there, watching it in the light
of the moon.

"Poor Mercury," she said wistfully; "he seems so solitary--alone in
this big forest with no one near.  He must have been a merry little
chap in the old days, before he became overgrown with moss.  I am
going to sit down.  Won't you rest beside me, Monsieur Arnold, so
that I may talk to you?"

She seated herself on the edge of the large empty basin, and gazed
around.  From his place of concealment Geoffrey watched, and the
beauty of the scene tortured him so that he closed his eyes.  The
silver rays of the moon bathed the clearing and the _château_ in a
pure white light which softened the decay, till one could almost
picture it as it must have appeared in those far-off days when it had
been the centre of life and love, of activity and of idleness: the
playground of courtiers and ladies-in-waiting, with their colours and
their swords, with their lace petticoats and their fans.

Never had Elizabeth looked so beautiful; it seemed to Geoffrey that
never before had a background so admirably become her.  If it were he
who sat beside her, if it were only he!  He caught his breath in a
little gasp.

"How you must have wondered at me, Monsieur Arnold!" Elizabeth was
saying to him as he sat beside her.  "Did you think me mad, asking
you to escort me here one night?"

"Indeed no," Arnold replied in his deep voice.  "On the contrary,
mademoiselle, I myself was more than pleased to come.  This _château_
has wonderful memories for me--memories of one night, just like this,
not so long ago, when ... when Cecile..."  He stopped awkwardly.

"Why, of course.  I had forgotten," and it seemed to Geoffrey as if
there was a sigh in her voice.  "You are very happy, monsieur?"

"Happy!"  There was a wealth of gladness in that one word which spoke
for itself.  "Mademoiselle, a short while ago, in the middle of the
Terror, I would have said that this world was a Hell for some other
and better world.  Now it seems to me that it must be Heaven itself."

"Heaven!" she repeated in a whisper.  "Heaven!  Well, it might be,
if..."  She turned to Arnold suddenly.  "What of the White Knight?
Where is he?"

"Heaven only knows, mademoiselle," Arnold groaned.  "Some time after
the Rumanians took control he disappeared without a word.  Since then
I have hunted high and low for him without success."

"Are you not--afraid?"  There was a catch in her voice.

"Afraid!" repeated Arnold, puzzled about her meaning.  Then he
realized what she meant.  "No, mademoiselle, not of that.  Only four
people know who the White Knight was--Apor, Francis, you, and I.
Besides, the Reds are being imprisoned in their hundreds.  Many will
hang.  The rest are too busy hiding to worry about revenge."

"Then why has he fled from us all?" she demanded.

"Because--because of his scars," he answered slowly.  "Poor Geoffrey.
You see, he was so handsome before--before they came.  And now!
Somehow I cannot blame him; I feel everything he suffers.  They make
him horrible, mademoiselle, horrible--almost too hideous for a man to
look at unmoved, and still less a--a woman!"

There was an unconscious undercurrent in his voice as he spoke the
last few words, and she turned to him.

"Why do you say that?  Why should he be more hideous to a woman?"

Arnold was embarrassed.  "I--I do not know, but you see,
mademoiselle, it always seems to men that women should be brought
into contact only with the--the pretty things of this world.  We try
to keep the ugly things to ourselves."

"I know--and yet some women say men are selfish."  She paused, but
only for a few seconds.  "Monsieur, supposing I brought you here for
two reasons?  One for the sake of--of memories, and the other to talk
to you, alone and privately!

"Listen!  That awful, terrible day when I betrayed the White Knight
he called me 'Delilah.'  Why, why did he say that to me?  Has he ever
explained to you?"

"No, mademoiselle," Arnold answered sadly.  "He would not let me
speak to him on the subject of his capture."

"Why not?" she demanded, but he was silent.  "Yet I believe I can
answer myself.  Was it because he thought I had deliberately betrayed
him?"

"I--I do not know."

"But you suspect...?  Again you are silent, monsieur, and your
silence is your answer.  Holy Mary!  Why cannot he realize the truth?
I--I to betray the White Knight!  Sooner would I have cut off my own
tongue than willingly betray the man who saved my father from death,
and me from far worse.  Oh, Mother in Heaven, why can he not realize
the truth?"

Arnold did not speak.  He felt as if he were being permitted to look
upon a woman's soul--that it would have been sacrilege for him to
speak.

There was a sob in her voice, and she struggled with her emotion, but
presently conquering it she continued: "Is that the only reason the
White Knight has disappeared, Monsieur Arnold?  Is the mere fact of a
woman betraying him sufficient to drive him away for ever, or is
there another reason?  Tell me.  I command you, monsieur, if you
value a woman's happiness, answer me the truth."

"The truth ... mademoiselle, he worships the ground you walk on, but
... but ... because of his scars..."

"And what of my betrayal of him?"

"He would ... he has, I am sure ... forgiven you that."

"Monsieur, for those words I could almost love you.  And I believe
you.  God be praised!  But now, listen carefully, monsieur, I have a
message for you to give the White Knight if ever you shall meet him.
Tell him that his love for me is no deeper than my love for him,
that--that--oh! what can I say save that I love him so?"  And
suddenly she buried her face in her hands, her body shaking with the
sobs she could no longer repress.

At that moment there came, from the forest, a crackling of disturbed
undergrowth, and a tall, white-faced man staggered toward them, to
sink on the turf at her feet, clasping her hands, kissing them, again
and again, till his burning lips were bruised.

With scarcely a sound Arnold disappeared, and they were left alone in
the clearing, alone with the moon.

"My love, my love," he muttered again and again.  "And yet ... it is
impossible.  I am dreaming, just dreaming.  Soon I shall wake up, to
find myself alone, with the rats and the mice--alone!"

"Hush, dear one!" she placed her hands to his lips.  "Hush!"

For a while neither spoke, till in the end Geoffrey broke the
silence, and his voice was changed.

"It must be impossible.  How can you care for me?  My scars..."

"Do you think a woman loves a man only for his face?" she asked.

"Not ordinarily, perhaps.  But my face is ghastly--evil.  For the
moment you have forgotten it.  Your love is blinding you.  When your
eyes are opened you will see--you must see--my features in their true
colours, and you will shudder....  Oh, God!  Believe me, Elizabeth, I
know it to be the truth."

"It is not the truth!" she murmured passionately.  "Have I not
thought till my brain has ached with weariness?  Have you forgotten
that I am a daughter of Hungary, descended from a long line of fierce
warriors?  Each scar on your face is a scar of honour, every wound
only one more reason why I should cherish you even more.  I am not a
dressed-up doll of the West, who must be surrounded by pretty things
lest she droop.  Unless you wish to wreck two people's happiness you
must--must believe me, dear!"

"If only I might!" he murmured.

"Then test me," she challenged defiantly; "test me!"

"Ay, I will, dear," he agreed.  "I will light a match, hold it to my
face, and then look into your eyes.  I shall assuredly read the truth
there."

So his hand fumbled for a box of matches in his pocket, but when he
found it his fingers trembled.  What would the light reveal?  Slowly
he took out a match, but even then he hesitated.  If they could only
live for ever thus--in the dim light of the moon!

"Geoffrey!" she commanded gently.

"I am a coward.  I am afraid."  Then suddenly he struck it, and held
the spluttering flame close to his face, so that its light might also
reflect upon hers, and thus he could read her eyes.

So they sat, face to face, till the flame died away.  In her eyes he
had seen, not shuddering, unwilling horror, but tender love and,
above all, overwhelming surprise.

Surprise!

"What is it?" he asked roughly.

"Geoffrey!  Geoffrey!" She could hardly speak in her excitement, she
was almost incoherent.  "Oh, God!  Oh, Mother in Heaven!"

So after all she had failed!  His life was shattered.  He rose to his
feet, and would have moved away, but she clung to him desperately,
forcing his arms around her.

"Geoffrey, you don't understand!  Almost you are handsome.  Your
scars--your scars--I cannot see them, only one, just across your eye.
That could not hurt me."

"You cannot see my ... my scars!  Oh, God!  You are deceiving
yourself, Elizabeth ... your love is blinding you."

"No, no, I swear it!  Don't you understand, Geoffrey?  Your beard,
your moustache----"

His hand wandered to his chin, his fingers felt the silky hairs,
curling, concealing.  Then suddenly he realized that he too was
receiving his reward.

A wave of happiness flooded his body.  Life once again opened out
before him.

He drew her closer ... they were alone together ... just Elizabeth
and he ... and the moon!









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