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Rassendyll's wisdom in visiting Strelsau just now." The King lit a cigarette. "Well, Sapt?" said he, questioningly. "He mustn't go," growled the old fellow. "Come, colonel, you mean that I should be in Mr. Rassendyll's debt, if " "Oh, ay! wrap it up in the right way," said Sapt, hauling a great pipe out of his pocket. "Enough, sire," said I. "I'll leave Ruritania today."
Had his discoveries stopped there, they would have been vexatious and disquieting, but perhaps of little serious harm. They went further. Set on the track by his acquaintance with what had passed during Mr. Rassendyll's tenure of the throne, he penetrated the secret which had been kept successfully from the king himself.
Yet we did not hesitate. Since disaster had come, it must be faced. Mr. Rassendyll's servant and I followed the constable of Zenda up to the door, or within a few feet of it. Here Sapt, who was in uniform, loosened his sword in its sheath; James and I looked to our revolvers. There were no lights visible in the lodge; the door was shut; everything was still.
The stakes had been high, the struggle keen; the edge of passion had been sharpened, and the seeds of enmity sown. Yet Michael, having struck for the crown, had paid for the blow with his life: should there not then be an end? Michael was dead, the Princess her cousin's wife, the story in safe keeping, and Mr. Rassendyll's face seen no more in Ruritania. Should there not then be an end?
Sapt would tell him bluntly that Rudolf did this or that, set this precedent or that, laid down this or the other policy, and that the king could do no better than follow in Rudolf's steps. Mr. Rassendyll's name seldom passed his wife's lips, but when she spoke of him it was as one speaks of a great man who is dead, belittling all the living by the shadow of his name.
"Ah, the play-actor!" said he, with a gleam of his teeth and a toss of his curls, while his second hand, like Mr. Rassendyll's, rested in the pocket of his coat. Mr. Rassendyll himself has confessed that in old days it went against the grain with him when Rupert called him a play-actor. He was a little older now, and his temper more difficult to stir. "Yes, the play-actor," he answered, smiling.
THE night, so precious in its silence, solitude, and darkness, was waning fast; soon the first dim approaches of day would be visible; soon the streets would become alive and people be about. But there was still some time at Mr. Rassendyll's disposal, and he could not spend it better than in pursuing his fight with Bauer.
I cried. "Yes, sir," answered Rudolf Rassendyll's servant. "What the devil do you want?" asked Sapt. "I came to attend on the Count von Tarlenheim, sir." "I did not give you any orders, James." "No, sir. But Mr. Rassendyll told me not to leave you, unless you sent me away. So I made haste to follow you." Then Sapt cried: "Deuce take it, what horse is that?"
"Yes, to a certainty," I cried, hot in excitement and emotion. Sapt glanced across at Mr. Rassendyll's servant. James had, with my help, raised the king's body on to the bed, and had aided the wounded forester to reach a couch. He stood now near the constable, in his usual unobtrusive readiness. He did not speak, but I saw a look of understanding in his eyes as he nodded his head to Colonel Sapt.
The ashes of the hunting-lodge held their secret fast, and none suspected when the charred body which was called Rudolf Rassendyll's was laid to quiet rest in the graveyard of the town of Zenda, hard by the tomb of Herbert the forester. For we had from the first rejected any idea of bringing the king's body to Strelsau and setting it in the place of Mr. Rassendyll's.
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