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Updated: May 11, 2025
I saw him directly, as he advanced towards the window. He caught young Rupert by the arm. "The moat would hold more than the King!" said he, with a significant gesture. "Does your Highness threaten me?" asked Rupert. "A threat is more warning than most men get from me." "Yet," observed Rupert, "Rudolf Rassendyll has been much threatened, and yet lives!"
"I'm suffocated," he muttered with a sullen frown, avoiding Rupert's eyes. "Where's Rudolf Rassendyll?" asked Rupert. "Have you heard of him?" "No, I don't know where he is." "We must find that out, I think." Rischenheim turned abruptly on him. "I had no hand in this thing," he said, "and I'll have no more to do with it. I was not there. What did I know of the king being there?
But he would kill Rudolf Rassendyll first, if he could; and nothing but the certainty of being utterly damned by the release of the King alive and his restoration to the throne would drive him to throw away the trump card which he held in reserve to baulk the supposed game of the impudent impostor Rassendyll. Musing on all this as I rode along, I took courage.
The night was so dark that the spy, who had seen the king but once and never Mr. Rassendyll, did not recognize who the visitor was, but he rightly conceived that he should serve his employer by tracking the steps of the tall man who made so mysterious an arrival and so surreptitious a departure from the suspected house.
I do not suppose that he meant to strangle him, but the anger, long stored in his heart, found vent in the fierce grip of his fingers. It is certain that Bauer thought his time was come, unless he struck a blow for himself. Instantly he raised his hand and thrust fiercely at Rudolf with his long knife. Mr. Rassendyll would have been a dead man, had he not loosed his hold and sprung lightly away.
I went straight back to Rudolf Rassendyll. His eyes greeted me and questioned me. He was a man, and I played no silly tricks with him. I bent down and said: "An hour, they think, Rudolf." He made one restless movement, whether of pain or protest I do not know. Then he spoke, very low, slowly, and with difficulty. "Then they can go," he said; and when I spoke of a priest he shook his head.
And, as Colonel Sapt said to me, both I would destroy, if need were ay, and myself with them. A man did not serve Queen Flavia with divided mind. The arrangements for my meeting with Mr. Rassendyll had been carefully made by correspondence before he left England. He was to be at the Golden Lion Hotel at eleven o'clock on the night of the 15th of October.
It crashed on the crown of Bauer's head, and he fell like a log to the ground with his skull split. The queen's hold on me relaxed; she sank into Rischenheim's arms. I ran forward and knelt by Mr. Rassendyll. He still held Sapt's hands, and by their help buoyed himself up. But when he saw me he let go of them and sank back against me, his head resting on my chest.
"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.
Rassendyll the plans that had been made, and, although she trembled at the danger that he must run in meeting Rupert of Hentzau, she had such love of him and such a trust in his powers that she seemed to doubt little of his success. But she began to reproach herself for having brought him into this peril by writing her letter. At this he took from his pocket the copy that Rischenheim had carried.
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