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Updated: June 15, 2025
Sapt's face was full of eagerness, and he gnawed his moustache silently. We gathered closer to one another. At last we could bear the suspense no longer. With one look at the queen and another at me, Sapt stepped on to the gravel. He would go and learn the answer; thus the unendurable strain that had stretched us like tortured men on a rack would be relieved.
Often I seem to see him as he stood there, tall, straight, and stately, the king a man's fancy paints when he reads of great monarchs who flourished long ago in the springtime of the world. Sapt's step crunched on the gravel. Rudolf heard it and turned his head. He saw Sapt, and he saw me also behind Sapt. He smiled composedly and brightly, but he did not move from where he was.
I had no plan, and I was not in love with Sapt's plan. Yet it offered us four and twenty hours. For that time, at least, it seemed as if the secret could be kept. Beyond that we could hardly hope for success; after that we must produce the king; dead or alive, the king must be seen. Yet it might be that before the respite ran out Rupert would be ours. In fine, what else could be chosen?
We watched him for a moment; the silence seemed deeper than silence could be. At last, moved by a common impulse, we stepped forward, but timidly, as though we approached the throne of Death himself. I was the first to kneel by the king and raise his head. Blood had flowed from his lips, but it had ceased to flow now. He was dead. I felt Sapt's hand on my shoulder.
Then I, overcome by the strange thing, turned half-foolish by the bizarre mingling of comedy and impressiveness in Sapt's rendering of it, plucked him by the sleeve, and asked, with something between a laugh and a gasp: "Who had that other corpse been, Constable?" He turned his small, keen eyes on me in persistent gravity and unflinching effrontery. "A Mr.
"Is it open?" asked Sapt again, for in the dim light he could not see. "No," I answered. "Thank God!" said he. And, for Sapt's, the voice was soft. THE moment with its shock and tumult of feeling brings one judgment, later reflection another. Among the sins of Rupert of Hentzau I do not assign the first and greatest place to his killing of the king.
I put my arm round Sapt's waist and supported him out of the cellar, drawing the battered door close after me. For ten minutes or more we sat silent in the dining-room. Then old Sapt rubbed his knuckles into his eyes, gave one great gasp, and was himself again. As the clock on the mantelpiece struck one he stamped his foot on the floor, saying: "They've got the King!"
They were up to us: the duke reined up. I saw Sapt's finger curl lovingly towards the trigger. I believe he would have given ten years of his life for a shot; and he could have picked off Black Michael as easily as I could a barn-door fowl in a farmyard. I laid my hand on his arm. He nodded reassuringly: he was always ready to sacrifice inclination to duty. "Which way?" asked Black Michael.
"Of the queen's letter I need say nothing and will say nothing," he pursued. "But I will tell them that I'm not the king, but Rudolf Rassendyll, and that I played the king only in order to serve the queen and punish Rupert of Hentzau. That will serve, and it will cut this net of Sapt's from about my limbs."
But Rudolf himself had not spoken. Sapt's appeal and the queen's imploring cry had shaken but not overcome him; he had wavered, but he was not won. Yet there was no talk of impossibility or peril in his mouth, any more than in ours: those were not what gave him pause.
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