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.