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.