Chapter XIX

The faint light from the guttering candle was barely sufficient to illuminate the tiny kitchen, for a draught blew in through a broken window, twisting and flicking the flame from side to side. Yet, despite the shadows, there was no mistaking the figure of the man who sat at the table, his head buried in his outstretched arms, his shoulders shaking with emotion.

Through the cracked window watched the White Knight, and the pathos of the scene hurt him, the silent grief, the loneliness of the cottage, the very solitude of the man—a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved, and yet there seemed no one to help carry the burden of the unhappy man within.

Szamuelly in his Death Train had come and gone—the White Knight had missed him by an hour—and somehow Wenzel could not doubt that the anguish he now witnessed was a direct result of that flying visit.

He moved round to the door, and gently twisting the handle pushed and entered.

The man at the table glanced up, and the White Knight saw that his face was twisted with pain.

Dully he looked Wenzel up and down. "What do you want?" he asked tonelessly.

"A word or two with you," Wenzel replied.

Immersed in the depths of his own thoughts, the man did not understand. "What do want?" he asked for the second time.

Tragedy tinged the air, and Wenzel felt its influence. "A few words, comrade," he said quietly. "I shall not keep you long."

After a time his meaning seemed to sink into the man's consciousness, for suddenly the corners of his lips puckered downward. "Go away, friend. I talk to no one to-night."

Wenzel did not move. "Yet I would ask you to listen. Tell me one thing—when I looked through the window I saw your shoulders shaking; your eyes seem red with weeping. A man does not give way without good cause. Tell me your sorrow."

The man's eyes glittered, and he half rose from his seat. "What the Hell does it matter to you? Get out!" he muttered savagely. "Leave me to myself." But from the look of desperation in his eyes Wenzel divined his purpose.

"No, my friend, not until I have spoken with you. You must not kill yourself. It is not God's will."

"God!" The man sneered. "There is no God, or if there is He has forgotten Hungary. Who are you to talk to me of God? Have you had a son butchered to death before your very eyes? Have you heard your son crying for death, shrieking with pain?—God, the murderous hounds! The devils!"

"You mean—Szamuelly?"

For a moment Wenzel regretted mentioning the name, for suddenly the man's expression changed. Sadness and heartache dissolved from his face. Instead, his features became distorted by a spasm of unrelenting hatred. His eyes gleamed wickedly, his lips drew back in a snarl, exposing his coarse and rotted teeth, while his breath hissed in the intensity of his feelings.

"Szamuelly! Szamuelly!" He choked. "May his entrails rot in Hell! May the vampires suck his blood! May God blast his soul! I curse him, he and all of his, his sons and his sons' sons; his daughters, his daughters' daughters, and all who may speak to them in friendship! Curse him, I say! Curse him!" With a sobbing cry the man's head fell on to his crooked arms.

Wenzel neither spoke nor moved. Gradually the paroxysm passed, then the man looked up again, tears frankly falling from his eyes, and dropping, with dismal splashes, upon the rough wooden table.

"The only son left to me here in the village. Pity the grief of an old man, friend, an old man who, five years ago, had a house full of healthy sons around him. Six there were—from twelve years of age to thirty. They were not a marrying sort, so remained with their old father.

"Six of them, five years ago. Two killed in 1915, one in 1916, and another in 1917—blast the War! Four sons out of five—and all for nothing. Have we not lost after all? Is not Hungary beaten, conquered, ground down? Only one came back to me; he, together with the youngest and me—we were going to start life anew, but, my God! the eldest was forced to stop in Budapest and join the railway, to sweat and toil for Bela Kun.

"I wish to Heaven both he and the youngest had been killed in the War! Better to die fighting, say I, battling against enemies, than to—to be tortured to death in front of the eyes of your father by your own countrymen. Yes, comrade, that is what happened to my youngest. Just seventeen years of age, and Szamuelly—Szamuelly had him hanged because he wouldn't wear the Red cockade. He would have killed me, because I too wouldn't have worn the cursed colour, but the swine was in a hurry.

"'Tell what I have done to all would-be Whites,' he said, with a laugh. That's what he said to me, the father of the poor butchered boy. Oh, Jesus Christ, why have You deserted us in our hour of need? Why do You not smite these heretics who spit on Your Cross? ... And now, comrade, what do you want?"

It was as though the old man suddenly recollected that there was another man present, for he ended with a snarl.

"I want—the help of you and your remaining son, comrade—I am the White Knight."

The man gazed at him with incredulous eyes, his trembling lips, his shaking hands testifying to the shock he had received, but, as the fact filtered into his brain, he dropped suddenly to his knees, and seizing Wenzel's hand in his own, he kissed it passionately, again and again, until Wenzel, in embarrassment, withdrew it.

"The White Knight! The White Knight!" With the assistance of the White Knight the old man shakily rose to his feet and tottered back to his chair. "God be praised! You, Excellency, you are the man who has sworn to kill Szamuelly, you, Excellency, are the White Knight, the Enemy of the Commune, and you need my help, and the help of my—only son...." He drew himself up and gazed with steadfast eyes at Wenzel. "God forgive me!" he muttered piously. "God forgive me for my words. He has not forgotten us.... And now, Excellency?"

His voice finished briskly, and the White Knight knew that he need fear no betrayal from this man.

"Firstly," he said, "your promise. You must not kill yourself."

The man gazed at him with reproach. "Excellency, I am yours to command."

"Good! You are a railwayman?"

"Yes, Excellency."

"You are in the telegraph service?"

"Yes, Excellency."

"And your son? I believe he also is in the telegraph department at the Budapest terminus. Is that not so?"

"Yes, Excellency."

"Good! Your name, my friend, it is Hervesi?"

"Correct, Excellency."

"Now, listen, Hervesi; tell me firstly how you knew that I had sworn to kill Szamuelly."

"I heard a week ago from my son in Budapest, Excellency. He met a man named Gunzi, who was searching for the White Knight. 'For why?' asked my son. 'Because he threatens to kill our great Szamuelly,' replied this Gunzi. Then my son, so he told me, chuckled inwardly, and made inquiries about the White Knight, and heard of all your wonderful deeds, Excellency, so when I saw him three days ago he told me all."

"Does he hear much news?"

"Plenty, Excellency. He sleeps in the same room as a man named Nyistor, a labourer who is now Assistant Commissary for Agriculture."

The White Knight smiled. Matters were turning out far better than he had ever expected.

"What thinks your son, then, Hervesi, of the Commune?"

The railwayman's face twisted into a snarl. "As I, Excellency. He fought for glorious Hungary, for your country and mine, not for these filthy Russian murderers."

"Not my country, Hervesi," said Wenzel quietly.

"Not your country, Excellency?" The man looked puzzled. "I do not understand."

"I am not Hungarian—I am British."

"You—British? Then you are—an enemy!" Instantly Hervesi's face became suspicious.

"Not an enemy of you or any other honest Hungarian, Hervesi. Only an enemy of the Commune. I—I was engaged to a Hungarian lady, Hervesi, but when I got back from the War I found that the Communists had—killed her, killed her as surely as they killed your son."

"The swine, the swine! So that is why you help us? We Hungarians never wanted to fight the British, Excellency, but we were the puppets of German intrigue. Why did England fight us? We were—we are friends of England."

"England does not forget the fact, Hervesi," but Wenzel said it with a heavy heart, for even then the Peace Conference was disintegrating the unhappy country, forgetting all ties of past friendship in the wild, mad effort to punish the war-makers—and in doing so punished only the cat's-paws of Germany, while Germany herself—— At that stage the past was not yet past, and Wenzel hastened to turn the subject.

"You are a thinker, Hervesi. Good, it is so much the better. But listen. It is true what your son has told you: I have sworn to kill Szamuelly. But my task is difficult. In his Death Train he tears across the country, never remaining in any one place, only just long enough to kill honest Hungarians, and then he is gone again. I cannot catch him up. Even to-night I am an hour late, even now Szamuelly is many miles away from me.

"I must have an ally. Your son can help me. Whenever he can obtain news of Szamuelly's destination he can wire through to you, so that I can be there first, and by God's will I can fulfil my oath. Do you think he will do that for me, Hervesi?"

"Excellency, I answer for him as I answer for myself. Szamuelly must die," and all unconsciously he uttered the words which for weeks now had haunted the White Knight.

* * * * * *

The country was stirring; the faint rumblings of discontent were growing louder and more insistent, the seeds sown by the counter-revolutionaries were ripening for the crop. The honest peasants were tired of selling their goods for the worthless paper money of the Soviet, the workmen were realizing that fifty Soviet crowns were of little more use than five blue crowns of the old Austro-Hungarian Bank.

The knell of the Commune was sounding, the tocsin for liberty ringing, and the people of Hungary were muttering angrily, ominously. Only in Budapest was the call still unheeded, though not unheard, for there Bela Kun and his cronies ruled supreme, and people were afraid to express their feelings for fear of reprisals—revenge which might come from Cserni, whose red car continually raced the streets of the city, from Szamuelly with his Death Train, or from the inhuman spider Korvin-Klein, who sat in his web devouring the virulent as well as the inoffensive Whites with an impartiality only equalled by his insatiable appetite.

Away in distant parts the Whites were openly preparing for battle. The Vends of Western Hungary, forced to flee to Austria, were being joined by Hungarian officers commanded by Baron Lehar. In Szeged, where the fuel of counter-revolution burned brightest, a White Government was being formed, with Nicholas Horthy as Minister of War and Paul Teleki as Foreign Secretary, while Generals Soos and Gombos were organizing the White Army.

If the members of the Supreme Soviet Council, kept fully acquainted with the situation by their numerous spies, were experiencing the first warnings of their coming doom, under the thrall of the ranting Bela Kun they hesitated to betray the fact.

With an incredible faith in his waning star, to the Dictator, any omens of a dark future were hidden by roseate-hued visions of a World Commune, with himself second only to Lenin or Trotsky. With an unbounded nerve, of which one could scarcely dream him capable, he demanded of the Allies the fulfilment of their promise that on the cessation of hostilities against the Czechs the Tisza should be evacuated by the Rumanians, for day by day, keeping pace with the atrocities committed by the Communists upon their own people, the enemies of Hungary, Czecho-Slovakia, Serbia, and Rumania, were advancing on all sides, sometimes repulsed, but more often gaining the victory over the less organized Red guards.

That Clemenceau, President of the Peace Conference, treated his message with disdain, ordering that Hungary should observe the conditions of the Armistice before he would treat with the Soviet Council, meant nothing to the impudent Dictator, who ironically replied to Clemenceau that he, Bela Kun, doubted the power of the President to impose his will upon the Rumanians or the Czechs.

Then, in defiance of the Peace Conference, he issued orders for mobilization, and upon the walls of Hungary's villages and towns appeared huge, glaring posters of a sailor's figure, running and holding aloft a Red flag, which bore the inscription: "FEGYUERBE!" Ex-soldiers, who for long years had fought the Serbians and Russians, gazed upon the crude recruiting pictures, read the call "To Arms," and realized that fighting must continue, even while their friends and relations who remained at home were stabbed in the back by the self-chosen leaders of the nation for whom they would have to fight.

Thus Bela Kun and his satellites failed to heed the writing on the wall—the passing of the Bavarian Soviet, the miscarriage of the Austrian Soviet, the failure of the Russian Soviet to come to their assistance—and laughed at the Allies, at the threatening armies of the Whites, at the invading hordes of the neighbouring Slavs.

There was only one who really sensed the change—Szamuelly; in an effort to intimidate the recalcitrants his Death Train tore from one end of the country to the other, and all the time he hanged, butchered, murdered, and the trail of corpses he left in his tracks grew longer and longer.

From Szamuelly and his hangmen the innocent and guilty alike fled in terror; and the volume of their curses grew louder, till their reverberating echoes reached the ears of the spies, who in due course then reported to the fiend himself.

At the constant repetition of the threats he merely laughed: it was not the individual he feared, but the concerted whole. In his lightning trips he did not fail to notice the signs of the growing White menace, and so he said to Bela Kun, "Kill! Kill! Kill!" setting a good example.

Yet his day was to come, and Szamuelly had a hint of it one morning when he received a letter addressed to him at the Batthyany Palace.

He slit open the envelope. Inside was a plain post card on which were written six words only:

Szamuelly shall die. THE WHITE KNIGHT

Szamuelly felt a surge of murderous hate toward the sender, and sent for Gunzi.

When the detective arrived Szamuelly handed over the card to the other.

"Look, Comrade Gunzi, look! Here is another message which I have to-day received through the post."

The detective took and inspected it with a quizzical eye. "He seems certain of himself," he muttered calmly.

Szamuelly smashed his fist down upon the table before him. "Do you think I sent for you to hear that?" he shouted furiously, but to the acute ears of the detective there was an undercurrent of fear in the voice of the other.

"Well, what do you want of me?" he asked coolly.

"Is there still no trace of the braggart?"

Gunzi shook his head, and his lips tightened. "Not yet, comrade. He is as elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp, yet I shall trace him in the end. At Aszod, had not Gonnard fled to Budapest, I should have arrested the White Knight, and by now he would be but a memory."

"Bah, child's talk! Did you not arrest him here, in Budapest itself; did you not actually imprison him in a cell underneath Parliament House, and did not you and the fools on the Council let him free against my advice? I should have hanged that man whether he had been the White Knight or not."

Gunzi bit his lip. "Who could have foreseen that the White Knight had such a cunning trick up his sleeve? That day in the Hapsburg Palace I would have sworn an oath it was not he."

"Even now I do not understand. I cannot get Korvin-Klein to talk. Was it or was it not the White Knight who appeared before us that morning?"

"It was. My men trailed him for a time, and then—he disappeared entirely. They reported to me. I hurried to the room where I had arrested him the night before and there I found a message from him thanking me for my help in his escape."

"Yes, yes. All that I know. But what of his scars, the difference in his expression, in the man himself?"

Gunzi shrugged his shoulders. "The White Knight could most easily tell you that. Myself, I have only a theory."

"And that?"

"I believe that the White Knight's scars were nothing but grease-paint. During the night he wiped them off."

"Good God!" Even into Szamuelly's unwilling eyes there crept a glow of admiration, till suddenly he remembered the message he had just received, and shivered.

"Gunzi, you must catch him soon. I begin to feel nervous."

"Why should you? You are surrounded by reliable men. I do not think even the White Knight can pierce through your gang of Terror Boys."

"But the White Knight is uncanny."

Gunzi sneered. "The White Knight is human. He baffled me for a short time at Aszod, but in the end I got on his track. Give me a week or two longer and I shall bring him to you, and the next time... I hope the Council will take your advice, Comrade Szamuelly, and hang him anyway, right man or not." A spasm of rage convulsed his face. "God! to think we had the White Knight in our hands and let him go!"

* * * * * *

Hidden in a small copse some hundred yards distant from the track, two men waited for the Death Train, which was due to thunder toward them at any moment. From where they were they could just see the red light which sent out its warning ray from between the iron parallels, and behind which lay a felled tree.

"Why the red light, Geoffrey, why the warning? Would it not be better to let the Death Train crash into the obstruction, and so send it, Szamuelly, and all his hangmen to Hell together?"

"I wish I dared, Arnold, but I am afraid to take the risk. The time-table is at the best of times irregular. Supposing instead of the Death Train it were another we wrecked? Suppose an unexpected express were to come the other way? No, no, Arnold! I must rely upon this," and he fondly patted the rifle which was stretched out in front of him, significantly turned in the direction of the barricade.

"Do you think you will get the opportunity—that your courage will not fail you at the last moment?"

The White Knight laughed softly: "Would you hesitate to kill a rat, Arnold? To me the life of Szamuelly is less than that of the meanest rodent. As for the rest, I can only hope that he will not suspect the truth and cringe into the farthest corner of the coach."

"Will not your constant warnings prepare him for all eventualities? Tell me, Geoffrey, would not a swift, silent blow be just as feasible? I do not understand the reason of your repeated messages to him."

"When should I ever get an opportunity for the swift blow? He is surrounded night and day. From the very first he has had his men under an Army discipline, and set guards. No prince threatened by anarchists has ever been better protected. No, Arnold, do not think I play for melodramatic effect.

"No will however strong, no courage however deep, is proof in the long run against the insidious prickings of fear. Threats, if sustained long enough, are like the dripping of water on the hardest rock, the succession of footsteps upon the toughest stone.

"Sooner or later his nerve will crack. He will begin to suspect even his own men, and when suspicion once enters the mind nothing will drive it out again. When that time comes he will hesitate to sleep lest during those hours a knife should be plunged into his bosom. He will fear to eat lest the food should be poisoned. When he reaches that stage he will flee from the Death Train, from his Terror Boys, perhaps even from Budapest, and then he will be my prey, and I shall kill him with more pleasure than I should have in exterminating a rabid dog."

"That is, of course, if you do not succeed to-night, or at any other time?"

"To-night is my one opportunity. The trick will not work twice."

"Why not shoot him when he stops at the villages? From a near-by window..."

"And if I missed? Arnold, I have seen that butcher hang men and torture children for the mere love of cruelty. He scarcely seeks excuses for his vile work. What would happen to the villagers if, as I have said, I missed him? How many would he hang in revenge?"

"I am dull-witted to-night, Geoffrey."

"You are too happy to think of anyone or anything, my dear chap," Wenzel said softly; then he sighed. "I envy you, Arnold, but I am glad, deuced glad! You have earned your reward and Cecile...."

Arnold laughed happily: "I had not meant to say a word to her, but last night ... you must have noticed the moon, Geoffrey; it seemed to have a smirk on its face, and when I looked at it, it seemed to wink at me and then grin derisively. The next thing I knew the words were out of my mouth, Cecile was in my arms, her lips pressing against mine.... I wonder why I am telling you all this, Geoffrey? I had always thought that a man's sensations on such a night were sacred to himself alone."

In his heart Wenzel agreed, for every word that Arnold uttered flayed his soul, seared into his heart, and reminded him of another night when the moon had winked at him in the same way, and a similar torrent of passionate words had forced themselves from his lips.... Memories! Memories! Was he never going to be free of them? Memories of Zita! Memories of Elizabeth! His heart cried out in agony, but his voice was calm when he answered:

"Because your happiness is mine, Arnold." His lips curved ironically as he wondered dimly whether his lips had ever uttered a greater lie.

There was a short silence, but Arnold was bubbling over with too great a joy to remain quiet very long.

"Do you know, Geoffrey, this is the first time we have talked together, alone like this, since the day you walked free from the hands of the Communists? All this time my curiosity has remained unappeased. How in the name of God did you deceive them? Your—your scars, Geoffrey, what happened to them? Why have you avoided the château? Why have you restlessly moved about from place to place, as though some one forced you ever onwards? Before then I—I had thought——"

"Stop!" Wenzel heard the fatal words before they were even uttered. "As my friend, Arnold, do not question me; do not endeavour to awaken cherished thoughts which must be for ever buried and forgotten."

"Geoffrey, I am sorry! I did not realize. I——"

"Arnold, please!" His voice was weary. "Remember this. I have no personal feelings left. They are dead, killed in the first case by the Communists, and then again by——" Just in time he stopped himself. Another moment and he might have mentioned Elizabeth's name. "As for the scars... Arnold, I battled with myself for hours that morning. When I awoke in a cell and realized that the Communists had me at last, I knew it to be but a matter of hours before I should be dispatched from this world, but I was not unprepared. When I first became the White Knight I knew that the possibility of my being captured eventually was a hundred to one on, so I took necessary precautions. But for one thing, however, I should never have made use of them.

"You never suspected my down-at-heel boots as harbouring any means of escape, did you, Arnold? As a matter of fact, they were not down-at-heel, for both heels were hollow. Inside were two thick sticks of grease-paint, Arnold. I rubbed them well into the wounds; rubbed and rubbed until at last each scar was erased in turn, the thick grease-paint effectively hiding them. After that I powdered them well, so that nothing was noticeable except a white pallor over the whole of my face. Then, on top of it all, dirt; not just a coat of dust which might wipe off, but thick, ingrained dirt. Have you ever rubbed dirt into a greasy substance? It was perfectly effective, as you know."

"Good Lord, it is amazing! Yet—forgive me if I hurt your feelings—that much I understand; but the wound across your scalp, your eyebrow, and—and—your twisted cheek?" He choked slightly; it was hard to mention such things to the White Knight himself.

Wenzel smiled softly to himself. Poor old Arnold! How his words stumbled!

"I had prepared for all that, Arnold. I had ready a little pad, a tiny strip of flesh-coloured canvas, on to which was stuck a not inconsiderable portion of my own hair from another part of the scalp. Liquid gum, similar to that used in theatrical circles, was more than sufficient to keep the shaped canvas in its place. Then I dyed my hair, parted it on the other side—what parting I could induce my cropped hair to display—brushed the remainder the other way, and that scar was concealed.

"My eyebrow I treated in exactly the same way. As for my mouth, a tiny little ivory chip inside did the trick, by pulling and keeping the flesh more or less as it should be naturally. Incidentally, it hurt like the Devil, but against that it helped disguise my voice, so it served a double purpose.

"My changed appearance plus a likely story and a possibility of leading them on the track of the White Knight earned me my freedom. I had but one thing to fear—that they would hang me from pure spite, but—I must be more than a bad penny, for here I am."

Had Arnold been less in a state of profound fascination he might have detected the bitter tinge which crept into his leader's last words; even now there was still one question he wished to ask.

"Geoffrey, old man, I have never heard anything more marvellous in all my life, yet won't you tell me why you hesitated, that morning in your cell, to make your plans for escape, and what, at the last moment, made you change your mind?" There was a wistful note in his voice. In his present happiness he wished all his friends to share it.

Purposely the White Knight ignored the first part of the question. "The thought of this moment," Wenzel replied, and again he patted his rifle. "Szamuelly must die." Suddenly he shot out his hand and grasped Terhune's arm. "Listen!" he said harshly.

From afar off they heard a faint murmuring, a tremulous, echoing vibration.

"The Death Train!" whispered Arnold.

Wenzel laughed throatily, and for the first time in weeks there was a happy timbre in his tone.

The noise of the shrieking monster pounding toward them through the night grew louder, and some way off its fiery beacon flashed into view as it rounded a curve. Swaying in its stride it thundered forward; then with a wild groan, wrung protestingly from it by the fierce application of the brakes, it slowed up until it came to a stop, scarcely fifty yards from the warning red light, snorting its fury into the air.

The immediate neighbourhood of the Death Train was lit up by the blaze of light from within, and the two watchers were able to see the hurried exit of several men from the second coach, clambering down to the ground and running forward into the night.

With a steady hand the White Knight swung round the sight of his rifle; unwaveringly it pointed to the exit of the first coach, and there waited....

The men who had rushed forward to investigate returned once again into the radius of the light. They were gesticulating wildly. A window swung up, a smooth, purring voice, which the White Knight believed to be that of Szamuelly, rang out, questioning.

The rifle swung round, pointing significantly toward the man at the window, but the White Knight was not sure, so he waited. There must be no mistake that night.

The man withdrew his head from the window. Almost immediately he emerged from the obscurity of the exit, and the White Knight saw that he had made no mistake. It was indeed Szamuelly!

Szamuelly was talking excitedly, but he was standing still; the rifle moved slightly, the White Knight's finger quivered for the fatal pull, but—the Devil protects his own! At the sight of the arch-fiend Wenzel's wrath blazed up anew, shaking him in its grip. A tiny shadow floated before his eyes, the sharp outline of the Communist against the light became dim and obscure.

Desperately the White Knight realized his prey was moving back into the coach again, doubtless to sleep while his men moved the obstruction. Unless he fired now it might be too late. His index finger tightened. The next moment the air resounded with the terrifying crash of six explosions; the glass of the coach was shattered, the bullets ricochetted in every direction, there was a moan of pain as one of the Terrorists spun round and dropped to the ground, but—Szamuelly remained upright, unhurt, and untouched. Even as Wenzel noted the fact he saw the Communist darting for cover. With a sob in his throat he realized the ghastly truth. He had failed!

The next moment there was a fusillade from the train, as the Terrorists snatched their ever-ready revolvers from their holsters and opened fire in the direction from which the shots had come; but they did no good, for Wenzel and Terhune were already speeding from the spot in the automobile by which they had arrived.

"Not yet, Arnold, not yet has Szamuelly's time come." The White Knight sobbed the words as he drove the car along the pitch-dark road. "But it will! I swear it will! Szamuelly must die! Szamuelly shall die!"