The Lost Prince Read online

  ‘Hallo! Hallo! I am locked in!’ yelled Marco, at the topmost power of his lungs. ‘Hallo! Hallo!’

  After half an hour’s shouting, he began to think that he was wasting his strength.

  ‘They only think it is a boy shouting,’ he said. ‘Someone will notice in time. At night, when the streets are quiet, I might make a policeman hear. But my father does not know where I am. He will be trying to find me – so will Lazarus – so will The Rat. One of them might pass through this very street, as I did. What can I do!’

  A new idea flashed light upon him.

  ‘I will begin to sing a Samavian song, and I will sing it very loud. People nearly always stop a moment to listen to music and find out where it comes from. And if any of my own people came near, they would stop at once – and now and then I will shout for help.’

  Once when they had stopped to rest on Hampstead Heath, he had sung a valiant Samavian song for The Rat. The Rat had wanted to hear how he would sing when they went on their secret journey. He wanted him to sing for the Squad some day, to make the thing seem real. The Rat had been greatly excited, and had begged for the song often. It was a stirring martial thing with a sort of trumpet call of a chorus. Thousands of Samavians had sung it together on their way to the battlefield, hundreds of years ago.

  He drew back a step or so, and, putting his hands on his hips, began to sing, throwing his voice upward that it might pass through the broken window. He had a splendid and vibrant young voice, though he knew nothing of its fine quality. Just now he wanted only to make it loud.

  In the street outside very few people were passing. An irritable old gentleman who was taking an invalid walk quite jumped with annoyance when the song suddenly trumpeted forth. Boys had no right to yell in that manner. He hurried his step to get away from the sound. Two or three other people glanced over their shoulders, but had not time to loiter. A few others listened with pleasure as they drew near and passed on.

  ‘There’s a boy with a fine voice,’ said one.

  ‘What’s he singing?’ said his companion. ‘It sounds foreign.’

  ‘Don’t know,’ was the reply as they went by. But at last a young man who was a music teacher, going to give a lesson, hesitated and looked about him. The song was very loud and spirited just at this moment. The music teacher could not understand where it came from, and paused to find out. The fact that he stopped attracted the attention of the next comer, who also paused.

  ‘Who’s singing?’ he asked. ‘Where is he singing?’

  ‘I can’t make out,’ the music teacher laughed. ‘Sounds as if it came out of the ground.’

  And, because it was queer that a song should seem to be coming out of the ground, a costermonger stopped, and then a little boy, and then a workingwoman, and then a lady.

  There was quite a little group when another person turned the corner of the street. He was a shabby boy on crutches, and he had a frantic look on his face.

  And Marco actually heard, as he drew near to the group, the tap-tap-tap of crutches.

  ‘It might be,’ he thought. ‘It might be!’

  And he sang the trumpet call of the chorus as if it were meant to reach the skies, and he sang it again and again. And at the end of it shouted, ‘Hallo! Hallo! Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!’

  The Rat swung himself into the group and looked as if he had gone crazy. He hurled himself against the people.

  ‘Where is he! Where is he!’ he cried, and he poured out some breathless words; it was almost as if he sobbed them out.

  ‘We’ve been looking for him all night!’ he shouted. ‘Where is he! Marco! Marco! No one else sings it but him. Marco! Marco!’ And out of the area, as it seemed, came a shout of answer.

  ‘Rat! Rat! I’m here in the cellar – locked in. I’m here!’ and a big piece of coal came hurtling through the broken window and fell crashing on the area flags. The Rat got down the steps into the area as if he had not been on crutches but on legs, and banged on the door, shouting back:

  ‘Marco! Marco! Here I am! Who locked you in? How can I get the door open?’

  Marco was close against the door inside. It was The Rat! It was The Rat! And he would be in the street again in a few minutes. ‘Call a policeman!’ he shouted through the keyhole. ‘The people locked me in on purpose and took away the keys.’

  Then the group of lookers-on began to get excited and press against the area railings and ask questions. They could not understand what had happened to cause the boy with the crutches to look as if he were crazy with terror and relief at the same time.

  And the little boy ran delightedly to fetch a policeman, and found one in the next street, and, with some difficulty, persuaded him that it was his business to come and get a door open in an empty house where a boy who was a street singer had got locked up in a cellar.

  chapter seventeen

  ‘it is a very bad sign’

  The policeman was not so much excited as out of temper. He did not know what Marco knew or what The Rat knew. Some common lad had got himself locked up in a house, and someone would have to go to the landlord and get a key from him. He had no intention of laying himself open to the law by breaking into a private house with his truncheon, as The Rat expected him to do.

  ‘He got himself in through some of his larks, and he’ll have to wait till he’s got out without smashing locks,’ he growled, shaking the area door. ‘How did you get in there?’ he shouted.

  It was not easy for Marco to explain through a keyhole that he had come in to help a lady who had met with an accident. The policeman thought this mere boy’s talk. As to the rest of the story, Marco knew that it could not be related at all without saying things which could not be explained to anyone but his father. He quickly made up his mind that he must let it be believed that he had been locked in by some queer accident. It must be supposed that the people had not remembered, in their haste, that he had not yet left the house.

  When the young clerk from the house agency came with the keys, he was much disturbed and bewildered after he got inside.

  ‘They’ve made a bolt of it,’ he said. ‘That happens now and then, but there’s something queer about this. What did they lock these doors in the basement for, and the one on the stairs? What did they say to you?’ he asked Marco, staring at him suspiciously.

  ‘They said they were obliged to go suddenly,’ Marco answered.

  ‘What were you doing in the basement?’

  ‘The man took me down.’

  ‘And left you there and bolted? He must have been in a hurry.’

  ‘The lady said they had not a moment’s time.’

  ‘Her ankle must have got well in short order,’ said the young man.

  ‘I knew nothing about them,’ answered Marco. ‘I had never seen them before.’

  ‘The police were after them,’ the young man said. ‘That’s what I should say. They paid three months’ rent in advance, and they have only been here two. Some of these foreign spies lurking about London; that’s what they were.’

  The Rat had not waited until the keys arrived. He had swung himself at his swiftest pace back through the streets to No. 7 Philibert Place. People turned and stared at his wild pale face as he almost shot past them.

  He had left himself barely breath enough to speak with when he reached the house and banged on the door with his crutch to save time.

  Both Loristan and Lazarus came to answer.

  The Rat leaned against the door gasping.

  ‘He’s found! He’s all right!’ he panted. ‘Someone had locked him in a house and left him. They’ve sent for the keys. I’m going back. Brandon Terrace, No. 10.’

  Loristan and Lazarus exchanged glances. Both of them were at the moment as pale as The Rat.

  ‘Help him into the house,’ said Loristan to Lazarus. ‘He must stay here and rest. We will go.’ The Rat knew it was an order.

  He did not like it, but he obeyed.

  ‘This is a bad sign, Master,’ said Lazarus, as they went
out together.

  ‘It is a very bad one,’ answered Loristan.

  ‘God of the Right, defend us!’ Lazarus groaned.

  ‘Amen!’ said Loristan. ‘Amen!’

  The group had become a small crowd by the time they reached Brandon Terrace. Marco had not found it easy to leave the place because he was being questioned. Neither the policeman nor the agent’s clerk seemed willing to relinquish the idea that he could give them some information about the absconding pair.

  The entrance of Loristan produced its usual effect. The agent’s clerk lifted his hat, and the policeman stood straight and made salute. Neither of them realised that the tall man’s clothes were worn and threadbare. They felt only that a personage was before them, and that it was not possible to question his air of absolute and serene authority. He laid his hand on Marco’s shoulder and held it there as he spoke. When Marco looked up at him and felt the closeness of his touch, it seemed as if it were an embrace – as if he had caught him to his breast.

  ‘My boy knew nothing of these people,’ he said. ‘That I can guarantee. He had seen neither of them before. His entering the house was the result of no boyish trick. He has been shut up in this place for nearly twenty-four hours and has had no food. I must take him home. This is my address.’ He handed the young man a card.

  Then they went home together, and all the way to Philibert Place Loristan’s firm hand held closely to his boy’s shoulder as if he could not endure to let him go. But on the way they said very little.

  ‘Father,’ Marco said, rather hoarsely, when they first got away from the house in the terrace, ‘I can’t talk well in the street. For one thing, I am so glad to be with you again. It seemed as if – it might turn out badly.’

  ‘Beloved one,’ Loristan said the words in their own Samavian, ‘until you are fed and at rest, you shall not talk at all.’

  Afterward, when he was himself again and was allowed to tell his strange story, Marco found that both his father and Lazarus had at once had suspicions when he had not returned. They knew no ordinary event could have kept him. They were sure that he must have been detained against his will, and they were also sure that, if he had been so detained, it could only have been for reasons they could guess at.

  ‘This was the card that she gave me,’ Marco said, and he handed it to Loristan. ‘She said you would remember the name.’ Loristan looked at the lettering with an ironic half-smile.

  ‘I never heard it before,’ he replied. ‘She would not send me a name I knew. Probably I have never seen either of them. But I know the work they do. They are spies of the Maranovitch, and suspect that I know something of the Lost Prince. They believed they could terrify you into saying things which would be a clue. Men and women of their class will use desperate means to gain their end.’

  ‘Might they – have left me as they threatened?’ Marco asked him.

  ‘They would scarcely have dared, I think. Too great a hue and cry would have been raised by the discovery of such a crime. Too many detectives would have been set at work to track them.’

  But the look in his father’s eyes as he spoke, and the pressure of the hand he stretched out to touch him, made Marco’s heart thrill. He had won a new love and trust from his father. When they sat together and talked that night, they were closer to each other’s souls than they had ever been before.

  They sat in the firelight, Marco upon the worn hearth rug, and they talked about Samavia – about the war and its heartrending struggles, and about how they might end.

  ‘Do you think that some time we might be exiles no longer?’ the boy said wistfully. ‘Do you think we might go there together – and see it – you and I, Father?’

  There was a silence for a while. Loristan looked into the sinking bed of red coal.

  ‘For years – for years I have made for my soul that image,’ he said slowly. ‘When I think of my friend on the side of the Himalayan Mountains, I say, ‘The Thought which Thought the World may give us that also!”

  chapter eighteen

  ‘cities and faces’

  The hours of Marco’s unexplained absence had been terrible to Loristan and to Lazarus. They had reason for fears which it was not possible for them to express. As the night drew on, the fears took stronger form. They forgot the existence of The Rat, who sat biting his nails in the bedroom, afraid to go out lest he might lose the chance of being given some errand to do but also afraid to show himself lest he should seem in the way.

  ‘I’ll stay upstairs,’ he had said to Lazarus. ‘If you just whistle, I’ll come.’

  The anguish he passed through as the day went by and Lazarus went out and came in and he himself received no orders, could not have been expressed in any ordinary words. He writhed in his chair, he bit his nails to the quick, he wrought himself into a frenzy of misery and terror by recalling one by one all the crimes his knowledge of London police courts supplied him with. He was doing nothing, yet he dare not leave his post. It was his post after all, though they had not given it to him. He must do something.

  In the middle of the night Loristan opened the door of the back sitting room, because he knew he must at least go upstairs and throw himself upon his bed even if he could not sleep.

  He started back as the door opened. The Rat was sitting huddled on the floor near it with his back against the wall. He had a piece of paper in his hand and his twisted face was a weird thing to see.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Loristan asked.

  ‘I’ve been here three hours, sir. I knew you’d have to come out sometime and I thought you’d let me speak to you. Will you – will you?’

  ‘Come into the room,’ said Loristan. ‘I will listen to anything you want to say. What have you been drawing on that paper?’ as The Rat got up in the wonderful way he had taught himself. The paper was covered with lines which showed it to be another of his plans.

  ‘Please look at it,’ he begged. ‘I daren’t go out lest you might want to send me somewhere. I daren’t sit doing nothing. I began remembering and thinking things out. I put down all the streets and squares he might have walked through on his way home. I’ve not missed one. If you’ll let me start out and walk through every one of them and talk to the policemen on the beat and look at the houses – and think out things and work at them – I’ll not miss an inch – I’ll not miss a brick or a flagstone – I’ll –’ His voice had a hard sound but it shook, and he himself shook.

  Loristan touched his arm gently.

  ‘You are a good comrade,’ he said. ‘It is well for us that you are here. You have thought of a good thing.’

  ‘May I go now?’ said The Rat.

  ‘This moment, if you are ready,’ was the answer. The Rat swung himself to the door.

  Loristan said to him a thing which was like the sudden lighting of a great light in the very centre of his being.

  ‘You are one of us. Now that I know you are doing this I may even sleep. You are one of us.’ And it was because he was following this plan that The Rat had turned into Brandon Terrace and heard the Samavian song ringing out from the locked basement of Number 10.

  ‘Yes, he is one of us,’ Loristan said, when he told this part of the story to Marco as they sat by the fire. ‘I had not been sure before. I wanted to be very sure. Last night I saw into the depths of him and knew. He may be trusted.’

  From that day The Rat held a new place. Lazarus himself, strangely enough, did not resent his holding it. The boy was allowed to be near Loristan as he had never dared to hope to be near. It was not merely that he was allowed to serve him in many ways, but he was taken into the intimacy which had before enclosed only the three. Loristan talked to him as he talked to Marco, drawing him within the circle which held so much that was comprehended without speech. The Rat knew that he was being trained and observed and he realised it with exaltation. His idol had said that he was ‘one of them’ and he was watching and putting him to tests so that he might find out how much he was one of them. And he was doing it
for some grave reason of his own. This thought possessed The Rat’s whole mind. Perhaps he was wondering if he should find out that he was to be trusted, as a rock is to be trusted. That he should even think that perhaps he might find that he was like a rock, was inspiration enough.

  ‘Sir,’ he said one night when they were alone together, because The Rat had been copying a road-map. His voice was very low – ‘do you think that – sometime – you could trust me as you trust Marco? Could it ever be like that – ever?’

  ‘The time has come,’ and Loristan’s voice was almost as low as his own, though strong and deep feeling underlay its quiet – ‘the time has come when I can trust you with Marco – to be his companion – to care for him, to stand by his side at any moment. And Marco is – Marco is my son.’ That was enough to uplift The Rat to the skies. But there was more to follow.

  ‘It may not be long before it may be his part to do work in which he will need a comrade who can be trusted – as a rock can be trusted.’

  He had said the very words The Rat’s own mind had given to him.

  ‘A Rock! A Rock!’ the boy broke out. ‘Let me show you, sir. Send me with him for a servant. The crutches are nothing. You’ve seen that they’re as good as legs, haven’t you? I’ve trained myself.’

  ‘I know, I know, dear lad.’ Marco had told him all of it. He gave him a gracious smile which seemed as if it held a sort of fine secret. ‘You shall go as his aide-de-camp. It shall be part of the game.’

  He had always encouraged ‘the game’, and during the last weeks had even found time to help them in their plannings for the mysterious journey of the Secret Two. He had been so interested that once or twice he had called on Lazarus as an old soldier and Samavian to give his opinions of certain routes – and of the customs and habits of people in towns and villages by the way. Here they would find simple pastoral folk who danced, sang after their day’s work, and who would tell all they knew; here they would find those who served or feared the Maranovitch and who would not talk at all. In one place they would meet with hospitality, in another with unfriendly suspicion of all strangers. Through talk and stories The Rat began to know the country almost as Marco knew it. That was part of the game too – because it was always ‘the game’, they called it. Another part was The Rat’s training of his memory, and bringing home his proofs of advance at night when he returned from his walk and could describe, or recite, or roughly sketch all he had seen in his passage from one place to another. Marco’s part was to recall and sketch faces. Loristan one night gave him a number of photographs of people to commit to memory. Under each face was written the name of a place.