The Lost Prince (15 page)

chapter sixteen

the rat to the rescue

Marco walked through the passage and into the kitchen part of the basement. The doors were all locked, and they were solid doors. He ran up the flagged steps and found the door at the top shut and bolted also, and that too was a solid door. His jailers had plainly made sure that it should take time enough for him to make his way into the world, even after he got out of the wine cellar.

The cat had run away to some part of the place where mice were plentiful. Marco was by this time rather gnawingly hungry himself. If he could get into the kitchen, he might find some fragments of food left in a cupboard; but there was no moving the locked door. He tried the outlet into the area, but that was immovable. Then he saw near it a smaller door. It was evidently the entrance to the coal cellar under the pavement. This was proved by the fact that trodden coal-dust marked the flagstones, and near it stood a scuttle with coal in it.

This coal scuttle was the thing which might help him! Above the area door was a small window which was supposed to light the entry. He could not reach it, and, if he reached it, he could not open it. He could throw pieces of coal at the glass and break it, and then
he could shout for help when people passed by. They might not notice or understand where the shouts came from at first, but, if he kept them up, someone’s attention would be attracted in the end.

He picked a large-sized solid piece of coal out of the heap in the scuttle, and threw it with all his force against the grimy glass. It smashed through and left a big hole. He threw another, and the entire pane was splintered and fell outside into the area. Then he saw it was broad daylight, and guessed that he had been shut up a good many hours. There was plenty of coal in the scuttle, and he had a strong arm and a good aim. He smashed pane after pane, until only the framework remained. When he shouted, there would be nothing between his voice and the street. No one could see him, but if he could do something which would make people slacken their pace to listen, then he could call out that he was in the basement of the house with the broken window.

‘Hallo!’ he shouted. ‘Hallo! Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!’

But vehicles were passing in the street, and the passers-by were absorbed in their own business. If they heard a sound, they did not stop to enquire into it.

‘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!”