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Mummy and Miss Nitocris: A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension

<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2> <h3>THE MYSTERY OF PRINCE ZASTROW</h3> Events now began to move with an almost bewildering rapidity, at least, so far as they affected the immediate temporal concerns of Nitocris and her father. For days and weeks a furious storm raged round the famous lecture, and the atmosphere of the scientific world was thick with figures and formulæ, diagrams and disquisitions; but since none of the learned disputators proved himself capable of detecting the slightest flaw in the lecturer's mathematics, it had very little interest for him, and therefore has none for us. In fact, so little did he seem concerned with the tempest he had raised, that a few days later, to the astonishment and chagrin of his baffled critics, he and Nitocris bade adieu to their more intimate friends and disappeared on a wandering trip of undetermined destination for change of air and scene and a much-needed holiday for the over-worked Professor. At least, that is the reason which Nitocris gave to Lord Leighton and the Van Huysmans, and the few others to whom she thought it necessary to give any explanation at all. The day before they left, Merrill lunched at "The[Pg 186] Wilderness," took a fitting leave of his lady-love and his prospective father-in-law, and departed to join his ship, slightly mystified, perhaps, by recent happenings, but still believing himself with sufficient reason to be the happiest and most fortunate Lieutenant-Commander in the British Navy. The true reasons for the sudden departure of the now more than ever famous Professor and his beautiful daughter from the scene of his latest and most marvellous triumph may be set forth as follows: On the evening of the third day after the lecture Franklin Marmion was going back by train to Wimbledon after a long day at the British Museum among the relics of Egyptian antiquity—which, as may well be understood, he studied now with an interest of which no other man living could have been capable; and as soon as he was seated in a comfortable corner, and had his pipe going, he opened his Pall Mall Gazette, and, as was his wont on such occasions, began with the leading article and read straight along through the Special Article and the Occ. Notes, until he came to the news of the day, skipping only the financial news and quotations, which, under his present changed conditions of existence, he dare not trust himself to read lest he might be tempted by the unrighteousness of Mammon, a form of idolatry which he had always heartily despised. The first item on the news page was headed in bold type:[Pg 187] <div class="blockquot"> <h4> "MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF A RULING GERMAN PRINCE. "SUSPICION OF FOUL PLAY. "IMPORTANT STATE PAPERS VANISH WITH HIM.—SPECIAL. </h4> "In spite of the most rigorous censorship of the Press Bureau, it has now become a matter of practical certainty that Prince Emil Rudolf von Zastrow, the youthful and very capable ruler of Boravia, who, during the last two or three years, has become one of the most brilliant figures in European society, has disappeared under circumstances so strangely mysterious as to suggest some analogy with the tragedy of which the unhappy Prince Alexander of Bulgaria was the central figure. "The facts, so far as they have been ascertained, are briefly as follows:—Up to about a fortnight ago, the Prince was living in semi-retirement with his consort, the Princess Hermia, in his picturesque Castle of Trelitz, which, as every one knows, looks down over the waters of the Baltic from a solitary eminence of rock which rises out of the vast forests that cover the rolling plains for leagues on the landward sides. It will be remembered that every year since his accession, the Prince has been wont to retire to this famous hunting-ground of his to enjoy at once the pleasures of the chase and the society of his beautiful young consort in peace and solitude after the whirl of the European winter season. As far as is known, the only guests at the Castle were the Count Ulik von Kessner, High Chamberlain of Boravia, who is believed to have been present on business of State, and Captain Alexis Vollmar, of the 55th Caucasus[Pg 188] Regiment, at present attached to the Imperial Headquarter Staff at St Petersburg. Captain Vollmar, in addition to being a brilliant young officer, is also a scion of two of the wealthiest and most aristocratic families in Russia. "It is now fully established that on the evening of the 6th of this month—that is to say, nearly three weeks ago—the Prince and his two guests returned after a long day in the forest, and that the Prince retired to rest very shortly before supper. From that day to this he has never been seen, either at home or in society. What makes the disappearance more strangely striking is the fact that the Prince, who is Colonel of the 28th Pommeranian Regiment, did not put in an appearance at the recent review in the Kaiserhof when the German Emperor held his usual inspection. Although it was obvious that His Majesty was both puzzled and annoyed by his absence, no official explanation of it has been given, and all information on the subject is rigidly withheld. Our own comes from a personal friend, and, as far as it goes, may be absolutely relied upon." </div> For some reason or other, which, after his recent experiences, he thought it would be as well not to try and fathom for the present, these few paragraphs made a strangely persistent impression on him. When he got home he gave his evening papers as usual to his daughter, and at dinner the Zastrow mystery was the chief, in fact almost the only, topic of conversation. "Yes, it certainly is very extraordinary," said Nitocris. "The papers make mysteries enough out of the disappearance, of the most everyday,[Pg 189] insignificant persons, who were probably only running away from their debts or their domestic troubles, but for a real Prince to utterly vanish like this—that certainly looks like a little more than an ordinary mystery. And I suppose," she went on, after a little interval of silence, "if there really has been foul play—I mean, granted that Prince Charming, as all the Society papers got to call him, has been spirited away for some hidden reason of State or politics and is never intended to see the light of day again, who knows how many secrets may be connected with this affair which might be like matches in a powder magazine? And—Oh yes—why, Dad, it was this same Prince Zastrow who has been mentioned by most of the best European papers as the only possible Elective Tsar of Russia if the Romanoffs are driven out by the Revolution, and the people go back to the old Constitution. In fact, some of them went so far as to say that nothing but his selection could prevent a scramble for the fragments of Russia which could only end in general conflagration." "Yes, of course I do," replied her father. "But what an atrocious shame, if it is so! One of the most popular of the minor princes of Europe spirited away, and perhaps either murdered or thrown into some prison or fortress, where he will drag out his days and nights in solitude until he goes mad: a young, bright, promising life ruined, just because he happens to stand in the way of some unscrupulous ambition, or vile political intrigue![Pg 190] "It would be a crime of the very first magnitude, that is to say, of the most villainous description, and all the more horrible because it would be committed by people in the highest of places. Really, Niti, it is enough to make one think that there ought to be some higher power in the world capable of making these political crimes impossible. The inner history of European politics—I mean, the history that doesn't get into books or newspapers—would, I am certain, prove that quite half the wars of the world, at least during the period of what we are pleased to call civilisation, would have been avoided if some means could have been found of putting an end to the miserable personal ambitions and jealousies which have never anything to do with the welfare of nations, but quite the reverse. I shouldn't wonder if poor Prince Zastrow has been the victim of something of the sort. It is quite possible that expiring Tsardom had a finger in the pie. At any rate, there was a Russian officer in the Castle the day he disappeared. I should very much like to see the sort of explanation he could give of the affair, if he chose." "But is there not such a power in the world now, Dad?" asked Nitocris, looking across the table at him with a peculiar smile. He looked back in silence for a moment or two. Then he replied slowly: "I see what you mean, Niti. Of course, I suppose we shall be able to read each other's thoughts now, or even converse without speaking,[Pg 191] or when we are out of earshot of each other. The same idea came to me while I was reading the account of this affair in the train; but should I, or, rather we, be doing right in interfering actively in the transactions, political and otherwise, of the world—by which I mean, of course, the state of three dimensions? It would be a terrific responsibility. Remember what tremendous powers we are capable of wielding by simply—it is so very simple now—simply transferring our personalities to the higher plane. What if we were to do wrong? We might involve the whole world in some unspeakable catastrophe." "And which do you consider to be the greatest catastrophe, or, perhaps I ought rather to say the greatest evil, that has ever afflicted the world, Dad?" she asked, with just a suspicion of a smile in her eyes, though her lips were perfectly serious. "Oh, war, of course!" he replied, with his usual emphasis when he got on to that topic. "What was I saying only just now about personal intrigues and ambitions that make war? What have I always thought about war? It is the most appalling curse——" "Then, Dad," she interrupted in her sweetest tones, "do you think that, supposing we possess these wonderful powers, they could be better used than in preventing any war which may possibly arise out of this disappearance of Prince Zastrow, and so convincing those who are wicked enough to plunge the human race into blood and misery[Pg 192] that henceforth all wars of aggression and ambition will be impossible?" "Yes, you are right as usual, Niti," he exclaimed, getting up. "Now you go and think about it all, and give me your advice in the morning. I want to get away now and work out an intelligible solution of those three problems—if I can make it so—for the benefit of Van Huysman and the rest of my respected critics. When I've done that, we'll be off to the Continent or somewhere——" "And see what we can make of the Zastrow Mystery, perhaps!" said Nitocris. "Good-night, Dad. I want to do some thinking, too." He went to his study and set to work upon a development of the demonstrations with which he had astounded not only London, but the whole civilised world. But it was no good to-night. The ideas would not come. Over and over again he picked up the threads of his arguments, only to drop them again. At last, in something like wondering despair, he muttered: "Confound the thing! I almost had it last night, and now I seem as far away from it as ever. What on earth can be the matter with me?" He put his elbows on the table, took his head between his hands, and stared down at the pages covered with angles and circles, chords and curves, and wildernesses of symbols, which were scattered about his desk. As he stared at them they seemed somehow to come together, and the lines and curves arranged themselves in symmetrical shapes,[Pg 193] until they developed from diagrams into pictures; and as they did so he found himself forgetting all about the problems, and thinking only of the strange vision which seemed to be unfolding itself among the scattered papers before him. The straight lines became the walls and turrets of one of those two-or three-hundred-year-old German country houses, half castle, half mansion, which every explorer of the bye-paths of the Fatherland has seen and admired so often. The curves became long, sweeping stretches of sandy bays, fringed with other curves of breaking rollers; and as the picture grew more distinct, one great circle embraced a whole perfect picture of land and seascape—land dusky and forest-covered in the southward half; and the misty sea, island-dotted, wind-whipped, and foam-flecked, to the northward. The castle stood on the top of a somewhat steeply sloping hill about five hundred feet above the sandy shore, on which the breakers were curling a couple of miles away. The hill was covered with thick-growing firs from the plain to the castle wall, but two broad avenues ran in straight lines, one to seaward, and the other down into the depths of the vast forest, until it opened on to the post road, which afforded the only practicable carriage route to the station of Trelitz on the main Berlin-Königsberg Railway. The longer he looked, the more surprisingly distinct the picture became, and, curiously enough, the less his wonder grew. He saw three men on horseback riding at a canter up the avenue from[Pg 194] the forest. Their costumes showed plainly enough that they had just come back from the chase. As they rode on they seemed to come quite close to him, until he could see their features with perfect distinctness. By the changing expression of their faces he could tell they were laughing and chatting; but, singularly enough, he could not hear a word that they were saying, which, considering the minuteness with which he saw everything, struck him as being distinctly curious. He watched them ride up to the old Gothic gateway in the wall which ran round the castle, suiting itself to the irregularities of the hill. They crossed the courtyard and dismounted. The grooms led their horses away, and, as the big double doors opened, they went in, one of them, standing aside for the younger of his companions but entering before the other. In the great hall whose walls were adorned with horns and heads and tusks, and whose floor was almost completely carpeted with skins, they gave their weapons to a couple of footmen; and as they did so he saw the slim and yet stately figure of a woman coming down the winding stair which led into the hall from a broad gallery running round it. As she reached the bottom of the stairway she threw her head back a little, and held out both her hands towards the man who had come in second. As the light of a great swinging lamp above the stairway fell upon her upturned face, he recognised the Countess Hermia von Zastrow, the reigning European beauty whose portrait in the[Pg 195] illustrated papers, and in the great photographer's windows, was almost as familiar as that of Queen Alexandra. The Count—for the handsome young hunter who now took her hands could now be no other than the Prince of Boravia-Trelitz—raised her right hand in courtly fashion to his lips. The other two bowed low before her, and then she led the way up the stairs. He saw all this as distinctly as though he had been actually present, and yet none of the party seemed to take the slightest notice of him. But he was getting quite accustomed to miracle-working now, and so he accepted the extraordinary conditions of his visions, or whatever it was, with more interest than astonishment. He followed them up the stairs and along the right hand side of the gallery. The Count opened a door of heavy black oak and stood aside for his Countess to enter. Again the younger of his companions went first, and again he followed; then, as the elder man entered and closed the door, the scene was blotted out as though a sudden darkness had fallen upon his eyes. "Dear me!" he said, getting up and rubbing his temples with both hands. "If I hadn't had so many extraordinary experiences since my promotion to the plane of N^4, I should probably be a little scared as well. But it is really astonishing how soon the trained intellect gets accustomed to anything—even the eccentricities[Pg 196] of the fourth dimensional world. Well, well! I hope that's not the end of the adventure, I was getting quite interested. I suppose this must be in some obscure way the reason why those paragraphs in the Pall Mall interested me so strangely." He walked towards the window, pulled the blind aside and looked out. But instead of his own tree-shaded lawn and the wide expanse of moonlit common beyond which he expected to see, he found himself looking, as it were, through a window from the outside into a great, oak-panelled sleeping chamber, lighted by a huge silver lamp hanging from the middle of the painted and corniced ceiling. Against the middle of the left hand side wall, as he was looking into the room, stood one of the huge, heavily-draped, four-post bedsteads in which the great ones of the earth were wont to take their rest a couple of hundred years ago. The curtains were drawn back on both sides. In the middle of the bed lay Count Zastrow, deathly white, with fast-closed eyes and lips, breathing heavily as the rise and fall of the embroidered sheet and silken coverlet which lay across his chest showed. On the right hand side stood the Countess and the two men whom he had seen before; on the other side stood a tall, strikingly handsome woman, whose dark imperious features seemed strangely at variance with the severely fashioned grey dress and the plainly arranged hair which proclaimed her either a nurse or an upper servant.[Pg 197] He saw the elder of the two men lean over the bed and raise one of the sleeper's eyelids with his thumb. The nurse took up a lighted taper by the table beside her and passed it in front of the opened eye. The man closed the eyelid, and turned and said something to the Countess and the other man. The Countess nodded and smiled, not quite as a man likes to see a woman smile, and, with a swift glance at the motionless figure on the bed, turned away and left the room. The nurse said something to the two men, and as the door closed behind her the scene changed again. This time he was not looking into a window, but out of one. He was gazing over a vast expanse of forest pierced by a broad, straight road which led for several miles, as it seemed to him, between two dark walls of thickly-growing pines until it ended abruptly with the forest and opened out on a tiny sand-fringed inlet whose narrow mouth was guarded by two little outcrops of rock half a mile to seaward. A carriage drawn by four black horses rolled rapidly along the road, swung out on to the beach, and stopped. Almost at the same moment a grey-painted, six-oared boat grounded on the sandy beach. A couple of men landed from her, and as the carriage door opened, they saluted. The Count's two guests got out and the others entered the carriage, then one of them got out again followed by the other, and between them they carried a limp, motionless human form completely covered by a great rug of dark fur.[Pg 198] It was taken to the boat. All embarked, and the pinnace shot away out through the little headlands. A mile out to seaward lay the long black shape of a torpedo destroyer. The pinnace ran alongside and they all went on board, two of the sailors carrying the body as before. Professor Marmion found himself accompanying them. The body was taken into a little cabin and laid in a berth. The rug was turned down from the face, and he recognised Prince Zastrow. A few minutes later he found himself in the main cabin of the destroyer. The two men who had come in the carriage were sitting at a little table with a man in mufti. This man raised his head and said something. He did not hear the words—but, to his amazement, he recognised the handsome face as that of Prince Oscarovitch, whom he had never seen before he came as his guest to the garden-party at "The Wilderness." On the bulkhead of the cabin at the Prince's head there hung a little block-calendar, and the exposed leaf showed the date, Monday, 6th June. As he read it an impulse caused him to look round at the calendar standing upon his own mantel-shelf. It showed the date, Friday, 24th June. He turned back to the window and saw nothing but his own lawn and the moonlit Common beyond.[Pg 199] <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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