"Certain of them have their orders."

They stood eye to eye. The anger of the Princess flamed into the cold gaze of the man. There was no yielding in either at the moment.

"I refuse."

The words came full of desperate determination. But even as Vita p.r.o.nounced them she felt their futility. Swiftly she cast about in her mind for a loophole of escape, but every avenue seemed to be closed.

The house was isolated. It was attended by seven or eight servants, and bitterly she remembered that they all came from a country which yielded allegiance to Teutonic tyranny. Ruxton had been right. Oh, how right!

Which of these servants were under the orders of this man? She could not be sure, excepting in the case of Va.s.silitz. Again panic grew and reached a pitch of hysteria as she listened to the man's easy level tones.

"You are angry, and your common-sense is blinded by it," he said without emotion. "Were it not so you would see the absurdity of your refusal. I am not without means of enforcing authority. Listen. At the front door stands a powerful car. A closed car, which is fict.i.tiously numbered. While we are talking your maid is packing for you. She has orders to prepare for you every luxury and comfort you are accustomed to require. This luggage will be placed in the car, and she will travel with you. If you persist in your refusal you will be dealt with. If you seek to call for aid you will be silenced. The servants in your house will not dare to raise a finger in your a.s.sistance. You will be conducted to a place already prepared to receive you. You will be treated with every courtesy your rank and s.e.x ent.i.tles you to. And when these affairs are settled to suit Berlin you will be released. Do you still refuse?"

The recital of the conditions prevailing possessed a conviction that suggested the inevitability of Doom, Vita realized. Coming from another than Frederick von Berger she might have hoped. But this man--she shivered. A conscienceless mechanism as soulless as cold steel.

Her answer was delayed. Her eyes, searching vainly, swept over the room. Finally they encountered the square face of Von Salzinger. She had forgotten him. Her gaze was caught and held, and, in a moment, she realized that he was endeavoring to convey some meaning to her. Its nature was obscure, but the expression of his usually hard face suggested sympathy, and almost kindliness. Could it be that in the grinding machinery of Prussian tyranny she possessed one friend? She remembered Von Salzinger's protestations. She remembered that he had spoken of love to her. Love--what a mockery! But might she not hope for support from him? No, he was bound hand and foot. She dared hope for no open support. But----

Von Berger displayed the first sign of impatience. He withdrew his watch.

"I cannot delay," he said. "It is not my desire to use the force at my command. Being in England, and you being a woman, discussion has been permitted. You will now choose definitely, within one minute, whether you will submit to the orders of Berlin, or resist them. I am considering your convenience. It is immaterial to me which course you adopt."

He held the watch in the palm of his hand, and his eyes were bent upon its face, marking the progress of the second hand. The influence of his att.i.tude was tremendous. He was a perfect master of the methods which he represented. No one could have observed him and failed to realize that here was a man who, with the same extraordinary callousness, could easily have stepped to the side of a fainting woman, and, without a qualm, have placed the muzzle of a revolver to her temple and blown her brains out, as had been done in Belgium.

Vita watched him, fascinated and terrified. The silent moments slipped away with the inevitability which no human power can stay.

Von Berger looked up. The measure of his eyes was coldly calculating.

"You have ten seconds," he said, and returned to his contemplation of the moving hand.

The strain was unendurable. Vita felt that she must scream. Her will was yielding before the moral terror this man inspired. There was no hope of help. No hope anywhere. The fire shook down, and she started, her nerves on edge. She glanced over at Von Salzinger. Instantly his features stirred to that meaning expression of sympathy. Now, however, it only revolted her, and, as though drawn by a magnet, her eyes came back to the bent head of Von Berger.

Simultaneously the man looked up and snapped his watch closed and returned it to his pocket.

"Well?" he demanded, and the whole expression of him had changed.

Vita saw the tigerish light suddenly leap into his eyes. The man was transfigured. She warned herself he was no longer a man. She could only regard him as something in the nature of a human tiger.

"I will go," she said, in a voice rendered thick by her terror-parched throat.

"Ja wohl!"

Von Berger turned and signed to his confederate.

CHAPTER XX

BAR-LEIGHTON

The face that gazed out at the driving October rain was one whose expression of unrelieved misery and hopelessness might well have melted a heart of flint. The wide, grey eyes had lost their languorous melting delight, which had been replaced by one of driven desperation. Dark, unhealthy rings had sunk their way into the young surrounding flesh.

They were the rings of sleeplessness, and an ominous indication of the mental att.i.tude behind them. The oval of the cheeks had become pinched and pale, while the drooping lips added a pathos that must have been irresistible to a heart of human feeling.

Vita was a prisoner in the hands of men without scruple or mercy. At least one of them she knew could claim all and more than such words expressed. Of the other she was less convinced. In fact, it was the thought that he was, perhaps, simply under the control of the other which, she told herself, made sanity possible. But even so it was the vaguest, wildest hope, and only in the nature of a straw to which to cling in her desperation.

The window from which she looked out gave upon a wildly desolate scene.

She was down deep, almost in the bowels of the earth, she admitted, and the rugged sides of the chasm, clad in a garment of dark conifers and leafless branches, rose up abruptly in every direction her window permitted her gaze to wander.

She had no understanding of where she was. The journey had been long.

It had been swift, too, under the skillful driving of Frederick von Berger, beside whom Von Salzinger had travelled. She had a vague understanding that the moon had been shining somewhere behind the car most of the time. Therefore she had decided they were travelling westwards. Then had come the dawn which had found them racing across a wide and desolate moorland, in a gale of wind and a deluge of driving rain, with dense mist clouds filling to overflowing sharp and narrow hollows which dropped away from the high level like bottomless pits of mystery and dread.

There had been n.o.body inside the car to question but her maid, Francella, and Vita had steadfastly denied herself any form of intercourse with the woman, under the certainty that she formed part of the Secret Service with which all unknowingly she had been surrounded.

Then had come a moment when her straining eyes, striving to penetrate the rain-streaming windows, had detected a distant view of a stretch of water. She had not been certain at first. But later she had detected the hazy outline of a steamboat upon it, with a long streaming smoke-line lying behind it. So she made up her mind it was the sea.

Even this, however, gave her no real cue to her whereabouts. For a moment she thought of Dartmoor, but later on she believed that that desolate wilderness was well inland.

Later again, all speculation had been yielded up under the painful interest of the moment. They were driving along the edge of a deep, mist-laden ravine. Vita had gazed down upon it in awed contemplation.

It was narrow and precipitous. Then had happened something which made her shiver and clutch at the sides of the car. The driver had swung round a fierce hairpin bend in the road. The next moment the downward incline made her seek support lest she should slide from her seat. In a moment the car was swallowed up in the dense white fog of the ravine.

So she had come to her prison, which she learned accidentally was called Bar-Leighton. Whether the name applied to the house or to the locality she never knew. It was a big rambling mansion, deep hidden in a close surrounding of trees, nor, as far as Vita could see, was the ravine occupied by any other habitation.

This was the second day of her imprisonment. It had been raining when she arrived. It was still raining. It looked as if it were likely to continue raining for a month. Vita had spent most of her time gazing out of the window. She was heart-broken and desperate.

She had no eyes for anything but the cheerless view beyond the window.

Its attraction was small enough in its repellent austerity, but it represented freedom. It represented the life which was forbidden her.

Somewhere out there beyond, miles and miles away, was the love of her life, maybe vainly seeking her. Somewhere out there all that made for her happiness in life lay beyond her reach. Would she ever recover it?

Would she ever listen to those calm tones of encouragement, and purpose, and love again? It seemed impossible. It seemed as though the end of all things was about to be achieved for her, now that the savage hand of Prussian tyranny had been laid upon her.

The treatment meted out to her had been by no means hard so far. She occupied a suite of apartments unusually handsome and s.p.a.cious. But they led from one into the other, and all the outer doors were securely locked. She had been handed over to a hard-faced matron of German nationality on her arrival, nor, from that moment, had she been permitted sight of either of her male captors.

It was this dreadful isolation, this suspense, which affected her. Was she to remain here indefinitely, ignorant of her father's movements, of all that might be happening to her lover, of the possible disaster to all those plans to which she had so completely lent herself? The thought was maddening. It was completely unbearable. She wanted to weep, to scream. But she did neither. She sat on in a window-seat in the splendid sitting-room, and gazed miserably out on the depressing aspect which thrust her lower and lower in the deeps of despair.

If Vita had been permitted no further sight of her captors it was not because they had taken their departure from the precincts of the prison they had prepared for her. On the contrary. With the arrival of Prince von Berger at this retreat, hidden so deeply in the remoteness of some of the wildest of the west country, the place became a hive of secret activity. Many visitors came and went, but mostly at night. And so contrived were their movements, that never for one moment did the mansion lose its appearance of neglect in the hands of an indifferent caretaker.

Amongst those who visited the place at night was Johann Stryj, and with him a man named Emile Heuferman. It was a far cry from Dorby to Bar-Leighton, but distance seemed to have no concern for these people, who were served by cars of great speed and power. It was obvious that Frederick von Berger's visit to England had been the cue for great activity in the underworld of the Secret Service, and that far-reaching powers were in his control.

While Vita watched the desolation of rain-washed woodlands, Von Berger was occupied with Johann Stryj and Heuferman in a library, which had obviously once been the pride of a previous owner of the house. Von Salzinger was in attendance, too, and, for more than two hours, it was pretty evident these four had been in close consultation on matters of vital interest.

It was obvious, too, that Heuferman was of lesser degree than his companion, Stryj, for it was to the latter Von Berger chiefly addressed himself and from whom he extracted the information he needed. All the talk was of Dorby, and during it the name of Farlow frequently mixed itself into the details. The manner of these men was devoid of all heat. Von Berger might have been a machine, so frigidly precise was his whole att.i.tude. Johann Stryj spoke only the words necessary, with an effect and decision which must have left nothing to be desired by his exalted superior. Von Salzinger was reduced to a mere observer, but Heuferman became an object for the reception of explicit instructions, which, for the most part, he received with monosyllabic acquiescence.

It was in the middle of the afternoon that the meeting terminated. When Johann Stryj and his companion had taken their departure Frederick von Berger turned to the silent ex-Captain-General. His eyes were speculative. It was the cold calculation of a mind seeking to complete a half-formed train of thought.

"What were your relations with this woman--before the war?"

Von Salzinger started. A flush tinted his heavy features a sort of copper hue.

"I--don't understand, Excellency."

That odd flicker of the eyelids which seemed to be the only indication of a lighter mood accompanied Von Berger's next words.