Chapter 11: A Pyjama Party

About midnight I was awakened from agreeable slumber by somebody knocking at my bedroom door. I leaned out of bed, switched on the electric light, got up and opened the door.

King Ferdinand stood there in night-shirt and bare feet holding a candle that shook like an aspen leaf in the darkness.

“Somebody’s been trying to open my d-door,” he stammered. “I want you to come in and help me l-look under the b-bed. Not that I’m n-nervous or af-f-fraid, b-b-but I d-d-don’t want to be d-disturbed.”

“You say you heard somebody trying your door?”

“Yes, I did. I never sleep well and when I sleep at all I sleep lightly. I heard it p-p-plainly, I tell you.”

I smiled. “It’s a windy night,” said I. “Doors and windows rattle.”

“Yes, but the wind can’t turn the knob on your door!” he insisted, his eyes of a wild pig roving nervously about my room. “I don’t like such things, and I want you to come and look under my bed.”

“Very well,” said I, “let us go and look under your bed, Monsieur Itchenuff.”

The Tzar of all the Bulgars was not an agreeable spectacle in his night-shirt and enormous bare feet. His visage was pasty, his eyes had a frightened, stealthy restlessness like a wild thing’s that hears and scents an enemy but has not yet perceived him.

So wabbly was the lighted candle in his large fat hand, that I was afraid he’d set fire to his night-shirt, and relieved him of it.

“We have our own dynamo here,” said I. “Why didn’t you turn on the electric light by your bed?”

“It wouldn’t work,” he replied. “Do you suppose somebody has c-c-cut the wire?”

“Who?”

“God knows! Everybody has enemies, I suppose. You wouldn’t believe it, Monsieur, if you knew me well, but even I am affected by enemies.”

“Impossible!” said I, looking at him askance as he waddled along bare-footed beside me.

“Nevertheless, I assure you,” he complained in a voice unctuous with virtuous self-pity, “I, who have never harmed a fly, Monsieur, have secret enemies who would d-destroy me.”

Again I glanced sideways at this Bulgarian assassin—the murderer of Stambouleff, and of God knows how many others.

We came to the door of his dark bedroom and I went in with the lighted candle. First I examined the electric fixture.

“Nobody’s cut your wire,” said I. “The globe’s burnt out.”

“Does that seem at all suspicious to you?” he asked in an agitated voice, coming up behind me.

I smiled. “That happens daily as you must know.” I got down on my knees and peered under his bed. Of course there was nobody there. Nevertheless he got down on all fours and took the candle to examine every corner. Then, puffing, he reared up, shuffled to his flat, splay feet, and went about peeping into closets, behind curtains and sofas, moving from room to room in his suite with a stealthy flapping of his bare feet on the parquet.

Meanwhile I went around trying the several electric switches. It was odd that all the globes should have been burnt out at once. Evidently some fuse in the cellar had blown out.

There was another candle on his dresser. I lighted it. And, as it flickered into yellow flame, something on the floor of the dressing-room beyond caught the light and sparkled. And I went forward on tip-toe and picked it up.

The Tzar of all the Bulgars was busy searching the sitting-room. Now, satisfied that there was no intruder concealed about the apartment, he waddled massively back to where I stood.

“All the same,” he said, “I heard the knob of my door squeak.”

“There are no robbers in this region,” said I with a shrug.

“Monsieur O’Ryan,” he said solemnly, “you may not know it but I am a very important personage—person, I mean—that is,” he explained hastily, “I am important in a business sense. And I have many envious business rivals who would not hesitate to follow me secretly from Berne and attempt to possess themselves of any—papers I might carry—in hopes of obtaining business secrets.”

I said nothing. He stood on one leg, rubbing one shin with his large, fat toes, and his little mean eyes roaming everywhere.

“You should have brought a servant or two,” I suggested.

“No, no, not this time,” he said hurriedly. “No, this is just an—an informal little p-pleasure trip with friends—the Xenoses—quite—er—al fresco—sans façon, you see. No, I didn’t want servants about.” He shot a cunning glance at me and checked himself.

So I shrugged, showed him how to double-lock all his doors, bade him good night, and went back to my own room, trying the corridor lights on my way. None of them worked.

“There’s no fuse blown out,” thought I to myself, staring at my own bedroom light which burned brightly and which was controlled by the same switch.

Then, locking my door, I took out of my pocket the small bright object which I had picked up in Tzar Ferdinand’s dressing-room.

It was a silver filigree button from the peasant costume of Thusis.

Of course she had probably lost it sometime during the day when airing the suite. Untidy little Thusis!

I dropped onto my bed still holding the silver button in my closed hand. Presently I touched it, discreetly, with my lips. And fell asleep after a while—to dream that the Bulgarian and the Hohenzollern had cut off my hands at the wrists and were nailing them to my front door, as happened, I believe, to Major Panitza.

About three o’clock I awoke in pitch darkness, all quivering from my dream, and heard the wind in the fir-trees and the slam of a heavy shutter.

For a while I lay there hoping the shutter would stop banging. But it did not. Then I tried to locate it by the sound. And after a while I decided that it must be some shutter on one of the windows overhead.

The servants’ quarters were there. I didn’t exactly like to go up and hunt about. But the racket was becoming unbearable; so I rose again, got into slippers, trousers and dressing gown, and went out along the corridor. It was pitch dark, but I decided not to go back and hunt up a candle because I could follow the strip of carpet and feel my way to the service stairs.

And I was doing this in a blind, cautious way, and was just turning the corridor corner with groping arms outstretched, when, with a soft and perfectly silent shock, somebody walked into them.

Such a thing is sufficient to paralyze anybody. My heart missed like a flivver out of gear, then that engine started racing, and my arms mechanically and convulsively closed around that unseen thing that had collided with me.

“W-who the devil is it!” I said shakily, as a shocked gasp escaped it and the thing almost collapsed in my terrified embrace.

Then, as I spoke, my half-stunned wits awoke; a faint fragrance grew on my senses; the yielding ghost in my arms came to warm life, and two hands clutched at my imprisoning arms.

“Michael!” she panted.

“Great heavens! Thusis!” I faltered.

Freed, she leaned against the corridor wall for a few moments in palpitating silence. I also needed that interval to recover.

“What on earth is the matter, Thusis?” I managed to whisper at last.

“N-nothing. There was a shutter blowing——”

“But it’s on the floor above! It’s on your floor, Thusis.”

She was silent for a moment, then: “What are you doing—prowling about the house at this hour?” she demanded.

“In my case,” said I, “it was the shutter.”

“Very well. I’ll go up and fix it, and you may go back to bed.”

But I had begun to feel a little troubled, and I made no motion to depart.

“I’ll fix it,” she repeated. “Good night.”

“Thusis?”

“What?” In her voice I distinguished the slightest tone of impatience, perhaps of defiance. “What is it?” she repeated.

“Tell me the truth. What are you really about in this corridor at three in the morning?”

“I’ve told you.”

“No, you haven’t, Thusis.”

After a silence I could hear her laughing under her breath.

“Mind your own business, Michael,” she whispered; “I’m not going to confide in you.”

“I want to know what brought you here,” said I.

“What if you do wish to know? I am not obliged to inform you, am I?”

I heard her retreating, and I followed to the service stairs. Here a dim light came through a high window faintly silvering the stairs; and I saw the phantom figure of Thusis standing where she had suddenly arrested her steps on the stair-case, half-seeing, half-divining, my pursuit.

“Is that you, Michael?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you follow me?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“What nonsense! At three in the morning? Also I am not in conventional attire.”

“I’m not, either,” said I, “but we’ll waive ceremony.”

“No, we won’t!”

“Yes, we will——”

“No!”

“Why?”

“I’ve told you why. Do you suppose I wish Clelia or Josephine to find me sitting on the stairs with you under such circumstances?”

She seated herself on the stairs as she spoke and I came up and leaned on the newel-post.

“I’m a perfect fool,” she said. But she looked like an angel there in the vague light of the windy sky, her splendid hair about her face and shoulders, and her little naked feet drawn close under the hem of her silvery chamber-robe which she was belting in with rapid fingers.

“Well?” she said, looking up at me.

“I found something which belongs to you,” said I, quietly.

“What is it?”

“A silver filigree button.”

“Oh. Where did you find it, Michael?”

“In the dressing-room of King Ferdinand.”