The Prince Commands: Being Sundry Adventures of Michael Karl, Sometime Crown Prince & Pretender to the Thrown of Morvania Read Online Free PDF Page B

them to terms. Take him away,” he ended swiftly.
    They hurried him out of the farther door and up a flight of steps worn into deep hollows by the passing and repassing of hundreds of feet. The passage was bitter cold, and Michael Karl longed for his cloak and tunic. By some mystery the Cross still swung at his throat, and it appeared that he was to be allowed to keep it.
    Halfway down the corridor at the top of the stairs they were halted by a messenger hurrying after them. He delivered an order in a Morvanian dialect unknown to Michael Karl, whose guards opened the nearest oaken door on the corridor and thrust him in. The American heard the key rasp in the lock and their heavy boots clamping on the stairs in an awful hurry to get somewhere.
    The room he stood in was small and dark, furnished, he discovered by the simple method of walking around and bumping into things, with a shaky table, a rude cot and a three-legged stool. Higher than his head a window was a pale square on the wall.
    He pushed the table against the wall, supporting its weak leg with the stool and clambered up carefully. A story below his window lay the courtyard and even as he watched, a group of wolfmen mounted and rode furiously out, leaving the yard empty except for wandering wolves, most of whom were waiting patiently by a small door at one end.
    Their patience was at last rewarded by the coming of one of the wolfmen, who tossed them great chunks of meat and then stood by, armed with a whip, to keep them from fighting. The meat bolted, they went to curl up in a furry mass near the farther wall.
    Michael Karl measured the window, and then went to grope over the cot. Blankets or covers there were none, but after pulling off a stiff hide he discovered to his joy that a woven net of leather strips supported the sleeper. The knots, old and stiff, defied his fingers.
    After his fifth attempt to undo one he leaned back against the wall exhausted, only to have something sharp press into his neck. Three of the links of the chain which held the Cross had sharp edges. Michael Karl slipped the chain over his head and set to work to saw the rope below the knots.
    Fortune smiled on him at last, for when the thong parted he discovered that he need only to cut one more knot to get the whole thing loose. Cold from the stone floor where he crouched and from the unpaned window above stiffened his hands so that time and time again the chain slipped through his blue fingers and he had to grope around for it in the floor dust.
    Once the rope was free he tested as best he could every foot of it. It would be fatal if it were to break and let him down into the midst of the waiting wolves. The cot had served him once and now it must serve him again. He knotted one end of the rope about the leg.
    With his stiff fingers he tugged and twisted his snug boots until he managed to slip them off and fasten them about his waist with a couple of turns of the loose end of the rope. Coiling the slack in one hand he climbed his table ladder and began to wriggle through the window. It was a scraping tight fit and for the second time that night he had reason to be thankful that he was slim and small. A man of the Baron's or the Werewolf's size could never have made it.
    Gasping as the chill mountain air struck him, he edged through and swung over to dangle against the rough masonry. Inch by inch he gingerly lowered himself, keeping watch on the sleeping wolves.
    “If,” he thought, “I ever get out of this, you'll never find me two blocks from Broadway again.” He knew nothing of Broadway, but judging by the Balkans, it must be very safe. Michael Karl was through with adventure, but unfortunately, it wasn't through with him.
    The rope didn't quite reach, of course, and he had to hang there, unfasten himself and his boots and then drop about four feet. The plump of his landing sounded alarmingly loud and without looking to see its effect on the sleeping guardians, he stumbled as fast as