But was he dead? I seized Sapt by the arm. His glance questioned me.
Facing round, we walked to the door of the dining-room. Here I turned suddenly faint, and clutched at the constable. He held me up, and pushed the door wide open. The smell of powder was in the room; it seemed as if the smoke hung about, curling in dim coils round the chandelier which gave a subdued light. James had the lamp now, and followed us with it. But the king was not there. A sudden hope filled me. He had not been killed then! I regained strength, and darted across towards the inside room. Here too the light was dim, and I turned to beckon for the lamp. Sapt and James came together, and stood peering over my shoulder in the doorway.
The king lay prone on the floor, face downwards, near the bed. He had crawled there, seeking for some place to rest, as we supposed. He did not move. We watched him for a moment; the silence seemed deeper than silence could be. At last, moved by a common impulse, we stepped forward, but timidly, as though we approached the throne of Death himself. I was the first to kneel by the king and raise his head. Blood had flowed from his lips, but it had ceased to flow now. He was dead.
I felt Sapt’s hand on my shoulder. Looking up, I saw his other hand stretched out towards the ground. I turned my eyes where he pointed. There, in the king’s hand, stained with the king’sblood, was the box that I had carried to Wintenberg and Rupert of Hentzau had brought to the lodge that night. It was not rest, but the box that the dying king had sought in his last moment. I bent, and lifting his hand unclasped the fingers, still limp and warm.
Sapt bent down with sudden eagerness. “Is it open?” he whispered.
The string was round it; the sealing-wax was unbroken. The secret had outlived the king, and he had gone to his death unknowing. All at once--I cannot tell why--I put my hand over my eyes; I found my eyelashes were wet.
“Is it open?” asked Sapt again, for in the dim light he could not see.
“Thank God!” said he. And, for Sapt’s, the voice was soft.
CHAPTER IX. THE KING IN THE HUNTING LODGE
THE moment with its shock and tumult of feeling brings one judgment, later reflection another. Among the sins of Rupert of Hentzau I do not assign the first and greatest place to his killing of the king. It was, indeed, the act of a reckless man who stood at nothing and held nothing sacred; but when I consider Herbert’s story, and trace how the deed came to be done and the impulsion of circumstances that led to it, it seems to have been in some sort thrust upon him by the same perverse fate that dogged our steps. He had meant the king no harm--indeed it may be argued that, from whatever motive, he had sought to serve him--and save under the sudden stress of self-defense he had done him none. The king’s unlooked-for ignorance of his errand, Herbert’s honest hasty zeal, the temper of Boris the hound, had forced on him an act unmeditated and utterly against his interest. His whole guilt lay in preferring the king’s death to his own--a crime perhaps in most men, but hardly deserving a place in Rupert’s catalogue. All this I can admit now, but on that night, with the dead body lying there before us, with the story piteously told by Herbert’s faltering voice fresh in our ears, it was hard to allow any such extenuation. Our hearts cried out for vengeance, although we ourselves served the king no more. Nay, it may well be that we hoped to stifle some reproach of our own consciences by a louder clamor against another’s sin, or longed to offer some belated empty atonement to our dead master by executing swift justice on the man who had killed him. I cannot tell fully what the others felt, but in me at least the dominant impulse was to waste not a moment in proclaiming the crime and raising the whole country in pursuit of Rupert, so that every man in Ruritania should quit his work, his pleasure, or his bed, and make it his concern to take the Count of Hentzau, alive or dead. I remember that I walked over to where Sapt was sitting, and caught him by the arm, saying: