"So be it," he said. "You take command. Yes, we'll be ready. The fate drives."
Then and there they set about what they had to do. It seemed indeed as though some strange influence were dominating Sapt; he went about the work like a man who is hardly awake. They placed the bodies each where the living man would be by night--the king in the guest-room, the huntsman in the sort of cupboard where the honest fellow had been wont to lie. They dug up the buried dog, Sapt chuckling convulsively, James grave as the mute whose grim doings he seemed to travesty: they carried the shot-pierced, earth-grimed thing in, and laid it in the king's room. Then they made their piles of wood, pouring the store of oil over them, and setting bottles of spirit near, that the flames having cracked the bottles, might gain fresh fuel. To Sapt it seemed now as if they played some foolish game that was to end with the playing, now as if they obeyed some mysterious power which kept its great purpose hidden from its instruments. Mr. Rassendyll's servant moved and arranged and ordered all as deftly as he folded his master's clothes or stropped his master's razor. Old Sapt stopped him once as he went by.
"Don't think me a mad fool, because I talk of the fate," he said, almost anxiously.
"Not I, sir," answered James, "I know nothing of that. But I like to be ready."
"It would be a thing!" muttered Sapt.
The mockery, real or assumed, in which they had begun their work, had vanished now. If they were not serious, they played at seriousness. If they entertained no intention such as their acts seemed to indicate, they could no longer deny that they had cherished a hope. They shrank, or at least Sapt shrank, from setting such a ball rolling; but they longed for the fate that would give it a kick, and they made smooth the incline down which it, when thus impelled, was to run. When they had finished their task and sat down again opposite to one another in the little front room, the whole scheme was ready, the preparations were made, all was in train; they waited only for that impulse from chance or fate which was to turn the servant's story into reality and action. And when the thing was done, Sapt's coolness, so rarely upset, yet so completely beaten by the force of that wild idea, came back to him. He lit his pipe again and lay back in his chair, puffing freely, with a meditative look on his face.
"It's two o'clock, sir," said James. "Something should have happened before now in Strelsau."
"Ah, but what?" asked the constable.
Suddenly breaking on their ears came a loud knock at the door.
Absorbed in their own thoughts, they had not noticed two men riding up to the lodge. The visitors wore the green and gold of the king's huntsmen; the one who had knocked was Simon, the chief huntsman, and brother of Herbert, who lay dead in the little room inside.
"Rather dangerous!" muttered the Constable of Zenda as he hurried to the door, James following him.
Simon was astonished when Sapt opened the door.
"Beg pardon, Constable, but I want to see Herbert. Can I go in?"
And he jumped down from his horse, throwing the reins to his companion.
"What's the good of your going in?" asked Sapt. "Herbert's not here."
"Not here? Then where is he?"
"Why, he went with the king this morning."
"Oh, he went with the king, sir? Then he's in Strelsau, I
suppose?"
"If you know that, Simon, you're wiser than I am."
"But the king is in Strelsau, sir."
"The deuce he is! He said nothing of going to Strelsau. He rose early and rode off with Herbert, merely saying they would be back to-night."
"He went to Strelsau, sir. I am just from Zenda, and his Majesty is known to have been in town with the queen. They were both at Count Fritz's."
