Zita was untouched. She had died as she watched her father's death, her heart giving way under the strain, her hand clutching a chess-piece, a piece which, had she finished her move, would have released the white king from check by taking a red pawn. The piece was--a white knight. _CHAPTER I_ The surging crowds, swaying, shuffling, grumbling, waited impatiently in the grim Parliament Square, as yet lit but faintly by the dawning from the east. A motley crew, a corrupt community; the scene was but a typical picture of Budapest and all Hungary in the grip of revolution, a revolt of the proletariat for government by the proletariat, the shadow of Lenin falling upon an unhappy country, already torn by years of recent strife and earlier suppression. A country, monarchist to the core, now ground down by Soldiers' Councils and Workers' Councils, headed by the Russian-taught Bela Kun, and the bloodthirsty tyrant Tibor Szamuelly, his Terror Boys, and the merciless Korvin-Klein. Unhappy Hungary! Down through the ages have trickled histories of the French Revolution, the people _versus_ the '_aristos_.' Too well is known the toll of Madame Guillotine, and the cruel justice of Robespierre. There have been written histories of the Revolution, of the howling mobs, the vampire women; readers have felt a saddened pain at the thought of fleeing _émigrés_, driven from their own country, the land of their birth. Yet how many are aware that in less than a year more horrible deeds, more bloodthirsty deaths occurred during the dictatorship of Bela Kun than during all the years of the French Revolution? Even in the crowd which waited this morning there were whispers of horrible tortures: of men, whose only crime was that of belonging to the hated _bourgeoisie_, who were strung up by the hands and gagged with the lighted ends of cigars and cigarettes; of others who were bayoneted by the Terror Boys, and flung into a newly dug grave and buried, even while the breath still remained in their bodies. Other tales there were also, all too true unfortunately, of prisoners of Szamuelly, of the proletariat, who were, incredible as it may sound, flayed alive by their own countrymen. Murder, theft, blackmail! These were not crimes--merely the prerogative of the proletariat. To be a _bourgeois_! There was no worse sin in the calendar of Dante; and so the towns and villages of Hungary ran red with the blood of the Hungarians, and all because the shadow of Lenin fell upon the unhappy land. "Well done, Bela Kun! Well done, Szamuelly!" applauded Lenin, and, thus encouraged, these two flung the war-battered country into the maelstrom of bloody revolution, unheeded by the outside world, for all Europe was itself only just free of the throes of a ghastly war. Not a soul to aid the unhappy victims, not a man to stretch out a helping hand--save one. * * * * * *