Shafts of red and green wavered and quaked in the black dock waters.

Between the hulks of cork- and salt-freighters, the steam yacht Isis slipped with as graceful a motion as that of the gulls. Then when the anchor chains ran gratingly out, Benton turned on his heel and went to his cabin.

Behind a bolted door he dropped into a chair and sat motionless. Finally the right hand wandered mechanically to his breast pocket and brought out the envelope. He read for the thousandth time the endorsement in the corner.

"Not to be opened until the evening of March 5th," and under that, "I love you."

There was another envelope; an outer one much rubbed from the pocket. It was directed in her hand and the blurred postmark bore a date in February. He could have described every mark upon the enclosing cover with the precision of a careful detective. When his impatient fingers had first torn off the end, only to be confronted by the order: "Not to be opened until the evening of March 5th," he had fallen back on studying outward marks and indications. In the first place, it had been posted from Puntal, and instead of the familiar violet stamp of Maritzburg, with which her other letters had been franked during the two months past, this stamp was pink, and its medallion bore the profile of Karyl.

That she had left Maritzburg, and that she had written him a message to be sealed for a month, meant that the date of March 5th had significance. That she was in Galavia meant that the significance was—he winced.

On the calendar of a bronze desk-set, the first four days of March were already cancelled. Now, taking up a blue pencil, he crossed off the number five. After that he looked at his watch. It wanted one minute of six. He held the timepiece before him while the second-hand ticked its way once around its circle, then with feverish impatience he tore the end from the envelope.

Benton's face paled a little as he drew out the many pages covered with a woman's handwriting, but there was no one to see that or to notice the tremor of his fingers.

For a moment he held the pages off, seeing only the "Dearest" at the top, and the wild way the pen had raced, forming almost shapeless characters.

"Dearest," she said in part, "I write now because I must turn to someone—because my heart must speak or break. All day I must smile as befits royalty, and act as befits one whose part is written for her. Unless there be an outlet, there must be madness. I have enclosed this envelope in another and enjoined you not to read it until March 5th. Then it will be too late for you to come to me. If you came to-night, you would find me hurrying out to meet you and to surrender. Duty would so gladly lay down its arms to Love, dear, and desert the fight.

"To-night I have slipped away from the uniforms, the tawdry mockery of a puppet court, to find the pitiful comfort of rehearsing my heart-ache to you, who own my heart. In my life here every hour is mapped, and I seem to move from cell to cell. So many obsequious jailers who call themselves courtiers stand about and seem to watch me, that I feel as if I had to ask permission to draw my breath. Out in the narrow streets of this little picture town, I see dark-skinned, bare-footed girls. Some of them carry skins of wine on their heads. All of them are poor. They also are gloriously free. As they pass the palace, they look up enviously, and I, from the inside, look out enviously. I know how Richard of the Lion Heart felt when he was a prisoner in France, only I have not the comfort of a Lion Heart, and it is not written in the book of things that you shall pass outside and hear my harp—and rescue me.... One little taste of liberty I give myself. It caused a terrible battle at first, but I was stubborn and told them that if I was going to be Queen I was going to do just what I wanted, and that if they didn't like it, they could get some other girl to be Queen, so of course they let me.... There is an old half-forgotten roadway walled in on both sides that runs through the town from this horrible palace to the woods upon the mountain. There is some sort of foolish legend that in the old days the Kings used to go by this protected road to a high point called Look-out Rock, and stand there where they could see pretty much all of this miserable little Kingdom and a great deal of the Mediterranean besides. No one uses it now except me; but I do as often as I can steal away. I dress in old clothes and take the little Inca god with me and no one knows us. We slip off among the bowlders and pine trees where the view is wonderful, and as his godship presides on a moss-covered rock and I sit on the carpet of pine needles, he gives me advice. Somewhere in these woods crowds of children live. They are very shy, and for a long time looked at me wonderingly from big liquid eyes, but now I have made friends with them and they come and sit around me in a circle and make me tell them fairy stories....

"Once, dear, I was strong enough to say 'no' to you. Twice I could not be."

The reader paused and scowled at the wall with set jaws.

"But when you read this, almost three thousand miles away, there will be only a few days between me and (it is hard to say it) the marriage and the coronation. He is to be crowned on the same day that we are married. Then I suppose I can't even write what is in my heart."

Benton rose and paced the narrow confines of the cabin. Suddenly he halted. "Even under sealed orders," he mused slowly, "one may dispose of three thousand miles. They, at least, are behind." A countenance somewhat drawn schooled its features into normal expressionlessness, as a few moments afterward he rose to open the door in response to a rapping outside.

As the door swung in a smile came to Benton's face: the first it had worn since that night when he had taken leave of Hope.

"You, Blanco!" he exclaimed. "Why, hombre, the anchor is scarce down. You are prompt!"

The physically superb man who stood at the threshold smiled. The gleam of perfect teeth accentuated the swarthy olive of his face and the crisp jet of his hair. His brown eyes twinkled good-humoredly. Jaw, neck and broad shoulders declared strength, while the slenderness of waist and thigh hinted of grace—a hint that every movement vindicated. It was the grace of the bull-fighter, to whom awkwardness would mean death.

"I had your letter. It was correctly directed—Manuel Blanco, Calle Isaac Peral." The Spaniard smiled delightedly. "When one is once more to see an old friend, one does not delay. How am I? Ah, it is good of the Senor to ask. I do well. I have retired from the Plaza de Toros. I busy myself with guiding parties of touristos here and abroad—and in the collection and sale of antiques. But this time, what is your enterprise or pleasure, Senor? What do you in Spain?"

"My business in Spain," replied Benton slowly, "is to get out of Spain. After that I don't know. Will you go and take chances of anything that might befall? I sent for you to ask you whether you have leisure to accompany me on an enterprise which may involve danger. It's only fair to warn you."

Blanco laughed. "Who reads manana?" he demanded, seating himself on the edge of the table, and busying his fingers with the deft rolling of a cigarette. "The toreador does not question the Prophets. I am at your disposition. But the streets of Cadiz await us. Let us talk of it all over the table d'hote."

An hour later found the two in the Calle Duke de Tetuan, blazing with lights like a jeweler's show-case.

The narrow fissure between its walls was aflow with the evening current of promenaders, crowding its scant breadth, and sending up a medley of laughter and musical sibilants. Grandees strolled stiffly erect with long capes thrown back across their left shoulders to show the brave color of velvet linings. Young dandies of army and navy, conscious of their multi-colored uniforms, sifted along through the press, toying with rigidly-waxed mustaches and regarding the warm beauty of their countrywomen through keen, appreciative eyes, not untinged with sensuousness. Here and there a common hombre in short jacket, wide, low-crowned sombrero and red sash, zig-zagged through the pleasure-seekers to cut into a darker side street whence drifted pungent whiffs of garlic, black olives and peppers from the stalls of the street salad-venders. Occasionally a Moor in fez and wide-bagging trousers, passed silently through the volatile chatter, looking on with jet eyes and lips drawn down in an impervious dignity.

They found a table in one of the more prominent cafes from which they could view through the plate-glass front the parade in the street, as well as the groups of coffee-sippers within.

"Yonder," prompted Blanco, indicating with his eyes a near-by group, "he with the green-lined cape, is the Duke de Tavira, one of the richest men in Spain—it is on his estate that they breed the bulls for the rings of Cadiz and Seville. Yonder, quarreling over politics, are newspaper men and Republicans. Yonder, artists." He catalogued and assorted for the American the personalities about the place, presuming the curiosity which should be the tourist's attribute-in-chief.

"And at the large table—yonder under the potted palms, and half-screened by the plants—who are they?" questioned Benton perfunctorily. "They appear singularly engrossed in their talk."

"Assume to look the other way, Senor, so they will not suspect that we speak of them," cautioned the Andalusian. "I dare say that if one could overhear what they say, he could sell his news at his own price. Who knows but they may plan new colors for the map of Southern Europe?"

Benton's gaze wandered over to the table in question, then came uninquisitively back to Blanco's impassive face. It took more than European politics to distract him.

"International intrigue?" he inquired.

The eyes of the other were idly contemplating the street windows, and as he talked he did not turn them toward the men whom he described. Occasionally he looked at Benton and then vacantly back to the street parade, or the red end of his own cigarette.

"There is a small, and, in itself, an unimportant Kingdom with Mediterranean sea-front, called Galavia," said Blanco. Benton's start was slight, and his features if they gave a telltale wince at the word became instantly casual again in expression. But his interest was no longer forced by courtesy. It hung from that moment fixed on the narrative.

"Ah, I see the Senor knows of it," interpolated Blanco. "The tall man with the extremely pale face and the singularly piercing eye who sits facing us,"—Blanco paused,—"is the Duke Louis Delgado. He is the nephew of the late King of Galavia, and if—" the Spaniard gave an expressive shrug, and watched the smoke ring he had blown widen as it floated up toward the ceiling—"if by any chance, or mischance, Prince Karyl, who is to be crowned at Puntal three days hence, should be called to his reward in heaven, the gentleman who sits there would be crowned King of Galavia in his stead."



CHAPTER X

OF CERTAIN TRANSPIRINGS AT A CAFE TABLE

Benton's eyes seemed hypnotically drawn to the table pointed out, but he kept them tensely riveted on his coffee cup.

"Yes?" he impatiently prompted.

"Of course," continued Blanco absently, "no one could regret more profoundly than the Grand Duke any accident or fatality which might befall his royal kinsman, yet even the holy saints cannot prevent evil chances!" He paused to sip his coffee. "At the right of 'Louis, the Dreamer,' as he is called, sits the Count Borttorff, who is not greatly in favor with Prince Karyl. He, too, is a Galavian of noble birth, but Paris knows him better than Puntal. He on the left, the man with the puffed eyes and the dissipated mouth—you will notice also a scar over the left temple—" Blanco was regarding his cigarette tip as he flecked an ash to the floor—"is Monsieur Jusseret supposed to be high in the affairs of the French Cabinet Noir."

"There is one more—and a vacant chair," suggested Benton.

The toreador nodded. "True, I had not forgotten the other. Tall, black-haired, not unlike yourself in appearance, Senor, save for a heavier jaw and the mustache which points upward. He is an Englishman by birth, a native of the world by adoption. Once he bore a British army commission. Now he is seen in distinguished society"—Blanco laughed—"when distinguished society wants something done which clean men will not do. His name, just now, is Martin. In many quarters he is better known as the English Jackal. Where one sees him one may scent conspiracy."

In all the life and color compassed between the four walls of Moorish tiles and arches, Benton felt the magnet of the group irresistibly drawing his eyes to itself.

"And this gathering about a table for a cup of coffee, in Cadiz—what of it?" argued Benton. He tried to speak as if his curiosity were dilute and his thoughts west of the Atlantic. "Are they not all known here?"

Again Blanco gave the expressive Spanish shrug.

"Few people here know any of them. I only said, Senor, that if any chance should cause Galavia to mourn her new King that same chance would elevate the tall, pale gentleman from a cafe table to a throne. I did not say that the chance would occur."

"And yet?" urged Benton, his eyes narrowing, "your words seem to hint more than they express. What is it, Manuel?"

The Spaniard took a handful of matches from a porcelain receptacle on the table. He laid one down.

"Let that match," he smilingly suggested, "stand for the circumstance of the Grand Duke leaving Paris for Cadiz which is—well, nearer to Puntal—and less observant than Paris." He laid another on the marble table-top with its sulphur head close to the first, so that the two radiated from a common center like spokes from a hub. "Regard that as a coincidence of the arrival of the Count Borttorff from the other direction, but at the same time, and at the precise season of the coronation and marriage of the King." He looked at the two matches, then successively laid down others, all with the heads at the common center. "That," he said, "is the joining of the group by the distinguished Frenchman—that the presence of the English Jackal—that is the chance that runs against any King or Queen of meeting death. That—" he struck another match and held it a moment burning in his fingers "—regard that, Senor, as the flaring up of ambitions that are thwarted by a life or two."

He touched the burning match to the grouped tips of sulphur and his teeth gleamed white as he contemplated the little spurt of hissing flame. Then he dropped his flattened hand upon the tiny eruption and extinguished it, as his sudden grin died away to a bored smile.



"There, it is over," he yawned, "and of course it may not happen. Quien sabe?"

"And if they should flare up—" Benton spoke slowly, carefully, "others might suffer than the King?"

"How should one say? The King alone would suffice, but Kings are rarely found in solitude," reasoned the Andalusian. "For a brief moment Europe looks with eyes of interest on the feasting little capital. The King will not be alone. No, it must be—so one would surmise—at the coronation."

"Good God!" Benton gaspingly breathed the exclamation. "But, man, think of it—the women—the children—the utterly innocent people—the Queen!"

The Spaniard leaned back, balancing his chair on two legs, his hands spread on the table. "Si, Senor, it is regrettable. Yet nothing on earth appears so easy to supply as Kings—except Queens. And after all, what is it to us—an American millionaire—a Cadiz toreador?"

For a moment Benton was silent. When he spoke it was in quick, clear-clipped interrogation.

"You know Puntal and Galavia?"

"As I know Spain."

"Manuel, suppose the quaking of a throne does interest me, you will go there with me—even though I may lead you where its fall may crush us both?"

The Spaniard grinned with a dazzling show of white teeth. His shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. "As well a tumbling castle wall as a charging bull."

"Good. The first thing is to learn all we can of Louis and his party."

"There is," observed Blanco calmly, "a table on this side also shielded by plants. From its angle we can observe,—and be ourselves protected from their view. However, we will first go for a stroll in the calle and return. The change of position will then be less noticeable. Also, the Senor's forehead is beaded with moisture. The air of the street will be grateful."

As Benton rose he noticed that the Grand Duke was leaning confidentially toward the member of the French Cabinet Noir.

Fifteen minutes later the two men were ensconced in their more sheltered coign, with wine glasses before them, and all the seeming of idle hours to kill.

"Is Louis ostensibly a friend of the throne?" demanded the American.

"Professedly, he is, Senor. He will write his felicitations when the marriage and the crowning occur—he will even send suitable gifts, but he will remain at his cafe here with his absinthe, or in Paris near the fair Comptessa Astaride, whom he adores, unless, of course, he goes to touch the match."

"Does he never return to Puntal?"

"Once in five years he has been there. Then he went quietly to his hunting lodge which is ten miles, as the crow flies from the capital, yet barred off by the mountain ridge. It is two days' journey by sea from Puntal, and save by the sea one comes only through the mountain pass, which is always guarded. Yet on that occasion heliographs reported his movements; the King's escort was doubled and the King went little abroad."

"Who stands at Louis' back? Revolutionists?"

"Dios! No, Senor. The Galavians are cattle. Karyl or Louis, it is one to them. Galavia is a key. The key cares not at what porter's belt it jingles. Europe cares who opens and closes the lock. Comprende? Spain cares, France cares, Italy cares, even the Northern nations care. The movement of pawns affects castles and kings."

Manuel suddenly halted in his flow of talk. "Blessed Saints!" he breathed softly. "When he comes nearer you will see him—the palms obscure him now. It is Colonel Von Ritz. He has just entered. He stands near Karyl and the throne. He is a great man wasted in a toy kingdom. All Europe envies the services which Von Ritz squanders on Galavia."

Benton looked up with a rush of memories, and was glad that the Galavian could not see him.

Like all the men concerned, Von Ritz was inconspicuously a civilian in dress, but as he came down the center of the room he was, as always, the commanding figure, challenging attention. His steady eyes swept the place with dispassionate scrutiny. His straight mouth-line betrayed no expression. He came slowly, idly, as though looking for someone. When still some distance from the table where sat the Duke Louis, he halted and their eyes met. Those of the Duke, as he inclined his head slightly, stiffly, wore a glint of veiled hostility. Those of Von Ritz, as he returned the salute, no whit more cordially, were blank, except that for the moment, as he stood regarding the party, his non-committal pupils seemed to bore into each face about the table and to catalogue them all in an insolent inventory.

Each man in the group uneasily shifted his eyes. Then Karyl's officer turned on his heel and left the place. Louis watched him, scowling, and as the Colonel passed into the street turned suddenly and spoke in a vehement whisper. Jusseret's sardonic lips twisted into a wry smile as though in recognition of an adversary's clever check.

The cafe was now filled. Few tables remained unoccupied, and of these, several were near that of the Ducal party.

Blanco rose. "Wait for me, Senor," he whispered, then went to the front of the cafe where Benton lost him in a crowd at the door. A moment later he came lurching back. His lower lip was stupidly pendent, his eyes heavy and dull, and as he floundered about he dropped with the aimless air of one heavily intoxicated into a chair by a vacant table not more than ten feet distant from that of Louis, the Dreamer.

There he remained huddled in apparent torpor and for some moments unobserved, until the Duke signaled to a passing waiter and indicated the toreador with a glance. The waiter came over to Blanco. "The Senor will find another table," he said with the ingratiating courtesy of one paying a compliment. "It is regrettable, but this one is reserved." Blanco appeared too stupid to understand, and when finally he did grasp the meaning he rose with profuse and clumsy apologies and staggered vacantly about in the immediate neighborhood of the conspiring coterie. Finally, after receiving further attention and guidance from the waiter, he returned to Benton, and dropping into his chair leaned over, his white teeth flashing a satisfied smile. "The matches may not flare, Senor," he said, "but it would appear it was planned. Now Martin and Borttorff cannot go to Puntal. Since the brief visit of Von Ritz they are branded men. The others are already known to Karyl's government."

Benton sat with his brows knitted intently listening.

"Now," went on Blanco, "there is one thing more. They await the man for whom they hold the empty chair."

There was a brief silence, then the Spaniard uttered a low exclamation of satisfaction. Benton glanced up to see a young man of frank face, blond mustache and Paris clothes drop into the vacant place with evident apologies for his tardiness.

"Ah," breathed Blanco again, "I feared it would be someone I did not know. He is the Teniente Lapas, of Karyl's Palace guard. The pobrecito! I wonder what post he hopes to adorn at the Court of the Pretender."

For a moment the Spaniard looked on with an expression of melancholy reflection. "That boy," he said "at last, has the trust and friendship of the King. Before him lies every prospect of advancement, yet he has been beguiled by the Countess Astaride, and throws himself into a plot against Karyl. It is pitiable when one is perfidious so young—and with such small cause."

"Who is the Countess Astaride?" inquired the American.

"One of the most beautiful women in Europe, to whom these children are playthings. For her there is only Louis Delgado. It is her firing of his dreams which makes him aspire to a throne. It is she who has the determination. He can see visions of power only in the colors of his absinthe glass. She uses men to her ends. Lapas is the latest—unless—" Blanco paused—"unless he is playing two parts, and really serves Karyl. Come, Senor, there is nothing further to interest us here."



CHAPTER XI

THE PASSING PRINCESS AND THE MISTAKEN COUNTESS

With the sapphire bay of Puntal at his back, his knees clasped between interlacing fingers, Benton sat on the stone sea-wall and affected to whistle up a lightness of heart. Near at hand sprawled a picturesque city, its houses tinted in pea-greens, pinks and soft blues, or as white and decorative as though fashioned in icing on a cake.

Clinging steeply to higher levels and leaning on buttressing walls, lay outspread vineyards and cane fields and gardens. Splotching the whole with imperial and gorgeous purple, hung masses of bougonvillea between trellis and masonry. At a more lofty line, where the sub-tropical profusion halted in the warning breath of a keener atmosphere, came the scrub growth and beyond that, in succeeding altitudes, the pine belt, the snow line and the film of trailing cloud on the white peaks.

Out of the center of the color-splashed town rose the square tower of the ancient cathedral, white in a coat of plaster for two-thirds of its height, but gray at its top in the nakedness of mossy stone.

To its dilapidated clock Benton's eyes traveled repeatedly and anxiously while he waited.

From the clock they wandered in turn to the road circling the bay, and the cliff at his left, where the jail-like walls of the King's Palace rose sheer from the rock, fifty feet above him.

From the direction of the Cathedral drifted fragments of band music, and the bugle calls of marching platoons. Everywhere festivity reigned, working great profits to the keepers of the wine-shops.

Manuel Blanco turned the corner and Benton slipped quickly down from his perch on the wall and fell into step as the other passed.

"It is difficult to learn anything, Senor." The Spaniard spoke low as he led the way outward from the city.

"Puntal is usually a quiet place and the festivities have made it like a child at a fiesta. One hears only 'Long live the King—the Queen!' There are to be illuminations to-night, and music, and the limit will be taken off the roulette wheels at the Strangers' Club. Bah! One could have read it in the papers without leaving Cadiz."

"Then you have learned nothing?"

"One thing, yes. An old friend of mine has come for the festivities from the Duke's estate. He says the pass is picketed and a guard is posted at the Look-out Rock."

"The Look-out Rock?" Benton repeated the words with an inflection of inquiry.

"Yes—look above you at the hill whose summit is less high than the ridge peaks—there below the snow." Blanco suddenly raised his voice from confidential undertone to the sing-song of the professional guide. "Yonder," he said, scarcely changing the direction of his pointed finger, "is the unfinished sanatorium for consumptives which the Germans undertook and left unfinished." Two soldiers were sauntering by, smart in newly issued uniforms of tall red caps, dark tunics, sky-blue breeches, and polished boots. "That point," went on Blanco, dropping his voice again, as they passed out of earshot, "is three thousand, five hundred feet above the sea. From the rock by the pines—if you had a strong glass, you could see the Galavian flag which flies there—the eye sweeps the sea for many empty leagues. One's gaze can also follow the gorge where runs the pass through the mountains. Also, to the other side, one has an eagle's glimpse of the Grand Duke's hunting lodge. There is an observatory just back of the rock and flag. The speck of light which you can see, like a splinter of crystal, is its dome, but only military astronomers now look through its telescope. There one can read the tale of open shutters or barred windows in the house of Louis, the Dreamer. You understand?"

"Yes."

"Now, do you see the thread of broken masonry zig-zagging upward from the Palace? That is a walled drive which runs part of the way up to the rock. In other days the Kings of Galavia went thus from their castle to the point whence they could see the peninsula spread out below like a map on the page of a school-book."

"Yes? What else?"

"This. The lodge of the Duke as seen by the telescope sleeps shuttered—an expanse of blank walls. Yet the Duke is there!"

"Louis—in Galavia?"

"Wait." Blanco laid his hand on the other's arm and smiled.

"My friend is superstitious—and ignorant. He tells how the Duke has a ship's mast with wires on a tower fronting the far side. He says Louis talks with the open sea."

"A Marconi mast?"

Manuel nodded.

Benton's eyes narrowed under drawn brows. When he spoke his voice was tense.

"In God's name, Manuel," he whispered, "what is the answer?"

The Spaniard met the gaze gravely. "I fancy, Senor," he said slowly, "the matches will burn."

"When? Where?"

"Quien sabe?" Blanco paused to light a cigarette. Two priests, their black robes relieved by crimson sashes and stockings, approached, and until they were at a safe distance he talked on once more at random with the sing-song patter of the guide. "That dungeon-like building is the old Fortress do Freres. It has clung to that gut of rock out there in the bay since the days when the Moors held the Mediterranean. It is said that the new King will convert it from a fortress into a prison. It is now employed as an arsenal."

Slowly the two men moved back to the busier part of the city. They walked in silence until they were swallowed in the crowds drifting near the Central Avenue. Finally Blanco leaned forward, moved by the anxious face of his companion. "Manana, Senor," he suggested reassuringly. "Perhaps we may learn to-morrow."

"And to-morrow may be too late," replied Benton.

"Hardly, Senor. The marriage and coronation are the day following. It should be one of those occasions." Benton only shuddered.

They swung into the Ruo Centrale, between lining sycamores, olive trees and acacias, to be engulfed in a jostling press of feast-day humanity. Suddenly Benton felt his coat-sleeve tugged.

"Let us stop," Manuel shouted into his ear above the roar of the carnival clamor. "The Royal carriage comes."

Between a garden and the pavement ran a stone coping, topped by a tall iron grill, and laden with screening vines. The two men mounted this masonry and clung to the iron bars, as the crowd was driven back from the street by the outriders. Before Benton's eyes the whole mass of humanity swam in a blur of confusion and vertigo. The passing files of blue and red soldiery seemed wavering figures mounted on reeling horses. The King's carriage swung into view and a crescendo of cheering went up from the crowd.

Benton saw blurred circles of color whirling dizzily about a steady center, and the center was the slender woman at Karyl's side, who was the day after to-morrow to become his Queen. He saw the fixed smile with which she tried to acknowledge the salutations as the crowd eddied about her carriage. Her wide, stricken eyes were shimmery with imprisoned tears. To drive through the streets of Puntal with that half-stunned misery written clear in lips and eyes, she must, he knew, have reached the outmost border of endurance. Karyl bent solicitously forward and spoke, and she nodded as if answering in a dream, smiling wanly. It was all as some young Queen might have gone to the guillotine rather than to her coronation. As she looked bewilderedly from side to side her glance fell upon the clustering flowers of the vine. Benton gripped the iron bars and groaned, and then her eyes met his. For a moment her pupils dilated and one gloved hand convulsively tightened on the paneling of the carriage door. The man dropped into the crowd and was swallowed up, and he knew by her familiar gesture of brushing something away from her temples, that she believed she had seen an image projected from a troubled brain.

"Come," he said brokenly to his companion, "for God's sake get me out of this crowd."

* * * * *

The Strangers' Club of Puntal sits high on a solid wall of rock and overlooks the sea. Its beauty is too full of wizardry to seem real, and what nature had done in view and sub-tropical luxuriance the syndicate which operates the ball rooms, tea gardens, and roulette wheels has striven to abet. To-night a moon two-thirds full immersed the grounds in a bath of blue and silver, and far off below the cliff wall the Mediterranean was phosphorescent. In the room where the croupiers spun the wheels, the color scheme was profligate.

Benton idled at one of the tables, his eyes searching the crowd in the faint hope of discovering some thread which he might follow up to definite conclusion. Beyond the wheel, just at the croupier's elbow, stood a woman, audaciously yet charmingly gowned in red, with a scale-like shimmer of passementerie. A red rose in her black hair threw into conspicuous effect its intense luster.

She might have been the genius of Rouge et Noir. Her litheness had the panther's sinuous strength. The vivid contrast of olive cheeks, carmine lips and dark eyes, gave stress to her slender sensuousness.

Hers was the allurement of poppy and passion-flower. In her movements was suggestion of vital feminine force.

Perhaps the incurious glance of the American made itself felt, for as she threw down a fresh louis d'or, she looked up and their eyes met. For an instant her expression was almost that of one who stifles an impulse to recognize another. Possibly, thought Benton, she had mistaken him for someone else.

"Mon dieu," whispered a voice in French, "the Comptessa d'Astaride is charming this evening."

"Ah, such wit! Such charm!" enthused another voice at Benton's back. "She is most perfect in those gowns of unbroken lines, with a single rose." Evidently the men left the tables at once, for Benton heard no more. He also turned away a moment later to make way for an Italian in whose feverish eyes burned the roulette-lust. He went to the farthest end of the gardens, where there was deep shadow, and a seaward outlook over the cliff wall. There the glare of electric bulbs and blazing doorways was softened, and the orchestra's music was modulated. Presently he was startled by a ripple of laughter at his shoulder, low and rich in musical vibrance.

"Ah, it is not like this in your gray, fog-wrapped country."

Benton wheeled in astonishment to encounter the dazzling smile of the Countess Astaride. She was standing slender as a young girl, all agleam in the half-light as though she wore an armor of glowing copper and garnets.

"I beg your pardon," stammered the American, but she laid a hand lightly on his arm and smilingly shook her head.

"I know, Monsieur Martin, we have not met, but you were with the Duke at Cadiz. You have come in his interest. In his cause, I acknowledge no conventions." In her voice was the fusing of condescension and regal graciousness. "It was wise," she thoughtfully added, "to shave your mustache, but even so Von Ritz will know you. You cannot be too guarded."

For an instant Benton stood with his hands braced on the coping regarding her curiously. Evidently he stood on the verge of some revelation, but the role in which her palpable mistake cast him was one he must play all in the dark.

"You can trust me," she said with an impassioned note but without elevating her voice. "I am the Countess—"

"Astaride," finished Benton.

Then he cautiously added the inquiry: "Have you heard the plans that were discussed by the Duke, and Jusseret and Borttorff?"

"And yourself and Lieutenant Lapas," she augmented.

"And Lapas and myself," admitted Benton, lying fluently.

"I know only that Louis is to wait at his lodge to hear by wireless whether France and Italy will recognize his government," she hastily recited; "and that on that signal you and Lapas wait to strike the blow."

"Do you know when?" inquired the American, fencing warily in the effort to lead her into betrayal of more definite information.

"It must be soon—or never! But tell me, has Louis come? Has he reached his hunting lodge? Does he know that guards are at the rock? Do you, or Lapas, wait to flash the signal from the look-out? Ah, how my gaze shall be bent toward the flag-staff." Then, as her eyes wandered out to sea, her voice became soft with dreams. She laughed low and shook her head. "Louis, Louis!" she murmured. "When you are King! But tell me—" again she was anxious, executive, imperious—"tell me everything!"

Obviously he was mistaken for the English Jackal!

Benton countered anxiously. "Yet, Your Majesty,"—he bent low as he anticipated her ambition in bestowing the title—"Your Majesty asks so many questions all at once, and we may be interrupted."

Once more she was in a realm of air castles as she leaned on the stone coping and gazed off into the moonlight. "It is but the touching of a button," she murmured, "and allons! In the space of an explosion, dynasties change places." Suddenly she stood up. "You are right. We cannot talk here. I shall be missed. Take this"—she slipped a seal ring from her finger. "Come to me to-morrow morning. I am at the Hotel de France. I shall be ostensibly out, but show the ring and you will be admitted. When I am Queen, you shall not go undecorated." She gave his hand a warm momentary pressure and was gone.



CHAPTER XII

BENTON MUST DECIDE

On the next afternoon at the base of the flag-staff above Look-out Rock, Lieutenant Lapas nervously swept the leagues of sea and land, spreading under him, with strong glasses. Though the air was somewhat rarer and cooler here than below, beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, and the cigarettes which he incessantly smoked followed each other with a furious haste which denoted mental unrest.

At a sound of foliage rustled aside and a displaced rock bumping down the slope, the watcher took the glasses from his eyes with a nervous start.

Up the hill from the left climbed an unknown man. His features were those of a Spaniard. As the officer's eyes challenged him he halted, panting, to mop his brow with the air of one who takes a breathing space after violent exertion. The newcomer smiled pleasantly as he leaned against a bowlder and genially volunteered: "It is a long journey from the shore." Then after a moment he added in a tone of respectful inquiry: "You are Lieutenant Lapas?"

The officer had regained his composure. He regarded the other with a mild scrutiny touched with superciliousness as he nodded acquiescence and in return demanded: "Who are you?"

"Do you see that speck of white down yonder by the sea?" Blanco drew close and his outstretched finger pointed a line to the Duke's lodge. "I come from there," he explained with concise directness.

The officer bit his lip.

"Why did you come?" The Spaniard paused to roll a cigarette before he answered:

"I come from the Duke, of course. Why else should I climb this accursed ladder of hills?"

"What Duke?" The interrogation tumbled too eagerly from the soldier's lips to be consonant with his wary assumption of innocence. "There are so many Dukes. Myself, I serve only the King."

The Spaniard's teeth gleamed, and there was a strangely disarming quality in the smile that broke in sudden illumination over his dark face.

"I have been here only a few days," explained Blanco. Then, lying with apt fluency, he continued: "I have arrived from Cadiz in the service of the Grand Duke Louis Delgado, who will soon be His Majesty, Louis of Galavia, and I am sent to you as the bearer of his message." He ignored the other's protestations of loyalty to the throne as completely as he ignored the frightened face of the man who made them.

Lapas had whitened to the lips and now stood hesitant. "I don't understand," he stammered.

The Spaniard's expression changed swiftly from good humor to the sternness of a taskmaster.

"The Duke is impatient," he asserted, "of delays and misunderstandings on the part of his servants. His Grace believed that your memory had been well schooled. Louis, the King, may prove forgetful of those who are forgetful of Louis, the Duke."

Lapas still stood silent, pitiably unnerved. If the man was Karyl's spy an incautious reply might cost him his life. If he was genuinely a messenger from the Pretender any hesitation might prove equally fatal.

Time was important. Blanco drew from his pocket a gold seal ring which until last night had adorned the finger of the Countess Astaride. Upon its shield was the crest of the House of Delgado. At the sight of the familiar quarterings, the officer's face became contrite, apologetic, but above all immeasurably relieved.

"Caution is so necessary," he explained. "One cannot be too careful. It is not for myself alone, but for the Duke also that I must have a care."

Blanco accepted the explanation with a bow, then he spoke energetically and rapidly, pressing his advantage before the other's weakness should lead him into fresh vacillation.

"The Duke feared that there might be some misunderstanding as to the signal and the programme. He wished me to make it clear to you."

Lapas nodded and, turning, led the way through the pine trees to a small kiosk that was something between a sentinel box and a signal station built against the walls of the old observatory.

"I think I understand," said Lapas, "but I shall be glad to have you repeat the Duke's commands and inform me if any changes have been made."

"No, the arrangements stand unaltered," replied the Spaniard. "My directions were that you should repeat to me the order of your instructions and that I should judge for His Grace whether or not your memory is retentive. There must be no hitch."

"I don't know you," demurred Lapas.

"His Grace knows me—and trusts me. That should be sufficient," retorted Blanco. "I bring you credentials which you will refuse to recognize at your own risk. Unless I were in the confidence of the Duke, I could scarcely be here with a knowledge of your plans."

Blanco's eyes blazed in sudden and well simulated wrath. "I have no time to waste in argument. Choose quickly. Shall I return to Louis and inform him that you refuse to trust those he selects to bear his orders?"

For an instant the Spaniard stood contemptuously regarding the other's terror, then with a disgusted exclamation he turned on his heel and started to the door of the kiosk. But Lapas was in a moment catching at his elbow and protesting himself convinced. He led Blanco back to a seat.

"Listen." The Lieutenant sat at the crude table in the center of the small room and talked rapidly, as one rehearsing a well-learned lesson.

"The Fortress do Freres is stocked with explosives. Karyl goes there with Von Ritz and others of his suite to inspect the place with the view of turning it into a prison. The Grand Duke, waiting at his hunting lodge, is to receive by wireless the message from Jusseret and Borttorff, who convey the verdict of Europe, as to whether or not it is decided to recognize his Government. If their message be favorable, he will raise the Galavian flag on the west tower of the hunting lodge, and I shall relay the message here with the flag at Look-out Point. This flag-pole will be the signal to those in the city whose fingers are on the key, and whose key will explode the powder in do Freres. If the flag which now flies from the flag-staff here is still flying when the King enters the fortress, the cap will explode. If the flag-staff is empty, the King's visit will be uneventful. It will require fifteen minutes for the King to go from the Palace to the Fortress. I must not remain here—I must be where I can see."

Lapas rose and consulted his watch with nervous haste. "You will excuse me?" he added. "I must be at my post. Are you satisfied?"

Blanco also rose, bowing as he drew back the heavy chair he had occupied. "I am quite satisfied," he approved. His hands were gripping the chairback and when Lapas had taken two paces to the front, and Blanco had appraised the distance between, the chair left the floor. With the same lightning swiftness of motion that had brought salvos of applause from the bull-rings of Cadiz and Seville, he swung it above his head and brought down its cumbersome weight in an arc.

Lapas, his eyes fixed on the door, had no hint. A picture of serene sky and steady mountains was blotted from his brain. There was blackness instead—and unconsciousness.

A bleeding scalp told the toreador that the blow had only cut and stunned.

Rapidly he bound and gagged his captive. Dragging him back through the narrow room he made certainty doubly sure by tying him to the base of the neglected telescope in the abandoned observatory.

A hundred yards below the rock, tucked out of sight of the man at the flag-pole, stretched a ledge-like strip of level ground, backed by the thick tangle of growth which masked the slope. Beyond its edge of roughly blocked and crevassed stone, the gorge fell away a dizzy thousand feet. Out of the pines struggled the half-overgrown path where once a road had led from the castle. This way the earlier Lords of Galavia had come to look across the backbone of the peninsula, to the east.

As Benton paced the ledge impatiently, awaiting the outcome of Blanco's reconnoiter, he noticed with a nauseating sense of onrushing peril how the purpled shadows of the mountains were lengthening across the valley and beginning to creep up the other side.

Each time his pacing brought him to the edge of the clearing he paused to look down at the sullen walls of Karyl's castle.

A woman, flushed and breathless from the climb, pushed through the scrub pines at the path's end and stopped suddenly at the marge of the clearing. Her slender girlish figure, clad in corduroy skirt and blue jersey, was poised with lance-like straightness, and a grace as free as a boy's. Her hands, cased in battered gauntlets, went suddenly to her breast, as though she would muffle the palpitant heart beneath the jersey. She stood for a moment looking at the man and the ultramarine of her eyes clouded slowly into gray. The pink flush of exercise died instantly to pallor in her cheeks.

Then the lips overcame an impulse to quiver and spoke slowly in an undertone and with marked effort. "This is twice that I have seen you," she whispered, "although you are three thousand miles away."

The man wheeled, not suddenly, but heavily and slowly. "I am real," he answered simply.

Cara put out one hand like a sleep-walker, and came forward, still incredulous.

"Cara, dearest one!" he said impetuously. "You must have known that I would be near you—that I would be standing by, even though I couldn't help!"

She shook her head. "I have been having these hallucinations, you know, of late." She explained as though to herself. "I guess it's—it's just missing people so that does it."

She was close to him now, close, too, to the sheer drop of the cliff, walking forward with eyes wide and fixed on his face. He took a quick step forward and swept her to him, crushing her against his breast.

She gave a glad exclamation of realization, and her own arms closed impulsively around his neck.

"You are real! You are real!" she whispered, looking into his eyes, her gauntleted hands holding his face between them.

"Cara," he begged, "listen to me. It's my last plea. You said in the letter I have in my pocket—there where your heart is beating—that you could not refuse me if I came again. Dear, this is 'again.' The Isis is a speck out there at sea awaiting a signal. Will you go? I have no throne to offer, but—"

"Don't," she cried, holding a hand over his lips. "For a minute—just for a little golden minute—let us forget thrones." Then as the furrow came back between her brows: "Oh, boy, it's my destiny to be always strong enough to resist happiness when I might have it by being less strong, and always too weak to bear bravely what must be borne—when it can't be helped."

He stood silent.

After a moment she went on. "And I love you. Ah, you know that well enough, but up there beyond your head which I love, I see the green and white and blue flag of Galavia which I hate, and destiny commands me to be disloyal to you for loyalty to it. On the eve of life imprisonment," she went on, clinging to him, "I have stolen away to play truant perhaps for the last time—still craving freedom, longing for you; and now I find freedom, and you, just to lose you again! I can't—I can't—yes—I can—I will!"

Suddenly he held her off at arms' length and looked at her with a strange wide-eyed expression of discovery.

"But," he cried with the vehemence of a sudden thought, "you are up here—safe! Safe, whatever happens down there! Nothing that occurs there can affect you!"

"Safe, of course," she spoke wonderingly. "What danger is there?"

The man turned. "For God's sake—let me think a moment!" He dropped on the pine needles and sat with his hands covering his face and his fingers pressed into his temples. She came over.

"Does that prevent your thinking?" she softly asked, dropping on her knees at his side and letting one hand rest on his shoulder.

For moments, lengthening into minutes, he sat immovable, fighting back the agonized and torrential flood of thought which burst upon him with unwarned temptation. The danger was not after all a danger to the woman he loved, but a menace to his enemy. She was safe three thousand feet above the threatening city. He had only to hold his hand, perhaps, for a half-hour; had only to keep her here and let matters follow their course.

He was not entertaining the thought, except to assure himself that he could not entertain it, but it was racking him with its suddenness. The King was there—in peril. She was here—safe. Insistently these two facts assaulted his brain.

"Pardon, Senor." Blanco broke noisily down through the pines and halted where the path emerged. For an instant he stood in bewildered surprise.

"Pardon, Your Highness—" he exclaimed, bending low; then, quenching the recognition in his eyes and assuming mistake, he laughed. "Ah, I ask forgiveness, Senorita. I mistook you for the Princess. The resemblance is strong. I see my error."

"Manuel!" Benton rose unsteadily and stared at the toreador with a face pallid as chalk. He spoke wildly, "Quick, Manuel—have you learned anything?"

The Spaniard glanced inquiringly at the girl, and as Benton nodded reassurance went on in a lowered voice. Only fragments of his speech reached Cara's ears. Her own thoughts left her too apathetic to listen.

"The plan is this. It is to happen at the Fortress do Freres this afternoon while the King inspects the arsenal. Now, in fifteen minutes!" He pointed down toward the city. "See, the cortege leaves the Palace! Lapas was to be here at the rock—the blessed Saints help him! He is hobbled to his telescope." Swiftly he rehearsed the story as it had come from the lips of Lapas.

Benton was studying the Duke's lodge with his glasses. "There is a flag flying on the west tower," he muttered.

He turned slowly toward the Princess. Outstanding veins were tracing cordlike lines on his temples. His fingers trembled as he focused the glasses.

Blanco looked slowly from one to the other. Suddenly he threw back both shoulders and his eyes grew bright in full comprehension of the situation he had discovered.

"Senor!" he whispered.

"Yes?" echoed the American in a dull voice.

"Senor—suppose—suppose I have confused the signals?" The tone was insinuating.

Benton's mind flashed back to a Sunday School class of his childhood and his infantile horror for the tale of a tempter on a high mountain offering the possession of all the world if only—if only—

He took a step forward. Speech seemed to choke him.

"In God's name!" he cried, "you have not forgotten?"

The Spaniard slowly shook his head and smiled. The expression gave to his face a touch of the sinister. "No—but it is yet possible to forget, Senor. I serve no King, I serve you. Sometimes a mistake is the truest accuracy. Quien sabe?"

The Andalusian looked at the girl who stood puzzled and waiting. "Sometimes in the Plaza de Toros, Senor," he went on, speaking rapidly and tensely, "the throngs cry, 'Bravo, matador!' and toss coins into the ring. Yet in a moment the same throngs may shout until their throats are hoarse: 'Bravo, toro!' A King is like a bull in the ring, Senor—he has a fickle fate. To me he is nothing—if it pleases them—it is their King—let them do as they wish." He shrugged his shoulders.

Benton straightened. "Manuel," he said with a strained tone, "the flag comes down."

The Andalusian smiled regretfully, and once more shrugged his shoulders.

"As you say, Senor, but are you sure you wish it so?"

"Manuel, I mean that!" said the American with a steadied voice. "And for God's sake, Manuel," he added wildly, "throw the rope over the gorge when you have done it!"

For a moment Benton stood rigid, his hands clenched together at his back as he watched the quick step of the Andalusian climbing to the flag-staff. At last he turned dully and looked down where he could see the royal cortege, not yet half-way along the road to the fortress, then he went over to the girl's side.

"Cara," he said, "I have earned the right to kiss you good-by."

"It's yours without the earning, but good-by—!" She shuddered. "What does it all mean?" she asked in bewilderment. "What was it you discussed?"

"Listen," he commanded. "Tell Von Ritz or Karyl that Lapas is a traitor and a prisoner in the observatory; that Louis is at his lodge and that the Countess Astaride is a conspirator in a plot to assassinate the King. Tell them that a percussion cap and key connect the magazines of do Freres with the city."

The Princess looked at him with eyes that slowly widened in amazed comprehension. "I understand," she whispered. "And the flag—see, it is coming down—that means?"

He dropped on one knee and lifted her fingers to his lips. "It means that you are to be crowned Queen in Galavia to-morrow," he answered with a groan. "Long live the Queen!"



CHAPTER XIII

CONCERNING FAREWELLS AND WARNINGS

"To-morrow!" repeated the girl with a shudder.

Both stood silent under such a strain as cannot be long sustained. At the crunch of branch underfoot and the returning Blanco's, "Senor! Senor!" both started violently.

"Look, Senor," exclaimed the Spaniard. "The King has entered the fortress." Then, seeing that the eyes of both man and girl turned at his words from an intent gaze, not on the town but the opposite hills, he added, half-apologetic: "I shall go, Senor, and look to my prisoner. If you need me, I shall be there."

With the same stricken misery in her eyes that they had worn as she passed in her carriage, Cara remained motionless and silent.

The bottom of the valley grew cloudy with shadow. The sun was kissing into rosy pink the snow caps of the western ridge. A cavalcade of horsemen emerged at last from do Freres and started at a smart trot for the Palace. Cara pointed downward with one tremulous finger. Benton nodded.

"Safe," he said, but without enthusiasm.

"I must go." Cara started down the path and the man walked beside her as far as the battered gate which hung awry from its broken columns. Over it now clambered masses of vine richly purple with bougonvillea. She broke off a branch and handed it to him. "Purple," she said again, "is the color of mourning and royalty."

Blanco noted the coming of evening and realized that it would be well to reach the level of the city before dark. He knew that if Lapas was to be turned over to Karyl's authorities, steps to that end should be taken before he was discovered and released by those of his own faction. He accordingly made his way back to the gate.

Benton was still standing, looking down the alley-way which ran between the half ruined lines of masonry. His shoulders unconsciously sagged.

The Spaniard approached quietly and stood for a moment unwilling to interrupt, then in a low voice touched with that affectionate note which men are not ashamed to show even to other men in the Latin countries, he said: "Senor Benton!"

The American turned and put out his hand, grasping that of the toreador. His grip said what his lips left unworded.

"Dios mio!" exclaimed Blanco with a black scowl. "We saved the King, but we bought his life and his throne too high! He cost too dear!"

"Blanco," Benton spoke with difficulty, "I have brought you with me and you have asked no questions. The story is not mine to tell."

The Andalusian raised a hand in protestation.

"It is not necessary that you tell me anything, Senor. I have seen enough. And I know the King was not worth the price."

Benton shook his head. "Are you going on with me, now that you know what you know?"

"Senor, it grieves me that you should ask. I told you I was at your disposition." The Spaniard went on talking rapidly, talking with lips and eyes and gesture. "When you came to Cadiz and took me with you on the small steamer, I did not ask why. I thought it was as Americans are interested in all things—or perhaps because the many million pesetas of the Senor's fortune might be affected by changing the map of Europe. No matter. You were interested. It was enough."

He swept both hands apart.

"But had I known then what to-day has taught me, I should have held my tongue that evening when the Pretender plotted in the cafe."

"To-morrow," said Benton slowly, "there will be festivity. I can't be here then. I must leave to-night—but you, amigo mio, you must stay and watch. If Lapas is taken prisoner and silenced there will be no one in Puntal who will suspect you. No one knew me and if I leave at once, the Countess will hardly learn who was the mysterious man to whom she gave a ring."

"But, Senor,"—Blanco was dubious—"would it not be better that I should be with you?"

"You can serve me better by remaining here. I would rather have you near Her."

The man from Cadiz nodded and crossed himself.

"I am pledged, Senor," he asserted.

"Then," continued the American, "for a time we must separate. The Isis will sail to-night."

The men walked together to the terminal station of the small ratchet railway. When they parted the Spaniard and the yachtsman had arranged a telegraph code which might be used by the small but complete wireless equipment of the Isis. An hour later the launch from the yacht took him aboard at the ancient stone jetty, where the fruit-venders and wine-sellers shouted their jargon, and the seaweed clung to the landing stage.

* * * * *

When Karyl had returned to the Palace after the inspection of the Fortress do Freres, he had sent word at once to that part of the Palace where Cara had her suite. She was accompanied by her aunt, the Duchess of Apsberg, and her English cousin, Lilian Carrowes, who also knew something of the life in America with the Bristows.

The King craved an interview. He had not seen her since morning and his request conveyed the desolation occasioned by the long interval of empty time.

The girl, who in the more informal phases had consistently defied the Court etiquette, sent an affirmative reply, and Karyl, still in uniform and dust-stained, came at once to the rooms where she was to receive him.

There was much to talk of, and the King came forward eagerly, but the girl halted his protestations and rapidly sketched for him the summary of all she had learned that afternoon.

With growing astonishment Karyl listened, then slowly his brows came together in a frown.

It was distasteful to him beyond expression to feel that he owed his life and throne to Benton, but of that he said nothing. Lapas had been, in the days of his childhood, his playmate. He had been the recipient of every possible favor, and Karyl, himself ingenuous and loyal to his friends, felt with double bitterness that not only had his enemy saved him, but, too, his friend had betrayed him.

Then came a hurried message from Von Ritz, who begged to see the King at once. The soldier must have been only a step behind his messenger, for hardly had his admittance been ordered when he appeared.

The officer looked from the King to the Princess, and his eyes telegraphed a request for a moment of private audience.

"You may as well speak here," said Karyl dryly. "Her Highness knows what you are about to say."

"Lieutenant Lapas," began Von Ritz imperturbably, "has not been seen at the Palace to-day. His duties required his presence this evening. He was to be near Your Majesty at the coronation to-morrow."

"Where is he?" demanded the King.

"That is what I should like to know," replied Von Ritz. "I learn that last night the Count Borttorff was in Puntal and that Lapas was with him. To-day the Countess Astaride left Puntal, greatly agitated. I am informed that from her window she watched do Freres with glasses during Your Majesty's visit there, and that when you left she swooned. Within ten minutes she was on her way to the quay and boarded the out-going steamer for Villefranche. These things may spell grave danger."

So rarely had Karyl been able to anticipate Von Ritz in even the smallest matter that now, despite his own chagrin, he could not repress a cynical smile as he inquired: "What do you make of it?"

Von Ritz shook his head. "I shall report to Your Majesty within an hour," he responded.

"That is not necessary," Karyl spoke coolly. "You will, I am informed, find Lieutenant Lapas bound to a telescope at the Rock. You will find the explosives at do Freres connected with a percussion cap which was to have been touched while we were there this afternoon. The Countess was disappointed because the percussion cap was not exploded. Sometimes, when ladies are bitterly grieved, they swoon."

For a moment the older man studied the younger with an expression of surprise, then the sphinx-like gravity returned to his face.

"Your Majesty, may I inquire why the cap failed to explode?" he asked, with pardonable curiosity.

"Because"—Karyl's cheeks flushed hotly—"an American gentleman, who had been here a few hours, intercepted the signal—and reversed it."

For an instant Von Ritz looked fixedly into the face of the King, then he bowed.

"In that case," he commented, "there are various things to be done."



CHAPTER XIV

COUNTESS AND CABINET NOIR JOIN FORCES

When Monsieur Francois Jusseret, the cleverest unattached ambassador of France's Cabinet Noir, had first met the Countess Astaride, his sardonic eyes had twinkled dry appreciation.

This meeting had seemed to be the result of a chance introduction. It had in reality been carefully designed by the French manipulator of underground wires. Louis Delgado he already knew, and held in contempt, yet Louis was the only possible instrument for use in converting certain vague possibilities into definite realities. Changing the nebulous into the concrete; shifting the dotted line of a frontier from here to there on a map; changing the likeness that adorned a coin or postage-stamp: these were things to which Monsieur Jusseret lent himself with the same zest that actuates the hunting dog and makes his work also his passion.

If the vacillation of Louis Delgado could be complemented by the strong ambition of a woman, perhaps he might be almost as serviceable as though the strength were inherent. And Paris knew that Louis worshiped at the shrine of the Countess Astaride. The Countess was therefore worth inspecting.

The presentation occurred in Paris, when the Duke took his acquaintance to the charming apartments overlooking the Arc de Triomphe, where the lady poured tea for a small salon enlisted from that colony of ambitious and broken-hearted men and women who hold fanatically to the faith that some throne, occupied by another, should be their own. Here with ceremony and stately etiquette foregathered Carlists and Bonapartists and exiled Dictators from South America. Here one heard the gossip of large conspiracies that come to nothing; of revolutions that go no farther than talk.

In Paris the Duke Louis Delgado was nursing, with lukewarm indignation, wrath against his royal uncle of Galavia who had fixed upon him a sort of modified exile.

Louis had only a languid interest in the feud between his arm of the family and the reigning branch. He would willingly enough have taken a scepter from the hand of any King-maker who proffered it, but he would certainly never, of his own incentive, have struck a blow for a throne.

Sometimes, indeed, as he sat at a cafe table on the Champs Elysees when awakening dreams of Spring were in the air and a military band was playing in the distance, dormant ambitions awoke. Sometimes when he watched the opalescent gleam in his glass as the garcon carefully dripped water over absinthe, he would picture himself wresting from the incumbent, the Crown of Galavia, and would hear throngs shouting "Long live King Louis!" At such moments his stimulated spirit would indulge in large visions, and his half-degenerate face would smile through its gentle but dissipated languor.

Louis Delgado was a man of inaction. He had that quality of personal daring which is not akin to moral resoluteness. He was ready enough at a fancied insult to exchange cards and meet his adversary on the field, but a throne against which he plotted was as safe, unless threatened by outside influences, as a throne may ever be.

When Louis presented Jusseret to the Countess Astaride there flashed between the woman of audacious imagination and the master of intrigue a message of kinship. The Frenchman bent low over her hand.

"That hand, Madame," he had whispered, "was made to wield a scepter."

The Countess had laughed with the melodious zylophone note that caressed the ear, and had flashed on Jusseret her smile which was a magic thing of ivory and flesh and sudden sunshine. She had held up the slender fingers of the hand he had flattered, possibly a trace pleased with the effect of the Duke's latest gift, a huge emerald set about with small but remarkably pure brilliants. She had contemplated it, critically, and after a brief silence had let her eyes wander from its jewels to the Frenchman's face.

"Wielding a scepter, Monsieur," she had suggested smilingly, "is less difficult than seizing a scepter. I fear I should need a stronger hand."

"Ah, but Madame," the Frenchman had hastened to protest, "these are the days of the deft finger and the deft brain. Even crowns to-day are not won in tug-of-war."

The woman had looked at him half-seriously, half-challengingly.

"I am told, Monsieur Jusseret," she said, "that no government in Europe has a secret which you do not know. I am told that you have changed a crown or two from head to head in your career. Let me see your hand."

Instantly he had held it out. The fastidiously manicured fingers were as tapering and white as her own.

"Madame," he observed gravely, "you flatter me. My hand has done nothing. But I do not attribute its failure to its lack of brawn."

"Some day," murmured Delgado, from his inert posture in the deep cushions of a divan, "when the time is ripe, I shall strike a decisive blow for the Throne of Galavia."

Jusseret's lip had half-curled, then swiftly he had turned and flashed a look of inquiry upon the woman. Her eyes had been on Louis and she had not caught the quick glint that came into the Frenchman's pupils, or the thoughtful regard with which he studied her and the Duke across the edge of his teacup. Later, when he rose to make his adieux, she noted the thoughtful expression on his face.

"Sometimes," he had said enigmatically, and had paused to allow his meaning to sink in, "sometimes a scepter stays where it is, not because the hand that holds it is strong, but because the outstretched hand is weak or inept. Your hand is suited."

She had searched his eyes with her own just long enough to make him feel that in the give-and-take of glances hers did not drop or evade, and he, trained in the niceties of diplomatic warfare, had caught the message.

So the Countess had been fired with ardent dreams and later, when the time seemed ripe, it was to her that Jusseret went, and with her that he made his secret alliance.

The ambitions cherished by Marie Astaride to become Louis' queen were secondary to a sincere devotion for Louis himself.

When at the last he had weakened and threatened to crumple, it was she who goaded him back to resolution. When the Duke had gone half-heartedly to his lodge to await the decision of the European Powers, it was she who went to Puntal to direct the conspirators and watch, from the windows of her hotel suite, the fortress on the jetty.

Her one deplorable error had been in mistaking Benton for Martin. This had been natural enough. Though she had never met the "English Jackal," she had once or twice seen him at a distance, and she had been misled by a strong resemblance and an excessive eagerness.

The afternoon she had spent on the balcony of her suite, her eyes fixed on the Fortress do Freres.

At last, with a wildly beating heart she had seen the King, Von Ritz and the escort ride up to the entrance and disappear. She had waited—waited—waited, her nerves set for the climax, until the continued silence seemed an unendurable shock.

Then the King and escort emerged. She, sitting pale and rigid, saw them mount and turn back unharmed toward the city. Her ears, eagerly set for the detonation which should shake the town and reverberate along the mountain sides, ached with the emptiness of silence.

Across the street a soldier, off duty and in civilian clothes, sat on the sea-wall and whittled. Incidentally he noticed that Madame the Countess was interested beyond the usual in some matter. He was there to notice Madame the Countess. His instructions from Von Ritz had been to keep a record of her goings and comings, and who came to see her or went away.

Therefore, when the King and his small retinue had trotted past the window and when Madame the Countess rose to go in, and when just as she crossed the low sill of the window she suddenly caught up both hands to her throat and fell heavily to the floor, the soldier, whittling a small crucifix, made a record of that also. When a moment later a gentleman whom he had not seen in Puntal for months, but whom he knew as the Count Borttorff, because that gentleman had formerly been Major of his battalion, hurriedly left a closed carriage and entered the place, the incident was noted. When still later both Borttorff and the Countess emerged and reentered the conveyance, driving rapidly away, he likewise noted these things. Going from the pier whither he had followed the closed carriage, he reported his observations with soldierly dispatch to Colonel Von Ritz.

The Grand Duke Louis meanwhile, waiting in great anxiety, had received the message which had come by the wireless mast. The words were in code, and being translated they read: "France, Italy, Spain, Portugal will recognize. Strike." The signature was "Jt.," which Delgado knew for Jusseret. The Duke had been greatly excited. He paced the room in a nervous tremor. It was arranged that a small steamer, which had stood a short distance offshore since yesterday to relay the wireless message and make it doubly sure, should pick the Duke up as soon as Lapas signaled by a triple dip of the flag that the fortress had been destroyed. The steamer was then to rush the Grand Duke around the cape to Puntal, bringing him in as though he had come from Spain. Those conspirators who were in the capital, strengthened by those who would declare for Louis, with Karyl dead and no other heir existent, would proclaim him King. Lapas would see that the royal salute was fired as the steamer entered the harbor, and the Countess would either meet him and explain all the details or would speak with him by Marconi if she had left the town.

Louis spent the forenoon in an agony of anxiety and impatience. All afternoon he watched through binoculars the white and blue and green flag on the rock above him. He was waiting for the triple dip that should tell him the fortress had been scattered in debris and with it the government. Evidently the King was late going to the arsenal.

He had imagined it would be earlier. The hours dragged interminably. Louis walked the stone buttress where the flag which he had raised in signal to Lapas flapped and whipped against its staff. At last his binoculars, fixed on the rock, caught the dip of the colors there. With a great sigh of relief the Duke watched to see them rise and dip, rise and dip again. The flag came down the length of the pole—and did not go up.

Panic seized the Pretender. There was no way of talking with the ridge three thousand feet above. It was a climb of an hour and a half by the pass. Evidently there had been a miscarriage. In the prearranged code of flag signals the only provision for the drooping of the colors on the hill was in the event that it should be wished to stop the explosion. That would be only in the event of refusal by the governments to recognize; the governments had not refused! Possibly Lapas had turned traitor!

There had also been some unexplained delay seaward. The little steamer, which should have remained near by, was a speck on the horizon, and without her there was no possibility of escape. Wildly Louis, the Dreamer, hurried to his improvised Marconi station and called the ship. Finally toward evening came a response and with it a message from somewhere out at sea, relayed from ship to ship around the peninsula.

The message said simply in code: "Failure. Make your escape." It was signed "M. A."—Marie Astaride.

Louis rushed, panic-stricken, down to the shore. He and the few men with him paced the beach in the settling twilight with desperate anxiety. The steamer seemed to creep in, snail-like, over the smooth water. Meanwhile binoculars fixed on the pass showed a number of small specks sifting like ants through the lofty opening. Troops were advancing. It was now the life-and-death question of which would arrive first, the boats from the ship that had stood off at sea a bit too long, or the soldiers coming across the broken backbone of the mountains.

At last the ship had drawn near, and circled under full steam far enough out to get away to a flying start as soon as the Ducal party had been taken on board. Small boats were rushed toward the beach and Louis, the Dreamer, with his party waded knee-deep into the water to meet the rescuers.

At the same moment a bugle call announced the coming of Karyl's soldiery.

As Louis Delgado went over the side, he turned quickly back and, leaning over the rail, gazed through the settling darkness toward shore.

"Do we make for Puntal, Your Majesty?" inquired the captain, saluting.

Louis turned coldly. "No."

The officer looked at the Duke for a moment and read defeat in his eyes.

"Where then—Your Grace?" he inquired.

Louis winced under the quick amendment of title. "Anywhere," he said shortly; "anywhere—except Puntal."



CHAPTER XV

THE TOREADOR BECOMES AMBASSADOR

Manuel Blanco was ubiquitous during the first days following the coronation. He listened to the fragments of talk that drifted along the streets. He frequented the band concerts in the Public Gardens and drank native vintages in the wine-shops. He elbowed his way naively into chattering groups with his ears primed for a careless word. Nowhere did he catch a note hinting of intrigue or danger. It seemed a sound conclusion that if the plotters had not entirely surrendered their project for switching Kings in Galavia, their conspiracies were being once more fomented on foreign soil, just as the first plan had been incubated in Cadiz.

One evening shortly after the dual celebration, a steamer laden with tourists lay at anchor in the bay, outlined in points of light like a set-piece of fireworks. Hundreds of new sight-seeing faces swarmed along the narrow, cobbled streets. This would be a great night in the Strangers' Club and Blanco decided to spend an hour there.

In evening dress he moved through the gardens and pavilions of the casino on the rock, where with the coming of darkness the gayety of the town began to focus and sparkle.

The coronation of Karyl had brought to an end official mourning for the late King, and the crepe which had palled the national insignia on all public buildings had been cleared away. With this restoration of public gayety came a liberal sprinkling of uniforms to the throngs that crowded the ball-rooms, tea-gardens and gambling halls.

Blanco was standing apart, looking on, when he felt a light touch on his shoulder and turned to find a young officer at his back who smilingly begged him for a moment in the gardens. The Spaniard noticed that the man who addressed him wore the epaulettes of a Captain of Infantry and the added stripe and crown of gold lace at the cuff which designated service in the household of the reigning family.

He turned and accompanied the officer through the wide door into the lantern-hung grounds, passing between the groups which clustered everywhere about small wicker tea-tables. There were no quiet or secluded spots in the gardens of the Strangers' Club to-night, but after a brief glance right and left the Captain led the way to a table in a shadowed niche between two doors. The light there was more shadowed and the tides of promenaders did not crowd so close upon it as elsewhere. As the two came up a third man rose from this table and Manuel found himself looking into the flinty eyes of Colonel Von Ritz.

Von Ritz spoke briefly. If Senor Blanco could spare the time, His Majesty wished to speak with him.

The younger officer turned back into the casino and Von Ritz led the toreador through the front gardens, where the tennis courts lay bare between the palms. The acacias and sycamores were soft, dark spots against the far-flung procession of the stars.

The street outside was crowded with fiacres and cabs. Von Ritz signaled to a footman and in a moment more Blanco and his escort had stepped into a closed carriage and were being driven toward the Palace. They entered by a side passage and the Colonel conducted him through several halls and chambers filled with uniformed officers, and finally into a more remote part of the building where they met only an occasional servant. At last they came into a great room entirely empty but for themselves. About the walls hung ripened portraits. The decorations were of Arabesque mosaics with fantastic panels of Moorish tiling. It might have been a grandee's house in Seville, patterned on the Alcazar. Evidently this was part of a private suite. Heavy portieres were only partly drawn across a wide window with the sill at the floor level, and through them Blanco dimly saw a balcony giving out over a small garden, and commanding more distantly the harbor and town lights below. From somewhere in the garden came the splashing of a small fountain.

Here Von Ritz left his charge to himself, silently departing with a bow. For a while the Spaniard remained alone. The room was not so brightly illuminated as many through which he had come on his way across the Palace. Light filtered through swinging lamps of wrought metal encrusted with prisms of green and amber and garnet. The Moorish scheme depends in part upon its shadows. Finally a gentleman entered from a balcony. He was neither in uniform nor in evening dress. His face was smooth-shaven and pleasing.

Blanco fancied this was a secretary or attendant of some sort, and was conscious of slight surprise that as he entered the place he smoked a cigarette with a freedom scarcely fitting the King's personal chambers. At the window the gentleman halted and looked Blanco over with a frank but not offensive curiosity. Manuel returned the gaze, wondering where he had seen the face before, yet unable to identify it. Then the newcomer crossed and proffered the Spaniard a cigarette from a gold case, which the toreador declined with a shake of his head.

"Gracias, Senor," he said, "but I am waiting for the King."

The other smiled, and the visitor noticed that even in smiling his lips fell into lines of sadness.

"None the less," he said pleasantly, "a man may as well have the solace of tobacco while he waits—even though he awaits a King."

The Andalusian once more shook his head, and the other continued to study him with that undisguised interest which his eyes had worn from the first.

"So you are one of the two men," he said, "who learned what all the secret agents of the Throne failed to unearth. Incidentally it is to you that the present King owes not only his Crown, but his life as well." He paused.

"After all," he went on, "it is neither your fault nor Mr. Benton's that the King could have done very well without either the Crown or his life. You restored something which perhaps he held worthless.... But that is his own misfortune."

Blanco's expressive face mirrored a shade of resentment. He had come on summons from the King and found himself listening to the familiar, even disrespectful, chatter of some underling who laughed at his Monarch and lightly appraised the value of his life while he smoked cigarettes in the Royal apartments. The Spaniard bowed stiffly.

"I observe you are in the confidence of the King," he said, in a tone not untouched with disapproval.

The other man's lips curled in amusement. After a moment he replied with simple gravity.

"I am the King."

Blanco stood gazing in astonishment. "You—the King!" Then, recognizing that the shaving of a mustache and the change into civilian clothes had made the difference in a face and figure he had seen only on the streets and through shifting crowds, he bowed with belated deference.

Karyl once more held out his case. "Now perhaps you will have a cigarette?"

The toreador took one and lighted it slowly. The King went on.

"My sole pleasure is pretending that I am not a Monarch. Between ourselves, I should prefer other employment. You, for example, I am told have won fame in the bull ring—and it was fame you earned for yourself."

Blanco flushed, then, bethinking himself of the fact that he had been brought here presumably with a purpose, he ventured to suggest: "Your Majesty wished to see me about some matter?"

The other shook his head.

"No," he said slowly, "it was not really I who sent for you. It was Her Majesty, the Queen."

Before he had time for response the toreador caught the sound of a shaken curtain behind him, but since he stood facing the King he did not turn.

Karyl, however, looked up, and then swiftly crossed the room. As he passed, Blanco wheeled to face him and was in time to see him holding back the portieres of a door for the Queen to enter.

She was gowned in black with the sparkle of passementerie and jet, and at her breast she wore a single red rose. As she stood for a moment on the threshold, despite the majesty of her slender poise it appeared to Blanco that her grace was rather that of something wild and free and that the Palace seemed to cage her. But that may have been because, as she paused, her hands went to her breast and a furrow came between her brows, while the corners of her lips drooped wistfully like a child's.

The King stooped to kiss her hand, and she turned toward him with a smile which was pallid and which did not dissipate the unhappiness of her face. Then Karyl straightened and said to Blanco, who felt himself suddenly grow awkward as a muleteer: "The Queen."

Manuel dropped on one knee. At a gesture from Cara he rose and waited for her to speak. Karyl himself halted at the door for a moment, then came slowly back into the room. He picked up from a tabouret a decoration of the Star of Galavia, and, crossing over, pinned it to the Spaniard's lapel.

"There!" he said, with a good-humored laugh. "You made me a somewhat valueless present a few days back. You will find that equally useless, Sir Manuel. You may tell Mr. Benton that I envy him such an ally."

With a bow to the Queen, the King left the apartment.

For a moment the girl stood at the door, with the same expression and the same silence, unbroken by her since her entrance, then she turned to the Spaniard and spoke directly. Her voice held a tremor.

"How is he?"

"I have not seen him since the day on the mountain," returned Manuel.

"He has, in you, a very true friend."

"Your Majesty, I am his servant," deprecated the toreador.

"If I had friends like you," she smiled, "it would matter little what they called themselves. And yet, if there is but one like you, I had rather that that one be with him. I want you to go to him now and remain with him."

"Your Majesty, Senor Benton left me here to watch for recurring dangers. I am now satisfied that nothing threatens, at least for the present. I might, as Your Majesty suggests, better be with him."

"Yes—yes—with him!" she eagerly agreed; then her voice took on the timbre of anxiety. "I am afraid. Sometimes I am afraid for him. He is not a coward, but there are times when we all become weak. I appoint you, Sir Manuel—" the girl smiled wanly—"I appoint you my Ambassador to be with him and watch after him—and, Sir Manuel—" her voice shook a little with very deep feeling—"I am giving you the office I had rather have than all the thrones in Christendom! Will you accept it?"

She held out her hand, and taking it reverently in his own, the Andalusian bowed low over it. He did not kneel, for now he was the Ambassador in the presence of his Sovereign. "With all the Saints for my witnesses," he declared fervently, "I swear it to Your Majesty."

There was gratitude in her eyes as they met the whole-heartedness of the pledge in his. For a moment she seemed unable to speak, though there was no dimness of tear-mist in her pupils. She stood very upright and silent, and her breathing was deep. Then slowly her hands came up and loosened the flower at her breast.

"The King has decorated you, Sir Manuel," she said. "I don't think Mr. Benton would care for knighthood—and I could not confer it—but sometime—not now—some day after you have both departed from Galavia, give him this. Tell him it may have a message which I may not put in words. If he can read the heart of a rose deeply enough, perhaps he can find it there."

When Blanco had carefully folded the emblem of his embassy in paper and deposited it in his breast pocket, she gave him her hand again, and, turning, went out through the same door that she had entered.

Back in the town, Blanco had certain investigations to make. He knew Von Ritz's men had been too late to capture the Duke, and that the Countess Astaride had sailed by the steamer leaving for French and Italian ports. Wherever these two conspirators should meet would become the next point to watch.

Blanco felt sure that Louis would be willing to drop back into the routine of his life in Paris, freshly stocked with pessimistic memories of how a crown had slipped through his fingers. It would take driving to prevent him lagging into the inertia of sentimental brooding. On the other hand, he knew that the Countess Astaride, having gone so far, would never again relinquish her ambitions. He knew the temper of the Countess's mind from various bits of gossip he had heard and now also from what he had seen. He knew that, while she was entirely willing to participate in a murder plot to further her designs, she was not fired solely by a lust for power. More deeply she was actuated by her wish to make Louis Delgado a man of potentiality because she loved Louis Delgado.

That love might evidence itself in savagery toward men who obstructed the road which her lover must travel to a crown, but it was a ferocity born of love for the Pretender.

Since this was true it was not probable that she would allow the matter to end where it stood. Even if she were willing, it was more than certain that Jusseret had not entered into the undertaking without some sufficient end in view. Having entered it, he would not relinquish it because the first attempt had been bungled.

That same night Manuel sent a message to the Isis, saying that he was sailing the following morning by the Genoa steamer and asking that the yacht meet the ship and take him on board. Having done that much, he went to the hotel where the Countess had stopped and told the clerk that he had news of importance to communicate to Madame the Countess, and that he wished to learn her present address. The clerk, like all Puntal, was ignorant of what important matters had just missed happening, but he had instructions from this lady to assume ignorance as to her destination. Blanco, however, showed the seal ring which she had said would prove a passport to her presence and which Benton had left with him. He was promptly informed that she had taken passage for Villefranche, and had ordered her mail forwarded there in care of the steamship agency.



CHAPTER XVI

THE AMBASSADOR BECOMES ADMIRAL

More suggestive of a stowaway than a millionaire, thought Blanco the following afternoon, when he had come over the side of the Isis and sought out the owner of the yacht. Benton had turned hermit and withdrawn to the most isolated space the vessel provided. It was really not a deck at all—only a space between engine-room grating and tarpaulined lifeboats on what was properly the cabin roof. Here, removed from the burnished and ship-shape perfection of the yacht's appointment, he lay carelessly shaven and more carelessly dressed.

The lazily undulating Mediterranean stretched unbroken save for the yacht's stack, funnels and stanchions, in a sight-wide radius of blue. Overhead the sky was serene. Here and there, in fitful humors, the sea flowed in rifts of a different hue.

The sun was mellow and the breeze which purred softly in the cables overhead came with the caressing breath that blows off the orange groves of Southern Spain. Ahead lay all the invitation of the south of France; of the Riviera's white cities and vivid countryside; of Monte Carlo's casinos and Italy's villas. Beyond further horizons, waited the charm of Greece, but the man lay on an old army blanket, clad in bagging flannels and a blue army shirt open at the throat. His arms were crossed above his eyes, and he was motionless, except that the fingers which gripped his elbows sometimes clenched themselves and the bare throat above the open collar occasionally worked spasmodically.

Blanco had come quietly, and his canvas shoes had made no sound. For a time he did not announce himself. He was not sure that Benton was awake, so he dropped noiselessly to the deck and sat with his hands clasped about his knees, his eyes moodily measuring the rise and fall of the glaringly white stanchions above and below the sky-line. At frequent intervals they swept back to the other man, who still lay motionless. It was late afternoon and the smoke-stack shadows pointed off in attenuated lines to the bow while the sky, off behind the wake, brightened into the colors of sunset. Finally Benton rose. The unexpected sight of Blanco brought a start and an immediate masking of his face, but in the first momentary glimpse the Andalusian caught a haggard distress which frightened him.

"I didn't know you had come," said Benton quietly. "How long have you been here?"

"I should say a half-hour, Senor," replied Manuel, casually rolling a cigarette.

"Why didn't you rouse me? I'm not very amusing, but even I could have relieved the dullness of sitting there like a marooned man on a derelict."

"Dullness?" inquired the toreador with a lazy lift of the brows. "It is ease, Senor, and ease is desirable—at sea."

The American sat cross-legged on the deck and held out his hand for a cigarette. When he asked a question he spoke in matter-of-fact tones. He even laughed, and the Andalusian chatted on in kind, but secretly and narrowly he was watching the other, and when he had finished his scrutiny he told himself that Benton had been indulging in the dangerous pastime of brooding.

"Tell me—everything," urged the yacht-owner. "What are the revolutionists doing and how is—how are things?" Carefully he avoided directing any question to the point on which his eagerness for news was poignant hunger.

When Blanco told how Louis had left Galavia just before the soldiers reached the lodge, Benton's face darkened. "That was fatal blundering," he complained. "So long as Delgado is at large the Palace is menaced. If they had taken him, and held him under surveillance, the Cabinet Noir would be disarmed. Now they will try again."

Blanco nodded.

"There is no charge they can make against him," he mused. "They cannot bring him back because the government cannot admit its peril. Outwardly his bill of health is clean. Assuredly when they let him slip, Senor, they committed a grave error."

Benton rose and paced the deck in deep reflection. At last he halted and spread his hands in a gesture half-despairing.

"My God!" he said in a low voice. "The anxiety will drive me mad! You saw their methods. An entire cortege was to be blown into the air—just to kill Karyl. Next time, what will they attempt?" He broke off with a shudder.

"I have seen the Queen," said Blanco slowly.

Benton wheeled. For an instant his face lighted, then he leaned forward. He said nothing, but his whole attitude was a question.

"You behold in me, Sir Manuel Blanco," began the Andalusian grandly. Then, slipping his arm through that of the other man, he began leading him around the deck. When he had finished his narrative, he said: "I begin my office as Ambassador by delivering this packet." From his pocket he produced the paper-wrapped rose. "I was instructed to give it to you at some future time. Possibly, Senor, I am over-prompt. Lawyers and diplomats should be deliberate."

The Mediterranean day had died slowly from east to west while the men had talked, and the last shred of glowing sky was darkening into the sea at the edge of the world astern, when Benton greedily thrust out his hand for the packet.

"Gracias," he said bluntly, and turning away went precipitously to his cabin.

After dinner, when the Captain had betaken himself to the bridge and the smoke from the Spaniard's cigarettes and Benton's pipe had begun to wreathe clouds against the ceiling-beams, Blanco broached his diplomacy.

In the dulled expressionlessness of the face opposite him and the stoop of the shoulders, Manuel read a need for an active antidote against the corrosive poison of despair.

"Where are we going now, Senor?"

Benton shrugged his shoulders.

"'Quien sabe!' as you say in Spain. We are simply cruising, drifting, keeping out of sight of land."

"And drifting is the precise thing, Senor, which we must not do. I have hitherto done without question what you have said. Now I hold a new dignity." There was a momentary flash of teeth as he smiled. "As Ambassador, I make a request. May I be permitted to take entire control of affairs for a brief time? Also, will you for a few days obey my instructions, without question?"

Benton looked across the table at the dark face half-obscured behind a blue fog of cigarette smoke. After a moment he smiled.

"Admiral," he said, "issue your orders."

"You will instruct the Captain," said Manuel promptly, "to head at once for Villefranche. There you, Senor, will leave the yacht, and I will go with it to Monte Carlo. I wish to be as soon as possible in the casino where the drone of the croupier and the clink of outflowing louis d'or constitute the national refrain."

Benton's eyes narrowed in perplexity. On his face was written curiosity, but he had agreed to ask no questions. He unhesitatingly put his finger on the electric bell.

"Ask the Captain to come here as soon as he is at leisure," he directed when the steward had responded to the call.

"Good," commended Blanco. Then with a sorrowful shake of his head he commiserated: "I am sorry that you are to be denied the excitement of the rouge et noir and the trente et quarente of the gold table, Senor, but if the Countess Astaride and Louis should meet there, the lady would know you. I fancy that she will not again mistake you for someone else. As for myself, neither of them yet knows me."

"Are they at Monte Carlo?" Benton sat suddenly upright, and Blanco had the first reward of his diplomacy, as he noted the quickening interest in the questioning eyes.

"I am only guessing, Senor. If the guess is good, I may learn something. What is in my mind, may fail. If you are willing to trust me I would rather not reveal it now."

"And I?" questioned Benton. "Have I any part to play in this, or do you go it alone?"

Blanco leaned forward.

"It may be necessary to have someone near enough to the Palace in Puntal to insure immediate action—action to be taken on the instant.... You must return to the city, Senor.... It will be for only a few days. The Grand Palace Hotel is above the town in large gardens.... If you choose you can remain there with your presence absolutely unknown, so far as the city proper is concerned. Also, the Marconi office has a station in the hotel grounds. With a code which we have yet to arrange, I can keep in touch with you...."

The next day Benton was a passenger by steamer from Villefranche to Puntal.

The Grand Palace Hotel, dominating its own acres of subtropical gardens, looks down on the city as one seated on an eminence commands the common things at his feet. Between its grounds and the scalloped bay, run the huddled habitations of the town's water-front, with its delicately tinted walls and riotously colored gardens invading every crevice.

Following the semicircle of the bay, the eye commands that other eminence where the King's Palace shuts itself in austerely at the very center of the arc. Through the clustered, tea-sipping loungers on the galleries and terraces Benton made his way several days later, wearing the studiously affected unconcern of the tourist; an unconcern which he found it desperately difficult to assume in Puntal.