After dinner Cara and the ladies of her party had withdrawn to their rooms to prepare for the gay warfare of the gardens. Benton, awaiting them in the rotunda, lounged on one of the low divans which circle the walls of the octagonal chamber, beneath carved lattices and Moorish panels; a cigarette between his fingers and a small cup of black coffee on the low tabouret at his elbow.

The place invited lazy ease, and Benton was as indolent among his cushions as the spirit of brooding Egypt, but his eyes, watching the stairs down which she would come, remained alert.

Hearing his name called in a voice which rang familiarly, he glanced up to recognize the smiling face of young Harcourt, his chance acquaintance of Capri. He set down the small Turkish cup and rose.

"Come back to the bar and fortify yourself against the thin red line of British soldiery out there in the gardens. You can get a ripping highball for eight piastres," laughed the newcomer. But Benton declined.

"I am waiting for ladies," he explained. "I'll see you again."

"Sure you will." Harcourt paused. "I dash up the Nile in the morning, going to do Karnak and Luxor—you know, the usual stunt. Been busy all day buying scarabs and mummied cats, but I want to see you sometime to-night. By the way, I've heard something—"

"All right. See you later." Benton spoke hurriedly, for he had caught the flash of a slender figure in white on the stairs.

In the war of the confetti, man makes war on woman and woman on man, while over the field reigns a universal and democratic acquaintanceship.

Cara was on vacation, and a child—bent on forgetting that to-morrow must come. It was characteristic of her that she should enter into the spirit of the occasion with all the abandon it suggested.

Benton stood by as she gradually gave ground before the attacks of a stout, gray-templed Briton, a General of the Army of Occupation. She fought gallantly, but he stood doggedly before her handfuls of confetti, shaking the paper chips out of his eyes and mustache like some invincible old St. Bernard, and her slender Mandarin-coated figure retreated slowly before his red and medal-decked jacket.

"Watch out!" cried Benton, who followed her retreat, forbidden by the rules of warfare from giving aid, other than counsel, "The British Army is putting you in a bad strategic position."

She had retreated across the flower-beds and stood with her back to the rim of the fountain. Her box of confetti was empty and Benton also was without ordnance supplies.

Young Harcourt suddenly stepped forward from the crowd.

"Here!" he cried with a smile of frank worship, as he tendered a fresh box of confetti. "Take this and remember Bunker Hill!"

The British officer bowed.

"I surrender," he said, "because you violate the rules of war. Your confetti is not deadly and your tactics are mediocre, but your eyes use lyddite."

Inside Cara went to her room to wrestle with the tiny chips of multi-colored paper that covered her and filled her hair. In the hall, Harcourt came again to Benton.

"By Jove, she is a wonder," he said. Then he slipped his arm through Benton's and led him aside. The American followed supinely.

"Benton, do you remember the talk we had about Romance?"

Benton looked quickly up to forestall any possible personality to which he might object, but Harcourt continued.

"Do you know that chap, Martin—he doesn't call himself Browne now—has turned up again? He's been here. Not ragged this time, but well groomed and in high feather. To-day he left to go back to Galavia."

"Back to Galavia?" Benton repeated the words in astonishment. "What do you mean?"

Harcourt laughed. "The scales have turned and his Grand Duke is to be King after all."

Benton seized the boy by the elbow and steered him into one of the empty writing-rooms.

"Now, for God's sake, what do you mean?" he demanded.

"That's all," replied the young tourist. "They've switched Kings. Oh, it was so quietly done that the people of the city of Puntal don't know yet it's happened. The King died suddenly and Louis will ascend his throne."

"The King died suddenly!" Benton echoed the words blankly. "I don't understand."

"Neither do I. But Martin said the King was taken prisoner and tried to escape. He was shot."

"How did Martin know?" asked Benton slowly, trying to realize the full import of the boy's chatter.

"The news hasn't reached here, generally speaking. He said that the King's death has not even been made public there, but the Countess Astaride has been stopping here. Martin himself was in her party and he helped her to decipher the news from the Duke's code-telegram." He paused. "However," he added, "that may not interest you. The story probably bored you at first, but having told you the original tale, I had to add the sequel. What I really wanted to ask you, is to present me to the wonderful American girl. You will, won't you?"

Benton's back was turned to the window. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and stared at nothing.

"You will, won't you?" repeated the boy.

"Oh, yes, of course," Benton replied mechanically. "I shall ask permission to do so."

Outside on the terraced veranda, where one sips tea and overlooks one of the most varied human tides that flows through any street of the world, Benton and Cara sat at a table near the edge—the man wondering how he could tell her. Fakirs with spangled shawls from Assouit, bead necklaces, ebony walking-sticks, scarabs and souvenir postcards jostled on the sidewalk to pass their wares over the railing. Fat Arab guides with red fezes and the noisy jargon of half-mastered French and English discussed to-morrow's journeys with industrious globe-trotters.

On the tiles squatted a juggler from India. Under his white turban his glittering, beady eyes appraised the generosity of his audience as he arranged his flat baskets, his live rabbits and his hooded cobras for an exhibition of mercenary magic.

Along the street, heralded with tom-toms, came a procession of lurching camels, jogging donkeys, rattling carriages, acrobats leading dog-faced apes and trailing Arabs in fezes—the pomp and pageantry of a pilgrim returning from Mecca. Motors, victorias, detachments of cavalry swept by in unbroken and spectacular show.

Benton sat stiffly with his jaw muscles tightly drawn and his eyes dazed, looking at the girl across the table.

She turned from the street, eyes still sparkling with the reflected variety of the picture that hodge-podged Occident and Orient, telescoping the dead ages with to-day.

"Oh, I love things so," she laughed. "I'm as foolish as a child about things that are new."

With another glance at the shifting tide, she added seriously: "And every silly Oriental of them all is free to go where he pleases—to do what he pleases. I would give everything for freedom, and they have it—and don't value it!"

Then she saw the hard strain of his face. Slowly her own eyes lost the glow of pleasurable interest and saddened with the realization of being barred back from life.

The man bent forward. His fingers tightened on the edge of the table with a clutch which drove the blood back under his nails. It was a hard fight to retain his self-control. His question broke from him in a low, almost savage voice.

"Cara!" he demanded. "Cara, is there any price too high to pay for happiness?"

"What do you mean?" The intensity of his eyes held hers, and for a moment she feared for his reason. Her own question was low and steadying, but he answered in an unnatural voice.

"I hardly know—perhaps I have less right to speak now than ever—perhaps more. I don't know, I only know that I love you—and that the world seems reeling."

Something caught in his throat.

"I'm a cur to talk of it now. I want to think of—of—something else. I ought to think only what a splendid sort he was—but I can realize only one thing—I love you."

"Only one thing," she repeated softly. Then as she looked again into the feverishly bright eyes under his scowl, the meaning which lay back of his words broke suddenly upon her.

"Was!" she echoed in startled comprehension. "Was!—did you say was?"

The man remained silent.

"You mean that—?" she said the three words very slowly and stopped, unable to go on.

"You mean—that—he—?" With a strong effort she added the one word, then gave up the effort to shape the question. Her hand closed convulsively.

Benton slowly nodded his head. The girl leaned forward toward him. Her lips parted, her eyes widened.

The next instant they were misty with tears. Not hypocritical tears for an unloved husband, but sincere tears for a generous friend.

"Delgado escaped," he explained simply. "Karyl was captured." Again he spoke in few words. It seemed that he could not manage long sentences. "Then he tried to escape," he added.

She pressed her fingers to her temples, and leaned forward, speaking rapidly in a half-whisper that sometimes broke.

"Oh, it's not fair! It's not fair! I want to think only how splendid he was—how unselfish—how brave! I want to think of him always as he deserves, lovingly, fondly—and I've got to remember forever how little I could give him in return!"

"Yes, I guess he was the whitest man—" Benton stopped, then blurted out like a boy. "Oh, what's the use of my sitting here eulogizing him. I guess he doesn't need my praises. I guess he can stand on his own record."

"It's monstrous!" she said, and then she, too, fell back on silence.

Suddenly she rose to her feet, carried one hand to her heart and swayed uncertainly for a moment, steadying herself with one hand on the table.

The man turned, following her half-hypnotic gaze, in time to see Colonel Von Ritz bending over her hand. With recognition, Benton started up, then his jaw dropped and, doubting his own sanity, he fell back into his chair and sat gazing with blank eyes.

At Von Ritz's elbow stood Pagratide.

Slowly Benton came to his feet, his ears ringing. Then as Karyl turned from the girl and held out his hand to him, the American heard, as one listening through the roaring of a fever, some question about affairs in Galavia.

He heard Karyl answer, and though the words seemed to come from somewhere beyond Port Said, he recognized that the former King tried to speak in a matter-of-fact voice.

"I have no Kingdom. Louis took it."

Karyl had held out his left hand. The right was bound down in a sling. But these things were all vague to Benton because it seemed that the pilgrim's tom-toms were beating inside his brain, and beating out of time. He could see that Karyl's eyes also were weary and lusterless.

Turning with an excuse for travel-stain to be removed, Karyl halted.

"Benton," he said. There he fell silent. "Benton," he said again, forcing himself to speak in a voice not far from the breaking point, "Blanco—Blanco is dead."

He turned on his heel and went into the hotel.

Blanco dead! For a moment Benton felt an insane desire to rush after Karyl and demand his life for Blanco's. Some delirious accusation that this man cost him every dear thing in life seemed fighting for expression and reprisal, then he realized that the toreador had won his way into Pagratide's affection as well as his own. Tears came to his eyes for an instant. He focused his gaze on a cigarette-shop across the street.

"Lady!"

A grinning Egyptian face, surmounted by a red fez, showed itself over the railing. The girl started violently and seemed for a moment on the edge of hysteria. She laughed unnaturally. Thus encouraged, the Bedouin's grin broadened until it radiated good-humor across the swarthy visage from cheek-bone to cheek-bone.

"Nice scarabs, lady! Only five piastres—only one shilling," he spieled. "Scarabs of a dead dynasty. Tres antique."



CHAPTER XXIV

IN WHICH KINGS AND COMMONERS DISCUSS LOVE

In the gardens of the hotel, the paths lay ankle-deep in scattered confetti. Already the scores of lights were going out and those that remained shone on the wreckage of an entertainment ended.

Cara had gone to her rooms. In his own, at a window commanding the garden, Benton sat in an attitude of lethargic dejection, staring down on the lingering illuminations. His brain still swirled. A dozen times he told himself that matters were precisely as they had been; that the developments of the evening had brought no change, save a momentary belief in a mistaken rumor and a few wild dreams. When he had waited in the rotunda for Cara, he had known Karyl to be living. He knew it now, yet it seemed as though his life-rival had died and come again to life. It seemed, too, as though his own prison doors had swung open, and while he stood on the free threshold had slammed inward upon him, sweeping him back, broken and bruised with their clanging momentum.

To-morrow he must go away.

Benton looked at his watch. It was after four o'clock.

Then a knock came on the door. Benton did not respond. He feared that young Harcourt, belated and flushed with brandy-acid-soda, might have seen the light of his transom and paused for gossip. The thought he could not endure. Again he heard and ignored the knock, then the door opened slowly, and turning his head, he recognized Karyl on his threshold.

Just at that moment the American could not have spoken. He had come to a point of pent-up emotion which can move only by breaking dams. He pointed to a chair, but Karyl shook his head.

For a while neither spoke. Karyl's hair was rumpled; his eyes darkly ringed, and the line of his lips close set. Benton glanced out of his window. Across the gardens the wall was growing blanker, as lighted panes fell dark. One window, which he knew was Cara's, still showed a parallelogram of light behind its drawn shade. Karyl in passing followed the glance. He, too, recognized the window.

At last the Galavian spoke.

"Can you spare me a half-hour?"

Benton nodded. He would have preferred any other time. He needed opportunity for self-collection.

Again Karyl spoke.

"Benton, I might as well be brief. There are two of us. In this world there is room for only one. One of us is an interloper."

The American felt the blood rush to his face; he felt it pound at the back of his eyeballs, at the base of his brain. An instinct of fury, which was only half-sane, flooded him. Red spots danced before his eyes. The other had spoken slowly, almost gently, yet he could read only challenge in the words, and the challenge was one he hungered to accept.

He made a tremendous effort for self-mastery and rose slowly, turning a white face on his visitor.

"You told me," he said, enunciating each word with distinct deliberateness, "that you would fight me, when your throne freed you. You begin promptly. I am here, but—"

"I think you misunderstand me," interrupted Karyl.

"But," went on Benton, ignoring the interruption, "neither of us is free to fight. If we were, Pagratide, you may guess how gladly I'd put it to the issue. Good God, man, what could I lose?"

"Wait," said the late King of Galavia. "I have come here to talk with you, Benton, in a way which is unspeakably hard. Can you not make the same effort to lay aside passion that I am making?"

The American turned and paced the floor.

For a moment more there was the same embarrassed silence between them, then the Galavian continued, measuring his words, speaking with desperately studied effort to eliminate the feeling that struggled to the surface.

"You love my wife."

"And shall," replied the American in the same calculated, colorless voice, "while I live."

"I, too," said Pagratide. "Therefore we must talk."

"Wait." Benton raised a hand. "If we are to talk at all along these lines, Pagratide, there is only one way in which it can be done."

"And that is what?"

"That each of us, throughout, talks with only one thought in mind: her happiness; that one strip aside all conventions and talk as two utterly naked souls might talk."

"Of course," said Karyl simply. "Otherwise I should not have suggested it."

"Then," began Benton, "up to this point we are agreed."

The King, despite his pallor, smiled.

"I'm afraid you still don't understand me. I haven't come to murder you, or to invite murder, Benton. It would not help."

"You have just said that one of us is an interloper. Presumably you have come to decide which one it is."

Karyl shook his head.

"Benton, that point has been decided. Not by you or me, but it is decided."

"I don't understand you," admitted the American.

His visitor studied the few remaining lights in the garden beneath.

"I am no longer a King. I am an outcast. If I ever had a claim before God, it passed with my Crown. I could hold her now only by brutality. I told you I would free her and fight for her, but I saw her eyes to-night.... Benton, it is I who am the interloper!"

No answer came to Benton's tongue. Pagratide did not seem to expect one. After a moment he went on, with the manner of one who had thought out what he was to say, and who compels himself to go through with the prepared recital.

"If there is no throne, I must eliminate myself.... But for the time being I have given Von Ritz my parole.... The game is not yet quite played out.... He and Cara agree that I must play it to the end. After that there will be time to remedy mistakes." He paused.

"Pagratide," said the American slowly, "you are talking wildly. At all events, while everything impossible has happened to us, I think we can, after all shake hands."

Karyl extended his own.

"I have spoken as I have," he went on, "because it was necessary to be frank. Meanwhile I must ask you to place me under yet another obligation. There is one safe place for her. Will you take us with you on the yacht, and cruise in unfrequented ports, until Von Ritz reports to me?"

"Where is Von Ritz?"

"Gone back to Alexandria. He still cherishes hopes of a restoration. He wishes to return to Galavia."

"Can he return safely?"

Karyl shrugged his shoulders. "His conduct can hardly be construed as a political offense. He will be under suspicion, but all Europe would resent any injury to Von Ritz."

"The Isis is, of course, at your command."

* * * * *

In the same rooms where Karyl and his father had often consulted with Von Ritz on affairs of state, Louis Delgado sat in conference with a foreigner, who had no acknowledged position in the councils of any government, yet whose mind and execution had affected many. The foreigner was Monsieur Jusseret.

"Why," began the new Monarch testily, "do you believe that there should be delay in proclaiming myself? I shall feel safer with the Crown actually upon my head."

The Frenchman sat reflectively silent, his slim fingers spread, tip to tip, his elbows on the arms of the chair in which he lounged.

"Your Majesty is not a fisherman?" he suavely inquired. Louis rose impatiently.

"You know that I have no interest in such sports. Why do you ask?"

"It is unfortunate," mused the Master Intriguer, "since if Your Majesty were, you would realize the inadvisability of an effort to land the game fish too abruptly when he takes the hook. Your Majesty, however, realizes that it is wiser to eat ripe fruit than green fruit."

The King poured himself a glass of wine, which he gulped down nervously.

"You speak in riddles—always in riddles. What is unripe? The blow is struck, I am in possession. What is to be gained by waiting?"

Jusseret raised his brows.

"What blow is struck, Your Majesty? You know and I know that you occupy the Palace. Europe in general supposes that you have been here for some time as the guest of Karyl. Europe does not yet officially know that Karyl has vacated the throne. The governments agreed to recognize you, but the governments relied upon your adequately disposing of your royal kinsman. Yet he is now at large."

The Pretender wheeled suddenly on the calm gentleman sitting indolently in his chair. The Pretender's face paled.

"Do you mean, Monsieur Jusseret, that after enticing me into this mad enterprise you now purpose to abandon me?" The coward's terror added excitement to the questioning voice.

Jusseret smiled.

"By no means," he assured. "But Your Majesty must now play your part. I merely counsel holding the reins of government lightly—as Regent—until it is logically advisable to grasp them tightly as King. Karyl escaped. The man shot proves to be an unknown who had changed coats with the King. Ostensibly, His late Majesty is traveling. You are his representative. Now, if His Majesty and the Queen should fail to return from their journeyings, your position would be stronger."

Louis sank into a chair, deeply agitated. "I fear this man Von Ritz more deeply than Karyl."

"Naturally," was Jusseret's dry comment. "But Your Majesty will leave Von Ritz alone. I also, should like to see him disposed of—but leave him alone, or you will incur Europe's displeasure."

"What shall I do?" The question came in a note of plaintive helplessness.

The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.

"If you ask my counsel, I should say send for one Martin. He has been of some service. He is a man of action. He is called the English Jackal. I should suggest—" He paused.

"Yes, yes—you would suggest what?" eagerly prompted the new King.

"Really, Your Majesty, you should act more promptly on hints. Diplomats cannot diagram their suggestions. I should suggest that the English Jackal also travel, with the understanding that if he should return to Galavia after the death of the late King and Queen—and that shortly—he may expect certain titles and recognition at Court, but if he returns before their death, he need expect nothing." Jusseret lighted a cigarette.

The Pretender sat silent, frightened, vacillating.

"And," went on Jusseret calmly, "there was one other suggestion which I shall make, if Your Majesty will permit me the liberty."

"What?"

"Touching Your Majesty's marriage—"

"Yes—Marie is also in some hurry about that. What is the devilish haste? One can be married at any time."

Monsieur Jusseret rose and began drawing on his gloves.

"Of course if Your Majesty sees fit, a morganatic marriage with the Countess Astaride would be entirely advisable—but for the Queen of Galavia, Europe will insist on a stronger alliance; on a union with more royal blood."

Louis came to his feet in astonishment.

"You dare suggest that?" he exclaimed. "You, who have been her ally and used her aid!"

"Pardon me—I suggest nothing. I repeat to Your Majesty, as the very humble mouthpiece of France, the sentiment of the governments, without whose recognition your dynasty can hardly stand."



CHAPTER XXV

ABDUL SAID BEY EFFECTS A RESCUE

Martin, tall and aggressively British, from the black silk tassel on his red fez to the battered puttees and brown boots that had once come out of Bond Street, stood watching the Isis outlined against the opposite walls of the Yildiz Kiosk.

Few pleasure-craft call at Constantinople.

"If you had not, as usual, been so damned late"—he turned with a gesture of raw impatience to the heavy-faced Osmanli at his side—"I could have pointed them out to you on Galata Bridge. As it is, they have returned to the yacht."

"May Heaven never again thwart your wish with delay, Martin Effendi." The Turk spoke placidly, his oily voice soft as a benediction, "I was delayed by pigs, and sons of pigs! Your annoyance is my desolating sorrow, yet"—he waved his hand with a bland gesture—"I am but the servant of His Majesty, the Sultan—whom Allah preserve—and the official is frequently detained."

"What is done, is done. Bismillah—no matter!" The Englishman curbed his annoyance and spoke as one resigned. "What now remains is this: We must see them, and you must learn to recognize them. You understand?"

The other bowed in unperturbed assent.

"All Europeans," he suggested, "dine at the Pera Palace Hotel—it is the Mecca of their hunger."

To the white man's voice returned the ring of asperity. "And at the Pera Palace, we shall not only see, but be seen. Likewise unless we have a care in this enterprise, we shall not only eat, but be eaten. A man may stare at whom he chooses on Galata Bridge."

"When I dine in a public place"—the Osmanli smiled cunningly from the depths of small pig-like eyes—"I shield myself behind a screen. Thus may I observe unobserved."

The sun had set, but the yellow after-glow still lingered in the sky behind Stamboul as the two men stood looking toward Galata Bridge, where their quarry had escaped them, and across the Golden Horn.

A pyramid of domes, flanked by a pair of slender minarets, daintily proclaimed the Mosque Yeni-Djami against the fading amber. On Galata Bridge itself, the day-long tide of medleyed life was thinning. Where there had been an eddying current of turbans and tarbooshes, bespeaking all the tribes and styles which foregather at the meeting place of two Continents and two seas, there were now only the belated few.

To the jaded imagination of Martin Effendi and his companion, Abdul Said Bey, the falling of night over the quadruple city, smothering more than a million souls under a single blanket of blackness, made no appeal. They were watching a yacht.

Over the Pera roofs swept flocks of crows to roost in their garden rookeries at the center of the town. Across the harbor water, now too gloomy to reveal its thousands of jelly-fish, drifted the complaining cries of the loons. Then as the occasional city lamps began to twinkle, making the darkness murkier by their inadequacy, there arose from the twisting ways of Pera, Galata and Stamboul the night howling of thirty thousand dogs.

At length Martin held up the dial of his watch to the uncertain light.

"I must be off," he announced. "Jusseret is waiting at the Pera Palace. Don't fail us at seven-thirty."

The tireless features of Abdul Said Bey once more shaped themselves into a deliberate smile. "Of a surety, Effendi. May your virtues ever find favor in the sight of Allah."

For a moment the pig-like eyes followed the well-knit figure of the Englishman as it went swinging along the street. Then the Turk turned and lost himself in the darkness.

The Pera Palace Hotel stands in the European quarter of the town. To its doors your steps are guided by a trail of shop signs in English, French, German and Greek, among which appear only occasional characters in the native Arabic.

Almost immediately after Cara, Pagratide and Benton had seated themselves in the dining-room that evening, Arab servants secluded a corner table, close to their own, behind mushrabieh screens. The party for whom this distinguished aloofness had been arranged made its entrance through an unseen door, but the voices indicated that several were at table there. The waiter who served this table apart might have testified that one was an Englishman, wearing in addition to European evening dress the native tarboosh, or fez. Also, that against his white shirt-front glittered the Star of Galavia. The second diner wore one of the many elaborate uniforms that signify Ottoman officialdom. His eyes were small and pig-like, and as he talked no feature or gesture at the table beyond escaped his appraising scrutiny.

There was one other behind the mushrabieh screens. The niceties of his dress were Parisian, punctilious, perfect. In his right lapel was the unostentatious button of the Legion d'Honneur.

The Englishman spoke. "Much of your story, Monsieur Jusseret, is familiar to me. It will, however, prove interesting in toto, I daresay, to our friend Abdul Said Bey, whom Allah preserve."

There was a murmur of compliment from the Turk, adding his assurance of interest, and the Frenchman took up the thread of his narrative.

"We supposed that Karyl was dead—the Throne of Galavia clear for Delgado. Alas, we were in error!" The speaker shook his head in deep regret, as, turning to Martin, he added:

"It was a pardonable mistake. Let us hope the announcement was merely premature." He lifted his wine-glass with the air of one proposing a toast. "It becomes our duty to make that statement true. Messieurs, our success!"

When the three glasses had been set down, the Englishman questioned: "How did it occur?"

In the smooth manner of an after-dinner narrative, Jusseret explained the occurrences of the night when he had brought his plans to an almost successful termination. He told his story with charm of recital, verve and humor, and gave it withal a touch of vivid realism, so that even his auditors, long since graduated from the stage where a tale of adventurous undertaking thrilled them, yet listened with profound interest.

With the salad Jusseret sighed regretfully.

"I rather plume myself on one quality of my work, Monsieur Martin. I rarely overlook an integral detail. I, however, find myself growing alarmingly faulty of judgment."

"Indeed!" The Englishman was not greatly engrossed in the autobiographical phases of Jusseret's diplomatic felonies.

"I regret to acknowledge it, but it is, alas, true. I reflected that the world would resent harsh treatment of a man like Von Ritz. He had committed no crime. We could not charge treason against a government not yet born. I opposed even exile. He immediately rejoined his fleeing King—and has since returned to Puntal, where one can only surmise what mischief he agitates. It may be as well to consider his future."

"And now," callously supplemented the Englishman, "our new King feels an uncertainty of tenure so long as the old King lives, and I am rushed after this refugee Monarch with brief instructions to dispose of him."

There was a certain eloquence in the shrug of Jusseret's shoulders. "Messieurs, we have wrecked Karyl's dynasty, but it still devolves upon us in workmanlike fashion to clear away the debris."

Martin leaned forward and put his query like an attorney cross-examining a witness.

"Where was this Queen when the King was taken?"

"That," replied Jusseret, "is a question to be put to Von Ritz or Karyl. It would appear that Von Ritz suspected the end and, wise as he is in the cards of diplomacy, resolved that should his King be taken, he would still hold his Queen in reserve. That Kingdom does not hold to the Salic Law—a Queen may reign! And so you see, my colleagues," he summarized, "we, representing the plans of Europe, find ourselves confronted with questions unanswered, and with matters yet to do."

Martin's voice was matter-of-fact. "After all," he observed, "what are the odds, where the King was or where the Queen was at a given time in the past, so long as we jolly well know where they are to-night?" Turning to the Sultan's officer, he spoke rapidly. "You understand what is expected?" He pointed one hand to the party from the yacht. "The man nearest us is the King who failed to remain dead. That failure is curable if you play your game." He paused. "The lady," he added, "has the misfortune to have been the Queen of Galavia. You understand, my brother?"

The Turk rose, pushing back his chair.

"Your words are illuminating." He spoke with a profound bow. "In serving you, I shall bring honor to my children, and my children's children." With the Turkish gesture of farewell, his fingers touching heart, lips and forehead, he betook himself backward to the door.

Two hours later, alighting from a rickety victoria by the landing-stage, Cara made her way between the two men, toward the waiting launch from the Isis. Filthy looking Arabs, to the number of a dozen, rose out of the shadows and crowded about the trio, pleading piteously for backshish in the name of Allah. The party found itself forced back towards the carriage, and Benton fingered the grip of the revolver in his pocket as the other hand held the girl's arm. At the same moment there was a sudden clamor of shouting and the patter of running feet. Then the throng of beggars dropped back under the pelting blows from heavy naboots in the hands of kavasses.

An instant later a stout Turk in official uniform broke through the confusion, shouting imprecations.

"Back, you children of swine!" he declaimed. "Back to your mires, you pigs! Do you dare to affront the great Pashas?" Then, turning obsequiously, he bowed with profound apology. "It is a bitter sorrow that you should be annoyed," he assured them, "but it is over."

"To whom have we the honor of expressing our thanks?" smiled Pagratide.

The Osmanli responded with a deprecating gesture of self-effacement.

"To one of the least of men," he said. "I am called Abdul Said Bey. I am the humble servant of His Majesty, the Sultan—whom Allah preserve."

As the launch put off, the elliptical figure of Abdul Said Bey, on the lowest step of the landing, speeded its departure with a gesture of ceremonious farewell—fingers sweeping heart, lips and forehead. "If you go to shop in Stamboul," he shouted after them, "have a care. The pigs will cheat you—all save Mohammed Abbas."

When the reflected lights of the launch shimmered in vague downward shafts at a distance, he turned and the scattered throng of beggars regathered to group themselves about him with no trace of fear.

"You will know them when you see them in the bazaars?" he demanded. "You shall be taught in time what is expected—likewise bastinadoed upon your bare soles if you fail. Now you have only to remember the faces of the Infidels. Go!" He swept out his hand and the Bedouins scattered like rats into a dozen dark places.

* * * * *

If the panorama of Constantinople fades from a lurid silhouette to a sooty monotone by night, it at least makes amends by day. Then the sun, shining out of a sky of intense blue, on water vividly green, catches the tiled color-chips of the sprawling town; glints on dome and minaret, and makes such a city as might be seen in a kaleidoscope.

Her insatiable appetite for beauty had brought Cara on deck early. The early shore-wind tossed unruly brown curls into her eyes and across the delicate pink of her cheeks.

When the yachtsman joined her, she read in his eyes that he had been long awake and was deeply troubled. In the shadow of the after-cabin she stopped him with a light touch on his arm.

"Now tell me," she demanded, "what is the matter?"

His voice was quiet. "There is nothing in my thoughts that you cannot read—so—" He lifted the eyes in question, half-despairing despite the smile he had schooled into them. "Why rehearse it all again?"

Her face clouded.

He turned his gaze on the single dome and four minarets of the Mosque of Suleyman.

"Besides," he added at length, speaking in a steady monotone, "I couldn't tell it without saying things that are forbidden."

When she spoke the dominant note in her voice was weariness.

"My life," she said, "is a miserable serial of calling on you and sending you away. Back there"—she waved her hand to the vague west—"it is summer—wonderful American summer! The woods are thick and green.... The big rocks by the creek are splotched yellow with the sun, and green with the moss.... I wonder who rides Spartan now, when the hounds are out!" She broke off suddenly, with a sobbing catch in her throat, then she shook her head sadly. "You see, you must go!" she added. "You will take my heart with you—but that is better than this."

She turned and led the way forward and for the length of the deck he walked at her side in silence.

As they halted he demanded, very low; "And you—?"

Her answering smile was pallid as she quoted, "'More than a little lonely'—" then, reverting to her old name for him, she laughed with counterfeited gayety—"as, Sir Gray Eyes, people must be—who try to be good."



CHAPTER XXVI

IN A CURIO SHOP IN STAMBOUL.

The muezzin had called the devout to their prayer-rugs for the third time that day, when the girl and the two men turned from the Stamboul end of Galata Bridge into the tawdry confusion of buildings which cluster about the Mosque Yeni-Djami. They were bound for the bazaars.

Along the twisting ways stretched the booths of native merchants stocked with the thousand fascinating trifles that the City of the Sultan markets to the journeying world. Everywhere the crowd surged and jostled.

On the side street where the shops are a trifle larger than their neighbors, one Mohammed Abbas keeps his curio bazaar. In such flowery Orientalism of appeal did he couch his plea for an inspection of his wares, that Cara was persuaded and turned into the shop. Cut off by pressure of the crowd, Pagratide, who was following, some paces back, caught a glimpse of her figure in the door and fought his way to her side, but Benton, having stopped to price a bracelet of antique silver set with turquoises, lost sight of them. The girl had become interested in a quaint, curved dagger thickly studded with semi-precious stones.

Mohammed Abbas urged her to see the rarer and choicer articles which he kept in an upper room. As they tailed, a half-dozen natives, swarthy and villainous of face, drifted into the shop to be promptly ordered out by the proprietor, who used for that purpose a vocabulary of scope and vividness. The ruffians retreated after a brief conversation in guttural Arabic, but not by the street door through which they had come. Instead, they left by a low-arched exit to the rear, concealed from view by the angle of the screening stairway. Abbas led his customers to an upper room which they found dark except where he lighted it as he went with hanging lamps. Its space was generous, broken here and there by piles of ebony furniture, inlaid with pearl; pieces of Saracenic armor, Damascened bucklers, and all the gear too large for the narrow confines below.

Half an hour's searching through the chaos of wares failed to reveal the choice daggers which Mohammed wished them to see, and with many apologies for added annoyance he begged Monsieur and Madame to mount yet another flight, and visit yet another store-room. At the head of these stairs they encountered absolute darkness and the shopman, with his ever-ready apologies, paused again to light lamps.

As Pagratide's pupils accustomed themselves to the murk he realized that this last room was bare except for tapestries hung flat against the wall, and that at its farther side narrow slits of light showed along the sills of two doors. Turning, he noted the darker shadow of some recess in the wall, immediately to his left.

Suddenly Mohammed Abbas closed the door upon the stairs, and sharply clapped his hands. In all lands where Allah is worshiped, clapping of the hands is a signal of summons. Thrusting his hand into the pocket where he had stored an automatic pistol, Karyl found it empty, and remembered that on the stairway the merchant had apologized for jostling him. Then simultaneously the two opposite doors opened and framed against their light a momentary picture of crowding Arabs.

* * * * *

Outside, Benton had been searching. First he had felt only annoyance for a chance separation, but when ten minutes of futile wandering had lengthened to fifteen, annoyance gave way to fear, and fear to panic. A dozen tragic stories of mysterious disappearances in Stamboul crowded like nightmares upon his memory. At last, standing bewildered in the street, he caught sight of a familiar figure; a figure that filled him with astonishment and delight.

Colonel Von Ritz had left Cairo to return to Puntal. Now here he was in a crooked Stamboul street, appearing without warning, but with his almost uncanny faculty for being at the right spot when needed. He shouldered his way to the side of the officer.

Though the two men had parted several weeks before, the Galavian greeted the other only with a formal bow, and an abrupt question. "Where are they?"

"I have lost them," replied Benton. He rapidly sketched the events of the last half-hour, and confessed his own apprehensions.

With evidence of neither anxiety nor interest, Von Ritz listened, and replied with a second question. "Have you seen Martin?"

Benton gave a palpable start. "Martin!" he ejaculated. "Is Martin in Constantinople?"

For reply Von Ritz permitted himself the rare indulgence of a smile.

"Martin is here," he said briefly.

"And you—?"

As he spoke the figure of Martin himself emerged from a shop a few paces ahead, and without a backward glance cut diagonally across the narrow street to disappear into the doorway of the curio shop which is kept by Mohammed Abbas.

When, after being cut off and delayed for some minutes by a passing donkey train, Von Ritz and Benton entered the place, they found it empty except for a native salesman, but as the Galavian paused to make a trivial purchase his listening ear caught a sound above. Without hesitation, he wheeled and mounted the stairs with Benton close at his heels. Behind him the shop-clerk stood irresolute—taken aback, with a vague consciousness that he should have devised a way to stop this gigantic Infidel. Assuredly the master would be angry. Orders had been explicitly given to allow no one to climb those steps to-day without permission.

While Cara and Karyl had been on the second floor, a heavy Osmanli, wearing the Sultan's uniform, had stood in the center of the room above, looking about with keen, pig-like eyes, as he gave rapid commands to a half dozen Arabs of villainous visage.

"You, Sayed Ayoub," he ordered, "take your pig of a self and others like unto you into that doorway by the stairs. Remain until you hear men enter from these two doors, facing the Infidel dogs. Then come upon them from behind. The man is to be bound, and when evening comes—but that is later! Still, if he resists too much—" The speaker shrugged his heavy shoulders and made a certain gesture.

"And the woman? What of her?" The question came from a gigantic Bedouin whose evil countenance was made the more sinister by one closed and empty eye-socket.

Abdul Said Bey nodded. "She is to be tenderly handled," he enjoined. "She, also, must disappear, but that shall be my care. My harem is as silent as the Bosphorus."

There were steps on the stairs, and instantaneously the room emptied itself and became silently dark.

When Karyl heard the hand-clapping of the decoy shopman, and saw the responding ruffians in the opposite doors, he swiftly thrust the girl into the spot of blacker shadow at his back, and seized the wrist of Mohammed Abbas with a force and suddenness that wrung from him a piteous wail.

Keeping the Turk before him, he backed toward the shadowed recess, with the one idea of shielding Cara. But the darker spot was the door behind which Sayed Ayoub lay in ambuscade, and as Karyl reached it, it swung open, showing them against a background as bright as though they were painted on yellow canvas.

With his free arm he swept Cara into the doorway, wheeling quickly in front of her, and sent Mohammed Abbas lurching forward into the faces of the assailants led by Sayed Ayoub. Instantly, however, his arms were pinioned from behind by the reenforcements, and as he frantically struggled to turn his face, in an effort to see the girl, some thick fabric fell over his head, covering mouth and eyes, and he went down stifled and garroted into insensibility.

Seeing the man overwhelmed and dragged through the door, Cara stood rigidly upright, white in the intensity of voiceless outrage, until the gigantic brute with one sightless eye and a greasy tarboosh reached out his grimy hand and seized her. Then she sickened at the profaning shock of his touch, and fell unconscious.

A few moments later the "English Jackal" stood nonchalantly looking down at the bound figure of the former King lying on the floor, shoulders propped against the wall, head wrapped in a richly embroidered shawl from Persia. Lamps had been kindled. The head wrappings had already been somewhat loosened and Karyl was stirring with the indication of returning consciousness.

"Oh, damn it!" remarked Martin in disgust. "He doesn't need to be both trussed up and gagged, you know. He's quite safe. Take off the head cloths."

He stuffed tobacco into his blunt bull-dog pipe as he supervised the undoing of the smothering fabric and complacently looked at his prisoner.

Freed from the bandage, and drinking in again reviving breaths, Karyl awoke to the sense of his surroundings. His eyes at once swept the place for Cara, but he saw only the closed door of the room where she was detained.

Martin looked down and as their eyes met he casually nodded.

"Sorry to inconvenience you," he commented affably, "but this is politics, you know. I happen to work for the other chap, King Louis." As an afterthought he added: "And the other chap thinks that you are, to put it quite civilly, unnecessary."

He smoked meditatively, while Karyl, without reply, scowled up into his face. The sense of futility left Pagratide silent. He lay insanely furious like a trapped wolf, able only to glare.

Suddenly the complacency deserted the Englishman's features, for a startled expression. With a violent malediction he bent forward listening.

Karyl's ears also caught the sound of feet on the stairs, immediately followed by a crash upon the door.

Martin drew a heavy revolver from a holster under his coat, and his voice ripped out orders with the sharp decision which had survived the days when he wore a British uniform. "Here, you beggars," he shouted, "to that door!"

As the Bedouins swarmed forward there came a second crash under which the panels fell in, precipitating Von Ritz and Benton into a fierce swarm of human hornets.

Falling desperately upon the newcomers with swords, knives and naboots, the bravos afforded them no time to take breath after their climb of the stairs.

Martin, standing with his pipe clamped between his teeth, took no part in the onslaught. He cast a glance at the turmoil, then deliberately cocked his weapon and leveled it at the breast of his captive.

Karyl realized that the Jackal was not to be led away from his single purpose: that of execution. If he himself were to speak to his rescuers, he must do it quickly. He raised his voice.

"Von Ritz! To that door!" he shouted loudly, but the Galavian and his companion, fighting desperately to hold their own, with the shouts and clamor of the struggling Moslems in their ears, did not hear, and the Englishman only smiled.

"They are quite busy, you know," he drawled in a half-apologetic tone. "Give them a bit of time."

Von Ritz was fighting with the blade of his sword-cane, while Benton, too closely pressed to make use of his pistol, was relying upon his fists. Indeed, the two white men owed their lives to the crowding which made effective fighting impossible on either side.

At last the Turks gave back a few steps for a fresh rush and Benton, taking instant advantage of the widened space, fired into the crowd. They turned in terror at the first report and went stampeding to the several doors. Then for the first time the rescuers caught sight of the Englishman standing guard over the bound figure on the floor.

With the grim smile of one who, recognizing the end, neither flinches nor dallies, Martin fired two shots from his leveled revolver.

A half-second too late Benton's magazine pistol ripped out in a frenzied series of spats. The Englishman swayed slightly, his face crimson with blood, then, propping himself weakly against the wall, he fired one ineffectual shot in reply. Slowly wilting at waist and knees, his figure slipped to the floor and lay shapelessly huddled near that of Karyl. The stench of powder filled the room. Twisting spirals of smoke curled ceilingward.

Von Ritz and Benton, kneeling at the King's side, raised him from the floor. The wounded man attempted to speak. His eyes turned inquiringly toward the door of the other room. Benton caught the questioning look and nodded his head. Then Karyl settled back against the officer's supporting shoulder after the fashion of a reassured child.

"The King is dead," said Colonel Von Ritz quietly. There was something very pathetic in the steady despair of his voice.

A door opened, and several Bedouins retreated shame-faced and cowed before a heavy Turk who wore the Sultan's uniform. His small, pig-like eyes blazed with terrifying wrath. Looking about the room for a moment, he volcanically reviled them.

"You dogs! You pigs! You serpents!" he shrieked. "Your hearts shall be thrown to the buzzards! Your children dishonored! You have dared to attack the foreign Pashas, and you—Mohammed Abbas—!" The shopkeeper fell trembling to his knees. "Your filthy shop shall be pulled down about your ears. You make it a trap—your feet shall be bastinadoed until you are a cripple for life!" Then his rage choked him, and, wheeling, he walked over to Benton, contemptuously kicking the prostrate body of Martin Effendi as he went.

From every pore Abdul Said Bey exuded sympathy and commiseration. Scenting liberal backshish, he promised absolute secrecy for the affair, coupled with soothing assurances of private vengeance upon the surviving miscreants. Also, he bewailed the disgrace which had fallen upon the Empire by reason of such infamy. He presumed that the foreign gentlemen preferred secret punishment of the malefactors to a public sensation. It should be so.

In his anxiety for Cara, Benton left Von Ritz to adjust matters with the Turk, who with profound courtesy and amazing promptness had closed carriages at a rear door, and caused his kavasses to clear the alley-way of prying eyes.

When the American reached the room where Cara had been left it was deserted by the assassin's guards. With a sudden stopping of his heart, he saw her lying apparently lifeless on a stacked-up pile of rugs. In a terror that he scarcely dared to investigate, he laid his ear hesitantly to her breast, then, reassured, he gave thanks for the anesthetic of unconsciousness with which nature had blinded her to the tragedy beyond the closed door.

Two curtained carriages drove across Galata Bridge and in the mysterious quiet of Stamboul there was no ripple on the surface of affairs as other tourists haggled over a few piastres in the curio shops of the bazaar.



CHAPTER XXVII

BENTON SAYS GOOD-BY

Louis Delgado awaited Jusseret in an agony of doubt and fear.

The Frenchman was late. A dispatch from the frontier had announced his coming, but to the anxiety of Delgado delays seemed numberless and interminable.

At last an aide ushered him into the apartment where the new Monarch waited, his inevitable glass of Pernod and anisette twisting in his fingers. Jusseret bowed.

"Where is Martin?" inquired the King.

"Dead," said the newcomer briefly. The Pretender paled palpably. Evidently the plan had gone awry. Fear always stood near the fore, ready to rush out upon Delgado's timid spirit.

"And being dead," resumed the Frenchman, "he is much safer."

Louis gave a half-shuddering sigh of relief. He had none of that righteous horror of crime which makes the face of murder hideous, but in its place he had all the terrors of the weak, and playing with life and death gave him over to panic.

"I should suggest an announcement that King Karyl had fled for a time from the cares of State and was traveling as a private gentleman in strictest incognito, when sudden death overtook him. There need be no hint of violence. There must be a State funeral."

"Where is the body?" objected Louis.

Jusseret shrugged his shoulders.

"That I cannot say. I can, however, assure you that it is quite lifeless. Since the death occurred some days ago the lying in State may be dispensed with. A closed casket is sufficient."

"And his Queen?"

"That point is left unguarded, but from intimations I have received, I believe the Queen will be satisfied with private life. If you announce her abdication, she will hardly contradict you."

"And Von Ritz?" persisted Louis, with the manner of one who wishes all the ghosts which terrify him laid by someone stronger and less afraid of ghosts than himself.

"Leave Von Ritz to me. He is no fool. Von Ritz knows who instigated the murder of the King, but he is without proof. The thing happened far beyond the borders of Galavia."

Louis rose unsteadily from his chair.

"Jusseret," he began, "this interview with Marie still confronts me and I dread it. Would it not be better for you to explain to her? You could persuade her that Kings are not free in these matters, that crowned heads from antiquity to Napoleon have been compelled to obey the dictates of State."

The Frenchman stiffened.

"Your Majesty," he observed, "it is impossible. Your attachment for the Countess Astaride is a personal matter. I am concerned only in affairs of State. I must even require of you, in respect to that confidence which obtains between gentlemen, that you shall in no wise intimate that this suggestion came from me."

The new incumbent, who had brought to the Throne of Galavia all the libertine's irresoluteness, paced the floor in perplexed distress. He feared Jusseret. He dared not anger or disobey him. It appeared that being a King was not what he had conceived it, as he sat under the chestnut trees of the Paris boulevards and listened to the band.

When Jusseret had left him to his thoughts he paused three times with a tremulous finger on the call-bell, unable to command the courage required to send a message to the Countess Astaride. Finally he succeeded and five minutes later stood shamefacedly in the presence of the woman who had made him King. She was more than usually beautiful, and as always her beauty and personality dominated him, swayed his senses like music. It was so easy to slip into the impetuous attitude of the lover; so difficult to maintain the austere one of the Monarch.

Delgado nerved himself and began.

How he said it or what he said, he did not himself know when the words had been spoken. He rushed through the speech he had prepared like a frightened child at recitation and waited for the outburst of her anger. He waited in vain.

Marie Astaride had plotted, had consented to every infamy which had been suggested as necessary to bring the man she loved to the Crown.

Now she was silent.

The man looked up when he had waited a seeming century for the expected torrent of reproach.

She was standing supporting herself upon her downward stretched arms, her hands resting on the table. Her face was pallid and her magnificent figure rigid. The scarlet fullness of her lips had gone bloodless. Her eyes were stupefied.

At length she straightened herself, let go her support upon the table and went slowly like a sleep-walker from the room. She had not spoken. She had not said good-by, but Louis Delgado knew that she had walked out of his life.

* * * * *

That evening Monsieur Jusseret of the French Cabinet Noir met, as if by chance, young Lieutenant Lapas, who was now high in the favor of the new government. Jusseret knew that the lure which had drawn young Lapas away from the confidence of Karyl to the uncertain standard of Delgado had been the influence of the Countess Astaride. He knew that Lapas loved her hopelessly, willing even in her name to serve the greater man who loved her more successfully. His attachment was that of the boy for the woman who is mistress of all the mature arts of charm. This love could be turned into the fanatic's zeal; this boy could be led to the extreme of martyrdom, if the strings of his characterless nature were played upon with a skill sufficiently consummate. Jusseret knew also a number of other things. He knew that whereas he had, to all seeming, brought a difficult task to completion, he was in reality not yet half through. His own vision went farther into the future, and recognized in the present only a mile-post far from the ultimate.

He led Lapas to his own rooms. He was leaving for Paris the following morning, he explained, and wished a brief conference.

Jusseret could, when occasion demanded, be not only calm and self-sufficient, but also emotional. Now he was emotional.

"Rarely, indeed," he began, "do I permit personal indignation to excite me. But this is so unspeakable that I wished to talk to you. You enjoy the confidence of the Countess Astaride?"

"Only in a humble way," confessed young Lapas.

"But you are her friend? If she were wronged and had no other defender, you would assume her cause?"

"With my life," protested the officer, fervently.

"This matter," said Jusseret dubiously, "might cost you your life. Possibly I should not tell you. As a politician I can have nothing to do with it, but as a man, I wish I were myself free to act."

"Who has offended the Countess?" demanded Lapas hotly.

"Offended, my young friend! This is not an offense. It is the gravest indignity that can be shown a woman. It is an insult to which a man must either blind himself—or punish with such means as can ignore personal peril."

"For God's sake," insisted the other, "explain yourself."

"Louis Delgado," began Jusseret quietly, "accepted this woman's love: enjoyed it to the full. He sat and dreamed over his absinthe futile dreams of power. He was too weak to strike a blow—too weak to raise a hand. Then she took up his cause; intrigued, enlisted our interests, raised his supine and powerless ambitions to a throne. There he abandons her at the foot of the stairs by which he mounted; and refuses her his Crown. He talks now of a more Royal alliance." Jusseret spread his hands in a gesture of disgust.

Lapas rose tensely from his chair. The veins on his temples stood out corded and deep-lined.

"This cannot be true, sir," he argued. "There must be some error. You wrong the King."

"Am I the man to wrong Louis?" questioned the Frenchman. "You have only to wait and see for yourself. The matter rests with you. She and I have put Louis on the throne. So much I did as the servant of my government. What I say to you I say as a man, and I had rather behold all my work undone than to stand by and see it bear such fruit. Adieu."

He rose slowly and took his departure. Outside, he smiled.

"I fancy," he told himself, "he will go to the Countess. I fancy she will corroborate me—and then—!" He dismissed the matter with his habitual shrug.

* * * * *

Two weeks had passed since the tragedy in Stamboul, and the Isis cruised aimlessly westward. The Mediterranean stretched to the horizon, so placid that the froth from the wake washed languidly, almost lifelessly, on the surface, and a single cloud hung stationary in the softer blue of the sky. Wrapped in a steamer rug, her figure, more slender in the simple lines of her black gown, Cara sat gazing toward the receding coast-line of Malta. So she had spent most of the hours since they had weighed anchor at Constantinople. On the deck at her feet sat Benton.

At Piraeus Von Ritz had secured a copy of the Figaro several days old, and the men had read its report of the Regency of Louis in Puntal. Then the yacht had called at Malta where the gray fortresses of Valetta frown out to sea, and Von Ritz had once more gone in quest of news.

That had been yesterday. By common consent the two men refrained from allusions to State matters in the girl's presence. Now the former adviser of the King uneasily paced the deck. Over his usually sphinx-like face brooded the troubled expression of one who confronts an unwelcome necessity. Suddenly he halted before the girl's deck-chair, and, schooling his voice with an apparent effort, spoke in his old-time even modulation, but for once he found it difficult to meet the eyes of the person he addressed.

"We have heretofore not spoken of things which we would all give many years of life to forget," he began. Then he added with feeling: "Only the sternest necessity could force me to do so now."

As he paused for permission to continue, the girl raised her eyes with a sad smile that had grown habitual.

"I have come," said Von Ritz, "to stand for an implacable Nemesis to you, and yet I should wish to be identified only with happiness in your thoughts. To me one thing always comes first. The House of Galavia is my gospel; has been my gospel since Karyl's father mounted its throne." He paused and added gravely: "Louis Delgado has reaped his reward—he is dead."

Benton's voice broke out in an explosive "Thank God!"

Von Ritz stood a moment silent, then, dropping to one knee, he took the fingers which fell listlessly over the arm of Cara's steamer-chair and raised them to his lips.

"Your Majesty is Queen of Galavia."

The American came to his feet, his hands clenched, but with quick self-mastery he stood back, breathing heavily.

Cara sat for a moment only half-comprehending, then with a low moan she leaned forward and covered her face with both hands.

"Forgive me," said Von Ritz. "I am your Nemesis."

Benton moved over silently and knelt beside her chair. Neither spoke, but at last she raised her face and sat looking out at the water, then slowly one hand came out gropingly toward the American and both of his own closed over it. Von Ritz stood waiting.

When finally she spoke, her voice was almost childlike, full of pleading.

"I thought," she said, "that all that was over. I had thought that whatever is left of life belonged just to me—for my very own. I thought I could take it away and try to mend it."

Von Ritz turned his head and his eyes traveled northward and westward, where, somewhere beyond the horizon, lay his country.

"Galavia needs you," he said with grave simplicity. "Unless you come to her aid there must be ruin and dismemberment. You will save your country."

But his words appeared to convert all her crushed and pathetic misery into anger. "It is not my country!" she replied almost fiercely. "To me it means only—"

Von Ritz raised his hand supplicatingly. "It is my country," he said sadly, "and—your duty. Its fate is in your hands."

The girl rose, swayed slightly, and putting out one hand for support, stood with her black-gowned figure sketched slenderly against the white of the cabin wall, her eyes irresolute and distressed.

"I must have time to think," she begged. "Will you leave me?" Von Ritz bowed and retired.

She dropped exhaustedly into the chair again and for a long while sat silent. Finally she turned toward the man who, kneeling by her side, waited for her decision through what seemed decades of suspense, and her hands went out gropingly again toward him.

"Dear," she said in a voice hardly more than a whisper, "whatever I do—whatever I decide—always and always I love you!" Impulsively her fingers clutched at his, which rested clenched on her arm-chair.

"You must go!" she said, after a long while. "With you here there is nothing else in the world. I can see only you." With a catch in her voice she rushed on. "You must not only go, but I must not know where you go. I must not be able to call you back. You must give me your word of honor."

He attempted to speak, but she tightened her hold on his hands and her hurried utterance checked his words.

"No!" she said. "Listen! This time I decide forever. I must decide alone. You must not only be out of my sight, but beyond recall. Three months from to-day I shall write to you, but until then I must not know your address. Three months from to-day you may be at 'Idle Times,' where I first told you I loved you ... where we told each other ... if you still wish to be. Then, if I decide that I am free, you will find my letter there. If I'm not free, I had better not even write. I couldn't write without calling you back. If I have to decide that way—" She broke off with a shudder. "Oh, you must go—Dear!—you must go quickly—! It is the only way you can help me."

A half-hour later, Benton turned to the approaching Von Ritz.

"Colonel," he said steadily, "I sail for San Francisco by way of Suez from the first port we reach. You will favor me by accepting the Isis as long as Her Majesty can use it."

Von Ritz met his eyes in silence and held out his hand.



CHAPTER XXVIII

JUSSERET MAKES A REPORT

In Paris a small party of gentlemen, among whom were represented all the national types of Southern Europe, were engaged in an informal discussion of very formal affairs. They occupied a private suite in the Hotel Ritz overlooking the column of the Place Vendome. Upon a table swept clean of draperies and bric-a-brac lay an outstretched map of the Mediterranean littoral, whereon a small peninsula had been marked with certain experimental and revised boundaries in red and blue and black. The atmosphere was thick with the smoke from cigars and cigarettes, and through the veneering amenities of much courtesy the gentlemen of Europe's Cabinets Noirs wrangled with insistence. Finally Monsieur Jusseret took the floor, and the others dropped respectfully into an attitude of listening.

"It is hardly necessary," he began, "to discuss what has been done in Galavia. That is long since a stale story. Our governments, acting in concert, made it possible to remove Karyl and crown Louis." He smiled quietly. "You know how short a reign Louis enjoyed before death claimed him. Perhaps you do not know that his death was not unforeseen by me."

There was an outburst of exclamations under which France's representative remained unmoved.

"Our object," he explained coldly, "was the disruption of Galavia's integrity. In reducing this Kingdom to a province, the supplanting of Karyl with Louis was essential only as an initial step. The instability of that government had to be demonstrated to the world by more continuous disorders. It was necessary to show that the Kingdom had become incapable of self-rule. It followed that the removal of Louis was equally natural—and imperative."

Don Alphonso Rodriguez, bearing the secret credentials of Spain, came to his feet with the hauteur of offended dignity.

"My government" he said, with austere deliberation, "had the right to know what matters were being transacted. France appears to have assumed exclusive control. Is it too late to inquire of France"—he bent a chilling frown upon the smiling Jusseret—"what she now purposes? It appears that Spain knew no more than the newspapers. Spain also believed that Louis died by his own hand, and artlessly assumed the motive of disappointment in his love for Marie Astaride. We believed we were being frankly informed."

The more accomplished diplomat lifted brows and hands in a deprecating gesture. "Mon ami," he responded with suavity, "you flatter me. What I have done is nothing. I have only paved the way. Quite possibly Louis did kill himself. If so it was a meritorious act, but whether he did so or whether some mad young officer, infatuated and jealous, was the real author of the result, the result stands—and meets our requirements. France does not care what flag flies over the Governor-General's Palace in Puntal, provided it be the flag of a nation in concert with France. France suggests that the Governor-General should be a Galavian, and points to the one man conspicuously capable—who happens to be," he added with an amused laugh, "my particular enemy."

"You mean Von Ritz?" The question came from Italy's delegate.

Jusseret bowed his head. "Von Ritz," he affirmed.

Don Alphonso Rodriguez laughed with a note of incredulity. "And how do you propose," he demanded, "to persuade this loyal adviser of Karyl to accept a deputyship at the hands of Karyl's enemies?"

Again Jusseret smiled. "It will be Von Ritz or a foreigner," he explained. "We must convince him that his beloved Kingdom can henceforth be only a province in any event—that it may prosper under his guidance or suffer under a more oppressive hand. That done, his patriotism will prove our ally. We have only to convince him that no member of Karyl's house can reign and live—and that it must be himself or an alien."

"It would have been as easy," demurred the Portuguese delegate, "to have persuaded Von Ritz that Karyl himself should abdicate."

Jusseret felt the hostility of the other members. In spite of the realization, or perhaps because of it, he glanced from face to face with unruffled urbanity.

"Messieurs," he suggested, "you overlook the hypotheses—and in reaching conclusions hypotheses are serviceable. You, gentlemen," he continued blandly, "regarded the initial steps as impracticable. What I volunteered to do, I have so far done. We have one object. The insatiate ambition of that nation, which we need not name, must not gain additional Mediterranean foothold. Spain or Portugal, it is one to us, may decide the matter of suzerainty between themselves."

"How do you mean to persuade Von Ritz?" insisted Don Alphonso.

"In the young Queen, who is the sole eligible candidate for the Throne, we have at heart an unwilling heir. Von Ritz distrusts France. Let the suggestion come from Portugal, a friend who can speak persuasively—and convincingly. Let him see the inevitable result unless he consents. Let all which we have done be denounced. Lead him to believe that he holds as steward"—Jusseret raised his hands as he concluded—"for Karyl's heir, if there should be one. These things are mere details."

* * * * *

Benton worked his way slowly to San Francisco through the Far East. It is not difficult to avoid newspapers between Ismailia and Manila, and with the dogged determination to let the day set by Cara answer all questions of his future, he had neither sought nor received tidings from Galavia.

He had not permitted himself great indulgence in hope. The past months had brought too many disappointments, and he knew that they had all been but episodes leading up to the climax which must come with the day when he inquired for a letter at "Idle Times."

He dreaded a return to "Idle Times" before the day set for his inquiry. Bristow's place stood for too much of memory, and the inevitable questions of his friend loomed before him, as the trifle which a man who has stood much more than trifles cannot bring himself to face. Yet there was no danger of his being late. That time was the one fixed point on the calendar of his future. One day before his three months had come to an end, he arrived, but he did not go to Van Bristow's house. He did not announce his coming. He went by the less frequented streets of the near-by village to its inadequate hotel, where he found only a drummer for a New York shoe house and a gentleman traveling "out of Chicago" with samples of ready-made clothing.

For a time he sat in the dingy parlor of the place and listened to the jarring talk of the commercial travelers. Already Galavia and the months which had been, seemed receding into an improbable dream, but the misery of their bequeathing was poignantly real.

He rose impatiently and made his way to the livery-stable, where he hired a saddle horse. His idea was merely to be alone. The reins hung on the neck of his spiritless mount and the roads he went were the roads it took of its own unguided selection.

Suddenly Benton looked up. He was in a lane between overarching trees; a lane which he remembered. Off to the side were the hills bristling with pines, raised against the sky like the lances of marching troops. It was the road he had ridden with her on that day when her horse fell at the fence—and there, on the side of the hill, stood a dilapidated cabin: the cabin upon whose porch he had poured water over her hands from a gourd dipper.

It was only the end of September, but an early frost had flushed the woods and hillsides into a hint of the crimson and gold they were soon to wear in more profligate splendor. The fragrant, blue mist of wood smoke drifted over the fields at the foot of the knobs. The hills were seen through a wash of purple. From somewhere to the far left drifted the mellowed music of fox-hounds. Riding slowly, the man came at length to the cabin gate.

The same farmer sat as indolently now as then, on the top step. The setter dog started up to growl as the horseman dismounted.

The man did not recognize him, but the proffer of Benton's cigar-case proved a sufficient credential, and a discussion of the weather appeared a satisfactory reason for remaining. It was only a verbal and logical step from weather to crops, and in ten minutes the visitor was being shown over the place. When the round of cribs and stables was completed it was time for the host to feed his stock, and, saying good-by at the barn, he left Benton to make his way alone to the cabin. Passing through the house from the back, the man halted suddenly and with abrupt wonderment at the front door.

For upright and slim, with a small gauntleted hand resting on one of the rude posts of the porch, gazing off intently into the coloring west, stood an unmistakable figure in a black riding habit. Incredulous, suddenly stunned under the cumulative suspense of the past three months, he stood hesitant. Then the figure slowly turned and, as the old heart-breaking, heart-recompensing smile came to her lips and eyes, the girl silently held out both arms to him.

Finally he found time to ask: "How long have you been here?"

"Six weeks," she answered. "And it's been lonesome."

"Your answer, Cara," he whispered. "What is your answer?"

"I am here," she said. "Don't you see me? I'm the answer."

THE END

* * * * *

BIOGRAPHIES

* * * * *

TWO POPULAR AUTHORS

&

SOMETHING ABOUT THEM

* * * * *



CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK

Though still a young man—he has only just passed his thirtieth year—Charles Neville Buck, the author of "The Lighted Match," has travelled far and done much. Although it was as late as January, 1909, that he first settled down to write for the magazines, he has made already an established reputation as a short story writer, and promises to make an even greater name as a novelist. His first novel, "The Key to Yesterday," was one of the successes of the last publishing season, and we shall be greatly surprised if "The Lighted Match" does not prove still more popular.

Born in Louisville, Ky., he visited South America with his father, the Hon. C. W. Buck, United States Minister to Peru. Since then he has travelled in Europe, covering the ground where he places the scenes in "The Key to Yesterday" and "The Lighted Match."

After graduation, Mr. Buck studied art, and for a year was the chief cartoonist on Louisville's leading daily paper. He then turned to editorial and reportorial work, which brought him into close contact with Kentucky politics and the mountain feuds. In 1902, while still a reporter, he was admitted to the Bar, but never practised.

Successful as he is at the short story, it is in the novel that Mr. Buck does his finest work. The novel rather than the short story gives scope for those little touches which make for style and atmosphere, and it is at these that Mr. Buck peculiarly excels. The vivid interest of his plots is apt to blind the reader to this merit, for Mr. Buck's novels have what some consider the only virtue of a novel, that they can be read for the story alone; but it is there, nevertheless, and for some constitutes the greatest charm of his work. In "The Lighted Match," even more than in "The Key to Yesterday," is this artistic finish noticeable. "The Lighted Match" is not only a bully good story, it is literature as well.



PELHAM GRANVILLE WODEHOUSE

During the past year a phrase has been frequently heard among magazine and book men in New York when the name of Pelham Granville Wodehouse has been mentioned. This phrase is "the logical successor to O. Henry"—and it is misleading. Any humorist who tried to follow in the tracks of O. Henry would be merely an imitator and the task would be as unwise as though O. Henry had cramped his own freedom in an effort to walk in the footprints of Mark Twain or any other predecessor in the field of humor.

Wodehouse suggests O. Henry only in that he has suddenly come into universal recognition as a remarkable humorist. He wields a pen which commands an uncommon power of satire, without the suggestion of vitriol or bitterness. His humor has a sparkle, effervescence and spontaneity which has put him in an incredibly short time in the front rank of writers, and since the materialistic barometer at least records the opinion of the editors and since the editors are supposed to know, has brought him into that envied coterie whose rate per word in the magazines has soared skyward.

P. G. Wodehouse was born in Guildford, England, in 1881, and while still an infant he accompanied his parents to Hong Kong, where the elder Wodehouse was a judge. He is a cousin of the Earl of Kimberley. In his school days he went in for cricket, football and boxing, and made for himself a reputation in athletics.

For two years Mr. Wodehouse went into a London bank and observed the passing parade from a high stool, but this was not quite in keeping with his tastes, and we find him next publishing a column of humorous paragraphs in the London Globe, under the head of "By the Way." Later he assumed the editorship of this department, and many of his paragraphs lived longer than the few hours' existence of most newspaper humor. Also since all writers experimentally venture into the dramatic, he wrote several vaudeville sketches which have had popular English productions.

Three years ago P. G. Wodehouse came to New York. He liked the American field and wanted to see whether his humor would strike the American fancy. It struck. Mr. Wodehouse had tried his wings here only a few months when magazine editors were bidding for his manuscripts. His short stories have appeared generally in the magazines, and while one often finds the delightful touch of pathos, there is always an abundance of laughter. In Cosmopolitan, Collier's Weekly, Ainslee's, and many other publications these stories appear as often as Mr. Wodehouse will contribute.

His novel, "The Intrusion of Jimmy," last year was a decided success. In it Mr. Wodehouse demonstrated his ability to hold his sprinting speed over a Marathon distance. The book, after giving the flattering returns of a large sale, found its second production on the stage. In its dramatized version with the title, "A Gentleman of Leisure," it has had its tryout on the road and has proven a success. With Douglas Fairbanks in the leading role, it will be one of next Fall's elaborate productions on Broadway.

In personality Mr. Wodehouse is quite as interesting as one might gather from his writings. Physically a man of splendid proportions and mentally a fountain of spirited humor, he is, nevertheless, modest to the point usually termed "retiring," and is well known only after long acquaintanceship. He is fond of all sports, and on reaching America became truly the native in his enthusiasm for baseball. Mr. Wodehouse says that one epoch of his literary career dates from his purchase of an automobile in 1907. The purchase was an investment of considerable gravity to a young writer just commencing to command an entree. The automobile lasted some two weeks and came to a violent end against a telephone pole. Mr. Wodehouse thought out the major problems of life sitting on the turf near the pole from a more or less lacerated point of view. He decided, among other things, that his forte was rather writing about motors than riding about in motors.

Mr. Wodehouse's second novel will be an even greater success than "The Intrusion of Jimmy." Mr. Wodehouse spent last winter on the Riviera writing this book, and his friends who have read the advance pages, agree with the publishers that it will deserve and receive even greater cordiality than the first. The title will be "The Prince and Betty," and it will be something for novel readers to look forward to.

THE END