The Lighted Match Part 14

"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 ma.s.s of humanity swam in a blur of confusion and vertigo. The pa.s.sing 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 s.h.i.+mmery 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 cl.u.s.tering 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 brus.h.i.+ng 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 G.o.d'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 phosph.o.r.escent. 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 s.h.i.+mmer of pa.s.s.e.m.e.nterie. A red rose in her black hair threw into conspicuous effect its intense l.u.s.ter.

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 pa.s.sion-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-l.u.s.t. 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 impa.s.sioned 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 antic.i.p.ated her ambition in bestowing the t.i.tle--"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 b.u.t.ton," she murmured, "and _allons_! In the s.p.a.ce 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 gla.s.ses. 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 b.u.mping down the slope, the watcher took the gla.s.ses 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 s.p.a.ce after violent exertion. The newcomer smiled pleasantly as he leaned against a bowlder and genially volunteered: "It is a long journey from the sh.o.r.e." 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 a.s.sumption 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.