The Lighted Match Part 17

The man from Cadiz nodded and crossed himself.

"I am pledged, _Senor_," he a.s.serted.

"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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 gla.s.ses 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 antic.i.p.ate 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 amba.s.sador 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; s.h.i.+fting 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 pa.s.sion.

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 wors.h.i.+ped 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 gla.s.s as the garcon carefully dripped water over absinthe, he would picture himself wresting from the inc.u.mbent, 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 kins.h.i.+p. 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 suns.h.i.+ne. 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 cus.h.i.+ons 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.