Truxton King: A Story of Graustark Part 16

"He has a very bad liver," was all Tullis deigned to offer in response.

The Countess stared for a moment and then laughed understandingly. "I think he needs a change."

"I have a strange feeling that he is but one of a great many men who are in Edelweiss for the purposes I mentioned before. Now I have a favour to ask of you. Will you take this matter up with Baron Dangloss as if on your own initiative? Do not mention me in any way. You can understand why I ask this of you. Let them believe that the suspicions are yours. I trust you to present them without involving me."

"Trust me, my dear Countess. I am a very diplomatic liar. You need have no fear. I shall find a quick way of getting my friend Dangloss on the right track. It may be a wild goose chase, but it is best to be on the safe side. May I now tell you how greatly I appreciate your confidence in--"

She stopped him with a glance. "No, you may not tell me. There is nothing more to be said."

"I think I understand," he said gently.

"Let us change the subject. I have uttered my word to the wise. Eh bien!

It may not be so bad as I think. Let us hope so, at least."

"I have a vague notion that you'd rejoice if we should catch your ogre and chop his head off," said he, coolly lighting a fresh cigarette. She liked his a.s.surance. He was not like other men.

Glancing up at his sandy thatch, she said, with a rueful droop at the corners of her mouth, a contradictory smile in her eyes: "I shall rejoice more if you do not lose your head afterwards."

"_Double entendre_?"

"Not at all."

"I thought, perhaps, you referred to an unhappy plight that already casts its shadow before," he said boldly. "I may lose everything else, my dear Countess, but _not_ my head."

"I believe you," she said, strangely serious. "I shall remember that."

She knew this man loved her.

"Sit down, now, and let us be comfy. We are quite alone," she added instantly, a sudden confusion coming over her. "First, will you give me that box of candy from the table? Thank you so much for sending it to me. How in the world do you manage to get this wonderful New York candy all the way to Graustark? It is quite fresh and perfectly delicious."

"Oh, Fifth Avenue isn't so far away as you think," he equivocated. "It's just around the corner--of the world. What's eight or nine thousand miles to a district messenger boy? I ring for one and he fetches the candy, before you can wink your eye or say Jack Robinson. It's a marvellous system."

He watched her white teeth set themselves daintily in the rich nougat; then the red lips closed tranquilly only to open again in a smile of rapture. For reasons best known to himself, he chose not to risk losing the thing he had vowed not to lose. He turned his head--and carefully inspected the end of his cigarette. A wholly unnecessary precaution, as any one might have seen that it was behaving beautifully.

Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly as she studied his averted face in that brief instant. When he turned to her again, she was resting her head against the back of the chair, and her eyes were closed as if in exquisite enjoyment of the morsel that lay behind her smiling lips.

"Are you enjoying it?" he asked.

"Tremendously," she replied, opening her eyes slowly.

"'Gad, I believe you are," he exclaimed. She sat up at once, and caught her breath, although he did not know it. His smile distinctly upset her tranquillity.

"By the way," he added, as if dismissing the matter, "have you forgotten that on Tuesday we go to the Witch's hut in the hills? Bobby has dingdonged it into me for days."

"It will be good fun," she said. Then, as a swift afterthought: "Be sure that the bodyguard is strong--and true."

CHAPTER VII

AT THE WITCH'S HUT

The next morning, before setting forth to consult the minister of police at the Tower, he called up the Perse palace on the telephone and asked for the Countess, to tell her in so many words that he had been followed from her door to the very gates of the Castle grounds. Not by one man alone, for that would have excited suspicion, but by half a dozen at least, each one taking up the surveillance in the most casual manner as the watcher before him left off. Tullis was amazed by the cunning which masked these proceedings; there was a wily brain behind it.

The Duke's secretary answered the call. Tullis was completely bowled over by the curt information that the Countess Marlanx had left Edelweiss before six that morning, to join her husband, who was shooting wild boars with a party in Axphain.

"When does she return?" demanded the American, scarcely believing his ears. She had said nothing of this the night before. What could it mean?

"I do not know, sir."

"In a day or two?"

"She took sixteen trunks, sir," was the laconic reply, as if that told the story in full.

"Well, I'm d.a.m.ned!"

"I beg pardon, sir!"

"I beg _your_ pardon. Good morning."

In the meantime, our excellent young friend, Truxton King, was having a sorry time of it. It all began when he went to the Cathedral in the hope of seeing the charming aunt of the little Prince once more. Not only did he attend one service, but all of them, having been a.s.sured that the royal family wors.h.i.+pped there quite as regularly and as religiously as the lowliest communicant. She did not appear.

More than all this, he met with fresh disappointment when he ambled down to the armourer's shop. The doors were locked and there was no sign of life about the shuttered place. The cafes were closed on this day of rest, so there was nothing left for him to do but to slink off to his room in the Regengetz, there to read or to play solitaire and to curse the progress of civilisation.

Monday was little better than Sunday. Hobbs positively refused to escort him to the Castle grounds again. No amount of bribing or browbeating could move the confounded Englishman from his stand. He was willing to take him anywhere else, but never again would he risk a personally conducted tour into hot waters royal. Mr. King resigned himself to a purely business call at the shop of Mr. Spantz. He looked long, with a somewhat s.h.i.+fty eye, at the cabinet of ancient rings and necklaces, and then departed without having seen the interesting Miss Platanova. If the old man observed a tendency to roam in the young man's eye, he did not betray the fact--at least not so that any one could notice. Truxton departed, but returned immediately after luncheon, vaguely inclined to decide between two desirable rings. After a protracted period of indecision, in which Olga remained stubbornly out of sight, he announced that he could not make up his mind, and would return later for another inspection.

At his room in the hotel, he found a note addressed to himself. It did not have much to say, but it meant a great deal. There was no signature, and the handwriting was that of a woman.

"_Please do not come again_." That was all.

He laughed with a fine tone of defiance and--went back to the shop at five o'clock, just to prove that nothing so timid as a note could stop him. This, however, was after he had taken a long walk down Castle Avenue, with a supplementary stroll of little incident outside the grim, high walls that enclosed the grounds. If any one had told him that he was secretly hoping to find a creva.s.se through which he could invade paradise, I make no doubt he would have resented the imputation soundly.

On the occasion of this last visit to the shop, he did not stay long, but went away somewhat dazed to find himself the possessor of a ring he did not want and out of pocket just thirty dollars, American. Having come to the conclusion that knight-errantry of that kind was not only profligate but distinctly irritating to his sense of humour, he looked up Mr. Hobbs and arranged for a day's ride in the mountains.

"You'll oblige me, Mr. Hobbs, by removing that band from your cap. I know you're an interpreter. It's an insult to my intelligence to have it flaunted in my face all day long. I'll admit you're what you say you are, so take it off before we start out to-morrow."

And so, minus the beguiling insignia of office, Mr. Hobbs led his hypercritical patron into the mountain roads early the next morning, both well mounted and provided with a luncheon large enough to restore the amiability that was sure to flag at mid-day unless sustained by unaesthetic sandwiches and beer.

The day was bright and clear, warm in the valley where the city lay, cooler to cold as one mounted the winding roads that led past the lofty Monastery of St. Valentine, sombre sentinel among the clouds.

A part of Edelweiss is built along the side of the mountain, its narrow streets winding upward and past countless terraces to the very base of the rocky, jagged eminence at whose top, a full mile above the last sprinkling of houses, stands the isolated, bleak Monastery. The view from these upper streets, before one enters the circuitous and hidden Monastery road that winds afar in its climb, is never to be forgotten by the spectator, no matter how often he traverses the lofty thoroughfares.

As far as the eye can reach, lies the green valley, through which winds the silvery river with its evergreen banks and spotless white houses-greens and whites that almost shame the vaunted tints of old Ireland as one views them from the incoming steamers. Immediately below one's feet lies the compact little city, with its red roofs and green chimney pots, its narrow streets and vivid awnings, its wide avenues and the ancient Castle to the north. To the south, the fortress and the bridges; encircling the city a thick, high wall with here and there enormous gates flanked by towers so grim and old that they seem ready to topple over from the sheer fatigue of centuries. A soft, Indian summer haze hangs over the lazy-lit valley; it is always so in the summer time.

Outside the city walls stretch the wheat-fields and the meadows, the vineyards and orchards, all snug in the nest of forest-crowned hills, whose lower slopes are spotted with broken herds of cattle and the more mobile flocks of sheep. An air of tranquillity lies low over the entire vista; one dozes if he looks long into this peaceful bowl of plenty.

From the distant pa.s.ses in the mountains to the east and north come the dull intonations of dynamite blasts, proving the presence of that disturbing element of progress which is driving the railroad through the unbroken heart of the land.