King John of Jingalo Part 60

"I actually did abdicate. And then the bomb came, and that made it impossible. And so--here I still am; and that is how you got my consent!"

"You abdicated?"

"Yes, my boy, I really did. And if that bomb had not happened I should have been off the throne and you would have been on it. So now, Max, I am going to tell you everything." And he did, from beginning to end.

And when it came to giving Max the actual proof, he got up and unlocked a drawer, and handed out of it the shard and the four films for him to look at.

"Take a magnifying-gla.s.s," said the King. "The face and the raised arm are behind the palisade to the right."

"I can't see them," said Max.

"Very small," said the King; "a man with a dark beard."

Max continued to look without result. "I can't find it," he said.

"Well, look at the figures and lettering on the shard; you can see those."

"No," said Max, "I can't."

The King came impatiently across and took them off him. Then, as he examined them, he saw that the shard and the four films had been changed.

He had his souvenir; but the incriminating evidence was gone.

CHAPTER XXII

A MAN OF BUSINESS

I

While these events of political moment were going on, Prince Hans Fritz Otto of Schnapps-Wa.s.ser had been busy planting himself in the good graces of the Princess Charlotte. They rode, they skated, they lunched, they played billiards together; and so easy did their relations to each other become that the Queen ceased to have any anxiety as to the future, and left the entire conduct of the affair to Providence.

Charlotte all her life had been quick and impulsive in her decisions; her hatreds and her affections had always been precipitately bestowed, and while her conduct was seldom reasonable, her instincts were generally right. So now--when a most crucial question was coming to her for decision--for she no longer needed to be informed of the Prince's mind in the matter--she did not allow its serious character to weigh upon her spirits or make her less ready and spontaneous in the bestowal of her liking. On the contrary, if anything, it hastened her verdict of approval. "I do believe that I am going to fall in love with him!" she said to herself after an acquaintance of only twenty-four hours; and having so determined, she set forth with all speed to study "philosophically," as she phrased it, this huge healthy natural specimen which fortune had thrown in her way. "For if I don't take a philosophical view of him now," she said to herself, "I shall never be able to do it afterwards."

The effort to do so rather amused her; she was not in love with him but she liked him more than a little. She had not yet, however, put him to the test by revealing the awful fact that she had been in prison as a common criminal; and before doing so (a little nervous as to the result) she took such opportunity of survey as was left to her, studied him up and down, noticed his ways, demeanor, habits, and wondered to herself whether in three weeks' time she would be so infatuated with this great creature as not to know where divinity ended and mere earthly clay began.

She had plenty of material to go upon: he was as nave in the revelations of his own character as in his half-bewildered admiration for the swift mercurial motions of her livelier temperament.

For a while, at the beginning of their acquaintance, some question as to the degree of her sincerity seemed to trouble him.

"How much of what you say do you really mean?" he inquired.

"Oh, it varies!" she answered. "I talk so as to find out what I think.

Don't you? Some things one can't judge of till one hears them spoken."

"That seems funny to me."

"Why? You are fond of music: don't you find that sound is very important? Can you _think_ music without ever hearing it?"

"Sometimes," he said.

"But only the airs."

"Oh, no; sometimes I can think like an orchestra, when I know all what is in it."

"You must be very musical."

"Yes; that is my misfortune sometimes. The world has so much ugly sound already; and then some people go out of their ways to make more."

"Ah, yes," she smiled, "I remember you were a musical critic once."

He let that go; and turning the conversation abruptly, as was his wont, to more personal ends, said--

"Tell me, do you like my name?"

"Schnapps-Wa.s.ser?" Shaping the word elaborately, she made a wry face over it.

"No--not that; my own name."

"But you have three."

"Yes; Hans, Fritz, Otto. Which of them you like best?"

"Fritz suits you best."

"Then will you always call me it?"

"Prince Fritz, Prince Fritz?--sounds like a robin," she said, trying it in musical tones.

"No, just Fritz; no more, only that."

"Wait till I have known you a few more days; then we will see."

"But I shall already be nearly gone by then," he protested. "I am only here such a short time."

"Perhaps some day you will come again."

"Ah! Again!" He sounded unutterable things, as though upon that word hung his whole fate. Anything might happen to him before they met again.

"I have a secret," he said; "I want to tell it you."

"Are you sure you can trust me?"

"When I have told you it, you can tell anybody."