The Lighted Match Part 13

The movement of p.a.w.ns affects castles and kings."

Manuel suddenly halted in his flow of talk. "Blessed Saints!" he breathed softly. "When he comes nearer you will see him--the palms obscure him now. It is Colonel Von Ritz. He has just entered. He stands near Karyl and the throne. He is a great man wasted in a toy kingdom.

All Europe envies the services which Von Ritz squanders on Galavia."

Benton looked up with a rush of memories, and was glad that the Galavian could not see him.

Like all the men concerned, Von Ritz was inconspicuously a civilian in dress, but as he came down the center of the room he was, as always, the commanding figure, challenging attention. His steady eyes swept the place with dispa.s.sionate scrutiny. His straight mouth-line betrayed no expression. He came slowly, idly, as though looking for someone. When still some distance from the table where sat the Duke Louis, he halted and their eyes met. Those of the Duke, as he inclined his head slightly, stiffly, wore a glint of veiled hostility. Those of Von Ritz, as he returned the salute, no whit more cordially, were blank, except that for the moment, as he stood regarding the party, his non-committal pupils seemed to bore into each face about the table and to catalogue them all in an insolent inventory.

Each man in the group uneasily shifted his eyes. Then Karyl's officer turned on his heel and left the place. Louis watched him, scowling, and as the Colonel pa.s.sed into the street turned suddenly and spoke in a vehement whisper. Jusseret's sardonic lips twisted into a wry smile as though in recognition of an adversary's clever check.

The cafe was now filled. Few tables remained unoccupied, and of these, several were near that of the Ducal party.

Blanco rose. "Wait for me, _Senor_," he whispered, then went to the front of the cafe where Benton lost him in a crowd at the door. A moment later he came lurching back. His lower lip was stupidly pendent, his eyes heavy and dull, and as he floundered about he dropped with the aimless air of one heavily intoxicated into a chair by a vacant table not more than ten feet distant from that of Louis, the Dreamer.

There he remained huddled in apparent torpor and for some moments un.o.bserved, until the Duke signaled to a pa.s.sing waiter and indicated the _toreador_ with a glance. The waiter came over to Blanco. "The _Senor_ will find another table," he said with the ingratiating courtesy of one paying a compliment. "It is regrettable, but this one is reserved." Blanco appeared too stupid to understand, and when finally he did grasp the meaning he rose with profuse and clumsy apologies and staggered vacantly about in the immediate neighborhood of the conspiring coterie. Finally, after receiving further attention and guidance from the waiter, he returned to Benton, and dropping into his chair leaned over, his white teeth flashing a satisfied smile. "The matches may not flare, _Senor_," he said, "but it would appear it was planned. Now Martin and Borttorff cannot go to Puntal. Since the brief visit of Von Ritz they are branded men. The others are already known to Karyl's government."

Benton sat with his brows knitted intently listening.

"Now," went on Blanco, "there is one thing more. They await the man for whom they hold the empty chair."

There was a brief silence, then the Spaniard uttered a low exclamation of satisfaction. Benton glanced up to see a young man of frank face, blond mustache and Paris clothes drop into the vacant place with evident apologies for his tardiness.

"Ah," breathed Blanco again, "I feared it would be someone I did not know. He is the _Teniente_ Lapas, of Karyl's Palace guard. The _pobrecito_! I wonder what post he hopes to adorn at the Court of the Pretender."

For a moment the Spaniard looked on with an expression of melancholy reflection. "That boy," he said "at last, has the trust and friendship of the King. Before him lies every prospect of advancement, yet he has been beguiled by the Countess Astaride, and throws himself into a plot against Karyl. It is pitiable when one is perfidious so young--and with such small cause."

"Who is the Countess Astaride?" inquired the American.

"One of the most beautiful women in Europe, to whom these children are playthings. For her there is only Louis Delgado. It is her firing of his dreams which makes him aspire to a throne. It is she who has the determination. He can see visions of power only in the colors of his absinthe gla.s.s. She uses men to her ends. Lapas is the latest--unless--"

Blanco paused--"unless he is playing two parts, and really serves Karyl.

Come, _Senor_, there is nothing further to interest us here."

CHAPTER XI

THE Pa.s.sING PRINCESS AND THE MISTAKEN COUNTESS

With the sapphire bay of Puntal at his back, his knees clasped between interlacing fingers, Benton sat on the stone sea-wall and affected to whistle up a lightness of heart. Near at hand sprawled a picturesque city, its houses tinted in pea-greens, pinks and soft blues, or as white and decorative as though fashioned in icing on a cake.

Clinging steeply to higher levels and leaning on b.u.t.tressing walls, lay outspread vineyards and cane fields and gardens. Splotching the whole with imperial and gorgeous purple, hung ma.s.ses of bougonvillea between trellis and masonry. At a more lofty line, where the sub-tropical profusion halted in the warning breath of a keener atmosphere, came the scrub growth and beyond that, in succeeding alt.i.tudes, the pine belt, the snow line and the film of trailing cloud on the white peaks.

Out of the center of the color-splashed town rose the square tower of the ancient cathedral, white in a coat of plaster for two-thirds of its height, but gray at its top in the nakedness of mossy stone.

To its dilapidated clock Benton's eyes traveled repeatedly and anxiously while he waited.

From the clock they wandered in turn to the road circling the bay, and the cliff at his left, where the jail-like walls of the King's Palace rose sheer from the rock, fifty feet above him.

From the direction of the Cathedral drifted fragments of band music, and the bugle calls of marching platoons. Everywhere festivity reigned, working great profits to the keepers of the wine-shops.

Manuel Blanco turned the corner and Benton slipped quickly down from his perch on the wall and fell into step as the other pa.s.sed.

"It is difficult to learn anything, _Senor_." The Spaniard spoke low as he led the way outward from the city.

"Puntal is usually a quiet place and the festivities have made it like a child at a _fiesta_. One hears only 'Long live the King--the Queen!'

There are to be illuminations to-night, and music, and the limit will be taken off the roulette wheels at the Strangers' Club. Bah! One could have read it in the papers without leaving Cadiz."

"Then you have learned nothing?"

"One thing, yes. An old friend of mine has come for the festivities from the Duke's estate. He says the pa.s.s is picketed and a guard is posted at the Look-out Rock."

"The Look-out Rock?" Benton repeated the words with an inflection of inquiry.

"Yes--look above you at the hill whose summit is less high than the ridge peaks--there below the snow." Blanco suddenly raised his voice from confidential undertone to the sing-song of the professional guide.

"Yonder," he said, scarcely changing the direction of his pointed finger, "is the unfinished sanatorium for consumptives which the Germans undertook and left unfinished." Two soldiers were sauntering by, smart in newly issued uniforms of tall red caps, dark tunics, sky-blue breeches, and polished boots. "That point," went on Blanco, dropping his voice again, as they pa.s.sed out of earshot, "is three thousand, five hundred feet above the sea. From the rock by the pines--if you had a strong gla.s.s, you could see the Galavian flag which flies there--the eye sweeps the sea for many empty leagues. One's gaze can also follow the gorge where runs the pa.s.s through the mountains. Also, to the other side, one has an eagle's glimpse of the Grand Duke's hunting lodge.

There is an observatory just back of the rock and flag. The speck of light which you can see, like a splinter of crystal, is its dome, but only military astronomers now look through its telescope. There one can read the tale of open shutters or barred windows in the house of Louis, the Dreamer. You understand?"

"Yes."

"Now, do you see the thread of broken masonry zig-zagging upward from the Palace? That is a walled drive which runs part of the way up to the rock. In other days the Kings of Galavia went thus from their castle to the point whence they could see the peninsula spread out below like a map on the page of a school-book."

"Yes? What else?"

"This. The lodge of the Duke as seen by the telescope sleeps shuttered--an expanse of blank walls. Yet the Duke is there!"

"Louis--in Galavia?"

"Wait." Blanco laid his hand on the other's arm and smiled.

"My friend is superst.i.tious--and ignorant. He tells how the Duke has a ship's mast with wires on a tower fronting the far side. He says Louis talks with the open sea."

"A Marconi mast?"

Manuel nodded.

Benton's eyes narrowed under drawn brows. When he spoke his voice was tense.

"In G.o.d's name, Manuel," he whispered, "what is the answer?"

The Spaniard met the gaze gravely. "I fancy, _Senor_," he said slowly, "the matches will burn."

"When? Where?"

"_Quien sabe?_" Blanco paused to light a cigarette. Two priests, their black robes relieved by crimson sashes and stockings, approached, and until they were at a safe distance he talked on once more at random with the sing-song patter of the guide. "That dungeon-like building is the old Fortress _do Freres_. It has clung to that gut of rock out there in the bay since the days when the Moors held the Mediterranean. It is said that the new King will convert it from a fortress into a prison. It is now employed as an a.r.s.enal."

Slowly the two men moved back to the busier part of the city. They walked in silence until they were swallowed in the crowds drifting near the Central Avenue. Finally Blanco leaned forward, moved by the anxious face of his companion. "_Manana, Senor_," he suggested rea.s.suringly.

"Perhaps we may learn to-morrow."