The Lighted Match Part 2

The unwavering mouth-line; level, dark brows almost meeting over unflinching gray eyes; the uncurved nose and commanding forehead were in concert with the clean, almost lean sweep of the jaw, in spelling force for field or council.

"Am I a brigand, Von Ritz, to be hara.s.sed by police? Answer me--am I?"

Pagratide spoke in a tempest of anger. He halted before the other man, his hands twitching in fury.

Von Ritz remained as motionless, apparently as mildly interested, as though he were listening to the screaming of a parrot.

"My orders were explicit." His words fell icily. "They were the orders of His Majesty's government. I shall obey them. I beg pardon, I shall attempt to obey them; and thus far my attempts to serve His Majesty have not encountered failure. I should prefer not having to call on the amba.s.sador--or the American secret service."

"By G.o.d! If I had a sword--" breathed Pagratide. His fury had gone through heat to cold, and his att.i.tude was that of a man denied the opportunity of resenting a mortal affront.

Von Ritz coolly inclined his head, indicating the heaped-up luggage on the table between them. Otherwise he did not move.

"The stick there, on the table, is a sword-cane," he commented.

Pagratide stood unmoving.

The other waited a moment, almost deferentially, then went on with calm deliberation.

"You left your regiment without leave, captain. One might almost call that--" Then Benton remembered an auxiliary door at the back of his apartment and made his escape unnoticed.

A half hour later, changed from boots and breeches into evening dress, Benton was opening a long package which bore the name of his florist in town. In another moment he had spread a profusion of roses on his table and stood bending over them with the critically selective gaze of a Paris.

When he had made the choice of one, he carefully pared every thorn from its long stem. Then he went out through the rear of the hall to a stairway at the back.

He knew of a window-seat above, where he could wait in concealment behind a screening ma.s.s of potted palms to rise out of his ambush and intercept Cara as she came into the hall. It pleased him to regard himself as a genie, materializing out of emptiness to present the rose which she had chosen to declare un.o.btainable.

In the shadowed recess he ensconced himself with his knees drawn up and the flower twirling idly between his fingers.

For a while he measured his vigil only by the ticking of a clock somewhere out of sight, then he heard a quiet footfall on the hardwood, and through the fronds of the plants he saw a man's figure pace slowly by. The broad shoulders and the lancelike carriage proclaimed Von Ritz even before the downcast face was raised. At Cara's door the European wheeled uncertainly and paused. Because something vague and subconscious in Benton's mind had catalogued this man as a harbinger of trouble and branded him with distrust, his own eyes contracted and the rose ceased twirling.

Just then the door of Cara's room opened and closed, and the slender figure of the girl stood out in the silhouette of her black evening gown against the white woodwork. Her eyes widened and she paled perceptibly.

For an instant, she caught her lower lip between her teeth; but she did not, by start or other overt manifestation, give sign of surprise. She only inclined her head in greeting, and waited for Von Ritz to speak.

He bowed low, and his manner was ceremonious.

"You do not like me--" He smiled, pausing as though in doubt as to what form of address he should employ; then he asked: "What shall I call you?"

"Miss Carstow," she prompted, in a voice that seemed to raise a quarantine flag above him.

"Certainly, Miss Carstow," he continued gravely. "Time has elapsed since the days of your pinafores and braids, when I was honored with the sobriquet of 'Soldier-man' and you were the 'Little Empress.'"

His voice was one that would have lent itself to eloquence. Now its even modulation carried a sort of cold charm.

"You do not like me," he repeated.

"I don't know," she answered simply. "I hadn't thought about it. I was surprised."

"Naturally." He contemplated her with grave eyes that seemed to admit no play of expression. "I came only to ask an interview later. At any time that may be most agreeable--Pardon me," he interrupted himself with a certain cynical humor in his voice, "at any time, I should say, that may be least disagreeable to you."

"I will tell you later," she said. He bowed himself backward, then turning on his heel went silently down the stairs.

She stood hesitant for a moment, with both hands pressed against the door at her back, and her brow drawn in a deep furrow, then she threw her chin upward and shook her head with that resolute gesture which meant, with her, shaking off at least the outward seeming of annoyance.

Benton came out from his hiding-place behind the palms, and she looked up at him with a momentary clearing of her brow.

"Where were you?" she asked.

"I unintentionally played eavesdropper," he said humbly, handing her the rose. "I was lying in wait to decorate you."

"It is wonderful," she exclaimed. "I think it is the wonderfulest rose that any little girl ever had for a magic gift." She held it for a moment, softly against her cheek.

He bent forward. "Cara!" he whispered. No answer. "Cara!" he repeated.

"Yeth, thir," she lisped in a whimsical little-girl voice, looking up with a smile stolen from a fairy-tale.

"I am just lending you that rose. I had meant to give it to you, but _now_ I want it back--when you are through with it. May I have it?"

She held it out teasingly. "Do you want it now--Indian-giver?" she demanded.

"You know I don't," in an injured tone.

"I'm glad, because you couldn't have it--yet." And she was gone, leaving him to make his appearance from the direction of his own apartments.

CHAPTER III

THE MOON OVERHEARS

At dinner the talk ran for a course or two with the hounds, then strayed aimlessly into a dozen discursive channels.

"My boy," whispered Mrs. Van from her end of the table, to Pagratide on her right, "I relinquish you to the girl on your other side. You have made a very brave effort to talk to me. Ah, I know--" raising a slender hand to still his polite remonstrance--"there is no Cara but Cara, and Pagratide is--" She let her mischief-laden smile finish the comment.

"Her satellite," he confessed.

"One of them," she wickedly corrected him.

The foreigner turned his head and nodded gravely. Cara was listening to something that Benton was saying in undertone, her lips parted in an amused smile.

Through a momentary lull as the coffee came, rose the voice of O'Barreton, the bore, near the head of the table; O'Barreton, who must be tolerated because as a master of hounds he had no superior and a bare quorum of equals.

"For my part," he was saying, "I confess an augmented admiration for Van because he's distantly related to near-royalty. If that be sn.o.bbish, make the most of it."

Van laughed. "Related to royalty?" he scornfully repeated. "Am I not myself a sovereign with the right on election day to stand in line behind my chauffeur and stable-boys at the voting-place?"

"How did it happen, Van? How did you acquire your gorgeous relatives?"