The Lighted Match Part 25

"She sent me away once, and I don't particularly care for the Cairo idea."

"This time she will not send you away." Jusseret glanced up with a bland smile. "And it seems I remember a season, not so many years gone, when you were a rather prominent personage upon the terrace of Shephard's.

You were quite an engaging figure of a man, Monsieur Martin, in flannels and Panama hat, quite a smart figure!"

The Englishman scowled. "You delight, Monsieur, in touching the raw spots--However, I daresay matters will go rippingly." He took the bills and counted them into his own purse. "A chap can't afford to be too sentimental or thin-skinned." He was thinking of a couple of clubs in Cairo from which he had been asked to resign. Then he laughed callously as he added aloud: "You see there's a regiment stationed there, just now, which I'd rather not meet. I used to belong to its mess--once upon a time."

Jusseret looked up at the renegade, then with a cynical laugh he rose.

"These little matters _are_ inconvenient," he admitted, "but embarra.s.sments beset one everywhere. If one turns aside to avoid his old regiment, who knows but he may meet his tailor insistent upon payment--or the lady who was once his wife?"

He lighted a cigarette, then with the refined cruelty that enjoyed torturing a victim who could not afford to resent his brutality, he added:

"But these army regulations are extremely annoying, I daresay--these rules which proclaim it infamous to recognize one who--who has, under certain circ.u.mstances, ceased to be a brother-officer."

The Englishman was leaning across the table, his cheek-bones red and his eyes dangerous.

"By G.o.d, Jusseret, don't go too far!" he cautioned.

The Frenchman raised his hands in an apologetic gesture, but his eyes still held a trace of the malevolent smile.

"A thousand pardons, my dear Martin," he begged. "I meant only to be sympathetic."

CHAPTER XX

THE DEATH Of ROMANCE IS DEPLORED

"And yet," declared young Harcourt, "if there still survives, anywhere in the world, a vestige of Romance, this should be her refuge; her last stand against the encroachments of the commonplace."

He spoke animatedly, with the double eagerness of a boy and an artist, sweeping one hand outward in an argumentative gesture. It was a gesture which seemed to submit in evidence all the palpitating colors of Capri sunning herself among her rocks: all the sparkle and glitter of the Bay of Naples spreading away to the nebulous line where Ischia bulked herself in mist against the horizon: all the majesty of the cone where the fires of Vesuvius lay sleeping.

Across the table Sir Manuel Blanco shrugged his broad shoulders.

Benton lighted a cigarette, and a smile, scarcely indicative of frank amus.e.m.e.nt, flickered in his eyes.

"Do you hold that Romance is on the run?" he queried.

"Where do you find it nowadays?" demanded the boy in flannels. "There!"

With the violence of disgust he slammed a Baedeker of Southern Italy down upon the table. "That is the way we see the world in these days! We go back with souvenir postcards instead of experiences, and when we get home we have just been to a lot of tramped-over places. I'll wager that a handful of this copper junk they call money over here, would buy in a bull market all the real adventure any of us will ever know."

The three had been lunching out-doors in a Capri hotel with flagstones for a floor and overhanging vine-trellises for a roof. Chance had thrown this young stranger across their path, and luncheon had cemented an acquaintanceship.

"Who can say?" suggested Benton. "Why hunt Trouble under the alias of Romance? Vesuvius, across there, is as vague and noiseless to-day as a wraith, but to-morrow his demon may run amuck over all this end of Italy! And then--" His laugh finished the speculation.

"And yet," went on the boy, after a moment's pause, "I was just thinking of a chap I met in Algiers a while back and later on the boat to Malta.

I ran across him in one of those vile little twisting alleys in the Kasbah quarter where dirty natives sit cross-legged on shabby rugs and eye the 'Infidel dogs' just as spiders watch flies from loathsome webs--ugh, you know the sort of place!" He paused with a slight shudder of reminiscent disgust. "I fancy he has had adventures. We had a gla.s.s of wine later down at one of the sidewalk cafes in the _Boulevard de la Republique_. He showed me lots of things that a regular guide would have omitted. The fellow was on his uppers, yet he had been something else, and still knew genteel people. Up on the driveway by the villas, where fashion parades, he excused himself to speak with a magnificently dressed woman in a brougham, and she chatted with him in a manner almost confidential. He told me later she might some day occupy a throne; I think her name was the Countess Astaride."

Benton looked up quickly and his eyes met those of the Spaniard with a swiftly flashed message which excluded Harcourt.

"This fellow and I were on the same boat coming over to Valetta,"

continued the young tourist. "One night in the smoke-room, the steward was filling the gla.s.ses pretty frequently. At last he became confidential."

"Yes?" prompted Benton.

"Well, he told me he had once held a commission in the British Army and had seen service in diplomacy as military attache. Then he got cashiered. He didn't go into particulars, and of course I didn't cross-question. He recited some weird experiences. He had been a cattle man in Australia and a horse-trader in Syria and had served the Sultan in Turkey. There were lots of things that would have made a good book."

The boy's voice took on a note of young ardor. "But the great story was the one he told last. He had stood to win a t.i.tle of n.o.bility in this two-by-four Kingdom of Galavia, but it had slipped away from him just on the verge of attainment."

Harcourt slowly drained his thin Capri wine and set down the goblet.

"I must watch the time," he remembered at last, drawing out his watch.

"I do the Blue Grotto this afternoon.... Well, to continue: This chap gave the name Browne (he insisted that it be Browne with an e), though while he was drunk he called himself Martin.

"He told a long and complicated story of plans in which a King was to lose his life and throne. He said that the secret cabinets of several of the major European governments were interested, and that just as carefully prepared plans were about to be consummated something happened--something mysterious which none of the cleverest agents of the governments had been able to solve. In some unfathomable way someone had discovered everything and stepped between and disarranged. No upheaval followed and of course Browne never won his t.i.tle. They have never yet learned who saved that throne. Someone is working magic and getting away with it under the eyes of Europe's cleverest detectives."

The boy stopped and looked about to see if his recital had aroused the proper wonderment. Both men gave expression of deep interest. Flattered by the impression he had made, Harcourt went on. "Now you fellows are old travelers--men of the world--I am a kid compared to you. Yet has either of you stumbled on such a story as that? So you see wonderful things do sometimes happen under the surface of affairs with never a ripple at the top of the water. Browne--or Martin--said that the Duke would reign yet--oh, yes, he said the Powers would see to that!"

"_Senor_, what became of your friend?" inquired Blanco.

"Oh!" the boy hesitated for a moment, then broke into a laugh. "I'm afraid that's an anti-climax. They found that he was simply a nervy stowaway. He had not booked his pa.s.sage and so--"

"They put him off?"

"Yes, at Malta. Meantime he was stripped to the waist and armed with a shovel in the stoke-hold."

Benton laughed.

"There was another phase to it, though--" began the boy afresh.

At that moment the whistle of the small excursion steamer below broke out in a shrill scream. Young Harcourt hurriedly pushed back his chair and grabbed for his Panama hat. "Caesar!" he cried, "there's the whistle.

I shall miss my boat for the Grotto." And he hastened off with a shout of summons to a crazy victoria that was clattering by empty.

During a long silence Blanco studied the cone of Vesuvius.

"Blanco!" Benton leaned across the table with an anxious frown and stretched out a hand which over-turned the wine gla.s.ses. "There was one thing he said that stuck in my memory. He said the Powers would see that in the end Louis had his throne."

The Spaniard shook his head dubiously.

"The Powers have lost their instrument! You forget, _Senor_, that this is underground diplomacy. It must appear to work itself out and the new King must be logical. With Louis a prisoner their meddling hands are bound."

Benton rose and pushed back his chair. His companion joined him and together they pa.s.sed out through the stone-flagged court and into the road. For fifteen minutes they walked morosely and in silence through the steep streets where the shops are tourist-traps, alluringly baited with corals and trinkets. Finally they came out on the beach where many fishing boats were dragged up on the sand, and nets stretched, drying in the sun.

Then Benton spoke.

"In G.o.d's name, Manuel, what do I care who occupies the throne of Galavia? No other man could so block my path as Karyl." Then as one in the confessional he declared shamefacedly: "I have never said it to any man because it is too much like murder, but--sometimes I wish I had reached Cadiz one day later than I did." He drew his handkerchief and wiped the moisture from his forehead.

The Spaniard skillfully kindled a cigarette in the spurt of a match, which the gusty sea-breeze made short-lived.