The Lighted Match Part 28

Yet five minutes later, Jusseret, escorted by several officers in the Galavian uniform, entered the garden through the door of the King's private suite. At the monstrous insolence of this forbidden invasion of Karyl's privacy, Von Ritz stepped forward. His voice was even colder than usual with the chill of mortal fury.

"You have evidently misunderstood. The King declined to receive you--"

he began.

Karyl turned his head and looked curiously on. The keen, dissipated eyes of the sub-rosa diplomat twinkled humorously. For a moment the thin lips twisted into a wry smile.

"The King is hardly in a position that warrants declining to receive me," he announced with an ironically ceremonious bow to Karyl. He was imperturbable and impeccable from his patent-leather pumps to the Legion of Honor ribbon in his lapel.

"I offer the King an opportunity to abdicate his throne--and retain his liberty. Not only do I offer him his liberty, but also such an income as will make the cafes of Paris possible, and the society of other gentlemen who are also--well, let us say retired Royalties. I do this in the capacity of a private friend of the Grand Duke Louis Delgado." His smile was bland, suave, undisturbed.

Von Ritz took a step forward.

"Escort Monsieur Jusseret to the Palace gates!" he commanded, his eyes blazing on the Galavian officers. "The persons of even secret Amba.s.sadors are sacred--otherwise--" His voice failed him.

The officers cringed back under his glance, but stood supine and inactive.

Karyl waited with a cold smile on his lips. His face was pale but there was no touch of fear in the expression. For a brief psychological moment there was absolute silence, then the Frenchman spoke again. "Gentlemen, you are my prisoners." Turning to the Colonel, he added: "You have clung to the waning dynasty, Von Ritz, until it fell, but your sword may still find service in Galavia. I offer you the opportunity. We have often crossed wits. Now, for the first time, I win--and offer amnesty."

For a moment Von Ritz stood white and trembling with rage, then with his open hand he struck the smiling face that seemed to float tauntingly before his eyes, and drawing his sword, stepped between the King and the suddenly concentrated group of officers who moved frontward with a single accord, hands on swords. They spread from a group into a line, and the line quickly closed in a circle around the King and the one man who remained loyal.

Karyl was himself unarmed. He raised a restraining hand to Von Ritz's shoulder, but before he could speak his head sagged forward under the impact of some sudden shock--some blow from behind--and things went dark about him as he crumpled to his knees and fell.

Von Ritz, struggling desperately with a broken blade in his hand was slowly overwhelmed by seeming swarms of men. Like a tiger caught in a net, his ferocity gradually waned until, bleeding from scratch-wounds in a half-dozen places, he felt himself sinking into a haze. His useless sword-hilt fell with a clatter to the tiles. As his arms were pinioned by several of his captors, he was dreamily aware that music still floated up from the Botanical Gardens and the German man-of-war. Nearer at hand, Von Ritz heard--or perhaps dreamed through his stupor that he heard--a voice exclaiming: "Long live King Louis!"

There had been no noise which could have penetrated beyond the King's suite. Less than ten minutes had elapsed since the sentinel had been pacing below. Jusseret, pa.s.sing unostentatiously out through the Palace gate, glanced at his watch and smiled. It had been excellently managed.

Later, Karyl recovered consciousness to find things little changed. He was lying on a leather couch in his own rooms. The windows on the small garden still stood open and the moon, riding farther down the west, bathed the outer world in shimmer of silver, but at each door stood a sentinel.

Karyl remembered that during Louis Delgado's recent captivity he had fared in precisely the same manner, neither better nor worse.

The King rose, still a trifle unsteady from the blow he had received, and went out into the garden. There was no effort on the part of the saluting soldier to halt him, and once outside he realized why this lat.i.tude was allowed him. In addition to the man at the door, a second walked back and forth by the outer wall. As Karyl stepped into the moonlight this man, himself in the shadow, saluted as his fellow had done.

"I have the honor to command the guard, Your Grace," said the man in a respectful voice. "It is by the order of His Majesty, King Louis."

Something in the enunciation puzzled Karyl with a hint of the familiar.

"Why do you remain outside?" he asked.

"Over this wall, any comparatively agile man might make his way to the beach, if he succeeded in pa.s.sing the muskets of the sentry-boxes--and there are boats at the water's edge," explained the soldier with a short laugh. "I am responsible for the guard, so I keep this post myself. I believe myself incorruptible and men with thrones at stake might make tempting offers."

Karyl smiled. "What would you regard as a tempting offer?" he suggested.

For answer the man came into the light and lifted his cap. The King looked into the dark eyes of Manuel Blanco. "I won into their confidence by the hardest," he explained in a lowered tone, "but after that, I had no opportunity to leave them or communicate with you. This was all I could do. As it is, I shall be recognized as soon as the Duke arrives."

Blanco raised his voice again in casual conversation and beckoned to the sentinel at the door. When the man approached the Spaniard pointed over the wall. "Do you see that rock? Is that a figure crouching behind its shelter?" he demanded. As the man leaned forward, Manuel suddenly struck him heavily at the back of the neck with a loose stone caught up from the masonry's coping. The soldier dropped without a sound.

"Now, Your Majesty, we must risk it down the rock," prompted the man from Cadiz, in hurried, low-pitched words. "Moments are invaluable....

It is only while I command the guard that there is a chance of your escape.... An officer may come at any instant on a round of inspection--my discovery as the Duke's kidnapper is a matter of minutes.... I have been watched and tested in a hundred ways; it was only to-day that I convinced them of my fanatic zeal."

Blanco hurriedly gave his cap and cape to the King, donning himself the blouse of Karyl's undress uniform. Then the two crept cautiously down the rifted face of the cliff, holding the shadow of the crevices. One sentry-box they pa.s.sed safely, and finally they edged by the second unnoticed. They had negotiated the hundred feet of descent and stood pressed against the bottom, hugging the black shadow. They were waiting an opportunity to slip across a narrow sliver of intervening moonlight to the beach and the boat which lay at the water's edge.

Occasional lazy clouds drifted across the sky. The two refugees, goaded by the realization that every wasted second cut their desperate hope more and more to a vanishing point, watched the fleecy sc.r.a.ps of mist skim by the moon afar off without veiling its face. Then for a short moment a shred of silver-tipped cloud cut off the radiance. Blanco seized the King's arm in a wordless signal. Karyl and the bull-fighter raced across to the boat that lay at the water's edge. In a moment more it was afloat and they were at the oars. The moon emerged and at the same instant an outcry came from above. The musket of the man in the lower sentry-box barked with a blatant reverberation. One of the figures in the boat drooped forward and sagged limply over his oars. The other only redoubled his efforts. And then again, like the curtain of a theater, a cloud dropped downward and quenched the moon and the sea and the rock in impartial obscurity.

CHAPTER XXIII

"SCARABS OF A DEAD DYNASTY"

Since the anchor had been weighed at Naples, the days had pa.s.sed uneventfully for the indolently cruising _Isis_ with no word from Galavia. But at last the operator caught his call and made ready to receive. The message consisted of one word, and the word was "Cairo."

Cara, with no suspicion of what was transpiring in Puntal, beguiled by the spell of smooth seas and _dolce-far-niente_ softness of sky, was once more the frank and charming companion of the American days.

The single word of the Marconigram had left the American in perplexity.

Evidently either Karyl or Von Ritz was to meet them at Cairo. Probably Cairo instead of Alexandria had been designated because the King had taken into consideration the possible danger from the plague at the seaport. He told Cara only that Karyl would join the vacation party there and kept to himself the reservation that his coming probably meant disaster. Yet when they reached Cairo there was no news awaiting them.

It was the night of a confetti fete at Shephard's Hotel. Among the trees of the gardens were ropes of lights and the soft color-spots of Chinese lanterns. Branches glittered with incandescent fruit of brilliant colors. Flags hung between the fronds of the palms and the plumes of the acacias, and among the pleasure-seekers from East and West of Suez fell pelting showers of confetti.

After dinner Cara and the ladies of her party had withdrawn to their rooms to prepare for the gay warfare of the gardens. Benton, awaiting them in the rotunda, lounged on one of the low divans which circle the walls of the octagonal chamber, beneath carved lattices and Moorish panels; a cigarette between his fingers and a small cup of black coffee on the low tabouret at his elbow.

The place invited lazy ease, and Benton was as indolent among his cushions as the spirit of brooding Egypt, but his eyes, watching the stairs down which she would come, remained alert.

Hearing his name called in a voice which rang familiarly, he glanced up to recognize the smiling face of young Harcourt, his chance acquaintance of Capri. He set down the small Turkish cup and rose.

"Come back to the bar and fortify yourself against the thin red line of British soldiery out there in the gardens. You can get a ripping highball for eight _piastres_," laughed the newcomer. But Benton declined.

"I am waiting for ladies," he explained. "I'll see you again."

"Sure you will." Harcourt paused. "I dash up the Nile in the morning, going to do Karnak and Luxor--you know, the usual stunt. Been busy all day buying scarabs and mummied cats, but I want to see you sometime to-night. By the way, I've heard something--"

"All right. See you later." Benton spoke hurriedly, for he had caught the flash of a slender figure in white on the stairs.

In the war of the confetti, man makes war on woman and woman on man, while over the field reigns a universal and democratic acquaintanceship.

Cara was on vacation, and a child--bent on forgetting that to-morrow must come. It was characteristic of her that she should enter into the spirit of the occasion with all the abandon it suggested.

Benton stood by as she gradually gave ground before the attacks of a stout, gray-templed Briton, a General of the Army of Occupation. She fought gallantly, but he stood doggedly before her handfuls of confetti, shaking the paper chips out of his eyes and mustache like some invincible old St. Bernard, and her slender Mandarin-coated figure retreated slowly before his red and medal-decked jacket.

"Watch out!" cried Benton, who followed her retreat, forbidden by the rules of warfare from giving aid, other than counsel, "The British Army is putting you in a bad strategic position."

She had retreated across the flower-beds and stood with her back to the rim of the fountain. Her box of confetti was empty and Benton also was without ordnance supplies.

Young Harcourt suddenly stepped forward from the crowd.

"Here!" he cried with a smile of frank worship, as he tendered a fresh box of confetti. "Take this and remember Bunker Hill!"

The British officer bowed.