The Lighted Match Part 30

Karyl had held out his left hand. The right was bound down in a sling.

But these things were all vague to Benton because it seemed that the pilgrim's tom-toms were beating inside his brain, and beating out of time. He could see that Karyl's eyes also were weary and l.u.s.terless.

Turning with an excuse for travel-stain to be removed, Karyl halted.

"Benton," he said. There he fell silent. "Benton," he said again, forcing himself to speak in a voice not far from the breaking point, "Blanco--Blanco is dead."

He turned on his heel and went into the hotel.

Blanco dead! For a moment Benton felt an insane desire to rush after Karyl and demand his life for Blanco's. Some delirious accusation that this man cost him every dear thing in life seemed fighting for expression and reprisal, then he realized that the _toreador_ had won his way into Pagratide's affection as well as his own. Tears came to his eyes for an instant. He focused his gaze on a cigarette-shop across the street.

"Lady!"

A grinning Egyptian face, surmounted by a red fez, showed itself over the railing. The girl started violently and seemed for a moment on the edge of hysteria. She laughed unnaturally. Thus encouraged, the Bedouin's grin broadened until it radiated good-humor across the swarthy visage from cheek-bone to cheek-bone.

"Nice scarabs, lady! Only five _piastres_--only one shilling," he spieled. "Scarabs of a dead dynasty. _Tres antique_."

CHAPTER XXIV

IN WHICH KINGS AND COMMONERS DISCUSS LOVE

In the gardens of the hotel, the paths lay ankle-deep in scattered confetti. Already the scores of lights were going out and those that remained shone on the wreckage of an entertainment ended.

Cara had gone to her rooms. In his own, at a window commanding the garden, Benton sat in an att.i.tude of lethargic dejection, staring down on the lingering illuminations. His brain still swirled. A dozen times he told himself that matters were precisely as they had been; that the developments of the evening had brought no change, save a momentary belief in a mistaken rumor and a few wild dreams. When he had waited in the rotunda for Cara, he had known Karyl to be living. He knew it now, yet it seemed as though his life-rival had died and come again to life.

It seemed, too, as though his own prison doors had swung open, and while he stood on the free threshold had slammed inward upon him, sweeping him back, broken and bruised with their clanging momentum.

To-morrow he must go away.

Benton looked at his watch. It was after four o'clock.

Then a knock came on the door. Benton did not respond. He feared that young Harcourt, belated and flushed with brandy-acid-soda, might have seen the light of his transom and paused for gossip. The thought he could not endure. Again he heard and ignored the knock, then the door opened slowly, and turning his head, he recognized Karyl on his threshold.

Just at that moment the American could not have spoken. He had come to a point of pent-up emotion which can move only by breaking dams. He pointed to a chair, but Karyl shook his head.

For a while neither spoke. Karyl's hair was rumpled; his eyes darkly ringed, and the line of his lips close set. Benton glanced out of his window. Across the gardens the wall was growing blanker, as lighted panes fell dark. One window, which he knew was Cara's, still showed a parallelogram of light behind its drawn shade. Karyl in pa.s.sing followed the glance. He, too, recognized the window.

At last the Galavian spoke.

"Can you spare me a half-hour?"

Benton nodded. He would have preferred any other time. He needed opportunity for self-collection.

Again Karyl spoke.

"Benton, I might as well be brief. There are two of us. In this world there is room for only one. One of us is an interloper."

The American felt the blood rush to his face; he felt it pound at the back of his eyeb.a.l.l.s, at the base of his brain. An instinct of fury, which was only half-sane, flooded him. Red spots danced before his eyes.

The other had spoken slowly, almost gently, yet he could read only challenge in the words, and the challenge was one he hungered to accept.

He made a tremendous effort for self-mastery and rose slowly, turning a white face on his visitor.

"You told me," he said, enunciating each word with distinct deliberateness, "that you would fight me, when your throne freed you.

You begin promptly. I am here, but--"

"I think you misunderstand me," interrupted Karyl.

"But," went on Benton, ignoring the interruption, "neither of us is free to fight. If we were, Pagratide, you may guess how gladly I'd put it to the issue. Good G.o.d, man, what could I lose?"

"Wait," said the late King of Galavia. "I have come here to talk with you, Benton, in a way which is unspeakably hard. Can you not make the same effort to lay aside pa.s.sion that I am making?"

The American turned and paced the floor.

For a moment more there was the same embarra.s.sed silence between them, then the Galavian continued, measuring his words, speaking with desperately studied effort to eliminate the feeling that struggled to the surface.

"You love my wife."

"And shall," replied the American in the same calculated, colorless voice, "while I live."

"I, too," said Pagratide. "Therefore we must talk."

"Wait." Benton raised a hand. "If we are to talk at all along these lines, Pagratide, there is only one way in which it can be done."

"And that is what?"

"That each of us, throughout, talks with only one thought in mind: her happiness; that one strip aside all conventions and talk as two utterly naked souls might talk."

"Of course," said Karyl simply. "Otherwise I should not have suggested it."

"Then," began Benton, "up to this point we are agreed."

The King, despite his pallor, smiled.

"I'm afraid you still don't understand me. I haven't come to murder you, or to invite murder, Benton. It would not help."

"You have just said that one of us is an interloper. Presumably you have come to decide which one it is."

Karyl shook his head.

"Benton, that point has been decided. Not by you or me, but it is decided."

"I don't understand you," admitted the American.

His visitor studied the few remaining lights in the garden beneath.

"I am no longer a King. I am an outcast. If I ever had a claim before G.o.d, it pa.s.sed with my Crown. I could hold her now only by brutality. I told you I would free her and fight for her, but I saw her eyes to-night.... Benton, it is I who am the interloper!"