The Puppet Crown Part 14

"Ay, Madame; he is a man so deep, with a mind so abyssmal, that I would give ten years of my life for a flash of his thoughts. He has some project; apparently he gives his whole time to the king. He loves this weak man Leopold; he has sacrificed the red hat for him, for the hat would have taken him to Italy, as we who procured it intended it should."

"The archbishop? Trust me; one month from now he will be recalled. That is the news I have for you."

"You have taken a weight from my mind. What do you think in regard to the rumor of the prince and the peasant girl?"

"It afforded me much amus.e.m.e.nt. You are a man of fine inventions."

"Gaze toward the upper end of the pavilion, the end which we have just left. Yes--there. I am having the owner of those broad shoulders watched. That gendarme leaning against the pillar follows him wherever he goes."

"Who is he?"

"That I am trying to ascertain. This much--he is an Englishman."

Mademoiselle of the Veil laughed. "Pardon my irrelevancy, but the remembrance of a recent adventure of mine was too strong."

Maurice could not regain his interest in the scene. He strolled in and out of the moving groups, but no bright eyes or winning smiles allured him. Impelled by curiosity, he began to draw near the shadowed nook.

Curiosity in a journalist is innate, and time nor change can efface it. Curiosity in those things which do not concern us is wrong. Ethics disavows the practice, though philosophy sustains it. Perhaps in this instance Maurice was philosophical, not ethical. Perhaps he wanted to hear the woman's voice again, which was excusable. Perhaps it was neither the one nor the other, but fate, which directed his footsteps.

Certain it is that the subsequent adventures would never have happened had he gone about his business, as he should have done.

"Who is this who stares at us?" asked Beauvais, with a piercing glance and a startled movement of his shoulders.

"A disciple of Pallas and a pupil of Mars," was the answer. "I have been recruiting, Colonel. There is sharpness sometimes in new blades. Do not draw him with your eyes."

The Colonel continued his scrutiny, however, and there was an ugly droop at the corners of his mouth, though it was partly hidden under his mustache.

Maurice, aware that he was not wanted, pa.s.sed along, having in mind to regain his former seat by the railing.

"Colonel," he mused, "your face grows more familiar every moment. It was not a.s.sociated with agreeable things. But, what were they? Hang it! you shall have a place in my thoughts till I have successfully labeled you.

Humph! Some one seems to have appropriated my seat."

He viewed with indecision the broad back of the interloper, who at that moment turned his head. At the sight of that bronzed profile Maurice gave an exclamation of surprise and delight. He stepped forward and dropped his hand on the stranger's shoulder.

"John Fitzgerald, or henceforth garlic shall be my salad!" he cried in loud, exultant tones.

CHAPTER VII. SOME DIALOGUE, A SPRAINED ANKLE, AND SOME SOLDIERS

The stranger returned Maurice's salute with open-mouthed dismay; the monocle fell from his eye, he grasped the table with one hand and pushed back the chair with the other, while Maurice heard the name of an exceedingly warm place.

The gendarme, who was leaning against the pillar, straightened, opened his jaws, snapped them, and hurried off.

"Maurice--Maurice Carewe?" said the bewildered Englishman.

"No one else, though I must say you do not seem very glad to see me,"

Maurice answered, conscious that he was all things but welcome.

"Hang you, I'm not!" incogitantly.

"Go to the devil, then!" cried Maurice, hotly.

"Gently," said Fitzgerald, catching Maurice by the coat and pulling him down into a chair. "Confound you, could you not have made yourself known to me without yelling my name at the top of your voice?"

"Are you ashamed of it?" asked Maurice, loosing his coat from Fitzgerald's grip.

"I'm afraid of it," the Englishman admitted, in a lowered voice. "And your manly, resonant tones have cast it abroad. I am here incognito."

"Who the deuce are you?"

"I am Don Jahpet of Armenia; that is to say that I am a marked man. And now, as you would inelegantly express it, you have put a tag on me. When I left you in Vienna the other day I lied to you. I am sorry. I should have trusted you, only I did not wish you to risk your life. You would have insisted on coming along."

"Risked my life?" echoed Maurice. "How many times have I not risked it? By the way," impressed by a sudden thought, "are you the Englishman every one seems to be expecting?"

"Yes." Fitzgerald knocked his pipe against the railing. "I am the man.

Worse luck! Was any one near when you called me by name?"

"Only one of those wooden gendarmes."

"Only one of those wooden gendarmes!" ironically. "Only one of those dogs who have been at my heels ever since I arrived. And he, having heard, has gone back to his master. Well, since you have started the ball rolling, it is no more than fair that you should see the game to its end."

"What's it all about?" asked Maurice, his astonishment growing and growing.

"Where are your rooms?"

"You have something important to tell me?"

"Perhaps you may think so. At the Continental? Come along."

They pa.s.sed out of the pavilion, along the path to the square, thence to the terrace of the Continental, which they mounted. Not a word was said, but Maurice was visibly excited, and by constant gnawing ruined his cigar. He conducted his friend to the room on the second floor, the window of which opened on a private balcony. Here he placed two chairs and a small table; and with a bottle of tokayer between them they seated themselves.

"What's it all about?"

"O, only a crown and a few millions in money."

"Only a crown and a few millions in money," repeated Maurice very slowly, for his mind could scarcely accept Fitzgerald and these two greatest treasures on earth.

A gendarme had leisurely followed them from the park. He took aside a porter and quietly plied him with questions. Evidently the answers were satisfactory, for he at once departed.

Maurice stared at the Englishman.

"Knocks you up a bit, eh?" said Fitzgerald. "Well, I am rather surprised myself; that is to say, I was."

"Fire away," said Maurice.

"To begin with, if I do not see the king to-morrow, it is not likely that I ever shall."