The Puppet Crown - Harlod MacGrath (nice books to read TXT) 📗

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, passed 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 associated 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 passed 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."

"The king?"

"My business here is with his Majesty."

Maurice filled the glasses and pushed one across the table.

"Here's!" said he, and gulped.

Fitzgerald drank slowly, however, as if arranging in his mind the salient points in his forthcoming narrative.

"I have never been an extraordinarily communicative man; what I shall tell you is known only to my former Colonel and myself. At Calcutta, where you and I first met, I was but a Lieutenant in her Majesty's. To-day I am burdened with riches such as I know not how to use, and possessor of a title which sounds strange in my ears."

The dim light from the gas-jet in the room flickered over his face, and Maurice saw that it was slightly contorted, as if by pain.

"My father was Lord Fitzgerald."

"What!" cried Maurice, "the diplomat, the historian, the millionaire?"

"The same. Thirteen years ago we parted-a misunderstanding. I never saw him again. Six months ago he died and left me a fortune, a title and a strange legacy; and it is this legacy which brings me to Bleiberg. Do you know the history of Leopold?"

"I do. This throne belongs to the house of Auersperg, and the Osian usurps. The fact that the minister of the duchess has been discredited was what brought me here. Continue."

And Fitzgerald proceeded briefly to acquaint the other with the strange caprice of his father; how, when he left Bleiberg, he had been waylaid and the certificates demanded; how he had entrusted them to his valet, who had gone by another route; how the duke had sought him in Vienna and made offers, bribes and threats; how he had laughed at all, and sworn that Duke Josef should never be a king.

"My father wished to save Leopold in spite of himself; and then, he had no love for Josef. At a dinner given at the legation, there was among others a toast to her Majesty. The duke laughed and tossed the wine to the floor. It lost him his crown, for my father never forgave the insult. When the duke died, his daughter took up the work with surprising vigor. It was all useless; father was a rock, and would listen neither to bribes nor threats. Now they are after me. They have hunted me in India, London, and Vienna. I am an obscure soldier, with all my titles and riches; they threaten me with death. But I am here, and my father's wishes shall be carried out. That is all. I am glad that we have come together; you have more invention than I have."

"But why did you come yourself? You could have sent an agent. That would have been simple."

"An agent might be bought. It was necessary for me to come. However, I might have waited till the twentieth. I should have come openly and informed the British minister of my mission. As to the pheasants, they could have waited. Perhaps my fears are without foundation, unless you have been the unconscious cause of my true name being known. Every one has heard the story. It is known as 'Fitzgerald's folly,' and has gone the rounds of the diplomatic circles for ten years. I shall ask for an audience to- morrow morning."

"And these certificates fall due the same day that the princess is to be married," mused his auditor. "What a yarn for the papers!" his love of sensation being always close to the surface. "Your father, you say, took four million crowns; what became of the fifth?"

"The duke was permitted to secure that."

"A kind of court plaster for his wounds, eh? Why don't you get that other million and run the kingdom yourself? It's a great opportunity." Maurice laughed.

"Her Royal Highness must not be forgotten. My father thought much of her."

"But really I do not see why you are putting yourself to all this trouble. The king will pay off the indebtedness; the kingdom is said to be rich, or Austria wouldn't meddle with it."

"The king, on the twentieth of this month, will be some three millions short."

"And since he can not pay he is bankrupt. Ah, I see the plan. The duke knew that he wouldn't be able to pay."

"You have hit it squarely."

"But Austria, having placed Leopold here, is his sponsor."

"Austria has too many debts of her own; she will have to disavow her protege, which is a fact not unthought of by the house of Auersperg. By constant machination and intrigue the king's revenues have been so depleted that ordinary debts are troublesome. The archbishop, to stave off the probable end, brought about the alliance between the houses of Carnavia and Osia. My business here is to arrange for a ten years' renewal of the loan, and that is what the duchess wishes to prevent, mon ami. What's to become of the king and his daughter if aught in the way of mishap should befall me? I have not seen the king, but I have seen her Royal Highness."

"What is she like?" Maurice asked, innocently. He saw no reason why he should confide to the Englishman his own adventure.

"I'm not much of a judge," said Fitzgerald cautiously. "I have lived most of my life in cantonments where women were old and ran mostly to tongue. I should say that she is beautiful." A short sigh followed this admission.

"Ah!" said Maurice with a loud laugh to cover the sudden pang of jealousy which seized him; "in gratitude for saving her father's throne the daughter will fall in love with you. It is what the dramatist calls logical sequence."

"Why don't you write novels? Your imagination has no bounds."

"Writing novels is too much like work. But I'm serious. Your