COUNTESS AND CABINET NOIR JOIN FORCES
When Monsieur François Jusseret, the cleverest unattached ambassador of
France's _Cabinet Noir_, had first met the Countess Astaride, his
sardonic eyes had twinkled dry appreciation.
This meeting had seemed to be the result of a chance introduction. It
had in reality been carefully designed by the French manipulator of
underground wires. Louis Delgado he already knew, and held in contempt,
yet Louis was the only possible instrument for use in converting certain
vague possibilities into definite realities. Changing the nebulous into
the concrete; shifting the dotted line of a frontier from here to there
on a map; changing the likeness that adorned a coin or postage-stamp:
these were things to which Monsieur Jusseret lent himself with the same
zest that actuates the hunting dog and makes his work also his passion.
If the vacillation of Louis Delgado could be complemented by the strong
ambition of a woman, perhaps he might be almost as serviceable as though
the strength were inherent. And Paris knew that Louis worshiped at the
shrine of the Countess Astaride. The Countess was therefore worth
inspecting.
The presentation occurred in Paris, when the Duke took his acquaintance
to the charming apartments overlooking the Arc de Triomphe, where the
lady poured tea for a small _salon_ enlisted from that colony of
ambitious and broken-hearted men and women who hold fanatically to the
faith that some throne, occupied by another, should be their own. Here
with ceremony and stately etiquette foregathered Carlists and
Bonapartists and exiled Dictators from South America. Here one heard the
gossip of large conspiracies that come to nothing; of revolutions that
go no farther than talk.
In Paris the Duke Louis Delgado was nursing, with lukewarm indignation,
wrath against his royal uncle of Galavia who had fixed upon him a sort
of modified exile.
Louis had only a languid interest in the feud between his arm of the
family and the reigning branch. He would willingly enough have taken a
scepter from the hand of any King-maker who proffered it, but he would
certainly never, of his own incentive, have struck a blow for a throne.
Sometimes, indeed, as he sat at a café table on the _Champs Elysées_
when awakening dreams of Spring were in the air and a military band was
playing in the distance, dormant ambitions awoke. Sometimes when he
watched the opalescent gleam in his glass as the garçon carefully
dripped water over absinthe, he would picture himself wresting from the
incumbent, the Crown of Galavia, and would hear throngs shouting "Long
live King Louis!" At such moments his stimulated spirit would indulge in
large visions, and his half-degenerate face would smile through its
gentle but dissipated languor.
Louis Delgado was a man of inaction. He had that quality of personal
daring which is not akin to moral resoluteness. He was ready enough at a
fancied insult to exchange cards and meet his adversary on the field,
but a throne against which he plotted was as safe, unless threatened by
outside influences, as a throne may ever be.
When Louis presented Jusseret to the Countess Astaride there flashed
between the woman of audacious imagination and the master of intrigue a
message of kinship. The Frenchman bent low over her hand.
"That hand, Madame," he had whispered, "was made to wield a scepter."
The Countess had laughed with the melodious zylophone note that caressed
the ear, and had flashed on Jusseret her smile which was a magic thing
of ivory and flesh and sudden sunshine. She had held up the slender
fingers of the hand he had flattered, possibly a trace pleased with the
effect of the Duke's latest gift, a huge emerald set about with small
but remarkably pure brilliants. She had contemplated it, critically, and
after a brief silence had let her eyes wander from its jewels to the
Frenchman's face.
"Wielding a scepter, Monsieur," she had suggested smilingly, "is less
difficult than seizing a scepter. I fear I should need a stronger hand."
"Ah, but Madame," the Frenchman had hastened to protest, "these are the
days of the deft finger and the deft brain. Even crowns to-day are not
won in tug-of-war."
The woman had looked at him half-seriously, half-challengingly.
"I am told, Monsieur Jusseret," she said, "that no government in Europe
has a secret which you do not know. I am told that you have changed a
crown or two from head to head in your career. Let me see _your_ hand."
Instantly he had held it out. The fastidiously manicured fingers were as
tapering and white as her own.
"Madame," he observed gravely, "you flatter me. My hand has done
nothing. But I do not attribute its failure to its lack of brawn."
"Some day," murmured Delgado, from his inert posture in the deep
cushions of a divan, "when the time is ripe, I shall strike a decisive
blow for the Throne of Galavia."
Jusseret's lip had half-curled, then swiftly he had turned and flashed a
look of inquiry upon the woman. Her eyes had been on Louis and she had
not caught the quick glint that came into the Frenchman's pupils, or the
thoughtful regard with which he studied her and the Duke across the edge
of his teacup. Later, when he rose to make his adieux, she noted the
thoughtful expression on his face.
"Sometimes," he had said enigmatically, and had paused to allow his
meaning to sink in, "sometimes a scepter stays where it is, not because
the hand that holds it is strong, but because the outstretched hand is
weak or inept. Your hand is suited."
She had searched his eyes with her own just long enough to make him feel
that in the give-and-take of glances hers did not drop or evade, and he,
trained in the niceties of diplomatic warfare, had caught the message.
So the Countess had been fired with ardent dreams and later, when the
time seemed ripe, it was to her that Jusseret went, and with her that he
made his secret alliance.
The ambitions cherished by Marie Astaride to become Louis' queen were
secondary to a sincere devotion for Louis himself.
When at the last he had weakened and threatened to crumple, it was she
who goaded him back to resolution. When the Duke had gone half-heartedly
to his lodge to await the decision of the European Powers, it was she
who went to Puntal to direct the conspirators and watch, from the
windows of her hotel suite, the fortress on the jetty.
Her one deplorable error had been in mistaking Benton for Martin. This
had been natural enough. Though she had never met the "English Jackal,"
she had once or twice seen him at a distance, and she had been misled by
a strong resemblance and an excessive eagerness.
The afternoon she had spent on the balcony of her suite, her eyes fixed
on the Fortress _do Freres_.
At last, with a wildly beating heart she had seen the King, Von Ritz and
the escort ride up to the entrance and disappear. She had
waited--waited--waited, her nerves set for the climax, until the
continued silence seemed an unendurable shock.
Then the King and escort emerged. She, sitting pale and rigid, saw them
mount and turn back unharmed toward the city. Her ears, eagerly set for
the detonation which should shake the town and reverberate along the
mountain sides, ached with the emptiness of silence.
Across the street a soldier, off duty and in civilian clothes, sat on
the sea-wall and whittled. Incidentally he noticed that Madame the
Countess was interested beyond the usual in some matter. He was there to
notice Madame the Countess. His instructions from Von Ritz had been to
keep a record of her goings and comings, and who came to see her or went
away.
Therefore, when the King and his small retinue had trotted past the
window and when Madame the Countess rose to go in, and when just as she
crossed the low sill of the window she suddenly caught up both hands to
her throat and fell heavily to the floor, the soldier, whittling a small
crucifix, made a record of that also. When a moment later a gentleman
whom he had not seen in Puntal for months, but whom he knew as the Count
Borttorff, because that gentleman had formerly been Major of his
battalion, hurriedly left a closed carriage and entered the place, the
incident was noted. When still later both Borttorff and the Countess
emerged and reëntered the conveyance, driving rapidly away, he likewise
noted these things. Going from the pier whither he had followed the
closed carriage, he reported his observations with soldierly dispatch to
Colonel Von Ritz.
The Grand Duke Louis meanwhile, waiting in great anxiety, had received
the message which had come by the wireless mast. The words were in code,
and being translated they read: "France, Italy, Spain, Portugal will
recognize. Strike." The signature was "Jt.," which Delgado knew for
Jusseret. The Duke had been greatly excited. He paced the room in a
nervous tremor. It was arranged that a small steamer, which had stood a
short distance offshore since yesterday to relay the wireless message
and make it doubly sure, should pick the Duke up as soon as Lapas
signaled by a triple dip of the flag that the fortress had been
destroyed. The steamer was then to rush the Grand Duke around the cape
to Puntal, bringing him in as though he had come from Spain. Those
conspirators who were in the capital, strengthened by those who would
declare for Louis, with Karyl dead and no other heir existent, would
proclaim him King. Lapas would see that the royal salute was fired as
the steamer entered the harbor, and the Countess would either meet him
and explain all the details or would speak with him by Marconi if she
had left the town.
Louis spent the forenoon in an agony of anxiety and impatience. All
afternoon he watched through binoculars the white and blue and green
flag on the rock above him. He was waiting for the triple dip that
should tell him the fortress had been scattered in débris and with it
the government. Evidently the King was late going to the arsenal.
He had imagined it would be earlier. The hours dragged interminably.
Louis walked the stone buttress where the flag which he had raised in
signal to Lapas flapped and whipped against its staff. At last his
binoculars, fixed on the rock, caught the dip of the colors there. With
a great sigh of relief the Duke watched to see them rise and dip, rise
and dip again. The flag came down the length of the pole--and did not go
up.
Panic seized the Pretender. There was no way of talking with the ridge
three thousand feet above. It was a climb of an hour and a half by the
pass. Evidently there had been a miscarriage. In the prearranged code of
flag signals the only provision for the drooping of the colors on the
hill was in the event that it should be wished to stop the explosion.
That would be only in the event of refusal by the governments to
recognize; the governments had not refused! Possibly Lapas had turned
traitor!
There had also been some unexplained delay seaward. The little steamer,
which should have remained near by, was a speck on the horizon, and
without her there was no possibility of escape. Wildly Louis, the
Dreamer, hurried to his improvised Marconi station and called the ship.
Finally toward evening came a response and with it a message from
somewhere out at sea, relayed from ship to ship around the peninsula.
The message said simply in code: "Failure. Make your escape." It was
signed "M. A."--Marie Astaride.
Louis rushed, panic-stricken, down to the shore. He and the few men with
him paced the beach in the settling twilight with desperate anxiety. The
steamer seemed to creep in, snail-like, over the smooth water. Meanwhile
binoculars fixed on the pass showed a number of small specks sifting
like ants through the lofty opening. Troops were advancing. It was now
the life-and-death question of which would arrive first, the boats from
the ship that had stood off at sea a bit too long, or the soldiers
coming across the broken backbone of the mountains.
At last the ship had drawn near, and circled under full steam far enough
out to get away to a flying start as soon as the Ducal party had been
taken on board. Small boats were rushed toward the beach and Louis, the
Dreamer, with his party waded knee-deep into the water to meet the
rescuers.
At the same moment a bugle call announced the coming of Karyl's
soldiery.
As Louis Delgado went over the side, he turned quickly back and, leaning
over the rail, gazed through the settling darkness toward shore.
"Do we make for Puntal, Your Majesty?" inquired the captain, saluting.
Louis turned coldly. "No."
The officer looked at the Duke for a moment and read defeat in his eyes.
"Where then--Your Grace?" he inquired.
Louis winced under the quick amendment of title. "Anywhere," he said
shortly; "anywhere--except Puntal."