THE AMBASSADOR BECOMES ADMIRAL
More suggestive of a stowaway than a millionaire, thought Blanco the
following afternoon, when he had come over the side of the _Isis_ and
sought out the owner of the yacht. Benton had turned hermit and
withdrawn to the most isolated space the vessel provided. It was really
not a deck at all--only a space between engine-room grating and
tarpaulined lifeboats on what was properly the cabin roof. Here, removed
from the burnished and ship-shape perfection of the yacht's appointment,
he lay carelessly shaven and more carelessly dressed.
The lazily undulating Mediterranean stretched unbroken save for the
yacht's stack, funnels and stanchions, in a sight-wide radius of blue.
Overhead the sky was serene. Here and there, in fitful humors, the sea
flowed in rifts of a different hue.
The sun was mellow and the breeze which purred softly in the cables
overhead came with the caressing breath that blows off the orange groves
of Southern Spain. Ahead lay all the invitation of the south of France;
of the Riviera's white cities and vivid countryside; of Monte Carlo's
casinos and Italy's villas. Beyond further horizons, waited the charm of
Greece, but the man lay on an old army blanket, clad in bagging flannels
and a blue army shirt open at the throat. His arms were crossed above
his eyes, and he was motionless, except that the fingers which gripped
his elbows sometimes clenched themselves and the bare throat above the
open collar occasionally worked spasmodically.
Blanco had come quietly, and his canvas shoes had made no sound. For a
time he did not announce himself. He was not sure that Benton was awake,
so he dropped noiselessly to the deck and sat with his hands clasped
about his knees, his eyes moodily measuring the rise and fall of the
glaringly white stanchions above and below the sky-line. At frequent
intervals they swept back to the other man, who still lay motionless. It
was late afternoon and the smoke-stack shadows pointed off in attenuated
lines to the bow while the sky, off behind the wake, brightened into the
colors of sunset. Finally Benton rose. The unexpected sight of Blanco
brought a start and an immediate masking of his face, but in the first
momentary glimpse the Andalusian caught a haggard distress which
frightened him.
"I didn't know you had come," said Benton quietly. "How long have you
been here?"
"I should say a half-hour, _Señor_," replied Manuel, casually rolling a
cigarette.
"Why didn't you rouse me? I'm not very amusing, but even I could have
relieved the dullness of sitting there like a marooned man on a
derelict."
"Dullness?" inquired the _toreador_ with a lazy lift of the brows. "It
is ease, _Señor_, and ease is desirable--at sea."
The American sat cross-legged on the deck and held out his hand for a
cigarette. When he asked a question he spoke in matter-of-fact tones. He
even laughed, and the Andalusian chatted on in kind, but secretly and
narrowly he was watching the other, and when he had finished his
scrutiny he told himself that Benton had been indulging in the dangerous
pastime of brooding.
"Tell me--everything," urged the yacht-owner. "What are the
revolutionists doing and how is--how are things?" Carefully he avoided
directing any question to the point on which his eagerness for news was
poignant hunger.
When Blanco told how Louis had left Galavia just before the soldiers
reached the lodge, Benton's face darkened. "That was fatal blundering,"
he complained. "So long as Delgado is at large the Palace is menaced.
If they had taken him, and held him under surveillance, the _Cabinet
Noir_ would be disarmed. Now they will try again."
Blanco nodded.
"There is no charge they can make against him," he mused. "They cannot
bring him back because the government cannot admit its peril. Outwardly
his bill of health is clean. Assuredly when they let him slip, _Señor_,
they committed a grave error."
Benton rose and paced the deck in deep reflection. At last he halted and
spread his hands in a gesture half-despairing.
"My God!" he said in a low voice. "The anxiety will drive me mad! You
saw their methods. An entire cortége was to be blown into the air--just
to kill Karyl. Next time, what will they attempt?" He broke off with a
shudder.
"I have seen the Queen," said Blanco slowly.
Benton wheeled. For an instant his face lighted, then he leaned forward.
He said nothing, but his whole attitude was a question.
"You behold in me, Sir Manuel Blanco," began the Andalusian grandly.
Then, slipping his arm through that of the other man, he began leading
him around the deck. When he had finished his narrative, he said: "I
begin my office as Ambassador by delivering this packet." From his
pocket he produced the paper-wrapped rose. "I was instructed to give it
to you at some future time. Possibly, _Señor_, I am over-prompt. Lawyers
and diplomats should be deliberate."
The Mediterranean day had died slowly from east to west while the men
had talked, and the last shred of glowing sky was darkening into the sea
at the edge of the world astern, when Benton greedily thrust out his
hand for the packet.
"_Gracias_," he said bluntly, and turning away went precipitously to his
cabin.
After dinner, when the Captain had betaken himself to the bridge and the
smoke from the Spaniard's cigarettes and Benton's pipe had begun to
wreathe clouds against the ceiling-beams, Blanco broached his diplomacy.
In the dulled expressionlessness of the face opposite him and the stoop
of the shoulders, Manuel read a need for an active antidote against the
corrosive poison of despair.
"Where are we going now, _Señor_?"
Benton shrugged his shoulders.
"'_Quien sabe!_' as you say in Spain. We are simply cruising, drifting,
keeping out of sight of land."
"And drifting is the precise thing, _Señor_, which we must not do. I
have hitherto done without question what you have said. Now I hold a
new dignity." There was a momentary flash of teeth as he smiled. "As
Ambassador, I make a request. May I be permitted to take entire control
of affairs for a brief time? Also, will you for a few days obey _my_
instructions, without question?"
Benton looked across the table at the dark face half-obscured behind a
blue fog of cigarette smoke. After a moment he smiled.
"Admiral," he said, "issue your orders."
"You will instruct the Captain," said Manuel promptly, "to head at once
for Villefranche. There you, _Señor_, will leave the yacht, and I will
go with it to Monte Carlo. I wish to be as soon as possible in the
casino where the drone of the _croupier_ and the clink of outflowing
_louis d'or_ constitute the national refrain."
Benton's eyes narrowed in perplexity. On his face was written curiosity,
but he had agreed to ask no questions. He unhesitatingly put his finger
on the electric bell.
"Ask the Captain to come here as soon as he is at leisure," he directed
when the steward had responded to the call.
"Good," commended Blanco. Then with a sorrowful shake of his head he
commiserated: "I am sorry that you are to be denied the excitement of
the _rouge et noir_ and the _trente et quarente_ of the gold table,
_Señor_, but if the Countess Astaride and Louis should meet there, the
lady would know you. I fancy that she will not again mistake you for
someone else. As for myself, neither of them yet knows me."
"Are they at Monte Carlo?" Benton sat suddenly upright, and Blanco had
the first reward of his diplomacy, as he noted the quickening interest
in the questioning eyes.
"I am only guessing, _Señor_. If the guess is good, I may learn
something. What is in my mind, may fail. If you are willing to trust me
I would rather not reveal it now."
"And I?" questioned Benton. "Have I any part to play in this, or do you
go it alone?"
Blanco leaned forward.
"It may be necessary to have someone near enough to the Palace in Puntal
to insure immediate action--action to be taken on the instant.... You
must return to the city, _Señor_.... It will be for only a few days. The
Grand Palace Hotel is above the town in large gardens.... If you choose
you can remain there with your presence absolutely unknown, so far as
the city proper is concerned. Also, the Marconi office has a station in
the hotel grounds. With a code which we have yet to arrange, I can keep
in touch with you...."
The next day Benton was a passenger by steamer from Villefranche to
Puntal.
The Grand Palace Hotel, dominating its own acres of subtropical gardens,
looks down on the city as one seated on an eminence commands the common
things at his feet. Between its grounds and the scalloped bay, run the
huddled habitations of the town's water-front, with its delicately
tinted walls and riotously colored gardens invading every crevice.
Following the semicircle of the bay, the eye commands that other
eminence where the King's Palace shuts itself in austerely at the very
center of the arc. Through the clustered, tea-sipping loungers on the
galleries and terraces Benton made his way several days later, wearing
the studiously affected unconcern of the tourist; an unconcern which he
found it desperately difficult to assume in Puntal.
Driven by a growing and intense desire to put distance between himself
and all alien humanity, he turned into a narrow, steeply climbing street
which ran twisting between toy-houses and vine-cumbered garden-walls,
until at last it lost its right to be called a street and became merely
a narrow, trail-like path up the mountain-side. The wanderer climbed
interminably. He took no thought of destination and satisfied himself
with the physical exertion of the laborious going.
His heart pounded faster as he attained the altitude of the pine woods
where he seemed to have left humanity behind him. Once or twice he saw a
shy, half-wild child who fled from its task of gathering fagots at his
approach, to gaze at him out of startled eyes from a safe distance.
Occasionally he would stop to look down, from some coign of vantage, at
cascading threads of water tumbling into the gorge below, or at a
châlet-like house perched far beneath in its trim patch of agriculture.
Finally he stretched himself indolently on a carpet of pine needles at
the brink of a drop to the valley. Then, with a sense of recognition, he
saw the tumbled-down gate of the King's driveway below him to the left,
and his face became set and miserable as memory began its work of
tearing open wounds not yet old.
Suddenly there drifted up a chorus of children's laughter. He sat up
suddenly and looked about, but no one was in sight. Again he heard an
unmistakable peal of shrill, childish merriment, seemingly close at
hand. He lay flat and looked over the ledge, holding on to a root of a
gnarled pine that grew far out at the marge.
Under him, not more than twenty yards below, on a similar natural
platform, sat a circle of peasant children, their eyes large with
wonderment and interest. In their center, also seated on the earth, was
the Queen of Galavia. She was dressed in a short walking skirt and a
blue jersey, and as the man gripped the pine root to which he held, and
gazed over, she lifted an outstretched finger of a gauntleted hand in
illustration of some particularly wonderful point of what was palpably a
particularly wonderful fairy story. A third burst of delight came from
the listening and responsive auditors, who had no idea by whom they were
being entertained.
The peasants of Galavia speak Portuguese. As Benton shifted his position
so that he could eavesdrop without being discovered, he found that he
could catch some of the words.
"Tell us another story--" piped a high treble voice, "--a story about
the beautiful Princess who married the King." The demand was seconded by
an immediate clamor of eager voices.
The girl rose unsteadily and shook her head. For a moment she stood
looking off over the miles of sea with her hands at her breast and her
eyes clouded, oblivious of the small companions of her truancy. She
stretched out both strong young arms toward the Mediterranean.
Then she heeded the children's clamor again and, turning to them, she
laughed.
"No, no!" she teasingly answered, and the man above realized for the
first time that Portuguese is a tongue of liquid music. "These are fairy
stories without Princesses. These are perfectly good fairy stories, you
know." Then with a sudden burst of confidence, "In really-truly life,
Princesses are not much good. Don't any of you ever be a Princess if you
can help it!" After planting this seed of treasonable ideas she turned
away, adding: "No, no, no! I've run away and I must go back. To-morrow
we will have a wonderful story--but no more to-day."
Slowly she made her way down to the old gate, stopping twice to look out
to the sea, and above her, choking off the shout that clamored at his
lips, the man sat motionless and gave no intimation of his presence.
Finally he rose and made his way unsteadily back to the city. He walked
slowly down between the wine-shops, noisy with laughter, to the road
along the bay. Immersed in reflection and forgetful of his resolution to
keep as much as possible out of sight, he went openly and conspicuously
along the street that overhangs the water, where at sunset all Puntal
promenades. It was only when a detachment of soldiers in the familiar
opera-bouffe uniform went clanking by to change the guard at the Palace
gates that he remembered he was to have remained inconspicuous. With a
sense of chagrin for his indiscretion, he turned into a side street
which sloped upward toward his hotel. This street was so little used
that between its cobble stones tender sprigs of grass made the way as
green as a turf course.