"Suppose? What do you mean?" she demanded haughtily.
"I mean that you are mistaken if you and Clelia believe that your orders
come from Monsieur Venizelos."
"From whom, then, do you imagine they come?" retorted Thusis.
"From Tino!"
"You dare----"
"Yes, I dare tell you, Thusis, how you have been deceived. Tino himself
plotted this. Your orders are forgeries. Monsieur Venizelos never
dreamed of inciting you to the activities in which you are now
concerned----"
"That is incredible," said Thusis hotly. "I know who sent you here to
check us and spoil it all--as though we were two silly, headstrong
children! Tell me honestly, now; did not that--that gentleman in Rome
give you some such impression of us?--that we were two turbulent and
mischievous children?"
"I was not told who you were."
"But you were told that we are irresponsible and headstrong? Is it not
true?"
"Yes."
"And you were sent here to see that we didn't get into mischief. Is it
true?"
"Yes."
Thusis made a gesture of anger and despair:
"For lack of courage," she said tremulously, "a timid King refuses the
service we try to render! We offer to stake our lives cheerfully; it
frightens him. We escape his well meant authority and supervision and
make our way into Switzerland to do him and Italy a service in spite of
his timorous fears and objections. He has us followed by--_who_ are you
anyway, Mr. Smith?"
"I happen to be," he said pleasantly, "an officer in a certain branch of
the Italian Army."
"Military Intelligence!" exclaimed Clelia. "And we were warned by
Monsieur Venizelos!"
Thusis flung out her arms in a passionate gesture: "We offer the King of
Italy two royal scoundrels! And he refuses. We offer the King of Italy
two islands? And you tell us he refuses. When we were in Rome he
laughed at us, teased us as though we had been two school-girls bringing
him some crazy plan to end the war. And now when we are practically
ready to prove our plan possible--ready to consummate the affair and
give him the two most dangerous royal rascals in Europe--restore to
Italy two islands stolen from her centuries ago--the King of Italy turns
timid and sends a gentleman to ruin everything!"
"Because," said Smith pleasantly, "although King Constantine and Queen
Sophia have been deposed, yet, were you to seize them and carry them
across this frontier into France, Greece would resent it. So also would
Switzerland. And the Allies would merely make two enemies out of an
Allied country and a neutral one for the sake of a few odd kings and
queens.
"And, moreover, if you should proceed, as you had planned, to the
Cyclades; and if you succeed in fomenting a revolution in Naxos and
Tenedos, and induce these two islands to declare themselves part of
Italy, because seven hundred years ago a Venetian conquered them, then
you turn Greece into a bitter enemy of Italy and of the Allies. And
that is what you accomplish in exchange for a couple of little islands
in the AEgean which Italy does not want."
"Then," retorted Thusis violently, "why did Monsieur Venizelos suggest
that we attempt these things? Is the greatest patriot on earth a traitor
or a fool?"
"No, but Constantine of Greece is. And the boche is his tutor. Oh,
Thusis--Thusis! Can't you see you have been tricked? Can't you
understand that Venizelos had no knowledge of these things you are
attempting in all sincerity?--that you have been deluded by the
treachery of the hun--that those who counseled you to this came secretly
from Tino and the Kaiser, not from Venizelos?"
Thusis gazed at him bewildered. Clelia, too, seemed almost stunned.
"Do--do you mean to tell me," stammered Thusis, "that these kings know
that Clelia and I are here to try to kidnap them?"
"No," said Smith coolly, "because I censored their mail in Berne. Their
agents in Rome had warned them, in detail, by letter."
"Had those agents penetrated our identity?"
"They seemed to have no notion of it. But they described you both
minutely."
Clelia seemed to come out of her trance. She turned to Thusis and said
in a naive, bewildered way:
"It's rather extraordinary, Thusis, that nobody seems to have found out
who we really are.... It's almost as though we are not of as much
importance as we have been brought up to suppose."
Thusis blushed hotly: "Because," she said, "nobody has discovered our
incognito, is no reason for us to underrate our positions in Europe."
"Still--it is extraordinary that nobody recognizes us. And we use our
own names, too. I can't account for it," she added honestly, "unless we
are of much less importance than we have been accustomed to consider
ourselves----"
Her voice was lost in a fearful scream from the house.
"Good Heavens!" said I, "what has happened?"
At that moment the door flew open and King Ferdinand waddled out in his
wrapper and slippers.
"Help!" he shouted, "help! Is there a physician in the Alps?"
"I'm one," said Smith, coolly, "among other things."
And we all started hastily for the house.
*XVIII*
*THE GANGSTERS*
The Tsar of all the Bulgars, wearing a green and yellow wrapper, and
bright blue slippers over his enormous flat feet, exhibited considerable
nervousness as we entered the house.
"I wasn't doing anything," he said; "I trust that nobody will
misunderstand me. Heaven is my witness----"
"What's the matter?" asked Smith tersely.
"The Princess Pudelstoff is screaming. I don't know why; I didn't go
near her----"
We hurried up stairs. The door of the Princess' room was open, the
light burning. The Princess sat up in bed, tears rolling down her
gross, fat face, screaming at the top of her voice; while beside her, in
Phrygian night-cap and pajamas, stood King Constantine.
He had her by the elbow and was jerking her arm and shouting at her:
"Shut your fool head! Stop it! There's nothing the matter with you.
You've been dreaming!"
Smith went straight to the bed, shoved Constantine aside, and laid a
soothing hand on the Princess' shoulder.
"I'm a physician," he said in his pleasant, reassuring voice. "What is
the trouble, Princess?"
"There's turrible doin's in this here house!" she bawled. "I peeked
through the key-hole! Them there Bolsheviki next door is fixin' to blow
us all up. I seen the bomb a-sizzlin' and a-fizzlin' on the floor like
it was just ready to bust! And then I run and got into bed and I let
out a screech----"
"It's all right," said Smith kindly. "It was just a bad dream. There
isn't any bomb. Nobody is going to harm you----"
"I didn't dream it! I----"
"Yes, you did. Calm yourself, Princess. You have eaten something which
has disagreed with you."
She ceased her screaming at that suggestion and considered it, the tears
still streaming over her features. Then she began to blubber again and
shook her head.
"I ain't et hoggish," she insisted. "If I had et hoggish I'd think I
drempt it. But I ain't et hoggish. That wasn't no dream. No, sir! I
had went to bed, but I was fidgety, like I had a load of coal onto my
stummick. And by and by I heard them Bolsheviki next door whisperin'.
And by and by I heard a fizzlin' noise like they was makin' highballs in
there.
"Thinks I to myself that sounds good if true. So I gets up and I lights
up and I peeks through the key hole. And I seen King--I mean Monsieur
Xenos, and Monsieur Itchenuff, and Puppsky and Wildkatz and a long,
black box on the floor in the room next door, and somethin' sticking out
of it which fizzled without smokin'----"
"It was all a dream, madame," interposed Smith soothingly. And to my
surprise, he took from his inner breast-pocket a small, flat medicine
case.
"A glass of water and two spoons, please," he said to Clelia. And she
went away to fetch them.
There was another glass on the wash-stand. In this he rinsed a clinical
thermometer and inserted it under the tongue of the sobbing Princess.
Thusis and I stood near him, silent. King Constantine and the Bulgarian
Tsar appeared to be unsympathetic and at the same time slightly nervous.
"If she'd stop gorging herself," remarked Tino, "she'd have no
nightmares."
"I seen _you_ in there! Yes I did!" retorted the Princess in another
access of wrath and fright, the thermometer wagging wildly between her
lips. "And I seen you too!" she went on, pointing at King Ferdinand,
who stared wildly back at her out of his eyes of an alarmed pig and
wrinkled his enormous nose at her.
"Don't tell me I was dreamin'," she added scornfully, "nothing like
that."
Clelia came with the two spoons and glass of water; Smith selected a
phial, mixed the dose, withdrew the thermometer, shook it, examined it,
washed it at the basin, and, returning to his patient, administered a
teaspoonful of medicine.
Then, in the other glass, he dissolved a powder, gave her three
teaspoonfuls of that, and placed the two glasses on the night table
beside her bed.
"If you happen to awake," he said gently, "take a teaspoonful of each.
But I think you'll sleep, madame. And in the morning you'll be all
right."
He turned on King Constantine and the Tsar so suddenly that they both
took impulsive steps backward as though apprehensive of being kicked.
"The Princess needs quiet and rest, gentlemen," said Smith. "Kindly
retire."
"Perhaps I'd better sit beside her for a while," began Constantine, but
Smith interrupted him:
"I'll call you into consultation if I want you, Monsieur Xenos." His
voice had a very slight ring to it; the ex-King of Greece looked at him
for a moment, then winced and backed out of the room, followed by King
Ferdinand who seemed to be in a hurry and crowded on his heels like an
agitated pachyderm.
Clelia, who had remained mute and motionless, looking at Smith all the
while, now came toward him. And in the girl's altered face I saw,
reflected, deeper emotions than I had supposed her youthful heart could
harbor.
"Do you need me?" she asked. "I am at your service."
"Thank you, there is nothing more," said Smith pleasantly. He turned to
include Thusis in kindly but unmistakable dismissal.
Clelia gave him a long, slow look of exquisite submission; Thusis sent
an odd, irresolute glance at me. As she passed me, following her
sister, her lips formed the message: "I wish to see you to-night."
When they had gone Smith shut and locked the door, and with a slight
motion to me to accompany him, walked over to the bed, seated himself
beside it, and took the fat hand of the Princess Pudelstoff in his as
though to test her pulse.
The lady rolled her eyes at us but lay still, her mottled cheeks still
glistening with partly dried tears.
"What's on your mind, Princess?" inquired Smith in a soft, caressing
voice.
"Hey?" she exclaimed in visible alarm, and evidently preparing to scream
again.
"Hush. Don't excite yourself, madame," he said in his pleasant,
reassuring way. "There is no occasion for alarm at all."
"Am I a sick woman?" she demanded anxiously. "Is that what you're
a-goin' to hand me? _Is_ it?"
"No, you're not physically ill. You have no temperature except as much
as might be due to sudden shock."
"I got the scare of my young life all right," she muttered. "Say, Doc,
_was_ it a dream? On the level now, was it?"
"Probably----"
"Honest to God?" she insisted.
"Why do you think it was not a dream, Princess?" he asked gently.
"Why? Well, I've run with Rooshians enough to know a infernal machine
when I see one. And I never dream plain, that way. I can see that darn
thing yet--and hear it! And I can see them men in there all a settin'
onto chairs in a circle like, and a-watching that there bomb sizzling.
It made a blue light but no smoke and no smell. How could I have drempt
all that so plain, Doc?"
"Princess! You're not afraid of me, are you?"
She looked up into his clean-cut, pleasant American face.
"No, I ain't," she said. "You come from God's country"--she suddenly
began to beat her pudgy fists on the sheets--"and whyinhell I ever was
crazy enough to leave little old Noo York I don't know excep' I was
damfoolenough to do it!"
Smith smiled at her: "You sure were some peach," he said, dropping
gracefully into the vernacular, "when you played with Nazimova in that
Eastside theater."
The Princess flushed all over, and the radiance of her smile
transfigured her amazingly.
"Did _you_ see me in them days, Doc?"
"You betcha!"
"Well-f'r-God's-sake!" she gasped in wonder and delight. "Say, you had
me fooled, Doc. I understood you was a Norsky--a sort of tree-peddlin'
guy. But, thinks I to myself, he looks like a Yank. I says so to my
brother, Leo Puppsky----"
"Don't say it to him again, Princess. Or to anybody."
At that the Princess fixed her shrewd little eyes on Smith, shifted them
for an instant to me, then resumed her scrutiny of his serene and
smiling features.
"What's the idea?" she asked at last.
"I'm going to lay all my cards down for you, Princess,--faces up. I am
an American serving in the Italian army."
"The-hell-you-say!" There was a silence that lasted a full minute.
Then, suddenly, the Princess began to laugh. Soft, fat chuckles
agitated her tremendous bosom; a seismic disturbance seemed to shake her
ample bulk beneath the bed-clothes.
"Tabs!" she exclaimed. "You're keepin' tabs on these here
down-and-outers! That's what you're a doin' of! Am I right?"
"And what are _you_ doing here in Switzerland, Princess?" he inquired
smilingly.
"Say! I'm their goat! Now, do you get me?"
"Not exactly----"
"Well listen. Puppsky's my brother. He was in the suit and cloak
business in Noo York before the Rooshian revolution. Then he beat it
for Petrograd--workin' for his own pocket same's you and me, Doc; and
seein' pickin's--Trotzky bein' a friend of ours, and Lenine a relation.
I was in Stockholm fixin' to go to Noo York, when that poor fish,
Wildkatz, comes in and talks me into this game. And look at me now,
Doc! Here I am financin' this here bunch o' homeless kings, sittin' into
a con game, holdin' all the dirty cards they deal me--busted flushes,
nigger straights, and all like that! And what," she demanded
passionately, "is there in it for me? Tino, he says I'll be a Greek
duchess an' rule a island called Naxos!--And, Gawd help me, I fell fur
it. And wherethehell is Naxos? And is it as big as Coney Island?
Wasn't I the big dill-pickle to stake 'em to a Greek revolution? And me
a princess! Sure, I know a Rooshian princess ain't much of a swell, and
the Duchy of Naxos looked good to me.
"But the more I mix in with these here kings the wiser I get.
Four-flushers is four-flushers wherever you find 'em. And these guys is
all alike--old Admiral bushy-whiskers, Bummelzug, General Droly and that
sore-eyed little Gizzler!--all want to sell me gold bricks for real
money!"
She waved her short, fat arms in furious recollection of her wrongs.
"Say, even the Greek Queen ain't too particular about chousing the
long-green outer me! She wants to hand me the order of the Red
Chicken!--costs ten thousand plunks! What do you know about that, Doc?"
I don't know whether Smith was as amazed as was I by these revelations
in argot. He smiled his kindly, undisturbed smile and patted her hand
encouragingly; while from depths long plugged burst the excited recital
of the woes of the Pudelstoffs.
"I'm through," she said. "I got enough. And I told 'em so at the
meeting after dinner to-night. They talked rough to me, they did.
Puppsky, he got riled and tells me I'm no sister of his. And the Greek
Queen she was crazy and called me a kike in German. Which upset my
dinner.
"Say, Doc, the Gophers and Gas-house gangs ain't one-two-three with this
bunch. I'm scared stiff they'll get me--that Ferdie has croaked more
guys 'n people know. I'm scared Sophy sticks me. They say she stuck a
hat-pin into Tino. You bet she knows how to make that big stiff behave!
And she's got a way of lookin' at you!--Me, I quit 'em cold to-night.
'Nothing like that,' says I; 'no revolution in Greece at $250,000 a
revolute! No Naxos! No Red Chicken! Me, I'm on my way via Berne,
Berlin, Christiania, and Noo York!'"
"You've quarreled with them, Princess?" asked Smith.
"I sure did. Say, I don't have to stand for no rough stuff from
Wildkatz neither. We ain't in Petrograd. But, mind you, I don't put it
past him to try his dirty tricks on me with bombs!"
"But why----"
"They're like all gun-men! Once in you can't get out, or they'll try to
get you. If you've got enough and try to quit peaceable they think
you've been bought out. You're a squealer to them."
"You believe they might offer you violence?" I asked, incredulously.
"How do I know? What was they doin' with that bomb? They're sore on
me. They know they're gettin' no more dough outen me. They know I've
quit and I'm goin' back to God's country."
"But Leo Puppsky is your own brother!" I exclaimed, horrified.
The Princess shrugged her fat shoulders.
"He's a Red, too. Bolsheviks is Bolsheviks. You don't know 'em. You
don't know what they done in Rooshia. No boche is bloodier. Call 'em
what you like--call 'em all sons of boches--and you won't be wrong."
Her flabby features had grown somber; suddenly a shudder possessed her,
and she opened her mouth to scream; but Smith instantly filled the
gaping orifice with medicine, and only a coughing fit followed.
To me he said: "Please leave me alone with her now. It will be all
right, Michael."
And he turned tenderly to the convulsed Princess and patted her vast
back.
*XIX*
*CONFIDENCES*
As I walked through the corridor considerably concerned over the
statements made to us by this east-side Princess and seriously disturbed
by finding myself in the very vortex of this whirlpool of intrigue which
every moment seemed to spew up from its dizzying depths new plots and
counter-plots, I almost ran into the ex-Queen of Greece.
She was in curl-papers and negligee, standing just outside her door, an
electric torch in one hand, a pistol in the other.
"Madame!" I exclaimed, "what in the world is the matter?"
"I don't like this inn," she said. "I consider it a suspicious place."
"Madame!"
"What do I know about your inn?" she demanded insolently, "or about you,
either?"
"_Madame!_"
"You _say_ you are a Chilean. You don't look it. Neither does your
friend resemble a Norwegian. If you desire to know my opinion you both
look like Yankees!"
"Madame, this is intolerable----"
"Possibly," she interrupted, staring at me out of chilly eyes that
fairly glittered. "Possibly, too, I am mistaken. Perhaps your
servants, also, unduly arouse suspicion--your pretty housekeeper may
really be your housekeeper. The waitress, too, may be a real waitress.
This is all quite possible, Monsieur. But I prefer to be prepared for
any eventuality in this tavern!"
And she went into her room and shut the door.
The ex-queen's insolence upset me. I was possessed by a furious desire
to turn them all out of doors. The prospect of living in the same house
with these people for days--perhaps for weeks, seemed unbearable.
Surely there must be some way out of the valley!
Down stairs I saw Raoul coming from the front courtyard leading two
strange horses attached to a sort of carryall.
"Where on earth did you discover that rig?" I called out to him in the
starlight.
"Two guests have just arrived," he replied, laughing.