"Naxos is a Venetian Duchy, belonging to Italy," I repeated. "I am
happy and proud of the privilege of acknowledging the restoration of
Naxos to Italy--and I salute its ruler--Thusis, Duchess of Naxos!"
And I lifted the white hand of Thusis and touched it with my lips.
"There's conspiracy here!" shouted Tino, very drunk, and vainly
attempting to stand up. "We're all tangled up in treason here! We're
in the web of the AEgean League! What are these people doing here,
anyway!--all these Yankees and Duchesses running about underfoot----"
A hiccough terminated his activities and he slid up against his spouse
who shoved him away, her eyes flashing.
"That lying Yankee," she began, almost beside herself, "has set a trap
for us here!"
At the word "trap," King Ferdinand, drunk as he was, got up hastily and
started toward the door.
"You'd better defend yourselves!" he shouted. "I've got pistols in my
room----"
His voice ceased: Raoul blocked his way:
"Stay where you are," he said, smiling and cool. And placing a powerful
hand on King Ferdinand's chest he shoved him backward onto a chair.
Then, to my surprise, Raoul slipped a pair of automatic pistols from his
side pockets and cast a merry glance around him at the company.
"The first man that moves," he remarked, "is not likely to continue the
movement."
The dead silence which fell over everybody was startling. Raoul,
resting gracefully on a table with one leg on the floor, looked about
him as though immensely amused. Then, as we awaited further
developments, his countenance assumed a thoughtful expression--and he
absent-mindedly hummed aloud his favorite air:
"Crack-brain-cripple-arm
You have done a heap of harm----"
*XXIV*
*RAOUL*
Raoul looked up, thoughtfully, playing with his pistols, and said to
King Constantine in an unaccented and conversational tone:
"After all, who were you to rule Naxos?--you cheap, treacherous, yellow
dog!"
That partly cleared the king's muddy mind and he lurched to an upright
position and began to take notice.
"You sold Greece to the boche," continued Raoul in his serene, even
voice, toying idly with his pistols. "What else you did--what else you
are--is a trifle too vile to repeat aloud----"
He turned and looked at the Tzar of all the Bulgars whose ungainly bulk
as he sat on his chair was now agitated by visible tremors:
"Murderer and coward," mused Raoul aloud. "Every time you hire your
gun-men to kill an enemy you hurry away to establish an alibi, don't
you? You cheap peddler of duped people--you made a rotten bargain this
time, didn't you? When your treacherous pal, Tino, betrayed Serbia, you
swindled your own people, didn't you?"
He shrugged, dangled his pistols, glanced at Gizzler,--or rather
_through_ Gizzler as though, the wretched creature were not there,--and
his eyes encountered the interested jet black orbs of Eddin Bey.
Both smiled, Eddin in the face of death; Raoul with the generous grin of
a man who recognizes in his enemy a peer.
"Eddin Bey," he said, still smiling, "the Osmanli fight fairly. Ask the
British Tommy.... And your fool of a Sultan is dead. And what do you
think of affairs at present?"
"They are not any too gay," replied Eddin Bey, laughing, "especially in
the Alps."
The half smile on Raoul's face flickered and faded:
"You're about done for, you Turks," he said quietly. "You bet on the
wrong horse, too. And now Enver Pasha keeps running to Berlin to ask
why the all-highest doesn't make him Khedive of Egypt as he promised.
And Taalat is scared, and the butcher Djavid is in the dumps. Oh, I
know it was not you Osmanli that set the Kurds and Bashi-Bazouks on the
Armenians. That butchery of a million souls, men, women, children,
babies, was conceived by the Berlin government and superintended from
the Yldiz Palace."
Raoul turned and looked contemptuously at the Germans:
"You square-heads," he said, "have achieved one thing, anyway. Never
before in history has a nation been indicted, and it was supposed it
could not be done. But it has been done in your case. And for the
first time also in history an entire race is spoken of and known to
civilization only by a revolting nick-name--_boche_!
"Do you know what it means? There have been disputes concerning the
origin of the term _boche_. The French say it means a stupid fellow--a
clown; the Belgians think that it is a vulgar term for 'blockhead.' But
I shall tell you what it really does mean: it means, in South African
Dutch, an unclean and degraded species of wart-hog; and it has been in
use for fifty years!"
He lifted one pistol and sat idly twirling it around his fore-finger.
"I know why you came here to Schwindlewald," he said, "to put _that_
back on the throne of Greece!"--he nodded toward Tino.
"In Berne you live luxuriously and wastefully in the midst of famine.
You eat as usual; your bread is white; there are no restrictions for you
in the matter of food amid a hungry people. You maintain a court there
with flunkies, stables, motor-cars--every necessity and luxury which is
now forbidden by Swiss law and by the law of decency you violate daily!"
He looked at the queen:
"Your effrontery, madame, is of course, in keeping with Hohenzollern
tradition. But things are happening now--now, madame,--at this very
moment! And I'm wondering just how long the Swiss are likely to endure
your behavior in Berne."
He sat silent after that for a little while, twirling his pistols and
whistling softly to himself:
"Crack-brain-cripple-arm----"
Suddenly Eddin made a quick motion and Raoul shot the leg off his chair
letting him down with a crash.
The startling crash of the pistol-shot brought them to their feet.
"Sit down!" said Raoul sharply, "or it will be a living leg next time;
and the time after that a wooden head!" He sat watching Eddin getting
to his feet with a shame-faced laugh:
"No use," said Raoul in a friendly voice, "it can't be done, Colonel."
"I notice it can't," remarked Eddin, laughing. "Well sir, you have
entertained us very pleasantly with your historical inappropos. Is
there to be a denouement perhaps?"
"Did you expect one?"
Eddin shrugged: "A firing-squad, possibly. But of course I don't
insist."
Raoul shook his curly head: "No, Colonel Eddin; no firing-squad. No
Turkish atrocities, no Bulgarian murders, no boche bestialities." He
turned contemptuously on Constantine:
"You laid plans in Berne to entrap the leaders of the AEgean League.
You forged instructions sent to me by Monsieur Venizelos. You attempted
to foment an uprising in Naxos because you foresaw the trouble it would
bring between two of the Allied powers--between Italy and Greece!
"Also you conceived and encouraged a plot to attempt the capture of
yourself and your wife because you believed that Greece, although now
rid of you, would resent such an attempt; and that chivalrous America
would be shocked at the kidnaping of a woman--even such a notorious one
as your Hohenzollern wife."
He eyed him for a moment: "You _are_ the cheapest back-stairs scullion
who ever grafted, Tino," he said. "But remember this little couplet the
next time you go gaily grafting:
"'Grecian gift and Spanish fig
Help the fool his grave to dig!'"
"That's the motto of the AEgean League!" burst out the queen in a white
hot fury.
"It is, madame," returned Raoul, pleasantly.
Then he placed the other foot on the floor and got up leisurely from his
seat on the table.
"You're all free to go," he said carelessly.
A moment of suspense, then the boche herd scrambled to its feet and
rushed for the nearest exit. And Raoul came over to where I stood
beside Thusis with Smith and Clelia beside me.
"All their weapons are locked up in the cellar," he said, laughing; "let
them look for them. Also I have all their documents packed up. We're
through with them," he added, smiling at Thusis.
But there was a thunder cloud on her white brow:
"Are we not going to secure and crate the kings, Raoul?" she demanded.
"Do you and Josephine fail me, now?"
"Duchess," he said smilingly, "news came to-night--a real communication
from Monsieur Venizelos."
"_How_ could it come?" I asked.
"The Pass is open," he replied serenely. "And," turning to Thusis, "so
is the road to France. And we should travel it this night unless we
wish to see our papers taken from us and our persons subjected to arrest
by these somewhat singular Swiss gendarmes."
"What did Monsieur Venizelos say?" insisted Thusis, tears of
disappointment and vexation shining in her gray eyes.
"The letter is here,"--Raoul touched his breast pocket--"at the disposal
of her grace the Duchess of Naxos----"
"_Tell_ me!" cried Thusis, angrily, "and let my 'grace' go to the
devil!"
"Monsieur Venizelos warns us of Tino's forgery. We are _not_ to touch
these kings: we are _not_ to proclaim Naxos an Italian Duchy and you its
hereditary ruler."
There was a painful silence.
Very slowly Thusis turned and looked at me. And I remembered then what
I had said to her about the purity and unselfishness of justifiable
revolutions.
And now I realized that part of this revolution in Naxos was the
restoration of an ancient Duchy and of a family as ancient, embodied in
this young girl before me.
At that moment Tino came lurching into the room followed by the queen,
and presently by the majority of the huns in the house-party.
"Somebody has been through my luggage!" he barked. "Now I'm damned if I
put up with that----"
Raoul still held one of his pistols in his hand and Tino's bloodshot
eyes fell on it.
"Oh, very well," he said, turning on his heel.
The queen, pallid and ghastly with fury, faced us a moment:
"You'll all pay this reckoning!" she whispered,--"every one of you!"
"Madame," said Raoul gaily, "the Pass is open. And really very wonderful
news has come through. But I'm afraid you don't like Yankees, and it
won't interest you to hear that the Yankee General Pershing has wiped
out the St. Mihiel salient, and the guns of Metz are saluting the
event."
"Lies!" she retorted; "Yankee lies!" She bit her lip, glared at us all,
turned her Hohenzollern back on us. Behind her stood the huddled huns,
sullen, enraged, baffled in their headlong rush to find weapons for
avenging Prussian "honor."
They were quite helpless although outnumbering us; and they seemed to
realize it.
Raoul, watching them, passed his pistols to me and walking coolly in
among them and shoving the Admiral and Von Dungheim out of his way, went
to the kitchen. Josephine had wrung out the disinfected garments of the
Bolsheviki. But they were still steaming when Raoul unlocked their door
and flinging the clothing at them, bade them dress and depart.
"The Pass is open," he said. "It's a summer night and you won't take
cold. Get into those things and get out of this house! And," he added,
"you ought to be obliged for what I've done to you."
When Raoul came back the huns had retired to their several apartments;
Smith and Clelia stood by the window whispering together; Thusis was
absently looking over the letter from Monsieur Venizelos; and I leaned
in the doorway gazing out at the high stars above the disfigured Bec de
l'Empereur.
"Nature pulled his nose and twisted it, too," murmured Raoul, passing
me. Then he said aloud:
"It really is not healthy for us here any longer. The Swiss gendarmes
will arrive in the morning. I have held the wagon that penetrated the
Pass. It's waiting for us. So if you'll be kind enough to pack your
luggage----"
"Are you going?" I asked, appalled.
"We must," said Raoul gaily. "And I regret to say that I think you and
Mr. Smith had better come with us."