The Unknown Mr. Kent Part One

 THE UNKNOWN MR. KENT

ROY NORTON

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The Unknown
Mr. Kent

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By ROY NORTON

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Author of
"The Plunderer," "The Mediator," Etc.

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A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers⁠New York

Published by arrangements with George H. Doran Company

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COPYRIGHT, 1916,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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THE UNKNOWN MR. KENT

Chapters (not listed in original)

• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Chapter Nine
• Chapter Ten
• Chapter Eleven
• Chapter Twelve
• Chapter Thirteen
• Chapter Fourteen
• Chapter Fifteen

THE UNKNOWN MR. KENT

CHAPTER ONE

THERE are just three sorts of men in this world who have an ambition that is worth a cuss! Hermits, billionaires, and burglars; and all they ask is to be left alone," declared John Rhodes on the day when, with painstaking attention to details, he took the last precautions to obliterate his footsteps and disappeared. He might have added, "I'm one of 'em," and if the inquisitive had asked which one, would probably have answered, "Burglar."

Furthermore, there were numerous financiers over different sections of the globe who would have agreed with him heartily, perhaps vociferously. Not that the methods by which, with amazing and cumulative steadiness, he had acquired his vast fortune were more reprehensive than those of other financiers; but because he was endowed with such appalling foresight, steadiness of nerve, and ingenuity of resource that it ​seemed impossible to drive him into a corner and keep him there. And this was naturally much of a disappointment to rival magnates. His most peculiar characteristic, however, was such a morbid hatred for publicity that even those who could have identified him on the street were few and it became a tradition that, whenever possible, his business was transacted through agents. Also that of these agents Richard Kent was the one who effected nearly all the largest deals; also that if there was any truth in the adage, "Like master like man," Rhodes must have been a "terror," inasmuch as, in the parlance of the street, Kent was a "Hum-dinger!"

It was admitted that Kent could be neither bullied, bribed, influenced nor employed, because at different times all these tactics had been tried unsuccessfully. There were diverse opinions of him. Some agreed with that expressed by a certain renowned financial light, pillar of a fashionable church, advertised as a philanthropist, moralist, and patriot, who declared wrothfully, "Kent is nothing more nor less than a blithering ass! A fool! Why, do you know, he's so stupid that he can tell Rhodes' money from his own? He refused fifty thousand dollars I offered him as a gift, when all he had to do to get it was to tell me whether Rhodes was a bull or a bear on Steel Common? Plain dishonest, I call him!"

​Others, disagreeing, liked him because he kept his word; but most of those were unimportant people, who, therefore, didn't count.

That Kent was astonishingly qualified to act as Rhodes' agent in foreign countries, some were aware; for amongst his conspicuous talents was that of languages, of which he made a hobby. This was proven by the assertion of a distinguished polyglot, who could have given "cards and spades" to the average university professor of languages, being a waiter in a Broadway restaurant.

"He's a heller!" said he. "Talks at least five languages, each one better than the other. And he can cuss in all five of 'em. Found it out one night when he got sore at the head waiter, who was a bit uppish, because there was a short change on his meal bill, a hold-up in the cloak room, pair of gloves swiped from his overcoat pocket by a page boy and the waiter handed him coffee with a harmless little roach in it! And that ain't all, either. He'd had a row at the front door with a chauffeur because the guy flipped his flag and tried to double the fare before this Kent could look at the dial. Fine chance an honest workingman's got with him, eh? He ain't no New Yorker, because if he was, he'd stand for it, and what's more, he'd like it. Besides, a perfect gent don't make no fuss over little things like them. He can ​talk some, all right, believe me, but he's either a Boston feller or a piker. Give me one live one from Pittsburgh or Goldfields, every time. You can tell what they are when they blow in; but these big, square-jawed guys like that Kent is awfully hard to place, and every once in a while I make a mistake with his kind!"

Yet on one point every one agreed, that being Kent's loyalty to Rhodes. And this fidelity found further proof when the master financier disappeared, inasmuch as at somewhere near the same time, or at least within a few weeks after it had been announced that Rhodes had gone on an extended vacation, Kent likewise departed from New York. Presumably to attend his employer's interests abroad. He said that was why he was going; but he lied, this being his blunt idea of diplomacy as employed in many national and social circles.

And so, having lied when he stated that he was going abroad in behalf of the formidable Mr. Rhodes, the square-jawed Mr. Kent was now turned loose on war-stricken Europe for a holiday to wander as his somewhat erratic fancy dictated, and cheerfully agreeing with himself that he "didn't care a continental cuss" where the renowned John Rhodes was, what he was doing, what he wanted to do, or what he did. All that Mr. Kent, the agent, desired, was that Mr. Rhodes, ​the financier, should leave him, Mr. Kent, undisturbed. He was rebellious.

"John Rhodes," said he to himself, "has bossed me around and run me here and there, like a small boy hopping a cat over hurdles in the cellar, until I'm sick and tired of it. He's paid me well, and I'm fairly well off; but I've sure earned every cent I ever got out of him. He's gone on a long vacation. So shall I. And if John Rhodes doesn't like it he can go to ——"; but at that point of his meditations caution, or perhaps some of his loyalty to Rhodes, overcame his disregard of that amiable employer under whom he had prospered, and caused him to take the precaution of leaving word with sundry bankers of New York, London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna where Rhodes could find him if desiring his services. And, so strong is the habit of discipline and obedience, on second thought he arranged that mails might be forwarded enclosed in protective envelopes, keeping him informed concerning certain financial transactions entrusted to him by Mr. Rhodes. From all of which it might be conjectured that, despite his mutinous disposition, he cautiously realised that, without the fat commissions afforded by John Rhodes, Richard Kent might shrivel as thin as a living skeleton in a freak museum, and be compelled to seek another patron endowed with purse, power, and authority.

​Mr. Rhodes' disappearance was noted; Mr. Kent's wasn't. Watchful financiers rumoured it that Mr. Rhodes was travelling in the far East intent on new plunder; but about Mr. Kent there were no rumours at all, and for the simplest of reasons, that Kent had hopped completely beyond the reach of rumour; had hopped almost out of the known world, beyond finance, railways, automobiles, and state highways, into the unknown, unchanging, sixteenth century village of Steinweg. Accompanied only by his factotum, Ivan, who for years had gone with him, everywhere, he had found in Steinweg his two great objects, fish and freedom. Probably he would not have admitted any sentimental or artistic interest in the quaint village itself, with its single crooked street, lined by houses whose gables seemed forever to reach across and whisper of conspiracies, the next robber baron raid, or the public flaying of some poor wretch accused of stealing a purse or a ham. He might have admitted the comfort within the old houses, once one had passed through the low doors to the cool interiors where low ceilings, heavy beams, ancient fire-places, blackened wainscotings and all, were lighted by the cross shadows cast through the narrow windows with tiny leaded panes. This would have been his excuse for renting one of those quaint houses in the quaint street—renting it and all it contained, ​including the aged but competent widow who owned it. Proof of his daring! It requires nerve to rent a widow, although anybody can rent a house.

He paid therefor what seemed a prodigal sum in those wretched, penurious times that followed on the heels of that great war, when old boundaries disappeared and new states either sprang into existence or were resuscitated after decades of suppression. He wished to be free, obscure, unmolested, and within a month he must have been gratified, having been accepted as a part of the village, like the village forge, the shabby little priest, or the town pump, because none might suspect that within his uncommunicative mind were concealed the methods by which so many of the old-new or new-old states had been financed; but not so with Ivan. He commanded an uncanny interest. He couldn't avoid it. First, because of his enormous size, strength and agility; second, because of his strange manner of ignoring all sounds and of speaking only to those who faced him in the light. It took longer to accustom the villagers to this giant, stalking ever at the fisherman's elbow, silent, taciturn, alert with the absorbed alertness of a wild animal watchful to the four ways of the wind. Visualisation is necessary to attract the attention of the unimaginative, and without visualisation they have small interest; hence on a certain night in Steinweg no one had ​even the slightest curiosity in either the widow, Mr. Kent, or Ivan, because it stormed; stormed as it can in those mountains, with sweeping rain, thunder that is a punctual and close comrade of lightning stabs; an erratic, capricious pair out on a rampage, like a pair of drunken rioters, one of whom is boisterous, swaggering, shouting, and harmless, the other snapping, deadly, intent, and out to kill. The villagers were inside and under cover on that turbulent night of late spring. So were Kent, financial agent on a holiday, and Ivan, factotum, always at work.

Kent, the master, lounged in the room that he had converted into a den, and luxuriously stuck his feet, carpet-slippered, toward the fireplace wherein surged a blaze that robbed the spring dampness of a winter chill. He wondered if, despite his sense of freedom and independence, he could endure such a place in real winter, and yawned, casually thanking God, in the meantime, that Rhodes had decided to extend his vacation indefinitely. Kent liked him for that decision. Lazily he swung round in his chair to see what Ivan was doing; but the light, a sharp, white flame from the student's lamp on the oaken desk by his side, bothered him, and he held his fine head sidewise to escape its rays. It accentuated the individuality of his square jaws, the lumpiness of his high brow, the whimsical lines at the corners ​of his shrewd eyes, the ruggedness of his well-shaped nose, the half-humorous, half-stern crevices bordering his liberal mouth.

In the corner of the room, whose uniform and blackened wainscoting Kent had, with his own hands, desecrated by building a makeshift bookcase, Ivan knelt. His huge shoulders were bent forward and his shock head was stretched, turtlewise, as he sought, patiently and laboriously, along the well-packed shelves, for a book that the widow had replaced in her customary hit-or-miss fashion. His face, dour and strong, was set like a mask of perseverance, and one huge finger probed methodically along the line of titles. His lips moved, dumbly, as he read. A terrifying, terrific shock of combined thunder and lightning did not disturb him; but Kent started and stared at the diamond-shaped panes that became iridescent with fresh rivulets of rain. An interior door was jerked open and the widow appeared, holding her work-gnarled hands upward, and rolling her eyes with fright.

"I hope it struck the Catholic church!" she exclaimed. "I'm a Lutheran."

She paused to look backward over her shoulder, as if afraid that the thunderbolt had legs and might be chasing her; and then, suddenly discovering that she was safe, made garrulity serve for apology.

​"It isn't often that we have such weather here, it isn't! The sides of the house are waterfalls; the street a river; the garden a lake. I was afraid the pig would drown. I brought him into the kitchen."

"And very humane of you," commented Kent, drily. "Why didn't you bring him in here? Any other stock to be salvaged?"

"There's the chickens; but they have roosts, and—a very great bother to bring them all in the kitchen. Unless——" she stopped, put her arms akimbo and stared at Ivan as if to suggest that with his assistance she might manage.

"Never mind! As you say, they can roost," Kent hastily protested, lest she take him seriously and bring not only the chickens but perhaps the cow, a donkey and the family goat into the household.

Another crash of thunder and flash of light so close as to be simultaneous caused her to throw her arms above her head as if to protect it. Ivan did not so much as raise his eyes. His imperturbability exasperated her.

"I tell you," she exclaimed, pointing a declamatory finger at Ivan, "he's not natural! Sometimes he doesn't answer when a body speaks to him. Something uncanny about him, and—and I don't like it!"

"There is something wrong with him," Kent ​checked her. "He can't hear. Deaf as an adder, or a bad man's conscience."

Her look of incredulity, her sniff, were equivalent to disputing her employer's word. He thought best to explain.

"Listen," he said, "I don't want you to dislike him. He can't help it. When he was a young man he had spinal meningitis. It left him deaf. Before that he was a tutor of languages. He taught me all I know, so I shall always keep him. He can tell what you say to him only by watching your lips—lip reading we call it in English. I want you and every one else to be kind to him, because he's sensitive. Stop picking at him, and be kind."

She shook her head doubtfully; but won over by natural sympathy said, "Too bad! Who'd have thought it! I see how it is. I had a dog with three legs. Four he had until he had an accident with a scythe. Couldn't pull a cart to market after that. My man wanted to kill it. I told him dogs were like men because nobody wants to lose his leg or his tail if he can help it. And nobody wanted a three-legged dog, and he loved me, so I kept him. I'm sorry I ever scolded that Ivan. He's your three-legged dog and you keep him because he loves you."

Kent tried to discourage her limberness of tongue by picking up a book; but she talked ​unceasingly while heaping more fagots around the backlog and dusting the ashes from the grate. Her voice, raised to a snap, brought him back from a reverie.

"You've not heard a word I said!" she declared, vastly annoyed.

"Eh? What's that?" he lifted his eyes and placated her with a smile that was rare and winning.

"A man came from Marken," she repeated, intent on impressing him with prodigious news, "Pierre LaFranz, it was, and says there might be a revolution over there that will shake the world! Shake the world, Pierre said."

Kent could not restrain a laugh.

"Don't you bother about the world," he said, soothingly. "Marken's standing army might give the Pope's Swiss guard a good tussle, but— Humph! If Marken went to war the world would probably never hear of it—let alone shake. Why, Marken's so small it's a secret!"

As he proceeded, she reddened with indignation, tried to speak, and then, wagging her head at the obtuseness of a man who could not believe that the two-by-four kingdom, neighbouring on Steinweg, and regarded with awe by every peasant within forty miles, was not of world-wide importance, retired to her kitchen. She slammed the door with a final expression of disgust; but Kent ​was already thoughtfully recalling what she had said of that inconspicuous, but completely independent kingdom called Marken, a kingdom so small that on a map of Europe it would be but a tiny pink spot; a kingdom so small that no one had ever taken the trouble to upset it.

His face became grave and he emitted a disgruntled, "Humph!" John Rhodes was again intruding on his peace of mind, and could not be put aside. Marken threatening revolt! That meant that the loan of five million dollars that Rhodes had extended to His Majesty Karl II, king of Marken, might prove worthless. And Kent had met the negotiators of that loan, passed upon their securities, accepted them, and caused that loan to be made. Hang Rhodes! He could afford to lose many times that sum; but the question of the wisdom of his agent, Kent, was involved, and a financial agent's judgment is his sole stock in trade. Kent was rather jealous of his, in a secret way. He had laboriously and with inner pride built up a reputation for infallibility, and now Marken might prove a slap at his judgment. Rhodes wouldn't like it. And there were many other agents who——

He twitted his big, capable fingers together and muttered some unpleasant objurgations consigning Karl II, the Marken state loan, and John Rhodes, indiscriminately, to the outer world. It ​was his plain duty, as he was well aware, to travel without delay to Marken and do what he could to protect Rhodes' interests, and that might mean the end of this vacation, and the trout were at their best. Scowling, he swung to his desk, unlocked a drawer, took therefrom a steel despatch box, unlocked that, and sought a paper which he opened and scanned. It was a private report he had caused to be made on Marken affairs, and, now that its substance was recalled and his memory refreshed, it did not appear to add to his mental comfort. He used one or two very vigorous Americanisms, and replaced paper and box in the desk. He thumped vigorously on the floor with his heel and when the huge man in the corner, feeling the shock, looked up, addressed him in a voiceless whisper of the lips.

"Ivan, have you happened to learn anything about a revolt over in Marken? You see more of these tongue-wagging peasants than I do."

The giant advanced to the desk across which he spoke.

"No, sir, not exactly a revolution; but I heard they were discontented over there. Some of the villagers said—you know it is an autocratic government?"

"Yes. Autocratic government with a man born to the job who doesn't happen to be a real, good, all-wool-and-a-yard-wide autocrat. Good deal like ​a fellow being born to inherit a farm whose nearest idea he has of a plough is an ice scraper for cocktails."

Whilst Kent spoke Ivan's eyes were fixed on his lips, attentively; but discerning that his employer's speech was at an end, he slowly wagged his massive head, and added all his information.

"They say, sir, that the king is credited with being a well-meaning man, but not just the one to advance the kingdom. They are afraid Marken will be swallowed by some of the big fish around it."

"That's where an autocrat comes in," declared Kent. "A first-class autocrat ought to be a big enough fish to go out, and, under the guise of charity, culture, or some other bosh like that, swallow the other fellow first. Any sort of an excuse will do, just so he eats them, dead or alive. I'm rather a believer in autocrats, myself. Now, if I were advising Karl the Second, I'd say——"

He stopped abruptly, interrupted by a prolonged peal of thunder, and when it died away there became audible a terrific bumping and thumping on the door outside as some one knocked for ingress. At the same moment the door from the kitchen opened hurriedly, and the gnarled widow entered.

"Some one wants in—some one who raps on the outside door," she grumbled.

​"Well, let them in," said Kent, and Ivan, reading his lips, straightened up and stepped backward to his corner intent on withdrawing himself now that others desired audience with his employer.

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CHAPTER TWO

THE widow opened the door leading from the room to the little storm entrance, a mere square of vestibule, and withdrew the bolts from the outer door. She swung it wide and stepped back. Instantly, as if already rendered impatient by the delay, a man stepped inside. A long raincoat dripped water on the floor and the visor of his military cap trickled until, annoyed, he jerked it from his head and wiped his brow with his hand. He appeared to be scarcely more than thirty years of age, and of slender frame, but with an erect carriage that lent him a false dimension of height.

Close behind him crowded a burly, gray-haired man with fierce moustaches demanding more attention than any other part of his face, who pursed his lips and blew the water from this adornment with a single loud, explosive "Poof!" His eyes, round, pale, and staring, almost child-like but appraising, fixed themselves on Kent across his leader's shoulder, and at sight of them Kent, who had looked up with casual curiosity, smiled slightly and arose.

​"We are sorry to disturb you," said the younger man, in apologetic French, "but we fail to find an inn. Yours was the only light. Can you direct us——"

"There is no inn open at this hour. We can perhaps accommodate you," Kent replied, and Ivan, reading his lips, lifted his eyebrows, knowing that within less than a quarter of a mile was one of late habit though excellent repute.

"Then——" The young man turned dejectedly as if to consult his companion, while Keut watched him,

"Perhaps," suggested Kent, "you could be comfortable here; you and—your friend. You're welcome."

Ivan wondered at his pertinacity.

"But her High—My sister and her maid are outside," the younger man said, with faint eagerness. "My sister and her maid, and the man who—their chauffeur. Can you provide for so many?"

"Easily, if you don't mind a little discomfort," was the instant response. "Bring them in. Don't keep them out there in the rain."

The elder man, with a grunt, swung round and reopened the door of the vestibule through which the younger man, as if too relieved to think for the moment of offering thanks, preceded him out into the storm.

​"You said there was no inn!" indignantly remonstrated the old peasant woman. "You said that——"

"S-s-sh!" Kent silenced her, with twinkling eyes. "Forget that," he said, quietly. "All you are to do is to see that they are made comfortable. Understand?" he rapped out like an order, on discovering that she still hesitated. Grumbling, but obedient, and more or less subjugated, she turned back toward her kitchen just as the outer door opened and through it stepped a young woman who, without hesitation, walked to the fire and with gloved fingers fumbled at the buttons of her coat, and doffed it with an air of satisfaction, exposing a graceful, well-rounded figure clad in a serviceable tailored costume. Kent, watching her, and ignored, saw that her fine eyes were sombre and absent, as if her mind were concentrated on something other than her surroundings, and that her hands, when ungloved and lifted with feminine habitude to adjust her disordered, exquisite hair, were white and graceful. Her features were refined, sensitive, well bred, and of strength. Her lips, grave, and compressed, made him wonder what they might be like when relaxed by laughter. Tenderness and strength, he decided, were her characteristics and he was not quite certain but what, under different circumstances, ​she might appear beautiful; even to the indifferent judgment of a fiscal agent.

Behind her came a most haughty personage carrying a jewel case. Nothing save the fact that she carried it indicated that this might be the maid and the other the mistress.

"Well," said the lady with the box, addressing him abruptly, "can't you offer a chair?"

She fixed Kent with a haughty stare, and he, realising that in his inspection of his new guest he had forgotten to be polite, felt rebuffed, and hastened to make amends.

"Pardon me," he said, lamely. "I forgot."

He drew two chairs toward the fireplace, and was then aware that during his ministrations the door had opened and another young man had entered carrying a suitcase and handbag. This, he decided, eyeing the visitor's long, gauntleted gloves, was the chauffeur. The latter carefully deposited the luggage out of the way at one side, removed his cap and stood by the door. He appeared to be the youngest of the party and was clean and fearless of face and eyes. Kent, the student of men, mentally valuing him, concluded that he liked the young man as one who could be depended upon in almost any emergency. He had scant time for his inspection; for the door from the vestibule again swung open and the two men who had first disturbed him appeared, closed the ​door after them and divested themselves of their raincoats. The younger man, evidently the leader of the party, was clad in the uniform of an officer of hussars from which the shoulder insignia was missing, and his high boot tops were here and there splattered with mud, proof that his ride had been far from leisurely. One of the frogs of his coat braid had been torn loose and dangled by a thread as if it had been ripped away in the haste of fastening it, and one of his spurs was missing. He fumbled absently at his belt, unfastened it, and threw belt and sword carelessly on top of the suitcase before turning toward the fire. His stout and elderly companion was far from being as neat in his attire, being clad in a rather startling mixture consisting of a pair of dress trousers tucked into cavalry boots, a dress waistcoat exposing a soiled dress shirt front, and a heavy hunting coat from each pocket of which protruded letters and papers crammed hastily inward. Around his portly waist was strapped a cavalry sabre and, mixed with the papers in one pocket of his coat, projected the handle of a huge revolver. Before he was clear of his raincoat he began roaring orders like an important guest newly arrived at an inn.

"Here, Woman," he called to the aged peasant dame. "Have some one take our horses to a stable, rub them down, water and feed them. Not ​too much, mind you! And you might take these raincoats out and clean the mud off the skirts. And bring us all something hot to drink. Quickly! We're half frozen and wet to our hearts!"

With considerable resentment she faced Kent, as if accepting orders from none other, and he, smiling sardonically, made a swift gesture commanding her to obey. She sniffed her nose high in the air, tossed her head and disappeared. The younger man, in the meantime, with an air of great weariness and dejection, dropped into a chair by the side of the fireplace, where he suddenly leaned forward until his elbows rested on his knees and held his white, well-kept hands toward the blaze. On one of his fingers was a huge old signet ring that now and then he absently twisted in distraction, while moodily staring in front of him.

Kent, finding himself still ignored, smiled knowingly and reoccupied his chair by the desk, where he pretended to absorb himself in a book. Ivan, taking the cue from his master, resumed his search of the book shelves as if receiving unexpected guests on such a night was a regular routine, and the young officer by the door, on an invitation from the leader of the group, joined the others by the fireplace in an attitude of respectful waiting.

"Well, we are this far and——" began the elder man, in his booming French, and then, recalling that they were not alone, turned stiffly and ​stared at Kent, made a significant gesture of warning with his hand, and changed to a dialect language that was plainly a mixture of German, French and Italian in quality. Had he been observing the financial agent he might have been startled by another flicker of a smile on that absorbed gentleman's features due to the fact that Kent, the polyglot, spoke the language of Marken almost as fluently as he did his own tongue.

"And a close call it was, too, Your Majesty. It was very fortunate that I had the foresight to divert them from following Captain Paulo across the border by——"

The king of Marken interrupted him impatiently.

"Your foresight? Humph! It seems to me that if your foresight as chancellor of my kingdom had amounted to much, we should never have been compelled to run like a hutch of rabbits to save our lives! But, anyway, my sister is safe," he concluded, and then observing that the acting chauffeur, Captain Paulo, appeared restlessly eager to speak, added, "What is it, Paulo?"

"Does it not seem best, Sire, that I stand guard outside the door for at least an hour or two to make certain that we are not pursued, even here across the border? We are but an hour's ride from it——"

​He hesitated. The king vented a short, bitter laugh.

"Go ahead," he said. "What you mean to say is that our cousin, Baron Provarsk, is not the sort to pay much attention to boundaries on a dark night when out for a chase?"

"Exactly, Sir."

"Then do as you wish," the king assented, with a shrug of his shoulders and a gesture of helplessness. Instantly, and with an air of willingness, the young officer saluted and passed outside to stand guard in the storm.

"Karl, I can not yet see the sense of all this," asserted the princess, who up to now had not spoken, and Kent caught himself starting at the musical sound of her voice.

"But, Your Royal Highness!" blurted the chancellor, "it would have been extremely dangerous for you to have remained there. I foresaw that, and being a man of action, I——"

He paused, interrupted by the opening of the door from the kitchen and the appearance of the peasant woman wearing, draped about her head and shoulders, a gunny sack that she had used to protect herself from the rain. She glared haughtily at the visitors and spoke directly to Kent, the only one she acknowledged as her master.

"I have put the horses in the woodshed," she ​announced. "That fool Peter helped. He is feeding them now. The poor beasts! Scandalous, I call it, to ride animals so hard on such a night!"

Kent smiled at her tolerantly.

"That being done," he said, "you will now prepare the best chamber for our lady guests. Make it comfortable in every way you can. After that, do the best you can with other rooms."

The lady's maid, as if to assure herself of the princess' comfort, arose, saying, "I will help you. Please lead the way," and, when the peasant woman disappeared, followed her. Kent, after a glance at his guests, who, as if too dejected to be interested in anything save their own plight, still stared at the fire, again resumed his pretence of reading. Now and then his bushy eyebrows tightened and his mouth took on a grim, firm look, as if he were slowly threshing his way toward a resolution; but his guests, evidently feeling safe behind the barrier of their language, again took up their conversation.

"What I fail to understand, despite your somewhat lame explanations, Von Glutz," remarked the king with asperity, "is how Provarsk could have hatched his plot and taken possession of the palace before you suspected it."

"A chancellor can not see everything," doggedly grumbled Von Glutz. "And you will ​remember, Sire, that it was you who did away with our secret service."

"Bah! Why not! It accomplished nothing, and cost much to keep."

"Now when your father was alive, under whom you must not forget I had the extreme honour to act as chancellor——" began Von Glutz, crustily and pompously.

"Yes, Father willed you to us," interjected the princess with acerbity.

The chancellor said, "Humph! Hum-m!" noisily, and then, having cleared his throat preparatory to speaking, contented himself by getting extremely red in the face, opened his lips, closed them, and tugged at his white moustache.

"And things went from bad to worse, regardless of all I wanted to do for my people!" The king spoke with a voice of regret and sorrow.

This evidence of sincerity appeared to be the final spur necessary to bring Kent to a decision. He turned slowly around and stared hard at the young man, then abruptly closed his book, tossed it on the table and said, addressing him in the tongue of Marken, "And so, abandoning your good intentions, you ran away, eh?"

The falling of one of the beams of the ceiling could scarcely have proven more startling to the three refugees by the fireplace. The king pivoted in his chair and faced Kent with a look of ​consternation. The princess, aghast, opened her eyes widely, and the chancellor, bristling with annoyance, jumped to his feet and roared loudly, "What business have you listening? Do you know whom you are addressing?"

To a man who, throughout his life, had been accustomed to see his hearers quail when he vented that tremendous roar, the effect was more than disappointing. The roar seemed to have lost its efficacy; for the financial agent merely grinned at him and snapped his fingers. He even had the temerity to eye the chancellor slowly from his round eyes down to the tips of his boots, then back up again; almost contemptuously, but with infinite good nature. Yet there was something about him suggesting that he might grin just as pleasantly if he were ordering the chancellor to be taken out to the hen house and hanged by his fat neck.

"Suppose you drop that style of talk with me," he said at last, "and sit down like a good boy. Certainly I know whom I address. Otherwise—Humph! I don't think I'd take the trouble. This pleasant little party consists, first, of Her Royal Highness, Princess Eloise; second, of His Majesty, Karl Second, King of Marken, and third, of His Excellency, that clever, astute and far-sighted chancellor, Baron Von Glutz."

He chuckled softly as the chancellor writhed under his sarcasm, stuttered, threatened ​apoplexy, and then added, with a soft drawl that even the language of Marken could not hide, "Don't trouble to speak, Baron, if it hurts you. I undoubtedly have the advantage of you in this, that while you don't know who I am, which after all matters but little, I know all about you."

"You—you—you—Impudence, I call it! How dare you——"

"Easy! Easy, Baron," he admonished, with much of the good nature vanishing from his eyes, and his firm mouth adjusting itself to harshness. "Best not make a fool of yourself. You have my permission to scowl at me. Perhaps it's just as well, so that in future meetings, if there are any, you can identify me quickly and thus learn to suppress what I fear is—shall we say—a rather truculent temper."

The king, who had watched him closely, evidently had greater control of his emotions and faced his chancellor sharply.

"Baron, sit down," he said, quietly. "We are not in a position to domineer. You forget yourself. We are this gentleman's guests, although, as he says, he has an advantage of knowledge."

Kent refused to accept this suggestion that he make himself known and turned to his desk and the steel despatch box which he had opened and took therefrom a packet of papers that rustled as he spread them before him.

​"That there may be no further doubt of my knowledge," he said, drily, "and that you may realise how thoroughly I do know you, I ask you to kindly listen while I read."

The face of the princess expressed nothing save expectancy, while the king watched his strange host with a look of curiosity. The chancellor, subdued momentarily by the command of his superior, fidgeted and moved restlessly in his chair.

Without preliminary, Kent read, slowly, distinctly, as if to impress his words upon them, but in rather a kindly tone of tolerance:

"'In obedience to your request for a thorough report, I submit as follows: After some six weeks of study of the situation, I may add. His Majesty Karl II is in character a well-meaning, morally clean young man. He has neither bad nor extravagant habits. There is small doubt that he cares for his people and has at all times their welfare at heart. His unfortunate failing is that he clings to the old monarchical ideas, but without the strength and firmness to enforce them upon his subjects and thereby control them. He may possibly have the courage to face the issues that are certain to confront him as a ruler, but I am inclined to doubt it. He is too kindly disposed and is given to the evasion of harsh or unpleasant duties, the prompt meeting and deciding of which can alone make his reign a success. I ​had not the means of studying him very closely, and therefore may be mistaken; yet I can not help but regard him, until he proves otherwise, as what is termed a Slacker.'"

He paused and looked up at the king, who bit his lip, frowned thoughtfully, and said, quietly, "It is the truth!"

The princess gazed at her brother angrily, and urged him to speak in his own defence.

"Karl! Karl!" she demanded indignantly. "Are you going to sit here and let a stranger dare to criticise you in this manner?"

"If the princess will but listen," Kent began politely, and with an air of deference; but was interrupted by the chancellor, who again blustered until he was silenced. And that, too, without politeness or deference.

"Suppose, Baron, you keep out of this!" Kent's voice was stern albeit satirical. "No, no; wait a moment, and I'll give you an excuse to talk. The best part of this report deals with you, and no doubt an outside appraisal of your character might prove interesting."

He flipped the pages over rapidly, paying no heed to the chancellor's angry protests, until he interrupted with a dry, "Here we are!" and again read aloud: "'Chancellor Von Glutz is in person a large, pot-bellied man with a bulbous red nose, eyes like a golliwog's, given to boasting, ​over-eating and arrogance, who has a vastly exalted opinion of himself; and is, in reality, a man of but mediocre ability.' Steady! Steady, Baron! I've not finished."

"Yes, do be quiet!" insisted the king, with a slight grin of satisfaction.

"'It is largely due to his incompetence and pig-headedness that the kingdom is secretly in a state of unrest at the time of rendering this report; but it is doubtful if the king will dismiss him from office inasmuch as the baron is a sort of family heirloom. I find nothing to his credit save that he is bluntly honest and loyal.'"

"There you are, Baron!" the king laughed, almost gleefully; but the chancellor, after gasping like a large and overfat codfish hauled from deep water, was now on his feet, bristling with rage, his eyes completely round and blazing, his moustaches quivering, his face red, and his fist clenched and threatening assault on Kent, who grinned cheerfully and said in English, "Hoity-toity! Got a rise out of you that time, you old porpoise!"

"By what right, I demand to know," shouted the baron, "did you dare to send a detective to Marken? You have gone too far, even if we do have to accept you as host. By what right, sir? Answer me!"

Kent's bushy eyebrows closed in a heavy frown and all tolerance and good-humour disappeared. ​Even his voice underwent a subtle change and became frigid and emphatic. His eyes coldly met and held those of the chancellor.

"If any one had the right to investigate the procedure by which you and your king, between you, botched up the affairs of Marken, I am that man. Let's be done with paltering, flattery, and rubbish, and talk plainly. I happen to be Richard Kent, who, as confidential agent for John Rhodes, gave the unfortunate advice by which he advanced five million dollars in gold to start Karl the Second, just come to the throne, free from other debt. Oh, I had right enough! You may rest assured."

As if touched by an electric spark, the king arose from his chair, stared for an instant, and then slowly dropped back again with a long sigh of resignation. Von Glutz breathed heavily through his nose, and appeared to wilt into an equal state of helplessness. There was a moment's silence in which Kent sternly eyed him, and then a voice broke out, filled with anger and defiance, that of the princess Eloise.

"And so," she said, scornfully, "the vultures gather on the borders, waiting to fatten from our misfortunes!"

"Mademoiselle—Your Royal Highness! You——"

​She swept his attempted defence aside with an eloquent gesture.

"John Rhodes! The nightmare that has been over our heads for four years. Men might worry and work, but John Rhodes' interest must be paid! That magnificent usurer who thrives fat from the misfortunes of Nations, of peoples, of private enterprises. The gigantic spider that crouched behind the war, waiting, that he might plunge forward with money and twist his prey harder than ever. Shylock clutched and hung to his pitiable victims. And you have the affrontery to tell us here to-night, when we are your reluctant guests, with everything lost behind us, that you are the agent of the infamous John Rhodes!"

Kent looked at her in a strange admixture of annoyance and admiration. Here, at least, was one who was not afraid. His eyes lowered themselves to the papers on his desk. And it was as if the great John Rhodes before whom, as she said, kings and financiers alike had trembled, was for the first time being presented to Kent's mind in true light. She waited for his defence; indeed, demanded it as eloquently through the silence of the room as if she had voiced long sentences asking him what he could say to purge from the character of John Rhodes those charges and imputations that she had so stormily assembled against him.

​"It is true," he said, thoughtfully, "that I am the agent of John Rhodes. But I have not, as your Royal Highness implies, been set here as a spy in waiting for your flight—for an abdication, or to make terms for John Rhodes' protection. My being here is an accident."

She shrugged her shoulders with an air of disdain, as if expecting a financial agent to evade or lie. It added to his distress. Men he understood, and could fight. He was no quaverer. He had, in his capacity as agent, boldly met and boldly browbeaten half the chancelleries of Europe. His nerve and bravery were recognised by those of far more importance than any one connected with this paltry, petty, betinselled little kingdom that had survived by accident, and whose disruption had been delayed by his own efforts, merely because it was the whim of John Rhodes, for financial purposes of his own, that it should continue to exist.

"An accident?" she said, mockingly. "An accident! They are strange, such accidents as these! Mr. Richard Kent admits to being the financial emissary for the gentle Mr. Rhodes! Rhodes! whose crimes of selfishness and remissness are greater than those of any man living. Who ever heard of John Rhodes ever doing anything to lessen the cares and sorrows of kingdoms, or of peoples? The Rothschilds, with less power than ​this hard-hearted American, found ways to save many; but not so Rhodes. There was in them a respect for the dignity of those who had suffered responsibilities and a desire to assist those nations that struggled for existence, and because they had endured, were worthy of some respect and veneration; but Rhodes, the cruel, uncanny, and monstrous genius of money, has no such saving grace. Not even you, his agent, can truthfully tell of one unselfish and kindly act in his career. I am not afraid to tell you this, though 'like master like man' is a fine old proverb in your tongue. And you have the temerity to declare that you were not lying here in wait; that you——"

Without thought she had advanced, as she tempestuously spoke, until she stood at the end of the desk, and he, to meet her approach, arose and, from its opposite side, stood and looked at her. The king and chancellor in turn tried to check her, but she imperiously waved them aside. Her beauty alone would have commanded deference from Kent; but there was added to it the desperate indignation of tricked fearlessness, and a reckless desire to speak that over which she had thought in previous days. It was debt that had ruined her house. And the agent of debt, justly or unjustly, stood before her for arraignment.

"Does not your Royal Highness understand," ​objected the chancellor pleadingly, "that you are making a powerful enemy of the only man, possibly, who can assit us in the future?"

"Future? There is no future!" she declared, impatiently gesturing the baron aside; but Kent, who stood almost stolidly under her words, objected to interference.

"If you please, Baron," he said, steadily, "I prefer that the princess have her say. She is at least candid and honest. From her at least I shall not find subterfuge." He stepped around the side of the desk until his back was to Von Glutz, and also by the change he carelessly and impolitely ignored the king.

"I implore your Highness to proceed," he said, respectfully, yet firmly meeting her eyes. "There is nothing that so clarifies the atmosphere of misunderstandings as freely uttered truths. And—Mademoiselle—even a money lender may be permitted to admire bravery such as yours. I have told you that my being here was an accident. I told the truth. Is it fair and just to believe that I also may not be candid? To condemn me, unheard, as a liar? Neither of us is afraid! I listen."

For some reason that she could not have analysed, her defiance faltered and waned. There was the protest of honour affronted in his quiet musical voice, that had dismissed severity and ​command from its tone when he turned to her from the faltering chancellor; and she suddenly discerned in this alien some prodigious power, some inflexible strength, that hitherto, blinded by anger, she had not recognised.

"What is the need?" she asked lamely. "You are in a position to laugh at our distress; a distress that you do not, and can not, understand! Oh, if I were a man——" She paused. He smiled vaguely, at this sign of femininity.

"Other women have said that," he declared, softly. "Other brave women ever since thrones and kings began. It is the most hackneyed cry of creation. And I doubt not that if you were——"

He turned sharply as the sound of a door opening disturbed him, and glanced across the room to where the lady-in-waiting had entered and stood with her hand upon the latch.

"Your Royal Highness' apartment is ready," the lady-in-waiting said, as perfunctorily as if they were still in a royal palace and undisturbed. The king arose to his feet, wearily, and the chancellor bowed punctiliously before the princess as she slowly turned and advanced toward the door. She paused for an instant, as if torn by a desire to speak again, hesitated with other words on her lips, perhaps those of appeal to the man she had so valiantly defied, and then slowly passed from sight.

​

CHAPTER THREE

THE king, harassed by his own misfortunes, slowly dropped back to his seat, and resumed his listless attitude while staring into the fire that crackled and glowed as a black log dropped, broken, to be consumed in the bed of embers beneath, symbol of his broken kingdom from which he had fled. The chancellor, diplomatic, become obsequious in the presence of the man who stood as a possible dictator of destiny, stared at Kent, and resumed that nervous tugging at his moustache. Kent, bent from the hips forward, still leaned across the desk, with his eyes fastened absently on the door through which the princess had departed.

"I hope," said the chancellor, apologetically, "that Mister Kent does not take too seriously what the Princess Eloise has said? Her Royal Highness is exhausted. She has endured much to-night, and—at times all of us are worn to irritability."

Abruptly Kent scowled at him and stood erect. Almost resentfully, he said, "The princess requires no champion. She appears abundantly ​able to fight her own battles. Better, I might suggest, than some of those stalwarts around her."

Heedless of the chancellor's discomfiture, he walked around the desk and seated himself, with all the air of energy and business capability that dominated him when on guard. He folded the scattered papers, placed them in an envelope, put them back into the despatch box, and then brusquely turned toward the king.

"Now that we understand more or less of the conditions," he said, coldly, "I should like to have you tell me exactly what happened in Marken that explains your presence here in this village. You need not hesitate or stand on your dignity. I have talked with other fallen kings. I have made and unmade some of them," he added, with grim significance.

The king looked at him and smiled, almost sadly, yet not without dignity. The chancellor, after a perplexed and hesitating glance, grunted, wiped his bald head with his handkerchief, and left the task of reply to royalty. The king shrugged his shoulders, and his eyes wandered around the room, as he mentally formulated speech and sought the true beginning. They fell upon Ivan, and for the first time he appeared cognisant of his presence.

"Perhaps," he suggested, "in the discussion ​of a subject so delicate as the admission of one's own defeats it would be better if we were alone."

Kent turned toward Ivan. He started to explain the latter's affliction and then, checking himself, said, "Quite right! It is better if we are alone."

It flashed through his mind that it might be as well to humour the king, and also mental habit controlled him, a habit of caution that had grown from the policy that it was far better never to tell anything that could remain untold. He saw that his follower's eyes were on his lips, and said, "Ivan, you may go. I shall not want you this evening."

The giant, alert in his own world of silence, smiled quietly, understanding all that was implied, and turned toward the door with the lost book in his hands.

"Thank you," he said. "If you need me, I shall be in my room. Good night, sir!"

He bowed to Kent's guests and passed out, while the king, with an air of relief, watched his departure.

"Well," said the king abruptly, after a minute's silence, "I tried to reform and be a father to my people without giving offence, and—made a mess of it!"

Kent liked him for the frankness of his ​confession, and his eyes softened to a more friendly shade.

"His Majesty was not——" began the chancellor.

"Suppose you let him tell it," interrupted the financier. "He seems to have maintained his position as well as you did yours."

The king lifted his hand, palm outwards, toward the chancellor, and it was quite as effective as if the open palm had been clapped over the chancellor's mouth.

"Go ahead," Kent urged the king. "You tried reforms and they didn't succeed. Most of them don't. Er — what particular mania — I mean brand of reformation, was yours? Anti-gambling? Prohibition? Eugenics? Votes for women? Universal peace? What was it you tried?"

At first the king scowled at the American, a good, hearty scowl of outraged dignity, and then discerning that beneath the banter was more or less of sympathy, smiled a trifle sadly.

"I tried," he said, quietly, "to give them more liberty."

"Oh!" Kent let the exclamation slip. And then, after a slight pause, "I remember that yours was an absolute monarchy. Always has been; people brought up to respect the king boisterously when he happened to be respectable, and to swallow their disrespect when he happened to be the ​other thing. May I ask what form of liberty you proposed? Was it magna charta, or something like that?"

"Of course not!" indignantly objected the chancellor. "The rights of the crown had to be respected."

"Um-m-mh! So! Sort of curtailed liberty, eh, with a leash on it that could be jerked when necessity arose? Just like an April Fool purse designed by a small boy who lurks around the corner."

"I gave them councils where they could vote," protested the king. "That was a step toward liberty, wasn't it?"

"But I suppose your very able chancellor saw to it that you could veto any act passed, and in fact dissolve them, any time they had plans you did not approve of?"

The king tried to appear offended, and the chancellor was sulky and sullen.

"Did you finally dissolve them?" Kent asked, when neither answered.

"No," said the king, sadly. "I tried to reason with them. That was after one of them proposed a resolution inviting me to abdicate."

Kent leaned back and laughed quietly.

"Listen!" he said. "There are just two ways of reasoning with a man who tries to throw you out of your own house. If he is big enough to ​do it, grin and move. If he isn't, call for the police or take a club and chase him into the middle of the next block. It appears they were strong enough to put you out, so—here you are!"

"No, you are wrong," disputed the king. "It was not the people who caused me to leave. It was my cousin, Baron Provarsk, who wants to rule in my place, and who laughs and snaps his fingers at any idea of reform."

"I rather approve of him," Kent volunteered. "How did he do it?"

"He has money. He gathered a good-sized band of mercenaries from the surrounding states, without our knowing it, surprised the palace to-night, which was easy because I have dispensed with much of a guard, and we had to escape."

"His Majesty fails to be explicit," declared the chancellor, crustily. "Provarsk would have murdered him."

"But what I can't understand," said Kent, "is why you didn't fight it out? Why you two come mounted? Why Her Royal Highness arrives in a car accompanied by a maid and one officer? Why didn't all——"

"When the attack was made it was entirely unexpected," explained the king. "I had not the faintest fear that any of my subjects would lay hands on my person. I was unable to defend the palace alone, and couldn't escape and leave my ​sister there at Provarsk's mercy. You see, Sir, my sister was also one of his objects. Twice he has tried to marry her. It was because I didn't want her to fall into his clutches that we ran away. We would have remained to fight it out but for her presence. We did hold them off until Captain Paulo had succeeded in carying her away, then, — well — the chancellor and I mounted, led Provarsk's followers off in the wrong direction to give Paulo time, and rejoined my sister here at this village."

"We fought," observed the chancellor, as if theirs had been an achievement scarcely worthy of note. "We held them up from door to door, and charged them once in the woods, cutting our way through and back again."

The king nodded agreement, and Kent, astonished, studied both his and the chancellor's faces as if he had discovered unexpected cause for commendation.

"His Majesty made most excellent sword play," observed the chancellor. "We dared not fire lest we bring others against us."

The king lifted his hand in deprecation.

"Well, you did, Sire," insisted the chancellor.

"No more, nor as much, as you, Baron," protested the king.

"I did not mind that so much as the difficulties ​of getting Her Royal Highness to assent," boomed the chancellor.

"My sister," explained the king to the financier, "is—somewhat difficult. She has—and I don't mean this as disparagement or criticism—quite a will and temper of her own. She rather stubbornly insisted on all of us remaining and fighting to the death."

"Positively refused to recognise the hopelessness of the odds," the chancellor seconded. "Declared she would go and face them alone, which was just what Provarsk would have liked. Tried to call for help by telephone, but Provarsk's crew had cut the wires. Tried to shoot a man who crawled round the balcony toward her chamber, but the pistol wasn't loaded. It was very difficult, sir. Very. We had to threaten to carry her away by force for her own safety before she would go."

"Whose task was that?" asked Kent.

"His Majesty's."

"I should say that, too, required some bravery," commented the American.

"It did," assented Von Glutz, grinning drily and stroking his nose, in an effort to hide his mirth.

"And this Paulo is?" Kent questioned.

"The captain of the king's guard, which unfortunately consists, owing to His Majesty's ​desire to appear democratic, and also to conduct the affairs of the kingdom with the utmost economy, of barely four-score men, of whom but five are ever on palace duty. Provarsk had about fifty followers," he concluded, as if to explain how the palace had been overwhelmed.

Kent leaned his chin on his hand and meditated for a time and then said, "I don't see how you could have done anything else than escape from the palace; but why cross the border?"

"There seemed no other direction open," replied the king, with a heavy sigh of discouragement.

"But certainly, if what I understand is correct, you must have had some friend who could shelter you until you could formulate some definite plan?"

"Yes; but that," said the king, "might have meant civil war. Bloodshed. And I don't want any of my people killed on my account. If they have decided that the country and their happiness are more assured by my going—well—I must go!"

"What do you think on those points?" Kent demanded, frowning at the king.

"If it were anybody but Provarsk——" the latter faltered, with an air of resignation.

"Provarsk is a reactionary! A would-be tyrant! A man who would think no more of taking ​one or a hundred lives, than he would of throwing dice for his castle," Von Glutz roared.

"With the natural result that if he gets into power, the people of Marken will at least have a ruler," Kent retorted. "And quite plainly, from my way of thinking, that is what they have lacked. The country has had a king who, with the best of intentions, has been misunderstood. Firmness was the element lacking. To like a man's motives but to doubt his ability to carry any of them through is even worse than to doubt his motives, but be certain that, whatever they are, he will force them over. A resolute bad man is frequently better than a vacillating good man."

The king nodded his head and scowled at the fireplace.

"I admit all that — now that it is too late," he said, in a bitter monotone.

"Too late! Heavens, man, you don't mean to tell me that you are brave enough to cut your way through a band of murderers in the night, after defending your sister, and yet are ready to abdicate rather than make another fight for it, do you? Humph!"

Kent's tone conveyed contempt mixed with wonder.

"I am not personally afraid of anything, sir," declared the king, nettled. "But I do not want, and will not have, hundreds, perhaps thousands of ​men killed on my acount. After all, they are my people, as they have been the people of my ancestors for hundreds of years! I have conceived it to be my duty to protect them and their happiness and welfare."

"Well spoken," said Kent. "Very nice theory, too; but it lacks this much: that quite frequently it is necessary to compel people to do the right things for their own happiness. For this reason we sometimes spank boys when they run away from schools; paddle them when they yield to the delights of chewing tobacco; admonish our daughters when they go to places of gaiety that they should not enter; whip our dogs when they begin to delight in snapping at strangers' heels; and a thousand and one other things that make the admonished howl or yelp at the time, but work out for their own good."

He stared in a kindly way at the king for a moment, as if expecting the latter to dispute, and then added, grimly, "If I were in your place, I'd not let this man Provarsk win so easily. I'd fight!"

"I would, if I knew how!" The king spoke impetuously.

"But you must have some friend who can assist you," suggested Kent. "Some man you can depend upon."

The king shook his head sadly.

​"There are many who like me," he said; "but they fear Provarsk."

"Pooh!" Kent accompanied himself with a snap of his fingers.

"If His Majesty would run the risk of a war——" began the chancellor.

"Rubbish!" exclaimed Kent. "War, nothing! The thing to do is to beat him at his own game. See here, young man,—I beg Your Majesty's pardon—you've got to do it! You've got to be one of two things, a king or a coward. You've got to decide to-night, too, before the people of Marken know that you have been driven out by Provarsk. Don't you understand that from to-night you are either just beginning or just finished?"

"If I could see any way on earth without civil war," declared the king, desperately, "I'd try it."

Kent studied him closely, with steady eyes, and then turned to his desk and consulted a memorandum book.

"I'm going to be perfectly frank with you," he said, at last. "It doesn't matter much to me who is the ruler of Marken; but I like you for the ideals you have had, and admire your sister for wishing to stay to the ultimate end. And most of all, I've got considerable at stake in this myself, because John Rhodes hasn't much use for a man who causes him to lose a million pounds, and what's more, he's a good fighter. He does pretty ​much as I suggest. Besides, this strikes me as an interesting proposition, and at present I haven't much to do. Provarsk is promising. I admire him, too. It requires courage to do what he has done."

He suddenly threw the book back into the drawer and shoved the latter shut with an emphatic bang. He arose from his chair, frowned thoughtfully at the lampshade, then looked across it at the king, who was watching him, as if fascinated by his heavy, square-cut American face. He seemed to have arrived at an audacious resolution.

"I'll make a bargain with you," he said, chopping his sentences. "You assist me and I'll assist you—under—let us say—very peculiar conditions. If you will agree to do exactly as I say, I'll either make a real king of you, or give you a chance to die like a man instead of a runaway. And if we fail, we'll fail together. But I shall at least make an effort to save John Rhodes' money, and you your throne! Be certain of that!"

The king looked at him hopefully, and the chancellor with grudging respect.

"I can't see what else I can do but listen," said the king. "I am—as you see. What do you propose?"

"This," said Kent, deliberately; "that you are to go back to your country and fight it out; but that you are to fight it out just as I direct; that ​from now onward, until I have recovered the money John Rhodes lent you, which would naturally mean the clearing of Marken's finances and a restoration of peace and industry, I am to be the absolute, untrammelled dictator of your kingdom. Not only that, but that you and this chancellor, or any other that I name, are to do exactly as I order. I'm to be temporarily the tyrant, the ruler. Also that not a soul on earth besides ourselves is to know that I am such. I can be anything we wish, a visitor at court, or anything that doesn't matter, so long as you and the baron here obey me implicitly, no matter how difficult my demand."

The king gasped and stared at him as if fascinated, while the chancellor went red and white by turns. Both were speechless at the boldness of his proposition.

"Come," he said, in a friendly tone, "you've everything to gain and nothing to lose. You've lost all you had, both of you. And I believe, if you agree to give me a free hand, that we can succeed. Administration is, after all, largely a matter of finance. Furthermore, if you do not agree to this, I am compelled to take steps immediately to ally myself with Provarsk, the insurgent, for the protection of that loan which I caused to be made, and which I represent. Hence, after to-night, I shall be either your friend or your ​enemy! No half-way measures with me. I must be one or the other, squarely, uncompromisingly. You must decide."

The king settled back into his chair, and appeared to hesitate and consider, while the chancellor fixed his stare on the floor, greatly perturbed, and quite helpless. The old clock in the corner ticked heavily, and the rain lashed the windows audibly, as if waiting outside the room were enemies, defiant and challenging onslaught. The American slowly opened his strong box a second time, selected some papers with due care, and held them toward the king.

"That there may be no doubt in your mind that I am the original man who made the loan to your government, and that I am empowered by John Rhodes to act as I deem best, you will please read these. They will serve as credentials."

He handed the papers to the king, who read them and handed them back; but with an increased look of respect in his eyes. His gaze shifted back to the chancellor, then, almost absently, so evident was his concentration, to the fire dogs. Plainly he was hesitating, yet devoid of funds or other plans, an exile, tempted to plunge.

"If you were out of money, why didn't you sell those manganese mines you own, or a concession on them for a number of years?" Kent asked the king as if by afterthought.

​"Because I could conceive of no one being fool enough to offer me such a sum for a concession," replied the king. "It would require more capital or labour than I can produce to make them pay." Kent stared speculatively at him, and took a turn through the room.

"I'm not certain that I wouldn't be foolish enough to try it," he said thoughtfully. "I've been well informed that they are valuable. Why not grant me a twenty-year concession, out of which I give you ten per cent of the profit; but with this clear agreement: that I am to have full power to handle you and your kingdom to make them pay? It's the only way I can find to save Rhodes' money for him."

The king looked tempted, yet cautiously considerate; but did not answer in haste.

Kent paced the room thoughtfully, and at last, with a kindly air, walked across and laid his hand on the king's shoulder.

"You are not a king to me," he said, quietly. "You are just a fine, brave young fellow, with high ideals, who deserves a chance. I hate to see as decent a young chap as you are fail, irretrievably, for the want of some one to back him, and to show him the way through. We don't have kings in my country; but we have the young fellows. And I have helped a lot of them, when about all they needed was some one to pat them on ​the back and say, 'It's all right, Boy. You're not licked yet! Get up and try again!' And most always, they take heart and go in and win! That's what I want you to do. Go in and win! Your duty is to be a king! And I now tell you, go and be one! If you'll do as I say, Provarsk is much abler than I think he is, if we don't best him, hand and foot. In any event, he shall have a struggle that will make him about the busiest usurper that ever tried for a throne!"

The king, trained to repress display of emotions since childhood, and passed through the course which makes of princes wooden-faced images, forgot all that education as the American progressed, and became merely a desperate hurt human being, craving friendship and support. His lips twitched and strained under this unexpected tender of sympathy. They might have remained unmoved had he walked upon the scaffold of a guillotine, but here was a new emotion, that rendered him defenceless. With something akin to boyish amazement, he stared at the grim, satirical, strong face above him as if to make certain of the character that offered open support in return for secret domination, and what he saw there gave him confidence. For a long time he weighed the situation with all its alternatives, asking now and then cautious questions and receiving reassuring answers. At last, quite like one ​taking a final and desperate chance, he made his decision. He stood to his feet, as befitted the gravity of the situation, and said, very simply, "I accept. The concession is yours, and I put myself completely in your hands because I trust you and because I have no other recourse. Our agreement is one of honour, to last until you have secured your superior's money, or by your own word release me from further obligation."

"That is fair; very fair," Kent replied, with equal gravity. "And you may trust me to make my stay as brief as possible, because I've no wish for the job." He paused a minute and added with one of his rare, half-humorous smiles, "You see, the fact is, I never have run a kingdom before. Once when I was young, I ran a sawmill, and after all, running kingdoms and sawmills are not much different. Both consist in seeing that the work is well done."

The king extended his hand to the financial agent, who took it, and for an instant held it, and studied the king's face as if to make a last appraisment of this material with which he must work.

"And I take it that the chancellor——"

"For more than twenty years, as boy and man," Von Glutz rumbled, "I have served the house of His Majesty. And behind me are four generations of my name who have also given all they had ​to give. I ask nothing but to serve. The king's wish is to me an order."

"Phwew! That's going some! Takes me back to a gallery seat at the melodrama," Kent said in English, much to the chancellor's bewilderment. But with the chancellor, too, the American shook hands as if this were to seal a binding contract, and then, almost abruptly, he swung round to his desk, seated himself, and was the man in command. His head appeared to set more doggedly, his voice to become more crisp and authoritative.

"I'll take your word for the concession until we can draw it up. Now who is this friend of whom you spoke?" he asked the king.

"Baron Von Hertz, distantly related, who dwells most of the time in a mediæval castle he has rehabilitated. It is less than ten miles from Marken."

"And you can depend on him?"

"Implicitly. On him and all his followers and tenants."

"And how far is his castle from here?"

"About thirty miles, I should think."

"All right. We shall have to use the car the princess arrived in. We three will start at once."

"And leave my sister here alone — undefended?"

Kent stepped to the door, and turned back to answer over his shoulder.

​"No, I shall leave my man Ivan to guard her. She will be as safe as if we three were here."

He was gone from the room but a few minutes and when he returned was clad in a heavy raincoat, and carried in his hand a light sporting rifle. He was very brusque and determined in the directness with which he crossed the room, possessed himself of a magazine pistol, examined the clip to make certain that it was filled, and gave an order that was entirely devoid of deference. "You will now call in Captain Paulo and instruct him," he said. "Also there must be no forgetfulness of our relative positions. You are now and hereafter to be my mouthpiece. You are still the king. You will give such orders as I give you as your own, obey my instructions, and see that they are carried out as if they were your own. You understand thoroughly?"

Both the king and chancellor bowed, the latter with a quick military salute of acquiescence.

"Summon Captain Paulo," said the king, accepting his new rôle; and when, in answer to the stentorian hail of the chancellor through the lattice, the officer appeared, the king commanded, evenly, as if nothing unusual could be found in the situation, "Captain Paulo, bring the car around to the door, headed in the opposite direction. We return to our kingdom."

The officer's youthful face flashed to exultation. ​Almost he voiced it; but recovered and saluted, while his eyes danced with satisfaction. He would have turned to obey, but the king restrained him.

"Just a moment, Paulo," he said. "Mr. Kent accompanies us, and will remain with us for some time. It is my wish that you obey anything he asks as you would me. Do you know the road from here to the Castle Hertz?"

"Quite well, Sire."

"Then it is there that you are to take us."

Kent gave his first direct order to the officer a few minutes later as the three men climbed into the car.

"Drive!" he said "Drive like the devil!"

And the car, with big headlights ablaze, roared its way down the village street, skidded as it made a sharp turn, and then leaped out on a long straight road like a racer reaching for a goal.

​

CHAPTER FOUR

FOR what seemed to Kent a long and perilous time, the car jolted and slipped, and ran at a fearsome speed over long level stretches, up hills, over mountain roads, and at last rushed noisily up a harsh incline and across what he surmised had once been a moat bridge, to come to a halt in a courtyard, where it stood and steamed like a spent racer finishing a course.

"Well! What's wanted?"

A night watchman, flashing an electric torch, challenged them, and they climbed out to observe that the storm was abating, that off on one horizon stars were shining through a cloud opening, and that they stood in front of a huge and gloomy old pile that Kent knew must be the Castle Hertz.

"The baron is within?" asked the chancellor.

"Without a doubt. And asleep as such an honest man should be," was the watchman's surly response.

"He must be aroused," grunted the chancellor.

"Not by me!" exclaimed the watchman. "I'm an old man with a family dependent on me. Can't you gentlemen wait until morning?"

​"You go and tell your master that———" Von Glutz began in a hoarse bluster, but was quietly elbowed aside by the American, who continued the sentence as if it were his own.

"That three gentlemen have called here in the most urgent haste and can not be delayed. Also that we are on the king's business. Here! This may help!"

He slipped a gold coin into the watchman's hand, which the latter took, inspected under the light of the torch, bit to make certain that he was not dreaming, and acknowledged by doffing his cap and bowing very deeply.

"It must be on the king's business," he declared. "No one else could possibly have that much money in these times, Sir. I'll take a chance."

"Wonderful what one can accomplish by diplomacy," Kent remarked, dryly, as the watchman ambled around to a side entrance and disappeared. A long wait ensued which indicated cither that the Baron Von Hertz might have been hard to awaken, or had calmly murdered his watchman and returned to his repose. And then when Kent was beginning to be annoyed, a huge door in front of them opened, a light glowed within, and they were invited to enter.

"I trust," observed the watchman, meaningly, as he conducted them toward a waiting room, ​"that you gentlemen are really on the king's business. Otherwise I fear that My Lord the baron will prove—ahem! a trifle unpleasant. At first he swore that he wouldn't get up for the king himself. It was not until I suggested you might be robbers, and there was a prospect of a good fight, that he consented to arise. He is now loading his shotgun. Pray be seated."

"Must be a pleasant old chap !" said Kent, with a soft chuckle.

But the king, failing to see any humour in the situation, threw himself wearily into a chair without removing his hat or coat, and stretched his legs in front of him and stared at his boots. The watchman took his post outside the doorway, and then, by afterthought, switched on the lights in the corridors, and brought the waiting room to full blaze. Kent, as idly as any tourist, personally conducted, and endowed with a connoisseur's knowledge, stared around at the fine old wainscoting and polished floors. He acted as if calling out a baron of the realm of Marken at three o'clock in the morning were an every-night occurrence with him. He was disturbed by a sharp "Ahem!" in the doorway and looked around to discover a tall, gaunt, white-whiskered old gentleman whose bald head was protected by a flaming red night cap, and who carried a heavy fowling piece in a manner that suggested that he might be ​perfectly willing to use it on slight provocation. The three men stood to their feet and for a moment he glared at them, then entering the room, hastily deposited the shotgun in a corner, turned his head and bawled to the watchman, "It's all right! Go on outside and watch the weather. I'm expecting a hailstorm."

After that he came quickly forward and offered both hands to his sovereign.

"Well, Karl, what is up now? What brings you here at this time of night? Some one been lifting the lid to let the sulphur out?"

"Provarsk," replied the king, sententiously.

The old man smiled a wry smile, nodded to Von Glutz, and favoured Kent with a harsh stare from under his scowling eyebrows.

"It's all right!" said the king. "We can talk freely. This is an American gentleman, Mr. Kent, who is the agent for John Rhodes, the financial magnate."

"Oh! Can't he collect interest in daylight?" demanded the irascible old man. "Since when did you begin to make night journeys with money lenders?"

Kent stood unmoved; but the king rushed to his defence.

"Baron," he asserted, steadily, "Mr. Kent has proved to be my friend. As such I am certain you will regard him."

​"Pardon me," the American interjected, "I do not seek the baron's friendship."

Before the amazed old nobleman could recover, Kent walked directly across the intervening space until he confronted him.

"Whether you like me or not, whether you object to me or not, My Lord Baron, is to me of the very slightest importance. There is but one attitude I expect from you, that which is current between gentlemen, and consists of courtesy. That I demand!"

There was an intense stillness in the room as they eyed each other, Kent inflexible, the king distressed, and the chancellor open-mouthed at such uncompromising words. The old baron was the most affected and stood as if stupefied with astonishment. For a pregnant time he met Kent's stare and then suddenly chuckled in his throat with a queer, wise acceptance. He turned to the king and exploded, much as an explorer might have done on announcing a discovery. "Why, Karl! You've got a friend who is a man! By Saint Dominique! This is a man!"

The chancellor twisted and frowned. The caustic inference was not lost upon him; but he had no opportunity for speech, for the baron advanced to the American, put out his hand and exclaimed, "My kinsman needs a few like you. It should straighten affairs out, unless I mistake."

​For a time they stood and eyed each other, the one stalwart in developed strength, the other elderly, weak, and wise.

"I have placed myself at the king's disposal," Kent said, mollified. "And that is one of the reasons why we are here. We now seem to understand one another. His Majesty himself will tell you what has happened in Marken. He seeks a friend. He has come to you."

He turned to the king, as did the baron, and they seated themselves around a tête-à-tête table that stood conveniently in a corner of the room, where, without evasion, the king told the baron all that had taken place, observing his promise to Kent that nothing should be said of their private agreement.

"I have undertaken," explained the American, "to assist His Majesty in the difficulty, by advice, and, furthermore, I am in a position to command for him and if need arises will enlist substantial financial support in our enterprise."

His three auditors alike exposed their surprise and gratification.

"I mean it," he declared. "Mean that I am going to save, if possible, the Rhodes loan, though doubtless it may require additional resources. If they are needed they will be forthcoming. The financial side does not in the least disturb us, therefore, and we have come to you because the ​king understands that we must have support and possibly refuge. That is all he asks of you. I shall attempt to clear Provarsk out without bloodshed. After that I shall endeavour to advise the king how to rehabilitate himself as the real ruler of Marken."

"But what do you propose to do!" demanded the old baron. "What is the first move? It looks rather difficult to me. Provarsk has brains. He is fearless; fearless in the adventurer way. If you think you have an infant to fight you are wrong. You might lose."

"I never play to lose," retorted Kent. "I make no such calculation."

"Karl," said the baron, after a thoughtful study of the American, "all the support I have to give is yours."

"That being so," hastily suggested Kent, "the next move is to send Captain Paulo back to bring the princess, her maid, and my man Ivan here as quickly as possible. It must not become known to the public that the king has ever been driven from the kingdom. For the present, it will do, if his absence is noted, that he and his sister have been here as your guests, voluntarily."

The baron assented with an enthusiasm that had in it a suggestion of mischievousness.

"That will do nicely," he said. "And it will be easy as far as my part is concerned, because I ​have the finest body of liars around me that the world has ever known since Ananias gained repute. Send for Eloise."

After Paulo had been summoned and sent on his journey, they fell to discussing the plan which the American slowly outlined, and were still enlarging upon it when the young officer returned with his passengers. Kent, as though curious to interpret the princess' attitude, was a silent spectator in the background when she arrived, and smiled his approbation when he saw her hasten to the king and study his face, unabashed by the presence of the others, and meet his eyes with an encouraging stare.

"I am glad!" she declared. "Very glad! You are going to fight it out, and drive Provarsk, that unspeakable traitor, from Marken!"

"With Mr. Kent's help I shall try," he said, and, disappointed and perplexed, she slowly dropped her hands, and her eyes sought the American, for whom she had already pronounced aversion and distrust.

"You are accepting his support, rather than——"

Kent, alert and diplomatic, stepped forward to prevent the completion of her sentence.

"Your Royal Highness will permit me," he said suavely, "to say that I am trying as best I can to support your brother. I may be of service or ​not; but what I have to offer, I give. And at least we are here, together, ready for an effort."

"And what is more, Eloise," sharply exclaimed Baron Von Hertz, "this is no time for any woman folly of tongue. You'd better be thankful that Karl has got some one back of him that, if I'm not badly mistaken, is going to do things. Hoity-toity! Don't start in to make faces at me! I'm old enough to know a man when I see one. You had better go upstairs to bed. So had all of us. Come on. No foolishness. I'll show you the way. This man—what is that his name is—Kent, has plenty to do in the morning, and I will not let him be bothered by anybody. You just stop any desire to interfere and leave him alone. I'll have my way here. This is my place."

Rebelliously she obeyed, and Kent watched her as she followed the crabbed old man up the grand staircase, while the latter's voice came back through the deserted halls, querulous, and admonitory, until it died away. A half hour later he, too, stood alone in a vast room surveying the bed in which he was to sleep, and as he pulled off his shoes and threw them outside the door for much needed attention, he grinned as if secretly pleased with his adventure. His lights were out within fifteen minutes, but the watchman, wondering, noted that farther along in a room assigned to the young man to whom so much deference was shown, that ​occupied by His Majesty, Karl II, the lights did not go out and a harassed guest continued to pace, with monotonous insistence, backward and forward in front of the windows on which his shadow was thrown.

​

CHAPTER FIVE

IN the city of Marken, the capital of Marken, early rising might have been a crime. Here was no sordid place so highly fascinated by industry that lights began to glow in workmen's homes before the sun arose. Not thus in Marken! The only ones who opened windows in Marken at dawn were those who, usually with night-caps on their heads, poked the said night-capped heads out to look at the weather, then with all observations necessary for prognostication, shut the windows again and retired to "think it over" for an hour or two. True, if the day happened to be fair and somnolent, the sun, shining in their eyes through some quaint old lattice, or climbing almost boisterously like a second-story burglar into the depths of some high-hung balcony, caused them to arise grumbling. People in Marken always did the same things—came deliberately to the front doors and opened them, walked out into the narrow, cobbled streets, took another look at the weather, yawned, thrust their fingers through their hair, grunted "good morning" to their neighbours, and then sought the kitchen sink to wash ​their faces. Then, by about nine o'clock, there might be a haze over Marken—a most savoury haze of ethereal, palpitating blue, the blue of a fair dream perfumed; but the perfumed haze in Marken was due to the unanimous habit of frying sausages. The dogs, of which population there was nearly as great a number as of other people, aroused themselves from the doorways, stretched, exchanged neighbourly canine salutations by the customary methods of identification, and then, with noses properly dilated, headed for those places where according to their fixed belief, the sausages grew and might be obtained. Later the children, swarms of them, appeared in the narrow cobbled streets, accompanied by the dogs, all of them adorned by sausage grease on their chops and an air of contentment. Then, still leisurely, the shop shutters began to come down with creaks, and bangs, and bumps, and portly shopkeepers in their shirt sleeves stood in the shade of their doorways, leaning more or less heavily on the doorjambs, and smoked, and read their papers, prior to a general assemblage in the streets to discuss the latest news. Periodically they all arose early, it being the most exciting day of each week, market day. This was due, perhaps, to the fact that the farmers of the immediate country were a quite incomprehensible sort of folk, who were foolish enough to brave miasmatic vapours from the soil ​and all sorts of unpleasant things, and get up early. Not that this would have made much difference to the good folk of Marken; but that these same foolish farmers invaded the city with a clatter of sabots, a bleating of kids, the braying of donkeys, and much voluble chatter, so that it was quite impossible for any one to sleep.

The storm of the night had completely disappeared with the dawn and a lazy spring sun busied itself in drying the mud on this particular market day, when some of the more observant arrivals noted with curiosity that for the first time since Karl II had become a king, with vast and delightful ceremony, the gates of his palace were closed and two grim and foreign-appearing sentries stood guard beside the main entrance, each squarely planted in his sentry box as if he had grown there over night like a fungus. And so he had, in truth!

The palace stood on the flat top of a fair hill and was surrounded by a wall. Every good palace has to have one, and all others do not count. Doubtless, in some ancient day, there had been a moat; but this had been filled and turfed. Where in the time of his august predecessors had been a considerable place d'armes for the drilling of fighting men, Karl II had created a garden of distinguished beauty in which, it was scornfully whispered by the malcontents, he occasionally ​worked, himself, with pruning shears and spade. He had approached sacrilege by modernizing the palace itself, something criminally undignified, inasmuch as no good palace should have either drains or sanitary contrivances. It makes them too much like other folks' houses, and, somehow, people expect kings to be different from everybody else. Furthermore, as a final proof that he was not fit to be a real king, he tried to pay his debts!

From the palace windows the quaint old city of Marken, red or moss roofed, flowering from window ledges, its streets dotted here and there with colourfully-clad inhabitants, could be scanned as it stretched away on three sides.

From the smaller throne room, by stepping to a balcony, on this morning, a great deal might have been seen; but nobody in the throne room took the trouble. There was much other business to be done, because when a first-class usurper usurps, there are usually several things that require attention. At least that was the opinion of one Baron Provarsk, who, on this gay morning, was, as Kent might have said, "on the job."

The usurper sat in a big chair at the head of a table, the like of which could be seen any day, in any directors' room of any bank in America. Neatly proportioned, middle-sized, carelessly but well clothed, and about thirty-five years of age, ​he appeared competent. His was rather a handsome, fearless, albeit reckless face, fairly strong, and without trace of any excess. He was more the rapier type of soldier of fortune, than usurpers usually are, and would probably prefer a rapier to a butcher's cleaver. And as far as looks were concerned, Kent afterward said, he "had it on the king."

On the side of the room opposite from the balconied, or garden side, were ornate inner windows looking out upon a corridor, and, proving that the baron proposed to take no chances, there could be seen standing in this generous passageway a file of armed men. As for them, the foreign legion of Africa could not have been more mixed, or mongrel. Apparently the baron had been interested in such of the king's papers and letters as he had been able to find by ransacking the palace. He scanned them hastily, grinning pleasantly now and then. A good usurper displays no more delicacy in nosing into another's palace, than does a cuckoo intent on laying an egg in another's nest.

Provarsk shoved the papers into a heap and picked up several other sheets in his own handwriting, just as a scar-faced man with a scraggly moustache and stubby goatee swaggered into the room and stood opposite his new master.

"I don't see anything to prevent my ​proclamation being sent to the printing office just as it is," said Provarsk, looking up at his lieutenant, who had become such by recruiting from various foreign sources and drilling Provarsk's army. "Here, Ubaldo, read it. Read it aloud so I can hear how it sounds."

The new commander-in-chief of the army took the paper and after mumbling over a flowery preamble which "Viewed with horror and alarm," read the following: "It having come to my knowledge, fortunately, that the erstwhile sovereign of the free and independent Monarchy of Marken, King Karl II, had practically completed secret plans to borrow in the name of the state a second and larger loan than that with which his suffering subjects were already grievously burdened, I, his cousin by direct descent from the royal Dynasty, Ferdinand Matilda George Wilhelm Ludwig Humberto Provarsk, Baron of the realm, did expostulate with him in the name of the people of Marken, and was rebuffed, and threats made against my person. I therefore gathered for my own protection a few followers, but was astonished, grieved, and humiliated to learn that, presumably some time within the past few days, King Karl II had taken all the available funds in the treasury, all the royal jewels, and with his sister, the Royal Princess Eloise, his Chancellor, the Baron Von Glutz (who apparently is a ​fellow-participant and partner in his defalcation), and the renegade Captain Paulo, fled to parts unknown. The abdication, to my sincere and lasting grief, is made certain by the fact that the former king and his party are known to have abandoned the sacred soil of our beloved fatherland without legal notice and have been seen on their way to Paris.

"It has therefore become incumbent upon me as one of the hereditary royal family, and as a true patriot, ready to sacrifice himself for the kingdom, to assume at least temporarily the reins of government and to bring chaos from the muddle into which the foolish extravagances and corruptions of the late king and his chancellor have plunged it."

This much Ubaldo obediently read aloud, after which for a time he read to himself, while the baron yawned and drummed the table with his fingers.

"It's all right," said Ubaldo, tossing it back on the table; "but I always like to see them end up some way. Most of those I've helped get up before have something about how the people are to be freed from taxation, work, and all that stuff. Then all of 'em have one of two things at the tag end; they either beseech the dear, faithful subjects and patriots to rest quietly and peacefully until the new ruler, always aided by God Almighty, gets down to the concrete foundations and ​straightens everything out; or else they warn the damned public to avoid congregating in groups on any public street, showing any lights at night, making any undue disturbances, or speaking above a whisper, on penalty of being shot dead, instantly, all their goods and likely womenfolk escheating to the crown."

"Um-m-mh! That 's so," thoughtfully observed the baron.

"And I should advise the dear-people-keep-quiet stuff and all that," hastily observed Ubaldo, "otherwise we might have a scrap, and there might not be enough of us. Also eighteen or twenty of the army signed on as soldiers with the understanding that they wouldn't have to do any fighting, and there aren't more than three that could hit a barn with a shotgun at ten paces distance."

Baron Provarsk grinned amiably, and hurriedly wrote another page or two, pausing but once to look up when part of the new army flattened its nose against the panes of the corridor window.

"Pull those curtains across that window so nobody can see in," he growled, irritably. "Also see that handkerchiefs are made part of the regulation uniform. Some of your men—er—rather disturb my cultured side."

The new commander-in-chief dutifully obeyed, then disappeared into the hall and swore, ​painstakingly but fluently, in seven different tongues, while Provarsk completed his manifesto.

"There," he said, as if highly satisfied, when his lieutenant returned. "I've added in the gentle appeal for peace and order. Also I've offered ten thousand pounds for old Von Glutz, dead or alive, five thousand for that fellow Paulo, and stated that we are making indefatigable efforts to recover the loot from the royal absconders and have hopes of getting it."

The new commander-in-chief was making mental calculations.

"About that fifteen thousand pounds——" he said, abstractedly staring at the ceiling. "I didn't know you had found that much on tap. Let me see! Fifty men, and me getting ten shares makes sixty, and sixty goes into fifteen——"

"You needn't badger your empty skull about that!" angrily remarked the usurper. "There isn't any fifteen thousand that I know of."

"But supposing somebody does catch the chancellor or Paulo?"

"Then we'll have the chancellor and Paulo killed in their cells, after which we'll accuse the fellows that claim the reward of murder and have them hanged publicly as proof of how lawful and orderly we are," cheerfully replied the baron. "Besides, either old Von Glutz or Paulo will be hard to catch. They'll not show up until long after ​I've got so firmly fixed in the saddle that no one will dare try to upset me. I think I shall have this posted on every church and—Well, what is it?" he demanded, as a sentry appeared at the door waiting for a word.

"A man to see you, sir, who insists on an immediate and private audience. Says you will be glad to see him at once. Here is his card, sir." He advanced and tendered a card which Provarsk, scowling with annoyance, took and scanned. His face changed from anger to one of amusement.

"He is right," he said. "I've an idea that this chap and I might do some profitable business together. No one I want to see so much just now. You can bring Mr. Richard Kent, agent for John Rhodes, Esq., up at once."

The sentry saluted and disappeared, and Provarsk turned to his lieutenant.

"I want to be left alone and undisturbed when this man comes up," he said, pointedly. "When he gets in the room you go outside, shut the door after you, stand guard, to see that no one gets his ear tangled up with a crack in the door, and—by the way—keep your own away, too. This is going to be private business! Strictly private! Understand?"

Ubaldo grinned mirthlessly and said orders should be obeyed. Evidently, at a pinch, he stood ​in considerable awe of his new master; for he was threatening to wax voluble concerning his own sense of discipline when the visitor arrived. His advent was preceded by the persistent thumping of a stick on the tiled floor, by sundry titters and muttered gibes from the guardsmen in the corridor, then by his own voice admonishing, somewhat testily, some unseen person to exercise more care and not let him fall.

Provarsk saw an apparently infirm, decrepit and palsied man being half led, half carried into the room by a veritable giant of an attendant, as if the visitor were paralysed from the hips downward and could but drag his legs with difficulty.

"You discern my infirmities, sir," said the financial agent, "hence I crave your permission to be seated. In asking such a favour I—Ivan! What are you trying to do? You lumphead! Trying to let me fall and murder me, eh? Big, slow, clumsy lout! I'll get another valet! I will, so help me Bob! I will!"

His voice had risen by degrees to a querulous, irascible scream that ended with, "There! There! There! Easy now! That does it! Now stand by me with the ammonia. And don't go to sleep if I get faint!"

He settled helplessly into the chair toward which the baron had waved a hand, and panted laboriously as if the exertion had been trying, and ​seemed startled when the doors leading to the corridor closed with a harsh clicking sound.

"You are Mr. Kent——" suavely began Provarsk.

"Financial agent for John Rhodes, who loaned this kingdom five million dollars on my advice," the visitor finished the sentence, eyeing the usurper at the opposite end of the table.

Provarsk smiled sadly and shook his head, quite with a regretful air, but politely waited for his visitor to proceed.

"Dangerous man, this. Knows how to keep his mouth shut," was Kent's mental measurement. Aloud he said, "I came here in my employer's interests and was told at the very gates of the palace that the king had abdicated and that a distinguished Baron Provarsk now ruled in his stead, or at least was at present the head of the government."

He paused and watched the baron, who bit his lower lip, tried to keep from frowning, and mentally swore that he must find out which sentry had been so frank in statement and see that his case was amply attended to.

"I presume, therefore," continued the visitor, "that it is the Baron Provarsk I must interview concerning the state of indebtedness."

"That is true," replied the usurper. "And I am Baron Provarsk. Now that you are made ​comfortable, perhaps it is as well, considering the confidential nature of our interview, that you dismiss your man for a few minutes, Mr.—ah——" He consulted the card to refresh his memory, "Mr. Kent."

"Quite impossible! Quite impossible! Quite impossible!" declared the agent, resuming some of his former air of irritability. "Can't you see for yourself that he is both hands and feet to me? I'll answer for him. He always goes where I go. Don't mind him. Talk as if he isn't here. He forgets. I pay him for that—and for being dumb. Besides, if he ever said that you said, or that I said, or that anybody ever said anything, at any time, or any place, I'd say he was a liar! All men of affairs deny all interviews and call all reporters liars when it suits their convenience. So they're all liars—everybody's a liar, but you and me."

Provarsk decided that there was quite a lot of wisdom in that speech. It indicated possibilities. Moreover, as it fitted in so closely with his own cynical code, it was up to this money lender to take the responsibility if anything was said that might prove embarrassing.

"As you wish," he said, with a little shrug.

"What I came for, and all that interests me," said the agent, "is to know what provisions the new government proposes to make for the payment of its bonds. They are almost due. I don't ​care a rap who pays them. All I want is the payment. Money alone does not change. It has no regard for the hand that borrows, spends or pays. It absorbs no personality, no identity. It has neither fealty nor religion. It outlasts kings and cardinals. It is admirable, being steadfastly itself." His eyes were wide and vacant as he rhapsodized; but now they came quickly to another cast and he demanded, "What does the new government of the great sovereign state of Marken intend to do about the bonds held by Mr. John Rhodes?"

The usurper stared straight at him, wondering if there was intentional sarcasm in this money lender's speech, but meeting a stare even steadier than his own, and devoid of anything save enquiry, resolved to continue in diplomacy.

"I am exceedingly sorry, Mr. Kent," he said, with an admirable assumption of regret, "to say that the late king, my cousin Karl, was not—ah! What shall I say to seem kindly yet truthful?—In fact, Karl was anything but a great and farsighted monarch. Indeed, he was a plain, unadulterated ass!"

"It appears so. You are here!" drily observed the American, and again the usurper wondered if there might be a double significance in his words. Patiently, however, he resumed.

"He managed the affairs of the kingdom of ​Marken very faultily. He was a theorist and a reformer. The Markenite wishes neither theory nor reformation. It is a staid, sober, and self-satisfied nation. It is not the most powerful nor the richest nation in the world; but, such as it is, it is. My unfortunate and lamented cousin did not understand it. It did not understand him. "With the very best of intentions, he failed. Failed because he was not adept, as you and I are, Mr. Kent, in financial affairs."

He waited for an instant for this suggestion to sink in, then, satisfied by the twinkle in his visitor's eyes that it had been fully understood, and being thereby emboldened, proceeded in that same gentle, courteous, well-modulated tone that was quite nearly, if not wholly, ingratiating.

"Owing to this mistaken direction of funds, and failure to realise from resources, it will thereby be necessary, regrettable as it may seem at first sight—and at first sight only, Mr. Kent—that Mr. Rhodes' loan be extended, and also that the state be provided with additional funds that it may redeem not only its original bonds, but all others that follow."

Kent was thoughtfully staring upward, but now dropped his eyes to those of his vis-a-vis.

"Quite so," he said, encouragingly.

"It would be—let us say—profitable, for all concerned." The baron's voice had lowered ​itself and conveyed much. "It is the business of your superior to lend from his enormous stores of wealth. A man with so much money has but one object, to lend it. You, as his agent, have but one employment, to see that it is lent. Is that not so, Mr. Kent?"

The baron was now leaning eagerly across the big table with a meaning smile, like an angler who sees a coveted trout nosing his bait.

"Quite so," came again the encouraging assent.

"And you, as a most capable agent for the most distinguished financier in the world, perhaps receive, for doing the lion's share, the brainy share, let us say, a commission?"

"You are right about that," declared the American, grinning steadily into the baron's fact and inviting him to come still further.

"Then," said the baron, dropping all pretence and confident of his ground, "what use is there for you and me to ride this merry-go-round any longer? You want money. So do I. Rhodes has it—plenty of it. What commission do you usually make on a loan of five million dollars?"

Kent eyed him in perfect understanding, and pretended a certain amount of caution by throwing a quick glance over his shoulder at Ivan, who, with a face as blank as the wall, stared straight in front of him, and even yawned deliberately, as ​if infinitely bored by hearing a lot of stuff that he had heard before.

"Suppose I said one per cent?" questioned the American with an air of slyness.

"Then I should say," instantly reciprocated the baron, now fully convinced, "that if you induced John Rhodes to advance another million dollars, you should be entitled to——" He stopped short, got to his feet, rested his palms on the long table and leaned far across, and spoke scarcely above a whisper—"to a bigger commission than you ever had in your life. Enough so that you could relinquish your difficult and burdensome duties, Mr. Kent, and retire. If you can induce Rhodes to extend the time of the previous bonds five years, and to advance five million francs more for ten years, on the same terms as those preceding, I'll make you an independent man by giving you one million francs. Think of it! A million francs for your own! Is that worth while?"

Kent sat stolidly in his chair, and to all outward appearances considered the proposition.

"But what of Rhodes?" he asked, lifting his eyes, slowly. "What of Rhodes? Does he ever get his money? How will you raise it?"

"Sweat it out of the hands and hides of these citizens of Marken!" was the emphatic reply, still carried across the desk in that suggestive undertone.

​"And yours? How much do you get?"

"I'll get enough. That is not your affair," somewhat stiffly responded the usurper. "All that need concern you is that I hope, and think, Rhodes will lose nothing and that you will make a million francs. Also that no one but you and I is ever to know anything about it. It is, after all, a clean deal. You get well paid for your work. I get well paid for my management. Rhodes gets well paid for his advance. "

Again the American made that queer twisting movement and glanced over his shoulder to reassure himself that Ivan was still standing behind him. The baron complacently dropped back into his seat, beaming with satisfaction. He accepted the conclusion too speedily, as was evinced by his visitor's next remark. Kent leaned slowly back, rested his hands on his hips and laughed. The usurper frowned at him.

"Hot stuff! Fresh from the bat!" Kent said in his native tongue, then reverted to the language of Marken. "Say, I admire your line of talk! I do! You are quite all right! I rather expected something like this. Why, I really believe you are trying to bribe me personally, aren't you?"

"Of course I am." The usurper smiled placidly. "You had no idea I was sending you out into this cold and cruel world to start an orphans' home, or a hospital for indigent and decrepit ​chorus girls, did you? I put no conditions on what you are to do with the money. It's for you."

"Have you ever sold any green goods?" demanded Kent "If not, you've certainly missed your calling."

The baron failed to understand this literal translation of an unknown swindle; but he surmised that his proffer was being ridiculed, and having made his last pitch in this direction, his face hardened and he displayed the real man he was, resourceful, striving for a new hold. He became quite natural, ready to storm his way through, strike, smash under foot, and pass on.

"You jest," he said, unsmilingly. "You think you can play with me. Good! If you don't induce Rhodes to advance another five million francs, I promise you this: that he shall never get a single centime of the money he has already advanced, and that I shall also tell him that you made me take this decision. How does that strike you, Mr. Richard Kent?"

He sat back with an air of triumph, and waited.

"Strike? How does that strike me? Why, very good, Baron, save for this: that I took a few precautions before I came here. In fact, you rather please me, when I recall that you are somewhat younger than I and doubtless lacking in experience. I think you might do well on Wall Street, or in a good stiff game of poker. Ever ​play it? That's too bad! You're ignorant of a lot that we teach school boys, over in America. By the way, have you a telegraph form?"

Puzzled by this swift speech, and inclined to believe that the difference in national characteristics accounted for any balk of agreement, after all, the baron resumed his air of suavity, and threw a blank sheet of paper across the table which Ivan, as if schooled to service, laid in front of his employer, and handed him a pencil.

"You said," remarked Kent, with the pencil poised in his fingers and looking across at the baron, "that if I didn't get Rhodes to advance you five million francs more, you would repudiate the loan?"

"I said it. "

"You don't dare do it!"

"I don't, eh? Try me, Mr. Kent."

There was the utmost assurance in his words, but his manner belied them as he watched the American, who painstakingly scrawled a message on the sheet of paper, then, almost carelessly, tossed it along toward Provarsk. It fell short, and Ivan, like an automaton, picked it up and handed it on to its destination. With a show of nothing more than cursory interest, the baron read it. It was addressed to the foreign minister of Austria and said: "Provarsk, who is now dictator of Marken, owing to the abdication of Karl ​II, repudiates Rhodes loan. The action previously agreed upon between us is now expected and will be responded to as promised. Immediate results will be easy of accomplishment."

⁠(Signed)
⁠"Richard Kent, agent for John Rhodes."

The baron read it with an unmoved face.

"Of course," he said, as placidly as if discussing the weather, "I don't understand its meaning."

"That's easy to explain," declared the American, and there was something in his attitude quite like that of a cat playing with a beetle, or a gentleman holding a royal flush while the others consider. "Austria has borrowed money, quite a lot of it, and wants more, I might add, from Mr. Rhodes. Funny condition attached to that loan, Baron. Might interest you to know about it. Laughable and unusual, in fact!"

He bent forward and smiled sweetly at the usurper.

"Something like this: that loan was granted and the second request considered, with the proviso that if Marken refused to pay that five million dollars, Austria was to immediately take Marken and assume the indebtedness."

Provarsk read the message again, and pondered, while gazing at the sheet. Then he laid it on the ​table, impolitely yawned while holding his finely-shaped hand over his mouth, excused himself and drawled, "That was rather neat of you. All right! I'll have it sent," and arose to reach for the bell on the far side of the table.

"Just a moment," the American interrupted. "Why are you so willing to destroy Marken, your native state?"

Provarsk laughed heartily.

"Destroy nothing!" he retorted, contemptuously. "I am merely amused at the bewilderment which will be sustained by the Austrian minister on receipt of this message!"

The American continued to watch him unmoved. The baron, indicating that he would no longer dally with a situation over which he had control, sharply rapped his knuckles on the outspread message and said, insolently, "This is what your countrymen call a bluff! You know it. I'll let you know a little more. It doesn't in the least influence me. You can send it if you wish. I don't care! Furthermore, this twaddle about destroying the country makes me laugh. Rubbish! Sheer rubbish! When addressed to a man who has seized a throne and who thereby stakes not only his fortunes but his life on the result and his ability to maintain himself. I don't care much more about this country than you do, and you may as well know that, too. "

​"Give me the message," Kent said.

The usurper thrust it across toward him, facilitated its passage by blowing it sharply with his pursed lips, and then calmly sat down. Kent took it, twisted it into a knot, and with thumb and finger flipped it into the air. For a moment they looked at each other, Provarsk alert and with increasing insolence, the American humorously, and secretly pleased.

"Why, do you know," he said suddenly, almost as if speaking to himself and expecting no reply, "you are a lot more interesting and much smarter than I gave you credit for being? Somehow or another, though, I don't believe you are going to put it through. You don't dare to ruin a kingdom. You've called my bluff and now I call yours!"

The baron sneered.

"Don't dare to carry it out to the end, you mean? Try me!"

"Perhaps I shall. That depends. Yes, I rather think I will."

"That old saw about possession being nine-tenths, you know, Mr. Kent?" The baron now spoke with painful gentility.

"That being the case, I suppose I may as well go," replied the American.

"Oh, I shouldn't be in too big a hurry," the usurper said, with a meaning grin that did not extend above his lips. "I'm afraid, Mr. Richard ​Kent, agent for John Rhodes, that you shall not make your departure from this palace until you have induced your employer to advance the additional loan. Needless to add that, under these new conditions, you can scarcely expect any commission whatever."

The American did not appear disturbed; yet there was a peculiar watchfulness in his manner.

"Humph! You don't dare to detain me," he said.

"Don't dare to detain you? That's a joke. Don't dare? I dare not only to detain you, but, in case this money lending, penny scraping master of yours doesn't advance, I dare to have both you and that stupid dummy behind you shot and put nicely out of the way."

If he had expected to frighten his visitor, he must have been disappointed; for the latter grinned with the utmost contempt directly across at him and then chuckled deep in his throat.

"You're not half the man I thought you," he said, jeeringly. "I'm quite disappointed in you, to tell the truth. Dare? Why, you wouldn't dare do anything. It's a pity. You had me respecting you as a pretty fair gamester; but this last lot about detaining me, brigand and ransom stuff, cheap melodrama, really hurts me! Call in one of those louts outside, and, by an exchange, take your proper place. You and your mob are, after ​all, a lot of penny whistles squeaking thinly in a country lane."

There was everything of studied insult in his tone, his look, the play of his hands as he spoke, and the baron, surprised, upset, angered, and tired by his long hours of excitement, responded as the American wished and lost his temper, and jumped to his feet in a fury. Unnoted by him, the American had given an odd signal across his shoulders by curiously twisting his fingers and waving them, and, expectant and watchful, Ivan had observed and slowly, cautiously, edged around the table side to his employer's elbow. Now he came, inch by inch, a little farther, to a position where he could fix his eyes on Kent's lips. The baron, resolved to exert his authority, came around the corner and reached for the bell. Kent's lips moved noiselessly, although he sat still.

"Now! Ivan! Get him! Quickly!" he said, and the giant whirled and leaped even as the baron's fingers were within an inch of the bell that would summon assistance. One of Ivan's huge hands was clasped over the usurper's mouth, the fingers seeming bent on crushing the lower part of the baron's face, while he threw his other arm completely around him, pinioned him and lifted him from the floor as if he were but a combative boy in weight and strength. He bent him back across the table roughly, then slammed him down on the ​top of it with such force that the baron's breath was almost churned from his body; then, swiftly releasing his arm from around the baron's body, he lifted himself on one tip-toe and planted a heavy knee in the pit of the baron's stomach, while the other hand shot to the usurper's throat and threatened by main strength to crush the bones of his victim's neck. The baron's eyes protruded and he began to struggle feebly.

Kent rushed to Ivan's side and attracted his attention by tapping him, smartly on the shoulders with his knuckles. Ivan, without relaxing his hold, looked at his employer's lips.

"Don't kill him! For heaven's sake, don't kill him!" Kent muttered.

"I've got to choke his teeth loose. He has set them in the palm of my hand," the giant replied; but was saved from executing the baron, who at that moment dropped back inert, his face purple, and his eyes dazed with threatened unconsciousness. Unnoted by either Kent or the baron, an automobile horn had been tooting lustily outside, its mellow notes playing a trumpet tune that swept vigorously through the open windows. Again it sounded and Kent threw his head up and listened.

"What can that mean?" he voiced aloud, forgetting that Ivan could not hear. "That is one of the ​royal automobiles, because no others are allowed to carry such horns!"

It did not sound again and the baron was beginning to recover his senses and anger; although now the latter was curiously intermingled with respect, if not fear. Kent stood over him perfectly calm and self-possessed.

"Listen, Provarsk," he said, "and make no mistake. My man and I may have trouble getting you out of here; but of one feature rest assured. If any of your sentries come in to take us, or to help you, they will find a dead leader on this table!"

An almost sly smile shifted the grim outlines of his mouth, as he added, speaking entirely for the baron's ears, and well aware that Ivan, watching his prisoner, could not take the order, "Ivan, if the baron opens his mouth to call for help, or makes any attempt to reach that bell, kill him instantly by breaking his neck across the edge of the table. If you prefer, you may cut his head off with that knife on your hip, but make no noise. Do it quickly, and surely."

He saw that Provarsk was impressed with his peril but also saw a sudden gleam of exultation leap into his eyes at the sound which now became audible throughout the corridor, a sound of commotion and a woman's voice raised to an indignant pitch of determination.

​"How dare you attempt to block my way?" it demanded. "Who are you and your scrapheap band of adventurers to attempt to keep me from coming into my own palace?"

"But, but, Madame!" they heard the voice of Ubaldo protesting.

"I am not Madame. I am Her Royal Highness the Princess Eloise, and I am going to see and talk to Baron Provarsk, no matter who interferes. Out of my way!"

"That's the bird the baron wanted us to make sure of last night, Captain," another voice, coarse and heavy, called out. "Better let her go in. He'll be glad to see her."

"But the princess does not understand that my orders are——"

It was evident that Ubaldo was retreating in front of her up the corridor toward the entrance to the throne room, and that she was steadily advancing, bravely and impetuously intent on confronting the usurper.

Kent's face hardened. He thrust his hand into his pocket, brought out a heavy automatic pistol, slipped the safety catch off with hands that did not tremble, and planted himself just inside the door. Ivan, obedient to previous understanding that, no matter what occurred after they were in the palace, Provarsk was to be his especial charge, held the usurper down with the steadiness of a stone ​man. The noise in the corridor increased, making it plain that the guard, highly entertained, had fallen into the Princess' wake. They heard her turn on them.

"What do you mean by following after and annoying me?" she questioned, angrily.

Ubaldo, anxious to find some means of extricating himself from a ridiculous position, bawled, "The princess is right! Halt, you men! Fall in! Stand at attention!"

There was a quick shuffling of feet as the guardsmen obeyed.

"Now, Your Royal Highness, if you still insist, I will announce you."

"No, you won't!" she said. "All you can do is to stand to one side. I'll announce myself!"

That she gained her way was evident by her entrance, as she swung one of the doors open and, with white cheeks and blazing eyes, stepped inside. Instantly the American closed it behind her. At the sound of the closing door she turned apprehensively like one entrapped, but both fear and anger gave way to astonishment as she grasped the signs of struggle that were before her, the American with pistol in hand, and on the table the discomfited usurper intently watched by the giant, who did not so much as glance up at her entrance.

"What—what is the meaning of this?" she ​faltered, all her own resolutions upset by the strangeness of the tableau.

Provarsk dumbly rolled his eyes toward her, but it was Kent who replied.

"It means that the princess has arrived at a most inopportune moment," he said, coldly. "I left positive instructions that neither you, nor any one else, was to interfere with my plans."

"And my brother took orders from you," she said, sarcasm in her reflexion. "And I told him that if there was no man of our house who dared to face this upstart baron, I would do it myself and alone!"

A reluctant approval of her bravery shone in his grim, resolute face.

"How could my brother know," she demanded, as her temper again came uppermost, "that the agent of John Rhodes, who seeks his pound of flesh and nothing more, would not come here and ally himself with this adventurer?"

"I am not without honour," Kent answered, quietly and with a fine dignity of his own. "The situation as you find it is sufficient proof."

She hesitated, bit her lip, and looked back at the other participants in this outré scene into which she had recklessly forced her way. The proof of Kent's fidelity to her house was palpable in that restrained and desperate figure stretched out and held relentlessly by the silent giant, and ​by the American's readiness to defend her against the squalid band outside.

"You have impugned my motives before," his cold, restrained voice again broke in, and with a quality that she could not misinterpret. "But you have now interfered, seriously, in an emergency whose difficulties are increased by your presence. You have jeopardised our chances; so you shall and must obey what I am going to tell you."

"Must? Must?"

"Must and shall!"

For an instant they eyed each other, and then, frightened by his very domination and strength, she felt suddenly disturbed.

"Come," he said, "we have no time to quibble. If you value your life, or your brother's possession of the throne, you will do precisely as I tell you. If this can not be accomplished with your friendship as an aid, it shall, nevertheless, be accomplished. I expect you to obey, implicitly! It is our only chance."

Overawed by his determined pose, she bowed her head, in enforced assent. He stepped across to the side of the table, touched Ivan on the arm, and gestured for him to release their prisoner.

"Get up, Provarsk!" the American curtly ordered, and as the baron stiffly descended from the table and began with nervous fingers to ​rearrange his disordered cravat, Kent glanced swiftly at Ivan to assure himself that the latter's gaze was fixed on his lips. He spoke slowly, distinctly, and with forceful quietness, addressing himself to the baron but with his head slightly turned that the giant might read.

"Provarsk, you and I are going out of this room and through that corridor, arm-in-arm, while you apparently assist me in a friendly fashion. Ivan will support me on the opposite side, because my arms will be crossed, the one on your side being beneath my coat. You will support me with your left side toward me, my gentle friend, for a definite reason."

He grinned and paused to give his words effect.

"That reason being, as you may have surmised, that every foot of the way the hand beneath my coat will be pressing this gun against your heart, and that if you even falter, attempt to break loose, or give the slightest alarm, I'll kill you as remorselessly as I would a snake. Our peaceful progress is the only way by which you have the remotest chance of being alive fifteen minutes from now. If we are compelled to fight our way out, it will be after your dead carcass is left behind on the corridor tiles. Make no mistake concerning my determination and ability to carry this through. This time there is no bluff."

Terrified by the possibilities of tragedy before ​her eyes, the princess asked in an awed whisper, "What do you intend to do with him?"

"If he lives through the next few minutes, I shall take him to the automobile waiting there in the street, and kidnap him. After the king has returned to his throne, we shall see! Probably I shall permit him to live. That depends entirely on his behaviour. I expect you to play your part well."

He turned to the baron with a scowl on his face.

"Now!" he said. "This, as sure as you're alive, is a moment of fate for you. Also, lest any of your fool guard might suspect, you must pretend to engage me in friendly conversation. The friendlier the better, my lad, for I shall listen earnestly to that pleasant discourse that I expect to fall from your lips. I have observed that you can talk rather well, on occasion. Open the doors, Princess Eloise, and pass out. You know the way."

Right royally she obeyed, nerving herself to a direct and unfaltering progress. Her pale, cleanly-cut face, the haughty carriage of her finely poised head, and her deliberate, graceful stride proclaimed her the royal princess in truth. So far as any nervous betrayal was concerned, she might have been leading the way to some affair of state. She stared with cool contempt at the little ​guard of adventurers who stood at stiff attention against the corridor walls.

Provarsk felt the strength of the rigid arm that clasped his own against the American's side, and the rigid pressure beneath it of the firmly-held steel tube. Any doubts he had relative to the helplessness of his position were confirmed. Any hope he cherished of escape was subdued by the fear and certainty of death, imminent, ready, and inexorable; for now, to increase his discomfiture, the hobbling, dragging man, a picture of physical incapacity, had bent a trifle forward and turned his gaze upward that he might watch even the expression of his prisoner's face. The surreptitious wink of an eye would, Provarsk felt, be as fatal as a shrill scream.

"Ah! My dear Baron, you were saying——?" He writhed mentally at the sound of the high, querulous, assumed voice, and hastened to reply when he felt the pressure of the pistol's muzzle harshly increased against his ribs.

"I was saying," he replied, with cool, untrembling bravado, "that we can finally rearrange our affairs at a later date. At present, of course, you have the best of it."

"Decidedly! Decidedly!" croaked the visitor. "And there is nothing I love better than a man who tries to balance his obligations. But I trust, my dear Baron Provarsk, that the cares of state ​which now burden you will soon be over with."

The usurper's face flushed red, but he controlled himself to pass the crisis. This American had taunted him, and played with him in the moment when disaster had overtaken his plans—but whatever else he was, Provarsk was a good sportsman, and, somehow, the humour of the situation, even in this time of stress, appealed. He broke into a cynical laugh that echoed through the corridors and convinced the wondering Ubaldo that there was nothing covert in the situation. The latter even grinned and winked at his comrades after the procession disappeared and declared, "Trust him! He's a fox! Already he has that doddering old ass just where he wants him. Now you fellows can take a rest!"

The two sentries on guard in the gaily painted sentry boxes outside the palace gates decided, when they saw the princess, who had almost forced her way into the palace, reappear and enter her car, that they had done well to admit her; for surely that great leader, Baron Provarsk, whom they had assisted to the throne, talked most gaily when he drove away in the second car with the high-voiced, cackling old man who still clung to him in a most friendly manner. The only difficulty about a revolution, after all, the sentries decided, was that it robbed the invaders of enough sleep, and thereupon they yawned widely and ​tried once more to interest themselves in the appearance of the villagers and farmers who passed leisurely with baskets and fowls, totally unaware that they were in the midst of a revolt.

​

CHAPTER SIX

TWO automobiles, the first a closed car carrying a royal princess who was still in a state of mental turmoil and distress, largely punctuated at times by the knowledge that she had met one man who paid no deference to her title, and the second a long, stream-line touring car bearing on its panels the arms of Baron Von Hertz, and carrying three passengers and a chauffeur in the baron's uniform, stormed up the steep ascent to the Castle Hertz, and came to a halt.

Two men emerged anxiously from the great doors and smiled with satisfaction when they identified the occupants of the second car.

"Got him!" exclaimed Kent, leaping easily from the car. "And, by the way, Baron Von Hertz, if those gates or the drawbridge still work, it might be as well to close them until we finish our business with our guest. He's able, and slippery."

The old baron, chuckling, ambled away to obey the request. Ivan alighted, the Princess Eloise had already reached earth and told her chauffeur to take his car to the garage, and Provarsk, resigned for the moment to his capture, slowly ​descended. He smiled cheerfully at the king, bowed with mock politeness, and quite airily waved his hand.

"Good morning, Cousin," he said. "I hope I see you well?"

The king stared at him with smouldering eyes. The princess tossed her head, turned her back, and walked into the castle.

"She doesn't seem fond of me, Cousin," whimsically exclaimed the usurper.

The king disdained reply.

"It's a very cold, formal, inhospitable place to which you have brought me, Mr. Kent," observed the baron, turning toward the American with an air of gentle reproof. "I had anticipated a welcome! Glad shouts from the peasantry! Ringing of joy bells in the castle."

"Why?" questioned Kent, drily. "Perhaps none of us regarded you as worth it." He suddenly dropped all badinage and turned to Baron Von Hertz, who had returned from his mission. "I suppose you have some place where you can keep our guest securely?"

"Several very fine, unhealthy dungeons here," cheerfully replied the baron.

The American thoughtfully stared at the usurper, and then said, "No, I don't think I like that. I don't want him to contract typhus, or influenza, or croup. He's too nice a boy for that. Besides, ​I may want to use him, later on. "What's up in those towers?"

"That one over there," the baron indicated with a pointed finger, "contains rather a fair prison chamber. Strong enough; but no one has entered it, so far as I know, for about a hundred years."

"Good! Can't it be made comfortable for the baron?"

"Quite easily," declared Von Hertz. "And in the meantime I can have him guarded in another chamber. Bring him along."

Provarsk unhesitatingly followed the owner of the castle with the American leisurely pacing by his side and Ivan in the rear.

"That's decent of you, Mr. Kent," the prisoner said, calmly.

"Why not? I've no ill-feeling against you, Provarsk. We've merely played in the same game and you've lost."

"So far!" the prisoner qualified.

Kent laughed approvingly.

"Now you're talking!" he declared. "That's just the kind of spirit I like. I had sort of lost interest in you a while back. You seemed too easy; but now I really begin to regard you as worth while. Hello! Here we are. Nice room, too."

He walked across and looked through a ​window, observing that it overlooked a precipitous cliff with a sheer drop below it of several hundred feet. No other doors save the one through which they entered gave egress. The room was spacious and quite modernly furnished. He walked back and examined the heavy, old-fashioned, cumbersome-keyed lock on the stout oaken door and spoke to Baron Von Hertz:

"Why not leave him here? With a proper guard on the outside, this makes a very nice prison for our friend, the baron. I prefer that he be treated as a distinguished guest, who has a queer desire to remain in his own room for the time being. Have I your assent, sir?"

The fine old eyes of Baron Von Hertz twinkled humorously at the American, for whom plainly he had formed a distinct liking.

"It shall be exactly as you wish, Mr. Kent," he assented. "Also you may trust me to see that your guest does not lack for prompt attention. Indeed, to make sure of it, I shall keep at least four men on guard in the corridor from now on, so that on the slightest sound from within they may hasten to learn what the Baron Provarsk desires. And that even his slightest restlessness in the night may be noted I will also have a night service as well. Prompt attention shall be the rule of the Hotel Hertz. Is there anything he wishes now, prior to our departure?"

​Provarsk grinned nonchalantly and threw himself into a chair.

"Some ham and eggs, Landlord, and see to it that the eggs are fried on both sides. Bread and butter. No rancid stuff, mind you, or I'll complain to the management. Coffee! lots of it, with ample cream. The fact of the matter is that some small business affairs of mine have been so urgent that I've not had time to eat during the last twenty-four hours. I shall be glad for a rest—just a slight one, you understand, because I really must resume my industries at the first opportunity."

"Quite so! Quite so!" Von Hertz replied in the same vein. "You may trust me to observe even the most minute details for your comfort."

"And before we go—sorry, Provarsk!" Kent stepped quickly across and relieved the baron of a small pocket pistol and a penknife, while the latter said, gaily, "So am I sorry! Rather hoped you'd overlook them."

He had calmly cocked his heels up on the edge of the casement and was whistling softly between his teeth when they bolted the door on him. Ivan was left on guard for the few minutes necessary for his relief and when he descended the stairs was at once directed to the small reception room in which Baron Von Hertz had received his guests on the previous night. The king and the American were standing in the centre of the room, the ​latter evidently repeating some former instructions.

"And you are quite certain that Captain Paulo has had sufficient time and can be depended on to the minute?" the American asked.

"Positive!" declared the king with great earnestness.

"And you will attend to the other arrangements?"

"Yes, Mr. Kent. "

"Then here goes, and—good luck to us all!"

The American would have turned from the room without further ceremony, but the king's face glowed and impetuously he held out his hand.

"Just a moment, sir," he said. "If anything goes wrong—and your mission may be dangerous! I want you to know that I appreciate all you have done and are trying to do for me."

The American seemed embarrassed by this display of gratitude. He took the king's hand, but answered, brusquely, "Pshaw! You fail to understand that what I am trying to do is to save my own credit, and to make certain that John Rhodes' money is not lost. I have no sentiment—that is—to amount to anything. Good-bye."

He beckoned to Ivan and passed directly out to the still waiting touring car, into which he climbed.

"Drive us back to the palace in Marken," he ​ordered the chauffeur, wondering in the meantime if Baron Von Hertz had neglected to arrange for the opening of the gates whenever his visitor wished. He saw that such instructions had been given by the very promptitude with which they were widely flung, and then settled back into his seat as the car gathered momentum, and carefully took the curves of the winding road leading to the valley below. Speculatively he studied the rich valley with its farms and clusters of farm cottages, appearing from that height like a great garden trimly cultivated, the distant ranges of mountains where carefully maintained forests alternated with fields, and, far beyond, the spires of Marken. It was a land capable of rendering profit, he decided, reflectively, and what was more, he, the American, unhampered by tradition and eager for such an experiment, would see that it did yield profit or prove his own incompetence as a manager. Also, he concluded, this was the finest sport in which he had ever engaged and better, somewhat, than trout fishing.

His meditations were brought to an abrupt stop by a sharp explosion, the car swerved, and came to a halt beside the highway. Almost as the chauffeur's feet struck the macadam he was by his side. The cause was plain, a flattened tire sagging flaccidly under the weight above it. Anxiously the American looked at his watch.

​"Hang it all!" he exclaimed savagely. "We've no time to lose. Not even five minutes. Any delay at the other end and——" he snapped his fingers conclusively. He stood above the chauffeur while the latter unstrapped an old-style wheel and urged him to haste. He himself seized the jack, but was thrust aside by Ivan, whose mighty muscles sent the lever flying up and down. Together they worked with the adjustment, and again Ivan worked the pump with which the car was provided, grumbling in the meantime that they had to resort to such old-time methods, thereby losing precious minutes from their progress. When he climbed back into the car and they moved ahead at high speed, he again studied his timepiece and said to Ivan, in that voiceless motion of the lips, "This difference of twenty minutes may upset the whole game; but we've got to do our best. It cuts us out of a chance for overcoming awkward preliminaries. Two o'clock was the hour set for everything."

Again they halted in front of the palace and the sentries saw the crippled old gentleman assisted from the car. Baron Provarsk, he explained to them, would return shortly, and had requested that he, Mr. Kent, should be conducted to the smaller throne room, there to wait. Unquestioningly the sentries admitted the caller; for was he not the usurper's friend? And also, the news ​had spread, that through this old simpleton money was to come—plenty of it—enough to make them all rich. One of the lounging soldiers of fortune inside even assisted the visitor up the wide marble steps and along the corridor where drowsy men fell back to give space.

Inside the room Ubaldo, Provarsk's captain at arms, sat beside the table talking to two other men, and his face, that had been perturbed, cleared when he saw the American ushered in. He stared at the door through which Kent and Ivan entered, as if expecting the usurper to follow them, and betrayed disappointment that this expectation was not fulfilled. Without asking consent, Ivan led Kent to a seat at the head of the table, as if unaware that this post of honour was reserved for the ruler of the country, then respectfully backed away until he stood to one side of the door.

"Baron Provarsk did not return with you, sir?" Ubaldo asked with an effort at politeness.

The American again consulted his watch before answering, and a look of satisfaction crept over his face. Leisurely he snapped the case shut, slipped the timepiece back into his pocket, leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands together carelessly. A dry grin broke over his lips, as he looked at Ubaldo and then answered.

"No, Baron Provarsk did not return with me. In fact, the last I saw of him he was—er— ​whistling with satisfaction while waiting for some ham and eggs, some bread and butter, and a cup of coffee to be served with pure cream."

The three adventurers looked at one another perplexed. It was Ubaldo who spoke.

"When may we expect him, sir, may I ask?"

"Why, as for that, not at all," Kent answered, with evident candour.

"For what reason?" Ubaldo demanded, while his comrades looked their intense anxiety.

"Well, mainly for this reason," Kent said, with the same dry grin. "As you, being his right-hand man, doubtless know, the principal thing he wanted was money, and after that power! Provarsk is no fool, I can tell you. Pretty far-sighted, I should say. He wanted to see the king. Insisted on it, I believe. As a result of it all, they seem to have come to a most satisfactory understanding. Quite satisfactory, one might conclude. The baron is thus rendered quite happy by being enabled, with money, to go his way rejoicing. The king is probably equally happy at being enabled to return to his throne without any fuss whatever, and so there you are!"

"You mean we've been sold out?" This time Ubaldo's voice rose to an angry roar, and his two comrades lent their anger to the occasion.

"Put it that way if it suits you best," Kent ​marked, carelessly lifting his hand to conceal a yawn.

Ubaldo's companions broke for the door and out into the corridor bawling, "Betrayed! We've been betrayed! Sold out by that——" And what they called Provarsk would not have been pleasant to the usurper's ears. Ubaldo turned, hesitantly, as if to call them back, and Kent seized the opportunity to give a noiseless command to Ivan.

"When I get them all inside," he said, "you slip out quickly and see that the palace gates are not barred," and then, speaking aloud, he called to Ubaldo.

"It seems to me that your fellows are making a pretty good-sized noise over nothing. Noise isn't going to help you."

In the corridor outside could be heard oaths, hoarse exclamations and the sound of running bootheels over the tiled floors. Several of Provarsk's adventurers came tearing into the throne room, shaking their fists and wanting to know if what they had heard was the truth. Their leader tried in vain to control them for some minutes, and at last, when he obtained attention, did so by outbawling them all.

"Silence! Silence, there, you men! Who's leader here? You or me? I tell you to hold your ​tongues until we find out about this. Do you hear me?"

Slowly and sullenly they became subdued. Ubaldo then turned fiercely on the American, who sat impassive at the head of the table, his manner portraying nothing more than a melancholy, almost disinterested curiosity in his surroundings.

"Now, you limping old fossil!" Ubaldo snarled, "you'll tell us exactly what happened. And don't forget this; if you don't tell the truth, I'll cook you, inch by inch, and then throw the cinders into the streets."

The "old fossil" looked mildly surprised.

"I thought I did tell you," he said. "If I've got to tell it again, suppose you call all your men in to hear it. It strikes me that you're only one of them, and that any man that joined your expedition has just as much right to know what is up as you have."

"That's right! You're right there!" the other adventurers in the room yelled in chorus, some of them in the meantime scowling at Ubaldo and muttering to their neighbours that he was the one, after all, who had got them into the mess. Ubaldo recognised the sign of danger, and tried to quell it; but he was unheeded in the turmoil. Two of the guardsmen rushed out of the room to summon their comrades. Ubaldo was vainly trying to ​bring those within the room to a cooler state of mind when the others began to arrive, some of them hurriedly pulling on their tunics and frowsy-headed, attesting that they had been aroused from sleep. Kent, imperturbably watching, decided that they were all there, inasmuch as the two men who had rushed out to give the summons came in last, accompanied by the gate sentries, and the corridor was still.

"All I can say," he remarked, quietly, "is just about what I've said before. Baron Provarsk is at this moment the contented guest of the king. He's in a place where you men can't reach him. I fancy he will remain there so long as he fears he might meet any of you. In fact, he doesn't seem eager to renew the acquaintance of any of you. I don't believe he likes you. Indeed, he has been unkind enough, once or twice, to refer to you as a lot of jackasses, and what he said about Mr.—what's this your name is—Ubaldo? I don't care to repeat. Why, Mr. Ubaldo, do you know, he said to me, Provarsk did, that if all your brains were taken out of your skull and boiled into tallow, they wouldn't make a candle for a glow worm! He said your head would make a fine snare drum! For goodness' sake, man! Don't be angry with me! I'm just telling you what the Baron Provarsk said after he left the palace with me this morning."

​Ubaldo grew red with anger and sputtered, and his temper was not assisted by the remarks of some of his army.

Kent observed with satisfaction that Ivan had disappeared from his post by the doorway. In an instant's lull in the turmoil about him, he heard the faint, clarion warning of an automobile horn that played the same gentle notes indicative of the approach of the royal automobile, and, keenly alive to the necessity of holding this swarm of adventurers a few minutes longer, rapped on the table with his bare knuckles and called, in his powerful voice, "Gentlemen! Attention, please! Let me finish."

He waited until they were again quiet, straining his ears the while for a repetition of the horn's warning, but hearing nothing, settled to his task.

"Now let us be reasonable," he said. "You are all reasonable men, I take it. You joined this expedition, somehow, with the hope of bettering yourselves—making money, securing a steady place. Well, you didn't get it. You are done. Your jig is up. You are in jeopardy. You've no more chance than a lot of dogs in a city pound. There is no one now but the king who can grant you amnesty. You couldn't escape from Marken if you tried. You know what they usually do with fellows like you are, when they catch them, don't you? If you don't, I'll tell you. They hang them! ​Why, I wouldn't give a centime for all of your chances, unless you can square it, someway, with the king. There's no use for you to fight. You are probably pretty good, and used to it; but fifty men can't do anything against—say—five thousand good, husky peasants armed with everything from a blunderbuss to a high-powered, flat trajectory rifle. They'd get you, sure! The only thing for you chaps to do is to lay down your hands."

He cocked his head sidewise and paused, in a listening attitude, for again he heard the horn, quite distinctly now. His suspense grew and with it ran his resolution to hold this mob to the last moment.

"Don't pay any attention to him!" shouted Ubaldo. "Don't be fools!"

"Why, that's what Provarsk called you," Kent said, plaintively. "He said that if you had had the wisdom of a garden worm, everything would have been all right. And he said——"

"Shut up!" yelled Ubaldo, menacingly, dropping his hand to the hilt of his sword. "I'll run you through if you don't! You men keep quiet. Hear what I've got to say. You don't know but what this old paralytic is a liar, sent here by the king to blindfold you!"

The crowd glared at the American as if this suggestion had not hitherto dawned upon them.

​"Very unkind of you," Kent murmured. "And maybe they are already convinced that you are one."

Ubaldo wasted no time in retort.

"The only chance we've got," he said, loudly, "is to hold this palace until Baron Provarsk returns, or until we can make terms! Besides, we've got this old imbecile as a hostage and, if he's a friend of the king's, they'll let us go rather than let him be toasted. Get back to the gates, some of you fellows. Others of you go to the walls. Don't let any one but Provarsk in. I've warned you about that before, and now you see what kind of a fix you are in by not obeying my orders. Get out and ready to defend yourselves," he shouted to spur them to action. But before any of them could obey, the pretended paralytic had leapt from his chair and now stood in the door with his hand upraised, and his eyes blazing at them.

"Stop!" he commanded.

They paused, astonished at his physical agility, and the aspect of power presented by his commanding gesture. Suddenly, while they hesitated, through the corridor rang the loud blare of a trumpet.

"Gentlemen! You are too late! See!"

He sprang to the hangings that barred the view of the corridor, jerked them aside, and the discomfited adventurers huddled backward to a solid ​group when they saw that the corridor was nearly filled with trimly-uniformed soldiers of the royal army who stood quietly with rifles at the "Ready."

There was another blast of a trumpet, and the American moved slowly toward the side of the doorway, announcing as he did so, "Here comes the king!"

In a desperate, awed silence, helpless and defeated, they fixed their eyes on the door through which, followed by the Princess Eloise, Baron Von Glutz and Captain Paulo, and accompanied by a body guard, the king entered, walked slowly across the room and then halted and scornfully eyed them, man by man, these who would have murdered him for a usurper's hire.

"I present to Your Majesty," said a calm, sarcastic voice, "fifty gentlemen-at-arms. A fine batch of jailbirds who at present are idle, having just been mustered out."

​

CHAPTER SEVEN

CAPTAIN PAULO, standing in one of the small reception rooms of Castle Hertz, and staring absently across the lawn on which the morning sun was shining, whistled softly a very gay tune, indicative of a well-contented spirit. A movement behind him caused him to turn quickly, and instantly he came to attention, then made a punctilious bow.

"Your Royal Highness———"

"Is up early. I know what you are going to say."

The princess spoke with something akin to petulance, and being adroit in danger signs, Captain Paulo held his tongue expectantly. The captain of a royal household guard has to be something of a diplomat if he wishes to continue in his billet. The princess walked across the room and looked absently out at the lawn for a moment, then, glancing over her shoulder to make certain that they were alone, asked him a question.

"What took place in the palace yesterday, after I left the room?"

"Mr. Kent pointed out to Provarsk's men the ​folly of resistance and made them surrender their arms, after delivering them a homily on the dangers of rebellion, and told them that he would then appear as their solicitor before the king."

"Well? Well?" she urged him when he paused. "What was done with them? Where are they now confined?"

"They are not confined anywhere, Your Royal Highness."

She gave a start of astonishment, as if incredulous.

"At Mr. Kent's suggestion, His Majesty granted them full amnesty, with the exception of the man called Ubaldo, who has been sent to prison on an indefinite sentence. After that, Mr. Kent selected a few of the most likely ones that he said he had use for, and suggested that the others be escorted across the border. He also suggested that each one's picture be taken. Said he thought this would serve two purposes, one to identify them for hanging if they ever returned, and the other because he thought Marken should start a rogues' gallery and this was an excellent opportunity to lay a foundation."

"Suggested! He suggested! And everything he suggested my brother did! I simply cannot understand this situation. How on earth it happened that my brother fell so suddenly and so ​completely under the influence of this money-lender is incomprehensible!"

Her annoyance was unmistakable. Captain Paulo was secretly thankful that he was not her brother and was vastly relieved by the entry of that gentleman in person. By the troubled frown on the king's brows the young officer decided that every word of the princess' last and captious speech had been overheard.

"You may go, Captain Paulo," the king said, significantly, and the young officer saluted and discreetly retired, glad that he was not in the king's shoes.

"Eloise," the king remonstrated, with an attempt at severity, "I am sorry to say that I heard what you said to the captain. Does it seem quite fitting that you should discuss our affairs with——"

"Why not!" she retorted, coolly. "It's time it was discussed with some one on whom I can depend, isn't it? If I don't, I'm afraid this man Kent will be running the kingdom as he pleases before long."

The king winced and lost his air of admonishment. He knew, from past experience, that this sister of his dealt in very plain truths. Sometimes they were highly unpleasant. Anger at his own impotence caused him to rush to Kent's defence. Moreover, he was filled with great respect for his ​new ally's rough-and-ready method of doing things, that so far invariably had been successful.

"Why should you object?" he asked. "Has he not proved himself a stronger and a better advisor than I ever had before?"

"But there comes a time when advice assumes domination! It looks to me as if his suggestions were assuming the nature of orders."

"Well, what of it?" he retorted, goaded by the knowledge that she had put her finger on the truth. "You wouldn't have me decline to do as he suggests when I can see for myself that those suggestions are exactly the right course to follow?"

"But isn't it time that he were given to understand——"

"My dear sister," he exclaimed, as another loophole presented itself offering escape from this unpleasant interview, "can't you see further than that? How do you suppose this dynasty is to maintain itself without financial support? Can't you fix it plainly in your mind that John Rhodes, whose agent Mr. Kent is, could practically ruin Marken if he chose?"

"Oh! Those bonds again? I thought so. Well, do you know what I would do if I were the king? I would calmly notify this fearsome Mr. John Rhodes that I wasn't ready to pay his bonds, and that he could wait until I did get well ready!"

​"Is that Her Royal Highness' conception of honour in financial undertakings?" questioned a dry voice behind them, and they turned to observe Kent standing quietly in the doorway.

"I didn't hear any one announce you," she said, nettled by his unexpected interruption.

"No," he replied, affably, "I don't suppose you did. As an admission, I will say that I'm so unused to court affairs, and dwelling with royalty, and the presence of superiority, that I have not yet learned all that is expected of one under such circumstances. In many ways I'm what we call, over home, a Rube. But now that I am here, I don't remember that you answered my question."

His eyes met hers unflinchingly, insistently. She wondered if there was not a little of scorn in them; tolerant, but, just the same, scorn such as one bestows upon those guilty of moral delinquency. She was driven to defence.

"I feel no compulsion to answer the questions of one who is merely a financial agent," she retorted, "but since you have wilfully tried to misconstrue my meaning, I will explain that there are occasions when, of necessity, one is forced to adopt measures that under other conditions would not be at all considered. This is one of them. The dignity of royalty must be maintained."

"The dignity of royalty—must be maintained, even by the repudiation of its honest debts? You ​are now quite explicit. I did not see your attitude before."

Under this sirocco of sarcasm she withered; but still fighting for her standard replied, hotly, "You deliberately misapply my words."

"Motives," he corrected, unmoved.

It was too much! She felt like a schoolgirl being quietly admonished by a head master.

"Since you are so exact," she remarked, petulantly, "perhaps you will try to make me see that your motives in assisting us as you have, and we recognise that service, too, are entirely unprejudiced? That you are here as a philanthropist giving service to our house, one that you have never known! That you are not here because you want to save that person Rhodes, for whom you work, his money."

"That last may be so," he declared, patiently. "I am here to save John Rhodes' money. Do you believe that a kingdom, any more than an individual, can advance itself without money?"

"Honour is better than money," she asserted.

"It seems to me that I've heard that before," he said, smiling. "I didn't know that was in your copy books, also. Since you are intent on fighting me, suppose you draw the line for me by telling where honour begins after one has practically abrogated one's debts. I am interested, Mademoiselle. I would know the ideas of royalty in those ​matters. You see, as I have confessed, being an American, I have never before been a sort of member of a king's household."

A slow, patient smile spread over his ingenuous face as he looked at her, and she, more than ever angered at the strange sense of power that this man exhaled, felt herself again worsted in the tilt and in proportion hated herself for her weakness. She felt that it was unbecoming to her dignity of position, that had perforce commanded respect, to her beauty, that had brought leaders of her own class to her feet, to stand meekly and in a ridiculous light before this scoffer from an alien land. She had regarded America as a great blatant nation, without historical precedent, ruled by an official known as a president, who, while in power, must be tolerated and addressed patronisingly, and promptly forgotten and ignored after his departure from office. Marken was, after all, its superior. It was a kingdom! Ruled by those whose ancestors had ruled it for hundreds of years! A king, no matter what his personal habits or strength, must as a matter of course be far greater, and of an entirely superior mould to a mere accident of popularity thrust into power by an impossible people. Once some one had told her, laughingly, that the kingdom of Marken was not so important in the world's affairs as New York, and she, a school girl, had felt highly ​insulted and looked that place up in a geography to learn whether such a name was really on the map. She felt peculiarly powerless to express to this American her real estimation of him. She did as other royal personages have done before and will do again, affected a vast loftiness and superiority in lieu of other answer. She lifted her head and, with a gesture of indifference, walked toward the door. He did not seem at all overawed, or impressed. Indeed, it was more as if he were inwardly amused, yet desirous of parting friends for future needs. He dared to bar her way, and to stand in front of her with his hands holding the hangings on either side.

"Come," he said, "you are wrong. It is you who do not understand; and understanding is necessary. I've come here to make good. I'm going to do it!"

A strange jargon this. And she found herself pondering its meaning and usage.

"You needn't trouble to answer," he continued when she hesitated in a bewildered study. "But I'll tell you something before you go. It is not yours to play the part of an obstructionist to your brother's hopes and ideals, if you love him as a sister should. I don't know it, but I presume that it is permitted for the sister of a king to love her brother and advance his interests—maybe not. If so, kings and princesses should never be ​brothers and sisters. Anyway, it's going to be a lot easier for me to—to get John Rhodes' money—" she could scarcely account for the strange sarcasm in his tone "and incidentally to help your brother, if we act as friends. Come, will you not act as our ally in this troublesome undertaking?"

She was strangely and unreasonably moved by his appeal; for appeal it was, his mellow voice hastening to his will, and his thoughtful, searching eyes fixing themselves questioningly upon her face.

"Unity of action is necessary to success," he added, while she stood before him, waiting for him to stand aside.

For quite a time they confronted each other, he with his hand outstretched, as if inviting her compact, and then slowly his look shifted and lost all its warmth, and veiled itself, and his lips straightened to a harsh, obdurate line. He bowed and stepped to one side, beckoning with unconscious grace toward the open door. She knew that he was wounded by her refusal, and she was no longer aggressive. She fought an impulse to put her hand in his and become, after this relinquishment, his faithful partner in the enterprise; but that meant, she knew, that she must become, as her brother threatened to become, his subordinate, a position against which, by training and heredity, she rebelled. Without looking back, neither ​disdainful, haughty, nor yet subdued, she passed through the door and away. For an instant his face was grave and hurt, and then, as if arousing himself to his task, an inexorable master of himself as well as of others, his face again hardened and he walked toward the king, who, throughout the interview, had stood with his back toward the room, as if politely leaving the situation to adjust itself.

Kent put his hands in his pockets, frowned reflectively, and said as brusquely as if addressing an office boy, "Please summon Von Glutz and have Captain Paulo and Ivan brought here at once."

And like an office boy the king obeyed. He stepped to an electric button and pressed it, after which he stared at Kent, who stood lost in thought. Von Glutz was the first to enter. He bowed deeply to the king and with marked respect to the American.

"Sit down, Baron. Make yourself at home," Kent said, careless of royal etiquette, and the chancellor, disturbed by this invitation, looked at the king beseechingly.

"Certainly, Baron. Sit down," said the king, smiling a little at the strangeness of their positions.

Captain Paulo appeared and at him Kent smiled and nodded, and immediately afterward the giant ​stood in the doorway with his eyes fixed on Kent's lips.

"Ivan, did yon serve the Baron Provarsk in person, this morning?" the financier asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Ah! How did the baron appear? Resigned? Cheerful? Or grumpy and discomfited?"

Ivan grinned widely.

"I am not certain, sir, but I think that when I entered he was whistling. Resigned? Perhaps. Discomfited? Not at all. Certainly he did not seem out of spirits. Indeed, he was rather gay. He asked me if I had ever seen a blindfolded dog with a wooden leg playing football with a one-eyed pig, and when I said 'No,' declared that he was rather astonished, because he understood one could see almost anything in America.

"Good! He'll do, all right!" Kent exclaimed. His lips opened as if to give a command, and then, observing Captain Paulo, he turned toward the king respectfully and said, "If it meets with your approval, sir, can we not have the insurgent brought here?"

The king, appreciating Kent's constant care to avoid humiliating him in the presence of any of his people, gave Captain Paulo the order, and the latter disappeared with alacrity. The chancellor, who, plainly ill at ease, had shifted and rolled himself restlessly from one side to the ​other, seized the opportunity to stand up, looking an apology at the king; but the king, evidently good humoured and curious, was watching the American. He could not repress a scowl, however, when Provarsk was ushered in with two sentries in front, two behind, and Captain Paulo bringing up the rear. The sentries saluted the king and stepped to one side.

"You will stand guard outside with your men," the king directed Paulo.

Kent gestured Ivan to guard the door from the inside.

"Good morning, Cousin, and everybody else, Americans included," blithely saluted Provarsk. "Nice weather, isn't it—ah—after the storm! "

Kent was the only one who seemed to enjoy his humour. The king turned his back, walked to a chair and seated himself. For nearly a minute, in the silence of the room, Kent studied Provarsk's face.

"Well, Provarsk," he said, genially, "my bluff seems the best of the lot, doesn't it?"

"Evidently!" quite freely agreed Provarsk. "Only, of course, I don't as yet know just how badly I am let in."

"You'll find that out, soon enough. One usually does, you know," was Kent's response. "I believe His Majesty gives you permission to sit."

"I do," said the king, carelessly, and Provarsk ​smiled and seated himself after an ostentatious and exasperating grin at the chancellor, who promptly turned purple with rage.

"You will pardon me," said Kent, drily, as he pulled a chair into a position where he could directly face Provarsk, "if in our conversation I seem to be assuming; but His Majesty has graciously granted me certain privileges of speech and action which he will sanction. Is that not true, Sire?"

The king, reverting to that strange, curious look of expectancy, said it was, and Provarsk shielded his mouth with his finger tips as if to conceal a smile.

"Provarsk," said Kent, decisively, "you're whipped; all the way down the line."

"For the moment, yes, I suppose," the usurper admitted, gracefully. He smiled at the American in rather an amused, friendly way.

"The king has decided," continued Kent, placidly, "that you are a man of some talent, and has therefore concluded to make none other than you chancellor of his kingdom."

For once Provarsk was so completely surprised that his looks betrayed him. He leaned forward in his chair and stared at the American, doubtfully. Baron Von Glutz cleared his throat explosively, and was nearly speechless with wrath.

"This is going too far!" he exclaimed; but was ​silenced by Kent, who turned toward him and said, "Steady! Steady, Baron. You needn't worry. You will be cared for later in this—this reconstruction."

"But—but—" hesitated the king, vastly distressed, "Baron Von Glutz has been my mentor since my boyhood, and was the chancellor of Marken under my father!"

"Doubtless his administrative excellence accounts for Marken's present peaceful condition; and also for our unexpected meeting across the border, then!" Kent said, suavely. "But as I understood you, sir——"

Provarsk interrupted with a sneering laugh and exclaimed, "Pshaw! I might have known it. It is you who ask me to be chancellor, Eh? All right! I accept. Under you; but not under His Majesty. But pray tell me why I am thus honoured?"

"Honoured? Well, for several reasons. One that it's not so messy as to have you taken out and hanged. Another that you still represent to me a sporting proposition and I like fearless men who go out after a thing when they want it. It's been a long time since I have met such an interesting sort of a personage as you seem to be, and, inasmuch as His Majesty wants me to remain with him for a time as an advisor, I'd like to see what you can do whether you can get the best of us."

​"I promise to do the very best I can to get the best of you," Provarsk asserted.

"I like that, too, " Kent said, heartily. "You're welcome to get away with all you can; with this understanding, that you must agree to accept and honestly carry out all orders given you. Otherwise——"

"Otherwise what?" queried the baron, when the American hesitated.

"Otherwise we'll have you promptly shot. Also, you are 'honoured,' as you put it, because I believe you are a good enough gamester, once having given your word, to obey orders."

Provarsk studied Kent, wonderingly, while the latter, without a change of expression, stared back at him.

"You don't want to be bothered hanging or shooting me, now; you think I'm too dangerous to exile; and you therefore prefer to keep me directly under your eye. So you appoint me chancellor! Bather clever, it strikes me."

Kent nodded and smiled.

"You have it," he said.

"All right, Mr. Richard Kent, I accept this chancellorship, and agree to obey all of your orders—or should I say His Majesty's?—with just one provision, which is that after one year's service I have the privilege of resigning and walking away, scot free, whenever I choose to do so."

​"Quite a nice agreement! A very pleasant agreement, indeed!" Kent assented. "We will now have an interview with Captain Paulo."

He gave Ivan the order, speaking loudly, as though to impress on the new chancellor that his man was a trifle hard of hearing, and in a moment Captain Paulo stood before them.

"Captain Paulo," said Kent, "His Majesty, the king, has graciously delegated me to reorganise the cabinet of Marken, and, because of your fidelity, you are now appointed Minister of the Treasury."

Paulo stood with a look of astonishment on his face. It was an advancement that he had never thought of. Truly there must have been some foundation for the Arabian Nights. For once the king was not disturbed by the American's plans, and began ta wonder if, after all, there was not some method in this new form of madness.

"Those are my wishes, Captain Paulo," said he. Kent bowed his head gravely to the new Minister of the Treasury.

"Permit me to introduce the new Chancellor of the realm, Baron Provarsk."

Paulo found it difficult to bow; but by desperate effort did so. Provarsk acknowledged this deference to his position by an airy, "That's all right, Paulo. Never can tell what your luck may be. Perhaps I'll make you a field marshal ​yet," a piece of pleasantry that Kent appreciated with a slight smile, and which the king plainly resented.

"And the Baron Provarsk is therefore now at liberty?" queried Paulo, evidently unable to grasp the extraordinary changes that had taken place.

"My goodness, man! Your Excellency, the Minister of the Treasury, does not suggest that so exalted and important official as the chancellor of the realm should be pinched, do you?" Kent asked, with unsmiling lips.

"Why, I should say not!" exclaimed Provarsk, with a great assumption of dignity. "I couldn't think of such a thing! I've a mind to ask my cousin to instantly remove you from office!"

"If I am to act as cabinet minister——" began Paulo.

"I would suggest that you and the chancellor retire to the anteroom, and come to an amicable agreement to leave each other alone," Kent interrupted. "His Majesty expects you to do so. It must be understood that all previous differences have, from the moment of His Majesty's appointments, been obliterated."

Provarsk arose with an air of relief, bowed deeply to the king, eyed Kent quizzically, and led the way. Paulo, still bewildered, made his salutes and followed after, leaving the American with his eyes fixed on Von Glutz, who had steadily drooped ​and wilted into an effigy of injured innocence, not unlike a wilted turnip.

"Baron," Kent began, "all this may appear a trifle strange to you; but I have reasons."

"Does it not seem to you, Mr. Kent, that you are in a measure taking advantage of our somewhat singular position?" the king asked. "I am still striving to keep my share of our agreement; but I can not quite grasp——"

"You aren't supposed to grasp anything, owing to that agreement," was the concise retort. "You were, and still are, in a passive position. It's my job to pull you out. I'm probably upsetting a lot of precedents; but I take the responsibility for running this board of directors—pardon! I mean this kingdom—in my own way."

Rebuffed, the king met Kent's look, and then, reassured by the intelligence he saw there, said, "I am sorry to have interfered. I am doing the best I can to learn. It requires some patience, under the circumstances, to——"

He stopped, the confession itself being difficult; but the American liked him for his outburst. Indeed, he decided there might be some hope for the king, properly handled.

"Our ways are different," he said, less aggressively. "Your way has been tried and failed. Therefore mine can be no worse."

He faced Von Glutz again, and was about to ​speak, when, as if it were her particular mission in life to interfere, the Princess Eloise came hurriedly into the room, again with full danger signals flying.

"Karl," she asked, "is it true, as Provarsk just now informed me, in the ante-room, that you have appointed him chancellor of Marken?"

"It is true," the king replied.

"Then," she declared stormily, "I suppose this outrage is also due to the sage advice of your new friend, Mr. Kent? Are you still the king of Marken, may I ask? Or are you a marionette pulled by a string? Have you gone mad? Have you no spirit left?"

Exasperated by her return as well as by the contempt that had so deftly conveyed itself in the selection of her words, the king forgot his promise of secrecy to the American.

"Eloise," he replied, desperately, "sheer force of circumstances have for the time being drawn me into a pact with Mr. Kent, by which he is to have the controlling voice in the affairs of the kingdom. You forget that without his efforts we should scarcely be here now. So far he has proven——"

"Why doesn't he have himself crowned?"

The king did not answer. Kent was amused. She stared at him as he sat noiselessly drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair, entirely ​self-possessed, and apparently indifferent to anything she might say.

"I suppose it was you, then, who appointed our enemy Provarsk to the position of chancellor?" she said.

"The king appoints. I merely advise," he replied, with a smile in the corners of his eyes that stretched slowly downward until it created circumflex wrinkles around his firm lips.

"What is to become of Baron Von Glutz?" she demanded, directly to the point.

The American slowly moved his head in the baron's direction and assumed a deep study of that person that caused the latter to squirm, puff his cheeks, and adopt the habitual recourse of tugging at his moustache.

"Do you know," replied Kent slowly, "that is the question which has bothered me a whole lot. I've given considerable thought to him and—er—I hardly know what to do with him. At first I thought of appointing him the king's dog-catcher. Then, observing something faintly suggesting a military character, a regular fighting general behind the lines—a long way behind—I concluded that he might make a good minister of war. That is one of the most important places in every kingdom of this kind. The smaller the army, the more important the position. There ​is such a billet as that in Marken, isn't there?" he concluded in a bland tone of inquiry.

Von Glutz was the first to recover from this attack.

"When one has been a chancellor, it is rather difficult to step back to a portfolio," he protested.

"Then why not step out into private life?" retorted Kent, and added with great enthusiasm: "It would be such a change for you! By Jove! That's the very thing! Become a plain citizen! All sorts of things to do. Opportunities to criticise the government. Tell admiring friends what you would have done if you had been chancellor. Point out the incumbent's mistakes. Get a lot of figures together to show wasteful extravagance in expenditures. Tariff reform. Income tax. Workingman's friend. Poor girls' benefactor. Be a Cromwell, and get the power of a king by having His Majesty's head cut off. Or a Bismarck, freely lieing, breaking all covenants, and have yourself made a prince. Sort of fellow-citizen, friend-of-the-people, Napoleon, and clap the crown on your bald head. You might even Cookize, and discover a new North pole. Say! If you've been a good chancellor, why did the hen cross the road? Why was Provarsk?"

He paused with mock earnestness, waiting deferentially for a reply.

"You don't answer," he continued, and again ​that subtle change that distinguished him was apparent. "Baron Von Glutz, I respect you for being an honest man, and a faithful one. But there has been a task that you could not grasp. There are many different kinds of brains in this world. Yours was not the kind for the place. This one requires a callosity that you don't possess. You can't cheat, or dissimulate. You can't bluff. You were not a good chancellor. So I've made you Minister of War. Do you want the place?"

The baron gave a heavy sigh, and looked doubtful. Apprehensive lest he decline the proffered portfolio, the princess hastened to urge his acceptance.

"Since there seems no way of disregarding our new advisor's wishes, Baron Von Glutz, I ask you in my own behalf to accept. If you should retire to private life you would leave me with one less friend in whom I can confide. There is none left, now, save Paulo."

The American did not dispute her; but the king looked at her strangely and said, "That is unfair, Eloise."

She paid no attention to him but walked across until she stood by the baron's side.

"For my sake, old friend," she appealed, and Von Glutz, for whom Kent was secretly rather sorry, lifted his head and said, "Very well. I accept."

​"Good!" said Kent, bluntly.

He waited, as if expecting the princess to leave the room; but she, divining his wish, stubbornly made her way to a chair and seated herself with the evident intention of remaining indefinitely. Observing this, Kent smiled slightly, and announced himself.

"Having thus come so easily through our reorganisation, and now being on such nice, friendly terms of amity and unity," he said, "we may as well get down to business and understand what we propose to do. I have studied the situation pretty thoroughly. First, we have army enough now to do police duty. That is what it shall do. Next, we shall have conscription."

His hearers gave a gasp of dismay.

"The trouble with a large majority of Markenites," he went on, "is that they are lazy. They don't produce enough. Therefore we will have conscription for labour, and compel them to work whether they want to or not. If they don't obey, we confiscate their property and throw them out of the kingdom. I'm going to compel every man in Marken to earn more money than he ever has hitherto!"

His voice was now hard and emphatic, and he punctuated his declaration by rapping the table with his knuckles.

"I'm going to make them rich, and the kingdom ​rich, whether they like it or not. When a country is in such distress as this kingdom is, it needs an autocrat and, by Heavens! it has one now! Those mines shall work full tilt, and this government is going to force the building of factories and encourage industries. The kingdom of Marken shall not only pay its debts, but while doing it, shall learn how to keep out of debt."

The king could not entirely repress a look of enthusiasm; but the princess was still rebellious.

"And may I ask what rôle the modest Mr. Kent proposes to play in all this miraculous work?" she inquired.

"I've thought of that, too," cheerfully replied Mr. Kent, ignoring the inference that he had been boasting. "Some kings have officials known as 'The King's Remembrancer,' whose job it is to stand at the king's elbow and remind him of what he has to do. I shall be the King's Remembrancer in Marken, Your Royal Highness."

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article  Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.