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Castle Craneycrow

by George Barr McCutcheon · English · Gutenberg #5349 · 448,716 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Castle Craneycrow

Author: George Barr McCutcheon


        
Release date: March 1, 2004 [eBook #5349]
                Most recently updated: March 12, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5349

Credits: Produced by Charles Aldarondo and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASTLE CRANEYCROW ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo






CASTLE CRANEYCROW

By George Barr McCutcheon

NEW YORK

1902




CASTLE CRANEYCROW




I. THE TAKING OF TURK


It was characteristic of Mr. Philip Quentin that he first lectured
his servant on the superiority of mind over matter and then took him
cheerfully by the throat and threw him into a far corner of the
room. As the servant was not more than half the size of the master,
his opposition was merely vocal, but it was nevertheless
unmistakable. His early career had increased his vocabulary and his
language was more picturesque than pretty. Yet of his loyalty and
faithfulness, there could be no doubt. During the seven years of his
service, he had been obliged to forget that he possessed such a name
as Turkington or even James. He had been Turk from the beginning,
and Turk he remained--and, in spite of occasional out breaks, he had
proved his devotion to the young gentleman whose goods and chattels
he guarded with more assiduity than he did his own soul or--what
meant more to him--his personal comfort. His employment came about in
an unusual way. Mr. Quentin had an apartment in a smart building
uptown. One night he was awakened by a noise in his room. In the
darkness he saw a man fumbling among his things, and in an instant
he had seized his revolver from the stand at his bedside and covered
the intruder. Then he calmly demanded: “Now, what are you doing
here?”

“I'm lookin' for a boardin' house,” replied the other, sullenly.

“You're just a plain thief--that's all.”

“Well, it won't do me no good to say I'm a sleepwalker, will it?--er
a missionary, er a dream? But, on d' dead, sport, I'm hungry, an' I
wuz tryin' to git enough to buy a meal an' a bed. On d' dead, I
wuz.”

“And a suit of clothes, and an overcoat, and a house and lot, I
suppose, and please don't call me 'sport' again. Sit down--not oh
the floor; on that chair over there. I'm going to search you. Maybe
you've got something I need.” Mr. Quentin turned on the light and
proceeded to disarm the man, piling his miserable effects on a
chair. “Take off that mask. Lord! put it on again; you look much
better. So, you're hungry, are you?”

“As a bear.”

Quentin never tried to explain his subsequent actions; perhaps he
had had a stupid evening. He merely yawned and addressed the burglar
with all possible respect. “Do you imagine I'll permit any guest of
mine to go away hungry? If you'll wait till I dress, we'll stroll
over to a restaurant in the next street and get some supper.

“Police station, you mean.”

“Now, don't be unkind, Mr. Burglar. I mean supper for two. I'm
hungry myself, but not a bit sleepy. Will you wait?”

“Oh, I'm in no particular hurry.”

Quentin dressed calmly. The burglar began whistling softly.

“Are you ready?” asked Philip, putting on his overcoat and hat.

“I haven't got me overcoat on yet,” replied the burglar,
suggestively. Quentin saw he was dressed in the chilliest of rags.
He opened a closet door and threw him a long coat.

“Ah, here is your coat. I must have taken it from the club by
mistake. Pardon me.”

“T'anks; I never expected to git it back,” coolly replied the
burglar, donning the best coat that had ever touched his person.
“You didn't see anything of my gloves and hat in there, did you?” A
hat and a pair of gloves were produced, not perfect in fit, but
quite respectable.

Soberly they walked out into the street and off through the
two-o'clock stillness. The mystified burglar was losing his
equanimity. He could not understand the captor's motive, nor could
he much longer curb his curiosity. In his mind he was fully
satisfied that he was walking straight to the portals of the nearest
station. In all his career as a housebreaker, he had never before
been caught, and now to be captured in such a way and treated in
such a way was far past comprehension. Ten minutes before he was
looking at a stalwart figure with a leveled revolver, confidently
expecting to drop with the bullet in his body from an agitated
weapon. Indeed, he encountered conditions so strange that he felt a
doubt of their reality. He had, for some peculiar and amazing
reason, no desire to escape. There was something in the oddness of
the proceeding that made him wish to see it to an end. Besides, he
was quite sure the strapping young fellow would shoot if he
attempted to bolt.

“This is a fairly good eating house,” observed the would-be victim
as they came to an “all-nighter.” They entered and deliberately
removed their coats, the thief watching his host with shifty, even
twinkling eyes. “What shall it be, Mr. Robber? You are hungry, and
you may order the entire bill, from soup to the date line, if you
like. Pitch in.”

“Say, boss, what's your game?” demanded the crook, suddenly. His
sharp, pinched face, with its week's growth of beard, wore a new
expression--that of admiration. “I ain't such a rube that I don't
like a good t'ing even w'en it ain't comin' my way. You'se a dandy,
dat's right, an' I t'ink we'd do well in de business togedder. Put
me nex' to yer game.”

“Game? The bill of fare tells you all about that. Here's quail,
squab, duck--see? That's the only game I'm interested in. Go on, and
order.”

“S' 'elp me Gawd if you ain't a peach.”

For half an hour Mr. Burglar ate ravenously, Quentin watching him
through half-closed, amused eyes. He had had a dull, monotonous
week, and this was the novelty that lifted life out of the torpidity
into which it had fallen.

The host at this queer feast was at that time little more than
twenty-five years of age, a year out of Yale, and just back from a
second tour of South America. He was an orphan, coming into a big
fortune with his majority, and he had satiated an old desire to
travel in lands not visited by all the world. Now he was back in New
York to look after the investments his guardian had made, and he
found them so ridiculously satisfactory that they cast a shadow of
dullness across his mind, always hungry for activity.

“Have you a place to sleep?” he asked, at length.

“I live in Jersey City, but I suppose I can find a cheap lodgin'
house down by d' river. Trouble is, I ain't got d' price.”

“Then come back home with me. You may sleep in Jackson's room.
Jackson was my man till yesterday, when I dismissed him for stealing
my cigars and drinking my drinks. I won't have anybody about me who
steals. Come along.”

Then they walked swiftly back to Quentin's flat. The owner of the
apartment directed his puzzled guest to a small room off his own,
and told him to go to bed.

“By the way, what's your name?” he asked, before he closed the door.

“Turkington--James Turkington, sir,” answered the now respectful
robber. And he wanted to say more, but the other interrupted.

“Well, Turk, when you get up in the morning, polish those shoes of
mine over there. We'll talk it over after I've had my breakfast.
Good-night.”

And that is how Turk, most faithful and loyal of servants, began his
apparently endless employment with Mr. Philip Quentin, dabbler in
stocks, bonds and hearts. Whatever his ugly past may have been,
whatever his future may have promised, he was honest to a painful
degree in these days with Quentin. Quick-witted, fiery, willful and
as ugly as a little demon, Turk knew no law, no integrity except
that which benefitted his employer. Beyond a doubt, if Quentin had
instructed him to butcher a score of men, Turk would have proceeded
to do so and without argument. But Quentin instructed him to be
honest, law-abiding and cautious. It would be perfectly safe to
guess his age between forty and sixty, but it would not be wise to
measure his strength by the size of his body. The little ex-burglar
was like a piece of steel.





II. SOME RAIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES


New York had never been so nasty and cold and disagreeable. For
three weeks it had rained--a steady, chilling drizzle. Quentin stood
it as long as he could, but the weather is a large factor in the
life of a gentleman of leisure. He couldn't play Squash the entire
time, and Bridge he always maintained was more of a profession than
a pastime. So it was that one morning, as he looked out at the
sheets of water blowing across the city, his mind was made up.

“We'll get out of this, Turk. I've had enough of it.”

“Where do we go, sir?” calmly asked the servant.

“Heaven knows! But be ready to start tomorrow. We'll go somewhere
and dodge this blessed downpour. Call me a cab.”

As he drove to the club, he mentally tossed coppers as to his
destination. People were already coming back from Aiken and Palm
Beach, and those who had gone to the country were cooped up indoors
and shivering about the fireplaces. Where could he go? As he
entered the club a man hailed him from the front room.

“Quentin, you're just the man I'm looking for. Come in here.”

It was the Earl of Saxondale--familiarly “Lord Bob”--an old chum of
Quentin's. “My missus sent me with an invitation for you, and I've
come for your acceptance,” said the Englishman, when Quentin had
joined him.

“Come home with us. We're sailing on the Lucania to-morrow, and
there are going to be some doings in England this month which you
mustn't miss. Dickey Savage is coming, and we want you.”

Quentin looked at him and laughed. Saxondale was perfectly serious.
“We're going to have some people up for Goodwood, and later we shall
have a house-boat for Henley. So you'd better come. It won't be bad
sport.”

Quentin started to thank his friend and decline. Then he remembered
that he wanted to get away--there was absolutely nothing to keep him
at home, and, besides, he liked Lord Bob and his American wife.

Fashionable New York recalls the marriage of the Earl of Saxondale
and Frances Thornow when the '90's were young, and everybody said it
was a love match. To be sure, she was wealthy, but so was he. She
had declined offers of a half-dozen other noblemen; therefore it was
not ambition on her part. He could have married any number of
wealthier American girls; therefore it was not avarice on his part.
He was a good-looking, stalwart chap with a very fetching drawl,
infinite gentility, and a man despite his monocle, while she was
beautiful, witty and womanly; therefore it is reasonable to suspect
that it must have been love that made her Lady Saxondale.

Lord Bob and Lady Frances were frequent visitors to New York. He
liked New York, and New Yorkers liked him. His wife was enough of a
true American to love the home of her forefathers. “What my wife
likes I seem to have a fondness for,” said he, complacently. He once
remarked that were she to fall in love with another man he would
feel in duty bound to like him.

Saxondale had money invested in American copper mines, and his wife
had railroad stocks. When they came to New York, once or twice a
year, they took a furnished apartment, entertained and were
entertained for a month or so, rushed their luggage back to the
steamer and sailed for home, perfectly satisfied with themselves
and--the markets.

Quentin looked upon Lord Bob's invitation as a sporting proposition.
This would not be the first time he had taken a steamer on
twenty-four hours' notice. The one question was accommodation, and a
long acquaintance with the agent helped him to get passage where
others would have failed.

So it happened that the next morning Turk was unpacking things in
Mr. Quentin's cabin and establishing relations with the bath
steward.




III. PRINCE UGO


Several days out from New York found the weather fine and Lord
Saxondale's party enjoying life thoroughly. Dickey and the
capricious Lady Jane were bright or squally with charming
uncertainty. Lady Jane, Lord Bob's sister, certainly was not in love
with Mr. Savage, and he was too indolent to give his side of the
case continuous thought. Dimly he realized, and once lugubriously
admitted, that he was not quite heartwhole, but he had not reached a
positive understanding with himself.

“How do they steer the ship at night when it is so cloudy they can't
see the north star?” she asked, as they leaned over the rail one
afternoon. Her pretty face was very serious, and there was a
philosophical pucker on her brow.

“With a rudder,” he answered, laconically.

“How very odd!” she said, with a malicious gleam in her eyes. “You
are as wonderfully well-informed concerning the sea as you are
on all other subjects. How good it must seem to be so awfully
intelligent.”

“It isn't often that I find anyone who asks really intelligent
questions, you know, Lady Jane. Your profound quest for knowledge
forced my dormant intellect into action, and I remembered that a
ship invariably has a rudder or something like that.”

“I see it requires the weightiest of questions to arouse your
intellect.” The wind was blowing the stray hairs ruthlessly across
her face and she looked very, very pretty.

“Intellects are so very common nowadays that 'most anything will
arouse them. Quentin says his man Turk has a brain, and if Turk has
a brain I don't see how the rest of us can escape. I'd like to be a
porpoise.”

“What an ambition! Why not a whale or a shark?”

“If I were a shark you'd be afraid of me, and if I were a whale I
could not begin to get into your heart.”

“That's the best thing you've said since you were seasick,” she
said, sweetly.

“I'm glad you didn't hear what I said when I was seasick.”

“Oh! I've heard brother Bob say things,” loftily.

“But nobody can say things quite so impressively as an American.”

“Pooh! You boasting Americans think you can do everything better
than others. Now you claim that you can swear better. I won't listen
to you,” and off she went toward the companionway. Dickey looked
mildly surprised, but did not follow. Instead, he joined Lady
Saxondale and Quentin in a stroll.

Four days later they were comfortably established with Saxondale in
London. That night Quentin met, for the first time, the reigning
society sensation, Prince Ugo Ravorelli, and his countrymen, Count
Sallaconi and the Duke of Laselli. All London had gone mad over the
prince.

There was something oddly familiar in the face and voice of the
Italian. Quentin sat with him for an hour, listening with puzzled
ears to the conversation that went on between him and Saxondale. On
several occasions he detected a curious, searching look in the
Italian's dark eyes, and was convinced that the prince also had the
impression that they had met before. At last Quentin, unable to curb
his curiosity, expressed his doubt. Ravorelli's gaze was penetrating
as he replied, but it was perfectly frank.

“I have the feeling that your face is not strange to me, yet I
cannot recall when or where I have seen you. Have you been in Paris
of late?” he asked, his English almost perfect. It seemed to Quentin
that there was a look of relief in his dark eyes, and there was a
trace of satisfaction in the long breath that followed the question.

“No,” he replied; “I seem in some way to associate you with Brazil
and the South American cities. Were you ever in Rio Janeiro?”

“I have never visited either of the Americas. We are doubtless
misled by a strange resemblance to persons we know quite well, but
who do not come to mind.”

“But isn't it rather odd that we should have the same feeling? And
you have not been in New York?” persisted Phil.

“I have not been in America at all, you must remember,” replied the
prince, coldly.

“I'd stake my soul on it,” thought Quentin to himself, more fully
convinced than ever. “I've seen him before and more than once, too.
He remembers me, even though I can't place him. It's devilish
aggravating, but his face is as familiar as if I saw him yesterday.”

When they parted for the night Ravorelli's glance again impressed
the American with a certainty that he, at least, was not in doubt as
to where and when they had met.

“You are trying to recall where we have seen one another,” said the
prince, smiling easily, his white teeth showing clearly between
smooth lips. “My cousin visited America some years ago, and there is
a strong family resemblance. Possibly you have our faces confused.”

“That may be the solution,” admitted Phil, but he was by no means
satisfied by the hypothesis.

In the cab, later on, Lord Bob was startled from a bit of doze by
hearing his thoughtful, abstracted companion exclaim:

“By thunder!”

“What's up? Forgot your hat, or left something at the club?” he
demanded, sleepily.

“No; I remember something, that's all. Bob, I know where I've seen
that Italian prince. He was in Rio Janeiro with a big Italian opera
company just before I left there for New York.”

“What! But he said he'd never been in America,” exclaimed Saxondale,
wide awake.

“Well, he lied, that's all. I am positive he's the man, and the best
proof in the world is the certainty that he remembers me. Of course
he denies it, but you know what he said when I first asked him if we
had met. He was the tenor in Pagani's opera company, and he sang in
several of the big South American cities. They were in Rio Janeiro
for weeks, and we lived in the same hotel. There's no mistake about
it, old man. This howling swell of to-day was Pagani's tenor, and he
was a good one, too. Gad, what a Romeo he was! Imagine him in the
part, Bob. Lord, how the women raved about him!”

“I say, Phil, don't be ass enough to tell anybody else about this,
even if you're cocksure he's the man. He was doubtless driven to the
stage for financial reasons, you know, and it wouldn't be quite
right to bring it up now if he has a desire to suppress the truth.
Since he has come into the title and estates it might be deuced
awkward to have that sort of a past raked up.”

“I should say it would be awkward if that part of his past were
raked up. He wasn't a Puritan, Bob.”

“They are a bit scarce at best.”

“He was known in those days as Giovanni Pavesi, and he wasn't in
such dire financial straits, either. It was his money that backed
the enterprise, and it was common property, undenied by him or
anyone else, that the chief object in the speculation was the love
of the prima donna, Carmenita Malban. And, Bob, she was the most
beautiful woman I ever saw. The story was that she was a countess or
something of the sort. Poverty forced her to make use of a glorious
voice, and the devil sent Pagani to young Pavesi, who was then a
student with some ripping big master, in the hope that he would
interest the young man in a scheme to tour South America. It seems
that Signorita Malban's beauty set his heart on fire, and he
promptly produced the coin to back the enterprise, the only
condition being that he was to sing the tenor roles. All this came
out in the trial, you know.”

“The trial! What trial?”

“Giovanni's. Let me think a minute. She was killed on the 29th of
March, and he was not arrested until they had virtually convicted
one of the chorus men of the murder. Pagani and Pavesi quarrelled,
and the former openly accused his 'angel' of the crime. This led to
an arrest just as the tenor was getting away on a ship bound for
Spain.”

“Arrested him for the murder of the woman? On my life, Quentin, you
make a serious blunder unless you can prove all this. When did it
all happen?”

“Two years ago. Oh, I'm not mistaken about it; it is as clear as
sunlight to me now. They took him back and tried him. Members of the
troupe swore he had threatened on numerous occasions to kill her if
she continued to repulse him. On the night of the murder--it was
after the opera--he was heard to threaten her. She defied him, and
one of the women in the company testified that he sought to
intimidate Malban by placing the point of his stiletto against her
white neck. But, in spite of all this, he was acquitted. I was in
New York when the trial ended, but I read of the verdict in the
press dispatches. Some one killed her, that is certain, and the
nasty job was done in her room at the hotel. I heard some of the
evidence, and I'll say that I believed he was the guilty man, but I
considered him insane when he committed the crime. He loved her to
the point of madness, and she would not yield to his passion. It was
shown that she loved the chorus singer who was first charged with
her murder.”

“Ravorelli doesn't look like a murderer,” said Lord Bob, stoutly.

“But he remembers seeing me in that courtroom, Bob.”




IV. AND THE GIRL, TOO


“Now tell me all about our Italian friend,” said Quentin next
morning to Lady Frances, who had not lost her frank Americanism when
she married Lord Bob, The handsome face of the young prince had been
in his thoughts the night before until sleep came, and then there
were dreams in which the same face appeared vaguely sinister and
foreboding. He had acted on the advice of Lord Bob and had said
nothing of the Brazilian experiences.

“Prince Ugo? I supposed that every newspaper in New York had been
devoting columns to him. He is to marry an American heiress, and
some of the London journals say she is so rich that everybody else
looks poor beside her.”

“Lucky dog, eh? Everybody admires him, too, it seems. Do you know
him, Frances?”

“I've met him a number of times on the continent, but not often in
London. He is seldom here, you know. Really, he is quite a charming
fellow.”

“Yes,” laconically. “Are Italian princes as cheap as they used to
be? Mary Carrolton got that nasty little one of hers for two hundred
thousand, didn't she? This one looks as though he might come a
little higher. He's good-looking enough.”

“Oh, Ugo is not like the Carrolton investment. You see, this one is
vastly rich, and he's no end of a swell in sunny Italy. Really, the
match is the best an American girl has made over here in--oh, in
centuries, I may say.”

“Pocahontas made a fairly decent one, I believe, and so did Frances
Thornow; but, to my limited knowledge, I think they are the only
satisfactory matches that have been pulled off in the last few
centuries. Strange, they both married Englishmen.”

“Thank you. You don't like Italian princes, then?”

“Oh, if I could buy a steady, well-broken, tractable one, I'd take
him as an investment, perhaps, but I believe, on the whole, I'd
rather put the money into a general menagerie like Barnum's or
Forepaugh's. You get such a variety of beasts that way, you know.”

“Come, now, Phil, your sarcasm is unjust. Prince Ugo is very much of
a gentleman, and Bob says he is very clever, too. Did you see much
of him last night?”

“I saw him at the club and talked a bit with him. Then I saw him
while I slept. He is much better in the club than he is in a dream.”

“You dreamed of him last night? He certainly made an impression,
then,” she said.

“I dreamed I saw him abusing a harmless, overworked and underfed
little monkey on the streets of New York.”

“How absurd!”

“The monkey wouldn't climb up to the window of my apartment to
collect nickels for the vilest hand-organ music a man ever heard,
even in a nightmare.”

“Phil Quentin, you are manufacturing that dream as you sit here.
Wait till you know him better and you will like him.”

“His friends, too? One of those chaps looks as if he might throw a
bomb with beautiful accuracy--the Laselli duke, I think. Come, now,
Frances, you'll admit he's an ugly brute, won't you?”

“Yes, you are quite right, and I can't say that the count impresses
me more favorably.”

“I'll stake my head the duke's ancestors were brigands or something
equally appalling. A couple of poor, foolish American girls elevate
them both to the position of money-spenders-in-chief though, I
presume, and the newspapers will sizzle.”

At dinner that evening the discussion was resumed, all those at the
table taking part. The tall young American was plainly prejudiced
against the Italian, but his stand was a mystery to all save Lord
Bob. Dickey Savage was laboriously non-committal until Lady Jane
took sides unequivocally with Quentin. Then he vigorously defended
the unlucky prince. Lady Saxondale and Sir James Graham, one of the
guests, took pains to place the Italian in the best light possible
before the critical American.

“I almost forgot to tell you, Phil,” suddenly cried Lady Saxondale,
her pretty face beaming with excitement. “The girl he is to marry is
an old flame of yours.”

“Quite impossible, Lady Frances. I never had a flame.”

“But she was, I'm sure.”

“Are you a theosophist?” asked Phil, gaily, but he listened
nevertheless. Who could she be? It seemed for the moment, as his
mind swept backward, that he had possessed a hundred sweethearts.
“I've had no sweetheart since I began existence in the present
form.”

“Good Lord!” ejaculated Dickey, solemnly and impressively.

“I'll bet my soul Frances is right,” drawled Lord Bob. “She always
is, you know. My boy, if she says you had a sweetheart, you either
had one or somebody owes you one. You've never collected, perhaps.”

“If he collected them he'd have a harem,” observed Mr. Savage,
sagely. “He's had so many he can't count 'em.”

“I should think it disgusting to count them, Mr. Savage, even if he
could,” said Lady Jane, severely.

“I can count mine backwards,” he said.

“Beginning at one?”

“Yes, Lady Jane; one in my teens, none at present. No task, at all,
to count mine.”

“Won't you give me the name of that old sweetheart of mine, Lady
Saxondale? Whom is the prince to marry?” asked Quentin.

“Dorothy Garrison. She lived in your block seven or eight years ago,
up to the time she went to Brussels with her mother. Now, do you
remember?”

“You don't mean it! Little Dorothy? By George, she was a pretty
girl, too. Of course, I remember her. But that was ages ago. She was
fourteen and I was nineteen. You are right, Lady Saxondale. I'll
confess to having regarded her as the fairest creature the sun ever
shone upon. For six solid, delicious months she was the foundation
of every thought that touched my brain. And then--well, what
happened then? Oh, yes; we quarrelled and forgot each other. So
she's the girl who's to marry the prince, is she?” Quentin's face
was serious for the moment; a far-off look of real concern came into
his eyes. He was recalling a sweet, dainty face, a girlish figure,
and the days gone by.

“How odd I did not think of it before. Really, you two were dreadful
spoons in those days. Mamma used to worry for fear you'd carry out
your threat to run away with her. And now she's to be a real live
princess.” Lady Frances created a profound sensation when she
resurrected Quentin's boyhood love affair with the one American girl
that all Europe talked about at that moment. Lord Bob was excited,
perhaps for the first time since he proposed to Frances Thornow.

“By Jove, old man, this is rare, devilish rare. No wonder you have
such a deuced antipathy to the prince. Intuition must have told you
that he was to marry one of the ladies of your past.”

“Why, Bob, we were children, and there was nothing to it. Truly, I
had forgotten that pretty child--that's all she was--and I'll warrant
she wouldn't remember my name if some one spoke it in her presence.
Every boy and girl has had that sort of an affair.”

“She's the most beautiful creature I ever saw,” cried Lady Jane,
ecstatically. Dickey Savage looked sharply at her vivacious face.
“When did you last see her, Mr. Quentin?”

“I can't recall, but I know it was when her hair hung down her back.
She left New York before she was fifteen, I'm quite sure. I think I
was in love with a young widow fourteen years my senior, at the
time, and did not pay much heed to Dorothy's departure. She and her
mother have been traveling since then?”

“They traveled for three years before Mrs. Garrison could make up
her mind to settle down in Brussels. I believe she said it reminded
her of Paris, only it was a little more so,” said Lord Bob. “We met
them in Paris five years ago, on our wedding trip, and she was
undecided until I told her she might take a house near the king's
palace in Brussels, such as it is, and off she flew to be as close
to the crown as possible. She struck me as a gory old party who
couldn't live comfortably unless she were dabbling in blue blood.
The girl was charming, though.”

“She's in London now,” ventured Sir James. “The papers say she came
especially to see the boat races, but there is a pretty well
established belief that she came because the prince is here. Despite
their millions, I understand it is a love match.”

“I hope I may have a look at her while I'm here, just to see what
time has done for her,” said Quentin.

“You may have the chance to ask if she remembers you,” said Dickey.

“And if she thinks you've grown older,” added Lord Bob.

“Will you tell her you are not married?” demanded Lady Jane.

“I'll do but one thing, judging from the way you describe the
goddess. Just stand with open mouth and marvel at her magnificence.
Somewhere among my traps I have a picture of her when she was
fourteen, taken with me one afternoon at a tin-typer's. If I can
find it, I'll show it to her, just to prove that we both lived ten
years ago. She's doubtless lived so much since I saw her last that
she'll deny an existence so far back as that.”

“You won't be so deuced sarcastic when you see her, even if she is
to marry a prince. I tell you, Phil, she is something worth looking
at forever,” said Lord Bob.

“I never saw such eyes, such a complexion, such hair, such a
carriage,” cried Lady Frances.

“Has she any teeth?” asked Dickey, and was properly frowned upon by
Lady Jane.

“You describe her as completely in that sentence, Lady Frances, as a
novelist could in eight pages,” said Quentin.

“No novelist could describe her,” was the answer.

“It's to be hoped no novelist may attempt it,” said Quentin. “She is
beautiful beyond description, she will be a princess, and she knew
me when I didn't know enough to appreciate her. Her eyes were blue
in the old days, and her hair was almost black. Colors still obtain?
Then we have her description in advance. Now, let's go on with the
romance.”




V. A SUNDAY ENCOUNTER


It was a sunny Sunday morning and the church parade was popular.
Lady Frances and Quentin were walking together when Prince Ugo
joined them. He looked hardly over twenty-five, his wavy black hair
giving him a picturesque look. He wore no beard, and his dark skin
was as clear as a girl's.

“By the way,” said Quentin, “Lady Saxondale tells me you are to
marry a former acquaintance of mine.”

“Miss Garrison is an acquaintance?” cried the prince, lifting his
dark eyes. An instant later his gaze roamed away into the horde of
passing women, as if searching for the woman whose name brought
light to his soul.

“Was an acquaintance, I think I said. I doubt if she remembers me
now. She was a child when I knew her. Is she here this morning?”
 asked Phil, secretly amused by the anxious look in the Italian's
eyes.

“She will be with Lady Marnham, Ah, I see them now.” The young
prince was looking eagerly ahead.

Quentin saw Miss Garrison and gasped with astonishment. Could that
stunning young woman be the little Dorothy of New York days? He
could scarcely believe his eyes and ears, notwithstanding the
introductions which followed.

“And here is an old New York friend. Miss Garrison, Mr. Philip
Quentin. You surely remember him, Miss Garrison,” said Lady Frances,
with a peculiar gleam in her eye. For a second the young lady at
Quentin's side exhibited surprise; a faint flush swept into her
cheek, and then, with a rare smile, she extended her hand to the
American.

“Of course, I remember him. Phil and I were playmates in the old
days. Dear me, it seems a century ago,” she said.

“I cannot tell you how well the century has treated you,” he said,
gallantly. “It has not been so kind to me.”

“Years are never unkind to men,” she responded. She smiled upon the
adoring prince and turned again to Quentin. “Tell me about New York,
Phil. Tell me about yourself.”

“I can only say that New York has grown larger and better, and that
I have grown older and worse. Mrs. Garrison may doubt that I could
possibly grow worse, but I have proof positive. I am dabbling in
Wall street.”

“I can imagine nothing more reprehensible,” said Mrs. Garrison,
amiably. Quentin swiftly renewed his opinion of the mother. That
estimate coincided with the impression his youth had formed, and it
was not far in the wrong. Here was the mother with a hope loftier
than a soul. Purse-proud, ambitious, condescending to a degree--a
woman who would achieve what she set out to do at all hazards. Less
than fifty, still handsome, haughty and arrogant, descended through
a long line of American aristocracy, calm, resourceful, heartless.
For fifteen years a widow, with no other object than to live at the
top and to marry her only child into a realm far beyond the dreams
of other American mothers. Millions had she to flaunt in the faces
of an astonished, marveling people. Clever, tactful, aggressive,
capable of winning where others had failed, this American mother was
respected, even admired, in the class to which she had climbed. Here
was the woman who had won her way into continental society as have
few of her countrywomen. To none save a cold, discerning man from
her own land was she transparent. Lord Bob, however, had a faint
conception of her aims, her capacity.

As they walked on, Quentin scarcely took his eyes from Miss
Garrison's face. He was wearing down the surprise that the
sweetheart of his boyhood had inspired, by deliberately seeking
flaws in her beauty, her figure, her manner. After a time he felt
her more wonderful than ever. Lord Bob joined the party, and Quentin
stopped a second to speak to him. As he did so Prince Ugo was at
Miss Garrison's side in an instant.

“So she is the girl that damned Italian is to elevate?” said Mr.
Quentin to himself. “By George, it's a shame!” He did not see Lord
Bob and his wife exchange a quick smile of significance.

As they all reached the corner, Quentin asked: “Are you in London
for long, Dorothy?” Lady Frances thought his tone a trifle eager.

“For ten days or so. Will you come to see me?” Their eyes met and he
felt certain that the invitation was sincerely given. “Lady Marnham
is having some people in to-morrow afternoon. Perhaps you'll come
then,” she added, and Phil looked crestfallen.

“I'll come,” he said. “I want to tell you the story of my past life.
You didn't know I'd been prime minister of a South American
republic, did you?”

She nodded and they separated. Prince Ugo heard the last words of
the American, and a small, clear line appeared for an instant
between his black eyebrows.

Lady Frances solemnly and secretively shook her finger at Quentin,
and he laughed with the disdain of one who understands and denies
without the use of words. Lord Bob had wanted to kick him when he
mentioned South America, but he said nothing. Quentin was in
wonderful spirits all the way home.




VI. DOROTHY GARRISON


Quentin was driving with Lady Saxondale to the home of Miss
Garrison's hostess. Phil's fair, calculating companion said to
herself that she had never seen a handsomer fellow than this
stalwart American. There was about him that clean, strong, sweet
look of the absolutely healthy man, the man who has buffeted the
world and not been buffeted by the world. He was frank, bright,
straightforward, and there was that always-to-be-feared yet
ever-to-be-desired gleam of mastery in his eye. It may have been
sometimes a wicked mastery, and more than one woman who admired him
because she could not help herself had said, “There is a devil in
his eyes.”

They found Lady Marnham's reception hall full of guests, few of whom
Quentin had seen before. He was relieved to find that the prince was
not present, and he made his way to Dorothy's side, with Lady
Frances, coolly dropping into the chair which a young captain had
momentarily abandoned. Lady Frances sat beside Miss Garrison on the
divan.

“I am so glad you kept your promise, Phil, and came. It seems good
to see you after all these years. You bring back the dear days at
home,” said Dorothy, delight in her voice.

“From that I judge you sometimes long for them,” he said, simply. To
Lady Frances it sounded daring.

“Often, oh, so very often. I have not been in New York for years.
Lady Saxondale goes back so often that she doesn't have the chance
to grow homesick.”

“I hear you are going over this fall,” said Quentin, with a fair
show of interest.

“Who--who told you so?” she asked, in some surprise. He could not
detect confusion.

“Prince Ravorelli. At least, he said he expected to make the trip
this fall. Am I wrong in suspecting that he is not going alone?”

“We mean to spend much of the winter in the United States, chiefly
in Florida. I shall depend on you, Phil, to be nice to him in New
York. You can do so much to make it pleasant for him. He has never
been in New York, you know.”

“It may depend on what he will consider pleasant. I don't believe he
will enjoy all the things I like. But I'll try. I'll get Dickey
Savage to give a dinner for him, and if he can survive that, he's
capable of having a good time anywhere. Dickey's dinners are the
real test, you know. Americans stand them because they are rugged
and accustomed to danger.”

“You will find Prince Ugo rugged,” she said, flushing slightly, and
he imagined he could distinguish a softness in her tone.

“I am told he is an athlete, a great horseman, a marvelous
swordsman,” said Lady Frances.

“I am glad you have heard something about him that is true,” said
Dorothy, a trifle quickly. “Usually they say that princes are all
that is detestable and unmanly. I am sure you will like him, Phil.”

Mrs. Garrison came up at this moment with Lady Marnham, and Quentin
arose to greet the former as warmly as he could under the smooth
veil of hypocrisy. Again, just before Lady Frances signaled to him
that it was time for them to leave, he found himself in
conversation, over the teacups, with Dorothy Garrison. This time
they were quite alone.

“It doesn't seem possible that you are the same Dorothy Garrison I
used to know,” he said, reflectively.

“Have I changed so much?” she asked, and there was in her manner an
icy barrier that would have checked a less confident man than Philip
Quentin.

“In every way. You were charming in those days.”

“And not charming now, I infer.”

“You are more than charming now. That is hardly a change, however,
is it? Then, you were very pretty, now you are beautiful. Then, you
were--”

“I don't like flattery, Phil,” she said, hurt by what she felt to be
an indifferent effort on his part to please her vanity.

“I am quite sure you remember me well enough to know that I never
said nice things unless I meant them. But, now that I think of it,
it is the height of impropriety to speak so plainly even to an old
friend, and an old--er--chum.”

“Won't you have a cup of tea?” she asked, as calmly as if he were
the merest stranger and had never seen her till this hour.

“A dozen, if it pleases you,” he said, laughingly, looking straight
into the dark eyes she was striving so hard to keep cold and
unfriendly.

“Then you must come another day,” she answered, brightly.

“I cannot come to-morrow,” he said.

“I did not say 'to-morrow.'”

“But I'll come on Friday,” he went on, decisively. She looked
concerned for an instant and then smiled.

“Lady Marnham will give you tea on Friday. I shall not be at home,”
 she said.

“But I am going back to New York next week,” he said, confidently.

“Next week? Are you so busy?”

“I am not anxious to return, but my man Turk says he hates London.
He says he'll leave me if I stay here a month. I can't afford to
lose Turk.”

“And he can't afford to lose you. Stay, Phil; the Saxondales are
such jolly people.”

“How about the tea on Friday?”

“Oh, that is no consideration.”

“But it is, you know. You used to give me tea every day in the
week.” He saw at once that he had gone beyond the lines, and drew
back wisely. “Let me come on Friday, and we'll have a good, sensible
chat.”

“On that one condition,” she said, earnestly.

“Thank you. Good-bye. I see Lady Frances is ready to go. Evidently I
have monopolized you to a somewhat thoughtless extent. Everybody is
looking daggers at me, including the prince, who came in ten minutes
ago.”

He arose and held her hand for a moment at parting. Her swift,
abashed glance toward Prince Ugo, whose presence she had not
observed, did not escape his eyes. She looked up and saw the
peculiar smile on Quentin's lips, and there was deep meaning in her
next remark to him:

“You will meet the prince here on Friday. I shall ask him to come
early, that he may learn to know you better.”

“Thank you. I'd like to know him better. At what hour is he to
come?”

“By 3:30, at least,” she said, pointedly. “Too early to be correct,
you suspect?”

“I think not. You may expect me before three. I am not a stickler
for form.”

“We shall not serve tea until four o'clock,” she said, coldly.

“That's my hour for tea--just my hour,” he said, blithely. She could
not repress the smile that his old willfulness brought to her lips
and eyes. “Thank you, for the smile. It was worth struggling for.”

He was gone before she could respond, but the smile lingered as her
eyes followed his tall figure across the room. She saw him pause and
speak to Prince Ugo, and then pass out with Lady Saxondale. Only
Lady Saxondale observed the dark gleam in the Italian's eyes as he
responded to the big American's unconventional greeting. On the way
home she found herself wondering if Dorothy had ever spoken to the
prince of Philip Quentin and those tender, foolish days of girlhood.

“Has she lost any of the charm?” she asked.

“I am not quite sure. I'm to find out on Friday.”

“Are you going back on Friday?” in surprise.

“To drink tea, you know.”

“Did she ask you to come?”

“Can't remember, but I think I suggested it.”

“Be careful, Phil; I don't want you to turn Dorothy Garrison's
head.”

“You compliment me by even suspecting that I could. Her head is set;
it can't be turned. It is set for that beautiful, bejewelled thing
they call a coronet. Besides, I don't want to turn it.”

“I think the prince could become very jealous,” she went on,
earnestly.

“Which would mean stilettos for two, I presume.” After a moment's
contemplative silence he said: “By Jove! she is beautiful, though.”

Quentin was always the man to rush headlong into the very thickest
of whatever won his interest, whether it was the tender encounter of
the drawing-room or the dangerous conflict of the field.

When he left Lady Marnham's house late on Friday afternoon he was
more delighted than ever with the girl he had once loved. He was
with her for nearly an hour before the prince arrived, and he had
boldly dashed into the (he called them ridiculous) days when she had
been his little sweetheart, the days when both had sworn with young
fervor to be true till death. She did not take kindly at first to
these references to that early, mistaken affection, but his
persistence won. Before the prince arrived, the American had learned
how she met him, how he had wooed and won, and how she had inspired
jealousy in his hot Italian heart by speaking of the “big, handsome
boy” over in New York.

He secured her permission to join her in the Row on Tuesday. There
was resistance on her part at first, but he laughed it off.

“You should ask me to your wedding,” he said, as the prince came in.

“But you will not be here.”

“I've changed my mind,” he said, calmly, and then smiled into her
puzzled eyes. “Brussels, isn't it?”

“Yes; the middle of September,” she said, dreamily.

“You'll ask me to come?”

“I should have asked you, anyway.”

The two men shook hands. “Sorry I can't stay for tea, Dorothy, but I
promised Lord Saxondale I'd meet him at four o'clock.” He did a
genuinely American thing as he walked up the street. He whistled a
lively air.




VII. THE WOMAN FROM PARIS


For two weeks Phil Quentin did not allow Dorothy to forget the old
association, and then came the day of her departure for Paris. Mrs.
Garrison was by no means reluctant to leave London,--not that she
disliked the place or the people, but that one Philip Quentin had
unceremoniously, even gracefully, stepped into the circle of her
contentment, rudely obliterating its symmetrical, well-drawn lines.

Mr. Quentin had much to overcome if he contemplated an assault upon
the icy reserve with which Dorothy Garrison's mother regarded his
genial advances. She recalled the days when her daughter and he were
“silly, lovesick children,” and there was not much comfort to be
derived from the knowledge that he had grown older and more
attractive, and that he lost no opportunity to see the girl who once
held his heart in leash. The mother was too diplomatic to express
open displeasure or to offer the faintest objection to this renewal
of friendship. If it were known that she opposed the visits of the
handsome American, all London would wonder, speculate, and finally
understand. Her disapproval could only be construed as an
acknowledgment that she feared the consequences of association; it
would not be long before the story would be afloat that all was not
smooth in the love affairs of a certain prince, and that the fires
of an old affection were burning brightly and merrily in the face of
a wrathful parent's opposition.

In secret, Dorothy herself was troubled more than she cared to admit
by the reappearance of one who could not but awaken memories of
other days, fondly foolish though they were. He was still the same
old Phil, grown older and handsomer, and he brought with him
embarrassing recollections. He was nothing more to her now than an
old-time friend, and she was nothing to him. She loved Ugo
Ravorelli, and, until he appeared suddenly before her in London,
Philip Quentin was dead to her thoughts. And yet she felt as if she
were playing with a fire that would leave its scar--not on her heart
or Quentin's, perhaps, but on that of the man she was to marry.

It required no great strength of vision to see that Ravorelli was
jealous, and it was just as plain that Quentin saw and enjoyed the
uneasiness he was causing. She could not know, of course, that the
American had deliberately planned to play havoc with the peace and
comfort of her lover, for she recognized no motive. How could she
know that Giovanni Pavesi, the tenor, and Prince Ravorelli were one
and the same to Philip Quentin? How could she know that the
beautiful Malban was slain in Rio Janeiro, and that Philip Quentin
had seen a handsome, dark-eyed youth led to and from the murderer's
dock in that far-away Brazilian city? How, then, could she
understand the conflict that waged with herself as the battlefield?

As for Quentin, he was bound by no law or duty to respect the
position of Prince Ravorelli. He was convinced that the sometime
Romeo had the stain of blood on his delicate hands and that in his
heart he concealed the secret of Carmenita Malban's death. In his
mind, there was no mistake. Quentin's composure was shaken but once
in the fortnight of pleasure preceding Dorothy's departure for
Paris. That was when she indignantly, almost tearfully, called his
attention to the squib in a London society journal which rather
daringly prophesied a “break in the Ravorelli-Garrison match,” and
referred plainly to the renewal of an “across-the-Atlantic
affection.” When he wrathfully promised to thrash the editor of the
paper, she shocked him by saying that he had created “enough of a
sensation,” and he went home with the dazed feeling of one who has
suffered an unexpected blow.

On the evening before the Garrisons crossed the channel, Lord and
Lady Saxondale and Philip Quentin found themselves long after
midnight in talk about the coming marriage. Quentin was rather
silent. His thoughts seemed far from the room in which he sat, and
there was the shadow of a new line about the corners of his mouth.

“I am going to Brussels next week,” he said, deliberately. The
others stared at him in amazement.

“To Brussels? You mean New York,” said Lady Frances, faintly.

“New York won't see me for some time. I'm going to make a tour of
the continent.

“This is going too far, old man,” cried Lord Bob. “You can't gain
anything by following her, and you'll only raise the devil of a row
all round. Dash it! stay in London.”

“Thanks for the invitation, Bob, but I've always had a desire to
learn something about the miniature Paris. I shall spend some time
in Paris, and then go up there to compare the places. Besides, there
won't be any row.”

“But there will be, Phil,” cried Lady Saxondale. “You must keep out
of this affair. Why, all Europe knows of the wedding, and even now
the continent is quietly nursing the gossip of the past two weeks.”
 She dropped into a chair, perplexed and anxious.

“Let me tell you something, both of you. The events of the past two
weeks are tame in comparison with those of the next two months,”
 said Quentin, a new light in his eye. His tall figure straightened
and his nostrils expanded.

“Wha--what do you mean?” floundered Lord Bob.

“Just this: I love Dorothy Garrison, and I'm going to marry her.”

“Good heavens!” was the simultaneous gasp of Lord and Lady
Saxondale. And they could not dissuade him. Not only did he convince
them that he was in earnest, but before he left for Paris he had
made them allies. Ugo's experience in Rio Janeiro shocked Lady
Frances so seriously that she became a champion of the American's
cause and agreed with Lord Bob that Dorothy should not be sacrificed
if it were in their power to prevent. Of course Dickey Savage
approved of Quentin's campaign and effectually disposed of Lady
Jane's faint objections by saying:

“America for the Americans, Brussels for the Americans, England for
the Americans, everything and everybody for the Americans, but
nothing at all for these confounded foreigners. Let the Italian
marry anybody he pleases, just so long as he doesn't interfere with
an American. Let the American marry anybody he pleases, and to
perdition with all interference. I'm for America against the world
in love or in war.”

“Don't forget, Mr. Savage, that you are a foreigner when on British
soil,” remonstrated the Lady Jane, vigorously.

“My dear Lady Jane, an American is at home anywhere in this world.
If you could see some of the foreigners that land at Castle Garden
you wouldn't blame an American for absolutely, irrevocably and
eternally refusing to be called a foreigner, even on the shores of
Madagascar. We are willing to be most anything, but I'll be hanged
if we'll be foreigners.”

A week later Quentin was in Paris. Savage was to join him in
Brussels about the middle of August, and Lord and Lady Saxondale
promised faithfully to come to that city at a moment's notice. He
went blithely away with the firm conviction in his heart that it was
not to be a fool's errand. But he was reckoning without the woman in
the case.

“If you do marry her, Quentin, I've got just the place for you to
live in, for a while at least. I bought an old castle in Luxemburg a
couple of years ago, just because the man who owned it was a friend
and needed a few thousand pounds. Frances calls it Castle
Craneycrow. It's a romantic place, and would be a great deal better
than a cottage for love. You may have it whenever the time comes.
Nobody lives there now but the caretaker and a lot of deuced
traditions. We can discharge the caretaker and you can make fresh
traditions. Think it over, my boy, while you are dispatching the
prince, the mamma and the fair victim's ambition to become a real
live princess.”

“Don't be sarcastic, Bob,” exclaimed Quentin. “I'll not need your
castle. We're going to live in the clouds.”

“Beware of the prince,” said Lady Frances. “He is pretty high
himself, you know.”

“Let the prince beware,” laughed back the departing guest. “We can't
both live in the same cloud, you know. I'll push him off.”

On the day Quentin left Paris for Brussels he came face to face with
Prince Ugo on one of the Parisian boulevards. The handsome Italian
was driving with Count Sallaconi and two very attractive ladies.
That the meeting was unexpected and undesired was made manifest by
the anxious look which the prince shot over his shoulder after the
carriage had passed.

When Quentin left Paris that night with Turk and his luggage, he was
not the only passenger bound for Brussels. At the Gare du Nord two
men, one suspiciously like the Duke Laselli, took a compartment in
the coach just ahead of Quentin. The train was due to reach Brussels
shortly after midnight, and the American had telegraphed for
apartments at the Bellevue. There had been a drizzle of rain all the
evening, and it was good to be inside the car, even if the seats
were uncomfortable.

Turk and his master were the only passengers in the compartment. The
watchful eyes of the former had seen several persons, men and women,
pass through the aisle into which the section opened. One woman
paused at the entrance as if about to enter. She was fair to look
upon and Turk gallantly moved, presenting a roomy end of his seat to
her. She passed on, however, and the little ex-burglar glanced
sharply at his master as if to accuse him of frightening the fair
one away. But Quentin was lying back, half-asleep, and there was
nothing repellent about the untroubled expression on his face.

Before reaching Le Cateau the same lady passed the entrance and
again glanced inside. Turk was now asleep, but his master was
staring dreamily toward the aperture leading to the aisle. He saw
the woman's face for an instant, and it gradually dawned upon him
that there was something familiar about its beauty. Where had he
seen her before? Like the curious American he was, he arose a few
minutes later and deliberately walked into the aisle. He passed two
compartments before he saw the young woman. She was alone and was
leaning back, her eyes closed. Quentin observed that she was young
and beautiful and possessed the marks of fashion and refinement. As
he stood for a moment looking upon the face of the dozing French
woman, more certain than ever that he had seen her recently, she
opened her eyes with an affrighted start.

He instantly and in some embarrassment turned to escape the eyes
which had caught him in a rare bit of impertinence, but was
surprised to hear her call softly:

“Monsieur!”

“Mademoiselle,” he replied, pausing, “can I be of service to you?”

“I must speak with you, M. Quentin. Come inside. I shall detain you
but a moment, and it is so very important that you should hear me.”
 She was now sitting upright, visibly excited and confused, but very
much in earnest.

“You know my name,” he said, entering and dropping to the seat
beside her. “Where have we met? Your face is familiar, but I am
ashamed to admit--”

“We have no time to talk of that. You have never met me, and would
not know who I am if I told you. Had it not been for that horrid
little man of yours I should have boldly addressed you sooner. I
must leave the train at Le Cateau, for I cannot go on to Quevy or
Mons. It would not be wise for me to leave France at this time. You
do not know me, but I wish to befriend you.”

“Befriend me? I am sure one could not ask for a more charming
friend,” said he, smiling gallantly, but now evincing a shade of
interest.

“No flattery, Monsieur! It is purely a personal matter with me; this
is by no means a pleasure trip. I am running a great risk, but it is
for my own sake as much as for yours, so do not thank me. I came
from Paris on this train because I could not speak to you at the
Gare du Nord. You were watched too closely.”

“Watched? What do you mean?” almost gasped Quentin.

“I can only say that you are in danger and that you have incurred
the displeasure of a man who brooks no interference.”

He stared at her for a moment, his mind in a whirl. The thought that
she might be mad grew, but was instantly succeeded by another which
came like a shock.

“Is this man of noble blood?”

“Yes,” she almost whispered, turning her eyes away.

“And he means to do me harm?”

“I am sure of it.”

“Because?”

“Because he fears your power.”

“In what direction?”

“You know without asking, M. Quentin.”

“And why do you take this interest in me? I am nothing to you.”

“It's because you are not to be treated fairly. Listen. On this
train are two men who do not know that I am here, and who would be
confounded if they were to see me. They are in one of the forward
coaches, and they are emissaries sent on to watch your every
movement and to report the progress of your--your business in
Brussels. If you become too aggressive before the man who employs
them can arrange to come to Brussels, you are to be dealt with in a
manner effectual. What is to be done with you, I do not know, but I
am certain you are in great danger unless you--” She paused, and a
queer expression came into her wide eyes.

“Unless what? You interest me.”

“Unless you withdraw from the contest.”

“You assume that there is a contest of some sort. Well, admitting
there is one, I'll say that you may go back to the prince and tell him
his scheme doesn't work. This story of yours--pardon me, Mademoiselle
is a clever one, and you have done your part well, but I am not in
the least alarmed. Kindly return to the man who sent you and ask him
to come in your stead if he wants to frighten me. I am not afraid of
women, you know.”

“You wrong me, Monsieur; I am not his agent. I am acting purely on
my own responsibility, for myself alone. I have a personal object in
warning you, but that is neither here nor there. Let me add that I
wish you success in the undertaking which now interests you. You
must believe me, though, when I say that you are in danger.
Forewarned is forearmed. I do not know what steps are to be taken
against you; time will expose them. But I do know that you are not
to win what you seek.”

“This is a very strange proceeding,” began he, half-convinced of her
sincerity.

“We are nearing Le Cateau, and I must leave you. The men of whom I
speak are the Duke Laselli and a detective called Courant. I know
they are sent to watch you, and they mean you no good. Be careful,
for God's sake, Monsieur, for I--I--want you to win!” She was standing
now, and with trembling fingers was adjusting a thick veil over her
face.

“Why are you so interested in me?” he asked, sharply. “Why do you
want me to win--to win, well, to win the battle?”

“Because--” she began, but checked herself. A deep blush spread over
her face just as she dropped the veil.

“The cad!” he said, understanding coming to him like a flash. “There
is more than one heart at stake.”

“Good-bye and good luck, Monsieur,” she whispered. He held her hand
for an instant as she passed him, then she was gone.

Mile after mile from Le Cateau to Quevy found him puzzling over the
odd experience of the night. Suddenly he started and muttered, half
aloud:

“By thunder, I remember now! It was she who sat beside him in the
carriage this morning!”




VIII. THE FATE OF A LETTER


At Quevy the customs officers went through the train, and Quentin
knew that he was in Belgium. For some time he had been weighing in
his mind the advisability of searching the train for a glimpse of
the duke and his companion, doubtful as to the sincerity of the
beautiful and mysterious stranger. It was not until the train
reached Mons that he caught sight of the duke. He had started out
deliberately at last to hunt for the Italian, and the latter
evidently had a similar design. They met on the platform and, though
it was quite dark, each recognized the other. The American was on
the point of addressing the duke when that gentleman abruptly turned
and reentered the train, one coach ahead of that occupied by
Quentin, who returned to his compartment and proceeded to awaken the
snoring man-servant. Without reserve he confided to Turk the whole
story of the night up to that point.

“I don't know what their game is, Turk, but we must not be caught
napping. We have a friend in the pretty woman who got off in the
rain at Le Cateau. She loves the prince, and that's why she's with
us.”

“Say, did she look's if she had royal blood in her? Mebby she's a
queen er somethin' like that. Blow me, if a feller c'n tell w'at
sort of a swell he's goin' up ag'inst over here. Dukes and lords are
as common as cabbies are in New York. Anyhow, this duke ain't got no
bulge on us. We're nex' to him, all right, all right. Shall I crack
him on the knot when we git to this town we're goin' to? A good jolt
would put him out o' d' business fer a spell--”

“Now, look here, young man; don't let me hear of you making a move
in this affair till I say the word. You are to keep your mouth
closed and your hands behind you. What I want you to do is to watch,
just as they are doing. Your early training ought to stand you well
in hand for this game. I believe you once said you had eyes in the
back of your head.”

“Eyes, nothin'! They is microscopes, Mr. Quentin.”

Quentin, during the remainder of the run to Brussels, turned the new
situation over and over in his mind. That the prince was ready to
acknowledge him as a dangerous rival gave him much satisfaction and
inspired the hope that Miss Garrison had given her lover some cause
for alarm. The decisive movement on the part of Prince Ugo to
forestall any advantage he might acquire while near her in Brussels
was a surprise and something of a shock to him. It was an admission,
despite his position and the pledge he had from the girl herself,
that the Italian did not feel secure in the premises, and was
willing to resort to trickery, if not villainy, to circumvent the
American who knew him in other days. Phil felt positive that the
move against him was the result of deliberate intent, else how
should his fair friend of the early evening know that a plot was
brewing? Unquestionably she had heard or learned of the prince's
directions to the duke. Her own interest in the prince was, of
course, the inspiration. To no one but herself could she entrust the
delivery of the warning. Her agitated wish, openly expressed, that
Quentin might win the contest had a much deeper meaning than would
appear on the surface.

From the moment he received the warning the affair began to take on
a new aspect. Aside from the primal fact that he was desperately in
love with Dorothy Garrison, there was now the fresh incentive that
he must needs win her against uncertain odds and in the face of
surprising opposition. In this day and age of the world, in affairs
of the heart, an American does not look for rivalry that bears the
suggestion of medieval romance. The situation savored too much of
the story-books that are born of the days when knights held sway, to
appear natural in the eyes of an up-to-date, unromantic gentleman
from New York, that city where love affairs adjust themselves
without the aid of a novelist.

Quentin, of course, was loath to believe that Prince Ugo would
resort to underhand means to checkmate a rival whose real purpose
had not yet been announced. In six weeks the finest wedding in years
was to occur in Brussels. St. Gudule, that historic cathedral, was
to be the scene of a ceremony on which all European newspapers had
the eye of comment. American papers had printed columns concerning
the engagement of the beautiful Miss Garrison. Everywhere had been
published the romantic story of this real love match. What, then,
should the prince fear?

The train rumbled into the station at Brussels near midnight, and
Turk sallied forth for a cab. This he obtained without the usual
amount of haggling on his part, due to the disappointing fact that
the Belgian driver could understand nothing more than the word
Bellevue, while Turk could interpret nothing more than the word
franc. As Quentin was crossing to the cab he encountered Duke
Laselli. Both started, and, after a moment's pause, greeted each
other.

“I thought I saw you at Mons,” said Phil, after the first
expressions of surprise.

“Yes; I boarded the train there. Some business called me to Mons
last week. And you, I presume, like most tourists, are visiting a
dozen cities in half as many days,” said the duke, in his execrable
English. They paused at the side of the Italian's conveyance, and
Quentin mentally resolved that the dim light, as it played upon the
face of the speaker, was showing to him the most repellent
countenance he had ever looked upon.

“Oh. no,” he answered, quickly, “I shall probably remain until after
the marriage of my friend, Miss Garrison, and Prince Ugo. Are you to
be here long?”

“I cannot say,” answered the other, his black eyes fastened on
Quentin's, “My business here is of an uncertain nature.”

“Diplomatic, I infer?”

“It would not be diplomatic for me to say so. I suspect I shall see
you again, Mr. Quentin.”

“Doubtless; I am to be at the Bellevue.”

“And I, also. We may see some of the town together.”

“You are very kind,” said Quentin, bowing deeply. “Do you travel
alone?”

“The duchess is ill and is in Florence. I am so lonely without her.”

“It's beastly luck for business to carry one away from a sick wife.
By the way, how is my dear friend, Prince Ugo?”

“Exceptionally well, thank you. He will be pleased to know you are
here, for he is coming to Brussels next week. I think, if you will
pardon me, he has taken quite a fancy to you.”

“I trust, after longer acquaintance, he may not find me a
disappointment,” said Phil warmly, and a faint look of curiosity
flashed into the duke's eyes. As they were saying good-night,
Quentin looked about for the man who might be Courant, the
detective. But the duke's companion was not to be seen.

The next morning Quentin proceeded in a very systematic and
effective way to locate the home of the Garrisons. He was aware, in
the beginning, that they lived in a huge, beautiful mansion
somewhere in the Avenue Louise. He knew from his Baedeker that the
upper town was the fashionable quarter, and that the Avenue Louise
was one of the principal streets. An electric tramcar took him
speedily through the Boulevards Regent and Waterloo to the Avenue
Louise. A strange diffidence had prevented him from asking at the
hotel for directions that would easily have discovered her home.
Somehow he wanted to stroll along the avenue in the early morning
and locate the home of Dorothy Garrison without other aid than the
power which tells one when he is near the object of his adoration.
He left the car at the head of the avenue and walked slowly along
the street.

His mind was full of her. Every vehicle that passed attracted his
gaze, for he speculated that she might be in one of them. Not a
well-dressed woman came within the range of his vision but she was
subjected to a hurried inspection, even from a distance. He strode
slowly along, looking intently at each house. None of them seemed to
him to hold the object of his search. As his steps carried him
farther and farther into the beautiful avenue he began to smile to
himself and his plodding spirit wavered. After all, thought he, no
one but a silly ass would attempt to find a person in a great city
after the fashion he was pursuing. He was deciding to board a
tramcar and return to the hotel when, at some distance ahead, he saw
a young lady run hurriedly down the steps of an impressive looking
house.

He recognized Dorothy Garrison, and with a thump of exultation his
heart urged him across the street toward her. She evidently had not
seen him; her eyes were on the ground and she seemed preoccupied. In
her hand she held a letter. A gasp of astonishment, almost of alarm,
came from her lips, her eyes opened wide in that sort of surprise
which reveals something like terror, and then she crumpled the
letter in her hand spasmodically.

“I thought you lived down here somewhere,” he exclaimed, joyfully,
seizing her hand. “'I knew I could find you.”

“I--I am so glad to see you,” she stammered, with a brave effort to
recover from the shock his appearance had created. “What are you
doing here, Phil?”

“Looking for you, Dorothy. Shall I post your letter?”

She was still standing as if rooted to the spot, the letter in a sad
plight.

“Oh, I'll not--not post it now. I should have sent the footman. Come
with me and see mamma. I know she will be glad to have you here,”
 she hurried, in evident confusion. She bethought herself suddenly
and made an effort to withdraw the letter from its rather
conspicuous position. The hand containing it was drawn behind her
back.

“That will be very nice of her. Better post the letter, though.
Somebody's expecting it, you know. Hullo! That's not a nice way to
treat a letter. Let me straighten it out for you.''

“Never mind, Phil--really, I don't care about it. You surprised me so
tremendously that I fear I've ruined it. Now I shall have to write
another.”

“Fiddlesticks! Send it as it is. The prince will blame the
postoffice people,” cried he.

“It is not for the prince,” she cried, quickly, and then became more
confused than ever. “Come to the house, Phil. You must tell me how
you happen to be here.”

As they walked slowly to the Garrison home and mounted the steps,
she religiously held the epistle where he could not regard it too
closely should his curiosity overcome his prudence. They were
ushered into the reception room, and she directed the footman to ask
if Mrs. Garrison could see Mr. Quentin.

“Now, tell me all about it,” she said, taking a chair quite across
the big room.

“There's nothing to tell,” he said. “I am in Brussels, and I thought
I'd hunt you up.”

“But why didn't you write or wire me that you were coming? You
haven't acted much like a friend,” she said, pointedly.

“Perhaps I wrote and never mailed the letter. Remember your
experience just now. You still hold the unlucky note in your hand.
Sometimes we think better of our intentions at the very instant when
they are going into effect. It is very mysterious to me that you
wouldn't mail that letter. I can only believe that you changed your
mind when you saw me.”

“How absurd! As if seeing you could have anything to do with it!”

“You ought to tell me if my appearance here is liable to alter any
plan that letter is intended to perfect. Don't let me be an
inconvenience. You know I'd rather be anything than an inconvenience.”

“It doesn't matter in the least; really, it doesn't. Your coming--”

The footman appeared on the landing above at that instant and said
something to her in a language Quentin could not understand. He
afterward heard it was French. And he always had thought himself a
pretty fair French scholar, too.

“Mamma has asked for me, Phil. Will you pardon me if I leave you
alone for a moment?” she said, arising and starting toward the grand
stairway. The letter, which she had forgotten for the moment, fell
from her lap to the rug. In an instant he had stepped forward to
pick it up. As he stooped she realized what had happened, and, with
a frantic little cry, stooped also. Their heads were close together,
but his hand was the first to touch the missive. It lay with the
address upward, plain to the eye; he could not help seeing the name.

It was addressed to “Philip Quentin, Esq., care of the Earl of
Saxondale, Park Lane, London, W. S.” Surprise stayed his fingers,
and hers clutched the envelope ruthlessly. As they straightened
themselves each was looking directly into the other's eyes. In hers
there was shame, confusion, even guilt; in his, triumphant,
tantalizing mirth.

“My letter, please,” he said, his voice trembling, he knew not why.
His hand was extended. She drew suddenly away and a wave of scarlet
crossed her face.

“What a stupid I was to drop it,” she cried, almost tearfully. Then
she laughed as the true humor of the situation made itself felt in
spite of consequences. “Isn't it too funny for anything?”

“I can't see anything funny in tampering with the mails. You have my
letter, and I hope it won't be necessary for me to call in the
officers of the law.”

“You don't expect me to give it to you?” she cried, holding it
behind her.

“Most assuredly. If you don't, I'll ask Mrs. Garrison to command you
to do so,” he threatened, eagerly. He would have given his head to
read the contents of the letter that caused her so much concern. All
sorts of conjectures were racing through his brain.

“Oh, please don't do that!” she begged, and he saw real supplication
in her eyes. “I wouldn't give you the letter for the world, and
I--I--well, don't you see that I am embarrassed?”

“Give me the letter,” he commanded, Sternly.

“Do you wish me to hate you?” she blazed.

“'Heaven forbid!”

“Then forget that your name is on this--this detestable envelope,”
 she cried, tearing the missive into pieces. He looked on in wonder,
chagrin, disappointment.

“By George, Dorothy, that's downright cruel. It was intended for
me--”

“You should thank me. I have only saved you the trouble of
destroying it,” she said, smiling.

“I would have kept it forever,” he said, fervently.

“Here's a small bit of the envelope which you may keep as a
souvenir. See, it has your name--'Philip'--on it. You shall have that
much of the letter.” He took it rather gracelessly and, deliberately
opening his watch, placed it inside the case. “I'd give $10,000 to
know what that letter had to say to me.”

“You can never know,” she said, defiantly, from the bottom of the
steps, “for I have forgotten the contents myself.”

She laughed as she ran upstairs, but he detected confusion in the
tone, and the faint flush was still on her cheek. He sat down and
wondered whether the contents would have pleased or displeased him.
Philosophically he resolved that as long as he was never to know he
might just as well look at it from a cheerful point of view; he
would be pleased.




IX. MOTHER AND DAUGHTER


It would be difficult to define the emotions that consumed Miss
Garrison as she entered her mother's boudoir. She could not conceal
from herself the sensation of jubilant delight because he had come
to Brussels. At the same time, even though his visit was that of a
mere friend, it promised complications which she was loath to face.
She went into the presence of her mother with the presentiment that
the first of the series was at hand.

“What is Philip Quentin doing here, Dorothy?” demanded Mrs.
Garrison. She was standing in the center of the room, and her
attitude was that of one who has experienced a very unpleasant
surprise. The calm, cold tone was not far from accusing; her steely
eyes were hard and uncompromising. The tall daughter stood before
her, one hand still clutching the bits of white paper; on her face
there was the imprint of demure concern.

“I haven't had time to ask him, mamma,” she said, lightly, “Would it
be quite the proper thing to demand the reason for his presence here
when it seems quite clear that he is paying us a brief morning
call?”

“Do not be absurd! I mean, what is he doing in Brussels? Didn't he
say he was to return to New York last week?” There was refined
belligerence in her voice. Dorothy gave a brief thought to the cool,
unabashed young man below and smiled inwardly as she contemplated
the reception he was to receive from this austere interrogator.

“Don't ask me, mamma, I am as much puzzled as you over his sudden
advent. It is barely possible he did not go to New York.”

“Well, why didn't he?” This was almost a threat.

“It is a mystery we have yet to unravel. Shall we send for Sherlock
Holmes?”

“Dorothy, I am very serious. How can you make light of this
unwarranted intrusion? He is--”

“Why do you call it intrusion, mamma? Has he not the right to come?
Can we close the door in his face? Is he not a friend? Can we help
ourselves if he knocks at our door and asks to see us?” Dorothy felt
a smart tug of guilt as she looked back and saw herself trudging
sheepishly up the front steps beside the intruder, who had not been
permitted to knock at the door.

“A gentleman would not subject you to the comments of--of--well, I may
say the whole world. He certainly saw the paragraphs in those London
papers, and he knows that we cannot permit them to be repeated over
here. He has no right to thrust himself upon us under the
circumstances. You must give him to understand at once, Dorothy,
that his intentions--or visits, if you choose to call them such--are
obnoxious to both of us.”

“Oh, mamma! we've talked all this over before. What can I do? I
wouldn't offend him for the world, and I am sure he is incapable of
any desire to have me talked about, He knows me and he likes me too
well for that. Perhaps he will go away soon,” said Dorothy,
despairing petulance in her voice, Secretly she was conscious of the
justice in her mother's complaints.

“He shall go soon,” said Mrs. Garrison, with determination.

“You will not--will not drive him away?” said her daughter, quickly.

“I shall make him understand that you are not the foolish child he
knew in New York. You are about to become a princess. He shall be
forced to see the impregnable wall between himself and the Princess
Ravorelli--for you are virtually the owner of that glorious title. A
single step remains and then you are no longer Dorothy Garrison.
Philip Quentin I have always disliked, even mistrusted. His
reputation in New York was that of a man of the town, a rich
roisterer, a 'breaker of hearts,' as your uncle has often called
him. He is a daring notoriety seeker, and this is rare sport for
him.” Mrs. Garrison's eyes were blazing, her hands were clenched,
her bearing that of one who is both judge and executioner.

“I think you do him an injustice,” said Dorothy, slowly, a feeling
of deep resentment asserting itself. “Philip is not what you call
him. He is a gentleman.” Mother and daughter looked into each
other's eyes squarely for a moment, neither flinching, both
justifying themselves for the positions they were to take.

“You defend him?”

“As he would defend me.”

“You have another man to defend. Do you think of him?”

“You have yet to say that Ugo is no gentleman. It will then be time
for defense, such as I am offering now.”

“We are keeping your friend waiting, Dorothy,” said Mrs. Garrison,
with blasting irony. “Give him my compliments and say that we trust
he may come every day. He affords us a subject for pleasant
discussion, and I am sure Prince Ugo will be as charmed to meet him
here as he was in London.”

“Don't be sarcastic, mamma. It doesn't help matters and--” began
Dorothy, almost plaintively.

“Mr. Quentin certainly does not help matters, my dear. Still, if you
will enjoy the comment, the notoriety that he may be generous enough
to share with you, I can say no more. When you are ready to dismiss
him, you shall find me your ally.” She was triumphant because she
had scored with sarcasm a point where reason must have fallen far
short.

“I might tell Rudolf to throw him into the street,” said Dorothy,
dolefully, “only I am quite positive Phil would refuse to be thrown
by less than three Rudolfs. But he is expecting you downstairs,
mamma. He asked for you.”

“I cannot see him to-day. Tell him I shall be only too glad to see
him if he calls again,” and there was a deep, unmistaken meaning in
the way she said it.

“You will not go down?” Dorothy's face flushed with something akin
to humiliation. After all, he did not deserve to be treated like a
dog.

“I am quite content upstairs,” replied Mrs. Garrison, sweetly.

Dorothy turned from her mother without another word, and as she went
down the stairs there was rebellion in her soul; the fires of
resistance showed their first tiny tongues in the hot wave that
swept through her being. Quentin was stretched out comfortably in a
big chair, his back toward the stairs, his eyes upon the busy avenue
below. She paused for a moment at the foot of the stairs and there
was a strange longing to pass her fingers over the thick dark hair.
The thought passed instantaneously, but there was a new shyness in
her manner as she approached.

“Hullo,” he said, arising as he heard her footfall. “Been watching
the people drive by. Pretty smart traps, some of them, too. The old
families that came over in the Ark with Moses--er, Noah, I should
say.” There was deep concern in the remark, but she was confident
that he vaguely understood why she was alone.

“Mamma trusts you will excuse her this morning. She says she will be
glad to see you when you come again.” She seated herself on a divan
near the window, a trifle out of the glaring light of the August
sun. She held in her hand a fan and the bits of paper had
disappeared. “Isn't it dreadfully warm?”

“Looks like rain, too,” said he, briefly. Then, with new animation:
“Tell me, what was in that letter?”

“Nothing but nonsense,” she replied, smiling serenely, for she was
again a diplomat.

“How dare you! How dare you write nonsense to me? But, really, I'd
like to know what it was. You'll admit I have a right to be
curious.”

“It pleases me to see you curious. I believe it is the first time I
ever saw you interested in anything. Quite novel, I assure you.”

“Don't you mean to tell me?”

“Assuredly--not.”

“Well, I think it's a roaring shame to write anything to a fellow
that he can't be allowed to read. I wouldn't treat you that way.”

“I know you wouldn't. You are too good, and too sensible, and too
considerate, and all the other kind of too's, while I am just an
unaccountable ninny. If you ever did anything crazy you wouldn't
like to have it found out, would you?”

“By all means! Then I could take treatment for the malady. Lean
forward, Dorothy, so that I can see your eyes. That's right! Now,
look at me squarely. Will you tell me what was in that letter?” She
returned his gaze steadily, almost mockingly.

“No.”

“That's all I want to know. I can always tell by a girl's eyes
whether she is stubborn.”

“I am not stubborn.”

“Well, I'll drop the matter for all time. Doubtless you were right
when you said it was nonsense; you ought to know. Changing the
subject, I think I'll like Brussels if I stay here long enough.” He
was again nonchalant, indifferent. Under her mask of unconcern she
felt a trifle piqued that he did not persist in his endeavor to
learn the contents of the unfortunate letter.

“How long do you expect--I mean purpose to stay?” she asked.

“It depends on conditions. I may be crazy enough to stay six weeks
and I may be crazy enough to go away next week. You see, I'm not
committing myself to any specified degree of insanity; it won't make
so much difference when I am found out, as you say. At present,
however, I contemplate staying until that affair at St. Gudule.”

She could not hide the annoyance, the discomfiture, his assertion
inspired. In a second she saw endless unpleasantries--some
pleasantries, it is fair to say--and there seemed to be no gentle way
of escape. At the same time, there came once more the queer flutter
she had felt when she met him in the street, a half-hour before.

“You will find it rather dull here, I am afraid,” she found courage
to say. “Or do you know many people--the American minister,
perhaps?”

“Don't know a soul here but you and Mrs. Garrison. It won't be
dull--not in the least. We'll ride and drive, go ballooning or
anything you like--”

“But I can't, Phil. Do you forget that I am to be married in six
weeks?” she cried, now frightened into an earnest appeal.

“That's it, precisely. After that you can't go ballooning with
anybody but the prince, so for at least a month you can have a good
time telling me what a jolly good fellow he is. That's what girls
like, you know, and I don't mind in the least. If you want to talk
about him by the hour, I won't utter an objection. Of course, I
suppose you'll be pretty busy with your trousseau and so forth, and
you'll have the house full of visitors, too, no doubt. But you can
give me a little time.”

“I am sure mamma would not--”

“She never did approve, if that's what you were about to say. What
is she afraid of? Does she imagine that I want to marry you? Good
heavens!” So devout was his implied denial of such a project that
she felt herself grow hot. “Doesn't she think the prince has you
safely won? You are old enough to take care of yourself, I'm sure.”

“She knows that I love Prince Ugo, and that he is the only man I
shall ever love. Her disapproval would arise from the needless
exposure to comment. You remember what the London paper said about
us.” If she thought that he was chilled by her bold opening
assertion she was to find herself mistaken. He smiled complacently.

“I thought it was very nice of them. I am preserving the clipping,”
 he said, airily. “We can talk over this little difficulty with
public opinion when we've had more time to think about it. You see,
I've been here but ten hours, and I may be willing to leave
tomorrow, that is, after I've seen more of the town. I may not like
the king, and I'm quite sure the palace doesn't suit me. I'll come
around to-morrow and we'll drive through one of these famous parks--”

“Oh, no, Phil! Really, you don't know how it embarrasses me--”

“I'll go away to-night, if you say you don't want to see me at all,
Dorothy,” he said, seriously, rising and standing before her.

“I don't mean that. You know I want to see you--for old times' sake.”

“I shall go, nevertheless, if you merely hint that I am unwelcome.”
 She arose and suddenly gave him her hand.

“You are not unwelcome, and you are foolish to speak in that
manner,” she said, seriously.

“And your mother?”

“She must endure what I endure.”

“Somewhere Baedeker says that the Bois de la Cambre is the finest
park in Brussels,” said he, his eyes gleaming.

“I am quite sure Baedeker is reliable,” she agreed, with a smile.

“At three o'clock to-morrow afternoon, then, I will come for you.
Will you remember me to your mother and tell her I am sorry not to
see her to-day? Good-bye!”

She followed him to the door, and when he sped lightly down the
steps there was a broad smile on the face of each. He turned and
both laughed outright. “Where there's a will, there's a way,” she
mused, as she went to her room upstairs. An hour later her daily
letter to the prince was ready for the post. The only allusion to
the visitor of the morning was: “Mr. Quentin--our New York friend,
you will remember--made us a brief call this morning. He is quite
undecided as to the length of his stay here, but I hope you will be
here to see him.”

Then, dismissing Quentin from her mind, she sat down to dream of the
one great event in her life--this wonderful, glorious wedding in old
St. Gudule's. Already her trousseau was on a fair way to completion.
She gave no thought to the fortune that these gowns were to cost,
she considered not the glories she was to reap by becoming a real
princess, she dwelt not on the future before her, for she knew she
was to be happy with Ugo. Instead, she dreamed only of the “color
scheme” that was to make memorable her wedding procession.

In her mind's eye she saw the great church thronged with the most
brilliant, illustrious assemblage it had ever held (she was quite
sure no previous gathering could have been more august), and a smile
of pride came to her lips. The great chorus, the procession, the
lights, the incomprehensible combination of colors, the chancel, the
flowers, her wedding gown, and Ugo's dark, glowing face rushed in
and out of her vision as she leaned back in her chair and--almost
forgot to breathe. The thought of Ugo grew and grew; she closed her
eyes and saw him at her side as they walked proudly from the altar
with the good bishop's blessing and the song of the choir in their
ears, the swelling of love in their souls. So vivid became the dream
of his presence that she could almost feel his hand touching hers:
she felt her eyes turn toward him, with all that great crowd
watching, and her heart quivered with passion as his dark, happy
eyes burnt through to her very soul. Somehow she heard distinctly
the whisper, “My wife!”

Suddenly a strange chill came over this idle, happy dream, and she
opened her eyes with a start, Ugo's face fading away like a flash.
The thought had rushed in like a stab from a dagger. Would Philip
Quentin be there, and would he care? Would he care?




X. TWO IN A TRAP



“Th' juke sent his card up, sir,” said Turk, his master was once
more in his rooms at the Bellevue. Turk was looking eminently
respectable in a new suit of blue serge.

“When?” asked Phil, glancing at Laselli's card. He had forgotten the
Italian, and the sight of his name recalled the plot unpleasantly.

“'Bout eleven o'clock. I watched him leave th' hotel an' go down
that street over there--th' same one you took a little earlier.”

“Watching me, I suspect. Haven't seen that detective fellow, have
you, Turk? You ought to be able to scent a detective three miles
away.”

“I can't scent in this language, sir.”

Early in the evening, as Quentin was leaving the hotel for a short
stroll, he met the duke. The Italian accosted him familiarly and
asked if he were trying to find a cool spot.

“I thought a ride on the tramcars might cool me off a bit,'” said
Phil.

“I know the city quite well, and I, too, am searching for relief
from the heat. Do you object to company in your ride or stroll?”

“Happy to have you, I assure you. If you'll be good enough to wait
here for a moment, till I find my stick, I'll be with you.” The duke
bowed politely, and Phil hastened back to his rooms. He secured his
stick, and did more. Like a wise young man, he bethought himself of
a possible trap, and the quest of the stick gave him the opportunity
to instruct Turk to follow him and the duke and to be where he was
needed in case of an emergency.

The tall, fresh-faced American in his flannels, and the short,
bearded Italian in his trim frock coat and silk hat strolled
leisurely forth into the crowded Place du Palais.

“Shall we walk awhile and then find a cafe where we may have
something to drink?” asked the duke, his English so imperfect that
no writer could reproduce it.

“I am in your hands, and at your mercy,” said the other, clinging
close to him as they merged into the crowd.

“May I ask if you have many friends in Brussels?” Under the
politeness of the inquiry Quentin, with amusement, saw the real
interest. Looking calmly into the Italian's beady eyes, he said:

“I know but four persons here, and you are included in the list. My
servant is another. Mrs. and Miss Garrison are old and particular
friends, you know. In fact, my dear duke, I don't believe I should
have come to Brussels at all were they not here.”

“They are most charming and agreeable,” murmured the duke. “This is
such a frightful crowd Shall we not cross to the other side?”

“What's the use? I used to play football--you don't know what that
is, I suppose--and I'll show you how to get through a mob. Get in
front--that's right--and I'll bring up in the rear.” Laughing to
himself, he brought his big frame up against the little man's back
and surged forward. Sure enough, they went “through the mob,” but
the duke was the volley end of the battering ram. Never in all his
life had he made such hurried and seemingly unnecessary progress
through a blockading crowd of roisterers. When they finally went
lunging into the half-deserted Rue de la Madeleine, his silk hat was
awry, his composure was ruffled, and he was very much out of breath.
Phil, supremely at ease, heaved a sigh of satisfaction, drawing from
the Italian a half-angry, half-admiring glance.

“Much easier than I thought,” said Quentin, puffing quietly at his
cigar.

“We did it very nicely,” agreed the other, with a brave effort to
equal the American's unconcern. Nevertheless, he said to himself
many times before they reached the broad Boulevard Anspach, that
never had he taken such “a stroll,” and never had he known how
little difference there was between a steam and a human propeller.
He almost forgot, as they sat at a small, table in front of a cafe,
to institute his diplomatic search for the real object of the
American's presence in Brussels.

It was twelve o'clock when they returned to the hotel, after a
rather picturesque evening in the gay cafes.

Here is what the keen little Italian deduced: Quentin was to remain
in Brussels until he took a notion to go somewhere else; Quentin had
seen the prince driving on the Paris boulevards; the Bois de la
Cambre offers every attraction to a man who enjoys driving; the
American slept with a revolver near his pillow, and his manservant
had killed six or seven men in the United States because of his
marvellous skill with the pistol; Quentin was a most unsophisticated
young man, with honesty and innocence in his frank eyes, although
they sometimes grew rather searching; he could only be overcome by
cunning; he was in love with Miss Garrison.

Quentin's conclusions: Laselli was a liar and an ass; Prince Ugo
would be in Brussels within ten days; he was careless with the
hearts of women and cruel with their love; French detectives are the
best in the world, the most infallible; Miss Garrison loved the very
ground the prince trod upon. He also discovered that the duke could
drink wine as a fish drinks water, and that he seldom made overtures
to pay for it until his companion had the money in hand, ready to do
so.

Turk was waiting for him when he reached his rooms, and Turk was not
amiable. A very attractive, innocent and demure young lady, who
could not speak English except with her hands and eyes, had relieved
him of a stickpin and his watch while he sat with her at a table not
far from the man he was protecting with his vaunted “eagle eye.”

“An' she swiped 'em right under me nose, an' me eyes square on her,
too. These people are too keen for me. They ain't a fairy in New
York that could 'a' touched me without d' dope, lemme tell you. I
t'ought I knowed a t'ing er two, but I don't know buttons from
fishhooks. I'm d' easiest t'ing 'at ever went to Sunday school.”

It was with a flushed, rebellious face that Miss Garrison stepped
into the victoria the next afternoon for the drive to the Bois de la
Cambre. She had come from a rather trying tilt with her mother, and,
as they drove off between the rows of trees, she felt that a pair of
flaming eyes were levelled from a certain upstairs window in the
Avenue Louise. The Biblical admonition to “honor thy father and thy
mother” had not been entirely disregarded by this willful young
lady, but it had been stretched to an unusual limit for the
occasion. She felt that she was very much imposed upon by
circumstances in the shape of an unreasonable mother and an
inconvenient friend.

Mr. Quentin, more in love than ever, and more deeply inspired by the
longing to win where reason told him he must fail, did not flatter
himself into believing that Mrs. Garrison wholly approved of the
drive. Instead, he surmised from the beginning that Dorothy's
flushed cheeks were not from happiness, but from excitement, and
that he was not altogether a shadowy cause. With rare tact he
plunged at once to the bottom of the sea of uncertainty and began to
struggle upward to the light, preferring such a course to the one
where you start at the top, go down and then find yourself powerless
to get back to the surface.

“Was your mother very much annoyed when you said you were coming out
with me?” he asked. She started and a queer little tinge of
embarrassment sprang into her eyes.

“How absurd!” she said, readily, however. “Isn't the avenue
beautiful?”

“I don't know--yet,” he said, without looking at the avenue. “What
did she say?” Miss Garrison did not reply, but looked straight ahead
as if she had not heard him. “See here, Dorothy, I'm not a child and
I'm not a lovesick fool. Just curious, that's all. Your mother has
no cause to be afraid of me--”

“You flatter yourself by imagining such a thing as--”

“--because there isn't any more danger that I shall fall in love
with you than there is of--of--well, of your falling in love with me;
and you know how improbable--”

“I don't see any occasion to refer to love in any way,” she said,
icily. “Mamma certainly does not expect me to do such an
extraordinary thing. If you will talk sensibly, Phil, we may enjoy
the drive, but if you persist in talking of affairs so ridiculous--”

“I can't say that I expect you to fall in love with me, so for once
your mother and I agree. Nevertheless, she didn't want you to come
with me,” he said, absolutely undisturbed.

“How do you know she didn't?” she demanded, womanlike. Then, before
she was quite aware of it, they were in a deep and earnest
discussion of Mrs. Garrison, and her not very complimentary views.

“And how do you feel about this confounded prospect, Dorothy? You
are not afraid of what a few gossips--noble or otherwise--may say
about a friendship that is entirely the business of two people and
not the property of the general public? If you feel that I am in the
way I'll gladly go, you know. Of course, I'd rather hate to miss
seeing you once in a while, but I think I'd have the courage to--”

“Oh, it's not nice of you to be sarcastic,” she cried, wondering,
however, whether he really meant “gladly” when he said it. Somehow
she felt herself admitting that she was piqued by his apparent
readiness to abdicate. She did not know that he was cocksure of his
ground before making the foregoing and other observations equally as
indifferent.

“I'm not sarcastic; quite the reverse. I'm very serious. You know
how much I used to think of you--”

“But that was long ago, and you were such a foolish boy,” she cried,
interrupting nervously.

“Yes, I know; a boy must have his foolish streaks. How a fellow
changes as he gets older, and how he looks back and laughs at the
fancies he had when a boy. Same way with a girl, though, I suppose.”
 He said it so calmly, so naturally that she took a sly peep at his
face. It revealed nothing but blissful imperturbability.

“I'm glad you agree with me. You see, I've always thought you were
horribly broken up when I--when I found that I also was indulging in
a foolish streak. I believe I came to my senses before you did,
though, and saw how ridiculous it all was. Children do such queer
things, don't they?” It was his turn to take a sly peep, and his
spirits went down a bit under the pressure of her undisguised
frankness.

“How lucky it was we found it out before we ran away with each
other, as we once had the nerve to contemplate. Gad, Dorothy, did
you ever stop to think what a mistake it would have been?” She was
bowing to some people in a brougham, and the question was never
answered. After a while he went on, going back to the original
subject. “I shall see Mrs. Garrison to-night and talk it over with
her. Explain to her, you know, and convince her that I don't in the
least care what the gossips say about me. I believe I can live it
all down, if they do say I am madly, hopelessly in love with the
very charming fiancee of an Italian prince.”

“You have me to reckon with, Phil; I am the one to consider and the
one to pass judgment. You may be able to appease mamma, but it is I
who will determine whether it is to be or not to be. Let us drop the
subject. For the present, we are having a charming drive. Is it not
beautiful?”

To his amazement and to hers, when they returned late in the
afternoon Mrs. Garrison asked him to come back and dine.

“I must be dreaming,” he said to himself, as he drove away. “She's
as shrewd as the deuce, and there's a motive in her sudden
friendliness. I'm beginning to wonder how far I'll drop and how hard
I'll hit when this affair explodes. Well, it's worth a mighty
strenuous effort. If I win, I'm the luckiest fool on earth; if I
lose, the surprise won't kill me.” At eight he presented himself
again at the Garrison house and found that he was not the only
guest. He was introduced to a number of people, three of whom were
Americans, the others French. These were Hon. and Mrs. Horace
Knowlton and their daughter, Miss Knowlton, M. and Mme. de Cartier,
Mile. Louise Gaudelet and Count Raoul de Vincent.

“Dorothy tells me you are to be in Brussels for several weeks, and I
was sure you would be glad to know some of the people here. They can
keep you from being lonesome, and they will not permit you to feel
that you are a stranger in a strange land,” said Mrs. Garrison.
Quentin bowed deeply to her, flashed a glance of understanding at
Dorothy, and then surveyed the strangers he was to meet. Quick
intelligence revealed her motive in inviting him to meet these
people, and out of sheer respect for her shrewdness he felt like
applauding. She was cleverly providing him with acquaintances that
any man might wish to possess, and she was doing it so early that
the diplomacy of her action was as plain as day to at least two
people.

“Mamma is clever, isn't she?” Dorothy said to him, merrily, as they
entered the dining-room. Neither was surprised to find that he had
been chosen to take her out. It was in the game.

“She is very kind. I can't say how glad I am to meet these people.
My stay here can't possibly be dull,” he said. “Mile. Gaudelet is
stunning, isn't she?”

“Do you really think so?” she asked, and she did not see his smile.

The dinner was a rare one, the company brilliant, but there was to
occur, before the laughter in the wine had spent itself, an incident
in which Philip Quentin figured so conspicuously that his wit as a
dinner guest ceased to be the topic of subdued side talk, and he
took on a new personality.




XI. FROM THE POTS AND PLANTS


The broad veranda, which faced the avenue and terminated at the
corner of the house in a huge circle, not unlike an open
conservatory, afforded a secluded and comparatively cool retreat for
the diners later in the evening. Banked along the rails were the
rarest of tropical plants; shaded incandescent lamps sent their glow
from somewhere among the palms, and there was a suggestion of
fairy-land in the scene. If Quentin had a purpose in being
particularly assiduous in his attentions to Mlle. Gaudelet, he did
not suspect that he was making an implacable foe of Henri de
Cartier, the husband of another very charming young woman.
Unaccustomed to the intrigues of Paris, and certainly not aware that
Brussels copied the fashions of her bigger sister across the border
in more ways than one, he could not be expected to know that de
Cartier loved not his wife and did love the pretty Louise. Nor could
his pride have been convinced that the young woman at his side was
enjoying the tete-a-tete chiefly because de Cartier was fiercely
cursing the misfortune which had thrown this new element into
conflict. It may be unnecessary to say that Mrs. Garrison was
delighted with the unmistakable signs of admiration manifested by
the two young people.

It was late when Quentin reluctantly arose to make his adieux. He
had finished acknowledging the somewhat effusive invitations to the
houses of his new acquaintances, and was standing near Dorothy,
directly in front of a tall bank of palms. From one point of view
this collection of plants looked like a dense jungle, so thickly
were they placed on the porch at its darkest end. The light from a
drawing-room window shone across the front of the green mass, but
did not penetrate the recess near the porch rail. He was taking
advantage of a very brief opportunity, while others were moving
away, to tell her that Mile. Louise was fascinating, when her hand
suddenly clasped his arm and she whispered:

“Phil, there is a man behind those palms.” His figure straightened,
but he did not look around.

“Nonsense, Dorothy. How could a man get--” he began, in a very low
tone.

“I saw the leaves move, and just now I saw a foot near the rail. Be
careful, for heaven's sake, but look for yourself; he is near the
window.”

Like statues they stood, she rigid under the strain, but brave
enough and cool enough to maintain a remarkable composure. She felt
the muscle of his forearm contract, and there swept over her a
strange dread. His eyes sought the spot indicated in a perfectly
natural manner, and there was no evidence of perturbation in his
gaze or posture. The foot of a man was dimly discernible in the
shadow, protruding from behind a great earthen jar. Without a word
he led her across the porch to where the others stood.

“Good-night, Mrs. Garrison,” he said, calmly, taking the hand she
proffered. Dorothy, now trembling like a leaf, looked on in mute
surprise. Did he mean to depart calmly, with the knowledge that they
needed his protection? “Good-night, Miss Garrison. I trust I shall
see you soon.” Then, in a lower tone: “Get the people around the
corner here, and not a word to them.”

The ladies were quite well past the corner before he ventured to
tell the men, whom he held back on some trifling pretext, that there
was a man among the plants. The information might have caused a
small panic had not his coolness dominated the nerves of the others.

“Call the gendarmes,” whispered de Cartier, panic stricken. “Call
the servants.”

“We don't want the officers nor the servants,” said Philip, coolly.
“Let the ladies get inside the house and we'll soon have a look at
our fellow guest.”

“But he may be armed,” said the count, nervously.

“Doubtless he is. Burglars usually are. I had an experience with an
armed burglar once on a time, and I still live. Perhaps a few palms
will be damaged, but we'll be as considerate as possible. There is
no time to lose, gentlemen. He may be trying to escape even now.”

Without another word he turned and walked straight toward the palms.
Not another man followed, and he faced the unwelcome guest alone.
Faced is the right word, for the owner of the telltale foot had
taken advantage of their momentary absence from that end of the
porch to make a hurried and reckless attempt to leave his cramped
and dangerous hiding-place. He was crowding through the outer circle
of huge leaves when Quentin swung into view. The light from the
window was full in the face of the stranger, white, scared, dogged.

“Here he is!” cried Quentin, leaping forward. “Come on, gentlemen!”

With a frantic plunge the trapped stranger crashed through the
plants, crying hoarsely in French as he met Quentin in the open:

“I don't want to kill you! Keep off!”

Quentin's arm shot out and the fellow went tumbling back among the
pots and plants. He was up in an instant. As the American leaped
upon him for the second blow, he drove his hand sharply,
despairingly, toward that big breast. There came the ripping of
cloth, the tearing of flesh, and something hot gushed over Phil's
shoulder and arm. His own blow landed, but not squarely, and, as he
stumbled forward, his lithe, vicious antagonist sprang aside, making
another wild but ineffectual sweep with the knife he held in his
right hand. Before Quentin could recover, the fellow was dashing
straight toward the petrified, speechless men at the end of the
porch, where they had been joined by some of the women.

“Out of the way! Out of the way!” he shrieked, brandishing his
knife. Through the huddled bunch he threw himself, unceremoniously
toppling over one of them. The way was clear, and he was down the
steps like a whirlwind. It was all over in an instant's time, but
before the witnesses to the encounter could catch the second breath,
the tall form of Philip Quentin was flying down the steps in close
pursuit. Out into the Avenue Louise they raced, the fugitive with a
clear lead.

“Come back, Phil!” cried a woman's voice, and he knew the tone
because of the thrill it sent to his heart.

He heard others running behind him, and concluded that his fellow
guests had regained their wits and were in the chase with him. If
the pursued heard the sudden, convulsive laugh of the man behind him
he must have wondered greatly. Phil could not restrain the wild
desire to laugh when he pictured the sudden and precipitous halt his
valiant followers would be compelled to make if the fugitive should
decide to stop and show fight. One or more of them would doubtless
be injured in the impossible effort to run backward while still
going forward.

Blood was streaming down his arm and he was beginning to feel an
excruciating pain. Pedestrians were few, and they made no effort to
obstruct the flight of the fugitive. Instead, they gave him a wide
berth. From far in the rear came hoarse cries, but Quentin was
uttering no shout. He was grinding his teeth because the fellow had
worsted him in the rather vainglorious encounter on the porch, and
was doing all in his power to catch him and make things even. To his
dismay the fellow was gaining on him and he was losing his own
strength. Cursing the frightened men who allowed the thief to pass
on unmolested and then joined in the chase, he raced panting onward.
The flying fugitive suddenly darted into a narrow, dark street,
fifty feet ahead of his pursuer, and the latter felt that he had
lost him completely. There was no sign of him when Quentin turned
into the cross street; he had disappeared as if absorbed by the
earth.

For a few minutes Philip and the mob--quite large, inquisitive and
eager by this time--searched for a trace of the man, but without
avail. The count, de Cartier and the Honorable Mr. Knowlton, with
several of Mrs. Garrison's servants, came puffing up and, to his
amazement and rage, criticised him for allowing the man to escape.
They argued that a concerted attack on the recess amongst the palms
would have overwhelmed the fellow and he would now be in the hands
of the authorities instead of as free as air. Quentin endured the
expostulations of his companions and the fast-enlarging mirth of the
crowd for a few moments in dumb surprise. Then he turned suddenly to
retrace his steps up the avenue, savagely saying:

“If I had waited till you screwed up nerve enough to make a combined
attack, the man would not have been obliged to take this long and
tiresome run. He might have called a cab and ridden away in peace
and contentment.”

A laugh of derision came from the crowd and the two Frenchmen looked
insulted. Mr. Knowlton flushed with shame and hurried after his tall
countryman.

“You are right, Quentin, you're right,” he wheezed. “We did not
support you, and we are to blame. You did the brave and proper
thing, and we stood by like a lot of noodles--”

“Well, it's all over, Knowlton, and we all did the best we could,”
 responded Philip, with intense sarcasm which was lost on Mr.
Knowlton. Just then a sturdy little figure bumped against him and he
looked down as the newcomer grasped his arm tightly.

“Hello, Turk! It's about time you were showing up. Where the devil
have you been?” exclaimed he, wrathfully.

“I'll tell y' all about it w'en I gits me tires pumped full agin.
Come on, come on; it's private--strictly private, an' nobody's nex'
but me.” When there was a chance to talk without being overheard by
the three discomfited gentlemen in the rear, Turk managed to give
his master a bit of surprising news.

“That guy was Courant, that's who he was. He's been right on your
heels since yesterday, an' I just gits nex' to it. He follers you up
to th' house back yonder an' there's w'ere I loses him. Seems like
he hung aroun' the porch er porticker, er whatever it is over here,
watchin' you w'en you wuz inside. I don't know his game, but he's
th' guy. An' I know w'ere he is now.”

“The dickens you do! You infernal little scoundrel, take me there at
once. Good Lord, Turk, I've got to catch him. These people will
laugh at me for a month if I don't. Are you sure he is Courant? How
do you know? Where is he?” cried Phil, excited and impatient.

“You ain't near bein' keen. He doubled on you, that's w'at he done.
W'en you chased him off on that side street he just leaps over th'
garden wall an' back he comes into a yard. I comes up, late as
usual, just in time t' see him calmly prance up some doorsteps an'
ring th' bell. Wile th' gang an' you wuz lookin' fer him in th'
gutters an' waste paper boxes, he stan's up there an' grins
complackently. Then th' door opens an' he slides in like a fox.”

“Where is the house? We must search it from top to bottom.”

“Can't do that, Mr. Quentin. How are you goin' to search that house
without a warrant? An' w'at are you goin' to find w'en you do search
it? He's no common thief. He's in a game that we don't know nothin'
about, an' he's got cards up his sleeve clear to th' elbow. Th'
people in that house is his friends, an' he's safe, so w'at's th'
use? I've got th' joint spotted an' he don't know I am nex'. It's a
point in our favor. There wuz a woman opened the door, so she's in
th' game, too. Let's lay low, Mr. Quentin, an' take it cool.”

“But what in thunder was he doing behind those palms? That wasn't a
very sensible bit of detective work, was it?”

“Most detectives is asses. He was hidin' there just to earn his
money. To-morrow he could go to th' juke an' tell him how slick he'd
been in hearin' w'at you said to th' young lady w'en you thought
nobody was listenin'. Was he hid near a window?'

“Just below one--almost against the casing.”

“Easy sailin'. He figgered out that some time durin' th' night you
an' her would set in that window an' there you are. See? But I
wonder w'at he'll say to th' juke to-morrow?”

“I hate to give this job up,” growled Phil. “But I must get back to
the hotel. The villain cut me with a knife.”

By this time they were in front of the Garrison home, and in an
undertone he bade Turk walk on and wait for him at the corner below.

“Did he escape?” cried Dorothy from the steps.

“He gave us the slip, confound him, Dorothy.”

“I'm glad, really I am. What could we have done with him if he had
been caught? But are you not coming in?”

“Oh, not to-night, thank you. Can't you have some one bring out my
hat and coat?” He was beginning to feel faint and sick, and
purposely kept the bloody arm from the light.

“You shall not have them unless you come in for them. Besides, we
want you to tell us what happened. We are crazy with excitement.
Madame de Cartier fainted, and mamma is almost worried to death.”

“Are you not coming up, Mr. Quentin?” called Mrs. Garrison, from the
veranda.

“You must come in,” said de Cartier, coming up at that moment with
the count and Mr. Knowlton.

“Really, I must go to the hotel, I am a little faint after that
wretched run. Let me go, please; don't insist on my coming in,” he
said.

“Mon dieu!” exclaimed the count. “It is blood, Monsieur! You are
hurt!”

“Oh, not in the least--merely a--”

“Phil!” cried Dorothy, standing in front of him, her wide eyes
looking intently into his. “Are you hurt? Tell me!”

“Just a little cut in the arm or shoulder, I think. Doesn't amount
to anything, I assure--”

“Come in the house at once, Philip Quentin!” she exclaimed. “Mr.
Knowlton, will you ask Franz to telephone for Dr. Berier?” Then she
saw the blood-stained hand and shuddered, turning her face away.
“Oh, Phil!” she whispered.

“That pays for this cut and more, if necessary,” he said, in a low
voice, as he walked at her side up the steps.

“Lean on me, Phil,” she said. “You must be faint.” He laughed
merrily, and his eyes sparkled with something not akin to pain.

Dr. Berier came and closed the gash in his shoulder. An hour later
he came downstairs, to find Mrs. Garrison and Dorothy alone.

“You were very brave, Mr. Quentin, but very foolhardy,” said Mrs.
Garrison. “I hope from my heart the wound will give you little
trouble.”

His good right hand closed over hers for an instant and then clasped
Dorothy's warmly, lingeringly.

“You must let us hear from you to-morrow,” said she, softly.

“Expect me to fetch the message in person,” said he, and he was off
down the steps. He did not look back, or he might have seen her
standing on the veranda, her eyes following him till he was joined
by another man at the corner below.




XII. HE CLAIMED A DAY


The strange experience of the evening brought Quentin sharply to a
sense of realization. It proved to him that he was feared, else why
the unusual method of campaign? To what extent the conspirators
would carry their seemingly unnecessary warfare he was now, for the
first time, able to form some sort of opinion. The remarkable
boldness of the spy at the Garrison home left room for considerable
speculation as to his motive. What was his design and what would
have been the ending to his sinister vigil? Before Quentin slept
that night he came to the drowsy conclusion that luck had really
been with him, despite his wound and Courant's escape, and that the
sudden exposure of the spy destroyed the foundation for an important
move in the powderless conflict.

In the morning his shoulder was so sore that the surgeon informed
him he could not use the arm for several days. Turk philosophically
bore the brunt of his master's ire. Like a little Napoleon he
endured the savage assaults from Quentin's vocal batteries, taking
them as lamentations instead of imprecations. The morning newspapers
mentioned the attempt to rob Mrs. Garrison's house and soundly
deplored the unstrategic and ill-advised attempt of “an American
named Canton” to capture the desperado. “The police department is
severe in its criticism of the childish act which allowed the wretch
to escape detection without leaving the faintest clew behind.
Officers were close at hand, and the slightest warning would have
had them at the Garrison home. The capture of this man would have
meant much to the department, as he is undoubtedly one of the
diamond robbers who are working havoc in Brussels at this time. He
was, it is stated positively by the police, not alone in his
operations last night. His duty, it is believed, was to obtain the
lay of the land and to give the signal at the proper moment for a
careful and systematic raid of the wealthy woman's house. The police
now fear that the robbers, whose daring exploits have shocked and
alarmed all Brussels, are on their guard and a well-defined plan to
effect their capture is ruined. A prominent attache of the
department is of the opinion that an attempt was to have been made
by the band to relieve all of Mrs. Garrison's guests of their jewels
in a sensational game of 'stand and deliver.'”

“The miserable asses!” exploded Phil, when 'he read the foregoing.
“That is the worst rot I ever read. This police department couldn't
catch a thief if he were tied to a tree. Turk, if they were so near
at hand why the devil didn't they get into the chase with me and run
that fellow down?”

“Th' chances are they was in th' chase, Mr. Quentin, but they didn't
get th' proper direction. They thought he was bein' chased th' other
way, an' I wouldn't be surprised if some of 'em run five or six
miles before they stopped t' reflect.”

“If there is a gang of diamond robbers or comic opera bandits in
this city I'll bet my hand they could steal the sidewalks without
being detected, much less captured. A scheme to rob all of Mrs.
Garrison's guests! The asses!”

“Don't get excited, sir. You'll burst a blood vessel, an' that's a
good sight worse than a cut,” cautioned Turk.

“Turk, in all your burglarious years, did you ever go about robbing
a house in that manner?”

“Not in a million years.”

“Well, what are we to do next?” demanded Quentin, reflectively,
ignoring his former question and Turk's specific answer. “Shall we
give the police all the information we have and land Mr. Courant in
jail?”

“This is our game, sir, not th' police's. For th' Lord's sake, don't
give anything up to th' cops. They'll raise particular thunder in
their sleep, an' we gets th' rough ha! ha! from our frien's, th'
enemy. We pipes this little game ourself, an' we wins, too, if we
succeed in keepin' th' police from gettin' nex' to anything they'd
mistake for a clue.”

Phil thought long and hard before sitting down at noon to write to
Dickey Savage. He disliked calling for help in the contest, but with
a bandaged arm and the odds against him, he finally resolved that he
needed the young New Yorker at his side. Dickey was deliberation
itself, and he was brave and loyal. So the afternoon's post carried
a letter to Savage, who was still in London, asking him to come to
Brussels at once, if he could do so conveniently. The same post
carried a letter to Lord Bob, and in it the writer admitted that he
might need reinforcements before the campaign closed. He also
inclosed the clipping from the newspaper, but added a choice and
caustic opinion of the efficiency of the Brussels police. He did not
allude specifically to Courant, the duke, or to the queer beginning
of the prince's campaign.

Early in the afternoon Mrs. Garrison sent to inquire as to his
wound. In reply he calmly prepared for an appearance in person. Turk
accompanied him, about four o'clock, in a cab to the house in Avenue
Louise. There were guests, and Phil was forced to endure a rather
effusive series of feminine exclamations and several polite
expressions from men who sincerely believed they could have done
better had they been in his place. Mrs. Garrison was a trifle
distant at first, but as she saw Quentin elevated to the pedestal of
a god for feminine worship she thawed diplomatically, and, with rare
tact, assumed a sort of proprietorship. Dorothy remained in the
background, but he caught anxious glances at his arm, and, once or
twice, a serious contemplation of his half-turned face.

“I'll let her think the fellow was one of the diamond robbers for
the present,” thought he. “She wouldn't believe me if I told her he
was in the employ of the prince, and the chances are she'd ruin
everything by writing to him about it.”

When at last he found the opportunity to speak with her alone he
asked how she had slept.

“Not at all, not a wink, not a blink. I imagined I heard robbers in
every part of the house. Are you speaking the truth when you tell
all these people it is a mere scratch? I am sure it is much worse,
and I want you to tell me the truth,” she said, earnestly.

“I've had deeper cuts that didn't bleed a drop,” said he. “If you
must have the truth, Dorothy, I'll confess the fellow gave me a
rather nasty slash, and I don't blame him, He had to do it, and he's
just as lucky as I am, perhaps, that it was no worse. I wish to
compliment your Brussels police, too, on being veritable
bloodhounds. I observed as I came in that they have at last scented
the blood on the pavement in front of the house and have washed away
the stain fairly well.”

“Wasn't the story in the morning paper ridiculous? You were very
brave. I almost cried when I saw how the horrid detectives
criticised you.”

“I'm glad to hear you say that, because I was afraid you'd think
like the rest--that I was a blundering idiot.”

“You did not fear anything of the kind. Do you really think he was
one of those awful diamond robbers who are terrorizing the town? I
could not sleep another wink if I thought so. Why, last spring a
rich merchant and his wife were drugged in one of the cafes, taken
by carriage to Watermael, where they were stripped of their
valuables and left by the roadside.”

“Did you see an account of the affair in your morning paper?”

“Yes--there were columns about it.”

“Then I think eight-tenths of the crime was committed at a city
editor's desk. It's my opinion these diamond thieves are a set of
ordinary pickpockets and petty porch climbers. A couple of New York
policemen could catch the whole lot in a week.”

“But, really, Phil, they are very bold and they are not at all
ordinary. You don't know how thankful we are that this one was
discovered before he got into the house. Didn't he have a knife?
Well, wasn't it to kill us with if we made an outcry?” She was
nervous and excited, and he had it on the tip of his tongue to allay
her fears by telling what he thought to be the true object of the
man's visit.

“Well, no matter what he intended to do, he didn't do it, and he'll
never come back to try it again. He will steer clear of this house,”
 he said, reassuringly.

A week, two weeks went by without a change in the situation. Dickey
Savage replied that he would come to Brussels as soon as his heart
trouble would permit him to leave London, and that would probably be
about the twentieth of August. In parentheses he said he hoped to be
out of danger by that time. The duke was persistent in his
friendliness, and Courant had, to all intents and purposes,
disappeared completely. Prince Ugo was expected daily, and Mrs.
Garrison was beginning to breathe easily again. The police had given
up the effort to find the Garrison robber, and Turk had learned
everything that was to be known concerning the house in which
Courant found shelter after eluding his pursuers on the night of the
affray. Quentin's shoulder was almost entirely healed, and he was
beginning to feel himself again. The two weeks had found him a
constant and persistent visitor at Miss Garrison's home, but he was
compelled to admit that he had made no progress in his crusade
against her heart. She baffled him at every turn, and he was
beginning to lose his confident hopes. At no time during their
tete-a-tetes, their walks, their drives, their visits to the art
galleries, did she give him the slightest ground for encouragement.
And, to further disturb his sense of contentment, she was
delighted--positively delighted--over the coming of Prince Ugo. For
a week she had talked of little save the day when he was to arrive.
Quentin endured these rapturous assaults nobly, but he was slowly
beginning to realize that they were battering down the only defense
he had--the inward belief that she cared for him in spite of all.

Frequently he met the Duke Laselli at the Garrisons'. He also saw a
great deal of the de Cartiers and Mile. Gaudelet. When, one day, he
boldly intimated to Dorothy that de Cartier was in love with Louise
and she with him, that young lady essayed to look shocked and
displeased, but he was sure he saw a quick gleam of satisfaction in
her eyes. And he was positive the catch in her breath was not so
much of horror as it was of joy. Mrs. Garrison did all in her power
to bring him and the pretty French girl together, and her insistence
amused him.

One day her plans, if she had any, went racing skyward, and she, as
well as all Brussels society, was stunned by the news that de
Cartier had deserted his wife to elope with the fair Gaudelet! When
Quentin laconically, perhaps maliciously, observed that he had long
suspected the nature of their regard for one another, Mrs.
Garrison gave him a withering look and subsided into a chilling
unresponsiveness that boded ill for the perceiving young man. The
inconsiderate transgression of de Cartier and the unkindness of the
Gaudelet upset her plans cruelly, and she found that she had wasted
time irreparably in trying to bring the meddling American to the feet
of the French woman. Quentin revelled in her discomfiture, and Dorothy
in secret enjoyed the unexpected turn of affairs.

She had seen through her mother's design, and she had known all
along how ineffectual it would prove in the end. Philip puzzled her
and piqued her more than she cared to admit. That she did not care
for him, except as a friend, she was positive, but that he should
persistently betray signs of nothing more than the most ordinary
friendship was far from pleasing to her vanity. The truth is, she
had expected him to go on his knees to her, an event which would
have simplified matters exceedingly. It would have given her the
opportunity to tell him plainly she could be no more than a friend,
and it would have served to alter his course in what she believed to
be a stubborn love chase. But he had disappointed her; he had been
the amusing companion, the ready friend, the same sunny spirit, and
she was perplexed to observe that he gave forth no indication of
hoping or even desiring to be more. She could not, of course, know
that this apparently indifferent young gentleman was wiser, far
wiser, than the rest of his kind. He saw the folly of a rash, hasty
leap in the dark, and bided his time like the cunning general who
from afar sees the hopelessness of an attack against a strong and
watchful adversary, and waits for the inevitable hour when the vigil
is relaxed.

There was no denying the fact that with all his confidence his
colors were sinking, while hers remained as gallantly fluttering as
when the struggle began. He was becoming confused and nervous; a
feeling of impotence began slyly, devilishly to assail him, and he
frequently found himself far out at sea. The strange inactivity of
the prince's cohorts, the significant friendliness of the duke, the
everlasting fear that a sudden move might catch him unawares began
to tell on his peace of mind. Both he and Turk watched like cats for
the slightest move that might betray the intentions of the foe, but
there was nothing, absolutely nothing. The house in which Courant
found safety was watched, but it gave forth no secrets. The duke's
every movement appeared to be as open, as fair, as unsuspicious as
man's could be, and yet there was ever present the feeling that some
day something would snap and a crisis would rush upon them. Late one
afternoon he drove up to the house in Avenue Louise, and when
Dorothy came downstairs for the drive her face was beaming.

“Ugo comes to-morrow,” she said, as they crossed to the carriage.

“Which means that I am to be relegated to the dark,” he said,
dolefully.

“Oh, no! Ugo likes you and I like you, you know. Why, are we not to
be the same good friends as now?” she asked, suddenly, with a pretty
show of surprise.

“Oh, I suppose so,” he said, looking straight ahead. They were
driving rapidly toward the Bois de la Cambre. “But, of course, I'll
not rob the prince of moments that belong to him by right of
conquest. You may expect to see me driving disconsolately along the
avenue--alone.”

“Mr. Savage will be here,” she said, sweetly, enjoying his first
show of misery.

“But he's in love, and he'll not be thinking of me. I'm the only one
in all Christendom, it seems to me, who is not in love with
somebody, and it's an awful hardship.”

“You will fall really in love some day, never fear,” she
volunteered, after a somewhat convulsive twist of the head in his
direction.

“Unquestionably,” he said, “and I shall be just as happy and as
foolish as the rest of you, I presume.”

“I should enjoy seeing you really and truly in love with some girl.
It would be so entertaining.”

“A perfect comedy, I am sure. I must say, however, that I'd feel
sorry for the girl I loved if she didn't happen to love me.”

“And why, pray?”

“Because,” he said, turning abruptly and looking straight into her
eyes, “she'd have the trouble and distinction of surrendering in the
end.”

“You vain, conceited thing!” she exclaimed, a trifle disconcerted.
“You overestimate your power.”

“Do you think I overestimate it?” he demanded, quickly.

“I don t--don't know. How should I know?” she cried, in complete
rout. In deep chagrin she realized that he had driven her sharply
into unaccountable confusion, and that her wits were scattering
hopelessly at the very moment when she needed them most.

“Then why do you say I overestimate it?” he asked, relentlessly.

“Because you do,” she exclaimed, at bay.

“Are you a competent judge?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, grasping for time.

“I mean, have you the right to question my power, as you call it?
Have I attempted to exert it over you?”

“You are talking nonsense, Phil,” she said, spiritedly.

“I said I'd feel sorry for the girl if she didn't happen to love me,
you know. Well, I couldn't force her to love me if she didn't love
me, could I?”

“Certainly not. That is what I meant,” she cried, immensely
relieved.

“But my point is that she might love me without knowing it and would
simply have to be brought to the realization.”

“Oh,” she said, “that is different.”

“You take back what you said, then?” he asked, maliciously.

“If she loved you and did not know it, she'd be a fool and you could
exert any kind of power over her. You see, we didn't quite
understand each other, did we?”

“That is for you to say,” he said, smiling significantly. “I think I
understand perfectly.”

By this time they were opposite the Rue Lesbroussart, and he drove
toward the Place Ste. Croix. As they made the turn she gave a start
and peered excitedly up the Avenue Louise, first in front of her
companion, then behind.

“Oh, Phil, there is Ugo!” she cried, clasping his arm. “See! In the
trap, coming toward us.” He looked quickly, but the trees and houses
now hid the other trap from view.

“Are you sure it is he?”

“Oh, I am positive. He has come to surprise me. Is there no way we
can reach the house first? By the rear--anyway,” she cried,
excitedly. Her face was flushed, and her eyes were sparkling.

“Was he alone?” asked he, his jaw setting suddenly.

“That has nothing to do with it. We must hurry home. Turn back,
Phil; we may be able to overtake him on the avenue.”

“I wanted to take you to the Park, Dorothy.”

“Well?”

“That's all,” he went on, calmly. “The prince can leave his card and
call later in the--well, this evening.”

“What--you don't mean--Philip Quentin, take me home instantly,” she
blazed.

“Not for all the princes in the universe,” he said. “This is my
afternoon, and I will not give up a minute of it.”

“But I command, sir!”

“And I refuse to obey.”

“Oh--oh, this is outrageous----” she began, frantically.

Suddenly his gloved left hand dropped from the reins and closed over
one of hers. The feverish clasp and the command in his eyes
compelled her to look up into his face quickly. There she saw the
look she feared, admired, deserved.

“There was a time when you wanted to be with me and with no other. I
have not forgotten those days, nor have you. They were the sweetest
days of your life and of mine. It is no age since I held this hand
in mine, and you would have gone to the end of the world with me. It
is no age since you kissed me and called me a king. It is no age
since you looked into my eyes with an expression far different from
the one you now have. You remember, you remember, Dorothy.”

She was too surprised to answer, too overcome by the suddenness of
his assault to resist. The power she had undertaken to estimate was
in his eyes, strong, plain, relentless.

“And because you remember I can see the hardness going from your
eyes, the tenderness replacing it. The flush in your cheek is not so
much of anger as it was, your heart is not beating in rebellion as
it was, and all because you cannot forget--you will not forget.”

“This is madness,” she cried, shivering as with a mighty chill.

“Madness it may be, Dorothy, but--well, because we have not
forgotten the days when we were sweethearts, I am claiming this day
of you and you must give it to me for the same reason. You must say
to me that you give it willingly,” he half whispered, intensely. She
could only look helplessly into his eyes.

From the rumble Turk saw nothing, neither did he hear.




XIII. SOME UGLY LOOKING MEN


Prince Ugo Ravorelli was not, that day, the only one whose coming to
Brussels was of interest to Quentin. Dickey Savage came in from
Ostend and was waiting at the Bellevue when he walked in soon after
six o'clock. Mr. Savage found a warm welcome from the tall young man
who had boldly confiscated several hours that belonged properly to
the noble bridegroom, and it was not long until, dinner over, he was
lolling back in a chair in Quentin's room, his feet cocked on the
window sill, listening with a fair and increasing show of interest
to the confidences his friend was pouring forth.

“So you deliberately drove off and left the prince, eh? And she
didn't sulk or call you a nasty, horrid beast? I don't know what the
devil you want me here for if you've got such a start as that. Seems
to me I'll be in the way, more or less,” said Dickey, when the story
reached a point where, to him, finis was the only appropriate word.

“That's the deuce of it, Dickey. I can't say that I've got a safe
start at all, even with her, and I've certainly got some distance to
go before I can put the prince out of the running. You may think
this is a nice, easy, straightaway race, but it isn't. It's going to
be a steeplechase, and I don't know the course. I'm looking for a
wide ditch at any turn, and I may get a nasty fall. You see, I've
some chance of getting my neck broken before I get to the stretch.”

“And some noted genius will be grinding out that Lohengrin two-step
just about the time you get within hearing distance, too. You won't
be two-stepping down the aisle at St. Gudule, but you'll agree that
it's a very pretty party. That will be all, my boy--really all. I
don't want to discourage you and I'm willing to stay by you till
that well-known place freezes over, but I think an ocean voyage
would be very good for you if you can arrange to start to-morrow.”

“If you're going into this thing with that sort of spirit, you'll be
a dead weight and I'll be left at the post,” said Quentin, ruefully.

“Was the prince at the house when you returned from the drive?”

“No; and Mrs. Garrison almost glared a hole through me. There were
icicles on every word when she told poor Dorothy he had been there
and would return this evening.”

“Was she satisfied to finish the drive with you after she had seen
the prince?” Quentin had not told him of the conversation which
followed her demand to be taken home.

“She was very sensible about it,” he admitted, carefully. “You see,
she had an engagement with me, and as a lady she could not well
break it. We got along very nicely, all things considered, but I'm
afraid she won't go out again with me.”

“She won't slam the door in your face if you go to the house, will
she?”

“Hardly,” said the other, smiling. “She has asked me to come. The
prince likes me, it seems.”

“But he likes to be alone with her, I should say. Well, don't
interfere when he is there. My boy, give him a chance,” said Dickey,
with a twinkle.

The duke headed off the two Americans as they left the hotel half an
hour later. He was evidently watching for them, and his purpose was
clear. It was his duty to prevent Quentin from going to the Garrison
home, if possible. After shaking hands with Savage, the little man
suggested a visit to a dance house in the lower end, promising an
evening of rare sport. He and Count Sallaconi, who came up from
Paris with the prince, had planned a little excursion into unusual
haunts, and he hoped the Americans had a few dull hours that needed
brightening. Phil savagely admitted to himself that he anticipated a
good many dull hours, but they could not be banished by the
vulgarity of a dance hall. The long, bony, fierce-mustached count
came up at this moment and joined in imploring the young men to go
with them to the “gayest place in all Brussels.”

“Let's go, Phil, just to see how much worse our New York places are
than theirs,” said Dickey.

“But I have a--er--sort of an engagement,” remonstrated Quentin,
reluctantly. The duke gave him a sharp look.

“Do not be afraid,” he said, laughing easily. “We will not permit
the dancing girls to harm you.”

“He's not afraid of girls,” interposed Dickey. “Girls are his long
suit. You didn't tell me you had an engagement?” Quentin gave him a
withering look.

“I have one, just the same,” he said, harshly.

“You will not accompany us, then?” said the count, the line between
his eyebrows growing deeper.

“I have to thank you, gentlemen, and to plead a previous engagement.
May we not go some other night?”

“I am afraid we shall not again be in the same mood for pleasure,”
 said the duke, shifting his eyes nervously. “The count and I have
but little time to give to frivolity. We are disappointed that you
will not join us on this one night of frolic.”

“I regret it exceedingly, but if you knew what I have to do to-night
you would not insist,” said Phil, purposely throwing a cloak of
mystery about his intentions for the mere satisfaction of arousing
their curiosity.

“Very well, mes Americains; we will not implore you longer,”
 responded the count, carelessly. “May your evening be as pleasant as
ours.” The two Italians bowed deeply, linked arms and strolled away.

“Say, those fellows know you haven't an engagement,” exclaimed
Savage, wrathfully. “What sort of an ass are you?”

“See here, Dickey, you've still got something to learn in this
world. Don't imagine you know everything. You don't, you know. Do
you think I am going to walk into one of their traps with my eyes
open?”

“Traps? You don't mean to say this dance hall business is a trap?”
 exclaimed Dickey, his eyes opening wide with an interest entirely
foreign to his placid nature.

“I don't know, and that's why I am keeping out of it. Now, let's
take our walk, a nice cool drink or two and go to bed where we can
dream about what might have happened to us at the dance hall.”

“Where does she live?” asked Savage, as they left the rotunda.

“Avenue Louise,” was the laconic answer.

“Why don't you say Belgium or Europe, if you're bound to be
explicit,” growled Dickey.

A dapper-looking young man came from the hotel a few paces behind
them and followed, swinging his light cane leisurely. Across the
place, in the shadow of a tall building, the two Italian noblemen
saw the Americans depart, noting the direction they took. It was
toward the Avenue Louise. A smile of satisfaction came to their
faces when the dapper stranger made his appearance. A few moments
later they were speeding in a cab toward the avenue.

“That is her house,” said Phil, later on, as the two strolled slowly
down the Avenue Louise. They were across the street from the
Garrison home, and the shadowy-trees hid them. The tall lover knew,
however, that the Italian was with her and that his willfulness of
the afternoon had availed him naught. Nor could he recall a single
atom of hope and encouragement his bold act had produced other than
the simple fact that she had submitted as gracefully as possible to
the inevitable and had made the best of it.

“Ugo has the center of the stage, and everybody else is in the
orchestra, playing fiddles of secondary importance, while Miss
Dorothy is the lone and only audience,” reflected Dickey.

“I wish you'd confine your miserable speculations to the weather,
Dickey,” said the other, testily.

“With pleasure. To-morrow will be a delightful day for a drive or a
stroll. You and I, having nothing else to do, can take an all-day
drive into the country and get acquainted with the Belgian birds and
bees--and the hares, too.”

“Don't be an ass! What sort of a game do you think those Italians
were up to this evening? I'm as nervous as the devil. It's time for
the game to come to a head, and we may as well expect something
sudden.”

“I think it depends on the prince. If he finds that you haven't torn
down his fences while you had full sway, he'll not be obliged to go
on with the game. He was merely protecting interests that absence
endangered. Now that he's here, and if all is smooth and
undisturbed--or, in other words, if you have failed in your
merciless design to put a few permanent and unhealable dents in the
fair lady's heart--he will certainly discharge his cohorts and enjoy
very smooth seas for the rest of the trip. If you have disfigured
her tender heart by trying to break into it, as a safe-blower gets
into those large, steel things we call safety deposit vaults--where
other men keep things they don't care to lose--I must say that his
satanic majesty will be to pay. Do you think you have made any
perceptible dents, or do you think the safe is as strong and as
impregnable as it was when you began using chisels and dynamite on
it six weeks ago?”

“I can't say that I enjoy the simile, but I'm conceited enough to
think it is not as free from dents as it was when I began. I'm not
quite sure about it, but I believe with a little more time and
security against interference I might have--er--have--''

“Got away with the swag, as Turk would say. Well, it's this way. If
the prince investigates and finds that you were frightened away just
in time to prevent wholesale looting, you'll have to do some expert
dodging to escape the consequences of the crime. He'll have the duke
and the count and a few others do nothing but get up surprise
parties for you.”

“That's it, Dickey. That's what I'm afraid of--the surprise
parties. He's afraid of me, or he wouldn't have gone to the trouble
of having me watched. They've got something brewing or they wouldn't
have been so quiet for the past two weeks. Courant is gone and--”

“How do you know Courant isn't here?”

“Turk says he has disappeared.”

“Turk doesn't know everything. That fellow may have a score of
disguises. These French detectives are great on false whiskers and
dramatic possibilities. The chances are that he has been watching
you night and day, and I'll bet my head, if he has, he's been able
to tell Ugo more about your affair with Miss Garrison than you know
yourself, my boy.”

They turned to retrace their steps, Phil gloomily surveying the big,
partially-lighted house across the way. A man met them and made room
for them to pass on the narrow walk. He was a jaunty, well-dressed
young fellow and the others would have observed nothing peculiar
about him had they not caught him looking intently toward the house
which was of such interest to them. As he passed them he peered
closely at their faces and so strange was his manner that both
involuntarily turned their heads to look after him. As is usually
the case, he also turned to look at them.

“I saw that fello\v in the hotel,” said Savage.

Five minutes later they met Turk and, before they could utter a word
of protest, he was leading them into the Rue du Prince Royal.

“There's a guy follerin' you,” he explained. “An' th' two swells is
drivin' aroun' in a cab like as if they wuz expectin' fun. They just
passed you on th' avenoo, an' now they's comin' back. That's their
rig--cuttin' across there. See? I tell you, they's somethin' in the
air, an' it looks as though it ain't goin' to pan out as they wanted
it to.”

“What's the matter with you? The duke and the count went to a dance
hall,” expostulated Quentin.

“To make a night of it,” added Savage

“Didn't you see a nice lookin' feller up there in th' avenoo, an'
didn't he size you up purty close? That's him--that's Courant, th'
fly cop. Git inside this doorway an' you'll see him pass yere in a
couple of seconds. He's not a block behind us.”

Sure enough the dapper stranger passed by the three men in shadow,
looking uneasily, nervously up and across the street.

“He's lost th' trail,” whispered Turk, after Courant was beyond
hearing.

“The same fellow, I'll be blowed,” said Dickey, in amazement. “Now,
what do you suppose the game is?”

“My idea is that w'en you turned 'em down on th' dance hall job they
was afraid you'd go to th' young lady's house and cut in on th'
prince's cinch, so they had to git a move on to head you off. You
was wise w'en you kicked out of th' dance hall racket. Th' chances
are you'd 'a' got into all kinds o' hell if you'd fell into th'
trap. Say, I'm dead sure o' one er two t'ings. In th' first place,
they've got four or five more ringers than we know about. I seen
Courant talkin' mighty secret-like to two waiters in th' hall this
evenin, an' th' driver o' that cab o' theirn was a baggage hustler
at th' Bellyvoo as late as yesterday.”

“By thunder, I believe their game was to mix us up in a big
free-for-all fight when they got us into that dance dive. That shows
Dickey, how wise I was to decline the invitation,” said Quentin,
seriously. By this time they were some distance behind Turk,
following in the path of the puzzled detective. They saw him look
curiously at the lighted windows of the houses, and overtook him at
the intersection of the Boulevard Waterloo. Just as they came up
from behind, Courant stopped for an instant's conversation with two
men. Their talk was brief and the trio turned to go back over the
path just traversed by Courant The two sets of men met fairly and
were compelled to make room for each other to pass. Courant came to
a full stop involuntarily, but recovered himself and followed his
friends quickly.

“The plot thickens,” observed Phil. “It looks as though they are
rounding up their forces after the miscarriage of the original plan.
Gad, they are hunting us down like rats to-night.”

“The hotel is the safest place for us, and the quicker we get there
the better,” said Dickey. “I'm not armed, are you?”

“Of course not. I hadn't thought of such a thing, but from now on
I'll carry a revolver. Those fellows didn't look especially dainty,
did they?”

“I can't believe that they intend to murder you or anything like
that. They wouldn't dare do such a thing.”

“That's th' game, Mr. Savage; I'm dead sure of it. This was th'
night an' it was to ha' been done in th' dance hall, riot, stampede,
everybody fightin' wild an' then a jab in th' back. Nobody any th'
wiser, see?” The two paled a trifle under Turk's blunt way of
putting it.

When they entered the hotel a short time later the first man they
saw was Prince Ugo. With his dark eyes glowing, his lips parted in a
fine smile, he came to meet them, his hand extended heartily.

“I have asked for you, gentlemen, and you were out. You return just
as I am ready to give up in despair. And now, let me say how happy I
am to see you,” he said, warmly. The Americans shook hands with him,
confusion filling their brains. Why was he not with the Garrisons?

“I knew you were here, Prince Ugo, and would have inquired for you
but that I suspected you would be closely engaged,” said Quentin,
after a moment.

“Earlier in the evening I was engaged, but I am here now as the
bearer of a message to you, Mr. Quentin. Miss Garrison has asked me
to deliver into your hands this missive.” With that he drew from his
pocket a sealed envelope and passed it to Quentin. “I was commanded
to give it you to-night, so perhaps you will read it now.”

“Thank you,” muttered the other, nervously tearing open the envelope
as the prince turned to Dickey Savage. At that moment the duke and
the count strolled into the rotunda, jauntily, easily, as if they
had been no farther than the block just beyond, instead of racing
about in a bounding cab. They approached the group as Phil turned
away to read the note which had come so strangely into his hands.
Dorothy wrote:

“Dear Phil: I trust you to say nothing to Prince Ugo. I mean, do not
intimate that I saw him yesterday when I went to drive with you. He
would consider it an affront. I know it is not necessary to caution
you, but I feel safe in doing so. You will pardon me, I am sure. My
conduct, as well as yours, when we look at it calmly in an
afterlight, was quite extraordinary. So fully do I trust him and so
well does he love me that I know this note comes to you inviolate.

“D.”

Phil's brain was in a whirl. He glanced at the handsome face of
Dorothy's noble lover and then at his swarthy fellow countrymen.
Could they be plotters? Could he be hand-in-hand with those
evil-looking men? He had delivered the note, and yet he so feared
its recipient that he was employing questionable means to dispose of
him. There could be no doubt as to the genuineness of the note. It
was from Dorothy, and the prince had borne it to him direct from her
hand.

“An invitation to dinner?” asked the prince, laughing easily. “Miss
Garrison is alarmingly fond of Mr. Quentin, and I begin to feel the
first symptoms of jealousy. Pardon me, I should not speak of her
here, even in jest.” So sincere was his manner that the Americans
felt a strange respect for him. The same thought flashed through the
minds of both: “He is not a blackguard, whatever else he may be.”
 But up again came the swift thought of Courant and his ugly
companions, and the indisputable evidence that the first named, at
least, was a paid agent of the man who stood before them, now the
prince, once the singer in far away Brazil.

“The mention of dinner recalls me to affairs of my own,” continued
Ugo. “To-morrow night I expect a few friends here to dine, and I
have the honor to ask you all to be among my guests. We shall sit
down at nine o'clock, and I only exact a promise that the end may
come within a week thereafter.”

The Americans could do naught but accept, but there was an
oppressive sense of misgiving in their hearts. Mayhap the signal
failure to carry out the plans of one night was leading swiftly and
resolutely up to the success of another. For more than an hour
Quentin and his friend sat silently, soberly in the former's room,
voicing only after long intervals the opinions and conjectures their
puzzled minds begot, only to sink back into fresh fields for
thought.

“I can't understand it,” said Dickey, at last, starting to bed.

“I believe I understand it perfectly. They are on a new tack. It
occurs to me that they fear we suspect something and the dinner is a
sort of peace offering.”

“We may be getting into a nest of masculine Lucretia Borgias, my
boy.”

“Pleasant dreams, then. Good-night!”




XIV. A DINNER AND A DUEL


At nine o'clock the next evening Quentin and Savage found themselves
in the rooms occupied by the prince, the former experiencing a
distinct sense of wariness and caution.

If Quentin suspected some form of treachery at the outset, he was
soon obliged to ridicule his fears. There were nearly a score of men
there, and a single glance revealed to him the gratifying fact that
no treachery could be practiced in such an assemblage. Among their
fellow guests there was an English lord, an Austrian duke, a Russian
prince, a German baron, besides others from France, Belgium and
Germany.

Prince Ugo greeted them warmly, and they were at their ease in an
instant under the magnetism of his manner. Duke Laselli and Count
Diego were more profuse in their greetings to the young men, and it
devolved upon the latter to introduce them to the distinguished
strangers. There was but one other American there, a millionaire
whose name is a household word in the states and whose money was at
that time just beginning to assert itself as a menace to the great
commercial interests of the old world. He welcomed his fellow New
Yorkers with no small show of delight. The expression of relief on
his face plainly exposed a previous fear that he was unspeakably
alone in this assemblage of continental aristocrats.

At the table, Quentin sat between an Austrian duke and a German
named Von Kragg. He was but two seats removed from Prince Ugo, while
Savage was on the other side of the table, almost opposite Quentin.
On Dickey's right sat the Duke Laselli, and next to that individual
was the American millionaire. Directly across the broad table from
Quentin was the tall rakish-looking Count Diego Sallaconi.

“Ob, nobde gap sansan wobble wibble raggle dully pang rubby dub,
bob,” said the baron, in his best French, addressing the statuesque
American with the broad shoulders and the intense countenance.

“With all my heart,” responded Mr. Quentin, with rare composure and
equal confidence. He had no more conception of what the baron
intended to say than he would have had if the planet Mars had
wigwagged a signal to him, but he was polite enough to do anything
for the sake of conversation. The baron smiled gladly, even
approvingly; it was plain that he understood Phil's English fully as
well as that gentleman understood his French. Quentin heard his name
uttered by Prince Ugo and turned from the baron.

“Mr. Quentin, Prince Kapolski tells me he saw our friends, the
Saxondales, in London last week. They were preparing to go to their
place in the country. You have been there, have you not?” Prince Ugo
turned his gleaming eyes and engaging smile upon the man addressed.

“On several occasions,” responded the other. “Saxondale is a famous
hunter and he gave me some rare sport. When do they leave London?”
 he asked, indifferently.

“They were to have started this week,” said the Russian prince,
“and there is to be quite a large party, I hear. A young American
who was with them was called away suddenly last week, and, as the
trip was arranged for his special amusement--by the Lady Jane, I was
told--his departure upset the plans a trifle.” Quentin and Savage,
who had heard the remarks glanced at one another in surprise.

“I should enjoy being with them,” said the former, warmly. “My
friend, Mr. Savage, was invited, I think,” he added, and Dickey
studiously consulted the salad. He had not been invited and the
announcement that the Saxondales were off for the north of England
was news to him.

“Oh, certainly,” exclaimed Ugo; “he was their guest. And the Lady
Jane arranged it, you say, Kapolski? Draft horses could not have
been strong enough to pull me away from London had she planned for
my pleasure. You must discover the fault in him, my dear Quentin,
and hold him to account for a very reprehensible act.” Ugo knew that
Dickey was listening, and the first point in a beautiful game was
scored.

“Mr. Savage does not care for shooting,” said Phil, flushing
slightly. The Russian prince had been looking at him intently; a
peculiar flash came into his eye when Quentin made the defensive
remark.

“But there is game to be had without resorting to the gun,” he said,
smiling blandly.

“One doesn't have to go to a shooting box to bag it, though,” said
Sallaconi, mischievously.

“I think the hunter uses bow and arrow exclusively,” added Ugo, and
there was a general laugh, which sent a streak of red up Dickey's
cheeks. If the Russian's news was true he had been purposely
slighted by the Saxondales. And yet it was not altogether
humiliation or wounded pride that brought the red to his cheek. He
and the Lady Jane had quarrelled just before he left her, and while
he hated her and she hated him and all that, still he did not care
to hear her name bandied about by the wine sippers at this
delectable table.

“What are they talking about?” asked the American millionaire of
Dickey, his curiosity aroused by the laughter of a moment before.

“About as nasty as they can,” growled Dickey. “That's their style,
you know.”

“Whew! You don't have much of an opinion of nobility. Beware of the
prince,” said the other, in a low tone.

“You couldn't insult some of them with a deliberate and well-aimed
kick,” remarked the younger man, sourly. The Duke Laselli's ears
turned a shade pinker under his oily, swarthy skin, for the words
penetrated them in spite of the speaker's caution.

“A toast,” said the Russian prince, arising from his seat beside
Ravorelli. The guests arose and glasses almost met in a long line
above the center of the table. Ugo alone remained seated as if
divining that they were to drink to him. For the first time Quentin
closely observed the Russian. He was tall and of a powerful frame,
middle-aged and the possessor of a strong, handsome face on which
years of dissipation had left few weakening marks. His eyes were
narrow and as blue as the sky, his hair light and bushy, his beard
coarse and suggestive of the fierceness of the wild boar. His voice
was clear and cutting, and his French almost perfect. “We drink to
the undying happiness of our host, the luckiest prince in all the
world. May he always know the bliss of a lover and never the cares
of a husband; may his wedded state be an endless love story without
a prosaic passage; may life with the new Princess of Ravorelli be a
poem, a song, a jub late, with never a dirge between its morn and
its midnight.”

“And a long life to him,” added Quentin, clearly. As they drank the
eyes of Prince Ugo were upon the last speaker, and there was a
puzzled expression in them. Count Sallaconi's black eyebrows shot up
at the outer ends and a curious grimness fastened itself about his
mouth and nose.

“I thank you, gentlemen,” responded Ugo, arising. “Will you divide
the toast with me in proposing the happiness of the one who is to
bring all these good things into my life?” The half-emptied glasses
were drained. Dickey Savage's eyes met Quentin's in a long look of
perplexity. At last an almost imperceptible twinkle, suggestive of
either mirth or skepticism, manifested itself in his friend's eyes
and the puzzled observer was satisfied.

When, in the end, the diners pushed their chairs back from the table
and passed into another room, it was far past midnight, and the real
revelry of the night was at hand. Reckless, voluptuous women from
the vaudeville houses and dance halls appeared, and for hours the
wine-soaked scions of nobility reeked in those exhibitions which
shock the sensibilities of true men. Four men there were who tried
to conceal their disgust while the others roared out the applause of
degenerates.

“I am not a saint, but this is more than I can stand. It is
sickening,” said Quentin.

“And these miserable specimens of European manhood delight in it,”
 said Savage, his face aflame with shame and disgust. “It is too vile
for a man who has a breath of manhood in him to encourage, and yet
these bounders go crazy with rapture. Gad, don't ask what kind of
women they are. Ask how it is the world has ever called these
fellows men.”

“Did I understand you correctly, sir?” asked a cold voice at his
side, and Dickey turned to look into the flaming eyes of Prince
Kapolski. Count Sallaconi was clutching the left arm of the big
Russian, and there was a look of dismay in his face. He flashed a
glance of fierce disappointment at Quentin, and then one of
helplessness across the room at Prince Ugo.

“If you understand English you probably did,” said Dickey, pale but
defiant.

“Come, prince,” began the agitated count, but Kapolski shook him
off.

“You must apologize for your comments, sir,” said the prince, in
excellent English.

“I can't apologize, you know. I meant what I said,” said Dickey,
drawing himself up to the limit of his five feet ten. The Russian's
open hand came violently in contact with the young fellow's cheek,
driving the tears to the surface of his eyes They were tears of
anger, pain and mortification, not of submission or fear.

His clenched right hand shot outward and upward, and before the
Russian knew what had happened a crashing blow caught him full in
the jaw, and he would have gone sprawling to the floor had not Diego
Sallaconi caught him in his arms. Quentin grasped Dickey and pulled
him away, while others rushed in and held the roaring, sputtering
victim.

All was confusion and excitement in an instant. Quentin and the
millionaire drew their lithe countryman away from the gathering
crowd, one cheek white as a sheet, the other a bright pink, and Phil
hoarsely whispered to him:

“I don't know what we're in for, Dickey, so for heaven's sake let's
get out of here. We don't want any more of it. You gave him a good
punch and that's enough.”

“You broke up the show all right enough,” exclaimed the millionaire,
excitedly. “The fairies ran over each other trying to get out of the
room. You're as game as a fighting cock, too.”

“Let me alone, Phil!” panted Dickey. “You don't suppose I'm going to
run from that big duffer, do you? Let go!”

“Don't be a fool, Dickey,” said his friend, earnestly. Just then a
pale-faced, sickly-looking waiter came up from behind and hoarsely
whispered in Quentin's ear:

“Get out, quick! The big prince made a mistake. He was to have
quarrelled with you, Monsieur.” He was gone before he could be
questioned.

“See!” exclaimed Dickey. “It was a job, after all, and the dago is
at the bottom of it!”

“Sh! Here he comes with the Russian and the whole pack behind them.
It's too late; we can't run now,” said Phil, despairingly. As Ugo
and Kapolski crossed the room, the former, whose face was white with
suppressed passion, hissed under his breath into the ear of the
raging Russian:

“You fool, it was the other one--the tall one! You have quarrelled
with the wrong man. The big one is Quentin, Kapolski. How could you
have made such a mistake?”

“Mistake or no mistake, he has struck me, and he shall pay for it.
The other can come later,” growled the Russian, savagely.

“Gentlemen, this is no place to fight. Let us have explanations--”
 began Ugo, addressing Quentin more than Savage, but the latter
interrupted:

“Call off your dogs and we will talk it over,” he said.

“Dickey!” cautioned his friend.

“I do not understand you, Mr. Savage. My dogs? Oh, I see, Mr.
Quentin; he is mad with anger,” said the prince, deprecatingly.

“There can be no explanations,” snarled Kapolski. “My card,
Monsieur,” and he threw the pasteboard in the young American's face.

“Damn your impudence,” exploded Quentin, now ready to take the fight
off the hands of the one on whom it had been forced through error.
“You ought to be kicked downstairs for that.”

“You will have that to recall, Monsieur, but not until after I have
disposed of your valiant friend,” exclaimed Kapolski.

“We are not in the habit of waiting for a chance to dispose of such
affairs,” said Quentin, coolly. “We fight when we have a cause and
on the spot.”

“Do you expect civilized men to carry arms into drawing-rooms?”
 sneered Kapolski. Ugo's face was lighting up with pleasure and
satisfaction and Sallaconi was breathing easier.

“I'm speaking of hands, not arms,” said Phil, glaring at the other.

“I'll fight him in a second,” cried Dickey.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen! Be calm! Let this affair be arranged by your
seconds and in the regular manner,” expostulated Ugo. “This is very
unusual, and I must beg of you to remember that you are in my
rooms.”

“That is the rub, Prince Ravorelli. It has happened in your rooms,
and I want to say to you that if evil befalls my friend, I shall
hold you to account for it,” said Quentin, turning on him suddenly.

“What do you mean, sir?”

“You know what I mean. I can and am ready to fight my own battles.”

“This outrageous brawl is none of my affair, Mr. Quentin, and I do
not like your threat. You and I should do all in our power to
prevent it from going farther. Your friend was too free with his
words, I am told. If he did not like my entertainment, he should
have left the room.”

“Well, I didn't like it, if you want to know,” said Dickey. “And I
don't care a continental who heard what I said.”

“Does he still want to fight with his hands?” demanded Kapolski, now
cool and ironical. There was an infuriating attempt on his part to
speak as if he were addressing a small, pouting child.

“Anything--anything! The only point is, you'll have to fight
to-night--right now. I've two or three friends here who'll see that
I get fair play.” said Dickey, discretion flying to the wind.

“You shall fight and here!” exclaimed the Russian. “But you shall
fight like a gentleman for once in your life. I will not claw and
scratch with you, like the women do, but with any weapon you name.”

Dickey's valor did not fade, but his discretion came to the surface
with a suddenness that took his breath away. He turned to speak to
Quentin and the millionaire. Phil's face was deathly white, and
there was a pleading look in his eyes. The millionaire was trembling
like a leaf.

“I guess I'll take pistols,” said Dickey, slowly. “I can't hit the
side of a barn, but he can't bluff me, damn him.”

“Great Scott, Dickey! Don't do it, don't do it!” whispered Quentin.
“This is my fight, you know it is, and I won't let you--”

“You can't help it, old boy. He'll probably get me, but I may be
lucky enough to have a bullet land in him. My only chance is to aim
anywhere but at him, shut my eyes, and trust to luck.” Then turning
to Kapolski he said, deliberately: “Pistols, and here, if the prince
does not object.”

“Cannot this affair be postponed--” began Ugo, desperately.

“Not unless your friend forgets that I punched his head. It is now
or never with me,” said Dickey.

“I insist that it is my right to fight this man!” exclaimed Quentin,
standing forth. “I first expressed the opinion which Mr. Savage
merely echoed and to which Prince Kapolski took exception.”

“But you did not strike me. In any event, you shall come next, Mr.
Quentin; I shall take you on immediately after I have disposed of
your cockadoodle friend,” said Kapolski, throwing aside his coat.
“You have pistols here, Prince Ravorelli?”

“This is murder,” cried the millionaire, “and I shall take it before
the United States government.”

“Dickey! Dickey!” cried Phil, helplessly, as Savage began to remove
his coat.

“I have weapons, if you insist, gentlemen,” said Ugo. At his words
intense excitement prevailed, for now there could be no doubt as to
the result of the quarrel. Count Sallaconi hurried away for the
pistols, smiling significantly as he passed his prince. His smile
said that Kapolski would kill two men that night.

“For God's sake, Dickey, be careful, if you must fight. Take
deliberate aim and don't lose your nerve,” cried Quentin, grasping
him by the arms. “You are as cold as ice.”

“I haven't fired a pistol more than a dozen times in my life,” said
Dickey, smiling faintly.

“Then shoot low,” said the millionaire.

“Your second, Monsieur?” said the Austrian duke, coming to Savage's
side.

“Mr. Quentin will act, Monsieur le Duc. We may need a surgeon.”

“Dr. Gassbeck is here.”

It was hurriedly agreed that the men should stand at opposite ends
of the room, nearly twenty feet apart, back to back. At the word
given by Prince Ugo, they were to turn and fire.

Sallaconi came in with the pistol case and the seconds examined the
weapons carefully. A moment later the room was cleared except for
the adversaries, the seconds, and Prince Ugo.

There was the stillness of death. On the face of the Russian there
was an easy smile, for was not he a noted shot? Had he ever missed
an adversary in a duel? Dickey was pale, but he did not tremble as
he took the pistol in his hand.

“Good-bye, Phil,” was all he said. Poor Quentin turned his face away
as he clasped his hand, and he could only murmur:

“If he hits you, I'll kill him.”

A moment later the word “fire” came and the two men whirled into
position. Dickey's arm went up like a flash, the other's more
cruelly deliberate. Two loud reports followed in quick succession,
the slim American's nervous finger pressed the trigger first. He had
not taken aim. He had located his man's position before turning
away, and the whole force of his will was bent on driving the bullet
directly toward the spot he had in mind. Kapolski's bullet struck
the wall above Dickey's head, his deadly aim spoiled by the quick,
reckless shot from the other end of the room.

He lunged forward. Dickey's bullet had blown away part of the big
Russian's chin and jaw, burying itself in the wall beyond.




XV. APPROACH OF THE CRISIS


Prince Ugo's face was livid, and his black eyes bulged with
horrified amazement. The unscrupulous, daring, infallible duelist
whom he had induced to try conclusions with Quentin in a regular and
effective way, had been overthrown at the outset by a most peculiar
transaction of fate. He had assured the Russian that Quentin was no
match for him with the weapons common to dueling, and he had led him
to believe that he was in little danger of injury, much less death.
Kapolski, reckless, a despiser of all things American, eagerly
consented to the plan, and Ugo saw a way to rid himself of a
dangerous rival without the taint of suspicion besmirching his
cloak. Sallaconi was an accomplished swordsman, but it would have
been unwise to send him against Quentin. Ugo himself was a splendid
shot and an expert with the blade, and it was not cowardice that
kept him from taking the affair in his own hands. It was wisdom,
cunning wisdom, that urged him to stand aloof and to go up to his
wedding day with no scandal at his back. But the unexpected, the
miraculous had happened. His friend, his brother prince, his
unwitting tool, had gone down like a log, his vaunted skill
surpassed by the marksmanship and courage of an accursed American.

To his credit be it said that he did all in his power to preserve
the life of Prince Kapolski. More than that, he did all that was
possible to keep the story of the encounter from reaching the world.
So powerful, so successful was his influence that the world at large
knew nothing of the fight, the police were bribed, and the
newspapers were thrown completely off the scent.

Ugo's first thought after the fall of Kapolski was to prevent his
opponent from leaving the room alive, but common sense came to his
relief a second later, and he saw the folly of taking a stand
against the victor. He rushed to Kapolski's side and helped to
support the moaning man's body. The surgeon was there an instant
later, and Dickey, as white as a ghost, started mechanically toward
the fallen foe. Ouentin stood like a man of stone, stunned by relief
and surprise. One glance at the bloody, lacerated face and the
rolling eyes caused Savage to flee as if pursued by devils.

For hours Quentin and Turk sought to comfort and to quiet him; the
millionaire, who refused to desert them, sat up all night to manage
the information bureau, as he called it. He personally inquired at
Ugo's rooms, and always brought back reassuring news, which Quentin
doubted and Dickey utterly disbelieved At four o'clock Prince Ugo
himself, with Duke Laselli, came to Quentin's rooms with the word
that Kapolski was to be taken to a hospital, and that Dr. Gassbeck
pronounced his chance for recovery excellent. The prince assured Mr.
Savage that secrecy would be preserved, but advised him to leave
Brussels at the earliest possible moment. Kapolski's death, if it
came, would command an investigation, and it would be better if he
were where the law could not find him.

Quentin with difficulty restrained from openly accusing the prince
of duplicity. Afterthought told him how impotent his accusation
would have been, for how could he prove that the Russian was acting
as an agent?

Just before daylight Turk saw them take Prince Kapolski from the
hotel in an ambulance, and, considering it his duty, promptly
followed in a cab. The destination of the ambulance was the side
street entrance to one of the big hospitals in the upper part of the
town, and the men who accompanied the prince were strangers to the
little observer. Prince Ugo was not of the party, nor were Laselli
and Sallaconi. On his return to the Bellevue he had a fresh task on
his hands. He was obliged to carry a man from Quentin's apartments
and put him to bed in the millionaire's room, farther down the hall.
The millionaire--for it was he--slept all day and had a headache
until the thirtieth of the month. Turk put him to bed on the
twenty-seventh.

During the forenoon Prince Ugo and Count Sallaconi called at
Quentin's rooms. They found that gentleman and Mr. Savage dressed
and ready for the street.

“Good morning,” said Dickey, pleasantly, for the two Americans had
determined to suppress, for diplomatic reasons, any show of
hostility toward the Italians. The visitors may not have exposed
their true feelings, but they were very much astounded and not a
little shocked to find the duelist and his friend in the best of
spirits.

“And how did you sleep?” asked Ugo, after he had expressed his
sorrow over the little unpleasantry of the night before, deploring
the tragic ending to the night of pleasure.

“Like a top,” lied Dickey, cheerfully.

“I was afraid the excitement might have caused you great uneasiness
and--ah--dread,” said the prince. The count was industriously
engaged in piercing with his glittering eyes the tapestry in a far
corner of the room. Mr. Savage possessed the manner of a man who
shoots someone every morning before breakfast.

“Not in the least; did it, Quentin?”

“He slept like a baby.”

“By the way, before I forget it, Prince Ugo, how is the gentleman I
shot last night--ah, what was his name?” asked Dickey, slapping his
leg carelessly with his walking stick.

“Prince Kapolski is in the hospital, and I fear he cannot recover,”
 said the prince. “I came to tell you this that you may act
accordingly and with all the haste possible.”

“O, I don't know why I should run away. Everybody there will testify
that the fight was forced upon me. You will swear to that, yourself,
Prince Ugo, and so will the count. I had to fight, you know.”

“It seems to me, Mr. Savage, that you were rather eager to fight. I
cannot vouch for your safety if the prince dies,” said Ugo, coolly.

“But he isn't going to die. I did not shoot to kill and the ball hit
him just where I intended it should--on the chin. He'll be well in a
couple of weeks. True, he may not feel like eating tough beefsteak
with that jaw for some time, but I knew a fellow once who was able
to eat very comfortably after six weeks. That was as good a shot as
I ever made, Phil,” said Dickey, reflectively.

“I think Buckner's nose was a cleaner shot. It wasn't nearly so
disgusting,” said Phil.

“Do you mean to say you are able to hit a man just where you
please?” demanded the count.

“Provided he does not hit me first,” said Mr. Savage. “Gentlemen,
let me order up a quiet little drink. I am afraid the unfortunate
affair of last night has twisted your nerves a bit. It was rather
ghastly, wasn't it?”

When the four parted company in front of the hotel, a quarter of an
hour later, the two Italians sat down to reflect. They wondered
whether Mr. Savage usually carried a pistol in his pocket, and they
agreed that if he did have one of his own he would be much more
accurate with it than with a strange one, such as he had used the
night before. The two Americans were not jubilant as they strolled
up the street. They had put on a very bold front but they were
saying to themselves that Kapolski's death would be a very
disastrous calamity. Cold perspiration stood on Dickey's brow and he
devoutly prayed that his victim would recover.

“I'd feel like a butcher to the last day of my life,” he groaned.

“The big brute got what he deserved, Dickey, but that isn't going to
relieve us if he should die. Prince Ugo would use it as an excuse to
drive you out of Europe and, of course, I would not desert you. It
was my affair and you were unlucky enough to get into it. There is
one thing that puzzles me. I directly insulted Ravorelli last night.
Why does he not challenge me? He must be positive that I recognize
him as Pavesi and can ruin him with a word. I am told he is a
remarkable shot and swordsman, and I don't believe he is a coward.”

“Why should he risk his head or his heart if he can induce other men
to fight for him?”

“But it seems that he has traitors in his camp. I wonder who that
waiter was?”

After a long silence Dickey dolefully asked: “Say, do you believe
the Saxondales turned me down on that shooting box party?”

“I can't believe it. All is well between you and Lady Jane, of
course?”

“As well as it can ever be,” said the other, looking straight ahead,
his jaws set.

“Oho! Is it all off?”

“Is what all off?” belligerently.

“O, if you don't know, I won't insist on an answer. I merely
suspected a thickness.”

“That we were getting thick, you mean? You were never more mistaken
in your life. The chances are I'll never see her again. That's not
very thick, is it?”

“I saw a letter just now for you, in my box at the hotel. Looked
like a young woman's chirography, and it was from London--”

“Why the devil didn't you tell me it was there?” exploded Dickey.

“Does Lady Jane make an R that looks like a streak of lightning with
all sorts of angles?”

“She makes a very fashionable--what do you mean by inspecting my
mail? Are you establishing a censorship?” Dickey was guilty of an
unheard of act--for him. He was blushing.

“My boy, I did not know it was your property until after I had
carefully deciphered every letter in the name. I agree with you; she
writes a very fashionable alphabet. The envelope looked thick, to
say the least. It must contain a huge postscript.”

“Or a collection of all the notes I have written to her. I'll go
back, if you don't mind, however. I'm curious to know who it's
from.”

Dickey went back to read his voluminous letter, and Quentin seated
himself on a bench in the park. A voice from behind brought him
sharply from a long reverie.

“Mr. Quentin, last night, possibly in the heat of excitement, you
inferred that I was in some way accountable for the controversy
which led to the meeting between Prince Kapolski and your friend. I
trust that I misunderstood you.”

Quentin was on his feet and facing Prince Ravorelli before the
remark was fairly begun, and he was thinking with greater rapidity
than he had ever thought before. He was surprised to find Ugo, suave
and polite as ever, deliberately, coolly rushing affairs to a
climax. His sudden decision to abandon the friendly spirit exhibited
but half an hour before was as inexplicable as it was critical. What
fresh inspiration had caused him to alter his position?

“We say many things when we are under stress of excitement,” said
Phil, sparring for time and his wits. Count Sallaconi was standing
deferentially beside the prince. Both gentlemen had their hats in
their hands, and the air was pregnant with chill formality.

“Can you recall my words, Prince Ravorelli?”

“You said that you would hold him to account if your friend--” began
the count, but Quentin turned upon him coolly.

“My quarrel, if there is one, is with the prince, Count Sallaconi.
Will you kindly allow him to jog his own memory?”

“I do not like your tone, Mr. Quentin,” said the count, his eyes
flashingly angrily. Phil's blood was up. He saw it was useless to
temporize, and there was no necessity for disguising his true
feelings. They had come to the point where all that had lain
smothered and dormant was to be pricked into activity; the mask was
to be thrown down with the gauntlet.

“So much the better; you are not in doubt as to what I meant. Now,
Prince Ravorelli, may I ask you to speak plainly?”

“Your remark of last night was one that I believe I would be
justified in resenting,” said the prince, flicking the ash from his
cigarette, but not taking his burning eyes from Quentin's face.
There was not a tinge of cowardice in his eyes.

“It is your privilege, sir, and I meant precisely what I said.”

“Then I have to demand of you an apology and a satisfctory
explanation.”

“'I presume it would be travesty on politeness if I were to ask you
to be seated, so we may stand up to each other and talk it over. In
the first place, I have no apology to make. In the second place, I
cannot give an explanation that would be satisfactory to you. Last
night I said I would hold you to account if Mr. Savage was hurt. He
was not hurt, so I will not carry out my threat, if you choose to
call it such.”

“You enlarge the insult, Mr. Quentin,” said Ugo, with a deadly tone
in his voice.

“You may as well know, Prince Ravorelli, that I have long been
acquainted with the fact that you bear me no good will. Frankly, you
regard me as a man dangerous to your most cherished aspirations, and
you know that I heard Giovanni Pavesi sing in days gone by. You have
not been manly enough to meet me fairly, up to this instant. I am
perfectly well aware that Prince Kapolski was your guest last night
for no other purpose than to bring about an affray in which I was to
have been the victim of his prowess and your cleverness.”

For a moment the two men glared at each other, immovably,
unwaveringly. Prince Ugo's composure did not suffer the faintest
relaxation under the direct charge of the American.

“My only reply to that assertion is that you lie,” he said, slowly.

“This is a public place, Prince Ugo. I will not knock you down
here.”

“It is not necessary for me to give you my card. Count Sallaconi
will arrange the details with any friend you may name. You shall
give me satisfaction for the aspersion you have cast upon my honor.”
 He was turning away when Quentin stepped quickly in front of him.

“If you mean that you expect me to fight a duel with you, I must say
you are to suffer disappointment. I do not believe in duelling, and
I believe only in killing a man when there is no other alternative.
To deliberately set about to shoot another man down is not our
method of settling an issue. We either murder in cold blood or we
fight it out like men, not like stage heroes.”

“I will add then, sir, that you are a coward.”

“I have been brave enough to refrain from hiring men to do my
fighting. We will fight, Prince Ravorelli, but we will not fight
with weapons made by man. You call me a coward and I call you a
scoundrel. We have hands and arms and with them we shall fight.”

“Count Sallaconi is my second, I do not care to hear another word--”

“If Count Sallaconi comes to me with any ridiculous challenge from
you, I'll knock him down and kick him across the street. My friend
shot the face off of your poor tool last night. I do not care to
repeat the tragedy. I shall not strike you here and now, because the
act might mean my arrest and detention on no one knows what sort of
a trumped-up charge. You need not bother me with any silly twaddle
about swords and pistols I shall pay no attention to it. Ordinarily
Americans do not delay actual combat. We usually fight it out on the
spot and the best man wins. I will, however, give you the chance to
deliberate over my proposition to settle our differences with our
hands.”

Ravorelli calmly heard him to the end. Then he turned and strode
away, smiling derisively.

“You are the only American coward I have ever seen. I trust you
appreciate, the distinction,” he said, his white teeth showing in
malicious ridicule. “Your friend, the hero of last night, should be
proud of you.”

Quentin watched them until they were lost in the crowd near the
Palace, his brain full of many emotions. As he walked into the hotel
his only thought was of Dorothy and the effect the quarrel would
have on their friendship.

“Which will she choose?” he mused, after narrating to Savage the
episode of the park. For the first time Dickey noticed the pallor in
his face, the despair in his eyes, the wistful lines about his lips.

“There's only one way to find out, old man,” said he, and he did not
succeed in disguising the hopelessness in his voice.

“Yes, I guess I'm up to the last trench. I'm right where I have to
make the final stand, let the result be what it may,” said the
other, dejectedly.

“Don't give up, Phil. If you are to win, it will take more courage
than you are showing now. A bold front will do more than anything
else just at this stage. The result depends not entirely on how
eager she is to become a princess, but how much she cares for the
man who cannot make her a princess.”

“There's the rub. Does she care enough for me?”

“Have you asked her how much she cares?”

“No.”

“Then, don't ask. Merely go and tell her that you know how much she
cares. Go this afternoon, old man. O, by the way, Lady Jane sends
her love to you, and wants to know if you will come with me to
Ostend to-morrow to meet her and Lady Saxondale.”




XVI. THE COURAGE OF A COWARD


“Tell Mr. Quentin I cannot see him,” was Miss Garrison's response
when his card was sent to her late that afternoon. The man who
waited nervously in the hall was stunned by this brief, summary
dismissal. If he was hurt, bewildered by the stinging rebuff, his
wounds would have been healed instantly had he seen the sender of
that cruel message. She sat, weak, pale and distressed, before her
escritoire, striving to put her mind and her heart to the note she
was writing to him whose card, by strange coincidence, had just come
up. An hour ago he was in her thoughts so differently and he was in
her heart, how deeply she had not realized, until there came the
crash which shattered the ideal. He was a coward!

Prince Ugo had been out of her presence not more than ten minutes,
leaving her stunned, horrified, crushed by the story he laughingly
told, when Quentin was announced. What she heard from Ugo
overwhelmed her. She had worshiped, unknown to herself, the very
thing in Philip Quentin that had been destroyed almost before her
eyes--his manliness, his courage, his strength. Ugo deliberately
told of the duel in his rooms, of Savage's heroism in taking up the
battles of his timorous friend, of his own challenge in the morning,
and of Quentin's abject, cringing refusal to fight. How deliciously
he painted the portrait of the coward without exposing his true
motive in doing so, can only be appreciated when it is said that
Dorothy Garrison came to despise the object of his ridicule.

She forgot his encounter with the porch visitor a fortnight
previous; she forgot that the wound inflicted on that occasion was
scarcely healed; she forgot all but his disgraceful behavior in the
presence of that company of nobles and his cowardice when called to
account by one brave man. And he an American, a man from her own
land, from the side of the world on which, she had boasted, there
lived none but the valorous. This man was the one to whom, a week
ago, she had personally addressed an invitation to the wedding in
St. Gudule--the envelope was doubtless in his pocket now, perhaps
above his heart--and the writing of his name at that time had
brought to her the deadly, sinking realization that he was more to
her than she had thought.

“Tell Miss Garrison that, if it is at all possible, I must see her
at once,” said Quentin to the bearer of the message. He was cold
with apprehension, hot with humiliation.

“Miss Garrison cannot see you,” said the man, returning from his
second visit to the room above. Even the servant spoke with a
curtness that could not be mistaken. It meant dismissal, cold and
decisive, with no explanation, no excuse.

He left the house with his ears burning, his nerves tingling, his
brain whirling. What had caused this astonishing change? Why had she
turned against him so suddenly, so strangely? Prince Ugo! The truth
flashed into his mind with startling force, dispelling all
uncertainty, all doubt. Her lover had forstalled him, had requested
or demanded his banishment and she had acquiesced, with a
heartlessness that was beyond belief. He had been mistaken as to the
extent of her regard for him; he had misjudged the progress of his
wooing; he awoke to the truth that her heart was impregnable and
that he had not so much as approached the citadel of her love.

Dickey was pacing their rooms excitedly when Quentin entered. Turk
stared gloomily from the open window, and there was a sort of
savageness in his silent, sturdy back that bespoke volumes of
restraint.

“Good Lord, Phil, everybody knows you have refused to fight the
prince. The newspaper men have been here and they have tried to pump
me dry. Turk says one of the men downstairs is telling everybody
that you are afraid of Ravorelli. What are we going to do?” He
stopped before the newcomer and there was reproach in his manner.
Quentin dejectedly threw himself into a chair and stared at the
floor in silence.

“Turk!” he called at last. “I want you to carry a note to Miss
Garrison, and I want you to make sure that she reads it. I don't
know how the devil you are to do it, but you must. Don't bother me,
Dickey. I don't care a continental what the fellow downstairs says;
I've got something else to think about.” He threw open the lid to
one of his trunks and ruthlessly grabbed up some stationery. In a
minute he was at the table, writing.

“Is Kapolski dead?” asked Dickey.

“I don't know and don't care. I'll explain in a minute. Sit down
somewhere and don't stare, Dickey--for the Lord's sake, don't stare
like a scared baby.” He completed the feverishly written note,
sealed the envelope, and thrust it into Turk's hands. “Now, get that
note to her, or don't come back to me. Be quick about it, too.”

Turk was off, full of fresh wonder and the importance of his
mission. Quentin took a few turns up and down the room before he
remembered that he owed some sort of an explanation to his
companion.

“She wouldn't see me,” he said, briefly.

“What's the matter? Sick?”

“No explanation. Just wouldn't see me, that's all.”

“Which means it's all off, eh? The prince got there first and spiked
your guns. Well? What have you written to her?”

“That I am going to see her to-night if I have to break into the
house.”

“Bravely done! Good! And you'll awake in a dungeon cell to-morrow
morning, clubbed to a pulp by the police. You may break into the
house, but it will be just your luck to be unable to break out of
jail in time for the wedding on the 16th. What you need is a
guardian.”

“I'm in no humor for joking, Dickey.”

“It won't be a joke, my boy. Now, tell me just what you wrote to
her. Gad, I never knew what trouble meant until I struck Brussels.
The hot water here is scalding me to a creamy consistency.”

“I simply said that she had no right to treat me as she did to-day
and that she shall listen to me. I ended the note by saying I would
come to her to-night, and that I would not be driven away until I
had seen her.”

“You can't see her if she refuses to receive you.”

“But she will see me. She's fair enough to give me a chance.”

“Do you want me to accompany you?”

“I intend to go alone.”

“You will find Ugo there, you know. It is bound to be rather trying,
Phil. Besides, you are not sure that Turk can deliver the note.”

“I'd like to have Ravorelli hear everything I have to say to her,
and if he's there he'll hear a few things he will not relish.”

“And he'll laugh at you, too.”

An hour later Turk returned. He was grinning broadly as he entered
the room.

“Did you succeed?” demanded Quentin, leaping to his feet. For answer
the little man daintily, gingerly dropped a small envelope into his
hand.

“She says to give th' note to you an' to nobody else,” he said,
triumphantly. Quentin hesitated an instant before tearing open the
envelope, the contents of which meant so much to him. As he read,
the gloom lifted from his face and his figure straightened to its
full height. The old light came back to his eyes.

“She says I may come, Dickey. I knew she would,” he exclaimed,
joyously.

“When?”

“At nine to-night.”

“Is that all she says?”

“Well--er--no. She says she will see me for the last time.”

“Not very comforting, I should say.”

“I'll risk it's being the last time. I tell you, Savage, I'm
desperate. This damnable game has gone far enough. She'll know the
truth about the man she's going to marry. If she wants to marry him
after what I tell her, I'll--I'll--well, I'll give it up, that's
all.”

“If she believes what you tell her, she won't care to marry him.”

“She knows I'm not a liar, Dickey, confound you.”

“Possibly; but she is hardly fool enough to break with the prince
unless you produce something more substantial than your own
accusation. Where is your proof?”

This led to an argument that lasted until the time came for him to
go to her home When he left the hotel in a cab he was thoroughly
unstrung, but more determined than ever. As if by magic, there came
to life the forces of the prince. While Ugo sat calmly in his
apartment, his patient agents were dogging the man he feared,
dogging him with the persistence and glee of blood-hounds. Courant
and his hirelings, two of them, garbed as city watchmen, were on the
Avenue Louise almost as soon as the man they were watching. By
virtue of fate and the obstinacy of one Dickey Savage, two of
Quentin's supporters, in direct disobedience of his commands, were
whirling toward the spot on which so many minds were centered. From
a distance Savage and Turk saw him rush from the carriage and up the
broad stone steps that led to the darkened veranda. From other
points of view, Jules Courant and his men saw the same and the
former knew that Turk's visit in the afternoon had resulted in the
granting of an interview. No sooner had Quentin entered the house
than a man was despatched swiftly to inform Prince Ugo that he had
not been denied.

Mrs. Garrison met him in the hall alone. There was defiance in her
manner, but he had not come thus far to be repulsed by such a trifle
as her opposition. With rare cordiality he advanced and extended his
hand.

“Good evening, Mrs. Garrison. I hardly expected to find you and
Dorothy quite alone at this time of night.” She gave him her hand
involuntarily. He had a way about him and she forgot her resolve
under its influence. There was no smile on her cold face, however.

“We are usually engaged at this hour, Mr. Quentin, but to-night we
are at home to no one but you,” she said, meaningly.

“It's very good of you. Perhaps I would better begin by ending your
suspense. Dorothy refused to see me to-day and I suspect the cause.
I am here for an explanation from her because I think it is due me.
I came also to tell you that I love her and to ask her if she loves
me. If she does not, I have but to retire, first apologizing for
what you may call reprehensibility on my part in presuming to
address her on such a matter when I know she is the promised wife of
another. If she loves me, I shall have the honor to ask you for her
hand, and to ask her to terminate an engagement with a man she does
not love. I trust my mission here to-night is fully understood.”

“It is very plain to me, Mr. Quentin, and I may be equally frank
with you. It is useless.”

“You will of course permit me to hear that from the one who has the
right to decide,” he said.

“My daughter consented to receive you only because I advised her to
do so. I will not speak now of your unusual and unwarranted behavior
during the past month, nor will I undertake to say how much
annoyance and displeasure you have caused. She is the affianced wife
of Prince Ravorelli and she marries him because she loves him. I
have given you her decision.” For a moment their eyes met like the
clashing of swords.

“Has she commissioned you to say this to me?” he asked, his eyes
penetrating like a knife.

“I am her mother, not her agent.”

“Then I shall respectfully insist that she speak for herself.” If a
look could kill a man, hers would have been guilty of murder.

“She is coming now, Mr. Quentin. You have but a moment of doubt
left. She despises you.” For the first time his composure wavered,
and his lips parted, as if to exclaim against such an assumption.
But Dorothy was already at the foot of the stairs, pale, cold and
unfriendly. She was the personification of a tragedy queen as she
paused at the foot of the stairs, her nand on the newell post, the
lights from above shining directly into a face so disdainful that he
could hardly believe it was hers. There was no warmth in her voice
when she spoke to him, who stood immovable, speechless, before her.

“What have you to say to me, Phil?”

“I have first to ask if you despise me,” he found voice to say.

“I decline to answer that question.''

“Your mother has said so.”

“She should not have done so.”

“Then she has misrepresented you?” he cried, taking several steps
toward her.

“I did not say that she had.”

“Dorothy, what do you mean by this? What right have you to--” he
began, fiercely.

“Mr. Quentin!” exclaimed Mrs. Garrison, haughtily.

“Well,” cried he, at bay and doggedly, “I must know the truth. Will
you come to the veranda with me, Dorothy?”

“No,” she replied, without a quaver.

“I must talk with you alone. What I have to say is of the gravest
im

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