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The Prince and Betty

by P. G. Wodehouse · English · Gutenberg #6955 · 398,933 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Prince and Betty

Author: P. G. Wodehouse


        
Release date: November 1, 2004 [eBook #6955]
                Most recently updated: February 20, 2026

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRINCE AND BETTY ***




THE PRINCE AND BETTY

by P. G. WODEHOUSE

[American edition]
1912




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I      THE CABLE FROM MERVO

II     MERVO AND ITS OWNER

III    JOHN

IV     VIVE LE ROI

V      MR. SCOBELL HAS ANOTHER IDEA

VI     YOUNG ADAM CUPID

VII    MR. SCOBELL IS FRANK

VIII   AN ULTIMATUM FROM THE THRONE

IX     MERVO CHANGES ITS CONSTITUTION

X      MRS. OAKLEY

XI     A LETTER OP INTRODUCTION

XII    "PEACEFUL MOMENTS"

XIII   BETTY MAKES A FRIEND

XIV    A CHANGE OF POLICY

XV     THE HONEYED WORD

XVI    TWO VISITORS TO THE OFFICE

XVII   THE MAN AT THE ASTOR

XVIII  THE HIGHFIELD

XIX    THE FIRST BATTLE

XX     BETTY AT LARGE

XXI    CHANGES IN THE STAFF

XXII   A GATHERING OF CAT SPECIALISTS

XXIII  THE RETIREMENT OF SMITH

XXIV   THE CAMPAIGN QUICKENS

XXV    CORNERED

XXVI   JOURNEY'S END

XXVII  A LEMON

XXVIII THE FINAL ATTEMPT

XXIX   A REPRESENTATIVE GATHERING

XXX    CONCLUSION




THE PRINCE AND BETTY




CHAPTER I

THE CABLE FROM MERVO


A pretty girl in a blue dress came out of the house, and began to walk
slowly across the terrace to where Elsa Keith sat with Marvin Rossiter
in the shade of the big sycamore. Elsa and Marvin had become engaged
some few days before, and were generally to be found at this time
sitting together in some shaded spot in the grounds of the Keith's Long
Island home.

"What's troubling Betty, I wonder," said Elsa. "She looks worried."

Marvin turned his head.

"Is that your friend, Miss Silver?"

"That's Betty. We were at college together. I want you to like Betty."

"Then I will. When did she arrive?"

"Last night. She's here for a month. What's the matter, Betty? This is
Marvin. I want you to like Marvin."

Betty Silver smiled. Her face, in repose, was rather wistful, but it
lighted up when she smiled, and an unsuspected dimple came into being
on her chin.

"Of course I shall," she said.

Her big gray eyes seemed to search Marvin's for an instant and Marvin
had, almost subconsciously, a comfortable feeling that he had been
tested and found worthy.

"What were you scowling at so ferociously, Betty?" asked Elsa.

"Was I scowling? I hope you didn't think it was at you. Oh, Elsa, I'm
miserable! I shall have to leave this heavenly place."

"Betty!"

"At once. And I was meaning to have the most lovely time. See what has
come!"

She held out some flimsy sheets of paper.

"A cable!" said Elsa.

"Great Scott! it looks like the scenario of a four-act play," said
Marvin. "That's not all one cable, surely? Whoever sent it must be a
millionaire."

"He is. It's from my stepfather. Read it out, Elsa. I want Mr. Rossiter
to hear it. He may be able to tell me where Mervo is. Did you ever hear
of Mervo, Mr. Rossiter?"

"Never. What is it?"

"It's a place where my stepfather is, and where I've got to go. I do
call it hard. Go on, Elsa."

Elsa, who had been skimming the document with raised eyebrows, now read
it out in its spacious entirety.

   _On receipt of this come instantly Mervo without moment
   delay vital importance presence urgently required come
   wherever you are cancel engagements urgent necessity hustle
   have advised bank allow you draw any money you need expenses
   have booked stateroom Mauretania sailing Wednesday don't fail
   catch arrive Fishguard Monday train London sleep London catch
   first train Tuesday Dover now mind first train no taking root
   in London and spending a week shopping mid-day boat Dover
   Calais arrive Paris Tuesday evening Dine Paris catch train de
   luxe nine-fifteen Tuesday night for Marseilles have engaged
   sleeping coupe now mind Tuesday night no cutting loose around
   Paris stores you can do all that later on just now you want to
   get here right quick arrive Marseilles Wednesday morning boat
   Mervo Wednesday night will meet you Mervo now do you follow
   all that because if not cable at once and say which part of
   journey you don't understand now mind special points to be
   remembered firstly come instantly secondly no cutting loose
   around London Paris stores see._

                                           _SCOBELL._

"_Well!_" said Elsa, breathless.

"By George!" said Marvin. "He certainly seems to want you badly enough.
He hasn't spared expense. He has put in about everything you could put
into a cable."

"Except why he wants me," said Betty.

"Yes," said Elsa. "Why does he want you? And in such a desperate hurry,
too!"

Marvin was re-reading the message.

"It isn't a mere invitation," he said. "There's no
come-right-along-you'll-like-this-place-it's-fine about it. He seems to
look on your company more as a necessity than a luxury. It's a sort of
imperious C.Q.D."

"That's what makes it so strange. We have hardly met for years. Why, he
didn't even know where I was. The cable was sent to the bank and
forwarded on. And I don't know where he is!"

"Which brings us back," said Marvin, "to mysterious Mervo. Let us
reason inductively. If you get to the place by taking a boat from
Marseilles, it can't be far from the French coast. I should say at a
venture that Mervo is an island in the Mediterranean. And a small
island for if it had been a big one we should have heard of it."

"Marvin!" cried Elsa, her face beaming with proud affection. "How
clever you are!"

"A mere gift," he said modestly. "I have been like that from a boy." He
got up from his chair. "Isn't there an encyclopaedia in the library,
Elsa?"

"Yes, but it's an old edition."

"It will probably touch on Mervo. I'll go and fetch it."

As he crossed the terrace, Elsa turned quickly to Betty.

"Well?" she said.

Betty smiled at her.

"He's a dear. Are you very happy, Elsa?"

Elsa's eyes danced. She drew in her breath softly. Betty looked at her
in silence for a moment. The wistful expression was back on her face.

"Elsa," she said, suddenly. "What is it like? How does it feel, knowing
that there's someone who is fonder of you than anything--?"

Elsa closed her eyes.

"It's like eating berries and cream in a new dress by moonlight on a
summer night while somebody plays the violin far away in the distance
so that you can just hear it," she said.

Her eyes opened again.

"And it's like coming along on a winter evening and seeing the windows
lit up and knowing you've reached home."

Betty was clenching her hands, and breathing quickly.

"And it's like--"

"Elsa, don't! I can't bear it!"

"Betty! What's the matter?"

Betty smiled again, but painfully.

"It's stupid of me. I'm just jealous, that's all. I haven't got a
Marvin, you see. You have."

"Well, there are plenty who would like to be your Marvin."

Betty's face grew cold.

"There are plenty who would like to be Benjamin Scobell's son-in-law,"
she said.

"Betty!" Elsa's voice was serious. "We've been friends for a good long
time, so you'll let me say something, won't you? I think you're getting
just the least bit hard. Now turn and rend me," she added
good-humoredly.

"I'm not going to rend you," said Betty. "You're perfectly right. I am
getting hard. How can I help it? Do you know how many men have asked me
to marry them since I saw you last? Five."

"Betty!"

"And not one of them cared the slightest bit about me."

"But, Betty, dear, that's just what I mean. Why should you say that?
How can you know?"

"How do I know? Well, I do know. Instinct, I suppose. The instinct of
self-preservation which nature gives hunted animals. I can't think of a
single man in the world--except your Marvin, of course--who wouldn't
do anything for money." She stopped. "Well, yes, one."

Elsa leaned forward eagerly.

"Who, Betty?"

"You don't know him."

"But what's his name?"

Betty hesitated.

"Well, if I am on the witness-stand--Maude."

"Maude? I thought you said a man?"

"It's his name. John Maude."

"But, Betty! Why didn't you tell me before? This is tremendously
interesting."

Betty laughed shortly.

"Not so very, really. I only met him two or three times, and I haven't
seen him for years, and I don't suppose I shall ever see him again. He
was a friend of Alice Beecher's brother, who was at Harvard. Alice took
me over to meet her brother, and Mr. Maude was there. That's all."

Elsa was plainly disappointed.

"But how do you know, then--? What makes you think that he--?"

"Instinct, again, I suppose. I do know."

"And you've never met him since?"

Betty shook her head. Elsa relapsed into silence. She had a sense of
pathos.

At the further end of the terrace Marvin Rossiter appeared, carrying a
large volume.

"Here we are," he said. "Scared it up at the first attempt. Now then."

He sat down, and opened the book.

"You don't want to hear all about how Jason went there in search of the
Golden Fleece, and how Ulysses is supposed to have taken it in on his
round-trip? You want something more modern. Well, it's an island in the
Mediterranean, as I said, and I'm surprised that you've never heard of
it, Elsa, because it's celebrated in its way. It's the smallest
independent state in the world. Smaller than Monaco, even. Here are
some facts. Its population when this encyclopaedia was printed--there
may be more now--was eleven thousand and sixteen. It was ruled over up
to 1886 by a prince. But in that year the populace appear to have said
to themselves, 'When in the course of human events....' Anyway, they
fired the prince, and the place is now a republic. So that's where
you're going, Miss Silver. I don't know if it's any consolation to you,
but the island, according to this gentleman, is celebrated for the
unspoilt beauty of its scenery. He also gives a list of the fish that
can be caught there. It takes up about three lines."

"But what can my stepfather be doing there? I last heard of him in
London. Well, I suppose I shall have to go."

"I suppose you will," said Elsa mournfully. "But, oh, Betty, what a
shame!"




CHAPTER II

MERVO AND ITS OWNER


"By heck!" cried Mr. Benjamin Scobell.

He wheeled round from the window, and transferred his gaze from the
view to his sister Marion; losing by the action, for the view was a joy
to the eye, which his sister Marion was not.

Mervo was looking its best under the hot morning sun. Mr. Scobell's
villa stood near the summit of the only hill the island possessed, and
from the window of the morning-room, where he had just finished
breakfast, he had an uninterrupted view of valley, town, and harbor--a
two-mile riot of green, gold and white, and beyond the white the blue
satin of the Mediterranean. Mr. Scobell did not read poetry except that
which advertised certain breakfast foods in which he was interested, or
he might have been reminded of the Island of Flowers in Tennyson's
"Voyage of Maeldive." Violets, pinks, crocuses, yellow and purple
mesembryanthemum, lavender, myrtle, and rosemary ... his two-mile view
contained them all. The hillside below him was all aglow with the
yellow fire of the mimosa. But his was not one of those emotional
natures to which the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that
do often lie too deep for tears. A primrose by the river's brim a
simple primrose was to him--or not so much a simple primrose, perhaps,
as a basis for a possible Primrosina, the Soap that Really Cleans You.

He was a nasty little man to hold despotic sway over such a Paradise: a
goblin in Fairyland. Somewhat below the middle height, he was lean of
body and vulturine of face. He had a greedy mouth, a hooked nose,
liquid green eyes and a sallow complexion. He was rarely seen without a
half-smoked cigar between his lips. This at intervals he would relight,
only to allow it to go out again; and when, after numerous fresh
starts, it had dwindled beyond the limits of convenience, he would
substitute another from the reserve supply that protruded from his
vest-pocket.

       *       *       *       *       *

How Benjamin Scobell had discovered the existence of Mervo is not
known. It lay well outside the sphere of the ordinary financier. But
Mr. Scobell took a pride in the versatility of his finance. It
distinguished him from the uninspired who were content to concentrate
themselves on steel, wheat and such-like things. It was Mr. Scobell's
way to consider nothing as lying outside his sphere. In a financial
sense he might have taken Terence's _Nihil humanum alienum_ as his
motto. He was interested in innumerable enterprises, great and small.
He was the power behind a company which was endeavoring, without much
success, to extract gold from the mountains of North Wales, and another
which was trying, without any success at all, to do the same by sea
water. He owned a model farm in Indiana, and a weekly paper in New
York. He had financed patent medicines, patent foods, patent corks,
patent corkscrews, patent devices of all kinds, some profitable, some
the reverse.

Also--outside the ordinary gains of finance--he had expectations. He
was the only male relative of his aunt, the celebrated Mrs. Jane
Oakley, who lived in a cottage on Staten Island, and was reputed to
spend five hundred dollars a year--some said less--out of her snug
income of eighteen million. She was an unusual old lady in many ways,
and, unfortunately, unusually full of deep-rooted prejudices. The fear
lest he might inadvertently fall foul of these rarely ceased to haunt
Mr. Scobell.

This man of many projects had descended upon Mervo like a stone on the
surface of some quiet pool, bubbling over with modern enterprise in
general and, in particular, with a scheme. Before his arrival, Mervo
had been an island of dreams and slow movement and putting things off
till to-morrow. The only really energetic thing it had ever done in its
whole history had been to expel his late highness, Prince Charles, and
change itself into a republic. And even that had been done with the
minimum of fuss. The Prince was away at the time. Indeed, he had been
away for nearly three years, the pleasures of Paris, London and Vienna
appealing to him more keenly than life among his subjects. Mervo,
having thought the matter over during these years, decided that it had
no further use for Prince Charles. Quite quietly, with none of that
vulgar brawling which its neighbor, France, had found necessary in
similar circumstances, it had struck his name off the pay-roll, and
declared itself a republic. The royalist party, headed by General
Poineau, had been distracted but impotent. The army, one hundred and
fifteen strong, had gone solid for the new regime, and that had settled
it. Mervo had then gone to sleep again. It was asleep when Mr. Scobell
found it.

The financier's scheme was first revealed to M. d'Orby, the President
of the Republic, a large, stout statesman with even more than the
average Mervian instinct for slumber. He was asleep in a chair on the
porch of his villa when Mr. Scobell paid his call, and it was not until
the financier's secretary, who attended the seance in the capacity of
interpreter, had rocked him vigorously from side to side for quite a
minute that he displayed any signs of animation beyond a snore like the
growling of distant thunder. When at length he opened his eyes, he
perceived the nightmare-like form of Mr. Scobell standing before him,
talking. The financier, impatient of delay, had begun to talk some
moments before the great awakening.

"Sir," Mr. Scobell was saying, "I gotta proposition to which I'd like
you to give your complete attention. Shake him some more, Crump. Sir,
there's big money in it for all of us, if you and your crowd'll sit in.
Money. _Lar' monnay_. No, that means change. What's money, Crump?
_Arjong_? There's _arjong_ in it, Squire. Get that? Oh, shucks!
Hand it to him in French, Crump."

Mr. Secretary Crump translated. The President blinked, and intimated
that he would hear more. Mr. Scobell relighted his cigar-stump, and
proceeded.

"Say, you've heard of _Moosieer_ Blonk? Ask the old skeesicks if
he's ever heard of _Mersyaw_ Blonk, Crump, the feller who started
the gaming-tables at Monte Carlo."

Filtered through Mr. Crump, the question became intelligible to the
President. He said he had heard of M. Blanc. Mr. Crump caught the reply
and sent it on to Mr. Scobell, as the man on first base catches the
ball and throws it to second.

Mr. Scobell relighted his cigar.

"Well, I'm in that line. I'm going to put this island on the map just
like old Doctor Blonk put Monte Carlo. I've been studying up all about
the old man, and I know just what he did and how he did it. Monte Carlo
was just such another jerkwater little place as this is before he hit
it. The government was down to its last bean and wondering where the
Heck its next meal-ticket was coming from, when in blows Mr. Man, tucks
up his shirt-sleeves, and starts the tables. And after that the place
never looked back. You and your crowd gotta get together and pass a
vote to give me a gambling concession here, same as they did him.
Scobell's my name. Hand him that, Crump."

Mr. Crump obliged once more. A gleam of intelligence came into the
President's dull eye. He nodded once or twice. He talked volubly in
French to Mr. Crump, who responded in the same tongue.

"The idea seems to strike him, sir," said Mr. Crump.

"It ought to, if he isn't a clam," replied Mr. Scobell. He started to
relight his cigar, but after scorching the tip of his nose, bowed to
the inevitable and threw the relic away.

"See here," he said, having bitten the end off the next in order; "I've
thought this thing out from soup to nuts. There's heaps of room for
another Monte Carlo. Monte's a dandy place, but it's not perfect by a
long way. To start with, it's hilly. You have to take the elevator to
get to the Casino, and when you've gotten to the end of your roll and
want to soak your pearl pin, where's the hock-shop? Half a mile away up
the side of a mountain. It ain't right. In my Casino there's going to
be a resident pawnbroker inside the building, just off the main
entrance. That's only one of a heap of improvements. Another is that my
Casino's scheduled to be a home from home, a place you can be real cosy
in. You'll look around you, and the only thing you'll miss will be
mother's face. Yes, sir, there's no need for a gambling Casino to look
and feel and smell like the reading-room at the British Museum.
Comfort, coziness and convenience. That's the ticket I'm running on.
Slip that to the old gink, Crump."

A further outburst of the French language from Mr. Crump, supplemented
on the part of the "old gink" by gesticulations, interrupted the
proceedings.

"What's he saying now?" asked Mr. Scobell.

"He wants to know--"

"Don't tell. Let me guess. He wants to know what sort of a rake-off he
and the other somnambulists will get--the darned old pirate! Is that
it?"

Mr. Crump said that that was just it.

"That'll be all right," said Mr. Scobell. "Old man Blong's offer to the
Prince of Monaco was five hundred thousand francs a year--that's
somewhere around a hundred thousand dollars in real money--and half the
profits made by the Casino. That's my offer, too. See how that hits
him, Crump."

Mr. Crump investigated.

"He says he accepts gladly, on behalf of the Republic, sir," he
announced.

M. d'Orby confirmed the statement by rising, dodging the cigar, and
kissing Mr. Scobell on both cheeks.

"Cut it out," said the financier austerely, breaking out of the clinch.
"We'll take the Apache Dance as read. Good-by, Squire. Glad it's
settled. Now I can get busy."

He did. Workmen poured into Mervo, and in a very short time, dominating
the town and reducing to insignificance the palace of the late Prince,
once a passably imposing mansion, there rose beside the harbor a
mammoth Casino of shining stone.

Imposing as was the exterior, it was on the interior that Mr. Scobell
more particularly prided himself, and not without reason. Certainly, a
man with money to lose could lose it here under the most charming
conditions. It had been Mr. Scobell's object to avoid the cheerless
grandeur of the rival institution down the coast. Instead of one large
hall sprinkled with tables, each table had a room to itself, separated
from its neighbor by sound-proof folding-doors. And as the building
progressed, Mr. Scobell's active mind had soared above the original
idea of domestic coziness to far greater heights of ingenuity. Each of
the rooms was furnished and arranged in a different style. The note of
individuality extended even to the _croupiers_. Thus, a man with
money at his command could wander from the Dutch room, where, in the
picturesque surroundings of a Dutch kitchen, _croupiers_ in the
costume of Holland ministered to his needs, to the Japanese room, where
his coin would be raked in by quite passable imitations of the Samurai.
If he had any left at this point, he was free to dispose of it under
the auspices of near-Hindoos in the Indian room, of merry Swiss
peasants in the Swiss room, or in other appropriately furnished
apartments of red-shirted, Bret Harte miners, fur-clad Esquimaux, or
languorous Spaniards. He could then, if a man of spirit, who did not
know when he was beaten, collect the family jewels, and proceed down
the main hall, accompanied by the strains of an excellent band, to the
office of a gentlemanly pawnbroker, who spoke seven languages like a
native and was prepared to advance money on reasonable security in all
of them.

It was a colossal venture, but it suffered from the defect from which
most big things suffer; it moved slowly. That it also moved steadily
was to some extent a consolation to Mr. Scobell. Undoubtedly it would
progress quicker and quicker, as time went on, until at length the
Casino became a permanent gold mine. But at present it was being
conducted at a loss. It was inevitable, but it irked Mr. Scobell. He
paced the island and brooded. His mind dwelt incessantly on the
problem. Ideas for promoting the prosperity of his nursling came to him
at all hours--at meals, in the night watches, when he was shaving,
walking, washing, reading, brushing his hair.

And now one had come to him as he stood looking at the view from the
window of his morning-room, listening absently to his sister Marion as
she read stray items of interest from the columns of the _New York
Herald_, and had caused him to utter the exclamation recorded at the
beginning of the chapter.

       *       *       *       *       *

"By Heck!" he said. "Read that again, Marion. I gottan idea."

Miss Scobell, deep in her paper, paid no attention. Few people would
have taken her for the sister of the financier. She was his exact
opposite in almost every way. He was small, jerky and aggressive; she,
tall, deliberate and negative. She was one of those women whom nature
seems to have produced with the object of attaching them to some man in
a peculiar position of independent dependence, and who defy the
imagination to picture them in any other condition whatsoever. One
could not see Miss Scobell doing anything but pour out her brother's
coffee, darn his socks, and sit placidly by while he talked. Yet it
would have been untrue to describe her as dependent upon him. She had a
detached mind. Though her whole life had been devoted to his comfort
and though she admired him intensely, she never appeared to give his
conversation any real attention. She listened to him much as she would
have listened to a barking Pomeranian.

"Marion!" cried Mr. Scobell.

"A five-legged rabbit has been born in Carbondale, Southern Illinois,"
she announced.

Mr. Scobell cursed the five-legged rabbit.

"Never mind about your rabbits. I want to hear that piece you read
before. The one about the Prince of Monaco. Will--you--listen, Marion!"

"The Prince of Monaco, dear? Yes. He has caught another fish or
something of that sort, I think. Yes. A fish with 'telescope eyes,' the
paper says. And very convenient too, I should imagine."

Mr. Scobell thumped the table.

"I've got it. I've found out what's the matter with this darned place.
I see why the Casino hasn't struck its gait."

"_I_ think it must be the _croupiers_, dear. I'm sure I never
heard of _croupiers_ in fancy costume before. It doesn't seem
right. I'm sure people don't like those nasty Hindoos. I am quite
nervous myself when I go into the Indian room. They look at me so
oddly."

"Nonsense! That's the whole idea of the place, that it should be
different. People are sick and tired of having their money gathered in
by seedy-looking Dagoes in second-hand morning coats. We give 'em
variety. It's not the Casino that's wrong: it's the darned island.
What's the use of a republic to a place like this? I'm not saying that
you don't want a republic for a live country that's got its way to make
in the world; but for a little runt of a sawn-off, hobo, one-night
stand like this you gotta have something picturesque, something that'll
advertise the place, something that'll give a jolt to folks' curiosity,
and make 'em talk! There's this Monaco gook. He snoops around in his
yacht, digging up telescope-eyed fish, and people talk about it.
'Another darned fish,' they say. 'That's the 'steenth bite the Prince of
Monaco has had this year.' It's like a soap advertisement. It works by
suggestion. They get to thinking about the Prince and his pop-eyed
fishes, and, first thing they know, they've packed their grips and come
along to Monaco to have a peek at him. And when they're there, it's a
safe bet they aren't going back again without trying to get a mess of
easy money from the Bank. That's what this place wants. Whoever heard
of this blamed Republic doing anything except eat and sleep? They used
to have a prince here 'way back in eighty-something. Well, I'm going to
have him working at the old stand again, right away."

Miss Scobell looked up from her paper, which she had been reading with
absorbed interest throughout this harangue.

"Dear?" she said enquiringly.

"I say I'm going to have him back again," said Mr. Scobell, a little
damped. "I wish you would listen."

"I think you're quite right, dear. Who?"

"The Prince. Do listen, Marion. The Prince of this island, His
Highness, the Prince of Mervo. I'm going to send for him and put him on
the throne again."

"You can't, dear. He's dead."

"I know he's dead. You can't faze me on the history of this place. He
died in ninety-one. But before he died he married an American girl, and
there's a son, who's in America now, living with his uncle. It's the
son I'm going to send for. I got it all from General Poineau. He's a
royalist. He'll be tickled to pieces when Johnny comes marching home
again. Old man Poineau told me all about it. The Prince married a girl
called Westley, and then he was killed in an automobile accident, and
his widow went back to America with the kid, to live with her brother.
Poineau says he could lay his hand on him any time he pleased."

"I hope you won't do anything rash, dear," said his sister comfortably.
"I'm sure we don't want any horrid revolution here, with people
shooting and stabbing each other."

"Revolution?" cried Mr. Scobell. "Revolution! Well, I should say nix!
Revolution nothing. I'm the man with the big stick in Mervo. Pretty
near every adult on this island is dependent on my Casino for his
weekly envelope, and what I say goes--without argument. I want a
prince, so I gotta have a prince, and if any gazook makes a noise like
a man with a grouch, he'll find himself fired."

Miss Scobell turned to her paper again.

"Very well, dear," she said. "Just as you please. I'm sure you know
best."

"Sure!" said her brother. "You're a good guesser. I'll go and beat up
old man Poineau right away."




CHAPTER III

JOHN


Ten days after Mr. Scobell's visit to General Poineau, John, Prince of
Mervo, ignorant of the greatness so soon to be thrust upon him, was
strolling thoughtfully along one of the main thoroughfares of that
outpost of civilization, Jersey City. He was a big young man, tall and
large of limb. His shoulders especially were of the massive type
expressly designed by nature for driving wide gaps in the opposing line
on the gridiron. He looked like one of nature's center-rushes, and had,
indeed, played in that position for Harvard during two strenuous
seasons. His face wore an expression of invincible good-humor. He had a
wide, good-natured mouth, and a pair of friendly gray eyes. One felt
that he liked his fellow men and would be surprised and pained if they
did not like him.

As he passed along the street, he looked a little anxious. Sherlock
Holmes--and possibly even Doctor Watson--would have deduced that he had
something on his conscience.

At the entrance to a large office building, he paused, and seemed to
hesitate. Then, as if he had made up his mind to face an ordeal, he
went in and pressed the button of the elevator.

Leaving the elevator at the third floor, he went down the passage, and
pushed open a door on which was inscribed the legend, "Westley, Martin
& Co."

A stout youth, walking across the office with his hands full of papers,
stopped in astonishment.

"Hello, John Maude!" he cried.

The young man grinned.

"Say, where have you been? The old man's been as mad as a hornet since
he found you had quit without leave. He was asking for you just now."

"I guess I'm up against it," admitted John cheerfully.

"Where did you go yesterday?"

John put the thing to him candidly, as man to man.

"See here, Spiller, suppose you got up one day and found it was a
perfectly bully morning, and remembered that the Giants were playing
the Athletics, and looked at your mail, and saw that someone had sent
you a pass for the game--"

"Were you at the ball-game? You've got the nerve! Didn't you know there
would be trouble?"

"Old man," said John frankly, "I could no more have turned down that
pass-- Oh, well, what's the use? It was just great. I suppose I'd
better tackle the boss now. It's got to be done."

It was not a task to which many would have looked forward. Most of
those who came into contact with Andrew Westley were afraid of him. He
was a capable rather than a lovable man, and too self-controlled to be
quite human. There was no recoil in him, no reaction after anger, as
there would have been in a hotter-tempered man. He thought before he
acted, but, when he acted, never yielded a step.

John, in all the years of their connection, had never been able to make
anything of him. At first, he had been prepared to like him, as he
liked nearly everybody. But Mr. Westley had discouraged all advances,
and, as time went by, his nephew had come to look on him as something
apart from the rest of the world, one of those things which no fellow
could understand.

On Mr. Westley's side, there was something to be said in extenuation of
his attitude. John reminded him of his father, and he had hated the
late Prince of Mervo with a cold hatred that had for a time been the
ruling passion of his life. He had loved his sister, and her married
life had been one long torture to him, a torture rendered keener by the
fact that he was powerless to protect either her happiness or her
money. Her money was her own, to use as she pleased, and the use which
pleased her most was to give it to her husband, who could always find a
way of spending it. As to her happiness, that was equally out of his
control. It was bound up in her Prince, who, unfortunately, was a bad
custodian for it. At last, an automobile accident put an end to His
Highness's hectic career (and, incidentally, to that of a blonde lady
from the _Folies Bergeres_), and the Princess had returned to her
brother's home, where, a year later, she died, leaving him in charge of
her infant son.

Mr. Westley's desire from the first had been to eliminate as far as
possible all memory of the late Prince. He gave John his sister's name,
Maude, and brought him up as an American, in total ignorance of his
father's identity. During all the years they had spent together, he had
never mentioned the Prince's name.

He disliked John intensely. He fed him, clothed him, sent him to
college, and gave him a place in his office, but he never for a moment
relaxed his bleakness of front toward him. John was not unlike his
father in appearance, though built on a larger scale, and, as time went
on, little mannerisms, too, began to show themselves, that reminded Mr.
Westley of the dead man, and killed any beginnings of affection.

John, for his part, had the philosophy which goes with perfect health.
He fitted his uncle into the scheme of things, or, rather, set him
outside them as an irreconcilable element, and went on his way enjoying
life in his own good-humored fashion.

It was only lately, since he had joined the firm, that he had been
conscious of any great strain. College had given him a glimpse of a
larger life, and the office cramped him. He felt vaguely that there
were bigger things in the world which he might be doing. His best
friends, of whom he now saw little, were all men of adventure and
enterprise, who had tried their hand at many things; men like Jimmy
Pitt, who had done nearly everything that could be done before coming
into an unexpected half-million; men like Rupert Smith, who had been at
Harvard with him and was now a reporter on the _News_; men like
Baker, Faraday, Williams--he could name half-a-dozen, all men who were
_doing_ something, who were out on the firing line.

He was not a man who worried. He had not that temperament. But
sometimes he would wonder in rather a vague way whether he was not
allowing life to slip by him a little too placidly. An occasional
yearning for something larger would attack him. There seemed to be
something in him that made for inaction. His soul was sleepy.

If he had been told of the identity of his father, it is possible that
he might have understood. The Princes of Mervo had never taken readily
to action and enterprise. For generations back, if they had varied at
all, son from father, it had been in the color of hair or eyes, not in
character--a weak, shiftless procession, with nothing to distinguish
them from the common run of men except good looks and a talent for
wasting money.

John was the first of the line who had in him the seeds of better
things. The Westley blood and the bracing nature of his education had
done much to counteract the Mervo strain. He did not know it, but the
American in him was winning. The desire for action was growing steadily
every day.

It had been Mervo that had sent him to the polo grounds on the previous
day. That impulse had been purely Mervian. No prince of that island had
ever resisted a temptation. But it was America that was sending him now
to meet his uncle with a quiet unconcern as to the outcome of the
interview. The spirit of adventure was in him. It was more than
possible that Mr. Westley would sink the uncle in the employer and
dismiss him as summarily as he would have dismissed any other clerk in
similar circumstances. If so, he was prepared to welcome dismissal.
Other men fought an unsheltered fight with the world, so why not he?

He moved towards the door of the inner office with a certain
exhilaration.

As he approached, it flew open, disclosing Mr. Westley himself, a tall,
thin man, at the sight of whom Spiller shot into his seat like a
rabbit.

John went to meet him.

"Ah," said Mr. Westley; "come in here. I want to speak to you."

John followed him into the room.

"Sit down," said his uncle.

John waited while he dictated a letter. Neither spoke till the
stenographer had left the room. John met the girl's eye as she passed.
There was a compassionate look in it. John was popular with his fellow
employes. His absence had been the cause of discussion and speculation
among them, and the general verdict had been that there would be
troublous times for him on the morrow.

When the door closed, Mr. Westley leaned back in his chair, and
regarded his nephew steadily from under a pair of bushy gray eyebrows
which lent a sort of hypnotic keenness to his gaze.

"You were at the ball-game yesterday?" he said.

The unexpectedness of the question startled John into a sharp laugh.

"Yes," he said, recovering himself.

"Without leave."

"It didn't seem worth while asking for leave."

"You mean that you relied so implicitly on our relationship to save you
from the consequences?"

"No, I meant--"

"Well, we need not try and discover what you may have meant. What claim
do you put forward for special consideration? Why should I treat you
differently from any other member of the staff?"

John had a feeling that the interview was being taken at too rapid a
pace. He felt confused.

"I don't want you to treat me differently," he said.

Mr. Westley did not reply. John saw that he had taken a check-book from
its pigeonhole.

"I think we understand each other," said Mr. Westley. "There is no need
for any discussion. I am writing you a check for ten thousand
dollars--"

"Ten thousand dollars!"

"It happens to be your own. It was left to me in trust for you by your
mother. By a miracle your father did not happen to spend it."

John caught the bitter note which the other could not keep out of his
voice, and made one last attempt to probe this mystery. As a boy he had
tried more than once before he realized that this was a forbidden
topic.

"Who was my father?" he said.

Mr. Westley blotted the check carefully.

"Quite the worst blackguard I ever had the misfortune to know," he
replied in an even tone. "Will you kindly give me a receipt for this?
Then I need not detain you. You may return to the ball-game without any
further delay. Possibly," he went on, "you may wonder why you have not
received this money before. I persuaded your mother to let me use my
discretion in choosing the time when it should be handed over to you. I
decided to wait until, in my opinion, you had sense enough to use it
properly. I do not think that time has arrived. I do not think it will
ever arrive. But as we are parting company and shall, I hope, never
meet again, you had better have it now."

John signed the receipt in silence.

"Thank you," said Mr. Westley. "Good-by."

At the door John hesitated. He had looked forward to this moment as one
of excitement and adventure, but now that it had come it had left him
in anything but an uplifted mood. He was naturally warm-hearted, and
his uncle's cold anger hurt him. It was so different from anything
sudden, so essentially not of the moment. He felt instinctively that it
had been smoldering for a long time, and realized with a shock that his
uncle had not been merely indifferent to him all these years, but had
actually hated him. It was as if he had caught a glimpse of something
ugly. He felt that this was the last scene of some long drawn-out
tragedy.

Something made him turn impulsively back towards the desk.

"Uncle--" he cried.

He stopped. The hopelessness of attempting any step towards a better
understanding overwhelmed him. Mr. Westley had begun to write. He must
have seen John's movement, but he continued to write as if he were
alone in the room.

John turned to the door again.

"Good-by," he said.

Mr. Westley did not look up.




CHAPTER IV

VIVE LE ROI!


When, an hour later, John landed in New York from the ferry, his mood
had changed. The sun and the breeze had done their work. He looked on
life once more with a cheerful and optimistic eye.

His first act, on landing, was to proceed to the office of the
_News_ and enquire for Rupert Smith. He felt that he had urgent
need of a few minutes' conversation with him. Now that the painter had
been definitely cut that bound him to the safe and conventional, and he
had set out on his own account to lead the life adventurous, he was
conscious of an absurd diffidence. New York looked different to him. It
made him feel positively shy. A pressing need for a friendly native in
this strange land manifested itself. Smith would have ideas and advice
to bestow--he was notoriously prolific of both--and in this crisis both
were highly necessary.

Smith, however, was not at the office. He had gone out, John was
informed, earlier in the morning to cover a threatened strike somewhere
down on the East Side. John did not go in search of him. The chance of
finding him in that maze of mean streets was remote. He decided to go
uptown, select a hotel, and lunch. To the need for lunch he attributed
a certain sinking sensation of which he was becoming more and more
aware, and which bore much too close a resemblance to dismay to be
pleasant. The poet's statement that "the man who's square, his chances
always are best; no circumstance can shoot a scare into the contents of
his vest," is only true within limits. The squarest men, deposited
suddenly in New York and faced with the prospect of earning his living
there, is likely to quail for a moment. New York is not like other
cities. London greets the stranger with a sleepy grunt. Paris giggles.
New York howls. A gladiator, waiting in the center of the arena while
the Colosseum officials fumbled with the bolts of the door behind which
paced the noisy tiger he was to fight, must have had some of the
emotions which John experienced during his first hour as a masterless
man in Gotham.

A surface car carried him up Broadway. At Times Square the Astor Hotel
loomed up on the left. It looked a pretty good hotel to John. He
dismounted.

Half an hour later he decided that he was acclimated. He had secured a
base of operations in the shape of a room on the seventh floor, his
check was safely deposited in the hotel bank, and he was half-way
through a lunch which had caused him already to look on New York not
only as the finest city in the world, but also, on the whole, as the
one city of all others in which a young man might make a fortune with
the maximum of speed and the minimum of effort.

After lunch, having telegraphed his address to his uncle in case of
mail, he took the latter's excellent advice and went to the polo
grounds. Returning in time to dress, he dined at the hotel, after which
he visited a near-by theater, and completed a pleasant and strenuous
day at one of those friendly restaurants where the music is continuous
and the waiters are apt to burst into song in the intervals of their
other duties.

A second attempt to find Smith next morning failed, as the first had
done. The staff of the News were out of bed and at work ridiculously
early, and when John called up the office between eleven and twelve
o'clock--nature's breakfast-hour--Smith was again down East, observing
the movements of those who were about to strike or who had already
struck.

It hardly seemed worth while starting to lay the bed plates of his
fortune till he had consulted the expert. What would Rockefeller have
done? He would, John felt certain, have gone to the ball-game.

He imitated the great financier.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was while he was smoking a cigar after dinner that night, musing on
the fortunes of the day's game and, in particular, on the almost
criminal imbecility of the umpire, that he was dreamily aware that he
was being "paged." A small boy in uniform was meandering through the
room, chanting his name.

"Gent wants five minutes wit' you," announced the boy, intercepted.
"Hasn't got no card. Business, he says."

This disposed of the idea that Rupert Smith had discovered his retreat.
John was puzzled. He could not think of another person in New York who
knew of his presence at the Astor. But it was the unknown that he was
in search of, and he decided to see the mysterious stranger.

"Send him along," he said.

The boy disappeared, and presently John observed him threading his way
back among the tables, followed by a young man of extraordinary gravity
of countenance, who was looking about him with an intent gaze through a
pair of gold-rimmed spectacles.

John got up to meet him.

"My name is Maude," he said. "Won't you sit down? Have you had dinner?"

"Thank you, yes," said the spectacled young man.

"You'll have a cigar and coffee, then?"

"Thank you, yes."

The young man remained silent until the waiter had filled his cup.

"My name is Crump," he said. "I am Mr. Benjamin Scobell's private
secretary."

"Yes?" said John. "Snug job?"

The other seemed to miss something in his voice.

"You have heard of Mr. Scobell?" he asked.

"Not to my knowledge," said John.

"Ah! you have lost touch very much with Mervo, of course."

John stared.

"Mervo?"

It sounded like some patent medicine.

"I have been instructed," said Mr. Crump solemnly, "to inform Your
Highness that the Republic has been dissolved, and that your subjects
offer you the throne of your ancestors."

John leaned back in his chair, and looked at the speaker in dumb
amazement. The thought flashed across him that Mr. Crump had been
perfectly correct in saying that he had dined.

His attitude appeared to astound Mr. Crump. He goggled through his
spectacles at John, who was reminded of some rare fish.

"You are John Maude? You said you were."

"I'm John Maude right enough. We're solid on that point."

"And your mother was the only sister of Mr. Andrew Westley?"

"You're right there, too."

"Then there is no mistake. I say the Republic--" He paused, as if
struck with an idea. "Don't you know?" he said. "Your father--"

John became suddenly interested.

"If you've got anything to tell me about my father, go right ahead.
You'll be the only man I've ever met who has said a word about him. Who
the deuce was he, anyway?"

Mr. Crump's face cleared.

"I understand. I had not expected this. You have been kept in
ignorance. Your father, Mr. Maude, was the late Prince Charles of
Mervo."

It was not easy to astonish John, but this announcement did so. He
dropped his cigar in a shower of gray ash on to his trousers, and
retrieved it almost mechanically, his wide-open eyes fixed on the
other's face.

"What!" he cried.

Mr. Crump nodded gravely.

"You are Prince John of Mervo, and I am here--" he got into his stride
as he reached the familiar phrase--"to inform Your Highness that the
Republic has been dissolved, and that your subjects offer you the
throne of your ancestors."

A horrid doubt seized John.

"You're stringing me. One of those Indians at the _News_, Rupert
Smith, or someone, has put you up to this."

Mr. Crump appeared wounded.

"If Your Highness would glance at these documents-- This is a copy
of the register of the church in which your mother and father were
married."

John glanced at the document. It was perfectly lucid.

"Then--then it's true!" he said.

"Perfectly true, Your Highness. And I am here to inform--"

"But where the deuce is Mervo? I never heard of the place."

"It is an island principality in the Mediterranean, Your High--"

"For goodness' sake, old man, don't keep calling me 'Your Highness.' It
may be fun to you, but it makes me feel a perfect ass. Let me get into
the thing gradually."

Mr. Crump felt in his pocket.

"Mr. Scobell," he said, producing a roll of bills, "entrusted me with
money to defray any expenses--"

More than any words, this spectacle removed any lingering doubt which
John might have had as to the possibility of this being some intricate
practical joke.

"Are these for me?" he said.

Mr. Crump passed them across to him.

"There are a thousand dollars here," he said. "I am also instructed to
say that you are at liberty to draw further against Mr. Scobell's
account at the Wall Street office of the European and Asiatic Bank."

The name Scobell had been recurring like a _leit-motif_ in Mr.
Crump's conversation. This suddenly came home to John.

"Before we go any further," he said, "let's get one thing clear. Who is
this Mr. Scobell? How does he get mixed up in this?"

"He is the proprietor of the Casino at Mervo."

"He seems to be one of those generous, open-handed fellows. Nothing of
the tight wad about him."

"He is deeply interested in Your High--in your return."

John laid the roll of bills beside his coffee cup, and relighted his
cigar.

"That's mighty good of him," he said. "It strikes me, old man, that I
am not absolutely up-to-date as regards the internal affairs of this
important little kingdom of mine. How would it be if you were to put me
next to one or two facts? Start at the beginning and go right on."

When Mr. Crump had finished a condensed history of Mervo and Mervian
politics, John smoked in silence for some minutes.

"Life, Crump," he said at last, "is certainly speeding up as far as I
am concerned. Up till now nothing in particular has ever happened to
me. A couple of days ago I lost my job, was given ten thousand dollars
that I didn't know existed, and now you tell me I'm a prince. Well,
well! These are stirring times. When do we start for the old
homestead?"

"Mr. Scobell was exceedingly anxious that we should return by
Saturday's boat."

"Saturday? What, to-morrow?"

"Perhaps it is too soon. You will not be able to settle your affairs?"

"I guess I can settle my affairs all right. I've only got to pack a
grip and tip the bell hops. And as Scobell seems to be financing this
show, perhaps it's up to me to step lively if he wants it. But it's a
pity. I was just beginning to like this place. There is generally
something doing along the White Way after twilight, Crump."

The gravity of Mr. Scobell's secretary broke up unexpectedly into a
slow, wide smile. His eyes behind their glasses gleamed with a wistful
light.

"Gee!" he murmured.

John looked at him, amazed.

"Crump," he cried. "Crump, I believe you're a sport!"

Mr. Crump seemed completely to have forgotten his responsible position
as secretary to a millionaire and special messenger to a prince. He
smirked.

"I'd have liked a day or two in the old burg," he said softly. "I
haven't been to Rector's since Ponto was a pup."

John reached across the table and seized the secretary's hand.

"Crump," he said, "you _are_ a sport. This is no time for delay.
If we are to liven up this great city, we must get busy right away.
Grab your hat, and come along. One doesn't become a prince every day.
The occasion wants celebrating. Are you with me, Crump, old scout?"

"Sure thing," said the envoy ecstatically.

       *       *       *       *       *

At eight o'clock on the following morning, two young men, hatless and a
little rumpled, but obviously cheerful, entered the Astor Hotel,
demanding breakfast.

A bell boy who met them was addressed by the larger of the two, and
asked his name.

"Desmond Ryan," he replied.

The young man patted him on his shoulder.

"I appoint you, Desmond Ryan," he said, "Grand Hereditary Bell Hop to
the Court of Mervo."

Thus did Prince John formally enter into his kingdom.




CHAPTER V

MR. SCOBELL HAS ANOTHER IDEA


Owing to collaboration between Fate and Mr. Scobell, John's state entry
into Mervo was an interesting blend between a pageant and a vaudeville
sketch. The pageant idea was Mr. Scobell's. Fate supplied the
vaudeville.

The reception at the quay, when the little steamer that plied between
Marseilles and the island principality gave up its precious freight,
was not on quite so impressive a scale as might have been given to the
monarch of a more powerful kingdom; but John was not disappointed.
During the voyage from New York, in the intervals of seasickness--for
he was a poor sailor--Mr. Crump had supplied him with certain facts
about Mervo, one of which was that its adult population numbered just
under thirteen thousand, and this had prepared him for any shortcomings
in the way of popular demonstration.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Scobell was exceedingly pleased with the scale
of the reception, which to his mind amounted practically to pomp. The
Palace Guard, forty strong, lined the quay. Besides these, there were
four officers, a band, and sixteen mounted carbineers. The rest of the
army was dotted along the streets. In addition to the military, there
was a gathering of a hundred and fifty civilians, mainly drawn from
fishing circles. The majority of these remained stolidly silent
throughout, but three, more emotional, cheered vigorously as a young
man was seen to step on to the gangway, carrying a grip, and make for
the shore. General Poineau, a white-haired warrior with a fierce
mustache, strode forward and saluted. The Palace Guards presented arms.
The band struck up the Mervian national anthem. General Poineau,
lowering his hand, put on a pair of _pince-nez_ and began to
unroll an address of welcome.

It was then seen that the young man was Mr. Crump. General Poineau
removed his glasses and gave an impatient twirl to his mustache. Mr.
Scobell, who for possibly the first time in his career was not smoking
(though, as was afterward made manifest, he had the materials on his
person), bustled to the front.

"Where's his nibs, Crump?" he enquired.

The secretary's reply was swept away in a flood of melody. To the band
Mr. Crump's face was strange. They had no reason to suppose that he was
not Prince John, and they acted accordingly. With a rattle of drums
they burst once more into their spirited rendering of the national
anthem.

Mr. Scobell sawed the air with his arms, but was powerless to dam the
flood.

"His Highness is shaving, sir!" bawled Mr. Crump, depositing his grip
on the quay and making a trumpet of his hands.

"Shaving!"

"Yes, sir. I told him he ought to come along, but His Highness said he
wasn't going to land looking like a tramp comedian."

By this time General Poineau had explained matters to the band and they
checked the national anthem abruptly in the middle of a bar, with the
exception of the cornet player, who continued gallantly by himself till
a feeling of loneliness brought the truth home to him. An awkward stage
wait followed, which lasted until John was seen crossing the deck, when
there were more cheers, and General Poineau, resuming his
_pince-nez_, brought out the address of welcome again.

At this point Mr. Scobell made his presence felt.

"Glad to meet you, Prince," he said, coming forward. "Scobell's my
name. Shake hands with General Poineau. No, that's wrong. I guess he
kisses your hand, don't he?"

"I'll swing on him if he does," said John, cheerfully.

Mr. Scobell eyed him doubtfully. His Highness did not appear to him to
be treating the inaugural ceremony with that reserved dignity which we
like to see in princes on these occasions. Mr. Scobell was a business
man. He wanted his money's worth. His idea of a Prince of Mervo was
something statuesquely aloof, something--he could not express it
exactly--on the lines of the illustrations in the Zenda stories in the
magazines--about eight feet high and shinily magnificent, something
that would give the place a tone. That was what he had had in his mind
when he sent for John. He did not want a cheerful young man in a soft
hat and a flannel suit who looked as if at any moment he might burst
into a college yell.

General Poineau, meanwhile, had embarked on the address of welcome.
John regarded him thoughtfully.

"I can see," he said to Mr. Scobell, "that the gentleman is making a
good speech, but what is he saying? That is what gets past me."

"He is welcoming Your Highness," said Mr. Crump, the linguist, "in the
name of the people of Mervo."

"Who, I notice, have had the bully good sense to stay in bed. I guess
they knew that the Boy Orator would do all that was necessary. He
hasn't said anything about a bite of breakfast, has he? Has his address
happened to work around to the subject of shredded wheat and shirred
eggs yet? That's the part that's going to make a hit with me."

"There'll be breakfast at my villa, Your Highness," said Mr. Scobell.
"My automobile is waiting along there."

The General reached his peroration, worked his way through it, and
finished with a military clash of heels and a salute. The band rattled
off the national anthem once more.

"Now, what?" said John, turning to Mr. Scobell. "Breakfast?"

"I guess you'd better say a few words to them, Your Highness; they'll
expect it."

"But I can't speak the language, and they can't understand English. The
thing'll be a stand-off."

"Crump will hand it to 'em. Here, Crump."

"Sir?"

"Line up and shoot His Highness's remarks into 'em."

"Yes, sir.

"It's all very well for you, Crump," said John. "You probably enjoy
this sort of thing. I don't. I haven't felt such a fool since I sang
'The Maiden's Prayer' on Tremont Street when I was joining the frat.
Are you ready? No, it's no good. I don't know what to say."

"Tell 'em you're tickled to death," advised Mr. Scobell anxiously.

John smiled in a friendly manner at the populace. Then he coughed.
"Gentlemen," he said--"and more particularly the sport on my left who
has just spoken his piece whose name I can't remember--I thank you for
the warm welcome you have given me. If it is any satisfaction to you to
know that it has made me feel like thirty cents, you may have that
satisfaction. Thirty is a liberal estimate."

"'His Highness is overwhelmed by your loyal welcome. He thanks you
warmly,'" translated Mr. Crump, tactfully.

"I feel that we shall get along nicely together," continued John. "If
you are chumps enough to turn out of your comfortable beds at this time
of the morning simply to see me, you can't be very hard to please. We
shall hit it off fine."

_Mr. Crump:_ "His Highness hopes and believes that he will always
continue to command the affection of his people."

"I--" John paused. "That's the lot," he said. "The flow of inspiration
has ceased. The magic fire has gone out. Break it to 'em, Crump. For
me, breakfast."

During the early portion of the ride Mr. Scobell was silent and
thoughtful. John's speech had impressed him neither as oratory nor as
an index to his frame of mind. He had not interrupted him, because he
knew that none of those present could understand what was being said,
and that Mr. Crump was to be relied on as an editor. But he had not
enjoyed it. He did not take the people of Mervo seriously himself, but
in the Prince such an attitude struck him as unbecoming. Then he
cheered up. After all, John had given evidence of having a certain
amount of what he would have called "get-up" in him. For the purposes
for which he needed him, a tendency to make light of things was not
amiss. It was essentially as a performing prince that he had engaged
John. He wanted him to do unusual things, which would make people
talk--aeroplaning was one that occurred to him. Perhaps a prince who
took a serious view of his position would try to raise the people's
minds and start reforms and generally be a nuisance. John could, at any
rate, be relied upon not to do that.

His face cleared.

"Have a good cigar, Prince?" he said, cordially, inserting two fingers
in his vest-pocket.

"Sure, Mike," said His Highness affably.

Breakfast over, Mr. Scobell replaced the remains of his cigar between
his lips, and turned to business.

"Eh, Prince?" he said.

"Yes!"

"I want you, Prince," said Mr. Scobell, "to help boom this place.
That's where you come in."

"Sure," said John.

"As to ruling and all that," continued Mr. Scobell, "there isn't any to
do. The place runs itself. Some guy gave it a shove a thousand years
ago, and it's been rolling along ever since. What I want you to do is
the picturesque stunts. Get a yacht and catch rare fishes. Whoop it up.
Entertain swell guys when they come here. Have a Court--see what I
mean?--same as over in England. Go around in aeroplanes and that style
of thing. Don't worry about money. That'll be all right. You draw your
steady hundred thousand a year and a good chunk more besides, when we
begin to get a move on, so the dough proposition doesn't need to scare
you any."

"Do I, by George!" said John. "It seems to me that I've fallen into a
pretty soft thing here. There'll be a joker in the deck somewhere, I
guess. There always is in these good things. But I don't see it yet.
You can count me in all right."

"Good boy," said Mr. Scobell. "And now you'll be wanting to get to the
Palace. I'll have them bring the automobile round."

The council of state broke up.

Having seen John off in the car, the financier proceeded to his
sister's sitting-room. Miss Scobell had breakfasted apart that morning,
by request, her brother giving her to understand that matters of state,
unsuited to the ear of a third party, must be discussed at the meal.
She was reading her _New York Herald_.

"Well," said Mr. Scobell, "he's come."

"Yes, dear?"

"And just the sort I want. Saw the idea of the thing right away, and is
ready to go the limit. No nonsense about him."

"Is he nice-looking, Bennie?"

"Sure. All these Mervo princes have been good-lookers, I hear, and this
one must be near the top of the list. You'll like him, Marion. All the
girls will be crazy about him in a week."

Miss Scobell turned a page.

"Is he married?"

Her brother started.

"Married? I never thought of that. But no, I guess he's not. He'd have
mentioned it. He's not the sort to hush up a thing like that. I--"

He stopped short. His green eyes gleamed excitedly.

"Marion!" he cried. "_Marion!_"

"Well, dear?"

"Listen. Gee, this thing is going to be the biggest ever. I gotta new
idea. It just came to me. Your saying that put it into my head. Do you
know what I'm going to do? I'm going to cable over to Betty to come
right along here, and I'm going to have her marry this prince guy. Yes,
sir!"

For once Miss Scobell showed signs that her brother's conversation
really interested her. She laid down her paper, and stared at him.

"Betty!"

"Sure, Betty. Why not? She's a pretty girl. Clever too. The Prince'll
be lucky to get such a wife, for all his darned ancestors away back to
the flood."

"But suppose Betty does not like him?"

"Like him? She's gotta like him. Say, can't you make your mind soar, or
won't you? Can't you see that a thing like this has gotta be fixed
different from a marriage between--between a ribbon-counter clerk and
the girl who takes the money at a twenty-five-cent hash restaurant in
Flatbush? This is a royal alliance. Do you suppose that when a European
princess is introduced to the prince she's going to marry, they let her
say: 'Nothing doing. I don't like the shape of his nose'?"

He gave a spirited imitation of a European princess objecting to the
shape of her selected husband's nose.

"It isn't very romantic, Bennie," sighed Miss Scobell. She was a
confirmed reader of the more sentimental class of fiction, and this
business-like treatment of love's young dream jarred upon her.

"It's founding a dynasty. Isn't that romantic enough for you? You make
me tired, Marion."

Miss Scobell sighed again.

"Very well, dear. I suppose you know best. But perhaps the Prince won't
like Betty."

Mr. Scobell gave a snort of disgust.

"Marion," he said, "you've got a mind like a chunk of wet dough. Can't
you understand that the Prince is just as much in my employment as the
man who scrubs the Casino steps? I'm hiring him to be Prince of Mervo,
and his first job as Prince of Mervo will be to marry Betty. I'd like
to see him kick!" He began to pace the room. "By Heck, it's going to
make this place boom to beat the band. It'll be the biggest kind of
advertisement. Restoration of Royalty at Mervo. That'll make them take
notice by itself. Then, biff! right on top of that, Royal
Romance--Prince Weds American Girl--Love at First Sight--Picturesque
Wedding! Gee, we'll wipe Monte Carlo clean off the map. We'll have 'em
licked to a splinter. We--It's the greatest scheme on earth."

"I have no doubt you are right, Bennie," said Miss Scobell, "but--" her
voice became dreamy again--"it's not very romantic."

"Oh, shucks!" said the schemer impatiently. "Here, where's a cable
form?"




CHAPTER VI

YOUNG ADAM CUPID


On a red sandstone rock at the edge of the water, where the island
curved sharply out into the sea, Prince John of Mervo sat and brooded
on first causes. For nearly an hour and a half he had been engaged in
an earnest attempt to trace to its source the acute fit of depression
which had come--apparently from nowhere--to poison his existence that
morning.

It was his seventh day on the island, and he could remember every
incident of his brief reign. The only thing that eluded him was the
recollection of the exact point when the shadow of discontent had begun
to spread itself over his mind. Looking back, it seemed to him that he
had done nothing during that week but enjoy each new aspect of his
position as it was introduced to his notice. Yet here he was, sitting
on a lonely rock, consumed with an unquenchable restlessness, a kind of
trapped sensation. Exactly when and exactly how Fate, that king of
gold-brick men, had cheated him he could not say; but he knew, with a
certainty that defied argument, that there had been sharp practise, and
that in an unguarded moment he had been induced to part with something
of infinite value in exchange for a gilded fraud.

The mystery baffled him. He sent his mind back to the first definite
entry of Mervo into the foreground of his life. He had come up from his
stateroom on to the deck of the little steamer, and there in the
pearl-gray of the morning was the island, gradually taking definite
shape as the pink mists shredded away before the rays of the rising
sun. As the ship rounded the point where the lighthouse still flashed a
needless warning from its cluster of jagged rocks, he had had his first
view of the town, nestling at the foot of the hill, gleaming white
against the green, with the gold-domed Casino towering in its midst. In
all Southern Europe there was no view to match it for quiet beauty. For
all his thews and sinews there was poetry in John, and the sight had
stirred him like wine.

It was not then that depression had begun, nor was it during the
reception at the quay.

The days that had followed had been peaceful and amusing. He could not
detect in any one of them a sign of the approaching shadow. They had
been lazy days. His duties had been much more simple than he had
anticipated. He had not known, before he tried it, that it was possible
to be a prince with so small an expenditure of mental energy. As Mr.
Scobell had hinted, to all intents and purposes he was a mere ornament.
His work began at eleven in the morning, and finished as a rule at
about a quarter after. At the hour named a report of the happenings of
the previous day was brought to him. When he had read it the state
asked no more of him until the next morning.

The report was made up of such items as "A fisherman named Lesieur
called Carbineer Ferrier a fool in the market-place at eleven minutes
after two this afternoon; he has not been arrested, but is being
watched," and generally gave John a few minutes of mild enjoyment.
Certainly he could not recollect that it had ever depressed him.

No, it had been something else that had worked the mischief and in
another moment the thing stood revealed, beyond all question of doubt.
What had unsettled him was that unexpected meeting with Betty Silver
last night at the Casino.

He had been sitting at the Dutch table. He generally visited the Casino
after dinner. The light and movement of the place interested him. As a
rule, he merely strolled through the rooms, watching the play; but last
night he had slipped into a vacant seat. He had only just settled
himself when he was aware of a girl standing beside him. He got up.

"Would you care--?" he had begun, and then he saw her face.

It had all happened in an instant. Some chord in him, numbed till then,
had begun to throb. It was as if he had awakened from a dream, or
returned to consciousness after being stunned. There was something in
the sight of her, standing there so cool and neat and composed, so
typically American, a sort of goddess of America, in the heat and stir
of the Casino, that struck him like a blow.

How long was it since he had seen her last? Not more than a couple of
years. It seemed centuries. It all came back to him. It was during his
last winter at Harvard that they had met. A college friend of hers had
been the sister of a college friend of his. They had met several times,
but he could not recollect having taken any particular notice of her
then, beyond recognizing that she was certainly pretty. The world had
been full of pretty American girls then. But now--

He looked at her. And, as he looked, he heard America calling to him.
Mervo, by the appeal of its novelty, had caused him to forget. But now,
quite suddenly, he knew that he was homesick--and it astonished him,
the readiness with which he had permitted Mr. Crump to lead him away
into bondage. It seemed incredible that he had not foreseen what must
happen.

Love comes to some gently, imperceptibly, creeping in as the tide,
through unsuspected creeks and inlets, creeps on a sleeping man, until
he wakes to find himself surrounded. But to others it comes as a wave,
breaking on them, beating them down, whirling them away.

It was so with John. In that instant when their eyes met the miracle
must have happened. It seemed to him, as he recalled the scene now,
that he had loved her before he had had time to frame his first remark.
It amazed him that he could ever have been blind to the fact that he
loved her, she was so obviously the only girl in the world.

"You--you don't remember me," he stammered.

She was flushing a little under his stare, but her eyes were shining.

"I remember you very well, Mr. Maude," she said with a smile. "I
thought I knew your shoulders before you turned round. What are you
doing here?"

"I--"

There was a hush. The _croupier_ had set the ball rolling. A
wizened little man and two ladies of determined aspect were looking up
disapprovingly. John realized that he was the only person in the room
not silent. It was impossible to tell her the story of the change in
his fortunes in the middle of this crowd. He stopped, and the moment
passed.

The ball dropped with a rattle. The tension relaxed.

"Won't you take this seat?" said John.

"No, thank you. I'm not playing. I only just stopped to look on. My
aunt is in one of the rooms, and I want to make her come home. I'm
tired."

"Have you--?"

He caught the eye of the wizened man, and stopped again.

"Have you been in Mervo long?" he said, as the ball fell.

"I only arrived this morning. It seems lovely. I must explore
to-morrow."

She was beginning to move off.

"Er--" John coughed to remove what seemed to him a deposit of sawdust
and unshelled nuts in his throat. "Er--may I--will you let me show
you--" prolonged struggle with the nuts and sawdust; then
rapidly--"some of the places to-morrow?"

He had hardly spoken the words when it was borne in upon him that he
was a vulgar, pushing bounder, presuming on a dead and buried
acquaintanceship to force his company on a girl who naturally did not
want it, and who would now proceed to snub him as he deserved. He
quailed. Though he had not had time to collect and examine and label
his feelings, he was sufficiently in touch with them to know that a
snub from her would be the most terrible thing that could possibly
happen to him.

She did not snub him. Indeed, if he had been in a state of mind
coherent enough to allow him to observe, he might have detected in her
eyes and her voice signs of pleasure.

"I should like it very much," she said.

John made his big effort. He attacked the nuts and sawdust which had
come back and settled down again in company with a large lump of some
unidentified material, as if he were bucking center. They broke before
him as, long ago, the Yale line had done, and his voice rang out as if
through a megaphone, to the unconcealed disgust of the neighboring
gamesters.

"If you go along the path at the foot of the hill," he bellowed
rapidly, "and follow it down to the sea, you get a little bay full of
red sandstone rocks--you can't miss it--and there's a fine view of the
island from there. I'd like awfully well to show that to you. It's
great."

She nodded.

"Then shall we meet there?" she said. "When?"

John was in no mood to postpone the event.

"As early as ever you like," he roared.

"At about ten, then. Good-night, Mr. Maude."

       *       *       *       *       *

John had reached the bay at half-past eight, and had been on guard
there ever since. It was now past ten, but still there were no signs of
Betty. His depression increased. He told himself that she had
forgotten. Then, that she had remembered, but had changed her mind.
Then, that she had never meant to come at all. He could not decide
which of the three theories was the most distressing.

His mood became morbidly introspective. He was weighed down by a sense
of his own unworthiness. He submitted himself to a thorough
examination, and the conclusion to which he came was that, as an
aspirant to the regard, of a girl like Betty, he did not score a single
point. No wonder she had ignored the appointment.

A cold sweat broke out on him. This was the snub! She had not
administered it in the Casino simply in order that, by being delayed,
its force might be the more overwhelming.

He looked at his watch again, and the world grew black. It was twelve
minutes after ten.

John, in his time, had thought and read a good deal about love. Ever
since he had grown up, he had wanted to fall in love. He had imagined
love as a perpetual exhilaration, something that flooded life with a
golden glow as if by the pressing of a button or the pulling of a
switch, and automatically removed from it everything mean and hard and
uncomfortable; a something that made a man feel grand and god-like,
looking down (benevolently, of course) on his fellow men as from some
lofty mountain.

That it should make him feel a worm-like humility had not entered his
calculations. He was beginning to see something of the possibilities of
love. His tentative excursions into the unknown emotion, while at
college, had never really deceived him; even at the time a sort of
second self had looked on and sneered at the poor imitation.

This was different. This had nothing to do with moonlight and soft
music. It was raw and hard. It hurt. It was a thing sharp and jagged,
tearing at the roots of his soul.

He turned his head, and looked up the path for the hundredth time, and
this time he sprang to his feet. Between the pines on the hillside his
eye had caught the flutter of a white dress.




CHAPTER VII

MR. SCOBELL IS FRANK


Much may happen in these rapid times in the course of an hour and a
half. While John was keeping his vigil on the sandstone rock, Betty was
having an interview with Mr. Scobell which was to produce far-reaching
results, and which, incidentally, was to leave her angrier and more at
war with the whole of her world than she could remember to have been in
the entire course of her life.

The interview began, shortly after breakfast, in a gentle and tactful
manner, with Aunt Marion at the helm. But Mr. Scobell was not the man
to stand by silently while persons were being tactful. At the end of
the second minute he had plunged through his sister's mild monologue
like a rhinoceros through a cobweb, and had stated definitely, with an
economy of words, the exact part which Betty was to play in Mervian
affairs.

"You say you want to know why you were cabled for. I'll tell you.
There's no use talking for half a day before you get to the point. I
guess you've heard that there's a prince here instead of a republic
now? Well, that's where you come in."

"Do you mean--?" she hesitated.

"Yes, I do," said Mr. Scobell. There was a touch of doggedness in his
voice. He was not going to stand any nonsense, by Heck, but there was
no doubt that Betty's wide-open eyes were not very easy to meet. He
went on rapidly. "Cut out any fool notions about romance." Miss
Scobell, who was knitting a sock, checked her needles for a moment in
order to sigh. Her brother eyed her morosely, then resumed his remarks.
"This is a matter of state. That's it. You gotta cut out fool notions
and act for good of state. You gotta look at it in the proper spirit.
Great honor--see what I mean? Princess and all that. Chance of a
lifetime--dynasty--you gotta look at it that way."

Miss Scobell heaved another sigh, and dropped a stitch.

"For the love of Mike," said her brother, irritably, "don't snort like
that, Marion."

"Very well, dear."

Betty had not taken her eyes off him from his first word. An unbiased
observer would have said that she made a pretty picture, standing
there, in her white dress, but in the matter of pictures, still life
was evidently what Mr. Scobell preferred for his gaze never wandered
from the cigar stump which he had removed from his mouth in order to
knock off the ash.

Betty continued to regard him steadfastly. The shock of his words had
to some extent numbed her. At this moment she was merely thinking,
quite dispassionately, what a singularly nasty little man he looked,
and wondering--not for the first time--what strange quality, invisible
to everybody else, it had been in him that had made her mother his
adoring slave during the whole of their married life.

Then her mind began to work actively once more. She was a Western girl,
and an insistence on freedom was the first article in her creed. A
great rush of anger filled her, that this man should set himself up to
dictate to her.

"Do you mean that you want me to marry this Prince?" she said.

"That's right."

"I won't do anything of the sort."

"Pshaw! Don't be foolish. You make me tired."

Betty's eye shone mutinously. Her cheeks were flushed, and her slim,
boyish figure quivered. Her chin, always determined, became a silent
Declaration of Independence.

"I won't," she said.

Aunt Marion, suspending operations on the sock, went on with tact at
the point where her brother's interruption had forced her to leave off.

"I'm sure he's a very nice young man. I have not seen him, but
everybody says so. You like him, Bennie, don't you?"

"Sure, I like him. He's a corker. Wait till you see him, Betty.
Nobody's asking you to marry him before lunch. You'll have plenty of
time to get acquainted. It beats me what you're kicking at. You give me
a pain in the neck. Be reasonable."

Betty sought for arguments to clinch her refusal.

"It's ridiculous," she said. "You talk as if you had just to wave your
hand. Why should your prince want to marry a girl he has never seen?"

"He will," said Mr. Scobell confidently.

"How do you know?"

"Because I know he's a sensible young skeesicks. That's how. See here,
Betty, you've gotten hold of wrong ideas about this place. You don't
understand the position of affairs. Your aunt didn't till I put her
wise."

"He bit my head off, my dear," murmured Miss Scobell, knitting
placidly.

"You're thinking that Mervo is an ordinary state, and that the Prince
is one of those independent, all-wool, off-with-his-darned-head rulers
like you read about in the best sellers. Well, you've got another guess
coming. If you want to know who's the big noise here, it's me--me! This
Prince guy is my hired man. See? Who sent for him? I did. Who put him
on the throne? I did. Who pays him his salary? I do, from the profits
of the Casino. Now do you understand? He knows his job. He knows which
side his bread's buttered. When I tell him about this marriage, do you
know what he'll say? He'll say 'Thank you, sir!' That's how things are
in this island."

Betty shuddered. Her face was white with humiliation. She half-raised
her hands with an impulsive movement to hide it.

"I won't. I won't. I won't!" she gasped.

Mr. Scobell was pacing the room in an ecstasy of triumphant rhetoric.

"There's another thing," he said, swinging round suddenly and causing
his sister to drop another stitch. "Maybe you think he's some kind of a
Dago, this guy? Maybe that's what's biting you. Let me tell you that
he's an American--pretty near as much an American as you are yourself."

Betty stared at him.

"An American!"

"Don't believe it, eh? Well, let me tell you that his mother was born
and raised in Jersey, and that he has lived all his life in the States.
He's no little runt of a Dago. No, sir. He's a Harvard man, six-foot
high and weighs two hundred pounds. That's the sort of man he is. I
guess that's not American enough for you, maybe? No?"

"You do shout so, Bennie!" murmured Miss Scobell. "I'm sure there's no
need."

Betty uttered a cry. Something had told her who he was, this Harvard
man who had sold himself. That species of sixth sense which lies
undeveloped at the back of our minds during the ordinary happenings of
life wakes sometimes in moments of keen emotion. At its highest, it is
prophecy; at its lowest, a vague presentiment. It woke in Betty now.
There was no particular reason why she should have connected her
stepfather's words with John. The term he had used was an elastic one.
Among the visitors to the island there were probably several Harvard
men. But somehow she knew.

"Who is he?" she cried. "What was his name before he--when he--?"

"His name?" said Mr. Scobell. "John Maude. Maude was his mother's name.
She was a Miss Westley. Here, where are you going?"

Betty was walking slowly toward the door. Something in her face checked
Mr. Scobell.

"I want to think," she said quietly. "I'm going out."

       *       *       *       *       *

In days of old, in the age of legend, omens warned heroes of impending
doom. But to-day the gods have grown weary, and we rush unsuspecting on
our fate. No owl hooted, no thunder rolled from the blue sky as John
went up the path to meet the white dress that gleamed between the
trees.

His heart was singing within him. She had come. She had not forgotten,
or changed her mind, or willfully abandoned him. His mood lightened
swiftly. Humility vanished. He was not such an outcast, after all. He
was someone. He was the man Betty Silver had come to meet.

But with the sight of her face came reaction.

Her face was pale and cold and hard. She did not speak or smile. As she
drew near she looked at him, and there was that in her look which set a
chill wind blowing through the world and cast a veil across the sun.

And in this bleak world they stood silent and motionless while eons
rolled by.

Betty was the first to speak.

"I'm late," she said.

John searched in his brain for words, and came empty away. He shook his
head dumbly.

"Shall we sit down?" said Betty.

John indicated silently the sandstone rock on which he had been
communing with himself.

They sat down. A sense of being preposterously and indecently big
obsessed John. There seemed no end to him. Wherever he looked, there
were hands and feet and legs. He was a vast blot on the face of the
earth. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Betty. She was gazing
out to sea.

He dived into his brain again. It was absurd! There must be something
to say.

And then he realized that a worse thing had befallen. He had no voice.
It had gone. He knew that, try he never so hard to speak, he would not
be able to utter a word. A nightmare feeling of unreality came upon
him. Had he ever spoken? Had he ever done anything but sit dumbly on
that rock, looking at those sea gulls out in the water?

He shot another swift glance at Betty, and a thrill went through him.
There were tears in her eyes.

The next moment--the action was almost automatic--his left hand was
clasping her right, and he was moving along the rock to her side.

She snatched her hand away.

His brain, ransacked for the third time, yielded a single word.

"Betty!"

She got up quickly.

In the confused state of his mind, John found it necessary if he were
to speak at all, to say the essential thing in the shortest possible
way. Polished periods are not for the man who is feeling deeply.

He blurted out, huskily, "I love you!" and finding that this was all
that he could say, was silent.

Even to himself the words, as he spoke them, sounded bald and
meaningless. To Betty, shaken by her encounter with Mr. Scobell, they
sounded artificial, as if he were forcing himself to repeat a lesson.
They jarred upon her.

"Don't!" she said sharply. "Oh, don't!"

Her voice stabbed him. It could not have stirred him more if she had
uttered a cry of physical pain.

"Don't! I know. I've been told."

"Been told?"

She went on quickly.

"I know all about it. My stepfather has just told me. He said--he said
you were his--" she choked--"his hired man; that he paid you to stay
here and advertise the Casino. Oh, it's too horrible! That it should be
you! You, who have been--you can't understand what you--have been to
me--ever since we met; you couldn't understand. I can't tell you--a
sort of help--something--something that--I can't put it into words.
Only it used to help me just to think of you. It was almost impersonal.
I didn't mind if I never saw you again. I didn't expect ever to see you
again. It was just being able to think of you. It helped--you were
something I could trust. Something strong--solid." She laughed
bitterly. "I suppose I made a hero of you. Girls are fools. But it
helped me to feel that there was one man alive who--who put his honor
above money--"

She broke off. John stood motionless, staring at the ground. For the
first time in his easy-going life he knew shame. Even now he had not
grasped to the full the purport of her words. The scales were falling
from his eyes, but as yet he saw but dimly.

She began to speak again, in a low, monotonous voice, almost as if she
were talking to herself. She was looking past him, at the gulls that
swooped and skimmed above the glittering water.

"I'm so tired of money--money--money. Everything's money. Isn't there a
man in the world who won't sell himself? I thought that you--I suppose
I'm stupid. It's business, I suppose. One expects too much."

She looked at him wearily.

"Good-by," she said. "I'm going."

He did not move.

She turned, and went slowly up the path. Still he made no movement. A
spell seemed to be on him. His eyes never left her as she passed into
the shadow of the trees. For a moment her white dress stood out
clearly. She had stopped. With his whole soul he prayed that she would
look back. But she moved on once more, and was gone. And suddenly a
strange weakness came upon John. He trembled. The hillside flickered
before his eyes for an instant, and he clutched at the sandstone rock
to steady himself.

Then his brain cleared, and he found himself thinking swiftly. He could
not let her go like this. He must overtake her. He must stop her. He
must speak to her. He must say--he did not know what it was that he
would say--anything, so that he spoke to her again.

He raced up the path, calling her name. No answer came to his cries.
Above him lay the hillside, dozing in the noonday sun; below, the
Mediterranean, sleek and blue, without a ripple. He stood alone in a
land of silence and sleep.




CHAPTER VIII

AN ULTIMATUM FROM THE THRONE


At half-past twelve that morning business took Mr. Benjamin Scobell to
the royal Palace. He was not a man who believed in letting the grass
grow under his feet. He prided himself on his briskness of attack.
Every now and then Mr. Crump, searching the newspapers, would discover
and hand to him a paragraph alluding to his "hustling methods." When
this happened, he would preserve the clipping and carry it about in his
vest-pocket with his cigars till time and friction wore it away. He
liked to think of himself as swift and sudden--the Human Thunderbolt.

In this matter of the royal alliance, it was his intention to have at
it and clear it up at once. Having put his views clearly before Betty,
he now proposed to lay them with equal clarity before the Prince. There
was no sense in putting the thing off. The sooner all parties concerned
understood the position of affairs, the sooner the business would be
settled.

That Betty had not received his information with joy did not distress
him. He had a poor opinion of the feminine intelligence. Girls got their
minds full of nonsense from reading novels and seeing plays--like Betty.
Betty objected to those who were wiser than herself providing a perfectly
good prince for her to marry. Some fool notion of romance, of course. Not
that he was angry. He did not blame her any more than the surgeon blames
a patient for the possession of an unsuitable appendix. There was no
animus in the matter. Her mind was suffering from foolish ideas, and he
was the surgeon whose task it was to operate upon it. That was all. One
had to expect foolishness in women. It was their nature. The only thing
to do was to tie a rope to them and let them run around till they were
tired of it, then pull them in. He saw his way to managing Betty.

Nor did he anticipate trouble with John. He had taken an estimate of
John's character, and it did not seem to him likely that it contained
unsuspected depths. He set John down, as he had told Betty, as a young
man acute enough to know when he had a good job and sufficiently
sensible to make concessions in order to retain it. Betty, after the
manner of woman, might make a fuss before yielding to the inevitable,
but from level-headed John he looked for placid acquiescence.

His mood, as the automobile whirred its way down the hill toward the
town, was sunny. He looked on life benevolently and found it good. The
view appealed to him more than it had managed to do on other days. As a
rule, he was the man of blood and iron who had no time for admiring
scenery, but to-day he vouchsafed it a not unkindly glance. It was
certainly a dandy little place, this island of his. A vineyard on the
right caught his eye. He made a mental note to uproot it and run up a
hotel in its place. Further down the hill, he selected a site for a
villa, where the mimosa blazed, and another where at present there were
a number of utterly useless violets. A certain practical element was
apt, perhaps, to color Mr. Scobell's half-hours with nature.

The sight of the steamboat leaving the harbor on its journey to
Marseilles gave him another idea. Now that Mervo was a going concern, a
real live proposition, it was high time that it should have an adequate
service of boats. The present system of one a day was absurd. He made a
note to look into the matter. These people wanted waking up.

Arriving at the Palace, he was informed that His Highness had gone out
shortly after breakfast, and had not returned. The majordomo gave the
information with a tinkle of disapproval in his voice. Before taking up
his duties at Mervo, he had held a similar position in the household of
a German prince, where rigid ceremonial obtained, and John's cheerful
disregard of the formalities frankly shocked him. To take the present
case for instance: When His Highness of Swartzheim had felt inclined to
enjoy the air of a morning, it had been a domestic event full of stir
and pomp. He had not merely crammed a soft hat over his eyes and
strolled out with his hands in his pockets, but without a word to his
household staff as to where he was going or when he might be expected
to return.

Mr. Scobell received the news equably, and directed his chauffeur to
return to the villa. He could not have done better, for, on his
arrival, he was met with the information that His Highness had called
to see him shortly after he had left, and was now waiting in the
morning-room.

The sound of footsteps came to Mr. Scobell's ears as he approached the
room. His Highness appeared to be pacing the floor like a caged animal
at the luncheon hour. The resemblance was heightened by the expression
in the royal eye as His Highness swung round at the opening of the door
and faced the financier.

"Why, say, Prince," said Mr. Scobell, "this is lucky. I been looking
for you. I just been to the Palace, and the main guy there told me you
had gone out."

"I did. And I met your stepdaughter."

Mr. Scobell was astonished. Fate was certainly smoothing his way if it
arranged meetings between Betty and the Prince before he had time to do
it himself. There might be no need for the iron hand after all.

"You did?" he said. "Say, how the Heck did you come to do that? What
did you know about Betty?"

"Miss Silver and I had met before, in America, when I was in college."

Mr. Scobell slapped his thigh joyously.

"Gee, it's all working out like a fiction story in the magazines!"

"Is it?" said John. "How? And, for the matter of that, what?"

Mr. Scobell answered question with question. "Say, Prince, you and
Betty were pretty good friends in the old days, I guess?"

John looked at him coldly.

"We won't discuss that, if you don't mind," he said.

His tone annoyed Mr. Scobell. Off came the velvet glove, and the iron
hand displayed itself. His green eyes glowed dully and the tip of his
nose wriggled, as was its habit in times of emotion.

"Is that so?" he cried, regarding John with disfavor. "Well, I guess!
Won't discuss it! You gotta discuss it, Your Royal Texas League
Highness! You want making a head shorter, my bucko. You--"

John's demeanor had become so dangerous that he broke off abruptly, and
with an unostentatious movement, as of a man strolling carelessly about
his private sanctum, put himself within easy reach of the door handle.

He then became satirical.

"Maybe Your Serene, Imperial Two-by-Fourness would care to suggest a
subject we can discuss?"

John took a step forward.

"Yes, I will," he said between his teeth. "You were talking to Miss
Silver about me this morning. She told me one or two of the things you
said, and they opened my eyes. Until I heard them, I had not quite
understood my position. I do now. You said, among other things, that I
was your hired man."

"It wasn't intended for you to hear," said Mr. Scobell, slightly
mollified, "and Betty shouldn't oughter have handed it to you. I don't
wonder you feel raw. I wouldn't say that sort of thing to a guy's face.
Sure, no. Tact's my middle name. But, since you have heard it, well--!"

"Don't apologize. You were quite right. I was a fool not to see it
before. No description could have been fairer. You might have said much
more. You might have added that I was nothing more than a steerer for a
gambling hell."

"Oh, come, Prince!"

There was a knock at the door. A footman entered, bearing, with a
detached air, as if he disclaimed all responsibility, a letter on a
silver tray.

Mr. Scobell slit the envelope, and began to read. As he did so his eyes
grew round, and his mouth slowly opened till his cigar stump, after
hanging for a moment from his lower lip, dropped off like an exhausted
bivalve and rolled along the carpet.

"Prince," he gasped, "she's gone. Betty!"

"Gone! What do you mean?"

"She's beaten it. She's half-way to Marseilles by now. Gee, and I saw
the darned boat going out!"

"She's gone!"

"This is from her. Listen what she says:

   "_By the time you read this I shall be gone. I am going back
   to America as quickly as I can. I am giving this to a boy to
   take to you directly the boat has started. Please do not try
   to bring me back. I would sooner die than marry the Prince._"

John started violently.

"What!" he cried.

Mr. Scobell nodded sympathy.

"That's what she says. She sure has it in bad for you. What does she
mean? Seeing you and she are old friends--"

"I don't understand. Why does she say that to you? Why should she think
that you knew that I had asked her to marry me?"

"Eh?" cried Mr. Scobell. "You asked her to marry you? And she turned
you down! Prince, this beats the band. Say, you and I must get together
and do something. The girl's mad. See here, you aren't wise to what's
been happening. I been fixing this thing up. I fetched you over here,
and then I fetched Betty, and I was going to have you two marry. I told
Betty all about it this morning."

John cut through his explanations with a sudden sharp cry. A blinding
blaze of understanding had flashed upon him. It was as if he had been
groping his way in a dark cavern and had stumbled unexpectedly into
brilliant sunlight. He understood everything now. Every word that Betty
had spoken, every gesture that she had made, had become amazingly
clear. He saw now why she had shrunk back from him, why her eyes had
worn that look. He dared not face the picture of himself as he must
have appeared in those eyes, the man whom Mr. Benjamin Scobell's Casino
was paying to marry her, the hired man earning his wages by speaking
words of love.

A feeling of physical sickness came over him. He held to the table for
support as he had held to the sandstone rock. And then came rage, rage
such as he had never felt before, rage that he had not thought himself
capable of feeling. It swept over him in a wave, pouring through his
veins and blinding him, and he clung to the table till his knuckles
whitened under the strain, for he knew that he was very near to murder.

A minute passed. He walked to the window, and stood there, looking out.
Vaguely he heard Mr. Scobell's voice at his back, talking on, but the
words had no meaning for him.

He had begun to think with a curious coolness. His detachment surprised
him. It was one of those rare moments in a man's life when, from the
outside, through a breach in that wall of excuses and self-deception
which he has been at such pains to build, he looks at himself
impartially.

The sight that John saw through the wall was not comforting. It was not
a heroic soul that, stripped of its defenses, shivered beneath the
scrutiny. In another mood he would have mended the breach, excusing and
extenuating, but not now. He looked at himself without pity, and saw
himself weak, slothful, devoid of all that was clean and fine, and a
bitter contempt filled him.

Outside the window, a blaze of color, Mervo smiled up at him, and
suddenly he found himself loathing its exotic beauty. He felt stifled.
This was no place for a man. A vision of clean winds and wide spaces
came to him.

And just then, at the foot of the hill, the dome of the Casino caught
the sun, and flashed out in a blaze of gold.

He swung round and faced Mr. Scobell. He had made up his mind.

The financier was still talking.

"So that's how it stands, Prince," he was saying, "and it's up to us to
get busy."

John looked at him.

"I intend to," he said.

"Good boy!" said the financier.

"To begin with, I shall run you out of this place, Mr. Scobell."

The other gasped.

"There is going to be a cleaning-up," John went on. "I've thought it
out. There will be no more gambling in Mervo."

"You're crazy with the heat!" gasped Mr. Scobell. "Abolish gambling?
You can't."

"I can. That concession of yours isn't worth the paper it's written on.
The Republic gave it to you. The Republic's finished. If you want to
conduct a Casino in Mervo, there's only one man who can give you
permission, and that's myself. The acts of the Republic are not binding
on me. For a week you have been gambling on this island without a
concession and now it's going to stop. Do you understand?"

"But, Prince, talk sense." Mr. Scobell's voice was almost tearful.
"It's you who don't understand. Do, for the love of Mike, come down off
the roof and talk sense. Do you suppose that these guys here will stand
for this? Not on your life. Not for a minute. See here. I'm not blaming
you. I know you don't know what you're saying. But listen here. You
must cut out this kind of thing. You mustn't get these ideas in your
head. You stick to your job, and don't butt in on other folks'. Do you
know how long you'd stay Prince of this joint if you started in to
monkey with my Casino? Just about long enough to let you pack a
collar-stud and a toothbrush into your grip. And after that there
wouldn't be any more Prince, sonnie. You stick to your job and I'll
stick to mine. You're a mighty good Prince for all that's required of
you. You're ornamental, and you've got get-up in you. You just keep
right on being a good boy, and don't start trying stunts off your own
beat, and you'll do fine. Don't forget that I'm the big noise here. I'm
old Grayback from 'way back in Mervo. See! I've only to twiddle my
fingers and there'll be a revolution and you for the Down-and-Out Club.
Don't you forget it, sonnie."

John shrugged his shoulders.

"I've said all I have to say. You've had your notice to quit. After
to-night the Casino is closed."

"But don't I tell you the people won't stand for it?"

"That's for them to decide. They may have some self-respect."

"They'll fire you!"

"Very well. That will prove that they have not."

"Prince, talk sense! You can't mean that you'll throw away a hundred
thousand dollars a year as if it was dirt!"

"It is dirt when it's made that way. We needn't discuss it any more."

"But, Prince!"

"It's finished."

"But, say--!"

John had left the room.

He had been gone several minutes before the financier recovered full
possession of his faculties.

When he did, his remarks were brief and to the point.

"Bug-house!" he gasped. "Abso-lutely bug-house!"




CHAPTER IX

MERVO CHANGES ITS CONSTITUTION


Humor, if one looks into it, is principally a matter of retrospect. In
after years John was wont to look back with amusement on the revolution
which ejected him from the throne of his ancestors. But at the time its
mirthfulness did not appeal to him. He was in a frenzy of restlessness.
He wanted Betty. He wanted to see her and explain. Explanations could
not restore him to the place he had held in her mind, but at least they
would show her that he was not the thing he had appeared.

Mervo had become a prison. He ached for America. But, before he could
go, this matter of the Casino must be settled. It was obvious that it
could only be settled in one way. He did not credit his subjects with
the high-mindedness that puts ideals first and money after. That
military and civilians alike would rally to a man round Mr. Scobell and
the Casino he was well aware. But this did not affect his determination
to remain till the last. If he went now, he would be like a boy who
makes a runaway ring at the doorbell. Until he should receive formal
notice of dismissal, he must stay, although every day had forty-eight
hours and every hour twice its complement of weary minutes.

So he waited, chafing, while Mervo examined the situation, turned it
over in its mind, discussed it, slept upon it, discussed it again, and
displayed generally that ponderous leisureliness which is the Mervian's
birthright.

Indeed, the earliest demonstration was not Mervian at all. It came from
the visitors to the island, and consisted of a deputation of four,
headed by the wizened little man, who had frowned at John in the Dutch
room on the occasion of his meeting with Betty, and a stolid individual
with a bald forehead and a walrus mustache.

The tone of the deputation was, from the first, querulous. The wizened
man had constituted himself spokesman. He introduced the party--the
walrus as Colonel Finch, the others as Herr von Mandelbaum and Mr.
Archer-Cleeve. His own name was Pugh, and the whole party, like the
other visitors whom they represented, had, it seemed, come to Mervo, at
great trouble and expense, to patronize the tables, only to find these
suddenly, without a word of warning, withdrawn from their patronage.
And what the deputation wished to know was, What did it all mean?

"We were amazed, sir--Your Highness," said Mr. Pugh. "We could not--we
cannot--understand it. The entire thing is a baffling mystery to us. We
asked the soldiers at the door. They referred us to Mr. Scobell. We
asked Mr. Scobell. He referred us to you. And now we have come, as the
representatives of our fellow visitors to this island, to ask Your
Highness what it means!"

"Have a cigar," said John, extending the box. Mr. Pugh waved aside the
preferred gift impatiently. Not so Herr von Mandelbaum, who slid
forward after the manner of one in quest of second base and retired
with his prize to the rear of the little army once more.

Mr. Archer-Cleeve, a young man with carefully parted fair hair and the
expression of a strayed sheep, contributed a remark.

"No, but I say, by Jove, you know, I mean really, you know, what?"

That was Mr. Archer-Cleeve upon the situation.

"We have not come here for cigars," said Mr. Pugh. "We have come here,
Your Highness, for an explanation."

"Of what?" said John.

Mr. Pugh made an impatient gesture.

"Do you question my right to rule this massive country as I think best,
Mr. Pugh?"

"It is a high-handed proceeding," said the wizened little man.

The walrus spoke for the first time.

"What say?" he murmured huskily.

"I said," repeated Mr. Pugh, raising his voice, "that it was a
high-handed proceeding, Colonel."

The walrus nodded heavily, in assent, with closed eyes.

"Yah," said Herr von Mandelbaum through the smoke.

John looked at the spokesman.

"You are from England, Mr. Pugh?"

"Yes, sir. I am a British citizen."

"Suppose some enterprising person began to run a gambling hell in
Piccadilly, would the authorities look on and smile?"

"That is an entirely different matter, sir. You are quibbling. In
England gambling is forbidden by law."

"So it is in Mervo, Mr. Pugh."

"Tchah!"

"What say?" said the walrus.

"I said 'Tchah!' Colonel."

"Why?" said the walrus.

"Because His Highness quibbled."

The walrus nodded approvingly.

"His Highness did nothing of the sort," said John. "Gambling is
forbidden in Mervo for the same reason that it is forbidden in England,
because it demoralizes the people."

"This is absurd, sir. Gambling has been permitted in Mervo for nearly a
year."

"But not by me, Mr. Pugh. The Republic certainly granted Mr. Scobell a
concession. But, when I came to the throne, it became necessary for him
to get a concession from me. I refused it. Hence the closed doors."

Mr. Archer-Cleeve once more. "But--" He paused. "Forgotten what I was
going to say," he said to the room at large.

Herr von Mandelbaum made some remark at the back of his throat, but was
ignored.

John spoke again.

"If you were a prince, Mr. Pugh, would you find it pleasant to be in
the pay of a gambling hell?"

"That is neither here nor--"

"On the contrary, it is, very much. I happen to have some self-respect.
I've only just found it out, it's true, but it's there all right. I
don't want to be a prince--take it from me, it's a much overrated
profession--but if I've got to be one, I'll specialize. I won't combine
it with being a bunco steerer on the side. As long as I am on the
throne, this high-toned crap-shooting will continue a back number."

"What say?" said the walrus.

"I said that, while I am on the throne here, people who feel it
necessary to chant 'Come, little seven!' must do it elsewhere."

"I don't understand you," said Mr. Pugh. "Your remarks are absolutely
unintelligible."

"Never mind. My actions speak for themselves. It doesn't matter how I
describe it--what it comes to is that the Casino is closed. You can
follow that? Mervo is no longer running wide open. The lid is on."

"Then let me tell you, sir--" Mr. Pugh brought a bony fist down with a
thump on the table--"that you are playing with fire. Understand me,
sir, we are not here to threaten. We are a peaceful deputation of
visitors. But I have observed your people, sir. I have watched them
narrowly. And let me tell you that you are walking on a volcano.
Already there are signs of grave discontent."

"Already!" cried John. "Already's good. I guess they call it going some
in this infernal country if they can keep awake long enough to take
action within a year after a thing has happened. I don't know if you
have any influence with the populace, Mr. Pugh--you seem a pretty warm
and important sort of person--but, if you have, do please ask them as a
favor to me to get a move on. It's no good saying that I'm walking on a
volcano. I'm from Missouri. I want to be shown. Let's see this volcano.
Bring it out and make it trot around."

"You may jest--"

"Who's jesting? I'm not. It's a mighty serious thing for me. I want to
get away. The only thing that's keeping me in this forsaken place is
this delay. These people are obviously going to fire me sooner or
later. Why on earth can't they do it at once?"

"What say?" said the walrus.

"You may well ask, Colonel," said Mr. Pugh, staring amazed at John.
"His Highness appears completely to have lost his senses."

The walrus looked at John as if expecting some demonstration of
practical insanity, but, finding him outwardly calm, closed his eyes
and nodded heavily again.

"I must say, don't you know," said Mr. Archer-Cleeve, "it beats me,
what?"

The entire deputation seemed to consider that John's last speech needed
footnotes.

John was in no mood to supply them. His patience was exhausted.

"I guess we'll call this conference finished," he said. "You've been
told all you came to find out,--my reason for closing the Casino. If it
doesn't strike you as a satisfactory reason, that's up to you. Do what
you like about it. The one thing you may take as a solid fact--and you
can spread it around the town as much as ever you please--is that it is
closed, and is not going to be reopened while I'm ruler here."

The deputation then withdrew, reluctantly.

       *       *       *       *       *

On the following morning there came a note from Mr. Scobell. It was
brief. "Come on down before the shooting begins," it ran. John tore it
up.

It was on the same evening that definite hostilities may be said to
have begun.

Between the Palace and the market-place there was a narrow street of
flagged stone, which was busy during the early part of the day but
deserted after sundown. Along this street, at about seven o'clock, John
was strolling with a cigarette, when he was aware of a man crouching,
with his back toward him. So absorbed was the man in something which he
was writing on the stones that he did not hear John's approach, and the
latter, coming up from behind was enabled to see over his shoulder. In
large letters of chalk he read the words: _"Conspuez le Prince."_

John's knowledge of French was not profound, but he could understand
this, and it annoyed him.

As he looked, the man, squatting on his heels, bent forward to touch
up one of the letters. If he had been deliberately posing, he could
not have assumed a more convenient attitude.

John had been a footballer before he was a prince. The temptation was
too much for him. He drew back his foot--

There was a howl and a thud, and John resumed his stroll. The first gun
from Fort Sumter had been fired.

       *       *       *       *       *

Early next morning a window at the rear of the palace was broken by a
stone, and toward noon one of the soldiers on guard in front of the
Casino was narrowly missed by an anonymous orange. For Mervo this was
practically equivalent to the attack on the Bastille, and John, when
the report of the atrocities was brought to him, became hopeful.

But the effort seemed temporarily to have exhausted the fury of the
mob. The rest of that day and the whole of the next passed without
sensation.

After breakfast on the following morning Mr. Crump paid a visit to the
Palace. John was glad to see him. The staff of the Palace were loyal,
but considered as cheery companions, they were handicapped by the fact
that they spoke no English, while John spoke no French.

Mr. Crump was the bearer of another note from Mr. Scobell. This time
John tore it up unread, and, turning to the secretary, invited him to
sit down and make himself at home.

Sipping a cocktail and smoking one of John's cigars, Mr. Crump became
confidential.

"This is a queer business," he said. "Old Ben is chewing pieces out of
the furniture up there. He's mad clean through. He's losing money all
the while the people are making up their minds about this thing, and it
beats him why they're so slow."

"It beats me, too. I don't believe these hook-worm victims ever turned
my father out. Or, if they did, somebody must have injected radium into
them first. I'll give them another couple of days, and, if they haven't
fixed it by then, I'll go, and leave them to do what they like about
it."

"Go! Do you want to go?"

"Of course I want to go! Do you think I like stringing along in this
musical comedy island? I'm crazy to get back to America. I don't blame
you, Crump, because it was not your fault, but, by George! if I had
known what you were letting me in for when you carried me off here, I'd
have called up the police reserves. Hello! What's this?"

He rose to his feet as the sound of agitated voices came from the other
side of the door. The next moment it flew open, revealing General
Poineau and an assorted group of footmen and other domestics.
Excitement seemed to be in the air.

General Poineau rushed forward into the room, and flung his arms above
his head. Then he dropped them to his side, and shrugged his shoulders,
finishing in an attitude reminiscent of Plate 6 ("Despair") in "The
Home Reciter."

"_Mon Prince!"_ he moaned.

A perfect avalanche of French burst from the group outside the door.

"Crump!" cried John. "Stand by me, Crump! Get busy! This is where you
make your big play. Never mind the chorus gentlemen in the passage.
Concentrate yourself on Poineau. What's he talking about? I believe
he's come to tell me the people have wakened up. Offer him a cocktail.
What's the French for corpse-reviver? Get busy, Crump."

The general had begun to speak rapidly, with a wealth of gestures. It
astonished John that Mr. Crump could follow the harangue as apparently
he did.

"Well?" said John.

Mr. Crump looked grave.

"He says there is a large mob in the market-place. They are talking--"

"They would be!"

"--of moving in force on the Palace. The Palace Guards have gone over
to the people. General Poineau urges you to disguise yourself and
escape while there is time. You will be safe at his villa till the
excitement subsides, when you can be smuggled over to France during the
night--"

"Not for mine," said John, shaking his head. "It's mighty good of you,
General, and I appreciate it, but I can't wait till night. The boat
leaves for Marseilles in another hour. I'll catch that. I can manage it
comfortably. I'll go up and pack my grip. Crump, entertain the General
while I'm gone, will you? I won't be a moment."

But as he left the room there came through the open window the mutter
of a crowd. He stopped. General Poineau whipped out his sword, and
brought it to the salute. John patted him on the shoulder.

"You're a sport, General," he said, "but we sha'n't want it. Come
along, Crump. Come and help me address the multitude."

The window of the room looked out on to a square. There was a small
balcony with a stone parapet. As John stepped out, a howl of rage burst
from the mob.

John walked on to the balcony, and stood looking down on them, resting
his arms on the parapet. The howl was repeated, and from somewhere at
the back of the crowd came the sharp crack of a rifle, and a shot, the
first and last of the campaign, clipped a strip of flannel from the
collar of his coat and splashed against the wall.

A broad smile spread over his face.

If he had studied for a year, he could not have hit on a swifter or
more effective method of quieting the mob. There was something so
engaging and friendly in his smile that the howling died away and fists
that has been shaken unclenched themselves and fell. There was an
expectant silence in the square.

John beckoned to Crump, who came on to the balcony with some
reluctance, being mistrustful of the unseen sportsman with the rifle.

"Tell 'em it's all right, Crump, and that there's no call for any fuss.
From their manner I gather that I am no longer needed on this throne.
Ask them if that's right?"

A small man, who appeared to be in command of the crowd, stepped
forward as the secretary finished speaking, and shouted some words
which drew a murmur of approval from his followers.

"He wants to know," interpreted Mr. Crump, "if you will allow the
Casino to open again."

"Tell him no, but add that I shall be tickled to death to abdicate, if
that's what they want. Speed them up, old man. Tell them to make up
their minds on the jump, because I want to catch that boat. Don't let
them get to discussing it, or they'll stand there talking till sunset.
Yes or no. That's the idea."

There was a moment's surprised silence when Mr. Crump had spoken. The
Mervian mind was unused to being hustled in this way. Then a voice
shouted, as it were tentatively, "_Vive la Republique!"_ and at
once the cry was taken up on all sides.

John beamed down on them.

"That's right," he said. "Bully! I knew you could get a move on as
quick as anyone else, if you gave your minds to it. This is what I call
something like a revolution. It's a model to every country in the
world. But I guess we must close down the entertainment now, or I shall
be missing the boat. Will you tell them, Crump, that any citizen who
cares for a drink and a cigar will find it in the Palace. Tell the
household staff to stand by to pull corks. It's dry work
revolutionizing. And now I really must be going. I've run it mighty
fine. Slip one of these fellows down there half a dollar and send him
to fetch a cab. I must step lively."

       *       *       *       *       *

Five minutes later the revolutionists, obviously embarrassed and ill at
ease, were sheepishly gulping down their refreshment beneath the stony
eye of the majordomo and his assistants, while upstairs in the state
bedroom the deposed Prince was whistling "Dixie" and packing the royal
pajamas into a suitcase.




CHAPTER X

MRS. OAKLEY


Betty, when she stepped on board the boat for Marseilles, had had no
definite plan of action. She had been caught up and swept away by an
over-mastering desire for escape that left no room in her mind for
thoughts of the morrow. It was not till the train was roaring its way
across southern France that she found herself sufficiently composed to
review her position and make plans.

She would not go back. She could not. The words she had used in her
letter to Mr. Scobell were no melodramatic rhetoric. They were a plain
and literal statement of the truth. Death would be infinitely
preferable to life at Mervo on her stepfather's conditions.

But, that settled, what then? What was she to do? The gods are
businesslike. They sell; they do not give. And for what they sell they
demand a heavy price. We may buy life of them in many ways: with our
honor, our health, our independence, our happiness, with our brains or
with our hands. But somehow or other, in whatever currency we may
choose to pay it, the price must be paid.

Betty faced the problem. What had she? What could she give? Her
independence? That, certainly. She saw now what a mockery that fancied
independence had been. She had come and gone as she pleased, her path
smoothed by her stepfather's money, and she had been accustomed to
consider herself free. She had learned wisdom now, and could understand
that it was only by sacrificing such artificial independence that she
could win through to freedom. The world was a market, and the only
independent people in it were those who had a market value.

What was her market value? What could she do? She looked back at her
life, and saw that she had dabbled. She had a little of most
things--enough of nothing. She could sketch a little, play a little,
sing a little, write a little. Also--and, as she remembered it, she
felt for the first time a tremor of hope--she could use a typewriter
reasonably well. That one accomplishment stood out in the welter of her
thoughts, solid and comforting, like a rock in a quicksand. It was
something definite, something marketable, something of value for which
persons paid.

The tremor of hope did not comfort her long. Her mood was critical, and
she saw that in this, her one accomplishment, she was, as in everything
else, an amateur. She could not compete against professionals. She
closed her eyes, and had a momentary vision of those professionals,
keen of face, leathern of finger, rattling out myriads of words at a
dizzy speed. And, at that, all her courage suddenly broke; she drooped
forlornly, and, hiding her face on the cushioned arm-rest, she began to
cry.

Tears are the Turkish bath of the soul. Nature never intended woman to
pass dry-eyed through crises of emotion. A casual stranger, meeting
Betty on her way to the boat, might have thought that she looked a
little worried,--nothing more. The same stranger, if he had happened to
enter the compartment at this juncture, would have set her down at
sight as broken-hearted beyond recovery. Yet such is the magic of tears
that it was at this very moment that Betty was beginning to be
conscious of a distinct change for the better. Her heart still ached,
and to think of John even for an instant was to feel the knife turning
in the wound, but her brain was clear; the panic fear had gone, and she
faced the future resolutely once more. For she had just remembered the
existence of Mrs. Oakley.

       *       *       *       *       *

Only once in her life had Betty met her stepfather's celebrated aunt,
and the meeting had taken place nearly twelve years ago. The figure
that remained in her memory was of a pale-eyed, grenadier-like old
lady, almost entirely surrounded by clocks. It was these clocks that
had impressed her most. She was too young to be awed by the knowledge
that the tall old woman who stared at her just like a sandy cat she had
once possessed was one of the three richest women in the whole wide
world. She only remembered thinking that the finger which emerged from
the plaid shawl and prodded her cheek was unpleasantly bony. But the
clocks had absorbed her. It was as if all the clocks in the world had
been gathered together into that one room. There had been big clocks,
with almost human faces; small, perky clocks; clocks of strange shape;
and one dingy, medium-sized clock in particular which had made her cry
out with delight. Her visit had chanced to begin shortly before eleven
in the morning, and she had not been in the room ten minutes before
there was a whirring, and the majority of the clocks began to announce
the hour, each after its own fashion--some with a slow bloom, some with
a rapid, bell-like sound. But the medium-sized clock, unexpectedly
belying its appearance of being nothing of particular importance, had
performed its task in a way quite distinct from the others. It had
suddenly produced from its interior a shabby little gold man with a
trumpet, who had blown eleven little blasts before sliding backward
into his house and shutting the door after him. Betty had waited in
rapt silence till he finished, and had then shouted eagerly for more.

Just as the beginner at golf may effect a drive surpassing that of the
expert, so may a child unconsciously eclipse the practised courtier.
There was no soft side to Mrs. Oakley's character, as thousands of
suave would-be borrowers had discovered in their time, but there was a
soft spot. To general praise of her collection of clocks she was
impervious; it was unique, and she did not require you to tell her so,
but exhibit admiration for the clock with the little trumpeter, and she
melted. It was the one oasis of sentiment in the Sahara of her mental
outlook, the grain of radium in the pitchblende. Years ago it had stood
in a little New England farmhouse, and a child had clapped her hands
and shouted, even as Betty had done, when the golden man slid from his
hiding-place. Much water had flowed beneath the bridge since those
days. Many things had happened to the child. But she still kept her old
love for the trumpeter. The world knew nothing of this. The world, if
it had known, would have been delighted to stand before the clock and
admire it volubly, by the day. But it had no inkling of the trumpeter's
importance, and, when it came to visit Mrs. Oakley, was apt to waste
its time showering compliments on the obvious beauties of the queens of
the collection.

But Betty, ignoring these, jumped up and down before the dingy clock,
demanding further trumpetings, and, turning to Mrs. Oakley, as one
possessing influence, she was aware of a curious, intent look in the
old lady's eyes.

"Do you like that clock, my dear?" said Mrs. Oakley.

"Yes! Oh, yes!"

"Perhaps you shall have it some day, honey."

Betty was probably the only person who had been admitted to that room
who would not, on the strength of this remark, have steered the
conversation gently to the subject of a small loan. Instead, she ran to
the old lady, and kissed her. And, as to what had happened after that,
memory was vague. There had been some talk, she remembered, of a dollar
to buy candy, but it had come to nothing, and now that she had grown
older and had read the frequent paragraphs and anecdotes that appeared
in the papers about her stepfather's aunt, she could understand why.
She knew now what everybody knew of Mrs. Oakley--her history, her
eccentricities, and the miserliness of which the papers spoke with a
satirical lightness that seemed somehow but a thin disguise for what
was almost admiration.

Mrs. Oakley was one of two children, a son and a daughter, of a Vermont
farmer. Of her early life no records remain. Her public history begins
when she was twenty-two and came to New York. After two years'
struggling, she found a position in the firm of one Redgrave. Those who
knew her then speak of her as a tall, handsome girl, hard and intensely
ambitious. From contemporary accounts she seems to have out-Nietzsched
Nietzsche. Nietzsche's vision stopped short at the superman. Jane
Scobell was a superwoman. She had all the titanic selfishness and
indifference to the comfort of others which marks the superman, and, in
addition, undeniable good looks and a knowledge of the weaknesses of
men. Poor Mr. Redgrave had not had a chance from the start. She married
him within a year. Two years later, catching the bulls in an unguarded
moment, Mr. Redgrave despoiled them of a trifle over three million
dollars, and died the same day of an apoplectic stroke caused by the
excitement of victory. His widow, after a tour in Europe, returned to
the United States and visited Pittsburg. Any sociologist will support
the statement that it is difficult, almost impossible, for an
attractive widow, visiting Pittsburg, not to marry a millionaire, even
if she is not particularly anxious to do so. If such an act is the
primary object of her visit, the thing becomes a certainty. Groping
through the smoke, Jane Redgrave seized and carried off no less a
quarry than Alexander Baynes Oakley, a widower, whose income was one of
the seven wonders of the world. In the fullness of time he, too, died,
and Jane Oakley was left with the sole control of two vast fortunes.

She did not marry again, though it was rumored that it took three
secretaries, working nine hours a day, to cope with the written
proposals, and that butler after butler contracted clergyman's sore
throat through denying admittance to amorous callers. In the ten years
after Alexander Baynes' death, every impecunious aristocrat in the
civilized world must have made his dash for the matrimonial pole. But
her pale eyes looked them over, and dismissed them.

During those early years she was tempted once or twice to speculation.
A failure in a cotton deal not only cured her of this taste, but seems
to have marked the point in her career when her thoughts began to turn
to parsimony. Until then she had lived in some state, but now,
gradually at first, then swiftly, she began to cut down her expenses.
Now we find her in an apartment in West Central Park, next in a
Washington Square hotel, then in a Harlem flat, and finally--her last,
fixed abiding-place--in a small cottage on Staten Island.

It was a curious life that she led, this woman who could have bought
kingdoms if she had willed it. A Swedish maid-of-all-work was her only
companion. By day she would walk in her little garden, or dust, arrange
and wind up her clocks. At night, she would knit, or read one of the
frequent reports that arrived at the cottage from charity workers on
the East Side. Those were her two hobbies, and her only
extravagances--clocks and charity.

Her charity had its limitations. In actual money she expended little.
She was a theoretical philanthropist. She lent her influence, her time,
and her advice, but seldom her bank balance. Arrange an entertainment
for the delectation of the poor, and you would find her on the
platform, but her name would not be on the list of subscribers to the
funds. She would deliver a lecture on thrift to an audience of factory
girls, and she would give them a practical example of what she
preached.

Yet, with all its limitations, her charity was partly genuine. Her mind
was like a country in the grip of civil war. One-half of her sincerely
pitied the poor, burned at any story of oppression, and cried "Give!"
but the other cried "Halt!" and held her back, and between the two she
fell.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was to this somewhat unpromising haven of refuge that Betty's mind
now turned in her trouble. She did not expect great things. She could
not have said exactly what she did expect. But, at least, the cottage
on Staten Island offered a resting-place on her journey, even if it
could not be the journey's end. Her mad dash from Mervo ceased to be
objectless. It led somewhere.




CHAPTER XI

A LETTER OF INTRODUCTION


New York, revisited, had much the same effect on Betty as it had had on
John during his first morning of independence. As the liner came up the
bay, and the great buildings stood out against the clear blue of the
sky, she felt afraid and lonely. That terror which is said to attack
immigrants on their first sight of the New York sky-line came to her,
as she leaned on the rail, and with it a feeling of utter misery. By a
continual effort during the voyage she had kept her thoughts from
turning to John, but now he rose up insistently before her, and she
realized all that had gone out of her life.

She rebelled against the mad cruelty of the fate which had brought them
together again. It seemed to her now that she must always have loved
him, but it had been such a vague, gentle thing, this love, before that
last meeting--hardly more than a pleasant accompaniment to her life,
something to think about in idle moments, a help and a support when
things were running crosswise. She had been so satisfied with it, so
content to keep him a mere memory. It seemed so needless and wanton to
destroy her illusion.

Of love as a wild-beast passion, tearing and torturing quite ordinary
persons like herself, she had always been a little sceptical. The great
love poems of the world, when she read them, had always left her with
the feeling that their authors were of different clay from herself and
had no common meeting ground with her. She had seen her friends fall in
love, as they called it, and it had been very pretty and charming, but
as far removed from the frenzies of the poets as an amateur's snapshot
of Niagara from the cataract itself. Elsa Keith, for instance, was
obviously very fond and proud of Marvin, but she seemed perfectly
placid about it. She loved, but she could still spare half an hour for
the discussion of a new frock. Her soul did not appear to have been
revolutionized in any way.

Gradually Betty had come to the conclusion that love, in the full sense
of the word, was one of the things that did not happen. And now, as if
to punish her presumption, it had leaped from hiding and seized her.

There was nothing exaggerated or unintelligible in the poets now. They
ceased to be inhabitants of another world, swayed by curiously complex
emotions. They were her brothers--ordinary men with ordinary feelings
and a strange gift for expressing them. She knew now that it was
possible to hate the man you loved and to love the man you hated, to
ache for the sight of someone even while you fled from him.

It did not take her long to pass the Customs. A small grip constituted
her entire baggage. Having left this in the keeping of the amiable
proprietor of a near-by delicatessen store, she made her way to the
ferry.

Her first enquiry brought her to the cottage. Mrs. Oakley was a
celebrity on Staten Island.

At the door she paused for a moment, then knocked.

The Swede servant, she who had been there at her former visit, twelve
years ago, received her stolidly. Mrs. Oakley was dusting her clocks.

"Ask her if she can see me," said Betty. "I'm--" great step-niece
sounded too ridiculous--"I'm her niece," she said.

The handmaid went and returned, stolid as ever. "Ay tal her vat yu say
about niece, and she say she not knowing any niece," she announced.

Betty amended the description, and presently the Swede returned once
more, and motioned her to enter.

Like so many scenes of childhood, the room of the clocks was sharply
stamped on Betty's memory, and, as she came into it now, it seemed to
her that nothing had changed. There were the clocks, all round the
walls, of every shape and size, the big clocks with the human faces and
the small, perky clocks. There was the dingy, medium-sized clock that
held the trumpeter. And there, looking at her with just the old
sandy-cat expression in her pale eyes, was Mrs. Oakley.

Even the possession of an income of eighteen million dollars and a
unique collection of clocks cannot place a woman above the making of
the obvious remark.

"How you have grown!" said Mrs. Oakley.

The words seemed to melt the chill that had gathered around Betty's
heart. She had been prepared to enter into long explanations, and the
knowledge that these would not be required was very comforting.

"Do you remember me?" she exclaimed.

"You are the little girl who clapped her hands at the trumpeter, but
you are not little now."

"I'm not so very big," said Betty, smiling. She felt curiously at home,
and pity for the loneliness of this strange old woman caused her to
forget her own troubles.

"You look pretty when you smile," said Mrs. Oakley thoughtfully. She
continued to look closely at her. "You are in trouble," she said.

Betty met her eyes frankly.

"Yes," she said.

The old woman bent her head over a Sevres china clock, and stroked it
tenderly with her feather duster.

"Why did you run away?" she asked without looking up.

Betty had a feeling that the ground was being cut from beneath her
feet. She had expected to have to explain who she was and why she had
come, and behold, both were unnecessary. It was uncanny. And then the
obvious explanation occurred to her.

"Did my stepfather cable?" she asked.

Mrs. Oakley laid down the feather duster and, opening a drawer,
produced some sheets of paper--to the initiated eye plainly one of Mr.
Scobell's lengthy messages.

"A wickedly extravagant cable," she said, frowning at it. "He could
have expressed himself perfectly well at a quarter of the expense."

Betty began to read. The dimple on her chin appeared for a moment as
she did so. The tone of the message was so obsequious. There was no
trace of the old peremptory note in it. The words "dearest aunt"
occurred no fewer than six times in the course of the essay, its author
being apparently reckless of the fact that it was costing him half a
dollar a time. Mrs. Oakley had been quite right in her criticism. The
gist of the cable was, "_Betty has run away to America dearest aunt
ridiculous is sure to visit you please dearest aunt do not encourage
her_." The rest was pure padding.

Mrs. Oakley watched her with a glowering eye. "If Bennie Scobell," she
soliloquized, "imagines that he can dictate to me--" She ceased,
leaving an impressive hiatus. Unhappy Mr. Scobell, convicted of
dictation even after three dollars' worth of "dearest aunt!"

Betty handed back the cable. Her chin, emblem of war, was tilted and
advanced.

"I'll tell you why I ran away, Aunt," she said.

Mrs. Oakley listened to her story in silence. Betty did not relate it
at great length, for with every word she spoke, the thought of John
stabbed her afresh. She omitted much that has been told in this
chronicle. But she disclosed the essential fact, that Napoleonic Mr.
Scobell had tried to force her into a marriage with a man she did
not--she hesitated at the word--did not respect, she concluded.

Mrs. Oakley regarded her inscrutably for a while before replying.

"Respect!" she said at last. "I have never met a man in my life whom I
could respect. Harpies! Every one of them! Every one of them! Every one
of them!"

She was muttering to herself. It is possible that her thoughts were
back with those persevering young aristocrats of her second widowhood.
Certainly, if she had sometimes displayed a touch of the pirate in her
dealings with man, man, it must be said in fairness, had not always
shown his best side to her.

"Respect!" she muttered again. "Did you like him, this Prince of
yours?"

Betty's eyes filled. She made no reply.

"Well, never mind," said Mrs. Oakley. "Don't cry, child! I'm not going
to press you. You must have hated him or else loved him very much, or
you would never have run away.... Dictate to me!" she broke off,
half-aloud, her mind evidently once more on Mr. Scobell's unfortunate
cable.

Betty could bear it no longer.

"I loved him!" she cried. "I loved him!"

She was shaking with dry sobs. She felt the old woman's eyes upon her,
but she could not stop.

A sudden whirr cut through the silence. One of the large clocks near
the door was beginning to strike the hour. Instantly the rest began to
do the same, till the room was full of the noise. And above the din
there sounded sharp and clear the note of the little trumpet.

The noise died away with metallic echoings.

"Honey!"

It was a changed voice that spoke. Betty looked up, and saw that the
eyes that met hers were very soft. She moved quickly to the old woman's
side.

"Honey, I'm going to tell you something about myself that nobody dreams
of. Betty, when I was your age, _I_ ran away from a man because I
loved him. It was just a little village tragedy, my dear. I think he
was fond of me, but father was poor and her folks were the great people
of the place, and he married her. And I ran away, like you, and went to
New York."

Betty pressed her hand. It was trembling.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered.

"I went to New York because I wanted to kill my heart. And I killed it.
There's only one way. Work! Work! Work!" She was sitting bolt upright,
and the soft look had gone out of her eyes. They were hard and fiery
under the drawn brows. "Work! Ah, I worked! I never rested. For two
years. Two whole years. It fought back at me. It tore me to bits. But I
wouldn't stop. I worked on, I killed it."

She stopped, quivering. Betty was cold with a nameless dismay. She felt
as if she were standing in the dark on the brink of an abyss.

The old woman began to speak again.

"Child, it's the same with you. Your heart's tearing you. Don't let it!
It will get worse and worse if you are afraid of it. Fight it! Kill it!
Work!"

She stopped again, clenching and unclenching her fingers, as if she
were strangling some living thing. There was silence for a long moment.

"What can you do?" she asked suddenly.

Her voice was calm and unemotional again. The abruptness of the
transition from passion to the practical took Betty aback. She could
not speak.

"There must be something," continued Mrs. Oakley. "When I was your age
I had taught myself bookkeeping, shorthand, and typewriting. What can
you do? Can you use a typewriter?"

Blessed word!

"Yes," said Betty promptly.

"Well?"

"Not very well?"

"H'm. Well, I expect you will do it well enough for Mr. Renshaw--on my
recommendation. I'll give you a letter to him. He is the editor of a
small weekly paper. I don't know how much he will offer you, but take
it and _work!_ You'll find him pleasant. I have met him at charity
organization meetings on the East Side. He's useful at the
entertainments--does conjuring tricks--stupid, but they seem to amuse
people. You'll find him pleasant. There."

She had been writing the letter of introduction during the course of
these remarks. At the last word she blotted it, and placed it in an
envelope.

"That's the address," she said. "J. Brabazon Renshaw, Office of
_Peaceful Moments_. Take it to him now. Good-by."

It was as if she were ashamed of her late display of emotion. She spoke
abruptly, and her pale eyes were expressionless. Betty thanked her and
turned to go.

"Tell me how you get on," said Mrs. Oakley.

"Yes," said Betty.

"And _work_. Keep on working!"

There was a momentary return of her former manner as she spoke the
words, and Betty wavered. She longed to say something comforting,
something that would show that she understood.

Mrs. Oakley had taken up the feather duster again.

"Steena will show you out," she said curtly. And Betty was aware of the
stolid Swede in the doorway. The interview was plainly at an end.

"Good-by, Aunt," she said, "and thank you ever so much--for
everything."




CHAPTER XII

"PEACEFUL MOMENTS"


The man in the street did not appear to know it, but a great crisis was
imminent in New York journalism.

Everything seemed much as usual in the city. The cars ran blithely on
Broadway. Newsboys shouted their mystic slogan, "Wuxtry!" with
undiminished vim. Society thronged Fifth Avenue without a furrow on its
brow. At a thousand street corners a thousand policemen preserved their
air of massive superiority to the things of this world. Of all the four
million not one showed the least sign of perturbation.

Nevertheless, the crisis was at hand. Mr. J. Brabazon Renshaw,
Editor-in-chief of _Peaceful Moments_, was about to leave his post
and start on a three-months' vacation.

_Peaceful Moments_, as its name (an inspiration of Mr. Renshaw's
own) was designed to imply, was a journal of the home. It was the sort
of paper which the father of the family is expected to take back with
him from the office and read aloud to the chicks before bedtime under
the shade of the rubber plant.

Circumstances had left the development of the paper almost entirely to
Mr. Renshaw. Its contents were varied. There was a "Moments in the
Nursery" page, conducted by Luella Granville Waterman and devoted
mainly to anecdotes of the family canary, by Jane (aged six), and
similar works of the younger set. There was a "Moments of Meditation"
page, conducted by the Reverend Edwin T. Philpotts; a "Moments among
the Masters" page, consisting of assorted chunks looted from the
literature of the past, when foreheads were bulged and thoughts
profound, by Mr. Renshaw himself; one or two other special pages; a
short story; answers to correspondents on domestic matters; and a
"Moments of Mirth" page, conducted by one B. Henderson Asher--a very
painful affair.

The proprietor of this admirable journal was that Napoleon of finance,
Mr. Benjamin Scobell.

That this should have been so is but one proof of the many-sidedness of
that great man.

Mr. Scobell had founded _Peaceful Moments_ at an early stage in
his career, and it was only at very rare intervals nowadays that he
recollected that he still owned it. He had so many irons in the fire
now that he had no time to waste his brain tissues thinking about a
paper like _Peaceful Moments_. It was one of his failures. It
certainly paid its way and brought him a small sum each year, but to
him it was a failure, a bombshell that had fizzled.

He had intended to do big things with _Peaceful Moments_. He had
meant to start a new epoch in the literature of Manhattan.

"I gottan idea," he had said to Miss Scobell. "All this yellow
journalism--red blood and all that--folks are tired of it. They want
something milder. Wholesome, see what I mean? There's money in it. Guys
make a roll too big to lift by selling soft drinks, don't they? Well,
I'm going to run a soft-drink paper. See?"

The enterprise had started well. To begin with, he had found the ideal
editor. He had met Mr. Renshaw at a down-East gathering presided over
by Mrs. Oakley, and his Napoleonic eye had seen in J. Brabazon the
seeds of domestic greatness. Before they parted, he had come to terms
with him. Nor had the latter failed to justify his intuition. He made
an admirable editor. It was not Mr. Renshaw's fault that the new paper
had failed to electrify America. It was the public on whom the
responsibility for the failure must be laid. They spoiled the whole
thing. Certain of the faithful subscribed, it is true, and continued to
subscribe, but the great heart of the public remained untouched. The
great heart of the public declined to be interested in the meditations
of Mr. Philpotts and the humor of Mr. B. Henderson Asher, and continued
to spend its money along the bad old channels. The thing began to bore
Mr. Scobell. He left the conduct of the journal more and more to Mr.
Renshaw, until finally--it was just after the idea for extracting gold
from sea water had struck him--he put the whole business definitely out
of his mind. (His actual words were that he never wanted to see or hear
of the darned thing again, inasmuch as it gave him a pain in the neck.)
Mr. Renshaw was given a free hand as to the editing, and all matters of
finance connected with the enterprise were placed in the hands of Mr.
Scobell's solicitors, who had instructions to sell the journal, if, as
its owner crisply put it, they could find any chump who was enough of a
darned chump to give real money for it. Up to the present the great
army of chumps had fallen short of this ideal standard of darned
chumphood.

Ever since this parting of the ways, Mr. Renshaw had been in his
element. Under his guidance _Peaceful Moments_ had reached a level
of domesticity which made other so-called domestic journals look like
sporting supplements. But at last the work had told upon him. Whether
it was the effort of digging into the literature of the past every
week, or the strain of reading B. Henderson Asher's "Moments of Mirth"
is uncertain. At any rate, his labors had ended in wrecking his health
to such an extent that the doctor had ordered him three months'
complete rest, in the woods or mountains, whichever he preferred; and,
being a farseeing man, who went to the root of things, had absolutely
declined to consent to Mr. Renshaw's suggestion that he keep in touch
with the paper during his vacation. He was adamant. He had seen copies
of _Peaceful Moments_ once or twice, and refused to permit a man
in Mr. Renshaw's state of health to come in contact with Luella
Granville Waterman's "Moments in the Nursery" and B. Henderson Asher's
"Moments of Mirth."

"You must forget that such a paper exists," he said. "You must dismiss
the whole thing from your mind, live in the open, and develop some
flesh and muscle."

Mr. Renshaw had bowed before the sentence, howbeit gloomily, and now,
on the morning of Betty's departure from Mrs. Oakley's house with the
letter of introduction, was giving his final instructions to his
temporary successor.

This temporary successor in the editorship was none other than John's
friend, Rupert Smith, late of the _News_.

Smith, on leaving Harvard, had been attracted by newspaper work, and
had found his first billet on a Western journal of the type whose
society column consists of such items as "Jim Thompson was to town
yesterday with a bunch of other cheap skates. We take this opportunity
of once more informing Jim that he is a liar and a skunk," and whose
editor works with a pistol on his desk and another in his hip-pocket.
Graduating from this, he had proceeded to a reporter's post on a daily
paper in Kentucky, where there were blood feuds and other Southern
devices for preventing life from becoming dull. All this was good, but
even while he enjoyed these experiences, New York, the magnet, had been
tugging at him, and at last, after two eventful years on the Kentucky
paper, he had come East, and eventually won through to the staff of the
_News_.

His presence in the office of _Peaceful Moments_ was due to the
uncomfortable habit of most of the New York daily papers of cutting
down their staff of reporters during the summer. The dismissed had, to
sustain them, the knowledge that they would return, like the swallows,
anon, and be received back into their old places; but in the meantime
they suffered the inconvenience of having to support themselves as best
they could. Smith, when, in the company of half-a-dozen others, he had
had to leave the _News_, had heard of the vacant post of assistant
editor on _Peaceful Moments_, and had applied for and received it.
Whereby he was more fortunate than some of his late colleagues; though,
as the character of his new work unrolled itself before him, he was
frequently doubtful on that point. For the atmosphere of _Peaceful
Moments_, however wholesome, was certainly not exciting, and his
happened to be essentially a nature that needed the stimulus of
excitement. Even in Park Row, the denizens of which street are rarely
slaves to the conventional and safe, he had a well-established
reputation in this matter. Others of his acquaintances welcomed
excitement when it came to them in the course of the day's work, but it
was Smith's practise to go in search of it. He was a young man of
spirit and resource.

His appearance, to those who did not know him, hardly suggested this.
He was very tall and thin, with a dark, solemn face. He was a purist in
the matter of clothes, and even in times of storm and stress presented
an immaculate appearance to the world. In his left eye, attached to a
cord, he wore a monocle.

Through this, at the present moment, he was gazing benevolently at Mr.
Renshaw, as the latter fussed about the office in the throes of
departure. To the editor's rapid fire of advice and warning he listened
with the pleased and indulgent air of a father whose infant son frisks
before him. Mr. Renshaw interested him. To Smith's mind Mr. Renshaw,
put him in any show you pleased, would alone have been worth the price
of admission.

"Well," chirruped the holiday-maker--he was a little man with a long
neck, and he always chirruped--"Well, I think that is all, Mr. Smith.
Oh, ah, yes! The stenographer. You will need a new stenographer."

The _Peaceful Moments_ stenographer had resigned her position
three days before, in order to get married.

"Unquestionably, Comrade Renshaw," said Smith. "A blonde."

Mr. Renshaw looked annoyed.

"I have told you before, Mr. Smith, I object to your addressing me as
Comrade. It is not--it is not--er--fitting."

Smith waved a deprecating hand.

"Say no more," he said. "I will correct the habit. I have been studying
the principles of Socialism somewhat deeply of late, and I came to the
conclusion that I must join the cause. It looked good to me. You work
for the equal distribution of property, and start in by swiping all you
can and sitting on it. A noble scheme. Me for it. But I am interrupting
you."

Mr. Renshaw had to pause for a moment to reorganize his ideas.

"I think--ah, yes. I think it would be best perhaps to wait for a day
or two in case Mrs. Oakley should recommend someone. I mentioned the
vacancy in the office to her, and she said she would give the matter
her attention. I should prefer, if possible, to give the place to her
nominee. She--"

"--has eighteen million a year," said Smith. "I understand. Scatter
seeds of kindness."

Mr. Renshaw looked at him sharply. Smith's face was solemn and
thoughtful.

"Nothing of the kind," the editor said, after a pause. "I should prefer
Mrs. Oakley's nominee because Mrs. Oakley is a shrewd, practical woman
who--er--who--who, in fact--"

"Just so," said Smith, eying him gravely through the monocle.
"Entirely."

The scrutiny irritated Mr. Renshaw.

"Do put that thing away, Mr. Smith," he said.

"That thing?"

"Yes, that ridiculous glass. Put it away."

"Instantly," said Smith, replacing the monocle in his vest-pocket. "You
object to it? Well, well, many people do. We all have these curious
likes and dislikes. It is these clashings of personal taste which
constitute what we call life. Yes. You were saying?"

Mr. Renshaw wrinkled his forehead.

"I have forgotten what I intended to say," he said querulously. "You
have driven it out of my head."

Smith clicked his tongue sympathetically. Mr. Renshaw looked at his
watch.

"Dear me," he said, "I must be going. I shall miss my train. But I
think I have covered the ground quite thoroughly. You understand
everything?"

"Absolutely," said Smith. "I look on myself as some engineer
controlling a machine with a light hand on the throttle. Or like some
faithful hound whose master--"

"Ah! There is just one thing. Mrs. Julia Burdett Parslow is a little
inclined to be unpunctual with her 'Moments with Budding Girlhood.' If
this should happen while I am away, just write her a letter, quite a
pleasant letter, you understand, pointing out the necessity of being in
good time. She must realize that we are a machine."

"Exactly," murmured Smith.

"The machinery of the paper cannot run smoothly unless contributors are
in good time with their copy."

"Precisely," said Smith. "They are the janitors of the literary world.
Let them turn off the steam heat, and where are we? If Mrs. Julia
Burdett Parslow is not up to time with the hot air, how shall our
'Girlhood' escape being nipped in the bud?"

"And there is just one other thing. I wish you would correct a slight
tendency I have noticed lately in Mr. Asher to be just a trifle--well,
not precisely risky, but perhaps a shade broad in his humor."

"Young blood!" sighed Smith. "Young blood!"

"Mr. Asher is a very sensible man, and he will understand. Well, that
is all, I think. Now, I really must be going. Good-by, Mr. Smith."

"Good-by."

At the door Mr. Renshaw paused with the air of an exile bidding
farewell to his native land, sighed and trotted out.

Smith put his feet upon the table, flicked a speck of dust from his
coat-sleeve, and resumed his task of reading the proofs of Luella
Granville Waterman's "Moments in the Nursery."

       *       *       *       *       *

He had not been working long, when Pugsy Maloney, the office boy,
entered.

"Say!" said Pugsy.

"Say on, Comrade Maloney."

"Dere's a loidy out dere wit a letter for Mr. Renshaw."

"Have you acquainted her with the fact that Mr. Renshaw has passed to
other climes?"

"Huh?"

"Have you, in the course of your conversation with this lady, mentioned
that Mr. Renshaw has beaten it?"

"Sure, I did. And she says can she see you?"

Smith removed his feet from the table.

"Certainly," he said. "Who am I that I should deny people these little
treats? Ask her to come in, Comrade Maloney."




CHAPTER XIII

BETTY MAKES A FRIEND


Betty had appealed to Master Maloney's esthetic sense of beauty
directly she appeared before him. It was with regret, therefore, rather
than with the usual calm triumph of the office boy, that he informed
her that the editor was not in. Also, seeing that she was evidently
perturbed by the information, he had gone out of his way to suggest
that she lay her business, whatever it might be, before Mr. Renshaw's
temporary successor.

Smith received her with Old-World courtesy.

"Will you sit down?" he said. "Not to wait for Comrade Renshaw, of
course. He will not be back for another three months. Perhaps I can
help you. I am acting editor. The work is not light," he added
gratuitously. "Sometimes the cry goes round New York, 'Can Smith get
through it all? Will his strength support his unquenchable spirit?' But
I stagger on. I do not repine. What was it that you wished to see
Comrade Renshaw about?"

He swung his monocle lightly by its cord. For the first time since she
had entered the office Betty was rather glad that Mr. Renshaw was away.
Conscious of her defects as a stenographer she had been looking forward
somewhat apprehensively to the interview with her prospective employer.
But this long, solemn youth put her at her ease. His manner suggested
in some indefinable way that the whole thing was a sort of round game.

"I came about the typewriting," she said.

Smith looked at her with interest.

"Are you the nominee?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Do you come from Mrs. Oakley?"

"Yes."

"Then all is well. The decks have been cleared against your coming.
Consider yourself engaged as our official typist. By the way,
_can_ you type?"

Betty laughed. This was certainly not the awkward interview she had
been picturing in her mind.

"Yes," she said, "but I'm afraid I'm not very good at it."

"Never mind," said Smith. "I'm not very good at editing. Yet here I am.
I foresee that we shall make an ideal team. Together, we will toil
early and late till we whoop up this domestic journal into a shining
model of what a domestic journal should be. What that is, at present, I
do not exactly know. Excursion trains will be run from the Middle West
to see this domestic journal. Visitors from Oshkosh will do it before
going on to Grant's tomb. What exactly is your name?"

Betty hesitated. Yes, perhaps it would be better. "Brown," she said.

"Mine is Smith. The smiling child in the outer office is Pugsy Maloney,
one of our most prominent citizens. Homely in appearance, perhaps, but
one of us. You will get to like Comrade Maloney. And now, to touch on a
painful subject--work. Would you care to start in now, or have you any
other engagements? Perhaps you wish to see the sights of this beautiful
little city before beginning? You would prefer to start in now?
Excellent. You could not have come at a more suitable time, for I was
on the very point of sallying out to purchase about twenty-five cents'
worth of lunch. We editors, Comrade Brown, find that our tissues need
constant restoration, such is the strenuous nature of our duties. You
will find one or two letters on that table. Good-by, then, for the
present."

He picked up his hat, smoothed it carefully and with a courtly
inclination of his head, left the room.

Betty sat down, and began to think. So she was really earning her own
living! It was a stimulating thought. She felt a little bewildered. She
had imagined something so different. Mrs. Oakley had certainly said
that _Peaceful Moments_ was a small paper, but despite that, her
imagination had conjured up visions of bustle and activity, and a
peremptory, overdriven editor, snapping out words of command. Smith,
with his careful speech and general air of calm detachment from the
noisy side of life, created an atmosphere of restfulness. If this was a
sample of life in the office, she thought, the paper had been well
named. She felt soothed and almost happy.

Interesting and exciting things, New York things, began to happen at
once. To her, meditating, there entered Pugsy Maloney, the guardian of
the gate of this shrine of Peace, a nonchalant youth of about fifteen,
with a freckled, mask-like face, the expression of which never varied,
bearing in his arms a cat. The cat was struggling violently, but he
appeared quite unconscious of it. Its existence did not seem to occur
to him.

"Say!" said Pugsy.

Betty was fond of cats.

"Oh, don't hurt her!" she cried anxiously.

Master Maloney eyed the cat as if he were seeing it for the first time.

"I wasn't hoitin' her," he said, without emotion. "Dere was two fresh
kids in the street sickin' a dawg on to her. And I comes up and says,
'G'wan! What do youse t'ink youse doin', fussin' de poor dumb animal?'
An' one of de guys, he says, 'G'wan! Who do youse t'ink youse is?' An'
I says, 'I'm de guy what's goin' to swat youse on de coco, smarty, if
youse don't quit fussin' de poor dumb animal.' So wit' dat he makes a
break at swattin' me one, but I swats him one, an' I swats de odder
feller one, an' den I swats dem bote some more, an' I gits de kitty,
an' I brings her in here, cos I t'inks maybe youse'll look after her. I
can't be boddered myself. Cats is foolishness."

And, having finished this Homeric narrative, Master Maloney fixed an
expressionless eye on the ceiling, and was silent.

"How splendid of you, Pugsy!" cried Betty. "She might have been killed,
poor thing."

"She had it pretty fierce," admitted Master Maloney, gazing
dispassionately at the rescued animal, which had escaped from his
clutch and taken up a strong position on an upper shelf of the
bookcase.

"Will you go out and get her some milk, Pugsy? She's probably starving.
Here's a quarter. Will you keep the change?"

"Sure thing," assented Master Maloney.

He strolled slowly out, while Betty, mounting a chair, proceeded to
chirrup and snap her fingers in the effort to establish the foundations
of an _entente cordiale_ with the cat.

By the time Pugsy returned, carrying a five-cent bottle of milk, the
animal had vacated the shelf, and was sitting on the table, polishing
her face. The milk having been poured into the lid of a tobacco tin, in
lieu of a saucer, she suspended her operations and adjourned for
refreshments, Pugsy, having no immediate duties on hand, concentrated
himself on the cat.

"Say!" he said.

"Well?"

"Dat kitty. Pipe de leather collar she's wearin'."

Betty had noticed earlier in the proceedings that a narrow leather
collar encircled the animal's neck.

"Guess I know where dat kitty belongs. Dey all has dose collars. I
guess she's one of Bat Jarvis's kitties. He's got twenty-t'ree of dem,
and dey all has dose collars."

"Bat Jarvis?"

"Sure."

"Who is he?"

Pugsy looked at her incredulously.

"Say! Ain't youse never heard of Bat Jarvis? He's--he's Bat Jarvis."

"Do you know him?"

"Sure, I knows him."

"Does he live near here?"

"Sure, he lives near here."

"Then I think the best thing for you to do is to run round and tell him
that I am taking care of his cat, and that he had better come and fetch
it. I must be getting on with my work, or I shall never finish it."

She settled down to type the letters Smith had indicated. She attacked
her task cautiously. She was one of those typists who are at their best
when they do not have to hurry.

She was putting the finishing touches to the last of the batch, when
there was a shuffling of feet in the outer room, followed by a knock on
the door. The next moment there entered a short, burly young man,
around whom there hung, like an aroma, an indescribable air of
toughness, partly due, perhaps, to the fact that he wore his hair in a
well-oiled fringe almost down to his eyebrows, thus presenting the
appearance of having no forehead at all. His eyes were small and set
close together. His mouth was wide, his jaw prominent. Not, in short,
the sort of man you would have picked out on sight as a model citizen.
He blinked furtively, as his eyes met Betty's, and looked round the
room. His face lighted up as he saw the cat.

"Say!" he said, stepping forward, and touching the cat's collar.
"Ma'am, mine!"

"Are you Mr. Jarvis?" asked Betty.

The visitor nodded, not without a touch of complacency, as of a monarch
abandoning his incognito.

For Mr. Jarvis was a celebrity.

By profession he was a dealer in animals, birds, and snakes. He had a
fancier's shop on Groome Street, in the heart of the Bowery. This was
on the ground floor. His living abode was in the upper story of that
house, and it was there that he kept the twenty-three cats whose necks
were adorned with leather collars.

But it was not the fact that he possessed twenty-three cats with
leather collars that had made Mr. Jarvis a celebrity. A man may win a
local reputation, if only for eccentricity, by such means. Mr. Jarvis'
reputation was far from being purely local. Broadway knew him, and the
Tenderloin. Tammany Hall knew him. Long Island City knew him. For Bat
Jarvis was the leader of the famous Groome Street Gang, the largest and
most influential of the four big gangs of the East Side.

To Betty, so little does the world often know of its greatest men, he
was merely a decidedly repellent-looking young man in unbecoming
clothes. But his evident affection for the cat gave her a feeling of
fellowship toward him. She beamed upon him, and Mr. Jarvis, who was
wont to face the glare of rivals without flinching, avoided her eye and
shuffled with embarrassment.

"I'm so glad she's safe!" said Betty. "There were two boys teasing her
in the street. I've been giving her some milk."

Mr. Jarvis nodded, with his eyes on the floor.

There was a pause. Then he looked up, and, fixing his gaze some three
feet above her head, spoke.

"Say!" he said, and paused again. Betty waited expectantly.

He relaxed into silence again, apparently thinking.

"Say!" he said. "Ma'am, obliged. Fond of de kit. I am."

"She's a dear," said Betty, tickling the cat under the ear.

"Ma'am," went on Mr. Jarvis, pursuing his theme, "obliged. Sha'n't
fergit it. Any time you're in bad, glad to be of service. Bat Jarvis.
Groome Street. Anybody'll show youse where I live."

He paused, and shuffled his feet; then, tucking the cat more firmly
under his arm, left the room. Betty heard him shuffling downstairs.

He had hardly gone, when the door opened again, and Smith came in.

"So you have had company while I was away?" he said. "Who was the
grandee with the cat? An old childhood's friend? Was he trying to sell
the animal to us?"

"That was Mr. Bat Jarvis," said Betty.

Smith looked interested.

"Bat! What was he doing here?"

Betty related the story of the cat. Smith nodded thoughtfully.

"Well," he said, "I don't know that Comrade Jarvis is precisely the
sort of friend I would go out of my way to select. Still, you never
know what might happen. He might come in useful. And now, let us
concentrate ourselves tensely on this very entertaining little journal
of ours, and see if we cannot stagger humanity with it."




CHAPTER XIV

A CHANGE OF POLICY


The feeling of tranquillity which had come to Betty on her first
acquaintance with _Peaceful Moments_ seemed to deepen as the days
went by, and with each day she found the sharp pain at her heart less
vehement. It was still there, but it was dulled. The novelty of her
life and surroundings kept it in check. New York is an egotist. It will
suffer no divided attention. "Look at me!" says the voice of the city
imperiously, and its children obey. It snatches their thoughts from
their inner griefs, and concentrates them on the pageant that rolls
unceasingly from one end of the island to the other. One may despair in
New York, but it is difficult to brood on the past; for New York is the
City of the Present, the City of Things that are Going On.

To Betty everything was new and strange. Her previous acquaintance with
the metropolis had not been extensive. Mr. Scobell's home--or, rather,
the house which he owned in America--was on the outskirts of
Philadelphia, and it was there that she had lived when she was not
paying visits. Occasionally, during horse-show week, or at some other
time of festivity, she had spent a few days with friends who lived in
Madison or upper Fifth Avenue, but beyond that, New York was a closed
book to her.

It would have been a miracle in the circumstances, if John and Mervo
and the whole of the events since the arrival of the great cable had
not to some extent become a little dream-like. When she was alone at
night, and had leisure to think, the dream became a reality once more;
but in her hours of work, or what passed for work in the office of
_Peaceful Moments_, and in the hours she spent walking about the
streets and observing the ways of this new world of hers, it faded.
Everything was so bright and busy! Every moment had its fresh interest.

And, above all, there was the sense of adventure. She was twenty-four;
she had health and an imagination; and almost unconsciously she was
stimulated by the thrill of being for the first time in her life
genuinely at large. The child's love of hiding dies hard in us. To
Betty, to walk abroad in New York in the midst of hurrying crowds, just
Betty Brown--one of four million and no longer the beautiful Miss
Silver of the society column, was to taste the romance of disguise, or
invisibility.

During office hours she came near to complete contentment. To an expert
stenographer the amount of work to be done would have seemed
ridiculously small, but Betty, who liked plenty of time for a task,
generally managed to make it last comfortably through the day.

This was partly owing to the fact that her editor, when not actually at
work himself, was accustomed to engage her in conversation, and to keep
her so engaged until the entrance of Pugsy Maloney heralded the arrival
of some caller.

Betty liked Smith. His odd ways, his conversation, and his extreme
solicitude for his clothes amused her. She found his outlook on life
refreshing. Smith was an optimist. Whatever cataclysm might occur, he
never doubted for a moment that he would be comfortably on the summit
of the debris when all was over. He amazed Betty with his stories of
his reportorial adventures. He told them for the most part as humorous
stories at his own expense, but the fact remained that in a
considerable proportion of them he had only escaped a sudden and
violent death by adroitness or pure good luck. His conversation opened
up a new world to Betty. She began to see that in America, and
especially in New York, anything may happen to anybody. She looked on
Smith with new eyes.

"But surely all this," she said one morning, after he had come to the
end of the story of a highly delicate piece of interviewing work in
connection with some Cumberland Mountains feudists, "surely all this--"
She looked round the room.

"Domesticity?" suggested Smith.

"Yes," said Betty. "Surely it all seems rather tame to you?"

Smith sighed.

"Comrade Brown," he said, "you have touched the spot with an unerring
finger."

Since Mr. Renshaw's departure, the flatness of life had come home to
Smith with renewed emphasis. Before, there had always been the quiet
entertainment of watching the editor at work, but now he was feeling
restless. Like John at Mervo, he was practically nothing but an
ornament. _Peaceful Moments_, like Mervo, had been set rolling and
had continued to roll on almost automatically. The staff of regular
contributors sent in their various pages. There was nothing for the man
in charge to do. Mr. Renshaw had been one of those men who have a
genius for being as busy over nothing as if it were some colossal work,
but Smith had not that gift. He liked something that he could grip and
that gripped him. He was becoming desperately bored. He felt like a
marooned sailor on a barren rock of domesticity.

A visitor who called at the office at this time did nothing to remove
this sensation of being outside everything that made life worth living.
Betty, returning to the office one afternoon, found Smith in the
doorway, just parting from a thickset young man. There was a rather
gloomy expression on the thickset young man's face.

Smith, too, she noted, when they were back in the inner office, seemed
to have something on his mind. He was strangely silent.

"Comrade Brown," he said at last, "I wish this little journal of ours
had a sporting page."

Betty laughed.

"Less ribaldry," protested Smith pained. "This is a sad affair. You saw
the man I was talking to? That was Kid Brady. I used to know him when I
was out West. He wants to fight anyone in the country at a hundred and
thirty-three pounds. We all have our hobbies. That is Comrade Brady's."

"Is he a boxer?"

"He would like to be. Out West, nobody could touch him. He's in the
championship class. But he has been pottering about New York for a
month without being able to get a fight. If we had a sporting page on
_Peaceful Moments_ we could do him some good, but I don't see how
we can write him up," said Smith, picking up a copy of the paper, and
regarding it gloomily, "in 'Moments in the Nursery' or 'Moments with
Budding Girlhood.'"

He put up his eyeglass, and stared at the offending journal with the
air of a vegetarian who has found a caterpillar in his salad.
Incredulity, dismay, and disgust fought for precedence in his
expression.

"B. Henderson Asher," he said severely, "ought to be in some sort of a
home. Cain killed Abel for telling him that story."

He turned to another page, and scrutinized it with deepening gloom.

"Is Luella Granville Waterman by any chance a friend of yours, Comrade
Brown? No? I am glad. For it seems to me that for sheer, concentrated
piffle, she is in a class by herself."

He read on for a few moments in silence, then looked up and fixed Betty
with his monocle. There was righteous wrath in his eyes.

"And people," he said, "are paying money for this! _Money!_ Even
now they are sitting down and writing checks for a year's subscription.
It isn't right! It's a skin game. I am assisting in a carefully planned
skin game!"

"But perhaps they like it," suggested Betty.

Smith shook his head.

"It is kind of you to try and soothe my conscience, but it is useless.
I see my position too clearly. Think of it, Comrade Brown! Thousands of
poor, doddering, half-witted creatures in Brooklyn and Flatbush, who
ought not really to have control of their own money at all, are getting
buncoed out of whatever it is per annum in exchange for--how shall I
put it in a forcible yet refined and gentlemanly manner?--for cat's
meat of this description. Why, selling gold bricks is honest compared
with it. And I am temporarily responsible for the black business!"

He extended a lean hand with melodramatic suddenness toward Betty. The
unexpectedness of the movement caused her to start back in her chair
with a little exclamation of surprise. Smith nodded with a kind of
mournful satisfaction.

"Exactly!" he said. "As I expected! You shrink from me. You avoid my
polluted hand. How could it be otherwise? A conscientious green-goods
man would do the same." He rose from his seat. "Your attitude," he
said, "confirms me in a decision that has been in my mind for some
days. I will no longer calmly accept this terrible position. I will try
to make amends. While I am in charge, I will give our public something
worth reading. All these Watermans and Ashers and Parslows must go!"

"Go!"

"Go!" repeated Smith firmly. "I have been thinking it over for days.
You cannot look me in the face, Comrade Brown, and say that there is a
single feature which would not be better away. I mean in the paper, not
in my face. Every one of these punk pages must disappear. Letters must
be despatched at once, informing Julia Burdett Parslow and the others,
and in particular B. Henderson Asher, who, on brief acquaintance,
strikes me as an ideal candidate for a lethal chamber--that, unless
they cease their contributions instantly, we shall call up the police
reserves. Then we can begin to move."

Betty, like most of his acquaintances, seldom knew whether Smith was
talking seriously or not. She decided to assume, till he should dismiss
the idea, that he meant what he said.

"But you can't!" she exclaimed.

"With your kind cooperation, nothing easier. You supply the mechanical
work. I will compose the letters. First, B. Henderson Asher. 'Dear
Sir'--"

"But--" she fell back on her original remark--"but you can't. What will
Mr. Renshaw say when he comes back?"

"Sufficient unto the day. I have a suspicion that he will be the
first to approve. His vacation will have made him see things
differently--purified him, as it were. His conscience will be alive
once more."

"But--"

"Why should we worry ourselves because the end of this venture is
wrapped in obscurity? Why, Columbus didn't know where he was going to
when he set out. All he knew was some highly interesting fact about an
egg. What that was, I do not at the moment recall, but I understand it
acted on Columbus like a tonic. We are the Columbuses of the
journalistic world. Full steam ahead, and see what happens. If Comrade
Renshaw is not pleased, why, I shall have been a martyr to a good
cause. It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done,
so to speak. Why should I allow possible inconvenience to myself to
stand in the way of the happiness which we propose to inject into those
Brooklyn and Flatbush homes? Are you ready then, once more? 'Dear
Sir--'"

Betty gave in.

When the letters were finished, she made one more objection.

"They are certain to call here and make a fuss," she said, "Mr. Asher
and the rest."

"You think they will not bear the blow with manly fortitude?"

"I certainly do. And I think it's hard on them, too. Suppose they
depend for a living on what they make from _Peaceful Moments?_"

"They don't," said Smith reassuringly. "I've looked into that. Have no
pity for them. They are amateurs--degraded creatures of substance who
take the cocktails out of the mouths of deserving professionals. B.
Henderson Asher, for instance, is largely interested in gents'
haberdashery. And so with the others. We touch their pride, perhaps,
but not their purses."

Betty's soft heart was distinctly relieved by the information.

"I see," she said. "But suppose they do call, what will you do? It will
be very unpleasant."

Smith pondered.

"True," he said. "True. I think you are right there. My nervous system
is so delicately attuned that anything in the shape of a brawl would
reduce it to a frazzle. I think that, for this occasion only, we will
promote Comrade Maloney to the post of editor. He is a stern, hard,
rugged man who does not care how unpopular he is. Yes, I think that
would be best."

He signed the letters with a firm hand, "per pro P. Maloney, editor."

Then he lit a cigarette, and leaned back in his chair.

"An excellent morning's work," he said. "Already I begin to feel the
dawnings of a new self-respect."

Betty, thinking the thing over, a little dazed by the rapidity of
Smith's method of action, had found a fresh flaw in the scheme.

"If you send Mr. Asher and the others away, how are you going to bring
the paper out at all? You can't write it all yourself."

Smith looked at her with benevolent admiration.

"She thinks of everything," he murmured. "That busy brain is never
still. No, Comrade Brown, I do not propose to write the whole paper
myself. I do not shirk work when it gets me in a corner and I can't
side-step, but there are limits. I propose to apply to a few of my late
companions of Park Row, bright boys who will be delighted to come
across with red-hot stuff for a moderate fee."

"And the proprietor of the paper? Won't he make any objection?"

Smith shook his head with a touch of reproof.

"You seem determined to try to look on the dark side. Do you insinuate
that we are not acting in the proprietor's best interests? When he gets
his check for the receipts, after I have handled the paper awhile, he
will go singing about the streets. His beaming smile will be a byword.
Visitors will be shown it as one of the sights. His only doubt will be
whether to send his money to the bank or keep it in tubs and roll in
it. And anyway," he added, "he's in Europe somewhere, and never sees
the paper, sensible man."

He scratched a speck of dust off his coat-sleeve with his finger nail.

"This is a big thing," he resumed. "Wait till you see the first number
of the new series. My idea is that _Peaceful Moments_ shall become
a pretty warm proposition. Its tone shall be such that the public will
wonder why we do not print it on asbestos. We shall comment on all the
live events of the week--murders, Wall Street scandals, glove fights,
and the like, in a manner which will make our readers' spines thrill.
Above all, we shall be the guardians of the people's rights. We shall
be a spot light, showing up the dark places and bringing into
prominence those who would endeavor in any way to put the people in
Dutch. We shall detect the wrongdoer, and hand him such a series of
resentful wallops that he will abandon his little games and become a
model citizen. In this way we shall produce a bright, readable little
sheet which will make our city sit up and take notice. I think so. I
think so. And now I must be hustling about and seeing our new
contributors. There is no time to waste."




CHAPTER XV

THE HONEYED WORD


The offices of Peaceful Moments were in a large building in a street
off Madison Avenue. They consisted of a sort of outer lair, where Pugsy
Maloney spent his time reading tales of life on the prairies and
heading off undesirable visitors; a small room, into which desirable
but premature visitors were loosed, to wait their turn for admission
into the Presence; and a larger room beyond, which was the editorial
sanctum.

Smith, returning from luncheon on the day following his announcement of
the great change, found both Betty and Pugsy waiting in the outer lair,
evidently with news of import.

"Mr. Smith," began Betty.

"Dey're in dere," said Master Maloney with his customary terseness.

"Who, exactly?" asked Smith.

"De whole bunch of dem."

Smith inspected Pugsy through his eyeglass. "Can you give me any
particulars?" he asked patiently. "You are well-meaning, but vague,
Comrade Maloney. Who are in there?"

"About 'steen of dem!" said Pugsy.

"Mr. Asher," said Betty, "and Mr. Philpotts, and all the rest of them."
She struggled for a moment, but, unable to resist the temptation,
added, "I told you so."

A faint smile appeared upon Smith's face.

"Dey just butted in," said Master Maloney, resuming his narrative. "I
was sittin' here, readin' me book, when de foist of de guys blows in.
'Boy,' says he, 'is de editor in?' 'Nope,' I says. 'I'll go in and
wait,' says he. 'Nuttin' doin',' says I. 'Nix on de goin'-in act.' I
might as well have saved me breat! In he butts. In about t'ree minutes
along comes another gazebo. 'Boy,' says he, 'is de editor in?' 'Nope,'
I says. 'I'll wait,' says he, lightin' out for de door, and in he
butts. Wit' dat I sees de proposition's too fierce for muh. I can't
keep dese big husky guys out if dey bucks center like dat. So when de
rest of de bunch comes along, I don't try to give dem de trun down. I
says, 'Well, gent,' I says, 'it's up to youse. De editor ain't in, but,
if you feels lonesome, push t'roo. Dere's plenty dere to keep youse
company. I can't be boddered!'"

"And what more could you have said?" agreed Smith approvingly. "Tell
me, did these gentlemen appear to be gay and light-hearted, or did they
seem to be looking for someone with a hatchet?"

"Dey was hoppin' mad, de whole bunch of dem."

"Dreadfully," attested Betty.

"As I suspected," said Smith, "but we must not repine. These trifling
contretemps are the penalties we pay for our high journalistic aims. I
fancy that with the aid of the diplomatic smile and the honeyed word I
may manage to win out. Will you come and give me your moral support,
Comrade Brown?"

He opened the door of the inner room for Betty, and followed her in.

Master Maloney's statement that "about 'steen" visitors had arrived
proved to be a little exaggerated. There were five men in the room.

As Smith entered, every eye was turned upon him. To an outside
spectator he would have seemed rather like a very well-dressed Daniel
introduced into a den of singularly irritable lions. Five pairs of eyes
were smoldering with a long-nursed resentment. Five brows were
corrugated with wrathful lines. Such, however, was the simple majesty
of Smith's demeanor that for a moment there was dead silence. Not a
word was spoken as he paced, wrapped in thought, to the editorial
chair. Stillness brooded over the room as he carefully dusted that
piece of furniture, and, having done so to his satisfaction, hitched up
the knees of his trousers and sank gracefully into a sitting position.

This accomplished, he looked up and started. He gazed round the room.

"Ha! I am observed!" he murmured.

The words broke the spell. Instantly the five visitors burst
simultaneously into speech.

"Are you the acting editor of this paper?"

"I wish to have a word with you, sir."

"Mr. Maloney, I presume?"

"Pardon me!"

"I should like a few moments' conversation."

The start was good and even, but the gentleman who said "Pardon me!"
necessarily finished first, with the rest nowhere.

Smith turned to him, bowed, and fixed him with a benevolent gaze
through his eyeglass.

"Are you Mr. Maloney, may I ask?" enquired the favored one.

The others paused for the reply. Smith shook his head. "My name is
Smith."

"Where is Mr. Maloney?"

Smith looked across at Betty, who had seated herself in her place by
the typewriter.

"Where did you tell me Mr. Maloney had gone to, Miss Brown? Ah, well,
never mind. Is there anything _I_ can do for you, gentlemen? I am
on the editorial staff of this paper."

"Then, maybe," said a small, round gentleman who, so far, had done only
chorus work, "you can tell me what all this means? My name is Waterman,
sir. I am here on behalf of my wife, whose name you doubtless know."

"Correct me if I am wrong," said Smith, "but I should say it, also, was
Waterman."

"Luella Granville Waterman, sir!" said the little man proudly. "My
wife," he went on, "has received this extraordinary communication from
a man signing himself P. Maloney. We are both at a loss to make head or
tail of it."

"It seems reasonably clear to me," said Smith, reading the letter.

"It's an outrage. My wife has been a contributor to this journal since
its foundation. We are both intimate friends of Mr. Renshaw, to whom my
wife's work has always given complete satisfaction. And now, without
the slightest warning, comes this peremptory dismissal from P. Maloney.
Who is P. Maloney? Where is Mr. Renshaw?"

The chorus burst forth. It seemed that that was what they all wanted to
know. Who was P. Maloney? Where was Mr. Renshaw?

"I am the Reverend Edwin T. Philpott, sir," said a cadaverous-looking
man with light blue eyes and a melancholy face. "I have contributed
'Moments of Meditation' to this journal for some considerable time."

Smith nodded.

"I know, yours has always seemed to me work which the world will not
willingly let die."

The Reverend Edwin's frosty face thawed into a bleak smile.

"And yet," continued Smith, "I gather that P. Maloney, on the other
hand, actually wishes to hurry on its decease. Strange!"

A man in a serge suit, who had been lurking behind Betty, bobbed into
the open.

"Where's this fellow Maloney? P. Maloney. That's the man we want to
see. I've been working for this paper without a break, except when I
had the grip, for four years, and now up comes this Maloney fellow, if
you please, and tells me in so many words that the paper's got no use
for me."

"These are life's tragedies," sighed Smith.

"What does he mean by it? That's what I want to know. And that's what
these gentlemen want to know. See here--"

"I am addressing--" said Smith.

"Asher's my name. B. Henderson Asher. I write 'Moments of Mirth.'"

A look almost of excitement came into Smith's face, such a look as a
visitor to a foreign land might wear when confronted with some great
national monument. He stood up and shook Mr. Asher reverently by the
hand.

"Gentlemen," he said, reseating himself, "this is a painful case. The
circumstances, as you will admit when you have heard all, are peculiar.
You have asked me where Mr. Renshaw is. I don't know."

"You don't know!" exclaimed Mr. Asher.

"Nobody knows. With luck you may find a black cat in a coal cellar on a
moonless night, but not Mr. Renshaw. Shortly after I joined this
journal, he started out on a vacation, by his doctor's orders, and left
no address. No letters were to be forwarded. He was to enjoy complete
rest. Who can say where he is now? Possibly racing down some rugged
slope in the Rockies with two grizzlies and a wildcat in earnest
pursuit. Possibly in the midst of Florida Everglades, making a noise
like a piece of meat in order to snare alligators. Who can tell?"

Silent consternation prevailed among his audience.

"Then, do you mean to say," demanded Mr. Asher, "that this fellow
Maloney's the boss here, and that what he says goes?"

Smith bowed.

"Exactly. A man of intensely masterful character, he will brook no
opposition. I am powerless to sway him. Suggestions from myself as to
the conduct of the paper would infuriate him. He believes that radical
changes are necessary in the policy of _Peaceful Moments_, and he
will carry them through if it snows. Doubtless he would gladly consider
your work if it fitted in with his ideas. A rapid-fire impression of a
glove fight, a spine-shaking word picture of a railway smash, or
something on those lines, would be welcomed. But--"

"I have never heard of such a thing," said Mr. Waterman indignantly.

"In this life," said Smith, shaking his head, "we must be prepared for
every emergency. We must distinguish between the unusual and the
impossible. It is unusual for the acting editor of a weekly paper to
revolutionize its existing policy, and you have rashly ordered your
life on the assumption that it is impossible. You are unprepared. The
thing comes on you as a surprise. The cry goes round New York,
'Comrades Asher, Waterman, Philpotts, and others have been taken
unawares. They cannot cope with the situation.'"

"But what is to be done?" cried Mr. Asher.

"Nothing, I fear, except to wait. It may be that when Mr. Renshaw,
having dodged the bears and eluded the wildcat, returns to his post, he
will decide not to continue the paper on the lines at present mapped
out. He should be back in about ten weeks."

"Ten weeks!"

"Till then, the only thing to do is to wait. You may rely on me to keep
a watchful eye on your interests. When your thoughts tend to take a
gloomy turn say to yourselves, 'All is well. Smith is keeping a
watchful eye on our interests.'"

"All the same, I should like to see this P. Maloney," said Mr. Asher.

"I shouldn't," said Smith. "I speak in your best interests. P. Maloney
is a man of the fiercest passions. He cannot brook interference. If you
should argue with him, there is no knowing what might not happen. He
would be the first to regret any violent action, when once he had
cooled off, but-- Of course, if you wish it I could arrange a meeting.
No? I think you are wise. And now, gentlemen, as I have a good deal of
work to get through--

"All very disturbing to the man of culture and refinement," said Smith,
as the door closed behind the last of the malcontents. "But I think
that we may now consider the line clear. I see no further obstacle in
our path. I fear I have made Comrade Maloney perhaps a shade unpopular
with our late contributors, but these things must be. We must clench
our teeth and face them manfully. He suffers in an excellent cause."




CHAPTER XVI

TWO VISITORS TO THE OFFICE


There was once an editor of a paper in the Far West who was sitting at
his desk, musing pleasantly on life, when a bullet crashed through the
window and imbedded itself in the wall at the back of his head. A happy
smile lighted up the editor's face. "Ah!" he said complacently, "I knew
that personal column of ours would make a hit!"

What the bullet was to the Far West editor, the visit of Mr. Martin
Parker to the offices of _Peaceful Moments_ was to Smith.

It occurred shortly after the publication of the second number of the
new series, and was directly due to Betty's first and only suggestion
for the welfare of the paper.

If the first number of the series had not staggered humanity, it had at
least caused a certain amount of comment. The warm weather had begun,
and there was nothing much going on in New York. The papers were
consequently free to take notice of the change in the policy of
_Peaceful Moments_. Through the agency of Smith's newspaper
friends, it received some very satisfactory free advertisement, and the
sudden increase in the sales enabled Smith to bear up with fortitude
against the numerous letters of complaint from old subscribers who did
not know what was good for them. Visions of a large new public which
should replace these Brooklyn and Flatbush ingrates filled his mind.

The sporting section of the paper pleased him most. The personality of
Kid Brady bulked large in it. A photograph of the ambitious pugilist,
looking moody and important in an attitude of self-defense, filled half
a page, and under the photograph was the legend, "Jimmy Garvin must
meet this boy." Jimmy was the present holder of the light-weight title.
He had won it a year before, and since then had confined himself to
smoking cigars as long as walking sticks and appearing nightly in a
vaudeville sketch entitled, "A Fight for Honor." His reminiscences were
being published in a Sunday paper. It was this that gave Smith the idea
of publishing Kid Brady's autobiography in _Peaceful Moments_, an
idea which won the Kid's whole-hearted gratitude. Like most pugilists
he had a passion for bursting into print. Print is the fighter's
accolade. It signifies that he has arrived. He was grateful to Smith,
too, for not editing his contributions. Jimmy Garvin groaned under the
supervision of a member of the staff of his Sunday paper, who deleted
his best passages and altered the rest into Addisonian English. The
readers of _Peaceful Moments_ got their Brady raw.

"Comrade Brady," said Smith meditatively to Betty one morning, "has a
singularly pure and pleasing style. It is bound to appeal powerfully to
the many-headed. Listen to this. Our hero is fighting one Benson in the
latter's home town, San Francisco, and the audience is rooting hard for
the native son. Here is Comrade Brady on the subject: 'I looked around
that house, and I seen I hadn't a friend in it. And then the gong goes,
and I says to myself how I has one friend, my old mother down in
Illinois, and I goes in and mixes it, and then I seen Benson losing his
goat, so I gives him a half-scissor hook, and in the next round I picks
up a sleep-producer from the floor and hands it to him, and he takes
the count.' That is what the public wants. Crisp, lucid, and to the
point. If that does not get him a fight with some eminent person,
nothing will."

He leaned back in his chair.

"What we really need now," he said thoughtfully, "is a good, honest,
muck-raking series. That's the thing to put a paper on the map. The
worst of it is that everything seems to have been done. Have you by any
chance a second 'Frenzied Finance' at the back of your mind? Or proofs
that nut sundaes are composed principally of ptomaine and outlying
portions of the American workingman? It would be the making of us."

Now it happened that in the course of her rambles through the city
Betty had lost herself one morning in the slums. The experience had
impressed itself on her mind with an extraordinary vividness. Her lot
had always been cast in pleasant places, and she had never before been
brought into close touch with this side of life. The sight of actual
raw misery had come home to her with an added force from that
circumstance. Wandering on, she had reached a street which eclipsed in
cheerlessness even its squalid neighbors. All the smells and noises of
the East Side seemed to be penned up here in a sort of canyon. The
masses of dirty clothes hanging from the fire-escapes increased the
atmosphere of depression. Groups of ragged children covered the
roadway.

It was these that had stamped the scene so indelibly on her memory. She
loved children, and these seemed so draggled and uncared-for.

Smith's words gave her an idea.

"Do you know Broster Street, Mr. Smith?" she asked.

"Down on the East Side? Yes, I went there once to get a story, one
red-hot night in August, when I was on the _News_. The Ice Company
had been putting up their prices, and trouble was expected down there.
I was sent to cover it."

He did not add that he had spent a week's salary that night, buying ice
and distributing it among the denizens of Broster Street.

"It's an awful place," said Betty, her eyes filling with tears. "Those
poor children!"

Smith nodded.

"Some of those tenement houses are fierce," he said thoughtfully. Like
Betty, he found himself with a singularly clear recollection of his one
visit to Broster Street. "But you can't do anything."

"Why not?" cried Betty. "Oh, why not? Surely you couldn't have a better
subject for your series? It's wicked. People only want to be told about
them to make them better. Why can't we draw attention to them?"

"It's been done already. Not about Broster Street, but about other
tenements. Tenements as a subject are played out. The public isn't
interested in them. Besides, it wouldn't be any use. You can't tree the
man who is really responsible, unless you can spend thousands scaring
up evidence. The land belongs in the first place to some corporation or
other. They lease it to a lessee. When there's a fuss, they say they
aren't responsible, it's up to the lessee. And he, bright boy, lies so
low you can't find out who it is."

"But we could try," urged Betty.

Smith looked at her curiously. The cause was plainly one that lay near
to her heart. Her face was flushed and eager. He wavered, and, having
wavered, he did what no practical man should do. He allowed sentiment
to interfere with business. He knew that a series of articles on
Broster Street would probably be so much dead weight on the paper,
something to be skipped by the average reader, but he put the thought
aside.

"Very well," he said. "If you care to turn in a few crisp remarks on
the subject, I'll print them."

Betty's first instalment was ready on the following morning. It was a
curious composition. A critic might have classed it with Kid Brady's
reminiscences, for there was a complete absence of literary style. It
was just a wail of pity, and a cry of indignation, straight from the
heart and split up into paragraphs.

Smith read it with interest, and sent it off to the printer unaltered.

"Have another ready for next week, Comrade Brown," he said. "It's a
long shot, but this might turn out to be just what we need."

And when, two days after the publication of the number containing the
article, Mr. Martin Parker called at the office, he felt that the long
shot had won out.

He was holding forth on life in general to Betty shortly before the
luncheon hour when Pugsy Maloney entered bearing a card.

"Martin Parker?" said Smith, taking it. "I don't know him. We make new
friends daily."

"He's a guy wit' a tall-shaped hat," volunteered Master Maloney, "an'
he's wearing a dude suit an' shiny shoes."

"Comrade Parker," said Smith approvingly, "has evidently not been blind
to the importance of a visit to _Peaceful Moments_. He has dressed
himself in his best. He has felt, rightly, that this is no occasion for
the flannel suit and the old straw hat. I would not have it otherwise.
It is the right spirit. Show the guy in. We will give him audience."

Pugsy withdrew.

Mr. Martin Parker proved to be a man who might have been any age
between thirty-five and forty-five. He had a dark face and a black
mustache. As Pugsy had stated, in effect, he wore a morning coat,
trousers with a crease which brought a smile of kindly approval to
Smith's face, and patent-leather shoes of pronounced shininess.

"I want to see the editor," he said.

"Will you take a seat?" said Smith.

He pushed a chair toward the visitor, who seated himself with the care
inspired by a perfect trouser crease. There was a momentary silence
while he selected a spot on the table on which to place his hat.

"I have come about a private matte

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