The Continental Op (Novelettes and short stories)

Originally appeared in Mystery Stories, January 1928

I “Yes” — and “No”

The train from Belgrade set me down in Stefania, capital of Muravia, in early afternoon — a rotten afternoon. Cold wind blew cold rain in my face and down my neck as I left the square granite barn of a railroad station to climb into a taxicab.

English meant nothing to the chauffeur, nor French. Good German might have failed. Mine wasn’t good. It was a hodgepodge of grunts and gargles. This chauffeur was the first person who had ever pretended to understand it. I suspected him of guessing, and I expected to be taken to some distant suburban point. Maybe he was a good guesser. Anyhow, he took me to the Hotel of the Republic.

The hotel was a new six-story affair, very proud of its elevators, American plumbing, private baths, and other modern tricks. After I had washed and changed clothes I went down to the café for luncheon. Then, supplied with minute instructions in English, French, and sign-language by a highly uniformed head porter, I turned up my raincoat collar and crossed the muddy plaza to call on Roy Scanlan, United States chargé d’affaires in this youngest and smallest of the Balkan States.

He was a pudgy man of thirty, with smooth hair already far along the gray route, a nervous, flabby face, plump white hands that twitched, and very nice clothes. He shook hands with me, patted me into a chair, barely glanced at my letter of introduction, and stared at my necktie while saying:

“So you’re a private detective from San Francisco?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Lionel Grantham.”

“Surely not!”

“Yes.”

“But he’s—” The diplomat realized he was looking into my eyes, hurriedly switched his gaze to my hair, and forgot what he had started to say.

“But he’s what?” I prodded him.

“Oh!” — with a vague upward motion of head and eyebrows — “not that sort.”

“How long has he been here?” I asked.

“Two months. Possibly three or three and a half or more.”

“You know him well?”

“Oh, no! By sight, of course, and to talk to. He and I are the only Americans here, so we’re fairly well acquainted.”

“Know what he’s doing here?”

“No, I don’t. He just happened to stop here in his travels, I imagine, unless, of course, he’s here for some special reason. No doubt there’s a girl in it — she is General Radnjak’s daughter — though I don’t think so.”

“How does he spend his time?”

“I really haven’t any idea. He lives at the Hotel of the Republic, is quite a favorite among our foreign colony, rides a bit, lives the usual life of a young man of family and wealth.”

“Mixed up with anybody who isn’t all he ought to be?”

“Not that I know of, except that I’ve seen him with Mahmoud and Einarson. They are certainly scoundrels, though they may not be.”

“Who are they?”

“Nubar Mahmoud is private secretary to Doctor Semich, the President. Colonel Einarson is an Icelander, just now virtually the head of the army. I know nothing about either of them.”

“Except that they are scoundrels?”

The chargé d’affaires wrinkled his round white forehead in pain and gave me a reproachful glance.

“Not at all,” he said. “Now, may I ask, of what is Grantham suspected?”

“Nothing.”

“Then?”

“Seven months ago, on his twenty-first birthday, this Lionel Grantham got hold of the money his father had left him — a nice wad. Till then the boy had had a tough time of it. His mother had, and has, highly developed middle-class notions of refinement. His father had been a genuine aristocrat in the old manner — a hard-souled, soft-spoken individual who got what he wanted by simply taking it; with a liking for old wine and young women, and plenty of both, and for cards and dice and running horses — and fights, whether he was in them or watching them.

“While he lived the boy had a he-raising. Mrs. Grantham thought her husband’s tastes low, but he was a man who had things his own way. Besides, the Grantham blood was the best in America. She was a woman to be impressed by that. Eleven years ago — when Lionel was a kid of ten — the old man died. Mrs. Grantham swapped the family roulette wheel for a box of dominoes and began to convert the kid into a patent leather Galahad.

“I’ve never seen him, but I’m told the job wasn’t a success. However, she kept him bundled up for eleven years, not even letting him escape to college. So it went until the day when he was legally of age and in possession of his share of his father’s estate. That morning he kisses Mamma and tells her casually that he’s off for a little run around the world — alone. Mamma does and says all that might be expected of her, but it’s no good. The Grantham blood is up. Lionel promises to drop her a post-card now and then, and departs.

“He seems to have behaved fairly well during his wandering. I suppose just being free gave him all the excitement he needed. But a few weeks ago the trust company that handles his affairs got instructions from him to turn some railroad bonds into cash and ship the money to him in care of a Belgrade bank. The amount was large — over the three million mark — so the trust company told Mrs. Grantham about it. She chucked a fit. She had been getting letters from him — from Paris, without a word said about Belgrade.

“Mamma was all for dashing over to Europe at once. Her brother, Senator Walbourn, talked her out of it. He did some cabling, and learned that Lionel was neither in Paris nor in Belgrade, unless he was hiding. Mrs. Grantham packed her trunks and made reservations. The Senator headed her off again, convincing her that the lad would resent her interference, telling her the best thing was to investigate on the quiet. He brought the job to the Agency. I went to Paris, learned that a friend of Lionel’s there was relaying his mail, and that Lionel was here in Stefania. On the way down I stopped off in Belgrade and learned that the money was being sent here to him — most of it already has been. So here I am.”

Scanlan smiled happily.

“There’s nothing I can do,” he said. “Grantham is of age, and it’s his money.”

“Right,” I agreed, “and I’m in the same fix. All I can do is poke around, find out what he’s up to, try to save his dough if he’s being gypped. Can’t you give me even a guess at the answer? Three million dollars — what could he put it into?”

“I don’t know.” The chargé d’affaires fidgeted uncomfortably. “There’s no business here that amounts to anything. It’s purely an agricultural country, split up among small land-owners — ten, fifteen, twenty acre farms. There’s his association with Einarson and Mahmoud, though. They’d certainly rob him if they got the chance. I’m positive they’re robbing him. But I don’t think they would. Perhaps he isn’t acquainted with them. It’s probably a woman.”

“Well, whom should I see? I’m handicapped by not knowing the country, not knowing the language. To whom can I take my story and get help?”

“I don’t know,” he said gloomily. Then his face brightened. “Go to Vasilije Djudakovich. He is Minister of Police. He is the man for you! He can help you, and you may trust him. He has a digestion instead of a brain. He’ll not understand a thing you tell him. Yes, Djudakovich is your man!”

“Thanks,” I said, and staggered out into the muddy street.

II Romaine

I found the Minister of Police’s offices in the Administration Building, a gloomy concrete pile next to the Executive Residence at the head of the plaza. In French that was even worse than my German, a thin, white-whiskered clerk, who looked like a consumptive Santa Claus, told me His Excellency was not in. Looking solemn, lowering my voice to a whisper, I repeated that I had come from the United States chargé d’affaires. This hocus-pocus seemed to impress Saint Nicholas. He nodded understandingly and shuffled out of the room. Presently he was back, bowing at the door, asking me to follow him.

I tailed him along a dim corridor to a wide door marked “15.” He opened it, bowed me through it, wheezed, “Asseyez-vous, s’il vous plaît,” closed the door and left me. I was in an office, a large, square one. Everything in it was large. The four windows were double-size. The chairs were young benches, except the leather one at the desk, which could have been the rear half of a touring car. A couple of men could have slept on the desk. Twenty could have eaten at the table.

A door opposite the one through which I had come opened, and a girl came in, closing the door behind her, shutting out a throbbing purr, as of some heavy machine, that had sounded through.

“I’m Romaine Frankl,” she said in English, “His Excellency’s secretary. Will you tell me what you wish?”

She might have been any age from twenty to thirty, something less than five feet in height, slim without boniness, with curly hair as near black as brown can get, black-lashed eyes whose gray irises had black rims, a small, delicate-featured face, and a voice that seemed too soft and faint to carry as well as it did. She wore a red woolen dress that had no shape except that which her body gave it, and when she moved — to walk or raise a hand — it was as if it cost her no energy — as if some one else were moving her.

“I’d like to see him,” I said while I was accumulating this data.

“Later, certainly,” she promised, “but it’s impossible now.” She turned, with her peculiar effortless grace, back to the door, opening it so that the throbbing purr sounded in the room again. “Hear?” she said. “He’s taking his nap.”

She shut the door against His Excellency’s snoring and floated across the room to climb up in the immense leather chair at the desk.

“Do sit down,” she said, wriggling a tiny forefinger at a chair beside the desk. “It will save time if you will tell me your business, because, unless you speak our tongue, I’ll have to interpret your message to His Excellency.”

I told her about Lionel Grantham and my interest in him, in practically the same words I had used on Scanlan, winding up:

“You see, there’s nothing I can do except try to learn what the boy’s up to and give him a hand if he needs it. I can’t go to him — he’s too much Grantham, I’m afraid, to take kindly to what he’d think was nurse-maid stuff. Mr. Scanlan advised me to come to the Minister of Police.”

“You were fortunate.” She looked as if she wanted to make a joke about my country’s representative but weren’t sure how I’d take it. “Your chargé d’affaires is not always easy to understand.”

“Once you get the hang of it, it’s not hard,” I said. “You just throw out all his statements that have no’s or not’s or nothing’s or don’t’s in them.”

“That’s it! That’s it, exactly!” She leaned toward me, laughing. “I’ve always known there was some key to it, but nobody’s been able to find it before. You’ve solved our national problem.”

“For reward, then, I should be given all the information you have about Grantham.”

“You should, but I’ll have to speak to His Excellency first. He’ll wake presently.”

“You can tell me unofficially what you think of Grantham. You know him?”

“Yes. He’s charming. A nice boy, delightfully naïf, inexperienced, but really charming.”

“Who are his friends here?”

She shook her head and said:

“No more of that until His Excellency wakes. You’re from San Francisco? I remember the funny little street cars, and the fog, and the salad right after the soup, and Coffee Dan’s.”

“You’ve been there?”

“Twice. I was in the United States for a year and half, in vaudeville, bringing rabbits out of hats.”

We were still talking about that half an hour later when the door opened and the Minister of Police came in.

The over-size furniture immediately shrank to normal, the girl became a midget, and I felt like somebody’s little boy.

This Vasilije Djudakovich stood nearly seven feet tall, and that was nothing to his girth. Maybe he wouldn’t weigh more than five hundred pounds, but, looking at him, it was hard to think except in terms of tons. He was a blond-haired, blond-bearded mountain of meat in a black frock coat. He wore a necktie, so I suppose he had a collar, but it was hidden all the way around by the red rolls of his neck. His white vest was the size and shape of a hoop-skirt, and in spite of that it strained at the buttons. His eyes were almost invisible between the cushions of flesh around them, and were shaded into a colorless darkness, like water in a deep well. His mouth was a fat red oval among the yellow hairs of his whiskers and mustache. He came into the room slowly, ponderously, and I was surprised that the floor didn’t creak nor the room tremble.

Romaine Frankl was watching me attentively as she slid out of the big leather chair and introduced me to the Minister. He gave me a fat, sleepy smile and a hand that had the general appearance of a naked baby, and let himself down slowly into the chair the girl had quit. Planted there, he lowered his head until it rested on the pillows of his several chins, and then he seemed to go to sleep.

I drew up another chair for the girl. She took another sharp look at me — she seemed to be hunting for something in my face — and began to talk to him in what I suppose was the native lingo. She talked rapidly for about twenty minutes, while he gave no sign that he was listening or that he was even awake.

When she was through, he said: “Da.” He spoke dreamily, but there was a volume to the syllable that could have come from no place smaller than his gigantic belly.

The girl turned to me, smiling.

“His Excellency will be glad to give you every possible assistance. Officially, of course, he does not care to interfere in the affairs of a visitor from another country, but he realizes the importance of keeping Mr. Grantham from being victimized while here. If you will return tomorrow afternoon, at, say, three o’clock...”

I promised to do that, thanked her, shook hands with the mountain again, and went out into the rain.

III Shadowing

Back at the hotel, I had no trouble learning that Lionel Grantham occupied a suite on the sixth floor and was in it at that time. I had his photograph in my pocket and his description in my head. I spent what was left of the afternoon and the early evening waiting for a look at him. At a little after seven I got it.

He stepped out of the elevator, a tall, flat-backed boy with a supple body that tapered from broad shoulders to narrow hips, carried erectly on long, muscular legs — the sort of frame that tailors like. His pink, regular-featured, really handsome face wore an expression of aloof superiority that was too marked to be anything else than a cover for youthful self-consciousness.

Lighting a cigarette, he passed into the street. The rain had stopped, though clouds overhead promised more shortly. He turned down the street afoot. So did I.

We went to a much gilded restaurant two blocks from the hotel, where a gypsy orchestra played on a little balcony stuck insecurely high on one wall. All the waiters and half the diners seemed to know the boy. He bowed and smiled to this side and that as he walked down to a table near the far end, where two men were waiting for him.

One of them was tall and thick-bodied, with bushy dark hair and a flowing dark mustache. His florid, short-nosed face wore the expression of a man who doesn’t mind a fight now and then. This one was dressed in a green and gold military uniform, with high boots of the shiniest black leather. His companion was in evening clothes, a plump, swarthy man of medium height, with oily black hair and a suave, oval face.

While young Grantham joined this pair I found a table some distance from them for myself. I ordered dinner and looked around at my neighbors. There was a sprinkling of uniforms in the room, some dress coats and evening gowns, but most of the diners were in ordinary day-time clothes. I saw a couple of faces that were probably British, a Greek or two, a few Turks. The food was good and so was my appetite. I was smoking a cigarette over a tiny cup of syrupy coffee when Grantham and the big florid officer got up and went away.

I couldn’t have got my bill and paid it in time to follow them, without raising a disturbance, so I let them go. Then I settled for my meal and waited until the dark, plump man they had left behind called for his check. I was in the street a minute or more ahead of him, standing, looking up toward the dimly electric-lighted plaza with what was meant for the expression of a tourist who didn’t quite know where to go next.

He passed me, going up the muddy street with the soft, careful-where-you-put-your-foot tread of a cat.

A soldier — a bony man in sheepskin coat and cap, with a gray mustache bristling over gray, sneering lips — stepped out of a dark doorway and stopped the swarthy man with whining words.

The swarthy man lifted hands and shoulders in a gesture that held both anger and surprise.

The soldier whined again, but the sneer on his gray mouth became more pronounced. The plump man’s voice was low, sharp, angry, but he moved a hand from pocket to soldier, and the brown of Muravian paper money showed in the hand. The soldier pocketed the money, raised a hand in a salute, and went across the street.

When the swarthy man had stopped staring after the soldier, I moved toward the corner around which sheepskin coat and cap had vanished. My soldier was a block and a half down the street, striding along with bowed head. He was in a hurry. I got plenty of exercise keeping up with him. Presently the city began to thin out. The thinner it got, the less I liked this expedition. Shadowing is at its best in daytime, downtown in a familiar large city. This was shadowing at its worst.

He led me out of the city along a cement road bordered by few houses. I stayed as far back as I could, so he was a faint, blurred shadow ahead. He turned a sharp bend in the road. I hustled toward the bend, intending to drop back again as soon as I had rounded it. Speeding, I nearly gummed the works.

The soldier suddenly appeared around the curve, coming toward me.

A little behind me, a small pile of lumber on the roadside was the only cover within a hundred feet. I stretched my short legs thither.

Irregularly piled boards made a shallow cavity in one end of the pile, almost large enough to hold me. On my knees in the mud, I huddled into that cavity.

The soldier came into sight through a chink between boards. Bright metal gleamed in one of his hands. A knife, I thought. But when he halted in front of my shelter I saw it was a revolver of the old-style nickel-plated sort.

He stood still, looking at my shelter, looking up the road and down the road. He grunted, came toward me. Slivers stung my cheek as I rubbed myself flatter against the timber-ends. My gun was with my blackjack — in my gladstone bag, in my room in my hotel. A fine place to have them now! The soldier’s gun was bright in his hand.

Rain began to patter on boards and ground. The soldier turned up the collar of his coat as he came. Nobody ever did anything I liked more. A man stalking another wouldn’t have done that. He didn’t know I was there. He was hunting a hiding place for himself. The game was even. If he found me, he had the gun, but I had seen him first.

His sheepskin coat rasped against the wood as he went by me, bending low as he passed my corner for the back of the pile, so close to me that the same raindrops seemed to be hitting both of us. I undid my fists after that. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him breathing, scratching himself, even humming.

A couple of weeks went by.

The mud I was kneeling in soaked through my pants-legs, wetting my knees and shins. The rough wood filed skin off my face every time I breathed. My mouth was as dry as my knees were wet, because I was breathing through it for silence.

An automobile came around the bend, headed for the city. I heard the soldier grunt softly, heard the click of his gun as he cocked it. The car came abreast, went on. The soldier blew out his breath and started scratching himself and humming again.

Another couple of weeks passed.

Men’s voices came through the rain, barely audible, louder, quite clear. Four soldiers in sheepskin coats and hats walked down the road the way we had come, their voices presently shrinking into silence as they disappeared around the curve.

In the distance an automobile horn barked two ugly notes. The soldier grunted — a grunt that said clearly: “Here it is.” His feet slopped in the mud, and the lumber pile creaked under his weight. I couldn’t see what he was up to.

White light danced around the bend in the road, and an automobile came into view — a high-powered car going cityward with a speed that paid no attention to the wet slipperiness of the road. Rain and night and speed blurred its two occupants, who were in the front seat.

Over my head a heavy revolver roared. The soldier was working. The speeding car swayed crazily along the wet cement, its brakes screaming.

When the sixth shot told me the nickel-plated gun was probably empty, I jumped out of my hollow.

The soldier was leaning over the lumber pile, his gun still pointing at the skidding car while he peered through the rain.

He turned as I saw him, swung the gun around to me, snarled an order I couldn’t understand. I was betting the gun was empty. I raised both hands high over my head, made an astonished face, and kicked him in the belly.

He folded over on me, wrapping himself around my leg. We both went down. I was underneath, but his head was against my thigh. His cap fell off. I caught his hair with both hands and yanked myself into a sitting position. His teeth went into my leg. I called him disagreeable things and put my thumbs in the hollows under his ears. It didn’t take much pressure to teach him that he oughtn’t to bite people. When he lifted his face to howl, I put my right fist in it, pulling him into the punch with my left hand in his hair. It was a nice solid sock.

I pushed him off my leg, got up, took a handful of his coat collar, and dragged him out into the road.

IV Introductions

White light poured over us. Squinting into it, I saw the automobile standing down the road, its spotlight turned on me and my sparring partner. A big man in green and gold came into the light — the florid officer who had been one of Grantham’s companions in the restaurant. An automatic was in one of his hands.

He strode over to us, stiff-legged in his high boots, ignored the soldier on the ground, and examined me carefully with sharp little dark eyes.

“British?” he asked.

“American.”

He bit a corner of his mustache and said meaninglessly:

“Yes, that is better.”

His English was guttural, with a German accent.

Lionel Grantham came from the car to us. His face wasn’t as pink as it had been.

“What is it?” he asked the officer, but he looked at me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I took a stroll after dinner and got mixed up on my directions. Finding myself out here, I decided I was headed the wrong way. When I turned around to go back I saw this fellow duck behind the lumber pile. He had a gun in his hand. I took him for a stick-up, so I played Indian on him. Just as I got to him he jumped up and began spraying you people. I reached him in time to spoil his aim. Friend of yours?”

“You’re an American,” the boy said. “I’m Lionel Grantham. This is Colonel Einarson. We’re very grateful to you.” He screwed up his forehead and looked at Einarson. “What do you think of it?”

The officer shrugged his shoulders, growled, “One of my children — we’ll see,” and kicked the ribs of the man on the ground.

The kick brought the soldier to life. He sat up, rolled over on hands and knees, and began a broken, long-winded entreaty, plucking at the Colonel’s tunic with dirty hands.

“Ach!” Einarson knocked the hands down with a tap of pistol barrel across knuckles, looked with disgust at the muddy marks on his tunic, and growled an order.

The soldier jumped to his feet, stood at attention, got another order, did an about-face, and marched to the automobile. Colonel Einarson strode stiff-legged behind him, holding his automatic to the man’s back. Grantham put a hand on my arm.

“Come along,” he said. “We’ll thank you properly and get better acquainted after we’ve taken care of this fellow.”

Colonel Einarson got into the driver’s seat, with the soldier beside him. Grantham waited while I found the soldier’s revolver. Then we got into the rear seat. The officer looked doubtfully at me out of his eye-corners, but said nothing. He drove the car back the way it had come. He liked speed, and we hadn’t far to go. By the time we were settled in our seats the car was whisking us through a gateway in a high stone wall, with a sentry on each side presenting arms. We did a sliding half-circle into a branching driveway and jerked to a stand-still in front of a square whitewashed building.

Einarson prodded the soldier out ahead of him. Grantham and I got out. To the left, a row of long, low buildings showed pale gray in the rain — barracks. The door of the square, white building was opened by a bearded orderly in green. We went in. Einarson pushed his prisoner across the small reception hall and through the open door of a bedroom. Grantham and I followed them in. The orderly stopped in the doorway, traded some words with Einarson, and went away, closing the door.

The room we were in looked like a cell, except that there were no bars over the one small window. It was a narrow room, with bare, whitewashed walls and ceiling. The wooden floor, scrubbed with lye until it was almost as white as the walls, was bare. For furniture there was a black iron cot, three folding chairs of wood and canvas, and an unpainted chest of drawers, with comb, brush, and a few papers on top. That was all.

“Be seated, gentlemen,” Einarson said, indicating the camp chairs. “We’ll get at this thing now.”

The boy and I sat down. The officer laid his pistol on the top of the chest of drawers, rested one elbow beside the pistol, took a corner of his mustache in one big red hand, and addressed the soldier. His voice was kindly, paternal. The soldier, standing rigidly upright in the middle of the floor, replied, whining, his eyes focused on the officer’s with a blank, in-turned look.

They talked for five minutes or more. Impatience grew in the Colonel’s voice and manner. The soldier kept his blank abjectness. Einarson ground his teeth together and looked angrily at the boy and me.

“This pig!” he exclaimed, and began to bellow at the soldier.

Sweat sprang out on the soldier’s gray face, and he cringed out of his military stiffness. Einarson stopped bellowing at him and yelled two words at the door. It opened and the bearded orderly came in with a short, thick, leather whip. At a nod from Einarson, he put the whip beside the automatic on the top of the chest of drawers and went out.

The soldier whimpered. Einarson spoke curtly to him. The soldier shuddered, began to unfasten his coat with shaking fingers, pleading all the while with whining, stuttering words. He took off his coat, his green blouse, his gray undershirt, letting them fall on the floor, and stood there, his hairy, not exactly clean body naked from the waist up. He worked his fingers together and cried.

Einarson grunted a word. The soldier stiffened at attention, hands at sides, facing us, his left side to Einarson.

Slowly Colonel Einarson removed his own belt, unbuttoned his tunic, took it off, folded it carefully, and laid it on the cot. Beneath it he wore a white cotton shirt. He rolled the sleeves up above his elbows and picked up the whip.

“This pig!” he said again.

Lionel Grantham stirred uneasily on his chair. His face was white, his eyes dark.

V A Flogging

Leaning his left elbow on the chest of drawers again, playing with his mustache-end with his left hand, standing indolently cross-legged, Einarson began to flog the soldier. His right arm raised the whip, brought the lash whistling down to the soldier’s back, raised it again, brought it down again. It was especially nasty because he was not hurrying himself, not exerting himself. He meant to flog the man until he got what he wanted, and he was saving his strength so that he could keep it up as long as necessary.

With the first blow the terror went out of the soldier’s eyes. They dulled sullenly and his lips stopped twitching. He stood woodenly under the beating, staring over Grantham’s head. The officer’s face had also become expressionless. Anger was gone. He showed no pleasure in his work, not even that of relieving his feelings. His air was the air of a stoker shoveling coal, of a carpenter sawing a board, of a stenographer typing a letter. Here was a job to be done in a workmanlike manner, without haste or excitement or wasted effort, without either enthusiasm or repulsion. It was nasty, but it taught me respect for this Colonel Einarson.

Lionel Grantham sat on the edge of his folding chair, staring at the soldier with white-ringed eyes. I offered the boy a cigarette, making an unnecessarily complicated operation out of lighting it and my own — to break up his score-keeping. He had been counting the strokes, and that wasn’t good for him.

The whip curved up, swished down, cracked on the naked back — up, down, up, down. Einarson’s florid face took on the damp glow of moderate exercise. The soldier’s gray face was a lump of putty. He was facing Grantham and me. We couldn’t see the marks of the whip.

Grantham said something to himself in a whisper. Then he gasped:

“I can’t stand this!”

Einarson didn’t look around from his work.

“Don’t stop it now,” I muttered. “We’ve gone this far.”

The boy got up unsteadily and went to the window, opened it and stood looking out into the rainy night. Einarson paid no attention to him. He was putting more weight into the whipping now, standing with his feet far apart, leaning forward a little, his left hand on his hip, his right carrying the whip up and down with increasing swiftness.

The soldier swayed and a sob shook his hairy chest. The whip cut — cut — cut. I looked at my watch. Einarson had been at it for forty minutes, and looked good for the rest of the night.

The soldier moaned and turned toward the officer. Einarson did not break the rhythm of his stroke. The lash cut the man’s shoulder. I caught a glimpse of his back — raw meat. Einarson spoke sharply. The soldier jerked himself to attention again, his left side to the officer. The whip went on with its work — up, down, up, down, up, down.

The soldier flung himself on hands and knees at Einarson’s feet and began to pour out sob-broken words. Einarson looked down at him, listening carefully, holding the lash of the whip in his left hand, the butt still in his right. When the man had finished, Einarson asked questions, got answers, nodded, and the soldier stood up. Einarson put a friendly hand on the man’s shoulder, turned him around, looked at his mangled red back, and said something in a sympathetic tone. Then he called the orderly in and gave him some orders. The soldier, moaning as he bent, picked up his discarded clothes and followed the orderly out of the bedroom.

Einarson tossed the whip up on top of the chest of drawers and crossed to the bed to pick up his tunic. A leather pocketbook slid from an inside pocket to the floor. When he recovered it, a soiled newspaper clipping slipped out and floated across to my feet. I picked it up and gave it back to him — a photograph of a man, the Shah of Persia, according to the French caption under it.

“That pig!” he said — meaning the soldier, not the Shah — as he put on his tunic and buttoned it. “He has a son, also until last week of my troops. This son drinks too much of wine. I reprimand him. He is insolent. What kind of army is it without discipline? Pigs! I knock this pig down, and he produces a knife. Ach! What kind of army is it where a soldier may attack his officers with knives? After I — personally, you comprehend — have finished with this swine, I have him court-martialed and sentenced to twenty years in the prison. This elder pig, his father, does not like that. So he will shoot me to-night. Ach! What kind of army is that?”

Lionel Grantham came away from his window. His young face was haggard. His young eyes were ashamed of the haggardness of his face.

Colonel Einarson made me a stiff bow and a formal speech of thanks for spoiling the soldier’s aim — which I hadn’t — and saving his life. Then the conversation turned to my presence in Muravia. I told them briefly that I had held a captain’s commission in the military intelligence department during the war. That much was the truth, and that was all the truth I gave them. After the war — so my fairy tale went — I had decided to stay in Europe, had taken my discharge there and had drifted around, doing odd jobs at one place and another. I was vague, trying to give them the impression that those odd jobs had not always, or usually, been lady-like. I gave them more definite — though still highly imaginary — details of my recent employment with a French syndicate, admitting that I had come to this corner of the world because I thought it better not to be seen in Western Europe for a year or so.

“Nothing I could be jailed for,” I said, “but things could be made uncomfortable for me. So I roamed over into Mitteleuropa, learned that I might find a connection in Belgrade, got there to find it a false alarm, and came on down here. I may pick up something here. I’ve got a date with the Minister of Police to-morrow. I think I can show him where he can use me.”

“The gross Djudakovich!” Einarson said with frank contempt. “You find him to your liking?”

“No work, no eat,” I said.

“Einarson,” Grantham began quickly, hesitated, said: “Couldn’t we — don’t you think—” and didn’t finish.

The Colonel frowned at him, saw I had noticed the frown, cleared his throat, and addressed me in a gruffly hearty tone:

“Perhaps it would be well if you did not too speedily engage yourself to this fat minister. It may be — there is a possibility that we know of another field where your talents might find employment more to your taste — and profit.”

I let the matter stand there, saying neither yes nor no.

VI Cards on the Table

We returned to the city in the officer’s car. He and Grantham sat in the rear. I sat beside the soldier who drove. The boy and I got out at our hotel. Einarson said good night and was driven away as if he were in a hurry.

“It’s early,” Grantham said as we went indoors. “Come up to my room.”

I stopped at my own room to wash off the mud I’d gathered around the lumber stack and to change my clothes, and then went up with him. He had three rooms on the top floor, overlooking the plaza.

He set out a bottle of whisky, a syphon, lemons, cigars and cigarettes, and we drank, smoked, and talked. Fifteen or twenty minutes of the talk came from no deeper than the mouth on either side — comments on the night’s excitement, our opinions of Stefania, and so on. Each of us had something to say to the other. Each was weighing the other in before he said it.

I decided to put mine over first.

“Colonel Einarson was spoofing us to-night,” I said.

“Spoofing?” The boy sat up straight, blinking.

“His soldier shot for money, not revenge.”

“You mean—?” His mouth stayed open.

“I mean the little dark man you ate with gave the soldier money.”

“Mahmoud! Why, that’s— You are sure?”

“I saw it.”

He looked at his feet, yanking his gaze away from mine as if he didn’t want me to see that he thought I was lying.

“The soldier may have lied to Einarson,” he said presently, still trying to keep me from knowing he thought me the liar. “I can understand some of the language, as spoken by the educated Muravians, but not the country dialect the soldier talked, so I don’t know what he said, but he may have lied, you know.”

“Not a chance,” I said. “I’d bet my pants he told the truth.”

He continued to stare at his outstretched feet, fighting to hold his face cool and calm. Part of what he was thinking slipped out in words:

“Of course, I owe you a tremendous debt for saving us from—”

“You don’t. You owe that to the soldier’s bad aim. I didn’t jump him till his gun was empty.”

“But—” His young eyes were wide before mine, and if I had pulled a machine gun out of my cuff he wouldn’t have been surprised. He suspected me of everything on the blotter. I cursed myself for overplaying my hand. There was nothing to do now but spread the cards.

“Listen, Grantham. Most of what I told you and Einarson about myself is the bunk. Your uncle, Senator Walbourn, sent me down here. You were supposed to be in Paris. A lot of your dough was being shipped to Belgrade. The Senator was leery of the racket, didn’t know whether you were playing a game or somebody was putting over a fast one. I went to Belgrade, traced you here, and came here, to run into what I ran into. I’ve traced the money to you, have talked to you. That’s all I was hired to do. My job’s done — unless there’s anything I can do for you now.”

“Not a thing,” he said very calmly. “Thanks, just the same.” He stood up, yawning. “Perhaps I’ll see you again before you leave for the United States.”

“Yeah.” It was easy for me to make my voice match his in indifference: I hadn’t a cargo of rage to hide. “Good night.”

I went down to my room, got into bed, and, not having anything to think about, went to sleep.

VII Lionel’s Plans

I slept till late the next morning and then had breakfast in my room. I was in the middle of it when knuckles tapped my door. A stocky man in a wrinkled gray uniform, set off with a short, thick sword, came in, saluted, gave me a square white envelope, looked hungrily at the American cigarettes on my table, smiled and took one when I offered them, saluted again, and went out.

The square envelope had my name written on it in a small, very plain and round, but not childish, handwriting. Inside was a note from the same pen:

It was signed “Romaine Frankl,” and had a postscript:

Below this an address was written.

I put the note in my pocket and called: “Come in,” to another set of knocking knuckles.

Lionel Grantham entered.

His face was pale and set.

“Good morning,” I said, making it cheerfully casual, as if I attached no importance to last night’s rumpus. “Had breakfast yet? Sit down, and—”

“Oh, yes, thanks. I’ve eaten.” His handsome red face was reddening. “About last night — I was—”

“Forget it! Nobody likes to have his business pried into.”

“That’s good of you,” he said, twisting his hat in his hands. He cleared his throat. “You said you’d — ah — do — ah — help me if I wished.”

“Yeah. I will. Sit down.”

He sat down, coughed, ran his tongue over his lips.

“You haven’t said anything to any one about last night’s affair with the soldier?”

“No,” I said.

“Will you not say anything about it?”

“Why?”

He looked at the remains of my breakfast and didn’t answer. I lit a cigarette to go with my coffee and waited. He stirred uneasily in his chair and, without looking up, asked:

“You know Mahmoud was killed last night?”

“The man in the restaurant with you and Einarson?”

“Yes. He was shot down in front of his house a little after midnight.”

“Einarson?”

The boy jumped.

“No!” he cried. “Why do you say that?”

“Einarson knew Mahmoud had paid the soldier to wipe him out, so he plugged Mahmoud, or had him plugged. Did you tell him what I told you last night?”

“No.” He blushed. “It’s embarrassing to have one’s family sending guardians after one.”

I made a guess:

“He told you to offer me the job he spoke of last night, and to caution me against talking about the soldier. Didn’t he?”

“Y-e-s.”

“Well, go ahead and offer.”

“But he doesn’t know you’re—”

“What are you going to do, then?” I asked. “If you don’t make me the offer, you’ll have to tell him why.”

“Oh, Lord, what a mess!” he said wearily, putting elbows on knees, face between palms, looking at me with the harried eyes of a boy finding life too complicated.

He was ripe for talk. I grinned at him, finished my coffee, and waited.

“You know I’m not going to be led home by an ear,” he said with a sudden burst of rather childish defiance.

“You know I’m not going to try to take you,” I soothed him.

We had some more silence after that. I smoked while he held his head and worried. After a while he squirmed in his chair, sat stiffly upright, and his face turned perfectly crimson from hair to collar.

“I’m going to ask for your help,” he said, pretending he didn’t know he was blushing. “I’m going to tell you the whole foolish thing. If you laugh, I’ll— You won’t laugh, will you?”

“If it’s funny I probably will, but that needn’t keep me from helping you.”

“Yes, do laugh! It’s silly! You ought to laugh!” He took a deep breath. “Did you ever — did you ever think you’d like to be a—” he stopped, looked at me with a desperate sort of shyness, pulled himself together, and almost shouted the last word — “king?”

“Maybe. I’ve thought of a lot of things I’d like to be, and that might be one of ’em.”

“I met Mahmoud at an embassy ball in Constantinople,” he dashed into the story, dropping his words quickly as if glad to get rid of them. “He was President Semich’s secretary. We got quite friendly, though I wasn’t especially fond of him. He persuaded me to come here with him, and introduced me to Colonel Einarson. Then they — there’s really no doubt that the country is wretchedly governed. I wouldn’t have gone into it if that hadn’t been so.

“A revolution was being prepared. The man who was to lead it had just died. It was handicapped, too, by a lack of money. Believe this — it wasn’t all vanity that made me go into it. I believed — I still believe — that it would have been — will be — for the good of the country. The offer they made me was that if I would finance the revolution I could be — could be king.

“Now wait! The Lord knows it’s bad enough, but don’t think it sillier than it is. The money I have would go a long way in this small, impoverished country. Then, with an American ruler, it would be easier — it ought to be — for the country to borrow in America or England. Then there’s the political angle. Muravia is surrounded by four countries, any one of which is strong enough to annex it if it wants. Even Albania, now that it is a protégé of Italy’s. Muravia has stayed independent so far only because of the jealousy among its stronger neighbors and because it hasn’t a seaport. But with the balance shifting — with Greece, Italy, and Albania allied against Jugoslavia for control of the Balkans — it’s only a matter of time before something will happen here, as it now stands.

“But with an American ruler — and if loans in America and England were arranged, so we had their capital invested here — there would be a change in the situation. Muravia would be in a stronger position, would have at least some slight claim on the friendship of stronger powers. That would be enough to make the neighbors cautious.

“Albania, shortly after the war, thought of the same thing, and offered its crown to one of the wealthy American Bonapartes. He didn’t want it. He was an older man and had already made his career. I did want my chance when it came. There were” — some of the embarrassment that had left him during his talking returned — “there were kings back in the Grantham lines. We trace our descent from James the Fourth, of Scotland. I wanted — it was nice to think of carrying the line back to a crown.

“We weren’t planning a violent revolution. Einarson holds the army. We simply had to use the army to force the Deputies — those who were not already with us — to change the form of government and elect me king. My descent would make it easier than if the candidate were one who hadn’t royal blood in him. It would give me a certain standing in spite — in spite of my being young, and — and the people really want a king, especially the peasants. They don’t think they’re really entitled to call themselves a nation without one. A president means nothing to them — he’s simply an ordinary man like themselves. So, you see, I–It was— Go ahead, laugh! You’ve heard enough to know how silly it is!” His voice was high-pitched, screechy. “Laugh! Why don’t you laugh?”

“What for?” I asked. “It’s crazy, God knows, but not silly. Your judgment was gummy, but your nerve’s all right. You’ve been talking as if this were all dead and buried. Has it flopped?”

“No, it hasn’t,” he said slowly, frowning, “but I keep thinking it has. Mahmoud’s death shouldn’t change the situation, yet I’ve a feeling it’s all over.”

“Much of your money sunk?”

“I don’t mind that. But — well — suppose the American newspapers get hold of the story, and they probably will. You know how ridiculous they could make it. And then the others who’ll know about it — my mother and uncle and the trust company. I won’t pretend I’m not ashamed to face them. And then—” His face got red and shiny. “And then Valeska — Miss Radnjak — her father was to have led the revolution. He did lead it — until he was murdered. She is — I never could be good enough for her.” He said this in a peculiarly idiotic tone of awe. “But I’ve hoped that perhaps by carrying on her father’s work, and if I had something besides mere money to offer her — if I had done something — made a place for myself — perhaps she’d — you know.”

I said: “Uh-huh.”

“What shall I do?” he asked earnestly. “I can’t run away. I’ve got to see it through for her, and to keep my own self-respect. But I’ve got that feeling that it’s all over. You offered to help me. Help me. Tell me what I ought to do!”

“You’ll do what I tell you — if I promise to bring you through with a clean face?” I asked, just as if steering millionaire descendants of Scotch kings through Balkan plots were an old story to me, merely part of the day’s work.

“Yes!”

“What’s the next thing on the revolutionary program?”

“There’s a meeting to-night. I’m to bring you.”

“What time?”

“Midnight.”

“I’ll meet you here at eleven-thirty. How much am I supposed to know?”

“I was to tell you about the plot, and to offer you whatever inducements were necessary to bring you in. There was no definite arrangement as to how much or how little I was to tell you.”

VIII An Enlightening Interview

At nine-thirty that night a cab set me down in front of the address the Minister of Police’s secretary had given in her note. It was a small two-story house in a badly paved street on the city’s eastern edge. A middle-aged woman in very clean, stiffly starched, ill-fitting clothes opened the door for me. Before I could speak, Romaine Frankl, in a sleeveless pink satin gown, floated into sight behind the woman, smiling, holding out a small hand to me.

“I didn’t know you’d come,” she said.

“Why?” I asked, with a great show of surprise at the notion that any man would ignore an invitation from her, while the servant closed the door and took my coat and hat.

We were standing in a dull-rose-papered room, finished and carpeted with oriental richness. There was one discordant note in the room — an immense leather chair.

“We’ll go upstairs,” the girl said, and addressed the servant with words that meant nothing to me, except the name Marya. “Or would you” — she turned to me and English again — “prefer beer to wine?”

I said I wouldn’t, and we went upstairs, the girl climbing ahead of me with her effortless appearance of being carried. She took me into a black, white, and gray room that was very daintily furnished with as few pieces as possible, its otherwise perfect feminine atmosphere spoiled by the presence of another of the big padded chairs.

The girl sat on a gray divan, pushing away a stack of French and Austrian magazines to make a place for me beside her. Through an open door I could see the painted foot of a Spanish bed, a short stretch of purple counterpane, and half of a purple-curtained window.

“His Excellency was very sorry,” the girl began, and stopped.

I was looking — not staring — at the big leather chair. I knew she had stopped because I was looking at it, so I wouldn’t take my eyes away.

“Vasilije,” she said, more distinctly than was really necessary, “was very sorry he had to postpone this afternoon’s appointment. The assassination of the President’s secretary — you heard of it? — made us put everything else aside for the moment.”

“Oh, yes, that fellow Mahmoud—” slowly shifting my eyes from the leather chair to her. “Found out who killed him?”

Her black-ringed, black-centered eyes seemed to study me from a distance while she shook her head, jiggling the nearly black curls.

“Probably Einarson,” I said.

“You haven’t been idle.” Her lower lids lifted when she smiled, giving her eyes a twinkling effect.

The servant Marya came in with wine and fruit, put them on a small table beside the divan, and went away. The girl poured wine and offered me cigarettes in a silver box. I passed them up for one of my own. She smoked a king-size Egyptian cigarette — big as a cigar. It accentuated the smallness of her face and hand — which is probably why she favored that size.

“What sort of revolution is this they’ve sold my boy?” I asked.

“It was a very nice one until it died.”

“How come it died?”

“It — do you know anything about our history?”

“No.”

“Well, Muravia came into existence after the war as a result of the fear and jealousy of four countries. The nine or ten thousand square miles that make this country aren’t very valuable land. There’s little here that any of those four countries especially wanted, but no three of them would agree to let the fourth have it. The only way to settle the thing was to make a separate country out of it. That was done in 1923.

“Doctor Semich was elected the first president, for a ten-year term. He is not a statesman, not a politician, and never will be. But since he was the only Muravian who had ever been heard of outside his own town, it was thought that his election would give the new country some prestige. Besides, it was a fitting honor for Muravia’s only great man. He was not meant to be anything but a figure-head. The real governing was to be done by General Danilo Radnjak, who was elected vice-president, which, here, is more than equivalent to Prime Minister. General Radnjak was a capable man. The army worshiped him, the peasants trusted him, and our bourgeoisie knew him to be honest, conservative, intelligent, and as good a business administrator as a military one.

“Doctor Semich is a very mild, elderly scholar with no knowledge whatever of worldly affairs. You can understand him from this — he is easily the greatest of living bacteriologists, but he’ll tell you, if you are on intimate terms with him, that he doesn’t believe in the value of bacteriology at all. ‘Mankind must learn to live with bacteria as with friends,’ he’ll say. ‘Our bodies must adapt themselves to diseases, so there will be little difference between having tuberculosis, for example, or not having it. That way lies victory. This making war on bacteria is a futile business. Futile but interesting. So we do it. Our poking around in laboratories is perfectly useless — but it amuses us.’

“Now when this delightful old dreamer was honored by his countrymen with the presidency, he took it in the worst possible way. He determined to show his appreciation by locking up his laboratory and applying himself heart and soul to running the government. Nobody expected or wanted that. Radnjak was to have been the government. For a while he did control the situation, and everything went well enough.

“But Mahmoud had designs of his own. He was Doctor Semich’s secretary, and he was trusted. He began calling the President’s attentions to various trespasses of Radnjak’s on the presidential powers. Radnjak, in an attempt to keep Mahmoud from control, made a terrible mistake. He went to Doctor Semich and told him frankly and honestly that no one expected him, the President, to give all his time to executive business, and that it had been the intention of his countrymen to give him the honor of being the first president rather than the duties.

“Radnjak had played into Mahmoud’s hands — the secretary became the actual government. Doctor Semich was now thoroughly convinced that Radnjak was trying to steal his authority, and from that day on Radnjak’s hands were tied. Doctor Semich insisted on handling every governmental detail himself, which meant that Mahmoud handled it, because the President knows as little about statesmanship to-day as he did when he took office. Complaints — no matter who made them — did no good. Doctor Semich considered every dissatisfied citizen a fellow-conspirator of Radnjak’s. The more Mahmoud was criticized in the Chamber of Deputies, the more faith Doctor Semich had in him. Last year the situation became intolerable, and the revolution began to form.

“Radnjak headed it, of course, and at least ninety percent of the influential men in Muravia were in it. The attitude of people as a whole, it is difficult to judge. They are mostly peasants, small land-owners, who ask only to be let alone. But there’s no doubt they’d rather have a king than a president, so the form was to be changed to please them. The army, which worshiped Radnjak, was in it. The revolution matured slowly. General Radnjak was a cautious, careful man, and, as this is not a wealthy country, there was not much money available.

“Two months before the date set for the outbreak, Radnjak was assassinated. And the revolution went to pieces, split up into half a dozen factions. There was no other man strong enough to hold them together. Some of these groups still meet and conspire, but they are without general influence, without real purpose. And this is the revolution that has been sold Lionel Grantham. We’ll have more information in a day or two, but what we’ve learned so far is that Mahmoud, who spent a month’s vacation in Constantinople, brought Grantham back here with him and joined forces with Einarson to swindle the boy.

“Mahmoud was very much out of the revolution, of course, since it was aimed at him. But Einarson had been in it with his superior, Radnjak. Since Radnjak’s death Einarson has succeeded in transferring to himself much of the allegiance that the soldiers gave the dead general. They do not love the Icelander as they did Radnjak, but Einarson is spectacular, theatrical — has all the qualities that simple men like to see in their leaders. So Einarson had the army and could get enough of the late revolution’s machinery in his hands to impress Grantham. For money he’d do it. So he and Mahmoud put on a show for your boy. They used Valeska Radnjak, the general’s daughter, too. She, I think, was also a dupe. I’ve heard that the boy and she are planning to be king and queen. How much did he invest in this little farce?”

“Maybe as much as three million American dollars.”

Romaine Frankl whistled softly and poured more wine.

IX Conjectures

“How did the Minister of Police stand, when the revolution was alive?” I asked.

“Vasilije,” she told me, sipping wine between phrases, “is a peculiar man, an original. He is interested in nothing except his comfort. Comfort to him means enormous amounts of food and drink and at least sixteen hours of sleep each day, and not having to move around much during his eight waking hours. Outside of that he cares for nothing. To guard his comfort he has made the police department a model one. They’ve got to do their work smoothly and neatly. If they don’t, crimes will go unpunished, people will complain, and those complaints might disturb His Excellency. He might even have to shorten his afternoon nap to attend a conference or meeting. That wouldn’t do. So he insists on an organization that will keep crime down to a minimum, and catch the perpetrators of that minimum. And he gets it.”

“Catch Radnjak’s assassin?”

“Killed resisting arrest ten minutes after the murder.”

“One of Mahmoud’s men?”

The girl emptied her glass, frowning at me, her lifted lower lids putting a twinkle in the frown.

“You’re not so bad,” she said slowly, “but now it’s my turn to ask: Why did you say Einarson killed Mahmoud?”

“Einarson knew Mahmoud had tried to have him and Grantham shot earlier in the evening.”

“Really?”

“I saw a soldier take money from Mahmoud, ambush Einarson and Grantham, and miss ’em with six shots.”

She clicked a finger-nail against her teeth.

“That’s not like Mahmoud,” she objected, “to be seen paying for his murders.”

“Probably not,” I agreed. “But suppose his hired man decided he wanted more pay, or maybe he’d only been paid part of his wages. What better way to collect than to pop out and ask for it in the street a few minutes before he was scheduled to turn the trick?”

She nodded, and spoke as if thinking aloud:

“Then they’ve got all they expect to get from Grantham, and each was trying to hog it by removing the other.”

“Where you go wrong,” I told her, “is in thinking that the revolution is dead.”

“But Mahmoud wouldn’t, for three million dollars, conspire to remove himself from power.”

“Right! Mahmoud thought he was putting on a show for the boy. When he learned it wasn’t a show — learned Einarson was in earnest — he tried to have him knocked off.”

“Perhaps.” She shrugged her smooth bare shoulders. “But now you’re guessing.”

“Yes? Einarson carries a picture of the Shah of Persia. It’s worn, as if he handled it a lot. The Shah of Persia is a Russian soldier who went in there after the war, worked himself up until he had the army in his hands, became dictator, then Shah. Correct me if I’m wrong. Einarson is an Icelandic soldier who came in here after the war and has worked himself up until he’s got the army in his hands. If he carries the Shah’s picture and looks at it often enough to have it shabby from handling, does it mean he hopes to follow his example? Or doesn’t it?”

Romaine Frankl got up and roamed around the room, moving a chair two inches here, adjusting an ornament there, shaking out the folds of a window-curtain, pretending a picture wasn’t quite straight on the wall, moving from place to place with the appearance of being carried — a graceful small girl in pink satin.

She stopped in front of a mirror, moved a little to one side so she could see my reflection in it, and fluffed her curls while saying:

“Very well, Einarson wants a revolution. What will your boy do?”

“What I tell him.”

“What will you tell him?”

“Whatever pays best. I want to take him home with all his money.”

She left the mirror and came over to me, rumpled my hair, kissed my mouth, and sat on my knees, holding my face between small warm hands.

“Give me a revolution, nice man!” Her eyes were black with excitement, her voice throaty, her mouth laughing, her body trembling. “I detest Einarson. Use him and break him for me. But give me a revolution!”

I laughed, kissed her, and turned her around on my lap so her head would fit against my shoulder.

“We’ll see,” I promised. “I’m to meet the folks at midnight. Maybe I’ll know then.”

“You’ll come back after the meeting?”

“Try to keep me away!”

X Einarson in Control

I got back to the hotel at eleven-thirty, loaded my hips with gun and blackjack, and went upstairs to Grantham’s suite. He was alone, but said he expected Einarson. He seemed glad to see me.

“Tell me, did Mahmoud go to any of the meetings?” I asked.

“No. His part in the revolution was hidden even from most of those in it. There were reasons why he couldn’t appear.”

“There were. The chief one was that everybody knew he didn’t want any revolts, didn’t want anything but money.”

Grantham chewed his lower lip and said: “Oh, Lord, what a mess!”

Colonel Einarson arrived, in a dinner coat, but very much the soldier, the man of action. His hand-clasp was stronger than it needed to be. His little dark eyes were hard and bright.

“You are ready, gentlemen?” he addressed the boy and me as if we were a multitude. “Excellent! We shall go now. There will be difficulties to-night. Mahmoud is dead. There will be those of our friends who will ask: ‘Why now revolt?’ Ach!” He yanked a corner of his flowing dark mustache. “I will answer that. Good souls, our confrères, but given to timidity. There is no timidity under capable leadership. You shall see!” And he yanked his mustache again. This military gent seemed to be feeling Napoleonic this evening. But I didn’t write him off as a musical-comedy revolutionist — I remembered what he had done to the soldier.

We left the hotel, got into a machine, rode seven blocks, and went into a small hotel on a side street. The porter bowed to the belt when he opened the door for Einarson. Grantham and I followed the officer up a flight of stairs, down a dim hall. A fat, greasy man in his fifties came bowing and clucking to meet us. Einarson introduced him to me — the proprietor of the hotel. He took us into a low-ceilinged room where thirty or forty men got up from chairs and looked at us through tobacco smoke.

Einarson made a short, very formal speech which I couldn’t understand, introducing me to the gang. I ducked my head at them and found a seat beside Grantham. Einarson sat on his other side. Everybody else sat down again, in no especial order.

Colonel Einarson smoothed his mustache and began to talk to this one and that, shouting over the clamor of other voices when necessary. In an undertone, Lionel Grantham pointed out the more important conspirators to me — a dozen or more members of the Chamber of Deputies, a banker, a brother of the Minister of Finance (supposed to represent that official), half a dozen officers (all in civilian clothes tonight), three professors from the university, the president of a labor union, a newspaper publisher and his editor, the secretary of a students’ club, a politician from out in the country, and a handful of small business men.

The banker, a white-bearded fat man of sixty, stood up and began a speech, staring intently at Einarson. He spoke deliberately, softly, but with a faintly defiant air. The Colonel didn’t let him get far.

“Ach!” Einarson barked and reared up on his feet. None of the words he said meant anything to me, but they took the pinkness out of the banker’s cheeks and brought uneasiness into the eyes around us.

“They want to call it off,” Grantham whispered in my ear. “They won’t go through with it now. I know they won’t.”

The meeting became rough. A lot of people were yelping at once, but nobody talked down Einarson’s bellow. Everybody was standing up, either very red or very white in the face. Fists, fingers, and heads were shaking. The Minister of Finance’s brother — a slender, elegantly dressed man with a long, intelligent face — took off his nose glasses so savagely that they broke in half, screamed words at Einarson, spun on his heel, and walked to the door.

He pulled it open and stopped.

The hall was full of green uniforms. Soldiers leaned against the wall, sat on their heels, stood in little groups. They hadn’t guns — only bayonets in scabbards at their sides. The Minister of Finance’s brother stood very still at the door, looking at the soldiers.

A brown-whiskered, dark-skinned, big man, in coarse clothes and heavy boots, glared with red-rimmed eyes from the soldiers to Einarson, and took two heavy steps toward the Colonel. This was the country politician. Einarson blew out his lips and stepped forward to meet him. Those who were between them got out of the way.

Einarson roared and the countryman roared. Einarson made the most noise, but the countryman wouldn’t stop on that account.

Colonel Einarson said: “Ach!” and spat in the countryman’s face.

The countryman staggered back a step and one of his paws went under his brown coat. I stepped around Einarson and shoved the muzzle of my gun in the countryman’s ribs.

Einarson laughed, called two soldiers into the room. They took the countryman by the arms and led him out. Somebody closed the door. Everybody sat down. Einarson made another speech. Nobody interrupted him. The white-whiskered banker made another speech. The Minister of Finance’s brother rose to say half a dozen polite words, staring near-sightedly at Einarson, holding half of his broken glasses in each slender hand. Grantham, at a word from Einarson, got up and talked. Everybody listened very respectfully.

Einarson spoke again. Everybody got excited. Everybody talked at once. It went on for a long time. Grantham explained to me that the revolution would start early Thursday morning — it was now early Wednesday morning — and that the details were now being arranged for the last time. I doubted that anybody was going to know anything about the details, with all this hubbub going on. They kept it up until half-past three. The last couple of hours I spent dozing in a chair, tilted back against the wall in a corner.

Grantham and I walked back to our hotel after the meeting. He told me we were to gather in the plaza at four o’clock the next morning. It would be daylight by six, and by then the government buildings, the President, most of the officials and Deputies who were not on our side, would be in our hands. A meeting of the Chamber of Deputies would be held under the eyes of Einarson’s troops, and everything would be done as swiftly and regularly as possible.

I was to accompany Grantham as a sort of bodyguard, which meant, I imagined, that both of us were to be kept out of the way as much as possible. That was all right with me.

I left Grantham at the fifth floor, went to my room, ran cold water over my face and hands, and then left the hotel again. There was no chance of getting a cab at this hour, so I set out afoot for Romaine Frankl’s house.

I had a little excitement on the way.

A wind was blowing in my face as I walked. I stopped and put my back to it to light a cigarette. A shadow down the street slid over into a building’s shadow. I was being tailed, and not very skillfully. I finished lighting my cigarette and went on my way until I came to a sufficiently dark side street. Turning into it, I stopped in a street-level dark doorway.

A man came puffing around the corner. My first crack at him went wrong — the blackjack took him too far forward, on the cheek. The second one got him fairly behind the ear. I left him sleeping there and went on to Romaine Frankl’s house.

XI A Romantic Interlude

The servant Marya, in a woolly gray bathrobe, opened the door and sent me up to the black, white, and gray room, where the Minister’s secretary, still in the pink gown, was propped up among cushions on the divan. A tray full of cigarette butts showed how she’d been spending her time.

“Well?” she asked as I moved her over to make a seat for myself beside her.

“Thursday morning at four we revolute.”

“I knew you’d do it,” she said, patting my hand.

“It did itself, though there were a few minutes when I could have stopped it by simply knocking our Colonel behind the ear and letting the rest of them tear him apart. That reminds me — somebody’s hired man tried to follow me here tonight.”

“What sort of a man?”

“Short, beefy, forty — just about my size and age.”

“But he didn’t succeed?”

“I slapped him flat and left him sleeping there.”

She laughed and pulled my ear.

“That was Gopchek, our very best detective. He’ll be furious.”

“Well, don’t sic any more of ’em on me. You can tell him I’m sorry I had to hit him twice, but it was his own fault. He shouldn’t have jerked his head back the first time.”

She laughed, then frowned, finally settling on an expression that held half of each.

“Tell me about the meeting,” she commanded.

I told her what I knew. When I had finished she pulled my head down to kiss me, and held it down to whisper:

“You do trust me, don’t you, dear?”

“Yeah. Just as much as you trust me.”

“That’s far from being enough,” she said, pushing my face away with a hand flat against my nose.

Marya came in with a tray of food. We pulled the table around in front of the divan and ate.

“I don’t quite understand you,” Romaine said over a stalk of asparagus. “If you don’t trust me why do you tell me things? As far as I know, you haven’t done much lying to me. Why should you tell me the truth if you’ve no faith in me?”

“My susceptible nature,” I explained. “I’m so overwhelmed by your beauty and charm and one thing and another that I can’t refuse you anything.”

“Don’t!” she exclaimed, suddenly serious. “I’ve capitalized that beauty and charm in half the countries in the world. Don’t say things like that to me ever again. It hurts, because — because—” She pushed her plate back, started to reach for a cigarette, stopped her hand in mid-air, and looked at me with disagreeable eyes. “I love you,” she said.

I took the hand that was hanging in the air, kissed the palm of it, and asked:

“You love me more than any one else in the world?”

She pulled the hand away from me.

“Are you a bookkeeper?” she demanded. “Must you have amounts, weights, and measurements for everything?”

I grinned at her and tried to go on with my meal. I had been hungry. Now, though I had eaten only a couple of mouthfuls, my appetite was gone. I tried to pretend I still had the hunger I had lost, but it was no go. The food didn’t want to be swallowed. I gave up the attempt and lighted a cigarette.

She used her left hand to fan away the smoke between us.

“You don’t trust me,” she insisted. “Then why do you put yourself in my hands?”

“Why not? You can make a flop of the revolution. That’s nothing to me. It’s not my party, and its failure needn’t mean that I can’t get the boy out of the country with his money.”

“You don’t mind a prison, an execution, perhaps?”

“I’ll take my chances,” I said. But what I was thinking was: if, after twenty years of scheming and slickering in big-time cities, I let myself get trapped in this hill village, I’d deserve all I got.

“And you’ve no feeling at all for me?”

“Don’t be foolish.” I waved my cigarette at my uneaten meal. “I haven’t had anything to eat since eight o’clock last night.”

She laughed, put a hand over my mouth, and said:

“I understand. You love me, but not enough to let me interfere with your plans. I don’t like that. It’s effeminate.”

“You going to turn out for the revolution?” I asked.

“I’m not going to run through the streets throwing bombs, if that’s what you mean.”

“And Djudakovich?”

“He sleeps till eleven in the morning. If you start at four, you’ll have seven hours before he’s up.” She said all this perfectly seriously. “Get it done in that time. Or he might decide to stop it.”

“Yeah? I had a notion he wanted it.”

“Vasilije wants nothing but peace and comfort.”

“But listen, sweetheart,” I protested. “If your Vasilije is any good at all, he can’t help finding out about it ahead of time. Einarson and his army are the revolution. These bankers and deputies and the like that he’s carrying with him to give the party a responsible look are a lot of movie conspirators. Look at ’em! They hold their meetings at midnight, and all that kind of foolishness. Now that they’re actually signed up to something, they won’t be able to keep from spreading the news. All day they’ll be going around trembling and whispering together in odd corners.”

“They’ve been doing that for months,” she said. “Nobody pays any attention to them. And I promise you Vasilije shan’t hear anything new. I won’t tell him, and he never listens to anything any one else says.”

“All right.” I wasn’t sure it was all right, but it might be. “Now this row is going through — if the army follows Einarson?”

“Yes, and the army will follow him.”

“Then, after it’s over, our real job begins?”

She rubbed a flake of cigarette ash into the table cloth with a small pointed finger, and said nothing.

“Einarson’s got to be dumped,” I continued.

“We’ll have to kill him,” she said thoughtfully. “You’d better do it yourself.”

XII The Night Before

I saw Einarson and Grantham that evening, and spent several hours with them. The boy was fidgety, nervous, without confidence in the revolution’s success, though he tried to pretend he was taking things as a matter of course. Einarson was full of words. He gave us every detail of the next day’s plans. I was more interested in him than in what he was saying. He could put the revolution over, I thought, and I was willing to leave it to him. So while he talked I studied him, combing him over for weak spots.

I took him physically first — a tall, thick-bodied man in his prime, not as quick as he might have been, but strong and tough. He had an amply jawed, short-nosed, florid face that a fist wouldn’t bother much. He wasn’t fat, but he ate and drank too much to be hard-boiled, and your florid man can seldom stand much poking around the belt. So much for the gent’s body.

Mentally, he wasn’t a heavy-weight. His revolution was crude stuff. It would get over chiefly because there wasn’t much opposition. He had plenty of will-power, I imagined, but I didn’t put a big number on that. People who haven’t much brains have to develop will-power to get anywhere. I didn’t know whether he had guts or not, but before an audience I guessed he’d make a grand showing, and most of this act would be before an audience. Off in a dark corner I had an idea he would go watery. He believed in himself — absolutely. That’s ninety percent of leadership, so there was no flaw in him there. He didn’t trust me. He had taken me in because as things turned out it was easier to do so than to shut the door against me.

He kept on talking about his plans. There was nothing to talk about. He was going to bring his soldiers in town in the early morning and take over the government. That was all the plan that was needed. The rest of it was the lettuce around the dish, but this lettuce part was the only part we could discuss. It was dull.

At eleven o’clock Einarson stopped talking and left us, making this sort of speech:

“Until four o’clock, gentlemen, when Muravia’s history begins.” He put a hand on my shoulder and commanded me: “Guard His Majesty!”

I said, “Uh-huh,” and immediately sent His Majesty to bed. He wasn’t going to sleep, but he was too young to confess it, so he went off willingly enough. I got a taxi and went out to Romaine’s.

She was like a child the night before a picnic. She kissed me and she kissed the servant Marya. She sat on my knees, beside me, on the floor, on all the chairs, changing her location every half-minute. She laughed and talked incessantly, about the revolution, about me, about herself, about anything at all. She nearly strangled herself trying to talk while swallowing wine. She lit her big cigarettes and forgot to smoke them, or forgot to stop smoking them until they scorched her lips. She sang lines from songs in half a dozen languages. She made puns and jokes and goofy rhymes.

I left at three o’clock. She went down to the door with me, pulled my head down to kiss my eyes and mouth.

“If anything goes wrong,” she said, “come to the prison. We’ll hold that until—”

“If it goes wrong enough I’ll be brought there,” I promised.

She wouldn’t joke now.

“I’m going there now,” she said. “I’m afraid Einarson’s got my house on his list.”

“Good idea,” I said. “If you hit a bad spot get word to me.”

I walked back to the hotel through the dark streets — the lights were turned off at midnight — without seeing a single other person, not even one of the gray-uniformed policemen. By the time I reached home rain was falling steadily.

In my room, I changed into heavier clothes and shoes, dug an extra gun — an automatic — out of my bag and hung it in a shoulder holster. Then I filled my pocket with enough amunition to make me bow-legged, picked up hat and raincoat, and went upstairs to Lionel Grantham’s suite.

“It’s ten to four,” I told him. “We might as well go down to the plaza. Better put a gun in your pocket.”

He hadn’t slept. His handsome young face was as cool and pink and composed as it had been the first time I saw him, though his eyes were brighter now.

He got into an overcoat, and we went downstairs.

XIII Progress Goes “Betune”

Rain drove into our faces as we went toward the center of the dark plaza. Other figures moved around us, though none came near. We halted at the foot of an iron statue of somebody on a horse.

A pale young man of extraordinary thinness came up and began to talk rapidly, gesturing with both hands, sniffing every now and then, as if he had a cold in his head. I couldn’t understand a word he said.

The rumble of other voices began to compete with the patter of rain. The fat, white-whiskered face of the banker who had been at the meeting appeared suddenly out of the darkness and went back into it just as suddenly, as if he didn’t want to be recognized. Men I hadn’t seen before gathered around us, saluting Grantham with a sheepish sort of respect. A little man in a too big cape ran up and began to tell us something in a cracked, jerky voice. A thin, stooped man with glasses freckled by raindrops translated the little man’s story into English for us:

“He says the artillery has betrayed us, and guns are being mounted in the government buildings to sweep the plaza at daybreak.” There was an odd sort of hopefulness in his voice, and he added: “In that event, we can, naturally, do nothing.”

“We can die,” Lionel Grantham said gently.

There wasn’t the least bit of sense to that crack. Nobody was here to die. They were all here because it was so unlikely that anybody would have to die, except perhaps a few of Einarson’s soldiers. That’s the sensible view of the boy’s speech. But it’s God’s own truth that even I — a middle-aged detective who had forgotten what it was like to believe in fairies — felt suddenly warm inside my wet clothes. And if anybody had said to me: “This boy is a real king,” I wouldn’t have argued the point.

An abrupt hush came in the murmuring around us, leaving only the rustle of rain, and the tramp, tramp, tramp of orderly marching up the street — Einarson’s men. Everybody commenced to talk at once, happily, expectantly, cheered by the approach of those whose part it was to do the heavy work.

An officer in a glistening slicker pushed through the crowd — a small, dapper boy with a too large sword. He saluted Grantham elaborately, and said in English, of which he seemed proud:

“Colonel Einarson’s respects, Mister, and this progress goes betune.”

I wondered what the last word meant.

Grantham smiled and said: “Convey my thanks to Colonel Einarson.”

The banker appeared again, bold enough now to join us. Others who had been at the meeting appeared. We made an inner group around the statue, with the mob around us — more easily seen now in the gray of early morning. I didn’t see the countryman into whose face Einarson had spat.

The rain soaked us. We shifted our feet, shivered, and talked. Daylight came slowly, showing more and more who stood around us wet and curious-eyed. On the edge of the crowd men burst into cheers. The rest of them took it up. They forgot their wet misery, laughed and danced, hugged and kissed one another. A bearded man in a leather coat came to us, bowed to Grantham, and explained that Einarson’s own regiment could be seen occupying the Administration Building and the Executive Residence.

Day came fully. The mob around us opened to make way for an automobile that was surrounded by a squad of cavalrymen. It stopped in front of us. Colonel Einarson, holding a bare sword in his hand, stepped out of the car, saluted, and held the door open for Grantham and me. He followed us in, smelling of victory like a chorus girl of Coty. The cavalrymen closed around the car again, and we were driven to the Administration Building, through a crowd that yelled and ran red-faced and happy after us. It was all quite theatrical.

XIV Coronation

“The city is ours,” said Einarson, leaning forward in his seat, his sword’s point on the car floor, his hands on its hilt. “The President, the Deputies, nearly every official of importance, is taken. Not a single shot fired, not a window broken!”

He was proud of his revolution, and I didn’t blame him. I wasn’t sure that he might not have brains, after all. He had had sense enough to park his civilian adherents in the plaza until his soldiers had done their work.

We got out at the Administration Building, walking up the steps between rows of infantrymen at present-arms, rain sparkling on their fixed bayonets. More green-uniformed soldiers presented arms along the corridors. We went into an elaborately furnished dining-room, where fifteen or twenty officers stood up to receive us. There were lots of speeches made. Everybody was triumphant. All through breakfast there was much talking. I didn’t understand any of it. I attended to my eating.

After the meal we went to the Deputies’ Chamber, a large, oval room with curved rows of benches and desks facing a raised platform. Besides three desks on the platform, some twenty chairs had been put there, facing the curved seats. Our breakfast party occupied these chairs. I noticed that Grantham and I were the only civilians on the platform. None of our fellow conspirators were there, except those who were in Einarson’s army. I wasn’t so fond of that.

Grantham sat in the first row of chairs, between Einarson and me. We looked down on the Deputies. There were perhaps a hundred of them distributed among the curved benches, split sharply in two groups. Half of them, on the right side of the room, were revolutionists. They stood up and hurrahed at us. The other half, on the left, were prisoners. Most of them seemed to have dressed hurriedly. They looked at us with uneasy eyes.

Around the room, shoulder to shoulder against the wall except on the platform and where the doors were, stood Einarson’s soldiers.

An old man came in between two soldiers — a mild-eyed old gentleman, bald, stooped, with a wrinkled, clean-shaven, scholarly face.

“Doctor Semich,” Grantham whispered.

The President’s guards took him to the center one of the three desks on the platform. He paid no attention to us who were sitting on the platform, and he did not sit down.

A red-haired Deputy — one of the revolutionary party — got up and talked. His fellows cheered when he had finished. The President spoke — three words in a very dry, very calm voice, and left the platform to walk back the way he had come, the two soldiers accompanying him.

“Refused to resign,” Grantham informed me.

The red-haired Deputy came up on the platform and took the center desk. The legislative machinery began to grind. Men talked briefly, apparently to the point — revolutionists. None of the prisoner Deputies rose. A vote was taken. A few of the in-wrongs didn’t vote. Most of them seemed to vote with the ins.

“They’ve revoked the constitution.” Grantham whispered.

The Deputies were hurrahing again — those who were there voluntarily. Einarson leaned over and mumbled to Grantham and me:

“That is as far as we may safely go to-day. It leaves all in our hands.”

“Time to listen to a suggestion?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Will you excuse us a moment?” I said to Grantham, and got up and walked to one of the rear corners of the platform.

Einarson followed me, frowning suspiciously.

“Why not give Grantham his crown now?” I asked when we were standing in the corner, my right shoulder touching his left, half facing each other, half facing the corner, our backs to the officers who sat on the platform, the nearest less than ten feet away. “Push it through. You can do it. There’ll be a howl, of course. To-morrow, as a concession to that howl, you’ll make him abdicate. You’ll get credit for that. You’ll be fifty percent stronger with the people. Then you will be in a position to make it look as if the revolution was his party, and that you were the patriot who kept this newcomer from grabbing the throne. Meanwhile you’ll be dictator, and whatever else you want to be when the time comes. See what I mean? Let him bear the brunt. You catch yours on the rebound.”

He liked the idea, but he didn’t like it to come from me. His little dark eyes pried into mine.

“Why should you suggest this?” he asked.

“What do you care? I promise you he’ll abdicate within twenty-four hours.”

He smiled under his mustache and raised his head. I knew a major in the A. E. F. who always raised his head like that when he was going to issue an unpleasant order. I spoke quickly:

“My raincoat — do you see it’s folded over my left arm?”

He said nothing, but his eyelids crept together.

“You can’t see my left hand,” I went on.

His eyes were slits, but he said nothing.

“There’s an automatic in it,” I wound up.

“Well?” he asked contemptuously.

“Nothing — only — get funny, and I’ll let your guts out.”

“Ach!” — he didn’t take me seriously — “and after that?”

“I don’t know. Think it over carefully, Einarson. I’ve deliberately put myself in a position where I’ve got to go ahead if you don’t give in. I can kill you before you do anything. I’m going to do it if you don’t give Grantham his crown now. Understand? I’ve got to. Maybe — most likely — your boys would get me afterward, but you’d be dead. If I back down now, you’ll certainly have me shot. So I can’t back down. If neither of us backs down, we’ll both take the leap. I’ve gone too far to weaken now. You’ll have to give in. Think it over. I can’t possibly be bluffing.”

He thought it over. Some of the color washed out of his face, and a little rippling movement appeared in the flesh of his chin. I crowded him along by moving the raincoat enough to show him the muzzle of the gun that actually was there in my left hand. I had the big heaver — he hadn’t nerve enough to take a chance on dying in his hour of victory. A little earlier, a little later, I might have had to gun him. Now I had him.

He strode across the platform to the desk at which the red-head sat, drove the red-head away with a snarl and a gesture, leaned over the desk, and bellowed down into the chamber. I stood a little to one side of him, a little behind, close enough so no one could get between us.

No Deputy made a sound for a long minute after the Colonel’s bellow had stopped. Then one of the anti-revolutionists jumped to his feet and yelped bitterly. Einarson pointed a long brown finger at him. Two soldiers left their places by the wall, took the Deputy roughly by neck and arms, and dragged him out. Another Deputy stood up, talked, and was removed. After the fifth drag-out everything was peaceful.

Einarson put a question and got a unanimous answer.

He turned to me, his gaze darting from my face to my raincoat and back, and said: “That is done.”

“We’ll have the coronation now,” I commanded. “Any kind of ceremony, so it’s short.”

I missed most of the ceremony. I was busy keeping my hold on the florid officer, but finally Lionel Grantham was officially installed as Lionel the First, King of Muravia. Einarson and I congratulated him, or whatever it was, together. Then I took the officer aside.

“We’re going to take a walk,” I said. “No foolishness. Take me out a side door.”

I had him now, almost without needing the gun. He would have to deal quietly with Grantham and me — kill us without any publicity — if he were to avoid being laughed at — this man who had let himself be stuck up and robbed of a throne in the middle of his army.

We went roundabout from the Administration Building to the Hotel of the Republic without meeting any one who knew us. The population was all in the plaza. We found the hotel deserted. I made him run the elevator to my floor, and herded him down the corridor to my room.

I tried the door, found it unlocked, let go the knob, and told him to go in. He pushed the door open and stopped.

Romaine Frankl was sitting cross-legged in the middle of my bed, sewing a button on one of my union suits.

XV Bargain Hunters

I prodded Einarson into the room and closed the door. Romaine looked at him and at the automatic that was now uncovered in my hand. With burlesque disappointment she said:

“Oh, you haven’t killed him yet!”

Colonel Einarson stiffened. He had an audience now — one that saw his humiliation. He was likely to do something. I’d have to handle him with gloves, or — maybe the other way was better. I kicked him on the ankle and snarled:

“Get over in the corner and sit down!”

He spun around to me. I jabbed the muzzle of the pistol in his face, grinding his lip between it and his teeth. When his head jerked back I slammed him in the belly with my other fist. He grabbed for air with a wide mouth. I pushed him over to a chair in one corner of the room.

Romaine laughed and shook a finger at me, saying:

“You’re a rowdy!”

“What else can I do?” I protested, chiefly for my prisoner’s benefit. “When somebody’s watching him he gets notions that he’s a hero. I stuck him up and made him crown the boy king. But this bird has still got the army, which is the government. I can’t let go of him, or both Lionel the Once and I will gather lead. It hurts me more than it does him to have to knock him around, but I can’t help myself. I’ve got to keep him sensible.”

“You’re doing wrong by him,” she replied. “You’ve got no right to mistreat him. The only polite thing for you to do is to cut his throat in a gentlemanly manner.”

“Ach!” Einarson’s lungs were working again.

“Shut up,” I yelled at him, “or I’ll come over there and knock you double-jointed.”

He glared at me, and I asked the girl: “What’ll we do with him? I’d be glad to cut his throat, but the trouble is, his army might avenge him, and I’m not a fellow who likes to have anybody’s army avenging on him.”

“We’ll give him to Vasilije,” she said, swinging her feet over the side of the bed and standing up. “He’ll know what to do.”

“Where is he?”

“Upstairs in Grantham’s suite, finishing his morning nap, I suppose.”

Then she said lightly, casually, as if she hadn’t been thinking seriously about it: “So you had the boy crowned?”

“I did. You want it for your Vasilije? Good! We want five million American dollars for our abdication. Grantham put in three to finance the doings, and he deserves a profit. He’s been regularly elected by the Deputies. He’s got no real backing here, but he can get support from the neighbors. Don’t overlook that. There are a couple of countries not a million miles away that would gladly send in an army to support a legitimate king in exchange for whatever concessions they liked. But Lionel the First isn’t unreasonable. He thinks it would be better for you to have a native ruler. All he asks is a decent provision from the government. Five million is low enough, and he’ll abdicate to-morrow. Tell that to your Vasilije.”

She went around me to avoid passing between my gun and its target, stood on tiptoe to kiss my ear, and said:

“You and your king are a couple of brigands. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She went out.

“Ten millions,” Colonel Einarson said.

“I can’t trust you now,” I said. “You’d pay us off in front of a firing squad.”

“You can trust this pig Djudakovich?”

“He’s got no reason to hate us.”

“He will when he’s told of you and his Romaine.”

I laughed.

“Besides, how can he be king? Ach! What is his promise to pay if he cannot become in a position to pay? Suppose even I am dead. What will he do with my army? Ach! You have seen the pig! What kind of king is he?”

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “I’m told he was a good Minister of Police because inefficiency would spoil his comfort. Maybe he’d be a good dictator or king for the same reason. I’ve seen him once. He’s a bloated mountain, but there’s nothing ridiculous about him. He weighs a ton, and moves without shaking the floor. I’d be afraid to try on him what I did to you.”

This insult brought the soldier up on his feet, very tall and straight. His eyes burned at me while his mouth hardened in a thin line. He was going to make trouble for me before I was rid of him. I scowled at him and wondered what I should do next.

The door opened and Vasilije Djudakovich came in, followed by the girl. I grinned at the fat Minister. He nodded without smiling. His little dark eyes moved coldly from me to Einarson.

The girl said:

“The government will give Lionel the First a draft for four million dollars, American, on either a Vienna or Athens bank, in exchange for his abdication.” She dropped her official tone and added: “That’s every nickel I could get out of him.”

“You and your Vasilije are a couple of rotten bargain hunters,” I complained. “But we’ll take it. We’ve got to have a special train to Saloniki — one that will put us across the border before the abdication goes into effect.”

“That will be arranged,” she promised.

“Good! Now to do all this your Vasilije has got to take the army away from Einarson. Can he do it?”

“Ach!” Colonel Einarson reared up his head, swelled his thick chest. “That is precisely what he has got to do!”

The fat man grumbled sleepily through his yellow beard. Romaine came over and put a hand on my arm.

“Vasilije wants a private talk with Einarson. Leave it to him. We’ll go upstairs.”

I agreed and offered Djudakovich my automatic. He paid no attention to the gun or to me. He was looking with a clammy sort of patience at the officer. I went out with the girl and closed the door. At the foot of the stairs I took her by the shoulders and turned her around.

“Can I trust your Vasilije?” I asked.

“Oh my dear, he could handle half a dozen Einarsons.”

“I don’t mean that. He won’t try to gyp me?”

She frowned at me, asking: “Why should you start worrying about that now?”

“He doesn’t seem to be exactly all broken out with friendliness.”

She laughed, and twisted her face around to bite at one of my hands on her shoulders.

“He’s got ideals,” she explained. “He despises you and your king for a pair of adventurers who are making a profit out of his country’s troubles. That’s why he’s so sniffy. But he’ll keep his word.”

Maybe he would, I thought, but he hadn’t given me his word — the girl had.

“I’m going over to see His Majesty,” I said. “I won’t be long — then I’ll join you up in his suite. What was the idea of the sewing act? I had no buttons off.”

“You did,” she contradicted me, rummaging in my pocket for cigarettes. “I pulled one off when one of our men told me you and Einarson were headed this way. I thought it would look domestic.”

XVI Lionel Rex

I found my king in a wine and gold drawing-room in the Executive Residence, surrounded by Muravia’s socially and politically ambitious. Uniforms were still in the majority, but a sprinkling of civilians had finally got to him, along with their wives and daughters. He was too occupied to see me for a few minutes, so I stood around, looking the folks over. Particularly one — a tall girl in black, who stood apart from the others, at a window.

I noticed her first because she was beautiful in face and body, and then I studied her more closely because of the expression in the brown eyes with which she watched the new king. If ever anybody looked proud of anybody else, this girl did of Grantham. The way she stood there, alone, by the window, and looked at him — he would have had to be at least a combination of Apollo, Socrates, and Alexander to deserve half of it. Valeska Radnjak, I supposed.

I looked at the boy. His face was proud and flushed, and every two seconds turned toward the girl at the window while he listened to the jabbering of the worshipful group around him. I knew he wasn’t any Apollo-Socrates-Alexander, but he managed to look the part. He had found a spot in the world that he liked. I was half sorry he couldn’t hang on to it, but my regrets didn’t keep me from deciding that I had wasted enough time.

I pushed through the crowd toward him. He recognized me with the eyes of a park sleeper being awakened from sweet dreams by a night-stick on his shoe-soles. He excused himself to the others and took me down a corridor to a room with stained glass windows and richly carved office furniture.

“This was Doctor Semich’s office,” he told me. “I shall—” He broke off and looked away from me.

“You’ll be in Greece by to-morrow,” I said bluntly.

He frowned at his feet, a stubborn frown.

“You ought to know you can’t hold on,” I argued. “You may think everything is going smoothly. If you do, you’re deaf, dumb, and blind. I put you in with the muzzle of a gun against Einarson’s liver. I’ve kept you in this long by kidnaping him. I’ve made a deal with Djudakovich — the only strong man I’ve seen here. It’s up to him to handle Einarson. I can’t hold him any longer. Djudakovich will make a good dictator, and a good king later, if he wants it. He promises you four million dollars and a special train and safe-conduct to Saloniki. You go out with your head up. You’ve been a king. You’ve taken a country out of bad hands and put it into good — this fat guy is real. And you’ve made yourself a million profit.”

Grantham looked at me and said:

“No. You go. I shall see it through. These people have trusted me, and I shall—”

“My God, that’s old Doc Semich’s line! These people haven’t trusted you — not a bit of it. I’m the people who trusted you. I made you king, understand? I made you king so you could go home with your chin up — not so you could stay here and make an ass of yourself! I bought help with promises. One of them was that you’d get out within twenty-four hours. You’ve got to keep the promises I made in your name. The people trusted you, huh? You were crammed down their throats, my son! And I did the cramming! Now I’m going to uncram you. If it happens to be tough on your romance — if your Valeska won’t take any price less than this lousy country’s throne — that’s—”

“That’s enough.” His voice came from some point at least fifty feet above me. “You shall have your abdication. I don’t want the money. You will send word to me when the train is ready.”

“Write the get-out now,” I ordered.

He went over to the desk, found a sheet of paper, and with a steady hand wrote that in leaving Muravia he renounced his throne and all rights to it. He signed the paper Lionel Rex and gave it to me. I pocketed it and began sympathetically:

“I can understand your feelings, and I’m sorry that—”

He put his back to me and walked out of the room. I returned to the hotel.

At the fifth floor I left the elevator and walked softly to the door of my room. No sound came through. I tried the door, found it unlocked, and went in. Emptiness. Even my clothes and bags were gone. I went up to Grantham’s suite.

Djudakovich, Romaine, Einarson, and half the police force were there.

XVII Mob Law

Colonel Einarson sat very erect in an armchair in the middle of the room. Dark hair and mustache bristled. His chin was out, muscles bulged everywhere in his florid face, his eyes were hot — he was in one of his finest scrapping moods. That came of giving him an audience.

I scowled at Djudakovich, who stood on wide-spread giant’s legs with his back to a window. Why hadn’t the fat fool known enough to keep Einarson off in a lonely corner, where he could be handled? Djudakovich looked sleepily at my scowl.

Romaine floated around and past the policeman who stood or sat everywhere in the room, and came to where I stood, just inside the door.

“Are your arrangements all made?” she asked.

“Got the abdication in my pocket.”

“Give it to me.”

“Not yet,” I said. “First I’ve got to know that your Vasilije is as big as he looks. Einarson doesn’t look squelched to me. Your fat boy ought to have known he’d blossom out in front of an audience.”

“There’s no telling what Vasilije is up to,” she said lightly, “except that it will be adequate.”

I wasn’t as sure of that as she was. Djudakovich rumbled a question at her, and she gave him a quick answer. He rumbled some more — at the policemen. They began to go away from us, singly, in pairs, in groups. When the last one had gone the fat man pushed words out between his yellow whiskers at Einarson. Einarson stood up, chest out, shoulders back, grinning confidently under his flowing dark mustache.

“What now?” I asked the girl.

“Come along and you’ll see,” she said. Her breath came and went quickly, and the gray of her eyes was almost as dark as the black.

The four of us went downstairs and out the hotel’s front door. The rain had stopped. In the plaza was gathered most of Stefania’s population, thickest in front of the Administration Building and Executive Residence. Over their heads we could see the sheepskin caps of Einarson’s regiment, still around those buildings as he had left them.

We — or at least Einarson — were recognized and cheered as we crossed the plaza. Einarson and Djudakovich went side by side in front, the soldier marching, the fat giant waddling. Romaine and I went close behind them. We headed straight for the Administration Building.

“What is he up to?” I asked irritably.

She patted my arm, smiled excitedly, and said:

“Wait and see.”

There didn’t seem to be anything else to do — except worry while I waited.

We arrived at the foot of the Administration Building’s stone steps. Bayonets had an uncomfortably cold gleam in the early evening light as Einarson’s troops presented arms. We climbed the steps. On the broad top step Einarson and Djudakovich turned to face soldiers and citizens below. The girl and I moved around behind the pair. Her teeth were chattering, her fingers were digging into my arm, but her lips and eyes were smiling recklessly.

The soldiers who were around the Executive Residence came to join those already before us, pushing back the citizens to make room. Another detachment came up. Einarson raised his hand, bawled a dozen words, growled at Djudakovich, and stepped back, giving the blond giant the center of the stage.

Djudakovich spoke, a drowsy, effortless roar that could have been heard as far as the hotel. As he spoke, he took a paper out of his pocket and held it before him. There was nothing theatrical in his voice or manner. He might have been talking about anything not too important. But — looking at his audience, you’d have known it was important.

The soldiers had broken ranks to crowd nearer, faces were reddening, a bayoneted gun was shaken aloft here and there. Behind them the citizens were looking at one another with frightened faces, jostling each other, some trying to get nearer, some trying to get away.

Djudakovich talked on. The turmoil grew. A soldier pushed through his fellows and started up the steps, others at his heels. Angry voices raised cries.

Einarson cut in on the fat man’s speech, stepping to the edge of the top step, bawling down at the upturned faces, with the voice of a man accustomed to being obeyed.

The soldiers on the steps tumbled down. Einarson bawled again. The broken ranks were slowly straightened, flourished guns were grounded. Einarson stood silent a moment, glowering at his troops, and then began an address. I couldn’t understand his words any more than I had the fat man’s, but there was no question about his impressiveness. And there was no doubt that the anger was going out of the faces below.

I looked at Romaine. She shivered and was no longer smiling. I looked at Djudakovich. He was as still and as emotionless as the mountain he resembled.

I wished I knew what it was all about, so I’d know whether it was wisest to shoot Einarson and duck through the apparently empty building behind us or not. I could guess that the paper in Djudakovich’s hand had been evidence of some sort against the Colonel, evidence that would have stirred the soldiers to the point of attacking him if they hadn’t been too accustomed to obeying him.

While I was wishing and guessing Einarson finished his address, stepped to one side, clicked his heels together, pointed a finger at Djudakovich, barked an order.

Down below, soldiers’ faces were indecisive, shifty-eyed, but four of them stepped briskly out at their colonel’s order and came up the steps. “So,” I thought, “my fat candidate has lost! Well, he can have the firing squad. The back door for mine.” My hand had been holding the gun in my coat pocket for a long time. I kept it there while I took a slow step back, drawing the girl with me.

“Move when I tell you,” I muttered.

“Wait!” she gasped. “Look!”

The fat giant, sleepy-eyed as ever, put out an enormous paw and caught the wrist of Einarson’s pointing hand. Pulled Einarson down. Let go the wrist and caught the Colonel’s shoulder. Lifted him off his feet with that one hand that held his shoulder. Shook him at the soldiers below. Shook Einarson at them with one hand. Shook his piece of paper — whatever it was — at them with the other. And I’m damned if one seemed any more strain on his monstrous arms than the other!

While he shook them — man and paper — he roared sleepily, and when he had finished roaring he flung his two handfuls down to the wild-eyed ranks. Flung them with a gesture that said, “Here is the man and here is the evidence against him. Do what you like.”

And the soldiers who had cringed back into ranks at Einarson’s command when he stood tall and domineering above them, did what could have been expected when he was tossed down to them.

They tore him apart — actually — piece by piece. They dropped their guns and fought to get at him. Those farther away climbed over those nearer, smothering them, trampling them. They surged back and forth in front of the steps, an insane pack of men turned wolves, savagely struggling to destroy a man who must have died before he had been down half a minute.

I put the girl’s hand off my arm and went to face Djudakovich.

“Muravia’s yours,” I said. “I don’t want anything but our draft and train. Here’s the abdication.”

Romaine swiftly translated my words and then Djudakovich’s:

“The train is ready now. The draft will be delivered there. Do you wish to go over for Grantham?”

“No. Send him down. How do I find the train?”

“I’ll take you,” she said. “We’ll go through the building and out a side door.”

One of Djudakovich’s detectives sat at the wheel of a car in front of the hotel. Romaine and I got in it. Across the plaza tumult was still boiling. Neither of us said anything while the car whisked us through darkening streets. She sat as far from me as the width of the rear seat would let her.

Presently she asked very softly:

“And now you despise me?”

“No.” I reached for her. “But I hate mobs, lynchings — they sicken me. No matter how wrong the man is, if a mob’s against him, I’m for him. The only thing I ever pray to God for is a chance some day to squat down behind a machine gun with a lynching party in front of me. I had no use for Einarson, but I wouldn’t have given him that! Well, what’s done is done. What was the document?”

“A letter from Mahmoud. He had left it with a friend to be given to Vasilije if anything ever happened to him. He knew Einarson, it seems, and prepared his revenge. The letter confessed his — Mahmoud’s — part in the assassination of General Radnjak, and said that Einarson was also implicated. The army worshiped Radnjak, and Einarson wanted the army.”

“Your Vasilije could have used that to chase Einarson out — without feeding him to those wolves,” I complained.

She shook her head and said:

“Vasilije was right. Bad as it was, that was the way to do it. It’s over and settled forever, with Vasilije in power. An Einarson alive, an army not knowing he had killed their idol — too risky. Up to the end Einarson thought he had power enough to hold his troops, no matter what they knew. He—”

“All right — it’s done. And I’m glad to be through with this king business. Kiss me.”

She did, and whispered:

“When Vasilije dies — and he can’t live long, the way he eats — I’m coming to San Francisco.”

“You’re a cold-blooded hussy,” I said.

Lionel Grantham, ex-king of Muravia, was only five minutes behind us in reaching our train. He wasn’t alone. Valeska Radnjak, looking as much like the queen of something as if she had been, was with him. She didn’t seem to be all broken up over the loss of her throne.

The boy was pleasant and polite enough to me during our rattling trip to Saloniki, but obviously not very comfortable in my company. His bride-to-be didn’t know anybody but the boy existed, unless she happened to find some one else directly in front of her. So I didn’t wait for their wedding, but left Saloniki on a boat that pulled out a couple of hours after we arrived.

I left the draft with them, of course. They decided to take out Lionel’s three millions and return the fourth to Muravia. And I went back to San Francisco to quarrel with my boss over what he thought were unnecessary five- and ten-dollar items in my expense account.