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The Lighted Match, a novel by Charles Neville Buck |
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Chapter 16. The Ambassador Becomes Admiral |
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_ CHAPTER XVI. THE AMBASSADOR BECOMES ADMIRAL More suggestive of a stowaway than a millionaire, thought Blanco the following afternoon, when he had come over the side of the _Isis_ and sought out the owner of the yacht. Benton had turned hermit and withdrawn to the most isolated space the vessel provided. It was really not a deck at all--only a space between engine-room grating and tarpaulined lifeboats on what was properly the cabin roof. Here, removed from the burnished and ship-shape perfection of the yacht's appointment, he lay carelessly shaven and more carelessly dressed. The lazily undulating Mediterranean stretched unbroken save for the yacht's stack, funnels and stanchions, in a sight-wide radius of blue. Overhead the sky was serene. Here and there, in fitful humors, the sea flowed in rifts of a different hue. The sun was mellow and the breeze which purred softly in the cables overhead came with the caressing breath that blows off the orange groves of Southern Spain. Ahead lay all the invitation of the south of France; of the Riviera's white cities and vivid countryside; of Monte Carlo's casinos and Italy's villas. Beyond further horizons, waited the charm of Greece, but the man lay on an old army blanket, clad in bagging flannels and a blue army shirt open at the throat. His arms were crossed above his eyes, and he was motionless, except that the fingers which gripped his elbows sometimes clenched themselves and the bare throat above the open collar occasionally worked spasmodically. Blanco had come quietly, and his canvas shoes had made no sound. For a time he did not announce himself. He was not sure that Benton was awake, so he dropped noiselessly to the deck and sat with his hands clasped about his knees, his eyes moodily measuring the rise and fall of the glaringly white stanchions above and below the sky-line. At frequent intervals they swept back to the other man, who still lay motionless. It was late afternoon and the smoke-stack shadows pointed off in attenuated lines to the bow while the sky, off behind the wake, brightened into the colors of sunset. Finally Benton rose. The unexpected sight of Blanco brought a start and an immediate masking of his face, but in the first momentary glimpse the Andalusian caught a haggard distress which frightened him. "I didn't know you had come," said Benton quietly. "How long have you been here?" "I should say a half-hour, _Senor_," replied Manuel, casually rolling a cigarette. "Why didn't you rouse me? I'm not very amusing, but even I could have relieved the dullness of sitting there like a marooned man on a derelict." "Dullness?" inquired the _toreador_ with a lazy lift of the brows. "It is ease, _Senor_, and ease is desirable--at sea." The American sat cross-legged on the deck and held out his hand for a cigarette. When he asked a question he spoke in matter-of-fact tones. He even laughed, and the Andalusian chatted on in kind, but secretly and narrowly he was watching the other, and when he had finished his scrutiny he told himself that Benton had been indulging in the dangerous pastime of brooding. "Tell me--everything," urged the yacht-owner. "What are the revolutionists doing and how is--how are things?" Carefully he avoided directing any question to the point on which his eagerness for news was poignant hunger. When Blanco told how Louis had left Galavia just before the soldiers reached the lodge, Benton's face darkened. "That was fatal blundering," he complained. "So long as Delgado is at large the Palace is menaced. If they had taken him, and held him under surveillance, the _Cabinet Noir_ would be disarmed. Now they will try again." Blanco nodded. "There is no charge they can make against him," he mused. "They cannot bring him back because the government cannot admit its peril. Outwardly his bill of health is clean. Assuredly when they let him slip, _Senor_, they committed a grave error." Benton rose and paced the deck in deep reflection. At last he halted and spread his hands in a gesture half-despairing. "My God!" he said in a low voice. "The anxiety will drive me mad! You saw their methods. An entire cortege was to be blown into the air--just to kill Karyl. Next time, what will they attempt?" He broke off with a shudder. "I have seen the Queen," said Blanco slowly. Benton wheeled. For an instant his face lighted, then he leaned forward. He said nothing, but his whole attitude was a question. "You behold in me, Sir Manuel Blanco," began the Andalusian grandly. Then, slipping his arm through that of the other man, he began leading him around the deck. When he had finished his narrative, he said: "I begin my office as Ambassador by delivering this packet." From his pocket he produced the paper-wrapped rose. "I was instructed to give it to you at some future time. Possibly, _Senor_, I am over-prompt. Lawyers and diplomats should be deliberate." The Mediterranean day had died slowly from east to west while the men had talked, and the last shred of glowing sky was darkening into the sea at the edge of the world astern, when Benton greedily thrust out his hand for the packet. "_Gracias_," he said bluntly, and turning away went precipitously to his cabin. After dinner, when the Captain had betaken himself to the bridge and the smoke from the Spaniard's cigarettes and Benton's pipe had begun to wreathe clouds against the ceiling-beams, Blanco broached his diplomacy. In the dulled expressionlessness of the face opposite him and the stoop of the shoulders, Manuel read a need for an active antidote against the corrosive poison of despair. "Where are we going now, _Senor_?" Benton shrugged his shoulders. "'_Quien sabe!_' as you say in Spain. We are simply cruising, drifting, keeping out of sight of land." "And drifting is the precise thing, _Senor_, which we must not do. I have hitherto done without question what you have said. Now I hold a new dignity." There was a momentary flash of teeth as he smiled. "As Ambassador, I make a request. May I be permitted to take entire control of affairs for a brief time? Also, will you for a few days obey _my_ instructions, without question?" Benton looked across the table at the dark face half-obscured behind a blue fog of cigarette smoke. After a moment he smiled. "Admiral," he said, "issue your orders." "You will instruct the Captain," said Manuel promptly, "to head at once for Villefranche. There you, _Senor_, will leave the yacht, and I will go with it to Monte Carlo. I wish to be as soon as possible in the casino where the drone of the _croupier_ and the clink of outflowing _louis d'or_ constitute the national refrain." Benton's eyes narrowed in perplexity. On his face was written curiosity, but he had agreed to ask no questions. He unhesitatingly put his finger on the electric bell. "Ask the Captain to come here as soon as he is at leisure," he directed when the steward had responded to the call. "Good," commended Blanco. Then with a sorrowful shake of his head he commiserated: "I am sorry that you are to be denied the excitement of the _rouge et noir_ and the _trente et quarente_ of the gold table, _Senor_, but if the Countess Astaride and Louis should meet there, the lady would know you. I fancy that she will not again mistake you for someone else. As for myself, neither of them yet knows me." "Are they at Monte Carlo?" Benton sat suddenly upright, and Blanco had the first reward of his diplomacy, as he noted the quickening interest in the questioning eyes. "I am only guessing, _Senor_. If the guess is good, I may learn something. What is in my mind, may fail. If you are willing to trust me I would rather not reveal it now." "And I?" questioned Benton. "Have I any part to play in this, or do you go it alone?" Blanco leaned forward. "It may be necessary to have someone near enough to the Palace in Puntal to insure immediate action--action to be taken on the instant.... You must return to the city, _Senor_.... It will be for only a few days. The Grand Palace Hotel is above the town in large gardens.... If you choose you can remain there with your presence absolutely unknown, so far as the city proper is concerned. Also, the Marconi office has a station in the hotel grounds. With a code which we have yet to arrange, I can keep in touch with you...." The next day Benton was a passenger by steamer from Villefranche to Puntal. The Grand Palace Hotel, dominating its own acres of subtropical gardens, looks down on the city as one seated on an eminence commands the common things at his feet. Between its grounds and the scalloped bay, run the huddled habitations of the town's water-front, with its delicately tinted walls and riotously colored gardens invading every crevice. Following the semicircle of the bay, the eye commands that other eminence where the King's Palace shuts itself in austerely at the very center of the arc. Through the clustered, tea-sipping loungers on the galleries and terraces Benton made his way several days later, wearing the studiously affected unconcern of the tourist; an unconcern which he found it desperately difficult to assume in Puntal. Driven by a growing and intense desire to put distance between himself and all alien humanity, he turned into a narrow, steeply climbing street which ran twisting between toy-houses and vine-cumbered garden-walls, until at last it lost its right to be called a street and became merely a narrow, trail-like path up the mountain-side. The wanderer climbed interminably. He took no thought of destination and satisfied himself with the physical exertion of the laborious going. His heart pounded faster as he attained the altitude of the pine woods where he seemed to have left humanity behind him. Once or twice he saw a shy, half-wild child who fled from its task of gathering fagots at his approach, to gaze at him out of startled eyes from a safe distance. Occasionally he would stop to look down, from some coign of vantage, at cascading threads of water tumbling into the gorge below, or at a chalet-like house perched far beneath in its trim patch of agriculture. Finally he stretched himself indolently on a carpet of pine needles at the brink of a drop to the valley. Then, with a sense of recognition, he saw the tumbled-down gate of the King's driveway below him to the left, and his face became set and miserable as memory began its work of tearing open wounds not yet old. Suddenly there drifted up a chorus of children's laughter. He sat up suddenly and looked about, but no one was in sight. Again he heard an unmistakable peal of shrill, childish merriment, seemingly close at hand. He lay flat and looked over the ledge, holding on to a root of a gnarled pine that grew far out at the marge. Under him, not more than twenty yards below, on a similar natural platform, sat a circle of peasant children, their eyes large with wonderment and interest. In their center, also seated on the earth, was the Queen of Galavia. She was dressed in a short walking skirt and a blue jersey, and as the man gripped the pine root to which he held, and gazed over, she lifted an outstretched finger of a gauntleted hand in illustration of some particularly wonderful point of what was palpably a particularly wonderful fairy story. A third burst of delight came from the listening and responsive auditors, who had no idea by whom they were being entertained. The peasants of Galavia speak Portuguese. As Benton shifted his position so that he could eavesdrop without being discovered, he found that he could catch some of the words. "Tell us another story--" piped a high treble voice, "--a story about the beautiful Princess who married the King." The demand was seconded by an immediate clamor of eager voices. The girl rose unsteadily and shook her head. For a moment she stood looking off over the miles of sea with her hands at her breast and her eyes clouded, oblivious of the small companions of her truancy. She stretched out both strong young arms toward the Mediterranean. Then she heeded the children's clamor again and, turning to them, she laughed. "No, no!" she teasingly answered, and the man above realized for the first time that Portuguese is a tongue of liquid music. "These are fairy stories without Princesses. These are perfectly good fairy stories, you know." Then with a sudden burst of confidence, "In really-truly life, Princesses are not much good. Don't any of you ever be a Princess if you can help it!" After planting this seed of treasonable ideas she turned away, adding: "No, no, no! I've run away and I must go back. To-morrow we will have a wonderful story--but no more to-day." Slowly she made her way down to the old gate, stopping twice to look out to the sea, and above her, choking off the shout that clamored at his lips, the man sat motionless and gave no intimation of his presence. Finally he rose and made his way unsteadily back to the city. He walked slowly down between the wine-shops, noisy with laughter, to the road along the bay. Immersed in reflection and forgetful of his resolution to keep as much as possible out of sight, he went openly and conspicuously along the street that overhangs the water, where at sunset all Puntal promenades. It was only when a detachment of soldiers in the familiar opera-bouffe uniform went clanking by to change the guard at the Palace gates that he remembered he was to have remained inconspicuous. With a sense of chagrin for his indiscretion, he turned into a side street which sloped upward toward his hotel. This street was so little used that between its cobble stones tender sprigs of grass made the way as green as a turf course. _ |
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