At last Marulitch flung the paper aside with an angry snarl.

"Ah, bah!" he growled. "May the devil fly away with our dear Alec and his doings day by day! A nice pair of fools we made of ourselves when we pitchforked him into power!"

"Patience, my friend, patience!" said the Greek. "Everything comes to him who waits, and Alec will fall far when his luck changes. It may be to-morrow, or next week; but he must experience a reverse. He is like a gambler at Monte Carlo who stakes maximums just because the table is running favorably."

"Fish!" snorted Marulitch. "What else would a gambler do?"

"What indeed?" agreed Beliani, though a far less alert intelligence than Marulitch's might have known that he was annoyed. The pink and white Julius, whom his friends had nicknamed "le beau Comte," did not fail to catch the contemptuous note of that purred answer; he sprang up from his chair, ransacked a cupboard, and threw on the table a box of those priceless cigarettes, the produce of a single southwesterly hillside at Salonica, that are manufactured solely for the Sultan of Turkey.

"There, smoke, my Constantine," he laughed harshly. "Why should we quarrel? We were idiots. Let us, then, admit it."

"Were we?"

"Can you deny it? We arranged the first move beautifully. With Theodore out of the way----"

The Greek turned his head swiftly and looked at the door. Marulitch lowered his voice.

"No need to refer to Theodore, you will say? How can one avoid it? His death was the cornerstone of the edifice. If only that senile uncle of mine had become King the path would be clear for the final coup before the year was out. And now where are we? What purpose do we serve by self delusion? Each day's newspaper bears witness to our folly. Alec carries the a.s.sembly by storm; Alec captures a would-be a.s.sa.s.sin; Alec flouts Austria; Alec disbands the Seventh Regiment and hands its officers to the police; Alec attends the funeral of Theodore and Helena, and takes over their servants and debts; Alec tells the Sultan that he exists in Europe only on sufferance; Alec draws a map of Kosnovia and decorates it with railways; Alec bathes in the Danube at six, breakfasts at seven, attends a christening at eight, a wedding at nine, a review at ten, a memorial service in the cathedral at eleven, lunches at twelve, receives provincial deputations at one, inaugurates the Delgratz Polo Club at two and the Danubian Rowing Club at three,--Alec round the clock, and all Europe agape to know what next he will be up to--and you and I here, unknown, unrecorded,--you and I, the brains, the eyes, the organizers of the whole affair! Oh, it makes me sick when I remember how I stood like a stuck pig in old Delgrado's flat and let the son jump in and s.n.a.t.c.h from the father's hands the scepter I had purchased so dearly!"

The Greek rose languidly, strolled to the door, and threw it open. A page boy was in the lobby, and it was easy to see by his innocent face that his presence there was inspired by no more sinister motive than to deliver a newspaper.

Beliani took it, closed the door, listened a moment, and unfolded the damp sheet. He glanced at its foreign news.

"'Le Soir' gives prominence to a rumor that King Alexis will marry a Montenegrin Princess," he murmured composedly.

"Mirabel, of course?"

"She is unnamed."

"That's it. I know, I know! He will marry Mirabel. By Heaven! if he does, I'll shoot him myself!"

"The trial of the regicides is fixed for June," went on Beliani, wholly unmoved by Marulitch's vehemence. "Now, the vital question is, How far can Stampoff be relied on?"

"How does our reliance on Stampoff concern Mirabel?"

"I am not thinking of Mirabel, but of Julius and Constantine. If Stampoff tells our young Bayard everything, Delgratz is no place for you and me, my veteran."

Marulitch, though trembling with pa.s.sion, could not fail to see that the Greek was remarkably nonchalant for one who had witnessed the utter collapse of ten years of work and expenditure.

"Are we going there?" he managed to ask without a curse.

"Soon, quite soon, provided Stampoff keeps a still tongue."

"But why? To grace the coronation by our presence?"

"It may be. Remember, if you please, that we are Alec's best friends. We gave him his chance. I offered to finance him; did finance Stampoff in fact. We are unknown personally to the officers of the Seventh. That was wise, Julius, far-seeing, on my part. Oh, yes, we must go to Delgratz.

Delgratz is the nerve center now."

"You are keeping something from me."

"On my honor, no. But you sneered at my parable of the successful gambler, whereas I believe in it implicitly. I have seen that type of fool backing the red, staking his six thousand francs on every coup, and have watched a run of twelve, thirteen, seventeen, twenty-one; but the smash came at last."

"What matter? A man who wins twenty times can well afford to lose once."

"I said a gambler, not a financier," smiled Beliani. "But let it pa.s.s. I thought you told me there was a girl here in Paris----"

"So there is, a beauty too; but Alec has meanwhile become a King."

"A somewhat peculiar King. He has borrowed his regal notions from America rather than Kosnovia, Julius. He would laugh at any claim of divine right. One of these days you will find him chaffing the Hohenzollerns, and that is dangerous jesting in the Balkans. If he loves a girl in Paris, he will not marry your Mirabel. I fancy I have taken his measure. If I am right, he is far too honest to occupy the throne of Kosnovia."

"_Grand Dieu!_ the country is pining for honest government. Even you will grant that."

"Even I, as you say; but I should be wrong. If I have an ax to grind, so has the other fellow. Kosnovia is in the East, and the East loves deceit. Alec has dazzled the people for a few days. Wait till he begins to sweep the bureaus free of well paid sinecurists. Wait till he finds out how the money is spent that the a.s.sembly votes for railways, education, forestry, and the like. Wait till he reduces the staff of the army and the secretaries. I know Delgratz and Kosnovia, and he does not.

He will win the people, it is true; but he will alienate the men who can twist the people this way and that to suit their own purposes. Before a month is out he will be wrangling with the a.s.sembly. See if I am not a prophet. Oh, yes, Julius, you and I must go to Delgratz. No hurry; slow but sure. I'll break the journey at Vienna. We must sound Stampoff too.

But before I go, I should like to be sure that the girl has gone there."

"The artist girl to Delgratz!"

Julius was bitter and skeptical; but he reposed such confidence in Beliani's judgment that he choked his doubts. "Yes. Can it be managed?"

Le beau Comte leered, and the satyr grin was highly expressive. It seemed to show the man's real nature. In repose his face was insipid; now for an instant he resembled the G.o.d Pan.

"You called Alec a Bayard just now. Not a bad t.i.tle for him. He has that kind of repute among his friends. Perhaps the girl is built on the same lines, and we don't want to send a pretty saint to Delgratz merely to inspire him to fresh efforts."

The Greek inhaled a deep breath of the aromatic smoke. "You'll be an average sort of King, Julius; but you are not a philosopher," said he thoughtfully. "I tell you we are safer than ever if we can bring him and the girl together. He will marry her, you short sighted one--marry her, and thus alienate every Slav in the Balkans. I have turned this thing in my mind constantly since I recovered from the first shock of his achievement, and I am fairly certain of my ground. Mark you, Princess Mirabel of Montenegro will be reported to-morrow as out of the running.

If that is so, you will begin to believe me and stop clawing your hair and injuring your fine complexion by scowling."

Next morning's "Matin" announced that King Alexis was greatly annoyed by the mischievous and utterly unfounded canard that bracketed his name with that of a woman he had never seen. Count Julius read, and made a hasty toilet. Beliani and he had laid their plans overnight, and he lost no time in opening the new campaign.

It was a difficult and delicate task he had undertaken. Paris, big in many respects, is small in its society, which, because of its well marked limits, makes a noise in the world quite incommensurate with its importance; whereas London, close neighbor and rival, contains a dozen definite circles that seldom overlap. The woman Julius had seen with Alec in the Louvre was not on Princess Michael's visiting list, of that he had no manner of doubt. Therefore, from his point of view, the only possible solution of their apparent friendship would prove to be something underhanded and clandestine, an affair of secret meetings, and letters signed in initials, and a tacit agreement to move unhindered in different orbits.

Being of the nature of dogs and aboriginal trackers, Marulitch made straight for the Louvre. There he had quitted the trail, and there must he pick it up again. But the hunt demanded the utmost wariness. If he startled the quarry, he might fail at the outset, and, supposing his talking was successful, both he and Beliani must still beware of a King's vengeance if their project miscarried.

Neither man had the slightest belief in Alec's innate n.o.bility of character. Beliani likened him to Bayard, it is true, and Marulitch had scoffingly adopted the simile; but that was because each thought Bayard not admirable, but a fool. The somber history of the Kosnovian monarchy, a record of cra.s.s stupidity made lurid at times by a lightning gleam of pa.s.sion, justified the belief that Alexis would follow the path that led Theodore, and Ferdinand, and Ivan, and Milosch to their ruin. Each of these rulers began to reign under favorable auspices, yet each succ.u.mbed to the siren's spell, and there was no reason at all, according to such reckoning, why the handsome and impulsive Alexis should escape. That a pretty Parisienne who was also an artist should fail to offer herself as a willing bait did not enter at all into the calculation.

"Be suave, spend money, and keep in the background," said the Greek.

Julius entered the Grande Galerie prepared to apply these instructions through the medium of his own subtle wit. At the outset, luck favored him. Somehow, it is always easier to do evil than good, and the longevity of evil is notorious, whereas the short lived existence of good would horrify an insurance agent.

Joan was not present; but Felix Poluski was preparing a canvas for his twenty-seventh copy of the famous Murillo. Two of his "Immaculate Conceptions" were in private collections; one had been sold to a South American millionaire as the Spanish artist's own duplicate of the picture, though Poluski was unaware of the fraud; and twenty-three adorned the high altars of various continental churches, where they edified mult.i.tudes happily ignorant of the irreverent conditions under which the cheery souled anarchist hunchback droned his s.n.a.t.c.hes of song and extracted from a few tubes of paint some glimpse of heaven, and rays of sunlight, and hints of divine love and divine maternity.

The crooked little Pole's genius and character were alike unknown to Count Julius. He saw only a quaintly artistic personage who might possibly be acquainted with such a remarkable looking habitue of the gallery as Joan. Instead, therefore, of appealing to one of the officials, he approached Poluski, and the two exchanged greetings with the politeness that Paris quickly teaches to those who dwell within her gates.

"You work in this gallery most days, monsieur?" said Julius.

"But yes, monsieur," said Felix.

"About a fortnight ago, monsieur," explained Marulitch, "I happened to be here at this hour, and I noticed a young lady copying one of the pictures on the opposite wall. Can you tell me who she was?"