"Thirty! Tell me, then, how market bills are to be met when one is owed these thirties?"

"Dear angel, Providence has decided that you shall deal with such problems."

"Well, well, no more, not a centime beyond the thirty!"

"Monstrous, yet all heart!" murmured Felix. He struck an att.i.tude, and sang with exquisite feeling the opening bars of the Jewel Song from "Faust." As applied to the earthly tabernacle of madame's generous soul, the effect of that impa.s.sioned address was ludicrous. But Felix recked little of that. He threw the hundred-franc note on the counter.

"There, _ma pet.i.te_, be rewarded for your trust," he cried. "Now give me the railway timetable; for I have far to go ere I return, when you and I shall crack a bottle of Clos Vosgeot with our dinner."

Madame, who had not betrayed the least embarra.s.sment when she and her cafe were apostrophized in Gounod's impa.s.sioned strains, was utterly bewildered by Poluski's wealth. Not once in many years had he owned so much at one time, since he always drew small sums on account of his pictures and kept himself going hand-to-mouth fashion. But here was Felix intent on the timetable and sweeping seventy-two francs twenty-five centimes of change into his pocket without troubling to count a coin.

"You have found a mad Englishman, I suppose?" t.i.ttered madame.

"Better, far better, _ma cherie_; I have met a man who would be a King!"

He hurried out, climbed into a pa.s.sing omnibus, and descended at the Gare de Lyon.

Joan was just leaving the pretty hotel at Barbizon, meaning to put in some hours of work after a distracted morning, when Felix emerged from the interior of a ramshackle cab that had carried him from Melun to the edge of the forest. Now, a cab drive of several miles, plus a journey from Paris, was a sufficiently rare event in Poluski's life to make Joan stare. His unexpected appearance chimed so oddly with her own disturbed thoughts that she paled.

"Felix," she cried, "have you brought ill news?"

"Of whom, _chere mademoiselle_?" he demanded.

"Of--of any one?"

"Alec still reigns, if that is what you mean."

"But he has sent you?"

"What, do I look like an envoy?" He laughed. "Well, well, _ma belle_, there is some truth in that. I come in behalf of one before whom even Kings must bow; I represent Saint Peter! But even an apostolic dynamitard must eat. I am starving, having sacrificed my luncheon to my love of you. Commend me, then, to some deft handed waiter, and let hunger and curiosity be sated at the same time."

Joan knew that Poluski would choose his own way of explaining his presence. The hour for luncheon was long past; but she hurried to the empty dining room and was able to secure some soup and a cold chicken.

Felix eyed the bird distrustfully.

"Although I am here in behalf of Saint Peter, there is no sense in asking me to chew the wretched fowl that proclaimed his downfall," he muttered.

"Oh, Felix dear, please do tell me what has happened!" said Joan, clasping her hands in real distress. "I received a letter from Alec this morning. It was sent to me from my lodgings, and, what between that and the extraordinary things in the newspapers, I think I am bewitched. Now I am sure that you too have heard from him. Is it a telegram?"

"Yes," he said, "a message sent without wires; it came by one of those underground currents that convulse an unconscious world, sometimes agonizing mountains, at others perplexing a simple maid like yourself.

You see, Joan, all things conspire to draw you to Delgratz."

"I am not going!" she vowed, thereby giving Poluski the exact information he needed; for his nimble brain was beginning to see the connection between Alec's letter and Count Julius Marulitch's intense desire to avail himself of Joan's skill as a copyist.

"You are, my dear," he said, dropping his bantering tone and looking her straight in the eyes.

"How can such an absurdity be dreamed of?" she demanded breathlessly.

"Because it is a dream that will come true. Listen, now, and don't be afraid, for these gray old trees of Barbizon have heard madder whisperings than that you should become a Queen. It is in the natural order of things that I, who gave my best years to devising the ruin of Kings, should be chosen in my dotage to help in fixing a King firmly on his throne. It is some sport of the G.o.ds, I suppose, a superhuman jest, perhaps the touch of farce that makes tragedy more vivid, since even that colossal Shakespeare of yours thought fit to lighten Hamlet by introducing a comic gravedigger. Be that as it may, Joan, you are Alec's Queen, and, as he cannot come for you it follows that you must go to him. Shall I tell you why? You are necessary to him. It is decreed, and you cannot shirk your lot. He knows it, and he has written to bid you come. His enemies know it; but there is a kind of knowledge that leads its votaries blindfold to the pit, and Alec's enemies are blindly plotting now to send you to Delgratz and thus compa.s.s his ruin."

"Felix! What are you saying?"

"The truth, the simple truth. Not a whiff of metaphor or extravagance about that statement, Joan. This morning a man came to me in the Louvre.

He was seeking you. He wants to pay you five thousand francs for a copy of some blazoned daub that hangs in the cathedral at Delgratz. He will pay double, four times, the money if only you will consent to go there.

Why? Because he believes that Alec is infatuated about you, and that the mere hint of marriage with one who is not a Slav princess will shatter the throne of Kosnovia about the ears of its present occupant.

My anxious visitor is mistaken, of course. He is trying to do good that evil may come of it; but while there is justice in Heaven any such perversion of an eternal principle is foredoomed to failure.

"But just think of that man coming to me, Felix Poluski, who has an ear for every sob that rises from the unhappy people who dwell in the borderland between Teuton and Tartar! Isn't that the cream of comedy?

When I make everything clear to you, when I show you how and by whom the killing of Theodore and his wife was engineered, you will begin to understand the fantastic trick that Fate played when she sent her emissary to the hunchback artist in the Louvre. But it is a long story, and it will beguile the journey across Austria, while there are many things you must attend to ere you leave Paris in the Orient Express to-morrow night."

"Felix, it is impossible!"

"Ah! Then you don't love our Alec."

"I--I have not heard a word from his lips--well, hardly a syllable----"

"Not in the letter?"

"That is different. Felix, I can trust you. Perhaps, under other conditions, I might marry Alec; but now I cannot."

"Why?"

"Because he is a King."

"The best of reasons, if he was bred in a palace. But he has lived long enough to become a man first. Frankly, Joan, I like Alec, and I think he ought to be given a chance. At any rate, I don't see why you are afraid of him."

"I am not. Indeed, I am not!" Joan's voice was tremulous. She was on the verge of tears; for the little Pole's persistence was breaking down the barrier that she had striven to erect against her lover's pleading. Alec had not said much in his letter; but what he did say was wholly to the point.

"Come to me, Joan," he wrote. "Don't wait. Don't stop and worry about what the world will say, since it will surely be something bitter and untrue. The people here are all right, and I think they are beginning to like me; but I can see quite plainly that they will not be content until I am married, and hints are being thrown out already that there are several eligible young ladies in neighboring States. But if these Kosnovians take me they must take you too, and it will be far easier for me when they have seen you.

"Now, no hesitation, no doubts, no weighing of pros and cons. Just set your teeth and toss your head up, and tell Pauline to sling your belongings into your boxes, and before you start send me one word in a telegram. I am horribly busy, of course (for details see daily papers), and this must be the most extraordinary love letter ever written; but what does that matter when you and I understand each other? It was you who sent me here. Don't forget that, dear teller of fortunes, and I want you to be standing by my side when the storm breaks that must surely be brewing for me after an incredible success."

There was more in the same vein. Alexis the King seemed to differ in no essential from the Alec Delgrado who used to wait for her every day in the neighborhood of the Pont Neuf. Dare she risk it? The question had tortured her ever since the early morning. It was not that the prospect of being a Queen was dazzling or even dismaying in itself; she really dreaded the result of such a marriage on the fortunes of the man she loved.

But against that self sacrificing att.i.tude she was forced to admit the plea of Alec's own bewildering lack of conventionality. If half the stories in the newspapers were true, he was the most original minded monarch that ever reigned. She was quite sure that his answer to any evasive reply on her part would be a public announcement of the fact that his promised bride was a young lady in Paris, Joan Vernon by name.

And that would be worse almost than going quietly to Delgratz and being married there.

What was she to do? She found Felix Poluski's gray eyes looking at her steadfastly. In this dilemma he was her only trusted counselor, and he had already advised her to yield.

"If I even knew his relatives," she faltered. "His parents live in Paris. We have never met. How can I say to his mother, 'Your son wants me to marry him. What do you think of me?' She, a Princess, would scoff at the idea."

"Alec is well aware of that; hence he has written direct to you, and said nothing to any other person. Let me a.s.sure you that if Prince Michael Delgrado had gone to Delgratz he would have died a sudden and violent death. Prince Michael knew it, and declined the distinction.

Believe me, too, Alec has the very best of reasons for consulting no one in his choice of a wife. Now, Joan, be brave! When all is said and done, it should be far more pleasant to marry a King than fling a bomb at him, and I have met several young ladies almost as pretty as you who were ready enough to adopt the latter alternative. At any rate you will take no harm by crossing the Danube. It is not the Rubicon, you know, and you have Saint Peter to lean on in case of difficulty."

So Felix did not return to Paris alone, and when he met Count Julius Marulitch next morning in the Louvre he was able to announce that Miss Joan Vernon had accepted the commission to copy the Delgratz Saint Peter and was ready to start for Kosnovia by the night mail.

CHAPTER VI