Despite its sinister significance, Alec could not choose but credit this amazing statement. He wondered why Felix had not told him the facts in detail afterward; but he knew that the hunchback's mind worked in strange grooves, and it was probable that his silence was dictated by some powerful motive. In any event, the incident was an unpleasant reminder of certain nebulous doubts that he had striven to crush, and it was better that this scared rabbit of a man should not remain in Delgratz and become the victim of some vendetta which might bring the whole odd story into prominence.

"You want to leave the city, I take it?" said he after a thoughtful pause, in which he took a slow turn up and down the room.

"I dare not remain here any longer, your Majesty. I came to-night to ask Monsieur Poluski to be good enough to give me money to take me to Warsaw."

"I think," said Alec, smiling, "he promised you, in my name, the wherewithal to buy a cafe."

"I fear I did not earn my reward, your Majesty," stuttered the other.

"Are cafes dear in Warsaw?" said the King, unlocking a drawer and producing roubles to the equivalent of five hundred dollars. "Here, this sum should give you a fresh start in life. All I ask in return is that you shall keep a still tongue about your recent share in local events."

Poor Sobieski's grat.i.tude grew incoherent, especially when the King handed him over to the care of the attendant who had brought him to the bureau, with instructions that he was to be taken to the railway station and safeguarded there till the departure of the next train that crossed the frontier.

By that time the dinner hour was long past. Alec was disinclined for a heavy meal; so he went to his private suite, where he changed his clothes, contenting himself with some sandwiches, which he ate in a hurry and washed down with a gla.s.s of red wine.

Coming down stairs about an hour later, he pa.s.sed the smoking-room. The door was open, and he saw that the men had already ended dinner. He was about to enter the music salon, to which his mother and Joan usually retired with the President's wife and daughter, when he met Pauline for the second time, and the Frenchwoman now approached him with the same marked nervousness in her demeanor that he had noticed when he saw her standing in the lobby.

"May I have a word with your Majesty in private?" she asked.

He was surprised; but again he believed she was probably bringing a message from Joan. He threw open the door of his office. "Come in here,"

he said. "What is it?"

She held out a letter, and he saw that her hand shook. "Mademoiselle asked me to give you this, your Majesty," she said. "I was to take care that you were alone when you received it."

"Something important then," he said with a laugh.

Crossing the room to the table on which stood the lamp by whose light he had scribbled "Alexis R." on the papers intrusted to Bosko, he opened the envelop, which bore in Joan's handwriting the simple superscription, "Alec," and began to read:

MY DEAR ONE:--When Pauline gives you this, I shall have left you forever. I am going from Delgratz, and I shall never see you again.

I cannot marry you--but oh, my dear, my dear, I shall love you all my life! Try and forget me. I am acting for the best. Do not write to Paris or endeavor to find me. If it is G.o.d's will, we shall never meet again. I can scarcely see what I am writing for my tears. So good-by, my Alec! Be brave! Forgive me, and, in the years to come, try to forget our few days of happiness together.

Yours ever,

JOAN.

He stood there stricken, almost paralyzed with the suddenness of the blow, wondering dumbly why Joan's hand should have inflicted it. The frightened Frenchwoman dared not speak or move. She watched him with that impersonal fear so readily aroused in one of her cla.s.s by the terrifying spectacle of a strong man in his agony. At last he moved listlessly, as though his limbs had just been released from the rack. He held the letter under the lamp again and read it a second time, word for word. He seemed to be forcing himself to accept it as truth. This young King, so valiant, so resourceful, so prompt in action and judgment, could devise no plan, no means of rescue from the abyss. After an interval that neither the man nor the woman could measure, he turned his strained, staring eyes on the shrinking Pauline.

"Have I ever done you any harm?" he said in the low voice of utmost despair.

"Me, monsieur?" she gasped. "You harm me? No, indeed, I was only too proud to think my dear mistress should have won such a husband."

"Then you will answer my questions truly," he went on, his eyes devouring the woman's homely features as though he would fain seek some comfort therein.

"Oh yes, indeed, monsieur. Ask me anything. It is not that I have much to tell. Mademoiselle said, 'Give this letter to the King himself. Let it touch no other hand.' That is all, monsieur. She was weeping when she wrote it. Monsieur Poluski told me what to do to-morrow about my own journey. See, here are my tickets."

"Poluski!" said Alec, and the words came dully. "Has he too betrayed me?"

"He has gone with my mistress," sobbed Pauline. "It is not that they have betrayed you, monsieur; for mademoiselle looked like to die, and I have never seen any one more disturbed than Monsieur Poluski. He raved like a maniac when I asked him for one word of explanation."

"But what does it mean, woman? Do you understand what has happened? My promised wife has fled, bidding me not to dream of seeing her again, and with her has gone one of the few men alive in whom I had confidence.

What is that but betrayal?"

"I do not profess to understand the ways of courts, monsieur," said Pauline, gathering a little courage, since the King appealed to her as a fellow mortal. "But in your case I do not think I should blame Mademoiselle Joan. She did not go because she had ceased to love you, monsieur. Sometimes a woman can love a man so well that she will leave him if she thinks it is for his good."

A light broke in on the darkness. Was Joan the victim of some deadly intrigue such as had sullied too often the records of the Kosnovian monarchy? How strange it was that he should come from that eventful meeting of the Cabinet and receive within the hour Joan's pathetic message of farewell! He stood and thought deeply again for many minutes, striving to conquer his laboring heart and throbbing brain, exerting manfully all his splendid resources of mind and body. Then he turned to the trembling Frenchwoman and said with almost uncanny gentleness:

"You have done what your mistress asked, Pauline. Come to me to-morrow before you go, and I will reward you for your faithful service. Leave me now; but tell none what has happened. I must have time to think, and it would help me if no other person in this house but you shares with me the knowledge of mademoiselle's departure."

Pauline went out, glad of her dismissal, yet sobbing with sympathy. Alec began to pace the length of the long dimly lighted room. Back and forth he went, thinking, knitting his brows in fierce effort to subdue his stunned faculties. By degrees the sad significance of Joan's words and actions during their visit that morning to the New Konak began to establish itself. He saw now that she was bidding farewell to her dream of happiness, deliberately torturing herself with a burden of memories.

Even their parting kiss must have given her a twinge of direst agony; for the one thing he would never believe of Joan was that she had sacrificed him to some feminine whim, made him the sport of a woman's caprice.

She had been driven from him! By whom? He must discover that, and he gloated with almost insensate rage at the thought of strangling with his hands the wretch who had done this callous deed. Physical pa.s.sion mastered him again, and it was not until he realized the folly of merely dreaming of vengeance that he forced himself anew into a semblance of calm. He knew that a man blinded with rage could not deal sanely with this problem of love and statecraft. At first he thought of questioning individually each person who, by the remotest chance, might be responsible for Joan's flight. But not only did his impatient heart spurn that slower method of inquisition; but he realized that he was more likely to discover the truth by gathering instantly in one room all those persons whose self interest pointed to his undoing. Somehow, Sobieski's disjointed narrative aroused a dreadful suspicion that was not to be quelled.

He summoned an attendant. "Ask Prince and Princess Delgrado to come here," he said. "Send to General Stampoff and tell him that the King urgently desires his presence. I believe that Monsieur Beliani and Count Julius Marulitch are in the smoking-room with Monsieur Nesimir. Ask those three gentlemen also to join me."

The attendant saluted and withdrew. Alec examined the door to make sure that the key was in the lock. Hardly conscious of his own purpose, he looked about for a weapon. In the place of honor, above the fireplace, hung the sword given him by his father in the Rue Boissiere. It evoked bitter memories, and he swung on his heel with a curse, going to the window and staring out into the night. His brain seethed with strange imaginings, and his breast was on fire. The sight of that ridiculous sword lying in its sheath of velvet and gold seemed to reveal the hollowness of life, its mock tragedies, its real agony of tears. All at once the impulse seized him to look at the bright steel. With a savage laugh he sprang back across the room and took down the sword. The blade leaped forth at his clutch, and he kissed it in a frenzy.

"You weep, my Joan," he cried. "I know that you weep; but your tempter's lying heart shall shed drop for drop!"

CHAPTER XIII

WHEREIN A REASON IS GIVEN FOR JOAN'S FLIGHT

A knock sounded on the door. "Their Excellencies the Prince and Princess Delgrado," announced Bosko, whose jaws underwent strange contortions at being compelled to utter so many syllables consecutively.

Alec thrust the sword into its scabbard. He did not put the weapon in its accustomed place; but hid it behind a fold of one of the heavy curtains that shrouded the windows.

"On the arrival of the others whom I have summoned you can usher them in without warning," he said to Bosko. "As soon as General Stampoff comes let no other person enter, and remain near the door until I call you."

"_Oui, monsieur_," said Bosko. King or no King, he was faithful to his scanty stock of French.

Prince Michael had dined well, having induced his host to depart from the King's injunctions as to the wine supplied at meals. His puffed face shone redly. It looked so gross and fat, perched on such a slender frame, that he resembled one of those diminutive yet monstrous caricatures of humanity seen on the pantomime stage.

"What is the trouble now, Alec?" he asked, glancing quickly round the s.p.a.cious ill lighted apartment. "Your man came to me most mysteriously.

His manner suggested treasons, spoils, and stratagems. I met your mother on the stairs. She too, it seems, is in demand."

Alec looked at the strange little creature whom he called father, and from the Prince's gargoyle head his gaze dwelt on his mother. She had uttered no word. Her eyes met his furtively for a second and then dropped. She was disturbed, obviously alarmed, and, with a curiously detached feeling of surprise, he guessed that she knew of Joan's departure. Well, he would bide his time until all possible conspirators were present. Then, by fair means or foul, he would wring the truth from them.

"I want to consult my mother and you as to a certain matter," he said, answering Prince Michael with apparent nonchalance. "I shall not detain you very long. Beliani, Julius, and Monsieur Nesimir are in the building, and then we only await Stampoff--with whom, by the way, I almost succeeded in quarreling to-day."

"A quarrel with Stampoff!" exclaimed the elder Delgrado, preening his chest and sticking out his chin in the exaggerated manner that warned those who knew him best of the imminent expression of a weighty opinion.

"That will never do. Stampoff is the backbone of your administration.

Were it not for our dear Paul, nothing would have been heard of a Delgrado in Kosnovia during the last quarter of a century. My dear boy, he has kept us alive politically. On no account can you afford to quarrel with Stampoff!"