Chapter II (2)

I smiled.

"You wouldn't believe me?" she asked.

"What I believe and do not believe, dear Countess, should not disturb you in the slightest."

"I thought we were friends."

"Do you _really_ think so?"

"I hope so. I wish it--if you do. And friendship does not fear confidences."

"Neutrals have no confidences to make. My country is not at war."

"Is not your heart enlisted?" she asked, smilingly.

"Is yours?"

"Yes, it is! See how my friendship refuses no confidence when you ask? _I_ do not hesitate."

"On which side," said I, warily, "is your heart enlisted?"

"Shall I tell you?"

"If you care to."

She sat looking at me intently, her soft hand in mine. Then, with a pretty gesture, she placed the other hand over it, and her shoulder came into contact with mine.

"I am Russian," she said. "Is that not an answer?"

"So is Puppsky," I remarked.

For a second an odd expression came over her face and it turned quite white. Then she laughed.

"I'll tell you something," she said. "I have a girl friend. I love her dearly. I have a country. I love it still more dearly. The girl I love is Adelaide, Grand Duchess of Luxemburg. Prussia has practically annexed it. The country I love is Russia. Prussia holds it.... Do you still doubt me?"

"Good Lord," thought I, "how this girl can lie!" But I said: "Tell me about Luxemburg, Countess. Is it true that Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria means to marry the seventeen-year-old sister of the Grand Duchess Adelaide?"

"Yes," she said. And I distinctly heard her teeth snap.

"What sort of man is Ruprecht?" I inquired, to steer the conversation toward easier ground.

"Ruprecht! Did you ever see him?"

"No."

"Well, he has the manners of the barn-yard and the distinction of a scullion! Picture to yourself a man of fifty-seven with a head as square as a battered bullet and the bodily grace of a new-born camel. He is the stupidest, coarsest, commonest vulgarian in Europe.

"Why, the man is ridiculous! He once set all Munich laughing by appearing in the English Garden on skates wearing his spurs and saber. And all his military suite had to do likewise. Picture the result--and Ruprecht scarcely knew how to stand on the ice! Why their swords got between their legs and their spurs did the rest, and the entire lake resounded with the incessant crash of falling warriors."

She threw back her head and laughed; and I laughed too.

"Such a brute," she said. "His first wife, daughter of that kindly and philanthropic oculist, Karl Theodore of Tegernsee, died of his neglect and ill treatment. And now, at fifty-seven, he rolls his hog's eyes in his freckled face and smirks at a seventeen-year-old child--God help her!"

I gazed in amazement at the Countess Manntrapp. This was acting with a vengeance. Such perfection, such flawless interpretation of the role she was playing for my benefit, I had never dreamed possible. No emotion could appear more genuine, no sincerity more perfectly mimicked. Here was an actress without equal in my entire experience.

Suddenly I caught her eye, and turned very red.

"You don't believe me," she said calmly, and dropped her head.

There was a painful silence between us. Presently she looked up at me, flushed, curious, amused:

"You take me for a Hun, don't you?"

"If you are not pro-German," said I, much embarrassed, "what are you doing with those people?"

"Watching them. And you don't believe that, either?"

"I'm sorry, Countess."

"Why do you doubt me?"

"Because only a pro-German would confide to a stranger that she is not one. Were you really in the Allied service you'd keep your own council. Secret agents don't betray themselves to strangers. You have no means of knowing where my sympathies lie. How do you know I am not pro-German?"

"By your letters."

"My letters?"

"I opened several," she said naively.

"Where!"

"In Berne."

"You stole my letters?"

"Yes, I had to."

"How did you do it?"

"The postman is in my pay."

"That," said I angrily, "is a most outrageous confession, Countess."

"But I had to know what your politics are," she explained gently. "Besides, if I had not stolen all your letters the Swiss authorities would have opened them and found out that you are pro-Ally in sentiment. And then you would not have been permitted to come here and live in this house. And all these people would not have come here either. And I should have had nobody to help me while keeping these people under surveillance."

"You count on me to help you?" I demanded, too astonished to remain angry.

"May I not?" she asked sweetly.

"So that's the reason," said I, "that you let me kiss you."

"I must be honest, it is."

With every atom of conceit knocked out of me, wincing, chagrined, I found nothing to say to this pretty woman who sat so close beside me and looked at me with a half smile hovering on her lips and out of sweet, dark eyes that seemed utterly honest--God help her.

"It is only your vanity that is smarting a little," she said, smiling, "not your heart. I haven't touched that at all."

"How do you know?" I retorted.

"Because you are in love with somebody else, Mr. O'Ryan."

"With whom?" I demanded defiantly.

"I don't know. But you are in love. A woman can tell."

"I am _not_ in love," said I with angry emphasis, recollecting the treatment meted out to me by Thusis. "I'm not in love with anybody." I caught her doubting but interested eyes fixed intently on me--"unless," I added recklessly, "I'm in love with you."

"But you're not."

We looked at each other curiously, almost searchingly, not inclined to laugh yet ready, perhaps, for further mischief. Why not preoccupy my mind with this amusing and pretty woman, and slay in my heart all regard for Thusis?

So I kissed her with that object in view. She said nothing--scarcely defended herself--sitting with pretty head lowered and white jeweled hands tightly folded in her lap.

"I'll take you trout-fishing," said I, determined to exterminate and root out all tender memories of Thusis.

She looked up: "May I ask you a question?"

"What is it?" I returned, suspiciously, instantly on my guard again.

"Who is Mr. Smith?"

"A Norwegian." And I explained Smith's business with the Swiss government.

She nodded absently. Probably she did not believe this. As far as that was concerned, neither did I.

"Answer me a question, will you, Countess?" said I in my turn. She smiled: "What is it?"

"Is your kiss really worth the information you extract from me?"

In spite of her light laughter she turned quite pink, and when I bent toward her again, she laid her arm across her lips, defending them.

Then, as I was preparing for further indiscretion, the door behind us opened and was closed again instantly. I knew it was Thusis. The certainty chilled my very bones.

"Who was it?" I asked carelessly.

"Only the waitress," said she.

"The red-haired one?"

"I believe so. Is she Swiss?"

I did not answer.

The Countess looked up and repeated the question. "Where did you find her?" she added.

There was a short silence. An almost imperceptible change came over her features. Then, daintily, and by degrees, she inclined her head a little nearer.

But it was not in me to betray Thusis for a kiss. Slowly, however, I became aware that I was betraying myself.

Presently the Countess rose in the gathering dusk, and I stood up immediately.

She inspected me steadily for a full minute, then that almost imperceptible smile edged her lips again and she gave me my conge with a gentle nod.

*XVII*

*MORE MYSTERY*

I discovered Smith sitting on the rim of the fountain all alone in the dusk.

"Good heavens!" I blurted out, "was any man ever so completely entangled in the web of intrigue as I am? Plot, counterplot, camouflage, mystery--I'm in the very middle of the whole mess!

"I don't know who anybody is or what they're up to! Who is Thusis? Who is Clelia? Who is Josephine Vannis? Raoul? The Countess Manntrapp? And who are you, for that matter? I don't know! I don't pretend to guess."

"What's the trouble?" he asked, amused.

"Trouble! I don't know. There's all kinds of trouble lying around. I'm in several varieties of it. Where is the traveling circus?"

"In Tsar Ferdie's apartments."

"Probably conspiring," I added.

"Probably."

"What are you doing out here?"

"Oh, I'm not conspiring," he said, laughing, "I'm no saint to converse with the fishes in your fountain."

"Where is Clelia?"

He said he didn't know but somehow I gathered the impression that she was somewhere behind the lighted kitchen windows and that Smith was hanging around in hopes she might come out to take the air by starlight.

"Have you seen Thusis?" I asked guiltily. And felt my ears burning in the dark.

"Why, yes," he said. "She walked down the road a few moments ago."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"Probably she went to take a look at the snow blockade," said I.

He nodded.

"Perhaps," I added carelessly, "I had better saunter down that way."

"No," he said, "you'd better not."

"Why?" I asked sharply.

"Starlight and Thusis might go to a young man's head."

"I'm no longer in love," said I in the most solemn tones I had ever used. "I am now able to contemplate Thusis without the stormy emotions which once assailed me, Smith. All that is over. To me she is merely an interesting and rather pathetic woman. I feel kindly toward Thusis. I wish her well. I would willingly do anything I could to----"

"Piffle."

"What the devil do you mean by that?" I demanded.

"What the devil do you mean by kidding yourself?"

"Haven't I just explained?"

"You've given yourself away. A man doesn't utter pious sentiments about a girl he no longer cares for. He doesn't bother to explain his regenerated attitude toward her. He doesn't trouble himself to talk about her at all. Nor does he go roaming after her by starlight. If you really care for her no longer, let her alone. If you do care you'll get mad at what I say--as you're doing--and start off to find her in the starlight--as you're doing----"

But I was too exasperated to listen to such stuff.

I discovered her, finally, in the starlight just ahead of me,--a slim shadow on the high-road, outlined against a stupendous mass of snow which choked the valley like a glacier.

She heard my steps on the hard stone road, looked over her shoulder, then turned sharply, paying me no further attention, even when I came up beside her.

"Gracious!" said I, attempting an easy tone and manner; "what a tremendous fall was here!"

"I have known greater falls," she said very quietly.

"Really?"

"Yes; I once had a friend whose fall was greater."

"Poor fellow! He fell off a precipice, I presume."

"He fell from his high estate, Mr. O'Ryan."

"Oh. Did he also have an estate in the Alps?"

She said scornfully: "He fell in my esteem--deep, Mr. O'Ryan--into depths so terrible that, even if I leaned over to look, I could never again perceive him."

"Poor fellow," I muttered, chilled to the bone again.

"Yes." she said calmly, "it was tragic."

"D-did you care for him, Thusis?" I ventured, scared half to death.

"I trusted him."

"D-don't you trust him any more?"

"He is dead--to me," she said coldly.

There ensued a silence which presently I became unable to endure.

"You know, Thusis, that man isn't dead----"

"He might better be!"

"You don't understand him!"

"I no longer wish to."

"He loves you!"

"He does _not_!" she cried in tones so fierce that I almost jumped.

"Thusis," said I in a miserable voice, "you hurt and wounded that man until he was almost out of his senses----"

"And he lost no time in consoling himself with another woman!"

"He didn't know what he was doing----"

"He seemed to! ... So did _she_!"

"Thusis--"

"_Did_ you kiss her?"

"I----"

"Did you?"

"Yes."

I was so scared that my teeth chattered when Thusis turned on me in the starlight.

Her gray eyes were aflame; her little hands were tightly clenched. I hoped she would upper-cut me and mercifully put me to sleep, for this scene was like a nightmare to me.

Then, of a sudden, the slender figure seemed to wilt before my eyes,--shrink, bend, stand swaying with desperate hands covering the face.

"Michael," she whispered. "Michael!"--and her voice ended in a sigh.

Scared as I was I took her in my arms. She rested her face against my shoulder.

"You--you don't really care," I stammered, "do you, Thusis? _Do_ you, my darling----"

"Oh, I don't know--I don't know. You've hurt me, Michael; I'm all hurt and--and quivering with your wound. I don't know!--I don't understand myself. My heart is sore--all raw and sore. So is my mind--the blow you dealt hurts me there, too----"

"But, Thusis dear! _You_ wounded me, too----"

"Oh, I know.... I scarcely knew what I said. I don't know now what I'm saying--what I'm doing--here in your arms----" She tried to release herself, and, failing, buried her face against my shoulder with a convulsive little shudder.

"You _must_ love me," I whispered unsteadily. "I can't live without you, Thusis."

"But I can't love you, Michael."

"Can't you find it in your heart to care for me?"

"In my heart, perhaps.... But not in my mind."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean exactly that.... I can't consult my--my heart alone.... I must not. I dare not. I am obliged to consult my senses, too. And--dear Michael--my senses tell me that I may not care for you--must not fall in love--with you----"

"Why?"

After a silence she lifted her lovely head and looked up at me out of beautiful, distressed eyes that dumbly asked indulgence.

"Well, then, you need not tell me, Thusis."

"You'll know, some day."

"I'll know, some day, why I won you in spite of everything."

She gently shook her head.

"Yes," said I, "I shall win you, Thusis."

"My heart--perhaps."

"Your mind, too."

We remained so, for a while, not speaking lest the spell be broken. And at last she slowly disengaged herself from my arms, then, confronting me, placed both her hands in mine with a sudden impulse that thrilled me.

"Let it remain this way, then," she said. "Win my heart, if you care to. I don't mind going through life with my heart in your kind keeping, Michael. I had rather it were so. I should be less unhappy."

"Unhappy?"

"Yes--because I am going to be unhappy anyway. And if I knew that you once cared, it would be easier for me--in after years.... Michael----"

"Yes?"

"Would you care for that much of me?"

I drew her nearer.

"You must not kiss me," she whispered.

"I----"

"Please.... It is a sign of troth plighted.... And is desecration else.... Troth plighted is a holy thing. And that cannot be between us, Michael. That cannot happen.... And so, you must not touch my lips with yours--dear Michael.... Only my hand--if you do care for me----"

I kissed her hand--then, slowly, each finger and the fragrant palm, until it seemed to disconcert her and she withdrew it.

"Now take me back," she said in an uncertain voice that trembled slightly, "and remain my dear, frank, boyish friend.... And let me plague you a little, Michael. Won't you? And not be angry?" She asked so sweetly that I began to laugh--covered her hand with kisses--and laughed again.

"You little girl," I exclaimed--"oddly mature in some ways--a child in others--you may torment me and laugh at me now to your heart's content. Isn't laughter, after all, your heaven born privilege?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Oh, Thusis! Thusis! I am more convinced than ever of what I have half believed. Before I ever set eyes on you I had begun to care for you. Before I ever heard your voice I had begun to fall in love with you. Thusis--my Thusis--loveliest--most wonderful of God's miracles since Eden bloomed--_you_ are The Laughing Girl!"

"Michael----"

"You _are_!"

Suddenly, as she walked lightly beside me, resting on my arm, she flung up her head with a reckless, delicious little laugh: "I am The Laughing Girl!"

A slight yet exquisite shock went clean through me as I realized that even to the instant of her avowal I had not been absolutely convinced of her identity with the picture.

"And I wish to tell you," she went on, her smile changing, "that when the photograph--which unhappily has become so notorious--was taken, I never dreamed that it would be stolen, reproduced in thousands, and sold in every city of Europe!"

"Stolen!"

"Certainly! Do you imagine that I would have permitted its publicity and sale? Never has such an exasperating incident occurred in my life! And I am helpless. I can't prevent it."

"Who stole it?"

"I haven't the slightest idea. It was this way, Michael; it happened in my own home on the island of Naxos, and my sister Clelia and I were amusing ourselves with our cameras, dressing each other up and posing each other.

"And she dressed me--or rather almost _un_-dressed me--that way--isn't it enough to make a saint swear--for when I had developed the plate and had started to print, somebody stole the plate from the sill of the open window. And the next thing we knew about it was when all Europe was flooded with my picture under which was printed that dubious caption--'The Laughing Girl.' Can you imagine my astonishment and rage? Could anything more utterly horrid happen to a girl? Had I at least been fully dressed--but no: there I was in every shop window among actresses, queens, demi-mondaines, and dissipated dukes just as Clelia had posed me in the intimacy of our own rooms, all over jewels, some of me mercifully veiled in a silk scarf, audaciously at ease in my apparent effrontery--oh, Michael, it nearly killed me!"

"Didn't you do anything about it?"

"Indeed I did! But where these photographs were being printed we never could find out. All we were able to do was to forbid their importation into Italy."

"How did you manage that?" I asked curiously.

She hesitated, then carelessly: "We had some slight influence at court----"

"_Influence?_"

"Possibly it amounted to that," she said indifferently.

"You are known at court, Thusis?"

She shrugged: "We are not, I believe, completely unknown." She walked on beside me in silence for a few moments, then:

"I do not wish to convey to you that I am _persona grata_ in Italian court circles."

"But if you are known at court, dear Thusis, how can you be otherwise than welcome there?"

"I am _not_ welcome there."

"That is impossible."

"You adorable boy," she laughed, "I must beg of you to occupy yourself with your own affairs and not continue to occupy yourself with mine."

"That's a heartless snub, Thusis."

"I don't mean it so," she said, her hand tightening impulsively on my arm. "But, Michael dear, I don't wish you to speculate about my affairs. It does no good. Besides, the situation in which I find myself is fearfully complex, and you couldn't help me out of it."

"Perhaps I can, Thusis."

She laughed: "You are delightfully romantic. You almost resemble one of the old time cloak-and-sword lovers of that dear Romance which died so long ago on the printed page as well as in human hearts."

"It is not dead in my breast, Thusis."

"It is dead in every breast. Only its frail ghost haunts our hearts at moments."

"When I offered you my heart, Thusis, did you suppose it empty save for a trace of selfish passion?"

"Men are men.... I do not understand their hearts."

"Take mine; tear it apart, look into it,--even if I die of it. Will you?"

Her laugh became less genuine and there was no gaiety in it.

"Tell me what I should find in your heart if I dissected it?"

"Love--and a sword!"

"You--you offer me your life, Michael?"

"This life--and the next."

She made no answer, walking slowly on beside me, her arm linked in mine, the starlight glimmering on her bent head. Down the road beyond us the illuminated windows of my house glimmered. As we moved toward them along the stony highroad, I said:

"Thusis dear, I know nothing about you or about your affairs. I do not even guess your identity. But that you and your sister are here for the purpose of taking these miserable kings across the frontier into France, by violence, I do know.

"And this, also, I have learned, that, if you attempt to execute this _coup-de-main_, my friend Shandon Smith will do all he can to prevent it."

The girl stopped as though I had struck her and stared at me in the silvery lustre of the stars.

"What?" she said slowly.

"I have told you what Smith told me. He said that he didn't care whether or not I informed you. He added that, in case I chose to inform you, I should also repeat to you the following couplet:

'Grecian gift and Spanish fig
Help the Fool his grave to dig.'"

A bright flush stained her face yet she seemed to be more astounded than angry.

"Is it possible," she said, "that your friend Mr. Smith--this Norwegian promoter--repeated that couplet to you?"

"He certainly did repeat it to me, Thusis."

"Did he--did he tell you what it meant? Did he tell you anything more?"

"He mentioned a secret society called the AEgean League."

"This is amazing," she murmured, looking up the road at the lights of the house.

"Of all people," she added, "that man Smith, the last person on earth we could suspect." She passed her hand across her eyes--a gesture of perplexity and consternation:

"I wish to find Mr. Smith, Michael. I desire to see him immediately. Please let us walk faster."

We fell into a quick pace and she released my arm as the light from the windows fell on us.

"He was sitting by the fountain," I began.

"He is there now, with Clelia," she exclaimed, and walked directly toward him where he was seated near Clelia on the stone rim of the pool.

They looked up as we approached, and Smith rose.

"Mr. Smith," said Thusis with a trace of excitement in her voice, "have you any knowledge concerning my identity?"

If the blunt question were a shock to him he did not show it. He answered in his pleasant, even voice:

"I don't know who you are, Thusis."

"Have you any idea?"

"None."

"How can that be," she asked, flushing, "when you send me such a couplet?"

"I've told you the truth," he said simply; "I don't know who you are, Thusis. I don't even suspect." He turned and looked at Clelia who had risen from her seat on the fountain's edge.

"You do not like me, Clelia, and now you are going to like me less. You resented it when I preached at you concerning proper behavior for a young girl. And now that you learn I am going to interfere in your political and military maneuvers, I suppose you hate me."

Nobody moved or spoke for a moment. Then Clelia took a step toward Smith, and I saw her face had become deadly pale.

"No," she said, "I don't hate you. On the contrary I am beginning to like you. Because it takes a real man to tell the woman he loves that he means to ruin her."

"Clelia, you and Thusis are ruined only if I hold my hand."

"We are done for _unless_ you hold your hand!" she said. She stepped nearer.

"Mr. Smith?" she said sweetly, "you think you are on your honor. You are not. He who has sent you here to thwart us is deceiving you."

"He who sent _you_ here, Clelia,--and _you_, Thusis, is deceiving you," he rejoined very quietly.

Thusis said: "You know who sent us, and yet you don't know who we are! How can this be, Monsieur?"

"It's true. I _do_ know who sent you here. But you _don't_!"

Clelia, still very pale, bent her gaze on him.

"Mr. Smith?"

"Yes, I hear you, Clelia."

"Suppose--suppose--I prove kinder to you."

"No," he said, grim and flushed.

Thusis turned sharply on her sister: "Have you given him your heart?"

Clelia answered, her eyes still fixed on Smith:

"I gave it to him from the first--even when I thought him a pious dolt. And was ashamed. And now that I know him for a man I'm not ashamed. Let him know it. I do care for him."

Smith stood rigid. Thusis, looking intently at Clelia, went to her and passed one arm around her waist.

"This can't be," she said. Clelia laughed. "But it _is_, sister. It isn't orthodox, it isn't credible, it is quite unthinkable that I should care for him. But I do; and I've told him so. Now he can ruin us if he wishes." And she flung a sweet, fearless glance at Smith which made him tremble very slightly.

Thusis turned to me an almost frightened face as though in appeal, then she caught her sister's hands.

"Listen!" she cried, "I also gave my heart as you gave yours, sister! I couldn't help it. I found myself in love--" She looked at me--"I was doomed to love him.

"But for God's sake listen, sister. It is my _heart_ I give. My mind and my destiny remain my own."

"My destiny is in God's hands," said Clelia simply. "My mind and heart I give--" She looked at Smith--"and all else that is myself ... if you want me, Shan."

"You cannot do it!" exclaimed Thusis in a voice strangled with emotion. "You can do it no more than can I! You have no more right than have I to give yourself merely because you care! Your heart--yes! There is no choice when love comes; you can not avoid it. But you can proudly choose what to do about it!"

"I have chosen," said Clelia, "if he wants me."

Thusis clenched her hands and stood there twisting them, dumb, excited, laboring evidently under the most intense emotion.

And what all this business was about I had not the remotest notion.

Suddenly Thusis turned fiercely on her sister with a gesture that left her outflung arm rigid.

"Do you wish to find the irresponsible political level of those two Bolsheviki in there?" she said with breathless passion. "Are you really the iconoclast you say you are? I did not believe it! I can't. The world moves only through decent procedure, or it disintegrates. Where is your reason, your logic, your pride?"

"Pride?" Clelia smiled and looked at Smith: "In him, I think.... Since he has become my master."

"He is not our master!" retorted Thusis. "If what we came here to do is now impossible--thanks to a meddling and misled gentleman in Rome--is there not a sharper blow to strike at this treacherous Greek King and his Prussian wife and that vile, Imperial Hun who pulls the strings that move them?"

Clelia looked at Smith: "Do you know what my sister means?"

"Yes."

"Will you stop us even there?"

"I must."

Thusis, white with passion, confronted him:

"It is not you who are bound in honor to check and thwart us," she said unsteadily, "but your duped block-head of a master who exasperates me! Does he know from whom I take my orders?"

"Yes."

"I take them from the greatest, wisest, most fearless, most generous patriot in the world. I take my orders from Monsieur Venizelos!"

I started, but Smith said coolly: "Is that what you suppose, Thusis?"

"Suppose? What do you mean?" she demanded haughtily.

"I mean that you are mistaken if you and Clelia believe that your orders come from Monsieur Venizelos."

"From whom, then, do you imagine they come?" retorted Thusis.

"From Tino!"

"You dare----"

"Yes, I dare tell you, Thusis, how you have been deceived. Tino himself plotted this. Your orders are forgeries. Monsieur Venizelos never dreamed of inciting you to the activities in which you are now concerned----"

"That is incredible," said Thusis hotly. "I know who sent you here to check us and spoil it all--as though we were two silly, headstrong children! Tell me honestly, now; did not that--that gentleman in Rome give you some such impression of us?--that we were two turbulent and mischievous children?"

"I was not told who you were."

"But you were told that we are irresponsible and headstrong? Is it not true?"

"Yes."

"And you were sent here to see that we didn't get into mischief. Is it true?"

"Yes."

Thusis made a gesture of anger and despair:

"For lack of courage," she said tremulously, "a timid King refuses the service we try to render! We offer to stake our lives cheerfully; it frightens him. We escape his well meant authority and supervision and make our way into Switzerland to do him and Italy a service in spite of his timorous fears and objections. He has us followed by--_who_ are you anyway, Mr. Smith?"

"I happen to be," he said pleasantly, "an officer in a certain branch of the Italian Army."

"Military Intelligence!" exclaimed Clelia. "And we were warned by Monsieur Venizelos!"

Thusis flung out her arms in a passionate gesture: "We offer the King of Italy two royal scoundrels! And he refuses. We offer the King of Italy two islands? And you tell us he refuses. When we were in Rome he laughed at us, teased us as though we had been two school-girls bringing him some crazy plan to end the war. And now when we are practically ready to prove our plan possible--ready to consummate the affair and give him the two most dangerous royal rascals in Europe--restore to Italy two islands stolen from her centuries ago--the King of Italy turns timid and sends a gentleman to ruin everything!"

"Because," said Smith pleasantly, "although King Constantine and Queen Sophia have been deposed, yet, were you to seize them and carry them across this frontier into France, Greece would resent it. So also would Switzerland. And the Allies would merely make two enemies out of an Allied country and a neutral one for the sake of a few odd kings and queens.

"And, moreover, if you should proceed, as you had planned, to the Cyclades; and if you succeed in fomenting a revolution in Naxos and Tenedos, and induce these two islands to declare themselves part of Italy, because seven hundred years ago a Venetian conquered them, then you turn Greece into a bitter enemy of Italy and of the Allies. And that is what you accomplish in exchange for a couple of little islands in the AEgean which Italy does not want."

"Then," retorted Thusis violently, "why did Monsieur Venizelos suggest that we attempt these things? Is the greatest patriot on earth a traitor or a fool?"

"No, but Constantine of Greece is. And the boche is his tutor. Oh, Thusis--Thusis! Can't you see you have been tricked? Can't you understand that Venizelos had no knowledge of these things you are attempting in all sincerity?--that you have been deluded by the treachery of the hun--that those who counseled you to this came secretly from Tino and the Kaiser, not from Venizelos?"

Thusis gazed at him bewildered. Clelia, too, seemed almost stunned.

"Do--do you mean to tell me," stammered Thusis, "that these kings know that Clelia and I are here to try to kidnap them?"

"No," said Smith coolly, "because I censored their mail in Berne. Their agents in Rome had warned them, in detail, by letter."

"Had those agents penetrated our identity?"

"They seemed to have no notion of it. But they described you both minutely."

Clelia seemed to come out of her trance. She turned to Thusis and said in a naive, bewildered way:

"It's rather extraordinary, Thusis, that nobody seems to have found out who we really are.... It's almost as though we are not of as much importance as we have been brought up to suppose."

Thusis blushed hotly: "Because," she said, "nobody has discovered our incognito, is no reason for us to underrate our positions in Europe."

"Still--it is extraordinary that nobody recognizes us. And we use our own names, too. I can't account for it," she added honestly, "unless we are of much less importance than we have been accustomed to consider ourselves----"

Her voice was lost in a fearful scream from the house.

"Good Heavens!" said I, "what has happened?"

At that moment the door flew open and King Ferdinand waddled out in his wrapper and slippers.

"Help!" he shouted, "help! Is there a physician in the Alps?"

"I'm one," said Smith, coolly, "among other things."

And we all started hastily for the house.

*XVIII*

*THE GANGSTERS*

The Tsar of all the Bulgars, wearing a green and yellow wrapper, and bright blue slippers over his enormous flat feet, exhibited considerable nervousness as we entered the house.

"I wasn't doing anything," he said; "I trust that nobody will misunderstand me. Heaven is my witness----"

"What's the matter?" asked Smith tersely.

"The Princess Pudelstoff is screaming. I don't know why; I didn't go near her----"

We hurried up stairs. The door of the Princess' room was open, the light burning. The Princess sat up in bed, tears rolling down her gross, fat face, screaming at the top of her voice; while beside her, in Phrygian night-cap and pajamas, stood King Constantine.

He had her by the elbow and was jerking her arm and shouting at her: "Shut your fool head! Stop it! There's nothing the matter with you. You've been dreaming!"

Smith went straight to the bed, shoved Constantine aside, and laid a soothing hand on the Princess' shoulder.

"I'm a physician," he said in his pleasant, reassuring voice. "What is the trouble, Princess?"

"There's turrible doin's in this here house!" she bawled. "I peeked through the key-hole! Them there Bolsheviki next door is fixin' to blow us all up. I seen the bomb a-sizzlin' and a-fizzlin' on the floor like it was just ready to bust! And then I run and got into bed and I let out a screech----"

"It's all right," said Smith kindly. "It was just a bad dream. There isn't any bomb. Nobody is going to harm you----"

"I didn't dream it! I----"

"Yes, you did. Calm yourself, Princess. You have eaten something which has disagreed with you."

She ceased her screaming at that suggestion and considered it, the tears still streaming over her features. Then she began to blubber again and shook her head.

"I ain't et hoggish," she insisted. "If I had et hoggish I'd think I drempt it. But I ain't et hoggish. That wasn't no dream. No, sir! I had went to bed, but I was fidgety, like I had a load of coal onto my stummick. And by and by I heard them Bolsheviki next door whisperin'. And by and by I heard a fizzlin' noise like they was makin' highballs in there.

"Thinks I to myself that sounds good if true. So I gets up and I lights up and I peeks through the key hole. And I seen King--I mean Monsieur Xenos, and Monsieur Itchenuff, and Puppsky and Wildkatz and a long, black box on the floor in the room next door, and somethin' sticking out of it which fizzled without smokin'----"

"It was all a dream, madame," interposed Smith soothingly. And to my surprise, he took from his inner breast-pocket a small, flat medicine case.

"A glass of water and two spoons, please," he said to Clelia. And she went away to fetch them.

There was another glass on the wash-stand. In this he rinsed a clinical thermometer and inserted it under the tongue of the sobbing Princess.

Thusis and I stood near him, silent. King Constantine and the Bulgarian Tsar appeared to be unsympathetic and at the same time slightly nervous.

"If she'd stop gorging herself," remarked Tino, "she'd have no nightmares."

"I seen _you_ in there! Yes I did!" retorted the Princess in another access of wrath and fright, the thermometer wagging wildly between her lips. "And I seen you too!" she went on, pointing at King Ferdinand, who stared wildly back at her out of his eyes of an alarmed pig and wrinkled his enormous nose at her.

"Don't tell me I was dreamin'," she added scornfully, "nothing like that."

Clelia came with the two spoons and glass of water; Smith selected a phial, mixed the dose, withdrew the thermometer, shook it, examined it, washed it at the basin, and, returning to his patient, administered a teaspoonful of medicine.

Then, in the other glass, he dissolved a powder, gave her three teaspoonfuls of that, and placed the two glasses on the night table beside her bed.

"If you happen to awake," he said gently, "take a teaspoonful of each. But I think you'll sleep, madame. And in the morning you'll be all right."

He turned on King Constantine and the Tsar so suddenly that they both took impulsive steps backward as though apprehensive of being kicked.

"The Princess needs quiet and rest, gentlemen," said Smith. "Kindly retire."

"Perhaps I'd better sit beside her for a while," began Constantine, but Smith interrupted him:

"I'll call you into consultation if I want you, Monsieur Xenos." His voice had a very slight ring to it; the ex-King of Greece looked at him for a moment, then winced and backed out of the room, followed by King Ferdinand who seemed to be in a hurry and crowded on his heels like an agitated pachyderm.

Clelia, who had remained mute and motionless, looking at Smith all the while, now came toward him. And in the girl's altered face I saw, reflected, deeper emotions than I had supposed her youthful heart could harbor.

"Do you need me?" she asked. "I am at your service."

"Thank you, there is nothing more," said Smith pleasantly. He turned to include Thusis in kindly but unmistakable dismissal.

Clelia gave him a long, slow look of exquisite submission; Thusis sent an odd, irresolute glance at me. As she passed me, following her sister, her lips formed the message: "I wish to see you to-night."

When they had gone Smith shut and locked the door, and with a slight motion to me to accompany him, walked over to the bed, seated himself beside it, and took the fat hand of the Princess Pudelstoff in his as though to test her pulse.

The lady rolled her eyes at us but lay still, her mottled cheeks still glistening with partly dried tears.

"What's on your mind, Princess?" inquired Smith in a soft, caressing voice.

"Hey?" she exclaimed in visible alarm, and evidently preparing to scream again.

"Hush. Don't excite yourself, madame," he said in his pleasant, reassuring way. "There is no occasion for alarm at all."

"Am I a sick woman?" she demanded anxiously. "Is that what you're a-goin' to hand me? _Is_ it?"

"No, you're not physically ill. You have no temperature except as much as might be due to sudden shock."

"I got the scare of my young life all right," she muttered. "Say, Doc, _was_ it a dream? On the level now, was it?"

"Probably----"

"Honest to God?" she insisted.

"Why do you think it was not a dream, Princess?" he asked gently.

"Why? Well, I've run with Rooshians enough to know a infernal machine when I see one. And I never dream plain, that way. I can see that darn thing yet--and hear it! And I can see them men in there all a settin' onto chairs in a circle like, and a-watching that there bomb sizzling. It made a blue light but no smoke and no smell. How could I have drempt all that so plain, Doc?"

"Princess! You're not afraid of me, are you?"

She looked up into his clean-cut, pleasant American face.

"No, I ain't," she said. "You come from God's country"--she suddenly began to beat her pudgy fists on the sheets--"and whyinhell I ever was crazy enough to leave little old Noo York I don't know excep' I was damfoolenough to do it!"

Smith smiled at her: "You sure were some peach," he said, dropping gracefully into the vernacular, "when you played with Nazimova in that Eastside theater."

The Princess flushed all over, and the radiance of her smile transfigured her amazingly.

"Did _you_ see me in them days, Doc?"

"You betcha!"

"Well-f'r-God's-sake!" she gasped in wonder and delight. "Say, you had me fooled, Doc. I understood you was a Norsky--a sort of tree-peddlin' guy. But, thinks I to myself, he looks like a Yank. I says so to my brother, Leo Puppsky----"

"Don't say it to him again, Princess. Or to anybody."

At that the Princess fixed her shrewd little eyes on Smith, shifted them for an instant to me, then resumed her scrutiny of his serene and smiling features.

"What's the idea?" she asked at last.

"I'm going to lay all my cards down for you, Princess,--faces up. I am an American serving in the Italian army."

"The-hell-you-say!" There was a silence that lasted a full minute. Then, suddenly, the Princess began to laugh. Soft, fat chuckles agitated her tremendous bosom; a seismic disturbance seemed to shake her ample bulk beneath the bed-clothes.

"Tabs!" she exclaimed. "You're keepin' tabs on these here down-and-outers! That's what you're a doin' of! Am I right?"

"And what are _you_ doing here in Switzerland, Princess?" he inquired smilingly.

"Say! I'm their goat! Now, do you get me?"

"Not exactly----"

"Well listen. Puppsky's my brother. He was in the suit and cloak business in Noo York before the Rooshian revolution. Then he beat it for Petrograd--workin' for his own pocket same's you and me, Doc; and seein' pickin's--Trotzky bein' a friend of ours, and Lenine a relation. I was in Stockholm fixin' to go to Noo York, when that poor fish, Wildkatz, comes in and talks me into this game. And look at me now, Doc! Here I am financin' this here bunch o' homeless kings, sittin' into a con game, holdin' all the dirty cards they deal me--busted flushes, nigger straights, and all like that! And what," she demanded passionately, "is there in it for me? Tino, he says I'll be a Greek duchess an' rule a island called Naxos!--And, Gawd help me, I fell fur it. And wherethehell is Naxos? And is it as big as Coney Island? Wasn't I the big dill-pickle to stake 'em to a Greek revolution? And me a princess! Sure, I know a Rooshian princess ain't much of a swell, and the Duchy of Naxos looked good to me.

"But the more I mix in with these here kings the wiser I get. Four-flushers is four-flushers wherever you find 'em. And these guys is all alike--old Admiral bushy-whiskers, Bummelzug, General Droly and that sore-eyed little Gizzler!--all want to sell me gold bricks for real money!"

She waved her short, fat arms in furious recollection of her wrongs.

"Say, even the Greek Queen ain't too particular about chousing the long-green outer me! She wants to hand me the order of the Red Chicken!--costs ten thousand plunks! What do you know about that, Doc?"

I don't know whether Smith was as amazed as was I by these revelations in argot. He smiled his kindly, undisturbed smile and patted her hand encouragingly; while from depths long plugged burst the excited recital of the woes of the Pudelstoffs.

"I'm through," she said. "I got enough. And I told 'em so at the meeting after dinner to-night. They talked rough to me, they did. Puppsky, he got riled and tells me I'm no sister of his. And the Greek Queen she was crazy and called me a kike in German. Which upset my dinner.

"Say, Doc, the Gophers and Gas-house gangs ain't one-two-three with this bunch. I'm scared stiff they'll get me--that Ferdie has croaked more guys 'n people know. I'm scared Sophy sticks me. They say she stuck a hat-pin into Tino. You bet she knows how to make that big stiff behave! And she's got a way of lookin' at you!--Me, I quit 'em cold to-night. 'Nothing like that,' says I; 'no revolution in Greece at $250,000 a revolute! No Naxos! No Red Chicken! Me, I'm on my way via Berne, Berlin, Christiania, and Noo York!'"

"You've quarreled with them, Princess?" asked Smith.

"I sure did. Say, I don't have to stand for no rough stuff from Wildkatz neither. We ain't in Petrograd. But, mind you, I don't put it past him to try his dirty tricks on me with bombs!"

"But why----"

"They're like all gun-men! Once in you can't get out, or they'll try to get you. If you've got enough and try to quit peaceable they think you've been bought out. You're a squealer to them."

"You believe they might offer you violence?" I asked, incredulously.

"How do I know? What was they doin' with that bomb? They're sore on me. They know they're gettin' no more dough outen me. They know I've quit and I'm goin' back to God's country."

"But Leo Puppsky is your own brother!" I exclaimed, horrified.

The Princess shrugged her fat shoulders.

"He's a Red, too. Bolsheviks is Bolsheviks. You don't know 'em. You don't know what they done in Rooshia. No boche is bloodier. Call 'em what you like--call 'em all sons of boches--and you won't be wrong."

Her flabby features had grown somber; suddenly a shudder possessed her, and she opened her mouth to scream; but Smith instantly filled the gaping orifice with medicine, and only a coughing fit followed.

To me he said: "Please leave me alone with her now. It will be all right, Michael."

And he turned tenderly to the convulsed Princess and patted her vast back.

*XIX*

*CONFIDENCES*

As I walked through the corridor considerably concerned over the statements made to us by this east-side Princess and seriously disturbed by finding myself in the very vortex of this whirlpool of intrigue which every moment seemed to spew up from its dizzying depths new plots and counter-plots, I almost ran into the ex-Queen of Greece.

She was in curl-papers and negligee, standing just outside her door, an electric torch in one hand, a pistol in the other.

"Madame!" I exclaimed, "what in the world is the matter?"

"I don't like this inn," she said. "I consider it a suspicious place."

"Madame!"

"What do I know about your inn?" she demanded insolently, "or about you, either?"

"_Madame!_"

"You _say_ you are a Chilean. You don't look it. Neither does your friend resemble a Norwegian. If you desire to know my opinion you both look like Yankees!"

"Madame, this is intolerable----"

"Possibly," she interrupted, staring at me out of chilly eyes that fairly glittered. "Possibly, too, I am mistaken. Perhaps your servants, also, unduly arouse suspicion--your pretty housekeeper may really be your housekeeper. The waitress, too, may be a real waitress. This is all quite possible, Monsieur. But I prefer to be prepared for any eventuality in this tavern!"

And she went into her room and shut the door.

The ex-queen's insolence upset me. I was possessed by a furious desire to turn them all out of doors. The prospect of living in the same house with these people for days--perhaps for weeks, seemed unbearable. Surely there must be some way out of the valley!

Down stairs I saw Raoul coming from the front courtyard leading two strange horses attached to a sort of carryall.

"Where on earth did you discover that rig?" I called out to him in the starlight.

"Two guests have just arrived," he replied, laughing.

I hurried out to where he stood.

"Guests!" I repeated. "Where did they come from? Isn't the pass closed?"

"Sealed tight, Monsieur O'Ryan. But when the avalanche fell this vehicle and its passengers were just far enough inside the pass to be caught.

"I understand they've been digging themselves out of the snow all this time. They've just arrived and are in the long hall asking for accommodations."

"Who are they?" I demanded in utter disgust; "more huns?"

"One is a Turkish gentleman," he said. "The other is the driver. I will take care of him. The Turkish traveler's name is Eddin Bey, and he says he's a friend of Admiral Lauterlaus."

I went into the house and discovered Eddin Bey entering his signature on the ledger while Clelia with keys and candle waited beside him to show him to his quarters.

"Ah!" he exclaimed cordially when I named myself, offering his dark, nervous hand, "I am inexpressibly happy to have the privilege, Monsieur O'Ryan! A narrow escape for us, I assure you!--that mountain of snow roaring down on us and our horses whipped to a gallop! Not gay--eh? No, sir! And I thought we'd never dig out the horses and our wagon and luggage!"

I replied politely and suitably, and Clelia presently piloted this dark, lean, vivacious young man to his quarters across the corridor from General von Dungheim.

When she returned her flushed, set features arrested my attention. "Did that Turk annoy you, Clelia?" I asked sharply.

She shrugged: "Tavern gallantry," she replied briefly: "men of that sort are prone to it."

I said: "If any of these people annoy you and Thusis come to me at once."

She laughed: "Dear Monsieur O'Ryan," she said, "Thusis and I know how to take care of ourselves." She came nearer, looking up at me out of her lovely, friendly eyes:

"Thusis is in her room. It isn't very proper, of course, but she is waiting for you. Will you go?"

"Yes."

Clelia laid one hand lightly on my arm, and her smile became wistful and troubled:

"You do care for my sister, don't you?"

"I am deeply in love with her."

"I was afraid so."

"Afraid?"

"Oh, I don't know how Thusis is going to behave,--how she is going to take it!" said Clelia in frank anxiety. "Never before has she cared for any man; and I don't know what she's going to do about you--indeed I don't, Mr. O'Ryan!"

"Could you tell me," said I bluntly, "what obstacles stand in the way of my marrying your sister?"

"Thusis should tell you."

"She isn't already married?"

"Good Heavens, no!"

"Is it a matter of religion?"

"Thusis must tell you. I could not speak for her,--interfere with her. My sister will act for herself--assume all responsibility for whatever she chooses to do.... As I do."

I took Clelia's soft hands in mine and looked earnestly into her face:

"You, also, care for a man; don't you?"

She bent her head in wordless assent.

"What are _you_ going to do about it, Clelia?"

"Whatever _he_ wishes."

"Marry him?"

"If he wishes."

"You are an astounding girl!"

"I am an astounded girl. I never supposed I should take such a view of life, of its obligations, of my own position in the world.... Lately, in the probable imminence of sudden death, I became a little reckless--perhaps excited--willing to learn in these brief hours the more innocent elements of love--curious to experience even the least real of its mysteries--to play coquette in the pretty comedy--even with you----"

She gave me a vague smile and slowly shook her head.

"All the while," she said, "I was in love with him. I didn't know it because I didn't know him. When I felt frivolous and wished to laugh he was serious. His solemnity stirred me to audacity; and when I said a lot of silly things I didn't mean he preached at me; and I bullied him and was impudent and showed my contempt for a man who would endure such tyranny.... That is how it began.... And all the while, not knowing it, I was falling more completely in love. Isn't it odd?"

She smiled, pressed my hands, shook her head as though at a loss to account for her behavior.

"The first hint of it I had," she said, "was when he coolly warned me that he would thwart me. And I looked into his eyes and knew him for the first time--knew him to be the stronger, the wiser, the more capable,--and the more powerful.

"And I realized, all in a moment, that he had endured my contempt and tyranny merely because he chose to; that he was a real man, in cool possession of his own destiny; that, if he chose, he could clear his mind of me, and presently his heart; that I was not essential to him, not necessary; that, indeed, unless I instantly took myself in hand and made an effort to measure up to him, he'd turn from me,--quite courteously--and go his own way with a kindly indifference which suddenly seemed terrifying to me.... And I loved him.... And let him know.... And that is how it happened with me."

After a long pause: "What would happen," I inquired, "if I tried that sort of thing on Thusis?"

Clelia shook her head: "Thusis and I are different. I don't wish to be a martyr."

"Does Thusis?"