Read Ebook: The Amateur Diplomat: A Novel by Costain Thomas B Thomas Bertram Eayrs Hugh S Hugh Sterling

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Ebook has 1027 lines and 60344 words, and 21 pages

The princess smiled, and if her face was charming in repose it was ten times more so when it expressed animation. Fenton's diffidence left him. He began to talk of Canada, of the vastness of the country, of its customs and its freedom; particularly of its freedom. The princess listened with deepest interest.

"I should like to go to America--to Canada," said she. "It would be so splendid to be able to do what one wanted without bothering with customs and etiquette; to be able to go about without endless crowds of people staring at one."

"Canadians turn out to stare at princesses the same as they do here in Ironia," answered Fenton. "In fact, as their opportunities are fewer, they probably make more of them. And even if you were to travel incognito--I'm afraid my countrymen would let their admiration get the better of their politeness."

"Mr Fenton, this is my father," said the princess.

The Canadian, who had been observing everything, acknowledged the introduction with a correct imitation of the stiff formal bow that seemed an integral part of Ironian etiquette. The princess's father bore a striking resemblance to King Alexander. Could this be the Prince Peter to whom Varden had referred?

They talked for a few minutes, the prince also speaking English with fluency. Then someone came, a little understrapper in a most gorgeous uniform, and bore the princess away to dance.

"Lucky devil!" sighed the Canadian to himself.

The two men walked out to a balcony, and on the prince's first remark Fenton became assured of his identity.

"Mr Varden has spoken of you to me," said Prince Peter. "He intimates that it is your intention to remain for some time in Ironia and to lend your assistance to the cause that Mr Varden has himself espoused."

Fenton responded warmly, and for half an hour the two men talked war problems and Ironia's relation thereto. Prince Peter discussed the situation with a frankness which might have astonished the young Canadian had he not been aware that all Ironia was thoroughly conversant with most phases of the vexed problem. When the prince returned to the ball-room, he left Fenton with an unbounded enthusiasm for the new cause and a deep respect for Prince Peter himself. The latter was a born leader in every respect, particularly in his ability to win adherents.

Fenton lit a cigarette and started down a dark path leading to the extensive and intricately planned royal gardens. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to be able to think, to dream. And his thoughts and dreams at first ran exclusively along one groove. How beautiful the princess was! He began to reflect on the future--his future and hers. In a moment his thoughts took a gloomy turn. He would go back to Canada, which now for the first time seemed void of interest. She would marry a man of royal blood and rule in some such country as Ironia. He pictured her married for diplomatic reasons to a royal nonentity, condemned to a lifetime of endless etiquette, of senseless rigmarole. He reflected darkly on the benighted condition of the old world which made such things possible. Was there no way that an ambitious young millionaire from the new world could succeed in upsetting this almost inevitable arrangement, by scaling the walls of custom and tradition?

In keeping with his thoughts his pace had become savagely energetic. He now discovered that he had wandered well away from the palace into a maze of dark paths. He stopped and looked about him. And then suddenly he heard voices.

They proceeded from a thick clump of bushes close to his right. One voice was raised sufficiently high above the rest to carry its message to his ears. The owner of the voice was speaking in German, and Fenton knew enough of that language to catch what was being said. It interested him so acutely that he stepped through the bushes cautiously in the direction from which the sound came.

In a small clearing, part of which was thrown into relief by a ray of light from a nearby building, stood a group of men. One of them turned and the light fell direct on his face. With a start of surprise Fenton recognised the Grand Duke Miridoff.

"Are we all here?" asked Miridoff.

From where he stood behind the bushes, Fenton could watch the party without being seen himself. He noted that they were all in uniform or evening dress, having apparently left the ball-room to attend this stealthy rendezvous. It struck Fenton that the majority of the group were not Ironians. They gathered about Miridoff, who quite apparently was the leader.

"Members of the Society of Crossed Swords," Miridoff was saying, "we have heard news of such importance that we deemed it necessary to have word passed quietly to each of you to meet here.

"Events are taking an unfavourable turn," he went on. "The King is still loyal to our cause, but the strong feeling throughout the country is making an impression on him. Peter is pressing him strongly. I regret to have to state it, but I can clearly see the King is wavering."

There was a moment's silence, and then Miridoff began again in such low tones that Fenton could hardly catch the words.

"I received important news to-night from the front. The Russians are massing for an invasion of Mulkovina. It will be hard to hold them. Once they get possession of Mulkovina, without Ironia's assistance, no power on earth will wrest it from them." Miridoff's voice at this point sunk almost to a whisper. "If the people know that Russia is ready for the advance, nothing will prevent them from declaring for the Allies while there is still time to gain the two provinces by so doing. Alexander's opposition will be swept away. There is only one course left. Ironia must be ranged on Germany's side before the news of the Russian mobilisation leaks out!"

This statement was followed by a babel of discussion in which most of the men took part, and the confused tangle of talk proved too difficult for Fenton's inadequate knowledge of the German tongue. He lost the thread of the discussion until the decisive tones of Miridoff again cut through the talk.

"There is but one course open. If Prince Peter is not there to prompt the King, to urge his arguments of policy, Alexander could be rushed into declaring war against Russia at once. That is what we must bring about. Peter must be removed!"

A general murmur followed Miridoff's statement, and out of it Fenton's amazed senses picked one word--"Assassination!"

"Well, who's to do it?" someone asked.

"It is to decide that point that we are here," answered Miridoff. "It is a regrettable necessity, but our cause demands it. Peter dead, the people will be like a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Is it necessary to get your consent to the step?"

The men assented as with one voice to what their leader had said.

"Our oath binds us to secrecy," said Miridoff. Drawing from his pocket some slips of paper, he deposited them in his hat. "Two are marked," he said. "Those who draw them will be called upon to perform the service. Are you agreed?"

Rooted to the spot with horror, Teuton watched the men draw in turn from the hat. After all had drawn, two of them stepped aside for consultation with Miridoff.

"The rest of you had better go," said the latter. "This place is none too safe. Remember, not a word. Perhaps by to-morrow morning we shall have news for you, news that will shake the world and cause a grey fear to creep into the faces of the cursed English!"

DARING PROPOSALS

For the first time now, Fenton became aware that the happy accident which brought him as eavesdropper to this extraordinary assignation had also placed him in a most dangerous position. On completing their consultation, the three men made straight in his direction. Fenton tried to shrink back farther into the rhododendrons, but even in the darkness they did not afford sufficient shelter for a man with the conspicuous white front of evening dress. He decided that his best chance of safely lay in flight.

Pulling the collar of his dress coat up around his neck, he started off cautiously. Unfortunately he stumbled and nearly fell headlong into a small shrub. Sharp exclamations from the rear warned him that he had betrayed his presence to the three conspirators. Throwing all other considerations to the winds, therefore, Fenton ran for dear life.

The men behind took up the pursuit with business-like grimness. Not a word was uttered, but in an instant he heard the steady pound of their feet and then the sharp discharge of a revolver. A bullet whizzed close past his ear, showing that the conspirators were not firing entirely at random. Several more shots followed in the next few minutes, and in each instance they were but an inch or two off their mark.

Fenton had been a sprinter in his college days, and the knowledge that three expert and determined marksmen are on one's trail is perhaps the greatest spur to velocity that could be imagined. Without paying any heed to his course, he plunged straight ahead, through shrubbery and garden plots, around fountains and over railings. His pursuers made up in desperation what they lacked in length of leg, and it took the young Canadian some time to gain a comfortable lead. At last he outdistanced them, however, and by pursuing a devious course landed, all unwittingly, at a side door of the palace. He pushed it open and, finding no one to stop him, made his way down a corridor toward the sound of the music.

Without pausing to catch his breath or plan any definite course, Fenton showed in the ball-room. Glances that drifted his way fixed themselves on him with astonishment, until finally the Canadian found that, much as he had desired to avoid notice, he had instead made himself the cynosure of all eyes. The reason was not hard to find. In his flight he had broken recklessly through brambles and thick shrubbery. The front of his once immaculate dress shirt was willed and soiled; his face scratched, his hair rumpled. He looked as though he had been through a football scrimmage.

To find Varden was his first endeavour, but the latter unfortunately was nowhere in sight. So Fenton decided to seek Prince Peter in person, and convey to him direct the startling news he had stumbled upon. Threading his way blindly through the gay ranks in search of the leader of the allied cause, he came in contact with the Grand Duke Miridoff. The two men halted and stood for a moment face to face, like belligerents. Their glances crossed like rapier blades. Miridoff coldly and without haste appraised the disorderliness of the young Canadian's attire.

"Mr Fenton has been strolling in the gardens?" he said.

Fenton was no diplomat. He was unversed in the art of exchanging polished phrases in the face of tense situations, of veiling threats, innuendoes, warnings, in the guise of polite rejoinders. He replied with the directness and vigour that are supposed to be characteristic of the Canadian character.

"Yes, I have been strolling in the gardens," he said, "and it's lucky I happened to be around just when I did!"

Miridoff, accustomed to the devious ways of diplomacy, was thrown off his guard by the sheer unexpectedness of so direct a rejoinder. He regained his poise in an instant, however, and treated Fenton to a cold glare.

"Perhaps Mr Fenton will find it unlucky for himself that he happened to be around just when he did," he said, passing on.

The remark set Fenton thinking. Undoubtedly the situation presented certain possibilities that had not occurred to him before. His presence at the meeting of the Society of Crossed Swords, known as it now was to the conspirators, would not serve as a deterrent to the carrying out of their foul purpose. Instead, it had given them a double aim; it would be advisable to get him out of the way before the plans laid for the death of Prince Peter were attempted. That much was quite clear even to one so completely unversed as himself in the ruthless way of Balkan politics. He was a marked man. It was equally clear to him that he was practically powerless in the matter. He could not go to the police or the military authorities and lay bare the whole thing to them. He would merely be laughed at for his pains. Who was he, an unknown foreigner, to lay such a serious charge against so illustrious a personage as the Grand Duke Miridoff? That course could have no effect other than to destroy his own usefulness to the cause he had espoused and perhaps to bring suspicion down on the prince and Varden. Fenton saw clearly that the only thing for him to do was to acquaint the prince of the plot against him and take the chance of any danger to himself which might arise in the meantime from the animosity of Miridoff's myrmidons.

He continued his search for Prince Peter with an almost feverish eagerness, recognising that every minute was precious now. Delay on his part might mean the death of the leader of the popular cause with all that such a calamity would entail. Miridoff's reasoning had been right; the prince out of the way, there would be little difficulty in persuading the King to swing Ironia into line against Russia.

But, to Fenton, the possibilities did not stop there. Prince Peter was father of the loveliest woman in the world! Ever since he had spent those golden minutes with the Princess Olga, thoughts of her had never been entirely out of his mind. Even as he had dashed headlong through the gardens, a picture of her as she had last appeared to him, in all her regal beauty and dainty girlishness floating off to the strains of "The Blue Danube" on the arm of a native officer, had remained with him. Could this great sorrow be permitted to come to her?

It was to the princess herself that he finally told the story of the plot. He could not locate her father, and, in sheer desperation, sought her out where she stood at the end of the long ball-room. His dishevelled appearance created comment in the group surrounding her, but Fenton, casting finesse to the winds, rode rough-shod over all considerations of court etiquette.

"Your highness," he said, "I must see you for a few minutes--alone. I assure you it is a matter of great urgency."

The princess, glancing at him intently, divined the earnestness behind his unusual request, and, with a murmured word, dismissed the partner to whom she had been engaged for the next dance. All eyes followed them as they crossed to a nearby alcove.

"Your highness," said Fenton earnestly, "I want to apologise, first for appearing in such a condition, and second for what must appear to you as gross ignorance of all that pertains to royal etiquette. I can plead in extenuation only the urgency of the case."

He told her in a few words of his blind excursion outside and its astonishing sequel. "I may have done wrong by telling you this," he concluded, "but I could find neither your father nor my friend, Varden, and I realised that every moment was precious."

For a moment there was silence. The eloquent dark eyes of the princess, which had been fixed on his face during the recital, were now filled with a troubled appeal.

"I cannot find words to thank you, Mr Fenton," she said, clasping her hands together. "Your news is disquieting, although I have feared for the safety of the prince, my father, ever since war broke out. Anything is possible in Ironia now--even that they should want the death of a prince who has never had a thought beyond the welfare of his country! He is the most unselfish man that ever lived, I think, Mr Fenton. One who has not known him can have no conception of the way in which he has given himself to the service of Ironia."

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