In the vestibule of the Boris, deaf to the hovering attention of a door-boy more curious than dutiful, stood two men of the stature and complexion of Prince Tabnit of Yaque. They were dressed like the youth who had answered the door of the prince"s apartment, and they were speaking softly with many gestures and evidently in some perplexity. The drooping spirits of St. George soared to Heaven as he hastened to them.
"You are asking for Miss Holland, the daughter of King Otho of Yaque," he said, with no time to smile at the pranks of the democracy with hereditary t.i.tles.
The men stared and spoke almost together.
"We are," they said promptly.
"She is not here," explained St. George, "but I have attended to some affairs for her. Will you come with me to my apartment where we may be alone?"
The men, who somehow made St. George think of tan-coloured greyhounds with very gentle eyes, consulted each other, not with the suspicion of the vulgar but with the caution of the thorough-bred.
"Pardon," said one, "if we may be quite a.s.sured that this is Miss Holland"s friend to whom we speak--"
St. George hesitated. The hall-boy listened with an air of polite concern, and there were curious over-shoulder glances from the pa.s.sers-by. Suddenly St. George"s face lighted and he went swiftly through his pockets and produced a sc.r.a.p of paper--the fragment that had lain that morning on the floor of the prince"s deserted apartment, and that bore the arms of the King of Yaque. It was the strangers" turn to regard him with amazement. Immediately, to St.
George"s utmost embarra.s.sment, they both bowed very low and p.r.o.nounced together:
"Pardon, adon!"
"My name is St. George," he a.s.sured them, "and let"s get into a cab."
They followed him without demur.
St. George leaned back on the cushions and looked at them--lean lithe little men with rapid eyes and supple bodies and great repose. They gave him the same sense of strangeness that he had felt in the presence of the prince and of the woman in the Bitley Reformatory--as if, it whimsically flashed to him, they some way rhymed with a word which he did not know.
"What is it," St. George asked as they rolled away, "what is it that you have come to tell Miss Holland?"
Only one of the men spoke, the other appearing content to show two rows of exceptionally white teeth.
"May we not know, adon," asked the man respectfully, "whether the prince has given her his news? And if the prince is still in your land?"
"The prince"s servant, Elissa, has tried to stab Miss Holland and has got herself locked up," St. George imparted without hesitation.
An exclamation of horror broke from both men.
"To stab--to _kill_!" they cried.
"Quite so," said St. George, "and the prince, upon being discovered, disclosed some very important news to Miss Holland, and she and her friends started an hour ago for Yaque."
"That is well, that is well!" cried the little man, nodding, and momentarily hesitated; "but yet his news--what news, adon, has he told her?"
For a moment St. George regarded them both in silence.
"Ah, well now, what news had he?" he asked briefly.
The men answered readily.
"Prince Tabnit was commissioned by the Yaquians to acquaint the princess with the news of the strange disappearance of her father, the king, and to supplicate her in his place to accept the hereditary throne of Yaque."
"Jupiter!" said St. George under breath.
In a flash the whole matter was clear to him. Prince Tabnit had delivered no such message from the people of Yaque, but had contented himself with the mere intimation that in some vanishing future she would be expected to ascend the throne. And he had done this only when Olivia herself had sought him out after an attempt had been made upon her life by his servant. It seemed to St. George far from improbable that the woman had been acting under the prince"s instructions and, that failing, he himself had appeared and obligingly placed the daughter of King Otho precisely within the prince"s power. Now she was gone with him, in the hope of aiding her father, to meet Heaven knew what peril in this pagan island; and he, St. George, was wholly to blame from first to last.
"Good Heavens," he groaned, "are you sure--but are you sure?"
"It is simple, adon," said the man, "we came with this message from the people of Yaque. A day before we were to land, Akko and I--I am Jarvo--overheard the prince plan with the others to tell her nothing--nothing that the people desire. When they knew that we had heard they locked us up and we have only this morning escaped from the submarine. If the prince has told her this message everything is well. But as for us, I do not know. The prince has gone."
"He told her nothing--nothing," said St. George, "but that her father and the Hereditary Treasure have disappeared. And he has taken her with him. She has gone with him."
Deaf alike to their exclamations and their questions St. George sat staring unseeingly through the window, his mind an abyss of fear.
Then the cab drew up at the door of his hotel and he turned upon the two men precipitantly.
"See," he cried, "in a boat on the open sea, would you two be at all able to direct a course to Yaque?"
Both men smiled suddenly and brilliantly.
"But we have stolen a chart," announced Jarvo with great simplicity, "not knowing what thing might befall."
St. George wrenched at the handle of the cab door. He had a glimpse of Amory within, just ringing the elevator bell, and he bundled the two little men into the lobby and dashed up to him.
"Come on, old Amory," he told him exultingly. "Heaven on earth, put out that pipe and pack. We leave for Yaque to-night!"
CHAPTER VII
DUSK, AND SO ON
Dusk on the tropic seas is a ceremony performed with reverence, as if the rising moon were a priestess come among her silver vessels.
Shadows like phantom sails dip through the dark and lie idle where unseen crafts with unexplained cargoes weigh anchor in mid-air. One almost hears the water cunningly lap upon their invisible sides.
To Little Cawthorne, lying luxuriously in a hammock on the deck of _The Aloha_, fancies like these crowded pleasantly, and slipped away or were merged in s.n.a.t.c.hes of remembered songs. His hands were clasped behind his head, one foot was tapping the deck to keep the hammock in motion while strange compounds of tune and time broke aimlessly from his lips.
"Meet me by moonlight alone, And then I will tell you a tale.
Must be told in the moonlight alone In the grove at the end of the vale"
he caroled contentedly.
Amory, the light of his pipe cheerfully glowing, lay at full length in a steamer chair. _The Aloha_ was bounding briskly forward, a solitary speck on the bosom of darkening purple, and the men sitting in the companionship of silence, which all the world praises and seldom attains, had been engaging in that most entertaining of pastimes, the comparison of present comfort with past toil. Little Cawthorne"s satisfaction flowered in speech.
"Two weeks ago to-night," he said, running his hands through his grey curls, "I took the night desk when Ellis was knocked out. And two weeks ago to-morrow morning we were the only paper to be beaten on the Fownes will story. Hi--you."
"Happy, Cawthorne?" Amory removed his pipe to inquire with idle indulgence.
"Am I happy?" affirmed Little Cawthorne ecstatically in four tones, and went on with his song:
"The daylight may do for the gay, The thoughtless, the heartless, the free, But there"s something about the moon"s ray That is sweeter to you and to me."