The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Game and the Candle, by Eleanor M. Ingram This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Game and the Candle Author: Eleanor M. Ingram Illustrator: P. D. Johnson Release Date: April 1, 2011 [EBook #35740] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GAME AND THE CANDLE *** Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) THE GAME AND THE CANDLE BY ELEANOR M. INGRAM WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY P. D. JOHNSON INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright 1909 The Bobbs-merrill Company October PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS BROOKLYN, N. Y. TO THAT GRACIOUS FAMILY CIRCLE OF WHICH I HAVE THE HAPPINESS TO BE ONE He carried her back to the cream-tinted boudoir. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. The Decision CHAPTER II. The Key to the Door CHAPTER III. His Royal Highness CHAPTER IV. The Bond CHAPTER V. The New Day CHAPTER VI. "The King is Dead—Long Live the King" CHAPTER VII. Allegiance CHAPTER VIII. To Meet the Emperor CHAPTER IX. Guinevere of the South CHAPTER X. A Stanief's Own CHAPTER XI. In the Regent's Study CHAPTER XII. The Turn in the Road CHAPTER XIII. The Intervention of Adrian CHAPTER XIV. The Ordeal CHAPTER XV. At the Gates of Change CHAPTER XVI. Fire Lilies CHAPTER XVII. An Arabian Night CHAPTER XVIII. The Last Week CHAPTER XIX. Adrian's Day CHAPTER XX. Closed LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS He carried her back to the cream-tinted boudoir. Allard remained silent, regarding her. "Come in, Officer," Stanief invited pleasantly. "Will you ride with me, Monseigneur?" There existed no one else for either. THE GAME AND THE CANDLE CHAPTER I THE DECISION "It will last about six months," stated John Allard. "Afterward—" His brother looked up at him helplessly. "Afterward?" he echoed drearily. "Afterward there must be more. It is not possible, simply is not, for poverty to approach Theodora and Aunt Rose. Look around you, Robert." Under the clear California moonlight the jade-green lawns and terraces dropped one below the other to the distant road. Through them writhed the long serpentine drive and paths; dotted over them stood dark masses of flowering bushes or trees, with here and there the snowy gleam of a statue; over all floated the rhythmic tinkle of the central fountain. Untroubled calm was the spirit of the place, hereditary comfort. "I have looked so often, John. Yet, I find nothing." "We must find not a little money, but a fortune, and we must find it in six months," John answered, his low voice just reaching his listener. "There is no way to earn it, we know. Inside the law there are ways to acquire it. Wall Street, for instance; a new popular song or two, an inexplicable conjuring trick, or a fresh breakfast food. But we have no such talents, you and I; we are just the ordinary gentlemen of leisure,—dilettanti. We are useless, within the limits set for us. Outside the limits, outside the law—" The suggestion was left unfinished, the two men falling silent before it. They were young; so young that the morning mists of romance still blurred the sharp landscape of reality, and for the moment, daring appealed more than endurance. "We could not do anything low," Robert demurred hesitatingly. "Not about the mortgages or business tangles, John." "No, no," John agreed, flushing. "Of course not that. I suppose there is an honor even in crime, a class distinction. Sir Henry Morgan probably despised a common thief, and Paul Clifford would not pick his neighbor's pocket at dinner. No; we will pay our inherited debts, if we have to steal for it. What a comédie-héroïque!" Robert regarded him seriously. "You are just playing?" he doubted. "I am not playing at all; only looking at things. For the time left us is not long. If we do nothing, this place will go, and with it all that Theodora and Aunt Rose call life. We must then take these women, Aunt Rose an invalid, Theo a spoiled and petted patrician, to some cheap city lodging, and there strive to support them. How, I haven't any idea. Some one might employ us as clerks, possibly. I have traveled all over Europe and speak French and Italian; that is all my stock in trade, except an education." "Mine is less." "We have wasted our time thoroughly, if innocently. Now we pay. Do you wonder that I look at the outlaw's path that offers itself?" His brother moved, startled. "Offers itself, John?" "Yes; I did not think of this without the prompting of circumstance. Are you dismayed, or shocked?" "I can not see very clearly," Robert answered simply. "Or, rather, I keep seeing the wrong things. Nothing dismays me to-night except the idea of pain coming to Theo and her mother. I do not say it should be so; merely that it is. We are more ornamental than useful, we Allards, as you point out, but we have the art of loving. I think most people have a less capacity for it; I believe it is a certain intensity born with one—a gift, a talent. And we have it. Tell me more." "I shall not tell you very much, because the work is only for one of us," John said. "One of us must go, the other stay here and live as always. One must still be master of Sun-Kist, still the head of this household of ours and an irreproachable citizen. He had better not know too accurately what the one who goes is doing." "John!" John Allard slipped impulsively from the veranda rail and came to sit on the arm of Robert's chair, drawing him into a caressing embrace. "I know; we've always played together, dear old fellow. School and college, and the short time since,—the two years' difference between us got lost pretty early. But we must learn to go alone at last. And if we undertake this insanity—for it is little better—we must stand without flinching all it brings. Is it worth while? I do not know, but I know many a man has gone into the underworld to protect a woman. How many cashiers have misused funds entrusted to them, how many business men have stooped to illegal methods, in order to give their wives—not necessities, but luxuries? We see it every day, this cowardice for some one loved. Only they do it by degrees, and we do it all at once." Robert laid his hand over the one on his shoulder. "It does not sound very pretty," he acknowledged wistfully. "It is the old legend of selling your ego to Mephistopheles. Only, I wouldn't so much mind going to Hades afterward; it is the clasping Mephisto's smudgy fingers that hurts." "I am not asking you to do it, Bertie. We will just forget this half-hour, if you like. You know it was a suggestion, not a conviction, I voiced. You are right, of course. But I was ready for rebellion against all laws to-day; and then Desmond came to me—" "Desmond! He is out of prison?" "A week ago. He came to me for money to go East. 'Do you mind how you and Master Robert used to sneak away from your nurse to play with Tommy, the coachman's boy?' he said to me. 'And now Tommy Desmond is nursed by the police far and near. I am a master at my trade, I am.' He has not changed much since we recognized him at his trial, five years ago, and tried to help him." Robert turned to see the face above him in the moonlight. "He said more than that." "He was very frank," John answered laconically. "Then, go on, please. I never meant that we should give up the last chance because it was unpleasant, or unsafe. Theo —she has just tasted her girlhood, just commenced to live; how can we let her lose it all? I would rather smudge my fingers in saving her than wear the bar sinister of cowardice. There are laws I know you will not break, because, being yourself, you can not. Go on, and tell me what Desmond said." A white moth, hunting some star across the dark, dashed itself against Allard's coat and hung quivering there. He paused to disentangle the delicate wings before replying, the careful seriousness of the little action in itself a characterization. "There has been shown to me a way to make enough money to thrust poverty out of sight for the present and find comfort for the future. A way to save Sun-Kist in the short time left us to command. But it is by a crime, a crime which the world calls as ugly as forgery. You know for what Desmond was punished. Yet it is in a certain sense the crime magnificent, in that one wrongs a government instead of an individual, and dashes the gauntlet into the face of the state itself. It is the crime that to the least degree smudges, because, after all, it offers a fair equivalent for value received." "What do you mean?" "The old mine is no longer worth operating; but there is silver in small quantities," Allard replied quietly. "Enough for Desmond's use. Naturally, he never dreamed of making such a proposition to me. He simply told me how the affair could be carried out, as he told me a dozen other amazing possibilities and reminiscences. I encouraged him to talk, at first merely to dull the clamor of thought at my inner ear. In the end, I kept him near here." "It's so real, John?" "It's so real and so possible. I have satisfied myself of that. Either of us could carry the plan through, with Desmond; but we must realize that the one who undertakes it steps out of this life. For, facing the fact, disaster in the end is almost certain. The government machinery is very perfect; he who breaks the law can scarcely hope to escape arrest sooner or later. And if that happens, our world must never guess. Whoever accepts the work must leave here for an indefinite journey abroad, ostensibly; and in reality lose his identity absolutely somewhere. The one who goes must endure in silence whatever happens; the one who stays—" "Go on." "The one who stays," John finished gently, "must not interfere or try to save." Robert shuddered slightly and sat still for an instant. "It is for the women," he said, his boyish voice quite steady. "Shall we draw lots, or will you let me go?" "Bertie, Bertie!" John exclaimed, and, rising abruptly, walked to the rail. When he came back to the seat beside his brother, it was with his face turned from the silver light pouring through the arches of the veranda. "We are spared the pain of choosing our rôles, Bertie," he declared with grave finality. "The decision is not ours. Theodora cares for one of us. Aunt Rose admitted as much to me, although she herself could not say which. Of course that one is the one who stays. You see I am just taking it for granted that we both love her. We have never talked about it, but we knew, I think." "Yes." John waited, but no more was volunteered. "You agree with me?" he at last questioned. "Oh, I suppose so!" Robert flung savagely. "John, I am not blind; if you propose this, it is because you are satisfied Theo will choose me. If you sacrifice everything to save Sun-Kist for the women, it is because you mean the sacrifice to be yourself. Tell the truth; if I were to go, you would refuse to carry out the plan." "I said either of us could do the work." "Yes, but you mean to do it yourself." "I mean to leave the decision to Theodora." "Honestly?" "Honestly. And our time is short, Robert; ask her to-night when she comes home." "I will not," he refused flatly. "Take your right as eldest and tell her your story before I tell mine. I will not take that advantage of you. Oh, if she were only less delicate, less fastidiously reared, less unable to endure even vexation! If we could fight it out, you and I!" "Hush, hush; this is the fight. We are paying the penalty of being fit for no better battle; he who can use neither sword nor gun must be sent to dig in the muddy trenches." "We could take care of ourselves." "Without doubt, or starve decently. But we have to take care of others." "John, let me go." "Play fair, Bertie." "John—" "And Theo?" The younger dropped his head against the other's knee. "I think your part will be harder than mine," John rejoined, after a long silence. "It is less difficult to suffer than to watch another endure. I can very well believe we are taking the wrong way, but I do not see a better. And for the—smudge— I have one consolation." "That is, John?" "The crime chosen is one the state finds it advisable to condemn for reasons of policy. It is not so actual a wrong to our fellow-men as a fortune made in Wall Street or in speculating on their necessities. I am going to break man's regulations, not God's law." "I hope you are right," said Robert with equal reverence. "But you are taking an unblazed trail, and the safe road lies far aside." Down the smooth slope of the country-side crept the vibrating throb of an automobile, accompanied by laughter and the faint sound of gay voices. Some one in the party was singing—a man whose clear tenor reached the two on the veranda, filtered to purest pathos through the veil of distance: "Sconto col sangue mio L'amor que posi in te! Non ti scordar—non ti scordar di me—" "That is Billy Clive," Robert identified wearily. "He is an arrant humbug, is Billy; I do not believe he ever had a serious moment in his life. Theo is coming; will you speak to her? It may be you, after all, you know." "I think not, Bertie." "But you will try?" Through the night air pierced the crescendo wail of a horn, startling the insect choirs into silence and waking a sleepy bird in the wistaria vines. Both men rose. "If I must," John yielded. "Yet I have an idea it will not matter who speaks first, and perhaps you are not quite up to the task to-night. Yes, I will try." "And try fairly. I," as the white lights of the car swung into the avenue, "I am going in." Their hands met in passing, Robert turning to the house door and John descending the wide steps to greet the arrival. "The most delicious time," pealed the sweet, high voice of a girl above the noise of the halted automobile. "Good night, Mrs. Preston. Until to-morrow, Sue and Billy. Oh, John, you!" "Come over to-morrow, Allard," rang the merry chorus. "Don't forget the hunt." "Bring Robert, old man." "Adiós, Theo." The car started noisily, and whirled down the driveway. "I am so tired," sighed the girl on the steps, gathering up her shimmering skirts and throwing back the hood of her cloak. "Mama has gone to bed, John? Oh, and I do want tea! Why should I not have tea at midnight, if I like? I love to be revolutionary." "Why not, indeed? Sit down there in your chosen divan, my lady." "You will bring me tea?" "Wait only." She sank laughing into a chair and began to draw off her long gloves, watching him as he moved to the little tea-table in a nook of the veranda. Allard possessed an almost feminine deftness at such tasks; perhaps it was as well that Robert was not busied with the fragile china and glass that evening. "It was a nice dance," Theodora mused aloud. "But then, almost everything is nice. Only I missed you and Robert. A dance without Robert is like a salad without cayenne." "And a salad with cayenne?" "Is the chief joy of life's dinner." He brought the cup and she extended a slim, jeweled hand to receive it. Theodora had a somewhat oriental taste; odors of sandalwood and rose breathed from her laces, her white wrist sparkled with slender bracelets, and the high comb in her blonde hair held the glint of gems. "Why do you not laugh at my epigram?" she demanded. "Thank you; I would say you were adorable if you did not already know it. Please give me a biscuit, and give yourself some tea. Why are you so serious to-night?" "I had something to tell you, I think." She waved a commanding spoon. "Then sit down and begin." But Allard remained silent, regarding her. It was not easy to begin. Moreover, the glamour of the future had fallen away, leaving the naked ugliness; and he was held by a prescient certainty that to-night ended for ever this gracious life. Allard remained silent, regarding her. "Robert is not up?" Theodora queried presently, too fine to insist on the suggested confidence. "No. Are you sorry, Theo?" Surprised at the tone, she glanced up, but the shadows were heavy where he sat. "Why, yes, of course." And recovering herself, "Certainly; how could we exist without him?" "How, indeed?" he echoed, rather too quietly for naturalness. "Suppose he were to go away?" "I should expire immediately of ennui. You see, he and I have a bond of frivolity; while against you we all lean for support. You are very supporting, John; now, this tea," she laughed gleefully. "Robert probably would have pressed champagne upon me, because it is less trouble to get." "You might have made tea yourself," he suggested, drawing a branch of the wistaria to shade his face more completely. "I hate to do things for myself. I hope that I never will have to." "I hope not. But I promised to tell you something. I am going on a trip to South America; part business, part restlessness." "You!" "Why not? I can not play all the time, you know, not being a girl myself. I may be away only a few months, or—much longer. But let me be quite frank; surely you are aware Robert loves you, Theo. If I should not be home before you are married, still you will understand how much good I wish you both, and remember that I said this now. Forgive me for speaking of this; it is ventured because I start to-morrow." She sat very still, and he heard her hurried breathing in the hush. "I did not know you meant that," she said at last, her accents unsure. "Or you would not have confessed? Never mind my blundering interference, little cousin; I have no wish so dear as that you two should care for each other. You are not angry?" She rose abruptly to set down the cup, the shadows now a cloak for her. "Angry? Oh, no; I have never learned to be angry with you. I—It is damp out here; I must go in. Good night, John." "Good night, Theo," he responded with all gentleness. It was so wonderful, this exquisite timidity, this virginal shyness that only Robert should have seen. He saw her quivering as she passed him in the moonlight, her head averted. But in the doorway she turned back. "John, as we entered the avenue to-night, there was a man standing near the olive-trees. Mr. Preston stopped the car and called to ask what he did there. The man answered that he was waiting to see you about some gardening work, but it was so late that you must have forgotten. He sounded honest, but Mr. Preston bade me warn you, saying that a man, once your father's servant, had just been released from prison, and might use a knowledge of Sun-Kist to attempt burglary. You will be careful?" "I will be careful," he answered calmly. "Thank you, dear." She slipped hurriedly across the threshold, as if in escape, ruthlessly tearing her thin gown upon the door-latch. Allard wearily rested his head against the column behind him, and so remained. At the end of an hour he rose and went down across the moon-blanched lawns, walking steadily and directly toward the group of olive-trees. He knew for what Desmond was waiting, knew what answer would be given, and it seemed to him that he had already severed the connection between the present and the future. It seemed to him that not to- morrow, but to-night, he was taking leave of all things; that the unblazed trail led straight on from behind those dark trees just beyond him. The white statues stirred with the wavering shadows as he passed; the rich scent of the tuberoses called as a familiar voice; like a patter of tiny footsteps the ripple of the fountain followed. CHAPTER II THE KEY TO THE DOOR "The road you called, and I believed to be, an unblazed trail through a grave forest, I am beginning to see is just the old sordid, musty Bridge of Sighs across which common malefactors are led," wrote John Allard to Robert three months after his departure from Sun-Kist. "But if we can agree with Browning's dictum, there is a certain virtue simply in keeping on at a task assumed, even if the end be questionable. And I am keeping on. Do not fancy I am saying this to trouble you, or in weak regret. All is going better than we dared hope, as you know; and I see no danger near, at present. No; it is only that I have been fearing I gave you some edged doctrines; do not close your hand upon them, for they cut. You can not write to me, of course, since you do not know where I am. Nor shall I myself write again, even with this guarded and unsigned precaution. When this venture ends, I am going away from America; I think I shall enlist in France's Foreign Legion. Not because I am afraid, but because I want to work. Yet, in spite of success, it seems to me that, like Saxon Harold, I hear a cry in the night: 'Sanguelac, the arrow, the arrow!'" There was nothing in the quiet, sun-filled, little hut nestled on the mountain-side, to indicate that here rested one end of the Ponte degli Sospiri. Yet to one of the two men here at bay, the dark bridge arched away as a thing visible. A siege had been held there all the June afternoon, until now this grateful lull had fallen,—a siege whose tale was punctuated with the snap of bullets, the crash of loosened stones down the cliff, and the shouts of men below. No one yet had ventured on the steep, narrow path winding up to the hut, although there was but one defender, and so far the battle had been bloodless. But neither the big Irishman leaning by the door, nor John Allard, lying helpless on a rough cot, had any doubt of the final result. They were simply waiting for the end to come. "Desmond, have you hurt any of them?" Allard asked suddenly, rousing himself from a reverie bordering on stupor. "I have not," answered the other in accents just touched with Hibernian softness. "But I am thinking they will not come up until dusk. Bird shot scatters." "Our own men have gone safely?" "They have. And if you had not slipped through that hole in the old floor and broken your ankle—" Allard raised himself on his elbow. Fever lent an artificial brightness to his firm young face and shadowed gray eyes, the waving chestnut hair clung boyishly around a forehead which had acquired one straight line between the brows during the five months since he had left Sun-Kist. "You should not have stayed, Desmond," he said earnestly. "You can not help me; I have my own way out of this. You must go now, at least, and try the mountain. I ask you to go." "And if I do, it must be at dusk. Look out that door; not a cloud or a shade—and me with a hundred yards of bare mountain-side to cross. Lie easy, sir." "Desmond!" "Oh, it's a word slipped! Old times are close enough for their ways to come to my tongue in the rush." Allard shook his head, but sank back upon the pillow and let his gaze go out the open door opposite. Far below, the silver and azure Hudson widened into the Tappan Zee, set in purple and emerald hills which curved softly away to the distant outposts of the Palisades. Fair and tranquil, warmly palpitating under the summer sunshine, the scene was cruel in its placid indifference to the struggle here upon the cliff-like mountain. The very breeze that fluttered in brought taunting perfumes of cedar and blossom from a country-side out of reach; poised airily between earth and sky, a snowy sea-gull flaunted its unvalued liberty. Sighing, the Californian dropped the curtain of his lashes before a world no longer his. He had been so near safety, the arrow had been held so long upon the cord, that disaster came now with a double keenness of stroke. "Desmond," he said, after a pause, "we have nothing to do with old times or titles. I can trust your will, I know; but do not let your memory betray me. I mean, words must not slip. I hope you are going to get out of this safely; I can not, of course. After my—capture," a curious expression flickered across his face, "no matter how things end, you may count that I will say nothing of you or the others. Will you, at all times in the future, remember that I am just Leroy?" "I will," the big man replied briefly. "And the others don't know anything." "No; there is only you. You it would not help if the truth were made public; it would only excite more attention. You yourself do not want your former record connected with your stay here. If you escape, you will be free and comparatively rich; leave me my secret, Desmond; I shall have nothing else." "You needn't worry about me," Desmond reassured, his eyes on the ribbon of path that was visible. "It might be better, I'm thinking, to do the worrying about how you'll come out of this." "Fiat justicia," Allard returned, with a cool endurance quite free from bitterness. "Or, more intelligibly, I must pay for my cakes and ale. Only carry your part through, and do not talk." "You needn't worry. There's a man around that big boulder down there! Will I have to shoot bird seed at his legs, I wonder?" "Not if you can avoid!" "Oh, I'm not playing at it; rest easy. And don't fear they'll be believing it's you. When they find me gone and you not able to stand, they'll guess who was shooting. I'll put all the guns beyond your reaching them, to help, before I go to- night." "No!" The swift monosyllable fell with an energy that brought Desmond's glance at once to the speaker. "I shall want my revolver," Allard added more quietly. "I might need it." "Just so," assented the other, regarding him oddly, and presently returned to his guard of the door. There was a long silence. Gradually the fluffily piled clouds in the west became tinged with ruddy gold, clouds which bore a fanciful resemblance to Elysian mountain peaks, as if heaped so in sport by some imitative baby Titan who had patterned them from the hills below. Sunset was at hand, and from its brightness Allard wearily averted his face. Suffering, mental and physical, keyed his nerves to exquisite sensitiveness; a passionate desire for darkness and silence possessed him. Suddenly the roaring crash of the huge shotgun set the cottage vibrating, and echoed heavily back and forth among the cliffs. "It's only to scare them," explained Desmond, as his companion started up. "But I doubt they will wait past dusk. And we needed just one week more!" "You mean they will rush the place by daylight? You will go now?" "I need the dusk more than they do. Still, I won't wait long. You—shall I get you water?—you moved too quick!" "It is nothing," Allard panted. But he drank gratefully from the tin dipper, nevertheless, and in returning it searched with gentler eyes the hard, intelligent countenance of the giver. "It is nothing I can not face, all this, if I can be certain you will keep silence." "I will," he said, and walked back to the door in cautious vigilance. Allard lay still. Evening: Theodora would be on the veranda in her pretty dinner gown, perhaps with a flower tucked over her little ear in the Spanish fashion she mimicked, if this were home. Aunt Rose would be reading in her favorite chair, Robert lounging near them and pouring out his usual flood of sparkling gaiety and nonsense. Allard smiled tenderly and with a touch of defiance; after all, he had won the battle fought for them, had carried out the task set, before to-day's ruin overtook him. Moreover, he had his own way of escape, resolved upon since the first. He almost could be content. "It's growing dark," broke in Desmond's voice after a time. "I'm thinking they'll be making that rush mighty soon. I'd give something to take you along, instead of having to climb like a cat up the bluff." Allard roused himself. "Not possible! You should have gone with the rest instead of being here now." He held out his hot hand for the other's clasp. "Good-by, Desmond. Without you this thing would never have worked at all." "It's not so. Many a time this game has been tried and has fallen through half-way; and it's not thousands are made at it. You did it, with the gentleman's brain and knowledge and wit. Not that it matters now." "Not very much. You are forgetting my revolver." "No, I am not forgetting. You will not need it." He turned away to add the last one to the pile of weapons in the opposite corner. Allard rose on his arm, his eyes flashing wide and keen. "You have no idea what I need, Desmond. Give me that revolver." "You would shoot no one, and it would be of no use." "Desmond, we have been friends; give me that." "I can't," he answered sullenly. "Why not?" "Because I know for what you want it, sir." Allard flung back his head and confronted the defiant face opposite with the fevered anger of his own. "And if so, is it your affair? Have you, you who have led your life, grown sentimental? You, who know from where I come and to where I am going,—you will interfere? You are wasting our time; give me my revolver, and go." But the other made no move, although sending an anxious glance through the doorway. "One gets out of prison," he said obstinately, "as I've tried myself. But that that you mean—there's no coming back. You are over young for that, sir." "You have been paid for helping me," Allard retorted, his voice savage with pain, "not for teaching me philosophy. Go take your liberty, if you can, and leave me mine. There is one door out for me, and one key. I trusted you; I might have kept the thing with me if I had imagined this." Desmond flushed, but turned coolly. "I'll go, it's time. If I was paid for helping, I gave the help. I never was paid for this you are asking." "Desmond, Desmond, you leave me so!" He turned on the threshold, a square, obstinate figure against the violet twilight. "I'd never do it," he said quite gently, "if I didn't know you'd thank me some day." "Desmond—" "Good-by, sir." "Desmond—" The doorway was empty; the evening serenata of a robin filled the hush. Allard's head sank on his arm in the darkest moment of the last somber months. But presently he looked up again. Still dressed as when the accident had happened a few hours before, he possessed a tiny box of cartridges, and only the width of the room separated him from his desire. He impulsively tossed aside the blanket and slipped to the floor. The fall drew a gasp of pain. All before faded to insignificance beside the anguish of movement. It was not the ankle only; the injury had gone farther than that. Colorless, catching his breath with difficulty, Allard dragged himself inch by inch toward the goal. Desmond was almost forgotten when the first shot on the mountain-side rang out. Startled from the mists of suffering, Allard paused an instant. Then as a very fusillade reverberated among the cliffs, he toiled on with redoubled haste. They would come next for him. It had a pearl and silver handle, that revolver. He had treasured it because it was a gift from Robert, and a souvenir too frequently duplicated to betray his identity. Now the pearl shone a glistening spot in the surrounding grayness, beckoning, tantalizing. It was so far across the room, so very far! Shots again! He struggled yet more desperately, and the resulting pang brought waves of faintness above his head. If he could only rest, so. Some one was shouting, half exultantly, half fearfully, and other voices replied in equal excitement. Some one was killed, they were saying, had fallen from the cliff. Desmond, perhaps? Allard roused himself fiercely and saw with gratitude how near the coveted object lay. A little farther, only a little; but it cost. The rush and patter of feet grew louder,—the steady approach of the hunters. It hardly mattered, for the cool white handle was in the grasp of his outstretched hand. He had won, won doubly. He had accomplished his task, and he held the key to the door. Robert's face leaned toward him, warm with relief and praise; Theodora was in the room, bringing fragrances of sandalwood and rose— Once more he drove back the mists and dragged the revolver to him, smiling, but with knit brows. CHAPTER III HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS They looked at each other steadily, the distinguished visitor and the prisoner who polished a brass railing. Beside them an official was droning a particularly monotonous and dreary account of the institution, his eyes half-closed with the mental exertion of recollection, his thoughts turned inward and absorbed. There were several gentlemen and officers of the building in the bare room, chatting with one another in varying degrees of boredom and interest, and completely ignoring the quiet prisoner who had been John Allard. Yet he was perhaps the only one present, with the exception of the man facing him, who escaped the commonplace. "You have something to say?" questioned the grave, lustrous dark eyes of the visitor; eyes southern in their long-lashed softness, northern in their directness. And Allard's gray eyes returned assent with an utter calm which overlay the surface of tragedy. "On the east bank of the Hudson, six miles above Tarrytown," went on the droning voice of the official, then broke as the visitor's cool, slightly imperious tones fell across the monologue: "Ah, and is it permitted to speak with your inmates, if one has the fancy?" The official stared, but smiled vaguely. "Certainly, sir; if you wish," he replied. Again the eloquent glances of the other two crossed. "You have much of this work?" queried the visitor, the words scarcely heeded either by speaker or listener in the deeper search for a means of communication. Allard answered in French, the fluent, barely-accented French of a traveled American: "That man in gray who accompanies you, monsieur, the man near the window, is not to be trusted. He was released from this place last year, after serving a term for his share in some Paterson anarchistic outrages. He is dangerous, and he watches you constantly." The visitor was trained to self-control; he did not commit the mistake of looking toward the man in question. But he could not quite check the flash of blended emotions which crossed his own expression. "Thank you," he said. And after an instant, "I thought I recognized you when I saw you on entering; now you have spoken, I am certain. Yet—" Allard flushed from throat to temples, the color dying out again to leave even his lips white. But his reply was steadily given. "There is no one here whom you know, monsieur, or who knows you. Even a prison has its courtesies. Turn your head away, and go past," he said. "Would you have done so, finding a friend in such a strait?" "I have no friends." "Then why did you warn me against Dancla, my anarchistic secretary yonder?" The question was unexpected, and left Allard momentarily disconcerted. "Confess we knew each other very well five years ago," the visitor added gently, and paused to consider. A few paces off the official stood stupidly enjoying the respite from exertion; placidly indifferent to an incomprehensible conversation inspired by a whim of the guest. The other three or four men were admiring the view from a window facing the river, and listening to their cicerone. "I wish you would go away, monsieur," Allard said only, when he had recovered perfect command of himself. "Be patient with me yet a moment. We were both avowedly masquerading during those weeks of boyish frolic at Palermo; do you know who I am?" "No more than I knew then: that you were a European, and evidently of position." "You have more liberty than some of those here, I think." "Yes; I am what they call a trusty;" the straight line between the fine brows deepened markedly. "I beg your pardon; I do not ask from curiosity. My yacht is anchored before this place—if I return through here in an hour, on my way to it, can you be here still?" Allard hesitated. "I believe so, but I would prefer not. I can aid you no further; and—" "And?" For an instant the curtain was withdrawn from the prisoner's clear eyes. "You wake what is better asleep. It is not pleasant for me to meet you, monsieur." The visitor caught his breath. It came to him with a shock of realization that many days and nights might pass before he could forget that straight glance of quivering pain and humiliation, of proudly endured hopelessness. "Yet I ask it," he insisted. "Very well. If I am not here it will be because it was not possible." The visitor turned away with well-assumed carelessness. "I fancied your prisoner there was a fellow-countryman," he remarked to the official, in passing on. "But he appears to be French." "Yes, sir. He said he came from the South, at his trial." The man had necessarily kept beside the visitor to reply, and they walked down the room so together. "What is he here for?" came the idle inquiry. "Counterfeiting, sir. Right over on that mountain across the river, they captured him and killed one of his comrades. The rest got away in time, and they never were found because this man would tell nothing, even to save himself. He might have turned state's evidence and got off with a light sentence, for he was young and not known to the police. But he wouldn't and he got the whole thing. Leroy, his name is. The officers who captured him believe he never meant to be taken alive; for they found him unconscious, with a little pistol in his hand, and they guessed that he fainted before he could use it. He had to spend weeks in a hospital before he could be tried, getting over a broken ankle and some other worse injuries. But he and his fellows had done clever work, no one knows how much. This Leroy might have been from across the water, as you say, sir; no one knows him here." "How long has he been here?" "Two years, sir." "And his sentence?" "Fifteen." The visitor shuddered involuntarily. Pleased by his interest, the official brightened to offer further diversion: "If you'll come to the inner building, sir, I can show you some more. We've some in for life—" "Thank you," the visitor refused bruskly, and moved aside to rejoin his companions. The little group fell silent and expectant at the approach of the one whose escort they were. It was rather a brilliant group against the somber prison background. Dancla, "the man in gray" of Allard's warning, was the only member not in uniform, with the exception of the distinguished visitor himself. "I am going into the town," their chief announced, pausing before them, "with Dancla. You may return to the yacht. Vasili, send the launch for me in an hour. Ah, and leave on that bench by the door my rain coat; I fancy it will be storming before we return. You understand?" "Perfectly, your Royal Highness," responded Vasili, a trim, blond young aide-de-camp with a most ingenuous smile. He spoke in French, as did all the party. "I alone have the honor of accompanying your Royal Highness?" Dancla asked, not without a shade of uneasiness. The velvet black eyes of his chief passed over him deliberately. "You alone; come." They went out, attended by the prison officials, past the prisoner still at work. Laughing and chatting, the rest of the party walked down the room to the door nearest the river. The place left seemed darker for their going, the silence more profound after their gay voices. "We knew each other very well five years ago—" When the patient has apparently reached the climax of suffering, when the very excess of pain brings a relief of numbness, Fate the Inquisitor occasionally finds amusement in devising a fresh form of putting the question. Upon Allard was forced the San Benito of renewed recollection. Nearly five years before, John Allard, in all his gay insouciance of twenty-one years, had spent an hour on the quay at Palermo to enjoy the limpid Sicilian night. Alone at first, he was presently joined by a young officer with whom he had crossed from Italy a few days before and formed a slight shipboard acquaintance. Knowing nothing of each other, there had nevertheless sprung into life between them that curious sympathy and friendliness which can be born of exchanged glances, meeting smiles; that sudden inexplicable liking which can make two passing strangers turn to gaze wistfully after each other and vaguely resent the trick of chance that has set their feet in opposite paths. It is one of the common phenomena of existence, but it was new to Allard, and perhaps new to his companion as well. They sat side by side while evening melted into night, starlight into late moonrise; and they chatted of everything tangible and intangible suggested by the place and the time. But they did not touch the personal note until the cathedral chimes were pealing midnight. "I must go back," commented the European wearily. "I have had my last day." "Your last day!" Allard echoed, startled. "Of freedom, yes. I was promised a month's vacation; a month to spend as I chose, but I have good reason to know the promise has been revoked. Oh, not for any cause,—just my uncle's whim. He is fond of playing with me so." "Do you always do what he says?" queried the young America incredulously. "I have that habit; it is safer, and more virtuous. Still, virtue palls when its reward is invisible. When I go back to the hotel, Petro will hand me a telegram demanding my return to the Empire." "Then I would not go back to the hotel," was the blithe suggestion. "Run before you are told to stay. Come share my bachelor hut and let Rome vociferate for a while." "You are not in earnest," said the other, turning to look at him with an odd, eager surprise. Allard had not been, but he adopted his own idea with the light-hearted impulsiveness of his bel age. "Why not? My people—my brother and aunt and cousin—have gone for a glimpse of Germany; and I have stayed here to cram for my last year of college. I have a delicious miniature villa five miles out of town, which I have taken until their return, and which is a thousand times too big for me alone. Come stay out your vacation with me. If your uncle promised you a month, he can not complain if you take it. It is not your fault if you do not receive his old telegram." "No. I am not supposed to know it is coming." "Well, then, why not come? Send a note to your servant at the hotel, and tell him you are visiting a friend. He will have to telegraph your uncle that you are not to be found." The European stood up and looked out across the shining water. "I am nearly twenty-seven years old," he stated, "and I have never in my life had one week of my own. If you are serious, I will do this." "Of course I am serious. We will have the time of both our lives. Come," the spirit of adventure in his veins, "you can write your note in that trattoria over there, and pay a boy to take it. We shall then make a straight dash for Villa Giocosa." "You do not know me, and I can not tell you my name without spoiling all. If I tell you, we can not ignore it, try as we may." Allard paused, then laughed out in sheer delight at the situation. "I forgot all about names; I believe you do not know mine, for that matter. But come incognito, if you choose. I will even play host incognito, if that will arrange matters. Monsieur, my Christian name is John." Youth, and the South, and the romance-freighted Sicilian night! "You are very good," said the other simply. "I am called Feodor." They went home to Villa Giocosa. The three weeks which followed were a charming and graceful incident to Allard, an interlude in his happy, pleasantly- filled life. What they were to his companion, the American did not realize until long afterward. The two young men read or lounged together in the mossy garden, boated on the placid sea, talked and smoked through the tranquil evenings in the perfection of comradeship. But they kept the playful incognito, calling each other Don John and Don Feodor in the pretty Italian custom of the island where they met. Yet there was a difference, for the frank and communicative Allard soon laid all his past and present open to view, while the other never spoke of himself. "How much you know!" exclaimed Allard, one day when Don Feodor came to the aid of the college man and passed from complicated subject to subject with the light surety of a master of each. "I ought to know something; I have been trained in a school that concedes no rest," was the composed reply. The idyl ended abruptly. One sun-gilded, flower-scented noon, a messenger was ushered into the villa garden. In silence Don Feodor accepted and read the letter brought, in silence wrote and gave to the bearer his answer. And then he turned to his dismayed host. "They have found me," he said quietly. "Of course you can not realize how I shall remember this time; you are too happy." That was all. But Allard had remembered also; remembered the breathless, hot hush of noon, the heavy perfume of orange- and lemon-blossoms, as they shook hands in the old garden, and the sense of boyish desolation with which the farewell had left him. "We knew each other very well, five years ago—" The prisoner bent his head over his work, setting his white teeth in his lip until his mouth was bitter with the taste of his own blood. The short spring day drew toward its close. The threatened storm marshaled its gray columns down the river, a sighing rain whispered around the building of sorrows. Very early, shore and water alike blended into vague, indeterminate dusk. Rather less than the hour fixed had elapsed when the distinguished visitor, who had once worn the name of Don Feodor instead of that journalistic title, reëntered the upper end of the hall. He came accompanied only by the same stolid official as before; Dancla had disappeared. Opposite the prisoner he paused to light a cigarette, then hesitated, looking from him to the little gold case in his own hand. "I am going out again with this officer," he said in French, his casual tone excellently feigned. "Go to that river door, put on the coat lying upon the bench and the cap you will find in a pocket, then walk slowly to the barred gate and wait for me. When I come, salute me and follow." Allard stiffened to rigidity, his eyes seeking the other's. "I am guilty of what they accuse; do you still wish this?" he demanded. There was something more than admiration in the visitor's smile. "Did you question me in Palermo, or did you accept caste as enough? Yes, I wish it." He turned to the official and offered him the gold case. "I wanted to give the poor devil a cigarette," he explained. "But he says it is not allowed. Ah, I have forgotten to sign your register; will you come back?" "Yes, sir," readily consented the man, curiously inspecting the diminutive, gold-tipped, perfumed cigarette lying in his ample palm. The nicotine bon-bon touched his massive sense of the ludicrous; he was still contemplating it as he led the way back. When the two vanished, Allard went swiftly down the long room, casting around him a glance of feverish scrutiny. He reached the door as a great gong announced the time when he should have returned from his work. Snatching up the coat, he slipped into it, pulled out the yachting cap with its gilt insignia, and finding a pair of gloves, drew them over his stained hands. So far well! The most dangerous part, the journey across the broad, open wharf under the gaze of the armed guards in the towers, at least gave him the tonic of the sweet, wet air. "I need John Allard's unshaken nerves," he told himself grimly. "If I reach there, perhaps I can believe he still exists." The cloudy twilight, just light enough to show his conventional outline, just dark enough to veil discrepancies, aided him. He walked quite slowly and naturally, carefully avoiding puddles, stopping once to turn up his collar against the drizzling rain. Several times he looked back for his companion, and strolled on again. A dozen eyes watched the self-possessed figure as he leaned nonchalantly upon the barred gate, and passed from him to the more interesting spectacle of the small white launch and immaculate crew waiting outside. There was little time, and the visitor, now with three attendant officials, moved slowly across the space. "God," prayed Allard dumbly, leaning against the gate in anguished waiting. "I think I have paid; but if not, let them shoot—to kill." The group came nearer, halted. Allard drew himself stiffly erect and raised his hand in salute as the tallest man came opposite, then obeyed a slight movement of direction and stepped behind him. A grating of locks, a brief exchange of compliments, and for the first time in two years the prisoner stood without the barriers. Free, if only for that instant, free, and in reach of the lapping river. The sailors waited at rigid salute, the visitor stepped into the swaying launch, and as Allard followed the gate closed— behind him. The tiny engine puffed, caught its beat, and the boat darted toward the dim white shape out in the stream. Lights were flashing up here and there in the buildings, shining through the barred windows. To see the uncheckered sky again! At the throb of their motor the yacht gleamed unexpectedly into an outline of myriad-pointed fire. Men ran across the decks, a miniature staircase fell in readiness. "Follow me closely," directed the cool voice, when the launch stopped. The wet, shining deck, the mutely respectful figures waiting to receive them, all blurred into insignificance for Allard. As his foot touched the yacht, pandemonium broke loose in the prison. Out over shouts and gong crashed the deafening roar of the huge whistle, rousing the country-side for miles around. "It means?" questioned the master of the situation. "They know I am missing—and they will think to search th...