Front matter (continued 5)

"Thusis," said I, "you and Clelia shall sit at table and Smith and I are going to turn waiters! No!" as she exclaimed in protest, "let's be logical in our grotesqueries! This little world of ours here in Schwindlewald is already absurd enough with you and Clelia waiting on table. Let's turn it completely upside down and stand it on its head."

She finally consented, forced by my gay ardour, and, I think, mischievously pleased at the prospect of protest from the Queen.

All over the house, now, I could hear snatches of loud laughter as my Teutonic guests began to gather and visit one another in their costumes. Thusis fled; and I opened the door and broke the news to Smith.

"Get into your evening duds," I added, "and announce dinner. We're all going stark mad and I'm glad of it."

So I dressed, and found him ready when I was; and we went downstairs into the large lounging room where Raoul was fitting disks into the music-box.

He laughed when we told him our intentions, and then we went into the kitchen and informed Josephine Vannis. That stately Juno condescended to smile on us. She was rather tremendously imposing as a baby with bonnet and stick-out skirts—as though somebody had decked out a masterpiece of Praxiteles.

Retiring, Smith murmured: "Only the Parthenon possesses such awe-inspiring symmetry; only the Acropolis could vie with her. Did you ever see such superb underpinning in all your life?"

Stunned by such stupendous symmetry I admitted that I never had. And we went away to announce dinner.

But it was not until the noisy company were gathered in the dining-room that the Queen perceived the two empty chairs and began to realize my intentions. And she came to me and made angry representations, refusing to be seated on the right of a servant, or, indeed, to suffer servants at all at table, and saying that if she chose to admit my waitresses to the dancing hall, it was because such privileges sometimes were graciously permitted to the peasantry who never misunderstood such condescension.

"Madame," said I, "my housekeeper, Thusis, sits in my place at table this evening. And if, madame, you are so deeply concerned about it, comfort yourself with the explanation that in my housekeeper you behold your host; she is my vice-reine, or vice-roy, or vice-regent—whatever you like best, madame! She represents me! In her you see embodied the inviolable authority of the master of this house wherein you are a guest! However, madame, if you prefer to be served alone in the bar, I will have a table set there for you——"

She almost spat at me; and Thusis entered, her hand linked in Clelia's.

I think the royal circus was stupefied by the beauty of these two young girls. A rather frightful silence reigned for a moment; then the Countess Manntrapp clapped her jeweled hands and sang out in her clear, soprano voice: "Brava! Bravissima! They are beautiful, our little waitresses!"

Eddin Bey removed his red fez and, swinging it by the tassel, gave three hochs.

Then, instantly, the cheers broke out everywhere: I gave Thusis my arm; Smith offered his to Clelia; and we seated them amid shouts and the waving of napkins, the queen's eyes glittering like twin daggers all the while.

Such an uproar as Smith and I served the soup! Gurgles, gulps, scraping, sucking sounds arose from feeding Teutons. The fish produced a frightful clatter of knives and forks, and the Princess Pudelstoff cut her lip with her knife but stuck a patch on it and joyously immersed it in gravy.

They—the kings and admirals and generals were drinking too much; I noticed that in the din. And toward the wrecked climax of the dinner when everybody was offering everybody else tinsel bon-bons, and people were pulling snapping-crackers with one another, I sent Raoul out to start the music-box; and Josephine Vannis emerged all clean and fresh and scented to join the revelry.

Her appearance awed us all; again I felt that innate reverence for the prodigiously beautiful, that awe for things superbly Greek. Her effect upon the two kings, however, was pronounced. The wild-pig eyes of Ferdinand became fixed and vitreous for a full minute; King Constantine's orbs bulged. Both made straight for her when Thusis gave the signal to rise; and I saw the exasperated Queen staring at her spouse and fingering a large, sharp, jeweled pin.

But I went into the dancing room and took command without loss of time; and Smith followed with a bottle of wine and a roast chicken—our own dinner which we intended to discuss while supervising this party and keeping the music-box busy.

"Silence!" said I, hammering on the glass lampshade with my fork. "The party begins, like all children's parties, with children's games. 'Going to Jerusalem' will be the first game played!"

"How is that played?" demanded several at once.

I instructed them, gravely; and presently Smith and I, eating our dinner beside the music-box, beheld our guests in their baby costumes marching around and around a row of chairs and, at a given signal, falling into the unoccupied seats with squeals and shrieks and bellows of laughter.

They tired of that, presently, and I laid aside my chicken and glass of claret and, rising, instructed them in the game called "Oats-peas-beans." They listened attentively, but Thusis and Clelia appeared much disconcerted when further revelations on my part disclosed that it was a "kissing" game; and they both withdrew, firmly declining to play it, much to the dissatisfaction of Eddin Bey and Tino.

So Thusis and Clelia came over to where Smith and I were installed, and, while we resumed our dinner, they cranked the music-box in which I had inserted a disk containing the immemorial air of "Oats-peas-beans."

We then became pleased observers of royalty and nobility in baby clothes, hands joined, walking very seriously in a circle in the center of which stood the Princess Pudelstoff, and singing in unison and with all their might:

"Oats-peas-beans

And barley grow,

Though you and I and nobody knows

Where oats-peas-beans

And barley grow!"

"Thus the farmer sows his seed!

(All made motions of scattering something.)

Thus he stands and takes his ease!

(All with hands on hips.)

Stamps his foot,

(All stamp)

And claps his hand,

(All clap.)

And turns around to view the land,

(All turn.)

While waiting for a partner!

While waiting for a partner!

So open the ring

And choose one in

And kiss him when you get him in!"

The singing ceased; the Princess Pudelstoff giggled; then, to his dismay, she pounced upon Eddin Bey, almost throttled that handsome Moslem in her enthusiasm, and gave him a resounding smack amid screams of laughter and roars of approval.

And then the game waxed fast and furious: Eddin Bey chose the Countess Manntrapp and kissed her delicately and courteously; she chose King Constantine, but merely saluted his cheek, much to his exasperation.

Then Tino held the ring, waggish, jocose, bantering everybody with their expectations. But though the queen eyed him commandingly, furiously, he swaggered over to Josephine Vannis and soundly kissed that classic memorial in animated Grecian marble.

The Teutons behaved rather grossly; King Ferdinand ranged the ring like a liberated wild hog and presently charged the object of his osculatory intentions—Josephine.

Probably nobody dared kiss the queen, but such respectful abstention seemed to please her none the more, for presently she hissed something into Tino's ear, and he chose her into the ring with an agility born of terror.

Once there she glared at everybody and then, with a sneer, selected Tino again, and the game, promising to become a monotony and a deadlock, I rose and, waving a leg of the chicken to impose silence, proclaimed that the games had ended and that dancing would now begin.

Raoul inserted a fox-trot of sorts; and the next instant everybody was footing it.

"Raoul," I said in a guarded voice, "did you souse those Bolsheviki in sheep-dip?"

"I did, sir."

"What did they do?"

"They made an agonizing noise, Monsieur. I fear it was, perhaps, their first bath."

"Go up and dip 'em again."

"All Bolshevikdom will shriek," he said, grinning.

"Let it for a change. It's set all the world scratching. Let Bolshevik Russia do a little shrieking, now that she feels the boche biting her worse than her native cooties! Get some more sheep-dip and de-louse that pair of things upstairs."

He went away, laughing.

XXIII

THUSIS

For a while the dancing was lively and good-humored hilarity reigned.

The Tzar of all the Bulgars had imbibed enough wine to dull, if not to obliterate that continual desire of his to slink into corners and peep out at a hostile world bent on his assassination. Only when somebody spoke to him too abruptly behind his back did the customary symptoms blanch his face and set his wild eyes roving and his big nose wrinkling like a boar which winds an enemy.

He was having as good a time as such a person can ever have; and toward supper time his exhilaration incited him to attempt a waddling sort of Bulgarian dance with the Countess Manntrapp—an amazing exhibition of mammoth movements on his part; and a sort of infernal and fascinating grace on the part of the lithe Countess.

Dancing with Thusis, I hastily led her out of their way, and everybody else stood in the circle, the center of which was pervaded by Ferdinand and his lively vis-à-vis.

Which performance presently stirred Admiral Lauterlaus from a somewhat beer-sodden lethargy, and he emitted raucous sounds of protest. But Baron Bummelzug began to snap his fingers and stamp and caper in imitation of the schuplattl of the Bavarian peasantry; and all the boche except the Queen, imitated him and seized partners.

Eddin Bey came to ask Thusis, and he was so faultlessly polite and so gay and graceful that she cast a saucy glance of dismissal at me and accepted him.

It was quite all right, of course, but it depressed me a little, particularly because Clelia had inexorably refused everybody except Smith.

Now there is a very beautiful Grecian dance supposed to be the triumphant dance executed by the Ten Thousand when they caught sight of the sea; and it is called "The Sea-dance."

Tino, rather drunk, climbed on a chair, shouted for attention, and informed the company that he was about to perform this celebrated dance.

But when we all gave him room he jigged around a while like an intoxicated soldier's drab, and, remarking jauntily that he had forgotten it, offered ten thousand drachma to anybody present who could dance the Sea-dance of the Ten Thousand.

He was rather vulgar about it, too, digging into his pockets and pulling out fistfuls of hun gold, and loudly demanding that somebody should attempt to win it.

I glanced instinctively toward Thusis who, her dance with Eddin interrupted, stood in the circle opposite me.

Her gray eyes were brilliant, her cheeks delicately flushed, and the shock of thick ruddy hair fairly glittered, every silky thread afire with the gleam of molten gold.

She looked at me with the sweet, reckless audacity of a spoiled child; then she laughed and said something to Clelia. I saw the latter go to the music box, select a record, start it; and the haunting air called The Sea-dance floated out.

Then Thusis seemed suddenly to melt into motion; her slim feet scarcely touched the floor; head, arms, slender body, were all part of a single and exquisite motion flowing from one soft curve to another.

You could have heard a pin drop in the room; and I did hear one—a big jeweled affair, that clattered to my feet.

As I stooped to recover it the queen said hoarsely in my ear:

"Who is that girl?"

I turned; she snatched the jewel and dug it into her hair.

"That girl, madame, is Thusis, my housekeeper."

"Fiddle," retorted the queen. "She's something else, too,—or once was. The first time I noticed her it occurred to me that I'd seen her somewhere. What was she—a celebrated dancer?—before she became your housekeeper?"

The queen's nasty insolence froze me.

"I am not," said I, "as familiar with celebrated dancers as your husband is—and the various men of your immediate family."

That I had penetrated her incognito did not appear to disturb her as much as my inferences concerning Tino and the Kaiser and that degenerate nest of reptiles, her nephews.

A white, pinched expression came into her frosty face and her eyes flamed.

"I thought you were a Yankee," she said.

"A Yankee from Chile," said I, bowing.

She looked clean through me at Thusis.

"I've seen that woman somewhere," she said without emotion. "I'll recollect where, presently."

But my eyes and attention were now focussed on the lovely Thusis and I paid no further heed to this bad-tempered Hohenzollern.

Never have I seen such an exquisite dance, such grace, such loveliness. As for the boches, when Thusis ended her Dance of the Sea, they were like a herd of cattle galloping around her and bellowing their satisfaction.

Tino, drunk and prodigal, began to throw handfuls of gold at Thusis, and, enraged, I caught him by the collar and jerked him onto a chair.

"Where the devil do you think you are—in the Coulisse of the Opera?" I cried in his partly deafened ear.

But he only grinned and wagged his head and attempted to fish more gold out of his pockets. But now his thrifty wife interfered and she ordered Secretary Gizzler to pick up every coin. Then she hissed something into Tino's car which seemed to galvanize that partly soused monarch so that he found his feet with alacrity and suffered himself to be led aside by his tight-lipped spouse.

From time to time during the festivities I had heard distant significant noises indicating that upstairs the Bolsheviki were not enduring sheep-dip and imprisonment with resignation.

Once I had slipped away to the corridor outside their quarters, but, when I made my presence known, Raoul from within calmly assured me that the delousing was progressing successfully and that he did not require my assistance.

Russia, forcibly scrubbed, had put forth agonized howls; and now, Russia imprisoned, was battering at its door and yelling murder.

Now and then, a hun noticed the noise and inquired concerning its origin, but I always turned on more music and they soon forgot in the din of the dance.

Thusis had resumed her dance with Eddin Bey; Smith and Clelia were dancing. I said to Raoul, who was starting to crank the music-machine: "I'll just step up and quiet those Bolsheviki."

They were raining blows upon their door when I arrived. I rapped sharply.

"What do you want?" said I.

They gibbered at me in Russian.

"Speak English!" I insisted.

Perhaps Puppsky was so excited or so demoralized by his first bath that he forgot he could speak English.

I tried them in Italian: "Whata da mat'?" I inquired pleasantly. They chattered back at me like lunatic squirrels.

"What the devilovitch is the matsky?" I shouted, incensed at their stupidity. "You listen to me! Your clothes are being boiled and you've got to stay where you are! Stop your noise, Puppsky!"

And off I went to inspect the big wash boiler in the kitchen where, lifting the lid which had been the queen's shield, I was gratified to observe the garments of the Bolsheviki simmering nicely.

"It is not the only vermin that Germania's shield covers," said I. And much pleased with my jeu d'esprit, I poured in another bottle of sheep-dip and returned to the dance salon where supper was now being served at little tables.

As soon as I entered the room I felt trouble brewing. The inevitable hunnish reaction had set in. A tired boche is an ugly one; an intoxicated hun may become either offensively sentimental or surly and ingeniously bestial. And now they were about to become surfeited huns, heavy with wine, heavier with food. I did not fancy the looks of things very much.

The queen alone appeared to be perfectly sober; the others were engaged in that sort of half insolent raillery always provocative of a row, shouting German pleasantries at one another from table to table, lifting slopping glasses, cheering, singing and leering at the ladies.

Bummelzug demanded that the music-box play "Deutschland über Alles," but the disk was non-existent.

Von Dungheim, who exhibited an inclination to weep at any mention of Germany, asked in a hoarsely saturated voice for a folk-song. And Raoul turned on two; and the huns sang first "Du bist wie eine Blume," which shattered them sentimentally so that loud sobs punctuated the "Lorelei" which, of course, followed.

Then Ferdinand, one arm around the Princess Pudelstoff, and a chicken wing in the other hand, lifted a voice choked with food and attempted a Bulgarian folk-song—something about the "Kara Dagh" and "Slivnitza"—but presently lost all recollection of what he was doing and challenged everybody to extemporaneous rhymes in praise of his native land.

Nobody obliged.

"Too stupid!" he remarked thickly. "Nobody clever enough to rhyme 'Bulgarian'—eh, mine host?" looking around at me where I sat shielding Thusis from the playful attentions of King Constantine who was attempting to pinch her.

"Of course," said I, "'Bulgarian' rhymes with 'vulgarian'; but that's obvious." And I smiled at the Tzar of all the Bulgars and offered Thusis a bon-bon.

She looked at Ferdinand, at Tino, at the queen: suddenly she threw back her head, and that lovely, childlike, silvery laughter rippled through the Teutonic din.

There was no scorn in her laughter, only the delicious, irresistible gaiety of a young girl face to face with the excruciating. And there is nothing on earth more innocently insolent.

Every Teuton head was turned toward her in stupefied displeasure; fishy, fixed, pig-like eyes stared at this young girl who dared condone an insult to Bulgaria with her fresh, impulsive laughter.

Suddenly behind me there was a brusque movement; I heard Tino protest that his foot had been trodden on; and, turning, I saw the queen excitedly rising from her place.

"I know who that woman is now!" she said in a voice as sharp as a blade. She pointed at Thusis like a vixen from the markets:

"That's The Laughing Girl!" she cried. "Look at her! Anybody can recognize her now from her photographs!"

Thusis colored crimson and shrank from the brutal publicity against my shoulder, staring wide-eyed at the hatefully sneering visage of the queen.

"The celebrated Laughing Girl!" repeated the queen mockingly; "Mr. O'Ryan's housekeeper, gentlemen—and our guest at dinner! And what does our German chivalry and nobility think of that insult launched at us by a Yankee inn-keeper?"

"Be silent, madame!" I said sharply. "If you don't know how to conduct yourself I shall request your husband to remove you!"

Then it came, the boche deluge!—a herd of huddling swine on their feet, all grunting at me, enraged, clamoring, waving their arms. And in the midst of the guttural uproar a thin, high voice pierced all sound and dominated it—the sniffling whine of Secretary Gizzler.

Possessed by a sort of cringing exaltation, he rose to his thin, splay feet, and pointed a meager finger almost in the shocked face of Thusis.

"That is the Duchess of Naxos!" he squealed.

At that Thusis was on her feet, white as a slim sword-blade, and her gray eye charged with lightning.

I rose, too, incredulous, astounded.

"Thusis, Duchess of Naxos!" piped the excited voice of Secretary Gizzler. "She and The Laughing Girl are one! I know! I was in the Intelligence! I procured that photograph so that if this woman ever gave our fatherland any trouble she could be easily recognized wherever she might be!" He beat his temples and glared at Thusis: "Stupid! Stupid!" he squealed; "why did I not recognize her at once! Why did not a single German present recognize the chief mischief-maker in Greece!—the instigator of revolt!—the pupil of Venizelos!—the enemy of their majesties King Constantine and Queen Sophia!—the plotter who aided in their downfall!—Thusis, Duchess of Naxos!"

The huns seemed thunderstruck; Thusis, very pale, swept them with insolent cool eyes.

All at once King Ferdinand got to his feet and loomed up like a bad dream.

"Naxos! Where is Naxos?" he demanded.

And when Secretary Gizzler would have answered him: "The man's mad," he said heavily; "there's no such place."

At that I saw Thusis's face flame; but the boche all around her burst into a roar of ironic laughter.

"Let the fatherland tremble!" bellowed General Count von Dungheim. "Naxos declares war!"

"Look sharp!" shouted Admiral Lauterlaus, "or we'll have Andorra invading us."

"And Monaco, too!" growled Bummelzug. "Gott in Himmel! If Naxos defies us through her Duchess we're as good as lost!"

"I tell you!" shrieked Secretary Gizzler, "that it's no laughing matter! That girl is the Duchess of Naxos! And the other—her sister—look well at her, gentlemen!—she is Duchess of Tenedos!"

"That belongs to my country!" cried Eddin Bey, laughing, "the island of Tenedos. I sincerely hope the Cyclades are not in revolt! But if they are I'm very glad so charming a lady is to own one of them."

But his attempt at a good natured diversion made no impression on the huns; and Gizzler, venomous and quivering, held the floor and kept his weak, vicious eyes on Thusis.

"It was the Ægean League that exiled the King and Queen of Greece!" he said. "She made that league!—that woman standing there—Thusis, Duchess of Naxos!"

"It isn't a Duchy!" cried the queen, choking with fury; "it's a Greek Island!"

"It's a Venetian Duchy and belongs to Italy, madame," I said calmly—having read up on it in the Encyclopedia since I had fallen in love with one of its inhabitants.

At that the queen turned on me like a fury.

"You lie!" she said.

I tried to control myself:

"Naxos is a Venetian Duchy, belonging to Italy," I repeated. "I am happy and proud of the privilege of acknowledging the restoration of Naxos to Italy—and I salute its ruler—Thusis, Duchess of Naxos!"

And I lifted the white hand of Thusis and touched it with my lips.

"There's conspiracy here!" shouted Tino, very drunk, and vainly attempting to stand up. "We're all tangled up in treason here! We're in the web of the Ægean League! What are these people doing here, anyway!—all these Yankees and Duchesses running about underfoot——"

A hiccough terminated his activities and he slid up against his spouse who shoved him away, her eyes flashing.

"That lying Yankee," she began, almost beside herself, "has set a trap for us here!"

At the word "trap," King Ferdinand, drunk as he was, got up hastily and started toward the door.

"You'd better defend yourselves!" he shouted. "I've got pistols in my room——"

His voice ceased: Raoul blocked his way:

"Stay where you are," he said, smiling and cool. And placing a powerful hand on King Ferdinand's chest he shoved him backward onto a chair. Then, to my surprise, Raoul slipped a pair of automatic pistols from his side pockets and cast a merry glance around him at the company.

"The first man that moves," he remarked, "is not likely to continue the movement."

The dead silence which fell over everybody was startling. Raoul, resting gracefully on a table with one leg on the floor, looked about him as though immensely amused. Then, as we awaited further developments, his countenance assumed a thoughtful expression—and he absent-mindedly hummed aloud his favorite air:

"Crack-brain-cripple-arm

You have done a heap of harm——"

XXIV

RAOUL

Raoul looked up, thoughtfully, playing with his pistols, and said to King Constantine in an unaccented and conversational tone:

"After all, who were you to rule Naxos?—you cheap, treacherous, yellow dog!"

That partly cleared the king's muddy mind and he lurched to an upright position and began to take notice.

"You sold Greece to the boche," continued Raoul in his serene, even voice, toying idly with his pistols. "What else you did—what else you are—is a trifle too vile to repeat aloud——"

He turned and looked at the Tzar of all the Bulgars whose ungainly bulk as he sat on his chair was now agitated by visible tremors:

"Murderer and coward," mused Raoul aloud. "Every time you hire your gun-men to kill an enemy you hurry away to establish an alibi, don't you? You cheap peddler of duped people—you made a rotten bargain this time, didn't you? When your treacherous pal, Tino, betrayed Serbia, you swindled your own people, didn't you?"

He shrugged, dangled his pistols, glanced at Gizzler,—or rather through Gizzler as though, the wretched creature were not there,—and his eyes encountered the interested jet black orbs of Eddin Bey.

Both smiled, Eddin in the face of death; Raoul with the generous grin of a man who recognizes in his enemy a peer.

"Eddin Bey," he said, still smiling, "the Osmanli fight fairly. Ask the British Tommy.... And your fool of a Sultan is dead. And what do you think of affairs at present?"

"They are not any too gay," replied Eddin Bey, laughing, "especially in the Alps."

The half smile on Raoul's face flickered and faded:

"You're about done for, you Turks," he said quietly. "You bet on the wrong horse, too. And now Enver Pasha keeps running to Berlin to ask why the all-highest doesn't make him Khedive of Egypt as he promised. And Taalat is scared, and the butcher Djavid is in the dumps. Oh, I know it was not you Osmanli that set the Kurds and Bashi-Bazouks on the Armenians. That butchery of a million souls, men, women, children, babies, was conceived by the Berlin government and superintended from the Yldiz Palace."

Raoul turned and looked contemptuously at the Germans:

"You square-heads," he said, "have achieved one thing, anyway. Never before in history has a nation been indicted, and it was supposed it could not be done. But it has been done in your case. And for the first time also in history an entire race is spoken of and known to civilization only by a revolting nick-name—boche!

"Do you know what it means? There have been disputes concerning the origin of the term boche. The French say it means a stupid fellow—a clown; the Belgians think that it is a vulgar term for 'blockhead.' But I shall tell you what it really does mean: it means, in South African Dutch, an unclean and degraded species of wart-hog; and it has been in use for fifty years!"

He lifted one pistol and sat idly twirling it around his fore-finger.

"I know why you came here to Schwindlewald," he said, "to put that back on the throne of Greece!"—he nodded toward Tino.

"In Berne you live luxuriously and wastefully in the midst of famine. You eat as usual; your bread is white; there are no restrictions for you in the matter of food amid a hungry people. You maintain a court there with flunkies, stables, motor-cars—every necessity and luxury which is now forbidden by Swiss law and by the law of decency you violate daily!"

He looked at the queen:

"Your effrontery, madame, is of course, in keeping with Hohenzollern tradition. But things are happening now—now, madame,—at this very moment! And I'm wondering just how long the Swiss are likely to endure your behavior in Berne."

He sat silent after that for a little while, twirling his pistols and whistling softly to himself:

"Crack-brain-cripple-arm——"

Suddenly Eddin made a quick motion and Raoul shot the leg off his chair letting him down with a crash.

The startling crash of the pistol-shot brought them to their feet.

"Sit down!" said Raoul sharply, "or it will be a living leg next time; and the time after that a wooden head!" He sat watching Eddin getting to his feet with a shame-faced laugh:

"No use," said Raoul in a friendly voice, "it can't be done, Colonel."

"I notice it can't," remarked Eddin, laughing. "Well sir, you have entertained us very pleasantly with your historical inappropos. Is there to be a denouément perhaps?"

"Did you expect one?"

Eddin shrugged: "A firing-squad, possibly. But of course I don't insist."

Raoul shook his curly head: "No, Colonel Eddin; no firing-squad. No Turkish atrocities, no Bulgarian murders, no boche bestialities." He turned contemptuously on Constantine:

"You laid plans in Berne to entrap the leaders of the Ægean League. You forged instructions sent to me by Monsieur Venizelos. You attempted to foment an uprising in Naxos because you foresaw the trouble it would bring between two of the Allied powers—between Italy and Greece!

"Also you conceived and encouraged a plot to attempt the capture of yourself and your wife because you believed that Greece, although now rid of you, would resent such an attempt; and that chivalrous America would be shocked at the kidnaping of a woman—even such a notorious one as your Hohenzollern wife."

He eyed him for a moment: "You are the cheapest back-stairs scullion who ever grafted, Tino," he said. "But remember this little couplet the next time you go gaily grafting:

"'Grecian gift and Spanish fig

Help the fool his grave to dig!'"

"That's the motto of the Ægean League!" burst out the queen in a white hot fury.

"It is, madame," returned Raoul, pleasantly.

Then he placed the other foot on the floor and got up leisurely from his seat on the table.

"You're all free to go," he said carelessly.

A moment of suspense, then the boche herd scrambled to its feet and rushed for the nearest exit. And Raoul came over to where I stood beside Thusis with Smith and Clelia beside me.

"All their weapons are locked up in the cellar," he said, laughing; "let them look for them. Also I have all their documents packed up. We're through with them," he added, smiling at Thusis.

But there was a thunder cloud on her white brow:

"Are we not going to secure and crate the kings, Raoul?" she demanded. "Do you and Josephine fail me, now?"

"Duchess," he said smilingly, "news came to-night—a real communication from Monsieur Venizelos."

"How could it come?" I asked.

"The Pass is open," he replied serenely. "And," turning to Thusis, "so is the road to France. And we should travel it this night unless we wish to see our papers taken from us and our persons subjected to arrest by these somewhat singular Swiss gendarmes."

"What did Monsieur Venizelos say?" insisted Thusis, tears of disappointment and vexation shining in her gray eyes.

"The letter is here,"—Raoul touched his breast pocket—"at the disposal of her grace the Duchess of Naxos——"

"Tell me!" cried Thusis, angrily, "and let my 'grace' go to the devil!"

"Monsieur Venizelos warns us of Tino's forgery. We are not to touch these kings: we are not to proclaim Naxos an Italian Duchy and you its hereditary ruler."

There was a painful silence.

Very slowly Thusis turned and looked at me. And I remembered then what I had said to her about the purity and unselfishness of justifiable revolutions.

And now I realized that part of this revolution in Naxos was the restoration of an ancient Duchy and of a family as ancient, embodied in this young girl before me.

At that moment Tino came lurching into the room followed by the queen, and presently by the majority of the huns in the house-party.

"Somebody has been through my luggage!" he barked. "Now I'm damned if I put up with that——"

Raoul still held one of his pistols in his hand and Tino's bloodshot eyes fell on it.

"Oh, very well," he said, turning on his heel.

The queen, pallid and ghastly with fury, faced us a moment:

"You'll all pay this reckoning!" she whispered,—"every one of you!"

"Madame," said Raoul gaily, "the Pass is open. And really very wonderful news has come through. But I'm afraid you don't like Yankees, and it won't interest you to hear that the Yankee General Pershing has wiped out the St. Mihiel salient, and the guns of Metz are saluting the event."

"Lies!" she retorted; "Yankee lies!" She bit her lip, glared at us all, turned her Hohenzollern back on us. Behind her stood the huddled huns, sullen, enraged, baffled in their headlong rush to find weapons for avenging Prussian "honor."

They were quite helpless although outnumbering us; and they seemed to realize it.

Raoul, watching them, passed his pistols to me and walking coolly in among them and shoving the Admiral and Von Dungheim out of his way, went to the kitchen. Josephine had wrung out the disinfected garments of the Bolsheviki. But they were still steaming when Raoul unlocked their door and flinging the clothing at them, bade them dress and depart.

"The Pass is open," he said. "It's a summer night and you won't take cold. Get into those things and get out of this house! And," he added, "you ought to be obliged for what I've done to you."

When Raoul came back the huns had retired to their several apartments; Smith and Clelia stood by the window whispering together; Thusis was absently looking over the letter from Monsieur Venizelos; and I leaned in the doorway gazing out at the high stars above the disfigured Bec de l'Empereur.

"Nature pulled his nose and twisted it, too," murmured Raoul, passing me. Then he said aloud:

"It really is not healthy for us here any longer. The Swiss gendarmes will arrive in the morning. I have held the wagon that penetrated the Pass. It's waiting for us. So if you'll be kind enough to pack your luggage——"

"Are you going?" I asked, appalled.

"We must," said Raoul gaily. "And I regret to say that I think you and Mr. Smith had better come with us."

I shrugged my shoulders.

"It's too bad to have done this to you," said Raoul, "but we couldn't very well avoid it. You had better cross with us into France until this blows over. The boche are sure to raise a terrific row; and the Swiss are mortally afraid of invasion. So if you remain you'll be annoyed—held for examination—possibly imprisoned. But they won't confiscate your estate: you know too much about the Swiss Government's cognizance of these hun conspirators, and their use of neutral soil."

I scarcely heard him; I was looking at Thusis who stood bending over the music-box and studying the disks lying there.

"Could I help you to pack up?" insisted Raoul.

"Thanks; I shall remain here," said I quietly.

At that moment the door burst open and Puppsky, his clothing still steaming in spots, rushed in upon us followed by Wildkatz in similar and vaporous attire:

"I been robbed!" yelled Puppsky. "All my papers und evertings it bass been robbed me alretty!"

Raoul shot a contemptuous glance at the chattering pair of Reds: "I haven't bothered about your papers," he said.

"Did I say you done it! No, I did not say you done!" shouted Puppsky. "I see this here Countess hanging around by the room of comrade Wildkatz. What for iss she in this, I ask it? She iss who, perhaps? I think she got my papers also comrade Wildkatz he also believes it——"

"Go and ask her!" said Raoul bluntly.

When they were gone Smith turned from the window where he had been whispering with Clelia:

"It's quite en règle," he said coolly. "The Countess Manntrapp is in the employment of the Siberian government. She came here to get what she wanted and report on these Reds. She left for the Pass an hour ago, on foot."

The unseen web in the center of which I had unwittingly stood for so long suddenly became partly visible to me.

Raoul laughed. "It's really a pity," he remarked to me, "that we can't catch and box up these kings and take them along with us. But Venizelos says no; and he's always right. So we had all better pack up and be on our way."

He went off whistling the "Crack-brain" song. Presently, without noticing me, Thusis turned from the music-box and walked over to where her sister was standing; and I heard her say something about dressing.

I turned away and went silently upstairs to my room, and, closing the door, seated myself.

The baby-party indeed was ended.

XXV

THE DUCHESS OF NAXOS

I was still sitting there when somebody knocked, and, supposing it to be Smith, I said, "come in."

Thusis entered, and I rose. We looked at each other in silence, then I set a chair for her by my table and she dropped onto it as though tired.

She wore a dark hat and a dark gown which I had never seen. Also she was gloved, another phase hitherto unfamiliar to me. And her beauty almost hurt me.

"You are not going with us?" she asked in a low voice.

"No."

"Why not?"

"There is no reason why I should go."

"You are not afraid to remain?"

I forced a smile.

"You choose to stay here in this house all alone with these huns?" she persisted.

"What else is there to do? Besides, they'll leave to-morrow."

"And then you'll be utterly alone here."

I nodded, smiling.

"Won't you come with us as far as France?"

I thanked her.

"Why won't you?"

"I think I'd be rather lonelier in France," I said lightly, "than I might be here."

"Will you be lonely?"

I did not answer.

"When I glanced across the table at her again she had unpinned her hat. I waited; but she tossed it from her onto my bed.

"Why do you do that?" I asked.

"I shall not leave unless you do," she said serenely.

"That's nonsense! I am in no danger!"

"I should be, if I left you alone here."

"In what danger?"

"In danger—of falling a prey to—grief—Michael."

My heart almost stopped: she was looking down at the gloves which she was slowly stripping from her wrists:

"Danger of grief," she repeated, "of lifelong sorrow—for leaving you—here—alone.... Because, once, I gave my heart to you...."

"You were only Thusis, then," I said, steadying my voice and senses with an effort.

"Am I less, now, in your eyes?" She lifted her head and looked at me.

"You are the Duchess of Naxos."

She smiled faintly: "What was it you once said to me about revolutions?—about the necessity for purity of motive and absolute unselfishness for those who revolted against tyranny?"

I was silent.

"Michael?"

"Yes."

"How can I incite my people to revolt unless my motives are entirely free from selfish interest?"

"Are they not?"

"Why do you ask me? You know that I would be Duchess of Naxos if my country regains its freedom under the Italian crown."

"Has that influenced you?"

Her candid, sweet gaze met mine: "I think it has."

And, as I said nothing, "I hadn't quite considered it in that light," she said. "I thought my motives were pure. Besides, I really am hereditary Duchess of Naxos—if ever there is to be such a Duchy again." She laughed a little. "A phantom ruler in a phantom realm. It must amuse you, Michael."

"It may all come to pass," said I.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Monsieur Venizelos does not wish it. Nor does the King of Italy. Also I am afraid that Naxos is really quite contented under the Greek flag, now that Constantino is exiled and because, moreover, that same flag flies beside the flags of England, France, and Italy.... No, Michael, there will be no revolution now in Naxos; no Duchy, no Duchess.... And," she rose and looked at me, and stretched out one fair hand, "come into France with me, Michael.... I can't leave my heart here with you unless I stay here, too.... I can't become disembodied and float off to France leaving heart and mind and body and soul here—in your arms—in the arms of the man I—love.... Can I, dear Michael?—Can I my dear lover?—my dearest—my beloved——"

Her fragrant, flushed face was close against mine when we heard Smith's trunk banging in his room and Raoul's voice: "Easy, mon vieux! Mon dieu, but it's heavy, your Norwegian-American luggage."

"Darling!" she exclaimed in consternation, "you're not packed up! Quick, Michael! I'll help you——"

"Thusis, I don't want this junk! Do you know what I am going to take with me?"

"What, darling?"

"My poems to you; the portrait of the Admiral; and my photograph of The Laughing Girl.... And nothing else whatever."

I picked up the photograph from my dresser as I spoke and slipped it into my breast pocket.

"Are we to start housekeeping with the portrait of the Admiral and your heavenly poems of which I never before heard?" she exclaimed, enchanted.

"Not housekeeping," I said smiling, and drawing her into my arms.

"Aren't we going to keep house, Michael?" she asked, her surprised eyes uplifted to mine.

"After the war," said I.

For a full minute she stood gazing at me. Then:

"I understand." And she offered her lips for the first time to any man. And for the first time I kissed her.

"Yes," said I gaily, "I join Pershing. Or the Legion, if the Yankees won't take a Chilean——"

Smith rapped loudly on my door:

"Is Thusis there?"

"She is," said I.

"Did she persuade you to come with us?"

"She did."

"Good business!" cried Smith. "Is your luggage ready?"

"It is."

I handed Thusis my poems, unhooked the portrait of the Admiral, and tucked it under one arm.

Thusis pinned on her distractingly smart little hat, turned, flung both arms around my neck.

"There may be the deuce to pay for this in Italy," she whispered. "Oh, Michael! Michael! I adore you!"

Half way down the corridor a door opened and the queen's head in curl papers was thrust out. When her hard eyes fell on us she stiffened for an instant, then the celebrated Hohenzollern sneer twitched her features:

"Your housekeeper!" she hissed.

And Thusis threw back her beautiful head and the silvery laughter of The Laughing Girl filled the house with its exquisite melody.

"Oh Michael, Michael!" she said, "they'll be the death of the world after all—the boche!—for we'll all perish of laughter before we're done with them!"

And we went gaily on downstairs, my poems clasped to Thusis' breast, the Admiral's portrait under my left arm, and the lovely little hand of Thusis in mine—for ever, God willing—for ever and a day.

THE END