“Phew, how that shook me up!” exclaimed Burroughs. “How did you get in, Bryant?”
“I got rid of the man at his house door as he was going to fetch his overalls, so I came on at once, sir.”
“All right. But I wish you had said who you were. Get to work with that lock.”
In a few minutes all was ready and we waited anxiously for the sound of the king’s approach.
We heard the arrival of the officers in the adjoining shed and could even catch the low hum of their voices.
The suspense was not a little trying; and I was intensely glad when the whistle of a launch announced that the king was coming.
CHAPTER XXIII
ON THE RAMPALLO
WHENEVER I read of an actor playing for the first time a part which is to make or mar his reputation, my thoughts fly back to that wet squally evening on the Lisbon water-front. The big warehouse with its piles of varied merchandise; the curiously composite smell with its predominating scent of hay; the creaking of the tall slide doors at the front as the wind dashed at them and whistled through the crevices and whispered and rustled in the cavernous gloom of the building, the hiss and spume of the waters of the bay, and Burroughs, Bryant and I grouped together by the smaller door as I stood listening intently for the cue to “go on.”
I was, and yet was not, nervous. That is, I was sure of myself and confident of success, was quite cool, and had not a thought of shrinking from the scene to be played; but at the same time my pulses were beating very fast, my tongue was dry, and I kept moistening my lips and biting them, and I could not keep my hands still nor my fingers from fidgetting, and I am sure I was very pale.
I knew that success or failure might turn upon my giving the signal to leave the shed at exactly the right moment. If I went too soon, the men waiting at the end of the narrow passage would know the king had not had time to pass through the shed from the launch. If I delayed too long, the king himself might come out before the “abduction” had taken place.