The night before, he had been dragged by his charge to three dances at open-all-night restaurants, where professionals entertained the audience. The Maharajah had insisted on learning to dance, his instructress being an attractive Russian girl; then, as the fun grew furious, he had forgotten his eastern dignity, and pirouetted for a wager, with a valuable jar containing a palm. This jar he had promptly broken, and had not been conciliatory to the proprietor. At five o'clock he had driven his own car—bought at Marseilles—to Nice, full to overflowing with his late partners. There had been a slight accident, and to console the girls for their fright the Maharajah had divided all his ready money among them. Since then he had had one fight with a German, whom he had jostled, and who had called him a black man. Major Norwood had been obliged to use the most nerve-racking exertions to keep his princeling out of a French prison. Slightly subdued, the Maharajah had consented to call at the palace at Monaco, to walk through the beautiful gardens on the Rock with Hannaford, and to visit the Fish Museum; but there was a yearning for new excitements in his dangerous dark eyes, and Norwood had been thankful to see Carleton the airman standing on the beach by his hangar. The two Americans were introduced to the Indian royalty, and Carleton, not too eagerly, had just begun to explain the features of his Flying Fish, when the big blue car brought Miss Grant back.
At sight of Mary in a newly bought motor-bonnet, the Maharajah's eyes lit up. He had seen her the night before at the Casino, and had started the applause after her first sensational win. Now he asked to be introduced, and Major Norwood's weary heart sank. Judging from the expression of the plump olive face, this was going to be another case of infatuation, and already there had been one on the ship, and one at Cannes, both of which had necessitated the most delicate diplomacy. The Maharajah was passionately fond of jewels, and had brought with him from home some of the finest in his collection, which he intended to wear in London. But on board ship he had given an emerald worth five hundred pounds to the pretty young wife of an old Indian judge, who could not resist accepting it; and at Cannes he had bestowed a diamond aigrette on a second-rate actress. Major Norwood had tried to get these valuables back, in vain; and now felt symptoms of heart failure whenever his charge looked at a beautiful woman.
The Maharajah had an extraordinarily winning manner, however, almost like that of a dignified child, and his way of speaking English was engaging. Mary had never seen an East Indian before, and was much interested to meet one. She gave him her prettiest smiles and looks, while the other men stood round her, each secretly annoyed to see her treating a "black fellow" as if he were the equal of a European.
"I'm hanged if I'll stand on ceremony with the chap, if he is some kind of potentate," Carleton grumbled; and, interrupting the conversation, asked Mary if she were of the same mind about being his passenger for a flight.
"Of course!" she answered. But Carleton had not yet stepped into the hangar when Prince Vanno Della Robbia passed on foot, going to the palace on the Rock.
He had returned to his hotel after lunching with the curé, had dressed and, as he was told there might be a small revolution in progress at Monaco—something worth seeing—he had started out to walk.
The revolution of Monegasques demanding the vote seemed after all not to be taking place that day; but if Vanno missed the miniature warlike demonstration he had been promised, at least his walk was not uneventful. Noticing a group round Carleton's hangar on the beach, he drew nearer, and to his astonishment saw Mary in a long coat of moleskin, and a little red motor-bonnet, surrounded by five men, one of them the somewhat notorious Maharajah of Indorwana. Vanno retreated hastily, and went on toward the steps which led up to the Rock of Monaco; but he had not gone far when a combination of sounds stopped him: the whirr of a propeller and the throb of an engine. Carleton was evidently on the point of trying his machine, the curious invention which could be used, it was said, on land as well as in air and on the water.
Vanno looked back, and saw a biplane on wheels, fitted with a kind of float. It was moving out of the hangar, down an inclined plane that bridged the beach as far as the water's edge. In the aviator's seat sat Dick, and behind him the red motor-bonnet was decorative as a flower.
She was going with Carleton! Vanno had hardly time to realize that he had seen her, before the hydro-aeroplane ran, rather than plunged, into the water. It ploughed deeply and almost painfully for the first moment, sending up a great spout of foam like an immense plume of spun glass; but as Carleton increased the speed daringly, his Flying Fish rose higher on the little waves, the float barely skimming the surface of the water. The aviator tilted the control, as if to watch the action, and suddenly, to the amazement of all the spectators, what had been an unusual looking double-decked motor-boat sprang out of the harbour into the air. It rose gracefully and gradually to a height of perhaps four hundred feet, flying as if it aimed straight for the far-distant pearl-cluster of Bordighera, on the Italian coast.
Vanno had an extraordinary sensation, as if his heart stopped beating, and as if at the same time an iron band across his chest stopped the expansion of his lungs. It was such a sensation as a man might have in the moment of death, and it was so unlike anything he had ever felt before that, for a few seconds of physical agony, he asked himself dazedly what was the matter. Then, suddenly, he knew that he was afraid—afraid for the girl. And he hated Carleton for risking her life. He felt a savage longing to do the young airman some bodily injury as a punishment for what he, Vanno, was made to suffer.