Had many a man made this speech he would have punctuated its termination with a clenched fist. But the scion of an intriguing aristocracy bared his teeth in a wolf-like smile as he unsheathed his sword-cane an inch or two, to snap it back into place, with a snarling smile in his drooping eyes.
However, the speech and the theatrical delivery of the gifted courtier were wasted effort. Maria Theresa of Spain was impervious to the surface sheen: she had seen true metal within the past twenty-four hours!
"Oh, Carlos—you should have been a novelist or a dramatist! I much prefer the romantic sky-line of New York harbor to your reminiscence of Don Quixote!"
The great roar of the turbine vibrated through the ship. She advanced to the cabin door, and imperiously called to him to follow.
"I insist. I need fresh air.... We'll be gone ten minutes!"
And grudgingly the Duke of Alva followed her, with a vicious swish of his cane at the unoffending trunk.
As the door slammed, the top of the trunk was slowly lifted, and the battered, bleeding face of Warren Jarvis might have been visible above the iron ridge of its lock bar.
Stiffly he drew himself out of the trunk, to blink in the unaccustomed light.
"O,... O.... O.... Oh! Lord!... If I only had that last baggageman by the neck!"
He bent forward and back to limber an apparently paralyzed spinal column.