Finally he rose and made his way unsteadily back to the city. He walked slowly down between the wine-shops, noisy with laughter, to the road along the bay. Immersed in reflection and forgetful of his resolution to keep as much as possible out of sight, he went openly and conspicuously along the street that overhangs the water, where at sunset all Puntal promenades. It was only when a detachment of soldiers in the familiar opera-bouffe uniform went clanking by to change the guard at the Palace gates that he remembered he was to have remained inconspicuous. With a sense of chagrin for his indiscretion, he turned into a side street which sloped upward toward his hotel. This street was so little used that between its cobble stones tender sprigs of grass made the way as green as a turf course.
CHAPTER XVII
BENTON CALLS ON THE KING
There were several things to harrow Benton's thoughts aside from the ingenious tortures of memory. Blanco should have arrived at Monte Carlo on the day of their separation. Benton himself had proceeded slowly to Puntal and had now been an isolated guest at the Grand Palace Hotel for two days, yet he had heard nothing from Manuel. Still the man from Cadiz had not been idly cruising. The Isis had duly dropped her anchor in the ultramarine waters where the rock of Monaco juts out like a beckoning finger, and Monte Carlo spreads the marble display of its rococo façades at the feet of the Maritime Alps.
That night, in the most detailed perfection of evening dress, he wandered good-humoredly, yet aloof, through the crowds. He haunted the groups that swarmed about the busy wheels in the casino. He mingled with the diners upon the terraces of the principal hotels. He brushed elbows with the strollers along the promenade and about the Cercle des Etrangers, and all the while his studiously alert eyes wandered with seeming vacancy of expression over the faces of the men and women whom he passed.
Safe in the surety of being himself unknown, he trained his countenance into the ennui of one who has no object beyond killing the hour and contributing his quota to the income of the syndicate.
The evening was wasted, together with a few louis, and the next morning found the Spaniard scrutinizing every face along the Promenade des Anglais at Nice. Then he searched Cannes and Mentone, but by evening he was back again in the sacred City of Black and Red.
As he disembarked from the yacht's launch and came up the white stairs to the landing-stage, his eyes were still indolently wandering, but before he reached the level of the Boulevard de la Condamine, the expression changed with the suddenness of discovery into a glint almost triumphant. It was only with strong effort that he banished the satisfied light from his pupils and forced them to wander absently again, along the glitter and color of the palm-lined promenade.