CHAPTER XVI
THE GENTLEMAN IN THE TWEED SUIT
It was nine o'clock when Mr. Povey left the little modern red-brick post-office situated in one of the principal thoroughfares, that ran steeply inland from the boulevard, and made his way down the hill.
Nine o'clock was an important hour of the twenty-four to the inhabitants of Corbo, for it was then that the late edition of El Imparcial de Corbo made its appearance. The editor and proprietor of that enterprising journal had an arrangement by which the latest European news was sent to him direct from a relative employed on the staff of one of the great Parisian papers. There was another paper published in Corbo, but it was not one that appealed to the sensation-loving San Pietrians. El Dia was a heavy mass of stodgy reading matter, that was run, only too evidently, for political reasons and in the interests of Spain. It is little wonder, then, that as nine o'clock approached a little flutter of excitement and anticipation manifested itself in the crowds that thronged the cafés and boulevards.
Edward called to a little bare-footed, black-eyed urchin, who was calling his papers, and bought a copy. He had no desire, in his present state, nor did he think it a correct thing, to be seen at any of the fashionable haunts facing the gaily lighted promenade, and he turned and walked slowly up the street, keeping his eye open for a place where he could take his refreshment and read his paper in peace.
He decided upon a corner café that did not seem to be too well patronized, and made his way to one of the little round marble-topped tables sheltered by the glass wind-screen, by which the proprietor protected his guests from the sharp gusts which at times beat through the narrow streets of this part of the town.
Calling a waiter, Edward ordered a coffee and cognac, and, lighting a cigar, opened his paper. It was a badly printed sheet, still damp from the press, and smelling evilly of inferior printers' ink. As he gazed idly down the columns, Edward could well understand the popularity of the wretched rag. Sensation was evidently the keynote of its policy—that and scare and scandal. To the editor of the Impartial de Corbo nothing was sacred. Povey read first a long leader on the career of King Enrico, of whose health the reports had the last few days been again more favourable. The tone of the article plainly showed that the editor resented this temporary recovery of a monarch whom he evidently considered to be of more worth dead than on the throne of San Pietro. It mattered nothing to him that the Royal victim of his pen lay dying within a mile of his printing press. Ruthlessly the ruler of San Pietro was attacked—virulently and viciously. His mode of legislature, his family quarrels, his private morals, all came under the lash of the pen. On the question of morals the writer, scenting something to whet the appetite of his readers, had let himself go with a vengeance.
The useful relative in Paris had kept him well supplied with anecdotes and paragraphs relating to Enrico's frequent visits to the French capital. These, while the king had been in good health, he had not dared to publish; but now, when any moment might be the last, he was drawing on the stores of his pigeon-holes, with the result that the café loungers of Corbo were given something to talk about.
Edward put down the paper in disgust. It seemed to his English way of thinking, a poor thing, this attacking of a dying man, who, if report spoke true, must be having a bad enough passing as it was.
He looked up to where, between the gables of the opposite houses, the palace rose up gaunt and sombre above the town. The portion of the building which came within his vision was in darkness, save where in the eastern wing a short row of windows showed little patches of yellow light. It was in those rooms that he understood the dying king lay.