The casual pedestrian, after dusk, was tempted to tiptoe lightly across the palace front, so pervasive was its air of mystery. No more fitting place could be found for plots of deposed monarchies and uncrowned kings. The last S. Croix, impoverished in the mutations of generations, reluctantly, half savagely, had swallowed his pride a few years previously and had consented to rent his ancestral halls. The ideal locality and its immunity from the over-curious had appealed to one who, gladly paying the first price asked, had held the place against the day of need. The lease was in the name of Josef Zorsky, none other than the Hereditary Servitor.
Behind the mask of night, the new-found king, with his gentlemen, was driven to the Hotel des S. Croix, where three ordinary Parisian fiacres discharged the royal party who had come directly from the attic studio. His Majesty was the last to alight. Taking Colonel Sutphen's proffered arm, he proceeded toward the entrance, followed by his suite. The place was dark and grim, no light came through the heavily curtained windows and only by a gleam through the transom above the door could the closest observer have discovered that it was inhabited.
A single wayfarer—the neighborhood boasted but few pedestrians after dark—was approaching. As he drew nearer the group about the King he slackened his pace. Probably actuated by some slight natural curiosity aroused by the unaccustomed sight of many men alighting from cabs before a mansion traditionally, and apparently, empty, he could be excused for gazing inquiringly at each of the party in turn. Accident may have made Josef the last to be noticed, but to Carter's watchful eyes it seemed that some lightning recognition passed between the two. Certainly he saw Josef extend two fingers and as rapidly withdraw them. The passer-by acknowledged the signal, if such it was, by the slightest of smiles and passed on toward the Quai D'Orsay. Carter mentally determined to speak to Sobieska at the first opportunity and regretted that his duties to His Majesty for the present prohibited the consultation.
A species of stage-fright, seizing upon the King, sent a quiver through his limbs, causing his knees to quake, his hands to tremble.
"Who will be here?" he asked in a tone he strove desperately to hold natural and easy. He had already received this information, but speech seemed a refuge from his trepidation. If Sutphen had noticed how his king's voice quavered he was too loyal a subject to comment. With the patience of iteration he answered his sovereign.
"The Duchess of Schallberg, the Countess Muhlen-Sarkey, together with the remaining gentlemen of the household, are all anxiously waiting to welcome Your Majesty."
In response to a signal from Sutphen, the doors were flung wide to admit His Majesty, Stovik Fourth, King of Krovitch. An hundred electric lights, doubled and trebled a score of times by pendant crystals and glistening sconces, greeted the eyes of the man who a few short hours before had been a struggling artist.
Half blinded by the brilliance, he hesitated, his foot already upon a way strange to him. He realized numbly how symbolic of his future that present moment might be. New conditions arose suddenly to confront him, only to find him halting, incompetent. He took a step forward. In his embarrassment his foot caught beneath a rug's edge. Calvert Carter's hand, alone, kept the king from sprawling frog-wise on the polished floor. A sudden pallor at the untimely accident came to the face of Sutphen.
"What is it?" Carter whisperingly inquired of the veteran.
"A bad omen, coming as it does as he enters the house," replied the soldier in the same low tone, tinged with the superstition of his race. "I pray God," he continued, "that he turn out no weak-kneed stumbler."