"My dear Mazaroff, your liberal-mindedness is proverbial. But as to those papers, I lost them. Positively, they are nowhere to be found. You must let me have others."
A curious clicking sound came from Mazaroff's lips. The face of Count Gleikstein turned pale with anger. There was a comedy going on, and the grave listeners with their polite attention knew what was happening quite as well as if the conversation had been in plain words.
"Your majesty is pleased to jest with me," Mazaroff said hoarsely.
"Indeed I am not, my good fellow. Blame yourself for the excellency of that brand of champagne. We dined somewhere, did we not? I must have changed somewhere after, for I distinctly remember burning a hole in my shirt front with a cigarette, and behold there is no burn there now! Somewhere in the pocket of a dress-coat lies your precious concessions."
"I think," the queen said with some dignity, "we had better change the conversation. I do not approve of those medieval customs in my husband. Ah, Madame Peri is going to sing again."
There was a hush and a stir, and the glorious liquid notes broke out again. Mazaroff slipped away, followed presently by Count Gleikstein. The latter's face was smiling and gay as he addressed some remark to Mazaroff in a low tone, but his words were bitter.
"You senseless fool," he said. "How have you managed to blunder in this idiotic way? And after everything had been so perfectly arranged. It would have been known to-morrow in every capital in Europe that the Queen of Asturia attended the important diplomatic and social function alone. We could have hinted that the king had already fled. In the present state of feeling in Asturia that would have insured the success of the revolution."
"And the occupation of Russia in the interests of peace," Mazaroff sneered. "My dear Gleikstein, I am absolutely dumbfounded. It was as the king says. I lured him into a house where only the fastest of men go, a gambling den. I saw that act of abdication in his pocket. I saw him so helplessly intoxicated that it was any odds he was not seen before morning. I arranged for him to be detained where he was. To-morrow the thing would have been done; it would have been done to-day but he was past signing. Then he comes here clothed and in his right mind. It is amazing. We shall have to begin all over again, it seems to me."
"We certainly have received a check," Gleikstein admitted with a better grace. "But there are other cards to play yet. Those papers missing from the Foreign Office, for instance. To get to the bottom of England's game will be a great advantage."
"Don't you know that we have been beaten there as well?" said Mazaroff.