The gangway stairs dropped as she spoke, and as they did so the Sultan made a sign and a pair of attendants brought forward some steps covered with crimson velvet, which they placed so that she could descend from the parapet, to which the Sultan himself ascended to meet her as she came down. Taking her hand on the parapet, he led her down to the terrace with the grace of a king and the deference of a courtier. Then he bent low over her hand and kissed it, and as he did so the attendant officers of his empire bowed in silent and respectful salutation.
Olga was at once conducted to one of the state apartments of the palace in which the Sultan was wont to receive his most distinguished guests. She was treated with even more respect than would have been accorded to one of the crowned monarchs of the earth, for not only her wonderful beauty and royal carriage, but the marvellous manner of her coming and the tremendous power represented by the flotilla of air-ships inspired both the Sultan and his subjects with a deference that amounted almost to homage.
Then, too, the mystery and romance which invested her name and family and fortune distinguished her as a woman apart from all other women in the world. It might be, as Alan had told the Sultan, that she was really the enemy of the human race, that her true object was to destroy the peace of the world, and rekindle the fires of war on earth, but still the present romance was stronger than the future, and possibly problematical, reality, and so it would hardly be too much to say that Olga had succeeded in removing the impression left by Alan on Khalid’s mind before she had been an hour under his roof.
She naturally expected that one of the first to receive her would be the ambassador who had preceded her, but, after looking anxiously for him and not finding him either on the terrace or in the reception-room, she turned to Khalid and said—
“I do not see my ambassador here, and yet he must have arrived, since your Majesty tells me that you have been expecting me.”
The Sultan’s face darkened, and his brows slightly contracted, as he replied—
“Tsarina, I have been waiting for an opportunity to tell you what cannot but be unwelcome news. Your ambassador, Orloff Lossenski, is not here”—
“What!” cried Olga, half rising from her seat, “not here! Surely he has not presumed to leave before my arrival? I can hardly believe that of him.”
“He has gone, nevertheless,” said the Sultan, “though not by his will or mine, I can assure you. Scarcely had his vessel alighted on the terrace yonder, and he had disembarked, when an Aerian cruiser dropped down as silently as a shadow from the skies.