“I have not a watch, gnädiger Herr, I cannot tell you exactly,” he answered, “but it should be half past four. It is the afternoon coffee on the tray and the paper from Herrovosca.”
John got off the bed sleepily, and the man left us.
More from lack of occupation than for any other reason, I opened the paper. Of course I could not read it. In the exact center of the front page was the portrait of a woman. John came over and stared at the paper over my shoulder. I pointed to the name under the portrait. It read: “Maria Lalena, Rhenia Alariavni.” Which, of course it took no great knowledge of the language to know meant “Maria Lalena, Queen of Alaria.” There was another picture on each side of Maria Lalena’s. One was Conrad’s—we read that, too, and felt like sleuths doing it—and the other was a drawing of the Black Ghost, white Templar’s cross and all. Under it was the legend, “Fakat Zol” and more that we could not understand. And glancing through the rest of the paper, each column seemed peppered with the three names. There was a fourth I feared to find, and did not. It was Helena, Countess Waldek. If Prince Conrad had attacked the validity of Maria Lalena’s claim the name Waldek would have appeared. It did not.
“What do you make of it?” John asked.
“Oh, Conrad is waiting for something to start, that’s all. You remember what the Black Ghost said yesterday about being an opportunist?”
“He’s right, too,” John said, “whatever happens can only be to Conrad’s advantage. This business of raking that girl up was only a mad idea that couldn’t possibly succeed, even in a crazy-quilt country like this. She isn’t the Princess, she’s your cousin’s daughter.”
“You don’t know that,” I said, “and even if it is true Conrad isn’t going to start anything himself, he’s too afraid of a civil war.”
“Why do you think that? Because the Black Ghost said so? Do you suppose he really knows much?”
“I do think he knows much,” I said, “which is merely guess work, of course. I was very much impressed with him. But I have another reason for thinking Conrad wants peace. He wouldn’t have made that speech on the Cathedral steps if he hadn’t.”
“Yes, that’s true,” John admitted. “I wish we could read this paper.”