There was a narrow iron balcony outside the window and it was not so very high above the street. We could have dropped without any special risk, perhaps, if there had not been such a crowd below, and if, on a similar balcony belonging to the next room, the doctor and various members of his household had not been standing. They were shouting and cheering, “Fakat Zol! Fakat Zol! Fakat Zol!”
The black troop rode straight through the square to the fountain. There they paused, and Fakat Zol, scorning the eminence of the masonry beside him, raised one arm straight above his head in the fashion made famous by the Fascisti. It is a dramatic gesture, and he was a dramatic personification of direct action and force to people to whom pageantry is the outward and visible sign of authority. And he was more than that. He was a holy creature, a saint, supernatural, a subject for worship and the hero of an infinite number of legends. Friends and enemies alike were his publicity agents.
“I’d like to know,” I said, “that Helena’s safe, though I’m damned if I think she deserves to be. So far as I can see she’s an out-and-out political meddler.”
“She probably has the best of intentions,” John answered, “and I don’t like to think of her in trouble, but I quite agree. Still, I think we must try to deliver her message to the Queen, though I’m inclined to wish no one had ever interfered with Conrad. That girl Maria Lalena, or whoever she is, is too young to know what she’s about.”
I agreed, decidedly.
“Pretty girl, too,” said John, thoughtfully. “We mustn’t be too hard on them, though it’s the craziest scheme I ever heard of even if she really is the Princess.”
“Yes,” I said, “I’d like to know who thought of the whole silly plot in the first place, and who persuaded my poor cousin to go into it. Being Queen of a poverty-stricken, unsettled Balkan country isn’t my idea of a proper destiny for a young girl who ought to be going to dances and having a lot of trips to Paris, and all that sort of thing.”
“Queen Yolanda thought of it,” John said, “it fairly reeks of her.”
“Thought of what?” I asked. “Killing her son, or only of importing this girl to take his place?”
“Oh,” John said. “Suppose Fakat to be responsible for killing Bela, what more natural than that a lady who had been practically the ruler of the country for a number of years should object to relinquishing her place to an old hermit brother-in-law, and want to keep her position as mother of a weak, or at least inexperienced ruler? No doubt it had got to be a habit.”