CHAPTER III
DARING PROPOSALS
For the first time now, Fenton became aware that the happy accident which brought him as eavesdropper to this extraordinary assignation had also placed him in a most dangerous position. On completing their consultation, the three men made straight in his direction. Fenton tried to shrink back farther into the rhododendrons, but even in the darkness they did not afford sufficient shelter for a man with the conspicuous white front of evening dress. He decided that his best chance of safely lay in flight.
Pulling the collar of his dress coat up around his neck, he started off cautiously. Unfortunately he stumbled and nearly fell headlong into a small shrub. Sharp exclamations from the rear warned him that he had betrayed his presence to the three conspirators. Throwing all other considerations to the winds, therefore, Fenton ran for dear life.
The men behind took up the pursuit with business-like grimness. Not a word was uttered, but in an instant he heard the steady pound of their feet and then the sharp discharge of a revolver. A bullet whizzed close past his ear, showing that the conspirators were not firing entirely at random. Several more shots followed in the next few minutes, and in each instance they were but an inch or two off their mark.
Fenton had been a sprinter in his college days, and the knowledge that three expert and determined marksmen are on one's trail is perhaps the greatest spur to velocity that could be imagined. Without paying any heed to his course, he plunged straight ahead, through shrubbery and garden plots, around fountains and over railings. His pursuers made up in desperation what they lacked in length of leg, and it took the young Canadian some time to gain a comfortable lead. At last he outdistanced them, however, and by pursuing a devious course landed, all unwittingly, at a side door of the palace. He pushed it open and, finding no one to stop him, made his way down a corridor toward the sound of the music.
Without pausing to catch his breath or plan any definite course, Fenton showed in the ball-room. Glances that drifted his way fixed themselves on him with astonishment, until finally the Canadian found that, much as he had desired to avoid notice, he had instead made himself the cynosure of all eyes. The reason was not hard to find. In his flight he had broken recklessly through brambles and thick shrubbery. The front of his once immaculate dress shirt was willed and soiled; his face scratched, his hair rumpled. He looked as though he had been through a football scrimmage.
To find Varden was his first endeavour, but the latter unfortunately was nowhere in sight. So Fenton decided to seek Prince Peter in person, and convey to him direct the startling news he had stumbled upon. Threading his way blindly through the gay ranks in search of the leader of the allied cause, he came in contact with the Grand Duke Miridoff. The two men halted and stood for a moment face to face, like belligerents. Their glances crossed like rapier blades. Miridoff coldly and without haste appraised the disorderliness of the young Canadian's attire.
"Mr Fenton has been strolling in the gardens?" he said.
Fenton was no diplomat. He was unversed in the art of exchanging polished phrases in the face of tense situations, of veiling threats, innuendoes, warnings, in the guise of polite rejoinders. He replied with the directness and vigour that are supposed to be characteristic of the Canadian character.