The pleading accents were familiar, and paternal. I pushed open the door and entered the room. A distracted vision with streaming hair and in a white nightgown was sitting up in bed; while candle in hand a magnificent figure in a blue silk Oriental robe over a brilliant yellow sleeping-suit was confronting her.
"Little milady. Little Irene."
I fumbled for the knob of the electric light, found it and turned it up.
I was face to face with a subtle and smiling visage. There was astonishment in it, it is true, but it was also full of humour and benevolence.
"Why, my friend," said Ferdinand the Twelfth in his most paternal manner, "pray what are you doing here?"
I confess that I could find no answer to the royal inquiry.
In the circumstances it was not easy to know what reply to make. Indeed so completely was I taken aback that I could not find a word to say. Coolly enough the King stood regarding me with that bland and subtle countenance. But as those smiling eyes measured me they gave me "to think." I carried one arm in a sling, I was without a weapon, and the Father of his People was a man of exceptional physical power.
As a measure of precaution, I reached pensively for the poker.
A transitory gleam flitted across the King's face, but the royal countenance was still urbane.
"Madame should have locked her door," he said, with an air of humorous reproach. "Dat is a good custom we haf in Illyria."