CHAPTER XII. — FIRST SHOW OF FORCE
On entering the room, when he returned, Edestone, although he was aware that the King had been notified and the attendants been given orders to admit him, did not advance, but took his stand near the door, looking neither to the right nor to the left. He permitted the young Prince, his escort, who had discovered that they had many friends in common, and whose sister it was that had been his fellow-passenger on the Ivernia, to inform His Majesty that everything was in readiness for the exhibition of the moving pictures.
The King immediately beckoned the inventor forward and, picking up the little instrument from the table, thrust it into Edestone’s hands, almost with an air of relief.
“We appreciate the compliment you have paid us in believing that we still play fair.” There was in both his tone and action a touch of the bluff heartiness of the naval officer, which was natural to him, and showed that he had thrown off all restraint. “But do not, I beg of you, do this again, even in England. These are desperate times; and nations, like men, when fighting for their very existence, are quite apt to forget their finer scruples.
“My cousin in Berlin, I am convinced,” and there was perhaps a hint of warning in his smile, “would give the souls of half his people to know what that little box contains; and, in his realm, it is the religion of some of his benighted subjects to give him what he wants.”
Bowing slightly, Edestone took the little case, and, without even looking at it, slipped it carelessly into the inside pocket of his coat.
“I knew that Your Majesty would understand me,” he said in a tone intended for the Royal ear alone, and with more emotion than he had yet displayed. As he spoke, too, he lifted his hand in obedience to an involuntary and apparently irresistible impulse.
The King met him more than half-way. Reaching out, he grasped the extended hand in his own, and standing thus the two men looked straight into each other’s eyes.
The suppressed excitement which the scene created was so intense that some of the spectators seemed to be suffering actual pain; and when, after a fraction of a moment which seemed an age, the King released the American’s hand and spoke, there was an audible sigh of relief that pervaded the entire room.