"Ah, bah!" he growled. "May the devil fly away with our dear Alec and his doings day by day! A nice pair of fools we made of ourselves when we pitchforked him into power!"
"Patience, my friend, patience!" said the Greek. "Everything comes to him who waits, and Alec will fall far when his luck changes. It may be to-morrow, or next week; but he must experience a reverse. He is like a gambler at Monte Carlo who stakes maximums just because the table is running favorably."
"Fish!" snorted Marulitch. "What else would a gambler do?"
"What indeed?" agreed Beliani, though a far less alert intelligence than Marulitch's might have known that he was annoyed. The pink and white Julius, whom his friends had nicknamed "le beau Comte," did not fail to catch the contemptuous note of that purred answer; he sprang up from his chair, ransacked a cupboard, and threw on the table a box of those priceless cigarettes, the produce of a single southwesterly hillside at Salonica, that are manufactured solely for the Sultan of Turkey.
"There, smoke, my Constantine," he laughed harshly. "Why should we quarrel? We were idiots. Let us, then, admit it."
"Were we?"
"Can you deny it? We arranged the first move beautifully. With Theodore out of the way——"
The Greek turned his head swiftly and looked at the door. Marulitch lowered his voice.
"No need to refer to Theodore, you will say? How can one avoid it? His death was the cornerstone of the edifice. If only that senile uncle of mine had become King the path would be clear for the final coup before the year was out. And now where are we? What purpose do we serve by self delusion? Each day's newspaper bears witness to our folly. Alec carries the Assembly by storm; Alec captures a would-be assassin; Alec flouts Austria; Alec disbands the Seventh Regiment and hands its officers to the police; Alec attends the funeral of Theodore and Helena, and takes over their servants and debts; Alec tells the Sultan that he exists in Europe only on sufferance; Alec draws a map of Kosnovia and decorates it with railways; Alec bathes in the Danube at six, breakfasts at seven, attends a christening at eight, a wedding at nine, a review at ten, a memorial service in the cathedral at eleven, lunches at twelve, receives provincial deputations at one, inaugurates the Delgratz Polo Club at two and the Danubian Rowing Club at three,—Alec round the clock, and all Europe agape to know what next he will be up to—and you and I here, unknown, unrecorded,—you and I, the brains, the eyes, the organizers of the whole affair! Oh, it makes me sick when I remember how I stood like a stuck pig in old Delgrado's flat and let the son jump in and snatch from the father's hands the scepter I had purchased so dearly!"
The Greek rose languidly, strolled to the door, and threw it open. A page boy was in the lobby, and it was easy to see by his innocent face that his presence there was inspired by no more sinister motive than to deliver a newspaper.