“My orders are to send all cards and messages to him,” persisted the clerk.
The two visitors drew apart from the desk and put their heads together.
“The minister of finance will not let us get within a cable’s length of his boss if he thinks we are seafarin’ men,” whispered O’Shea.
“The swindler may have took notice of us in the Jolly Mermaid,” growled Johnny Kent. “We might send up a card and make headway as far as this Strothers person. Then I could knock him down and sit on his head while you rummaged the royal apartments and found the king.”
“Your methods might strike these hotel people as violent, Johnny. You’re a good man at sea, but I would not call ye a diplomat. Anyhow, we will take a chance of running the blockade that this crooked minister of finance has established to prevent honest men from talking to his employer.”
Returning to the desk, O’Shea picked up a pen and wrote on a blank card:
“Captain Michael O’Shea and John Kent, Esq., U. S. A., to see King Osmond on a matter that he will find interesting.”
Promptly in answer to this message came word that Baron Strothers would see the gentlemen. A hotel attendant conducted them to a suite on the second floor. At the threshold of a sort of anteroom they were met by the brisk, self-possessed young man, who gazed sharply at the sunburnt strangers, hesitated a trifle, and invited them to enter. Offering them cigars, he bade them be seated, and again scrutinized them as if striving to recall where he might have seen them elsewhere.
Captain O’Shea, at his ease in most circumstances, and particularly now when he held the whip-hand, asked at once:
“Are we to have the pleasure of paying our respects to His Majesty?”