“The beautiful Cupian?” I gasped.
“The very same,” he replied. “The Princess Lilla, daughter of King Kew of Cupia, illegally detained as a prisoner by the Formians.”
So that was why her identity was sealed!
“And who are you?” I asked.
“I am her unhappy cousin, Yuri, next in succession to the throne of Cupia,” he answered.
Yes, I had heard of him from his younger brother, Prince Toron, who had been my assistant in the laboratories of Mooni.
Yuri continued: “I have long loved the beautiful princess, but she ignored me. And so, blinded to all sense of right and wrong by my passion, I arranged with the Department of Eugenics at Mooni to have her kidnaped into Formia, for the purpose of forcing her to marry me and thus inaugurate a strain of perfect Cupians.”
I knew, from Toron, of Yuri’s great influence among the ant-men, due to his being the leader of the court party in Cupia who believed in the most abject adherence to the treaty of Mooni. And I could well believe that a splendid race would spring from this pair, the two most perfect specimens of all Cupia.
Yuri went on with his tale: “All of Cupia was turned upside down searching for the princess, but of course no searching by Cupians was possible in Formia, and the authorities of the latter country gave out no intimation that they knew the whereabouts of the princess. My implication in Lilla’s kidnaping was unknown to her; and so, on meeting me here at Wautoosa, she hailed me as a possible rescuer.”
I could restrain my indignation no longer.