“The credit all belongs to Myles Cabot,” magnanimously replied Nan-nan.
They were interrupted by a boyish figure which rushed up the stairs onto the terrace. It was Prince Toron. His youthful face was suffused with joy. In fact, he seemed more like his former carefree self than he had at any time since the beginning of the war.
“Well, well,” he cried. “Greetings, my cousins! This is indeed a happy occasion. Even now the vanguard of our army of liberation is entering the capital. But I came on in advance to superintend my machines.”
“And to take over your palace, I suppose,” Cabot added dryly and not without malice. Ever since he had found the dead body of the baby Cupian on the royal bier in the deserted castle on the island of Lake Luno, with the note signed “Toron, King of Cupia,” Myles had borne ill-will against his wife’s cousin. At first he had suspected Toron of the deed. But this suspicion had been allayed by the account of the happenings at Luno Castle which had been told him by the priests of the Caves of Kar. It had awakened, only to be stilled again by Toron’s own story and by the assurances given by Poblath. Nevertheless, he still resented Toron’s bad taste in signing the note with his royal title—resented even the fact that Toron, that any one else than Lilla’s own son, was King of Cupia. This resentment had been only slightly mitigated by the unquestioned loyalty of Toron to Cupia and the common cause.
And so Myles permitted his feelings to get the better of his manners when he greeted Toron on this joyous occasion which should have been free from all malice.
Lilla appeared shocked and surprised at her husband’s language, and started to remonstrate; but he, sensing the situation at once, cut in ahead of her with a question.
“By the way, your majesty,” he said, “we are all most inquisitive to learn just how you contrived to bring down those enemy planes, and thus save the day when all seemed lost.”
“I thought you would want to know,” Toron replied, with boyish pride. “So that was one of the reasons why I rushed up here to greet you. You remember the day with our army in the mountains, when that young aviator excited your attention by stopping his airplane motor with a word, and how we perfected a machine which would send a ray which would accomplish the same thing. But perhaps you were not so intimately acquainted with our later experiments with that ray. You remember how we were not able to understand fully just why this ray accomplished what it did. This intrigued me to such an extent that I resolved to discover the secret. And I hit upon the clue just about the time that you were captured.”
“Yes, yes,” Cabot interrupted, “but I am not asking about the motor-stopping ray, which became useless as soon as the enemy copied us by adopting trophil engines. What I am asking is how you destroyed the foremost planes of the enemy advance in this morning’s battle?”