Only her lips could be sweeter than the soft hand I kissed, long and closely, until she withdrew it with a tremulous little laugh of protest.
"We're becoming infamous; we're a scandal, Michael. Have you anything further to say to me? If not, please go home to bed."
Casting about in my mind for an excuse to linger I recollected the advent of Eddin Bey; and I told her about it.
"What a barnyard full!" she said scornfully, "all the creatures, now,—Turk, Bulgarian, Bolshevik, and boche! ... To see them here—and the two principal scoundrels almost within my grasp! I don't believe I can stand it," she added breathlessly. "Smith or no Smith, and his exasperating majesty the King of Italy to the contrary, I think something is going to happen to Tino and Ferdie as soon as the pass is cleared."
"One thing more," I said; "do you believe there really was a bomb in the room next to the Princess Pudelstoff's?"
"Do you mean, Michael, that those murderous Russians might possibly suspect Clelia, Josephine, Raoul, and me?"
"Oh no, I don't think that. But possibly they had other assassinations in mind and were trying out a new species of bomb—experimenting with some untried fuse. That's what occurred to me—unless the fat Princess really did dream it all."
"When I make the beds to-morrow," remarked Thusis, "I shall search very carefully. The only trouble is that those Bolsheviki seldom leave their rooms except to eat. And then I'm obliged to wait on table."
I nodded, a little troubled. But it was unthinkable that these treacherous Reds should even dream of bomb-murder in Switzerland. Whom might they desire to slaughter, unless it were the poor, fat Princess? And they would scarcely blow up an entire establishment in a neutral country for the purpose of scattering portions of the Princess over the adjacent Alps.
And yet I began to feel oddly uneasy, now. Of what such vermin might be capable I could not guess, with the frightful example of the two arch-traitors Lenine and Trotzky staring a sickened world in the face,—a world already betrayed twice since its sad history began—once by Judas, once by Benedict Arnold.