“Ah, yes,” he observed with a meditative smack of the lips; “it was a ticklish affair. Always a woman; that is my experience, and I have tossed about the world enough to speak of its tides and currents, squalls and tempests with authority. Look now. At the play to-night—an infernally silly piece—a girl laughed at me. Could I help that? Or laughing back? The play was dull and the girl was pretty. What would you have? I am no priest to look like a saint and think like a devil. Well, our interchange of courtesies seemed to give offence to a smart fellow with a hawk’s eye and a rabbit’s heart, who wanted to monopolise the lady’s glances. Was it my fault again if she preferred to look at my shock head than at his wonderful moustachios turned up to his eyes? The less my deserts the greater my gratitude. And this brave fellow, like many another, mistook gratitude for love. Anyhow he grew consumedly jealous, and when the play was over and I was ready to escort the lady through the crowd he tried to jostle me away. Jostle me!” He laughed, merrily scornful. “Me, who have fought in half the countries of Europe; whose sword and a stout heart and arm behind it (pardon a passing boast) are my stock-in-trade. Naturally I did not give way, never yet quailed before a pair of fierce moustachios—pah! Albrecht von Ompertz frightened of a tuft of hair!—and never shall. He had to carry it boldly before the lady, and when two men are bold and not agreed, why, it means cold steel. He waited for me by the tavern, mad with rage and jealousy or—well, poor fellow, they will never trouble him again in this world. And so I have brought my neck uncomfortably near the hempen cravat. It was only when my point stuck in that I remembered the new decree against brawling. Well, what’s done is done; one cannot blow the fire with burst bellows or get a dance out of a fellow with a skewered lung.” He drained off another glass of spirits; his situation seemed to affect him as little as though it were but the loss of a few pieces at play.
“Von Ompertz, then your name is?” Ludovic said.
“Add Captain,” the other replied with a mock bow and a flourish. “Devotedly at your service; I would say everlastingly did not that seem a big word from a man who has but a few more breathing hours before him. But for those you can command me, and what is more to the point, my sword.” He took it up from the couch on which he had thrown it and glanced down the blade. “Don Moustachio’s hot blood has bubbled away, it seems. Ah, this good little fellow and I have been through some tight squeezes, I tell you; some warm encounters, official and private, for personal considerations and for imperial motives. I have held commissions in pretty well half the states of Europe.”
“A free-lance, Captain?”
“Just so.” He threw his arms out and then pushed back the shock of hair that fell across one side of his face like a half-drawn curtain.
“I love two things in a lesser degree, but they are comparative trifles as my old General Freiherr von Aremberg observed after Schweidnitz when he heard that a church full of people had been fired and its contents roasted. Yes, I have a keen nose for a quarrel, international or individual, and it is worth something to be free to follow one’s sympathies, although that usually means enlisting on the weaker side. Well, if it is all over now, I’ve lived my life and with plenty of pepper to spice it.”
All through Captain von Ompertz’ voluble talk his host had been quietly observing him with amused interest. “You must get away, Captain,” he said. “A man of your resource and experience is surely not going to hang about and be taken.”
“Not if I can help it,” the other replied cheerfully. “But get away is easier to say than to do in this country where Rollmar, the old spider, has his feelers out on every side. It is nothing but a big net, sir. We can move about, but we cannot fly, and when he wants to be down on us the spider moves quickest.”
“And you, devotee of freedom, stay here,” laughed Ludovic.
Ompertz gave a shrug. “The place is lively and is a good point from which to scan the horizon for a war cloud. And now—donnerwetter! what the devil did that fool with the moustachios want to draw on me for?”