"Don't interrupt," Mayhew urged. "I'll lay anybody a hundred to one they don't come back alive."
There was a suitably dramatic pause as he sat back with hand extended waiting for his wager to be taken.
"He's the heir, isn't he?" Loring inquired. "Is this some beastly new riddle?"
"It's the solution of a very old one," said O'Rane gravely. "The Archduke married a morganatic wife who'll be Queen of Hungary and can't be Empress of Austria. It'll save a lot of complication if they're put out of the way. After all, it's only two human lives."
"But—is this known?" I asked Mayhew in astonishment.
"It's being openly discussed in Budapest——"
"And London," O'Rane put in.
"Confound you, Raney," Mayhew cried. "You hear everything."
"It's a pretty story, even if it isn't quite new," said O'Rane. "I shan't take your bet, though, Mayhew; you're too likely to win. You see," he went on, turning to us, "the Bosnians simply hate the Archduke, so it'll look quite plausible if anyone says they've blown him up on their own initiative. And then Austria will have a wolf-and-lamb excuse for saying Servia was responsible and annexing her, just as she did with Bosnia and Herzegovina six years ago. This is the way Powers and Potentates go to work in our enlightened twentieth century."
The discussion was interrupted by a footman entering to say that the cars were at the door. It was still daylight when we began to motor down, but we arrived to find the gardens lit with tiny avenues of fairy lights and to be greeted with music borne distantly on the warm, flower-laden breeze. For an hour I danced or wandered under the trees watching the whirl of bright dresses through the open ballroom windows. Loring and Violet had disappeared from view and only returned to us at supper-time so exaggeratedly calm and self-possessed that Amy squeezed my arm warningly as we entered the Club House.