“Then you were awake after all?” said Cyril, accepting meekly the bowl of broth which Mr Hicks forced upon him. “I thought your sleep was suspiciously profound.”
“Well, Count, I don’t mind allowing that I wasn’t as fast asleep as I looked. But I was on my honour not to interfere with Mr Mansfield’s plan of campaign, and I didn’t. For the rest, you may be sure that the grave isn’t a circumstance to me in the matter of discreet silence.”
“I haven’t a doubt of it. Well, this soup of yours has waked me up pretty thoroughly, so I may as well explain things a little to the two of you, for I can see you are both palpitating with curiosity. It seems that when the Queen was obliged to leave Thracia, she chose Brutli as her place of refuge, for family reasons. The senior deaconess was once betrothed to one of the Schwarzwald-Molzau princes, but he died just when the family had given their consent to his marrying her. The sisters received the Queen most kindly, but she found that her steps were continually dogged by spies. The Princess of Dardania was anxious to have it thought she was mad, and seems to have left no means untried to make her so. It was partly this perpetual espionage that made her refuse to admit any man to her presence, and partly—well, that was my fault.”
“Very natural in the circumstances, Count.” Mr Hicks’s comment was diplomatically ambiguous.
“Of course such seclusion only gave colour to her cousin’s inventions, and the Queen and her ladies saw this. It was Mlle. Mirkovics who devised a plan of relief. She was in Damascus when the Vali arrested the Beni Ismail for non-payment of their tribute, and she told the Queen about it. Her Majesty was so much affected and distressed that Princess Anna, to please her, paid up the arrears of tribute through the sheikh. After such kindness as that, he could not refuse to answer the questions she asked him about the unknown desert in which his tribe were said to live, and he even offered to guide her to this place, Sitt Zeynab, thinking that all Europeans were interested in antiquities. The tribe had kept it in some sort of repair as a fortress for use in war-time, but they preferred sticking to their tents in the oasis whenever they could. It seems to have struck her that this might afford the Queen the refuge of which she felt the need, and when the sheikh came to her in his next trouble she made a bargain with him. The Queen induced the Empress of Pannonia to use her influence at Czarigrad, so saving the tribe from deportation, and they accepted her as their ruler. They have really made rather a good thing out of it, for they have been provided with food, and had their tribute paid, on condition that they robbed no more caravans. Of course the Vali and Mahmud Fadil know the truth about the mysterious Princess, but they have accepted a present to hold their tongues, and they are honourable men.”
“But General Banics and M. Stefanovics—don’t they know?” cried Mansfield. “To keep them there at Brutli eating their hearts out——”
“The Queen told me herself that she had entreated them to return to Thracia, but they refused to go. No, they do not know. It was impossible to confide the secret to them, for the Princess of Dardania’s emissaries are buzzing round them continually. Naturally Madame Stefanovics knows the truth, for she spends part of every day at the Institute, with the lady who is left there to delude the Queen’s visitors. Mlle. Mirkovics and Fräulein von Staubach spend alternate months here and at Brutli, and do their best to account for the fortnight which must pass before the Queen can be seen, or can give an answer to any question.”
“Guess it’s a queer life here for a set of lone women,” remarked Mr Hicks.
“The Queen seems to have found it rather peaceful than otherwise. They have plenty of servants—fugitive Armenians who were glad to find a refuge here with their wives and children—and the Arabs are wonderfully amenable. They have lost their old occupation of highway robbery, but they find it rather interesting, for a change, to mislead inquisitive travellers, and they appear to be taking kindly to the cultivation of their oasis. The Queen is much too devoted to the tribe to take leave of them altogether, but I think they will be able to get on with an occasional visit.”
“When her Majesty and you are reigning at Jerusalem?” There was a touch of awe in Mr Hicks’s voice. “Well, Count, I have always reckoned you the most almighty successful man of my acquaintance—with runs of bad luck now and then, of course, like the rest of us—but you bet I never thought of anything like this. You start right away into the desert on the maddest freak in creation, and it brings you out just where you calculated to be, and fixes you up with the finest future a man could desire. But then you started with getting round the twelve tribes of Israel, and the man that can do that has little to learn, even with regard to the female persuasion.”