“Yes,” he said, taking up the thread of conversation where it had been broken so long a time ago, “there is but one more debt to be cleared off: the value of the Princess Goroski’s tiara. A thousand pounds will wipe that off—it was not a very expensive one—and I could have had that sum to-day if I had thought of myself alone. Mr. Narkom thinks me a fool. I wonder what you will think when you hear?” And forthwith he told her.
“If you are again ‘fishing’,” she replied with a quizzical smile, “then again you are going to be successful. I think you a hero. Kiss me, please. I am very, very proud of you. And that was what made you late in coming, was it?”
“Not altogether that. I might have been earlier but that we ran foul of Waldemar and the Apaches again, and I had to lose time in shaking them off. But I ought not to have told you that. You will be getting nervous. It was a shock to Mr. Narkom. He was so sure they had given up the job and returned home.”
“I, too, was sure. I should have thought that the rebellion would have compelled that, in Count Waldemar’s case at least,” she answered, gravely. “And particularly in such a grave crisis as his country is now called upon to face. Have you seen to-day’s papers? They are full of it. Count Irma and the revolutionists have piled victory on victory. They are now at the very gates of the capital; the royal army is disorganized, its forces going over in hordes to the insurgents; the king is in a very panic and preparing, it is reported, to fly before the city falls.”
“A judgment, Alburtus, a judgment!” Cleek cried with such vehemence that it startled her. “Your son drinks of the cup you prepared for Karma’s. The same cup, the same result: dethronement, flight, exile in the world’s wildernesses, and perhaps—death. Well done, Irma! A judgment on you, Mauravania. You pay! You pay!”
“How wonderful you are—you seem to know everything!” declared Ailsa. “But in this at least you appear to be misinformed, dear. I have been reading the reports faithfully and it seems that death was not the end of all who shared in Queen Karma’s exile and flight. Count Irma is telling a tale which is calling recruits to the standard of the revolutionists hourly. The eldest son—the Crown Prince Maximilian—is still alive. The count swears to that; swears that he has seen him; that he knows where to find him at any moment. The special correspondent of the Times writes that everywhere the demand is for the Restoration, the battle cry of the insurgents ‘Maximilian!’ and the whole country ringing with it.”
“I can quite believe it,” he said, with one of his queer, crooked smiles. “They are an excitable people, the Mauravanians, but, unfortunately, a fickle one as well. It is up to-day and down to-morrow with them. At present the cry is for Maximillian; this time next month it may be for Irma and a republican form of government, and—Maximillian may go hang for all they want of him. Still, if they maintain the present cry—and the House of Alburtus falls—and the followers of Irma win——But what’s the use of bothering about it? Let us talk of things that have a personal interest for us, dear. Give me to-morrow, if you can. I shall have a whole day’s freedom for the first time in weeks. The water lilies are in bloom in the upper reaches of the Thames and my soul is simply crying for the river’s solitudes, the lilies, the silence, and you! I want you—all to myself—up there, among God’s things. Give me the day, if you can.”
She gave him not one but many, as it turned out; for that one day proved such a magic thing that she was only too willing to repeat it, and as the Yard had no especial need of him, and the plain-clothes man who had been set upon Waldemar’s track had as yet nothing to report, it grew to be a regular habit with him to spend the long days up in the river solitudes with Ailsa, picnicking among the swans, and to come home to Dollops at night tired, but very happy.
It went on like this for more than ten days, uninterruptedly; but at length there came a time when an entry in his notebook warned him that there was something he could not put off any longer—something that must certainly be attended to to-morrow, in town, early—and he went to bed that night with the melancholy feeling that the next day could only be a half holiday, not a whole one, and that his hours with her would be few.