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Gustavus asked. Bjelke shrugged. "The hand will be disguised, no doubt," he evaded. "But you will heed the warning, Sire?" exclaimed, Armfelt, who had read over the secretary's shoulder, and whose face had paled in reading. Gustavus laughed contemptuously. "Faith, if I were to heed every scaremonger, I should get but little amusement out of life." Yet he was angry, as his shifting colour showed.
"I suspected no more than I suspect now," was his easy equivocation. "And all that I suspect now is that some petty enemy is attempting to scare Your Majesty." "To scare me?" Gustavus flushed to the temples. "Am I a man to be scared?" "Ah, but consider, Sire, and you, Bjelke," Armfelt was bleating. "This may be a friendly warning.
On his death-bed, Gustavus III appointed his brother Charles and Charles Gustavus Armfelt members of the government during the minority of his son. His guardians retired, and the new monarch ruled alone, without favorites or influential advisers. This proved most unfortunate for Sweden, for he was entirely without the gifts of a regent.
Like many another prince who has come to a violent end, he was born to the wrong metier. "I derived the notion," he continued, "from a sanbenito in a Goya picture." "An ominous garb," said Bjelke, smiling curiously. "The garment of the sinner on his way to penitential doom." Armfelt cried out in a protest of mock horror, but Gustavus laughed cynically. "Oh, I confess that it would be most apt.
He dared not raise his eyes to meet the glance of the prisoner. But the shameless Armfelt sucked in a breath of understanding. "You admit your guilt, then?" he snarled. "That I sent the monster to the masquerade, knowing that there the blessed hand of Ankarstrom would give him his passport out of a world he had befouled yes."
In the circumstances proposed by Bjelke, the risk would be Bjelke's, a matter which troubled Armfelt not at all; indeed, he had no cause to love Bjelke, in whom he beheld a formidable rival, and it would be to him no cause for tears if the knife intended for the royal vitals should find its way into Bjelke's instead.
If a conspiracy there was, the conspirators would thus be trapped; if there were no conspiracy, then this attempt to frighten him should come to nothing; thus he would be as safe from the mockery of his enemies as from their knives. Nor did Armfelt protest or make further attempts to dissuade him from going.
Be sure, if there is indeed a plot, the assassins will be informed of the disguise you are to wear. Give me your flame-studded domino, and take a plain black one for yourself." Armfelt gasped at the audacity of the proposal, but Gustavus gave no sign that he had heard. He continued standing in that tense attitude, his eyes vague and dreamy.
It was an ejaculation of horror from Armfelt, whose face was now as white as the ivory-coloured suit he wore. "What else? Am I to be intimidated out of my pleasures?" Yet that his heart was less stout than his words his very next question showed. "Apropos, Bjelke, what was the reason why you countermanded the ball last week?"
And, knowing this, there was bitter rage in his heart against the men who had wrought this havoc, a rage that sharpened his wits to an unusual acuteness. At last the King was once more in his apartments awaiting the physicians who were to pronounce his fate, and Armfelt kept him company among others, revolving in his mind the terrible suspicion he had formed.
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