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"Ah, but look!" He thrust before us the thing he had taken from the bag. It was that precious kodak film of Sylvia. "Look!" he cried. "You say she is near to twenty he, to seventy-five! But, more than all, I see with my lens that here is the breathing likeness of the mother! Where are your eyes, my boys? Ciel, must I tell you? She is the kidnaped princess of Azuria!"
It would be right decent of you, as the special emissary plenipotentiary extraordinary fat-and-hairy agent from Azuria, to give the bride away. I'm only suggesting it." But the professor was on his feet, sputtering and waving his arms in a torrent of rage. "It shall not be, it shall not be!" he cried.
So now, when the erudite Monsieur treated my experience with reverence, even introducing an element of mysticism, Tommy wavered. "Whiz-bang! You don't really believe that spooky stuff, do you?" "To my knowledge," Monsieur answered, "I have seen one case. You have heard me speak of Azuria.
Then the young doctor's quick departure; his plunge into the Universities, trusting absorption of the sciences to act as a panacea for his grief. Years later his return to Azuria; their pure love still burning, though unexpressed.
He had been a professor in the University of Bucharest, and hinted at an intimate entente with the reigning house of Azuria. Besides being versed in many sciences, including medicine, he spoke seven languages and read several others. But these things were drawn from him by Tommy's artful questions, rather than being said in boastfulness. Indeed, Monsieur was charmingly, almost touchily, modest.
"If she told you she'd stayed awake nights fighting it out and reached the conclusion, absolutely and without peradventure of changing her mind, that her destiny's in Azuria, what would you do then you who know such a hell of a lot about women?" I just had to say that; it kept irritating me.
The open safe and three or four pipes belonging to Gates lay on the floor between them, while the old skipper who had taken the wheel was silently convulsed with laughter as he watched the puzzled expression on Monsieur's face and the innocence on Tommy's. My opportunity seeming favorable, I said: "Professor, last night the Princess decided to give up Azuria.
A King's order makes the police of the world my underlings! Besides that, she is my special charge, and no power this side of Azuria can abrogate my authority over her!" A cold hand wrapped its fingers about my heart.
"Look at those books, at that piano, at what is suggested by the violin case, at the refinement of this room and then picture what might have been here! Take another view, and consider what a fine chance you'd have had to meet her if that old codger hadn't turned scamp off there in Azuria! Anyway, we've got to clean up the signs of this butchery before she comes."
Leaning forward, he said in the same soft voice though Monsieur did not recognize the deadly purpose behind it: "Professor, if you seriously want to see Azuria again I think we'd better arrange this thing, somehow. You came here to look for a princess; Jack came pardon me, Jack, but it's unavoidable for a sweetheart. Every man to his trade, you know!"
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