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Crump had supplied him with certain facts about Mervo, one of which was that its adult population numbered just under thirteen thousand, and this had prepared him for any shortcomings in the way of popular demonstration. As a matter of fact, Mr. Scobell was exceedingly pleased with the scale of the reception, which to his mind amounted practically to pomp.
"I'm sure we don't want any horrid revolution here, with people shooting and stabbing each other." "Revolution?" cried Mr. Scobell. "Revolution! Well, I should say nix! Revolution nothing. I'm the man with the big stick in Mervo. Pretty near every adult on this island is dependent on my Casino for his weekly envelope, and what I say goes without argument.
But at the time its mirthfulness did not appeal to him. He was in a frenzy of restlessness. He wanted Betty. He wanted to see her and explain. Explanations could not restore him to the place he had held in her mind, but at least they would show her that he was not the thing he had appeared. Mervo had become a prison. He ached for America.
Scobell's account at the Wall Street office of the European and Asiatic Bank." The name Scobell had been recurring like a leit-motif in Mr. Crump's conversation. This suddenly came home to John. "Before we go any further," he said, "let's get one thing clear. Who is this Mr. Scobell? How does he get mixed up in this?" "He is the proprietor of the Casino at Mervo."
The army, one hundred and fifteen strong, had gone solid for the new regime, and that had settled it. Mervo had then gone to sleep again. It was asleep when Mr. Scobell found it. The financier's scheme was first revealed to M. d'Orby, the President of the Republic, a large, stout statesman with even more than the average Mervian instinct for slumber.
She did not know that Smith and he were friends, and did not, therefore, suspect that the former and not herself might be the object of his visit. Nor had any word reached her of what had happened at Mervo after her departure.
His idea of a Prince of Mervo was something statuesquely aloof, something he could not express it exactly on the lines of the illustrations in the Zenda stories in the magazines about eight feet high and shinily magnificent, something that would give the place a tone. That was what he had had in his mind when he sent for John.
John, for his part, had no intention of sharing this particular trouble even with Smith. It was too new and intimate for discussion. It was only since his return to New York that the futility of his quest had really come home to him. In the belief of having at last escaped from Mervo he had been inclined to overlook obstacles.
She would not go back. She could not. The words she had used in her letter to Mr. Scobell were no melodramatic rhetoric. They were a plain and literal statement of the truth. Death would be infinitely preferable to life at Mervo on her stepfather's conditions. But, that settled, what then? What was she to do? The gods are businesslike. They sell; they do not give.
This man of many projects had descended upon Mervo like a stone on the surface of some quiet pool, bubbling over with modern enterprise in general and, in particular, with a scheme. Before his arrival, Mervo had been an island of dreams and slow movement and putting things off till to-morrow.
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