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Orry, always united with Madame des Ursins, and all-powerful, by her means, was her sole confidant in this important affair. At that time the Marquis de Brancas was French ambassador at Madrid. He had flattered himself that Madame des Ursins would make him one of the grandees of Spain. Instead of doing so she simply bestowed upon him the order of the Golden Fleece.
A flash of dim recollection came to Orry for a moment, "I kind of remember. First there was a bluff, with what looked like a communicating trench, in spots. Just as if most of it was covered. I dropped some bombs I had left on the moving gray something I saw. After that I skimmed over the bluff. Then there was a stream, and another embankment beyond. After that I don't seem to remember much.
It is easy to understand that rogues should steal, but not that they should have the audacity to do so in the face of facts which so quickly and so easily could prove their villainy. It was Pursegur's letter then, detailing this rascality on the part of Orry, that had reached the King just before that respecting the Abbe d'Estrees.
Ten seconds later their wheels dropped gently on the gravel at either end of the parade ground two tired looking aviators left their the waiting mechanics and walked soberly to the others. The stunts were over for the day. "Well, well, Orry! How do you feel after your stunts of yesterday?"
The Abbé, vain of his family and his position, was not a man much to be feared as it seemed. Madame des Ursins accordingly laughed at and despised him. He was admitted to the council, but was quite without influence there, and when he attempted to make any representations to Madame des Ursins or Orry, they listened to him without attending in the least to what he said.
His vexation upon finding that nothing upon which he had reckoned was provided, may be imagined. He at once wrote to the King, in order to contradict all that he had recently written. This conduct of Orry his impudence, I may say in deceiving a man who immediately after would have under his eyes the proof of his deceit, is a thing past all comprehension.
One day when he was returning from London to Madrid, with instructions for Lord Lexington, some Irishmen, in the service of Philip V., attacked him, and, as he was endeavouring to take refuge in a church, they killed him, conformably to the orders which they had received, it is said, from the Princess des Ursins and Orry.
Blaine laughed gleefully as he turned away, patting Orris on the shoulder approvingly. "I always thought you were a sticker, Orry." "That's better 'n being a slicker or a slacker, isn't it?" Again the big fellow laughed as he hurried off towards the Captain's quarters at the far end of the grounds. The day passed quietly.
Reaching the clubroom door, they entered, Blaine pushing his comrade forward and saying with mock politeness: "Let me present my comrade Erwin, or Orry, I like to call him. While doing the Boches the other day at Appincourte Bluff, the Boches came mighty nigh doing him. But here he is, what's left of him. Jolly him a bit. He feels bad!"
Full of these ideas, he set out for the frontier of Portugal to reconnoitre the ground himself, and arrange everything for the arrival of the army and its general. What was his surprise, when he found that from Madrid to the frontier not a single preparation had been made for the troops, and that in consequence all that Orry had shown him, drawn out upon paper, was utterly fictitious.
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