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Updated: June 28, 2025
She raised the hem of her light dress and tripped up the stairs looking more like a schoolgirl than a queen. Wilson and Stubbs followed after Otaballo, who appeared somewhat worried. They entered the palace, and at her request a guard led them into the privacy of a small room as it happened, the room which Wilson had twice before visited that day.
He watched it with indifferent interest until a closed carriage drove up. At this moment he saw Stubbs himself step from the palace and at the side of Otaballo approach the carriage. Here was his opportunity to make known his whereabouts to his partner. He tiptoed to the stairs and descended to the first floor.
"Wait until we get the ruffians in our hands. Otaballo plans the attack for early to-morrow; we ought to be in the city by noon. Once the place is ours you can take a force of men and go through the jail; I imagine that it is in the old palace. That is where I was locked up overnight, at any rate; and if it is like that " Wilson glanced up swiftly, his face pale. "It was bad?"
Otaballo had his hands full with prospect of more to do every hour. "Everyone in Bogova knows Sorez," he answered. "If he had been in the city for the last year I should know more of his possible whereabouts than I do. He was a surgeon in the Republican armies here, but he took no active interest in the Republic. How little his arrest proves.
Before she retired she had turned wearily to Otaballo, who remained a few minutes after the others departed. "My General," she said, "I'm tired of it all. Let them do as they will." "Not so long as there is a loyal man to carry a gun," he answered stubbornly. "You are old, General; it is time you had peace." "I am as young as my queen."
This city of some 20,000 inhabitants lay about the inner port and some eight miles from the bay where Danbury's yacht now rode at anchor, safely, because of the treachery of the harbor patrol, who to a man were with the Revolutionists. Danbury had been instructed by Otaballo, through the priest, to make this harbor and remain until receiving further instructions.
General Otaballo was the last of one of those old families of Carlina who had spent their lives in the service of the family of Montferaldo. His grandfather, to go back no further, had died defending the last reigning queen, his father had been shot for leading a conspiracy to restore the family, and now the grandson was following in the old way.
When General Otaballo stole in this morning and showed me beneath his coat that old uniform I knew something serious was meant. And, Dicky, I don't want to be a queen even to get revenge upon the cads who haven't been nice.
He had come ashore one night in a dory, been arrested and carried before Otaballo who refused to recognize him and gave him the alternative of going to jail or leaving the coast at once. It had all been an incomprehensible mystery to him; the only explanation he could think of being that the Queen was seized by the General who had usurped the throne.
If she went now with General Otaballo, it would leave no possible outlet for her to avoid assuming the title of Queen; she must mount the throne at once. To do this meant to give up the greatest thing in her life. There was no possible escape from it. Only by renouncing Danbury utterly, by keeping him from Carlina, could she save his life.
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