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It flashed into Alec's mind that the presence in Paris of the Greek on the very day of the Delgratz regicide offered a most remarkable coincidence. Beliani was no stranger to him, since he and General Stampoff, the one as Finance Minister and the other as Commander in Chief, were exiled from Kosnovia after an abortive revolution ten years ago.
He was irresistibly reminded of the stage, with its sharp contrasts between the two sides of the footlights, and in the luggage net near his head reposed that melodramatic sword, still wrapped in brown paper. The train slowed, and Stampoff went into the corridor. He came back instantly. "The station is guarded by troops," he muttered. "Some of the officers may recognize me.
"I agree most fully and unreservedly," murmured the Greek, conveying, with a deep bow, his respectful regret that such an assurance should be necessary. The greatly perturbed President had already quitted the room; so Alec turned to Stampoff. His manner was quite friendly. Well he knew that this fiery soul was not to be judged by the Delgrado standard.
There was almost a touch of genius in the remark. Its very vacuity told of the man's exceeding unfitness for the rôle thrust upon him by certain desperadoes in the far off Balkans. "We must have money," growled Stampoff with a most unflattering lack of recognition of the elder Delgrado's humor. "Ah!" said Prince Michael, plunging both hands into his trousers' pockets and keeping them there.
For an instant Alec scowled at the President; but Sergius Nesimir's vacuous features so obviously revealed his condition of speechless surprise and distress that there remained only Stampoff, Prince Michael and his mother.
He felt that he was finally touching sure ground in the morass through which he was floundering. "She and all of you must remain!" was his grim reply. "Answer my question! Was it you who drove Joan from Delgratz?" "I counseled it," said Stampoff, folding his arms defiantly, and apparently careless whether or not the King sprang at his throat the next instant. "Ah! At last!
"It has found me unprepared, and, if I am not very much mistaken, many of the gentlemen here did not anticipate that the question would be raised to-day in its present acute form." It was evident that the majority of ministers favored the adoption of the King's proposal; but Stampoff scowled at them angrily and drowned their timorous agreement by his resentful cry: "God's bones!
I suppose Stampoff urged your mother to reveal the facts to that chit of a girl who has addled your brain, and she, fortunately, had sense enough to see that you can not continue to occupy the throne five seconds after it becomes known that you are a mere alien, that your name is Alexander Talbot, and that I, Michael Delgrado, who married a foreigner in order that I might live, and permitted an American child to be reared as a lawful Prince of my house, am the lawful King."
He neither saw nor looked for Stampoff. Having a minute to spare, he obtained a newspaper, took a seat voucher for the first dinner, lighted a cigarette, entered his reserved compartment, arranged his luggage, and burnt General Stampoff's scrawl just as the train moved out of the station.
Those leaden blasts that had swept the room from the first floors of the opposite houses had ceased, and not one potvaliant marksman of them all was to be seen; but the street was full of hussars, and directly beneath, mounted on an excited horse, Stampoff was giving furious orders which evidently demanded an energetic storming of the hotel entrance. Alec threw open the window and leaned out.
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