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To-day the Countess Astaride left Puntal, greatly agitated. I am informed that from her window she watched do Freres with glasses during Your Majesty's visit there, and that when you left she swooned. Within ten minutes she was on her way to the quay and boarded the out-going steamer for Villefranche. These things may spell grave danger."
"True." The Countess sat for a time in deep thought. "There is one man in Puntal," said Jusseret with sudden thought, "who might possibly be of assistance to you. He is not legally a citizen of Galavia. He even has a certain official connection with another government. He is a man I cannot myself approach."
For a moment Benton was silent. When he spoke it was in quick, clear-clipped interrogation. "You know Puntal and Galavia?" "As I know Spain." "Manuel, suppose the quaking of a throne does interest me, you will go there with me even though I may lead you where its fall may crush us both?" The Spaniard grinned with a dazzling show of white teeth. His shoulders rose and fell in a shrug.
Immersed in reflection and forgetful of his resolution to keep as much as possible out of sight, he went openly and conspicuously along the street that overhangs the water, where at sunset all Puntal promenades.
Within this natural breakwater are enclosed an outer and an inner port; and so cumbered with shoals and rocks was the entrance from the sea that no ship could get in without passing under the guns of the town batteries, while access from the outer to the inner port was only to be gained by the Puntal passage, half a mile wide. Opposite Cadiz, on the other side of the outer harbor, was Port St.
If Blanco could be spared and would consent to come to Puntal, his proven ability, together with his understanding of the language and the fact that he was not generally known in Puntal, would give him untold value. All the government's secret agents were either under suspicion of treason or too well known to the conspirators to be of great avail.
Harcourt laughed. "The scales have turned and his Grand Duke is to be King after all." Benton seized the boy by the elbow and steered him into one of the empty writing-rooms. "Now, for God's sake, what do you mean?" he demanded. "That's all," replied the young tourist. "They've switched Kings. Oh, it was so quietly done that the people of the city of Puntal don't know yet it's happened.
When the Duke had gone half-heartedly to his lodge to await the decision of the European Powers, it was she who went to Puntal to direct the conspirators and watch, from the windows of her hotel suite, the fortress on the jetty. Her one deplorable error had been in mistaking Benton for Martin. This had been natural enough.
A dozen tragic stories of mysterious disappearances in Stamboul crowded like nightmares upon his memory. At last, standing bewildered in the street, he caught sight of a familiar figure; a figure that filled him with astonishment and delight. Colonel Von Ritz had left Cairo to return to Puntal.
Jusseret had been talking in a low tone, too low to endanger being overheard by the cocher, but now with excess of caution he leaned forward and whispered a name. The name was José Reebeler. It was June. Three months had passed since the Grand Duke had steamed into Puntal Harbor as Blanco's prisoner of war. The Duke had since that day been a guest of the King.
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