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The Lighted Match, a novel by Charles Neville Buck |
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Chapter 12. Benton Must Decide |
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_ CHAPTER XII. BENTON MUST DECIDE On the next afternoon at the base of the flag-staff above Look-out Rock, Lieutenant Lapas nervously swept the leagues of sea and land, spreading under him, with strong glasses. Though the air was somewhat rarer and cooler here than below, beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, and the cigarettes which he incessantly smoked followed each other with a furious haste which denoted mental unrest. At a sound of foliage rustled aside and a displaced rock bumping down the slope, the watcher took the glasses from his eyes with a nervous start. Up the hill from the left climbed an unknown man. His features were those of a Spaniard. As the officer's eyes challenged him he halted, panting, to mop his brow with the air of one who takes a breathing space after violent exertion. The newcomer smiled pleasantly as he leaned against a bowlder and genially volunteered: "It is a long journey from the shore." Then after a moment he added in a tone of respectful inquiry: "You are Lieutenant Lapas?" The officer had regained his composure. He regarded the other with a mild scrutiny touched with superciliousness as he nodded acquiescence and in return demanded: "Who are you?" "Do you see that speck of white down yonder by the sea?" Blanco drew close and his outstretched finger pointed a line to the Duke's lodge. "I come from there," he explained with concise directness. The officer bit his lip. "Why did you come?" The Spaniard paused to roll a cigarette before he answered: "I come from the Duke, of course. Why else should I climb this accursed ladder of hills?" "What Duke?" The interrogation tumbled too eagerly from the soldier's lips to be consonant with his wary assumption of innocence. "There are so many Dukes. Myself, I serve only the King." The Spaniard's teeth gleamed, and there was a strangely disarming quality in the smile that broke in sudden illumination over his dark face. "I have been here only a few days," explained Blanco. Then, lying with apt fluency, he continued: "I have arrived from Cadiz in the service of the Grand Duke Louis Delgado, who will soon be His Majesty, Louis of Galavia, and I am sent to you as the bearer of his message." He ignored the other's protestations of loyalty to the throne as completely as he ignored the frightened face of the man who made them. Lapas had whitened to the lips and now stood hesitant. "I don't understand," he stammered. The Spaniard's expression changed swiftly from good humor to the sternness of a taskmaster. "The Duke is impatient," he asserted, "of delays and misunderstandings on the part of his servants. His Grace believed that your memory had been well schooled. Louis, the King, may prove forgetful of those who are forgetful of Louis, the Duke." Lapas still stood silent, pitiably unnerved. If the man was Karyl's spy an incautious reply might cost him his life. If he was genuinely a messenger from the Pretender any hesitation might prove equally fatal. Time was important. Blanco drew from his pocket a gold seal ring which until last night had adorned the finger of the Countess Astaride. Upon its shield was the crest of the House of Delgado. At the sight of the familiar quarterings, the officer's face became contrite, apologetic, but above all immeasurably relieved. "Caution is so necessary," he explained. "One cannot be too careful. It is not for myself alone, but for the Duke also that I must have a care." Blanco accepted the explanation with a bow, then he spoke energetically and rapidly, pressing his advantage before the other's weakness should lead him into fresh vacillation. "The Duke feared that there might be some misunderstanding as to the signal and the programme. He wished me to make it clear to you." Lapas nodded and, turning, led the way through the pine trees to a small kiosk that was something between a sentinel box and a signal station built against the walls of the old observatory. "I think I understand," said Lapas, "but I shall be glad to have you repeat the Duke's commands and inform me if any changes have been made." "No, the arrangements stand unaltered," replied the Spaniard. "My directions were that you should repeat to me the order of your instructions and that I should judge for His Grace whether or not your memory is retentive. There must be no hitch." "I don't know you," demurred Lapas. "His Grace knows me--and trusts me. That should be sufficient," retorted Blanco. "I bring you credentials which you will refuse to recognize at your own risk. Unless I were in the confidence of the Duke, I could scarcely be here with a knowledge of your plans." Blanco's eyes blazed in sudden and well simulated wrath. "I have no time to waste in argument. Choose quickly. Shall I return to Louis and inform him that you refuse to trust those he selects to bear his orders?" For an instant the Spaniard stood contemptuously regarding the other's terror, then with a disgusted exclamation he turned on his heel and started to the door of the kiosk. But Lapas was in a moment catching at his elbow and protesting himself convinced. He led Blanco back to a seat. "Listen." The Lieutenant sat at the crude table in the center of the small room and talked rapidly, as one rehearsing a well-learned lesson. "The Fortress _do Freres_ is stocked with explosives. Karyl goes there with Von Ritz and others of his suite to inspect the place with the view of turning it into a prison. The Grand Duke, waiting at his hunting lodge, is to receive by wireless the message from Jusseret and Borttorff, who convey the verdict of Europe, as to whether or not it is decided to recognize his Government. If their message be favorable, he will raise the Galavian flag on the west tower of the hunting lodge, and I shall relay the message here with the flag at Look-out Point. This flag-pole will be the signal to those in the city whose fingers are on the key, and whose key will explode the powder in _do Freres_. If the flag which now flies from the flag-staff here is still flying when the King enters the fortress, the cap will explode. If the flag-staff is empty, the King's visit will be uneventful. It will require fifteen minutes for the King to go from the Palace to the Fortress. I must not remain here--I must be where I can see." Lapas rose and consulted his watch with nervous haste. "You will excuse me?" he added. "I must be at my post. Are you satisfied?" Blanco also rose, bowing as he drew back the heavy chair he had occupied. "I am quite satisfied," he approved. His hands were gripping the chairback and when Lapas had taken two paces to the front, and Blanco had appraised the distance between, the chair left the floor. With the same lightning swiftness of motion that had brought salvos of applause from the bull-rings of Cadiz and Seville, he swung it above his head and brought down its cumbersome weight in an arc. Lapas, his eyes fixed on the door, had no hint. A picture of serene sky and steady mountains was blotted from his brain. There was blackness instead--and unconsciousness. A bleeding scalp told the _toreador_ that the blow had only cut and stunned. Rapidly he bound and gagged his captive. Dragging him back through the narrow room he made certainty doubly sure by tying him to the base of the neglected telescope in the abandoned observatory. A hundred yards below the rock, tucked out of sight of the man at the flag-pole, stretched a ledge-like strip of level ground, backed by the thick tangle of growth which masked the slope. Beyond its edge of roughly blocked and crevassed stone, the gorge fell away a dizzy thousand feet. Out of the pines struggled the half-overgrown path where once a road had led from the castle. This way the earlier Lords of Galavia had come to look across the backbone of the peninsula, to the east. As Benton paced the ledge impatiently, awaiting the outcome of Blanco's reconnoiter, he noticed with a nauseating sense of onrushing peril how the purpled shadows of the mountains were lengthening across the valley and beginning to creep up the other side. Each time his pacing brought him to the edge of the clearing he paused to look down at the sullen walls of Karyl's castle. A woman, flushed and breathless from the climb, pushed through the scrub pines at the path's end and stopped suddenly at the marge of the clearing. Her slender girlish figure, clad in corduroy skirt and blue jersey, was poised with lance-like straightness, and a grace as free as a boy's. Her hands, cased in battered gauntlets, went suddenly to her breast, as though she would muffle the palpitant heart beneath the jersey. She stood for a moment looking at the man and the ultramarine of her eyes clouded slowly into gray. The pink flush of exercise died instantly to pallor in her cheeks. Then the lips overcame an impulse to quiver and spoke slowly in an undertone and with marked effort. "This is twice that I have seen you," she whispered, "although you are three thousand miles away." The man wheeled, not suddenly, but heavily and slowly. "I am real," he answered simply. Cara put out one hand like a sleep-walker, and came forward, still incredulous. "Cara, dearest one!" he said impetuously. "You must have known that I would be near you--that I would be standing by, even though I couldn't help!" She shook her head. "I have been having these hallucinations, you know, of late." She explained as though to herself. "I guess it's--it's just missing people so that does it." She was close to him now, close, too, to the sheer drop of the cliff, walking forward with eyes wide and fixed on his face. He took a quick step forward and swept her to him, crushing her against his breast. She gave a glad exclamation of realization, and her own arms closed impulsively around his neck. "You are real! You are real!" she whispered, looking into his eyes, her gauntleted hands holding his face between them. "Cara," he begged, "listen to me. It's my last plea. You said in the letter I have in my pocket--there where your heart is beating--that you could not refuse me if I came again. Dear, this is 'again.' The _Isis_ is a speck out there at sea awaiting a signal. Will you go? I have no throne to offer, but--" "Don't," she cried, holding a hand over his lips. "For a minute--just for a little golden minute--let us forget thrones." Then as the furrow came back between her brows: "Oh, boy, it's my destiny to be always strong enough to resist happiness when I might have it by being less strong, and always too weak to bear bravely what must be borne--when it can't be helped." He stood silent. After a moment she went on. "And I love you. Ah, you know that well enough, but up there beyond your head which I love, I see the green and white and blue flag of Galavia which I hate, and destiny commands me to be disloyal to you for loyalty to it. On the eve of life imprisonment," she went on, clinging to him, "I have stolen away to play truant perhaps for the last time--still craving freedom, longing for you; and now I find freedom, and you, just to lose you again! I can't--I can't--yes--I can--I will!" Suddenly he held her off at arms' length and looked at her with a strange wide-eyed expression of discovery. "But," he cried with the vehemence of a sudden thought, "you are up here--safe! Safe, whatever happens down there! Nothing that occurs there can affect you!" "Safe, of course," she spoke wonderingly. "What danger is there?" The man turned. "For God's sake--let me think a moment!" He dropped on the pine needles and sat with his hands covering his face and his fingers pressed into his temples. She came over. "Does that prevent your thinking?" she softly asked, dropping on her knees at his side and letting one hand rest on his shoulder. For moments, lengthening into minutes, he sat immovable, fighting back the agonized and torrential flood of thought which burst upon him with unwarned temptation. The danger was not after all a danger to the woman he loved, but a menace to his enemy. She was safe three thousand feet above the threatening city. He had only to hold his hand, perhaps, for a half-hour; had only to keep her here and let matters follow their course. He was not entertaining the thought, except to assure himself that he could not entertain it, but it was racking him with its suddenness. The King was there--in peril. She was here--safe. Insistently these two facts assaulted his brain. "Pardon, _Senor_." Blanco broke noisily down through the pines and halted where the path emerged. For an instant he stood in bewildered surprise. "Pardon, Your Highness--" he exclaimed, bending low; then, quenching the recognition in his eyes and assuming mistake, he laughed. "Ah, I ask forgiveness, _Senorita_. I mistook you for the Princess. The resemblance is strong. I see my error." "Manuel!" Benton rose unsteadily and stared at the _toreador_ with a face pallid as chalk. He spoke wildly, "Quick, Manuel--have you learned anything?" The Spaniard glanced inquiringly at the girl, and as Benton nodded reassurance went on in a lowered voice. Only fragments of his speech reached Cara's ears. Her own thoughts left her too apathetic to listen. "The plan is this. It is to happen at the Fortress _do Freres_ this afternoon while the King inspects the arsenal. Now, in fifteen minutes!" He pointed down toward the city. "See, the cortege leaves the Palace! Lapas was to be here at the rock--the blessed Saints help him! He is hobbled to his telescope." Swiftly he rehearsed the story as it had come from the lips of Lapas. Benton was studying the Duke's lodge with his glasses. "There is a flag flying on the west tower," he muttered. He turned slowly toward the Princess. Outstanding veins were tracing cordlike lines on his temples. His fingers trembled as he focused the glasses. Blanco looked slowly from one to the other. Suddenly he threw back both shoulders and his eyes grew bright in full comprehension of the situation he had discovered. "_Senor!_" he whispered. "Yes?" echoed the American in a dull voice. "_Senor_--suppose--suppose I have confused the signals?" The tone was insinuating. Benton's mind flashed back to a Sunday School class of his childhood and his infantile horror for the tale of a tempter on a high mountain offering the possession of all the world if only--if only-- He took a step forward. Speech seemed to choke him. "In God's name!" he cried, "you have not forgotten?" The Spaniard slowly shook his head and smiled. The expression gave to his face a touch of the sinister. "No--but it is yet possible to forget, _Senor_. I serve no King, I serve you. Sometimes a mistake is the truest accuracy. _Quien sabe?_" The Andalusian looked at the girl who stood puzzled and waiting. "Sometimes in the _Plaza de Toros, Senor_," he went on, speaking rapidly and tensely, "the throngs cry, '_Bravo, matador_!' and toss coins into the ring. Yet in a moment the same throngs may shout until their throats are hoarse: '_Bravo, toro_!' A King is like a bull in the ring, _Senor_--he has a fickle fate. To me he is nothing--if it pleases them--it is their King--let them do as they wish." He shrugged his shoulders. Benton straightened. "Manuel," he said with a strained tone, "the flag comes down." The Andalusian smiled regretfully, and once more shrugged his shoulders. "As you say, _Senor_, but are you sure you wish it so?" "Manuel, I mean that!" said the American with a steadied voice. "And for God's sake, Manuel," he added wildly, "throw the rope over the gorge when you have done it!" For a moment Benton stood rigid, his hands clenched together at his back as he watched the quick step of the Andalusian climbing to the flag-staff. At last he turned dully and looked down where he could see the royal cortege, not yet half-way along the road to the fortress, then he went over to the girl's side. "Cara," he said, "I have earned the right to kiss you good-by." "It's yours without the earning, but good-by--!" She shuddered. "What does it all mean?" she asked in bewilderment. "What was it you discussed?" "Listen," he commanded. "Tell Von Ritz or Karyl that Lapas is a traitor and a prisoner in the observatory; that Louis is at his lodge and that the Countess Astaride is a conspirator in a plot to assassinate the King. Tell them that a percussion cap and key connect the magazines of _do Freres_ with the city." The Princess looked at him with eyes that slowly widened in amazed comprehension. "I understand," she whispered. "And the flag--see, it is coming down--that means?" He dropped on one knee and lifted her fingers to his lips. "It means that you are to be crowned Queen in Galavia to-morrow," he answered with a groan. "Long live the Queen!" _ |
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