Part 1 (1/2)
Havoc.
by E. Philips Oppenheim.
CHAPTER I
CROWNED HEADS MEET
Bellamy, King's Spy, and Dorward, journalist, known to fame in every English-speaking country, stood before the double window of their s.p.a.cious sitting-room, looking down upon the thoroughfare beneath.
Both men were laboring under a bitter sense of failure. Bellamy's face was dark with forebodings; Dorward was irritated and nervous.
Failure was a new thing to him--a thing which those behind the great journals which he represented understood less, even, than he.
Bellamy loved his country, and fear was gnawing at his heart.
Below, the crowds which had been waiting patiently for many hours broke into a tumult of welcoming voices. Down their thickly-packed lines the volume of sound arose and grew, a faint murmur at first, swelling and growing to a thunderous roar. Myriads of hats were suddenly torn from the heads of the excited mult.i.tude, handkerchiefs waved from every window. It was a wonderful greeting, this.
”The Czar on his way to the railway station,” Bellamy remarked.
The broad avenue was suddenly thronged with a ma.s.s of soldiery--guardsmen of the most famous of Austrian regiments, brilliant in their white uniforms, their flas.h.i.+ng helmets. The small brougham with its great black horses was almost hidden within a ring of naked steel.
Dorward, an American to the backbone and a bitter democrat, thrust out his under-lip.
”The Anointed of the Lord!” he muttered.
Far away from some other quarter came the same roar of voices, m.u.f.fled yet insistent, charged with that faint, exciting timbre which seems always to live in the cry of the mult.i.tude.
”The Emperor,” declared Bellamy. ”He goes to the West station.”
The commotion had pa.s.sed. The crowds in the street below were on the move, melting away now with a m.u.f.fled trampling of feet and a murmur of voices. The two men turned from their window back into the room. Dorward commenced to roll a cigarette with yellow-stained, nervous fingers, while Bellamy threw himself into an easy-chair with a gesture of depression.
”So it is over, this long-talked-of meeting,” he said, half to himself, half to Dorward. ”It is over, and Europe is left to wonder.”
”They were together for scarcely more than an hour,” Dorward murmured.
”Long enough,” Bellamy answered. ”That little room in the Palace, my friend, may yet become famous.”
”If you and I could buy its secrets,” Dorward remarked, finally shaping a cigarette and lighting it, ”we should be big bidders, I think. I'd give fifty thousand dollars myself to be able to cable even a hundred words of their conversation.”
”For the truth,” Bellamy said, ”the whole truth, there could be no price sufficient. We made our effort in different directions, both of us. With infinite pains I planted--I may tell you this now that the thing is over--seven spies in the Palace. They have been of as much use as rabbits. I don't believe that a single one of them got any further than the kitchens.”
Dorward nodded gloomily.
”I guess they weren't taking any chances up there,” he remarked.
”There wasn't a secretary in the room. Carstairs was nearly thrown out, and he had a permit to enter the Palace. The great staircase was held with soldiers, and d.i.c.k swore that there were Maxims in the corridors.”
Bellamy sighed.
”We shall hear the roar of bigger guns before we are many months older, Dorward,” he declared.
The journalist glanced at his friend keenly. ”You believe that?”
Bellamy shrugged his shoulders.