Part 19

The Princess dropped her eyes before the undeniable questioning of his burning glances. As she looked away, he assured himself that he had scored.

"My brother ... what do you know of him, Carlos? When did you see him last? Have you been in Seguro?"

Two long whistles, and the vibration of the great steamship evidenced the beginning of the long voyage. The answer to the questions was still more pathetic in cadence.

"Ah, how I dread telling you!... I was there a few days before leaving for America. I learned, unfortunately, that despite my very friendly advice, he had been prowling about that ridiculous old castle again, in search of the mythical treasure your grandfather is supposed to have secreted there."

He laughed, and the girl instinctively shuddered with a newborn distrust. There was no mirth in the sound.

"You heard nothing more? Was he well and safe when you left the town?"

"He was as well and safe as I would consider any man who was prowling about that castle in a foolhardy way."

She wished to get rid of him: that ominous trunk might contain a dead man, for all she knew.

"How did you find me? Why did you come to America?"

"What could have brought me here but love and anxiety for you?"

She turned away impatiently and walked toward the cabin porthole.

"Oh, come, Carlos. The ship is almost in mid-stream. Let us go out on deck, for one last look at America."

"Thank you; I can do very well without it!" he retorted, as he sat down upon the trunk. "My dear Maria, why do you not desist from this silly pursuit of an imaginary treasure? What is the value of money--we are Spaniards, not shirt-sleeved, mercenary pigs of Americans! We strive for it, only to obtain the happiness and luxury which it brings. Can it bring any greater happiness than that which I have so many times laid at your feet--the love and honored name of a man who would protect and worship you? You have wonderful beauty and family rank. I have power, influence at Court, and an unconquerable ambition. Mine is the intellect to conceive, the heart to dare, and the will to complete! Think what our alliance would mean to us both.... My dear girl--there is nothing which could halt me, nothing which I could not crush!"

Had many a man made this speech he would have punctuated its termination with a clenched fist. But the scion of an intriguing aristocracy bared his teeth in a wolf-like smile as he unsheathed his sword-cane an inch or two, to snap it back into place, with a snarling smile in his drooping eyes.

However, the speech and the theatrical delivery of the gifted courtier were wasted effort. Maria Theresa of Spain was impervious to the surface sheen: she had seen true metal within the past twenty-four hours!

"Oh, Carlos--you should have been a novelist or a dramatist! I much prefer the romantic sky-line of New York harbor to your reminiscence of Don Quixote!"

The great roar of the turbine vibrated through the ship. She advanced to the cabin door, and imperiously called to him to follow.

"I insist. I need fresh air.... We'll be gone ten minutes!"

And grudgingly the Duke of Alva followed her, with a vicious swish of his cane at the unoffending trunk.

As the door slammed, the top of the trunk was slowly lifted, and the battered, bleeding face of Warren Jarvis might have been visible above the iron ridge of its lock bar.

Stiffly he drew himself out of the trunk, to blink in the unaccustomed light.

"O,... O.... O.... Oh! Lord!... If I only had that last baggageman by the neck!"

He bent forward and back to limber an apparently paralyzed spinal column.

"Well, I'm all here!"

He stumbled across the cabin, where he helped himself to a welcome drink of water. He tenderly caressed the bruised elbows, and breathed hard.

"I'm most all here!"

He looked down at his twisted, cracked patent-leather shoes.

"My feet are bent--they'll never get well!"