Part 80

The King laughed, nevertheless, with an affectation of ease.

“I inferred it from your absence from Court on such a night. What has been keeping you?” But, without waiting for an answer, he fired another question. “What do you say to my domino, Bjelke?”

It was a garment embroidered upon a black satin ground with tongues of flame so cunningly wrought in mingling threads of scarlet and gold that as he turned about now they flashed in the candlelight, and seemed to leap like tongues of living fire.

“Your Majesty will have a great success,” said Bjelke, and to himself relished the full grimness of his joke. For a terrible joke it was, seeing that he no longer intended to discharge the errand which had brought him in such haste to the palace.

“Faith, I deserve it!” was the flippant answer, and he turned again to the mirror to adjust a patch on the left side of his chin. “There is genius in this domino, and it is not the genius of Francois, for the scheme of flames is my very own, the fruit of a deal of thought and study.”

There Gustavus uttered his whole character. As a master of the revels, or an opera impresario, this royal rake would have been a complete success in life. The pity of it was that the accident of birth should have robed him in the royal purple. Like many another prince who has come to a violent end, he was born to the wrong metier.

“I derived the notion,” he continued, “from a sanbenito in a Goya picture.”

“An ominous garb,” said Bjelke, smiling curiously. “The garment of the sinner on his way to penitential doom.”

Armfelt cried out in a protest of mock horror, but Gustavus laughed cynically.

“Oh, I confess that it would be most apt. I had not thought of it.”

His fingers sought a pomatum box, and in doing so displaced a toilet-case of red morocco. An oblong paper package fell from the top of this and arrested the King's attention.

“Why, what is this?” He took it up--a letter bearing the superscription:

To His MAJESTY THE KING SECRET AND IMPORTANT

“What is this, Francois?” The royal voice was suddenly sharp.

The valet glided forward, whilst Armfelt rose from the divan and, like Bjelke, attracted by the sudden change in the King's tone and manner, drew near his master.

“How comes this letter here?”

The valet's face expressed complete amazement. It must have been placed there in his absence an hour ago, after he had made all preparations for the royal toilette. It was certainly not there at the time, or he must have seen it.

With impatient fingers Gustavus snapped the seal and unfolded the letter. Awhile he stood reading, very still, his brows knit.

Then, with a contemptuous “Poof!” he handed it to his secretary.

At a glance Bjelke recognized the hand for that of Colonel Lillehorn, one of the conspirators, whose courage had evidently failed him in the eleventh hour. He read:

SIRE,--Deign to heed the warning of one who, not being in your service, nor solicitous of your favours, flatters not your crimes, and yet desires to avert the danger threatening you. There is a plot to assassinate you which would by now have been executed but for the countermanding of the ball at the opera last week. What was not done then will certainly be done to-night if you afford the opportunity. Remain at home and avoid balls and public gatherings for the rest of the year; thus the fanaticism which aims at your life will evaporate.

“Do you know the writing?” Gustavus asked.

Bjelke shrugged. “The hand will be disguised, no doubt,” he evaded.

“But you will heed the warning, Sire?” exclaimed, Armfelt, who had read over the secretary's shoulder, and whose face had paled in reading.

Gustavus laughed contemptuously. “Faith, if I were to heed every scaremonger, I should get but little amusement out of life.”

Yet he was angry, as his shifting colour showed. The disrespectful tone of the anonymous communication moved him more deeply than its actual message. He toyed a moment with a hair-ribbon, his nether lip thrust out in thought. At last he rapped out an oath of vexation, and proffered the ribbon to his valet.

“My hair, Francois,” said he, “and then we will be going.”

“Going!”