The street outside was crowded with fiacres and cabs. Von Ritz signaled
to a footman and in a moment more Blanco and his escort had stepped into
a closed carriage and were being driven toward the Palace. They entered
by a side passage and the Colonel conducted him through several halls
and chambers filled with uniformed officers, and finally into a more
remote part of the building where they met only an occasional servant.
At last they came into a great room entirely empty but for themselves.
About the walls hung ripened portraits. The decorations were of
Arabesque mosaics with fantastic panels of Moorish tiling. It might have
been a grandee's house in Seville, patterned on the Alcazar. Evidently
this was part of a private suite. Heavy portières were only partly drawn
across a wide window with the sill at the floor level, and through them
Blanco dimly saw a balcony giving out over a small garden, and
commanding more distantly the harbor and town lights below. From
somewhere in the garden came the splashing of a small fountain.
Here Von Ritz left his charge to himself, silently departing with a bow.
For a while the Spaniard remained alone. The room was not so brightly
illuminated as many through which he had come on his way across the
Palace. Light filtered through swinging lamps of wrought metal encrusted
with prisms of green and amber and garnet. The Moorish scheme depends in
part upon its shadows. Finally a gentleman entered from a balcony. He
was neither in uniform nor in evening dress. His face was smooth-shaven
and pleasing.
Blanco fancied this was a secretary or attendant of some sort, and was
conscious of slight surprise that as he entered the place he smoked a
cigarette with a freedom scarcely fitting the King's personal chambers.
At the window the gentleman halted and looked Blanco over with a frank
but not offensive curiosity. Manuel returned the gaze, wondering where
he had seen the face before, yet unable to identify it. Then the
newcomer crossed and proffered the Spaniard a cigarette from a gold
case, which the toreador declined with a shake of his head.
"Gracias, Señor," he said, "but I am waiting for the King."
The other smiled, and the visitor noticed that even in smiling his lips
fell into lines of sadness.
"None the less," he said pleasantly, "a man may as well have the solace
of tobacco while he waits--even though he awaits a King."
The Andalusian once more shook his head, and the other continued to
study him with that undisguised interest which his eyes had worn from
the first.
"So you are one of the two men," he said, "who learned what all the
secret agents of the Throne failed to unearth. Incidentally it is to you
that the present King owes not only his Crown, but his life as well." He
paused.