"Am I a brigand, Von Ritz, to be harassed by police? Answer me--am I?"
Pagratide spoke in a tempest of anger. He halted before the other man,
his hands twitching in fury.
Von Ritz remained as motionless, apparently as mildly interested, as
though he were listening to the screaming of a parrot.
"My orders were explicit." His words fell icily. "They were the orders
of His Majesty's government. I shall obey them. I beg pardon, I shall
attempt to obey them; and thus far my attempts to serve His Majesty have
not encountered failure. I should prefer not having to call on the
ambassador--or the American secret service."
"By God! If I had a sword--" breathed Pagratide. His fury had gone
through heat to cold, and his attitude was that of a man denied the
opportunity of resenting a mortal affront.
Von Ritz coolly inclined his head, indicating the heaped-up luggage on
the table between them. Otherwise he did not move.
"The stick there, on the table, is a sword-cane," he commented.
Pagratide stood unmoving.
The other waited a moment, almost deferentially, then went on with calm
deliberation.
"You left your regiment without leave, captain. One might almost call
that--" Then Benton remembered an auxiliary door at the back of his
apartment and made his escape unnoticed.
A half hour later, changed from boots and breeches into evening dress,
Benton was opening a long package which bore the name of his florist in
town. In another moment he had spread a profusion of roses on his table
and stood bending over them with the critically selective gaze of a
Paris.
When he had made the choice of one, he carefully pared every thorn from
its long stem. Then he went out through the rear of the hall to a
stairway at the back.
He knew of a window-seat above, where he could wait in concealment
behind a screening mass of potted palms to rise out of his ambush and
intercept Cara as she came into the hall. It pleased him to regard
himself as a genie, materializing out of emptiness to present the rose
which she had chosen to declare unobtainable.
In the shadowed recess he ensconced himself with his knees drawn up and
the flower twirling idly between his fingers.
For a while he measured his vigil only by the ticking of a clock
somewhere out of sight, then he heard a quiet footfall on the hardwood,
and through the fronds of the plants he saw a man's figure pace slowly
by. The broad shoulders and the lancelike carriage proclaimed Von Ritz
even before the downcast face was raised. At Cara's door the European
wheeled uncertainly and paused. Because something vague and subconscious
in Benton's mind had catalogued this man as a harbinger of trouble and
branded him with distrust, his own eyes contracted and the rose ceased
twirling.