IX Rex, Regis ——
As I descended the stairs to greet my unbidden guests, through my noddle ran the flippant old time sing-song of earliest schooldays—“Rex, Regis, Regi, Regem, Rex, Rege”—an ironic declension of the theoretical in contrast to the actual which I could not very well decline.
Now, as I entered the long lounging room which Smith and I had used as our living-room, I very easily recognized God’s anointed, thanks to Thusis. Otherwise it never would have occurred to me that what I now beheld was a bunch of kings in camouflage.
Constantine, the ex-King of Greece, sat near a window drinking a pint of impossible Greek wine and reading one of last month’s New York newspapers. The ex-Queen of Greece stood with hands linked behind her well-made back, looking out at the mountains. At another little table the Tzar of all the Bulgars loomed up majestically. He was eating coffee-cakes and drinking coffee. I could hear him.
As I entered the room they all turned their heads to look at me. And I thought I had never gazed upon anything more subtly disturbing than the Hohenzollern visage of the ex-queen. Indeed she seemed to lack only the celebrated imperial mustaches to duplicate the sullen physiognomy of her brother, the Kaiser. That family countenance of a balky horse was unmistakable; so were the coarse features of Constantine, with his face of a typical non-commissioned officer. But of all faces I had ever gazed on the fat, cunning visage of the Bulgarian Bourbon, Ferdinand, was the most false. A long thin nose split its fatness; under a pointed beard a little cruel and greasy mouth hid close, while two stealthy eyes of a wild thing watched over this unpleasant and alarming combination.
Normally these people would not have noticed me; but now, in their rôles of tourists, they recollected themselves.
When I quietly introduced myself Constantine got up, and I went over and welcomed him, bowed to his wife, and, when Ferdinand, also, concluded to get up, I greeted him with the same impeccable formality.
“So you are the fortunate Chilean gentleman who has inherited this valuable property,” said the ex-queen, her hard Prussian eyes fixed intently upon me.
“Yes, madam, I am that unfortunate Mr. O’Ryan,” said I smilingly. “The duties of an inn-keeper are not yet entirely familiar to me but I trust that my servants can make you comfortable.”
The queen remarked indifferently that if she were not comfortable enough she’d let me know,—and turned her back, paying me no further attention. Doubtless her scrutiny of me had satisfied her. Possibly the Chilean flag flying from the flag-pole in front of the house also reassured her. She gazed out at the Bec de l’Empereur, named from the august nose of her brother. Constantine’s flickering glance rested on the rigid back of his spouse, shifted toward me uncertainly, but always reverted to that straight, stiff back as though in awe and unwilling fascination.
I went over to the counter and picked up the guest ledger: “May I trouble you to register in order that I may fulfill my obligations toward the Swiss police?” I said pleasantly. For none of them had so far offered me whatever noms-de-guerre had been decided upon.
At this the queen turned and said something to Constantine in a surly voice, and he got up with alacrity and swaggered over to the desk.
“M. Constantine Xenos, wine merchant, Zurich, and Madame Xenos,” he wrote, his tongue in his cheek. His shifty eyes flickered toward King Ferdinand who had again become rather noisy over his coffee and cakes. Then, apparently remembering his instructions, he wrote:
“Monsieur Bugloss Itchenuff. Investments and business opportunities. Zurich.”
He handed me the pen with a flourish: “There you are, Mr. O’Ryan,” he said with a misleading heartiness in his barrack-room voice contradicted always by restless and furtive eyes and remarkable royal fingers which were never still—twitching, wandering, searching, unquiet fingers,—irresolute, uncertain, timid, prying fingers not to be depended upon in emergencies, never to be trusted, even in their own pockets.
“Do you expect to remain over night, Monsieur Xenos?” I inquired, glancing at the wet signatures on the ledger, and blotting them.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “This inn looks like a damn fine place to spend a few weeks in—doesn’t it, Sophy?” appealing to his wife in the loud, familiar, bluff tone characteristic of him, and which seemed to me neither genuine nor carelessly frank, but an assumed manner covering something less confident and good humored.
The Princess of Prussia, so abruptly addressed, turned slowly from her contemplation of the Bec de l’Empereur:
“We shall remain as long as it suits us,” she said coolly. “And if our suites are ready——”
“Rooms,” corrected the King in jocular protest.
“Suites,” repeated his wife sharply.
Ferdinand, gobbling his slopping coffee, wiped his wet beard:
“If there are any suites in your chalet,” he said to me, “I’ll take one—that is, if it isn’t too expensive. I can’t afford anything very expensive, and I’ll trouble you to remember that.”
He got up, continuing to wipe his greasy mouth with the back of a fat, soft hand, and came toward us,—a massive man, and bulkily impressive except that his legs were too short for his heavy body, which discrepancy gave to his gait a curious duck-like waddle.
“I like plenty of privacy,” he explained, “that’s what I like. I want to see my rooms and I want to know in advance exactly how much they are going to cost me and what extras are not included in the——”
“Oh, for God’s sake don’t begin that hard luck history of yours,” interjected Constantine in his best barrack-room manner. “Mr. O’Ryan is a gentleman and he’s not going to rob you, Buggy!”
It was instantly evident to me that the Tzar of all the Bulgars did not like to be called Buggy,—the familiar, affectionate and diminutive, no doubt, for his first nom-de-guerre, which was Bugloss, and was, in the Bulgarian language, pronounced Bew-gloss, not Bugg-loss.
The Queen, paying no attention to her loud-mouthed husband or to King Ferdinand, crossed the room with a firm, quick step, and examined the ledger and the indifferent penmanship of her royal husband. Then, to me:
“Be good enough to show me to my suite,” she said. “My husband will occupy separate but connecting apartments.”
I banged on a large, brass bell. The door opened. Thusis appeared.
Her instant and abrupt appearance had an odd effect upon these three people. They all started perceptibly. The Tzar of all the Bulgars even jumped. Then he stared at her with the intentness of a wild pig in the rutting season. And King Constantine also regarded her with a stealthy sort of pleasure discreetly screened by a mask of bluff and hearty indifference:
“Now, my good girl,” he said loudly, “kindly show us to our quarters and be quick about it. And maybe you’ll find a pretty silver franc in your apron pocket if you step lively! Such things have happened—haven’t they, Sophy?”
Thusis curtsied, then I saw her beautiful gray eyes lifted slowly and fix themselves upon the coldly staring orbs of the Hohenzollern princess.
“Madame will graciously condescend to follow,” she murmured. “A thousand reverent excuses that I precede the gracious lady. But it is inevitable when the humble guide the well born.”
The Queen’s hard, suspicious face never stirred a muscle. She leisurely inspected Thusis from head to toe, from toe to head without approval and without mercy.
“Are you the chamber maid?” she demanded coldly.
“My house-keeper and waitress, Madame,” I explained. “Her name is Thusis.”
The Queen stared intently at Thusis, then very insolently at me:
“Your house-keeper? Really,” she said,—“your house-keeper? Fancy! One might almost doubt that such a very young girl could possess sufficient domestic experience for such an important position.”
I turned red; not Thusis, however; and either the vulgar innuendo had left her quite unconscious, or she coolly scorned the implication. And she merely smiled upon the Hohenzollern and awaited her Prussian pleasure.
“Come on, Sophy,” said King Constantine, with a covert leer at Thusis’s ankles. And they all started upstairs, King Ferdinand shuffling in the rear with the peculiarly ponderous waddle which characterizes the progress of an elephant’s hind quarters.
King Constantine halted on the stairs to turn and call back to me in his noisy, unceremonious, jovial way:
“Wait a bit, O’Ryan! I forgot to say that we’re expecting some friends of ours. So fix ’em up in good shape when they——”
“Go on, Tino!” interrupted the queen impatiently. “Don’t you even know enough to keep on going when you start? And God knows,” she added in her disagreeable voice, “it’s hard enough to start you.”
“All right, my dear,” he exclaimed with his loud forced laugh. “I only wanted to rest Buggy’s legs a bit.”
And the anointed of the Lord resumed their shuffling progress upward at the heels of the swift, light feet of Thusis.
As for me I went out to the court where their luggage lay piled. The wagon which had brought them was gone, but Raoul stood there, his hat on one side, hands on hips, chewing a wheat-straw and gazing blandly at the pile of royal luggage.
“These,” said I carelessly, “belong upstairs. Thusis will tell you where to carry them, Raoul.”
“Bien, Monsieur!”
We both looked gravely at the luggage, then my glance rested on his pleasant, reckless face in which I seemed to notice a gaiety more marked than usual.
For one moment, as he caught my eye, I thought he was going to wink at me, but, even as his eyelid quivered, he seemed to recollect himself. And, with an absolutely indescribable expression, he seized upon the luggage, and, both arms full, strode toward the back stairs. And, far in the passageway, I heard him singing under his breath:
“Crack-brain-cripple-arm,
You have done a heap of harm——”
until Josephine Vannis came to the pantry door, her superb arms all over flour, and said in French: “Hush, Raoul, or I slay thee with my rolling-pin, thou imbecile, curly, hot-head!”
“My Josephine adored,” he retorted, “thou slayest me hourly with thy Olympian beauty——”
“Be silent, addlepate, I implore thee! Is the very devil in thee, Raoul, to endanger everything with thy empty-headed audacity?”
“Ruler of hearts,” he rejoined, “remain tranquil. Nous les aurons!”
I went upstairs, discovered Smith lying on his bed and reading, and then and there told him the whole story. He did not appear to be very much surprised over the royal identity of my guests.
“That sort of king,” he remarked, “is likely to run about under foot. You’ll find them a nuisance.” And he resumed his novel and his pipe.
I went downstairs again. Raoul passed with more luggage.
I stood motionless listening to the retreating footsteps of Raoul through the stone passageway. And, as I lingered, intensely curious and beginning to feel uneasy, Clelia came out of the kitchen looking like some flushed, excited school-girl, her golden hair in two braids, and her blue eyes very brilliant in the bright sunshine.