The contrast between the tiny white room in the hospital with the dire shadow of the Grim Reaper hovering over the narrow cot bed, and the spacious, brilliant salon of the hotel, where life, assertive, aggressive, almost obtrusive, was dominant, had something of a dazzling effect on Carey Grey, and he paused a moment on the threshold, with blinking eyes, in an effort to adjust his vision to the sudden change of scene.

There was a momentary lull in the merriment that smote him as the door swung open in answer to his knock, and then the cannonade of voices—of cries of surprise, of welcoming greetings, of laughter—was resumed, and Nicholas Van Tuyl rose from his place at the round table, which, with its snowy damask dotted with pink-shaded candles and dappled with silver and crystal, seemed like the centre of some giant flower of which the men and women about it were the variegated petals.

“My friends,” cried the host, raising his voice and hand simultaneously for silence, “I have pleasure in presenting to you my future son-in-law, Mr. Carey Grey, of New York.”

The next instant everybody was shouting at once. The men were up and bearing down on the newcomer in a solid phalanx, and Lady Constance and Mrs. Dickie were waving their napkins and fairly shrieking their congratulations. When at length something like order reigned again, Frothingham found his champagne glass and proposed a toast:

“To the bride-elect,” he cried. “‘She moves a goddess and she looks a queen.’”

Grey’s response was brief but enthusiastic, and the significance of the quotation with which he closed it evoked an outburst of applause that must have been heard as far as the Kursaal, two blocks away.

He did not know it at the time, but prior to his coming the whole story of his adventure had been related and discussed, much to the entertainment of the party in general and to the intense edification and delight of young Edson in particular, who resolved to make to his chief, the Ambassador, a full report of the extraordinary affair, with a view to having it forwarded to Washington to be filed among the State archives, as indicative of a vulnerable point in Budavia’s boasted supremacy in statecraft. The aptness of the quotation, therefore, was more generally appreciated than Grey had any notion it would be, and the hilarious approbation of his auditors was consequently a good deal of a surprise.

Nicholas Van Tuyl, however, leaned over in the midst of the cheering, to tell him that the plot of his play and the part he had enacted were known to the company. The news was not ungrateful, for from the moment of his entrance he had felt a natural restraint, which was now relieved. Very soon the matter came up again, and he related his experience at the hospital, which was listened to with the deepest interest. “Under the circumstances,” observed Sinclair Edson when Grey had finished, “it is not surprising that the extradition proceedings have been withdrawn.”

“Withdrawn?” exclaimed Grey, in amazement. “If it be true I should say it were most surprising.”

“We had a cable to that effect yesterday before I left Paris,” continued the secretary. “They were withdrawn at the instance of your partner, Mr. Mallory.”

“That is inexplicable,” Grey commented. “He doesn’t know anything more now than he did a week ago.”

Van Tuyl drained his wine-glass and wiped his lips with his napkin.

“Oh, yes he does, Carey,” he said, “he knows pretty much about it. I took the liberty of cabling to him all I knew. Besides, that whole business was a mare’s nest. If you hadn’t disappeared there would never have been any prosecution. Any one knows that a partner can’t be held for borrowing from his own firm, and unless I’m very much mistaken you were in a position to turn over real estate worth several times the amount secured on the bonds.”

“That is very true,” Grey replied, smiling, “but, strange as it may seem, that view of the situation never occurred to me before.”

“The newspapers were responsible for most of the hue and cry, I fancy,” Van Tuyl continued, “and as for the extradition part, I imagine Mallory took that step more from an impulse to find out whether the cable you sent him was really from you, and with the hope of locating you—dragging you back from the grave, so to speak—than with an idea of punishment for a crime that was never really committed.”

A Dresden clock on the mantel-shelf had tinkled midnight before the party broke up, agreeing to be down for an early breakfast at a quarter of eight, since the Van Tuyls and Grey were leaving KÜrschdorf at nine, to connect with the Orient Express at Munich.

When the rest had gone, Grey, who had lingered, drew Hope out onto the balcony. The music of the band which had floated up from below throughout the evening had ceased, but the rushing Weisswasser and the breeze stirring the foliage of the trees on the Quai combined in a melody to which their hearts beat a joyous refrain. The stars twinkled in unison in the blue-black canopy of the heavens, and from the distance a nightingale’s song made chorus.

“‘She moves a goddess and she looks a queen,’” Grey repeated, his arm about the girl’s supple waist. “That was an inspiration on Frothingham’s part. The line was never more aptly quoted. My goddess! My queen! Ah, my darling, if I could only make you know the happiness that is mine tonight!”

Her head was resting against his shoulder, but now she turned her face to him and in her eyes was a world of passionate adoration.

“I know,” she murmured, softly. “It is mine, too, dear. It is a mutual happiness, and we both know it. That is the reason it is so sweet.”

He drew her still closer, until he could feel her heart beating against his side.

“God is good,” he said, reverently. “There were moments in the past week when I saw only the frowning face of an implacable fate; when I felt that the net woven about me was too cruelly strong ever to give way to my struggles; and then I was more than half inclined to curse God and die. But we are only blind children, as it has been said, and when Providence is preparing for us the most delectable morsels we grow rebellious because we can’t see just how it is being done.”

“‘More welcome is the sweet,’” she quoted, returning the pressure of his hand. “You will never know, my very dear, the agony I suffered in those weeks after your disappearance. I would have died gladly—oh, so gladly; but, as you say, God is good, only we cannot always see. The sky was very black, without a single star, and the sun would never rise again, never, never. I knew it.”

“But it has, love, hasn’t it?” Grey asked, cheerily. “And we’ll pray now for a long, long, sunshiny day to make up for so dark a night.”

Then he bent his head and kissed her; and the nightingale’s song was a pÆan, and the music of the trees and the river a serenade.

After a little, Nicholas Van Tuyl joined them.

“Well, lad,” he said to Grey, as he flicked the ashes from his cigar, “what are your plans?” “I’m taking La Savoie from Havre on Saturday,” the young man answered. “I’d rather lose my right arm than leave Hope now, just as I have found her, but there’s no getting out of it. I must hurry back to New York and square things.”

“You must go so soon, dear?” she questioned, with just a suspicion of a pout.

“I must,” he replied, reluctance in his voice. “I’ll try to rejoin you later; but every duty demands my presence in America now.”

“We’ll have to stop, of course,” Van Tuyl observed; and then he added, with a smile: “my daughter, here, will be very busy, I fancy, for the next few weeks with couturiÈres and marchandes de modes in the rue de la Paix and thereabouts. So don’t exercise yourself unnecessarily, Carey. She’ll hardly have time to miss you. There’s no salve in the world to a woman so effective as that to be found in ordering new finery.”

“Don’t you believe him, dear,” the girl protested, her fingers tightening on Grey’s hand. “I shall think of you every minute I’m awake, and dream of you every minute I’m asleep.”

The two men lounging against the iron railing of the balcony smoked and chatted for a long time after Hope went in. They had much in common, and to each occurred a multiplicity of matters of mutual interest.

Meanwhile the street below grew quiet, the terrace was deserted, the wind in the trees died to a whisper, and the incessant murmur of the hurrying waters accentuated rather than disturbed the silence. But the two great lamps on either side of the hotel’s broad entrance still blazed, throwing a half circle of illumination out across the roadway and in under the lindens of the Quai.

Grey, flinging away the end of his cigar, turned and looked down, watching it fall and sputter red sparks upon the macadam of the drive. And as he looked a shadow glided swiftly across the arc of light beneath the trees and was swallowed up in the gloom beyond—a shadow, the contour of which even in that brief moment struck Grey as unmistakably familiar, recalling a figure that he had seen twenty-four hours before, leaping wildly, from dark to dark, down a winding stone stairway.

“It’s bed time,” said Nicholas Van Tuyl, yawning. “You must be tired. Suppose we——” A pistol shot, startlingly loud and sharp against the night silence, clipped off the end of the sentence.

For a moment neither spoke, and the stillness was the stillness of death. Then came the patter of hurrying steps, and presently voices were heard and men were darting across the street from all directions, and all heading toward the Quai at a point just opposite the balcony.

“Murder?” suggested Van Tuyl.

“No,” answered Grey, with conviction. “Suicide.”

Five minutes later, as they watched and listened, the crowd came straggling back, two by two and in groups, all chattering.

“Poor devil!” said one. The words rose distinctly audible.

“He made very sure,” commented another.

“Fancy blowing out his brains on the edge of the Quai and burying himself in the river!” exclaimed a third.

“For love, I suppose,” a young man ventured.

“Lost his last mark at the Kursaal tonight probably,” an older man theorised. Grey and Van Tuyl turned into the salon through the open window.

“That is what is called retribution,” said the younger man, “but it is usually longer delayed.”

Van Tuyl’s face asked for enlightenment.

“I could hardly have been mistaken,” Grey answered, with assurance. “I saw the fellow just a moment before. It was Captain Lindenwald, of the Royal Household and Equerry to the late King Frederic of Budavia.”

THE END