A Man of Means Read online

  After his first inspection of the house and the friends, Roland came to the conclusion that he preferred Maraquita’s room to her company. The former was large and airy, the latter, with one exception, small and hairy.

  The exception Maraquita addressed as Bombito. He was a conspicuous figure. He was one of those out-size, hasty-looking men. One suspected him of carrying lethal weapons.

  Maraquita presented Roland to the company. The native speech of Paranoya sounded like shorthand, with a blend of Spanish. An expert could evidently squeeze a good deal of it into a minute. Its effect on the company was good. They were manifestly soothed. Even Bombito.

  Introductions in detail then took place. This time, for Roland’s benefit, Maraquita spoke in English, and he learned that most of those present were marquises. Before him, so he gathered from Maraquita, stood the very flower of Paranoya’s aristocracy, driven from their native land by the Infamy of 1905. Roland was too polite to inquire what on earth the Infamy of 1905 might be, but its mention had a marked effect on the company. Some scowled, others uttered deep-throated oaths. Bombito did both. Before supper, to which they presently sat down, was over, however, Roland knew a good deal about Paranoya and its history. The conversation conducted by Maraquita—to a ceaseless bouche pleine accompaniment from her friends—bore exclusively upon the subject.

  Paranoya had, it appeared, existed fairly peacefully for centuries under the rule of the Alejandro dynasty. Then, in the reign of Alejandro the Thirteenth, disaffection had begun to spread, culminating in the Infamy of 1905, which, Roland had at last discovered, was nothing less than the abolition of the monarchy and the installation of a republic.

  Since 1905 the one thing for which they had lived, besides the caoutchouc, was to see the monarchy restored and their beloved Alejandro the Thirteenth back on his throne. Their efforts toward this end had been untiring, and were at last showing signs of bearing fruit. Paranoya, Maraquita assured Roland, was honeycombed with intrigue. The army was disaffected, the people anxious for a return to the old order of things.

  A more propitious moment for striking the decisive blow was never likely to arrive. The question was purely one of funds.

  At the mention of the word “funds,” Roland, who had become thoroughly bored with the lecture on Paranoyan history, sat up and took notice. He had an instinctive feeling that he was about to be called upon for a subscription to the cause of the distressful country’s freedom. Especially by Bombito.

  He was right. A moment later Maraquita began to make a speech.

  She spoke in Paranoyan, and Roland could not follow her, but he gathered that it somehow had reference to himself.

  As, at the end of it, the entire company rose to their feet and extended their glasses toward him with a mighty shout, he assumed that Maraquita had been proposing his health.

  “They say ‘To the liberator of Paranoya!’” kindly translated the Peerless One. “You must excuse,” said Maraquita tolerantly, as a bevy of patriots surrounded Roland and kissed him on the cheek. “They are so grateful to the savior of our country. I myself would kiss you, were it not that I have sworn that no man’s lips shall touch mine till the royal standard floats once more above the palace of Paranoya. But that will be soon, very soon,” she went on. “With you on our side we can not fail.”

  What did the woman mean? Roland asked himself wildly. Did she labor under the distressing delusion that he proposed to shed his blood on behalf of a deposed monarch to whom he had never been introduced?

  Maraquita’s next remarks made the matter clear.

  “I have told them,” she said, “that you love me, that you are willing to risk everything for my sake. I have promised them that you, the rich Senor Bleke, will supply the funds for the revolution. Once more, comrades. To the Savior of Paranoya!”

  Roland tried his hardest to catch the infection of this patriotic enthusiasm, but somehow he could not do it. Base, sordid, mercenary speculations would intrude themselves. About how much was a good, well-furnished revolution likely to cost? As delicately as he could, he put the question to Maraquita.

  She said, “Poof! The cost? La, la!” Which was all very well, but hardly satisfactory as a business chat. However, that was all Roland could get out of her.

  The next few days passed for Roland in a sort of dream. It was the kind of dream which it is not easy to distinguish from a nightmare.

  Maraquita’s reticence at the supper-party on the subject of details connected with the financial side of revolutions entirely disappeared. She now talked nothing but figures, and from the confused mass which she presented to him Roland was able to gather that, in financing the restoration of royalty in Paranoya, he would indeed be risking everything for her sake.

  In the matter of revolutions Maraquita was no niggard. She knew how the thing should be done—well, or not at all. There would be so much for rifles, machine-guns, and what not: and there would be so much for the expense of smuggling them into the country. Then there would be so much to be laid out in corrupting the republican army. Roland brightened a little when they came to this item. As the standing army of Paranoya amounted to twenty thousand men, and as it seemed possible to corrupt it thoroughly at a cost of about thirty shillings a head, the obvious course, to Roland’s way of thinking was to concentrate on this side of the question and avoid unnecessary bloodshed.

  It appeared, however, that Maraquita did not want to avoid bloodshed, that she rather liked bloodshed, that the leaders of the revolution would be disappointed if there were no bloodshed. Especially Bombito. Unless, she pointed out, there was a certain amount of carnage, looting, and so on, the revolution would not achieve a popular success. True, the beloved Alejandro might be restored; but he would sit upon a throne that was insecure, unless the coronation festivities took a bloodthirsty turn. By all means, said Maraquita, corrupt the army, but not at the risk of making the affair tame and unpopular. Paranoya was an emotional country, and liked its revolutions with a bit of zip to them.

  It was about ten days after he had definitely cast in his lot with the revolutionary party that Roland was made aware that these things were a little more complex than he had imagined. He had reconciled himself to the financial outlay. It had been difficult, but he had done it. That his person as well as his purse would be placed in peril he had not foreseen.

  The fact was borne in upon him at the end of the second week by the arrival of the deputation.

  It blew in from the street just as he was enjoying his after-dinner cigar.

  It consisted of three men, one long and suave, the other two short, stout, and silent. They all had the sallow complexion and undue hairiness which he had come by this time to associate with the native of Paranoya.

  For a moment he mistook them for a drove of exiled noblemen whom he had not had the pleasure of meeting at the supper-party; and he waited resignedly for them to make night hideous with the royal anthem. He poised himself on his toes, the more readily to spring aside if they should try to kiss him on the cheek.

  “Mr. Bleke?” said the long man.

  His companions drifted toward the cigar-box which stood open on the table, and looked at it wistfully.

  “Long live the monarchy,” said Roland wearily. He had gathered in the course of his dealings with the exiled ones that this remark generally went well.

  On the present occasion it elicited no outburst of cheering. On the contrary, the long man frowned, and his two companions helped themselves to a handful of cigars apiece with a marked moodiness.

  “Death to the monarchy,” corrected the long man coldly. “And,” he added with a wealth of meaning in his voice, “to all who meddle in the affairs of our beloved country and seek to do it harm.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Roland.

  “Yes, Senor Bleke, you do know what I mean. I mean that you will be well advised to abandon the schemes which you are hatching with the malcontents who would do my beloved land an injury.”

  Th
e conversation was growing awkward. Roland had got so into the habit of taking it for granted that every Paranoyan he met must of necessity be a devotee of the beloved Alejandro that it came as a shock to him to realize that there were those who objected to his restoration to the throne. Till now he had looked on the enemy as something in the abstract. It had not struck him that the people for whose correction he was buying all these rifles and machine-guns were individuals with a lively distaste for having their blood shed.

  “Senor Bleke,” resumed the speaker, frowning at one of his companions whose hand was hovering above the bottle of liqueur brandy, “you are a man of sense. You know what is safe and what is not safe. Believe me, this scheme of yours is not safe. You have been led away, but there is still time to withdraw. Do so, and all is well. Do not so, and your blood be upon your own head.”

  “My blood!” gasped Roland.

  The speaker bowed.

  “That is all,” he said. “We merely came to give the warning. Ah, Senor Bleke, do not be rash. You think that here, in this great London of yours, you are safe. You look at the policeman upon the corner of the road, and you say to yourself ‘I am safe.’ Believe me, not at all so is it, but much the opposite. We have ways by which it is of no account the policeman on the corner of the road. That is all, Senor Bleke. We wish you a good night.”

  The deputation withdrew.

  Maraquita, informed of the incident, snapped her fingers, and said “Poof!” It sometimes struck Roland that she would be more real help in a difficult situation if she could get out of the habit of saying “Poof!”

  “It is nothing,” she said.

  “No?” said Roland.

  “We easily out-trick them, isn’t it? You make a will leaving your money to the Cause, and then where are they, hein?”

  It was one way of looking at it, but it brought little balm to Roland. He said so. Maraquita scanned his face keenly.

  “You are not weakening, Rolan?” she said. “You would not betray us now?”

  “Well, of course, I don’t know about betraying, you know, but still–-. What I mean is–-“

  Maraquita’s eyes seemed to shoot forth two flames.

  “Take care,” she cried. “With me it is nothing, for I know that your heart is with Paranoya. But, if the others once had cause to suspect that your resolve was failing—ah! If Bombito–-“

  Roland took her point. He had forgotten Bombito for the moment.

  “For goodness’ sake,” he said hastily, “don’t go saying anything to Bombito to give him the idea that I’m trying to back out. Of course you can rely on me, and all that. That’s all right.”

  Maraquita’s gaze softened. She raised her glass—they were lunching at the time—and put it to her lips.

  “To the Savior of Paranoya!” she said.

  “Beware!” whispered a voice in Roland’s ear.

  He turned with a start. A waiter was standing behind him, a small, dark, hairy man. He was looking into the middle distance with the abstracted air which waiters cultivate.

  Roland stared at him, but he did not move.

  That evening, returning to his flat, Roland was paralyzed by the sight of the word “Beware” scrawled across the mirror in his bedroom. It had apparently been done with a diamond. He rang the bell.

  “Sir?” said the competent valet. (“Competent valets are in attendance at each of these flats.”—_Advt._)

  “Has any one been here since I left?”

  “Yes, sir. A foreign-looking gentleman called. He said he knew you, sir. I showed him into your room.”

  The same night, well on in the small hours, the telephone rang. Roland dragged himself out of bed.

  “Hullo?”

  “Is that Senor Bleke?”

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “Beware!”

  Things were becoming intolerable. Roland had a certain amount of nerve, but not enough to enable him to bear up against this sinister persecution. Yet what could he do? Suppose he did beware to the extent of withdrawing his support from the royalist movement, what then? Bombito. If ever there was a toad under the harrow, he was that toad. And all because a perfectly respectful admiration for the caoutchouc had led him to occupy a stage-box several nights in succession at the theater where the peerless Maraquita tied herself into knots.

  There was an air of unusual excitement in Maraquita’s manner at their next meeting.

  “We have been in communication with Him,” she whispered. “He will receive you. He will give an audience to the Savior of Paranoya.”

  “Eh? Who will?”

  “Our beloved Alejandro. He wishes to see his faithful servant. We are to go to him at once.”

  “Where?”

  “At his own house. He will receive you in person.”

  Such was the quality of the emotions through which he had been passing of late, that Roland felt but a faint interest at the prospect of meeting face to face a genuine—if exiled—monarch. The thought did flit through his mind that they would sit up a bit in old Fineberg’s office if they could hear of it, but it brought him little consolation.

  The cab drew up at a gloomy-looking house in a fashionable square. Roland rang the door-bell. There seemed a certain element of the prosaic in the action. He wondered what he should say to the butler.

  There was, however, no need for words. The door opened, and they were ushered in without parley. A butler and two footmen showed them into a luxuriously furnished anteroom. Roland entered with two thoughts running in his mind. The first was that the beloved Alejandro had got an uncommonly snug crib; the second that this was exactly like going to see the dentist.

  Presently the squad of retainers returned, the butler leading.

  “His Majesty will receive Mr. Bleke.”

  Roland followed him with tottering knees.

  His Majesty, King Alejandro the Thirteenth, on the retired list, was a genial-looking man of middle age, comfortably stout about the middle and a little bald as to the forehead. He might have been a prosperous stock-broker. Roland felt more at his ease at the very sight of him.

  “Sit down, Mr. Bleke,” said His Majesty, as the door closed. “I have been wanting to see you for some time.”

  Roland had nothing to say. He was regaining his composure, but he had a long way to go yet before he could feel thoroughly at home.

  King Alejandro produced a cigaret-case, and offered it to Roland, who shook his head speechlessly. The King lit a cigaret and smoked thoughtfully for a while.

  “You know, Mr. Bleke,” he said at last, “this must stop. It really must. I mean your devoted efforts on my behalf.”

  Roland gaped at him.

  “You are a very young man. I had expected to see some one much older. Your youth gives me the impression that you have gone into this affair from a spirit of adventure. I can assure you that you have nothing to gain commercially by interfering with my late kingdom. I hope, before we part, that I can persuade you to abandon your idea of financing this movement to restore me to the throne.

  “I don’t understand—er—your majesty.”

  “I will explain. Please treat what I shall say as strictly confidential. You must know, Mr. Bleke, that these attempts to re-establish me as a reigning monarch in Paranoya are, frankly, the curse of an otherwise very pleasant existence. You look surprized? My dear sir, do you know Paranoya? Have you ever been there? Have you the remotest idea what sort of life a King of Paranoya leads? I have tried it, and I can assure you that a coal-heaver is happy by comparison. In the first place, the climate of the country is abominable. I always had a cold in the head. Secondly, there is a small but energetic section of the populace whose sole recreation it seems to be to use their monarch as a target for bombs. They are not very good bombs, it is true, but one in, say, ten explodes, and even an occasional bomb is unpleasant if you are the target.

  “Finally, I am much too fond of your delightful country to wish to leave it. I was educated in England—I am a Magdalene Coll
ege man—and I have the greatest horror of ever being compelled to leave it. My present life suits me exactly. That is all I wished to say, Mr. Bleke. For both our sakes, for the sake of my comfort and your purse, abandon this scheme of yours.”

  Roland walked home thoughtfully. Maraquita had left the royal residence long before he had finished the whisky-and-soda which the genial monarch had pressed upon him. As he walked, the futility of his situation came home to him more and more. Whatever he did, he was bound to displease somebody; and these Paranoyans were so confoundedly impulsive when they were vexed.

  For two days he avoided Maraquita. On the third, with something of the instinct which draws the murderer to the spot where he has buried the body, he called at her house.

  She was not present, but otherwise there was a full gathering. There were the marquises; there were the counts; there was Bombito.

  He looked unhappily round the crowd.

  Somebody gave him a glass of champagne. He raised it.

  “To the revolution,” he said mechanically.

  There was a silence—it seemed to Roland an awkward silence. As if he had said something improper, the marquises and counts began to drift from the room, till only Bombito was left. Roland regarded him with some apprehension. He was looking larger and more unusual than ever.

  But to-night, apparently, Bombito was in genial mood. He came forward and slapped Roland on the shoulder. And then the remarkable fact came to light that Bombito spoke English, or a sort of English.

  “My old chap,” he said. “I would have a speech with you.”

  He slapped Roland again on the shoulder.

  “The others they say, ‘Break it with Senor Bleke gently.’ Maraquita say ‘Break it with Senor Bleke gently.’ So I break it with you gently.”

  He dealt Roland a third stupendous punch. Whatever was to be broken gently, it was plain to Roland that it was not himself. And suddenly there came to him a sort of intuition that told him that Bombito was nervous.