Chapter 18

A MORNING VISIT

In an upper room in the Palace of the Litany, fair with all the burnished devices of the early light, Prince Tabnit paced on that morning of mornings of his marriage day. Because of his great happiness the whole world seemed to him like some exquisite intaglio of which this day was the design.

The room, "walled with soft splendours of Damascus tiles," was laid with skins of forgotten animals and was hung with historic tapestries dyed by ancient fingers in the spiral veins of the Murex. There were frescoes uniting the dream with its actuality, columns carved with both lines and names of beauty, pilasters decorated with chain and checker-work and golden nets. A stairway led to a high shrine where hung the crucified Tyrian sphinx. The room was like a singing voice summoning one to delights which it described. But whatever way one looked all the lines neither pointed nor seemed to have had beginning, but being divorced from source and direction expressed merely beauty, like an altar "where none cometh to pray."

Prince Tabnit, in his trailing robe of white embroidered by a thousand needles, looked so akin to the room that one suspected it of having produced him, Athena-wise, from, say, the great black shrine. When he paused before the shrine he seemed like a child come to beseech some last word concerning the Riddle, rather than a man who believed himself to have mastered all wisdom and to have nailed the world-sphinx to her cross.

"Surely there is a vein for the silver And a place for the gold where they fine it. Iron is taken out of the earth And brass is moulton out of the stone. Man setteth an end to darkness And searcheth out all perfection: The stones of darkness and of the shadow of death,"

he was repeating softly. "So it is," he added, "'and searcheth to the farthest bound.' Have I not done so? And do I not triumph?"

Then the youth who had once admitted St. George and his friends to that far-away house in McDougle Street--with the hokey-pokey man outside the door--entered with the poetry of deference; and if, as he bent low, there was a lift and droop of his eyelids which tokened utter bewilderment, not to say agitation, he was careful that the prince should not see that.

"Her Highness, the Princess of Yaque, Mrs. Hastings, Mr. Augustus Frothingham and Miss Frothingham ask audience, your Highness," he announced clearly.

Prince Tabnit turned swiftly.

"Whom do you say, Matten?" he questioned and when the boy had repeated the names, meditated briefly. He was at a loss to fathom what this strange visit might portend; beyond doubt, he reflected (in a world which was an intaglio of his own designing) it portended nothing at all. He hastened forward to wait upon them and paused midway the room, for the highest tribute that a Prince of the Litany could pay to another was to receive him in this chamber of the Crucified Sphinx.

"Conduct them here, Matten," he commanded, and took up his station beside an hundred-branched candlestick made in Curium. There he stood when, having been led down corridors of ivory and through shining anterooms, Mrs. Hastings and Olivia and Antoinette appeared on the threshold of the chamber, followed by Mr. Frothingham. As the prince hastened forward to meet them with sweepings of his gown embroidered by a thousand needles and bent above their hands uttering gracious words, assuredly in all the history of Med and of the Litany the room of the Crucified Sphinx had never presented a more peculiar picture.

Into that tranquil atmosphere, dream-pervaded, Mrs. Medora Hastings swept with all the certainty of an opinion bludgeoning the frail security of a fact. She had refused to have her belongings sent to the apartments in the House of the Litany placed that day at her disposal, preferring to dress for the coronation before she descended from Mount Khalak. She was therefore in a robe of black samite, trimmed with the fur of a whole chapter of extinct animals, and bangles and pendants of jewels bobbed and ticked all about her. But on her head she wore the bonnet trimmed with a parrot, set, as usual, frightfully awry. Beside her, with all the timidity of charming reality in the presence of fantasy, came Olivia and Antoinette--Olivia in a walking frock of white broadcloth, with an auto coat of hunting pink, and a cap held down by yards of cloudy veiling; Antoinette in a blue cloth gown, and about them both--stout little boots and suede gloves and smart shirt-waists--such an air of actuality as this chamber, prince and Sphinx and tradition and all, could not approach. Mr. Augustus Frothingham had struck his usual incontestable middle-ground by appearing in the blue velvet of a robe of State, over which he had slipped his light covert top-coat, and he carried his immaculate top-hat and a silver-headed stick.

"Prince Tabnit," said Mrs. Medora Hastings without ceremony, "what have they done with that poor young man? Ask him, Olivia," she besought, sinking down upon a chair of verd antique and extending a limp, plump hand to the niece who always did everything executive.

Olivia was very pale. She had hardly slept, night-long. Alarm at the inexplicable disappearance of St. George at dinner-time the day before and at the discovery that old Malakh was nowhere about had, by morning, deepened to unreasoning fear among them all. And then Olivia, knowing nothing of what had taken place in the room of the tombs, had resolved upon a desperate expedient, had bundled into an airship her almost prostrate aunt, Mr. Frothingham and his excited little daughter, and had borne down upon the Palace of the Litany two hours before noon. Amory, frantic with apprehension, had stayed behind with Jarvo, certain that St. George could not have left the mountain. But now that Olivia stood before the prince it required but a moment to convince her that Prince Tabnit really knew nothing of St. George's whereabouts. Indeed, since his gift of Phoenician wine, sealed three thousand years ago, and the immediate evanishment of the two Americans, his Highness had no longer vexed his thought with them, and he was genuinely amazed to know that (in a world which was an intaglio of his own designing) these two had actually spent yesterday at the king's palace on Mount Khalak. He perceived that he must give them more definite attention than his half-idle device of the wine--intended as that had been as a mere hyperspatial practical joke, not in the least irreconcilable with his office of host.

"Mr. St. George came to Yaque to help me find my father," Olivia was concluding earnestly, "and if anything has happened to him, Prince Tabnit, I alone am responsible."

The prince reflected for a moment, his eyes fixed upon the hundred-branched candlestick. Then:

"Mr. St. George's disappearance," he said, "has prevented a still more unpleasant catastrophe."

"Catastrophe!" repeated Mrs. Hastings, quite without tucking in her voice at the corners, "I have thought of no other word since I got to be royalty."

"A world experience, a world experience, dear Madame," contributed Mr. Frothingham, his hands laid trimly along his blue velvet lap.

"But that doesn't make it any easier to bear, no matter what anybody says," retorted the lady.

"Inasmuch," pursued Prince Tabnit with infinite regret, "as these Americans have, as you say, assisted in the search for your father, the king, they have most unfortunately violated that ancient law which provides that no State or satrapy shall receive aid, whether of blood or of bond, from an alien. The Royal House alone is exempt."

"And the penalty," demanded Olivia fearfully. "Is there a penalty? What is that, Prince Tabnit?"

The voice of the prince was never more mellow.

"Do not be alarmed, I beg," he hastened his reassurance. "Upon the return of Mr. St. George, he and his friend will simply be set adrift in a rudderless airship, an offering to the great idea of space."

Mrs. Hastings swayed toward the prince in her chair of verd antique, and her voice seemed to become brittle in the air.

"Oh, is that what you call being ahead of the time," she demanded shrilly, "getting behind science to behave like Nero? And for my