Part 2

I had no sooner turned my gaze on the ruined lighthouse when a big bat swooped down at me out of the darkness. Only the night before, one of them had got into my bedroom. I've never been able to overcome my early fear of these nocturnal flying mammals. To my childish imagination, they were the very spirits of evil. I was in no mood this night to be pestered by them. A vague uneasiness possessed me, an uneasiness caused on one hand by Henry's strained and haggard look, and on the other, by his encouraging Prince Matani's attentions to Pat.

Perhaps at the moment, his crazy quest in interstellar communication annoyed me most. I had already suggested to Jane that we send him to a psychoanalyst to be overhauled. This delving into the unknown was too ponderable a matter for a man of his years. It had become fixed on his mind with all the power of an obsession. All that day he had not stirred from his observatory, and now Olinski was coming from town to give a verbal report of his own findings. Much cogitation, much secrecy was, in effect, nothing at all. Unless they now had found the key. Was it possible that Olinski might be bringing a transcribed cipher of a radio message from Mars? His eager acceptance of the invitation to dinner seemed to hold an important significance for Henry.

Desperately bothered by both problems which confronted me, the bats made things more annoying still. Then, sudden-like, in the haunting stillness, I saw something moving towards me from the blackish void of trees and shrubbery bordering the west end of the terrace. At first, I was conscious only of an oncoming shadow, advancing with a rapid, noiseless movement.

I could feel my pulse jumping. Whoever or whatever it was, there was a risk. Rather than face the risk, I moved quietly but swiftly across the terrace towards the front door. But that did not stop the oncoming something; it had suddenly changed its direction and was coming right at me.

Luckily at that moment, the lights were turned on in the lower part of the castle. Then Orkins opened the front door, and gave voice to a surprised exclamation as he saw me making hurriedly for the doorway.

Suddenly I stopped, and turned. The glow of a floor lamp in the entrance hall had spread fanwise across the terrace, and into this arc of light strode--Serge Olinski.

"Oh, hello, Olinski!" I exclaimed, with respectful familiarity, and very cordially, stretching out my hand, and smiling to myself at the start he had given me, coming like an abortive something out of the shadows of the terrace. "That you?"

"Yes; it is I," Olinski replied, shaking my proferred hand, and breathing rather heavily.

I faced a short, dumpy, middle-aged man, with a paunch, and a Russian cast of countenance. Small, intelligent black eyes gleamed through shell-rimmed glasses, from a round face fringed with a short, black beard. He carried his hat, and I observed that his primly sleeked hair was as black as his beard. I had a suspicion that he dyed them.

"I caught an early train from the city, in order to enjoy the benefit of a walk from the village to your beautiful castle," he explained, half breathlessly, "after a most exacting but successful day in the laboratory. A million apologies if I have delayed your dinner."

"Time is infinite in the country, especially on a fine night like this," I remarked lightly, as we entered the hall, and Orkins relieved him of his black top-coat and hat. His dinner jacket, I noticed, was much too small for him, and his waistcoat so short that it came perilously near revealing a section of his middle-age bulge. There were soup stains on his shirt-front, which indicated that his shirt had been out to dinner before.

As I waved him to a chair, I said: "You're really very punctual, even if you avoided our car which was sent to the station to meet you, and walked here. You can depend upon it, Prince Matani will not miss the chance to drive to the castle in state when he steps off the train."

Unconsciously my lips sneered as I spoke the young princeling's name. Olinski nodded and smiled understandingly. "Ah!" he said. "I take it that you do not look with favor on the match your scholarly brother is about to arrange between your charming niece and my noble countryman?"

"To be frank, no," I replied.

"So I gathered. And why?"

"I have very strong reasons for opposing their marriage," I said; "and my sister, Jane, is just as dead set against it as I am. Every one knows that the Prince came to America to make a rich and advantageous marriage. Pat will soon come into a large inheritance from her mother's estate, and we don't want her to throw her fortune and herself away on this--this penniless, titled gigolo."

Olinski chuckled. "Perhaps just a trifle over-perfumed for a man," he said, "and addicted to the habit of biting his fingernails, but such details cannot detract from his royalty. He dances divinely. He seems to be your niece's devoted slave."

"He's been camping on our door-step all summer," I retorted. "Why Henry favors such a nincompoop, I cannot imagine."

"But the charming Patricia seems to have lost her head over him," Olinski rejoined. "So what can you do?"

"It's up to you to do something," I answered, promptly. "You are in a position to know all the discreditable incidents in the Prince's past, and your word carries great weight with Henry. Surely you do not believe that he really loves Pat?"

"Only for her money," Olinski replied. "A make-believe of love. Froth in an empty glass. He needs the money to get his coronet out of pawn, and get the gas and water turned on at the seedy, shabby chateau in France he calls his castle."

"Then you will tell Henry the truth about this threadbare, titled foreigner?"

"Ah, my friend, that will be a great pleasure, although he is the genuine article, you know. I can't disprove his claim to the title."

"After all, I suppose you have a certain fondness for the Prince," I suggested.

"Not at all," Olinski replied, almost wrathfully. "He is the most impudent person I ever met. At the last dinner we attended together, what do you think he said to me? He accused me of smelling of garlic. Did you ever hear of anything quite so low? As God is my witness, I detest that evil-smelling plant, garlic."

He clicked his teeth, and went on with desperate finality.

"I will tell you one thing more, and then I shall have told you enough. Your niece and Prince Matani should never marry, for he has a hereditary malady--sudden and violent attacks which produce unconsciousness. Some great excitement, and, then--pst!--he falls unconscious. At Monte Carlo, he gambled all he had, and lost. Pst!"

"Shocking!" I murmured.

"No doubt about its being hereditary," Olinski continued. "When the Czar of Russia first bestowed the title of prince upon his great-grandfather, Carlos, for his war-like feats, what does his great-grandfather do but get so excited he falls in convulsions at the feet of the emperor."

"What luck!" I reflected as soon as Olinski had finished. An intimate little peep into the private life of a royal personage, if ever there was one! And I was about to voice my appreciation for this absolute proof that the Prince was not a proper person to marry Pat when Henry entered, immaculately swallow-tailed for dinner.

Seizing Olinski's hand, he shook it heartily. "And you walked all the way from the station?" he exclaimed. "How extraordinary! But I'm glad you've come ahead of our Prince Charming. It's very important that we should get together, at once."

Linking his arm in Olinski's, he marched him off to the far end of the hall. Their heads together, whispering excitedly, and putting so much meaning in words that meant nothing to me, because I could not hear what they said, it was easy to assume that they had made some important and startling discovery in their crazy quest of exchanging radio communications with Mars.

I was diplomatic enough to leave them to themselves. A few minutes later, Jane appeared on the scene, and after greeting our guest, I took her to one side, as I was burning to tell her what Olinski had said. Jane is a plump, gushing soul, with soft, silvery hair, and very distinguished in her manner. She had sponsored Pat's formal coming-out the previous winter, and felt her responsibility keenly.

After she had heard all I had to report, she said: "Well, that's something. But things still seem to be against us. The spark of desire to be a princess or duchess burns in every girl's nature, whether she's rich or poor. Pat is just pent up with romance, but she's never had a chance to express it until Prince Matani came along."

"Just a lot of romantic piffle," I said. "What we need is some artful lead to get her mind off the Prince."

"I'm afraid it's too late," she sighed. "Even if Mr. Olinski tells Henry everything that you've just told me, he'll simply turn up his nose. Henry's as obstinate as a mule once his mind gets set on something, and it wouldn't surprise me a bit if he announced their betrothal at dinner, tonight."

Pat's future now appearing to be an unpleasant speculation, and feeling utterly disheartened about the whole situation, for I was enormously fond of her, I was about to go to Henry and speak my mind, when she suddenly appeared in the picture.

I had often thought of having a great artist do a study in oils of Pat coming down our great, stone staircase; she does it so gracefully and with such regal poise. Slim, brown-haired, and blue-eyed, no one could look at her without being enthralled. Her fragility, like a rare piece of Dresden china, was most appealing; she was so intensely feminine. She looked particularly lovely this night in her simple dinner frock, the soft and filmy draperies seeming to envelop her like a pastel-tinted cloud.

As Olinski advanced eagerly to meet her, she favored him with a delightful smile. He bowed low and kissed her hand, not in a perfunctory, European-custom way, but rather warmly and explosively.

"My dear Patricia!" he exclaimed. "You look--adorable."

"And you look hungry," she returned his compliment with a mischievous twinkle.

"And so I am," Olinski replied.

"As soon as I knew you were coming for dinner, I asked Aunt Jane to have one of your favorite desserts prepared--steamed peach roly-poly, with cream sauce," Pat informed him.

"Thank you for being so thoughtful and nice," he said under his breath.

"Of course, I never allow Pat to touch sweets," said Jane. "Girls of her age should keep their angles as long as possible."

"Speaking of angles," Olinski remarked, good-humoredly, "I've often wondered how Prince Matani, who dines out so much, manages to keep his angles."

"Oh, the Prince!" said Jane, taken a little unawares. "He is very slender, isn't he?"

"And very handsome and distinguished looking," Pat interjected, softly but emphatically.

Jane gave a little snort. "I hadn't noticed that particularly," she said, rather coldly, and walked away.

It was so unlike Jane's usual tone and manner that Pat looked after her in surprise, and then her anxious eyes met Olinski's.

"What is the trouble?" he asked, obviously to draw her out. "Is it possible that your Aunt is unfriendly to the young man with whom you're in love?"

She looked at him and laughed softly. "In love with Prince Matani? How amusing."

"But he seems to be very much interested in you," said Olinski. "Most girls would consider his attentions a supreme compliment. Is it possible that you're not in love with him?"

"I'm almost tempted to tell you," she answered with calm, amused eyes, "but I think I'd better leave you to make your own discoveries, just as you and Uncle Henry are doing about Mars--perhaps you'll get more fun out of it!"

And then Orkins announced: "His Highness Prince Matani."

III

Prince Matani was certainly good-looking and _distingué_; slender and dark, with an absurdly small black mustache plastered over his rather thick and sensuous lips. Scrupulously dressed for dinner, every detail of him indicated the care he devoted to his person.

Bowing formally and stiffly on entering the hall, he looked past us and made a swift movement forward to Pat's side. He kissed her hand with dazzling grace. Then he turned his brilliant smile upon her, and beneath that smile, greatly to my alarm, she seemed as wax.

The cocktail prelude to dinner was unavoidably lengthened to a quarter of an hour, for Jane was called unexpectedly to the telephone. Her absence left Henry and Olinski still conversing earnestly at one end of the hall, while I sat patiently at the other end, under the staircase, fidgeting with my glass, and glancing around anxiously from time to time at Pat and the Prince, who were sitting informally, but luxuriously, on some cushions the Prince had placed on the lower steps of the stairs. Sipping at her cocktail Pat seemed to become more and more responsive to the young nobleman's flatteries.

Presently my position grew to be a most embarrassing one. While their voices came to me at first only in murmured undertones, I became suddenly conscious of hearing every word they said. Any attempt at eavesdropping is beneath my dignity, but confronting a situation so fateful and momentous in Pat's life, with the Prince exercising his fascinations upon her, I cast aside my principles and listened. And of all the fatuous, syrupy conversations, I had never heard the like before.

"It was so awfully, awfully sweet of you to ask me to dinner tonight," the Prince was saying in a low, rapturous voice.

"But I didn't invite you," Pat countered. "Uncle Henry did, for some reason or other."

"Some excellent reason, I hope," said the Prince. "He seems to appreciate my chivalrous devotion to you, my unselfishness and utter trustworthiness. And a truer help-mate I could never find. You are such a sweet-natured and lovable girl."

"You have said that before, Your Highness," Pat gently reminded him.

"And I shall say it a thousand times again," he answered. "True, I am well-born but penniless. But, please--please don't say that your regard for me is compounded more of pity than of love."

"We'll talk about that, after dinner, shall we?" Pat suggested artfully.

"Your pleasure is my pleasure," he said. "Yes; we'll talk about that after dinner. We'll take a stroll in the garden, where the night air is intoxicating with its rich aroma of flowers. Or on the terrace, whichever you like. It's such a terribly sweet night, we mustn't miss it."

"I love sweet nights, don't you?" Pat cooed.

"They are very useful at times," the Prince rejoined. "What would you say if, in the sweet darkness, I found a pair of sweet lips."

"Oh, Your Highness! You wouldn't dare!" Pat exclaimed, in a disturbed voice. "I've always found you so--so perfectly trustworthy in the dark. Besides, taking undue advantage of a helpless young lady is only done by bores of the lower classes."

"Oh dear, no!" the Prince responded. "You're quite wrong there. The most extraordinary things happen to people in our class. Sort of dignified things, you know." Then he laid his hand on hers. "My dear," he went on, "I think you have offered every excuse there is. What I want now is to be told exactly what you think of me."

"I will also tell you that, tonight--after dinner," Pat replied, evasively.

"But I cannot--I cannot possess my soul in patience," he said. "I must know now--at this very moment. But if you are cruel, and spurn me--you, so gentle-souled, who would never intentionally hurt a fly, I know,--I will leap off the cliff. Men of my race, in love or in war, always act on the spur of the moment. You don't want me to jump off your cliff?"

"Listen, Your Highness," answered Pat. "This is what I want you to do for me. Just nothing at all."

"I'm afraid you'll have to grin and bear it--this deed of violence. But it will be a happy death."

"It'll put us all to a lot of trouble," Pat sighed.

"That's true. I hadn't thought of that. You'll have to buy orchids and go to my funeral."

"No; I'll have to go to the autopsy, first," she corrected him.

To my great astonishment, she seemed perfectly informed on that subject, probably from reading so many murder mystery stories.

"Very well," the Prince concurred; "perhaps it would be foolish for me to jump off your cliff. Some perfectly innocent person, like--well, like your Uncle Livingston--might be accused of pushing me off, and there would be a murder trial, and all those horrid newspaper reporters and photographers would make your life miserable. No; I cannot let the innocent suffer."

At this juncture, their voices trailed off again into indistinctness, leaving me in a mood to give the Prince all the encouragement he needed in his threat to jump off our cliff. Most unjust of me, but most human, I fear. At any rate, their tête-à-tête was soon interrupted by the return of Jane, and, a few minutes later, by Orkins' dignified announcement that dinner was served.

I was further agitated in mind when Henry linked arms with Pat and the Prince, and, walking between them, escorted the romantic pair to the dining room. The definite warmth with which he treated the Prince seemed to settle the matter. The announcement of their engagement seemed an assured thing. When we were finally seated at the candle-lit table, I began to pray silently, though desperately, that something might happen to stay Pat's unfortunate romance with the Prince, in what I felt to be its penultimate stage.

Luckily something did happen. Altogether, it was an extraordinary meal. We had just passed from soup to fish, when the telephone in the library, adjoining the dining room, began to trill, and what occurred after that, so disturbed Henry's peace of mind that the affair between Pat and the Prince became of secondary importance to him.

Niki, Henry's slim but powerfully muscled valet and bodyguard, was relieving Orkins and the second man during the serving of dinner. From my place at the table, I watched him through the wide connecting doorway as he answered the persistent telephone calls in the library, and curtly dismissed them with a quick hang-up of the receiver. Finally, when the bell began to trill at five minute intervals, he left the hook off the receiver, and stepped into the dining room and approached Henry.

"Pardon," he said, in his smooth, suave manner, and bowing low, "but there have been many telephone calls for you. The same voice in each case. The gentleman says it is veree important, but he will not give his name."

Henry nodded thoughtfully, and said: "And what does the gentleman require of me, Niki?"

"An appointment for an interview, sir, if you would be so kind," said Niki. "A very agitated gentleman, I gathered, sir."

"Very good, Niki," said Henry. "Tell the agitated gentleman that I will make an appointment to see him at nine o'clock tonight. Say that I am at dinner and cannot be disturbed at present."

Niki bowed, and started to withdraw.

"On second thought, Niki," Henry called after him, "tell the gentleman that I will make the appointment only on condition that he identifies himself--now."

Returning in a few moments, Niki said: "The gentleman says to tell you his name is Meester Robert McGinity."

Henry looked at him in quick astonishment, and then made a face expressive of extreme displeasure. "Is Mr. McGinity still on the wire? Yes; well, then, go back and tell him that under no consideration will I grant him an interview. You understand?"

Niki bowed understandingly, and re-entered the library, where he delivered Henry's ultimatum, which silenced the telephone during the remainder of the dinner.

Although Henry strove mightily to pretend unconcern, I could easily see that McGinity's telephone call had upset him terribly. His face became more drawn and whiter than it had been. I sensed at once that he had been thrown into a state of perturbation and dismay, in the belief that the reporter had somehow obtained inside information on the result of his and Olinski's research work in interplanetary radio communication, as he had on the comet.

Olinski seemed equally perturbed. "McGinity! The reporter?" he gasped. "Do you think he's found out anything?"

Henry smiled grimly, and replied: "He must have some knowledge of our discovery or he wouldn't have called up. As our first move, we must find out where the leak is, and stop it."

As he finished speaking, he glanced over his shoulder at Orkins, who was standing at his side with a bottle of sherry in his hand. Orkins, whom I had always regarded as a secretive, suspicious person, despite his dignified appearance as a well-trained butler, leaned over and spoke to Henry, which was an unusual proceeding on his part.

As he refilled Henry's glass with sherry, I heard him mutter: "If you've any suspicions about any of the servants in the house, sir, it's your plain duty to say so."

Henry looked coldly at the butler out of the corner of his eye, and replied, in a low voice: "I have no suspicions at all, Orkins, in that direction." Then his attention was attracted to Olinski, who said: "Your best move will be to continue to exercise the utmost caution, and to prevent any possible personal contact with this reporter."

Henry wagged his head defiantly. "He's certainly a mono-maniac on the subject of news, but I've got my eye on him now, and I'll give him something to try his teeth on. He'll never get the best of me again--never!"

At that point, Pat chimed in. "What's all this fuss about a reporter?" she asked. "Is this Mr. McGinity, who just called, the same reporter who got the first news about the comet?"

"The same cheeky rascal," Olinski replied; "and now, apparently, he's bent on getting some advance information about our experiments in interplanetary radio communication."

"And aren't you going to oblige him, Uncle Henry?" Pat inquired.

Henry's eyebrows went up. "Oblige him? Certainly not."

"It will be the perfect imbecility on this reporter's part to try and get anything out of your Uncle, or me, on our latest discovery," Olinski explained. "The time is not yet ripe for any sort of public announcement."

"If he's a live-wire reporter," I offered, "and he seems to be just that, I'm afraid he'll go the limit in getting what he's after."

"Of course he will," Pat smiled. "Now that Uncle Henry has refused to be interviewed, he'll try some other means to get at him. Oh, the life of a reporter must be terribly thrilling! One reads so much about them in detective and mystery stories." She paused for a moment, and then continued, half musingly. "I wonder what he's like--this Mr. McGinity--this mono-maniac on the subject of news. Did you ever meet him, personally, Uncle Henry?"

Henry nodded, and replied grudgingly: "I met him personally, not long after he had tricked me into giving him the news of the comet. I was acting as toastmaster at the annual banquet of the Colonial Lords of Manors, and he was reporting the dinner. He tried to be friendly, but I squelched him good and plenty."

"Oh, how interesting!" Pat enthused. "Tell me, please! Is he young and good-looking?"

Henry's head jerked up. He did some rapid thinking, and then he lied firmly: "He's an oldish person, fat and awkward, and almost bald."

Pat smiled faintly, and did not have much to say after that. I divined that her little bubble of romantic anticipation had been pricked, but as she had no suspicions then, and had accepted Henry's description of the reporter as truthful, I passed it up. Considering Henry's position at the moment, I could not very well cross purposes with him and enlighten her. I happened to have been present at the same banquet, and I could have offered her a vastly different picture of the reporter from the fraudulent one Henry had painted.

An uncomfortable silence followed. The Prince was looking at Pat quizzically. "Well, what about it?" he said suddenly.

"About what?" she replied.