Part 9

“Women’s curiosity is the fatal weakness of the sex, my dear. A king is a king wherever you find him. And my advice to you is not to go braggin’ about and telling all hands that His Majesty has patronized the Jolly Mermaid.”

He trudged to the rear room, hat in hand, and timidly knocked on the door. As it was opened, the quick ear of Captain O’Shea heard the mysterious personage saying to the brisk young man:

“A steamer of the tonnage of this _Tyneshire Glen_ is what I wish. If your investigation has satisfied you that she is thoroughly sea-worthy and in good repair and Captain Handy also recommends her----”

The door closed behind Captain Handy, and O’Shea, glancing in that direction, smiled cynically and observed to Johnny Kent:

“Did ye size up this Handy man? You know the kind. Every big port has them: broken shipmasters, disrated mates, that aren’t fit to take a scow to sea.”

“Sure! They’ve borrowed money off me from Baltimore to Singapore. This Captain Handy must have sighted an easy mark in the offing.”

O’Shea pondered for a moment and asked:

“Did ye hear mention of the _Tyneshire Glen_ steamer just now? Do you happen to know the vessel? I can’t place her.”

Johnny Kent grunted as if he had sat upon a tack and answered with heated emphasis:

“Maybe it’s the old _Tyneshire Glen_ that was carryin’ cotton out of Savannah years ago. I went aboard to see her chief once and her plates was rusted so thin that I could have thrown a wrench through ’em.”

Captain Handy had left the door of the back room unlatched and a gusty draught of sea-breeze blew it partly open. The watchful pair in the tap-room had a glimpse of Captain Handy standing stolidly between His Majesty and the minister of finance, and heard him huskily declaim:

“The _Tyneshire Glen_ is a bargain at thirty thousand pounds, and you needn’t take my word for it. Baron Strothers here has interviewed the brokers that have her for sale, and he knows the price they put on her.”

“I have full confidence in the judgment of my minister of finance, with Captain Handy’s expert opinion to assist him,” easily replied His Majesty.

“Most of my papers were lost at sea,” hastily put in Captain Handy, as if to forestall an awkward question. “They were tied up together, your Royal ’ighness, when the _Falls of Clyde_ steamer went down and I saved the lives of forty-seven passengers and was the last man to leave her when she foundered under my feet. The newspapers praised me so that a modest man ’ud blush to repeat it.”

“Baron Strothers has investigated your record, so he informs me, and he advises me that you are to be depended upon,” was the warm assurance.

In the tap-room O’Shea chuckled skeptically and said to Johnny Kent:

“’Tis likely enough he lost his papers, but I mistrust his version of the story. What kind of a flim-flam is this, anyhow? The king and the minister of finance are discussing a rotten ship and a rotten skipper as if the both of them were to be taken seriously.”

After more conversation which the listeners failed to catch, the trio in the back room ended the session and prepared to leave the tavern. As they walked out past the bar Captain Handy was arguing with awkward gestures, the elderly personage was listening courteously, and the brisk young man alertly kept an eye on both, as though he had an absorbing interest in the interview. In front of the tavern they parted, Captain Handy to turn in the direction of the East India Docks, the puzzling pair of notables to seek the railroad station to London.

Upon O’Shea and Johnny Kent there fell a prolonged spell of silence. Each was piecing theories together and discarding them as unsatisfactory. Of one thing they were convinced. This royal visitation had not been an elaborate hoax, and the explanation of lunacy was finally and emphatically dismissed.

“’Tis no case of barnacles on the intellect,” was the verdict of O’Shea, “barrin’ the fact that he ought to have more sense than to listen to the palaver of a rascal like this Captain Handy. Why didn’t we think to follow them up and see where they went?”

“I’m too short-winded to make a good sleuth-hound, Cap’n Mike, and it ain’t dignified for a man of my years.”

“Well, then, who is this Captain Handy?” demanded O’Shea. “We’ll try another tack.”

He questioned the bar-maid, who was disappointing.

“The man never showed hisself in ’ere before,” said she. “You’re more likely to find out about ’im at the docks.”

“Say, Cap’n Mike,” exclaimed Johnny Kent with puckered brow, “ain’t there some kind of a book written about kings, their habits and their names, and the various breeds of ’em? And where you’re most apt to find ’em? Do they generally run around loose?”

“I’m not personally acquainted with a whole lot of them, Johnny; but as a rule ’tis safe to bet they don’t come wanderin’ into sailors’ taverns convoyed by the minister of finance.”

“Suppose we take his word for it,” was the suggestion. “Call him a king. He’s lookin’ for a ship and a captain, ain’t he?”

“Now you talk hard sense, Johnny. That’s where I pricked up my ears. Maybe we can cross his bows again if we look sharp.”

Next morning they carefully scrutinized the “Court Circular” of the London _Times_, and were more at sea than ever at discovering that the only visiting royalty comprised an unimportant cousin of the house of Hanover from a German duchy and the dusky ruler of a native state of India. That a full-fledged king and a minister of his cabinet, both indubitably Englishmen, could be strolling about London unnoticed by the newspapers and unknown to the public was fairly incredible, and yet no mention could anywhere be found of the illustrious patrons of the Jolly Mermaid, although O’Shea bought the morning journals by the fistful.

It occurred to him to pay a call at a ship-brokers’ office down in Leadenhall Street, and Johnny Kent rode with him on top of a ’bus. They had made the acquaintance of the managing partner of the firm under the palms of a Venezuelan seaport, and he cherished a strong friendship for this pair of adventurous rovers. He was anxious to find a ship for O’Shea, and the latter dropped in now and then in search of news.

The comrades twain were about to dodge through the traffic of Leadenhall Street and enter the office of their friend when O’Shea plucked Johnny Kent by the sleeve and pulled him back into an adjacent door-way. A brisk, sandy-haired young man was also doubling among the stream of vehicles which roared from curb to curb and aiming his course for the ship-brokers’ office.

“’Tis the minister of finance, Johnny,” cautiously spoke O’Shea. “Look at him. There he goes, right into Tavistock & Huntley’s, the same destination as ours.”

“Why not go in and meet him, Cap’n Mike? Maybe George Huntley will introduce us and we can slip in a few questions.”

“Because I do not like this sprightly right bower of royalty, Johnny. I took a violent dislike to the Baron Frederick Martin Strothers at first sight. And me hunches about people are worth heeding when they take hold of me as strong as this one did.”

They surmised that the brisk young man with the red waistcoat must have business to transact with Tavistock & Huntley, for he remained inside a good half-hour. Then the watchers caught no more than a farewell glimpse of him as he hastily emerged and popped into a passing hansom. Thereupon they sauntered into the ship-brokers’ office and were cordially greeted by George Huntley, managing partner, a stocky, bald-headed person who looked as substantial as a brick house. The spirit of romance was in him, however, and he secretly envied O’Shea his illogical pursuit of hazards for sheer love of them.

Steering them into a small private room, he plumped himself into the chair at the desk, waved them to a leather-covered lounge, and inquired with much gusto:

“And how are my disreputable friends this morning? Anything in the wind?”

“’Tis still blowing dead calm for us, but the weather is suspicious in one quarter of the compass,” answered O’Shea. “Tell me, George, what do you know about the young man that just now whisked out of here--the fancy lad with the loud vest and the high-steppin’ manner?”

Huntley tilted his chair, clasped his hands across a comfortable waistband, and replied in his deliberate way:

“I have laid eyes on him only twice. His name is Strothers, I believe, and he calls himself a baron. One of those Continental titles, I fancy. You buy them, you know. This day of last week he came into our place with Captain Handy, who used to sail in the Blue Anchor service.”

“Got into trouble with his owners, didn’t he?” interrupted O’Shea, at a guess.

“Yes. He lost a steamer in the Bay of Biscay, and the evidence went to show that he was drunk at the time. His certificate was taken away or suspended; I forget the details. A rather shabby lot is Handy. As I was about to tell you, O’Shea, the pair of them, Captain Handy and this spruce young man, Strothers, came in to ask our cash selling-price for the _Tyneshire Glen_, which is laid up in the East India Docks. We have no interest in the vessel beyond representing the owners, who want to get rid of her.”

“And did you give the precious pair of two-spots a price on her?” blandly inquired O’Shea.

“I offered them the _Tyneshire Glen_ for twenty-four thousand pounds as she stands,” replied Huntley. “It’s all she’s worth. She is a big steamer, almost five thousand tons, but she will need a lot of repairs. Captain Handy claimed that he had found a possible buyer in whose interests young Strothers was acting. Of course we were willing to pay Handy a decent commission if the deal went through.”

O’Shea looked sidewise at Johnny Kent, who, on occasions, was bright enough to see through a hole in a grindstone. They kept their thoughts to themselves, and O’Shea commented non-committally:

“Of course Captain Handy is entitled to a commission if he finds ye a customer for the steamer, George. ’Tis an honest chance for the poor divil to pick up a few dollars. And so the young man, Strothers, came back this morning? Do I show too much curiosity in asking what he had to say?”

“You are welcome to all I know. He told me that the gentleman whose interests he represented had inspected the _Tyneshire Glen_ yesterday and thought she would answer his purpose. The price was satisfactory and he would like a three-days’ option, which I was very willing to give him.”

“And the price was still twenty-four thousand pounds?” violently put in Johnny Kent with a snort as if his steam were rising.

“Precisely twenty-four thousand pounds, or one hundred and twenty thousand dollars of your Yankee currency or thereabouts. Are you thinking of buying her yourself, Johnny?” said Huntley with a broad smile.

“Not on your life,” was the fervent response. “I’d be afraid to sneeze on board of her in the docks for fear her rivets would fly off.”

“Oh, she isn’t as bad as all that. A well-built steamer is the _Tyneshire Glen_, with lots of service in her.”

“What she needs is a new hull, boilers, and engines,” grunted Johnny. “Say, George Huntley, did this young man, Strothers, mention anything about buyin’ the steamer for a king that is roamin’ around London without any tag to him?”

“A king!” ejaculated the ship-broker, blinking like an astonished owl. “Are you chaps raggin’ me?”

“Maybe the joke is on us, George, or else Cap’n Mike and me have been seein’ visions and hearin’ things that ain’t so.”

Huntley cast an appealing glance at O’Shea, who said:

“’Tis evident that ye are not acquainted with our particular king, George. You do not move in royal circles. We will tell ye the answer later. About this young man that calls himself a baron. Did he leave any address behind him?”

“Yes. He is staying at the Carleton. If the option expires I shall take it for granted that he doesn’t want the steamer. If he pays down the cash I shall be ready to make out the papers and give Captain Handy his commission. Now you ought to tell me why you are so keen on knowing all about the business. If you keep mum, you are a pair of blighters and no friends of mine.”

O’Shea hauled Johnny Kent to his feet and remarked:

“We thank you kindly, George. You are a good-natured man and we have made a nuisance of ourselves. ’Tis the honest truth that we know very little more about this young man and the _Tyneshire Glen_ than ye know yourself. But what we do know we will first investigate.”

“You are conspirators born and bred,” laughed Huntley, rather pleased to have an ordinary business transaction wrapped in romantic mystery. “Come and dine with me as soon as you have unravelled the plot.”

They straightway betook themselves to the nearest public-house, where in a quiet corner a council of war was convened. It was obvious that they had run athwart a scheme to defraud the confiding purchaser of the _Tyneshire Glen_. And their sympathies went out strongly to the royal victim. Whether or not he was a real king was beside the mark. He was very much the gentleman, and he had trusted too much in the loyalty and integrity of that enterprising young man who was called the minister of finance.

“’Tis as plain as the big nose on that red face of yours, Johnny,” exclaimed O’Shea. “The two crooks are standing in together. Captain Handy recommends the ship as all right. This Baron Frederick Martin Strothers backs him up and advises His Majesty to buy her. The two blackguards get a price of twenty-four thousand pounds from George Huntley, and then tell this innocent potentate that the price is thirty thousand pounds. The difference is six thousand pounds--thirty thousand dollars--which this pair of land-sharks will split up and stick in their own pockets. And they will doctor the bill of sale so the poor deluded monarch will never know what happened to him.”

“That was what we heard ’em say in the Jolly Mermaid, Cap’n Mike. The price was thirty thousand pounds.”

“’Tis me opinion that a minister of finance like this could bankrupt a kingdom, give him time enough,” said O’Shea. “He is working the game for all it’s worth. He will loot the treasury as long as it looks safe and easy, and then he will resign his what-do-ye-call-it--his portfolio--and leave his buncoed Majesty to figure out the deficit.”

“That poor king deserves to be delivered from his lovin’ friends,” replied Johnny Kent. “What’s the orders now?”

“We will ring up full speed ahead and find this king. If the minister of finance is at the Carleton Hotel, ’tis a good bet that His Majesty is not far away. That busy young man will not separate himself from a good thing.”

The fashionable Carleton was unfamiliar territory to the inquisitive mariners, but they strolled boldly through the corridors until they fetched up in front of a desk presided over by an immaculate clerk with a languid manner who appeared indifferent to their wants. After waiting several minutes for some recognition, Captain Michael O’Shea sweetly remarked:

“Will ye answer a civil question or will I climb over the counter and jolt you wide-awake?”

The languid person looked attentively at the resolute features of the speaker and hastily answered:

“Beg pardon--beg pardon--what can I do for you, sir?”

“Tell me if a king is stopping in this hotel of yours, and does he have a minister of finance called Baron Strothers?”

“Ah, you mean His Majesty, King Osmond of Trinadaro,” and the clerk delivered these resounding syllables with unction. “Yes, he is a guest of the hotel.”

“He is a real one, do you get that?” soberly whispered O’Shea to his comrade before he again addressed the clerk.

“We wish to see him on important business. We will write our names on a card.”

“Baron Strothers receives such callers as are personally unknown to His Majesty,” the clerk explained.

“We do not wish to see the young man,” said O’Shea.

“My orders are to send all cards and messages to him,” persisted the clerk.

The two visitors drew apart from the desk and put their heads together.

“The minister of finance will not let us get within a cable’s length of his boss if he thinks we are seafarin’ men,” whispered O’Shea.

“The swindler may have took notice of us in the Jolly Mermaid,” growled Johnny Kent. “We might send up a card and make headway as far as this Strothers person. Then I could knock him down and sit on his head while you rummaged the royal apartments and found the king.”

“Your methods might strike these hotel people as violent, Johnny. You’re a good man at sea, but I would not call ye a diplomat. Anyhow, we will take a chance of running the blockade that this crooked minister of finance has established to prevent honest men from talking to his employer.”

Returning to the desk, O’Shea picked up a pen and wrote on a blank card:

“_Captain Michael O’Shea and John Kent, Esq., U. S. A., to see King Osmond on a matter that he will find interesting._”

Promptly in answer to this message came word that Baron Strothers would see the gentlemen. A hotel attendant conducted them to a suite on the second floor. At the threshold of a sort of anteroom they were met by the brisk, self-possessed young man, who gazed sharply at the sunburnt strangers, hesitated a trifle, and invited them to enter. Offering them cigars, he bade them be seated, and again scrutinized them as if striving to recall where he might have seen them elsewhere.

Captain O’Shea, at his ease in most circumstances, and particularly now when he held the whip-hand, asked at once:

“Are we to have the pleasure of paying our respects to His Majesty?”

“You Americans are so delightfully informal,” smiled the minister of finance. “An audience is arranged beforehand if I consider it worth while.”

“But this king of yours takes a special interest in ships and sailors,” suggested O’Shea. “And we have information that he will find useful.”

Baron Frederick Martin Strothers changed color just a trifle and his manner was perceptibly uneasy as he explained:

“I am awfully sorry, but he is not in at present. He will be disappointed, I’m sure. You are shipmasters or something of the sort, I take it.”

“You guess right,” was the dry comment of O’Shea. “I have heard that ye are fond of talking to seafaring men yourself.”

The shot went home. The young man moved in his chair and looked painfully uncomfortable. Nervously twisting a cigar in his fingers, he replied:

“Ah, yes. Now I know. You must have seen me at the East India Docks.”

“There or thereabouts, but no matter,” said O’Shea. “His Majesty is not in, you say. And when will he be in the hotel again?”

“Not for several hours. He went out with the minister of foreign affairs to keep an important appointment. Will you state your business to me? That is the customary procedure.”

Johnny Kent was for denouncing the young man to his face, but O’Shea nudged him and smoothly made answer:

“It would please us better to see the king himself. We can come again, or we can look for him on his way in and out of the hotel.”

The young man could not dissemble signs of impatience to be rid of these pertinacious intruders.

“If you have a ship to sell, or you are looking for positions, this is only wasting time,” said he. “I presume you heard something of our errand among the docks.”

“Yes, we have heard of it,” and O’Shea bit off the words. “Well, Johnny, shall we go below and wait till His Majesty heaves in sight? This minister of finance will give us no satisfaction. And I am not used to dealing with understrappers.”

“You are impertinent!” cried the young man. “I have been as courteous as possible. You will leave at once, or I shall ask the hotel management to put you out.”

Up from a chair rose the massive bulk of Johnny Kent, and his ample countenance was truculent as he roared:

“You’ll throw us out, you impudent son of a sea-cook? No, Cap’n Mike, I won’t shut up. I ain’t built that way. Diplomacy be doggoned. I’m liable to lose my temper.”

“’Tis a large-sized temper to lose, and I hereby hoist storm-signals,” said O’Shea with a grin as he neatly tripped the minister of finance, who was endeavoring to reach an electric push-button.

The fervid declamation of Johnny Kent must have echoed through the apartments. It sufficed to attract the notice of an erect, elderly gentleman in another room who opened a door and stared curiously at the strenuous tableau. At sight of the kindly, refined face with the snowy mustache and imperial, O’Shea gleefully shouted:

“The king, God bless him! So this bright young minister of finance was a liar as well as a thief!”

Comically abashed, Johnny Kent mumbled an apology for making such an uproar, at which the elderly gentleman bowed acknowledgment and said to the perturbed and rumpled Strothers:

“My dear baron, will you be good enough to explain?”

“These ruffians insisted on seeing you, Your Majesty, and when I tried to discover their business they called me names and assaulted me,” sputtered the young man in a heat of virtuous indignation.

“He was afraid of the truth,” cried O’Shea. “We came to tell Your Majesty that he has cooked up a job to cheat ye out of six thousand pounds, and we can prove it up to the hilt. We caught him with the goods.”

“That sounds a whole lot better to me than diplomacy,” approvingly exclaimed Johnny Kent.

Bewildered by the vehemence of these outspoken visitors, King Osmond I of Trinadaro turned to the sullen minister of finance and inquired, still with his placid kindliness of manner:

“These men do not look like ruffians, my dear baron. What are their names, and who are they? And what is the meaning of this grave charge they bring against your integrity?”

“I am O’Shea, shipmaster, hailing from the port of New York,” spoke up the one.

“I am Johnny Kent, chief engineer to Captain Mike O’Shea,” said the other, “and I hail from the State o’ Maine. And we can show you our papers. _We_ didn’t lose ’em in the Bay of Biscay.”

Strothers stood biting his nails and shifting from one foot to the other, for once stripped of his adroit, plausible demeanor, nor could he find, on the spur of the moment, the right word to say. The royal personage said it for him.

“I think you had better retire. I wish to hear what Captain O’Shea and Mr. Kent may have to tell me.”

The amiable monarch was unconsciously swayed by the virile personality of Captain O’Shea, who dominated the scene as though he were on the deck of his own ship.

Baron Frederick Martin Strothers made a last attempt to protest, but Johnny Kent glared at him so wickedly and O’Shea moved a step nearer with so icy a glint in his gray eye that there was a moment later a vanished minister of finance.

The etiquette of courts troubled O’Shea not in the least as he cheerily yet respectfully suggested to the perplexed elderly gentleman:

“Now, King Osmond, if you will please sit down and let us talk things over with ye as man to man, we’ll tell you how it happened.”

The personage obediently did as he was told, nor could he feel offended by the shipmaster’s boyish candor. O’Shea chewed on his cigar and his eyes twinkled as he glanced at the stubborn visage of Johnny Kent, which was still flushed. His Majesty began to get his wits together and to wonder why he had permitted this brace of total strangers to take him by storm. O’Shea broke into his cogitations by explaining:

“You are surprised that ye chucked the trusted minister of finance out of the room and consented to listen to us at all. In the first place, we are not askin’ anything of you. What I mean is, we felt bound to put you next to the dirty deal that was framed up to rob ye.”

“We saw you in the Jolly Mermaid tavern, and we liked your looks,” ingenuously added Johnny Kent. “We decided to do you a good turn, whether we ever saw the color of your money or not.”

“And we didn’t like the cut of the jib of your minister of finance,” resumed O’Shea. “And we were dead sure that Captain Handy was rotten.”

King Osmond earnestly interrupted: