The Amateur Diplomat: A Novel

For the first time now, Fenton became aware that the happy accident which brought him as eavesdropper to this extraordinary assignation had also placed him in a most dangerous p...

The Princess Olga rose late the next morning. It is a popular myth that persons of royal blood live an entirely different kind of life from the rest of humanity. The universal c...

The sun crept behind a distant mountain peak. In this country of little twilight the transition from day into night was speedy, and almost as Olga watched from her window the la...

Olga slowly sat up. The room, she realised, was now empty save for the man who knelt beside her couch; a man in a long military cloak, that belonged, she knew, or had belonged,...

From the glare and glitter of the ball-room they stepped out to wait for their car--Varden and his wife and Fenton. The Baroness Draschol was a very charming woman of a striking...

It was after ten when they quietly emerged from the house of the old priest. The sky was overcast so that not a star showed. A peasant silently emerged from the shadows at the s...

The new arrival was a man of possibly thirty years, with twinkling blue eyes and brick-red hair. That his clothes were made of the best material and were cut by an English tailo...

Fenton voiced the query with rising impatience. For the past three hours they had been following a tortuous trail up and down the mountain-side, and the Canadian had chafed at t...

The Continental Hotel at Serajoz is known to all travellers by reputation at least. It ranks with Shepherd's Hotel at Cairo, the Eis Arena in Berlin, Giro's at Monte Carlo. At t...

The particular department of the well-known firm of Fate & Co., to which had been deputed the difficult task of weaving a train of circumstances that would plunge a nation into...

As they spoke, there came a knock, three taps in rapid succession, followed by two slowly. The officer on guard opened the door a few inches and peered out into the intense gloo...

On a sunny spring day in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and fifteen, a fiacre drove up to a big house in the Lodz, the winding, crescent-shaped street in Serajoz...

The ball at the palace was a very brilliant affair. The rooms were hung with a thousand lights; the flowers, many of them strange to Fenton's western knowledge, and the decorati...

The hill people of Ironia were counted as giants, and their leader, Take Larescu, was a giant among them. He stood four inches over six foot, with the proportions generally of a...

The war riots continued in Serajoz with ever-increasing violence. Following the unsatisfactory events of the morning, Fenton spent several hours in Varden's automobile on a miss...

It was noon when Fenton awoke the next day. He awoke to a sense of unfamiliar surroundings. Above him was a ceiling of dingy, brownish hue. The walls, he discovered on investiga...

Events moved fast in Ironia. At five o'clock Peter was publicly declared King, the announcement being received with manifestations of the wildest joy in Serajoz. At five-thirty...

Fenton had recognised the possibilities of a popular demonstration for the great French General, but if he had known how far public feeling would be aroused, he undoubtedly woul...

Fenton left the room with his mind filled with surging, angry emotions. For some time he paced up and down in front of the lodge, thinking over what the princess had told him an...

As the hours passed the hill country awoke to restless activity. On several prominent peaks the beacon fires blazed, summoning the followers of Take Larescu. From all sides they...

Fenton sat on a camp stool beneath the sloping sides of a canvas tent. Gusts of wind found their way inside, causing the candle that stood on a small table beside him to flicker...

From the blackness of night that had settled down over the mountains, Olga emerged into the clear space that was known as Hawk's Rest, in the centre of which was a blazing fire...

At times when the emotion runs high, considerations of a practical, artificial or conventional nature are often lost sight of; everything, in fact, recedes from the mind but the...

Worn out from the excitement of the night, Fenton slept well through the forenoon. When he finally wakened it was to a realisation of stiffened muscles and a general feeling as...

He fell into a violent fit of coughing. The atmosphere about him was smoke-charged and stiflingly close and hot. A steady, crackling sound above gradually impressed itself upon...

King Alexander of Ironia stood in an embrasure of the royal council room. He appeared to be gazing over the crowded, turbulent Lodz, but in reality he saw nothing; nor did the w...

The Austrian cavalry regiment, which had ridden out of Tisza shortly before midnight, with Crane in the van, struck the Bhura River a mile below the point where the first tribut...

The body of King Peter lay in state. All the previous day a continuous line of his mourning subjects had filed past the royal bier to gaze for the last time on the placid face o...