The Kingmakers

Selden, entering from the dining-room, saw that the lounge was crowded, and he paused for a moment to look about him. It was the half-hour between dinner and the Sporting Club,...

As the prince bowed, with much empressement, above the slim hand extended to him, Selden was conscious of a rapid but penetrating scrutiny on the part of the older man. It was a...

The opera at Monte Carlo is housed in the end of the Casino building nearest the Hotel de Paris, so that the Countess Rémond and her two companions had only to cross the street....

This time it was the baron who attended and the countess who was distraught. The story he had told her had awakened memories and emotions deeper, more violent, than he suspected...

The Sporting Club at Monte Carlo is a creation of recent years, an effort on the part of M. Blanc and his associates to meet the demand for a place where one can gamble longer a...

Selden did not attempt to explain to himself his sudden interest in this fascinating unknown, but he was determined to find out about her all that he could. His first impulse ha...

Monte Carlo, like all other pleasure resorts, has its inexorable routine, and the feature of the morning is a walk upon the terrace. This is followed by an apéritif and half an...

For a moment the Countess Rémond did not speak, and Selden could see that her thoughts were turned inward, as though seeking some starting-point, some end to get hold of in the...

Selden dressed for dinner that evening with the same sense of nervous tension that he used to feel in the old days when tumbling out of bed and hustling into his clothes in the...

Selden saw with some astonishment that it was indeed the same young Davis whom he had met at the Sporting Club the night before. Why should the king invite these Americans to di...

The whole house was buzzing with the great news, and Selden was sure that champagne was being consumed even more liberally below stairs than above. Probably the king knew it too...

The _Times_, for all its drum-and-trumpet democracy, was, as he knew quite well, aristocratic and capitalistic at heart, and so was its American namesake with which his services...

What could be the connection between Halsey and the Countess Rémond, Selden wondered, as he turned away. He tried to remember what he knew of Halsey, but it was not very much. T...

Selden went up to his room and got ready for lunch with a clearer conscience than he had had since he opened his eyes that morning. At last he knew where he was--he was definite...

The _London Times_ does not reach Nice until five o’clock in the evening, but by the middle of the morning a crowd of newspaper men, diplomats and motley adventurers were besieg...

It was to Ciro’s that Selden had promised to take the countess that evening, and remembering his resolve to give her the best the place had to offer, he drove there, before goin...

Selden left the hotel and made his way down to the terrace. He felt that he had need to collect his thoughts, to arrange his ideas. He walked up and down for a minute or two unt...

“I could be very angry with you if I wished,” said Madame Ghita, presently, “at certain things your attitude has seemed to imply. It is true that I had never promised to give up...

Those words were in Selden’s mind when he went to sleep that night and when he awoke next morning, and he lay for a long time thinking of the woman who had uttered them and of t...

It was not merely, or even principally, to arrange the articles of settlement that the Baron Lappo had gone so hastily to Paris. The terms of the articles had already been agree...

It was a decidedly nervous and shaken Selden who dressed for dinner that evening. For the first time in his life he had committed what is for a journalist the unpardonable sin--...

There was a moment’s stupefied silence, while the prince looked triumphantly at each of them in turn, his gaze lingering upon Selden an instant longer than upon the others, as t...

They still tell, at the Sporting Club, of the last visit of Prince Danilo. There have been other visits more spectacular, ending with a pistol-shot on the terrace or a draught o...

Selden took train for Nice next morning with a sense of impending calamity. He was greatly depressed. The emotional events of the previous evening had overtaxed his nerves. He h...

For a moment no one stirred--just sat and stared at the man who came, swift and resolute, into the room, while the frightened attendant goggled from the door behind him--a man o...

They were there when the curtain rose, and were soon under the spell of the enchanting music with which Saint-Saëns has clothed the old Scripture allegory of man’s weakness and...