to the cause of the distressful country’s freedom. Especially by Bombito.
He was right. A moment later Maraquita began to make a speech.
She spoke in Paranoyan, and Roland could not follow her, but he gathered that it somehow had reference to himself.
As, at the end of it, the entire company rose to their feet and extended their glasses toward him with a mighty shout, he assumed that Maraquita had been proposing his health.
“They say ‘To the liberator of Paranoya!’” kindly translated the Peerless One. “You must excuse,” said Maraquita tolerantly, as a bevy of patriots surrounded Roland and kissed him on the cheek. “They are so grateful to the savior of our country. I myself would kiss you, were it not that I have sworn that no man’s lips shall touch mine till the royal standard floats once more above the palace of Paranoya. But that will be soon, very soon,” she went on. “With you on our side we can not fail.”
What did the woman mean? Roland asked himself wildly. Did she labor under the distressing delusion that he proposed to shed his blood on behalf of a deposed monarch to whom he had never been introduced?
Maraquita’s next remarks made the matter clear.
“I have told them,” she said, “that you love me, that you are willing to risk everything for my sake. I have promised them that you, the rich Senor Bleke, will supply the funds for the revolution. Once more, comrades. To the Savior of Paranoya!”
Roland tried his hardest to catch the infection of this patriotic enthusiasm, but somehow he could not do it. Base, sordid, mercenary speculations would intrude themselves. About how much was a good, well-furnished revolution likely to cost? As delicately as he could, he put the question to Maraquita.
She said, “Poof! The cost? La, la!” Which was all very well, but hardly satisfactory as a business chat. However, that was all Roland could get out of her.
The next few days passed for Roland in a sort of dream. It was the kind of dream which it is not easy to distinguish from a nightmare.
Maraquita’s reticence at the supper-party on the subject of details connected with the financial side of revolutions entirely disappeared. She now talked nothing but figures, and from the confused mass which she presented to him Roland was able to gather that, in financing the restoration of royalty in Paranoya, he would indeed be risking everything for her sake.
In the matter of revolutions Maraquita was no niggard. She knew how the thing should be done—well, or not at all. There would be so much for rifles, machine-guns, and what not: and there would be so much for the expense of smuggling them into the country. Then there would be so much to be laid out in corrupting the republican army. Roland brightened a little when they came to this item. As the standing army of Paranoya amounted to twenty thousand men, and as it seemed possible to corrupt it thoroughly at a cost of about thirty shillings a head, the obvious course, to Roland’s way of thinking was to concentrate on this side of the question and avoid unnecessary bloodshed.
It appeared, however, that Maraquita did not want to avoid bloodshed, that she rather liked bloodshed, that the leaders of the revolution would be disappointed if there were no bloodshed. Especially Bombito. Unless, she pointed out, there was a certain amount of carnage, looting, and so on, the revolution would not achieve a popular success. True, the beloved Alejandro might be restored; but he would sit upon a throne that was insecure, unless the coronation festivities took a bloodthirsty turn. By all means, said Maraquita, corrupt the army, but not at the risk of making the affair tame and unpopular. Paranoya was an emotional country, and liked its revolutions with a bit of zip to them.
It was about ten days after he had definitely cast in his lot with the revolutionary party that Roland was made aware that these things were a little more complex than he had imagined. He had reconciled himself to the financial outlay. It had been difficult, but he had done it. That his person as well as his purse would be placed in peril he had not foreseen.
The fact was borne in upon him at the end of the second week by the arrival of the deputation.
It blew in from the street just as he was enjoying his after-dinner cigar.
It consisted of three men, one long and suave, the other two short, stout, and silent. They all had the sallow complexion and undue hairiness which he had come by this time to associate with the native of Paranoya.
For a moment he mistook them for a drove of exiled noblemen whom he had not had the pleasure of meeting at the supper-party; and he waited resignedly for them to make night hideous with the royal anthem. He poised himself on his toes, the more readily to spring aside if they should try to kiss him on the cheek.
“Mr. Bleke?” said the long man.
His companions drifted toward the cigar-box which stood open on the table, and looked at it wistfully.
“Long live the monarchy,” said Roland wearily. He had gathered in the course of his dealings with the exiled ones that this remark generally went well.
On the present occasion it elicited no outburst of cheering. On the contrary, the long man frowned, and his two companions helped themselves to a handful of cigars apiece with a marked moodiness.
“Death to the monarchy,” corrected the long man coldly. “And,” he added with a wealth of meaning in his voice, “to all who meddle in the affairs of our beloved country and seek to do it harm.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Roland.
“Yes, Senor Bleke, you do know what I mean. I mean that you will be well advised to abandon the schemes which you are hatching with the malcontents who would do my beloved land an injury.”
The conversation was growing awkward. Roland had got so into the habit of taking it for granted that every Paranoyan he met must of necessity be a devotee of the beloved Alejandro that it came as a shock to him to realize that there were those who objected to his restoration to the throne. Till now he had looked on the enemy as something in the abstract. It had not struck him that the people for whose correction he was buying all these rifles and machine-guns were individuals with a lively distaste for having their blood shed.
“Senor Bleke,” resumed the speaker, frowning at one of his companions whose hand was hovering above the bottle of liqueur brandy, “you are a man of sense. You know what is safe and what is not safe. Believe me, this scheme of yours is not safe. You have been led away, but there is still time to withdraw. Do so, and all is well. Do not so, and your blood be upon your own head.”
