The rumble of other voices began to compete with the patter of rain. The fat, white-whiskered face of the banker who had been at the meeting appeared suddenly out of the darkness and went back into it just as suddenly, as if he didn’t want to be recognized. Men I hadn’t seen before gathered around us, saluting Grantham with a sheepish sort of respect. A little man in a too big cape ran up and began to tell us something in a cracked, jerky voice. A thin, stooped man with glasses freckled by raindrops translated the little man’s story into English for us:
“He says the artillery has betrayed us, and guns are being mounted in the government buildings to sweep the plaza at daybreak.” There was an odd sort of hopefulness in his voice, and he added: “In that event, we can, naturally, do nothing.”
“We can die,” Lionel Grantham said gently.
There wasn’t the least bit of sense to that crack. Nobody was here to die. They were all here because it was so unlikely that anybody would have to die, except perhaps a few of Einarson’s soldiers. That’s the sensible view of the boy’s speech. But it’s God’s own truth that even I—a middle-aged detective who had forgotten what it was like to believe in fairies—felt suddenly warm inside my wet clothes. And if anybody had said to me: “This boy is a real king,” I wouldn’t have argued the point.
An abrupt hush came in the murmuring around us, leaving only the rustle of rain, and the tramp, tramp, tramp of orderly marching up the street—Einarson’s men. Everybody commenced to talk at once, happily, expectantly, cheered by the approach of those whose part it was to do the heavy work.
An officer in a glistening slicker pushed through the crowd—a small, dapper boy with a too large sword. He saluted Grantham elaborately, and said in English, of which he seemed proud:
“Colonel Einarson’s respects, Mister, and this progress goes betune.”
I wondered what the last word meant.
Grantham smiled and said: “Convey my thanks to Colonel Einarson.”
The banker appeared again, bold enough now to join us. Others who had been at the meeting appeared. We made an inner group around the statue, with the mob around us—more easily seen now in the gray of early morning. I didn’t see the countryman into whose face Einarson had spat.
The rain soaked us. We shifted our feet, shivered, and talked. Daylight came slowly, showing more and more who stood around us wet and curious-eyed. On the edge of the crowd men burst into cheers. The rest of them took it up. They forgot their wet misery, laughed and danced, hugged and kissed one another. A bearded man in a leather coat came to us, bowed to Grantham, and explained that Einarson’s own regiment could be seen occupying the Administration Building and the Executive Residence.
Day came fully. The mob around us opened to make way for an automobile that was surrounded by a squad of cavalrymen. It stopped in front of us. Colonel Einarson, holding a bare sword in his hand, stepped out of the car, saluted, and held the door open for Grantham and me. He followed us in, smelling of victory like a chorus girl of Coty. The cavalrymen closed around the car again, and we were driven to the Administration Building, through a crowd that yelled and ran red-faced and happy after us. It was all quite theatrical.
XIV
Coronation
“The city is ours,” said Einarson, leaning forward in his seat, his sword’s point on the car floor, his hands on its hilt. “The President, the Deputies, nearly every official of importance, is taken. Not a single shot fired, not a window broken!”
He was proud of his revolution, and I didn’t blame him. I wasn’t sure that he might not have brains, after all. He had had sense enough to park his civilian adherents in the plaza until his soldiers had done their work.
We got out at the Administration Building, walking up the steps between rows of infantrymen at present-arms, rain sparkling on their fixed bayonets. More green-uniformed soldiers presented arms along the corridors. We went into an elaborately furnished dining-room, where fifteen or twenty officers stood up to receive us. There were lots of speeches made. Everybody was triumphant. All through breakfast there was much talking. I didn’t understand any of it. I attended to my eating.
After the meal we went to the Deputies’ Chamber, a large, oval room with curved rows of benches and desks facing a raised platform. Besides three desks on the platform, some twenty chairs had been put there, facing the curved seats. Our breakfast party occupied these chairs. I noticed that Grantham and I were the only civilians on the platform. None of our fellow conspirators were there, except those who were in Einarson’s army. I wasn’t so fond of that.
Grantham sat in the first row of chairs, between Einarson and me. We looked down on the Deputies. There were perhaps a hundred of them distributed among the curved benches, split sharply in two groups. Half of them, on the right side of the room, were revolutionists. They stood up and hurrahed at us. The other half, on the left, were prisoners. Most of them seemed to have dressed hurriedly. They looked at us with uneasy eyes.
Around the room, shoulder to shoulder against the wall except on the platform and where the doors were, stood Einarson’s soldiers.
An old man came in between two soldiers—a mild-eyed old gentleman, bald, stooped, with a wrinkled, clean-shaven, scholarly face.
“Doctor Semich,” Grantham whispered.
The President’s guards took him to the center one of the three desks on the platform. He paid no attention to us who were sitting on the platform, and he did not sit down.
A red-haired Deputy—one of the revolutionary party—got up and talked. His fellows cheered when he had finished. The President spoke—three words in a very dry, very calm voice, and left the platform to
