“Refused to resign,” Grantham informed me.
The red-haired Deputy came up on the platform and took the center desk. The legislative machinery began to grind. Men talked briefly, apparently to the point—revolutionists. None of the prisoner Deputies rose. A vote was taken. A few of the in-wrongs didn’t vote. Most of them seemed to vote with the ins.
“They’ve revoked the constitution.” Grantham whispered.
The Deputies were hurrahing again—those who were there voluntarily. Einarson leaned over and mumbled to Grantham and me:
“That is as far as we may safely go today. It leaves all in our hands.”
“Time to listen to a suggestion?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Will you excuse us a moment?” I said to Grantham, and got up and walked to one of the rear corners of the platform.
Einarson followed me, frowning suspiciously.
“Why not give Grantham his crown now?” I asked when we were standing in the corner, my right shoulder touching his left, half facing each other, half facing the corner, our backs to the officers who sat on the platform, the nearest less than ten feet away. “Push it through. You can do it. There’ll be a howl, of course. Tomorrow, as a concession to that howl, you’ll make him abdicate. You’ll get credit for that. You’ll be fifty percent stronger with the people. Then you will be in a position to make it look as if the revolution was his party, and that you were the patriot who kept this newcomer from grabbing the throne. Meanwhile you’ll be dictator, and whatever else you want to be when the time comes. See what I mean? Let him bear the brunt. You catch yours on the rebound.”
He liked the idea, but he didn’t like it to come from me. His little dark eyes pried into mine.
“Why should you suggest this?” he asked.
“What do you care? I promise you he’ll abdicate within twenty-four hours.”
He smiled under his mustache and raised his head. I knew a major in the A.E.F. who always raised his head like that when he was going to issue an unpleasant order. I spoke quickly:
“My raincoat—do you see it’s folded over my left arm?”
He said nothing, but his eyelids crept together.
“You can’t see my left hand,” I went on.
His eyes were slits, but he said nothing.
“There’s an automatic in it,” I wound up.
“Well?” he asked contemptuously.
“Nothing—only—get funny, and I’ll let your guts out.”
“Ach!”—he didn’t take me seriously—“and after that?”
“I don’t know. Think it over carefully, Einarson. I’ve deliberately put myself in a position where I’ve got to go ahead if you don’t give in. I can kill you before you do anything. I’m going to do it if you don’t give Grantham his crown now. Understand? I’ve got to. Maybe—most likely—your boys would get me afterward, but you’d be dead. If I back down now, you’ll certainly have me shot. So I can’t back down. If neither of us backs down, we’ll both take the leap. I’ve gone too far to weaken now. You’ll have to give in. Think it over. I can’t possibly be bluffing.”
He thought it over. Some of the color washed out of his face, and a little rippling movement appeared in the flesh of his chin. I crowded him along by moving the raincoat enough to show him the muzzle of the gun that actually was there in my left hand. I had the big heaver—he hadn’t nerve enough to take a chance on dying in his hour of victory. A little earlier, a little later, I might have had to gun him. Now I had him.
He strode across the platform to the desk at which the redhead sat, drove the redhead away with a snarl and a gesture, leaned over the desk, and bellowed down into the chamber. I stood a little to one side of him, a little behind, close enough so no one could get between us.
No Deputy made a sound for a long minute after the Colonel’s bellow had stopped. Then one of the anti-revolutionists jumped to his feet and yelped bitterly. Einarson pointed a long brown finger at him. Two soldiers left their places by the wall, took the Deputy roughly by neck and arms, and dragged him out. Another Deputy stood up, talked, and was removed. After the fifth drag-out everything was peaceful.
Einarson put a question and got a unanimous answer.
He turned to me, his gaze darting from my face to my raincoat and back, and said: “That is done.”
“We’ll have the coronation now,” I commanded. “Any kind of ceremony, so it’s short.”
I missed most of the ceremony. I was busy keeping my hold on the florid officer, but finally Lionel Grantham was officially installed as Lionel the First, King of Muravia. Einarson and I congratulated him, or whatever it was, together. Then I took the officer aside.
“We’re going to take a walk,” I said. “No foolishness. Take me out a side door.”
I had him now, almost without needing the gun. He would have to deal quietly with Grantham and me—kill us without any publicity—if he were to avoid being laughed at—this man who had let himself be stuck up and robbed of a throne in the middle of his army.
We went roundabout from the Administration Building to the Hotel of the Republic without meeting anyone who knew us. The population was all in the plaza. We found the hotel deserted. I made him run the elevator to my floor, and herded him down the corridor to my room.
I tried the door, found it unlocked, let go the knob, and told him to go in. He pushed the door open and stopped.
Romaine Frankl was sitting cross-legged in the middle of my bed, sewing a button on one of my union suits.
XV
Bargain Hunters
I prodded Einarson into the room and closed the door. Romaine looked at him and at the automatic that was now uncovered in my hand. With burlesque disappointment she said:
“Oh, you haven’t killed him
