Beaumaroy removed his hand from her arm, but she caught his wrist in one of hers and stood there, holding on to him, breathing quickly, her eyes now set on the figure on the throne.

The old man’s lips had ceased to move; his eyes had closed; he lay back in the deep seat, inert, looking half-dead, very pale and waxen in the face.  For what seemed a long time he sat thus, motionless and almost without signs of life, while the two stood side by side before him.  Mary glanced once at Beaumaroy; his lips were apart in that half humorous, half compassionate smile; there was no hint of impatience in his bearing.

At last Mr. Saffron opened his eyes, and saw them; there was intelligence in his look, though his body did not move.  Mary was conscious of a low bow from Beaumaroy; she remembered the caution he had given her, and herself made a deep curtsey; the old man made a slight inclination of his handsome white head.  Then, after another long pause, a movement passed over his body—­excepting his left arm.  She saw that he was trying to rise from his seat, but that he had barely the strength to achieve his purpose.  But he persisted in his effort, and in the end rose slowly and tremulously to his feet.

Then, utterly without warning, in a sudden and shocking burst of that high, voluble, metallic speech which Captain Alec had heard through the ceiling of the parlor, he began to address them, if indeed it were they whom he addressed, and not some phantom audience of Princes, Marshals, Admirals, or trembling sheep-like re emits.  It was difficult to hear the words, hopeless to make out the sense.  It was a farrago of nonsense, part of his own inventing, part (as it seemed) wild and confused reminiscences of the published speeches of the man he aped, all strung together on some invisible thread of insane reasoning, delivered with a mad vehemence and intensity that shook and seemed to rend his feeble frame.

“We must stop him, we must stop him,” Mary suddenly whispered.  “He’ll kill himself if he goes on like this!”

“I’ve never been able to stop him,” Beaumaroy whispered back.  “Hush!  If he hears us speaking he’ll be furious, and carry on worse.”

The old man’s blue eyes fixed themselves on Beaumaroy—­of Mary he took no heed.  He pointed at Beaumaroy with his scepter, and from him to the gleaming gold in Captain Duggle’s grave.  A streak of coherency, a strand of mad logic, now ran through his hurtling words; the money was there, Beaumaroy was to take it—­to-day, to-day!—­to take it to Morocco, to raise the tribes, to set Africa aflame.  He was to scatter it—­broadcast, broadcast!  There was no end to it—­don’t spare it!  “There’s millions, millions of it!” he shouted, and achieved a weird wild majesty in a final cry, “God with us!”

Then he fell—­tumbled back in utter collapse into the recesses of the great chair.  His scepter fell from his nerveless hand and rolled down the steps of the dais; the impetus it gathered carried it, rolling still, across the floor to the edge of the open pit; for an instant it lay poised on the edge, and then fell with a jangle of sound on the carpet of golden coins that lined Captain Duggle’s grave.