through the mountains.  Also, to the other side, one has an eagle’s glimpse of the Grand Duke’s hunting lodge.  There is an observatory just back of the rock and flag.  The speck of light which you can see, like a splinter of crystal, is its dome, but only military astronomers now look through its telescope.  There one can read the tale of open shutters or barred windows in the house of Louis, the Dreamer.  You understand?”

“Yes.”

“Now, do you see the thread of broken masonry zig-zagging upward from the Palace?  That is a walled drive which runs part of the way up to the rock.  In other days the Kings of Galavia went thus from their castle to the point whence they could see the peninsula spread out below like a map on the page of a school-book.”

“Yes?  What else?”

“This.  The lodge of the Duke as seen by the telescope sleeps shuttered—­an expanse of blank walls.  Yet the Duke is there!”

“Louis—­in Galavia?”

“Wait.”  Blanco laid his hand on the other’s arm and smiled.

“My friend is superstitious—­and ignorant.  He tells how the Duke has a ship’s mast with wires on a tower fronting the far side.  He says Louis talks with the open sea.”

“A Marconi mast?”

Manuel nodded.

Benton’s eyes narrowed under drawn brows.  When he spoke his voice was tense.

“In God’s name, Manuel,” he whispered, “what is the answer?”

The Spaniard met the gaze gravely.  “I fancy, Senor,” he said slowly, “the matches will burn.”

“When?  Where?”

“Quien sabe?” Blanco paused to light a cigarette.  Two priests, their black robes relieved by crimson sashes and stockings, approached, and until they were at a safe distance he talked on once more at random with the sing-song patter of the guide.  “That dungeon-like building is the old Fortress do Freres.  It has clung to that gut of rock out there in the bay since the days when the Moors held the Mediterranean.  It is said that the new King will convert it from a fortress into a prison.  It is now employed as an arsenal.”

Slowly the two men moved back to the busier part of the city.  They walked in silence until they were swallowed in the crowds drifting near the Central Avenue.  Finally Blanco leaned forward, moved by the anxious face of his companion. “Manana, Senor,” he suggested reassuringly.  “Perhaps we may learn to-morrow.”

“And to-morrow may be too late,” replied Benton.

“Hardly, Senor.  The marriage and coronation are the day following.  It should be one of those occasions.”  Benton only shuddered.

They swung into the Ruo Centrale, between lining sycamores, olive trees and acacias, to be engulfed in a jostling press of feast-day humanity.  Suddenly Benton felt his coat-sleeve tugged.

“Let us stop,” Manuel shouted into his ear above the roar of the carnival clamor.  “The Royal carriage comes.”