That same night Manuel sent a message to the Isis, saying that he was sailing the following morning by the Genoa steamer and asking that the yacht meet the ship and take him on board.  Having done that much, he went to the hotel where the Countess had stopped and told the clerk that he had news of importance to communicate to Madame the Countess, and that he wished to learn her present address.  The clerk, like all Puntal, was ignorant of what important matters had just missed happening, but he had instructions from this lady to assume ignorance as to her destination.  Blanco, however, showed the seal ring which she had said would prove a passport to her presence and which Benton had left with him.  He was promptly informed that she had taken passage for Villefranche, and had ordered her mail forwarded there in care of the steamship agency.

CHAPTER XVI

THE AMBASSADOR BECOMES ADMIRAL

More suggestive of a stowaway than a millionaire, thought Blanco the following afternoon, when he had come over the side of the Isis and sought out the owner of the yacht.  Benton had turned hermit and withdrawn to the most isolated space the vessel provided.  It was really not a deck at all—­only a space between engine-room grating and tarpaulined lifeboats on what was properly the cabin roof.  Here, removed from the burnished and ship-shape perfection of the yacht’s appointment, he lay carelessly shaven and more carelessly dressed.

The lazily undulating Mediterranean stretched unbroken save for the yacht’s stack, funnels and stanchions, in a sight-wide radius of blue.  Overhead the sky was serene.  Here and there, in fitful humors, the sea flowed in rifts of a different hue.

The sun was mellow and the breeze which purred softly in the cables overhead came with the caressing breath that blows off the orange groves of Southern Spain.  Ahead lay all the invitation of the south of France; of the Riviera’s white cities and vivid countryside; of Monte Carlo’s casinos and Italy’s villas.  Beyond further horizons, waited the charm of Greece, but the man lay on an old army blanket, clad in bagging flannels and a blue army shirt open at the throat.  His arms were crossed above his eyes, and he was motionless, except that the fingers which gripped his elbows sometimes clenched themselves and the bare throat above the open collar occasionally worked spasmodically.

Blanco had come quietly, and his canvas shoes had made no sound.  For a time he did not announce himself.  He was not sure that Benton was awake, so he dropped noiselessly to the deck and sat with his hands clasped about his knees, his eyes moodily measuring the rise and fall of the glaringly white stanchions above and below the sky-line.  At frequent intervals they swept back to the other man, who still lay motionless.  It was late afternoon and the smoke-stack shadows pointed off in attenuated lines to the bow while the sky, off behind the wake, brightened into the colors of sunset.  Finally Benton rose.  The unexpected sight of Blanco brought a start and an immediate masking of his face, but in the first momentary glimpse the Andalusian caught a haggard distress which frightened him.