The three had been lunching out-doors in a Capri hotel with flagstones for a floor and overhanging vine-trellises for a roof.  Chance had thrown this young stranger across their path, and luncheon had cemented an acquaintanceship.

“Who can say?” suggested Benton.  “Why hunt Trouble under the alias of Romance?  Vesuvius, across there, is as vague and noiseless to-day as a wraith, but to-morrow his demon may run amuck over all this end of Italy!  And then—­” His laugh finished the speculation.

“And yet,” went on the boy, after a moment’s pause, “I was just thinking of a chap I met in Algiers a while back and later on the boat to Malta.  I ran across him in one of those vile little twisting alleys in the Kasbah quarter where dirty natives sit cross-legged on shabby rugs and eye the ‘Infidel dogs’ just as spiders watch flies from loathsome webs—­ugh, you know the sort of place!” He paused with a slight shudder of reminiscent disgust.  “I fancy he has had adventures.  We had a glass of wine later down at one of the sidewalk cafes in the Boulevard de la Republique.  He showed me lots of things that a regular guide would have omitted.  The fellow was on his uppers, yet he had been something else, and still knew genteel people.  Up on the driveway by the villas, where fashion parades, he excused himself to speak with a magnificently dressed woman in a brougham, and she chatted with him in a manner almost confidential.  He told me later she might some day occupy a throne; I think her name was the Countess Astaride.”

Benton looked up quickly and his eyes met those of the Spaniard with a swiftly flashed message which excluded Harcourt.

“This fellow and I were on the same boat coming over to Valetta,” continued the young tourist.  “One night in the smoke-room, the steward was filling the glasses pretty frequently.  At last he became confidential.”

“Yes?” prompted Benton.

“Well, he told me he had once held a commission in the British Army and had seen service in diplomacy as military attache.  Then he got cashiered.  He didn’t go into particulars, and of course I didn’t cross-question.  He recited some weird experiences.  He had been a cattle man in Australia and a horse-trader in Syria and had served the Sultan in Turkey.  There were lots of things that would have made a good book.”  The boy’s voice took on a note of young ardor.  “But the great story was the one he told last.  He had stood to win a title of nobility in this two-by-four Kingdom of Galavia, but it had slipped away from him just on the verge of attainment.”

Harcourt slowly drained his thin Capri wine and set down the goblet.

“I must watch the time,” he remembered at last, drawing out his watch.  “I do the Blue Grotto this afternoon....  Well, to continue:  This chap gave the name Browne (he insisted that it be Browne with an e), though while he was drunk he called himself Martin.