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“Now that the doors of my palatial suite are safely locked,” said Mr. Campion some sixty minutes later, “let us adjourn with all due pomp to the state bedroom, and I will tell you in kingly confidence that ‘uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’ ”

He linked his arm through Guffy’s and they walked across the sitting-room into the adjoining bedchamber, whither Eager-Wright and Farquharson had preceded them.

“We’re coming in here because the walls are practically sound-proof,” Campion explained airily as he swept aside the mosquito net and seated himself upon the great gilt rococo bed.

Guffy Randall, mystified and truculent, stood before him, Dicky Farquharson lounged upon the dressing-table stool, a glass of beer in his hand, the bottle on the floor at his feet, while Eager-Wright stood by the window grinning broadly.

Guffy was frankly unamused. He felt he had been made to look an ill-mannered ass and was prepared to accept only the most abject of apologies.

Farquharson leant forward, his smile wrinkling his forehead until his short, close-cropped curls almost met his eyebrows.

“It’s rather a blessing Guffy has turned up at this particular juncture,” he said. “He’d never have stood the strain of playing the courtier for long. It’s damned hard work, old man,” he added, grinning at his friend, “His Majesty being rather a stickler for etiquette. You haven’t got the bearing at all, if I may say so. Bring the heels together smartly and from the waist—bow!”

Guffy passed his hand over his forehead. “Look here,” he said, “I’m completely in the dark. I take it you have some purpose in careering about the place behaving in this extraordinary fashion. I don’t want to intrude, of course, but if you could give me a clue it’d help considerably.”

Mr. Campion, sitting cross-legged on the bed, his pale eyes amused behind his enormous spectacles, nodded affably.

“As a matter of fact, you ought to have been in it from the start,” he said. “The army of spies which reports to me daily scoured London for you about three weeks ago.”

“Really?” Guffy looked up with interest. “I was in Oslo with the Guv’nor judging some new sort of dog they’re breeding. I’m sorry about that. Frankly, Campion, I feel this is going to take a bit of explaining. When I dropped in here this morning I found old Fleurey black in the face because he thinks he’s got a pack of confidence tricksters in the place. I took a squint at the suspects for him and I found it was you.”

“Confidence tricksters!” said Eager-Wright, aghast. “I say, that reflects on us rather badly, Farquharson.”

“Oh, he thought also that you might be minor royalty,” said Guffy with due fairness. “He suspects you, Campion, of being the potentate of some little tinpot Balkan state.”

Farquharson and Eager-Wright exchanged glances, and a faint smile passed over Mr. Campion’s pale, foolish face.

“The good Fleurey is a man of perception,” he said. “You can’t fool a hotel proprietor, Guffy. The man’s absolutely right. You are now in the presence of the Hereditary Paladin of Averna and his entire Court. Not perhaps very impressive, but genuine. That’s the chief charm about us in this business: we’re absolutely bona fide.”

Guffy’s blue eyes became dark and incredulous. Mr. Campion met them gravely. Then he held out his hand.

“Meet Albert, Hereditary Paladin of Averna.”

“Never heard of it,” said Guffy stolidly.

“You will,” said Mr. Campion. “It’s a hell of a place: I’m the king. Farquharson represents the Government of the country. Eager-Wright is the Opposition. I suppose you wouldn’t care for an order or two? The Triple Star is natty without being bourgeois.”

“It sounds mad,” said Guffy. “But I’m with you, of course, if there’s anything I can do. I don’t want to be offensive, but it sounds as though you’re collecting for a hospital.”

Mr. Campion’s pale eyes became momentarily grave. “Yes, well, there’s always that,” he said. “And before you decide to join us I feel I ought to point out that there’s a distinct possibility that I and all my immediate friends may have to die fighting for my country. I say, Farquharson, have you got that coat?”

Dicky leant over the back of the stool and pulled a suitcase from under the dressing-table. From its depths he drew out a light travelling ulster and displayed a six-inch tear just under the shoulder.

“A bullet?” enquired Guffy with interest.

“As we got on the train at Brindisi,” agreed Mr. Campion. “We Avernians live dangerously.”

“I’m in it,” said Guffy stoutly. “I say, though, where is this place Averna? Ought I to have heard of it?”

“Well, no. Its greatest asset is that very few people ever have heard of it.” Mr. Campion’s precise tone was still light, but Guffy, who knew him well, realized that he was now approaching the serious. “To be quite honest,” he went on, “it’s not very hot, as kingdoms go. To begin with, the area’s about eight hundred, I should say.”

“Square miles?” said Guffy, impressed.

“Acres,” said Mr. Campion modestly. “That includes the castle, of course, but not the rockery. I also hold dominion over the left half of a beautiful mountain about four thousand feet high, and the right half of a much loftier affair. Included in this not very desirable property is running water, cold, five hundred yards of sea coast, a truffle plantation, and quite half a dozen subjects, all of whom now have a signed photograph of myself in court dress and five hundred cigarettes. My levee was a stout affair. It was only my personal charm which retained me my throne, although no doubt the uniforms helped. Our red and gold ones are rather good; you must see them.”

Guffy sat down. “I’m awfully sorry,” he said, “but it just doesn’t sound true. Suppose you tell me about it plainly and simply, as though I were a child.”

“It’s not a simple story,” said Mr. Campion. “However, if you make your mind receptive, put your trust in me and try to grasp one fact at a time, I’ll explain. First of all the history of Averna is important, and it goes like this. It all began with a man called Peter the Hermit, who went out to do a bit of crusading in 1090. He took a friend with him called Walter the Moneyless, who seems to have been about as hopeless as his name, and they went off with a rabble and had a frightful time coming through Dalmatia. They expected to be fed miraculously—ravens, and whatnot, you know—but the notion wasn’t sound, and they finally came to a sticky end on the plains of Asia Minor. You can find all that in any history book, probably not so lucidly put.

“But now we come to more specialized information. With these two birds was a fearfully tough egg called Lambert of Vincennes, who not unnaturally got fed up at half-time and came back. He parted from the other two enthusiasts in the mountains on the Dalmatian coast and had rather a thin time at first. But he had the pioneer spirit all right, furnished himself with a wife—some early Hungarian beauty, no doubt—and with her took refuge in a sort of pocket in the mountains, a pleasant valley with trees and a stream and large protecting walls of rock all round. In fact, my present kingdom.”

Guffy nodded understandingly. “All clear, so far,” he said.

Mr. Campion continued with dignity. “These two and their followers settled down in the valley for a bit and then the old boy made plans for getting home. The only thing against the valley was, and is, for that matter, that it’s a most difficult place to get out of. Once you’re in it you’re in it, and if the crops fail or the stream runs dry the situation can be most unpleasant. Also, there’s no social life.

“Mrs. Lambert and most of the others were left behind while Lambert and a couple of friends set out from home. The extraordinary thing is that they got there. But, home politics being what they were at the time, the Lambert estates had been sequestered and the unfortunate fellow couldn’t raise enough money to get back to his valley again. He turned up in England and was received kindly as a sort of holy man. But no one felt like exploring at the time, and finally he died in despair, commending his kingdom, in which no one quite believed, to the English Crown.

“It seems to have been a sort of standard anecdote until 1190, when Richard the First set out to do his own bit of crusading, and then a detachment under a delightful soul called Edward the Faithful left the main expedition in Tuscia, cut across Romandiola to Ancona, and across the Adriatic—whatever it was then called—to a place called Ragusa, where the Dinaric Alps run down to the sea.”

He paused and looked at his friend apologetically. “I’m sorry to trot out all this history,” he said, “but it’s absolutely necessary if you’re going to get a clear idea of what we’re up to. To carry on with Edward the Faithful: he discovered Lambert’s kingdom eventually, and wasn’t very impressed by it. There were no members of the original party alive, and Edward seems to have taken a dislike to the place. But he set up the royal standard and claimed it formally from two lizards and a bear, as far as I can make out. Matters weren’t improved when someone started a rumour, based on abstruse and erroneous calculations, that the valley was the scene of the incident between Cain and Abel. That settled it as far as Edward was concerned. He christened it Averna and bunked back to England. Later on, when he handed in his report to Richard, the king appears to have been frightfully amused. He rewarded Edward, but presented the kingdom as a kind of royal snub to a perfectly mad family called Huntingforest, the ancestors of the Earls of Pontisbright. Two of these lads died on expeditions to this kingdom, and I imagine that Richard laughed like fun—or his heirs did—the humour of the period tending that way.

“Finally, when any of the family became a little uppish the reigning king used to suggest a trip out to see the old family possession.”

Guffy grinned, and Mr. Campion heartened and went on with his harangue.

“No one got much out of it,” he said, “until about 1400, when Giles, the Fifth Earl, actually went out there, set up as Hereditary Paladin and built a castle. To him we are indebted for most of the present palaver. He had a crown made, drew up articles—the deeds of the place, as it were, and had ’em signed and ratified by Henry the Fourth. After this everything settled down normally; most of the Pontisbrights preferred to stay at home, and the family, whose estates in the midlands had dwindled, were given others in East Anglia and became quite important people, in with the Governments and that sort of thing. A few adventurous members of the family looked in at Averna when they made the grand tour, and ‘Hereditary Paladin’ was mentioned in the family titles on state occasions, but the place was not attractive and of no value, and no one took much notice of it.

“The last time it came into any sort of prominence was in 1814, after the rearrangement of Europe. Then the fifteenth Earl of Pontisbright was quietly financed by the British Government to enable him to buy his estate secretly from Metternich, the great real estate pedlar of that time, so that no row over the little bit of land could lead to any fighting which might possibly involve us.

“Then in the Crimea the last earl was killed, and the line came to an end. There you have it in a nutshell, or at least most of it.”

He rose from the bed as he finished speaking and wandered down the room, his long thin figure looking somehow very modern and prosaic after his story.

Guffy was still puzzled. “I’ve assimilated all that,” he said, “and I may be a complete fool, but I still don’t see how you came into it. I thought your family name was—” He hesitated. Mr. Campion’s real name was one of the few subjects which were taboo in his presence.

“All, well, now we come to the difficult bit.” Campion regarded his friend mildly from behind his spectacles. “About eight or nine months ago you either do or you don’t remember there was a minor earthquake in that part of the world. Nothing much happened, but it shook up a bit of Italy and broke a few windows in Belgrade. No one thought any exciting damage had been done for a long time until Eager-Wright, holidaying in the Bosnian Alps, discovered there had been a certain amount of recent disturbance among the great ones. Chunks of rock had been hurled about, and that sort of thing. Well, then, this is frightfully important and the whole crux of the matter generally: he discovered on behalf of the British Government that with very little help from a man like Farquharson, Averna could be made a pretty useful spot. You see, roughly it’s like this. Until last year Averna was a small oval patch of land entirely surrounded by rock, save for a single narrow tunnel through which a mountain stream ran out to the sea. I believe one of the early Pontisbrights attempted to shoot down this tunnel and never emerged at the other end. But now, since the spot of bother last year, the tunnel is no longer a tunnel, but an open cleft in the rocks, the sea has come up, and Averna now has a minute coast line—quite five or six hundred yards, I should say. Farquharson as the expert has had a look at it, and in his opinion it would now be comparatively simple to carry on the good work done by the earthquake and turn the place into a marvellous natural harbour at a cost of approximately two and sixpence as the politician thinks.”

Guffy’s round eyes grew rounder. The significance of the harangue was beginning to dawn upon him.

Farquharson leant forward. “That isn’t all, Randall,” he said. “There’s every evidence that on the land behind the castle there’s an untapped oilfield. It was discovered, I imagine, years ago, but of course the incredible difficulties of transport made it valueless. Even now I doubt whether it’s a commercial proposition to export; but who wants to export it if ships can take it in on the spot? You see the situation now, don’t you?”

“Good Lord!” said Guffy. “A natural harbour with natural fuel.”

“That seems to be the general opinion,” said Farquharson, and Campion cut in, his quiet, foolish voice sounding odd in conjunction with the importance of his discourse:

“Only no one wants anyone else to have a natural harbour in the Adriatic like that,” he said. “There’ll probably be a lot of international litigation about it. Litigation is a tetchy business at the best of times, but just now it might be rather awkward if there was much argument or fuss. The European situation being what it is.”

“I see,” said Guffy slowly. “I suppose there’s no doubt at all that the place actually belonged to the Earls of Pontisbright?”

“Oh, none at all. They had it by right of conquest first, and then, to be on the safe side, they bought it from Metternich. They hold, or at least they once held, the deeds, the charter, the regalia—the receipts, in fact—and if the family hadn’t disappeared in the Crimea things would be simple. As it is, however, the family was in low water at the time of its disappearance, and there seems to have been a general mix up at the finish, and, frankly, everything belonging to Averna has been lost. That’s where we come in. That’s what we’re doing. We’re on a sort of fantastic treasure hunt with rather a lot at stake. The Powers-That-Be got wind of the affair, first through Eager-Wright and then from their own expert, and, deciding that the matter was one of those complicated slightly underhand pieces of business which go so well with my personality, they did me the honour of calling me in, giving me a free hand, and there you are. Rather pretty, isn’t it?”

Guffy Randall sat silent for some minutes reflecting upon what he had heard. His slow methodical mind went over the story inch by inch, and finally he looked up, a suggestion of alarm in his eyes.

“Rather a tall order, isn’t it?” he said. “I mean, these proofs may be anywhere.”

“That’s just it,” said Eager-Wright from his corner. “However, we’ve been more hopeful since someone took the trouble to shoot at us.”

Campion nodded. “The good folk in authority have an idea based upon certain enquiries that part of these papers, documents, crowns, and whatnot may be about to fall into the hands of some unscrupulous private agent, who will hold them until the right moment to make a deal. As the feeling in London is that the moment for safety is almost past, they are anxious to make him come out into the open if he really does exist. Our somewhat spectacular descent into Averna and our leisurely return through Europe is a self-advertising stunt. We had intended to wait until we received an offer to purchase and then to freeze on to the vendor with the tenacity of bull-pups. I understand the intention at present is even to revive the Pontisbright title if necessary. But even so, our employers won’t cut much ice at the Court of The Hague if they can’t produce the documents. So far no one’s tried to sell us anything. But someone tried to kill us, and we’ve been followed most thoroughly ever since we left the kingdom; so it looks as if our good work has not been completely wasted. It’s only the delay that is alarming, because, as you can gather, the whole thing is rather serious. As far as I can see, we might have all Europe flaring up if a certain Power thought it worth while to fight for Averna. It is just important enough to make a good excuse.”

“I see. Did you catch a glimpse of the man who fired at you?”

“Just a glimpse,” said Farquharson. “There were two of them: one, a most extraordinary-looking fellow with a widow’s peak that almost touched the bridge of his nose, had been following us for some time, and just as we were getting into the train at Brindisi he took a pot shot at us. Unfortunately we were surrounded by a crowd immediately, and although we made a sprint after the fellows, we missed them. We haven’t seen widow’s peak since, but his pal, a little rat-faced person with a perpetual sniff, is right here in this hotel on the same floor.”

“Really?” said Guffy with interest. “Is that the man who had his rooms ransacked?”

This innocent enquiry had an instantaneous effect upon his audience. Eager-Wright sprang to his feet and Mr. Campion paused in his stride to regard the speaker sharply.

“Fleurey told me,” said Guffy hastily. “That’s why he was trying to find out who you were. Apparently some fellow or other on this floor complained that your man, W. Smith, had gone rummaging among his things. Naturally Fleurey was most anxious not to make any complaint until he was certain you were not royalty incognito. Now I come to think of it, I saw a man sneaking out of a window on this floor when I was driving up just before lunch. He was a little rat-faced person in a brown suit.”

“That’s him,” said Eager-Wright. “Lugg must have frightened him.”

Mr. Campion, who had become suddenly grave, turned to Eager-Wright.

“I say, would you mind going out and finding Lugg?” he said. “It’s the same old Lugg, Guffy: he’s only masquerading under the name of Smith, like the rest of us. This wants looking into. I wonder what the cretin’s done now.”

Five minutes later Eager-Wright returned, his eyes alight with curiosity, and in his wake, lumbering, breathless but indignant, came Mr. Campion’s personal servant and general factotum, Magersfontein Lugg.

He was an immense and gloomy individual at the best of times. The lower part of his vast white face was almost hidden by a drooping black moustache, but he had the quick keen eyes of a cockney in spite of the lugubrious expression which he almost always wore. The fact that he had been a burglar before, as he remarked himself, he had lost his figger, tended to make him a very valuable ally to the master to whom he was devoted. Mr. Lugg’s knowledge of the underworld was unrivalled.

At the moment the sleek black clothes of the typical gentleman’s gentleman sat oddly upon his ungainly form, more especially as he wore no trace of the subservience which almost invariably accompanied them. He eyed his master truculently.

“Can’t even ’ave a little sleep in the afternoon now, can’t I?” he said. “It’s ‘Yes, me lord; no, me lord’ the whole time. I get sick of it.”

Campion waved his remarks aside impatiently. “Sniffy Edwards has left this hotel by a window. Before he left he complained to the management that his rooms had been ransacked by a person who resembled you very closely.”

Mr. Lugg looked completely unabashed. “Oh, ’e saw me, did ’e,” he said. “I wondered if ’e had.”

“Look here, Lugg, this is disgraceful. You’d better pack your things and go straight back to Bottle Street.” Mr. Campion, it seemed, spoke more in sorrow than in anger.

“Ho, that’s it?” said his aide angrily. “It’s manners now, is it? I don’t like to talk to you like this in front of yer friends, but I didn’t know we’d got to put on airs and graces in private. King you may be, but not to me. Very well, I’ll go. But you’ll be sorry. When I went through Sniffy’s rooms I didn’t search ’is bags, as you might think. I simply took ’is morning mail. Anybody might ’ave done that. ’E was in ’is bath and I nipped in quick as you please and read the letters the moment after ’e’d done so ’isself. And what’s more, I found something. I found the key of the ’ole situation. I was going to show it to you as soon as I got you alone. But am I going to now? Not on yer life! I’m going back to London.”

“Cast aside like a worn-out glove, I suppose,” said Mr. Campion sarcastically. “The plaything of fate again. Come across with it, Lugg, if it’s interesting.”

Mr. Lugg appeared mollified but affected not to have heard the interruption.

“So Sniffy went, did ’e?” he said. “I thought ’e would. I left a note on ’is dressing-table sayin’ I’d show ’im what it was like to take a good look at the inside of ’is own ’ead if I laid ears to ’is dirty little snuffle again. I left it anonymous, you know, but if ’e saw me that accounts for him leaving sudden.”

“What about this key to the whole situation?” enquired Campion again.

With a gesture of resignation Mr. Lugg removed his coat, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and drew from a small pocket in the lining a crumpled half sheet of paper.

“There you are,” he said. “You fight in your gentlemanly way. Say ‘Excuse me’ and ‘I wonder if I could trouble you.’ But if you want a thing done, go and do it in the natural dirty way that the Lord meant. And if you don’t like to read another bloke’s letters, I’ll put it back.”

“Lugg, there’s something positively horrible about you,” said Mr. Campion with distaste as he picked up the paper.