l to complete!
Think what our alliance would mean to us both.... My dear girl--there
is nothing which could halt me, nothing which I could not crush!"

Had many a man made this speech he would have punctuated its
termination with a clenched fist. But the scion of an intriguing
aristocracy bared his teeth in a wolf-like smile as he unsheathed his
sword-cane an inch or two, to snap it back into place, with a snarling
smile in his drooping eyes.

However, the speech and the theatrical delivery of the gifted courtier
were wasted effort. Maria Theresa of Spain was impervious to the
surface sheen: she had seen true metal within the past twenty-four
hours!

"Oh, Carlos--you should have been a novelist or a dramatist! I much
prefer the romantic sky-line of New York harbor to your reminiscence of
Don Quixote!"

The great roar of the turbine vibrated through the ship. She advanced
to the cabin door, and imperiously called to him to follow.

"I insist. I need fresh air.... _We'll be gone ten minutes!_"

And grudgingly the Duke of Alva followed her, with a vicious swish of
his cane at the unoffending trunk.

As the door slammed, the top of the trunk was slowly lifted, and the
battered, bleeding face of Warren Jarvis might have been visible above
the iron ridge of its lock bar.

Stiffly he drew himself out of the trunk, to blink in the unaccustomed
light.

"O,... O.... O.... Oh! Lord!... If I only had that last baggageman by
the neck!"

He bent forward and back to limber an apparently paralyzed spinal
column.

"Well, I'm all here!"

He stumbled across the cabin, where he helped himself to a welcome
drink of water. He tenderly caressed the bruised elbows, and breathed
hard.

"I'm _most_ all here!"

He looked down at his twisted, cracked patent-leather shoes.

"My feet are bent--they'll never get well!"

He sat limply down on the top of the trunk, and fumbling in his hip
pocket drew forth a bent and battered cigarette case. As he struck a
light to inhale a few welcome, cheering puffs, he looked about his
strange surroundings with the old, unconquerable Jarvis spirit.

"A Princess--a Duke--a castle--a treasure! Well, well! But the problem
is: _Where the devil do I fit in_?"

VII

THE ROMANCE OF THE CASTLE

Warren hobbled painfully to the telephone on the wall. This connected
with a central switchboard from which he knew he could reach his own
stateroom--provided Rusty had not failed in his trust.