ns!" His voice rang out sharp and querulous. A servant,
resplendent in the palace livery of green and orange, was instantly
before him bowing low.

"Who awaits our pleasure?"

"Scar Balta, sire," answered Waffins, bowing low again.

"We will see him."

Waffins disappeared. Scar Balta came in alone, sleek as usual showing
no trace of his irritation over his long wait. He did not even glance
at the somber hangings that concealed a number of recesses in the
wall. Scar knew that guards stood back of those hangings, armed with
neuro-pistols or needle-rays as a precaution against the ever-present
menace of assassination. And of the loopholes back of these recesses,
with still other armed men, as a constant warning to any of the inner
guards whose thoughts might turn to treachery.

* * * * *

Scar Balta bowed respectfully.

"Your Excellency desired to see me?"

"I wished to see you, or I should not have had you called," Wilcox
replied irritably. "I wish to have an explicit understanding with you
as to our proceeding next week at our conference with the financial
delegates. Sit here, close to me. It is not necessary for us to shout
our business to the world."

Balta took the chair beside Wilcox, and they conversed in low tones.

"First of all," Wilcox wanted to know, "how is your affair with the
Princess Sira progressing?"

"Your Excellency knows." Balta began cautiously, "that the news
agencies have been sending out pictorial forecasts--"

"Save your equivocation for others!" Wilcox interrupted sharply. "I am
aware of the propaganda work. It was by my order that the facilities
were extended to you. I am also aware that the princess escaped from
Joro's palace. An amazing piece of bungling! Did she really escape or
is Joro forwarding some plot of his own?"

"He seems genuinely disturbed. He has spent a fortune having the canal
searched by divers, flying ships and surface craft. If Sira fails to
marry me Joro's life ambition will fail, for the hopes of the
monarchists will then be forever lost."

"True; but his Joro some larger plan? His is a mind I do not
understand, and therefore I must always fear. A man with no ambition
for himself, but only for an abstract. It is impossible!"

"Not impossible!" Balta insisted. "Joro is a strange man. He believes
that the monarchy would improve conditions for the people. And, Your
Excellency, wouldn't I be a good king?"

* *