Day After To-morrow
Through the Night
The Fifth Bull; and After

I

THE KING'S CAR

"Motor to Biarritz? You must be mad," said Dick Waring.

"Why?" I asked; though I knew why as well as he. "A nice way to receive an
invitation."

"If you must know, it's because the King of Spain will be there, visiting
his English fiancee," Dick answered.

"I wish him happiness," said I. "I hear he's a fine young fellow. Why
isn't there room in Biarritz for the King and for me?"

"The detectives won't think there is, nor will they give you credit for
your generous sentiments," said Dick.

"They won't know I'm there."

"They knew when you went to Barcelona, from Marseilles."

This was a sore subject. It is not my fault that my father was as
recklessly brave a general, and as obstinately determined a partisan as
Don Carlos ever had. If I had been born in those days, it is possible that
I should have done as my father did; but I was not born, and therefore not
responsible. Nor was it the King's fault that we lost our estates which my
ancestors owned in the days of Charles V; nor that we lost our fortune, we
Casa Trianas; nor that my father was banished from Spain. For the King was
not born, therefore he was not responsible; so why should I blame him for
anything that has happened to me?

It was perhaps ill-judged to visit my father's land, since to him it had
been a land forbidden. But a few months after his death, when I was
twenty-one, the longing to see Spain had become an obsession. And it must
have been my evil star which influenced an anarchist to throw a bomb at a
royal personage on the very day I arrived at Barcelona, thinly "disguised"
under an English name.

My identity was discovered at once, as the son of the great dead Carlist.
I was suspected and clapped into a cell, to wait until my innocence could
be proved. This was not easy; but, on the other hand, there was no proof
against me; and after an experience which scourged my pride and emptied my
purse, I was released, only to be politely but firmly advised never again
to show the undesirable face of a Casa Triana in Spain.

It was after this that I flung myself off to Russia, and through friendly
influence got a commission in the army. I had some adventures in the Boxer
rising; and though Heaven knows I have no grudge against the Japanese, the
fight I made later on the Russian side gave me something to do for