ave blackmailers yourself--that is
why you will not let me speak."

"Blackmailers!" said Gordon. "Confound your impudence, what the
devil do you mean by that?"

But the Frenchman was staring angrily at the distant group on the
terrace, and Gordon turned his eyes in the same direction. Something
he saw in the strained and eager attitude of the four conspirators
moved him to a sudden determination.

"That will do, you must go," he commanded, pointing with his arm toward
the city gate; and before the Frenchman could reply, he gave an order
to the guards, and they seized the foreigner roughly by either arm and
hurried him away.

"Thank God!" exclaimed the King, piously. "They have separated, and
the boy thinks he is rendering us great service. Well, and so he is,
the young fool."

The group on the piazza remained motionless, watching Gordon as he
leisurely lit a cigar and stood looking out at the harbor until the
Frenchman had disappeared inside the city wall. Then he turned and
walked slowly after him.

"I do not like that. I do not like his following him," said Barrat,
suspiciously.

"That is nothing," answered the King. "He is going to play the spy and
see that the man is safely in jail. Then he will return and report to
us. We must congratulate him warmly. He follows at a discreet
distance, you observe, and keeps himself well out of sight. The boy
knows better than to compromise himself by being seen in conversation
with the man. Of course, if Renauld is set free we must say we had no
part in his arrest, that the American made the arrest on his own
authority. What a convenient tool the young man is. Why, his coming
really frightened us at first, and now--now we make a cat's-paw of
him." The King laughed merrily. "We undervalue ourselves sometimes, do
we not?"

"He is a nice boy," said Zara. "I feel rather sorry for him. He
looked so anxious and distressed when I was so silly as to faint on the
beach just now. He handled me as tenderly as a woman would have
done--not that women have generally handled me tenderly," she added.

"I was thinking the simile was rather misplaced," said the King.

Gordon passed the city wall and heard the gates swing to behind him.
The Frenchman and his two captors were just ahead, toiling heavily up
the steep and narrow street. Gordon threw his cigar from him and ran
leaping over the huge cobbles to the Frenchman's side and touched him
on the shoulder.

"