The Lighted Match

The Grand Duke Louis meanwhile, waiting in great anxiety, had received

the message which had come by the wireless mast. The words were in code,

and being translated they read: "France, Italy, Spain, Portugal will

recognize. Strike." The signature was "Jt.," which Delgado knew for

Jusseret. The Duke had been greatly excited. He paced the room in a

nervous tremor. It was arranged that a small steamer, which had stood a

short distance offshore since yesterday to relay the wireless message

and make it doubly sure, should pick the Duke up as soon as Lapas

signaled by a triple dip of the flag that the fortress had been

destroyed. The steamer was then to rush the Grand Duke around the cape

to Puntal, bringing him in as though he had come from Spain. Those

conspirators who were in the capital, strengthened by those who would

declare for Louis, with Karyl dead and no other heir existent, would

proclaim him King. Lapas would see that the royal salute was fired as

the steamer entered the harbor, and the Countess would either meet him

and explain all the details or would speak with him by Marconi if she

had left the town.

Louis spent the forenoon in an agony of anxiety and impatience. All

afternoon he watched through binoculars the white and blue and green

flag on the rock above him. He was waiting for the triple dip that

should tell him the fortress had been scattered in débris and with it

the government. Evidently the King was late going to the arsenal.

He had imagined it would be earlier. The hours dragged interminably.

Louis walked the stone buttress where the flag which he had raised in

signal to Lapas flapped and whipped against its staff. At last his

binoculars, fixed on the rock, caught the dip of the colors there. With

a great sigh of relief the Duke watched to see them rise and dip, rise

and dip again. The flag came down the length of the pole--and did not go

up.

Panic seized the Pretender. There was no way of talking with the ridge

three thousand feet above. It was a climb of an hour and a half by the

pass. Evidently there had been a miscarriage. In the prearranged code of

flag signals the only provision for the drooping of the colors on the

hill was in the event that it should be wished to stop the explosion.

That would be only in the event of refusal by the governments to

recognize; the governments had not refused! Possibly Lapas had turned

traitor!

There had also been some unexplained delay seaward. The little steamer,

which should have remained near by, was a speck on the horizon, and

without her there was no possibility of escape. Wildly Louis, the

Dreamer, hurried to his improvised Marconi station and called the ship.

Finally toward evening came a response and with it a message from

somewhere out at sea, relayed from ship to ship around the peninsula.