Truxton King

"That's what I've been asking of myself," he murmured. "I guess we're both awake all right. Nightmares don't last forever."

Her story came haltingly; he was obliged to supply many of the details by conjecture, she was so hazy and vague in her memory.

At the beginning of the narrative, however, Truxton was raised to unusual heights; he felt such a thrill of exaltation that for the moment he forgot his and her immediate peril. In a perfectly matter-of-fact manner she was informing him that her search for him had not been abandoned until Baron Dangloss received a telegram from Paris, stating that King was in a hospital there, recovering from a wound in the head.

"You can imagine what I thought when I saw you here a little while, ago," she said, again looking hard at his face as if to make sure. "We had looked everywhere for you. You see, I was ashamed. That man from Cook's told us that you were hurt by--by the way I treated you the day before you disappeared, and--well, he said you talked very foolishly about it."

He drew a long breath. Somehow he was happier than he had been before. "Hobbs is a dreadful ass," he managed to say.

It seems that the ministry was curiously disturbed by the events attending the disappearance of the Countess Ingomede. The deception practised upon John Tullis, frustrated only by the receipt of a genuine message from the Countess, was enough to convince the authorities that something serious was afoot. It may have meant no more than the assassination of Tullis at the hands of a jealous husband; or it may have been a part of the vast conspiracy which Dangloss now believed to be in progress of development.

"Development!" Truxton King had exclaimed at this point in her narrative. "Good God, if Dangloss only knew what I know!"

There had been a second brief message from the Countess. She admitted that she was with her husband at the Axphain capital. This message came to Tullis and was to the effect that she and the Count were leaving almost immediately for a stay at Biarritz in France. "Mr. King," said the narrator, "the Countess lied. They did not go to Biarritz. I am convinced now that she is in the plot with that vile old man. She may even expect to reign in Graustark some day if his plans are carried out. I saw Count Marlanx yesterday. He was in Graustark. I knew him by the portrait that hangs in the Duke of Perse's house--the portrait that Ingomede always frowns at when I mention it to her. So, they did not go to France."