Part 10

“Yes. He lost a steamer in the Bay of Biscay, and the evidence went to show that he was drunk at the time. His certificate was taken away or suspended; I forget the details. A rather shabby lot is Handy. As I was about to tell you, O’Shea, the pair of them, Captain Handy and this spruce young man, Strothers, came in to ask our cash selling-price for the _Tyneshire Glen_, which is laid up in the East India Docks. We have no interest in the vessel beyond representing the owners, who want to get rid of her.”

“And did you give the precious pair of two-spots a price on her?” blandly inquired O’Shea.

“I offered them the _Tyneshire Glen_ for twenty-four thousand pounds as she stands,” replied Huntley. “It’s all she’s worth. She is a big steamer, almost five thousand tons, but she will need a lot of repairs. Captain Handy claimed that he had found a possible buyer in whose interests young Strothers was acting. Of course we were willing to pay Handy a decent commission if the deal went through.”

O’Shea looked sidewise at Johnny Kent, who, on occasions, was bright enough to see through a hole in a grindstone. They kept their thoughts to themselves, and O’Shea commented non-committally:

“Of course Captain Handy is entitled to a commission if he finds ye a customer for the steamer, George. ’Tis an honest chance for the poor divil to pick up a few dollars. And so the young man, Strothers, came back this morning? Do I show too much curiosity in asking what he had to say?”

“You are welcome to all I know. He told me that the gentleman whose interests he represented had inspected the _Tyneshire Glen_ yesterday and thought she would answer his purpose. The price was satisfactory and he would like a three-days’ option, which I was very willing to give him.”

“And the price was still twenty-four thousand pounds?” violently put in Johnny Kent with a snort as if his steam were rising.

“Precisely twenty-four thousand pounds, or one hundred and twenty thousand dollars of your Yankee currency or thereabouts. Are you thinking of buying her yourself, Johnny?” said Huntley with a broad smile.

“Not on your life,” was the fervent response. “I’d be afraid to sneeze on board of her in the docks for fear her rivets would fly off.”

“Oh, she isn’t as bad as all that. A well-built steamer is the _Tyneshire Glen_, with lots of service in her.”

“What she needs is a new hull, boilers, and engines,” grunted Johnny. “Say, George Huntley, did this young man, Strothers, mention anything about buyin’ the steamer for a king that is roamin’ around London without any tag to him?”

“A king!” ejaculated the ship-broker, blinking like an astonished owl. “Are you chaps raggin’ me?”

“Maybe the joke is on us, George, or else Cap’n Mike and me have been seein’ visions and hearin’ things that ain’t so.”

Huntley cast an appealing glance at O’Shea, who said:

“’Tis evident that ye are not acquainted with our particular king, George. You do not move in royal circles. We will tell ye the answer later. About this young man that calls himself a baron. Did he leave any address behind him?”

“Yes. He is staying at the Carleton. If the option expires I shall take it for granted that he doesn’t want the steamer. If he pays down the cash I shall be ready to make out the papers and give Captain Handy his commission. Now you ought to tell me why you are so keen on knowing all about the business. If you keep mum, you are a pair of blighters and no friends of mine.”

O’Shea hauled Johnny Kent to his feet and remarked:

“We thank you kindly, George. You are a good-natured man and we have made a nuisance of ourselves. ’Tis the honest truth that we know very little more about this young man and the _Tyneshire Glen_ than ye know yourself. But what we do know we will first investigate.”

“You are conspirators born and bred,” laughed Huntley, rather pleased to have an ordinary business transaction wrapped in romantic mystery. “Come and dine with me as soon as you have unravelled the plot.”

They straightway betook themselves to the nearest public-house, where in a quiet corner a council of war was convened. It was obvious that they had run athwart a scheme to defraud the confiding purchaser of the _Tyneshire Glen_. And their sympathies went out strongly to the royal victim. Whether or not he was a real king was beside the mark. He was very much the gentleman, and he had trusted too much in the loyalty and integrity of that enterprising young man who was called the minister of finance.

“’Tis as plain as the big nose on that red face of yours, Johnny,” exclaimed O’Shea. “The two crooks are standing in together. Captain Handy recommends the ship as all right. This Baron Frederick Martin Strothers backs him up and advises His Majesty to buy her. The two blackguards get a price of twenty-four thousand pounds from George Huntley, and then tell this innocent potentate that the price is thirty thousand pounds. The difference is six thousand pounds--thirty thousand dollars--which this pair of land-sharks will split up and stick in their own pockets. And they will doctor the bill of sale so the poor deluded monarch will never know what happened to him.”

“That was what we heard ’em say in the Jolly Mermaid, Cap’n Mike. The price was thirty thousand pounds.”

“’Tis me opinion that a minister of finance like this could bankrupt a kingdom, give him time enough,” said O’Shea. “He is working the game for all it’s worth. He will loot the treasury as long as it looks safe and easy, and then he will resign his what-do-ye-call-it--his portfolio--and leave his buncoed Majesty to figure out the deficit.”

“That poor king deserves to be delivered from his lovin’ friends,” replied Johnny Kent. “What’s the orders now?”

“We will ring up full speed ahead and find this king. If the minister of finance is at the Carleton Hotel, ’tis a good bet that His Majesty is not far away. That busy young man will not separate himself from a good thing.”

The fashionable Carleton was unfamiliar territory to the inquisitive mariners, but they strolled boldly through the corridors until they fetched up in front of a desk presided over by an immaculate clerk with a languid manner who appeared indifferent to their wants. After waiting several minutes for some recognition, Captain Michael O’Shea sweetly remarked:

“Will ye answer a civil question or will I climb over the counter and jolt you wide-awake?”

The languid person looked attentively at the resolute features of the speaker and hastily answered:

“Beg pardon--beg pardon--what can I do for you, sir?”

“Tell me if a king is stopping in this hotel of yours, and does he have a minister of finance called Baron Strothers?”

“Ah, you mean His Majesty, King Osmond of Trinadaro,” and the clerk delivered these resounding syllables with unction. “Yes, he is a guest of the hotel.”

“He is a real one, do you get that?” soberly whispered O’Shea to his comrade before he again addressed the clerk.

“We wish to see him on important business. We will write our names on a card.”

“Baron Strothers receives such callers as are personally unknown to His Majesty,” the clerk explained.

“We do not wish to see the young man,” said O’Shea.

“My orders are to send all cards and messages to him,” persisted the clerk.

The two visitors drew apart from the desk and put their heads together.

“The minister of finance will not let us get within a cable’s length of his boss if he thinks we are seafarin’ men,” whispered O’Shea.

“The swindler may have took notice of us in the Jolly Mermaid,” growled Johnny Kent. “We might send up a card and make headway as far as this Strothers person. Then I could knock him down and sit on his head while you rummaged the royal apartments and found the king.”

“Your methods might strike these hotel people as violent, Johnny. You’re a good man at sea, but I would not call ye a diplomat. Anyhow, we will take a chance of running the blockade that this crooked minister of finance has established to prevent honest men from talking to his employer.”

Returning to the desk, O’Shea picked up a pen and wrote on a blank card:

“_Captain Michael O’Shea and John Kent, Esq., U. S. A., to see King Osmond on a matter that he will find interesting._”

Promptly in answer to this message came word that Baron Strothers would see the gentlemen. A hotel attendant conducted them to a suite on the second floor. At the threshold of a sort of anteroom they were met by the brisk, self-possessed young man, who gazed sharply at the sunburnt strangers, hesitated a trifle, and invited them to enter. Offering them cigars, he bade them be seated, and again scrutinized them as if striving to recall where he might have seen them elsewhere.

Captain O’Shea, at his ease in most circumstances, and particularly now when he held the whip-hand, asked at once:

“Are we to have the pleasure of paying our respects to His Majesty?”

“You Americans are so delightfully informal,” smiled the minister of finance. “An audience is arranged beforehand if I consider it worth while.”

“But this king of yours takes a special interest in ships and sailors,” suggested O’Shea. “And we have information that he will find useful.”

Baron Frederick Martin Strothers changed color just a trifle and his manner was perceptibly uneasy as he explained:

“I am awfully sorry, but he is not in at present. He will be disappointed, I’m sure. You are shipmasters or something of the sort, I take it.”

“You guess right,” was the dry comment of O’Shea. “I have heard that ye are fond of talking to seafaring men yourself.”

The shot went home. The young man moved in his chair and looked painfully uncomfortable. Nervously twisting a cigar in his fingers, he replied:

“Ah, yes. Now I know. You must have seen me at the East India Docks.”

“There or thereabouts, but no matter,” said O’Shea. “His Majesty is not in, you say. And when will he be in the hotel again?”

“Not for several hours. He went out with the minister of foreign affairs to keep an important appointment. Will you state your business to me? That is the customary procedure.”

Johnny Kent was for denouncing the young man to his face, but O’Shea nudged him and smoothly made answer:

“It would please us better to see the king himself. We can come again, or we can look for him on his way in and out of the hotel.”

The young man could not dissemble signs of impatience to be rid of these pertinacious intruders.

“If you have a ship to sell, or you are looking for positions, this is only wasting time,” said he. “I presume you heard something of our errand among the docks.”

“Yes, we have heard of it,” and O’Shea bit off the words. “Well, Johnny, shall we go below and wait till His Majesty heaves in sight? This minister of finance will give us no satisfaction. And I am not used to dealing with understrappers.”

“You are impertinent!” cried the young man. “I have been as courteous as possible. You will leave at once, or I shall ask the hotel management to put you out.”

Up from a chair rose the massive bulk of Johnny Kent, and his ample countenance was truculent as he roared:

“You’ll throw us out, you impudent son of a sea-cook? No, Cap’n Mike, I won’t shut up. I ain’t built that way. Diplomacy be doggoned. I’m liable to lose my temper.”

“’Tis a large-sized temper to lose, and I hereby hoist storm-signals,” said O’Shea with a grin as he neatly tripped the minister of finance, who was endeavoring to reach an electric push-button.

The fervid declamation of Johnny Kent must have echoed through the apartments. It sufficed to attract the notice of an erect, elderly gentleman in another room who opened a door and stared curiously at the strenuous tableau. At sight of the kindly, refined face with the snowy mustache and imperial, O’Shea gleefully shouted:

“The king, God bless him! So this bright young minister of finance was a liar as well as a thief!”

Comically abashed, Johnny Kent mumbled an apology for making such an uproar, at which the elderly gentleman bowed acknowledgment and said to the perturbed and rumpled Strothers:

“My dear baron, will you be good enough to explain?”

“These ruffians insisted on seeing you, Your Majesty, and when I tried to discover their business they called me names and assaulted me,” sputtered the young man in a heat of virtuous indignation.

“He was afraid of the truth,” cried O’Shea. “We came to tell Your Majesty that he has cooked up a job to cheat ye out of six thousand pounds, and we can prove it up to the hilt. We caught him with the goods.”

“That sounds a whole lot better to me than diplomacy,” approvingly exclaimed Johnny Kent.

Bewildered by the vehemence of these outspoken visitors, King Osmond I of Trinadaro turned to the sullen minister of finance and inquired, still with his placid kindliness of manner:

“These men do not look like ruffians, my dear baron. What are their names, and who are they? And what is the meaning of this grave charge they bring against your integrity?”

“I am O’Shea, shipmaster, hailing from the port of New York,” spoke up the one.

“I am Johnny Kent, chief engineer to Captain Mike O’Shea,” said the other, “and I hail from the State o’ Maine. And we can show you our papers. _We_ didn’t lose ’em in the Bay of Biscay.”

Strothers stood biting his nails and shifting from one foot to the other, for once stripped of his adroit, plausible demeanor, nor could he find, on the spur of the moment, the right word to say. The royal personage said it for him.

“I think you had better retire. I wish to hear what Captain O’Shea and Mr. Kent may have to tell me.”

The amiable monarch was unconsciously swayed by the virile personality of Captain O’Shea, who dominated the scene as though he were on the deck of his own ship.

Baron Frederick Martin Strothers made a last attempt to protest, but Johnny Kent glared at him so wickedly and O’Shea moved a step nearer with so icy a glint in his gray eye that there was a moment later a vanished minister of finance.

The etiquette of courts troubled O’Shea not in the least as he cheerily yet respectfully suggested to the perplexed elderly gentleman:

“Now, King Osmond, if you will please sit down and let us talk things over with ye as man to man, we’ll tell you how it happened.”

The personage obediently did as he was told, nor could he feel offended by the shipmaster’s boyish candor. O’Shea chewed on his cigar and his eyes twinkled as he glanced at the stubborn visage of Johnny Kent, which was still flushed. His Majesty began to get his wits together and to wonder why he had permitted this brace of total strangers to take him by storm. O’Shea broke into his cogitations by explaining:

“You are surprised that ye chucked the trusted minister of finance out of the room and consented to listen to us at all. In the first place, we are not askin’ anything of you. What I mean is, we felt bound to put you next to the dirty deal that was framed up to rob ye.”

“We saw you in the Jolly Mermaid tavern, and we liked your looks,” ingenuously added Johnny Kent. “We decided to do you a good turn, whether we ever saw the color of your money or not.”

“And we didn’t like the cut of the jib of your minister of finance,” resumed O’Shea. “And we were dead sure that Captain Handy was rotten.”

King Osmond earnestly interrupted:

“But I have had all the confidence in the world in Baron Strothers, and as a British sailor of the tarry breed, Captain Handy----”

“The two of them are tarred with the same brush,” exclaimed O’Shea. “They fixed it up between them to pay twenty-four thousand pounds for the _Tyneshire Glen_ and sell her to you for thirty thousand. ’Tis a simple matter to produce the evidence. Send a messenger to Tavistock & Huntley in Leadenhall Street. They named the price to Captain Handy and your precious minister of finance. ’Tis a clear case.”

“You can buy her yourself from George Huntley, and he’ll be darn glad to get his price,” chimed in Johnny Kent. “That ought to prove it. But if you’ll listen to me, you’ll have nothin’ to do with the _Tyneshire Glen_.”

King Osmond’s faith in human nature had been severely jarred, but somehow he could not doubt the statements of these rugged men who drove their words home as with a sledge-hammer. Toward the graceless minister of finance he felt more sorrow than anger as he wove together in his mind this and that circumstance of previous transactions which should have made him more vigilant. But the culprit was the son of a dear friend, and his credentials had been impeccable.

“I shall obtain from Tavistock & Huntley confirmation of your story, as you suggest,” he slowly replied to O’Shea. “In the meantime I wish you would tell me about yourselves.”

“We are looking for big risks and big wages,” said O’Shea with a smile. “Johnny Kent and I are better known in the ports of the Spanish Main than in London River. We have made voyages to Hayti and Honduras and Cuba without the consent of the lawful governments, and we know our trade.”

King Osmond I reflectively stroked his white imperial, and his face assumed an expression of vivid interest. These men were different from Captain Handy. They would neither cringe nor lie to him, and they looked him squarely between the eyes.

“Will you be good enough to come into my own rooms?” said he. “We shall find more privacy and comfort. I should like to hear of your adventures along the Spanish Main.”

With a courteous gesture he showed them into a much larger and more luxurious room which was used as a library or private office, inasmuch as a large flat-topped desk was strewn with books, pamphlets, and documents, and more of them were piled on tables and on shelves against the walls. As temporary headquarters for royalty at work, the room suggested industry and the administration of large affairs.

So friendly and unconventional was the reception granted them that Captain O’Shea and Johnny Kent were made to feel that their intrusions demanded no more apologies. Their curiosity fairly tormented them. It was on the tips of their tongues to ask the host what kind of a kingdom was his, and where it was situated, but this would be rudeness. O’Shea took note of several admiralty charts on the desk, two of them unrolled with the corners pinned down, and a rule and dividers for measuring distances.

While O’Shea talked, Johnny Kent let his eyes wander to a small table at his elbow. It was covered with magazines, government reports, and newspaper clippings. One of the latter was so placed that he was able to read it from where he sat, and with absorbed interest he perused the following paragraphs:

Colonel Osmond George Sydenham-Leach, of the ancient Norfolk family, has lived on the Continent for the last dozen years, and is better known to the boulevards of Paris than to London. He was never considered eccentric until recently when his claim to the island of Trinadaro in the South Atlantic as a sovereign realm aroused much interest and amusement. He assumed the title of King Osmond I.

It is said that he has created an order of nobility, and that the insignia of the Grand Cross of Trinadaro have been bestowed upon the fortunate gentlemen composing his cabinet and coterie of advisers. A Court Circular is expected to appear shortly, and a diplomatic service will be organized.

Until His Majesty is ready to sail for Trinadaro to occupy his principality, the royal entourage will be found in the state apartments of the Hotel Carleton. Elaborate preparations are in progress for colonizing the island of Trinadaro, and a ship-load of people and material will leave London in a few weeks.

King Osmond I has a very large fortune. He is unmarried, and his estates, at his death, will pass to the children of his only brother, Sir Wilfred Sydenham-Leach of Haselton-on-Trent. The kinfolk of His Majesty are alarmed, so it is reliably reported, lest his wealth may be squandered on this curiously mediæval conception of setting up an independent principality upon an unproductive, volcanic island in mid-ocean which no nation has taken the trouble to annex.

Slowly and carefully Johnny Kent possessed himself of this information with never a flicker of a smile. The solution of the mystery of King Osmond I impressed him as neither grotesque nor curiously mediæval. In all London the King of Trinadaro could not have found two men of readier mind to fall in with his project and pretensions. To play at being a king on a desert island, to have the means to make it all come true--why, thought Johnny Kent, and he knew O’Shea must instantly agree with him, any man worth his salt would jump at the chance.

He was anxious to pass the tidings on to his comrade, and when the conversation slackened he edged in:

“We must be on our way, Cap’n Mike. His Majesty is good-hearted to listen to us, but it ain’t polite to talk his ear off.”

With this speech went so elaborate a wink that O’Shea comprehended that the engineer had something up his sleeve. Their host cordially declared that he must see them again, and made an appointment for ten o’clock of the next forenoon. They took their departure after friendly farewells and steered a course for Blackwall and the tavern of the Jolly Mermaid.

O’Shea was as delighted as a boy to learn that Osmond I was about to found an island kingdom. It was a more attractive revelation than if he had been discovered to be the inconsequential ruler of some effete little domain of Europe. And if one planned to set himself up in business as a sovereign, it was proper to use all the pomp and trappings and ceremony that belonged to the game.

“If he is to have a navy,” cried O’Shea as he pounded his friend on the back, “I know where he can find an admiral and a fleet engineer.”

“Not so fast, Cap’n Mike. I have a notion that he’ll have his own troubles gettin’ to his kingdom. Any man that can be buncoed as easy as he was is liable to have all his playthings taken away from him before he has a chance to use ’em. I’ll feel safer about him when he gets clear of London River.”

Before seeking the royal audience next morning they went to Leadenhall Street to see George Huntley. The ship-broker greeted them indignantly.

“You would try to hoodwink me, would you?” exclaimed he. “I have found out who your mysterious king is. I received a letter from him last night, asking information about the price of the _Tyneshire Glen_. I had no idea it was this crazy Colonel Sydenham-Leach that calls himself ruler of Trinadaro.”