CHAPTER IV.
OPENING THE KING'S EYES.
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 and stormy. 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 you 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 asking 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. The magging partner will be glad to come here at once. He 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."
The faith of King Osmond in human nature had been severely jarred, but somehow he could not doubt the statements of these headstrong, 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. The king had become fond of him.
"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 Haiti and Honduras and Cuba without the consent of the lawful governments, and we know our trade."
King Osmond 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. He desired to draw them out, to let them talk at their leisure.
"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 furnished and used as a library or private office, inasmuch as a large, flat-topped desk was strewn with books, pamphlets, and documents, and many more of them were piled on tables and on shelves against the walls. As a 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 intrusion demanded no more explanations or 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.
King Osmond, sympathetic and tactful, encouraged O'Shea to spin the yarn of his latest voyage—of a contraband cargo of arms, a steamer that fought her way clear of the enemy and all but foundered before she was beached and abandoned on a lonely coral key.
While O'Shea was telling the story, 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 could 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 quite recently, when his claim to the island of Trinadaro, in the South Atlantic, as a sovereign realm aroused much interest and amusement. He has 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 has been bestowed upon the fortunate gentlemen comprising his cabinet and circle 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 shipload of people and material will leave London in a few weeks.
King Osmond the First 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 will be squandered on this curiously medieval 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 waded through this information, with never a flicker of a smile. His face was enjoyably absorbed. The solution of the mystery of King Osmond I. impressed him as neither grotesque nor curiously medieval. The blustering, simple-hearted chief engineer was in his own way a dreamer of dreams, a follower of visions, although he assumed that he had linked himself with the troubled fortunes of Captain Mike O'Shea merely for the sake of double wages and a bonus at the end of the voyage. In all London the King of Trinadaro could not have found two men of readier mind to fall in with his project and his pretensions than these. 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 would instantly agree with him, every living man with the spirit of youth in him would jump at the chance.
He was anxious to pass the tidings on to O'Shea, and when the conversation slackened he edged in, with an excited flourish of his fist:
"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 eloquent 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 haven of the Jolly Mermaid.
O'Shea was as delighted as a boy to learn that King Osmond 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 with the game. O'Shea was heart and soul in sympathy with the dreams and plans of the gentle elderly eccentric who had the imagination to play the part with scrupulous attention to detail.
"If he is to have a navy," cried O'Shea as he pounded his comrade 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 bunkoed as easy as he was is liable to have all his playthings took away from him before he has a chance to use 'em. I'll feel safer about him when he gets clear of London River."